I ask you, how could you feel helpless against the bigness of the world with that kind of gathering?
I ask you, how could you not be swept away?
You couldn’t.
We stepped into the stream of people heading toward the park, and I was glad that our voices made the crowd that much louder. I could almost hear the change in volume that our voices added.
I was glad of it.
“I thought that it would just be old hippies,” Caleb said, looking around.
“Me, too,” I told him.
“I am pleasantly surprised,” he said.
It was an ocean of every kind of person you could possibly imagine. Everyone who made up New York City. Everyone who made up the world. Professionals, parents, children, punks, physicists, yuppies, artists, actors, firemen, dock workers, cabbies, teachers. Everyone. It was a people-watching paradise.
They all had signs.
PROFESSIONALS FOR A NUKE-FREE WORLD!
PARENTS FOR NO NUKES! NO WARS!
TEACH TOLERANCE! TEACH PEACE! TEACHERS SAY NO NUKES!
PUNKS FOR PEACE!
PHYSICISTS FOR ATOMS! NOT BOMBS!
GET ACTIVE! NOT RADIOACTIVE!
“Who is Ron?” Yrena asked, pointing to a sign that said THIS IS NOT A MOVIE, RON!
“Our president,” Maurice said. “Ronald Reagan.”
“He was a movie actor,” I explained.
“Oh, I see—this is real life and not a movie, Ronald Reagan,” she said, and then she laughed.
A huge blue whale balloon went by. It had a thought bubble over its head that said SAVE THE HUMANS.
“Ha!” I said, pointing it out to everyone.
“It’s probably true that if whales could talk they would tell us to stop having nuclear bombs,” Callisto said.
We all nodded.
“Those whales would definitely have something to say about it,” I said.
“Too bad that’s not in my skit,” Caleb said. “Let’s go, or I’ll be late.”
We pushed deeper into the thick of the crowd.
I felt as though I was a part of something bigger than myself. I looked around at the other people—some walked at our pace, some moved faster, and some took their time, but they were all like us. We smiled at them and they smiled at us, and embraced us as part of them. We shook our heads in approval back at them, and as we did, they welcomed us.
People even handed us signs to hold up.
LOVING ARMS, NOT NUCLEAR ARMS
FREEZE THE ARMS RACE
IT’S A WORLD EMERGENCY
The crowd thickened the closer we got to Central Park. We had our free arms linked together so that we didn’t lose one another, and with our free hands we held up the signs. There were more people there than I’d ever seen in one place. More people on the streets than what I’d seen at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. There were people with bullhorns. There were people with banners that said No NUKES NOW!
As we walked toward the park, I noticed that there were many people just watching us marchers walk by.
“How can they stand there?” I said. “We’re not a parade!”
“Calm down there, radical,” Caleb said. “They have the right to watch. Maybe they won’t join us this time, but maybe next time.”
“But we are walking for them. How can they not be moved by the message? The message that we all want to live?”
“I think some people just don’t feel for the whole world,” Caleb said.
“It’s hard to feel for the whole world,” Yrena observed.
“It’s hard to even feel for your friends and family sometimes,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to.”
Yrena seemed to be a bit overwhelmed by everything that was going on.
Some of the bystanders were not just watching us passively. They were yelling at us all as we walked by. There were people protesting the peace march. There were people screaming that we were the dangerously naive ones.
They yelled: Peace is a Soviet weapon.
They yelled: The devil’s headquarters is in Moscow.
They yelled: You cannot trust those who are evil. They have bullhorns.
What they were yelling hurt us all, but Yrena was the hardest hit.
I looked at Yrena and I could see how upset she was. She was holding on to her sign as though it were going to hold her upright. I could tell that she wanted to cry.
We all touched her nicely so that she knew that we felt terrible and that we did not feel as though she was evil at all.
“But who is a devil? Me? You? Them?” she asked.
The people lined up thought anyone who didn’t think like them was the devil, and that was surely evil. But they were just scared, like we were.
“Those people yelling at us for marching are just as angry and upset as we are about nuclear bombs,” I said.
“They feel that we are against real peace and that we are messing up their safety in this world,” Caleb said.
“Isn’t that weird?” Callisto said. “That two groups of people can feel so much like the other side is dangerous and naively misguided.”
“That’s why we’re at war,” Maurice said.
“Just keep walking,” I said. “Don’t listen to them.”
“Propaganda,” Yrena said. “It is just to make us seem like, what do you call it?”
“The Red Menace,” I said.
“Yes. The Red Menace. We were not the only ones with bombs pointed. We were not the only ones who propagated this idea. Only you covered it up and call it being free.”
“They’re free to protest,” Caleb said. “Just like we are.”
“I’m not afraid to observe your protest rituals,” Yrena said. “I don’t hate you people. I like you.”
“We don’t hate you, either,” Callisto said. “Obviously.”
“Glad that’s out of the way,” Caleb said.
“Is it really hate?” I asked. “Is that what it is?”
“No,” Yrena said. “It’s not hate. It’s not the mes and yous. When it is me and you, it is always fine.”
“It’s the uses and thems,” I said.
“Why can’t our countries get along?” Callisto asked. “I mean, why can’t they see that having bombs pointed at each other is stupid? I can see it’s stupid.”
“I can see it’s stupid, too,” Yrena said.
“Even Reagan and Brezhnev can see that it’s stupid,” Maurice said.
“But they don’t do anything about it,” I said. “They just keep at it.”
“Maybe they think that keeps it balanced?” Caleb said.
“But don’t we ever figure it out?” Caitlin asked. “I mean, is there ever a point where we realize that we are all human beings and that life is precious?”
“No,” I said. “No matter how many people speak up, people always hate.”
“I hate haters,” Callisto said.
“Me, too,” Yrena said.
“I can’t wait until I’m eighteen,” I said, “so I can vote for change.”
That’s when Caleb punched me in the arm.
“You’re so cool,” he said.
And then he put his arm around my waist and squeezed like he liked me. I felt a thrill and it was more than just from being in a crowd a half a million people strong.
The truth was, we were always in a sort of tentative balance with someone. Friends, even the best of friends, were always in danger of destroying each other. Alliances shifted and changed. People came together and fell apart.
It was all politics, except that in friendship we were held in balance by the heart and in the real world we were held in balance by the fact that there was a thing called MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction. So if one side attacked the other, the bombs from the other side were launched automatically, to assure that both sides were completely annihilated. It didn’t surprise me that the acronym was MAD. That was mad. Pure. Crazy. Madness.
It made me look up at the sky. It made
me see the world in a much more focused way.
“Do you really think there will be a nuclear war?” I asked Yrena. “I mean, it seems so hard to believe that we or you would do that.”
“Hard to believe on a beautiful morning like this,” Caleb said.
“I don’t think that a bright day protects us from people whose hearts are immune to trust and filled with such darkness,” Yrena said. “And sadly, bombs are incapable of having anything, even a truly fine feeling, touch them.”
That made me have goose bumps. That made me want to fight harder for all that is good in the world. That made me want to bring my friends in closer to me. That made me want to pump my fist harder into the air.
As we walked, the crowd separated and walked around a spot on the street. On the ground were chalk outlines of bodies painted black. The result was that it looked as though only people’s shadows had been left behind.
“They said that’s what happens,” Caleb said. “In seventh grade we read this book on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and there was a picture of someone’s shadow sitting on the steps of a bank. That’s all that was left of him.”
“Oh yeah,” Callisto said. “I remember wondering if when you melt, does it hurt?”
“It must hurt,” Caitlin said.
“It must be something terrible,” Yrena said.
“How could a society think that they are a better people?” I asked. “That they think a better way? That they live a better way? And that, because they are better, they are allowed to kill other people?” I asked.
“It’s the oldest story in the book,” Callisto said.
“As if we live any differently. As if we all aren’t just trying to put food on the table, and fall in love, and get through the day,” Maurice said.
“How long can we stay right on the brink of hating each other?” Caitlin said.
“They said that the Doomsday Clock is almost at midnight. We are hovering on the edge of destruction,” Caleb said.
“We do it because you do it,” Yrena said. “And you do it because we do it. Everyone does it because everyone else does it. As you said, it’s the oldest story in the book.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s a good story,” I said.
Once we got inside of Central Park, there were a lot of policemen, on foot and on horses.
A march volunteer handed us two silver balloons and told us not to let them go until we were told to.
“How will we know when?” I asked the volunteer.
“You’ll know,” she said. Each balloon said GOOD-BYE, NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
There were vendors at the entrance to the park, hawking No Nukes stuff.
“I want one of those T-shirts,” Yrena said.
It was white with a pink-and-red stripe and a little sun on it, and said REVERSE THE ARMS RACE!
We all wanted one.
“Well, Yrena has to get a T-shirt,” I said. We pooled our money together to buy her one.
After what seemed like much longer than needed to be because of all the people, we got to the rock, where the party had been the night before. A bunch of people from Performing Arts were there.
“Hey!” Elliot Waldman said. “Glad you got here.”
“Hi,” Caitlin said. She was blushing.
Caleb left us and joined the others in the skit. After about fifteen minutes, Elliot stood up and gathered a crowd around the base of the rock and announced the Performing Arts Revolutionary Players.
“Here is the truth,” Caleb said in his old-timey emcee voice. “We are always thirty minutes away from total destruction.”
And then they launched into their skit. I am Russia. I am America. Fisticuffs. Girls as bombs. Bomb noises. Everyone fell down and melted from a nuclear attack and while they lay there, they began to sing “America the Beautiful” and the whole crowd joined in.
We clapped. But some adults said that it was shameful that kids were being brought up to be so anti-American.
“Anti-American!” Caleb yelled back at some older guy. “What are you doing here then?”
“Relax,” I said. I put my hand on his shoulder.
“Hey, just because we had a moment before doesn’t mean anything,” he said, shaking me off.
He pushed by me and went to join the other actors behind the rock. Presumably to get stoned.
“Hey, sorry about that,” Caitlin said.
“He can be really sensitive about his art,” Callisto said. “I think he just got upset that people got upset.”
“Well, I liked it,” I said. “I thought it was great.”
“Yrena!”
Like a miracle, we had found Free. He was walking by the rock and saw us.
“Free!” Yrena said as she and the others emerged right behind us.
“Hey! Wicked! You guys made it!” Free said.
Yrena went straight up to Free and kissed him right on the lips. He looked a little surprised but also really happy.
“Free,” Yrena said. “I have something to tell you. I will be back in Moscow on Friday.”
“What?” he said.
“I am moving back home to Moscow,” Yrena said.
“This is her only day out,” I said, trying to come to Yrena’s rescue. She smiled at me, and I could tell she appreciated it.
“Really?” Free said. “You’re going back to the USSR?”
“Da,” she said. “Friday.”
“So, like, you’re not someone who defected? You’re, like, really Russian?” Free said.
“I am not a defector. I’m a Soviet citizen,” Yrena said.
“Wow. I thought you were just an immigrant or something,” he said.
“No. I am a Soviet citizen.”
Caleb came back out and came straight up to me.
“That was lame,” he said. “I was lame. No one even cared about our piece.”
“I cared,” I said.
“I know,” he said. And then he smiled at me. “Friends?”
I nodded.
“Let’s go see some of the bands,” I said. Then I turned to Free, who had just come up for air after kissing Yrena some more. “I thought you had a whole big group coming from Science.”
“Nope,” Free said. “I’m the only one who showed up. I have a social conscience.”
“I can’t believe you actually found us,” I said.
“I talked to a cop and he said there are at least five hundred thousand people here,” Free said.
“That is a lot of people,” I said.
“Yes, but we found you,” Yrena said. “We were looking for you!”
“Do you think this is what Woodstock was like?” Callisto asked. We started walking toward the Great Lawn.
“My parents took me to Woodstock,” Free said.
“Really?” Caleb said. “That’s kind of cool.”
“What is Woodstock?” Yrena asked Free.
“It was a three-day rock concert,” Free explained.
“A big love-in,” Callisto said.
“Love-in. I like that,” Yrena said.
“At least your parents went to Woodstock. My dad’s a jazz musician; he doesn’t know anything about rock and roll,” Caleb said.
“Yeah, my parents are a mess, but they love rock and roll. They’re both here at this protest. Just not together.”
I realized that I liked my parents and my family. They were not extreme. They were not clueless. They were not cool, but they were not uncool. They were normal. In the middle. Just fine. That made me kind of happy. Like, at least I didn’t have to worry about having crappy parents.
James Taylor started to sing, and I leaned back into Caleb’s chest. I don’t know why I did it, but I did, and then he had his arms around my waist. Maurice and Callisto were dancing in time to the music. Callisto knew the words to the song and so she was singing along, but she was doing it low and in Maurice’s ear. I noticed that Yrena and Free were hovering near each other, and then I watched as Free did the pin on Yrena as she leaned up against a tree that w
e were next to.
I was with a group of people who I thought could be my real friends.
A man got onstage and said, “Three thousand of you have silver ballons. On those balloons it says GOOD-BYE, NUCLEAR WEAPONS.”
Everyone cheered.
“All together now, starting on ten,” he said.
After the crowd counted down, we let go of the two balloons we had, and they joined the thousands of other balloons that rose and floated into the air like a reverse snow. They floated up into the gray day.
We all breathed in and out as one as we watched them become smaller and smaller until they were impossible to see in the sky. We hoped with all our might that we really were saying good-bye to nuclear bombs. Because that would have been the best news.
More people got on the stage and gave speeches. One of them told us exactly what would happen if a nuclear bomb hit Central Park right that minute. It would vaporize everyone within six miles.
It was terrible.
Why did we have weapons that could do that? It was inhuman.
We were trembling.
We wanted to do something that would make us feel better.
And just in the moment when I felt surrounded by friends, the music started again. There I was in the arms of a cute boy, happier than I’d ever been. You had to embrace life in order to fight death. You had to grab hold of joy in order to fend off destruction. You had dance wildly instead of standing still.
At the moment when I felt right with everything, when the music in my heart was just right, I knew what I had to do.
“Yrena, I have to tell you something,” I said.
And then I told her about the news report. And about talking to my brother on the phone. And about the clicks.
She stood there and she stared at me. Her eyes got a faraway look in them.
Yrena nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “I suspected that would happen.”
“We should go home soon,” I said.
Yrena nodded, and I didn’t feel anxious anymore.
Rita Marley took the stage and began to sing. Her voice slipped around us with love and peace.
The last song that was sung as they closed the protest was “Give Peace a Chance.” We sang and swayed, everyone’s voices lifting to the sky like wishes. My friends and I were all arms and limbs and togetherness as we sung. I stood closest to Caleb and Yrena. I couldn’t tell where my body started and where theirs ended.
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