The Fourteenth of September, page 11
“But we have representation,” the same guy said.
“Do you? You voting? You don’t look twenty-one. And yet the lottery could send you off to Vietnam. I call that at the very least conscription without representation.”
Judy hadn’t thought of it that way. She was impressed at how good a teacher he was under all the attitude.
“Here’s a fact that should get your attention,” Jerry said. “The life expectancy of an infantryman under fire in Vietnam is six seconds. That’s what the war has come down to, six seconds.”
He looked out at the stunned room.
“I thought it was more like fifteen minutes,” the bold guy spoke up again.
“You looking for all the caveats?” Jerry barked back. “You think fourteen minutes and change is going to matter?
“None of you gets it, you know. You can go to all the sessions today and talk about whether enlisting or joining ROTC might give you a safer deal, or teaching or going to law school might extend your deferment for a while. But it all boils down to the same thing.
“Read my lips—six seconds. It’s that simple. You get six seconds, you’re outta here. The next guy gets six seconds, and he’s gone and on and on. What difference does it make if you delay it with a deferment? At some point, you’ll be on the line, and you’ll get six fucking seconds. A six-second life doesn’t mean shit. Get it now?”
Jerry stood up, pulling his papers together. He was angry, like Michael and David tried to be. “You can go to all the marches, hear all the speeches, and sing all the songs you want today, but the lottery’s coming, and if your name is drawn, they’re going to give you six seconds to live a life.” He paused, giving them a sinister smile, then threw a finger in the face of a pale guy in the front row who hadn’t yet said a word.
“And if your number is under a hundred, you can kiss it.”
The guy reeled back.
Jerry turned to another one, jabbing his chest.
“Six seconds. Tick tock. So, what the hell are you doing here?” Then he was out the door.
“Fucking Jesus!” someone said.
“Holy shit.”
“Goddamn asshole,” someone else said, and Judy noted how God’s name taken in vain always made it through when there was nothing left to say.
Chapter 16
JUDY APPROACHED THE QUAD CAUTIOUSLY, HOPING NOT to be seen, but didn’t notice anyone she knew. A huge crowd was milling around, and there were calls that they were moving the Lottery Performance to the lagoon. The sun was low. Golden streaks mixed with shadow limbs, making the crowd appear to be moving as a giant spider, lots of little legs walking quickly, but the overall body advancing at a slow crawl. By the time they arrived at the north edge of the largest finger of the lagoon, darkness had settled in.
The scene they came upon made them hush. On the opposite shore were a dozen people with tall, thick candles. They were standing tall and still, the candles placed just below their chins, lighting their faces with a ghostly glow. The water’s reflection magnified their impact, like footlights.
The crowd disassembled, tentacles of dark figures lined up all along the edge of the lagoon, dozens deep. When they were settled, Michael raised a megaphone with his good hand and began to read “The Lottery,” by the light of his candle, from Judy’s book. The beginning of the story set the scene in an anonymous town gathering for an annual ritual.
After a few minutes of reading, Michael handed the book and the megaphone to Wizard, who took over, read several paragraphs, then passed them on to David, who read about how the children were gathering stones and piling them in the town square.
They progressed through the story, relaying how each of the dutiful townsfolk stuck their hand into a black box and pulled out a piece of paper, one of which would be revealed to have a black mark.
Judy knew all the performers: Vida, Marsha, Achilles, RoMo, Fish, Wil, Sheila, Wizard, and Howie, even Meldrich. They handed the megaphone back and forth again and again among the readers. They had needed her.
The crowd listened in respectful silence, the wind sometimes taking the words away when Marsha or RoMo spoke. Then Michael or Meldrich would bring them back with force.
The sentences piled up with horror as the story revealed that this lottery was not for a prize that anyone would want to win.
As they approached the end of the story, the readers signaled their final lines by turning their candles upside down and snuffing them out, disappearing into the dark.
Michael took the megaphone and recited the last paragraph of the story that makes it clear that the one who has drawn the paper with the black mark is to be stoned to death. His broad, clear baritone echoed the length of the lagoon.
Wil reached over to reverse Michael’s candle, and the final reflection was sucked into the water as they all stared into darkness. The crowd stood silent in the black, the only illumination from headlights on the highway and high above them from the distant Union Tower.
LATER that night, all of the performers were packed into Wizard’s room, draped over the bunks, chairs, and most of the floor, passing joints and alternating spoonfuls from a jar of chunky peanut butter with swigs from a half bottle of Southern Comfort. A towel, shoved under the door, kept the smoke from escaping. It was dark except for the glow from an orange lava light on one of the room’s two desks and the periodic flick of lighters.
David sat on the other desk, going on about how significant it was that he had jockeyed the Trots out of leadership of the march. “They’d have blown it,” he was saying for at least the third time. “They never would have been able to get all those kids from the Lottery Performance back to the Quad in time for the march.”
Fish was flipping through albums next to Meldrich, who was doing a spastic, goofy dance while playing with the stopwatch Achilles had used to time the march so they wouldn’t exceed the two-hour permit. Judy had ignored David and was sitting cross-legged on the floor between Vida and Michael.
“That was brilliant, Michael,” Judy said—yelled actually, because the stereo was playing an extended scream from a song on one of the Pink Floyd albums. “Where did you get the idea for using the candles like that?”
“Turn it down,” Michael said, waiting until he was obeyed before facing Judy. “It’s part of the excommunication ceremony the church performed in the Middle Ages. The priests would hold these long, thick candles high as their waists and when the ceremony was over, they’d say the condemned’s name, turn the candles over, and snuff them out, damning him forever. I saw it in the movie Becket. It hit me as so . . . final. I thought it was appropriate.”
He leaned closer to Judy.
“The idea for the candles I got from the movies. But you know the idea for the whole thing I got from you.” He gave her a wink, then turned toward Meldrich, who was calling for their attention.
Judy noticed David watching them; so did Vida.
“So, what’s going on with David? Did you finally sleep with him?” Vida whispered in her ear.
“Let’s just say Sally beat me to it.” She started to say more but felt her voice begin to shake.
“The blonde? Big surprise.”
“Yeah, how stupid am I?”
“He’s not worth it,” Vida said and passed her a joint. “Besides, look at him. He’s dying. No one cares about his march; all they’re talking about is your Lottery Performance. I love it.”
“My performance?”
Judy was glad when everyone’s attention turned to Meldrich.
“Guess how long?” he cried, waving the stopwatch. “I just timed the scream, guess how long?”
“Four fucking hours,” Fish said.
“I know it seems like that,” Meldrich said, laughing. “But it was only 5.4 minutes, do you believe it, out of an 8.5-minute cut? I know I’m high, but Jesus!” He began giggling uncontrollably.
“Here, I’m gonna hold this hit; time me,” Howie said and inhaled. Marsha rolled her eyes as Meldrich counted.
“Five . . . seven.”
Howie let go, coughing and spitting smoke.
“Let me try,” Achilles said.
“Eight . . . nine. You’re turning blue, man.” Achilles let it out, choking.
“No fair, you made me laugh.”
“I can do better than that. Check me out,” Vida said. She inhaled and exhaled a few times, then sang out a pure clear note.
“Ten . . . twelve. You’re gonna break the record. Keep going. Keep going.” Vida’s eyes got big. She started to pound her thigh and finally ran out of breath.
“Twenty-four seconds. Yes! What else can we time?” Meldrich looked around.
Michael leaned toward Judy again. “Why weren’t you with us at the performance?”
“I’m not much of an out-front person,” she said. “Shy, you know.” She cursed herself for not knowing what to say. She had been waiting for Michael’s attention all this time and now just sounded like an idiot.
“Hmm.” He took a drag of his cigarette and gave her a skeptical look.
“Michael,” Meldrich said, “give me something to time.”
“I’ll pass.”
“Come on, everyone’s got to do something.”
“I’ve got one,” David interrupted. “Let’s time the length of the chorus in ‘Judy Blue Eyes.’ You know, the ‘dew do dew do dew do’ part.”
Judy refused to look at him.
“You got it!” Wizard said, reaching for the album.
When the song began, David came over to sit between Judy and Michael.
“Where were you all day?” he asked. “You just disappeared.”
“At the sessions.”
“All day?”
“There were a lot of them.”
“Swanson do the usual bullshit about how the war started again? You think he’d progress.”
“It doesn’t sound like bullshit yet to me,” Judy said.
David snorted.
She watched him take a long drag off a disappearing roach. He had removed his hat, and his hair kept falling in front of his eyes. Periodically, he flung his head in that way he had. Why did it have to be true that all the cute ones were jerks, especially the cute smart ones?
“Besides,” she added, testing him, “listening to Swanson warmed me up for the march. You really had them tonight.”
He smiled as he held his hit.
She resisted the urge to hum “Mustang Sally.”
“Okay, Judy Blue Eyes,” Meldrich said, “you’re up.”
“No,” she said. “I can’t think of anything.”
“Sure, you can, something with time, seconds.”
She remembered what the TA said earlier in the day, and struggled for an alternative. “How about a Beatles song?”
“No, sick of music,” Meldrich said. “Something else.”
They were all staring at her.
“All I can think about is something I heard today. It’s nothing. I don’t want to be a downer.”
“No, tell us,” Wil said.
She hesitated. “All right. Did you know that your life expectancy under fire in Vietnam is only six seconds?”
The room went quiet.
“Finally, something worth timing,” Michael said. He grabbed the stopwatch from Meldrich, told Wil to bring the lava light to the center of the floor, then rubbed his hands and spread his arms out like the maharishi.
“Listen carefully,” he said. “Close your eyes. Come on, do it. Picture this. You’re in a jungle, wading through mud, carrying a heavy backpack and a rifle. Suddenly, you hear gunfire. It’s coming at you and you’re done for. This is it, six seconds left to your life. What will you do with it? Go.” He clicked the watch button.
“One second.”
Judy was already there, out of the jungle into a field hospital from one of her mother’s scrapbook photos. A cot was rushed alongside the narrow table. Giant eyes fixed on her above sinking shock-white cheeks. His own foot was in his face. The soldier lifted his head to where his nose nearly touched the sole of his boot.
“Is that my foot?” he screamed.
Judy pushed aside his severed leg and pulled the heavy blanket, saturated scarlet, up to the top of the soldier’s chin. “It’s just your boot,” she said. “They knew you’d need it later.”
“Jesus,” he said, “For a second I thought . . .” His head fell back and he sighed.
“I know.”
He locked all the fingers of his right hand around one of hers.
“Better move him on,” a corpsman said. “We need the space.”
“A second.” Judy put up her free hand.
“You can’t . . .”
She kept her hand up for another second.
“Okay, now.”
The corpsman pulled off the blanket as she disengaged her finger. She rearranged the leg on the cot, putting it back where it belonged. She lifted the soldier’s arms by the elbows and angled her head to motion for the blanket to be returned. She placed the soldier’s arms on top of the blanket and folded his hands high over his chest.
“Six seconds,” Michael said.
She was able to close the soldier’s eyelids just before the explosion.
“Stop.”
Judy came to attention in a room full of faces staring at Michael holding the watch by the orange glow of the light. She was sure he had been observing them, eyes open, the whole time.
“Now tell us, what were you thinking?” he asked. They looked at each other, wondering who would go first. “Meldrich, you.”
“I was thinking about the instant the bullet hit. Splatter, eh?”
No one laughed, and he immediately got serious.
“Do you think it hurts when you’re being blown apart, or does it just . . . happen? You know, do you think you see your own guts flying out of you?”
Judy saw Marsha shake herself.
“Wil?”
“I was watching the lava light,” he said. “It took six seconds for one drop to separate from the blob and move on. It’s like a microcosm. Your life is just the process of being extracted from the collective goo and then drifting off.”
“It was weird,” Wizard said. “I saw the bullet and watched it open up, and then all this shit was coming at me. And then I saw the face of the guy who shot me. It was Swanson, do you believe that? Maybe he really is a spy for the administration.”
“I think it would just be ordinary,” Vida said. “You’d be thinking it should be a big deal, and then it wouldn’t be. It would be about ducking and running, and one second it would just stop.”
“Yeah,” David said. “Just gone.”
“I couldn’t think of a damn thing,” Howie said. “I was waiting for my life to flash before my eyes, but it wouldn’t come. It was nothing. Over, done, nada.”
“Judy, what about you?” Michael asked.
She was still in the tent. She pictured the young soldier’s green eyes, the irises ringed with yellow, rings that had begun to glow so bright the light filled the tent and, in a second, incinerated her life.
“Nothing,” she answered, skirting Michael’s gaze.
“It was like Howie said, nada.”
Chapter 17
JUDY LEFT SHORTLY AFTER, ALONE. IT HAD RAINED WHILE they were in Wizard’s room. The lights that lined the ring road winding from the dorms down to the Union were reflected in the wet blacktop. She watched the mist, lingering over the shiny spots, and remembered how scary it had been to walk up this road her first week of freshman year, when she had been so worried something would go wrong and she would find herself back in Belmont Heights with a steno pad. She thought of that calculated first visit to the freak side of the Tune Room. It seemed a lifetime ago.
She squinted to follow the lights all the way to the highway, next to the black expanse of the lagoon. She was shaken by her six-second reverie. She shook herself and inhaled deeply to clear her mind. She wanted to enjoy the moment. The Lottery Performance had been a great idea, and it had been hers, and Michael had told them so. Judy didn’t care who David slept with.
When she reached her dorm, she picked up her mail, stopping abruptly when she saw the familiar note card. She turned it over and over as she took the elevator to her floor and walked down the hall. Rather than wake Maggie, she stayed just outside her door and slid down the wall to sit in the dim hallway.
The address was just normal, no rank or any other signal about her mother’s message this time. She broke the seal and unfolded the card. There was just one word:
Well?
She heard the phone ring and for an instant was sure it was her mother, knowing somehow that she had just read her message. She jumped up and rushed to get it before it woke Maggie. Danny never called later than midnight, and it was now after one.
“Yes?”
“You disappeared again,” David said.
“Did I?”
“I’m in your lobby. Come down, I want to talk.”
“Not now, David,” she whispered. “It’s late. I’m tired.”
“No way, we’re all too keyed up after today to even try sleeping.”
“Really, I’m not in the mood.”
“Why? Something’s wrong, isn’t it? I can hear it in your voice. Come on down and talk about it.”
“I don’t need to talk. If you do, I’m sure you can find someone else. Michael, Vida . . . Sally.”
“What the—ah . . . zeeze. I get it,” he said. “That’s why you’re pissed. You come down or I’m coming up.” The phone clicked.
“Fuck!”
“Go rinse your mouth out with soap and let me sleep,” said Maggie, pulling the covers over her head.
She stuffed the card into her desk drawer and hurried to the elevator to head him off. But once downstairs she walked right past him, and he trailed her out the door. Puddles reflected the sidewalk lights, offering a bright path between the dorms. They followed it automatically, walking slowly, hands in their pockets, without a destination.
Judy breathed in the wet dampness and prepared herself as much as she could, half wishing she was alone and could figure out what to do about her mother and half happy David had been so insistent.
