Memorial Bridge (59 page)

The eye was and would continue to be, had to be, he wanted it to be, his secret. No one of the tens of thousands around him could know or begin to understand what this moment was for him. He was no longer
linked to them at all. He allowed the current of the crowd's movement to carry him. The main body of demonstrators funneled into the vast north parking lot, where this phase of the rally was to take place. Speakers at the Lincoln Memorial had explained that government permits had been obtained for this second gathering, that it was perfectly legal. Those hoping to challenge the war by committing acts of civil disobedience would move on from the parking lot to cross the well-marked boundary onto the forbidden apron of the Pentagon proper. As they approached, Richard, still craning, saw that that boundary was marked by a length of yellow rope behind which stood a row of club-bearing military policemen. He saw their white helmets and knew, even from that distance, who they were.

Not Richard. He had not come here to get busted, and already he wanted to cry out, at the mystical eye that only he saw, what was now true, that he was not one of these people, that he had come here for reasons of his own, that while he too hated the fucking war, he did not hate the men who had to fight it.

You. I don't hate you, he said, perhaps aloud. He had his stare fixed on that spot on the side of the Pentagon, which was approximately where his father's office was. As he drew steadily closer it seemed to him he could distinguish among the numerous windows, picking out one window and drifting toward it.

Without realizing it, Richard's preoccupation took him to the edge of the crowd, away from the temporaiy platform in the middle of the lot on which a rock band was playing. Soon he found himself actually approaching the limit of the parking lot among a column of wild-hearted Yippie radicals who, it was quickly apparent, were here to make trouble. Just a few dozen yards ahead Richard saw kids taunting the stoical MPs. One was waving a small NLF flag directly in the face of an impassive black soldier, and several girls were dancing lewdly in front of another. Richard heard the catcalls and obscenities that the protesters were shouting at the soldiers, and he began to shout too, but against his fellow demonstrators. "No," he cried, "don't do that! Not like that!"

There were several hundred Yippies just there, where the embankment leading up to the building marked the limit of the parking lot. They were a knot of crude and, even to Richard, ugly young people, who then picked up the chant of "Out, demons, out!" Richard remembered that their leader, Jerry Rubin, had promised an exorcism of the war machine,
but these kids were hurling themselves on the MPs as if
they
were devils. The idea of an exorcism had seemed like fun when Richard had heard it, but this frenzy—girls flaunting their bodies, boys waving enemy flags, shouting, "Out, demons, out!"—frightened him.

He decided to move away. But the crowd of chanters was thick and pressing him, and they forced him forward as the entire column moved steadily against the line of MPs.

"No!" Richard cried. "Stop this!" And he pushed roughly against a white kid whose hair was styled dramatically in an Afro. The kid punched Richard in the jaw, staggering him.

"Out, demons, out!"

When he'd found his balance again, Richard was facing the other way, his back toward the Pentagon, and he began pushing against the crowd, trying to get out. But it was impossible.

At one point he ripped out of someone's grasp another red and blue, yellow-starred Vietcong flag and quite deliberately threw it to the ground where it was immediately trampled under and lost.

The frontmost rank of demonstrators, no longer content with taunting the rows of MPs, broke and began running for the Pentagon, tearing the yellow cord down, scrambling up the embankment and, eluding the startled soldiers, actually crossing onto the broad paved apron. The crowd around Richard surged forward. The line of MPs was no match for it, and all at once hundreds of protesters were storming the Pentagon itself.

Richard, simply to stop himself from being carried forward, fell to the ground, one of the few who did, and one of the few easy targets, therefore, for the white-helmeted soldiers.

"You motherfucker!" an MP cried as he brought his club viciously down on Richard.

Richard covered his head just in time and took the blow with his shielding forearms. Instinctively he rolled away, scrambling to his feet and moving with energy and finesse, a halfback eluding tacklers. "Cheer for the Redskins!" The old fight song in his father's voice. Run me, Dad, run me!

Despite the shocking memory of his father's carrying him like a football, and despite the pandemonium around him, his brain snapped into focus, locked on one idea and held it as an absolute: not to get arrested. That was all. I cannot get arrested! But his instinctive move
into open space had, in fact, taken him toward the Pentagon, not away from it. He was way over the line of what was allowed, but he was dodging everybody now. The Yippies were as much a threat to him as the MPs were. Cheer for the Redskins! Was it that memory that made him want to cry?

The first rank of radicals was just approaching the stairs leading to the river entrance proper, storming it like heroes. A Vietcong flag waved above them, and that drew Richard's eye just as the huge doors between the limestone pillars swung open. Out poured a company of countercharging troops, not white-helmeted, club-wielding MPs but combat soldiers in fatigues, armed with rifles. They stormed into and around the Yippies, who stopped cold, instantly overwhelmed. He saw soldiers repeatedly bringing the butts of their rifles down on the heads of the now panicked kids. Their cocky demon chant was transformed into screams of pure terror, and as they tried to fall back in retreat, the troops pursued them. Hundreds of combat soldiers continued to pour out of the Pentagon, chasing down the protesters, who in Richard's mind were transformed once more back into harmless flower children. "Don't," he screamed now, "don't do that!" But instead of at Yippies, he was screaming at a GI who at that moment was brutally clubbing a girl who had daisies woven into her hair. The girl was at the soldier's feet, writhing with the blows. Richard simply forgot his new absolute, that he could not be arrested, and he ran at the soldier. "Stop that, goddamn it!" He hit the GI from the side, with more force than he intended, and it stunned him that the soldier fell to the ground. Richard reached to help the girl. Blood was pouring from her head, and she was screaming hysterically, but instead of allowing Richard to lead her away, she pulled out of his grasp as soon as she was on her feet, and she turned on the soldier who was getting up. "Asshole!" she screamed. "You fucking baby-burner!" She stood over the stunned GI, just screaming at him, "Asshole! Asshole!" The soldier shook with confusion.

Richard took off. He ran as fast as he could, back toward the main body of the demonstration in the parking lot. The soldiers were scrambling after protesters, who were still scampering toward the Pentagon, not away from it, and so they ignored him. He cut through the crowd, more a halfback to himself than ever. By the time he hit the parking lot, the demonstrators there had turned their focus toward the battle on the embankment, and Richard was struck by the uniformity of expression
on their faces: horror and anger. The huge crescent-shaped edge of the crowd stood watching the whacked-out Yippies take their beating.

Richard pushed through them toward the platform where the band had been playing, and he took up a position near the stage, amid a small and relatively tranquil group of demonstrators. There were older people here, men and women both, professors in corduroys and Wallabees, ministers in tweed coats and clerical collars, women in wraparound khaki skirts instead of blue jeans, as well as a sprinkling of long-haired earnest young men, hard-core pacifists who no doubt disapproved of the tactics of confrontation that threatened now to turn the entire rally into a violent rout. A minister was on the platform, speaking as if the soldiers and radicals were not battling each other a mere hundred yards away.

Richard tried to listen. Now that he had stopped, he realized how his heart was pounding and how his breath was coming in gasps. His legs were trembling. He felt nauseous. But he was surrounded here by people who seemed rooted, calm and serious. Gradually he felt their steadiness coming to him, and he found it possible actually to understand what the minister was saying.

"We are not here to defy the rule of law. . . "He was speaking from note cards, not ranting or extemporizing but presenting a firm, thought-out position. His voice was powerful above them, and to Richard the minister's evident self-possession seemed an antidote to his own inner quaking. "...but to redeem the system of constitutional government. We will no longer let the vulnerable young expose themselves alone to its fury, and that is why we join them in committing this act of direct resistance to the war and the draft. There are twenty-seven young men representing Resist groups from all over the country. They will come forward now to present to us the draft cards turned in locally by those groups, so that we in turn may present them, by prearrangement, to the chief marshal here at the Pentagon, and through him to the court of the United States. Those others of us who want to include their own draft cards are encouraged to do so. We will thus, in a simple ceremony, make concrete our affirmation of support for these young men who are the spearhead of direct resistance to the war and all of its machinery."

The group applauded, a subdued, polite reaction in marked contrast to the pitched battle still in progress on the slope between the parking lot and the river entrance.

The minister received several bundles of cards from the representatives who came forward solemnly, as in church. "Ceremony," he had said, and it was true. Richard felt that he was witnessing a holy ritual.

"Who is that?" he asked a woman next to him.

"Bill Coffin, the Yale chaplain. He just read Mitch Goodman's statement."

"Mitch Goodman?"

"The poet, the head of Resist."

Reverend Coffin held up a cloth sack into which the draft cards had been so liturgically placed. He announced, "Section Twelve of the National Selective Service Act commands that we shall not aid, abet or counsel men to refuse the draft. But when young men refuse to allow their conscience to be violated by an unjust law and a criminal war, then it is necessary for their elders—their teachers, ministers, friends—to make clear their commitment, in conscience, to aid, abet and counsel them against conscription. We too must be arrested, for in the sight of the law, we are now as guilty as you are." Coffin leapt from the stage to stand in front of it.

A second, more spontaneous procession began as other young men, and older men too, the professors and old lefties, filed forward to add their draft cards to those collected in advance. They dropped their cards into the bag with due solemnity; a few felt compelled by emotion to make brief, halting statements, but most carried out the act in silence.

Richard could hardly breathe, watching them. He stood on the edge, hugging his chest, which still ached from the exertion of his flight and from the pounding it was taking from his heart. No one looked at him, for which he was grateful. He felt quite naked and helpless, and like everyone else in that corner of the mad, desperate apocalypse of a demonstration, he was riveted by the sight of American men putting their entire futures in jeopardy for the simple sake of conscience.

Richard's hand went to his back pocket for his wallet. The movement was subtle, sly almost, but he was fully aware of it, and aware of its implication. Without fumbling in the slightest he withdrew the small stack of cards he carried, his library card, his UVA ID, his driver's license, his social security card and, on the bottom, his draft card. "Classification," he read, "2-S."

He was in law school, he admitted for the first time, only for the sake of that very number and letter, the precious exemption it offered. He felt ashamed of himself for the glib self-righteousness of his rejection of the
war till then. It had cost him nothing, and he had risked nothing, while Vietnamese and Americans both were dying now in droves. His very acknowledgment of that disparity seemed itself a new kind of conscription, drafting from within him at last a rare sacrificial impulse.

He had joined the procession and found himself at the head of it, faced with the stern but steady-eyed Reverend Coffin, who was extending the sack toward him. Richard hesitated. The minister nodded and looked at him for an instant with such compassion, and also with such confidence, that his doubt evaporated. He dropped his card into the bag, then walked away feeling, despite having literally discarded something, more as if he had received, much more than he ever had at the communion of the Mass.

His path away from the platform took him toward the Pentagon for some yards, and his gaze quite naturally lifted to the place where before he'd imagined the Cyclops eye. The eye was gone. He no longer felt afraid. Not giddy either, or high, as he had on the bridge. He had never felt like this before, yet the feeling was familiar.
How does it feel?

Like I am Richard Dillon, not someone's son.

For a while Richard would revel in the apparent contradiction—as if he were not meant to be both himself and his father's son—and he would love his sense of freedom from it.

If Richard had been able actually, from that distance, to single out the window of his father's office, he'd have seen that, like most windows on that side of the Pentagon, it was blank. Early that morning custodians had gone through the offices on the mall side, dropping Venetian blinds. In the VIP suites, like the DIA director's, there were also heavy serge draperies to draw across the windows, and in those rooms the outside world was thoroughly sealed off.

Since it was Saturday, General Dillon and his colleagues were dressed in mufti. They had begun the morning affecting a weekend nonchalance, but as the hours passed, even if they could barely hear it, they knew the huge demonstration was building to a climax. But the real urgency they felt had nothing to do with Jerry Rubin's psychopathic exorcism, or with the frenzy with which green, frightened GIs were holding off the ragtag army of nut-case radicals and spaced-out flower children outside.