American Woman (11 page)

She wrote back, “I'll let you know when I reach our good friend,” and glued the slip of paper with the lawyer's name and phone number on it into one of her shoes, underneath the insole, so that all day long she had to step on it, and think of it. Merely calling the lawyer wouldn't mean she had chosen surrender. But a week passed, and then several weeks more, and she still didn't call. As winter deepened she sometimes went down to the river and sat watching the train. That close to the water the wind was much worse; she would smoke, without gloves, as her fingers went bluish and stiff. It was the same train on which she'd arrived here. She remembered what satisfaction it had given her to find that the Wildmoor property ran along the same tracks, as if staying nearby would ensure that one day she'd get back on and finish the trip. Now she knew that the train went to Canada. Sitting blue and numb on the dead grass, looking down at the dross that washed up from the river, she would feel the train register itself first in her bones, amplify her teeth-chattering before it burst into view and she saw, as it streaked past the curve, a conductor's pale face and raised hand, briefly waving to her before whipped out of sight. She would pretend she was ruminating the plausibility of it, the chances she'd save enough money, the chances of crossing the border, but she knew—as she might not have known if the train were just a little bit farther away, if it were gliding on the river's other side, if it were merely a wail she heard in the night—that the train was a dream. She didn't have the documents or the money, or Canadian friends.

Then, as February began, something happened having nothing to do with her own ruminations, and she stopped hesitating and flew to the phone. In Berkeley, a band of masked, armed, black-clad women and men kidnapped the nineteen-year-old daughter of one of California's premier families. The girl's last name was as well known as Fremont's, familiar to all Californians from big granite buildings and vast public parks. The kidnappers were a revolutionary cadre that nobody had heard of before, but they claimed kinship to a long list of better-known threats, like the Weather Underground and the Black Panther Party. The kidnapping had taken place in full view of the neighbors, Berkeley graduate students and young couples who'd thrown themselves on their floors as machine-gun fire shattered their windows and the screaming girl was dragged from her house wearing only a bathrobe, and dumped in the trunk of a car. All over the country the kidnapping was greeted with outrage and horror. It even made the front page of the Rhinebeck
Gazette
. If William was right—if Watergate had made mainstream Americans more sympathetic to radicalism—something like this would exhaust that new sympathy quickly. She didn't know anything about these kidnappers, who they were, what they hoped to achieve, but she could see they were being portrayed in the worst possible light. She had dreamed of a window that might open for her. What if Watergate really had opened it? Now the public's dismay at the kidnapping would close it again.

And so one freezing morning she boarded the train at Rhinecliff, at an hour unusual for her so she'd see no conductors she knew, and rode farther south toward the city than she'd been since the night she had left. She got off at Peekskill. Here the river emerged from the vise of the highlands and pooled open again to the width of a lake. Beside the quaint station were a few scarred benches facing the water and the cement plant a half mile away on the opposite bank. “If it's raining I'll meet you inside,” she'd told him, “but if not I'll be out on a bench. The wind is brutal off the river at this time of year. I'm sure we won't have company.”

The lawyer, when he finally came, turned out to be much younger than she'd expected. She had imagined a salt-and-pepper moustache and eyebrows, some sort of socialist party survivor who'd seen darker days and far worse situations. Instead he was smooth-cheeked and handsome, with a pair of steel-framed glasses to lend gravity. His voice, when he said hello to her, had the hard city edge she had heard on the phone. Then it had been persuasive; in person she found it too dissonant, matched with his face. “Nice spot,” he said, pulling his collar tightly around his neck. It was a dark, windy, quintessentially upstate New York day. Clouds the color of pewter rolled over them, pushed by strong wind. The air felt pregnant with snow, a worse cold than dry cold would have been. She had been waiting for almost half an hour, in her thin jeans and an old leather jacket that was missing two buttons, and a sweatshirt rolled up for a scarf. She couldn't feel her hands or her toes, but she was used to it. She hadn't bought winter clothes since she'd been here. She'd never had enough money.

“I won't keep you long,” she said, feeling embarrassed. She realized that in some part of herself she had actually wanted the older, grandfatherly man. The one who would arrive with a gruff nod but a warm gaze, who would be knowledgeable and relaxed, having won harder cases than hers more times than he could count. She suddenly longed to be sheltered by someone like that. Instead she was huddled outside on a bench with a very young man, and their meeting so far felt as awkward and fraught as a date.

He was watching her, waiting, and so she finally choked out her question. “In light of the current political climate,” she began awkwardly, in the way she'd rehearsed. When she was finished he said, after a moment, “I think it's fair to say that the current climate is pretty much the same as it's been. No deals for fugitives. They'll talk to you once you surrender. It's safe to assume that coming in on your own will help out, later on.”

“I didn't just mean the climate inside the Justice Department. I meant the political climate in general. The Watergate scandal.”

“I'm not seeing the connection.”

“With abuses of power at the executive level so certain, it struck me there might be more sympathy now for the radical movement.”

“I don't know about that. You'd be safer just putting that out of your mind. It won't bear on your case.”

Now she no longer felt she was just quoting phrases of William's. The young lawyer's tone was so breezily certain she wondered just how young he was. Was he younger than her? “How can you say that?” she demanded. “The government's prosecutorial habits are always political.”

“Sure, but the charges against you are serious. I'm not trying to stick up for Nixon. I think the guy's as crooked as they come. But you can't say the executive office did criminal acts, so my criminal acts aren't important.”

“It's not the so-called crimes, it's the underlying reasons for them.
You
can't strip our acts of their context and say they were crimes, and at the same time strip something like Vietnam of its crime, and call it a legitimate venture.”

“Vietnam was a war. A distinct body of law applied to it.”

“That doesn't make it right.”

“No, but your case will be decided on law. I agree with you, Jenny. But we're talking about your chances in the justice system. We're not in ethics class.”

This made her wish for the meeting to end. She stared across the water at the glowing cement plant. Although it was midday the sky looked like dusk, and the plant's green and gold lights shone intensely. A plume of white smoke, perhaps steam, emerged and was steadily snatched by the wind. The river looked like the ocean downstream at its mouth, green and full of harsh chop. She said, barely hearing herself over the wind, “I don't have any money.”

“We don't need to talk about that.”

“We will. Maybe there's no point in our talking at all. I'll have to have a court-appointed lawyer.”

“Would your family help?”

“My mother died when I was a baby. My father isn't sympathetic to my views.”

“Enough said. Jenny, if you go forward with me I want you to assume money isn't an issue. Money will be worked out somehow. The issue is, do you want to go in? Do you want to surrender?”

The white plume was still steadily tom from its smokestack. She sighed; she must sound like a truculent child. “Let's pretend that I do.”

“What happens after that will have a lot to do with how much you cooperate.”

“I won't name names.”

For the first time she was aware of impatience. “Then you'll have a hard time,” he said, crossing and recrossing his legs. “I hope you weren't expecting me to tell you that there's some kind of Watergate amnesty for the government's enemies. Your only advantage is the stuff that you know. You had a large circle of friends when you lived in Berkeley. Your boyfriend was convicted of bombing draft offices. At the time they were claimed by something called the People's Army and no one believes that was just him alone, or even just him and you. You see, I did my homework before coming here. If you surrender and offer no information you're going to get a very hostile reception.”

“I can't betray friends. I don't mean to drag you back to ethics class, but it's a principle for me.”

“Maybe you have information that doesn't involve your close friends. Things you've heard on the grapevine.”

“Like what?”

“Information about this kidnapping would help you. A lot.”

She knew she shouldn't be surprised this had come up, but she still wondered whether he sensed this was why she had called him. Flamboyant behavior elsewhere in the Left; sudden desire to get herself cover. “Not my circle,” she said.

“Same hometown. You might know someone who knows one of them.”

“I don't, and if I did we'd just be back in ethics class. I'd be willing to talk about general things. Common techniques, types of targets—”

“You wouldn't betray
kidnappers
? That's beyond the pale, Jenny. They snatched a little girl. God only knows what they're doing to her.”

“She's not ‘a little girl,' she's a nineteen-year-old college student, not that that means she deserved to be kidnapped. They say they're treating her in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.”

“Oh my God, that's not even the most absurd thing they say. You can't really believe that.”

“I don't yet disbelieve it! Almost the entire world believes the worst of them. Who's left to believe the best, if not us?”

“Kidnapping's not politics, regardless of what those clowns want to claim.”

“I'm not in agreement with them, I'm extending them the benefit of the doubt. Isn't that part of your
legal
discourse? Kidnapping's not a tactic I'd ever embrace.”

“I hope not. And don't talk about what you have or haven't embraced, even hypothetically. I'm not representing you yet.”

This stung her. “You haven't exactly said whether you would,” she said, after a minute.

“Of course I would. But you haven't said whether you want me, and I'm not sure you do. I'm not sure you're ready to go through with this. If you become my client I'll do everything in my power, but you'll still face the same choice. You'll feel a lot of pressure to talk, and not just from the government. You may feel a lot of pressure from yourself. You don't want to go to prison for ten years, maybe more. I'm not saying we're certain to lose. I'm not saying you should abandon your principles, either. I'm saying you need to face facts. There won't be any Watergate amnesty.”

She'd flushed from his tone, but she knew he was right. Perhaps she'd already known. William was in prison, she realized. Sometimes she realized this incredible fact with fresh force. William was in prison, and his capacity to gauge the political atmosphere was not the same as it had been when he was out in the world. She'd wasted this young lawyer's time. In some way, though, she'd enjoyed it. She'd liked arguing with him.

“I understand,” she told him.

It was time for the city-bound train. Before he turned back toward the station he said, “It's too bad you don't know where those kidnappers are. That would be worth at least three Watergates.”

“Really?” She knew it was a peace offering.

“Oh, yeah. They'd throw out all the charges and make you an FBI agent.”

“The worst fate of all!” she said, laughing.

“Write me.” He put his hand out and she took it. Even through the numb chill she could feel his hand's warmth, and the shock, the warm touch, made her stomach turn over with longing. She pulled her hand away quickly.

“I'll write you,” she said.

I
T WAS HARD
, she had to admit, to give the kidnappers the benefit of the doubt. They'd taken weeks to convey their demands, and when they finally did she had the sense of a panicked all-night study session, or a coffee-soaked chainsmokers' mad argument that had collapsed in indiscriminate compromise. There were pages on typewritten pages. There were declarations of principles and sociological tracts, and a mythlike explanation of their symbol. There was a long list of other revolutionary movements with which they shared ideological ties or—perhaps this was meant as a threat—“logistical/material reciprocity arrangements for ammunition, supplies, and ground troops.” There was a tape with the victim's voice on it. “They've chosen me as a symbol of the problems of capitalism, Mom, Dad, and I think if you try you can see what their point is.” The victim detailed—clearly reading, her voice strangely girlish yet dull—the demand: that a week's worth of “good, healthy food” be distributed to every California resident whose annual income was below the poverty line, or who suffered some form of social marginalization, for example was a recently paroled criminal, or a resident of the state's substandard low-income housing, or otherwise verifiably poor. Every person in need must be fed. The food was to be distributed, no strings attached and no hassles, starting in no less than a week and continuing for no less than a month, anywhere that was not a social services center or some other record-keeping arm of any level of government and preferably at normal supermarkets where The People were accustomed to going, so as to make it convenient. The distribution was not even the actual ransom, but a goodwill gesture, after which ransom talks would commence. Periodically the girl would pause, and a rustling of sheets would be heard. “I just had to turn over the page,” she murmured at one point.