Make Quilts Not War - By Arlene Sachitano Page 0,82

Vietnam. When you protested, the police were the enemy, using tear gas and rubber bullets. Even the movies of the times were important statements. There was no such thing as pure entertainment.”

Harriet reached across Lauren and pointed at the cookie plate. Lauren scooped a couple into her lap then passed the plate. Jenny waited until Harriet was settled again.

“This is the hard part. I know I told you I’d grown up in a commune and I did—part of the time, after what went down.” Jenny sipped her tea again. It was obvious she was stalling.

“My brother was, indeed, a drug dealer, but he was smalltime. He sold small quantities of marijuana to his self-important friends. We lived in Lynnwood, and they acted like we lived in Berkeley. We were a blue-collar working-class town where most of the adults we knew were just trying to get by.

“Every town had a Selective Service office, and Lynnwood was no exception. Prior to Vietnam, a large percentage of the town’s young men signed up to go in the army as a way of getting out and seeing the world. But now they were scared. The army might actually expect them to fight.

“Bobby hung out with a group of stoned underachievers with high ideals and low ambition. They were very full of themselves back then. Everyone had a guitar or drum and thought they were going to be the next John Lennon or Ringo Starr. They went through a phase where they were going to be artists and craftsmen.

“Back then, the nerds had slide rules and graph paper and were always working on some problem, the solution to which would end world hunger or create a renewable source of clean energy. The only trouble was, none of them was good at anything. And of course, they all grew their hair out and stopped washing it.

“I don’t even remember which one of them thought up the idea of breaking into the Selective Service office and stealing the punch cards with the names of registered eighteen-year-olds. Left to their own devices, nothing would have come of the scheme except a lot of hot air.”

“How many people are we talking?” Lauren asked.

“There were a dozen, not counting Bobby, but the core group was maybe half that. Then Cosmic started hanging out with them, and that’s where the trouble started. What I told you about that part was true. Cosmic had an uncle who was an ex-con, he brought in another ex-con friend, and they decided to rob the bank next door.”

Jenny rubbed her hands together and then rubbed them on her upper arms.

“Are you cold?” Harriet asked and started to get up.

“Sit,” Lauren commanded. “I’ll get one of the fleece throws from the closet.”

She opened the closet door behind her chair and pulled out an assortment of afghans and throws from a box. She gave Jenny the fleece one and tossed a ragged knitted afghan onto Harriet’s lap, keeping a lap-sized flannel rag throw for herself.

Jenny wrapped the throw around her shoulders and continued her narrative.

“What I didn’t tell you the first time was what my role was.”

Harriet looked at Lauren, and they both looked at Jenny, but she was lost in her recollection.

“I was fifteen, and my parents were always working, so I tagged along with Bobby wherever he went. My parents had been making him babysit me after school from the time I was nine and he was twelve. He was flat-footed, and in those days that was enough to get you a one-F draft rating, which meant you weren’t prime and would be given a noncombat job to free up more qualified soldiers, but they would only do that if they ran out of one-As, which wasn’t likely.”

Jenny was clearly pained having to tell her story and was dragging it out as if rescue were coming, which they all knew wasn’t the case. Harriet’s arm was starting to hurt, but she didn’t want to distract Jenny by asking Lauren to get her pain medication.

“Bobby was lacking in ambition, beyond his small drug operation, so whenever he could make me do his chores or run errands for the group, he would. At that time, I was in awe of the older kids. They used new names, like Cosmic and Paisley and Tranquillity. They called me Jonquil. It was all very glamorous, in a hippie sort of way.” Her voice took on a faraway quality.

“As I was saying, Bobby made me run errands for him, and he’d