Late-K Lunacy

by Ted Bernard

  “The drama is almost too much to absorb, Stefan. I hope I’m up to the task,” Katherine abruptly halts and gazes vacantly across her kitchen into the adjacent sitting room, now dark as the moonless night, as if she is drowning in self-doubt, her precarious post as coordinator of an unpredictable and unruly band. Just as abruptly she chugs the rest of her beer, slams the bottle on the table. “Alright, time to call the man,” she declares.

  She dials and waits, her expression revealing nothing but perplexity. She cancels the call. “Huh? It went right to voice mail. He told me to call any time, day or night, said he would respond. Okay, if he doesn’t answer, I’ll have to leave a message.”

  She makes the call, ending her message with, “We hope you will treat this as urgent, sir.” She looks at me with raised eyebrows, a brief shake of her head, her eyes betraying the confidence of a few moments past.

  I consider those beguiling eyes and acknowledge her frustration. “To change the subject, are you hungry?”

  We sit side-by-side on her tattered couch, munching Landslide Pizza, chatting about grad school and the readings for our next class, assuming, she says half-jokingly, that the whole caboodle doesn’t topple by Tuesday. She says, slyly, that not many students can boast of a professor so close at hand to tutor them. I agree that this is so. Like a tongue-tied fifteen-year-old, I am stumped about where to go next. Her beauty is subtle and intriguing, eyes that draw me toward her soul, a willowy body that moves gracefully through its days. And here on this night of consequence, unable to say something memorable, I nonetheless bask in her warmth.

  When she carries the remnants of our impromptu dinner to the kitchen, I rise and tell her I should leave her to the evening’s rabble rousing.

  She grins at my locution and says, “Yes, and you’d best slip silently into the night.”

  “I had no idea that my first venture to your place would be the night you’d be carrying the nuclear codes.”

  “Kind of puts an edge on things, wouldn’t you say?”

  “It does. But, Katherine, this too shall pass. Rumi tells us: Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”

  “Here’s the form I’ll be dreaming about,” she replies, misty eyed. She melts into my arms. We stand there entwined for some moments, perilous and wrought with longing. I step back.

  As I head toward the door, she says, “You and Rumi, double-teaming me. What am I supposed to do?”

  “Just be,” I tell her.

  6

  As I reflect on the next few days of our story, my head spins. So much transpired in such a short time and at such a pace, I fear that I will but lamely capture our accomplishment, our exhilaration, and ultimately our fears about the outcomes of our efforts to alter the course of history. I am indebted to Dr. Helen Flintwinch, Mayor Vernon Alexander, and Chief Annie Barnhart for their viewpoints on our challenge to their hegemony and for their quite reasonable, but ultimately unrealistic belief that our movement could be contained or at least detained. Since I spent zero minutes at their command post or in their offices, I asked President Redlaw to confirm their accounts. All he said was, “Go with them, Hannah.”

  We quite deliberately chose Halloween weekend to launch our occupation. What was about to happen in uptown Argolis on that weekend would require more overtime police hours than the rest of the year combined. Festivities would comprise virtually anything you could imagine in a party lasting two nights and one afternoon in a four-by-four block district with upwards of 30,000 mostly young, and for the duration, at least moderately drunk and stoned partiers. Us. Despite the dead-serious police presence with backups of riot-equipped and equestrian contingents, by 3:00 AM Sunday morning, more than two-hundred celebrants would have been arrested on charges ranging from drunk and disorderly, to indecent exposure, to assault with a deadly weapon, and, of course, resisting arrest.

  After years of street takeovers and clashes between police and partiers, in the mid-nineties, Halloween became an official town-gown-sponsored event, an evolution unimaginable in the rowdy eighties when both the city and the university unsuccessfully tried to shut it down. Halloween weekend was now elaborately orchestrated and heavily patrolled. Yet it still possessed unstoppable madness. Halloween in Argolis had thus held, for over thirty years, a reputation as the best October block party in Ohio. To the administration of Gilligan University Ohio and to the city officials of Argolis, Halloween was nothing but one long pain in the derrière. To make matters worse, from their viewpoint, the university’s ranking as one of the nation’s top party schools rose dramatically after each Halloween fiasco. (Although few student partiers explicitly aimed to enhance or sustain this rank, neither would any of us have lamented it.)

  So, on Friday evening, uptown streets would be closed to traffic and given over, first, to children and their parents with a costume competition, children’s activities sponsored by community and campus organizations, clowns, a parade of massive puppets, and the outdoor presentation of Peter and the Wolf at the amphitheater on Southwell Quad. By nine, after the streets would empty of kids, they would begin to pulse with so-called adults; many from other campuses, roving from bar to bar, hitting on each other, occasionally enjoining in brawls, many bearing IDs of great invention, all gorging themselves on food served up by food carts and the multitude of restaurants up and down Federal Street, almost all planning to get wasted at the most incredible party they would hardly remember.

  On Saturday afternoon, uptown streets would close to traffic again. If trends from past years held, the crowd Saturday night would be the largest. The main events Saturday would rock three stages with eighteen bands performing almost continuously. By about nine o'clock, droves would pour onto the streets in costume: pregnant nuns cavorting with swarthy pirates or drunken priests, dominatrix spankies with febrile nearly naked slave-men, blue men with PVC pipes, angels and devils tempting staggering prophets, monks au naturel beneath their robes (flashing from time to time), happy Buddhas, Arab Sheiks, Catholic Priests with Jack Daniels bottles, party girls in skimpy lingerie, and the latest animation characters (this year, Sponge Pants Bob bobbing through the crowd along with monsters from Monster University and the Croods).

  Infused by a colossal plunge in the collective intelligence of thousands of our classmates, our brains awash in gonadal hormones, alcohol, and cannabinoids , by Saturday night around midnight, a tipping point would be reached when good clean fun would flip over to Sodom and Gomorrah and videos of young bodies copulating on steps of churches would go viral. Even before midnight, in the windows of second and third floor apartments and on flimsy balconies overlooking Federal Street, women (and so-called men) would be coaxed by the masses below to bare key parts of their youthful anatomies to us gawking adolescents down on the street, some of whom would respond in kind. As a prude from Ashtabula, when I witnessed this lascivious phase last Halloween, I confess to arousal rather than revulsion.

  Responsibility for this looming event fell squarely on the shoulders of Provost Helen Flintwinch, Campus Police Chief Annie Barnhill, and Argolis Mayor Vernon Alexander. It was Friday night. All three were perched in the offices of Dodson, Knapp, Barnacle, and Fogg, Attorneys at Law, on the third floor of the Bundy Building at the corner of Federal and Jefferson, the Halloween command center. The hour was 9:00 PM.

  Chief Barnhill idly gazed down at the sparse crowd of students slowly displacing children and their parents. She turned to the mayor and asked, “Any predictions?”

  “Well, you know, Annie, any expectation I might have will likely be the photonegative of what will actually happen. So, with that in mind, I predict this evening will turn to shit.”

  ~

  I found Katherine at the corner of Spruce and Ohio, the meeting place for the march. We stared aghast at the mass of protestors melting away into the dark. Frank saw us. “Hey guys, how’s this for a turnout? And this does not even include those heading toward Centennial Quad.”

  “I’m speechless,” Ka
therine replied. Astrid, Nick, Em, José, and the others of our Group of Thirteen gathered round. “How did the president respond?” Nick asked.

  “No response. My call went straight to his voice mail. I had to leave a message.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Yes, if he doesn’t get back to me soon, I’m not sure what to do. In less than an hour he’ll have to deal with our occupation of the quad. This is making me crazy.”

  Nick said, “Well, Katherine, we’ve got a few hundred folks here anxious to march, so to hell with the president. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Our procession began to weave its way toward the courthouse, trying without success to stay legal and keep to the sidewalks. Compared to the campus protest ten days earlier, we carried more signs and noise makers, including Caribbean steel drums, Tibetan horns, and didgeridoos . At the head, Frank and four of his best friends, dressed as grim reapers wearing skeleton masks, were swinging scythes with signs reading: Blackwood: The End is Near.

  “Where'd you come up with those grain slashers?” José called to Frank.

  “They’re scythes, man. Folks at the Country Corners Museum out in Mud Flats loaned 'em to us.” Frank swayed to rhythms that might have passed for Trinidadian calypso. José quickly got into the beat moving fluidly along with the crowd. He sidled up to me. I was stomping along like a wooden soldier.

  “Hey baby, loosen up! Sway those hips, shake your bootie, bounce those boobs, get your shoulders moving.”

  I cracked up. “Hey bro, I’ve got none of those feminine charms, but grab my hand and I’ll follow.” He did and my spirits soared. This night was going to be awesome!

  We marched southward on Federal toward campus, crossing Park Street, and stopping finally at the Argolis County Courthouse where Jefferson Street crossed Federal. Waiting for us on the steps of the courthouse was Weston in shiny dress shoes, pressed charcoal gray slacks, and a blue-striped button-down shirt. He had tied a big GREEN ENERGY NOW banner across the columns at the front of the courthouse and had set up a small podium and portable PA system. The drumming and percussion continued. Onlookers gathered to watch. Frank and the other grim reapers climbed the steps and began line dancing to hoots and cheers. They had the crowd in their palms while leading their familiar chants:

  NO MORE COAL. NO MORE GAS.

  WE WANT ENERGY THA'S GONNA LAST.

  NO MORE COAL. NO MORE GAS.

  WE WANT ENERGY THA'S GONNA LAST.

  GREEN ENERGY! GREEN ENERGY! NOW, NOW, NOW!”

  And a sanitized version of the Redlaw reproof:

  BLACKWOOD, BLACKWOOD, SACRED SPACE

  REDLAW, REDLAW, YOU’RE A DISGRACE

  The chants were followed by five student speakers, each more impassioned than the last, the crowd responding enthusiastically to their exhortations. Zachary, the last to speak, worked himself into a sweat, topping off his oration with “This is our generation’s challenge. OUR generation! We are the ones to halt global warming. We are the ones to make the transition to renewable green energy. If we do not make these changes, our children and grandchildren will have no future. WE MUST STOP FRACKING. We must save Blackwood Forest before we plunge over the cliff into oblivion. Blackwood is a metaphor for our times. Save Blackwood, Save Blackwood, Save Blackwood!”

  ~

  Chief Barnhill, Provost Flintwinch, and Mayor Alexander were joined by Argolis Police Chief Dirk Waldecker. Drinking freshly brewed strong coffee, they relaxed in a conference room, munching pumpkin-shaped Halloween cookies with orange icing and chocolate sprinkles. Their light conversation was interrupted by muted sounds coming from across the street, three stories below: the percussion, our chants, our cheers for the grim reapers. The mayor adjusted his hearing aids, stood up and stretched. He steadied himself and zigzagged into the adjacent room facing the street.

  “What in hell is this?” he called back to his colleagues.

  They rushed to join him at the open windows.

  “Oh God,” said Helen Flintwinch. “The Blackwood crowd. Do they have a permit, Vernon?”

  “Permit?”

  “Yeah, to hold a rally on Federal Street.”

  “Dunno. Do they need a permit, Dirk?”

  Dirk stroked his chin. The incitements of speakers drifted upward. “I guess since Federal is closed to traffic and they’re not doing anyone harm, we can let them be. Are they the ones who rallied on campus a couple of weeks ago, Helen?”

  “Probably.”

  “And they were peaceful, right?”

  “For the most part, yes. A small altercation caused us to issue a cease and disperse.”

  “Altercation?”

  “Reputedly one of the vice-presidents was bumped by protestors on her way out of Stiggins.”

  As they watched, the grim reaper with the goatee stepped to the podium to lead the crowd in chants, following which the percussion fired back up while he and five other grim reapers danced in syncopation down the steps toward the darkening campus. The mass of protestors followed us along with dozens of partying onlookers curious about what would happen next.

  “Looks like they’re headed toward campus, Helen,” Chief Waldecker speculated, his tone flat as a court stenographer. There was a reason he was chief of this backwater town.

  “Damn!” The provost looked across to her campus police chief. “Annie, alert your people. Tell them to stay out of sight. As soon as those protestors step on campus, have somebody report back. Where the hell is that scoundrel Redlaw now that we really need him?”

  “Hey, yeah, where is he?” repeated the mayor as if he’d just noticed the scoundrel’s absence.

  “Off fishing on Lake Erie.”

  “What'd I say about the evening turning to shit?” the mayor asked.

  “Doesn’t look like a photonegative to me,” Annie Barnhill replied.

  ~

  We protestors banked left on Clayborne and snaked down the street, laterally undulating and sidewinding toward the main portal on the north side of Centennial Quad. Up the steps we slithered into the Quad to the resounding shouts of dozens more supporters hiding at the edges. From the shadows of Weary Hall came masses of occupiers from the east. From the darkness around Chapman Hall converged still dozens more from the west. Our crowd, now numbering three hundred, responded again to the grim reapers’ line dancing moves and chants. Some in the crowd of onlookers began to lend their voices to the hubbub. Frank hushed the crowd, invited the occupiers to set up their village, and returned, clapping to the pulsating beat of the frenzied mass.

  As the village took shape under the direction of Julianna Ferguson, percussion ceased. Nick, holding a bullhorn and a large flag bearing a spreading oak and the hashtag #blackwood forever on a regimental stanchion, christened the Quad Village. He staked the flag at the center of the quad and announced: “I hereby declare that we the students of Gilligan University of Ohio, defenders of Blackwood Forest and ardent haters of fracked gas and oil as sources of energy for our university, do now hold and occupy Centennial Quad. We shall continue doing so until Gilligan University’s administration halts the threatened despoliation of Blackwood Forest, and commits the university to renewable energy. Blackwood, Blackwood! Sacred Space!” Weston shot the entire ceremony on video. He immediately blasted it to our social media followers.

  I saw Em wrapping her arm around Nick. She whispered, “Les jeux sont faits.”

  “Oui” he replied. “The die is cast.”

  The chants continued as dozens of tents, yurts, canopies, tables and sleeping gear were pitched across the Quad. Lanterns, like constellations of stars, began to light up the historic green. At the main portal, a dozen students unfurled a large banner over the top of the gate. It read: Occupy Centennial Quad.

  No police appeared.

  Nick located Katherine. “Any luck contacting Redlaw?”

  “No, but I’ve left two more messages.”

  ~

  Back at the command center, Helen Flintwinch nodded and spoke in
to her cell phone. “Uh huh. How many would you say? Holy shit. And they’re what? Oh God! Okay, let me huddle with Annie and get back to you.”

  Annie Barnhill, a Gilligan summa cum laude graduate in 1990 and a twenty-year veteran of the Cincinnati Police Department, comprehended the situation before Helen Flintwinch had spoken a word. “So, they’ve taken over Centennial?”

  “You’ve got that right,” replied the Provost. “Look at this video.” On the provost’s phone, there was Nick declaring that the Quad was theirs.

  “They sure didn’t waste any time going public. Helen, are you inclined to have us nip this thing in the bud?”

  “To be honest, Annie, I’m not inclined to do anything until I talk to Mitch, er, President Redlaw. Give me a few minutes.”

  The provost retreated to the conference room. She tapped in the president’s mobile number. It went straight to his voice mail. She left a short message then recalled that she had a backup number. “Hello, is this Roger O'Malley?” she asked. “Good. This Dr. Helen Flintwinch in Argolis. I am a colleague of your neighbor Mitch Redlaw. He’s not answering his phone. I need to speak with him urgently … Oh, he is? Great. Thank you.”

  Ten seconds later the president answered. The provost got down to business without pleasantries. “Mitch, we’ve got a delicate situation on our hands. Centennial Quad has been occupied by hundreds of Blackwood protestors. Annie and I need to know how you want us to handle this.”

  There was a heavy pause. “Let me check my messages first,” the president replied.

  “Okay,” she said. “Be quick about it. Annie’s people are keeping an eye on things but we have no idea where this is headed.”

  ~

  Katherine, Nick, Em, and I decided to take a break from the cacophonous quad. We wandered down to The Eclipse Coffee Company. We ordered coffees and settled into a cushioned booth. Apart from two other customers lost in their smart phones, we were alone. Only five blocks from the crowds uptown and only a stone’s throw from Centennial Quad, The Eclipse was eerily still.