by Daniel Kraus
Even I became riled by such words. It became difficult to see my body of lacerations, burns, and gouges as anything but proof of a historical ordeal. When Scheinberg finished and the crowd took up the chant of HEY, HEY, LBJ, HOW MANY KIDS DID YOU KILL TODAY? I did my thing, and whether spectators believed it to be an act or authentic was of niggling import. The point was that they were moved by what I did, yet moved toward something larger than me, and instead of feeling cheated, I felt inspired. There was a strange sort of satisfaction in contributing to a neighbor’s struggle without personal payoff; I believe they call this a sense of “community.”
My martyrdom that April afternoon was a crucifixion done upside-down in the style of the Apostle Peter, who’d insisted he didn’t deserve the same death as Jesus. That specific concern I did not share—certainly I was superior to Nazareth’s one-hit-wonder!—nor did it bother student protestors, who tended toward a generalized we-are-all-connected spirituality. If Zebulon X died, a part of them died, too; so, too, died the soldier in Vietnam; so, too, did his Vietnamese analogue; so, too, did the American Dream that could not be worth such suffering. I was the conduit to these personal epiphanies, and I will not lie. It felt good.
As “The Ballad of Old Mr. Finch” hit Number eleven in August, NSTF attained top velocity with a three-day vigil commemorating an event close to my cold heart: the twentieth anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nighttime candles created uncountable shadows, and in each I hunted for the Millennialist to no avail; he’d been chased away, I felt certain, by the Fifty-One, content at last that I was making good use of my death. A day later, we hung antiwar banners across train tracks that transported drafted soldiers, which landed dozens of us in handcuffs. Two days after that, a black man was beaten by a pig in full view of friends, and the city exploded into riots. It was Watts, California, the same place from which I’d rescued Merle in 1941 and murdered her morphine dealer, Sandy, but by the time NSTF got there, the rebellion had petered out and the crumbling two-story building in which I’d found Merle was no longer available for nostalgic sightseeing. It had, like most relics of my past, been burned to the ground.
V.
I QUIT HEARING “THE BALLAD OF Old Mr. Finch.” Disappointing, but I awaited the Beau-Ts’ sophomore smash. The airwaves, however, had forsaken resplendent harmonies in favor of fuzzy psychedelics that brought to my mind images of a cobra swaying, perhaps to strike, perhaps just to salivate crudely. Baby, light my fire, these songs begged, before we paint the windows black, because then who knows? We might just see for miles and miles and miles.
Scheinberg’s source was right on. Troop numbers in Nam had redoubled to a staggering four hundred thousand. For protestors, it made for a source of inexhaustible fuel. NSTF activists dropped out of school, took to the streets, and spread the bad word in the form of basement-printed bulletins called “undergrounds” with titles like Berkeley Barb, Free Student, Angry City Press, News from Nowhere, Partisan, Rat, and my personal pick, Fuck You. These were disseminated in every major city and, like the Dr. Whistler handbills of old, kept readers in the know of all the hippest happenings, mine included.
Booking me at your protest event became as de rigueur as hiring a clown for your child’s birthday party, except rather than party hats and balloons, I came equipped with spears, knives, rods, whips, projectiles, and other festive thingamabobs. I began to receive invitations from bodies as diverse as Rising Up Angry (blue-collar unionists), the Young Patriots (disenfranchised white migrants), the Young Lords (prideful Puerto Ricans), La Huelga (Chicano crusaders), Redstockings (leftist ladies), and the Young Socialist Alliance (Trotskyist agitators). The selfless young people among whom I existed had taught me that a Better God should not choose favorites. I accepted every invite, which sent Scheinberg into a hard-hat-hurling huff.
“You can’t lose focus now!” cried he. “The NSTF is building a major rep, man! We’ll be bigger than the SDS by ’68, bigger than the SNCC by ’69! We’re going to change the world, you gotta believe that, but first we brothers have to stay brothers! I thought me and you were grooving to the same wavelength!”
The lingo had developed, but the message was identical to what Luca Testa had delivered while feeding me lamb brains the night we’d met: Have your fun, kid, but step outside my boundaries, and be sorry. But I’d changed since then, too; bullets no longer scared me. I was a free agent, and Scheinberg, as the kids liked to say, could suck an egg.
For nine decades, Reader, I’d been caught at seventeen, but the cliché about a stopped clock is true. Seventeen was, at last, the ideal age to be. Teenagers had seized college campuses, entire towns, the totality of public discourse, and they’d done so thanks to Rigby’s generation, who’d had marathons of missionary sex after World War II and ejected a shockwave of babies now matured enough to punish their begetters’ sins.
The so-called generation gap was a crevasse so deep, it might swallow us all. Every event at which I martyred was a-crawl with babbling, overdrugged, would-be prophets hocking their typed-and-stapled manifestos. Helping these young searchers had become my Grâl, and like Udo von Lüth and Otto Rahn, I would continue seeking it in the peaks and swales of every death. I dug deep into Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and got creative, sewing myself inside fresh animal skins like the martyrs of early AD Rome so that wild dogs would have at me; cinching myself inside a bag of imported scorpions like Julian of Antioch; sitting upon a red-hot metal throne like Saint Blandina; and being shot through with arrows like Sebastian of Milan. My pain released that of those who watched me. You only had to see their faces to know it.
These ragtag public-park pilgrims claimed to be blind to skin color yet adored colorful costuming. Whenever a martyrdom ruined my wardrobe, a gypsy sort was there to donate cooler threads, and by and by I looked less like an undercover pig and more like a “hippie,” adding to my aviator shades, noose necklace, and hard hat a regalia of tie-dye tees, baggy ponchos, and moccasins—Reader, judgeth me not! At NASA, no fellowship had been offered me. Among the hippies, fellowship overflowed, and these were the colors and textures of their world in which I walked, died, and resurrected, and it felt as natural as air, as song, as war.
One benefit of this looser brand of clothing was the ease with which it came off. I’d have liked to shake the hand of the playboy genius who’d inserted “free love” into the Movement’s platform! Pretty coeds who in earlier years would have held out for an Ivy League wedding got fresh with on-the-dole dropouts. Reputations were for “good girls”—and what, in a world of unremitting slaughter, was good if not one’s own body?
If I had only had the pecker with which to participate! Nay, I scolded myself, even if Bridey Valentine had showed up with my manhood in a handbag and a Triangulino with my scrotum in a change purse, I’d still have forced myself to demur. The hippies had been good to me, better than anyone else in a very long time, and for that I owed them a Better God’s chastity. That didn’t mean they needed know of whom I dreamt at night: my Wilma Sue, whose two arms, two legs, and two breasts were more sensual, soothing, and secure than any magnitude of hippie harem.
Silence remained Zebulon X’s chief character trait, and I typically sat alone while others plotted, partied, and porked. One such lonely winter night took place following a Pittsburgh “love-in,” at which my martyrdom had been outshined by the release of hundreds of kites, bubbles, and balloons. The whole thing had put me in an offish mood, as I’d been hired by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a wobbly crew of ex-soldiers on crutches, in wheelchairs, and, like me, missing limbs. As it happened, our event had intersected with an NSTF march, and beyond our singsong of “L-O-V-E,” I could hear the fanatic bullhorning of Harvey Scheinberg.
That night the smoke was thick, not from grass but from the incinerations of Selective Service draft cards by conscientious objectors (or cowering cowards, were you less charitably inclined). The passion of the participants brought to mind the book-burning of the Hitlerjugend, and troubled by the
parallels, I walked across the unlit park and found a bench. The smoke drifted my way, and so I didn’t see Scheinberg until he sat next to me, knocking back an Iron City Ale.
His hair had buckled beneath its own height to drop as a thick cape over his shoulders. A full beard had absorbed his muttonchops, and despite the cold he went bare-chested but for a moonstone upon a leather strap. His serene eyes followed the paths of invisible fireflies as he offered up a piece of wax paper upon which was adhered squares of gelatin printed with rainbow-colored peace symbols. I shook my head; was I the only one who saw the symbol’s resemblance to swastikas?
“LSD, not LBJ,” encouraged he.
“There is no point.”
“Will you just drop the acid, man? It’s only three hundred mikes.”
To shut him up, I peeled off a peace sign and centered it upon my dry tongue.
“You got to make time to mellow out, man. Acid ought to be your trip. That and mescaline. There’s a lot more exploring to be done in here”—he tapped his temple—“than up there.” He pointed at the stars.
It was what I needed to hear. The day’s papers had led with news from Cape Canaveral. Gus Grissom had burned to death in a launch-pad fire along with two copilots. Grissom had been among my least favorite Astros, and yet I couldn’t shake his death. I checked the stars Scheinberg had referenced and wondered if the hippies were right that fellow humans were the only bodies worth understanding. Scheinberg sighed.
“You’re such a bring-down, man. There’s a real scene to be experienced, right in front of your face, and one day you’ll be sorry you didn’t get high on all of it.”
His breath plumed white into the black night. Mine, of course, did not.
“What do you think?” posed I. “Will it work?”
“The acid?”
“The marching. The speeches. All of it.”
“Why not, man? America’s gotta change sometime.”
The tab was sharp on my tongue. Everything that night was sharp.
“But what if America is already dead? Putridity is irreversible.”
Scheinberg crushed his beer can and hurled it.
“You need to put a microscope to your mind, man. How many times do you do your death act every week? I wish you did it with my group, for sure, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still dig what you do. You know there’s hope, man. You know there’s love. So many people can’t be dying for nothing at all. You don’t seem interested in chicks. You’re square as a box when it comes to dope. Why else would you even being doing this shit if you didn’t believe?”
Because of a personal vendetta against Gød?
“I suppose I’m not making sense,” said I.
“You burn your draft card? I did.” Scheinberg blinked. “Whoa. I think I’m freaking out.”
I owned one burnable thing—myself—and was too afraid to burn it.
“I don’t have a draft card,” said I.
“Already torched it, huh? See, man, you get it. You get it.” He held up a hand. “You see that? Inside my hand? There’s a little boy in there. He’s got bright red wings. It’s three-million o’clock. Okay, I’m definitely freaking out.”
He needed the bench more than I. I stood, removed the crocheted yarn vest I’d inherited from a beneficent bohemian, and used it as a blanket for the underdressed iconoclast. He did not resist, lying flat as a board and gawping at the stars with reverence. There was no question that he saw what I could not, in celestial objects, yes, but also in other people’s splendid potentials and beautiful failures. I’d seen glimpses—with Church, the Whites, the hippies—but reliable human connection remained, for me, elusive. I spat the dry acid, turned away, and listened for the patches of merrymaking in the park so that I might skirt them on my way out.
“What do you see?” gasped Scheinberg.
I jumped. He’d startled me.
“Blackness,” said I.
“That’ll change,” laughed he. “You wait long enough, the colors will come.”
VI.
AS MALCOLM LITTLE HAD BECOME Malcolm X and Zebulon Finch had become Zebulon X, boxing champ Cassius Clay repudiated his given name to become Cassius X. Shortly thereafter he adopted a full Muslim name, Muhammad Ali, and under it refused on religious grounds to accept military induction, declaring in his trademark dog-growl that he’d rather go to jail than shoot innocent women and children.
It shook the ground. Before Ali’s attestation, I had rarely seen black and white protestors intermingle, the former camp resentful over the 2-S draft deferments monopolized by white collegians, and the latter skittish about, to be blunt, blacks with guns. Now whites were reassessing the Nation of Islam as a potential ally. Why not, thought I, the Better God? Both groups wished to abolish racism, mistrusted Middle America, and believed that stopping the Vietnam War was the only hope of fixing the U.S.A.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s April 15, 1967, march was the largest demonstration to which I’d been invited, and I accepted, though I did so through a sensation of hardening cement. The colors Scheinberg had promised had yet to show. In this time of dynamic change, was I merely going through the motions? Four hundred thousand dissidents paraded from New York’s Central Park to United Nations headquarters, and King cried, “If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam.” I marched along, foot after foot, imagining my own autopsy. It would look much like America’s: flesh that had turned too quickly for someone so young and now emulsified at the brink of spoil.
The UN march begat a litter of ancillary bazaars. My services had been obligated to a bold coproduction of the Students for a Democratic Society and a burgeoning, already infamous Negro group called the Black Panthers, who advocated for any and all brands of violence if it ensured the safety and advancement of Negroes. I was duly intimidated the instant I wiggled past a rampart of billyclubbed pigs and onto the repurposed parking lot. Rank-and-file Panthers stood at attention in martial tiers holding emblemed flags, clad in the enviably sleek attire of waist-length black leather jackets, powder- blue turtlenecks, and insouciant berets. Trimmings included dark sunglasses, bandoliers of ammo, and rifles packed by everyone down to the Panthers stationed on adjacent rooftops, ready for the worst.
Only once I was confident that a bullet hailstorm was not in the forecast did I survey the goings-on. Dearest Reader, I hardly recognized it as America! Old Glory had been swapped for pennants of red, black, and green, beneath which Negroes in splendiferous dashikis and turbans sold shell necklaces and tiger-skin epaulets while negotiating in Swahili. A pair of men proselytized an exodus from Amerika—that’s how it was spelled on their fliers—for Algeria, the “motherland of Pan-Africanism.” The backbone of the scene was a semicircle of drummers pounding Zulu rhythms while women moved their sweaty bodies in a loose-jointed dance.
But do not think that this ebony Eden sold only sunny notions. The inspirational gospel choruses of my early martyrdoms had been supplanted by a chilling chant to the beat of the drums: “The Revolution has co-ome! / Off the pigs! / Time to pick up the gu-un! / Off the pigs!” When it finished, the speaker at the podium lifted his rifle above his head with one hand, and his voice cracked so loudly, I ducked, believing the rooftop militia had opened fire.
“Lyndon B. Johnson’s Amerika,” bellowed he, “is about to learn the difference between two million niggers and two million armed niggers!”
Hundreds of black-gloved Black Power fists jutted into the air. I was perplexed by how much it stirred me until I noticed the logo affixed to the speaker’s podium. It was, you see, a black fist, almost identical to the Black Hand logo I’d drawn on the extortion letters that had gotten me murdered. Was my journey here, to this specific place at this specific time, cosmic kismet? One of the few things I still possessed, after all, was a fist. I held it before me, studied the wounds of fishing hook, embedded tooth, and barbecue skewer. Once upon a time, I’d punched with this fist.
What might I do with it now?
She about-faced in a sudden swoop both feminine and combative, lips pursed for, presumed I, a heavy peppering of the word “cracker.” But instead her unpainted lips parted; indeed, every hostile line of her face softened. I, too, felt my own umbrage melt before I could identify the reason. The girl’s big brown eyes were fixed upon the noose about my neck as if she recognized it, which, of course, she did.
