“KENT STATE MASSACRE…..

1970” AN EXCERPT TAKEN FROM THE NOVEL

THE HUNTERS AND THE HUNTED by JERRY FISHMAN.

It’s all here: The crowd feel, the demonstrations , the music, the sex -drenched, drug- free
wildness of the loose nineteen seventies. The endless drumbeat of the dirty war in
Vietnam, the radicalization of millions of young people, the alienation, the angst, the wild
freedom, the endless plotting of the Nixon government and finally the big plan to murder
enough students to cut down the demonstrations . . . . .

April 27, 1970

The statue of King Arthur and Lancelot and Guinevere in carved whitish stone

and standing about ten feet high stood right outside the faux Colonial Administration

Building of Brinnel College down the way from Kent State University. A fakish ante-

bellum, ivy–covered, Ivy League looking complex of buildings (all white columns and

porticos) housing about ten thousand war-hyped, pores open, sensation devouring young

Americans, mostly white, mostly upper middle class, Brinnel College was an aging,

stuffy, opera-oriented lady, well on in years, but bustling with the Vietnam War energy

and frissons of race tensions. The Administration Building had a plantation style porch

and many white columns and weathered white bricks.

King Arthur was a magnificent, tall, broad-shouldered man with a crown on his

head, an armored tunic and chainmail leggings. His tremendous, brutish hands held a

broad sword aloft. He had a pleasant but stern face with a short mustache and a fringe of

beard from ear to ear. Lancelot, equally as tall, but long and sinewy, lay curled at his feet

looking up at the raised sword in fear. Girlish locks of hair spilled from a long, puffy hat

on Lancelot’s head. His mouth, sensuous and inviting, was wide open with the tip of his

tongue appearing. Staring at this beautifully carved mouth, Elise could almost see the

mouth turning pink, turning organic. It was a devil of a sexually-inviting mouth she

thought.
 And lying against Lancelot’s supine body, at Arthur’s booted feet, lay Guinevere

on her back in long, flowing robes. She had her head turned up, staring at the sword in

the air. Her expression could not be read—it was a mixture of total resignation and

prickly fear. Her demure face sheltered with wisps of hanging hair; her mouth open. One

beautifully proportioned arm rested on Lancelot; her long fingers caressing his face. Her

other upraised arm, fingers extended, spoke of pleading and helplessness. Her position

and her facial expression made her a figure to be pitied.

Elise had agreed to meet Henry Nash—-her history teacher. But, as usual, she

stood before this statue rapt and contemplative. The statue of the adulterous lovers and

the myth-shrouded king, that glamour-soaked Lord of Avalon, held her. How incredibly

sweet and honeyed must have been the thread of love that drew Guinevere and Lancelot

together Elise thought.

Everything medieval, the very word “medieval,” fairies adance on impossibly

green fairy circles, weathered, stony, age-brooding, massive castles, tumbled ruins, rock

on rock, knights, damsels, the misty, misty otherworldness of twelfth century England.

Crosses, crusades, romantic distortions of Richard the Lionhearted, armor, jousting,

pennants wafting in the breeze on the jousting ground, the Holy Grail (with Christ left

out)—all facts, nonsense, fairy tales, lies and history, all added a pleasured roundness

and fullness to her daily life. She spent a good part of her time living in her mind. And all

this misty, fey history blended into a green mulch that made her life fecund. Life . . . just

everyday, pedestrian isness, plain existence withered her up inside. She had to have a

mist. A dreamymeaningtapestry to weave herself into. How could people live without a

mist Elise asked herself. Without a mist. As she walked away from the statue this time,

she thought she saw Lancelot’s warm lips moving.

Elise Dates Henry

 Elaine Elise Wolz had her first run-in with pornography when she was having her

affair with a community college history professor. A man with very wild eyes. He was a

talker, tall, slim, with unusually large. Almost brutish hands. “But yes, Henry, those eyes

of yours, They undress everything female that walks on earth—zebra, hippos, monkeys,

mice, women. Pure Pan eyes!!!” Then it was his turn to laugh, and he began showing her

that he was indeed trying to seduce her by starting to touch her casually. When she came

back to the small, dark table in the Japanese restaurant around the corner from the

Humanities Building, he took her arm as she glided into her seat. And as they talked

about Corso’s poetry and her poems (she had shown him two of hers after he gave her a

poem about My Lai that he had written), he took her hands one at a time and pressed

them quite openly.

Elise loved the pressure of his light hands and long fingers. She liked the contact

of his hands so much she forgot herself; she didn’t want to be easy or sex-crazed; she had

smashed her last relationship after months of agonized fighting just a week ago; she

didn’t want to bounce into anything. Into any relationship. Not now. This being only the

first time the two of them had sat down with no one else around, to really talk; however,

she forgot herself and squeezed one of his hands. Then when they strolled back to the

campus meandering towards the dorm where she lived this semester, he touched her

back again and again and, finally, as they walked in the dark on the paths and on grassy

lawns under the Old French lamps made of arabesque ironwork, as they walked from

pool of light to pool of light on the dark campus, a few strolling people, a floating laugh

heard, a few words in the dark as someone passed, he finally put his arm around her

waist. And she did not resist. As they passed the large statue of a giant gray owl with a

white patch on its breast, he tightened his hold on her waist. She felt solid comfort in his

arm around her, but she kept telling herself that she was stupid to bounce into this

relationship. And, maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t right for a student to go with a college
teacher. And then she had seen his thick gold wedding band. She really didn’t want to

deal with that issue. Elise had never had to deal with that married man business before.

Never . . . . Was this not-yet-a-relationship dead wrong?

She didn’t know if she felt that way. She hadn’t worked it out yet. So stupid if you

haven’t worked out the moral end of it and if you don’t want to bounce, why are you not

pushing his arm away. She couldn’t answer herself somehow. There were times when

Elise just couldn’t make herself deal with issues. With important issues. She would go

numb then. Or really she would form a second personality that was icy, cool, detached,

soaring way above the real Elise walking on Earth. This disembodied Elise would not act.

So the earthbound Elise was frozen too, unable to make decisions or act. This was

happening now. She couldn’t quite make herself tell Henry no or no not now or maybe

later when we get to know each other.

Later he gave her a slim book of short stories which she dropped in her shoulder

purse. And he pressed her against the brick wall of her dorm in a dark corner and put his

lips to hers. He kissed her firmly and kept opening his mouth, more or less urging her to

open her mouth to him. She liked the darkness of the April night, insect sounds in the

dark; the being-with-him felt so natural, no age difference bothered her or him she

guessed; his weight, his body-feel was right; she didn’t want to think about things; she

felt animal pleasure in his weight against her weight; she felt the way she normally did

when she snuggled a big, weighty, purring cat and held it to her body. The solidness of

his body (he was two inches taller than she was) felt real against her, and she really

enjoyed his mouth exciting her. But she kept her mouth closed and slowly put a hand on

his shoulder and eased his body away from her. She was panting a bit, but she managed

to speak.
 “Henry, I . . . don’t want to discuss your wedding ring right, right yet. I, oh shit,

shit and double shit . . . . You . . . you make me feel mushy.” Then he squeezed her right

breast through her thin blouse. His hand was caressing and electric. She had no

brassiere on, and his cupping hand shot sparks through her. “Let’s stop now,” she said.

He pressed her to go to a film with him after the next class next Wednesday night (and

that’s when she began wondering more about his marriage and what lies he told his wife

and how he managed to have bouts of time away from her and other things as well). She

had never been with a married man, let alone a college professor, before. But he was so

human and approachable and flirty and funny when he wasn’t the teacher! And he was,

slim and wiry and tall and determined when he walked and talked and turned and

touched things. And his body-ness was so right, especially when the heaviness of it

pressed against her. She was drawn to his physical being. He also had a habit of saying

things that scattered the clouds in her mind. He was a genuine thinker person. A person

much sharper mentally than anyone she had ever met in her life. And that too was a

magnet drawing her to him.

Earlier at the table. Over sashimi. He had said, after they got into why Heidegger

loved and supported Hitler in World War Two, he had said, “Normal people and Nazis

have a lot in common. They both, you know, get their ideas from sources outside

themselves, and they both will do even horrible . . . unspeakable things to other people.

If someone in authority tells them to.” That concept kept pressing buttons in her mind.

Later she opened the first short story in the book he had given her. She received a

mild shock. It was an erotic story. The opening sentences in the story opened her eyes

wide: “Cleopantha crept silently among the bristly, hairy, giant green leaves to where her

mother and a tall, tall man were lying on a blanket: they were both naked under the

lovely blazing sun. As she knelt and peered between two fronds, Cleopantha saw his

member all pinkish-red and swollen standing slantedly erect as he lay on his back.” Elise
closed her eyes rather than reading on; for just a moment she recreated that weighty,

thrilling contact when Henry Nash’s hand had squeezed her breast through her blouse.

Then Elise, laughed happily, forming Henry’s face in her mind as she turned back to read

more of the story called “Cleopantha and Morain.”

May 1, 1970

“We were drafted and trained to kill and sent to a very far away place to die. And our

parents watched their children go to this insanity and did not seem to mind. Even when

we came back in boxes.”

Linda Eldredge, student, 19, in 1970

Recent discoveries in quantum physics (the study of the physics of sub-atomic particles)

and in cosmology (the branch of astronomy and astrophysics that deals with the universe

taken as a whole) shed new light on how mind interacts with matter. These discoveries

compel acceptance of the idea that there is far more than just one universe and that we

constantly interact with many of these “hidden” universes.

Elise found herself in the Upside Down Café and Pub on Water Street downtown

where not only the community college and homeless hippy crowd hung out but business

folks and Kent State University students as well. Her mind ignored Joplin’s voice echoing

through the café. She wandered over to watch two chess players hunched over a slow

moving game. They were playing Persian chess—one side had only a king, but a king that

became any piece it wanted to be each time it moved, and the other side had the usual

European pieces. Elise took her silver flask out of her cotton shoulder bag and poured a

shot of ouzo into her Iced Blackberry Tea. Slowly her mind reeled around the room. She

was looking for a conversation to eavesdrop on. Her favorite café pastime. Her period

had just more or less stopped; she still had a mild cramp, but it was fading. Her funny

pain in her left ear that came and went was back . . . .
By the back wall, the writing wall in the Upside Down Café, two people were talking away

while writing on the wall with marking pens (there was a bucket of marking pens hung at

the edge of the pink wall). Elise meandered over to listen in.

One wall writer was a heavy set, big-shouldered man in a paisley shirt and soft

blue pants that flared out at the bottom and ugly sandals. He had a huge shoulder bag

with fringes hanging from it. He had doused himself in Patchouli oil, and Elise, standing

by the wall and pretending to be reading the wall messages so she could eavesdrop on

their conversation, wrinkled her nose as she smelled the oil. The other writer was a fairly

slim blonde woman whose face was calm, and her very merry bluegrey eyes danced

mischievously as she talked. She wore a mesh blouse that revealed a thin black brassiere

that merely covered a small area around each nipple and long green pants with a flared

bottom and very odd pink shoes with red ribbons on the front. She was saying, “I don’t

give a rosy rat’s ass about the invasion . . . . ‘N’ I won’t be dragged to anymore damn

demos. I’m just not political, Jack.” He went on writing, and then he gave her a look as if

to say, “You always say that but you go to the demos anyway.”

She glanced at him, stopped writing long enough to look at what she had written,

shrugged her shoulders at him and went on writing.

She said, “No, Jack, I don’t give a scurfoh about the fucking invasion of

Cambodia.”

She emphasized her remark with a giant red exclamation mark in the sentence

she had just written.

A good-sized black bump of a fly hit the wall above the exclamation mark,

bounced into the air and again dizzied up to the wall and landed on it. All three of them

ignored the fly.

Jack looked at her. He said, “No such word as ‘scurfoh.’ ”

 “There is now, Jack. It’s a neologism. A made up word. I . . . .”

“Nits, Melinda. Made-up . . . .”

“Made-up. Once I say the new word it is a word. That’s what ‘neologism’ means.”

“Neologism. Huh. That’s …. That’s cosmoidal!”

“Cosmoidal? Oh you made a neologism. Well, Jack, you amazed me.”

“Cosmoidal because the universe is a big emptiness, a void. So you put O-I-D in

cosmos and . . . and you get ‘cosmoidal.’ It’s much better than a weak, wishywashy

word like cosmic.”

Elise had a hard time not laughing out loud at this conversation. She stepped

back to see what the two of them were writing, and she noticed new signs since she had

been in yesterday. One read , “Female spirituality.” “Grace Slick eats it raw.” Another

said, “Christ had no balls.” And, “Anarchism because.” One read, “Heidegger was a Jew

Lover.” Then in small black letters in one corner, near the floor, “Marx is mommy’s tit

for infantile leftists.” And just above that, “Castro is Mussolini with a Russian hard-on.”

Elsewhere, she saw, “Spiritual fucking is godly.”

Jack had written, “Until the NLF wins the war in Vietnam, there is only one

world-wide enemy of all decent-minded human beings. That is the USA. Long live the

World Socialist Revolution!” Melinda had written, “Women know things. Women feel

things! The eternal loveliness of the universe is based on female knowingness.”

Elise liked what Melinda had written, and she started to turn towards her to

speak to her.

Suddenly, a young man in a black tee-shirt that read, “Death to the Fascist

Insects/ Anarchism Now” stood up on a chair and began screaming. “Rally against the

invasion of Cambodia in the Kent State Commons Monday May Fourth at noon. We need
all of you to show the Nixon scum that this cannot go on. We need all the bodies possible.

Please, please Monday in the Kent State Commons at noon. Solidarity.” He jumped down

and someone turned the Joplin up. An eerie tension jerked around the room through the

fifty odd people sitting and standing in the café. Elise felt a big tightening in her stomach.

Something new and raw was happening. It was a something that was not just in her life;

it was a force, a river of events moving millions of folks along. She felt herself being

pulled by the river. She knew not where.

Elise finished her drink, after spiking it with another drift of ouzo, tossed the

container in the trash can shaped like a giant red cactus by the door of the Upside Down

Café and walked out on Water Street.

People running. Cars honking. One Kent police car rolled slowly along as the

crowds milling on the street and on the sidewalks grudgingly moved aside. Elise saw a

woman in a short yellow skirt and no top except for an orange cape that she now used to

cover her breasts and now pulled back to expose them reach down and pick up a stubby

brown Budweiser beer bottle from the street. With quaint grace, she kicked her leg like a

baseball pitcher while bending her body back and tossing the bottle with a fine overhead

toss. It hit the side of the black and white police cruiser. Elise felt nervous, and her heart

began pumping rapidly. Crash. Splintered glass. People laughed. One young man

exposed himself and shook his organ at the police cruiser. The police car rolled on. The

serious demonstrators—the ones dressed in army jackets and khaki or camouflage pants

—moved along with all the happy, frolicking students. Yelling. Signs being raised in the

air (Moe’s Book Store on Water Street off, uptown, away from the campus, freely

allowed people to come and use his cellar–full of blank cardboard, sticks, hammers and

nails and marking pens and paint--to make signs all day and far into the night.) People

were accumulating in the street. Stopping traffic. Elise saw two fires burning in the

street. Someone had dragged a really decrepit dark brown couch with the white stuffing
popping out of it into the middle of the street. A plump woman with large ears and a

most happy grin on her face was sitting in the chair singing, , “When the moon hits your

eye like a big pizza pie . . . .” People were dancing and waving beer bottles around the

fires. Frustrated drivers leaned out of cars to scream at people to get out of the way. Elise

felt a tension like a thickness filling the air.

One raised sign read, “Fuck the Pigs”; another, “The NLF Never Called Me A

Nigger.” “Death to Nixon’s Bloody War.” “Waste Westmoreland.” “Let’s Make

Abortion a Law.” “U S Out of My Vagina and Vietnam.” “Queers for Peace.” “Napalm

Burns Human Beings.” “Fuck Agent Orange.” “I am a sick man . . . .I am a wicked man.”

“My Lai was Nazi thing.” “Make Love Not War.” A stout man in glasses, with his grayish

hair pulled over one eye, a man who had the look of a middle aged pastor at some big

middle class suburban church held up a large sign that read, “Pol Pot Equals Nixon.”

Elise entered the mass of slow moving humans in the street. It was becoming a

rally or a riot. She saw two men lift a metal trash can and slam it into the window of First

Mid-Atlantic Bank’s broad window on Water Street. Jagged spears of glass sat in the

window frame assuming strange shapes like old men sitting down to play dominos. As

soon as the window was shattered, an electric sounding bank alarm began ringing. Two

women stood on the sidewalk singing while suddenly a young man ran up and poured a

can of beer over them. They shivered and laughed and let the beer run over them and

went on singing. A long, slinky cat very delicately wove through the people on the

sidewalk, lifting first one paw, that had a white patch on it, with delicate grace than

another.

She heard yells. “Cops are behind us!!” “Heads up—pigs coming.” “U S out of

Cambodia.” She heard someone else yelling, “The pigs are closing the bars! Heads up.”
 Even though the air wasn’t really hot, Elise started to sweat. Part of her wanted to

get out of this stream moving downtown, toward the Kent State campus (her own

community college campus lay off to the right another twelve blocks). Part of her liked

the sweaty, bumping along of this mass movement. She kept bumping into people,

knocking along in this friendly, excited mass. Almost everyone angry at Nixon’s invasion

of Cambodia.

Elise loved to eavesdrop and peoplewatch, and she was deeply in love with this

being inside actual history feeling. She knew these students and other folks bumping

along with her this night in May were HISTORY. It made her skin feel realer than real.

She glanced to one side and saw a little adventure unfolding. Her keen eyes took it in

as she idled and moved out of the street, pretending to be looking for something as she

got back on the sidewalk. She saw a squat orange and white taxicab parked; three people

were getting in. They definitely did not belong to this crowd milling and massing and

moving on Water Street. They were city folks. Their dress and their aura gave their

identity. Kent city folk, not part of the campus world of Downtown Kent. Of course the

city folks came into downtown to run their businesses and eat lunches and what have

you, but they looked out of place and gave off no funky vibes. In this group of three, one

woman was medium height, very slim. She wore a dark green smart skirt and a luscious

gold colored blouse whose folds shimmered. She had blondish hair and a plain, very

calm face with slightly prim lips. The plainness of her face was belied by dark, very alert,

intelligence-flashing brown eyes. She got in the rear of the cab as the other woman got in

the front. The other woman was shorter and heavier, wearing a long, soft blue dress with

lines of white ruffles running top to bottom down the front. She walked with a vigorous

step, swung her arms. She had a full figure and dark, lustrous hair. Her face was round

and very friendly, and her dark eyes flashed with laughter. The third one was a man:

short as the dark-haired woman. He had a genial face and a silly grin, and he wavered a
bit as he walked. He kept looking nervously at the mass of people flowing in the street,

and he flinched when a flying beer bottle flew overhead to crash into a building near the

cab. When the slim, blonde woman was getting in the car, he rubbed her behind and at

one point lifted the hem of her dark green skirt to sniff the material. She backed out of

the cab, looked at him and said clearly enough for Elise, five feet away, to hear her:

“What the fricking are you doing.” Then she pointed at the front seat of the cab just as

the dark-haired woman slammed the door shut. The blonde said as she pointed with one

finger toward the front of the cab: “Your wife!” Then she turned around and got back in

the rear of the cab. The man with the empty grin, laughed and slapped his forehead a bit

theatrically and climbed in the cab after her. Before he could shut the door, Elise heard

him in the cab saying, “SHH! Sshh, don’t tell Rupe.” The woman in front must not have

heard him because she suddenly rolled down her window just as the rear door of the cab

slammed and screamed into the restless night, “Leon, Leon, are you playing the fool out

there. Where . . . . Oh you’re in the cab. Good. Let’s go.” She rolled her window partway

up as the cab hunched into the hardly moving crowd. Elise stood there musing. Who

were these people? Leon and Rupe and the blonde in the electric gold blouse? Did they

care at all about the U.S. invading a neutral country with thirty thousand troops? Did

they care that Kissinger the great beast and Nixon had been secretly bombing Laos for

over a year. No declaration of war on Laos just bombs and death, death and death and

more death. Elise shivered in the mild May night. But she was also sweating.

Elise turned back toward the street, clutching her shoulder bag tightly with her

right arm, getting ready to step into the streaming mass of people again.

A man just about two inches shorter than Elise’s five foot ten came out of the

antique store called The Antiquaint at 342 Water Street. He was stocky and muscled. His

face had a plain nose, a chin that was easy to ignore, two smallish but heavy-lobed ears

and two wide-open blue-grey eyes that burned with some tamped down emotion. He was
a bit unsteady on his feet. He held a can of Pabst beer in his left hand, his tenth that

evening, and in his right a copy of Gershon Legman’s Love and Death. He shifted his

weight a bit. He grew tired of holding the book and dropped it in his shoulder bag. Then

he saw Elise stepping off the curb to swim into the mass of people on Water Street. He

recognized her, but, instead of going up to her right away, he followed her, hanging back

in the crowd a bit and then moving alongside her and then dropping back again. Elise

did not notice him at first. He studied her as he moved along. He saw a fairly tall woman

with a young, fresh, happy face. Her ears were sweetly shaped and her nose and chin

were demure. Her full blonde hair cascaded loosely onto her shoulders, and her eyes

were devilishly lit up. Her aura of excitable energy and firm determination belied the

soft, giving quality advertised by her chin. He knew she was a watcher like himself. She

was slim-bodied, but her ample breasts pushed against her South American fringed

white blouse as she walked. Stanley knew she was a student at Brinnel Community

College. They had met at Moe’s Book Store last year and had been bumping into each

other once or twice a week ever since. He wanted to date her, but when he started

touching her one day, touching her elbow, the small of her back, she turned and looked

at him and said, “I like you Dirty Stanley, but we’re not going to be an item. O.K.” Up

front and direct.

He had accepted this in his usual way by climbing partway up the nearest

lamppost and screaming out his usual diatribes. So they had settled into an easy

comradeship. Now, tired of just looking at Elise as he walked alongside her in the

bumping, jostling crowd that was hardly moving now—all traffic had stopped—he

touched her and said, “Dostoevsky fucks little boys.” Elise turned and saw him. “Why it’s

Dirty Stanley” she said.

The term “Dirty” had attached itself to him because of his language, the endless

stream of obscenities that salted his talk. He grinned and said, “This is an illegal
gathering . We are all going to be god-damn arrested.” She shrugged. “We have to do

something about this son-of-a-bitching war. How are you Stanley?”

Questions like that always set him off. He replied by pushing out of the crowd to a

lamppost, climbing up a few feet and yelling into the crowd. “Dostoevsky was the licker

of humanity’s underwear.” And, “Tchaikovsky was the pederast of Saint Petersburg.”

“Agnew has acne.” “Kissinger is a pedophile!” “Nixon is a fist fucker.” Elise pushed over

to him, took his arm, pulled him down to the street and just shook her head at him. They

moved back into the mass of people, arm in arm. Someone held up a radio and a news

report about U.S. troops pushing into Cambodia filled the street. Two people dragged a

battered, dying old red armchair with springs sticking out and its stuffing cottoning out

into the middle of the street and set it on fire. They began a Russian style dance all

around the burning chair that cascaded sparks into the night sky. Some folks started

clapping; others howled.

When they reached Hearst Gate leading onto Kent State campus where Water

Street ended in the cross street Rasiabom Street, there was an enormous, restless mass

of young people swelling and swelling in front of a line of about twelve Kent policemen

and the mayor of Kent in an outlandish outfit. He was standing on a khaki colored jeep in

front of the line of policemen yelling and pleading emotionally through a giant bullhorn.

When Elise and Stanley got up close, they could see beads of sweat on the mayor’s

forehead.

Next to the right side of the gate stood a seven foot, larger than life, bronze statue

of William Randolph Hearst. It was a good likeness with an open smile and outstretched

hands. One foot rested on the side of a battleship turned on its side with a gaping hole in

its bottom. His other foot rested on a stack of newspapers. The headline of one paper

could be made out—“WAR” in giant letters. Oddly enough there was something amiss
with his eyes. The orbs were empty; they had no pupils. Under him, in the base of the

statue, was a plaque discussing his relationship to Kent State University. One wag had

plastered a sign on the statue—“Nero fiddled while Rome burned/ Nixon diddled while

Asia burned.”

The mayor was wearing a beige raincoat and a soft fedora style hat with red and

green feathers in it and boots like none Elise had ever seen. They were dark black and

rubbery and came up to the mid-calf line. They were not closed with laces but with a row

of about twelve gleaming steel clasps. They had that Frankenstein’s monster look. Elise

tried picturing the mayor with a bolt through his neck in the style of the old Frankenstein

movies.

Stanley jostled Elise as they stood among the restless, growling crowd—most

people were now hissing the mayor and the line of police. “Look, Elise, look at the fascist

boots—straight out of 1984!!”

The mood was ugly. The crowd began chanting: “R.O.T.C. burn!” over and over.

Elise knew that they were saying that the old wooden R.O.T.C. headquarters on the Kent

State campus should be burned to the ground. The crowd swelled up in front of the

dozen policemen. And the mayor who was still begging the crowd to disperse. Bottles

flew through the air crashing into the mayor’s jeep. The policemen fired canister after

canister of tear gas into the crowd. One canister landed near Elise and Stanley. Stanley

began hopping around like a mad clown. He reached down and grabbed the smoking

canister with a handkerchief around his hand and hurled it back. It smacked right into

the mayor’s jeep and bounced to the ground. The mayor put down his bullhorn and

moved back behind the jeep. Clouds of tear gas filled the night. The crowd broke up,

people running in many directions to get away from the stinging gas. Elise stared at the

scene, and a theatrical thrill filled her. Much as she hated violence. All this—the tear gas,
the oceanic crowd, the frissons of nervous energy running through a mass of angry

people, a just cause—made her feel a part of the river of history . . . .

On the sidewalk near Stanley and Elise, a tall man in a white t-shirt that read

“America the Land of the Free” in giant blue letters over the picture of a dynamic

looking eagle kept shouting “USA” over and over and pumping his right fist up and

down. Stanley turned to him and hissed, “Read a book.” The man stopped yelling and

stared at Stanley; then he laughed scornfully and said to Stanley, “Take a bath.” Elise felt

the bad vibes of the crowd screaming at the police and saw the crowd behind her pushing

forward—police behind the crowd must have been pushing them toward Hearst Gate.

She reached out to grab Stanley—her eyes were burning; the gas was getting to

her—but Stanley marched up to the tall man and poked him in the chest.

“So you support this stupid, insane war?” Stanley said to him.

Before Stanley could even blink, the tall man swung a powerful right, hitting him

in the head and staggering him. Stanley bounced back and started to swing his right fist.

A fairly heavy, big shouldered man with extremely large ears just appeared out of the

crowd, grabbed Stanley’s arm and pulled him away from the tall man who must have

weighed a hundred pounds or more than Stanley. And Elise jumped in between Stanley

and the patriot. The tall man was just stepping off the curb to continue the fight, but

Elise blocked his path, pushing her breasts right against his chest and glaring up at him

and staring at him eye to eye.

He stopped, shrugged and got back on the sidewalk.

Elise and the heavy-set man dragged Stanley over to a doorway on Rasiabom

Street and pushed him in there and quieted him down.

 Elise turned to the heavy man: “Thanks for helping. What a demented night . . . .

Oh, I’m Elise.”

He grinned and nodded at her, “I’m Jack Handel. You at Kent?”

“No,” Elise said, “I’m at Brinnel: History. Are you at Kent?”

“Yeah. Second semester. Majoring in Existential Bullshit and General Fuck

0ffing.”

Elise laughed: “Studying Camus while living like Rimbaud.”

The man with the large ears and very long earlobes bent down to look at Stanley

who was rubbing the bump on his head. “You o.k.?” he said to Stanley in a comforting

voice.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You should have let me hit that fascist prick in the jaw.”

“I’m Jack. Jack Handel.”

“Good. Yah. I’m Stanley Karnowski.” They shook hands, and Jack suddenly bent

and kissedElise on the forehead and walked off.

Elise felt the kiss and shrugged. The big-eared man did not give off pleasant vibes

even though he had saved Stanley from a beating.

“He feels more like an accountant than a student. His vibes are city, uptown.

Know what I mean, Elise?” Stanley said as he stood up, still rubbing the bump the blow

to his head had made.

“Yeah Stanley; he feels like someone who isn’t a student.”

The gas had mostly drifted off. When they walked to the corner of Water Street

and looked up they saw that all the lights up Water Street had gone dark—the police

must have closed all the bars and other places down. Someone pushed out of the giant

crowd and started to walk down Rasiabom Street. As he passed Stanley and Elise, he
said, “Hey, heads up; the cops are behind the crowd too, ‘bout two hundred of them.

They’re pushing everyone onto the campus through the gate. They want the Kent folks to

go back to the dorms, and everyone else to go home!! Better move outa here or you’re

gonna get pushed through the gate. . . . ” He had a bottle of water, and he passed it to

Elise. She poured water on her handkerchief and patted her still burning eyes. Then she

gave the bottle to Stanley. He poured the water over his head.

Now the mayor, thirty feet off to the left of Stanley and Elise, was back on the jeep

yelling and pleading through the bullhorn. “This is the mayor. Please disperse. This is no

time and no place for a demonstration. Come Monday have all the demonstrations you

want on campus. Remember there are leftist agitators from Chicago coming in now. They

want to burn the university down. They can hide in crowds like this one. So please,

please, break this up. We really don’t want to arrest people. We just want you to get on

campus or go home. We will let you through the line, through the gate here.” As he

spoke, the policemen moved—six to one side of the gate and six to the other. People

started to trickle past the jeep on through the fancy art deco leaf and tendril iron arch of

Hearst Gate, onto the campus. Then another figure appeared standing on the jeep as the

mayor stepped down. Elise looked: It was Henry. Her Henry.

Then all that happened that night, all the rush and excitement of being in the

rumbling crowd on Water Street and the undertow of violence in the air, the smashing

bottles, the smoking gas canisters, and now Henry’s face and a certain pleasure feeling, a

warm river of pleasure, on seeing him, all welled up in her. She got dizzy, dropped the

water bottle, felt her mind filling with black space. She sagged against Stanley who

jumped up and eased her down into the doorway. Her mind was blackness.

Jack Handel stood in his hallway in darkness. It was a huge, thick darkness that

made his ears hum. He fumbled out a small, neat pocket flashlight—his Bantam Lite. He
pressed the button and a small shaft of light appeared. He found his mailbox, opened it,

retrieved two letters and found the stairs. Up twoflights to his apartment.

Unlike most students at Kent State, Jack had two locks on his apartment door.

He clicked both of them, undressed completely and pulled a Pabst beer out of the

refrigerator. He slid into the soft crotch of his extremely ugly, bright orange easy chair in

his small living room, sipping icy, tangy beer and staring out the window at the moon,

breathing slowly and decompressing. The two letters turned out to be advertisements.

He tossed them. He thought about Elise with her waves of blonde hair splashing on her

shoulders. He began to feel aroused. But he tamped the feeling down; he got up, walked

over to the alarm clock by his bed in his tiny bedroom and realized it was past eleven

0’clock. He was supposed to report in at eleven!

The phone sat on an oval oak table next to a copy of a book he had bought at

Moe’s—The F.B. I. Nobody Knows. The author’s last name—Cook—stood out in brilliant

white letters on the green book jacket. Jack laughed a little as he became his other self

and dialed a number in Washington, D.C.

A voice at the other end said, “Allied Shipping. How can we help you?”

Jack replied, “Roger Bacon, one, one four.”

“One minute please. While I connect you. CLICK!! . . . . Click. Hssss. Hssss.

Click. Hssss.”

“Hello . . . . Hello Amber?” Jack said.

“That’s you 114? Right! Good, good. Uncle is getting very nervous. He wants to

know what’s going on at Kent. Someone told him there was a small riot on the campus

tonight. That right Roger?”

“Negative, John . . . . ”
 “Sssssst! ~ Don’t call me that. Damn it. I’m Amber.”

“Sorry . . . Amber. Not a riot. Not on campus. Downtown. A big messy crowd.

Some bottle throwing. Some tear gas from the police. A few windows broken!! I stirred

up some good shit though, so it will get in the papers. I talked some kids into joining me

in throwing trash cans through a bank window and some store windows. And when no

one saw me, I got a good-sized brick and hit a police officer square in the shoulder. Man

oh man did he curse blue shit at midnight!”

“Good, Roger. Good, good. Now look we have to talk, but you must forget what

we are going to talk about. Forget it later. Got me? Understood? Do you read me 114?”

“Understood, Amber.”

“Good. Uncle has been talking to Big Boy. The royal shitstorm of all shitstorms is

coming down. What’ Four hundred and eighty-six campuses rioting and demonstrating

over the Cambodia excursion! Christ! The seams are coming out of the denims! What

next? Uncle wants a shooting. It has to be a shooting by an official—a policeman or a

soldier or a National Guardsman. You understand. Because the level, the level of

mayhem on the campuses and in the press and on television is killing us dead. Dead,

dead, dead. Invasion of a neutral country, blah, blah, blah, liberal donkey shit, as if the

headquarters and supply camps for the Viet Cong were not in Cambodia . . . . Pardon me,

I’m talking too much, two nights for no sleep. Riggy brain. I mean Druggy Brain. But

listen, Roger.”

“I’m listening.”

“What were the students doing today at Kent?”

“They made speeches, students and faculty—got a new name to add to the Army

Surveillance List if he isn’t on there yet—Henry Nash, Ph. D.—History professor at

Brinnel Community College—you know—down the way from Kent. He is a powerful

commie talker—told the students that normal Americans are like little baby ducks

following the mommy duck—imprinting—you know. But he did calm them down a bit

when they talked about burning down the R.O.T.C. building at Kent. Then the students

dug a hole in the big grassy area—you know, the Commons—and buried a copy of the

Constitution in the hole. Said the invasion killed the Constitution and all that

donkeydew. But the big rally against the invasion is coming up Monday at noon at the

Commons. I guesstimate three thousand students might show!”

“That’s it. Good, good. That’s perfect. All we need to do is pull the National Guard in

and let them take over the campus. We’ll—you’ll work up a pretext for confrontation and

boom we get our shooting. Nothing too big. Ten or twenty dead will chill all the

campuses in America pronto.”

“Does Big Boy . . . . ”

“Big Boy is scared out of his pants, Roger. At the Secret Cab meeting two hours

ago. All of us druggy from sleep lack, he started in on the Big One. The revolution. The

three hundred thousand people coming to Washington, D.C. to overthrow the

government. He started in as usual, you know: The niggers and the Jews. The dirty

bums going around exploding campuses. The dirty bums, the niggers and the fucking

kikes are going to invade D.C. and surround the White House. Niggers fucking Jews in

front of the White House. And on and on. Whenever he starts doing that number, Uncle

always looks at me and rolls his eyes. Yes it’s on—we have actual, physical control,

control of about eight Ohio National Guardsmen thanks to dear old Cousin Elmer . . . . ”

“Is Cousin Elmer actually on the payroll?”

“Shh, the less said about Cousin Elmer the better. And no he isn’t on the legal

payroll. We have some problems now with the F.B.I. and with John Dean, I mean El

Greco, sorry. We think the F.B.I.—J. Edgar and his sidekick Mark the Nose--smell a
shooting coming, but they don’t have the eyes and ears we do; that’s Elmer doing his job

blocking their access. But we have eyes and ears where they don’t. So, so far we are

ahead. But El Greco is making disloyal sounds . Every day he starts in with this right and

wrong shit—this donkeypiss, libcommie talk. Ah forget it. Let’s see. Let’s see. . . . Oh yes,

guess what Henry told Big Boy recently— ‘To be absolutely certain about something, one

must know everything or nothing about it.’ Good one, ey? Pretext? What pretext?

What can we do to get the National Guard on campus? . . . . Are you still making the calls

to the mayor’s office telling him that the crazy Weather Underground folks are coming to

burn Kent State to the fucking ground! Are you?”

“About ten calls a day. But I was real busy today, agitating, so I only called about

four times. But I guess you have other operatives like me operating in Kent and calling

in, don’t you?”

Jack a.k.a. Roger Bacon sat up, scratched his chest and swiveled his head around

to look at the moon again while he was talking to Washington.

“Good, Roger, good. Keep calling. We must get the mayor to call the National

Guard to come in and occupy the campus. If need be, I’ll have Uncle call him directly and

fill his head with scare stuff. You need to stir things up—burn down the fucking R.O.T.C.

building if the students don’t. Burn it down! Usual strictures on avoiding the taking of

human life apply here. Burn the building at night perhaps—no one in it. Got me? Report

back by noon tomorrow. And forget everything we just talked about 114. Got me?”

“Sure Amber. Sure, sure. Meanwhile enjoy your sweet life sitting on your bum in

that gorgeous office of yours. Give my love to Washington!!!”

“One more thing, Roger. You do have the extraction phone numbers if we have to

extract you in a hurry!”

“Sure do, Amber. Over and out!”

 Jack or Roger or to give him the name he was born with Wesley Eric Hampton sat

way back in his easy chair as he finished his beer and stroked the long, dark very thick,

raised scar on his left thigh, his Vietnam souvenir as he called it. His thoughts returned

to the woman with the flowing blonde hair. Elise she called herself. He had never met

anyone with that name before. He remembered the fullness of the white blouse she was

wearing and the way the points of her nipples pushed against the blouse. Jack began

wondering why he had stopped the fight between the commie guy with Elise and the

patriotic guy. If he was supposed to stir things up, why not let them fight or, better yet,

join in the fight. Then Jack began to realize that he wanted to somehow impress that

sweet looking blonde woman with the commie guy. So he stepped in to help him—

becoming some sort of hero, perhaps, to the blonde with the endless waves of delightful

hair spilling on her shoulders. Is that what I did Jack asked himself.

He began laughing at himself, but the laugh was a trifle bitter. He got up, roamed

over to the walnut bureau in the corner and stared at the small framed photo of his ex-

wife Melinda. He sighed, wiped one finger across his lips and stared at her picture taken

two years ago just before they said farewell. Again he sighed. Bitterness rose up in Jack’s

heart. “Sometimes you just do things, do things. And nothing works out,” he told himself.

His face twisted in puzzlement and resentment. Again he ran a finger across his lips. He

stood there, scratching his bare belly, lost in a reverie. And a large ball of, he didn’t know

what to call it—unfairness-- filled him. Still he stood there staring at the photograph.

Elise came out of her swoon to find Stanley’s hands squeezing both of her breasts

through her blouse. She quickly pushed his hands away. “What? Did I conk out? Hey,

Dirty Stanley, you bastard . . . .You pig bastard . . . . You took advantage of me Stanley . . .

.”

“Oh, shit . . . . I” Stanley started to say

 “You dirty rat taking advantage of me, Stanley. Never ever do that again!”

“I’m a victim of my hormones, Elise. No, I’m sorry. So stupid to act like that.

Forgive me?” And Stanley hung his head down abjectly in one of his favorite poses—one

he used whenever he needed to apologize (and that was quite often).

Henry Nash was still talking to the crowd, begging them to go home, to disperse.

He kept telling them that Monday at noon on the Kent State Commons was the place to

be, to protest the invasion.

“C ’mon folks. Let’s go home and come back in strength Monday. Mondayat noon

on the Kent State Commons. There are no cameras, no tv here tonight. America can’t

hear you. This is a beer riot that’s all. Monday at the Commons at Kent State at noon all

the tv cameras will be on us. The world will hear us. This is not the right time, not the

right place . . . . We can be heard around the world with a mighty voice if we stop

destroying property, if we mass in very large numbers on campuses where the cameras

roll, if we raise one issue—the invasion—loudly and clearly, if we do not end up fighting

among ourselves about which socialism is the right socialism . . . . ”

The chanting, “R.O.T.C. Burn, baby burn,” came up loud and clear drowning

Henry Nash’s voice as he stood gesturing on the jeep with the booted mayor standing

leaning against the jeep nodding in agreement with Henry as he spoke. A large bottle

crashed into the jeep, and the mayor and Henry ducked as glass shards flew up over

them.

Elise pulled Stanley towards the jeep and Henry, but Stanley decided to take

himself home. He apologized again; his happy state was flagging, and the very old dark

stone of discontent that lodged itself deep in his brain was making itself felt again.

Negativity clouds scudded in mindscape. He asked Elise if she wanted him to walk her
back to Brinnel, and, when she said no, she was feeling better, he kissed her lightly on

the lips and dragged himself off down Rasiabom Street heading for his apartment.

Elise pushed through the crowd, jostled, shoved, bounced around, moving toward

Henry who was climbing down off the jeep now.

Elise saw Jeff Miller, one of the real activists from Kent State who was always

speaking at rallies. She yelled at him. But he didn’t hear her.

Finally she pushed herself right up to Henry. . . . .