In a movie, Zandor Zudenigo and I would have gradually but steadily become good friends. I'm honestly not even sure we ever managed to became good acquaintances. Maybe by the end of that year we had become good strangers.
He was just too weird to befriend. And I speak as one with a higher than normal tolerance for weirdness. He was away a lot, and when he was there he rarely spoke voluntarily, and when he did it was often in monosyllables or grunts—but there was more to it than that.
It reminded me of Gertrude Stein's famous crack about Oakland, "There's no there, there." You couldn't get a purchase on him; it was like trying to make a snowman out of bubbles.
Hundreds of times I found myself wondering what was going on behind those moist squinting eyes of his. Not once did I ever have a clue. I not only never knew what he was thinking, I rarely knew even in the most general terms what he was thinking about. In freshman year I had been dismayed to discover that the roommate relationship could enforce a high degree of intimacy even with someone you couldn't stand. Now I was a little startled to realize how little intimacy it could provide even with someone you kind of liked.
And I did kind of like him. He was low maintenance. He had a knack for erasing himself. I'd forget he was in the room, or fail to notice when he arrived. His shoes didn't seem to produce footsteps. His clothes didn't rustle when he moved. He never seemed to be in my way, or make sudden or unexpected moves in my field of vision. He never complained about anything I did, and seldom did anything that bothered me. He didn't seem to get drunk, depressed, high, homesick or horny. Or bored, even when he was just staring at the wall. Unlike his miserable predecessor Tank Sherman, he never played practical jokes, or said cruel things, or threw tantrums, or vomited on my bed.
His only downside as a roommate, really, was that our room reeked so badly it made no perceptible difference whether he was present or not. Noseplugs, some incense, and I learned to handle it.
One thing I noticed. Math majors frequently asked me what it was like to be his roommate. Math professors, too, even. They always listened carefully to whatever I said, and then they usually just nodded and thanked me and walked away. It happened often enough to make me wonder if maybe the reason I couldn't seem to connect with whatever he had going on behind his eyes was simply that I was too dumb and innumerate to understand it.
For whatever reasons, connection was impossible. I gave up trying early, probably in the first day or two I knew him. And I'm not sure I can explain exactly why. It wasn't that he discouraged conversation, exactly. You would start to say something to him, and as the very first syllable left your lips he was already looking your way, giving you his full attention, and somehow you found yourself reviewing what you'd meant to say, and deciding it was dumb. Or trivial. Or shallow. Or something. So all that ended up coming out of your mouth was a sigh. And by the time you had patted your remark into acceptable form, you no longer had his attention, and the moment was seconds past.
If I've given the impression that Smelly himself never spoke, that's not strictly true. He did say things occasionally. Just seldom, and as economically as possible.
I once saw him stop a riot with a two-sentence telephone call, for instance. No shit.
It was the year when, all across North America, young men with long hair, beards, and no girlfriend somehow simultaneously decided, like scattered lemmings marching to separate seas, to band together and take over their campus's library building. It was generally agreed that this would shorten the Vietnam War. Also, it was as much fun as a panty raid, but you didn't have to feel like a total jackass.
There was nothing like an official SDS chapter at Saint Billy Joe; the administration would never have permitted anything so radical. But that year our campus longhair supply finally reached critical mass—fifty or so. And so one sunny fall day, the same sort of migratory instinct that brings rural young men with mullet-head haircuts into 7-Elevens with cut-rate pistols led those fifty urban young men with Buffalo Bill haircuts, and two or three of the more adventurous girls, to march on the Chaminade Memorial Library together with guitars and antiwar banners and a pound of purported Panama Red. They tried to set an American flag on fire in front of the main doors, and though they failed, they did manage to literally raise a stink, and the word spread round campus like fire. A crowd materialized in time to see the intrepid demonstrators announce that they were Liberating the Library, then disappear inside the building. Everyone backed off about half a football field, in case of gunplay or an air strike, and began taking sides.
I was one of them. The spectators, not the demonstrators. I was as opposed to the war as anyone my age—even though I knew for certain the draft would never get me. But in the first place I had never voluntarily joined anything in my life. And in the second place I could not for the life of me imagine what good it would do to capture books.
Still, I was definitely in the half of the crowd that was applauding the demonstrators. Over the next ten minutes or so the building slowly emptied of non-demonstrators— students, faculty and staff—adding to the crowd. Those who chose to stick around and watch events unfold also seemed to split about evenly between pro and anti. Arguments began. Volumes were raised. Immoderate language was heard. Campus Security showed up, raising the crowd's density and lowering its average intelligence; the arguments became less intellectual in character. I remained an observer, present but passive, uninvolved.
Suddenly I remembered that Smelly usually spent time in the library at this time of day, when it was least populated. I had not seen him come out. By now the library windows were mostly either broken or full of gleeful freaks hanging banners with defiant slogans on them. I scanned them anyway.
And saw him. At a window on the second of three floors. He was in some office, talking on the phone, and looking intently out the window at us all.
No. Past us.
I glanced behind me and saw nothing remarkable, at least in that context. But Smelly was still staring out at the campus and frowning as ferociously as if something were there.
Then something was, and suddenly I wasn't having fun anymore. A group of guys came into view from behind the chem building, heading our way, and I knew at first glance it was Easy Company.
It is a clue to their intelligence and their philosophical orientation that they chose to name themselves after a comic book, about a combat unit. (Sgt. Rock of Easy Company, a DC comic written by Robert Kanigher and drawn by the great Joe Kubert.) They were a pack of thugs, archconservative upperclassmen, most of them either rngineering majors or jocks. They fervently supported the Vietnam War, almost enough to enlist, and found everything about the Age of Aquarius offensive, and liked to express their displeasure by beating the mortal shit out of any longhair they could manage to corner alone in a dark corner of the campus. Good Americans.
This was the first time they were coming out in the open, in broad daylight, where they could be identified. But I knew it was them the moment I saw them. There were something like twenty of them. They looked like I'd pictured Easy Company: big, fit, smug, arrogant, and mean. I knew a couple by name, and wasn't surprised to see them there. Since they did not have their prey outnumbered twenty to one, this time, they had brought utensils to help shape the flow of discourse. Axe handle. Tire iron. Brass knuckles. Louisville Slugger. Crowbar. Car antenna. Like that.
I glanced back at the library and noticed Smelly still in that upstairs window, just hanging up the phone. I waved to get his attention, but couldn't seem to catch his eye.
I turned back to Easy Company. Even Campus Security had noticed the approach of a heavily armed mob looking for trouble. But unlike the shouted arguments they'd been having with other bystanders, the discussion they were now having with Easy Company was muted, damn near chummy.
With a sinking feeling I looked back at the library again. Except for Smelly upstairs, the demonstrators seemed oblivious to their doom—to everything but how much fun they were having. Several were leaning out of various first floor windows, hanging banners, bellowing unintelligible things through a bullhorn, throwing Frisbees and leaflets to girls, having a swell time. Nobody was guarding the entrance. They'd settled for chaining the two big glass doors shut, overlooking the existence of things like crowbars and baseball bats and people disposed to use them in defense of the sacred honor of a library. I looked for Smelly, was relieved to see he was gone from the window. I hoped he was smart enough to be looking for a good place to hide.
A few minutes later, Easy Company finished their palaver with the authorities and walked past me on either side, on their way to the library a few hundred yards distant. I looked hastily around. Not one Campus Security officer in sight. Maybe they'd all been beamed up to the mothership.
I felt a powerful impulse to yell, "Hey! Assholes!" at the backs of Easy Company, as loud and challengingly as I could. They would stop their advance at least briefly and turn around to look at me. The goofballs in the library would hear, look, and be warned. Then they'd have a minute or two to prepare themselves, or flee out the back way, while Easy Company were busy kicking the mortal shit out of me. I thought of a very persuasive reason not to call out, which I can't seem to call to mind just now. The goon squad was a hundred yards from the building. Fifty—
Five men came walking around the corner of the building. They didn't seem to be in any hurry, but they covered ground fast. They stopped in front of the library doors, spaced them-selves a few feet apart, and folded their arms across their chests.
All five of St. William Joseph's black students.
Easy Company, startled and nonplused, milled to a stop.
The man in the middle of the five, a giant named Charlie Sanders, shook his Afro from side to side slowly, so that he met each pair of vigilante eyes at least briefly. In a voice that was gentle and surprisingly high pitched, yet carried clearly, he said, "No you don't, either."
Easy Company looked at one another. They had the black guys outnumbered four to one, with hundreds more white people watching. They were nearly all heavily armed, and the black guys were showing only hands. On the other hand, you could see rednecks deciding, that didn't mean they were unarmed. All Negros carried knives, right?
Wheels turned. You could almost smell the smoke of thought. At least one of the five black students was known to be a goddam ballet dancer, for Chrissake. Then again, the son of a bitch did have thighs like Captain America. Arms too. Another was a nerd . . . but nerds could sometimes be tricky little bastards. All five appeared to be carved from blocks of obsidian.
One of the most overlooked and underappreciated details of the Sixties, I believe, is that a baseball bat or tire iron is vastly less effective against a man with an Afro.
A few of the goon squad tried to open a dialog, but were all unsuccessful. Charlie and his friends didn't seem aware of their existence any more. Or inclined to move away from the doorway anytime today.
Demonstrators had finally noticed the storm gathering at the portal, and began to shout various helpful things down from nearby windows. The thugs began to realize they were vulnerable to attack from overhead as long as they stood there.
It didn't happen all at once, but over the next little while, each of the members of Easy Company recalled pressing business in another part of the forest, and within a minute or two there didn't seem to be any of them left.
Nobody ever did find out how the 'Fro Five, as Bill Doane named them, had heard of the incipient massacre. Nor did anyone have a clue, or even a plausible theory, about why they decided to put themselves on the line to prevent it. Nobody white had the stones to ask, and nobody black was talking.
I asked. For all the good it did me.
That night, when Smelly got back to the room, I said, "You phoned Charlie, didn't you?"
He sat down at his desk and bent to get a Coke. He drank the stuff literally by the crate, at room temperature. He got a bottle, used a drawer handle to pop the cap off, and took a long gulp. I figured he was stalling. But after the belch, he said, "Yes."
His admission took me slightly aback. I'd expected him to lie, or at least duck and weave a little first. I wanted to ask why he'd done it, but the question suddenly seemed silly. He'd done it because it was the right thing to do. What I really wanted to know was—
Because I was hastily thumbing through the script trying to catch up, what I blurted out was, "How?"
As the word left my mouth I knew he would now say How what? and I would say How did you know? and he would say How did I know what? and I would say How did you know Easy Company were coming? and he would say I saw them, and I would say How did you see them through a solid building? and he would—
"I just knew," he said.
"You smelled them coming," I said, and then wished I could cut out my tongue. "I'm sorry, man, I didn't mean that the way it sounds." Yeah, and my vocal cords, too.
"If you're Serbian, and you were born in Croatia, you learn to smell violence coming, yes." This was so long ago, I had no idea what he was talking about—but I got the gist, and it did seem to explain things, sort of. He turned away, set the Coke down on his desk, sat down, opened a text and began studying. It was the first time I could ever recall him voluntarily coming any closer than ten feet from the nearest person.
So I did the same. Sat right beside him at my own desk, and opened a textbook. It was a kind of penance. Through some yoga technique I invented on the spot out of sheer necessity, I was able to make the eye on the side away from him do all the watering. After a few silent minutes, he made a long arm and opened the window a little more, and it helped. I think we kept it up for over an hour.
The next time I spoke was just before we turned the lights out for the night. "How did you know Charlie Sanders' phone number?"
"There was a campus directory in that office."
"Ah." We clicked our bed lights out.
Odd, I thought. Each floor in every dorm had a single payphone, hanging on the wall just outside the RA's room. There was indeed a college-published directory of all of them widely available. But to use it, Smelly would have had to know just what floor of which dorm Charlie lived on. "Hey, Zandor?"
His answer was a snore. I gave up and went to sleep and it wasn't until I was alone in the john brushing my teeth the next morning that I thought, Smelly doesn't snore.
The second question, why Charlie and his friends had done what they did in response to Smelly's call, I asked Charlie the next day, when I found him alone in the cafeteria. He looked at me in silence for ten or fifteen seconds, and then changed the subject.
That happened to me a lot when I tried to talk with black people in those days. Come to think, it still does, sometimes.
That very evening, however, the whole subject was driven right out of my head for good, along with any other thoughts that might have been lurking in there. An incalculable number of thoughts deserted nearly a thousand heads in Olympia that night. Every thought but one, really.
For that was the night the Bunny walked into Wanda's Rest, and into legend.