near the silo. I stepped off the road beyond the gate and secured a branch for myself, as did Edward, and we obliterated our tracks in the dust of the road for fifty yards or so.
During the rest of the trek back to the vehicles, the tightness I’d been living with throughout the night slowly relinquished its grip on my body. Weariness flowed in to supersede the baseline fear and worry that had kept me buzzed since our expedition began. When I finally sank into the microbus’s back seat, tiredness clobbered me.
“Jay and Pump are going to do a little work, and then we’ll all get together again?” I heard Phil ask from the front as the Volksie swung onto the asphalt.
“That seems to be the plan,” Edward said.
Once again there was no traffic on 74. Everybody in the vehicle had lapsed into a state of lethargy, except for — I hoped — Willow, who steered us through the series of curves and dips of the winding mountain road. Phil, beside her, tuned the radio to a station fading in and out from Riverside, or perhaps San Diego. The eternally energetic Beatles, in a tune from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, were celebrating an improvement in their personal life:
I used to get mad at my school
(No, I can’t complain)
The teachers who taught me weren’t cool:
(No, I can’t complain)
You’re holding me down
(Ah-ha)
Turning me round
(Ahhh)
Filling me up with your rules.
I’ve got to admit it’s getting better,
A little better all the time.
(Can’t get no worse)
I have to admit it’s getting better,
It’s getting better
Since you’ve been mine.
Me used to be angry young man….
Static overwhelmed the weakening signal, and Phil hunted up and down the dial. The Beatles’ comments about their teachers had plunged me into a consideration of Dr. Bulgy and how many thesis pages I needed to get squared away by Monday to create the illusion that I hadn’t squandered the summer. This was already Saturday morning. An aura of gloom started to descend on me, but Phil found a station broadcasting Procol Harum, and I drifted off into the band’s stoned meanderings:
The room was humming harder
As the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
The waiter brought a tray
And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale.
I jerked out of a doze when the microbus halted to let Remi off at his place. Ten minutes later, as I climbed out of the vehicle, the street lights on Cajon shut off. Then I was falling into bed as the new California day shone through the curtains.
I tried to live up to my vow to grind forward with the thesis for what was left of the weekend. The sun woke me a few hours after I crashed. I spent another hour or two fitfully dozing, then got up and groggily hit the books. I could sense the clock ticking toward my rendezvous with Dr. Bulgy. Having the desk in the bedroom was a disadvantage, since my pillow and sheets were an ever-present temptation as I read, scratched notes, and typed draft after draft of new paragraphs.
The room was hot and close all afternoon. I was working in shorts and had to be careful not to drip sweat from my forearms on freshly minted pages. After I cranked out three entire new pages, I rewarded myself by stumbling onto the deck and nodding out on the recliner in the comparative cool of a fresh sea breeze. What seemed like seconds later, voices roused me: the couple who had rented the downstairs last year had arrived. I helped them haul boxes of their household stuff from their rented truck parked on Cajon down the steep driveway and into their living room. As we ascended and descended the route, we yakked, filling one another in on our summers and plans for the new academic year. Like me, Robert was determined to finish his thesis before June; Georgiana had lined up a secretarial gig in the registrar’s office. I could hardly refuse a beer as thanks for helping unload their pile of cartons.
Robert and Georgiana were good neighbours to have, unobtrusive except for an occasional late-night TV binge audible through my bedroom floor. Pretty straight arrows, however: their hope, I had been informed by them, was that once Robert had earned his degree he would find a university position in the Midwest — in Ohio, if possible, where they came from. The moment their future was secured, they would begin a family.
Mostly, the pair socialized with other young married grad students like themselves. Whenever I hosted a party, I invited them, of course — they wouldn’t have been able to sleep with the stereo blasting and people stomping in my living room over their heads. At these gatherings Robert and Georgiana resembled anthropologist participant-observers at the ritual of some savage tribe: the Midwest meets California hippie-student life. Robert even smoked a pipe, and I don’t mean hash. You’d see him perched on an arm of my couch, talking earnestly with Remi or Meg or Alan, highball glass in one hand as the other hand inserted into and withdrew from his mouth the stem of his pipe, depending on whether he was speaking or listening. Georgiana would stand beside him, one hand on his shoulder, eyes fixed on whoever was talking to her husband, shifting her gaze to him when he replied. They called each other “hon.”
But, for all that, I liked them. I never probed too far about their views on the war. They were aware I was in SDS, but they didn’t raise the topic of Vietnam, either. From oblique comments they uttered, I deduced they believed that, even if the war was wrong, a citizen had to support the government in wartime. Georgiana’s brother was in the air force, stationed someplace in Texas.
That Saturday, once we emptied the truck and sucked back a brew, they invited me to supper, but I declined, explaining my thesis dilemma. I trudged upstairs and worked until 11:00 p.m., when nothing I read or wrote was comprehensible. Sunday was entirely a thesis day. I considered phoning Guantanamero Bay, but instead kept my nose to the grindstone.
I duly presented myself with considerable trepidation at the office of Dr. Bulgerak — Bulgy’s real name — late Monday morning, another fifteen pages completed. Suckhole that I am when required, I had also prepared a timetable outlining dates for completion of the first draft, the second and third rewrites, submission to my thesis committee, and the formal defence. I knew from experience that Dr. Bulgerak would demand this proposed schedule: I’d already developed four of these over the past two years, none of which I’d lived up to. I was resolved to adhere to this version, though; I wanted to be finished. With my master’s in hand I’d have to decide whether to pursue an academic career, which meant applying for a Ph.D. program somewhere, or return to journalism and fall into the gaping maw of the Vancouver Sun newsroom. If I goofed off the master’s, Sun reporter was my only employment option. There was always the possibility I’d be in jail by June, a consequence of some SDS protest in the upcoming months, or as a result of the scheme hatched at the Bay — if that
