going to put poison in your water pitcher when you’re away from your bed,” Marty whispers.
I take this threat seriously though try my best not to let Marty know how frightened I feel, brushing it off and telling him to “consider the threat a compliment.” And that it is clearly an indication of how effective we are becoming as an organization.
The following week someone rips the windshield wipers off my car in the SCI parking lot and a day later they flatten all my tires. I am careful not to drink from my water pitcher by my bedside anymore, choosing instead to purchase cans of Coke from the hallway vending machine. This is crazy, I remember thinking. Here I am in a hospital trying to heal, to get better, and people want to kill me!
* * *
By Memorial Day weekend 1973, my bedsore has finally healed and I am able to get into my chair again. I feel very weak and out of shape but still thrilled to be sitting up in my chair. I was trapped on the gurney for nearly ninety-three days, but finally I am free and it’s a wonderful feeling.
As time passes, I grow more and more confident, and by early June I’m finally ready to leave the hospital.
At my last meeting with the Patients’/Workers’ Rights Committee before I leave, I wish the others well, telling them how proud I am of them and all they have accomplished. I promise to stay in touch and let them know that if for any reason they need me, they can call at any time.
My plan is to head back to my hometown of Massapequa, Long Island, for some much-needed rest. The following night Joe Hayward and another member of the committee drive me to the airport to make sure I get on the plane safely.
Massapequa
Burned out and exhausted, I spend most of the summer at my parents’ house in Massapequa, resting up in my room and taking notes in a black-and-white composition notebook for what I hope will be my first book.
In July I receive a collect call from Nick telling me that the Patients’/Workers’ Rights Committee has fallen apart, and that many of those involved are being punished. “Woody and Jafu are on the psychiatric ward. Willy and Danny are confined to their beds, being punished for complaining, and the rest of the guys are afraid to say anything! You gotta come back and help us. They really came down hard after you left and things are worse now than ever. You gotta come back, brother!” shouts Nick over the phone, sounding desperate.
I patiently listen to him, promising to return right away, but I know I won’t be going back anytime soon. I am still exhausted, and besides, why would I want to return to all that madness at the VA, all the threats and intimidation?
It is summer on Long Island and I am home in Massapequa and there seems to be no better place in the world to be at this moment. I spend the remainder of July and August in my room continuing to rest and taking notes for the book that I hope to write as soon as I get back to the West Coast.
Hurricane Street
By the end of the summer, having rested up sufficiently, I head back to California, where with the help of my friend and real estate agent Sally Baker, I rent a small house in Marina Del Rey along the ocean at 24 1/2 Hurricane Street. It is there that I hope to finally settle down and begin writing my book.
I still remember the night I put that first sheet of paper in my typewriter, thinking of all the things I wanted to say. I feel a powerful urge that’s hard to describe, only that I just know I have to write this book.
I love the night and work for hours as if no time has passed at all. I am exhausted and my back aches, but none of that seems to matter. Convinced that I am destined to die young, I struggle to leave something of meaning behind, to rise above the darkness and despair.
For the next several nights I continue to write as the words flow, seeming as if they will never stop. I feel wonderful inside, tired but completely consumed by my writing. I drink a couple cups of coffee and then with a new surge of energy work for another hour or so as the bright lights of the morning begin to fill the room. I neatly stack all the pages next to the typewriter after holding them proudly in my hands, then transfer out of my wheelchair and onto my water bed.
* * *
Everything is progressing nicely when, a few nights later, for some reason I stop writing. I don’t know what to do. For the next several hours I sit behind my desk waiting for the words to come—but there is nothing. I feel frustrated. I can’t concentrate. Why am I even writing this book? I ask myself. What am I doing here on Hurricane Street? The truth is, I can’t stop thinking about the war and the guys at the Long Beach VA hospital—Marty, Danny, Jafu, Willy, and Nick. I can’t abandon them. Wasn’t I the one who promised I would be there if they needed me? Wasn’t I the one who said I would never let them down? I have to do something.
For a moment there was hope with the Patients’/Workers’ Rights Committee, a belief that we could make a difference and that our lives could be improved. But they had infiltrated our group, set veterans against one another, did all they could to stop us. Who do these people think they are? How dare they try to stop us from expressing ourselves. What kind of country is this? What kind of democracy is this, where men who sacrificed almost their entire bodies are kept from exercising those very rights and freedoms they supposedly fought for? I am angry. There has to be another way.
My thoughts drift, and sometime around one a.m. I type the letters ARM. I sit staring at the letters, just three letters, ARM.
American Revolutionary Movement, I think to myself. Yes, that’s what I’ll call it!
ARM will be the answer. We will be the spark that will set off a raging prairie fire, sweeping away everything in its path. It will be a powerful organization, the vanguard of a great movement. Veterans from all across the country will join us. Millions will take to the streets, citizens from every walk of life, all of them will come, all of them will march with us, their fists raised high in the air, chanting and crying out for justice, for an end to this madness!
I continue to work on my idea throughout the next few days, but I soon begin to feel a queasiness in my stomach as I sit behind my rolltop desk. There is something about the name ARM that troubles me, something that makes me feel vulnerable.
Once again the nightmares return and I find myself trapped in a violent storm at sea. There is a terrible howling of the wind and a helpless feeling so profound that it leaves me shaking like a frightened child upon awakening.
At first I merely brush it off, but the next night is even worse. This time in my nightmare, a squad of heavily armed cops comes crashing through the door of my house with their guns drawn, cursing and screaming, calling me a traitor and threatening to kill me. “Get up, you fucking son of a bitch! Get up, you motherfucking Commie traitor!” yells one of the cops who looks exactly like Mr. Warden, my fifth-grade history teacher who warned us that “the Chinese Communists will someday have a billion people,” and that “Americans everywhere should be afraid!” The cops then drag me out of my bed and through a long and darkened hallway into an elevator, and take me down to the ground floor, where they pull me across a lawn covered in broken glass, laughing and cursing at me, slamming me against a brick wall where they say they plan to execute me immediately. I keep screaming to them that I am paralyzed and can’t stand up for the execution, and they are kind enough to provide a rickety old chair once used by the condemned Irish revolutionary James Connolly at his execution in Dublin, not long after the 1916 Easter Rising. I still remember them pointing their guns at me and firing as I jerked awake, my heart
