Читать книгу Black and Gold: The End of the Sixties - Mike Jr. Trial - Страница 7

By Friday afternoon of the first week of the semester, Mark knew his Thermodynamics class would be as bad as it had seemed on the first day. Bradley, a slicked-back-hair-Robert-McNamara type in a pressed shirt and tie, started the class with a quiz which Mark was certain he failed. Bradley told the class, “There’ll be a quiz every other Friday—they’ll be twenty-five percent of your grade, homework due every Wednesday, another twenty-five percent, exams are the rest of your grade.” Then he turned to the board and began writing out one formula derivation after another at high speed while Mark struggled to copy it all down. Fifty minutes later, Mark stumbled out, humbled. “Focus on the homework and the quizzes,” he muttered as he walked through the crowd of students to his next class. “Even if the midterm exam and the final are as bad as I expect they will be, I need to get a C in the course.” By the time he got to his next class in McAlester Hall, the gloom of Thermodynamics had lifted and he noticed it was a bright day, clear and crisp, not quite cool, but not hot and humid—the first hint of autumn. Mark went into the old high-ceilinged classroom and slid up one of the casement windows to let cool air wash in.

Last class of the day, last class of the week, and it was his easy one. For the last two years Mark had been treating himself to one non-engineering course per semester because they were interesting, and also because they helped keep his grade point average up. Politics and Economics was his easy course for the fall semester. It was proving to be as interesting as he’d hoped, plus there were girls in it, unlike his engineering classes. Carol Bianchi, Dave’s former not-quite-girlfriend, was one of them.

Professor Wollheim was comparing capitalism to socialism. Mark grinned. This was one of the beautiful Carol’s hot buttons, so there should be an interesting discussion today. Mark glanced at his watch. Forty minutes of class, then to happy hour at the Heidelberg.

He had actually read the material, so he found his mind drifting on the cool breeze of the afternoon. Larry Mitchell, bulldozed by his parent’s expectations into getting married. A life-changing choice. Mitchell at least had had a choice, unlike Tim or Keith, even if he’d made the wrong one. Mark shook his head and tried to concentrate, put the feeling of superiority out of his mind, but it crept back. I have my freedom, Larry never will. Of course, I’m sure he feels he’s the one making the right decision, not me. True love, marriage right out of college, a job, a career, money, all that.

Wollheim paced, juggling his chalk in one hand like a crap shooter about to roll the dice. “…free markets,” he was saying. “Complete freedom to buy good quality at a low price. Because competitive market forces keep the price low and the quality high.” He wrote the word “freedom” on the board.

The class murmured agreement.

“Think so?” he grinned. “Or in free markets can big sellers manipulate small buyers, control supply, force small competitors out of business by artificially low prices, or take in excess profits by artificially high prices, let quality drop because they are the only supplier?” He wrote the word “coercion” on the board. “That’s not freedom.”

Mark, usually silent, found himself saying, “Unless small buyers band together to balance the power of the big seller.”

Wollheim nodded. “Venceremos,” Mark added conversationally. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Carol nodding approval. There was scattered laughter. Wollheim smiled. “True, you may ‘overcome,’ but it usually depends on whether all the small buyers can stay unified long enough to effect change.”

Wollheim paused and let the distant voice of a speaker in the park drift in through the window. “Every Friday afternoon I hear this,” he nodded toward the park. “Are they unified enough to effect change?”

“They could be,” Carol said. “If they formed a coalition with one voice.”

“True, Miss Bianchi, but that will take a leader to convince them their shared interests are greater than their differences.” Wollheim raised his chin at the park where students lolled on the grass listening to the speakers on the platform. “Disparate opinions are hard to form into a unified agenda. It may surprise you to know that I’ve read the Port Huron Statement and tend to agree with most of it. But I don’t see the SDS leadership really getting behind it.”

“They will though, there’s power in numbers,” somebody said from the back of the room.

“They? Who’s they? I think you mean you. But you’re right about there being power in numbers. Mussolini thought so.” Wollheim sketched what looked to Mark like a bundle of sticks with an axe blade sticking out of it. Wollheim grinned, “One person’s opinion, no dissent. The opposite of democracy and of free markets. Free markets, like democracy, are imperfect, inefficient, and can be manipulated, but, like democracy itself, they are the best thing we’ve come up with so far.” He perched on the edge of the ancient wooden table at the front of the room, looking thoughtfully at the clock high on the wall. “Take the rest of the afternoon off, get over to the Heidelberg, or the Hofbrau, or the Ivanhoe, and exercise your freedom of choice in which beer you drink, as long as it’s Hamm’s. Chapter three on Monday.”

There was an ebullient racket as students snapped notebooks closed and scrambled for the door, oblivious to Wollheim’s irony. Mark hurried after Carol and caught up with her.

“Hi Carol, got time for a beer? Or a cup of coffee?”

She shrugged, “Maybe.” They walked across the quad in the clear sunshine and stood on Ninth Street facing the Heidelberg. “But I think, not today. We’ve got to get the Columbia Free Press finished up tonight so it can go to the printer tomorrow.”

“You’re sure?” Mark said. He nodded at the Heidelberg across the street. “I’ll buy you a beer and you can show me how Marxism is going to save the free world.”

She smiled her brilliant smile. Mark recognized a couple of local SDS chapter members hurrying down the sidewalk toward them.

“I liked what you said today in class,” she told Mark. “You should join us, maybe do some volunteer work with the Columbia Free Press.”

Mark nodded as she was hastened away.

* * *

Friday afternoon the crowd was already thick, even though happy hour didn’t start for forty more minutes. Early in the semester, exams still distant, the weather perfect. Mark pushed his way in and found Jeff by himself at their usual table by the window, staring gloomily at two empty beer glasses and humming along with the Grassroots on the jukebox. He glanced up at Mark, “And ‘where were you when I needed you’ to introduce me to that blonde you were just a talking to.”

“Carol Bianchi,” Mark slid into a chair. “Dave’s former, not girlfriend, but more than a friend.”

“Well, you should buy the next round,” Jeff said. “I’ve had to sit here holding this table for ten minutes without anything to drink.”

When Mark had brought the beers back and drank a comfortable quantity he mused, “That class Carol and I are in, Politics and Economics, I’m getting some good points to argue with Dave about. Where is he anyway?”

“Probably got a hot date. He’s secretive, like you.”

“Me?” Mark set his beer down.

“I never see you in here with Jennifer. You seem to like to keep her sort of secret; you don’t bring her to happy hour, for example.”

“Hey,” Mark bridled. “She and I both deserve a little time off from each other. I deserve some freedom.”

“Speaking of which, did you hear about Mitchell?”

“Yeah. Poor sucker.”

“Brenda is a nice girl,” Jeff protested.

Mark laughed, “Yeah, I’ve seen you eying her.” He pulled a handful of change out of his pocket and slapped it on the table. “I’ll buy if you’ll fly.” Jeff shouldered his way through the growing crowd. “And I’ve seen you eying Jennifer, too,” Mark said to himself. Jeff returned with four full glasses. “I assume you want me to ask Jennifer to get you a blind date?” Jeff raised his eyebrows and looked around the room, his gaze pausing on a babe in a pink Pi Epsilon Phi tee shirt, surrounded by guys. Mark followed his gaze. “I don’t think Jennifer knows any girls like that.”

Jeff shook his head. “That’s not what I’m looking for.”

“That’s what you’re going to find at the Stephens mixers and out at the Black and Gold Saturday nights. They’re all pretentious as hell.”

Jeff finished a beer and waved the glass in Mark’s face, “I’ll tell you what’s pretentious—Dave moving out of Tiger Village and into that rat-hole on Paquin, pretending to be some sort of Zen disciple, but still driving his little sports car.”

Mark felt guilty and good, tried not to, but still felt superior to Jeff.

“Jeff, can I give you some advice?” Mark leaned in confidentially.

“No,” Jeff said, his eyes on the crowd around them.

“You might want to try being less eager with your blind dates. Kind of pretend like you can take it or leave it, go out with a girl three or four times before you put the make on her, you know. You shouldn’t seem too eager, makes you look desperate.”

“You’re the expert?” Jeff said defensively. He hid his mouth behind his glass. “You haven’t dated anybody since you hooked up with Jennifer. I’ve been to a mixer every week and out at the Black and Gold on Saturday nights.”

“That’s what I was talking about. What’s it got you?”

Jeff, embarrassed, changed the subject, “Did you see the jazz poll in the October Playboy? Getz wasn’t even on the list, but the Fifth Dimension was. Speaking of jazz, I haven’t seen Keith in a while. I heard he’s playing guitar in some club these days.”

“The Hofbrau, Wednesday nights, but not for long. He’ll be playing M-16 pretty soon. He got his draft notice,” Mark said.

“What! When?”

Mark shrugged, “Jennifer and I heard him play at the Hofbrau last Wednesday. I haven’t seen him since.”

Jeff and Mark sat in silence.

After a while Mark pushed his chair back. “I’m out of here.”

He unchained his Suzuki motorcycle and rode down Ninth Street, the air rushing by like water in a cool mountain stream, clear and full of the promise of autumn. He’d had the bike since he was a Freshman, had planned to sell it every autumn for the last three years, but somehow when the days were like this, there was nothing better than riding the bike down country roads. Out of town, on a two-lane blacktop, he twisted the throttle up to seventy miles-per-hour, the countryside around him brilliant green grass and trees beginning to change color.

Then he turned back to the tiny trailer park where Keith lived; over the speed bump to the third trailer on the left, the smallest one. Keith’s white Corvair was not in the driveway. Mark idled down the row of old trailers, front yards dotted with redneck litter. He made a circle through the place and got back on the highway.

The wind whipped by. Freedom. Less of that around that we all think. Keith had plans to graduate in Business, get a job with an accounting firm, make the big bucks, buy a Porsche, clothes, big apartment, first class airfare.

Guess all that’s changed now.

* * *

Lying on the mattress in Dave’s stuffy apartment, Allison toed the stack of books and magazines which slid out across the floor in a colorful fan. “What’s this?” She picked up a Playboy. “Miss October had better watch her weight or that baby fat is going to be permanent.”

“Look at the Jazz poll,” Dave said. “Look where they put Monk, and Getz isn’t even on the list.”

Allison laughed. “I’m sure that was the first thing you turned to.” She pulled up her Mexican peasant blouse and flashed Dave her tits. Dave wrestled her to the mattress and onto the floor across books and the tangled Indian blanket. “Ow!” Allison said, holding up a book titled Capitalism and Freedom. “Get this fascist crap out of my butt.”

Dave let go of her and picked the book up. “Friedman’s no fascist. He’s a liberal in the true sense of the word, not like those blockheads in SDS. Speaking of which, you should have been in Peace Park this afternoon. Idiots lecturing idiots. Unilateral disarmament, macrobiotic vegetarianism, solar power, eliminate all money…if he’d come up with one more half-assed idea I would have puked right there. He doesn’t have any idea how society works.”

“And you do?”

“More than him.”

Allison was lying on the bed, her blouse riding up to show her left nipple. “Gonna be a revolution…” she sang. Dave ignored her and flipped the book open. “Listen to this. Here’s some of the stuff Friedman thinks the government should not do—draft people into the army, that will get a lot of applause, agricultural price supports—lots of farmers here in Missouri live off the subsidies…”

“My dad says soybean price supports are the only way he can stay in farming…” She looked at Dave but his attention was elsewhere. Her voice changed, “He’s so weak these days he can barely climb up on his tractor.”

“Price supports distort the market, cause artificially high prices. Low prices are the market’s way of telling farmers to quit growing soybeans. The country needs fewer farmers.” Dave continued to flip through the Friedman book.

“He loves that old farm. It’s his life,” Allison said quietly. She sat up and pulled her blouse straight.

Dave looked up. “What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

Dave continued, “The SDS up in Chicago has a good agenda, Hayden and those guys, but these bean-heads here in town…they’re just idiots. They say they want freedom, but freedom means taking more responsibility, not less. Responsibility for ourselves and for each other. The bean-heads in the park want big daddy government to take care of everything for them, and they want total freedom too. They are like five-year-olds, depending on their parents and hating them too.”

“Childlike is good.”

“Childish is not good,” Dave tossed the book aside and turned on the window fan. “It’s hot in here.”

“Must be all this hot air.” Allison stripped her blouse off, then raised up and slid out of her jeans. Dave stripped off his clothes too, but he wasn’t quite finished lecturing. “Back in the park this afternoon I should have expressed my opinion, right then and there, but I missed my chance.” She put her hard little hands on him. They kissed and fell silent except for the movement of their bodies. The last of the sunlight changed slowly from gold to red on the old wallpaper, and the air softened and cooled with the coming of evening. After making love, they dozed. Dave woke as the last light of the sun tinted Allison’s dark brown hair with gold. She looked very young as she slept. He gently pulled the sheet around her.

* * *

Mark thought about dropping in on Dave, but instead went back to his trailer. He parked his Suzuki in the driveway and opened the hood of his car.

His roommate Bill stuck his head out the trailer door. “Need any help?”

Mark waved, “No, thanks. Just going to re-gap the points and plugs. This old 283 gets out of tune fast. I’ve got to pick up Jennifer in thirty minutes and this thing will barely start.”

Friday night and Bill’s home studying, thought Mark. But he’s clear about what he’s doing and where he’s going too. He’ll have a solid career with a reputable firm, doing good work. And he knows that’s the best route to what he wants: a house in the suburbs, good-looking wife, two kids, two cars, a dog. He knows what he wants, but I don’t. I have all the freedom in the world, and still I’m not happy. I would be happy if I could keep everything just as it is, nothing changing, my friends and family happy, healthy and living forever.

Mark stared at a small scratch in the shiny black distributor cap. It had been a sunny afternoon four years ago when his screwdriver had slipped and he’d made that scratch. September 1964. He’d just re-tuned his old Chevy and the three of them, he, Dave and Jeff, had driven to the Uptown Theater to see the Beatles movie A Hard Day’s Night. Afterward, the music still filling their minds, they had cruised around Columbia recapping the movie. They were all eighteen years old, just graduated from Hickman High, just starting their freshman year at MU. He’d lived at home that year. He’d sat at his old desk and paged through his crisp new Physics 20 textbook absorbing the smell of the fresh pages, the perfect neatness of the formulae, the symmetrical beauty of the diagrams. On the bookcase behind him were the red and yellow and blue and green spines of the science fiction books he had read and reread since he was ten years old. He stared at his Physics book and dreamed of starships falling through the endless night of space, stars glittering like jewels on black velvet. He was on his way to becoming an engineer. Maybe one day he would be involved in the space program. He saw himself working in an ultra-modern office overlooking a Southern California beach, designing launch vehicles destined for the space station or the lunar surface. The delicious future with its unlimited potential. And for that moment, like this moment staring at the engine of his car, the future and the past coexisted, the familiar and the new, a savory mix of what was, what had been, and what could be.

Mark came back to the present, snapped the two retainers off with a screwdriver, took off the cap and rotor, disconnected wires, loosened or tightened screws, adjusted gaps. He started the engine, and it idled smoothly.

He stretched the kinks out of his back, smiled at the evening sky. I’m happy. I have everything I want. Later in life, I’ll have more—more money, cars, things. I’ll have been places and done things, but I won’t feel any happier than right now, this minute.

* * *

As Jennifer came down the stairs of her dorm where Mark was waiting, guys’ heads turned. She tilted her head down to let her long hair hide her embarrassment. She was wearing a short red minidress that was perfect for her slim tanned legs and long black hair. “You look great!” Mark told her. She shifted the paperback she was carrying and took his arm. “We’re going to study tonight?” he asked. She smiled.

At the Hofbrau they ordered their usual bratwurst plates with a draft beer and a Coke. “I love Blake,” Jennifer said. “I want you to hear this.” She opened her book and read “The Crystal Cabinet.”

“Sounds like a science fiction story, alternate worlds,” Mark grinned. He took her hand. “Is there another Jennifer in an alternate world…” he tilted his head and read “…translucent, lovely, shining, clear…?”

“Perhaps,” she said with a sly smile. “Would you love her?”

“I love you, here in this world.”

She stopped eating. “I can’t believe it. You said ‘love’ right out loud in public.”

“I often tell you I love you…”

“…when we’re having sex,” she said.

“Well, yeah.” Mark looked around. “Read me some of ‘Auguries of Innocence,’” Mark said.

“Later,” Jennifer said archly. Mark grinned. He left money on the table and they slid out quietly into the cold night. In the car, Mark tapped the heater a couple of times to get the fan started. Jennifer huddled in her coat. “Winter’s coming,” she said. “Yeah,” Mark replied. Sadness flooded through him. He busied himself wiping condensation off the windshield as they drove down Providence Road. “Time flies by,” he said. “Remember that demonstration the cops broke up last summer? I remember running down Maryland Avenue dodging tear gas.”

“Revolution for the fun of it, right?” she said. “Like Abbie Hoffman.”

“Maybe…but now, I’m taking this really great class called Politics and Economics. A girl in the class was pointing out that Hobbes…”

“Can you get the heater running?” Jennifer said.

Mark tapped and the fan grudgingly began to turn again. Mark wiped the windshield by hand. “Hobbes said social disorder is the worst of all possible situations, even worse than dictatorship, and I think he may be right.” It had been Carol quoting Hobbes in Wollheim’s class.

In the dash lights Mark could see Jennifer’s attention was elsewhere. The heater fan stopped and Mark tapped it to life again. “By the way,” he said, “what’s your roommate like this semester?”

“Jeff wants me to get him another blind date?”

Mark parked at the trailer and they hurried inside. Bill was sitting on the couch in front of the little black and white TV. Empty blue and white Busch cans littered the room. Jeff wandered into the room dressed in slacks and a sweater.

“What band is playing at the Black and Gold?”

“Wolfgang and the Warlocks.” The commercial ended and Bill reabsorbed himself in Star Trek. Mark got two beers from the refrigerator, handed one to Jennifer, and they took seats on the couch. Jeff, suddenly interested in a TV show he detested, opened a beer for himself and sat down on the couch beside Jennifer.

The Enterprise was surrounded by three Klingon ships. “Klingon-design,” Jeff noted, feigning great interest. “But they are Romulan ships,” Bill said. Jeff grinned, “Saves on the show’s production costs when you can use the same models for both.”

The Romulan commander turned out to be a woman. Kirk and Spock beamed over to her ship to negotiate, and she slapped Kirk in the brig. “Now she’ll put the moves on Spock,” Jeff whispered. He got three cans of Busch from the refrigerator and passed them around.

“How’d they get in this mess, anyway?” Mark asked. “The usual Kirk stupidity?”

“Romulan cloaking device,” Jeff said. “Spock looks like he may make a deal with the Romulans.”

At the next commercial Mark and Jennifer withdrew quietly into the darkness of Mark’s microscopic bedroom. They took off their clothes and lay together, but Mark made no move to touch her. In the other room, Star Trek played on, very softly. Mark whispered. “I do love you.”

“I love you too.” She paused. “Is something wrong?”

He lay silent for a minute. “No.”

* * *

The University library Friday night at nine. Mark forced his attention onto his Thermodynamics textbook. Around him the cavernous library was silent. He worked at his homework until ten o’clock, then drove the ten miles to his parent’s farm. The house was already dark. He let himself in and went to bed in his old room, tossed and turned in the dark for a while, then clicked the light back on. He took down Heinlein’s Tunnel in the Sky and reread chapter one.

The next morning, it was just his father and sister at the breakfast table with him. “Your mother is not feeling very well this morning,” his father said. He took her some food on a tray.

After awhile Mark went with his father to the shed where they got the old tractor started, hooked up the trailer, and drove out across familiar fields to one of the new walnut tree plantations on a hillside overlooking one of the ponds. With long-handled shears they each walked down a row of ten-foot-tall trees, pruning and throwing the cut branches on the trailer.

“Nice trees,” his father said. “Planted them ten years ago. The first couple of years are slow going. There’s lots of competition from the residual fescue in these fields, but once they get up to about six or eight feet tall they do fine.”

After an hour they took a break, sitting on the back of the trailer. The day was mild and sunny. The oak and maple trees were brilliant with color.

Mark’s father was quiet. A light breeze had come up and was rippling the surface of the pond. Red and yellow, brown and green leaves waved in the wind. The air was intoxicatingly clear and cool. Mark’s father looked at the grass and the trees, the wind ripples on the pond, the crystal blue sky with a filigree of cirrus clouds to the north. “Your mother is not well,” he said quietly. “She goes in for more tests next week, but it’s just to confirm the diagnosis. She has cancer.”

Cancer. Mark’s mind retreated from the word. “What can be done?” he asked.

“The doctors will do all that can be done,” his father said with a bit too much confidence. “You just need to keep to your studying.” His father turned to him and removed his glasses, looking strangely defenseless without them. “And spend as much time with her as you can these next months.”

At the house, Mark went into his mother’s room and chatted with her for a while. She seemed tired but cheerful. He sat in the blue easy chair and they watched a rerun of Have Gun—Will Travel. She hadn’t touched her breakfast. Beside the TV, the drapes were open a little. He could see her garden carefully prepared for next spring. Mark kept his mind empty as the show wound on. Eventually, Richard Boone pronounced the final benediction and the theme music played. Mark saw his mother was sleeping and slipped out of the room.