Roundhouse Stories:
Roundhouse Stories:
They said "love it or leave it,"
so I just left. They had no idea how far I could go. That was
back in the Bad Old Days, when the Inquisition was in full swing,
and all of us felt the unwelcome spotlight one way or another.
I'm still not sure why they came after us with such a fury. After
all, there weren't that many teenagers on their hitlists. I've
heard once or twice from travellers--fellow-travellers I suppose
I should say--that the Director himself had a particular interest.
Given some of his interests, I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised.
Anyway, it was open season on the Rover Books clan for awhile
there.
The Boys and I got associated with a couple of Hollywood screenhacks,
who might or might not have been Reds. Red, who definitely wasn't,
invented something or other that got the national security boys
het up something fierce. They treated him like a spy for awhile,
then they mostly just treated him like damp dynamite.
Pat Gordon they came for surprisingly late, though most of us
figure he was the reason for most of our heat. Maybe they figured
the guy for too tough and too tight-lipped. If so, they figured
right. They identified him as an anarchist and a Wobbly, traced
his movements through mines and logging camps, strikes and free
speech fights, dragged out the jail records, bussed in the railroad
bull who busted his nose. Pat took it all with a quiet smile,
until they tried to link him to the Portland Bomb Plot--and then
he just laughed. It was a harsh, hard sound. When I heard it,
it finally really sunk in that all the rest was true, as true
as this new accusation was false. "Don't kid a kidder, boys.
We all know Portland has a Red Squad for every Red. In those days,
there might well have been two. Undercovers tripping over each
other, looking for genuine radicals. You know me, boys. I've done
my share of mine work. If I'd beenhandling the dynamite, at least
it would have gone off." They didn't pursue the matter--which
doesn't mean they didn't pursue others. Within a couple of years
they got Pat back up on the stand, and made something stick. But
by then it was pretty clear that something other than "Red
subversion" was at stake.
In the meantime though, we took a lot of wind out of their sails.
Pat was a marvel--in ways we'd never known. They couldn't believe
that we hadn't know all about his past, that we weren't all little
Bolsheviks-in-training. So we all got the third degree, but what
could it get them? Finally, they put Tom on the stand, and the
kid famous for saying "Wow!" wowed them with a little
lesson on liberty and loyalty, so all-American that some of the
bastards had tears in their eyes.
The heat came off for awhile, but the sneaks never quit digging,
pushing, making up what they couldn't find. They missed with Bear
Burr, tried to frame him up on a morals charge, but by then we
were getting a little together, protecting our own. Bear got a
piece of one of the federal boys, and still managed to get off
scott free. Someday maybe we can tell how we worked it.
Unfortunately, there wasn't a thing we could do for Kathy Rider.
We were all caught off guard by that one, by Mick Burr going over
to the other side, by the way folkks even in Soggytown hid from
it, just turned their backs. More than anything, it just happened
too damn fast, for us and especially for Kathy, who didn't know
who she could turn to. By the time we knew, so did the papers,
and then it was over in no time. I saw the pictures. All of them.
Kathy with the Mexican girl, looking happy (and maybe the ghouls
hated that as much as anything) and then later, just looking deader
and more abandoned than any human being ought to. Then they went
after Checker, and the last I saw him he was walking south. Said
he was headed for Mexico. "Mexico first. Then, who knows?
Del Fuego or Hell. Anyway, they aren't going to get me."
The tide was turning again, and I waited for the inevitable. When
it came--hell, I really was an anarchist by then--I bought a bus
ticket for Albuquerque, New Mexico and went looking for Little
Jerry's Pool. Imp was waiting there when I found it--which would
have been surprising, except that Imp's talent for surprise had
long since become a commonplace. "Though you might need some
help," he said. "You know, finding the way." Whcih
was an understatement. Even with the two of us, it took some time
to "find the way." Pretty much all the time I had, I
guess. There was someone coming through the berry brambles as
I said my goodbyes. A reluctant county man and a couple of feds,
Imp told me eventually, not so long ago, really, as we sat on
the banks of the Circular River. And so I gave them the slip.
Maybe they looked in Albuquerque, or maybe they already knew a
little more than that. Whatever.
I still have the bus ticket.