Derry.”
“The report now reverted to Kirkland in his live stand-up mode.
“The demonstrators were ferried from WomanCare to Derry Police Headquarters on Main Street around nine o’clock this morning, Lisette.
I understand that twelve were questioned and released; six others were arrested on charges of malicious mischief, a misdemeanor. So it seems that another shot in Derry’s continuing war over abortion has been fired. This is John Kirkland, Channel Four news.”
“Another shot in-’ “McGovern began, and threw up his hands.
Lisette Benson was back on the screen. “We now go to Anne Rivers, who talked less than an hour ago to two of the so-called Friends of Life who were arrested in this morning’s demonstration.”
Anne Rivers was standing on the steps of the Main Street copshop with Ed Deepneau on one side and a tall, sallow, goateed individual on the other. Ed was looking natty and downright handsome in a gray tweed jacket and navy slacks. The tall man with the goatee was dressed as only a liberal with daydreams of what he might think of as “the Maine proletariat” could dress: faded jeans, faded blue workshirt, wide red fireman’s suspenders. It took Ralph only a second to place him. It was Dan Dalton, owner of Secondhand Rose, Secondhand Clothes. The last time Ralph had seen him, he had been standing behind the hanging guitars and bird-cages in his shop window, flapping his hands at Ham Davenport in a gesture that said Who gives a shit what you think.p But it was Ed his eyes were drawn back to, of course, Ed who looked natty and put together in more ways than one.
McGovern apparently felt the same. “My God, I can’t believe it’s the same man,” he murmured.
“Lisette,” the good-looking blonde was saying, “with me I have Edward Deepneau and Daniel Dalton, both of Derry, two of those arrested in this morning’s demonstration. That’s correct, gentlemen?
You were arrested?”
They nodded, Ed with the barest twinkle of humor, Dalton with dour, jut-jawed determination. The gaze the latter fixed on Anne overs made him look-to Ralph, at least-as if he were trying to remember which abortion clinic he had seen her hurrying into, head down and shoulders hunched.
“Have you been released on bail?”
“We were released on our own recognizance,” Ed answered. “The charges were minor. It was not our intention to hurt anyone, and no one was hurt.”
“We were arrested only because the Godless entrenched powerstructure in this town wants to make an example of us,” Dalton said, and Ralph thought he saw a minute wince momentarily tighten Ed’s face. A there-he-goes-again expression.
Anne Rivers swung the mike back to Ed.
“The major issue here isn’t philosophical but practical,” he said.
“Although the people who run WomanCare like to concentrate on their counselling services, therapy services, free mammograms, and other such admirable functions, there’s another side to the place.
Rivers of blood run out of WomanCare-”
“Innocent blood!” Dalton cried. His eyes glowed in his long, lean face, and Ralph had a disturbing insight: all over eastern Maine, people were watching this and deciding that the man in the red suspenders was crazy, while his partner seemed like a pretty reasonable fellow. It was almost funny.
Ed treated Dalton’s interjection as the pro-life equivalent of Hallelujah, giving it a single respectful beat before speaking again.
“The slaughter at WomanCare has been going on for nearly eight years now,” Ed told her. “Many people-especially radical feminists like Dr. Roberta Harper, WomanCare’s chief administrator-like to gild the lily with phrases like ’early termination,” but what she’s talking about is abortion, the ultimate act of abuse against women by a sexist society.”
“But is lobbing dolls loaded with fake blood against the windows of a private clinic the way to put your views before the public, Mr. Deepneau?”
For a moment-just a moment, there and gone-the twinkle of good humor in Ed’s eyes was replaced by a flash of something much harder and colder. For that one moment Ralph was again looking at the Ed Deepneau who had been ready to take on a truck-driver who outweighed him by a hundred pounds. Ralph forgot that what he was watching had been taped an hour ago and was afraid for the slim blonde, who was almost as pretty as the woman to whom her interview subject was still married.
Be careful, young lady, Ralph said You’re standing next to a very dangerous man.
Then the flash was gone and the man in the tweed jacket was once more just an earnest young fellow who had followed his conscience to hell. Once more it was Dalton, now nervously snapping his suspenders like big red rubber bands, who looked a few sandwiches shy of a picnic.
“What we’re doing is what the so-called good Germans failed to do in the thirties,” Ed was saying. He spoke in the patient, lecturely tones of a man who has been forced to point this out over and over…
. mostly to those who should already know it. “They were silent and six million Jews died. In this country a similar holocaust-”
“Over a thousand babies every day,” Dalton said. His former shrillness had departed. He sounded horrified and desperately tired.
“Many of them are ripped from the wombs of their mothers in pieces, with their little arms waving in protest even as they die.”
“Oh good God,” McGovern said. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I have ever-”
“Hush, Bill,” Lois said. -purpose of this protest” Rivers was asking Dalton.
“As you probably know,” Dalton said, “the City Council has agreed to re-examine the zoning regulations that allow WomanCare to operate where it does and how it does. They could vote on the issue as early as November. The abortion rights people are afraid the Council might throw sand in the gears of their death-machine, so they’ve summoned Susan Day, this country’s most notorious proabortion advocate, to try and keep the machine running. We are marshalling our forces-” The pendulum of the microphone swung back to Ed. “Will there be more protests, Mr. Deepneau?” Rivers asked, and Ralph suddenly had an idea she might be interested in him in a way which was not strictly professional. Hey, why not? Ed was a good-looking guy, and His. Rivers could hardly know that he believed the Crimson King and his Centurions were in Derry, joining forces with the baby-killers at WomanCare.
“Until the legal aberration which opened the door to this slaughter has been corrected, the protests will continue,” Ed replied.
“And we’ll go on hoping that the histories of the next century will record that not all Americans were good Nazis during this dark period of our history.”
“Violent protests?”
“It’s violence we oppose.” The two of them were now maintaining strong eye contact, and Ralph thought Anne Rivers had what Carolyn would have called a case of hot thighs. Dan Dalton was standing off to one side of the screen, all but forgotten.
“And when Susan Day comes to Derry next month, can you guarantee her safety?”
Ed smiled, and in his mind’s eye Ralph saw him as he had been on that hot August afternoon less than a month ago-kneeling with one hand planted on either side of Ralph’s shoulders and breathing They burn the fetuses over in Newport into his face. Ralph shivered.
“In a country where thousands of children are sucked from the wombs of their mothers by the medical equivalent of industrial vacuum cleaners, I don’t believe anyone can guarantee anything,” Ed replied.
Anne Rivers looked at him uncertainly for a moment, as if deciding whether or not she wanted to ask another question (maybe for his telephone number), and then turned back to face the camera.
“This is Anne Rivers, at Derry Police Headquarters,” she said.
Lisette Benson reappeared, and something in the bemused cast of her mouth made Ralph think that perhaps he hadn’t been the only one to sense the attraction between interviewer and interviewee.