Black Glass Part 8

We sent Nixon a telegram. Gretchen composed it. END THIS OBSCENE WAR AT ONCE STOP PULL OUT THE WAY YOUR FATHER SHOULD HAVE STOP It didn't make us feel better.

We should have done more. I look back on those years, and it's clear to me that we should have done more. It's just not clear to me what more we should have done.

Perhaps we lacked imagination. Perhaps we lacked physical courage. Perhaps our personal stakes were just not high enough. We were women. We were not going to Vietnam. We were privileged. Our brothers, our lovers, were not going to Vietnam. But you do us an injustice if you doubt our sincerity. Remember that we watched the news three times a day. Three times a day we read the body count in the upper right-hand corner of the screen like the score of a football game. This is how many of them we killed today. They killed this many of us. Subtract one figure from the other. Are we winning?

Could anyone be indifferent to this? Always, I added the two numbers together. My G.o.d, I would think. Dear G.o.d. Look how many people died today! (What if one of them was you?) * * *

YOU ARE ON A PLANE, an ordinary plane. You could be en route to Denver from Chicago or going home for Christmas if you just close your eyes and believe only your ears. But you are really between j.a.pan and Vietnam. The plane has a stewardess dressed in a bathing suit like Miss America. This is designed as a consolation for you. If you are very, very frightened, she may agree to wear rabbit ears and a tail when she brings you your drink. But you must not touch her. She is a white woman and looks familiar to you-her height, her build quite ordinary. This will change. When you remember her later she will seem exotic. It will seem odd to you that a woman should be so big. You will remember that she came and tightened your seat belt as if she were your mother. What was she keeping you safe for? Whose body is it anyway? You look at your legs, at your hands, and wonder what your body will be like when it is returned to you. You wonder who will want it then.

The immediate threat is the plane's descent. You make a sudden decision not to descend with it. You spread your arms to hold yourself aloft. You hover near the top of the plane. But it is hopeless. If they have to shoot you down, they will. Friendly fire. You return to your seat. The plane carries your body down into Vietnam.

You think of me. How I will hate you if you don't live through this. How you must protect me. And during your whole tour, every time you meet someone returning home, you will give him a message for me. You will write your message on the casts of the wounded. You will print it on the foreheads of those who return walking, on the teeth of those who return bagged. I am here, I am here, I am here. So many messages. How are you to know that none will get through?

MY AFFINITY GROUP was very kind about you. I would tell them frequently how the war would be over by Christmas, how you were responsible for the growing dissatisfaction among servicemen. Vets against the war, I said to them, was probably one of your ideas. They never mentioned how you never wrote. Neither did I. You were my wound. I had my broken ankle and I had you. It was so much more than they had. It made them protective of me.

They didn't want me at any more demonstrations. "When you could run," Lauren pointed out, "look what happened to you." But I was there with them when the police cordoned off Sproul Plaza, trapping us inside, and ga.s.sed us from the air. You don't want to believe this. Governor Ronald Reagan and all the major networks a.s.sured you that we had been asked to disperse but had refused. Only Poncho Taylor told the truth. We had not been allowed to leave. Anyone who tried to leave was clubbed. A helicopter flew over the area and dropped tear gas on us. The gas went into the hospital and into the neighboring residential areas. When the police asked the city to buy them a second helicopter so that they could enlarge operations, many people not of the radical persuasion objected. A committee was formed to prevent this purchase, a committee headed by an old Bay Area activist. She happened to be Poncho Taylor's grandmother. Lauren took it as a sign from G.o.d.

Lauren's pa.s.sion for Poncho had continued to grow, and we had continued to feed it. It's difficult to explain why Poncho had become so important to us. Partly it was just that Lauren loved him and we loved Lauren. Whatever Lauren wanted she should have. But partly it was the futility of our political work. We continued to do it but without energy, without hope. Poncho began to seem attainable when peace was not. Poncho began to represent the rest of our lives, outside the words.

Lauren told everyone how she felt. Our friends all knew and soon their friends knew and then the friends of their friends. It was like a message Lauren was sending to Poncho. And if it didn't reach him, Lauren could combine useful political effort with another conduit. She called Poncho's grandmother and volunteered us all for the Stop the Helicopter campaign.

We went to an evening organizational meeting. (We did more organizing than anything else.) Though now I remember that Julie did not come with us, but stayed at home to rendezvous in the empty apartment with her teaching a.s.sistant.

The meeting was crowded, but eventually we verified Poncho's absence. After interminable discussion we were told to organize phone trees, circulate pet.i.tions, see that the city council meeting, scheduled for the end of the month, was packed with vocal opponents. Lauren couldn't even get close to Poncho's grandmother.

When we returned home, Julie was drunk. Her lover had failed to show, but Mike, a friend of mine, had come by with a bottle of wine. Julie had never known Mike very well or liked him very much, but he had stayed the whole evening and they had gotten along wonderfully. Julie had a large collection of Barbra Streisand records we refused to let her play. Mike had not only put them on but actually cried over them. "He's a lot more sensitive than I thought," Julie told me.

Mike denied it all. He was so drunk he wove from side to side even sitting down. He tried to kiss me and landed on my shoulder. "How did the meeting go?" he asked, and snorted when we told him. "Phone trees." He lifted his head to grin at me, red-faced, unshaven, wine-soaked breath. "The old radicals are even less b.a.l.l.sy than the young ones."

I picked up one of his hands. "Do you think it's possible," I asked him, "for a revolution to be entirely personal? Suppose we all concentrated on our own lives, filled them with revolutionary moments, revolutionary relationships. When we had enough of them, it would be a revolution."

"No." Mike removed his hand from mine. "It wouldn't. That's cowardice talking. That's you being liberal. That's you saying, 'Let's make a revolution, but let's be nice about it.' People are dying. There's a real war going on. We can't be incremental."

"Exactly," said Gretchen. "Exactly. Time is as much the issue as anything else."

"Then we should all be carrying guns," said Julie. "We should be planning political a.s.sa.s.sinations."

"We should be robbing banks," said Mike. "Or printing phony bills." Mike had been known to pa.s.s a bad check or two, though he never needed the money. He was an auto mechanic by day, a dope dealer by night. He was the richest person we knew. "Lauren," he called, and Lauren appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. "I came here tonight because I have a surprise for you." He was grinning.

"If it's dope, I'm not interested," said Lauren. "Nor am I solvent."

"What would you say," Mike asked, "if I told you that right now, right at this very moment, I have Poncho Taylor's car sitting in my garage waiting for repairs?" Lauren said we would go right over.

Poncho had a white convertible. Lauren loved it. She sat in the driver's seat, because Poncho had sat there. She sat on the pa.s.senger side, because that was where she would be sitting herself. I discovered an old valentine in the glove compartment. Lauren was torn between the despair of thinking he already had a girlfriend and the thrill of finally discovering something personal. She opened it.

"Love and a hundred smooches, Deborah." Lauren read it aloud disapprovingly. "This Deborah sounds like a real sap."

"Poncho seems more and more to be the perfect match for you," I added. The valentine had one feature of incontrovertible value. It had Poncho's address on it. Lauren began to copy it, then looked at us.

"What the h.e.l.l," she said and put the whole thing in her purse.

I had no address for you, you know. I mean, in the beginning I did, and I probably should have written you first. Since I hardly talked to you when you came to say good-bye. Since I didn't cry. I did miss you. I kept thinking you would write me. And then later, when I saw you wouldn't, it was too late. Then I had no address. I couldn't believe you would never write me. What happened to you?

Even our senators sent me form letters. More than I got from you.

Dear (fill in name), Well, here I am in Vietnam! The people are little and the bugs are big, but the food is Army and that means American. As far as I can see, Saigon has been turned into one large brothel. I go there as often as I can. It beats my other way of interacting with the locals, which is to go up in planes and drop Willie Peter on them. Man, those suckers burn forever! I made my first ground kill yesterday. Little guy in a whole lot of pieces. You have to bring the body for the body count and the arm came off right in my hand. We were able to count him six times, which everybody said was really beautiful. Hey, he's in so many pieces he's never going to need any company but his own again. The dope is really heavy-duty here, too. I've lost my mind.

Listen, I got to go. We're due out tonight on a walk-through with ARVN support, and you know what they say here about the ARVN-with friends like these . . . Ugly little b.u.g.g.e.rs.

Dust off the women. I'll be home by Christmas. Love you all.

(fill in name) Now you're angry. I hope. Who am I to condemn you? What do I know about the real war? Absolutely nothing. Gretchen says you're a running-dog imperialist. She thinks she met you once before you left, before she knew me, at a party at Barbara Meyer's. In Sausalito? I don't think it was you. She waited a long time to tell me about it. I was married before she told me. I don't think it was you.

So it took Lauren two days to formalize her final plan. It was audacious. It was daring. It had Lauren's stamp all over it. Mike called when Poncho came in and picked up his car. This was our signal to start.

It was Lauren's night to cook dinner, and she saw no reason to change this. She had bought the ingredients for cannelloni, a spectacular treat she made entirely from scratch. It required long intervals, she claimed, when the dough must be allowed to rest. During one of these rest periods, she fixed herself up and Julie drove her to San Francisco, where Poncho lived. Julie returned in forty minutes. She had only stayed long enough to see Lauren safely inside.

Lauren came home perhaps a half an hour later. She changed her clothes again, dropping the discarded ones onto the living room floor, and went into the kitchen to roll out the cannelloni dough. We sat around her at the kitchen table, chopping the onions, mixing the filling, stuffing the rolls while she talked. She was very high, very excited.

"I knocked on the door," she said. "Poncho's roommate let me in. Poncho was lying on the couch, reading. Poncho Taylor! He was there!"

"Can I come in?" Lauren had asked. She made her voice wobble. She showed us how. "A man in a car is following me."

"What was the roommate like?" Julie asked hopefully. "Pretty cute?"

"No. He wears big gla.s.ses and his hair is very short. James. His name is James. He asked me why I came to their apartment since they live on the second floor."

"Good question," I admitted. "What did you say?"

"I said I saw their Bobby Seale poster and thought they might be black."

"Good answer," said Julie. "Lauren thinks on her feet. All right!"

"There's nothing wrong with gla.s.ses," Gretchen objected. "Lots of attractive people wear gla.s.ses." She cut into an onion with determined zeal. "Maybe he's gay," she said.

"No," said Lauren. "He's not. And it wasn't the gla.s.ses. It was the compet.i.tion. Poncho is so . . ." We waited while she searched for the word worthy of Poncho. "Magnetic," she concluded.

Well, who could compete with Poncho? Gretchen let the issue drop.

Lauren had entered the apartment and James and Poncho had gone to the window. "What make was the car?" James had asked. "I don't see anybody."

"Green VW bug," said Lauren.

"My car," said Julie. "Great."

"They wanted me to call the police," Lauren said. "But I was too upset. I didn't even get the license."

"Lauren," said Gretchen disapprovingly. Gretchen hated women to look helpless. Lauren looked back at her.

"I was distraught," she said evenly. She began picking up the finished cannelloni and lining the pan with neat rows. Little blankets. Little corpses. (No. I am being honest. Of course I didn't think this.) Poncho had returned immediately to the couch and his books. "Chicks shouldn't wander around the city alone at night," he commented briefly. Lauren loved his protectiveness. Gretchen was silent.

"Then I asked to use the phone," Lauren said. She wiped her forehead with her upper arm since her hands were covered with flour. She took the pan to the stove and ladled tomato sauce into it. "The phone was in the kitchen. James took me in; then he went back. I put my keys on the floor, very quietly, and I kicked them under the table. Then I pretended to phone you."

"All your keys?" Julie asked in dismay.

Lauren ignored her. "I told them no one was home. I told them I'd been planning to take the bus, but by now, of course, I'd missed it."

"All your keys?" I asked pointedly.

"James drove me home. d.a.m.n! If he hadn't been there . . ." Lauren slammed the oven door on our dinner and came to sit with us. "What do you think?" she asked. "Is he interested?"

"Sounds like James was interested," said Gretchen.

"You left your name with your keys?" I said.

"Name, address, phone number. Now we wait."

We waited. For two days the phone never rang. Not even our parents wanted to talk to us. In the interest of verisimilitude, Lauren had left all her keys on the chain. She couldn't get into the apartment unless one of us had arranged to be home and let her in. She couldn't drive, which was just as well since every gas company had made the boycott list but Sh.e.l.l. Sh.e.l.l was not an American company, but we were still investigating. It seemed likely there was war profiteering there somewhere. And, if not, we'd heard rumors of South African holdings. We were looking into it. But in the meantime we could still drive.

"The counterculture is going to make gas from chicken s.h.i.t," said Julie.

"Too bad they can't make it from bulls.h.i.t," Lauren said. "We got plenty of that."

Demonstrators had gone out and stopped the morning commuter traffic to protest the war. It had not been appreciated. It drove something of a wedge between us and the working cla.s.s. Not that the proletariat had ever liked us much. I told our postman that more than two hundred colleges had closed. "BFD," he said, handing me the mail. Nothing for me.

YOU ARE ON the surface of the moon and the air itself is a poison. Nothing moves, nothing grows, there is nothing but ash. A helicopter has left you here and the air from its liftoff made the ash fly and then resettle into definite shapes, like waves. You don't move for fear of disturbing these patterns, which make you think of snow, of children lying on their backs in the snow until their arms turn into wings. You can see the shadows of winged people in the ash.

Nothing is alive here, so you are not here, after all, on this man-made moon where nothing can breathe. You are home and have been home for months. Your tour lasted just over a year and you only missed one Christmas. You have a job and a wife and you eat at restaurants, go to baseball games, commute on the bus. The war is over and there is nothing behind you but the bodies of angels flying on their backs in the ash.

PONCHO NEVER CALLED. We went to the city meeting on the helicopter, all four of us, to help the city make this decision. The helicopter was item seven on the agenda. We never got to it. Child care had been promised but not provided. Angry parents dumped their children on the stage of the Berkeley Community Theatre to sit with the council members. A small girl with a sun painted on her forehead knocked over a microphone. The conservative council members went home. Berkeley.

Lauren found Poncho and James in the dress circle. Poncho was covering the meeting. Lauren introduced us all. "By the way," she said carefully, "you didn't find a set of keys at your house, did you? I lost mine, and that night is the last I remember having them."

"Keys?" asked Poncho. "No." Something in his smile told me Lauren must have overplayed herself that evening. He knew exactly what was going on.

"If you do find them, you will call me?"

"Of course."

Julie drove us home, and I made Lauren a cup of tea. She held my hand for a moment as she took it from me. Then she smiled. "I thought we were boycotting Lipton's," she said.

"It's a British tea." I stirred some milk into my own cup. "That should be all right, shouldn't it?"

"Have you ever heard of Bernadette Devlin?" Gretchen asked.

We never saw Poncho again except on TV. On 29 June he told us all American forces had been withdrawn from Cambodia. Your birthday, so I remember the date. Not a bad lottery number either. So I always wondered. Were you really drafted? Did you enlist?

Poncho lost his job about the same time Nixon lost his. Some network executive decided blacks didn't need special news, so they didn't need special reporters to give it to them. Let them watch the same news as the rest of us. And apparently Poncho's ability to handle generic news was doubtful. The network let him go. Politically we regretted this decision. Privately we thought he had it coming.

G.o.d, it was years ago. Years and years ago. I got married. Lauren went to Los Angeles and then to Paris, and now she's in Washington writing speeches for some senator. Hey, we emerged from the war of the words with some expertise. Gretchen and Julie had a falling-out and hardly speak to each other now. Only when I'm there. They make a special effort for me.

Julie asked me recently why I was so sure there ever had been a real war. What proof did I have, she asked, that it wasn't a TV movie of the decade? A miniseries? A maxiseries?

It outraged Gretchen. "Don't do that," she snapped. "Keep it real." She turned to me. She said she saw you about a month ago at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. She said you had no legs.

It doesn't alarm me as much as you might think. I see you all the time, too. You're in the park, pushing your kids on the swings and you've got one hand and one hook. Or you're sitting in a wheelchair in the aisle of the movie theater watching The Deer Hunter. Or you're weighing vegetables at the supermarket and you're fine, you're just fine, only it's never really you. Not any of them.

SO WHAT DO you think of my war? At the worst I imagine you're a little angry. "My G.o.d," I can imagine you saying. "You managed a clean escape. You had your friends, you had your games. You were quite happy." Well, I promised you the truth. And the truth is that some of us went to jail. (d.a.m.n few. I know.) Some of us were killed. (And the numbers are irrelevant.) Some of us went to Canada and to Sweden. And some of us had a great time. But it wasn't a clean escape, really, for any of us.

Look at me. I'm operating all alone here with no affinity group and it seems unnatural to me. It seems to me that I should be surrounded by people I'd trust with my life. Always. It makes me cling to people, even people I don't care for all that much. It makes me panic when people leave. I'm sure they're not coming back. The war did this to me. Or you did. Same thing. What did the war do to you?

Look how much we have in common, after all. We both lost. I lost my war. You lost your war. I look today at Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos and I feel sick inside. Do you ever ask yourself who won? Who the h.e.l.l won?

Your war. I made it up, of course. It was nothing, nothing like that. Write me. Tell me about it. Please. If I have not heard from you by Christmas, I have decided to ask Lauren to go to the monument and look for your name. I don't want to do this. Don't make me do this. Just send me some word.

I am thirty-five years old. I am ready to believe anything you say.

DUPLICITY.

They took Alice out every single day. Sometimes she was crying when she came back. Sometimes she was limp and had to be carried. This was not much like Alice.

Alice had been Alice the day she and Tilly had returned to the base camp and found it violated. The tent had been ransacked. The camp lantern had been taken and some of their more brightly colored clothes were gone. A box of tampons had been opened and several unwrapped. Alice picked one up, holding it by its long tail like a dead mouse. She laughed. "What do you suppose they made of these?" she asked Tilly. She stuck the tampon into one of her ears, plugging the other ear with her finger. "Very useful," she said. "Yes? Sleep late in the mornings. Miss the birds."

Alice's cheerfulness was so marked it required explanation. Alice, who was an artist and amateur cartographer, had told Tilly that the blank s.p.a.ces in maps were often referred to as sleeping beauties. This surprised Tilly, who had never given it any thought. She could not imagine anyone actually functioning with this optimistic att.i.tude toward the unknown. Not without a lot of effort. Here be dragons, was Tilly's philosophy. Expect the worst and you'll still be disappointed. Her reaction to the intrusion into their camp had been one of barely controlled alarm. She had known this trip would be dangerous. They had come so casually. They had been very stupid.

But Alice had been Alice. "It was clearly investigative," she told Tilly calmly. "And not malicious. Nothing was broken. If they had wanted us to go, they would have found an unambiguous way to suggest it. This was just curiosity. Though I do wish they hadn't taken our light." Alice had been sitting outside the tent in the sun, since she could no longer work at night. Propped open on her knees, she'd had a lap desk which folded and unfolded; she'd been penciling a curve in the Nhamund River onto her graph.

The map Alice and Tilly had brought was based on high-alt.i.tude infrared pictures. The maps Alice was doing would be much more detailed. On that day she had been working on something whimsical, partly map, partly picture. She had noted the turn in the river and then, in the water, had added the head of a large river turtle-the tracaja. On the day of their arrival, a turtle like this had watched them for hours while they emptied the boat and set up camp. Alice had sung the turtle song from Sesame Street to it, bringing civilization, she said, to the backwards turtles of Brazil, who could have no knowledge of the advances other turtles had made globally. Alice had nieces and nephews and a predilection for information there was no reasonable way she could know anyhow. Tilly didn't know that song.

Two untidy brown braids rested on Alice's shoulders. A slight breeze blew the unrestrained wisps of hair into her face. She held them back with her left hand, added an arrow to the map with her right. "You are here," she'd said to Tilly. Brightly. You are here.