Beach Music (93 page)

Later, I thought that this moving without reason had been an unforgettable sensation that made me understand the comfort of herds, the safety that great numbers lend to religious pilgrimages. I had never been a part of something so much larger than myself. My hands trembled with fury and my mouth was dry; I felt irrational and murderous, yet curiously not angry as I walked with the students, many crying, around me.

By the time we reached the open space in front of the library, Capers and Shyla had already been arrested for unlawful assembly. News of their arrest spread angrily through the crowd along with the surprising fact that the president of the university himself had secured their releases. Like an overhang of mist from the Saluda River, the mob dissipated, almost shyly, breaking up as though a spell had been lifted by an unseen hand.

That night, Jordan, Mike, and I were at Yesterday’s when Shyla and Capers walked in. They were welcomed by a thunderous ovation as they moved toward the bar with their fists raised and people reaching out to touch them. Capers wore a butterfly Band-Aid over
his left eye where one of the arresting officers had banged his head against a wall. Shyla went to the front entrance of the restaurant and worked the crowd into a lather of self-righteousness, while Capers and Radical Bob worked the back door and the bar. Shouts echoed through the streets and a police car went up in flames near the stadium. The sound of sirens hovered over the city. It was not anarchy or even near it, but something had disturbed the sediments of dispassion in the loose boundaries of this college. You could feel the thrill of lethargy set afire. On this night, the pure fact of living seemed like a new branch of theology. There was wildness and disquiet along the tree-lined streets of a sleeping city. Over the televisions and the radios came the news that none of the slain students had been a radical and one had even belonged to a ROTC unit. The men in uniforms had turned their guns on college students. My generation cohered in outrage and parents everywhere were afraid.

The next afternoon, the gathering began again and I learned that the instinctual was far more fearful than the scheduled or the planned. The mob again made its way toward the end of the Horseshoe; and once more I felt the thrill of being part of something much larger than myself, as I was swept along by the movement of thousands. Jordan’s hand held my elbow as we tried to see the speakers through the sunlight and the noise. Whispering in my ear, Jordan said he had never seen so many men with guns in his whole life, not even at Camp Pendleton. Hundreds of National Guardsmen had reinforced the highway patrol, and the air itself seemed gelatinous, unbreathable.

Shyla was speaking when we drew close enough to hear, but we were still fifty feet away from the speaker’s platform. We heard Shyla saying, “They brought the war home for us yesterday. Because we did not want our soldiers buried in an unjust war, they decided to bury some of us instead. Because we came in peace, they tried to show us what the price of peace was going to be. Because we hate war, they decided to declare war on all of us. Let us answer their gunfire by rededicating ourselves to the cause of bringing our soldiers home. Let us bury our dead, then go about our business of burying the Vietnam War forever.”

The applause that greeted her words was loud and insistent.
Then Radical Bob moved toward the microphone. He had spoken but a few words when the head of the SLED—South Carolina Law Enforcement Division—agents, J. D. Strom, interrupted him and announced to the audience that no license to assemble had been granted by the city and that this demonstration was canceled by order of the mayor. Shoving Strom aside, Radical Bob tried to commandeer the microphone, but his actions were broken off by a slim, swift-moving team that handcuffed him with great efficiency. The crowd roared malignantly as Radical Bob was dragged off and thrown into the back of a squad car. Students on the edge of the crowd tried to break through the cordon of officers to free Bob, but were pushed back by a line of SLED agents.

Capers negotiated nose to nose with Colonel Strom, then was allowed to use the microphone to make an announcement.

“This meeting will reconvene in the theater of the Russell House. They may be able to stop us from talking to each other out here, but by God, we own the Student Union.”

So, again, we moved, this time between the rifles, the pistols, and the batons of the forces of order, yet we were orderly and wondered at the necessity of this dark show of paranoia and force. The eyes of the police officers were filled with loathing as they watched the disorderly but unthreatening passage of the students between their ranks.

“They’re worried about being killed,” Jordan said. “The poor bastards are afraid of us.”

“Why do so many fat people go into law enforcement?” I asked.

“Because they’re wearing bulletproof vests. Stay in the middle,” Jordan warned. “If they start shooting, they’ll thin out the edges first.”

“They won’t start shooting,” I said. “These are just South Carolina country boys, like us.”

“You think those National Guardsmen weren’t just Ohio boys like those poor students?” Jordan said.

“Don’t make me more nervous than I already am,” I said. “Let’s go back to our rooms. I personally don’t give a gerbil’s fart for the whole Vietnam War.”

“Then that’s a good reason to be here,” Jordan said, but he did not explain what he meant.

On the ramp leading into the Russell House, I saw two attack helicopters hovering in the distance. One girl carrying a radio said it was reported that another thousand National Guardsmen were mobilizing in Charleston. I watched highway patrolmen passing canisters of tear gas through their ranks and heard the barking of Dobermans and German shepherds assembling behind the library. Already, the state had gathered enough firepower to eradicate a suburb of Hanoi, yet the enemy they faced were placing flowers and candy kisses into the holsters and cartridge belts of unsmiling patrolmen.

When we reached the Student Union, Jordan and I stood in one of the overflowing aisles as Capers Middleton walked out to center stage and to the podium. Applause went up like a fire among drought-stricken pines and grew in fury because our energy had been set off with no outlet. The cheering turned to screaming and the screaming turned to a roar, tribal and irresistible. So many students had crowded into the theater and spilled out into the hallways and corridors that the police and the guard had mostly been left outside. We were alone with one another again.

Capers surprisingly did not immediately start to speak. Instead, he enjoyed his first moment as a politician, as a man who had an instinctive appreciation for the ravenous needs of crowds. He watched the police and SLED agents force their way into the back of the auditorium and move through the students, whom they jostled and shoved out of their way, and he threw away the handwritten copy of the speech he had prepared. Once the phalanx of policemen had reached the front of the stage with their nightsticks at the ready, he began. “I’d like all of you to join me in singing a song most appropriate for this occasion. What we are doing truly is celebrating the greatness of this country. This is the country in which the British would not let us speak freely, assemble at will, or have a say in who would tax us. The British had thought of everything, except one thing: we were no longer English. The country had changed us and without knowing it, we had become Americans. As Americans,
we taught the whole world about free speech. We invented it. And no one—I repeat, no one—is going to take it away from us.”

Mike was up onstage photographing the crowd’s reaction just as it erupted, electrified by the power of Capers’ words. Jordan and I almost burst as we screamed until we were hoarse. “These poor cops’re afraid of us. Let’s show them there’s no need to be afraid.”

Then Capers stood before the microphone and sang in his merely serviceable tenor voice:

We all wept during the singing of “America.” Capers had managed to create a moment of great beauty. His instincts were accurate, his timing impeccable, and he seemed to exert leadership over the crowd by the authority of his presence alone. I had never seen a handsomer, more charismatic boy and I felt myself falling in love with this best of friends all over again.

Then law enforcement made their first strategic error. The city fire chief waddled out onstage, his saunter penguinesque and uncertain, and one could sense his unease before our crowd of long-haired students. He wrestled the microphone away from Capers. During their brief struggle, Capers was smiling and playing to the crowd, but the fire chief did not come to this moment of time in a playful mood. He thought that Capers was mocking him. He motioned with his left hand and the stage was suddenly filled with cops. One shot a small aerosol can of mace into Capers’ eyes. Capers screamed, went down on his knees when a baton struck the back of his legs, and he fell to the floor face forward as a cop hit his head with a blackjack. Capers was unconscious as they carried him offstage to an
ambulance waiting outside. We were so astonished by the sudden turn of events that there was not a sound in the auditorium and all I could actually hear was the shutter of Mike’s camera opening and closing like the eyelids of some beast hidden from view.

The fire chief spoke up at last. “Mr. Middleton here didn’t get a permit for this meeting. Y’all are busting every rule we got in the fire code. I’m authorized by the governor himself to issue a proclamation. Until further notice, no students’ll be allowed in the Student Union. Understood? No students allowed in the Russell House. You’ve got five minutes to disperse.”

A murmur went through the leaderless crowd and then I heard a voice beside me. It was Jordan speaking. “Hey, fatso. If the Student Union isn’t for the students, then who in the hell is it for?”

“Arrest that boy,” the fire chief said, turning away, but the PA system amplified his every word.

“I’m a student,” Jordan yelled. “There’s no law against a student being in his college’s only Student Union. I want to know why all you damn cops and National Guardsmen are here. We built and paid for this house. We belong inside this house. You’ve come to our home and arrested and beaten our friends and interrupted our meeting and scared us in the place we feel safest. Then you’ve got the nerve to tell us we can’t even be in the place that’s got our name written on it.”

“Do yourself a favor, son, and shut up,” the fire chief said.

“Why should I shut up?” Jordan said. “I live here. My parents pay good money so I can attend classes here. I took tests so I could get into this college. All of us studied hard so we could get the chance to attend this university. You’ve no right to tell any of us to leave.”

“You’re creating a fire hazard,” the chief said. “Only two thousand people are allowed in this theater at one time.”

“Then take the cops and the soldiers and get your asses out of here. Then we’ll have about the right number,” Jordan said. Policemen had already started moving toward Jordan, but the crowd made it very difficult for anyone to get near him. The colonel in charge of the National Guard and the head of SLED took the fire chief’s place at the microphone.

“Listen, people,” the colonel said. His face had the soft, puffy texture of a woodland mushroom but he clearly hated the students. “I got me a little order here. An order granting me emergency powers issued by the governor’s office. I just watched as you ignored an order to disperse by the fire marshal. I personally don’t believe in the gentle, feel-good approach to mob rule. I want you to take your hippie-asses and get the hell out of here.”

Jordan spoke again, growing calm as the fury of the crowd spread around him, volatile as wild fire.

“Please apologize for calling us hippie-asses, Colonel,” Jordan asked. “I know my fellow students well and we are very sensitive to name-calling. We’ve been burdened with tender sensibilities and you just hurt our feelings.”

“I gave an order to disperse, Betsy, or whatever your name is,” the colonel said. “Sorry, I can’t tell if you’re a boy or a girl.”

“Colonel,” Jordan said. “Why don’t you and I have a fistfight on that stage and you can find out if I’m a boy or not.”

The roar from the students drowned out the colonel’s next words.

“… and I’d like to remind this crowd of draft dodgers and peaceniks that there are fine young American men fighting and dying in Vietnam right now, as we speak,” the colonel said. “Do you know why these young men are dying?”

“Yeh, we sure do,” Jordan screamed. “They weren’t rich enough or lucky enough to be able to join the goddamn National Guard like you and these pussies with rifles you got us surrounded by …”

Again the rolling thunder of voices swept back and forth across that theater for several moments. The colonel tried several times to restore order, but his voice was puny, anemic.

“Our boys are dying in Vietnam for a cause they believe in,” Jordan continued, finally, “and they’ve earned the love and respect of all of us. We now need to stop that war and bring them home. Our armed forces are out in the field killing the enemy, while you and your sorry National Guard, these chicken-shit, yellow-bellied bastards with their bayonets at ready, get to sit out the war pretending you’ve done your duty to our country. You aren’t out in the
jungle hunting Viet Cong. Your guns are locked and loaded and you’ve come on our campus to hunt your own American brothers and sisters. Yesterday you killed four of us in Ohio. How many of us you plan to kill today? Talk to me, National Guardsmen. I want one of you bastards to stand up and tell me that you aren’t the biggest draft dodgers this country’s ever seen. Tell me it wasn’t the greatest day in your sorry lives when that piece of paper came in the mail saying you’d never catch malaria or clap in Vietnam.”