by Tom Corbett
“What did happen to her in the end?” Josh was curious.
Peter opined, “My guess is that she was always searching for things that were not there, and thus remained very unhappy. She was the well-scrubbed sorority sister who never found a way into a sorority, could never figure out if she wanted in. Then, she fell in with this exciting but twisted group who were hell-bent on saving Western civilization. It lured her in and chewed her up. She said all the right words, dressed in the correct uniforms, but did not belong. In the end, you cannot fake conviction. It takes too much out of you. Each of us fought to find out who we were. For some, it took a long time. Too bad you don’t get an instruction book at the start. That’s where God screwed up. He didn’t give us an instruction book, not that I ever could understand those damn things. Ever read those come-ons for do-it-yourself crap, even a child can put this together. Well, maybe a child but no one over twelve. But I digress. Anyway, I looked her up toward the end. Her brother asked me to do it. Now there was a useless piece of shit, the older brother, I don’t care how high in the DOJ he rose. I think he was afraid to see her in case it ruined his damn career. She was in terrible shape, thin as a rail, nervous, distracted, all the signs of a junkie playing out the end game. I could not get her into treatment and had no leverage, not being family. You might ask why Chuck didn’t look her up himself? My guess is that she probably embarrassed him.”
“Peter, you are good people,” Josh said.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Morris intoned. “Do you ever think back to those days? Sometimes when no one is in the bookstore, which is far too often, I see us back then. We are young again, full of vision and so righteous in our purpose. It is almost as if all that were in some other life, as if it did not happen to us.”
“I know what you mean,” Carla said. “Remember our first so-called action? What were we thinking? I mean, we were among the smartest in the school, except for that Jewish girl you dated, Josh, the one who was the smartest.”
“Sarah.”
Carla continued. “Whatever, anyways, we picked out a selective service office and decided to break in to destroy records. The three of us dressed in dark clothes, I’m surprised we did not put boot black on our faces like all those covert guys. We were not settling for doing something symbolic, this was to be the first strike of an uprising that would take down the war machine. God, we took ourselves seriously. Remember, we parked four blocks away and crept along in the dead of night?”
“What I remember is that Mo stumbled on a curb and I almost crapped in my pants,” Josh said.
“Was that the time a cruiser pulled around the corner and we jumped behind some bushes?” Carla asked.
“No,” Morris said, “that was later at the facility in Ware, Massachusetts. This was the first when we were even more jumpy. In any case, we get to the door and start to argue. When we pry it open, what if an alarm goes off ? Carla still wanted to do something to indicate we had struck while Josh wanted us to get the hell out of there. In any case, we finally got to work to prying the door open. Since we were the gang that couldn’t shoot straight, I tried first. As you can see, I have the arm strength of a wet noodle. After struggling, Josh just grabs the crowbar and gives the damn thing a good yank. We thought you could hear the resulting crack in downtown Boston when it broke. We wait, no alarm sound. Next, we start and right then Carla asks if anyone considered the possibility of a silent alarm. We all froze to think that one through but decided we were screwed anyways and kept going. Once in, we started debating what to focus on. Remember us checking out various file draws, this was long before computerization. We came across something that looked like pending draft decisions where the status was under dispute. Those we piled out onto the floor and poured red paint all over them. Then we ripped up stuff and did other mischief before getting skittish and deciding to get out.”
Carla laughed in a way that pleased Josh. “Oh yes, and we got about a block away and our discipline broke down. We started running like mad. Talk about looking guilty. International jewel thieves we were not.”
Rachel looked on with a bemused expression she could not suppress. “Why didn’t you stop? Clearly, you were out of your league.”
“We did get better with practice,” Carla noted. “Not perfect, though. Later, we were doing an office in Lawrence. It was sandwiched in between several businesses. Obviously, now being pros at this, we were not going to break in the front door facing the street. With great stealth and consummate cunning, we snuck down the back alley. But we counted the doors wrong. So then, when we broke in, it was the wrong place It was not a government office at all.”
“What was it?” Cate asked.
“A lingerie store!”
Silence, then everyone laughed as Cate said, “So you knocked off Victoria’s Secret?”
“Well, I did grab a couple of lacy bras before we left.” Carla’s lips were curled in a thin smile. “Funny now, not so funny then.”
Josh chortled. “Ha-ha, you didn’t even wear bras back then, I suppose I could’ve used the sexy nighties, though, when seducing the ladies. Hey girlie, want some sexy lingerie? Let us face it, my charms alone were not going to get these gals into my bed.” His earlier anxiety was evaporating. “But things soon got serious, or more serious at least. Jimmie and Bob had big plans. They came and asked me if I could get them dynamite and stuff like that. This was nuts, but I didn’t even ask why. I was the go-to guy. I had the connections, through my dad’s bar, so I showed them where they could get the stuff, a small construction company owned by a guy who frequented my dad’s place. I had done some odd work for him and knew the layout. God, I wish I had that moment back, stupid, stupid, stupid.” He got up and poured himself another drink. “And then there was the time that Helen came up to me and said I should help her on an action…we called them actions back then. She told me Mo wanted it done.”
Mo shrugged. “I doubt that. I never would have gone on an action only with her. She always was a wild card. I doubt all her marbles were in place.”
“I took her at her word and drove her to a place in Worcester. She had a big bag with cans inside. I thought it was paint. I was getting nervous now. We had been lucky, moving around and getting lost amid so much growing antiwar stuff. But patterns would not be overlooked forever. I had a terrible feeling in my stomach from the start.” He took another sip. “We get inside and all seemed okay. We open some files, and she gives me a can. I pour the paint, and she takes another can. As she pours the liquid out, I stop in my tracks. That is not just paint, even I knew it was laced with an accelerant of some kind. The smell is unmistakable. Before I can say anything, she strikes a match and the place goes whoosh. I thought my freaking eyelids were gone. That moment got me thinking about backing off.”
“In what way?” Cate asked.
“I could see that the logical imperative was to become more extreme. You felt you had to ratchet up when there was no response. And even a numbnuts like me could see that no one would suddenly end the war nor there would be no general uprising. We would be alone, and we would eventually get caught. But for what? Up to that moment, no one had been injured. Fortunately, the fire was put out before anyone was hurt, there were apartments next door. It could have been a disaster.”
“On the next action, with the usual team, an alarm did go off. We barely got our asses out in time. They were beefing up security, that would not be their only response. That insight and my conscience were catching up with me, well…”
“Hmmm,” Carla murmured. “you did an action with Helen. I forgot.”
“Was that important?” Josh asked.
Suddenly the door opened and Connie, Usha, and Meena were back. They had Indian food. “Hope everyone likes spicy food.” Josh laughed as Peter wrinkled his nose. “Come on, you ignorant Wop, time to try new things, not everything can be smothered in marinara sauce.” Everyone found their way to the food and loaded up. People ate and exchanged pleasantries about the day
and how Josh obviously had everyone fooled. Josh was aware that Cate and Rachel kept glancing in his direction.
“What were you guys talking about?” Connie asked as the dinner wound down.
“Just reliving old times, when a few of us thought we could change the world, make it right.” Josh smiled as he looked at Carla and Mo. “Funny how our youth morphs with time. What we loved or hated or feared is reborn in our imagination. But I wonder, I’ve always wondered about whether we really were so wrong? Were we? Damn it, we were among the brightest of our generation. I’m convinced of that. Yet we became outcasts in our own land except for Peter.”
Peter put his plate down. “And you, Josh, not an outcast, just an exile. Hey, remember that night when Mo asked us to make a kind of bond with one another? Of course you do, we all do. Then you will remember that I left. Funny, even though that decision probably saved me untold grief and gave me a shot at a good career and nice family and all the trappings of middle- class success, I still don’t know if I did the right thing. I wanted to be with you guys so much. I also believed you were right. For me, the choice was one of cowardice. I didn’t have the guts to do what I thought was right. At a moment of truth, I chose the easier path. And it wasn’t like I gave it great thought. At the time, it struck me as no more consequential as choosing a movie. Later, though, I thought about it a lot.”
Josh leaned back. “No, Peter, don’t be hard on yourself. You were not alone in your thoughts. I came within a whisker of joining you. These things, these decisions, were never easy, except in the moment. Funny, you spend all kinds of time trying to decide what movie you want to see on a weekend and almost no time on the course of your life. I bought this house after walking through it once. Okay, it had a roof and I could walk to the university, so good enough. Of course, it was affordable back then, but that’s the thing. Have you ever observed real decision makers? They will spend time on small matters like whether to hire an extra secretary for the office and then pass a huge entitlement budget without much debate. They can get their head around the small issue, but the big stuff is too big. Events carry you along. You flow along day by day and suddenly, you find yourself facing something big, perhaps irreversible. But you never know at the time. I suppose there are roads taken and not taken that we choose all the time and never appreciate the consequences. Other times, we think of something that is small yet is of the most enormous import. How does one ever know? But that night, when Morris asked for our pledge, it seemed the fork in the road. And I just decided with trepidation but not great consideration. None of us said, give me a week to think it over. That would have made sense but not one of us did that. How odd.”
Morris sighed. “Perhaps you have a point. I was carried along by everything in my life. My heritage was all about fighting oppression, seeking justice for working people. Hell, I was weaned on the holocaust. Righteousness is what I was fed as a child. Other kids ate oatmeal, I was spoon-fed revolution. By the time I was eight years old, my fate was determined. There was no other choice, so I never thought about things.”
Carla then chimed in. “I grew up in a religious family, my dad was a rabbi, and I took it seriously. I absorbed the guilt at least, that I needed to do the right thing and fight evil.”
“I always knew you wanted to be a Catholic, Carla.” Josh chuckled.
“What?”
“Come on, think about it. Most of the left-wingers in our generation were either Jews or adherents to the one true and Catholic faith.”
“The one true what?” Carla seemed puzzled.
“That is what we called Catholicism when I was young.” Josh got up. “Like all of us, I have gone over those times again and again in my head. Rachel wonders why I hid up here for so many years, even after I could’ve come home. It was fear in part. I always worried that a warrant would be issued for my arrest and that coming back to the States would end with my ass in the pokey. Since I never changed my name and the RCMPs never came to arrest me, I knew that was just my paranoia after a while. Most of my paralysis was guilt. In my head, I had committed to my friends and then I ran away. I would read about Jimmie’s death, arrests, trials, prison sentences, and think only that I was the coward that ran away. What did Shakespeare say, the coward dies a thousand deaths but the hero dies but once? That’s so true. I just could not face anything for a long time. By the time I relaxed, I had a new life but still could not shake my fear that there would be a knock on the door. I guess I was beyond paranoia, I had wandered well into the land of the delusional.”
“While I do subscribe to the belief that you were always bat-shit crazy, you were not as paranoid as you think,” Peter chimed in. “Chuck Olson was, in truth, after your ass. Oddly enough, we were both assigned to a joint task force on domestic terrorism. You were in our sights, and Chuck seemed to have it in for you. If you had asked in the 1970s, I would have advised you to stay up north. It was personal with him.”
“His sister, he probably blamed me.”
“Yeah, you did have a way with the ladies, and I can’t discount that. Not that I’m looking for praise, but I kept trying to deflect him.”
“Why?” Josh asked.
“Oh, loyalty, I guess. I knew you were harmless. In my mind, you would never be a terrorist even though you were on one of our watch lists. In those days, it didn’t take much to get on one of those. Of course, I didn’t know about all your misdeeds, that you were stupid enough to steal from the mob. That blows my mind. Frankly, I’m glad I didn’t know about all of it, I would have been conflicted. That would have been tough. I had you pegged as a stupid Mick, as most of your tribe were, nothing more.”
Josh thought for a moment. “We all had our moments of struggle, of decision. Hmm, I wonder if we thought ourselves invulnerable. Is that why we just made these…casual choices. It seemed like we would sit around chatting up things like…oh well, I guess I’ll try to bring down the state next week, or go to the shore for some sun? Were we naïve or stupid?” He paused as if seeking to answer his own query. “No, in the end, we were neither. Damn it, we were right in our analysis but wrong on tactics. That is clear now though it was not then. We were right on the war, but more violence was stupid beyond belief. But it goes deeper than that.”
“What do you mean?” Morris asked.
“We were raised in interesting times, an old Chinese curse. We did not know it, but we came of age when the American dream was real. From the war—the Second World War—through the early 1970s, America enjoyed almost unprecedented growth. But what marked the period as unusual was that the growth was shared equally by all. Not only did real incomes double but those at the bottom also shared in the good fortune as much as everyone else. In fact, they did better than the wealthy so inequality fell. What did that mean, you ask? Well, kids like us could go to college. We did not worry about getting jobs. We assumed jobs would be there. So rather than focus on survival, we obsessed about the higher-order issues like justice and equality and the good society. When I was in school, stateside college, I never worried about what courses to take. I selected the ones I thought I might enjoy. Now, I look over anxious faces of kids who are worried sick about their futures and what it holds. And the college kids in the States, those poor SOBs, are up to their asses in debt. If they don’t get a good job straight out of school, they will be off their parent’s health insurance and screwed if they have an accident. It is a different world. We were a fortunate generation and a cursed generation.”
“Fortunate.” Carla simply said the word, neither question nor confrontation.
“Yeah,” Josh responded. “We had this deep belief that all would turn out right, if only we stood up. We had a Teflon future before us. Nothing bad would stick, truth and justice would prevail. Too many B movies and superheroes.”
“Some of us were not blessed with rose-colored glasses. Some of us were even more cursed with an excess of conviction than others.” Morris grimaced.
“Yeah, for sure,” Josh agreed. “
we couldn’t ignore our sense of commitment. Yet, we still sinned.”
“Meaning?” Rachel asked.
“I think our biggest sin was to focus on the wrong thing. Now, give me a minute to see if I can get this right. We vented our spleens on the war. That was easy. But remember, the Port Huron statement, the signal call of our generation, was framed before Vietnam was on anyone’s agenda. It basically decried a lost generation dulled by success and lacking consciousness and direction. We lost that issue and, in truth, lost our way. Vietnam was easy. It was so wrong, so stupendously stupid. It was the Iraq war of our generation except the cost was greater both there and at home. There was even our WMD moment, the Gulf of Tonkin fabrication. It was easy to rally at least some support against the war as it dragged on and on with mounting casualties and increasing numbers being placed in harm’s way. With justification and encouragement, we were on our own slippery slope. There would be no easy exit once started because we could not end the insanity that was way beyond our meager abilities, and yet the psychological assault on our reason and sanity continued unabated. We were trapped by our own sense of right.”
“Having principles is such a curse, who knew?” Carla growled softly.
“It is. Especially when you pound on the wrong nail.” Josh stopped. “Where the hell did I come up with that metaphor? Those who never forgave Roosevelt and the Great Depression for evening out the odds of success in society were just waiting for their revenge. Remember, as late as the 1950s, the top tax rate hovered around 90 percent, education at public universities was a deal, unions were protected. The working guy had a chance, and his kids, us, had every opportunity. We assumed that we would sweep away the remaining detritus of injustice, like de jure segregation, and that all the economic gains that had been made would remain intact. Little did we know.”
“Yeah, I guess our crystal balls were a little cloudy,” Morris said.
“While we frittered our energies away on something that would end in any case. America would eventually lose in Vietnam, that was certain. Just as the British would lose the Colonies, it was too expensive to fight against a determined foe thousands of miles away. We fought a symptom while the core of the elite began to focus on the war that counted. They systemically went about reframing the political debate and electoral protocols to dominate US policies. Think about it. How does a major political party that essentially serves the interests of the top sliver of the economic pyramid retain such a hold on power? It makes no sense. Huge numbers must vote against their own interests. There is one county in Kentucky that is virtually all-white and dirt-poor. Over 90 percent are on food stamps, and their kids are on free or subsidized lunches. Yet they vote overwhelmingly Republican, the party that would eviscerate those benefits they desperately need to survive. Why would they do that? I guess because they still believe that the GOP will make it hard on those they despise—minorities and immigrants and all those they are permitted to feel superior to by the right-wing ideologues. The strategies of the right are not all that brilliant. They use the oldest misdirection plays in the book—we will give you permission to hate the guy that looks a little different than you while we steal you blind.”
