Memorial Bridge

by James Carroll

  For a long time, like the man below him, Richard did not budge, on the animal theory that perhaps bad things happen only to those who move. Eventually the guards came back. "You, Quaker," one said. "Your name Dillon?"

  "That's right."

  "Surf's up." Both guards had their nightsticks out, ready for trouble; hoping for it, Richard sensed. One unlocked and opened the door, eyeing the motionless hulk on the lower bunk. "Let's go."

  Richard hopped down to the floor with a jolt that shot right to his teeth. He quickly went through the door, ashamed of the stealth in his movement, an implicit throwing-in with the guards against the sleeping black giant.

  But there was nothing conspiratorial in the way the guard handcuffed him. The two shoved him along. Out of the lockup there were stairs and a maze of corridors, progressively wider and more recently painted, more populated. Finally the guards led him into a large paneled waiting room and turned him over to a man behind a desk, a marshal. Richard became aware of his own filth. A door off the room was marked "Men" and Richard gestured toward it with his cuffed hands; only then did he allow himself to feel an acute need to urinate. "Can I go in here?"

  "No way, bub," the marshal said, and another came then and took Richard by an elbow, leading him through an opposite door into a hearing room. A magistrate was seated at a dais on one side, and a collection of perhaps a dozen people were seated on fixed benches on the other. Richard refused to look at them because he knew at once who was and wasn't there.

  Before he'd looked away he had glimpsed his mother, had seen in that instant her hand fly to her mouth, not quite able to stifle a yelp of pain at the sight of him. She was still wearing the black suit from the funeral, and it shocked him how old she seemed. Her clothes looked slept-in. For the first time in his life he'd seen her hair as gray instead of red. In sunglasses she'd looked like a woman in the magazines, yet he had known her in an instant. What he had recognized was the way she had of holding her face tilted upward, proudly, despite everything.

  And who wasn't there, naturally, was his father.

  "State your name and address, please." The magistrate did not look up from the ledger he was writing in.

  "Richard Dillon, no address."

  A clerk handed a sheet of paper to the magistrate, saying, "The government lists him at Sixty-four Westover Avenue Southeast, the District of Columbia. That's Boiling Air Base, your honor."

  "Mr. Shaw?" The magistrate gestured toward a man at a side table whom Richard hadn't noticed. He was completely bald, dressed in a seersucker suit.

  "Ready, your honor."

  "Mr. Dillon." The magistrate now looked up at Richard, frowning solemnly. "The purpose of this hearing is threefold: to present you with the charges as brought by the government of the United States, as represented in the person of Mr. Shaw there; to allow you to answer those charges by entering your plea; and to set the terms of your disposition between now and the time of your trial. Do you understand?"

  "Not that last part."

  "To set your bail." The magistrate looked toward the others in the room. "Are you represented by legal counsel?"

  "Not yet, I..."

  From behind him, a male voice announced, "Your honor, if I may."

  And then, almost immediately, a different voice preempted the first. "Your honor, I represent Mr. Dillon."

  Richard turned to see two men approaching through the narrow opening of the one low gate. It was clear that they were racing each other to the front, and from their appearance alone the stakes of their competition were obvious. One was gray-haired, tall and crisply dressed in a blazer and gray slacks. He carried a leather briefcase. A mere glance told Richard all he needed to know about this one. The other, a shorter man and much younger, wore a brown corduroy suit which, already long rumpled, had wilted further in the steamy weather. The trousers of that suit hung slackly at the man's knees and so far over his shoes as to hide them. The man's hair seemed incongruously short and slicked back, but then Richard realized, as the man swung through the gate, that he had a ponytail long enough to brush his shoulders. One would have thought that, especially paired with the other, the younger man would have come off at once as an ill-kempt flake, but to Richard at least, his clothing and hair and even the tattered cloth satchel slung on his shoulder combined with a virile flint of the eye and the carriage of a former athlete to give him an offbeat glamour, like a jazz musician's.

  The gray-haired, distinguished-looking man spoke first. "I am representing Mr. Dillon."

  The magistrate began to write. "And you are—?"

  "Excuse me, your honor." The man in the ponytail tried to squeeze between Richard and the other lawyer, who refused to move. Richard made way for him, but rigidly. He was staring at the magistrate, resolutely not looking at the people behind him. "I believe I am Mr. Dillon's attorney."

  "Who are you?" the magistrate asked.

  "I am David Cohen."

  "I am Lloyd Macmillan, your honor, of Crocker, Wells and Birone. I was engaged by the parents of the accused."

  Richard was startled by the man's announcement. The word "Crocker" had lifted Richard's spirit, which crashed immediately when he realized the word "accused" referred to him. Before he could react, Cohen put his hand on Richard's shoulder.

  "I am here," he said firmly, "in response to Mr. Dillon's own phone call." Cohen looked across at his rival attorney with a kind of triumph. "He called us."

  "And who is 'us,' counselor?" the magistrate asked.

  Cohen, a short man, seemed to draw himself up by several inches as he answered with the single word "Resist."

  The name of the notorious antidraft peace group stalled in the air, curdling it for most of those present, but the word resonated inside Richard. A certain public stiffening of his own spine seemed the reward for his having mustered the nerve hours ago—or was it weeks?—to squander the privilege of his one phone call on strangers. Instead of calling the D.C. number he knew by heart, he had dialed the number scrawled inside the matchbook he had carried with him from Toronto. It had never occurred to him that his parents would send a lawyer. Not his parents, he corrected himself. Despite what the man in the blazer had just said, Richard was under no illusion that his parents had responded. Only she had.

  While the two lawyers fenced before the magistrate, Richard turned slightly to let his eyes flow toward the others in the room. Cohen had been seated with three other people, a man with a beard wearing wire-rims and two women gotten up like twins, in loose-fitting India print dresses and long unpinned hair.

  He wanted to call his eyes back when they hit the vacant spot on the bench where Lloyd Macmillan had been sitting, but it was impossible. He knew already who had accompanied the lawyer. Richard's longing quite abruptly turned into the familiar nausea of guilt as his gaze kept moving and he allowed himself at last to look directly at his mother.

  Cass felt she had been here before. While waiting for the proceedings to begin she had been drawn back against her will into an entirely different scene, seeing her husband in a room like this. But that was a long time ago, and he wasn't her husband then. He was a young stranger who had saved her, but in that room it had become apparent that he had lost Doc Riley, whose other name was Richard. She remembered Sean whispering in the ear of the frightened prosecutor while the smirking man who'd murdered both her uncle and Doc Riley leered at her from the raised platform of his chair. She remembered anger blowing her apart and the judge—no, coroner—banging his gavel, ordering her just to sit there quietly, as if she were stone or salt.

  And now she was just sitting there quietly again. Her fists were clenched at her sides, pressing like stymied pistons into the cold wood of the bench. It was all she could do to keep from leaping to her feet and screaming, Leave my son alone!

  But scream at whom?

  The magistrate seemed as perplexed as she by what was unfolding before them as the two attorneys vied for the right to speak for Richard. There was no smirking murderer here
, but Cass recognized the ill-groomed anti-Establishment lawyer as a deadly threat to her son.

  "Your honor," he said, "let Mr. Dillon speak for himself. He has engaged us to represent him."

  The lawyer Cass had hired was shaking his head vigorously. She knew nothing about him but that he was a senior partner in the Washington office of Randall Crocker's firm. The first thing he'd told her was that he had been at Randy's funeral that morning. He'd said he would drop everything to help her son. He knew how Randy loved Richard.

  "I have had no access to my client," he was saying now. "I must insist on it before the matter of representation is ruled upon. Mr. Dillon, to any extent that he has acted at all, has done so under duress."

  " 'Ruled upon'?" Cohen protested. "There's no question of ruling here. My client has..."

  Richard himself seemed oblivious of the fateful argument. Cass realized that instead of listening he was slowly turning toward her part of the room. She recognized as characteristic that vague-eyed drifting of the head, had seen it dozens of times at the dinner table and in church. She had heard teachers describe the way his otherwise gifted mind could just float right out the classroom window. Once his inability or refusal to pay attention had been a source of irritation, but now knowledge of it simply caught in her throat, like a qualm of her own. She waited, hardly breathing while his gaze swept steadily toward her. At the last moment she took her sunglasses off. Their eyes met through a mutual shimmering glaze.

  The gavel came down hard. "Mr. Dillon," the magistrate said, "you must indicate which of these attorneys is to speak for you." The official had no need to put into words the fact of his own preference for Macmillan. He was looking for grounds on which to send the long-haired peacenik shylock back into his hole.

  Cass sensed the reluctance—and guilt—with which Richard let go her eyes.

  "It's true," he said timidly. "I called them. I asked them for help."

  "You asked who for help?"

  "Resist."

  "Your honor," Macmillan said, "Mr. Dillon's parents will be posting his bail. Surely they—"

  Cohen waved Macmillan off. "We're prepared to make bail, your honor. Provided it is reasonable."

  Macmillan looked sharply at the other lawyer. "Do you always post bail for your clients?" He faced the magistrate. "That proves my point, your honor. Resist is a political organization seeking to exploit this young man for its own ends. Once they feed him to their publicity machine they will make a spectacle of him. That's all they want."

  The magistrate peered at Richard. "Have you considered that?"

  "What, that...?" Richard's voice trailed off, as if he had not quite grasped the point.

  "I object to this, your honor," the Resist lawyer said. "It is of no relevance who posts—"

  "Just a moment, counselor. I'm talking to you, Mr. Dillon. Have you considered what these people may expect of you?"

  "Oh, please!" Cohen protested.

  The gavel came down again. "Another word out of you and you're dismissed! Now, Mr. Dillon."

  "They expect me to be against the war," Richard said calmly. "I am against the war."

  "They expect you"—this was Macmillan and he was almost whispering—"to denounce your father."

  In the silence that followed that statement Richard turned toward Cohen, who said, "That's not true."

  But Macmillan pressed. "It's what they do, Richard. Ask him about the press conferences and television appearances he arranged in nine cities for another client, Leroy Kuttner, the army deserter."

  "Kuttner wanted those press conferences! Your honor, why are you letting this—?"

  "Ask him about Paul Cummings and Harold Diver and Jerome Travis."

  "The same thing. They all wanted to make their statements. We didn't force—"

  "They'll do whatever they have to, Richard, to get you on their wavelength. You are the catch of the year, the son of the head of DIA, the son of the man in charge of all military intelligence, the son of the man whose organization picks the bomb targets in North Vietnam! What they think they have is a son prepared to charge his father with war crimes! They have already contacted a producer at the Panorama show about your appearance."

  Cohen shot a look at Macmillan of such enraged surprise that Richard saw at once that the accusation was true. He drew back from both men, shaking his head. "I can't do this."

  "Mr. Dillon," the magistrate said, "you have to decide."

  "I don't want either one of them."

  From her seat behind him Cass saw the color rush to her son's neck, the band of skin between his T-shirt collar and the fringe of his hair, the scruffiness of which had once made her wild with anger and shame. How long ago that seemed now, and how ridiculous. She was half off the seat, wanting to stand and declare the meeting at an end. This is a mistake! This is my Richard! Let him come home with me!

  "Are the boy's parents present?"

  "Yes, your honor. His mother."

  "Mr. Dillon, perhaps a short recess would be—"

  "No!"

  "—to talk to your mother about—"

  "I don't need to talk to my mother. I don't need these lawyers. I'll be my own lawyer. Can't I do that?"

  "If neither of these gentlemen is to represent you, the court shall assign your case to the public defender."

  "I don't need anybody. I was a law student. You want me to enter a plea. I can do that. I don't deny what I did, but I'm not guilty of any—"

  "Your honor, this is improper."

  The magistrate waved his hand impatiently. "I know. I know. There is still the matter of your bail, Mr. Dillon. The government has asked me to set it at fifty thousand dollars."

  "Your honor!" Macmillan said.

  "The young man has already established his willingness to flee to avoid the obligation of law, counselor. The government is properly—"

  But Richard cut through the squabbling again. "I don't want bail. Do I have to have bail?"

  "You want to stay in jail until your trial?"

  The prospect, so directly put, slammed Richard. At first he could not answer. Then he said slowly, "The jail where I am now?"

  The magistrate shook his head. "You're in the court lockup now, not jail. You would be remanded to Occoquan. I would not recommend Occoquan for you, young man. You have an alternative not available to the men who are there. You should take it."

  "Maybe that's the point," Richard said with fresh energy. "Dr. King didn't take bail when he was alive. The Vietnamese are not offered alternatives, why should I be? You people think..."

  Cass put her sunglasses back on, but otherwise did nothing to conceal her distress. Richard had his back to her and could not see. She knew that he was speaking mainly now to her.

  "...you think I have some kind of hang-up with my father, and I'm only doing this because ... I mean, you think I need to get back at him. But that isn't it. That isn't it at all." He turned slightly toward Cohen. "I'm not talking about my father. He has nothing to do with this. I am talking about the Vietnamese, those women and children, and those men too. I'm just not going to kill them, that's all. I'm not going to help kill them in any way." Now he turned to Macmillan. "This has nothing to do with my mother, either. This has to do with me."

  Cass wanted to go to him and pick him up by his skinny ribs and bony elbows and swing him off his feet until he squealed with pleasure. He was a foot taller than she was, and it had been years and years since she had been able to do that, but holding her Richard in her arms the way she used to was all she could think of now. He had been such a beguiling baby, and she had loved taking him everywhere in the magic city that Washington was for young mothers after the war. He had soothed her loneliness, then destroyed it. She remembered how he could sit for long periods under the huge arching dinosaur skeleton at the Natural History Museum, staring up as if counting the individual bones. On the grassy stretches of the river park at Hains Point he had learned to walk as strangers cheered him on. He had rarely seen his father i
n those early years, but that was normal, for as enchanting as Washington was for women, museum guards and bus drivers, it was still, for the powerful men of government like Sean, the center of what had become the permanent world emergency.

  Cass had told herself it wouldn't matter that Sean knew Richard mostly from what she reported late at night. But as Richard grew older he had seemed less consistently bright, and then, once he started school, there had come those sporadic hints of something missing. His first teachers used the label "lazy." He refused to learn to tell time. He was the last second grader to master reading. He didn't finish things. Eventually she had known to take that lack of focus as a signal of his lurking inner fear that his mother's well-behaved, infinitely cherished only child, her good boy, was not nearly good enough. Cass knew all about the cruel boomerang of parenthood—how a well-brought-up child can come to believe he is deeply loved not for himself but for being well-brought-up. If her son feared he was not good enough, and if what she was witnessing now was that fear finally ruining him, Cass Dillon would be forever unable to say it had nothing to do with her. After all, that exact fear was hers before it was his, and who would dare claim that such things were not, despite all love and all effort, passed on, like freckles or bad teeth or, for that matter, original sin. "This has to do with me," her son had just proclaimed with such fierce nobility. No, Cass thought, you dear sweet silly. Not only you. Not only you at all.

  Twenty-three

  The workhouse in Occoquan, Virginia, was serving that spring as a spillover jail for the District of Columbia, since many of the men arrested in the disturbances after Dr. King's assassination still filled the D.C. Jail itself. It was a medium-security prison thirty miles south of Washington, a compound of buildings spread across thirty acres on a plateau overlooking the creek that had given the place its name. The Occoquan spilled out of Bull Run toward the tidewaters of the Potomac, cutting a mean, dark valley through the hills.