Janis all dark on the stage before a spot struck sudden on her, she in a deep purple satin outfit, cut sexy-crazy, sight of her set off screams and some fans scrambled out of their seats to run down the aisle and get near the stage get near Janis, source of that painful power pulsing out through the wiry little body, the sing-shout plea to “Take a little bit a my heart now, bay-bee …” and they would if they could in a way they did, the hungry audience hot and mean in a heavy atmosphere of smoke from joints the management gave up trying to stop, the smoke thick, everywhere, electric roar of the band a blare but her voice going over it, beyond it, guts wrenching but making it music. This was what it was to be alone in the dark and not be afraid to be afraid.
After the Joni Mitchell concert they all went to Barnes’s, built a fire, drank wine, played her records.
After the Janis Joplin concert they just went home, not saying anything.
But that brought them closer, too, knowing they all understood things they didn’t have to say.
For the first time Gene could remember he really had it together, doing things he usually didn’t but wished he had later, living and loving and having friends. He had the nice sense he and Lou were settling—in but not down. Settling down sounded stodgy, settling in sounded warm.
He didn’t even mind the holidays coming, he figured he might even send a few cards.
Greetings.
They were for him, but not from Santa.
Uncle Sam.
He had got the message before but always been safe with a student deferment. At the rate he was going through college—colleges—he figured there was no way the war would still be on when he graduated. But it seemed like they couldn’t turn it off. It was part of life now like college and marriage and kids and career and retirement. They had quietly added Vietnam to the list. Like adding a new sand trap to the course just in case it was getting too easy.
Mainly he had tried to forget the whole thing.
But it had not forgot him.
“There’s got to be a way,” Lou said when he showed it to her, “out of it.”
“There is,” Gene said. “Canada. Jail. I can take my choice.”
Lou shook her head. She said there had to be others, at least another.
She went out and got a copy of the Cambridge Phoenix. That was a weekly paper that had stuff in it for students and hippies like the regular dailies mainly had stuff for housewives and guys who sold insurance and followed the Red Sox. The Phoenix had classified ads for everything from secondhand stereo bargains to getting laid, from how to get abortions to help for kicking heroin. They had a whole column just for draft counseling, and Lou and Gene went over the list and picked out what sounded best.
At the Draft Counseling Service in the basement of the Arlington Street Church, Gene talked with a hip-looking young lawyer, or maybe he was still just a law student, who had muttonchop sideburns and wore a corduroy suit with a sweater underneath the jacket. He looked like one of the young lawyers on a TV series who shun the offers of big corporate firms to help the oppressed and live on containers of black coffee and takeout sandwiches. He said to call him Pete.
“Tell me, Gene,” Pete said, tapping his pencil, “do you have any strong religious background?”
“I was baptized,” Gene said, “a Methodist.”
He thought of how church was as a kid, the men sitting stiffly in their best suits, the women wearing hats that seemed precariously perched on their heads with the aid of pins, everyone vaguely itching, mouthing holy hymns, fighting temptations to doze through the preacher’s drone; time sticking in the slow thick syrup of Sunday. None of it fed him, nothing was filled.
“No,” Gene said. “It wasn’t—it isn’t enough.”
“Have you had any mental or emotional problems—ones that required professional help—a psychologist or psychiatrist.”
“A couple,” Gene said.
Pete picked up his pencil, hopefully.
“How many is that? Two? Or more than two?”
Gene figured.
“Three,” he said.
“What was the problem?”
“They didn’t know.”
He smiled, thinking of the Dylan song that said, My best friend the doctor won’t even tell me what I got …
“Why did you seek this professional help?”
“They told me. The schools. I was breaking their rules.”
“Which ones? Serious?”
“Not attending classes. Booze in the room. Dope.”
“Hard stuff?”
Gene shook his head.
“Just weed,” he said.
“The doctors—what did they tell you?”
Gene pressed his temples, remembering rooms, licenses framed on the wall and Sister Corita prints with lively colors and quotations from famous people endorsing life; testimonials from statesmen and philosophers assuring that things weren’t as bad as they seemed. Gene’s favorite was the quote from e. e. cummings, “damn everything but the circus.” In front of it, at a desk in one of those rooms, sat a sad-eyed, gentle woman who looked as if it had been a long time since she’d been to any circus. The third time he saw her she said, kindly and sadly, that there wasn’t any magic in her field, that she didn’t know how to instill motivation into anyone and she hoped sometime he would find something that would move him to use his potential. He appreciated that she hadn’t handed him a lot of crap, given him lectures like the men shrinks had whom he’d seen at other schools. Both those dudes sat there and told him like they were laying some heavy information on him that he used dope and alcohol as an escape.
What the hell else did you use them for?
Pete reviewed Gene’s case and determined that he lacked any of the mental or physical defects that would have saved him from military service.
Shit. He was even deficient in having deficiencies. His physical was less than two weeks off.
Lou called a conference. She didn’t say that, she just asked everyone to meet at Barnes’s place.
“What good’ll it do?” Gene asked.
“Ideas,” she said. “Somebody might have one. Maybe if we all keep talking and thinking about it, concentrate on it, somebody’ll just come up with something.”
Lou was like the chairman. She wouldn’t even let Thomas pass around joints or Flash make a batch of rusty nails, though each of them complained she was stifling their inspiration.
“Later for that,” Lou said. “First we try to think.”
They were allowed to sip wine and smoke regular cigarettes.
Gene told about the draft counseling guy, and how he didn’t think the stuff that Gene had or had done would get him out.
“Not even three different shrinks?” Barnes asked.
“That’s nothing anymore,” said Lou. “It’s probably the national average.”
“Fuckin wine,” said Flash. “How do people drink the stuff?”
“Quiet,” said Lou. “So what do we do?”
“It’s easy,” said Thomas.
There were general groans.
“Go on,” said Lou.
“We make Gene crazy,” Thomas said.
“How?”
“Start about a week before the physical. Feed him some acid, uppers and downers, hash, grass, any kind of dope, booze, no food but some garlic maybe, no shave or bath, by the time he gets there he’s crazy. Besides, they won’t be able to stand the smell.”
“No,” said Nell.
“I’ve seen it!” said Thomas. “I helped guys through it, helped em do it.”
“When?” Nell asked.
“Last year sometime.”
“Yeh, but now they know,” Nell said. “This guy at Northeastern showed up like that, dropped acid and all, this army doctor just smiled and told him, ‘Have a good trip, it’s the last one you’ll take till we ship you to Nam’.”
“Maybe it wasn’t good acid,” said Thomas.
“No,” Nell insisted, “they know now.”
“It figures,” said Lou.
“Maybe they know everything now,” said Gene. “Maybe there ain’t no way.”
“Well, if they get your ass,” said Flash, “try to sign up for radio school. Learn a fuckin trade.”
“No!” Lou shouted.
Barnes was pacing, scratching his head.
“If there was just one of those little things, that Gene had …”
“What little things?” asked Lou.
“You know. Like bee stings.”
“What about them?” Gene asked.
“They can keep you out. If you’re allergic to em.”
“You’re shittin me,” Gene said.
“No. I knew a guy once. Why?”
“I think I am. Allergic. Or was anyway. As a kid. I got real sick once after a bee stung me, had to go to the doctor.”
“What doctor?” Barnes asked.
“Family.”
“Yeh, but who, his name!”
“Dr. Gardner. Why?”
Barnes lifted his body about an inch off the floor. For him, that was a leap.
“Write him! Call! Good old Dr. Gardner. Get him to give you a letter about it. Get on the phone! Get ahold of the guy, now!”
“Can’t,” Gene said.
“Why?”
“He’s dead.”
“You know for sure? Maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s just old.”
Gene shook his head.
“Died of a heart attack at a high-school football game.”
“You sure?” Barnes said. “You really remember?”
Gene nodded, holding his head.
“We lost, seven to six. Missed the extra point. That’s what did him in.”
“That’d be somethin,” Thomas said, “if you had to go to war cause the guy missed the extra point.”
“Shut up,” Lou said.
“Hell,” said Flash, talking out of the side of his mouth now. “What’s wrong with all of ya? All we need here’s a letter from a doctor, right?”
“Sure but the doctor’s dead.”
“Doesn’t have to be that doctor,” Flash said. “I know a doctor.”
“Yeh,” said Gene, “but will he give me a letter that—”
Flash waved away the question.
“The stuff this doctor gives me, a letter’s nothin.”
“Listen,” said Lou, “does this sound real? Like it really can work?”
“Yeh,” Barnes said, “but there might be a hitch.”
Thomas rasped a laugh.
“Even I coulda told ya that.”
“Knock it off,” said Lou, looking intently to Barnes.
“The guy I know, who got out because of the bee sting business, when he went for his physical he had a letter from his doctor but then they gave him a test.”
“Shit,” Gene said, “they put him in a room with bees?”
“No, no. They gave some kind of serum, see, and they give you this shot of it, and if you’re allergic, the place where they stuck you swells up and gets red. Then they know you got it.”
“Christ,” said Gene. “What if I haven’t got it anymore? What if they stick me and nothin happens?”
It was quiet.
“You make it happen,” Thomas said.
“How?”
“Don’t you know?” said Thomas, smiling. He was the center of attention now.
“Goddam, Thomas,” said Lou, “if you know something say it.”
“It’s not so much what I know it’s who I know.”
“Who then?” Lou yelled.
“A chemist. Well anyway, chemistry student, I guess, since he hasn’t graduated yet. I met him at MIT when I took the aviation course.”
“So what can he do?” asked Lou.
“Make a serum. If they got a serum that can tell if you’re allergic to bee stings, he’s got one you can take beforehand to make sure the other one shows you’re allergic.”
“He’s got this stuff?” Gene asked.
“Well, I don’t know if he’s actually got this particular stuff. He might, though, cause he’s into the antiwar thing. But if he hasn’t got it he can make it.”
“Shit,” said Flash, “this kid can just make up a serum like we need?”
“This kid, as you call him, in his own kid laboratory, has produced among other things the finest acid on the East Coast. Some people say it’s better than Owsley’s stuff out West. Among other things. This’ll be a challenge to him, like a little puzzle. And if he can’t come up with the stuff, he’ll tell me.”
Lou looked to Barnes, maybe because he was oldest, or used to be a reporter or something.
He shrugged.
“It’s worth a try,” he said. “It might work.”
“OK,” said Lou. “Flash gets the letter, Thomas gets the serum.”
The letter came first. Flash produced it the following day.
A few days later Thomas came by. He didn’t have the serum. He had an idea, though.
“Even if we get the serum,” he said, “you ought to have a little extra insurance.”
“Life?” Gene asked. “In case the fuckin serum poisons my ass?”
Thomas thought just for good measure Gene ought to show he was crazy, maybe not completely crazy but a little off. He thought it would do the trick if the day of the physical they painted on Gene’s chest in big red letters, “What About the Bees?”
Gene and Lou looked at each other. They didn’t think so. Still, sometimes the crazy stuff helped. They’d think about it.
More important, when the hell was the serum coming through?
“Stay cool,” said Thomas, “he’s working on it.”
“He’d better hurry,” Gene said.
There were only three days to go.
Thomas brought it, the night before. The serum. It was in a little vial, precious looking, like it contained radium or something.
“Shit, man,” Gene said, “I gotta shoot it up?”
Thomas cackled.
“Nah,” he said. “Just swallow it.”
“When?”
“Just beforehand.”
“That’s what he said?”
“Who?”
“The chemistry guy. The guy that made it.”
“Sure. Just swallow it, he said. Beforehand.”
Lou sighed.
“OK, man,” Gene said.
“Are you going to paint it on your chest?”
“What?”
“You know, ‘What About the Bees?’”
They hadn’t for sure decided, but they didn’t think so. Thomas was disappointed.
In the end, they agreed on doing it straight. They figured the place would be full of kids with all kinds of shit painted all over them.
Gene wore a tie.
“Bee stings,” the sergeant said contemptuously when Gene showed the letter. “Where you’re goin, you won’t have to kill any bees.”
“No, sir,” Gene answered.
He called everyone sir.
The sergeant handed him back the letter and said, “OK, go down that hall, turn right, room thirty-two. Give this letter to one of the doctors.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hey, kid,” the sergeant called after him, “keep your prick in your pants so it don’t get stung.”
The whole thing obviously pissed off the sergeant something awful.
“Yes, sir,” Gene said, not changing his expression.
After the hall turned Gene ducked quickly into a men’s room, went into a stall, closed the door, and pulled from his left-hand pocket the little brown bag with the vial in it. His hands were shaking. He put the bag back in his pocket and started to unscrew the top of the vial. Shit. It was stuck. It was on too tight. He closed his eyes and twisted so hard he saw purple spots, and it suddenly came loose. Jesus. He put the cap in his pocket and swallowed the stuff, drank it down straight.
It tasted sort of like gin. Maybe it was. Maybe that’s all it was. Well, whatever, it was too late now. It was all he had.
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The doctor had a mustache. Gene thought he looked like a Frenchman he’d seen in a movie. Gene felt like he was in a movie. The doctor read the letter, then went back to his bag and took something out. A needle but not like a regular hypodermic needle. Smaller.
He stuck it in the back of Gene’s right hand.
It left a tiny mark, just a dot, like a pinprick.
“The reaction should show in three to five minutes,” the doctor said.
“Yes, sir.”
“You may sit down.”
He motioned to a folding chair.
“Yes, sir.”
Gene sat down.
He stared at his arm. The little tiny prick-mark.
Shit. He’d forgot to bring a watch. He looked up at a clock on the wall. He couldn’t figure how many seconds must have passed before he looked. Fifteen, maybe, Twenty. He looked back down at his forearm. It was white. Well, nothing could happen for three minutes anyway.
What if it didn’t?
He stared at the arm, trying to think the reaction out, pulling with his mind, Come on you sombitch you serum goddam you work oh shit you motherfucker do your thing get red get well get weird get something anything.…
The arm was pure white, the dot from the needle perfectly calm.
He wanted to tear at it, rip at it, then he thought. He thought of something to try to do.
When it seemed four minutes had passed and his arm was still pristine, Gene said, “Excuse me, sir, may I go to the men’s room?”
“Hmm? Oh. Certainly.”
The doctor seemed distracted.
Gene went as quickly as he could move without breaking into a run of panic, and got himself into one of the stalls. There were several army guys pissing in the latrine. He took down his pants, sat on the toilet, and made grunting noises. At the same time he took the fingernail of his left index finger and he dug it into the flesh of the pinpoint on his right hand, he scratched it as hard and as deep as he could possibly do it, till he managed to raise a redness, a scratchy redness. He gave it one more last dig and then hurried back. He held the hand out to the doctor.
“Hmmm,” the doctor said glancing at it, “positive.”
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