The Laws of our Fathers (22 page)

    ‘I wasn't "raised as a Commie." It's not like being a Baptist, baby. My mother belonged to the Party. Not me. And that doesn't make her the same kind of Stalinist zealot Eddgar is. He'd think she's a Trotskyist.'

    Sonny always stuck up fiercely for her mother. During her term as president of her pipefitters' local, during World War II, Zora had appeared on the cover of
Life -
Wendy the Welder - with her acetylene torch glimmering like the Lamp of Liberty on the lowered visor of her mask. She was famous then. But because she was a Communist, and female, she was hounded from leadership and, eventually, from the union once the men came back. At the height of the McCarthy years, Zora had packed canned goods and blankets in two suitcases, expecting the army any day to take Sonny and her to the camps.

    Sonny was cheerfully tolerant of her mother's eccentricities. Zora tended to call out of the blue and would keep Sonny on the phone forever. She would sit locked in the bedroom, even when we had guests in the apartment or people waiting elsewhere. By habit, Sonny never disagreed with her. She was silent. Zora talked.

    'So what did she say?'

    'Not much.'

    'In an hour and a half?'

    Sonny shook her head. It went beyond her power to explain. 'You know her.'

    I didn't really. I had met Zora on only a few occasions. She was a tiny woman, not more than five feet, if that, always smoking Chesterfields. She had one walleye and heavy glasses and barely filled out her shirtwaist dress. I recall being impressed by the strings of muscles in her forearms. A tough bird, you'd say. The few times Sonny brought me by, Zora had not directed a single word to me, including hello. Instead, she soon launched into an account for Sonny's benefit of some recent outrage she had suffered - unemployment, landlord troubles, a union steward who had become a management whore. Small and quick, racing back and forth, Zora reminded me of a hamster in a cage. She screamed, spat words, raged her hands through the air, as she rambled at enormous speed and volume.

    Sonny tirelessly consoled Zora. She sent her money whenever she could afford to and also maintained communications with

    Zora's enormous Polish family - the Milkowskis - with whom Zora, generally, was not on speaking terms. I took Zora with her wild look, erratic manner, and self-centered habits as clearly out of her mind. But this, I quickly learned, was not a view I was free to share.

    Late one night the meeting of one of Eddgar's collectives ended upstairs, while Sonny and I were in the rack, stoned and amorous. In order to confound the Damon police surveillance, the rads would head out from Eddgar's in all directions, and three or four of them came clomping down the back stairs in their work boots, passing right next to our open window. We ceased grinding, waiting for the loud voices to drift off into the thin night. One of the last remarks I heard was someone trying to be brassy, boasting about the oinkers he was going to off on the day the rev came. Drifting on the dope, I found myself pondering the question that life in Eddgar's midst was gradually forcing on me.

    'Do you think there's going to be a revolution?' I asked. ‘I mean, really?'

    Beneath me, Sonny groaned. 'Of course not.'

    'Oh.'

    'Seth, I mean - baby, I grew up with this. It's a crazy discussion. If there was no revolution in the United States in the 1930s, when 15 percent of the workforce was unemployed, how could it ever happen now?'

    I repeated, somewhat experimentally, what I'd heard Eddgar say about raising the consciousness of the working class. 'These guys on the assembly lines who think they love George Wallace? They're like avoiding the despair of their own lives.'

    'Seth, these are the people my mother has been organizing all her life. I've listened to Zora explain to them that they don't recognize their despair, and they've run her out of town.'

    'That's Zora.'

    Beneath me, Sonny slid her hips back so that I was suddenly on my own. 'What does that mean?'

    I knew I was on tender ground, but somehow I felt provoked, probably by her callousness toward my own screwy hopes.

    'It means, you know, no offense, but your mother can come across as a little weird.'

    'Meaning?'

    ' "Meaning?" Jesus, don't be dense, goddamn it. I mean, maybe all these working joes are like rejecting Zora, not what she's saying.'

    The light went on then, a painful brightness. Sonny, whose warmth seldom left her, was cold as stone. 'Not my mother,' she said. I shielded my eyes. 'Okay.' 'Never.' 'I get it.'

    She flipped the light off and turned her back on me. 'Sonny.'

    She shirked my hand.

    Eventually I slept, but about an hour along I woke. Some sense, perhaps just waiting for my bearings, told me not to move too quickly. Gradually I became aware of Sonny beside me, breathing heavily, jolting with small tremors. After a number of minutes, I realized that her hands were beneath her waist, finishing off what I'd begun. I lay there in the dark, absolutely still, not knowing what to do, whether it would be too humiliating if I intervened -or if, as I suspected, that was not even desired. Instead, I listened, as her breath slowly rose, reaching its summit and briefly ceasing as she thrilled to her own touch, and then resuming softly as she disappeared into sleep.

    Hobie's newfound alliance with Cleveland Marsh, which had uncharacteristically brought both of them to the ARC demonstration, had begun one night in the fall when Hobie was at our apartment for dinner. Heading up the stairs to a meeting at the Eddgars', Cleveland had caught sight of Hobie in our doorway, where he was lurking as usual in hopes of passing a word with his illustrious classmate. In his black turtleneck and shades, Cleveland drifted past, then thought better of something and, a few steps above, extended a finger Hobie's way. A.45-caliber cartridge, sleekly jacketed in copper, swung like an amulet around his neck.

    'Hey, Blood,' he said. 'We got a kind of study thing we might be doin’ in Contracts. You know? Maybe you be up for that?'

    Personally, I was somewhat unsettled by my passing contacts with Cleveland. Not because he was manifestly angry. Leaving aside Hobie, every young black person
I
knew seemed perpetually pissed off, an attitude which required little explanation in 1969, a year after Martin Luther King had been gunned down, and one in every eight Americans had voted for George Wallace for President. But I'd grown up around black folks; I'd marched, I'd held hands; I'd dated black girls. I knew the churches and the preaching; the dance steps; the hierarchies of the black middle class.
I
knew what was different and what wasn't. Cleveland was the first black person I'd encountered who unrepentantly refused to look beyond the color of my skin. He viewed me with the sinister, unfeeling look you'd save for a snake.

    Nonetheless, Hobie was thrilled by Cleveland's comradeship. Cleveland had grown up in Marin City, the housing project at the foot of the Golden Gate, and had become an all-West Coast Conference running back for Damon. In the spring of 1968, he had made the national news shows repeatedly, first when he announced that he had joined the Panthers, and then when he was admitted to Damon Law School amid protests from faculty and alumni, who objected either to his political views or to his qualifications. Hobie regarded anyone who'd been on television as if they descended from a higher realm. In this,
I
suppose, he took after his father, Gurney, who had a treasured row of celebrity photos above his soda fountain, featuring baseball stars, jazz musicians, and boxers. Besides, Hobie's relationship with Cleveland soon took on a predictable dimension. Shortly after the ARC demonstration, Hobie arrived for Doobie Hour with a small bundle which he opened as soon as Michael was gone for the night.

    'Called co-caine,' he told Sonny and me, as he spilled a small white rock out of a test tube onto a pocket mirror. Sonny was always too earnest to really enjoy drugs of any kind. She described the near-ruination of Sigmund Freud's medical career when he'd unwittingly addicted patients to this miracle substance, and left the room in disgust. But with Hobie my watchword was to try anything once. Overall, I wasn't impressed.

    'It's groovy,' said Lucy. 'Except the straw. Everybody's nose? That's gross.'

    'Where do you come into this stuff?' I asked Hobie.

    'Panthers are into some awesome shit,' he said, as he was sniffling and wheeling his head about to absorb the rush. 'This here, man, this is a far-out form of political fund-raising. They've got a dude, man, he's stamping out acid in tabs with the big B on them? Wrapped in the little bubbles of cellophane? Aspirin all the way, when you look at it. Outta-sight operation.'

    'Hobie even went to Cleveland's house,' said Lucy. 'He's got like
kids.
It was all weird and everything. Did you tell Seth? There are
all
these guns? And -'

    With his huge hand, Hobie had taken hold of her knee. His eyes flashed at me somewhat tentatively.

    'That whole scene, they're freaky paranoid, you know. "Safe houses." All that shit. Fucking
I Spy,
or something. You know the rap: I'm righteous and I'm a brother, but anybody else, nothin bout nothin. I had to swear by the Zulu gods.' He smiled at himself. It took me a second to understand he was saying he wasn't going to talk about it. Hobie and I generally had no secrets, particularly when it came to his exploits. But Cleveland remained a touchy subject.

    Late one afternoon, shortly after the turn of the year, Hobie rang the bell and stood downstairs in his green army-surplus poncho. The rains had come then, occasional chill downpours, but more often drizzle and heavy fog, nasty stuff that felt like a cold hand gripping my bones. The blue flame in the space heater in our hall was never off.

    'Okay you drive?' Hobie yelled up. We were going to play

    basketball on campus. As we were walking among the puddles toward my car, I glimpsed Hobie's old Dodge Dart, springshot and rustworn, off in a corner of the gravel lot. The car had the old push-button automatic and half a psychedelic paint job, both front fenders whorled in color. I asked what was wrong with it.

    'Nothing. I just got some stuff in there.'

    Hobie had an uncharacteristic poor-mouth expression and I pushed past his hand to inspect. The car was full of oozing burlap sacks, piled on the front and back seats. Hobie, who'd followed, pointed to the sky and told me it was raining.

    'Hobie, don't be a douche bag. What is this, the Magical Mystery Tour? What the hell do you have back here, man?'

    'Sandbags.'

    'Sandbags?'

    'Suckers are heavy, too. Wudn't even sure Nellybelle was gonna make it up the hill on Shattuck.' Nellybelle was his car, named after Roy Rogers's sidekick's jeep.

    'You get the lowdown from Noah? Are we havin another flood?'

    'It's just a favor, man. That's all. I was rappin with Cleveland a little after Contracts yesterday, and he asked when I was comin this way to hang with you. So he's like, well do I mind any stoppin at an auto-supply place - tells me where a couple are - pick up a can of battery acid and twenty sandbags. Gives me the money and all. Weird, right? Saidjust leave the car unlocked. Somebody'd get it.'

    'Eddgar?' Cleveland didn't know anyone else in the building. 'Man, I didn't ask. It's just a favor. Dude does for me. I do for him.'

    'Hobie, you better watch your ass.'

    He hooted at that, particularly coming from me, Eddgar's admiring employee. 'Come on. Battery acid and sandbags? Gimme a break, Jack. Why should I be gettin uptight about that?'

    'Well, what are they doing with it?'

    Hobie shrugged. 'Only thing I could figure is like winter travel. You know, Gurney's always topping off his battery and throwing a few sandbags in the trunk around this time of year. But it's gonna be a hell of a climate change for California, if that's what he's getting ready for.'

    'Maybe he got an advance forecast from the Weathermen.'

    We larked around for a moment with the notion. What a gas if the Weathermen really knew something about the weather. Or, better yet, could change it. Talk about making trouble.

    When we came back later, I was careful, at Hobie's instruction, not to pull in next to his car. Instead, I watched him cross the lot. It was still raining. Inside, he turned my way and rolled down the window so I could see him as he mouthed a single word: 'Gone.'

    

    One Wednesday afternoon in January, I walked into Michael Frain's apartment, calling for Nile, and found Michael in bed with June Eddgar. It was around 4 p.m. Down on campus at another Student Mobilization Committee meeting, I'd been pierced by a sudden fear June had forgotten I was off today, and that Nile, as a result, would have no one looking after him. Shouting the little boy's name, I'd rushed through all the places in the building he was likely to be. From the bedroom, I was sure I'd heard Michael answer, 'In here.'

    When I pushed open the door, June was sitting up in the bed, with the sheet drawn across her chest and her other hand pinching the bridge of her nose. Lying beside her, Michael was turned away from me. I could see nothing but his skinny shoulders and the pale bald spot among his longish dreadlock curls. But even at that I recognized him. It was, after all, his apartment.

    I said exactly one word, 'Whoops,' and turned completely around.
1
ransacked myself for some idea of what to do next and finally, foolishly, called Nile's name again.

    'We said, "He's not here," ' June answered behind me. She was in the doorway now, unclothed. She confronted me flatfooted, utterly confident of herself, as I took in what she unflinchingly revealed - limbs of trim strength, the dark female triangle, a tummy barely sloping and withered by childbirth, her daring