Vida by Marge Piercy

Author:Marge Piercy [Piercy, Marge]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780449208502
Publisher: Fawcett
Published: 1981-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

13

The SAW demonstration took a day to mount, and all their plans got kicked over another day, while two Black students were shot in Mississippi and Randy fumed. When Vida stopped by the apartment to change for the streets, Randy and Kevin were head to head in the dormitory living room.

“Man, your priorities are screwed up” Kevin snapped. “Why does it matter exactly when we act? We can’t make a direct connection between that induction center and Kent State or Jackson State.”

“Suppose you get busted fighting cops? That ruins everything” Randy said, exuding sulkiness thick as cold gravy.

“What’s the difference? It’s all the same war.” Kevin slapped Randy on the back and strolled off. “We’ll see some fine action”

Randy slammed out of the apartment. Kevin grinned at her. “It’s here. Stored in Lulu’s room.”

“It?” Then she understood. It was as if he had shoved his fist into her abdomen. “Oh.”

Together they went in and looked at it, packed neatly in the box. Her hands were sweating. She could not find anything to say. They locked the door, locked the dynamite in. Then Vida had no more time to think. She ran from one meeting to another—the teachers’ group, the welfare mothers, the city planners, the taxi drivers. By the time the demonstration came, she could not whisper without pain. Her voice was entirely gone. Lohania, Jimmy and Kevin were in the streets, the Steering Committee of SAW, kids from the fifty-odd chapters, people from all the off-campus antiwar groups. She noticed Oscar, Natalie, Jan, Bob Rossi in a separate Maoist contingent, his ex-girlfriend Brenda with some bikers, Pelican. Everybody was out and running, while the police were rioting and breaking heads. She did not see Randy.

He disappeared completely until after the demonstration, whereas he was usually one of the busiest street fighters, always calling for a charge, the first to pick up a rock or toss garbage cans into windows, to rock a car over, to set a fire in a trash basket. Vida, who was always trying to keep action directed against political targets, did not miss him, but she was surprised he could stay away.

She could remember the peace parades down Fifth Avenue dressed in their respectable best, marching with agreed-upon placards along the negotiated route. Always they had been pleased how many old people turned out. Yet in such legal parades she had been beaten the first, the second, the third time. Always the newspapers reported half the numbers, and the war went on. Gradually the activists a grown tired of standing and being beaten on, and they had begun to run, to regroup, to taunt; gradually they had begun to fight back, to pick up the tear-gas canisters and return them, to come back at the police with clubs. Usually they got beaten anyhow. They were not often outnumbered, but they were outgunned, and the police tended to attack many on one.

Now when they went on the streets they expected to fight. Beforehand she was in terror, with an ache of fear growing stronger and stronger as the moment approached.

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