Bring The War Home

BRING THE WAR HOME! A Novel About Resistance To TheVietnam War And Racism In The United States Marine Corps.

By

BARRY S. WILLDORF

A GAUCHE PRESS San Francisco, CA www.agauchepress.com

Dedication Copyright © 2001by Barry S. Willdorf All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form whether in print, electronically, by mechanical means or otherwise, including information storage and retrieval systems without the prior written consent of the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of the characters to actual people or of the events to events that actually took place is purely coincidental.

ISBN: 0-9713026-0-X

Inquiries or correspondence should be to the Publisher at www.agauchepress.com. Printed in the United States of America

To the servicemen and women who followed their hearts and minds in opposing a senseless war. And to the civilian activists who supported them.

In 1970, I was hired by a civil rights organization to defend active duty Marines who were involved in anti-war efforts and were fighting for racial justice at Camp Pendleton, California. They needed someone, anyone, to merely show up and throw a legal wrench in the gears of military justice. My professional inexperience was a perfect qualification for that type of task.

FORWARD I grew up in Massachusetts in the 1950’s, in a place where the WWII vets sat out on the stoop on hot summer evenings, smoking Pall Malls and Chesterfields and recounting their wartime experiences before an audience of slack-jawed, admiring pre-teens. It was the age of the draft. Two years in the Army was seen as a rite of passage. I fully expected that some day I would make that passage. However, the Vietnam War at first challenged and then upset these expectations. In 1965, as a student in England, I participated in my first demonstrations against the War. In 1966, I joined the Students for a Democratic Society while attending Columbia Law School. In 1967, I was a local organizer for “Vietnam Summer.” Thanks, in large part to the well-known Columbia student strikes that caused the cancellation of final exams for two consecutive spring semesters, I managed to graduate from law school and in 1969 I became an attorney. But, like many of my contemporaries, I had been too busy occupying buildings, attending demonstrations and leafleting to spend much time learning the tools of my trade. Thus, I was ill prepared for a legal career. Within weeks of my graduation, I was thrown out of my pre-induction physical, after a heated misunderstanding with a doctor about the haphazard way he was performing a certain delicate procedure. Getting thrown out of a pre-induction physical was a surprise because, by that time I was convinced that I would get drafted and was resolved to go in and “organize” though I was never really clear what that meant. But being rejected by the Army because of my attitude only egged me on. I decided to use my legal training to represent GIs.

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Just two weeks before my wife and I were to join a small group of activists in Oceanside, California that was supporting these Marines, their house was machine-gunned. An active duty Marine was wounded in the attack. We went despite this “message.” Over the following year, our group was threatened, harassed and was always under police surveillance. In spite of this close scrutiny, we took risks. We maintained an armed watch, night and day, to deter further attacks. We delivered banned anti-war reading material to GIs. We published and distributed a provocative newspaper. We also interacted with a broad range of civilians including clergy, timid peace activists, “movement heavies” right-wing adversaries, and even “radical chic” movie stars. There were some arrests and there were some narrow escapes. Every day was lived in an atmosphere of paranoia, adrenaline rushes and the potential of violence. Through this experience though, we had the privilege of meeting a wide spectrum of servicemen, enlisted men and officers, of all races and with very diverse backgrounds. Those GIs who knew us and understood what we were committed to accomplishing could see that we were acting out of a sense of duty. It created a bond with the servicemen we knew and worked with. For many of us, that bond remains intact to this day. As a lawyer who was on base almost every day, I was given the unique opportunity to observe the military without the blinders of stereotyping. It indelibly changed my political perspective and I try to touch on that in the pages that follow. Bring the War Home! is, admittedly, only one person’s attempt to put some perspective on anti-war activity in the military during the Vietnam War. Though it is drawn from personal experiences, I do not believe mine were especially unique. I have chosen the novel format out of respect for some very heroic GIs who deserve their privacy and peace. It would not do, even after all these years, to breach their honored confidences. Nevertheless, I

have attempted to faithfully memorialize a time and events that I fear are in danger of being lost, denigrated or trivialized. The accomplishments and the failures of the people involved in this effort to end an indefensible war, both military and civilian, represent a significant yet unfortunately obscure aspect of anti-war activity in this country. Bring the War Home! represents my modest attempt to secure for it at least a footnote in history.

Barry S. Willdorf San Francisco 2001

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Bring The War Home

PROLOGUE Jumpin’ Jack looked back over his shoulder one final time, just before he pulled himself up into the chopper. He tried to remember how it felt when he jumped down onto this ground on that first occasion. How the place looked to him then. And he found himself wiping back a tear when he recalled his naive enthusiasm for the mission. He squinted as he looked up into the steep, lush hills. Hills with cover that, like the VC, refused to die back despite the pounding. The napalm. The Willie Peter. He shuddered to think how much he had changed. But the senselessness of it all could not escape him. His tour was ending right where his conversion had begun. An LZ a couple clicks south of A Luoi along a thin ribbon of dust that the maps describe as Route 548. Smack dab in the heart of the A Shau Valley. That he was there, like thousands before him, beginning in 1966, was testament that nothing had been accomplished. Unless, you figured that a batch of KIAs and a mountain of mangled, amputated limbs were an accomplishment. Despite the effort, the bravery, the sacrifice and heroism that could not be denied and should not be forgotten, the NVA were still infiltrated in those steep hills. Returning after every operation, like water does in the hold of a leaky ship, no matter how often you man the bilge pumps. He had been brought up for just one more in a long series of those bilgepumping operations. Something called Dewey Canyon. Now he was back to the same spot, ready to rotate out. And although the landscape looked like it did the year, the decade, the millennia before, now it was adorned with ghosts. Neither best efforts nor atrocities, nor the millions of dollars that Uncle Sam poured in had made a difference. But he had changed. It was just a guilt-ridden shell of his former self the Marines would be returning. He was hoisting an emotional time bomb into the chopper that would fly him to Quang Tri on the first leg of a journey through Da Nang and finally back to Pendleton. Back to his very own personal and permanent fire-fight. The Black corporal, Donnie Woods, had beaten Jack home by a couple of months. Thanks to NVA sappers who hit under the cover of darkness, as -1-

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was their habit. As wounds go, it wasn’t much to complain about. No bragging rights. Only a shard of shrapnel that peeled back the top of his right index finger from the nail to the second knuckle, like a banana. But it hurt like hell. Nothing has more nerve endings than the tip of a finger and it was his trigger finger to boot. A corpsman dressed the wound and the field hospital stitched most of the peel back where it belonged. Probably because he was policing the garbage at his field kitchen when he was hit, the bacteria ran rampant and the thing got hellishly infected. He couldn’t cook and he couldn’t shoot so they sent him to the rear. For a while it looked like he might lose the digit altogether. By the time they had the infection under control, Woods was too short to reassign. So they sent him back to Pendleton. It was December 4, 1969. Donnie Woods, young, Black and proud, touched down stateside with a purple-heart and an attitude. He had earned respect. He landed just as the Chicago police were pumping a Black Panther leader named Fred Hampton full of lead while he lay asleep in his bed. They came back to a country far different from the one they left. When they had embarked, all we were saying was “Give peace a chance.” and “Bring the Boys Home!” But during their year overseasthe mood of the student protesters chanting on the stateside streetshad become angry. The new slogan had become “Bring the War Home!” There was a different quality now. A heightening sense of anger and betrayal on one side, resentment and accusations of treason on the other. Words were becoming heated. As usual, that leads to violence. Well, these GIs were bringing the War home. But not exactly in the romantic way we imagined. That’s the way wishes seem to work, especially when it comes to wars and we students were about to get our wish.

Bring The War Home

PART ONE THE FREE FIRE ZONE 1. “I took the job,” I announced as I walked in the door. There was no discussion. No debate. I took the job and I simply reported my decision to Emma. That’s how a man did things. “You took what job?” she replied, questioning, hesitant with a hint of annoyance. “What are you talking about, Eric?” We had been married for just over a year and I wasn’t quite trained yet. I still kind of peed on the floor and needed to have my nose tapped with a rolled up newspaper a lot. I needed to be housebroken. “I thought I told you about it,” I replied defensively. “Didn’t I mention that I was going downtown to a meeting with George Kahn, remember, the guy who’s hooked up with that civil liberties outfit from Cambridge that’s recruiting lawyers for that GI legal defense project? C’mon Emma, I know I told you about it.” “Eric, you told me that you were meeting with a guy who had some court martial cases he wanted you to take, not that you were heading off to a job interview,” Emma replied, her hands on her hips. Her lips twitched with a combination of curiosity and anger that she had been left out of the loop. It was becoming an issue with us, how I tended to make solo decisions, while she demanded a consultative role. Maybe even a veto. We had not discussed this decision-sharing requirement prior to taking the big leap. In fact we hadn’t really discussed very much along the lines of expectations. From the time I first noticed her, sitting on a large stuffed chair in one of the Barnard lounges, her feet tucked up, hugging her knees, it was a physical thing with me. She was wearing tight corduroys. Brown ones. Nice packaging, I thought in my boorish way. It was at a meeting preparing for one of those giant Mobilization Against the War events. I had shown up to check out a committee that was involved in the planning for the fall event. The goal was to put a million people on the -3-

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green in Central Park with rock stars rocking, lengthy, boring speeches by leftist notables, Allen Ginsberg chanting to the thumping of conga drums and naked hippies swimming in the fountains. We would puff clouds of pungent dope, consign the smoke to the breeze, and the magical zephyrs would stone out the world to a blissfulness that would be peace. When I looked at her, it convinced me to speak up and get myself noticed. So I cooked up something to say to the group. Sophomoric rhetoric. But Emma smiled at me and I was glad for it. Encouraged by the look, I asked her out after the meeting. There was only one obstacle. She was enamored with a student leader who was doing an impression of Che Guevara -- beret, cigar, beard, the whole bit. Fortunately for me he had the same sort of flash-in-the-pan staying power as the real McCoy and was on to something and, or someone else within a few weeks. After that we were inseparable. We went to every demonstration together. Got busted together. Decided that after school was done we’d keep on working for an end to the War. It was important to us. We were in love and we had something in common. But with all the activity, all the against the War stuff, we really didn’t take the time to look beyond that to whether we expected the same thing out of a marriage. At least I didn’t. I didn’t have any idea that Emma intended to demand some rights to a say in my affairs once the ring had been slipped on her finger. All I knew about marriage was what I had seen and that sure wasn’t the way my father had operated. He was the stereotypical trooper who got hooked by a broad in the middle of the war. One of those horny GIs who knocked up a generation of girls and then went off to fight. When Sam Wolfe came back, he ruled the roost. If he wanted to go hunting, he went hunting. If his buddies called about a weekend fishing, he just announced he was going fishing. He had the right to play poker every Saturday night, stink up the house with spilled Seagrams and stale cigars leaving the wife to clean it all up the next morning while he slept it off. He was man’s man who gave his wife an allowance, an occasional night out and an angry growl if she crossed him. But he wasn’t a brute, at least not in the physical sense. He was proud to say he never struck her. Real men didn’t beat up on their lessers. “ Don’t be a bully!” He hammered that into me. But for him abuse stopped at the physical. All the rest was fair game. He was the mentor who told me that as far as

women went, there was always a better one around the corner. And that any man who let a woman tell him what to do was a pussy. So what did I know? It was a disappointment to him that I got married. “Look, Emma,” I tried to explain, “We’ve been through this about a hundred times already. You graduate next month and we’re out of here. I hate this town. It’s too big. The lines are too long. I can’t stand waiting two hours to see a movie. I can’t take getting up at six in the morning so we can get to Jones Beach by noon and then spend another hour trying to find a place to spread our blanket. I’ve been to one too many student demonstrations. I’ve exceeded my lifetime quota of college building sit-ins. It’s time for us to get out of here and do something against this War out in the real world, where there are real people who have an actual live or die relationship with what is happening.” She looked at me like I was full of shit. “You’re talking like I don’t agree we have to move on. But that’s not what the problem.” “Yeah, what’s the problem then?” I asked with a hint of menace. “The problem, Eric, is that still, after a whole year, you seem to think that you can make those decisions for the both of us. Like I have no say. And what I think doesn’t count. I’m just supposed to tag along, ‘whither thou goest,’ to wherever you say.” “California.” “What?” “California. They recruited me, I mean us, for Camp Pendleton. I have a year contract. $5,000. Down in Oceanside. San Diego County. Beginning of July. And just so you don’t think I wasn’t thinking about you, you should know that there’s a whole collective down there. They’ve got a newspaper and a regular organizing committee. You’ll get to work directly with active duty servicemen. Marines.” “Oh boy,” she sneered. “I’ll get to work with Marines! Eric, are you out of your mind? I know absolutely nothing about the military. I want to work with people I can relate to. Just because you have this thing about the military, doesn’t mean, I’ve got to pack up and head off to nowheresville.” She knew how to do it, to stick in the dagger. After only a year, she had my number. Knew what to say and when to say it. She was like a great big fucking superego on one shoulder demanding that I be responsible, while on the other shoulder my old man, Sammy Wolfe, was yelling like a top sergeant, “Dump the bitch, asshole. You don’t wanna be married.” “We’d better not get into this Emma,” I responded, raising my voice a few decibels. “That’s how I was raised. Someone’s got to make the final -5-

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decision in every family and I claim that job.” I walked into the bedroom of our tiny flat and slammed the door forcefully, half hoping that I might break it. I loved breaking inanimate objects when I got mad. It was a release and a diversion from the risk of throwing a punch. “Go ahead, break something,” she challenged from beyond the door, pressing her luck. But she got me to be introspective and maybe she had a point. I had signed up on a whim, imagining it was going to be some kind of a Kerouac-like, pseudo-military adventure. Something that could easily be repaired if it went sour, with a roll of duct tape and a couple good beers to cry in. And all I was giving up were a few shallow, slap-on-the-back friendships with a bunch of guys who never ventured beyond opinions on the local quarterback’s groin problems. Among my friends, washing down a Polish dog and fries with a few cold brews qualified as a genuine bonding experience. So, for me, the opportunity to hang out with anti-war GIs and directly confront the war machine seemed like the perfect answer to my dilemma of what to do with my legal training. It wasn’t the same for Emma though. If she decided to tag along (and I wasn’t too sure she was going to) she would be sacrificing a broad web of intricate, solid relationships. She and her women friends put a lot of energy into knowing all about each other. They obsessed on things like details of lineage and thenuancesof their respective psychoses. They knew how much to value or to discount each other’s opinions on a wide spectrum of affairs from clothing preferences to the jewelry each possessed and when she was most likely to wear a certain piece. Not to mention politics, amusements, theater, film, dining and men. I hadn’t made any attempt to think about what leaving all that behind would be like for her. How she would be agreeing to set herself adrift. For Emma, the consequence of my decision would be a great, traumatic unplugging that I failed to appreciate. I emerged from the bedroom sheepishly, a copy of the Blade-Tribune, Oceanside’s excuse for the press, in hand. “Here,” I said. “You might as well know the whole story.” She took it from me, sat down on the couch in our combination living/dining room and began to read: “Two Wounded In Attack On Anti-War Meeting.” it began. May 25, 1970, Oceanside, California: “Two men, one an active duty Marine and the

other a recently discharged Vietnam veteran were wounded over the weekend when unknown assailants raked an Anti-War meeting with automatic gun fire. “Police responding to the scene speculated that the attack may have been provoked by a demonstration that took place approximately two weeks ago in this Southern California city adjacent to the sprawling Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton. At that event, a crowd estimated at a thousand Marines and their supporters marched, calling for an end to the War in Vietnam. While the Anti-War activists who organized the demonstration claimed that hundreds of active duty servicemen participated, officials noted that it was impossible to make an accurate assessment since the only people taking part in the march who were not permitted to wear a uniform were the GIs themselves. “Recent court decisions have permitted active duty GIs to engage in political activities but only off base and if they are not wearing military uniform.” the Base legal officer stated. Many of the marchers who were wearing uniforms, the police explained, could have been discharged veterans or civilians who have recently taken to wearing military surplus while at the same time expressing their opposition to the War. “Residents of the area, many with strong ties to the Marine Corps expressed shock and outrage that the demonstration had been permitted by local authorities and feelings have been running strongly against the demonstrators since the event....” Emma carefully set down the article as she worked to select her words. “So,” she said finally, “you get to go to war after all.” All I could do was smile weakly. Once, I had made the mistake of confessing that I had some mixed feelings about having been thrown out of my pre-induction physical. I had explained that growing up, I had always expected to go in, do my duty, just like my father had done. I told her how Sammy, my dad, had pushed for me to go into JAG, as a lawyer, a captain. As a JAG officer, he said, there would be no chance that I would be doing anything that would be directly contributing to the War. Instead, I became active against the War. I got myself busted a couple times and that took JAG out of the picture. So when my number came up and I got a call for a physical, there were only two possibilities. They would take me as a grunt or reject me. Running away or going to jail were not in my deck of cards. Nor was a conscientious objector claim. But I was determined to let them know that if they took me, they would not be happy with what they were getting. I had opinions and I wasn’t shy about stating them. The -7-

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way I figured it, they were sending boys to Vietnam to preserve the capitalists’ right to ship their fathers’ jobs overseas. I wasn’t going to risk my neck for that cause without raising a stink. But if they wanted to pay for my weapons training, I wasn’t going to stop them. The Selective Service got the message and tossed me out with a 1-Y, not suitable. When I got back from the physical and announced the outcome, she threw her arms around me like I had done something heroic. “What a relief. Now we can make plans,” she exhaled. That’s when I confessed my mixed feelings about it. How I was glad that I wouldn’t have to deal with the dangerous contradiction of being part of a mission I opposed but, at the same time, how I really wasn’t happy that I got rejected from something as easy to get into as the U.S. Army. So, she had it partly right with her comment about me getting into the War after all. But only partly. She was scared, too. If she decided to go with me, she had every right to be afraid. The place we were going had been shot up once. There was no reason to expect that it wouldn’t be again. But why wasn’t I worried? The answer to that question, I came to realize not long after, was that I was sure nothing would happen to me. I was immortal. And the fact was that I wasn’t much different from those wide-eyed, naive young men who get themselves recruited into the services by blind visions of glory? It was a humbling epiphany. “Well,” I said to myself, “no one was forcing her to come along.” And then I did. “Yeah, I get to do something positive against this War,” I guilt-tripped. “And sometimes positive requires risk. How about you? Are you willing to take a risk to work against this War or do you want to stay nice and comfy in New York, writing articles that only your friends will read, whining about government policy ?” I was as shameless as a Marine recruiter. I knew Emma wanted to help stop the War. Bring those guys home. She, more than I, wanted to get the guns out of their hands. Wanted to do her part to stop us from dumping napalm on some poor peasant’s hut that had the misfortune to occupy high ground. She was an easy mark from my appeal. Emma looked at me with resignation. “What will I do there while you’re out defending GIs?” “I told you, they have a paper there too, Emma,” I answered with relief. “The GIs put out a paper called Free Fire Zone. Because they are restricted

in what they can do and say, they need people to help them write it, do layout, get it printed and even distribute it. You’ll get to write articles that people who have their finger on the trigger will actually read. If you want to do something meaningful to end this fuckin’g War, the place to do it is with the people who are fighting it, not with students and faculty who are running as far away from it as they can get. Oh, and by the way, the project has several women organizers already, so it won’t just be a bunch of men.” She sighed, the sigh of surrender.

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2. We lumbered toward Oceanside in our overloaded '63 Valiant like a couple of Okies thirty years late. The back seat was piled high above window level with stuff we would end up never using. The bulging trunk was tied down by rope. The springs were bottomed out. A sagging car-top carrier smothered the roof. The day delivered a Provencal sky. The high bluish white kind of dome that goes on forever and sucks all the shadows out of the landscape. Emma's high cheek-bones, deep, mysterious blue-green eyes and the ever-so-slight cleft of her chin benefited handsomely from the lighting. She was wearing cut off jeans and a tank top for the swelter and sat as close to the open window as she could get. Her thin neck craned forward to gain the cooling advantage of an unobstructed breeze. Her straight long hair trailed behind, shining golden in the sunlight, like the tail of a comet. Off to the west, a cobalt sea puckered up to the reflecting sky with hypothermic lips and sucked up the hot Mojave air. Ranks of four foot waves pressed forward like infantry, cresting, holding their form against the off-shore zephyr, then toppled neatly, one after the other, as if they were doomed doughboys advancing against a machine gun. As we locked on to our objective, a look of pleasant anticipation flushed color into her not-yet-Californian complexion. Beauty, as they claim, is in the eye of the beholder, but at that moment it would have taken some unusual beholder to have resisted such a conclusion. Oceanside, California during the War was one of a whole slew of towns across the country that prospered by being up close and personal with a military base. The town was unabashed in its efforts to sell sleaze, honky tonk and cars to teenage GIs fresh off the farm. Its streets teemed with halfassed hawkers who specialized in dragooning recent graduates of Advanced Infantry Training into topless bars with big cover charges serving watered down drinks. Its shops were operated by unscrupulous merchants who got rich selling low quality goods to naive recruits. Stuff they couldn't afford and would have no possible use for during the year they'd be over in the Nam. “The credit is easy.” could have been the town’s motto. Like the preachers at

a skid row mission, that's where MOP, the Marines Organizing Project, set up shop. The group included a number of vets who had been to Vietnam and whose experiences there had changed their minds about our country and about what they believed in. Now they were determined to bring their message right into the Green Machine's own back yard. Right into the barracks at Pendleton, the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, 29 Palms Artillery Range and El Toro Air Station. They knew that by this time there were vast numbers of troops who didn't believe in the mission. GIs so traumatized by the Vietnam experience that they had become suicidal, homicidal, catatonic, angry and a general drag. Their objective now was to provide aid and comfort to these guys. Keep them out of the brig, healthy and in one piece so they could get out with a good discharge, an even chance at a job and a commitment to peace. A lot of people called MOP subversives, but that was just politics. Our destination was on Ditmar Street, a prairie straight road where junior five bungalows lolled at parade rest behind lush lawns, neatly kept and as trimmed as a Drill Instructor's scalp. Ranks of palm trees formed up for inspection at each curb, gently rocking in the July heat. All was in order... except for a single sore thumb structure, out of uniform, unfit for duty and irreverent. An insult to propriety and discipline, it slouched among the ranks of the righteous like a pockfaced delinquent. Rebellious. Taunting. Provoking to be arrested. Once a similarly modest, conforming cottage, this house now mocked the neighborhood from behind clumps of hearty, dull brown weeds that burst helter-skelter out of dusty soil. It suffered from a pathetic, slap-dash splashing of pilfered GI paint, in drab military monochrome, devoid of trim. Large spotlights pointed outward to the street from the corners of the two front eves like a San Quentin guardhouse. Strands of razor wire serpentined along the roof gutters. This wasn't a house, it was a bunker. A zig zag pattern of automatic weapons fire prominently embellished its facade. Great chunks of stucco had been dislodged revealing open wounds of splintery lath. This, I realized, must have been the handiwork of the Minutemen attack that had been reported in the papers. A message from those right-wing nuts who historically have been attracted to this part of Southern California, like ants to a Sunday picnic. Word was that they were holed up in a compound somewhere out in the eastern reaches of the county, disguised in mild occupations such as TV repairmen. From time to time they and their minions oozed down from the high desert to visit acts of cowardly ambush -11-

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upon their political adversaries. Indeed, there was abundant evidence that Pendleton’s environs were swarming with such thugs. As I squeezed past a liberally dented '61 Dodge van that blocked up the driveway, I wondered whether the place was booby-trapped. But the vehicle’s cheerfully decorated yellow submarine-like motif quickly squashed this concern and I boldly proceeded to the entrance. Emma lagged behind, hesitant, digesting the scene at a little slower pace. My knocking was answered after a while by a short, stocky youth with tightly curled black hair and the burnished complexion of a Hispanic. He looked through the screen door of the porch, over the tops of his dark aviator glasses. His squared shoulders were placed to block any unwelcome intrusion. He was holding a Winchester 12 gauge pump shotgun across his chest. We were not about to barge in on him. “What you want?” he demanded inhospitably, through gritted teeth and with a menacing stare. “We’re the Wolfes,” Emma replied with disarming charm. “From New York. We’re here to replace Charles and Sylvia.” “Yeah,” I said, employing my well-worn joke, “the Wolfes are at your door.” The fellow didn’t acknowledge my attempted humor and muttered for us to wait. He backed away from the door with what I took to be excessive caution. When he did, I noticed that the porch too was fortified. Below the screened in windows there was a low wooden wall and behind it, all along the front of the house, were sandbags, with gun slots, like a World War I trench. “Hey, Joanie,” he yelled over his shoulder, into the house, “You know anything about some Wolfes from New York? They supposed to be taking over from Chuck and Sylvie?” “Yeah,” screeched a disembodied voice from beyond the porch. “It’s ok, Jesus, let them in.” Jesus complied and admitted us into the living room. Three young women were sitting cross-legged on the floor, laying out what looked like some sort of pamphlet. They briefly glanced up from what they were doing and smiled. One of them sprang to her feet. “Hi, I’m Joanie,” she said, holding out a hand first to Emma. She was about Emma’s height, 5'5" or 6" but stocky and heavy breasted. She was wearing Ben Davis overalls, a tee

shirt printed with the announcement of some past Mobilization demonstration. She would have benefited from a bra. Her wild bush of kinky brown hair encased a puffy face that caused her eyes to squint when she smiled. It was a nice smile. Genuine, I thought. Thick lips broke apart to disclose a fine set of choppers, white and straight. She eyed Emma up and down with unabashed interest. “This here is Cookie,” she said, pointing to a tall, thin, light-skinned Black woman wearing some sort of silk pajama type thing that accented her delicate bone structure. Her finely chiseled nose and jaw line, her long, slender neck, reminded me of a magazine spread I had seen about a supermodel from Ethiopia. She turned toward us with lilting graceful movements. Cookie had a regal bearing that seemed out of place in these environs. It crossed my mind that she was slumming. But then, maybe so were we. “And Gabrielle,” Joanie continued. Gabrielle was tiny and obviously Hispanic. She wore her hair closely cropped and boyish. Long chains of silver hoops dangled from her ears. She nodded coolly and sighed, like they all had better things to do. “Sorry, we can’t talk now, we’ve got a deadline to meet,” she said. “We’ll get together in a bit, ok?” With that, the three of them returned to their task. Jesus went out to the porch and slid into a collapsible beach chair with bright green and red stripes. It was positioned low in a corner, where he was well protected from potential ambush by the sandbags. We were left to stand and fidget uncomfortably, watching the women prepare their publication. I picked up the prior month’s edition of the paper, Free Fire Zone,and began to read: “Today the War is becoming increasingly unpopular. Millions of citizens oppose it. Hundreds of thousands assemble and march to stop it. Elected representatives speak out against it. And now opposition is taking hold among the troops. There has been an enormous increase in the number of GIs filing for conscientious objector status. But for those of you who of are not opposed to war in all cases and do not qualify to be conscientious objectors there are still legal ways you can make your opposition known. It is ok for you to register your protest by writing to your congressman that the War is illegal and immoral. You can join in demonstrations off base if you are out of uniform. You can learn the truth about the war you are being forced to fight. The MOP, the Marines Organizing Project is here to help and support you. Come visit our house and we’ll let you know what you can do to help to end this War!” -13-

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“Name’s Mitch,” a voice intruded, after what seemed like an eternity of shuffling and snooping around the living room. “Boy are we glad you’re here.” He offered us a meaty paw, adorned with the grease-smudged nails and raw knuckles of a clumsy auto mechanic. Mitch was a big-boned man of about 25 years, with long straight black hair that fell to his shoulders and out over his face, sometimes covering his eyes. He was wearing a white tee shirt, which he apparently used as a hand cloth, and soiled jeans that were so worn through in the crotch and buttocks that they provided the world with an unobstructed glimpse of his genitalia. Mitch didn’t seem to feel a need to employ underwear. For a moment he scrutinized the laborings of the three women on the floor but said nothing to them. “Come on in the back,” he invited, while self-consciously preening and pushing back his locks. “Nice to be finally free to grow it out,” he observed. Mitch limped into a kitchen, motioning us to follow. The room was pungent with the acrid smells of festering edibles. On the left was a sink, burdened by a mound of filthy dishes encrusted with the detritus of meals long past. Against the far wall an antique Fridgidaire hummed loudly as it waded in a puddle of meltwater, the result of habitual neglect of defrosting. Opposite, an ancient four burner gas stove bedecked with many layered remnants of burned and spilled culinary efforts harbored a blue metal coffee pot with a cascade of brown vertical drippings permanently baked into its lacquer. In the very middle of the room, six feet in diameter, asplintery spool table dominated, like an altar to sloth, on the sticky, discolored black and white checkerboard of linoleum. Seated on one of those folding metal bridge chairs that are a staple at flea markets was a representative of this kingdom’s knighthood. Mitch did the introduction. “This here’s Clayton.” He nodded in the man’s direction. “Army, First Infantry, Big Red One, a grunt.” Clayton was a broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted Black man, over on the ebony side of the spectrum. Tattoos decorated the length of his bulging arms. Recently discharged, he still displayed the evidence of a military buzz cut. His hairline terminated millimeters from his eyebrows so that when he wrinkled his brow, as he was doing during these introductions, he seemed to be devoid of a forehead. I stuck out a hand, but Clayton made a fist salute. “How’s it going?” I asked.

“It’s shakin’,” he replied. “Clayton’s from Chicago, South side,” Mitch continued, trying to help the conversation along. Clayton was wearing some sort of braided black shoelace on his wrist. He caught my questioning gaze. “It’s a Black Unity bracelet,” he explained, grinning. “Accordin’ to the regs, we can wear ID bracelets with our uniforms. Black’s my identity.” He gave us another clenched fist salute and a “Right on.” He flipped open a couple more of the bridge chairs, and true to his MOS, grunted for us to be seated. We accepted. “The reg Clayton’s referring to” Mitch went on to explain, “is one of the reasons we need a lawyer down here. I don’t know how much you know about it but we’ve been making it the centerpiece of our organizing effort among the brothers. The brass can’t accept the fact that being Black is an identity thing. ‘Specially the lifers. A lot of ‘em’s crackers an’ they can’t accept the notion that Black people have a legitimate identity as Black. There’s been a lot of threats that if the brothers don’t take ‘em off, they’re going to get written up on charges. We’d like for you to do something about it. Coffee?” Mitch offered, as he poured himself some of the brew that was boiling itself sour on the stove. Emma glanced around the kitchen, rolled her eyes and politely declined. I decided to take a chance. It would be educational. In response to my acceptance, Mitch shuffled over to the sink and extracted a chipped mug from somewhere beneath the mound of the great unwashed. He fished a sopping grey dishcloth from the plastic bucket of lukewarm rinse water and swabbed the innards of my cup. As an extra sanitary precaution, he rinsed it once then filled it with hot brown liquid from the pot. He limped back over to the table with my cup and sat down gingerly. “What happened to you?” Emma asked about the limp. “Did you get that in Vietnam?” “No. I was over there, all right,” he explained. “I was a corpsman, Navy, but assigned to the Marines. Worst fuckin’ job there is. Pickin’ up the pieces, all the while under fire. An’ they aim for you too. Try an’get you so you can’t be patching someone up and sendin’ em back into combat. Tryin’ to demoralize the grunts, ya know. But the whole time I was over I never got hit direct. Not ‘til I got to this place. I was sittin’ in the fuckin’ livin’ room. Right over there.” He pointed to a couch that was visible from the doorway. “Mindin’ my own business. Readin’ ‘bout the Padres. Baseball. Fuckin’ American as apple pie. They used an automatic weapon. Probably an M-16. Fuckin’ weird.” He looked in my direction. “Ya know that paper you was -15-

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readin’ when I came in? Free Fire Zone? Well, we used to call it DISGRUNTLED, a kinda takeoff on grunts, becoming ex-grunts, ya dig? But with the shoot-in, one of the brothers said the place was like a free fire zone, like in the Nam, and we got to thinking, yeah, it was kinda like that. Being here in this part of the country, we were in a free fire zone, and so we thought that maybe the paper should be named that too. Sort of a place where the grunts can free fire on the brass.” “Anyways, them sons of bitches left a note with The Blade Tribune the night after the machine gunning,” Mitch continued. “Said they had no intention of operating a debating society with us peaceniks. An’ it didn’t matter one bit to them that they actually hit a Viet vet and an active duty Marine. As far as they were concerned, we were just traitors an’ we’d be better off dead than red.” “The Marine that got hit’s upstairs crashed. Should be down soon. He got free medical attention at Pendleton and a visit from NIS investigators wanting to know what the hell he was doing in a dangerous place like this. They transported me to the county hospital, but I got triaged to follow the completion of a police report. Shoulda given us both the purple heart. Anyhow, the cops never even examined the note they sent to the paper for possible clues. That’s why all the defense.” He motioned in the direction of the sandbagged front porch. “Get used to it, we’re on our own here.” He bent down to pat a shorted-haired, yellow-brown hound who had slithered sheepishly out from under the table. The dog seemed to be the only functioning housekeeper in the room. Between yawns, the animal engaged in a haphazard lapping of the floor droppings. “Good dog. Good Dino,” he said before returning to the subject of coffee. “We got some powdered milk and sugar.” He pointed in the direction of some bowls on the table. “Thanks. I take it straight.” I took the mug and peered inside, examining its contents. The flotilla of foreign organisms I expected were not visible. Still, I just held the mug and pretended to drink. I hoped these guys didn’t notice my reticence and in short order, happily concluded that they didn’t seem to be concerned with etiquette. “Want some cheese?” Mitch asked, jabbing a bayonet into what looked like a large orange lobster buoy. His thrust broke off a piece the size of a hockey puck, as well as numerous satellite crumbs that looked like friable asbestos.

“What kind?” I asked. “Commodity,” Mitch laughed. “Who the fuck knows what the hell it is. Probably made in some lab by Dow Chemical.” He rose and limped over to a cupboard next to the stove. It looked like a Third World bodega. Big bags of rice. Another chunk of lobster buoy cheese. Enormous tins of peanut butter. Sacks of powdered milk. And a couple of hams in cans. “All fucking government issue. San Diego County’s option for food stamps. Nothing they give the People is fresh. Nothing that can spoil. Not for a million years.” “We each git $50 a month from the support group,” Clayton chipped in. “All together we git $300 for the rent, eats an’ gas for the wheels. That makes us eligible for this here crap. Same shit’s we git in the service. Sucks, but it’s free.” “How come they don’t just give you food stamps, like in New York or San Francisco?” Emma wanted to know. “We all don't cotton to dose food stamps down heeyah,” Mitch told us in mock red-neck, while grinding some more beans in a well-worn hand grinder. “Providin’ pooh folk wid dietary discretion ain’t an objective owah County Supervisuhs approves of. Dey ain’t ‘bout to invest da pooh wid choices ovah what dey eats. Dey judgmint cain’t be relied on.” “Yeah,” Clayton added. “ A few coupons might git ripped off or maybe traded ta some slime-ball store owner for a bottle of Ripple. With commodity foods ya can’t ‘buse the system.” he chuckled. “So,” Emma concluded, “Commodity foods is a program based on the philosophy that the only things a government should give the poor are things that they can't possibly enjoy. Otherwise, God help us, they might ask for more. Lose their motivation. Be forever unable to take the initiative and get on their feet.” “Ya got it,” nodded Clayton with a smile. He seemed to be warming a bit. “Folks might git thesselves addicted ta the cushy life ya can have on the welfare. Might end up unsuited to foragin’ for they own survival, like them Yosemite bears or squirrels in the park.” As we debated the politics of commodity foods, a lean, young Black man descended a ladder from a make-shift sleeping loft they had constructed above the kitchen. He was not as dark as Clayton and built along the lines of a middle-distance runner, narrow in the waist and hips. His hair was high and tight, well within Marine Corps regulations and he was squared away, wearing starched utilities with the collar chevron of a corporal. His left arm was in sling.

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“Name’s Woods,” he introduced himself, raising his good arm in a Black Power fist salute. He too was wearing a Black Unity bracelet. “Donnie Woods. Glad to see you. Are you the lawyer?” he asked with the kind of clear, studied accent one finds among the Black bourgeoisie. I nodded affirmatively and began to introduce Emma but, unnoticed to me, she had wandered back into the living room to be with the women. Over my shoulder I could see she had joined them on the floor and was participating in creating the pamphlet. I felt relieved. “Donnie was the other guy hit during the shoot-in,” Mitch interrupted. “Took a bullet fragment in his shoulder.” “I heard you talking about commodity foods,” Woods said. “It kind of woke me up. Good thing too, because I’ve got duty. They tried that shit back home in Richmond, dig. Fucking tortured the poor folks with it. The man who came up with that shit’s a mother. Keeps you hungry all the time. It’s supposed to motivate you to get off but the problem is there isn’t any place to get off to, if you know what I mean. So that program failed back home and they went back to food stamps. Power of the people, dig ...” He pulled at his uniform, gave us a wry smile and did a 180 out of the place. “Right on, bro,” Clayton yelled after him. “Right the fuck on.” It would soon become a part of our lives. Our daily fare. Commodity foods would be welfare as we knew it.

Bring The War Home 3. There was no room at the inn. Ditmar was full and to tell the truth, neither Emma nor I was complaining about it. Neither of us wanted to live in a sty. Especially one that was ground zero for the Minutemen. We got ourselves a room in a cheap motel down by the beach while we looked for digs of our own. The place had a grungy charm. It was situated below the cliffs, at beach level. You could pick the front door lock with a pen knife. The aluminum windows didn’t fully close, permitting comfortable, moist sea breezes to blow through without obstruction, even when the weather up higher was humidity and doldrums. It was “L” shaped. Furnished with a kitchenette, a lounge chair, dinette for two, dresser and a black and white TV. Its lumpy double bed converted into a brown and yellow plaid couch for day use. All this came for $10.00 a night. “So what do you think?” I asked Emma as we unloaded the Valiant. “The place is a dump, but it will do ‘til we find something better,” she replied. “I don’t mean the motel,” I responded, amused. “How did you like the MOP collective? What do you think?” “I didn’t realize,” she said with apparent enthusiasm, “that there is a whole movement going on. We were working on the paper and they had articles and reports from all over the country. Did you know that they have GI coffee houses or organizing projects in Ft. Lewis, Washington, Ft. Hood, Texas, Ft. Benning, Georgia, Long Beach, San Diego, Great Lakes Naval Station and they even have one in Saigon! I had no idea!” ”That’s what I was trying to tell you, Emma. There are hundreds, thousands of GIs in all of the services who are against the War and willing to do something about it. With your writing and research skills you can really have an impact here.” “And the paper has a circulation of a thousand copies,” she enthused. “Most of them get distributed on the base, to Marines. It’s actually not a bad piece of work. I think it can use some improvement but I wouldn’t be ashamed to work on it.” “Not to mention that this is just about the only place I know where white organizers can still work directly with Blacks,” I added, as I unpacked my Smith-Corona electric. “Where there’s still a chance to act in an integrated political movement.” -19-

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“What are those?” she asked when she noticed me stacking some papers on the dinette table. “Cases,” I replied. “Mitch didn’t waste any time laying the work on me. Here’s a brief George Kahn had done on the Black Unity identity bracelet issue,” I said, displaying a file. “You remember, those shoelace things that the Black GIs are wearing. They want me to file an action in Federal Court, to get a declaration that these bracelets conform to the General Order on uniforms. They want to prevent the brass from harassing them on this because they are using it as an organizing tool. If they can talk the Black GIs into wearing them, they can work towards a kind of union thing. Actually, I don’t have a clue what the hell I’m supposed to be doing about this,” I confessed, patting the manila cover. “So I’ve got a shit load of studying and research to do to get up to speed. And here’s a couple of letters from guys in the brig who want representation. Mostly they are GIs who went UA.” “What’s UA?” Emma interrupted. “That’s like AWOL in the Army. It stands for unauthorized absence. And here’s a letter from a Marine who wants to talk to me about conscientious objector status. The interesting thing is that he has already done his tour in Vietnam and only has about a year to go on his enlistment. Most of the servicemen want to apply for CO before they’re sent to Vietnam so they won’t have to fight. The military looks at that pretty suspiciously. But this is different. He says he can’t continue to serve, even at home, because of what’s going on over there. It seems like his combat experience politicized him against the War. I can’t wait to talk to him.” “Say, Emma, wanna go get some dinner?” I asked after a bit more unpacking. “ Kind of celebrate that things are working out? What do you say?” She looked at me with a gleam of pleasure in her eyes. I could see that she was becoming happy with our prospects here. “Sure,” she replied. “Let’s check out the finest bistro in this burg.” We cruised the waterfront investigating the seafood joints. Emma jumped out a couple times to peruse the menus. Finally we settled on a fisherman’s shack type place up on the cliff, out on a point of land where a small inlet called San Luis cuts into the sandstone and heads east along the border of Camp Pendleton. We ate on the veranda. Candles in red glass bowls flickered on each table. Not all the fish was fried. There was a reasonable

selection of cheap California wine. It was quiet and uncrowded. They took credit cards. Between courses we held hands. Emma glowed in the candlelight. It was like a first date. Magic in a new world. We returned to our digs enveloped in the mild buzz of the wine. Inebriated by a refurbished infatuation. The warm Pacific breeze playfully flicked at the calico curtains of our unit. Somewhere, not far away, someone was playing slow dance music that reminded me of a prom long ago. I took Emma in my arms and pulled her close to me so that I could feel those wonderful parts of her woman’s body, up against mine. I put my hands on her buttocks and she brought herself closer, so close that we seemed to melt together into the sweetness of love. The kind of love that goes best with genuine affection, so that you don’t have to question or doubt or worry but can simply be carried away totally, without even the slightest regard for the consequences. Where you know what the other person wants and can put all of your consciousness into making them happy, pleased and satisfied. And that’s what we did...until the residue of wine and exhaustion got the upper hand and we fell asleep in each other’s arms, on that swaybacked, lopsided $10-a-night mattress. We woke the next morning covered with the red, blotchy bites of a thousand ravenous sand fleas. Our room was infested with the suckers but we had been too in love to notice. As far as I was concerned, it was a small price to pay for the memory. Emma, on the other hand, set off to buy all of the chemical remedies that she could locate. She had extermination on her mind and was not about to do anything else until the job was accomplished. “What you’re doing,” I told her playfully, “is just like the military’s response to the Viet Cong. Throw every chemical you got at them. Wipe ‘em out.” “You’re weird,” she responded. “The Viet Cong aren’t fleas.” “They are to the military,” I replied. “Then you can live with them, Mr. Insect Rights,” she sneered. “In your next life you could be a flea,” I jibed. “Let’s just worry about this one.” She pointed a can of Raid in my direction and made a threatening gesturethat I hoped was in jest. “Any more of your nonsense and I’ll eradicate you.” she giggled. I was tempted to distinguish myself from the fleas by claiming that at least I didn’t leave itchy red marks when I bit. But then, I wasn’t all that sure that her response wouldn’t be coming from the business end of that can of chemicals. So I let her win this one.

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“Listen,” I said, changing the subject, “I gotta meet with Donnie Woods and some other guys this afternoon about the Black Unity thing. You got anything going?” “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do,” she said. “I’m going to get the paper and do a bit of apartment hunting. The women are going to show me around. Give me a guided tour.” “What you wanna do for dinner tonight?” I asked her. “Don’t you think we ought to be doing something with the collective?” she asked. “We ought to be eating with them, at least most of the time if we are going to be a part of it.” I must have looked disappointed. Like I was hoping for a repeat of the night before. She noticed. “We’re not going to be living with them,” she winked, giving me a hug. “Don’t worry. We’ll still have our private moments.” I wasn’t worried. Yet.

Bring The War Home 4. We drove over to the MOP house just after noon. I parked our car around the block so that the license number would not get picked up. After the things Mitch had told me about the Minutemen and their de facto alliance with the local forces of law and order, I was starting to feel a bit paranoid. I left Emma in the living room with her new friends and headed for the men’s hangout, the malodorous kitchen. Donnie Woods was seated at the table with a Kool in one hand and a can of generic lager in the other. With him were Clayton, Jesus and another GI whom I hadn’t yet met. He was a pudgy, young man who, despite African features, was hardly blacker than a Sicilian. He stood up to introduce himself. “Name’s Thomas,” he said with a toothy smile and a honey-smooth Southern drawl. “Private Darron Thomas, but the bros calls me Deputy Dawg.” “Like the cartoon?” I asked. “Yessuh. That’s right,” he responded amiably and sat back down. He grabbed a can of brew and gave a little nod of his head in its direction. “Want one? It’s some o’that cheap piss fum the PX. Not too bad after yuh gets used to it.” “Don’t mind if I do,” I said, trying to be cordial. I was the only white guy in the room and the only non-serviceman to boot. There was no point in putting myself even further outside the circle. I took a free seat and unbuckled the hand-tooled leather briefcase that was a gift from a prisoner out on Rykers Island in New York. A fellow who wanted to express his gratitude for the shortened sentence I had gotten him in one of my first cases ever. It was summer camp arts and crafts quality, but it approximated the real value of my services to him. I took out the brief that Mitch had given me the day before and placed it on the table. The brothers all looked at me as if I were the Delphi Oracle about to expound on some truth that they would not be able to understand. Ironically, I was certain that the less they understood, the more they would be convinced that I knew what I was talking about. But the truth was that all I knew about their damn case was what I had read that morning in George Kahn’s brief. Which was to say, virtually nothing I could take to the bank. As I glanced around at their expectant faces I felt the urge to proceed in Latin. Make it a priest-like sermon of gibberish and get the hell out of there before they cottoned on to the fact that I was an absolute charlatan. Ex post facto, quid

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pro quo, expressio unis et exclusio ulterius, res ipsa loquitur, carpe diem, in nomine patriae et filia et spiritus sanctum and head for the hills. “You know,” I fessed up instead. “I really don’t have a very good idea how to cook up a legal strategy that can help you with the Black Unity identity bracelet thing. Maybe you can give me some kind of idea just what it is you’re looking for and we can put something together.” “Hell,” Donnie Woods piped up, lightning bolts of blue smoke roaring from his nostrils as he exhaled the product of his filtered Kool, “We don’t expect legal miracles. Black folks don’t expect to win in the white man’s courts. All we’re looking for is a little suit to fuck with the man’s mind so we can get on with the organizing. You keep us in court a couple of months with the lifers off our backs and we can do some organizing around it. And then, when we lose, we can do some organizing around that. You don’t have to win in the courts for us to get over. Just put together something that’ll hold them off a while.” Woods was a sophisticated guy. I was impressed...and relieved that I wouldn’t have to exceed reasonable expectations. “We got this heyuh gunny,” said Deputy Dawg, “Gunny Bonham. A cracker, lifuh outta Mississippi, that’s been fuckin’ with us over at the mess an’ threatenin’ to git us all busted fuh wearin’ the ID. Maybe you could name him in the suit. Yuh know, sue him or somethin’ fuh violatin’ our civil rights, like our right to have our identity. Ain’t that some kinduh free speech thing? Like marchin’?” “Might be,” I responded, “if you all weren’t in the military. The thing is, GIs don’t have a hell of a lot by way of rights. You can’t say things that they think bring dishonor and disrespect to the service. If you get yourself a civilian bust for anything, that’s a violation of military law. When you’re on base, on duty or in uniform, you’re pretty much in their hands and all you’ve got’s the right to a lawyer, a fair trial and the sentence that the law prescribes.” “But there’s a fuckin’ General Order that says that we can wear an identity bracelet with our uniform,” Jesus butted in. “That’s from way upstairs. Top Brass. Ain’t no gunny can overrule a General Order and make his own law, is there?” “Well,” I hedged, “I read the part of the General Order that pertains to the ID bracelet. It looks to me like the Pentagon was thinking more along the

lines of something like those commercial Speidel type jobs. Not a braided shoelace that doesn’t have any name on it. Just because you call something an identity bracelet doesn’t make it one. Frankly, it isn’t likely some judge is going to decide to tell the Commandant of the Marine Corps what his troops can or can’t wear on their wrists.” “How long you think it’ll take them to get the case thrown out of court?” Woods wanted to know. “Oh, maybe two months from when we file it,” I speculated. “Well, in the meantime we can give it to the press, raise some hell about how the local brass are discriminating against Black Marines in violation of the General Order, how that’s racist. They’ll likely chill until the case gets thrown out and meanwhile we might be able to get another fifty guys wearing the thing. Kind of makes it tough for them to come down on us, don’t you think?” “I get your drift,” I smiled. “I’ll start working on some kind of bullshit complaint and we can go over it to see if I’m saying stuff you want to hear. Don’t go counting on a win, though,” I winked. After the meeting broke up, I cornered Woods. “Got a couple minutes, Donnie?” I asked. “Sure,” he said, with a hint of curiosity in his eyes. “What’s on your mind?” “Well, I was really impressed by your political savvy. You’ve got a kind of sophistication about organizing that I’ve got to confess I didn’t expect...” “From a Black grunt,” he interposed. “Well, I wouldn’t put it that way,” I sputtered, “but if that’s the way you want to look at yourself, so be it. The point is that you’re obviously the one who’s spearheading this action and I’d really like to find out where you’re coming from.” “Likewise,” he said, flicking his pack of smokes so that a couple of cigarettes poked their filtered heads above the rest, the way that very cool guys did it in the commercials. “Smoke?” I took one. He put the pack to his lips and pulled another out with his teeth. “Where would you like to rap?” he asked. “My car’s parked ‘round the corner,” I told him. “It isn’t bugged like this place probably is. Let’s go for a spin.” “I knew what I was getting into,” Woods responded to my question of how he ended up in the Corps. “My daddy, Ole Chet we call him, had a shit fit when he heard I joined up. ‘How many times I tole you, boy,’ he said, “they’s a bunch a racist crackers. They takes what they can get outta ya, then -25-

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they chews ya up and spits ya out. You be a fool if you go puttin’ yo life on the line for them muthas.’” “My Daddy got himself fucked over by the Navy real good back in ‘44. In that Port Chicago thing. You remember, where the ammo ships blew up? Killed hundreds of the Black sailors but the very next day the Navy ordered the survivors back to work. Like nothing happened. Like there wasn’t any reason to question what went wrong or to figure out whether things could be made safer. The way Chet explained it to me, the explosion probably happened because of carelessness. They had the brothers working night and day, under white officers, like the overseers they had back on the plantation. As far as the Navy was concerned, it was only the niggers that got killed and they weren’t going to lose sleep over it. So, when my Daddy and some of the other sailors got uppity and protested, they called it a god-damn mutiny. Tossed ‘em all in the brig. Gave about fifty of them prison with hard labor and dishonorable discharges. “But me, I knew better.” Woods looked at me over the tops of his shades and laughed. ““Times had changed,’ I told Ole Chet. ‘We got civil rights and all, now. We got us Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson and Jim Brown. And there’s Sammy Davis Jr. on the TV hanging out with Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. The white folks are buying records by the Supremes and Johnnie Mathis. And there are more Black doctors and lawyers.’” He winked mischievously. “So I went in to get me the GI Bill. Money to help me go to college. Get my Black ass out of Richmond. Well, it turned out that Ole Chet wasn’t that far off the mark and that time’s hadn’t changed as much as I thought. So the young bloods like myself come into the Marines expecting to be treated equal. With some respect. But then we get hit with a bunch of lifers who think the Klan’s right on. They expect us to act like Uncle Toms or they’re gonna kick our ass. Make us walk point outta turn. Dig latrines. But when they get in our faces like that, some of the brothers won’t take it. They’re gonna fire on them or maybe, in a fire-fight, lob a frag in their direction by accident. Then I come back and I find out they’re assassinating Black Panthers left and right. “Well, I’m for putting up a fight, just like Ole Chet was. But I’m not going to be stupid in my resistance. I’m going to fight them with their own regs. That’s why I want the legal thing covered. I did my tour in the Nam and

earned that good discharge. When I get out, I mean to go into hotel and restaurant management. Get me a good paying job at one of them resort hotels. And I’m not going to let any racists take what I earned away from me. I know it’s been a long struggle to get here and I know there’s a hell of a way yet to go. We got to be smart and patient. How about you, Mr. Wolfe? You been in the service? ” I looked over at him and did a half cough, half laugh sort of thing to clear my throat. “Me? Nah. They didn’t want any part of me. I was about half way through my pre-induction physical. Doing fine. Well on my way to basic, when this old doc gave us an order to take off our pants so he could check us out for hernias. I obeyed the order but wasn’t wearing underwear, unlike the rest of the guys. The doc got into my face like he was a drill sergeant or something and yelled, ‘I just told you to take off your pants, not your underwear.’ “Something short circuited. I puffed up and yelled right back into his shocked puss. ‘I’m not wearing any fucking underwear. What kind of doctor are you, anyway? Freakin’ out when you see a pair of balls and a dick? How the hell can you check for a hernia through a pair of shorts?’ I thought it was a kind of mild response, given his attitude. He didn’t. He wrote out a piece of paper and next thing I knew, I found myself benched like Arlo Guthrie described in his song, Alice’s Restaurant.” Only there weren’t any murderers and rapists there with me. I sat there all alone for about a half-hour while the rest of my group finished up. Then a sergeant came by with a piece of paper in his hand. ‘Mr. Wolfe,’ he said. ‘I’ve been ordered to escort you off the base.’ “They were throwing me out. ‘But I haven’t finished my physical,’ I piped up, taking the opportunity to be a wise ass. The sergeant looked at me with this blank, cold stare, like he’d rather put a bullet through my head. ‘That won’t be necessary,’ he said. ‘We have already made our decision about you.’ Next thing I knew, I was out of there with a 1-Y. Seems I’m not needed for duty at the present time.” “Jeezus,” Woods remarked with evident amazement. “You mean all you white boys gotta do to get out of the service is to yell at the fucking man! Shit, if one of the brothers did that they’d be doing some kind of time or something.” I didn’t know how to respond. Woods’ putting my experience in a racial perspective caused me to wonder about just how many of my experiences I had simply accepted at face value. Events I took for granted but that a Black person would automatically compare to his expectation of how he would be -27-

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treated if the circumstances were similar. I had been in town only a couple of days and was already expanding my perspective on things that I never would have thought about otherwise. Woods broke the silence with another question. “So what brings you here?” I glanced at him as long as safe driving would permit. He wasn’t smiling in that polite, diplomatic way that servants and seekers of favors paste on when they question a patron or professional. His brow was furrowed and he squinted in an effort to entice eye contact. It was an expression that said he wasn’t going to settle for some glib, off-the-cuff response. His security and that GI Bill of his were at stake. He had a right to know whether I was a flake or an agent. “I mean,” he repeated, “how come you’re doing this?” I hesitated. “You know, I’m not sure I can give you an easy answer to that,” I began. “I’m not really sure. All I can tell you is that I’m against this War and I’m against you guys killing people who I think are patriots. All the VC are doing is defending their country the way anyone would and for that they get bombed and napalmed and called gooks and slopes. I’d like to think that if I were in their place, I’d be doing exactly what they’re doing. And coming here is sort of a way of proving that to myself. I think that part of the reason I decided to come is because the place got shot up. The job of a soldier is to neutralize the enemy, right? Well every GI that I can get out of the service is one that I’ve neutralized. So I guess coming here is my way of fighting this War. Can I drop you somewhere?” I asked. “I’m heading back to the house but I can give you a lift if you need one.” Woods looked over his shades and down his nose at me. There was a hint of a smile. “This seat recline?” he asked. “There’s a lever on the side of the seat,” I told him. “Pull up on it.” “I’m headin’ back to the Base,” Woods said as the seat fell back and he began to relax. “But you can drop me at the bus stop downtown. I don’t think they’ll give you a pass to drive me back to the barracks and it’s a long way. The bus stop’ll be fine.” “Well, I was looking forward to seeing it but I’ll be heading out to the Base in a day or two anyway,” I told him. “As soon as I make arrangements to interview a couple of guys in the brig who want legal services. So I guess I’ll be checking out the place soon enough.” “In due course,” he smiled, “in due course.”

Bring The War Home 5. “Where’s everybody?” I asked Cookie when I got back to the MOP house. “Emma’s off apartment hunting with Joanie,” Cookie told me with a condescending arrogance. “Gabrielle an’ Mitch’s gone up to the printer in San Berdu with the paste-up of FFZ.” “Why’d they go all the way up there?” I asked innocently. San Bernardino was a twohour trip each way. “‘Cause there isn’t a printer in all San Diego or Orange County willing to print our stuff. Either they read the contents and get all uppity or the FBI’s already been there and told ‘em not to work for us. So we gotta go all the way to LA or San Bernardino.” “Where’s Clayton?” I persisted. “Went on down to San Diego to see some of the folks he’s hooked up with,” she sniffed with royal indignation. “He’s into some organization down there. They’re the ones sent him up here to organize.” “What organization is that?” I asked. “Ever hear of Rod Katanga and the Black Liberation Front?” she said with evident disdain for whatever it was.” “Nope.” I shook my head. “How ‘bout you. You come down here courtesy of an organization too or are you freelance?” She looked down her proud nose at me, and contemplated whether or not to dignify my question with an answer. “You know what the Nation of Islam is?” she asked. “Malcolm X’s organization,” I nodded. “ ‘til they assassinated him. You part of that?” “I think I’m going’ to take Dino for a walk,” she evaded. “C’mere boy.” She put a couple of fingers to her lips she emitted a sharp whistle. The dog trotted in from the kitchen. “Wanna go for a walk?” she asked as nicely as I had ever heard her speak before. Dino wagged his tail and ran a circle enthusiastically. “Let’s go, then,” she said to him. “See ya latter, Wolfe.” Before I knew it, she was on the sidewalk, leaving me in charge of the empty house and whatever responsibilities went along with it. I was reading a back issue of FFZ when Emma and Joanie returned from their hunt. They were chatting excitedly. When Emma saw me she strolled up proudly and announced “Eric, we just found a perfect place. I’ve got a copy of the lease right here. We told the landlord that you were a lawyer who just -29-

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moved to town, planning on opening up a practice. He seemed really pleased. Claims the military that move in always get shipped out in a few months, sticking him with the rent and a fucked up place. It’s two streets over and a couple blocks down, so we can walk here.” “So tell me about it,” I said, putting down the paper. But before Emma could begin her description, Joanie interrupted. “Where is everybody?” When I told her, she got wide-eyed and red in the face. “You mean they left you in charge?” she almost screamed. “You don’t even know the house rules! This is so fucked...,” she said storming from room to room to confirm that indeed, no one else was around. “This isn’t supposed to happen.” “Nothing did happen,” I said. “Everything’s ok. Let’s hear about the apartment.” “You don’t understand,” Joanie persisted, enraging herself even further. “This is like a base, a post. People have duty here and their duty includes security. The organizers can’t just walk off and leave no one in charge. This is a breach of discipline.” “Well,” I replied, slighted provoked by the fact that she thought of me as ‘no one’. “You can’t court martial whoever’s UA until they get back. Meanwhile, I’d like to hear about the new pad.” Joanie transferred her anger to me. “That’s pretty flip,” she accused me. “ Maybe you don’t realize that we could be attacked at any minute. The place could get raided. All our stuff trashed.” “And one person’s gonna stop that?” I exclaimed. “Or maybe they’d make a real good martyr. Look Joanie, nothing happened so whatever the breach of discipline is, it can be fixed with no harm done. OK?” While she continued to stew, I asked Emma again for the details. But Emma seemed torn between giving comfort to her new friend and describing the place to me. I resolved her dilemma for her. “OK, it can wait. Let’s all just sit here and be pissed until the rest of the folks get back.” I picked up FFZ and went back to reading. Joanie and Emma went off into the kitchen to confide but I could still hear Joanie’s snarling and had the impression it was directed at me. I had become an enemy. I had been at the project for two full days and had already succeeded in alienating two out of the three women. Cookie, I had written off as a given. She wasn’t ever going to like white guys on general principle. So the fact that

I had insulted the Muslims by accusing them of assassinating Malcolm X probably hadn’t made matters much worse. On the other hand, Joanie hadn’t started out with a grudge against me. But my lackadaisical sarcasm conflicted with her intense commitment. Anyway, dinner would tell me if the conflict was going to be insurmountable The evening fare was a rude contrast to the night before. They were serving a facsimile of pasta. A large pot of the stuff was congealing on the stove, until it became so rubberized that you had to cut it off in chunks with a knife. In another pot, a thin, gruel-like concoction of green peppers and onions in tomato sauce bubbled like a sulphuric hot spring until the life had been cooked out of it. On the round table, a bowl of crushed orange cheese waited patiently to serve as a topping. Beside it, someone had impaled a bayonet into a loaf of sturdy Italian bread from the day-old place. Mitch stirred up a pitcher of powdered milk that could be stomached only as a condiment for the coffee. Otherwise, the drink of choice was tepid tap water. Plates and silverware were strictly clean-it-yourself. Once we were all seated, Joanie injected her tension into the dining experience. “You guys,” she began, “when I got back from apartment hunting with Emma this afternoon, there was no one on duty. Somebody abandoned his post.” She looked around accusingly. “ I thought it was all agreed that since the place got attacked there would be somebody responsible on duty at all times.” Well, she was getting my goat. Not only was I a non-person, a “no one,” but now, to the extent that I assumed any human characteristics at all, I was “not responsible.” I could feel myself getting redder than that excuse for pasta sauce they were serving. “Me and Gabbie took off before noon for San Berdu with FFZ,” Mitch entered a plea of not guilty, jabbing at his mound of rubberized pasta. “That left you, Clayton and Cookie.” Clayton folded his arms across his chest and snorted. “I tole ya yesterday that I got me a ride down to San Diego with one of the bros. Y’all knew that.” “I just took Dino for a walk ‘round the block.” Cookie pushed aside her rations and shrugged. “ I left Wolfe here. He was here when you came in wasn’t he?” Joanie was flustered. “But he doesn’t know the house rules. He doesn’t have any training. You can’t leave a new person in charge without any training or explanation,” she sputtered.

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Cookie shrugged again, denying that she had to explain herself to a white girl or follow the rules, if she didn’t want to. I was not surprised at how Joanie handled this challenge to the house protocol. She let the matter drop and changed the subject. “Did the printer ask for money up front, like he did last time?” she asked Gabrielle. “Yeah,” Gabrielle replied, “ but we reminded him that he shorted us almost two hundred copies last month and the printing was all runny, so he owed us a refund. We got him down to a hundred in advance with the rest when we pick up the papers next week.” “How we doin’ on the bread anyways?” Clayton wanted to know. “We got enough to pay the bills?” He lit up a Kool and blew a puff of smoke over the table. “Gonna be close,” Gabrielle reported, offering a summary of her bookkeeping conclusions. “But we’re not gonna have enough commodity foods to survive now with the Wolfes. The van’s eating into our budget something fierce with the repairs. And it’s still burning oil.” She frowned in Mitch’s direction. “I didn’t think we’d make to San Berdu and back. We got to spend more money on ammo now so we can all be ready and fully trained in case we get attacked again. We got to replace the radio that somebody stole and the utility bills are going through the roof with the new spotlights on all night. Oh yeah, and we’re behind a month on the rent.” “I thought the bread from the Wolfes would cover it,” Mitch responded through a mouthful of dangling spaghetti that made him look like a horror creature emerging from the ocean, orifices oozing seaweed and scum. “An’ by the by, that vehicle needed a new engine bad. The rings were shot. That 289 I got for a hundred from those brothers up at El Toro really makes a difference, despite what Gabby thinks,” he muttered, avoiding her incredulous gaze. “Soon as I get it tuned up you’ll see the performance.” “ Sept’n ya can’t get it ta sit right,” said Clayton with an insolent smirk. He stubbed the half-finished butt into his mound of uneaten pasta converting it to instant garbage. “I’ll get it to work proper.” Mitch slumped. “Don’t you be worryin’ about it. It’s a bigger motor, so I gotta machine some stronger motor mounts and that’ll stop the shimmyin.” “Yeah, if the rear end don’t freeze up first,” Clayton interjected. “I had me an ole Jeep truck once. Useta have one of them itty bitty four cylinder

pots. Put me a big mother of a Ford engine in it but didn’t mess with the rest of the power train. Fucker burned out the rear end with all that torque. Ya gotta be doin’ the whole job, all the way to the wheels when ya change the engine.” Mitch nodded. “Don’t y’all be worryin’ about it.” “We’ll just have to get out there and raise some money then, won’t we?” Joanie concluded. “Who’s got the support list?” “Sorry,” Mitch apologized, “I ain’t brought it up to date yet.” “Shit man, you’ve had the thing for a month. What the hell you been doing?” Joanie snapped in a way that she seemed unable to do when it came to the Blacks. “I just ain’t had time,” Mitch whined. “It’s been one thing or another. The van. Leafleting. Counseling... Getting shot,” he added with a raise of eyebrows to reminder her that he had been recently wounded for the cause. “I just ain’t got around to it.” Joanie was having none of his excuses. “Gimme a fucking break, Mitch,” she yelled over her shoulder as she scraped the remnants of her supper into Dino’s bowl. “We’ve been here all that time too. We’ve all seen what you do and what you don’t do. You get where you want to go, no trouble. The women have been doing all the shit work around here lately and we aren’t going to take any more of this lazy sexist shit.” “I took the paper to the printer,” Mitch stammered in his defense. “And picked it up, too.” “Yeah, big deal. You got to go for a ride,” Joanie sneered. “I’m fuckin’ sick of the women doin’ all the work and the men having all the excuses. There’s a fuckin’ war going on here, in case you’ve forgotten.” “OK, OK,” Mitch attempted a reconciliation. “It’s true that you women have been doing a shitload on the paper and all. But it doesn’t do no good for us to be fighting.” “I think we ought to divide up into teams,” Gabrielle intervened. “Each take a part of the list and get out to visit these folks. Make personal contact. We got to introduce the Wolfes to all of our supporters. Asking people to get behind legal defense stuff is a whole lot easier than asking for money to churn out leaflets. We’re running an announcement for the legal services in the new edition of FFZ. We should be using it with our fund raising activities too.” “Meanwhile, I think we should do a film showing for the GIs,” Joanie proposed. “We just got in the Yippie film about the Chicago convention. And

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we still have a couple of the Vietnamese films from Newsreel we haven’t shown yet.” Mitch groaned. “Aw, not again. Last time we hooked some saps in with free moviesthey went running for the exits after they seen the propaganda about the VC kicking Yankee butt. And I can’t remember when the hat that we pass around at the end ever had a contribution in it.” Dino ambled in foraging for scraps. “C’mere boy,” Cookie called. The mutt snubbed the leftovers in his bowl and settled down with his head on Cookie’s feet. I could see in Clayton’s face that he thought Dino was a lucky dog. “Yeah? But that’s what’s happening,” Joanie argued, ignoring the canine interruption. “The Vietnamese people are actually beating our superior technology. That’s what a People’s War is all about. I think the GIs ought to know that.” “That ain’t the point,” Mitch protested. “We’re trying to do organizing here and this shit’s got very limited audience appeal. We can’t get the message across if the film freaks them out.” “Mitch’s right on,” Clayton injected. “Them young honky Marines just can't take the concept of Third World peasants kickin’ their ass. Them bein’ the bad guys. An’ the brothers, sheeit, they ain’t into this movie shit no way. Ain’t ‘bout ta be spendin’ their off-duty time sittin’ ‘roun here watchin’ no movie when they can be off blowin’ some weed and snatchin’ some pussy.” Joanie and Gabrielle squirmed but held their tongues, not wishing to alienate the project’s only Black male organizer, or get drawn into accusations of racism for failing to excuse this sexist glitch in his culture. Cookie though screwed her face into an angry scowl and flung an acerbic challenge. “I suppose, Clayton, that you’re sayin’ again that we oughta let ‘em get high here, like you’re always advocating. We could really bring the brothers in if we turned the place into a whorehouse. Is that what you’re sayin’, or did I miss something?” Dino squirmed. “I still think that if ya wanna organize the brothers, ya gotta lighten up an let ‘em blow the weed and that’s a fact,” Clayton replied in the lower voice he used when responding to Cookie. The dog looked up and emitted low growl. “It’s all right, boy,” Cookie soothed, stroking the hound behind the ears.

“We all decided, Clayton,” Mitch added. “We can’t afford that risk. Half the GIs we get in here are undercover pigs. We start lettin’ them do drugs here and we’ll all be busted in no time. We can’t engage in meaningful political activity and do drugs at the same time. If we try it, we’ll all end up busted.” Clayton shrugged. “Just statin’ the facts is all. The only folks make it through to the end of your shows are the wanna be revolutionary types or them guilt ridden, masochistic cats just back from the Nam, who wanna whup their own asses for doin’ whatever dirty deeds they done over there. Everyone else got better shit to do.” He rose from the table and did a cool jive shuffle out of the room. “Did you notice how Joanie backed off on her attacks when it came to criticizing Clayton and Cookie?” I remarked dryly on our return to the motel. “She’s ready, willing and able to bust a white guy’s butt even though he’s a vet and just got shot. But when it comes to criticizing a Black for breaking rules or for blatant sexism, she can’t even whisper a criticism.” Emma stared over at me. “Go easy, Eric,” she said shaking her head. “Dealing with a multi-racial organization requires diplomacy. Something you’re not too expert on.” “Yeah,” I conceded readily, “I guess that’s true. I just go at things the same way for everybody, even if it pisses people off. But Joanie comes off like a guilty liberal dealing with the Blacks. They can see right through her double standardand believe me, they don’t respect it.” “And I guess you think they respect you?” she challenged with a shake of her head. “Naw, Emma, I don’t believe that. I don’t believe Cookie respects me. But that’s the result of her own racism. She can feel however she likes about me, but what I say isn’t going to change because of her attitude. And her attitude isn’t going to change based on what I say. As far as I’m concerned, if she doesn’t like my opinions or what I say, she can go fuck herself because I don’t respect racists of any color.” “You know, Eric,” she observed, “you seem to have alienated two out of the three women in this collective in only one day. Have you ever considered that you might have a problem getting along with strong women?” “Well I get along with you,” I said, driving through a red light and forcing her to white-knuckle it. The morning after the “Who was AWOL?” debacle Mitch told me, “Eric, we’ve got weekly weapons training today and you and Emma are up for it. And by the way, we’re gonna need your car for the weapons.” At least -35-

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they were wasting no time on the issue of turning me from “no one” into “responsible.” I was encouraged that they could agree on something. Later in the day, we piled into the van with Joanie at the wheel. It was a long, hot drive over back roads through rolling hills covered with scrub, bone dry grass, thistle and brambles. The last few miles were over dusty, rutted wagon tracks. Every few miles she’d double back and cross paths with Clayton, who was driving our Valiant, its trunk loaded with weapons and ammo. Finally when we had stopped in a secluded dry wash out in the desert east of San Marcos that was our practice area, I asked her, “Hey Joanie, what’s with all the back roads and doubling back?” “Pigs,” she replied. “We gotta do it to outwit their surveillance. Every week they’re cruising to catch us when we go out to practice. Seems to be more and more surveillance around the house just as the time approaches. So we keep changing the time on them at the last minute. We keep doubling back so the driver of car with the guns knows it’s safe to move forward. The pigs would have loved to catch us transporting guns.” It turned out I had a lot to learn. Although Sammie had taught me how shoot and clean guns, he knew nothing compared to the Viet vets. Mitch and Clayton did most of the instruction. They seemed to take curious delight in teaching us all kinds of irrelevant stuff, like how to set up ambushes and cross-fires. Stuff, we’d only need when the revolution came. The thought crossed my mind that it would be bad evidence against us if we ever got caught because it had nothing to do with self-defense. In a few weeks Emma and I had qualified for the questionable honor of all night sentry duty. 6. It seemed like no time before I was backlogged with requests for help. Each required a response that included instructions for the Marine to tell his appointed military counsel to contact me so that we could work out an onbase interview. I could see that keeping busy was not going to be a problem, so I decided to take only the cases where the GI was not likely to cop a plea. Military counsel could usually do a better job arguing on the sentence, what the military calls E&M, extenuation and mitigation, than a civilian because military judges resented the presumption of a civilian telling them what the punishment ought to be. On the other hand, if the guy was going to fight it, a

civilian would be more comfortable picking nits and raising a fuss than the JAG captain who had career issues. I needed an office badly...and stationery. Emma and I put our creative heads together and came up with a name that could be defended against charges of misrepresentation, but was designed to mislead. The Civilian Defense Counsel Services or CDCS. “Sounds like it has something to do with Civil Defense,” Emma chuckled. “And the ‘Services’ makes it sound official and public, like the Armed Services,” I agreed. Together we created a logo with blue scales of justice inside a red circle of the words “Civilian Defense Counsel Services.” It looked so patriotic I had no problem getting it printed in Oceanside. Meanwhile, we worked on our new apartment and future CDCS headquarters, four tiny rooms above a double garage, fronting on an alley. The place came unfurnished so there was plenty of shopping to be done. But one of the benefits of living in a military town is the abundance of used stuff available for purchase. In no time our living room sported a used black and white TV, a butt-burned hatch cover coffee table with interconnected cup stains that resembled the Olympic symbol and a thread-bare, saggy sofa-bed with white, cottony stuffing oozing from its arms. For five bucks, we furnished the kitchen with a pine planked picnic table covered with a sticky checkerboard pattern shelf paper and two backless benches that would seat four skinny people. We graced one of our two bedrooms with a brand new Sears mattress and a warped, four-drawer maple veneer bureau with drawers that refused to close. The second bedroom became my office, complete with a hollow-core door propped on some crates as a desk top, a creaky oak swivel chair and two high-backed dining chairs from a set that had long since been dispersed to the four winds. The walls soon displayed our collection of posters saved from Peace Marches past and Fillmore East psychedelic rock concerts that we couldn’t really remember attending. Emma hemmed some Indian designed yard goods and we push-pinned them into the moldings above the windows for curtains. Everything else we owned, we packed in 25 cent orange crates that lined the free walls. If possessions are an indication of freedom, we were about as free as we could get. I was now ready for my first consultation. He turned out to be John Conlon, the corporal recently back from Nam who wanted out as a conscientious objector. -37-

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“You can call me Jumpin’ Jack,” he allowed on introduction. He was blond, with a cowlick and a jutting, cleft chin but stood a little too short to be a recruiting poster boy. The Marines had bulked him up in basic, broadening his shoulders to hill-humping masses that could easily pack a BAR and all the gear for the long haul. His filled-out thighs bulged beneath his tight jeans. He was wearing a green GI tee shirt with the short sleeves rolled up to reveal biceps definition. Back when he had been proud of his status, he got himself a tattoo on his right shoulder, a traditional globe and anchor with the motto “Body by USMC” Now you could barely read it for all the scabbing and blood sores he had inflicted on himself trying to obliterate his embarrassment. He had glassy, dull blue eyes that seemed like the gaseous swirls of a Carl Sagan nebula. When he spoke, they darted back and forth nervously with the paranoid glare of a combat vet. “I want to find out about applying for conscientious objector status,” he announced. “ I can’t take it in the Suck any more.” “Why don’t you tell me something about why you joined up in the first place,” I asked him. Jack took a seat on one of those “new” chairs. “Mind if I smoke?” he asked nervously. “Go on, I ain’t no shrink,” I tried to make light. “And I ain’t writing anything down. I just need to get an idea where you’re coming from so I can see if we can put together a CO or if there’s some other way I can help you out. You know it’s pretty unusual for a guy to try to get a CO after he’s been to Nam. Usually they try it to keep from getting sent over. So in some ways this could be easy. But, on the other hand, there’s very little precedent for what you’re asking. The key to a CO is being against all wars, and morally opposed to using arms. You can’t just be against one specific war, ” I hinted broadly, expecting him to pick up on it and say the right thing. “So it would help a lot if you told me why you joined up to be a Marine and then we can get into how you changed, or what changed you so that you can’t fight in any war. The Marines will certainly want to know what happened to you over there that turned you against the War. Part of my job will be to figure out the best way to present you. To do that, I’ve gotta know about you from the git.” He told me that he came from a small town in upstate New York that was a long way from anywhere. His description of the burg made it seem interchangeable with a hundred others from the salt-splashed rocks of coastal

Maine to the spine of the Alleghenies. A place where the churches were neatly painted in white with black trim. Where the steeples stood tall above small clusters of homes and red brick commercial buildings. Where the solid hardwood and pine structures of the 19th century were made to last, memorials to the people who built them. Its main street, as Jack described it, was lined with family owned businesses. Everyone knew everyone else’s affairs but the split between Republicans and Democrats was about as significant as personal preferences for Pepsi or Coke. It sounded a lot like the town I came from. “You don’t know, man,” he admitted with some difficulty, “ when I joined up, I couldn’t even listen to the Star Spangled Banner without getting a lump in my throat. My father was killed in the Korean War, but I never knew him. I was just a baby when he died. His name is one of six engraved on a brass plaque in front of the town hall, right next to a howitzer. On holidays the American Legion comes down and puts flags and flowers around it. We’d go down there and they’d salute and stuff and play taps, and I’d be so fuckin’ proud, I’d want it to be me on that plaque. “We’ll, I guess ‘cause of my dad and all, and my mother bein’ in over her head with her new old man, who didn’t like me bein’ around very much, ya know, crampin’ his style, that I was destined for the service. I never really thought too much about any options. In high school, the coaches would always be asking me when I was gonna join up. I guess they were kind of worried that I would do it before I finished the track season. ‘Cause of how good a long-distance runner I was. So I just followed expectations. I swore in before graduation. I stayed around to get my diploma and then stepped onto a bus for Lejeune to become a hero.” He found himself laughing at the admissions. “And when I went through boot camp, I was so gungy they made me a platoon leader. I was a PFC in advanced infantry training and made lance corporal in my first year. They gave me a second stripe when I got to Nam. I was battalion Marine of the Month my second month over. So you might say, I’ve got some credentials. But after a while over there I started to notice shit that I didn’t expect, and got into doin’ stuff that Americans ain’t supposed to do and it changes you, inside. It made me begin to wonder if what I’d been taught to believe in was right.” He looked over at me, appealing for understanding. I tried to accommodate him with a knowing nod. But I didn’t know and I suspected that he could see through me. He went on anyway. “And pretty soon, pullin’ the trigger gets a little bit harder. Slows you up. An’ you know it could be a -39-

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death sentence, but a part of you feels betrayed and doesn’t give a shit, ‘cause you’re wondering, maybe a little bit, maybe that what you done, that what you’re doin’ just ain’t all that ok, ain’t all that for God and Country like you thought and just possibly that you might deserve to take a hit.” I didn’t really know what to say. The kid was obviously suicidal. And I started to regret that I wasn’t the shrink I joked about earlier. “Well, Jack,” I fumbled, “that’s real helpful. Sounds like you grew up in a place similar to me. My old man was in the military too, but he made it back. Lucky, I guess. But you still haven’t given me any information about how you’re a CO. I‘m getting the message about you feeling guilty about what you did over there and that maybe you’re even a little suicidal. That might get you a psych out, if you wanna go that route, but I don’t hear a CO in your story yet.” He looked back at me with an unmasked expression of defensiveness and I could feel him stepping back from the engagement, distrusting. “I’m not gonna psych out.” He shook his head firmly. “I ain’t crazy or nuthin’. I seen what I seen and I done what I done but no way I’m gonna cop to being nuts.” He got up from the chair and started to leave. “If you can’t help me....” “Hold on there,” I put up a hand, not wanting my first client to walk out on me. “All I said was I didn’t hear anything that would get you out on a CO. I just thought you were more interested in getting out that you apparently are. I don’t think you’re a psych case, but you certainly aren’t telling me that you ‘ain’t gonna study war no mo’.’ It sounds to me like your combat experience was a bummer, but I’m not sure what I can do for you at this point. I can work on a CO application but I haven’t heard anything yet that would qualify you for one. Otherwise the only thing a lawyer can do for you is defend you if you’re up on charges, which you aren’t.” He sat back down and looked out the window, forming his thoughts. “I guess it’s true,” he finally admitted. “If I had to fight, I would. I’m just turned off to their God and Country shit. I’ve come to see what a load of BS that was. There’s no way we’re over there fighting for God or Country and there’s no way I’m going to keep up the lie. I’ve had it with that crap and I want to get as far away from it as I can. You dig where I’m coming from?” “Yeah. I think I understand that. I’m a few years older and got the word before I took the big step forward. You wised up too late for that, but not too late to do something. At least you’re not fooling yourself anymore and not willing to fool others. One thing’s for sure though, if you don’t shut up about

what you learned, they’ll fuck with you something fierce, at which point you will end up needing my services. Here’s your choices, either you sling them a line that you’re a CO, which you aren’t or fake being psycho, which will fuck you up big time when you get out, or you keep your mouth shut and burn up inside or you step outta line and take those consequences. It isn’t a great set of options.” “You blow weed?” he asked. “Occasionally,” I hedged, putting a bit of my own paranoia out there. I really didn’t know who the hell he was. For all I knew he could have been NIS, sent to check me out. “Wanna toke?” he offered, producing a joint from his pack of smokes. “Not at the moment,” I begged off. “I got a whole shit load of cases coming in and I can’t do weed and justice to them at the same time. Maybe sometime when I’m off.” “I been blowing weed every day since about half way through Nam. An’ doing as much acid as I can get my hands on. That’s how I’m coping at the moment.” “If getting you high is getting you by,” I winked, “that’s probably as good as I can do for you.” He got up to leave. “Thanks man.” He offered a hand and I shook it. “You’ve been a big help. Really. Set me straight on the options. I got a lot to think about.” “You going to the film show at the house?” I asked. “They’re gonna be showing a Yippie film in a couple of weeks. Check it out if you can.” “Thanks,” he said. “Maybe I will. See ya.” 7. I was hitting a major snag in the Black Unity lawsuit Donnie Woods wanted me to cook up. I was admitted in New York and could therefore represent GIs in military courts anywhere in the world, but I couldn’t practice in California state courts. They had their own separate rules about who could practice in their courts. That required taking their test. I hadn’t even applied for it. Therefore I needed to locate a local counsel willing to appear with me. Finding that person turned out to be a problem. I contacted my recruiter, George Kahn, expecting instant support but he demurred, claiming that his lawyer pool was “spread thin.” When I explained the tactic, things went even further down hill. “Eric,” he told me with condescension dripping from his voice, “it’s unethical to bring a lawsuit you know has no merit, just to harass the other -41-

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side. I don’t know any lawyers who would want to put their name on a complaint against the Marines just so that some organizers can buy a couple months of time.” I found myself taking a page from Joanie’s book. “George,” I argued, “we’re in the middle of a war here. We’ve got a couple Marines on the inside who are organizing a Black servicemen’s union and they need the time this suit can buy them to hold off inevitable harassment. So they can make the brothers believe that there is an actual movement they are being asked to join. Harassing the enemy is a legitimate tactic in a war, isn’t it? What’s unethical about buying time? Do we have a movement against the War or don’t we?” Kahn listened and told me he’d get back to me the way Hollywood producers do to people they want to throw out of their office but don’t want to reject outright, in case someday, they may turn out to be a star. That is, he forced me to put the project on hold. But not long after this rejection, I got a call that would change the whole picture. “Mr. Wolfe?” the voice asked. “It’s Darron Thomas. Y’all remembuh, Deputy Dawg?” “I couldn’t forget a name like that,” I told him. “What’s up?” “Well, actually, I’m callin’ from the Santa Ana jail. I got me ‘rested ovuh the weekend an’ I’m callin’ ‘cause I need a lawyuh. I was hopin’ I could git released into the custody of my company CO, ‘cause I ain’t got no bread fuh bail. They up’n stole all my money.” “What are you in on, Darron?” I asked. “They done busted me fuh robbin’ a gas station,” he replied. “The bail’s ten thou an’ I’m going’ to the court tomorrah fuh a plea an’ bail hearin’. Can y’all come up an’ represent me?” “Sorry, I can’t. I’m not admitted to practice in California courts,” I explained. “I thought you was a lawyuh,” he said with the curt clip of frustrated anger in his voice. “How come yuh can represent us Marines an’ y’all ain’t a lawyuh?” “Oh, I’m a lawyer all right. But, lawyers can only practice in places where they are admitted. I can practice in New York and in military courts, but I haven’t gotten around to getting myself admitted to the California courts yet and that’s where you are. I can make a call for you and see if I can get

you an emergency lawyer, at least for the bail hearing. I don’t know whether I’ll be successful, but I’ll do what I can.” “Well, thanks Mr. Wolfe, for whatevuh yuh can do. If I git outta here, I’ll prob’ly have to be seein’ y’all anyways, ‘cause when yuh gits busted like this it mean yuh ends up bein’ UA. So I’s gonna be up on charges back at Pendleton, ‘less’n I can beat this heyuh rap.” “Well, then,” I agreed, “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you soon.” After he hung up, I got on the phone to Kahn. This time he was a bit more helpful and put me in touch with one of his contacts in Santa Ana, who agreed to make an appearance for Deputy Dawg. I also made a call to a JAG captain named Jeffers whom I had recently met on another case. Like many of the Judge Advocates General men, he had joined up as a means of skipping through his military obligation without significant risk of being killed by hostile fire and a favorable entry on his curriculum vitae. JAG offered him that plus officer’s privileges and duty from 8:00 am to whenever in the early afternoon he could skip out for the golf course. It was a sweet deal. Still Jeffers was one of the rare few who was willing to step over the line and lend a hand. That may have been because he was Black, although lightskinned enough to pass. According to the credentials displayed on his wall he was a graduate of Howard and after that, the University of Michigan Law School. A team photo revealed him to have been member of his college basketball team. He was as close a colleague as I could expect to find and did little things that set himself apart from the mainstream, high and tight Marine officer crowd. He wore tinted Jazz musician style glasses and had a thin, Thurgood Marshall moustache. He let his hair grow to the maximum permissible limit. After we completed our first court martial together, Jeffers invited Emma and me to dinner at his officer’s housing on Base. He said that his wife was looking forward to meeting us. She had heard a lot about us from him and was interested in learning more. He left a pass for us with the MPs at the main gate so we could join them for a home-cooked meal. And we were having a very nice time. His wife was a charming woman. She was darker than he was and wore her hair close-cropped, in the Watusi style. Tall. Elegant. Educated. She had wrapped herself in flowing kente cloth accessorized with abundant, jangly silver jewelry. We had just gotten through the main course, a nice roasted chicken, when the MPs knocked. They had orders to escort us off the Base right then -43-

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and there, they claimed. There was to be no delay. Their orders were so firm that they refused us permission to finish the meal. Barely allowed us to put down our forks and wipe our faces on the napkins. Jeffers got on the phone to his CO and made a plea that the brass relent. Instead he got a direct order to tell us to leave. His wife was mortified. Emma and I made no trouble and left, sharing apologies with the Jeffers and a promise to renew our acquaintance for dinner off Base. We figured that the lesson Jeffers and his wife learned about the idiots running the military was worth missing dessert for. But Emma and I also realized that we had been informed on. We wondered who it was. Only the folks at the house knew about this dinner. Between Captain Jeffers and the Santa Ana lawyer, we were able to spring Deputy Dawg into the custody of Gunny Bonham, the fellow Deputy Dawg had described several weeks before as a racist cracker. Bonham escorted Deputy Dawg back down to the Pendleton brig and told him that if he ever got out of that place, he, Bonham, would be happy to kick his Black ass into shape for him down at the mess hall. It looked like frying pans or fires, whichever way Deputy Dawg turned, and if I was going to see him it would have to be at the Pendleton brig. Camp Pendleton, the largest Marine Corps base in the country, stretched all the way from Richard Nixon’s vacation home at San Clemente to Oceanside and back from the beach to Fallbrook in the high desert. It sprawled over 120,000 acres of undeveloped terrain, from beaches to mountains, from desert to woodland, making it suitable for realistic mock-up tank battles, amphibious assaults and live ammo artillery practice. It was the only thing that kept LA out of San Diego, ironically preserving our native habitat while dedicated to destroying foreign environments. Home to the First Marine Division, parts of the Third and Fifth Marine Expeditionary Brigade, it was governed by a feudal lord known as a three star general, the “CO.” I had to wait until they got Dawg’s paperwork straightened out before I could arrange a visit. Getting on to Pendleton, for a civilian, required a visitor’s pass. Thanks to Captain Jeffers, the main gate MP shack already had my name on a clipboard when I arrived for my appointment with Darron Thomas, aka Deputy Dawg.

“Be sure to stay on the main roads, sir,” a sergeant MP warned me with a stiff and proper military salute. “Your pass is only good for travel from the main gate to Mainside, the brig and back.” As I walked back to my car with my pass, I heard the MP on the squawk box. “Six foot, one seventy, long red hair and moustache. Blue Valiant. New York license.” Not all that accurate but close enough. I was under surveillance. It was a clear, silky morning and the sun was posing in brilliant yellow above the rugged purple and brown mountains in the east. The road followed a dry river bed on my left. Beyond lay flat fields of wheat-straw weed, churned by dusty half-track ruts and dotted with occasional low brush. The expanse of the Base lay before me, beckoning to go a bit heavier on the accelerator. But less than a mile after I passed the main gate, I noticed that they were tailing me in a marked jeep. Restrained by the tail, I arrived at Mainside late but without receiving the speeding ticket that already had my name written on it. The Pendleton brig was a disappointment after all I had heard. It consisted of a pair of down-at-the -heels, wood-frame barracks fronting for several shabby Quonset huts left over from two wars ago. The whole thing sat in dung brown dust about a mile from Mainside, hemmed in by chain-link topped with a corkscrew of razor wire. This brig was no San Quentin but a low security affair. The Corps wasn’t all that concerned with escapees. Their effective obedience training program backed by the threat of brutally merciless retribution was sufficient to restrain all but the most recalcitrant of desperados. For those few who were undeterred, the Corps had more secure accommodations elsewhere. I presented my credentials to a lone, armed Marine at the gate and was allowed in without so much as an inspection of my briefcase. I mounted the warped and warn wooden steps of the brig admin building and passed into the domain of Captain Daly. Daly was a large man, tall, with shoulders that seemed too narrow for his barrel chest. His close-cropped hair was turning gray. He had a pencil thin moustache that reminded me of David Niven. His status as commander of the brig was plainly announced on a plastic plaque. Behind him, on the top shelf of his gray metal bookcase stood a row of coffee cups, each bearing the embossed chevron of a rank. Private all the way to master sergeant, plus two with lieutenant’s bars in gold and silver. Daly was a mustang, an officer who had risen from the ranks. He looked up at me from behind the pages of the San Diego Union sports section and noticed me admiring his coffee cup collection. He was wearing -45-

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his khaki dress shirt over blue pants. A phalanx of ribbons decorated his shirt front. He had his index finger crooked around the handle of a cup of foul smelling, over-brewed java with the double gold bar insignia of his present rank. “Made captain,” he announced, proudly hoisting it aloft as if he were making a toast, “on my second tour in Nam. Battlefield promotion.” Daly was one of those soldiers heavily invested in war. If it ever stopped, mustangs would be the first to lose rank. I decided to feel him out. “You in World War II?” I asked. “How’d you know?” he seemed surprised. “My old man’s got a couple of those,” I said pointing to a row of his ribbons. He brightened a moment then furrowed his brow. “Marines?” “Army Air Corps,” I told him. “He was a master sergeant in the Pacific. In charge of the ammo dump on Tinian.” “After we took it,” Daly one-upped me and quickly changed the subject. “You here to see a prisoner?” I handed him a chit from Base Legal. “Private Thomas. I think you got him here.” Daly smiled through the kind of yellow teeth that happen after gallons of sludge coffee and a couple of packs of smokes a day. “Disgrace to the Corps,” he opined. “I look forward to the day we can ship that son of a bitch to Leavenworth.” They brought Private Thomas into a small, green room that contained a metal table and two decrepit metal chairs with shapeless cushions. A young Marine guard told me to knock when I was ready to leave and closed the door behind him. We were alone. Thomas was wearing starched and pressed utilities, the uniform of the day for prisoners in the brig. He put his cap on the table and waited for me to give him permission to sit. I motioned for him to take a chair and popped open my briefcase. His file was thin. All I had was a rap sheet and the criminal complaint. “This doesn’t look pretty,” I said, pointing at the papers that lay before me. “The gas station clerk gave the cops a description of the car and part of the license number. Then he ID’d you after you were detained. You got a prior from Missouri on your rap sheet. If you’re convicted, you’re going to do some time. Then the Marines could give you

some more and throw you out with a dishonorable. Where’d you get the car they caught you in?” I probed. Deputy Dawg looked around the room, as if concerned that there might be someone else listening. “It’s OK man,” I reassured him. “This is a privileged conversation. They can’t use what you tell me, even if they are listening.” “Ripped it off in San Clemente,” Deputy Dawg grinned. He leaned forward. “Lissen man, there gotta be some way we can beat this heyuh rap. I mean the wheels wasn’t on no hot sheet, an’ the pigs jus’ pulled me ovuh ‘cause I be Black. An’ the ID wasn’t fair man. I mean there wasn’t no line up or nuthin’. They jus’ drove by with the kid. ‘Course he gonna pick the first Black man they shows him. The whole thing ain’t right.” “Well, those issues are gonna get sorted out in Santa Ana,” I shook my head, ducking his complaint about police tactics. “My job is to see if we can get some kind of deal with the Marines that will help get you out while it’s pending. But I’d sure like to hear what went down that night. You do it?” Deputy Dawg nodded. “The truth,” he said, “is that I guess yuh could say I’m ‘dicted’ to pullin’ stick ups. It’s like a sport with me. Ain’t so much fuh the bread, yuh dig, but it’s like for a couple minutes I got me the power an’ it’s a fuckin’ high. Yuh gotta unnerstand what it feels like fuh a Black man even if it’s jus’ fuh a minute to have the power. I been doin’ this a long time, on my weekend passes. Sometimes, when I’m hangin’ with some of the bloods we be bettin’ how many gas stations I can rob on the way up to LA an’ still get there in two hours. Couple months ago I did me six. Set a fuckin’ record.” I must have been looking at him in some kind of disbelief, but if I was, he misunderstood the drift of my thoughts. “Man, don’t yuh know that it takes fuckin’ time to rob a gas station?” he waved a hand almost dismissively, as if he thought I was questioning his ability to pull that many rip-offs in only two hours. But I had never even considered the crime as some kind of stowatch Olympic sport, as he evidently did. “First yuh gotta git offuh the highway an’ cruise ‘till yuh find a station ain’t got no customers,” he expounded. “One that ain’t got no bullet-proof cage fuh no cashier neither. An’ when yuh finds one uh them, yuh runs in, does a quick check of the scene before yuh stick the barrel of yo piece in the suckuh’s face, right between his eyes and then yuh yells ‘Give it up, motherfucker!’ Fuh him to turn ovuh the cash. An’ most of the time, the

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look on their faces is worth the whole thing. When I sees their faces, I knows I got me the power.” He emphasized “power” like it was a state of nirvana and looked down over the tops of his shades, checking me out, to see if I was shocked. I pokerfaced it and he went on. “They only got me on one, man,” he laughed. “I pulled off four others that night. Hope they don’t find out.” “How the fuck did you get into the Marines anyway?” I wanted to know. “I can’t understand why they took a gangster like you.” “Yuh can’t huh?” he snickered. “Well you gots a lotta learnin’ to do then. Yuh know why they calls me Deputy Dawg?” he asked, and decided he was going to tell me whether or not I wanted to know. “‘Cause I drives like them wild-ass deputies yuh see in them car chases on TV and ‘cause people think I got this kinduh way ‘bout me like that cartoon character. Anyways, I can drive an’ I can walk into a store doin’ this ‘aw shucks’ thing an’ no one’ll think nuthin’ of it ‘til it’s too late. I was the fuckin’ best wheel man in East St. Louis,” he boasted. “An’ I ain’t never did no job where anyone got caught with me behind the wheel.” “Until this one,” I reminded him. He paid me no mind and went on with his brag. “The way yuh do it, yuh see, is yuh hot wire some fast wheels fum somewheres in the slums ‘cause most of the time, the cops won’t even do nuthin’ if someone fum the slums reports they vehicle stolen. Which half the time they won’t do anyways, ‘cause it always gonna cost a blood grief ‘long with bread to be dealin’ with the pigs. An’ the wheels I rips off, a bro like me looks natural in ‘em. So once yuh got the vehicle, an’ yuh be satisfied ‘bout where the local pigs is at an’ yuh done selected yo target, yuh chill out ‘til yuh feels like everything is ok. An’ dat’s when yuh stick the ole’ .44 inta the suckuh’s face. Now,” he pointed a finger in the air for emphasis, “it gotta be a big gun like a 357 or a 44 ‘cause yuh gotta scare the livin’ shit outta them. And then yuh grabs yo stack of bills. Yuh gets back onto the interstate for couple exits, then gets off and hides out in some hamburger joint or coffee shop. Have yuhself somethin’ ta eat for a bit an’ then yuh can do it again. And then when yuh be finished with that fuh the night, y’all dumps the wheels somewhere’s back in the slums where the po’ folk can scavenge the parts off. An before yuh know it, the cars nuthin but a burnt out body on some street an’ they ain’t no fuckin’ evidence of nuthin. Like it nevuh happen.

“Well, I was doin’ this fuh over a year an’ was so good at it, I dropped outta high school after the 10th grade and went pro,” he said, making it sound like he had signed with the Yankees. “I was ‘jus 17 at the time. But then one night, I got me a call from a blood I hung with some of the time, needed some bread bad an’ he wanted some help. I couldn’t let the bro down, yuh unnerstan’ so I tole him I’d pick him up after I found me the right vehicle. That was the part I liked to do myself. Less chance one person ‘causin’ people to notice than two, yuh know. Mos’ of the time I could get inside a car in ‘bout 30 seconds.” He asked me for a smoke and after I gave it to him he continued with his story. “Well this heyuh particular night, I found me the wheels I wanted, a Camaro, aftuh only ‘bout ten minutes of lookin’. It was parked on a dark street a long ways from the nearest streetlight. So things was going’ easy, an’ I guess that got me a little careless. Anyways, I didn’t see the owner ‘til it was too late. The bro was ‘bout a foot taller ‘n me, lean an’ mean.” Deputy Dawg looked over his sunglasses again to make sure I understood that he hadn’t punked out. That the guy was really too big and strong for him to handle. “Fucker pulls me out fum unduh the dashboard with one fuckin’ hand.” He described it, graphically grabbing at the air with one of his to illustrate how it was done. “Someone calls the cops and the motherfuckers actually come this time. “Anyways, I was lucky, ‘cause I was jus’ a kid and wasn’t carryin’ no weapon. It was jus’ a misdemeanor. The public defender cops me out and it turns out, yuh see, the judge was a ex-Marine. The cat believed that the armed services made a man outta him and that it would do the same for almos’ anyone, ‘specially first offenders like myself. Instead of givin’ me six months jail and three years probation like the D.A. wanted, he tole me he would drop the charges completely an’ give me a fresh start, if I agreed to join the Marines. “The Marines were willin’. They didn’t even wanna hear ‘bout my record. Took me straight in. Made me a tank driver ‘cause of how good I be at it.” By the time he finished, I realized I was resting my chin in the palm of my hand, to keep my jaw from hanging open with amazement. Were the Marines so hard up for bodies to fight this War that they had taken in this pathological robber, taught him all the fine points of killing and combat driving so he could concoct an even better one man crime wave when he got out? Was anybody thinking? -49-

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“How come, after you joined up you kept on doing the same old shit?” I asked with a smirky smile, unable to restrain my sarcastic side. “I mean like wasn’t driving a tank through the huts of peasants enough to make you wanna hold off, at least until you get out and go back to the boredom of slum living?” “Aw, that sheeit don’t mean fuck all,” he rocked back in his chair and shook his head, apparently missing the dark humor that I intended. “Don’t get yuh off like a stick-up, man.” He continued, taking himself a whole lot more seriously than I would have liked. “Runnin’ some bullshit game fo’ the man ain’t the same as havin’ the power yo’ own self. An’ I’m good at it, Mr. Wolfe. Believe it. Best they is.” I looked around the holding cell where we were doing the interview. “You aren’t that good,” I told him. “You’re in here, after all.” Deputy Dawg smiled. “I done more’n a hundred rip offs,” he bragged. “An’ been busted only twice. If you did that good with your cases you’d be King Shit of all the lawyers in America.” “Yeah, but I don’t go to jail when I lose.” “That don’t take away nuthin’ from the fact that I’m the fuckin’ best there is at what I do, man. An’ mos’ people can’t say that bout what they do.” He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Now, ain’t that the truth?” 8. “Here,” Emma said, handing me a folded up piece of paper just as I settled down for a hearty breakfast. “Let me know when you’re ready to talk about it.” It was one of her lists. Her way of handling unpleasant exchanges between us. Emma made lists for everything. She professed innocent motives. Claimed it was so she wouldn’t forget things. But she knew I hated her lists. So when she handed me one it was a bad sign. Either a scorecard of my misconducts or a criticism of my performance. She developed this sort of hand-over routine and did a duck and cover number while I boiled and fumed. Then after I had cooled off, she would begin to work on me until I gave up. Once an item was completed, she took obvious pleasure in eradicating it from the document. Merely putting a line through it simply would not do. It had to be totally obliterated the way Stalin airbrushed his rivals out of old group photographs.

“This a hit list?” I tried to joke, looking at the four names on the piece of paper. “In a manner of speaking,” she parried. “If you want to dine on tuna casserole instead of cheese macaroni.” “But Emma,” I protested, “I already bring $5,000 into the collective. I already have done my share in raising money. Besides, I’ve got some heavy legal work to do.” Emma shrugged. “Eric, when you got me to come along on this jaunt, you told me that there would be work for me here too. And there is. I’m working on the paper and leaflets. We’ve got that film showing coming up and you may not believe this but getting the word out takes some work. So, maybe you haven’t noticed but you’re not the only one doing things around here. And whether you like it or not, the only way we’re going to supplement our commodity food allotment with something nutritious is if we can raise some money. It’s your choice. You’re the one who likes to eat.” She had a point. That morning’s breakfast of government issued powdered milk and everlasting pink lobster-buoy cheese was a powerful motivator. First on my list were the Reverend L. Thomas Harrington, an Episcopalian minister and his assistant, Reverend Michael Simpson. “You think we can set up a time to meet with them around a dinner?” I suggested. “Best I could do was an afternoon tea,” she winked. “I already figured that the only way I’d ever get you to do this was if I dangled an edible incentive in front of your nose.” On the approach, it looked promising. The Episcopalians sure weren’t pikers when it came to housing their “men of the cloth.” Reverend Harrington’s place was a sprawling ranch house on a half acre site on the outskirts of Oceanside. A line of palm trees marked the border of his front yard. A circular driveway led up to the double-doored entrance of contrasting dark hardwoods. His lawn was Astro-turf green and well kept. Harrington and Simpson met us at the door. They were an Oliver and Hardy pair. Harrington was tall and trim. Well-tanned. He appeared to be about 35 but could have been ten years older. He reminded me of an old Yankee skipper with rugged, angular features topped off by full head of long wavy brown hair with a trace of gray. Simpson looked about 10 years younger, was almost a foot shorter and lugged around an ample belly that seemed to explode from beneath his narrow rib cage. He was pale, with a freckled, cherubic face that had begun to develop incipient jowls. The reddish hair on his scalp was well along in the thinning process except for his -51-

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attempted mutton chops. His lips retracted when he smiled to disclose an overbite of rabbit-like incisors. Together they showed Emma and me into a large living room that was a misnomer, as it appeared that no one really lived in it. I had the feeling that they had just peeled back the plastic covers from the furniture. Everything smelled like Lysol and furniture polish. The bookshelves were laden with leather-bound volumes purchased for show and rarely consulted. The end tables were strewn with glass and porcelain trinkets difficult to find outside of garage sales. They sat us down in front of a phony gas log fireplace and leaned forward intently, inviting us to unburden ourselves, the way clergy and psychiatrists do. This was the queue for the dutiful wives to enter, bearing the hospitality offerings. The Reverend rose gallantly and introduced his wife, Marylou, the bearer of a tray laden with tea, coffee and the necessary accessories. She looked to be a somewhat past prime prom queen who had gained more than a few pounds in the wrong places and was sagging under the load both physically and mentally. She had what once was a beautiful and was still a very pleasing face. She turned out to be an obsequious woman. The kind people tend to describe as “very nice.” But the Reverend Harrington all but genuflected when he turned to introduce the second wife. Trumpets for Mrs. Raylene Simpson! Raylene was carrying a tray holding wafer type cookies in day-glow pink, lime green and custard yellow. She was a lean, hard-muscled blonde who looked like she had just been roped, hogtied and dragged out of a West Texas saloon. She was wearing a glossy silk dress in colors that matched the confections on her tray but she seemed uncomfortable in it. I guessed she probably was more at home in blue jeans. How Raylene ever hooked up with her rotund young reverend must have been quite a tale. They hardly seemed “two peas in a pod.” “How’r y’all doin?” she responded to Harrington’s introduction. “Would y’all care to try one of these here fine wayfahs? They’re absolutely scrumshus,” she declared. Raylene had the hard-scrabble manners of an Okie farm girl with a twangy drawl to match. She was loud when she talked, clompy when she walked and oozed a sexual energy that was inappropriate to a clergyman’s spouse. But, she seemed to be saying, “Who the hell gives a shit about that. Let’s have a blast.”

“Why thank you very much.” Reverend Harrington reached over and picked a couple off the tray, his eyes catching her glance. She returned it with a seductive smile. Simpson reddened. Marylou twitched and suggested that those wafers would go nicely with some of her coffee. Harrington opined that Marylou made the best coffee in Oceanside, maybe all of Southern California. That seemed to settle her down a little. I proposed to try some, injecting that the coffee we had at the project house was none too good, given that we didn’t have the kind of budget that would permit of higher quality goods, such as Emma and I were accustomed to when we were Ivy League students back East. Emma winced and I got the message. What if these men were not of the Yale Divinity School ilk but rather some down-in-the-heels Midwestern Bible College where they resented the Eastern liberal elite with a passion? My elitist gambit would merely be nose rub to them. “Michael taught religion a Harvard a few years ago,” Raylene responded competitively. “It was just at the summer school,” Simpson corrected her. “A seminar. I was adjunct professor for one summer.” “How did you like Cambridge?” Emma asked. “Oh fine, just fine,” Simpson dodged. “Quite a liberal place, actually. All those bookstores and coffee houses. There was a lot to do.” “And Boston was right close by,” said Raylene. “We even went to one of those outdoor concerts they give next to the river. Y’all know what I’m talking about?” “Pops,” Harrington nodded. “On the Esplanade. The Boston Pops.” “That’s right,” Raylene brightened. “ They give this big concert on the Fourth of July and shoot off fireworks right over the river. Quite a sight. And they’ve got these real old buildings from the Revolution. It’s so historic.” “They call it the ‘Cradle of the Revolution,’” Harrington added. Raylene seemed impressed with the breadth of his knowledge. “Those same values are what we are all about,” Emma interjected, attempting to make some progress. “That’s why we came out here. Do you know that GIs don’t have the protection of the Bill of Rights? They don’t have the right to free speech or a trial by a jury of their peers, even in time of peace. So, if a kid gets drafted against his will and is forced into the military, he loses all his rights.” “But isn’t that necessary to run an Army?” Simpson argued. “Yes, I suppose it is,” Emma agreed. “And it would make sense if there wasn’t a law like the draft, that forces young men to either become convicted felons and lose their rights or to go into the military and lose their rights. -53-

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What use is the Bill of Rights if Congress can make a law that deprives people of their constitutional rights one way or the other?” “But the idea is that this sacrifice is necessary for the defense of the country,” Simpson persisted. “If that’s where you draw the line that lets Congress take away a citizen’s constitutional rights,” Emma responded, “then you have to concede we’re not at that point yet. It would be quite a stretch to say we’re defending our country by messing in a civil war seven thousand miles away. And even if you were to twist the truth to say that’s what we’re doing, then at the very least, Congress ought to have the guts to declare war before it forces its citizens to lose their rights. We’re way over the constitutional line here. Either the government has to come out and say this War is necessary for the defense of the country or they have to quit drafting people and just use volunteers who are willing to give up their rights. Your argument about the defense of the country shouldn’t even apply until they declare a war and we all know that they can’t put that one over.” “Well, aren’t the Marines volunteers?” Harrington interrupted. “How is that argument relevant to what you are doing down here?” “As long as there is a draft and young men know they are going to be forced into some military organization or another,” Emma argued, “then there is no truly, non-coercive volunteering going on. But let’s get back to GI rights, which is what we are really here to talk about. Did you know that it’s against the law for the GIs to organize a union? They can’t even wear a peace sign around their neck with their cross. In fact, the military could force them to remove their crosses if they wanted to. They have prevented Jewish soldiers from wearing yarmulkes. They force soldiers whose religion opposes doctor’s treatment to be treated by doctors. Right now, some of the Black GIs are getting hassled for wearing a Black Unity identity bracelet. If they can stop these soldiers from wearing a bracelet they can prevent the wearing of a cross. The revolution is not quite finished. That’s why we’re here.” “So what kinds of things are you doing?” Marylou wanted to know. “Eric’s started an organization called the Civilian Defense Counsel Services, to defend the troops who want to stop the War. Because they can’t really exercise their rights as citizens, they are always getting into trouble with the brass and they need legal help. We try to help them beat the charges and get them out with a good discharge so they don’t lose their benefits.”

“What do you mean, ‘lose their benefits?’” the Reverend Harrington asked. “Well,” I explained, “a GI who serves for at least six months is entitled to get V.A. benefits like money for school or a home. But more important than that, his discharge papers, the DD-214 they call it, tells prospective employers how he got out of the service. If he got thrown out after a court martial or even if the military wants to just throw him out administratively, kind of like firing him, the DD-214 states that he was discharged under other than honorable conditions. If a GI has to show an employer that paper, he won’t get the job, for sure. He’s automatically disqualified from government jobs. Can’t even be a mailman. So a GI who gets thrown out of the military because, for example, he is opposed to the War and refuses to ship over in protest, or if he’s already over andrefuses to commit some war crime, because it’s an illegal order, he ends up with a life sentence as far as employment is concerned. He’s barred from all the good jobs. It’s a very high price to pay for personal integrity. My job is to help them so that they don’t get sentenced to a life of poverty and discrimination.” “And we need all the help we can get, because there’s a whole lot of guys in that position,” Emma added. “In fact, we probably are going to have a major case coming up in the very near future. We’re planning to bring a case to establish the Black GI’s right to wear the Black Unity bracelet.” “What are you looking for by way of help?” Harrington asked. “Basically, we need people to come out and support the troops whenever they have to appear in court,” Emma explained. “We’d like help with publicity. If you can mention their cases in your church meetings and activities, that would be nice. Some of the churches up in the San Francisco area are even organizing sanctuaries, where troops who don’t want to go to Vietnam can stay, in a protest. They’re using the tradition of the churches as sanctuaries from government oppression and creating a public forum for these men to make a statement, gain support. But most of all we need money. Fighting a case in court is expensive. Getting out publicity is expensive. We are all working on a shoestring budget...” “Eating commodity foods,” I injected. “And every little bit you can see yourselves clear to donate, would be appreciated,” Emma urged. Well, churchmen are used to collecting handouts from their supporters, not being on the other end of the stick. To be hit up was virgin territory and they responded poorly to the turned table. The Reverend Harrington squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. His eyes focused off to somewhere beyond the -55-

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large plate glass window. Simpson pulled at a mutton chop, did a nervous rabbit grin and mumbled a few platitudinous words of support for the cause. As we got up to leave, Harrington hinted opaquely that it might be a bit divisive if he advocated aid or comfort for deserting soldiers from the pulpit but indicated that he thought that he could bring up the issue in some of his adult forums, which were held on a monthly basis to discuss topics of current interest. He promised to put the issue of the sanctuary movement on the agenda for debate and intimated that he’d propose to invite us. We might even get some supporters out of it, he supposed. But he didn’t want to do anything that would bring discord and controversy to his church. Marylou showed us out. When we got to our car she slipped Emma a twenty from her purse, with an apology that it was not more and a request to be notified of any forthcoming trials. She said she wanted to attend. 9. The Yippie movie was an Oscar winner. We had a full house of troops howling when Mayor Daley explained that his police weren’t there to create disorder but were there to preserve disorder. Everyone enjoyed the demonstration of the new, improved Yippie helmet and how it prevented your head from looking like the remnants of a squashed watermelon if you had the misfortune of getting clubbed by a Chicago cop. By the end, they were ready to riot, to join us in a trashing of downtown Oceanside. But some of us didn’t know when to quit. Joanie announced that we had another film and would do a double feature. Clayton knew what was coming and mentioned that he had to meet some brothers, couldn’t stay. We should have gotten the hint when Mitch, who Clayton thought of contemptuously as a honky, said “I’ll go with ya, man.” and Clayton let him. The second feature was a piece of scratchy Viet Cong propaganda whose value was mainly as historical evidence that they weren’t as skilled in film making as they were in revolution. It commenced with scenes of F-14s screeching through the sky, bombs exploding, earth flying everywhere. Under attack, scores of small people in black pajamas and conical hats began throwing down their various farming implements and running, leaped into what looked like sewers. After a quick cut, they emerged in pith helmets, their antiquated machine guns blazing skyward. Soon the planes trailed smoke and parachutes began floating earthward. Blackened, disheveled pilots

were shown being lead away, trussed with their heads bowed. Then we traveled south on dilapidated trucks as the scratchy soundtrack roused the soldiers with strains of the Internationale. In the jungle, a platoon of young women were whittling bamboo stakes and placing them at the bottom of pits that they then covered with palm fronds and dirt to create lethal booby traps. For the grand finale we were taken directly into an ambush. Sappers blasted a line of stalled tanks, forcing large, terrified white men to spring from the turrets, their uniforms ablaze. By the time the red and blue flag with the yellow star fluttered behind the FIN and the house lights came up, the place had been abandoned. Only Jumpin’ Jack and his friend, Frankie diPietro, remained of the crowd. “I wanted Frankie to see this,” he told me. “Get some idea what it’s like from the other side. I liked the Yippie movie but I was real glad you showed the second one. I seen stuff like that. The boobie traps and them sappers. You’d cut one down and another’d spring up in his place. Like a Joe Palooka punching bag. They don’t give up. They ain’t like us. If we were takin’ the losses they take, we’d pull back and call for air support. They just march right over their dead buddies and keep coming. They hate our guts that much.” “To tell you the truth,” Frankie smiled shyly. “I would’ve left with them other guys. Except for Jack here. I ain’t for this fuckin’ War, but I ain’t for them neither. I think we should get the hell out. Leave that damn country for them to fight over. But I don’t go for making them the good guys neither. War’s war and everyone in it’s got a license to kill. Nobody’s the bad guy and nobody’s the good guy either.” “You don’t understand man,” Jack shook his head. “The kind of things they got me to do ain’t just war. It’s beyond that. It’s way beyond that. The VC may not think like us, or act like us or believe in God like us, but they’re people just the same and the shit we’re doing to them is beyond war. The brass is making us into criminals, animals. There just ain’t no excuse for what we’re doin there. I don’t go by Jumpin Jack for nothing.” Frankie nodded, like he knew the whole story. But, looking around the room, I could see that the rest of us didn’t. Who, I wondered, would speak up and ask him what he meant? “But let’s face it, Jack,” Frankie responded, “ most of the guys who’ve been over don’t end up where you’re at. I mean, really, man. You fuckin’ joined up ‘cause you wanted to. Went over to fight gooks ‘cause you wanted to. And so things got outta hand, like you gotta expect in them kind of situations. Right? So you saw that fightin’ a war ain’t so pure and righteous. -57-

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And you got carried away. But how many guys did that and didn’t end up going against the big green machine like you’re doing. Most of them put it behind them. Get on with their lives. Try to forget what they’ve done. Chalk it all up to war, man. It’s not like it says something about who you really are, man.” Jack sat down on the floor Indian style. He looked down into the vortex made by his crossed legs like it was a black hole and he was hoping it would suck him into it. In that position he addressed his barely audible response. “You ain’t been there yet. You don’t know, man. I didn’t know shit about the racism part ‘til I got into the Suck, man. But then, I began to notice how they were always putting the Blacks into the shit details. But that kind of shit don’t sink in right away, ‘cause a lot of the brothers got an attitude, ya know. And it takes time to get the picture. So I figure it’s like retaliation, OK. But then, I can’t help noticing how we treated the ARVN. You know, they ain’t got all the muscle we got, but they been fighting a long time and they ain’t gettin’ no respect. Sometimes they take ten times the casualties we do, but the first guys to get Medi-vac’d out are us. And there’s hostility. We’re always callin’ Charlie gooks and such, but if Charlie’s a gook then so are they. Even the brothers are calling them gooks, like they can’t see past racism against Blacks to the racism against the yellow man. An’ what the fuck did I know man, I grew up in a place where the only colored people I ever heard of were the Black folks we saw on TV, like Rochester and Amos and Andy and the only fuckin’ yellows we ever seen were the ones that ran the laundry or maybe some Chinese restaurant in Albany. “Yeah, we’re riskin’ our lives and all, but we ain’t the heroes that some folks want us to be. We got the planes and we got the artillery and we got the armor. But we also got R&R and are out of there in a year. Them ARVN and yeah, the VC too, some of them been fightin’ five, ten years. Lost all of their family. Got nothin to go home to but a burnt up patch of jungle. If we’re heroes what the hell are they? “And then, when we take a hamlet, we gotta destroy it. Who the fuck knows? Maybe the locals are VC and maybe they ain’t. Who’s goin’ ta take a chance, get his ass blown off? So ya end up ‘callin’ in air strikes on some shit hole, piss poor village full of rag covered, scarecrow peasants. But hey, after awhile you start to see all this shit different. How it’s all crazy and mixed up and it changes you inside. None of it makes any sense, ‘cept

surviving. An’ that’s a fuckin’ good reason to blow some smoke or drop a tab or shoot a bit of smack ‘cause the whole thing’s fuckin’ insane. ‘Cause ya don’t want to think about what you’re doin’ and just want to survive. That’s what it’s like, man. “But for me, after a while, surviving didn’t seem all that fuckin’ important any more, after I added up the stuff I’d been doin’ to reach that objective. Maybe some guys can forget, or think they can forget. I ain’t about to speak for them, but I can’t believe that a whole lotta them are ever going to forget and in the end, down the road, they’re gonna feel sold out one way or another. I just hit that place maybe sooner than some. We stick up for each other under fire and that’s the best of it. We’re all brothers on that score. I’ll remember that too, the good stuff. But how we got there in the first place and the shit we did while we was there, well, good luck to the guys who can forget that. Good fuckin’ luck.” “Let’s be gettin’ back, man,” Frankie proposed. “This is bummin’ you out.” He looked over to us and shook his head. “It’s ok. He gets like this when he starts to remembering. Don’t you worry about it. We’ll see you later. Come on, man,” he said to Jack. “It’s about time we be getting back to Base.” To my surprise, Jack and Frankie did see us later. Jack even began staying over. Hanging out. Sharing dinners. Sleeping in the attic loft, because as an NCO, he could stay off base except when he was on duty. He even brought a duffel bag over, with changes of uniform so he could report to duty straight from the house. 10. Even though there were plenty of Marines around, guard duty at Ditmar was restricted to those of us who were not in the service. It was partly because we wanted to keep the GIs out of trouble but also, as it turned out, they had been banned from the duty, incredibly, for incompetence. The job was not complicated. It involved walking the perimeter of the property. Checking all the barbed wire for gaps. Making sure that the bells and cans were properly attached to the trip wires strung around the yard and capable of making the warning noises that were intended. After that, the sentry would take up a post on the street side behind the sandbags where it’s hard to be a target. You were supposed to sit there for four hours in the shadows, all the while making sure not to be inadvertently back-lit by one of the MOP collective who decided to put on a lamp to read or who was just fussing around inside the house. -59-

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As I heard the story, just after the place got machine-gunned, some of the Marines volunteered to pull guard duty for the collective. One night, Jesus and Deputy Dawg drew the sentry duty. You’d think, seeing as they were trained Marines and all, they might have known what they were doing. But you’d be wrong. They had managed to consume a couple of joints, washed them down with a few bottles of Ripple. Just like some fire base hell over in the Delta, I guess they were thinking. Neither of them would fess up to just how it happened but that pump action Winchester shotgun went off and blew a hole in the ceiling the size of a hubcap. A load of double O buck blasted through the makeshift sleeping loft where Donnie Woods was sleeping. It whizzed past his head by a few inches and opened a skylight in the roof. It was miracle the cops didn’t show up. At that point the collective decided to phase out all the active duty Marines from guard duty, slowly, so as not to offend any of them. There were questions about their discipline. They were prone to inebriation the moment they left the Base and seemed to require a rigid command, which none of us were capable of doing. It was early September, not long after Emma and I had become eligible for the people’s glorious watch standing duty. It was about midnight on one of my first watches. I was hunkered down in the deck chair and armed to the teeth. I stuck the 9mm. Browning automatic that I recently purchased for this chore, barrel first, into a gap in the sandbags, from where it could be quickly withdrawn. I had the 12 gauge pump shotgun nestled in my lap. Dino, the yellow, short-haired mongrel, was curled up under the chair for company. A suspicious, unmuffled car shook me out of a doze as it cruised by and turned the corner. A short while later it came around again and slowed down. I could see at least four people inside and they were gesturing toward the house. I peeked over the sandbags, pumped a round into the chamber and slowly flicked the safety of the shotgun, training it in their direction. The driver had turned off his lights, but there were dots of glow inside the vehicle. A couple of them must have been smoking. The next thing I heard was the engine rev. A moment later, a loud bang shattered the night. It startled me almost to the point of pulling the trigger. But our training paid off. I was able to recognize that it was not the sound of a shot being fired. Whoever was in that car had produced a backfire. Then they drove off in a wake of laughter,

not realizing how close we had all come to disaster. They thought it was a joke. “What the fuck!” I heard Mitch yell from somewhere inside the house. “It’s cool.” I yelled back. “Just a backfire. Some yahoos fuckin’ around. Assholes almost got themselves peppered with double O.” I found myself wondering what the hell was I doing. If they had been Minutemen attempting another machine-gunning what would I have done? Shoot back? And if I did, wouldn’t most of my fire end up in the walls of an innocent neighbor’s house at best or in one of their bodies at worst. In the movies, when the bullets miss their intended target that’s the last you ever think of them. But not in the real world. Here, bullets keep on going until somebody or something stops them. Even the ones people shoot up in the air return to earth, according to the laws of physics, at the same speed that they left the muzzle. And what then? Surely the cops would come and want to get in. What was my job then? Create an armed confrontation? Risk a Black Panther type massacre? If my luck went bad, I’d end up being forced to hold off the Oceanside Police Department. Trying to arrange for a surrender in front of the press. So I came to the conclusion that shooting back, even at attacking Minutemen would be a big mistake. The only good reason to have the guns was to deter someone stupid enough to try to break in or fire bomb the place and that possibility looked pretty hypothetical. This sentry duty began to seem like a suicide mission. If shit really did go down, all I’d be was a couple days of gruesome news. A casualty, like those poor students who blew themselves up in that townhouse back in Greenwich Village while trying to make bombs. If there was going to be an attack, chances were I’d be a dead duck, one way or another. Well, maybe I was no different from those grunts on the Base after all. Doing shit that was really stupid. Except I had volunteered for a different army. As this jumble of thoughts raced around in my head, an argument between Clayton, Donnie and Cookie was brewing somewhere in the back of the house and began to evolve into something close to disturbing the peace. “Hey, can you guys keep it down?” I hollered in from the porch. “I can’t stand watch with all that noise goin’ on in there and if it keeps up this time of night you all can expect the cops any minute.” Maybe it worked. A little while later Donnie came out to join me. He was walking uneasily. Beset by an alcoholic tempest, he was listing first to port and then to starboard like an abandoned yacht, broaching in heavy seas. He slid himself down the wall until his butt met the stoop, took a long drag on his

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Kool and sighed. “Hey Wolfie,” he slurred, holding out a green bottle with the remains of some Ripple sloshing in the bottom. “ Want some?” I tapped on the stock of the 12 gauge and shook my head. He nodded his understanding. “Smoke?” I was eager to be sociable. It was not often that the brothers made the effort to socialize with us white organizers, and Donnie was one of the few who seemed willing to. I took one of his Kools and he handed his over so I could light up. “I see that dog sort of takes to you,” he remarked. “Yeah, “ I replied. “Actually, I’m kind of surprised he came out here. Usually he hangs with Cookie.” Woods laughed and gave me a knowing nod. “Her protection.” he smirked. He noticed the questioning expression on my face and went on to explain. “Clayton’s got this thing for Cookie, in case you ain’t noticed. But she doesn’t dig him at all. So she picked up this here hound as sort of protection. Maybe you ain’t hip to the fact but Black men and dogs don’t get along very well. The man’s been using hounds for centuries to chase us down when we escape. Like how those redneck sheriffs down in Alabama are always siccin’ the dogs on civil rights protesters. So she knows Clayton’s got a special thing against dogs. He’s also got this power thing against women, especially Black women. So Cookie goes out and gets this hound to piss him off. Keep him at bay, like. Works like a charm. But it fucks up the dialogue we gotta have. So I kicked the dog out of the room because of the discussion we were having and I didn’t want either one of them talking through the dog. Or that dog would be growling and snarling in no time. You know what I’m saying? I guess that’s why he came out here to you.” “Anyways,” Woods slurred, “ I been meaning to ask you how our Black Unity lawsuit’s coming? You got it done yet?” “Problem with it,” I advised, shaking my head. “I can’t get any lawyer admitted in California to help me file it. No one wants to put his name on a loser, just to harass the Marine Corps. Can you believe it? I may have to go all the way to San Francisco or Berkeley to find someone with the guts to do it.” “Can’t say I’m surprised,” Woods said half laughing. “Ain’t no big deal anyway. We’ll keep moving forward with or without the bourgeoisie.” “What was that hullabaloo all about?” I asked, changing the subject.

“Oh we were just talking about why the pigs are singling out the Panthers and not going after the other so-called Black revolutionary groups. You know, the Chicago pigs off’d Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in their beds the very day I got home from the Nam. And before that, the Oakland pigs shot little Bobbie Hutton and wounded brother Eldridge. That’s all a sore issue with Clayton, and Cookie too. Because if the pigs are leaving the Muslims and Katanga alone, it must mean they’re not a threat like the Panthers are. ” “That’s why I wanted you all to pipe down.” I responded, knowing the whole story well enough. Fred Hampton, Mark Clark and Bobby Hutton had been some of the many bright and articulate young Blacks who had joined the Black Panther Party out of anger and frustration with the slow progress their people were making in the struggle against racism. They had been killed in a series of raids that were part of a Nixon/J. Edgar Hoover conspiracy to defang the left. “It’s my fucking luck to have to stand watch over three Black revolutionaries who’re raising hell in the middle of the night, right in the belly of the fucking monster. The pigs in this town would like nothing better than to get a complaint and become big heroes like the Oakland and Chicago cops. You think I want to be here for the goddamn incoming?” Donnie’s teeth, white as pearls, sharp as a cross-cut saw, glistened with an unsuppressed smile. “Yeah, I dig.” “So how bad’s the split between you all?” I probed. Woods brooded on the question. He took a long drag on his smoke and offered an opinion. “How big a split is it between revolutionaries and cultural nationalists or Muslims? I’d say you can tell that by the fact that they don’t come to the aid of the Panthers. Instead, they attack them.” “What do you mean?” I asked. “ That’s how you tell who the fuck’s a revolutionary and who’s bullshitting,” he glowered, taking another drag on his KOOL and swallowing the smoke in a gulp of Ripple. “Whoever the pigs are out gunning for, you know for sure they’re not the man. So if you don’t give them support, you must be either the man yourself or his ally. Doesn’t that make sense?” “Are you saying that Cookie and Clayton are government agents?” “I’m not saying that.” Woods shook his head with denial. “But that doesn’t mean they’re not being counter-revolutionaries. Clayton, with that Black nationalist shit. His boss, Katanga’s never had any real trouble with the man, despite the fact he’s always waving his pieces in front of the TV cameras. He gets away with shit the Panthers get killed for. And fucking -63-

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Cookie jumps in with her Elijah Mohammed rap.” he sneered. “How the Black man needs a Black religion. So I suggest to her, how come the Muslim cats dropped a dime on Brother Malcolm? How it wasn’t a coincidence that it happened just when he got himself a revolutionary consciousness. How the evidence is that they were probably in on the assassination. And how Muslim isn’t really a Black religion at all because the Muslims are still trading in Black slaves in parts of Africa even today. She can’t respond to that. So draw your own conclusions.” “Yeah, I read a report about how one of Malcolm’s bodyguards was a New York City cop,” I said. “I mentioned that to Cookie, the one time I ever spoke to her one on one and she got pissed off. She hasn’t spoken to me since.” “Anyway, how come you can’t add up two and two?’ I asked them, not meaning to make a big deal or nothing.” Woods continued. “But I just fucking had it with their tired shit. I guess that’s when it got a little loud. Clay gets in my face about how the Panthers are practically begging to get iced. His point being that the Panthers are getting what they deserve or something. Like he doesn’t see them as his brothers. And how we’d be better off doing a Black thing ourselves. Not dealing with whitey at all. Which, he claims, is the reason the pigs aren’t coming down on Katanga. Because he stays in his community and not up in Leonard Bernstein’s pad in Manhattan.” Woods nodded and sucked on his smoke. “You know,” he philosophized, “the man is always fighting against the black and yellow and brown. And the way he gets over is by turning the poor and the minorities against each other so he can get them to do his dirty work. Look at me, man. The Marines got all us brothers out on the front lines, kicking yellow ass. So what do I come home to? My people being assassinated. A slum. Getting shot and then hassled by racist pigs. Maybe set up like Geronimo Pratt? And if we start to organize, they always seem to find a way to get us fighting amongst ourselves, just like Cookie and Clay and I were doing tonight. But in spite of the proof, man, we still got the Cookies and the Claytons spending all their time trying to avoid the truth. Clayton thinks we ought to be creating a separate Black country. Cookie says we ought to be building Black businesses, cutting our hair short, getting white shirts and ties and joining a temple. Like that will take care of everything. Like the man won’t still be there controlling our lives. I say we can’t hide in a temple or pretend we’re

Africans when we’re not. We gotta deal with the objective conditions that are coming down around us. And that dictates we gotta stand up and deal with the white folks, man to man. Then once we get our dignity, our place in this here country, we can go to Africa with our heads held up high like men and we can go to a temple or a church or wherever we want, knowing we aren’t there cause we’re running away from something.” “You’re right.” I agreed, careful not to overstep my boundaries. It was ok for him to criticize his Black brothers and sisters but for me to do so would be bad politics. Just like he could call his brothers niggers. Like I could get away with using “kike”, but if any non-Jew tried it, the poison would never air out. Still, it was as rare as snow in Oceanside for me to be talking politics with a Black man, as opposed to being lectured to, and I was excited by the opportunity. “There’s no way I can see that this country’s going to let Black people make a Black republic inside our borders,” I tested. “And I don’t see very many folks out there of any color ready to help them do it. So, I guess Katanga’s outnumbered and out-gunned on that one. And frankly, I don’t think Black people have got a chance in hell selling that proposition to the white folks in this country. We’ll get nowhere unless we create a revolution for everyone. Black folks may be the most oppressed but there are plenty of white guys in the Corps who came from shit and will be going back to nothing better when they get out. There’s no advantage in making them the enemies. Malcolm X knew that. I heard him speak once, about six months before he was killed. That’s what he was saying.” “That’s why they killed him.” Donnie Woods agreed. “Brother Martin knew that and they killed him too. When Huey started saying the same things, they tried to kill him and now he’s in the slammer. The so-called leaders who they leave on the street, they’re all the separatists, nationalists and Muslims. Me, I ask myself who they’re killing and who they aren’t and that’s how I tell who’s really revolutionary and who’s just jive.” All I could do was mumble a few “Right Ons” and hope I made it through the night. 11. Fall was advancing and Mother Nature was getting stingy with her daylight hours. As was becoming my habit, I drove on Base in time to catch the ascendant sun raise its gauze curtain on the day. As I headed East toward Mainside, the form and features of the Coast Range emerged like a photographic print in developer’s solution. I set my speed to chase the night’s shadows as if they were a mirage, always just out of reach. High up the first -65-

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golden-orange shafts of sunlight began to filter through the crevasses of the mountains, backlighting the sparse evergreens that crowned the ridgelines. My plan was to meet up with Jeffers at the officers club and scrounge a cheap breakfast among the other early risers. Swaggering commanders and their fawning junior officers. The food, as always, was wholesome, plentiful and cheap. On my arrival, Jeffers blessed me with news of the convening officer’s altered priorities. The anticipated Special Court Martial that was to take place had been postponed without prior notice. I remained for breakfast anyway, then returned early, hopeful that the postponement would segue into a long overdue dalliance with Emma. Instead, inexplicably, I found myself lurking in the alleyway awaiting the mail carrier like a gumshoe in the employ of jealous spouse, hoping to find circumstantial evidence of matrimonial infidelity. I was conniving to be first to the mailbox in the event my monthly check was there. Hoping to tap the till for a few extra bucks that would make for a little materialistic foreplay. I knew that if Emma got her responsible mitts on it before me, it would go right into the collective bank account and that would be the end of it. She’d broadcast the blessed event as if it were the birth of a royal heir. Plans would be made and a budget etched in stone before I could insinuate a few preferential expense items of my own and then, if I protested, I would be made to look selfish and counter-revolutionary. As luck had it, the mail that morning contained the check and I got my hands on it. I pocketed the funds and took the rest of the bundle in hand to complete the delivery. Opening the door, I found a meeting in progress. It instantly deflated my pipedream. Gabrielle, Joanie, Cookie and Emma were huddled around the hatch-cover, cups of steaming tea in hand. They hushed when I entered the room, as if I was an enemy agent and their cabal was about to be uncovered. They looked up at me and then back down again, working hard not to acknowledge my intrusion. It was evident that either they or I would be leaving shortly. “The mail arrived yet?” Emma asked. I handed it to her and she sorted through it quickly. “No check.” she announced to the group who were watching her with interest. “If it doesn’t come soon, you should call them,”she said to me. I nodded. “What’s up?” “We’re having a meeting.” she replied simply.

“I can see. Where’s Mitch and Clayton?” I asked. “This meeting is just for the women,” Joanie advised. I raised my eyebrows. “I guess I ought to get the things I need and go over to Ditmar then.” I proposed. “How long you gonna be?” “We’ll be over by lunch time,” Emma told me. “By the way, “ Gabrielle said, “how’s it coming with your fund raising activities. Have you gotten through your list yet?” “Naw,” I replied. “I just haven’t had the time. Been real busy with court martial stuff. I’ll get around to it. How are you guys doing with your efforts? I’d sure like to move up from macaroni and cheese to something with chicken or fish in it,” I said with a smile that I knew would annoy them. I went into my office and got some random files. I had no intention of doing any meaningful work. There was silence in the living room until I left the place. As I walked away, I could hear them start up, and I figured that they were not treating me kindly. Later that day I managed to get Emma alone. “The check came in this morning,” I confessed. She raised her eyebrows and gave me a questioning stare. “Why didn’t you say so then?” she asked. “You pretended that it hadn’t come in yet. What’s going on?” “I wanted to discuss it with you before you had a chance to donate all of this month’s money to MOP, Emma. I want to make sure that I am part of a decision about how my stipend is going to be used and not have it made for me, then forcing me to look like some asshole counter-revolutionary if I object. If I had said the check had come in, you and the women at that meeting would have started figuring out how it was going to be spent and that’s not how I want things to go down with this check.” “So, you’re making a unilateral decision? And, you’re not going to be up front about it?” she challenged. “I guess you could say that I’m making a unilateral decision,” I admitted. “The check’s got my name on it. No one else’s.” “I thought we were part of a collective here, and we were going to make collective decisions.” Emma put her hands in her jeans pockets and that raised her shoulders in an aggressive stance. “What kind of capitalist shit is this?” “You can call it what ever the fuck you want,” I responded, working myself up beyond what I was really feeling. “But that isn’t going to change how I’m feeling about the way things are getting run around here. First off, in case you haven’t noticed, we aren’t living on Ditmar Street so we aren’t in -67-

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the collective in that sense. Second, I seem to be doing a different kind of work than everybody else. In fact, I seem to be the only one that’s doing something that’s making any money at all. Meanwhile, on top of what I’m doing, I’m getting shit for not raising money, when, in fact, I’m putting in more money that the rest of the collective together. Then, when people do go out to raise money, the thing they use to raise it is CDCS, my operation. But if money does get raised, it doesn’t go into the defense fund, but into the general budget that the four of you women seem to be in control of. And meanwhile, the food we’re eating sucks, big time. And beyond all of that, Joanie, Gabrielle and Cookie treat me like shit. They can’t even say a fucking hello half the time. So I’ve got no reason to be big on contributing to their living situation.” She looked at me like I was crazy. “Is it that you resent the women? Is that it? You got off on the wrong foot with all of them, with insults and arrogance and you want them to kiss your butt ‘cause you’re the big provider of cash? You know better than that. The whole point here is that money doesn’t buy influence-- that’s what we’re all about. You seem to have a problem with that.” “That’s pretty funny, Emma,” I snarled. “But let’s look at the facts and not the rhetoric. Gabrielle, it turns out, isn’t some poor Chicana from El Barrio. She’s a graduate of NYU film school. The daughter of some left-wing Jewish-Cuban publisher who did something to antagonize Batista and managed to emigrate to the U.S. before Castro came to power. But did they go back to join the revolution and give up their wealth? No way! Beneath that patina of brown skin and fluent Spanish is a genuine “red-diaper baby.” And Joanie! Why there’s another surprise. Ends up she’s an Ivy League dropout who decided to join the collective in a snit, to spite her parents. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had a trust fund somewhere and is just not dipping into it while she’s slumming. Then there’s Cookie, who won’t even say a civil hello ‘causes she’s so high and mighty Black that if she got caught talking to a white man someone might think she was less than pure. If she’s ever spent a night in a ghetto, like where Deputy Dawg comes from I’ll eat our ratty couch. No, Emma, there isn’t one of your women friends, or you either for that matter, that can’t come up with some bread from somewhere to help make ends meet. But they’re not doing it. Ever hear the saying, ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need?’ Well they’ve

got the ability and this month, I’ve got the need to have some steak and chocolate and some good beer. Not that generic pisswater that the brothers keep coming up with. You can join me if you want, but don’t talk to me about a donation to the common fund ‘til I finish eating.” “It looks like you’ve got a lot of anger,” she observed dryly. “Go ahead then, have your steak and chocolate, you need it.” And she walked out. I did. It was a lonely meal. Then I did the penance. I grabbed the list and made plans to drop in on Morris Gilman and Benny Shapiro, two refugees from the radicalism of the 1930’s. Morris Gilman was one of those old lefties whom Joe McCarthy had, through intimidation and the blacklist, turned into a chicken rancher. But unlike the cluster that ended up hiding out in Sonoma County, he had sunk his roots in the parched backwaters of San Diego County east of Vista, on a few arid acres. The drive up to his modest ranch was over blue, crushed gravel that announced my arrival with a low grumbling. His house, of typical Southwest architecture, stucco and red tile roof, stood on a slight rise among some spindly oaks. Three long chicken coops stood off to the downwind side, except for when the Santa Anas blew. Gilman was waiting for me on his screened front veranda. It was green, cool and pleasant with hanging plants and wind chimes all around. A safe haven where one could enjoy the present, regret the past and fear the future in nervous peace. He was a tall man. Enveloped in weathered, ruddy brown skin the consistency of rough leather. Wrinkled features seemed to cascade from beneath straight white hair that was unusually long for a man of his age. He had eyes of dull, washed out blue and his thin lips barely parted in greeting. He seemed frail and exhausted with the trials of life. A reclusive fellow who left the impression of carrion. He gave me a weak smile and an even weaker handshake. I found it curious that he had chosen to set himself up in such inhospitable surroundings. The inhabitants of these parts were not likely to be fellowtravelers or even people who might be expected to strike up an agreeable conversation on politics or current affairs. We sat down to coffee on his veranda. He waited for me to start the conversation. I didn’t know where to begin. “This is a real nice place,” I observed, looking out over his domain. “You’ve got a nice spread here. My grandmother raised chickens for a while, up in New Hampshire. But that was way back in the 20’s. She couldn’t make it in the business. How is it these days?” “I get by,” he replied deadpan. “So what brings you out here?” -69-

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“Well, as you probably know, I’m running a legal defense project out on Pendleton. I got your name from a list of possible supporters. I’m providing civilian defense counsel services for GIs who are involved in Anti-War issues. Cases like refusing to go to Vietnam, illegal orders and racial discrimination. I raise defenses that the military counsel would be uncomfortable making.” “Tell me,” he said with an increasing frown, and the beginnings of a nervous twitch in his left eye, “How did you get my name?” I realized at that moment that this was all a big mistake. The only reason this guy had agreed to meet me was because he wanted to know who had stripped him of his cover. He was in hiding. In fear and wanted to stay that way. The only way he could make the repair was to discover who had informed on him. I determined not to satisfy him. “We got your name from some folks in LA,” I lied. “They said that they knew you from SANE and some civil rights stuff. Mentioned that you were an old Wobbly and might be interested in contributing to the defense of Anti-War GIs. My grandfather was a Wobbly too. He was a lumberjack up in northern Maine. Aroostook County. And he laid tracks for the Boston and Maine.” The Wobbly thing put him over the edge. His eyes blinked out of control. His liver-spotted hands shook. His face flushed. “I don’t think I can help you,” he sputtered, rising to let me know the visit was concluded. “I think you had better leave.” I hadn’t even gotten through half my coffee. “Well,” I frowned, putting down my half-finished coffee, “I guess I got the wrong guy. I’ll make sure to tell those folks in LA that they got it wrong.” “Yes, you tell them that,” he hissed. “You can count on it,” I cavalierly replied. As I walked down the gravel path to my car, I had an uncomfortable feeling that he was right. There was good reason to fear. This terrorized man had carefully chosen as his cover the last hiding place he thought anyone would ever look for him. Right wing country. Yet he had been discovered. I watched him in my rear view mirror as he made certain I left his property. I felt sorry for him. He wouldn’t sleep well tonight. And I wouldn’t either. The eerie calm that had prevailed for us these past several months couldn’t last. I drove away wondering what the Marines and their allies were cooking up, and when the bomb would go off. My next chance for a few good meals was Benny Shapiro. How the collective got his name and number, I couldn’t imagine, but the scoop on him

was that he had once been an officer in Harry Bridges’ Longshoremen’s Union. Then he went east to be a business agent with the ILGWU, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union. From there it got a bit murky. Benny hung out at Rancho La Costa, a gated place for the elite only, just north of San Diego. Rancho La Costa was reputedly financed by creative accounting with Teamster pension funds. Rumor had it that it was a hideaway for celebrities like J. Edgar Hoover and the kind of parasites that hang around pension funds. People like Benny Shapiro. I called him without any expectations, but to my surprise, he agreed to a meeting. I was hoping to get to see the inside of La Costa but Benny had other ideas. He proposed a coffee shop in Carlsbad. A sterile place furnished with Formica counter tops and vinyl-covered chairs. Encased in huge, tinted plate glass windows it permitted the patrons to see out, but denied the folks on the street a look inside. It was the kind of place where Jimmy Hoffa might have been last seen with Sam Giancana. Where you’d expect the customers to be named “Fat Tony” and “Three Fingered Louie.” Where they kept their pies in a three-high plastic merry-go-round and allowed coffee to sour in the pot. As I entered, I encountered the combo waitress/cashier standing beside the register, arms crossed, like the guardian of an entrance to a speakeasy. She was a stubby, fiftyish female with hard-hat hair and bowed legs with calves like a defensive tackle. Behind the counter, a cook who looked like he doubled as the complaint department, worked feverishly at a smoldering grill that sizzled hot grease. He was an over-stuffed oily fellow in a stain-covered tee shirt that stopped a few inches short of his distended belly. A half cigarette, half ash appendage hung from his lower lip as though it was glued on. He turned to glare at me like he expected to be a witness and wanted to get the identification right. Few patrons would be stalwart enough to complain about the food or service. “He’s over there,” the waitress bellowed in a voice like Ethel Merman, nodding in the direction of the back wall. Benny was seated in a booth at the far corner facing the door, his back against a wall. He was the kind of guy who wanted to meet people for the first time on his turf. To see you coming. To size you up first before you knew he was there. He watched me approach over his cup of coffee like a cat sizing up a canary. He was getting on in years. Wispy white hair stood out from his scalp with a mind of its own. Purple and red veins webbed the sickly pale complexion of his face like roads on a map. His beaky nose reminded me of -71-

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the dorsal fin on a great white shark. He had nicked himself in more than a few places shaving, probably using his razorblade of the month. He was fat, with round shoulders and looked like a coronary candidate. “Wolfe?” he asked, motioning to me to sit across from him. “Cup ‘aJoe?” “Sure, thanks.” “‘Nother cup, Edna, please,” he yelled like steady customers do. Edna brought a cup of steaming, burnt liquid and plunked it down in front of me. “The pie’s good here,” he remarked. “Ya wanna slice?” “What kind you having?” “Me? Nah. Doc says I gotta quit the high cholesterol stuff,” he said, patting his stomach, “or else I’m gonna croak. Got me a heart condition. Hell, he’s takin’ all the fuckin’g fun outta life. The old wonker don’t crank up so well these days and the girls cost more than an old guy on a pension can afford. Can’t smoke. Don’t want me to drink. All this old stiff’s got left is food and that prick doctor just took that away too.” His face screwed up like he had just sucked on a lemon. “So Wolfe,” he continued, giving me a moment to sip the brew, “Let’s not beat around the bush. Waste each other’s time. I know what you’re up to on the Base. I done my homework and expect that you done yours too. For the record, I’m one hundred percent American. Don’t like the crap your friends are pullin’ with the Marines up there. We got a war goin’ here and the only fuckin’ thing to do in a war is win it. I don’t give a shit who’s right and who’s wrong. We got boys over there that need our support, one hundred percent. That’s where I stand.” “So what made you agree to see me?” I asked. “I’m not sure I understand.” “Easy,” he replied. “You want some money, right? You wanna defend GIs who got problems with the military. I can agree with that. Hell, we all have problems with the law sometimes,” he laughed and coughed. “And we all need lawyers. I got no problem with you defending GIs. And I can help you out. But this is business. Ya know what I’m sayin’? It’s a two way street. I’m willin’ to scratch your back but you gotta be willin’ to scratch mine, ya see.” “I’m not sure I understand,” I repeated. “How can I help you?”

He winked and a gleam of mischief flashed in his dull eyes. “Come on,” he said. “You ain’t as dumb as you look. I give you a little money. You give me a little information. Nothin’ about your cases of course. I ain’t askin’ you to breach a confidence. But what’s goin’ on. Just keep me posted. Ya know what I mean?” “Yeah, I get your drift,” I said. “But there isn’t anything that you’d be interested in going on. You can come by any time you like.” “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “You let me decide for myself what’s interesting.” “I see what you mean,” I said, realizing with amazement that the guy had been actually put on my list by someone who figured I might be a candidate for recruitment as an FBI informant. “So, we got a deal?” “I’ll let you know,” I replied, ambiguously. “Thanks for the coffee.” I put down my mostly full cup. He could see I wasn’t going to be a stoolie. I think he was even glad it was working out that way. He wasn’t the kind of guy that liked informants, even though it was obviously his job to recruit them. “No problem,” he said. “ Be talkin’ to ya.” “Take care of that ticker,” I said, waving goodbye. All three of them watched me leave. Followed me with their eyes. I could feel their stares through the tinted glass until I rounded the corner to my car. We all knew that the price was too high. The food wasn’t going to get any better but at least I’d still be able to swallow it. I drove away wondering what the hell kind of list of supporters MOP had. Was it just my bad luck that I drew a randy reverend, a chicken chicken farmer and a government agent? Or was somebody fucking with me?

12. “It’s me, Woods,” Donnie announced. It was just after Halloween. “They just wrote us up for disobeying some bullshit orders and some other shit I don’t understand.” “Where you calling from?” “Barracks, man. They got me and Jesus on restriction and the Dawg’s back in the brig.” “Deputy Dawg’s back in the brig?” I repeated, with amazement. “When did they let him out of the brig?”

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“They just let him out on work detail,” Woods explained. “KP. Assigned him to police my kitchen. So there we were, me and Jesus and Deputy Dawg all working NCO’s mess when Gunny Bonham gets into the Dawg’s face.” “Gunny Bonham’s that racist lifer from Natchez,” Woods reminded me. “Always calling the brothers ‘Boy’ and figuring out shit details for them. And so the Dawg’s swabbin’ the deck like he’s ordered, except he’s doing a jive thing with the mop. Having himself a little fun. Gunny sees him and I guess he thinks Dawg’s enjoying himself a bit too much. He ain’t supposed to be enjoying swabbing. So Gunny gets in Dawg’s face. But the Dawg is chill. Stays cool. Gunny can’t get Dawg to do or say anything that he can write him up for and that’s when he loses it. He starts in with the names. Calling Dawg ‘boy’ and ‘nigger’ and tries to get the Dawg pissed. I got worried that he might succeed so I go up to him and tell him ‘Hey Gunny, no need to get racial here. Dawg’s not messing with you. It’s cool.’ But Gunny’s not about to lay off. He tell’s me how, quote ‘us niggers always stick together.’ And then he goes off on the Black Unity thing. Tells us he checked out the regs with Base legal and got an opinion that the General Order says that you can only wear an identity bracelet that identifies who the person is. Not what race they are. Then he tells us that we are all out of uniform and orders all three of us to take them off. We all refused. Then he gave us each direct order and each of us refused again. Then he calls it mutiny and calls in the MPs. Me and Jesus are restricted to barracks pending. They sent Deputy Dawg back to the brig.” “Mutiny?” I repeated. “Yeah,” said Woods, his voice dripping with the irony. “ Can you believe it? Kind of rings a bell, doesn’t it? When was it I told you that I was going to be smarter than my old man? Well, they sure kicked my fucking butt, didn’t they? Guess this mutiny thing runs in the family. Ole Chet’s going to have a heart attack when he hears about it. Either that or he’s going to die laughing at me.” “Stay cool,” I told Woods, certain that he would. “First thing, you got to take care of Jesus. They always try to split you up and Jesus is a weak link because he’s young, apolitical and he’s not Black. They might try to offer him a Captain’s Mast in exchange for his cooperation against you and Deputy Dawg.”

The Marines had beaten us to the punch. We had planned a lawsuit in Federal Court about the right to wear the Black Unity bracelet, a civil rights case with the attendant publicity campaign. Perhaps they had gotten wind of it and put Gunny Bonham up to a provocation. Now the case was going to be on their turf, in a court martial for mutiny. I called Captain Jeffers, down at JAG. As usual, Jeffers was happy to help. He got back to me the next morning. No, there would not be a mutiny charge. But yes, there were going to be charges. The three, Woods, Jesus and Deputy Dawg were being charged with disobeying a direct lawful order of a superior NCO and Article 134, a catch-all violation that basically says that it’s a crime in the military to do something the brass doesn’t like. Article 134 is vague enough to charge everybody with something. In this case, the 134 violation they cooked up involved being out of uniform. Wearing the shoestring Black Unity bracelet made them officially out of uniform, according to the charge sheet. Captain Jeffers advised that it could all be resolved if Jesus and Woods agreed to accept a Captain’s Mast and agreed not to wear the wristbands anymore. There would be no brig time, perhaps some short restrictions to Base and a one pay-grade bust. Jesus, he suggested, had little to lose. He was just an E-2 anyway and would soon get his orders to Nam, where he’d quickly earn it back. Woods, Jeffers argued, was 4 months short and a Viet vet with combat decorations. The most that would happen to him was loss of a pay grade. He’d probably even get an early out. If they refused, Jeffers speculated, it’d be a Special Court Martial that involved “bad time,” time in custody that could keep him in the service in past his discharge date. And he’d be risking a BCD, a Bad Conduct Discharge, as well. Deputy Dawg was going to end up in prison anyway. He was sure to receive a dishonorable for that robbery beef up in Santa Ana, so there was no point in prosecuting him. Jeffers thought he could get the restrictions lifted for Woods and Jesus if they just agreed to take off the Black Unity wristbands. That wasn’t what Woods had in mind however. “Guess now we don’t have to get some lawyer from Berkeley to file that suit,” he observed dryly, dismissing Jeffers’ suggestion of a possible deal. “We’ve got us a real political trial now.” Just after Thanksgiving, as I was settling into my preparation for the Black Unity trial, the second shoe dropped. Jumpin’ Jack flipped out. By the time I learned of it, he had already been carted off to the loony bin at the Long Beach Naval Hospital.

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The way Frankie described it, Jumpin’ Jack was leading a squad of grunts on a training maneuver over the rough terrain on the back side of Pendleton. They were within weeks of their shipping over and this was a big tune-up. The brass wanted to use some of their experienced NCOs on this one and Jack, they thought, fit the bill. He dropped a tab, Frankie said, before they headed out. They had humped several miles when Jack came to a boulder that must have reminded him of something, and he snapped. He climbed to the top, held his M-16 above his head with both hands and screamed down at his men below, “Kill the gooks for Christ and Nixon. War crime, Seig Heil! War crime, Seig Heil.” Then he threw his weapon down at them, gave his startled green troops a fascist salute and dove off, head first. Luckily for him a small manzanita bush broke his fall and instinct caused him to tuck before he rolled to a landing. The combination of these two fortuitous circumstances saved his life and all that happened was he ended up cracking a couple of ribs underneath his scapula. His mental condition was another matter. As they carried him away he was still chanting, “War crime, Seig Heil!” In hindsight, one could say it was inevitable. No matter how often I tried to get him to unload, he persisted in holding back the whole truth. It was like he wanted to preserve it for himself so he could wallow in the fester. He claimed that he had humped nearly every peak in the A Shau. Places he called “The Beak,” “Hoptown,”“The Eagles Nest.” His unit, he told me, had been dropped into action in most of +the LZs in I-Corps, searching and destroying. The LZs he told me, had girls’ names, like Marguerite, Kathryn, Nancy and Helen. He found it a cruel joke, naming LZs after girls. What happened there ruined half the women in the world for him, he said. He swore he could never ever go out with a girl who had one of those names. But he wouldn’t talk about specifics. He’d go so far as to admit there came a point where he stopped being gung ho. Stopped volunteering and started shirking. Until the company commander relieved him as squad leader. And somewhere along the way, he admitted, he began leaning heavily on LSD. By then, John Conlon, American freedom fighter, metamorphosed into Jumpin’ Jack, the hideous alien invader of a peaceful tropical paradise. Then he’d clam up. I knew he was still using the stuff and that it was causing him to flash back on every killing and every burning hut. I could tell that the LSD was

eating a hole in his defenses and had replaced the wounded remnants of his self-esteem with merciless, self-loathing. Maybe it was even warping the facts. I didn’t think that anyone could really tell that. But he had contracted a very bad case of Dr. Tim Leary’s revenge and whatever it was that he was trying to escape, it was so big and so bad that he seemed determined to throw petrol on the fire in the desperate hope it would cleanse his soul. Anyway, it was evident that Jack was hurting. Maybe I was just too inexperienced or deferential to combat vets, but I figured it wasn’t my place to tell a Vet what he should or should not do about his wartime experiences. Instead, I did nothing. So for want of help, Jack became a casualty of the War, the psych-out candidate he vehemently denied he was at our first meeting. Even though there were others who also could have helped but did nothing, I filled my pockets with the guilt of my impotence and ineptitude. And it dawned on me clearly, for the first time, what an ominous responsibility had been thrust on my shoulders, and how I had failed the test. The lark, the Kerouac adventure, was no more. I had allowed a comrade to take a hit and thus became, as they say, complicit. A few days later, Captain Jeffers reported that they had him under psychiatric observation. If the military shrinks concluded he was psycho, Jack would certainly get a medical out and along with it, a VA pension. But the very idea that Jumpin’ Jack would be rewarded with an early discharge and a lifetime monthly check to boot rankled certain members of the officer corps. Some of them, Jeffers intimated, were taking offense at Jack’s comparison of the Marine Corps with Nazi war criminals, especially in front of green troops that they would have liked to send into combat all gungy and starry-eyed. His escapade rocked their boat. So the pressure was on to declare him fit and to charge him with Article 115, self-inflicting a wound. And Jeffers cautioned that although it may sound absurd to the civilian mind, there was plenty of precedent for an Article 115 charge. It was not unheard of for a trooper to wound himself, the proverbial “shoot yourself in the foot” tactic, he explained, to avoid some unwanted duty and a 115 was the charge they leveled on such occasions. It appeared that shortly, Jack would either be leaving the Corps with a pension or be enjoying long term accommodations at the brig. Given his association with us, the former seemed less likely than the latter. 13.

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Emma and I went up to Long Beach on a Friday to visit Jack. I needed to see him to find out how a boulder could set him off. But the Navy was allowing him no visitors. They wouldn’t even let me visit as his attorney, since he wasn’t charged with anything yet, and his medical condition, they indicated, did not permit it. I demanded a report that they refused to permit my visit based on medical grounds, hoping the incident would help prove that he was too nuts to stay in. Since we now had time on our hands, we decided to stop by another MOP project in the neighborhood. This MOP contingent was set up in a shabby part of Long Beach, where marginal light industries mingled with decaying rental properties. The headquarters was a weathered, 40's cottage in a weed infested yard with an oil stained driveway. The paint on its drab clapboard siding was pocked with painful blisters and boils like the face of a scarlet fever victim. As we crossed the front porch to knock and announce our visit, its sagging, dry rotted planking creaked complaints like a recently risen octogenarian. No sooner had knuckle met wood than a wild, overweight oaf in a motorcycle jacket with some stenciled skull and crossbones logo on the back made a lumbering, hustling exit. He pushed his way past me screaming, "Da pigs is afta me, da pigs is afta me." Paying us no mind, like he was the white rabbit and we were Alice, he kept sailing his course, screaming the same mantra, down the sidewalk, until he merged with his dilapidated environment. That was all we ever saw of him. It seemed like he was telling the truth though. "Da pigs" to which he was alluding appeared to be in pursuit. But something was out of whack. There were a suspiciously numerous lot of them and the interest shown by most of “da pigs” seemed to be more in the contents of the house than in the fleeing suspect. In fact, none of them seemed enthusiastic about apprehending this oaf. It was like a search was what they had planned all along but they needed a pretext so they wouldn't have to get the warrant they probably had no basis to ask for. But my indiscretion got the better of me and I butted my silly ass in. "I'm an attorney and I represent the owner of the house,” I bluffed. “Unless you have a warrant, please stop the search until you have the owner's consent."

"Hey, sarge," a rotund snooper yelled over his shoulder. "There's a guy here, claims he’s an attorney who represents the owner of this place. Wants to see a warrant." The sergeant poked his head around the corner of kitchen and into the hall. "Yeah? Where's the owner?" Emma tugged at my shirt, a signal that we should get the hell out of there. "I'll go have a talk with him,” I backed off. “We'll be right back." We turned and left. That was as smart as I was about to get that day. Unfortunately, we ran into the owner on the sidewalk. Bob was a tall, gawky, hick of a fellow with long, stringy black hair. He had slumping shoulders, a threadbare ensemble and a matching ambiance. He was a movement wanna be who couldn't be because he was a landlord. He approached us, hands in pockets, quizzical, wondering what was going on. Bob seemed bemused by my account. "No biggie," he smirked. “I don’t live there. But the tenants work for me at the head shop and they’re all good people. Might be a little weed in there. Let’s check it out.” With world-class stupidity, Bob, Emma and I marched back up the steps of that forlorn cottage, determined to put a stop to this trampling upon his tenants' constitutional rights. The full dignity of the law was on our side. We demanded audience with the sergeant. One of the boys in blue set aside the couch pillow he was probing for contraband and headed off, in what I took to be compliance with my demand. A few minutes later the sergeant appeared, holding a poster of a bald Mao Tse Tung. The one with that pimple on his chin, smiling benignly from the Heavenly Gate and often seen hoisted aloft by the Chairman’s minions as they stampeded their way through four thousand years of culture and social tradition. He displayed the Great Helmsman, like it was a porno poster and we were being solicited to purchase tickets for the show. "You know something about this?" he snarled. Bob shrugged. “Is it a poster of Mao Tse Tung?" "I fucking know it’s a picture of fucking Mao fucking Tse god damn Tung,” the sergeant sputtered. “Do fucking commies live here?" Before Bob could admit or deny knowledge of the raison d'etre for this particular piece of artwork, the cops commenced a roundup of the inhabitants of the premises and herded them into the living room where they joined us. First, a bare-foot young woman in thin sari-type wrap and kinky black tresses that a tie-dyed headband barely held down, sashayed in between two of the gendarmes. She was followed moments later by three scraggly males, each

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sporting first growth facial hair and uniformly clad in moth-eaten Mr. Natural tee shirts over bell-bottoms. "And what's this?" croaked another blowhard cop, slamming down a jar with some clear liquid in it and what looked to me like a package of pipe cleaners. "Looks like bomb making material to me." "Pipe cleaners and sulfuric acid!" the young woman laughed. "We use the acid to clean the brass that we make into roach clips and belt buckles and pipes and stuff. You guys know that. Get off it." The ole' sarge was getting red in the face. "Rooney," he screamed. "Bring in the rest." Rooney dutifully produced some guns and ammo. The haul was a twelve gauge with a box of double O buck and a cleaning kit, an old FN assault rifle from World War II with a couple boxes of shells and some stripper-clips, a .22 Ruger pistol and a .22 Marlin rifle, with scope, some assorted longs and shorts for the .22s and a packet of targets. When they spread it out on the floor it looked like a lot of stuff. But as any Minuteman or Klansman would testify, it was no big deal. You could have found more and better weaponry in Charlton Heston's den. Worse from their point of view, it all was legal. I was beginning to get confident this would blow over. But the gendarmes had manufactured an encore. "It's heavy. Could be a bomb," one of these lackeys observed, dropping a dusty, black camping trunk at Bob's feet like it was tribute from a distant vassal and he was the emperor. "Open it," he demanded. "How the hell am I supposed to open it? I don't have a key and it isn't mine. I don't even live here," Bob whined. "Neither do we." Emma stood up as if to depart. "And we’d like to remind you that we've never even been in this house before you invited us to sit down. We'd like to leave right now if you don't mind." "Sit down!" the top cop ordered and we knew we were busted. "Now who wants to give me the key to open this up?" He held his hand out and turned around to give each of us the opportunity to cross his palm with a key. "Come off it," one of the young fellows snipped. " Do we look to you like the kind of people who would be carrying around a key to an old camping trunk? Like one of your weird fat buddies from the donut shop with

those big rings of keys on his belt, heavy enough to pull down his pants so you can see the crack in his butt real good?" The sarge looked at him cross-eyed. "No one's talking,” he said. “Guess we'll just have to break into it. Might be a bomb. Get me a knife from the kitchen, a good strong one." Rooney soon returned with the blade. "I wouldn't do that if I were you, sergeant, "one of the youthful provocateurs suggested with unnecessary bravado that extinguished any possibility we would get out of this fiasco without a trip downtown. "If it’s a bomb, breaking into it might set it off." "We'll just have to take that chance, won't we boys?" the sergeant volunteered. And a braver bunch of lads you'd never hope to meet. To a man-jack of them they decided to hang around and watch their leader pry open the potential trunk-bomb. "Uh, can we watch from outside?" Emma raised a point of order. But the chair didn't recognize her because the chair was busily inserting a knife between the lock and the trunk with the finesse of a Yosemite bear attacking a tourist’s cooler. Once the lock was broken, we were treated to the suspense of an extremely slow lifting of the lid, as if it was a holiday surprise. Silence like a seance. Only the last few inches of arc were accomplished with a flourish, " ta da!" to reveal ....drum rolls... not diamonds, rubies or golden doubloons but Red Books. It was filled to the lid with miniature volumes of the collected, abridged thought of Chairman Mao Tse Tung. Distillations of his best sixty second sound bites. The treasure of some ersatz Red Guard. The hippie woman snickered when she saw what it was. " Simcock," she giggled. "He was going to take these and give 'em out to motels like Gideon Bibles. That was his great idea." The sarge looked at her like she was crazy. "No. But he was," she said. "What?" he quizzed. "Crazy." she said, like she knew what he was thinking. "Who the hell is Simcock?" The sergeant scrunched up his face and clenched his teeth with an angry curiosity. "GI." She smiled with a hint of irony. "Just another one of those burned out, totally stoned grunts that our friendly government discards after they don't need him anymore.” She clearly had more insight than I had given her credit for. “Came back from the Nam a flaming commie. Last we saw of him,

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Shore Patrol was taking him off to the hospital or the brig. We ain't heard from him since, and that was a couple months ago." Since the whole thing had now been reduced to farce, as a face saver, the sergeant busted us all for possession of weapons, bomb making materials and subversive propaganda. It mattered little that the guns were legal and the bomb makings had a legitimate industrial purpose, the manufacture of roach clips. Nor was the local law deterred by the small matter of constitutional protection for reading material, even if it was Mao’s Red Book. We were transported to their lock-up downtown. The next day we were allowed to read about ourselves in the newspaper. The Blade-Tribune ran a front page spread, with pictures, names and a lot of inflammatory background on our terrorist activities. According to the media’s “reliable sources,” the Long Beach police had broken up an underground cell of Maoist terrorists in the very process of making bombs. There was a photo spread for the national wire services. The guns and ammo, a couple of bottles of sulfuric acid and the pipe cleaners were all laid out neatly on a linencovered table so the press could get a clear front page picture. A radical still-life. They made us look like a serious militia. The AP and UPI ate it up. Sent it all around the country, a headline story. "Police Smash Southern California Terrorist Cell!" And the country was told how the good citizens of Southern California were spared indescribable mayhem thanks to their crack “Serve and Protect” forces. The next afternoon, we received a visit from a representative of our “defense team,” a law student who interned for a well-known local, radical attorney. "Stacey" was his name but we called him "spacey" because he was often stoned and when he was, he would do things like steal your shoes. Whenever we caught him at it, he'd say something like; "Man you a counter-revolutionary or something? You don't share your possessions?" Then he'd push his slightly too heavy lips together in a smirk, thinking himself brilliant for exposing bourgeois hypocrisy. Spacey was only a law student, but for him, the nice cops waived a little rule that says you have to be a licensed attorney to get into the Long Beach jail to interview a client. Spacey used his time with me opining how cool it was to be into bombs and stuff, probing for details of my felonious complicity in this absurd affair. I had to keep reminding him that I wasn't into bombs and stuff and that I had never even been to the place before. After a while, Spacey

heaved an exasperated sigh and expressed his genuine disappointment that I wasn't the militant he had supposed. He announced that under such circumstances, that is my innocence of the charges, it was unlikely that his employer would be accepting the case, but that he would see to it that I would have representation at the arraignment, which he supposed would be covered by the press. Then, I’d be free to arrange “more appropriate counsel.” Apparently, neither he nor the cops were more successful extracting admissions of terrorist conspiracy from any of the other arrestees because on Monday, just before our scheduled court appearance, they gave each one of us “a last opportunity” to tell them about the bombs. We all must have provided the identical negative response, seeing as there never were any bombs. The next thing we knew we were ushered down to the property room, given our stuff and gruffly ordered to get the hell out of there. We never saw the inside of a courtroom. 14. Not long after, we discovered the reason we were arrested. “Bad politics.” It wasn't simply a case of Emma and I being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Could this have happened to anyone? Nooo. It could only happen if you had bad politics. Bad, bad politics. Just how bad could our politics be, we wondered? To get the answer to this question, and for the sake of our future security, we decided to undertake a pilgrimage to my recruiter, supervisor and the West Coast GI Political Thought Poohbah, the most eminent Guru, George Kahn, whom we had come to affectionately refer to as Genghis. Genghis had influence over my stipend, retaining an effective connection with the prime benefactors of that East Coast civil liberties organization that funded my work. It was important to nip this negative impression of “bad politics” in the bud. Kahn was a tall man, with soft round features and perpetually tense shoulders. He wore his blond hair bushy and accessorized with a full Santa Claus beard. He sported the disingenuous smile of a television evangelist. On this occasion, he was wearing a pair of black shorts and a jungle camouflage jacket, open to permit his curly, blond body hair to cascade from the breach. He gave us audience in his recently constructed home on the unstable sands that make up Malibu Beach. For a movement heavy is was obscenely ostentatious. The house featured wrap-around redwood decks and expansive glass walls that exploited all the magnificence of the Pacific coast. The view was stupendous but building there was an act of faith in both nature and the efficiency of concrete piers. -83-

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Kahn prepared himself to dispense enlightenment. He assumed a crosslegged pose in his massive, power-operated Castro convertible (It had to be a Castro.) that was positioned majestically at one end of his expansive yet barren, neo-modern living room. He invited us to find seats on a low white cloth couch that faced him from a safe distance and offered us cups of ginseng tea. Once this was all settled, he set about explaining our major problem: we weren’t sufficiently opposed to smoking dope. “I hear tell your collective has changed its policy on drugs and that one of the Black organizers left because of it,” he said. His intelligence was good. After the disaster of the last picture show, Clayton finally got his way. A consensus emerged with Clayton, Mitch, and Gabrielle arguing that a GI just back from Nam, seeing what he saw, doing what he did, had a right to blow a little weed without a bunch of pompous, puritanical, politicos dictating to him. Cookie had blown a gasket. “Just look around our ghettos,” she sneered at Clayton with undisguised contempt. “All you see is stoned out brothers hangin’ on the corner, not doin’ shit for themselves, their people and especially the little Black babies they be makin’. You think the weed ain’t got nothin’ to do with that? You think the only way we can organize our people is while they be smokin’ and snortin’ shit? Ain’t you read ‘bout Malcolm? What happened to him on the dope? You think you need dope to organize the brothers in the military? Well, let me tell you, the Prophet Elijah Mohammed teaches that you don’t need nothin but faith in Allah and in yourself. And for sure you don’t need no drugs. Unless you ain’t seein’ straight, you gotta notice there’s a whole lot more Muslim brothers in the service than we got here at MOP.” She said her piece and stomped out. Packed up. The last we heard of her was a letter to Gabrielle. She asked her to mail some stuff she had forgotten. She was going by the name Latifa, she said. Joined a Mosque in East Saint Louis. Didn’t want to know how any of us were doing. Except she asked us to take care of Dino. Hoped Emma and I would take him. Genghis went on to criticize the “adventurist lawsuit” I had proposed. But when he began to quote from Mao, Emma interrupted.

"Excuse me," Emma snickered, casting a skeptical glance my way, as if to say, boy are we wasting our time here! “But that house was full of Mao stuff,” she actually said. “We were up to our ears in Red Books.” Kahn smiled a guru's knowing smile and raised a Buddha-like finger to refute the apparent contradiction. "But they were making roach clips." "And belt-buckles," Emma replied, barely suppressing a disrespectful scowl. "And pipes" trumped Genghis with a condescension-dripping retort. “Hash pipes. Drug paraphernalia.” "So," I said? "If they hadn't been operating a head shop, selling drug paraphernalia, they wouldn't have had the sulfuric acid. Without that, no bombs. Without the bombs, no terrorism charges, even with the guns. It’s that simple, drugs are a risk a revolutionary can't afford. You're hanging out with unsafe people because they are involved with drugs." It would have been no use to confound this analysis with the fact that we hadn't been hanging out with anybody. The great Kahn could easily have wiggled himself free of such a simple muddle. Competition, Ghengis reminded us as we parted company, was fierce for these limited funds and it was only right that they be awarded to those with “total commitment” (to his political point of view.) That, as they say, is politics. Yer either with 'em or agin 'em. And that, in a nutshell, was one side of the then current, revolutionary youth movement debate. On the other side was Dr. Tim Leary, tuning them in, turning them on and dropping them out. Like good fence straddlers, we caught shit from both sides. We needed a karmic adjustment. Kahn, Tim, Kahn, Tim, Kahn, Tim. Aw shit. Returning along Highway One from our enlightenment session, Emma and I decided to hunker down for an expensive Amercian Express card financed repast at a Palos Verde bistro. The card was a remnant of our formerly middle-class life-style. A legacy from protective parents who wanted to make sure that we were safe in an emergency. Something I insisted we hide from our ever-vigilant comrades, who would have urged us to max it out on collective benefits. But since jailhouse fare was even worse than the commodity crap we had been forcing down, we felt entitled. Hell, even Mao ate well when he could. I, at least, could take the contradictions. Well, it came to pass that we were agin 'em. Shortly after Cookie’s desertion, MOP challenged Kahn’s authority in an editorial advocating that marijuana was a safe, recreational activity and better for our boys than -85-

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alcohol. As we anticipated, it was an unacceptable rebuke to the party line. A few weeks later, an innuendo-laden report made its way to the East Coast leadership proclaiming our heresy. Inevitably, the controllers back East concluded that we were unreliable and thus unworthy of those meager shekels that the rich, liberal theoreticians condescended to flip our way. Funding, the little voices whispered, would soon be drying up. And the prospect of greater reliance on commodity foods loomed larger than ever. 15. It was part of the deal. Emma and I had a long-standing commitment to travel back East, for the New Year. A lox and bagels fix. As the departure approached, Joanie began to stomp and pout up a tornado of passive aggression. “We’re goin’ to have a meeting before you go,” Mitch told me privately one afternoon out in the back country while we shot bottles into bits with our .380 automatics. “‘Case you ain’t noticed, Joanie’s pissed about your vacation.” “Yeah, I noticed. What’s her problem.” “Same as always. Someone’s taking a break. She can’t handle that.” I mentioned it to Emma, but of course, she was way ahead of me on the subject. “Do you think we ought to cancel?” she asked. “I mean, it does look like we’re using our white bourgeois skin privilege.” “Fuck no!” I responded emphatically. “We aren’t going to be any less white or any less privileged if we decide to stay.” “There’s a WAR going on!” Joanie reminded us during the meeting. “We’ve got work to do. The bombs aren’t going to stop falling while you two go gallivanting off enjoying yourselves.” “They aren’t going to stop if we don’t go either,” I countered. “Then you don’t believe we’re making a difference?” she responded. “What the hell are you doing here in that case?” “I am not saying we’re not making a difference, Joanie,” I replied. “But I am saying that even in a war, people get R&R and that’s what we need, right now.” “You see anyone else taking a break around here?” she snarled.

“Joanie, if you don’t want to take a break, that’s your business,” I shot back. “I, for one don’t begrudge you a break. Take a fuckin’gbreak and lay off the guilt trip.” “Listen,” Mitch mediated, “you guys’ve got connections in New York, don’t you? I mean, some of the people you know got bread, right? Why don’t you take some of the MOP literature. Pass it around. See if you can raise some bucks while you’re there.” “Right on.” said Clayton. “Hit up some of them rich honkies. What you call it, doin’ the MauMau thing with them Bernstein liberals.” Emma was nodding her head, agreeing. “You don’t have any idea what you’re asking,” I muttered. “ Fund raising in New York takes a professional, and we’re just amateurs. In fact, as you know, I’m somewhere beneath amateur. Whatever you may think, most of our friends in the Big Apple don’t consider themselves sufficiently wealthy to qualify as donors and those that have the bucks resent being reminded of it. I know these people and we don’t have a chance.” But there was Joanie’s anger to disarm and Emma’s guilt to diminish. “Let’s do it,” Emma urged. “We don’t have anything to lose by trying.” We flew in on the red-eye, just after Christmas, our belongings in backpacks. On the bus in from Kennedy, I felt like an alien. I wasn’t sure why. Up on the West Side, I sat in the borrowed apartment left for us by friends who were off warming their buns in the Caribbean sun, nursing a warm cup of their coffee and a sense of unease. “Does it feel funny to you, being back here?” I asked Emma finally. “I’m not sure I can put my finger on why.” “Yeah, a bit,” she agreed. ‘Everything looks the same, but it doesn’t feel the same,” I said. “Maybe it’s us,” she observed. “Maybe we’ve changed. When we left, we didn’t know any Viet vets, much less active duty GIs. No one was trying to shoot up our home. The War was an abstraction and our arguments were hypothetical. We’ve been through a lot in the last seven months, Eric. I think we’ve changed.” “Yeah, but how much?” I asked. “We’ve got a dinner date with Rick and Sandra tonight.” Emma smiled. “Maybe that will answer your question.” Rick and Sandra were newlyweds. Former SDSers who fancied themselves leftist intellectuals. And though they aspired to be spokespeople for the oppressed and downtrodden, neither of them knew the meaning of doing without. Rick's dad owned one of the biggest real estate developments -87-

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in New York State. I think they called it Long Island. Rick had been groomed to be Executive VP and heir apparent. Dad grumbled a bit when Rick dabbled on the radical fringes but wasn't worried. His wealth was a potent aphrodisiac and he knew Rick would come around, sooner rather than later. Sandra, was the princess of an upper East Side money launderer for the remnants of Tammany Hall who liked to wear mini skirts made from less material than her panties. She was a researcher of injustices who spent a lot of her time prancing about making sure everybody noticed her plump buns. We met them for dinner at the five room coop on West End Avenue that they had received as a wedding present. They were pest-free digs unlike our old brownstone where, when you switched on the light, roaches scurried like protesters being disbursed by the New York Police TAC squad. They had spared no expense furnishing the place. A pair of gigantic leather sofas. "Fifteen thou." Sandra modestly revealed. An antique four poster, hand-made in Pennsylvania by Amish craftsmen, supposedly. Hand-woven Persian rugs. Original artwork. Shelving of rare, polished hardwoods. There was a commercial range in the kitchen, on which Benita, the illegal, underpaid Jamaican housekeeper cooked their dinners so they could work late at their exhilarating revolutionary jobs. “Benita has left us with four courses, ready to go.” Sandra bragged. "No one cooks better than Benita." And she was not off the mark by much. Over coffee, life at the ole GI project was brought up. We proudly showed them our mimeographed literature describing the project and the work we were doing. But they had glossy fund raising material, professional and slick. Sandra trotted out her eighty-page quarterly, complete with scholarly articles, footnotes and bibliographies. The research she was doing at the Manhattan, left-wing think tank that specialized in Latin American revolutionary writers, she explained, was really the apex of leftist political activity. We showed them the first rudimentary press releases we had created for the impending Black Unity identity bracelet court martial. They displayed their own literature for legal projects that had to be more important because they involved “third world people,” instead of “agents of imperialism.” I mentioned the defense fund that we had established, and how necessary it was that we win this case, so that Black GIs could organize without intimidation by the racist brass. They opined that money could be better spent educating “the people” about indigenous movements in developing nations,

movements that had a real chance of creating progressive governments. While our project needed money to buy groceries and gas, to pay for accommodating witnesses and preparation of evidence, their publication needed money to buy ads in the Times and Washington Post. Who is to say which way the money would be better spent? “But Sandra,” Emma subtly injected into the conversation, “ you’ve got simply oodles of money. You’ve got these fabulous couches, this amazing apartment, Benita cooks gourmet for you. Meanwhile, we’re dining on commodity handouts from the county. How can you even compare the two situations?” Sandra was righteously offended and anxious to avoid any misunderstanding. While Rick stood by, stiffly silent, hands folded across his chest, she hastily fired off the coup d' grace into our rapidly deflating fund raising balloon. "Emma, despite what it looks like,” she insinuated in a highpitched huff, “we're not made of money!" Emma looked around the room and sniffed. “Sandra dear, it would be difficult for one to draw that conclusion based on these surroundings.” This brought a chill to the air colder that the January winds that were accelerating through Manhattan's canyons at that very moment. Not long after, we descended from the towered coop hideaway to the street below, where those frigid gusts embraced us. We found them to be more nurturing than Rick and Sandra's place. 16. We set about making calls to the few friends who were left in town over the holidays. One by one we completed the reunion rounds at lunch spots and over dinners at the bistros and cafes we had frequented as students. Each in turn became defensive when the subject of a little financial assistance was hinted at. Some bristled that we had the gall to ask them to put some money into our project. They chastised us. They were revolutionaries too, they argued. Weren’t they too giving their time to the revolution? Their arguments sure convinced me. We had a hell of a lot of nerve, asking "movement" people with lots of money to give us some when we should have been hitting up people with no money and/or no “politics.” Our marketing was all wrong. As our “vacation” wound down to the last days, we had not raised a penny, despite Emma’s best efforts. All we had left to look forward to was a free meal with Dan and Molly. A week earlier, we would have viewed them as fine candidates for a touch but we were so disheartened by this point that -89-

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the thought of hitting them up was unbearable. We wanted to have at least a few friends left. They lived on the upper West Side, next to Columbia University, in an elegant, rent controlled railroad flat. There was a large bedroom that occupied the front quarter and was mostly taken up with an inlaid, maple bureau and a king size bed, piled high with seductive pillows. Beyond this boudoir was a smaller room that Dan used as a study. It stood in dark contrast to the bedroom, harboring a worn oak roll-top desk that Dan strewed with leftist tracts and periodicals in a way that made them look like they were all in use but which had not actually been consulted in recent history. Down at the end, the hall opened into a large living room with French windows fronting onto a narrow balcony. If one dared hang on to its sooty wrought iron railing, twisting like a gymnast to the left would reward the athlete with a vista beyond the Hudson and the Palisades into the gray-orange pollution of New Jersey. An out-of-place eight seat mahogany dinner table took up a third of this room. It was set for four and ready to go when we arrived. Molly greeted us with hugs and kisses. Dan did one of his bear-hug things and began tendering a steady barrage of drinks. With Dan on the job, no glass seemed able to remain unfilled, wherever hidden. Molly was of that of light-skinned, yellow-haired, Celtic race that gets a bad case of sunburn in a rainstorm. She came from what they call "old money" which is far better than new money because the ancestor who did whatever nasty things had to be done to get it, was long dead. Despite her privileged station, Molly had been trained to do her own housekeeping and cooking. She had been raised on an ethic of Scottish-Irish self-reliance and was refreshingly devoid of intellectual pretensions. If she had any blarney genes, she had gifted them to Dan as a wedding present. Dan had been a grad student in history, on his way to a life in academia when he dropped out to study law. But that had not altered his left-wing opinions. He was also a jolly Greek. Dark, tall and slightly overweight from the phyllo dough in his genes. Dan had a gift for embellishment and tall tales in which he was the central character. But if you knew him well, you knew that for him life was more of a spectator sport. Presented with the opportunity to experience an historic moment, Dan behaved like a fan, preferring to observe from the stands, but able to acquire the good seats. Unlike Molly, Dan didn’t come from old money. And the "new money" his family made

was diluted by eleven deductions. So that dowry that Molly brought along didn’t exactly count against her, despite his professed Communist sympathies. Sensitive to this contradiction, he was quick to assure everyone within earshot that for a catch such as he was, there were plenty of rich girls to be had, thus proving that he had wed Molly for more honorable reasons than her inheritance. They labored together to serve us a meal that was simple but very hearty American fare. Time flew. By midnight, the blunt sluggishness of alcoholic influence had set in. Eyelids were taking control over their own deployment. Conversation degenerated. We surrendered to gravity, propping ourselves askew on the rug with couch pillows. The phone rang. Dan startled and picked it up. "Yeah, Mark? Yeah, yeah, No shit! Yeah, you're kidding, no shit! Man, so what are you gonna do?" He held his hand over the phone. "It’s Mark Ravitz," he whispered in our general direction. "He's in big trouble. He's got this dope dealer tied up over at this house. He has this old friend, Milt, who was back here from Ann Arbor trying to score. The deal got fucked up. They kidnapped Milt and are holding him for ransom. So Mark and Milt’s partner from Ann Arbor grabbed this guy in retaliation. They want our help. Should they try to work a trade or should they just call the cops?" "Is this for real?" I yawned. Dan confirmed that it was, first with them and then for me. “Don’t you think the police might be a tad premature?” Emma suggested. “After all, there’s no telling who they’ll bust. Probably bring them all in.” Her observation became a consensus opinion and we communicated the same to Mark, the desperate. "By the way," I said as I fluffed out my flattened hair with my fingers, "what's to prevent those dealers from making up a totally different version of the facts and turning in Mark for kidnapping? I hope their pad is clean.” This insight was duly communicated, and Mark fessed up to having a couple ounces of weed, a .38 police special and the ten thoushand dollars they were supposed to use to buy the hash they were trying to buy when Milt got kidnapped. Molly summed it up. "Guns, drugs and cash, a kidnapped guy tied up in their pad and they want to call the cops!" Molly’s articulation of his predicament enlightened Mark to the possibility that he was at some personal risk, it being his apartment. He made a plea for our assistance. "Clean out the apartment of contraband," I suggested. -91-

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"What are we supposed to do with the stuff?" Mark wondered into the phone. "Tell them to pack it all up and move it out of there," I advised. Dan duly advised them, adding, "We'll be by in a few and check it out.” “Nice of you to volunteer.” I shook my head and muttered in Dan’s direction. It was a cold, uninviting night even for those of us desensitized by inebriation. “I guess we’d better get over there and see what’s happening,” I concluded reluctantly. I found myself a little jealous that the women would remain warm and comfortable while we would be cast out into the elements. “Don’t wait up,” I sarcastically advised them, hoping and trusting that they would not take the advice and would at least vicariously share the discomfort of our pending sub-arctic adventure. So, not long past midnight we found ourselves trudging beneath the 116th Street and Broadway Gate onto the Columbia campus, down College Walk. Whipping winds swooped from behind Low Library, kicking the paper detritus of urban campus life into a whirlwind that danced like a Hopi shaman around the circular, raised marble centerpiece of the campus called the Sundial. A score of frigid, eerie lights, crowned by yellow-white halos, projected a grillwork of elongated shadows across the facades of Hamilton and Kent Halls. The thermometer was committedly plummeting into the teens. Our body core temperatures dove along with it and our pace quickened to keep warm. By the time we negotiated the two long blocks and turned the corner onto Morningside where Mark had a flat, we were trotting and very chilled. He lived in a substantial brick and concrete structure embellished with bits of faux-granite trim and leaded pane glass in the lower stories. The building was one of a row of well-kept high-rises that hovered on the Heights like black-caped, bloodthirsty vampires, contemptuous and predatory. Below them at the bottom of the hill, the burnt-out wreckage of Harlem sprawled prone and decrepit. A long flight of piss-drenched stairs and a gauntlet of security stood between the unfortunate, desperate inhabitants of this lowland and these darkly privileged dwellings. A heavy front door of black metal and safety glass guarded a small airlocked hall, its walls bedecked with ranks of mailboxes and a double row of buttons. Numbers and names, scratched onto plain paper and stuffed in

name slots identified enough tenants to populate an entire North Dakota farming community. Dan poked at the buzzer and after a moment, a scratchy electronic voice commanded that we identify ourselves. Upon satisfying himself that we were the genuine article, Ravitz buzzed us in. The hall was dimly lit but brightened when Mark opened the door and furtively popped his head out, looking in all directions just to make sure. He occupied a first floor apartment, just off the foyer. Ravitz was above average in height, but a preview of middle age to come bulged his shirt, taxing its buttons. Emerging stress lines were already commencing the irreversible etching process at the corners of his eyes and mouth. His chin sported what a five o'clock shadow becomes on a swarthy complexion when unattended past midnight. His pale face was flushed a guilty red, the color of those neon cocktail signs that decorate the outside of modest corner bars in working class neighborhoods. "Come on!" he urged us in a hush that was as loud as the rush hour traffic on Broadway. The lanky young hostage sat in the kitchen, trussed to the kind of chrome and vinyl chair that was in vogue back in the Ozzie and Harriet era. Long dirty blonde hair hung wildly to his shoulders. He wore ostentatious leather motorcycle pants, like the kind Peter Fonda was wearing when he got blown off his bike in Easy Rider. Gray duct tape sealed his mouth against yelling and screaming. The pale edge of fear pulsated across his facial muscles. He was breathing in difficult snorts and sniffs. "We can't take the tape off," the kid from Ann Arbor explained with a palms up helplessness. "He'll yell and neighbors might call the cops," he added, seeking our assurances that it was the right thing to do. "Aw he wouldn't be stupid enough to do that," Dan clucked amiably. He looked down at the hog-tied prisoner and shook his head. "You wouldn't be dumb enough to call the cops and get yourself busted, would you?" The guy shook his head, agreeing. "What's his name?" Dan asked the hapless captor. "We got his ID." Ann Arbor responded, nervously offering up a wallet with all the information. While Dan occupied himself with negotiating a tape removal, I made a cautious approach to Mark Ravitz. He was sitting in the living room, rigid and nervous, on the edge of an overstuffed green and pink flower-patterned couch. Che Guevara squinted romantically from an altar to one side, suspiciously eyeing his competition on the opposite wall where Ho Chi Minh hung, slightly cock-eyed. -93-

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I wanted to know about Milt’s scraggly friend from Ann Arbor, but Ravitz quickly disputed a level of acquaintanceship that could assist me on that topic. He was merely the friend of his friend, Milt Levine, who was presently in the hands of the kidnappers. Their sole common ground involved the risk of imminent arrest and potential co-defendantcy. In other words, Ravitz had little basis to trust the fellow. He did however elaborate on what he knew. The fiasco began when his friend Milt had injudiciously bragged to his Ann Arbor buddies that he had this boss connection for Moroccan hash. On the strength of this braggadocio, he had ten big ones pressed upon him by the doper crowd at U of M. His bluff was called. Milt had no choice but to save face and in slipshod haste, he arranged a deal with some shady operators from Brooklyn. The transaction was to take place on neutral turf, the Sundial, right in the absolute middle of the Columbia campus, at midnight. Milt would deliver the money in a brown paper sack in exchange for an identical bag containing the dope. Whoever cooked up the scene must have been a classic spy movie buff. But Milt’s caution had gotten the better of him. He went to the Sundial without the bread, leaving Mark and the Ann Arbor Kid at the Amsterdam gate holding the sack of loot. His adversaries proved worthy of this distrust. Their representative approached the Sundial toting a bag concealing a .45 automatic in lieu of Moroccan hash. The gentleman apparently didn't accept Milt's explanation or his offer to produce the money after he could be assured that the bargain actually involved hashish. He suggested that Milt take a walk with him and Milt was persuaded in the wisdom of such a course by the glint of nickel plate. A few minutes later, one of the Brooklyn gang sauntered over to the Amsterdam Gate and proposed a new deal, that he exchange the loot for Milt. The Kid was having none of it. Moved by the fear of facing his joint venturers back in the lower Peninsula without either drugs or money he rejected this deal with a well-aimed and effective right hook. It brought down the extortionist with such a depressing crack of cranium on pavement that death would not have been a surprising result. Then, with the agility of an Olympian, this Mid -western pugilist reached down and put the young thug in a full nelson. "Grab his feet," he commanded Ravitz. "Let's get him to your place. Quick!"

New Yorkers know how to mind their own business. And what might seem bizarre and bold to some is often commonplace in the Big Apple. Thus, they were apparently able to accomplish this feat without raising the hue and cry of local citizenry. Just a couple of college kids carrying home their passed-out buddy. The task however exhausted the heroism of Ann Arbor and by the time we arrived, he appeared to be absolutely useless as part of the solution. I looked at Ravitz with the kind of smarmy curiosity I imagined Phillip Marlowe might have employed. "Have you cleaned up?" He was flushed and there were a few beads of sweat condensing on his temples. "It's all in there," he advised, pointing to a brown leather briefcase nestled between the sofa and a greasy blue wall. "All?" ".38 special and a box of hollow points. Couple ounces of Panama Red. Ten thousand, cash," Ravitz responded weakly. “In case you’re not aware of it,” I advised, adopting a tone of professionalism. “Almost every pistol in New York City is illegal. They've had this Sullivan Law since about 1911 or 12. Practically no one except cops can own a handgun in the city, let alone carry one. This isn’t Texas.” “It's not a stolen gun, if that’s what you’re wondering.” Ravitz attempted to reassure me. “My legal address is in Westchester County." “The gun’s still in the City,” I observed, “and, by the by, hollow point bullets are another problem. They’re designed to open up like a mushroom when they hit human flesh so they make a great big hole. Using them is a war crime butthe streets of New York are not the kind of war that is covered by international law. Cops can use them. In cops hands they’re considered humane. But for anyone else, it is evidence of depravity. It is not the kind of fact you would want to have influencing a sentence.” I recited the maximums and minimums for the felonies he was presently committing. The penalties were not of the slap-on-the-wrist variety. He shuddered with the realization that he was out of his league. "What are you going to do with all that shit?" I faked a bored yawn and expected that he would be requesting a service. Mark looked at me, his eyes betraying desperation, and addressed a pathetic appeal. "I, I, thought....you uh you were going to take care of it. You’re a lawyer aren’t you?" I nodded. "Hey, Dan," I called into the kitchen. "Would you mind coming in here a minute. We've got something important to discuss."

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Dan abandoned his interrogation of the ersatz cowpoke and the three of us huddled. “What do you think we ought to do?” I asked. Dan scratched at his chin, as if in deep thought, which was impossible for either of us in our condition at that time of the morning. “We can just chuck the dope down the hill into Harlem, but ditching a gun is not that easy,” he mused. “ We can’t just throw it over the wall. I don’t mind them being stoned, but I got a problem with them being stoned and armed.” “How about the river,” Ravitz proposed. “Well, that requires finding a secluded spot, right? Tonight.” I replied. “That means someone’s going to have to walk it across Riverside Drive and the West Side Highway to the Hudson and, without looking too suspicious, hurl it into the river from some location where it might be a good idea to hold on to it just to get safely back home. You up for that?” I looked over at Ravitz and saw that he was not. I looked over at Dan. He pursed his lips into a wry smile and shrugged. His manner disarmed me and I dropped my guard. Before I knew it, Dan and Ravitz made a deal that all of the stuff, the drugs, the gun, the hollow point ammo and the loot be moved to Dan’s pad, as soon as possible. Our fingers had not yet thawed before we found ourselves once again fighting the frigid gusts as we re-crossed the campus, our professional careers tied up in a brown leather briefcase. We delivered the cornucopia of felonies into Dan’s pad and opened her up. It looked like a theatrical prop from a B movie. A stack of dirty bills bound with rubber bands. A shiny nickel-plated, snub-nosed revolver, a box of cartridges and a large transparent sandwich bag full of marijuana. Molly picked up the baggy, sniffed the contents and scrunched up her face. "Cheap shit." was her verdict. "Shoulda tossed it." "Then let's flush it, " Emma proposed. "Now what about the gun?" I asked, watching the grass swirl into the vortex with a satisfying gurgle. "Not a problem." Dan flashed a smile of reassurance. "I got a buddy, Nick, who's going upstate to his cabin tomorrow morning. He'll hold it up there, where it's legal. If things don't work out tonight, I'll give him a call first thing in the morning." "And no one's going to question me about a measly ten grand. " Molly chuckled at the ironic truth.

Dan picked up the phone and called Mark to tell him that the mission had been accomplished. "We heard from them." Ravitz announced. "They want to do a trade. Our guy for theirs. They wanna trade ‘em at this location in Yonkers. They're gonna call us back in ten minutes." "We'll be back over there in a couple." Dan responded. "Sounds like a good deal to me.” Moments later, we were off again, leaving the women snug, warm and curled up around ten Gs. There was no telling what fine ideas that sweet narcotic would churn in their brains. "We’ve got a few logistics to deal with," I told Dan on the way back to Ravitz’s place. "Yeah, like what?" Dan probed warily. “Like how things get decided on what we do and what we don’t do,” I replied. “ For example, I don’t suppose you’ve given thought to what we say if they ask us to take this guy to Yonkers, have you?” I was sure he hadn't. Dan was the kind of guy who said the first thing that popped into his head and then spent a hundred times longer figuring out how to make it work, so he could bullshit that he had it planned. "I don’t see Ravitz and that schmuck from Ann Arbor anxious to drive that mother out to the sticks, do you?” I continued. “ So, like are you going to volunteer us to chauffeur him through the streets of New York bound and gagged?” "What do you think?" Dan asked, paying more attention to details now. "I think," I said without having thought much about it either, "that we’re going to end up doing some dirty work and we better reach some kind of an understanding with the guy before we leave Ravitz’s pad. Convince him that the trade’s for real. Have his buddies talk to him on the phone when they call back. I want him to go voluntarily.” "But maybe we should hold onto his wallet." Dan pitched in. “In case he tries something, I’d like to have his ID.” "Then, if it’s not a fair exchange, he'll know we know how to get him and he'll be the one who's holding the bag for kidnapping." Moments later we were back at Ravitz's flat and I asked him how he was planning to make the exchange. "The problem," he informed us, "is I don't have any wheels." "Well, what about your visitors? How the fuck they get here, horseback?" "Naw, car. But Milt's got the fuckin’ keys." -97-

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I slapped my forehead with the palm of my hand in feigned exasperation. "So how were you planning to make this exchange in Yonkers?" Ravitz looked over at Dan. "There's no one else," he observed with a sniff of victory. Dan looked over to me and shrugged. My prediction was confirmed. We were on the hook for an early morning tour of Yonkers with the hostage. The Catatonic Kid and Mark Ravitz were not going to be much help. And to tell the truth, that was probably a good thing. Before we knew it we were back yet again in the icy wind, headed for where big Dan stashed his vehicle, Riverside and 114th. Third lap. Dan, fortunately, was a friend of cars and his old Chevy wagon started right up. We picked up our load and confirmed the deal with him. We'd be holding his ID. If he cooperated he'd get it back at the end of the trip. We were neutral and didn’t want any trouble. All we wanted was to do an exchange. No matter what, even if his buddies cheated us, he'd be released because we had his ID and would just deal with it later. He could go right now if he wanted or ride with us to Yonkers, it didn’t matter to us. But he also had to know that there was no more ten thousand. It was gone. Out of our hands. He and his pals could forget about ransom. They might as well let this Levine fellow go and everyone would just forget the whole thing. Our passenger was reasonable on the subject. He allowed how things had gotten out of hand and that it was a good idea to keep the cops out of the whole affair. We had a nice ride to Yonkers. I was surprised how much wild and vacant stuff there seemed to be in Yonkers back in 1970. Maybe it was because of the dark. Or maybe the bad guys knew of this one place where nobody seemed to have gotten around to sprouting a development. But there it was, a vast expanse of woodland, suitable for a gangland hit. Big enough to get lost in. And we would have too, but for the navigational assistance of our passenger. At his direction, we pulled over to the side of the road. We returned his ID and bid him a farewell with our best wishes that his friends were out there somewhere. With parting words of confidence that they were nearby, he sprinted off into the dark, like a rehabilitated animal released into the wild. A few minutes later a shoeless Milt Levine hobbled, tenderfoot, into our headlights.

17. "The asshole didn't even say thanks when we dropped him off!" I groused, referring to Levine and not to our newfound friend from Brooklyn. It was now 5 a.m. The temperature had gotten about as cold as it was going to get. A damp chill wind was pushing the first wave of New Jersey commuters eastbound across the Hudson. Each exhale announced itself with a cloud of icy breath. Dan scrambled for his key to the warmth of his lobby. He didn't bother to respond until we had crossed the threshold. "Yeah," he grumbled, "I noticed." He called down an elevator. "Fuckin’ asshole. Didn't give a second thought to what we've done for him. Treated us like a goddamn cab." He let us in with two more keys. He had a whole lot of keys. It was New York City after all. Molly and Emma were still up. Warm as toast. "Want a hot drink?" Molly offered, as cheerily as if she had just awoken from a Cinderella-like slumber. There was acceptance. They served us hot tea, fortified by Dan's favorite single malt. "We've got it figured out," Emma teased seductively. Meaning every bit of it while seeming to mean none of it. "What you got figured out?" I asked. "How to divide up your fee," she said, playing the coquette. "Say, why don't we just go out for breakfast? " Molly happily suggested as she poured more hot liquids into our cups with the energy of a truck stop waitress. "What about the fee?" Dan asked, ignoring his spouse’s diversion. "We think you guys ought to get a fee for your night's work, don't you?” Emma smiled. “A big fee. How much would you say you saved Ravitz and his friends by just talking them out of calling the cops? Ten thousand? Fifty thousand? Easy, and they lose the money and some of them probably go to jail. Right?" Molly didn't wait for an answer. "And you put your own careers on the line.” She spiced her argument with animated hand gestures. “Carrying their stuff across campus for them. Then transporting their hostage. Unbelievable!" In unison, they harmonized. “ We think you ought to take a thousand dollar fee.” Emma continued. "But not for us. What do you think about $300 going to SCUM, $200 to West Side Womens’ Shelter and $500 to the MOP. Dan gets to donate to his favorite group. You and I get to bring home some funds. And Molly would like that new women's shelter to get some money to buy -99-

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the some bedding and toys for the kids. A hell of a lot better than sending it back to Ann Arbor where those rich little putzes will just use it to buy drugs from someone else, don’t you think?" "And make a profit off of a communal sacrament," Molly huffed sanctimoniously. "They ought to count themselves lucky they'll be getting anything back," Emma concluded, pounding a fist into her knee for emphasis. All the while, Dan was nodding in agreement. SCUM, the Society of Communist University Members was just his cup of tea: intellectuals, radical young professors, recent alumni and grad students all united in their common pursuit of a perpetual draft deferment. They put out one funny paper. Text dripping with irreverence and risque sarcasm that 90% of the country would never get. It was a journal that was no threat to influence the so-called masses. As a result they were perpetually on the shorts for the next issue. And this next one, Dan promised, would be a blockbuster call to arms. Dan had put in a rough evening. He was entitled to a call and whole-heartedly approved the women's suggestion. So it all came down to me. The choice was an easy one. These past weeks in New York, without commodity foods, had reawakened dormant taste buds. They now cajoled that $500 would forestall reunion with San Diego welfare food. I voted with my stomach and made it unanimous. We would impose a tithing on the heathen felons from the Midwest. After a hearty breakfast of slithery fried eggs and perspiring bacon, Emma and I decided to spend our last full day of vacation actually engaged in tourist frivolity. We boarded the IRT and aimed ourselves downtown to begin with a cheap ride on the Staten Island Ferry. The morning was crisp with a winter sky of battleship gray. An anemic sun struggled toward an unremarkable zenith over the Brooklyn warehouses and tenements, vainly attempting to brighten the grimy metropolitan vista. Sailing into the teeth of brisk, salty gusts, we gaped at the algae green Lady Liberty, her beacon seeming more of a warning than a welcome. We lunched on shrimp in lobster sauce and chicken with almonds at Hung Fat’s in Chinatown. Then, after hiking across Canal Street into Little Italy to gorge on cannolis and cappuccino, we trekked up to Orchard Street to haggle our way into a cheap new suitcase. We topped it all off with a late matinee of All Quiet on the Western Front at the Thalia. Its theme of youthful

enthusiasm betrayed seemed timeless and, thanks to recent experience, I found new meaning in what Remarque was saying. We got back to Dan and Molly’s place just in time to find Dan on the line responding to a call from Mark. I listened in on an extension. Mark was telling him he hoped we had been able to get some sleep and explained how he had waited until now to give us the opportunity. But there was nervous transparency in his presentation. Finally, he got to the point. “Milt and his sidekick are itching to get back to Ann Arbor and they would like to get their cash back as soon as possible,” he said. “And if you haven’t already handed off the ‘package’ to your friend to take out of town, I was wondering if it wouldn’t inconvenience you too much if you could bring it over with the cash.” "Actually," Dan commenced negotiating, “that package was safe and sound. If you want it, Mark, come on over and pick it up yourself. Frankly, I’m through being used as a delivery boy. By the way, those “vegetables” that you gave us were very rotten. We had to throw them away," “That’s no problem,” Ravitz replied, sounding disappointed. “Will you be there in a bit? I’ll come over and pick up the package and the bread.” "Speaking about the bread,” Dan continued, "before we return it, we have a little matter of our fee to settle." "What the hell are you talking about?" Ravitz snapped with an edge on. "What fee is that?" "For the legal services we rendered to you last night, including travel expenses, the surcharge for after-hours work, the surcharge for emergency work and the surcharge for the specialized services that we provided which you can't find in an ordinary law office. And oh yes, an override for the fact that we had to deal with a couple of the most ungrateful pricks it has ever been my misfortune to meet." "Your friends will be glad to know it will be going to a good cause," I piped up. "Fuck you," Ravitz replied. "It’s just a rip off. That's what it is. Just like those other guys. You never said you were going to charge us." "And fuck you too." I was quick to respond. "What did you call us for then? You wanted professional help, didn't you, asshole? That's why you called us. You wanted legal advice. You were in deep shit. Needed to talk to a lawyer. Then you needed us to do your dirty work for you. Now you say you weren't planning on paying for it? You’re lucky we’re proposing to give anything back."

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This didn't help the settlement process very much. Dan was running his index finger across his neck, cutthroat, for me to shut up. "Just one big one, Mark, my lad,” he bantered amiably. Just one G, a tithe. And it’s not going into our pockets either. Some will be going to SCUM. Your favorite paper,” he reminded him. “Some’s going to the West Side Women’s Shelter, to help those poor little children of battered women. And some to help out our brave Vietnam veterans. It’s all going to good causes. Nothing in our pockets. It’s a fair deal for everyone.” "Just a minute," Ravitz said. He communicated the status of these negotiations to his co-conspirators and Milt got on the phone to contribute a lengthy stream of vituperation to the discussion. Upon completion of this overture, he offered us $100 and our lives. This was a mistake. Dan’s hot Greek blood started to boil. He had a tendency to take these kinds of things seriously. In his culture people didn't verbalize such threats. If they were stupid enough to do so, they would likely have an accident that prevented the threat from germinating. Dan made that point to Milt, who immediately softened his tone. Negotiations proceeded. "Milt, two of us spent five hours each last night,” Dan explained. “Those hours, even at journeyman rates would run about $250 bucks. But you won't find anybody to do what we did for you last night for $250 bucks. Just the after-hour services alone would raise it to $500, even if it were in-the-office research. We also had to do a bit of dirty work, if you know what I mean. And your good buddies were no help. Taking all of that into account and the fact that you are a fucking ungrateful asshole, you ought to be kissing the ground we walk on that you'll be able to take back to Michigan 90 cents on the dollar. Think of it as the risks of the business you're in. Big profits, big risks. Think of it as a donation to some good causes. Think of it any way you want but while you're doing it think of the charges that we're racking up right now talking to you." "You bastards," he snapped. "Of course we are," I laughed. "We're lawyers! You want the nine or would you prefer to have some more deductions taken out?" Milt decided to cut his losses. That wasn't the end of it though. Mark Ravitz spread his version of the word and the calls flooded in to Dan and Molly's switchboard. There were enough opinions to support a statistically significant sampling. Emma spent

our last moments in New York fending off as much hostility as she could, using impeccable logic and good humor. She had a bundle of good reasons how much better use the money could be put than to stone out the undergraduate population of U. of Michigan at a profit to greedy assholes. But her best efforts did not win much success. The closely-knit network of relationships that had nurtured her before we emigrated to sunny Southern California was primed against her once Mark’s version found its way into Sandra’s paws. We found ourselves being compared to Stalin who, after all, had begun his career as a train robber. Emma didn’t stand a chance against the network that she had enjoyed only a few months before and she lost many friends because of this. I just shrugged it all off. It was garbage in, garbage out. We lifted off that evening on the red-eye with more cash in our pockets than we ever hoped to extract from that crowd. Looking down at the dramatic Manhattan skyline as the plane strained to cruising altitude, we sensed a newfound alienation from those towers and lights. Estranged from the microscopic evidence of business that went on as usual. And we both felt in our gut that it was no longer home. Henceforth, we would only be visitors. Neither strangers nor tourists. More nearly refugees.

PART TWO FATES AND FURIES 18. Within the half-year since our arrival in Oceanside, the gods of change had pressed the accelerator to the floor. Urban sprawl advanced like a rampant malignancy through the rolling farmland to the east, all the way to Escondido. One day a hill was there, the next it was leveled. Creeks that had nourished the native flora for millennia vanished over night, to be forgotten until a hundred year flood might coax them into the basements of unsuspecting home buyers. Great chunks of terra firma were consumed in orgiastic gulps of developmental gluttony so that in a geologic nano-second, the serene desert environment was transmogrified into expanses of heat shimmering building pads, strip malls and ersatz Spanish townhouses of pastel stucco. And with this progress came the acrid particulate atmosphere of a petroleum gorging culture to degrade every breeze. It was as mood altering as a narcotic. Subtle but irrevocable.

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Ditmar was not immune to its influence. I sensed it as I walked up the driveway and I heard the whine coming from the hippie-painted van. It was a plaintive wail, low and forlorn. I looked in and saw Dino sprawled on the driver’s seat squirming, his eyes rolling. It turned out to be an omen. Clayton had taken advantage of the holiday to conspire with his mentor, Malik Katanga, the militant Black nationalist/separatist from San Diego. He had replaced the Mao-Ho-Huey propaganda that predominated in the house when we left with literature prominently featured his leader’s likeness in camouflage utilities with officer’s rank, like a latter-day Marcus Garvey. Katanga was an ex-Army sergeant and this cachet attracted a number of vets to his camp. Those of an ilk reluctant to put down the gun and looking for an excuse to keep up the trappings of militarism without the accompanying burdens of discipline. As near as I could tell from reading the stuff, his organization, the Black Liberation Front, advocated a mythical Africanism that seemed to be a melange of cultural voodoo and wishful thinking. They had also reinforced Clayton with a new organizer whom the brothers called Doc. Doc was a wiry fellow whose dark skin made him seem of indeterminate age. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, sported a goatee and a hairline that was receding into male pattern baldness. He spoke measured, careful prose into which he sprinkled cultural references. James Baldwin. Leroi Jones. Patrice Lumumba. He claimed to be a Marine vet, Third Division, and to have been stationed up near the DMZ, in Quang Tri Province, where he had seen a lot of action. No one questioned his credentials. He came with the Katanga seal of approval, and that was enough for the brothers. Joanie too had been busy on the recruitment path. Like Clayton, she felt the need for allies. This prompted her to embark upon a recruiting search that took her up the coast to revolution central, Berkeley. Here she had exploited ambiguous political connections that seemed to run the gamut from a commune with a porcine presidential nominee as its mascot to doctrinaire Marxist theoreticians incapable of laughter. She had returned with Louise. Louise had recently gained infamy as a SF State student strike leader. She had been expelled for assaulting its then president and later Senator, S.I. Hayakawa. This assault was actually rather mild in comparison to the normal criminal fare. More of a performance piece, it involved swiping the president’s famous tam o’shanter from his head and burning it in his

presence, before a sympathetic audience, as well as the eyewitness news. The theatrical appeal of this conduct, in direct proportion to the elusiveness of its political content, was a prescription for notoriety. Thus she joined a galaxy of left-wing celebrities who had managed to perform a photogenic act to the critical acclaim of a bourgeois media ravenous for representational imagery of the outrage du jour. Louise was a short, large-boned woman with an acne-pocked, olive complexion and unruly black hair that doubled the circumference of her head. She had a refreshingly unfeminine lack of concern for her personal appearance that conveniently minimized the chance that a GI might mistake her for a sex object. She sported a husky voice that broadcast prodigious, intolerant opinions, honey-coated with a patina of benign sophistication. That is to say, she had the skills of an effective politician. While she was at it, Joanie visited the Oakland headquarters of the Black Panther Party. Here she reported her concern that Clayton and Doc would leave the Panthers out in the organizational cold unless they acted fast. The Panthers and Katanga were then dancing a dangerous, more-revolutionarythan-thou tango. A fierce battle for the hearts and minds of the bloods on the street. Each attacked the other as police informants, Uncle Toms, infiltrators or agents provocateurs, depending upon the audience. Accusations flew faster than volleys at Wimbledon. So when the Oakland Panthers heard that Katanga was stacking the deck down at Pendleton, they were prodded into competitive action and ordered one of the sisters to join Joanie and Louise at the project. Sukari was her name and she was firmly encamped in Cookie’s old digs when we arrived. A chilly, Afro-topped beauty, she seemed to slither in fashionably chic dashikis, ears resplendent with dangling silver earrings and slender arms festooned with matching bracelets. She looked down her revolutionary nose at us honkies with the contempt to which she was entitled by her birthright as a victim of racial oppression, barely condescending to introduce herself. Mitch, the nominal leader, was clearly no longer in control. He was a figurehead now, as impotent as the British monarch. The subtext was clear. No one wanted to be the first to admit it, but the new team signified a surrender of hope. An end to the integrated effort. MOP had succumbed fully to divisive racial politics. However, it was cast in a positive light. We were displacing the inert, stagnant thinking and ossified inactivity that had enveloped our project. -105-

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It was for this new bunch that Emma produced our envelope of gains from the Sundial adventure. With gusto she splayed the twenties on the spool table like a Vegas card dealer. Clayton strutted around the table and flashed a broad-toothed grin, something akin to Long John Silver, thanking us for our contribution while suggesting that we would enjoy a long walk on a rather short plank. “Nice work,” he said, moving toward the cash as if Emma had made him a personal present. “Hold on, Clayton,” I said. “I think it’s Gabrielle’s job to handle the cash.” Clayton looked through me and smiled. “ Guess you ain’t heard,” he said. “We been changin’ how things get run ‘round here. The brothers have decided they can’t organize in this racist society in the same project with whites.” Doc nodded approval, as though he had dictated the script and Clayton was doing a good job of fronting for him. “We worked it out with Mitch. We’re gonna call ourselves the Black Servicemen’s Union. The BSU. You see this here Black Unity wristband?” He held up his right arm to demonstrate. “Well, all the BSU brothers will be wearing them from now on. We’re gonna be organizin’ a union. This here house’ll be our headquarters, which means that if you ain’t Black you can’t live here no more. So’s it will be a comfortable, secure place for the Black GIs to meet and organize. Mitch agreed. He an’ Gabrielle an’ Joanie an’ Louise are gonna move out, soon as you all can get a place.” I looked over at Mitch who nodded in defeat. Gabrielle said nothing, agreeing with what was obviously a decision she didn’t want to contest. “That your decision too?” I asked Donnie Woods, who had been taken off restriction pending a final decision on the court martial. I wondered how he, as a Panther supporter, was planning to fit into this mix. Woods looked over and nodded. “Ain’t no big deal,” he muttered in a low tone. “We’re still gonna be allies against the man.” “It isn’t working,” said Joanie. “Us white people, with our white skin privilege, trying to organize Black GIs. We don’t understand what needs to be done. Don’t even speak the language. Black GIs are in the vanguard and if shit comes down, they’re the ones who are going to catch it. We’ll skate and that will look even worse. White ex-students getting the Blacks into trouble and then getting off. It has gotta be Black organizing Black. ”

“Right on, sister,” said Doc with a hint of condescension. “We gonna need the money to keep the house going.” Clayton continued. “Y’all got the fund raisin’ lists and ya know we can’t be raisin’ any bread from those ministers an’ old lefties an’ Hollywood dudes. They won’t give us shit. So, if we gonna survive, we gotta have the bread. Ya dig?” I couldn’t help it. Started to laugh. “I don’t mean any disrespect,” I lied, trying to get myself straight, “But if you knew who was on my list and the prospects they have for money, you’d be laughing too. We never raised enough dough from that list to make a difference.” Clayton glowered at me. “Don’t make no never mind,” he said. “The decision is made. This here house is for Blacks only from now on.” “Whoa, hold your horses,” I responded. “This house was leased by a servicemen’s support group in LA. And your decision to split has got nothing to do with who occupies it. Besides, Emma and I didn’t bust our butts to get this money just to give it to some organization we’re not a part of. It was for a single project, MOP. Not for some BSU thing we don’t know anything about. Now we’re on the verge of losing the funds from the East Coast. We need money just as much as you do to keep our project open. I don’t see why you should get everything.” Joanie shook her head. “They have most of the GIs. They have a chance to bring in more. Lots more. The money ought to go where it will do the most good.” “Everyone knows that the Blacks are the vanguard of the revolution,” Louise injected. “And Black GIs are the vanguard of the vanguard, the warriors who will make it happen.” Clayton and Doc smiled at each other and did a Black power thing where they each made fists and hit fist on fist, top and bottom, then butted palms and ended with a power salute. Frankie was leaning uncomfortably against the door jamb, not certain whether to leave now or to just wait it out. “There’s still plenty of white GIs, and Brown and Yellow and Red ones too who need help,” he finally ventured. “ Every color’s dying over there because of this War, not just the Blacks and I don’t see why you think everyone else should get cut out of the equation just because you wanna go off and organize separately.” It was the first time I had ever heard him speak up and his support emboldened me. “We’re talking here about having to get a second house and who knows what,” I injected. “We’re going to need money too. Plus we have

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a lot of expenses coming up to defend Donnie, Jesus, Deputy Dawg and Jumpin’ Jack.” “What about your lawyer stipend?” Clayton asked. “You all get to keep that. Ain’t that enough for first and last? I mean, so you just get a bigger place, right?” “Look,” said Gabrielle, “you all are fighting over nothing. “We still have two months of rent to pay on this place and if anybody’s going to live in it we’ve got to pay that plus the utilities. When we get through with paying what we owe there isn’t going to be a hell of a lot left and we still got to finish repairing the van.” She cast a sarcastic look in Mitch’s direction. “What is it you say we still need? New motor mounts.” Mitch nodded. “And since the brothers want us to move out soon,” she went on, “ they have to deal with the fact that we can’t get a new place without a first and last, plus deposit, which we don’t have without some of this money. So let’s face reality here.” “She’s got a point,” Woods agreed. “We should wait until they get a new place, then we can talk about dividing shit up.” It was clear that things were going down hill. There were more divisions here than we could even begin to imagine. Sukari glared at Doc. Doc leered at her while taking hearty swigs from a bottle of Ripple, which he only offered to share with Clayton. Joanie brushed a shoulder with Louise like they were Siamese twins. Louise smiled at Emma and made a funny twitching face whenever she looked at me. Mitch studied the floor and seemed to be depressed. Woods told everyone he was going on duty in an hour and had to get back to Base. “By the way,” I asked no one in particular. “What’s up with Dino? He doesn’t look too good.” Clayton and Doc gave each other a conspiratorial grin. “Dog wasn’t acting right since Cookie left.” Clayton smirked. “ Been hangin’ in every vehicle he can get into. Hopin’ to escape, I guess. We gave him this tab of acid. Figured it would mellow him out some. Didn’t work. Looks like he had a bum trip.” Gabrielle collected the $500 from us and put it in the metal cash box. For the first time I could recall, she locked it and took it into her room, closing the door behind her.

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19. Frankie and I retreated to the little apartment above the garage, the only place Emma and I had to ourselves. “Ya know, Frankie,” I said as we walked, “that’s the first time I ever heard you speak in a meeting. What got into you?” Frankie looked down at the sidewalk and quickened his pace. “You heard ‘bout Jack?” he asked. “What about Jack?” I bit. “Anything happened while we were gone?” “Ain’t ya heard?” Frankie said, surprised that I hadn’t. “Jack split. Busted out of the hospital just after you left. They got him down from his bad trip. Dosed him up with thorazine or something. Then they let him out on the grounds. You know Jack. He can jump anything and the fence was no problem for him. I got this letter a few days later. He was in Seattle and heading across the border. Said he wasn’t ever coming back. Signed it Corporal John Conlon, USMC Ret.” “You still got the letter?” I asked with some urgency. “Yeah, I kept it for you to see.” “Too bad you didn’t throw it away.” I told him. “I don’t want to see it.” “Why not?” Frankie looked at me like I was crazy. “Ain’t you interested in what he had to say? He was telling me all kinds of shit he planned to do once he made it to Canada. He was in touch with some group up there, going to tell his story about war crimes to some sort of commission like with a German name or something.” “Nuremberg Tribunal?” I asked. “Yeah that’s it. Like they done after World War II, only they’re going to do this thing about how the US is involved in the same kind of shit. Killing off people because of their race. They got a name for that.” “Genocide” “Yeah, that’s what Jack was saying. How he was going to testify like in a new Nuremberg trial about genocide in the Nam. I thought you’d be wanting to read his letter about it.” “Frankie,” I said patiently. “The supposed letter you got from Jack could be evidence against him. If it came from him, and I don’t know that for a fact and if he were in his right mind when he sent it and if you got what he meant correct, his letter is an admission of desertion and means the difference between a charge of unauthorized absence and six months plus a bad conduct discharge, tops, or two years and a dishonorable. The letter went to you and -109-

not to me, so it isn’t privileged and can be used as evidence against him if he gets caught and they learn about it. Plus, you can be made to testify against him about the letter, even though you don’t want to do that. If you don’t cooperate, you can be court martialed too. Keeping that letter is dynamite. Now, I’m not telling you what to do or anything, you understand. What you do with that letter is your own business. I just don’t want to make it mine.” Frankie raised his eyebrows and smiled. “What letter are you talking about?” he asked, and I had to admit that I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. “Say, Frankie,” I asked, now that he had become a co-conspirator, “What got you into the Marines anyway? How the hell did they snag you?” “Easy,” he readily admitted. “There wasn’t no way else to get out of where I was at. You may not believe what I’m goin’ to tell you but, anyways, it’s the God’s honest truth.” He took a deep breath and looked over at me. “I ain’t told most of this to no one,” he admitted, “but seein’ as you are a lawyer and all, here goes. My old man was a dockhand and we were piss poor. So one Christmas, couple years back he decides he’s gonna borrow some money and give us a real nice time. Anyway, ain’t no one gonna loan my old man any bread, ‘cept these guys who make loans out of their pizza parlor at five percent a week. So my old man ain’t too bright. He gets himself drunk or somethin’ and decides that four hundred at five points ain’t no big deal. “Anyways, at first he made his payments. Twenty bucks a week. But after a few months the work on the docks slows up and he starts to fall behind. Well these guys don’t use no lawyers or nuthin’ to collect what they are owed. Anyways, pretty soon they get the picture that my old man needs a bit more encouragement. First thing they do is rough him up after work one day, down at the docks. Tell him maybe he’s gonna have an accident or somethin’ ‘cause down at them docks things can drop offa cranes and stuff easy, ya know. Anyways, they hurt him enough to keep him home from work a couple of days and that made matters worse. Then, they grabbed him on the street, beat the shit outta him again. Then they begin to call my old lady, threatening to kill me and my brother if she don’t start turnin’ tricks to pay off the debt. “So my old man fucks up even bigger time and goes to the cops, breaks the code.

So in retaliation, they kidnap my brother, Paulo. Finally, my old man comes to the conclusion he really fucked up bad and maybe he even got my brother killed in the bargain. So he gets himself drunk goes into the bathroom and shoots himself. I was just turned seventeen. “So, anyway, the sharks let Paulo go to the funeral as a kind of good will gesture an’ he just splits. The next day one of them goombas comes over with a message that they expect me to meet the family’s obligations. I didn’t stop to think about it. I figured my best protection was a Marine Corps education so I signed enlistment papers before my old man got cold in his grave. If I get back from the Nam alive,” he said with a grim -faced smile and a wink, “I’ll meet my fuckin’ family obligations.” He finished his story just as we arrived at our apartment. I grabbed a couple beers out of the noisy fridge that came with place and tossed a can to Frankie. I turned on the TV and plunked myself into one of the big floor pillows to begin the long wait for it to warm up. Our used TV had a fickle personality and was more responsive to violence than to careful fiddling with its hyper-sensitive dials. I was pounding on the chassis, fine-tuning the flopover, when Emma entered in a funk. She marched into the bedroom with only a perfunctory acknowledgment that we were there. I could tell she was grieving the demise of an organization to which she had devoted total commitment. But I had no interest in discussing the matter, fearful that it would result in my taking the blame for it. So I was glad for the excuse of Frankie’s company and the ball game. Despite my expert, hands-on attention, the picture continued to flop. I was up out of my seat performing various karate maneuvers on the cabinet when we were invaded. Joanie, Louise and Gabrielle dropped in toting what looked like camping equipment. It might have been a scene out of Dr. Zhivago but I had the feeling that it would be ending up more like “The Man Who Came To Dinner.” They didn’t wait for an invitation to dump the packs and baggage. Our revolutionary comrades operated on assumptions and chutzpa. Glum and determined, they announced that they had been urged to leave the Ditmar bungalow as soon as possible and complied. Without question, we would be putting them up. Emma invited Louise and Joanie into my office. “Our spare bedroom,” she put it. Gabrielle would reside on the couch. So much for the Padres and Dodgers. “Where are we supposed to put Mitch?” I asked. “Mitch’s going to hang out with his friends at MOP down in San Diego until we get a new place together,” Gabrielle explained.

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Emma, I could see, was pleased. Her home had just turned into a new all (except for me) women’s collective. After her ostracism from the New York crowd, she viewed this as a welcome turn of events. But I couldn’t say the same. “Well, I guess you all ought to be looking for a new pad beginning tomorrow,” I suggested without diplomacy. “This place is not going to work for all of us for long. And that spare bedroom is actually my office, which I use every day.” Joanie and Louise looked at Emma. Gabrielle looked at the floor. The level of tension, if measured by sound, could have been described by an increase of 50 decibels. Silence. Hostility. Grim expressions. Glances, quickly averted. Clipped, small talk. Emma played the hostess. Offering our food. Locating extra blankets, towels. Figuring things out. Unsuccessfully hinting at me for assistance. Signaling for hospitality. It was not what I had in mind. Frankie made an excuse about getting back to Base and I volunteered to give him a lift. When I got back, there were two new people sitting cross-legged around the hatch-cover, drinking my beer. The man got up to introduce himself. He was short, slim and barely post-pubescent. He wore his dirty yellow hair shoulder length like George Armstrong Custer and was cultivating peach fuzz on his chin. Mr. Zig-Zag, of the cigarette paper logo, decorated both the front and back of his tee shirt. He wore the most radical pair of bell-bottom jeans that Levi Strauss dared to market and stuck a cigarette stained hand out towards me for a shake. “Name’s Lucky,” he said in a Southern California patois. “And this here’s Melinda.” He threw a glance in the direction of his still-seated companion. She was light brown Chicana with bushy black hair topped off by a broad-brimmed, black Stetson. She was wearing a tee shirt with an R. Crumb caricature of Janis Joplin’s huge, cartoon breasts strategically placed over her own. Her ensemble was completed with a black mini-skirt, fishnet stockings and lace-up high-top boots. She reminded me of a reproduction of a Haight-Ashbury panhandler. Melinda looked up from the floor and smiled the spaced-out smile of the very stoned, mouth agape, in the grip of vertigo. I watched with fascination as her eyes rolled around in a desperate attempt to focus.

“We was over at the other house, trying to find you,” Lucky explained. “Black dude over there told us to come over here. I heard about you guys while I was over in Germany. My Dad sent me a copy of the paper and they had a story about what you were doing. Made it seem like you was a bunch of Commies, but I just said ‘far out!’ I mean, like fuck man, you guys are doing what needs to be done. Right? Shit, man the War sucks and the Army sucks and I’m just fucking glad I’m out. I got some bread I saved up and me and Melinda want to help out any way we can. Ain’t that right, babe?” Melinda acknowledged that it was right. “I’m on the student paper at Escondido Community College,” she slurred. “And I know how to do publicity. Make leaflets and stuff. Like if you need something in our paper, I can get that in too. Maybe even help set up some speaking gig or something.” Lucky meanwhile, was flipping through the crate of record albums we had transported from New York. Beatles, Rolling Stones, Dylan, The Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Country Joe, The Dead. “Far fuckin’ out man,” he exclaimed, pulling a disk from the Beatles’ Rubber Soul Album. “Mind if I put on some sounds?” He didn’t wait for an authorization and in a moment the strains of Norwegian Wood, loudly played, drowned out Melinda’s volunteerism. “Ever heard this in German?” Lucky asked? “Fuckin’ weird.” With that criticism he segued into his story. “Guess you might be wonderin’ how come a guy my age ain’t still in the Army?” I admitted that he did look a bit young to be a vet and he took my comment to be a invitation to explain. “I’m eighteen.” he announced. “Just turned it two months ago. I joined up when I was sixteen and nine months. Without my parents knowin’ nothin’ about it.” He laughed. “Fuckin’ recruiters don’t give a shit. They just sign you up and leave it for basic to weed ya out. But I skated right through. Then they sent me to tank school. Never even looked at my license. Then they sent me over to West Germany to the Fourth Armored Division. What a fuckin’ rip. I’m seventeen years old and they got me driving a Sherman tank. Goddamn blast. An’ the whole god-damn unit’s full of young guys just like me. Like the whole fuckin’ Army is made up of high school drop-outs and shit and the brass is all lookin’ the other way. “Well, over in Deutschland there ain’t shit going’ on ‘cept’n maneuvers. We’re always on maneuvers. Rippin’ up the fields. Chewin’ up the fuckin’ autobahn. Pissin’ off the locals. Gettin’ drunk and high and screwing their daughters.

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“So one weekend, a bunch of us go down to Stuttgart on a pass before these big maneuvers the brass got planned, and score some hash. Fuckin’ shit turned out to be the strongest boss stuff we’d run into the whole time we were there. Got it from some Afghani dude, name of Ali, like Ali Baba or somethin’ but we just called him Al. A block of the shit the size of a Chunky chocolate cost six bucks American. Unbelievable. We get back just in time to crank up and roll. So about a dozen tank crews hear about our score and we all end up behind a supply truck tokin’ away. Only we ain’t got no idea just how powerful the shit is. So we’re rollin’ on down into this little town, fuckin’ loaded out of our minds and this one guy drives his tank into a ditch. Then another asshole hits the side of a stone wall and croaks it into a field. I’m laughing my ass off. Can’t fuckin’stop. But them streets in these little towns are narrow, ya know. Too narrow really for a fuckin’ tank. I gotta make this hard right but I misjudge and ram the fuckin’ cannon right through the wall of this fuckin’ bakery. The fuckin’ baker comes out yelling shit in German. And all the while I’m backin’ out of his shop and bricks are falling into his fuckin’ bread and cakes and stuff. And the whole fuckin’ battalion’s laughing their asses off, except the officers of course. They’re runnin’ around tryin’ to chill out the locals, promising to pay damages. “Well man the whole fiasco gets all the way up to division ‘cause there’s these peace activists in this town. Been organizing to stop using Germany as a training ground for NATO and all and now the whole town’s behind them. Pissed as hell. So the general calls for a full-scale investigation and that’s the first time anybody in the Army ever bothered to take a good look at the birth date on my driver’s license and compare it to my enlistment date. Next thing I know, I’m being processed out with a general discharge. My permanent record’s got this big red stamp across the jacket stating that I’m not suitable for reenlistment. I’m not even fuckin’ old enough to register for the god damn draft man, and I’m out with a discharge, veteran’s benefits and they say they’ll never want me back even if the god damn country gets invaded. Can you believe it?” “Well, Lucky, ” I said. “ I guess you got the right nickname.” It was the first time that day that everyone could agree to laugh. 20.

“What about that Hollywood producer and his wife?” Gabrielle asked as I walked into the kitchen one morning not long after her move in. “What ever happened with them? Did you ever see them about a donation?” She knew the answer. It was just her way of kicking my butt. “Naw,” I shook my head. “Never had the time, with the Black Unity bust and then that bust in Long Beach and with Jack’s freak out and all. Then we went to New York and brought back that bread,” I reminded her. “So I never got the time. How about you? You score any hits?” I smiled her way but she wasn’t looking. She didn’t want to hear my excuses or the accusation that she wasn’t qualified to throw the first stone. Joanie was listening in, though. “Might be interesting if you met them,” she interposed. “I heard they were old lefties. Maybe they’d be interested in putting some money toward the legal defense fund. That’s an old lefty kind of trip. And probably you’re the best one to give it a shot, ‘cause you can tell them about the defense and stuff.” “Actually,” I said, as I looked in vain for a bit of milk to pour over the dregs of cereal that this band of freeloaders had left for me, “It might be a good idea. I’d like to see their place. Heard about it. Up in the Hollywood Hills, isn’t it? Maybe I can wangle a dinner out of it.” It was decided that Emma would join me. That it would be best to present an appearance of respectability. We would be conventional couple, on a mission to secure ordinary justice, rather than a couple of flakes from a new left commune. Late afternoon, a few days later, found us motoring up Mulholland Drive. We jockeyed the battered Plymouth among the Cadillacs and Jaguars, Rollses and Lincolns all the while being eyed with suspicion by adversarial drivers who looked us over for reassuring signs of whiteness and respectability. As we climbed to the stars, we’d slow to catch a fleeting glimpse through security gates of glitzy mansions that belonged to the enemy. People whose wealth and fame we were dead set upon bringing to an end. In this way, we dawdled in fantasy-land until the sun dropped into the cobalt Pacific. Shadows now darkened our way while an army of hunched over Hispanic gardeners and uniformed, dark-skinned maids emerged from the estates to wait for LA’s sporadic public transportation to deliver them back to East LA for the night. It was a signal for us to intensify our search for a little road that dropped down into a side canyon facing south. A byway to less ostentatious, ranch style homes, built on steep lots where no dwelling really belonged. Here we came upon places where you hoped you weren’t -115-

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when the “big one” hit. And after much map reading and female recriminations about not asking for directions, we drove through an open gate that breached a high fieldstone wall. The invitation instructed us to park in the driveway in front of an attached three car garage that made the home appear like a squashed down version of a Loire Valley chateau. Following a flagstone path, lit by those ubiquitous Malibu lights that infest California south of the Tehachapis, we came upon the home of Mort and Sherry Feldstein. The doorbell rang chimes of an interminable duration. Sherry answered it before the symphony was complete. She was a petite woman, somewhere in her fifties, dark and athletic. She wore her black hair long and straight. Her skin was welltanned and seemed darker in the subdued lighting of the hallway. Her face was etched with fine lines of age and abundant sunshine. She invited us to enter with a warm, friendly smile and a genuine welcoming manner. She advised us that Mort was in the midst of a shower and change, apologizing for him that he had gotten home from work late. Then she invited us to partake of the view from the deck. We were escorted there by way of the kitchen, a white tiled affair with stainless sinks, fridge and a commercial range. It featured a massive wall of windows that looked down the canyon to where it opened out onto the blinking brightness of a hundred great white ways. A dark-skinned female in a pink uniform stood at the sink enjoying at the view as she labored over the pots and pans. She looked up at us, smiled briefly and went back about her business. Sherry led us through a sliding glass door onto a deck the size of a city lot. It was railed in with steel tubes and cables. Small trees sprouted from redwood planter boxes around the perimeter. Lounge chairs were arranged in suites at both ends, with tables and umbrellas. To one side there was a barbeque and a wet bar under a canvas awning that extended out from the house. At the other end was a modest swimming pool recessed into the deck. It was a back yard but suspended precariously high above the steep, receding slope. I walked to the railing and looked out, succumbing to a case of vertigo as I noticed how radically the land fell away into the murky depths of the canyon below. Only the tops of the very tallest trees obstructed the view. A warm breeze rose up the canyon from the flatlands and tousled with my hair, bringing with it a flotsam of distant freeway traffic noise.

“Would you like a glass of wine?” Sherry inquired. Emma nodded agreeably. “Mercedes,” Sherry called out, “would you please bring us a bottle of the chilled chardonnay and some glasses. We can have it by the pool,” she suggested. “It’s a warm night. Unusual for this time of year. We ought to take advantage of it.” “Yes, let’s do that,” said a freshly washed gentleman, as he emerged from behind yet another glass door. “Hello, I’m Mort. I assume you’re Eric and Emma Wolfe. Very pleased to meet you.” He shook my hand, rather weakly I thought and offered a handshake to Emma as well. “Sounds like you folks are from back East,” he remarked. “Whereabouts?” “I’m from Maine,” I told him, “and Emma’s from New York.” “I was born in Los Angeles, actually.” Emma corrected. “But my family moved back to Brooklyn when I was a baby.” “That’s unusual,” Sherry said. “Most people you hear about moved West, not East. That’s what happened with both of us. We’re native New Yorkers but moved out here after the War.” “Well, actually my parents did that too,” Emma said. “But they moved back to New York because my father lost his job out here in the 50's.” Mort leaned forward, interested. “Was your father in the motion picture industry?” “Sort of.” Emma explained. “My father got an electrical engineering degree from CCNY. In World War II, they made him a technician with the Navy. He worked on aircraft lighting stuff out here. So when the War was over, he just stayed on the coast and got a job doing lighting with the movie studios. Met my mother. I was born. But then during the Hollywood Ten period, you know, McCarthy, they threw him out of the union ‘cause he wouldn’t take a loyalty oath. So he went back home and worked for my grandfather, who was in the wholesale lighting business in New York. Sold lamps and fixtures and things like that.” “Why wouldn’t he take the loyalty oath?” Mort asked. “Well, that’s sort of a long story,” Emma said. “My grandfather was a Communist. They put him up as a candidate for Brooklyn Borough President one year in the 30's. He even got about 4000 votes, they claim. So people knew our family background. My father even enlisted to go to Spain when he was at City College, but they stopped taking volunteers before he could get there. Probably saved his life ‘cause most of his friends who went over died. -117-

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Anyway, my father was politically active, and one thing he didn’t want to do was testify at HUAC against anyone. So, when the union started doing the loyalty oath witch- hunt thing, he refused. They threw him out. He thought that if he hung around the movie industry he would get a subpoena, so he split.” “I see,” said Mort. “So they never subpoenaed him.” “Mercedes is ready to serve.” Sherry interrupted. They invited us into a large dining area with views to the South and East where they treated us to a whole baked salmon, with rice and string beans, salad, dessert and coffee. Mort proposed after dinner brandy and a cigar for me, which I declined. We sat down in the living room to continue our chat. I looked around to search for topics. There were book shelves with history and science. Leo Szilard, Noam Chomsky, Rev. William Sloan Coffin. Works about Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer and the bomb. Norman Mailer. Beside an easy chair, on a coffee table, were magazines. The Nation, New Republic, I.F. Stone’s Weekly. Mort noticed my inspection and made his excuses. “Sherry reads that stuff mostly,” he said. “I’m not very political these days.” “But you used to be?” I probed. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Used to be. But,” he said nodding in Emma’s direction, “ if you get too political in this town, they’ll kill you. You won’t work. They won’t say anything. Won’t tell you. But the work just won’t be there.” “That’s what Emma’s father said, too,” I agreed. “So how’d you manage during the inquisition?” “McCarthy?” he took my drift. “I just kept my head down and my mouth shut.” “You didn’t get a subpoena?” I asked. “Well,” he hedged. “I got one but they didn’t call me.” “How’d that happen?” I asked, perhaps probing a bit too far. “He got interviewed by someone in Justice instead, and they decided not to call him,” Sherry said, rescuing him. “ I hear that you are working on an interesting case.” She changed the subject, adroitly leading me through my fund raising spiel on behalf of Donnie Woods and the Black Unity campaign. I had to be careful, I knew. Sherry had tipped me off, diplomatically, that her husband had talked himself out of public testimony by giving information. He

had been an informer. A fearful, fellow-traveler who would squeal to keep his pathetic job directing B movies. Emma and Sherry listened to my pitch for justice as long as they could. Then Emma, suppressing a yawn, asked if she could see the rest of the house. Sherry obliged, showing Emma around while I continued to describe the legal intricacies of the Black Unity identity bracelet to Mort. “Well, another bust,” I remarked to Emma, as we drove away that evening. “At least we got a decent meal out of it.” “Emma laughed. “You men.” She said. “One with no guts. The other with no brains. While you were giving that useless schlub a lecture, I was schmoozing with the one person in that house who was likely to give us anything. And here it is.” She produced it triumphantly. “A check for a hundred bucks! Drawn on her private account. She told me to keep it quiet until we left. She didn’t want Mort to find out. Said he’s afraid they could trace a check and it might come back to haunt them. She thought it was funny.” “Boy, I’m glad I brought you along,” I said with admiration. “I need a professional like you.” 21. “We have to talk.” I whispered to Emma during a rare moment when we were alone in our apartment. It had been over a month since the exodus from Ditmar and it seemed like there was going to be no end to the cramped living arrangement in sight. “What about?” she asked with a hint of annoyance that I was being so conspiratorial as to whisper. “Not here,” I said, raising my eyebrows and looking around to confirm that I was angling for a conspiracy. “This afternoon, I’ll join you shopping.” Later that afternoon, on the ride to Safeway, I let loose. “It just isn’t working,” I began. Emma played dumb. “What isn’t working?” “Come on Emma,” I replied with exasperation. “You know what I’m talking about. Our perpetual guests. We can’t go on this way.” “We’re looking as hard as we can,” she stated, her gaze wandering off toward the newest panorama of tract homes. “No one is willing to rent to three women without steady jobs.” “Well, maybe that’s true,” I had to concede, “but it really doesn’t deal with the problem that they are creating for me. I’ve lost my office. I have nowhere to work and I can’t even get into that room half the time, with their -119-

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bras and panties on the chairs and their split ends in my files and them zipped together until ten in the morning.” She turned to look at me. “Does it bother you that they sleep together?” she asked bluntly. “Is that what this is really all about? You’re threatened?” “Threatened!” I repeated in my most haughty denial voice. “Emma, I have clients to defend and I can’t even get into that room.” After a silence a bit too long for comfort while stealing a glance at her direction, I said, “OK, I’ll admit it’s embarrassing, but I’d be looking the other way if they were the opposite sex too and I had to get some important papers that they had covered with their underwear.” “Watch out!” she warned. “You just drove through a stop sign. Look, Eric, I know you don’t get along with them and they feel the same way about you, but you’re not the only one around here who has a job to do. We’re still putting out the FFZ and meeting with people around the county, organizing Anti-War stuff. And when it comes time for the Black Unity trial, it will be Joanie, Louise, Gabrielle and me who will be getting the people out in support. Making your case look important in the process.” “Don’t you think it’s funny,” I said, pushing the subject a bit off center, “that two lesbians have decided to come down to Pendleton to organize Marines? Seems a bit weird to me.” “How so?” she said, tight-lipped and defensive. She wasn’t in agreement that it was funny. “Well, I mean, uh, like what would lesbians want to be organizing Marines for? The Marines are totally macho and they would blow a gasket at the thought that some of the women in our project were lesbians.” “You mean that you are blowing a gasket at the thought,” she responded, accusingly. “For Christ’s sake, Eric, probably half the Women Marines are lesbians. Don’t you think the Marines know about lesbians? Besides, why should it make a difference who is organizing Marines as long as they want to do what it takes to end the War? Isn’t that the point? They’re not down here to marry the guys.” “Well, regardless,” I said, not wanting to confront my own prejudices, “I think it’s time we all move, so that I can do my job and you all can do your organizing. I need some space and, frankly, I’m sick of living with four women.” I squinted over at her. “One’s plenty.”

People describe it as “pillow talk.” That makes it sound romantic. But there can be another side of it. All you have to do is say the wrong thing. Then slide into bed and feel tension that can make a body go rigid no matter how soft the skin in which it’s wrapped. Muscles show up in places where they ought not to be. And if you continue to open your mouth, you’re going to regret it. But I figured that it would be a hell of a lot better now than having her deliberately begin a confrontation during the last of the ninth with the score tied. So I asked her what her problem was. Did she want to talk about it? A stupid question to ask a woman. She gave me an ear full. “You know why I’m pissed, Eric,” she said. “That conversation in the car this afternoon really showed me a side of you I don’t like. We’re all in this together, you know. And that means we’ve got to share. Keeping a place for ourselves, when others don’t even have a place to sleep is bourgeois, counter-revolutionary and just plain piggy. Just because you’re insecure about Joanie and Louise doesn’t mean you have a right to make your hang-up our problem.” What she was saying was true but I wasn’t about to let on that I thought so. I still wanted my space...our space. And I wanted the women, especially Joanie and Louise, out of my face whatever the reason, conscious or subconscious. So what if I was being selfish? Wasn’t it bad enough I had to eat commodity foods because my stipend was the only money to actually come into the project on a regular basis? No one else was contributing any bread. And now I couldn’t even keep enough toilet paper on hand to wipe my ass. If that was bourgeois, so be it. I didn’t intend to live like the Viet Cong just to satisfy some nut case’s warped sense of guilt. I don’t recall exactly how I articulated these complaints. I had worked myself into an angry fit and however I put it was apparently inept. Emma said I sounded like Sandra. She rolled over and it seemed to me like her back became the Great Wall, which caused me to wonder whether Mao had to put up with this shit. A blasphemous thought and also a bit pretentious. I wasn’t anything close to the Great Helmsman. But rumor had it that even during the darkest days of the Long March, he managed to requisition his own cave and there was even some malicious gossip that he could get laid whenever he wanted to. I fell asleep wondering why couldn’t I have that kind of cave. Sukari brought me more problems the next morning. She relayed Donnie Woods’ report that Jesus had decided to take the Captain’s Mast and remove the Black Unity wristband. He asked that I meet with them in Jeffers’ office that afternoon. Unless Jeffers’ prediction about Deputy Dawg being

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discharged as soon as he was convicted of the armed robbery was wrong, Woods would likely be standing trial alone. Base legal was an indistinct structure huddled in formation among a cluster of similar cinder-block, two story buildings. Captain Jeffers was located on the second floor, in an office hardly larger than an E-4 clerk’s cubicle. I met Jesus in the hall. He was seated uncomfortably on a molded plastic chair, his head down, his cap wrung between his knees with both hands. “How’s it going, Jesus?” I asked. He looked up at me with apologetic, blood-shot eyes. “OK,” he muttered. “Captain Jeffers in?” “Yeah, he said to knock when you got here.” We did. A moment later, Jeffers invited us into his generic green military office. He tendered cups of institutional brew in plastic USMC mugs. I accepted and Jesus declined the drink. Nervously, he took the seat nearest the window and began staring at the hubbub of military business going on outside, as if he might never see it again. “I hear you’re going to take the Captain’s Mast,” I said. “It’s a sweet offer,” injected Jeffers. “The deal is he keeps his pay grade, takes a 15 day restriction, which he’s already served, and loss of a month’s regular pay. He’s got orders to Nam anyway. When he gets there he’ll draw combat pay that will more than make up for the loss. It won’t go on his permanent record. That’s it.” “I ain’t even Black,” Jesus announced. “Black Unity wrist bands don’t mean nothing to me.” “Is that what they told you, man? That because you’re Puerto Rican it’s none of your business?” “Yeah man,” he responded. “They don’t think of me as Black. Don’t even want me around no more. So why should I hang in there for them?” “Well, if you feel that way, I guess you’re right,” I said. “You shouldn’t be forced into doing anything you don’t want to do. I think it’s a good deal for you. Go for it.” Jeffers got up and walked around his desk. He put a hand on Jesus’shoulder. “OK, Jesus, see you Wednesday.”

Jesus looked at me as if he were sorry. I put out my hand. “Good luck, man. Hope you get through Nam in one piece.” His grip was firm. “Glad you understand, man.” He snapped off a salute to Jeffers and disappeared into the black hole of the Green Machine. After Jesus left the room Jeffers said, “Before we interview Woods, I think you should know that Private Thomas pled guilty to misdemeanor petty theft in Santa Ana yesterday. They broke the robbery charge down on a deal. I don’t know how the hell they pulled it off. Gave him a suspended sentence and probation. Then they remanded him to his company commander.” Corporal Donnie Woods entered the office and saluted, stiff and as proper as a lifer standing before his battalion commander. He was dressed in the uniform of the day, starched khaki top with the perfect “V” of white tee shirt showing, and pressed blue trousers with the red stripes on the outside seam. He was wearing his ribbons, the rifleman’s and marksman’s badges. He had seven ribbons in all, including the yellow Vietnam campaign ribbon with the three red stripes, his purple heart and several unit citations. But he also continued to wear his Black Unity identity bracelet. The man was sticking to his guns. A first-class Marine. Jeffers offered Woods a chair and a mug of coffee. Told him he could smoke if he wanted. Woods accepted the chair and lit up. “Corporal, we’ve got an offer from Captain Eaton, the trial counsel. He’s willing to drop the case to a summary if you agree to plead to being out of uniform. Take off the Black Unity bracelet. You’ll get 30 days restriction and loss of two-thirds pay. No brig time, you keep your stripes. He thinks they’ll give you an early out during the 30 days. You’d be home free with an honorable.” Jeffers looked across the desk hopefully. In all of his experience it was a good deal. Donnie took a long drag on the smoke and gave it some thought. “Captain, no disrespect meant, sir, but it seems to me that if I accept the deal, it will be a signal to the brothers that they can’t wear the Unity bracelet. That I copped out. The whole point is that we have unity here and if I don’t stand up for our rights to express our identity, we won’t achieve that. It will be the same old, same old. That’s why they’re offering the deal. It’s not the time or the pay. It’s the politics and I can’t do it.” “I think there’s something else you should know before you make a decision,” Jeffers added. “Your buddy Jesus accepted a Captain’s Mast. He’s taken off the Black Unity bracelet.” Woods looked up and into the captain’s eyes. “I think I knew that before you did,” he said, in an even tone, but with a hint of a smile. “ He isn’t really -123-

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Black and Gunny Bonham’s been all over his ass for days, telling him he’s a sap and a sucker. Keeps reminding him the brothers at the house don’t think he’s Black. Won’t let him get full membership in the union, ‘cause he’s Puerto Rican.” “Yeah, I heard something about the split,” Jeffers admitted. “They say that there are two groups now, one Black and the other for everyone else.” “Where’d you hear that?” I asked. “NIS.” NIS, the Naval Intelligence Service was a military equivalent of the FBI. Its agents often worked in civilian clothes. Attended our meetings. Pretended to be disgruntled GIs. You could usually tell them from the real thing because they spouted rhetoric like it came from one of the underground papers. Genuinely disaffected troops sounded like troops and for the most part, acted like troops. They didn’t talk in movement jargon and didn’t ask questions about our tactics and strategy. What they wanted was information that would help them get out, as soon as possible. When one of those NIS guys came in though, talking their “right ons” and their “off the pigs” stuff, wanting to know how they could blow up the Base, you could be pretty sure who you were dealing with. “If you turn down the deal, Eaton mentioned a Special Court Martial and that the Convening Officer would be wanting 6 months and a BCD. They’ll hit you with everything they’ve got. Oh, and you probably will be alone. Private Thomas, whom you all call Deputy Dawg, in all likelihood, is going to be put on administrative leave pending a UD” “What you mean?” Woods seemed surprised now. “I thought he had that robbery beef up in Anaheim or someplace?” “Yeah, he did.” Jeffers continued, explaining now some of the facts that he had failed to mention to me earlier. “He pled guilty to a misdemeanor in exchange for a suspended sentence and three years probation. They remanded him to his C.O. for charges down here. But if he agrees to take off the Black Unity identity bracelet the general just wants him out. Figures that he’ll be nothing but trouble.” Woods shrugged and asked if that was all. Jeffers suggested that he think about the offer, that he had a few days to give Eaton the response. Woods said that he would take the time to think about it.

I walked with Woods back to my car and offered him a ride off Base with me. It seemed important that we talk this all out and the best place to do it was off Base. Woods agreed. The MPs followed us back the way I had come and retrieved my pass at the main gate. We drove to the beach, not talking about the case, believing that in all probability, my car was now bugged. The Oceanside pier was a much more secure location. The sun was commencing its plunge into the southwestern sky. A smattering of puffy gray-white cumulus clouds drifted before it, casting shadows over the green and blue winter sea. A sparse crew of wetsuited surfers floated like seals just behind a formidable break, waiting, ever greedy for one that was just a bit bigger, better formed, more perfect than the last. The seventh wave. For them, there was always the one just over the horizon, the one they would miss and regret if they took off on the swell at hand. “Always something better just over the horizon,” I observed, pointing in their direction as we leaned against the railing and looked to the north. I wondered out loud whether Donnie was doing the same thing with his case. Would it be better if he turned down the deal at hand? Was he just waiting for the seventh wave? Why should he fight for the wrist-band principle when no one else seemed willing to do so? “The way I look at it,” he responded, “ this case, the stand I’m taking, is a matter of principle. Besides,” he argued, “it was just like the perfect wave. I might never catch another. If I stand up for this, no matter how it comes out, I’ll always be able to say I stood for something. But if I cop a plea, I’ll be nothing, man. I’ll be running like a slave. I’m going to fight like a Black man should. That’s my mission here, ya dig?” I understood, a bit. Woods saw his future as an exemplary Black man. I had to admire him for it. “Pretty strange about Deputy Dawg, though,” I said. “They had him cold. Now he beats the case and he’s out too if he just takes off the identity bracelet. Just has to hang around a month while they process his discharge. Can’t blame him for taking it.” “There’s a catch, Bro,” Woods said while sucking on his Kool and looking into the distance. “‘Til he takes off the Black Unity bracelet, he’s in the case and gets to participate in our plans, right?” “You’re right.” I nodded, as the light came on. “Good thinking. I get the picture. Deputy Dawg shows up. Claims he’s going to hang tough on the Black Unity bracelet. I’ve got to defend him too. He participates in our plans, then, at the last minute, he decides to take the deal. Begs off ‘cause he’s got

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too much to lose. Meanwhile, everything we say goes straight to them. He gets his deal. You get fucked.” Woods squinted to the west. “Nice of them to let him hang around our house for a month, while they process our shit,” he said. Last week they had him in the fuckin’brig. Now they can’t let him loose on us fast enough.” “Deputy Dawg’s a thief and a con,” I agreed. “You think they would trust him?” “If he’s got the brig hanging over his head, yeah. And I wouldn’t put it past him to stir up some other shit or even make up some shit if there’s nothing to stir, just so he’ll have something to give the man.” “We can’t be planning your defense with him hanging around,” I stated. “The brothers won’t throw him out. He’s a brother, man. They believe in the Black Nationalist thing and probably more’n one of them’s a pig too. How’s it going to look, we don’t let him participate in the defense of a Black Servicemen’s Union case when he’s supposedly one of us and a defendant. They got us by the balls on this. Right now, the only one over there we can trust is Sukari.” “How do you know that?” I probed. “She’s a Panther,” he replied naively, like the Black Panther Party was somehow immune to infiltration by informers. Donnie Woods was sophisticated and blind all at the same time. But it didn’t really matter. As long as we kept the defense principled, on the up and up, we could benefit from any support. The only thing we really had to avoid was disclosing trial tactics to the NIS. That meant Deputy Dawg needed special handling. “We’ve got no choice.” I said. “There’ll have to be two defense cases. One for you and Deputy Dawg, and that information will be sure to go to NIS. The second one will be just between you and me. No one else will know about that. For the time being, it’s best to let NIS think they’ve successfully planted him.” “Hmmn,” Woods muttered, scratching his chin. “Probably keep me out of the brig and off restriction too, if they think that they’ll be getting info.” We separated at the pier. Woods headed to one of the clubs on the strip. Not a great place for white civilians to hang out. I drove back to my crowded apartment, feeling quite pleased with the strategy.

22. “It’s up on 395,” Lucky told us. “I saw it on the way back from San Bernardino. It ain’t some little thing either. It’s one of those full-size billboards, like they got for Coca-Cola or somethin’ like that. Big mother. No one driving south can miss it. ‘Support the Minutemen’ and them patriot-type guys like from the revolution, standing there in three cornered hats and bandages around their heads with an American flag and the drum and flute thing and one of them long flintlock rifles.” Lucky drove Gabrielle and me out to see it. The sign was prominently situated on the crest of a little hill, in the middle of a field. A frontage road passed by about a hundred yards to one side. It was surrounded by a chainlink fence that looked like it was electrified and had spot lighting so that travelers could see it at all hours. There was a farmhouse close by, dwarfed by a fluttering Stars and Stripes in a size I hadn’t seen anywhere outside of a car dealership. “We gotta do something about that thing,” Gabrielle muttered angrily. “Those are the fuckers that machine-gunned the house just before you came. Wounded Mitch and Donnie. Fuck that patriot shit.” “Payback’s a motherfucker,” said Lucky. “Maybe we oughta get even, chain saw the sucker down.” “Not a good idea,” I observed. “That thing’s got four posts the size of utility poles. We wouldn’t get through the first one before that farmer up there,” I motioned with my thumb, “would be on us with a gun. They’re armed, remember and they’d love nothing more than to have our heads stuffed above their mantel. We’d have to shoot our way out and the sign would still be up. We wouldn’t get five miles down the highway before we got stopped and we’d be lucky if it was by the pigs.” “Hmmn.” Gabrielle thought. “But we could fuck it up quietly. Couldn’t we? I mean like we could paint it over. Mess it up. Nobody would hear anything. We could do it at night. So no one would notice.” “Sign’s lit up,” I said doubtfully. “ Whoever’s up on that sign would be seen any hour, night or day It’s a sign, after all. Supposed to be easy to see. We need a plan. This ought to be a collective decision, how we deal with it.” “It’s not worth it,” Joanie argued when we made our report to the rest of the group. “We’re here to organize GIs, not to get into adventurist actions that don’t mean anything in the long run and just risk some of us getting

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busted or worse with all the defense costs that go into it. I say we forget about it. Fucking up a sign won’t stop the Minutemen.” “It’s not some adventurist action,” Gabrielle countered stubbornly. “That group thinks it can operate with impunity around here. They go and shoot up our place. Get away with it. We fuck up their sign, we’re sending them a message that if they fuck with us, there’ll be retaliation. And we know where at least one of them lives.” “The farmer?” Melinda asked. “That’s right,” said Lucky. “That fucker thinks he can put up a sign like that without fear. We gotta show them fascists that there are consequences. We hit that bastard’s sign, the next pig will think twice about retaliation.” “So fucking what,” sneered Louise. “There’s a hell of a lot more of them than there are of us and they know where to find us. We mess with their sign and they’ll come looking for us in no time.” “Maybe not, if they don’t know that it was us, exactly,” said Emma. “So what’s the point of retaliating if they don’t know who to suspect?” Joanie asked. “Listen,” Emma went on, responding to her question. “ Gabbie’s right about us having to send a message. If we want to be safe down here, those right-wingers have to know that they can be hit too. Now they don’t have to know precisely who did it to them. Just that ‘the left’,she made little quote signs with her fingers, did it to them. That sign’s just as far from San BerduRiverside as it is from us. There’s a UC up there and other political activity around. All they’ve gotta know is that it was revolutionaries that attacked them. Why would they think it was us, unless we got caught? So it depends on precisely what we do to the sign, doesn’t it?” “Like what have you got in mind?” I asked, knowing that when she posed that kind of question she had something up her sleeve. There was a glimmer of mischief in Emma’s eyes. “All we have to do,” she said, “is paint over the “Minute” and put in “Weather.” We can do that in no time. Just need a couple cans of spray paint. Use rubber gloves. Wipe the cans clean and leave’em there. Then chuck the gloves.” “I don’t get it,” said Melinda. “Ain’t you heard of the Weathermen,” Lucky snickered dismissively. “They’re this underground group that blows up police stations and stuff. Like they’re guerrillas.”

“Mostly they blow up bathrooms,” Louise sniffed. She looked over at Emma. “Em, “ she said warmly. “It’s a creative idea, but I’m still against it. There’s too much risk of getting caught.” She looked my way. “Like Eric mentioned, the sign’s lit up. If the Highway Patrol happens by, we’re done in.” “The lights are no biggie,” Frankie interrupted. “I got electrician training in the suck, that’s part of my MOS. I can knock out that sign in 15 seconds. All we need’s a bolt cutter in case we gotta cut through a lock on the fuse box and we’re in.” “Piece of cake there,” Lucky piped up. “My dad’s a tech for San Diego Gas and Electric. He’s got bolt-cutters up the wazzoo in his truck. He’d never miss one. I can have it this afternoon, when he comes home from work. “And no way they’re going to think it’s us. Especially if they know anything about Louise and Joanie’s politics,” I half-joked. “Well even they might figure it out if that van gets spotted. It sticks out like a sore thumb.” Joanie said, looking straight back at me. “Hey, no problemo,” said Lucky. “I got this friend with a spray gun. He can do that van over in a couple hours. Needs it too, I might add.” “Hmmn,” Emma mused, “if we get a paint job just before the action, we might fool all the law around here for weeks. They’re always on the lookout for the hippie van. This could have added benefits. Lets take a vote.” It was six to two with only Louise and Joanie in the minority. The plan was for three of us to do the job. Frankie would cut the power. Lucky volunteered to climb the sign and do a quick paint job. “ We need a driver,” Lucky pointed out, looking my way. When I didn’t volunteer for the job, they all somehow decided that I should be the wheel man anyway and I got this vision of my bar card with wings on it, flying off to never-never land. But I kept my mouth shut, because I didn’t want to seem like a chicken. It kind of reminded me of back when I was a teenager. We all agreed that the sooner we did it, the better. Frankie went off that afternoon to arrange for the paint job and to score the bolt-cutters. Emma and I drove up 395 to the sign, to scout for a place to park and set up for the “action.” The next day, we took the van over to a garage in back of a house down near the beachthat was rented to Lucky’s friend. We left it there for the afternoon. When we picked it up after dark, it had become a deep Navy blue, the best color he could find that would cover over the rainbow of psychedelia. Then the three of us set sail.

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It was a cloudless evening with a three-quarters moon scheduled to rise a few hours later. It would give us enough light to work by, but not enough to be seen clearly from the road. As favorable conditions as we could hope for. There was a nervous excitement in the van as we drove to our objective. Like we were heading into some kind of combat. And indeed it was possible that we might be. That farmer, and maybe there was more than one, was certainly armed. If roused by noise, there was the chance we’d be running into gunfire. This was, after all, a Minuteman compound. I thought about what happened to the three civil rights organizers, Goodman, Schwerner and Cheney when they got kidnapped and murdered by the Klan down in Mississippi and this place, those Minutemen guys, gave off the same kind of creepy, bad vibes. I decided to bring my 9 mm along, just in case. The driver’s seat had some hellish loose springs in it and I tucked the piece up under the seat, between the springs and the cushion. No chance of a fast draw, but available just the same. To get at the sign, we had to take an exit a few miles past our objective and turn back along a gravel frontage road that was used mostly by the agricultural folk who worked the fields bordering the highway. I cut the lights and made the turn onto a short gravel spur near the sign, stopping close behind a clump of high weeds. Lucky had a backpack with cans of spray paint slung over his shoulder and a flashlight in his hand. Frankie held the bolt-cutter like it was an M-16. They bailed out as if the van was a chopper and charged forward in a frontal assault. Frankie, who was in the lead, promptly got hung up on some low barbed wire left over from a former cattle fence. I watched with increasing concern as it took them a seeming eternity to cut free. Finally they were moving forward again. They hopped the chainlink fence that surrounded the sign with ease, but apparently created enough of a racket to cause the farmer’s dog to begin barking. This was not going to be the precision commando raid we had hoped for. A few moments later the sign went black. There was only the dim beam of the flashlight sweeping willy-nilly over the sign, the ground and into space. The dog continued to bark and was working itself into a kind of doggie hysterics. A light went on in the farmhouse, a couple hundred yards back up the hill. Even from the van I could easily see the door open and the backlit silhouette of what I surmised to be the Minuteman farmer. He appeared to be

carrying a rifle or shotgun. Shortly, a second fellow came out to join him, pointing in the direction of the sign. The armed man moved cautiously from the front porch down the stairs. He raised the gun and aimed in the direction that his companion was pointing, the direction of Lucky’s flashlight. The other one appeared to be unleashing the dog. It was a breathless moment or two, as I wondered whether Frankie and Lucky were hip to the danger that was rapidly coming down on them. Then, the flashlight went out. Seconds later they burst out of the bush, running hard. I started up the engine, but left the lights off. They jumped into the van. Lucky pulled off the yellow rubber gloves that he had been wearing, threw them in the ditch and slid the side door shut. “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he yelled. I backed the van out onto the frontage road and immediately ran it part way into a ditch. In a panic, I jammed it into first, spinning the wheels and kicking up a clatter of gravel and dirt. Then a tire caught and we lurched forward, out of control, almost dumping the front end into a ditch on the opposite side of the road. Finally, I got the van turned straight. Moving fast now, I decided to risk the lights before I crashed into something I could have seen with them on. I pulled a fast u-turn and gunned it, leaving a patch of rubber down the road. Far in the distance I could hear the pow of what sounded like a shotgun going off. But we were too far away to make a difference. We made the highway with the engine bouncing wildly, stressing the undersized motor mounts to the max. I slowed down before it fell apart and headed in the direction of Riverside for about ten miles before stopping at an all night cafe. I found a spot well hidden behind a semi and parked. We took a few moments to calm down and wipe off sweat from our faces and hands. My shirt was drenched. Lucky pulled a crumpled joint out of his jacket and lit up. Frankie chose one of his legal smokes. I bummed a little of both. They chattered nervously. “Ya see them motherfuckers. Tryin’ ta kill us. I fuckin’ thought that dog was goin’ to rip your ass off. Fuckin’ Doberman, he was. Bad ass mother.” I was surprised at how calm I felt, now. I had to admit “ I was sweating it for a while.” But then I felt a little guilty because I was only driving. I wasn’t actually out there. I still felt a little chicken. “That was some bitchin’ drivin’,” Frankie said, paying me a needed compliment. “What do ya say we celebrate with a little dessert?” Giddy, we went into the cafe, ordered coffee and some pie and pretended to be truckers. We killed half an hour chuckling at stupid jokes before starting back. -131-

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None of us could resist returning to the scene of the crime. The next day we drove back to admire our handiwork. “Support the Weathermen” it said in almost professional script. Lucky, I could see, had potential as an artist. We were proud, but privately I doubted if one in a hundred, excluding us and the Minutemen, had a clue to what it meant. The sign stayed that way for less than a week and then got replaced by the Marlboro man. 23. It had been more than seven months since I had even hung out just with men, and here we had pulled off a raid. Taken a risk. Been a team. It was exhilarating. A day later, I was still digging the macho. But a good mood is ephemeral. As I climbed the stairs, three distraught women doused my euphoria and that was only the beginning of the maelstrom. “Whatcha up to?” I asked, bounding over a pile of leaflets with newfound energy. “We’re working on the Smith case,” Louise said, handing me a leaflet from the pile while avoiding eye contact. “Fragging Frame-up” it screamed. Under a picture of a clean cut Black soldier, the leaflet announced that the Army was trying to frame an innocent Black Viet Vet for having allegedly thrown a fragmentation grenade into the hootch of his lieutenant, killing him. The Army had picked on Smith, the leaflet declared, because he was active in the struggle against military racism and the lieutenant was a target of his criticism for singling out Black grunts for the worst of the shit details. The leaflet went on to explain that Smith was innocent, but that fragging racist officers was justified in any case because oppression of Blacks always justified retaliation. “So what are you going to say about this?” I asked Louise. “Well,” she replied, “I think we want to get the message across that the brass better watch their step ‘cause the brother’s are on the march. The day of racism in the U.S. military is rapidly coming to a close and if they don’t get hip to it soon, they’re gonna get their asses blown off.” “Hmmn,” I mused. “You gonna pass out leaflets downtown supporting fragging as revolutionary justice or are you going to be demanding a fair trial for Smith?” “Both,” she said, frowning up at me, like I was a dumb shit. “The two aren’t mutually contradictory, you know.”

I thought about Captain Daly. How he’d seen heavy combat in the Pacific toward the end of World War II, then again in Korea and who knows what brushfire conflicts after that. How he and thousands just like him wouldn’t easily be able recognize the distinction between supporting fragging and a fair trial for Smith and that Louise’s leaflet wouldn’t help them very much in being able to. Moreover, I suspected that Daly might be into disputing whether being up to your ass in gunfire is the best time to start debating with the guy on your right whether or not your order was racist, at the risk of having a frag tossed into your hole. He’d just think that the kind of leaflet that Louise was set on distributing was a direct threat to his survival, as it might provoke one of those less than “good men” that the Marines were then dragooning into taking the opportunity of a combat situation to eliminate a redneck. No sir, he wasn’t going to like that kind of a leaflet at all. And passing them out wasn’t going to make my job any easier. I was just working myself into a response when the subject got changed. “Hi!” said Emma, disrupting my concentration. “Glad you’re back. What’s this mean?” She handed me an envelope embossed with the shiny black Gothic letterhead of a local law firm. “Hi,” I replied warily. The envelope was already torn open, so she already knew something that I did not. The contents were blunt and to the point. Emma could read. She didn’t need me to explain it. “Notice: To the Occupants....” it said. “Pursuant to California Civil Code section 728, you must hereby surrender possession of the premises within thirty days of the date of this Notice.” If we didn’t, the Notice warned, we would be sued. It then reminded us that since our lease had a provision for attorney’s fees, we could end up paying the landlord’s expensive attorney if we didn’t comply. Evicted! Secretly, I was happy about it. The place was too small for us now. But my immediate optimism that there might be a silver lining soon gave way to despair. With all of the surveillance and our unpopular political leanings, it was going to be hard locating a suitable alternative residence. The women had been making efforts. Every time they called about an apartment, the landlord seemed to know who we were. The cops were tipping off every owner who was advertising a suitable space. We’d have to employ special security and ruses to get a lease. And the search would divert us from the political work that was beginning to pile up. It would exhaust valuable time better spent organizing publicity for the Black Unity case. On the other hand, it might just prevent that provocative Smith leaflet from getting distributed.

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As I was mulling over eviction options, Joanie dropped the second shoe. “They caught Jumpin’ Jack after he testified at that war crimes tribunal in Canada. Remember when he got his picture in the paper with those Viet Cong women?” she asked. “Well, just after that, he decided that he ought to return to the States. I think the VC convinced him that it was wrong to stay up in Canada as a fugitive and the right course was to come back and force a political trial. He was trying to sneak back across the border, to do this high profile surrender at a press conference, when they nabbed him. Too bad. Now they can make it look like he was a deserter, instead of turning himself in. They’re bringing him back to Pendleton. The Black Unity case is not the only work we’ve got.” “Well, maybe we’ll have to use the Ditmar house if we get evicted.” I mused aloud. Joanie shot me a glare. “We can’t do that!” she asserted. “Why not?” I asked. “These are special circumstances now. Don’t you think the political work ought to take priority to the sectarian divisiveness that’s going on?” Louise turned on her heals and marched into what once was our spare bedroom. Joanie looked down her nose and followed Louise. Emma went into the kitchen, poured herself a cup of coffee and looked like she wanted to dive in. The conversation was over. I didn’t get it. “You don’t get it,” she told me that evening. “You just don’t get it.” “Shush,” I responded. “In case you don’t remember, we’re not alone here anymore. Let’s try to keep it between us.” We were in bed, or to be more accurate, on mattress, because that was the closest we came to having a bed. “What don’t I get?” Emma rolled to face the wall. “Racism. You just don’t get it.” “You mean why the Black organizers get the house and the money. Why we end up five in a two bedroom apartment while three of them live in a three bedroom house. Why my stipend goes to support all of us and we end up doing all the defense work for both Black and white, while in the meantime Clayton and Doc sit around all day blowin’ weed and drinkin’ Ripple. Yup, I guess you’re right, I don’t get why the other GIs aren’t as important to organize as the Black ones. Why the so-called vanguard gets excused from acting the part and whatever they say is from God’s mouth.”

“Black people are still slaves in this country...” she began, but I didn’t let her finish. “Emma, I’ve heard all the rhetoric, just like you. You don’t have to repeat it. I’m with you on all of that but I don’t agree that just because they’re Black they’re right, or that automatically, they’re the leaders. If we play that card, the worst of them will get the money and the power and will want us to become their slaves as a penance. We won’t win many hearts and minds by promoting the ‘first shall be last and the last shall be first’ strategy. Do you really think we can organize white or brown GIs around that?” “Black GIs need Black leadership, Black role models. White people can’t be telling them how to make their revolution. The Communist Party tried that. They tried it in SNCC.It failed. Blacks have got to have their own organizations and their own leadership. This is a racist country. That’s the way it is,” she responded. “Yeah, I know that. Big deal,” I snarled. “But I draw a line where you don’t seem able to. I’m not about to roll over and give up my common sense. They want to run their own organizations, fine, but it seems to me to be a bit hypocritical that they want to do it on the white folks’ dime and then tell us that we’ve got to take their orders. You want to do a role reversal thing, go right ahead, but as John Lennon said, ‘Brother you can count me out.’” “I guess so,” she said, and we dropped off to sleep. “I found a place in Vista,” Gabrielle reported as she slid into the overstuffed corner booth next to Louise. We were meeting in a hotdog joint near Dana Point, due to infectious paranoia that had spread among us over the last several weeks. It seemed as though each time we’d get close to signing a lease, the landlord would come up with an excuse. A cousin who had arrived unexpectedly. Damages that suddenly needed to be repaired. A new-found intention to sell the place. Within the past week two nice places had fallen from our grasp when the landlords turned on us overnight. One had even taken our money, first and last and had given us a signed lease. The next day he called and said he had decided not to rent the place to us after all. Said flat out that he “wasn’t gonna rent to no trouble-makers and get his property shot up.” We told him that he had signed a lease and it was too late. He said for us to come get our money now or he wouldn’t give it back until we went to court. We took our money back and he tore up the papers. Since we hadn’t disclosed our political affiliations or our association with the Ditmar house to him, the information could only have come from one source, the Feds. They -135-

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seemed to know what we were up to before we did ourselves and that did not bode well for our defense efforts on behalf of Woods and Jumpin’ Jack We were within days of the expiration of our thirty-day notice, when Gabrielle made her announcement. With these unsettling experiences under our belts and with furtive glances over our shoulders, we snuck into two cars early one morning and set out, one heading south, the other east, for ten or fifteen miles before turning north and traveling another fifty or so to Dana Point. Hopefully it would be a safe location to meet and plan. “It’s a three bedroom ranch style,” Gabrielle reported excitedly. “It’s got a big living room. Big enough for meetings and a large garage that we can work out of. The owner’s a Chicano contractor. Friend of my uncle Felix. He hasn’t put it on the market yet so the FBI can’t possibly know about it. We can move in right away.” “How do you think we should go about closing the deal without spooking him?” Joanie asked. “I’ve already set it up,” said Gabrielle. “I’m working for the Wolfes, as a legal assistant. Eric’s got a small practice. Going to be working out of the house. That’s why we need the extra bedroom. They’ll sign the lease. The guy will be impressed that he’s renting to a lawyer. It will be cool. We can do it tomorrow afternoon.” The next day, we were on time and dressed in our best. A suit and tie for me. Emma in a low cut cotton dress with a floral design, conservative and suggestive all at the same time. The guy would spend more of his concentration on her legs and tits than in the details of a negotiation. We would sign quickly. It would be fine. We took a circuitous route to be safe and arrived early to check things out. The house was situated on a small hill above the town. It had an unobstructed view of the rugged green and gold mountains that lay some twenty miles to the east. . The owner had recently built it himself, on spec, but had been unable to sell it because he had employed materials a grade below tract home quality. Consequently, stuff was falling apart left and right as fast as he could install it. He had used glue-on baseboards and they were peeling off at every seam. The self-stick tile on the floor didn’t and slipped around like you were walking on ice. The plumbing, when in use, banged and whistled with sounds

that reminded me of an auto repair shop. Electrical service was strictly third world. Lights flickered constantly. Some sockets didn’t work and the ones that did required the plugs to be taped in so that they wouldn’t slip loose and break the connections. It had walls thin as gossamer that resonated like drumheads, promising many sleepless nights. The window sashes were made of some sort of vinyl and had been installed out of plumb so the windows stuck. As for the doors, the owner told us that we could only have four occupants “because the doors would wear out.” We laughed at the thought of doors wearing out. But it came to pass. He showed us a six-month lease and looked down Emma’s dress while we leaned over the kitchen counter to sign up. No sooner had we done all of the hard work of moving in than Mitch showed up. Driving a Chevy station wagon, towing a Winnebago. He was completely re-fitted including a new girlfriend. Her name was Zoe and it was her rig. Actually it belonged to her parents, but they were getting divorced and fighting over it, along with everything else. So pending the far off, Bleak House resolution, it suited both them nicely that she held it in a kind of escrow. Zoe looked familiar. After the ritualistic, “Where do I know you from?” twenty questions, Emma finally placed her. She was the hippie girl with whom Emma had shared confinement in the Long Beach jail. Since the bust she had been spending her time and trust funds following the Grateful Dead around the country. She had met Mitch at a concert in Eugene. One thing led to another, as she described it, and they discovered their common interest in GI organizing. Mitch suggested that they come on down and check us out. See if they could help. No problem about the landlord’s restriction on the number of people who could reside in the house. They had the Winnebago. Just needed a place to park it. No problem that the house’s electricity wouldn’t support the trailer, they had a generator. They only needed to use the bathroom. Unfortunately, that put unacceptable wear and tear on the doors. Mitch, Zoe, Lucky and Melinda hit it off right away. It was one of those matches that some describe as having been made in Heaven. This union of revolutionary white youth and the acquisition of the new pad, they reckoned, called for a party, which of course would require acid. To no one’s surprise, having recently been on the Deadhead circuit, Zoe and Mitch were packing a stash. Mitch whispered this admission so that the bugging devices we assumed were already in place wouldn’t pick up the disclosure. Lucky, -137-

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unconcerned with security, blurted out that he was able to donate some fine weed and our cover was promptly blown. “They’re getting stoned over at Ditmar,” I chipped in. “I was there yesterday, working with Woods and Deputy Dawg on their testimony. The place reeked of weed. Seems like Doc has a connection on Base. Only ones who seemed straight were Donnie Woods and Sukari. Deputy Dawg was out of his gourd. No use at all. If it’s good enough for Black leadership...” I looked at Emma. She looked at Joanie. Joanie looked at Louise. We all shrugged. What the hell.

24. Lucky spread the stuff out on one of our regular kitchen plates. Tiny, perfectly square specks, as clear as Saran Wrap, each the size of a wheat germ flake. “Pick it up with the tip of your finger,” Mitch recommended, “and then put it on your tongue. It’s window pane.” “While you’re waiting,” Lucky said, “have a toke of this shit. It’s a knock out.” He was right. Before too long, it was hard to tell where the marijuana left off and the acid began. Things were starting to roll, like the deck of a square rigger in a Nor’easter. Someone managed to put on a stack of disks. Soon familiar sounds of screaming, whining electric guitars, strings bent way out of shape, began to fill the room. Senses reeled with discordant data. Songs blended, one into another disclosing trills and riffs that somehow had escaped my notice before, or at least were not as appreciated. We were still in take off mode when Donnie Woods and Sukari showed up. They had Dino, the hound, in tow. Gabrielle met them at the door with a shrug of embarrassment for the compromised condition of our collective. “Hey Donnie,” I managed from my sagged position on the couch. “What’s up?”

“The brothers decided to get rid of this mutt.” he announced, looking around the room in amazement at the scene. “We came by to deliver him. I see you’re doing all right.” He winked at me. “The hound’s a fucking racist,” Donnie continued. “He don’t like Black men at all. Been snarling at all the brothers who come by the house. Nipped at Clayton for no reason. Just hangs under the kitchen table or under a bed. You come near him and he snaps. He didn’t do that with you white folks so we decided to bring him by. He’s yours.” “You don’t think it might have something to do with the acid Clayton and Doc fed him?” I asked, playing devil’s advocate. “We don’t know nothin’ about that,” Sukari sneered, sloughing me off. “ But I think it’s best this dog stay with you folks. Some of the brothers been talkin’ about offin’ the animal.” “Dig it,” said Mitch. “We’ll take him. C’mere Dino, boy,” he said, bending down to pat the hound and welcome him into the house. Dino whined a little, wagged his tail and trotted over to familiar, outstretched arms. “Thataboy,” Mitch mumbled. “Want some water?” He turned and went into the kitchen, the dog trotting happily at his feet. Donnie and Sukari turned down our offer that they join us for the festivities and left. Night had fallen. It was a moonless evening. Clear. Exceptionally dark. The star show was extraordinary. “Hey, you guys,” I suggested. “C’mon outside. Catch the stars.” No one budged so I went out on my own. What was unique about this star show, made it different from all the others that I had seen, was that these stars were moving. Very slowly at first, so as not to frighten me, their motion began to suck me in. Soon I was engrossed in the phosphorescent Milky Way’s swirling performance. Faster, ever faster it spun until it resembled the flush of a toilet bowl, from one horizon to the other. Accelerating away from the source -- from me. Spiraling outward as if I were observing through a telescope backwards. And as I continued to observe this miracle, a rainbow of stars in all colors cascaded like a slash into the whirlpool. Among them was the planet earth. Like a droplet in a waterfall, it was helpless and insignificant, caught in the current of the whole. Then it registered that I was outside of it, looking in from a boundless nullity of time and space. Like I was larger. Immortal, yet strangely insignificant. I was as unimportant in the scheme of this cosmos as a single grain of sand on a beach. Maybe, I brooded, the same could even be said of the whole damn War. Who knew? And what of the great big, tough US of A? How big and tough was it really in the context of the universe? -139-

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What trivia we must be if the earth itself could be flushed down the drain of time and space! I watched, unable to detach, while our earth plummeted as helpless as a tiny boat tossed by tempestuous seas until it was swallowed up in a giant gurgling gulp that sucked the Milky Way into the sewer line of infinity. Yet it had left me behind, stranded. Without name, identity, alone. I had become a mere droplet myself. Less even than that speck of sand. In a short while I would be in trials as important to the lives of my clients as anything I had ever imagined doing. Yet, it was all nothing. I was now nothing. And I was terrified that I was not equal to the task. Hell, I didn’t even know who I was. But curiously, contradictorily, the acid made things easier for me. And I caught a glimpse of the allure the drug must have had to a trooper in combat. Being detached and at one with the universe all at the same time. Flying high. Who-gives-a-shit-high. I felt myself struggling for balance. Turning circles in a futile attempt to dance to the rhythm of the spinning, orbiting celestial bodies. Get in sync. Yes, that was the ticket. Maybe then, I could be up to the task. But as I focused on this effort at balance, the unruly universe made a comeback. The flush boiled up and overflowed, spilling a vile, nauseating sewage all over the floor of my insecurities. I became the incredible shrinking man. The effluent of a billion stars loomed over me like a winter wave cresting at Waimea Bay. Determined to pound me into the ocean bottom. Unstoppable, like the forces lined up against Donnie and Jack. And I knew I cared. And I feared failure. Their losing. My inadequacy. Humiliation. Maybe, in the end, that was all I was fighting for. The avoidance of humiliation. Not very political. Certainly an ego problem. God damn those hallucinogenics. Maybe doing acid in battle wasn’t such a good idea after all. This was turning into one of those “bad trips” that I had heard about but never believed could happen to me. I had to find my way back inside. I began groping in the dark. Bumping into the Winnebago. Stumbling up the stairs, toward the safety of an inside, a controllable, finite space. I started to panic. Stars would never be the same for me again. Gabrielle found me sprawled on the front porch. She helped me to my room. Listened to my explanations with patience. Made me feel vulnerable with the confession. Tried talking me down. From somewhere in the direction

of the living room I heard Procol Harum singing “ A Whiter Shade of Pale.” I was certainly that. I regained consciousness to the sounds of knocking. It was 6:00 a.m. and the first, weak rays of light had begun to brighten the craggy pinnacles far to the east. I opened the door to a scarecrow, backlit by the grayish luminescence of early dawn. “There will be an earthquake,” he prophesied, through a gap-toothed grimace. I was about to give this bum a piece of my mind for the presumptuous intrusion into our peace, when I heard a chilling “ Owooooh! ooooh! ow! ooooooh” coming from under the Winnebago. It was a sound that I heard only once before, from inside the van that first day back after our trip to New York. Dino was doing that whining thing of his again. I looked under the trailer and saw the dog lying on his side, hind legs extended outward and shaking. A front paw was draped over his snout. If dogs do it, he appeared to be crying. I had never seen a dog look like that before. “What’s the matter fella?” I asked. Dino paid no attention and continued to moan as if I was not there. I reached under to bring him out, but he gave me a nip and I retreated. The dog was going psycho on us. “Within the year,” the psychic tramp continued, paying Dino’s plight no mind, “ there will be death and devastation.” His clothing was grease-stained and tattered. His blotchy face was decorated with band-aids and stubble. His jaundiced eyes were red-streaked. His hair matted. His outstretched, pleading hands were gnarled. He looked believable to me. “How do you know this?” I asked, trying to ignore Dino’s hysteria. “I am a prophet,” he revealed emphatically. “If you give me something, you will be spared.” I decided not to take the chance. Being spared sounded like the right thing to go for, so I fished a couple of quarters out of a pocket and handed them over. It seemed like a cheap insurance policy. “How about my wife?” I bargained. “Would you mind sparing her too? I gave you two quarters. ” “He squinted up at me and nodded. “Two for the price of one?” as if 50 cents was his fare for a single ride on the salvation train. “You drive a hard bargain, but I guess that can be arranged.” I watched him shuffle off until he disappeared around the corner down at the bottom of the hill. He passed up three or four other houses along the way. I had an eerie feeling about why he had singled us out.

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A while later, Dino scratched on the door to come in. He looked fine now and was wagging his tail as if nothing had been bothering him. “You give the bum a quarter too?” I asked him. He cocked his head in the curious way dogs sometimes do. But the psycho hobo turned out to be right on the money. Not long after his visit a devastating earthquake struck the LA area. Smashed up a hospital and a few people got killed. We were spared... because we weren’t anywhere near LA at the time, just like over two billion other people. Still, at twentyfive cents a head, it was well worth it.

25. They brought Jumpin’ Jack back to Pendleton and put him in the brig. Confined him in solitary. He was infectious. Contagious with radicalism and Anti-War, Anti-Marine sentiment. He needed to be segregated. No visitors would be allowed except his lawyer and family members who, under the regs at that time, included his fiancee, if he had one. Jack’s family, such as it was, lived in upstate New York and had neither the funds nor the inclination to visit someone who had brought such dishonor on the family. His story was one of drug abuse, insanity and treason as far as they seemed to be concerned. The brass were talking a General Court Martial for desertion, based upon the statements Jack had made while in Canada and the pictures of him standing next to female Charlies. They were also hinting that if he pled insanity, they might go with a medical discharge, but nothing was firm. Gabrielle had been collecting the press clippings. They were great reading if you weren’t still under military jurisdiction. That one little glitch made all the difference. Jack’s testimony in The People’s War Crimes Tribunal admitted to playing a role in the torture and killing of captured Viet Cong soldiers and possibly civilians as well, although he conceded that in a “people’s war” it’s virtually impossible to tell the combatants from the noncombatants. His descriptions were vivid and grizzly. He was a war criminal, he declared. Under Nuremberg principles, he had to resist. The press ate it up. His testimony was broadly publicized and undoubtedly embarrassing to the military. So too was that notorious picture of him standing along side of the NLF’s representatives. Jack wouldn’t stand a chance at trial before a

panel of officers and senior NCOs. He had only two choices, plead insanity or do a full-blown Nuremberg defense and go down in a ball of flames. “We have to create a defense committee,” Joanie forcefully demanded. “The only way we can save Jack is to make his situation public. We’ve got to identify him as a political prisoner, a prisoner of conscience.” “To make it work, we’d have to raise a hell of a lot of money,” Mitch stammered, shaking his head. He looked down at the floor like an embarrassed schoolboy caught in the midst of an awful prank. “A shit load more’n we’ve ever been able to raise before.” “Well we didn’t have a good cause before.” Joanie hung tough. “But now we do. Jack’s put himself on the line, saying things that the government doesn’t want said. They don’t want a show trial with all the bad publicity. If we support him right, we can go national with this. It’s big.” “What do you think?” Gabrielle asked, looking at me for the answer. “Can they keep people off the Base who want to attend his trial?” “He’s entitled to a public trial,” I advised, only partially sure of the opinion. “I don’t think they’ll try to keep out civilians who want to witness the trial. I don’t think they can do that and not generate bad publicity about secret military courts martial. It would hurt their image at a critical time to keep out the public. I guess that they’ll have to open up the trial.” “We’ll organize a big demonstration, right on the Base, in support of Jumpin’ Jack, the GI who dared to speak out,” Emma said with a dramatic sweep of her hand, as if she were pitching a script for a movie. “Yeah, s’pose it works out and we raise a bunch of money,” Mitch muttered gloomily. “S’pose we do raise all this money. Meanwhile nothin’ is going down for the Black Unity trial. What about Donnie and Deputy Dawg? Them brothers down on Ditmar are going to say that the whitey only gives money to the whitey and that every dollar Jumpin’ Jack gets is evidence of racism. What then?” “Mitch’s right on,” Gabrielle concurred. “We better do something that acknowledges the brothers. It’s racist if we don’t.” Louise got up and paced a bit to let everyone know that she was about to utter something profound. She put her hands inside the straps of her Ben Davis overalls and glowered. “White people, rich white people will give to a legal defense fund that will support a nice white, blond GI who is telling them that he’s a war criminal. They’ll love that kind of mea culpa plea. But we all know they won’t give a dime to support a Black Marine who is trying to build an all-Black union. We’ve got to package the two of them together and educate the donors that it is one struggle.” -143-

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I responded derisively. “One struggle, my ass. I’m going to say this as the person who will be defending Donnie Woods, so it’s not just theoretical. Each case is going to have to stand on its own, because that’s the way they want it. Forget the issue of money. They called this play and it’s not up to us to be worrying about how they will be organizing. They kicked us out of the house because, quote, ‘We can’t organize Black GIs with whitey around.’ and you all supported them on that. So let’s be consistent here. Well, we’ve got a major political case and the kicker is the GI is white. That just might be a bad deal for the Black Unity case, but having a white Marine war hero coming out against Uncle’s war crimes sure helps the fight against the War, which is, after all, racist itself. Now you tell us we gotta compromise our organizing to defend him, because if we do a good job of it that might, hypothetically, offend a bunch of racist Black guys like Clayton and Doc. I know Woods. He won’t be offended. He’ll be hurt that his nationalist comrades fucked up. But he won’t begrudge Jack the best case we can put together for him. That’s the kind of man he is. On the other hand, folks whose only politics is ‘Black is good, white is bad.’ have got no politics at all.” Louise took that last remark personally and threw a book in my direction. I ducked and it broke a lamp. I broke into a smirking grin that only pissed her off more. She looked over at Emma and snarled, “That asshole’s out of here or I am.” Then she stomped out of the room. Emma shook her head. Tried to ignore the tantrum. “Well, the best place to start, I hate to say it, is with Genghis. We’re going to have to make a pilgrimage to the great Kahn.” “We better run this by Jumpin’ Jack first,” I suggested. “We can’t form a defense committee without his approval.” “I suppose that means you get to make the report to him,” Joanie sneered, with only a veneer of civility separating the neutrality of her words from seething contempt. “Jack gets a civilian visitor.” I snapped in retort. “A family member, wife, mother, fiancee. I’m not the only one that can visit him. Maybe you should marry him.”

“Great idea.” Emma enthused. “Jack should have a fiancee. And I know just the right person for the job.” She looked at Gabrielle. “Same age. They worked together on the paper, so they know each other. It will be believable.” Gabrielle blushed and looked at the floor. Joanie, who was a good 5 or 6 years older than Jack agreed. “What do you say, Gabbie? Jack needs a regular visitor besides Wolfe. You’re perfect.” “For the revolution!” Mitch chimed in, hoisting a cup of coffee in a mock toast. Gabrielle whispered assent with “aw shucks” embarrassment. Jack didn’t know it yet but he had just become engaged. It was one of those nights. I knew it before I climbed into bed. Could feel it in the air. Emma had criticism on her mind. She was just waiting for me to ask. To say something, anything, so she could lay into me. The way she rolled over to face the wall was impossible to ignore. I knew there would be no escape from the tension until I opened the subject. Asked sheepishly, “What’s wrong?” and then got a piece of her mind. I decided to get it over with. “I bet you’re pissed at me because of what went down with Joanie and Louise.” “You acted like an asshole.” “Yeah, how so?” “You said the things you said to provoke. You don’t really believe what you said, I hope. It sounded so racist.” “Oh, what’s so racist about criticizing Black people who are racists for being racists? Compromising on the basis of race alone at the expense of other peoples’ oppression? Here’s Jumpin’ Jack, facing maybe ten to twenty years in the slammer and we’re all worried about what happens if we raise a bunch of money to defend him. Believe me, those so-called Black revolutionaries wouldn’t share dime one with us. You wait and see how much support they end up giving Jack. But nevertheless, they’ll be demanding a split of any bread we raise. Mitch’s dead right on that. If I say anything about maybe not dipping into funds people may be donating for Jack, I’m a racist. Right? Aren’t there any common standards that apply to everyone?” “You may be right about Jack, Eric,” she said, calling me by my given name, as she did when she was pissed, “But you have to understand where they are coming from. Black people have been victims of oppression and slavery for hundreds of years and it is important for us all that they don’t feel like their issues are being sloughed off. They are organizing a union. That’s a -145-

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bigger picture than a single white soldier’s fate. It represents the freedom of an entire race. And they see the Black Unity issue that way.” “I know how they see it. These days I’m around them more than anyone, remember? But that’s just not the reality. A Black union is not going to advance the struggle against racism any more that an all white union. You can’t fight racism with racism. Besides, you can always cut the issues the way you want, to get what you want. Make your issue seem more important than anyone else’s.” Her eyes widened. “I don’t understand,” she said. “How can you defend Donnie when you don’t even believe in what he’s doing?” “I believe in what he’s doing, Emma, just not in separatism.” I responded. “ The Marines think of Blacks as second class citizens and treat them that way. The only thing they understand is a tough fight from an opponent they can respect. Donnie Woods is that kind of opponent. They need to see that he’s first class and I want to help him make that point. If it wereClayton or Doc, trying to organize a racist Black organization, well, I wouldn’t do it, even if they wanted a white guy’s help. Donnie’s different.” I saw doubt in her eyes. “Look, Emma,” I said, “Donnie is my friend and no one wants to get him off more than I do. But at the end of the day, he isn’t going up for years. The most he will get is a BCD and six months. And, I’m betting he won’t even come close to that. On the other hand, Jack’s not just one white soldier. That’s why the VC suggested he return. He is symbolic. He’s put himself on the line to end a war. He represents resistance to the War in the Marines, the most gung-ho of all the services. That’s what we’re here to do after all, isn’t it? End the War. And we’re talking about a war where hundreds of thousands of people are getting killed. As you know they seem to be getting killed in all races and genders. Jack’s not just a single white soldier. The issues are way bigger than him. We’ve got to have some perspective here, and, if I may say so, some balls. It just pisses me off that we’ve got people in this collective who think that the only way to be political and progressive is to kiss every Black butt they see.” “They are trying to keep things together, Eric. They want to have a revolutionary movement of all colors, and not to alienate the Black GIs. Everyone knows that we aren’t going to make any progress without breaking down the barriers of racism.”

“Keep things together!” I sputtered. “Who the fuck is together? We got kicked out of Ditmar. Does that sound together to you? It doesn’t to me. And kissing butt isn’t going to change that.” She tried to interrupt but I wasn’t giving up the floor. “You think that they’re going to respect us and work with us because every fucking thing they do is ok with us, because they are victims of racism? You think that? Well, let me tell you, I know these guys better than anyone else in this collective. I visit them in the brig. I talk to them about who they are and where they come from. I know more about them, the real them, than the rest of you put together. And surprise! some of them just aren’t nice people. Some of them are crooks and hustlers. Some are liars. Some are just fools. Some of them kicked us out and then turned the house into a shit hole. No one says a thing, ‘cause they’re historically victims of oppression. But where they came from is no excuse. It explains a lot but it doesn’t make them revolutionaries. And, if I may say so, it doesn’t excuse the absence of common decencies. In every society I’ve ever heard of, it has been taboo to kill and steal and cheat. Those crimes are as unacceptable in Africa as in Europe, so the concepts of good and bad aren’t foreign to people just because they grew up in the ghetto and some pig beat the shit out of ‘em in a bad bust. That kind of behavior only becomes ok when guilty white people say it’s ok. It’s sort of like we’re passing a sentence on ourselves for discrimination. Well, it’s ok to pass a sentence on ourselves for society’s racism. I’m all for it. That’s part of why I’m here. But that doesn’t mean that the right sentence is to give thugs and thieves a get-out-of-jail free card.” “C’mon,” she raised her voice. “ Most of the Black people you meet are really decent. You make it sound like they’re all racist criminals and that it’s not the white power structure that robs them of their rights and their dignity day after day. So why are you pulling out this racist stereotype argument that you know is bullshit? No one’s saying that just because a murderer is Black, it means he ought to get away with it. What we’re trying to do is put it in context and to avoid judging Black people by white standards. You say that Africans have laws against murder just like Europeans, but the difference is that in Africa, except for the parts ruled by the whites, they are judged by Black people who understand where they are coming from. In this country, poor Blacks get judged by wealthy whites who have no idea what the Black experience is and therefore can’t do them justice. I shouldn’t have to tell you that.” “Emma, I’m not so sure I buy your argument about how no one’s excusing Black homicides. That fragging leaflet you guys are working on sure comes pretty close. And as for the old ‘White skin privilege’ argument, -147-

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we can’t sit in judgment of any Black because we haven’t experienced what they have,” I sneered. “So what’s the deal? They may be guilty of the crime, but we aren’t able to do anything about it? Look, I grew up in a three-decker, down wind from the Scott paper mill. We didn’t live in a high-rise apartment on the upper East side. I didn’t go to Dalton. I was one of a handful of Jews in the town. The minority. My grandfather laid tracks for the B&M and lumberjacked up in Aroostook before he became a house painter and died of lead poisoning. My father didn’t commute on the New Haven from Greenwich to his big deal advertising job on Madison Avenue. He had a machine shop and my uncle fished Penobscot Bay, in a 48 footer, with only a winch for help and a ship-to-shore radio if he got into trouble. I worked in the machine shop when I was 14 and have the scars to prove it. I worked on the boat. We didn’t have white skin privilege where I grew up. There was no other color but white. I didn’t see a Black face until I was in college. So when the cops fucked with us on the street, there was no issue that they were just going to pull in the Blacks and let the whitey go. I’m not coming from guilt, the way Joanie and Louise are.” “Oh come off it Eric,” Emma snapped. “You’re privileged and you know it. Maybe your family wasn’t rich, but they weren’t poor either. They owned that three-decker you’re always talking about. They weren’t renters. In fact, if I recall correctly, they were actually landlords. And whatever they did for a living, they were able to send you to college and law school. Don’t try to pull that poor working class shit with me. I know better. You sound very bitter and angry.” Emma rolled over to face me in a way that I interpreted as an attempt to gain emotional advantage. “I don’t think that this is about racism at all,” she observed, “or about sucking up to the brothers. Are you acting this way because you think something is going on between Joanie, Louise and me? Is that really what this is all about?” I was stunned, uncomfortable with the shift, and sought to return to safer ground. “You weren’t comfortable with the facts, were you?” I said. “So you’re trying to change the subject to a personal level, where you feel you can control things better.” “Behind all male politics and lots of their intellectual argument is a whole lot of testosterone,” Emma countered. “It’s pretty clear that you feel threatened by the women in this collective.”

“I suppose you want to separate estrogen from women’s politics, like the two don’t go hand in hand,” I responded. “ It’s just the men who have that hormone problem, is it? If a man complains that a woman is acting the way she is because it’s ‘that time of the month’ he’s a male chauvinist. But women can get away clean when they accuse a guy of acting on his testosterone. The trouble is that with you it’s never a two way street. Blacks can get away with murder and white guys can’t complain. Women can accuse guys of being piggy ‘cause of testosterone but men can’t explain woman’s behavior by saying she’s on the rag. You know, I just don’t buy the rules of this game,” I grumbled, rolling over to avoid a face-to-face. It was my turn to pull the cold shoulder routine. “You’re jealous,” she persisted. “You’re insecure around them because they’re lesbians and you’re afraid they are trying to put the make on me. And so you lashed out at them around something that you know would push their buttons. You didn’t deal with the issue in a principled way. You provoked.” “Oh. How’d I do that?” “Your language. Your body language. The way you smirked at them. It was that smirk that caused Joanie to lose it and throw the book at you. I understood how she felt. I hate that smirk. The way you use it to piss people off. It’s a wonder someone hasn’t killed you over it.” I had to laugh. Probably it was defensive. “Yeah.” I said. “It does piss people off. I once got into a fight in Torquay, England, in a bar because of it. This bouncer was chucking a couple of nice looking girls out of the bar for some reason, didn’t matter. I told them to join us. It pissed the bouncer off. I smirked at him. He turned around, grabbed a chair and tried to hit me over the head with it. I ducked and he smashed it over the table. Just like in one of those John Wayne pictures, a real bar room brawl. Anyway, he had a whole bunch of friends and I was with this guy who was a little chicken shit. So I got the shit kicked out of me. Cops wanted to arrest me for the fight, but the girls saved my ass.” “I suppose you think that was cool,” she sneered. “Yeah. I kinda like the story.” I admitted. “Not everyone can say they were actually in a real bar room fight. The day after, I hurt like hell. But I got a story out of it. So I’m not complaining.” “Well, speaking of testosterone!” she said. “The point is that smirk of yours pisses people off. Provokes them to violence. And you know it, so you’re responsible for that violence.” “Well, well,” I snickered. “That’s quite an observation coming from a woman. All the time you hear how the woman is the victim ‘cause the man -149-

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threw the punch. ‘Cause he couldn’t control his anger, though he should have, no matter what the woman said to him to get to that point. It’s always the guy’s fault ‘cause he couldn’t deal on a non-physical level. And now you’re telling me that I’m responsible for violence against me because I smirked and some woman couldn’t deal with it on a non-violent level. Sounds to me like just one more chapter in the same old double standard book.” I could feel Emma stiffening again. Trying to control herself. “You just aren’t willing to take any responsibility for anything, are you? You’re so smart ass, with your lawyer bullshit. You don’t want to make things better. Just stir up shit. You complain about the divisiveness of racism, but you’re the most divisive element in this collective. You know, Eric, I think you’re becoming one of them. I hope you have a good night’s sleep.” She got out of bed, put on her robe and left. I could hear her in the other room, talking to her women friends. I didn’t have to imagine what they were saying. For a few minutes I regretted that I had been so argumentative. But it turned out that what I was really regretting was that I might have cost myself one of those particularly passionate, reconciliatory fucks that come at the end of big fights with someone you really love. Maybe, I thought, Emma was right. I was becoming one of them. On the one hand, I knew that the redneck line I had been slinging was divisive and destructive, but on the other hand, Sammy, my alter ego, had gotten the better of me and I had succumbed to the fun of it all. For a brief moment, I wondered if I would be able to fall asleep, but then I did. I met with Jack the next day and he seemed delighted with the prospect of a female visitor to break the tedium of brig incarceration. He also gave immediate consent to the defense committee. If he was going to go down, he told me, he would prefer to do it as a political prisoner rather than as a run of the mill deserter. But we still had no idea what the convening officer had planned for him. 26. When the military is planning a General Court Martial, one where the GI can get thrown into the brig for more than 6 months and receive a dishonorable discharge as well, the first step is an Article 32 hearing. The procedure is something akin to a civilian preliminary hearing, where the

prosecution puts on some witness to demonstrate to the brass that they won’t be making fools of themselves by calling for a General Court Martial. There was little doubt that they had the goods against Jack. For starters, the military had placed NIS agents in the audience at that Canadian war crimes tribunal and they had made recordings and taken photographs. They had a clean record of his apprehension at the border. With this evidence, they exuded confidence that they could get a conviction despite the fact that Jack had been confined in a psycho ward just months before all of this. That he might be nuts was a matter for the defense and possibly sentencing. In a way, they had us in a bind. If we cared to take the position that Jack was bonkers, that was ok with them. They would have loved such a plea, as it represented a means to explain away all of the charges that Jack was making against them. Like what the Soviets always did with their dissidents, putting them into mental hospitals. You had to be crazy, they liked to argue, to oppose the communist system. Well, the military mind was running on a very similar track. An insanity plea would have suited them just fine. The Article 32 came on quickly. They assigned the prosecution to Captain Eaton, a dull-witted but determined officer who appeared to be devoid of any ability to appreciate a moral stand. Eaton was a man whose only motivation was to earn the approval of his superiors. He was recently graduated from a law school of questionable accreditation and that seemed to make him all the more resentful of anyone who had been trained at a school with any prestige. His knowledge of the rules of procedure was minimal yet substantially greater than his understanding of the rules of evidence or their purpose. For Captain Eaton, the law was nothing more than a bludgeon to be employed against the helpless so that he might achieve career advancement. He had no apparent perspective of its greater purpose, justice. He was perfect for the military and, the brass hoped, for this job. They intended to throw the book at Jumpin’ Jack. The proceedings were held in a new, freshly painted courtroom. Two large MPs of color escorted Jack in from the brig, one on each side. He was spit and polish for the occasion. They sat him between Captain Jeffers and me, in the most comfortable cushioned chair he had experienced since he had been hauled from the car on the day of his arrest. He seemed outwardly calm, even stoic as he stared straight ahead, in the direction of the judge who was going to hear the evidence against him. Only a repetitive eye blinking gave away any hint of nervousness. Eaton stood behind the counsel table, effervescent. This was going to be his big case. The thing for which he might get noticed. He tried his -151-

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damnedest to appear sure of himself and of the outcome, but his fumbling delivery gave away a touch of insecurity at his own competence. He gave a perfunctory opening statement, promising to prove that Corporal Conlon was a deserter who had given aid and comfort to the enemy. Then he called a dour Naval lieutenant from the Long Beach Naval Hospital, who recited fifteen minutes of dreary data from the official records. It boiled down to how Jack had admitted to physicians that he had injured himself while jumping off a high rock and how he had broken confinement at the Naval Hospital. We heard nothing we didn’t know already. I asked to see the documents, to check their genuineness. Jeffers made a few notes and we passed on the cross-examination. Eaton, puffing now like a peacock, next called a stiff, Clint Eastwood type NIS agent. This fellow recounted in staccato, monosyllabic narrative the results of their intermittent surveillance of Jack while he was up in Canada. He played a couple of tapes they had made, identified Jack’s voice and displayed several photographs of Jack giving his testimony at a table behind which was draped an unfortunately large Viet Cong flag. In the opinion of this agent, and over our objections as to his abysmal lack of scientific expertise, Jack was perfectly sane when he testified that the Marines were a bunch of war criminals who had committed horrible atrocities on the Vietnamese people for which he felt profoundly guilty. The agent concludedwith a quote attributable to Jack: “It is my duty to resist this outlaw force in every way possible. By any means necessary.” Again we examined the evidence, but asked no questions that might reveal a potential strategy or educate Eaton. Finally, Eaton presented a border patrol officer who had been brought down from Washington to tell us the details of Jack’s apprehension. From this fellow we elicited that Jack had offered no resistance. He had promptly admitted his military status and was in possession of both his uniform and his military ID when apprehended. These facts would be useful later to refute a claim of desertion, which requires proof of an intent to quit the military and to never return. Keeping his uniform and ID, being apprehended returning to the US, all pointed away from desertion. On this charge, at least, we had a shot. Nevertheless, the Marine judge ruled that Eaton had proved a prima facie case of desertion terminated by apprehension, self-inflicting a wound,

escaping confinement, and to top that all off, making disloyal statements. The first charge could get him three years. Self-inflicting a wound carried up to seven years more. The third charge, escaping confinement, called for yet one more year. Finally the disloyal statement beef could net Jack another three years. When the smoke had cleared, we saw that they were talking about stacking 14 years of charges all together. The defense presented no witnesses. What was the point? We couldn’t refute the basic charges at this hearing. We needed time to prepare a complete defense and we couldn’t risk educating Eaton. Anyway, it wouldn’t have mattered. The judge was just another JAG officer appointed by the same convening authority that called the court in the first place. It was this base commander, unseen and never directly heard from, who was really pulling the strings. It was he who wanted all those charges. He, who stacked the court. And he was going to get the result he wanted. Putting Jack at risk of big time at hard labor, he must have figured, would result in either a plea favorable to the Marines or an insanity defense, which might be an even better face-saving result. We started off thinking that all we were facing was a desertion charge. When we left the courtroom that day, it was clear that the Marines had brought up the heavy artillery. 27. I had seriously underestimated the Marines’ attitude to Jack. He was a decorated Viet Vet and I figured that they would cut him some slack on that basis. That had been my experience with every other case I had done to date. If you had done your time in Nam, they cut you slack. But those cases were more runofthe mill. Long term unauthorized absences, disrespect, ordinary assault. Not an overt challenge to the very essence of the Marine’s mission. Jack had crossed the line and I hadn’t really reckoned just how far. He was worse than a deserter. He had cosied up to the VC and even though it had been in neutral Canadian territory, he was still a traitor. For that category they would show little mercy. I should not have expected anything less. I was embarrassed by my naivete. This was going to be a “no-surrender” battle. If we were going to put in place a functioning defense committee before Jack came to trial, we would have to move fast. And that fact left us with little choice. We would have to make a humbling pilgrimage to Malibu and pay homage to the Guru. I demanded that the whole collective participate in this one. Everyone would be required to pledge personal loyalty to the leader if we were to manage to pry some funds loose. -153-

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We could have chosen a better day for the outing. Jupiter and Neptune conspired to cast the Fates and Furies upon us. Boiling grey clouds milled close overhead, taunting, blurring the distinction between day and night. The sea, a melange of gunmetal and froth, heaved its salty mist into the fray, seasoning the freshwater downpour with tangy tartness. A gusting chill wind descended out of the Gulf of Alaska flailing the row of upscale homes on the west side of the Pacific Highway, Route One. Its inhabitants, wisely, had burrowed for shelter, eschewing travel, abandoning their cars in all available nooks, forcing us to park along the road and walk a couple of hundred yards in the frigid, almost horizontal rain. Seeming to be personally offended by our daring travel, the tempest almost consciously attempted to inflict pains. Lashing us. Stinging every patch of exposed skin. Particles of salt and sand insinuated into the corners of our eyes. Impaling grains bespeckled our lips until there was burn and bitterness. By the time we reached the shelter of Kahn’s front porch, these demons had left us drenched, chilled to the core and violated. We found Kahn dressed to suit the elements, wearing an Irish woolen pullover, a turtleneck of natural fiber and corduroy jeans with a slight flair at the bottoms. His greeting was cordial, gracious. His large, brilliant teeth flashed as he smiled condescension, like a politician on the stump. He invited us to sit. Inquired as to our drink of choice. Coffee? Tea? Schweppes? He was accompanied by his retinue of hangers on. Movement versions of Tammany ward-heelers. It was evident that he was prepared for barter this blustery day, not the usual bullshit. I found this a hopeful sign. Perhaps we had something to trade. It was a bizarre negotiation. I had come, hat in hand, to seek money. But Sukari, advocating for Donnie Woods, was unable to disguise her disdain for all whiteys. Gabrielle, Louise and Joanie, when they spoke, were unable to conceal their contempt for the money-bag movement heavies and influence peddlers who managed the lucre and, despite never getting soiled in the trenches, were certain that in the coming revolution they would play the role of Lenin. Mitch superficially attempted a show of deference yet betrayed amusement at the pretension of it all. Emma tried to be diplomatic but seemed depressed by the whole venture and to my disappointment, assumed a passive role.

On the other side of the table sat the money. Kahn, we knew, perceived us as necessary evils, to be used, abused and discarded when our usefulness had expired. The Support Our GIs honchos in his wake envied Kahn’s power and influence. Meanwhile each searched for an opportunity to exploit the situation for personal aggrandizement. Everyone held the customarily negative opinion of the lawyer. Negotiations stalled when Sukari delivered the Panthers’ ultimatum. The Black liberation movement, she asserted, could not publicize Jumpin’ Jack. Black Unity was their priority. They might run articles. But any money they raised directly would have to be earmarked for Woods and Deputy Dawg. Plus they wanted half of everything else that was being raised. SOGI’s directors squirmed, certain that dissent would bring accusations of racism. They dressed their responses in ambiguity. Sensing the potential to exploit our divisions, Kahn suggested that Sukari’s demands would not find favor among the contributors. Certainly neither he nor SOGI were racist, he sought to assure her. Certainly he could understand the Black position, yet facts were facts. Reason and reality had to prevail. Donnie Woods was looking at short time, he noted. Yet maybe 20 years of Jumpin’ Jack’s life might depend on what we planned here. And besides, he gently noted, some of the charges that were planned against Jumpin’ Jack invited defenses challenging the legality of the War itself. “What do you mean by that?” Sukari asked. “The charge that he was making disloyal statements, for example.” Kahn explained. “What’s disloyal about confessing that you are a war criminal? That you have seen and done things that this country, at another time, in another war, said was so beyond the bounds of the acceptable that it was a soldier’s duty to resist. They may not have realized it,” he went on, “ but they have set up a contradiction between loyalty and criminality. We can make some major Anti-War publicity out of it. Might even get some big name witnesses to testify about the Nuremberg case. We don’t have a declared war here. If we get the right witnesses, we can get national and maybe even international coverage. It could be the major trial of the War.” He saw the sneering look of contempt on her face and sought to placate her. “Perhaps,” he suggested, “ SOGI and its supporters could agree to putting up some money for the BSU. But if you want to go separate politically, it will be hard for us to argue that we owe you an equal share. We can look into something.” “What about Katanga?” one of the directors asked, timidly. “Isn’t his group involved too?” -155-

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Sukari glowered. “Woods don’t want nothing to do with them.” “But Deputy Dawg?” the fellow persisted. “Isn’t he affiliated with them?” “We’re going to deal with that.” Sukari replied obliquely, leaving the others to speculate on the type of heavy, dire measures that Black revolutionaries were reputed to employ. “That’s right.” Kahn agreed. “That’s their business. Ours is to get the word out.” Yet there was common ground after all. Persecution is the midwife of revolution and the nourishment of political movements. Donnie and Jumpin’ Jack were the stuff from which hay could be made. We all recognized opportunity when we saw it and it came in dress blues, as American as apple pie, from the halls to the shores. The cases had cachet. They were a raison d’etre for the political existence of all of us. And so, despite our differences and mutual loathing, we were prepared to compromise for the cause. As the day wore on, we debated civilly, restraining our worst impulses. Dealing and brokering agreements like the cigar-chomping, conventioneering politicianss we professed to detest. Finally, with a nod in Sukari’s direction, Kahn tossed a bone. “I think SOGI would be willing to put up funds for the defense in both cases. And to put money into publicity that would bring as many civilians as possible on to the Base for the trials.” He looked at me. “We have a right to attend these courts martial, don’t we, Eric? Don’t GIs have a right to public trials?” I confirmed that they did. “Well that’s a key ingredient in this action.” Kahn asserted. “Organizing hundreds of activists and supporters to attend them. Bring them onto the Base. It’ll drive the brass up a wall. But,” he lectured, “ it will require discipline.” He was chiding us about drugs, I suspected. I decided to let his editorial comment slide. Certainly my recent trip to the stars had dampened my enthusiasm for recreational chemicals. It was a good thing, I mused, that he didn’t have an inkling of what was going on over at Ditmar. Our ship would have been blown out of the water. Kahn started to lay out a strategy. SOGI would begin with announcements in their newsletter of the political persecution of the GIs at Pendleton. The SOGI directors would get the copy placed as news in as many

Peace organization and underground papers as possible and the left-wing news services as well. Contacts with friendly congressional liaisons would be made. A letter campaign under SOGI auspices would be initiated. Trust fund accounts would be opened. Demonstrations that coincided with trial dates had to be organized. Celebrities recruited to speak out on the political repression of GIs who resist institutional military racism and war crimes. He dropped names as if they were his best friends: I.F. Stone, Joan Baez, Staughton Lynd, Noam Chomsky, Robert Scheer, Jane Fonda, Wayne Morse. A defense committee would need to be established, which Kahn modestly agreed to head. If we wanted the money we would get it...provided it was produced and directed by Kahn. And if the Black organizations wanted to do a separate fund raising activity just for the Black Unity case, that was just fine. So long as we all agreed that there was a common struggle going on. The appearance of a coordinated fight against a common enemy would have to be maintained, even if the organizations were separate. Those were his terms. We all accepted. Kahn’s thunderburst of conceptual creativity got everyone pulling together. Work was parsed out and eagerly accepted. Everyone seemed delighted to get in on the ground floor of this new movement effort. I was impressed by his accomplishment, bringing everyone back into the fold. He wasn’t called the Guru for nothing. We departed Malibu with understandings and deals. Outside, the tempest had diminished into broken cloud cover. Rays of bright yellow-silver poked through, spotlighting a green-tinged sea. Rain ebbed to a fine mist. The winds abated. It was still wet, still cold, but not severe. The gods seemed appeased by our efforts and sent us these omens as encouragement that we might play out this temporal drama as a comedy. For the moment, we had been provided importance and meaning. Swollen with our own significance, we strutted to our vehicle, confident that we would be making history. We only had ourselves to blame if we failed. 28. Somehow Dino got loose from Mitch. We couldn’t find him anywhere. We drove all over the neighborhood looking for him, but to no avail. “Maybe he tried to make it back to Ditmar,” Emma speculated. “Sort of like a ‘Lassie Come Home’ type of thing. Dogs do that, don’t they? Go back to what they think is home?” “I’m going over there this afternoon, to work on the Black Unity case. Got a meeting with Woods and Dawg. I’ll check it out.” I replied. “But I -157-

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doubt that he’s there. The animal’s been fucked up. Probably couldn’t find his way back there any better than he could find his way back here.” “He got himself into the van,” Clayton related, when I inquired about Dino. I was waiting at the Ditmar house for my clients to show up. The place was a shambles. The couch in the living room was sprouting springs and cotton stuffing. The curtains dangled out of kilter, cut and torn. Drawers from the cabinets had been removed. Their charred remnants rested in the fireplace where they had been burned for heat. Clayton saw my curious glances at the devastation. “They cut off the power and gas, ‘cause we ain’t paid the bills,” he explained. “Ain’t no never mind. We ain’t gonna be here long anyway. So, we found that mutt sitting in the passenger seat like he was waiting for someone to drive him away from the place. We was all fucked up on Ripple,” Clayton said in mitigation. “He snapped at us when we found him.” Clayton smiled at me. His jaundiced eyes darted with deception, left to right and back again like the carriage of an old Royal in the hands of a skilled typist. With a “what the fuck are you going to do about it?” expression he relayed a version of the details. “We needed the van and that fuckin’ dog wouldn’t let us near it. We had to do somethin’, so Doc and me distracted him on one side and The Deputy, he comes up from behind and conks the mutt on the head with a baseball bat. Kinda knocks him out, like. And so we was able to get this pillowcase over his head, and tie his feet together like they do to them cows in the rodeo. But the animal’s bleedin’ all over the place from getting hit on the head and squirmin’ and wriggling’ and making these weird growling noises. We didn’t have no choice, ya understand. So, Doc gets out the 12 gauge and we drive him out to them arroyos east of here where we do the firearms training. “We was gonna dump him, ya understand, but the dog’s nuts. He’s so pissed he’s tryin’ to kill us. Snappin’ and bite’n. So Dawg gets the idea that it might be good to get some target practice on a moving target. And so we cut him loose and he starts runnin’ ‘round crazy like. Snarling and pullin’ back his lips, showing them big teeth like dogs do. And the hair on his back starts standing up. He’s a mad dog. Anyway, I throw some rocks at him and yell for him to start runnin’ but he ain’t moving. He’s staring straight at us, like he’s going to attack. Doc raises the bat to protect hisself and the dog like kinda

goes for him. So I throw another stone at him and hit him on the head and he starts to run a bit. He’s movin’ now. An’ that’s when Dawg fires on him. Hits him, but he don’t go down. Just like loses some of his ass but he’s still on his feet. He turns and looks at us and then turns back to try to get away. Dawg shoots again, but I think he was using birdshot or somethin’ cause the hound still don’t go down. He yelps a bit but keeps moving. Zig zaggin’ cause he’s been hit. Well we gotta finish him off now. It wouldn’t be right to leave him in that condition, would it? Dawg takes another shot and this time the dog drops. I goes over to look and ya know that was one tough hombre, cause he’s still alive and he tries to bite me. And so Dawg comes up and shoots him in the head. Point blank. Man, that motherfucker exploded! Fuckin’ blood everywhere! I ain’t seen shit like that since the Nam. Anyway, we drag him over to where somebody dumped a whole lotta shit and toss him into a cardboard box, that used ta have like a dishwasher or somethin’ in it. So we offed the dog. No need for you to be wastin’ any more of your time lookin’ for him.” Before I could say anything, the phone rang. At least something was still working in that dump. “It’s for you,” Clayton said. “The Deputy.” “It was a bullshit tip,” Dawg whined. He was calling from the Oceanside lock-up. There had been some more trouble, he explained, and he needed my help once again “A bullshit tip. How the fuck can they charge me with dealing weed?” he wanted to know. “It wasn’t fuckin’ weed.” “What was it?” I inquired. “Oregano. I bought this bunch of oregano. Them assholes just out of Basic don’t know fuckin’ oregano from marijuana.” Woods had plans to go to LA that evening with Sukari. He had a meeting with the Panthers, to drum up support for his case. She was off borrowing some wheels. Woods was already late for our appointment. With Dawg in the slammer, there was not going to be much time to do any trial preparation anyway, so I left a message with Clayton to tell Donnie Woods that I went to check out Dawg in jail and I’ll catch him when he gets back on Sunday night. That we’d go over our final defense plans then. “We’re on defense.” I explained to Clayton. “We gotta pick a panel of jurors and then Eaton has to put on his case. There’s no chance he’ll be on the stand Monday.” Then I left for the city lock-up and another bout with the incorrigible Deputy Dawg. “I was getting 10 bucks for a half ounce.” he complained in a selfrighteous lament. “Fuckin’ cops busted me for dealing. But it ain’t weed, I -159-

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tell ya,” he grumbled. “It’s oregano. They can’t bust ya for sellin’ oregano, can they?” “They can if you are selling it as dope,” I advised. “Maybe it isn’t weed but it sure is fraud and they can bust you for that.” “But who’s going to testify against me? What grunt is going to go into court and say he was trying to buy dope and got cheated?” “How’d you get busted?” I asked. “Undercover cop,” Deputy Dawg admitted. “There’s your answer, then,” I said. “That’s who is going to court to testify against you.” “Don’t tell anyone this,” Deputy Dawg pleaded. “You’re my lawyer, right? You can’t tell anyone what I tell you. Right?” “That’s right,” I said. “Attorney-client privilege is what it’s called. As long as you tell me about something you’ve done, not what you’re going to do, I can’t give it up.” “Well,” Deputy Dawg whispered. “I got me this deal. Ya see. The brass are supposed to cut me lose. Ya dig? Ya think this will fuck it up?” Here was the opportunity I had been waiting for. “Deputy Dawg, Woods and I know about your deal,” I revealed. He looked at me with shock. “You do! How’d you find out?” “Deputy Dawg, you don’t beat an armed robbery in Southern California unless you make some kind of deal.” I looked him in the eye. “Don’t you think we got that figured out? And you didn’t ever brag to us how you beat that rap, so we knew you were holding back something big, like they had turned you. We aren’t that dumb.” “Then what were you waiting for? What were you going to do?” he wanted to know. “Nothing.” I said, without adding it up for him that we had been using him to pass on false defense strategy to the brass. “We figured you’d fuck up sooner or later and you did. Woods can burn you now,” I told him. “He knows all about you turnin’ into an informant. Now that you’re in here, you’re out of the Black Unity case. He doesn’t need you any more. All he has to do is rap about you being the informer inside the Ditmar house and you’re a dead duck. You know that house is bugged. The FBI, the brass and the Oceanside PD all listen in. Once they find out that the brothers are on to you, know you are an informer, you’re no use to them either. You’re out in the

cold on both sides. The law’ll fuck you in the ass on this phony dope bust. You’re just a nigger to them and if they can’t get any more use out of you, you’re history. And if they let you off, well that’ll be just more proof to the brothers that you’re on the man’s payroll. Your game is up.” He comprehended the desperation of his situation and decided to make some amends. “There’s somethin’ I gotta tell you,” he said, looking sincere for the first time ever. “They gave me this ammo case with a belt of .30 cal. machine gun ammo in it,” he confessed. “I was ‘sposed to give it over to Donnie Woods. For him to bring up to LA to the Panther meeting this weekend. So’s they could bust him on it just befo’ the trial. Once the bust goes down, they’ll kill the trial and I cop to a Captain’s Mast. When I got to Ditmar this afternoon with the ammo, Woods wasn’t there, so I handed it over to Clayton and headed downtown to see if I could sell a few lids before y’all arrived. Clayton’s gonna give it to Donnie and they gonna bust him when he hits the INS checkpoint on I-5.” I knew what I had to do, but there wasn’t much time. By now, Woods was probably at Ditmar, if he hadn’t already left. He’d get the case of hot ammo from Clayton but even if he figured it was fishy that Clayton was giving it to him for the Panthers, instead of keeping it for Katanga, he wouldn’t be able to say “no.” He couldn’t lose face in front of the brothers. He’d take it. Put it in the car and then get stopped at the Immigration Station up the road, halfway between Oceanside and San Clemente. They’d pull him over, pretending it was just a regular spot check for illegal aliens but they’d have been tipped. They’d find it and whisk him off to the brig. So much for the Black Unity trial, the political statement. It was a clever plan. Deputy Dawg hung on to me. “Do you think you can get me out on bail?” He pleaded. “If I can’t get out fast, they’ll throw the book at me. I’m fucked.” It was an ethical dilemma. He had told me things in confidence. If I left him in the lurch to save Donnie with the information he had given me, I would be breaching my duty to him. But who the fuck cared. He was a stoolie. He had set up my friend as well as my client. I didn’t give a shit about the legal niceties of it all. I had to stop a bust from going down. “Sure, sure.” I said. “But I gotta go do it fast. It’s Friday afternoon. If I don’t move on this, you’ll be in all weekend. I gotta get out of here now and get to work.” I rang for the bailiff to let me out of the interview cell. It was pure perversity. The guy let me cool my heels with Deputy Dawg for another 20 precious minutes before he let me out. Then I got delayed again because the -161-

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turnkey entrusted with control of the final door was slacking off somewhere out of hearing range. The ordeal lasted a half hour all together. I raced for my car, fumbled for the keys and pulled into a Friday afternoon traffic flow that was beginning to congeal. I couldn’t take the chance of getting pulled over. I just had to go with it and seemed to hit every light along the way. I fell behind ancient drivers whose heads barely poked up above the seats. Phantoms who drove 15 mph in 25 mph zones. My suit became sticky with sweat. My heart raced. If I didn’t make it, didn’t get there before they left, the whole case would go down the tubes. A plainclothes car was parked at the end of the block. I had become proficient in spotting them. This one was a dark blue Chevy. A couple stiffs with crew cuts and necks that stretched the collars of their shirts to the limit obtrusively occupied its front seat. They forced me to cruise the last block slowly, as if I hadn’t a care. Yet I did. As I passed the stakeout, I saw Woods backing a car out of the driveway. I honked and he stopped to let me pass. I blocked his progress and waved at him to make sure he knew it was me. We both got out. Woods gave me a “power” shake. “We’re under surveillance.” I whispered, smiling to cover my concern. “Don’t look. I just drove past a stakeout down the corner.” “Big deal,” he said, smiling back. “The pigs are always checking us out.” “Maybe so, but I think this time you got something in the car that they want to find real bad.” His grin got bigger. “How’d you find out about that?” he whispered, as a tiny bead of sweat formed on his forehead. “What’s happenin’, baby?” Sukari called, a bit too loud, from the car. “We gotta get movin’ if we’re gonna make that meeting.” “Stay cool, girl. We got some important business here.” Woods told her. “The pigs are moving this way.” He muttered under his breath. “Pull the car back into the driveway.” I told Sukari. She hesitated, not willing to accept orders from a white man. “Do as he says,” Woods repeated with firmness. “Don’t be fuckin’ around.” “All the way to the garage,” I said. “As soon as I can, I’ll pull in behind you and block the view.”

The Chevy with the crew cut crew slowly rolled past. If they knew about the ammo, they were in a dilemma. They had no grounds for a bust. Nothing illegal was happening. As long as we made no moves they could call furtive, we had them in a stalemate. Their job had been to tail Woods until the bust went down, where it was planned, not to attempt a bust themselves. They stared at us, trying to provoke a move. I nodded at them, letting them know we knew who they were. I pulled a file from my car and opened it as if I were going over some legal issue with Donnie. It was all a ruse. When they got to the end of the block they turned the corner and rolled out of sight. We had our opportunity. I got back into my car and put it in the driveway behind Sukari. “You got it in the trunk?” I asked Woods. He nodded. “What’s it in?” “An ammo can in a duffel.” “Get ready.” I told him. I walked out to the sidewalk to scout for the cops. They had turned and parked around the corner but I was able to see the nose of the Chevy protruding a bit farther than they had planned. I gave Woods a slight wink and a nod and he moved the canister into the garage, under a coat. We both began to breathe a lot easier. “How’d you know about that?” he asked. “Half the fuckin’ city knows about it,” I said. “It was a set up and you almost fell for it. We still got to figure a way to get it off these premises.” “It all makes sense now,” Woods observed, scratching his chin. “I couldn’t figure why Clayton would turn it over to me. Hell, for all he knew, the Panthers would be using it to blow his man, Katanga into the next galaxy. But, ya know, I couldn’t just say no and turn it down.” “Yeah, yeah. I understand. You had to save face and all that.” “But are you sure that it was a set-up? How do you really know?” “Can’t tell you,” I said. “It’s an ethical situation. Lawyer-client privilege.” I winked. Woods smiled. “Heard ‘bout the Deputy. What’d they bust him for this time?” “Sellin’ oregano to the recruits. Tellin’ them it’s weed. Fuckin’ guy’s got no limits on his bullshit. Anyway, I gotta go. Promised to see if I could get him out.” “Damn well better” Woods laughed, then turned serious. “If he’s here when I get back from LA he’s history. I’ll ice the motherfucker.”

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“Well, it isn’t just him,” I observed. “You gotta reckon with Clayton and Doc too. Anyway, you’ll know it was a set-up for sure if they stop you at the Immigration Station and do a big time search,” I said. “I hope the car is clean.” “Sukari” Woods yelled. “You sure the car’s clean?” “You bet.” she confirmed. “Borrowed it from Mrs. Harrington this afternoon. I don’t think the Reverend’s car is a problem.” “Well, if it is,” I mused, “it will sure make for one hell of a headline.” I handed Woods some irrelevant papers from my file and pointed at them with animation. In case anyone was spying. I watched Woods and Sukari drive off to LA with a smug satisfaction. I shared Sukari’s confidence that the car was clean. Reverend Harrington might have been a lot of things but a dabbler in illicit substances he most certainly was not. Yet I couldn’t help suppress my curiosity. How, I wondered, had she come by his car. As far as I knew, she wouldn’t have come within mile of that gent on purpose. Woods and Sukari were tailed by the blue Chevy until they reached the Immigration Station where they were stopped and searched. He noticed an MP van parked in the back. It followed them all the way to San Clemente, like a polar bear stalking a seal. Then it turned back onto the Base. Its prey had escaped. I went into the Ditmar house and made a call to the Provost Marshall’s office. I explained Deputy Dawg’s problem to the Duty Officer, omitting the fact that I had warned their mark. I was counting on the tail not reporting the failure of their plan fast enough to interfere with my appeal for Dawg’s release. I told them that I thought that it might be in their best interest to keep their end of the bargain with Dawg and to spring him from the Oceanside lock-up. They denied knowing anything. Denied having any idea what the hell I was talking about. But Deputy Dawg called me around eight that night. He thanked me for the good work and told me he’d be seeing me on Monday, ready for trial. That was the last I ever saw or heard from him, directly at least. He reacted the way I suspected. That night he hot wired the old hippie van, and disappeared. 29. I was barely through the front door when I learned how Sukari came by the Reverend Harrington’s car. Marylou Harrington was sitting on the couch

alongside Emma, with Joanie and Louise hovering like protective wrens above a nest. Her eyes were red from crying. Her head hung and her shoulders were hunched in distress. There was a suitcase beside her. The women glowered at me as I entered the room. It was obvious that Marylou had been dumped by the Reverend and consequently, one half of the entire species of Homo sapiens had become the enemy. He was the stereotypical middle-aged male, abandoning the spouse of his youth for some skinny, young thing. Raylene, I suspected. And if I stayed around, I was going to be the surrogate scapegoat for eons of masculine treachery and infidelity. I quickly retreated into the kitchen and made a call to Lucky. Thankfully he was home and well advanced in a bout of recreational hemp experimentation. I begged an invitation. After several hours of space travel, punctuated by earsplitting audio Stairway to Heaven, Purple Haze and Surrealistic Pillow, I’d had enough. I summoned my courage. If the women hadn’t finished their indictment of the entire Y chromosome population by now, it was just too bad. I was going home, ready to risk the consequences. I found Marylou alone in the living room, making up the couch for the night. Her spirits had not improved. The coven’s encouragement had failed to make her feel better. “Let me give you a hand,” I offered. “Thanks,” she said, “but it’s almost finished.” “Did he leave you,” I asked with a bit too much boldness, “or did you leave him?” “A little of both, I guess,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t compete with youth. But I won’t live with it either.” I sat down on the corner of the couch and patted a spot for her to do the same. She complied. “I’m not good at this,” I admitted. “So, I hope it comes out right. Give me the benefit of the doubt as to good intentions. OK?” She was wary, non-committal. “I hope I can.” I looked straight into her eyes. She retreated as far as the couch would permit, then relented. “Maybe you’ve been liberated,” I began. “Maybe it’s a new beginning for you, not an ending. If that’s what you want to make of it. On the other hand, you can let it overwhelm you. There are a lot of people out there who grow old letting the sadness and bitterness of life consume them. Then, at the end, they’ve got nothing but regrets. “When I first met you, at that afternoon thing at your place, remember? I said to myself, now there’s a woman who’s in a bad marriage. You were -165-

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wearing ‘I’m unhappy!’ like a big neon sign. And the Reverend, he was condescending and flirting right in front of you. You served the coffee. Meanwhile he was all over Raylene with his eyes. It was a bad scene. You were both into making you a drudge. So you grew into looking the part. When I saw the lines around your eyes, all I could think of was how they announced your unhappiness. Now I’m not some clever guy who can read people’s lives in their faces, by if I could see that, then probably a lot of other people could as well. “But you’re free now and you can go positive. I once had a friend who, by every objective criteria of beauty, you’d have to say was a very ugly woman. But there was something about her. It was the way she looked at life. The way she carried herself that made her beautiful. It taught me a lesson. You look on the outside like you feel on the inside and the whole world can see it. “What you had, what you were, wasn’t going well for you. Maybe you were both too close to be able to say it. But now that he’s left you, you can be bitter and angry and pretty soon you’ll look that way on the outside too. Or you can take the opportunity to be liberated and get a chance at a makeover. You’ve sure got plenty to work with. The lines aren’t so deeply etched that they can’t be merry and wise.” “Marylou,” I said, touching her gently on the shoulder, “You’re out and you’re free. Don’t let bitterness swallow you up. There’s plenty of life and fun out there for the taking.” She surprised me, putting her arms around me and giving me a hug. And just as she did, Emma walked in. I saw her first. She was shocked. For a moment she just seemed to hang there. I winked at her and smiled. She eased up. “I’m glad you’re out of it, Marylou,” I said. “And I think you are too.” She broke the hug and took my hand in both of hers. “Thank you,” she said, letting go slowly, following me as I got up, “very much.” Emma was curious and perhaps a bit jealous too. As we got ourselves ready for bed, she brushed out her hair with a bit too much vigor. “So, what were you talking to Marylou about?” she probed. “Well,” I hedged, “I just figured that you and the two crones had filled her head with anger and bitterness, in the name of female support and that it

wouldn’t make her really feel any better about either herself or about men in general, so I decided to tell her what a man thought about her situation.” “And what was that?” Emma asked defensively. I repeated what I told Marylou. Emma looked up at me. Her mouth hung open a bit in surprise. “You told her that?” she exclaimed. “I didn’t know you had that in you.” “I don’t know what got into me.” I laughed. “Maybe Lucky’s Acapulco Gold. But, you know, I really meant it. I’d like for us to be positive about life as we get old. I’d like you to age with beautiful lines of wisdom and glowing contentment. I want us to have that. But I never find a way to say it. I feel it when I look at you and try to imagine us in twenty years. But I can’t bring myself to say those things. And even when I feel ready, it’s not the time or the place, or you say something that pisses me off or something just mundane that breaks my mood and I can’t say, shut up, Emma, I’m feeling something beautiful about you or about us and I want to share that with you. Instead we seem to end up arguing about whose turn it is to fold the laundry or making an excuse for not taking out the trash.” “I don’t understand,” she said getting up and walking over to me. Looking up at me. Backing me up against a wall. “Why can you say caring things to others and not ever find the time of the place to say things like that to the person you love?” I looked back at her and put my hands on her bare shoulders. “You know, I’ve given that some thought,” I admitted. “And the best excuse that I’m able to come up with, a poor excuse really, is that it’s harder to say loving things to someone you love. Marylou is easy. I’m detached. Marylou can’t hurt me because I don’t love her. I like her and want to help her be happy, but I don’t love her. She can’t hurt me. You, Emma, can hurt me because I love you. So with you I have to be harder, to protect myself. I’m not afraid of other women, but I’m afraid of you. Something inside me keeps saying ‘Protect yourself. Don’t let yourself get hurt.’ Because I love you and if I give it all up to you I can be really hurt. Funny, isn’t it, that it’s harder to be open with someone you love than with someone you don’t.” She put her arms around my waist and pulled herself close. Rested her head on my chest. “Boy, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. You don’t have to be afraid of me, Eric.” she whispered. “I’m not going to hurt you.” “I’m not so sure,” I whispered. She kissed me and swung her leg up over my hip. Her soft thigh snuggled against my side and she began to climb me as I stood there. I put my

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hands around her buttocks and helped pull her up. There was a passion that had not been there for many months. It was a special pleasure. 30. The next afternoon I had a speaking engagement at the Unitarian Church. Reverend Harrington, who was not of that denomination, had set it up. The topic was to be “The Church as a Sanctuary.” The Unitarians were operating out of a post-modern, raw concrete and stained glass building, solid yet simple. It was situated on a large, grassy, well maintained lot. The parking area was sufficient for more than a hundred cars. There was no steeple, as I imagined necessary for Christian denominations. But I had also heard that some people didn’t think Unitarians qualified as Christians, and I’m not really sure how vigorously the Unitarians argued the point. Inside, there was none of that blood and suffering. No Christs on crosses. I was greeted by Reverend Harrington and the host pastor, a pallid, mealy fellow with quasi-hip sideburns and inappropriate bell-bottoms. Skinny Raylene stood behind them and smiled at me, with the smugness of a victor as Harrington introduced me, benignly, as a civil liberties lawyer who had come from “back East” to create a legal defense team for military war dissenters. During the obligatory small talk, the Reverend said nothing about the absence of Marylou or Reverend Simpson. Everyone maintained a pretense that there was nothing out of the ordinary. “We have a pretty fair crowd,” Harrington observed, extending his arm in the direction of some twenty people who were seated in a circle, on metal folding chairs, in a large, all-purpose room. They were an older bunch. Retirees and those on the verge. As a group they were not directly threatened by a draft call to an unpopular war. For them the War was more an intellectual, political and/or moral exercise. Some of the women eyed me with curious interest. These men came in three, easy-to-recognize categories: fidgeters who had been dragged to the event against their will, the sedated ones who slumped in their chairs and lastly, those with a grudge that they wanted to vent and who sat with their arms folded across swollen bellies. I was an ambassador from a generation none of them could comprehend. A representative of an exotic culture that seemed to anger and obsess them. It was going to be a tough crowd.

“I was told that you call part of this church a sanctuary,” I commenced. “Probably you know that the tradition of churches as sanctuaries goes back to the Middle Ages, when it was forbidden to enter a church with weapons. It was a place where the King’s laws could not be enforced. And that meant that people, no matter what they had done, could find safety from the power of the state within its walls. A place of peace, where to do violence was forbidden on pain of excommunication. Right now, up in Berkeley, at a Unitarian Church similar to this one, there is that kind of a sanctuary taking place. Several sailors from the aircraft carriers, Coral Sea and Ranger have taken refuge in the church to protest against the War. They are protesting the fact that the bombing campaign against the people of North Vietnam is indiscriminate. They are trying to let everyone know that civilians are being targeted for bombing. By being able to take sanctuary in a church, the people have a chance to visit them and talk, to question and understand. The sailors are not going to stay in there forever. Just long enough for the issue to build and grow on its own. Then they intend to turn themselves in. That’s the kind of thing the church can do. And they are the kind of GIs I came down here to defend. “Maybe some of you have problems with the peace movement, hippies, and Anti-War activities, generally,” I said, acknowledging the body language of some of the men in the room. “But every one of us, regardless of our politics could, under some circumstances, find ourselves either forced to submit to the government or to pay the penalty for our conscience. Therefore it is important for each of us to recognize the significance of the sanctuary tradition for our modern condition. Any one of us might need it some day. “One of the cases I am involved in right now makes that very point. In about a month from now, Marine Corporal John Conlon will be going on trial, facing as much as 14 years at hard labor because, when he was in combat in Vietnam, he developed strong moral objections to the War. He has said that he was forced to commit acts that we called war crimes in World War II. When he talked about it with his chaplain, he was told that it was ok, that God would forgive him. But he wasn’t satisfied with that brush-off. He began to read about the rules of war and he discovered that his unit was engaging in behavior that had been defined during the Nuremberg Trials as war crimes. He felt betrayed. “So when he got back and was called upon to train others, he refused. He was on his way to a church sponsored sanctuary when he was arrested. Because he told embarrassing truths, the military has decided to throw the book at him. If Corporal Conlon had been able to make it to that sanctuary, -169-

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you all would certainly have heard about his shocking experiences. And it would have helped our country come to grips with the truth about the War. If Corporal Conlon had the chance to address the American people from a sanctuary, people could see that the opposition is broader than just a few long-haired hippies and pinko professors. It includes people like Jack Conlon, an all American boy who has been there and clearly knows what he’s talking about. “Another situation where a sanctuary could certainly make a positive contribution to the national debate is the issue in a case that will begin this Monday morning at Pendleton, when a Black Marine corporal, Donnie Woods, will go on trial for wearing a wristband called a Black Unit identity bracelet. The Black Unity bracelet is a symbol of their demand for dignity. After witnessing the violent way the National Guard took control of Black neighborhoods during the recent riots he felt it was important for the people to know that the combat units of the armed forces are full of Black troops who are bravely fighting and dying, even while their homes are getting burned to the ground and their families shot or arrested, just like the Vietnamese. His wearing the Black Unity identity bracelet represents his demand that the government recognize Black people as good, loyal Americans and treat them with the respect and dignity we all deserve. “Donnie Woods served his country in Vietnam and has a purple heart. He is only two months short of discharge. Corporal Woods is charged with refusing an order to remove the Black Unity identity bracelet, even though it is really no different than wearing a cross, which the military allows. Donnie Woods is not alone. Many troops of all colors feel the same way he does. If there were a sanctuary movement, Black GIs could use it to get public support. And if that happened, we’d all be able to learn a lot more about racism in the military, not from white lawyers like me but from the guys who are putting themselves on the line to bring the civil rights movement to the Armed Forces.” A hand went up. “Isn’t it true,” a ruddy faced gent of World War II vintage asked, “that your work is being funded by the communists? Aren’t you really serving the purposes of the international communist conspiracy by reducing the effectiveness of our fighting forces?” “Funding!” I exclaimed, barely suppressing a chuckle. “I sure wish we had some funding. I’ve been up and down this state looking for funding and

I’m still eating commodity foods. If there are any communists out there, I want you to know that you are failing us. We need money! “As for serving the purposes of the international communist conspiracy, when Congress passed the Uniform Code of Military Justice, it specifically gave every GI the right to be represented by an attorney of his choice. Up to that point, it was possible for a commander to discipline, jail and even execute a GI without a real trial at all. An accused soldier wasn’t even entitled to the opportunity to consult with an actual lawyer. The law now provides for the right to have a civilian attorney. Someone outside the command structure to represent our boys in military trials. What I am doing,” I firmly assured them, “ is actually part of the military system of justice, not something subversive. It is a congressionally authorized service to the country, just like a sanctuary would be a service to God.” With that, our host decided to cut it short. I had begun to invade his turf. He was looking for talk but clearly, no action. Certainly not a sanctuary. He rose to suggest that we might better discuss these matters informally over cookies and tea or coffee. On the walk back to my car after the event, I noticed Harrington open the door of a new car for Raylene. She scooted over to his side, like a teenager on a Saturday night date. They drove away virtually joined at the hip. A few straggling congregants shook their heads. It was a small town after all. Harrington would soon be heading for a new congregation. 31. MOP’s press release announcing the Woods court martial had gotten picked up by much of the underground press. It had made it into the Panther paper, and even into some of the more conventional Black press like the San Francisco Sun. Alternative radio stations like Pacifica carried the announcement. Some of the underground papers described the trial as an opportunity to “invade” the Marines’ most famous base, and to show support for the GI rebellion. Fearing that they were about to be overrun by Black Panthers, the Marines decided to restrict this anticipated band of infiltrators to a location far from their Mainside JAG courtroom. When the morning of the trial arrived, members of the general public were subjected to warrant checks and reviews for possible banning orders. After some delay, the MPs directed approximately 60 tie-dyed, irreverent spectators to a ramshackle World War II vintage storage building within a few hundred yards of the main gate. -171-

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It was hardly more than four walls and a roof. The clapboard exterior had been neglected and the paint was peeling. Inside, it was unfinished. Sunlight filtered through the cracked walls. Whenever the wind whipped up, sand managed to get inside. And the Marines had done little to spruce up the place for the performance. Actual chairs were made available only for the judge, jury, prosecution and defense. For the spectators, they had set up rows of backless benches. They were providing bare bulb lighting. The only color came from the Old Glory and Globe and Anchor flags that were hanging from movable poles to the left and right of the judge’s bench. In their effort to be as inhospitable as possible, they had unwittingly created a kind of “Uncle Tom’s Courtroom.” Given the political message of the case, it was more fitting than they realized. Woods entered, walking down the aisle like a prize-fighter with myself and Captain Jeffers, his entourage. He looked around at his supporters and winced. Apart from Sukari and a couple of Oakland Panthers posing as press, everyone else was white. SOGI had shown up. So had the organizers for the San Diego MOP. But even Clayton and Doc had failed to make a token appearance. It had to hurt. A few moments later Captain Eaton, the prosecutor, arrived with his witnesses in tow. He directed them to a front pew and bid us a perfunctory good morning. We all waited for the judge. The room was electric with anticipation. The spectators whispered snide observations and joked in voices just loud enough for Eaton’s ears. Behind the audience, four white-gloved MPs stood at parade rest. Pistols at the ready. Stone faced. Attempting to be intimidating by shifting their weight from one foot to the other. Puffing out their chests. Nearly another half an hour passed before our judge, Colonel Hansen, entered by a side door. The uniformed personnel snapped to attention as he took his place. Captain Eaton rose to make a statement, but the colonel waved him back to his seat. “I have an order to read from the Base Commander,” he announced solemnly. “No spectators shall be permitted to leave the immediate environs of this building, except to return off Base via the main gate. Anyone violating this order will receive an order banning him from the Base and be otherwise subject to arrest. The members of the press are forbidden to seek or obtain any statement from any member of the Corps except by prior permission of Public Relations. Any obstruction or disruption

of these proceedings or any inappropriate display of disrespect or emotion relating to these proceedings, as determined by the military judge presiding shall result in immediate and permanent ejection from the Base. There is to be no photography and no tape recording of these proceedings, except by official record or by prior written permission of the Base Commander.” The colonel looked out upon the assembly with contempt and disdain. “I hope you understand that,” he said. “I am advised by the Convening Officer that certain charges, originally filed in this matter have been withdrawn.” he continued, half hoping to hear some cheers or applause that would permit him to carry out his threat to eject spectators from the Base. But there was only silence. “The charge of disrespect toward a senior non-commissioned officer is withdrawn. The charge of disobedience of a lawful General Order is withdrawn. There remains to be tried the charges of not being in prescribed uniform, Article 134, and willfully disobeying the lawful order of a senior non-commissioned officer, Article 91. Is that correct, Captain Eaton?” Eaton jumped to his feet. “Yes Sir.” “Are you ready to proceed with the prosecution, captain?” “Yes sir.” “And is the defense ready?” the judge inquired. “No, your honor,” I said. “The defense had not been informed of these dismissals prior to your announcement and we ask the Court for a brief recess to consider the impact of these dismissals on our position.” “Very well,” nodded Colonel Hansen. “You may have one hour. This Court is in recess until eleven hundred hours.” We filed out to consult. “Was some sort of deal possible now?” Captain Jeffers wanted to know. Donnie shook his head. He was determined to proceed as planned. He told us he had no intention of changing his position based on these dismissals. We worried though that the dismissals might make it appear that the case was now less serious, less newsworthy and that the Marines were intent on giving Woods a fair trial before they screwed him. We were also worried that the few members of the press who had come down to cover the trial would leave. I reviewed my notes of the court’s orders. There was a loophole. Neither Woods nor Jeffers could talk to the press, but I could. They were huddled together, like the press usually is at these kind of things, talking to themselves. Speculating. I wandered over in their direction and they took the bait. “Are we allowed to talk to you?” one asked. -173-

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“The order didn’t cover me,” I observed dryly. “ I’m a civilian. The Base Commander can’t prevent me from speaking to the press. I still have the protection of the First Amendment and so do you.” “What do you make of these dismissals?” another asked. “Do you think they still have a case, or have they given up?” “Well, actually, we’re still in the same place as we were before,” I told them. “The out-of-uniform charge carries only a month. But the disobedience of a lawful order, Article 91 can still get Woods six, six and a kick.” “Six, six and a kick?” a reported asked. “What’s that?” “Six months confinement, six months forfeiture of pay and allowances and a Bad Conduct Discharge,” I explained. “The issue is still the same. Was Woods out of uniform because he was wearing the Black Unity identity bracelet? If he was out of uniform, the order of his senior NCO to remove it was lawful. If he was not out of uniform, the order was not lawful. Woods is determined to go ahead and test the regulation, for the sake of all of the Black servicemen.” “Can we quote you on that?” I was asked. “That’s why I’m talking to you.” As I turned to leave, I noticed the profile of an irked Colonel Hansen through the dirty glass windows of the courtroom nee shack. “You heard what he said, Your Honor. I object!” Captain Eaton leaned forward over the counsel table, his meaty palms splayed on either side of his thin file. Together with his flaccid, bulging belly they formed a sort of tripod that supported his upper half. His expansive rear fairly mooned the audience, testing the strength of the seam in his khaki pants. His puffy face, fixed in an apparently perpetual scowl, hinted at anguish. He hadn’t liked what he heard but, as he was bereft of knowledge of the rules of evidence, a whiny appeal was the best he could muster. “Sustained!” Colonel Hansen ruled without waiting for debate. An undercurrent of murmuring rumbled through the spectator gallery. “On what ground?” I asked, curious to know what was wrong. Was it the testimony? The question? “Ask your next question,” Hansen commanded. “I have ruled.” “But I don’t know what was wrong. How can I ask my next question if I don’t know what was wrong with the last one?” “It was prejudicial,” Hansen replied curtly. “ Not probative.”

Eaton nodded in agreement. “That’s right, prejudicial,” he repeated. To be sure, anything that the brass didn’t want to hear was prejudicial, but that didn’t mean it was not probative. We were in the middle of a colloquy concerning the General Order as it related to permissibility of wearing identification bracelets. Gunny Bonham, the NCO who had originally provoked the incident with his demeaning of Deputy Dawg in the mess hall, was the witness. He was claiming that to be genuine an identity bracelet had to be made of metal. Together we had been pouring over the language of the General Order upon which he was relying. With some difficulty, I had managed to get him to agree that the GO failed to discuss the acceptable materials required for construction of the item. “Would leather be ok?” I had asked. He wasn’t sure, but opined that at least the identity part had to be in metal, with writing on it. I asked if it mattered what the writing said. The Gunny said that it did. It had to be a name. “Could it be a nickname?” I had probed. The Gunny thought that it could. “So,” I asked, “it would be ok if I had an ID bracelet with words on it that said something like “Top Grunt.” “Sure,” Gunny agreed. “That would be within the spirit of the GO” “How about if my nickname were ‘Killer?’” That was ok too, according to the Gunny. In fact he knew several guys with that nickname. “Then ‘Brass Killer’ would be all right?” I asked next and that’s when Eaton got the point and objected. It was a matter of content. The concept of “Black Unity” was content offensive to the Gunny and he was clearly representative of the state of mind that existed among most of his NCO and officer ilk. Hansen didn’t want that in the record, but it was too late. I asked my next question, which undoubtedly was even more prejudicial. “What if my nickname was ‘Black Unity’?” “Objection,” Eaton screamed. “No one has that nickname.” “Sustained,” said Hansen. “How do you know that no one has that nickname?” I replied, ignoring Hansen’s ruling. “I’ll bet you never even asked. How do you know that Donnie Woods here isn’t called ‘Black Unity’ by all of his friends?” “I sustained the objection, counsel,” Hansen emphasized with a hammering of his gavel. “Yes, your Honor,” I said. “But I am entitled to a record here and that means that I have a right to know whether you are ruling that the content of -175-

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the communication expressed by the identity of the bracelet is governed by the GO This is a matter of constitutional law. We are dealing with the right to free speech.” “The General Order speaks of the identity of the individual wearing the bracelet. His individual identity,” the colonel replied. “That’s my interpretation of the law. Free speech is a civilian concept. We’re in the military. We’re not going to sit hear and speculate as to what someone might be called. If your client was wearing a bracelet that said ‘Black Unity’ and you put on some evidence to prove that it was his nickname, I would listen to that. But right now there is no evidence that he was wearing anything more than a shoelace around his wrist, so I don’t have to even get to the point of his identity.” “You mean that it’s how one communicates the statement, not the content of the statement itself, that is at issue here?” “That’s right, ” said the colonel. “Good order and discipline require that in the military we limit the means by which we communicate our ideas.” “So if we have two wrist bands, each communicating the same idea, one in writing on metal that said “Black Unity” and the other symbolically by braiding, good order and discipline can permit one and prohibit another?” “Yes, that’s right,” said the judge. “But when I look at the GO, Your Honor, it only says that you can communicate a message concerning your identity by means of a wrist band. There are no other limitations. There is no requirement that the identity be communicated in words. It says nothing about metal or cloth. Neither the Gunny here, nor, with all respect, Your Honor, has the power to issue or modify a General Order. Therefore, I submit that we have to get back to the issue of what is meant by “identity.” The colonel’s face reddened. “I have ruled, counsel. Do you have anything further to ask this witness?” I did not. The point was made. The colonel then ordered the matter adjourned for the day. The alternative media railed: “RACIST COURT MARTIAL!” “How,” one moderator of a Berkeley radio station asked, “could the Marines try a heroic Black veteran and seek to put him in jail, for wearing a shoelace on his wrist that merely symbolized his pride in his Black identity?” He went on to

suggest that letters be written to the few sympathetic congressmen willing to ask questions. It was a politically untenable position for the Marines. They had nothing to gain. Over the evening recess, the top brass apparently realized this and asked Washington for a clarification of the issue. Captain Jeffers called me at home, late and told me that they had decided to postpone the trial until they got the clarification. There would be no proceedings the following morning. The next day, instead of working on the trial, I began to write a motion. If the GO required a “clarification,” I argued, then it would be unfair to convict a Marine on the basis of an ambiguity that the top generals were admitting existed. Woods had to be cleared of any charge that required “willfulness.” 32. My motion to dismiss may actually have helped Donnie Woods. Although it rubbed the brasses’ noses in the contradiction, it forced someone in Washington to take notice. Woods called me a week later. “Can you give me a ride?” he asked. “Sure, where are you?” “Main gate.” “What the hell are you doing there?” I asked in unmuted surprise. He had been restricted to Base since the trial went into recess, pending the decision from Washington, “They discharged me this afternoon. he said. “ Fastest fuckin’ discharge I ever heard of. A couple of MPs came by and hustled me out of the kitchen. They just ran me through a physical. Had me sign a bunch of papers. The next thing I knew, I was standing here calling for a ride.” “What kind of discharge you get?” I asked. “Honorable,” he chuckled. “The only way I’d sign the fuckin’ papers is if the DD-214 said honorable. Oh shit, wait a second.” he said, and the phone was silent. I waited. “MPs just handed me a Ban Order.” He laughed. “Can you dig it. One minute they won’t let me off the Base and the next, I can’t ever go back on again. Even though I’m now an honorably discharged Marine Corps Vietnam Vet with a purple heart. These guys are too much!” I met Woods at the main gate. He was sitting on a duffel loaded with all of his stuff, puffing on a Kool, like he was waiting for a train. He jumped up when he saw me coming, threw his gear into the back of my car and we took off. -177-

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“Wanna get a drink,” I suggested, “to celebrate an Honorable Discharge?” “Deal,” he replied through a broad grin. We went to one of those dives on the main drag, where the grunts demanded the music at full volume. Where the beer signs behind the bar were in blue and red neon, and the strobe lights flicker above a tiny stage so the go go girls appear to move as if they were in an early silent film. Where horny privates just out of basic pushed and shoved to stick dollar bills into their bras. Where they only served the crummy domestic beers and no one knew any better. We took a table near the door, the size of a medium pizza. It was sticky wet with the spillage of drink and the slobbering of 18 year-olds. “So what are you goin’ to do now?” I asked. “Dunno.” Woods shrugged. “This happened faster than I expected. Came as a surprise. And getting banned from the Base puts a crimp in things. I can’t hang with the bros now. Except when they let ‘em off Base. And it won’t be long before I’m an outsider. I won’t be up on shit. It’s one thing to organize while you’re in, while you’ve got the same things to lose as the people you’re working with. But being out makes it another deal. Me and Sukari talked about that. She figures that I ought to go up to Oakland and join up with the Panthers.” “What do you think?” “Well, I like the Panthers a lot,” Wood hedged. “but I just got out of the military and I sure don’t want to be going back into something like I just came out of. I got a chance here to get an education with my GI Bill. I’m thinking that maybe I ought to go to hotel and restaurant school and get a degree. Then, I’ll see. I’m not saying I’m not going to be active. I’m just saying I don’t think that right now I want to make the revolution a full time job.” “I can understand that.” I nodded agreeably. “I was hoping that you and Sukari would hang around through Jack’s trial though. I think it’s important that there is a Black presence supporting him.” “I can dig it,” Woods said, taking a long swig on his beer. He looked like he needed time to find the right words, so I gave it to him. Finally, he collected his thoughts. “I dunno if you noticed,” he began, “but the only Black folks at my trial were Sukari, some Oakland Panthers and a couple of

reporters. None of the brothers showed. I don’t mean the Marines. They couldn’t come. But no one else. Clayton and Doc didn’t show and they didn’t do shit to get anyone else to come. It was a white show. Know what I mean?” “Yeah, I noticed,” I muttered. “And I didn’t like it one bit either.” “Well the point I want to make is this. I can’t organize on the Base. I haven’t got any influence at the house. And even if I do get Black folks to come, how’s it going to look, them coming out for Jack when they didn’t come out for me? All in all, we’re fuckin’ lucky the Corps decided to let me out before someone noticed.” “Maybe they did notice and that’s why you’re out,” I speculated. “Yeah, maybe so.” He nodded thoughtfully and took a long drag on his smoke. “Maybe they saw that the Black Unity thing wasn’t a real threat to them and that they had it under control all along. There wasn’t any need to make a fuss and get the civilians all riled up when the troops weren’t.” “Well that’s one way of looking at it, I suppose. In which case, I guess you’ll be leaving soon.” “Kinda looks that way,” he said, rocking back in his chair and downing the rest of his brew. “I don’t want you to think that I’m deserting you,” he said. “But the truth is, there isn’t shit I can do for you except be a Black face in the crowd and I’m never going to play that role.” “I understand.” I said with disappointment in my voice. I had anticipated a day something like this since I returned from New York. It was the foreseen fruit of the segregationist politics that Katanga’s cronies implemented. Ironically, I viewed my successful defense of Donnie Woods to be a defeat. His release was a letdown. Now there would be no demonstrable connection between racism in the military against Blacks and racism by the military against the Vietnamese. It made me chuckle unconsciously. Woods asked me what was so funny. “I was thinking about a speech I gave a while back. To a bunch of Unitarians.” I explained. “I told them that because Congress had authorized the use of civilian lawyers in military courts, I was actually performing a government sanctioned service. When I said it, I thought to myself that it was a load of crap. But look what happened. I got you off. Now there won’t be any connection between the Blacks’ struggle against racism in the Corps and Jumpin’ Jack’s trial. I actually helped the government divide the movement. I think that’s fuckin’funny.” “Yeah.” Woods smiled sympathetically. “I see where you’re coming from. Think the same kind of thing could happen with Jack?”

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“That’s what I’m worried about.” I admitted. “If I do my job like a lawyer, I’ll probably cut the rug out from under his political statement. I really am a government agent. Ironic, isn’t it?” “Don’t beat yourself up around it.” Woods consoled me. “Winning cases for GIs isn’t a bad thing. Can you give me a lift back to the Ditmar house?” he asked almost apologetically. “I’ve got some personal shit stashed up in the attic. Pictures from the Nam. A few souvenirs. My diary of the year over there. Someday, I may want to write it up. I’d like to get it before someone decides it would be good for the fireplace. Know what I mean?” “Unfortunately, I do.” I sighed. “Let’s go. The sooner the better as far as I’m concerned.” When we rounded the corner onto Ditmar, we smelled it. There is no other smell like it. The acrid, caustic aroma of burning toxins, old paint, dry, aged wood, fiber and plastic, as it is being doused with water. There were blinking lights on the tops of vehicles. The crackling sound of radio communications rended the air. A crowd stood across the street, held back by a yellow tape barrier, patrolled by uniformed officers. Clayton and Doc stood out, the only Black faces among the spectators. Clayton had his hands in his pockets. Doc’s arms were folded across his chest. They were in animated conference. Their white teeth glistened. They laughed. Did little shuck and jive steps. They were not upset. Opposite, yellow-orange flames were playing peek-a-boo from the windows of the bungalow. Dancing the shimmy in the breeze. Dense gray smoke billowed into the atmosphere. Tongues of fire, shooting from the roof, engaged in a game of dodg’em with torrents of water aimed by helmeted men in raincoats and rubber boots. A few of the fire fighters worked over the door with axes. But for all the activity, it seemed inevitable that the house was destined to perish in flames. Woods walked up to Doc and Clayton, leaving me a step behind. “What happened?” he asked. “Whoa, bro.” Clayton jumped, surprised to see him. “Thought you was confined to the Base. What you doin’ here?” “They discharged me today,” Woods stated in a minimalist way. “What happened?” “We was just tryin’ to keep warm, ya dig?” Clayton explained. “Puttin’ some papers in the fireplace. An’ they went right up the chimney. Like the

next thing we know, the roof’s on fuckin’ fire. An’ then, it kinda starts spreadin’ along the ceilin’. All over the fuckin’ place. I ain’t never seen nuthin’ like it man. That fuckin’ place must be made of kindlin’ wood or somethin’ ‘cause we barely got our asses outta there before the whole thing went up.” “Fuckin’ near exploded like an ammo dump,” Doc concurred. “If we done stayed in there another minute we’d be toast.” Woods turned away from them and shook his head. “Let’s get the fuck outta here,” he said to me. “You think I can crash at your place for a few nights? ‘Til I get my money out of the credit union and Sukari and I can catch a flight north?” Woods and I barely spoke on the drive over to our place. I was immersed in thoughts that the opportunity to build a multi-racial movement had slipped away and with it an organization that could truly achieve meaningful change. We were not heading for a revolution. It couldn’t be made in a segregated society and our movement had taken the bait. Only our ability to doggedly oppose the War remained as an option. In that moment I realized that with the end of the Vietnam War, this movement to which I was committed would probably wither and die. And I found myself psychologically in retreat like a revolutionary private in Napoleon’s tattered army limping away from Moscow, knowing that the ideals of his revolution had been squandered on the altar of self-aggrandizement. A few days later, Frankie came over on a weekend pass and brought another dose of bad news. He had been visiting steadily since they threw Jack in the brig and, it seemed every day he was becoming more alienated from the Corps. Like me, his morale was plummeting. He dropped in just before supper and Marylou set him a place. Although she was not quite old enough to be his mother, Marylou and Frankie were in the beginnings of a curious relationship. There certainly was a generational gap. She had been a child of the fifties, while Frankie could hardly remember Eisenhower. And there was a class difference. She had been brought up the sheltered daughter of the middle class. Frankie was from across the tracks; the kind of kid Marylou’s parents warned her to stay away from. Worse still, he was Catholic. But they seemed to be meeting each other’s immediate needs. She was the type of woman who submerged her own troubles and turmoil in the nurturing of others, while Frankie was an emotional black hole. She became dedicated to bringing him some hard-tocome-by peace and warmth. He was greedily accepting it. “They pulled my security clearance,” he announced over the salad. -181-

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“Yeah? Big deal.” Lucky snickered when he heard it. “So you ain’t a fuckin’ reliable person as far as they’re concerned. That’s actually a backhanded compliment.” “That’s one way of lookin’ at it,” Frankie responded in an even temper. “But my MOS is as a communications specialist and for that I’ve got to have a crypto access, which means I’ve got to have a security clearance. I can’t be taking and receiving messages from staff unless I’ve got that. And if they pull it, I’m down to a combat platoon radioman. Which means that instead of me being in a cushy H&S company, I end up being radio operator for some newly-minted second louie in some piss ass platoon humpin’ the fuckin’ boonies. Plus I gotta carry fifty pounds of radio shit along with my combat gear. And on top of that, I gotta be right next to the fuckin’ louie, which is the absolute the worst place to be. If Charlie ain’t aimin’ at him he’s goin’ ta be aimin’ at me. And if some pissed off grunt tries ta frag him, he’s goin’ ta take me out too.” “That’s all speculation,” Joanie soothed. “Nothing like that’s happened yet.” Then she saw the look on his face. “Has it?” It seemed like the longest silence I could remember having occurred during the entire time I had been in Southern California. Finally, he hunched up his shoulders and bit his lower lip. “I’ve been transferred out of H&S Company,” he grimaced. “to an infantry platoon out at Las Pulgas. They’re waiting orders.” So that was it. That was the Marines’ plan for Jumpin’ Jack’s trial. They were not going to permit the kind of organizing that went into Woods’ trial to jeopardize the conviction of a treasonous Marine who had testified before the whole world that their organization was a criminal conspiracy against the poor and oppressed. First, they’d get rid of Donnie Woods, without whom they could bank on Jack not getting Black support. Next, by transferring Frankie to Las Pulgas, ten miles up the coast, they were isolating our best onBase contact. It would be almost impossible for him to get in to meet with us regularly. Then, before the trial began, they’d ship him off to Nam, insuring that Jack would have no on-Base support. All that would be left were bunch of outside lefty civilian agitators. “So, Frankie,” Louise probed, “what are you going to do?” “What do you mean?” he asked, seemingly surprised that Louise thought there was a decision to be made.

“Well, are you going to go?” she pushed. “To Nam?” He looked at her curiously. “Well, I never gave it much thought before ‘cause of my MOS,” he admitted. “But now that you mention it, it seems to me that they are retaliating against me for being Jumpin’ Jack’s friend, even though I ain’t never done nothin’ to cause them to pull my clearance. They’re trying to stick me, to get back at Jack. I guess they think they’re sending a message that anyone who supports him will end up shipped out real quick.” “Seems that way to me too,” Louise said. “They did the same thing with Jesus.” Marylou brought a large bowl of steaming spaghetti and began to dish it out. Serving Frankie first with a large mound of the stuff, she asked, halfchoking on her words, “How long do you think you’ll have before they send you over?” “Shouldn’t be more than a month.” “Do you have any choice? Is there any way you can get your clearance back? What about a CO?” she asked, rapid fire, without waiting for any answers. I could see the worry-lines returning to her face. “I can appeal my clearance,” Frankie said. “But it will have to go through channels and I’ll be over and back before I get a decision. As for the CO route, I’ve looked into it but, you see, I’m not really a pacifist. If they asked my whether I’d fight to save my mother from a robber, and they do ask shit like that, I’d be lying if I said ‘No.’” “So what’s wrong with lying if it will save lives?” Marylou asked, surprising even herself. ‘I dunno,” said Frankie, “I guess I never thought of lying.” “Probably wouldn’t work,” I intervened. “ I mean, how’s it look? He’s got no problem with the Marines as long as he’s got this cushy job at H&S Company. But then they pull his clearance because he’s hanging around with us and instantaneously he’s a Conscientious Objector. Come on. Even if they can’t actually prove he’s lying, he isn’t going to prove that he’s got this deepseated and long-standing opposition to the use of violence in all cases. And that’s what he’d have to do.” “Well what about sanctuary then?” Marylou pressed, her hands on her hips. “You’re always talking about it as a principled way to oppose the War. What about that.” We all could see that Marylou was intent on stopping Frankie from going over. We also could see that he was listening. She had gained some influence over him and none of us could find anything wrong with it. -183-

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“What do you think, Frankie?” I asked. “It’s your life we’re talking about. You go the sanctuary route and you’ll be busted for UA and probably missing movement. Chances are you’ll get a court martial. Maybe even a BCD, but most of the guys who do it get about 3 months confinement and then get thrown out on a UD, for the convenience of the government, as an undesirable. The time is short but the discharge will stay with you for the rest of your life. You will lose all your GI Bill and VA benefits. All potential employers will ask for your DD-214 when you go looking for work and when they see a UD, they’ll think you were a major fuck-up. Most of them won’t hire you.” “How you talk him out of it!” said Joanie. “Look, Joanie,” I snapped. “You aren’t going to be the one who pays. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with Frankie knowing the whole story before he makes a decision. No one wants to be accused of manipulating anyone. Right?” “Look, everyone,” Emma said, putting down her fork and leaning forward. “Frankie is the one who gets to decide what he’s going to do. Whatever he decides, I know that I’m going to respect and support his decision. He has time and I don’t think that it’s for any one of us to be putting ideas into his head.” She picked up her fork and finished her meal. That evening, Frankie and Marylou took a long walk. They returned arm in arm, smiling. She was able to drive him back to Base later that evening because her car still had not been discovered as being “subversive.” A few days later, I got a call from Frankie. He said that he was now restricted to the Base. That he would be getting no passes. And that it didn’t look like he would get to see much of us before he shipped over. The reason, he explained, was that there had been a couple of incidents in his battalion that had put the brass on edge. The brass suspected that it was him. “Two nights ago,” he told me, “ in fact the night after our discussions about ‘you know what’ someone broke into the battalion armory and ripped off a dozen M-16s, a grenade launcher and a BAR along with some ammo. Word was out all over Las Pulgas but the brass wanted to keep a lid on it, so they put the whole camp on restriction. The next night they found a howitzer zeroed in on the San Clemente White House.” “It wasn’t ready to fire,” he elaborated, “but it was well aimed. Nixon wasn’t around, so everyone knew it was a message, not an attempt to kill the

President. But when ya think about it, there’s some Marines out here actually got the balls ta send the President that kind of message. It was a total freakout. The security was tight. Orders for my unit got cut overnight and scuttlebutt has it that they’re gonna pull the usual leave ya’ get just before ya’ ship over. So I called ta’ tell ya’ goodbye.” The next morning, Marylou packed her suitcase and told everyone that she was heading up to Berkeley. She had gotten hooked up with CCCO, the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, and was going to help with their publishing. She also had plans to volunteer at the Berkeley sanctuary. She promised to keep in touch. A few days later, we heard that Frankie’s battalion had shipped out. 33. I presented my credentials and was passed in without a search or inspection of my briefcase. They knew me and, if there was anything untoward, knew where they could find me. I mounted the familiar wooden steps into the brig admin building and ambled into Captain Daly’s domain like I owned the place. Daly was where he always was, doing what he always did at this time of the morning. He looked up at me from behind the pages of the San Diego Union sports section and brought a cup of foul smelling, overbrewed java to his lips. He greeted me with his usual smirk. “Hi, Captain Daly,” I responded cordially. “Better watch out that finger doesn’t turn into a perpetual cup hook.” He held up the cup as if toasting. “Works a trigger pretty good. Here to visit the deserter again? Why don’t you just throw in the towel with this kid, Wolfe. We got him by the balls and there ain’t shit you can do for him.” “Well, captain, you may be right, but then again you may be wrong. We just won’t know ‘til it’s over. Kind of like the War, wouldn’t you say?” Daly liked the repartee. Especially since he felt in total control. “Say Wolfe, what the bejeesus do you do this for anyway? I mean, you can’t be making a shitload of money on these grunts. They don’t get any. And you know as well as I do that damn few of them get off. I mean courts martial ain’t like them liberal civilian courts. We know how to deal with criminals and cowards and wise asses in the Corps. So what’s in it for you? By the way, can I get you a mug of coffee?” “Not until you get a cup with an eagle on it,” I joked. He squinted and grinned at the thought of himself as a colonel. “It’s like this captain,” I said. “You think of these kids as bad apples. I think of them as victims of a big time swindle. Half the guys you’ve got in here were dragooned into the -185-

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military by some civilian. A judge. Priest. Coach. Or a father who’s still fighting the last war. But they don’t really belong in here. You know that. I know that. It’s better for all concerned that the Corps just lets ‘em out. I just don’t get the point of the pound of flesh attitude. “I think you know that I’m actually doing you a great big favor.” I continued. “How’re you going to create morale, instill discipline, with my clients around? You may believe in the mission, but big deal. My clients don’t anymore, not after they’ve seen the reality. Then it dawns on them that they’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time. There ain’t jack you can do about it but have a tantrum and fling ‘em into the brig. But that doesn’t really solve anyone’s problem. It just lets you brass get your rocks off. My job is to get them out as quickly and as painlessly as possible. And if I can do that without you guys getting your revenge, well so much the better. But the end result is that everybody’s a whole lot better off if I succeed. Hell, you tell me if you’d want to be in a combat situation with my clients. You’d be out of your mind.” Daly looked my in the eye. He wiped his prominent chin with the back of his hand and smiled. “You’re right about that last part. Say, Wolfe, you ever been in the military?” “Naw,” I shook my head. “I’m sort of like my clients. Don’t take orders very well. Especially when it comes to a war I don’t believe in.” A gangly lance-corporal with wheat straw hair, looking like the inbred offspring of Ma and Pa Kettle entered the office and gave the officer a sloppy salute. “We brung the prisoner up, sir.” “Well, Wolfe,” the captain said, “Guess it’s time to get back to work. See ya ‘round.” He ducked back behind the newspaper and I left the room to the sound of an enormous slurp. The hayseed lancecorporal led me to a small room fitted out with two metal chairs and a well-gouged table. There was a single dirty window for light, reinforced by a grating to prevent the prisoners from jumping through and getting as far as the fence, where they could be shot if anyone was paying attention. Jumpin’ Jack was brought in. There was a cheery grin and animation in his being. It was the best I’d seen him since they brought him back in irons. His improved spirits were nothing for which I could take credit.

“Gabrielle was here yesterday,” he explained. “She wanted to leave me some underground papers. The MPs confiscated them, but she told me what was in them. There have been some articles about my case, haven’t there?” “Several,” I confirmed. “I sure would like to read them.” he said. “But all they let me read here is the Bible and stuff like Sports Illustrated. SI hasn’t said a thing about my case, or even the War.” He laughed. I had an idea. “There’s one other thing that they have to let you read even though you’re inside,” I advised, “and that’s your legal papers. Suppose I write a motion and attach the articles as exhibits. I can give you a copy of that and you can keep it and read it all you want. In fact, they can’t even look at it because it’s attorney-client privileged material and can’t even be disclosed until I decide to file it. So I’ll just prepare a bunch of motions with stuff you want to see as exhibits and bring them to you every time I come. What do you think?” Jumpin’ Jack liked the idea a lot. But I speculated that his press coverage wasn’t the thing that was really picking up his spirits. “How’re the visits with Gabby going?” I asked suggestively. “Great!” he enthused. “I wish they’d let her visit more often. She’s real nice. I didn’t notice her that much when I was around last year. Probably ‘cause I was too wacked out. But she’s been really great. Lookin’ real good too, don’t you think?” There was no reason to deny it. He was smitten and anything but a grade of straight As for Gabby would be considered treason. “You got that right,” I said. “Think she feels the same way about you?” “Guess so.” He winked. “Think you can figure out a way that we can get more time together?” “Doubt it. But I’m sure glad you got her. It’ll make the time go by faster.” “What do you mean?” he quizzed me. “Well, to be frank, Jack, you don’t have much of a case. You split. Been gone more than 30 days. Told the whole world that you were a war criminal. Left people with the impression that you never intended to come back to the Marines. You had your picture taken next to some Viet Cong women. Then you got apprehended at the border. Your chances of getting off in a court martial are mighty slim. The only things you got going for you are that you are a Viet vet and split from the mental ward. That may get some sympathy, but only if you testify that you were so strung out on acid that you didn’t

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know what the fuck you were doing. To be blunt, it looks like you’ll max out on the sentence unless you retract your statements.” “I ain’t never going to do that.” He growled at me as if I was spouting blasphemy. “You suggesting I wimp out?” “I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just telling you your options. I have to do that. It’s my professional responsibility. What if I don’t tell you that and you get, say 10 years and then, while you’re in Leavenworth you start getting pissed that I didn’t tell you a way to get off?” “You got your job to do and I got mine,” Jumpin’ Jack replied in a detached voice. “I been to hell and what the brass can do to me now ain’t shit compared to what they already done. We’re going’, ya understand. All the way.” 34. Without my knowing about it, someone, probably Doc or Clayton, changed the registration on the van into my name. I guess they wanted a honky patsy in case the van was used illegally. Whatever their intention, I would never have gotten the information but for that fraud. “You Eric Wolfe?” the voice on the phone asked. When I confirmed the fact, the voice continued. “This here’s Deputy Sheriff Ransom, calling from Potter County, Texas. We got us a vehicle here registered to you.” “Deputy, my car is parked right outside. I don’t have a vehicle in Texas.” I replied. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Ain’t you the owner of a 1964 Dodge van? We got us a registration here from California, says it belongs to you.” “There was a van that was stolen from some friends of mine a few weeks ago,” I told him. “But it wasn’t mine. I don’t know how you could possibly have a registration in my name, ‘cause it isn’t mine.” “You say the vehicle was stolen from a friend of yours?” he asked. “Yeah, I think a Marine took it. He was trying to go home, I suspect.” “Would the name Darron Thomas ring a bell?” the deputy probed. “Yeah,” I admitted. “You got him in custody?” “Not that lucky.” said the deputy. By the time he got to Barstow, on his way back to East Saint Louis, Deputy Dawg must have known he was in trouble. He had to feel the vibrations when he accelerated. How the motor torqued over. He had to

notice the pull to the right. By the time he hit Kingman, the power train was probably crying out for relief in a high, constant whine. A receipt revealed that he had stopped in Flagstaff and bought some heavy duty transmission oil and some grease. If he had thought about the motor mounts, he would have remembered that Mitch had mentioned the need for their replacement but had never gotten around to it. Probably it didn’t even enter his mind. Nursing the van across New Mexico must have been excruciating for him, a wheel man. He was safe from speeding tickets but he most certainly feared for his vulnerability as a Black man in cowboy country. He was an easy target for the yahoo sheriffs who patrolled those roads. Deputy Dawg managed to coax the van down the long descent from Bushland as far as Amarillo, until the motor tore free of the mounts, twisted and snapped the universal. It was beyond repair. He was barely able to roll onto the shoulder, less than a mile from an exit. He put up the hood. Wrote a note that he had broken down. Left it on the windshield and started walking. He made it to “Wild Wes Cars and Trucks”, a used car lot surrounded by a chain-link fence, draped with yellow, red and green pennants on 20 acres of desert on the old route 66, near the westernmost Amarillo city line. Sheriff Ransom suggested I call a used car dealer named Herzog if I wanted to know the whole story. I was curious, so I did. Wes Herzog was a talkative, crazy redneck. He gave me an earful. He ran a business called Wild Wes’s, he told me. His wife had run off with some trucker who worked the regular route between Oklahoma City and Albuquerque. He felt like he was living in one of those sappy Hank Williams C&W songs, he said. He was sure it was them who had ripped him off. She had the keys. Felt entitled. Who else would have cleaned out the cash drawer and known the special hiding place where he kept the keys to his best cars? Who else would have been savvy enough to take the title papers too? It was especially galling that she had taken the Coupe deVille, one of the few cars on the lot that didn’t have some major mechanical defect that had to be repaired. If he saw them in town, he swore, he’d get even. He kept his .44 magnum with him at all times just for the occasion, he seethed. Just telling me about it on the phone got him steamed up. She had taken advantage of the layout, he told me. Had ripped off a key to his big locked gate, the one at the entry with the pair of longhorns attached to the top of his sign. And she knew where the switch was to turn off the spotlights. He lived in a mobile home in the back end of the property and his view of the office, where he kept the keys and papers, was blocked by a row of willows and the old Quonset hut that his half-assed mechanic used to make -189-

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the cars operable long enough to get the customers off the lot. She, or one of her low life boyfriends was bound to be back for another car sometime, he figured. So he decided that his next security measure would be a pair of Dobermans. Trained guard dogs. He found a guy in Lubbock who raised them. Guaranteed them to be some of the most vicious, merciless animals in the Panhandle. Anyway, he said, it must have been long about midnight. Everything was dark, except for his lights, shining on his sign like a beacon just off on the frontage road. It probably enticed Deputy Dawg like a flame does a moth. Dawg must have walked past and been attracted to that ‘67 Buick convertible parked in the front that had “Clean, Low Mileage” soaped on the windshield. He then probably returned to the van and got the bolt cutter that Lucky had left in it when we attacked that Minuteman sign, along with his jimmy and the few tools he needed to pull the ignition switch and cross the wires. He must have cut the lock to the front gate with the bolt cutters and then threw the heavy tool into nearby ditchbecause that was where the law found it later. He had just slipped the jimmy between the door-frame and the window when they struck. Silently, without so much as a snarl, they came up on him. The first latched on low, at his thigh. The second lunged at his neck. It got him just below his ear and sank its sharp, long canines deep into his neck. If he had kept the bolt cutters he might have had something to use as a weapon, but as it was he was virtually helpless. He fell to the ground. The Doberman with the grip on his neck twisted and pulled at his jugular like a trained assassin. The other ripped a huge gash in his side and then struck again in the soft folds of his stomach, tearing at his guts. Mercifully, he lost consciousness quickly. The jimmy was still in the window, when they found him. Wes told me that he had discovered him the next morning, when he opened up for business. He was lying in a vast pool of congealed blood. Another thieving Black, receiving his just desserts, Wes pronounced. The sheriff-coroner came by and took him away to the morgue, where he later was identified as a convicted criminal and deserter, Darron Thomas, aka Deputy Dawg. The women all cried when I told them. I shrugged and said it was too bad he had to die but the world certainly wouldn’t be a worse place without

him. They thought I was cold, cruel, without empathy. They didn’t know him like I did.

PART THREE THE CONVENIENCE OF THE GOVERNMENT 35. The Marines were determined that the trial of Corporal John Conlon would not be a re-run of the Donnie Woods affair. Jumpin’ Jack’s public accusations made it certain that they had to save face. It was going to be a General Court Martial where the stakes were far higher than with Woods. They intended to leverage a guilty plea or go for broke. We tried to counter-attack. There was a traveling troop of entertainers going around the country, much like the Bob Hope USO tour, only doing an Anti-War shtick. It featured such headliners as Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland and Peter Boyle as well as several people who Louise knew from the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Louise called in a few chits and asked them to come down to Oceanside to perform in support of Jumpin’ Jack. By this point, due to his public accusations of war crimes and the unfortunate picture of him standing next to a female Viet Cong guerrilla, Jack had become something of a darling with the Anti-War Movement, so they agreed. The fare involved slapstick skits about GIs outsmarting lifers and brass, devious ways of undermining authority and anti-war songs. Interspersed with this lighter stuff were anecdotes of life in North Vietnam designed to underscore the humanity of the people we were fighting and the inherent justice of their struggle. We held the shindig at an old barn on a ranch in Carlsbad that was slated for development. The owner, who Melinda knew, agreed to let us have it for free because he was pissed off. He was an older Hispanic farmer who had been victimized by heavy-handed Anglo pressure to sell the place to some developers with connections in the local government. If he refused he would get busted for sanitation and pollution violations and have nothing but trouble from here on out. He didn’t have the money to fight “progress” so he had agreed to take their bread and move on to another spread, further east. As far

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as he was concerned, we could fuck up the place all we wanted. The developers, he said, could pick up the trash. The site was a remnant of the idyllic “Old California,” that lives on in those dreamlike scenes one finds on fruit and vegetable crate labels. There was only one structure with a roof, a gigantic, wood-slatted, weathered barn, nestled in a tiny valley, down a short, dirt track. It was protected from the sensory pollution of civilization by luscious, rounded, golden hills. A dry creek ran along the back end of the parcel, splitting a grove of willows and white oak. There was a towering weathered windmill in front that pumped a trickle of cool water into a horse trough. A decrepit, western style corral of splintery gray fir rails rotted slowly to one side. The women had publicized the event well. Every utility pole in downtown Oceanside had a notice stapled to it. They glued posters on the sides of buildings and fences. They even managed to smuggle hundreds of leaflets onto the Base. Louise and Joanie organized a shuttle to the barn from right outside the Greyhound station. By the time the event began, we had several hundred GIs in attendance. Among them, to be sure, were many representatives of the various government intelligence and police agencies. It turned out to be a case of perception versus reality. The press reports versus the truth. We got the benefit of the press this time. It reported that hundreds of grunts had turned out to support Jack and the Anti-War Movement. However, while mingling with this crowd, I discovered many who had come only to see if they could get a grope of Jane Fonda and have a free party. Perhaps the reporters were biased in our favor, but probably it just made better copy than the truth. Most could have given a shit about Jack and the principles that he stood for. It was damn lucky that along about late afternoon when they were profoundly pickled, some of them didn’t try to rape the performers. As soon as the show was over, a couple of us arranged for their escape. I wondered if the NIS was hip to the truth. If they weren’t, we were in bigger trouble than what was going on over in the Nam. The Corps decided that they were going to hold this trial in their big spanking new courtroom at Mainside. They were bringing Colonel Hansen back to finish us off. Spectators would be permitted, according to Captain Jeffers, but every one of them would have to show ID, and be photographed. Security would be tight and made to be as much of a deterrent as possible.

There was going to be a press officer available at all times. There would be no “no comment” attributions to the military this time around. Jack demanded that his court, the military equivalent of a jury, include enlisted men, as was his right under the UCMJ. In this case he was going to get a panel of seven. In response, the convening officer pulled two junior officers off the court and selected a sergeant major and a first sergeant, each with over twenty years service. The sergeant major had actually seen combat in Okinawa at the end of World War II. The other had begun his career with a stint in Korea. They had so many stripes and ribbons that you could barely see their uniform for all of the gold and color. These guys knew their duty and they were going to do it. I met Jack early on the morning of the first day in Captain Jeffers’ office. Two MPs were stationed outside to make sure that he didn’t make a run for it. Jack was spit and polish in his khaki top with all his decorations and dress blue pants. “Can’t wait for the day I can take this shit off,” he replied, pulling the front of his shirt, when I asked him how he was doing. He sat down in a chair next to me and across from Jeffers, expecting some last minute briefing. Instead, he received only silence. There was really nothing to say. We were prepared. As prepared as one could be under the circumstances. Jack broke the gloom. “This reminds me,” he joked “of that old saying from some Western: ‘OK boys first we give him a fair trial and then we lynch him.’ He smiled at each of us in turn. “Whatever happens, I want you both to know that I’m hip to the fact that we don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of you guys getting me off. I know where I stand. All I would like out of this is a chance to make my statement, ok? So, what I really want from you both is to make sure I have the opportunity. I don’t want either of you to tell me to hold it back, ‘cause it may go harder on me, ok? If I do that, I’ll be selling out.” Jeffers looked at him curiously. Then at me. “It would make things a little easier if I knew what it was you intended to say,” he urged. “If I told you that,” he said, winking at me, “I wouldn’t know how you’d react. In fact, Eric here can’t even be too sure what I’m going to say. But one thing’s for sure, I’m going to say it. They want a fuckin’ trial. They want the truth. Well, that’s what they’re going to get.” “It’s time,” Jeffers said, looking at his watch. We left the office and walked down a long corridor to the courtroom, followed by the two MPs. Spectators milled about, watching us, giving power fist type salutes and whispering “right ons.” There were many of the same -193-

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faces as from the Woods trial, and a few more SOGI activists from the Seattle area. The Guru came up and wished me luck. He shook my hand warmly and smiled his transparent smile. “We’re all with you,” he assured me. A couple of reporters approached, asking if we had anything to say. Jeffers told them we had no comment. I told them that whatever we would have to say, we would be saying in the courtroom. One stuck a mike into Jack’s face and asked him whether he had anything to add. Jeffers pushed it away and told him that our client would have nothing to say to the press. Jack looked at Jeffers, nodded his head as if in agreement, then turned to reporter and said, “Stick around for my testimony.” I nudged him into the courtroom before he could say any more or the reporters were able to ask the inevitable follow-up questions. This venue was a significant contrast to the tar paper shack they had used to try the Black Marine, Donnie Woods. The chairs were comfortable. The counsel tables were more than adequate to spread out our papers. There was a pitcher of water and paper cups for us. It smacked of racism, although I’m sure the Marines never saw it that way. Their slapdash shack was more symbolically appropriate for the grandson of a slave. But the white guy, no matter what he was accused of, deserved the full regalia. Once again, our adversary was Captain Eaton. He entered the courtroom from a side door, not wishing to run the gauntlet of Jack’s supporters. With him this time was an aide. A lance corporal, legal clerk whose job it would be to hand him papers and fetch whatever he desired. Also with him was a chief warrant officer from NIS who had been the investigator on the case and had actually prepared the witnesses for the prosecution. We exchanged handshakes like the captains of a football team at midfield before the toss of the coin. A moment later, a sergeant whowould be the clerk entered and set up at a small table next to the witness stand. He was followed directly by a matronly civilian woman, her gray hair done up in a bun, dressed in a long, quilted skirt, a white blouse with a green plaid necktie and sensible black pumps. She reminded me of my Cub Scout den mother. She plopped her formidable derriere onto an undersized swivel chair and began to manipulate dials and buttons on the machine that the Marines employed to make a transcript of legal proceedings. Such transcriptions were required by the UCMJ in every case where a penal discharge such as a BCD

or a Dishonorable was possible or whenever the penalty could exceed six months. That is, whenever a conviction would be deemed a felony and the defendant would bear the stigma of a convicted felon for the remainder of his life. “She’s the instructor at the court reporter school on Base,” Jeffers informed me. “I guess they want to make sure that the record is perfect, so there’ll be no technical glitch when they convict Conlon. I had a case once where the defendant was given a Bad Conduct Discharge but they had to withdraw the punishment because the transcript had some blank spaces in it, where the court reporter couldn’t understand what was said. He was not experienced enough to speak up and ask for the testimony to be repeated. It’s very technical and the Court of Military Appeals is a stickler for a complete record. They don’t want a screw-up like that here, so they brought in the best they’ve got.” She deftly placed the first of the wax disks into her recording device and slipped the band of the mouthpiece over her head. She was ready to go and nodded to the clerk. “All rise!” he commanded. Hansen and seven Marine jurors marched in together. Five officers and two enlisted men of the highest ranks. Hansen immediately commenced the voir dire, our opportunity to question them for “possible bias.” I found this a curious concept given that each of the seven members had been personally selected for the task by the commanding general, the guy who had chosen to convene a General Court Martial in the first place. His decision left it no secret that he desired a heavy penalty. Since he was also the man who held life or death power over their careers in the Marine Corps and since each of them was a career soldier, his influence was considerable. Consequently, each juror had to be biased. Nevertheless, I was surprised by the results of my examination into their bias. All of them, of course, denied feeling any pressure to reach a guilty verdict because they were under the command of the general who had convened the court martial. What else could they say? But when I asked them if there was any other reason they could think of that might lead them to believe that they might not be able to be fair to the defense, two of them actually spoke up. “Yes sir,” the first sergeant said, raising his hand. “ I do not believe I can be fair to the defense because of your long hair and moustache.” “Captain Eaton also has moustache,” I observed. “Why is it that you can be fair to him and not to the defense?” -195-

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“Sir, your moustache isn’t regulation and neither is your hair. If you’re going to act as this man’s defense counsel in a military court, I think it is your duty to conform to military standards of grooming. Even if you are a civilian. It is disrespectful to the Marine Corps,” he opined stiffly. This provoked chuckles from the spectators and caused Colonel Hansen to slam the gavel down. “There will be order in this court or I will have it cleared,” he snapped. His threat had the desired effect. “Do any of the rest of you have a similar belief?” I asked. There was no response. “Your Honor,” I turned to Colonel Hansen, “I request that the first sergeant be excused from this court.” The colonel looked down from his bench toward the first sergeant with apparent displeasure at his voluntary announcement. “Sergeant, “ he asked, “do you really believe that the length of Mr. Wolfe’s hair or his moustache will prevent you from doing your sworn duty to give Corporal Conlon a fair trial in this case?” “Sir,” replied the first sergeant, “I always try my best to do my duty and I hope I could be able to do it here, but I have been sworn to tell the truth in this examination into my fitness for this duty and the truth is that I am prejudiced against Mr. Wolfe because he looks to me like a hippie troublemaker and I really don’t think I can put a lot of stock in what he says. So as long as Corporal Conlon has him for a lawyer, I don’t think I can judge him fairly.” Hearing this explanation, the colonel shook his head. “All right, sergeant, you are excused.” “Thank you, sir,” said the first sergeant, standing and saluting. He made a parade turn and marched out of the courtroom. “Does anyone else have any other reason they think they might not be able to give my client a fair trial?” I asked, looking back at the remaining six men. Seeing the success achieved by the first sergeant, a captain was emboldened to tentatively raise his hand. “Yes, captain,” I said, “do you have something you want to tell us?’ “Yes, sir,” said the captain. “I don’t have anything against you, like the first sergeant does, but I want to say that I don’t like all these spectators out there. These outside agitators coming from all over turn this trial into a circus and that bothers me. If these are the kind of people,” he waved his arm in the

direction of the spectators, and sucked in his breath between tightly-drawn lips, “who are the supporters of Corporal Conlon, then I can’t say I can give him a fair trial. I’m the kind of person that judges people by the friends they keep and I must say, I’ve already made a judgment in this case about your client, based upon what I’ve seen so far.” I looked over toward Colonel Hansen and shrugged. He looked back, then at the captain. “Captain,” he asked, “do you think that you can put that prejudgment out of your mind and judge the accused based simply upon the evidence presented to you in the trial of this matter?” “Colonel, sir,” the captain shook his head and lowered it to observe the floor, “actually, I think that the more I remain in the same room with these people, the less likely it will be that I will be able to give Corporal Conlon a fair trial.” “All right, captain, you are excused,” said the colonel. “Counsel,” if there are no further challenges for cause, do either of you wish to exercise your preemptory challenge?” After Eaton declined, I asked the court for a short recess to consult with my client and was granted ten minutes. “There are only five members of the panel left,” I advised Jack. “If we exercise a challenge now, the convening authority will have to add new members because they can’t go forward with only four. That could result in a continuance. What do you want to do?” “How long a delay will there be?” asked Jack. “Could be only a couple hours, or it could be days,” said Captain Jeffers. “Actually, I’ve never seen this happen before. I’ve never seen anybody win a challenge for cause. I really can’t say what they’ll do.” A broad smile broke across Jack’s face. “Never happened before,” he repeated. “Fine. let’s see what the fuck they’ll do. Who do you think we ought to bump?” “Well, we got a light colonel, two majors, a second louie and the sergeant major,” I said. “The second louie is going with his superiors, so there’s no point in bumping him. I say it’s either the colonel or the sergeant major.” “Well,” Captain Jeffers mused, scratching his chin. “I go with bumping the sergeant major. If we want to make things as difficult as possible, that is. The CO will have to scrounge up another enlisted man.” “Why the hell not?” agreed Jack. “Let’s bump him.”

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We bumped the sergeant major and got the recess we wanted. Colonel Hansen announced that we would reconvene at 1300 hours to determine if we would have a full court. When we returned, we found that the CO had gone us one better. Not only had he replaced the sergeant major with a gunny who had twenty two years of service, but he had also added a staff sergeant with only 9 years, bucking for rank and a chief warrant officer who had been a police inspector prior to rejoining the Marines, just so he could serve in Vietnam. We once again had a court of seven and each of them denied any bias or prejudice. Captain Eaton laid out the government’s case in his opening statement. He would show that Jack had jumped off a high rock with the intention of injuring himself so that he would not have to train troops for the War. Then, after he had then been confined in the psychiatric ward of Long Beach Naval Hospital, he broke his confinement by leaving the hospital and traveling to Canada. He would show that while in Canada, Jack had made disloyal statements in public, on several occasions criticizing the Marine Corps, the President and the United States Government for engaging in an allegedly illegal and immoral war. The evidence, he contended, would also show that Jack claimed in public that we had committed war crimes like the Nazis who had been found guilty in Nuremberg. And, he promised, the government would prove that Jack had made these accusations in the company of known agents of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese government, with whom we were at war. Eaton stated that he would prove that Jack was absent without authorization for more than thirty days and that he had done so with no intention of returning to the Marines. He argued that the convincing evidence would prove that Corporal Conlon was a deserter and that his desertion had been terminated by apprehension. This, he concluded emphatically, was a most flagrant case. It caused irreparable damage to the good name and the sacred honor of the Marines and the United States and for those reasons he would be seeking the maximum punishment possible. On behalf of the defense, I announced that I was reserving our opening statement until the conclusion of the government’s case. I asked the judge to instruct the panel members that this is a right of the defense and that they should draw no conclusions as to the guilt or innocence of Corporal Conlon from our exercise of that right. I also requested that he instruct the panel that the statements of Captain Eaton were not a substitute for actual proof.

Colonel Hansen looked at me with annoyance. “I always do that, counsel,” he snapped. “Thank you. Members of the Court, you have heard what Mr. Wolfe has said. That is the law. Captain Eaton, please call your first witness.” “Thank you, your Honor,” Captain Eaton said, jumping to attention. The first witnesses were a couple of grunts whom the government had brought back from combat duty in Vietnam just to testify about what occurred when Jack was leading their training mission at Camp Pendleton. They described how, suddenly, he climbed a large rock, screamed some AntiWar stuff, the specifics of which neither of them could recall and then, to their shock and surprise, jumped off the rock, injuring himself. They went on to confirm that when they got to him, he was babbling incoherently. The medics were called. They took him away and that was all they knew. I had no questions. Next came a doctor from the Pendleton hospital whohad treated Jack immediately after he jumped off the rock. He had signed papers ordering Jack admitted to the Long Beach Naval Hospital and prepared orders that he be escorted under guard to that facility. On cross-examination, I asked him to identify the papers he had signed. He was only able to identify his treatment orders. “Did you also sign confinement orders?” I asked gingerly. The captain shook his head. “I’m a doctor,” he smiled, “not a policeman. I just sent him along to psychiatric for observation. If they think he needs confinement, that’s for them to decide.” A custodian of records followed, producing the documentation from Long Beach Naval Hospital showing that Jack had been escorted to their facility by MPs from Pendleton and that he had been placed in a locked facility for observation. He also produced official records showing that Jack had been confined in a locked facility when he was granted permission to venture onto the hospital grounds. The records showed that he had not returned from one such unsupervised recreational opportunity. He was reported absent and there were no further entries. “No questions,” I said hopefully when my turn came. Eaton had yet to produce an actual confinement order. Eaton’s next witnesses were two NIS agents who had been operating under cover at the War Crimes Tribunal in Canada. One introduced a tape recording he had made of Jack’s speech. In it, Jack had described an experience he had in Vietnam where he personally had interrogated a captured Viet Cong guerrilla and was ordered to kill the man in front of another captured guerrilla. The victim had refused to cooperate with an interrogation and was purposely killed to encourage the second man into -199-

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talking. Jack told the Tribunal that his orders were to make it slow and painful, so that the incentive to talk would be clear. Then he went on to tell how he had seen other suspected guerrillas thrown from helicopters by their captors, even though they may not actually have been guerrillas at all but merely peasants who were caught in a crossfire. The tape concluded with Jack stating that: “For all of that, I ask your forgiveness and I make a solemn promise that I will never again serve such an organization of criminals.” “Agent,” I asked on cross-examination, “do you have any other statements from the accused?” “No, sir, nothing on tape.” “Did you hear anything else from the accused beyond the testimony that you recorded?” “No, I tried to get everything Corporal Conlon said on the tape. If he said anything to others, I was not in a position to hear that.” “So all you have concerning the issue of whether or not Corporal Conlon intended to turn himself in or never intended to surrender to the Marine Corps is the one statement we heard.” “Well, I understand there were other statements to that effect that he made to the press,” said the NIS agent. “But you didn’t hear them. Is that correct?” “Yes. That is correct. I didn’t hear them,” he admitted. “Thank you, that is all,” I said, sitting down. Eaton jumped to his feet, sensing a weakness in his case. “Agent, did you keep the press clippings? The ones where Corporal Conlon is quoted as saying he would never return to the Marines.” “Yes, I have them,” the agent testified. He reached into a folder he had brought with him to the stand. Captain Eaton smirked. “Will you please produce them,” he said. “Your Honor, I must object,” I said, rising. “Newspaper articles purporting to state what Mr. Conlon said at some time when this witness did not personally hear him say those things is the rankest of hearsay. My client should not be required to respond to those press reports.” “Yes,” said the colonel with patience. “Captain Eaton, newspaper articles can not be used to prove someone said what is reported in them. Do you have any other reason why you want the court to consider them at this time?”

“But Your Honor,” Captain Eaton pleaded, “we have a stack of reports from dozens of newspapers and they all report that the accused repeatedly stated that he would never voluntarily return to the Marines. They all can’t have gotten it wrong.” “I’m sorry, captain,” the colonel shook his head. “The rules of evidence require us to exclude hearsay unless there is an exception. Newspaper articles are uncorroborated reports. You can’t introduce them because the accused can’t cross-examine the article.” “He can deny it,” Eaton argued. “We are on the prosecution case, now,” the colonel reminded him, losing a bit of patience. “You have to proceed with your admissible evidence. I have ruled, captain. Do you have anything further from this witness?” “No, Your Honor.” “Then call your next witness,” said the colonel as curt as I had ever seen him toward the government. The second NIS agent was called and testified that he observed Jack standing next to two Asian women who had been introduced to the Tribunal as members of the Viet Cong. He produced pictures that showed Jack standing in the row behind them. He stated that he had witnessed Jack speaking with them, shaking their hands and apparently smiling and nodding in agreement during conversations. He saw all of this with his own eyes, he said. He then began to testify that he had obtained files from Military Intelligence that had identified both of the women as Viet Cong officials. I objected. “Your honor, the defense has not seen any files such as this witness described. As you know, we are entitled to receive all such evidence before trial. Can we have a stipulation,” I asked turning to Captain Eaton, “that the files the witness is describing, were not produced to us pre-trial?” “They are classified files, Your Honor,” Eaton explained to the judge. “We weren’t allowed to turn the files over to Mr. Wolfe because he doesn’t have a security clearance.” “You mean that the accused has not had an opportunity to examine the files upon which this man is basing his testimony that the people in this picture are Viet Cong?” the colonel asked with exasperation. “That’s right, Your Honor. We couldn’t give the defense those files. We weren’t allowed to.” “Well, that’s the government’s right,” said the colonel, “but it is the right of the accused to have an opportunity to prepare his defense and under military law, as you are well aware, captain, it is the obligation of the

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government to turn over to the defense those documents which form the basis of its prosecution. Are you telling me that this was not done?” “No, Your Honor,” said Eaton, breaking into a sweat that began to stain his neatly ironed shirt. “We gave them everything we were permitted to give, but just not that file.” “Your Honor,” I interrupted, “the defense moves to strike the testimony of this witness that identifies the two women in this photograph as Viet Cong and also the testimony that someone from this Tribunal introduced them as Viet Cong.” The colonel shook his head. “Granted,” he ruled reluctantly, in hushed tone. “Captain,” he addressed Eaton. “Do you have any other evidence that can establish that the two women in this photograph are actually Viet Cong or on the subject of what Corporal Conlon said up in Canada?” Eaton asked for a brief recess. He consulted with his investigator and then made a telephone call. Reluctantly he reported that he did not. We recessed until the next morning. Before they took Jack back to the brig, he, Jeffers and I conferred. “Eaton seems asleep,” I said. “It’s not that,” Jeffers replied. “He’s not really that bright and I don’t think he understands what’s happening. He spends all his time presenting open and shut cases where there are almost no objections. Most of the time he just takes pleas and argues sentences. I don’t think he has ever tried a case with complex elements or where someone makes evidentiary objections. If he ever knew the rules, which I doubt, he’s certainly rusty.” “What does it all mean?” asked Jack. Jeffers provided the answer. “If he doesn’t shore up his case tomorrow, he’s going to be in big trouble. Right now he seems to have neglected producing any evidence that you intended to injure yourself when you jumped off the rock. He hasn’t got a solid record that you broke confinement because he doesn’t have a confinement order. I looked through the records and I never saw one. Someone handed you over to the MPs to bring you up to Long Beach but either they never cut the confinement order or they lost it, because there isn’t one in court and there isn’t one in the Long Beach jacket. I think they just assumed you were under confinement because you were delivered by MPs. It was a screw up. The paperwork fell through the cracks. Probably Eaton knows it and is just bluffing his way through that charge.

Anyway, there are two charges they won’t be able to make stick. I’m not sure what they can do with the disloyal statement charge. The crime itself is very vague and they haven’t proved a hell of a lot yet. That leaves desertion. I think that’s the one they’re really going for. We’ll see tomorrow. They’re bringing in the Border Patrol officer who busted you.” “So where does that leave us?” Jack asked me. “It leaves you with the opportunity to say what you want and to let them decide whether they want to throw the book at you. But the book just got a whole lot thinner, I think, after today. Unless Eaton has some surprises for us. Keep your fingers crossed.” When trial began the next morning, Eaton did have a surprise for us. He moved to dismiss two charges. First, that Jack had intentionally attempted to inflict an injury on himself. He stated that because Jack had been confined for several weeks at the Long Beach Naval Hospital, there must have been some question concerning his mental condition at the time he jumped. Therefore, the Marines had come to the conclusion that he hadn’t intentionally attempted to inflict an injury on himself because he was not of sound mind when the incident occurred. They also, regrettably, had to dismiss the breaking confinement charge because there had been an error in the paperwork and no confinement order had ever been signed, or if one had been signed, it could not be located. It was a technicality. The Marines were scrambling to save face. “Then if I have it correct,” said Colonel Hansen, “ we now have two charges remaining. Making disloyal statements and desertion. Is that correct?” “Yes sir,” Captain Eaton confirmed. “OK, captain. You may proceed with that aspect of your case.” “I next call US Border Patrol Agent Michael Farrell,” Eaton announced. Michael Farrell was an easy-going fellow. He spoke slowly. Matter-of fact. He presented as a “no particular axe to grind” type of witness. I could tell immediately that he wasn’t someone who would be easily impeached. On the other hand, if there was good evidence to be had from him, it wouldn’t take a grenade to knock it out of him. He apprehended Corporal Conlon at the border as he was returning to the US, he testified. Conlon was in a vehicle with British Columbia plates. He was sitting in the back and there were three other people in the car. He made it a practice, he said, to speak to each passenger in vehicles that did not appear to be carrying a family. He wanted to know about nationality and he fancied himself somewhat of an aficionado when it came to accents. Conlon -203-

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had admitted he was an American, he said, but claimed he was from Southern California. He suspected that was not the case, because Conlon’s accent was clearly East Coast. He was always on the lookout for AWOL soldiers, he told the court, because there were lots of servicemen stationed up in the Washington area and they were frequently taking off into Canada where they didn’t have to worry about the MPs and Shore Patrol. He had caught plenty of them. He could sniff out GIs pretty good, he claimed. Corporal Conlon fit the bill. Suspicious, he asked to search the vehicle and when he did, he found Conlon’s Marine Corps duffel bag with uniforms and other evidence of membership in the Armed Forces. He asked Conlon straight out whether he was in the military and Conlon then admitted that he was a Marine. He asked for Conlon’s military ID. Conlon located it for him in a uniform in his duffel bag. He then ran a warrant check on UA Marines and Conlon’s name came up. He asked Conlon if he was UA and Conlon admitted that he was. He was then taken into custody. Eaton rested. It was my witness. “Now, to make very clear, Officer Farrell,” I asked, “Corporal Conlon never denied he was a Marine, did he?” “No, he did not.” “He never denied that he was absent without authorization, did he?” “No sir, he never denied that either.” “Did he answer all of your questions truthfully?” “Well not exactly,” Officer Farrell replied. “He told me he was from Southern California but that was not true.” “Where are we now, Officer?” Officer Farrell smiled, taking my point. “Southern California.” “Did you ask him where he was from originally,” I asked, “or just where he was from?” “I don’t recall.” “So as you sit here today, you can not testify that Corporal Conlon ever told you an untruth, correct.” “That’s right,” he admitted. “He never evaded any of your questions.” “True.” “He admitted that he was a UA Marine.” “Yes.”

“He never told you he was a deserter.” “That’s true. He never said that, but I didn’t ask it either.” “He was apprehended coming back into the country, not leaving it.” “Yes, that’s what I said.” “He had his military uniforms with him.” “True.” “He was able to produce his military ID for you.” “Yes, he was able to produce that for me.” “And you have indicated that there are a large number of military bases in the State of Washington, where a member of the military who is AWOL can turn himself in. Correct.” “Yes that is also true.” Finally, officer, you have also indicated that you are aware that there are also a large number of MPs and Shore Patrol up in your neck of the woods and that they are on the lookout for GIs who want to slip over the border. Right.” “I did say that, too,” said the officer. “So, if a member of the military was seeking to avoid apprehension, crossing the border from British Columbia into the State of Washington would be a pretty poor choice, wouldn’t it?” Eaton sprang to attention, the damage having become patently evident. “Objection, Your Honor,” he yelled. “On what basis?” I asked. “You heard what he said, Your Honor, I object.” “Objection sustained,” said the colonel. “May I have a basis for the ruling?” I asked the court. “I have sustained an objection, counsel,” Hansen sneered. “You will have plenty of opportunity to argue your case. If you want to rephrase the question, you may.” “No further questions. Thank you, Your Honor,” I said, turning my back to him in the process and walking back to my seat. I could feel the daggers of his stare. His anger at my insolence. Eaton rested his case and I immediately stood up to address the court. “Your Honor.....” Colonel Hansen, frowning, looked over to the defense. “Do you have a motion?” he interrupted. “Yes we do, Your Honor,” I said. “The defense moves to dismiss the charge of making disloyal statements. We have heard nothing from any of this evidence that shows any disloyalty, but rather a deeply held belief that -205-

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my client has committed criminal conduct in the performance of his duties, that he regrets it and that he will not do it again. That is not the same thing as disloyalty, even if he is incorrect. One cannot be prosecuted for making a disloyal statement when one is actually confessing or believes he is confessing a crime. “In addition, there has been a complete failure to prove that the statements attributed to my client either actually undermined discipline and loyalty or could have the reasonable effect of doing so. There is no showing that was even the intent of my client. Discipline and loyalty do not require one to be willing to commit a war crime for our country and if this court were to rule otherwise, it would be a statement of the Marines that any objection to our troops committing a war crime is disloyalty when our own country recognizes the sanctity of the Nuremberg precedents.” “And what have you to say in response?” the judge asked Eaton. “Your Honor,” Captain Eaton began. He had once again sweated through his shirt. There was a great “V” of perspiration stain down the middle of his back to which his soiled underarms were advancing for a link-up. He drummed his fingers on the counsel table nervously as he leaned over it to address the judge. His belly rested heavily on his papers and he heaved a breath. “I think there should not be any dispute about it. When a Marine gets up in public and states that he has committed a war crime by following orders, when he states that the whole Corps is a criminal conspiracy to commit war crimes, that is the rankest disloyalty one could imagine. How could such comments not affect the discipline of the troops? It seems to me that this ought to be self-evident.” “Is it the position of the prosecution,” asked the judge, “that if a Marine confesses to having committed a war crime in the course of his combat duties, that such a confession is per se disloyal?” “No, not per se,” Eaton replied. “If he admits it during an official investigation, it is not disloyal.” “You mean that if he is asked about it in an official inquiry and answers it, then it’s not disloyal and it can not be considered to undermine the discipline of the troops, but if he volunteers it to the public, the same statement is a crime in itself?” “Yes, Your Honor. In one case he is being ordered to say it by the command. In the other case he is not.”

“So then what you are saying is that it depends on the circumstances under which the statement is being made and not the content of the statement?” “That’s correct,” Eaton nodded. “Well, counsel,” Judge Hanson looked at me and grinned. “What is your response? It’s not the content of the statement that we have to look at here but the circumstances under which the statement is made.” I had to admire him. He was throwing the argument I had made in the Woods trial back into my face. Once, long ago, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes ruled that it was not a matter of free speech for the law to punish someone who yelled “Fire!” in a crowded theater ... unless there actually was a fire. His point was that it was not a matter of content but rather of the context in which the language was stated. “We don’t have to even address that fine philosophical issue,” I responded, ducking the bullet. “The charge requires some evidence, not speculation, not supposition, not conjecture that there has been some breach of discipline among the troops or that anyone acted in a disloyal manner as a result of the speech. This statement, so far as we know, was not made to any troops. We don’t know whether a single member of the military heard it when it was spoken. We don’t know whether a single act occurred by a single member of the armed services as a result of the statement. There is no evidence that anyone deserted or went UA or refused an order because of anything Corporal Conlon said. In fact, we know that the troops whom Corporal Conlon was training when he jumped of the rock, went to Vietnam and are now engaged in the very conduct which Corporal Conlon allegedly argued against. Where is the evidence?” I was getting worked up by this point. “I don’t even think we need to get into the question of how the Army can try Lieutenant Calley for war crimes while the Marines can try Corporal Conlon for objecting to the commission of them,” I added, looking straight into the eyes of the second louie, hoping to strike a responsive chord with him. He looked away. I heard snickers from the observers. I looked over my shoulder to see whether the reporters were taking it down. They were. At least they thought it was a good point. The theatrics were a bit too much for Judge Hansen. He banged his gavel and suggested to Captain Eaton that he be prepared to address the issue of failure of proof on the elements of undermining discipline and loyalty and announced a short recess.

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On the break, the Guru approached me and told me that he liked the way things were going. I asked him how he thought the case was being reviewed by the press. “Like usual,” he said. “You won’t recognize that it’s the same case when you read about it in the papers.” “Excuse me,” Captain Jeffers interrupted. “Captain Eaton would like to have a word with us.” The Guru backed away and we went into conference over in a corner of the courtroom. “You have a proposal for us to consider?” Jeffers began. “That’s right,” said Eaton. “We’re prepared to let your man plead guilty to an Article 86, UA, and recommend six months in the brig, credit for time served, full forfeitures and a BCD. He’s already done almost four months. With some good behavior credits he’ll be out within thirty days. We can all go home and have a stiff drink. What do you say?” “We’ll have to ask him,” I said, committing to nothing. A few moments later we huddled with Jack. Jeffers made the pitch. Jack looked at me for an opinion. “I’m not the one that’s going to have to do the time if you lose,” I said. “This is certainly a far better deal than I ever expected we’d get, but it’s the result of us knocking out everything they’re throwing our way.” “What do you think’s goin’ to happen with the motion to dismiss the disloyal statement charge?” he asked. “I don’t have a clue,” I shrugged. “If it were a fair trial, which it isn’t, the judge would have to throw it out because Eaton didn’t meet his burden of proof. But this is a court martial. I don’t know what he’ll do, except whatever it is, he’s got to do it in front of the whole world. But even if he does throw it out, you’re still facing an Article 85, desertion, with an aggravation that it was terminated by apprehension. That’s three years. You’re playing with two and a half years of your life.” “Will I be able to testify if I take the deal?” Jack asked. Jeffers shook his head. “No,” he said. “You just plead guilt to the UA. Eaton recommends six months with credit and we’re through.” Jack looked out over the crowded courtroom. “I didn’t come back here to just do some time and walk away. I have a statement to make. I swore to myself that I would make it and that’s what I’m going to do. It’s more

important than a couple of years in the brig. I’ll do that standing on my head and when I get out I’ll still be a man. Tell Captain Eaton thanks, but no thanks. I got to live with myself in the end.” We rejected the deal. Eaton seemed dumbfounded. So much so that he was unable to make a cogent argument on the undermining of the discipline of the troops. Reluctantly, but wisely, Colonel Hansen threw out that charge. It was political dynamite. He knew it and I suspected he got the approval of the CO over the break to make the ruling. After the disloyalty charge was dropped, I moved for a recess until the following morning, claiming that due to the events of the day, we were not fully prepared to proceed. We had been ready to go on the disloyalty charge, I claimed, but planned to end up with the defense to the desertion charge the following morning. Colonel Hansen bought it and declared a recess. We now had only one charge left to fight and it boiled down to the issue of whether when Jack Conlon left the Long Beach Naval Hospital, he did so with the intent not to return to the Marine Corps. On the one hand they had his statements. On the other hand, he had been wise enough to have us send him his duffel with uniforms and his spare military ID. And he had been lucky enough to have made the request before Clayton and Doc burned down the house. But by far, the best argument we had to beat the desertion charge was Jack’s motive for returning. Whether or not they liked his testimony, it would still be convincing that he had always wanted to tell his story in court. If they agreed that he had gone to Canada to make his statement but that he had always planned to come back to face the music, it would boil down to only an unauthorized absence and not desertion terminated by apprehension. If Jeffers and I could sell that argument, the most Jack would receive would be one year. When I got home that evening and told the collective about the deal, Gabrielle broke down. She couldn’t accept that Jack had rejected it. She wanted him out, she said. She wanted to talk to him, right away. “Could he still get the deal?” she asked. “ Probably,” I told her, “but I’m not going to let you talk to him now. Tomorrow will be the end of it. He wants to testify and I can’t let you interfere with what he intends to do or say.” “What is he going to say?” Emma probed. “You’ll have to wait and hear it for yourself,” I hedged. She looked at me with raised eyebrows. “You don’t know either, do you?” “I’m sorry,” I replied. “I can’t tell you. Even you.” -209-

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“You don’t!” she repeated, reading my mind better than I would have liked. “Wow.” “The defense calls Corporal John Conlon to the stand.” I looked across to the table where Captain Eaton sat glumly, still amazed that we had rejected the deal. Jumpin’ Jack rose, saluted the court and marched slowly to the witness stand. His manner was proud, like a Marine. He was squared away like a Marine. And that very fact, the training they had given to him, made him a threat to them. He was about to tell these officers something that could only be said by an enlisted man in a courtroom and then only if that trooper was fully prepared to accept the consequences. I didn’t know what he was going to say, or how he was going to say it. We were all going to find out together. I just had to have faith. I could see that he was determined to win their respect if not their agreement. If it were me, I’d have probably taken the deal, but then, I hadn’t any real clue what he had been through. After some preliminaries, I asked, “Corporal Conlon, will you please tell the Court why you joined the Marines.” Jack looked at the panel, moving his eyes from one to another. “Because, sir, I believed in this country and in God and I believed then that in serving the Marines, I was defending my country from all of its enemies, both foreign and domestic ( he emphasized the last word.) The Marines was the best way to do it.” “Do you still believe that?” I asked. “No, I do not.” Jack stiffened his back and straightened his shoulders. He looked them in the eye. “Why is that?” “Because of my experience in Vietnam, sir.” “What was it about your experience in Vietnam that caused you to change your opinion?” I probed. At this point, Captain Eaton jumped up and objected. “Relevance, Your Honor?” “Yes Counsel,” asked the Judge. “What is the relevance of this line of inquiry?” “Your Honor,” I said, “as I understand how matters now stand, the government has only one charge pending against this Marine, that he is a deserter. Proving that charge depends entirely upon their convincing the court that he did not have an intention of returning at some point during an alleged

unauthorized absence. In order for us to prove that Corporal Conlon had no such intent to desert and that he always intended to report back to the Marines, we need to show the reasons why he left the Long Beach Naval Hospital in the first place. It has become a case of Corporal Conlon’s state of mind. Once his reasons become clear it will also become apparent to any fairminded trier of fact that Corporal Conlon’s entire purpose was to announce his intention to defend himself at a court martial. This presupposes a continuing intention to return.” Colonel Hansen grimaced. He had not liked where we were going but he was also keenly aware that he had better permit us to go there or else no conviction would stick. “You may continue,” he ruled, “but I do not intend to permit any political diatribes. Do you understand?” “Yes, sir, I understand,” I nodded. “You may answer the question, corporal.” Jumpin’ Jack perked up. The time had come to tell his story. He ran a hand through hair that seemed blonder now after his lengthy confinement. He frowned at Captain Eaton. Glancing out over the crowded courtroom, he leaned forward in the witness chair and grasped the barrier in front of it with both hands. Muscles bulged under his shirt. Veins strained in his neck. Looking first at the judge and then turning to the panel that would be deciding his fate, he began. “My company shipped over in January of ‘69. We were sent right up to Quang Tri for assignment along the DMZ. Our first objective was to secure the highway and the railroad line that runs north out of Dong Ha to the DMZ. There was sporadic contact all along that sector then. I saw all the usual stuff, I guess. I smelled the smells of death. That mix of gangrene, urine and feces. Heard the buzzing of the flies as they feasted on open wounds and bathed in the pools of congealing blood. It should get to you, you know, the damage hot, speeding metal can do to human flesh when it hits and how you don’t see it coming. But, I have to admit,” he said, looking into the eyes of his judges, and I could see his own begin to redden, “ that I wasn’t really moved by it all. I kind of expected it would be bad like that and so I spaced myself from the reality. Just did my job like it was not really happening. Just a dream, you know, expecting the lights to turn off for me at any moment. So even when some of our men were KIA or stepped on a land mine and lost a leg, it was like hey, they’re on my team and it’s bad, but the other side is getting it worse, so let’s just keep pushing. I moved along with it. “And that’s how it still was with me ‘til after we secured the road and we started moving out to the West and South. The country starts getting hillier -211-

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there until the terrain gets very steep and every click is a major hump. It’s a good place to get ambushed. We’d go out on patrol and every couple days one of our guys would step on a mine, lose a leg. Or we’d take some small arms fire. That’s when I began to pay attention. I began to cheer when the air support dumped the napalm and Willie Peter. Laugh when Charlie fried. Mow him down when he got flushed out by the bombing. I started to really get into the battle. “So I couldn’t help but notice that no one tried to stop our guys from offing a gook when he popped out of a hole with his hands in the air or if we ran across a WIA who they had been unable to evacuate. No one raised a stink when an ARVN interrogator shot Charlie or tossed him out of a chopper after he got the information he wanted. It was all just business as usual. Part of war. No one said it was wrong. “At first, I wanted to say something, but then I didn’t, ‘cause no one else said anything. I just kind of minded my own business, ya know. Even though I knew that it was not right to kill a prisoner. I just looked the other way. Then, before I knew what was happening, I kind of stopped looking the other way and began to watch. And maybe that bothered me at first. I don’t rightly remember. But then, somewhere along the way, ya know, it didn’t bother me any more. Not the shots to the head, point blank. Not kicking their butts out of a chopper. Not clipping their testicles to the radio and cranking it up until they passed out and not when one of our guys slipped a wire around their necks and garrotted them. So over time, I got sucked into it. “Somewhere along the way, I started joining in. I don’t know when or how, it was just my turn, I guess. Maybe I was pissed off ‘cause we lost some guys in a fire fight. The longer I was there, ya understand, the more I came to know they guys I was fighting along side of and they were my friends, my allies. Their lives were in my hands and vice versa. So I began to take it harder and harder when we took a casualty, took it personal. And the VC were clever. They had to be. Sappers and snipers. Traps, mines and stuff. They didn’t have the air and armor so when they hit us it always seemed like sneaky, in the back kind of stuff. Ya know what I mean? Not like hand to hand combat. So I began to get into the killing. It became personal. And I started to get damn good at it. Merciless. That’s when they made me a corporal and gave me a squad to lead.

“Anyway, I had changed and didn’t realize it. I guess there wasn’t even any time to think about it. More like all I could think about was coverin’ my ass and my buddy’s ass and the best way to do that was to kill as many gooks as possible. And everybody was thinkin’ the same thing, so there was like no debating the fine points of what we were doing. “And that’s how it was when my unit got lifted into the A Shau valley. We had been fighting there steadily since 1966. Our positions were always getting hit by NVA mortar and sappers. They’re hard core fighters up there, and they have the ordinance to do a job on ya, ‘cause the place is right on the Ho Chi Minh trail, close up to the Cambodian border. “Well, for those of you who aren’t familiar with it, the A Shau is surrounded by very steep hills and that’s where the North Vietnamese were dug in. But they were very mobile and hard to hit from the air. There’s a zillion tunnels in them hills. For years our guys were trying to knock them out using the big 500 pound bombs that the B-52s drop. Then they’d send us up to clean’em out. But Charlie is dug in real good and keeps coming back. “Anyway, when we came up in ‘69 our guys were beat up bad and needed to be relieved. Our LZs were taking regular fire and we were losing a lot of choppers. Recon had it figured that the NVA had plenty of supplies and ordinance hidden in those hills, ‘cause like I said, they figured it was a terminus for the Ho Chi Minh trail. But one of their tactics was to harass us with small unit actions to keep us from conducting the kinds of coordinated operations that might help us find all their stuff. Our job was search and destroy, so the LZs and bases in the valley would be secure from Charlie’s fire. “I was given a squad to command. I knew the guys. I was responsible for them. And first we humped along the East side in the Eagles Nest area above A Luoi to secure a couple of our fire bases. We had a couple short fire-fights. Blew up some tunnels we found and I didn’t lose a single man. “Then we went over to the West side of the Valley and started operations to secure a couple of hills called the Beak and Hoptown. One day, we found this tunnel. One of the guys tosses a couple grenades into it. I send a man in to check it out. He’s yelling back from just a few feet inside the hole that there’s a couple of dead gooks in there, when I hear some fire. He isn’t talking any more. We call to him, but nothing. I don’t know if he’s dead or alive, but it’s clear that there’s an enemy in there with a weapon, and he ain’t coming out. “That guy’s our buddy and we don’t know whether he’s dead or alive. But I can’t send another guy into the hole and maybe lose him too. And we -213-

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can’t walk away either ‘cause we don’t know who’s in there, how many, how big it is. I mean it could be the gateway to a whole complex. Could be full of ordinance. If we fu..., I mean screw up, we can end up blowing the top off the whole hill that’s got our whole company crawling all over it. “I call down to the lieutenant and he comes up, looks the sitch over and says to bring up a flame thrower. Which we do. Now we know that if we gotta use the flame thrower our buddy’s toast along with anybody else in there. So the lieutenant orders in another man from my squad. Gives him a pistol and a flashlight. And he’s calling back reports every few feet. Finds our guy dead. Finds two dead enemy. And then he yells back that he’s at this place where the tunnel is widening out and it looks like there’s some tunnels running off to the left and to the right.... and then we hear an explosion. It sounded like a grenade ‘cause of all the echoing and there’s no more word from him either, but smoke’s comin’ out of the hole. Now I’ve lost two guys in less than a half hour. The lieutenant calls up the company commander and discusses the problem and together they decide that they should seal the entrance to this tunnel with explosives and hope the concussions kill everyone in there. They figure probably there’s other exits to the tunnel and that we should fan out and search for them. Maybe, when we blow up this hole, we might just see some smoke coming out of another exit, if it’s close. So we’re ordered to spread out and observe. And when we’re all in place, they blow the sucker up. “Well a couple of our guys see some smoke. So they head toward it, yelling that they found something, when one of them gets hit by sniper fire and the other is pinned down. Now I’ve lost three guys out of my squad. Two dead, one wounded and they’re all guys I was in the field with eating and sleeping and joking around for months. Guys who saved my butt. And I’ve got to say, we’re all pissed and scared at the same time, ‘cause none of us wants to be fighting hand to hand in no tunnels with an unknown enemy. But we’re beginning to think we may have to. “Just then, a guy from another squad comes up to the lieutenant, dragging this scrawny little VC. He found this hole and hid quietly next to it, he said. Kind of reminded him of waiting out a rabbit back home, he said. And when Charlie stuck his head out and started to take aim, he reached down, pulled him out with one hand.

“The captain kind of smiles and says, ‘we got ourselves some intelligence now.’ And he calls up an ARVN interpreter. But before the interpreter arrives, another Marine gets into an exchange of fire with the first sniper and wounds him. So now we’ve got two potential sources of information about the tunnels. “The wounded sniper looked about thirty years old so he was probably in his early twenties. He was lean and tough. Looked battle hardened. His wound was probably painful yet he didn’t seem to pay it the slightest mind. He just squatted down where he was put, like those people do. He didn’t answer the ARVN’s questions, even after the interpreter hit him in the balls with the butt of a rifle. He just looked beyond the ARVN, like he was dead already and this was just the road he had to take to get to heaven. “But the other guy, the one that got himself pulled out of the tunnel, was a different sort. He wasn’t more than a child. Looked about fourteen or fifteen. His skin was clear and unwrinkled. He didn’t weigh more than maybe a hundred and ten pounds. Almost looked like a girl. And he was scared -you could see it in his eyes. If one of them was going to break, it was gonna be him. But it wasn’t gonna happen as long as that regular was there. “I was so pissed off by this time that I went up to the captain and told him that I figured the best way to find out about the tunnels was to kill the wounded sniper in front of the kid. If we did it right, I said, the kid would piss in his pants to tell us what we wanted to know. “The captain was interested. Asked me what I had in mind. I pointed out a high rock and said ‘I’d like to jump on that fucker from on top of that rock. Squash him like a bug. The kid’ll talk after he watches me do it. “‘What if it doesn’t work?’ said the lieutenant. ‘Then we’ll be out a prisoner.’ “‘He ain’t goin’ to talk anyway, sir,’ I said. ‘So there ain’t nothin to lose. And I seen this work before. Look at that kid. He’ll tell us everything we ever wanted to know. I’ll guarantee it.’ I was so anxious to commit this act that I was even going to guarantee it. That’s how far I’d come.” “Well, the captain said it was worth a try and the lieutenant agreed. In fact everyone was getting up for it. It was going to be like a sports event. Guys started to make bets on how many jumps it would take before the guy dies or the kid agrees to talk. Anyway, it starts to become a carnival and I’ve volunteered to be in the center ring. “They bring the sniper up under the rock and tie him on his back, spread eagle. They bring the kid up close so he can witness it. The ARVN tells him the same thing’s going to happen to him if he doesn’t talk. He looks like he’s -215-

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going to talk when the sniper yells at the kid in Vietnamese, ordering him to say nothing. I guess he was an officer or something. So the kid clams up. “I climb up to the top of the rock. It’s eight maybe ten feet above the sniper. I put on a full pack and stand up like superman. Then I yell and jump. I come down hard, jamming both my feet into his right thigh area. I could feel the bones breaking and the skin splaying out. The blood vessels popping. The sniper just winces, says nothing but the kid’s legs go out from under him and he has to be held up on both sides. He’s crying now, but the sniper repeats his order that he shut up. “So I climb the rock again. It’s a contest now. A matter of wills. The boys are cheering me on. ‘Go Jack’ they’re yelling. ‘Yeah Jack, squash the bug!’ And I jump again, this time to the left thigh. But the same results. ‘I gotta kill the bastard,’ I say to the captain. “Go to it then,’ he tells me, and a cheer goes up from all the men. “This time I aim right for his midsection. I come down hard, just below his rib cage with both heels. I can feel the air go out of him. Stuff explodes out of his mouth and his ass. Shoots up at me like a geyser and for a minute I’m not sure what it is. Then I can tell. It’s his guts. Coming out both ends. Blood, water, feces, guts everything that was inside is coming out. And I’m covered in it. His eyes are wide open in horror. Staring at me all covered with his insides. He is dead. “And the kid has shit his pants. He is on his knees. Crying. Trembling. We broke him. The ARVN interpreter tells him again that if he doesn’t want the same thing to happen to him, he had better show us all of the exits to the maze of tunnels. He does. He tells us that there are probably ten more men still inside. They have plenty of weapons and food. There are false tunnels and places rigged for ambushes and we know that we could lose a whole company trying to flush them out. So instead, we use the flame throwers, then fill each exit with explosives and blow them all to kingdom come. “When we finish, the ARVN asks me if I would like to jump again. If not, he’d like to try it. It looked like fun. I told him I’d had enough for one day. Before I know it, they’ve got that kid tied down under the rock. The captain gives him the go-ahead and this kid loses his guts the same way. “The men are all coming up and laughing, slapping me on the back, like I did real good. Telling me that I saved all of their lives by keeping them from getting killed in the tunnel. One of them says ‘You’re a real jumping

fool, Jack, a regular Jumpin’ Jack’ and the name just stuck. The men called me that for the rest of my tour. “That night, we’re sitting around laughing about it all and one of the guys breaks down a shotgun. He’s got some marijuana and he’s telling everyone to take a pull on the business end of the barrel while he holds a joint at the other end. They call it shotgunning. First time I ever did it. Anyway it got me so high I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing. But somewhere along the way, it got me to thinking. First, about home and how proud I was being a Marine. And that got me to thinking about why I had joined in the first place and how what I had done, killing this prisoner certainly had to be wrong. It wasn’t the Marine Corps creed or what God wanted. It wasn’t something that the country would be proud to learn about. It wasn’t something that I would want to tell my kids about. It was just plain wrong. And we were all caught up in it, even the officers. They thought it was fun. Gave the ok. Even let the ARVN do it to that little kid who was just a baby, really. So I began to wonder, that night, what had happened to me. What had become of me. “I’m not sure when it was, maybe the next morning, I got to thinking. How come I only had this realization after I smoked marijuana? Was it true, drugs made you think different about stuff? ‘Cause I wasn’t thinking before like I was thinking now. And it started to make sense why it was illegal. After a while I came to see that the people who were pushing this War didn’t want us to think about it and the best way they could figure to make that happen was to make the drugs illegal. “I went to see the chaplain and talked to him about it. He said that I shouldn’t worry. That I had been doing my job and I saved a whole lot of lives, a whole lot of my friends’ lives, by getting that North Vietnamese soldier to talk. He said that God understood that in wars people didn’t behave the same as regular and that God would forgive me, because I had done something that saved our mens’ lives. My motives were good. “But when I said to him that what I had done probably caused at least as many people to die, at first he didn’t understand. He wasn’t even thinking that the VC were people. I told him that and he got real mad. “It got clearer and clearer. If Charlie had jumped off a rock and squashed one of our guys he’d be a war criminal, sure. But not when I did it. ‘Cause we’re people and they ain’t. And that’s how they make it happen. At least that’s how they made it happen to me. I could see that I wasn’t gonna get any help from the chaplain. I wasn’t gonna be real good at explaining it to the other grunts. I wasn’t prepared for this reality. -217-

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“I felt like I was in a box. Like all I could do was more drugs, and that was easy ‘cause they were all over the place and no one gave much of a damn as long as we were out in the field and pulling our weight. So I started to read stuff. I wanted to find out what a war crime was. The result of this was it seemed to come down to who won, or at least who got caught. Like the airmen who got shot down over the North were war criminals to them and heroes to us. And I was like a hero to our guys but if any VC knew what I had done, I’d be a war criminal to them. “Well, to tell you the truth, I stayed high the rest of my tour. I really didn’t give a damn if I got killed and I think that probably that’s what kept me alive. Kind of like my punishment was to live and to carry this guilt around. God wasn’t going to let me die. I came to figure that maybe he had something else in mind for me. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what it was. “When I rotated out and came back to Pendleton, I was still trying to figure it out. I knew that the War was a bad joke, a hoax on the people, but I wasn’t all that clear what to do about it.” At this point Captain Eaton rose slowly from his chair. He was noticing that everyone was rapt and attentive. The panel was purposefully looking down and away, anywhere but at Jack. The clerk was nervously shuffling the same sheaf of papers. The court reporter was periodically wiping tears from her eyes with a kleenex. He was astute enough to sense the need to break the spell. “Your Honor,” he said in his most southern drawl, “we’ve all been listening to this story patiently and sure it’s interesting, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the charge that we’re here to try, which is desertion. This may be useful on extenuation and mitigation, but that’s for another time.” “Yes, Counsel,” Judge Hansen said to me. “Can you please proceed with questions and answers from this point so that we can address the relevance issues.” “Corporal, “ I asked, not knowing precisely what Jack had next in mind, but intending to set him up with a hint as to the issue. “ Will you tell the Court how this evidence you have given proves that you did not intend to desert the Marines but always intended to return.” “Yes, sir,” Jack responded, taking a deep breath and relaxing a bit. “I was just getting to that when I was interrupted. I heard about the Tribunal in

Canada and I was thinking that I ought to tell my story at it. But nothing was clear until, when I was out on that training exercise in Pendleton with the recruits that were getting their orders to go over. I saw that rock, just like the one in the hills above A Luoi. That rock was sent from Vietnam to Camp Pendleton as a message that here or there, it was the same war, the same place really. What I was doing here was just as bad as what I did over there. And so I got this message to climb it, relive the experience and then go to Canada to tell my story in public. I could see that it was part of my mission to do that. First, I had to break with the war machine by jumping. Only then could I go and tell my story in a public tribunal where the world could hear it. If I did that, I couldn’t get lost or ignored when I came back. The Marines wouldn’t be able to sweep me under the rug. But my mission was to come back here and put it on the record. Make it part of Marine Corps history the only way that can irrevocably be done, a court martial. Jack pointed at the court reporter. “See, she’s taking it all down. It’s a permanent record. Like a stone tablet. I was anall American boy, a gung ho Marine and got turned into a war criminal by this madness. I can’t just write it off like the chaplain wanted.” His face reddened at the thought of his story going unheard. He clenched his fists. “We are the enemy as much as they are the enemy,” he announced in a lowered voice. “And we all better wake up and realize that fact. That’s the proof I always was planning to come back. It was my plan. It is my mission. The fact that I’m here at all, saying to you what I’m saying is the proof of my intention.” “No further questions, Your Honor,” I said. “Your witness.” Captain Eaton asked for and received a ten-minute recess. When he returned, he plowed in like an oaf. “You admit, corporal, that you’ve been using drugs regularly since sometime when you were in Vietnam, correct?” “Yes.” “And you also admit that using those drugs changed your way of thinking from being a good American and loyal Marine to someone who breaks the law, breaks the rules intentionally.” “Well, I still think I’m a good American and am loyal, but I suppose you could say that I am now willing to break the law intentionally, because I have a higher moral duty than to obey an illegal order. That’s the lesson of Nuremberg.” ”Now, corporal, there’s nothing in the War Crimes Trials at Nuremberg that authorizes desertion, is there?” “No, just the right to refuse to obey immoral and illegal orders. But I didn’t desert.” -219-

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“Well, you intentionally left without authorization. You admit that, correct?” “Yes.” “And you admit staying away without authorization for more than thirty days, correct?” “Yes.” “And you were arrested at the border, right?” “Yes.” “You didn’t just go up to the border and say to the officer, “I’m a Marine who’s UA and I am turning myself in. Did you?” “No, I didn’t do that.” “In fact, you wouldn’t have surrendered at the border. If you had been allowed through, you would have not said anything to the officer. Right.” “Yes. My plan was to have a press conference in a church in Seattle and then turn myself in. I was going to be in uniform and everything.” “Just answer the question, please,” Eaton demanded. “Your counsel can ask you about your plans if he wants.” “You’ve testified, corporal, as I understand it, that you’ve been using a lot of illegal drugs since this alleged incident in Vietnam. Those drugs have affected your thinking, right?” “They have changed the way I look at things, if that is what you mean.” “Well, it has affected your thinking, isn’t that right?” “My way of thinking about things.” “Are you sure it hasn’t affected your perception of what you have been seeing and hearing?” “What do you mean?” “Corporal, what kind of drugs are you talking about, anything besides marijuana?” “Some LSD,” Jack admitted, with hesitance and a slight squirm. “How much LSD, corporal?” Eaton probed. “Your Honor,” I rose to object. “What has this inquiry got to do with my client’s intention to return? Isn’t that the issue here? How is this relevant?’ “This man’s been on drugs, Your Honor,” Eaton replied. “He admits it. How can we tell what he remembers or what he thinks he remembers if he can’t even answer for his own state of mind, because he was on drugs at the time? How can he be believed?”

“Objection overruled,” said the judge. “You may proceed, captain.” “Your Honor,” I persisted, “it is their burden of proof. How can they prove through this man’s testimony that he intended to desert, if their hypothesis is that he was so influenced by drugs that he doesn’t know what he was thinking. They can’t prove their case by testimony that they claim proves his memory is unreliable. That just doesn’t make any sense.” “I’ve ruled, counsel, “ sneered the colonel. “Proceed.” “Can you testify here, under oath, that you recall your state of mind at all times while you were under the influence of LSD?” Captain Eaton demanded. “No, I can’t,” Jack admitted. “What I do know is that every time I thought about it, it was always what I would be doing and saying to this court. I never thought about running away.” “Never?” asked Eaton. “You were never tempted to just stay in Canada, where you were safe from prosecution?” Jack’s eyes opened wide. “You know, sir, it never occurred to me that I was safe from prosecution in Canada. I’m a Marine, not a draft resister. I thought the Mounties could arrest me and turn me in.” “The fact is, corporal, that your mind is all warped by the LSD and the marijuana, isn’t it?” I could see where he was going. He wanted more to discredit Jack’s testimony than to win the desertion rap. If he did that, the Marines could save face. They could write off Jack for his drug use and that would be good enough. All his moral points would get lost in this shuffle. I hoped Jack could make a recovery. “My mind was warped by the Marines,” Jack replied. “The marijuana and the LSD just helped set me straight.” “Do you subscribe to the philosophy of Timothy Leary?” the Captain asked. “You know, ‘turn on, tune in, drop out?’” “Well, I think, maybe I do, some,” Jack hedged, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow.. “And that’s what you did, isn’t it corporal. You decided to drop out. Right?” “I suppose, in a way.” “Desert? That’s what ‘drop out’ really means, isn’t it?” “Not to me it doesn’t. To me it means not going along with a mission that I can no longer accept and that I no longer believe in. It means no more war for me.”

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“So you decided to drop out.” Captain Eaton repeated. “Take illegal drugs. Jump off a rock so you could avoid doing your sworn duty. Run off to Canada to tell the world how bad the Marines are. That’s what you mean by ‘drop out’, right?” “I decided to stop taking part in a war that I could no longer believe in.” Jack said, slumping in resignation that the obtuse prosecutor was not willing to accept his explanations. “To stop being a war criminal. To do what I could to explain myself. That’s what I mean by ‘drop out.’” Jack responded with as much anger as he could reasonably allow himself under the circumstances. “No further questions,” Eaton declared. We took a break before we summed up. As I walked out of the courtroom, I got collared by the Guru. “Well you sure fucked that up,” he told me. He was not smiling that usual phony toothy thing he did. His lips were clamped shut over those choppers and there was an aura of tension radiating from his neck and shoulders. His face was flushed. It was very un-guru-like. “What are you talking about?” I asked, surprised that he would assume such an assertive and critical posture while we were still in the middle of the case and Jack was at maximum risk. “All that testimony about drugs. Was that your idea or was that his?” “Even if I wanted to, which I don’t,” I replied, “I am not at liberty to respond.” “It really doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “You’re the lawyer and the buck stops with you. That bit of testimony completely undercut a strong political statement. Now the Marines can describe Conlon as a drug-crazed kid who maybe had a bad experience in war and couldn’t take it, so he turned to drugs. No big news. No big deal. They don’t even have to talk about war crimes. He’s just a kid who broke down in war. This isn’t a political prosecution anymore. It was your job to keep it on track and you screwed up.” “By letting him tell his story? The truth? You want some perfect propaganda piece that isn’t real but that you can fit into your program? Sorry. It doesn’t work that way. And as a matter of fact, even though you don’t like the message, the dope did make a difference. It did open his eyes. And for what it’s worth, if it did that for Jack, it was a good thing.” “Good thing? The kid tried to get himself killed?”

“Yeah. Maybe he could’ve done a better job if he wasn’t stoned. Maybe you’d have liked him better as a statistic. See ya around Kahn. I got a trial to finish.” The panel of jurors was out for less than an hour. Perhaps Kahn was right. Perhaps the drug thing made it easier for them, in some weird way, to avoid the political implications of what Jack was saying. If he was loaded, he couldn’t really formulate a clear plan to desert. And there were the bothersome facts of him being out in the open. Not trying to hide who he was. He had kept his uniform and ID with him. The prosecution couldn’t prove desertion beyond a reasonable doubt and they gave him that benefit. He was convicted of an unauthorized absence of more than thirty days. Now the most he could get would be a dishonorable discharge and one year in the brig. That meant no more that eight more months confinement. We had whittled it down and despite the personal consequences to me, I felt relieved. After a conviction at a court martial the same panel decides on a recommendation for punishment. The process is called extenuation and mitigation, “E&M.” Testimony is taken concerning the defendant’s record in the service and the reasons for the commission of the crime. Anything that might help a court in determining what the sentence should be is relevant. This decision would be passed on with a transcript of the record and testimony to the convening officer, in this case the three star general who commanded Camp Pendleton. He would ultimately decide if that sentence was appropriate or to reduce it. Our trial strategy was to put Captain Jeffers in charge of E&M. I was not military and at this point the better approach would be for a Marine to argue the appropriate punishment for a Marine, not some outsider. Jeffers did a good job. He pointed out Jack’s previously unblemished record. His combat citations. His distinguished Vietnam service. He pointed out the fact that Jack had served almost all of his four year enlistment. He asked for a sentence of time served and no punitive discharge, hinting that Jack would end up being discharged anyway after he served his sentence and there was no real chance he would be returned to active duty with troops. Eaton argued that Jack had acted willfully and in knowing violation of the law. He had set out to hurt the reputation of the Marine Corps and had done substantial damage to that reputation in the public eye. He emphasized Jack’s habitual use of illegal drugs while performing his duties, including combat duties, where he may well have put his comrades’ lives, as well as his own in mortal peril. He asked rhetorically why the Marines should not impose the maximum sentence permitted by law on one who was a traitor to -223-

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the Corps and who gloried in his betrayal. How, he wondered out loud, could Corporal Conlon ask from mercy from his avowed enemy, whom he had set out to destroy? It was a good question. The panel came back within two hours. Jack stood at attention and faced them as the senior officer on the panel read the verdict: nine months hard labor, reduction in rank to E-1, forfeiture of all pay and allowances and a Bad Conduct Discharge. He had five months to serve. My job was not yet over. I had to obtain the trial transcripts and, with Captain Jeffers, prepare an argument for the convening officer, and then an appeal. To do that, I had to wait until the transcripts were prepared. Jeffers told me to expect this to take about two weeks. 36. For me, it was like the morning after a party. You come down the stairs hung over, to find the detritus of the night before. Half- consumed glasses of wine staining your coffee table. Bits of cake ground into your rugs. Paper plates lodged discretely under your sofa, encrusted with the remnants of dinner. Bits of torn gift-wrap and strands of ribbon swept into corners. Kitchen utensils, poorly cleaned and stuffed into the wrong places by wellmeaning friends. And a melancholy loneliness amplified by the echos of revelry so recent that the walls still reverberate. I made myself a bowl of cereal. The conversation was in mid-stream. Mitch was announcing that he and Zoe would be departing that day. There was a Zuni festival in New Mexico that needed his presence. Gabrielle was making her plans to visit with Jack as often as possible before they shipped him off to do the remainder of his time. She grimaced when she saw me. Like the Guru, she held me responsible for the sentence and Jack’s decision not to take a deal which would have left him free sooner. Louise and Joanie barely acknowledged my presence. Emma put a cup of tea in front of me and went back to reading the Blade Tribune and its report of the mild sentence handed down to a drug-impaired Marine who went UA. I dined in their presence but alone. The stress and excitement of trial gone, I had only my thoughts and the defensive rationale I was able to muster in opposition to the hostility, disappointment and incipient ennui. But my discomfort was soon distracted by a visit from Lucky and Melinda.

Lucky was in his usual state of mind-altered good cheer. He was bouncy and smiling. He reeked of stale marijuana and looked like he had spent recent history humping Melinda in the back seat of his VW bug. Her disheveled appearance did little to dissuade me from such speculation. “Hi Y’all” Lucky struck up. “How the hell’s it going?” He looked over at me. “Great fuckin’ job. I really dug that Jack stuck it to them fuckers about gettin’ high. Soon’s ya get the transcript I’d like ta send a copy off ta High Times. I think they’ll really dig how Jack told ‘em that dope made him see what a bunch of Nazis they are.” When no one responded to his comments, Lucky turned to Mitch. “Hey man,” he said. “Saw you got your shit packed up in the trailer. You planning on splittin’?” “Yeah, me an’ Zoe’s goin’ down to the Zuni reservation. They do this ceremony this time of year and it’s suppose to be really secret, but I hear they’re letting white people watch for the first time and we thought we’d check it out.” “Far out!” Lucky exclaimed. “Where’d you hear about it?” “Friend of Zoe’s turned us on to it,” Mitch explained. “Hey,” Lucky replied, in a burst of energy. “Ya think we might be able to get in on that. It sounds pretty cool. What do you think, Melinda? You’re even part Indian. They may dig that.” “Sure, why not?” Melinda agreed, suppressing a yawn. “Don’t think that there’s going to be much going on here for a bit. And we could sure use a vacation.” “Couldn’t we all,” Louise agreed, chillily “So what do ya think?” Lucky asked Mitch. “No problem, man,” he replied. “If it’s ok with the Zunis, it’s ok with us. We’re leaving this afternoon. First we’re heading up to LA to pick up some shit at Zoe’s parents’ house then we’re going to be heading back down through the desert. Gonna stop at the Grand Canyon. From there we’re going through the Navajo reservation to the Hopi mesas and then over to the Zuni reservation. We can meet up along the way, wherever you want.” They were looking for a map as I finished my breakfast and headed for the living room to take a look at the paper. I had barely settled in when I noticed a shady fellow walking up the driveway, heading for our door. He wore a warped, brown Borsalino pulled down to cover all evidence of hair. His face, shaded by the hat brim, looked furrowed and creased by age, excessive sunlight and/or frequent inebriation. He was thin and long. His wrists and ankles stuck out from a threadbare, single-breasted, brown suit -225-

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that appeared to be a stranger to the clothes hanger or iron. He was holding an envelope and looked like he was making a delivery. It was clear he was up to no good. I opened the door to meet him before he was able to knock. “Can I help you?” I asked, hoping that he had come to the wrong home. He pushed his hat back and looked down his long, pocked beak at me. “I’m looking for Eric Wolfe,” he announced. “Does he live here?” This was a relief. He wasn’t a cop or a detective, because he didn’t know me by sight. “You found him,” I replied with newfound bravado. “What can I do for you?” “This is for you,” he said, handing me the envelope. “Consider yourself served. Have a good morning.” He turned and started to walk back down the path. It was all in a day’s work for him. Nothing personal. “You too.” I called after him. He tipped his hat without turning back. I tore the end off the envelope to discover another one of those thirty-day notices to quit the premises that landlords give to tenants before they begin an eviction. I brought the notice back into the house. “Well, at least we won’t have to pay the rent this month,” I mumbled to no one in particular. “What did you say?” Emma called out from the kitchen. “I said we’re getting evicted again, so we don’t have to worry about paying the rent.” She came into the living room. “Let me see.” I gave her the notice. “Thirty days. We haven’t gotten your check yet. It’s already a week late. I thought we’d be in trouble for non-payment, but this makes it easy. We don’t have to pay now, do we?” “Well, I guess not,” I replied. “It would be pretty stupid to pay this month’s rent and then have to fight to get back our last month’s rent deposit. The landlord’d probably keep it and make us go to court to get it back. I guess there’s a silver lining.” “More than one.” Emma hinted ominously. “We have to have a meeting anyway, about our future here. This just makes it all the easier.” I didn’t want to ask her the particulars. It sounded like a lot of stuff had already been decided behind my back and the meeting was going to be just a formality. I suspected that decisions had already been made while I was busy with Jack’s trial, but that no one wanted to share them with me until it was

over. The tone of her voice just confirmed a paranoid feeling that I’d been having for weeks. My check came in the mail the following afternoon. The custom had been for someone to simply present it to me for endorsement so it could be deposited in the common account and used to pay expenses. After Emma’s comments the previous morning and the announced departure of Mitch and Lucky, it seemed prudent for me to get to the mail first. At that moment, it looked like our project was shaved down to myself and four women. At least two of them hated me. Another was pissed off that I had delayed her tryst with her newfound lover and I was no longer certain the last was faithful. At least, it seemed, she had been let in on a plot against me. The envelope was a little thicker than usual. It was accompanied by a letter from the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Civil Liberties Military Law Project. He thanked me for my year’s service and hard work. Unfortunately, he explained, the Board had decided to terminate funding for the project. It appeared that there was no longer a viable organization at Camp Pendleton, that the relationship between the Black Marines and the whites had deteriorated and that there was very little activity on the Base that could justify the expenditure of funds. They were a civil liberties organization, he reminded me, and the meager funds available needed to be used to protect the rights of the many, rather than the immediate interests of a few individuals. This would be my last check. I brought the letter into the house and showed it to Emma. “My discharge papers,” I said to her. “Convenience of the revolutionary government. The Guru’s work,” I editorialized, relieved that I had an excuse to leave but also angered by the slight. “I knew this was coming after he argued with me about Jack’s testimony. He made short work of it. It’s so easy when you’re just a theoretician and aren’t in the trenches making the decisions that affect people directly.” She shook her head. “Well, this confirms the need to make some decisions soon.” she said. “Where’s the check?” “I’ve got it,” I admitted defensively. She looked at me and frowned. “What do you mean, ‘You’ve got it’?” “I mean that it looks to me like we’re not long for this place and I don’t see any reason why I ought to turn this check over to a collective that doesn’t exist. People can blow in and out of here as they please and it seems the only one that has to stick around and put bread into the place is me. Well, we have a month left in this shit hole and when it’s over, we, you and I, if that’s what -227-

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you want, are going to have to do something else. For that we need this bread. So we’re going to do what everyone else around here is doing and live off the land till they pull the plug on the gas and electricity and then it’s adios motherfucker.” “Oh?” she looked away, out the window. “So you’re making that decision on your own. Without any input from the rest of us? From me? We’re back where we started. Is that it?” “You mean, me making critical decisions for both of us? I asked. “Well, yeah, I suppose I am.” I said, answering my own question. “At least I’m making this one for me. I’d like you to agree with it but I can’t see any choice for myself. Beside, a lot of decisions around here have already made without me, so let’s call this one my turn.” I crossed my arms over my chest, pursed my lips and glared in her direction. She glanced up and said, “Then we’ve got nothing more to discuss, do we?” “No I guess not.” It was a cold few days around the house. I wished that there was work for me to do, but there wasn’t any. There were no new clients. All I was doing was waiting for the transcript of Jack’s trial to be prepared, to write the appeal and it would be finished. In the meantime, I wrote a few letters off to other projects inquiring whether they needed a military law expert. It was too early to expect a response. “You may be interested in this,” Emma muttered, tossing a letter across the table not long after the hostile encounter over the last check. It was a letter from Marylou. From an address in Berkeley. In it Marylou explained how she had left Oceanside and headed up the coast, stopping at Las Pulgas to pick up Frankie. She managed to get him off the Base without him being discovered and together they drove North. It was graphic in its detail. She related that they had become wonderfully close on the trip. That Frankie had told her he was in love with her and that their age difference didn’t matter to him. They spent the night together in a motel on the beach at Morro Bay and climbed to the top of the rock, where they had a picnic of bread and cheese and wine and made love. They camped in Big Sur and walked together at Point Lobos looking a seals and sea otters and made love. They went to a rock concert at the University in Santa Cruz, where she had smoked marijuana for the first time in her life, admitting that she liked it.

They were now in Berkeley and Frankie was in a sanctuary at a church. He had made statements to the press that he was refusing to go to Vietnam and fight in an immoral war. She was so proud of him, she said. Meanwhile, she had changed her hair-style, ridded herself of her dowdy clothes and gotten a small apartment through some members of the church support group. She was about to begin job as the subscription manager for a Quaker publication that was dedicated to supporting conscientious objectors, she said. She was on to a whole new life, thanks to us and felt so free and happy that she couldn’t believe that a few short months ago she was a drudge and the wife of a stuffed shirt. She was happy! At least someone was, I thought. The two weeks for the preparation of the transcript were up and I was becoming anxious for something to do. There was no work and the hostility level at the house had risen to the point where people would leave the room when I walked into it. Or I left the room when one of the women other than Emma entered. And as for Emma, we were being civil and that was about it. We weren’t discussing plans and we weren’t exactly enjoying an intimate relationship. Something had to give. I called Captain Jeffers and asked for a status report. “I was just about to call you. You better come down here right away.” he told me. “We have some important matters to discuss and I don’t want to do it on the phone.” I left within minutes, telling Emma to tell the others that something was up and to stay put until I knew what it was. I didn’t realize it then but this would be my last excursion onto the Base. I got to the JAG office just after noon, when everyone was at the officer’s club taking their two hour, three beer lunches. Jeffers though, was at his post. The door to his office was open and he was standing next to his desk, staring out the window, lost in some thought. “What’s up?” I asked, interrupting his daydream. “You aren’t going to believe this,” he said. “You remember the court reporter, the lady whom they put on the job because she was the expert instructor?” I told him that I did. “Well,” he continued, “she had all of those wax disks with the proceedings on them and was transcribing them. She was working on them, taking them back and forth from her home to the school where she does the training. A couple days ago, she left the disks on the back window ledge of -229-

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her car, while she was doing one of her classes. It seems a whole stack of them, ones she had not finished transcribing, melted in the sun. Her back window acted like a magnifying glass and ruined the disks. They can’t be transcribed. There’s no record of the trial.” I laughed. “I guess either the gods or that lady, or both were sure playing a prank on us, weren’t they? Corporal Conlon wanted to make a record of war crimes, to make indelible history. The brass needed a record to convict him. Now it’s all a big zero. What are they planning on doing? Retrying him? They can’t give him a punitive discharge, now unless they do.” “No way do they want to retry him.” Jeffers confirmed. “The top brass are really pissed. Colonel Hansen came down this morning and relayed the CO’s proposal. They’ll let him out today if he agrees to a UD, ‘for the convenience of the government’ provided he doesn’t appeal his discharge for ten years. That’ll wipe his conviction off his record. All he’ll lose is his GI benefits but he won’t be a convicted felon. He’ll even keep his rank and they’ll reinstate his pay. What do you think he’ll say? He’s already testified.” “I haven’t got a clue,” I replied. “Let’s go over to the brig and ask him.” We drove over to the brig and asked Captain Daly to let us have an emergency conference with Jack. He seemed to be expecting us. “Guess that son of a bitch is living right,” he said. “If it was me, I’da given him a firing squad.” “Thanks for your verdict of sympathy,” I jibed, smiling. “I would have thrown you off the jury in less than a minute.” “Semper fi,” Daly responded. “That’s the issue. Get prisoner Conlon,” he hollered to one of the privates working under his command. Jack sat back in his metal folding chair and took a drag on a roll-yourown. “You’re fuckin’ shittin’ me.” he smirked. “Today? Ya mean I can get the fuck outta here today?” “That’s right,” Captain Jeffers confirmed. “They’re willing to let you out and send you on an administrative leave from this afternoon. They’ll send you your discharge in the mail in a couple of weeks. All you gotta do is agree to a UD, an administrative discharge under other than honorable conditions for the convenience of the government and not to appeal it for ten years. As a matter of law, it is not likely that you would win an appeal anyway and who knows what rights of appeal you would have ten years from now. Probably

none. So don’t think that you might get it upgraded sometime, because the chances are very low.” “Other than honorable conditions!” Jack exclaimed. “Their version of honor isn’t mine anyway, so who the hell cares. And as far as their bennies are concerned, they can take ‘em and shove ‘em.” He looked at me. “ Let’s get the fuck outta here.” “We got a deal,” I reported to Jeffers. “Go call the colonel.” When Jeffers returned, he held a brief conversation with Captain Daly. A few moments later, Daly told Jack to “Saddle up. We’re cuttin’ you lose.” Conlon slowly looked around the office, registering his emotions. He gave Daly a snappy salute which the officer chose to ignore, and headed back to his cell to collect his things. We walked out of the brig into bright, warm California sunshine. Conlon was silent, looking around as if he wanted to remember every step of his departure. Strangely, he seemed less than happy. He had been robbed of his penance and felt the loss of the expectation. I noticed. “Don’t worry,” I assured him. “Gabby will take up the slack.” It brought him back to earth. He smiled broadly at the thought that this evening would be different. We waited together at the coffee shop in the PX, talking about plans for the future. When I alluded to the demise of the collective, he expressed relief. He wanted to get as far away from the Base as he could, as fast as possible and had been worried that Gabrielle might wish to linger. They had the paperwork done in a few hours and we drove off to surprise the women. “I’ve got some news,” I said, opening the screen door to the kitchen. Emma was at the sink washing a pile of dishes. “What’s that,” she replied, looking up with that bland look that women put on when they are angry with you and want to let you know that they are simply humoring your conversation. “Round up the others and go look in the car,” I said. “Don’t play games with me,” she snapped. “What’s in the car.” “Just do what I said, Emma, please. It’s a surprise. Not a bad thing. Do it and you might enjoy it.” She perked up a bit, wiped her hands on a dish-towel and went to get the others. When the five of them came into the house it was like a cloud had lifted. Jack and Gabrielle were draped around each other negotiating a merger. Joanie and Louise were casting misty glances in every direction but mine. Emma, though, gave me a look with some of that old flame in her eyes, the -231-

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spark that I thought had gone out months ago. That evening, Jack was eating dinner at our table. The next morning Jack and Gabrielle announced that they would be leaving as soon as his discharge papers came through. They planned to spend a few days out in the desert, at Joshua Tree while they waited. Then they were going up to the Haight, where Jack had briefly stopped at on his way to Canada and where he had been longing to return, with his girl, ever since. We were now down to four. It was clearly time to have that meeting and settle up. The meeting from hell. Louise began with an attack on my elitism, my professionalism and my male chauvinism. She accused me of controlling my marriage to Emma and being a capitalist pig, because I had money and wouldn’t share it with “the people.” She argued that marriage was bourgeois and it was the duty of true revolutionaries to smash monogamy. Joanie, intimated how she had noticed how friendly I had become with the Marine brass and how that proved that I was really a pig. It got to me, I’ll admit it. I found myself asking how my old man would handle a situation like this. Of course Sammy would have never gotten into it in the first place. But if he had, he would have flipped the bird at these females and told them he was heading off to find some real women. That would have been that. Me? I sat and listened to the premeditated bashing and imagined the orgasmic satisfaction of physical violence as the tension built in my shoulders and arms. I could feel my biceps tightening, screaming for release, aching to throw a punch. I imagined the relief that would bring. But I restrained myself. I knew the consequences of a violent conclusion to this fiasco would be bleak and would put Emma over the edge. Even if I was going to lose her, I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of losing it. I tempered my macho with a dollop of California go-with-the flow Zen this, Tao that. I looked over at Emma, hoping to find an ally. But she stayed silent. I had been abandoned. The message was clear. She was sticking with the women. I began to feel the icy, limpid tentacles of loneliness, pulling me beneath the surface. I was either going to swim or drown. An emptiness filled my heart. The detachment of solitude enveloped me. Protected me from the women’s harangue as my consciousness began to travel away from this place.

There was no point in arguing with these women. I had no power of persuasion. The game was over before I could even make my first move. I had been set up. So I bailed. There was nothing else I could do, short of senseless violence. I got up from the table. Ignoring them, I pulled the last forlorn brew out of the refrigerator. It was a can of Colt 45 malt liquor, a drink I despised. Swigging the brew with arrogance, I bravely sauntered passed them into our room. In a daze now, I stuffed all of my clothes, clean and dirty together, into a backpack, tossed in my knife and a canteen and attached a rolled up sleeping bag and mat. There was only one possession left. I plucked the Browning from our dresser drawer and sat on our bed, cradling it. Contemplating. It had a mesmerizing effect; cold, empowering…evil and strangely comforting. I pulled back the action, slipping a round into the chamber, cocking the hammer and contemplated the options. There was a moment. Then I pushed the release and let the magazine fall away, rendering the gun inoperable. With a sigh of resignation, I stood up, grabbed the piece by the barrel and smashed the hammer into a window ledge, breaking it off. My war was over. I threw the broken weapon into our closet and slipped on my backpack. Then, as if encouraged by a bouncer’s final shove, I tossed myself out the door and onto the pavement. I walked away determined and fast. My mind furiously churned repairs to my self-esteem. For all of the love I had for Emma, I needed mountains of excuses why not to love. This was going to take a lot of rationalization work, I knew. Yet I was now unencumbered by external reality checks. I could warp history as I liked, to create a balm. I mused on how life sometimes works in ironic symmetries. Almost a year ago the two of us arrived by car. Southbound on the sunniest of days. It was night now and I found myself alone, carless, my thumb in the air. Soon I was aimlessly uprooting CalTrans flora by the side of an I-5 on ramp as I attempted to hitch a lift north, to anywhere. To the west, beyond the freeway, an unseasonably cool fog hit the beach low and rolled across the sand in an amphibious assault. Headlong, it butted up against the coastal cliffs that run in an almost unbroken barrier, border to border. There it hesitated, mustering its forces for a siege that would shortly lead to a breakout onto the broad coastal plain a hundred feet above. But it had already sent its chilling emissary before it. I had left in extremis, unconcerned with future travel plans. Emotional. In short sleeves. The cold breeze woke me from my stupor. I took the cold personally. It had come to punish me and no one else; to aggravate my mood of despair. -233-

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I was sitting on a patch of ice plants, frantically searching my belongings for a sweatshirt, when I saw our Valiant coming. It rolled toward me amid the traffic that was routinely rejecting my thumbing entreaties. Inside, there was only a driver, Emma. My heart pounded with hope. She drove the right front wheel up over the curb, crushing ice plants with a reckless disregard for serious undercarriage damage. “Eric,” she yelled through the open passenger side window, “get in.” I walked away from her, up the freeway ramp. Pretending not to notice. She followed, slowly. Honked her horn. “C’mon Eric. Get in. Let’s talk.” There was no point in prolonging the inevitable. I relented and got in. On the radio, an oily-smooth baritone was explaining the Kissinger theory of nuclear diplomacy. “Having the bomb,” he advised, “would do us no good unless the Soviets believed that we would use it. That means we have to be prepared to use it. In fact, it may even mean that we will have to use it.” He was speaking apparently to a patsy of a reporter, who wondered whether that didn’t negate the whole objective of not having to use the bomb. “Well, that’s right,” said the Kissinger apologist. “We might have to use it to get them to believe that we will use it. Therefore, the Kissinger strategy is the only way we can be certain that we are least likely to have to use it.” I’d heard enough and turned it off. It seemed to me that what he was saying applied to marriage at least as much as Weltpolitik. Men who used physical threats to control a relationship would have to get their wives to believe they would resort to physical force for the threat to do any good. Sooner or later, the only way that tactic would pass muster would be to actually slug her. But once violence is ruled out of bounds in a relationship, the man is practically up shits creek. There’s no way in hell that a man is going to beat out a woman in the marital power struggle when it is reduced to a battle of wits. Women have been in training for that tilt their whole lives. I wasn’t going to clobber Emma. She knew that. I might just as well throw in the towel. Thanks a bunch, Henry. “I can understand where you’re coming from.” she began. I didn’t let her finish. “Oh, you can, can you? Where do you think I’m coming from?” “You’re jealous,” she said. “You think I’m dumping you. Smashing monogamy. Got a thing for Joanie. That bugs you doesn’t it? Threatens your manhood.”

“Well...,” I admitted, “when someone dumps a person for someone else, doesn’t that say something about their so-called adequacy? I think so. But when a guy gets dumped, not for another man but for a woman, I mean, that’s a hard pill to swallow, don’t you think?” Emma looked over and smiled her alluring best. “Eric, you’re a fool. I’m not a lesbian. We’ve been together long enough for you to know that if you had been paying any attention at all. What’s with you anyway?” C’mon Emma,” I responded. “Don’t you think I’ve noticed the looks, the hugs. There’s stuff going on between you and Joanie. Don’t give me that shit. I ain’t blind.” “If you aren’t blind, you sure are dumb,” she retaliated. “Eric, everyone loves being liked. Being found attractive. Even by someone of the same sex. So big deal. Joanie thinks I’m attractive. So she’d like to go to bed with me. That doesn’t mean I want to go to bed with her. And it doesn’t mean she’s pushed it. But it also doesn’t mean I’m not flattered by her attraction. I’ve told her that and that I’m not interested. But don’t tell me you wouldn’t feel a bit flattered too if some guy found you attractive. I mean after you got past your macho, posturing indignation. At the bottom of it all, someone has found you attractive and how is that something to feel bad or offended about?” “This wasn’t some one shot deal, Emma. It’s been going on for months and you were rubbing my face in it. So don’t make it sound like a little flirt.” “We were working together, Eric. What do you expect? Was I supposed to quit? We had a job to do and the best way to do it was in a friendly manner, not hostility. I suppose that’s what you would have liked.” “I would have preferred a little support,” I said in a way that told her that she had convinced me that I was an asshole for even fantasizing that she had become Joanie’s lover. “So would I,” she responded with conciliatory sweetness and a glance in my direction. “I wasn’t getting any from you either, you know.” “Well, what did you expect? I was the odd man, and I mean man out.” “How can you blame that on us?” she shrugged. “I mean, just because the only people on the project who were doing any work were the women, how can you lay that on us?” “I was doing work, too, which you seem to forget.” “That’s different. You had a different job to do. It wasn’t a collective. You were operating on an individual basis. That’s why they don’t want to work with you.’

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“No, that’s not it Emma. The grant ran out and I’ve got no more money. You know, it’s funny but it sounds like the same old story. Women keeping a guy around ‘till the money runs out then they show him the door. Same wine in a movement bottle.” “It’s not like that,” she said with a hint of doubt. “You may not believe this,” I continued, “but I’ve got the full spectrum of emotions. All 88 keys. I don’t just have the bad ones, like anger, greed and jealousy but I have the others too. Men can have them. They can get hurt, feel sad, feel pain, betrayal, love. Believe me on this, Emma, if you’ve got ’em, we do too. Maybe we cover up better, but they’re in here all the same.” We had reached the immigration checkpoint and the line of cars was about ten deep. There were only two officers on duty but they persisted in conducting a thorough investigation of every vehicle with a brown-skinned occupant. In the meantime, they could have waved through a hundred illegal Irish immigrants and fifty French or German tourists who had overstayed their visas. But that was not the point. It was skin color pure and simple and we had to wait our turn to be waved through with a courteous nod and a smile. Emma took advantage of the slowdown and looked over at me. “I’m going with you,” she said. “I don’t want to stay in the collective without you. I love you. No one else. I’ve always been faithful.” Her wistful smile, illuminated by the headlights of oncoming cars, seemed to flash off and on like one of those old neon roadside advertisements designed to get the immediate attention of weary motorists. It got mine. She had won me over. I believed her. Every bit. I took a deep breath and knew that if she could still love me we were in this together, for the long haul. One of the beefy guardians of our borders directed us past a battered ‘50’s Ford pickup with its torn out seat lying alongside as if it were the victim of South Bronx scavengers. Clothing was strewn around its perimeter like the petals of a wilted flower a week past prime. A pathetic bracero slouched against the front fender, resigned to detention beneath the watchful eye of La Migra. Nearby his co-conspirator, a forlorn, ageless woman, squat and waistless, clutched her squirming brown infant to exposed breasts. Her broad face, engraved with worry lines of oppression, impassive yet sad, followed

the privileged travelers accelerating past to cruising speed in the fast lane of life. With a free hand she was picking up the pieces of a broken clay pot. Something of value to her that La Migra had delighted in smashing. I felt a kinship. Like her meager possessions, the luggage of my feelings was strewn along the highway of recent experience and I was helpless to do anything about it. And then it came to me that we had gotten our wish. The War had been brought home. As a consequence, it had broken the collective clay pot. The Donnies, Jacks, Luckys, Louises, Joanies, a whole generation, would be picking up the pieces for a long time to come. Rubbernecking, I watched her until she faded into the obscurity of darkness. We headed north in silence. Emma was driving.

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GLOSSARY AIT

Advanced Infantry Training. In the Marines an extra period of training in infantry tactics strategy and operations.

APC

Armored Personnel Carrier. A lightly armored troop transportation vehicle.

ARTICLE 15

Referring to Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which empowers commissioned officers who are company commanders and higher to impose various and limited forms of punishment for infractions of the Code, provided the subordinate agrees to waive his or her right to a court martial.

ARVN

Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the South Vietnamese army.

AWOL

Absent Without Leave. A military crime.

BAR

Browning Automatic Rifle. An automatic infantry weapon lighter than a machine gun and heavier than a standard issue rifle such as an M-1 6.

BCD

Bad Conduct Discharge

CAPTAIN'S MAST

Referring to an Article 15 non-judicial punishment proceeding in the Navy and Marines.

CO

Conscientious Objector or Officer, depending on context.

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Commanding

COINTELPRO

A covert operation concocted in the late '60’s by J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI and the Nixon White House to harass various leftwing organization such as the Black Panther Party and to provoke them into situations where they would be vulnerable to being shot by the police or arrested.

CORPSMAN

A medic in the Navy who might also be attached to the Marines.

CP

The Communist Party of the United States.

DD-214

A Department of Defense form used for specifying the type of discharge granted each member of the armed forces" Honorable, General, Undesirable, Bad Conduct or Dishonorable.

DI

Drill Instructor.

DMZ

The demilitarized zone separating North Vietnam from South Vietnam pursuant to the 1954 partition agreement.

E-1

Lowest pay-grade and rank for an enlisted person. "E" symbolizing "enlisted" and the numerical stating the pay-grade that corresponds to a rank. E- 1s and E-2s are privates. In the Marines, an E-3 is a Lance Corporal. An E-4 is a corporal. E-5s through 10s are various sergeant ranks.

E and M

FRAGGING

Extenuation and Mitigation, the part of a court martial after the serviceman has been found guilty of the crime(s) when the court reviews his record and hears his excuses, prior to determining the sentence. From the term, fragmentation grenade. The use of a grenade to kill one’s superior officers.

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GERONIMO

A Viet vet and Black Panther who was confined falsely for a murder based upon a Cointelpro informant.

GRUNT

Usually an infantryman.

GUNNY

Gunnery sergeant, a rank specific to the Marines. An E-7, the seventh highest rank of non-commissioned troops. Invariably a “lifer” or career soldier.

FN

Fabrique National, the Belgian national arms factory. A weapons manufacturer and brand name for various military weapons.

H&S

Headquarters and Service Company. A company in every battalion composed of various attached specialties from translators and investigators to cooks, drivers and including the commander’s staff.

HUEY

American helicopter gun ship.

I-CORPS

The Northernmost operations sector in South Vietnam.

JAG

Judge Advocate General, the legal branch of each of the armed services.

KIA

Killed in action.

LIFER

Usually referring to a career, noncommissioned officer.

M-16

Standard issue automatic assault rifle after approximately 1967.

MINUTEMEN

A right-wing paramilitary organization active in the 1960's generally a precursor to the militia movement.

MOBILIZATION

A loose collection of leftist and peace organizations that coordinated the large demonstrations against the war that took place in the late 60's and early '70’s.

MOP

Marines Organizing Project, a fictitious organization of civilians engaged in supporting Anti-War Marines.

MOS

Military Occupation Specialty, a bureaucratic classification number for the specialty each soldier is trained to perform, for example, radioman, driver, mortar man, etc.

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RED GUARD

A radical communist youth organization created and incited by Mao Tse Tung to harass, humiliate, silence and intimidate his political opponents in particular and, in general, anyone who might challenge his philosophy or rule. It targeted intellectuals and the educated sectors of Chinese society in particular.

SOGI

A fictitious organization of civilians engaged in raising funds for various Anti-War organizing activities directed toward members of the armed forces.

MR. NATURAL

A cartoon character created by R. Crumb, implicitly easy going and usually stoned.

NCO

Non-commissioned officer, a holder of one of the non-commissioned ranks of corporals and sergeants.

SANE

An anti-nuclear peace organization that was part of the "Ban the Bomb" movement of the early 60's.

NLF

The National Liberation Front. Generally called the Viet Cong and used synonymously with the communist guerrillas. This organization was ostensibly a broader based coalition of nationalist groups beyond the communists all of whom were engaged in the effort to oust the US forces from Vietnam.

SDS

NIS

Naval Investigative Service, The investigative and security department of the Navy that also has jurisdiction to investigate various crimes and conduct that affect the security of the Marines. A military version of the FBI.

Students for a Democratic Society. A decentralized left-wing student organization that had dozens of chapters in colleges and universities across the US during the late '60’s. SDS organized demonstrations, student protests, sit-ins and disruptions of university functions during the height of the Vietnam War until it degenerated in partisan bickering and factionalism in the early '70’s.

PFC

Private First Class. In the Marines an E-2

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SNCC

The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. In its early years, an integrated organization that sent students to the South to register Blacks to vote. It practiced nonviolence. Several of its organizers were killed while engaging in this activity. By 1967 the organization was controlled by "Black Militants" or "Black Power" advocates such as Stokely Carmichael and H."Rap" Brown who expelled all white members and started to advocate, initially the right to self defense and later the right to engage in “revolutionary violence.”

TAC Squad

New York City riot police customarily employed to break up demonstrations and to attack and beat demonstrators.

UA

Unauthorized Absence, the same as AWOL for Marines and Navy.

UD

Undesirable Discharge,. An administrative discharge for the convenience of the government (so they don't have to conduct a court martial) or, in context, the uniform of the day.

UC

University of California

VC

Viet Cong, the South Vietnamese guerrilla forces, as opposed to the North Vietnamese regular troops. V C in military communications parlance is Victor Charlie, hence, "Charlie."

WM

Women Marine

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WEATHERMEN

A faction of SDS that took its name from the Bob Dylan lyric, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. This lyric symbolized their belief that it was possible to create a violent revolution in the US. in 1969 by engaging in what they termed "exemplary action." This involved bombing, designed to break the taboo against violent political action and to challenge that prevailing philosophy that political discourse in American society was a sufficient process to accomplish necessary change. Weathermen engaged in the process of making bombs were blown up in a townhouse in Greenwich Village, New York City in 1969.

YIPPIE

Ostensibly the Youth International Party. Made up of politically active hippies during the late 1960's and early '70’s, it was supposedly dedicated to creating a youth revolution. In actuality it was a spoof of political factions created by Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and others to obtain media attention.

Bring The War Home

Acknowledgements I want to express my grateful thanks to Sheila Donohue who coached me and edited my early drafts. Her help in pulling together this story was invaluable. Thanks also to Linda Romilly Irvine who turned me on to Sheila. I also extend a heartfelt thanks to my friends/readers, Ann Ehrich, Jane St. John, John and Elly Gould and Jane Kinzler. Their insights and encouragement was most helpful. A special thank you to Kjeld Lyth who was kind enough to give me a read and a perspective from the “other side.” To Jonah Raskin and Peter Wiley, I want to express my extraordinary appreciation for the giving freely of your time and providing me with two of the most wonderful blurbs for which any writer could hope. And a second thanks to John Gould who also helped me with marketing ideas. Finally, I want to express my love and gratitude to my wife, Bonnie, who fortunately knows how one ought to spell and punctuate. Without her support and encouragement this project would never have made it this far.

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