Memorial Bridge

by James Carroll

  The whole world was—or was not—watching, but Sean Dillon was, sitting alone before the television in his quarters on Generals' Row at Boiling Air Base.

  Cass had found it unbearable and had gone upstairs.

  Dillon's mind was half taken up by the flashes on the television screen, the jumping images, the screams and curses, the melee; and half by the flashes of his own memory, the stockyards, with swarms of sparrows picking at the dung; the amphitheater and the Stockyards Inn outside which—on that pavement there!—Raymond Buckley had been arrested; blood overflowing the gutters of a slaughterhouse, the animals stampeding inside their corrals, the shriek of terror rising above the city as thousands of cattle, sheep and hogs gouge each other to death.

  Chicago's Pride.

  What he had built an entire life thinking he had left behind. He sat dead-still in the chair of his television room in the grip of a nausea he had not felt in years. The eerie blue light from the screen flickered over him mercilessly. He would have turned it off and gone upstairs too, but the images of a human stampede, the ungodly shriek, brought back what he had so fiercely shut out. There was no shutting it out now.

  Not any newfound sympathy for the hateful nihilism of the protesters, but something older, almost forgotten about the forces of control, those policemen, those men in uniform, the same old hatred and violence. Chicago policemen.

  Chicago politicians.

  Now he was a policeman.

  The television images switched from the streets to go inside the convention hall where a nearly equivalent chaos had apparently taken hold. The galleries high above the floor were filled with screaming demonstrators, but instead of "The whole world is watching," they were chanting "We love Daley!" and bouncing placards that read, "Daley Forever."

  Richard J. Daley.

  The camera went to him, sitting imperiously by the huge "Illinois" sign not far below the podium. Daley's face was twisted with rage. The men around him were standing shoulder to shoulder, sealing the mayor off from the wild arguments in other delegations. One Daley henchman in particular caught Dillon's eye, a stocky man whose head was bald but for his temples where the gray hair stuck out like handles. Dillon's memoiy tossed his name up, Geoige Delahunt, the former congressman, the one who'd sent a tickle past Dillon when he'd testified against the navy twenty years before. Even from the dais Delahunt had mentioned Raymond Buckley, acknowledging a debt to him. Now Delahunt was sneering up at the speaker on the podium a mere twenty feet away.

  The speaker was tall, gray-browed Abraham Ribicoff, looking more like a general than a politician, but a general in the heat of battle. His voice fairly cracked with emotion as he brought his fist down, bouncing the microphone at the climax of denunciation:"...Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago!"

  The camera caught Daley half out of his chair. "Fuck you, kike!" The mayor's lips moved with precision around the awful words.

  Whether the whole world was watching, Sean Dillon was.

  Richard J. Daley in a free fall of hatred.

  But Dillon saw something entirely other in the flickering blue light of his short-circuiting mind: Edward Kelly, Daley's long-dead predecessor, the gangster mayor who had embodied, for the young Dillon, a demonic corruption of his city.

  "Out, demons! Out!"

  Dillon could not watch Chicago that night, the war come home, and recognize himself on either side of it. But to his great surprise he realized, nevertheless, that if he were born thirty years later, he would certainly have been in those very streets defying Daley and Lyndon Johnson, denouncing the callous arrogance by which they claimed the right to rain clubs and bombs upon the heads of those they disapproved. Dillon thought of Eddie Kane, who had changed the meaning for him of the word "policeman."

  But now he, Sean Dillon, was a policeman.

  When he went upstairs at last, Cass was asleep. He nearly woke her. Carefully, instead, he lay down beside her, knowing he would never sleep. He lay there trembling for his country and for himself.

  In the morning, after washing, he went to his closet, intending to dress in his lawyerly pin-striped suit, but his hands went automatically to his uniform. He took it out of the closet on its hanger and dropped the hook over the doorknob. Without having thought of doing so before, he removed one set of three silver stars from the left epaulet, and then the other from the right.

  Six silver stars, a set in each hand, which he then closed, squeezing the sharp points until they hurt.

  To turn them in, at last, far too late, a resignation not out of any standing-in-judgment above what had been done—twenty-five thousand Americans dead, ten times that many Vietnamese, America herself morally napalmed, and for what?—but out of a judgment from below of his own essential contribution to the massive self-deception. There was nothing of which he could accuse the President, Rusk, Westmoreland—or even Daley?—that he could not accuse himself. And his refusal until now to resign? An act of cowardice after all? Was he just like the others in that too? He had no idea. Virtue or cowardice? He had no idea.

  He opened his hands and saw blood. Blood. He had helped build an Asian slaughterhouse. And he should leave now because it stinks? He could not walk away from the war until it was over; that was all he knew.

  Dillon wiped the blood from his palms with a handkerchief, and then pinned the silver stars back on the shoulders of his uniform jacket.

  Then he had a fresh impulse, another response to Mayor Fuck You Daley. Instead of dressing in his lawyer's suit, as he'd told his son he would, he donned his uniform, taking more care with it than ever. If the President and his men, including Daley and Hoover, found him insubordinate now, that was their problem.

  And three hours later, looking like what he was, resplendent in his blue creases, his stars and his ribbons—the Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, the National Defense Medal—he entered the United States Courthouse on Pennsylvania Avenue where his wife and son were waiting.

  In a hallway like this—high, ornately molded ceilings, mahogany benches lining the walls, polished terrazzo floors, frosted glass double doors, court functionaries idling by huge windows—a young Sean Dillon had pronounced a first vow: "I owe Doc Riley." His first Richard. "I owe him you."

  Dillon walked quickly, sharp-eyed, aware of the faces turning toward him as he passed, aware also that none of the faces were the ones he wanted.

  Until he came to the rotunda, the domed, open center of the building, where benches were backed against the railing of a high balcony. On one of those Cass was sitting, and so was his second Richard, his only son. They both stood as Sean approached, and he saw surprise sweep into their faces like a cloud.

  Sean, with a twist of his palm, indicated Richard's blue jeans, his hippie shirt and long hair. He had to stifle a burst of impatience at his son's getup. "No one will take you for the lawyer," he said.

  Richard grinned, hugely pleased to be able to rebut his father. "You either, General."

  Cass put a hand on each of their arms. "You both look fine to me."

  Sean snapped his wrist out of his sleeve, to check his watch. "It's time. Let's go."

  With Cass between them Sean and Richard walked, in step, into the courtroom. There were two men at the prosecutor's table, the stenographer was at her machine in front of the bench, a bailiff waited by the judge's door in the far corner. No one else was present. The jury box, three long elevated benches behind an elaborate balustrade, was vacant. Cass took her seat on one of the spectators' benches. Sean ushered Richard through the rail to the defendant's table. When they sat there together, the two prosecutors stared openly, then leaned to each other to confer.

  At an order from the bailiff, all rose, and the judge entered, a thin, bald man with a wizened face dominated by rimless eyeglasses. Sitting, he too registered the sight of a general officer forward of the rail. The bailiff recited the "hear ye's" and announced the case, and as soon as he was finished the judge, with an impatient curl of his hand, barked, "Appro
ach."

  Richard sat. Sean and the two prosecutors went forward to the right side of the bench where the judge, glaring at Sean, asked in a low voice, "What's the meaning of your uniform?"

  "I am an active-duty regular officer of the United States Air Force, your honor. I am also a member of the Illinois and District of Columbia bars. I am representing Richard Dillon in this matter, as a private citizen."

  "Are you with JAG, or what's the military connection here?"

  "Richard Dillon, my son."

  The senior prosecutor shook his head, "Your honor, this is impossible. We can't have this uniform before the jury."

  Dillon answered sharply, "This is a case involving questions of national service, patriotism and loyalty. The defendant's background as having been raised in the American military is relevant."

  "He's in rebellion against it," the prosecutor said.

  Now Dillon looked at him. "That's the point, Mr. Repucci. If the defendant's actions could be dismissed as mere rebellion, I would not be here. You're going to have to make a better case than that."

  "All right, gentlemen. All right," the judge said, then fixed Dillon with a glinting stare. "General, I do not want it ever said that a serviceman's uniform was unwelcome in my courtroom. Nevertheless there is a problem here, and before we begin to seat the jury I am going to have to rule on it."

  "My uniform before the jury may not be an issue, your honor. I have a preliminary motion I'd like you to hear."

  "I would too, if I were you. With what's happening in Chicago"—the judge glanced toward Richard, the beau ideal of a hippie troublemaker—"I'd move to postpone."

  "My motion, your honor, is to dismiss."

  The judge exchanged a look with Repucci, who rolled his eyes.

  "All right." The judge pushed back in his chair, ending the sidebar conference. "Let's hear it."

  On his way back to the defendant's table, Sean noticed a man who'd slipped into the courtroom and was now seated in the rearmost row. Sean noted his close hair, his civilian clothes, the pad on one knee. He thought of Hubert Humphrey, how Johnson's agents trailed him everywhere in the campaign, taking down whatever he said, to be sure he did not criticize the President's war policy, even slightly.

  A moment later Dillon was on his feet at the table, his papers spread, Richard seated beside him.

  "Your honor, I move to dismiss the charges against Mr. Dillon in this case on the grounds that this prosecution is consequent to a response by the United States government to Mr. Dillon's admitted, initial violation of the law that is itself illegal. I have a brief here. . . "Dillon handed a pair of folders to the clerk, who had come forward for them. He carried one to the judge and the other to Repucci. While Dillon spoke, the judge and prosecutors read. "On October twenty-first of last year, Richard Dillon did knowingly part with his Selective Service registration, his draft card, in violation of Section 172B of the Selective Service Act. Since Mr. Dillon's registration, together with one hundred and twenty-seven others, was delivered to authorities representing the attorney general, there was no effort to hide or deny the violation. The attorney general was bound to prosecute that violation according to procedures outlined in the law, but instead, on October twenty-third he forwarded Mr. Dillon's registration to the office of General Lewis B. Hershey, director of the Selective Service Administration. General Hershey, in further violation of the law, issued a directive on October twenty-sixth addressed to Mr. Dillon's draft board, ordering its members, first, to reclassify Mr. Dillon from 2-S to 1-A and, second, to conscript him forthwith into American military service. This represents a perversion of the Selective Service for purposes of punishment and of political control. The government's implicit claim to be defending Selective Service against. . . "Dillon veered, in order not to mention the targeted group, Resist. It would not serve his purposes to cross Hoover's line. "...is false. The government's action itself represents the threat to Selective Service. As such, it strikes at the heart of a system that exists by explicit act of Congress solely for the purpose of raising an army to defend the interests of this nation."

  Dillon had taken the court by surprise. His preliminary motion had become a speech, but so far neither the judge nor the prosecutors had mustered an objection. It amazed him how easy this was, quick turns on the shiny surface of the language. At this—if not his own work—he was a natural. He should have been lawyering all these years.

  "My client rejected the government's act of conscription because, for his own reasons, he did not recognize it as having proper authority. Whatever his reasons, he was right. The government should have prosecuted him for failure to maintain in his possession his Selective Service document. Instead, it improperly reclassified him—he was still eligible for student deferment—and drafted him. His refusal to report for induction and his subsequent flight to avoid prosecution are both rendered moot by the fact that his conscription was illegal."

  The judge slowly began to shake his head. "In order to dismiss on these grounds," he said, "I would have to see evidence of direct causation, linking the conscription order to the young man's draft card burning."

  "He did not burn the card, your honor. He turned it in to a government official."

  "I still need the link."

  "It is available, your honor." Dillon lifted two more pages from his table. The clerk again carried them to the judge and the prosecutors. "I am going to subpoena these official government records. As you will note, of the one hundred and twenty-seven other men who turned in their draft cards on October twenty-first, one hundred and fourteen of them were reclassified and drafted within weeks. Of the thirteen who were not, six were already classified 4-F and two were already classified CO."

  The judge peered toward Dillon without responding for a moment. Then he curled his hand. "Approach, please, gentlemen."

  Dillon and the two prosecutors once more went to sidebar.

  The judge cupped his hand over the small microphone, the stenographer's supplementary recording device. He leaned close to Repucci. "What's the government's disposition on this material?"

  "Your honor," Repucci whispered, "correspondence internal to a defense-related agency is privileged—"

  "That's ridiculous," Dillon said, eyeing the man directly. "If you have problems with providing those communications, it's because you see it will undercut government cases against one hundred fourteen other men, and probably many others." Dillon faced the judge. "The issue here is crucial, your honor. The Selective Service System is being perverted."

  Dillon did not say it was being perverted in precisely the way he himself had perverted it in Chicago twenty-eight years before.

  The judge was ignoring Dillon to glare at the prosecutor. "I'm going to have to rule on this, if this case proceeds. I'm going to need this material."

  "Your honor, I..." A line of sweat had broken out on Repucci's upper lip. This was to have been a third-rate slacker case. Repucci was out of his depth, and showed it.

  The judge said, "If you want a short recess to ... consider the issue ... I'll grant it."

  "Yes, your honor. Please."

  The judge reached for his gavel, lifted it, then stopped. "General, you state in your outline that this correspondence is on file in dated folders at Selective Service headquarters. How do you come by that information?"

  Dillon did not flinch. "We have sources inside the Selective Service administration who object quite strenuously to its perversion."

  "Who?"

  "That is privileged information, your honor, and irrelevant." Dillon's authority matched the judge's. "The records in question are easily available to this court, and will speak for themselves. You could have the file from headquarters this afternoon."

  "Nevertheless—"

  "Your honor, as a young attorney in 19401 participated personally in the drafting of the original Selective Service legislation. I represented the FBI, and I know from my own experience there were some in the Bureau who wanted to use the draft as
a way of extending government jurisdiction over nefarious mobsters. But it was clear the American people would accept conscription—this was in peacetime—only if its purpose was absolutely restricted to raising an army. It is a principle that must be protected in a free society."

  Dillon knew full well what a hypocrite this speech made him. The hypocrisy was implicit in the very arc of his life.

  The judge did not react for what seemed a long time.

  Finally he said once more, to the prosecutor, "I'm going to have to have this material." He brought his gavel down sharply once, facing the open court. "Short recess!" He banged the gavel again and stood.

  "All rise!" the bailiff called as the judge left.

  Richard and Sean remained at their table after the prosecutors had hurried away.

  Richard couldn't help himself, the amazement he felt, the twin thrills that his father was doing this for him and that his father was so good. He leaned across, cupping his mouth. "We have a source in Hershey's office? God, Dad, how'd you come up with that?"

  Sean looked at his son. "I didn't," he whispered.

  "What do you mean?"

  "There is no source."

  "You just said ... Isn't that perjury?"

  Dillon shook his head. "Nothing a lawyer says in court is under oath. Only witnesses are sworn. You know that."

  "But Christ, it never occurred—"

  "Law school is where you learn how it's supposed to be. In court you learn how it is. Lawyers are always making things up."

  "How'd you know for sure about the files?"

  "I don't. I'm guessing. If I'm right, they won't want to produce them. I'm sure Hershey ordered your conscription and that of your friends. I'm not sure he's dumb enough to have kept copies of the letters he sent to the local boards. But he may be." Sean's grin returned. "Think of it, kid, a numbskull four-star general!"

  Richard laughed out loud, and for a moment the two men were bound by their secret. Sean recognized his son, the renegade outsider, as his, and Richard saw in his father, for the first time in years, a flash of the man he hoped to be himself.