I pulled into the gas station, had the attendant fill up the Dodge’s tank and asked the way to Willow Ranch.
‘You don’t want to go to Willow Ranch, ma’am,’ the attendant said, a raw-boned, deeply tanned man who could have been thirty or sixty. ‘You got nothing but pothead hippie freaks out there.’
‘I’m a photographer,’ I said and gave him my card — record of my passing. He read it carefully. ‘Oh. You should be OK, then.’ It always worked.
The dirt road out of Line Lake ran up the middle of a wide wash where the heat seemed even more intense. I saw a broken sign that said ‘Willow Ranc—’ and persevered. I was stopped by a pine log across the track and beside it sat a wheelless VW Combi with a tarpaulin awning rigged off its side to give shade to a ramshackle stall selling home-grown produce — pots of honey, squash, corn cobs, long thin avocados and an assortment of various-sized straw baskets. A young man, shirtless, stepped out, hands in his pockets, with the unfocussed, blinking gaze of someone just roused from sleep or massively intoxicated.
‘Hey. Nothing down that road for you, ma’am. Ah. . Like private property, you know?’
‘I’ve an appointment with Tayborn Gaines. I’m a photographer.’ I showed him one of my cameras.
‘Oh. OK. Sure.’ He dragged the log away and I drove on to Willow Ranch only to pause, a hundred yards down the track, at a kind of crude gateway. On a rickety arch made of hewn timber and bits of planking there was a message, written in black paint, below the now familiar stylised eye: ‘THERE ARE NONE SO BLIND AS THOSE WHO WILL NOT SEE’.
I drove on under it, slightly more apprehensive. And after a few turns in the dirt road, Willow Ranch was revealed to me. I paused to take a quick photograph.
Willow Ranch, Inyo County, California, 1968.
The abandoned dude ranch was bigger than I expected, with a strange assortment of ramshackle wooden buildings spread over a two- or three-acre site, most of them semi-derelict, some roofless, with, at the centre, a three-storey western ‘saloon’ and a corral overgrown with mesquite bushes. Parked here and there in the shade of scrub oak or stunted cottonwood trees was an assortment of vehicles, sun-bleached cars and trucks and one ancient school bus. There must have been a water source as I saw a generator pump by a well head with black hoses winding out to those various buildings in better repair and to irrigate small vegetable allotments scratched out between the buildings. Here and there were other signs of semi-permanent habitation: a rubbish dump, washing hanging on lines — and graffiti, lots of graffiti. I slowed to take the slogans in — Ban the Bomb signs, flowers, and amongst them, carefully painted and stencilled messages: ‘BRAINWASHERS ARSONISTS SADISTS KILLERS — ENLIST TODAY IN THE SERVICE OF YOUR CHOICE’; ‘GIRLS SAY YES TO BOYS WHO SAY NO’; ‘RICH MAN’S WAR’; ‘WAR IS NOT HEALTHY FOR CHILDREN’; ‘MAKE ART NOT WAR’; ‘WAR IS GOOD BUSINESS INVEST YOUR SON’; ‘GIVE PEACE A CHANCE’.
Young men and women looked on in vague curiosity from doorways, canvas awnings and porches as I bumped along the track in front of the saloon and halted the car in the shade cast by its facade and stepped out. There were advantages to being a woman in your sixties with grey hair — sometimes — you posed no obvious threat, but I noted that my hands were shaking and my throat was constricted. I smiled breezily at a couple of guys wandering towards me. They were smiling. The natives were friendly.
‘Hello,’ I said as calmly as I could manage. ‘I’ve an appointment with a Mr Tayborn Gaines.’
‘Tay!’ one of the guys shouted towards a purple and white bungalow with an ex-army jeep parked outside, and more graffiti above the front door: the big stylised eye and the message ‘CLARITY OF VISION = THOUGHT = PURPOSE’. Then he sniggered as he added, ‘Old lady here to see you, man!’
After about a minute a tall, fit, good-looking man in his thirties emerged from the purple bungalow. He was bare-chested and wearing sawn-off jeans and had a red towel draped round his shoulders. His long, shoulder-length hair was damp, as if he’d just taken a shower, he was wearing sunglasses and had a droopy Mexican-style moustache.
‘Hi there, ma’am, I’m Tay Gaines, what can I do for you?’ he asked me in a friendly open manner, unfolding his towel and drying his hair.
‘Let me give you my card,’ I said. I had put my camera bag on the ground and as I started to rummage in it I covertly snapped a photo, quickly, hoping I’d managed to catch him in the frame. Evidence that might be useful. I stood and handed him a card.
‘Global-Photo-Watch. I don’t understand.’
‘We have an appointment,’ I said. ‘Don’t we?’
I don’t know quite what I’d been expecting — some kind of low-life down-and-out, I suppose — but Tayborn Gaines was a handsome well-built man and clearly proud of his lean, muscled body. And something of a full-on narcissist, I suspected.
‘No, I don’t recall any “appointment”,’ he said politely, looking around at the small crowd that had gathered. ‘I think you must have made some kind of mistake.’
‘My editor told me to come here,’ I said. ‘He told me everything was arranged.’
‘I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’ve had absolutely no contact with’ — he glanced at my card — ‘any Global-Photo-Watch.’ He smiled. ‘I stopped talking to the press a long time ago.’ He handed his towel to another girl — a pale-faced black girl with a huge Afro hairstyle — as she wandered out of the bungalow, curious to see what was going on. He put his hands on his hips and stared at me, head on one side.
‘Crossed wires, I guess,’ he said.
‘We’re doing this piece on alternative Californian communities,’ I said. ‘You know, the Esalen Institute, Hog Farm, Drop City, the White Lodge Commune in Marin County.’ I smiled apologetically. ‘I’m just a photographer, I go where they send me. I was told everything was arranged.’
Gaines smiled apologetically too, and then glanced again at my card.
‘I was also told a permission fee of two hundred dollars had been agreed. Sorry,’ I said and handed over an envelope containing $200. It was an old trick: cash usually overcomes the camera-shy. Gaines took out the money and riffled through the notes, $20 bills — I could see he was more interested now. I took the opportunity to turn and look around me. A dozen or so people had gathered, curious. All young, unkempt, grubby-looking. No sign of Blythe or anyone that looked like Jeff Bellamont.
‘I’m afraid it’s not convenient today,’ Gaines said, smiling broadly. His smile revealed poor teeth with visible gaps and one incisor was black. The handsome, fit man revealed the malnourished youth when he smiled. ‘Where are you staying? Close by?’
‘The San Carlos Motel in Glenbrook.’ I would have preferred not to tell him but there was no alternative.
‘Well, if it’s OK with you, I’d suggest you go back to your motel and we’ll call you when we’re good and ready.’
‘Yes, of course. I apologise if there’s been a mix-up but, as I said, I’m just the photographer.’
‘Yes, sure, I know what it’s like. Carry out those orders,’ he said. ‘And, by the way, would you mind telling me the name of your editor? You understand — I have to be a little careful.’
‘Mr Cleveland Finzi.’
‘I have to talk to my friends here — see if it’s something we’re prepared to consider — but I promise I’ll give you a call in the next twenty-four hours.’
I climbed back into my car and drove away from Willow Ranch, my hands sweaty on the steering wheel. I felt a tremble of high tension in my body but also a curious sense that — however strange the set-up at Willow Ranch was — it didn’t seem sinister. Perhaps, it struck me, Blythe was indeed safe and well, just as she had said.