the car sputtered to a stop about ten miles east of his father's house in houston.
bob had it towed and they moved the bed and stuff like julie's rocking chair and demian's crib into a brand new townhouse a few miles from dad's house. s. junked the dunathan car and bought a pink oldsmobile from the fifties for fifty dollars. it was enormous but ran real well.

bobby got s. a job as a trainee in inhalation therapy at hermann hospital in south houston. he learned from his brother all about catheters and 'birds' or byrds.... the apparatus which kept people alive in those days. it usually had a tube that went in the mouth unless the patient had a tracheotomy, then it entered the middle of the throat.

one night s. was attaching a catheter on the nose of ninety year old woman. she couldn't talk, but looked so sweet and frail. she was communicating with him with her eyes. then suddenly tears began to flow copiously from those warm grey eyes. s. cried too. later, he told bobby "i don't think i am cut out for this job."

well, the money wasn't that great and julie was even more restless. the townhouse was nice but it was like living on an asteroid in space as far as she was concerned. so they said their goodbyes and loaded up the pink 'batmobile' and with the usual paucity of cash headed out one morning for california. 'hammerdown' all the way down the straight highway and through the pass they barreled on without a rest until they arrived in los angeles.

julie introduced s. to her teacher in the 'work', mrs. f., an artist at her studio. she was teaching a class in wood sculpture. there were dozens of lame grapes mangled in wood strewn all around. nothing seemed to come of that.

s. cruised sunset strip a couple of nights in a row.

chris (stepbrother) had invited s. and family to visit his place in santa barbara. it was up the pretty coast a few hours drive on the winding roads with the pretty ranches and rolling green hills down to the blue blue pacific cliffs. it was all picture perfect with beauganvilla accenting spanish style haciendas with red tile roofs and well placed palms.

chris had married an heiress. they had a lovely hacienda with a formal pond, courtyard and rose garden. in the back of the sprawling house was an acre of fruit and nut trees. by the back door of the kitchen there was a vegetable garden and an infinite collection of herbs and pretty low flowers like the cobalt lobelia. tall daisies and sunflowers backed up to the kitchen wall with a kind of raucus celebration of gangly growth.

chris was also hosting a tribe of hippies at his commune above the city. the los padres national forest was to s., as an east coaster, just a hot dry wasteland with sharp rocks and threatening cacti. there was no cutting through the wild around here. and the worst from his point of view was there was no water. no river. well, there was a hot spring cultured by the government an hour ride into the deeper hills then a two hour walk on foot.

they all went to the hot spring one afternoon. chris brought a couple of bottles of sake.
cynthia brought some sandwiches. s. put his toe in to test the temperature. it was hot. it was hard to get into. but gradually, one piece at a time, s. was all in except his head. they were all in and cooking. a hash pipe with a generous blob of blond lebanese hashish was cooking too and the scene aquired a surrealistic ambience. it was all very wonderful as the sun set orange and golden over a turqoise horizon. in and out of the hot bath as the stars gradually came out and the sky cleared and the universe appeared.

s. drove up in the oldsmobile alone with a sleeping bag and spent a quiet night (except for the coyotes which s. was sure was a pack of wolves going to eat him) so he slept on a ledge of the hill and if they came for him he planned to roll down the hill and take them on one at a time with his survival knife.


after a few acid trips at the commune, s. started itching to paint. the hacienda was empty down in the valley. empty except for a live in maid and a gardener. so he drove down alone and painted for a week. then, missing julie and the babies and all the fun at the commune he went back, got high, made love, laughed and told stories with the flower children and their hairy parents by the nightly bonfire. then back down the hill to paint until he felt the urge again to be with people. up in the mountains cynthia posed for him. she was very pretty, with a lovely totally tanned body. and cynthia was a very patient model because she was a painter too. one drawing became an etching years later.



and julie never came to the hacienda with him. she preferred the company of all the thirty or so people living there. they built things and gardened together.