A Lonely and Curious Country (6 page)

              “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 that 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?”

              “Seven.”

              “Two to one? Shit, if that was news from Vietnam, they’d call it a victory,” Maliq said.

              “You got any more of that acid, Terry?” Lonnie asked.

              “Yeah.”

              “Where’d you get that from?” Connie asked. “I never figured you for a chemist or a dealer.”

              “Pharmacy student I know. I can hook you up. Not as good as the professor’s stash though.”

              “You tried that?” Maliq asked. Could he be the other FBI asset? He was from Hartford. He came right around the time the Panthers killed that guy, too. Shit, if he was an informant, it would get back to them that he had lied. He’d have to tell his handler. No. He could say he was just showing off to impress the Mill crowd.

              “Yeah, just the one time,” he said. “I’d like to get some more though.”

              “I bet that can be arranged,” Lonnie said.

              “I wish we could get more going on campus,” Connie said. “All the action is in the streets around here. My dad’s in Berkeley. They’re on the front line out there. Fucking Cleveland, man.”

              “Your old man’s protesting?” Maliq said. “That’s cool. Mine’s too worried about keeping his job. Says I should just keep my head down and make sure I don’t get kicked out of school and lose my draft exemption.”

              “Yeah, my pop’s pretty square too,” Terry said. “He doesn’t do anything but watch ball games and photography.”

              “Photography?” Lonnie said. His eyes narrowed. “He let you touch his cameras and shit?”

              “No. He says there’s chemicals. Plus the equipment is expensive.”

              “Dig it. All these old guys, locked down so tight? Photography clubs? They’re taking pictures of naked ladies. All those old guys, pretending to be so upstanding. Bunch of old panty sniffers, man. Every last one of them.”

              “Hey, you better watch what you’re saying about my dad,” Terry said, anger surging suddenly in his chest.

              “I’m just saying, they’re all pervs like everybody else.”

              “Maybe like you Lonnie,” Connie said. She touched Terry’s arm, just a pat. Just enough to keep him from getting up and saying the next thing that would lead to a fight.

***

              “Pop, you home?” Terry called. “Mom?” The house was empty and still, except the curtains blowing slightly and the sound of the television on in the living room. Almost two o’clock. His dad must have run out to the store before the game. He’d have to be quick.

              His dad had built a small darkroom in the back of the garage. There was a latch on the inside of the door to keep people from walking in when he was developing film, but that was all. He relied on his authority in the home to keep people out of his private domain otherwise. Terry closed the door behind him and pulled the chain for the work light. The space was cramped, and smelled of cigarettes and Aqua Velva, with an underlying funk of vinegar and spoiled eggs. Pictures from last Christmas hung on lines over the wooden work bench. Terry, his mother and sister. The white aluminum tree with red balls and garland. “It’ll last forever,” his dad pleaded when his mom saw it for the first time. She had been so embarrassed by it when her friends and family came to visit.

              He searched efficiently, moved through the boxes and cans of materials. Envelopes of negatives, and files of developed pictures. Family events and holidays. His uncle with his new Cadillac from a few years ago. Some experiments with nature shots: birds at the feeder and sunlight shining through icicles. A file of correspondence sent to photography magazine contests, consisting almost entirely of submission forms and rejection letters. There was no hint of Lonnie’s accusation. The closest thing was a few pictures of his mother in a modest one-piece from their trip to Hawaii when he was little.

              He closed the darkroom up quietly and returned to the house, through the kitchen and into the living room. His dad was in his lounger with the game on.

              “Hey, sport. Didn’t hear you come in.”

              “No, I was in the garage.”

              “Did you--ah, dammit, he sure got all of that one.”

              Terry looked up to see Yastrzemski trotting around second while Ellings looked on. His stomach churned and the hair on his head bristled. His dad shook his head.

              “Two-nothing to start the game. Well, we were third in the whole League last year. They’ll right the ship. With the new divisions they got, it’ll be even easier to make the playoffs. Hey, you alright? You look a little sick.”

              “Yeah, Pop.” He said. “I’m o.k. Everything’s fine.”

***

              “Some girl Connie called,” his sister yelled from the doorway as he ran out to Lonnie and Maliq in Lonnie’s pickup.

              “If she calls again, tell her I’ll call her back.”

              “Ain’t you going to mass with me an’ mom?”

              He gave her a disgusted look and got in to laughter and the Rolling Stones.

              He’d never seen the Mill in daylight. Trash and weeds choked the parking lot and riverbank. Rainbow slicks sparkled between shoals of clotted sludge in the river beyond. There were a lot of cars. Not as many as on a weekend night, but there were a lot of people inside. Their feet crunched on broken glass as they walked across the broken asphalt toward the dim space within.

              The sun filtered through the skylights and high windows well above the floor. Dust motes whorled in hazy columns that played upon the uneven concrete. It looked as though most of the trash from the night before had been swept out the back, or at least to the corners where oil-stained machinery mounts still protruded from the floor.

              “There any beer?” he asked. Lonnie shook his head.

              The Mill crowd shifted about on the floor, groups forming and dispersing, talking angrily about the war and the government. “The problem is escalation, man,” Maliq said. “Nixon’s gonna nuke Hanoi, and then the Russians will retaliate. If we don’t take steps to control and prevent the propagation of this shit, there will be more and more violence. We’ve got to take control from the warmongers and capitalists. By any means necessary, man.” It seemed to Terry that only the more intense personalities had come, and the room was agitated by the time Professor Baloq appeared.