Backward-Facing Man (22 page)

 

Chuck woke sweating, the sun beating down on the bed. There was a clattering in the kitchen, and when he opened his eyes and focused, he saw Lorraine, stretching, her back to him. He pushed the covers away and watched her extend her arms toward the ceiling, exposing the sides of her breasts, her shoulders and neck, the smooth line of skin that ended at her panties. Chuck watched her step into a white Danskin leotard and a short black skirt before leaving the room. His own shirt and pants were balled up at the bottom of the bed, and his underwear was sticky. In the bathroom, he splashed water on his face and rummaged through the medicine cabinet for some aspirin. He could hear Frederick talking in the kitchen, though he couldn't make out what he was saying. A teapot screamed and then subsided, and Chuck pictured them drinking instant coffee. He made his way through the living room and onto the porch. Outside, the sun rose over the brownstones, beating down on the asphalt, making the air over the street ripple. He lit a cigarette. After a little while, Lorraine came outside with her little portfolio and purse and kissed him on the cheek before heading off to work. A few minutes later, Frederick came out and sat down beside him. “Some evil shit we smoked,” he said, opening a beer.

 

In their first forays into friendship, Chuck felt a self-conscious mixture of pride and shame; he was cuckolding someone famous, whose attention both flattered and intimidated him. Uncertain, and often hesitant to speak, Chuck alternated between feeling as if they were developing a legitimate friendship and feeling that Frederick was all coiled up and ready to spring at the slightest provocation. Gradually, instead of haranguing him with revolutionary ideology or heated discourse, Frederick was becoming conspiratorial, even gracious. On the Fourth of July, the three of them drove to Worcester, where Frederick and a few of his high school buddies launched Hail Marys, Fat Boys, cherry bombs, and thumpers to the accompaniment of Jimi Hendrix, blasting from speakers mounted on the back of a van. As the fireworks exploded, Frederick leaned back and smiled, invoking combat noises from war movies or giggling like a kid. A week later, when Robert McNamara, President Johnson's secretary of defense, arrived in Harvard Square, a dozen radicals, including Frederick, were arrested for surrounding and rocking his limo. The next day, after his mother posted bail, Frederick rushed into Lorraine's apartment, waving a copy of the
Boston Globe,
hardly even noticing Lorraine, saying to Chuck, “We did it, man! We made the news!”

By late July, Chuck's relationship with Lorraine had changed. For one thing, he no longer skulked around her house, pining for her exclusive affections. He and Lorraine had a routine, which seemed acceptable to everyone. When Frederick was involved in revolutionary actions, Chuck and Lorraine were a couple. When Frederick returned, Chuck kept busy on his own or became Frederick's confidant, sidekick, and friend. Some nights, after Lorraine fell asleep, Chuck and Frederick went out listening to music, getting stoned, and talking about the revolution. It was in this context late one night that Frederick asked Chuck where he got his dope.

 

It took a few weeks to arrange, There were logistical issues. The band was playing an outdoor concert—a wedding in Vermont—and Augie Pearson, the percussionist who'd cultivated Chuck as a Boston distributor, didn't call him back for nearly a week. The family, as they called themselves, would be partying in the mountains until late July. Chuck had misgivings about introducing Frederick to his dealers, a premonition that these two forces in his life—his passion or at least his proxy for passion and his bread and butter—should not come too close in contact, but it wasn't strong enough to cancel the trip.

Frederick showed up at Chuck's apartment early one Saturday morning, his hands chapped, his nails bitten down, and the pores of his skin unusually dilated, causing his freckles to stand out like moles. He was chain-smoking Marlboros and talking nonstop about nothing and everything. Together they rode Frederick's bike out the Mass Pike to East Windsor, a little suburb of Connecticut, with maple saplings and sidewalks with hopscotch grids, little kids' tricycles, and mailboxes with names like “The Martins” and “The Howes” stenciled on them.

The house that served as worldwide headquarters for the Inter Galactic Messengers was a fading split-level in need of paint and landscaping. In the driveway, a half dozen black shiny orbs with grills featuring a lightning bolt logo and the words “Audio Adventures Inc.” emblazoned across them were sitting side by side. The orbs, Chuck explained to Frederick, were gigantic fiberglass speakers.

They let themselves in the yard and entered through the back door. A stereo played live rock music—badly mixed audiotapes of the band—and the house smelled like cigarettes, stale beer, bong juice, and body odor. A couple lay sleeping on a beat-up couch. Chuck led Frederick through the dining room, past a couple of guys wearing black leather, and into the kitchen, where a small man with curly hair—the band's manager—sat on a stool sorting through receipts. Three or four sleepy-looking young women in flowing skirts and skimpy T-shirts sat around him staring at a pile of burnt French toast. Chuck said hello to everyone and told Frederick to wait there while he went looking for Augie.

In one of the bedrooms, two guys were splayed on the floor holding guitars. In another, boxes of microphones and light fixtures and a huge mixing console were stacked almost to the ceiling. Circles of black cable lay coiled on the floor. The third bedroom was pitch-black. Augie wasn't around, despite his promises to be there. Chuck was thinking he and Frederick might go somewhere for breakfast, but when he walked back into the kitchen, Frederick and the band manager were having a serious conversation.

“I don't see why not,” Frederick was saying.

“You don't understand,” the curly-haired man said. “They belong to the band.” The young women were leaning back in their chairs as if Frederick and the guy were spraying each other with hot liquid.

“
You
don't understand, man,” Frederick sneered. “Two hundred thousand kids—some of whom may even have the poor taste to be your fans—are fighting for their lives in the jungles of Vietnam right now. To get the politicians to pay attention we're gonna need a good PA system in Chicago. We'll take good care of it. I promise, we'll return it so you guys can get rich.” It appeared to Chuck that Frederick was in the process of shaking down his dealer.

“No fucking way, man. This equipment is worth twenty thousand bucks.”

Frederick lowered his voice. “You can't just turn your back on your brothers and sisters.” The women in the room were listening intently now. Several had shifted so that their bodies were facing Frederick.

“Oh, yes, I can. The guys are rehearsing new material. They're this close to a record deal.” He held his thumb and his forefinger a quarter inch apart.

“I'm talking about bombs going off and people losing limbs,” Frederick said. The only sign that he was upset was his jaw working up and down under his cheek. “And you're worrying about some stupid rock-and-roll band….”

“I started working with this band when they were playing open mics and jamming in clubs in Wallingford and East Hartford.” The manager made it sound like a holy mission. “Now that they have a chance to make it, I'm not gonna let some speed freak fuck it up.” He made a sweeping motion with his arms. “Who the fuck is this guy anyway?” he said to Chuck. “Get him the fuck out of here, will you?”

By the time they got to the front door, the roadies were standing on the stairs and in the foyer, hitching up their pants. In the driveway, Frederick kick-started the bike and turned it around. “Pussies,” he called out beneath the engine noise. Then he flipped them the bird just like Dennis Hopper in
Easy Rider
and away they went.

 

In the summer of 1967, the Red Sox went 92 and 70, making it all the way to the World Series before losing to the Cards. The following winter, there was a lot of excitement in the air until Lonborg, their star pitcher, got hurt in a skiing accident. By the time Frederick and Chuck got to be friends, the Sox had already squandered their season and were, as was their habit, doing abysmally bad.

In early August, Frederick and Chuck started going to the Scoreboard Tavern, and, if Frederick was able to weasel a free pair of tickets, they'd see a game. Together, they sat in the narrow wooden seats in Fenway Park, history all around them, while Frederick talked about the coming revolution or the inevitable collapse of capitalism. In between, he ruminated on the shameful sale that sent the Babe to the Yankees and bizarre tales of Tom Yawkey, the mining magnate from South Carolina who bought the team in the thirties and slowly rebuilt it, bringing Ted Williams and, later, Carl Yastrzemski to town, while refusing to let black players like Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays even try out.

Listening to the radio from the time he was little, Frederick was an avid fan and a Red Sox expert, memorizing the team roster, the sponsors' slogans, players' averages, stats on attendance, and trivia about the ballpark; for example, how the plate steel and concrete wall that was rebuilt and painted green in the forties came to be called the Green Monster. From bus trips to the park, he came to know the stadium on game day, pristine and symmetrical, foul lines etched in lime, the pitcher's mound sculpted in red clay, the peanut and the beer guys' caw, the cigar and paper wrappers that lofted in ballpark breezes that changed mysteriously under the violet sky, joined during those few hours with thousands of others by hope that something beautiful might actually happen, something that could deliver them from their lives. Sitting in the bleachers, looking out at the
CITGO
sign that towered over the left-field fence, Frederick waxed poetic about the sport itself. “In baseball, nobody gets bashed or exploited. There's no thrusting, no penetration, no violence,” he told Chuck. “Every at bat, every inning, every game, is a chance for redemption. A man can step up to the plate, no matter what he did his last time out, and have another chance. He can defy his stats, begin again, even win back the hearts of the people who booed him off the field.” And the ball, Frederick believed, soaring out into the bleachers, was a little agent of consciousness.

By early August, like all Red Sox fans, Frederick had given up hope that his team would make it to the World Series. His work as a groundskeeper had become tedious and repetitive and Frederick was using crystal meth more and more—staying up two, three, four days in a row. To anyone who'd listen, he bragged about getting stoned with other radicals and how he'd been asked to draw up plans to disrupt the Democratic National Convention later that summer. The idea for the Fenway hack probably came to him in late July.

 

For at least a hundred years, MIT students have advanced the state of the art of practical jokes. Hacks, as they're called, are a blend of ingenuity and courage, the personal statements of people who don't easily and ordinarily express themselves—kids who didn't write or sing or dance or paint. They're the marriage of electrical engineering, mechanical mastery, social satire, and elegant pranksterism, and they usually require intense preparation, creativity, steely nerves, and split-second timing. In prior years, students have implanted transistor radios in telephone receivers, hoisted a police cruiser onto a campus rooftop, and set up a dormitory room in the middle of the Charles River when it was frozen. At MIT, hacks are a part of life—a way for the geeks and brainiacs to triumph over the more well-rounded Harvard boys. And so it was one day in August 1968, with man coolers blowing hot air across their faces, Frederick told Chuck his idea.

“How'd you like to help me hack one of the oldest franchises in baseball?” Frederick said. Chuck had just fired up a joint and was cupping it in his hands. “Picture a volcano erupting in the middle of Fenway Park during a game. All you'd see is lava—a steaming mass of multicolored goo that curdles up and starts smoking on the field.”

Chuck laughed.

“The coaches and the managers and field umpires running out, scratching their heads, and the players gathering round, holding their noses, and the fans having no fucking idea what's going on. Then, in the center-field bleachers, a banner unfurling that says, ‘Stop the War,' or ‘Bring Our Boys Home.'”

“It's ballsy,” Chuck said. He thought for sure his friend was kidding. He'd seen it a dozen times before: Frederick getting all fired up about something he never actually intended to do.

Frederick took out a composition book filled with equations, chemical reactions, drawings, even the names of companies that made or sold chemicals that could simulate a volcano erupting. He'd already thought a lot about it.

Chuck played along. “It's not without its challenges,” he said.

The other groundskeepers at Fenway whose job it was to bring out the crushed brick, clay, and Kentucky Bluegrass were a mixture of college boys with connections to the front office, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans working illegally, and a couple of career mechanics all laboring under a grizzled old full-time landscaper named John Touey. In Frederick's opinion, none had the right political leanings or could be trusted to help. His regular posse, the people he claimed to operate with, were, as he explained it, engaged out of theater.

For a hack like this to work, Frederick said they would need strong support, extensive setup, outside resources, and, depending on how well it went off, the ability to disappear afterward for a while. With clouds passing over the bleachers and the white noise of traffic coming off the Mass Pike, Chuck heard himself egging Frederick on—telling him it had all the elements of a Hall of Fame hack, mischievous with a message, a combination of science, technology, and social commentary. He told his friend he was intrigued by the idea. He spoke in glowing terms about how amazing it would be to pull off. By the time the two of them got up to leave, stoned out of their gourds, Chuck told Frederick that he was on board.