The Fourteenth of September, page 14
“Motormouth Mueller?” Wizard said, “I don’t believe it. Did she call you a fascist?”
“Of course.”
“There’s no blood on the floor. How’d you pull that off?” Fish asked.
“I just asked her a question. You know how she is,” Judy said, more boldly than she felt. “She didn’t like it. Not one bit.”
“Hey, anyone who makes a Trot stop for a breath is a hero in my book,” Wizard said. “Wil, did you hear Judy shut down Mueller?”
“Of course,” Vida answered instead. “That’s why I sent her there in the first place.”
“Watch yourself,” Wizard said. “I hear she has an enemies list.”
Shortly after, once the others dispersed off to their afternoon classes, Judy found herself alone at the table with Michael. She asked him about David.
“What do you really think of him? You know, as a leader in all this?”
“GagMan?” He laughed. “He’ll either end up on the top or the bottom. Let’s see if all that bluster has legs.”
“Are you rivals?”
“Life’s too short.”
Judy felt proud to be accepted by Michael. Just a few weeks ago he scared her to death, and now he seemed to feel they were the same, though it seemed to her that little had happened to make him feel that way, just the idea about the “Lottery” story.
“What on earth could be responsible for that facial expression?” Michael suddenly asked. “If you concentrate any harder, your features will merge.”
Judy blushed. “I’m having my own private moratorium.”
“Yeah?” Michael said. “Interesting.”
“A moratorium on my life. I love that word. I may use it forever. I’m reflecting, pausing to think and assimilate before I move on.” She used some of Vida’s sweeping hand gestures to take the edge off, but Michael took her seriously.
“We’re not just talking about David here, are we?”
“Oh, no. I mean, I suppose he’s part of it. But think about this. I met you all less than two months ago and look at everything that’s happened. It’s really life changing, but it’s less than eight weeks. That’s nuts.”
“Maybe not. Eight weeks can be a lifetime. As you have pointed out, six seconds can be a lifetime.”
“Now you sound like Wil,” she said.
“Our Wil is pretty wise under all that metaphysical bullshit, you know,” Michael said. “He doesn’t make it up. He really believes that life is pretty clear and doesn’t get himself all tied up in nuance.”
“And predestined.”
“Yeah?”
“As in let it flow, let it be, and what happens is supposed to happen.”
“No shit,” Michael said. “Hell, let’s make him our guru.”
“You’re hardly the let-it-flow type.”
He looked at her with a half smile, as if trying to decide how much he would reveal. Then he leaned back with his good arm wrapped around the chair top behind him and straightened his legs. In this position, she had to turn all the way around to see his face.
“Look, there are a lot of people making a lot of noise and claiming they have some special insight. And you’re listening to them all, and that’s fine. But again, don’t take too long.”
“To do what?”
“I think you came looking for something and you found it, but you don’t realize it yet.”
“And what is that?”
“That’s all you’re getting from me. You came here an outsider, and you get it better than most, period.”
“Get what?”
“You know.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. You know. Vida was right about that.”
Chapter 21
MICHAEL CALLED A WAR COUNCIL AT HIS APARTMENT FOR the next night, which caused great excitement because only Sheila and a few others had ever been there. It was rumored he had a $600 stereo and a legendary blues collection, which no one could figure out how he was able to afford.
It turned out to be a single basement room with a twin bed along one wall, and a worn couch along another under a pass-through window to the kitchen. In front of the bed was a coffee table assembled from concrete blocks and a board, covered with candles of all sizes and colors, hardened drippings cementing them in place. On the wall next to the couch was a giant poster of a lean figure with a guitar under the words CLAPTON IS GOD. Beneath the poster was a single brick, topped with a Wheels of Fire album cover, a few more candles, and an incense burner, like a shrine. There were lime-green lights flickering across the ceiling from a revolving lamp, with cut-outs in the shade. The whole place smelled like grass, beer, and old laundry.
Michael stood in the kitchen, leaning against the counter of the pass-through, as if he were about to serve dinner.
The guys headed straight for the stereo, a sleek silver flash of knobs and panels, and plunged into his blues albums, shouting out “Siegel-Schwall” . . . “Paul Butterfield” . . . “Lightnin’ Hopkins.”
“Just choose something and put it on low,” Michael said. “We have strategy to discuss.”
When they had all sat down, he said it was critical they show up for the March on Washington in force or they would be shut out of the plans the National SMC would be making at a key summit to be held onsite, as well as lose leadership of the CIU movement to the Trots, who he had learned were all attending. Above all, it was their responsibility, he told them, with the body count up to 38,925, to be part of this last action before the lottery.
At his suggestion, they pooled their money to see how many they could afford to send. Judy kicked in the full forty dollars, getting secret satisfaction that her army pay would be supporting this subversive action. They could afford to send five representatives. Michael decided who would go: David and Vida, of course, since they were the SMC leaders; Wizard, because he was the ace organizer; and Wil, of all people, because he was a true believer who wouldn’t let any anger or emotion steer him wrong. That choice surprised everyone, including Judy, but she knew it was because of what she had told Michael about him earlier that day.
They all assumed Michael would be the fifth, but he said he wouldn’t be going—he couldn’t very well choose himself—though Judy noticed he was leaning heavily against the counter and wondered if that was the only reason. Those who went would need to observe everything and report back very thoroughly, he told them.
Judy couldn’t believe it. The Michael she knew would kill to go. She looked at Sheila, who kept her head down. Everyone else was stunned, and then it got worse.
“So, who’s the last person going?” Achilles asked.
“Judy,” Michael said.
The room went dead quiet.
Judy was shocked. “No, I’m not going,” she said. “I told you, I was never going to go.”
“She doesn’t even want to go,” said Meldrich, who led an explosion of anger from Achilles, Fish, and Howie: “What’s she gonna do?” . . . “Hold up posters?” . . . “Help Wil write poetry?” . . . “What kind of contingent is this?”
“I can’t go,” Judy said. She was on her feet now.
“You have to,” Michael said.
“Why?”
“Because you’ll notice everything. You’ll be our eyes and ears,” Michael said. “You’ll be my eyes and ears.”
He scowled at the others, shaming them into silence.
“Okay,” Achilles said. “I surrender.”
“No, really, I can’t,” Judy said.
“Too late,” Michael said, “you’ve been chosen.”
JUDY tossed and turned all night, trying to figure out how to get out of the trip without saying too much. She could get sick at the last minute, and they could send Fish. Or she could pretend there was an emergency at home. But then she would have to actually go there or at least figure a way to be off campus without anyone finding out.
Still, she couldn’t help rehearsing the entire journey. She would wear her bulky sweater because it would be extra warm and it was soft and would be easy to sleep in on the bus. She would take her paisley bag. It was big and would carry a lot. She could wear some kind of disguise. She could put her hair in a ponytail, claiming she wouldn’t have time to fuss with it. Her green knit hat would cover it completely. She could wear sunglasses and say she needed them because the glare would be too much with her contacts. How likely was it to be a sunny day in mid-November? But she would really only need the disguise when they were marching. Who would see her among a million people? She would just blend in with the crowd the rest of the time. She could leave her ID here, and no one would ever know.
Why had Michael singled her out? she wondered. Meldrich and the others had been so angry. But Wil had been positively gleeful.
“This’ll be the biggest protest yet, and we’ll be there,” Wil had said to her, walking back from Michael’s. “And Swanson’s right. I do want to be able to tell my kids I was there on the front line of the struggle.”
When would she ever have another chance like this? She wondered if there would be a way to sneak onto the bus without anyone finding out.
Finally, she drifted off into a doze, waking fully only when Maggie returned from an early class the next morning, startled to see her still in bed.
“You sick?” she asked.
“No,” Judy sighed. “I’m trying to decide if I’m going to Washington for the Moratorium.”
“What?” Maggie said. “You . . . wouldn’t . . . dare.”
“I feel I have to be there, you know?”
Maggie started to fool with her books.
“And what about all your new friends?” she said. “If you get caught, how do you think they’ll take to finding out some PFC was in their private meetings, planning their protests, and sharing their drugs? Get real, they’ll think you’re undercover or something.”
“Please,” Judy said, with a huff.
Maggie raised her eyebrows.
“They wouldn’t believe that,” Judy said.
“If you say so,” Maggie said, in her singsong voice.
Judy let her head fall back on the pillow.
“Rick’s home, by the way,” Maggie said.
“He is?”
“This is the only leave he’ll get. He wants to see you over Thanksgiving. It’s the least you can do. So don’t get yourself arrested or anything before then.” She went over to the record player and set the arm on the album that was already teed up.
Here it goes again, Judy thought, the Monkees, over and over for the rest of the day and night, until she leaves for the weekend.
MONDAY night the phone rang at eight o’clock. Judy was lying on her bed, trying to finish the Brobdingnagian part of Gulliver’s Travels for her morning class, and didn’t stir.
“Hi, baby,” Maggie said, poised to cuddle the receiver. “Oh, hello, Mrs. Talton.”
Judy looked up into Maggie’s horror-struck face and reached for the phone. Maggie put her hand over the mouthpiece.
“I forgot to tell you, I saw her at the Dairy Queen over the weekend. I think I might have said something about Washington. I didn’t mean to, but . . .” She handed her the phone as if it were hot to the touch.
“Hello?” Judy said into the receiver. “Is something wrong?” Long distance calls were for emergencies only.
“You tell me.” Judy took the phone into the hall and slid down the wall, taking care not to sigh audibly. “What do you mean, you’re going to march on Washington? You can’t do that. You’re a member of the United States Army.”
“I’d be going as a student, Mom, not as a member of the armed forces.”
“You can’t pick and choose like that. Once you enlisted you became Judith Talton, PFC US Army. You can’t just decide to go back to plain Judy Talton whenever you want. You made a commitment.”
A deal with the devil, Judy thought, and listened to her mother’s voice getting deeper and louder with each sentence, a giant sound booming out of giant lips attached to a giant Brobdingnagian face that swelled ever larger as she bellowed into the tiny Lilliputian receiver.
“Yes . . . but—”
“There are no ‘buts.’ I can’t be wondering if your face is going to show up on the evening news. If I can see you, they can see you. Think!”
“I am thinking . . . but . . . no.” Judy couldn’t get in more than a word or two when her mother took a breath. She couldn’t remember her ever talking so fast or so violently. She could barely follow, though the drift was clear, and certain words would emerge out of the harangue with extra emphasis . . . ramifications . . . AWOL . . . tuition payback. She felt she was being slapped silly with words, one cheek and then another, with no opportunity to respond.
“So that’s it,” her mother said. “You’re not going, and that’s the end of it! . . . Judy?”
“Yes.”
“You hear me?”
“Loud and clear.”
“It’s settled, then. If we have to continue this discussion, it will be when you’re home for Thanksgiving. Goodbye.”
“Yeah, bye,” she said, after she heard the click. “Love you, too.”
“Thanks a lot,” Judy said to Maggie, who was cowering against her study pillow.
“She got it out of me. You know how she is,” Maggie said.
“I would never have done that to you.”
Maggie hardened. “So what. She needed to know.”
“That was not your call.” Judy tore down the USMC sticker and unpinned the photo of Rick from Wil’s poem. She smacked them down loudly on Maggie’s desk and took pleasure in watching her jump.
“Just stay out of my life, will you?”
Chapter 22
RIGHT NOW THERE WAS ONLY ONE PERSON’S OPINION Judy was interested in. She half ran to the Tune Room.
The line for bus registration was blocking the entrance, and she had to squeeze her way through the press of bodies to get to center stairs. The place was crackling with activity. There were new banners up along all the walls: YOUR VOICE IS YOUR VOTE. GET TO DC AND BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW. On the center floor, there was a group with arms linked, line dancing to the chorus of “Golden Slumbers.” Vida was table-hopping with her clipboard. Everyone was smiling, excited.
“I was beginning to think I’d have to come looking for you,” Michael said, from somewhere behind her.
“What’s going on here, anyway?” she turned and asked.
“They just finished a rally. Swanson, Lori, David. Whipped ’em into a frenzy, as you can see from the length of the registration line. We even signed up some of the Black Panthers.”
“Michael, this is serious. There’s a lot at . . . I have to ask you one more time, why me?”
He rested his good hand on her shoulder and grinned, “You know.”
Judy nodded and went over to join the line at the registration desk. Take that! She pictured her mother as she signed the attendance sheet with a flourish.
“I’M in,” she said later that night to the group making posters for the march in the Lutheran church basement. “I’ll do anything except sit next to Lori Mueller in her women’s bus.”
RoMo handed her a marker. They drew until they ran out of poster board, when Judy suggested they pull the want ads from a stack of newspapers next to the wastebasket. They were printed dense enough to draw over, she explained. She had once used them as background for current events announcements in high school. To demonstrate, she took a broadsheet and drew the octagon of a stop sign, ringing it with black barbed wire. Inside the outline she wrote STOP THE WAR in block letters, then filled in the background with a colored marker, blood red against the black and white of the newsprint.
“Oh, wow,” Vida said. “Isn’t that the Chicago Eight ‘Stop the Trial’ logo? Great work.”
“It’s the Chicago Seven now.” Judy was still too annoyed with Vida to give her an inch. “I thought everyone heard about Bobby Seale. He’s going to have his own trial.” It was the only time she ever one-upped Vida.
They duplicated the design until the papers ran out and set off to hang the posters across campus.
“Your roommate home tonight?” Judy asked David, as he juggled an armful of posters.
“No. He’s essentially living with his girl in University Apartments, the room is just his address.”
“Then I guess this is your night,” Judy said, enjoying the look of shock on his face. “Let’s go.”
They tacked posters on every bulletin board along the way to David’s dorm. He started putting up two and even three posters with the same thumbtacks. In the elevator on the way up to his room he grabbed her, sticking his tongue deep into her mouth and cupping her rear end with both hands. The doors opened on a lower floor and she heard people enter but didn’t pull away. When they got to his floor, she ran ahead of him as he fumbled for his keys, and leaned against his door, waiting with hip cocked, waving the end of her scarf as he hurried toward her.
“Argent,” she said as she slipped past him into the room, and soon the song was playing:
If you’re gonna sweep the sky
And feel the wind come rushing by,
Remember that I told you to be free.
Judy didn’t stop David at all this time. She let him unhook her bra and unzip her jeans. She helped him pull his T-shirt over his head.
“Why are you laughing?” he said at one point.
“You keep looking at me like I’m going to shut you down.”
“But you’re not, are you?” Without changing position, he reached one of his long arms into his desk drawer and pulled out a cellophane packet.
“No, I’m not.” She winced when she saw him rip the corner open with his teeth. “Just be careful.”
“We don’t need to use this. Is it a good day?”
“No, we need it. Just be careful.”
“Careful? Why?”
“Why do you think?”
David stopped moving, and looked down at her.
“No way?”
“No way, what?”
“You’re not . . . Jesus!” David rolled over and sat on the side of the bed.
