by Pat Conroy
The next afternoon, the gathering began again and I learned that the instinctual was far more fearful than the scheduled or the planned. The mob again made its way toward the end of the Horseshoe; and once more I felt the thrill of being part of something much larger than myself, as I was swept along by the movement of thousands. Jordan’s hand held my elbow as we tried to see the speakers through the sunlight and the noise. Whispering in my ear, Jordan said he had never seen so many men with guns in his whole life, not even at Camp Pendleton. Hundreds of National Guardsmen had reinforced the highway patrol, and the air itself seemed gelatinous, unbreathable.
Shyla was speaking when we drew close enough to hear, but we were still fifty feet away from the speaker’s platform. We heard Shyla saying, “They brought the war home for us yesterday. Because we did not want our soldiers buried in an unjust war, they decided to bury some of us instead. Because we came in peace, they tried to show us what the price of peace was going to be. Because we hate war, they decided to declare war on all of us. Let us answer their gunfire by rededicating ourselves to the cause of bringing our soldiers home. Let us bury our dead, then go about our business of burying the Vietnam War forever.”
The applause that greeted her words was loud and insistent. Then Radical Bob moved toward the microphone. He had spoken but a few words when the head of the SLED—South Carolina Law Enforcement Division—agents, J. D. Strom, interrupted him and announced to the audience that no license to assemble had been granted by the city and that this demonstration was canceled by order of the mayor. Shoving Strom aside, Radical Bob tried to commandeer the microphone, but his actions were broken off by a slim, swift-moving team that handcuffed him with great efficiency. The crowd roared malignantly as Radical Bob was dragged off and thrown into the back of a squad car. Students on the edge of the crowd tried to break through the cordon of officers to free Bob, but were pushed back by a line of SLED agents.
Capers negotiated nose to nose with Colonel Strom, then was allowed to use the microphone to make an announcement.
“This meeting will reconvene in the theater of the Russell House. They may be able to stop us from talking to each other out here, but by God, we own the Student Union.”
So, again, we moved, this time between the rifles, the pistols, and the batons of the forces of order, yet we were orderly and wondered at the necessity of this dark show of paranoia and force. The eyes of the police officers were filled with loathing as they watched the disorderly but unthreatening passage of the students between their ranks.
“They’re worried about being killed,” Jordan said. “The poor bastards are afraid of us.”
“Why do so many fat people go into law enforcement?” I asked.
“Because they’re wearing bulletproof vests. Stay in the middle,” Jordan warned. “If they start shooting, they’ll thin out the edges first.”
“They won’t start shooting,” I said. “These are just South Carolina country boys, like us.”
“You think those National Guardsmen weren’t just Ohio boys like those poor students?” Jordan said.
“Don’t make me more nervous than I already am,” I said. “Let’s go back to our rooms. I personally don’t give a gerbil’s fart for the whole Vietnam War.”
“Then that’s a good reason to be here,” Jordan said, but he did not explain what he meant.
On the ramp leading into the Russell House, I saw two attack helicopters hovering in the distance. One girl carrying a radio said it was reported that another thousand National Guardsmen were mobilizing in Charleston. I watched highway patrolmen passing canisters of tear gas through their ranks and heard the barking of Dobermans and German shepherds assembling behind the library. Already, the state had gathered enough firepower to eradicate a suburb of Hanoi, yet the enemy they faced were placing flowers and candy kisses into the holsters and cartridge belts of unsmiling patrolmen.
When we reached the Student Union, Jordan and I stood in one of the overflowing aisles as Capers Middleton walked out to center stage and to the podium. Applause went up like a fire among drought-stricken pines and grew in fury because our energy had been set off with no outlet. The cheering turned to screaming and the screaming turned to a roar, tribal and irresistible. So many students had crowded into the theater and spilled out into the hallways and corridors that the police and the guard had mostly been left outside. We were alone with one another again.
Capers surprisingly did not immediately start to speak. Instead, he enjoyed his first moment as a politician, as a man who had an instinctive appreciation for the ravenous needs of crowds. He watched the police and SLED agents force their way into the back of the auditorium and move through the students, whom they jostled and shoved out of their way, and he threw away the handwritten copy of the speech he had prepared. Once the phalanx of policemen had reached the front of the stage with their nightsticks at the ready, he began. “I’d like all of you to join me in singing a song most appropriate for this occasion. What we are doing truly is celebrating the greatness of this country. This is the country in which the British would not let us speak freely, assemble at will, or have a say in who would tax us. The British had thought of everything, except one thing: we were no longer English. The country had changed us and without knowing it, we had become Americans. As Americans, we taught the whole world about free speech. We invented it. And no one—I repeat, no one—is going to take it away from us.”
Mike was up onstage photographing the crowd’s reaction just as it erupted, electrified by the power of Capers’ words. Jordan and I almost burst as we screamed until we were hoarse. “These poor cops’re afraid of us. Let’s show them there’s no need to be afraid.”
Then Capers stood before the microphone and sang in his merely serviceable tenor voice:
“O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America! God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood,
From sea to shining sea!”
We all wept during the singing of “America.” Capers had managed to create a moment of great beauty. His instincts were accurate, his timing impeccable, and he seemed to exert leadership over the crowd by the authority of his presence alone. I had never seen a handsomer, more charismatic boy and I felt myself falling in love with this best of friends all over again.
Then law enforcement made their first strategic error. The city fire chief waddled out onstage, his saunter penguinesque and uncertain, and one could sense his unease before our crowd of long-haired students. He wrestled the microphone away from Capers. During their brief struggle, Capers was smiling and playing to the crowd, but the fire chief did not come to this moment of time in a playful mood. He thought that Capers was mocking him. He motioned with his left hand and the stage was suddenly filled with cops. One shot a small aerosol can of mace into Capers’ eyes. Capers screamed, went down on his knees when a baton struck the back of his legs, and he fell to the floor face forward as a cop hit his head with a blackjack. Capers was unconscious as they carried him offstage to an ambulance waiting outside. We were so astonished by the sudden turn of events that there was not a sound in the auditorium and all I could actually hear was the shutter of Mike’s camera opening and closing like the eyelids of some beast hidden from view.
The fire chief spoke up at last. “Mr. Middleton here didn’t get a permit for this meeting. Y’all are busting every rule we got in the fire code. I’m authorized by the governor himself to issue a proclamation. Until further notice, no students’ll be allowed in the Student Union. Understood? No students allowed in the Russell House. You’ve got five minutes to disperse.”
A murmur went through the leaderless crowd and then I heard a voice beside me. It was Jordan speaking. “Hey, fatso. If the Student Union isn’t for the students, then who in the hell is it for?”
“Arrest that boy,
” the fire chief said, turning away, but the PA system amplified his every word.
“I’m a student,” Jordan yelled. “There’s no law against a student being in his college’s only Student Union. I want to know why all you damn cops and National Guardsmen are here. We built and paid for this house. We belong inside this house. You’ve come to our home and arrested and beaten our friends and interrupted our meeting and scared us in the place we feel safest. Then you’ve got the nerve to tell us we can’t even be in the place that’s got our name written on it.”
“Do yourself a favor, son, and shut up,” the fire chief said.
“Why should I shut up?” Jordan said. “I live here. My parents pay good money so I can attend classes here. I took tests so I could get into this college. All of us studied hard so we could get the chance to attend this university. You’ve no right to tell any of us to leave.”
“You’re creating a fire hazard,” the chief said. “Only two thousand people are allowed in this theater at one time.”
“Then take the cops and the soldiers and get your asses out of here. Then we’ll have about the right number,” Jordan said. Policemen had already started moving toward Jordan, but the crowd made it very difficult for anyone to get near him. The colonel in charge of the National Guard and the head of SLED took the fire chief’s place at the microphone.
“Listen, people,” the colonel said. His face had the soft, puffy texture of a woodland mushroom but he clearly hated the students. “I got me a little order here. An order granting me emergency powers issued by the governor’s office. I just watched as you ignored an order to disperse by the fire marshal. I personally don’t believe in the gentle, feel-good approach to mob rule. I want you to take your hippie-asses and get the hell out of here.”
Jordan spoke again, growing calm as the fury of the crowd spread around him, volatile as wild fire.
“Please apologize for calling us hippie-asses, Colonel,” Jordan asked. “I know my fellow students well and we are very sensitive to name-calling. We’ve been burdened with tender sensibilities and you just hurt our feelings.”
“I gave an order to disperse, Betsy, or whatever your name is,” the colonel said. “Sorry, I can’t tell if you’re a boy or a girl.”
“Colonel,” Jordan said. “Why don’t you and I have a fistfight on that stage and you can find out if I’m a boy or not.”
The roar from the students drowned out the colonel’s next words.
“… and I’d like to remind this crowd of draft dodgers and peaceniks that there are fine young American men fighting and dying in Vietnam right now, as we speak,” the colonel said. “Do you know why these young men are dying?”
“Yeh, we sure do,” Jordan screamed. “They weren’t rich enough or lucky enough to be able to join the goddamn National Guard like you and these pussies with rifles you got us surrounded by …”
Again the rolling thunder of voices swept back and forth across that theater for several moments. The colonel tried several times to restore order, but his voice was puny, anemic.
“Our boys are dying in Vietnam for a cause they believe in,” Jordan continued, finally, “and they’ve earned the love and respect of all of us. We now need to stop that war and bring them home. Our armed forces are out in the field killing the enemy, while you and your sorry National Guard, these chicken-shit, yellow-bellied bastards with their bayonets at ready, get to sit out the war pretending you’ve done your duty to our country. You aren’t out in the jungle hunting Viet Cong. Your guns are locked and loaded and you’ve come on our campus to hunt your own American brothers and sisters. Yesterday you killed four of us in Ohio. How many of us you plan to kill today? Talk to me, National Guardsmen. I want one of you bastards to stand up and tell me that you aren’t the biggest draft dodgers this country’s ever seen. Tell me it wasn’t the greatest day in your sorry lives when that piece of paper came in the mail saying you’d never catch malaria or clap in Vietnam.”
“You’re inciting to riot, young man,” the colonel said after the noise died down.
“The students or the National Guard?” Jordan asked.
An exchange took place again at the podium and a slick, well-dressed young man from the governor’s office took the colonel’s place and got right down to business. “Any student found in the Russell House in five minutes will be suspended from the university for the rest of this semester. You will not be allowed to take exams or graduate with your class.”
Shouts and curses again filled the air, yet there was movement in the crowd toward the doors and when all the shifting and maneuvering was over, five hundred students still remained rooted in their spots. I looked around and was surprised to see that I did not recognize most of them, nor did I spot a single member of the SDS.
The young man onstage presented a flawless style of no-nonsense leadership. His youth lent him an air of quiet fascist authority. His angelic face with his high coloring and good cheekbones made him look like a candidate for water commissioner or for leading a probe into ethical violations by union officials. More and more students began sneaking out, their heads down, running as soon as they reached the doors.
When five minutes had passed, the young man, who identified himself as Christopher Fisher, announced that the one hundred or so students still remaining, their eyes fierce in their loathing of him and the safety net he stood for in his buttoned-down propriety, were expelled from the university.
“Why am I here?” I said. “I should be back in the dorm studying for my Victorian Novel exam.”
“Because you’re a man of character,” Jordan said, sitting easily beside me. “You’ve also never liked to cut and run just because an asshole told you to.”
“We’re not graduating,” I said, letting the full weight of my impulsive decision wash over me. “No diplomas, no walk across the stage, no handshakes and hugs from the parents. I’m not even sure I’m against the Vietnam War and I’m not going to graduate because my friends are all fanatics and my roommate just had a nervous breakdown right before my eyes.”
“They sent Capers to the hospital, unconscious,” Jordan said. “They arrested Shyla for giving a speech.”
“Oh yeh,” I said. “I knew there was a high moral principle involved that I don’t even believe in. I knew I was ruining my whole life for a perfectly stupid reason.”
“Go on back to the room then,” Jordan suggested.
“Then you’ll think you’re philosophically superior to me,” I said.
“I already think that,” replied Jordan, smiling.
“Shyla’d never talk to me again,” I mused aloud.
Jordan nodded. “That’s a given.”
“Mike would take a photo of me sneaking out, cringing like a whipped dog.”
“It’d be in all the papers,” Jordan agreed.
“But I could move to Alaska where they’ve never heard of South Carolina,” I said. “I could start a new life. Rumors of my cowardice would be dismissed. Or I could go to Vietnam. Volunteer. Become a Green Beret. Cut the throats of village chieftains soft on the Viet Cong. Win medals. Get laid in Bangkok on R&R. Parachute into the North and wreak havoc on supply lines. Make a necklace out of human ears. Step on a land mine. Lose both legs and watch a small pig run away with my balls in its mouth. Save up enough money to get an electric wheelchair. Set off metal detectors ’cause there’s so much shrapnel in what’s left of my dick. Nope. I’m staying.”
“Good decision,” Jordan said.
“But you were planning to join the Marines after graduation,” I said.
“It was going to be a gift to my father,” Jordan said, smiling. “I wanted to give him a single chance in our life together to be proud of me.”
“I think you ought to see a career counselor to give you a few more options,” I said as the circle of policemen and Guards tightened.
Jordan said, “This’ll hurt my chance for Commandant.”
“Our parents’re going to kill us,” I said. “Oh,
my God, my mother’s going to hit the roof. She thinks she’s earned my diploma.”
“We can go to summer school.”
Then Christopher Fisher’s voice echoed through the theater again. “All those students who do not leave the Student Union in the next five minutes will be arrested. A state of emergency has been called. You now have exactly four minutes and forty seconds to return to your rooms.”
Jordan stood up and said, “Yoo-hoo. Fellas, you’re not getting the big picture. Let’s go over this one more time. This is our room. This is the Student Union. Student. You see a pattern here?”
One of the students who had not said a word stood up at the far end of the dwindling circle. Though I did not recognize him, he looked far more warlike and menacing than the rest of us with his shaggy, unkempt hair, greasy headband, and torn jeans. His camouflage jacket lent authority to his rage and he began to scream orders to his fellow students.
“If the pigs want this building, let’s burn the fucker down and let them keep the ashes. This peace shit isn’t working with these assholes. They want to kick some ass, let’s kick back. If they want to shoot a bunch of unarmed kids, let’s go down while taking a few of them with us. I’m tired of talking, man. I want to kill me a pig.”
Jordan shouted for everyone to keep their seats and he walked slowly over to the out-of-control student. He put his arm around the young man’s shoulder, then grasped his neck with his hand. “Funny the way cops dress these days,” Jordan said to the remaining demonstrators. “Anybody know this guy? I don’t know a lot of you by name, but I’ve seen you around. I’ve been watching Mr. Radical here. He looks kind of overdressed, doesn’t he? I mean he’d look natural at Berkeley, but he’s gone Hollywood on us down here in Dixie. Now he wants us to charge the guys with the guns. Makes a lot of sense, huh!”
“Stool pigeon,” some of the students started yelling.
“Get lost, pal,” Jordan suggested. “These’re nice kids. Don’t get them shot.”