November 7, 1970

Okay, this is the first installment. I still don't know if this is going to be a short story or the start of something bigger, but it's the start of something.

 ***

Suzanne stares out the dirty window of the decrepit Detroit city bus, watching the slum roll by. When she'd boarded the bus with her best friend Mari, they'd been excited and talkative, but the tedious stop-and-go traffic and the cloud of marijuana smoke hovering over everyone's heads has put them half-asleep. Suzanne jerks awake when the bus driver slams on the brakes, and throws out her hands to save herself from a face-plant on the seatback in front of her.

"Hey man, what the fuck!" yells the guy in the Uncle Sam top hat across the aisle, but the driver pays no more attention to the grumbling crowd than he pays to the cloud of smoke. "I think I'm getting a contact high," says Mari. "It's the only kind I can afford."

Suzanne laughs. "Tell me about it. Smokin' other people's, and now, secondhand at that."

"How you feeling, Suzanne? You getting stoned?"

"Could be. I feel pretty good."

The light turns green. The bus heaves and shudders, and Suzanne lets go of the dented metal bar above the ripped seatback in front of her and settles back. The bus resumes its hissing down the wet asphalt, and she stares out the window again, looking down at the slush-spackled cars and at the gray lid of the sky above, threatening more November snow.

Suzanne and Mari are on their way downriver, heading for the Ambassador Bridge. There's another Student Mobilization rally against the war, and Canadian students from Windsor are going to meet American students from Detroit in the middle of the bridge and -- what? Shake hands, wave "U.S. out of Vietnam" posters, dance? Suzanne doesn't know the plan, or even if there is a plan, but she and Mari are willing to be a part of the newspapers' crowd estimate, their body count. Plan, no plan, plenty of kids always show up to the protests anyway. Suzanne figures if boys are getting their balls blown off in the tunnels of Cu Chi, the least she can do is go to a rally and chant. The draft is scooping up eighteen-year-old boys, and Suzanne, at sixteen, wants to make sure there will be plenty of intact boys left for her to date. She read the phrase "enlightened self-interest" someplace, and she's putting the concept into action.

The bus rolls down Jefferson, past the waterworks, past the Belle Isle entrance, past the downtown office buildings and Cobo Hall. There's a fair amount of traffic for a Saturday on the riverfront. They rumble under the freeway, past the Tunnel to Canada signs. A black bus slowly creeps next to Suzanne's window, every head in every window wearing an incongruous baby blue helmet. The city bus riders grow quiet.

Mari leans toward Suzanne. "Riot cops," whispers Mari.

"They look so weird," murmurs Suzanne. "They look like a carton of robins' eggs."

Mari grins. "You are most definitely stoned."

Their bus groans to a stop and the doors pop open. The skunk weed cloud inside meets the Zug Island factory stink outside as everyone shuffles off the bus. Mari precedes Suzanne down the stairs. "Oh, damn!" she yells as her foot sinks ankle-deep into the gutter. "Watch out for the slush!"

They're heading toward the bridge, heading toward the crush of high school students, Black Panthers, White Panthers, Wayne State University students and professors, union organizers, welfare rights organizers, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, undercover FBI agents, radical priests and nuns, dopers, mental patients, and the riot cops guarding the bridge from all of them.

The wind has picked up, blowing out of Canada, and Suzanne shivers. She's wearing the only jacket she owns, a black crinkled-fake-leather short jacket that looks totally cool -- but between the outer crinkly shell and ripped inner lining lies a thin layer of dryer lint. That's what it looks like, and that's what it feels like, Suzanne thinks, and wishes she had doubled up on sweaters underneath. Or maybe hit the Salvation Army store the previous week while she still had enough money from her after-school job to buy a used winter coat. Of course, that would have left her short on food money, which was why she hadn't done it. She sighs and walks a little faster. The crowd is in sight, and the more people, the more heat.

"Wait up!" Mari had fallen behind. Suzanne halts and turns, a little embarassed.

"Sorry!" She was thoughtless sometimes. Or just lost in thought most of the time. Another bad habit to work on.