For Kate…
“Everything I know about morality and the obligations of men, I owe it to football.”
― Albert Camus
1
All Along the Watchtower
Isla Vista, California
Santa Barbara Police Department
May 8, 1970
“Janelle Martin.”
I jerked my head up and brushed a tangle of long blonde hair out of my eyes with my left hand. My right was handcuffed to the chair at the booking officer’s desk. I’d been sitting here forever. An hour ago, a few of my fellow UCSB students marched past me, their hands cuffed. They flashed me the peace sign behind their backs as they went by. At least eight of them were booked for arson, vandalism, and resisting arrest, and then taken to jail while I sat; my ass growing numb on the hard, wooden chair.
Finally, the booking officer returned.
“Get up, Sunshine. You have visitors.”
“My name isn’t Sunshine,” I muttered, as the officer uncuffed me from the chair.
“No?” The officer smirked. “Isn’t that your hippie name?”
I wanted to tell him I wasn’t a hippie. Or a flower child. I might’ve looked the part with the long, straight hair, peasant top and flared jeans, but hippies were about peace and love, and that wasn’t my scene. I was going to graduate UCSB in a year with a double-major in journalism and French. My scene was following the Big Story. The biggest stories.
And Vietnam was the biggest story of them all.
I never thought the war would come to sleepy little Isla Vista, but the protests have only been escalating among my fellow students. That night, a bunch of them shoved a dumpster full of burning trash through the glass doors of the Wells Fargo Bank. My Nikon Photomic caught it all on film…and then I got caught in a cloud of police tear gas.
Tears streaming and my lungs burning, I was accosted by cops in riot gear. I tried to tell them I was a reporter, but they didn’t listen. The flames of the burning bank looked like hellfire to my blurred vision, and the shadows and shouts of protestors and police created a frightening chaos. But of all the sounds tonight, the small tinkle of my camera lens breaking as the cops threw me to the ground, was the loudest.
As I walked with the booking officer, a pang of fear tightened my chest. I wondered if I’ve ruined my future. The officer led me to a small room that was probably used for questioning suspects. I expected to find a detective, waiting for me to rat out my fellow students.
Instead, my father was there.
A sense of nostalgia for simpler times rushed over me, like a tide. I wanted to be his little girl again instead of a twenty-year-old who’d been tear-gassed and arrested and was now in jail. But I had to be strong. I was tired of covering vanity pieces for the university sports teams, and this was my first real test as a journalist.
I bottled up my longing to hug my dad, and looked to the other person sitting beside him. A dark-haired woman, and for a split second, I thought it was my mother. But it was Helen Strumfield. My best friend sat beside my father, chewing nervously on her thumbnail.
Helen had been my friend since grade school. Since before the war; before any of the fires or sit-ins or marches. We used to eat ice cream sundaes and giggle over the Monkees.
A lifetime ago. Before the world went mad.
My father got to his feet as I entered, his face falling and in anguish to take in my soot-covered, bloodshot-eyed appearance.
“Janey,” he said, rubbing his fingers over his mustache. Helen tugged a lock of her brown hair, her eyes darting between my father and me.
“Hi, Dad.”
The urge to hug them both came back, fierce, but the idea of touching either of them with handcuffs on my wrists was too shameful. I sank into the chair opposite.
“Hi, Helen.”
“Hey, Janey,” she said in a small voice. But warm. My father’s was cold by comparison.
“So it’s come to this,” Avery Louis Martin stated. “Arrested for vandalism. For arson. For destruction of government property.”
The room was empty but for us, and yet he kept his voice low, as if the whole town of Isla Vista—or all of greater Santa Barbara—were there, listening in and snickering that the only daughter of the wealthy, upper-crust owner of Alato Winery & Vineyards wasn’t the good girl everyone thought she was.
“Do you have any idea what you’re done to the family these last few weeks? Never mind your poor mother. She couldn’t even get out of bed when Sergeant Hollis called tonight.”
“I didn’t do anything but take pictures. They saw me—a college student, looking like a protester—and grabbed me too.”
“They wouldn’t have, if you didn’t get so damn close,” my father said. “Why do you have to get so close?”
“Because I’m tired of writing puff pieces on the university debate tournaments, or yet another article on the swim team’s ‘hopes for a good season.’” I shrugged. “I wanted to find a big story and get right to the heart of it.”
“Is the heart of the story inside a jail cell?”
“It’s not a locker room or out on a track,” I said.
He stared me down and I did not blink.
Finally, he folded his hand on the table, and put on his deep, I-mean-business boardroom voice. “I’ve made a decision. You’re not covering any more protests. And you’re not attending college, not at UCSB.”
I shot up straight. “What? Why? Where am I going to go?”
“You’re going to France, to finish your education away from all this nonsense.”
I gaped, honestly taken aback. And then I laughed. A dry and humorless one, but a laugh nonetheless. “France? You’re pulling my leg.”
“You’ll withdraw from UCSB immediately,” my father continued. “Your grades and your French fluency will be enough to get you into the Sorbonne, and if not, I’m prepared to pull some strings or line a few pockets if that’s what it takes. You’ll fly to Paris. I will arrange an apartment for you, and you’ll finish out the school year, then resume your studies in September.”
“So that’s how it goes? You just declare how it’s going to happen and so it does? I’m not one of your business ventures.” I shook my head incredulously. “And the Sorbonne? There is no Sorbonne. Haven’t you been paying attention? The revolution two years ago? The old buildings aren’t even usable.”
“The school is still operating, and you are going there to finish your degree.”
I gave my head a shake. “Dad…you can’t. There’s no story there. Not any more. In ’69, sure. But now—”
“Now, no one is getting shot,” my father said, his voice heavy, his eyes heavier.
“This is ridiculous,” I said. “One arrest and you totally freak out.”
My father’s folded hands tightened. “A month ago, a college student just like you, was shot and killed at one of these protests, Janey. And there was that terrible shooting at Kent State just last week. Four young people, dead.” He shook his head. “If you keep covering the war, something might happen to you…Your mother and I are afraid.”
“You don’t have to worry about me—”
“Clearly, we do,” my father said, loudly.
“There’s nothing in Paris for me. No story…”
My father slammed his closed fist on the table, making Helen and I jump. “Your story, Janelle, is that you stay safe.”
“Safe,” I spat. “For you or me? Tell the truth, Dad. You and your fancy, rich clientele don’t want to see what this war is doing to us. To the boys who are called up to go and die. You don’t want to look at the photos I take, do you?” I shook my head, crossed my arms. “I’m not a helpless little girl you can ship overseas, like some kind of fragile piece of glass. Not gonna happen.”
“It is going to happen,” my father said. “To keep you out of jail. My friendship with Ted Hollis is the only reason you haven’t been booked already. But I don’t have to pull that string. I can set you up in a nice apartment
in Paris, or you can sit in a prison cell in Chowchilla. Your choice.”
My heart clanged dully in my chest. “You’d let me go to prison?”
“What else can I do?” My father’s stern expression cracked to reveal the worry beneath.
Helen cleared her throat, reminding us of her presence.
“Might I have a word alone with Janey, Mr. Martin?” she asked in her timid, fluttery little voice that had never been lifted in protest.
My father gave me a final, thick look, almost pleading, and left the room. Helen waited until the door clicked shut, and then smiled at me sadly from behind her horn rims.
“Janey.”
“You agree with him,” I said. “That’s why you’re here. That’s why he brought you.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She leaned over the rickety Formica table. “Because I’m worried about you, too. You kept getting closer and closer to the story, that now you’ve become a part of it.”
I shifted in my seat, my handcuffs clanking as if to punctuate her words. Helen never said much. All through school, the kids called her Hush Puppy for her silence and her big, sad eyes. But when she did speak, when she was serious about something, you felt each word slug you in the gut.
“So what should I do?” I said. “Run to France and do what?”
“Keep reporting,” Helen said, “only from a safe distance.”
I snorted. “I don’t want to keep at a safe distance. I’m so sick of not being taken seriously. I want the big stories.”
“It’s not like Paris is sleeping,” Helen reminded me. “It’s a mess too. And what is left for you here, anyway? You spend all your time in the journalism department’s dark room. You don’t talk to me… I had to hear from Karen that Bobby dumped you. He said the same thing: you’re getting too involved in your work.”
I rolled my eyes. “Bobby’s boring and bad in bed. And you can quote me. Besides,” I added, “what’s wrong with hard work? I have to work twice as hard as a man in my field to get anywhere.”
“Maybe so, but what kind of work can you do from prison?”
“My father is bluffing. He’d never let me go to jail.”
“I agree, but the shootings, Janey. Those are real.”
I dug my thumbnail into a crack on the table, and tried not to think about how scared I was last night. “It feels like running away.”
“There will never be a shortage of stories.”
“Yeah, little ones,” I muttered.
Helen grinned. “I don’t know. Sometimes it’s the smaller stories that have the greatest impact.” She reached across the table to take my hand. “Find that story, Janey. Find one that looks like nothing on the outside, but once you crack it open…” She shrugged with a smile. “…Something incredible comes out.”
I pursed my lips, but my fingers curled around hers. “My dad’s secret weapon: Helen Strumfeld.”
“Your dad’s no dummy,” Helen said. “And he loves you, too.”
Tears stung my eyes, but I blinked them away. I wasn’t a crier. I needed my eyes to stay sharp and focused. To find the right photos to go with the best articles.
The big stories.
2
Subterranean Homesick Blues
May 15, 1970
Paris, France
Janey
My father didn’t know how badly Vietnam had torn France apart, or how it still hadn’t put itself back together. He thought the war ended for France in ‘54. But in the spring of ’68, riots, protests, and strikes brought the country to a standstill and broke apart the very university my father was sending me to.
I tried to explain this to him during my rushed registration process, but he didn’t get it. Or want to. He needed me to get away from the States, period. It didn’t matter that Paris was in a state of upheaval; no one had been killed here and that’s all that mattered.
As I said my goodbyes and boarded the plane, I pondered my plans for Paris. If my father thought I was going to stay out the war, he was sorely mistaken. My days of interviewing obnoxious athletes and dodging their grabby hands or ignoring their crass comments were over.
Even so, as soon as my flight lifted off, putting more distance between myself and Vietnam, I felt like a coward. Never again would I run away from a big story. There were still big stories in France; I just had to find them.
The flat my father rented for me was pretty keen, I hated to admit. I didn’t want to come here as a spoiled, little rich girl; an ex-pat, living off Daddy’s dime. But there I was, doing just that. The flat was in the 5th arrondissement, across the Seine River, and on the first floor of a beautiful old building. I had a small yard in the back where I could sit in the morning, in a wobbly wrought-iron chair at a tiny wrought-iron table, drinking my coffee.
I decorated the interior sparingly. No psychedelic prints or peace signs like my dorm at UCSB. The only poster was my Janis Joplin, Live at Winterland, and it was situated over my record player. I played a lot of Janis those first few days, and not much else. She had a reckless but melancholy feel to her singing that I loved. As if she were throwing herself at life full speed, no matter how hard it might hit her back.
All of my classes at the new Sorbonne—mostly French Literature and Journalism—were in the morning, leaving me plenty of time to myself. Too much time.
Homesickness and Loneliness were my constant companions, and I decided it was high time I ditched them in the city. Journalists had to live in strange countries all the time to chase the big stories; I needed to treat this like an assignment.
I grabbed my knapsack with my wallet and current read—Jonathan Livingston Seagull—and headed out.
I strolled down the Rue Cujas, past one of the old Sorbonne buildings. Shops, cafés and apartment blocks flanked me on all sides. I’d planned to sit at an outdoor café but my legs carried me past a dozen, and I couldn’t make myself take a seat. I kept walking until I heard Bob Dylan floating on the warm spring air, drawing me along like a sweet scent to a hungry person.
The blue lettering on white above the door said La Cloche. The Bell. It had a few tables and chairs outside, but the music was coming from inside, along with many talking and laughing voices.
I followed Bob Dylan into the interior to see that La Cloche was half-café, half-club; dimly lit, with clouds of smoke hanging the air. A small stage—empty now—where a band could play, was tucked into a corner behind a tiny dance floor, also empty. The afternoon crowd was entirely young people; drinking beer, coffee, or cocktails, and clustered around rickety tables and crammed into booths. The walls were covered in posters of American and British musicians: Jimi and Janis; Led Zeppelin and the Stones; Sam Cooke and Patsy Cline.
My heart clenched at the Americana in particular, and I nearly turned around and marched back out. I scolded myself that I was tougher than that; if I didn’t have the moxie to battle through homesickness, I probably wasn’t cut out to be a journalist.
I sat at a small table for two. Behind me was a booth packed with young men and women; boyfriends and girlfriends, I noted after taking a peek from behind my long wall of straight blonde hair. The men had their arms slung casually over the girls’ shoulders. Loud talk and laughter rolled out of the booth like waves that crashed into me over and over. The men, I deduced, were all on a soccer team—football, they called it here—and had a game coming up this Saturday.
I knew nothing about soccer except that it was a huge deal in Europe, and that the soccer players and their girlfriends in La Cloche were very loud. It was stupid to think I could read here. I started to get up to leave when another loud swell of voices lifted in greeting nearly bowled me over.
I looked around to see a young man with longish brown hair and a scruff of dark beard, join the other players. He was tall and packed in muscle; his shirt revealed the tight lines of his chest and arms, and his jeans strained to contain his thighs. He had a pretty, leggy brunette stuck to him like glue; she gazed up at him
adoringly.
While the friends in the booth pulled up another table to accommodate him, the guy looked my way. A flash of his dark blue eyes met mine, sending a jolt through me, as I realized I was staring. I didn’t impress easily, but this guy’s blue eyes seemed to hold a depth I wasn’t expecting.
At my slack-jawed stare, the guy’s grin turned cocky, breaking the spell instantly. I huffed a snort and looked away.
Nope. Just another arrogant jock.
I’d dealt with enough of those back home. I’d once had to interview the UCSB men’s swim team. I didn’t think I’d gotten in one question of merit between crass jokes, and declining requests to go out and ‘have some fun.’ Not one good man among them.
Fuming, I sat and tried to read my book. I’d been about to leave La Cloche but now I was stuck. The guy would think I was leaving because of him. I had to kill at least five more minutes before making my escape.
With my eyes in my book, and my hair shielding my face, I eavesdropped without being noticed. My mother would’ve scolded me for being rude, but the group was so loud, I practically didn’t have a choice.
I deduced that the girl clinging to the attractive-but-arrogant new guy wasn’t his girlfriend. He introduced her as Anna, and it was clear she didn’t know anyone there. She wasn’t a part of the tight-knit group, and none of the other girls made much effort to get to know her. I got the impression this wasn’t the first time the guy—whose name I had yet to hear—had brought a girl around.
Arrogant and a playboy. Even worse.
Minutes passed. The Rolling Stones played over the sound system. Mick sang that he couldn’t get no satisfaction. Neither could I. But as loud as the soccer group was, they sounded fun, and my loneliness wouldn’t let me leave them alone. When my five minutes were up, I stole a final glance.
They were all talking and laughing but for the extremely attractive guy. He sat slouched in his seat, legs spread, doodling on a cocktail napkin while his teammates talked about the big games coming up. Without the cocky grin, the guy’s beauty was harder to ignore.
Team Player: A Sports Romance Anthology Page 64