Thirteen

FUNDAMENTALLY, WHAT IS NOW called the “youth movement of the sixties” was exactly that. The movement of nearly sixty million Americans from adolescence to adulthood. And when was the last time a large group of Americans did anything quietly?

“Don’t say a word,” she warned him, crashing against the heavy metal outer door of the Memphis police station as if it were paper, the sound echoing across the chilly stillness of that early morning. It was fall 1968. “Not one word.”

“Okay.” He skipped down the concrete steps ahead of her. She could see that he was as put out as she was—he didn’t feel like talking to her anyway. So, she’d make him talk.

“And don’t look at me like that. I hate it when you look at me like that.”

“Okay,” he said.

Could he tell that she’d gotten up on the wrong side of the jail cell that morning?

“If my parents find out about this, I’ll know who told them,” she said, the threat in her voice as conspicuous as a mobster’s violin case.

He cast her a derisive glance.

Since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination in April, Memphis had become a hotbed of hippies and hostiles. Livy was in heaven. It wasn’t San Francisco, Chicago, or New York, but she was becoming aware that there was enough abject poverty, local government graft, and festering bigotry to walk the legs off a dead mule.

And, of course, there was always the war to shout about.

It was mid-November and she’d already been arrested four times since their parents waved good-bye and sent them off to college. She’d been protesting everything from the cold war and the threat of nuclear annihilation to contaminated air and water, inflation, unemployment, and the double standard between white American males and every other sex and nationality in the Melting Pot.

She and Brian called home once a week to report on their excellent health and the benefits of their fine study habits—and not much more. And adults thought kids were naive!

“Why would I tell your parents? They’d tell my mother and we’d have them and Loverboy Larry down on us like sheets at a Klan rally.” And as it occurred to him, he added, “Somebody else’ll tell them. The cops. Your school. Wait till somebody finds out your old man’s a mayor. What if he does decide to run for the state senate?” He shook his head at the thought, then grimaced at her. “I don’t think I’m the one you should be worrying about here, Liv.”

She made a disgusted noise as she looked about for his car. “Man, I can’t believe this town,” she said, throwing her safari pouch bag over her shoulder. “They’ll arrest you for anything.”

“Burning draft cards isn’t just anything. It pisses people off,” he said, leading her to the parking lot across the street. The sun was just beginning to dawn; the sky was gray and threatening rain. “Not that you had a draft card to burn in the first place,” he muttered.

“I will. Someday I will. It’s a male-dominated society for now, but not for long. You wait and see.” She all but shook a finger at him. “I’d have burnt yours if you’d have given it to me. You should have come and done it yourself.”

“Who’d have bailed you out then?”

“Very funny. You’ve got to stand up for your rights, Carowack. You don’t want to go to Vietnam. Make yourself heard. It’s not our war. It’s…?”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s the military-industrial complex and the capitalist establishment and… whoever. We’ve been over all this before. It doesn’t matter whose war it is. If my student deferment doesn’t hold and I get drafted, I’m the one who’s going to have to decide between going to prison and going to war. Not you. And not those fast-talking brainiacs you hang out with. Me.” He frowned. “Yesterday, this kid on my team got his notice to report to the draft board because he wasn’t showing up at any of his classes, and he’s failing them all. He says it was because he’s been arrested six times for protesting the war. I’m not giving General Hershey any reason to go messing around in my files. And I’m not wasting what time I have left sitting in a jail cell. I’ve got better things to do.”

“Really. Can you remember this one’s name?”

“Dorcas,” he said, pleased to tell her. Flashbacks of the night before sent enthusiasm growing in his voice—and between his legs, no doubt. He grinned. “We went at it all night long, Livy, I swear to God. I don’t think she even knows the word no.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t kill yourself,” she said absently, looking for his car once again, pretending it was any other Friday morning and she hadn’t just spent the night in jail.

She was wearing a black turtleneck and tights with a short, thick-belted plaid miniskirt. A long red scarf was tied about her forehead, the tails hanging long with her hair down the left side of her face. Very mod. Less fashion conscious, Brian generally stuck to his bell-bottom jeans and any shirt he could find.

“Well, for a few minutes there, I did think that I’d died and gone to heaven,” he said, motioning to the end of the row of parked cars, grinning like an idiot. Suddenly he was less annoyed, more charitable toward her. Clearly, this Dorcas had a way of making him feel… charitable, all over.

She sighed and tsked her disgust. “We all have to die sometime, I suppose. I guess I’d rather have you die that way than in Vietnam.”

“What way?” he asked, a sly grin coming to his lips. He flung an arm across her shoulder and bent his head to her ear. “In the throes of passion? During hot, wet, screaming… sex?”

He knew she had a certain… disdain for this act she hadn’t yet experienced. She sometimes felt like the last virgin on earth—and depending on the day, that made her vastly superior or incredibly inferior as a woman. But for some strange reason, and no matter how she was feeling about it, his constant yammering about sex irritated her like an itch she couldn’t scratch. He knew that, too.

“Ya know, Livy, sex is a lot more fun than going to jail. It’s cleaner. It’s cheaper. It makes you feel fantastic… and it doesn’t go on your permanent record.”

“Get away from me,” she said, pushing at him. “You’ve probably got some social disease already. And what if you get some girl pregnant? That’ll be pretty permanent, won’t it?”

“I’m very careful,” he said, still grinning.

“Yeah, right. Could we move a little faster, please. I’m going to be late again and Huckaby is a fascist war monger who accuses everyone who’s late for his morning class of being in jail the night before…”

“I wonder why?”

“…then wastes the entire period quoting Spiro Agnew and preaching nationalism as a way of life,” she said, parting from him to stand on the rider’s side of his precious Chevy.

“And what do biology profs know about life anyway, huh?”

He was smirking at her over the hood of the car. She grimaced and rolled her eyes heavenward.

“Can we just go?” she asked, opening the car door—to find nearly every inch of the interior cluttered with partial or complete drawings, art books, an easel, a basketball, painting supplies, and generalized junk.

He shrugged and got in, reaching immediately for one of the two beers he had under a towel on the seat.

“Beer? For breakfast?” she asked, disapproving, clearing out a place on the front seat to sit—part of the ride-with-Brian routine.

He gave a short laugh before tipping the can back and taking the long, quenching drink he’d mindfully postponed until after he’d talked to the cops inside the police station.

“Listen,” he said. “While you and your pals get tanked up and wired on coffee or Coke or weird Asian tea some guru recommends, so you can go out and agitate the hell out of the rest of the world, I’ll be drinking this for breakfast, lunch, and dinner to insulate myself from all of you.” He made a broad sweeping motion with the can. “I drink just enough to keep a happy little buzz on all day so no one can ruin it for me.”

They’d talked about this before, a few weeks earlier, when she commented on the fact that she rarely saw him anymore without a beer in his hand. She knew he’d been… experimenting with some of the illegal drugs floating around campus. Most everyone was. And they were everywhere. Even she’d tried smoking a little pot. But Brian didn’t enjoy them. He said they were dangerous, that they couldn’t be controlled. They scared him. He said there was no telling how much of a drug you were taking in—in smoke, in a pill, or into a vein—nothing you could do once it was in your system but hang on for the ride until it had run its course. He could titrate alcohol—that was the word he used, titrate, like in a chemistry class—and he could tell when he was getting too much and when he hadn’t had enough, when to stop drinking and when one more wouldn’t make him lose control. Plus, it was legal, he’d added.

At the time, she’d agreed with him and had felt a sense of relief, not knowing for sure how some of the experimental drugs they were being exposed to would affect people. And when Brian said he could handle something, he usually could. But the idea that he was using the alcohol to… insulate himself from the rest of the world, when he seemed so isolated already, bothered her, a lot.

She tilted her head to one side and studied him, loving everything she saw in him, wondering if and how she could ever break through to him—or if she should even keep trying. She watched as he fished the keys from his pocket, then hesitate, turning to look at her with a solemn expression.

“Livy, what you’re involved in is good. It’s right. I admire you for that. But it’s also really dangerous. This isn’t Tolford. Nobody knows you here. No one’s going to cut you any slack. You’re going to get hurt.” He glanced out the windshield for a second or two before he continued. “And those kids, those people you’re hanging out with, they won’t care. They’ll offer you up as a martyr to the cause if you happen to get shot, and they’ll go on without a second thought if you get your head bashed in.”

What he was saying was probably true. There was nothing peaceful about the peace rallies or peaceful demonstrations for civil rights in Memphis. During the riots after Dr. King’s death, the authorities lost all patience with the First Amendment. They had no understanding and felt no mercy when students or blacks gathered in groups of more than five or six at a time. And if you happened to be both black and against the war—well, it was usually best not to be seen alone.

On the other hand, if you were picked up in a police sweep and arrested, and if you were white, there was a chance of being bodily removed from the site, possibly hit now and again. But you were rarely beaten senseless and you could feel relatively safe inside the system. For white females, it was even easier. It was no big deal at all. A tense moment or two if a male officer had to search you, but for a worthy cause it was tolerable. Later, your best friend could pay the fifty dollar fine and you could be released into the adult custody of any twenty-three-year-old linguistics student who happened to be in your acquaintance. Simple.

And, of course, all the things your parents didn’t know couldn’t possibly hurt anyone.

If you hung out with the right people—and she did—free love and defiance were the order of the day. Mind blowing was the idea that you could be both free loving and violently defiant without being hypocritical. In fact, militant hippies were the ideal in certain factions of the under-thirty population. And if you listened to the news reports every evening, the country was teeming with them.

In reality, they were few and far between, she supposed.

She smiled at Brian. Maybe he was paying more attention than she thought. Maybe he wasn’t as insulated or isolated as he liked to pretend. “You worry too much, Carowack. Frankly, I don’t know how you can stay uninvolved, but you don’t need to worry about me. I’m not going to get hurt.”

“How do you know this?” he asked, more than a little frustrated. “What makes you so smart? I have nightmares about having to go out and buy a new black suit for your funeral. One with lapels as wide as my shoulders, and a new tie about ten inches wide.”

“Here we go…” she said, turning to face the front of the car, which wasn’t moving.

“I look like Bozo in this dream. I wake up and my life is still a nightmare. I have to ask my mom for more money, and you know how freaked old Larry gets about the money. He refuses to understand that the scholarship doesn’t cover basic living expenses. And as a man, I have certain responsibilities. There’s the black suit, of course, and one of those water beds would be real nice. I need a little beer money to relax me enough to broaden my mind… a little beer money for two when I’m studying with someone.” He grinned briefly at that and went on. “I’m constantly running out of paint and canvas, and let’s not forget bail money for…”

“Don’t I always pay you back?”

“…Livy who, instead of studying, is out burning draft cards…”

“Oh! Look who’s talking.”

“…and inciting riots and pissing off every cop in Memphis. They know who you are, you know. They call you ‘the one with the mark on her face,’ ” he said, looking at her, letting her know that her situation was no joke.

“I know. Isn’t it great?” She laughed. “It’s my hallmark. Finally, it’s good for something,” she said, wishing again that he’d start the car and take her back to her dorm. She’d lick fire before she ever admitted to hating every second of her night in jail, but if she didn’t get a bath soon she’d have to tear her skin off. “It makes organizing so much easier. People come to me now because I’m easy to pick out in a crowd. No more running all over campuses to track people down. They come to me.”

“Groovy. And think how easy it’ll be when the feds come to arrest you. The dean of students will be coming to you too, no doubt, with dismissal papers. It should be interesting to see how you keep your parents from hearing about that one.”

“Jesus, Carowack, what is your problem?” she asked, turning on him. “If you’re mad because I interrupted your date with… with that Dorcas person, I’m sorry. Next time I’ll use my dime on someone else and you can save your lecture… and that look!”

“What look?”

“The one on your face. Right now. Like you’re responsible for me. Like you’re going to get in trouble for what I’ve done. Like you weren’t baby-sitting me well enough. I’m not your problem, Brian. I’m my own woman. I can take care of myself.”

“Okay. Fine.” He jammed the keys into the ignition. “Take care of yourself. Do what you have to do, but next time leave me out of it.”

“Fine. I will and… I will… and I will. Can we go now?”

Livy always did what she felt she had to do. It was part of what made her special to him. It was part of what made her a pain in the ass, too.

Livy. She was as busy as a moth in a mitten that school year of 1968-69. So was he. As official bailsman to the repeat offender, Olivia Jane Hubbard, he soon began to suspect that he was the only person she knew who had elevated the act of calling home for more money to an art form. He could have taught a level-one class on Basic Creative Lying.

Of course, there was more to Memphis than the police stations. Compared to Tolford… well, there was no comparison to Tolford. The size of the city alone was mind numbing and confusing at first. The buildings, the traffic, the masses of people. Elegant mansions and hovels worse than any seen in the countryside around Tolford. Brian loved the museums and the music—great music that could drown out the rock beat of The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Blood, Sweat and Tears, on any given night with the slow, moody strains of the blues. Not that he didn’t love rock ’n’ roll and, of course, the country music he’d grown up with, but the blues were something special. Hell, you might even say he was developing an eclectic taste for music. Very educational.

The Mighty Mississippi was Memphis and it became part of your life’s blood whether you worked its docks or not. Elvis too, you venerated, whether you liked his music or not. He was a homegrown boy who’d done better than good; the only king America had ever recognized and claimed as its own and the biggest single tourist attraction Memphis had. Brian counted himself among the millions who preferred to dream of their son or daughter becoming another Elvis, instead of President of the United States.

Memphis, unlike Tolford, was exciting. There was a dark side that reached far into the daylight hours if you were interested in exposing yourself to it and, on occasion, Brian dallied on the fringes of it.

Nothing he did, however, was as alarming as Livy’s activities. Sit-ins and walkouts. Moratoriums and the seizing of public buildings. Marches and strikes. Next to the sort of things Livy was doing, filtering college life through seedy bars, shady acquaintances, and several pitchers of beer was more like child’s play.

Livy. She was so serious. So dedicated.

She was absorbed in a list of carbon-based chemicals she needed to know by the next day. Shortly after Christmas, they were well into their second semester.

“So, how’s your roommate?”

“Recovering nicely,” she said, with a sidelong glare in his direction. He pretended to be engrossed in a drawing of the intersection of Goodlett Street and Southern Avenue—detailing, his favorite part. “And I’ll thank you not to date her again. Or any of my other friends either. Girls talk, you know.” She squirmed in her chair a little. “I admit, I gossip as much as anybody but I don’t think it’s necessary to discuss, to death, certain things about certain people, and I’m sick of getting blow-by-blow descriptions of your dates from my friends.”

There were so many chinks in Livy’s armor she could have used it as a sieve. But it wasn’t every day that a body found one that was as irrational and unfounded as the one she had about sex. If she hadn’t been the one to explain it to him in the first place, he might have thought her shy about it, or embarrassed maybe. But it wasn’t the general topic of sex that made her squirm—it was him having sex that made her uncomfortable. And so, of course, he teased her with it every chance he got, which was whenever they were together.

“I’ll bet you are sick of it.” He grinned broadly. “But at least it’s not me telling you how great I am all the time. Maybe now you’ll believe me.”

“You’re such a pig.” She endeavored to put a feminist sting in the tone of her voice, but it came out amused, affectionate and… a lot like a compliment, this time.

He laughed. He was having altogether too much fun at college. Big city. Campus life. Beer and like-thinkers everywhere he turned. Livy had no idea what she was missing.

“Have you even opened a book this semester?”

“Sure.” He tossed the sketch pad aside and picked up a basketball with one hand, then started to spin it on his index finger. “I was reading a book when you called.”

“Right.” She studied him with narrowed eyes. She knew him too well. “Did the center page have a colored fold-out?”

The ball slipped off his finger. “I met this unreal girl from one of the sorority houses yesterday, but I couldn’t remember which one.” He glanced at her. “I was… refreshing my memory.”

“You’re going to have to study more than the campus phone book if you’re planning to keep your scholarship and stay in school, Carowack.” A pause. “You know, women aren’t the suckers they used to be for a guy in a uniform.”

“Yes, mother,” he said, turning his attention back to the spinning orb.

“I’m serious.”

“I know, and despite the damper you tend to put on things, I’m really glad you called. I’ve missed you. Have you got so many snooty new friends now that you don’t need me anymore?”

Again, they found themselves living in completely different worlds, separated by a remarkably short distance. A ten minute drive through town was all it took to get from the devoutly academic, very highbrow, preppie-infested private institution of higher education—Southwestern at Memphis where Livy worked up a brain-sweat over every little quiz and question—to Memphis State University where you could obtain an excellent education… or not, depending on your propensity to party.

Brian’s propensity was off the chart.

The first few weeks of school had been hard, confusing, and lonely for them both. Coed and open dorms were more the thing on the freer-thinking Memphis State Campus, and Brian had quickly adjusted to Livy’s frequent evening visits to his room. At first they had talked, compared their experiences, shared their feelings. As they became more comfortable, they talked less and simply spent the time together—Livy studying ardently, Brian daydreaming over an open book or sketching furiously.

By midterm they were introducing each other to new friends, double-dating on occasion—in Livy’s case, it was more like running an escort service for one. Brian. But they began to meet people they had things in common with, certainly more in common than they had with each other. Athletes and activists. Artists and writers. Party people and political science majors.

They were, as always, home-safe for one another—a familiar voice a phone call away, a trusted face when they needed one. But Memphis was a big place; the rest of the world was even bigger, and for the first time ever, they were truly free.

“My snooty friends aren’t as snooty as you think and what makes you think I ever needed you?” she asked. A fatuous question since they both knew the answer. They ignored it.

“You were the one who said they were snooty. I was amazed at how many of them were pretty. I was the one who figured they’d all be rich little bow-wows, remember? Doesn’t seem fair, does it?”

“Doesn’t seem to bother you much, either.”

He chuckled. “No way. Why should it? Soft talkin’, sweet smellin’, sex wantin’ stunners have a right to be as rich and as smart as they want to be. It’s the American way.”

She shook her head. He was hopeless. And he liked it that way. Whenever he could manage it, he was completely carefree and unconcerned.

“Brian.” She closed the book and slid it into the mess of debris that covered his rarely used desk.

When she turned to face him, he smiled at her and sighed. Her face never changed. It was one of a handful of faces that he loved and trusted above all others. It was a beautiful face.

“Spit it out, Liv,” he said when she hesitated. “I got practice in half an hour.”

“Well, I was wondering how you’d feel about living off campus next fall.”

He laughed. “After I flunk out of school, you mean? Your faith in me is inspiring, but if I get kicked out of MSU I won’t be hanging around.” He bounced the ball off the wall a couple of times. “I’ll bum around the country for a while, like I should have done in the first place. Europe, too, maybe, and paint.”

When he glanced over to catch her reaction, she was staring at him.

“You have it all planned out, don’t you?” He could tell she was a little stunned. “You’re not really flunking out, are you?”

“Maybe not this semester, but it seems inevitable. School just isn’t my bag, babe.” He paused. “You look surprised. I thought you were expecting me to drop out.”

“Of course I’m not expecting you to drop out. You’re smart. You can do anything you set your mind to. I… well, I just didn’t think you’d be setting it to flunking out of school, is all.”

“Then what’s this about living off campus?” He gestured about the cramped and cluttered 11×13 dorm room he shared with another basketball player. “Why else would I want to give up such splendor?”

“I can see where the choice might come to a flip of a coin, but I was actually thinking of taking a house off campus. If you and I and a couple other kids pool our money, we could afford it.”

“What other kids?” he asked, skilled at sensing when something was too good to be real.

“It’s a big house. Five people live there already, but two are leaving. There’ll be room for us next semester.”

“What other kids?”

“Alben Hollender. He’s MSU. You met him a few weeks ago, at that Dixie place with the blues music? On Beale Street? Remember? We went in for a beer and…”

“And you didn’t have your ID with you and had to leave. Was he the black dude with the eight inch Afro and the glasses?”

She nodded. “And Stephanie Pence. She’s a junior at Southwestern. She practically runs SCAW single-handedly.”

“SCAW?” It rang a bell, but there were so many abbreviations to remember in college. NAACP, FSM, CIA, NLF, FBI, KKK, UN, LSD, VDC, AFL-CIO, SNCC, HUD, SLA, SCLC, VC, BPP, GOP, and Ho Chi Minh. Nobody was speaking basic southern English anymore. Except for the NBA and the NFL.

“The Student Coalition Against War. I told you about the national network it’s setting up to unify our strength? Like National Turn In Your Draft Card Day? Remember?”

Vividly. He’d been with …? when Livy called from jail. What was that girl’s name? A forty-six-inch chest and blond hair. D something. Doris? Daphne? Darlene? Dena?

“And the Free Huey campaign?” she went on. “We need solidarity. The bigger we are, the louder we are and the sooner someone will listen to us.”

“In other words, this Stephanie isn’t my type,” he said. Dolores? Dinah? Dodie? Darcy? What the hell was that girl’s name?

“Well, no. She has a brain and a flat chest so you wouldn’t really be interested, but that’s the beauty of this place. It’s purely platonic. No messy love affairs. No sex. Just five people sharing a house.”

“No sex, huh?” To annoy her, he made it sound discouraging. “So who’s this fifth person?”

“Oh.” She pretended to feel foolish at the omission. “Richard. Richard Kerrigan. He’s… Brian, he’s so wonderful. He put together the Freedom Express, the unauthorized campus newspaper I want to write for. Remember? I showed you a copy. The administration is calling it an underground newspaper,” she said, like a true conspirator. “Wait till you hear him speak. He has…”

“Short blonde hair and thick black sideburns?”

“Yes.”

“Does he know how weird that looks?”

“It’s the sun,” she said, a bit impatient. There were so many more interesting things to say about Richard. “It bleaches his hair in the summertime, takes almost all winter to grow out. By spring his hair will be closer to the color of his sideburns, but then it’ll bleach out over the summer again. But it’s so much more than the way he looks. He has charisma.”

“Charisma? Is that what you call it?” He dropped the basketball on the floor and sat up on the edge of the bed to finish off his near-warm beer. Smuggling alcoholic beverages into the dorm was a huge drag, so he never wasted a drop of it. “Isn’t he the one who was screaming and yelling in front of our Ad-building, about the CIA secretly funding certain organizations in education and… law, I think he said, and journalism, too, for their support of the war? He looked a little crazy to me. And why doesn’t he do his screaming on his own campus?”

“There are more kids over here and he’s not crazy. He’s passionate. He’s deeply committed to civil rights and putting an end to the war.”

Brian nodded. “Great. That’s really great, but I don’t think I want to live with anyone that passionate or that committed. I might have to tie him up and gag him if he talks like that all the time. He might not think I was very… platonic.”

“But everything he says is true. There’s proof.”

“Okay. But he still doesn’t have to scream and yell. Couldn’t he just state the facts? Calmly. It made me nervous just watching him. Wouldn’t more people listen if he acted a little less crazy?”

She leaned back in the chair, looking at him.

“You know, I thought so too, at first. But Richard says there’s too much apathy. He says he’s like an actor, that he has to be outrageous to get people’s attention.”

He stood up and started looking for his coat. It was almost time to leave.

“He’s outrageous, all right.” He zipped up the front of his jacket and then looked at her. “Trading Bubba Du Bois for your friend Richard feels like a step down in roomies to me, Liv.”

“But if you don’t do it with me, I won’t be able to,” she said. “Sophomores have to live in the dorms unless they have permission from their parents. I don’t think mine will go for it unless I tell them you’ll be there with me.”

“Livy…”