Big Sex Little Death: A Memoir

by Susie Bright

  “What’s your problem?” Temma asked, swatting my bottom. “Chili’s leaving camp tomorrow; it’s perfect. It’s only an hour and a half away.” She tucked her long hair behind her ears with their enormous gold hoops.

  “Can’t you get us one of your ‘Cadillac friends’ to chauffeur us?” I asked.

  Temma screwed up her heart-shaped face. “That’s over,” she said, and then sang, “‘It was just one of those things … One of those bells that now and then rings … ’

  “‘But it’s all over now,’” she sang, switching lyrics and going flat. “And we have a very nice ride with Chili, if you and Hank Runninghorse can keep your fists off each other.

  Runninghorse was Chili’s best friend from high school — they did everything together. Runningmouth, as he was often called to his face, was as obnoxious as Chili was kind. But they had built an Oakland chapter of The Red Tide up from nothing — I had to hand them that.

  “Anyone else coming?” I asked, resigning myself.

  “Maybe Joe, maybe Steve P., I don’t know. But you have a seat.”

  Four hours later, Chili found me in the kitchen, stripping the clean dishes out of the Hobart. “Sue, I’m sorry, the Ford is screwed. The transmission only goes in reverse, and that’s with a lot of pleading.”

  I looked around the camp kitchen. We were the only two left. “There’s hardly anyone here,” I said. “Who’s going to take us back to the city?”

  Chili said he’d already thought of that. He was a little too enthusiastic — or maybe he was just playing his opposites game.

  He told me some autoworker contact, named Earl, also had a Ford van, and he was going to take Hank, Steve P., and me all the way back to the office, door-to-door service. “He lives in Hamtramck!” he added, like that was a plus.

  “A new contact, up here?” I was a little startled. The whole point of Commie camp was to better educate yourself so you could be a better recruiter, but you had to be pretty deep into socialism to attend in the first place. It wasn’t for newcomers. I’d heard more obscure Trotskyite history in the past week than I’d hear again in a lifetime. Last night Fat Henry had gotten drunk, peeled off his undershirt so that all his fur stuck out, and started bellowing out some dirty ballad about a Trot named Max Schachtman and a fat girl.

  Really, I had been in the IS for a year and a half now, and I was the closest thing to a “newbie” I’d met in camp.

  “This guy Earl’s been mostly studying with the UAW caucus in the East Barracks,” Chili said, pointing behind him.

  I shrugged and told him I’d be ready in an hour. Like young Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, if I could’ve taken Chili’s hand right then, with great prescience, I would have said, “And there started the longest night of our lives.”

  I wasn’t happy to be the only girl in the car. Temma had disappeared into the night with some new beau from the River Rouge plant who wore a silver spoon around his neck and had a Cadillac just for two.

  When we gathered at the parking lot at noon, I started to get in the back of the van, not looking at anyone, ready to read my John Reed memoirs in the back seat. Runninghorse grabbed my forearm and said, “No, Sue, you sit up front.”

  It was impossible to think that Hank was being chivalrous. The best seat in the vehicle? What gives? Hank rejected all niceties of male-female etiquette as counterfeminist, and everyone who knew him understood that he’d let a door slam in his grandmother’s puss without a second glance.

  I climbed up into the bucket seat, still puzzled, and came face-to-face with Mr. Earl’s big yellow grin, and even yellower hair, hopped up in the driver’s seat.

  “Hey there, jailbait!” the goober cried out. “I’m Earl Van Nuys the Third. God almighty, don’t rock the ammunition, darlin’.” He reached down into the console between us and came up with an open bottle. He threw his head back and gargled it down — which was saying something, considering the low headroom.

  I turned back to the boys in the back seat to accuse somebody of something, but it was too late. They all looked at me with beseeching eyes, communicating one single thought: Humor him.

  Well, Runninghorse’s eyes weren’t beseeching; they were more like, Maintain, bitch.

  Earl finished his gargle and fired the ignition, in a smooth stroke for someone who’d obviously been high for the past several days. He was so gracefully plastered that when his other hand fired up a joint, I realized he was backing up the van with his knees. I checked my seat belt.

  Earl was a ’Nam vet — two tours, baby — but they must have gone on forever, because Earl would not shut up about it. He craved our audience, my ears in particular. I had to share his smoke and brimstone — he was a veteran of the U.S. Fucking Army and They. Had. Fucked. Him.

  But who was “they”? I mean, he was an IS contact, right? He must mean the army or, at the very least, the VA hospital. But within the first fifteen minutes, he said “fuckin’ Charley” and “fuckin’ gook” about a dozen times. There wasn’t enough soap in the world to wash his mouth out.

  I was cringing, and cheated a glance at Runninghorse, who silently shook his head side to side: Don’t do it. Don’t say it. Shut Up.

  Steve P. looked like a skinny rabbit, his eyes getting pinker and pinker, his forehead a mass of sweating acne. Chili’s eyes held my sympathy, and I tried to imagine his meaning: This, too, shall pass.

  Earl acted like the boys weren’t there. He didn’t pass the joint to them; I did. My heart was beating hard enough to hear it in my head, and I couldn’t stop staring at the bottle Earl kept between his knees. It must be nearly empty by now. He might as well have hung a sheet on the side panel: Welcome, Highway Patrol, to Open-Container Drinking.

  If we got stopped, the shock of the booze and pot would soon give way to a full FBI investigation as to what was in our backpacks and boxes. We had a full load of incriminating evidence: socialist books, rifles, mailing lists.

  Unbelievable. Earl reached behind his seat and pulled out another fifth. I swore under my breath.

  Hank moved forward from the bench seat. He grabbed Earl’s shoulder. “Hey, man,” he said. “Take it easy, we gotta get the youngster home in one piece.”

  “Hey, man!” Earl cackled and shook him off. “I don’t take it easy, man; I take it!” he whooped, like a lunatic version of some Wobbly song he’d picked up at camp.

  The van swerved, but there was no one in the next lane. Something long and silver flashed out from beneath my seat when Earl corrected the wheel, and I yelped, “What’s this?”

  It was something in a holster. I picked it up.

  Earl shouted again and temporarily forgot to unscrew his next bottle. “Open it up, darlin’, and see what’s inside!” he urged me. “That’s my lady!”

  I heard Steve P. whimper, and Chili and Hank moved forward. I was glad for a distraction from the whiskey.

  It was a knife. No one would have known what it was at first glance, though, because it looked like a medieval instrument. Earl snatched it from my hand, and said, “Isn’t she bee-yoo-ti-ful! My lady gutted Charley many times; oh yes, she did.”

  I thought I was going to throw up. The blade was a foot long, one side curved like a pirate’s sword. On the other side, it was serrated like a saw. The tip formed a hook. I could see why Earl talked about her like she was a person, a she-warrior, a terrorist who could slay all the butter knives and steak cutters in a dishpan army.

  Earl liked to talk with his knife in his hand. He gestured and gesticulated through a hundred more soldier stories. My eyes stayed on the western light playing on his blade.

  Runninghorse tried to interrupt, wanted to doubt him. Hank had never handled such a knife, and I could tell he wanted to. But Earl wasn’t going to let go of it now. I could feel Chili drawing closer to Hank, tempering him quietly. So familiar. If he could soothe Runningmouth, and I could calm Earl, and Steve P. could stop mouth-breathing, then maybe we could get back to the national office on Woodward Avenue in one piece. />
  We got inside city limits. Earl tipped the hook of his lady at my head and then offered the knife to me, which I grabbed before Hank could make a pass. Earl was loosening his belt — shit, now what?

  “Goddamn, girl, I have to take a leak,” he yowled, like I was squeezing his tank.

  Chili spoke up, his first words: “We’re at Six Mile — five more minutes.”

  Earl took that inspiration to start describing what kind of havoc he and his “gook gutter” could wreck in the same amount of time.

  “What’s Fleetwood like?” I asked, willing him to leave Saigon. He looked at me like I’d asked him what it was like on Mars.

  “Huh?”

  “Fleetwood plant?” I began again. “Don’t you work there with Zelda and Brent and Henry and —”

  “Work there?” He choked on his spit. “Well, we’ll just see, won’t we, if I still work there or not!”

  I had no idea what he was talking about. He was still bombing Hanoi. How could someone who gloried in his Vietcong kill count be a contact of a bunch of socialists who, despite our self-defense credo, were more the type to hold hands and sing “Kumbaya”? This guy was a redneck Nazi drug addict. I’d watched my life pass before my eyes for the past ninety minutes, but now I felt something different: fury. Whoever had let this asshole into our cabbage patch — I might have to take Earl’s “lady” and cut him into a million pieces.

  The neon sign at Larry’s Diner came into view, the coffee shop below our office. Steve P. was gasping, but I kept my eyes on Earl’s hands, willing them to move to the right, pull to the curb — yes, yes, easy does it.

  “We’re here,” Hank announced, and leaned all the way over me to put his hand on the steering column and yank out the keys. The car shuddered, and we bumped into another parked vehicle in front of us. Runninghorse put his face in Earl’s, and said over his shoulder, “Sue, open his door.” Then to him: “Earl, you’re gonna take a piss now.”

  Chili climbed out the side panel door, yelling back at Hank, “I’ll get him, man, I’ll get him.”

  How did Earl drive at all? He couldn’t walk. He fell down into the street; I heard him, and the thud, and Chili trying to help him back up. But I was already well down the sidewalk, pushing open the lobby doors and praying the stink would fall behind me.

  Steve P. was right at my side — when we got to the foyer, he gave me a bear hug. “You saved us.”

  I looked at him, shaking my head.

  “No, no,” Steve heaved. “You’re so sweet and nice-looking, and you were so kind to that animal; he’s a monster!” He started weeping, and I had to tug at him to get him to continue climbing the stairs with me. We didn’t want to get called back for first aid.

  “Nice to him? I should’ve throttled him with both hands.”

  “You know, you just kept talking like you believed in him, which is the only thing he listens to; he’s insatiable.”

  “He’s suicidal,” I said, realizing something. I knew it so well. “We should be calling Bellevue — what’s ‘Bellevue’ in Detroit?”

  Steve had his keys out for our next set of doors. Our offices were at one end of the second floor of what had once been a small manufacturing firm. There was nothing at the other end except restrooms.

  Our new British National Secretary, Hugh Fallon, had tightened up our security since he’d arrived with his Manchester ingenuity. Now, instead of one set of glass doors and locks, there were two sets of steel doors, each one so heavy that I routinely had to put my shoulder into them to get them open. The first set required one key that you turned twice clockwise. The second door had a dead bolt that went one way and a knob lock that went the opposite.

  It took me five minutes to wrestle through the entrance, but noodle-thin Steve was so quick we spirited though. The second door made a groan when we opened it. Everyone in the office looked up at our grand entrance.

  Marty Breyer, our six-foot-tall UMW coal organizer from West Virginia, smiled and said, “Allow me, sweetheart,” taking my sweaty backpack off my shoulders. Temma told me he used to be an engineer at MIT — I couldn’t imagine it. Marty had this way of listening to everyone in a room, like each person’s story went right to his heart.

  Secretary Hugh was in the middle of the room, wearing a lavender shirt with French cuffs, scowling at pallets of new books that had just arrived. Our chief copywriter, Ty Burnside, waved at me without even looking up from his typewriter. There was Murray again, his camp chef’s toque replaced with a striped printer’s cap. I could hear Judith, our bookkeeper who looked like Mona Lisa, talking in the editor’s office. Michael, my only Los Angeles comrade in town, sprang up from the back and embraced Steve and me at the same time: “Your timing is perfect!”

  I squeezed him back harder. “No, don’t even tell me what you need now … I’m not going anywhere except into a shower. I’ve just been through a sewer.”

  Michael loosened his hug, acknowledging the stench. I wanted the bathroom key — Steve P. went to get it for both of us. But he came back and shook his head. “Sorry.” He gestured at the doors where Marty had just passed though on his way to the john. Shit. I hated it when a middle-aged person beat you to the bathroom — you had no idea how long it would be.

  “What happened?” Michael asked. I realized he’d shaved his beard off, the one he’d sported since I’d met him my first day at Uni High. Any other day that would’ve shocked me. But not today.

  Steve and I spoke almost simultaneously: “WHO THE FUCK IS EARL VAN NUYS THE THIRD?”

  Everyone within earshot looked blank.

  “UAW worker?” I continued. “Someone’s contact? Supposedly came up to camp from the Auto Caucus?”

  Steve P. delivered the full picture. “This racist, inbred piece of trash almost killed us driving home from camp, and he says that he just joined the IS yesterday!”

  Wow, I hadn’t heard that part.

  Ty tried to make light. “Hey now, Steve, don’t go talking ’bout ‘inbred’ to your West Virginia comrades.”

  “You have no idea what we’ve just been through,” Steve spat. He may have sounded like a baby, but he was right. I was freezing even though it was June; I wanted a blanket and a hot cocoa.

  Steve held court about the “lady” knife, and Michael put his hand on my shoulder. Marguerite, the typesetter, came over to me with the purple afghan she always kept on her chair.

  There was a thud against the outside doors. Not the inner ones, but the thick outer doors — the ones you had to unlock counterclockwise. I wondered if Runningmouth had lost his keys again — but it wasn’t his impatient banging.

  No, it was like a big package someone was shoving against a wall.

  Christ, I didn’t care. Send in the deliveries; send in the clowns. I wrapped Marguerite’s blankie all around me and closed my eyes, so tired.

  “Marty!” Hugh yelled. “ Bloody hell! Ty, Michael!”

  Hugh always snapped orders, but I’d never heard him yell like this. I opened my eyes and saw him trying to hold up a much bigger man, failing to push the second doors open. Murray and Michael rushed up help him. The big man collapsed to the floor, and Hugh broke his fall.

  It was Marty Breyer. He’d just gone to the bathroom with the key. But now he was lying on the floor, with a huge dark puddle spreading all over his chest. Hugh struggled out from under Marty’s body, his lavender shirt soaked scarlet-red.

  My mind went as blank as a stone. A single line entered it, as if in a dialog balloon: “The blood looks just like it does in the movies.”

  Hugh tore off his shirt and pressed it over Marty’s chest. It was leaking like a faucet. I heard Marguerite’s voice behind me, summoning an ambulance on the phone, her voice breaking up. But that wasn’t the only thing cracking. I heard one, two, three rifles behind me, pulling their magazines back.

  In the seconds since Marty had hit the ground, every man in the office had reached up, down, or behind shelves and desks to appear holding a firearm. Ty; Murray,
our telephone union guy; Chewy — they looked at one another like members of a night patrol. Like something Earl had told us about. They approached the front doors, anticipating an ambush. I realized they thought we were under siege.

  “Michael,” I whispered, and then realized I was whispering.

  Mikey heard me anyway, and held up his hands to the gun guys. “What is it, Sue? Who is it?”

  “It’s the guy who drove us; it’s Earl,” I said. “He has that special knife —”

  The new battalion doubted me. Chewy claimed there must be more men; he and Ty started taking positions to head down the hall to the bathroom and the front gate.

  “Secure the front doors!” Judith screamed. She was Chewy’s wife, Hugh’s current lover. The only woman there besides Marguerite and me.

  Hugh excoriated her for calling 911. “You fucking idiot!”

  “He’s dying Hugh, you bastard; he’s dying!”

  Hugh stood bare-chested in the middle of it all, as if Judith’s revelation had brought his own self-interest to heart. “I have to get out of here, now,” he ordered, and Judith ran up to him, car keys in hand. He turned to Michael. “Give me your shirt.’

  Michael ripped off his work shirt. Hugh slipped it over his shoulders, stepped over Marty’s body, motioned to Judith, and barked, “JFK. Meet me at the airport.”

  I didn’t get it. This supremely selfish man was now leaving town because one of his underlings was drowning in a sea of blood on his fresh-scrubbed floors? I bet Judith had waxed them herself.

  Michael saw my disbelief. “Hugh’s illegal, Sue. He can’t be here when the cops come … this is bad.”

  I could hear thunder coming up the stairs; everything was loud. Michael asked me for my jacket, so he wouldn’t be half naked, so I took off my mom’s navy sailor coat, and he squeezed into it. His muscles bulged in my skinny sleeves.

  He took me by the shoulders again. “Sue, look at me, and talk to me now, because the cops are coming through that door in one minute.”