The Indian: America's Waking Dream, Berkeley Radicals, War, Riots, Drugs and Revolution

By Jeffrey Bernhardt

Jeff has been telling lies since he cut down his fathers cherry tree. He obtained degrees in math and chemistry, which have served him well over the years in spinning plausible stories for many employers. For many years, he has designed and developed medical instruments, some of which worked. It has somehow just dawned on him that he could spin yarns for his own purposes. Jeff has three children and lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains in California with his wife and high schoolaged youngest daughter. The neighbors complain about his dogs and the racket he makes on every New Years Eve.
Jeff lived through and participated in events of the period portrayed in this book but, as is usual of those who did, cannot remember much of it. However, the intentions, yearnings, and idealism of the period are crystal clear and as out of step with the larger social mores now as they were then. Details of the historical events have been chronicled by many in exquisite detail and are utilized extensively in this work. The extraordinary period depicted in this work spanning 1969 through 1972 is a greatly underappreciated and momentous point in American history and the place of America in the world. From the peak of affluence and power, many were able to pursue spiritual and political ideals, only to slam against the larger reality of a culture which fractured and came dangerously close to self-destruction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483607528

Jeffrey Bernhardt

Jeff has been telling lies since he cut down his father’s cherry tree. He obtained degrees in math and chemistry, which have served him well over the years in spinning plausible stories for many employers. For many years, he has designed and developed medical instruments, some of which worked. It has somehow just dawned on him that he could spin yarns for his own purposes. Jeff has three children and lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains in California with his wife and high school–aged youngest daughter. The neighbors complain about his dogs and the racket he makes on every New Year’s Eve. Jeff lived through and participated in events of the period portrayed in this book but, as is usual of those who did, cannot remember much of it. However, the intentions, yearnings, and idealism of the period are crystal clear and as out of step with the larger social mores now as they were then. Details of the historical events have been chronicled by many in exquisite detail and are utilized extensively in this work. The extraordinary period depicted in this work spanning 1969 through 1972 is a greatly underappreciated and momentous point in American history and the place of America in the world. From the peak of affluence and power, many were able to pursue spiritual and political ideals, only to slam against the larger reality of a culture which fractured and came dangerously close to self-destruction.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Gathering of the Tribe

A conference is a gathering of people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.

—Fred Allen

When politics and religion are intermingled, a people are suffused with a sense of invulnerability and gathering speed in their forward charge, they fail to see the cliff ahead of them.

—Frank Herbert

T he Indian was pissed off, and not just everyday ordinary pissed off, but so pissed off that he was ready and willing to kill someone. In fact, there was a specific someone he was ready and planning to kill. This was extraordinary, since he usually liked most everyone and was not a violent person. The Indian thought of himself as basically a nonviolent person, even though he knew that his people, or at least who he thought were his people, had great proud warriors in their numbers. It took a lot to get him angry, and he couldn’t remember actually getting violent since he was a small child.

It was fall of 1969 in Berkeley, California, where The Indian had lived for several years without incident. As he saw it, he minded his own business, did right by everyone, and had never even gotten rousted by the cops, even through the height of the People’s Park riots. He had made a lot of friends and business associates and had no enemies that he was aware of. He was loosely a member of the Red Mountain Tribe, a counterculture collective, which had only loosely associated members. Berkeley had seen its share of demonstrations and riots, and The Indian had participated in many of these. In his mind, there was no contradiction between a live and let live attitude and believing fervently that the world was on the cusp of an important transformation requiring assertive action. Since Berkeley was on the forefront of this movement, everyone had to contribute.

He had never before declared anyone’s life forfeit or, for that matter, had anyone ever declared his life forfeit. This might have been due more to the fact that for most of his life he wasn’t noticed at all, rather than any deeply ingrained belief or charisma. For the first part of his life, he had been an expert, almost a wizard, at not being noticed. On his part, he cut people a lot of slack and found redeeming or at least compensating factors in people whom most other people had written off as hopeless flotsam. Recently however, some of this flotsam had jammed the gears of his previously smoothly running life and could continue to do so. The Indian had been compassionate and, against his better instincts, had helped a strung-out junkie, a longtime heroin addict. This kindness had been returned tenfold in dispassionate destruction. The junkie had sold him out to crooked cops just to get high, even worse, to get enough to get high only once.

The Indian had just been released from jail in the morning, after spending the weekend locked up because he had been busted late on a Friday afternoon. No processing fingerprints, no checking for outstanding warrants nationwide after close of business on Friday, hence no bail over the weekend. Then to top things off, when he had returned to his usual place on Telegraph Avenue after being released, the cause of his being busted was there, selling his stash. The crooked cops had given Junkie Judas his stash, and there he was selling it on the street. The Indian had sent a friend to check it out more closely. Not only was Junkie Judas offering his fine Thai stick marijuana, but this worthless piece of shit had a cop watching over him, keeping him safe. Junkie Judas had gone to the cops and ratted him out for one hit of heroin, or something like ten dollars, which he got by selling The Indian’s pot. He already suspected that something like this had happened. At his arraignment, three-quarters of his pot was gone. The cops displayed only about ten sticks out of the forty they had confiscated. The Indian knew how it worked. The junkie would sell his pot, he would rat out buyers, and most of the proceeds from the sales would go into the police coffers or maybe the pocket of one policeman. The Indian couldn’t exactly demand they produce the rest of his pot, so he was just screwed.

The Indian was known as The Indian by his friends, mostly because he liked it that way. He had long straight black hair, and although he didn’t know how much Native American blood he really had in him, it was enough to get money from the government every month for being an Indian from a tribe according to a treaty from the nineteenth century. Well, that was unless someone clever had just set it up that way when he was too young to know any different. His family history was a little fuzzy as he had been transferred from home to home, on and off the reservation. At least that’s what he told people. He honestly couldn’t remember whether he had ever lived on a reservation. What he did know for sure is that he had been smoking pot since he was seven, and he’d been dropping acid since he was thirteen, and that gave the white hippies reason to look up to him. Life was usually good now. He had plenty of money and weed and lots of friends who not only considered him really cool but also looked to him for guidance in their lives. The Indian, as he was also known on the street, had learned to be whatever people expected him to be that made them happy or inspired them.

He had called together a meeting of a war council, a meeting of the tribe through the usual channels. As a community, they needed to address a problem that affected the whole community, even though, as far as he knew, he was the only one who had actually suffered so far. They had gathered, some loyal, some committed, some curious, and some who had heard that something important was happening which they shouldn’t miss but had no idea what it was. Finally, there were a few who knew with certainty that they didn’t know what was going on here in Berkeley or anywhere else but were driven by their idealism to find out.

Word had passed far and wide through Berkeley, but the word had been vague, and even the meeting place and time had gotten lost in some of the word-of-mouth transfers. The calls had gone through the same sources that had alerted this segment of the community to emergency meetings in the park to plan for surprise attacks from and against the cops. This particular message had gotten more diluted and distorted as it emanated from a single source. Still, to the people hearing it through the various grapevines, it could be the real call to arms, the spark that starts the fire that brings Nixon and his war down for all history… or not. The community was dizzy with excitement; and the feeling of being in a special time and place in history, on the cusp of a major world event, was in everyone’s mind.

This last thought was going through Rob’s head, and he convinced his friends Doug and Henry to come along as well. Doug and Henry, like Rob, were university students, more or less.

The Indian had known this guy who knew a guy who knew a real hit man who also worked freelance, although most of his work was through the Mafia. The hit man was passing through Berkeley, presumably on his way to or from another job. Taking Junkie Judas off the board was a job for a hit man. You needed distance. The Indian knew he would be the logical suspect when the little shit junkie disappeared. His friend said he would get word to the hit man, who was known as Tiny, when and where the meeting was.

At least twenty people crammed into The Indian’s living room, sitting on the floor or leaning up against the walls and doors. The apartment was furnished sparsely, the furniture old and worn, but clean. There was only one chair and a small couch which no one sat in, not wanting to violate the atmosphere of the tribe seated in a circle on the earth. The true connoisseur of the musty, dusty, and stale would be able to detect the faint echo of decades of tobacco smoke that underlay the smell of stale marijuana smoke embedded in the walls and ceiling. The walls hadn’t been painted in recent memory. The floor was scratched and dented with small holes everywhere in the floor where carpet had once been tacked down. Countless tenants had come and gone, and the apartment had been slowly reduced to its structural basics.

One wall sported a dog-eared poster, its corners torn and filled with pinholes. It announced Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company appearing at the Fillmore West auditorium some three years before. On the opposing wall, another poster urged solidarity with the takeover of the university land, now known as People’s Park, which had spawned several riots and one death. As if to not challenge the tired walls to hold up anything more, those were the only items of decor in the apartment.

Every time a new person arrived, they had to wait until the people leaning against the door scooted away so the door could be opened. Regular friends and acquaintances of The Indian, along with part of the established mercantile drug trade centered on Telegraph Avenue, brought guns. These were mainly surplus World War I rifles which were leaned against the walls, falling over each time people shuffled about trying to make room for new arrivals. Then they started to be passed around. The rifles went clockwise around the room; and the expertly rolled marijuana cigarette, which appeared as soon as the entry door closed, went counterclockwise. The rifles made it all the way around, but the marijuana somehow disappeared about two-thirds of the way. The second joint launched from the same bag by The Indian disappeared in approximately the same place probably about half smoked. Ammunition spilled into the center of the room as people examined and dropped the various bullets that had been placed by the rifles, and the ammunition became hopelessly shuffled as the rifles moved around.

Tiny was late. The Indian cleared his throat, and the room became quiet. We are here waiting on Tiny, he said simply, and everyone in the room nodded sagely even though only a few people had the slightest idea what he was talking about. The Indian knew that almost no one knew what he was talking about and decided to explain. Tiny is a top Mafia hit man. I mean like top of that game. We are bringing him here to set the will of the people right, and do away with the pig informer. I know this is not the usual way we take care of our business, and normally we try to have nothing to do with these criminal establishment tribes, but this is a special circumstance.

The room became very silent. This was not what most of the people attending had expected. The Indian continued, There are times when we all can use the methods and resources of the system against itself to accomplish our goals. It’s a Zen thing, you let the flow happen and just give the slightest push here and there. Don’t resist and things work out just fine.

As if on cue, Tiny came through the door followed by a diminutive woman. Tiny was about six feet and five inches tall and had to bend to get through the door. Sorry I’m late, he said and started to explain.

But by the time he had gotten the first sentence out, the small woman was through the door, and one look from her silenced him. She took up the explanation. We got stopped by the cops, and they searched our car, she said, stopping for dramatic effect. We had two spare barrels in the trunk of the car, but the cops didn’t know what they were. We never do two jobs with the same barrel. They were just kind of rolling around, and they thought they were just pieces of old pipe. She just then noticed all the rifles stacked about the room and the ammunition scattered around the floor. She then noticed just how many people were in the room and was torn between basking in being a celebrity guest and the utter stupidity of having a profession usually kept quite private aired to a large group of strangers. Her cheeks puffed up, then deflated as she breathed out slowly. Being a celebrity won out.

Tiny took one look around the room and came to an immediate realization. He knew what his wife was thinking, and he was having the same thoughts. These people were lame, clueless hippies. The rifles lying around the room were all from a bargain barrel that every gun shop had by its front door. Old World War I bolt action rifles, two or three for ten dollars. There was no discretion here; the room was full of people, probably half of whom didn’t even know each other, let alone the person who called the meeting. This meeting was probably posted around town. On the positive side, this was such a lame group that the FBI and local cops most likely hadn’t bothered with undercover agents. These people were so clueless that they would probably all want to follow him and watch him kill the stupid junkie if he was stupid enough to take the contract.

What the fuck was going on here? Weren’t hippies nonviolent, peace and love and all that? They sure looked like hippies and students and teenagers and God knows what else. Just what he needed. The hit man performs his shtick to a capacity crowd. You couldn’t get much dumber than that. Somehow, inexplicably, he continued on with his performance. It was also clear that this audience was not expecting his act.

Tiny relaxed, now sure that he wasn’t going to do any work for these people. It didn’t matter what he said or didn’t say. Everybody bullshitted, and without someone actually getting whacked, no one would be interested in him. These bozos certainly weren’t going to get anything together on their own; and in the meanwhile, he could smoke their pot, bask in their respect and admiration, and then split with some of their stuff if there was anything worth taking. He was waiting to hear from a few people about another job anyway, so he would cool his heels here for a day or two. Set up some meetings to discuss details and then just disappear like a cloud of smoke in a windstorm. He knew that Linda, his wife, was on the same page.

He had been with Linda for about two months now, and after the first month, she had suggested they get married. He thought, what the hell, she was by far the best woman he had ever had in his life. He felt really lucky hooking up with her, but that’s as far as his luck had gone lately. He had missed out on three big jobs in the last two months. Somehow he had been given the contracts, gotten close enough to the mark to begin planning, but then someone else had taken the mark off the board. It wasn’t unusual for his employers to make sure that a job got done by contracting it out to two hitters at the same time, but it seemed kind of weird that this would happen to him three times in a row. That wasn’t too good for his reputation, and he was just thankful that Linda, his woman, jeez, his wife, didn’t hold it against him. Well, he’d kick back for a few days and see if something new came up. He was actually kind of new at this game, and this very well might be the way it usually worked.

He would set up another meet for tomorrow, and even set up a one-on-one with The Indian to identify the mark. He kind of liked The Indian. There was something about him that was straightforward and no bullshit, but he sure hung with a lot of hopeless losers. He would feel a bit bad stealing The Indian’s stash, but he had already decided that he needed to get something for the time he was spending with these morons. He would never see anyone here again. They might even learn something about the real world and how you needed to be more careful. He needed to do something to keep Linda’s respect. If he couldn’t pull off a clean and quick contract, he could at least keep himself and Linda in good pot and enough cash to be comfortable for another two months if something good didn’t pan out quickly.

Linda seemed to be completely with the program, and she also seemed to be having a good time. He and Linda were certainly the big fish in a little pond, and even though the other pond dwellers might not approve of their occupation, it carried respect and a certain romantic flair. Most importantly, at least some of these people needed their services, although Tiny had no doubt that they would not be able to raise the cash he usually demanded. They would probably expect him to give them some big discount, on account of this job being for the people. Well, screw that.

The meeting broke up with an agreement that a smaller group would meet again tomorrow, and in the meanwhile, The Indian would show Tiny the target. This was the most incredibly stupid and public contract Tiny had ever talked about taking. The more he thought about it, the more he worried that just being around these people might end his short career before he could even learn the ropes. He had been reassuring himself that since he wasn’t going to take the job, nothing bad could come from any of this, and he might just as well relax and have some fun; but his growing unease made this seem risky.

The walls were so patched, and the paint had so many spots of dirt that no one noticed the two quarter-inch dark patches about a foot below the ceiling on opposite sides of the room. On the other side of each of these walls, in the two apartments on either side of The Indian’s apartment, there were cupboards; and in each cupboard a tape recorder was whirring quietly as it caught every word spoken.

The Indian felt conflicted. One part of him was pretty proud of the fact that he had gathered this group together, that he had brought in a big gun (literally) from the larger world, and that he was managing a significant operation that anyone would view as serious and dangerous, and that some people would even find repulsive. On the other hand, he had his doubts. Although there was no question what a shit the junkie was and that he posed a danger to a lot of people, killing was a difficult moral question. Then there was the question of mixing the ideals and politics of the Berkeley political dream with a Mafia hit man, one of the least moral entities on the planet. Deep down he worried that his plan wasn’t a clever use of forces at play in the larger world to accomplish a needed task, but a way around his own lack of courage. Did he gather all these people to help overcome his self-doubt, or was it absolutely the right thing to do to bring the tribe, the community, together to share in an important and difficult decision?

The group had seemed to him not to have much input. They seemed a little ambivalent, a little baffled at the whole reason they had been brought here, and strangely enough, even a little apathetic. This was clearly not what anyone had been expecting. They didn’t understand that they were supposed to be part of a community moral decision and share responsibility for that decision. The Indian felt, well, actually he was having a hard time deciding what he felt. On the one hand, he had done his duty, brought everyone together to go forward or stop this action. On the other hand, perhaps he had forced onto them a decision on a course of action so outside their realm of moral sense or even reason that they didn’t even realize they could put a stop to it. Maybe he was completely out of line gathering this group for this purpose.

These people were thinking of the new Utopia, correcting the wrongs of a powerful nation gone wrong, opposing the forces of oppression, taking back the streets, that sort of thing. Killing a junkie who was ratting out pot dealers might be lowering themselves into the mud and wallowing with the very same types they despised and were fighting against. What had seemed like such a good idea just a little while ago was now causing him a boat load of self-doubt.

At least he had met a few new people that he liked as a result of this meeting. Henry, with whom he was doing business, selling pot to UC Berkeley students, had come not even knowing that it was The Indian who called the meeting. He had brought a friend, Doug, whom he immediately got a really positive feeling for. Doug had many interests and seemed idealistic but not to the point of naiveté. The Indian tended to think more of people who didn’t automatically accept the direction and judgment of others. Doug could question himself and those around him, but was not paralyzed by doubt. He seemed to have misgivings about this project, and rather than resent him for that, The Indian thought more highly of him. Then there was Rob, a friend of Henry’s, who had driven both the others to the meeting. Rob was solid and someone The Indian felt he could work with in the future.

After the last of the people at the meeting had shuffled out the door, The Indian returned to his bedroom where he had left Tiny and his wife. An ominous draft filled the empty room. The room seemed cold and breezy, and no one was there, and then he realized that Tiny and his girlfriend must have opened the window and climbed out. But why? They could have just said no to the job and left. With a sinking feeling, he walked slowly over to his rickety nightstand and yanked out the drawer. His stash and money were gone. Two total losses in a week. In spite of this, and his desire to feel righteously angry, he let out a sigh of relief. This might actually be the best way out of this deal with no one but him questioning his original decision. This whole thing was done. He doubted he’d ever see Tiny again or that there would be any other repercussion from his attempt to do business with him.

CHAPTER 2

The Berkeley Everyman

What we call soul has been around a long time. It comes out of a particular culture that is African in origin, but influenced by 250 years of slavery, as well as other forms of racial oppression.

—Roy Ayers

Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.

—Robertson Davies

E ver since Doug had arrived in Berkeley from his home in Los Angeles, this town had a way of smacking him with the unexpected in unexpected ways and places. The meeting he had just come from was not at all what he was expecting. In fact, it was one of the strangest gatherings of any kind he had ever attended. He didn’t know quite what he was expecting, but a Mafia hit man introduced by a Native American was certainly not it.

Doug was thinking back to his first week in Berkeley as he rode in Rob’s car back to the dorms. When he had first arrived at Berkeley, before classes started, his next-door neighbor in the dorm invited him to ride into town with some other of the new arrivals. They piled into an old Pontiac that belonged to one of the new students. With the radio blaring Tears of a Clown, they headed to west Berkeley.

They passed by tenements with men sitting on the steps, somehow more real and present in the world than he had ever felt himself to be. He thought of the feeling Motown music brought out in him, about the people who lived in the songs and whose lives were patchworks of suffering, resignation, and struggle. All Doug had to do to succeed was to follow the path pointed to him and do the things he had practiced in school, none of which were very hard. He just had to please a few people at a time each step of the way by doing what he was asked to do, and he would live in comfort and prosperity for the rest of his life.

Most of the houses they passed had paint peeling off the walls and stoops. The peeling paint looked like ornate script telling the stories of the many families that had eked out livings in these houses. The language of decay and crumbling was comprehensive and steeped in detail. These were stories of lives that led to a point, more often than not, of eventually failing to raise the required rent and then being evicted or leaving before eviction. A bounty of abandoned cars lined the streets, and the sidewalks and curbs were adorned with generous patches of broken glass. Toys and garbage vied for space on the mostly unattended lawns.

Here and there appeared an oasis of a freshly painted house or a painstakingly tended lawn or garden. They didn’t look out of place, but rather a part of the variety of a rich and varied human landscape. Fragrant flowers scented entire blocks, displacing the various smells of humanity; smoke, sewage, cooking food, sweat, stale beer, car exhaust, and undigested human yearnings. The language of these newly painted and well-maintained houses was terse and direct—we want into the American Dream.

The scene had a hypnotic effect on everyone in the car including the driver. The car hit a particularly big pothole, the tallest head which was Ben’s, hit the roof hard. Jeez, another one like that and my head will go right through your roof. Doug was so absorbed that he didn’t notice anything and continued to gaze out the window.

Many of the stoops and steps leading to the front doors were occupied by men and women engrossed in conversation and argument. Children played, running and whooping on the streets and lawns. Teenagers strutted and swaggered. There were a smattering of drunks and addicts lying on the sidewalks or passed out on the bus stop benches. As Doug and the others drove along, they were witness to a deceptive vision of harmony and community. Violence and misery was never far, just out of sight of the casual passerby.

Here were people who had no certain plan to follow, or much hope that anything would improve. The music blaring from the car radio spoke from the release from a hundred years of enslavement where culture, family, and even memory had been torn away and obliterated, leaving only raw emotion and what was absolutely vital to survive. This was followed by another hundred years of trying to find a place in a culture and society whose members often treated them little better than slaves, at best as inferiors. Like a good soup, the raw bitterness of enslavement and oppression had been blended by long simmering with the universal emotions felt across humanity and produced a music and literature that enraptured psyches around the world.

Riding with his new friends, radio blaring, Doug melded with the people in the crowded tenement. He thought he understood the music, to whom and how it spoke. It spoke with such strong authority and to the depths of so many people that it was nothing short of magical. Doug felt something just out of reach, a connection to a people who somehow found a purpose in their suffering, people who had had something really important stolen from them generations ago, people who unlike him had a real sense of biting loss not merely a vague generic sense of alienation like what he had grown up with.

Ben, the big black guy who had been assigned the dorm room one room over, had chosen the radio station and seemed completely at home in the poor neighborhood they were driving through, even though he came from across the country, and most oddly from a stratum of wealthy Southern blacks, a rare status indeed.

Rob pulled up to the parking structure by the dorms, and Doug was jolted out of his ruminations. His life in this new place had been so different from his previous life at home with his parents. Finals week was coming up in two weeks, and he probably should have been studying instead of going to this meeting. Suddenly, he remembered that he had signed up for a psych experiment which started in less than an hour.

Interestingly, between working odd jobs off the job board—being a paid subject in psychology experiments, selling the occasional ounce of pot to other students in the dorms, and writing term papers for pay for two term paper companies that had recruited students—he was earning more money than he had ever earned, twice what he earned for full-time summer jobs. The psychology experiments were a real winner as they paid as much for one hour or so what any other job paid in four hours.

Doug walked over to Tolman Hall and was ushered into a small room with a screen by a graduate student who explained that he would be watching a short film. Doug signed a short waiver, which he didn’t read, and was told that he would be watching a film three times and that they were interested in his response. He would have electrodes attached to his head and arms. He was asked about the kinds of films he had watched, how he reacted to films, and if any films had disturbed him so much that he had left the theater. He reported that he had never seen a film that was that disturbing. The student turned out the lights and left the room.

It was some sort of African tribal ritual recorded by a handheld camera, a coming of age ritual. A young man was spread out on a rock, held down, and some village elders slitted his penis with a sharpened stone, about halfway up its length, and then opened the tissue and spread it flat. Doug felt a little queasy. The film ended abruptly, and the lights went back on. The student came back in and checked on Doug. After verifying that he was not too disturbed and all the electrodes were still in place, the student left the room, and the lights went out. The same film was played again. Again the student checked on Doug, and the movie was shown a third time. Then the student came back in the room with an envelope with fifteen dollars in it. The student thanked Doug for his time and said that he was finished.

Although the movie left him feeling queasy, Doug had just earned four hours’ worth of wages for less than an hour’s work. He actually felt dizzy from the shock of what he had watched. Then he thought of the suffering of other people in many other places in the world, and he felt silly and pampered. On the way out, he signed up for two more studies. Doug then headed back to the dorm where he thought that he would grab his books for a few hours’ study. He was starting to get worried that he was falling so far behind that he would flunk at least one of his finals.

As soon as he got back to his room, he started to gather up his books to head out to the library. He was just about to leave when his friend Henry rushed in, looking excited. Hey, Doug, got something for you that you’re going to like. When I got back to my room, my roommate had taken a message from the Sure Pass term paper company. There are two custom papers that they’re willing to pay a writer seventy dollars for. Some rich kids are desperate and need them within two weeks. They’re willing to pay anything for papers that will give them a passing grade. You could probably ask eighty dollars. I’d do it, but I can’t. You know this science stuff, and you know how to do research stuff.

Hey, Henry, Henry, just listen, I got to ask you… Doug tried to interrupt, but it was no use. Henry was exhausted, excited, and not listening.

. . . If you got a hundred and sixty dollars, I could get a really nice pound of pot and twenty-five hits of good acid and turn it in three days or less without ever leaving the dorm for five hundred dollars. I’d keep a hundred and twenty and give you the rest. I’d also keep two ounces of pot and four hits of acid and split it with you. Hey, you want to impress Liz? Show up at her room with an ounce of good pot and two hits of windowpane acid. You can’t get any better, only person I know who can get it is The Indian. The panes are so small that it’s got to be pure.

Doug finally got his question in. Henry, Earth to Henry. Attention, calling Henry. What are the papers on? I have to study. I have finals in two weeks, just like you, so this can’t take up too much time.

Henry looked sheepish and pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket. One paper is on ‘Autoxidation in Plastics Exposed to Sunlight,’ the other is ‘French Parterre Gardens and Their Role in the Historical Evolution of Horticulture.’ Hard to imagine who actually gives a shit about the second one, and I don’t have a clue what the first one is about. You can phone the guy and talk to him. In fact, I can just leave you this paper since I don’t know anyone else who could do this.

Doug sighed. Perhaps this would be an opportunity that might not come again unless he showed this guy that he could deliver on hard-to-write term papers. Okay, I’ll at least do the first one. I don’t know about the second, I don’t know what they are expecting. I’d have to look up the class and see what it covers to have the slightest idea about it. Doug thought about how ironic it was that his grade point average on papers he had written for other people was so much higher than his grade point average on papers he had turned in for himself. Well, he still may as well carry his physics books to the library, but it looked like he was going to spend most of his time working on some upper division classes that he would probably never take.

Doug left the last library about midnight, when it was closing. He had started out in Hildebrand, the chemistry library, and had worked his way through the LeConte, Bancroft, and Moffitt libraries. At least all these libraries were close to each other, so as Doug’s stack of books grew he didn’t have to carry them that far, at least until he headed back to the dorm. He looked around for a payphone to call Henry. He was tired and wanted help carrying all the books. Besides, Henry had a pretty big stake in the outcome of his labors.

Henry was glad to help, and together they lugged twenty-two books back to the dorm. Doug had also taken extensive notes from materials that weren’t allowed to leave the library. He had a good start on one paper, and for the other he had at least figured out the obscure word that described an obscure type of garden.

When Doug got back to his dorm room, he found several notes stacked up on his desk and on top of his bed. His roommate was snoring loudly, and a portable record player was blaring Aretha Franklin. Doug initially had a room to himself when he first moved into the dorms. His assigned roommate had decided these dorms were too noisy and wild and had transferred to a more studious dorm. Doug had invited Ben, the black guy from Georgia, to be his roommate. Ben couldn’t stand his assigned roommate, and the feeling was mutual.

There were two inches of soul music records on Ben’s portable record player, and there were still a few stacked as yet unplayed. Ben had been his roommate for about three weeks. After several weeks of a cold war between Ben and his previous roommate, things took a distinct turn for the worse. The roommate apparently could not adapt to rooming with a black person and had been sniping at Ben constantly, but avoiding any direct racial slurs. Ben ignored him and spent little time in their shared room. In addition to his intolerance for a black roommate, he was also was rather neurotic about any disorder or distracting noises in his room. Ben liked listening to soul music when studying or going to sleep, but he refrained at his roommate’s constant complaints. Ben was also not the tidiest person. Even though Ben didn’t spend much time in his room, when he was there he found ways to retaliate.

Ben was a very good shot with a basketball, baseball, and wadded-up paper. He liked to toss his crumpled rejected typing across the room and bounce it off the rim of the wastebasket before it landed in the wastebasket. When he missed, Ben would collect the misses only after a satisfying pile had built up on the floor. His roommate couldn’t stand it and would get up and immediately put the paper into the wastebasket, glaring at Ben. Ben began to crumple up sheets of paper and bounce each paper off the rim and onto the floor just to watch his roommate dutifully get up and put every paper in the wastebasket as soon as it landed.

This became great sport, and then a great spectator sport. Ben would invite his neighbors to watch surreptitiously from the door as he bounced crumpled papers, one after another, off the rim of the wastebasket onto the floor. His roommate would unfailingly get up immediately, walk over, and put the paper into the trash can. Ben would time it as just as his roommate was sitting down, the next paper landed on the floor. He could do this for usually ten or twelve shots before his roommate would storm out the door or fewer if the hidden audience started to giggle.

One night, Ben came home late and was talking in the hallway with several other students rather loudly outside his room. Ben’s roommate stormed out of the room and, ignoring the other students, turned to Ben and blared, You ignorant tar baby, why don’t you let some real students study in peace and go back to picking cotton or something else that suits you. This statement not only lacked any literary flair or elegance that Ben or anyone else would be likely to appreciate but was also the most blatantly racist utterance ever heard by anyone in the dorm. Doug, who witnessed this outburst,