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Rebellion in a Curious Way | Poem

REBELLION IN A CURIOUS WAY by Jodey Bateman
 

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CHAPTER FOUR
          Don decided he didn’t want to go back right away. He stayed on in Pronghorn with me and Marge and Clu and Ben while the other Vanguarders and Committee people went back - squeezed a little tight because they were one car less. You ask what a bunch of radicals do to occupy their time while waiting for somebody to show up in a bar in eight hours? There is a whole universe to be discussed! I have seen such a group get into discussing the social class implications of Spider Man as opposed to other Marvel Comics heroes. And we had far more urgent and immediate matters to discuss - but with many wanderings far afield. And whatever else you say about Don and Ben, they were both authorities in many fields of knowledge, some of them pretty strange. 
          Marge, so far, has just been a shadow figure, who irritates Clu, but she had been to Cuba three times - a month each time. That means we were all ears for anything she had to say. Clu was questioning Marge as eagerly as anyone. For us, sexual jealousy could not begin to compare with the Cuban Revolution as a focus of intense concern - when we weren’t discussing the appeal for Will’s court martial, Pete Yoder’s up coming court martial and such side topics as the sociology of the Impact Area - the area in downtown Pronghorn full of bars, greasy spoon cafes, strip joints, pawn shops, brothels, tattoo parlors, and you name it, that lived off the G.I.’s at Fort Clay. I knew something about this and Will knew more when he showed up at the Barrage after getting off duty at five. 
All these hours of discussion, I had only had four glasses of beer from the pitchers, which Don and Ben were buying and for me that was quite a buzz. Don had really been working his way through those pitchers. At one point he was showing everybody how he could manipulate his armpit to make noises like a chicken. He even tried to play the opening phrases of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" moving his armpit and the others all claimed they could hear it, but I couldn’t. Clu applauded with a sad, nostalgic smile, remembering how once he had played it just for her. But when Will showed up, Don navigated back to seriousness and purposefulness, faster than you could believe. He seemed just about sober as he guided the discussion - but with many excursions on side paths, as is common among radicals. 
          Shortly after Will came in, Hattie Saulienas showed up in the bar for the night. She was co-owner of the place with her husband Frog - real name - Frolis Saulienas, son of Lithuanian refugees. 
          Hattie’s father was a retired 20-year sergeant, but her mother was the daughter of a famous Indian Chief. The chief’s mother was Hattie Parsons, a white woman, who had been captured by the Indians when she was five years old. Her name sake, the Hattie who was taking charge behind the bar, was a tall, gaunt woman with a prominent Indian nose. She had a long pony tail of brownish-blonde hair down her back and her skin had a hint of brown. She belted her skirt at the waist with a chain of silver conchas and the skirt hung down below her knees. She came over to our table to greet me when she finished making calculations at the cash register. 
          I introduced her to everybody and Ben asked, "Do you have a TV set here?" 
          "Oh, just a little bitty thing we keep under the bar," Hattie said. "It’s never out unless Frog wants to watch a football game." 
"We’d like to watch the six o’clock local news, please," Ben said. Underneath all the facial hair, I could see he still had that persuasive expression. I had seen black people open up with him who had never said a candid word to a white man before in their lives. 
          "Oh, I guess so," Hattie said. "It’s just kind of strange." She brought the small portable TV from behind the bar. 
          I was like Hattie in those days - almost a non-TV watcher. In 1967, those of us in the movement very seldom watched network TV news because we knew the networks were for the war and we assumed everything on TV news was a lie. We just watched the local news when we had a demonstration to see how they covered it. 
           At six o’clock Ben turned on the evening news and soon we could see our line of people in the glare of TV camera lights going in single file through a churning mob of reporters and MP’s. Clu was in the lead with her arm raised in a gesture like "forward troops!" I was holding my notebook over my head and a couple of Vanguarders held up clenched fists. For the first time in the voice-over of a TV announcer, I heard a note of surprise and uncertainty, like something had happened that he couldn’t sum up easily. 
          Hattie watched with her mouth hanging open. Just then, Jim Ed walked in - early, unlike so much that went on in the Organization. He was with two women. In an Organization that had so many skinny people, he was one of the skinniest, but he had a huge grin that lit up that dim bar room. 
          "Hey Dale, what the fuck?" He hollered in greeting. "Yeah, what the fuck!" he said in surprise at the table surrounded by people watching the TV set. The image of us at the court martial was finished, so I flicked off the TV and got up and went over to Jim Ed and we hugged. He had a thick, stiff crown of brownish hair on top but not long in back. You didn’t even think long hair at Southwest State, where Jim Ed was a student. Two years after ROTC had been made voluntary at the big university a few blocks from Clu’s house, it was still compulsory at Southwest State in Pronghorn. The only reason Jim Ed didn’t have to take it was that he had already been in the Marines. He got out before Vietnam got big and used the pay he had saved to start at Southwest State, which was very cheap then but... 
          Now a big introduction scene started. I had met one of the women once before, Jim Ed’s girl friend Lori Youngblood. She had the dark good looks, sort of a combination of Mediterranean and Oriental that are so common among the many people in our state who have some Indian ancestry. The other woman had dark hair and a lively face with lots of freckles. She extended her hand and shook mine and said, "I’m Jan Welles. Until this spring I was secretary of the Young Republicans at Southwest State." She laughed and everyone at the table laughed. "Well," she added, "the Democrats are for the war and Young Republicans was a place to learn how to conduct a meeting and give out literature. We sure couldn’t have a chapter of the Organization at Southwest State." 
          "So you were part of the great beatnik affair," I asked. 
          "What’s that?" Ben asked from the table. 
          "Oh, this guy showed up on the Southwest State campus with long hair, a beard, and sandals," Jan said. "He was just coming to visit a friend and the Southwest State administration called the Pronghorn cops and had him put in jail." 
          "Yeah," Jim Ed said. "And I went to the President of the college with the chairman of campus young Republicans. We asked the President to please get the dude released and he threatened to expel us both from Southwest State." 
          "Oh yeah," Hattie put in, "then Jim Ed came here to the bar with the Young Republican guy and got me and Frog to help raise money from the people hanging out here to bail the guy out of jail." 
          "So the chairman of the Young Republicans quit and the vice chairman quit and I quit as secretary," Jan said. "Now the only groups that can hold meetings on campus are the Baptists and ROTC." 
          "No shit!" Ben called from the other side of the table. By now everybody was shaking hands across the table and giving names and Jim Ed was pulling up chairs for himself and Lou and Jan. 
          "Say - what is the TV here for anyways?" Jim Ed asked. Will and Ben did most of the talking now, telling about the court martial and its aftermath. 
          "How long have you been around here, man?" Jim Ed asked Will. 
          "Oh, almost three months," Will said. 
          "Well, have you learned how things work here in the Impact Area?" Jim Ed asked. 
          "He’s been telling us about that for the last half hour," Don said. "He’d make a good anthropologist." 
          "Then you know that all these old retired lifer farts..." 
          "Hey, you watch out about that, Jim Ed!" Hattie said sharply. "My dad was a retired lifer." 
          "So was mine!" Jan said. 
          "All right," Jim Ed said, "anyways, the retired officers and sergeants who own stores here in the Impact Area that gouge the G.I.’s out of every nickel - before tonight’s over they’re gonna all know about all that revolution and shit you all pulled off at the court martial and they’re gonna be super down on y’all, because the Impact area merchants will be scared and scared people are dangerous." 
          "Why would they be scared?" Clu asked. 
"Don’t you ever read any of your left wing stuff about union organizers fighting bosses?" Jim Ed went on. "The Impact Area merchants have had it dicked for sixty years. Anytime a G.I. gets behind on payments for the overpriced bullshit they sell, they contact his commanding officer - like maybe they were old Army buddies together. Well, the CO passes the word down to the poor fucker’s sergeant and he gives all kinds of shit until the G.I. pays. Hell, there are businesses in the Impact Area that have a contract with the Army that they can confiscate money from the dude’s paycheck if he falls behind in his payments. So you..." and Jim Ed grinned even more and pointed at Will. 
          "The court martial was only about literature against the war," Will said. 
          "Don’t matter what it was about!" Jim Ed said. "Anybody who organizes anybody about anything here in Pronghorn is a threat to the people who run things - like the Young Republican guy was a threat! Fuck, man, they don’t know what the G.I.’s will do if they get started - and they don’t want to find out." 
          "Look, man, I gotta wind this up cause I gotta boogie," Jim Ed said as he stood up. 
          "Yeah, we’re in school this summer so we can get out of that dump soon." Lou, his girlfriend, put in, "and we both have tests tomorrow." 
          "But here, gimme a pencil Dale," Jim Ed said, "and I know you got a notebook." I handed Jim Ed a pencil and tore a sheet of paper out of my notebook and gave it to him and Jim Ed scribbled down his address. 
"And the only phone I can put down is the Barrage here." Jim Ed went on writing it down. 
          "Yeah, just call me or come in here if you need to pass messages," Hattie said. 
          "You know, I was born 30 miles from here in Holston, same town Dale comes from," Jim Ed said pointing at me. "I been coming over here to the Impact Area since I was twelve years old." 
          "And he brought me over here to the Barrage to meet Frog and Hattie when I was sixteen," I added. 
          "Anyway," Jim Ed said, "I know every wall in the Impact Area and I’ve made enough enemies around here and I might as well go out like a rocket. So if you need my help man..." He handed Will the sheet of paper. Will folded it up and put it in his pocket. Jim Ed grabbed Will’s right hand with both hands and Will put his left hand on top of Jim Ed’s hand. Will stood up and they looked each other in the eye for a couple of minutes. Then they let go. Jim Ed and Lou waved and went out of the bar. 
          "What about Frog?" I ask Hattie. When I first got back from the South in the fall of 1965 I had come down to the Barrage with an armload of anti-war literature and Frog told me to never bring that kind of stuff in again. He was a Korean War Vet with a big scar from Chinese shrapnel on his belly as well as being the son of anti-Communist refugees from Lithuania. I had honored his wish and never brought the literature into the Barrage after that. I always took it to Jim Ed’s place and stashed it under a cedar bush by his door and Jim Ed would see that it got around. 
          "Well Frog - he’s changing," Hattie said. "The more he hears the guys talk about Nam, well - it gets to him." 
          We didn’t have long to find out. About nine Frog came in, a man with a long, dark-brown beard and dark brown hair hanging down his back. He’d worn it that way since before he heard of the Beatles, back when there were beatniks and no hippies. Frog wore old fatigue pants and an old blue denim shirt. He had a big beer belly, but his chest and his shoulders were bigger. 
          "So Dale!" he called out. "Every place I go around here, there’s people standing in front of their stores, in front of their bars asking me if I’d heard about it." He had a strong voice, but not too deep, with a slight foreign accent. "So I come in my own bar and here’s the revolution, here’s the commies!" 
          "Yup," I and stood up and held out my hand. He shook it. Will stood up and held out his hand. He still had on his uniform. 
          "So it’s you, huh?" Frog asked Will. 
          "Yeah," Will said. 
          "And you’ve been to Nam?" 
          "Yeah." 
          He shook Will’s hand and looked straight in Will’s eyes with his own intense blue eyes. 
          "Yeah, all the commies and here’s our own Young Republican," Frog said, looking down at Jan, who hadn’t left with Steve and Lou.           "We’re growing a strange crop now -lifer’s kids like you with these people?" 
          "Yeah, I guess I am," Jan said. 
          "I guess you are,"  Frog said. He just stood there and looked at us, not hostile, but not exactly overjoyed. It was like a mountain thinking. All of a sudden Frog spoke, "Say, I got a spare guitar in that closet where I keep mops. Dale you just take it and get on the stage and give us a song."
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