A Lonely and Curious Country Read online

  The sting of black peat and mud, of tarry ancient soil, mingled with the tear in her breast, entering her lungs through ribcracked protrusions in her side. She breathed in, blood and peat, the milk of a mother swirling in the soil. A black fleshy creature, buried in the earth, the pale light of the moon and the soft buzzing of a kitchen bulb (turned on in a nearby farmhouse with the commotion), the only witnesses.

  Standing at the window, trying to gaze through the darkness, Murphy, the farmer, could see nothing. But the faint sense that the world still turns, and things still live in the dark of the night couldn't leave him, even as he pulled the silverballed cord, and quenched the filament flame in his kitchen. He turned on his linoleum floor, and went upstairs to his bed to lie awake, knowing that once his gaze was gone, the night would return to its usual order.

  And sure enough, heavy feet tramped back across the field, away from the dead cow in the bog, and on with their journey, their only company the heavy silence of darkness.

  Turn on, Tune in, Infiltrate, Disrupt

  K. H. Vaughn

  Terry stared at the lamp. Globules of viscous blue oozed upward in a column within the milky white fluid, broke apart, and drifted languidly to the base again. The room was brick with a worn couch and a mattress resting on old shipping pallets. The ceiling was high, and pipes ran across the walls, asbestos wrapping coming apart in chunks. He picked up a piece of the insulation, and it crumbled between his fingers like a dried white honeycomb. The stuff was everywhere. Out on the main floor of the Mill, he could hear a smoky mélange of laughter and political debate over the sound of Iron Butterfly. Students and drop-outs, mostly. Pretending to be beats, hippies, and revolutionaries. A few gurus selling Aquarian voodoo. He hated these people, or most of them at least. A handful were dangerous, but most of them were simply fakes.

  “You o.k.?” Connie said from the doorway. “You’re missing the party.” He’d met her on campus protesting the ROTC recruiters. Pretty, blonde, smart. She was leading a crowd screaming “One, two, three, four! We don’t want your fucking war!” when the cops started firing teargas. The riot didn’t last long, but they broke the windows in the student union, flipped over a tow truck and set it on fire. Afterwards some of them said it was a symbol of protest. Terry didn’t follow the semiotics, but later that night Connie smelled of burnt tires and the apple-blossom scent of phenacyl chloride.

  “Just trying to get my head together,” he said. “That dope is pretty strong.”

  “Sure, baby. Dwight said it came from Hawaii. Or California. Good shit, man.”

  “Yeah, good shit,” he said, and rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know, Connie. I’m tired of listening to coffee-house revolutionaries. That asshole Lonnie thinks growing a beard and wearing a beret is gonna change the world.”

  “Lonnie thinks it’s gonna get him laid.”

  “Then I guess he’s not that dumb. Chicks seem to dig it.”

  “Not all of them,” she said. The lamp continued its languid dance of merger and separation in a slow-motion boil.

  “You ever seen one of these things come uncorked?” he said. “Unbelievable. It explodes everywhere. Glass in the ceiling. Wax all over the place. Fucking mess.”

  “Come on, let’s get out of here,” she said, pulling him from the couch. They maneuvered through the open floor of the Mill, clusters of people drinking beer, smoking. Dean Martin pretended to stagger drunkenly on a silent television off to the side. He caught a glimpse of Professor Baloq, wild-eyed, lecturing to a small assembly.

  The air on the loading dock was cooler, helped to clear his head. Beer bottles stacked along the ledge. A skinny hippy with wilted flowers braided around his neck picked at a guitar. He was too stoned to notice one of the strings had snapped.

  “Hey look,” Connie said. “’Guy with a guitar’ is playing.” “Damn, I love that band.”

  They laughed. The Cuyahoga River drifted past sluggishly below, slick greasy surface reflecting industrial lights. Upstream, the stacks of the steel mill fumed.

  “Some of them just want to get fuck around and get stoned, but we’re gonna stop the war and we’re gonna win on civil rights,” she said. “If you pay attention, there are people who know what they’re talking about.”

  “I’m not sure it really matters whether they do or not,” he said.

  ###

  Another night at home. His mother and sister. A conversation about the Pill that he was not supposed to hear, and that ended with his mother crying quietly. He snuck upstairs and took the phone from the stand in the hall into the bathroom.

  They made him memorize the number. Warned him not to write it down anywhere. Clicking noises on the line. Tapped? Tapped by whom? His FBI handler came on. Asked him a list of perfunctory questions before getting to the point.

  “What’s your progress with Dr. Baloq’s group?”

  “I’ve been able to get in with students in his set. He’s at the Mill most nights. What should I be looking for? Is he a Red? An Anarchist?”

  “It may go beyond anything that simple. Assume nothing. Except that he may be dangerous.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “There is another Bureau asset assigned to his case. Do not attempt to make contact. Do not identify yourself as part of this operation. Do not intervene. As a Confidential Agent, you do not possess the training or authority.”

  “I have to report a violation. I smoked part of a marijuana cigarette. I didn’t think there was any other way to keep my cover. It’s a test. If you don’t join in, you can’t get close. They dose each other to prove no one is a cop.”

  “Hold on.” Dead silence on the line. Five minutes. Below, he heard the door slam and his sister’s car start.

  “Are you experiencing any psychiatric symptoms? Psychosis? Paranoia? Suicidal ideation?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Hold on.” More silence, punctuated with clicking noises. Ten minutes. A brief, muffled argument between his mother and father downstairs.

  “We’ve encountered this before. Marijuana is authorized if necessary to maintain your cover, but minimize use. Make excuses, fake inhaling. Whatever you have to do. Under no circumstances are you to take heroin or cocaine. Be aware that they may lace a reefer cigarette with other substances.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t trust anyone. Report back in one week. Sooner, if you have actionable intelligence.”

  ***

  When he went back downstairs, his sister was gone and his mother was pretending nothing had happened. His father was watching the Indians game on the big color console. Terry flopped on the couch. The Indians were at Country Stadium, and the old man sure hated the White Sox.

  “Oh, you should shave and get a haircut,” his mother said. “Robert, can’t you make him shave those awful sideburns?”

  “If he wants to wear his sideburns like Chester Arthur, I can think of no finer tribute to our twenty-first President. Say, honey, would you grab me a beer from the fridge? One for Terry too.”

  His mother left a pair of Strohs and retreated to the kitchen. Dad in the recliner, Terry on the sofa.

  “It’s fine for college, sport, but you’ll need to do something about that when you start interviewing for jobs. Nobody with a beard ever amounted to anything.”

  “I missed the news earlier,” Terry said. “Anything happening?”

  “Same as every day. Demonstrations. Riots. The whole country is losing its mind.”

  “People have a lot to be angry about. No one wants to be in Nam. The cops are beating people.”

  “What are the cops supposed to do? All those blocks on Hough and in Glenville burned in riots. National Guard called in twice. Snipers killing cops in the streets. It’s the communists starting it all. I didn’t fight the Chinese in Korea so commies could start riots in my own back yard.”

  Sweat beaded on Terry’s beer bottle. Hopkins took Tiant deep to tie the game. His dad sighed, looked around for Terry’s mother then went to the f
ridge for another beer.

  “Your mom was pregnant when I got activated and sent to Korea,” he said as he walked back to his lounger. “I thought I was done after we beat the Japs. Came home, got a job, married your mother, but I stayed in the reserves for the money. A lot of us did. Nobody thought anyone would be stupid enough to start another war, so when Kim Il-sung and Stalin invaded South Korean we got caught with our pants down. So they called up the reservists and threw us in there until they could get their shit together. Sorry about the language. I guess you’re old enough to hear it. Anyhow, I made it home for your second birthday in one piece. More or less. Anyway, what I’m saying is no one wants to be there, but the damned hippies aren’t going to solve the problem and most people understand we have to be there whether we like it or not. We didn’t start this thing, but the Army’s getting it under control now. They’ve got the A Shau Valley cleaned out and they whipped the NVA at Binh Ba. Nixon says they’ll pull 25,000 more troops by the end of summer. We’ll have it sewn up before too long. This time we’re doing it right.”

  ***

  Lonnie was reading the new Playboy in the back of the van as they drove down toward the Mill. “Hugh Hefner is a great man,” he said. “Opening minds, throwing off the Patriarchy. He’s liberating our sisters.”

  “He’s sure liberating their tits,” Maliq said. “I don’t see how that helps the cause. That’s not treating our Sisters with respect.” Maliq had moved from Hartford a few weeks before, just in time for final exams and an attempt to hold a sit-in at the Courthouse to protest the death sentence for an activist who had led a running gun battle against the cops in Glenville last summer. He’d moved quickly into the Mill crowd.

  “You got it all wrong, man. In twenty years, everyone will be fucking everyone whenever they feel like it. There won’t be any judgment. No more rape. Men and women will be free and equal.”

  Connie drove while Terry fiddled with the eight-track.

  “Hey, Maliq,” Terry called back over his shoulder. “I heard you got roughed up by the pigs last week. What’d you do?”

  “Got born Black in America, man.”

  “Right on.”

  ***

  It was dusk when they reached the Mill, abandoned by a bankrupted company and taken over by the people. Lonnie, Connie, Maliq, and Terry piled out of the van, made their way across the weedy, trash-strewn lot. Inside they found beer and dope, and mingled on the main floor. Tie-dye and denim. Military jackets and Cuban sunglasses. The air was thick and humid and it felt close despite the wide open space and high ceilings. They separated, drifted from cluster to cluster. Some talking music, others politics. Terry was finishing his fourth beer when Connie pulled him from a small group where a kid with a PLA hat with a red star was explaining that Mao, Castro, and Che were champions of the struggle.

  “People all over the world are throwing off the oppressor and the imperialists. The capitalists and the racist slave-owners. There will be peace, man. By the year 2000 we’ll look back at how much better the world was because of heroes like them.”

  “Hey Terry, the Professor wants to see you,” Connie said, looping her arm inside his.

  ***

  Baloq had set up in what had been some sort of supervisor’s office off the floor. More couches and an oriental rug on the concrete floor. He had a pair of battered oversized leather chairs framing a small table. Books and papers littered an army surplus desk. He smiled when Terry appeared at the door and gestured to a seat. He wore jeans, sandals, and a mustard turtleneck shirt.

  “I don’t remember you from any of my classes, Terry. But I hear good things about you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “No need for that. We’re all equals here. Call me Peter.”

  “Right on.”

  “I was wondering what you want with the Mill. Why are you here?”

  “I’m not really sure. I just feel like that scene in The Graduate, you know? Hoffman’s at his graduation party and all these old guys are giving him bad advice and laying all these expectations on him about what he’s supposed to be. I just want to hide at the bottom of the pool. I want something authentic, and it isn’t there.”

  “I understand you attended the police academy. Why did you drop out?” “I guess I was trying to please my old man when I joined up, you know? He was in the army, real patriot. I always trusted the government. I heard people talk, but I couldn’t believe our own government killed King or the Kennedys. Then I saw the cops beating people outside the convention in Chicago last year. They put tear gas and dogs on a bunch of kids just trying to stop the war. I felt like I was on the wrong side.”

  “Your eyes are partway open, at least. There’s a process of consciousness-raising to disrupt the narrative of history and patterns of thought you have been force-fed your entire life. But there is more. We can open your eyes further. You can attain the spiritual awakening that the Age of Aquarius promises.”

  Baloq removed a book from desk, an old leather-bound volume, and took a sheet of paper from within. It looked like a sheet of stamps, with yellow squiggles on a brown background. No, not squiggles, more like a spiral. It was hard to say.

  “Take this. Place it on your tongue.”

  “Naw, I think I’m good. I’m already pretty high. I’ve heard that stuff isn’t good for you.”

  “Alcohol isn’t good for you. It dulls the senses and atrophies the brain. You know, one of the most difficult challenges we face is reprogramming our mind from the lies that we have been told by the system. Those in power, or who believe that they have power, lie to you. They depend on your willingness to believe their lies. We depend on your willingness to see the truth. To slip the bonds of ignorance and illusion. This is your first time, so it is a minimal dose. You’ll see. Do you trust me?”

  Terry hesitated. Another test. If he didn’t comply, he’d never get close to Baloq’s plans. He placed the piece of blotter paper on his tongue. For a moment, Baloq’s eyes expanded so that cold blackness filled both orbs, and stars glittered within like ice crystals.

  ***

  The lights sparkled and rainbow trails followed his hands as he waved them before his face. He giggled. Connie was saying something he could not follow.

  “They will say ‘does not drown but decays. Does not drown but decays,’” she said, but then she walked further away through the smoke and he lost track of her. The room was febrile. People moved at strange angles as he tried to make his way through the crowd. They were hazy, strange.

  But the lights were beautiful.

  He stood and stared as a lamp suspended on a long thin wire like a globe or pure fire, or a star in the heavens. Moths fluttered around it and he heard the television announcer say that Yastrzemski had hit a ball off Ellings deep into right field at Cleveland Stadium. But it was too dark out now for them to be playing. He turned and there was a guy he hadn’t seen before in a worn Army uniform standing in the doorway. His beard was thick and ratty.

  “Were you in the war?” Terry asked. He wasn’t sure he was saying the words out loud, but the soldier nodded at him.

  “What’s the worst thing you saw over there?”

  “I killed a baby.”

  “By accident? Shooting at some Viet Cong and the kid got in the way, right? “No, man,” he said. “It wasn’t like that at all.”

  And he walked away, leaving Terry on the loading dock alone.

  He looked out across the oozing river, at the lights of Cleveland across the way. Hazy smoke from joints, incense, and cigarettes blended from the smoke from the factories and mills along the river. A train crossed the railroad bridge just downstream, giving off a long mournful whistle for the impending death of the American heartland. The blue lights of a police car flashed in the distance.

  “Fucking pigs,” he said. He laughed. He tried to repeat it but he was laughing so hard that he could do no more than squeal incoherently. There was a message spray-painted on the wall that he could not make out, but th
at seemed incredibly significant to him, and overhead, the stars whirled and twisted madly.

  ***

  “What is your report?” It sounded like his handler had him on a speakerphone.

  “I’m getting closer to Balog. He talked with me privately for a little while. Everything he says is the same consciousness-raising mumbo-jumbo. He offered me something - LSD I think. I didn’t take it. Said I was already too high.” “Describe it.” “Blotter paper. Brown with a yellow design on it. A spiral. Or maybe a question mark. It was hard to-”

  “Hold on.” Dead static on the line again. “We need you to obtain a sample. Do not take the substance. We will leave a package for you at the dead drop. Use it to establish that you are ‘hip’ or make a trade, but don’t use it.”

  “What is it?”

  “Pure LSD-25. You can say you got it from a pharmacy student you know. Her information will be included. Burn it afterwards. If they contact her, she’ll vouch for you.”

  “Look, I feel like I’m getting in a little over my head with this. I don’t think there’s anything going on at the Mill except people talking and getting high.”

  “You know that the Black Panthers tortured and killed a man in Connecticut last month because they thought he was an informant.”

  “Was he?”

  The line went silent again. In the morning, he found an envelope filled with sheets of flower power designs in the university library stacks, hidden in an issue of Terrae Incognitae.

  ***

  “Man, they rioted in Ann Arbor last night,” Connie said. “Fifteen cops taken to the hospital.” They were laying on the green near the library. Clouds scudded overhead. Terry was supposed to be in a 9:30 English lecture; he didn’t know about the others.

  “Right on,” Lonnie said. “How many student?”