The Eden Express by Mark Vonnegut Page B

the trial.
    Luxury accommodations. It was the first time we had slept in what most people would call a bed in about three months. Nothing against couches and foam pads, mind you, but this was something else. A great big old maple bedstead, a mattress, a room all to ourselves.
After four days of buses and trains, after three months of camping, it felt great.
    Amanda and Lou were first-rate hosts: good food, good drinks, movies. They expressed suitable indignation over the silly trial we had to go through.
    Lou was in graduate school, another thing I had avoided like the plague. They were making a pretty good adjustment to all the things I had refused or been unable to adjust to. Had I been a pathetic hippie whose dreams were getting stale, coming back East to be tried for dope, I would have hated them.
    The trial was a bore. I got off on a technicality but ended up having to use some political pull to get the judge to see it. Mine was the first case of its kind that hadn’t been pled guilty. People said it was an important case that would change things. I couldn’t get into it.
    Hitching to Swarthmore was a bore. Being stopped by the cops and searched again and again was a bore.
    At Swarthmore, talk talk talk talk talk. The shit is on the fan or very close. What to do about it? Was what we were doing good? Was it an answer? To how much? Working with the system? I had been through them all so many times. Boring. Spiced with a touch of astrology, the I Ching, or yoga, and diet. Was a bore. Was bored. It never went anywhere. Nothing ever changed. Maybe it was adding up. But how much adding up was needed? Boring, bored, bore. In the time I’ve been talking to you I could have cut a week’s worth of firewood, shingled a hundred square feet of roof, and shot three grouse.
    When the shakes started coming on the talk was torture. Dope helped some.
    Virginia went down to North Carolina to see her parents and I headed for New York City, where Pa was spending more and more time.
    Somewhere along the line I started falling apart. My elevation stopped working. My capacity for politeness and social grace deteriorated.
“I have the farm to go back to. None of this shit matters. Repeat. None of this shit matters.”
    Earlier it had been “I have the farm to go back to so I can enjoy being back East, New York, etc.” Toward the end it was “If I get really awful I’ll just put myself on ice and ship myself back to Powell River, where life makes a certain amount of sense.”
    Time started meaning less and less. It just hung there. Where I was meant less and less. More and more meant less and less. Just getting back to the farm where things made sense became everything. Just getting back. Where there was work to do that meant something. Something to get my mind off my mind.
    Feeling something gripping the pit of my stomach. Hands shaking. Social blunders. Getting confused about names. Stuttering some. Confusion about how long to shake hands. Getting please, thank-you, you’re welcome, hello, and good-by fucked up.
    Then the crying started. First just little tears falling asleep. Then bigger tears. Then having to get away and cry alone.
    Always on the verge of tears, waiting for, dreading the question, “What’s wrong, Mark?” Not being able to answer except by crying. Nothing they could do. “Just get me back to the farm. I cry a lot less out there.” They hardly ever asked. When they did, my answer was usually a look or gesture that said “Why aren’t you crying too?” And their looks seemed to wonder back.
    Maybe because I had the farm I let myself go further than usual. The pressure of having to endure was gone, so I allowed myself to see the full horror. Knowing how many valleys there were like ours, why New York City? It didn’t have to be this way.
    Automobiles careening. Drunks careening, junkies, pollution, misery ad infinitum, all careening. Dinners at Sardi’s, famous people, lots of talk. I fled up to the Cape for a