CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
In spite of the woolen scarf, the monkey started
to shiver with cold. Hope handed the monkey to Harry. Then she went home
with Naldo. Her brother Zack and his girlfriend Marilyn left. Then Harry
said, "Goodbye everybody, this has been a great evening. I’ll always remember
it."
Harry and monkey walked home with Mariah and Shin
and the Wallenberg twins. Sally and Terry left and I walked back to Clu’s
with Randy and Ben and Will. I explained my draft physical plan to them.
"Wow!" Will breathed.
"A good plan!" Ben said. "At least it’s not the
virtue of daring." Then he went on to tell what he and will had whispered
about at the picnic. It was the plan for the Field Board Haring and Will
told me the role I might play. We all hugged on Clu’s front porch, then
Ben and Will hopped in Ben’s rented car and drove off to Pronghorn.
Randy and I walked into Clu’s dim living room.
"Jeez," Randy said. "I’m still tripping my brains
out. All these patterns moving around on the wall - it’s better than a
kaleidoscope!"
"I’m still getting some pretty good movies myself,"
I said.
Just then our noise woke Clue up. She came padding
out of her bedroom in slippers. She was wearing a pale blue night gown
and she was pulling on a thin white flannel housecoat that reached about
to her knees. She was wincing with the effort to stay awake and her long
light brown hair was in disarray. I saw lines of anxiety around her mouth.
"Randy!" she said. "Why did you and Will leave me
and go to that party?"
"Well, I’ll tell you," Randy said. "I got tired
of being used to jump on Will."
"But don’t you think I got jumped on after you all
were gone?" Clu said. "Randy, you and I both know that the Vanguard are
the only ones able to do anything serious, but sometimes it’s hard for
me to work with them when I’m alone. My shoulders aren’t strong enough
to bear up under all that! I need your help!"
"Well, you should tell them they’re full of shit
and to back off!" Randy said. "They need you as much as you need them."
But by this time Clu wasn’t noticing Randy. She
whirled around to me. "Dale! I’ll bet this is all your doing!" she said
flashing her eyes at me. "You’re disrupting everything I’m trying to build.
Don’t you see?" and by now there was a note of weeping in her voice. She
stamped her foot on the floor and turned around and went to her bedroom.
"What more is there to say?" Randy asked into the
air. "Man, just look up at the ceiling!"
I looked up and saw drifts of glowing, multi-colored
dust flowing through the air. Randy was lying on his back on the couch,
a wide smile on his face.
I had gotten a plan for my draft problem and some
kind of new relationship to Hope - even if it wasn’t the sort of relationship
I had once wanted. I hadn’t needed Will so much to help me face my problems,
but I was glad he had come and found a plan to solve his own. The only
thing that bothered me now was that I knew Clu was crying. So I just wanted
to stay quiet a while, but Randy started talking again.
"You know, I was in the Organization a while," he
said. "But I felt kind of strange. I only finished the eleventh grade and
in the Organization I was around all these college kids - and they didn’t
know what the fuck they were doing. The Organization is so un-together,
I don’t see how you can work for them. Then I got in the Vanguard. Both
my parents were factory workers and the way the Vanguard explained Marxism,
people like me are the people that socialism is intended for - to set us
free of being bossed around and stop us from being laid off to go broke
every time someone can’t make enough profit off our labor.
"Well, I realized tripping tonight," Randy went
on, "I believe in socialism more than ever. But I also realize how much
I’ve resented the Vanguard. It’s like always having a foreman sitting on
your shoulder, hollering into your ear. I don’t know how much longer I
can take it. Still there are a lot of really good people in the Vanguard
- they do a lot of good. So I’m kind of pulled both ways. I know I don’t
have much use for the Organization, though."
"Well," I said, "how about you and me staying in
touch and being willing to work together even though you’re in the Vanguard
and I’m in the Organization. Did you ever hear of a guy named Bump?"
"Yeah!" Randy said. "I met him once. For somebody
in the Organization, he sure knew a lot about Marxism."
"Bump told me," I said, "that before he became a
Marxist, he was into a big Church of Christ trip. And the church
adults were real worried about keeping their youth from going to the Baptists
or the Pentecostals. And finally Bump got tired of the adults trying to
order the youth around and keep them away from other denominations and
he told them he was quitting. He quoted their own scriptures back at them
‘some preach Christ for the truth’s sake and others out of envy, but what
do I care as long as Christ is preached?’ Bump used to say the same thing
should be true of socialism as much as Christ. Why waste our time hassling
against each other - the Organization or Vanguard or the Communist Party
or whatever?"
"Amen." Clu’s voice came from her bedroom, sounding
full of laughter and crying at once. At least now I knew she was all right.
"Let’s keep on together, Clu!" I called to her.
"Just be ready for anything Monday."
I went upstairs to my room and watched the play
of bright colored designs until the sun came through my window. Outside
I could see the trees with each autumn leaf arranged on the branches like
an individual work of art. Then I fell into a deep sleep, all through that
Sunday morning. I woke up early in the afternoon. I walked downstairs.
Don and Marge were talking with Clu. Randy was curled up on the floor in
his sleeping bag - still conked out. I said hello and hurried out into
an afternoon that still had some LSD sparkle to it.
Next day the five of us started to Fort Clay. The
Field Board hearing wasn’t supposed to begin until ten a.m. Once we were
in the room where it was held, we waited half an hour for the hearing to
start. Finally it did. A handsome, stern-looking woman of about fifty sat
down in the witness seat. Her up swept hair was dyed bright red. She was
sworn in as Gloria Waterman, a research analyst since 1958 for the House
Un-American Activities Committee, a committee of Congress that investigated
subversive activity.
The main items of Miss Waterman’s testimony were
as follows:
"The Vanguard is a militant Marxist party dedicated
to the revolutionary overthrow of the United States Government.
"Claudia Proctor has been a member of the Vanguard
since July 1965. She went on a mission for the Vanguard in the Soviet Union
and three Eastern European countries in August and September of 1965 -
and again in July, 1966.
"Claudia Proctor attended Private Will Orry’s first
court-martial and caused a disruption. She was arrested for trespassing
while trying to attend his second court-martial. She has conferred with
Private will Orry and his attorney Ben Markovitz, both in the town of Pronghorn
and at her home."
(At this point the officers conducting the Field
Board Hearing all tried to stare holes into Clu.)
Then Ben got up to cross-examine.
"Miss Waterman," he started off, "how does the House
Un-American Activities Committee know that Claudia Proctor joined the Vanguard?"
"I refuse to answer that question for National Security
reasons," Miss Waterman said.
"And how does the un-American Activities Committee
know when and why Miss Proctor went to the Soviet Union?"
"I also refuse to answer that question on National
Security grounds."
"What details, if any, does the Un-American Activities
Committee know about Miss Proctor’s conferences with me and Private Will
Orry in Pronghorn and how does it know them?"
"I refuse to answer that question on the same grounds."
By now, Miss Waterman’s frown was getting grimmer.
She was sticking her chin out further and further. Ben was grinning like
a cat over a bowl of cream. He rubbed the palms of his hands together.
"Miss Waterman," he went on, "has the Un-American
Activities Committee monitored my visits or Private Will Orry’s visits
to Claudia Proctor’s home and if so , how?"
Miss Waterman turned her head sharply to the Field
Board officers.
"Please!" she said. "I must ask to stop all further
cross-examination on the ground that it might seriously compromise National
Security."
Right then Ben raised his right hand, with a sheepish
smile on his face. He looked like a cross between a holy man giving a blessing
and a school child asking permission to go to the bathroom.
"Yes?" one of the officers asked..
"May it please the Field Board, "Ben said in a gentle
voice, "I wish to ask no further questions of Miss Waterman about Claudia
Proctor or Private Will Orry. But I do wish to ask her one more question
about her job at the House Un-American Activities Committee, which surely
must be a matter of public record."
"Mmm, I suppose so," said the colonel in charge
with his mouth twisted in doubt.
"Thank you, sir," Ben said. "Now Miss Waterman,
you said you have been a research analyst for the House Un-American Activities
Committee since 1958. So were you a research analyst for the committee
when it conducted the hearings in 1959 entitled Interlocking Subversion
in Brooklyn?"
"Yes, I believe so," Miss Waterman said.
"Miss Waterman," Ben continued, "one of the witnesses
called before your committee in that hearing was my aunt, Mrs. Bessie Gladstein.
The congressman on the committee, with their memories refreshed by your
diligent research asked my Aunt Bessie all about her life - what organizations
she belonged to, who her friends were - you know, the whole bit. Aunt Bessie
had to take the Fifth Amendment 45 times. She had a big shouting match
with some of the members of congress and your committee. They said she
was betraying the American people. She answered, ‘Most of the people I
know well are my fellow garment workers. I have never betrayed them! Never!’
And she came home and had a stroke. Then when I saw you refuse to answer
questions in this hearing you gave me a joy and satisfaction for Aunt Bessie’s
sake such as I never imagined I might have. Thank you, Miss Waterman, you
may go!" and the ring of Ben’s voice sent Miss Waterman to some other corner
of the universe.
"This hearing is adjourned for lunch!" the colonel
said.
"Bang!" went his gavel.
The five of us - Clu, Don, Marge, Randy, and I walked
out onto the steps of the building. Suddenly off on the sidewalk in front
we saw something that surely wasn’t in anyone’s plan.
Ben was dancing his head and upper body bobbing
up and down. Sometimes he would leap into the air. He was holding his hands
high over his head and clapping rhythm as he sang something I couldn’t
make out, at the top of his lungs. Will and Jan and the other G.I.’s were
standing around him, most of them in fatigues. They started clapping their
hands and some of them started leaping like Ben.
Will stretched out his hand and motioned to me to
come over to their group. I turned to Randy and said, "You’d better stay
here to help Clu with whatever comes up."
I ran over to Will. Ben had just finished shouting
the last thunderous words of his song. His feet hit earth from his last
leap. He gasped for air and reached over and shook Will’s hand and then
shook mine.
"What on earth was that?" I asked.
"A wedding song!" Ben panted. "When I was a kid
at weddings all the women would get in one circle and dance this song and
I’d be in the other circle dancing it with all the men. The words mean
‘you brought us out of bondage in Egypt’ - you see, even at weddings we
remember oppression and the meaning of freedom. The songs ends up ‘and
you brought us to Jerusalem! Jerusalem!"
Ben doubled both hands into fists and shook them,
"L-YeRoo-shalaYEEM! YeROO-shalaYEEM!" he bellowed the last words of the
song and started laughing.
"You know what?" he said. "At one wedding I danced
that song so hard I threw my leg out of joint for three days. I could almost
do that now, I feel so great! I got one back for Aunt Bessie at their stupid
Un-American Committee! I never expected to do that in my life! Grndpop
was right! There must be a God!"
"Where are Jim Ed and Lou?" I asked.
"They went over to the Southwest State Campus,"
Will said. "They’re getting people together for us there."
Will and his girlfriend Jan and I got into Ben’s
car. Ben handed Will a large sack. "These are hamburgers and Cokes," he
said. "Pass them around. I can’t stop at a restaurant. I don’t want the
cops to get to the college campus before I do."
He drove across Pronghorn as fast as he could within
the speed limit. Sure enough, there was a cop car following a couple of
blocks behind us. We drove up to the small student union building on the
campus.
Jan pulled a key out of her handbag. "Come on to
Conference Room B," she said. "i got the key from a friend in the Baptist
Student Organization. The administration is so used to having that room
used only for Wednesday night prayer meetings that they leave it with her
all the time."
"Will she get in trouble for this?" I asked.
"She told me she could always say she didn’t know
what I wanted the key for." Jan said. "And she’s leaving this hell hole
for a real college at the end of the semester."
We followed Jan down the hall to Conference Room
B. When she opened the door we went in and sat in the neatly arranged folding
chairs and finished eating our hamburgers. Ben went outside the union building.
Then he came back in and told us, "The cops are parked across the street
not doing anything. Everything’s cool for now."
Over the next hour more and more people drifted
into the room. Will and Ben and I introduced ourselves to everybody. We
started an informal discussion of court-martials, Field Board Hearings
and other strange things. We didn’t say very much about Vietnam itself
at first. A large part of the Southwest State students were the children
of officers and twenty-year sergeants and they had heard a lot about Vietnam
at home. One woman stood up and said, "At home my parents would talk about
the war - that there was something really wrong and sick about it - but
they wouldn’t say that to most of their friends, just a few that they really
trusted. They didn’t want to hurt my father’s army career. It was like
our secret. And I’m sure it was the same way in all the other military
families. This is the first time in my life I’ve really felt even a little
bit free to talk about the war and everything with a bunch of other people."
Voices around the room said, "Yeah, that’s right."
Several of the male students had been in Vietnam
and they got into brief discussions with Will about what outfit he was
in and where and when. Then at one o’clock Jim Ed came in. By now there
were over fifty people in Conference Room B, some of them standing.
"I think by now everybody has met Will," he said.
"Now it’s time for him to say the things he came here for."
Will stood up, his head slightly bent downward,
a shy smile on his face. "At last," he said, "maybe now I can say what
I really want to say without someone stopping me."
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