Dark Side of the 60's Moon - Mike Marino (best novels to read in english .txt) 📗

We left California after the deadly Altamont - Rolling Stones - Hell’s Angels debacle “shaken, not stirred” as Ian Fleming had his 007 character, James Bond order his literary martinis in his spy novels. John McCloud, my best friend and his Olivia returning to Berkeley, now referred to as Berzerkley, while Myrika, our Olivia and I and the others were hightailing back to Michigan and our ultimate destination, our resistance headquarters island snug and safe in Canadian waters. Along for the ride this time, Martin Bouchard, Olivia’s new Canuck fuck we had picked up along the way and was now part of our traveling medicine show.

The grand social experiment of the Sixties was coming apart at the seams in America by 1970. The SDS, once a bastion of pure protest marching in the streets and a campus take over or two suffered from a inner friction that splintered into fractured factions morphing into the much more violent Weathermen. where bullets replaced ballots and bombs for bongs. They were dedicated to engage in guerrilla warfare against the U.S. government” and a belief that underground guerrilla warfare was the best way to engage the “machine” to bring it to it's knees.

In 1970 alone they hurled three gasoline-filled Molotov cocktails in front of the home of Supreme Court Justice John M. Murtagh, who was presiding over the pretrial hearings of the members of the Black Panther Party over a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores.

Prior to that bombing, Molotov cocktails had been thrown at the second floor of Columbia University’s International Law Library and at a police car parked across the street from the cop shop in the Village. But wait...there’s more. They also bombed the Army and Navy recruiting stations/booths on the Brooklyn College campus.

Once back in our log lodge in the sanctuary of our Canadian island home we tried to make sense of all...Altamont and the Rolling Stones and Hell’s Angels combo meal turned a music festival into a “paint it black” moment.

Then as spring began springing across the Midwest with flowers beginning to emerge from the ground to signal “new life” - a renewal and affirmation of peace and the return of peace signs, love making not war making, creating a new utopia where sunshine supermen and women lived in harmony, “wearing their love like heaven”.

As May rolled around a peaceful protest was planned on the campus of Kent State in ridgerunner Ohio. The war in Vietnam was in full tilt boogie mode so maybe one more march would save some lives. Instead… four young students were shot dead, nine others wounded. The twenty nine Ohio National Guardsmen had fired over 60 rounds in 10 seconds or so..leaving the campus a killing field...My Lai had come to America. In combat when killed by your own people it’s referred to has “friendly” fire. Kent State was a massacre.

 

The war in Vietnam had by spring spilled over into Cambodia increasing the body counts on both sides. Later it would absorb Laos as well.

We were all silent when we heard the news coming from Kent State. Danny Two Horse who had returned eventually from the Alcatraz occupation was the first to break the silence.
“Is it over, Mickey? I mean is this how it ends, after everything we strived for? Where did it go wrong?

I had no answer. Myrika was unusually silent. Olivia was rocking China to sleep sitting by the campfire. All I could hear was the snap crackling of hardwood breaking up in the fire and Olivia humming a lullaby gently under her breath. I could only feel the clutch of Myrika’s fingers holding onto my arm tightly. Otherwise I was numb.

“Fuck if I know, Danny. Fuck if I know.”

Myrika and I retired to our room. Neither one in the mood for making love nor war. The world was off it’s axis wobbling dangerously and erratically through our collective mental cosmos. The camp was quiet all night long...soon the dawn would come. Daylight would bring new hope or we felt in our hearts.

 

A new dawn..Christ, we already went through the dawning of Aquarius, how many more damn dawns would we have to endure. Woodstock was a brilliant sunrise, Altamont was an eclipse that poked the social solar system of the counterculture in the eye blinding it. Peace was being pissed on. Protest marches were becoming a shooting gallery where the innocent were mere metal targets at a carnival to be shot down so some rube could win a teddy bear for his girl who has already been to bed in the storage shed with half the patrons at the local bowling alley.

The morning did come as promised. What we didn’t plan on was the arrival of 20 Mounties who were there to place us under arrest. We were awakened to yells and jostling by Canada’s finest who herded us all outside to the central campground area.
We were stunned, not stoned, which would have made it even more surrealistic. Orders were called out, “Everyone, line up over there. Thank you.” We did. Remember we had just gotten the news about Kent State. Hopefully the Canadians were more reasonable and they were there to serve up a breakfast of poutine and bagels.

I held the trembling Myrika...Olivia clutched China protectively in her arms as only a mother could do. Don’t mess with a mom and her cub!

 

Once we were quiet and somewhat settled, their Captain explained what was going on.
“We don’t much disagree with your purpose here, and yes we know you are here merely as a conduit for draft dodgers and the like. We also know you are helping the more violent members of the Quebec Separatist Movement, shall we say, escape apprehension. Not to mention that we slso have information you have helped members of the Irish Republican Army evade capture here. So...you have a choice, I want to fair with you. You have become an embarrassing thorn in our side and must ask you to leave, back to your own country and leave Canada immediately. Well, let’s say within 24 hours. Or….face arrest here and a not so pleasant stay in one of our prisons as our guests.”

We were being told to “get out of Dodge” by a Canadian Wyatt Earp.

 

We all just looked at one another, and could see the consensus by the looks on the faces of the others. We wanted to avoid prison at all costs, Canadian or otherwise.

“Um, we’ll pack up and leave. I appreciate your frankness, Captain and understand. We’ll leave by the morning. We have to pack up things, arrange for transportation,and things like that.”

 

“I quite understand, Mr. Cusmano. Very well then, I’ll leave some men here to help you if you don’t mind and thank you so much for being reasonable,” the Captain confirmed.
The day was spent packing up papers and all our gear. We decided to head to Drummond Island in American waters off the coast of the Upper Peninsula. We’d be safe there until we regrouped and established ourselves elsewhere, only this time we would be carefully watched...we had made the Canadian Police Hit Parade.

Danny used out boat to go ashore to get help to implement the move. More boats, manpower, etc.

It was nice while it lasted, but now I had to inform the Resistance that this route to freedom was now blocked off.

As the day progressed, Olivia came to us in a frantic state. “Have you seen Martin? I haven’t seen him all day.”

I laughed it off. He’s probably half way to Ottawa by now. Probably took off fast when he saw that the Redcoats were coming,” I laughed.

When Danny returned from the mainland, he had a look on his face I had never seen before. It scared me, as after all, Danny had an in with the all knowing all seeing gods of his tribe’s spirit world. His face said something was tremendously wrong.

“We’re fucked, right Danny?” I asked sheepishly.

“I think more than we know!” was all he replied.

Chapter 55 - The Windy City & The Kill Zone

 

 

We were now ass deep in the murky muck of the stateside quagmire of the Vietnam War. The Canadian Mounties were ousting us from the country as easily and without thought  as a broken down wino heaves an empty bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 wine into a dumpster  in a Detroit alley in the Cass Corridor, or rather,  the Mama Cass Corridor as I refer to it.

 

We had our marching orders to leave the relative safety of arrest free Canada for the “stop or I’ll shoot bang I gotcha” United States where draft dodging and the resistance movement was a sure ticket to three hots and a cot in a beautiful scenic cellblock condo in Leavenworth Prison. Was Leavenworth worth it? The only other option they would put on the table was to have me report for duty and get inducted just in time to spend next Christmas in a casket where the dog tags and body bags were hung by the chimney with care.

 

Danny Two Horse returned from St. Ignace that evening after dark to sound the alarm. What alarm? What could possibly go wrong? We leave Canada and head to Drummond Island or Bois Blanc Island. What’s so difficult about that?

 

Unfortunately for me, he had that tell-tale look on his face would in another era of of six guns and tomahawks of mass destruction convey a warning of an Anglo ambush by General George Custer and his Rin Tin Tin blue coats just beyond the ridge over yonder as they used to say

 

“Slow down amigo. What’s wrong?” When Danny was angry and worried, I panicked inside. He was Mr. Spirit World Nothing Can Hurt Us. The embodiment of the great “no-thing” of Eastern philosophy. Danny was Buddha, but didn’t even know it. I knew it and that was enough. This time however, the Laughing Buddha was replaced by a pissed off Geronimo ready to storm Fort Apache.

 

“Everything. Everything is wrong!” he managed to blurt out.

 

I hate when everything goes wrong, awry, gone south, in the toilet or up in smoke unless it’s some mighty fine weed or a distant smoke signal inviting me over for a beer and pipeful to go along with an orgy in a wigwam.

 

“The Feds. They’re all over the place on Bois Blanc and Drummond. It’s a fucking trap!”

 

Myrika came out on the deck when she heard us talking and she could sense when something was about to blow up in our face. Even from a distance. Those Germans were uncanny. She could sniff out fear or lust in a man or woman and take advantage of the situation. Fear or Lust? Either one meant you were hers period.

“Goddamn it,” was my best reply. The goddamned Mounties won’t arrest us so they  toss us to the lions? Is that the game?  Shit, if the  Feds pick us up they’ll find warrants for sure then it’s off to see the prison wizard in some fed pen. Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

 

Danny ever the realist brought focus to the blinding moment of fear. “Believe me, Mickey. They