Warren and the Hippies

Bare Ass Beach in the time of the Osqua Indians

The floor of the living room was stones set in broad margins of mortar. They were almost flat to walk on. More than once Warren had stubbed his toe on the edge of a stone.

He lit a Lucky Strike from a pack on the coffee table. It took a long time for smoke to float to the pine vaulted ceiling. The smoke floated up listlessly. It drifted above him to a spot patched with plywood. That was where he shot a hole through the ceiling one night with a single shot 410.

You might want to ask him why he did that? Just how curious are you?

You'd probably get asked what his dad asked him out in the garage when he caught boy-Warren sneaking a pull off of his jug --

What's the matter with you, boy?! Your face ain't hurting bad enough?!

Then Warren would flash that grin that generates a neon gleam through his eyes and fix your face for you.

Truth was Warren couldn’t remember why he’d shot the ceiling anymore than he could remember exactly why he hit guys in bars.

It was like some Masher Minder snipped a synapse-receptor connection. Took wire cutters and snap! Cut it clean through! Freed it from binding bondage! Saved it from the responsibility of storing memory. Then shoved a hood over his memory cage.

Someone had to do it, he’d say if he was in a good mood and not up to busting your face. Someone had to shoot it. Grin. Hands in the air, palms up, shrugging.

I was gonna hit the ceiling anyway, he'd probably say. Was gonna go through the roof. Might as well do it sooner than later! I was on the down side of a four-day speed run anyway. Living on potato chips and beer. Besides everyone else, including you, was asleep.

You want to ask him why he needed to hit the ceiling? Maybe you think that grin is friendly. Maybe you're not feeling the slide guitar ping in his eyes. If that Masher Minder managed to reconnect his synapse with it's lonely receptor, slap some Duct Tape on that sucker and yank the hood off of his memory, Warren’d be able to tell you he was pissed at those dirty hippies invading Bare Ass Beach the day before. That would be day 3 of his speed run.

Those dirty little assholes! He could hear them from on up through the tall trees surrounding his cabin above the Fish Hawk River. He heard them all the way from down there on the River on old Bare Ass Beach. Heard the whooping and hollering.

The drumming was a steady pulse. The drums knocked in his head. A wobbly rhythmic knocking, their stretched covered membranes reverberating the membrane of his mind. It resonated, got into his head and under his skin, like some primeval beat that had been ground into his psyche as the sun came up during that first time of days when it was just discovering its warmth. Mankind's first headache. He didn't like it then and he sure as hell didn't like it now.

He saw himself jerking his body around his place to the beating of the drums, dancing to the deja vu beat that resounded from the dark woods with soul intensity and fervent continuum that mimicked hot breathing and set the time to the Universe's pulse. He didn't need or want anybody keeping the Universe's time for him!

That did it! He wasn't going to be a comic book character in his own house! Time to go on down there. And if he was lucky, maybe some naked hippie chick'd offer him a toke of rope.

So he tumbled out the door, grinning, quite confident with the electricity of the speed firing sparks in his blood cells and surging through his consciousness.

There are two ways to get to Bare Ass Beach. The civilized chicken-shit way is to cross the Fish Hawk by walking across High Bridge Bridge from Oldmill Road to Treeline Road. That's the way the hippies went (though to cut 'em some slack, it's the way most everyone goes). Once across the bridge they had to climb down a short steep path from Treeline Road, a stretch that's there just to make you think you're roughing it.

The High Bridge Bridge is a covered bridge that spans the Fish Hawk River just west of High Bridge town. The covered part looks like the roof of a big old white barn. It was designed by the Corps of Engineers in 1936 to replace the original bridge the Osqua Indians had watched getting hammered into being as they surrendered Fish Hawk Country to the Whites.

Years after the Osqua's stoic departure, the first bridge mysteriously burned down. Did some Osqua upstart with a cantankerous spirit sneak down from the caves and plateaus hidden in the mist of the mountains to torch it? Did one of the younger Leggitts or Bardells, now counted as ancestors by the current generation, strike a match during a drunk? What happened has long ago been swirled away by the Fish Hawk itself.

What is known, but not talked about, is that men working for the Works Projects Administration built the bridge. The Corps supervised.

So the Government, the Federal Government, is responsible for the bridge. This doesn't get talked about in High Bridge town. It doesn't get talked about down in Oldmill either. Folks around those parts don't think too much of the Government. They see the Government as butting into lives, telling them when and where they can hunt and fish, when and where they can cut timber, what they can and can't drink and smoke.

But the men who actually built High Bridge Bridge were real people. Real poor people. WPA grunts. They were Great Depression poor. Pain-in-the-belly-at-bedtime poor. Many had come in from Kansas and Texas and Oklahoma. Side-steppin' right out of Woody Guthrie's "Do-Re-Me." Working the bridge put beans in their belly and chaw down inside their lower lips.

Some of them still lived in and around High Bridge town and down in Oldmill in this time that we're talking about. They won't talk about working on the bridge, quarrying the heavy stone for the abutments, milling the timber and hoisting it into place, and they sure won't talk about any of the make-out humping and carrying on that took place under that roof since the bridge's been built. High Bridge karma. You don't want anyone talking about you, do you?

('Course you would might talk about all that balls-bumping if you were young and today was time immemorial and you hid up in the bridge's rafters at night with a buddy watching the action down below. What's the point of going to all the trouble climbing up there and waiting of a Friday night after the football game if you can't tell somebody about it? You just better be ready to bust heads later to keep yours from getting cracked!)

But the guys who built the bridge and their next of kin sure as hell won't talk about High Bridge Bridge being built by the Government when they are fishing off of it. That'd be a downer no one wants to get into. Why upset the fish?

The other way to Bare Ass Beach was the Warren-way. It's harder than the easy-ass bridge route. Warren skipped down the back deck steps from his house and shot down a narrow path that reminded him gravity was in charge. The path probably had been carved out by the early trappers or earlier than that by the Osqua. Warren bent his legs slightly at the knees and dug his work boot heels in to drag against gravity as he skipped from one side of the trail to the other to keep from losing control of the downward momentum. The path was so narrow and deep that the trail was mainly sides, with the middle being a deep scar down in the side of the hill. This stretch is about 200 yards until it levels out and makes a turn to the left and you come to a clump of hemlock and you can straighten up again as you approach the river plain.

In the cool darkness of the tall trees, invisible from the Treeline Road, was an old house trailer, 10 feet wide - 50 feet long, covered by a crusty blue tarp. The tarp, a shield against the world, hung down along the door side of the trailer. It was Old Man Leggit's place. He was probably inside.  The feeling of the hanging tarp said, Don't come in. Don't even knock.

Warren glanced up into the trees as he always did when he reached this point in the trail, remembering what it was like when he walked through here with Garson his first night in Fish Hawk Country. High overhead but still concealed by the trees and running through them so that it was resting in the crooks of branches was a line of PVC pipe covered by a roof of tin gutter material for extra protection. Old Man Leggit had rigged this pipeline up years ago to drain off parts of Rock Creek that were close to his trailer. He'd set a battery powered sump pump at the beginning of the line that kicked in when the water level got high enough there.

Give ol' Gink-Chaw-Chow back some of its uppity wetness, Old Man Leggit thought, grumbling grunts as he stumbled around outside the trailer to go grab a bucket of water from the River. It'd flood the whole area if it could. Fuckin' River. It don't give a shit about me, but I sure as hell do!

Old Man Leggit thought he was pretty smart and he was. Pump all that excess water back into the Fish Hawk. Pour the gift of his ornery grace back into the soul of the River.

He figured the goddammed Oskey, as he called the Osqua, used his Rock Creek, which looked like a drainage ditch separating two smooth flat slabs of basalt, as a kitchen sink to clean their bowls and stone chiseled knives.

Hell, he thought, Let ol' Gink-Chow-Chaw have some of its dishwater back! Maybe if I look the other way it'll bless me in my sleep! ("Gink-Chow-Chaw" was Old Man Leggit's blasphemous corruption of the terms the Osqua had for the unity-concept of two Fish Hawk Rivers, one physical, the other spiritual, yet cosmically united.)

As he neared the tarp-covered trailer, Warren slowed his pace. If Old Man Leggit was inside, and he probably was, it would be smart not to make any noise. Leggit kept his .22 next to his bed. Warren wondered what he thought of the drums from the beach but that would have to remain one of life's mysteries. Warren smiled inwardly.

As he walked by the trailer he spoke at the tarp, uttering the password, Coming through.

He heard some muffled sentences from inside the trailer and what sounded like it might have been a question, followed by some muffled laughter. It was garbled permission to pass, concession wrapped inside confusion, amiability passing for insanity.

And Warren walked on, winking at a long knarled length of dry rolled wood in various stages of decomposition. Bits of shavings were tucked in crevices and grotesque wooden swirls erupted from edges like the body parts of forest gargoyles. Looks like Old Man Leggit's elbows and kneecaps, Warren thought.

A saggy wooden foot bridge with lodge pole railings crossed Rock Creek to a short trail leading down to Bare Ass Beach. Warren stomped across it, glad to be clear of the stealth that surrounded Old Man's Leggit's. The bridge buckled some under the weight of his stride.

Bare Ass Beach was down the side of the hill by the Fish Hawk. You could almost see it from Warren's house. The tall trees and thick brush kept it mostly hidden. The River's current was roaring from the snow melt up the mountain.

The Beach, sunny and clear and dazzling in the sunlight, was a slanting shelf of hard craggy shale rock. Scattered shags of moss covered portions of it. Some pebbly sand edged the beach in the middle of the summer when the River receded. But this was spring and the only way anyone would feel sand was to walk into the water.

Warren saw the white tee-pees and bon fires before he saw the people. The tee-pees were slanted on a semi-grassy space that edged the backside of the beach's rock surface. Several small fires flamed between and around the tee-pees.

His nostrils rushed with the speed's leftover adrenaline surge. His stomach was a vacant core. It was a familiar feeling he got whenever he barged in on a party where he hadn't been invited. In his bones he didn't know how to be. He knew no one. So he let the rush propel him and looked to fill the emptiness with dope and booze. Worked every time.

The hippies wore buckskin vests and dirty corduroy bell bottoms and sandals. Some were barefooted. They all had the look of new griminess. If you got close enough, which Warren soon did to share a pipe with several of them, you could smell the sour odor of several days of sweat.

Some of the women were topless. Others wore gingham dresses tie-died in yellows, oranges, and blue. Some wore tie-died bras. All of the women were bare-footed. Some played with small children, stacking the bigger pebbles in piles or walking along the shallow water shoreline. A few toddlers and children ran around the fires until one of the men calmly, but firmly told them to cool it. Some older kids were skipping rocks in the River.

Warren guessed twenty hippies. He sauntered over to the largest campfire, his ego expanding and his expectations in check. He said his name to the guy who’d told the kids not to run around the fire. They shook hands. Warren felt weird being polite, but he knew he was an intruder and he'd get nowhere if they thought he was a narc.

The drum circle was behind the fire next to the tee-pees.  There were congas, bongos, and a pair of tabla drums. The tablas sent a hollow bell-like sound up into the air, causing Warren to grin broadly as he accepted a toke from a very pretty hippie woman, obviously more willing to accept him there than they guys were. She was topless, her breasts were small. They were very white in contrast to her tan body, like she'd rubbed them with chalk. Her nipples pointed at the cool morning air.

Warren made a point of passing the joint to the guy he'd shook hands with - Stew. As the number made the rounds, others softly wandered over to get a better look at him. They were all casual, non-effacing, but Warren felt their curiosity, their tentative fear. Was he a narc? He saw that in their eyes. In his mind he could have come across as a narc just to freak them out. But he wanted to get stoned and check out the chicks. And make a point.

He went through the "interview" before he sat down with them. He affected a strong mountain accent, dropping all his g’s at the end of words, speaking very slowly, lazily, squinting as he toked, grinning as he looked at the guys, saving an open-mouth smile for the ladies - the hint of a wink in his eyes.

They were refugees from the rock concert festival circuit. And Stew laid it out for Warren …

We just partied last night at this hu-uuuge concert out near Portland in the woods. We saw Country Sam and the Hoots and Rawbone Dinah and her new group. A helluva show, man! Rockin'! They jammed all night long. You should have been there, man! It was a trip!

It was far out! another said, in an almost contradictory, yet sympathetically enthusiastic tone, and he accepted a joint from Warren, who accepted a pipe from a chick wearing faded jeans and a vest and a headband.

That right? Warren asked, grinning.

Yeah, Stew went on. Some old timer there told us about this Bare Ass Beach place and we had to check it out. Too bad it's too cold to get nude, man.

Finally, after the pipe had gone around three or four times, Warren felt mellow. No one was going to challenge him.

Well, he grinned looking around the circle at each of them. He drawled his words out real slowly.

Welcome here to Bare Ass Beach. You all are right welcome to hang out here and have a good time and all. There’s been parties here before believe it or not. I’ve had a few good times down here myself.

He winked at Stew. Some of the guys snickered, needing to be seen as knowing.

Just between you and me, though, - no big deal, you see? - I’d keep it down at night if I was you. There are people living up and down the River here. Quiet people. Most of 'em got guns if you follow me. Pretineer all of 'em are serious hunters if you get my drift. (Warren mentally winced at "pretineer." Old Man Leggit or Bardell would say that. So he stole it from them for the occasion.)

He look-squinted at the woman’s breasts who’d handed him the toke earlier, shrugged, and he looked over at Stew and took a pull off the pipe as he froze his eyes on him.

I’d pay extra careful mind about the cabin up in there – yonder.

And he pointed up at his house. You could barely see the roof for all the trees, but there were no other houses up there. He kept grinning but there was no mirth in his grin.

I’d stay clear away from that place if I was you. Cause that fucker up there is crazy! And he’ll shoot your ass if he sees or smells you!

Warren clicked the roof of his mouth with the flat of his tongue, jerked his head up in the direction of his house, and winked at Stew. He handed the pipe to the chick, got up, cinched up his pants, saluted the group with his index finger, and said,

So long, folks. Thanks a lot for the smoke. ‘Member what I said now, and he tilted his head quickly up in the direction of his cabin, winked one more time, turned around and headed out.

He walked away the opposite direction he came in and nodded his head to the drums setting the time-beat for the River's roaring riff.