Hearts In Atlantis (46 page)

There was a kind of baffled anger in Ochs's voice. I suppose I liked it because most of the time I felt pretty baffled myself. He was like Dylan, but less complicated in his expression and clearer in his rage. The best song on the album—also the most troubling—was the title song. In that song Ochs didn't just suggest but came right out and said that war wasn't worth it, war was never worth it. Even when it was worth it, it wasn't worth it. This idea, coupled with the image of young men just walking away from Lyndon and his Vietnam obsession by the thousands and tens of thousands, excited my imagination in a way that had nothing to do
with history or policy or rational thought. I must have killed a million men and now they want me back again but I ain't marchin anymore, Phil Ochs sang through the speaker of Nate's nifty little Swingline phono. Just quit it, in other words. Quit doing what they say, quit doing what they want, quit playing their game. It's an old game, and in this one The Bitch is hunting
you
.

And maybe to show you mean it, you start wearing a symbol of your resistance—something others will first wonder about and then perhaps rally to. It was a couple of days after Halloween that Nate Hoppenstand showed us what the symbol was going to be. Finding out started with one of those crumpled leftover newspapers in the third-floor lounge.

“Son of a bitch, look at this,” Billy Marchant said.

Harvey Twiller was shuffling the cards at Billy's table, Lennie Doria was adding up the current score, and Billy was taking the opportunity to do a quick scan-through of the
News
's Local section. Kirby McClendon—unshaven, tall n twitchy, well on his way to his date with all those baby aspirins—leaned in to take a look.

Billy drew back from him, fluttering a hand in front of his face. “Jesus, Kirb, when did you take your last shower? Columbus Day? Fourth of July?”

“Let me see,” Kirby said, ignoring him. He snatched the paper away. “Fuck, that's Rip-Rip!”

Ronnie Malenfant got up so fast his chair fell over,
entranced by the idea that Stoke had made the paper. When college kids showed up in the Derry
News
(except on the sports page, of course) it was always because they were in trouble. Others gathered around Kirby, Skip and me among them. It was Stokely Jones III, all right, and not just him. Standing in the background, their faces almost but not quite lost in the clusters of dots  . . .

“Christ,” Skip said, “I think that's Nate.” He sounded amused and astonished.

“And that's Carol Gerber just up ahead of him,” I said in a funny, shocked voice. I knew the jacket with
HARWICH HIGH SCHOOL
on the back; knew the blond hair hanging over the jacket's collar in a ponytail; knew the faded jeans. And I knew the face. Even half-turned away and shadowed by a sign reading
U.S. OUT OF VIETNAM NOW!
, I knew the face. “That's my girlfriend.” It was the first time the word
girlfriend
had come out of my mouth tied to Carol's name, although I had been thinking of her that way for a couple of weeks at least.

POLICE BREAK UP DRAFT PROTEST
, the photo caption read. No names were given. According to the accompanying story, a dozen or so protesters from the University of Maine had gathered in front of the Federal Building in downtown Derry. They had carried signs and marched around the entrance to the Selective Service office for about an hour, singing songs and “chanting slogans, some obscene.” Police had been called and had at first only stood by, intending to allow the demonstration to run its course, but then an opposing group of demonstrators had turned up—mostly construction workers on their lunch break. They had begun chanting their own slogans, and although the
News
didn't mention if they
were obscene or not, I could guess there had been invitations to go back to Russia, suggestions as to where the demonstrators could store their signs while not in use, and directions to the nearest barber shop.

When the protesters began to shout back at the construction workers and the construction workers began firing pieces of fruit from their dinner-buckets at the protesters, the police had stepped in. Citing the protesters' lack of a permit (the Derry cops had apparently never heard about the right of Americans to assemble peaceably), they rounded up the kids and took them to the police substation on Witcham Street. There they were simply released. “We only wanted to get them out of a bad atmosphere,” one cop was quoted as saying. “If they go back down there, they're even dumber than they look.”

The photo really wasn't much different from the one taken at East Annex during the Coleman Chemicals protest. It showed the cops leading the protesters away while construction workers (a year or so later they would all be sporting small American flags on their hardhats) jeered and grinned and shook their fists. One cop was frozen in the act of reaching out toward Carol's arm; Nate, standing behind her, had not attracted their attention, it seemed. Two more cops were escorting Stoke Jones, who was back to the camera but unmistakable on his crutches. If any further aid to identification was needed, there was that hand-drawn sparrow-track on his jacket.

“Look at that dumb fuck!” Ronnie crowed. (Ronnie, who had flunked two of four on the last round of prelims, had a nerve calling anyone a dumb fuck.) “Like he didn't have anything better to do!”

Skip ignored him. So did I. For us Ronnie's bluster was already fading into insignificance no matter what the subject. We were fascinated by the sight of Carol . . . and of Nate Hoppenstand behind her, watching as the demonstrators were led away. Nate as neat as ever in an Ivy League shirt and jeans with cuffs and creases, Nate standing near the jeering, fist-shaking construction workers but totally ignored by them. Ignored by the cops, too. Neither group knew my roommate had lately become a fan of the subversive Mr. Phil Ochs.

I slipped out to the telephone booth and called Franklin Hall, second floor. Someone from the lounge answered and when I asked for Carol, the girl said Carol wasn't there, she'd gone over to the library to study with Libby Sexton. “Is this Pete?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“There's a note here for you. She left it on the glass.” This was common practice in the dorms at that time. “It says she'll call you later.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Skip was outside the telephone booth, motioning impatiently for me to come. We walked down the hall to see Nate, even though we knew we'd both lose our places at the tables where we'd been playing. In this case, curiosity outweighed obsession.

Nate's face didn't change much when we showed him the paper and asked him about the demonstration the day before, but his face never changed much. All the same, I sensed that he was unhappy, perhaps even miserable. I couldn't understand why that would be—everything had ended well, after all; no one had gone to jail or even been named in the paper.

I'd just about decided I was reading too much into
his usual quietness when Skip said, “What's eating you?”

There was a kind of rough concern in his voice. Nate's lower lip trembled and then firmed at the sound of it. He leaned over the neat surface of his desk (my own was already covered in about nineteen layers of junk) and snagged a Kleenex from the box he kept by his record-player. He blew his nose long and hard. When he was finished he was under control again, but I could see the baffled unhappiness in his eyes. Part of me—a mean part—was glad to see it. Glad to know that you didn't have to turn into a Hearts junkie to have problems. Human nature can be so shitty sometimes.

“I rode up with Stoke and Harry Swidrowski and a few other guys,” Nate said.

“Was Carol with you?” I asked.

Nate shook his head. “I think she was with George Gilman's bunch. There were five carloads of us in all.” I didn't know George Gilman from Adam, but that did not prevent me from directing a dart of fairly sick jealousy at him. “Harry and Stoke are on the Committee of Resistance. Gilman, too. Anyway, we—”

“Committee of Resistance?” Skip asked. “What's that?”

“A club,” Nate said, and sighed. “They think it's something more—especially Harry and George, they're real firebrands—but it's just another club, really, like the Maine Masque or the pep squad.”

Nate said he himself had gone along because it was a Tuesday and he didn't have any classes on Tuesday afternoons. No one gave orders; no one passed around loyalty oaths or even sign-up sheets; there was no real
pressure to march and none of the paramilitary beret-wearing fervor that crept into the antiwar movement later on. Carol and the kids with her had been laughing and bopping each other with their signs when they left the gym parking lot, according to Nate. (Laughing. Laughing with George Gilman. I threw another one of those germ-laden jealousy-darts.)

When they got to the Federal Building, some people demonstrated, marching around in circles in front of the Selective Service office door, and some people didn't. Nate was one of those who didn't. As he told us that, his usually smooth face tightened in another brief cramp of something that might have been real misery in a less settled boy.

“I
meant
to march with them,” he said. “All the way up I expected to march with them. It was exciting, six of us crammed into Harry Swidrowski's Saab. A real trip. Hunter McPhail . . . do you guys know him?”

Skip and I shook our heads. I think both of us were a little awestruck to discover the owner of
Meet Trini Lopez
and
Diane Renay Sings Navy Blue
had what amounted to a secret life, including connections to the sort of people who attracted both cops and newspaper coverage.

“He and George Gilman started the Committee. Anyway, Hunter was holding Stoke's crutches out the window of the Saab because we couldn't fit them inside and we sang ‘I Ain't Marchin' Anymore' and talked about how maybe we could really stop the war if enough of us got together—that is, all of us talked about stuff like that except Stoke. He keeps pretty quiet.”

So, I thought. Even with them he keeps quiet . . . 
except, presumably, when he decides a little credibility lecture is in order. But Nate wasn't thinking about Stoke; Nate was thinking about Nate. Brooding over his feet's inexplicable refusal to carry his heart where it had clearly wanted to go.

“All the way up I'm thinking, ‘I'll march with them, I'll march with them because it's right . . . at least
I
think it's right . . . and if someone takes a swing at me I'll be nonviolent, just like the guys in the lunchroom sit-ins. Those guys won, maybe we can win, too.' ” He looked at us. “I mean, it was never a question in my mind. You know?”

“Yeah,” Skip said. “I know.”

“But when we got there, I couldn't do it. I helped hand out signs saying
STOP THE WAR
and
U.S. OUT OF VIETNAM NOW
and
BRING THE BOYS HOME
 . . . Carol and I helped Stoke fix his so he could march with it and still use his crutches . . . but I couldn't take one myself. I stood on the sidewalk with Bill Shadwick and Kerry Morin and a girl named Lorlie McGinnis . . . she's my partner in Botany Lab  . . .” He took the sheet of newspaper out of Skip's hand and studied it, as if to confirm again that yes, it had all really happened; the master of Rinty and the boyfriend of Cindy had actually gone to an antiwar demonstration. He sighed and then let the piece of newspaper drift to the floor. This was so unlike him it kind of hurt my head.

“I thought I would march with them. I mean, why else did I come? All the way down from Orono it was never, you know, a question in my mind.”

He looked at me, kind of pleading. I nodded as if I understood.

“But then I didn't. I don't know why.”

Skip sat down next to him on his bed. I found the Phil Ochs album and put it on the turntable. Nate looked at Skip, then looked away. Nate's hands were as small and neat as the rest of him, except for the nails. The nails were ragged, bitten right down to the quick.

“Okay,” he said as if Skip had asked out loud. “I
do
know why. I was afraid they'd get arrested and I'd get arrested with them. That my picture would be in the paper getting arrested and my folks would see it.” There was a long pause. Poor old Nate was trying to say the rest. I held the needle over the first groove of the spinning record, waiting to see if he could. At last he did. “That my
mother
would see it.”

“It's okay, Nate,” Skip said.

“I don't think so,” Nate replied in a trembling voice. “I really don't.” He wouldn't meet Skip's eyes, only sat there on his bed with his prominent chicken-ribs and bare white Yankee skin between his pajama bottoms and his freshman beanie, looking down at his gnawed cuticles. “I don't like to argue about the war. Harry does . . . and Lorlie . . . George Gilman, gosh, you can't get George to shut up about it, and most of the others on the Committee are the same. But when it comes to talking, I'm more like Stoke than them.”

“No one's like Stoke,” I said. I remembered the day I met him on Bennett's Walk.
Why don't you take it easy?
I'd asked.
Why don't you eat me?
Mr. Credibility had replied.

Nate was still studying his cuticles. “What I
think
is that Johnson is sending American boys over there to die for no reason. It isn't imperialism or colonialism,
like Harry Swidrowski believes, it's not any
ism
at all. Johnson's got it all mixed up in his mind with Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone and the New York Yankees, that's all. And if I think that, I ought to
say
that. I ought to try to stop it. That's what I learned in church, in school, even in the darned
Boy Scouts of America
. You're supposed to stand up. If you see something happening that's wrong, like a big guy beating up a little guy, you're supposed to stand up and at least try to stop it. But I was afraid my mother'd see a picture of me getting arrested and cry.”