Less sure of a welcome, I followed watchfully. Who were these people, so pleased with themselves and one another? They seemed to have important business that they conducted merrily and whimsically, and what did we have to offer them? More to the point, what did I have to offer (I asked myself), feeling the kind of ugly not even a hippie could tolerate. Not only was I fat, I was deluded, having thought Saint might return my love. So much was wrong with me.
CJ had run ahead of me across the street, and now he was back, loping toward me over the grass, carrying his shoes again. “I thought you got lost, girlie.” I was so glad to be found that he looked good to me. Not male or female, just good in his beaded black dress, his skin shiny with sweat and the damp air. All through the park was a buzz and hum, as if from insects or small animals. We moved within it slowly, trying not to step on anyone, toward what we didn’t know, perhaps the heart or head of this body of people, its energy source. We felt something we had no word for but “energy,” impersonal and benign. Barely older than we were, these kids clustered in groups, but they weren’t protective of themselves like a high school clique. The clusters were part of something larger that was in its essence benign. Four friends were too few, I thought. Here was teeming humanity, none of whom, so far, had rolled their eyes at either one of us.
Eventually we arrived at the band shell, where CJ and his family had heard “The 1812 Overture” and authentic-sounding cannon fire. On the grass in front, people were listening to a pair of musicians, a guy playing a guitar and a young woman playing a mandolin; under her gauzy shirt you could see she wasn’t wearing a bra. Nearby, a man in a red bandanna toasted marshmallows over a camping grill. CJ and I sat down behind him, famished but not wanting to beg.
I was swallowing my saliva and trying not to look at the food when the man turned around. “Cool duds,” he said to CJ.
In my fly-on-the-wall shorts and T-shirt, I was embarrassed, but CJ didn’t bat a false eyelash. He fluffed his skirt with a fussy little theatrical gesture. “This? It was the first thing that came to hand in my closet this morning.” The man laughed, then blew out his flaming marshmallows, stuck them with a chocolate bar between two graham crackers, and offered them to CJ. “Land of plenty,” he said, and made one for me.
CJ took the treat a bit warily, but I was babbling. “This is so nice of you. We’ve been driving all night. Are you from around here?” Beside him, a girl with round glasses and Pippi Longstocking braids, who was probably older than she looked, was crocheting something with multicolored yarn. They went to the University of Chicago, had seen Godard’s Weekend tonight instead of getting tear-gassed, then felt like elitist shits and drove up from Hyde Park. She was making a hat for her new nephew in Maryland. Her name was Amy; his, Joel. We told them where we were from and we all made Lourdes jokes. A man my dad’s age lurched over, the kind of guy people in Lourdes would have pretended not to see or told to get a job, and he too got a s’more. He sat down with us, reeking of booze. “You’re a bunch of good kids, I don’t care what they say.”
After a while, our hosts put out their grill and lay down together, and we found a spot near a flagpole that offered the illusion of protection. “They’re so nice,” I whispered to CJ.
“Brigadoon,” he said.
But the next day, even more people were roving about in the already hot sun with the American flag flapping overhead. Joel handed us cups of coffee as if we were family. Every once in a while a group of uniformed police would pass through like soldiers, blank-faced inside their riot helmets, but talk in our group continued. How to behave when arrested: fight, play dead, and make them carry you away, or go along, hoping not to be injured? “We have to resist, that’s why we came,” Amy said. Joel snorted. “What? You’re going to stab them with your crochet hook?” He wasn’t a martyr, had no interest in getting clubbed. “I need my brains to finish school.” People laughed, some uneasily. “The question is,” he said, “what is worth dying for?”
Talk was loud now. Someone handed Joel a motorcycle helmet; he gave it to Amy. I saw a few other people in helmets or hard hats. My skull felt exposed and vulnerable, but I actually liked feeling vulnerable. I was aroused at the thought of new choices, of onrushing extraordinary, momentous events when CJ and I and all of these people might have to put our lives on the line. What was worth dying for? The question linked Chicago and Lourdes, the throbbing heart of their quest and ours too. In my mind I was trying out variations on this idea to express to the group around me (braving possible ridicule), when two policemen halted in front of us. “I’m going to have to ask you for that,” one of them said to Joel. He meant Joel’s little camp stove, which sat on the ground under the percolator. New coffee was burbling.
I smiled at the policeman, confident suddenly in this place where no one knew my limitations. Besides, I wanted to impress Joel. “We’re just making coffee,” I said, upturning my round face, whose youth and innocence would surely shame him. Amy said, “Would you like a cup?”
He had no interest in us. “No grilling on city property except in designated areas.”
“It’s not a grill,” Joel said quietly. “No briquettes, Officer, just propane. It’s not dangerous.” He set the percolator on the grass and shut off the gas.
“I won’t ask you twice,” said the cop.
“It’s off. No heat.” Joel waved his hand over the burner. “I won’t use it again.” He unscrewed the burner from the small blue tank. He was holding one harmless item in each hand when the cop went for his stick.
I had been preparing for martyrdom with my new, coffeed-up energy. But before I could throw my body in front of Joel’s, cop number two grabbed the first one’s arm. “Cool it, Frank.” At which Officer Frank grabbed the tank and the two marched off. “Motherfuckers,” Amy said, but not loud enough for them to hear. Joel tossed the useless burner into the air and caught it. “Brave new world,” he said.
“In the shadow of the American flag,” CJ offered.
“He was nice enough to leave us the pot,” I said goofily on purpose, and held out my cup for more. Joel laughed and poured and I drank. I loved the bitter taste of coffee, how it made me a part of it all.
CJ and I had planned to start our westward journey today, head out for the territories, but the scene wouldn’t let us go. It was getting hot; CJ unzipped his dress. More and more people kept arriving, some with signs:
END THE WAR IN CHICAGO. SEND THE COPS HOME.
CLEAN FOR GENE!
BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL
A boy was walking around with a parrot on his shoulder. Helium balloons sporting peace signs bobbed in the wind. This was our place, these were our people. The enemy wore a uniform, so you knew whom to hate, which left everyone else to be loved, if you were so moved. Stories circulated about power abuses, a Yippie leader arrested eating breakfast in a diner because he had FUCK written across his forehead. Arrested and jailed. For a word, for Christ’s sake!
For a while we drifted through the crowd, pausing on the outskirts of discussions. In one group, a pretty woman with yin yang circles on her cheeks declared that she hated Gene McCarthy as much as President Johnson. More, because McCarthy had gotten people’s hopes up then dashed them! Someone spoke in support of McCarthy, and the yin yang woman got upset. “The Soviets marched on Prague. No big deal for McCarthy! Not a major world crisis—he really said that! Then he quit, did you see the Trib? He said Humphrey had it all sewn up!” I couldn’t follow her argument, but I believed her sincerity. I could love this woman.
There were speakers now on the band shell. A man with thick black glasses stood at the lectern, his face wholly encircled by black curly hair. People sat down on the grass and quit talking. Something big was happening. Holding hands in order not to lose each other, we edged that way. The man said he would read some poems. There were whistles and cheers. “America you don’t really want to go to war. America it’s them bad Russians.”
I knew Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, but n
ot yet Allen Ginsberg. He read as if he was making fun of things I didn’t know could be mocked. He made me nervous, and I didn’t want to be nervous; I wanted to be impressed, aroused, illuminated. “CJ, do you know this guy?”
CJ just listened. “America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.”
His bare back was getting sunburned, and he had draped a glove across each shoulder. It made him sit straight. “That was a great poem,” I said, not quite fraudulently. I felt on the edge of appreciation, that one day those words would stir me. CJ nodded without looking at me. He couldn’t take his eyes off the stage.
Speakers followed whose purposes were easier to fathom. A guy with brown hair down his back described himself and friends going to face the New York City police with bags full of blood that they had garnered from local slaughterhouses. When a cop raised his billy club, they broke the bags over their own heads. “All this blood pours out,” the guy said, “and they totally freak!” Then someone else took the mic and made an announcement: The peace plank had been voted down.
CJ and I felt the gravity of that event through its effect on the people around us. They booed; they cursed the Democrats. A few were crying. Someone yelled, “Bomb the Pentagon!” The clamor swelled. Fuck the whole stupid country. Waves of fury looking for direction. Across the grass a skinny boy, very young, was climbing the flagpole toward the American flag that had presided over our sleep. Onstage someone was chanting, “Om.” Then the boy was gone from the pole and so was the flag, and another flag was going up, a piece of white cloth that looked like it had been dipped in blood. Things were happening now too fast for understanding. A troop of police wearing gas masks and holding rifles topped with bayonets were pushing toward the flagpole, to chants of “Sieg Heil!” Someone yelled, “Stick those guns up your ass!” A guy near us said, “See how mad they get when you fuck with their flag!” People threw things—eggs and water balloons filled with what we hoped was food coloring. We heard coughing and choking. And then we were coughing.
Tear gas hurts. My burning eyes wouldn’t open. CJ and I stood up, but we couldn’t move in the packed crowd. We held on to each other, trying not to fall, while around us was the world gone crazy. From the stage someone was urging battle in the streets. A cop yelled, “Get the nigger!” and cops converged on someone I couldn’t see. “Keep your head down!” someone said near my ear. Chanting rose and fell: “The whole world is watching, the whole world is watching.” Occasionally a bullhorn pierced the din, but the commands differed:
“We’re marching on the Amphitheatre.”
“Everybody sit down!”
“It’s time to leave the park. Exit in small groups.”
Our eyes and noses streaming, half-blind, we kept our heads down and held tight to each other’s hands and tried to reach what we hoped was the edge of all this.
“Be cool! Await instruction.”
With the bullhorn to orient us, we threaded our way through the churning crowd. “Stay together. Hold the line,” cried a black man in a suit. Then he went down. On hands and knees he tried to crawl away, but cops surrounded him. One cop kicked at him, another used his club. Blood streaked the back of his neck. Somebody, do something, I kept mouthing silently, like a crazy person.
I hadn’t forgotten my quest for martyrdom, but I was confused. I had lost hold of CJ. There were people all around me, but I seemed to be the only one aware of the man’s plight. And if no one else saw it, could it really be happening? CJ, where are you? The man was crawling toward the sidewalk. A fence barred access, but it was a snow fence, half-down already. Was that blood running from his ear?
Then, in the noise and the pressure and odor of bodies around me, someone stumbled against me. I grabbed the nearest handhold, which happened to be the blue sleeve of a policeman. He shook me off, but now I was moving. I’d lost sight of the man on the ground, but in front of me was a cop with a club in his hand, and while he leaned forward I jumped onto his back the way I would jump onto my father’s for a piggyback ride. I didn’t know if this was the evil cop, the one who had actually used his club. I knew some cops meant well and some did not. I don’t know if I thought I couldn’t be harmed, or if I just didn’t care, or if I thought I was Joan of Arc. I remember my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist, laughing. I was riding piggyback—riding the back of a pig! I held him by the helmet, yelling what my mother would say when I misbehaved, “I’m ashamed of you!” squeezing the strap against his neck to make him drop his club, which may or may not have happened. At some point he bucked me off. Then CJ was pulling me through the broken fence.
Out on the street the mayhem was less fraught, with an element of humor. Kids were trying to overturn a police car while someone danced on the hood screaming, “I am the universe.” There was no sign of the beaten man. CJ took off his shoes and we ran, past the Palmer House, where a middle-aged woman was being handcuffed while she tried to hold on to a boy who was probably her grandson. Past a man who yelled in our direction, “You pitiful fag!” Some blocks away was a Woolworth’s, where we ate bacon and eggs, drank coffee, waited for our hearts to slow down. There were two more days for the convention to run, two more days of the political theater that was Chicago. Safe now, we were high on it. We had been embraced as equals by older kids, all of us morally superior to the adults misrunning the world. My arm was bruised and my side hurt when I breathed, but I didn’t mind. I was glad for what CJ called my war wounds. And there was more for us to do here, and so much more to learn.
Scheduled for the afternoon was the protest march to the Amphitheatre, where the presidential nominee would be chosen. We planned to join it, but there was one thing we had to do first. The war in Chicago transcended personal matters, including P-Day, it seemed to us. It was crucial—essential—that Saint and Vera know about it. If we were lucky, they could ride down on Saint’s scooter and join us here.
We found a phone by the door and put our change together. We had to avoid Vera’s father, so Saint was obviously the one to call. We flipped a coin. I won, but together we worked out what to say. This thing was bigger than 4EVER. It could change our lives.
Saint’s mother answered the phone. At the sound of my voice she gave a shriek. “Thank God! Thank God!” She was laughing and crying. “Kay, where are you!”
I put my hand over the mouthpiece and whispered to CJ, “She knows we’re gone!”
He took the phone. “How are you, Mrs. Scully?”
She seemed equally glad to be talking to him, and she kept thanking God. Then she asked for Saint; she had to talk to Saint. “Please, just for a minute. I have to know he’s all right.”
“He isn’t here,” CJ said. “We’re looking for him too.” Her groan was audible. “I’m sorry,” he said.
The news was frightening. It wasn’t just Saint who hadn’t come home last night; neither had Vera or her brother, Garth. Mrs. Scully was crying. CJ apologized again and again. Then, not knowing what else to do, he hung up in the middle of whatever she was saying. We looked at each other, but we didn’t have to discuss it. We went for the car.
27
Playing House
Saint and Vera ride the crest of the dune until the path ends, then abandoning the bike they slide down the slope. Her foot is seriously swollen now but she makes no sound and will not ask for help as they clamber over rocks in the dark. A point comes when she has to sit. Her ankle is actually hot to the touch. But relatively speaking it’s nothing. Flesh. In a minute or so she’ll get it together.
They’re still a ways from their goal. Saint picks her up like she’s a doll; she’s almost glad now for her incapacity. She puts her arms around his neck—she has to, in order not to fall—remembering a late-night family outing, being carried from the car to her room and tucked into bed without having to brush her teeth or wash her face or take her daytime clothes off, then drifting off to sleep with the faint pressure of someone’s lips on her forehead. At the mouth of their haven Saint sets her down on
a flat rock. The sky is pale over the darkness of the lake. She rests her head and feels herself relaxing, pain and all. She is where she is, and there is nothing she can do about anything. The sensation is completely unfamiliar, with an edge of euphoria.
Now tears are running down her cheeks, with no choking or sobbing. In the course of her life she has rarely cried, and never like this, without trying to make it stop. Saint lifts her down to the sandy floor of the bunker where she used to play as a child, alone and safe, and she feels warmth from his body through his damp clothes. She leans closer, her face directly in front of his, and touches his face, neck, shoulder, his warm, alive skin, and what has no other name but love pulses from her to him.
They lie, exhausted and empty, side by side but separate in their rock shelter. In her dream they are dancing, she in the white dress of a bride. Then they are driving somewhere in a large, comfortable car, and the backseat is full of children, laughing with pleasure in one another, which she shares, she floats on it, till their screams of delight edge toward wildness and she turns in her seat to quiet them. They all look like Garth.
—
They sleep late and wake up starving. Vera’s ankle is yellow and double in size. Saint hoists her out of the hole so she can pee. Soon, though, they will need food.
He makes a noontime foray through the woods back to the picnic area, trying to blot out everything except simple, attainable goals, and manages to steal a thermos, a package of hot dogs, and a jar of mustard from a family organizing their children’s baseball game. There are eight hot dogs in the package. Even cold they taste good, especially with the mustard. They eat them all. The thermos contains lemonade, which they sip chastely, leaving as much as possible for the other person.
Once, in Lourdes Page 26