Passing Through the Flame (59 page)

“I like the way you organize things,” she said. “I like the way you don’t screw around.”

“Who knows?” Sargent said. “You might also end up liking the way I do screw around.”

Ruby reddened, but there was no flash of anger. Stein was gripped by a queasy premonition that he chose not to examine too carefully.

“As long as we
are
here,” Stein said, “I hope you won’t mind giving us a progress report.”

Sargent stood up. “As long as you’re here,” he said in a friendly tone of voice, “I’ll show you around.” It didn’t do much for Stein’s head that he was looking straight at Ruby while he said it and that she was looking straight back.

I can ball her today, but should I? Chris Sargent thought as he led Stein and Ruby Berger across the yard to where Bellows was trying to teach a few karate blows to the spaced-out crew from Berkeley. It’d sure get Stein pissed off at me—if he’s this uptight, he must be making it with her himself. But it would sure show him who’s boss, wouldn’t it?

He studied Ruby’s square, hard ass moving beneath her jeans as she walked half a step ahead of himself and Stein, striding like a jock. A lot of energy there waiting to be uncorked, and not that bad-looking. I might like it.

“Strike!... strike!... strike!...” Bellows chanted, and the two lines of street hippies chopped with the sides of their hands at their partners’ noses. It was a blow which properly thrown would instantly kill the enemy by splintering his nasal bone and driving it toward his brain. These nerds would be lucky to give anyone a bloody nose. But by the time Bellows was through with them, they would sure be able to scare the shit out of people who knew about karate from James Bond movies. A gang of crazy hippie karate freaks doing their thing and drooling like King Kong, with a few Saturday night specials thrown in for good measure, would sure keep any security force running around in circles for ten or fifteen minutes. Fortunately, that was all that these creeps would have to do.

“This is the final group,” Sargent said. “We’ll keep them here three more days, then disperse them and call the whole force back seven days from now, so that we can give it a final tune-up just before we go to Sunset City.”

“I’d like to talk to them,” Stein said.

Sargent laughed at the thought of this old nerd trying to talk revolution to these brain-damage cases. It would be like listening to some spaced-out lifer giving a drug identification lecture to the junkie battalion. “Be my guest,” he said. “They’re all yours. Bellows, the man wants to talk to the people.”

“You heard it, people,” Bellows called out. “The man here wants to talk to you.”

“Far out.”

Stein looked a little green around the edges as he stood in front of this gang of wild-eyed speed freaks, panhandlers, freaked-out Namvets, and assorted other ugly meat. You had to admit it was a nasty-looking outfit.

“I’d like to ask you why you’re here,” Stein said. “Why you volunteered.”

“Volunteered?”

“—nothing else to do—”

“—seemed like the righteous thing—”

They stood around looking confused and mumbling at each other. Sargent didn’t like that; these guys were confused enough, and not the easiest troops to handle.

“How about you?” Stein said, pointing to a thin kid with long blond hair, pink pimply skin, and bloodshot eyes a little too close together. “Why did you decide to come here?”

“Man, they told me we was gonna rip off some pigs, and that there would be plenty of free dope for everybody.”

“—yeah, right on—”

“—power to the people, dope for everyone—”

“—fuck over the pigs—”

“—take the scene over—”

Stein did not look happy. “Power to the people,” he said, about well enough to convince the spaced-out street rats of his sincerity. He walked rapidly toward Sargent and Ruby Berger. Sargent nodded to Bellows, and Bellows got them back into the cadence.

“That’s a lumpen street rabble,” Stein said, waving his hands and leading the two of them away toward the tents.

“Strike!... strike!... strike!...”

“That’s nice,” Sargent said. “Now tell me what a lumpen street rabble is.”

“Strike!... strike!... strike!...”

Stein shook his head and didn’t say anything until he had the tents between the three of them and the men. “A lumpen street rabble is what you have out there. Spaced-out street hoods whose idea of revolutionary consciousness is ripping people off and fighting for free dope.”

“That’s a nauseating elitist remark, Barry,” Ruby said. “They’re our brothers. They’re our walking wounded. They’re the victims we want to free.”

“I’m not arguing that, Ruby. I’m saying you can’t trust people like that because their level of consciousness is too low. You certainly can’t trust them with guns and train them to kill. Junkies are victims of an oppressive society, too, but you sure don’t want to meet them in a dark alley.”

“What about you, Chris?” Ruby said. “Do you trust the men you’ve recruited?”

“I can control them,” Sargent said.

“But do you trust them, Chris, do you believe in them?” She looked at him with those hard green eyes, and Sargent sensed that he was being tested, that the wrong answer would shut her up like a clam, and the right one would open her legs like a peace sign. She was really into this revolution trip, and she really didn’t want to know how this kind of action had to be fought, what kind of crud you had to use for gun fodder. She wants me to play Che Guevara for her. But I better not lay it on too thick.

“I understand them,” Sargent said. “I got to understand spaced-out cases in the Nam, and I saw it was possible to make them function if you knew how. Hell, there were times there when I was pretty spaced out myself. Who can be sure his own brains aren’t a little barbled, right? We can’t afford to require certificates of mental health from anybody. These guys are fighting because they want things that other people are keeping from them. Isn’t that the only thing anyone ever fights for?”

He could tell that he had scored from the look in her eyes, from the way Stein got to looking grimmer and grimmer. “I’d say that says it pretty well, Chris,” she said. “They’re fighting for their genuine class interest. You
do
understand what you’re involved in.”

“If you say so,” Sargent said, giving her a little smile that she immediately reflected back to him. “You seem to know more about it than I do.”

“We could learn from each other,” she said.

“Maybe we could.”

What a trip, she’s going to try to develop my political consciousness, while I get my rocks off. And keep their dumb little committee out from underfoot, too. What’s that line about politics and weird bedmates?

“Let’s go back to the house,” Stein said sourly. “I’ve seen enough of this.”

“Why not?” Sargent said. “I’d like you to meet the boys I brought up from Mexico to run this thing. Maybe they’ll make you feel better. You can talk to them all you please.” And maybe then you’ll get your ass out of here.

He caught Ruby looking at him. She didn’t look away. But maybe you’ll be staying behind, baby.

“Mart Pulaski, Hank Billingham, Earl Coleman,” Sargent said. “Baum here you’ve already met, Bellows is the guy giving the karate instruction, and Ortiz... where’s Ortiz?”

“Off checking out the obstacle course for tomorrow,” said Coleman, the lone black.

The four men sitting around the folding table with Sargent seemed totally unlike the lumpen rabble Stein had seen outside. Coleman was tall, lean, and hard-eyed. Pulaski was squat and thick with longish hair but the face of an experienced big-city cop, all cold eyes and hard fat. Billingham was lanky and relaxed, with deceptive lazy eyes, a Western gunfighter in repose. They were all wearing threadbare army shirts with corporal’s stripes and old blue jeans, apparently to make them look like street people, but these were no hippies. They looked hard, mean, and competent.

Stein did not like the look of them, he did not like the way they had automatically sat down flanking Sargent, facing the two outsiders in a solid rank, he did not like the automatic rifles they carried around like swagger sticks, and most emphatically he did not like the way Ruby Berger was staring at Sargent and his wolf pack like a fifteen-year-old groupie at a Stones concert.

“Are all these men from your Mexican dope operation?” he asked.

“Right,” Sargent said. “We’ve been together a long time. Bellows and Billingham and me even knew each other in the Nam. So at least the guys leading the troops are a nice tight outfit. Guys who know how to do the job. That’s why I’m not worrying about the kind of people we have to work with. We’re good enough to know how to compensate.”

“I wonder if your men know what this action is really all about either,” Stein said. Ruby gave him a sharp, cold look.

“Why don’t you ask them?” Sargent said easily.

“All right, I’m asking. Why are you in this?”

The four men exchanged glances with Sargent, then with each other, then with Sargent again; then Billingham spoke, as if by some subsubliminal consensus agreement.

“We’re going to liberate the dope trade from the middlemen who’re squeezing the honest dudes who ship the weed—that’s us—and the people who buy it, our customers. When we get rid of people like Jango Beck, we can split the savings between our own pockets and lower prices for the customers, and everybody will be real happy. That’s why we’re fighting for your ‘liberated zone.’”

“Yeah, right,” said Baum, the guy who not an hour ago had been pointing his gun at Stein’s gut. “Get rid of the middlemen.” Stein studied Sargent, who studied him back. Billingham had fed him back exactly what they had fed Sargent, and Baum had just been parroting Billingham. Sargent had been given a pragmatic interest in the success of his mission—increased profit by selling his grass directly to the consumer through the liberated zone—he had not exactly been won over on ideological grounds. What he understood was the ideology of his own self-interest, which was a rudimentary revolutionary consciousness of a sort. But the fact remained that he and his men were in it for the money, not out of commitment to any idealistic goals greater than their own selfinterest. They were a cut above mercenaries, but not by much. “Nothing beyond that?” Stein said.

“Beyond what?” Coleman asked.

“Don’t you have any feelings about the larger political implications of establishing a liberated zone where the people make the rules?”

“I had my ass shot at for three years for
larger political implications
, and man, it was a drag, a jive-ass shuck.”

“Barry, why are you doing this?” Ruby said angrily. “These men are on our side; they’re our brothers. Why are you giving them this third-degree treatment?”

Sargent and his men looked at her warmly, encouraging her to go on, to speak for them.

“It makes me feel good to have men who aren’t kidding themselves on our side for a change. Men who have genuine revolutionary self-interest, instead of middle-class parlor revolutionaries, bourgeois would-be adventurers.”

“I don’t understand half of that,” Sargent said, “but if you mean you can only rely on people who are fighting for themselves instead of for some fancy bullshit, I say right on.” Ruby glowed. Why couldn’t she see how he was shining her on?

“What about a little higher level of consciousness than that?” Stein said angrily. “What about fighting to liberate your brothers and sisters, not just yourself?”

“Everyone’s got to save his own ass,” Pulaski said.

“But we’re fighting the same enemy, so when we kick ass, we kick ass for everybody,” Sargent said. “Likewise, anyone who kicks the ass of the Jango Becks of the world is kicking ass for us.”

“That’s a genuine, honest, revolutionary attitude,” Ruby said. “Ass kickers of the world, unite!” Stein said caustically.

“You got it,” said Chris Sargent.

“Barry, can’t you face reality?” Ruby said. “This is the first Movement action I’ve ever seen where there’s someone around who’s really got his organizational shit together, who’s fighting for the people out of true self-interest,
and
who knows how to get things done.”

“But people aren’t supposed to get hurt at this thing,” Stein said. “The idea is to seize the festival with a bloodless coup.”

“Tell that to Jango Beck,” Sargent said. “I’ll cooperate if he will. But if he should decide he doesn’t like getting ripped off, there’s going to be a little back-and-forth, and some of his people are going to get hurt. Probably some of our people, too.”

He turned to Ruby. “I’m beginning to think you people never knew what you were getting into. You want to seize some turf from someone like Jango Beck, but you don’t have the stomach for combat. The people I recruit don’t meet your high standards of purity, and the boys and me track mud into your revolutionary living room. Maybe we should call the whole thing off. Because I don’t think you’re such hot-shit revolutionaries either.”

“Oh, no, no,” Ruby said, “we’re behind you. I approve of everything you’re doing. I think you’re going to get results, and that’s what we want. Isn’t that right, Barry?”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Stein said. What else was there to say? It was too late to do anything else; they were dependent on Sargent to carry out the seizure. Without him, they had nothing. We’re in this thing together with him, whether we like it or not.

But Ruby seems to like it just fine. I think it’s time to get her out of here. If it isn’t too late already.

“I think we’d better be going, Ruby,” he said, getting up, holding his breath.

“I’m in no rush,” Ruby said belligerently.

“I’ve got a meeting at six o’clock; we’ll have to start back soon if I’m going to make it.”

“Why don’t you go and she can stick around?” Sargent said blandly, but with sly eyes mirrored in those of his men. Stein felt like a caterpillar, a wimp. “I’d like to show one member of your revolutionary committee a little more, so she can make a full report. Since you’re in a hurry, Ruby can stay. I’ll have her driven into LA later on tonight.”

“Or in the morning,” Ruby said.

“Or in the morning,” Sargent repeated.