Dawn of a New Day (17 page)

“All right. Let me get cleaned up.”

The two of them took some time, for paint soaked into the fingers and under the nails. Prue was in the restroom scrubbing furiously at her hands when she heard muted voices.
Who could that be at this hour? Maybe a student come to talk to Kent.
She dried her hands, ran her comb through her hair, then stepping outside was surprised to see Mark Stevens.

“Mark! I didn't know you were in town.”

“I just got back.” Mark came over and stood before her. “You all through for the day? I'd hope so. It's pitch dark out there.”

“Well, yes. I had to do a little extra work tonight.”

“Well, you worked enough. Come on. I'm taking you out to eat.”

Prue suddenly felt trapped. She shot a quick glance at Maxwell, who was getting his coat. He turned as he slipped his arm into the sleeve, and when he saw her face, he studied her with an odd expression.

“I just promised to go out and eat with Kent.”

“That's fine,” Mark said cheerfully. “All three of us can go. That be all right, Mr. Maxwell?”

“No. You two go ahead.”

“I don't want to bust up your party,” Mark protested.

“That's all right. I'll see you tomorrow, Prue.” He turned, saying, “Lock the door when you go out.” He limped out, and Mark turned back with puzzlement. “What's wrong with him?”

“Oh, he doesn't take to big parties,” Prue said.

“Big parties? The three of us?” Mark grinned. “Well, now we're a big party of two. Come on. I'm hungry enough to eat the north part of a southbound hog.”

Mark took Prue to the Ivanhoe Restaurant, which was disguised vaguely as a medieval castle. When they were seated Prue was amused to see that the waiters, some of them, were wearing suits of armor. The one that came to them had trouble keeping his visor up, and it came crashing down, hiding his face several times. He tried to speak, also, in what he considered an Old English dialect but was almost totally incomprehensible.

Mark laughed at the sight and ordered for the two of them; as they waited he began to talk about the restaurants he had seen across America. He was wearing a pair of black slacks with cuffs at the bottom, a white and gray striped, cotton shirt worn with the top button undone, and a gray sports coat, and he looked tan and fit.

“I'm doing a piece on different kinds of wacky restaurants,” he said. “Food's not really the thing anymore. A restaurant has to have some kind of a gimmick. Some of them are Old English pubs with names like Ye Old Bull and Bush—that's in Atlanta. Also in Atlanta there's The Abbey Restaurant, where the waiters come dressed as monks. There's a Magic Castle Dinner Club in Los Angeles, where stars like Cary Grant and Paul Newman are members. Bookcases are creaking, stools mysteriously revolve when customers sit on them, and food is served in bubbling cauldrons or a magician's top hat.”

“I don't think I could pay any attention to the food at a place like that.”

“Nobody else can either. Like I said, it's not the food that people go for but the atmosphere.”

“Tell me some more of them.” Prue found it relaxing to be away from the studio. She always felt good around Mark, who had stopped in many times when he came back from his travels. Now she sat back in her chair and sipped her water occasionally as he continued.

“Well, in Boston, a fellow named Anthony Athanas built this gigantic seafood restaurant right on a decrepit pier. He has a lobster fisherman tromp through the dining room with his catch, and the customers go crazy.” Mark laughed and shook his head in half wonder and half disgust. “He even hired a one-legged doorman that he fitted with a wooden peg leg, but I guess the worst of all is New York's Auto Pub. The customers sit in bucket seats and are served by beautiful waitresses in racing uniforms. The lighting is racing helmet lamps. You can even choose a table in the Classic Car Lounge and sit in an old Stanley Steamer.”

Mark talked steadily until the food came, and then they both ate hungrily.

When they had finished their steaks, Prue said, “Tell me what else you've been doing.” She sat there and listened as Mark spoke of his other work, and finally she said, “I read everything you write, Mark. You're a wonderful writer.”

Mark looked up and smiled. “Thanks a lot. That means a lot coming from you, Prue. I wish I knew more about painting. Your stuff looks wonderful to me, but what do I know. What does Maxwell say? How are you getting along?”

“Oh, he's never happy with what I do. He always thinks I need to do more.”

“Sounds like a real slave driver.”

“Oh, he's not that. He's just so anxious for me to succeed.” She leaned forward now, and her face was filled with a secret excitement. “Someday he says I'll have a show, a one-woman show right here in Chicago.” Her dark eyes glistened, and a spirit glowed in her like live coals. Mark had always known Prue was a girl with a great degree of vitality and imagination, but these things had always been held under careful restraint. Now, since she had come to Chicago, she had blossomed. As she leaned forward, he appreciated the supple lines of her body. She was in that first maturity that follows girlhood, and the light in her eyes now held some kind of laughter, and she was enormously pleased.

She laughed and said, “We've been talking too much. I'm tired. Come along and take me home.”

They left the restaurant, and when they reached her apartment she invited him in. It was a very tiny apartment. The living room area, which doubled as Prue's bedroom, was painted a light green and had hardwood floors with a large area rug in tones of gold, green, and red on which a gold-toned couch that folded out into a bed had been placed; a chair covered in well-worn green leather, a coffee table, and two lamps completed the room. The kitchen, which was situated behind the living room area, had limited counter and shelf space, but there was a small table with two chairs that had been placed in the far corner of the room by the old white refrigerator. On the far side of the room was a short hallway with two doors; Mark surmised one led to a bathroom and the other to a closet.

Prue fixed coffee, and while Mark was drinking his, she said with a pleased light in her eyes, “I've got a present for you.” She moved out of the room for a moment, then returned bearing a painting. “This is for you,” she said.

Taking the painting, Mark stared at it with a distinct sense of shock, for he was staring at a portrait of himself. He recognized the setting instantly, for it was his home. He was sitting on the fence, arms braced against the top rail, and the wind was blowing his hair. It must have been in fall, because the trees on the hills behind his house were touched with yellow, and gold, and red. He looked young, and happy, and she had caught the smile on his face.

Prue stood looking down at him as he stared at the painting. She felt a moment's disappointment, for he said nothing, and she thought,
He doesn't like it.
But then he looked up and there was awe in his gray-green eyes. “This is wonderful, Prue,” he said quietly, almost in a whisper. His eyes went back to the painting, and he shook his head so that a lock of his tawny hair fell over his forehead. “I don't see how you did it.”

“Oh, it was from a snapshot I took. You probably don't even remember it.”

“I look so
young
!”

“Come now, Grandpa. Don't trip over your long, gray beard.” Prue sat down beside him, and together the two studied the painting.

“Is it oil?”

“No, it's acrylic.”

“I don't know the difference, but it doesn't matter.” He could not get enough of gazing at it, and after a while he said, “It's the best present you've ever given me, Prue.”

“I'm glad you like it. I wanted to keep it for myself, but I can always do another one.”

Mark held the picture lightly in his hands. Finally he said, “I'll get it framed tomorrow, but I don't have any place to keep it the way I move around. You keep it for me until I get a place of my own.”

“All right,” Prue said.

They talked for a while longer, and at long last he got up, saying, “I'll be here for two or three days. Can you get some time off?”

“At nights, maybe.”

“Take tomorrow afternoon off. We'll go out to the park somewhere and maybe have a picnic.” He was standing now, and she had risen to stand beside him. He handed her the picture, and leaned over, and kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks for the present.”

He turned and left abruptly, leaving Prue standing there holding the painting. She listened to his footfalls, and when they faded, she sat down and stared at the painting.

J
ake Taylor sat behind his desk, fingers locked behind his head. He stared across the room at Mark Stevens, who was leaning back in the oak chair going through a sheaf of papers he held on his lap. Mark looked up and asked, “So you want me to do a piece on this war protest movement?”

Jake nodded. “It's been done before in bits and pieces.
Esquire
did a pretty good run on it, but most of our readers don't read
Esquire
.”

“I don't know how to approach the thing, Jake.”

“You'll find a way. You always have.” A smile twisted his lips crookedly, and he added, “Anybody that can write a piece on baton twirling can do a war protest. You won't have any trouble finding one. This blasted thing's spread all over the country. First it was just a few nuts out in California. Well, I'm not too surprised about that. Everything loose rolls to California, as they say. Then it started spreading in the other liberal colleges across the country. Worked its way down to the high schools, and now I'm not going to be too surprised if preschoolers don't toddle out in their diapers carrying signs.”

“You feel pretty strongly about this, don't you, Jake?”

“Don't you?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I do.” Mark shifted in his chair impatiently, and there was a smoldering light of anger in his gray eyes. “I think we made a mistake going in there in the first place, but now that we're in I think we ought to push it on through.”

“You'll never see that, I don't think. The Second World War we had men like Eisenhower and Patton.” He brooded on the matter for a moment, then shook his head. “Sometimes I think nothing good happened to this country after George Patton died.”

“Oh, come on, Jake! It's not that bad!” Mark protested.

“It's bad enough! I hate to think what the history books will say about this decade. The sixties have produced nothing much but a war that we can't call a war, a bunch of squalling babies running off to Canada when they're asked to fight, and the rest of them cutting their classes to carry signs and scream about the war.”

“Well, I'll give it my best shot, Jake.” He began shuffling the papers together but paused when Taylor said, “Watch your rear, Mark.”

Surprised, Mark looked across at the rangy editor. “What do you mean by that?”

“Well,” Taylor shrugged, “all of the newspaper stories are about the police beating up on the protestors, but we've had quite a few cases of where it happened the other way around.”

“Oh, I know what you mean.” The two men thought of the reporter who had gone to cover one of the protest movements in Los Angeles at UCLA. He had made the mistake of letting the protestors know that he was a reporter and had been badly beaten. Now Mark chewed his lower lip thoughtfully. “I think I'd better get myself wired for this one.”

“Not a bad idea. And, you don't have to go to UCLA. They're having a protest out in the park today. It's supposed to be a big one.”

“All right. I'll take it in.”

“Come over for supper tonight. We're having squash casserole.”

Mark looked down at his chest, where the wire leading from the tape recorder in his baggy trouser pocket was taped. He stood before the mirror, holding a roll of adhesive tape in his hand, and carefully ran the wire up his neck. It was the smallest microphone wire he could find, but it was still obvious. He carefully taped the little microphone, a little larger than a shirt button, to his cheek parallel to the right side of his lips and saw that the wire itself was firmly anchored. Then he took a large bandage and placed it over the microphone. The bandage ran down his cheek and under it, and he studied it carefully, then turned and picked up a white turtleneck shirt. He slipped it on and pulled the neck up over the bandage. “It looks pretty good,” he murmured. “Like I tried to cut my throat or something. Now, let's go for a trial run.” Reaching into his pocket, he snapped on the tape recorder and said in a normal voice, “I'm going to risk my neck with a bunch of hairy, juvenile war protestors. If I'm going to get beat up, I'd like to at least have a chance to record. This is a test.”

He shut off the microphone, pulled it out of his pocket, ran the tape back, then put it on Play. He waited for a moment, then his voice came out of the tiny machine, which was no larger than a package of cigarettes. He listened and noted that it was fainter than usual but perfectly understandable. He nodded, ran the tape back, pushed Record, then the Stop button.

“Well, that ought to do it,” he said.

Leaving the house he drove to the park, noting as he got out that the park itself was already overflowing with people. As he moved toward the bandstand, where he assumed the speakers would yell their invictives against the government and the president, he noticed that the crowd was an eclectic one. Some youngsters seemed to be no older than twelve or thirteen, while at the same time quite a few elderly people were moving toward the bandstand. The vast majority of the crowd, however, was made up of what appeared to be hippies, bearded and wearing clothes that looked like they'd been thrown away as rejects by the Salvation Army. Mark wondered why so many people would interrupt their lives. But the war was a burning issue. Those who were opposed to it vociferously demanded its immediate end, while others felt that America's reputation was on the line. He thought about the ferment that stirred across the country, and the grim thought came to him,
The country has never been this divided since the Civil War. If we divided up the people today, half of us would be for the war and the other half would be against it. I don't see any good end to it….

It was not his purpose to hear the speaker, for he knew what the rhetoric would be. The story, he had decided, would be based on the protestors themselves. Who are they? Where did they come from? Why are they so vehemently opposed to the war? Questions like this he had filed in his mind, and he began talking to a diminutive teenager who stood next to him. She was smoking marijuana, and the acrid smell of the joint was sharp in Mark's nose.

“It looks like a good rally,” Mark said.

The girl, who had dishwater blond hair that needed washing, turned to grin at him. Her teeth were not good, and she obviously had not bathed that morning. He noticed also that her fingernails had dirt under them, and her fingers were stained yellow with nicotine.

“Yeah,” she said, her speech slightly slurred. “You come out to these things a lot?”

“Not much,” Mark said. “I have to work for a living.”

“Yeah?” she said. “What do you do?”

“I sell paper supplies.”

The girl giggled. “What a drag,” she said. Her eyes took him in in a speculative fashion, and she said, “What do you say after the meeting we go out and celebrate?”

Mark nodded. “Might be all right,” he said, thinking that she was just doped enough to tell him the absolute truth about herself.

The meeting started, as had the others, with a sixteen-year-old philosopher who wore a guitar and was singing Pete Seeger's and Bob Dylan's protest songs. He was a mediocre performer, but the crowd did not seem to notice.

Mark felt he should get more reactions from the people, and he winked at the girl. “I'll see you after the meeting.”

“Yeah. We'll have a party.”

Mark moved around the crowd and noticed that the attention was not strictly paid to the protestor doing the singing. He passed through a motorcycle gang and eyed them carefully as a prospect for future interviews.

He began talking instead to an older woman who stuck out like a sore thumb. She was neatly dressed; her silver hair looked as if it had been done by an expert hairdresser, and as he moved to stand beside her, he said, “Hello. It's a big crowd today.”

“Yes it is.” The woman turned to look at him, taking in his white turtleneck and clean-cut appearance. “You don't look like so many of these other people,” she said. “I wish more of our kind would come out here.”

Wondering what “our kind” was, Mark decided it meant not hippies. “I guess our kind are working,” he said.

“What is your job?”

“I sell paper supplies for the Acme Printing Company.”

The woman nodded briefly, listened to the song, and then her lips tightened in a bitter line. She stood there silently, and finally she turned to Mark and said, “This horrible war! This is all I can think of to influence the president to stop it.”

“You don't think we should go on?”

“With this terrible thing? Of course not!” She stared at him with antagonism beginning to show. “You don't believe in the war, do you?”

“Well, I suppose the president's having a hard time. We're into it, and it seems wrong to just pick up and leave after all the soldiers who have died.”

The woman turned to face him, her voice rising. “My son was killed six months ago in this useless slaughter!” Her voice got out of control, and those standing around began to look at Mark. There were scowls, and the crowd began to grow restless.

Mark saw he had gotten himself into the wrong light, but still the woman was voicing what many respectable Americans felt. He continued to play the role of a man who was not totally in favor of stopping the fighting, which proved to be a mistake.

“Well, looky here. We've got a patriot.”

Mark turned quickly to see that the black-jacketed motorcycle gang had moved closer to form a semicircle around him. Three of them were of rather average size, but the speaker was a huge man about six foot four and weighing, Mark estimated, close to three hundred pounds. The sleeves of his jacket were cut off, leaving his arms free, and they bulged with heavy muscles. He was, Mark figured, a wrestler and a weight lifter. He had the ponderous strength of one of those, and his small eyes were glittering with a reptilian ferocity. He came right up, and Mark could smell the rank odor of marijuana, and sweat, and stale beer. The man reached out and grabbed Mark's arm, his grip like a Stilson wrench. “You're one of the president's men, are you? Why ain't you over there fightin' if you're such a patriot?”

Mark tried to free himself, but without breaking loose violently, it was impossible. He eyed the others who all wore identical clothing, what amounted to uniforms. “I didn't say I was in favor of it,” he began lamely. “I just don't see—” He was cut off, however, for the four began laughing raucously. Another member of the gang, a small man with a feral appearance in his thin face, took his other arm so that Mark was pinioned. He began to curse, and Mark knew that he was in a poor situation. Quickly he glanced over the crowd, and from his superior height saw policemen wearing riot helmets and carrying sticks.

Got to get out of this quick!
He decided to draw his strength into one motion and rip himself free from his captors. He threw his arms up violently, heaved himself backward, and threw his smaller assailant off balance so that he staggered, but it was only with a second effort that he managed to rip himself free from the gorilla-like grip of the other. He turned and made one or two steps toward the police, but a mighty blow struck him at the base of his skull. It drove him to the ground and sent the world around him in a kaleidoscope fashion. He knew what was coming next, and he rolled into a ball to avoid the kick. It caught him on the kidney, and the pain made him gasp; then he turned his head to see a boot coming toward him and tried to roll away. But it caught him in the temple, and the world exploded in a huge, orange burst of light….

When he awoke, Mark lay for a moment in utter confusion. His head was pounding as if someone were striking it with a railroad spike tapped by a sixteen-pound sledge. He groaned, and voluntarily lifting his hand, felt the bandage around his head. But in lifting his arm, pain suddenly raced through his chest, and it caught his breath for a moment.