Starbird Murphy and the World Outside (33 page)

After walking on for a few blocks, we finally saw the police car drive off. Then we doubled back toward the other end of the park and came to a baseball diamond, where we sat in the darkness of a cement dugout, both looking out toward the pitcher's mound.

“How did you survive?” I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them.

“I stayed at a teen center until I turned eighteen. Then some kids told me about the network for organic farmworkers. I didn't need a Social Security card and most of the farms have housing for migrant workers. I made my way up through northern Oregon.”

“Why did you wait? I mean, why did you come back now?”

“Bathsheba Honey showed up a week ago on my farm. She was traveling north along the coast with network people because she had just left EARTH in California with Mars. She said he bought a house down there. I wish I had known he wasn't at the Farm. I would have come back so much sooner.”

“Mars Wolf can't buy his own house. We only own property together.”

“Mars didn't buy a house, EARTH did.”

“EARTH bought a house for us in California?”

“He bought it for himself, under his Outside name. Sheba told me. She said he's buying things as Arnold Muller—a truck, a business. EARTH told Sheba he was going to share everything with her, that she could be his wife. But she got sick of the scene and took off.”

“Arnold Muller?” I said. My brain was a camera that couldn't get focus. The repeating payment logged in the café ledger, the payment that Ben and I had never sent.

“Yeah, Arnold Muller. The reason Mars tried to drive me off.” Doug snorted and turned away from me. He reached into his backpack and pulled out a rolled-up pouch that held crinkly strings of tobacco.

“You smoke?”

“Hanging out with migrant workers,” Doug said. “Learned some Spanish, too.”

“Tell me about Arnold Muller.”

“What's funny is that the day I became EARTH's apprentice, I felt like a hero.” Doug loaded two pinches of tobacco into the paper and rolled it into a thin tube, licking one end to seal it. “I can't really describe it. It was like not just being part of a cell, but being part of the nucleus of a cell. I got my own desk in EARTH's office, remember? He had fired that accountant from Bellingham and wanted to train me to do the books. He probably would have used Mars, but Mars could barely add. Do you know Mars never finished high school? He was a drug dealer when he met EARTH. I found out a lot in that office.” Doug took a lighter from his jacket pocket and lit fire to the end of his cigarette.

“There was complicated math in those ledgers, lots of money coming in and going out. I was only thirteen.” Doug propped one foot up on the bench and took a long drag from his smoke.

“You know what job they gave me at thirteen?” I said. “The chicken coop.”

“If I could go back in time, I'd do anything to get the chickens,” Doug said, exhaling blue smoke through the dugout fence. “But no, I had to work for EARTH. He kept giving me harder paperwork and not explaining how to do it. If I asked too many questions, he would just tell me to go away until I felt like being useful. Soon I was writing checks, doing taxes, and I barely understood any of it. It's a convoluted corporation they set up to manage the Farm.” Doug took another long drag from his cigarette and exhaled slowly. “And the CEO is Arnold Muller.”

I remembered what Ben had pointed out. Sun's last name was Muller.

“Some Family members showed up with nothing, like Fern,” said Doug. “But some came to the Family with money or property, like Jupiter, or the guy who owned the café. EARTH got them to turn everything over to the Family, said that nothing should be left under their Outside names.”

“That's the only way we can be communal,” I said. “We have to own everything equally.”

“Exactly. That's why it was so weird when I found the Farm's monthly payments to EARTH's Outside name. He had bank accounts as Arnold Muller. Why would EARTH own personal property when no one else in the Family did?”

“Maybe he had to. It doesn't mean he did anything wrong just because the bank has his Outside name. V tells everyone her name is Felicia.”

“Who's V?”

“A girl from Beacon House. Never mind. My point is, maybe it's just a legal thing.”

“That's what EARTH said when I asked him about it. I knew I shouldn't, but we were in the office late at night, and Mars was there, too. The frogs were so loud by the pond that it sounded like a stereo was on in the room playing frog noises. EARTH didn't get mad. He actually sat closer to me so I could hear him over the frogs. He said that Jupiter, who he called Judas, was bringing a lawsuit against the Family to try to get back the money that he had willingly shared. EARTH said the only way to protect the Family was to put the money in a personal account. That was the same night that Mars Wolf told me we had to go on a Mission, all the way to Eugene.”

“But that makes sense,” I said. “If EARTH had to protect us from a lawsuit, why does it matter what name the money was under? I'm sure EARTH didn't know what Mars did. You didn't see how upset he was when you went missing. Fern and I sat with him all day.” I remembered EARTH, sitting on a pillow in his room the day we discovered Doug missing, the red veins showing in the whites of his eyes. “I can talk to EARTH when he gets to Seattle tomorrow. I can tell him what Mars did.”

“EARTH is coming back?! Now?” Doug put his foot down on the cement and turned to face me. “Shit. Then there's no time.” He stood up and tossed the end of his cigarette through the fence. “It took me a week to hitchhike from Bend, but we should be able to score a ride to Bellingham pretty fast. Getting all the way to the Farm is going to be harder, but maybe you could just call there and ask for Fern. They won't suspect you. Damn it. Why now? Just when I found out he was gone.”

“Suspect me? Of what?” I stood up, too.

“We can't leave without her even if she wants us to. I'm sure it will be terrifying leaving the Family at her age. You know she's afraid of the Outside. But we can't abandon her to them.”

“What are you talking about? I know Mars did something terrible, but we can't run away.”

“Mars? What about EARTH? What about Arnold Muller and the house in California? Aren't you listening?”

“You're the one who isn't listening. EARTH said he had a good reason for using his Outside name. I'm sure he has a reason for the house, too.”

“I know you've grown up in this.” Doug gripped my hand and squeezed it. “But it isn't what you think it is, Star. We can all go back to Oregon together. I can find us all work on the farms. We can make it.”

“No.” I wiggled my hand free from Doug's grip. “EARTH was looking for you in California. We just need to talk to him. He'll fix it.”

“If EARTH was looking for me, I'm afraid to think why.”

“You're wrong about him.” I said. “I'm a Believer. I believe in EARTH.”

Doug took hold of my upper arms. “I know this is hard, but you've been brainwashed.”

I knocked his hands away and tried to push past him to leave the dugout. “Maybe you've been brainwashed by Outsiders.”

“We don't have time for this.” He grabbed my arm again to stop me.

“I'm not going to run away from my Family.” I moved wildly like a fish on a hook, trying to wriggle out of his grip.

“
I'm
your family, Starbird. I am and Fern is.” His voice quivered. He looked sad and cold in his thin sweatshirt and jeans. I was cold, too, and exhausted. I stopped struggling and he let go.

“I don't want to leave without you,” he said.

“I need to think about this.” He wasn't just asking me to leave my Family. He was asking me to leave everything I had ever known. And the same day I might have saved the café, the very same day I became important. But how could I just send him away again, with no one to love him, alone on the Outside?

“I'll wait for you for one day. But promise me,” Doug said, dropping his hands to his sides, “if you see EARTH, you can't talk to him about any of this. Don't even let him be alone with you. He has a way of convincing people of things.”

Doug looked so lonely and strange standing in the dugout, no friends, about to sleep in a tent in the park. He looked like what the Book of Names had called him. He looked lost. “Okay. I won't say anything.”

Doug walked me back to Beacon House, where all the lights were off and the house was quiet. I snuck some food from the kitchen out to him through the back door, along with a jug of new apple cider. He stuffed a roll into his mouth as soon as I handed it to him.

“Remember your promise,” he whispered, disappearing into the wet darkness. “I'll come back tomorrow.”

 29 

T
he next morning's alarm rang without mercy. It clashed around my head like three different shades of red. My thoughts jumped right to Doug, waking up in a tent in the middle of a rainy park, alone and hiding. I wanted to run there and take care of him. But if I did, I was afraid it would mean that I was agreeing to leave my Family and go with him. I wasn't ready to do that.

I had questions.
Is Doug telling the truth, and, if so, why did Mars drive him off the Farm? Did EARTH know? Why is EARTH holding money and property as Arnold Muller?
And the most pressing of all:
Have I been brainwashed?

I closed my eyes again and tried to look inside my own skull. It still felt like my brain, like my thoughts.
What if it's the Outside that's trying to brainwash me by telling me there is something wrong with my Family?
Maybe Doug is the one who got brainwashed.
Where is my actual brain in all of this?

I thought about staying home from school, maybe playing sick. But then I would be surrounded by Family members all day with no room to think. That's when I remembered it. I reached under my mattress for something I had hidden there, careful not to make noise and wake Io.

I pulled out the book Teacher Ted had given me,
Looking for Utopia: Intentional Communities in the United States
. I turned it over in my hands. The book was from the Outside, probably written by an Outsider, but it was also a history of other communities like mine. Educational information or Outside propaganda? I peeked under the cover and then opened to the introduction titled “America, the Utopian Dream.”

A commune is a group of people living together who share common interests or philosophies, and, in some cases, work, income, and jointly owned property. Members have emotional bonds to the whole group rather than to any subgroup.

That sounded like my Family. Not our beliefs or our Principles, but the way we lived. It didn't call us a cult. I kept reading.

Attempting to build more equitable, sustainable, and loving communities outside of “normal” society has been a human endeavor since the Greeks and Romans. In the sixteenth century, Thomas More's book
Utopia
became popular in Europe and led to a rash of communes—communities created to exclude tyranny, corruption, and private property. When North America was colonized by Europe, many of these alternative communities were looking for a new land, unsettled by the old power. Utopian societies sprouted like weeds in the so-called New World.

So far, my Family sounded like a utopian society, and that didn't sound like a bad thing. Dispelling “tyranny, corruption, and private property” had to be good. I glanced at the clock and realized I would need to run for the bus. I shoved the book into my bag and got dressed.

I couldn't risk reading any more on the way to school because I was sitting next to Cham on the bus. But I did sneak in some reading during first period, hoping Ted wouldn't notice
Looking for Utopia
nestled in my history text. While the rest of the class read about constitutional amendments, I was skimming the first chapter, about an early American commune called Fruitlands, founded by Amos Bronson Alcott, the father of Louisa May Alcott, who wrote the book
Little Women
. At Fruitlands, people believed spiritual fulfillment was found in nature, not in a church. They lived and worked on a farm together near Boston, but their commune lasted only seven months. Some members said it was because Amos “held too much authority and demonstrated a stringency that limited the autonomy of the others.”

A shadow fell across my desk. Teacher Ted was standing over me. His eyes traveled from the book to my face. He nodded and kept walking around the room.

In second period, I had to admit that I hadn't done the homework. I still graded Ben's paper (another ten out of ten), and he gave me a drawing on notebook paper of Earth orbiting the sun, and a banner that said,
Stars have magnetic pull
. I was forced to do math problems all period and couldn't find a subtle way to learn more about communes.

 
 

At lunch in the cafeteria, Ben said, “What book were you hiding in your lap in math? More homework you didn't do?” He smiled at me from under his hair. Rory was absent, so it was just the two of us.

“Not exactly,” I said. “Do your parents call themselves followers?”

“Sure. Jesus is the Good Shepherd and all Christians are his flock.”

“I just don't like that word,
follower
. It sounds sort of brainless, doesn't it?” I sipped the cider I had brought from home and picked at my portobello sandwich.

“My parents wouldn't say ‘brainless,' they would say
‘humble.' By calling yourself a sheep, you're admitting that your nature is sinful and that you need to follow Jesus to overcome your nature.” Ben took a bite of pizza. “But I don't know. Karl Marx said religion is a drug that keeps people complacent and easy to control,” he said with his mouth full.

“What do you think?” I asked.

Ben put down his slice and wiped his hands. “You know when someone seems desperate to make you believe something, and it just feels weird to you? Like, why do they care so much what you believe? It feels off to me, like someone is trying to make me wear a coat that doesn't fit, and they don't want to hear me admit that the coat's too small. They want me to say that it fits perfectly.”

“Yeah,” I said, shifting around on the cafeteria bench.

 
 

After lunch, I could no longer stand to hide my book in class. So I went to chemistry and presented my teacher with the crisis pass Ms. Harper gave me. This felt like the closest I would come to a crisis. Even though I was supposed to use the pass to go to the guidance counselor's office, I went to the library and found a little table behind one of the tall stacks. There I read about the Shakers at Mount Lebanon, New York, who led the largest and most successful communal society in North America. For a hundred and sixty years, they lived their ideals about the equality of labor, gender, and race, as well as communal property and nonviolence. They were led by Mother Ann, an Englishwoman who came to America with eight followers and used her charismatic personality to get them to give up their possessions and stop having children. That community died out for obvious reasons.