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Book Nine: In the
New Semester
72. The first
event. . . .
The
first event on the radical students’ calendar for the spring semester was
Vice-President Spiro Agnew’s visit to Lincoln. Nobody was behind in homework
yet—it was the first Monday of the second week of classes—so a lot of students
turned out, including some unsober individuals who hoped their friends would
see them on TV. There was a fine sense of theatrics about the whole thing. The
only ones not in a mood to enjoy themselves were the Lincoln cops, directing
traffic with flashlights or monitoring the crowd from their motorcycles, frozen
stiff in their glossy winter leathers. It was an especially sharp night, so the
demonstrators—the newspapers said 200 of us—were bundled up in parkas and
mufflers and mittens. Spiro was to speak at Pershing Auditorium at 8 p.m., and
everyone gathered on the steps at 6. A group split off to picket the rear
entrance, but I was not a witness to anything that occurred back there.
Selva
Andersen was up near the steps, along with Adrian. She looked pale and nettled;
she stood first on one foot and then on the other, and wrapped her arms tightly
around herself and tucked her mittened fingers under her armpits. I would’ve
gone up and offered her my thick Air Force overcoat, but as I said, Adrian
Fisher was right there. Anyway her fiercely uncomfortable look was suitable to
the occasion. I’d put on my full Air Force winter dress blues, captain’s double
silver bars and all; the only nonregulation items were my beard, long since
past the itchy stage, and Julia’s silver chain, sans shrapnel, which I wore
outside the overcoat where it wouldn’t frostbite my neck. I’d also put on boots
and heavy socks, else I’d have had to dance on frozen feet like Selva.
With
two hours to kill, there was time for plenty of posturing. Ray Moriarty, of the
Moratorium Committee, made a short announcement on the bullhorn that there
would be an open mike, or “open horn,” before the scheduled speakers began at
seven. A few people went up to talk, including Krupp, my student of the fall
semester. These tirades were mostly short, and made us sound more simple-minded
than we were. L. D. Langdon, with whom I was standing, turned to me during one
of the dead spots. “Got anything to say, Ace?”
“Pretty
fucking cold,” I said. “Other than that, no. Is Teddy going to say something?”
Ted Kemp was at the front of the crowd with Selva and Adrian. I didn’t see
Mattie Halliday anywhere.
“He’s
one of the featured speakers,” L. D. said. “His speech is going to be
outstanding. I know because I wrote it.”
“I
wish they’d pass out those candles,” I said. “And they’d better have an extra
battery for that horn. It’s not going to last two hours at this temperature.”
“You
know, this is exciting,” L. D. said. “I never actually saw a vice-president of
the United States before.”
“You’re
not going to see him tonight, either,” I said. “They’ll take him in the back
way for sure. If he’s not inside the building already.”
“Spiro,”
L. D. said. “What a comedian. Where does the Republican Party get these people,
anyway?”
“You
ought to know,” I said. “He’s from your part of the country.”
“I’m
from Pennsylvania,” L. D. said. “He’s from New Jersey. I don’t take any
responsibility for what crawls out of New Jersey.”
I
was about to say something further when L. D. interrupted me. “Uh-oh,” she
said. “Time to make myself scarce.” When I looked around to see what was the
matter, L. D. Langdon had vanished; Mattie Halliday came striding up to take
her place.
“Who’s
that you were talking with?” Mattie demanded. Her handsome face was red from
her walk in the cold. “Smells like a rat’s been here.”
“Hello,
Mattie,” I said. “Did you bring your revolver?”
“Actually,
I didn’t,” she said. “I was afraid I might be tempted to use it. How much have
I missed?” Her eyes went straight to Kemp at the front of the crowd.
“No
speeches yet,” I said. “No Spiro, either. I was just telling— someone that I
bet we don’t see him.”
“Of
course we won’t. The chickenshit bastard motherfucker.” Her eyes bulged
slightly as she glared at Kemp. “Where’d she get to?” Mattie asked me.
“Didn’t
say,” I replied. “I suppose she saw you and went to stand near one of the
cops.”
“I
don’t know why I keep coming out for these things,” Mattie said. “They’re so
ineffective. We should be inside the auditorium. That’s where all the TV
cameras are set up.”
“Mattie,”
I said. “Wait a minute, now. If you’re here to start a riot, don’t enlist me.”
“Who’s
starting a riot?” Mattie said. “I just think we should be inside, that’s all.
We need more big men like you to lead the way. Most of these protesters are
little Jewish shrimps from the East Coast. I’ll bet their fathers are making
money off the war.”
Looking
around, I didn’t find many East Coast shrimps. Most looked tall and blond and
earnest, more like Lutherans and Methodists from the Dakotas. “It’s an open
mike,” I said after a pause. “Maybe you ought to go up and give the
benediction.”
“What
a good idea,” Mattie said. “I’ll ask the Lord to smite the Chamber of Commerce
with emerods.” She remained at my side, scowling at the protesters. “Speaking
of Jews,” Mattie said, “I don’t see our local pornographer.”
“Weld?
He’s too skinny,” I said. “He’d freeze to death in five minutes out here.”
“Somebody
told me he lives on rice,” Mattie said. “Rice and rotten vegetables out of the
dumpster.”
“I
wouldn’t know,” I said. “I’ve seen him scarf down a plate of French fries.”
“This
sucks,” Mattie Halliday said. “I’m going up there.” She gathered her lapels,
tilted her head forward, and bowled through the scattering protesters like a
Nebraska fullback blasting through the South Dakota State defensive line.
Mattie wrested the bullhorn from a startled young woman from Nebraska Wesleyan
who’d just finished reading a poem. “Hello, I’m Mattie Halliday. You know me,”
she said to the audience, “as an advocate for women’s rights and against
domestic violence. You may not know that I’m the daughter of an Army officer.
My father is a man— My father is a man capable of knocking down a middle-sized
woman with a slap of his open hand because of a wrinkle in his freshly ironed
uniform. I’m not saying all military men are like that— My father is a man who
hasn’t spoken to his own brother in fifteen years because his brother voted for
Adlai Stevenson in 1952. This is a man who once shot a neighbor’s collie— A
beautiful dog, deep golden fur, I can see it to this day— He took a .45 caliber
automatic pistol and shot the neighbor’s collie because it growled at his son
across the fence. Never mind that the son threw rocks at it every day of its
life— You may not know me as the daughter of the commander of an Army regiment.
All I’m saying here— All I’m saying is, that at a personal, gut level— At an
at-home level, I know something about the military. I know what its domestic
life is like.” The crowd had quieted and was watching and listening to her.
“Now
it doesn’t take much thinking,” Mattie went on. “It doesn’t take much
imagination to see what the Vietnam War protest has to do with women’s rights.
Because what right could be more important than to be able to raise your
children, to be able to bring up your sons and daughters in peace? Now, just
imagine yourself. . . .” While Mattie dramatized the life of a peasant woman
whose village and family were disrupted by the war, I thought of my old boss,
also a colonel and the nicest man you’d ever want to meet. It was hard to
imagine him swatting a fly, let alone shooting a collie. And yet, the command
he orchestrated wrought fire from the air.
Mattie
was a powerful speaker, and her belligerence was catching in the crowd, a spark
here, a flicker there. Ray Moriarty and Ted Kemp conferred at the foot of the
steps; every once in a while Ray glanced longingly at his bullhorn. There are
plenty of people who have no idea how to use a microphone—many of them become
FM disk jockeys—but Mattie had the technique. Her voice came out flat and
bitter through the cheap electronics, while her crisp consonants rattled like
buckshot off the commercial buildings across Fifteenth Street. She was starting
to get responses from the audience, a few yeses and right ons, when two things happened at once. Ray Moriarty and Ted Kemp went up
to her to try to get control of the bullhorn, and a caravan of Republican
dignitaries pulled up behind us in the street.
While
the crowd was absorbed in the confrontation on the steps, the topcoated men
from the limousines formed a tight vee behind us. At a signal, led by
plainclothes cops, the wedge moved quickly forward, dividing the protesters and
shoving them aside. We were pushed to the edge of the steps and onto ridges of
bladed-off snow at either side, where we broke through and floundered back to
the sidewalk again, scattering plate-sized trapezoids of brittle snowcrust. As
the leading plainclothesman came face to face with Mattie and her bullhorn, I
found myself with a clear view and a triangle of snow in my hand. I spotted
Adrian Fisher, his mouth just opening to say something, and with a genius flick
of my weakened wrist—my right arm was still not working properly—I sailed the
chunk of snow like a Frisbee and caught him just below the eye.
As
the loosely compacted snow-chunk hit Adrian’s cheek and exploded into the
light, camera strobes began popping and all hell broke loose. Mattie Halliday
gave Ted Kemp a good crack with the cone of the bullhorn; Ray Moriarty grabbed
the horn, trying to wrestle it away from Mattie and yelling at his people to
stay calm; everyone who’d been pushed off onto the berm began pelting the
Republicans with snow and ice; and the Lincoln Police Department, those in
plainclothes and those in uniform, charged the crowd.
Taking
advantage of the cops’ momentum, dodging flying pieces of snow, I plowed my way
to the front, where Mattie clung to the grip of the horn with both hands and Ray
Moriarty, his arms wrapped clumsily around the cone, tried to pull it away from
her. A motorcycle cop held Mattie by the elbow, while two of the protesters,
the earnest types, were helping Ray. I took hold of Mattie’s arm and faced the
cop, whom I recognized through his visor as my cousin Dale. “I’ll take her,” I
shouted to Dale. “She’s a friend of mine.”
My
cousin, who’d been jabbing Ray in the face with his nightstick, turned his
attention to me. “Let go!” he shouted back angrily. “This woman is under arrest!”
“You
can’t do that,” I protested. “She’s a Unitarian minister!” I yanked Mattie’s
elbow free, but she still clung to Ray’s bullhorn.
“Minister
my ass,” my cousin shouted, retrieving his section of the arm. “Let go, or I’ll
take you in, too.”
“Think
of Toni,” I reasoned. “What if—” But Ray Moriarty chose that moment to release
his hold on the bullhorn, and Mattie swung the heavy thing overhand and smacked
Dale on top of his helmet. “Baboons!” she shrilled. “Stop fighting over my arm!” I grabbed her and started dragging her through the
crowd; Dale recovered and ran after us. Then I collided with something soft and
bulky, and a leather-clad wrist slid under my chin from behind. Someone put the
sleeper hold on me, and that was all I knew until I woke up on a wooden bench
next to Ray Moriarty, who was sobbing through a broken nose.
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