WHITE SUMMER (Chap. 6)


We parted in front of McNutt. Ingrid hummed softly the theme to ‘A Man and a Woman’, her arms swinging lightly, as she left. I walked down the concrete concourse and up the stairs to my floor.
I unlocked the door, swung it open and snapped my wrist, sailing my notebook across the room like a Frisbee. It hit my bed and skidded to the floor. I needed to see Warlock.
When I knocked, the silence boomed inside. Next door, Seth’s room pumped The Stones’ ‘Satanic Majesties Request’, into the hall.‘Please come see me in the citadel, oh well...’.
I tried there and was greeted by Seth’s hoarse laughter, "Yeah, who is it?"
"Jase! Have you seen Warlock?" I heard rustling and scraping, Seth thudding to the door.
It cracked open, framing his fat acne-plagued face, his black hair hanging limp like frayed rope. "C’mon in, man."
The stench from his room pressed against my face like a dirty foot, the scent of marijuana overhanging it all like a thin moth-eaten blanket. Warlock was sitting on the floor, his arms braced against his knees, his chin balanced on his hands like a balloon, ready to float away, a ganja smile plastered across his face.
"God, Seth, don’t you ever scrape out this pit?"
"Can’t be bothered . What’s up? Dig the concert?"
"Yeah, it was far out."
"That prick screwed with my song," Warlock said, "Cut-off the freaking power."
"Yeah that was uncool. That cat was too uptight," I responded.
" Uptight," Warlock repeated, "They had no right! Outta sight. See the light. I’m rhyming ," like he was amazed himself. "Seth, write that down! It’s a freaking lyric!"
"Warlock, you have that ‘stuff’ I asked for earlier?"
"Yeah." He jumped to his feet. "Follow me."
In his room he pulled out a plastic baggie from under his mattress filled with grass and dangled it in front of my face.
"Five dollars, five dollars, ding, ding, ding." He swung it back and forth like a crossing signal.
I dug out Hunter’s five and gave it to him. He tossed the packet to me, and I stuffed it in my pants.
" I still have some acid left if you want some. It’s good stuff. Really, really good stuff. It took me to some groovy places in my music I hadn’t explored. You don’t know what’s inside your mind ‘til you try some, Jase. You just don’t know. If I could have played all of ‘White Summer’... It’s on me."
" I know. I know. I need to go. Anyway, It’s not for me. Hunter wants it."
"Wants what?" he said, as he locked his door.
"The grass. Hunter wanted me to get it for him."
"Hunter?" he asked.
"He wants it for Joey."
"Balling, balling, yeah, It’s great for balling. Ever try it?" his smile framing and answering his question as he pushed Seth’s door open, the reek scouring the hall.
"I have to go. I’ve got a date with Ingrid."
"Ooh, nice." He grabbed my forearm. "Stay cool, man. You’re a true friend. It’s all cool. I’m cool. It’s okay." Seth chuckled beside him, a lit doobie secreted in his beefy palm.
"Want a hit before you go?" he asked.
"No thanks. Not this time. I’ve got to hustle."
"See what I told you, man." The door shut.
Hunter wasn’t back. I stuck the grass under his pillow and scrawled a note, then took another shower. In the stall, as I lathered up, I thought of Ingrid, the night ahead. The shaved area was darkening now, the hairs starting to curl. It wasn’t so bad, not so embarrassing, the soap streaming off my body.
When I got back to the room, I yanked on a fresh pair of bell-bottoms and chose a short-sleeve shirt, the one with the fat horizontal stripes, burnt orange and brown. I bought it when I still liked the Beach Boys. Was that just a summer ago? I draped a necklace of wooden beads around my neck and called Ingrid to let her know I was on my way.
It was pouring when I reached the open concourse, the cloud-laden sky pulled low around the dorm like a dark gray sock. Bloomington was like that. The sky would cloud over and rain with little or no warning. You’d start out on a sunny day and by the time you got out of class, it would be raining cats and dogs. I went back for my umbrella. I rolled up my pants legs and slipped off my sandals. Hanging them over the hooked handle of the umbrella, I walked barefoot in the cold rain to Briscoe.
Ingrid laughed when she saw me standing outside the elevator. She stepped out and slipped off her sandals, too, draping them over mine. She had on a copper-colored mini-skirt and a silky brown top, a gold bracelet twisted around her arm. She took a moment to light one of her Gitanes, and we stepped onto the wet concrete, huddling under my umbrella to the sound of the constant rain, loud as pitched pennies. We were like two kids, stamping our feet in every puddle we came upon. Through the pouring night, water flowed, braiding together in the gutters, leaping through the iron grates.
On the way there was a moment when my carefully held thoughts spilled over. We kissed by the trestle that spanned Fee Lane. Our cold lips touched and I pulled back abruptly, remembering other colder lips. She had a puzzled, wounded look that slipped into silence.
"What do you think that means?" I pointed to new graffiti on the side of the gray trestle, a stenciled black triangle with three words: ART, MONEY, OBLIVION stacked inside.
"Money corrupts art," she answered tersely, expelling a shaft of smoke from between her lips, her cigarette at her side, scissored between her fingers. "You do not remember, ‘Contempt’?"
"Yeah. That’s one way of looking at it," we continued walking. "Or maybe it could be, without art there is nothing but oblivion, or better yet, from oblivion comes art."
"What do you do with the ‘MONEY’ in between?"
"Spend it."
She coughed, laughing, the smoke escaping her mouth.
We talked about the hypocrisy in America. She couldn’t understand why we wasted electricity on automatic doors in supermarkets, or our love of soft bread like cake. I learned she was a Catholic, but by her own admission, not a good one.
Kirkwood Avenue was like a beacon, The Von Lee’s bright white ping pong lights chasing around the illuminated marquee, the red plastic letters glowing. I dropped our sandals on the sidewalk and collapsed the umbrella, shaking it. I started to pull three dollars from my wallet then stopped.
"A dollar fifty," I asked.
She smiled, handing me her money. I purchased the tickets.
Inside was the familiar smell of mildew and the hot oil from the popping machine. The same but this time different, I thought. I bought a box of popcorn and a Coke.
"For me," I said, smiling at her, "but I share."
She laughed as I held open the narrow red door, and she passed through. We sat in the back, but not where we had sat before.
We settled in to a travelogue on Finland, the print faded and scratchy. I pushed a kernel of popcorn in her mouth. She reached in the box and did the same to me. A Hanna-Barberra cartoon about a fox flickered past. I tasted her salty, buttery fingers.
Then the screen was blue with white letters, ‘Un Homme et une Femme’, fog and Anouk Aimee by the seaside with her small daughter, an electric piano softly keyed. Ingrid’s body sighed into me. I put my arm around her as one evocative image replaced the other on the screen. It was good, her warmth beside me. Her gentle breathing, enough.
Ingrid leaned over and whispered, "The words at the bottom of the screen, I do not like. They annoy me." I drew back and frowned, she laughed.
The movie was now in black and white, the wipers going on Jean Luis Trintignant’s Mustang, the rain washing over the windshield as he drives. They are both married. He asks about her husband and flashback images supplant their faces on the screen, a movie set, her husband is an actor, no, a stunt man. The cool, lulling story line is broken by cars crashing into each other, the sound of metal scraping, rending, cars colliding; cars bursting into flames on the screen in color. It was that night again. The overwhelming smell of gasoline, oil, the acrid odor of burned rubber. I felt ill in the pit of my stomach.
I squeezed Ingrid’s arm. "I have to go," I whispered, " It’s okay, I’ll be right back."
I ran to the lobby and punched into the men’s restroom. It was vacant. I burst into heaving sobs, my eyes welling over with tears. Pressing my back to the white wall, my legs shaking, gave under me. I slid to the cold tile floor. Shivering uncontrollably, I wrapped my arms around myself. Why does that night always come back, that image of Karen. Clutching my shoulders, my fingers dug into my flesh, the tears coursing down my cheeks in crooked traces. If anyone came in... snot was trailing from my nose. Please forgive me, please, please, please, forgive me, forgive me, please forgive me. I rocked back and forth mouthing silently my miserable mantra, not knowing anymore who I was asking forgiveness of, Karen, her parents, God, Ingrid? Everyone, all of them? I pushed myself up off the floor. I leaned over one of the porcelain sinks. I cranked the spoked handle. The water surged from the faucet. Cupping my hands, it bubbled and effervesced through my fingers. I slapped my face with the cold water, my mouth and eyes sprung wide. Dripping, I yanked on the thin cotton towel looping down from the wall dispenser. I rubbed my face hard. I blew my nose. In the mirror, my eyes still burned red. It was dark in the theatre, she wouldn’t notice. I took a deep breath and licked my lips, wiped my palms on my jeans and opened the door. Ingrid was standing there, a concerned look on her face.
"I was worried." She looked me in the eyes. "It is a sad movie, yes? You think Anouk Aimee beautiful?" When I was silent, "We can leave if you do not feel good."
I shook my head.
"Then let us go back to our seats and watch the rest of the film. Please." She gathered my hand in hers.
We sat down. Her fingers tentatively massaged the back of my hand. We shared the popcorn, but separately, silently, watching the images unfold on the screen, the rain drenched scenes, the seductive music. Jean-Louis Trintignant’s character was a test car driver, a race car driver. The film continued to spool out and when he held Anouk Aimee’s hand on the screen, I took Ingrid’s hand in mine. She looked at me. I gently squeezed her fingers. I leaned over and kissed her. There was a scene in a hospital with a critically injured driver and his distraught wife. My mouth went dry as paper. I motioned for the Coke. But it was okay. It was over. I had pushed it back once more. On the screen they finally made love, bittersweet and in black and white. I imagined us together, her naked body under mine, how it would be. The lovers part, she boards the train. He stands alone. "Crazy to refuse happiness," the subtitles read. He gets in his car and races to the next stop, meeting her at the station, they embrace the camera swirling around them. And then the theme music, haunting and sweet. Ingrid was wiping her eyes. I pulled her to me and patted and rubbed her back. She laughed sighing through her tears.
"I am so foolish."
"No. Not at all. You were right. It is a sad movie."
"But, beautiful, yes?"
"Yes, very. Let’s go get something to eat, a snack. What do you say?"
"I say, yes!"
We dropped our trash in the white bullet-shaped canister in the lobby.
Outside, it was still raining. We slipped off our sandals under the marquee. I popped open my umbrella . Ingrid lit a Gitanes.
"I know just the place," I said, "and it won’t be crowded."
"Oui?" She expelled a thin stream of pale smoke as we stepped under the curtain of rain, our feet splashing on the wet pavement, the lights of Kirkwood haloed and shimmering before us.
"And they serve Coke!"
She laughed and hugged close to me. It was just a couple blocks, the blue and red neon of ‘Ladyman’s Café’ pulsing brightly, the daily specials painted on the window in slanting fat white letters.
"Here we are! If you want ‘American’, this is the place." I folded the umbrella and opened the door. We stepped in.
"Uh-uh, you can’t eat here," The waitress in the rumpled pink and white institutional dress informed us, looking up from the table she was wiping with a cloth. "You have to..." our sandals dropped to the floor in front of us. We slipped them on. She turned back giving the table a final swipe.
"Counter or booth?" she asked.
"Booth,"we answered in unison. We laughed. Ingrid slid into the nearest one, the bench seat an overstuffed orange leather, fat round buttons punched into the rolled cushions.
"I’ll give you two a moment," she said and clopped away.
I pulled two plastic covered menus from the chrome rack on the table."Let me know if you need me to translate anything," I said, handing her one. She laughed.
The waitress returned with two scratched plastic glasses of ice water. Her hair was dyed an unnatural shade of red, strategically pierced with bobby pins. She wore more than enough make-up, and it looked as if there was a portion of every dish she had served during her shift smeared on her apron.
"I will have a Coca-Cola. You have this?"
"Sure ‘nuff. And you honey?"
"We want separate checks," Ingrid interjected.
Her pencil poised above her green pad, the waitress raised an eyebrow.
"Flip the page. I’ll have a slice of apple pie and coffee."
Ingrid smiled.
"Be right back."
"Jason, the film, you did not like?"
"Yes, I liked it, the foggy early morning seaside with all the ocean spray, the silver- gray beaches. Just some scenes..."
"Some scenes?"
"The guy always seemed to be in his car driving in the rain, the wipers going. Does it rain that much in France?"
"Not in Nice, just a little."
The waitress returned with our order.
"Here you are, sweeties." She set the curved glass of Coke and a straw in front of Ingrid and placed the thick cup of coffee by me as well as the pie. "Enjoy. You can pay at the register."
"Thanks," I offered.
The paper shaft sailed across the table lightly bonking me on the forehead. Ingrid plunged her straw into the Coke, averting her eyes. She finally looked up and laughed.
"Cute." I wadded up the wrapper and tossed it back at her. She deflected it with her hand. I cut into my pie. "Ummm, you’ve got to try this. It’s really good!" I lifted a forkful and held it out to her. She leaned forward, looking in my eyes as her lips closed over the tines. She sat back.
"Ummm, yes, this is good, sweet."
I sipped the hot coffee.
"Jason," she looked at me, a serious cast to her face. "The cars in the film, they upset you? You left, after the montage of car crashes."
"Yeah, They made me think of something bad that happened to me." I tipped the cup to my lips again.
"You were in a car accident?"
"Yeah."
"You were hurt?"
"No." I shook my head.
She took a long sip of her Coke. "Someone else is hurt? Did you drive this car?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I did." I stuffed a piece of pie in my mouth.
"Who was hurt? Was someone...tue’? Killed."
"Yes. Listen, Ingrid, I’d rather..." I held the hot cup in both hands the steam obscuring my eyes. I squeezed them shut, opened them, breathed out and set the cup down.
"It was my girlfriend." I stopped. "It happened two years ago..." I couldn’t continue. "It was my fault. I shouldn’t have...stupid." I stood up. " Let’s go."
"I am sorry, Jason, I do not mean to... I do not want... Sit. Please." She looked at me.
I sat down. I could feel the heat gather behind my eyes. I held it in.
"Please forgive me," she said, her fingers locked with mine.
I had to stand. I laid a dollar on the table trying not to look at her. "Forgive you?" She was beside me. "Ingrid..." Under the florescent glare I hugged her, crushed her to me, held her hard against me.
She hugged me back . "Let it go," she said, softly, "let it go."
I paid at the counter, the full bill. Ingrid didn’t protest. When we left, the waitress turned the sign in the window, CLOSED. I pushed open the umbrella and we removed our sandals, by now it seemed a ritual of sorts, the rain spattering in waves across the pavement.
I peered in the window at the wall clock. "Eleven-thirty. She must have stayed open for us."
"Jason," Ingrid’s face close, "do not blame yourself. Please, live for you. In the film, remember? The train station? What Jean Paul said? ‘Il est fou de refuser le bonheur.’ ‘It is crazy to refuse happiness.’ You must not."
"I’m trying. But what’s it all worth? What’s any of it worth?"
Her dark eyes glistening. "Me," she said .
As we walked hand in hand huddled under my umbrella back down Kirkwood toward the campus, the bell tower in the old Student Building tolled the quarter hour.
"Jason!" She grabbed my arm. "I want to be a co-ed!"
"What?"
"The Well House! The tradition. You do not know?"
"Sorry, that’s so square."
"No! No! I want this! At midnight you kiss me in the Well House and I am a co-ed. It is tradition. I want this! Yes! Please?!"
"Okay. Okay."
"We must hurry!"
Our feet flashing over the wet pavement, we spotted it’s red-tiled dome, the carved limestone pillars, half-hidden by the undergrowth, the dark dripping trees.
We ran inside. I threw down my open umbrella, spinning like a broken top, as we collapsed on the smooth, stone bench. We laughed as we caught our breath.
"There is a fountain." She was looking at an ornate iron pedestal in the middle of the floor.
"Why," I breathed. "You need a drink?" I flipped her with water. She laughed .
Then the bell, pendulous, chimed, it’s notes, sonorous with the weight of decades, a prelude before it tolled the hour.
"Jason."
I clasped her fingers and we stood. "Do we kiss in the center, sit under the stain-glass, where?"
"I do not know."
"Or just this." I kissed her as the tower bell tolled, the first strike toward midnight. Her hands slid around my waist, hooking together at the small of my back. I cradled her head, her dark luminous hair in my hand and kissed her again. The bell reverberated through the drizzling night. Again and again our lips met in tender kisses, hungry kisses, then our tongues, hesitant, then hungry, thrusting, anxious. Her hands released, slipped lower pulling me closer as the bell tolled unrelenting, pushing lives, moments, irrevocably behind us. All we had, all we would ever have was now.
The dim light in the domed ceiling flickered above us. She let my fingers fumble her buttons, massage the front of her blouse, then slip inside to cup her cool breast, her nipple hard beneath my palm. The bell tolled and the rain faded; sounds from deep in her throat. I felt her heaving heart. The bell tolled, our bodies glued together. Kiss after kiss, twelve kisses, the bell tolled, the last tone, decaying through the mist veiled night. Our lips held, then parted.
She buttoned her blouse.
" It’s not raining now," I stuck my hand out from the enclosure, " just dripping from the leaves. Come on."
We stepped from the dry shelter to the damp pavement. I led her into the dark undergrowth, the cloak of night, the thick twining of leaves and vines, new twigs laden with water, spraying us as we passed.
"Ou’ prenez-vous de moi? Where are you taking me?"
"Shhhh."
Our bare feet stepped upon the spongy ivy that carpeted the ground. I stopped at a wide oak, far enough in to be secluded in the glade. I turned to her and pressed her gently to the corrugated trunk, my cold toes touching hers. We kissed, my fingers softly on her cheek; the silky folds of fabric under my hand, her breast; her skirt a different texture; her leg, cool. I slid my hand up, pushing under the hem of her skirt, seeking the tenderness between her thighs.
She inhaled deeply, then exhaled. "Jason, que faites-vous?"
"Shhhh... shhhh."
Her words fell like beautiful stones to the forest floor. My lips pressed to hers, my hand caressed higher. She wore no panties. My fingers surprised, laced her curls. She opened to me, yielding, warm, wet as the night enveloping us. Her arms encircled me, her fingers hard, insistent. She pulled her lips from mine, laying her head on my shoulder, her breathing, hard. I was a blind man, lost, my fingers seeking some meaning, some reason. She made small sounds indistinguishable from the night. Her teeth found my ear, her bites tender at first, then her breathing grew clipped. She bit hard, as she shivered beneath me. I bore the pain, kept plying her, until her teeth released and she exhaled, "Jason!"
Her arms uncoiled. My hand slipped away. I stepped back. Her face and limbs glistened pale in the darkness.
She placed her hand on the front of my jeans and softly squeezed. She smiled, turning me stumbling around, a twig snapped, poked my heel. She positioned me against the tree.
"Ingrid you don’t ha..."
"Shhh," she hushed.
Using both of her hands she unbuckled my belt, popped the metal button and pulled my zipper down. She pressed her body to mine, her breath hot on my cheek. I felt her cool hand slip under the elastic waist band, her slender fingers encircle me. She held me gently, firmly.
"Mmmmm. You like this?" Her hand began slipping rhythmically up and down.
"Yes," I breathed.
"I think you need this."
The black pools of her eyes close to mine, her breasts pressed to my heaving chest, she quickened her motions.
She felt what was happening. "Yes, yes. This is good. Let go, Jason, let go."
I expelled my breath like my very soul. I found her lips. I kissed her as if it were the end of the world.
Her lips broke from mine. Her hand withdrew. She raised her arm to her head. "Ooh, my hair, it is so wet."
"Yeah. My-- pant legs-- they’re soaked."
I zipped up and buckled my jeans. I put my arm around her and held her for just a moment before we slipped out of the leafy den. My umbrella still lay defeated, tipped crazily on the floor of the Well House.
"I need to get you back. I think your carriage has already turned into a pumpkin." I retrieved the umbrella and snapped it shut. I laid it across my shoulder like a rifle, our sandals dangling from the handle like hunting trophies; hunters, home from the hills.
"Oh, Jason! I am so sorry!" She clasped her hand to her mouth.
"What? Why?"
"Your ear. There is blood."
I touched my fingers gingerly to the sore part and held them out, the tips dark.
I smiled. "It’s all right. You know I..." What? What did I know? Was I going to say, ‘I love you’? She would think it phony, lust talking, hear the impossibility in it. "Let’s go," I said.
The campus lamp posts were a dim refrain as we traversed the washed sidewalks curving around the illumined back side of the Memorial Union. It wasn’t until we had passed Beck Chapel and crossed the trickle of the Jordan River that I noticed the thicket of pale leaves fringed in flickering red light, heard the bull horn.
When we cleared the over-hanging branches, I saw at least three police cars angled in front of the Quonset hut that housed the Spectator office. No sirens, just the silently rotating beams of the police cruisers bathing everything in red. There were men milling around, some in uniform, others in rain slickers or trench coats. One held a red and white bullhorn at his side. A white box truck and a jail van were parked near by.
We had to get a better look. Cutting across the rain slick street, we headed for the side of Woodburn Hall. It had jutting limestone corners and shrubs, sticky shadows that would cling to us.
The bull horn burped , "You are now in violation of University sanctions. You are now committing trespass on university property and in danger of being put on probation or expelled."
We scooted around a low bush and hugged the rough block wall.
"You need to vacate the premises at once, no negotiations, no further time extensions will be acknowledged or accepted. If you fail to vacate, all equipment will be liable to seizure and you will be subject to arrest. You must come out now." The bull horn squawked off. Several of the police officers conferred with the man with the horn. He lifted it again. " We also have information you are harboring a runaway. She must be surrendered immediately." There was a long pause. "We will be coming in if you do not accede to these demands."
"Ingrid, they’re talking about Andmoreagain."
Now, there was an axe, the man in the trench-coat had a long handled fireman’s axe. He cocked it back in his hands and swung hard. The blade bit into the door splintering the wood with a loud ‘thwack’. There were muffled shouts from inside that I couldn’t make out. Rocking it back and forth, he squeaked it free, and again the axe head slammed into the door. They were trying to break the lock. One of the police opened the back of the jail van.
The door took another hit from the axe and splintered. The hollering from inside was louder. Then the scene exploded. It was like knocking down a wasp nest. Those holed up inside swarmed out from behind the shattered door. There was chaos as The Spectator staff broke from the Quonset hut. Men, women; I craned my neck, I thought I saw Wolfman. There was Andmoreagain, cutting loose from the tangle of bodies. She started to run, but was tackled from behind by a burly officer slamming her hard to the pavement.
"Get your hands off me, motherfucker!" Andmoreagain screamed as her arm was violently wrenched behind her back and the cop snapped a cuff on her wrist. "Motherfucking pig! Hands off, pig!" Her other wrist was cuffed. "Owww! You’re hurting me, motherfucker! Wolf! Wolf!"
Students were being handcuffed and hustled into the van. Others were struggling under thick knees jammed into their backs. There was Wolf! A policeman lunged for him, grabbing at his shirt. Wolf bobbed and weaved and squirted away. The man wearing the trench-coat tried to stop him. He braced himself and held his axe out, horizontal, like a bar. Wolf rammed into him, knocking him down, the axe skittering across the asphalt. Not breaking his stride, Wolf stooped, grabbing it’s handle.
The cop was dragging Andmoreagain contorting and kicking toward the jail van.
Wolf swung toward them, wielding the axe high over his head, yelling, "Let her go, you Fascist pig!"
The officer pushed Andmoreagain to the pavement, unbuckling the safety strap on his holster.
She whipped her head around, "Wolf! "
Wolf seized both ends of the handle and hurled the axe broadside at the officer’s face. It smacked his head like a steel pancake, hard, knocking him dazed to the ground.
Wolfman stood there for a frozen second, staring at her.
"Run, Wolf," she shouted.
He turned, dashing toward us, shadows among shadows.
A policeman pounded after him.
Andmoreagain, still cuffed, struggled to her feet. The groggy cop hooked his arm around her ankles and yanked. She fell flat on her ass. He pounced on her.
I still don’t know what made me react. I was there, my back pressed to the cold stone of Woodburn Hall. Then I was moving, running. Wolf saw me, his eyes fried with confusion and fear, his cheeks shiny with perspiration, his curls tattooed to his forehead. As he rocketed past I collided with the officer hot on his heels. We both hit the pavement hard. The world was roaring, spinning. I saw Wolf dash down the sparsely lit trail, twisting around he raised his arm in the power salute, his fist clenched, before he disappeared into the heart of the campus.
The officer was instantly on me, wrapping his iron arms like a pretzel around my neck . I was choking as I struggled beneath his weight.
Ingrid was calling out, "Descendez-le! Laissez-le tranquille! Il est innocent! Innocent! Innocent!"
Andmoreagain was crying, "Let him go, you motherfucking, pig!"
Another officer rushed over; shiny black shoes with thick soles.
"Shit, Frank. He’s not one of them. Look," his head jerked toward Ingrid, "there’s his chickie. Let him go. Hell, what did you do to him? There’s blood on the side of his face."
The officer broke his hold, shoved my head hard and stood up. "I didn’t do shit. It’s just a scrape."
I doubled over, seized in a coughing fit. Ingrid crouched next to me, holding me, cradling my head.
"You two need to get lost or I’ll slap you with interfering with an officer," the cop said.
"Vous ne sont rien mais une truie."
"French, huh?" Then he addressed me. I didn’t look at him. "You think you’re the big hero, kid, helping your buddy escape? He won’t go far. We’ll catch him, and he’ll have some stiff charges waiting. How ‘bout child molest and assault and battery on an officer for starters. You Communist punks! If I had my way..."
"Come on, Frank. Chuck needs help with that blonde bitch. She won’t shut up."
They double-timed over to the officer struggling with Andmoreagain. She was all elbows and knees, kicking, spitting, screaming profanity, trying to scratch anyone who came near.
One of them clamped hold of her shackled wrists, another grabbed her jerking ankles, hoisting her up. As she squirmed in their grasp, her left breast popped out.
"Well, looky here," one of them chuckled, "a little bonus. You need to wear a bra, sugar."
The other officer ran to the police car and sprang the rear door open as they awkwardly trundled over her bucking torso. They heaved her in like a sack of potatoes and slammed it shut. Her feet kicked at the side window, as the two officers slid into the front from opposite sides. I heard them laugh as they revved the engine. The car violently lurched forward then screeched to a stop. Andmoreagain’s feet flailed upwards, then disappeared as she was hurled from the seat to the floorboards. The squad car sped off down Seventh Street toward town.
"Jason," Ingrid looked at me, " you are all right? Why does this happen? Pourquoi?" She helped me up.
" It was just a newspaper!" I gasped. " Was it that dangerous?"
"I do not know. Je ne comprends pas."
"Ingrid. What they did to Andmoreagain? She’s just a kid. And Wolf. What’s going to happen to Wolf? I can’t understand any of this."
We just held each other. I remembered the stupid umbrella and our sandals cast off by the side of Woodburn and retrieved them. We started on our way back to Briscoe, giving the area of police activity a wide berth. I looked over and the curb in front of the Quonset hut was piled with desks, chairs, filing cabinets, typewriters, a mimeograph machine, even a couch. They were in the process of loading it into the truck.
The reality of it all truly smacked into me when we were opposite the Little ‘5' track.
"We’ve got to find a phone. I’ve got to call Warlock!"
We found a phone booth on Tenth Street. I was shaking from the adrenaline rush and the cool of the night. We wedged ourselves inside, the umbrella was a comedy routine. Ingrid accordioned the glass door panels closed. I lifted the receiver and thumbed a dime into the telephone slot and dialed, Ingrid holding close to me. The phone at the other end started to ring. The long night was beginning to weigh on me. It rang and rang and rang. I wasn’t looking forward to the upward trek on Fee Avenue to our dorms. Where was he?
"What?" Warlock’s voice sounded thick as wool, a county away. "What time is it? Who is this?"
"It’s me, Jase, listen carefully. The cops raided The Spectator office. Wolfman is in serious trouble. He assaulted a cop. He’s run off. Are you still there?
"Sure. Yeah, I’m here. I’m with you." His voice bobbed up and down like a cork on the surface of consciousness.
"If you have any stash in your room you need to get rid of it. I’m sure the cops will get a search warrant and go through his stuff. They’ll be looking for him."
That woke him up. "Where’s Wolfman now?"
"I don’t know. He took off!"
"They’ve arrested Andmoreagain."
"What?! I can’t fucking believe..."
"Listen, I’ve got to hang up. I’m cold and tired and... Just do what I said."
"Don’t worry. I owe you, man."
I clacked the phone back in it’s cradle. I managed to turn, Ingrid’s soft warmth pressed against me, concern and worry in her eyes. "I wish the circumstances..."
"Oui." She wedged the door open with her heel.
We hiked back to Briscoe, our arms around each other.
In the deserted foyer we held hands and kissed again, something so chaste.
"Jason, what can I say?" She hugged me. "Je vous l’amour peut aussi facilement."
I wrinkled my brow and looked at her.
"If I wanted you to know, I would have used English. Good night, Jason." She kissed me and stepped into the elevator. The doors slid closed.
My feet led my tired body back to McNutt. All I wanted now was my pillow and blanket.
The scallop roofed concourse pulled me to the stairwell, the stairway to my floor. It never seemed so long. I limped down the hall and there was my pillow and blanket piled in front of the door to our room. I knew what the Scotch-taped note would say, but I read it anyway. HAUL YOUR STUFF TO THE LOUNGE. PLEASE!!! TANX, H. He still couldn’t spell thanks. Hunter had Joey with him. They were probably too stoned to drag their sorry asses over to her apartment. I juggled the umbrella as I gathered up my bedding and made my way to the lounge, not my favorite place. Then inspiration struck. I knocked on Warlock’s door.
"Jase. Come on in. I’ve taken care of it. Thanks, for the lowdown. What happened to your ear? It’s all caked with blood."
I touched it and smiled.
"Cops?"
"Warlock, big favor. I’m about to collapse, can I sleep in Wolfman’s bed? I don’t think he’ll be back tonight."
"Sure. Tell me what happened."
"It’s all too much. Here have an umbrella." I held it out to him. It dropped to the floor. I unfurled my blanket, tossing my pillow to the head of the bed. "I’ll tell you tomorrow." I shucked my bell-bottoms and burrowed under the blanket.
"Tomorrow’s already today, man."

WHITE SUMMER (Chap. 5)

WHITE SUMMER (chap. 5)


The water, bracing, ratcheted across my skin like metal spikes. I was slathering shampoo through my hair when a stall door slammed shut and the shower next to me hissed to life.
"Jase, that you?"
I rinsed my hair and wiped my eyes. "Warlock?" How did he know it was me, my feet beneath the partition? Must be Warlock magic.
"You’ll be there at the rally, right?"
"Wouldn’t miss it. Say, how’s it hanging, man? You okay? You had some trip last night."
"Yeah, some parts were not altogether pleasant. Stupid me, I took two tabs."
"You dumb ass."
"Yeah. I admit it. Jase,--" I stood listening to the sound of the water surging over the tiles sluicing noisily to the drain. "I-I’m glad you were there. You’re a true guy."
"No sweat." I turned the shower off and shoved the plastic curtain aside.
"I guess you won’t want to trip with me now."
"Wow, I don’t know. The stuff scares me." I grabbed my towel and rubbed down.
"Hey, I took too heavy a dose. One tab gives you a beautiful trip. I promise. Anyone will tell you that."
"Sorry, it’s just not my thing." I wrapped the towel around my waist, picked up my kit and unlatched the shower stall door.
"You don’t know what you’re missing," his voice called out from the torrent.
I stood outside his stall, the steam billowing. "My loss, huh. Say, could you sell me a nickel bag?"
"Yeah, sure. When do you need it?"
"Whenever."
"I’ll have it by tonight. Hey, Jase!
"What?"
"You’re a real pussy, you know that?"
"Yeah, thanks. I’m a real disappointment. You should know." Silence. Just the sound of the water hashing over the tiles. I padded away regretting the words as soon as I had said them.
I dressed for class and snatched a notebook off my desk.
I was glad to be out walking, feeling I was moving in some positive direction, out in the surging world; new leaves, jade green, over-spreading red- twigged trees, tender spring stalks bent ground-ward heavy in bloom, the low walls of green shrubs hugging sidewalks wet after the early morning rain. Sprays of jeweled water glittered through the air as I dragged my fingers over the hedges on my way to Woodburn Hall for my lecture.
Thomas Hart Benton murals loom over the lecture hall in Woodburn 100, all Benton’s wavy figures swirling around, rendered with rubbery arms and legs; a ditch digger rubs elbows with a newspaper reporter at his typewriter; the fireman; a circus acrobat standing on a pony; the ringmaster; the white nurse tending to a little black baby in it’s crib; in the center over them both, a burning cross; hooded, white robed klansmen gesticulating; old glory held aloft . It was freaky enough to be an illustration to a Bob Dylan song, maybe, ‘Desolation Row’. I guess Indiana was like that and it took an outsider to show us the truth. I wondered how he got away with it. Benton must have been some sort of radical.
I sat near the rear of the auditorium in case I nodded off. It had happened before. My notes would start out concise and readable and then degenerate into a wiry tangle of ink, the line rapidly dropping off the page. But today, surprisingly, I remained awake, softly tapping my pencil against my thigh, listening and taking concise notes, even though the professor’s voice droned on sounding like a shaman performing some sort of obscure archaic ritual. I was thinking about what would come after.
The sun was blinding as I pushed open the weighty oak door rubbed and stained dark by generations of sweaty palms.
I veered from my path and cut through the hedge, crossing the Memorial Union parking lot. I needed something to eat. The Union building was such a midwestern castle all limestone blocks, towers and parapets, red tiled roof. How could you not be impressed. I spun through the revolving door and up the black marble stairs. The bust of Herman B. Wells that anchored the landing was even imposing, a great bulldog of a head but with a gentle cast of wisdom about it, like a big panda or an owl. The massive carved wood banisters, the dark patterned rugs, the heavy leather chairs, the hall with the paintings of muddy wheel-rutted lanes, overhanging trees, rivers, crisp blue skies, torn white clouds, it all flashed around me until I reached the snack machines in a line outside the brown ceramic tiled restrooms. I plugged a quarter and a dime in and watched a package of Twinkies tumble down. I’d eat them here so I could wash down the sweet cake with water from the fountain. I found a seat, an overstuffed dark leather chair in the lounge and swung my legs over the arm rest. Lounge? It was more like a Victorian study where Peter Cushing would retire to share brandy and cigars with Christopher Lee in all those Hammer films, until the mummy smashed through the leaded pane windows. I unwrapped my cake. A grad. student nearby looked up from the book he was reading, as if my crinkling cellophane disturbed him. I gave him the googly eye and stuffed a Twinkie in my mouth. He stuffed his nose back in his book. I finished off the other Twinkie in good order, hit the restroom and slugged down some water before I pushed through the Commons door and stood outside at the top of the stone stairway.
Dunn Meadow was awash in people; earnest grad. students there to listen to Gene McCarthy; under grads. ready to groove to the music and the day. Buttoned-down frat brothers weeded through the crowd looking to pick up hippie chicks. Sorority girls stood in little clusters hugging arm-loads of books to their breasts like babies. Pez colored frisbees sliced through the air and every breed of dog ran free stuffing their wet black noses into open palms and unguarded laps. The glue that bound us all to this green spot of earth was not a shared political philosophy but the solidarity we found in our own youth.
"Jason!" I scanned the carpet of moving people and culled the waving arm, the girl in the orange sleeveless blouse and dark blue shorts, Ingrid. I scissored my arms over my head and tripped down the stone steps making my way toward her, stepping over and around bodies rooted to the grass, some with arms linked and lips pressed together. Verlaine was with her, her crooked smile like a moon on the wane. They both hugged me, but there was the promise of more in Ingrid’s arms.
"Jason, your painting ! It is wonderful ! You will do some more, yes?"
"Yes. Ingrid, come on call me Jase."
"No, you are Jason."
"I love it, I love it!" Verlaine broke in, whacking me on the head with an orange frisbee. "Now you two get over there and we’ll toss a few," she laughed.
I threw my notebook down and lost my sandals.
We found a sparse section on the fringe of the gathering and triangulated ourselves, relaying the bright platter between us. Verlaine’s tosses were like band saws, low, fast, and hard, not a few stragglers ducked or got out of the way.
Ingrid’s suspended in the air and dropped softly to my outstretched hands.
I had to throw it like a discus, cocking it vertically behind my back before letting it go with a snap of the wrist, launching it into a smooth horizontal hover.
Ingrid was first to signal surrender and we trooped back to our spot, collapsing on the grass. Warlock’s band was busy setting up their gear on the rough pine planked stage on the other side of the Jordan River, the picturesque little stream that cut through the meadow.
Ingrid leaned back, legs pulled up, and lay her head, her luxurious dark hair, cradled in my lap as I sat cross-legged. She closed her eyes, I gently traced her eyebrows with the tip of my finger and meditated on her sublime face. Verlaine faded into the crowd with some murmured excuse.
"This is nice," she whispered.
"Oui," I answered.
She laughed softly.
"Your eyebrows are so delicate."
"Your touch also."
I held her face in my hands, leaning over I touched my lips to hers.
"More," the word her lips formed.
I kissed her again, my lower lip softly tugging at her upper lip as they parted.
A loud squeal escaped an amp on stage as Warlock plugged in.
Ingrid’s eyes snapped open and she immediately scrunched her lids to the sun and sat up, shaking her hair.
"Are they to play now?" She leaned into me, my nostrils filling with the sweet scent of her perfume mingled with perspiration, like violets in cedar.
"I think they’ll tune up first."
Verlaine bounced toward us through the crowd."I heard ! It won’t be long now."
"Hey, look over yonder at Warlock," I said. I’m sure amazement tinged my voice.
The girls followed my gaze to the stage.
"Who’s the girl," Verlaine asked.
"I didn’t know he had one," I responded.
She turned to me. "Maybe she’s a groupie."
"Yeah, that’s close. Not the way she’s dressed." The girl had on a yellow blouse and navy blue skirt and loafers. She hugged him and they kissed, then she hopped from the stage and went to sit in an aluminum lounge chair with candy-colored webbing. Another girl wearing sunglasses and shorts in a similar lounge chair sat beside her.
"Of course not Jase! She’s a sorority sister. What do you think!?"
"With Warlock!? That blows my mind."
"Why don’t you go up and ask him? There’s time."
"Yes, do," Ingrid added. "I am curious also to find out."
I stood and slapped the seat of my pants.
"We’ll be here," Verlaine said .
I stepped carefully along the rock strewn bank of the Jordan until my toes found a slab of moss green shale near the bank and I stepped on it, finding another mid-stream and an over-hanging branch like an elbow, I threaded my way across hand over hand .
In the shade on the other side, I paused ,Warlock’s back to me, he and the three other band members gathered together near the rear of the stage. I knew what was going down. They were getting dosed. If it wasn’t me, Warlock would share with someone else, his band. I grabbed the limb and retreated to the opposite bank.
"Hey, why didn’t you go up there," Verlaine grilled me.
"I didn’t want to break their concentration. They were going over set lists." I dropped down next to them.
"Bullshit," she answered.
I watched the band separate and go to their respective instruments. "It’s none of our business. He’d tell us if he wanted us to know."
"Aren’t you curious? I’ll go over and ask her."
I grabbed Verlaine by the ankle and pulled her back down. "Stay put. They’re about to play anyway."
Verlaine lobbed a pissed look my way as something popped off my head, a dandelion flopped into my lap, another, and another. It was a miracle. In high school I had read all about mysterious falls of objects from the sky in Charles Fort’s paranormal books. Up my eyes arced to sky, clouds, blonde hair cascading around Andmoreagain’s Chicklet white smile as she dropped blossoms on me from a bouquet brighter than butter bunched to her naked belly. Her head was garlanded in dandelions, green and yellow; her eyes iridescent blue, pupils big as black marbles.
"Hi, Jase," her voice sang .
"Hi, man." Wolfman’s head loomed into view, his cheeks newly darkened with stubble, his wild curls ringed as well in a crown of dandelions, their green stems braided together. "What’s happening, Verlaine, Ingrid?"
"Pull up a patch of ground and have a seat," Verlaine said, "we were just discussing your roommate’s new girlfriend."
"Whoa, that’s a new one on me. Where is she?"
"Over there in the lawn chair. You mean you didn’t know?"
Wolf and Andmoreagain folded down next to us. Andmoreagain wore a halter top and skirt fashioned of fringed leather and beads. I could feel Ingrid’s eyes go hard.
"No clue. She’s not bad. I wouldn’t kick her out of bed." Andmoreagain punched his shoulder hard. Ingrid called him a pig.
"Take it easy, you two! She’s sorority, right?"
"See," Verlaine retorted.
"You here to see that reactionary, McCarthy," Wolf asked.
"No. To hear your roommate’s band. What’s the matter with you?"
"Just messing with your mind, man." He shoved me as the opening chords of ‘Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ ripped the air causing shouts and whoops to ripple through the gathering. I turned to Wolf to say something , when I spied Hunter in the crowd. I leaped up and waved my arms. He was with Joey. They circulated toward us.
"What is this," he shouted above the music as he took us all in, "a gathering of the tribes?"
"We saved you a berth," I shouted back, "sit down."
"Wolfman, who’s your significant other," Hunter yelled.
"Andmoreagain!"
"What? I didn’t catch it."
"Andmoreagain!"
"Ann Morgan, nice to meet you. This is Joey." He looked square at Wolfman. " I guess you two don’t need any introduction."
Wolfman’s jaw muscles writhed like baby snakes beneath his skin as he started to rise. I yanked his arm. "He’s just putting you on man, drop down and listen to the music."
‘Sargent Pepper’s’ segued into ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’, just like on the album, with Warlock singing Ringo’s lead. When he got to the part, ‘I get high with a little help from my friends,’ he leaped to the edge of the stage, lost his footing and tumbled off, hitting the rocky ground, his guitar plug popping out, abruptly cutting off the sound. Furious and embarrassed, he rolled over and hopped back on stage plugging his guitar back in, just in time to end the song in a flurry of notes.
Out of nowhere, Andmoreagain said, "Didja’ hear? Wolf is changing his major to Poli Sci. He’s gonna take on the fascist state from the inside. He’s not gonna let the university kick the Spectator out of it’s office. Too heavy, huh?"
"Ann," it was Joey, "what’s your major?"
"Heh, not Ann! No way Ann! It’s Andmoreagain!"
"Wow, that’s a really strange name. Is that your given name?"
"No. I took it. You know from that Love song. Dig, it was so cosmic, beautiful, you know what I mean?"
Joey shared a look with Hunter.
"Well what does it mean?"
"What do you want it to mean? It can be anything."
"Did you tell me what your major was?" Joey leaned forward her chin in her hand.
"I don’t have a major, major. I just kinda hang-out. You know? I study the I-Ching! You into that? It helps me with my poetry. I’m a poet! My stuff’s been published in the Spectator!"
"Wolfman, And Moreagain seems so right for you."
"Really?!" Andmoreagain brightened even more, if that was possible. "And I really dig Wolf, he’s a heavy dude."
Wolfman flipped Joey the bird and hinged his arm around Andmoreagain’s neck. Their lips and tongues met, opposite poles on the same magnet, irresistibly attracted, sliding together.
Hunter pulled Joey to him enfolding her in his arms. She leaned back resting her head on his shoulder, her long hair eclipsing his. He rested his hands on her thighs.
"Everyone, comfy," Verlaine remarked.
"High, people," Warlock shouted from the stage still tuning his guitar, "at least I hope you are. Wow, that first step is a lulu, huh? We’re ‘Orange Skies’ and we’re here to play for-- someone, I think it’s... Who is it?" He turned and looked at the other band members. The bass player said, McCarthy. "Oh, yeah, Gene McCarthy." There was a ripple of applause and shouts. " I hope you vote for him or do something fun for him or to him or something. Don’t just sit on your asses out there, you know."
Ingrid’s hand slipped down my back drawing up into a deliberate spider tapping it’s way around my waist to hook a finger through my belt loop. Her thumb slipped over the top of my jeans and pushed the fabric of my shirt up and began stroking my skin. I looked at her. She just smiled, her brown eyes glinting, sunlight on a deep lake.
Warlock plucked a few tentative notes on his white Stratocaster and the band launched into a loose, loopy version of the Love song, ‘Orange Skies’, poppy, and sunny and a groove for this beautiful day. The music pressed against us, warmed us and drew us closer.
The last note had not ceased vibrating as Seth the drummer laid a rhythmic tattoo on his cymbal and Warlock’s guitar chimed into the beginning of the Doors’, "I Looked at You". When Seth’s voice fought it’s way into the opening lyric, "I looked at you, you looked at me...". Verlaine and Ingrid leaped up, Ingrid hoisting me by the belt loops. Our fingers held fast like hinges, she snapped my arms up and down like a puppet as we twirled around, the sun chasing her eyes, her laughter like water pouring over me. She would not let go. She would not let me slip to the ground to just sit. Her firm grasp only loosened to let Verlaine join our dance. Her hand clasping mine as our laughter twined together, drowned out only by the booming lyrics ‘And we’re on our way, no we can’t turn back’.
Andmoreagain was right behind us, bobbing, all fringe and beads and bare skin, blonde hair slashing, Wolfman avidly dancing beside her. Joey and Hunter were last up, too cool in their attitude. Other clusters of dancers sprang up throughout the meadow like spring flowers bursting forth reaching for the glorious sun to the band’s insistent yowl, ‘It’s too late, too late, too late, too la-ate.’
The flurry of final chords slammed into us, we toppled to the cool grassy loam, Ingrid falling on me, pressed to me, her skin sun warm smelling of the breeze. Her hair held the scent of wood and grass. She pushed off me, her breath soft to my ear, something in French I couldn’t catch. I rolled over and sat up and glanced over at the shady patch. The girl who had gone up to Warlock and kissed him was gone, her friend too, lawn chairs, everything. Like they had never been there.
"Jase," it was Hunter, his hands clamped my shoulders, his mouth to my ear, "what’s your buddy, Warlock on? He’s flying without landing gear ."
I thought he was up on stage tuning his guitar, but now that I noticed, he was playing the same chord over and over again.
"Decide not to join him," Hunter asked. "My man, never let me down." He slapped my right shoulder and sat back down.
The bassist went over to him and said something that must have jogged his brain, because they fell right into, The Yardbirds, ‘For Your Love’, the organist leading the way.
Warlock and Seth’s drum work meshed again as they drove into the opening of, ‘Break on Through’. Seth propelled the song on his heaving vocals and I found myself on my feet again twirling around Ingrid’s orbit. Verlaine in her bib overalls, pant legs pushed up in fat rolls, stomped barefoot next to me, her laughter like sun showers. Wolfman was all legs and arms flailing as Andmoreagain’s blonde hair and leather fringe whipped around him. Hunter and Joey were cool, organized and taking it to the limit. ‘Ev-ry-body loves my baby, she gets, she gets, she gets h-i-i-igh’.
The music crashed into oblivion and gravity grabbed us by the ass once again. Without a pause, Warlock stepped forward fingering the first notes of, ‘Red Telephone’, his voice wavering, loose, ‘Sitt-ing on a hill-side watching all the pe-ople die, I’ll feel much better on the other side. I’ll thumb a ride’.
"Weird," Joey said. "Weird song. The McCarthy flacks will love this."
"Who cares, if they dig it or not," Wolfman barked .
"Maybe they’ll play ‘Louie, Louie’ next," Verlaine added helpfully.
Joey twisted up her mouth and looked back at Hunter, his hand under her blouse rubbing the small of her back .
"They need to play something heavy like Cream, right Jase?"
"It’s beyond that now." I turned to look at Hunter, his face open, ready for anything. "Got rid of your Buckingham albums yet?"
"Buddy, buddy, buddy." He lowered his head and shook it from side to side, something could have happened but it didn’t. His free hand clenched a fist of grass, ripped it out and tossed it aside.
‘I don’t know if I’m livin’ or if I’m supposed to be,’ Warlock continued singing, his feet rooted to the stage, his eyes faraway, ‘ sometimes my life is so eerie, and if you think I’m happy, paint me white.’ The organist added his own unsettling fills to the odd lyrics. It was a strange choice. As the song devolved into a chant for freedom, Warlock redeemed himself by launching into an up tempo Love song he had sung for me in his room.
‘What is happening and how have you been, gotta go but I’ll see you again...’
I laughed and careened into Ingrid. She caught me and pushed me over laughing as well.
‘Oh and the music is so loud...’
Our teeth clicked together as our lips met.
"He sang this when I answered his phone," I forced the words out laughing.
"What?" Ingrid’s face inches from mine, a vertical crease between her eyes, her dark hair tickling my cheeks.
‘Cross the street I’m at this laugh affair...’
"Nothing, just funny coincidence." I threw my arms around her and pulled her down on me.
‘When I leave now don’t you weep for me, I’ll be back, just save a seat for me...’
Warlock looked at us as he sang, his fingers dancing over the frets, strumming the guitar with a savage energy.
‘Let’s go paint everybody gray, yeah, gray’. The song ended in a fury of chords. Warlock raised his guitar over his head in triumph as shouts and applause rose from the meadow of people. We sat up whooping and screaming. Verlaine and Andmoreagain, were the loudest.
The band briefly left the stage but returned for an encore. They hopped behind their instruments. Warlock strapped on his guitar.
"We’ll play you one more, how’s that?"
Applause and shouts.
Warlock started aimlessly wandering the stage. He was unraveling again.
The organist jumped out from behind his keyboard and ushered him to the microphone, placed his hand on the mike stand.
"Now don’t forget to vote for that gray-haired guy. Not that other one with all the hair.
You know you are at a rally and that is important! To vote, people! That is if you are old enough or bold enough or... This is a new one we’ve been working on, a Yardbird’s tune. Right? Right. ‘White Summer’. Hope you dig it."
I leaned into Ingrid’s ear. "Warlock told me he wasn’t going to play this. It wasn’t ready." She nodded her head as the first chords sounded.
They were about a minute into the song when the power went off. For a few seconds they played on unamped. Confused, they looked at each other. Then a man in a black suit stepped on the stage waving his arms back and forth in front of him like wiper blades.
"No encores ! No encores ! Thirty minute set and off !"
Warlock turned volcanic. Screaming and sputtering his neck and cheeks red, inches from the man’s face, flecks of spittle forming at the corners of his mouth. The suit pushed him away. Warlock responded ramming his arms into the man’s chest twice knocking him back on his heels.
"I need to--" I jumped up. Verlaine’s hands shot out and hooked my bare heel and yanked . I fell back on my ass as she threw herself on top of me.
"You don’t need to do shit. His band members can handle him. They’ve been doing it all afternoon." As she said this, the three were peeling him away from the functionary, Warlock’s legs kicking as they hustled him off the stage.
"See, bright eyes." She looked down at me. "Jase, Warlock’s on more than acid to be this off. He’s probably doing speed as well. He doesn’t need you. You can’t do anything for him. Can you dig that?"
"No, no I can’t."
She sat up. "You need to get real."
Ingrid brushed the grass and dirt from my hair. She swung her sweet face in front of mine. "Let us get a Coca-Cola, Jason."
"Good deal you two," she said as we all stood up. " I don’t need to hang around and hear McCarthy’s tired stump speech." She brushed the dirt off the seat of her overalls.
"But I thought you were going to — oh, I get it."
Verlaine thumped my forehead with her palm . "God, you’re a fucking genius. You amaze me."
Laughter reigned around me. Ingrid hooked her thumb through my front belt loop and pulled me after her as Peter, Paul and Mary crossed the stage.
"Sorry, folks ! We’ve wiped their noses and gathered all their blocks together and sent the kid-dos home." We booed, but Peter, or was it Paul, ignored us. They both wore goatees. I never could tell them apart, who played the upright bass, who played the guitar. Whoever he was, he continued his monologue. "We all know the real reason we’ve gathered in this glorious place, in this great state; to help stop the war--", scattered applause.
Someone yelled, "Down in front!" We started moving toward the edges of the crowd.
"and to support a candidate who stands with us to stop this immoral war and bring our boys home, Eugene McCarthy!" Cheers and applause swept across the open space. "We need someone steady at the tiller of the ship of state," one of the goatees started plucking his bass, " to guide it to the shore of Peace and Freedom." Peter or was it Paul started fingering his guitar. "Here’s a song that says it all. We’ve changed the lyrics to fit the times."
Mary, big boned, pale, flicked her freshly ironed long blonde hair away from her face as she dipped to the microphone. "Eu-gene row the boat a-shore, Hal-le-lu-jah. Eu-gene row the boat a-shore, Hal-le-lu-u-jah."
Our pace quickened, trying to control ourselves. Andmoreagain’s laughter was first to spill, unrestrained, like a bag full of bells bouncing down an iron stairway. We all joined in, cats on piano keys stumbling into one another, our laughter, musical.
"I’m going back to the dorm," Verlaine said, slipping on her sandals on the sidewalk. "I’ll see you two later."
"Yeah, Jase , hang loose," Hunter said, "you too, Ingrid. It’s been real." He added. "You have that, ‘Special Offer’ I sent in the box tops for?"
"It’ll be in today," I answered.
"Great, super. We’re off then."
"Bye everyone," Joey said as they headed for Kirkwood.
"Vietnam’s river is deep and wide--" Peter, Paul, and Mary sang, their voices, sincere, distant, booming from the speakers.
"Man, it never ends," Wolfman intoned, his long fingers pressed into the flesh of Andmoreagain’s naked mid-riff, her arm hooked around his waist.
"They’re so square," she said to no one in particular, then looked at Wolfman, "Let’s go to my pad and get it on."
"Duty calls," he flashed us the peace sign and they walked away, two outlaw consorts.
My hand found the cool flesh of Ingrid’s hand and we proceeded up the limestone stairway to the Commons, halfway up I remembered my notebook.
"Stay here, I forgot my class notes!" I plummeted down the steps colliding into two people walking up, pushing off them with shouted apologies, I continued running. I hop-scotched over couples, finding our space now filled. The blue corner of my binder peeped out from under a blanket on which a girl and a guy sat. I tugged at it to their baleful stares.
"Excuse me, this is mine. I forgot it." The girl shifted her position and I slipped it out from under her. "Thanks," I hurriedly offered and once again bounded over the human obstacle course. Ingrid was waiting for me by the revolving doors.
"This is valuable," she asked.
"It is if I want to pass Anthropology," I answered
We pushed through the doorway..
Inside, I caught a lungful of air as we moved to the serving line.
"We just want a Coke," I said.
"We don’t have Coke, only Pepsi."
"No Coke? Why no Coke," Ingrid said. " It is all-American, yes? You should serve it."
"Well, we don’t. Do you want anything or not?"
"Yes, we’ll have a large Pepsi," I said.
"This I do not understand?"
"I’m thirsty. Coke, R.C., Double-Cola, Pepsi. It all tastes the same."
"This is not true, I think. Coca-Cola is number one in the world. You compromise too much."
"I’m a compromising kind of guy." I started to hand over three quarters to the cashier. Ingrid stopped me.
"How much?"
"Please, c’mon. It’s on me."
"No. I pay too."
"Oh, Jesus, let me see, uh, half of-- thirty five cents and we’ll call it even." She put the change into my hand and I paid the quizzical girl behind the cash register.
"This is good."
I pulled out two straws and held them up. "Right?"
"Yes!"
"Hey, over there. Remember?" I headed for the table we sat at that night we were all together and we were sopping wet from the fountain and my skin was wearing a fresh coat of paint.
"I loved to paint on you, Jason. You were fun. Did you enjoy?"
"I was a bit embarrassed I guess. But I liked your and Joey’s attention."
"Yes." She leaned over to take a sip and so did I. We both laughed.
"What time do you want me to pick you up tonight?" I touched her hand on the table.
"What time is the show?"
"It starts at 9:15. How about eight? Is that too early?"
"No. Fine. I will be ready." She reached in her purse and tapped out a Gitane and lit it.
" I am looking forward to this. You?" She placed her hand back on mine.
"Yeah, I am."
"Why?"
"I like being with you."
"Why?"
"You tell the truth."
"Is that all? This truth so important."
"I like your eyes. Your laugh. The touch of your skin." I pulled my hand from beneath hers and stroked the smooth hills of her knuckles, her delicate wrist.
"You like the truth? Is this the truth?"
"Yes."
She turned her head to the side and let out a thin stream of pale smoke, turned back and smiled at me. "You are sweet," is all she said.
We talked about the movie, ‘A Man and a Woman’, and the music at the rally and she critiqued my painting of Verlaine some more. She liked it, but we both agreed there were some weak spots in the execution. We didn’t leave until our straws fought over the last loud sputterings of drink.
The late afternoon sun in the sky banded our faces. We shaded our eyes with our hands. Eugene McCarthy was on stage now in the midst of his speech. We went over to have a look. Everything about him was gray, his hair, his suit, his speech.
"Three years ago we had 16,000 men in Vietnam, and we were told we were winning the war. Two years ago we had 100,000 men in Vietnam, and we were told we were winning the war. A year ago, we had 250,000 men in Vietnam, and we were told we were winning the war. Today we have 550,000 men in Vietnam with over 100,000 boys killed and wounded, and we’re told we’re winning the war. There’s got to be a better way than death, double talk and taxes."
Those gathered in Dunn Meadow cheered. The crowd was made up more of grad students and professors, some older townspeople . McCarthy up there on the stage just looked like another professor, earnestly and dully lecturing his students. I couldn’t see him as president of the United States.
"We French were smart. We got out. You do not understand." She lit another cigarette. " North and South Vietnam are one people. They are laced together such as a shoe."
"You think McCarthy will win the nomination from Kennedy or Humphrey?"
"It does not matter. Whom ever is elected will keep the war going. War is money. Those in power know this and will do little as possible. It is always so." The smoke curled from her lips. "Let us not talk about this. It is, what you say, ‘bummer’. Oui?"
"You’re right there. Let’s go back. I need to get ready for tonight."
"Jason, you be you. Okay."
Okay, whoever that is, I thought. Our arms entwined as we walked.

White Summer (Chap. 4)

WHITE SUMMER (chap. 4)



After the Brit. Lit. debacle, I actually knuckled down in my studies for the next few days. In my art history class I did okay on a quiz on Cimabue and wrote a good paper, I thought, juxtaposing Shakespeare’s and Jean Anouille’s interpretations of Julius Caesar for my comparative lit. class. Then Verlaine called.
"Jase, my class was cancelled. I have free time! I can pose for you! You can paint me. " I was headed to a class when the phone rang. "Did you hear me?" My Soash. book was under my arm. "You can finish my portrait!"
I didn’t have the will that Ulysses had, to be lashed to the mast of my academics, to shout above the beckoning sirens. She wasn’t a siren of course. She had made that clear. We were friends. And I would never betray that. But seeing her in the nude... I was an artist.
"Sure," I answered. "I’ll be right over."
She was there standing in the doorway, barefoot, her hair freshly brushed, falling softly to her shoulders, her worn green shift flowing and pooling over her form like water over smooth stones. When she shut the door her shift lifted from her body as if a freakish breeze caught it, swirling it up and depositing it at my feet. She was on her bed, arm bent, leg crooked in our agreed upon pose before I had my palette out of the paint box.
I painted with more intent, more intensively than I had before. Verlaine set the tone. She raised the stakes by posing silent, keeping so still. I called a break when I saw her right arm trembling. We sat on the floor, she beside me smoking a cigarette, gazing at the painting. I could tell she was smiling, knowing that was how I saw her. That my eye was true, my brush stroke sure. She offered comments and suggestions and I listened.
I didn’t finish the painting that day, even though I had been painting for three hours. It was close, but it had to be perfect. She raised her arms and the fabric of her dress cascaded over her. She gave me a hug and let me out.
I didn’t go back to my room but crossed Fee Lane, taking a short-cut to the Fine Arts building to pick up some turpentine. I angled my way around the Spartan limestone dormitories of Foster Quad., a Stonehenge of post-industrial America.
I was skirting the practice field behind the quad. grooving on the scent of new grass when a rough song of curses and grunts from a seething clot of players on the field caught my attention. It was the Rugby team. Hunter was on the Rugby team. The bodies locked in struggle were like a multi-legged beast, red and white banded jerseys ringed around, arms entwined, heads tucked, legs furiously pushing, digging up turf, in an attempt to gain ground as heels slashed back and forth trying to kick the ball out from the center of the heaving mass. It squirted out and a player grabbed the ball and ran down the field passing it to his team mate behind him, then it was passed behind again. I spotted Hunter’s towhead as he slammed into the legs of the runner with the ball. As he was knocked down, the ball popped up and there was a brawl and whistles and Hunter was in the thick of it. He was up, his arms hooked over the shoulders of the player he had tackled and both had mud smeared players behind them hooking their arms around their waists. The referee b dropped the ball between them and they kicked at the ball with their heels until it flew out.
I set my paint box down and slipped my sandals off, let my toes comb through the grass and the slight breeze curry my hair. I lay back on my elbows on the gentle rise under the blue domain of sky graced with clouds and watched the action ebb and flow below me.
All through the fall everything was ‘The Big Red Machine’, ‘The Cream and Crimson’, Harry Gonzo and John Isenbarger. ‘Keep the Ball Rollin’ by Jay and the Techniques was the unofficial song of John Pont’s football team, played over and over again on the campus station, as they plowed their way through the Big Ten and then on to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena . It didn’t really matter that the big game was a U.S.C. blowout, it was a glorious moment for I.U.
And all the while the Rugby team practiced and played in obscurity. Hunter had one of their bumper stickers on his M.G. ‘It Takes Leather Balls to Play Rugby.’ It was too true. Rugby was pure anarchy in team shirts and knee socks; mud, blood and contusions; a place to score and settle scores. The only protection they wore were their jock straps. Hunter would come back to the dorm tell me about the seniors’ infamous orgies.
I plucked clovers from the berm and twirled them between my thumb and finger content to watch the chaos, Hunter’s pale head bobbing and weaving through the scramble until his ruddy face turned my way and he chopped the air in greeting with his hand. I flashed him a peace sign in response.
Not long after a whistle blew three long trills and he came jogging up the rise. He plopped down next to me, his lungs punching breaths as his chest heaved, dripping sweat, radiating heat, clods of grass clinging to his spikes. I noticed an angry yellow bruise on his calf and a fresh rivulet of blood winding its way down his leg from a cut on his knee.
"Hey, buddy! What brings you here?" He launched an arc of spit into the grass.
"Nothing really. I was on my way to the art building and decided to sit and watch."
"What have you been painting?" He noticed my paint box beside me.
"Landscapes."
"Huh. So what did you think about the play? Pretty intense."
"Makes football players look like sissies."
"You’re damn right on that." Hunter, as if on cue, hooked the back of his thumb beneath the trickle of blood and scraped it up before it reached the top of his knee sock, sucking his thumb as if he were savoring a particularly succulent chicken bone. He yanked out a fist of grass and pressed it to his knee.
"Ancient Indian medicine?" I nodded to the grass beneath his palm.
"Yeah, right," he retorted. "Speaking of which, ol’ buddy. You got any I could borrow?"
"Borrow?"
"Don’t break my balls, Jase. I’ll pay you for it."
"I really don’t. I’ll have to hit Warlock up for it. I’ll see what I can do."
"Thanks, buddy. Anything I can do for you just...you know the rest."
"How about some free advice."
"Shoot."
"I’ve been offered L.S.D. This guy wants me to trip with him. Thinks it’ll be good for my art. What do you think? Should I take him up on it?"
"Whoa, that’s heavy. But why are you asking me? I’m not Dear Abby."
"Your opinion, I guess. What would you do?"
"Go for the Gusto! What do you want me to say? It’s your life, you live it."
"I just-- I don’t know. I’m afraid of getting screwed up."
"That’s your problem, Jase. You’re too afraid. You hold back. Here, I’ll let you in on a little secret, you know why I got those guys together and had them shave your pubes?"
I just sat there staring into his flushed face, his hair plastered to his brow, watching a bead of sweat trickle down the side of his jaw. I didn’t want to hear this.
"To see just exactly what you would do. It was a game with me. You really piss me off sometimes, hanging back, floating through everything like some sort of ghost. And guess what? You didn’t do anything. Oh you yelled and cursed but that was it. You should have decked me. But you didn’t."
"I thought I should go along with it because..."
"That’s just it! You think too much! You know why I like Rugby? You don’t have to think , you just do it." He brushed the grass off his abraded knee and squeezed the cut between his fingers, making it bleed anew. "It reminds me I’m alive! You know why I like fucking? Same reason. If you’re not bleeding or cumming you’re dead, buddy! That’s my philosophy. You can put it in a pipe and smoke it."
"I thought you were pissed I was taking Suzy out?"
"C’mon. No way. Maybe confused. I mean you’re ‘Hippie’. You’re not even Suzy’s type. No offense. She went out with you to get back at me, no other reason, sorry."
"I don’t believe that."
"Hey, believe what you want, it’s a free country. I’m telling you the truth. Listen, I give you credit for punching me that Sunday. But, buddy whatever burden you’re carrying you need to lay it down and leave it. It’s not doing you any good. Whoops, here’s my ride."
He slapped my shoulder and stood, brushing off some of the now dried mud from his shorts. I saw Joey striding across the field toward us, all legs in her cut-offs, her long chestnut hair streaming.
"I haven’t even hit the showers yet." He looked at me, his hands on his hips. I slipped my sandals on. "Think about what I said, okay, buddy?"
"Yeah, I will."
"Good. Don’t forget the grass, it’s for the lady over yonder." He smiled then jogged off catching her up in his arms in the middle of the field before she pushed him away. Her voice carried over the open space. I heard, "disgusting pig" and "take a shower" as I headed toward Tenth Street.
Verlaine’s call had derailed me from the tentative academic tracks I had laid earlier in the day, but I did manage to get some course reading in before dinner. However, after dinner was another matter. Star Trek was on. It was a must see for me, and the lounge was always packed. Later I’d see Warlock about the grass Hunter wanted. I would also tell him I had decided to drop some acid with him. He’d dig that, I was sure.
The chairs were all taken in the lounge when I got down there and I had to pull in an extra from the main meeting room. It was a repeat of an episode I had seen in January, but I sat and watched it anyway. It was about a giant space amoeba, it reminded me of a light show at the Fillmore, that was slowly sucking the Enterprise to certain doom.
It hadn’t been on long when Warlock showed up. He came in and stood by me. It was dark so he probably didn’t notice I was sitting there. I tugged at his shirt and he recoiled. I told him to get a chair but he ignored me and kept staring at the screen . Weird, but I stood and gave him mine and went and got another. He was still standing when I returned.
"Sit down, man," I whispered to him. He whispered something back to me I didn’t quite catch. "What," I asked.
"Klingons everywhere. Can’t- you -see them? Don’t move," he whispered haltingly back , his head swiveling as if it were attached with ball bearings.
"Warlock, man, there are no Klingons in this episode."
"No. I mean here-- in this room! They know-- I know. They’re probing my-- mind. Spock, we’ve got to make a run-- for it! Do it NOW!" He bolted from the lounge slamming the door open, throwing a jagged rip of light through the dark interior. I heard someone bark ,"asshole", as I ran after him. I found his white T-shirt at the foot of the stairs, and grabbed it as I bounded up. I heard a commotion above me. He was standing in the main lobby naked except for his white underwear swinging his jeans over his head like a propeller.
"Klingons everywhere, everywhere, Klingons. Get --back! Stay-- away!" He was frantic. A group of coeds cowered in a corner astounded yet giggling. A couple of guys laughed, shouting insults.
"Warlock, let’s go! C’mon, man, let’s go." I motioned to the front door. But he just stood there in his briefs swinging his pants. Then I hit on a plan that was totally warped.
"Captain!" He looked at me.
"Spock," he said hesitantly, recognition dawning on his face.
"The airlock door won’t stay open forever, Captain. I suggest you hurry. It’s our only escape." He continued whipping his pants over his head, but he sidled over to the doorway and ducked out as I shut it on their laughter.
He dropped his pants and hugged my arms. "Spock, you’ve got to save me. Their probes, they’re in me!" He sounded so desperate, it scared me. I looked into his wild turned on eyes and said under my breath, "You didn’t wait for me. Why didn’t you wait, man?" Then I grabbed his shoulders. "We have to get to the bridge, captain, for me to help you. You must trust me. It’s the only logical solution."
"Bridge, yes the bridge." His eyes rolled up to the galaxied night sky as I gently guided him to our wing and opened the door.
The first flight was easy but on the second floor landing he balked.
"The stairs, Spock!" His eyes were enormous with fear. "They have teeth! The jaws! They’ll tear us apart!"
"It’s a Klingon illusion, captain planted in your brain by the probes. You must trust me?" I turned him so he could look me in the eyes.
"Ye- I don’t, what if---"
"You must not weaken. Close your eyes and I’ll carry you."
I bent down and pushed my shoulder into his stomach heaving him across my back. Thankfully he lay very still as I lumbered up the remaining flight of stairs and pushed through the door into our hallway.
I set him down and massaged my shoulder.
"I can’t see," he whispered softly. "I’m blind, I’m blind." His voice was edging toward panic. He was about to cry.
"Open your eyes," I responded, sharply. By now, I was a little ticked with all this.
"I forget how." I saw an actual tear slip down his cheek.
I was exasperated. How do you teach someone to open their eyes? I didn’t have a clue. "I will blow my magic breath on each of your eye lids," I improvised, "and with each puff they will pop open and you will see again."
It worked. I was floored.
"Oh, wow, ice cream! This is delicious!" His hands pressed to the white wall, he took long licks with his tongue as he ricocheted from one side of the hall to the other."
A guy passed us and had to comment. "You’re friend is really out of it."
Right, I thought, thanks for your concern.
"Jase, try it man, finest kind!"
Curious, I thought. I was no longer Spock. I arched my right eyebrow as I pressed my hand to his back and continued to gently guide him to his room. We had to stop halfway to let the water burble and spout from the fountain nozzle for five minutes so he could groove on its’ colors.
I prayed his room was not locked as I touched the knob and it turned and the door swung open.
"Can you hear it, man," he asked in a conspiratorial tone, "it’s breathing. In, out, in, out. Oh, wow, I can feel it’s heart beating." Seth, next door was playing the ‘Stones’. I closed the door and locked it.
He spent the next two hours slowly making his way around the room picking up and examining everything. He plucked a wadded candy wrapper from the corner of his desk and turned it over and over in his hand studying the shiny colored foil closely. The texture of the clothes on the floor fascinated him as he crawled around discovering each sock and caressing it lovingly. He sat and riffled the pages of a book with his thumb, wanting to make it into a song. It would be a sure hit. I was bored. But I didn’t dare leave. I didn’t know what Warlock might do while he was tripping and I had no hopes of Wolfman showing up soon if at all. After a while Warlock curled up on his bed hugging his pillow, muttering, "you’re so beautiful". I couldn’t comprehend who or what his pillow was to him at that moment.
I must have nodded off at some point on Wolfman’s bed because the next thing I noticed was Warlock at the window. He had pushed the window pane up as far as it would go and was working at the aluminum corners of the screen, trying to loosen it.
I moved behind him quietly and placed my hands on his bare shoulders. It was like a jolt went through him. I felt his muscles coil with tension, his body twisted violently from my grasp.
"Don’t touch me! Let me die! I need to die!"
I had never seen human eyes look like his, wild, like a cornered animal, death and desperation behind them. A Beatles’ song, of all things, popped into my mind. It was, ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’.
"Relax, man, relax and float down stream. It’s not dying. You’ve hit some bad ripples, is all, just bad ripples in the stream."
His eyes glowed with a deep space stare. He stood there, his whole body shivering as if the temperature in the room had just dropped thirty degrees.
"It is shining. It is being. Feel the warm current, go with it, the sunlight filtering through the over-hanging leaves, dancing diamonds on the smooth water. Do you see them?" His shivering subsided. "Yeah and listen, do you hear that? Ever so faintly, ‘The Yardbirds’ playing. They’re playing, ‘White Summer’ on the far shore. Can you hear it?"
"Yesssss," long and low like a deep sigh, coming from Warlock’s mouth.
I edged over to him and slipped my arm around his shoulder, guiding him to his bed.
"The far shore, lay down on the sweet grass." He crumpled on his bed. "Listen to the beautiful music, the beautiful guitar." But my last words were wasted. He was deep asleep. I went over to the window and silently lowered it and locked it.
When I next awoke, Wolfman was shaking me. I woke with a start and jerked my head to look over at Warlock, still deep asleep.
"What are you doing here, Jase? Why are you in my bed? Hunter kick you out? He have Joey in your room?"
"Warlock dropped some acid," I groggily responded as I sat up. "He had a rough trip. I thought I ought to stay with him." I stood up.
"Thanks man. He looks like he’s sleeping like a baby now. Go back to your room. I need to sleep."
"Sorry. Sure. What’s happening?" I briefly searched for my sandals, hooking them by the toe strap with my fingers. "You’re burning the midnight candle."
"We had a strategy meeting at the Spectator." He sat down and pulled his shoes off. " The administration is coming down hard on us. We have an eviction notice and they’ve given us an ultimatum, either we vacate our building or they’ll forcibly move us." He yanked his shirt over his head and flung it toward the closet. "It’s coming down, Jase and I’m afraid it’ll be coming down hard. It’s time we man the barricades. They’ll be responsible for anything that happens." He flipped the sheet down. "Pull the door to, when you leave."
"Will do." As I walked down the long silent hall I knew I’d never be able to drop acid and come out in one piece.

White Summer Chapter 3

White Summer Chap. 3



"We should send some flowers." It was Hunter. He pulled out his wallet to help pay for the cab as we climbed out in front of McNutt.
"Yeah, that’s a good idea. I’ll chip in," I added.
"Could you order them?" Hunter looked in Verlaine’s direction.
"Me, I guess so. How much do you want to spend?"
Hunter unsheathed a fifty and pressed it into her hand.
"Wow. Maybe I misjudged you." A salvo of silver needles flashed from Verlaine’s eyes. "You must be on some guilt trip."
I added a ten of my own. "Lay off," I said.
He threw his arm around me. "It’s the least we could do. Right buddy?"
I shrugged his hand off. "It’s something we can do."
"Well, I really do need to go." Hunter responded. "My paper’s waiting. Good seeing you two. Sorry for the circumstances." He disappeared around the limestone corner of the main building .
"Shouldn’t you be studying too," Verlaine asked.
"Do you want me to work more on your portrait?"
"Jase, I don’t think it’s an appropriate time."
"You’re right. I just want to put things behind me. Move away."
"Vous peint ses seins voluminex." Ingrid cradled her elbow in her hand. In the V of her fingers pressed to her lips she held a cigarette. The morning breeze veiled her face with her hair. When she saw she had my attention she translated, "You painted her breasts too big."
"Ignore her," Verlaine smiled.
"You can correct next time, Qui?"
"Yeah, sure. Verlaine? Do you think so? I didn’t mean to. I--"
"Don’t get hung up about it, Jase. You can fix them, can’t you? It should be easy, right? Paint over them or whatever you do."
"Yeah, sure. I’m sorry."
"Don’t be." She touched my arm. " But I want my portrait to be as true as you can make it. No enhancements. Okay?"
Ingrid slipped behind me and leaned her head next to mine. "Vous etes si mauvais." A thin stream of smoke fumed in front of my face. "I think you study." She playfully mussed my hair and squeezed my shoulder. Then she was with Verlaine and they started walking .
"Listen to her, Jase," Verlaine said looking over her shoulder at me . "We don’t want you flunking out, becoming fodder for LBJ’s war machine!" They continued toward Briscoe.
When I reached our room, Hunter was clacking away, a sheaf of papers spread out on his study desk, the metal neck of his tensor lamp knotted above his typewriter, his left leg jiggling. He looked up, his blonde hair haloed in the light.
"This paper is a bitch!"
"Don’t mind me. I’m just going to grab something to study and go to Warlock’s room."
His leg still pumping, he hunched over the keys. "Later," he said, his fingers punching their sporadic tattoo as I pulled the door closed.
Someone on the hall was playing the Association’s, ‘Along Comes Mary’, but mostly it was Sunday morning quiet; guys sleeping off Saturday night hangovers, or sleeping elsewhere or up early cramming for Monday after blowing off assignments all weekend.
I knocked on Warlock’s door.
"Open!"
Warlock actually had his nose stuck in a book. He sat in his bed in his bell-bottom jeans knees pulled up, his pillow wedged between his bare back and the cream colored wall.
"Mind if I study with you, Hunter’s in our room pounding away on his typewriter."
He set his book aside. "Man, that’s a switch, he’s usually pounding his meat." He grinned. " Sure, toss some shit on the floor and sit."
"Where’s Wolfman hiding out these days?" I pushed a well-abused copy of Playboy and some rumpled socks off his chair and sat down.
"Andmoreagain."
"Yeah, the blonde chick. Okay. We’ve met. Pretty spacey."
"That’s her natural state. You know she’s fifteen?"
"Shit! What’s Wolf thinking? That’s prison time."
"That’s just it, he’s not. He’s been keeping to himself lately. I hear she’s the daughter of one of the professors."
I just shook my head. "You hear about, Suzy?"
"Yeah, Seth from down the hall clued me in. I wondered what was going down with the sirens this morning. She really try to kill herself?"
"Close enough."
"Bummer. You took her out. What happened? Get any, or was she too wigged out?"
"God, you’re crass. Listen, I’d rather not get into it. It was just a bad scene."
"I dig."
"You seeing anybody?"
"You could say that."
"Who is she? Do I know her."
"I seriously doubt it."
" Okay, fine. Keep her to yourself, what the Hell. What’re you reading?"
"Folklore." He sat up crossing his legs.
"Folklore? I didn’t even know that was a course offering. I have to study Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ for Brit. Lit. I think we’re having a test soon."
" Folklore is cool, man. There are some far out creation myths, pussies with teeth and all kinds of mind-blowing shit."
"What?! You’ve got to be kidding me," I laughed.
"No, honest. The San Carlos Apaches believed that, other cultures too."
" British literature is just boring." I sprung my hefty tome open to a folded down page. "Listen to this: ‘Of Man’s first disobedience,’" I mock intoned, " ‘and the fruit of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste...’"
Warlock upturned his hands on either side of his face as if supporting invisible thighs and waggled his pink tongue up and down. This sent me crashing to the floor, howling in uncontrollable laughter, purging the apprehension and stress of the morning . I managed to retrieve my sprawled out book and after several deep lung- fulls of air continued.
"‘Brought death into the world and all our woe,’" This is deep stuff. "‘That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed...’"
"Spurt, spurt, spurt!" Warlock’s fist worked up and down in front of his crotch. I was debilitated by laughter once more.
"Okay, okay, quit, quit." I fought for breath like a man in a gale, peeling myself off the floor. "I need to study, seriously."
"Say, you know the Airplane’s coming," Warlock said, stuffing a Ritz cracker in his mouth from the box on his desk.
"Jefferson Airplane, here? How?"
"The student Union board finally got their shit together. After all that Four Seasons, Lettermen crap they’ve been peddling, they finally booked some heavy groups. Dig, not only the Airplane, but The Byrds and B.B. King."
"Far out! I can not believe."
"It’s going to be open air too. They’re holding it on the Little 5' field."
"Where’d you hear all this?"
"Just a little bird, man, just a little bird."
"Yeah, sure, all right. You’re not dating this ‘little bird’ are you?"
A grin sliced across his face."You know who Jorma Kaukonen is, don’t you,"he continued.
"The Airplane’s lead guitarist, so."
"So, man, somebody I know is going to get me a private audition so I can play for him."
"You’ve got to be– that is fantastic! Maybe he can get you a record deal!"
"That’s my plan." Warlock leaned over and shucked his guitar from it’s soft vinyl case.
"Put ‘Surrealistic Pillow’ on and cue it up to ‘Embryonic Journey’."
I found it in a stack with other sleeveless lps on the floor.
"You need to take care of your records."
"Screw it. If it’s scratched I’ll get another. Just put it on the turntable."
When the first chords resonated from the speaker cabinets Warlock joined in, playing along with Kaukonen’s guitar line. It was a complex little instrumental and damn, if Warlock wasn’t dead on. It was eerie. His fingers were like high wire acrobats sliding across the vibrating strings. When the song ended Warlock’s shy smile bloomed. I fell over. He could really do it.
"That was amazing Warlock!"
"Thanks. Want to see my calluses?" He slid the neck into the case. " Who do you think is the best guitar player living? Excluding me of course," he laughed.
"I dig Hendrix," I replied.
"Groovy. What about Clapton?"
And that started the ball rolling. We found ourselves on our backs on the floor staring at the blank slab of ceiling, the round light overhead like a big white pill, debating the merits of rock guitarists and their guitar solos all afternoon; comparing and contrasting Eric Clapton to Jeff Beck, his replacement in the Yardbirds, whether the guitar break on ‘For Your Love’ was as good as the one in ‘Mister You’re a Better Man Than I’. Robbie Kreiger’s guitar improvisation in the middle of ‘Light My Fire’ was weighed against Jerry Garcia’s work on ‘Viola Lee Blues’. We each took turns leaping up to set the tone arm down on the album cut under discussion, then once more assuming our contemplative positions. Pete Townshend versus Keith Richards, Alvin Lee and Ten Years After going against Arthur Lee and Love. They were all discussed, even Neil Young . He thought his guitar playing sounded like he plucked the strings with his toes. Warlock even gave me a preview of some of the numbers he was going to play at the McCarthy rally.
As the afternoon mellowed into evening he changed to a new subject.
"I want to show you something, Jase." He locked the door, then dropped to the floor rummaging around in his closet. A second later, on his knees, he was holding a little black box before me. "Looky, looky, what I scored."
" You scored a pair of cuff links? I won’t tell a soul, cross my heart."
"No, man, heavy stuff," he shook it and betrayed nothing of it’s contents. "Just between you and me, okay? You swear?"
"All right, I swear."
He crawled closer and snapped open the box, holding it level with my eyes. Inside, clear plastic wrap carefully folded around tiny pale blue squares .
"Blue Cheer," he said.
"What?"
"Blue Cheer, man, you know like the group, acid, LSD. Finest kind! I’ll share it with you. We can trip together. What do you say?"
I looked into his expectant eyes, his conspiratory grin. "Wow, I don’t know, Warlock.. How come you’re not sharing with Wolf?"
"Man, he’s out of it. That chick has him all screwed-up."
"I’ve never dropped acid before. I – don’t know whether I’m together enough. What if I freak out ?"
"Bullshit, man!" He snapped the box closed and stood up. "You’re the most together dude I know. I’ll be with you, man." He kneeled down, his face close to mine, his eyes searching. " I won’t let anything bad happen to you. It’ll be groovy. It’ll help you with your art. It’ll open your mind so you can be more creative."
"I think it’s just too heavy for me." I bore that night as vivid now as then. The blanket of oil slick on the grass. The contents of a car spilled. How did I find Karen in that anthracite night. She was there, yet not there. So still. Too still.
"C’mon, Jase don’t cop out! I don’t mean right now this minute. But when it’s groovy, you know, when the vibes are right. We could drink some wine, mellow out, put on some Segovia or Grateful Dead. Think about it for a few days, okay? I know you’d dig it if you tried it."
" Okay. I’ll think about it."
Warlock locked his hand around my forearm and we shook."Righteous," he grinned.
He hid the box in his fist and squirreled it away in his closet, then unlocked the door and pounced back on his bed, sending his folklore book crashing to the floor.
"You want to order out for pizza?"
"That sounds great!" I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until he asked . I stood up.
"Everything?" Warlock was beside me already dialing the phone.
"Yeah, sure. Hell, I’ll even go anchovies. Get pop, too."
While waiting for the pizza, Warlock slapped Love’s ‘Forever Changes’ on the turntable and we shared a doobie.
"I could listen to this ‘till I croak and never get tired of it. It’s better than ‘Sargent Pepper’s’," Warlock remarked. Then later, holding the bobby-pinned roach out to me as he rose, "It’s such a drag having to turn the record over."
I had now officially lost the book I had brought to study. And I didn’t care.
A kid wearing wire rimmed glasses like Lennon, his hair curling over his ears, delivered our pizza. We were ravenous. But no sooner had we paid the delivery boy, cracked the cardboard lid open on Wolf’s bed, and let the aroma of hot Mozzarella waft up to our eager nostrils, than Wolfman flung the door open and swooped down on the pie, grabbing a hot slice in his claw.
"My timing is fucking genius, I swear," he growled as he shoveled the pizza into his mouth. He plopped down on his bed almost capsizing the box. Flipping his sandals off, they made a soft thwack against the closet door. He let his books drop where they may. Warlock and I quick grabbed slices and chowed down now that the unexpected Wolfman had a head start. I pitched a pop top into a corner.
"Where have you been laying your bones these days," I asked.
"Wouldn’t you like to know," he answered in-between gulps of Coke.
"Andmoreagain?"
He took another bite. A contented sound escaped his lips, his mouth crammed with pizza. He held up an index finger, hurriedly chewing and wiped his hands on his pants. He dug into his left jean pocket and pulled out a carefully folded sheet of lined notebook paper.
"She wrote a Haiku for me, can you dig it? It’s going to be published in the Spectator. Listen."
He unfolded it and read:
My orbit, your heart
In your arms my universe
In your kiss my truth.
Warlock snickered, "Spare us, man."
"You’re a cretin, you know that." He refolded the paper.
"Wolf, she’s fifteen, and she’s a professor’s daughter."
"Who told you that?" He shot a glance at Warlock.. "No she’s not. She’s a runaway. She’s crashing at the apartment of one of the chick’s that works at the Spectator."
"Out of the frying pan and into the inferno," Warlock said.
" Everything’s cool. I’m careful."
"That’s not the point," I said. "The cops catch you with her--"
"Or her parents," Warlock chimed in.
" Right. They’ll bust you so fast."
" We’ll take-off, drop out. I’ve got connections."
" Wolf, you’re living in a fantasy world."
"Don’t bug me! Do you know the administration is trying to throw the Spectator off campus? They’ve given them 48 hours to vacate their office before they confiscate all of their equipment. They’ve threatened to padlock the doors."
"What, that tin Quonset hut by the field house? How is that a threat?"
"The Spectator prints the truth, that’s how. The University is in the back pocket of Dow Chemical and Lockheed. They can’t tolerate that we know that. We’re living in a fascist state! Can’t you guys see?!"
I used my finger to lift a sagging strand of Mozzarella into my mouth. " I can see you’re hung up on Andmoreagain. Dig her poetry, go ahead and ball her even, but don’t get mixed up in any confrontation between the university and the Spectator. I’ve heard the campus police are getting patrol cars reinforced with wire mesh. They’re expecting riots here like Berkeley. Some of those dudes at the Spectator are hot heads. Skulls are going to get cracked. Don’t be one of them."
"You don’t understand."
" I understand that Warlock and I want to keep you out of trouble. You making grade point?"
"Toss me a Coke roomie." He scooted to the top of his bunk, digging into the mattress with his elbows, and bunched the pillow beneath his head of anarchic hair. "You’ve got room to talk," he said, as he popped the top.
"You really know how to hurt a guy." That jogged my memory. I launched a search party for my Brit. Lit. Book. Warlock was the one who excavated it from the debris.
" I’ll leave you two to devour the rest of the pizza." Hopefully, Hunter was through typing his paper. " It’s good catching up to you Wolf."
"You too, Jase. Tell, Hunter, hi."
"Will do, man. Peace."
"Don’t forget, Jase, what we talked about," Warlock called.
There was the commotion of late Sunday now as I walked down the hall. Everything around me was getting too heavy.
I opened our dorm room door. The air was foul with smoke. Hunter looked up from his typewriter in mid-key stroke, his eyes red-rimmed. He was sitting in his boxers at his desk, his fine hair looked like a wheat field a cyclone had hopped through; a half-smoked cigarette dangled from his lips. The cafeteria ash tray next to his elbow overflowed with crumpled butts.
"Just about through buddy. Want to order out?"
"Warlock and I already did. Why don’t you stop down there and grab a bite before it’s all gone."
"Just might do that." He continued typing.
"Wolf’s back so I wouldn’t wait too long. I’m going to the lounge to catch the Smothers Brothers."
In the dark recesses of the T.V. room I slumped across one of the chairs in the back as if it were shaped like a spoon and watched the remainder of the Ed Sullivan Show. The color smeared across the the screen made some of the performers look like Martians, others like carrots. Sporadically one of the lounge denizens would walk up to the set and fiddle with the color tint knobs on the back to little or no effect.
When the Smother Brothers show started all the seats filled . Tommy Smothers, with his naughty boy grin, and his brother Dick knew exactly what they were doing pushing the edges of the status quo with their hip, funny jokes and sketches. Their show was a thumb to the nose dressed up in a song and dance, a figurative flip of the finger to their network, the government, and any prevailing institution that was in their sights that week. Laughter ricocheted around the room as the brothers ran through their bits. I joined in, something I needed.
Hunter was not in our room when I got back. I brushed my teeth, pulled a sheet on top of me and set the alarm clock for my Monday morning Brit. Lit. class. Later a plank of hall light swept the room as the door opened and closed. I heard Hunter pad across the floor and cough, shuffle papers and finally collapse on his bed.
The buzzer slapped me like a sock stuffed with nickels. Now shackled to the day, I staggered into the hall, seeking walls for handles, falling into the shower open mouthed . Still wet, I pulled on clothes and wolfed down a semblance of breakfast. The morning was cool and overcast. With my text in hand I joined the thin stream of students headed to class. At the beginning of the semester if you were unlucky in the draw and had to register in the field house late in the afternoon, by that time the air stale, clogged with smoke and dust, you walked out with a card for a M.W.F. class at 6:45 A.M. as well as a hacking cough and a possible future case of emphysema.
I was running late as I pushed the dark oak door to the auditorium open. It heaved shut behind me with a resonant sigh. Several students in the back of the hall turned and gazed at me with mock pity in their eyes, smirks stapled to their faces. The hundred or so others remained hunched over scribbling thoughtfully in their open blue books. My legs felt weak. I looked down and noticed the little table beside me where the sheets of questions were neatly stacked next to the blue covered booklets, daunting in their blankness. My mouth went dry as I picked up one of each and sidled down a row of glares to find an empty seat. I swivelled the wooden arm rest into position, trying to make as little noise as possible. I humbly wrote my name and section number on the cover, then looked at the white sheet with the test questions.
BOOK ONE
1. Examine the narrator’s invocation (lines 1-25) and his epic question and answer (lines 26-49).
A.) What is the source of the narrator’s authority?
B.) What kind of persona would you say is established when one puts all three elements–the invocations, question, and answer– together? Characterize this poet-narrator–comparing him to the narrator’s of Spenser and Chaucer would be helpful.
I suppose my face went as white as that paper. I wanted to cry. And there were two more questions, equally involved. My shirt already damp, began to cling to my back. I felt a rivulet of sweat from my arm pit trickle down my left side. There was nothing to do but write. I held the tip of my pencil an inch above the page then wrote THE. THE. Sure! Simple. It could be the prow of a majestic ship constructed of reasoned argument and sound ideas--- if only I had the skills and knowledge to build it. More words followed under the grinding friction of the graphite point of my pencil as it pressed to the paper. Slowly, tortuously it meandered across each page through the loops of so many letters. My answers came in sentences stacked like dominoes ready to topple, not thoughts, words shoved ass end to ass end like box cars in a train yard with no engine. My words broke down into nothing more than letters strung together like common clay beads. It was all bullshit. Enough to get me possibly a D if a T. A. was in a forgiving mood, an F if they were less so.
A girl two rows down, three seats over, coughed. A pencil clattered to the concrete floor. Across the auditorium with a dry rasp, pages were relentlessly being turned. When the professor finally declaimed, "Ladies and gentlemen put down your writing implements and close your books." I felt as if I had just committed some vile act and, at the last minute, received a reprieve. I stumbled from the dim cave of my shame, dazed.
Outside sheets of rain were sweeping across the campus, the day gone dark as the clouds. I turned my collar up and tucked my head and ran through the streaming green world. Ran trying to stay dry. Ran from the academic disaster I had just participated in. It was all futile. How had it happened. I blew off last Friday’s lecture. It required too much effort to get out of bed that morning. Certainly the test was announced then. I should have studied on Sunday when I had the chance. Deciding to duck into the Union Building to shake off, I ran smack into the massive plaster sculpture of Ugolino and his Sons sitting in the vestibule just inside the doors. I halted, dripping. I had passed it many times. I even read the card once. The tableau was inspired by lines from Dante’s Inferno. The muscled youths nude in utter despair crowded around, clutching their father’s contorted limbs, his face agonized in hunger, condemned to eat his own children or die of starvation. I knew how they felt.
Part. 4
After the Brit. Lit. debacle, I actually knuckled down in my studies for the next few days. In my art history class I did okay on a quiz on Cimabue and wrote a good paper, I thought, juxtaposing Shakespeare’s and Jean Anouille’s interpretations of Julius Caesar for my comparative lit. class. Then Verlaine called.
"Jase, my class was cancelled. I have free time! I can pose for you! You can paint me. " I was headed to a class when the phone rang. "Did you hear me?" My Soash. book was under my arm. "You can finish my portrait!"
I didn’t have the will that Ulysses had, to be lashed to the mast of my academics, to shout above the beckoning sirens. She wasn’t a siren of course. She had made that clear. We were friends. And I would never betray that. But seeing her in the nude... I was an artist.
"Sure," I answered. "I’ll be right over."