The Drifters (53 page)

She received seven hundred dollars, which was more than she needed, since a twenty-one-day round-trip excursion from St. Louis to Málaga cost only $340, for which she also received the free use of an automobile while in Spain. When she told me this, I asked where she was keeping the car, and she was about to tell me when a group of soldiers from Sevilla slammed their way into the bar. They were in civilian clothes, of course, and Susan asked me, ‘Are they soldiers?’ When I nodded, she left me and moved to their table. Two of them were black and she paid most attention to them, buying drinks and asking them how they liked the military. I caught only snatches of her conversation, but she seemed to be asking about black attitudes in the army and what they planned to do when they returned home. At one point I heard her comment on race troubles in Detroit and Los Angeles, but the two soldiers merely stared at her. By some strange mechanism she conveyed to the men the idea that she was not interested in sex.

When Gretchen reported for her stint of singing, Susan Eltregon left the soldiers and returned to my table. ‘She is an attractive girl,’ she said approvingly. ‘Did the experience with the police …’ She fumbled for the right word, failed to find it, and sat back to listen. She found the ballads exciting, and whispered, ‘They were real revolutionaries in those days. Listen to those words!’

At the end of the program Susan went up to Gretchen and said, ‘I have come from St. Louis to talk with you.’

‘Why me?’

With that forthright beginning, Susan launched into a vigorous delineation of what the Haymakers were endeavoring to accomplish: the overthrow of the United States. I was surprised that she should divulge her plans so openly to Gretchen; that she should feel no compunction about discussing them in front of me was astonishing. She explained this: ‘Mr. Fairbanks is against us anyway. It is
good for him to know that his days are numbered. As soon as we take power he and his kind are doomed.’ She said this looking right at me.

Her arguments with Gretchen were persuasive: ‘You have seen the American police system at its worst. No,’ she corrected herself, ‘I have seen it at its worst—repressing general freedom. What you saw was personal aggression. But with your knowledge you become very valuable to the movement—to the revolution, that is. A girl like you—with that guitar, that voice … You know, of course, you are a very special person. Your background, too. You could move across the United States and do a vast amount of good. Young people would listen to you. What we must have is charismatic leadership bringing the people to us. The hard-core brains we have, the guns we have.’

I was interested to see how Gretchen would respond; she listened attentively, followed all arguments with her fingers making diagrams of them as Susan spoke, and treated the discussion as if it were a seminar at Radcliffe. Ideas were being presented to her, and some of them might have merit; she would accord them the dignity of attention. From the sympathetic manner in which she assented to many of the points Susan Eltregon was making, I was afraid at first that she was being persuaded, but when the emissary from the revolution paused, Gretchen said, ‘Let’s suppose I accept your data but disagree with your conclusions.’

‘How could you?’

‘Easy. I agree that the police can be abominable. I don’t agree that you solve the problem by eliminating them.’

‘How else? If the entire system is rotten, what else can you do but tear it down?’

‘You amend it. The system has always had to be amended.’

‘You mean gradualism?’ Miss Eltregon asked contemptuously.

‘Precisely.’ Now Gretchen leaned forward, and with a barrage of convictions I never knew she had, began arguing Socratically and with much self-control for the kind of ebb and flow in politics that had characterized the English-speaking peoples for the past seven hundred years. The soldiers stopped to listen.

Susan Eltregon was no pushover. During long nights in Montana and blazing hot afternoons in St. Louis she had
acquired a social philosophy which sustained her theories of revolution, and she gave a good account of herself: ‘The state as we know it must be destroyed by the constant pressure of anarchy, and it is the responsibility of each of us to add to that anarchy now so that we can witness the evolution of a new society tomorrow.’ I noticed that when she spoke she never used contractions: invariably she said
it is
and not
it’s.
For her, life was intense and single-tracked, and as the twilight fell on the alley darkened, I could see that she was irritated with Gretchen, who listened attentively, judged, and argued back. At no point did Gretchen’s eyes brighten with the thrill of discovery when Miss Eltregon made some telling point, for she had heard all these arguments years before in dormitory bull sessions; now she listened respectfully and evaluated, and when Susan finished any line of reasoning, Gretchen smiled, agreed with such data as were irrefutable, and began arguing back. It was obvious that Susan was not going to enroll Gretchen in the revolution.

The discussion ended unexpectedly. Miss Eltregon, who had done her homework, said, ‘But did not your own father—a representative of the worst of what we have been talking about—did he not force you to drop your suit against the police?’

‘He did.’

‘Well?’

‘Father’s confused. That doesn’t mean he’s to be liquidated.’

‘You believe that the corrupt things he stands for …’

Gretchen smiled. ‘I don’t think Father stands for much … except honesty in business relations … and the Republican party.’

‘And you fail to see that it is men like him who are destroying the country?’

Again Gretchen smiled. ‘I think you have drops in your eyes, Miss Eltregon. You see things bigger than they are.’

‘It is only that …’

‘No,’ Gretchen interrupted. ‘The fault isn’t with me. It’s with you. Your trouble is that you didn’t go to a tough university. One that knocked some sense into you … made you think.’

Susan’s eyes flashed. She started to make some kind of personal response, but her training with the Haymakers had proved that that wasn’t fruitful. Controlling herself,
she said, ‘For this generation, Miss Cole, the streets are the university.’

‘You’re right,’ Gretchen agreed generously. ‘That’s where I was educated.’ She accented the word I. ‘But when I got my education I was able to weigh it against the full range of history. And it came out as something quite different from what you say.’

‘You are hopeless,’ Miss Eltregon said.

‘No. I’m educated.’

The impasse was broken by the arrival of Cato Jackson and Monica, for as soon as Susan saw him she dropped Gretchen and started asking him a series of questions, which he answered with an enthusiasm that Monica encouraged. ‘Revolution?’ Cato asked. ‘It’s bound to come.’

‘Agreed,’ Monica cried. ‘Those bloody Dutch in Amsterdam with their queen who owns half the oil in the world.’

‘What the blacks must do,’ Miss Eltregon said, trying to get back on the track, ‘is unite with the laboring classes …’

‘There you dead right!’ Cato cried a little more loudly than necessary and shifting into Geechee. ‘We gonna get all the black labor union members … how many you think we got?’

‘What we have to do first,’ Monica said, ‘is get them tin workers in Bolivia … Cato, you know them tin workers in Bogotá.’

This occasioned a protracted discussion as to where Bogotá was, with one of the soldiers settling the argument: ‘Look, I was stationed in Venezuela and I know for a fact it’s in Ecuador.’ When this location was agreed upon, Cato said, ‘Man, we gonna slap them white oppressors, unnnnnh, unh!’

Miss Eltregon, trying to keep the conversation rational, asked, ‘Have you heard of the Haymakers?’

‘Yeah, das a punch Cassius Clay use,’ Cato said.

‘Sounds like a cocktail with pineapple juice and a bunch of muck,’ Monica suggested.

Miss Eltregon was sharp enough to know that the couple might be putting her on, but she proceeded as if that were not the case. ‘The Haymakers are the spearhead of the revolution,’ she said.

‘Man!’ Cato cried enthusiastically. ‘Das what we need! My friend Akbar Muhammad, he gonna decimate the town.’

‘Your friend who?’

‘Akbar Muhammad. He lead the New Muslims in Philly.’

I could see Miss Eltregon taking mental note of the name, searching her memory. ‘Was he with you when you shot up the church?’ she asked.

‘He gonna be with me when we shoot up the world.’

‘What would really pay off,’ Monica interrupted, ‘would be an attack on the House of Commons.’

Miss Eltregon ignored this and tried to bring the discussion back to some kind of sanity, but Cato said, ‘You hit the House of Commons and the U.S. Senate the same afternoon, man, you gonna attract attention.’

‘There’s a time difference,’ Monica said, and Miss Eltregon’s head jerked.

‘What the hell you mean by that?’ Cato demanded. ‘Don’t you suppose I know there’s a time difference? Like in the movies. Sidney Poitier say to Paul Newman, “Synchronize our watches.” If we smart enough to blow up the whole government, don’t you think we smart enough to synchronize our watches?’ In disgust he added, ‘London seven hours behind Washington.’

This provoked a flood of expertise, particularly from the soldiers, who were trained in such matters. They argued on behalf of time differences varying from London ahead by eight to London behind by seven. Miss Eltregon did not lose her composure; in fact, as I was to learn later, she was ahead of us all, for when Monica went on to propose that they bomb the Chamber of Deputies as well, provided they could synchronize their watches with Paris, I watched as Miss Eltregon studied Monica’s eyes. It must have been then that she first caught on that Monica was taking drugs.

Cato said, ‘Man, we get them firecrackers all goin’ off at the same time, we really gonna have a revolution.’ But when he had said this he grew moody and spoke directly to Miss Eltregon: ‘In my bones I feel when the smoke clear … well, the brother gonna be on the bottom of the pile like before. How you answer that, lady?’

Miss Eltregon did not understand the question and asked Cato to repeat. He said, ‘You gonna give the brother the same old end of the stick, eh, lady?’

Instead of trying to answer the question, Miss Eltregon studied Cato’s eyes and apparently decided that he, too, was under the influence of something, for she abandoned any further attempt at serious discussion and said with as
much cheeriness as she ever mustered, ‘Let us all go out to dinner.’ She indicated that Monica and I were included.

With shrewd judgment she picked from the soldiers the one Negro who was inclined to listen to the Haymaker message, and the six of us left the bar to find a restaurant, but she had something more special in mind. Leading us to the car which the airline had provided for three weeks, she drove us out of Torremolinos until we reached a side road leading to the sea. Before long we were at the gateway to a small castle, where Cato cried, ‘Hell, I know this place, Laura lives here.’

‘She does,’ Miss Eltregon agreed. ‘Friends in St. Louis sent me.’

Laura, wearing a long Moroccan caftan decorated with chains of beaten silver met us at the door. She led us into the medieval dining room, where Paxton Fell stood tall and trim in his lame evening jacket. Laura had six additional guests, three of them Americans, who applauded when she announced: ‘This is Susan Eltregon, from St. Louis. She’s one of those clever Harvesters who are going to lead the revolution.’

‘What are you people up to?’ one of the Americans asked.

Miss Eltregon replied forcefully, ‘We have decided that life in America is intolerable.’

‘Of course it is,’ the American agreed.

‘So intolerable that we must eliminate the whole filthy mess. We shall sustain anarchy wherever it breaks out … create it when it does not.’

‘Splendid tactics,’ Laura agreed.

‘Where do you live in the States?’ I asked her.

‘Texas.’

‘I shouldn’t think Texas would approve such a plan.’

‘Texas is beyond redemption,’ she said abruptly, dismissing me and turning to Susan. ‘Now tell us, dear child, what progress are you making?’

‘We have cadres in all major cities. Good nuclei in most universities. We find encouraging response from the blacks.’ Here she placed her hand on that of the Negro soldier she had recruited.

‘Splendid,’ Laura cried. ‘This is the most heartening news I’ve heard in a long time.’ Turning to Gretchen and Monica, she said, ‘I’m sure you girls have joined up. It’s such a sensible movement.’

‘It’s for America and I’m English,’ Monica said, ‘but I’m so excited about it, I plan to take care of central Africa … You know, Congo, Vwarda, Bolivia.’

‘Bolivia is in South America,’ one of the European guests pointed out.

‘I know that,’ Monica said petulantly. ‘I’m going there to organize the tin workers … in Bogotá.’

This occasioned the same kind of digression which had disrupted Miss Eltregon’s earlier presentation, and she intended to permit no repetition. She started speaking firmly and with a clear voice, continuing until she had captured everyone’s attention. Certainly her message made me listen, and I sat astounded at her willingness to share it with us: ‘The Haymakers are preparing many far-sighted moves against the day of revolution, but most of our work is being done for us by the doomed society as it thrashes about, trying to save itself. Each improvisation it adopts makes our position stronger and more inevitable. You will, I feel sure, see a sharp decline in the stock market as our corrupt economic system stumbles to its knees. Companies like yours, Mr. Fairbanks, will simply go to the wall. They will vanish. The entire force of history will drive President Nixon to enlarging his war in Vietnam, and when this happens you will see students across the nation rise in protest. Middle America will demand that the students be disciplined, so we can look forward to bloodshed, and this will further radicalize our youth. Now if at that moment, which I assure you is inescapable, a cadre of devoted men and women who comprehend the historical forces operating is in position to provide leadership … well, you can see for yourselves what can be accomplished.’