1968. Part 23

His boss did one good thing, calling the rescue squad, and one bad thing, smearing the burns with Crisco.

Then he went outside to lean on the van and stare at the charcoal sky.

Spider wept, but not from pain. "Why me?" he asked Kerry', who was cradling his head and dabbing at his face with a paper towel wetted with ice water. "I go through all this f.u.c.kin' s.h.i.+t and now this. Why me?"

The paramedics gave him morphine and, after they found the bottle in his pocket, a shot of Valium, He still cried out in agony when they got him back to the ER and cleaned the Crisco off and dressed his burns. They gave him more morphine and he fell asleep.

From his wallet they got his home phone number and called it. There was no answer. He wasn't carrying any record of the place where he was currently living, of course; he hadn't even given the address to his boss yet.

They found the purple ID that identified him as a disabled veteran, and called the Baltimore VA hospital to arrange for a bed in the burn unit. The clerk there noted that John Darcy Speidel had an appointment that morning in Psych. Could the wound have been self-inflicted? The medic said he didn't know, but it seemed unlikely. There were a lot of more direct ways to hurt yourself.

He slept through most of the ambulance ride to Baltimore. When he woke up, the nurse who was riding with him gave him a pill. When he realized he couldn't even hold a gla.s.s by himself, he began to cry again, and asked her the same question that Kerry couldn't answer. Sobbing herself, partly for him and partly from the shocking news about Kennedy, she held him for a minute, carefully, and in her softness and sadness he quieted down.

Summer Spider's s.e.x life (3) For weeks the pain was always there, but it never came to the surface, smothered under layers of medication. Spider felt like he never slept and never quite woke up, either. He lay on a bed, naked except for a tee s.h.i.+rt and socks, with his palms taped permanently to his thighs. He was growing a newlayer of skin on his hands, they told him; try to keep them still.

He couldn't feed himself or wipe himself. He didn't talk to anyone. He was in a corner bed, and the man in the bed next to him didn't say anything; he just moaned and whimpered, his face a blistered molten ruin. Spider wondered what his own face looked like. They'd asked him whether he would rather let his beard grow out than have someone shave him, and he nodded. He could feel it on the pillow, scratchy at first, then more like hair.

Every few days a male orderly would unb.u.t.ton the soft b.u.t.tons along the side of his tee s.h.i.+rt and give him a sponge bath. It mortified him, because he always had an erection, but there was no way he couldthink it away! The orderly always worked around it without comment. Once, after a couple of weeks, an older female nurse gave him his bath, behind a screen, and with a whispered lame joke ("Don't point that thing at me; it might go off") helped him with three or four merciful strokes, and cleaned up afterward.

A world of hurt The summer that followed Kennedy's a.s.sa.s.sination was a season of anger all over the world, citizens'

protests answered with clubs and guns and cynical politics.

In Czechoslovakia, the promise of a "Prague Spring" of liberalization was crushed under the treads of Soviet tanks. The coalition of students and workers in France was beaten down by truncheons and tear gas. Students and police exchanged blows in Mexico, j.a.pan, Yugoslavia, England, Spain, Germany, California.

In Miami, the Republicans selected their ticket, Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, who would eventually become the only executive pair ever forced from office for criminal dishonesty. While the Republicans were celebrating with their noisemakers and confetti and balloons, Miami police were trying to contain a race riot downtown that had escalated from shouts to sniper fire.

Nixon was less worried about the Democrats than the American Independence Party's George Wallace.

His straightforward campaign-keep the n.i.g.g.e.rs in their place, put the students in jail, untie the hands of the police, go in andwin that G.o.dd.a.m.ned war-was not going to siphon many votes from Hubert Humphrey, but it could dangerously split Nixon's far-right bloc.

(By November, Wallace's campaign-following the usual pattern of third-party politics in America-would weaken to where he only cost Nixon 14 percent of the popular vote, dropping "Tricky d.i.c.k" down to a 43-43-percent tie with "The Hump." But Nixon would win handily in the Electoral College, with thirty-two states and the District of Columbia.) Nixon may have taken a few votes from Humphrey with his claim that he had a "secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam soon after he took office. The plan would still be secret when he left office in disgrace, six years later.

A week after the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia, the Democrats invaded Chicago. It was hostile territory for liberals.

After Kennedy's death, Beverly had joined Lee in working for McCarthy. Their labors in the Los Angeles office were similar to what they had done for King in Was.h.i.+ngton-slipsheeting mimeos, stuffing envelopes, talking to strangers on the phone-but the spirit was completely different. In Was.h.i.+ngton the fuel had been rage. In Los Angeles it was righteousness, which burns with a paler flame. It didn't help that a lot of workers felt there was no realistic chance of their winning the nomination, let alone the election,but you did have to dosomething.

At the end of August, a lot of the workers convoyed off to Chicago to show their support for Gene.

Lee's Thing was one of the few plain American cars in the group, which had a preponderance of Volkswagen bugs and buses, many with amateur paint jobs in floral motifs.

The trip was a lot of fun, eight carloads stopping together for lunch and camping out, Lee playing and singing protest songs, half of the people high on politics and half on other painkillers. Some version of the experience was duplicated thousands of times as the counterculture converged on Chicago. Chicago would be ready for them.

Beverly and Lee, planning to demonstrate with the National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam, were on the sedate end of the counterculture's political spectrum, closer to the mainstream than the Students for a Democratic Society and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (many of whose members were neither students nor pacifists). At the far ultraviolet end were splinter groups like the White Panthers and the West Side Motherf.u.c.kers, into violent anarchy.

The best-organized far-left group was the Youth International Party, the Yippies, led by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Rubin and Phil Ochs had scoured the Illinois countryside for the ugliest pig they could find; they named it Pigasus and offered it as the Yippie candidate.

The Yippies got a disproportionate amount of media coverage, especially television, since political conventions are basically boring and repet.i.tive. The reportage had to be sanitized, though, with a "Look at what these crazy kids are up to now!" slant, because most of what the Yippies did and said was not suitable for the six o'clock news or family magazines. For instance, they circulated a leaflet demanding that the city of Chicago set up free medical clinics, to prevent a plague of VD-otherwise "We will f.u.c.k the police and their horses! NOTHING will be SAFE from STREET FREAK GERM WARFARE if the city does not allow us to disarm ourselves!"

The L.A. contingent had heard about a Yippie gathering in Lincoln Park the Sunday they arrived, August 25th. It was a good place to relax after the long drive. A couple of thousand young people, rock music, dope, street theater. There was a nervous edge to the festivities, but the expected trouble with Mayor Daley's police didn't materialize. After sundown, the more affluent went out into the suburbs to find motel rooms. Lee and Beverly found a quiet side street and slept in the Thing.

They were not sure where to head after the convention. Beverly sort of wanted to go back to Maryland and resume college, and maybe get in touch with her mother, but she liked California, too. Lee was b.u.mmed out over what the Haight had become and never had liked L.A. much. If by some miracle McCarthy won the nomination, he wanted to go back to the Was.h.i.+ngton area, to be where the action was. They wound up deciding not to make a decision just yet.

They wandered around the park the next day. Beverly found a couple she'd known at the university, who had brought along a hibachi grill. They pigged out on cheap hot dogs and then followed the crowd, several thousand, to the Chicago Coliseum for music and speeches. d.i.c.k Gregory and Phil Ochs entertained the troops, and the air was thick with antiestablishment solidarity.

Things started to unravel Tuesday night. The city ordered everyone out of the park. In response, the various groups organized a sit-in vigil, people wearing black armbands and singing hymns.

Plainclothes police surrounded the park. The uniformed cops took off their badges and nameplates.

Around twelve-thirty, they struck, first raining tear gas and Mace on the crowd, and then wading in withnightsticks. To Beverly and Lee it looked like a hopeless situation; they managed to slip out unharmed except for eye and nose irritation from the gas. On their way back to the Thing they stopped and watched a convoy of National Guard trucks roar toward the park.

They talked about leaving, but both of them were more angry than scared. The morning news said that Mayor Daley had given the Mobilization a permit to a.s.semble at Grant Park. They decided to stay at least for that, since that was one reason they'd come: to a.s.semble and march ten thousand strong to the Democratic Convention Amphitheatre. Confront the delegates with the fact that most of the people they represented wanted the United States out of the war.

The permit was to a.s.semble, though; not to march. By dusk, nearly fifteen thousand people had poured into the park. The police tried to cordon them off. They broke through the police line and surged downtown.

Lee and Beverly went with the crowd. For the first half-hour it was fairly peaceful, if not exactly orderly.

But as they approached the Conrad Hilton Hotel, where the delegates were staying, the police attacked with a sudden ferocity that made Tuesday's hara.s.sment look like a mild dress rehearsal.

Norman Mailer, watching from a hotel balcony, later said: "Lines of twenty and thirty policemen striking out in an arc. attacked [the crowd] like a chain saw cutting into wood." Lee and Beverly saw clouds of tear gas and Mace coming toward them. They tied bandannas soaked with c.o.ke over mouth and nose.

People were running in every direction, screaming, as anonymous police worked through the crowd swinging their clubs at random.

Lee was holding Beverly's hand, both of them trying to stay upright in the stampede, when she received one of those impersonal blows. Neither of them saw it coming. She was struck from behind, whacked on the crown, and fell forward onto her hands and knees, blood streaming. Lee went to help her and someone kicked him in the ribs. As he fell down, a big cop grabbed one foot and held his legs apart, laughing, while his partner beat him three times hard in the groin with a nightstick. He stayed conscious just long enough to crawl over to Beverly and curl protectively around her.

The rescue squad people who cleaned up after the police gave Beverly twelve st.i.tches. There wasn't much they could do for Lee other than cold compresses and rea.s.surance. His s.c.r.o.t.u.m was bruised and bleeding and swollen to twice normal size; he was in so much pain he could only grunt in monosyllables.

They would later find out that he had two fractured ribs as well.

The police had destroyed every camera they saw, but they didn't get all of them. The riot was on prime-time news Wednesday night, before the tear gas had even dissipated. Walter Cronkite, whom a poll had named "the Most Trusted Man in America," told viewers, "I want to pack my bags and get out of this city."

That's exactly what Lee and Beverly did, she steering the big car out to the interstate while he lay curled up in the back, was.h.i.+ng painkillers down with beer. As soon as they were out of the city, she exited onto a random country road, pulled over onto the shoulder and had some pills and beer herself. They spent the next ten hours in drugged sleep and then woke up and pointed the Thing From Detroit toward the rising sun.

Healing Spider watched the Chicago police riots on television with some interest, but the big thing in his life was that he was going to be released from the hospital. The skin grafts had been successfully completedweeks before, but his arms and hands were weak from the long period of immobility. He spent most of his day either doing physical therapy or recovering from it.

They found out he played the guitar and got him one from the Red Cross. It was especially good exercise for his left hand, which didn't get as much casual use as his right.

There was a beautiful well-shaded lawn in front of the hospital, and when the weather was nice he would sit on a park bench there and play, practicing songs out of the hospital's Joan Baez and Bob Dylan songbooks.

(Once he'd worn a straw hat outside to keep the sun off his head, then took it off when clouds came up.

A pa.s.serby threw a quarter into it as he sat there playing. Amused, he moved it to the gra.s.s at his feet, and after a couple of hours had collected $1.87-a new career!) The world didn't look too bad. He'd given up smoking, rather than ask people to sit and hold a cigarette for him, and he felt a lot better for losing the chronic cough and sinus problems. He was still taking Valium, but only two thirds of his prescription (he palmed the morning pills and sold them to a more strung-out patient). He was in some pain most of the time, but it was a healing pain, tolerable.

He was apprehensive about going home. The VA had notified his parents as to what had happened to him and where he was, but there had been no response. He'd called home daily since his hands had been free, but never got an answer.

Fall Homecoming (3) The VA released Spider on 14 September and put him on a dawn bus to Was.h.i.+ngton. All he had were the clothes he'd been wearing when he reported for work at the doughnut shop, a hospital ditty bag, and a couple of beat-up books from the Red Cross box. He was fairly flush, though, with $216.76, and another VA check due in two weeks.

At the Was.h.i.+ngton terminal he called home and listened to it ring twenty times. The ticket lady gave him directions and he caught a city bus to the District Line (that would have been the number 9 streetcar when he was a kid; they were all gone now). He was tempted to walk the five miles home, to put off facing whatever was there, but he took a cab.

The ride was rea.s.suring. Bethesda was unchanged. It felt like he'd been hospitalized a long time, but it had only been a couple of months. Maybe there was something wrong with the phone, or he had the number wrong.

He paid off the cab and got out to stare at a for sale sign. The gra.s.s had been cut but half of it was brown patches, and the flowers that used to border the house were all dead.

There was no car in the driveway. He peered into the garage and it was empty-not only was his mother's car gone, but so was all the years of c.r.a.p that should have been piled on the shelves all around.

He peered into the living room and there was no furniture, just fresh paint and new carpeting. He tried his key in the front door and it just got stuck.

"What the h.e.l.l do you think you're doin'?" Spider turned around. One of the neighbors-Mr. MenzelManville?-was standing there with a baseball bat.

"It's me, Spider." The man took a step toward him and Spider cringed back. "John. John Darcy."

"Good G.o.d, boy." He peered at him "You look like h.e.l.l."

"I was in an accident at work. Been in the hospital."

"Didn't know you was back from Vit-nam." He gestured with the baseball bat: the lawn, the house.

"What happened with your folks?"

"I was gonna askyou. What is this?"

"I don't have the faintest. You know your dad was gone for a while. Then he come back two days, Mrs.

Marvell says, or at least his car's back. Then he goes away again and about a month later your mom goes away, too. Then a coupla weeks ago this movin' crew comes in and cleans the place out and they paint it inside and mow the lawn-I mean it was afoot high-and put up the for sale sign."

Spider shook his head. "Jesus."

"You got any relatives could tell you something?"

"One aunt. Tried to get her from the hospital. She's got an unlisted number, though, and the phone company wouldn't give it to me."

"I was you, I'd call this real estate company on the sign. You can use our phone."

Spider wrote the number down on the back page ofWar With the Rutt and went inside the Marvells'

home. It was oppressively neat, doilies on top of plastic on the arms of furniture.

The real estate lady said the owner of record was the Bank of Bethesda, and gave him a number. The woman at the bank said they couldn't give him any information unless he showed up in person, with identification.

"Maybe you better shave and dress up before you go to some bank," Mr. Marvell suggested.

"Yeah, maybe." Spider wasn't going to shave. He didn't want to know what his face looked like. "My stuffs all over in Riverside. Mind if I call a cab?"

The cab took about ten minutes, while Spider and Mr. Marvell engaged in excruciating conversation on the front porch. He directed the cab to the doughnut shop, since he didn't remember the Remingtons'

address.

The shop had a new paint job, an awful shade of pink, and a new neon sign. Inside, it had a new owner.

He was Indian or Pakistani, friendly and earnest but without much English. Spider was able to make out his explanation that the previous owner had retired to California and "Would like old job back, please?

Boys we need two." No, thanks. He'd had a lifetime's worth of doughnut shop experience in one night.

The Remingtons' bicycle was still locked up where he'd left it, but both bike and lock were rusted solid.

He walked the few blocks to their house. His car wasn't parked outside.Mr. Remington talked to him without opening the door for a minute, unconvinced that he was who he said he was. Finally, Spider held his driver's license up to the peephole.

He opened the door a foot. "We thought you'd took the bike and gone. Kids do things like that."

"Like I say, I had an accident at work. I didn't have any way to get in touch with you."

"Well, that ain't my fault. What about the d.a.m.n bike?"

"It's still down at the doughnut shop. I would've brought it up, but the lock's rusted shut."

"Hmm. Figured you were gone for good."

"That's okay. Can I just get my stuff? My car?"

"Cleaned out the room when we got a new tenant. Down to the Goodwill. Police took your car away."

"You gave away all of my things?"

"We ain't no storage company. You go down to the Goodwill, it's likely mostly there."

"But the car, my car. it wasn't illegally parked."

"Couldn't have it clutterin' up the curb. New tenant, he had a car, too. You go down to the Riverside police station and they'll have it there." His brow furrowed. "One thing we still got is that guitar. Mrs.

Remington kept it for her grandson, but he didn't want it. Said it was a piece of junk."

Spider knew that. "Could I have it back, anyhow?"

"I don't know. You want the room?"

"I thought you had a tenant."

"Didn't work out. Foulmouth kid."

"Look, that guitar'smine. Could I please have it back?"

"Don't you raise your voice at me, young man." He walked away. After a couple of minutes he came back, but with a hacksaw rather than a guitar. "Now you bring back that bicycle. Then we'll see about the guitar." Spider took the saw and the man shut the door.

He went about a block and threw the saw behind a hedge. Then he headed for the police station.

Spider would never find out what had happened to his parents. His father had one last drunken confrontation with his mother and then left, picked up his Baltimore girlfriend, and went out west to "make a new start." That lasted less than a year. She testified against him and he wound up in a Phoenix prison, doing time for a.s.sault and battery and a.s.sault with a deadly weapon, a tire iron.

His mother grew increasingly depressed and ineffectual. Her sister stopped having anything to do with her, and on impulse she drove up to New Hamps.h.i.+re, where she had a half sister from her father's first marriage. The older woman, recently widowed, took her in, but they weren't good for each other, bothalcoholic and depressed. She stopped making sense and her half sister had her committed, and then sort of forgot about her, and then died.