WHITE SUMMER Chapter 7

WHITE SUMMER
Chapter7




It was my old Mustang. We were in the front seat. She was wearing LOVE by Yardley. I had bought it for her for her birthday. It now filled my nostrils as my lips explored her soft neck. She leaned forward and I coasted the zipper down her back. When I reared back I knocked my Timex off the rear view mirror where it hung, dangling, from it’s metal band. I slid the sleeves of her dress off her shoulders. They were so smooth, my hands glowing faintly from the radio dial as I caressed them. The Lovin’ Spoonful’s, ‘Do you Believe in Magic’ was playing low. It had been our song for forever. My hands slipped to the front of her bra. I could feel her nipples under the satiny fabric. Karen licked her lips and moaned softly. She fell into my embrace as my fingers worried the hooks on her bra strap. Twist, push, don’t pull. God, how many, two? The hard-on in my pants was raging. She rotated her shoulders as I slipped her bra off and I dropped it to the floor. My mouth found her warm skin. She stroked and rubbed my hair as my lips trailed across her breasts before settling on a nipple.
“Jason.”
“Mmmmm.”
“Jason, I’m pregnant.”
I paused, my breathing radiated over her skin.
“Jason, did you hear me?”
“Yes.” Slowly,I raised my head and sat up, my balls ached.
“Well. Say something?
“I –I. Are you sure?”
“Jason, I’m five days late! I’m never late. What are we going to do? We have to tell my folks. Jason? Jason!?”
The round glare of a flashlight pierced the window, washing everything in brilliant white light.
“Police, open up! Police!” A fist pounded on the window.
“Jason? Jason!”
“Karen?!” Where was Karen?
“Open up! We have a search warrant.”
“Jason! Man, wake up!” Warlock’s face was inches from mine, his breath tinged with the smell of marijuana, even this early. It was early, wasn’t it? I was chilled and it was too bright. My cover was pulled back.
“Jase, haul your ass out of bed! It’s the cops!”
“Cops?” The word was like an echo, causing an avalanche. The events of the past 24 hours tumbled down on top of me as I twisted and toppled out of bed. The necklace I had forgotten to take off, snapped. The little wood beads, popped, rolling everywhere. I scrambled for my pants. I shoved my legs into the rumpled jeans and had them half-way up, when the police entered. The officer thanked the head of housing as he pulled the key out, one of many that jingled on a big brass ring.
They stood there in their uniforms like they had just been cut out of stiff blue paper. One was tall with a haircut about a decade out of date, his hair short and severe like metal bristles on a brush. The other was short and beefy with a neck that squeezed out of his collar like toothpaste from a tube.
“Gentlemen, we have a search warrant to retrieve any property that belongs to Dale Wolfenberger that might relate to subversive or criminal activity.” It was the tall one who spoke.
We looked at each other. I cracked a smile and snorted. It had been awhile since I had heard Wolfman’s real name.
“We need to see student I.D. Just for our records.”
I had mine. It took Warlock a few minutes to locate his while the officers started rooting around.
We stood to one side while they dumped drawers and raked under the beds. The short one, with the fleshy neck , his partner called him Lou, retrieved one of Wolfman’s used rubbers from beneath his mattress and dropped it quicker than a radioactive isotope. We laughed. He glared at us with a sour expression. Then the tall one bagged the Playboy.
“Hey,” Warlock spoke out. “Why are you taking the magazine? That’s evidence?”
The officer with the clipped-short hair, answered. “It has an interview with the radical, Eldridge Cleaver,” as justification for it’s seizure.
“Here you go, Woody,” the fat cop said, “pay-dirt!” He held up a book the size of a pack of cigarettes in a red plastic sleeve. “Quotations from Chairman Mao.” He announced this as if it were a signed confession, and dropped it in his bag.
The only thing I ever knew Wolf to quote from was Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Philosophy. The book probably belonged to Andmoreagain. The men in blue picked up other radical literature, a copy of Zap Comix, and several editions of The Spectator. They found some of Andmoreagain’s love poetry to him and stuffed it in their bag, too. Even some of the stray wood beads from my necklace found their way into evidence. They probably thought they were drugs of some kind...with holes. Then it was Woody, the tall cop with the severe hair, who made the next discovery.
He had found a carefully folded and rubber-banded small brown paper bag in the back of Wolf’s closet. When he opened it, his eyes cracked open like a pair of eggs fried sunny side up. He hopped over the clothes strewn floor in a fever to show his brother officer the contents.
“Take a look at these, Lou.” He handed a stack of Polaroids to the short cop and peered over his shoulder as he shuffled through them. Warlock and I caught a glimpse. They were nude photos of Andmoreagain smiling and goofing around. The one the cops took special interest in, she was on her back, hands behind her head, on Wolf’s bed, laughing, her legs wide, her heels in the air.
“That’s the Morrisey girl isn’t it?”
“The runaway?”
The short one nodded. “ There’s your child molest.”
“How’s that man? Who?” Warlock interjected.
“The girl in the photograph. Her name is Morrisey, Judy Ann Morrisey. Your friend take these photographs?”
“Hard to say,” Warlock answered.
“This yours?” The tall officer held up the bulky gray Polaroid Land camera he had lifted from the desk clutter.
“Hard to say.”
The officer broke a hard smile and put it in the evidence bag.
“More than likely she’s under the influence.” He popped open the black plastic tube that contained the Polaroid fixative, sniffed it, then dropped it into the bag.
The short one, his gaze still fixed on the photo, said, “You can always tell by the eyes.” He rebanded the photos and placed them in the bag. He turned to us. “We’re just about finished here. If either of you have any knowledge of your friend’s whereabouts it would greatly help us and it would benefit your friend too, if you shared it. He needs to put this behind him. But first he needs to turn himself in and get this sorted out in a court of law. Here’s the department’s number if you come up with anything. Thanks for your cooperation.” They stepped over the mounds of clothes they had pulled from his closet and walked out.
Warlock slammed the door and flopped down on his bed. “Shit, shit, shit! Fucking cops! Wolf is such a stupid asshole.”
“He didn’t do anything wrong!”
Warlock sighed. “He’s still an asshole for getting involved with her.”
“He didn’t know.”
“Hell.”
“Hey, you want me to help clean-up this mess.”
“Yeah, what-the-hell.”
It took less than an hour. As I was redistributing the clutter, I happened upon a photo of the brunette that I had seen on stage with Warlock . She looked freshly minted.
“Okay, who is she?” I held up the photograph.
He torpedoed across the room and grabbed the photo from my hand.
“Leave my stuff the fuck alone! Just someone I know. Mind!?”
“Back off, man! I didn’t mean anything by it. God, get it together.” I gathered my bedding and left.
When I got back to our room, Hunter and Joey were gone. The interior smelled of sex and grass. The bed sheets were a twisted clump. Four torn-open Trojan packets were on the floor. It must have been some night.
I saw my reflection in the closet door mirror. I touched my ear, the dried blood. It was still sore. There were definite teeth marks. I smiled, remembering, and shucked my clothes, grabbing a towel. My shower would have to be quick, if I didn’t want to be late for my Life Drawing class.
Above the dorm, the sky was as thick and gray as a kneaded eraser. My cursed umbrella was still back in Warlock’s room, that is if the cops hadn’t taken it for evidence. I wasn’t going back. My drawing board and pads of newsprint and pencil case were enough for me to juggle.
As I neared the trestle over Fee Lane, a yellow diesel engine clanked overhead, jerking dirty vermillion boxcars behind it. The black triangle was still there with it’s cryptic statement:
ART I chewed it over in my mind like a tough piece of philosophical gristle.
MONEY
OBLIVION Its enigma remained.

When I reached the art building, I entered through the faculty parking lot. I bounded up the stairs, taking two at a time, until I reached the third floor. The studio was a shade less gray than the outside and a degree warmer. Students were still setting up. I squealed a bench over and positioned it in the semi-circle of other benches surrounding the wooden platform in the middle of the room. On the raised dias sagged a beat-up over-stuffed chair with a white sheet draped over one armrest.
My class was taught by Professor Heinrich, a stooped elderly man of considerable talent and rigidly-held convictions where art was concerned. His critiquing methods were notorious for reducing some students to tears, but his advice, if hard, was always sound. He conferred with the model who had just entered the room. She rested her instep against the side of her knee as she listened.
His instructions ended, he strode away and she began her warm-ups. She was a dish-water blonde in an over-sized army jacket, too long in the sleeves. The front would flap open presenting fleeting views of her breasts as she bent her elbows behind her head. Her pubic hair , a wedge of light brown curls, peeked-out from under her coat when she raised her arms. Her knees were boney and red. The soles of her feet were black from the concrete floor, all the charcoal dust and graphite the custodians shifted around at night when they swept. She had pulled her hair back and rubber-banded the ends, making it stick-up like the top-knot of some exotic bird. It swished back and forth as she leaned behind her to grip a foot and lift it to touch her heel to the small of her back.
When she was through with her exercises, she stepped to the platform and slipped her jacket from her shoulders, dropping it to the floor. Her first pose was for fifteen seconds, legs apart, back arched, hands on hips. My charcoal scooted across the paper laying down nothing more than angle and direction lines.
I flipped the page. Another pose. The charcoal stick balanced lightly between my fingers. I laid down a contour line. My eye possessed my hand and pulled the charcoal along as it followed the arch of her back, the curve of her buttocks, the cascading descent of her thigh to her calf, her heel planted solid as a root and underlined by me in a thick black line.
The poses lengthened. Her last one before break was thirty minutes, one leg crooked over the armrest, her arms languid, her head lolled to one side.
I still worked quickly, even though she was good at holding a longer pose. I laid in areas of tone with my blackened thumb, a smear of gray giving weight to her breasts; a black smudge for her pubic hair. Then time was up. She draped the olive drab army jacket across her white shoulders and stepped down from the platform.
During break she bought a TAB from the vending machine and did cartwheels down the hall, a human wheel, her arms and legs, spokes, her coat seemed little more than a poor after-thought, doing little to conceal her.
When we resumed, she settled down to extended poses of forty-five minutes to an hour in length. She half-wrapped the white sheet around her and fell across the chair.
Professor Heinrich walked up on the podium and rearranged the sheet to expose a breast and her right leg from mid-thigh. He stepped down and offered his sage advice, gesturing with his hands. “Concentrate on where nothing is. Show the space around the form.” He sculpted the air around her. “ Let the fabric define volume.”
As he circuited the room. He would peer over a student’s shoulder, and if they were concentrating too much on one part, say the face, he would ask for their charcoal, and to their astounded and dismayed expression, scrawl a big ‘X’ over that section of the work, telling them to complete the rest of the drawing. He never did this to me.
What was she thinking up there? Was this an ego trip for her? All eyes on me. Maybe she was an exhibitionist. Did she get off on having a room full of strangers stare at her? Or maybe this was just a way to make ends meet. Five dollars an hour for sitting or standing around. Sure she was nude, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. She had to be cold. Her nipples were like new erasers on a pencil. She had goose-bumps for sure. It must have been really hard sitting perfectly still, for even fifteen minutes. I wondered if I could do it. I would be afraid my mind would wander and I’d get an erection. Her whole arm was out of proportion. I erased it. God, that sheet was a bummer, all those creases and folds radiated up from where the chair sagged under the weight of her hips. It bunched and wrinkled at the back of her knee. Her foot had a high arch. I wondered if she was a dancer. Her toes were knobby. I erased some more. One shape was as important as any other, the corner of the table, the crook of an arm, an eye, an upholstered button on the chair. I let my eye roam the room. There was that girl across from me, I forgot her name, in the red plaid skirt and penney loafers, from the look of her work, she had to be an Art Education major. And that nun at her easel, it cracked me up, in her black and white cowl with those thick soled shoes, what did she think of this young woman’s nudity. Was it a glory to God, or a sin? She probably just needed three easy credit hours. The guy in the flannel shirt, Jim, I think, I never saw him finish a picture, not one. He was sharpening his pencils now. He could talk art theory all day long, but when it came time to draw... it never seemed to happen. How surreal, fifteen of us sitting in a circle, heads bobbing up and down, as we stared at a naked woman, and scribbled our little scribbles. Guys my age were getting crippled and killed in Vietnam. Bobby Pressler, I graduated with him. He’s dead now. We took a Biology class together . He almost fainted when the teacher dissected that hamster. I bet he saw a lot worse than that hamster over there. He came back in a flag draped coffin. His picture was on the front page of the paper. The obituary didn’t mention he was a bully and was crazy about Ian Fleming novels. What do they say? Don’t speak ill of the dead. Dead is dead. Why wasn’t it me? Why am I here? My folks had enough money to send me to college. What if I flunked out? Go directly to Vietnam. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.00. I wouldn’t make it. I couldn’t survive the military. A shiver salted my spine.
I wondered where Wolfman was. If I prayed, I’d pray he was in a good place and safe. Andmoreagain, too. What the cops did to her, manhandling her, hand-cuffing her. She was so open and real. I wondered if she’d been released to her parents. She would run away again, maybe farther, and not to such a good guy as Wolfman. Why were kids always being hassled? I put down a line then erased it. Was there ever one true line?
It was break time. She rolled out of the chair and threw her fatigue jacket over her shoulders, bent over stiffly, and massaged her calf. She sat down on the edge of the platform and dug in her pocket for her cigarettes, lighting one she stood up and sauntered around the room and looked at the student art. I stood and stretched my legs and let my right hand dangle, shaking it. I backed away from the drawing bench measuring my work with a critical eye.
She padded over to me and stood silently for a moment before speaking. “I dig your work.”
I looked at her, her pale eyes picketed with thick eyelashes. Her lips were cracked. “Thanks.”
“ I mean, like wow, that’s me.”
“There are some things I think I need to fix.”
“I don’t know what, but I mean, like you’re the artist, right?” She crossed her arms in front of her chest pushing one breast and a nipple into view through the open front of her jacket.
“Yeah.”
“Fucking righteous.” Her head nodded in answer to nothing and she took a drag on her cigarette. “Say, would you like, mind, letting me have it when you’re, like, finished with it? I mean I don’t have any bread or anything to pay you. But, I would really dig having it, and like be really grateful.”
“Yeah. Sure, why not.”
“Oh, wow, thanks, man!” She took another puff of her cigarette. “Shit! I better take a piss before the break ends! Tell them to hold up!” She dashed from the room, her bare feet smacking the concrete floor.
I realized I had just eliminated MONEY from the ART, OBLIVION equation, and smiled.
I was straddling my bench when she skipped back into the room. She dropped her jacket on the platform and climbed back into the chair to assume her pose. Of course the folds of the sheet were all wrong when she wrapped it around her body, but by then I was working more on the background. She looked content as a cat up there. Three students were already packing up to leave. I worked for another forty minutes.
When the class ended she skidded over to me, her breasts inches from my face behind the open curtain of her jacket.
“Wait for me, okay? I have to throw some clothes on. I’ll be right back!” And she bounded out of the room.
When she returned, her army jacket was draped over one arm. She was wearing clogs and a thin paisley print dress. Her nipples dimpled the fabric. I signed the drawing and ripped it from my pad.
“Thanks, man, I really appreciate this.”
I handed her the rolled-up picture.
“Say, you have an old lady?”
I had heard this phrase used in the movies. I knew what it meant, but I’d never heard anyone use that expression in real life. I didn’t know how to reply. I surprised myself. “Yeah,” I answered. I was thinking of Ingrid. But she certainly wasn’t my ‘old lady’, she’d never speak to me, if I ever thought of her that way. Not my girlfriend, no. No more girlfriends. Something. That I knew her, that she wanted to be around me, was somehow enough.
“Oh, well, groovy. Well, it’s been real. Thanks again, man! I have to split.” She danced out into the hall.
Hunter was in residence when I returned to the dorm. He was at his desk on the phone.
“Sure I want that, too, but what’s the rush? Aren’t you having fun? Why spoil it? Let’s not jump into any...”
I opened the door all the way.
“Listen, Jase just walked in. We’ll talk about this later, okay? Love you, babe. Bye.” He turned around in his chair. “Hey, buddy, long time no see!”
I laid my drawing board and sketch pads on the bed. Hunter came over for a look.
“Let’s see what you’ve been drawing today.” He thumbed through the pages. “Shit. Shit. Shit.” He was looking at all the fifteen to thirty second sketches. He flipped over about ten more pages, to the longer poses. “This is better, nice beaver.” He turned another page. “Her tits aren’t much. Did you try to get her number?”
“You never fail to disappoint.”
“Hey, I’m giving you an honest opinion.” He closed the pad. “By the way, thanks for getting the grass. We ended up fucking our brains out.”
“I know. Four times, right?”
He looked at me hard. “How do you know?”
“The open Trojan packets I found by your bed.”
He laughed. “Yeah, I must have been too preoccupied to call house-keeping. You know how it is, right? Say, what happened to your ear? Were you in a fight?”
“No, don’t worry about it.”
“It looks like someone tried to take a chunk out of it.”
“Did you hear? Wolfman is gone.”
“Dead?!”
“No! I mean he assaulted a cop and took off. We don’t know where he is.”
“Shit! How? Did he go nuts?”
“No, the administration forcibly evicted everyone from The Spectator office. He was in there with the others. They arrested people, threw their stuff out in the street. The police are looking for him now. They issued a search warrant for his room. Warlock and I were there.”
“Asshole,” he muttered, as he grabbed the Geology book off his desk and rooted around for a notebook.
“Andmoreagain was arrested.”
He turned to me. “She was bad news for him. I could see that as soon as I met her. Listen, I have to book it to my Geology class. What are you doing?”
“Grabbing a lunch, then I guess go to class. We’re going to see Kennedy, later.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Verlaine, Ingrid and me.”
“Yeah?! How’s that going? Getting any from either of them?”
“See you later, Hunter.”
He smiled and clamped his hand on the edge of the door. “Jase, do you ever study?”
“I study. I study. Don’t get hung up about it.”
His blonde head poked back into the room. “Better get on the ball before Uncle Sam sends you to ‘strafe them creeps in the rice paddy, daddy. Diddy whomp, diddy whomp’!” He slammed the door.
That Fugs album was still his favorite.
On my way to the cafeteria., I crossed over to the main building and picked up a Daily Student. There was nothing in it about the siege at The Spectator. Too early, or it was suppressed. The lunch was unmemorable as always, a meat, a starch, a vegetable. Da, ta da, ta da da.
When I got back to our floor, I could hear the phone clear down the hall. From outside our door, the brang, brang of the ringer sounded like a double-headed hammer threatening to knock the cover of the phone box off. I pushed the door open, my key still stabbed in the lock, and smacked the insistent phone with my hand.
“Hello!” I demanded.
“ Where have you been!?”
It was Verlaine, and the tempered edge to my voice dulled immediately . “I just got back from class. I was down eating lunch.”
“Ingrid told me all about last night.”
“All...?”
“Hmmm, how’s the ear?”
“Better.”
“Jase, she told me you two saw everything when the police stormed The Spectator office. You saw Andmoreagain get arrested, and how you helped Wolfman get away.”
“Yeah. I didn’t even think about what I was doing. It all came down so fast. Wolfman’s done it for sure this time. I just came from his room. The police got a search warrant and were confiscating his things.”
“Drugs?”
“No. Warlock made sure there weren’t any. Mostly papers and stuff and some Polaroids of Andmoreagain.”
“Polaroids? Nude?”
“Yeah.”
“Uh-oh. Definitely not cool. The pigs!”
“Jase, I’m calling because there’s going to be a rally in support of The Spectator in Dunn Meadow this afternoon. We’re going and you need to be there, too.”
“Why? I’m not part of that.”
“Yes, you are. It’s about student rights, freedom of speech, lunkhead.”
“Lunkhead?”
“You heard me. We’re heading your way as soon as I get off the phone. Be in front of McNutt to meet us.”
“Verlaine, wait...”
“Bye.” The receiver clicked on the other end.
I’d be skipping yet another class, but I found myself in the hall, then the door to the staircase swung shut behind me, and there was never any thought of turning back.
It had lightened considerably outside, but the rent clouds, still clotted the sky. I spotted Ingrid and Verlaine locked in silent conversation heading my way . Verlaine had on her white t-shirt and bib overalls, her hands stuffed in the wide pockets. She was wearing sandals, a rare occurrence. Her braided sandy-colored hair gently whipped against her shoulders as she walked. When she looked up, her lop-sided grin took possession of her face and she waved. Beside her, Ingrid was taller. Her hair lapping her face like dark waves on a tranquil sea. She wore jeans and one of her striped, scoop-neck, sailor shirts; with each step, her breasts rhythmically skewed the curved folds of fabric. Her smile was like the first slice of light at sunrise.
“Stand there much longer and they’ll dump cement over you and say a dedication,” Verlaine said, as she neared.
“Hi, Jason,” Ingrid’s voice sang out.
Verlaine held out her hand and I reached for it. She whipped me around and I fit between them, our arms linked. We kept walking.
“I’m glad you could make it,” Verlaine, said.
“Did I have a choice?”
“Well,” she hesitated. “No!”
Ingrid bit the nail on her little finger and laughed.
“I’m glad you’re looking after my welfare.”
“You’re a good sport, Jason, I think. Yes?” Ingrid, interjected.
“Oh, yeah, I have to be, right?”
Fee Lane took a dip and we found ourselves running, laughing, then it leveled off and we slowed again.
“After the rally we’ll go hear Bobby Kennedy speak,” Verlaine said.
“If we can get in. The auditorium will be packed.”
“Oh, we’ll get in, don’t you worry.”
“Well, now that you put it like that. I am worried. That sounds ripe with adventure.”
Verlaine just smiled as we made our way across 10th. Street, and on to Dunn Meadow.
When we arrived, students with black arm-bands were stationed around the edges of the assembly passing out black cloth strips for us to tie around our arms. A speaker was already at the makeshift podium lecturing the scattered crowd about student rights and First Amendment guarantees, the need to take up a collection to find The Spectator a new place and keep them printing the truth.
We found a patch of grass and folded our legs under us as we tied on our arm-bands. I couldn’t keep from concentrating on the soft fabric that draped Ingrid’s breasts. I thought of those Roman statues. Those women with their togas of sculpted marble, how the flow of the folds emphasized their rounded forms. I mentally painted Ingrid, how my brush would trail in declining arcs, defining the folds of cloth radiating down from her sloping breasts, her pointed nipples. Suddenly, a big black painted can blocked my sight. It shook in front of my nose, metallic, scattering my thoughts like clustered butterflies. Verlaine shook the can again.
“They’re taking up a collection for The Spectator. Do you want to put something in? Huh!?”
I put in a dollar. When it was passed on, Ingrid had turned away.
A succession of speakers, some from The Spectator, out on bail, and a couple of singers, backyard Dylan acolytes, kept the rally going. I learned the man in the trench-coat with the axe, who Wolfman knocked down, was the Dean of Students. No wonder they sicced the cops on him. More speakers came and went. It all drifted by, then someone from the stage called out for anyone, who had anything else to add to what went down that night to come to the podium. Verlaine’s knee jammed into my ribs when she jumped up. She began tugging on my arm, her nails digging in.
“Jase, saw it!” She yelled. “ He witnessed it! He can tell you!” She yanked harder, her nails cut red half-moons into my wrist. “Get up, Jase! Get up! Now’s your chance!”
“No way! Let go!” I said. My face hardened, but was no match for the zeal that flared across hers.
By then, the bearded speaker at the podium was calling into the microphone, “Come on up, man. We need the truth!”
A scattered chant rose from the students around me, “Tell it! Tell it! Tell it!”
I felt I was being squeezed and pulled like silly putty as my legs uncurled and I stood to applause and whistles.
“Right on, Jase, right on! Verlaine said, as she patted my back, pushing me forward .
I stumbled over bodies and out-stretched legs, as I made my way to the stage, rows of eyes upturned to me. My mind was blank and my mouth was dry. With shaky legs I tripped on the first stair. Someone reached down and grabbed my forearm. My face burned, as I walked across the uneven stage to the podium.
The bearded man in the plaid shirt, passed the hand-mike to me. His breath smelled of salami as he whispered, “Just tell it like it is, man.”
I took a deep breath and averted my eyes. I saw a glass of water and a pitcher on a shelf inside the hollow podium, with a shaky hand I reached for it. I wanted to take a big swallow, but my tongue only allowed a sip. It was tepid, but helped to wash away the sand. The pad of my finger boomed on the mike when I tapped it.
“I-I am just a student.” My voice quavered. “ My parents sent me here because this is a good college.” I reluctantly scanned the crowd, that sea of eyes. There were a few boos. “Run by men who value knowledge and nurture it in others... like me, I guess. They are here to promote the free exchange of ideas.” There were some catcalls. I tried to focus on the trees at the far edge of the meadow. “When I was in high school, D. H. Lawrence wasn’t on our reading list, too controversial. Catcher in the Rye, forget it, it was banned outright. And I would be sent to the principal’s office if I was ever caught with a drawing of a nude woman.” I heard some whistles. I kept my eyes on those trees and the guys beside them. “But, all of this is permitted here. Controversial books, ideas, even drawing nude figures from life.” I shifted my gaze down. Verlaine and Ingrid were smiling. My mind was plodding up steep steps. “Yet why are they beating up kids over a newspaper!” Now there was applause. I took another swig of the warm water. “I am just a student. Should I feel rage that they took an axe to an office door because they didn’t agree with what a newspaper printed? A paper that is guaranteed free speech under the Constitution!” Some cheering erupted. I continued. “ But I am just a student. Should I feel rage that other students just like me have been arrested because they just wanted their voices heard? Should I feel rage now that one of my best friends is a fugitive because he tried to defend someone he loved?” More cheering. It was an adrenaline rush, just like that night. The guys by the trees had cameras and were taking pictures. “Should I feel rage that this administration, this government, this war has turned us against one another; the University administration against the students, fathers against sons, our government against its citizens.” My brain was like a fountain, words spouting, gushing. Some students began to stand, Ingrid and Verlaine among them. I didn’t know what I was saying or where I was going with it. It was like hanging on to The Wild Mouse, the roller coaster at the State Fair, as it made it’s dips and twists and tight swerves. “My friend Wol-” ( No, he wasn’t Dale whatever, he really was Wolfman. He would always forever be Wolfman, nothing else, nothing would change that.) “My friend Wolfman is wanted by the police. They have a whole list of charges against him. But he is innocent. I was there. I was the last person to see him. Before he disappeared that night, he turned to me, grinned and raised his fist. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. He spoke to me through that gesture. You know what it said?” There were shouts from the crowd. The guys by the trees were snapping away. “It said, Be strong. Fight on. Remember me.” I paused to slug down some water. “I do. I do remember. Remember Wolfman!” I shouted, my clenched hand held high. More and more people began standing. The chant,‘Wolfman, Wolfman’ spread across the meadow. I looked behind me for someone to pass the mike to, no one was near. I dropped it on the top of the podium with a ‘thunk’, the sound of applause still filling my ears. I felt spent as I took the steps down from the stage. There were faces and voices and hands out-stretched. I peeled them all away until I found Ingrid and Verlaine. Ingrid hooked her arms around my neck and pressed her cheek to mine.
Verlaine mouthed a silent, ‘Wow’, a rapturous look on her face. “Jase, that was inspired. I didn’t know you had it in you!”
“I didn’t either. I didn’t know what I was going to say next. I was flying by the seat of my pants.”
Ingrid took hold of my shoulder and gave me a light kick.
“What was that for?”
“ Those feet, keep on the ground.”
“Jesus, Ingrid you need to kick him harder than that if you want to straighten him out,” Verlaine said.
Ingrid pushed me down and we fell together. There were more speakers and a singer that badly wanted to be another Phil Ochs. We sat and talked and half-listened until we became bored and hungry.
“Let’s get something to eat, then we can go over to the auditorium and wait for Bobby to arrive.”
“I’m for that,” I added.
We crossed the wide stone bridge to The Commons. Verlaine climbed the stairway ahead of us. When she reached the stone balcony she called down, “I’m going in, hurry up,” and pushed through the revolving door.
“Jason,” Ingrid said, not looking at me, as we took the steps. “Last night. I liked very much. But we will not do that every time. You understand?”
“I guess.”
“It was, how do you say? Sur une impulsion. I am not so much like that.”
“It’s okay, maybe I’m not either.” She squeezed my hand.
Our bodies crammed into one glass walled wedge of the revolving door, our arms inter-twined , our hands over-lapping as we pushed on through.
“It’s about time,” Verlaine said, as she slid her tray along the chrome rails, a tossed salad and a can of fruit juice sat in the center.
Ingrid plucked a tray from the stack. I followed her.
“Minestrone soup?” She asked.
“What?” The food handler answered. Her hair, contained in a tight net, seemed to have the texture of cotton candy.
“Just take the vegetable soup. It’s the same thing.”
“Vegetable,” Ingrid said with a dour look on her face.
I pulled a cheeseburger and a cardboard basket of limp fries from the glass shelf.
When we sat down at the table, Verlaine said, “Do you know what that is doing to your insides?”
“We’ve had this discussion before,” I answered. “Grease is one of the little known food groups.” I pushed a fry into my mouth. “So, do you think Kennedy can win the Primary?”
“ Sure. He has the Kennedy machine behind him, if he can fend off Governor Branigan and The Indianapolis Star, why not. Have you seen the crowds he’s attracting?”
“What about, McCarthy?” I glanced over at Ingrid. “God, do you put pepper on everything?”
“Oui. I like pepper.” She gave the shaker a few more forceful slaps over her soup.
Verlaine pinched a piece of lettuce and tucked it into her mouth. “McCarthy is a one trick pony, now that Johnson is out of the picture, he’ll fade. His only issue was the war.” She took a sip of her drink. “Eat! We need to get to the auditorium and find a place to wait outside.
“Outside?” I asked.
“Ye-s-s-s. The doors won’t be open yet and we want to see him arrive don’t we?”
“ You’re sure we can get in?”
“Trust me. I have connections.”
“You’re hiding something up your devious sleeve.”
“You’ll just have to wait and find out, won’t you.”
I looked at Ingrid. She was smiling over her spoon balanced in mid-air.
“You know something, too, don’t you?”
“Oui,” she answered, “more than you.” She sipped in the hot soup.
“I feel I’m having dinner with two C. I.A. moles.” They laughed.
We eventually finished our food and stacked our red trays.
Afternoon was sliding into evening faster than usual, the reprieve of blue sky withdrawn by swirling gray clouds.
The way to the auditorium was short, broad and straight. The structure itself formed a floodlit backdrop to Showalter fountain, Aphrodite’s sharp-planed form, her palms forever upraised.
Ingrid and I stopped by the cascading waters. The light wind lifted the spray and spritzed us. Ingrid let the droplets bead her brow before turning to me, shaking her hair.
“Jason...”
“I remember. That night was so insane.” I laughed and shook my head. My fingers out-stretched until they touched the damp back of her hand and gathered it in, our skin dewed with each slicing spray. She smiled and I kissed her.
“Hey, you two!” Verlaine stood on the other side, her arms limp at her sides out of exasperation. “Are you coming, or are you going to make-out in front of that ugly fountain all evening?”
Ingrid laughed and wiped her hair and we hurried around.
Verlaine led us to the dark side of the auditorium. The massive limestone wall loomed over us as it’s shadow sliced the street light into a black wedge. We followed her across the street and up the sloping ground that abutted the arts building parking lot, where bushes and young trees buffered it.
“Where are you going?”
She just hooked her finger, leading us on.
She picked a spot, hidden and crowded by a hedge and a tree. We squatted down facing each other, knee to knee.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Now, this.” Verlaine pulled a joint out of the front pocket of her overalls.
“Isn’t this risky?”
“Hoo, boy, Jase, you’re so hung up?!” She smiled, as her match ignited and the tip of the joint flared red, briefly throwing her face into relief. She exhaled. “We still have a lot of work to do on you. Right, Ingrid?”
“Oui, yes. Gimme, please. Yes?”
She passed the joint to Ingrid, and she took a greedy toke, then transferred it to me. So it went, round and round, and my muscles relaxed, my head lightened and my grin curled across my face .
Verlaine’s eyebrows scrunched together. “Do you think Bobby is lonesome?”
It took me a couple of beats to absorb this. “Kennedy? Doesn’t he have all those cousins and in-laws, and what, about ten children? How could he be lonely?”
“No, Jase.” She leaned over. “I didn’t say lonely, I said lonesome. There’s a difference. Lonesome is different.”
“How is this so?” It was Ingrid joining in, the joint a pinch between her fingers, three sparks, then out, fini.
“The way I see it...” Verlaine’s head lowered, her arms draped across her folded knees and she twirled the stalk of a dandelion between her thumb and forefinger, it’s bloom closed for the night. “Lonesome is by choice. You make a commitment to some thing larger than yourself that pushes you toward solitude, a life apart from others, you may miss society but you have a higher calling.”
“Kennedy has all kinds of friends and family and associates around, how can he be lonely–lonesome?”
“You mean you’ve never been in a crowded room,” she continued, “and felt all alone?”
“Well, that’s different.”
“Only in the sense that lonesome goes to the bone. It’s in your soul. It’s not a transient feeling.”
“Okay, so who’s lonely?” There was a long moment of silence.
“Someone who is homesick.” Ingrid, responded.
“ A girl sitting at home on the night of the big prom,” Verlaine said softly.
My eyes fixated on the twirling dandelion between her fingers, rotating first one way then the other. “Ah, I can’t think of anything,” I lied.
“Cop out!” Verlaine volleyed. “ Loneliness is a state that has been thrust on us, over which we have no choice, but it is only temporary. We leave it and go on.”
“So lonesome is...?” I asked again as I tried to get my head around the distinction.
“Your John Wayne,” Ingrid interjected.
“Yes!” Verlaine laughed and we joined in. “He doesn’t stick around. He rides off into the sunset! To where? No where! To distance, to solitude.”
“So he’s like, heroic?” I said.
“Stoic,” Ingrid added.
“The Lonesome Traveler,”Verlaine said. “Didn’t the Limeliters sing that?”
“Are You Lonesome, Tonight?”
“Lonesome Highway, Hank Williams,” Ingrid continued, as we got into a jag naming song titles with the word ‘lonesome’ in them.
Then it was on to songs with ‘lonely’ in the title, ‘Lonely Street’, ‘Only the Lonely’, and of course, ‘Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, until Ingrid settled it all.
“Lonesome is the blues. Lonely is rock and roll.”
Our laughter skipped across the darkness. Yes! It was beyond true.
We smacked the dirt off our pants, helped each other up, and maneuvered down the grassy rock strewn incline to wait with the other students gathered to see Bobby Kennedy; Bobby Kennedy, deemed by us a lonesome figure trying to shed the long shadow of his brother’s assassination.
People were shoulder to shoulder, a blanket of heads. Hand-made placards and professionally printed signs in red, white and blue, waved sporadically. We contorted into the crowd, the hot press of bodies. Conversations spooled out and tangled all about us. Again and again, I noticed Ingrid casting her gaze upward at seemingly nothing, the roof of the Fine Arts Building or a line of trees. I nudged Verlaine with my elbow and nodded in Ingrid’s direction.
“What are you looking at?” I finally asked.
“I am worried there will be another.” She took a nervous drag from her Gitane.
“That’s your paranoia kicking in. This is Bloomington, not Memphis.”
“Or Dallas,” Verlaine, added.”
“Anywhere, it could happen, if they think to them he is dangerous.” She pressed her cigarette to her lips again.
“What is this, some grand conspiracy?” I asked.
“You think not? Look what they did to his brother.” Her eyes were fierce.
After that, Verlaine and I started to furtively glance around as well, Ingrid’s little seed of apprehension already planted .
Then on the far edge of the crowd, near the front of the auditorium, there was a stirring, cheers, then shouts of “Bobby” and banners and signs popped up like spring flowers. I looked down 7th Street and saw a red convertible drifting nearer, pulling people running after it in it’s wake. Legs dangled over the sides of the car, as men sat perched, clinging to it’s backseat and trunk. As it approached, it’s motor a low rumble, the edges of the crowd broke toward it and parted.
Bobby Kennedy rose from the backseat of the slow moving car. He wore a gray suit, his sun-bleached brown hair, riffled in the breeze, as reflexively he tried to push it into place. He stood on the trunk, as one of the men leaned over and hooked his arm around his waist to anchor him, a field of hands reached out to touch, grasp or grab his hand, his sleeve, his pants’cuff, the black leather of his shoe.
His smile reminded me of Wolfman’s, a magnet for those gathered around him, pulling them closer still. It held their up-tilted faces as his fingers fanned finger tips, lightly clasped open palms, rubbed heads, before sweeping over to the next eager hand, the next yearning face, like a healer at a tent revival.
The red Chrysler rolled to a stop by the entrance and the men next to him hopped down and pushed back against the bodies pressing forward, as the senator clutched their hands, bent his legs and leaped down. His head low and his shoulders hunched forward like a prizefighter, his entourage hurried him through the side doors.
The crowd seemed aimless, milling around, the object that had so ignited their passions now removed.
“Follow me,” Verlaine said.
“They won’t let us in, it’s to capacity.”
“Oh ye of little faith!” She said to me over her shoulder as we angled and elbowed our way through the crowd toward the side entrance.
She pounded on the steel frame with the heel of her hand. A face appeared at a narrow vertical window and just like the doors to Oz opened to Dorothy, so too did the door that Bobby Kennedy had just passed through, open to Verlaine with her lion and tin man in tow.
“Bravo, you made it!” Exclaimed a wiry gray-haired man with glasses.
Verlaine touched his arm. “Jase, this is Evan,” she hesitated, “ I mean, Professor Goodman, my Biology instructor. He manages the Bloomington headquarters for the Kennedy campaign.”
His hand clamped around mine. “Good meeting you, Verlaine’s told me so much about you.” I wondered how much, then he asked, “Would you like to meet the senator?”
Verlaine just smiled. He turned, with his hand on the small of her back, and lead us up a short stairway, where more people were congregated.
Backstage was a thicket of suits and ties. Wide-eyed girls decorated the margins in pastel dresses, sweaters draped over their shoulders. Their disapproving eyes hooked to us; Verlaine’s overalls, Ingrid’s blouse, my hair, like nettles as we edged through the clusters of staff, invited officials and campus student leaders. The air was thick with the smell of perfume, people, and musty fabric, the auditorium curtains that ascended into the darkness of the ceiling. Beside them rough braided ropes cascaded from the rafters to big metal pulleys on the floor. Cables like black whips lay snapped across the wood planked stage, and cords and wires were tangled like weeds around the baseboard. On the wall hung a gray electrical box with rows of knife switches that looked fatal.
We poured into a small room, like corn flakes into a bowl. Cramped and hot, it reeked of privilege. My eyes kept scanning in front of me for Bobby’s head. He turned. I caught just a glimpse, his tender blue eyes. His face was winter, framed by summer. He seemed to burn and I wanted to be closer.
Professor Goodman guided him toward us. Scowling faces with razor burns were edged aside. “Senator, this is the student I was telling you about, one of your most ardent supporters. Verlaine, Senator Kennedy.”
“How do you do.” There was his familiar thick Boston accent. His smile opened up and wrinkles webbed the corners of his eyes. “It is, ah, always a pleasure to, ah, meet my ardent supporters. I understand you’re working in...?”
“ Biology!”
“No, ah, actually...”
“Oh! My area of concentration? Molecular Cell Biology.”
“No, eh ... How is the, ah...,” he looked at Professor Goodman, “Axolotl, community progressing? Did I, eh, pronounce it correctly?”
Verlaine’s eyes were as wide open as her mouth. I noticed her professor softly chuckle. “Yes. Fine...good....great!”
“Tell me, what is an Axolotl? ”
“A salamander, a type of salamander. It’s Latin name is Ambystoma mexicanum. It’s native to Mexico.”
“Latin, I know. So, why do you raise them? What is their purpose?” He leaned forward intent, his forehead lined with interest.
“Well, they’re neotenic. That means they don’t always undergo a metamorphosis into adult form as most salamanders do. The ones we have are in larval form, embryos with gill stems. They live in water.” She fanned out her fingers by her ears and wiggled them, then quickly dropped her hands.“We ship them to other research facil...”
“Senator,” An aide touched his shoulder. Bobby’s head jerked to the side. “We need to...”
“I know, I know what I need to do.” He waved him off.
The aide slipped back into the crowd.
“You raise them for research?”
“Yes, to study how embryos develop and their regenerative capabilities.”
“I know, ah, there are several members of the press I would , eh, like to place in glass bowls to study their regenerative capabilities.” His smile brightened when Verlaine laughed. He pulled a gold pin from his pocket and pressed it into her hand .
“Here. Here’s, eh, something I want you to have. It’s ah, my brother’s PT boat, a replica.”
She stared at the piece in her palm then looked up. “Thank, thank you Senator Kennedy. Thank you very much.” Her face opened like a flower at first sun.“I’d like you to, th-this is Ingrid, my roommate. She’s from France. Nice!”
“I hope my, ah, French is not too rusty. Bien...bien a\ vous recontrer, Ingrid. Ah, si vous etes de la France, je suppose... que je n’ai pas votre vote.”
She laughed. “Je vais dire a\ tous mes amis ame’ricains de voter pour vous,” she responded.
“Merci a\ vous, le plaisir de vous rencontrer.” He placed his other hand on top of hers, clasping it in his grip before letting go.
“That’s Jase!” Verlaine smiled and nodded in my direction.
I wiped my sweaty palms on the thighs of my jeans and swallowed as he shifted to me.
“Hello, Jase. Then, ah, you three are together?”
“Yeah.”
His alert eyes pierced mine. I was dumb as I grasped his rough scratched hand. He was shorter than me. His nose canted to the right side of his face, as if he had been in a fight. His eyebrows made him seem vulnerable. He had a shy smile, like a school boy, having to admit an error.
“You must consider yourself very, eh, fortunate to be in the company of such smart, lovely young women.”
“Yeah. I-I do.”
Do, ah, people tell you to... cut your hair?”
“Yeah, yes. All the time.”
“Me, too. Don’t listen to them...unless you, ah,... want to run for office.” His face formed parentheses, as he broke into a smile. “Good to meet you.”
One of his entourage pressed his hand to the senator’s back. I saw him visibly flinch. He pulled away then was hurried from the small room.
As people funneled out, Professor Goodman placed his hand on Verlaine’s shoulder.“I’m going to go and secure some chairs for your friends,” he said, and exited.
We stood there looking at each another as if we had just blown-out all the candles on our best birthday.
“The pin, show it to me, please?” Ingrid asked.
Verlaine opened her hand, a slender gold object in the shape of a small cruiser with, PT-109 emblazoned on the side, gleamed in her palm.
I looked up at Verlaine’s face, her lips were pressed together, a tear trickled down her cheek.
“It is so beautiful,”Ingrid said. “You will keep it?”
“Forever.”
As we left the room, I had to ask Ingrid.
“Well, tell me, what did you two talk about?”
“You are silly. I told him I would tell all my American friends to vote for him, and he thanked me.”
Verlaine saw her professor in the wings, sitting on a gray folding chair, saving three empty ones next to him. Verlaine came up behind him and put her arms around his neck, then went around and sat beside him. Ingrid and I took the other two seats. We could see a rectangular slice of bright lit stage where the podium stood.
Someone was reading an introduction, the voice flat, punctuated by mike squeals as Senator Kennedy stood by the thick curtain’s edge, a sheaf of papers now in his hand. The papers rattled softly. His hand was shaking. He was nervous, as I had been earlier. I couldn’t comprehend this confident man, this public figure, sharing the same secret fear I had. Then he stepped from behind the curtains onto the stage. The black cans of klieg lights snapped off and a lone spotlight held him as he crossed the stage . The applause resounded through the auditorium like an on-rushing downpour, hard rain pelting across a canvas tent. Whistles punctuated the roar like bottle rockets. His silhouette was etched in a silvery light, a gold halo embraced his hair. He braced his arms against the podium and leaned forward. In a reedy, quavery, voice he spoke haltingly at first, but his words gathered momentum as he continued to invest them with a force of will and heart. He spoke of Vietnam, of blunders made and difficulties ahead, that there were no easy solutions. He made a fist with his right hand, his thumb on top protruding, as if he were holding a tack hammer and every point he made, he had to hammer home. The whole morality of the war, was it moral to kill women and children? Was it right to send in American boys to fight and die, when the South Vietnamese should be the ones doing the fighting in defense of their own country? He hammered the air with his fist. Each time applause interrupted his speech, he took a sip of water from his glass and pushed his hair off his forehead. Again and again his speech was halted by the outbursts of the thousands of students assembled. He would flash an embarrassed smile, impatient to continue.
Ingrid held a thin, intense smile on her face. Professor Goodman sat with his hand on Verlaine’s knee. It was nothing. But his hand was on her knee.
Senator Kennedy drove home the point that it was unfair for the poor and the blacks to be bearing the burden of the war disproportionately. College deferments should be ended . The audience grew quiet and there were scattered ‘boos’. He called for a lottery to be put into effect so that everyone shared their moral obligation equally.
My thumb rubbed the back of Ingrid’s hand. I was scared of the war, of having to fight. I couldn’t bear anymore death.
Senator Kennedy closed his speech to thunderous applause and asked for questions from the packed auditorium. He seemed to be probing for lightning.
I felt restive and wanted us to leave, Verlaine protested, but then relented, and we slipped through the small crowd backstage. The professor followed. At the door she spoke to him in hushed tones and she hugged him before they parted. My stomach seized into a ball.
Outside, there was still a small scattered crowd. They had been listening to the speech broadcast over loudspeakers. When they saw us, they surged forward, then ebbed away when they realized it wasn’t him or any of his entourage.
A drizzling rain had enveloped the evening. Ingrid walked over to the curb and picked up a discarded placard and held it over her head. She stopped to look down at another sign. When we reached her, we saw what she was looking at, big black letters crudely drawn across a Kennedy campaign poster, ‘BOBBY GO HOME!’
“A disgruntled McCarthyite,” I said.
“Non. Hate.”
“Well, it’s torn anyway...,” I smashed my sandal down on it and churned my foot around. “...and stomped on.” I picked up a couple of other discarded campaign signs, not defaced and gave one to Verlaine.
“Here, take this. Keep your head dry.”
I bowed the sign over my head and slipped my sandals off. The rain fell on Kennedy for President, as we walked barefoot back to our dorms.
I wanted to ask Verlaine about her ‘professor’. But not now. What I saw between them had unsettled me.
“He has got to win,” Verlaine said. “He cares. He really cares.”
“There is something about him, but wanting to end student deferments; I don’t know.”
“It’s fair. You have to agree with that.”
“It’s fair, but it’s still scary.”
“I do not understand how he succeeds,” Ingrid added.
“Johnson is out of it. Humphrey is just a ‘ward heeler’. He should be no problem,” I answered.
“I do not mean...it is... He still carries around his brother. The pain, you can see in his eyes.”
I looked at Ingrid, the water dripping from the edges of the cardboard. She was far away.
“There is that, yeah. I noticed it too.”
“Well, he’ll win in Indiana. He’ll go all the way,” Verlaine said . “Just watch!” Her eyes were clear and defiant.
When we reached Briscoe, the girls stuffed the wet cardboard into the outside trash bin. I set mine down sagging against the front of the building.
“Don’t be long,” Verlaine said, a smile on her face and went up first, leaving us in the lobby.
I leaned into Ingrid against the marble wall, at our sides, our hands locked fingers. I kissed her, her lips soft and cool.
“It is all for nothing,” she murmured.
“What? This? Not this!?”
“Non. This is sweet.”
“Then what?”
“He is foolish. His campaign.”
“Oh, Kennedy.” I gave her a small kiss. “You still thinking about him?”
“Non.” Her brown eyes floated up to mine. “What comes, comes tomorrow. This is good now.” Her hands broke from mine and she embraced me, pulled me into our parting kiss.