An American Tune

by Barbara Shoup

  She woke near dawn, nauseated, and threw up repeatedly – something she’d eaten, probably, though it felt to her as if the events of the evening had made her physically ill. She called in sick and took an afghan to the couch, where she slept fitfully into the morning.

  Soon after Tom left for class, Bridget appeared, dressed in riot gear: Levi’s, long-sleeved shirt, sneakers. She’d tucked a small jar of Vaseline in her pocket, in case she got maced; soaked a cloth in vinegar, for tear gas. She’d taken out her earrings, braided her hair. She’d tied a bandana around her head and one around her neck, in case she needed to cover her mouth and nose with it.

  “Right on,” she said. “You’re cutting school to go? Groovy. You’d better get ready, though. We meet at nine to set our demands.”

  “I’m sick,” Jane said. “In case you didn’t hear, I’ve been barfing for hours.”

  “Oh.” Bridget actually looked at her for the first time. “Sorry. I crashed when I came in. I didn’t hear you. But you look okay now. Come on –”

  “I can’t move,” Jane said, grateful for the spasm that sent her to the bathroom again. She didn’t want to go. She was scared to death of what might happen.

  She stayed on the couch all day, drifting in and out of consciousness. She could hear the whack-whack of helicopters hovering over campus, the sirens, the shouting. The television was on, switching between national coverage of demonstrations happening all over the country to local newscasters reporting on what was happening a few blocks away. Fifteen hundred students marching from Dunn Meadow toward Bryan Hall to present administrators with a list of demands, including a repudiation of Nixon’s Southeast Asia policy and the termination of all ROTC programs on campus, had been met halfway by a busload of campus police, who stepped out in riot gear and moved in double-time on their way to protect the building. There was Bridget, screaming in their faces.

  A few days later, there was a shooting at Kent State. One of Jane’s fellow teachers heard it on the radio and came into the cafeteria, where Jane was on lunch duty, to tell her. Students had been shot, she said. They didn’t know how many yet, or if they’d survived. On the playground, afterward, Jane leaned against the cyclone fence in the spring sunshine, shivering.

  “Are you cold, Miss Barth?” Daniel Pettus asked.

  “I am,” she said. “Isn’t that crazy? I guess my body still thinks it’s winter.”

  She made herself go through the motions the rest of the day. “Four dead in Ohio,” the radio announcer said, as she pulled out of the parking lot and headed home at the end of the day. Jane, Tom, and Bridget sat glued to the news coverage on television. The line of National Guardsmen in gas masks, carrying rifles with bayonets, advancing over the crest of a hill, shooting canisters of tear gas; students yelling and lobbing them back. What looked like a retreat, then a volley of rifle fire dissolving into a chaos of images and voices, smoke drifting up into the spring sky.

  “Do you guys get it yet?” Bridget asked. “The pigs are killing us. They intend to keep killing us. Are you going to do anything about it, or just sit there on your fucking asses?”

  In the next days, it seemed as if the revolution she called for might actually occur. Universities across the country closed down. Two more students were killed in riots at Jackson State University, eleven bayoneted at the University of New Mexico by the National Guard. In New York, antiwar protestors were beaten by construction workers wearing hard hats and wielding clubs. A hundred-thousand people mobilized and converged on Washington D.C. to protest the war and the killing of unarmed student protestors. They smashed windows, slashed tires, dragged parked cars into intersections, and threw bedsprings off overpasses into the traffic below. Nixon was removed to Camp David for his own protection.

  Then the school year ended. Maybe most people had been as frightened as Jane had been by the events in May, maybe it was as simple as the vacuum left by students leaving campus to step back into the real world of families and summer jobs. But by the middle of June, the energy that had swelled up against the war had been redirected to fighting over parking meters. Would they install them along Kirkwood Avenue? Would they demolish People’s Park to build a high-rise apartment with a parking garage?

  “The same friendly people who brought us the Vietnam War have awakened the resistance to the value of guerilla warfare,” the Indiana Daily Student pronounced, suggesting that if the parking meters were installed students might consider filling the coin slots with epoxy glue.

  “As if parking meters and people dying in Vietnam were the same thing,” Bridget said. “Is there even one single thing in this stupid paper about My Lai? Does anybody think, maybe, we ought to be doing something about that?”

  She’d become obsessed with the hearings about the massacre, which had begun in the spring – collecting every news story she could find, fingering the pages of photographs in Life magazine so many times they’d become soft as cloth. Bodies fallen like Pick-up sticks along a dirt road; people who looked like living death cowering, begging, running; huts bursting into flames. She wouldn’t talk about it. There was nothing to say. She lay on the couch hours at a time, stoned or staring at the photographs – keeping them in the forefront of her mind, she said, because what else could she do?

  Sometimes Jane could get her to walk and, when she did, Jane walked with her – the two of them winding their way through campus, their conversation ranging from happier times, before Pete enlisted and went to Vietnam, to Bridget’s conviction that he would come back and when he did they would tackle the war together and make a difference. He’d sent her a series of postcards since going AWOL the year before – mountains, beaches, rivers, lakes, forests, and deserts, from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, each with a cryptic, probably drug-induced message. It made Jane furious. If Pete cared about Bridget, why didn’t he come back and be with her; if he didn’t, why couldn’t he just leave her alone?

  “He’s not coming back,” Tom said. “Not like she wants him to, anyway: Poster Boy for the Cause. You give her too much credit, Jane. The truth is, she’s pissed off at the whole world. The whole fucking SDS, what’s left of it, is full of people just like her. I accomplished more just sitting in the law school library figuring out how to get guys out of going one at a time than they have with their revolutionary bullshit – and she knows it. That’s why she gets so pissed off at me.”

  Then one day near the end of August, Jane and Bridget returned from a walk and found Pete smoking a joint on the front porch. The bedraggled mutt sleeping at his feet woke as they approached the steps and barked twice, then trotted toward them, its tail wagging.

  “That’s Gandhi,” Pete said. “I found him scrounging in a dump near Taos. We’ve been on the road together ever since. He’s a righteous, peaceful companion.”

  Bridget knelt to pet the dog – maybe to avoid looking at Pete, Jane thought. He was dirty and emaciated, his long, tangled hair pulled back in a bandana, his beard scruffy and unkempt.

  “Where’s my bro?” he asked.

  “Law library,” Jane said.

  Pete laughed. “Man, is he still doing that gig?”

  “One more year. He’ll take the bar next July. Which means it would be a real good idea if you smoked that joint inside. Not to mention the fact that I have a teaching job to think about.”

  “Jane, Jane. Ever the law-abiding citizen.” He pinched the burning tip of the joint with his calloused fingers, tucked it in a pocket of his backpack. “So, Bridge,” he said “Are you glad to see me?”

  Bridget didn’t answer.

  “Come on,” he said. “I fucking drove two days straight to get here. Seriously, Bridge. I had this wild dream. Me and Gandhi, we’re on this winding road going up a mountain – who the fuck knows where. But there’s these women, right? In these far-out hooded robes, man, every color you can imagine. And – dig it! – they’re everywhere, as far as I can see, walking in front of me and around me and behind me. Like water, man. Flowing. It
’s like they don’t have feet, like they’re on these invisible roller skates. And there’s me and Ghandi just trudging along and I’m so fucking tired all I want to do is lie down and go to sleep. Then, whoa! One of the women going by drops her hood and it’s you. You give me this walking stick, carved with all this Indian shit. Then, suddenly, I’m all the way at the top of the mountain and there’s nothing but sky and clouds and I’m, like, the only fucking guy in the universe. It’s all for me. All mine. So I wake up and I’m like, man, I’ve got to tell this to Bridge. I’ve got to thank her.”

  Bridget glanced at Jane, then went to sit beside him on the porch swing.

  “So, yeah. Thanks.” He grinned. “And Gandhi thanks you.” He put his arm around her, drew her close, and she buried her head in his chest. “We need to go find that place, you know? Be there. I need you, Bridge. Seriously. Will you come with me?”

  Bridget nodded, yes.

  10

  “Fortunate Son”

  She was back before Thanksgiving. They’d driven west, she told Jane – through the mountains in Colorado, then heading north for Wyoming and Montana, searching for the place Pete had seen in his dream. But no place was right. They’d blown most of her savings by the time they got to Yosemite in October. They’d need to settle soon, find work. Pete promised they would, but whenever she brought it up, he turned the music up loud. Lit a joint. Seduced her.

  “You want to be like them?” he’d say. “The Man? Fuck that. Why not just be together?”

  “The thing is,” Bridget said. “I didn’t give a shit if he worked or not. I could’ve gotten a waitressing job wherever we were. We’d have been fine. He was better with me, Jane; he was. More lucid. He ate the food I fixed for him. He looked like Pete again. And he loved me. He actually, finally said it. He said the best time in his whole life was his sophomore year, the year we were together.”

  But at night, he dreamed – not rainbow women, not magic walking sticks, not worlds at his feet. He’d wake screaming and shaking, sometimes crying. Once, Bridget told Jane, she was startled awake to find him crouched above her, his hands on her neck. He dreamed he was in Vietnam. That’s all he would say. Angrily, as if the dream had been her fault.

  Then one day she woke up and he was gone. It was a beautiful morning. Cold. She could see her breath in the clear, crisp air. She was annoyed, but not worried, she told Jane. Pete and Gandhi often disappeared for hours at a time. Mostly, she didn’t want to know where they went.

  When he hadn’t returned by evening, she began to argue with herself. His books, his clothes were still there. His stash. Surely, he wouldn’t have just left everything behind. She’d passed a sleepless night in the tent, fearful of every noise, and when after the second night he still did not appear she packed what she could carry in her duffel bag and walked to the highway, where she hitched a ride to L.A. and bought a plane ticket back to Indiana, angrier about the war, more determined to end it than she had been before she left.

  Tom and Jane argued about her assumption that she could move back into “her” room.

  “She needs to get her own place,” Tom said. “I don’t want to come home and spar with her every night. And, Jesus, didn’t you think it was nice having a little privacy? I like when it’s just the two of us. I like coming home at night and being . . . normal.”

  “I like it too,” Jane said. “But –”

  “But what?”

  “She’s a mess,” Jane said. “She’s heartbroken about Pete. We can’t just tell her to go.”

  “Which is such a crock of shit,” Tom said. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Bridget is pissed because she’s used to getting every single thing she wants. That’s what all this is really about.”

  “That’s not true,” Jane said. “She cares about the war. She’s given up everything –”

  “Bullshit,” Tom interrupted. “She decided not to be a teacher because she got pissed off when someone tried to tell her what to do. It took about two seconds for her to forget all about the war when Pete showed up and wanted her to go off and find some magic mountain. Now she’s back and it’s the war again – which she likes to think wrecked Pete and that’s why he keeps leaving her. Bridget wants to be unhappy, Jane. Don’t you see that? She thinks she’s punishing Pete being unhappy. Jesus, he’s dumped her – what, three times now? And she thinks he cares? The guy is fubar, man. Fucked Up Beyond All Repair. She needs to get over it and move on.”

  As the end of his last semester in law school approached, he pressed harder. “She’s so volatile,” he said. “I’ve got the bar exam coming up in July. I need to be able to concentrate. Not to mention her disappearing for days at a time. Who the hell knows what’s up with that? Whether or not I pass the bar will become a moot point if the FBI gets it in their mind that we’re harboring a goddamn revolutionary. The school board wouldn’t like it a whole lot, either.”

  “Bridget’s not –”

  “You don’t know that, Jane. Not really. Look. I’ll be the bad guy. I’ll tell her she needs to find her own place; you don’t even have to be there. Okay? Jane?”

  Jane didn’t answer.

  He put his arm around her shoulders, turned her toward him. “I know this is hard for you,” he said. “But it’s time, right? Even you can’t talk to her anymore.”

  “I know,” Jane said. “I know.”

  They were walking home from the law library, where they fled most evenings after their evening meal – Tom, to study; Jane, to grade papers and make lesson plans or just read. Jane felt a moment’s reprieve as they approached the house and she saw that it was dark. But inside they found Bridget sitting straight up on the living room couch, lit only by moonlight, her hands folded on her lap.

  “I need to talk to you guys,” she said.

  “What?” Jane took a step into the room. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Nothing.” Bridget glanced toward the closed door of her bedroom. “I just wanted to tell you there’s a . . . well, I mean, I met someone and he’s –”

  “No problem,” Tom interrupted. “Jane? Are you coming to bed?”

  “Jane,” Bridget said, urgently.

  “You go,” Jane said, sinking into the battered easy chair across from her. “I’ll be there in a little while. So, who is he?” she asked, when Tom had gone.

  “You don’t know him; he’s not from here. I actually met him a month or so ago –” Bridget waved vaguely in lieu of explanation. “The funny thing is, I thought he was a total asshole. He showed up at the SDS office from wherever and started bitching at me, like I was personally responsible for the fact that nobody in the whole state of Indiana appeared to give a fuck about the war. He ate shit, slept in his car, but as far as he could tell pretty much everybody else was way more into the idea of revolution than the daily grind of it. Blah, blah, blah.

  “I said, ‘Hey, fuck you,’ and gathered up my stuff and walked out on him. It felt good, you know? It beat the shit out of feeling like everything I do is totally useless.

  “Anyway. He showed up at the office again today. Penitent. We came back here, I made him some soup, we talked.” Bridget smiled, slyly. “The thing is, I knew what was going to happen when he walked through the door of the office. I knew it was why he came back. But before –” She gave a little shrug. “Before – you know. Cam – that’s his name. John Cameron, actually, but he’s called Cam. He said to me, ‘Are you with someone?’ ” She paused and, when she continued, her voice was husky with tears. “I said, ‘No. I’m alone.’ And, Jane, it was so weird. It was like, when I said it, I felt myself let Pete go. I felt like maybe, maybe I might be okay.”

  She leaned toward Jane, took her hand. “He has work to do here for the next few days, we both do. But after that, I’m going with him.”

  “Where?” Tom asked, when Jane climbed into bed and told him all that Bridget had said. “She didn’t tell me, and I was so freaked out I didn’t ask.”

  “Probably just as we
ll,” he said. “Shit. I knew she was getting in over her head with this stuff. My guess is he’s with the Weather faction. Or FBI, which would be even worse.”

  He was cool to Cam when they met the next evening, obviously assessing him.

  “My big brother,” Bridget said, amused.

  “He’s beautiful. Isn’t he beautiful?” she had whispered when Jane got home from school that afternoon, following her into the bedroom and closing the door behind them. “God, we spent the whole day talking – except when we, well, you know.” She flopped onto Tom and Jane’s bed and burst into tears. “I’m so happy. I feel like . . . myself with him. I didn’t even know how much I haven’t been myself till last night. How I’d stopped being myself ages ago, in the farmhouse with Pete.

  “We think exactly the same way about everything that matters,” she said. “The war. Our families. Everything. It’s like, all this time I’ve been waiting for him – and he says he feels the same way.”

  It was true they were electric together, Jane thought, watching them at dinner. And Cam was beautiful: tall and blond, athletic, with patrician features. His blue eyes were intelligent, intense as he leaned forward, talking about the work he’d been doing, telling his story. He’d grown up the only child of parents who’d given him everything. All those things they’d spent their lives collecting – cars and boats and stock portfolios, paintings that looked like the artist had conceived them as some kind of cosmic joke – hadn’t made any of them happy. Still, he said, he’d played by their rules. In high school, he played basketball; he got good grades. At the University of Michigan, he was in the right fraternity, on track to go to work for the family firm.