Authors: Lynn Austin
We arrived with swarms of other students and followed the crowd to the mall in front of the administration building. The students had erected thousands of white wooden crosses all over campus to represent the American casualties. When I saw them, the war struck home for me with full force.
“Jeff, those soldiers were our age. They’ll never have a chance to fall in love and get married and have careers like we will.”
“I know. That’s why I have to fight to end this war—before any more of them die.” He squeezed my hand, and I knew he felt the same impotent rage that I did.
The anti-war rally began peacefully as, one after another, various speakers ascended the platform to address the crowd. Jeff and I pushed our way toward the front. “I have a little surprise for you,” he said when we reached the platform. “As the prizewinning artist of
Protest
, I’ve been invited to say a few words.”
“Jeff! I’m so proud of you.”
“Wait right here until I’m done, okay?”
I beamed like a searchlight out in the audience while Jeff spoke. He briefly described the experiences in Chicago that had produced his painting, then spoke eloquently about recognizing the God-given dignity in our fellow man. “All men are made in God’s image,” he said. “That includes policemen and the Vietcong, as well as our own American soldiers. Only after we lay down our weapons and end this war will we truly obey Christ’s command to love our enemies.” The cheers were deafening.
“Were you nervous?” I asked after congratulating him with a kiss. He had climbed down from the platform again.
“I was petrified.”
“You didn’t seem to be.” In fact, while he should have been limp with relief, Jeff seemed more tense now than before he’d spoken. “What’s wrong?”
“Listen, Suzanne, we have to get out of here. Now.” His voice was an urgent whisper, but the fact that he called me by my given name conveyed even more than his tone. “There’s going to be trouble.”
“Jeff, wait . . . how . . .?”
“There isn’t time to indulge your Irish temper. Do you trust me?”
“Of course.”
“Then hang on to my arm and follow me. Don’t let go, no matter what.”
He towed me through the mob, heading back across the mall the way we’d
come a few hours ago. During that time, the crowd had swelled from thousands to tens of thousands, and now they were all tightly packed into the open area between the buildings, unable to move. There was nowhere for Jeff and me to go, and people didn’t like us pushing against the flow to force our way through. I felt deliberate, painful elbow blows to my ribs and knew that Jeff was suffering even more in front of me. I fought a wave of claustrophobia as I tried not to panic.
“Jeff, wait—this is crazy. We’ll never get through.”
He turned around to face me, panting from exertion. He pulled me into his arms and whispered in my ear. “Suzanne, listen. When I was on the platform waiting for my turn, I overheard the student leaders talking. They have an agenda, and it isn’t Vietnam. They’re going to use the momentum of the crowd to storm the administration building and take over the university.”
“Oh, Jeff.”
“The campus police have called for outside help. I saw the state troopers arrive while I was speaking. They’re wearing riot gear and gas masks. That means tear gas. But that isn’t all—there’s another mob of students in the parking lot behind the police lines. They’re arming themselves with stones.”
“Go ahead and say it, Jeff.”
“Say what?”
“‘I told you so.’”
He smiled in spite of himself and shook his head. “Stubborn, pigheaded Irishwoman! Come on.”
He plowed forward again like a ship through a turbulent sea. There seemed no end to the people. Jeff edged toward the safety of the buildings on one side, away from the center of the mob. Behind us the Students for a Democratic Society leader, who controlled the microphone, spewed out a tirade of recrimination against the college administration. The answering cries of the crowd deafened me.
Suddenly Jeff stumbled backward, slamming into me. The mob had stampeded forward. It was too late to escape. We were trapped in the riot.
“Turn around!” Jeff cried. “Turn around!”
In my panic, I didn’t understand what he meant. Jeff grabbed my shoulders and whirled me around. If I hadn’t turned, the momentum of the crowd would have bowled me over backward and I would have been trampled. But now I couldn’t see him.
“Jeff!” I screamed. “Jeff, where are you?”
“I’m right here. I’ve got you! I won’t let go!” I felt his arm lock through
mine. We stumbled forward, bobbing like corks in a flood. It was a horrible, helpless feeling.
I heard shouts and screams behind us and remembered the riot police. The noise grew louder. Then a series of dull thuds sounded, the concussions echoing off the buildings in front of us. “They’re firing at us!” someone screamed. “The pigs are firing at us!” The forward movement turned into pandemonium.
“It’s not bullets, it’s tear gas!” Jeff shouted. “Don’t panic, they’re just firing tear gas!” But judging by the terrified screams and the frantic elbowing all around us, no one was listening to him. I was being kicked and pummelled as people tried to escape in every direction.
There was a gap between two buildings on our left, and as the panicked mob turned to surge through it, Jeff and I were pulled apart like taffy. His hand reached out for me, and I felt him grip my jacket in his fist, then we were torn apart again, the force ripping my sleeve as he tried in vain to hang on. As the crowd poured between us, I struggled to keep him in sight. “Jeff! Where are you?”
Suddenly everyone ducked, raising their arms above their heads as a barrage of stones rained down on us. I caught sight of Jeff for a brief second and saw blood pouring down his face from a gash on his forehead. Pain and shock filled his eyes. He held his hands to his head and tried to stop the bleeding, but it poured through his fingers. He staggered, as if he might faint.
I had to reach him. I had to help him. Frantic, I started toward him again, using my elbows to push people out of my way. It was like swimming upstream against a powerful current. All the while, rocks continued to fall out of the sky like hailstones. I had Jeff in sight. I had almost reached him. Then he disappeared again as a stinging cloud of tear gas blinded my eyes.
The acrid, rubbery smell filled my lungs and I began to cough. As I stumbled blindly forward, a woman in front of me tripped and fell. Before I could help her up, someone pushed me from behind and I fell over on top of her. Immediately, hundreds of people trampled us as if we were rag dolls. Their weight crushed me to the ground. I cried out in agony as pain hammered me all over. I tried to stand and was knocked down again. Someone kicked my head like a soccer ball.
“Help me!” I screamed. “Somebody help me, please!” I couldn’t hear my own voice above the din of cries and screams.
Then a strong pair of arms gripped me, lifted me. Through my tears, I recognized Jeff’s bloody face. “I’ve got you,” he said. “It’s all right, I’ve got you.”
I lost consciousness.
When I awoke, my father hovered over me. I couldn’t imagine what he was doing at a Vietnam demonstration. “Daddy . . .?” A look of immense relief filled his face.
“Yes, Sue. It’s me.”
I heard my mother’s tearful voice. “Suzanne? Is she waking up, Stephen? Oh, thank God! Thank God!” She hurried to my side and took my limp hand in hers. Mine was connected to an IV line.
I looked around and saw that I was in a hospital room. My head throbbed with pain. I tried to concentrate, to understand what Daddy was saying to me, then realized he was asking me a bunch of stupid questions. “How many fingers am I holding up? What month is it?”
“Where’s Jeff?” I mumbled. “Is he okay?” It hurt every time I drew a breath, making it difficult to talk. My father’s face flushed with anger.
“Jeff’s gone! I sent him out of here!”
“No . . . go get him . . . I want to see him. . . . He saved my life.”
“Saved your life! He almost got you killed!”
“He’s probably back at the college by now,” Mom said. She smoothed my hair off my face. “You’ve been here since yesterday, Suzanne.”
“And you’re going to be here a while longer too,” Daddy added. “You needed surgery to stop the internal bleeding, thanks to that miserable hippie, and you also have two broken ribs, a broken collarbone, and a moderate concussion!”
He was much too irate to listen to me, so I pleaded with Mom. “Jeff wouldn’t leave me . . . please go look for his car . . . is his car still here?”
She reluctantly released my hand to peer through the blinds. “Stephen, it is out there,” she said. Daddy muttered something, but when I saw the look on his face I was glad I hadn’t heard it. “I’ll go look for him,” Mom finally said. Daddy sank into the visitor’s chair, arms folded across his chest, as we waited.
Mom found Jeff in the chapel. When he walked into my room with her, he was such a ghostly shade of white she might have found him in the morgue. His left eye was swollen nearly shut, and I saw a row of ugly black stitches where they had closed the gash in his forehead. He wore the same clothes as yesterday, crusted with dried blood. Jeff didn’t say a word, but he bent to kiss me as if I were made of glass.
My father stood to confront him, so furious his words rushed out in an angry flood of pent-up worry and rage. “My daughter seems to love you, Mr. Pulaski, and you claim to love her. How in the blazes could you let her get involved in something like this? How could you put her in such danger?”
Before Jeff could answer I said, “It’s not his fault. I made him take me. He didn’t want to.”
“You see? That’s what I don’t understand,” Daddy said, spreading his hands. “The men in my generation take care of their women. We put them on a pedestal, we shelter them, protect them. If you love a woman as much as I love my wife, you work hard so she doesn’t have to. You want to give her the best of everything. There is no way in the world I would take Grace to something like that riot you dragged Suzanne into yesterday.”
“It was supposed to be peaceful, Daddy.”
“Oh yeah? Why don’t you explain that to all the doctors down in the ER and in all the other area trauma centers? They had to treat thousands of injuries just like yours.”
“It was the police. . . .”
“No, Suzanne. You weren’t trampled by the police. You were trampled by the mob.” Daddy turned to Jeff, their faces inches apart. Jeff hadn’t said a word to defend himself against Daddy’s tirade. The guilt and shame I saw on his face as my father chastised him brought tears to my eyes.
“You want to marry my daughter? You want my blessing? Then start acting responsibly! If you care for her as much as you claim, then make up your mind which is more important—your infantile protests or my daughter’s safety. Grow up, Mr. Pulaski! Get a responsible job!” Daddy gripped Jeff’s arm. “Take care of her properly or—”
Jeff cried out in pain. I didn’t think it was possible for his face to turn any whiter, but it did. He nearly fainted. Daddy pushed him into a chair and forced his head between his knees.
“What’s the matter, son? Are you all right? Where are you hurt?” All the anger had drained from Daddy’s voice, replaced by concern.
“My arm . . .” Jeff moaned.
Daddy palpated it gently. “Does that hurt? Can you bend it? Any numbness or tingling?” Instantly he was a concerned doctor, not an irate father. I saw Daddy in his God-given role of physician, saw his genuine concern for people and for their pain, and I was stunned to see a compassionate heart beneath his arrogant facade. I thought about all the times he had left in the
middle of my recitals and birthday parties to be with one of his patients, and I finally understood him.
“Didn’t those fools in the ER examine you properly?” he asked Jeff.
“I . . . no, I wanted them to take care of Suzanne first.”
He helped Jeff from the chair. “I’m taking you down to radiology for an X-ray.”
They walked out of the door together with Daddy supporting Jeff. I knew he was in good hands. Even though it wasn’t his hospital, Daddy would use his powerful personality to cut through the red tape and get Jeff the help he needed. I closed my eyes and rested.
When they returned a while later, Daddy wore a borrowed lab coat and Jeff wore a cast on his right arm. I never did learn what had transpired between them down in the X-ray lab, but I saw that at last they had reached an uneasy truce.
TWENTY-SIX
Jeff never participated in another demonstration after the Vietnam Moratorium. Moon-dog and all of Jeff’s other hippie friends were furious with him. They surrounded us one afternoon as Jeff and I walked across the campus together.
“How can you sit back and do nothing, man?” Moon-dog demanded. “Don’t you listen to the news anymore? Don’t you care that the government’s gonna take away our college deferments? We’re all gonna be drafted, man, and you’re copping out on us!”
“I’m not copping out,” Jeff said.
“So you’ll be at the rally then?”
Jeff was quiet for a moment, then he shook his head. “No. The rally isn’t going to change the draft laws. It’s only going to get a bunch of us beat up by the cops and arrested.”
“Serve you right if you get drafted, man!” Moon-dog cried as he strode away. “Serve you right if you end up in ’Nam!”
“I’ll move to Canada first!” Jeff shouted back at him.
On December 1, 1969, Jeff and I crowded into the lounge of my dormitory to watch the Selective Service lottery on TV. It would determine his fate. And mine. Blue plastic capsules, containing all 366 possible birth dates, would be drawn one by one from a large glass jar to establish the order in which men would be drafted into military service in the coming year. Jeff’s birthday was June 8.
“It’s the helplessness that bugs me the most,” Jeff said as he grabbed the last empty chair in the lounge. He pulled me down onto his lap. I could feel the anger and tension in his body as we waited for the lottery to begin. “We may as well live in Russia if we’re going to have the government controlling our futures.”
“It’s so unfair,” I said. “It’s like a scene from pagan mythology, where the gods meet once a year in a celestial council to determine the fate of all the
people on earth. The mortals are helpless.”