InvasiveThoughts.com

BOOK SEVENTEEN: IN JAIL AND NOT

151. I was taken to the brick. . . .

            I was taken to the brick police station on R Street, where I was booked on suspicion of attempted homicide, my white-lipped cousin at my elbow to complete the paperwork. Beyond the main desk, in a cubicle, I could see Mattie Halliday stonily writing out a statement; in a few more minutes some uniformed policemen brought Julia in handcuffs in a distraught state. They also carried objects in sandwich bags, presumably their gleanings from my apartment. My sense of chaos was increased by the intense roaring in my ears caused by Mattie’s gunshot; people shouted at me, became angry and red in the face, but I still could not easily understand. I signed nothing, not even the receipt for items in my pockets.

            After I was fingerprinted—they already had my prints on file, but apparently they wanted another set—I was escorted to the cubicle where I’d seen Mattie writing. Here I was confronted by the same curly-headed detective who had supervised the misfired raid on the X-Cell Bookstore. He shoved a note pad and a ball-point pen at me, which I refused even to touch; he then tried questioning me, but I had the same difficulty hearing him that I’d had with everyone else. Each question sounded like, “Howmm owmm yumm noommbumoombabubbah,” shouted through a megaphone in the middle of an air raid. I put my hand behind my ear and shook my head. He clearly thought I was faking; his face tightened and his burly shoulders twitched. Finally I picked up the pen and wrote, I want to make a phone call. I paused and added, The number is on a slip of paper in my billfold.

            The detective seized the pad and printed something. He held it up for me. I can hear YOU, it said.

            “A phone call,” I said. “I’ll need some help because my hearing is fucked up. I was standing too close to the door when the gun went off.”

            The detective made a note, then left me briefly and returned with my billfold, which he began systematically emptying. When he came to the slip of paper with Brenda’s telephone number, I said, “There.” He transcribed the number for me, retaining the slip, and gestured to the telephone. “It’s an Omaha number,” I said apologetically.

            He gave me a level look. “I see that,” he said, forming the words emphatically.

            “I want Dale to dial it,” I said. “I won’t be able to tell if anyone is answering. The name is Stein. Brenda or Alex Stein.”

            My reluctant cousin was brought in—clearly, he was embarrassed to know me—and dialed the number, holding the phone to his ear and then handing it to me. “Hello,” I shouted. “Hello, is this Brenda or Alex?” I could make out nothing and handed the receiver back to Dale; he listened again, spoke into the mouthpiece, and then wrote out a word for me on the pad: BRENDA. I took the receiver. “Brenda,” I said, “listen. This is Jonas Smith. I’m at the police station in Lincoln. Julia is here also. She is fine but very upset. I repeat, Julia is fine, but she’s upset. It would be good if someone from the family could come and talk to her. Bob Warner should be notified, too. Julia has been a witness to a shooting. It’s no good asking me questions because I can’t hear anything. I’m going to hand the phone back to one of these guys; maybe they will talk to you. Drive safely if you’re coming.” In truth I was glad I could not hear whatever Brenda might be saying to me; I passed the receiver to Dale, who handed it off to the detective. He listened, spoke a few gruff words, and hung up.

            “There’s going to be a big white Chrysler flying down from Omaha at a hundred miles an hour, driven by a woman who can barely see over the dash. You might as well call the Highway Patrol and have them give it an escort,” I told them. “Can I make one more call?” They looked at each other; Dale handed me the phone. I dialed the co-op’s number and handed it back. “When someone comes on the line,” I said, “ask for Mark McKinley or Robert Shemansky; tell them Julia Stein is here.” I thought for a second. “I guess you could tell them that I’m here, too.”

            Dale looked at me thoughtfully and then took pen and pad. DO YOU WANT ME TO CALL YOUR FATHER?

            “Gosh, no,” I said. “Dad would shit a ring around himself.”

152. Rather than one of the cells. . . .

            Rather than one of the cells behind the old station, they hauled me in a van to the new building on K Street, where I was to be the sole tenant in a row of newly-completed pens. By then I was wearing a beltless robe and a set of blue pajamas, since they’d put my clothing into a sealed paper bag for the lab; they appeared to believe that I’d shot both Kemp and Stinns, and that I was a dope dealer and a Soviet agent besides. Anyway the new steel door slid shut behind me with the same old clang, the difference being that this time I was wide awake and sober when they pushed me in. Left alone with my resounding tinnitis, I had no one to talk to and nothing to distract me. When the numbness caused by being yanked around physically wore away, I found myself to be in a sorry state; I curled myself into a ball on one of the concrete benches—there were four thick shelves cantilevered from the wall, to be used as beds—and howled and blubbered like a grief-stricken child. It was not the perfect picture of a hardened criminal.

            After twenty minutes of self-indulgent bawling, I managed to sit up and take a few deep breaths; I felt better sitting, though I collapsed into bouts of weeping from time to time. What had hurt me most, I decided, was that when I’d had the chance to get off Scot-free—I could’ve put the blame on Mattie, who was surely going to prison anyway—I’d been stopped by the arrival of my cousin from shooting The Goon; the arrest had merely added insult to injury. But as the picture came back of him sitting on the floor, blinking passively up at me and prepared to die, I began to think that maybe he’d been shot enough. If he lived he wouldn’t be messing with anyone for a while.

            “Slivers in his liver,” I said through my teeth, grinning through my tears. The phrase gave me comfort, and I repeated it, making a bluesy tune: Slivers in his liver, bits of plywood in his parts, he’s a perforated jerkoff, the Jack of Hearts. I remembered that the U. S. Army had experimented with wooden bullets because the fragments failed to show up on X-ray equipment and were difficult to find and remove. (They eventually figured out that the VC didn’t have fluoroscopes anyway.) I could hope that Stinns would have splinters working out of his hide for years to come.

            I raised my head and looked around me. The cell block was different in design from the downtown station, better lit and roomier, with the emphasis more on concrete than on steel; still, you wouldn’t mistake it for a fraternity house. The bench I was sitting on felt cold, a cold that would seep into your bones, winter and summer. The walls were painted slick beige, almost a flesh color, and each cell was equipped with a floor drain so it could be conveniently washed down with a fire hose. The cell doors slid on rails rather than being hung on hinges; the cells across the way stood open, with unconnected wires drooping from the ceiling fixtures. I glanced up at my own ceiling. Twelve feet above me, out of reach, a ventilation duct stood open; the opening was big enough for a man to squeeze through, but I was by no means athletic enough to reach it. The light fixture was buttoned up, connected and working.

            I happened to remember that a sliding patio door can be lifted off its rails and set aside. I stood up to try my luck with the door of my cell. To my pleasure and surprise, it lifted cleanly, even disengaging at the latch so that all I had to do was move it an inch or two, then reset it into its track and slide it open. I lifted it again and set the latch back in its socket, then looked up to find the reason for my good fortune. Holes in the top rail showed where pins were meant to be installed to prevent the door from being lifted, but the pins were not in place. Already I felt better about my incarceration.

            “Hey!” I shouted. I wanted to see whether anyone would respond. “Hey, Guard! Help! Fire! Bees! Rattlesnakes! Klingons!” My voice sounded lower and louder to my battered ears, not so much like an ant trapped in a 55-gallon drum as it had sounded earlier.

            Presently a door at the end of the hallway opened—a regular door, not a sliding one—and a young woman appeared in the uniform of a police cadet. She looked the right age to be one of my students. She came swinging a flashlight that was long and heavy enough to be used as a weapon. “Do you want something, mister?” she asked coldly. No nonsense about this farm girl; she’d dealt with unruly animals before.

            “Nah. Just lonely,” I said. “Could I have a cell with a window? I’m kind of bored.”

            “None of them have windows,” she said. “Anything else?”

            “What’s your name? Did you grow up around Lincoln?”

            “Look, if you don’t want anything, I have homework,” she said icily. Not falling for my criminal bullshit, this one.

            “Do you go to college?”

            “I’m getting my G. E. D. Last chance: do you need something?”

            “How about a drink of water?”

            “Get it from your sink.”

            I watched her small figure retreating between the two rows of cells. I thought that it must be a deadly job, guarding a vacant building; she must be right at the bottom of the pecking order. Well, no, I was at the bottom. “Hey!” I called out after her. “If I need something, can I wave to you on the monitor?”

            “You can wave all you want,” she said, “but the camera’s not hooked up.”

            I gave her a couple of minutes to settle back down to her textbook, then lifted the door off its latch and slid it aside. The thing was heavy, eighty or ninety pounds, and I handled it carefully, knowing that if it fell it would make a terrific clang. I stepped out and lifted it closed behind me. The corridor was disappointing, nothing but a pathway between long rows of cells. There were twelve cages on each side, in various stages of final construction. Some doors were open, others closed; some cells had plumbing fixtures installed, in others they were sitting in boxes. I explored down to the door the young cadet had used, then peeked out and cautiously tried the knob. It was locked. By craning my neck I could see her at her desk. Some lapse of design had put the sergeant’s station off to one side, so that the person at the desk could not look down the row of cells without getting up. I stepped back from the door and turned to see what I could accomplish.

            The first thing I did was check the door at the opposite end of the hallway. That door was locked, too; it gave onto the bottom of a stairwell, and I could see through the window of the exit door right across. Outside it was a sunny Sunday in May. Beyond the door the sunlight scattered whitely from an expanse of new concrete, on which I could see the city’s fleet of a dozen Cushman three-wheelers.

            I turned away from the sunny window with an involuntary shiver. What I needed was a key, but I did not think I would soon be supplied with one. I retraced my steps down the hallway, looking into each unfinished cell for anything—a tool, a piece of styrofoam, an installation pamphlet for light fixtures—that would offer me a bit of diversion. All I found was a single strand of number ten electrical wire, coded red, which I wrapped around my wrist to form a bracelet, and the remains of a cardboard box in which a toilet fixture had been shipped. The box had been cut open so that it partially unfolded; I took it along to my cell, let myself back in, and finished demolishing the box so that I could use the flattened cardboard to pad one of the slabs. Then I lay down and closed my eyes, willing the time to pass.

153. When I opened. . . .

            When I opened my eyes, I was lying on my back. I just had time to notice something peculiar—the grille covering the ventilator above my head had been replaced—when I heard a dull boom and footsteps in the hallway, coming from the direction opposite the front desk. I sat up and swung my feet to the floor, rubbing my eyes. A pair of middle-sized, healthy-looking men walked vigorously past my cell, discussing a baseball game. Soon others entered the back way, coming singly and by twos and threes; I waited until I recognized one of the men I’d seen at my cousin’s, and asked him what was up.

            The young cop looked me over. “Aren’t you the guy who shot Don Stinns?” he asked. At this, his buddy moved up for a closer inspection.

            “I didn’t shoot him,” I said. “Mattie Halliday did. What’s going on?”

            “Alert,” he said. “Where’d you shoot him, exactly? They’re taking bets on whether he lives or not.”

            “Mattie’s a tall woman,” I said. “She held the gun level, chest high. Don was on the other side of the door, so I didn’t see where he was hit. What’s the alert about?”

            “There’s riots in Ohio,” he said. “The governor back there called out the National Guard. They think it could happen here, too, so the chief put us on alert.”

            “Who’s rioting?”

            “Students and hippies,” he said. “People who look like you. Do you think he’ll live, or not? Stinns, I mean.”

            “The last I saw of him, he looked clear-eyed,” I said. “He wasn’t turning blue or anything. That’s about all I can tell you.”

            “I guess he’ll live, then,” the cop said. “Thanks. If I win, I’ll buy you a candy bar.”

            I watched the two of them walk off toward the front of the building. The cop’s bland offer of a candy bar, the cheerful outdoor swagger of his retreating back, brought it home to me, more than previously, that I was in jail for an indefinite stay. Prior to this, I’d assumed my being held was meant as harassment, that the boss detective disliked me and had put me behind bars for a day and a night just to show me he could. Now I was less confident that it was that simple. True, I’d seen Mattie giving what I’d assumed to be her confession, but I had no way of knowing that was the case or, if it was, how long it might take. She could’ve picked that moment to begin her autobiography.

            Supposing Mattie did not confess or, worse, tried to put the blame for the second shooting on me? I counted up what was in my favor. First, I’d phoned Toni in an attempt to get help; second, I’d yelled out to Stinns, thinking he was Dale: “Look out, she has a gun.” Julia might’ve heard that, if she wasn’t terrified completely out of her wits, and Stinns would’ve heard it, which he might or might not testify to if he lived. Third, Mattie had already shot Kemp by that time; a jury might therefore consider her an unreliable witness. Once I’d added it up, it didn’t seem like much. Three cops had seen me standing over Stinns with a big, shiny .38 in my hand.

            I regretted asking Dale not to telephone my father.

            At the same time I was working all this out, the trickle of policemen past my cell rose to a flood; apparently the corridor offered the shortest way to get from the employees’ lot to the locker room. Their chat offered no clue to their expectations. It seemed that ninety out of a hundred had been either watching baseball or mowing the lawn when they got the call. I clung to the bars, hungry for company, while the tide of officers ebbed and turned; now they marched from left to right, uniformed and armed, looking taller. When the cop I’d spoken to came by, I asked him if he got his bet down, but he made no response. Soon the hallway was quiet, but with so much action for a Sunday afternoon, I no longer dared to go outside my cell; I waited for supper, hoping it would be edible since the food in jail is considered part of the punishment.

            Sometime around five—I had no way of telling time—the young woman in the cadet’s uniform came down the hallway with a tray. She walked right past my cell to the next one, stood at the door, and said, “Where are you?”

            “Over here,” I called to her. “You went to the wrong cell.”

            She came to my door and eyed me from a safe distance. “No,” she said, “you’re in the wrong cell. How’d you get there?”

            I glanced up at the mysteriously-repaired ventilator opening; mystery solved. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I bluffed. “What’d you bring me to eat?”

            “I know what happened,” she said angrily. “Some of the guys moved you. Well, you can tell them I don’t think it’s funny. In fact, I’m going to put it in my report.” She stepped a little closer and began passing Styrofoam containers through the bars. “Don’t bother trying to grab me,” she said. “I left the key to your cell back at the desk. It’s a safety procedure.”

            “Honey, I’m not a grabber,” I said. “If I can’t make love to a woman fair and square, I leave her alone. Do I get silverware, or am I supposed to eat this with a straw?”

            “It’s a burger and fries,” she said. “You don’t need silverware. We’re not really set up for company just yet.”

            “How come they put me in the new building, anyway? I’d rather be where I could talk to somebody, even if it was only burglars and drunks.”

            “How should I know anything?” she said. “I’m only a girl cadet. They won’t even talk to me about sports. All they’ll do is play tricks on me all the time. I really am going to report you for switching cells. That kind of thing pisses me off.”

            “But you’re mistaken,” I said. “I haven’t switched. It’s your memory that’s playing a trick on you.”

            “Ha,” she said. “If I had to depend on my memory, I’d be sunk.” She went to look inside the neighboring cell, pushing and shaking the steel door, then went back up the hall toward her desk. “Put those things in the hall when you’re done with them,” she said. “I’m going off duty in a few minutes. I’ll pick them up on my way out.”

            “Any chance I could get a shower?” I called out after her.

            “No,” she said. “Not till we get more help around here.”

            The cadet who came in to take her place had a sleepy look about him. I watched him walk by in civilian clothes, a pudgy blue-eyed kid a year or two out of high school, then saw him return with the girl, looking slightly more official in his white shirt and navy pants. “This is Roger,” she said to me. “He’ll be keeping an eye on you till morning. Don’t levitate to a new cell, now.”

            “Why not? It gives me something to do.”

            “It messes up the paperwork,” she said. “Are you finished eating? Roger, pick up those containers. If he tries to grab you, I’ll go get help.”

            “I wouldn’t grab Roger,” I said. “He’s not as cute as you.”

            “You think you’re smart,” she said to me. “But you’re in jail, aren’t you.”

            “I’m just visiting.”

            “We’ll see about that.”

            “Hello, Roger,” I said. “Nice to meet you. Did you watch the ball game? The Cards won six to nothing. That Bob Gibson has a heck of a fast ball.”

            The kid gaped at me. “How did you know?” he asked.

            “I’ve got a TV antenna built into my brain,” I told him. “Better not fall asleep on the job. I’d have to report you.”

            “He’s a joker,” the girl said to Roger. “He shot a man this morning, so not everything he does is funny. I’d definitely keep my distance if I were you.”

            “I’m harmless,” I said to him. “Come and talk to me if you get bored. Bring a deck of cards.”

            The kid looked from one of us to the other. “He can’t get out, can he?” he asked the girl.

            “I don’t know,” she said. “Better not come down that hallway unless you check the window first.”

            “That’s right,” I said. “Just because you’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean someone isn’t out to get you.” The girl and Roger went their separate ways, leaving me to face a lonely evening. Roger didn’t look like he’d be much company even if he was in the same cell with me; I expected him to either fall asleep or find some way to use the monitor to watch TV.

            A small fact about the door situation had been nagging at my mind, and now it surfaced like a feeding minnow. If the cops used the hallway to go to and from their parking lot, then the doors must appear locked only from the inside; each cop wouldn’t use a key each time he came through. Either that or they’d found a way of propping the locks open. To incurious people, if a door is locked, it’s locked, but there are degrees of lockedness, and my career as a 12-year-old vandal had taught me several of the various distinctions. It might be possible for me to get out, if I truly wanted to. I would have to watch and see how often the hallway was used. If there wasn’t much traffic, I could slip out for a few minutes, just long enough to bathe and telephone my father.

154. After the hallway had been quiet. . . .

            After the hallway had been quiet for an hour, I set the door to my cell aside and stepped out. I took a deep breath, put it carefully back, and tiptoed to the front to check on Roger. He had his head down on the desk like a good little snoozer. I smiled and moved off toward the door at the opposite end of the hall.

            The steel doorframe was set into a concrete wall; there’d be no budging the jamb aside. It opened outward, so I couldn’t get at the hinges. The glass was reinforced with mesh, and I wouldn’t have been desperate enough to break it anyway. I studied the lockset but couldn’t see how it disassembled. So far, I was striking out. I turned my attention to surveying the area for a hidden key, and in so doing happened to glance outside; what I saw there sent me hurrying back to my cell. The parking lot was full of police cruisers, lined up bumper to bumper, with cops leaning against the fenders or reading newspapers in the front seats. A number of the wives had come out, bringing sodas and sandwiches; a trio of uniformed men were tossing a Frisbee. I felt like a calico cat that had considered jumping into a kennel full of beagles.

            I had just finished sliding the bars into place when the door opened and the first of the soda drinkers came through to use the bathroom. “Hey,” I called out to him. “Are you guys having a keg party?”

            The man came to the door of my cell and looked in. “I wish,” he said. “Doesn’t look too comfortable in there. Is that piece of cardboard all they’re giving you to sleep on?”

            “That’s all,” I said. “Listen, when you go back outside, would you think about leaving the door open? Let in a little of that warm spring air.”

            “You’ve got to be kidding,” he said. “This is jail, fella. We don’t leave doors propped open around here.” I shrugged, gesturing to indicate the bars. “Well, I’ll think about it,” he said. “I guess you’re not exactly about to run out on us, are you?”

            “I wouldn’t go far,” I said. “Be quiet when you go up front. You’ll wake up Roger.” As it grew dark outside, more of the cops came in to piss; eventually, they stopped trudging all the way through and began using the brand-new toilets in the unoccupied cells. I was glad to see that they grew tired of unlocking the door and did indeed prop it open, using one of the toilet boxes for a stop, so that there was nothing to prevent my leaving but their attention.

            I got my chance after the second shift came on. By midnight the alert had lost its festive character; the cops who came through to change into their uniforms returned my sallies sourly if at all. Dale passed my cell wordlessly coming and going, his jaw tight. I numbered them in and out, like Christopher Robin counting the bees—my experience counting cattle in and out of trailers helped with this—so that when the final straggler came through, I knew, barring a mistake, that he was the last. Roger had been roused to pay me a visit; I gave him time to settle down again and lifted the barred door silently off its track.

            Because the hallway was brightly lit and there were a hundred crabby cops waiting in the lot, I made the trip to the back door on hands and knees. The floor, like everything else in that building, was hard and cold. I made it to the open door, turned a corner, and scuttled off down a darker hallway toward an EXIT sign. Once I rose to my feet, I could see what lay behind some of the doorways I passed. One led to another block of cells, one to a row of offices; behind a third, blank door was the sigh and rotating click of ventilation equipment. The hall ended at a stairwell, with the glass exit door again facing the parking lot where all the cops were sitting. Careful not to show myself, I took the stairs to the second floor, hoping to find a way out of the building that wouldn’t take me past a gauntlet of policemen.

            The second floor was a chaos of construction. It would, when finished, be devoted entirely to blocks of cells; the Lincoln Police Department had apparently warned the commissioners of an impending crime wave. Careful not to close any doors behind me, I made my way past buckets of drywall taping mud toward Roger’s end of the building. There I found three exits, two that led down stairwells at the corners of the building and one that led past the desk. I chose the exit nearest my apartment, the one at the northeast corner, and slipped down the stairs and out. Before I left entirely, I used the red wire that I’d earlier wrapped around my wrist to secure the handle of the outside door so that it wouldn’t latch.

            I took a deep, joyful breath; no night in May ever felt lovelier to me. The short walk to my apartment was sheer delight, even though the breeze got up my robe and the slippers I wore let the rough sidewalk bruise my feet. Immediately the thought of going back to jail became repulsive. I could go anywhere; I could take Grace’s car and leave for Canada. Why face the hassle of useless questioning when I knew I’d committed no crime? The idea of leaving seemed attractive. I had few possessions to detain me, since Dan Kroger had cleaned out my bank account, and I wasn’t afraid of driving all night and all day. I needed clothing; I needed to make a quick call to my father. I had no cash and no driver’s license, but Grace’s car ran cheap; I could borrow enough from somebody to get me to the border. Whom would I ask? Julia was probably in Omaha, recovering from being shot at and then arrested; the Nerd Brothers never had any money. Ditto Dexter Coffey, ditto L. D. Langdon. The only person I knew who had riches was Adrian Fisher, and I couldn’t ask him directly. I could ask Selva.

            Ay, said Hamlet, there’s the rub. When I thought of Selva, the joy went out of the intoxicating air; the very stars above me seemed to fade. She and Adrian were now engaged to be married. Why, of course, I thought bitterly, I’ll just call her up at two in the morning. Adrian won’t mind if she steps out for a couple of minutes to bring me fifty bucks. Then I can offer her a new life in Moose Jaw. I struck my forehead with the heel of my hand. It felt so good that I did it again, harder.

            My apartment was upside down; everything from the kitchen cabinets was piled on the counter, the carpet lay in a heap, the cushions were off the sofa. In the bedroom, the mattress leaned against the wall, and my clothing, the soiled and the clean, had been heaped together on the bedsprings. I discarded the robe and jail pajamas and pulled on underwear and jeans, and found a pair of sneakers for my sore feet.

            The telephone at my father’s house rang and rang; for once the old man was sound asleep. Either that, or he was out on an overnight run somewhere. I’d counted fifteen rings and was about to hang up when his deep tired voice came on the line. “Yeah?”

            “Dad, this is Jonas,” I said. “I’m in Lincoln. Have you heard anything about what’s going on?”

            My father sighed. “Toni McFerrin called me,” he said. “She told me two men had been shot and you’d been arrested for it. You and some woman from down there.”

            “Yeah, that’s about it,” I said. “I wanted to tell you not to worry too much. This woman shot her boy friend and came over to my place to tell me about it. Then a guy I never liked much came over and knocked on the door, and she shot him, too. When the cops came—one of them was Dale—I happened to be holding the gun. That’s all it was. They’ll soon have it figured out, I expect. If they don’t let me out tomorrow, I’ll call you.”

            “They’ve got you in jail, then?”

            “Yeah,” I said. “Technically.”

            “Son,” he said. “Tell me. Are you in jail, or not?”

            “Well,” I admitted, “I stepped out for some clean socks. I’m going right back as soon as I hang up the phone.”

            “God damn it,” my father said. “God damn it.”

            “Dad?” There was silence on the other end.

            “Dad, I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t shoot anybody. Honest. I got plenty of that in Southeast Asia. Dad, are you still on the line?”

            “Go back,” he said, gravel in his voice. “Get back over there, now, or I’ll come down there and whip your butt. Even if I have to stand on a chair to do it.”

            “Hey, I wasn’t going to run off,” I said defensively. “What kind of fool do you think I am?”

            “You’re not a fool,” he said, “but you’ve got too much imagination for your own good. You get back in there, now, before they find you outside. Those policemen carry guns too, you know. Shotguns and rifles, not just pistols. They won’t play around with you.”

            “I’m going,” I said. “I just wanted to let you know I’m all right, and that I’m not about to get sent to the state pen.”

            “Yeah,” he said sourly. “I’m not worried now.” There was a pause. “Were you drinking?” he asked.

            “Not when Mattie came over. Hey, I’ve got to get back. OK?”

            “OK,” he said. “Call me when you know something. Don’t be surprised if I come down there and see for myself how much truth you’re telling me.”

            “I don’t lie to you, Pop,” I said confidently. “They’ll release me.”

            “Trouble is,” he said, “you don’t have quite enough Indian in you to have good sense.”

            I marveled a bit after he hung up the phone. Dad never mentions his Indian heritage; I’d heard him say something about it half a dozen times, and five of them were jokes. It occurred to me that he’d had twenty years of life before I knew him. Maybe he knew a different side of law enforcement. I placed the receiver in its cradle and considered my next move, now that I’d promised my father I wouldn’t run away.

155. After I let myself. . . .

            After I let myself back into the jail building, I held the door open for a while, savoring the waft of sweet night air. At last I closed it with a shudder and removed the wire so that the latch fell into place, and turned and ascended the concrete stairs, rewrapping the red-clad wire around my wrist. I had to consider some stylish way of returning to my cell, since there was no guarantee that Roger was still asleep or that my absence hadn’t been noted; I could think of nothing better than to flush a few toilets on the second floor, then wait for him to come up the middle stairs so I could slip down to the first floor and get in past his desk. It would work once or twice if he was sufficiently stupid. The paper sack I carried under my arm held my jail robe and pajamas, and I’d also brought along a rolled-up air mattress, so in a way I was flaunting my brief freedom. This fuck-you to the cops was vital because they were holding me unjustly. Surely they knew I had no part in the Kemp shooting; as for Stinns, it was time someone put a hole in him. It would remind him not to prance around so much.

            My plan worked well enough, except that after I flushed a half-dozen toilets in the empty cells and waited for Roger to come up so I could duck down a side stairwell, I found that the door behind his desk was locked from the outside, too. I stood there like an idiot twisting the knob, while the sweat broke out on my palms and my teeth began to chatter; at the last second I rushed off toward the side entrance, bolting noisily through the stairwell door as I heard an adolescent voice crying “Stop!” behind me. I could’ve run out onto 9th Street, but I turned and sprinted down the hall, then turned again as I heard the latch crash open and headed for the propped-open door to my cell block. I made it inside and picked an open cell near the center—I had no time to be choosy—and was just sliding the door closed when a wheezing Roger turned the corner. By the time he spotted me I was safely behind locked bars, trying to calm my breathing and look innocent.

            He came up warily, puffing. “Hey,” he said. “Hey, I saw you.”

            “Saw me what?” My chest was heaving and mucus was piling up in my throat; nevertheless, I wasn’t about to give him anything.

            “Saw you running,” he said. “What were you doing out of your cell? What’s that sack under your arm?”

            “You’re hallucinating,” I said, offering him the paper bag. “This has nothing but my robe and pajamas, and this other thing is my mattress. I changed clothes, all right?”

            “You were out of your cell,” he said stubbornly. “I saw you.”

            “You’ve been dreaming,” I said. “Now go back to sleep.” Roger did not step forward to examine my clothing, so I unrolled the air mattress and started blowing it up. I sat on one of the lower bed-slabs, noting as I did so that I’d picked a cell in which no toilet had been installed; I’d have to move again later. “Go on back to your desk,” I said between huffs. “What are you looking at?”

            “I smell beer,” he said. “You’ve got sauerkraut in your chin-whiskers.”

            It was true that I’d fixed myself a snack. “Nobody’s perfect,” I said. “Hey, I’m here, aren’t I? That’s what matters. You’ve still got your job.”

            “You’re in the wrong cell. I’m going to have to call somebody.”

            “Don’t be a pedant,” I said. “The less said, the better.”

            “It isn’t safe,” he said, backing away. “You could hit me over the head the next time I come in here.”

            “Roger,” I said gently, “if I was going to hit you, I’d hit you where you’re vulnerable. Which cell am I supposed to be in, anyway?”

            “That one,” he said, pointing. “Number Eight. Two doors down.”

            “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll take care of it as soon as you clear out of here.” Roger went off down the hall, scowling. I waited for him to pop back in—I knew he would—and waved. “Still here,” I said cheerily. “You can go back to sleep now.”

            “Oh, sure,” he said. “Could you? Don’t tell anyone I was sleeping, OK?”

            “Relax,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere. Next time I slip out I’ll bring you a hot dog.”

            After Roger gave up trying to catch me, I took my stuff to the correct cell, the one with the cardboard I’d scrounged earlier, and let myself in. I made myself as comfortable as possible and lay down to sleep, using the jail robe as a blanket. Before I dozed off, Roger came back, accompanied by the sergeant from the downtown station. “Hey, you,” the sergeant said roughly. “Get up.”

            “Yes, sir,” I said, and sat up. “What can I do for you?”

            “You’ve been scaring my cadets,” he said. “First the girl, now him. I don’t like it.”

            “Roger’s an alert young man,” I said. “He’ll make a fine officer. He has nothing to fear from me.”

            “Shut up,” the sergeant said. “I want to know how you’re getting in and out of there.”

            “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

            “Asshole,” he said. “We’ve got cells at the other shop that aren’t so fancy. Nobody’s walking in and out of those whenever they feel like it.”

            “I know,” I said. “I’ve been there.”

            “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll get to the bottom of it. You’d better stay put if you know what’s good for you.”

            “I’m here whenever you want me,” I said. “It’s a dangerous world outside.”

            The sergeant came up closer. “In case you want to know,” he said, “the Halliday woman confessed to shooting Kemp, all right, but she says she doesn’t remember after that. She says you helped her learn to shoot, which could make you an accessory. Also, we found dope in your apartment. I wouldn’t feel too cocky if I was you.”

            “What about Stinns? Will he live?”

            “They don’t know yet. Was it you that shot him?”

            “It wasn’t,” I said, “but I wish it had been.”

            “What you got against him? Some kind of drug deal?”

            “It was a woman deal,” I said. “Nobody’s business but my own. What’re you, trying to make detective or something?”

            “Too boring,” the sergeant said. “I’d rather hose the puke out of drunk cells. Wouldn’t you?”

            “Actually I think I’d just as soon go home. Any notion what my bail might amount to?”

            “You’re kidding,” the sergeant said. “You’re not gonna get bail. We like having you here.”

            “Don’t tell me so,” I said. “Hey, they can’t hold me. I haven’t done anything.”

            “You forgot something,” the sergeant said. “You’ll figure it out come morning. I’ll be seeing you around.”

            “What if I decide to leave?”

            “That’s escape,” the sergeant said. “‘Flight to avoid prosecution.’ It’s a felony all by itself.”

            “Not if there’s nothing to prosecute me for,” I said.

            “Doesn’t matter,” the sergeant said. “Did you ever read the book Catch-22?”

            “Fuck,” I said.

            “Now you’re talking. Stay put, please?”

            “Where would I go? I mean, really.”

            “Smart boy,” he said. “Smart college boy. Maybe you’ll have company one of these fine days.”

            “Now what are you talking about?”

            “Those students,” he said. “Oh, they’re really something. Not like when I was your age.”

            “When was that?”

            “Some guy named Washington was president. Sleep tight; you’ve got a hearing coming up tomorrow.”

            “Hearing? Already? That’s good, isn’t it? Why haven’t I heard from Bob Warner?”

            “He’s representing the Stein family. Yours is court-appointed. You’ll probably get some kid just out of law school.”

            “You’re a cheerful son of a bitch,” I said.

            “I do what I can. Sleep tight,” he said again.

            “I will,” I said. “Night, Roger.”

            “Stay put, now,” the sergeant said.

            “Never fear. I wouldn’t want to miss my hearing.”

            That night I smelled the garlic of Vietnamese cooking in my dreams.

156. The weary cops. . . .

            The weary cops, who’d mostly slept in their cars since midnight, began trooping up and down my hallway at five a.m. Some had brought shaving equipment, others had thermoses of coffee, still others had cookies or oranges, little treats from home. They spoke in injured tones as they shared these things around. I noticed that they frowned or looked away as they passed my cell, as if they blamed me for their inconvenience. Roger brought me a cup of coffee at six—he looked sleepy as ever—and said I should get ready to take a shower. I asked him if he meant I should take off my clothes, since there was nothing else to “get ready.” No, he said, he didn’t mean that, and looked at me as if I might try to rape him. Shortly, a couple of the older cops came and unlocked my cell, put handcuffs on me, and took me in the van to the other police station, where I had my second shower since midnight. After they brought me back I was given breakfast, a scrambled-egg sandwich and a glass of juice from a fast-food joint. I sat on my slab looking out across the hall, ready to seize the fourth day of May, 1970.

            About the time Larry Whyffe would’ve been convening his class—was convening it, if anyone still attended—workmen began arriving to finish the unused cells. A pleasant change from the cops, who seemed at once babyish and cynical, these contractors and hung-over working stiffs had the patient, put-upon faces of people in the building trades; they dallied with their coffee and eyed the loose wires and untaped sheet rock, looking clean in their Monday-morning tee shirts and jeans. Someone plugged in a portable radio tuned to KKYX, the local country-rock station, and as if at a signal they put out cigarettes and hitched up their tool belts. By the time Whyffe would’ve finished his pitch for “relentless self-criticism,” everyone was busy.

            About nine o’clock a man came in whom I recognized from newspaper photographs: Joe Garriott, Lincoln’s flamboyant chief of police. Wherever he went, Garriott aimed to create an effect; to this end he wore a white Stetson cowboy hat, southern-sheriff style, and always smoked, or seemed about to smoke, a cigar. He had a rugged John Wayne face set above a broad-shouldered and deep-chested body, and a voice and swagger to match. I could hear him rumbling away at one of the contractors at the far end of the hall; at the close of their encounter, I heard him say angrily, “If you need more men, hire ‘em.” Then he left.

            One of the hippie drywallers happened to be taking a break across from me; I caught his eye and motioned him over. “What’s with the Chief?” I asked. “Sounds like he’s not happy.”

            “He says we have to be finished by five o’clock,” the young man said. Then he grinned. “I don’t know what he’s smoking,” he said, “but I want some of it.”

            “The cops are on alert,” I said. “I guess they think the Commies are about to attack.”

            “It’s that Cambodia shit,” he said. “All these University students are scared they’re gonna get drafted. Say, aren’t you Flying Ace Smith from the Green Frog? What’re you doing here?”

            “A woman I know shot some people. They’ve got it into their heads that I had something to do with it. I’ve got a hearing later today; I suppose they’ll set bail and release me, if I can come up with ten per cent.”

            The man whistled. “Good luck,” he said. “You always play the drums like you want to shoot somebody.”

            “Mattie Halliday did the shooting,” I said. “I just happened to be standing there when the cops came.”

            “Hey, I believe you,” he said. “I wonder why they put you over here. There must be plenty of room in the old place.”

            “Guess they think I’m too dangerous for the other felons,” I said. “Either that or they’re using me as a guinea pig to try out their new facilities.”

            I spent the morning watching the drywallers and electricians work on the ceilings. The walls were made of concrete, as befits a jail, but the ceilings were false, concealing ductwork and plumbing; they were also very high, so that the men had to climb scaffolds and move ladders. The work went slowly, as finish work often does, so that, though the workers were tired and hungry by noon, little in the vacant cells appeared to have changed. Roger and the girl cadet came down the hall to check on me; the cadets had gone on twelve-hour shifts too, with Roger getting shafted for an extra four hours. “Hey,” I said to them. “What about my hearing?”

            “We don’t know anything,” Roger said crabbily, worn out from a night and a day of sleeping. The girl moved closer to study me. “Where’d you get those clothes?” she asked.

            “The tooth fairy brought ‘em. I’m supposed to have a hearing; I’ve been waiting all morning. Could you call somebody? Maybe they forgot.”

            “They don’t forget,” the girl said.

            “Call them anyway,” I said. “Maybe nobody remembers where I am. They told me at seven o’clock that I should get ready to go.”

            She made no promises, but shortly after the two of them left—because shifts were changing, there was a traffic jam in the hall—a pair of cops showed up with a clipboard and handcuffs. “Smith?” the one with the clipboard asked me. “Joseph blah-blah-blah?”

            “Jonas,” I said sharply. “Jonas Franklin Adams Stevens Smith.”

            “Right,” he said. “Come with us.” The other cop unlocked the door and slid it aside, and the two of them put cuffs on me and led me out for my ride to the Terminal Building.

            Court was held in the same bare room where Mattie Halliday and I had pled “No Contest” to disturbing the peace. My sense of deja vu increased when I saw the white-headed bailiff. Mattie was brought in, looking drugged—there were no rowdy radicals in the audience this time—and the feeling was complete when the bailiff said “All rise” and the same judge entered the room. He was a middle-aged, balding fellow, one of Lincoln’s so-called liberal justices.

            “Will the defendants Joseph Smith and Matilda Halliday step forward.”

            “Jonas Smith,” I said.

            “What?” The judge looked up.

            “There’s something wrong in your records,” I said. “The name is Jonas, not Joseph.”

            “Clerk will make a note of it,” he ordered. “Step forward, please.” I moved up to stand uneasily beside Mattie, who growled like an angry cat. Her hair, I noted, had been chopped even shorter, and not by a professional.

            “On March twelfth, 1970,” the judge read, “you, Jonas Smith, and you, Matilda Halliday, after pleading ‘No Contest’ to charges of disturbing the peace, were fined and sentenced to ninety days confinement; this in the matter of a riot which took place on—” he consulted his notebook— “the ninth of February of this year. Sentence was suspended on condition of responsible behavior. Does either of you care to make a statement?”

            “Yes,” I said. “Where’s my attorney?”

            “You chose not to be represented at that time,” the judge said. “Do you want an attorney now?”

            I could feel myself flushing. “Then this hearing is not about a recent, uh, shooting incident?”

            “Yes and no,” the judge said. “Your alleged involvement in a shooting has caused me to re-evaluate my suspension of your previous sentences. However, this is not a new case or a new punishment; that matter will come up later in the week. Are you, Jonas Smith, going to claim that you were not involved?”

            “I didn’t shoot anybody,” I said sourly. “I just happened to be holding the gun, OK?”

            “Your holding the gun after a shooting is sufficient cause for me to revoke your suspension,” the judge said, “which I am presently going to do. Matilda Halliday, do you have anything to tell the court at this time?”

            “No,” Mattie said dully.

            “Very well.” The judge banged his gavel. “With the power vested in me, I hereby order you to serve the remaining—” He glanced at the clerk, who punched some numbers into a desk calculator.

            “Thirty-seven days, Your Honor,” the clerk said.

            “The thirty-seven days of your sentences remaining in confinement at the Lancaster County jail. That would be—” He glanced at the clerk again.

            “June tenth, Your Honor,” she said.

            “From this hour until twelve o’clock noon on—”

            “Wednesday,” the clerk said.

            “Wednesday, the tenth day of June, 1970. Any questions?”

            “That’s it?” I asked.

            “That’s it,” he said. “Back to the slammer with you.”

            “Could I—?”

            “What is it?” The judge looked up at me impatiently but not unkindly; a cop’s hand was already on my arm.

            “They’ve got me locked up in the new jail down on K Street,” I said. “It’s not bad as jails go, but there’s nobody else in there. It gets kind of lonesome in the evenings.”

            “I’ll pass along your complaint,” he said. “Just happened to be holding the gun, you say?”

            “That’s right,” I said.

            “I wonder if you have any idea,” he said, “how many times I have heard that particular statement. Next case, please.”

            The courtroom was on the second floor. Rather than using the elevator, the cops took us down the stairs that led to the lobby. As we turned at the landing, I heard angry shouts below. “It’s my friends!” Mattie whispered, her voice tight with emotion. “They’ve come to rescue me!”

            “Not on this planet,” I whispered back. “You need more Thorazine, Wonder Woman.” Still, I couldn’t help feeling a thrill of hope myself. Thirty-seven fine spring days would be a lot to miss.

            Our escorts hurried us down the last of the steps and turned us along the wall, away from the plate-glass windows across the hallway. Outside, a dozen or so demonstrators argued shrilly with two cops who blocked the entrance. Adrian posed in the forefront with his righteous strut, and Selva in her greasepaint death-mask scowled beside him; as I watched, she opened her mouth to shriek like a harridan. White blouse, black mini, one black leg and one white one; the red interior of her furious cold-lipped mouth. To save my heart from breaking, I looked off across the street to where a much larger crowd had backed up along the sidewalk, displaying the usual ill-lettered placards: “U. S. Out of Cambodia Now!” Ray Moriarty stood over there with his bullhorn, concerned frown in place, and I searched foolishly for foolish, bluff-jawed Ted Kemp until I remembered who the woman was who was being marched along beside me, and why.

            As Mattie and I were jerked around a corner, I heard glass smashing and glanced back to see Krupp and Kerrigan shoving a bus-stop bench through a panel beside the entrance. “Whew!” I said to Mattie. “Now I know how it looks from the cops’ point of view.”

            “They didn’t see us,” she said, grief in her voice. “My friends didn’t see us.”

            “It wasn’t about us, Mattie,” I said. “Remember, the draft board office is in this building.”

            “I’m going back,” she whispered. “Help me fight these guys, OK?”

            “Don’t,” I said. “They’ll put you in a strait-jacket next time.” We were soon pushed aboard the familiar van. Mattie was dropped off at the downtown station; I was taken to my cell in the new building.

After the cops left, I let myself out when no one happened to be looking and helped one of the crews hang ceiling panels the rest of the afternoon.

157. The sullen girl cadet. . . .

            The sullen girl cadet brought me an early supper, as she’d dome the previous evening; I was still loose in the hallway, so she ordered me back into my cell and re-locked the door. The truth of it was, I didn’t like that cell, nor did I care for the building. It made me think of being eighteen and living in the freshman dorm. But I went; I even offered to stay there if she’d bring me a magazine.

            “We don’t have magazines,” she said. “This isn’t the doctor’s office.”

            “Are you taking classes? What about one of your textbooks? I’m desperate for something to read.”

            “I need them myself. You might turn the corners down or something.”

            “That’s right,” I said. “Once a criminal, always a criminal.” I told myself that the next time I went out for a stroll I’d bring back reading material, if it was only a copy of Playboy. Just then two of the younger cops came hurrying up the hall from the direction of parking lot. One of them carried a transistor radio in front of him, with the speaker pointed toward me; he wore the gloating grin of a fan whose football team has scored a touchdown. “Yo!” he cried, turning up the volume. “Get a load of this, hippie!”

            I heard a volley of rifle fire and girls’ screams, then the garbled voice of a reporter, then the network announcer. Four students dead, he said. Someplace called Kent State. I stared back blankly at the triumphantly strutting cop. “Kent State,” I said. “Where’s that? It’s not Nebraska.”

            “Ohio,” he said, snapping off the radio. “It isn’t far from here, asshole. Not as far as you fucking longhairs think.”

            “This is terrible. Hey, turn that back on. I need to hear more.”

            “Hah!” he crowed, his face flushed. “Kiss my ass.”

            “No,” the girl said to him. “Turn it on.” The cop who was with him looked back and forth among us. “Please?” the girl said. “My brother goes to college over in Iowa.”

            “They said Ohio, not Iowa,” the angry cop snapped. He turned to me. “You’re lucky,” he said. “When the shooting starts, you’ll be locked up safe.” He looked me contemptuously up and down. “Too bad,” he added. “I’d like to take you out. You and all the other long-haired faggot Commie freaks.”

            “I’m no Communist,” I said. “Don’t be absurd. Turn that thing back on.”

            “Eat my shorts.”

            The second cop touched his arm. “Turn it on,” he said.

            The mean cop faced him. “What’s the matter with you?” he snarled. The second cop pulled back. “Shit!” the first cop said. “This is what we wanted! This is war!”

            I looked down at him. “You don’t know what war is,” I said. “Turn it on.”

            “I know I lost a cousin!” he said furiously. “I know one of my buddies got his foot blown off over there!”

            “This isn’t the same,” I said. “It must just be some kind of screw-up. Turn the radio back on. Please?”

            “Fuck you!” He looked incredulously at the three of us, me and the anxious girl and the second cop. “Fuck all of you! This is incredible!” Shoving the radio into the hands of his pal, he turned and stomped off down the hall. “Pussies!” he shouted. “This country is full of pussies! Incredible!”

            That was how I first heard about the Kent State shootings: over a cheap pocket radio held by a runty mean-eyed cop who hated me for the way I looked. The middle class was shooting its own privileged kids; that’s what it sounded like. We had no way of knowing that it wasn’t the start of something horrible.

            “That’s bad,” I said to the girl after we’d listened to it again. “Later on, I may step out for a while. If I do, I’ll be back shortly after midnight.”

            “I’ll call the sergeant,” she said angrily. “He’ll handcuff you to the bars. You’re supposed to be locked up, you crazy nut.”

            “I can’t help it,” I said. “I’m worried about my friends. You do your job, honey, and I’ll do mine. Did they get the monitor hooked up yet?”

            “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

            “What’s your brother taking in college?”

            “He’s studying to be a dope head,” she said. “Like you.”

158. I released myself. . . .

            I released myself on my own recognizance sometime after ten p. m., following two cops out the door who were arguing about a gadget that was used on the TV series Mission Impossible. No, one of them said, you’d need a blast furnace to melt that much gold that fast. I turned left, avoiding the parking lot, wired the latch of the exit door, and walked across to Eleventh Street and uptown to Casey’s. I found the place deserted except for L. D. Langdon washing glasses behind the bar. “Hey,” I said to her. “Bend over a little farther. You haven’t got much cleavage, but I’ve been deprived.”

            “Hello, Ace,” she said, glancing up testily. “I didn’t expect to see you out enjoying the fresh air.”

            “They left some rivets out of the door,” I said. “I can slip away a few minutes if no one sees me. Where is everybody?”

            “The crowd left here an hour ago. They said they were going to take over the ROTC building. I’m not sure I want you in here, Jonas. Mightn’t I be harboring a fugitive or something?”

            “Not unless they find me hiding under the counter. How about advancing me a draft? I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday.”

            “I’ll draw you one if you’ll drink it and go,” she said.

            “Done,” I said. She toweled soapy water from her hands and carried a wet glass to the pull. “So, they’re all at good old Military and Naval Science,” I said. “A place sadly familiar to me. Did you know I was a ROTC slob?” She handed me the full glass without comment. “If you think Leonard’s lectures are boring,” I said, “you ought to hear Captain Leeson talk about Grant’s strategy at Vicksburg.”

            “Drink,” she said. “Leave.”

            “Jesus Christ, L. D.,” I said. “What is it? Have I done something? Listen, there’s nothing wrong with your cleavage, I was just—”

            “Never mind my cleavage,” she said. “Listen, Jonas. Are you with the police or something? Because it looks pretty fishy, you walking the streets just when there’s a takeover on campus. And, you know, they say that man you shot was one of the local narcs.”

            “I didn’t shoot him. Mattie Halliday shot him,” I said. “That reminds me, by the way. How’s Julia?”

            “Coping, no thanks to you. Are you with the police? FBI, CIA, military intelligence, whatever?”

            “No.”

            “Because it would help to explain what you’re doing on campus at all, seeing that you could obviously give a shit about learning anything.”

            “No.” I sipped the beer, studying her. She wouldn’t meet my gaze. “This is not just you,” I said. “Who’s been spreading crap about me? Is it Adrian Fisher pursuing this line of inductive reasoning?”

            “People are scared,” she said defensively. “They’re also smoking pot. Drink up, Jonas. I mean it. I’m uneasy having you here.”

            “I’ll be damned,” I said, drinking off the lees. “Those hard brass balls of yours, turning to mush on my account? Don’t you believe I’m harmless?”

            “You seem an inconsequential boob, all right,” she said, confiscating my glass. “Ted Kemp was another buffoon. I know, because he was my lover for a year and a half. Suddenly he’s a dead buffoon, and how am I to believe you had nothing to do with this? I’m sorry, Jonas. I just can’t, any more.”

            “I’m sorry, too,” I said conversationally. “When’s the funeral?” But L. D. turned away and refused to speak to me.

159. As I crossed R Street. . . .

            As I crossed R Street and stepped onto the grounds of the University, I heard a familiar doong, ka-doong, ka-doong, ka-doong coming from near the Coliseum. A weeping harmonica staggered after the bass like a panhandler keeping pace with a hooker, and my heart sped up as I followed the beat toward Military and Naval Sciences. That was where Adrian Fisher would be, I thought, and Selva, too.

            From a distance, it looked more like a street dance than a demonstration. The old M & N or “ROTC” Building sat on the corner of campus nearest the power plant; externally it resembled any of the older classroom buildings, though on the inside it had tiers of balconies surrounding an empty space, rather like an old-fashioned brewery. A broad landing of poured concrete stood before the entrance, making a natural stage, and as I passed Morrill Hall where the dead elephants were kept and looked across the narrow mall, I could see McKinley and Shemansky up on the stage, along with some minor functionaries of the movement. The organizers were absent, I supposed within the building itself. I passed a squad car belonging to the campus police, and nodded in its direction. The street that led along the north side of the mall, past the Coliseum to the football stadium, had been blocked off with placards and with orange-and-white-striped barricades stolen from a utilities project.

            A crowd of students packed the street and spilled over into the mall and up onto the landscaping; they looked like ordinary students, which is to say that they were not especially long-haired for the time and included a few that were obviously recruits from the frat and sorority houses that lined 16th Street, just two blocks away. Some were dancing, others talked in small groups, and still others listened to the music, which sounded cheerful but a little feeble without drums and vocals. Here and there the coals of cigarettes brightened like ruby fireflies; besides the tangy perfume of marijuana, I smelled the yeasty horse-breath fragrance of beer. Half a dozen campus cops were in attendance, monitoring the proceedings with arms crossed, while the students for their part maintained an excited decorum. I shouldered my way through the dancers and up onto the curb, where I stood a little to one side, watching my bookish blues buddies play and sway.

            One of the entrance doors stood open, and I noticed people passing freely in and out. I ascended the steps near the edge and slipped behind a stack of quaking loudspeakers, then stepped through the doorway, where I collided with Dexter Coffey in the unlit entryway. “Hi, Dex,” I shouted above the music. “Is there a cover?”

            He looked me up and down. “I guess you’re part of the band,” he said. “Aren’t you supposed to be in jail?”

            “I decided to go out for pizza,” I said. “Is Julia here?”

            “She’s here,” he said. “We’ve been trying to get her to sing. I think it would be good if we could get her up there.”

            “Who else is here? The usual?” I meant Adrian and Selva.

            “Why don’t you go on down and find out,” he said cryptically. “I’m not stopping you.”

            I entered the depths of the M & N building warily after not having set foot in it for three years. Not much had changed; the status roster of the Arnold Air Society remained as it was, a colored-pencil drawing of a pile of battling children. The doors lacked the political cartoons you would see taped to the glass in any other suite of offices on campus. I found my way down a half-flight of steps to a sober gathering under the gloomy atrium. Standing against the wall or perched on rolled-up sleeping bags in that bottom-of-a-well space—no one had found the proper light switches—they had the open-faced look of stranded passengers. I knew some of them, but many were new to the demonstrations; I recognized with a start my physics professor from my sophomore year, who was addressing the solemn crowd in a voice of caution, advising them of the correct posture to resist a clubbing. Be sure, he said, to protect the back of your neck. I edged up to Larry Whyffe, who was watching the physics professor clasp his hands behind his high-crowned head. “Looks like these people are in it for the long haul,” I said.

            “Hunh? Oh, it’s you.” He gave me a slightly puzzled look; I saw that he was thoroughly stoned. “The long what?”

            “Haul. As in pulling something heavy. I wonder if they know that the cops downtown are getting ready, too.”

            Whyffe backed away from me. “I would presume so,” he said officiously, his voice slurred. “I would presume the fascist element is on the alert.”

            “Yeah,” I said, “and so is the L. P. D. Have you seen Julia Stein anywhere?”

            Whyffe’s blue eyes darted toward the shadows. “No.”

            “What about Selva Andersen?”

            “She was arrested at the Terminal Building this afternoon. I don’t think those people have been released yet.”

            My search for Selva had turned out to be another goose chase. I left Whyffe and moved farther in, along the back of the crowd. I found Julia in the custody of Barbara Justman, pressed against the door of one of the offices. “Hey,” I said to her. “The Nerd Brothers are begging for your services.”

            “Jonas!” she said, stepping forward for a hug. I embraced her while the librarian drilled me with a glare. “Oh,” Julia said, gripping me tighter. I inhaled a bit to keep my lungs from being crushed.

            “Sorry about that whole shit-ass bloody scene,” I said to her gently. “I guess Mattie’s locked up somewhere, anyhow.”

            “I guess,” Julia said. “Though if you’re out, I don’t know. When did they release you?”

            “Well,” I said, “I’m not technically released. I just came out for a breath of fresh air. So to speak.”

            Julia let go of me and stood back. “You escaped?”

            “That’s too melodramatic a word for it. I’m going back in a few minutes. I wouldn’t want them to get excited.”

            It was Barbara Justman’s turn to speak. “Do you mean to tell us, Mr. Smith, that you can come and go from police custody as you wish?”

            “I can slip out, if I’m careful,” I responded. “They’ve got me in the new jail down on K Street. They don’t quite have their security worked out yet.”

            “That’s horse puckey, Mr. Smith,” Barbara Justman said coldly. “A twelve-year-old wouldn’t believe it.” She turned on her heel and walked away from us. I was about to interrogate Julia further when I heard the clap of hands and Barbara Justman’s voice again, raised for an annoucement. “Attention, please!” she said loudly. “May I have the group’s attention. Thank you. We have an informer among us, and I’d like to ask him to step forward. Mr. Smith? Would you care to address the strike committee?”

            I glanced at Julia, then turned to face the rest of them. “Sure,” I said, moving up into the light. “As a former student here, I guess I can inform you of some things. First, the light switches are down the hall to your right. Second, there are rest rooms on the fourth floor if these get too crowded. There’s also a utilities closet, where they keep the toilet paper. There’s no phones outside the offices, as far as I know.” I took a breath; the room was silent. “Something else you should know. I’ve been spending time at the new city-county jail on K Street. From my accommodations there I can see the LPD parking lot. I can tell you that they have about a hundred cops on full alert, lined up in their cop cars and waiting for a call. Some of them are looking happy that they might get a chance to beat on you. I’d be careful how I proceeded if I were running this thing.”

            I fell silent, my legs shaking. Someone—it sounded like Whyffe—said “Off the pig!” He was shushed.

            Someone else spoke up. “What do you think we should do?” the voice said.

            “Refrain from tearing up the place,” I said. “Don’t do anything to make the campus police ask for reinforcements. Don’t take the demonstration off campus. See if you can get some kind of official recognition; maybe the faculty senate will support you. I don’t know. Politics has never been my specialty. This is politics,” I added. “I suggest you don’t try to turn it into a war. You’ll lose.”

            “If it’s war, whose side are you on?” a voice asked.

            “I am a captain in the United States Air Force reserve,” I said. “I am also a human being with a conscience. Please don’t call on me to choose between my country and my friends.”

            The room was silent. Finally Barbara Justman spoke up. “I think you should go,” she said to me. “Tell them we’ll do what we have to do, Mr. Smith.”

            “I’ll tell them if anybody asks me,” I said. “My opinion is not much in demand, down there on K Street.”

            I had turned to leave and was nearing the steps when Julia caught up with me. She flung her arms around me again and wedged me against her breasts. “That was very brave, Jonas,” she said tearfully. “Take me with you.”

            “I guess not, kiddo,” I said. “They’d really have a nervous breakdown if they found a woman in my cell. You’d better stay where Barbara can look after you.” I held her gently at arm’s length. “Did you know they reinstated our sentences from the Spiro Agnew riot? Mine and Mattie’s?”

            “What does that mean, Jonas?”

            “It means you’ll be safe from Mattie for a while. Thirty-seven days, to be exact,” I said. “I’ll be in the slammer, too. Could you keep an eye on my apartment until I get out?”

            “Of course I will,” she said. “Are there plants?”

            “No plants to water, no cat to feed,” I said. “I don’t expect Don Stinns will be coming around. It’s just that I wouldn’t want the landlord to think I’d pulled out on him and abandoned my stuff.”

            “I’ll watch it for you,” Julia said. “You should get some plants.”

            “Could you loan me any money? I had to bum off L. D. Langdon for a beer.”

            “Just a minute.” Julia went all the way back where Barbara Justman waited to retrieve her purse. “Here’s four dollars,” she said when she returned. “It’s all I have.”

            “Thanks,” I said. “You know what? You’re all right.”

160. It was well after midnight. . . .

            It was well after midnight when I got back to K Street. I slipped in the side entrance, reclaimed my piece of wire, and went up the stairs, making a detour through the second floor to reach the parking-lot side of the cell block. When I came downstairs again, I glanced outside to see whether the parking lot was full of police. It was. Someone had turned off the lights in the hallway, though the door remained propped open; I slid through and felt my way in the darkness, grateful that my silhouette wouldn’t be projected to the cops outside. The yellow square of light from the window at the far end gave enough illumination for me to make out the doors of the cells, and I found the door to Number Eight easily and lifted it and set it aside. I stepped blindly into the deeper gloom and had turned and was setting the door back in its place when someone behind me struck a match. I smelled phosphorus and expensive tobacco. I turned to face Joe Garriott and two other men seated on one of the slabs. The second man was the curly-headed detective; the third pair of eyes in this row of watching owls belonged to my dad.

            Once Garriott shook the match out, all I could see was the ember of his cigar and the white UFO shape of his hat. “Son,” he said, “I wouldn’t do that any more if I were you.”

            “Yes, sir,” I said.

            “Are all these doors defective?”

            “Yes, sir. Every one that I’ve tried.”

            The hat tipped to the left. “Well,” he said to the man next to him, “we can’t put the little sons of bitches in here.”

            My father’s voice spoke up. “Are you all right, son?” he asked.

            “Yes,” I replied. “Though it looks like I’m going to be here for thirty-seven more days.”

            “Did you shoot that fellow that’s in the hospital?”

            “No. Mattie Halliday shot him.”

            “I expect I’ll be seeing you when you get out, then.”

            “Yeah. I expect you will.” I slid the door open again and the three men got up and left in the dark. On his way out, my father touched my wrist and I caught his hand. He returned my grip strongly.

            “Knucklehead,” he said.

            I slid the door closed and listened to their footsteps recede down the hallway. Then I lay down on my bunk. The aroma of their tobacco lingered in the air, making me wish for cigarettes. I thought I could smell my father, his own personal air of diesel fuel and masculine sweat. Not one to use anti-perspirants, my father. “You’re right about me, Dad,” I said softly. “Your son is dirt.”

161. The crisis over the Cambodia. . . .

            The crisis over the Cambodia invasion and Kent State shootings passed without much violence, at least in Lincoln. By good luck, the hard-core militants, Selva and Adrian among them, had been jailed for trashing the entrance to the Terminal Building on Monday, and were still tied up with their hearings on Tuesday morning. A Faculty Senate meeting that had been scheduled for noon on Tuesday somehow got moved up to ten a.m.; on behalf of the faculty, Barbara Justman invited the activists sitting in the ROTC Building to attend, thus handing them an excuse to march singing out of harm’s way. By the time the chancellor’s noon deadline arrived, no stubborn bodies were left to be removed, and Police Chief Garriott never got his phone call. Leonard Strange and Lewis Rey helped to pull that one off. I like to think another factor might’ve been that the pins were missing from the sliding-door tracks at the new jail.

            The door they fixed first was the door at the front of my cell. I could see it was going to take the fun out of being incarcerated. The man who installed the pins grinned at me sympathetically. “I guess you won’t be visiting your girl friend any more,” he said.

            “Don’t have a friend,” I said glumly. “Girl or otherwise.”

            After that, time both speeded up and slowed down. Because I had few memories of events, there was little to mark the weeks, so in retrospect they seemed to have flown by. Yet the strongest memory I did retain was the excruciating passage of minutes, hours, days. A bitterness that had been stalking me for months caught up with me, so that I spent long stretches lying on the slab, my arms wrapped around my head. There were nights when I imagined I could smell beer. Julia visited me a number of times, and Toni McFerrin brought me cookies; otherwise, my only conversation was with cops. I complained repeatedly about the lack of company.

            One day the desk sergeant came down the hall with mischief in his eye and a partner bearing a clipboard and handcuffs. “You want company?” he said to me. “We’ve got a buddy of yours booked in on D and D charges who says he’s lonesome. Come on, we’re going to move you to the other place.”

            “What about my stuff?” Besides the cardboard pad and air mattress, I’d accumulated some books and magazines, gifts from Julia.

            “We’ll put it in a box for you. Let’s go; cuffs, please.” I held my wrists in front of me. I’d built enough trust by then that I was handcuffed in front when I was taken places, instead of behind my back. It was a big improvement.

            They wouldn’t tell me the name of my new cellmate, but from the smiles on the cops’ faces as I was escorted through the downtown station, I expected the news not to be good. Don Stinns had just been released from the hospital, but I didn’t think it could be him already; other than Adrian, whom I hated more or less in secret, and Dan Kroger, who ought to be in Viet Nam, I had no enemies that the Lincoln cops would know about. So, until I saw the man, it was a puzzle to me.

            When the sergeant swung the cell door open—no fancy pins or sliding bars, just a hinged grid of steel with an enormous lock—the bruised face that looked up at me belonged to the ambulance driver from Bertie’s. He had blood on his lips, and his matted hair sprung wildly from his head; I took one horrified look at him and climbed up on the upper bunk, scooting myself back into a corner with my heels in front of me. The desk sergeant laughed. “No loud noises, children,” he said. “Otherwise we come back and put the fire hose on you.”

            “Thanks a lot,” I said to him. The ambulance driver said nothing. After the sergeant left I heard him lie down, and from his hoarse breathing I thought that he’d fallen asleep. I relaxed my defensive posture and shifted to a more comfortable position.

            Suddenly he spoke. “You don’t have to sit up there hissing like a treed possum,” he said. “I ain’t going to bite you.”

            I moistened my dry mouth. “Wasn’t hissing,” I said. I pulled my heels up in readiness. “You’re the one who’s breathing funny,” I said.

            “My sinuses are swelled shut,” he said. “They pounded on me good. You could take a shit on the American flag and I wouldn’t do nothing to you today. Besides, I’m a certified pacifist.”

            “I have never done anything nasty to the flag,” I said. “If you’re a pacifist, how come you’ve attacked me every time I’ve seen you?”

            “I attacked you?” he said. “You’re the one who robbed me out of a pizza.” The springs of his bunk squeaked. “I was goddam hungry, too.”

            I lowered my feet and peered down. He was sitting on the edge of his bunk, holding his head. “You know,” I said, “if I had the least suspicion that you drank, I’d say you looked a tiny bit hung over.”

            “Oohh.” He let out a heartfelt groan. “Being hung over ain’t the half of it,” he said. “If I don’t get something to eat pretty soon, I’m going to start having hallucinations.” He looked up at me; I was staring at him in alarm. “Yeah,” he said. “Any time I go without food, or do too much exercise, things start to jump out at me. It can get real unpleasant. You were in Viet Nam, am I right?”

            “In the Air Force,” I said. “I was a Spad pilot.”

            “A baby burner,” he said. “You know what a C-130 is?”

            “Cargo plane,” I said. “A fat target.”

            “Then you know some of ‘em were equipped to spray,” he said. “Because I was a pacifist—I grew up Seventh-Day Adventist, believe it or not—they put me in Medevac. I saw plenty of action without carrying a gun, and got scars on me to prove it. Anyhow— It was getting close to the end of my tour, when we got a call that this spray plane had went down. It happened pretty regular down around Can Tho.”

            “Stupid the way they sent those things low over the trees,” I said. “Those poor SAC pilots were scared to death. Some of ‘em weren’t even combat trained.”

            “Unfortunately we found the son of a bitch,” he said. “Nobody alive in it but we had to get the bodies out. Well, we all got soaked in spider piss. You heard of Agent Orange?”

            “That’s the stuff they spray to knock down the leaves. That’s all I know about it.”

            “Yeah, it does more than that,” he said. “Come down here. I want to show you something.” I slid to the edge of the bunk and looked down. He was taking off his shirt. “Come on,” he said angrily. “I ain’t gonna rape you.” I got down carefully, looking around at the cell as I did so. There wasn’t much to inventory.

            “Look here,” he said, turning his back. “Put your nose down close to my skin. What do you see?”

            His back was covered with a rash of pimples. “I see a million little whitehead zits,” I said.

            He showed me his upper arms, also covered with eruptions resembling gnat bites. “Everywhere my uniform was,” he said. “Especially the scrotum, ‘cause I had on jockey shorts that day. I’d show it to you, but it really ain’t all that erotic. And my feet; my boots must have been full of that shit.”

            “Do you have it all the time, or does it come and go?”

            “Comes and goes,” he said. “It itches more in the summer because I sweat, but it covers more area in the winter. I’ve thought of moving to Tahiti or someplace warm where I could go naked, but my kids are here in Lincoln.”

            “Have you seen a doctor about it? Maybe they could help you at the VA hospital.”

            “Been there. At first they called it a nervous condition and gave me tranquilizers; then they put me on prednisone, which causes me to get in fights. They don’t admit it’s combat related. These zits ain’t the only thing that’s wrong with me. When it’s real bad I get a condition called porphyria, which makes my urine look like raspberry juice. That, plus I’m not quite right in the head. Just like King George the Third of England.”

            “Have you kept in touch with the other guys in your unit to see if any of them developed the same thing?”

            “One of ‘em writes to me. He’s worried because his wife is pregnant; he’s afraid it might damage the kid. I told him he should’ve got a divorce and a vasectomy, like me.”

            “Why does he think the child might be at risk?”

            The ambulance driver put his shirt back on. “There’s rumors,” he said. “The government is doing a cover-up. It’s like we’re the Roswell Aliens or something.” He gave me a hard look. “If I told you all this when I was drunk, you’d think it was just some bullshit you heard in a bar, am I right?”

            “I might,” I admitted. “There’s a lot of jokers out there getting free drinks off their war experiences.”

            “I don’t want no free drinks,” he said. “I might take that pizza you owe me.”

            “You forfeited,” I said. “I’ll think about it, though. How long will you be in here?”

            “My boss is bailing me out tomorrow,” he said. “He’s a Korean War vet, thank God. He says he understands some of this weirdness I’m going through.”

            “You can send me a pizza, then,” I said. “I’ve still got two more weeks.”

            “What did you do? Didn’t I read about you in the paper?”

            “A woman I know shot Don Stinns at my apartment. I happened to be holding her pistol when the cops walked in. They know I didn’t do anything, but they’re keeping me on some old charges while I talk to the grand jury about the anti-war movement.”

            The ambulance driver glanced at me. “Brain-wise, Don’s messed up just like me,” he said. “Except he got his brain damage by sniffing glue.”

            “I don’t feel sorry for him,” I said. “I would’ve finished him, only the cops showed up. We’ve got a history, Don and me.”

            “That’s cold,” he said. The two of us fell silent. After a while, the ambulance driver collapsed on his bunk and covered his face with his hands. “Jesus Christ,” he said.

            “You’ll be all right,” I said. “That stuff has to work its way out of your system eventually.”

            “Not before I lose my job,” he said. “Jesus Christ. I don’t know what will become of me.”