by Ed Gorman
ED GORMAN
PEGASUS BOOKS
NEW YORK
To some of the good ones along the way:
Linda Ashley
Terry Butler
Bonnie Cain
Connie DeVore
Sister Mary Emmanuel
Bunny Heskje
Doug Humble
Ted McCord
John McHugh
Ed Popelka
Steve Schwartz
Clete Sharp
Linda Shaw
Jim Siepman
Tom Spaight
Judy Stevenson
Jim Stuckenschneider
Mary Carol Travis
Dick Weltz
I’d like to thank Beth Morgan, who oversees the most informative Website of all for those of us who suffer the incurable cancer multiple myeloma.
As always, my thanks to Linda Siebels, whose first read and first edit of my books is invaluable.
So let us not talk falsely now
the hour is getting late
—Bob Dylan
“All Along the Watchtower”
It was quite a summer for news. President Lyndon Johnson’s effigy was burned on eight different campuses because of the escalating Vietnam war; the number of men drafted per month doubled to 35,000; Medicare was established; Mariner 4 sent back our first pictures of Mars; people who liked folk music were still mad at Bob Dylan for going electric; and for the first and only time, Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News mentioned our little town of Black River Falls, Iowa.
The story dealt with a rather befuddled police chief named Clifford Sykes, Jr., who had joined forces with an equally befuddled local minister, H. Dobson Cartwright, to rid our town of sin by putting all the high school–age boys with long hair in jail. They would be released only when they signed a “contract” guaranteeing that they would get their hair cut within twenty-four hours. Cartwright was of the opinion that the Beatles were instruments of Satan and that long hair on boys was a sign that they had handed their souls over to the Prince of Darkness himself.
It was hard to tell who resented the arrest decree more, the boys or their parents. The CBS story focused on the near-riot that occurred in front of the new police station on the night of July 23 when at least three hundred parents and their long-haired offspring demanded the badge of the aforementioned Clifford Sykes, Jr.
Also present were representatives of the state attorney general, the ACLU, and three members of LEGALIZE POT NOW! The assistant attorney general and the woman from the ACLU addressed the crowd and said that their boys had nothing to fear, that what the police chief and the minister advocated was clearly unconstitutional, and that whoever was hurling rocks at the police station should cease and desist. The three scruffy teenagers with the marijuana organization just watched the proceedings with very glassy eyes.
Now if you were working for the Chamber of Commerce and were trying to attract business to Black River Falls, this was not exactly the kind of story you wanted publicized. The sheriff was clearly a rube and the reverend a crackpot. Walter Cronkite, usually the most proper of men, couldn’t resist a wry smile just before he said goodnight.
That was the amusing part of the summer.
The less amusing part had to do with the doubled draft numbers. Our little town had already lost four men in Vietnam over the past two years. While the majority of folks never questioned what the government did—I suspect it’s that way in most countries—there were some of us who had a whole hell of a lot of questions about why we were there.
And we decided it was time to ask those questions in a public way.
1
BY THE TIME THE FIGHT STARTED, I WAS ALL SPEECHED OUT. Even though I was against the war in Vietnam, an hour and a half of listening to the same arguments had turned principle into monotony. The irony was that I was one of the rally organizers.
“How come you keep sighing?” Molly Weaver whispered. “Pay attention.”
In a previous life, the newest addition to the Black River Falls Clarion had likely been a nun of nasty disposition. We’d been struggling through a relationship for the past two months, both of us trying to recover from being dumped by people without the wisdom to love us and love us utterly. With her dark hair, slender form, bright blue eyes, and quick deft smile, Molly gave the impression of what my father would call “a gal who just likes to have fun.” But Molly’s fetching looks were misleading. She was like dating a character from an Ibsen play.
Tonight’s date had taken us to a small rally on the back steps of the Presbyterian church. There were maybe thirty people sweating it out in the eighty-five-degree dusk. Three speakers had preceded the present one. They were as sweaty as rock singers after an hour on stage. But they were only opening acts for the star.
I suppose I had to consider the possibility that I disliked Harrison Doran because I was jealous of him. For one thing, he was not stuck on the lower floors of life’s elevator. He was six-two to my five-six. He had also, though not necessarily in this order, appeared on stage with his good friend Joan Baez at her anti-war concert; spoken at the demonstration in Washington, D.C., in front of 25,000 people; and shared a radio interview with his close friend Norman Mailer. Doran was also due, at age twenty-five, to inherit somewhere in the vicinity of ten million dollars from his father. He had become a star in our little community. Girls trailed him everywhere.
So why would I be jealous? Me? Sam McCain?
The people in the front row held lighted candles in the vermilion moments before full darkness; the people in the second row held bobbing signs.
With his long blond locks and beard and his quarterback size, Doran did have a certain theatrical style, the kind of cavalier who also had a doctorate from Yale. Oh, yes, the town ladies loved him, though after a month of being dazzled some of them were starting to find his narcissism overwhelming. Not Molly. Molly had once dragged me to a dinner in his honor and we’d had the misfortune of sitting near him. I should say I had the misfortune. Molly was transfixed. That she had a crush on him was easy to see.
The speech droned on. I was thinking about the double feature at the drive-in, two Hammer films both with Peter Cushing. They’d be starting in half an hour. I was hoping we’d be there in time. I hated being late to a movie and as much as I was against the war, She and The Evil of Frankenstein sounded a lot better than sweating it out here.
He was just there suddenly, Lou Bennett, or as he prefers to be called, Colonel Lou Bennett. It was a sneak attack. The crowd had been listening to Doran, not paying attention to the fact that a form even darker than the shadows was moving to the top of the concrete steps where a stand-up microphone had been placed.
Bennett wasn’t threatening at first. He just walked over to Doran and stood next to him, a rangy, gray-haired muscular man in a blue golf shirt and chinos. You could feel how the crowd seized up when they saw him. After glancing at the retired Army man, Doran tried to keep talking but quickly gave it up. “Is there something I can do for you, Colonel?”
“Yes, there is, Mr. Doran. I’d like you to give me the opportunity to rebut what you’re saying. I think the people need to hear the other side.”
Stray boos came now. There was going to be a confrontation. When my stomach knots a certain way, it’s never wrong.
“We hear your side of the story everywhere we go,” Doran snapped. “You’ve got the whole government and the whole news media behind you.”
“That’s because they know the truth.” Only now was Bennett’s voice getting tight.
“This is a bogus war, Colonel. I don’t want innocent children murdered in my name.” Everybody started clapping and yelling approval. Hell, even I did. “Now I’d appreciate it if you’d leave and let me finish my speech.”
That was when Bennett shoved Doran aside and grabbed the microphone. “My son Bryce gave his life in Vietnam last year and you people are trampling on his grave.”
And there it was. The unspoken had now been spoken. The death of his son in a far alien place called Da Nang. All over the country this rage and hatred was causing rifts between friends and even family members. Bennett felt the rage and hatred because of his son; we felt it because of the slaughter on both sides and the folly of the whole goddamned thing. Another war. A good share of the country seemed to need one from time to time. There was no other way to explain how easily they could be led into it. And we knew damned well, it would keep expanding.
“Go home, Bennett! You don’t belong here!” somebody in the crowd shouted.
“You’re a pig, Bennett!” somebody else bellered.
“Your son died because of people like you! You killed your son!” Ugly as it was, the third cry silenced everybody for a moment.
Bennett’s entire body jerked as if he’d been physically wounded. He gaped right, then left, as if he expected somebody to come and rescue him. He looked older, too, and despite the gym-hardened sixty-year-old body, suddenly he seemed frail.
This wasn’t what I’d come to hear. I’d never liked Bennett, but I didn’t want to see him ripped apart.
Doran made a lunge for him, but Bennett had enough strength to shove him back.
“You people should go home and get down on your knees and thank the good Lord for the lives our fighting men have given you.” At this point he didn’t need a microphone. His voice was carrying far past the parking lot behind us. And then he broke: “That’s what my son gave his life for. For you and you and you. And what the hell do you give him?” He was sobbing now, his voice cracking. “And what the hell do you give him? You give him this!”
I was pretty sure everybody else was responding the way I was. He’d shocked us. And not because he was the bully who’d commandeered the microphone but because he was this asshole who for at least one startling moment was not an asshole at all. He was just this poor guy who’d lost his son. It didn’t matter how he felt about the war in general. The war had taken his son. The son who’d spent his life growing up in Black River Falls. The son who’d been a nice young kid. He’d married a town girl and then went to war and died.
The only light was from the candles and the lights inside the church that filled the glass rear entrance doors. Bennett staggered around like Lear, knocking over the microphone as he did so. Screeching assaulted the steamy air as the microphone bounced off the concrete entranceway.
Nobody was moving to help Bennett. He needed to be assisted off the platform. He just kept stumbling around. I wondered if he’d had some kind of breakdown.
I said nothing to Molly. I just worked my way through the people in front of me and rushed to the steps. I was almost there when I saw Doran finally move. He walked over to Bennett and tried to put his hand on the man’s shoulder. And that was when it started. Bennett swiveled around like a spooked animal. But that wasn’t all he did. He brought up a massive fist and slammed it hard and unerringly into Doran’s face. Doran screamed. Actually screamed. I wondered if his nose was broken.
Doran started to pull away but Bennett followed him and hit him twice more, once again in the face and then in the stomach. I was able to shove Bennett so that Doran would be out of target range.
Bennett was shouting at me. He was also swinging at me but I stayed below the punches and just kept slamming the palms of my hands into his chest to force him back. By now three men among the protestors had jumped up next to us and helped me restrain him.
I glanced behind me once. Molly was nursing the prone figure of Harrison Doran. In that millisecond, I realized that she’d finally managed to hook up with him. I’d sensed that was where it was heading—she’d told me she’d once plastered her bedroom walls with photographs of Fabian; Doran had taken old Fabe’s place.
A siren. The police station was only three blocks away. Somebody had warned the police that this sanctioned protest was turning bad.
The men had managed to push Bennett up against the entrance doors where they held his arms so he couldn’t swing. He wasn’t screaming now, he was sobbing again. I wished he’d been screaming. It was a hell of a lot easier to take.
The candles were all out. The small gathering stood in broken little groups talking quietly. Seeing Bennett snap as he had wasn’t good for political morale. Bennett was a bastard, but I pitied him; and Molly’s nursing Doran struck me as a betrayal. There was a quarter moon and the lawn had been mowed today and I wanted to float away on the summer sweetness of the scent.
Then I heard him: “You take your hands off the man or I’ll throw all of you in jail.”
Clifford Sykes, Jr., known to most townspeople as Cliffie, had arrived in his tan uniform with the big Western star on his breast pocket and his campaign hat slanted on his thick head. In case you missed the Western motif, he wore his Sam Browne low on his hip like the gunfighters in cowboy movies. He didn’t have framed photos of Fabian on his office walls, but I bet he had a few of Glenn Ford.
For a while there, Cliffie had started acting like a serious police officer. He’d rescued two people from a burning car, told a deputy to knock off the racial slurs, and had let his cousin Jane Sykes—the district attorney I’d fallen in love with; the district attorney who’d broken my heart—actually give him and his staff a few lessons in police conduct. But when Jane decided to return to Chicago and her ex-husband, Cliffie seemed to forget everything he’d learned.
He elbowed through the gathering and then hurried up the steps. “I should’ve figured you’d be involved in this, McCain. The only thing I’ll say for the judge is she sure as hell wouldn’t hook up with a bunch of Communists like this.”
He was moving all the time he was yelling at me. The men had unhanded Bennett, but Bennett hadn’t moved. He’d quit sobbing, but he stared straight down and made tiny whimpering sounds.
“Lou, Lou, what the hell did these bastards do to you?”
No response. I moved closer and that was when I saw, peripherally, Doran limping away. Molly had her shoulder under his arm and her hand on his stomach. The shoulder I understood. The stomach looked like the female equivalent of a cheap feel.
“Lou, Lou, you got to look at me, Lou!” As he said this, Cliffie snapped on a silver flashlight the size of a ball bat and waved the beam so his officer would come up here and help him.
“Maybe he needs a doctor.”
Cliffie’s facial expression was lost in the shadows but his voice was clear: “McCain, I’m ordering you to disperse this crowd and you to go with them. That permit I gave you is cancelled. And you can tell that to the beatnik pastor too.”
Then he leaned closer, his beer breath scouring my face and said: “That pastor. He’s no pastor.”
Pastor Gerard had replaced Pastor Beaton. Gerard was only twenty-eight, and he and his wife were known to serve wine at their parties and listen to jazz. Beaton had been seventy-nine when he finally retired. A town wag had once claimed that Beaton had fallen into a coma around age fifty-five, only nobody had ever noticed. Cliffie had been heard to call Gerard and his wife “bohemians,” which confused some of the locals of Czech heritage. “Now you get them the hell out of here, you hear me?”
I faced the few remaining protestors. I didn’t have to say anything. They’d heard Cliffie bellering. I saw Molly helping Doran into her car.
The odd thing was that after that first jab of jealousy, I found myself not caring. Molly and I had been going nowhere, anyway.
I was fifteen feet from my red Ford ragtop when a small red Triumph shot into sight so fast I wondered if it would be able to stop before it overshot the parking lot.
The woman who climbed from it shouted, “Where is he, McCain?”
“Cliffie has him. Your father’s not doing very well.”
“You had to have this goddamned thing, didn’t you?”
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Usually I would have argued with the arrogant Linda Raines, but her father was sick for one thing, and for another I had no energy for it.
Her face was lighted suddenly by headlights. I turned to see a red MG pulling up just a few feet from us. David Raines, Linda’s husband, did his best James Bond by leaping over the car door and hurrying to us. “Linda! Wait!” But she was already running toward her father.
“This was a stupid goddamn idea, McCain. You can tell all the people on your stupid little committee that I said that.” He set off after his wife.
I watched her rush across the lawn toward the rear entrance of the church. She was a small, finely made woman of thirty. She’d been a year ahead of me in high school. Her dark good looks made her popular despite her famous dark moods. I’d been told that her moods had calmed over the years, but not her intensity.
She was gone into the shadows, leaving me to stand there and think about Lou Bennett and being forced to see him as a human being instead of a demon, which I resented. He’d spent his years promoting his friends to the city council and getting his way more often than not. I never forgave him for humiliating my father one night at a council meeting. I was twelve or thirteen. We lived in the poorest part of the city, the part called the Hills. My father wanted to know when a long-promised skating rink would be built for people on our side of town. He said, “It ain’t right to keep promising and not making good on it.” I was embarrassed; I still remember the shame I felt. And then I hated myself for feeling shame. My father had only gone through eighth grade in the Depression. He read a lot, but every so often an “ain’t” would slip out. Lou Bennett stood up in the front row and said, “Well, we sure ain’t going to break our word no more, Mr. McCain.” I imagined that my father could still hear the laughter of that night; I still could. It was one of those moments nobody but my father and I would remember. It was a moment I’d never forget.
