A young woman faces her fears as she embraces life as a part of the peace and love generation of the 1960's.
Trouble in Trip City
James didn’t know how she did it, but Jessie Vaughn always kept a smile on her face even when she was pulling deeply on a joint. The smile got even bigger when she held the smoke inside her lungs and let the THC spread through her body. Her face was a paradox of conflicting emotions, a permanent smile hovering about her lips conveying joyous love for life and everything in it, while her beautiful brown eyes held a deep-seated sadness that struck him at the core of his being. There was a whole world inside those eyes that spoke to him without words and made him want to travel there to live for the rest of his life. He didn’t think that was going to happen, but he had her now, in the moment, by his side, alone with him, sharing her thoughts and ideas. That was all anyone could hope for with this sad eyed lady from the lowlands, the kind of girl that even Bob Dylan would write about. James was sure his musical idol had been writing about her when he wrote that song, or at least a girl like her. She could be the center of any song, every song he’d ever heard.
Jessie exploded, coughing out smoke and laughter at the same time. “Are you sure you don’t want some? It’s really good.”
James shook his head. “No…I’ve got to go to work. I brought this for you. Besides…you know I don’t…”
“I know you don’t use terrible old marijuana, James.” She kissed his cheek, her long brunette hair sliding across his face as her lips touched his skin. “You were just thinking of me…like you always do.” Each of her words was lengthened with a delicious Southern accent that gave her voice a lilting, musical sound.
James’s ebony skin grew hot as he blushed with excitement, joy, hope, and all of the other things a boy could think of when he was head over heels in love with a girl who considered him a friend and nothing else. He was sure it was true love, not obsession that bound him so tightly to the girl of his dreams. Yes, he did think of her all of the time. Yes, he did always remember to bring her a sandwich or a joint or whatever he thought she might want. Yes, he would do anything for this beautiful girl who offered the world nothing but love. Thoughts of her filled his heart and mind, and gave him the feeling that all the world’s problems could be solved with just one glance from her.
He wished he had enough courage to ask her to move into his room…as a roommate only…even though he wished it could be more. He knew she didn’t see him as a lover, and he didn’t want to interfere with the relationship he did have with her. But he fretted that she’d be so much better off in his little room with the door closed. She slept down in the room where everybody hung out when they dropped acid and tripped out. She said she liked it. She said the piano crate where she slept was dark and warm if she wasn’t up with the other people in the room. She said that she loved the energy of the psychedelic experience and the way it brought everything into focus in an out of focus way. But he worried that she’d be so much safer in his room while she slept with at least the protection of a door between her and the many people who wandered in at all times of the night and day. She just wasn’t a girl who cared much about safety.
They lived in an old house with a sagging front porch that had once served as a fraternity house, and was now widely known as Trip City. An oddly shaped wooden sign hung above the steps to the porch which had “The Hovel” carved into the front of it and the words “You are entering the World…don’t forget to wear clothes” painted on the side facing the interior of the house. All of the rooms were open for anyone to crash except James’s room at the front of the house, the room where Nick and Mindy lived, and the room upstairs where Straight Ron lived. Ron was the major contributor to the monthly rent with James and Nick right behind him. Everyone else who slept at the Hovel paid whatever they could afford which was often nothing.
In the trip room, the common room where they held their freak-ins, the walls were painted with psychedelic swirls and the sole source of electrical light was a black light which made the room glow at night. The only furniture was a table holding a stereo and two huge speakers. There was a piano crate in the corner where Jessie rested her head when she wanted to sleep.
When James had gotten home that day, she’d been sitting with her back against the crate beside an open window reading one of the books Ron had given her. He suspected Ron felt the same way about her as he did. She was the only tenant that Ron ever really talked to for any length of time, but he spent hours with her discussing philosophy and history, treating her like the teacher’s pet in one of the classes he taught at the university where he was a graduate student seeking a double doctorate degree in history and political science. James thought Ron’s tutelage of Jessie about the intricacies of political revolution were similar to James’s daily dinner with her, only Ron was feeding her mind while he fed her body.
Everyone living there except James and Ron were teenagers trying to pass as real life hippies: experimenting with psychedelic drugs, clad mostly in tie dyed shirts and jeans, learned in the lingo of hippiedom, and wise in the political goals of the anti-war movement and the music of Woodstock. James came there when his parents were arrested in a big bolete sting and he had nowhere to go. It was the first time he’d ever lived among white people, but he had to admit he liked it. The people at the Hovel were all kind and cared for each other even if most of them didn’t have a strong direction in life. Most of his housemates lived on a combination of the subs he brought home from the deli where he worked every day and raiding the Krispy Kreme dumpster when the new donuts came out at three o’clock in the morning. Once in a while they’d hit the Hare Krishna buffet on the Plaza of the Americas and dance around singing with the orange sari and dhoti clad youths who passed out some sort of peas and flatbread with smiles and open arms. They were definitely a group more interested in feeding their heads than their bodies.
James wasn’t sure exactly why Ron was there, but he had a feeling the man who lived upstairs and didn’t ever participate in the events occurring on the first floor was the biggest freak of all. Even though he was a clean shaven man with a crew cut who went to work at the university every day dressed in a button down shirt with a tie, James was sure his anti-establishment point of view was far more pronounced than any of those who regularly participated at the first floor freak-ins. He seemed to have connections with every left-wing political group around: the Black Panthers, the Vietnam Vets Against the War, the SDS, and just about any other group that had leanings to the left and opposed the war.
Jessie broke his reverie when his girl said softly, “What are your dreams, James? I mean…what do you want more than anything in the world?”
James was startled by the question. He had a deep seated urge to blurt out to her that his only real desire was to make her his girlfriend…even his wife. He loved her so much. But he knew it would change things between them. He knew she didn’t feel that way about him or anybody else. It was like she wanted to give herself to the world and make it smile with her in a commitment-free existence on the edge of change in the Geist of the planet. So he said cautiously, “I don’t know. I’m saving up so I can go to college. Maybe after I graduate, I could be president and end the war.”
“That’s good. You should go to college. You’re so smart.”
He smiled and said, “So how about you? You’re the smartest girl I know.” She really was. Her intelligence shone through her soft brown eyes like a laser, taking in the world around her and interpreting everything through the filter of what seemed like an inexhaustible source of love.
Jessie took the question very seriously. She knew how James felt about her, and wished she could make his dream come true . It wouldn’t really mean anything to her to take him in her arms and give him what she knew he wanted, but she also knew it would change things and take them in a direction she didn’t want to go. She was very aware of the power of sexual attraction and how it could change a man’s outlook on life. But it wasn’t important to her. Sex was the one thing in life that had hurt her and made her feel helpless to the winds of fate. So she placed no value on the thing most people put first on their list of desired or pleasurable outcomes. She was much more affected by sharing real thoughts and philosophies like she was doing with James at that very moment.
It was hard to articulate exactly what she wanted in life because it was still a sort of amorphous cloud of good will in her mind, changing shape daily as she absorbed more and more from the world around her, but she finally said, “I…I…just want the world to be in harmony…everybody together…without rules…because we don’t need them to force people to do the right thing…because the right thing is what everyone would always do without having a rule that tells them what it is. I want to be someplace where peace and love are real…where everybody takes care of each other. I mean…it’s sort of like that here, but I think there’s more. And I want to find that…that place where I could hear somebody say it was a groovy day and not have it sound fake…like they were saying it because it’s what hippies are supposed to say. I want to be where the world is really changing into something better for everyone…”
They were seated on the floor leaning against the wall. She closed her eyes and laid her head on his shoulder as she spoke. James felt a sense of contentment to be there sharing intimate thoughts with the girl he loved. Then a shadow fell across them and he glanced at the doorway.
A man stood there looking in, his eyes centered on Jessie, hard eyes that seemed to be feasting on her beauty. He was tall, clean cut, wearing an expensive looking suit with an attitude that suggested he usually got his way, that he was a man of power. Through his front window, James could see a black Mercedes parked out in front of the Hovel and assumed the man had arrived in that vehicle.
“Can I help you?” James said politely.
Jessie opened her eyes and smiled at the man.
The man pointed at her and said, “I need to talk to you.” His eyes ran up and down her body in a way that suggested he knew her or wanted to know her intimately.
“Do I know you from somewhere?”
“I saw you yesterday. You were walking down University Avenue.”
“Oh, yeah, I was coming home from the demonstration at Tigert Hall.”
“I saw you and knew immediately that you needed to be with me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I can do things for you.”
“But I don’t need things done for me.”
Jessie was still smiling, but James could tell she wasn’t happy with the direction of the conversation. The man just had too much of an establishment look about him, and there was something else…something that made James very uncomfortable. He could tell that the man was taken in by Jessie’s beauty and the aura of love that hovered around her just as everyone else around was…but for this guy it was just the physical beauty and it was like he wanted to use it. James had the distinct feeling the man wanted to use her for bad purposes. It brought up his hackles and made him want the man to leave as soon as possible.
“I can give you everything everybody wants…money, fame, all of the good things in life.” The words hung in the air, disturbing the streams of consciousness all around them in a place that was so much at odds with the establishment that valued the things which had rolled off his tongue like a mantra for capitalism.
“That’s not what I want in life.” Jessie’s brow wrinkled a little, her distaste for the air of wrongful intent that hung about the man standing in the doorway showing in her eyes and the tiniest suggestion of a frown that hovered around her lips disturbing her perpetual smile.
“Come outside with me where we can really talk about your future.”
James stood and faced the man. “She said she didn’t need you to do anything for her.”
The man sneered dismissively at James and said, “Get out of my way, boy. I’m here to talk to her.”
James felt heat begin to build inside, partly because of the racist slur, something he was used to out in the world but still didn’t like, and partly because of his feeling that this man intended harm to his girl. He balled up his fists and stood ready to defend her.
Jessie rose and said, “Never talk to my friend that way.”
The man immediately backed down and said, “I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m sure he’s a very good…friend. But you…you’re passing up a great opportunity. I can get you out of this dump and into a beautiful apartment at the top of the world in a place where you’ll never want for anything.”
“I like where I am.”
The man’s jaw dropped. “How can you say that? Look at this place. Where I could take you would be beautiful. Beauty deserves to be surrounded by beauty.”
“I am surrounded by beauty. I walk in beauty every day with all of the beautiful people around me.”
The man shook his head and laughed. “All right. I can see you’re not the ordinary girl…but I can tell you that motivates me even more. You’re going to see me again. I’ll be back and you’ll be ready when you realize what this place really is and what I could give you.”
The man turned and left.
Jessie stroked the side of James’s face and said, “No one can talk to you like that.”
James shook his head. “People like him have been talking like that to people like me for all of my life…for all of history. It’s the way of the world.”
“Then the world has to change.”
James laughed. “It will. He just doesn’t know it yet. He thinks I’ll always be a slave to my skin color, but I will never be that. Change is coming, and you’re a part of why it’s coming, my sweet little sister.”
“I hope so.”
The next day Jessie walked to the downtown office where Straight Ron had taken her to help out with the Vietnam Vets against the War. She picked up flyers that described what was happening to American soldiers in South Vietnam, and spent a few hours on the corners handing them out to all who came her way. She smiled at the people who took her pamphlets as she stood alone on the corners, caught up completely in the act of exercising her fundamental right to proclaim her belief to the world, in doing what she saw as her responsibility as a citizen. She danced and swung her hair as she sang: “look what’s happening out on the streets, got a revolution, got to revolution…” or “there’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear…” or “how many roads must a man walk down…” or, in remembrance of the remarks of the man she’d met the day before,…”how does it feel to be…one of the beautiful people…” People walked away with smiles on their faces even if they didn’t like what the pamphlets proclaimed about the war, about the rivers of young Americans’ blood being spilled to protect pockets of oil for those at the top of the economic food chain. Jessie reveled in their smiles and nods of understanding, enjoying the thrill of connecting in mind and spirit to a huge movement of people fighting for a more peaceful world.
She was still dancing and singing as she made her way down streets and alleys back to the place she called home, anticipating the discussion she’d have with Ron later that afternoon. When she rounded the corner of the street where the Hovel was located, the first thing she saw was a black Mercedes parked in front of the house. It stood in stark relief to everything around it, a symbol to her of the very things she’d protested that day, out in the street with the people of the world, dancing for political change, singing for the courage to make the change, smiling her hope that the change would come and free the planet from the shackles of the past. It reminded her that there were still dark forces that preyed on those who were perceived to be powerless. She knew the man thought of her that way even if it wasn’t true .
She started to turn away, but the man had already caught sight of her. He rushed toward her, saying, “Let me at least show you the kind of place I want to take you…” as he grabbed her arm.
Jessie had been on a high from her antics on the corner, but the man made her feel something that didn’t frequently come her way: fear, a bad feeling that this man had plans for her that she would never want to embrace, that were the opposite of everything she’d ever wanted in life. It kept growing with each second she was in his presence…fear, dark and lonely fear filled with an angst she didn’t understand…overwhelming,…breathtaking…fear. She tried to jerk away but he held her tightly.
Nick and Mindy had been sitting on the porch of the Hovel watching folks walk by and drinking their usual afternoon tea. When they saw the man grab Jessie, they ran to the curb and stood in front of the car door toward which he was pushing their friend.
Nick said, “Hey, man, leave her alone.” His greasy brown hair fell around a face he tried to keep stern, his long sleeved flannel shirt fluttering in the breeze as he stood straight with a strong resolve that didn’t often appear in his actions.
Mindy stood a few feet away, staring at the man she loved, hoping in her most secret places that he would stand for her the way he was for Jessie. She was a little awed at her boyfriend’s presence and a little jealous that he’d come into his own to protect someone else instead of her. She was both proud of him and a little angry at the same time. She stepped up closer and stood beside him glaring at the man, hoping no one could see the anger through her pride.
The man seemed to come out of a trance. He glanced at the two people standing by his car and laughed derisively. “I’m trying to help this girl. I just want to give her the world.”
“Hey, I can dig that…but it looks like she doesn’t want the world you want to give her…so back off.” Nick felt the thrill of standing up to a man who drove a Mercedes and dressed like the boss of the world. He raised his eyebrows and pointed at the car. “Take a ride, dude.”
The man held his hands up in the air and said, “Okay, okay…but I’m not giving up.” He turned to Jessie and continued, “I’ll bring you some pictures next time so you can see just what you’re missing. And you will come with me.”
When James came home later that day, he brought a whole sack full of subs. Everybody ate together, celebrating their victory over the establishment on the front lawn that day, passing the mustard smeared bread from hand to hand and sipping wine from a bottle of Ripple. Then they shared an after dinner bowl of some really good hash Nick had scored at the pool hall. There was a growing bond that flowed between the people sharing their bread and smoking their dessert, a bond of holy love and absolute peace that forged their friendship into a ghost-like presence of its own, the holy ghost of the peace and love generation, an apparition that was popping out all over the American landscape, all over the world. It was real, even if it only lasted a second at a time, blowing away in the gale-like wind of time like a mandala in a Tibetan painting, lost as soon as it was created, leaving only the seeds of the possibility of peaceful existence behind in its wake.
As she passed the pipe to Nick, Jessie turned and took Mindy’s hand. “Thank you, Mindy…” She smiled into Mindy’s eyes.
“For what?” Mindy was still a little unsettled about the way her boyfriend had stood up to a scary stranger for the girl everybody wanted to call their own. She had to admit to herself that Jessie was always nice to her, but…it was hard to like someone who got all of the male attention that Mindy never seemed to attract. Nick was the only thing in life that felt stable to her and she didn’t want him mooning around like all the rest of the guys at the Hovel. It would be humiliating.
“For standing up for me. It really meant a lot.” She kissed Mindy’s cheek and glanced at Nick as he moved across the room to pass the pipe to a group of guys gathered around a Stratocaster guitar. “Tell Nick I said thanks too. You guys are so great together. You’re like the coolest couple I’ve ever known. I only hope that someday…maybe I’ll meet the right guy and have something like what you have.”
Mindy felt a rush of delight that thrilled her body with a feeling of deep pleasure that came from being admired, something that hadn’t happened in her life very often. She started to open her mouth, but didn’t really know what to say. She hoped no one had noticed her jealous anger when Nick stood up for this girl that she admired through the veil of her hatred toward those who had all of the things she wanted in life but would never have. Finally, she said, “Oh…you’d do the same for me.” It sounded right.
Jessie nodded and said, “I would…but you know…you and Nick really set the tone here…and it’s good. It feels so good to be at a place where everybody feels such kindness for each other. The world would be a better place if it could be the way it is here…and you and Nick…well, you guys are right at the center of all that.”
Mindy looked at Jessie, wonder in her eyes, and said, “You really think that?”
“I do. You and Nick are beautiful people.”
A boy with a hint of Asian genes decorating his face walked into the room and said, “Who’s up for some Blue Owsley?”
Jessie leaned her head against the wall and sang, “remember…what the dormouse said…feed your head.” She smiled at the Asian boy and said, “I’m up.”
The next afternoon, Jessie was inside the semi-darkness of the piano crate dozing after a long night of psychedelic bliss. She opened her eyes and froze when she heard the man’s voice calling her name. Then she heard the door to Nick and Mindy’s room open and Nick’s voice saying, “Hey, man, it’s not cool for you to be here.”
Jessie felt unfamiliar fear fill her body, a sort of itchy uncomfortable feeling that stiffened her joints and caused her head to buzz with caution. She knew immediately that the stranger, the intruder that had haunted her the day before, was there again looking for her and probably wasn’t going to fade gently into the night as she’d hoped he would. She could see his face in her mind, and was suddenly unreasonably afraid he could see her through the wooden crate. She pulled her legs up, lying on her side in the fetal position as she strained to hear what was happening in the hall.
Nick walked toward the front door swinging his arms in bravado. Then the man grinned at him and said, “Stop there and tell me where she is.”
Nick mumbled, “She’s not here. She already left today.”
“Tell her I’ll be back for her.” The man’s response echoed through Jessie’s brain, each word travelling across the terrain of her mind like bullets followed by tracers leaving a hot trail of painful fear and a feeling of loss.
After she heard the man’s footsteps retreat out the front door and across the porch, Jessie peeked out of the crate. She could see Nick still standing in the hallway with his arms at his side, a disheartened look on his face.
“Nick…”
Nick came into the trip room and Mindy followed from their room across the hall. They sat on the floor in front of the crate.
“Nick, what happened?”
Nick looked shaken. “He came walking in…and I could see that he had a gun.”
Jessie’s heart raced even faster. “Oh my god!”
Mindy’s face blanched. “We have to do something about this. Maybe we should…call the police.”
Nick scowled. “They’d never believe us over him. He looks like the bourgeois Nazis the police love to protect. Besides…do we really want a bunch of…officers hanging out here?”
Mindy turned red. “Maybe, if we have guys carrying guns coming around.”
“Ron would have a hissy if we invited the police into this place.”
Jessie sighed. “I just have to…go away. I don’t want to cause anybody any kind of problems.” The feeling of loss the man had planted in her heart blossomed as she wondered just where she would go.
Mindy shook her head vehemently. “No. We won’t let that guy run one of us out of here.” She was surprised at her words, but she meant them. If it had been the day before, she might have encouraged Jessie to do exactly what she was offering to do, but something had changed. The way Jessie saw her had become one of the most important things in her life. Having a woman who lived in the center of male attention admire her and want something she had made her feel beautiful and somehow important to the world. Jessie’s words had forged a bond of sisterhood that she didn’t want to lose.
Jessie smiled gratefully.
Mindy smiled back and said, “We just have to make him think you’re gone.” When she smiled with the worry for a friend glowing from her eyes, she was beautiful. For a second, the physical quality she’d dreamed of having shone through the plain structure of her facial features. She was as beautiful as the most beautiful of the cinema queens, a movie star of the everyday world.
Nick said, “How do we do that?”
“Next time he comes, Jessie goes up to the attic and we tell him she’s never come back from when she left today. You told him she’d already left today. She’s really gone now.”
Nick nodded. “Good plan.” He smiled at Jessie. “You’re gone, girl.”
The next day, Nick and Mindy sat on the front porch sipping some tea. When the black Mercedes turned onto their street, Nick whistled and then sat waiting for the man’s arrival.
Jessie sat inside reading a book in her spot by the open window in the trip room. She jumped when she heard the whistle and quickly rose, taking her book as she headed for the stairs. She climbed up and passed through Straight Ron’s room on her way to the attic door.
She walked through the dimly lit attic, dark shadows in all of the corners, and sat on a box in the middle of the room. She heard the front door open and willed herself to sit perfectly still so that no sound would be heard below. She glanced down at the book she still held, but it was far too dark to read. She clutched it in her hands, not wanting even the sound of the book being placed on the floor to disturb the silence of the room.
She closed her eyes and tried not to think about the creepy feeling that emanated from the man walking the floor beneath her. She wasn’t sure what it was, but it seemed like he knew all of the things that had ever hurt her and was ready to use them all to force her to answer to his will. He made her feel sweaty and dirty, full of shame, anxious about the future, afraid of the past. She didn’t want to think about it, but the thoughts kept coming at her in an unmerciful stream of memories that hurt to behold.
In the midst of the sounds of the silence around her, she heard the drip of a faucet somewhere in the house, the sound of footsteps through the whole first floor, the sounds of a woodpecker chipping away at a tree next to the house, the scratchy sound of a squirrel looking in the window and trying to determine how to invade her space. She tried to lodge her thoughts inside one or all of the sounds, but they kept going back to the slimy, creepy way the man made her feel, the way his gaze peeled her flesh from her soul and tried to taunt her with the only thing that had ever really hurt her. In the echo of the man’s footsteps, she could hear an imaginary voice urging her to take off her clothes, to open her legs, to go places she’d never been before. Her face turned red with embarrassment as she felt the stream of thoughts roll into her brain, reminding her of the night she’d been raped by six boys, six drunken boys who gave her a memory that would always be tied to her first experience drinking alcoholic beverages. She saw their mocking eyes as she sat alone in the darkness, waiting for something terrible to happen. She tried to hate them, to take strength from the hate that should’ve come so easily. But she didn’t have hatred for those boys. She suddenly understood that she didn’t blame them for that night, but she did blame herself. In a flash of insight, she understood that self-forgiveness was all that was needed to end the hurt that still lived inside of her, that if she could apply the love she had for everyone and everything else in the world to herself, what had happened in the past could never hurt her again. She felt the web of pain that had prevented her from reaching the pinnacle of self-awareness break, and knew she could make her own choices about what she wanted to do in life, that she was strong because of her love for the world, that hatred would only weaken her. Tears streamed down her face as her body thrilled to the power of self-awakening.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, enjoying the miracle of life in the silence that surrounded her. She heard a low buzzing sound like a thousand crickets chirping, or a million bubbles bursting in the foam that accompanied the waves rushing to the shore, or an electric current humming through the wires of life…a wonderful sound, the sound of silence, the whisper of the universe…overwhelming all of the other sounds, bringing her a sense of peace and harmony which she realized with her new insight had always been there waiting for her to recognize. For one second, she felt the synchronicity of the universe as it flowed through her heart and soul, connecting her to everything, everyone, everywhere.
Then the silence was broken and the very air disturbed by the sound of a gunshot echoing through the house. It rang through her head carrying messages of violence and disregard for life, of everything ugly in the world.
She dropped the book and ran to the door, opening her shelter from the man who disturbed her so much. There he stood in the middle of Straight Ron’s room, looking so out of place in the midst of the walls of books that filled the room, his back to her, his arm around a frightened Mindy, the gun he carried pressed against Mindy’s head.
Nick stood in the doorway, his face filled with fear for Mindy.
The man said, “Tell me where she is or your girlfriend’s a goner.”
Nick’s eyes filled with tears. “Let her go…” He moved toward the man.
“Stop…or I’ll shoot.”
Jessie heard her voice like she was listening from somewhere else, somewhere above where she stood behind the man. “I’m here. Let her go.”
The man turned and saw her. He pushed Mindy away and said, “Come on. We’re going for a ride.”
Mindy said, “Don’t go!”
Jessie stared at the man and said, “It’s okay, Mindy.”
Nick shouted, “Mindy’s right.”
Jessie shook her head and walked toward the door. She looked back at the man and said, “Come on. Let’s get out of here.” Her sad eyes reflected all the pain in the world when she saw the triumphant look on his face, a look that promised her a life under his thumb, a look that revealed his intentions for her: to make her into the kind of girl who got paid by the trick or danced for dollars instead of the joy of living. All of his promises of the good things in life were premised on using her body for his purposes with no regard for her or anything she wanted in life. She felt as if she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders, but she had to do something to end the presence of this man in the lives of people she loved.
Mindy ran to Nick who pulled her close, tears falling from his eyes onto the head of the girl he loved. Jessie walked down the stairs toward the front door, the man behind her holding the gun by his side. She stopped in the hall near the front of the house when she saw James just as he opened the door.
James carried his usual bag from the deli filled with sandwiches. His face lit up when he saw Jessie, and then darkened when he saw the man behind her.
Jessie’s heart began to beat wildly when she saw James. She wasn’t sure what her plan was, but she knew she didn’t want him to be hurt by whatever it turned out to be. The man began to push her toward the door.
“Hey, wait a moment…” James didn’t like what he was seeing. He wasn’t about to let that gangster looking guy push around the girl he loved. “Take your hands off of her.”
“She’s going with me. Get out of the way.”
Jessie saw James moving in her direction and said, “It’s okay, James. I’m not going anywhere with him…just outside to talk a moment.”
“The hell you aren’t,” the man said angrily.
It was a mistake. James came at him, fists up, moving carefully so that Jessie didn’t get in the way of the punch he wanted to deliver to the guy who had disturbed the peace of his home for days on end.
The man pulled up the gun and pushed Jessie toward the door. He pointed the gun at James. “Now…do you understand? Guys like you don’t get to win.”
James laughed bitterly and said, “You’d be surprised.” He pressed on and delivered his punch just as the gun went off. James fell back against the wall and blood appeared on the front of his shirt. He looked triumphantly at the man and said, “The police station is just around the corner, a couple of blocks away. I’m sure they’ll hear that shot and be here momentarily. If I were you, I’d be going.”
Jessie ran to James’s side and put her arms around him. She looked in his eyes and said, “Are you…”
James smiled. “It’s okay. It hurts, but he’s not much of a shot. It went through my shoulder.”
Jessie turned back to the man and all of the fear she’d felt for him slipped away, leaving nothing but contempt, nothing but pity that he’d never understand the true value of anything in the world. She looked him in the eye and whatever shame he’d made her feel disappeared as she realized her power to make her own choices and her strength to do whatever it took to protect her loved ones.
She remembered James’s words on the day the man first darkened their door. She realized James had been right, that this man considered him a slave to his race, that he lived in a past where skin color carried chains of servitude to people of his color. She saw clearly that he felt the same way about her, that he considered her a woman whose only purpose in life was to serve him in whatever way he chose, a slave to her gender, a woman he wanted to make into a sex slave to service whoever paid the price he set. She smiled grimly to herself, thinking that she was so much like James, that she was not and would never be a slave to any person.
Jessie’s voice vibrated with strength as she said, “Leave, now and never return. When the police get here, and they will, if you’re not history, you will be arrested. “
“You stupid little bitch. You could have it all with me.”
“I’m not kidding. Get out.”
The man shrugged and walked away.
Jessie knelt beside James and took his head in her strong and capable hands. She smiled at him and said, “Nick…Mindy…”
“Yeah.”
Jessie was all business, taking charge of the situation like she’d never done before. In the matter of a moment, she’d gone from a sweet girl to a woman who could lead. “You guys need to go next door and call the ambulance. We’ve got to get James to a doctor.”
James watched in awe as she took control of everything. There was something very different about the way she held herself, a fierce pride that acknowledged her own strength like she never had before. The love he always saw still sparkled in her eyes, but it was different there too. There was something more, like she was letting him walk into the world of love inside her eyes, to enter the temple of her soul. His heart began to beat with hope that they’d turned a corner, and she smiled at him knowingly, as if she understood exactly what he was feeling.
She moved closer and kissed him on the mouth, a sweet, soft, lingering kiss that hinted of things to come. She smiled into his eyes and said, “James, I think this is the start of something really good.”
His heart somersaulted with glee, and he searched his mind for exactly the right thing to say. It clicked in his mind, the one thing he knew she’d want to hear, and he smiled slowly at her.
“Groovy.”
She kissed him again.
From the very first paragraph the descriptive imagery made me want to read further even though the AD editor always takes out the lines between paragraphs and makes reading somewhat difficult.
I was certainly around the scene when it was happening and intrigued, but I was the Straight Ron in the scenario. I never touched even marijuana in those days and still don't even though I've heard it's great for pain of all kinds.
Your Jessie was reminiscent of so many girls in those days who left themselves open to the world and got hurt by it like those who got caught up in Charles Manson's evil fantasy. But it was a time of awakening when it came to civil rights, especially for blacks and for women.
It couldn't have ended better. All fights are not won by strongly opposing evil with destruction. Sometimes they are ended with realization.
May I offer you a Round the World Cruise of a lifetime for the price of a novel?
Not only do the seas roll on but two romances,a death at sea, uncovered past lives, history uncovered in Brazil, caves in Australia, poetry in Senegal, the Lux Mundi
