FREEJACK

an excerpt from The Return of the Son of Needmore, a novel in progress

"HELL NO, WE WON'T GO!" shouts Assistant Professor Harrison B. Eastep, M.A., in unison with some two or three hundred youthful — and a few, like Harry, superannuated — resisters of the military draft, gathered on this sweet spring morn with their arms linked at the elbows to block the entrance to the Portland, Oregon, Induction Center, a four-storey beige building of no architectural distinction whatsoever, ugliness excluded. It being Saturday, the induction center is closed, and no potential inductees are scheduled to arrive until Monday morning — a mere technicality, so far as both the demonstrators and their antagonists, a large, heavily armed contingent of the Portland police department, are concerned.

"HELL NO, WE WON'T GO! HELL NO, WE WON'T GO!"

Now let it be clearly understood that there is not the slightest possibility that Harry Eastep will ever be obliged to "go." After all, he's thirty-six years old, he's a father (albeit an absentee one), and he's already a veteran. (What would the troops at Ft. Leonard Wood have done for toilet paper, were it not for the heroic efforts of Pfc. Eastep, bravely typing recquisitions in the quartermaster's office?) No, Harry is putting his aging but still serviceable person on the line in solidarity with one of his favorite students at Arbuckle State University (where Harry teaches Essentials of Western Civilzation, a notorious undergraduate Mickey heavily patronized by student athletes, those living embodiments of the word "oxymoron"), who has claimed conscientious-objector status, on behalf of whom Harry has written several wonderfully artful letters of support to the student's local draft board, testifying to the deeply religious nature of the earnest young man's pacifist convictions, despite the fact that the young man in question is at best an agnostic, quite possibly a pagan, and most assuredly Professor Eastep's dope dealer.

Not to suggest, even for a moment, that Harry Eastep is any less staunch an opponent of the odious war in Vietnam than the next right-thinking person. But up till now, his opposition has taken the form of appending his signature to supplicatory petitions and letters to the editor, participating in polite little on-campus peace marches, and bravely adorning his automobile with a bumper-sticker bearing the ubiquitous, iniquitous footprint of the American chicken. In other respects, however, he has made himself a bit more of a spectacle, having zealously taken up (being between marriages) certain other accoutrements of the Now Generation — such as long hair, a droopy moustache, bellbottoms, and granny glasses, not to mention all the sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll he can stand at his advanced age. He opposes the war, of course, but he has been, let us say, distracted.

But there is something about the looming presence of a couple of hundred cops in the parking lot directly across the street — some astride great horses like Centurions, some bearing tear gas grenade-launchers, some with slavering, ravenous-looking dogs on leashes, the rest sporting huge coldcocks and flak vests and space helmets with spooky plastic masks--which, to borrow Dr. Johnson's well-used phrase, concentrates the mind wonderfully. The air in the no man's land between the adversaries is poisonous with bullhorn commands, vile imprecations, tear gas. At this particular juncture, despite the defiant slogans and locked arms and revolutionary good intentions, Professor Eastep has only one thought in his highly refined pedagogical mind: how to get the fuck out of here unbusted, with his long-haired noggin unbludgeoned and his bell-bottomed lower person intact.

On Harry's immediate left is his friend and favorite student Freeman Jackson "Freejack" Perrin, recently defrocked third-string Arbuckle State halfback, proprietor of an Afro so immense he could wear a peck basket for a fez, dealer in Acapulco G0ld and other exotic enhancements to everyday human cognition. And right now, Freejack has Harry's intellectual-feeb left arm locked in the iron grip of Freejack's ex-halfback right arm to such an unrelenting extreme that there is not the slightest chance that Harry can escape without tearing his own arm off at the shoulder, like some small animal springing itself from a steel trap in tiny agony. Harry, in turn, has a nearly equivalent death grip on the left elbow of Gil Burgin, who is participating in this demonstration solely because Harry, as his friend and Western Civ colleague and office mate, had appealed to his conscience (misery loving company, Harry had actually allowed himself to use that portentous word, though he did so with his own conscience as guilty as sin) and had prevailed upon Gil (who also bought a little weed now and then from Freejack) to do his duty and join hands in expressing their unanimous, unswerving opposition to the draft and the war.

"HELL NO, WE WON'T GO! HELL NO, WE . . . "

Hell's rejoinder to this imprudent challenge arrives straight out of the luscious blue springtime Oregon heavens with a hollow thwok! on the pavement almost at Harry's feet, a hissing, spitting, fuming tear gas cannister the size of a Colt .45 Malt Liquor can, hot as a two-dollar pistol, bouncing along in the gutter spewing hateful, noxious vapors. Freejack--who all morning has been wearing, mysteriously, a leather glove on his right hand — instantly turns loose of Harry's arm and reaches with his gloved hand for the cannister as if he thirsts for noxious vapors, scoops up that scorching, virulent, vehement missive and in the same motion hurls it with all his considerable pacifist might straight back into the advancing ranks of the minions of the Dark Angel, looks back just long enough to holler "Scratch gravel, White Wind!" over his shoulder to his troops — both of them — and takes off up the street through gathering clouds of tear gas. Harry and Gil exchange horrified glances, then break ranks and haul ass in hot pursuit.

After a few blocks Freejack swings down an alley and they catch up with him — which is to say, Freejack slows, then stops and waits for them. When they arrive, breathless and staggering, ashen with terror, Freejack is exultant.

"You dudes!" he cries, laughing helplessly and slapping his knee. "Man, you the palest ofays in Portland!"

Gil Burgin is hugging a lamp post, gasping for breath. "Y'know," he wheezes, "Snakeshit had it right."

How's that? Harry manages to inquire.

"Conscience," Gil says. "It really does make cowards of us all."