“I’m sure.”
“Oh, well, would you like to buy a box of Girl Scout cookies?”
“I would not!”
“Oh. Hey, how about you, Mister?” the little Girl Scout tugged at the torn T-shirt of the bearded youth.
“Nah. They give me cavities. If you kids are gonna get hooked on gook like that, what good’s all this fluoridation?”
“I told you he was one of us! Come on, fellows.” A husky lad with a Prussian haircut led a group of tough-looking fellows wearing swastika armbands over to the line of march. “All together now,” he shouted. “Fluoridation must go!”
“Fluoridation must go!” they chorused.
“Ban the bomb!” the first group shouted.
“Be prepared!” The Girl Scouts paid their tribute to Margaret Sanger.
A new group appeared on the scene. LOYAL SUNS OF SICILY ROD & GUN CLUB, their first banner proclaimed. COSA NOSTRA CHAPTER was on the second banner. And on the third one, right behind it, their motto: The family that preys together stays together! Under the motto was the symbol of their organization, an American bald eagle, a Mama eagle, and two eggs in the process of cracking open.
Things were getting out of hand, and the cop decided to take action. He strode up to the bearded youth in the torn T-shirt and green jeans who had started the demonstration. “You’re under arrest,” he told him.
The bearded youth immediately went limp and fell to the sidewalk. “Passivity in the cause of peace is no crime,” he told the cop. “What’s the charge?”
“You’re a beatnik,” the cop answered.
“What’s that?”
“Damned if I know.” The cop scratched his head.
“Then what makes you think I’m one?”
“Well, first off, you got a beard.”
“So did Abraham Lincoln.”
“Second, your T-shirt’s torn.”
“That ain’t my fault. It’s cause my laundryman’s gettin’ back at us for keeping Red China out of the U.N.”
“And third, there’s them blue jeans you got on.”
“You must be color blind. They’re green jeans.”
“They are?” The policeman squinted. “They look blue to me.”
“The light’s bad here. Come on over to the window.” The bearded youth crawled over to the nearest storefront. “See? They’re really green. Sort of an aquamarine. Hell, man. I wouldn’t be caught dead in blue jeans. I don’t conform for nobody. These are green jeans. You dig? And that proves I’m not a beatnik!”
“How do you figure that?”
“All beatniks wear blue jeans, right?”
“I guess so,” the cop had to agree.
“So if these are green jeans, they prove I’m no beatnik. Dig?”
“Yeah, only--”
“Only what?”
“Only what about that dame with you, the one with the guitar and the seaweed hair and the Theda Bara gook all over her eyes. If she ain’t a beatnik, I never seen one.”
“Suppose she is. What’s that got to do with me?”
“Well, you’re marchin’ with her, ain’t you? If she’s a beatnik, that makes you one too.”
“Guilt by association!” The bearded youth dropped to the pavement again and kicked his heels. “McCarthyite! Storm trooper!”
“Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles.” The young Nazis picked up his accusation with a song.
“Arise, ye prisoners of starvation . . .” the folk singer sang back.
“America, the beautiful . . .” the Girl Scouts piped up.
“Hey,” shouted one of the Sons of Sicily, “don’t any ‘of you paisanos remember the words to Pistol Packin’ Mama?”
Before he could be answered, the mother emerged from Saks and began screaming hysterically. “My baby!” she yowled. “Someone’s kidnapped my baby! My Mervin’s been snatched! How can a mother march for peace without she’s got a baby to push around?”
It was all too much for the cop. Spying his original prisoner, the sacrilegious spitter, the sidewalk expectorator who had started it all, attempting to sneak away in the confusion, the bluecoat took refuge in his original charge. He dived for the young man and came up with him. “You’re under arrest!” he insisted firmly, reverting with a single-minded stick-to-it-iveness typical of New York’s Finest to the first cause and ignoring the subsequent chaos which had grown out of it.
“Wait!” The young man wriggled in his grasp. “Wait! I can explain! And there’s the witness to back up my explanation. Right there! Across the avenue.”
His finger pointed straight at Penny, who had just disembarked from a bus after delivering what was left of her specimen to the laboratory. She was on her way back to work at Pussycat Publications. Now she stood with her dimpled chin drooping in amazement at the spectacle on the street.
The cop allowed the young man to lead him over to her. “Miss, please,” the young man half-sobbed. “Tell him what happened. Tell him why I had to spit on the sidewalk.”
“What?” Penny backed away from him.
“Please.” The young man fell to his knees. “Please. If you’ve got an ounce of compassion in your breast --”
“Don’t you be talkin’ of such things to the lady now, you scamp.” Outraged, the cop’s brogue crept into a tone he identified with his mother who had hailed from County Cork. “Mind your manners now. Beggin’ your pardon, Miss-—-” He tipped his cap to Penny. “—I’m Patrolman Sean Fitzgerald, shield number 0945576587, and if you could throw some light on why this lad expectorated on the sidewalk, breaking ordinance number 306D, sub-section 29—”
“How should I know why he spit on the sidewalk?” Penny-interrupted. “I wasn’t even here. Why did you spit on the sidewalk, anyway?” she asked the young man. “That’s not a very nice thing to do.”
“Well, wouldn’t you? I mean, considering what you told me right after I tasted—”
“Oh!” Suddenly Penny understood. “Yes, I think I can explain why he did it.” She leaned very close to Patrolman Fitzgerald and whispered in his ear.
The officer’s face turned brick red. “Oh!” he said. “Well, I guess there was extenuatin’ circumstances. All right! See that you don’t do it again, laddie. You can go now.”
“I can?” The young man was dazed.
“Hurry up! Before I change my mind.”
But the young man stood rooted, too confused at his sudden freedom to move. Penny took pity on him. She took his hand in hers and led him across the street toward the building where Pussycat Publications had its offices. He followed her docilely, his palm sweating like that of a frightened child fearful of being separated from its mother. His face was a study in trauma.
Their direction paralleled that of the policeman crossing back to cope with the melee. But when he reached it, Patrolman Fitzgerald had a change of heart. He took one long look, decided nothing short of the riot squad could possibly straighten out the mess, and raised his voice in frustrated authority. “A pox on all your causes!” he howled, with a gesture that said he washed his hands of them.
Immediately, the bearded youth and the folk singer fell to the sidewalk. “We want a civilian review board!” they chanted. “Cops kill minority kids! We want a civilian review board!”
That was too much for Patrolman Fitzgerald. This was a direct attack on him and the hallowed institution he represented. One hand grabbed the girl’s shirt-tails, the other the youth’s T-shirt; and he began dragging them along the pavement. “You’re under arrest!” he raged.
Immediately the dapper little lawyer came running up to them. “Does your organization have a legal defense fund?” he asked.
“Of course,” the bearded youth told him.
“Unhand my clients!” the lawyer demanded of the cop. “Police brutality!” he yelled.