Whipped: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel(25)
“Don’t leave me alone with him. I might kick him in the nuts.”
Silverson came close, favouring Arthur with his mint-scented breath and sparkling teeth.
“It would be an immense pleasure, Arthur, if you’d let me show you around our homely little scene. This afternoon. Along with your lovely companion.” His eyes lingered for a moment on her bust. “It’s Taba, isn’t it? I don’t believe we’ve formally met.”
She avoided his extended hand by foraging in her bag for her keys. The guru casually turned and aimed his video camera at the Easy Pieces as they struggled to squeeze boxes into the back of the Ford van, then on Felicity as she approached.
Clipping his camera to his belt, Silverson turned back to Taba. “You must be very proud of your daughter. So beautiful, so open to experience.” A slightly mocking tone, though still that blinding smile. “But do come.” A glance at Taba’s pickup. A disarming grin. “Save us an extra trip.”
The real reason for the invitation: half a dozen boxes of food, tools, and other miscellany remained by the van, which was stuffed, hardly room for passengers.
Felicity grabbed her mother’s arm. “Come on, Mom, join us, they do a divine herbal tea. It’s a really radical scene.” She already wore the Starkers mask, the enduring smile. “Just do it, Mom.”
Taba looked at Arthur. “What the hell.”
Arthur shrugged. He had time to kill and was curious to see their radical scene.
WHO WE ARE IS WHO WE ARE
It remained a sunny, shirtsleeve afternoon as Arthur joined Taba Jones in her rattletrap pickup for her promised ride home by way of Starkers Cove. The day would have been even more agreeable were it not for the twitchiness Arthur felt, prompted by a concern — ridiculous, of course, but felt nonetheless — of being infected, transformed. Ensnared in an enduring state of happiness.
“You’ll be my excuse not to stay,” Taba said. “They spook me. That ogre Morg with his stupid, staring eyes. The hot guru with his gushy, fake smarm. Be honest, Arthur, don’t these cheesers make your skin crawl?”
It would be unmanly to admit to such dread. “I merely regard them as bizarre and pretentious.” And, he might have added, spurred by mischievous intent. Surely the Transformation Mission was an elaborate cover for a scam. The bilking of well-to-do Californians had emerged as a motive. Those middle-aged hippie pretenders — they obviously came from money.
Potatoes, oranges, and soup cans skidded from their bags and rolled about in the bed of the pickup as Taba turned onto the humpy, curling Lower Mount Norbert Road. Arthur had difficulty keeping his eyes off her breasts, as they bounced in tandem with the clanking old Chev.
The hot guru, the ogre, and Felicity and her pals were ahead in the van, and it was kicking up dust, so Taba let it gain distance.
“Felicity isn’t saying, but I know Silverson is fucking her.” Mimicking him: “‘So open to experience.’ She’d better not end up having another abortion.”
They were descending now and had a view of the Salish Sea and in the foreground the placid waters of Starkers Cove and its small sandy beach.
On a bench of rock overlooking the cove were a lodge and a dozen guest houses, built for Starkers Cove’s earlier incarnation as a nudist resort — a risky, ill-financed operation that went broke. Silverson and his group snapped it up several months ago on a bankruptcy sale. According to Postmaster Makepeace — the source of all local knowledge — it had recently been put in the name of the Personal Transformation Mission Society, newly registered.
The whole area was surrounded by a tall fence of stacked split cedars backed by chicken wire. An enormous pile of fresh manure sat outside a sturdy wooden gate, and when Arthur got a whiff of it, he understood why it had been deposited far from any living quarters.
The Ford van pulled up to the gate, and Silverson sprang out, swung it open, and focussed his camera on Taba’s pickup as it moved forward. Arthur took in the roughly painted sign above the gate: “When you realize there is nowhere to go, you have arrived.”
Taba idled until Silverson closed the gate. He bent to Arthur’s window, swept an arm about. “Our sangha, our oasis from the chattering world.”
His upper body was profiled by a golden aura, and Arthur felt his flesh crawl. Two possibilities came to mind: one, he was hallucinating; two, Silverson truly was Christ returned. Then he realized his host had placed himself in front of the lowering sun, its rays framing him.
The stench of the compost followed them until the pickup reached a tin-roofed barn and a newly finished building that had the look of a dormitory. Carpenters stilled their hammers and saws to smile and wave. Arthur recognized the man on wheelbarrow detail: Garibaldi’s eternally depressed school janitor. He looked serene, improbably content.
A housing crisis had been temporarily met with several tents and translucent structures of industrial plastic sheeting. The latest arrivals, the two women in the hippie van, were pitching their own tent. Happy workers in the fields, fencing, digging, planting. Chickens and rabbits free-ranging all over the place, amid a smorgasbord of other livestock: Jersey cows, llamas, guinea hens, and emus. The Farm Fantastic.
“Who designed this zoo?” Taba said. “Someone obsessed with the Whole Earth Catalog?”
The sturdy log-built lodge offered rooms for lodgers on two floors, all with views of the cove. Tossing grass seed about its grounds was yet another Garibaldi recruit, a retired teacher. She waved them down and approached Arthur’s window with a Madonna smile.