Chapter 5: The Four
The rumor had a life of its own, but the gathering at Sean’s house would have been called, regardless.
“Corey, you're going to have to explain, man.” The three look at him, thinking and feeling like a single entity.
“Why'd you cop a plea? We have the right to know, don't you think?”
What’s been rumor is fact, as of four hours ago Corey pled guilty. It will make a terrible story on the evening news. The worst is that the other three didn't have a clue that this was going down. They had all met last week, two days after release, three weeks since the raid. It was a high. They rode the crest of each other's energy, not then aware of how cheaply this high had been bought at the cost of each one’s despair. Today, the first of August, they are facing their first vision of the void.
Corey, whom most call a “pretty boy,” is no stranger to controversy and public scrutiny. As president of the university's student body, he’s been a highly visible leader for draft resistance and anti-war protest long before the other three had even begun to consider draft raids. Although recently graduated and the youngest of The Four, the media instinctively approached him after their bailout. All the radicals trusted him. Corey has that something that assures the people around him, even strangers, that he’ll voice just what they are feeling. He’s the most affluent and best connected of the group, and Sean had anticipated tapping his family’s clout to help their case in court.
Corey stands by the center living room window, a broad picture window that visually carries one out onto the high River Road Parkway bluff overlooking the mighty Mississippi. He’s absorbed in another dimension, as many have been while gazing upon the majesty of the Big Muddy. He’s off trudging alongside the pioneers who first struggled up these thickly-treed cliffs. Then he’s inside one of Mark Twain's scenarios of rafting life on the Great River. At another moment he’s watching a darker vision unfold – the massacre of Native Americans at river’s edge. His absorption has momentarily removed him from the unpleasantness of what must be done. In fact, Sean—bantamweight, bespectacled, and prematurely balding—has to yell, his anger almost lifting him off his toes—“Corey, you asshole, pay attention!”—before he turns towards them.
“Naturally,” catching himself falling out of reverie, “you deserve to know why.”
Moving back towards them Corey opts for an old musty rocking chair, almost an antique. He sits down, rocks slowly. Jared and Sean share the couch in front of him. Matt lies down on the floor near the picture window, flat on his back, gazing up at the ceiling. Yoga nut! flashes through Jared's mind. The image brings a quirky smile to his face.
Quite self-consciously, Corey positions himself at the center of their group vision.
“I want to say that it was my dad's influence or have someone to blame. I could run damage control on that around town. But the simple fact is, I'm in over my head. I quit.”
“You quit?” Sean's words slash at Corey's jugular. “What are you quitting? Peace? Justice? Truth? Integrity? Tell me, what did you join that you think you can quit?”
Sean has more in common with Corey than the others, and so he’s the one most threatened by Corey's actions. Although Matt and Jared have not spoken to either of them about their own jail experiences, both wonder, silently, whether similar experiences underlie Corey's decision. Whatever! What Corey is doing is, for them, just another peculiar happening in this whole bizarre series of events.
“Sean,” Corey begins as if talking to his younger brother, “there's a time to rush forward and a time to retreat. Now that we’re caught, the war is personal. No,” he pauses, searching for the accurate word, “no, the war is intimate. It's like getting your Selective Service letter that opens “Greetings” from Uncle Sam. Then you know they mean you. Then you know you better take stock of your life, quickly.”
Corey continually rocks, slowly, deliberately. He’s delivering his little speech as if he’s rehearsed it, though he hasn't.
“While I was in County, I took stock. I decided that a criminal record is neither a short or a long-term gain. If I plead guilty, my dad's been assured, I'll get a presidential pardon.” He puts a stress on pardon as if citing its majesty as presidential would elicit their approval, their pardons.
Sean is at him before his statement ends. “I can't believe you. I fucking-A cannot believe you! You used to rap down the best analysis of why the war in Vietnam is destroying America. You used to reach people none of us could. You and your fucking-A charm—you’re the only one of us who stands a chance of finessing the media during this trial, and now you're kissing us goodbye and pleading guilty?”
Sean’s lost his cool. He throws his hands up and exhales loudly in exasperation and anger. Then he half-jumps to his feet and starts pacing back and forth, back and forth behind the couch. Abruptly he jerks to a halt, turns towards Corey, points a condemning finger. “Are we a short-term gain or a long-term loss?”
Louder, more emphasis with the condemning finger. “Tell me, short-term or long-term?” Again, “Tell me!”
Corey rocks and rocks, gently, rhythmically, in control. He addresses Sean almost as if he’s the only audience. Oddly, Jared and Matt are somewhat detached from the gravity of Sean and Corey's encounter. It’s clear that jail hasn’t been for Corey and Sean what it was for them. Neither faults Corey for wanting out—at least they don’t fault on the personal level. Neither Jared nor Matt are sure what actually is the “correct political stance” with respect to standing trial and doing prison time. Jared calmly observes. Matt quietly hears the stirring conversation, the mini-cross-examination unfolding between their partners in crime.
Corey responds, “Sean—” but then chokes. Sean’s reaction has triggered a deep, unfamiliar anger in Corey. He’s angry that the audience isn’t being swept away by his reasoning; isn’t agreeing with his carefully considered wisdom. Artfully, he doesn’t let it make him lose control. Within a reflexive swallow he regains his composure. His voice is smooth, fluid.
“Look at us. Leaders of the Youth Movement! Think about that. We’re all under twenty-five. No doubt, we're bright, articulate, full of promise, but what experience of the real world do we have, really?”
At the real world! Sean snarls and glowers at Corey. The phrase marked many of his clashes with his father: two trains smashing head-on over and over again, each unyielding. Sean is seething at boiling point.
“Sean, we've had our fun. We've tweaked their noses. Look, I'm not doubting our wisdom. I'm just yielding to our ignorances!”
Corey pauses, as if expecting Sean's applause at this clever phrasing—surely it provides a way out for all of them. But Sean’s clearly not swayed, so Corey broadens the throw of his net.
“Sean,” and for the first time Corey’s gaze includes the other two, “we know a lot about foreign policy and economics and social theory and all that. I know you've all read Marcuse and Chomsky, Norman O. Brown and the rest.”
No one checks off his reading list.
“I'm sure you're all confident that LBJ lied to us, every night. That the moral sickness of even our most liberal liberals like McCarthy and McGovern has been hung out with the morning's wash. But,” and here he leans slightly towards them, presaging a move he’ll later use so effectively before juries when actually prosecuting cases, “but which of us can say with certainty”—Corey instinctively inserts the phrase, “and beyond a reasonable doubt,” so often flung at him by his litigious father—“who killed JFK or Bobby or King?”
Pointing at Jared. “Or Fred Hampton in Chicago? Do you know for certain,” he asks but doesn’t wait for a response, “that Daley had him killed? Do you know that for sure?” Then back to the group, “Or about the real intentions of the Viet Cong? We've all laughed at the Domino Theory, but how do we know? Are we sure the Commies are any better than puppets like Diem and Ky?”
Corey stands and walks a half-step closer to the couch. He places his right hand on
the couch's arm as if it’s the jury rail. “For me, it’s a matter of certainty. With you, I’ve acted in a specific way, a symbolic way, that says to all the world, ‘Corey is certain the war is wrong!’ But I don’t feel certain.” A pause, dramatic in intent. “I acted and reflected upon the act. And I judge the act empty!”
Sean writhes and explodes, “You bastard! You dirty, cowardly son-of-a-bitch! You . . . you stink!”
It’s the same rage he taps into when he’s hot with his father.
Jared looks over at Matt. Matt attentively rose to a sitting position at Sean’s “cowardly.” What should we say? mimes between them. Then Jared sighs in frustration as he states, “Man, only you can forgive yourself!” His words frame a weary dismissal of any attempt to analyze, justify, or couch their experiences in terms of reasonable arguments. Jail has moved the four of them into a peculiar realm of closeness . They are bound together with a heartfelt iron chain, crafted by each one’s silent assent of “All the way!” Corey’s action, more than his words, is the first crack in the chain.
As if Corey wasn’t present, Jared says to the others, “For all I care, let him go. He came this far but he's looking back. That's no good for us.” To Sean, “If he's not going to use that charm, he'll just be extra baggage. Cut him loose.”
Matt moves into the lotus position, nods in agreement.
Feeling the chasm ever-widening between him and them, Corey steps back and stands behind the rocker. He begins to slowly nudge it back and forth. He doesn’t show it, couldn’t bear to voice it even if he had the words, but he’s profoundly hurt. His vanity is wounded by his inability to tell this story to the three in such a way that they would beg him to stay. More, he’s maimed by the fact that not one of the three stands to affirm their core need for his heroic leadership.
The logic and finality of Jared's evaluation calms Sean down. Still, his mind continues to race at light speed. “Fucking-A . . . Fucking-A . . . Sure, from the trial point of view I see your point, J. We’ve got to control the courtroom, or at least not get swallowed up. We need to be together.”
But Sean still has an itch to scratch. “Man, I'm really pissed at you, Corey. I didn't expect you to be a traitor. Yeah, to me, to yourself. I know where you come from. What you're putting in the balance here—and it'll come around and bite your ass someday. Bite your fucking ass right off! … I won't weep. Motherfuckin’ no way!”
“Corey” —unexpectedly the sound of Matt’s soft voice startles them. Up to now he’s been characteristically reticent. Moreover, the others know that Matt and Corey have never had even a two-minute conversation, though Matt has heard Corey speak often and has told the others how much he’s been influenced by the factual sweep of his anti-war arguments.
“Corey, you say the war’s now intimate. But you've known that all along. You've known because, like me, you sat at the feet of the sage Professor Mulford Q. Sibley and drank in his history of nonviolence.”
Matt’s not advancing this memory as an appeal to reason. Rather, he’s making his one stab at the heart of the beast. “You've known all along that nonviolence isn’t a practice drawn from rational or even reasonable philosophical premises. You heard Sibley say over and over, to act nonviolently is to suspend the arguments of reason in an embrace of the common heart.”
In his own peculiarly caring way, Matt continues: “You've been intimate with the war all along. I know your intimacy. I’ve been touched by your intimacy. You are nonviolent.”
As happens when the dreaded moment of confession and confrontation passes, Corey momentarily slips into a gully of depression; pitifulness.
“I guess, I guess . . . jail just freaked me out. Just sitting there in that cage. Being totally out of control of the situation. I've never experienced that. There was no bailout.” Agitation rides his words. “They nailed us for sabotage . . . I mean, they really nailed us.”
This admission, this expression of fear snares Jared because this is the area of his own vulnerability. Unlike Matt, who is letting Corey go without preaching at him, Jared cannot look away. Corey’s fear mirrors a Gorgon's face.
Memories of jail unnerve Jared. He stands and confronts Corey. “Prison! Is it prison you fear?” Booming out, then pacing, thrashing out ancient symbols with his hands, “For Christ’s sake, man, if you don't resist then consider yourself your own captor. Do you grasp that? Do you?”
With each word Jared moves imperceptibly closer to Corey. His heart is on fire. Rising on deeply passionate words, shouting out, challenging ferociously, he’s demanding that Corey Resist!
Accusations and angry impatience: “What do you think Jesus the Christ told us? Why do you think he risked the capture and death of his own body? Don't you see, he knew the primary prison is the one we choose each day when we refuse to act according to our hearts? Isn't that clear?”
Spitting out the God gnawed bones: “Resisting evil means loving yourself and loving your neighbor. But—but you can't love your neighbor unless and until you love yourself!”
Prophecy: “The act that frees—the acceptable sacrifice—is resisting yourself. Resisting your own evil.”
Exasperation: “You have to forgive yourself first before you can forgive others. Just what in hell do you think this war is telling us? What? What?” The jury turns its ear towards him, eager for the simple answer. “That we’re frantic towards suicide. That through war, our collective agreement, our debased covenant, we give others the right to kill us!”
Subsiding: “Christ, fuck it all, the goddamn acceptance of war is the acceptance of your own murder. It’s a suicide pact, pure and simple.”
Jared's rush to the border of holy madness rattles Corey. It snaps him out of his moment of self-pity and he starts to cover his tracks as he knows best, by getting out of Jared's way when he’s fierce like this. In contrast Matt is carefully observing the interactions like a drama critic, still in lotus. Sean, as usual, is caught up by Jared's passion, but he’s struggling to wring out something practical.
“What's this about suicide?” Sean asks with genuine puzzlement.
But Jared’s once again a hermit chasing demons in the woods. Suicide—oh My son Albert, I hear your wisdom: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.” It is so, the shadows know. Camus tied the whole berserk world up into a tight bundle. Jared is sure of this, that All we are doing is trying to kill ourselves.
“Hey, Jared, we're over here,” Sean snaps his fingers, jesting, acting out the hypnotist's role. “Wake up, man. What planet did you just drop off to?”
Self-conscious and embarrassed about his raving fugue, Jared flops onto an overstuffed River viewing chair. Matt leans over, still in lotus, and tugs Jared’s trouser leg; it’s an affectionate touch.
Corey loudly and rapidly claps his hands together, once, twice, three times—an indication that, for him, his part has been played and the scene is over. As he strides towards the front door, Sean steps towards him, not close enough to threaten but close enough to stamp his statement Hand Delivered. “You have betrayed us. But we can and we will handle that. Know, you've called upon yourself a greater curse. You’ve betrayed yourself. I fear for you on your journey.”
Corey is only half listening and almost out the door when he feels the sting of Sean’s final words. He doesn’t stop. He hustles away without responding.
As Sean and Jared watch him hasten down the driveway to his car, Jared says, partly in
prayer, partly in dismissal, “God have mercy on him. He bears the mark of Cain.”
“Just three,” Matt raises his left hand and wiggles three fingers.
“Can't make a fist with three,” Sean observes. “No fist. No fist for the Revolution.” The perverse symbolic humor of this fact does not elude him. “Guys, we're stuck with two. Just enough for the Peace Sign—and one left over. Guess Aaren would appreciate our predicament!” At the mention of her name, Jared turns and looks quizzically at Sean.
“Aaren? Why are you thinking about Aaren? I mean, right now?”
Sean half-hears, half-ignores the question as he starts towards the kitchen. “All this has made me thirsty. Beer or anything for you guys?”
“Whoa, good buddy!” shoots Jared from his chair and with a long-stride and a long-arm he stretches to reach Sean’s shoulder but snags only an elbow. “I want to know why Aaren is on your mind and in this conversation?”
Sean twists and with a snappy jerk frees himself from Jared's grasp. Without answering he enters the kitchen and opens the refrigerator. He’s totally unaware of Jared's aching desire for Aaren. Sean simply believes that everyone wants to fuck her.
Head in the fridge, rattling a couple of bottles, Sean shouts back, “Why can't she be on my mind? Isn't Char on your mind a lot?”
“Yeah, man, but Char and I almost live together.” Anxious pause. “Have you been banging Aaren?”
“Oooh, Jared, you're so crude, don't you know the wimmen are doing the banging now?” Sean accentuates his remark with a pelvic motion, indicating getting laid.
Jared flicks him the bird. “Cut the crap!”
Jared’s heart is thumping but he’s not sure he wants to ask—Do I really want to know?— whether Aaren’s as free on love as her rhetoric implies. “What I want to know is if she’s talked with you about the jailhouse bombing?”
Sean sidesteps the question, now in the mood to play out his sexual strutting. “Bombing? Naw, we didn't talk politics, she didn't have time to talk. And when we were through, she was only purring, not preaching!”
Jared is at a rare moment of loss. He can't maneuver the conversation without revealing his feelings. He slips on a serious mask. “She didn't say anything about sending a message to me in County?”
Sean’s genuinely surprised. “Message to you! Damn, if there's one person she despises, it's you! Don't you know that?”
This condemning question momentarily shuts Jared down.
Sean returns from the kitchen with two beers and a seltzer for Matt.
She really hates me? The thought gnaws on Jared. He wants to shake it. He seeks a reversal. “She doesn't really hate me. She didn't say hate, did she?” He can hardly control the gulp reflex the question induces.
“Say, man, why are you so concerned about how Aaren feels? She hates all of us heepies,” Sean chortles. “She hates all of us who preach nonviolence. She's a holy terror from hell.” And milking that for all the macho it holds, he adds, “And a hellish terror in bed!”
The three drink and drift off into their own separate spaces. Sean sips the lust of his sexual adventure with Aaren. Matt disconnected when Sean started his strutting. He has no truck with sex as warfare. Jared continues to nurse the hurt of rejection, and is working feverishly within to find a rationalization for it all. Somewhere I know I reach her . . . In his mind's eye he foresees the day when she will come to him—redeemed and saved by her conversion to his spiritual ways.
The phone rings. It's the excuse they need to move along. The call is for Matt. His ex-wife, Sue, wants him over for dinner. Although they’re divorced, Sue’s still his best friend.
“Guys,” he says as he makes motions to leave, “I think Corey’s made the right decision for himself. Let him live with it. Let's drop it from our lives, agreed?”
Jared and Sean nod, yeah, sure.
“We've got to prepare for prison. The trial won't be ours to control. So let's not get trapped by false expectations. Lastly,” and he says this as if harshly conscious that he’s speaking his mind in as much detail as the other two have ever heard, “let's each in our own way to find our center. If we're not centered when we enter prison, we'll never weather its hurricane.”
As Matt finishes he looks first at Sean and connects nonverbally, then at Jared. His face says—though Jared has not told him the names—Bruiser, Dikbar . . . these and others, I know. Find your center!
They all gather at the front door; embrace. Matt departs.
“What a strange guy.”
“Not strange, just special,” Sean appraises. “You were sure lucky to have him with you in County.” It’s said with a touch of envy. “He has a lot of strength to share.”
Although Matt did not make time to meet with Jared after they were bailed out—he actually turned down several urgent requests—Jared senses that Matt knows all that happened, even if not the specifics. There’s something about Matt that Jared has never, till this moment, recognized or valued. It’s something he realizes he has never personally found, and it hits him that this might be what Corey’s searching for. Matt is truly a strong man.
Placing an arm around Sean's neck and playfully embracing/wrestling him, Jared jokes, “More than you know. More than you know.”
They linger—four arms dangling from Sean's chest—like parents who have just sent their kid off on the Greyhound bus to college for the first time. It’s a half-embrace, a half-hug, a touch of togetherness at a time of change that kisses them with abandonment. In that brief moment a riot of thoughts and urges chase each other through Jared's mind. He wants to talk with Sean about County, about Dikbar and Bruiser—but he can't.
Damn! He’s lost a connection to Sean at the mention of Aaren. If Sean is screwing Aaren—God, take that thought away!—then he could never . . . Why do I feel betrayed?
As Jared watches Sean walk back into the kitchen with the empty bottles, he feels a rush of shame. Have I been honest about all this? It’s a thought he’s had quite often in recent days. Agitated, he struggled with his need to make contact with Sean, but gave it up. Worse, he wasn’t even able to bring the matter up with Char, although after lovemaking he normally babbles to her about everything. Last night he found himself spewing out all kinds of feelings and thoughts but nothing about County. A small voice inside his head had promised, I will . . . after talking with the guys. But now what? Corey’s out. Matt’s inaccessible. And Sean . . . fuck, Sean’s just polluted the waters. Shit!
Nevertheless, Jared takes a stab. “Hey, good buddy, do you think it was the FBI who beat Matt and me up?”
Sean half leans through the kitchen doorway. “I know for sure it wasn't. My dad had a call.” He says it as casually as if he were saying, “Honey, change the channel, would'ja?”
“What do you mean your dad had a call?”
Sean, this time, steps fully back into the room to answer. “Like I said, a call—one of those anonymous things, from some crank who said, ‘Next time, we're gonna cut your boy for fish bait.’ Something like that.”
Sean's hands are full. He’s fumbling a bowl of pretzels while balancing a platter of cheese and crackers. Under his armpits, two more bottles of beer. “Want some?”
Jared’s bemused by Sean's nonchalant attitude. “Jesus, Sean, I got beat up! Aren't you afraid?”
Sean takes his spread to the couch, sits down, grabs and hits the remote, flicks quickly through the channels. “Damn, nothing but dumbass baseball. I can't wait for the pre-season.” Then, as an afterthought, as he finds a Jimmy Cagney movie—his favorite, White Heat—with a raised pretzel he announces, “The FBI's in control. They're in control of the whole fucking thing. You just got messed with by a local yokel deputy. Don't worry, you're safe.”
Jared stands there, on hold, watching Sean recede into the soul of the tube. The word laughs at him. Safe.
Well, maybe I am safe, now. Who knows? It’s a thought, one of those on the list he really doesn't want to mull over, that he allows himself to ignore. Catching Sean’s playful mood Jared comes over and plops down next to him, sticks his big mitt into the pretzel bowl. He glances at the TV. “Cagney?” Then, in his mind, Great! Cagney has always appealed to him. He has that daring, that sly glint that states, “I'm out here on the edge and I'm having fun!” Jared reaches a second time, mauls the pretzel bowl. Sean slaps his hand. Two beers are popped. Jared laughs.
After the movie, they mindlessly watch several sitcoms and avoid the
news. Before they separate, Sean asks Jared to go up north to his place on Lake Superior for several weeks. “Trial prep’s a full month away. For just doin’ nuttin'. We've earned it. Fishing, sleeping, eating.” Sean adds with a devilish grin, “Sacred mushroom dreaming!”
Jared waves him off, thinking, Jesus, that's all I need now—daymares!
Sean continues checking off his tantalizing list. “We can water ski . . . read if you want . . . write . . . and,” then he stops and accents with a big huff, “and broads! Just more man-hungry broads than you've ever seen, in the little towns around,” with a wicked chuckle, “just dying for a hunk of notorious Big Anti-War Man!”
Jared has to grin. Sean’s getting semi-tempting. “I mean, with the press we've gotten, we'll get laid before and after every meal! C'mon, man, pack it up with me!”
Jared would normally have succumbed to Sean's enticements. They had great times there before—however, not as much luck with the local women as Sean now forecasts. More than that, however, something’s driving him in another direction.
“No, my friend, I can't do that. There are some matters I have to tidy up. Some people I have to see before the trial begins.”
Sean’s too distracted to press, so he accepts Jared's vague excuse. In a way he’s glad to have some time just for himself. To be away from anyone seriously involved in resisting the war.
The trial is set to begin in about two months. Probably in early October and each has begun to count and measure, handling time in that unusual way it must be handled by people who are terminally ill. Jared knows, ironically, that he does not know where he’s going. Only that the people he has to see are all within himself. Those different Jareds whom jail, Dikbar, Bruiser and Aaren have summoned.
Kill the dove! Page 5