He remembered the first outbreak thirty-five years ago, the rash of inexplicable suicides that had stunned the city of R. during the winter and spring of 1931, that terrible stretch of months when close to two dozen young people between the ages of fifteen and twenty had put an end to their own lives. He had been young then himself, just fourteen years old, a freshman in high school, and he would never forget hearing the news that Billy Nolan was dead, never forget the tears that had poured out of him when he was told that beautiful Alice Morgan had hanged herself in the attic of her house. Most of them hanged themselves thirty-five years ago, leaving behind no note or explanation, and now it was starting again, four deaths in March alone, but this time the young people were killing themselves by asphyxiation, gassing themselves to death as they sat in idling cars parked inside locked garages. He knew there would be more deaths, that more young people would vanish before the epidemic came to an end, and he took those disasters personally, for he was a doctor now, general practitioner Henry J. Noyes, and three of the four newly dead children had been his patients, Eddie Brickman, Linda Ryan, and Ruth Mariano, and he had brought all three of them into the world with his own hands.
THEY WERE ALL supposed to gather at Howard’s farm between five and six o’clock on Saturday, July first. Celia would be coming from Woods Hole in the used Chevy Impala her parents had bought for her in May, Schneiderman and Bond from Somerville in the 1961 Skylark the Waxmans had given Luther as a going-away present when he left for his freshman year of college, and Ferguson from the house on Woodhall Crescent, where he had to go early that morning to fetch the old Pontiac. The plan was to spend Saturday night at the farm, eat breakfast there the following morning, and then drive over to Williamstown to watch Noah strut the boards as Konstantin in the Sunday matinee of The Seagull. After that, Celia would return to Woods Hole, Amy and Luther would return to Somerville, and Ferguson, Howard, and Mona Veltry would go back to the farm. Ferguson had an open invitation to remain there as long as he wished. He imagined he would stick around for about two weeks, but nothing was definite, and perhaps he would camp out there for the rest of the month, with trips to Woods Hole on the weekends.
Everyone made it to Vermont at the appointed hour, and because Howard’s aunt and uncle were visiting friends in Burlington that evening, and because no one was in the mood for cooking, the three couples decided to go out for dinner at a place called Tom’s Bar and Grill, a run-down watering hole on Route 30 about three-quarters of a mile from the center of Brattleboro. The six of them crammed into Howard’s station wagon after a couple of rounds of beer at the farm, a small guzzle in the kitchen because the Vermont drinking age was twenty-one and they wouldn’t be allowed to have any beer at Tom’s, and because one round had not been enough, they didn’t leave until close to nine o’clock, and by nine o’clock on a Saturday night Tom’s was generally in a state of near chaos, with loud country music thumping on the jukebox and the slosh-heads at the bar well into their umpteenth round of liquid refreshments.
It was a rough working-class and farmer crowd, no doubt a predominantly right-wing, pro-war crowd, and when Ferguson walked in with his little band of left-wing college friends, he immediately understood that they had come to the wrong place. There was something about the men and women sitting at the bar, he felt, something about them that seemed to want trouble, and the pity was that he and his friends had to sit within eyeshot of that bar because there were no free tables in the back room. What was it, he kept asking himself, as a friendly waitress showed up to take their orders (Hi, kids. What’ll it be?), wondering if the sour looks aimed in their direction had anything to do with his longish hair and Howard’s somewhat longer hair, or with Luther’s modest Afro, or with Luther himself because he was the only black person anywhere in sight, or with the elegant, upper-crust prettiness of the three girls, even though Amy was working in a factory that summer and Mona’s parents could have been at one of the tables in the other room that night, and then, as Ferguson studied the people at the bar more closely, some of whom had their backs turned to them, he realized that most of the looks were coming from two guys at the end, the ones sitting along the right plank of the three-sided bar, the ones with the unobstructed view of their table, two guys in their late twenties or early thirties who could have been woodcutters or auto mechanics or professors of philosophy from all Ferguson could tell, which was just about nothing beyond the obvious fact that they looked displeased, and then Amy did something she must have done several hundred times in the past year, she snuggled up against Luther and kissed him on the cheek, and suddenly Ferguson understood what was making the philosophers angry, not that a black person had entered their all-white domain but that a young white woman was touching a young black man in public, snuggling up against his body and kissing him, and when you factored in all the other aggravations they had been dealt that night, the college boys with the long hair, the fresh-faced college girls with their long legs and beautiful teeth, the flag burners and draft-card burners and the whole brigade of anti-war hippie snots, and then added in the number of beers they had consumed in the hours they had been sitting there, no fewer than six apiece and perhaps as many as ten, it wasn’t strange or even remotely surprising that the larger of the two philosophy professors should have lifted himself off his barstool, walked over to their table, and said to Ferguson’s stepsister:
Cut that out, girl. Stuff like that ain’t allowed in here.
Before Amy could collect her thoughts and answer him, Luther said: Butt out, mister. Get lost.
I’m not talking to you, Charlie, the philosopher replied. I’m talking to her.
To emphasize his point, he pointed his finger at Amy.
Charlie! Luther said, with a loud, theatrical guffaw. That’s a good one. You’re the Charlie, mister, not me. Mister Charlie himself.
Ferguson, whose chair was closest to the standing philosopher, decided to stand up and give him a lesson in geography.
I think you’re a little confused, he said. We’re not in Mississippi, we’re in Vermont.
We’re in America, the philosopher rejoined, turning his attention to Ferguson now. Land of the free and home of the brave!
Free for you but not for them, is that it? Ferguson asked.
That’s it, Charlie, the philosopher said. Not for them if they’re going to carry on like that in public.
Like what? Ferguson said, with a sarcastic edge in his voice, which turned the words like what into something that resembled fuck off.
Like this, asshole, the philosopher said.
And then he punched Ferguson in the face and the fight began.
IT WAS ALL so idiotic. A barroom brawl with a drunken racist itching for a fight, but after the first punch had been thrown, what else could Ferguson do but punch back? Fortunately, the philosopher’s friend did not jump in on the action, and while Howard and Luther both tried to break it up, they didn’t succeed quickly enough to prevent Tom from calling the cops, and for the first time in his life Ferguson was arrested, handcuffed, and driven off to a police station to be booked, fingerprinted, and photographed from three different angles. The night-court judge fixed bail at one thousand dollars (one hundred dollars in cash), which Ferguson posted with help from Howard, Celia, Luther, and Amy.