Chapter-- 

The killing had become legendary. It happened way before I got there. A young man, said to be a rival to Rasputin, had been shot from a distance clean through his head and had died instantly although all the spiritual medicine the people were capable of tried to keep him alive. Rasputin seemed shocked enough and sad enough to keep any suspicion away from him about the shooting. "Could have been a hunter who didn't like a group of people living in his hunting ground."

A huge discussion took place about whether to bring in the cops. "No, we can't bring in the cops because we aren't supposed to be here. They will ask questions that we have no answers for." Rasputin won out in his argument and the poor dead man was buried out between the rocks where the creek makes a wide bend. It was quite a ceremony they told me. "There weren't many tears but some excellent goobly gook about living forever and "in a better place," and the happiness and laughter good Jake had left."

The burial was marked by stones piled up to resemble a smiley face believe it not.

Over the years people began to speculate about it and the story changed each time. There was one shot, no, now two. He fell instantly to the ground, no he limped wounded toward the garden and fell among the sheaves of corn. He had some last words. One time it was, "they know where we are." Another time was, "it is time for paradise." Later there was a more terse last word. "Shit." That usually brought on laughter and a few nodding heads. But there was no question that man still cast a shadow over the operation. For one thing he had a lot of qualities that Rasputin did not. He came from the people and was of the people unlike Rasputin who seemed to come from a portion of his own mind and liked to boss and rule.

"When he put the bandana around his head he was all business and worked harder than anyone else but made you feel as though you had done more work. That's magic my friend."

"There was a lot of weeping sorrow at that man's death."

He was a ghost who hovered in and through everything as the people talked about him constantly, always as a way to get from the shadow of Rasputin. The ghost became a kind of ideal figure they made up out and beyond the people of the commune, including old Rasputin who knew how they venerated the dead man and didn't seem threatened by it. Before long it was clear that the ghost of this Jake had created everything and made the commune into a thriving village that the people spoke about in tones of regret and nostalgia. "It was different back when Jake was the guy. Every day was a joyful day and we were much more productive."

"We didn't have to keep reminding ourselves of what we were about. It was just a natural thing.

Let me tell you a story about how the dead man ruled the living.

This Jake had been a veteran and was in the beginning years of the Vietnam thing. Apparently he didn't talk much about his experience there. "He told me he was an intelligence officer." "He was a sniper in the South Vietnamese army hired to pick off important communist officials in the boonies." That's what people told me he had said to them. But nothing was ever confirmed.

"He came down one time dressed in his camafloge and it scared the crap out of people. He was carrying a rifle of some sort with a grim expression on his face. Some of the women ran around thinking he was going to hurt people. But he was just distracted and laid his gun against the fence and let people look at his camafloge. That was as close to getting him to tell about his adventures as we got."

"I saw him one time perched behind a tree pointing his rifle at something and then making a sound like he'd shot it off. Then he moved quickly to another tree, hunched and made another noise. I didn't approach him but watched with both fear and fascination from a distance."

He also had a lot of good ideas they told me. They said every week he came up with a new one; ways to improve things and make things run better. He thought up the idea of generating electrical power from the waterwheel and to make a rope bridge across the stream so in winter when it was running wild we could get to the otherside. Most of the people would listen and then forget what he had said. I'm not sure they really wanted to do anything more than what they were doing. I'm not sure but they didn't seem all that ambitious. Every week he'd come down to the table and give up an idea. He would articulate them peacefully, without a lot of energy behind them but with some sort of authority as though they would know to enact the idea and follow through with it. Rasputin would look thoughtfully and write something down in his notepad. "Interesting idea there Jake," he'd say. He sounded sincere but no one believed Rasputin would ever carry out any of them and without Rasputin it was hard to get the resources to do anything.

But then the poor man was killed and within a short time many of his ideas were put to use.

They had a new age sort of approach to death and after the shock wore off they would dance and drink for several nights. The shock was of the sudden violence that came into their bucolic lives. Some admitted they couldn't quite trust people after that event. "A lot of blood was spilled that day," ----- said. "When I saw his eyes fixed that way I freaked out and couldn't get it out of my mind for days."

Mona took me up to the gravesite, up past the mill, near the waterfall. Out in a little clearing were the rocks neatly piled on the ground with smaller rocks and pebbles making a crude smiley face. It was crude but you could definitely see the shape of it and the first thing you thought of was that damn smiley face. Mona began to talk to the stones, keeper this and keeper that and a few snippets of what she remembered of the poor man.

"Were you two lovers?"

"That could have happened. The man was powerful and sexy, he exuded allure for me at least. But he didn't seem interested in the women even though he could have had the pick of the litter. He was completely commited to making things work. We all knew that. We all shared that loss. It was nothing really personal. He was like this fine idea standing up in the heat of nowhere and making the impossible become real. That's what people fell in love with."

"His spirit is laughing now, no question. He sees us as fools for the things we have said and thought about him. But he stays a bit then zooms to another part of the universe. He's free."

"You believe the spirit is liberated at death and flies freely around the universe?"

"There's probably more to it than that. How would I know? It would make sense wouldn't it. It would explain why the universe appears to be a huge obstacle to life. Death is a way to fight through that hard illusion. It's a gift of some sort."

Mona was talking to herself. She had little desire to convince me of her beliefs.

"Oh, I wish that man were still around. He marks a spot we'll never go back to."

I went into ----- room one time and on the wall was a photograph of he and this Jake fellow, arms around shoulders, smiling like there was nothing wrong with the world. Jake had the look of a common man but with an aura of stark privlidge. ----- forced the conversation to Jake, the subject. "He's around here, believe me. Maybe his ghost hasn't been released yet, I don't know. Maybe we all carry of piece of the man and don't know how to let the sorrow go. I don't know. But that was one powerful man let me tell you. He shouldn't have been wasting time with us, he should have been in politics or inventing something."

"Did he have family? Did anyone know of his background?"

"He probably had family somewhere but back in the midwest or east coast. If he did I don't think he cared much to communicate with them. I know he was in the war. He never said he was for or agasint the thing only to stay out of it. I was always bugged by that. I thought he should have been more anti-war than he was. He said to stay out of it, not because it was an immoral war or an illegal war but that it "would mess your mind up." Ah, I still see him in those fatigues and aviator glasses. What a different specimin that guy was, cut from something I know nothing about."

"What was the rivalry with Rasputin?"

"Oh you know, two strong males fighting over women and/or power. Rasputin was much more concerned about it, I don't think Jake cared too much about it, would laugh about it and let Rasputin make decisions. But you could see the splits in loyalty in people. Each had something that spooked people in different ways."

There was a heavy iron fence that swung out to let in the truck from the road and kids would jump on it and swing out with it and jump into a flower bed filled with white and red flowers all carefully tended by one woman in particular who would yell at the kids before they gleefully ran up the road and into the woods. The kids were often like angelic trolls who had grown up too fast but fought to remain childlike. Several of them had the rough edge around them and I grew fond of each. They always looked at me as an outsider and one they could go to when they were upset with their parents or the routine of the place. There was a certain routine without question. But always, a day didn't pass without an oddity falling from the sky or blowing in the wind or however you want to explain it. I was never prepared when one of the beautiful woman would walk naked across the yard in the blazing heat. I would look around quickly to see how the other males were reacting to see if I was doing the right thing. The women who got nude like that always looked past any of the eyes that were staring at them and no one and nothing bothered them. It wasn't as though you could ask them out on a date. Where would you go? Although I knew for a fact there had been some interesting doings in the mine shaft. I would draw you a picture but I'm sure you've seen a naked women. Not just a naked woman but a beautiful naked woman, one who may have been an actress or model if they didn't have a screw loose or been rebellious like some of the women I knew in the Bay Area. They always walked straight up like a middle finger.

A few members stayed off by themselves for the most part. They didn't care much for anything but the work and the idea. They were friendly enough and had proven their loyalty one way or the other. They weren't sociable is what it comes down to. It's funny how things seperate into the socialbles and non-socialbles. The socialbles end up running everything but the non-socialbles have the best take on what is really going on. They live for that take and cultivate it with relish and wait for a stranger such as myself to come along and ask questions.

"I don't know what they're telling you but it's mostly concoction from their own brains. The truth of the matter is that Jake was feared, not loved. I heard him threaten people. I heard him get rough with a woman. No, he wasn't at all what they make him out to be. Don't think he was anything other than a muddled human being who got up in the morning wondering why he was still alive and figuring out how to con his way through the living day."

"Well that sounds right, I mean no one is perfect. But I'm sure the people want to have a good memory of the man, something they can aspire to themselves."

"Well sure, they make things up to please themselves. It's never about the guy himself. And I was shocked and sorry about his killing. I ran up to where he was laying and saw some godawful stuff with blood and brain tissue, bone fragments, eyes fixed, body sort of shaking. People were talking to him as if he were still alive or talking already to his ghost. "Hey Jake, stay with us. Come' on Jake there's still lots to do..." Things like that. And I could see the man was gone and his spirit half way to Alpha Centauri I imagined. Why not? Why would the spirit of a dead man stay around here?

"And if you ask me I don't think the shooter was a total stranger. Now, there are hermit nuts that live around here in shacks and people stay clear of them. It could have been one of them. Or, someone could have hired one of them to bump him off. In my mind it can go many different ways but the fact is the man is dead and we bury the dead to move on."

"His lingering memory points to the general consternation there was about he and Rasputin. And now one group wants to rub out his memory and the other wants to put it on a miner's cart and carry it into the deep future. So, go figure. It's part of life. You choose what you want to believe and don't look back. If you have to get into a group to protect you then get into a group. That's what they are there for."

One guy told me that certain women got suddenly sad after the killing and never came back with their careless smile and laugh. I couldn't quite figure out with all the different information coming from people who knew him and were witnesses to his killing. Perhaps they had all been traumatized in ways they wouldn't fathom until they were off the land and back in the city. Trauma would be one thing to account for some of the blank stares I saw on people. I thought it was fatigue and it could have been. At any rate, something died with poor old Jake.

David Eide
January 24, 2014