All the Wild Children by Josh Stallings Read Free Book Online Page B

wide gaps in VW body panels I don’t lose any flesh.  I remember clearly my mother going door to door asking for ice for her son’s hurt finger.  Doors are slammed in her face.  She smiles and tells me they don’t have ice in Salt Lake City.  For years I thought it had to do with salt water having such a low freezing temperature.
     
    November 22, 1963 President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas.  My mother sits in her rocking chair weeping openly. 
     
    November 25, 1963 President Kennedy is buried.  That brave little boy stands beside his mother at the graveside.  He stands for all of us kids.  He makes us proud as we stand beside our crying mothers.  Two days later I turn six.  I doubt there was much of a party that year.  Which is as it should be.
     
    February 21, 1965 Malcolm X is assassinated.  My family mourns.
     
    Summer, 1966 my father leaves.  My family mourns.
     
    January, 1967 the nightmare that was our foray into public school ends.  We have survived one semester at Escondido before our sentence is commuted.  Whether it is because Lark beat that boy up (his theory) or my constant detention (my theory) or because my mother saw how unhappy w e wer e (her theory).  It really didn’t matter.  We were free, free at last, sweet lord free at last.
    I’m smiling victoriously as I reenter Peninsula.  It has been raining.  Puddles lake the playground.  The mud gushes through my toes.  I am home.  For all of its failings, its rich kid, poor kid inadequacies, Peninsula is one part of my life that has returned to the old normal. 
    In wood shop, I’m using a table saw to cut a wall for a barn I am making for Shaun’s plastic horses.  Above the saw, tacked to the wall is an official looking sign –
    IN CASE OF NUCLEAR ATTACK
    1) SIT UNDER A TABLE OR DESK
    2) AVOID WINDOWS
    3) SIT ON THE GROUND
    4) PLACE YOUR HEAD BETWEEN YOUR LEGS
    5) KISS YOUR ASS GOODBYE
    I am back in the bosom of the counter culture. 
    It’s 1967.  A war is raging, the battle lines have been drawn in super markets and diners across America.  The foot soldiers are kids and old ladies.  The shock troops are the Black Panthers , redneck s with rifle racks, the Weather Underground, th e National Guar d .  The Kent State massacre is only four years away.  Things are heating up.
    It is freaks against the straights.  Long hairs against the short.  Everything we do, dress, speech and action is a way to say we ain’t you babe. 
    Straight old lady - Are you a boy or a girl?
    Hippy kid, JJ - Unless you want to fuck me why do you care?
    She knows I am a boy.  I know an eight year old saying fuck , will freak her. 
    We are fighting for the rights of Black people to eat at the same restaurant as White people.  We are fighting to end an unjust war in South East Asia.  We are fighting to stop nuclear war from destroying our planet.  We are fighting to be heard.  We are fighting for our lives. 
    The old lady is fighting because I with my long tangled hair and bare feet stand for all that she is losing.  I stand for the world that is crumbling under her feet.  I stand for the chaos lurking in the dark just beyond her porch light. 
    1967, the hippy movement is ramping up, fighting hate with love and LSD.  Northern California bay area is the epicenter.  Ken Kesey lives over the hill from us.  Joan Baez lives down the road from our land.  Her husband owns Keplers book store, meeting place of radicals and poets.  Neil Young herds goats off Skyline. 
    At the Human Be-In Timothy Leary speaks to 30,000 long haired kids in Golden Gate Park.  He says, “Turn on, tune in, drop out.”  They take it up as a battle cry.  It is a year and half before th e Summer of Lov e , but the wheels are already rolling hard.  The straights are starting to panic.  Change is in the wind, and they are all starting to freak.  They can see the deal going pear shaped.
     
    My father is working nights at the Best Western.  We see him on