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

have already done their homework. They already want you. Not so bad you avoided the draft and military service, but you work for the Resistance and that is what they want you for. You’ve made the hit parade!”

 

The shit parade you mean.

All told, there were approximately 100,000 of us draft card burning commie pinko fags making tracks and blazing James Fenimore Cooper trails to the Great White North in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Fortunately, but with trepidation we were accepted by Canada as the social refuse of their Marlon Brando “Ugly American” neighbor to the south. We were accepted as legal immigrants while many of us chose door number two...to live and hide in plain sight in the U.S. with false identity documents which were easy to obtain. Hell, It’s even easier today.  Got $300 bucks or so?

 

Canada  labelled draft dodgers as immigrants, not as refugees  and most became Canada-ized and stayed after the war was over. No Manchurian Candidates in the bunch.

Most  settled in larger  cities to be absorbed in the big Canadian sponge such as Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. The  total number of “immigrants” mushroomed toward the end of the 1960’s, so people in Canada began working for organizations helping dodgers find work and settle in and acquire a taste for Canadian beer and marry Canadian women.

In the end,  25,000, give or take a few of us, were indicted for civil disobedience, almost 9,000 convicted and 3,000 jailed. Many of us were caught and stood trial, one after another, an assemblyline of dissent that would make Henry ford proud. Most were ordered to report for induction, then charged with disobeying that order by not reporting, duh, but there were so many of us, as numerous as  cockroaches in a New York tenement apartment that it was impossible to prosecute more than a fraction of us.

 

I was formulating a plan on the wing without a net, a trapeze artist in tight fitting bulging pants without a net or a jockstrap. “OK, by dawn, before dawn get “Flashback” gassed up. We’ll be ready early, pick us up with as many boats as you can scrape up. We got a lot of shit here to move and take with us. We’ll attempt a landing at Detour Village by St. Ignace and we’ll leave from there and head out.”

 

“Where will we go, Mickey?” Myrika asked. “Not sure yet, but wake Olivia now and help her get packed and ready. We have a long night ahead of us. Damn! Damn! Damn! Let me think this out. Danny, gonna miss you my friend.”

 

“Don’t say goodbye, We will always be connected…” he laughed. “It’s the Indian way!”

 

Then I had an after thought and wanted to talk to Danny alone. As Myrika went indoors to get packed, Danny and I walked down and along the beach.

 

“I want you to get a message to that fuck head Martin. Gotta be him that us up. Probably FBI who couldn’t do anything while in Canada, so set this whole thing up. Here’s my plan, you’re in the clear. They can’t touch you so tell him we’ve gone to Chicago, play dumb like we don’t know it was him. We left without him because we didn’t want to get him in trouble, some bullshit like that. Tell him we’ll be at the pub Liam hangs out at in three days and we’re gonna have the IRA fugitive, make sure you say “fugitive” help us escape to Ireland.”

 

Danny was confused, “Why? That’s not where you’ll really go is it?”

 

“Chicago? Yes. Ireland, No! I’ll set it up with Liam’s people too, they hate the FBI as much as we do.  Remember Joey and the other FBI guy? What’s one more accidental killing. Hell, we could get the Panthers or the Weathermen to do this but the IRA is much more, you know, efficient. Martin fortunately doesn’t know we had the other two eliminated so he’ll fall for it. OK? We need him out of the way permanently.”

 

Danny smiled, “Got it!”

 

That night was a sleepless one, but we were ready. Our flotilla arrived while the Mounties were at the other end of the island not realizing we had moved everything overnight under cover of darkness to the western point of the island where we would embark from.

 

From there we would meet up in Detour Village in the UP of Michigan, load up and head for Chicago and wait for the trap to snap on Martin. They’d probably toss the body in the Chicago River on St. Patrick’s Day as a sarcastic final nail in the FBI informants coffin. From there, Myrika, Olivia, Baby China and myself would head back to Detroit and as they say, go underground and hide in plain sight with new identities until the war had ended, or a meteor crashed into earth throwing it off it’s axis on a collision course with Mars, or when Hell or Flint, Michigan freezes over.

 

It was a fine line to engage our balancing act  on. If caught we all faced prosecution, but at least not for murder. Besides, why is what we did called murder? Nixon and company were wasting villages and civilian lives everyday in Vietnam...while our government was sending young American “not old enough to drink or vote” men over to Vietnam to die uselessly everyday against their will. What we did, while at war with the American draft system

would be called “murder’...what the Pentagon and White House were doing was called “patriotism” with a four star general posing as God on Our Side….Go Figure.

Chapter 56 - Murder at Christmas

 

Christmas 1969 was looming on the horizon with all its candy canes and M-16’s, mistletoe to make love, and napalm to make war. The time of good cheer and chestnuts roasting on an open fire, as well as a Vietnamese village up in flames getting an unwelcome visit from Santa and his recon unit elves.

 

We were on our way to Chicago and a clandestine meeting with our Irish Republican Army cohorts. Little brogue speaking Santa helpers to arrange for the early holiday demise of one more FBI undercover agent. What the hell, this too was war on the home front and all is fair in love and war, yes? Why am I asking you anyway? I had Myrika for the love and sex portion of the equation. I also had the IRA, Black Panthers and the Weather Underground for the war aspect.

 

I chose the IRA for this job. The Panthers would make a garish poster and manifesto of the killing bringing much unwanted attention to it. The Weather Underground would, not being the most subtle of revolutionaries, make Martin the FBI grinch. disappear noisily by shoving a grenade up his ass for a fragmentation enema and brag about it in the underground press complete with photos...bang...Panthers or Weathermen..either way too much heat and turning over every rock investigations from Hoover’s G-men in tights surely would occur and all they had to do would be to follow the breadcrumbs to Hansel and Gretl, me and Myrika...No thank you!

 

They could pull off an assassination and disappear into some void where neither Scotland Yard or FBI would dare tread. They also had a resume going back to the Easter Rebellion to rely on. When it came to revolution, these were straight A students who were also the football team’s first string. I imagine the cheerleading squad was just one Riverdance away from the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. Pom, poms kaboom!!! “OK, team, this time go for the Ulster Ulcer play..and score, score, score!”

 

On our way to the Windy City we stopped first in Detroit to deposit Olivia and the baby, China at her parents house. I didn’t want China growing up in a world where she might confuse at an early age the smell of gunpowder for baby powder. Myrika and I both did not want Olivia involved in any way in the assassination plot in. She was now 17 and the mother of my baby, OK, Myrika claimed extended family parental rights as well as did Olivia. OUR baby. Just a happy trio of sex partners in crime.

 

Once we got into Chicago we headed for the Irish neck of the woods for O’Bannions Pub where we’d find the already briefed Liam, thanks to Danny Two Horse and the phone call he made the day we left St. Ignace. We were racing own Michigan’s mitten heading south on the interstate with a brief stop at Tony’s of I-75 truckstop. It is the undisputed gastronomic carousel ride of cholesterol. Even if you’re a 90 pound weakling, after a full breakfast of 5 sausages, 6 strips of thick bacon, three eggs, hash browns and sourdough toast lathered in Boysenberry jam and a hot cup of java thicker than the lava pouring from an Icelandic volcano you were now felt ready to haul an 18 wheeler with bald tires going full speed full of explosives over a mountain pass with a 30% grade and defective jake brakes in the blizzard of the century.

 

Soon, an hour and half later, the Motor City stop we were on I-94 heading east to Christmas in the land of Capone.

We were beat when we rolled into the parking lot at O’Bannon’s that night. It was pure pleasure to emerge from”Flashback” who was also feeling the strain. We entered the pub and the warm glow of the bar and the strains of a local balladeer in the middle of a sing a long made us feel like family. They were singing the song, “Michael Collins”and “The Tri-Colored Ribbon” with heart and feeling.

 

Liam burst into a wide grin and rushed across the room to greet us. I hated to disturb an Irishman in his favorite pub during a game of darts. That’s like pulling a dago away from a bocce tournament to see a full moon. A switchblade maybe, but not a full moon.

 

“Aye, ya made it folks. Got your message and all is ready for Mr. FBI rat. No problem.”

 

“Do we owe you, Liam? How much?” I asked hoping it would be cheap..our reserves were nearing E for empty.

 

“Not a thing, Lad. Not a thing. You saved me ass in Canada and got me here safely and now it’s my turn, our turn actually. All the boys know about what you all did...ha..but no names were mentioned, of that I can assure you. We got a call today from Danny boy, and our FBI target headed out yesterday and should be nosing around here by tomorrow. Christmas Eve! He’s in for one hell of present ha.”

 

Liam had a way of making even a hit job full of mirth and merriment. Gawd, I love the Irish.

 

With that Liam introduced us around to the gang then Liam grabbed Myrika while a sweet bonnie lass grabbed my ass out onto the dance floor for a rousing step dance extravaganza. It was Riverdance and I was feeling as if I were the Lord of the Dance or at the very least the Lord of the Flies, but that’s another story altogether we won’t go into here, there or anywhere.

 

Myrika was stepping high, her sweet Nordic ass fuel injected., and I was not surprised. The part