Outskirts Press, INC.

All hail Prodigal Time, 1969, lest it vanish in diamonds and dust.

Three people's lives interplay for love, for protest, and for family. Caught in the conflicted end of the Sixties, they pursue a life worth living. Over the course and fullness of a prodigal time, 1969 the three experience the end of the Sixties revolution, the beginning of the underground and GI Resistance, and travel in exile from the draft and its inclusion of youth in the distant and ever-present War in Vietnam. Kady and David travel Europe, work in France, come home for a wedding in Hudson Park, NY and a funeral in Dalhart, Texas, travel to California where Kady's sure she's pregnant, return to Woodstock, work a Freres' vacation in Vichy, France, where Kurt Kallini comes between the two of them. David returns from a walled-in Berlin to Kady working for Les Freres. They tell each other truths they can't bear to hear. The love they shared like the prodigal time of the Sixties runs out. Kady goes home, while David retreats to Munich. There Kurt Kallini offers big money if David will use GI-ID and buy PX supplies, which Kallini sends to GI bases, his diamonds and dust packaged as gifts to fund the GI Movement. David refuses. In the huge canvas bag Kady left with him, Kallini has taken from him, filled with diamonds and dust, and someone else brings it through customs. The empty bag tossed to him outside Kennedy Airport David takes home to Hudson Park. Then sends Kady her carpetbag and its tainted remains. Her huge bag once packed the cornucopia of all good things: music, freedom, love, travel, and especially the shared life worth living. Now it's only an empty bag that brought illegal contraband through customs. The Sixties end as the shadow of Nixon's Seventies falls over their lives.

PRODIGAL TIME, 1969 1. A Fatherless Time Blizzard snows whited out hilltops to the lakeside road, Route 90. Kurt Kallini and Lionel, the black dude, retreated from Cornell to Wells College, where Lionel took the Cornell van and Barb Kelly to Berkley on the Coast. Kallini saw the Sixties end. Quinn the Eskimo voted for violence, bombs, and bringing the Vietnam War home. Bring the war home. One, too many Columbias. One, too many Chicagos. Bring the war home. Dark was the night in Quinn's apartment and blizzard snows whited out the January day. Kallini didn't sleep for his crippled leg, mattresses scattered about the floor, and when he did his dream of St. Genieve hung like bloody lightning across the sky. A fatherless time. A time of Depression, worlds at war, and him selling news on the streets of Poughkeepsie. His mom worked for Deeves the Jeweler and Nana Morpheys kept the books. A Main Street of two, three story apartments hung over the walks and pavement down to Lucky Platt, Kresges, and FO Schwartz. Then Lower Main slid past Jewish shops of City fashion, ascots and flash, for the Blacks, Poles, Mics, and Guineas who hung out in the alleys downhill to the Hudson River and the train to New York City. Cripple on a skidboard with legs lost in an industrial accident handed him Journals to deliver upstairs. Old cripple with no legs and a guinea kid with one leg stunted from a bout of polio. Police tapped on the glass pane of Deeves Jewelry, where Kallini's mom worked and Nana Morpheys kept the books. Deeves the Jew listened to the Irish cop tell how the boys gangbanged a Polish girl and she pointed out Kurt, recalling the kid's coal black eyes glaring at her. Kallini sold papers down Lower Main. Deeves and Kurt's sickly mom begged him to name names and the Irish cop jotted them down: Rick Reilly, Ted Dobrynski, and Nikki Cerniglia. His sickly mom soon dead from cancer told him to pray to the virgin. "Every morning you walk up-a steps to the church on the hill, St. Genieve, you pray the virgin she help you." St. Genieve's cathedral stone masoned an outcropping of granite, uprising back to College Hill Park and looming over the downgrade of Main Street to the train station and the river. Both Kallini's walk to deliver papers down Lower Main and his ascent to St. Genieve took persistence. Nothing easy with his short leg and gnarled back. Granite steps terraced right and left and right again uphill to the cathedral. Kallini ascended to the heights and descended to the streets, mornings before school and afternoons to work. Kurt was a good Catholic boy for his mom. From St. Genieve he peered over to Haight Avenue where Nana Morpheys babysat him as a kid, street over from Vassar College, and his sight ranged over to Eastman Park and the eight stories of Vassar Hospital where he had his spinal operation. There the bully mic bastard Rick Reilly caught him coming out the heavy wooden doors. Ted Dobrynski hid behind the door and jumped Kallini. Three buttons ripped from his scrubbed white shirt for school. Reilly grabbed his head and jammed a fist into his face. Kallini fell on the stone steps. Big mic sat on his chest smashing his face, breaking his nose, cutting his lips and mouth wide open. Ted Dobrynski grinned to see Kallini take his bloody beating. "Kid, keep your mouth shut or you're dead." Kallini lost consciousness. Blood streamed into his eyes and choked his mouth, as he spit out teeth and globs of red spittle. In the sun he saw the virgin carving of St. Genieve soar above him on the ramparts, taking pity on his pain. He no longer hurt. Smell of spring air. The sky turned golden blue as cobalt. One of the Marist brothers who heard confessions helped Kallini to his feet. Looking into the sun above him he asked the brother if the carved woman was the virgin or St. Genieve. "What carved woman?" the Marist brother asked. There was none. The cathedral rampart soared above the stone steps with its lacquered panels, but no carving. Kallini had his first fit. A month later Nikki Cerniglia stuck a gun to Kallini's ear. "You're leaving the Jew's door unlocked or I blow your head off." Kallini was nearly fifteen. Burglary set off an alarm. Nikki, Dobrynski, and Reilly got questioned by a special investigator, not a cop on the take. A list of robberies tagged them. They told the investigator how Kallini pawned a jeweled watch and wedding ring two days ago. The ring his mom wore, never married, now dying of cancer. Pawn ticket had Kallini's name and $75.00. No one took care of the scrawny Italian kid with bushy eyebrows, fits, crippled back, and coal dark eyes. He got sent across the river to the Highland Reformatory. A fatherless time for Kurt Kallini in Poughkeepsie, New York. 2. Let the Physics Go "You can't quit college. It's ridiculous."" George Morpheys stared at his son, David. Baseball mits for hands gripped the Ford Galaxy as if car and rider spun out of control. "The whole thing's ridiculous," David replied to his dad. Let loose the dogs of war and he better run. World spun out of control and he rode in a car on snowy routes over high hills and plunging valleys. Road to Wells College and Cornell too. He swerved off his rocker. Karmic roadkill. "Quit college you do what?" "Do anything that's not the army." That fall David quit football and lost his scholarship. Smash went his head. Lights hazed out. No sound track till he checked back in showering. Blind side hit at defensive end. His ankle crumbled. He came as quarterback and quit as cannonfodder. His dad's word. Common folks who don't count, wasted in war, like linemen on a football team. His words. George Morpheys let off the gas for a valley route drifting snow on the way to Wells College. His son graduated from "little Harvard" as the recruiter offering David a scholarship for football called Hamilton. Best college in New York. Best chance his son do more than dig ditches, work on a farm, and tool machinery at the Poughkeepsie IBM. David had a hundred page thesis to complete. Then graduate from college. Then the draft and next stop Vietnam. Driving snow like electron bombardment dared him dream ways to smash up. "Quit football and now quit college?" "I see no reason to graduate." "Quitting lost your scholarship from football. Quit and worse happens." "Like you quit Bontecott?" "That was different, damn't." "You were my age." "I had a family to support. Foreman hired his son and Bontecott backed him. It was my job." "You punched him out." "I had a temper and I was out of work." "Well same as me." "I had a family to support and you had a scholarship." "You got a better job at IBM." David knew he shouldn't argue with his dad. His dad had heart problems. But it was the same. His dad quit Bontecott's and David quit football after one concussion and one busted ankle too many. Three years and the fourth he dropped out. For the sake of school work. He quit football, lost his scholarship, then worked selling sandwiches to pay tuition. He wrote papers on Whitman's poetry and Dostoyevsky's madness and improved his French to a point of exhaustion before Christmas vacation. He was played out. Western New York was all a blizzard. Between Binghamton and the girls college he saw Cayuga farms shrouded in snow. Oil furnaces fired under another layer of insulation. No one shoveled. No one checked mail. No one bought groceries. Lamps shone like campfires in the warm parlors, and the sun palled into pale grey morning. Let the Ford Galaxy skid toward fatality. What mattered a wrong turn sideways? Why not flip over a culvert? Let hard truth smash the sheetmetal roof flat to seat and chassis. Let the glass shatter like starry dust. No matter if impact emulsified brainmeal, limbs, and organs to a funereal concoction painted red. Nothing mattered. Like another concussion. To lose consciousness. To cease and desist. The crash a godsend devoutly to be wished. Turn off for Route 90 came too quick. A VW van lay still in swirls of snow. Someone walked the road. His dad swerved to miss the black coat, nearly clipped him, and turned in the direction of the skid. Galaxy lunged into the oncoming lane, spun backwards 360, and slammed into a snowbank. David let the physics go. They slid out of control and veered sideways and the slide caught the surging wave like skis, surfboard, and hydroplane, like a pyrotechnic defeat of gravity on the 4th of July. Sideways on air suction, deflation, smash of snowbank and tire blowout. Let slip the tense expectation. If something bad happens, nothing bad did. David let go. Nothing bad happened. Some chance spirit set him free on a snowy highway. Question of physics. Matter of faith. Front tire blew out. Other wheel spun gratefully. Guy in the black coat and black kid in the van helped push them off the embankment, and dad changed the tire. VW van left with one guy walking on. Single pedestrian in black overcoat, shitkicker sharp boots, cowboy black hat walked the lake road into Aurora. Dude skulked along ignoring an icy wind. Sullen in his wiry beard, he was neither student or working stiff. Walking into Aurora like he didn't mean to stay long. Dad slowed the Ford Galaxy and David slid down his window. Icy gale blew like jet engines and David made himself heard. "Thanks for your help back there. You need a ride?" Black-hatted walker glanced up, the engine running, his thick brows intensified as he saw father and son. His dark eyes bored into a person. "No thanks." Dad shouted over. "You must be freezing in this blizzard. What do you say?" "Thanks again, but I'm close enough to the Inn to pass on your offer. A walk works up an appetite." His eyes like icesickles needled into a person. "And you. Do you need directions?" "To the French House, where my son stays." "Quarter mile past the Inn on the lakeside. Brown gothic house with room for every Wells girl who can parley francais. Can't miss it." "Appreciate your help," dad said. David rolled up the window and the black coat faded to white. Dad chatted about the accident. David drifted into the Wells winter study. Angry words were to no avail between father and son. They parted in the storm. Fathers and sons. Father from a Depression whose social pain resolved in a world war too horrible to catalogue. Son spurred on by boundless optimism toward a dark journey lit by burning monks, burning ghettoes, and napalm burning off the jungles. "Accident was his fault. With him standing in the road I swerved aside." David nodded into his own world. One aloof from IBM and its THINK slogan. "Still, he had a pleasant manner about him." David tagged him as one of those Movement guys who travel campus to campus working resistance to the draft and the war. Dudes with cars and credentials, and a darling chick or two. Someday the war will end, nobody knew when. So the song goes. This dude had an odd gait, drifting along the lake road. As if walking took great patience or great pain, not to limp. There was Aurora. College town with a string of houses along the lake. The French House on the far side of Aurora looked over Lake Cayuga. An odd manor house with two wings, a carved wooden door, cupolas, gothic arches and all. Over the lake hung billowed clouds, swirling above the icy waters. The storm moved eastward. In its exhaust came the quiet of a cold snap. An aurora borealis streaked the neon sky with arctic splendor. Heavens contended in meteor shots: black and blue and emulsified brainmeal painted red. A bad accident colored the sky, as the storm swept onto New England. It was a college town. For girls, no less. David's brain brought with him a blizzard of busy thought. The sky lit up. Aurora was rosy-fingered dawn. Dawn to days brighter, flower warm, days so summer long that night meant no more than shadows, cast to call back day. Stay, stand still, and marvel in the setting sun. Aurora was the dawn. A string of houses along the lake. Aurora was prodigal time in days dark beyond belief. So much darker with nightfall over the waters. Time simply ran out. What was undone was left undone. David returned home. For David Morpheys Aurora was the dawn and afterward the music of memory. 3. Let Lionel Go Ford Galaxy nearly hit him. Leaping aside Kurt Kallini pulled muscles in his lower back. His back twisted wrong to a short leg from childhood polio. Morpheys didn't recognize him. Better for Kallini he owed nothing to the son. Kallini had a run-in with the Ithaca RYM where Quinn made briefcase bombs instead of sheets of LSD. Send Lionel to the coast with money, briefcases, and good will to the Oakland Panthers. They needed Lionel and Kallini sent him with Barb Kelly west. RYM blamed him. Kurt Kallini had longer range plans with the breakdown of SDS. Only a GI Resistance Movement put an end to the war. Panthers and the white RYM-rockers mere brought war and repression home. Leaving the van. "Better I don't give you the combination. Let me call." "How much bread in the briefcase?" "All Quinn the Eskimo put aside. For the vanguard. For the Black colony in Amerika." "Rich contributors?" "All them in this Revolutionary Youth Movement got rich parents. They play at life and now they play at death." "Kallini, you think I'm black enough for these Panthers." "Lose you Rye way of jiving. Wear shades. Talk black. You the man, who set up the Black studies program at Cornell." "But Julian Bonds. Can I match him?" "Hey Lionel. Both coasts got their own politics. Color counts. Rage counts. Violence ranks up there too." "You got the goods. I'll be your courier of cases." "The coast gets down to cases and you're carrying." "Last favor and we're flat." Kallini nodded. Then nearly got ripped by the Ford Galaxy. For Christ's sake, crippled for life, smacked on a stormy Route 90. He walked on to see how badly his back wrenched. To figure how bad Quinn the Eskimo came after him. His Cornell RYM blacklisted him and Joshua Steen for singing no songs of Mao, for refusing the cadre initiation, for voting against violence. Quinn quit voting. Kurt Kallini connected to the Sixties movement resisting the war in Vietnam. Other business connected him with his Uncle Carlo, who lost respect in the City, and Evander Bontecott who gained. One group played into another, wheels within wheels, as Kallini played his role. Only the machinery wore out. Like the war and this phase of fate's wheel. Kallini had Lionel rap through the Oakland move with Barb Kelly. He gave Lionel the Cornell van to take west to his black brothers in Oakland. "Take Barb with you," he told Lionel. "Brothers at the Black Panther capital of the whole pig-watching world will like her. What better than a knocked-up, big boobed, blond chick at headquarters? Better than a sawed-off shotgun for protection. You tell them. And lose that crusty Rye accent. Talk like a brother. Be a brother. And take a stash of money, not dope, across the country. Hell of a lot safer." The right move. For Lionel and Kurt Kallini. But one to end his role with more radical turns in the Movement. A move to bring down some heavy condemnation. Lionel got the Black Union at Cornell. Now the Blacks separated from SDS. Quinn and his RYM worshipped the Black Vanguard. So sending Lionel to the coast called down some heavy shit on Kallini. RYM wanted black and white together to bring the revolution home. Let Lionel go. Kallini owed him. Lionel's references included Kallini's van, a good deal of dope money, and Barb Kelly. Barb was Kallini's bonus card to the Black Panther organization. A card he already played. Kallini organized connections between east and west coasts of what he called The Brotherhood. It connected him to the 68' Freres of the Sorbonne revolution. SDS played itself out. From moratoriums and marches to cadres and solidarity cells. It was an end to the Sixties. Kallini saw RYM at war with Progressive Labor and becoming more radical by far. Maoism, the NLA, and support for the black colony inside Amerika. The Brotherhood could fund GI Resistance if Kurt Kallini connected with outliers in France and Italy. There was his work with Uncle Carlo. His uncle left Naples to avoid a first world war and Kallini left for France to avoid this one. Kallini was a go between, a connector. He connected the lawless codes of his uncle's generation with these GI resisters of his own. SDS split up by RYM no longer served his purposes. Age 33 he wasn't too old and settled, nor young and rootless. He saw the time unhinged without losing himself in the abyss. It was time to salvage what he could. For Lionel to the coast, for Kallini into the chaos and out, and for his Uncle Carlo, anything for the only father he ever had. Kallini came uphill from the Inn to the Townhouse. He saw the van parked and Barb beside it with her painting, Boobs at a Banquet. Herself nude on a guinea red and white tablecloth. Why weren't they gone? "I got to say goodbye to my best friend, Kady Bontecott." A whine in Barb's voice died in the swirling snowstorm. Lionel in a half Afro waved his hands in apology. Lionel should be the Black dude and say, "Are you on the bus, bitch, or off?" Those green eyes of his and tan color didn't fit the half Afro, nor did his Rye accent. Instead he pleaded. "Barb, come on babe, we'll be all day waiting in this weather." He checked oil and transmission fluid. He went upstairs for Barb's four Samsonites. St. Louis plane stubs hung from Christmas with her preacher folks at the Episcopalian mission. Lionel had second thoughts too. Meet these Black Panther guns with a white chick. Only Kallini funded his politics. And helped him make a name. Here's the black dude who planned the Afro-American program and their own house at Cornell. He wasn't radical like the Panthers. Kallini said he needed connections on both coasts for a political career and that's what Lionel wanted. The one favor Kallini asked. Van all packed with Barb in a fur collared coat open in the wind. And she whined about losing her friend. "Get in the van before you freeze to death," Kallini told her. "I don't want to leave Kady without a goodbye hug." "Hey, Lionel told you. In this blizzard Kady's not coming. You don't want her traveling in a snowstorm." "You called her?" "Her dad won't let her in the VW bug." "Really?" "Go west with Lionel. I'll give Kady your big hug. And your beautiful painting." "You knew. It's for her." "You got talent, Barb." "But I have to leave, really, you sure?" "Love, baby. In San Francisco they'll dig your talent. Here they're too hung up to love your flesh tones. Baby, you're a female Reubens." Kallini's stared into Barb's vacant blues like shattering glass after a champagne toast. Female Reubens, she had the body of a plains madonna. She had to go. Her and Kady Bontecott got too close, like sisters sharing secrets. Before he knew Kady'd be with Barb in St. Louis or with relatives in Dalhart, Texas. Kady's dad had plans for her. Take care of her sick mom. Kallini met Evander Bontecott when he was a Marist brother. When he helped the dying at Vassar Hospital. Kallini was good with death and dying as a seminarian. The Movement turned to death and dying. Suited his personality. He'd been crippled from a touch of polio. With Kady's mom dying of colon cancer, Kallini and Evander hit it off. Gradually he did work for Bontecott Stones. And Kady's mom survived the cancer so far. Kallini convinced him Kady's semester in Paris prepared her to tutor French at the Bennet School in Millbrook. But Kady and Barb got too close as roommates and Lionel owed him a favor. Done. Evander held up Kady, and Lionel got on the road. "Okay Barb, I'll see Kady. Hit the road, Lionel. And get a pair of shades and a scowl for your face. You look like Rye Country Day." Lionel grunted a "We be cool, brother." But it wasn't him. Kallini was the last white mother he'd be beholden to. The Panthers set his mind straight. And Kallini saw white and black go separate ways. Down dark alleys of violent demise. Holding-hand days were a long time gone. Cornell SDS planted bombs in buildings. Quinn the Eskimo promised him a white-out Christmas. Get his protégé Lionel away. Wait for Quinn to come for him. Then return to business with his Uncle Carlo. "Let me know which way the wind blows." "I be shucking and jiving with the brothers. Get a weatherman." "You don't need one." Barb stuck her splashed hair out the window frame. "Give Kady my hug. Wish I went to Paris with her." "Sacrifice for the sake of your art, okay honey." VW van let out the emergency, taxied downhill toward the Aurora Inn, and they too were long gone. 4. Promises to Keep David Morpheys unfurled his sleeping bag on a top bunk. He stared into a desert of snow funnels playing spin the bottle. Mr. Clean came to the rescue over a frozen Lake Cayuga. Lunar surface. Like father, like son. Dad quit the Bontecott farm for IBM. Dad's dream to live on a farm, and he worked World War II as a farmer, until Bontecott treated them like peasant boarders. Never servant to no one. Off to IBM and Suburbia with a square of garden in the backyard for after work and weekends. David quit football and wanted to quit school. He planned to cross over to Quebec with his French before the draft called him up. Why he worked on his French this Wells winter study. It was a bad deal. Like all deals with corporations like IBM, THINK. His friends in Hudson Park had worse. Not rich, they lived on the margin. Short term jobs like filling gas tanks, the bottomless A&P bag, or the bottomless stomachs at Dairy Queen. No, those were high school jobs. His buds moved onto unions, drugs, and the army. Kind of jobs they waited for weekends, careening in cars, crossing bridges to towns where bars stayed open, and waiting for sunrise in an alcoholic stupor, sleeping out the sun. Friday night, Saturday parties, and Sunday anxiety as the workweek came round again. No, that was high school life too. But his friends did pretty much the same. Some community college, to defer the war. Swirls of snow cut patterns over Lake Cayuga. His room door rattled as if the blizzard broke in. The call came at his door. He spun surprised. A straw-haired girl bent double over an immense canvas bag. A backpack and a stray suitcase too. Tall girl peered in, her nose and chapped cheekbones glazed with freckles, her eyes cut grass green. "Merde. Qui etes vous, Monsieur?" She swallowed a breath and let it go like blown smoke from a Dunhill cigarette. "You're in my room. Least I think so. That French bitch below told me, speak only French. I asked her where's my room and she blabs Non-Non-Non about ten in a row and shakes her finger and face like some damn epileptic. Who are you? Qui etes vous?" "One of the guys." "I mean why are you in my room?" "Sorry, this room's mine." "No kidding." Kady looked at her mimeo. Check. "Sorry I banged the shit out of your door, you in here sacked out and peaceful. One hell of a snowstorm! So thought I'd be solo here, except for the damn epileptic at the desk." David stared. It took him time to find words. He knew this girl, this debutant type with a glacial reserve, the kind of girl he steered clear because she wanted no part of him. He knew girls from Hudson Park off to schools like himself, and with their affairs of the heart they hurt each other. They were like him, hometown, first generation off to college with opportunity to do their parents one better. One chance. Don't blow it. He knew this kind of girl, yet he was mesmerized by her green eyes. Straw-blond hair the color of cornfields fell from her skicap, gold ringlets, like a bead curtain over her eyes. Her look cut David adrift. Sunny blond hair the color of straw in the field. Least he managed to speak. "Hope I didn't scarf up your room with a view. With my French I make mistakes." "Hey, Non-Non-Non. You got it right. Mamselle's clear as a bell about room numbers. I ignored her. She pointed her bony finger upstairs, sputtering in francais a mile a minute, schedule of classes, lab times, dinners." David leaped from the top bunk with a lunge to the floor. Kady blew strands of hair from her eyes and kept talking. As she glimpsed this tall, gangly, bespeckled guy with Racine mustache and sleepy eyes, someone she might be interested in, had she the time, with her VW running, barely, dropping off stuff to pick up more stuff, with Barb Kelly at the Townhouse, Barb waiting for her, as Kallini promised. "How do you say politely in francais, shut the hell up?" "Got me," David shrugged. "Housekeeper downstairs, not you." David understood. "So off I grabbed the paper because I'm meeting my friend Barb Kelly at the Townhouse and my damn VW stops cold unless I leave it running. Give it gas it goes. Doesn't idle well and doesn't start once it stops. Friend at the Fargo talked about a tune-up before Christmas and now it needs major surgery. Jesus, I'm talking your ear off and you stand there polite as pie, just listening." He knew this girl, debutant type, and she knew him. It didn't matter. He had plans to quit school and slip across the border to Quebec. It didn't mean he had no manners. "Let me help with that bag." "I can handle it. Really, don't bother. And parley francais, so Mamselle doesn't bebop upstairs and start lab exercises on us." The jazzy inconsequence shut him up. He reached for the filled to bust carpetbag and lugged it with her vinyl suitcase. Freckles fluttered on her chapped face. Fall leaves frozen on a gaunt winter tree. Chill wind flooded upstairs like a door open to the cold. He'd recognize that look next time. She was pissed off at his presumption to carry her bag for her. Kady glared at this tall boy who kept her from Barb Kelly. "Hey, don't touch the bag. Really, I got it." David didn't dare glance up. Bead curtain hair like snakes and cut green glass for eyes. He lugged the bag to her door. What he should do and leave. She saw this long hair with the drooping shoulders and Racine mustache. Another guy like Kallini who'd come by and listen to music. Open a door and it stays open. "Then help me quick, okay. Once my VW stalls I'm stuck and I got to see my friend, Barb Kelly. Next room here. Set it down." Kady unzipped the stereo from her huge bag. There it was, okay. All kinds of banned stuff. "Hey, no tunes and no car, that'd be tough for a month. I know Mamselle said no stereo. Merde alors, how does on live without the finer things? I can't picture Paris without a stack of records, can you?" Kady mumbled, damn, no dice. She had to call her mom, say she was fine. Else get the guilt trip for not caring. Tall guy with wire-rims gawked at the stereo, like he'd ask to play it. "No, I can't picture Paris at all," he said. David prepared to explain he wasn't going with the French group, that he was here for winter study, that he intended to find a factory job until his head cleared or the draft called, when he figured to cross into French Quebec. Kady bustled him from her room. With a Non-Non-Non she flicked her index finger like a 4th of July sparkler. "Monsieur, toujours francais." Her workboot slid in the stereo, suitcase, and backpack, and with a quick key turn she locked her room shut. Then she fastened green eyes on him and said as she bolted downstairs into the blizzard wind, "Hey sleepy eyes, don't you ask a person's name? Why not learn some manners?" 5. Kady and Kurt Kallini Kallini greeted her. He had black hair and brows that made his eyes scowl. A book of Nietzsche he gave her to read had this scowl. Only he was Italian. Barb's painting was his idea. He told her of his uncle's Neapolitan place in Poughkeepsie. Barb had been with him. Now she was with Lionel. Kady didn't care who Barb bedded. Only her roommate was gone, and they planned a trip to Paris to break loose from their parents. Barb broke off to the coast. Kady had her mom to care for. "Hey Kady, sorry I couldn't delay Barb a few minutes longer. Snow fell pretty bad. Lionel wanted to make Route 80 west before it got dark. You can't blame him." Kady blamed every goddamned guy, all of them, Kallini, Lionel, specially the tall, gawky guy at the French House. "You mean I missed Barb by ten minutes." "Hey Kady, I held them up for an hour. Best I could do." "Best you can do, it's not good enough. Do better for Barb Kelly? Care more, why don't you? Give her to Lionel and say split for the coast. Care for somebody other than yourself. You put San Francisco in Barb's mind, and off she goes, carefree as the wind." Kallini's eyes bore into hers, his Nietzsche scowl, his brows knit together, like he meant her harm. "The hell with all of you guys. One month and I'm out of here for good." Kady threw up her hands at Kallini. She rushed into Walcourt with her huge bag emptied of the stereo and filled its cornucopia with all their records and things. She was out of the Townhouse. God she hoped Mamselle didn't stick a Wells debutant with her. Who could replace Barb Kelly? Nobody at all. She better have her own room. With a padlock to keep out guys like Kallini and the sleepy eyed boy with a Racine mustache. 6. Her Heavy Bag of Sorrows David listened for her. He'd rue the time he missed her. He was quit of football and school. He was a heavy-winged raven like the black-hatted dude. He inured to icy wind and winter storm like the drifter dad swerved to miss. Learn francais and leave for Canada. He met girls like Kady but never knew them. Kady returned, lugging the heavy bag upstairs. She saw him coming. His droopy mustache, gangling arms, and can-I-help-you brown eyes. She decided to unpack and head to campus. See her other friend, Jesse. "Alors Monsieur. Sorry I split so fast. Had to say goodbye to my roommate and she was gone." "Barb Kelly." Mad her roommate was gone, this guy told her so. She dropped her heavy bag of sorrows. "Let me help." "I should've stayed at the Townhouse. All this stuff's a drag." "Let me carry it. That's why they hired help for winter study. Do the odd job nobody wants." "You're not in the French program?" He gave her a devious grin. "Then pick it up before the bag breaks my shoulder." Kady had Barb's painting turned over. Morpheys threw her bag on the bare mattress and she lay Barb's art, face down. She unzipped the bag with a shared record collection, everything. He stared at covers. "Rules against music, they're made to be broken, right? Hey, nothing more for the help to do. Let me tidy up, you go about your business." "I was kidding, you know?" "Really." Kady rifled through the huge canvas bag until it lay empty on the bare wood floor. David watched her, speechless. Like a cornucopia of all the good things in life: music, love, friends, time to make a life together, or least imagine one. Fill it up again. He wished to importune her. Please replenish this huge canvas bag, this cornucopia of all good things. Sure she knew him and he knew her. Time here at the French House wasn't time wasted. No time need be. Look beneath the bead curtain of her eyes, like looking on the sunrise of Long Beach Island where he went one summer, where the sun and the sky surprised him. The look beyond school, where la mer melee au soleil. C'est retrouve, quoi, l'eternite. Rimbaud, why he wanted to parlez francais. Like songs he memorized whole poems of the symbolists, Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Mallarme. Speak to her. Tell her about his plans. No, not the escape across the border to Quebec. Tell her about French poetry and how it made college come alive, more than football and classes, how it made Hudson Park less than memories of high school. It was the journey. It was the prodigal time. It was not what he was, but what he wanted to be. And Kady Bontecott. Last part of her last college year she intended months at the Sorbonne. Put the finishing touch on her French. Have some good times even if Barb Kelly left for the Coast. Then return to her sick mom, her dad's horsefarm, to tutor, then teach French at the Bennet School. No glamorous life, but what she planned to do. Kady listened to him. Who else were there, but the two of them? "Some blizzard we came through today," David said. "Kind of storm stirs up the storeposts, my Gram would say. Dust in Dalhart,Texas not all that different from these cold New York snows. West Texas survived the Depression and pounded the posts back down. What my Gram said. Why my mom left. Who'd think she left Gram's farm in West Texas to end up stuck on my dad's horsefarm in New York?" This Wells girl didn't talk like a debutant. Not like Dana Dupont. Still she knew him and she had a month to be off to Paris. Too bad for him. She kicked the deflated canvas bag under the bare mattress. "Sorry, got to run to campus." "See ya." "You don't ask a person's name?" He stared at her. "No manners?" "David Morpheys, at your service, waiting on your return." "Kady Bontecott." "My dad worked for a Bontecott before he quit for IBM." "Bien sur, Monsieur. Mais pas d'Anglais ici." Kady Bontecott scooted downstairs to her buzzing VW, barely running, on up to campus. David on second floor landing, looked downstairs to see if his vision of prodigal time remained, once the parlor doors swung closed. 7. Meet Your Mates Kady left, and the parlor filled with girls and a guy with short hair and parka. Mamselle reviewed the rules in francais too fluent for the untuned ear. Intros in ragged francais. He met his roommate Doug Bryant, from Philadelphia and Hamilton too. The girl Deb spoke of basketball if David played afternoons. She and Trixsie roomed from freshman year. All hail to hoops, he told Deb walking the stairwell. "Hey Doug, any of the beds they're yours. Bunkbed or single, take your pick." "I'll have the single." He set two leather suitcases on the mattress. He wore tweed jacket and tie beneath his parka. He looked the AD type like Steve Hancock, the coach's pick at quarterback. Only not. With his heavy glasses and jerky manner AD dangled his type from the third floor. Doug was the fool. "You belong to a fraternity, David?" "Did with DKE. No, not now. Too complicated, with these are the brothers and those are the jerks. You?" "ELS. I tried them out. We dress for dinners. Why I wore the suit, in case it's part of the program." "Damn I hope not. Mine got left at high school graduation. Used a friend's for the frat picture. Too much dress up at DKE." "What if dinner here requires coat and tie?" Doug's question suggested his shock. As if someone without pants ventured into the public eye. A punctilious code of rules his defense. Top of his suitcase his accountant dad tucked in a Playboy pack of come-ons to curry favor with girls. There was his shiteating grin. "I'm going to use it or lose it. The book I mean. You're welcome to thumb through it when I'm finished." David turned to see a third roommate appareled in gray wool coat, suit, and silk tie. "Hey a hand my good man, my kingdom for a hand." Walter stepped on springy feet with ready smile, and his hefty weight kept in motion with the gift of gab. Walter was the clown. "Walter Rink at your service." David helped him with a number of bags taken from a taxi, which Walter paid. Two bags David trundled upstairs to their room. Walter saw Doug's book of one-liners. "Aha, the Bryant by-the-book approach. I've tried everything. You're Morpheys?" "The bagman, at your service. Why the taxi?" "Unbelievable, what happened. You guys won't belieeeve what happened to me. Driving down Route 7 almost to Skaneateles, doing well on slippery roads, my GTO cruising near 60, listening to Fabulous Finds of the Fifties, you know, WOOH BABY! Great load of fire. And I'm sha-bob-bobbing along to the beat when this deer with a rack like tree branches busts my car. Jesus H. Christ! My car took a bounce before he took his last flying__ at the moon." "No kidding," David said taking a chair for Walter's narrative. Doug stuck a pipe in his gaping mouth. "My deer took his lover's leap into the wild blue yonder. And my GTO with a busted radiator, bent carbumper, stood there, bleeding to death. Steam hissed into the cold and headlights gave up the ghost. Hey, I'm in big ass trouble. Night coming on. I'm betting three to one here I freeze my balls on fire twenty miles from the most girls I'll ever meet in my life. Die in the prime of life, hell no. I'll walk, hitch, or crawl if I have to. You would too." "How'd the taxi come by?" "Half the town of Skaneateles came by. First hee-haw hick sees my car and sees the deer and says real nonchalant, hey, looks like the deer killed your car. I'll go down to the ESSO and see what they can do. Next comes the trooper with the same deer killed your car line. Then finally the ESSO wreaker, same line, only this hayseed asks if he can keep the deer." "How'd the taxi save your sorry ass?" David asked again. "I told the wrecker guy I was a good shot. Why not ride me to Wells College where the girls are? I see, he says. You're going deer hunting, hardee-har-har. You bet, I say. If I can tell the bucks from the does I'm doing my share of dosee-doeing. Wrecker guy's king of the comics. Says deerhunting going to cost me, lots of bucks and plenty of dough. Hardee-har-har. He called the town taxi and here I am." Doug's shiteating grin needed his pewter pipe again. "Hey Walter, you're a real card. Too bad you need a ride to dinner." "You're driving what, Doug?" "The Thunderbird my dad got me on my twenty-first birthday." "Well it ain't no GTO." "Neither is yours after the deer killed your car." "Hardee-har-har. Let's go to dinner. And don't use the deer killed my car routine. Give me a week to bleed that sucker dry." They took Doug's Thunderbird to dinner. Walter sat at the table-end like a liege lord; Doug, his straight-arrow retainer. The French group shared a room off the main mess supposedly to speak francais. Walter had the girls for his audience. "Why are we quarantined to break bread by ourselves?" Deb McGuire, among the beautiful, looked ordinary. Her dirty blond tinged with red and tied in a pony tail. David told her he played ball. "We're quarantined because of your company. You skip dinner and we can sit in the main mess." "Skip dinner, are you kidding? I'd rather skip breathing." Walter's brylcreamed hair hung over his eyes. He belonged to the AD frat at Colgate. Jester among the aristocrats of Choate, Groton, and Rye Country Day. "You girls cut me, personally, and my brethren. We men come to share your female company and we're greeted with disgrace. We come bearing gifts..." "What gifts?" Trixsie asked. "Nothing less than male companionship." "Nothing more?" Deb asked. "But nothing less, mind you. In this time of civil unrest we are the minority at Wells asking for fair treatment." None of the girls knew him enough to test his seriousness. "We'll give you a week and see if it works," Trixsie smiled to Debra, her roommate all through college. "Then a week turns into a month here and months in Paris. Your humble servants. We accept your gift of gracious hospitality." Walter flicked his eyebrows like Groucho. He had presence and poured coffee round the table. He had their bemused attention for his Deer killed his car rendition. "You see me here for dinner by the grace of God and Doug Bryant come to the rescue. There I was in my GTO on the road from Colgate to Skaneateles, and what prances before my car? No, not Rudolph, but his second cousin. I was listening to Fabulous Finds of the Fifties..." Douglas stuck his pewter pipe in his mouth. Trixsie and Deb, roommates till death, as Kady and Barb expected to be, nodded to one another. They would know better next time. Walter had Doug play the three hicks with a hardee-har-har. He had a part for Morpheys, had he not slipped away before this second helping of Walter's humor. If Kady Bontecott dined in the hall, he wanted a word about Walter with her. Warn her. She was nowhere in sight so he took the mile walk back to the house. Raven dark with slivered moon he clutched his worn suede coat in the steely wind. 8. Les Jeux sont Faits The French House lost its hollow sound. A few girls talked in the parlor. Mamselle played Debussy on the house stereo. An occasional board creaked in the hall and a flush upstairs blew its windy water organ. David's mind worked overtime. He wrote pages of poetry. Like Baudelaire, poems en prose. Like daydreaming. Take off for the coast like Kady's roommate, a sure-fire solution. On the road in a cross country van. Four years of college cooped up in classes, sports, and grades had gone on too long. It was an unreal time beyond recognition. Either/or. Sometime near winter David decided he knew. Not a hell no, I won't go, but a check of alternatives, one's own body count, and a pull like a thin air day in September signaled fall and football frenzy. For birds the instinctual rudder turned south. He dropped football and lost his scholarship. Now he had loans. Drop out of school, worse happens. Plan his next move better. Worse wasn't necessarily bad. Least it's not the same. David stared at the moon dusting the rippled black Cayuga with snowy incandescence. Blues in the next room. Offbeat acoustical blues complaining of trains taking him from his woman. Black smoking spirit of night like iron destiny between hearts already broken, and another town where whiskey and women bring an untimely end. "All my love's in vain." Not the Stones and their British gloss on this primordial sadness. This blues blacker than Melville's chapel on Ishmael's cold, cold trek seeking shelter in a strange town. Seeking employment with body and soul already enslaved to a fate whose finish was in the beginning, the coming to America. High seas heist for one, and high seas voyage out with doom inked on the wage contract. Black blues and Melville's epic, dark side to the American dream. Acoustical blues along the pipes connecting Kady's room to David. Music meshed with thick incense on a Budapest express. Girl with green eyes and spring freckling her face slipped into her room and played blues, illicit as hashish, sad and low, so only she and David heard. Knock on the door and compliment her music. He was too rash. Kady played blues to bewail Barb Kelly's departure, her sad escapade to the west coast when Kady traveled east to Paris. She sulked in private and resented his intrusion. Catching her on the fly like this afternoon, carrying her bags, collected her contempt. What was welcome and what wasn't? He wasn't. How to handle with care this male/female thing? Lure of blues and David Morpheys tap-tapped on his neighbor's door, soft so Kady wouldn't think it was Mamselle. Tap-tapping in pentatonic time, his call went unheard. No response as the room suffered no human presence. No more than the dead bluesman misleading David's reverie. He knocked full blast, so much louder than normal he shocked himself. The landing echoed. He was the house arrest, waking the dead, stash the smoke and muffle the music, I'm coming in. A male voice answered David's knock. "Hey, whoever the hell's there, come on in. I ain't stopping you." Kurt Kallini, who trekked to town from Cornell that afternoon, sat on Kady's bare mattress, lotus position, black cowboy hat, beard and thick brows, and piercing stare. Above Kady's bed the picture of a blond nude flirted with the viewer. "Sorry to disturb your meditation. I wanted to ask Kady about the blues." Kallini unwound from the lotus, tipped his bead-banded hat, and sat long black coat open on the single armchair. David stood. Indian band reminded David of a belt his dad gave him from a Quebec fishing trip with Grandpa. Where David went when drafted. "Robert Johnson," Kallini said. He crossed his sharp-toed, leather boots straight up to his knee, staring, dark eyes and heavy brows beaded on David. "My name's David Morpheys. We met this afternoon." Then the blank stare back, like he said, Hey, my name Jose Jimenez. Dude's eyebrows shut down like window shades on a tomb. "Delta bluesman is Robert Johnson. Black Orpheus who made the devil's deal to slide guitar whines at twenty one like Son House at forty. Immaculate conception of talent, flush with the gift and flashy with women. No cash. Just local notoriety, whiskey and women, and a waking doom ticking daylight in another Mississippi town, one day closer to the end. Jealous man poisoned his liquor and Robert Johnson spewed his insides in an empty room dead at daylight." "The music's so cool. Type I like to play on harmonica." "It's his soul ascending, sliding off like sparks and back like ash into the fire of endless silence. Acoustic guitar alive like an ashen coal with only one night to play." "What's your name anyway? Kady complained of manners when I didn't ask hers." "Name's Kallini, Kurt Kallini." Morpheys knew how to name him. Kallini was the guru and he was the novice come to learn the groovy route to truth. David didn't want the connection. It was simply there. Like so much else. "The blues calls you, then?" "Yes, like the truth. Like a car spun out of control whose accident waits for snowbank or the flip into a culvert of flame." "Father and son then. The Ford Galaxy that almost hit me." "Two views of the blues, like everything." "The blues is feeling, one step below sadness. Devil's deal its birthmark. All its joys are sparks in the darkness, the whiskey and the women, like the music itself. In the morning one's all strung out with only the bitter wind blowing you to the next honky-tonk town." "I like Chicago blues." "Who, Buddy Guy and Herbert Sumlin?" "Don't know them. I like Mike Bloomfield." "Kady likes Taj Mahal. College copy of twang and cornpone. Johnson is clean and pure. The deal is done. Les jeux sont faits." "Bloomfield plays guitar like a sudden shower of notes, a burst of rain gone before one senses a cool wet in a summer heat wave." David liked his words. Improvisation to match how Kallini talked. "I saw Bloomfield at Silvio's with Muddy Waters. His fun complimenting the master with high flying licks. Father and son, you know? Yet Muddy knows so much more about the feeling. The cotton fields, the slavery, and the Klan's maiming of the black man." "Bloomfield's learning." "Yea he's learning, like Clapton. Same night at Silvio's a black dude arrives between sets. Short barrel-chested dude held this Afro'd head by the hair, blood-soaked and dripping. Horrible sight, the hacked head of a human being. The Medusa. Sucker says to the barman cool as can be. Teach that jive talkin’ mother to fug around with my woman. Terror takes his stool in the black man's bar. White guys cry to Muddy for a guitar father. But the blues cries its tears for a mother dead and no father at all." David mesmerized by Kallini's heavy-browed eyes and his tale told. Kallini buttoned up his coat. "Now Chicago is the city where cops beat kids and kids beat back until Democrats find nothing but chaos, Kennedys dead, Martin Luther king dead, Wallace taking up votes, and Nixon elected. Now the RYM can't wait to return to Chicago and bring the war home. They don't know war and you don't know the blues." "I'd make a my own deal to play like Robert Johnson." "Always more to the deal than simply the dotted line." "It's all a bad deal. Whether I sign up or take off." "You know it Morpheys." David liked he had something to say back. Kallini gave him a nod. "Kady's out and so am I. Take the record and when you see Kady, play it. Tell her Kallini came by." David moved aside from the door. Mold of Kallini's face, jutting forehead and wide cheekbones, reminded him of Kady. Of course Kady had green eyes and cheeks splashed with freckles. Kallini was gone and the door hung open. What a fool he was, to play the novice to Kallini's mentor. But he couldn't help himself. The blues were too cool. 9. Kallini on Bass Kallini returned to the Aurora Inn where he'd eaten dinner that evening and took a room. He hooked up with the band, a group of town kids, his cousin Joey Gallo's age. It was Don on drums, pimply Lloyd West on guitar, and Tim Burt singing. Eddie, their bass player, got an Auburn factory job. He was out but his amp stayed. Kallini said he played bass. He keyed into the drumbeat and played runs beside the guitar chords. Guitar and drums were adequate, but Tim Burt swaggering like Mic Jagger didn't cut it. After a couple Stones songs Tim Burt left to see his girlfriend in Auburn. Kallini's arrival timed his departure. He saw Kady too. Usually the band did without a singer. Now they were pissed because Tim Burt cut out, and they lost Eddie on bass. Then they asked Kallini why he didn't sing too. He did. Kallini thought he'd ask for Kady's voice along side him. A nice gesture, but her white bird voice didn't fit. Show her he could sing and get her involved. Payback for sending Barb out west. He sang House of the Rising Sun, Honky Tonk Woman, Thrill is Gone, and then Sympathy for the Devil. So happened the hotel manager came down cellar and liked what he heard. He talked with Kallini, but Kurt pointed to Don on drums. When the balding owner suggested a weekend gig, Don said sure, asking Lloyd for confirmation, who said, "I guess so." The manager asked, "This weekend okay?" Don sweated from the set. He realized the gig was for real, and asked Kallini if it was okay with him. The hotel owner saw Kallini wasn't with the band, and insisted the bass and singer went with the gig. He turned with Don and Lloyd to see what Kallini would do. Kallini said, "Sure, I'm with the band, if we can use the cellar for practice during the week." The owner agreed, because he saw girls came to hear the band and drink a few beers. Sunday was an off night. "I'm sure you can. Anytime we don't have a luncheon upstairs. Even when we do, they're finished by three, so you'll have a couple hours." Don was all smiles. A gig weekends, and they didn't have to chip in to rent the practice room. He hugged Deb for luck. Maybe he should call Tim Burt back, but didn't. Kallini sat down by Kady. "Those cassis sneak up on a person." She liked the grape wine liqueur and her Dunhill cigarettes. Kallini impressed her too. "I didn't know you played music. Barb was telling the truth, you have talents few people know." "I miss Barb too. Especially her paintings of campus life." Kady was put off by his reference to Barb's self-portrait. She didn't know if Kallini was hitting on her. She told him he sang pretty well. "Thanks. Why don't you sing harmony on a couple tunes. Barb said you had a wonderful voice. One of those choral voices. Like to try?" Kady shook her head no. "I'd be too shy to stand before a crowd and sing. A choral voice doesn't fit your Stones set. I'm more Marianne Faithful." "Exactly. What about White Bird and David LaFlamme stuff?" "My favorite, how'd you know? You probably play violin too." "No, but there are girls in the string band. We could train a violinist." "Good gracious no. I'm far too shy." Kallini looked up to see Joshua Steen from Cornell. So Quinn the Eskimo knew. Lionel cut out for the coast. Josh had a full brown beard which muffled the merry gleam he leered at Kady Bontecott. She stared back. "Kady, a friend from Ithaca. His folks work the jewelry business off West 46th Street. Same line as Bontecott Stone." "You know my dad?" Same merry gleam as Josh shook his head. Josh had word how Quinn and RYM took Kallini's decision to send off Lionel, their black brother in the Union. "Do you know my dad, Kurt?" "No Kady. Barb mentioned him. Like she mentioned her Episcopalian father and how her and Deb's dad worked the St. Louis Mission. You're Catholic, I'm Catholic, even Joshua's religious in his red diaper way. Aren't you Josh?" "Really Kallini. Quinn's coming for you." "I'm in, then I'm out." "Who knows what out means anymore? Quinn talks of white-out of whatever holds back the vanguard." "The center will not hold." "We worked too long for guns, bombs, and cadre squads to take over." "It's the end of the Sixties." "The end of participatory democracy?" "Who wanted an endless meeting?" Kady said she had to split. "Whitebird, Kady, what do you think?" "With this blizzard, certainly no Hot Summer Breeze." "Marrying Maiden," Kallini said to Kady and Joshua Steen. "Really, you got to come to Ithaca to calm Quinn the Eskimo down. Or else, all hell's going to explode." Kallini left to ask Don about practice times, and then took the Movement dude with leering eyes to the bar. Kady settled back with Deb and Don, and Don was ecstatic about this first gig Kallini got them. Their joy spilled over, so Deb took him back to the Townhouse. Kady got another cassis and saw Kallini cornered by this guy Joshua Stein, raving his arms. Too bad Kallini let Lionel take Barb Kelly west. Good, Kallini caught some grief too. 10. Illuminations Not much later Kady drove her VW home. It surprised the hell out of her to find a Robert Johnson record on the unmade bed. Then the note read: "I met this guy Kallini and he said to tell you about this blues guitarist from 1940. I heard him play and knocked hoping to rap about music. Kallini sat there in the chair and said he'd gone to the crossroads and made his deal. Robert Johnson, I guess, and maybe this Kurt Kallini too. I recognized the Cream Crossroads. What's sorrowful with Johnson explodes with Clapton. What I thought. I didn't mean to intrude. Don't mind the note. I write to think and I knocked to compliment the music. See you at our Sunrise Semester." Kady saw weird people double stacked. Kallini had been there and hung Barb's painting. Then Morpheys came along. They set up my record player and leave me the record and the review. Too weird by far. She should move back to the Townhouse. Use this room as a blind, to avoid them both. Just pick up mail and take classes here. Her elbow arthritis acted up again and she couldn't sleep. She read Apollinaire, then Anais Nin till 3-4:00 in the morning. Nights at least belonged to her. No Barb Kelly returned to tell about sleeping with somebody new. Routines made her life easier. She played her stereo low as she moved to the bathroom to brush her teeth and undress. David tried sleeping Sunday night, but couldn't. He tried yoga and stared at the moon. Storm clouds raced like furrowed flags across the lunar surface. Spooky, the moon rising over Lake Cayuga cascaded light like a bridge arched over the water. After midnight David slept, but he woke in a sweat some hour between darkness and the dawn. In a dream he took a joyride with 18 year old Chink Anderson, same age as his older brother. David was twelve. His father was furious he rode in someone else's car. He warned David of teen accidents and harped on Bob Newman's death driving hellbent and drunk to the gills down Toller Hill. Kid was in Robby's graduating class and firemen scraped the stupid idiot off his windshield. In the dream there was dark rain shading the night. The windshield filmed with torrents and down the approaching hill washed streams of water. The car spun sideways, and what shocked David they tumbled off the Mid-Hudson Bridge, up and open, like a drawbridge. Chink beamed hysterically as the car plummeted, slapped the water surface, and sank below. David struggled with the window and door and held his breath, closed in a coffin of black, and at last burst above the surface. He swam against the choppy waves and reached the far bank, exhausted. Chink Anderson never surfaced. As David recalled Chink's beaming eyes like Genghis Kahn, he saw those of Kurt Kallini, the dude in Kady's room. He awoke, too shook up, to go back to sleep. He climbed from the top bunk and lighted the bathroom to read his thin copy of Rimbaud's Illuminations. The bathroom pipes connected with Kady's room because he heard her stereo playing the song White Bird, Kady singing, clear and resonant. Her voice spiraled like a mountain railway hitting notes without effort and far outreaching the record. "Whitebird .................." It touched David with a peace-of-God holiness. Without thinking he tapped on the connecting pipe and said, "Very nice." No response but the silent night. Off went the stereo. David slept until morning, despite the swirl of faces, first crazy Chink and his burning eyes becoming the bearded face of Kurt Kallini and him in turn molding into the sweet face of Kady Bontecott. Heaven and hell do battle between darkness and the dawn. How David arranged matters in his mind.