When Skye saw Virgo Mike loping down the path wearing clothes, she figured he must be going into town. Maybe someone scored some money.
He handed her a tiny spiral notebook and pencil. Redwood needles stuck out of his long hair. He smelled of b.o. and woodsmoke.
“Going for supplies,” he said. “Want anything?”
After months of brown rice, wild berries, and discarded vegetables from behind the market, Skye craved chocolate, a cold glass of milk, a hamburger. At the end of Virgo Mike’s list of staples, she read, “Good Squaws”.
So, that was it, then. Skye wasn’t cosmic enough. She’d gotten too hung up. A few nights ago he’d left her alone. She’d asked him where he’d been.
She handed the list back, nonchalant. “Looks good to me,” she said.
Skye had first seen Virgo Mike back east in the Cambridge Common. His face was lit up with cosmic bliss, his eyes radiated everything she wanted to know. Then she saw him in Golden Gate Park — or maybe it was another dude with long brown hair and big trippy brown eyes, smiling like the Buddha. But when she finally got to the commune in Mendocino and saw his celestial smile, she knew it was fate. They zipped their sleeping bags together inside a circle of new-growth redwoods.
No new squaws followed Virgo Mike back from town, but that night there were fresh onions and stew meat in the communal pot. And after dinner, Mike ground up the few hits of acid he’d scored, mixed them up in water, and passed the jug around the fire. Skye took a few good pulls.
Before the sun went down, she left the fire and went back to their campsite. Her sleeping bag lay rumpled and alone on the ground, unzipped. She pulled on her Indian print dress, slung the rolled up bag over her shoulder, and followed the path down to the river.
On the way she passed a tipi. No one was there except a mother dog lying outside in the dirt. Six little puppies, their eyes still closed, whined and crawled, searching blindly for a nipple to suck. Skye had to turn away.
On the bank of the river, Skye cleared a spot, balled her dress into a pillow and lay back, watching the sky darken and the stars blink. She waited to be reduced to quivering protoplasm and feel the cosmic oneness of the universe. To transcend her ego and her petty needs.
Instead the moon that rose over the tops of the redwoods was not the moon in the seventh house. It was the moon she’d watched from the back seat of her family’s 53 Plymouth, the moon that followed her car home. Skye was the little girl who sang, “I see the moon and the moon sees me,” and then “Moon River” at her high school graduation. Skye was the girl who would go to college and marry a nice man and have a nice family. Skye was not a good squaw.
Jeanne Holtzman is an aging hippie, writer and women’s health care practitioner, not necessarily in that order. Her work has appeared or is upcoming in various print and online journals including Every Day Fiction, Night Train, Dogzplot, Drunk and Lonely Men, Swink, flashquake, Salome, Camroc Press Review and Hobart. You may reach Jeanne at J.holtzman@comcast.net.
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30 Responses to “WHEN THE MOON IS IN THE SEVENTH HOUSE • by Jeanne Holtzman”
Comments
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July 14th, 2009 at 12:56 am
Good little story – very insightful.
July 14th, 2009 at 3:38 am
Jeanne,
You have captured the spirit of the hippie era with a few well crafted words.
July 14th, 2009 at 4:34 am
Great story Jeanne. It took me back.
July 14th, 2009 at 4:55 am
Congratulations. Love this story and really like the new ending! [at least it was new to me.]
July 14th, 2009 at 4:58 am
Vivid picture of absolute misery. Whether it’s true to some reality I don’t know, but except for some details, such as “a few good pulls” and the song “I see the moon and the moon sees me,” it seems like it’s possible.
July 14th, 2009 at 5:02 am
Very nicely done. A sweet, melancholy 5.
July 14th, 2009 at 6:30 am
Good story. I like the “good squaws” on the list and the final twist back to the opening.
July 14th, 2009 at 7:44 am
I very much liked the squaw in this story. :~)
July 14th, 2009 at 7:49 am
That was exteremly well weitten. I really loved the world you showed us, it was sad but beuatiful. This was defunitly a “five” story for me.
July 14th, 2009 at 7:51 am
I wonder what the point of this story was?
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that in a story, I want to be inspired, or for it to provoke me into new thought. A sexually used up woman is just depressing to me unless it is going somewhere. If I have to follow a character into their depression, I want them to be liberated too. Personal taste. But this story was too depressing for me.
July 14th, 2009 at 8:04 am
So well-written. I love the varied meanings of cosmic throughout, of Skye. And a beautiful, perfect ending.
July 14th, 2009 at 8:49 am
Beautiful, Jeanne. A touching story about not quite managing to live the life you dreamed of, or to be the person you imagined yourself to be. Great job!
July 14th, 2009 at 9:03 am
Great story. Took me back.
July 14th, 2009 at 9:07 am
What the hell was that? One of the most confusing pieces I’ve read in a loooong time! SORRY, not for me.
July 14th, 2009 at 9:22 am
If you want to check out how manipulative the likes of Mike could be in the 60s / 70s, check out ‘Helter-Skelter’ about Charles Manson and his ‘Family’.
Best true life crime novel I’ve ever read, to boot.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:39 am
thank you EDF for removing the bad taste in my mouth from yesterday’s pointless joke by posting today a story with literary depth. sophistication and maturity, if just for one day.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:58 am
This was going fine until it got to the 53 Plymouth, then it took a catastrophic nosedive. I really don’t get the ending! Nice portrayal of the hippie culture, but the last paragraph veered off into nowhere.
And as far as a. zeal’s comparison with yesterday’ “Wild West Justice,” I couldn’t disagree with you more! WWJ was by far better than today’s piece. Please, Editors, more like WWJ (and Legends Collide, too). a.zeal probably thinks that Jane Austen is a better writer than Janet Evanovich, too! (She isn’t, I can barely plow through Austen, while Evanovich does some real page-turners!)
July 14th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Nicely done. I’m so very glad Skye woke up and realized that she’s an important person, not some fake guru’s play-toy.
July 14th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Her name isn’t really Skye, either. It’s Jennifer.
July 14th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Thanks everyone – for the compliments and the lively debate!
July 14th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Huh?
July 14th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
In every movement there’s a point – maybe several – where we look up and realize “not for me anymore”. This is a great portrayal of one of those moments for one woman. “Sexually used up”? I don’t think so. Ready for a life beyond sex and drugs – yes. Nice work, Jeanne.
July 14th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
I liked this because it didn’t look back at the culture of that time through a smoke filled monocle. I’m sure there’s something to be said for “peace, love, and hair grease” but I never saw the charm. Wasn’t old enough back then to have an opinion about it, so perhaps I’m missing something.
Anyway, liked it and felt then ending showed a certain realization on the part of Skye: that all the lines about universal connectivity were probably just b.s. to get her in bed. The moon has no mystical quality for her anymore.
An unrelated aside: Jim, thank you for your kind words. The scattershot comment about the inferior quality of work posted here is just an opinion like any other, entitled to be expressed, though I’d wager one that is in the minority. I enjoy the range of stories that the editors present and while I don’t claim to love them all, I do appreciate the opportunity to read them.
–John
July 15th, 2009 at 2:19 am
Love it! A real gem!
July 15th, 2009 at 6:53 am
Lovely portrait of what happens in the real life of a day at a time. Felt real to me.
July 15th, 2009 at 7:32 am
I enjoyed it. Glad Skye came to her senses. There are still a lot of Virgo Mike types out there in various disguises.
July 15th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Thanks to everyone who took the time to comment. I love the diverse readership here at EDF!
July 17th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Pulled me in and kept me there.
(I too, have been impressed and enjoyed the diversity of stories and readership at EDF.)
July 20th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Lovely work. I look forward to reading more of your work.
-Raquel, Editor
September 9th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
I don’t know if this is what the author was going four, but I get the idea Skye is pregnant.