Bleeding Kansas (15 page)

Lara had her own battles with Susan, but hers concerned the X-Farm. Susan was spending so much time on K-PAW activities that she wasn't paying proper attention to the seedlings in the organic greenhouses.

The Grelliers grew lettuce, herbs, beans, and a few early vegetables in the X-Farm for sale in their own market, the one they'd reverted to when Susan shut down the co-op. The Kansas growing season for lettuce was short: between the arctic winter and the Sahara summer lay a window of about six weeks, so plants had to be ready to go into the ground when the last frost was past. Lara wheedled Curly into coming out to help her transplant the seedlings from germination trays into larger ones, where they'd grow until they were planted outside, but she was furious with Susan for treating the work so carelessly—her mother didn't even notice or thank her for taking care of the transplanting.

“I found the certification forms in your desk, too” Lara said. “You still haven't completed them, and we have to have an inspection or we might as well not bother to put the sunflower crop in because we already printed the packages saying they're certified organic.”

Susan kissed her daughter's forehead. “I'm too busy right now to worry about paperwork. If you fill out the forms, I'll sign them.”

Lara struggled as best she could, but there were fifteen pages that covered everything from where they stored synthetic pesticides on the main farm relative to the X-Farm to how they planned to ship the crop when it was harvested. Jim helped her, but he had, or tried to have, a serious talk with his wife about the situation.

“Lara cannot run the X-Farm. She isn't old enough or experienced enough. And, anyway, I will not have her sacrifice her education or her music and basketball to do the job you signed on for when you persuaded me to let you have that land. I will not let Lulu plant the sunflowers. You have to do that if you want this crop to work, Suze. And if you don't have time or energy for the X-Farm, we should sell the land to Curly's cousin—he's been asking for it, off and on, ever since I bought it from Mrs. Fremantle.”

“I'll take care of the crop, Jim. Don't lecture me. When have I ever shirked a responsibility?”

Jim wanted to remind her of the co-op market and the bread oven, but there were too many arguments in the house already so he bit the words back. “Just remember, somewhere in the world a hundred twenty-eight people are eating because we're growing crops. That's an important responsibility, more important than worrying about the war, because the crops are something we're in charge of. Whether you stand on a street corner in Lawrence handing out leaflets isn't going to make a difference to this war, but whether you get that crop in the ground, that will make a difference to what people eat next winter. Not to mention our bottom line.”

“I said I'll take care of the crop, Jim.” Susan glared at him. “Don't talk to me as if I were Eddie Burton.”

The fights between Chip and Susan got worse when K-PAW decided to hold a protest on March 8, International Women's Day, which, Susan said, quoting her new friends, was traditionally “dedicated to peace.” Susan announced she was taking part. Jim protested, while Chip's rage was so extreme that he spent several nights in town with Curly until Jim and Blitz made him go home again.

Later, Jim wondered if that had been his biggest mistake. Should he have left Chip in town? He'd forced Chip to come home because he'd imagined his son drifting, following Curly's aimless life, not graduating from high school, let alone going to college, never being able to have a real job or a real future and settling into the farm as an unwanted default. If he'd left Chip alone, let him cool off at Curly's. If. If.

Early on the Sunday of the march, Susan painted a peace slogan on an old sheet. She drove over to the Fremantle place with it, where she roused Gina from bed and got her to help attach the sheet to some bamboo poles. She left the house that morning as excited as a small child off to see Santa. She spent the night in jail.

Jim was in the wheat field when Susan called from the county jail to report her arrest. He'd been kneeling to feel the level of moisture in the soil and to see if the freeze line had retreated. The wheat had made it safely through the winter; right now, it looked like clumps of dead grass. It was still at least three weeks from breaking dormancy, he decided, when he heard his daughter screeching, “Dad! Dad!,” at the top of her lungs as she ran into the field in her flip-flops. “It's Mom,” Lara panted, handing him the phone. “She's in jail!”

“It was Arnie,” Susan blurted out to him, distraught. “He was at a pro-war rally in park. He started hassling Gina and me, calling us harlots, and worse names than that. I was carrying a plastic bag of hog's blood, we were going to pour it over a poster of the president at the end of the march, but I swung it at him to try to make him get away from me and it broke and he arrested seven of us.”

“Oh, Susan,” was all Jim could manage.

His concern for the winter wheat evaporated. Even though he could sense her fear from the way her voice trembled, he was angry, unable to utter even mechanical words of comfort. He had been opposed to the march, to the whole K-PAW venture in his wife's life. And see what came of it: Susan had been arrested, just like the rioters he remembered from his adolescence, the kids who turned the town and the valley upside down with drugs and anti-war violence, imagining that they were the only people on the planet with working brains.

Because it was a Sunday, Susan had to spend the night in the new jail out on Twenty-fifth Street. Despite his anger, Jim drove over to see her, but it was after hours and he wasn't allowed in. The guard, a tiny woman barely out of high school who seemed too frail for the weight of the gun and handcuffs hanging from her waist, told him that he couldn't visit a prisoner unless he was on an approved-visitors list, anyway.

“But it's my wife,” he said. “She was arrested this afternoon.”

The guard shook her head. “I'm sorry, sir, but I can't let you in. She was arrested at that march downtown, right? There will be a hearing at ten-thirty in the morning. You can bring your lawyer, and she'll probably be released on bail.”

Jim knew some lawyers, from church and through his brother, but the only one he and Susan ever consulted helped them with their estate planning and advice on threading through the maze of government regulations affecting the farm. Those legal bills were high enough that he could well imagine what it would cost to have someone represent Susan in the courtroom. She'd have to take her chances in front of the judge, he decided, and if she had to do thirty days, well, serve her right for taking part in the blasted march. All the same, he worried about Susan spending the night in a cell. When he got home, he called his brother in Chicago.

“Schapen, huh?” Doug said. “Damned asshole. If they charge Susan with assaulting a cop, she could be in big trouble. But for this hearing tomorrow, tell her to plead not guilty and wait to see what the charges are before you hire anyone. If it's a criminal case, maybe I could fly down to represent her.”

Jim was grateful, not just for the offer but for Doug not taking the opportunity to reiterate his views on Susan and her resemblance to an unguided missile.

“Call Drysdale,” Doug added. “He's a good guy. He won't want to drag you through a court battle.”

“I can't do that, Doug. I can't trade on your friendship with the guy.”

“Jimbo, that's why we have friends—so we're not on our own when we need help.”

Jim was unconvinced, but when he got to the courthouse next morning he found that Doug had played big brother behind his back: Hank Drysdale met Jim outside the courtroom.

“Jim, I'm so sorry Susan had to spend the night in jail. You should have called me yourself—I didn't even know she'd been arrested until I got Doug's message, and he didn't reach me until after midnight.”

The sheriff bent forward to add confidentially, “Between you and me, Arnie got overzealous. This was a Lawrence event; Chief Furman had four Lawrence police officers posted at South Park, and Arnie was only there as a civilian taking part in a counterdemonstration. Any rowdiness, it was the LPD's call on how to respond, not an off-duty county deputy's. Chief Furman is pretty unhappy with me, letting one of my boys muscle in on his cops' jurisdiction.

“I've spoken with the DA and with the mayor. No one wants a big trial that'll bring a lot of outsiders into the town: no one wants to see those seventies riots all over again. Bad enough they've brought reporters in from Topeka and Kansas City. Someone told me there're even runners or stringers or whatever from Chicago, so we plan to keep it low-key. The DA is willing to believe it was an accident, especially since it was Susan carrying that bag of blood. We'll call it a B misdemeanor. No need to go to trial unless you want to, but then there'd be court costs and her fine might go up. Your call, though.”

Jim wondered if Susan would insist on a trial. Would she think she was a martyr, like Jim's ancestors, and that a trial would be romantic? He didn't say this, just nodded at Hank, who clapped him on the shoulder.

The two men went into the courtroom together, where they separated, the sheriff joining the prosecutor's table up front, Jim looking around for a seat. The courtroom was full of people, most of whom were strangers to Jim. The only one he recognized was Rachel Carmody from church. She waved to Jim and scooted over on her bench to make room for him.

“Elaine Logan lives in New Haven Manor. I'm on their board, you know, and they needed someone to look after her in the courtroom,” Rachel explained. “I'm sorry about Susan. She's such an ardent spirit. I'm sure this must be a shock to her.”

“To me, too,” Jim couldn't help saying, then quickly added, “How did Elaine get involved?”

“She's an old seventies peacenik, or at least she says she is—I never know if half the stuff she says is true. She claims she was involved in that commune that used to live somewhere near your farm. I'm assuming that's how she met Gina Haring. Isn't she living out there, too?”

“Yep. At the Fremantle place. That's where the commune was, too.”

“I'm surprised you haven't seen Elaine, then—she hitches out there sometimes to moon over her past, and she's pretty hard to overlook. The New Haven director got an SOS from her only last week, demanding he come pick her up at the crossroads. Elaine is as proud of being arrested as if she were Joan of Arc on her way to the stake, but I have an unchristian feeling that Gina was just using her to swell her numbers—even though the country has turned against the war, you don't get too many people willing to take to the streets in this neck of the woods.”

Jim smiled wryly. “I wonder if it would be any comfort to think Gina was just using Susan, too, but Susan likes big causes. Sometimes I think she's been waiting her whole life for this anti-war nonsense.”

He broke off, embarrassed at having said so much about his private business, and said, to change the subject, “I see the place is full up.”

“Some of them are the K-PAW members.” Rachel pointed to a group across the aisle, most of them women, most in their fifties or sixties, neatly groomed, looking anxious. “The others are mostly from the other side, Kansas Patriots Speak Up. They're the ones carrying the little flags.”

Jim was so rattled he hadn't even noticed the American flags a lot of the spectators were holding. For reasons he couldn't quite define, the sight upset him. It was as if the courtroom were an Olympic stadium and the spectators were all set to wave their flags and yell “USA! USA!” when the hearing started.

Rachel nudged Jim and pointed out the reporters. Jim recognized the man from the
Douglas County Herald
who'd come out to the farm when Susan was running the co-op market and a woman from the local cable channel. The others were strangers.

“I guess they're hoping we're going to reenact bleeding Kansas for them,” Rachel said. “And if Elaine Logan gets close to any of the Speak Up people, that may start to happen, which is why I'm going to hustle her out of here as soon as the hearing is over.”

The clerk stood and announced the judge. Jim and Rachel got to their feet with the rest of the spectators. The hearing was for everyone who'd been arrested over the weekend, not just the marchers. Jim had to wait while a man charged with beating his wife, a woman who'd broken a mirror in a fight at the Storm Door, and two teens who'd ridden their motorcycles through someone's front yard, all had their cases heard.

The protestors were then called forward as a group. They seemed bedraggled after their night in jail, especially Elaine Logan. She was a fat woman, wearing gray sweatpants and a pink sweatshirt stretched tight over an enormous bosom. Her faded blond hair stood out from her head in dirty elflocks. Her hands were shaking, but she looked pugnaciously around the courtroom, making a peace sign at the group from Kansas Patriots Speak Up, who hissed at her. She poked Gina, urging her in an audible whisper to make a stand for justice. Gina stepped back without looking at the older woman. She was holding herself aloof, looking neither at the judge nor her fellow arrestees, not even Autumn Minsky.

Susan was so white that her freckles stood out like polka dots on muslin. She, too, tried to whisper to Gina, but Gina stared forward, ignoring Susan as completely as she had Elaine. Jim felt a spurt of anger: Gina had gotten Susan and Elaine involved in her stupid march and now she was acting like they were flies she was switching off her back. For the first time since his wife called him yesterday, Jim felt the urge to wrap his arms around her, comfort her, protect her from the big bad world.

When the hearing began, Arnie Schapen testified as the arresting officer. The Kansas Patriots waved their flags as he spoke, just as Jim had imagined they would, but the judge told them bluntly it was a courtroom, not a football field, and they would have to leave if they couldn't observe appropriate decorum.

Arnie gave his evidence without looking at Jim or Susan, but Jim could see he was smirking when he sat down. The judge gave the protestors a short, sharp lecture on civil conduct before offering them a choice of a fine or a trial. Jim waited tensely while Susan looked again at Gina, who chose the fine. Susan and the others all followed suit. It was suddenly over, no criminal charges, no trial, but two hundred fifty dollars! Where was that money going to come from?

As soon as the judge dismissed the protestors, Rachel Carmody hurried to the front of the room to collect Elaine Logan. Jim waited for Susan at the back of the courtroom. She stumbled down the center aisle, exhausted, and collapsed against him. He put an arm around her, but neither of them spoke, not while he stood in line at the cashier's window to pay her fine, not while she signed for her belongings, not while they walked out to the parking lot. The reporter from the
Herald
recognized them and hurried over, followed by a camera crew from the local television station. Jim shook his head, not saying a word, just picked up his exhausted wife and carried her to the pickup.