Shelter in Place (27 page)

In all their various weights and surfaces.

The only constant things within me.

So:

“How does it go, Joe?”

“Went out to Emerson,” I said.

Tess turned her head from the window.

“Why?” she asked. Or without the question mark, said as if she knew.

“I needed a vacation.”

She looked at me the way she always did lately—with cold suspicion. Always as if she were evaluating me, my promise. There was a fierce tension between us now, which as we drew closer to November, was nearly unremitting.

“Why were you there, Joe?”

“I needed some air.”

She looked back out the window.

“It's a nice campus,” Seymour said to the room.

“I ran into Marcy Harper.” Keeping my eyes on the side of Tess's face.

“Who's that?” Seymour our great objective mediator.

“Student at Emerson. Tess's friend,” I said.

“Not a friend. What did she say?”

“We talked a long time. Had a cup of coffee together. Apparently my mother won't see her, doesn't respond to her letters.”

Tess smiled at the street.

“You know about that?”

She shrugged.

“There's a protest Saturday night. She invited me. Invited us.”

“What's it for?” Seymour had moved to the floor where he now lay flat on his back.

“A girl was raped in a frat house.”

We were all quiet for a long time.

Then Seymour said, “Fuck it, I'll go.”

“Me too,” I said. “Saturday night. She's pretty, C. Marcy Harper.”

I said it to provoke Tess, but she didn't react. Seymour laughed. “In that case I'll wear a clean shirt. We'll have to get off work.”

“Fine by me,” I said.

“Tess you want to come?” He was up on his elbows.

“What's the plan exactly?”

I told her, “A silent protest. Candles. Wear all black, stand in front of the Beta house.”

“That's it?”

“Aggressive silence,” I said.

Tess gave us her most disdainful, most mocking laugh.

“Come on,” Seymour said. He poured himself another drink. “You know, we could do the same thing.” He was getting to his feet now. The giant emerging from sleep. He went to the door with his glass. There with his hand on the knob, he looked down at her. “We could do the same thing. Stand in front of his house each night. Black hoods. Candles in our hands. Pretty good idea, really. Save us the trouble of the other thing. Save us the trouble of prison.”

I was watching him at the door, seeing all at once, in one
fail
swoop, that he was just a kid. Maybe some new angle to his face, or a glint of fear. I looked up at him and thought exactly that,
He's just a kid.

Tess looked up at him then. Said, “We should all go on Saturday night,” as if it had been her idea in the first place. “We go in hoods, we see Marcy Harper and her friends, we light our candles. We stand in
aggressive silence
. We make sure we're
seen
.”

Seymour looked at her a long moment. “Seen?”

“Being peaceful, yes,” she said.

He shook his head, and then went outside onto the porch to smoke a cigarette.

I liked Seymour's idea. The three of us out there embarrassing Sam Young. Maybe we'd bring Marcy and her gang. Swarm the bastard's house night after night until it ended. Until the reporters came. Until the police were forced to respond. Until his wife was safe. And Anna. I liked the idea of it, but we could not do both things.

It was one or the other, and Tess was moving at breakneck speed.

S
aturday night the three of us in my truck driving out to Emerson. The close cab. Smell of Seymour sweat, Virginia Slims and lemon oil, coffee and night air tinged with salt. Of us. One unit. One brick of time.

The Beta house was on Barry, one of four main streets that framed the campus. Here were all the frats on one side, all the sororities on the other. Five and five.

And who cares what they were called? Can you think of anything less important in the world than distinguishing Beta from Delta? Kappa from Gamma?

Fuck those people.

There is a point when fear leaves me, when rage replaces it. And when that rage fuses with the upswing and the clear light, well, then I am deadly and I am invincible. And when that fusion, that concoction, that strange combination meets the end of Seymour Strout's patience, and is joined to all the wrath of Tess Wolff, then we are an army of rare and secret power.

We are out of the cab. We are off-kilter, irritable and separate. We have not yet cohered. But it is coming. I can feel it now, here in this house, and there is nothing I cannot see.

My heart is ahead of you, my whole body.

I will bring you in soon, I will bring you to me.

In the present, in the past, in all their respective iterations.

We are out of the cab.

We are walking down Barry, Tess ahead of us. Of course. A good full step. There are the houses, Alpha to Omega, or however it went. Five and five. And on the fraternity side, people spilling off their porches onto lawns.

The sororities had no parties.

When those women wanted debauchery they crossed the street.

They said heaven was on one side, hell the other.

Marcy Harper, dressed all in black, was there in heaven. Surrounded by the others, whose faces I can't remember. Or what they called themselves. But they were there, maybe ten, maybe fifteen to begin with. Milling around when we arrived. Tess hugging Marcy as if she were an old friend, as if she believed in her methods of war. Marcy tolerating Tess, and then smiling at me, saying, “So nice to see you Mr. March.” And then looking up at Seymour with the kind of nervous reserve his size and ever-changing eyes—dull to sharp, matte to gloss—provoked in people.

He and I were the only men. We stayed in the shadows, back on the second line. There were maybe thirty of us there. Two rows of fifteen by the time Marcy began distributing the lit candles, got all our hands glowing. Then in our uniforms, in our formations, we became a single entity. We held no signs. We kept our silence. We did nothing but stand and face the Beta House. Tess and Marcy front and center, side by side. We would stay the duration of a single small candle. Two hours. We would hold our ground. Say nothing.

Then we became a focal point and quickly had the attention of the street—the passersby, the people on the house porch, on the lawn. Rapid shift from invisible to visible. Stage lights thrown. The next hour you can predict. The various responses and insults. Our still black band, a solemn mass amidst the speeding Saturday night. But we stayed where we were. We kept our promises.

“What are you for?”

The first phrase I'm sure of. Someone calling from across the street. Some drunken fool on the Beta porch. Poetry by mistake: “What are you for? What are you fuckers
for
?”

The night took on a new pressure. I could sense it in Seymour. His body straightening. Tess motionless. And who knows how much time passed?

That's the call, which threw the switch.

“What are you fuckers for?”

And:

“Who wants to see the basement?”

And:

“Which one of you whores wants a tour?”

Then:

“Tour, tour, tour, tour, tour, tour.”

Then:

Laughter.

There was competition now.

Who could do what?

Who could do more?

Who could do worse?

So, someone threw an egg.

Missed.

Someone threw a bottle.

Now there was glass in the street.

“Fuck off, dyke. Fuck off, dyke. Fuck off, dyke.”

Faded. Failed chant.

Try again:

“Suck my cock. Suck my cock. Suck my cock.”

This one more successful. Call and response. Back and forth. Fraternity, sorority, fraternity, sorority. Men calling, women responding.

Low: “Suck my cock.”

High: “Suck my cock.”

Fade away. Laughter then a lull. And our formation unbroken. Candles still lit. Promises kept.

But always there is someone willing to cross the street. Rarely does he travel alone. So across Barry came three Beta brothers. Two shirtless, one in a red polo.

They were familiar to us from bars. Familiar to me and Seymour and Tess. The types, I mean.

We filtered them through our three respective lenses—barman, doorman, waitress.

We experts. We warriors.

They came on with the swagger of athletes at home.

They said, “What are you here for? What do you want?”

And we said nothing.

I can't say who of our front line looked past them, and who looked down, and who raised her eyes.

But pretty soon they were right in front of Marcy Harper. The single black woman there. A fact worth mentioning, I think. Worth mentioning that we are in White Pine, Washington, in 1992.

In any case, she didn't look away and she didn't look down. Whatever the reason, the drunk boys were over the curb now, closer, focused on their single subject.

“What are you here for?” one of them said.

And the other: whining, slurring, repeating his call as if he were demanding the answer to some crucial existential question, “What are you for? What are you
for?
”

I kept thinking, trying to keep my promise, as a way to remain calm, He's forgotten
here.
He's forgotten
here.

Then a litany: Cunt, whore, dyke, bitch, et cetera. The usual.

Then, noticing me and Seymour, faces shadowed by our hoods, they stopped for a moment. But they found their courage again, bolstered each other, and then to us: pussy, faggot, piece of shit, et cetera.

On it went. You can imagine, can't you? The insults, the provocations, our refusing to respond.

What else then is there to do for those minds, those enemy soldiers?

So the whiner, the one in red, he put his hand over Marcy's face and he pushed. She fell backwards into our second line, into two small women who couldn't hold her. She landed on the grass, down but unhurt. And still we made no move. Someone found her candle, relit it. Up again. Back in formation. Tess stayed still. I did too. And Seymour. But he pushed an elbow into my ribs.

Which meant: If they do it again, Joe. If they do it again.

I nodded. And I knew that Tess was listening. That she was in agreement. Enough was enough. I also knew that Marcy Harper would be angry. That she wouldn't want our protection, that she didn't need it.

But whatever we may have believed then, I don't think it was ever a question of protection. We were, just like those three fools in front of us, looking for war.

So when the red shirt laughed and put his palm on her face again and shoved, Seymour and I came through the front line fast. Seymour, following his open hand, came in a single move I knew from the bar. No talk, no warning, just his big fingers open as if around a fat coffee mug driving forward to the throat. He took that boy off the curb and into the street like he was some kind of inflatable doll. Driving him back and down.

Seymour kneeling above the kid now, choking him, holding his head to the asphalt, the boy making a horrible bird sound. And then one of the shirtless ones came toward Seymour, setting up with his leg, winding, but before he could kick I hit him hard in the gut and he fell back. I turned to face the other, who was moving, but not with much enthusiasm. There had been a change in the sound. Now more of them came from the lawn to the street. No more laughter.

Tess was off her line now too, her hood thrown back, yelling in her loudest voice, “C, let him go, C.”

And he did.

The boy rolling away, his hands at his throat. And now Seymour standing with me, facing the coming Beta. Who stood still waiting for the next move, the next decision, for someone else to make it. And Marcy and Tess both yelling, “Stop it. Stop. Fucking stop.”

The two of them brief partners. Same goal, different motives.

Tess in performance, determined to be seen as peaceful.

Marcy in real outrage.

The choked kid was being walked away. The women continued to hold their candles.

In the lull Tess was saying, “Go back, go back.”

Marcy saying the same.

We followed orders. We returned to our line. We waited. That was the end of it.

There were some trailing insults. Bluster. But nothing else.

Each of us stood our ground, kept our places. Burned the candles down.

And then we left. All of us walking in silence to someone's house where we sat on the front steps drinking beer, while Marcy seethed.

She said what you'd expect, “We don't need your goddamn protection. We don't need to be defended.”

We were sorry. Seymour was quiet the way he always was after battle. Tess trying to play sympathizer and sister in arms, but getting nowhere.

Soon we said our goodbyes. Marcy Harper looking down at us from the top step as we walked away, Seymour lumbering along ahead, sullen.

And us three we went back to the truck, drove up to Lester's and got lucky with a booth. The place was packed with guards, the music loud.

We ordered a pitcher of Olympia and a pizza.

Something had been proven. Tess had made her point.

We were not suited to peaceful protest. That kind of thing didn't coincide with our vision of ourselves. Or, at least, Tess's vision. But you have to understand that there was no great system in place. No grand philosophy. None of us could have told you what our ambitions were then. It was to do with rage and love and friendship. Boredom, too, if I'm to be honest. Let us not pretend that we were noble. Or entirely so. We were kids, after all. Which excuses nothing, of course. Only to say that reason was secondary.

We were not that night at Lester's, nor at any other time, nor in any other place, talking politics and activism. Do not confuse us with movie militants in a basement room, cleaning our weapons, maps on the table. Or even with Marcy Harper's disciplined and thoughtful campus variation.