He grieved, but not for Melissa. He grieved for what had happened to himself. Moping around, even Peaches couldn’t cheer him. He mourned a little each day, rationing his sorrow, savoring it, allowing the full impact of what he did to sink in gradually. He came to see that his lost fidelity was less fidelity to Janet than fidelity to himself. If he’d let someone down, he concluded, he’d let himself down. It was a bitter, unflattering thought to accept.
After all, he was Luke, all-around great guy, noble husband of Janet. He sipped his coffee, then opened the back door and whistled Peaches inside. The dog panted happily past him. It meant he wasn’t better than the average slob who lied and hustled his way through the streets. It meant he was no better than Janet. That hurt. Even though the forsythia had bloomed this morning, he was depressed. He walked to the front hallway to bring in the mail. The air in the hallway had the in-between smell of coming spring.
His heart banged in his ears as he saw there in the handful of bills and junk mail a letter from Melissa.
There are times when closed doors seem suddenly to open, times when missed opportunities seem to offer you a second chance. Melissa’s letter offered such a time to Luke. She was leaving Chicago for a job in the Sun Belt and she would need a roommate. And despite her better judgment she found that she was thinking of him, and she missed his touch. The rest, she wrote, was entirely up to him. He could travel full circle and return with her to the South or he could stay here in the city with Janet. She’d seen Janet on TV, by the way. That Karpet Klean commercial he’d mentioned, the one where Janet did plies and pirouettes through a jungle of deep nap dressed as an aerosol can. It was his decision; she wouldn’t pressure him. Janet was prettier than she’d imagined, by the way. What was his problem with her? Was she stupid? Was she no good in bed? He couldn’t bring the dog, sorry, because she wanted to live in an apartment complex with tennis courts and a swimming pool, and pets probably wouldn’t be allowed there. But maybe there would be room for a small garden. Would he call when he decided? No rush. But if possible by the end of the weekend, because she needed to make plans. She would have phoned him, but writing the letter seemed better, less pressure. She had a bottle of champagne waiting in the refrigerator, just in case he decided to make the move with her. How could he possibly endure living with someone who dressed like an aerosol can? She didn’t have to have a place with a tennis court and a swimming pool. She was waiting for his call. She’d make sure he had his garden.
Luke sat up in bed and looked at the mess of the room, of his life.
“Peaches,” he called. He took a last drag off, then extinguished, his cigarette. “Here, girl. Up on the bed. Here.”
The retriever stared at him with her brown eyes and long face, then leaped onto the bedspread. Luke scratched the big dog’s chest. “What do you say, Peaches? This morning, should I go over to Melissa’s and get drunk?”
The dog listened to the tone of Luke’s voice.
“Or should I stay here with you and Janet instead? You want me to pack a bag and leave you, Peaches?”
The dog exhaled sharply, then made two big circles and lay next to him on the bed.
Luke patted the dog’s side. He looked around the room. A bra hung limply from the doorknob. Littering the floor on Janet’s side of the bed were scores of wadded Kleenexes and a week of newspapers folded open to the comics section. Luke stared at the mess, at three empty boysenberry yogurt cartons, at a pair of rolled-up Danskin tops, the empty arms making broken circles on the carpet. Black banana peels. Wrinkled blouses. Underlined commercial scripts. A THE PLAY’S THE THING sweat shirt. “Up,” Luke said, and the man and the dog walked out into the backyard.
Where Peaches again ran the narrow length of the fence, and where Luke stood and gazed at the brilliant forsythia. Like inverted yellow bells, the single flowers. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. It survived the transplant well, Luke thought as he ran his hands down the splayed branches of the flower; and then he turned and searched the ground for crocuses, for daffodils, for the hyacinths and the tulips that were soon to follow. He expected to see their green stalks and leaves standing broken from the earth. But there were none. Of course. He hadn’t put in bulbs.
What was his problem with Janet? He thought of Melissa’s letter, of second chances. Open and closed doors. He’d closed the doors in Norfolk the morning they moved. Resenting it. Yes. He’d resented like hell having to move, and he resented even more the fact that his feelings were selfish. He had it made; he was perfectly content; he had Paradise. He looked back at the forsythia. It was beautiful in the late morning light. Then they lost it because Janet grabbed for the temptation of Mrs. Wescott. And then he grabbed for Melissa and her bed.
Luke ran to the garage, unlocking the side door. Shovel, the same sheet. Peaches looked at him strangely as he strode back into the yard.
The blade hit the dark earth. The dirt was cold. The work felt good. Peaches nipped the sheet, then grabbed a corner with her mouth and ran with it, playing. He’d dig deep, he thought, wide and deep, to save as much of the root as he could.
Then he sank to his knees. The plant above him swayed in the breeze. He couldn’t. No, he could. He didn’t want to. The forsythia had survived the winter. Now it deserved to flower and to green where it stood.
Luke stood. He surveyed the pitiful yard. Had he ever looked at it before? he wondered. It was small, but it had possibilities. Peaches lay on the sheet on the brown excuse of a lawn. Well, that would have to be the first step. The grass would have to be fertilized, and now was the right time to do it, when the forsythia bloomed. And this spring he could put in a rhododendron and maybe a bed of floribunda roses there by the corner in the full sun.
Next spring, Luke thought, watching the jay return to the birdbath, by next spring the garden would be brilliant.
The Intersection
We stood in small circles on the grass by the intersection. I wanted to touch Stacey’s hand. It was barely morning. The sun was just coming up. I wanted to tell Stacey that I hoped she was all right and not afraid. That I was not afraid. A boy on the ground was bleeding from his forehead where the policemen had clubbed him. I could still hear the crack of wood against bone. A girl held a blue kerchief to his wound. The boy said, “God, Christ, damn.”
He was bleeding pretty bad. The center of the kerchief was stained bright red. I didn’t touch Stacey, and then again I wanted to, and then as I reached for her she folded her arms and turned. Ted stood at her left. I realized that if I touched her she would disapprove of me. She would think I was being patronizing or emotional. This was not the time for emotions, I thought. Earlier, when the police first arrived, I placed my hand on her waist as we hurried across the street, and she pushed my hand away. She looked at me quickly, her dark eyes glaring, and said, “Lou, don’t try to protect me. I can take care of myself.”
I had meant to be tender. But there was no time to discuss it.
The boy rolled his head, still swearing. The girl helped him to stand. There was a line of blood across his forehead, pulsing, open like a bloody ditch, and lots of blood on his swelled-shut eye and cheek. Some blood had spilled down to his jacket. It seemed like everyone was talking—there were three or four hundred of us—and we milled in small circles, our backs to the police. They stood two deep in a wide circle around us, bouncing on their toes, slapping their clubs against their hands.
This was the revolution. It was meant to be a turning. A time of change. If the government wasn’t going to stop the war, then it was up to us to stop the government. It was that simple. It was a matter of duty, of conscience.
The war had gone on too long. So groups from all over the country would go to the city to shut the city down for a day. It would be a symbol that everyone in the nation would see. Each group was given some strategic spot. The general idea was to clog the area in whatever way possible. Of course the big officials would get to their government offices before the action was scheduled to begin.
They’d sleep over or drive in during the black of night. But everyone who worked there wouldn’t slip through the strategic spots. Keep enough secretaries and filing clerks away from their desks that day and what in the government could be accomplished? It was very logical.
Still, we knew from the beginning that it wouldn’t be easy to seize and then hold the intersection our group had been assigned. We could see it the day before, after we had driven out. There was nothing around that we could use to block the street. No traffic horses or wastebaskets, no scrap from gangways, alleys, or construction sites. Everything that wasn’t bolted down had been taken away. The street was six lanes wide, with towering rows of government buildings to the north and west and a grassy area to the east. A small park. There were no benches we could drag. Ted and I checked on that. And we were warned that patrolling the park would be police mounted on horses. The white dome of the Capitol was less than a mile off.
So we’d have nothing but our own bodies. For six wide lanes.
Our tactic would be to keep moving, to hurry back and forth across the street. Stay in groups. Force the traffic to weave around us. Slow the cars down. Scurry back and forth. Stop the traffic.
We had a big meeting the night before. Most of us understood that we’d be arrested, but collectively we couldn’t agree on how. One faction suggested we passively resist. Go limp. No violence. Make the police drag us from the intersection like so many sacks of potatoes. That would sure slow things down.
“Like hell,” others said. “That attitude is negative, defeatist. If you move on the streets, you gotta move to win.” They demanded that all of us bring bricks or sections of lead pipe.
The room was hot. I did not like the shouting. So I nodded to Stacey and then went outside to look at the evening and to smoke.
We were housed in a church. There was a small library and ample floor space in the basement. There was not much traffic on the street. Somebody told us the library belonged to a former speechwriter for the White House, a conservative who had changed his ideology and now was a radical. They said he gave up his rich law practice and now defended the poor. They said the range of political thinking is round, like the face of a clock. The war made him swing from right to left.
I flicked my cigarette to the curb. The meeting was breaking up. I really didn’t care what had been decided. I watched for Stacey, and then Ted came out and told me that the women were still inside, caucusing. I said, “What about?” He shrugged and said, “Don’t ask me, they kicked me out.”
He sat down next to me and I gave him a cigarette. We had driven here in his van. Seven hundred miles. The night was clear, quiet. We heard the noise from the others who remained inside.
“Yeah,” Ted said, “you know, this town is all right.”
“Sure,” I said. I laughed. “If you like monuments.”
“I mean the scene,” Ted said. He looked at me. “A whole lot of shit is gonna come down tomorrow.” He nodded, smiled.
I lit another cigarette. “Yeah.” I laughed again.
Ted stood. “Sure would be nice if we could get stoned.” His voice trailed off. He slapped his hands together. “But—”
“Yeah.” I shook my head.
We both knew that inside there were agents, undercover pigs who were remembering names and descriptions, places and times, who was sleeping with who. Ted knew I was clean. Drugs and politics do not mix. At school there was a big division between the politicos and the culture freaks. We were into direct action and Marxist-Leninist theory, and they were into organic food, meditation, acid rock, vitamin C.
Once I lived on brown rice for a month when I had no money, and I didn’t like it. When I ate some meat again I had bad farts for a week.
I continued to wait for Stacey, and when she came out to the front steps she told me she was going back inside to get some sleep. I asked her if she thought she could. She said, “What, go back inside?”
“No,” I said, “sleep.”
She smiled. “Sure, Lou, just as long as the anarchists keep quiet.”
Jokes aside, I suppose I was afraid. What frightened me, simply, was the thought that they might beat me. I was afraid for my groin and my head. I wondered if I was a coward. I wondered if this was how soldiers felt the night before a battle. In my mind I kept picturing the police: their white faces encased inside their plastic helmets, their gloved fists swinging their long sticks. I thought about all kinds of crazy things. Bayonets. Ferocious dogs. Terrible gases that would choke and blind me. I remembered I had meant to wear a jock and cup. I had one from soccer in high school, but when I looked in my drawer at school I couldn’t find it.
Inside, two women spoke at the foot of a staircase. One woman said someday our children will ask us what we did for peace, for human rights, for the silenced and oppressed. The other woman nodded and nodded. She patted the first woman’s hand, then opened her arms and quoted Che Guevara. “Let me say, at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.”
I slept near a wall on the floor by a bookcase. I slept fully clothed, alone. I do not know if I dreamed. In the morning I drank some cold water and put on a second shirt over my first shirt. I thought that I would be better protected. I buckled my belt as tightly as it would go. Then I loosened my boots and retied the laces.
Everyone moved quickly as we dressed. Someone asked me if I wanted a hit of speed. I said no. I was wide awake. Some of the boys were tying back their hair. One of the women was singing. Outside it was cold and dark. As I walked on the street between Ted and Stacey I was shivering.
A white car pulled suddenly to the curb next to us. The driver rolled down the window, then leaned out. “You fucking punks,” the man said, veins bulging in his temple. “Go back where you came from, you goddamn fucking punks.”
Ted and I ignored him. Stacey walked closer to the car. “There’s a war in Asia,” she said. “Does that mean anything to you? At this moment we are killing innocent women and children.”
“You don’t belong here, get out of this city, you fucking punks.” He continued to drive next to us as we walked.
“Blind pig,” Stacey shouted.
We turned a corner. The car drove straight.
Ted stopped. He knew the map. “The garage should be on this next block,” he said. I looked and couldn’t see the group that had left ahead of us. We’d left in staggered groups so we wouldn’t attract too much attention. The garage was where we’d decided we would all gather and wait.
“Let’s go then,” Stacey said. She walked quickly.
The others were inside the empty garage, waiting. Some huddled in one corner. Others leaned against the pillars and walls.
“You know the password?” someone said.
Ted raised his fist. We laughed. Stacey went over to the women. Ted turned and asked me for a cigarette.
“I didn’t bring any.” I shook my head. My mouth was very dry. I wouldn’t have wanted to smoke a cigarette anyway.
Someone called for quiet. The last group trickled in. “Hey, we need to send out scouts. Who wants to volunteer?”
“How far away is the intersection?” someone said.
“Two blocks. Act nonchalant.”
There was laughter. Then others told everyone to quiet down again. “Hey, let’s not get our asses busted in a damn garage.” For a while everyone whispered.
I walked the length of the garage. I couldn’t stand still. Stacey came over to me and asked if I was trying to escape. She was joking. I said I wish I could escape.
“So do I,” she said. She smiled, and then the scouts returned, and we joined the others huddling in the corner.
The scouts said they counted seven buses filled with policemen. By the park, east of the intersection. Someone asked if they had seen pigs on horses. They said they hadn’t. “Seven fucking buses,” someone said.
“Well,” a boy said. “Are we ready? Is it time yet to go through with this?”
&nb
sp; “Seize the time, off the slime.”
“Stop the war.”
“Out of the kitchens and into the streets.”
“For Uncle Ho.”
We moved out of the garage. Some of the others were already there at the intersection. They were crossing carefully, moving back and forth. The traffic wasn’t very heavy. The bright headlights shone as the cars drove up the slight hill.
“Let’s move,” Ted shouted. I shouted something. Everyone laughed.
It was difficult walking in front of speeding cars. You did not know if they were going to stop or not. We managed to slow the traffic’s flow, but we didn’t completely stop it. I realized that at various points around the city other groups were on the streets too. We were part of something that was bigger than any of us. History. I felt high. At different times we broke out into different chants, but I can’t remember what it was we chanted. The automobiles weaved slowly around the bricks some had brought and dropped. Some of us brought carpet tacks, for the tires, to give them flats. We spread them on the street like children feeding chickens. The tacks scattered to the curbs and stuck to the bottoms of everyone’s sneakers and boots. Some drivers shouted at us. Some tapped their horns and raised their fist in support. Some drivers pretended to hit us, but then at the last moment they screeched their brakes and swerved away.
The Evening News Page 11