“These people don’t like us. Let’s go back to Stan’s.”
“You can go back to Stan’s if you want. I’m not going to abandon our people in their hour of need.” Schecky glanced around. The parade would start in a few minutes; he wanted to join the rest of his click: the New Revolutionaries for Peace and Love. The movement had begun during the summer of ’67. Though Schecky had never seen any written articles of incorporation or even known who lead the organization, he recognized its members as his brothers and sisters. At a party in the neighborhood of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco—the exact place eluded him; it was an apartment full of smoke and music—Schecky had proclaimed his membership to the NRPL. That was a year ago, now they were converging in his hometown of Columbus to protest on Veteran’s day. He wasn’t about to miss it.
“Alright, I’ll stay, man. But after the parade, lets go back to Stan’s,” Arnold said.
“No problem, brother.” Schecky patted his friend on one bare arm.
“There they are.” Schecky nodded towards a large group of hippies—at least a hundred, more arriving by the minute–nested in the crowd of spectators along the curb across the street. The colorful mob stood out, decked in tie-dyed shirts, sequins, sunglass, and hair. Two women held a long banner across the front of the group. In blood red letters, the words, War: Good for Few, Bad For Most, were scrawled as if someone had used a shammy rag to paint the banner.
Someone walked through the host of hippies with a tray of brownies, taking fists full of greenbacks and handing over the baked treats. Schecky’s senses surged; he really wanted one of those brownies. “Come on,” he said to Arnold, and cut across the street towards his people. They greeted him and Arnold with grins and pats on the back.
“Well met, brother,” a man with oversized sunglasses said, throwing up the peace sign. Schecky and Arnold returned the two-fingered solute.
“Hey, man.” Schecky said, “Where’s the candyman?”
“Over there,” the hippie smiled and thumbed over his shoulder.
Schecky spotted the dude with the brownie tray. He and Arnold cut through the mob until they caught up with him.
“What can I do you for, bro?” The man with the tray said.
“I’ll take two of those magic brownies,” Schecky said, taking a fistful of singles out of his pocket. The man with the tray took the money and held out the tray. Schecky picked two of the largest brownies and handed one to Arnold.
Arnold smiled and took a bite of the little cake. “Things are looking up already,” he said.
“Like I said, I’ll take care of you, my brother. Who needs to go to Stan’s; the party’s right here.”
Arnold took another bite of the brownie and put on his widest grin.
Across the street, Schecky spotted a pair of Vietnam vets playing a game of cards on a bus bench. The two men stared at Schecky with icy eyes. Schecky was used to it. Every time he wore his American flag pants, people got their feathers ruffled. Schecky smiled at the two men. He raised one hand and made it into a gun. He took aim at the two vets and, just before firing the pretend weapon, opened his hand and flapped his fingers, making the gun fly away like a dove. The two vets shook their heads in anger and went back to their game.
Schecky checked his watch, only a few minutes before the parade started. He popped the rest of the brownie into his mouth and rubbed his hands together in glee. Things were about to get interesting and he planned on being a big part of it. In truth, a storm swelled in the offing and Schecky Lewis would stand right in its eye when it came.
Chapter 9
At the corner of High and Main, a handful of lackadaisical officers leaned against their squad cars, some pulling on cigarettes and crushing the butts out on the tarmac under their hush-puppies while Sergeant Bixbie wasn’t looking.
The radio inside of Smash and Fern’s cruiser squelched to life. The voice of a parade official at International Plaza, the other end of the parade route, confirmed that the parade was about to start.
“Don’t know why we’re on the sidelines and not marching today,” Fern said. He stood a few feet away from the cruiser, practicing a hat trick, flipping his eight-point cap into the air and catching it on his head after a full rotation. He had only successfully landed the stunt once.
“You gotta remember; the heat is on. You were still in Some’Butt, Kentucky when everything went down,” Smash said, trying not to let his partner’s hat antics get under his skin.
Fern slapped the hat onto his head and fixed Smash with a glare. “That’s Sumner, Kentucky. I wish you guys would lay off; I got family there still.”
“You know, that crazy som’bitch came out of some hay-seed town like Some’Butt. Last year we had some of those hippie types, all hopped up on mushrooms or something, cause a big scene. One of those kids got in the infamous Officer Greer’s face, calling him a pig and other stuff. The scene got a tense. I think the hippie kid even threw a punch. Well, Greer, being a half-cocked hayseed, took out his gun and put a slug in the kid’s chest—killed him cold.”
“Psycho.”
“Not too psycho. Everyone liked Greer. Hell, I would have jumped right in for a good boot stomping on that hippie son of a whore, Lord knows I can’t stand those little dirt bags, but pulling a gun on an innocent man, that’s another thing altogether.”
Fern leaned against the cruiser, forgetting the hat trick altogether.
“Internal Affairs hung Greer out to dry and worked the whole precinct over. Things was sticky for the better part of a year. Even now we’re looking over one shoulder for the men in black to come take us away.”
“That why everyone treats me like a chump?” Fern said.
Smash allowed one corner of his mouth to curl up into a mirth. “You gotta pardon me and the guys if we are a little antsy about the new guy, especially if he’s a hayseed.”
“I ain’t no hayseed. I’ve seen enough action to know how to handle myself, brother.”
“And that’s another thing. You ain’t a brother. Don’t call me brother.”
Fern looked at the ground.
Smash sighed and spread his hands expressively. “Look, man, I know you’ve been getting a hard time. You should take it as a compliment. This is a big town, nothing like Some’Butt. We all just need to watch one another’s backs, you know, and nobody’s seen how you handle yourself in action.”
“I’ll do just fine.” Fern looked up at a group of about eight cops playing a spontaneous game of soccer with one of the officer’s lunches. The lunch sack bounced from kick to kick, indefensible, until it broke open. A covered bowl of tomato soup burst open, spraying blood-red ooze onto the road in daps and splats.
Chapter 10
Someone blew an air horn at the back of the parade route. Like cattle, hundreds of men from wars spanning across the first half of the 20th century moved. The Vietnam Veteran marchers sauntered in clumps, some in full dress uniform, others with nothing more than bandanas and brazen tattoos to mark their pride as American G.I.s. Due to the unrest Officer Greer had caused during the 1967 parade, event officials had encouraged liaisons for the Vietnam Vet marchers to exclude weapons as part of their presentation—this exclusion was not imposed on World War I Veterans as there seemed to be no controversy over a half-century-old war.
Not only had the veteran march organizers complied—they too didn’t want controversy in lieu of recent, violent protests against the war—they stripped the parade marchers of all vehicles. Usually Nam vets rode like knights on top of traditional Nam transports