Gift of the Golden Mountain (41 page)

     "That way, down the hall," the woman gestured, and we walked ahead, aiming for the door she pointed to.

     It opened and Eli filled the frame.
He is too big for this
went through her mind,
He is just too big.

     His presence seemed to fill the tiny house. Tears rushed to her eyes. Eli pulled them into the room and closed the door. He stood, shaking his head as if he couldn't stop. "What a sorry mess," he said. "Andy . . . now this." His voice cracked. Hayes grabbed him, hugged him hard, and Eli reached to pull May into their embrace.

     The shades had been drawn, casting the room in an eerie, filtered orange light. The bed was covered with a pale blue satin spread, and a homemade pillow, heart-shaped and elaborately ruffled, was perched against the headboard. May's eyes scanned the room. It was, she guessed, the master bedroom. There was a framed wedding photograph on the dresser: bride and groom in front of a church altar, parents on either side, all of them smiling. May couldn't tell if the bride in the picture was the plain-faced girl who had opened the door for them; she couldn't remember what she looked like.

     The room was too cramped to move about. They arranged themselves in a small circle, May sat on the bed, Hayes and Eli in straight-backed chairs, their knees touching.

     "I couldn't stop it," Eli told them, "I tried, but I couldn't, and we all lost."

     In a voice so low she had to strain to hear, Hayes said, "Why not an anonymous tip, a warning?"

     Eli put his head in his hands. "Yeah—why not?" he answered, in an anguished voice.

     May reached to put her hand on his shoulder. "Where will you go?" she asked.

     Hayes broke in, "He can't tell you."

     "I can't, babe," Eli said, "but I thank you for saving my black ass—even if I'm not sure it's worth saving."

     "It's worth saving," Hayes told him.

     May had to ask, "Will you be all right?"

     "If they know what a basketball is where I'm going," Eli tried
to joke, and stood to show it was time for them to leave. "Before you go," he said, "I want to say I think the two of you should be together, should hold on to what you've got. Can you do that?"

     May looked at Hayes. "It's what I want," she said, as if taking a vow.

     "It's what I want," Hayes repeated, solemnly.

Two nights later she was packing books at two in the morning when she heard the knock on the door. One long, then three short raps.

     "I drove by about midnight and Karin's car was still here. I decided to try again . . . to see if by chance a light was on . . ."

     His eyes were rimmed in red, he looked haggard and worn. "I know," she said, wrapping her arms around him, laying her cheek against his chest, "I wish I could be with you all of the time."

     "The FBI questioned me today. I took a risk coming here, it would be bad if they connected the three of us and started investigating you . . . and found out about the cash withdrawal. God, I shouldn't have come May, but I had to see you again before you left . . . I couldn't sleep . . ."

     "Come sleep with me," she said quietly, and she led him up the stairs.

     They made love tenderly, touching each other with great care; slowly, to remember. He was breathing as a swimmer would breathe, evenly and deeply. She felt as if they were underwater, their bodies suspended in the wet warmth, gliding and turning easily, intertwined. And then they burst to the surface in a great gasp, laughing at the enormity of it, their immersion in each other.

     He slept, and she watched him, and then she watched both of them lying in a tangle of sheets, she watched from some point above, knowing that she would need this image in the months to come, this memory.

May sat in the back of the Stanford Memorial Church, giving herself over to the Bach prelude and fugue. The organ music swelled and waned, resonating into the high beamed ceilings of the great dark chapel, entering her bones. She had not told Hayes she would be there.

     The family and friends of Andrew Diehl were in the front pews of the church; the rest were filled with students who had come to protest the war in Vietnam. It was clear they saw the memorial service as a platform from which to deliver a message against the war.

     Marylee Diehl turned to look back at the students packed in the pews. Her face had been ravaged by sorrow; now, looking at the crowded chapel, the sorrow was complicated by confusion. Hayes sat next to her, put his arm around her. He was explaining, May thought.

     Three students crowded in beside her, pushing her into the corner of the pew. "Jesus, this should be something," one of them, a young blond woman in overalls, said, as if she were looking forward to a theatrical performance. Several students in the pew ahead turned and smiled.

     May's face burned with anger. She leaned across two students to tell her, "No, this is not going to be 'something'—this is going to be a memorial service for a man who died too soon. If you didn't know him, or if you didn't come here to offer some comfort to the family that mourns him, then you should either be quiet or leave."

     The blond girl looked at her defiantly. May stared back, all of her pent-up anger focusing on this blond, blue-eyed girl. A fierce silence hung over the pew. Then May felt it, the sudden shift as the students next to her moved to give her more room—and as they moved, the music seemed to swell, as if J. S. Bach was scoring a victory.

     Hayes came to the podium. He stood, looking out at the sea
of faces, tall and elegant in his sorrow, and May had to bite her lip to keep from crying out. He waited until the noise died and the students decided to listen to him.

     Into the profound silence that fell over the chapel, Hayes said simply, "My brother died in a war I did not believe in. But I believed in my brother.

     "Most of you who have come here today, to this memorial service, did not know my brother, Andrew Diehl. Andy. Many of you think he was wrong to have volunteered for this war, some of you think he was the enemy and you have asked if you can come up here today and state your views. Our answer—my parents' and mine— is that you can, if you are willing first to allow us our memorial."

     A loud rumbling made its way, in waves, through the audience. Several students, juggling books, rose and made their way out. Others squirmed uncomfortably. May looked at the blond girl and the others in her row, but they would not look back.

     Hayes leaned into the microphone. As he began to speak the noise died down. "My brother Andy was a patriot," he began, and a small hissing sounded through the chapel. "That shouldn't be an ugly word, certainly not in Andy's case. His heroes were Washington and Jefferson and Adams. He read everything they wrote, and as much as he could find written about them. When we were kids and my mother insisted we choose a psalm to say as our prayers at night, Andy talked her into letting him substitute the Bill of Rights. He said it out loud, as he would a psalm. If I close my eyes, I can hear him repeating the words still. He believed them. And he believed that this country was somehow blessed because of the extraordinary men who set its course.

     "Those of you who did know Andy know he tested the rules, and often enough he broke them. He wanted people to think he volunteered for Vietnam as a lark. He didn't. Andy was intensely loyal, to the people he loved on an individual basis, but also to his country. Even when he knew there was a good chance that his
country was wrong. He went to Vietnam because he felt he could not exempt himself. He felt it was wrong to let poor black and poor white kids go off to face the horror alone. His conscience wouldn't allow it."

     He squinted out into the audience, lowered his head, and then raised it again, almost defiantly. "So my brother Andy went, while we stayed behind to fight the war on the homefront. But he died, and we didn't.

     "Andy won't be coming back from Vietnam, but others will be. Some are back already, without their arms or legs, with memories we can't even begin to imagine. What I want to say today, right now, is that these men—and the memory of those who did not make it—must be treated with respect. They are not the enemy, they never were."

     He stood for a minute, as if there was something else he wanted to say. The silence filled the great chapel, there was not so much as a cough, a shifting. He looked out over the heads of all those crowded into the pews, and for a moment May thought he was looking at her.

     She realized, then, that he was looking at the group as a whole, waiting for someone to come forward, to speak out against what he had said. An uneasy silence lengthened, expanded. No one was coming; Hayes had won. Quickly then, he moved to his mother's side, and the service continued.

"Walk with me," he told May, and she fell in step beside him, moving along the leafy green pathways of Stanford in the late afternoon light.

     "I don't like this place, I never did," he told her angrily.

     She looked up at him, surprised.

     He shook his head. "I guess I don't like any place about now. I'm leaving as soon as I can, May. I'm going to be on the run too."

     She put her hand on his arm so that he would stop. "I'm leaving tomorrow," she said. "It's better if I go first, I think."

     "It would help," he answered, pulling her to him and walking on, his arm tight around her waist.

FMG: Notes, Reade family file, box 16
The Malibu
New Year's Day, 1971

IT IS SIX o'clock in the morning. Yesterday's warmth is trapped in the house but here on the verandah the air is summer morning cool. It will be awhile yet before the sun lifts from behind the mountains; it is wondrously still now, the only sound is the birds flickering inside the trees, ruffling the leaves.

     I am the only one awake in this big old house. The young people were up until three, welcoming in the New Year. I know the hour because I could hear their stifled laughter as they bumped against one another in the hallway on their way to bed. Their swimsuits are scattered like flags on the porch fail; I suppose they went for a moonlight swim. At dinner Kit was telling about some New Year's high jinks she remembered which ended with a swim in a cove where bootleggers used to put in.

     With some effort, I have managed to wheel myself onto the
verandah, pen and pad in hand. I had to be very quiet not to waken Israel, who is sleeping in the little study off the library. Israel does not approve of my solo flights. My head is full of thoughts I must not lose; I need to commit them to paper now, this morning, before they slip from me. I can no longer trust myself to remember.

     This holiday was—for me, for all of us, I do believe—the myth come true. This Christmas on the old Reade family ranch was in the grand tradition, better than any I could ever have imagined. There it is. If that sounds maudlin, or more to the point, perhaps, if I seem to be regressing, so be it.

     So much has transpired these past days, so many details that are part of the story. I must organize my thoughts so that I leave nothing out.