I was aware of nervous chatter in the crowd as everybody around me became more and more uptight. Me, too. Not that I could hear anyone very well, since the choppers constantly thrashed by above us in the dusk, or hovered, red and white lights blinking. I was getting more anxious by the minute. A middle-aged woman a few people over to my left was trying to talk to the cop in front of her. He displayed no evidence he was aware of her existence. Indeed, the row of helmets and clubs we faced were all impassive, except their eyes occasionally darted from side to side. I heard yells and screeches in the distance to my right becoming louder. A disturbance, sort of a pandemonium, rolled closer and closer down the line.
A single cop pushed through the wall of uniforms opposite us from behind the others. The ones he jostled aside looked startled. The intruder had sergeant’s stripes, and his face was a mask of rage. The world became very slow. I heard the sergeant yell, “Move back, you sons of bitches. Move back.” He had his club pointing forward, cradled in his left hand, and with the heel of his right palm he drove — with what appeared to be every ounce of his strength — the end of the club into the pit of the stomach of the man immediately on my right.
The guy who was hit groaned and collapsed across me, gasping for breath. The sergeant was gone; everybody around me was screaming. I heard a thwack and yelling a few people to my left. I guessed the sergeant was darting through his men all down the row, trying to get us to disperse.
By now everything was nuts — shrieks, curses, sirens, the roar of the choppers. Those of us directly confronting the helmets and clubs instinctively took a step or two back. A couple of marchers tried to assist my injured neighbour as the crowd behind pushed at us, shouting, “Stop! We’ve got no place to go!” I started to panic, feeling trapped between the line of police and my fellow demonstrators.
Then either our motion backward inspired the cops, or they obeyed some bellowed command that didn’t register with me. They surged ahead, clubs swinging.
The next fifteen minutes were a blur. The crowd to the rear sized up the situation the instant the cops charged — everybody scrambled. The cacophony was ear-splitting, and I was freaked. I ran, along with the rest of the demonstration. As I pounded on, I tried to keep Emma and the other Irvine students in sight so I wouldn’t get separated from them among strangers. At the edge of a freeway, people in front of me were already sliding down the embankment and out onto the asphalt. Traffic had jammed to a halt, horns blaring, adding to the racket. Protesters dashed between the idling, honking cars. Then I was down the bank, through the traffic, and up the other side. I climbed over a wire fence with a bunch of other people into a completely unfamiliar neighbourhood.
“You never got popped?” I heard Jay ask. I had let the account of my escape trail off.
We listened to the surf for a moment.
“No,” I finally said, pulling myself together. “I had a vague idea which direction we had left the car, and somehow we all rendezvoused there. But next day, the Times reported two hundred and fifty demonstrators injured and fifty busted. The pigs really whaled on people.”
“Far-out, man!” Pump declared.
“The Free Press had a giant headline calling what happened to us a police riot,” I said. “Before Century City I thought only ordinary people could riot, and the cops restored order. It never dawned on me the pigs could riot.”
“That didn’t stop you protesting?” Jay asked.
“No. We still have to end the war. I don’t intend to get busted, though, if I can help it.”
“Makes sense,” Pump agreed.
“I have to tell you,” I confessed, “I’m a practising coward. I’m convinced our society needs fundamental change. That we have to protest and take whatever steps are required to struggle for a more just, more equitable way of organizing society. That said, I like to stay out of trouble if I can. I’m not someone who believes that having more and more people arrested will influence the government to change its mind. I’m sure the government will happily build more jails if necessary.”
Edward laughed. “No doubt about it.”
“I like the idea of doing something to screw the system,” Jay said. “But I don’t know if I’d willingly go to jail.”
Pump grinned. “Yeah, we’ve been in the army, man.”
I assured Jay there would be protests during the fall he could take part in. As I spoke, I was conscious of my arms and legs feeling weighted and sluggish, whether due to reliving my terror at Century City, or ingesting too much smoke, or because my days on the road were finally catching up to me. I drained the last of my beer and thought of something that might intrigue Jay.
“One of our guys in SDS now, Thad, is a vet like you two. Did a tour in Nam. He decided last winter to ride the buses taking draftees from Santa Ana up to the L.A. Induction Center. That takes a lot of guts, as far as I’m concerned.” I explained how our SDS chapter helped Thad make up some leaflets on the war that also outlined alternatives to being drafted. “As the bus rolls up to L.A., he distributes the leaflets and raps to the guys about what the army is going to be like and about being in Nam.”
“They let him do that?” Pump wondered.
“He claims the trip’s paid for by the government, so he’s entitled to ride. The bus drivers don’t object, apparently, and he feels he wants to do it. He’s pretty fearless.”
“He’s in SDS?”
I shrugged. “He shows up at meetings. SDS is … you don’t have to formally be a member. Nobody cares whether you’ve joined or not, as much as whether you take part. I don’t even know if Thad’s a student. Emma’s always after people to officially sign up, because that way you get New Left Notes, the SDS paper. It offers quite a different view on what’s going down than you get from TV or the regular newspapers.”
“Who’s Emma?” Pump asked.
“Don’t let Wayman’s silver tongue convince you to become a Commie,” Edward said. “From what Emma told me about your convention, SDS might not be around much longer, anyhow.”
“She said that?” I asked, surprised.
“Not in so many words. But I inferred it. We didn’t talk long. I figured I’d get the gory details from you.”
My mind replayed images from inside the vast auditorium of the Chicago Coliseum. Day after scorching June day, the hundreds of delegates gave the impression of constant, restless motion. Tension was intense around each agenda item. From the stage, or in the aisles where mikes had been set up for long lines of delegates to express their views, impassioned speakers were incensed about matters that seemed far removed from the concerns of the Irvine students who assembled Wednesdays at 4:00 p.m. in room 204 on the second floor of the Commons Building. Even less familiar was the mass chanting that began to occur regularly after somebody finished speaking: hundreds of voices raised in unison to rehearse slogans intended to support — or to refute — a position that had just been expressed. The chanted catchphrases were accompanied by fists and Little Red Books — plastic-bound copies of Quotations from Chairman Mao — thrust rhythmically into the air at the end of a forest of arms. The shouted syllables clashed and echoed above among the structural trusses supporting the roof of the building.
“The first meeting of our chapter since the convention is next week,” I said. “I’m confident we’ll sort it out.”
“Even though you’re all crackpots,” Edward said.
“I don’t think we’re any odder as a group than grad students,” I countered. “Even if we were, paying attention to what’s really happening in the world would make anybody a little strange.”
“Maybe if you’re a little out of it to begin with, you pay extra attention to what’s going on around you,” Jay said.
I stared at him with new respect.