Michael’s Wife (26 page)

The militants were few in number but had a disquieting effect on the peace marchers. The only way you could tell them apart was that the agitators looked more agitated. Laurel put her hand on Jimmy's head and reflected with a shiver that unfortunately agitation was more contagious than peace.

“There's going to be trouble, Myra,” Laurel whispered.

“I know. Think we should call the police?”

“I don't think we're going to have to. Listen.” Sirens screamed in the distance just as a militant brought a sign down on the head of a hippie who'd refused it.

“Do you think someone else called them or they're just coming to clear the traffic jam?”

The injured hippie sprawled on the ground next to the Jaguar and some of the youths who'd been fading to the edges of the crowd at the sound of sirens moved back into it to stare down at him.

“Let's not have trouble now.” The boy with the megaphone hopped back onto the Jaguar and swung the hair out of his eyes by jerking his head. “Move out with your own signs and keep going. The fuzz won't stop you if you're peaceful and the Guard's still in Tempe. Get moving—fast.”

Cars and kids choked the road in both directions, and Laurel wondered how the police would get through the mob. The sirens sounded close now but seemed to be no longer moving and she guessed them to be at the outskirts of the crowd which she couldn't see from the doorway.

The noise of the mass of people and automobiles had kept Clyde fairly well drowned out, but now they could hear him again and then suddenly saw him as he sprang around the corner of the house and dived into the first set of legs he met. He looked even uglier with a yellow underside to his tail.

Laurel grimaced as he sunk his puppy teeth into an ankle. The owner of the ankle howled, and then Clyde was lost in the push as the crowd attempted to form lines and move out. From somewhere to their right an injured puppy yelping began.

Jimmy slipped from under her hand and was out the door before she could snatch him. Something was shoving them back and pushing too many of them up the steps, forcing the door closed with Jimmy outside and Laurel in. Now all they could see through the screen were hippie backs.

“Lock the door, Myra. I'm going out through the kitchen and around.”

“Hurry. Jimmy could get crushed in that mob.”

It looked as if the whole house would be crushed by the time Laurel reached the open gate in the fence between her house and Colleen's. She couldn't see Jimmy or Clyde.

The crowd surged backward between the houses as she moved toward it, and soon she pressed against the tide, immersed in a sea of shouting confusion and stumbling bodies and an odor like that of musty woolens often worn but never aired.

“Jimmy.” She was shoved back a step for every three forward, buffeted from one to another. “Please let me through. My little boy's out here.” But her voice seemed to bounce off the wall of low murmur that was somehow deafening and hurl back at her.

Laurel had not stopped to ask herself why the crowd moved away from its intended course, why lines hadn't formed and advanced orderly toward the main gates. Her only thought had been Jimmy. But now as she lost a sandal she sensed the panic around her and looked into some of the eyes close to her; expressions ranged from confusion to hysteria.

It was more than just her own fear, but she found her weakness for it responding to the fear around her. She knew if she didn't find Jimmy soon and get out of there she'd lose control.

Tears blurred her vision and she bit her lip till it bled. She fought herself as well as the crowd—trying to breathe deeply, but the air was not satisfying, not enough.

She cried out as an elbow struck her in the nose and she fell but was buoyed back up by the swaying bodies around her. And then someone stepped on her bare foot and she screamed, trying not to, telling herself she musn't let the screams out or she'd be unable to stop them. The pain was very real, but she had little time to dwell on it, for she was losing ground. In all this time she'd made it to the front of one of the buses, but now the crowd moved her back without her feet even touching the ground.

The sight of a white helmet moving closer—some kind of an official insignia on it, not on a poster but on a man's head, gave her hope, and she began kicking and clawing her way toward it. She crawled over some of the people in front of her who'd gone down, fighting her way toward the helmet, wiping tears from her eyes with the torn sleeve of her shirt so that she could keep the helmet in sight.

As she struggled closer she could see other helmets, but she headed for this particular one because the policeman wearing it was huge. He towered over the crowd, circling a stick on a leather strap over his head like a lasso. He'd be safe and strong enough to battle them both through the crowd to find Jimmy.

At last Laurel tucked her fingers around his belt and held on as the bodies around her tugged and jostled and tried to pull her free. “Help me. Help me, please,” she screamed, not wanting to because it made her sound hysterical.

A heavy hand, dry and hard, gripped her wrist, pulling her fingers away from the belt. The policeman drew her close and shouted into her face, “What's the matter?”

“Help me. My little boy.…”

“You on a trip?” His eyes narrowed and studied hers, pulling her closer to him as he swayed in an attempt to keep his balance. “You better come with me.” He slipped an arm around her waist and carried her like a long, floppy package, clearing a way for them with the stick in his hand.

“Wait. My boy. Jimmy! Jimmy!” The more Laurel fought him the more the arm around her middle tightened on her rib cage, crushing her breathing. She struggled to turn sideways and slip out of his grasp but couldn't.

They were past Myra's house now and out onto the paved road. Several panel trucks and an ambulance had pulled up alongside the fence that lined the base. Much of the crowd had thinned here, running off, leaving their cars behind.

The policeman dumped Laurel into the back of a panel truck where another armed officer guarded several battered peace marchers. “Think we got a drug case here. Watch her.” And he waded back into the mob.

Laurel sat limp and resigned on the metal bench until a stretcher passed the open end of the truck on its way to the ambulance. A boy's shocked eyes looked into hers briefly as he was carried by; blood ran in little streamlets down his face from a wound somewhere in his hair.

The thought of Jimmy lying trampled and bleeding under that surging mob brought her to her feet.

“Get back.”

“Officer, my little boy is out there. I have to find him. I'm not a hippie; I live in that house over there and my.…”

“There's a kid out there? Why do you people bring innocent children into these things if you're going to cause trouble?”

“I'm
not
one of them. I'm.…” She followed his eyes and looked down at herself. Both sandals were gone now, one sleeve of Michael's shirt hung in strips, paint smears on dirty jeans.… “Just find him, oh, please.”

He called to another officer and walked a short distance away to talk but kept his head turned so he could watch the door of the truck.

“Your kid blond with big eyes, yellow shirt? Little?” A fellow prisoner slid down the metal seat toward her. “Don't worry, I carried him out on my shoulders and handed him to the fuzz. He's probably licking a lollipop in a patrol car by now.”

“Are you sure? A little boy about two? Thank God.”

“Don't thank Him, thank me. Got myself stuck in here for it.” Sandy-colored eyes lazily focused on her, “I know you?” He cocked his head comically and pretended to frame her face with his hands. “Yeah, you're uhhh … what's her name? Sunny?”

“No, my name is.…”

“Mommy!”

“This your little boy?”

And Jimmy was dumped into her lap.

20

Laurel crouched in the corner of the room holding onto Jimmy as though the others were planning an attack, trying not to stare at the boy taking off his pants.

No one else acted disturbed by the strangeness of his actions. They stood against the walls or sat, as she did, on the floor or on the long conference table, their bright costumes giving life to the colorless room.

As much as they frightened her, she had to admit these kids didn't look dangerous. They spoke in whispers or not at all, their calmness unreal after what they'd been through.

Once he'd removed his pants (he wore no shorts) the boy stooped to put on his boots. The loose end of the bandanna wrapped around his head like a sweat band flopped into his face as he knelt to tie them. Then he stood and leaned against the wall, folding his arms and grinning.

“Peenie, Mommy.”

Laurel flushed as they turned to look in her corner, smiling at Jimmy's innocence. Friendly smiles, really nice faces if you bothered to look into them. Then why did she fear them? They hadn't been nearly as awesome as the police. Yet she huddled there with her young like a frightened animal cornered by a pack of hounds.

Perhaps it was just that the room was so crowded. Two policemen would come to the door every few minutes and motion four or five young people out. But, just as their numbers thinned, another group would be herded in.

It suddenly occurred to Laurel that the reason the half-naked boy stood where he did—across from the door but to the left of the conference table—was so that he could be seen clearly and immediately by anyone opening the door. His own little peaceful revolt against the authorities, ingenious and somehow pathetic.

The next time the door opened it was to add people to the room. The policeman glanced at the boy without pants and merely shook his head, closing the door.

Laurel recognized one of the youths who'd just entered as the young black with the booming voice and bushy hair, the one handing out militant signs from the pickup truck. He stood with his hands on his hips in the center of the room, revolving slowly to study the faces around him, nodding several times at people he knew.

And then his eyes passed Laurel's face and jerked back to pin her to the wall while he moved toward her. He knelt in front of her on his hands and knees, bringing his face close to hers. “Sunny? Where in hell you been?”

“My name is Laurel.” She could find no more than a whisper with which to answer him. Splotches of red danced in front of her eyes across his face as if the sun were playing tricks with her, but there was no sun in this room.

He sat back on his heels moving his head from side to side in slow motion, but his eyes stayed still on hers, the earring swinging in and out of the periphery of her vision. “Oh, nooo, baby, huh-uh. You are Sunny, I know.”

Then his eyes let go of her long enough to look down at Jimmy, “Where'd you get him?” Something intimate and possessive in his voice was many times more frightening than what he said or how he looked.

“Is there a Mrs. Devereaux, a Laurel Devereaux in here?”

“Must be the one in the corner. Only one with a kid in this group.”

Laurel heard her name, the voices of the policemen in the doorway. Inside she was crying to them for help, but outwardly she sat staring back at the young man in front of her.

“Mrs. Devereaux?” The voice was gentle, close to her.

“Yes.”

“Would you bring the boy and come with me please?”

“Yes.” But at the door Laurel paused to look back at the dark, expectant face.

“There's no call to be frightened. Your husband has come for you.”

In the large outer room small groups of demonstrators were being fingerprinted, emptying their pockets. Michael stood talking to an officer to one side of a central desk.

“Daddy!” Michael took Jimmy from her and then looked her up and down in disbelief. She was aware of her contrast to his tall, groomed handsomeness.

“We're real sorry about this, Mrs. Devereaux. I'm afraid it's pretty easy to pick up an innocent party in confusion like that.”

The snap of ice was in Michael's blue-gray eyes. “She does resemble them. Where did you get that outfit?”

“I was painting the kitchen. These were the oldest things I could find.”

The sudden relief on Michael's face mirrored that of the policeman's beside him. It was all right to look that way if you were painting your kitchen.

Jimmy didn't remember his new-found friend until they reached the car and started home. “Where puppy, Daddy?”

“The last I saw of him Myra and Sherrie were trying to coax him out from under her car. Don't worry, Jim. He's fine.” Michael explained that Myra had called the base as soon as the police began to clear the crowd and she couldn't see Laurel or Jimmy.

Signs of struggle and debris littered the yard. Without expression, Michael picked up a torn poster that had blown up against a trampled shrub near the front step, studied the helmeted skull, and tore it up. Two buses still sat on the lawn.

“Michael, have I ever had a nickname?”

“I imagine so, almost everyone has.”

“Have you ever heard anyone call me Sunny? A boy there thought he knew me. Do you suppose he did?”

“I doubt it. Probably mistook you for someone else.”

That night Laurel seduced her husband. It wasn't really difficult. He seemed slightly amused by it all. She told herself she did it to erase from her mind the intimacy on the dark face under the bushy hair. But once in Michael's arms she was less sure that was the reason.

His was not a gentle love-making, even when he wasn't angry. He had a knack for keeping her on the threshhold between rapture and panic. And he did that very well.

When she'd finished painting the kitchen, she applied for and, after a written test, received her Arizona driver's license. The combination of an extra gear, having to shift gears herself, and the Jaguar's startling acceleration confused her at first. But driving seemed to come back naturally, even if little else did. Traffic paralyzed her until she discovered that other drivers expected her to be a little flamboyant in the red Jaguar. They tended to make room for her.