Drop City by T. C. Boyle

the tops off of green beans and talking bands with Merry, when he came winding up the road on a unicycle, a black Scottie dog levitating over the bumps behind him. I have arrived! he sang out, and Scottie too! Somebody ran over the dog two days later, and Jiminy had sat there in the tall weeds crying like a child. “ ‘Keep Out, No Trespassing, That Means You!’ ” he shouted now, oblivious to the irony. “That’s what they did at the original Drop City, in Colorado. And Thunder Mountain too.”
    â€œYeah, right, and who’s going to decide who comes in and whodoesn’t? What, are we going to like hire pigs, is that it?” This was Verbie, swirling green-pink like a fruit drink in a blender. “Norm, what do you think? You going to be our policeman?”
    Norm Sender was sitting cross-legged on the table, a cowbell suspended from a suede cord round his neck. He didn’t even look up. “No way.”
    â€œThe problem,” Alfredo was saying, and his voice was strained now, as if he were trying to hold something back and it was choking him, “the problem is the shit in the woods. And everybody in this room is guilty—”
    â€œIncluding the dogs,” a voice boomed.
    â€œRight, including the dogs. But it’s unsanitary, people, and I mean, people aren’t even bothering to bury it, that’s our own people, the Drop City people—the weekend hippies just fling their trash—and their excrement—anywhere they feel like it. And, speaking of which, there was that incident last night, in the back house, and you all know what I’m talking about.”
    There was a murmur of agreement. Verbie said two words—“Sky Dog”—and then somebody called out: “It was the spades.”
    â€œReally?” Alfredo let his eyes creep over the faces in the room. “Well, I don’t know, maybe we better ask Pan over here—he was there, weren’t you, Pan? Why don’t you tell us about it? Come on, Ronnie, enlighten us all—tell us about peace and love, huh?”
    Ronnie had been lying there limp amongst the pillows, his feet skewed at the nether ends of his stretched-out legs, but now he came up off the floor so fast he startled her—and startled the dog too. Suddenly he was standing there trembling in his cutoffs and tie-dye, and she was wishing she had a hit of something, anything, because this was Ronnie when the finger was pointing at him, this was Ronnie the victim, Ronnie the crucified saint. “I told you once, man, and I’m telling all of you now, I had nothing to do with it—”
    â€œYeah, right. It was Sky Dog, wasn’t it?” Alfredo hissed. “And the spades. ”
    Ronnie let his eyes bleed out of his head, cool Ronnie, poorRonnie, and he spread his palms wide in extenuation. “I mean, it’s me, Pan, you all know me. You really think I would do something like that, no matter how stoned I was—? Fourteen, she was only fourteen, jail bait no matter how you slice it. I’m not like that, I’m not that kind of person. You all know me, right? Right?”
    Somebody up front, one of the founding members, stood up now too. Star couldn’t see him at first, so she lifted her head up off the pillows and felt Marco adjust his position beside her. It was the guy— cat —everybody called Mendocino Bill, two hundred fifty pounds of hair wedged inside a pair of coveralls you could have used as a drop-cloth. “Listen, people, this isn’t the issue, and I’m with Pan, he’s my brother and I believe in him—I mean, what is this, a kangaroo court or something? No, look, the issue is our black brothers out there. They’ve been intimidating people, and all they want to do is drink cheap wine and score dope and have one big nonstop party—and it’s at our expense. Because they sure don’t miss a meal, do