The Summer That Never Was

The Summer That Never Was

by

Steve Flood

Madness prevailed over reason, he resolved to have himself knighted by the first person he met…letting his horse take whatever path it chose, for he believed that there in lay the very essence of adventure.

Cervantes

Copyright © 2012 Stephen Flood

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction, based on historical events. In some cases, names of real people are used, however, characters and events portrayed are either composite, interpretive, or entirely the creation of the authors imagination, and not intended to represent real people, or real organizations as they actually existed.

ISBN 978-1-30-109991-7

Smashwords Edition

Cover Design: Steve Flood

Cover photo: Sean Brown, photographed by author, c.1974

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Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1 - Bloxom’s Boots

Chapter 2 - The Shadow

Chapter 3 - Green Eyes

Chapter 4 - Bells and Balls

Chapter 5 - Sparky’s Shotgun

Chapter 6 - The Berkeley Police Hat

Chapter 7 - Into The Pit

Chapter 8 - Truth or Dare

Chapter 9 - Thistle Picking

Chapter 10 - Fugitive At Last

Chapter 11 - Psilocybin

Chapter 12 - A Debt To Your Angels

Prologue

I’m not sure when the thought first occurred to me, but there was a first time—a thought so sudden and complete that there was no recollection of how things were before it. I could sit for hours and watch the pine tree in our front yard list to one side, then straighten as if it was a miracle—the smell of dirt falling through my fingers—it wasn’t dirt anymore, it was something else.

It was too hot to sleep. I lay in my boxer shorts and listened. Even the mockingbirds sounded tired. Then it started up again, rattling the casing of the machine next door. A year ago, I moved into the second story addition that my father built. It was still unfinished and the walls were bare studs, and by the time the sun came up over the mountain the heat inside would gather like a greenhouse. Even downstairs we didn’t have air conditioning. My father said that the seasons were nature’s way of reminding us of the power of the universe. My mother insisted that we join the swim club up the street. Almost before I could walk, I learned how to swim.

The day Kennedy was killed, she found me in the pool. It was my first memory of being Irish, everyone sitting around watching TV later, and saying how there was a curse on us, and how the good die young, and my dad saying that was all nonsense. Then she and some of the neighbors started crying.

Sometime later, he told me about his grandfather, who came over in a boat from Ireland. He owned a pub in County Donegal, just across from the Catholic church. The pub is still standing and so is the church, but ever since the civil war, it’s been cut in half.

The border runs right through it. With the north swearing allegiance to the queen, and the south a free and independent republic. And then he made a joke, saying that if you sat in the pews on one side you’d receive your rewards in heaven, and if you sat on the other, you’d inherit the earth.

That’s the way he tells it, my great-grandfather’s pub and the Catholic church that’s been cut in half, making a joke on the day that Kennedy died.

Indirectly, this led to my first true dilemma.

I had a habit of daydreaming at school, and no matter how many times I was reprimanded I couldn’t rid myself of it. I didn’t deliberately ignore my lessons—in some ways I had a right to stare out the window, I got it from my father, who got it from his father. But my fourth-grade teacher didn’t see it that way.

On the day the hippies marched through Berkeley burning draft cards, he was so upset, he lectured the class with his finger up at the ceiling.

It’s un-American, he stated, shaking it a few more times.

And this got me to thinking, looking out at the big maple planted in the courtyard outside. Was I American?

"Un-American!" he repeated, almost shouting it this time. Then he turned to me tapping his palm until I paid attention.

So I raised my hand and asked him:

If I was born in this country, how come we still call ourselves Irish?

With the National Guard and Martial law and the whole country up in flames, he thought I was being a smart- ass—but I was serious, how could I be two things at once?

I was an American. But that’s not all I was, and I wasn’t going to say it was, even if he gave me detention and I had to miss a day of shooting hoops with Bobby Council on the playground.

He wasn’t right. It wasn’t un-American to be Irish. I was in a conundrum over it all week. So the next Sunday, I ask Father Mahone, as he was shaking everyone’s hand at the front door after mass.

You’re as Irish as Irish is, he told me, putting his arm around my shoulder. I baptized you myself. Then he lowered his voice as if he were telling me a secret. Baptism happens only once, the month after you’re born, son.

This clarified nothing.

But you’d have better luck with big stones than to argue with Father Mahone. I knew for a fact that it didn’t happen just once, the month after you’re born. Every year the hills are baptized when the rains come and turn them green again.

The day I lost Jenny Reinhold’s garland beneath the maypole it felt like that, with the mustard blooming as far as the eye could see, and the boys going one way, and the girls going the other, weaving ribbons into a rainbow. She didn’t have a problem with being American, she knew it like she’d always known it; she was Jewish. And afterward, lying on my back staring up with the maypole poking the sky, she took it off and her hair fell down, and then she handed it to me and told me never to lose it.

If you lose it, the flowers won’t bloom.

She made me promise.

I stuck it in a cigar box and hid it in the crotch of a pear tree. In the month the grass turned, on the day they took the maypole down, I looked everywhere for that tree. But like the color green in summer, like Jenny Reinhold’s garland, I couldn’t find it anywhere.

Even now, as I lay in my boxer-shorts listening to the mockingbirds, I can still recall that vow, and one day I will find it.

But not today.

It was early. Morning was just coming up over the mountain, and already it was hot, burnishing hot. If it weren’t for the swim club, I wouldn’t have made it.

Like every day that summer, like every summer from the time I could remember, I’d immerse myself in the water, like a fish, like an amoeba, groping.

1

When I first met Tbone Brown, fair and square I had him pinned in a half-nelson with his face in the dirt, but he still wouldn’t cry uncle. We became friends after that, almost like brothers. He was being reborn, just like me, only with him, it wasn’t water, it was with fire.

The following year he came down with rubella fever and had to have an operation that left him with only one good ear. After that, it didn’t matter how hot it was, he wouldn’t go near the Aquatics swim club.

Indirectly, this led to his true calling.

Look at Django, he only has two fingers, he told me, just before he quit his paper route to devote all his time to playing guitar.

And like all the great musicians, he slept in till noon. If it wasn’t for Gracie Newsome, he wouldn’t have considered going to the club that day.

Right after doing my chores, I got a call from Johnny Martin, and he swore on a stack of bibles that she’d be there. When I called Tbone, telling him, he jumped out of bed, bolted down a bowl of Cheerios and five minutes later hopped on the Flyer—a wide-tired girl’s bike, with a double spring seat.

Pulling off the road and onto a path, he took the shortcut across the old farmlands. At one time pears grew the size of fists and plumbs and grapes in bushels, trucked down to the train stop at Hookston Station, where the Southern Pacific would pick them up and haul them off to market.

Then came the last harvest and the houses and the GI bill and the baby boom. Now the trees stood barren and ravens gathered in the branch tops, bickering. One summer, I shot one right through the eye. It just sat there without moving like a rusted weathervane, then dropped like a stone. When I found it, the BB went clean through its head and blood was coming out the other side. I wished then that I could take it back.

Tbone never wished he could take anything back. Coming to the ditch behind the dead end sign, he lit up the smoke he ripped off from his mother’s purse and pitched his lips.

Fucking toads, he said out loud, tossing the butt before it was half done.

Every time I saw him he was singing Suzie Q insisting there was a future in playing rock and roll just because Creedence Clearwater used to go to his high school. Now he pounded out the bass line against the chain guard, picking up speed as he hit the incline, and no one was going to tell him any different, not even Fran.

She didn’t care about the Parliaments, as long as it wasn’t her last one, but if you ever called her Lillian she could put her Irish into it. The time she caught us screaming in his good ear, she came right out of her skin. Sean said it was hormones, but I think she was just terrified that one day he would end up as deaf as a thumbtack. Every summer she took him in for a new set of earplugs, it was the only way Doc McCutchins would let him go near the water.

Right when he jumped the culvert, it was in his face—a scrap of tin above a wall of pyracantha. He paused in front of the sign, bouncing on the seat mouthing the words like he’d never seen them before Private Drive Pool Members Only.

He hated that sign. What enraged him even more was the thought that he was one of them. Luciferous, unhinged, there was no turning back. It wasn’t Gracie Newsome in a bikini that gripped him like an undertow; it was something else, like a second skin or an old pair of Levies or the heat of a bonfire.

***~~***

Johnny Martin could swim both lengths of the pool, taking one breath at the flip-turn and one breath on the way back. Tbone couldn’t swim a day to save his life, about the only thing they had in common was a crush on Gracie. But lately she’d been coming to the club with her boyfriend in his bug, so the truth was, neither of them stood a chance.

Wheeling the Flyer past a row of cars grilling in the heat, he let go of the handlebars, stretched out his arms, and let off a yahoo.

Baby I love you, Suzie Q.

He shoved the kickstand to ground and leered over at the VW.

Then he remembered Fran accusing him of stealing her last cigarette, then the scalding when she overheard him calling her Lillian, and all the rest—Gracie Newsome, his deaf ear, the club, and something else too. He couldn’t put his finger on it, and that bothered him more than anything.

Unless you counted the night Mary Birnbaum stuck her hand down his pants and pulled out his pecker without unzipping his jeans, he was still a virgin. Down the steps, shaded by lurching elms, his unruly mop falling over his bony shoulders, he felt like a windblown skirt.

It was the poster of Marilyn that hung over his brother’s bed, opposite the one of James Dean standing against a brick wall, and then, just as suddenly, he thought of the other two, Joplin and Hendrix. Every night before going to sleep, Sean would light a candle and say something like a prayer.

What’s the fixation with death? Tbone pondered, thinking of his brother.

To him, death was as far away as Jupiter. But Sean was different. Lately, he seemed to ruminate on it like old people—just one more thing that didn’t make sense. Tbone was growing tired of things that didn’t make sense.

Martin was preparing his serve when he saw him walk in, and give his name to the girl with the black lipstick at the front desk.

We’re over here, he called out, without taking his eyes off the table.

I’m going in, he yelled back over his shoulder.

I watched him cross the lawn with a scowl on his face.

Sloughing his sandals, he unbuttoned his denims, jammed in his earplugs, and dove.

He’s in a mood, I said, but Martin wasn’t paying attention.

Four, three, he replied, as the ball ripped over the net.

There was no way to stop that.

***~~***

Tbone couldn’t put his finger on it, not that afternoon, but he wasn’t alone. In 1969, everyone was pissed off about something—United Fruit Company, Vietnam, Bobby Hutton—sometimes it was nothing at all—a traffic stop at the wrong corner and entire neighborhoods went up like kindling. Even in Pleasant Hill, under the knell of wind chimes, you could feel the tension like just before a muscle cramp.

Everyone broke the rules. Some of us didn’t get caught, others stood up and howled. Tbone broke the rules more times than he could count and so did Johnny Martin. I couldn’t put my finger on it either, none of us could, but we didn’t break the rules just to break them, we had our reasons.

The reason I let Jacques Bloxom keep his boots in my locker was my sister. Not that I blame her, but I hardly knew him. All winter long he went around school barefoot kicking a soccer ball at lunchtime—even after they split up—so when he asked to borrow it, I thought he was just trying to impress her. Why else would he ask to keep an old pair of army boots in my locker? At the time it made perfect sense to me.

Perhaps I should have known better—they weren’t his boots, they were his brother’s.

Carrie told me I should have my head examined. She made it clear: he had a history.

People’s Park, it’s in all the papers, she warned, wagging her finger.

But I never read the newspaper.

We were kicking back at the club, waiting for Tbone to show up, hoping he had a joint left over from the night before. So what if Bloxom spent all summer selling the Barb on Telegraph Avenue, I still would have let him keep his boots in my locker. I didn’t listen to her advice, but I should have known better, he had a history.

Every morning he drove through the tunnel with his brother, over to Max Scherr's on Oregon Street, to pick up a stack of Berkeley Barbs. They never made more than chump change, barely enough for a half a lid or a burrito from Mamacita’s, but it was a job. Besides, it gave him a chance to be with his brother—and there weren’t that many days left. He’d already received his notice in the mail.

If they had ten or fifteen dollars after paying for gas, they bought them outright, if not, they would offer up the Nikon as collateral. Jacques would tie his hair back, fill both sides of his saddlebag and head over to Shattuck by the YMCA. If the corner was taken, he’d make his way down the sidewalk, past Woolworths, and onto the campus. He could get busted on university property, and just after spring break, on account of the park, the pigs were everywhere. But everyone wanted a copy of the Barb, and he knew he could sell out in less than an hour.

Afterward, they met up at Marcella’s pad to smoke out. Then they all took a walk through the alley and hung out with the freaks making music on washboards and empty five-gallon buckets. Jacques was welcome everywhere with his hair, lopping over his forehead like corn shucks, and Jean knew just about everyone that day.

A monsoon’s coming, a guy in dreadlocks sang out, pounding on a High Voltage box with two ends of a broomstick. He stopped in mid-rhythm and looked up. Tomorrow, man, it is coming down.

Someone else handed him a joint as big as a cigar and told him it was from Cuba.

Che’s gold, he said.

Viva la Gente, Jacques replied, taking a toke.

Viva la Gente, they all conferred.

Then they got so stoned they forgot all about Vietnam, or the week before, when the notice came, ordering his brother to show up at the Oakland Induction Center in thirty days.

The next morning they left early and beat the traffic, and everyone met up on the corner of Dwight and Telegraph in a vacant lot full of garbage and old tires.

Jacques had never worked so hard in all his life, sweat from his armpits and blisters, the smell of dirt, like ligaments reaching up from the earth. At the end of the day he was tired, but it felt good, unloading the sod truck, looking over at his brother smiling, like there would be a tomorrow; like he could live his whole life sleeping under the trees, watching Marcella, half naked, rolling a hula hoop around and around, and the white stars he painted on everyone’s forehead like the chosen ones, and he was good at painting teardrops too, and he painted one on Marcella’s breast, and when she pointed the other one at him saying it wasn’t fair leaving this one undone, they fell down and did it right there on the ground like a Greek mystery.

It was taking root now, with flowers and new shrubs, and it looked like a park, and it was the people’s, and he was one of them, and it felt good, like family, like he’d finally done something.

But all that changed with the gas. Everything changed when the gas came down.

That was the day his brother got drafted. And just after he disappeared behind the big glass doors at the Oakland Induction Center, Jacques sat on the sidewalk wondering if he would ever see him again, when it fell from the sky. He couldn’t fight it. That was like fighting ghosts.

They were going to spend the day, just the two of them, maybe stop in at Moe’s, say goodbye to some friends, buy takeout and eat it at the park. Then everything began to spin, like a balloon with a hole in it. The fence and the police in gas masks and people on the street screaming, take back the park, take back the park. And someone else said the Blue Meanies were using buckshot, and someone got blown away, and they were beating everyone with clubs, and all they could do was run as fast as they could to keep from getting trampled.

Then his brother was gone through the big glass doors, and a darkness descended and he forgot where he was, sitting on the sidewalk. If it weren’t for Marcella dragging him back that night, he would have been busted. There was a curfew and the cops roved in gangs like they were hunting Cong in the jungle.

The next day, he was back on the sidewalk again, staring at his shoes, when they swept him up like a riptide, screaming, take it back, take it back. He couldn’t see a thing except arms and shoulders, and he looked up over the heads and into the sky and wondered if he would ever see him again when he heard it: the whack and whir.

It was flying so close to the ground he thought it would crash, diving just over the top of the Campanile with a trail of smoke gushing from its side. But it didn’t crash. Then someone shouted, it’s gas, it’s gas, and his lungs felt like they were on fire, and suddenly he threw up on the guy next to him, all over his peacoat and football helmet with the button ears, just in case he ended up in the front line.

They were being pushed back now, ground into the pavement, and all he could see were boots and an empty beer bottle wedged in the storm drain and a crumpled-up bag from McDonald’s with greasy ketchup stains, or maybe it was blood.

He couldn’t find Marcella; he could barely stand up. Somehow he made it down to Ashby and held out his thumb. It never took more than a few minutes to get a ride on Ashby, not in those days. But during the riots it was different. When he finally got to Pleasant Hill, he walked the last three miles with his eyes swollen, as much from the gas as missing his brother. Then he slept for two days.

The first thing he did when he woke up was write the letter. It poured out of him as if in a dream, and when he finished, he sat reading it over and over—the games they used to play, shooting the carbine he cut out from a barn wood plank with a coping saw, killing Nazis with the best throaty gun noises in the neighborhood. And later, throwing rocks and running from the pigs, remember? They couldn’t do anything about it in their riot gear and plastic face shields. That was just a game too.

But it wasn’t a game anymore.

He put it in an envelope, found out the 101st was stationed somewhere in Tennessee and even paid the postage, but right in front of the mailbox, he stopped. He didn’t know why; he just couldn’t do it.

It was the shock he felt every morning as if snowmelt were thrown in his face, longing for the bygone days, and when he saw it on the rag rack at Moes—the last edition of the Berkeley Barb with the headlines that read: Max the Oinker, in bold print, and just beneath it, the shocking disclosure: Final Edition—he had to send that too, it was the end of an era, Max was closing the doors.

He’s playing the martyr Jacques thought. Max the Pig, it was more self-pity than a coup de tat—all of his writers had quit to start up a new paper called The Tribe, and Max decided there would be no more Berkeley Barb. Bloxom couldn’t be sure how much of it was true, but he was sure his brother would want to read all about it. He put it all in a manila envelope and set it on the table by his bed and turned off the light.

Everything is coming to an end…even the Barb.

Everything except the war, he said aloud, looking out the window at the tree fort they slept in every summer. One of the rails had broken off, but it was still solid after all these years, and I know it hurt. He could feel it beating, but it hurt.

***~~***

Boredom was like having your face peeled off and stuck in a jar. But it created bonds like hoof glue.

Born in a bog is how my dad once put it.

He was a nuclear engineer and split atoms for the government, and he would sit at the kitchen table for hours hovering over a yellow legal pad, doing equations. When I was younger, I used to imagine him going off to work in a pinstriped hat with a hatchet, until he told me he wasn’t that kind of engineer.

My mother was a nurse. One day the neighbor’s kid got a prune pit stuck in his throat, and she reached around his back with both hands and tugged on his stomach so hard that it popped right out of his mouth.

Johnny Martin was there. Ever since then, he wanted to be a doctor. For a while, he used to go around at the swim club with a ping pong ball practicing the Heimlich maneuver on everyone.

I don’t want to end up selling insurance like my dad, he would say. Usually whenever he talked about his dad he called him a toad, even though I know he loved his parents.

I loved my parents too, but they were still toads. All of them were toads, even Fran.

And none of us were going to end up like them, ever.

***~~***

We hadn’t finished the game, when he came down the steps right after Tbone, looking like he could kill something.

Your name, sir? the girl with the black lips at the front desk asked.

He grunted, ignoring the question. He wasn’t there for a cool dip, he was on a mission.

Mikie Rawlins was a breaststroker, college, maybe even the Olympics, there were big plans for his son. But the night before, he got so drunk I thought he was going to drive into a telephone pole. And when he found him lying on the front lawn, heaving his guts out, ranting about Mary Birnbaum in the back seat, and Tbone hooting when she flashed us with no panties on, he was supposed to be in training.

The way I saw it, he was lucky to be alive. After the concert, Tbone drove the car home, even though he didn’t have his license yet. He should have been thankful. But he didn’t see it that way.

They’re hooligans, looking out over the pool for Tbone. Hey, Hey I’m a Monkey, the lyrics grated across the roof of his mouth like gravel.

First it was the hair, then the music, and now this, filching whiskey from his own car!

He stared over at Tbone thrashing the water.

You call that swimming? he fumed.

The problem was, the Brown brothers lived right next door, and that meant Fran.

***~~***

I didn’t have any of his dad’s whiskey, and neither did Johnny Martin. I’m not making excuses, I was in the car, but it wasn’t our fault that Mikie got drunk and disoriented, right after the muff in his face, and ended up sitting on the kitchen chair like a lump of Jell-O, with his dad screaming like an over-boiled hotdog. We had ulterior motives, I admit it, but narking someone out is crossing the line. Mikie knew it, everybody knows it, he should have kept his mouth shut.

He couldn’t just order him out of the pool, and demand an explanation—not Tbone—he needed proof. Surveying the beach towels, the flip-flops, the crass-colored umbrellas strewn across the dandelions, he found his mark—a pair of huaraches. He hated those slabs of cowhide, glued onto tires, worn night and day, ever since that exchange program to Michoacan.

He spread his towel and lay down, and I could see him fliping through the pages of Life magazine.

He put down right beside Tbone, I said, returning the volley.

Tbone’s Swiss Army rucksack, from his periphery, was just poking out from under his towel and he looped the strap around his toe and shuffled it beneath his magazine.

19 to 20, game point, Martin said, then put a forward spin on it, keeping it low to the net.

What’s he doing now? I asked, returning it.

Lying there like a codfish, he said, barely taking his eyes from the table.

I glanced over, but he wasn’t just lying there.

Piece by piece, probing with the spine—an adult comic book, an earplug case, a hairbrush, and a pair of worn weightlifter gloves with the fingers ripped off.

Shit…he’s busted, I said, slamming the ball out of play.

We headed for the pool.

Martin came to the surface with a smooth angular stroke, shoving Tbone toward the shallow end.

You swim like a dead rat, he said.

What? Tbone asked.

YOU SWIM LIKE A DEAD RAT! He shouted this time.

Bullshit, a dead rat swims like this. Tbone spread flat, face down, with bubbles coming from the corners of his mouth. I pushed off the bottom and slapped him on the head, nodding toward his towel. At the edge of the pool, he stood up and pulled out his earplugs.

Hey, are you looking through my backpack? He asked, point blank.

***~~***

He would have crucified him if he found it, but Tbone was so pissed off, he didn’t give a shit. Besides, he had it hid in the bottom of his earplug case. As it was, they squared off shouting at one another.

When Rawlins threatened to call the cops, Tbone told him to go right ahead. Then the lifeguard came over, and he told him to fuck off. That’s when Gracie left. He could see her ass, just like I could, still dripping from the pool and tightly wrapped in banana bottoms. When her boyfriend reached over and offered her a towel, his eyes blazed. Then Rawlins hung up the pay phone out front, and the girl in the black lips at the desk looked over at us. When he came walking back, Tbone stuck out his lips and they started in again.

A few minutes later, they showed up at the front gate, and he slipped his earplugs back in. One stayed behind with his thumbs in his belt, eyeing the gathering crowd. The other started in with the usual opener.

What seems to be the trouble?

Huh? Tbone looked up, wide-eyed.

He’s got a bad ear, I explained, trying to be helpful.

The cop shot me a shut up or I’ll kick your ass look.

Let me take these out, he said loudly, leaving the case open, long enough for them to get a look inside.

What’s in the bag? the cop asked, then pulled out the gloves, smelled the gum, turned over the hairbrush, and flipped through the comic book with raised eyebrows.

He shot a Cheshire grin back at me. He didn’t give a shit. The cop motioned toward the case, still in his hand.

Can’t swim without them, he shrugged, pointing to his ear before handing it over.

The cop snapped it open, looked down at the plugs, then snapped it shut. We’ll have to call your parents, he said.

That’s when Lillian cut in, right out of nowhere.

That won’t be necessary, she said, with one hand on her hip.

Rawlins took a step back, rocking on his heels. Tbone looked down at the ground.

It appears Mr. Rawlins has violated the privacy of your son, Mrs. Brown, the cop said.

The square-jawed one with the pinball eyes stepped up and returned the backpack. He knew the Browns; he was the one who busted Sean with an ounce less than a year ago.

If you would like to file a complaint, ma’am…

Is anything missing? she asked.

No ma’am, I do not believe…

She turned and looked him full in the face, I am asking my son, she said, then handed it back to Tbone.

No, he replied, sheepishly.

What were you looking for, John? she asked Mr. Rawlins.

Like I told the police, I believe your son gave my boy some marijuana.

And what makes you think that?

Last night, he said he gave him a puff.

Is that true Michael?

"I didn’t give him anything," he replied.

We will talk about this later, she said, firmly.

Tbone knew what that meant. Yes mom, he said, looking back at his feet.

As for this, she continued, as much to the cops as to Mr. Rawlins, we are neighbors, and the Bill of Rights applies to a teenager the same as everyone else. How would it be, if on my way in here, I opened your car door and rifled through the mail on your front seat?

Lillian, that’s just it, they were rifling through my…

She cut him short, looking over the top of her half moons, That’s not what I heard, Jack.

She didn’t have to take it any further. She cast a warm smile, nodded her head to the cops and walked away. And that was that. No one messed with Fran, not even the fuzz. She was just about the coolest mom on the planet, even if she was a toad.

***~~***

Everyone has an angel, but even the benevolent ones demand something in return. And when they cease to be amused they can be merciless. I felt sorry for his brother, but when the draft board finally withdrew his deferment, his time was up.

Jacques had a right to be pissed off, I would have been if it was me. My sister hung up on him anyway. I couldn’t blame her either, it was noxious: the gas, Vietnam, the pigs, especially that pig Max, paying his writers minimum wage. After that, he didn’t want anything to do with the Barb or even Berkeley, but it was the only way he could get his Nikon back. What was she supposed to do about it? It was his camera. She just hung up.

It had been a month since he’d seen Marcella, and after rolling a joint on the couch and blowing facefuls of weed at one other for an hour, he managed to talk her into going over to Scherr’s house and picking it up for him.

I’m OK with that, she said, her eyes peering through the shanks like it was the jungle. I don’t think he’s a pig. When he started it, he was processing rolls in his kitchen sink. He can do what he wants, it’s a free country. She sashayed around the corner in a tea gown and leotard, turning back with a parade wave as she crossed Grove Park.

Later, they met up at Moe’s Bookstore, browsing the stacks and giggling through the comic strips. When she held up a copy of the Austin Rag and turned to The Fabulous Freak Brothers, starting in on a stand up routine right in the aisle, Jacques framed her perfectly with his Nikon and snapped one off.

***~~***

Nixon must have thought he was doing the right thing in Vietnam, he just didn’t know what he was up against.

Jean Bloxom didn’t know what he was up against, either. He came out of basic training like a left threaded screw. When he got to Nam his whole world turned upside down, and Jacques didn’t hear a word from him all summer. Where was he supposed to send it, general delivery, the Army?

The rag rack at Moe’s Bookstore had publications from every underground newspaper in print, even articles from the College Press Service. Jacques read all he could about the flap over The Tribe, but what he was really looking for was news of the 101st Airborne. That’s where he found the article by the Quakers, in one of the GI rags, called The Ally.

The American Friend’s of Service put out a call for all men in uniform to lay down their guns and start singing the psalms. He bought that issue and read it a dozen times and never went back to Berkeley for the rest of the summer.

Then one day it occurred to him, he had a story to tell, as good as anyone’s. Digging through his mother’s closet, he pulled out the old Olympia and spent all day pecking at the keys. When he finished, he sent it in. He didn’t expect The Ally to print it, or the twenty five dollar check they sent a month later. But there it was, sitting on the rag rack at Moe’s, right alongside Kaleidoscope and The Seed—his first published work. And after two months of laying low, he felt his wings again. The first thing he did was call my sister and brag about it.

***~~***

The day after Tbone almost got busted, Fran offered to take us out to lunch at The Bottomless Bowl. I think she was trying to make up for us getting harassed by the cops, and as we passed through the Caldecott Tunnel, she kept saying stuff like, It’s right in our own backyard.

Driving down Ashby, the National Guard trucks parked along the road; it was a state of siege. Those were her exact words, as we passed the big white spires on top of the Claremont Hotel.

A state of siege, she repeated.

A half mile down from the campus, we crossed Telegraph, looking for a place to park. Barricades stood on the boulevard. Several soldiers in fatigues lounged in the shade, smoking and shooting the shit. They looked bored. One was leaning against a big green truck with a white star on the door, and stared back with the strap off his helmet dangling in his face. We flashed him the peace sign from the rear window. He smiled, flashing it back; he didn’t look like a pig.

It’s fucking criminal, Fran said, more to herself than to us. I’d never heard her use the F word before; she didn’t sound pissed off, just sad.

The day after the riots, street people came from all over the Bay and tried to take it back, living in tents on the sidewalk.

The only Governor in US history to gas his own people from a helicopter, she explained, as we walked by a guy standing on a milk crate.

We The People, he recited. It sounded grand.

A girl sat cross-legged strumming on a dulcimer, someone else plucked on a jews-harp, the month before, James Rector got a hole blown in his stomach. He died the next day in Herrick Hospital, now there were flowers everywhere.

At the Bottomless Bowl, the soup came in pails and no one ever finished. Tbone was doing his best, trying to get to it, just to see if there was one. He finally gave up, leaned back, and let off a distended belch. After a short pause, everyone started laughing, even Fran. Everyone except Sean. Preoccupied in a frown, he barely lifted his spoon. He was younger than Tbone by a year, but he was the first one of us to start smoking weed, and by now his hair was halfway down his back. I could always tell when he had something on his mind. He would reach around and tug on his ponytail and say nothing. He was conspiring, no doubt about it.

I wiped my chin on a coarsely stitched napkin cut from a flour sack and looked up into Fran’s eyes beaming over the top of her half moons. Shall we go and meet the people? she proposed.

Telegraph Avenue was a parade, awash with barefoot freaks, lovers holding hands, boots in bell bottoms, bandanas and leather, silver and beads. A guy in a top hat walked down the middle of the street juggling bananas; a girl wearing a fur coat with nothing underneath, flashed everyone the peace sign down the sidewalk sitting in a red wagon. In the distance the low moan of conch shell sounded, and over the tops of heads, bunches of flowers flew into the air.

We made our way across the street and came to a fence where a couple of college girls stood, beckoning us from the other side. Behind the wire at People’s Park, they looked like prisoners of war, except for