Kathleen Murray had never been out of Louisiana before, and now, as she hitched across the broad, flat Southwestern desert, the heat she felt wasn’t the steamy, humid heat of New Orleans. This heat dried her to the bone. The trucker who’d given her and best friend, Marcelle Arceneaux, a ride, laughed when she’d mentioned it. He’d gunned the engine and on they rode, flying down the empty four-lane highway at eighty miles an hour, windows down and a hot wind roaring through the cab.
Six months ago, Kathy would never have dreamed this latest escapade of hers possible. She gave Marcie—her college roommate, sister of her secrets, partner in adventure—a wide grin.
“We’re gonna get there, Marcie! San Francisco!” she yelled over the sounds of the radio and the thunder of the big diesel engine.
If this had been a Sunday six months ago, she and Marcie would have been at Mass. But their attachment to the Catholic Church had fallen by the wayside in the past months. Too many history lectures had uncovered the political intrigues of the Church through the centuries, philosophy classes in existentialism had asked questions about whether God was dead, new thoughts had been prompted about what really constituted morality. Six months ago, they would have been recovering from one of LSU’s infamous fraternity parties and massive amounts of beer, consumed in a state where the drinking age was eighteen.
But sometime at the beginning of second semester, in February, the chance words of a friend about a political meeting had changed everything. Intellectual curiosity and the desire to put their energy into something useful had brought Kathy and Marcie to the Student Liberal Federation. Here, they’d traded biology class for roundtable discussions in coffee houses, and Mass for organizing and planning political action. The change in focus to voter registration programs and picket lines had been both exciting and frightening—exciting, because it had opened them to new thoughts, and frightening, because in doing so, the girls had been compelled to turn away from centuries of conformity. By protesting the university’s compulsory ROTC program for male students, segregationist despots in southern Louisiana, and the war in Vietnam, they had broken with parents who wholeheartedly supported tradition and the war effort and who were entrenched in fears of where desegregation might lead.
Kathy looked out the window at the passing desert with wide, curious eyes and, not for the first time on this journey, thought about Jim Barnes. Their first encounter had been at a political meeting. He’d stood before the desk of the Student Union room, leaning casually against it, his body solid, hair and eyes a light brown, a ready smile, and an attitude suggesting that he laughed at the world. Nervous, Kathy couldn’t take her eyes off him. Jim had been beaten and arrested several times, a folk hero from the picket lines in Birmingham and from lunch counter sit-ins in Selma.
“When we picket on Saturday,” he told the group, “we have to be prepared. In case of trouble, fall to the ground and roll into a tight ball to protect your internal organs. Keep your head down and cover your head and neck with your arms.” He’d lifted his arms in demonstration.
“But the police,” Kathy heard her own voice on that night months ago, small and quivering, “won’t the police protect us?”
General laughter had erupted from the more experienced activists. “Hell, honey,” someone cried, “they’ll likely be the ones kickin’ you!”
Now she laughed aloud as well, remembering, and it was a sign of her youth that she could laugh, because winter and spring had been rough. Not only had there been hostilities at the demonstrations, crowds of student hecklers with crew cuts and jeering faces, but also threatening phone calls in the night, a cross burned outside their dorm room door by the women who lived in their wing, and an investigation into the organization by the Louisiana House Un-American Activities Committee—HUAC.
Deeper still, every truth that had made up the framework of her life until that time had collapsed.
Marcie began to sing with the radio, and the trucker was really diggin’ it, tapping his hand along the steering wheel, getting off on her strong, clear voice. As they sat together in the front seat, all the things that had pushed them west this summer also pushed at Kathy’s thoughts. Rocked slowly, she leaned against the door of the cab, Marcie’s voice lulling her to drowsiness.
When the song ended, she closed her eyes. From far away, Marcie’s words drifted toward her, and Kathy vaguely heard her explaining to the trucker what had put them thumbing on the road. They were students off for summer holiday and wanted to learn why California could mobilize thousands of people to political action. Part of their journey was to Berkeley, the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, and another would be to a district of San Francisco called the Haight-Ashbury, its blocks of Victorian housing sitting near Golden Gate Park. In January, there had been a Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park. And in April, 100,000 people had marched from Market Street to Kezar Stadium to protest the Vietnam War. How could the organizers get so many people involved?
The driver mumbled something about supporting the troops in Nam and turned the radio up—discussion over—but Marcie, oblivious, began to sing again. Slipping further away, soothed by Marcie’s voice, head nodding, Kathy admitted that something more had pushed her west. Perhaps the strongest push had come from Jim Barnes himself. In that nether world just before oblivion, rocked by the steady vibration of the truck, she thought of Jim and the afternoon months ago, when, tired and sick at heart, she had gone to his apartment.
When Jim opened the door to her knock, Kathy thought he looked startled, but he took a drag off his cigarette, smiled, and motioned for her to come in.
With a sweep of her eyes, she took in everything. She had attended group meetings in the apartment at night, but at midday, the furniture appeared shabbier, the surfaces dustier, the cracks in the walls more obvious. The coffee table was a jumble of magazines and newspapers, half-filled coffee cups, a nearly empty jug of wine, and a candle stuck in a wine bottle. Jim regarded her, then scratched his head, as if unsure what to do.
“I was just finishing an article about the Human Be-In in San Francisco,” he said, holding up a magazine.
“Human Be-In? What’s that?” Kathy asked, throwing her purse on the couch and removing her jacket.
“Here,” Jim handed her the copy of Time, “take a look.”
Kathy studied the pictures for a long moment—men and women with long hair; painted, smiling faces; feathers, balloons, and strings of beads.
“Wow, what’s going on here?” she exclaimed. “And what does ‘turn on, tune in, drop out’ mean?”
“The press is calling them ‘hippies.’ Why don’t you sit down, and I’ll rinse these glasses out.”
When he returned from the kitchen, he picked up the jug of Chianti from the coffee table and poured. “So, what’s up?”
Kathy put the magazine on the table. “I … I needed to talk to someone. I picked you.”
“I’m honored,” Jim laughed, a sparkle flashing in his eyes. “You look tired.”
“Tired? I’m exhausted. Meetings. Marcie got threatened at the Student Union again last night. I’m trying to keep up with my classes. Sneaking over here today. You can’t believe how my dorm mother would just love to have me expelled for being in a man’s apartment. And my dad … my dad went absolutely crazy about that demonstration against Leander Perez. I mean, how can he object to protesting against a man who has concentration camps set up for civil rights activists? And … I don’t know … I’m just feeling lost …”
A part of her wanted to explain to Jim what her participation and commitment meant. Jim was from New Jersey. Could he truly understand what it was like to be raised in a segregated South? The moments upon countless moments of differences in perspective, of racial epithets, of the folklore of prejudice. Forced to stop as a child to ponder the idea of white and colored water fountains and bathrooms and the movable bar in the public bus. All-white classrooms. The countless images of fear and shame—and knowing, even as a small child, that it was wrong. Jim understood the politics. The injustice of segregation. The intellectual arguments given by a growing number of radical black groups that it was pointless to die in a war in Asia for Vietnamese freedom, while blacks were not free in their own country. But could he really understand what it was like to be a Southerner and stand against the authority of generations—against family, neighbors, friends?
“You know,” Jim tapped her glass with his own, encouraging her to take a swallow and mellow out, “it’s always tougher for those who lead the way. We’re changing things. Change scares people, and when they’re frightened, they get a little crazy. Tell me … why are you working for civil rights?”
“I … I suppose it started in high school.” Kathy looked into space and saw a picture that was her own. “The children … the little girls … the ones killed in the church bombing. They televised the funeral. The anguish on the faces of the parents. It was a church, for God’s sake. Then, there was this Tom Paxton song a friend used to sing. About Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney. Buried in a dam because they cared enough to get people to register to vote …”
“Those are good reasons for drawing a line.”
“But dealing with craziness isn’t the only reason I’m feeling confused. Not all of it,” she said, drinking deeply of the sour wine. “I stopped going to church, and there’s this great empty hole where things I always believed used to be.”
“No God? Now all you have is yourself?”
Kathy regarded him, a quick raise of her eyes to his, unsure of his meaning.
He grinned and moved closer. “Look, you believe that regardless of skin color, a man or woman can have a vote. We’ve been duped into a war that was already bad when the French controlled Indochina. As for religion, why not slowly rebuild by choosing things that are right for you? The things you feel here.” He touched her chest over her heart. “We’ve all given up something important to make changes. Have you ever listened to Bob Dylan? You might want to hear this.” He went to a box near a record player and rummaged until he found The Times They Are a-Changin’. “Listen to this. I’ll start the album from the beginning.”
As the music began, Kathy leaned forward, more relaxed, the wine effective. She chose another magazine off the table and read the headline. “Jim, what’s LSD?”
He sat down and reached again for the wine bottle. “I don’t think anybody really knows. A powerful psychoactive drug. Some say it opens consciousness. Ever hear of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love? There’s this dude named Farmer John who’s invited Timothy Leary out to California to live with the Brotherhood.”
“What kind of Brotherhood are you talking about?”
“Farmer John’s got whole communities of people gathering together, taking LSD, and holding hands in big circles. Friend I know who just got back from Mexico told me about it.” Then he laughed, as if he knew why she had really come, and it wasn’t to discuss magazine articles. “Now, tell me again why you’re here.”
Embarrassed that he had seen through her, she dropped her eyes to the floor. “Jim, I have to tell you …”
“That you’re a virgin? Hey, it’s pretty obvious.”
“Well, thanks,” she answered, her face burning.
But she wanted him … or some part of him. Jim understood the things she was trying to understand. While she had been in a Catholic high school for girls, he’d been on the front lines of the civil rights battle. The knowledge he had could fill the empty dark places of her soul, and at the moment, there was plenty of room. Jim would be the new beginning. The foundation that felt right. And the pact she’d made with Marcie, to lose their virginity—who better than Jim?
He ran a finger across her cheek, her neck, and to her cleavage, gently caressing.
“Why do you want me?” she whispered.
“Because I’ve never had a virgin before,” he told her honestly.
“What about love? Do you love me?”
“I love you right now. Today. After that, we’ll just have to take one day at a time.”
“Okay,” and she leaned forward to timidly kiss him.
His response was quick and fast, his tongue deep in her mouth. Frightened, she drew back.
“It’s alright,” he murmured quietly. He laid her back on the couch, kissing her softly now.
Kathy grabbed his hands. “Jim, I’m kind of afraid. I’m not sure …”
“Shhh. It’s alright.”
Nervously, she smiled.
With this encouragement, he moved his fingers to the buttons of her blouse. When they were undone, she felt him unhook her bra. No man had ever seen her breasts, not entirely. Now Jim was under her loosened bra, pinching her swelling nipples. Before she could recover from the shock, he pulled off her blouse and bra so that she was naked from the waist up. Flustered, she closed her eyes.
“Let’s go into the bedroom,” he whispered, pulling her gently from the couch.
As he walked, he began shedding his T-shirt. In the darkened room, he pushed away his jeans. Kathy searched for something to focus on. Anything, except his very obvious erection. In the next instant, he was pulling at her skirt, shoes, and stockings, mercifully leaving her with her underpants, and laying her on the bed.
Okay, so I promised myself to do this, she thought shakily. Only now I’m not so sure.
In that moment, she knew those backseat encounters with the frat boys were nothing compared to what she was planning to do now. The intimacy overwhelmed her. Jim lay close, his body along hers, rubbing her hips. The ache between her legs heightened. Gently, he kissed her mouth, his hand moving closer to places not even she had touched. He passed over her pubic area and down her legs, brought his hand to rest between her thighs.
“Touch me,” he whispered.
Her sigh was heavy, shaking, and she began to caress his face and shoulders, felt the muscles of his arms. His nipples were tiny and hard like hers. His breath was in her ear. He took her hand, slowly placing it between his legs. Shocked, she hesitated and drew back.
“Please,” he brought her hand back again. “Touch me.”
And so she touched, nervous and unsure.
Then with amazing swiftness, his hand slipped her panties off, slowly feeling between her legs, smoothing her wetness gently over her clitoris, until she quivered, her legs shaking uncontrollably. As he climbed atop her, she could not bring herself to open her eyes. All she could feel was his mouth, warm against her neck, and his penis, hard and searching. When he tried pulling up her knees, she awkwardly dropped them, until once again he lifted them and began to push his way inside. Kathy moaned, wanted to cry out that it hurt.
“It’s okay,” he murmured, the words low, hot next to her ear, his arms tight around her, his body heavy, making it difficult for her to breathe.
Slowly, he began to move, push, retreat, picking up speed, making it clear that she should lift her knees, confusing her with his signals, moving faster, until she wanted to scream.
His searching became harder, deeper. A hot, tempting sensation teased her, interspersed with the pain. The new feeling was seductive, insinuating. What was it? But Jim was heavy and she would never have dreamed of moving in the way he did. After what seemed an unbearably long time, his quick breathing became a cry and his motions slowed until he was still.
Kathy kept her eyes closed to him, wondering. Where was the pleasure she’d heard about? The gentleness that had convinced her to trust him lasted only as long as it took for him to get inside. Then, he was hard, heavy, having his way, while she was open, vulnerable.
For a few minutes, he lay next to her, quiet, stroking her. Then suddenly, as if it were very important, he asked, “Do you know where my watch is?”
Kathy shook her head.
“I’m going to get up and look for it.”
Minutes later, she heard water running in the bathroom. She sat up, wondering what she should do. Slowly, she began gathering her clothes.
“Kathy,” Jim stepped out of the bathroom, “I have a meeting tonight. I need to get some studying done.”
“Yeah, I have to go, anyway.”
“Look, take your time. Get dressed. I’ll be at my desk.”
“Sure. I’ll just … just use the bathroom. If you don’t mind?”
From that shaky beginning, she had fallen madly, desperately, passionately in love with him. And for all she knew, he had been faithful to her throughout the spring, balling her once or twice a week, studying when he could, giving the bulk of his time to organizing. Being with him, she’d learned a lot about the management of a political organization—creating and xeroxing leaflets, distributing them with Marcie and a few others, typing, picking up poster board for signs, handling the administrative details of scheduling the rooms for meetings, filling out permits. While she ran the office, Jim conducted the meetings, made the majority of the decisions, gave the radio and newspaper interviews, and made himself available to talk to members at the Student Union.
In mid-March, the weather became fair and sunny, and the entire campus was affected by spring fever. Even Jim had itchy feet and moved away from the coffee tables to sit outdoors under old oaks.
Then, on a momentous afternoon, he invited Kathy to New Orleans for the weekend.
New Orleans! All the times she’d slept with Jim after that first afternoon had been the same—furious necking, his hands across her body, his quick assumption that her clothes were his to remove. When it was over, she was dressing quickly, trying to get back to the dorm before curfew. What would it be like to spend a whole night with him? She wanted time to get comfortable with his body. Jim wanted her to fondle him, had even insinuated that she might kiss him on his maleness. At least now she knew to pull her knees up and the pain was dulled, but what about the other feeling, that other half-pain that made her wet, enticed her? All she and Marcie had to do was sign out to a friend’s house in another city for the weekend, and they’d escape both the dorm and their parents.
Jim’s friends in New Orleans—Sarah, Mike, and Phil—lived in the Marigny, just outside the French Quarter, in one side of a duplex built on high pilings in case of flooding. The house had wooden siding with peeling white paint, a scuffed, gray-toned porch, and tall French windows with dull, green shutters facing the street. A shotgun apartment, it was called: one room opening into another, straight back, without a hallway, the better to circulate air in summer heat. The windows were covered with aged yellow shades, the walls bare and almost as yellow, the floors unpolished hardwood, and the furniture deteriorating. Sarah took one look at Kathy and Marcie and gave Jim a not-so-subtle, questioning glance, insinuating immediately that two raw college girls did not belong.
That night, Mike picked up a guitar and began to sing, and suddenly, there was Marcie’s voice, filling in all the spaces around his in harmony. When the song was over, Marcie took the guitar he offered and shyly announced the name of a song she’d written.
The world that Kathy was introduced to that night was one she had only imagined before. These friends of Jim’s lived hand to mouth, had none of the furnishings she had been brought up to believe were essential to comfortable living, and apparently didn’t miss them. As she sat through the evening, listening to their travels, suggestions of love affairs, political escapades throughout the South, and the ambitions of the Vietnam Day Committee in Berkeley, she began to realize that what was really important to these people was experience.
“Hey!” Mike suddenly cried, “Want to smoke some pot?”
Before anyone could answer, he was up and out of his chair, taking a plastic bag and a pipe from a loose floorboard.
“Mike!” Sarah began, clearly trying to stop him. “I don’t think this is the time.”
“It’s Friday,” Mike waved her objections away with his voice. “We have guests.”
“I know,” she said, as if he should know too. The penalties in Louisiana for possession of marijuana were lengthy prison terms. If push came shove, which way would these girls fall?
Without mincing words, Mike glanced up at her. “Someone once turned you on.”
Sarah sighed and settled back onto the vinyl couch.
“Sure,” Jim nodded, watching Kathy. “Light it up.”
Mike filled the pipe with a mixture of leaves, stems, and seeds. Pot was too scarce not to smoke every part of the plant. When the pipe reached Jim, he toked and passed the pipe to Kathy. The smoke was hot, burning. She coughed hard, unable to stop.
“It’s the seeds and stems,” Phil told her. “Harsh. You just have to get used to it.”
Mike refilled the pipe once, then once more.
“Take two or three tokes,” Jim said to Kathy, “that way you’ll really know what it’s like to get stoned.”
The words were pointless advice, heard at a distance, because Kathy was already beginning to know. Disoriented, lightheaded, she began to sense her body in an unknown way. Anxiously, she pushed at the changes, groping her way back through clouds of heaviness to the world she knew. But the drug pulled her, mind and body locked in battle, seeking some kind of equilibrium.
“Come with me,” Jim said, watching her face.
“I … I can’t … walk.”
“Sure you can,” he said, pulling her.
Kathy didn’t want to leave Marcie and tried getting her attention, but Marcie had leaned back on the couch, her eyes closed. Awkwardly, she let Jim lead her from the room, feeling sick to her stomach. “I might throw up,” she mumbled.
“Here. Lie down and breathe. Like this.” Jim took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “That’s it.” He watched as her chest rose and fell in a slow rhythm. “Let go. You’re holding on to your ego. Your mind wants to explore. You’re disoriented because you can’t let go.”
Kathy had thought about her ego before. The ego had been the main question of her philosophy midterm, but tonight, there was new meaning to the term, something yet unclear.
“Just breathe,” Jim continued to whisper quietly. “Close your eyes. Listen to your body. Feel. Go with it.”
Something strange was happening. Patterns on her eyelids! Only then did she remember how she used to look at the patterns behind her eyes when she was a kid. If you rubbed your eyes or squeezed them tight, you could get color and flashes.
Another breath and she felt the tingle in her body. A sensation grew in her pubic area. The same sensation that suggested itself when Jim made love to her. She laughed, and her laughter sent blood flowing around her body. She went with it.
In the next room, Mike picked up the guitar once again and began to play. One by one, the notes came to her, and she reached out her hand to touch them. When they hit her body, she heard them explode against her skin as green, yellow, red, or blue.
Suddenly, she was thrilled!
What a marvel! A wonderland of color, vision, sound, and feeling!
The music passed over her as a warm, constant breeze from the Gulf of Mexico might have, caressing her body, sending thought after thought. Simple things, those she had always known but had never so truly understood before, and deeply sensitive ideas, new and newly touched on became clear.
At some point she reached out to Jim. “Thank you,” she smiled, nuzzling up to him.
“You like it?” he smiled back at her.
She looked at him, laughed, and pulled him to her.
“I know what you want,” he teased, rubbing her back, his chest hard against her breasts.
The late spring night already tempted summer, and the room was warmer than the air from the open window. Matching their rhythms to the flow of Mike’s guitar, Kathy and Jim moved together as if dancing in slow motion. She had not moved with him before, and now they both began to sweat, perspiration mixing with Kathy’s smells and the strong scent of early blooming magnolia from the tree outside. For the first time, her clitoris was actively engaged, the feeling between her legs too sensitive, the enticement, the growing burning, would not be ignored.
Slowly, she began to push with her hips, almost paused, the old prohibitions still on her. But this time, she couldn’t stop. Aroused as never before, she matched his rhythm, the fire building, engulfing her. Months of foreplay and longing exploded in great grasping pulsations, and she cried out into the colors on her eyelids, while Jim finished and fell onto her sweat-soaked hair.
“Kathy,” he murmured softly, and this time, he did not let go of her.
The sensations still pulsed through her body, rippling in waves, unbelievable, ecstatic, refusing to still themselves.
So this is orgasm.
Suddenly, everything made sense—art, music, literature. This emotion, this tantalizing feeling, this bonding of body and mind and soul had created empires or made epic heroes of ordinary men.
Jim covered them with a crumpled white sheet, and she settled into his arms, slowly falling asleep. She had never slept in Jim’s arms before, comforted by the warmth of his body and the soft coziness of her first stone. For that, perhaps for that first turn-on, perhaps she could forgive him.
By the middle of May, the early days of spring and the few weeks of mild weather had already given way to intense summer heat. The semester was nearly over. Kathy and Marcie concluded the year’s political activities, wrote down ideas for the fall, and turned toward their books and research papers. For Kathy, the extra time was a godsend, and the amount of work she was willing to give to her classes after the new ideas she’d discovered in New Orleans was surprising. Human knowledge all fit together in some glorious way. The only problem was the race against time: so little time, and so much to do to catch up.
On a night close to the end of the term, Marcie put down the book she was reading and looked wearily at the clock. “Why are you studying so hard?” she asked, peering across the dorm room. “And something like biology. Really, Kathy. Biology? Who cares?”
“I do. I want to be back in school in September. I love it. School, I mean. Thank God for places like universities where ideas can be exchanged. What would happen to all these small town kids without this place?” She looked up. “How can you find time to read a novel with finals so close?”
“It’s not a novel. It’s Dylan Thomas.” Her eyes glistened with tears.
“Why, Marcie …” Kathy pushed back her chair and came to sit next to her on the bed, wondering at her raw emotion.
“You know,” Marcie said, the tears suddenly falling down her cheeks, “with the semester ending, I feel as if we’re coming to the end of some long emotional marathon.”
“Is this about losing your virginity? Aren’t you glad you’re no longer a virgin?”
Kathy looked closely into her face. “Have you been smoking pot?” she whispered.
“Yes,” Marcie whispered back, wiping her eyes. “It’s delicious.”
“You’ve got to pass the semester!”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll pass. Maybe not with your grades. School just isn’t important to me. I just want to write poetry and music.” Suddenly, just as quickly as the tears had appeared, she was rolling between the sheets, giggling hysterically.
“Marcie, calm down!” Kathy whispered. “Do you want the dorm mother in here asking why we’re making so much noise? The girls in this wing would just love to put in a complaint! Listen. I’ve decided I can’t go home when the semester’s over. Can you see Jim picking me up for a date?” She nervously ran fingers through her hair. “I’m eighteen years old. I think it’s time I took control of my life.” She took a deep breath. “I’m going to ask Jim if I can move in with him.”
The next morning, Kathy left the biology lab certain she had a B going into the final. Too bad she hadn’t started to study earlier for all those quizzes. Now there was only one person she wanted to see, and, happily, she walked to Jim’s apartment.
“Hi.” She leaned over to kiss him. “I aced a bio quiz this morning! What’s going on here?” About twenty boxes were stacked in the corners of the living room.
“I’m packing,” Jim said absently, looking through papers.
“Packing?” Kathy felt her heart tighten, her mind numb to the words.
“Yeah,” his voice held a wry smile. “HUAC has opened an investigation on me. They say I’m a Communist.” Jim looked up and saw her shocked reaction to the news. “Come on. It’s not that bad. I’m actually flattered.”
“Where are you going?”
“Mexico. To visit some friends at Lake Chapala, near Guadalajara.”
“But finals are in two weeks. Are you going to blow away the whole semester?”
“No,” he shook his head. “I’ve already talked to my professors. I’ll send them my work.”
She swallowed. “When are you leaving?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
“I … I don’t want you to go.”
He finally looked up to give her his full attention. “I told you at the beginning—I can only do so much in one place, then I’ve got to move on. I was going to talk to you.”
“When?”
“As soon as I saw you. Where’ve you been hiding?”
“I’ve been studying. And thinking. I don’t want to go home.”
“Then don’t.”
“Can’t you wait a couple of weeks to leave? Until the semester’s over?”
Slowly, he moved closer. “I have to go now. Before I get arrested or summoned on some trumped up subpoena.”
“Then I’ll meet you in Guadalajara,” Kathy told him. “I’ll find a way to get there!”
“No.”
“Why not?” she demanded, watching him intently.
“Because I’m going alone.”
“Please!” she cried, the seed of desperation growing in her voice. “Please. What’ll I do without you? Where will I go? I love you!”
“Kathy, if I take you with me now, you’ll have gained nothing. You need time to stand by yourself. You’re just a babe.”
“Can’t you take me for the moment?” she insisted. “Isn’t that what you said? Day to day? Moment to moment?”
“It wouldn’t work.” He began stacking books, obviously trying to avoid her eyes.
“Jim, please! Look at me!” she demanded, her voice hoarse and breaking on a sob. “I’d make it work. You’d never be disappointed!”
He turned to her and shook his head.
It’s over, she thought, watching the bitter finality in his eyes. He doesn’t want me.
She blinked furiously, trying to gain control.
“Kathy …” he tried putting an arm around her, but she pulled away, deliberate and angry.
“Don’t touch me. Ever again! I can’t talk to you now. I think … I think I hate you!”
With a furious rush, she turned and left, slamming the door, walking blindly, not caring where she stumbled.
I hate him! God, but I really hate him! she screamed silently, running, fumbling for a tissue in her purse. How dare he leave me when he knows I have nowhere to go!
Several minutes passed before she recognized the aimlessness of her direction, and several more, before a sad and lonely anger stopped her tears.
“So, how’d it go?” Marcie asked as Kathy stomped into the dorm room. “Uh oh. Not so good, huh?”
“He’s going to Mexico the day after tomorrow and won’t take me with him. Something about leaving before getting investigated by HUAC. But I’ll tell you something,” Kathy hissed angrily, throwing her books on the bed. “I’m sick of hanging onto his shirttail. And I’m not going home. I’m tired of being told what to do. I’m going to California, Marcie. I’m going to spend the summer learning more about political activism. Next year, I’ll run the Student Liberal Federation.”
“California!” Marcie cried. “Where will you get the money to do that?”
“We’ll pool our last money. We’ll hitch.”
“We?” The blue of Marcie’s eyes deepened.
“Come with me! Remember that line of poetry you wrote about us. We have courage. Out of all the other women in this dorm. Come with me, Marcie!”
“You’re not going to tell your folks?”
“What could I say to them? I’ll call them when we get there. What do you say? Are you with me?”
For a long moment, Marcie said nothing, then slowly, she began to grin.
When Kathy finally settled down at her desk and the room was quiet once more, her eyes only grazed the words on the page. Instead, her mind wandered back to the scene at Jim’s apartment. Anger had combined with a new sense of humiliation. She held her face closer to the book, trying to understand her shame.
Rejection, she admitted, that’s certainly a part of it. But begging him! Where was my dignity? Why did I throw it away on a man who doesn’t love me?
Never again, she promised. I’ll never beg a man for anything. Certainly not for any part of himself.
At eight o’clock in the morning on the day after the last final, the two girls stood alone on the highway at the edge of the city.
“Kathy,” Marcie asked nervously, “are you sure we know what we’re doing?”
“Yeah,” Kathy shrugged. “We’re goin’ to check out California. If Jack Kerouac can do it, so can we.”
Even in early morning, the sun was hot, promising to get warmer. Already sweating in the humid air, Marcie picked up the small suitcase and guitar and moved into the shade.
Fifteen minutes later, a student on his way home after finals stopped for them. They agreed to help him drive all the way to Houston.