Positive. Was that it? Was that the magic word, the combination of syllables that set him free?
The doctor was signing something.
Gene put his hand in his pocket, fearing the irritation he’d made on the flesh might disappear too fast or something.
The doctor signed a paper, told Gene to give it to the sergeant.
“Yes, sir,” Gene said.
Was this it, his ticket to freedom?
He knew it was when the sergeant got red in the face and said, “OK, move your ass out of here.”
“Yes, sir,” Gene said.
Air. He stopped and leaned against the building. Then he walked fast, went in the first bar he came to, and asked for a glass of beer. It was hard to get it up to his mouth, the way his hands were going.
He went home and grabbed a hold of Lou, hard, and told her he was free.
She screamed, jumped, threw things.
“It worked!” she yelled. “Goddam Thomas’s serum really worked!”
Then Gene started laughing, whooping, bending over, hooting, hysterical.
“What?” Lou asked. “What happened?”
“Nothing!”
After he got himself calm he told her exactly how it went. She was pale, trembly.
They vowed they would never tell the true story, especially to Thomas.
The only thing that mattered was Gene was free.
They had the celebration at Barnes’s place.
Gene made stew.
He remembered how his first college shrink had asked him what he believed in and got pissed off when Gene said “Stew.” Well, he would answer the same thing now but add to it “living with Lou.” No matter how it looked on some kind of psychiatric rundown Gene knew those were two real actual things he believed in and that wasn’t bad. It was probably more than most people had.
The night of the party was the first big serious snow of the winter but that didn’t matter. Gene and Lou put the stuff for the stew in knapsacks and set out into the storm, letting it kiss their cheeks red, laughing as legs sunk deep in drifts, passing the slick cars, stalling and sliding and stealthily slipping through streets, headlights laying pale slats on the night-fallen snow. The Gene-Lou party pressed on, nipping sometimes from a canteen of brandy. Getting the serum through! The others got there, too.
Thomas brought some extra-good grass and a guy who was crashing with him in Cambridge who was AWOL from the Green Berets on his way to Toronto. He called himself Moon. On the way they’d stopped and cut down a tree to chop for firewood.
Gene and Lou both hugged Thomas and thanked him for supplying the serum that set Gene free, though privately they prayed he was not in charge of getting the ex-Green Beret across the border.
Barnes had set in a case of gallon jugs of Cribari and Nell had enough Bazooka bubble gum to seal the whole building. Flash called to say he would be a little late due to weather conditions at Logan, but to keep the faith. Gene began building the stew while Lou put music on.
Flash blew in with a Braniff stewardess who looked like Sophia Loren but talked with an Alabama accent. Her name was Belinda June Lee and at first she was nervous about getting into what looked to her like some kind of beatnik hippie maybe even Commie sort of scene but Flash had brought the makings for rusty nails, his new favorite drink, and after one the way Flash made it she kicked off her shoes and said she thought this party was real down home.
“Belinda June’s something else, man,” Gene said to Flash when he came to mix more drinks in the kitchen.
“That’s the kind I was talkin about when I mentioned that round-robinish sort of thing,” Flash said from the corner of his mouth. “Could you dig it?”
“Just not my scene, man.”
Flash sighed.
“You and your goddam middle-class hang-ups.”
Lou announced the stew was ready for anyone anytime they wanted it.
Moon asked what kind of stew it was and Lou stood up on the couch and announced, “This can only be called a magic stew. It will cure an ungodly collection of ailments of mind and body—warts, dandruff, schizophrenia, just to name a few. It is a stew of inspiration, healing, rejuvenation. Love. Oh, yeh. It tastes good, too.”
There were cheers when Lou stepped down but Belinda June cried, “Good God, what’s in it?”
Belinda June feared the “magic” of the stew might come from having what she called “L, S and D” in it, but Flash reassured her with another rusty nail and a quick consumption of his own first bowl without any adverse effects.
Everyone ate, delighting in it, delighted, not just by the taste and warmth and seasoning, not just by the stew that filled their stomachs, but fed as well by the feeling of it, partaking of it, a family for a while, together, out of the cold, warm inside, feasting, with friends, with food and fire and music.
“Listen!”
Gene jumped up like a sinner at a tent meeting, raising his arm like he wanted to repent.
He just wanted all his friends to hear the song they just had heard, only not just listen to it, hear it, the way he had heard it just then.
“Here Comes the Sun,” on the Beatles’ Abbey Road.
He played it again and they listened, trying to hear the way that he had, and mostly they did.
The song said how it had been a long and lonely winter—not the real one, the one that was blowing with fury outside. It meant the winter inside you, the daily freeze you lived with usually. That was the ice that was slowly melting. There, inside, was where it had been so long since it was clear. But now, little darlins, look and see the smiles upon your faces. That long freeze is over and it’s all right, cause—hear it now, listen, look, see it and feel it—
Here comes the sun
They got up and danced to it, everyone, partners and not, in couples and circles, over and on the furniture, alone in a corner or strutting in the center, a trio linking, parting, everyone part of it, getting inside the music, getting the music inside of them.
Later, long shadows fallen from the walls, dancers turned travelers, bundled and wrapped against the outside cold, Gene and Lou found themselves loosely curled on the couch and when they started to rise and unravel Barnes said no, stay, he was going to Nell’s, and he spread a bright blanket over them.
Snapping of cinders the only sound left now they held, huddled, snuggled.
“Sometimes it feels safe,” Lou said.
“Right,” Gene whispered. “All right.”
Slowly, gently, nothing to hurry, they helped one another out of clothes, stretching and pulling in concert, comfort, comfortable, close, cold then cuddling warm with each other, finding themselves, fitting, fondling, fond, found, they came together.
Later, no clocktime counted just later, after, warm and tangled, sounds of snowplow opened eyes a moment into windows washed pale blue, dawn lit.
Here comes the sun
That season of bitter wintercold was one they would always remember as a time of special warmth. Walking through icy snowcrunch to the high-beamed apartment on Beacon Hill where Barnes held perpetual open house and everyone helped keep the fire going; sometimes they toasted marshmallows on it or hot dogs, sometimes they just stared into it, watching the pictures it made, the dances and the tongues, the burning villages and bright sacrificial offerings to gods, the flare of celebration, smoke of dreams. You could get high just by watching it intently, but to help there was Barnes’s booze and Lou and Gene’s jugs of Cribari and Thomas’s grass and sometimes hash and coke and pills and Flash’s sweet mixtures for him and whatever stewardess he had at the time. The one with him New Year’s Eve said they ought to have a special toast for the new decade, but Lou said no, that was too long. They drank to who and what was there, then, that was plenty: the friends, loves, fires.
Even in spring they went to Barnes’s and built fires, best on rainy days when they threw up the windows, scenting and accenting their highs with the heady blend of wood-heat and showersmell. Sometimes they fell asleep by
the fire, waking at dawn to the last snap of cinders, winking out of final flames, ashes blown gently over brows in dusty blessing.
It seemed like the mood of that time would be on them always and in it Lou didn’t even mind making plans with Gene about the future. No promises, of course; they both were still free as always but there wasn’t any reason not to make a few practical plans.
Lou would go stay with her parents for the summer and finish her thesis for the Ph.D. That’s how she’d done her M.A. thesis, going back to live where she couldn’t drink or smoke but knew her parents would feed and take care of her needs so all she had to do was hunker down and do the work without distraction. With some juggling of dates and addresses that made him a state resident Gene got accepted at U Mass Boston to finish up the final dozen credits he needed, half in the summer session, half in the fall, a light enough load so he could hold down the job at The Crossroads as well.
He sent his dad a postcard with a picture of Old Ironsides, and wrote, “Going for last 12 credits, bring you degree in person next Feb. Love, Gene.”
He got back a plain card, the kind without any picture on it, that said, “Don’t give up the ship. Love, Dad.”
Shit, the old man had a right to pull his leg a little.
He promised himself when he got the degree and took it out to Dad in person he would also stay awhile, take the old man to a ball game, take him out fishing like the old man had taken him so many times growing up.
He wondered where the hell you went fishing in Chicago.
Gene and Lou weren’t the only ones making plans. The spirit that started with “Here Comes the Sun” seemed to be like a contact high, lifting and energizing all of them, moving them out of old ruts, picking up promises dropped.
Barnes had really started hanging out at Harvard and making notes for his new mystery. He wasn’t just pissing his time away in the Harvard Square coffeehouses either, he was catching some lectures, sitting in on seminars, going for beers with students and faculty. He had even come up with a title for the book: Congealed in Crimson. He said that’s what the place did to people’s brains. From his personal contact with Harvard he had come to hate it but he said that was good as far as hyping up the old inspiration. He had rented a one-room cottage on Cape Cod for the summer because he learned that’s what writers who lived in Boston were supposed to do and he was trying to get things right.
He wanted Nell to come and stay in the one-room cottage with him, knowing of course he’d have everything taken care of that way but she had already got a social work gig in Appalachia for the summer, taking on a larger if less compact depressed area than Barnes. He moaned and grumbled but Nell said she knew he could do it he had done it before and besides, she’d be back from the field in September and ready to resume operations as his own special caseworker.
Flash was going up to make a pile selling aluminum siding in the boondocks of New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont. It turned out this was the secret of his seemingly miraculous ability to put all he had in some crazy scheme, blow the whole thing, and be back on the scene again a few months later with a bankroll to launch still another grand venture. He would go up and live on a couch in the game room of his sister-in-law in Nashua, New Hampshire, and with this low-overhead base of operation blitz the boonies with his high-powered sales of aluminum and vinyl house siding. He was a natural salesman and always did well enough to come back and launch a new scheme designed to make him a tycoon in whatever new enterprise caught his fancy. Who knew what next? Maybe solar energy, he mentioned reading an article …
The only one who didn’t have any plans for the summer was Thomas, who didn’t want any. When Gene thought of getting through the summer alone and Thomas the only friend left in the city he got real down, so he tried not to think about it. The summer was still a month off and he might as well groove on the time he had with Lou till she went off to Arkansas.
Ever since Gene’s narrow escape from the draft Lou had gotten into doing antiwar stuff, she said that whole number they went through had really brought it home to her: how it felt to face going off to fight and maybe die for what you thought was wrong.
Gene believed all that in his head but as much as he thought the war sucked he couldn’t get into working against it. He felt kind of silly and phony doing political stuff, like he was out of place or something. He knew all the people his age were supposed to be political but he rarely ran into them personally. He had known this couple once, though, who were real radicals. Patrick and Laurinda. They went all over the country organizing against the war, living off donations they got passing a tin can around. Then they happened to hear one of these kid maharishis and decided what they’d been doing was just an ego trip. They ended up in Vancouver, making cheese. Gene ran into a guy who had been there and seen them. He said they were fine, but awfully quiet and subdued, which was probably because of their deep religious experience.
“This cheese they make,” Gene had asked. “Is it any good?”
“Damn good. People like it.”
“Well, good for them. You know?”
That was how he felt about it.
Lou didn’t press him to do any antiwar things with her until it came to Tricky Dick invading Cambodia, and that really pissed her off. Most of the universities in Boston were going to Strike and a big protest march was scheduled that Lou said Gene really had to go along with her on.
It turned out to be a beautiful early May day and the whole thing had a kind of holiday spirit. Flags whipped in the wind, like clean washing. The air was crisp, the sky unblemished. As the marchers went down Beacon Street people waved from the sidewalk and some joined in. Dogs and children would follow for a while, then drop away, and others sprang up to tag along. A chant would rise from a few, and then rise and spread, sweeping the march: “Hell, no, we won’t go!” Lou took Gene’s hand and squeezed. Gene squeezed back. Another chant rose, insistent, pressing: “Peace now, peace now, peace now …” It was hard to believe such a march would not end it. Stop the bombing, stop the war, stop the slaughter. So many people, good people, marching in concert, in common cause. Gene looked back and saw the ranks filling Beacon Street all the way up past Charles to the top of the Hill and the State Capitol building. Its gold dome shimmered, radiant with history and promise.
Gene felt a tingle, found himself thinking: Here comes the sun.
When summer came and Lou left, Thomas fell by and he and Gene smoked a joint, mostly in silence. With Lou not there, they didn’t have much to say to each other. After the joint Thomas said he had a big deal he had to bring off next morning, he’d better split. Gene wished him luck.
Gene had forgot what a drag it was living alone. He ate out of cans because it was quicker, sometimes forgot to eat at all. Had a pickle and a beer. Whenever he was in the apartment he kept the radio tuned to a twenty-four-hour news station. He wanted only words, not music. The repetitive babble helped stuff the empty space in his head like wads of cotton.
Reminders of her stung him, unexpected. Reaching in the closet for a shirt and feeling the touch of her winter dresses made him swallow. Her new issue of Harper’s Bazaar arrived in the mail, not knowing the difference. He slipped it out of sight in a pile of other magazines.
He was working the night shift at The Crossroads which was better than anyplace else he knew but in spite of the mechanically frozen air the job seemed stickier, more closed in. The drunks were sloppier, the old guys morose.
He hung in there, though, hitting the books, making every class, meeting all assignments no matter how chicken-shit. He didn’t just want to squeak through it, he wanted to do it right, make her proud of him.
There were showers in the afternoon, and at night the wet grass of Fenway was essence of green in the floodlights. Flash had called to say he was coming down from his sales job in New Hampshire with a couple of tickets for the Yankee game if Gene could get off. He traded a shift with Kevin, the other bartender, and sat with Flash above the left-field wall,
where you could almost reach down and tap Tommy Harper on the shoulder when the Sox were in the field. At matchbox-size Fenway you could still feel part of it, not just a dot in some impersonal super-stadium. Balancing a tall waxy cup of beer and a hot dog and booing the Yankees, Gene felt fresh and like a kid, the summer’s oppression uplifted with an evening breeze and the world clean and sharp and as ordered as the diamond set solid and neat in the deep green firmament. They had more beer and bags of peanuts, and the Yankees failed to spoil Gene’s evening, though they beat the Sox 7–3 and Flash kept mumbling, “Fuckin Yankees. Got nothin. Fuckin Bobby Murcer. Some excuse for a superfuckinstar.” Gene agreed with everything—“Right on, shee-it, man, way to go”—and did not care that Yaz fanned twice and failed to get a hit or that the efforts of the Boston bullpen were puny at best. He soaked in the rhythms, the patterns, the tides of sound; ritual of pitcher, motion and delivery, bat unleashed and cracked against ball that shot up arching in graceful trajectory, base runners going, sliding, exploding dust; infielders pivoting, ball thrown across like a taut line to pop in a waiting glove. Connections. Measurements. Meaning. Full.
After the final out Gene and Flash hit a couple bars, then stopped and shared a joint on a bench on Commonwealth Avenue beneath some stone Revolutionary soldier.
“Watchin that ball game,” Flash said, “it kinda got me down.”
“You mean the Sox blowing it?”
“Nah. They haven’t got a chance in hell this year.”
“So?”
“Just watchin those jokers. That Yankee infield. Shit. They’re not so hot. When you’re a kid, even in college, you think the pros are some kind of supermen. Hell, they’re just ball players, some better, some worse. I never even tried. I could have had a shot. At least a tryout. Our college coach had connections in the Lakers organization.”
“I thought you were too short,” Gene said.
“For forward. Maybe I coulda switched to guard. I wasn’t much of a shot, but I had speed, and best of all, I could go to my left. That’s important.”
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