New Orleans, when you stepped back and looked at it, was also doing really great. All cleaned up. Bursting with young entrepreneurs, movie trailers blocking every street. Here by the beaches of Florida he was starting to know what it means to miss New Orleans.
“I shouldn’t be sitting here on my butt. I don’t deserve this paradise,” he lectured himself. “I should be headed home. But first let me go see what Marguerite has on her mind.”
V
A few days after the shooting on Canal Street, in a cramped downtown office with nothing on the walls, the first order of business was to discuss the demonstrator they had killed.
Mostly the young men conducted their meetings in English but it was definitely bueno to chime in with the occasional Spanish epithet or significant old saying. The meetings stuck to a strict agenda, which was always laid out by their Leader, whose father had been the Leader before him. The members were serious about the program because their mission was extremely serious. They avoided using each other’s real names at these meetings. Big Brother could be watching. No doubt about it.
Individual assignments were handed out at their gatherings and if expenses were expected, the Leader provided the details. The Recorder kept track of it all, and Security kept them all safe. The Night Watchman saw to the purity of their ideology and the delivery of their message.
Much of what the youth group did was secretive, naturally, but behind them were even more hidden figures, known as the “Committee.” It was the source of most of their funds. The youth group members knew who some of the men on the Committee were because those old warriors occasionally appeared before the group to give inspirational talks. One of the Committee was “Senior,” and another was known as the “Judge.” No full names, please, but of course the members knew who they were. These giants were all important public figures.
The boys venerated them. After all, they had killed Kennedy, yes? And gotten away with it. Anyway, that was what the whisperers said. To a man, both young and old, they were steadfast and true to their cause, which was to “Free Cuba” and “Halt the March of Socialism.”
Almost all of these boys, there were no girls, had parents who had fled the island. Their property had been stolen by the Communists. Three of the youths had fathers, or uncles, who had sailed into the Bay of Pigs with Ricardo Duque and who had been betrayed there by JFK. These soldiers, whether they were alive or dead, were like gods.
“Shooting deviants is a good thing,” the Leader said. “That was a good clean kill.”
“Was that in the escalation plan?” his Second-in-Command asked. “Was that what we meant by taking the ball to the…”
“The scum.” Another boy, the Recorder, finished his sentence.
“Is anyone pointing a finger at us?” the Leader asked. “Should we have any fear of an investigation?”
“No. None whatsoever,” came the deep voice of Security, the one who was in the Young Police League. “They’re going through the motions, but no one identified your car or the license plate.”
“That’s what I hear, too,” the Night Watchman agreed.
“Then we’ve had good luck,” the Leader said.
“No. It was good execution,” Security replied.
“Lord’s will,” the Night Watchman muttered.
“Who is available to run the mimeograph machine tonight?” the Leader asked.
Three hands went up.
“I’ve got to take my mother to church,” the Vice-President explained.
VI
After the shooting on Canal Street, Tubby lost his way for a while. He never did tell his father or his friends back home what he had seen. Witnessing the death of the boy he knew only as “Parker,” however, dramatically altered his intention of enlisting in the Marines. Somehow the mindless violence he had witnessed connected in his mind with the unending daily tragedies overseas, which were also featured stories on the 6 o’clock news.
Unaware that his recruit had become troubled, the Tulane counselor, true to his word, got Tubby into the university.
The French Quarter spirits he had known so briefly scattered to the winds. He got a postcard from Dan explaining that he was enlisting in the National Guard to “subvert from within.” He got into the Guard based on a recommendation from his state representative in Canton, Mississippi. One of the girls moved off to the Blue Ridge Mountains where life was simple and pure. His friend Raisin Partlow stayed in touch. He dropped out of his Mississippi college and was immediately drafted and sent to Vietnam. In his Tulane dorm Tubby received regular letters from Raisin, who was fixing helicopters near Danang in Vietnam. The consistent theme, repeated over and over, was “Don’t the fuck even think about coming over here, whatever you do!”
But Tubby, the small town boy, thought he probably should go over there. He was supposed to join the ROTC as part of his school financial package but, wouldn’t you know it, someone burned the Tulane ROTC building down the night the Chicago 7 came to town. One problem solved.
School started going poorly. He became involved with a sophomore English major. In the ways of the time, what initially attracted him was that she had breasts like ripe cantaloupes, a comparison that came easily to him, having grown up on a farm. She was, however, very depressed as a general rule, not about the war or anything like that, but about her relationship with her father, her mother, her sisters. She would drink wine, then come over to Tubby’s room and cry. This had a chilling effect on his libido, which in turn depressed him, too. So he broke it off.
Events began to spin faster and faster. Dan was expelled from the Guard as an undesirable, and then went “undercover,” he said, to organize for some union. Most of the Tulane undergraduate students began to seem preppy beyond belief, or were too far into drugs to appeal to Tubby. Spirits low, he gave vent to an irrational burst of anger at a teacher about some interpretation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The professor, feeling physically intimidated, kicked him out of class. In retaliation Tubby quit school.
In a split second he was drafted. Right before his induction ceremony, Raisin came home.
“What the fuck did I tell you, man? Don’t go there!” he insisted over Heinekens at Fat Harry’s. Beer had become legal for 18-year-olds.
“Of course I’m going,” Tubby said angrily. “What else am I supposed to do?”
Two weeks after he crossed the line, leaving aimless civilian life behind, the peace accord went out the window, and the National Liberation Army raced south. In the middle of his basic training at Fort Polk, Saigon fell.
Tubby never left the country. In fact, he never left New Jersey. Due to his size he spent what was left of his two years of national service as a Military Police trainee. As an MP, he guarded the tarmac at Fort Dix and got to salute planeloads of men, those upright and those laid flat, coming home from various parts of the globe. In his country’s service he also competed on the Army’s wrestling team, and he got every muscle in his body bruised and torn by far better athletes than the blond boy from Louisiana. After beating the crap out of him they gave him the name “Tubby”. He was cool with that. They called themselves much worse things. Then he was discharged.
Raisin, Dan Haywood, and Tubby all came home with at least one thing in common. All three now knew there was definitely one thing that they never wanted to do again. Be in the Army. A noble calling, but…
Tubby’s Greyhound took him back to his hometown of Bunkie. A month later he was readmitted to Tulane. Only this time around his course in life was straight. With his muscles and bones mending, and his tuition paid by the government, Tubby began to see the point of getting educated. He met another English major named Mattie, and they started sleeping over at each other’s apartments. Tubby made the grades and graduated. Then he went to law school, and the rest, as they say, is history.