Amber by Dan-Dwayne Spencer (e book reader .TXT) 📕

the diner. At first, we all stood around, then as an alternative to standing, Roger and I claimed a spot on the grass to sit—there was a green patch near the Mustang’s front right tire. Rose, who constantly held Jimmy’s hand, casually sat on the car with him. Roger purposefully positioned himself so he didn’t have to watch Jimmy’s romantic gestures.

“You need some ginger tea and an hour of tranquil meditation,” Stoney advised as he repeatedly patted Rose’s arm. Being extra sensitive to odd behavior, I thought these hippies were more touchy-feely than any people I’d ever known. If he were a student at my school, I would swear he was trying to flirt with Rose, then when Flower gave Rose’s arm a vigorous rubbing I decided it had to be some hippie thing, and let it go.

Looking from one of us to another, Flower smiled and spoke with an encouraging, mentoring tone, “Tea and meditation are good for everyone. You’ll see.”

Roger complained, “I’d rather have a sandwich.” Looking from me to Jimmy, he blurted, “What? They offered.” He rolled his eyes. “What happened to getting us food? Now it’s just talk and tea.”

Flower gave him a peaceful smile. “We can manage that too.” She looked my way and laughed as if she had seen me for the first time. “You, in the mud, is this coating of drying clay intentional? Are you wearing it as a form of medicinal therapy?”

“No. I’m wearing it because I’m the shmuck who jumped in and towed Dave out of the playa at the accident site.” I waved toward the general direction of the highway. I had hoped they would recognize my moment in the sun—no one else there seemed to.

“You are brave to be so young.” Flower replied.

And there it was again. My damned button nose did it every time. It put me at least three years younger than my actual age. I added frustration to my confused bag of emotional trauma. Attempting to calm my angst, I breathed deeply and wondered what her perception was of three teenage boys traveling alone? I glanced around the group and remembered what the store clerk said to Jimmy. To them, we were probably two teenagers and an older man. Hell, everyone who met us probably thought our twenty-five-year-old brother was babysitting us. No way would a hippie chick go for someone who needed a babysitter—more frustration.

Roger migrated to straddle the fender over the headlight as best he could. To clear my head and rid myself of my nagging fears, I needed a distraction, so I decided to ask lots of questions. Maybe if I learned more about the commune, it would calm my apprehension about their Bohemian hippie lifestyle.

I opened my mouth to speak, but Roger beat me to it by asking, “If there’s a bunch of you living here you must have one heck of a grocery bill.”

Stoney pointed east. “Out there beyond the habitats are fields where we grow most everything we need. The other necessities and little luxuries, like Rose’s cigarettes, are provided by people who work outside the commune.”

Rose said, “At the center of the commune is a covered pavilion we call The Roundhouse. It provides a general meeting place when we all need to come together.” She made it sound like it was a tent stretched between two elaborate treehouses.

Roger shamelessly asked about drugs. Stoney answered, “Most of us are vegetarians and health advocates who wouldn’t think of putting any drug in our bodies. Eat pure and live pure. That’s our motto.” Smiling, he looked straight at Rose, “However, some of us have old habits we find hard to break.”

To Roger’s disappointment, it turned out, Stoney was his given name on his birth certificate. His folks were Jesus freaks, and it had something to do with Saint Peter.

Jimmy couldn’t keep quiet. He had to know. “I’m curious…you all, everyone here I mean….” He blushed. “You do wear clothes. I mean all the time—right?”

Stoney laughed and replied, “We are just like you. Do you wear your clothes all the time?”

Jimmy blushed a darker red and answered, “No.”

“We don’t walk around nude for the sake of being nude. If that’s what you’re asking? You’re confusing a commune with a nudist colony.” Stoney smiled and assured him, “We work, play, and do the things everyone does. We simply reject the conventional rules and social structure preventing the people outside our commune from discovering their true self.”

Jimmy nodded, his face returning to its normal hue. Stoney’s speech might have consoled Jimmy, but what I heard wasn’t an emphatic no. He left a lot of room for my imagination to contrive a smorgasbord of decadence about the unconventional lifestyle he described.

Then Jimmy tilted his head and got a puzzled expression. “When we were driving up, I counted about ten trailers and maybe a half-a-dozen tents. How many people live here?”

Stoney volunteered an answer, “There are about twenty-two active residents here and seven of those are children. Last month we numbered twenty-six.”

“Did the other four go back home?” Roger asked.

“No, but I don’t want to burden you with community problems.” He smiled and handed Roger another beaded necklace. “Wearing beads of love bonds us to the universe.”

Roger leaned over to me and quipped, “Then Rose and the universe are on a first-name basis.”

Jimmy spoke up again, “I suppose Rose’s job pays the electric bill.”

Stoney smiled, shaking his head. “We use photovoltaic energy to power the few devices we have.”

We blankly looked at them and back to each other, our ignorance plastered on our faces. We had no idea what he was talking about.

“Some people call it solar power,” Stoney explained. “You might have noticed the fixtures above the lights when you drove in. Those are photovoltaic collectors capturing the energy from the sunlight.”

Jimmy scowled. “But it’s dark now.