Drop City

long time now and there's no denying it, no postponing it anymore, and I've just _got__ to get it out, so bear with me . . .” He stopped right there, and nobody said a word, nobody so much as breathed.
    Star found Marco's arm and pulled it up over her shoulder like a cloak. Her heart was pounding now too, along with her head, a little hammer there striking over and over like in the TV commercials--she wasn't going back to Peterskill no matter what happened, not if Drop City closed down tonight. She was going to stay here, right here, and she didn't care what Norm said or how bad it was.
    Norm bent low to light the joint for Premstar, and Premstar took a hit and Norm watched in a proprietary way as she passed it on to Reba before he straightened up again and looked out over the room. “I'm telling you the bad news first, but remember what the _I Ching__ says--'Perseverance Furthers'--and you are all, every one of you brothers and sisters, going to _know__ that the good vibes outweigh the bad and that we _will__ persevere in our mission and our philosophy and all the love and truth and the beautiful vibes of Drop City and everything we've accomplished here in spite of the fascists beating at the door.” Another pause. His voice dropped. “Only we won't be here. Not on this property.”
    If there was any air left in the room, it was gone now, sucked right out the window. Not here? What was he talking about?
    “The fuck we won't!” Jiminy jumped up out of his chair, his hair windmilling round his shoulders. His fist was balled, and he brought it down on the table at Norm's feet, and then rocked back into himself, trembling all over. The day hadn't been kind to him either, Star could see that.
    “It's over, people,” Norm sighed, and he never even glanced at Jiminy, just let his gaze seek out each face in the crowd, one after another, like beads on a string. “The bureaucrats've won the war. The pencil-pushers, the accountants, the _man.__ We're history here, and you better get used to it, because the straight world is moving in.”
    Everybody was aroused now. Or no: they were incensed. “Bullshit!” a voice shouted from the far side of the room. “We won't let them!”
    “No!” Maya joined in, nothing to her voice but textured air, her glasses flashing in the glare of the overhead lights like a shield, and what was with the lights, Star was wondering, why feed PG&E? Was Norm staging this? Was that it?
    And then a voice she recognized, knew so intimately it was as if she were speaking herself: “Come on, Norm, come on, man, don't let us down.” It was Ronnie, across the room, his face pinched and his eyes swollen in his head. He looked terrible. Looked as if he'd been buried a week and dug up again. But that voice, that tone--there was something raw and desperate in it, a quaver she recognized from all those late-night disquisitions on God, the futility of life and how impossible it was to find a good FM station in the flatlands, and she understood in that moment how much all this meant to him. Ronnie. Pan. He needed Drop City as much as she did. “Come on, Norm,” he nagged. “Come _on.__”
    Norm bowed his head a minute, as if all the fuss were too much for him. He dug at his beard, pushed the hat brim up off his brow so that the bandage flared out like an accusation. “The bulldozers'll be here inside of a week. And that's whether the pigs come back and lock me up or not, because let me give it to you straight, people--by order of the _judge,__ and you can look it up, Judge Vincent T. Everard, the Right and Honorable, they're going to take down every substandard dwelling on the place, and that's their words, not mine, because I say _substandard,__ my ass.”
    “Right on!” Mendocino Bill shouted, and then they were all shouting, a dizzy reeling tightly wound gabble of voices--no, they wouldn't budge, they'd fight, they'd chain themselves to the gates--but all Star could think of was the naked hills and the rubble of the yurts and huts and plastic sheeting all rolled up like a frayed blanket, and would they spare the treehouse? Would they see it, even?
    She drifted in and out of it then, because that was when the joint worked its way to her and she touched her lips to it and tasted her brothers' and sisters' communion in the wetness of it and filled her lungs with the dense sweet smoke that was going to knock her headache down and out for the count and fill her every cell and fiber with bliss,