Noble Chaos

By Brent Green

Ryan Sterling is a nineteen-year-old college junior traversing a moral switchback in 1969 and 1970. He protests the Vietnam War while weighing patriotic implications. He loses passion for education while remaining on the Dean’s List. He defies authority while conforming to group pressure. He experiments with drugs while resisting dependency. He devours philosophy and psychology to find meaning in his raging confusion.

But conflict is the price of his search for understanding. Conflict carves rifts between Ryan, his peers and society. Conflict forces him to make game-changing choices.

Ryan’s odyssey includes a supporting cast of unforgettable characters. His quixotic lover shuns her self-indulgent past and makes the least expected confession. A calculating drug dealer squares off with Ryan’s nemesis, provoking a fatal consequence of intolerance. A traditionminded classmate transforms into a revolutionary and leads dangerous confrontations with armed authorities.

Set at the University of Kansas, one of the nation’s most radical colleges at that time, this astonishing story weaves emotional with historical truth. The novel shares a frank and shocking perspective of America’s jolting revolution against mainstream values… a bold reflection on the Vietnam War era from the university perspective.

Noble Chaos is an important and entertaining resource for those yearning for perspective about their youth. This uncensored story also gives young readers an emotional perspective of the chaotic forces that turned America upon itself while achieving noble social changes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 29, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450211949

Brent Green

Brent Green is a marketing communication strategist, creative director, copywriter, author, and trainer with focus on generational marketing. He is author of Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers: Perceptions, Principles, Practices, Predictions. He has been a community organizer throughout his academic and professional careers. During college in the late sixties and early seventies at the University of Kansas, he chaired the influential Student Advisory Committee. This vocal council challenged many unfashionable university traditions restricting student freedom and adult privileges. A Colorado resident since 1981, he has served in a leadership capacity with professional and public service organizations, including as board member for ten years and chairman of the Colorado Springs Convention & Visitors Bureau; board member for Junior Achievement Rocky Mountain, Inc.; and as programming chair for the Business Marketing Association and the Rocky Mountain Direct Marketing Association. He is the tenth recipient of the Direct Marketer of the Year award from the Rocky Mountain Direct Marketing Association. He has earned over 50 other marketing industry creative awards. His short story about alienation, entitled “Flight of Fancy,” received national recognition from Writer’s Digest. He received a similar accolade from Writer’s Digest for an essay entitled, “Baby Boomers at Mid-life: Coming of Age Revisited.” And again in 2009, Writer’s Digest recognized his magazine feature article entitled, “On Dad’s Passing.” He contributes to national online media such as Huffington Post; and his blog Boomers: A Trip into the Heart of the Baby Boomer Generation (http://boomers.typepad.com) achieves top search-engine performance for many online queries about the Boomer generation. An unpublished early version of Noble Chaos received a literary award for historical fiction from Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers in the organization’s Colorado Gold writing competition.

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Copyright © 2010 and 2020 Brent Green.

Cover design: Terra Brown

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4502-1195-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-1194-9 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 09/09/2020

DEDICATION

The author dedicates this book to men and women who lived through ambiguities of a cultural revolution; stood firm against institutionalized racism, sexism, and environmental destruction; and allowed their minds to expand beyond boundaries of convenience and convention to create a more egalitarian nation.

EPIGRAPH

Not many people are noticing all the good that came out of the last ten years – the moratorium and the vast gathering of people in Woodstock – the biggest mass of people ever gathered together for anything other than war. The good thing that came out of the sixties was this vast, peaceful movement. The sixties were just waking up in the morning. We haven’t even got to dinnertime yet. And I can’t wait! I can’t wait. I’m so glad to be around.

– John Lennon

The revolution, which is beginning, will call in question not only capitalist society but industrial society. The consumer’s society must perish of violent death. The society of alienation must disappear from history. We are inventing a new and original world. Imagination is seizing power.

– Pinned to the main entrance of the Sorbonne, Paris, May 1968

The decade was a unique one of transformation in personal relationships, in attitudes towards authority, in modes of self-presentation, in material standards, customs, and behavior. It is right, of course, to give attention to artists and cultural leaders, to movements and sub-cultures, but the ultimate significance of the sixties lies in what happened to ordinary people.

– The Open University 60s Research Group

CONTENTS

I.   Letty Leah

II.   The Moratorium

III.   The First Trip

IV.   Lanny’s House

V.   Guts & Glory

VI.   Woodrow

VII.   Falling Apart Together

VIII.   Of Friendship, Incense & Spades

IX.   The Metaphor for Sanity

X.   In Touch with What Can’t Be

XI.   The Worst of Both Worlds

XII.   Chasms of Intolerance

XIII.   The Day of New Endings

XIV.   Forget Me Not

XV.   Ménage à Trois

XVI.   The Big Eat

XVII.   Two Different Worlds

XVIII.   Please Forgive Me

XIX.   The Carillonneur

XX.   Finished Business

FOREWORD

It had been a time when all the old rules went away for a while—a short span when culture and society spun topsy-turvy. Traditional American values became unfashionable. Political idealism became tantamount to personal survival. Our relationship to received authority mutated into fierce indignation.

Demonstrators swelled campus thoroughfares. Defiant black fists of rage rose mightily above ghetto multitudes. Sweltering jungles and pastoral campuses became littered with the same young bodies. Resolute hitchhikers raced across the Canadian border to conscientious freedom.

Every aspect of expected behavior in human relationships became questioned, redefined, manipulated, and explored. We heard and read daily about gay rights, Black Panthers, the Women’s Movement, free love, interracial marriage, the Woodstock Generation, altered consciousness, an Age of Aquarius, SDS, Yippies, and open marriage.

We fought an unpopular war, popular prejudices, pollution of the environment, petty politicians, and perpetrators of the status quo. But most of all, we fought each other: blacks against whites, young against old, gays against straights, feminists against chauvinists, veterans against pacifists, construction workers against students, liberals against conservatives, environmentalists against industrialists, Democrats against Republicans, and Native Americans against centuries of exploitation by Caucasian culture.

On all fronts, we fought for change.

The children of the post-World War II baby boom stormed through adolescence, 76 million strong. We were fortunate enough to be on the cutting edge of adulthood, to have lived passionately through that complex segment of history, and we found the changes mostly captivating and indelible. We grew up in syncopation with the coming of age of a nation. We were a collision of youth on the threshold of a dream, locked in a war between tradition and change, revolution and counterrevolution, myth and disillusionment, love and hatred.

Over five decades hence, the reverie seems far off, remote, that we may awaken and it will have never been but in a few ersatz characterizations remaining in popular culture. Nevertheless, in my mind, I will tread that timeworn path again and again, until it is hardened with my desire to communicate the passion of a time and place, to share deeper understanding.

CHAPTER I

Letty Leah

Land embracing the graveyard flattened to the horizon in every direction, void of landmarks other than the undulating rise and fall of fertile river bottom farms and vast open spaces. It would have been easy to pass the burial place because gravestones could not be seen from an old country road from which a rancher’s path had been cut. The crest of this insignificant hill disguised several dozen burial monuments. A matched pair of giant evergreens stood firm as sentinels above the knoll.

Ryan Sterling could not understand what tempted him to turn his grimy Volkswagen Beetle onto a cattle path and discover the stones. But he would learn that love compelled him.

It had been an intense summer day, hot and bright. Steamy August heat, which had persistently scorched Lawrence, Kansas, during that long summer, became a cooling memory. The hill and gravestones anchoring it rewarded movement from a damp wind. Boughs of the great trees lumbered back and forth, whispering applause with each gust.

He stubbed out the remainder of his joint, ate the roach, and closed the car door; feeling circumspect, he wandered aimlessly among sun-bleached stones. As he reached the apex of the hill he scanned the landscape and sighed. The road below curved through a panorama extending twenty miles to the east. Mile after mile of tallgrass prairie, bisected by fallow farms, answered late afternoon breezes. At the horizon, the university appeared to be chiseled from flint as if cut in sharp angles and placed before an azure canvas. How incongruous an insignificant hill could stage such a view of a green-gold valley beyond; everybody knows Kansas is flat.

Ryan followed his spinning thoughts to epistemology. He wondered how this graveyard had begun. Perhaps a prairie schooner carried them here. A homesteader grieving death of a family member—or anticipating his demise—walked over this oasis and understood centuries could pass without discord. The pioneer took in this same majestic panorama: yes, the view would be held through time for bereaved. Those who walked upon ancient sod would tread with respect. Breezes would be cool in summer, and a western sun would soften arctic winds in winter.

This had been a wise choice.

Turning west, Ryan smelled subtle bouquet of a rose shrub growing against one headstone. Tiger lilies fanned around the hill as spirals of benevolent sun catchers; the flowers matched the fire of a hot Kansas sunshine. Bleached burial monuments reflected the amber light of a sinking sun.

Although he felt self-conscious, Ryan answered an urge to keep moving among tombstones. Each stone had character. Flint and granite tombstones tilted away from strong north winds—rugged markers carved from anguish and haste of survivors. These weathered memorials captured the temperament of a forgotten time. Rectilinear stones, machine honed and technically perfect, marked a few of the privileged; those people didn’t belong here. One stone inscribed the grave of a man born in 1857. He rested below the larger of two evergreens, no doubt a sign of respect for his humble achievements. Perhaps they had planted those trees when they planted Mr. Potter.

Ryan drifted from one stone to the next trying to understand the story of each. His wander was directionless and his mind raced with scattered thought and feeling. Such a simple spot, quiet, timeless, and unchanging. The hill could be a crossroads: junction of a country road and a rancher’s path, someplace that exists in three dimensions of physical space. Or, it could be a vision of the fourth dimension, an evanescent idea of ticking time.

In his mind, it became convergence of ageless values under siege by present turmoil: conflict between old and new, of inconsonant goals, philosophies, and decisions. Change pressed upon him, and he understood contrasts between his life and these lifeless.

This beauty is peace, a metaphor. The final reward: no more human conflict, no more war. Here remains sameness. Here, a survivor could remember the past, render it manageable, comprehensible, and acceptable. Death is one concluding answer, inexorable. How obvious.

Yet, the graveyard provided a stage for the future. Solitude invites turmoil and with it, complex questions. If this is where life ends, what then is the next step—before the finish?

War! What’s it for? Absolutely nothing!

Is it off to Vietnam to stop spread of communism? Be brave like Rodney Suthers and kick some East Asian butt? Or is this time for scholarship and careful career planning? Run off or rule reality? Live for now or tomorrow? Protest or pull out? Play or work? Cut all ties, dash to Canada, start over?

Which?

He read the grave markers without full comprehension. Rigid names bore testimony to harsh frontier existence: Skinner, Rake, Stone, Smith, and Weaver. He passed death and thought about life, knowledge, experiences, relationships, peace and war, living and death—about the future. He walked to the mound of a grave and became captivated—again by contrast.

Her name whispered from stone, delicate, soft, vulnerable:

Letty Leah

Born: September 10, 1909

Died: January 29, 1919

Age nine. He read it several times. He wanted to know her, to imagine her as she must have been.

Letty inspired images of a bouncy, bright little girl, a person others sought for companionship. She could break stoic coldness and disarm bitter tastes of prairie existence. Letty had been an elixir for those who shared her life. Her name was also Leah, a spring wind in her spirit, a feminine being who caressed farm creatures. Leah would have become a beautiful woman—like Jenny, the flawless Phi Theta in his encounter group class.

Sadness swept over him. He felt grief embers buried under sod a lifetime before, embers that cold earth would not extinguish. Yet, he knew Letty Leah was nothing more than a concept, perhaps life’s most potent concept: its desolation. And he could transcend across decades to a time when a family circled this stone, maybe humble, probably resigned. They had lost the girl. She had brought hope to their lives and joy in the gift of a sweet fruit ripening slowly. How this hurt. They had lost her. Had her illness been a burden, or did she die instantaneously, an accident?

Would they circle his grave, too? Would the casket be left open, even though a bullet from an AK-47 eliminated half his skull? Same as Rodney?

A diffident sun finally fell below the horizon; the sky cast hues ranging from powder blue at the horizon to midnight purple at zenith. He sat on the mound entombing Letty Leah and tossed stems of buffalo grass at the wind. His eyes darted aimlessly from fading light to sparkling stars. The cool air still felt damp, yet there were no signs of rain. He wished for another joint—a beautiful college chick to smoke it with—and Vinny’s stuff was the best he had had all summer. What a place to do a stoner: alone with dead people, the possibility of his death never closer; gratitude for his life never greater.

He stood and walked again to the hilltop. Boughs of the trees frantically danced in answer to gusts of wind. As he approached the larger evergreen, he tasted chocolate, swallowed hard—a flavor children learn about from grandmother, a piece of dark temptation broken from a big hunk. Fragrance passed through his nostrils: those roses. His face tingled with sensation as if stroked by soft fur.

Something fluttered, though it took no tangible form as if elusive images one sees in peripheral vision on a shadowy night. It might have been a dove; he heard a coo. He felt radiant warmth on his cheeks. Could be sunburn, but someone was nearby; he was not alone. He peered through darkness to find shadows. Pangs of loneliness he had been fighting all day—vanished.

A fat harvest orb rose full over the eastern plains; prairie grass ignited with somber yellow-gray light. This may have been juxtaposition of the gravestone in relation to the hillcrest, or this could have been his imagination growing more vivid, but moonlight crept across the graveyard and caused just one stone to glow—the final resting place for Letty Leah. Muted in comparison, neighboring stones leaned in directions that did not reflect focused moonlight.

He took several steps, fell to his knees, and faced the stone. God, I don’t want to die, and I don’t know how to live. His emotions became a tidal wave; remorse and fear and doubt and anger undulated with swaying evergreens.

Letty touched him beyond physical sensation. He understood he must find her to comprehend his own mortality. Death is life; life is death. Letty is both. She is part of the two eternities, bookends on either side of his story.

Nearby, a rose shrub trembled. He picked a bud, placed it upon the child’s grave, and walked hesitantly down the hill toward his Beetle.

Somewhere, a dove cooed.

CHAPTER II

The Moratorium

Stop bogarting it, Ryan, Kent announced, breaking a long silence. Pass it around so the rest of us can have a toke or two. He tousled his hair nervously.

Ryan shook his head affirmatively and handed Kent a hand-rolled joint. Sorry. Spaced it out.

Ryan was not accustomed to the wallop of Acapulco gold. Like the others, he had been head-starved for most of a long, dry summer.

Are you guys getting off? Ryan asked nobody in particular.

Far out, said Kent, who giggled with spasmodic stomach movements, and his voice traveled away with his thoughts. He downshifted to a lower gear, popped the clutch, and let the van jerk to a slower speed. Kent loved to dictate their agenda.

Ryan was beginning his junior year at the University of Kansas. Protracted, hot summer months had been an interlude to excesses and experiments of the previous audacious semester. The fall semester was six weeks along, and he felt saddled by a predictable grind of classes. There was another aggravating problem: He had not declared a major field of study, and his student draft deferment would soon be in jeopardy.

He had learned from psychology that free-floating anxiety must be mollified, so he debated with himself. Of course, it is justifiable for mental health purposes to escape academic pressures and dive into carefree mind expansion. Maybe time presses on, but it is never too late for another toke or two. Roll another one, brother.

Ryan felt pleasantly confused by the chimerical flight of his mind. Vivid mental images transported him from remembrances of golden Christie in the yellow bikini to electric twang of a new Jimi Hendrix tune: a distorted, anguished, bawling rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner that Hendrix had first played during the final day of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair just eight weeks earlier. He contemplated deeper meaning of a concept he had learned during philosophy class the previous day: Existence precedes essence. The existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre neatly gathered all human experiences together. Maybe this would be a good time to grow a mustache. Did Jenny smile at him that way with an ulterior motive—a breezy tease? Van headlights work like grasshopper bait; farmers could use this idea—maybe some money in it.

So his mind reacted to marijuana: it wandered from trivial to complex to trivial again. Insights of mammoth proportion came to consciousness and skipped from mind’s eye, as a hummingbird flits from flower to flower during shadowy moments after dusk.

Ryan, Kent, and three of their former fraternity brothers traveled the back roads late that night of October 1969. Kent drove, Ryan rode shotgun, and the three other men sat cross-legged in the back. Their drug supplier slept, and he lay against the back door, his head cockeyed. The van had been sparsely furnished with makeshift cushions covered by Indian mosaic fabric.

Protectively shrouded in this steel space capsule, the five Delta Omega dropouts zigzagged with it, wandering over one hill and then the next. At times they became lost. But ten miles away the specter of Fraser Hall rose like a black silhouette against moonlight; it was a familiar landmark to draw them back home. Four pairs of eyes lanced the road ahead. Janis Joplin wailed over Kent’s new eight-track stereo: Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose; nothing don’t mean nothing honey if it ain’t free. Jasmine incense smoke filled the van with pungent, earthy sweetness, bombarding their senses.

Hills around the college city of Lawrence were rolling and green after a summer of prodigious rainfall. The air had become sticky. Grasshoppers flew and crackled as they leaped in panic from looming van headlights. The grasshopper exodus triggered macabre fantasies about terror and survival.

For three hours they wandered up and down, up and down, never exceeding fifteen miles per hour. The droning vehicle grind, which Kent held in first or second gear, added monotonous background noise to quiet of an Indian summer night. For three hours nothing much had been uttered except an occasional command to light another joint or pass it around.

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Ryan awoke in rolling fog. Marijuana didn’t cause a hangover, but his mind took longer than usual to become alert. He stayed in bed for a while and thought about the reunion with his fraternity brothers. Tension entered his flaccid limbs, and he hoped his straight roommate had not detected pot smell.

Richard was conservative—no, straight as a pig. The son of a Marine lieutenant colonel, he had a rigid and predictable demeanor, an indication that he had been raised under strict admonitions. He had survived a regimented childhood by living a narrow lifestyle. One day he announced that if he caught Ryan or Kent smoking pot he would call the Dean’s office and report the lawbreaker.

Ryan stumbled out of his antique brass bed and hobbled to the bathroom. He hated the bathroom. To get there he had to tiptoe through Richard’s room, and he was sometimes greeted with off-hand derision, but Richard’s big hulk did not shift as Ryan passed into their tiny shared bathroom.

He stared at the mirror. His eyes were red and his hair full of cowlicks from a night of fitful sleep. He had a handsome face, light brown eyes, sandy hair, and the barest hint of a beard. He raised up on his tiptoes to make himself appear two inches taller; he would like to have been at least one inch taller, an even six feet. Maybe he still had a chance to grow more. He was thin, but it was difficult for him to gain weight. Ryan drove himself hard, and calories burned up through the course of each day, no matter how many Smaks cheeseburgers and Joe’s Donuts he gobbled.

He took time to bathe and thought about Jenny, the Phi Theta in his communication sensitivity training class. Her eyes held him in fantasy: dark brown, wide and sleepy, just enough mascara to make the whites whiter. She had an exotic, mystical presence that made Ryan feel uncomfortable and horny. Thoughts of Jenny and the hot bath turned him back on and cleared his head.

Running behind schedule he dressed quickly. He threw on a pair of bell-bottom jeans and stepped into suede Dingo boots. He grabbed a wash-worn blue chambray shirt. Then he stuffed a three-inch wide belt with a heavy, tarnished brass buckle through the loops of his pants; it barely squeezed through. Around his neck, he tied a thin leather strand that bore a silver symbol in the shape of an inverted three-pronged Y: the Rune of Peace. (The symbol suggested peace, but it had been more popularly recognized as a sign of rejection. Ryan preferred to think of it as a contemptuous challenge to social and political mores of the ruling generations.) He tossed on his fringed leather jacket and stood back to inspect himself in the mirror. His wavy hair had just hidden his ear lobes. He stepped back three more feet, looked again, satisfied.

As he opened the front door to leave their turn-of-the-century Victorian house, he heard Richard mumble something.

What? Ryan asked.

I said hippie. You look like a fucking hippie, Richard said. If my dad comes down for Homecoming Weekend, you better cut the goddamn hair. Oh, yea—morning.

Did we get up on the wrong side of the bed again?

It’s hanging over your ears.

Ryan glanced over his shoulder at the hall mirror and then at the hulking, awkward man, dressed only in a white tee-shirt and boxers. Excuse me, I forget—did we elect you house mother?

I can get the scissors—

Why don’t you sit on them and rotate?

I don’t need hassles with Dad. Kent looks like John Lennon.

He’d be honored with your comparison.

The insolent roommate slowly extended his middle finger.

Ryan mumbled, Fuck you and have a nice day, and slammed the door. Unaware of his surroundings he walked through the old neighborhoods and passed block after block of weathering homes. He continued to weigh the pros and cons of his predicament with Richard. He crossed through an alley and reached Jayhawk Boulevard near the new Smith Hall.

Hey Ryan, hold up, Merle shouted. A plump man walked quickly to join him. Where’s your armband? His face was defined by thick, round, gold-rimmed glasses attached to a follicle-challenged, oversize head.

Darn it, said Ryan. I forgot—today’s the Moratorium. Do you have any?

I wouldn’t wear one of the things, but a revolutionary like you should be outfitted in full protest regalia. I just passed Jenny on her way to Danforth Chapel and she has extras. He gleamed with an impish grin.

Ryan understood Merle’s innuendo. Men often produced mischievous grins when they spoke about Jenny. She had been a favorite topic of discussion, contemplation, and wishful thinking at college pubs because of celebrity she had received at basketball finals in San Diego during the previous March play-offs. She had traveled there as a guest of the team center, Billy Montgomery. He had a reputation for playing women as hard as he played hoops. Jenny had stumbled into a national TV interview with Billy and under an interview spotlight coquettishly suggested how she had relaxed him before the big game, a revelation so sexual that the network almost censored her comments. Viewers’ imaginations ripened that day. In addition to this beguiling claim to national fame, Jenny also performed as a Go-Go dancer every Friday at the Mr. Yuk-Up nightclub. Crowds of college males packed the place, raucous, cheerful, and admiring.

Why is she going to the chapel? Ryan asked.

Merle said breathlessly, She’s leading a KU committee to help get a million signatures for a petition to stop the war. They want thousands of demonstrators to gather in front of Strong Hall tomorrow night. It’s just insane. He shifted a stack of books from one arm to another. The new books already appeared dog-eared.

Maybe I’ll join them, Ryan said.

Impishly grinning, Merle added, You and half the dudes on campus.

How about you?

I’ve got more important things to do than this protest crap. Mid-terms are around the corner.

Let’s hump it. We’re going to be late.

They walked on together, their pace becoming brisk when they heard a ten-minute warning whistle. The day felt damp and chilly because a cold front had crawled in during early morning hours, and the campus had been enveloped in gloomy, gray mist. Droppings of elm and maple trees scattered across campus and leaves crushed beneath