On the third day, they arrested Crowe.
Rather, under small arms and under the supervision of two officers from the Naval Investigation Service, Lieutenant Commander Bonson and Ensign Weber, four Marine military policemen marched into the barracks where he and the rest of B company were relaxing while maintaining ready-alert status, and put him in handcuffs. Captain Dogwood and the battalion colonel watched it happen.
Then Lieutenant Commander Bonson came up to Donny and said in a loud voice, “Good job, Corporal Fenn. Damn fine work.”
“Good work, Fenn,” said Weber. “You got our man.”
In the aftermath, a space seemed to spread around Donny. He felt it open up, as if oceans of atmosphere had been vacuumed out of the area between himself and his squad and others in the platoon. Nobody would meet his eyes. Some looked at him in horror. Others merely left the vicinity, went into other squad bays or outside to lounge near the trucks.
“What the hell did he mean?” asked Platoon Sergeant Case.
“Uh, I don’t know, Sergeant,” Donny said. “Uh, I don’t know what the hell they were talking about.”
“You had contact with NIS?”
“They talked to me.”
“About what?”
“Ah. Well,” and Donny swallowed, “they had some security concerns and somehow I got—”
“Let me tell you something, goddammit, Fenn. If it happens in my platoon, you come tell me about it! You got that? This ain’t a one-man goddamn motherfucking operation. You come tell me, Fenn, or by God I will make your young sorry ass sorry you didn’t!”
The man’s blazing spit flew into Donny’s face and his eyes lit up like flares. A vein throbbed on his forehead.
“Sergeant, they told me—”
“I don’t give a monkey’s fuck what they told you, Fenn. If it happens in my platoon, I have to know about it, or you ain’t worth pig shit to me. Copy that, Corporal?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“You and me, boy, we got some serious talk ahead.”
Donny swallowed.
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Now, get these men off their asses. I’m not going to have them sitting around all goddamn day like they just won the fucking war all by themselves. Get ’em on work detail, drill ‘em, do something with them.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“And you and I will talk later.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
Donny turned in the wake of Sergeant Case’s departure, which was more like an ejection from a jet fighter than a normal retrograde adjustment.
“Okay,” he said to the squad. “Okay, let’s get outside and run through some riot control drills. There’s no point just sitting in here.”
But nobody moved.
“All right, come on, guys. I’m not shitting around here. You heard the man. We have an order.”
They just stared at him. Some looked hurt, the rest disgusted.
“I didn’t do anything,” Donny said. “I talked to some Navy lifers and that’s all.”
“Donny, if I flash the peace sign in a bar, will you turn me in to NIS?” someone asked.
“All right, fuck that shit!” Donny bellowed. “I don’t have to explain anything to anybody! But if I did, I’d point out I didn’t rat anybody out. Now, get into your gear and let’s get the fuck outside or Case’ll have us on a barracks party until 0400 next Tuesday!”
The men got up, but their slow heaviness expressed their bitterness.
“Who’ll take Crowe’s place?” someone asked.
There was no answer.
ulie was released from the lockup at the Washington Coliseum at 4 P.M. that same day, after forty-eight hours of incarceration with several hundred of the more recalcitrant demonstrators. At least physically, it was almost pleasant being arrested; the cops were old hands by this time and as long as everybody cooperated, the process was all right. She spent two nights on a cot in a field where the Washington Redskins practiced when it was their season. The seats of the junky old place rose above like a Pentecostal cathedral from the twenties, and in the pen, all the kids had a good time and nobody watched them too carefully. Grass was abundant; the portable toilets were cleaner than the ones at Potomac Park. The showers were never crowded and she got a good wash for the first time since leaving Arizona in the Peace Caravan. Some of the boys caught fantasy touchdown passes in what had to have been an end zone.
But no word at all from Donny. Had he been there on the bridge? She didn’t know. She’d looked for him, but then it’d all dissolved in confusion and tears as more of the gas flooded in. She remembered crumpling, rubbing her eyes desperately as the gas drifted by, and then there was the shock of the Marines and she found herself looking into the eyes of a boy, a child, really, big and booming behind his lenses; she saw fear in them, or at least as much confusion as she herself felt, and then he was by her and the Marine line moved on, and as she watched, teams of policemen pounced on the demonstrators behind the lines and led them away to buses. It was handled very simply, no big deal at all to anybody concerned.
Only later, in the lockup, did the word come that a girl had somehow died. Julie tried to work it out but could make no sense of it; the Marines had seemed quite restrained, really; it wasn’t anything like Kent State. Still, it was an appalling weight. A girl was dead, and for what? Why was it necessary? In the lockup, they had a television, and Amy Rosenzweig’s young and tender face, freckled, under sprigs of reddish hair, was everywhere. She looked to Julie like a girl she’d grown up with, though she could not remember seeing Amy amid the crowd, but that wasn’t surprising, for there had been thousands, and much confusion on the ground.
They let her out and she went back to the campground in Potomac Park. It was like a Civil War encampment after Gettysburg: mostly empty now that the big week was over and the kids in their multitudes had returned to their campuses and the professional revolutionaries to their secret cabals to plot the next move in the war against the war. Litter was everywhere and the cops no longer bothered. A few tents still stood, but the sense of a new youth culture had vanished. There was no music and no campfires and the Peace Caravan had departed. All, that is, except for Peter.
“Oh, hi.”
“Hi, how are you?”
“Fine. I stayed behind. Jeff and Susie are driving the Micro back. Everybody is with them. They’ll be all right. I wanted to stay here, see if you needed anything.”
“I’m okay, Peter, really I am. Have you seen Donny at all?”
“Him? Jesus, you know what they did to that girl and you want to know where he is?”
“Donny didn’t do anything. Besides, I read the Marines tried to save her.”
“If there hadn’t been any Marines, Amy would still be here,” Peter said obstinately, and then the two just looked at each other. He drew her close and hugged her and she hugged back.
“Thanks for hanging around, Peter.”
“Ah, it’s okay. How was the Coliseum?”
“Okay. Not so bad. They finally reduced charges, parading without a permit. They let us all go today.”
“Well,” he said. “If you want me to drive you to the Marine Barracks or something, I will. Whatever you want. I have a VW from a guy. It’s no problem.”
“I’m supposed to get married this week.”
“That’s fine. That’s cool. Good luck and God bless. Let me see if I can help you in any way.”
“I think I ought to hang here until I hear from Donny. I don’t know what happened to him.”
“Sure,” said Peter. “That’s a good idea.”
he alert was finally cancelled at 1600 that afternoon, to the cheers and relief of the companies. It took an hour or so to actually stand down — that is, to return the rifles to the armory, to shed and repack the combat gear in its appropriate place in the lockers, to shed the utilities, bag them for the laundry, shower and shave. But by 1700, when the work was done, the captain at last released his men — the married to go home, the rest to relax in town or on base as they preferred, with only a few left on skeleton duty, such as duty NCO or armory watch.