1968. Part 18

"Yes, they do. Maybe there was somebody in your company in Vietnam? Somebody who was aggressively h.o.m.os.e.xual?"

"Uh, no. Not really. There were two medics everybody knew were gettin' it on together, weirdos. Not aggressive, though."

"Were either of them named Lee?"

"I don't know. They were both Doc; Artillery Doc and Engineer Doc."

He nodded blankly at that. He was thinking. "You're still having the bad dreams."

"Not every night. Sometimes."

"And the apparition? The man with no face?"

"He, uh, hasn't been around in a while."

"Well." Folsom wrote several lines on a pale yellow 3X5 card. Then he squinted at what he had written and tapped the card on the desk three times. "We'll discontinue the ECT for the time being, and the aversion therapy. And we'll adjust your medication downward, see whether your concentration improves. Butyou must promise me"-he stabbed the yellow card at Spider for punctuation-"promise that you'll tell the truth if you start feeling worse.""Oh, I will, sir, I promise."

"Bad dreams, hallucinations, funny feelings about the men around you. We can fix them all, but sometimes it takes time."

"Yes, sir. Understood."

"Well. That's all. You may go."

"Thank you, sir." Spider tried not to move too fast, leaving. The pipe smoke was really getting to him. He carefully slipped the door shut, and noticed three things: The smoke smell in the corridor was different from inside. There was wood and asphalt. That's what he'd smelled earlier, when he thought Captain My Captain had changed blends.

Most of the patients were standing in the hall, looking toward the nurses' station.

Two white MPs were talking to the duty nurse. They carried automatic rifles.

"What's up?" Spider whispered.

From forty feet away, one of the MPs answered him, turning to face them with his rifle at port arms: "Return to your wards. The Negroes are rioting. Was.h.i.+ngton is burning."

Martin Luther King and James Earl Ray Martin Luther King had returned to Memphis in April to try to straighten out the sanitation-worker strike that had escalated into violence, the disturbance possibly started by undercover police infiltrators.

King's party had made reservations to stay in a white-owned hotel. A newspaper story berated him for that, so he changed to the black-owned Lorraine Motel. There was a 205-foot clear shot from the bathroom of a nearby rooming house to King's motel room balcony. A man named John Willard checked into the rooming house the same morning King checked into the Lorraine. He chose a lousy room whose only saving grace was that it was near the bathroom.

He locked himself into the bathroom and waited.

King stepped out onto the balcony and exchanged a few words with Jesse Jackson and a musician friend. His chauffeur hollered up from the parking lot that it was getting chilly; King ought to get a topcoat before they left for dinner. He agreed and started to return to his room and was struck by a.30/06 bullet on the right jaw. The round is designed for much larger game. He died at St. Joseph's Hospital an hour later, throat torn open, spinal cord severed.

The weapon was immediately recovered, a Remington Model 760, coincidentally the weapon of choice for Marine snipers in Khe Sanh, who routinely attempted head shots at fifteen times the distance between King's balcony and the rooming house bathroom.

There were no fingerprints in the bathroom, none in Willard's room. There was one on the rifle, but it was never linked to anyone. Right after the single shot, two white Mustangs took off in opposite directions from in front of the rooming house. An abandoned white Mustang was later found in Atlanta, ultimatelytraced to James Earl Ray, an escaped convict who was going to bartending school in Los Angeles under the name Eric Starvo Gait. He had recently undergone plastic surgery and had bought the Mustang with $2,000 cash, though he had no legitimate source of income.

Ray was not exactly a cunning criminal. He was eventually arrested in London's Heathrow Airport when he accidentally showed two pa.s.sports with different names on them and-oops!-was found to be carrying a loaded.38 pistol.

The case was quickly closed, but there were loose ends that indicated at least one other person was involved. Ray was a non-smoker, but the floors of the rooming house and the Mustang had been littered with Viceroy b.u.t.ts. Clothes found with the rifle were not the same size as the clothes in the Mustang trunk that led, through Los Angeles laundry marks, to James Earl Ray. Witnesses' descriptions of John Willard varied wildly, though admittedly that's not uncommon. But there were those two white Mustangs.

A lot of people wanted Martin Luther King out of the way. Twenty years after the a.s.sa.s.sination, his soft-spoken son, County Commissioner Martin Luther King III, said, "That's what he was killed about: redistributing the wealth and resources. And if anybody could have gotten the ma.s.ses to say, 'We want the wealth redistributed,' he could have. So the powers that be said, 'Well, he's got to be removed.' " The son went on to exonerate Lyndon Johnson specifically, saying, "It could have been the Mafia, it could have been a number of forces. Anyone who felt threatened that their wealth could be. diluted."

In 1978, the House a.s.sa.s.sinations Committee reported that "there is a likelihood that James Earl Ray a.s.sa.s.sinated Dr. Martin Luther King as the result of a conspiracy." Circ.u.mstantial evidence linked Ray with the New Orleans Marcello Mafia family, who might have financed the hit as a favor for the Ku Klux Klan. James Earl Ray apparently had no racial or political reason to murder King himself; he was just a pusher, forger, smuggler, thief, and evidently a better marksman than, say, Lee Harvey Oswald.

Or was he? Ray, who was discharged from the army for "ineptness," claims he didn't fire the shot. He took money and orders from a man named Raoul, but claims he was set up, and doesn't have any idea as to who actually did the deed.

A deliciously paranoidfrisson to this tragic crime is that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover detested Martin Luther King. He had agents tail King and make tapes of an extramarital affair, and then-three weeks before King was to receive the n.o.bel Peace Prize-mailed the tapes anonymously to King's wife, along with a note suggesting that the only honorable action for King would be suicide. When that bit of blackmail produced no results, he released the tapes to reporters.

Hoover had close personal ties with Mafia figures for most of his life, though until the 1960s denied that the Mob existed. He continually blocked Bureau action against organized crime until he was forced into it by the very public opposition of his boss, the attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, whom he also despised.

J. Edgar Hoover planted the news story that made King change his reservation to the Lorraine Motel.

The fire this time The television in the lounge was almost always on, but the nurse never allowed it to be tuned to a news program. That was probably smart, since most of the boys and men on the ward had psychological problems relating to Vietnam, and the networks had discovered how profitable it was to provide the public with daily war footage.But the lack of local news was suddenly disconcerting. They could smell the smoke and when the sun went down they could see the flickering reflection of flames on the low-lying clouds. Were there lunatic mobs ranging around the city attacking white people? Did they survive Vietnam just to be killed by Americans?

Frank White was playing double solitaire with Spider. "Yon have relatives in town, White?"

"Not anymore. Moved out." That was unusually direct for White. "Landlord sell the building f.u.c.kin' right out from under 'em, they go back to Sou' Carolina."

"White guy?" Spider asked. "The landlord?"

"Nah. White n.i.g.g.e.r, is what he was. Jive-a.s.s son of a b.i.t.c.h, he doin' it all over town, is what my father say. Rippin' off the brothers, the motherf.u.c.ker." He s.h.i.+fted three cards. "You worried about you' folks?"

"Yeah. I tried to call but can't get out."

"They live out Bethesda?" Spider nodded. "s.h.i.+t, they ain't gonna let 'em burn Bethesda. Gonna be like L.A. a couple years ago. Long as the black folks burn out our own neighborhoods, n.o.body give a s.h.i.+t.

They move in on f.u.c.kin' Whitey the f.u.c.kin' cops gonna mow 'em down."

"Guess so." Spider built the hearts up from seven to Jack. "Look, I'm sorry."

"What, you kill f.u.c.kin' Martin Luther King? You got nothin' to be sorry for."

Knox had moved quietly behind Spider. "Wish you guys wouldn't be talkin' this s.h.i.+t."

"We talk what the f.u.c.k we want, motherf.u.c.ker."

"You want a shot, Frank? That what you want?"

"Get off my f.u.c.kin' case, motherf.u.c.ker." He stood up. "I giveyou a f.u.c.kin' shot!"

"Come on, White," Spider said. "Yon can't beat him."

"Oh, f.u.c.k this s.h.i.+t." White flipped the card table over suddenly and dove toward Knox, clutching for his throat. Knox sidestepped and kicked him behind the knee. He went down hard and Knox pinioned both arms behind his back. "Nurse," he said, voice only slightly raised, "Code Blue."

Two other black patients stalked over. "You let go the brother," said one, even bigger than Knox.

"Whose side you on, anyhow?"

"Get back in bed, Royce. You want a shot, too?"

"Yeah, whose side you on?" the other one said. Two more black patients joined them.

"You stop this 'side' s.h.i.+t. Need that Blue, nurse."

"Don't get no nurse." Royce stepped forward and aimed a kick at Knox's face. Knox raised one hand to block it and White squirmed away. Three of them piled on Knox and Spider stood up."Come on, guys. This won't-" Someone kicked him in the b.a.l.l.s and, when he doubled over, rabbit-punched him into oblivion.

Fires By midafternoon on the 5th of April, there were more than seventy fires raging in Was.h.i.+ngton, and open looting was going on two blocks from the White House. That building and the Capitol were protected behind cordons of soldiers.

Seventy-five thousand National Guard troops were spread through 110 cities; "controlling" the rioting, arson, and looting that had broken out in black neighborhoods all over the country would eventually result in 2,500 casualties, 39 deaths.

For some blacks it was an explosion of bottled-up rage. For some, well publicized by the white press and television, it was just an opportunity to raise h.e.l.l or go shopping without the inconvenience of cash.

(A LondonTimes reporter caught in the Was.h.i.+ngton looting claimed "most of the youngsters had never heard of Dr. Martin Luther King, let alone his murder.") For a few, it was an unprecedented political opportunity.

Martin Luther King had not been admired by all blacks. His n.o.bel Peace Prize didn't cut any ice with people who perceived America as the battleground in a lopsided race war.

King had followed his idol Gandhi in a belief that nonviolent resistance would eventually prevail against the white power structure, as it had in India. His Southern Christian Leaders.h.i.+p Conference was joined by the mainstream National a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Colored People in that belief. But not many young blacks were listening. Even the pacifistically named Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was moving away from King and toward the violent radical Black Panther Party.

The Black Panthers themselves were split by conflicting ideologies and personalities at the top. Stokely Carmichael called for a pure color-line division, blacks of all cla.s.ses united against all whites. Blacks who didn't cooperate would be "offed." Eldridge Cleaver didn't think that Black Power could prevail without the cooperation of sympathetic whites; he called for a united front of all radical forces against the Establishment, who were not themselves all white. Both leaders were forceful, charismatic, educated, and unbending. One party wasn't big enough for both of them.

The Establishment's police almost simplified the problem for the Panthers on April 5th. Cleaver had hated King, but wasn't above using his death for political ends. He exhorted a rally in Berkeley to avenge their fallen leader. Later that day, police surrounded Cleaver and a fellow Panther in a burning building in Oakland. According to Cleaver, they came out with their hands up, but the cops opened fire anyhow.

His companion was. .h.i.t five times and killed. Cleaver was spared but was beaten up in the ambulance and later in jail.

By the end of 1968, Cleaver and Carmichael would flee the country, finding asylum in Algeria and Guinea, respectively. Black resistance to the white Establishment became more and more fragmented, less effective.

The ghetto fires burned down and in some places neighborhoods were rebuilt. In some places, they were rebuilt for black people and businesses to move back in. In Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., a couple of blocks from where the London reporter had talked to the black looters, the new FBI building rose up from the ashes, a brooding fortress for J. Edgar Hoover, its architecture jarring in a graceful city. Albert Speer, Hitler's architect, might have liked it.Boy Hero Bright glare and ammonia and a pounding headache. Spider woke up in a hospital bed in a room that was beige, not green. "No concussion," said the voice behind the glare. "You hear me, Speidel?"

"Yeah, yeah, s.h.i.+t." The room started to come into focus. A stranger in a white tunic, holding a doctor's light. Another stranger in a gaudy Hawaiian s.h.i.+rt, green and red and orange.

"What happened? G.o.d, I feel like s.h.i.+t." It felt like he'd been kicked in the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es. He remembered he had been.

"Here. Take a couple of Darvon." He accepted the capsules from the doctor-or-whatever and washed them down with ice water. "You take it from here, Mike. I got a lot of customers."

The other man loomed like a garish jungle cartoon and put a cool hand on Spider's forehead. "You'll be okay, John. Spider."

"Captain Folsom?" Spider hadn't recognized Captain My Captain, out of uniform.

"I came on duty as soon as I heard about the riot," he said gruffly. "An extra pair of hands."

"A riot? That fight in the day room turned into a riot?"

"Well, the duty nurse had to lock herself inside her station and call the MPs. Several of the patients went to the stockade."

That'll cure what ails them, Spider thought. "What happened to Knox?"

"He suffered a broken nose. But he dealt out a good deal more than that."

"Old White jumped him. Never would've thought he could move so fast. Then a bunch of other guys piled on."

"Knox says you stood up for him; that's why yon got creamed."

"Uh huh." Actually, Spider didn't think that was exactly what had happened. He did remember standing up, true; and saying something. But nothing heroic.

"I think it would be well to speed up your release rather than put you back on the ward. You know, with all the, uh, Negroes. I'll be calling your parents tomorrow morning. You can rest here for a couple of days while we outprocess you."

"Home?"

"That's right, home and a civilian. You'll outrank me!" He stood up to leave and Spider shook his hand and thanked him numbly. Home? Was he well enough?

A pretty nurse came in with pills. His usual Thorazine and Valium, and a little blue one she said was a sleeping pill. He took them all and then regretted the sleeping pill when he heard the theme fromStar Trek come from the TV. He watched about fifteen minutes of an episode he hadn't seen before, but couldn'tkeep his eyes open.

Life is but a dream Spider is standing on the walk that leads to his home in Bethesda. Behind him, a jeep pulls away.

He has a heavy duffle bag and, inexplicably, his M16. No, it's Sarge's M16, the one that works, with two magazines taped back-to-back. The selector is on auto. He clicks it back to SAFE, but then resets it back to fully automatic. This only looks like home. He knows where he is.

Spider is wearing tattered jungle fatigues, spattered with blood and brains. He goes up the walk slowly, dragging the duffle bag behind him. Checking the ground for b.o.o.bytraps. The trees for snipers.

He reaches for the doorbell but the door is slightly open. Inside, he hears dinner sounds: murmured conversation, clinking silverware and gla.s.ses. Smell of pork chops.

He silently eases the door open with the muzzle of the rifle. Louder noise, stronger smell. He leaves the duffle bag and stalks through the entrance hall, the living room, unchanged in any detail but subtly different.

The dining room. As expected, his parents are chatting amiably with the man with no face. Everyone is eating human parts.

Spider fires from the hip, emptying a magazine into the man with no face. He explodes in a cloud of bone fragments and dust and dry-shreds. The head falls onto the dinner plate and stares at him sideways. His mother is screaming.

Spider ejects the magazines and reverses it. He releases the c.o.c.king lever and shoulders the rifle, aims, puts a burst of three into his mother's chest. She fountains blood, still screaming, and tips over backward.

His father stands up and throws his dinner napkin down on the table and says something stern. Spider empties the rest of the magazine into him, blowing away his face, st.i.tching his chest and abdomen. He sprawls forward over the table.

Spider sits down to a plate of pork chops.

Baggage There was no need to take winter clothes to California. Beverly left most of her warm things with Sherry.

It did not make her happy to see that all her future life would fit into two cardboard boxes and a suitcase.

Of course it was good not to be a slave to material things. Lee didn't even own a suitcase; all of his stuff fit into a knapsack and a canvas shopping bag, plus another bag for his painters' tools, the good brushes and rollers, the spattered cap and overalls.

Both of their worlds fit with room to spare in the trunk of the Thing, Lee's beat-up old Buick. At the Army-Navy store, they picked up a Boy Scout camp cooking kit and a Sterno stove; they made up a "chuck wagon" box with cans of beans and stuff and a couple of plates and cups long ago liberated from the university. They turned the back seat into a bed so that one could sleep while the other drove. They would save a fortune on motels and restaurants.

It was more than a month before they'd planned to leave, but there wasn't much reason to stay. AfterKing's a.s.sa.s.sination, white people weren't welcome at the Poor People's March headquarters, and it wasn't safe for them to be down in that part of the city, anyhow. The warehouse job was over, and although Larry promised he could get them more work in a couple of weeks, they figured they could paint in California as easily as Maryland, and the vibes would be a lot better. Was.h.i.+ngton was nothing but bad karma, death and hate and destruction.

Besides, they didn't need a lot of money. Lee had a large Prince Albert can of primo Colombian and, as the saying went, "dope can get you through times of no money better than money can get you through times of no dope." That was more literally true with Lee than with most hippies, because of his talent for turning gra.s.s into cash. You could drop him blindfolded into a one-horse farming town in Idaho, and in ten minutes he'd find the town's only doper and make a deal that left them both feeling good.

Meanwhile, Beverly did not feel good, on several related levels. She had missed a period and was discreetly sick after breakfast almost every morning. She hadn't said anything to Lee, and he evidently hadn't noticed. She wanted to get out to California and get it over with. It would be easier to get an abortion out there, and no way that her parents would find out.

She hadn't stopped thinking about Spider. But she told herself that it was probably best for her to disappear before he was released from the hospital. Nothing was going to happen between them. No need to add to his problems.

The idea of an abortion made her sick with horror and fear. But the alternative of having a child, even if it could have been legitimate, was unthinkable. She was still a child herself, not ready to be a parent. Lee would never be ready. She would lose him.