“Hold it right there, kid; you are under arrest,” Smash shouted, wielding his nightstick. Just as Smash leaned into a run, a group of seven or eight NRPL closed the gap between he and Schecky.
“Out of the way,” Smash said but the throng of hippies didn’t move.
“You think we’re going to take orders from a lousy pig,” one of the hippies said.
“Out of the way or pay the price,” Fern said, stepping up next to his partner, his nightstick clenched in one fist.
“What do you say we teach these pigs what it means to give peace a chance,” the NRPL protestor said. After a chorus of chortles, nods, and general grunts of agreement, the cadre of NRPL hippies burst into action, all fists and head-butts.
Smash took a right cross to the temple. His head snapped to one side. He shook off the impact of the blow and swung his nightstick across the hippie’s face. A welt along the ridge of the hippie’s chin instantly rose.
Fern jabbed the end of his stick into the solar plexus of another protestor, sending him woofing to the ground. Two other NRPL ran away, perhaps in fear, perhaps to find better weapons than skin.
In the next few moments, with a series of well-planted blows, Smash and Fern put down the rest of the NRPL punks, leaving two knocked out, two holding their bellies, and the last crouched on the ground with his head in his hands, sobbing.
“Now where’d that son of a bitch go?” Smash said. He and Fern scanned the area, squinting through the melee, looking for the kid with the American flag pants. There was no sign of him. Schecky had escaped.
Fern looked to his partner for any idea of what to do. Smash bit his bottom lip. The two of them had let the American Flag pants wearing bastard slip through their fingers and the Serge would be furious. Smash visored the sun away from his eyes with one flat hand and panned back and forth along the parade route for any sign of the perp; but with violence escalating in every direction, the chance of spotting one man in the fray seemed impossible. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” Smash said.
Fern listened but kept alert, flicking his eyes over the fighting, watching for the perp.
“I want you to get across the street. Don’t worry about breaking up anything; this storm is already too big for the two of us. The Serge is going to have to call in a hell of a cleanup crew for this mess. We are going to concentrate on finding the perp and slapping the cuffs on him. Once you get to the other side, I want you to stay within eyeshot of me. We’ll walk the whole damn parade route if we have to, but we are going to find that hippie bitch.”
“Shouldn’t you run this up the flag pole?” Fern pointed at the radio handset on Smash’s shoulder?
“Lets wait until we find the kid in the American flag pants before we jingle the Serge. Trust me, it will be better that way.”
Fern nodded, clamped down his grip on his retractable nightstick, and trotted off across the street.
Smash drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He looked up at the sky and closed his eyes. “Lord help us, we’re going to need it.”
Chapter 20
In the violence and shouting, nobody noticed Schecky lurch along the tarmac towards the curb. Fresh pain stabbed from his spoiled hand all the way up to his shoulder and neck. He wondered how badly he had damaged his paw, but with fists flying all around him and the cops on his ass, he didn’t have time to think about it. He had to find somewhere safe where he could regroup.
As he slinked along the pavement, someone kicked him in the side with a good pair of combat boots. Schecky flopped to his back and stared up at a clean-cut warrior of Indo-china. The man reminded Schecky of Captain Kirk, with his perfect wavy hair, a single lock curling down over his forehead. “Out of my face, baby-killer,” Schecky managed to get out before Captain Kirk planted another boot into his ribs.
Schecky raised his hands, one white and clean, the other bleeding from multiple gashes. That was the moment Schecky realized that he had lost his pinky and ring finger. His eyes grew in horror; he would never play the guitar again—no huge loss, he had only taught himself the three chords in Hendrix’s All Along the Watch Tower.
Captain Kirk smiled and bent down. He grabbed Schecky’s bad hand and clamped down, the sinews in his forearm standing out like cables. Schecky curled and craned under the vice of pain, unable to do anything other than protest with dog whimpers and tearful pleas. Schecky felt his consciousness oozing away as Captain Kirk ground his remaining fingers together like meaty twigs. A blur poured in at the extreme edges of Schecky’s peripheral vision then, like the iris of camera, began to close.
Schecky dug from the last runts of his consciousness and summoned enough energy for one strike. He buckled up and planted a heel between Captain Kirk’s legs.
Captain Kirk winced, his eyes turning slightly in on each another. The little hippie prick had nailed him with perfect precision. He let up on Schecky’s paw and crumpled to the ground. For a moment, both men lay on their backs, moaning in tandem to the throbs of their respective injuries.
“Damn baby-killer,” Schecky managed to let the words ooze from his mouth. They sounded more like, “’am, avy-filler.”
“I’m going to kill you, you little hippie freak,” Captain Kirk said.
Schecky smiled and drew a deep breath. The air felt smooth and clean going into his lungs. He drew a kind of serenity from lying in the center of the cacophony. He felt like he was in the eye of the storm and that the eye would follow him wherever he went. He looked at the sky—azure, whisked with curling clouds. He used that single, invigorating breath to call out the NRPL mantra. “Hell no, we won’t go. Hell no, we won’t go!”
A pair of hippies heard Schecky’s cry and came to his aid. They closed in on Captain Kirk, who remained incapacitated by Schecky’s strategic blow. “You okay, bro?” one of the hippies said to Schecky, crouching down and resting one hand on his chest.
Schecky smiled. “This baby-killer said he wanted to kill me, man.”
“Solidarity, brother,” the hippie said and raised one fist in the air. He sent that fist straight down into Captain Kirk’s gut. Captain Kirk gasped out his wind and began to fight for air, his face paling, one hand between his legs, the other groping for wind. The two hippies went to work, kicking Captain Kirk in the sides and head.
Schecky giggled.
“Go find somewhere safe to take care of that hand. Wait ‘til this party’s over then get yourself to a doctor,” One of Schecky’s rescuers said as he crunched one of his Cuban heels down onto Captain Kirk’s sternum.
Schecky raised his good hand and clenched it into a bloodless fist, a sign of solidarity. Both hippies returned the gesture with balled fists of their own.
Holding his bad hand against his belly, Schecky rolled over and crawled along the pavement, enduring micro-cuts to his good palm and knees from a beer bottle that someone had broken on the tarmac. He glanced ahead, looking for some place he could hunker down until the free-for-all ended.
Schecky felt unfulfilled as he scratched his way along the road. He felt there was much more to be done that day and he wanted to be a part of it.
Chapter 21
When Manwell arrived at the end of the parade route, he knew he had a story on his hands. He intended to, accompanied by the cameraman he had brought, charge into the fray like Cronkite had done in Nam. But the police had a different idea; they weren’t letting the press beyond the security tape. Manwell shouldered his way through the sea of reporters straight to the police imposed parameter, ignoring the protests of his colleges: producers and reporters, clad in checkered coats and nicotine ties, from all the networks, their long haired cameramen in tow, note pads flipped open, pencils licked wet, ready to write.
Manwell’s cigar, smoked down to a nub, protruded from his fish lips.