RELENTLESS RESISTANCE

Chapter 14 Epilogue Authors Notes

CHAPTER 14 

The years following the death of Lindy’s father saw highs and lows. 

Trips to Cortes from his sister and children were always welcome. Lindy’s traveling days were over.

Lindy’s sons, raised until school age without electricity or running water, did indeed go to college. His oldest graduated with an engineering degree and was employed by the government, a job that required wearing a suit to work each day. His younger son pursued a computer science degree. Carol often pondered the irony of it all and wished their mother was alive to appreciate it with her. His forest imps of the deep woods had grown into creatures of the mainstream hub-bub. How Lindy reconciled in his mind that his sons opted to be part of the societal norms he had mistrusted and vilified all of his life was a mystery to all. He never spoke of it.

With the comings and goings of lovers and friends and the ever present intense pain, time passed. 
Often the pangs would ignite an already short fuse over some perceived infraction by a girlfriend or family member. His unpredictable rages became intolerable.

“I’m so sorry I yelled at you and treated you so badly when you were here the last time,” Lindy wrote his sister in the last letter she would receive from him. 
“You didn’t deserve that, you’ve suffered enough,” he continued. “Sometimes all I can hear is my arm screaming PAIN, my leg yelling AGONY and I can’t even be civil anymore.” 
Reading this letter broke his sister’s heart in more ways than one.  She felt helpless to alleviate his pain and missed the connection shared, she now knew, would never be the same again. 
“I just want to be alone most of the time,” the letter read. “My kids don’t even want much to do with me these days.” The letter ended with the request not to contact him anymore. Their Hawaii brother received the same request.

Letters from his sister begging reconciliation went unanswered. She did keep in touch with his sons from time to time. They both expressed confusion and sorrow about his condition and lack of communication.

It hadn’t always been that way. 
Once the three siblings enjoyed spending time together. Being on the same political page was a strong bond. Kids on the left….Father on the right. Upon growing up they learned that often brothers and sisters did not all share group-think,  Lindy was lucky his had supported and suffered the Presidio 27 ordeal along with him. As adults they remained in sync. 
Spread to the four winds, the Blake children, coveted visits with each other when wallets were fat enough to facilitate traversing long distances, most of which involved big water crossings. 
Re-united for the first time after Lindy’s amnesty, all three gathered, for younger brother Doug’s wedding in Hawaii, where their beloved mother had spent her last days. Gathered where they were sure her spirit lingered, they all agreed their reunion was nothing less than a miracle made possible by President Jimmy Carter, a voice of reason that healed many tortured hearts after the dark days of the Vietnam Non-War.

Subsequently, visits in Canada and California created a sense of unity that would have made their mother’s heart swell. Against all odds, her grown-up chicks as a unit had survived. Until they didn’t. 

Their comradery waned with Lindy’s declining health. After ten years of estrangement his sister and brother, both whom suffered his re-buff deeply, remained baffled by his withdrawal from their lives.  


One evening in the spring of 2009, soon after Lindy’s 60th birthday, his sister got a call from his oldest son. “Lindy is dying,” he told her, obviously shaken. “He’s in the hospital now but he wants to die at home. I asked but he doesn’t want you to come,” he added. “I’m so sorry.”

When Carol asked, Why? his son could only speculate that Lindy didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for him. He had become a shell of the man he once was. ‘Pride go-eth before a fall’ seemed his unfortunate credo.

Had his colon cancer been caused by the Agent Orange chemicals he was exposed to while tree planting? Lindy told his son he knew something had been wrong for a long time, but because he was in so much pain all the time it was hard to know when the growth began. When the pain became unbearable, he took the two-ferry ride to a hospital where they opened him up and at once pronounced him a goner.

Later, his sister heard a story from his long time colorful ex-girlfriend that exemplified his still in-tact sense of humor and quick wit, along with his shock.  

When summoned to the hospital by Lindy, she stopped at the nursing station to inquire which room he was in. The responding nurse’s face became grim. 

“You should know he’s dying,” she told his old flame.  And then added, “But he doesn’t know it yet.”
“What?” came her incredulous reply. “Why not?”
“Because the doctor hasn’t seen him about the results of his surgery yet,”
the nurse explained.
Speechless and shocked at that pronouncement, she demanded he be told before going into see him.
“Maybe you could tell him,” the nervy nurse requested.
Baffled by the assumption someone other than the doctor would be the bearer of this catastrophic news, she demanded angerly through gritted teeth, “No way. Call the doctor now and get him in there to tell him.”  

Drugged on morphine, Lindy welcomed his former love and now good friend to his bedside. As she sat on the bed holding his hand, the doctor came in and delivered the news. 
“As soon as he heard his death sentence,” she related, “his eyes closed for a few seconds and then flew back open.”
“Well,” he began with a mirthful sigh, “I guess I won’t need to get dentures then.” 
After an initial burst of laughter, they collapsed into sobs. After that reaction, typical of the way he would always deflect attention that commanded sympathy, he drew her close. “It’s okay, I’m ready,” was his short statement that she interpreted as all there was to be said about the subject.  

On Lindy’s last ferry ride home to Cortes, his sons accompanied him to his beloved cabin in the woods. Settling him in a hospital bed in front of a window that offered views of wildly blooming rhododendrons, fragrant clematis and pine trees swaying in the soft spring breezes, they held a death vigil. 
As his eight-year-old granddaughter softly played the piano, Lindy’s family, friends, neighbors and several ex-lovers came to sit with him in silence. 

Among those in attendance were two former cellmates out of the twenty-seven Presidio protesters that had made history forty years before. 
The lanky young man they had so admired for his courage and good cheer was escaping again they teased, with Lindy acknowledging their summation with a weak grin.  

When the end was near, and their once strong proud partner in that infamous 1968 sit-down lay drifting in and out of morphine induced consciousness, Randy Rowland and Keith Mather, each holding one of his hands sang the haunting hymn Pete Seeger made famous.  For one last time their voices, catching in their throats but strong, filled the somber cabin with the strains of the iconic ‘We Shall Overcome.”  

                       EPILOGUE  

“Lindy died yesterday,” Carol sobbed on the phone to their brother in Hawaii. “Can you come with me to his service?” she asked, after they had both composed themselves.

“I can’t believe it,” he commented weakly. “It happened so fast.”

“I know. Now it’s just the two of us.” She repeated her request. “Will you come?”

“I would, but I can’t,” he explained. “My second back surgery failed, and the pain is pretty overwhelming. I could never travel that far right now. I’m so sorry you have to go alone,” he apologized. 
“Oh god,” she gulped. “Well,  I’m going alone then. So sorry this last operation failed too. I’ll call you when I get back.” Hearing that her remaining brother was suffering health setbacks unsettled her.

The prospect of visiting Lindy’s rainbow cottage, knowing he would not be there to greet her, filled her with despair. Sick at heart, with no goodbyes, and not having talked to him since they parted in anger years before, she numbly started packing.

Lindy’s somber oldest son, along with his wife and daughter, picked up his grief-stricken aunt Carol from the Vancouver Airport. The next day, she took her last three-ferry boat trip with them, to the paradisiacal island of Cortes.

Whaletown, a port of sorts, consists of a heavily creosoted wooden-planked dock large enough to accommodate a small car ferry, several boat slips and two structures perched on a rock jetty. The Whaletown Store, packed to the rafters with merchandise ranging from frozen lobster to lug nuts, offered camaraderie, news and a porch to rest upon. A post office the size of a large walk-in closet occupied the other outbuilding. 

Several blocks away, up a winding road, Lindy’s cabin sat back in the lush foliage that obscured it from the road. From his inviting front porch, sitting under his multi-hued overhang, you could feel the fog roll in, sense the changing winds, and hear the low baritone horn of the ferry boat announcing its comings and goings.

Parking the car on the county road, a wide walking trail bordered by colorful blooming shrubs gave way to Carol’s first glimpse of the colorful roofline on what was indisputably the funkiest house on Cortes.

Carol trembled, her mind flashing back to the last time she’d visited him, years before. Unsuccessfully she tried choking back tears, remembering how he’d screamed at her when she’d suggested he try some product besides narcotics for his condition. He’d harshly screamed, “Shut up and leave me alone. Go!” And so she had.

Seeing Lindy’s old girlfriend with the blue hair walk across the yard towards her with open arms, Carol took a deep breath before she fell into them. “I’ve come to cook the last supper,” the woman announced.
The former lover had set a long plank table with a sumptuous repast, on a scruffy patch of grass in the front yard. Her experience showed. For years she had worked as a celebrated tree-planting gourmet camp cook. Offered was fresh-caught salmon, potatoes from the garden, and multiple desserts supplemented with offerings from the many who had come to pay tribute.

“You’re Lindy’s sister?” the couple from across the road queried with no small amount of incredulity etched on their faces. Shaking their heads, they explained they were shocked. He’d always been such an odd duck. “You look so normal,” they said, immediately regretting how that must have sounded. “Oh sorry, that came out wrong. We were never sure if he liked us or not,” they told her, looking baffled. “We knew he hated rich people, and while he never directly pointed fingers, we knew who he meant. Us. Or rather, those like us.”

This was no surprise to Lindy’s sister. His old letters had often been filled with rants on how the entitled, often wealthy through no effort of their own, were compassionless sons of bitches.

“I’m sure his shabby thrift store attire, long scraggly hair and Quasimodo limp certainly set him apart from the other neighbors,” Lindy’s sister acknowledged, “and in these last years, he’d become quite unpredictable.” She held her hands in an upward questioning position. In unison they silently nodded.

“He was quite the musician,” the man offered, wanting something positive to say. “Often we could hear Lindy singing or playing one of the many instruments he’d mastered,” he shared wistfully. “It was quite beautiful actually, how the notes from all the different horns and strings would drift through the woods and waft in our windows.”
“And,” added the woman, “often he shared his garden’s harvest with us. Yes, he was a bit standoffish, and I never really understood or got close to him. But mostly he was kind and generous,” she lamented, giving Carol a quick hug and a smile meant to soothe.

Wine flowed, yarns were spun and secrets revealed.

The late afternoon ferry delivered his longest-lasting girlfriend, the colorful one whom he’d traveled with to India.
She and Lindy’s sister knew one another well. Holding each other, they sobbed. 
“I couldn’t be there when he died. I was in California,” she said, squeezing Carol’s hand tightly, “but I wanted to be. I visited  him several times when he was in the hospital. He was ready to die, you know. He had been for a long time.” She continued assuagingly. 

“I’ll never forget what he told me a few years ago,” she said, looking at Carol for a sign to go on. “He was in so much pain, and when he heard that someone he admired had died, he wailed, ‘Why not me?’ He said he was unfit to live with anymore, and I agreed.” 

Her hands softly stroked Carol’s hair. “The men in your family seem to have insecurity issues. It’s what makes them so fetching, defensive and explosive. I don’t think he got the support from who mattered when he needed it.” Her eyes looked straight into Carol’s. “And he knew it. That’s why he tried so hard to be a good father to his boys.” 
Her observations resonated with Carol.

She went on. “I think the horrible military prison experience he had, witnessing a murder and feeling helpless, not getting support from his father, his mother far away and then her death in a car crash, were all nails in his coffin. He couldn’t lash out then, but he couldn’t contain the rage forever. Often, when he felt challenged about almost anything, the cork would burst from the bottle … and the older he got, the less he could control his pent-up feelings.” Stroking Carol’s hand and pulling her close, her eyes pleaded for understanding from her point of view. 
“He needed help from a professional and if he hadn’t been so goddamned stubborn, he could have gotten it. But he was scared.” Pausing for a few moments, her voice brightened and a smile came over her. “But I don’t think he’s the only pigheaded man on this planet.” She chuckled.

“I often wonder what would have happened to him if he hadn’t fallen off his bicycle and gotten busted that day,” Carol sighed, “and then ended up getting railroaded into the Army.” Her eyes filled with tears again. “It was all so unfair. I don’t think he would have chosen to leave his country and grow pot for a living.” 

The sun was going down and Carol started to rise from their outdoor bench in the garden. 

“Before we go join the others, let me tell you a good story,” the colorful woman offered. 
“You know how he always quoted the line from the Bob Dylan song that went, ‘To live outside the law you must be honest’?” Carol nodded faintly, smiling at that memory. “Lindy felt bad that he had not contributed much to society.” Her shoulder gave a small shrug. “Maybe that surprises you, but he really was a communal, all-for-one, one-for-all kinda guy. Not greedy at all.”

Carol knew that. “And?” she urged her on.

“So Lindy didn’t grow pot to get rich. He grew enough to get by.” Carol knew that too. “But he felt guilty that because he didn’t have a ‘real’ job he didn’t pay taxes, even though he never made more than seven or eight thousand dollars a year. But he loved Canada and all the refuge he had gained.” Here her face brightened and she gleefully related, “Each year, for many, he took a few one hundred dollar bills and sent them to the Treasury Department, anonymously. It made him feel like he was doing his share.” That was something Lindy’s sister didn’t know.

Heart warmed and positive insight appreciated, Carol rejoined the crowd.

Lindy’s ex-wife and the mother of his children spoke of his enticing sense of adventure. He was capable, captivating and persuasive. He also had a short fuse. Married for eight years, they produced two successful, happily married offspring.

The stories kept coming and the wine kept flowing.

“You’re Lindy’s sister?” a beautiful blond woman in her late fifties asked, pulling her aside.
“I am,” Carol answered.
“I can see it,” she appraised, standing back. “You have similar bone structure.” “He was a gorgeous man, whimsical and childlike at times. He could be very endearing,” she sighed. “I found him yummy. Too bad he fell in love with my daughter first,” she confessed, looking a bit sheepish.
“Hmmmm, well,” Carol gulped, feeling a bit confused. Yummy wasn’t how sisters usually thought of brothers. And then remembering when she had first moved to Montana, Lindy came for a visit and had brought an eighteen-year-old drop-dead gorgeous girlfriend with him. He was 44. “You must be Fawn’s mother?” Carol asked, putting the puzzle pieces together.

“Hey, Lindy’s sister,” two fiftyish men somberly hailed, coming over to embrace her tightly. “We’re here to say how sorry to hear that he died. It was a real surprise.” Each laid a head on one of her shoulders. “We didn’t know,” the taller one said, “that he had a sister,” the other one said, finishing the sentence as members of a longtime couple often do.

They knew him from around they told her. Lindy went around planting daffodils on the roads all over the island. Did she know that? She did not. Also, they told her he would put stuff for the taking out on the road. He had a greenhouse and enjoyed propagation. Often his hybrid peonies would be placed in a cardboard box at the end of his drive with a FREE sign taped on it.
Giving Carol a wink, one confessed, “We were longtime customers of Lindy’s. He grew the sweetest corn and the trippiest pot than anyone.” Lindy’s sister nodded knowingly.
“We met Lindy years ago when he was pushing an enormous wheelbarrow full of seaweed from the beach up the hill to his garden,” one told her, still holding her around the waist. “We gave him a hand, became friends, and the rest is history, as they say.”

“Many wonderful afternoons filled with music were spent at this cabin with your brother, fire roaring, brandy flowing, philosophical notions hurled everywhere.” Then both men’s faces dropped, feeling their sorrow.
“He always fed us,” the taller one related. “He made amazing bread,” and demonstrated his delight by licking his lips and rubbing his tummy in a circle. 
“Did you know that?” She did. He was a trained baker after all.
“We’d eat loaves of it at a sitting, oozing with melted cheese, loaded up with jalapeno chilies if he had them.”

“We always thought he had a lot of demons,” they lamented. “The Army fucked him up.”

“The last time we saw him was a few months ago.” One looked at the other for agreement. “A storm had left misty remnants. The trees were dripping as we walked up the trail to his house. Through the late afternoon dampness, we could hear the sweet notes of a saxophone.” They grasped each other’s hands for support. “And when we rounded the porch, there was Lindy, steam engulfed, luxuriating in the wood-heated outdoor bathtub, under the rain-laden boughs of a huge pine, slumped down in the warm water, holding his instrument high and dry, playing with absolute abandon.” One looked at the other with obvious regret. “We watched for a while and then quietly slipped away to leave him be.” Both men wiped their eyes.
“How were we to know,” they looked at each other and shook their heads, “that would be the last time we ever saw him? We never said hello or good-bye that day, not wanting to intrude on an intimate moment.”

Sunday afternoon, as the ferry pulled out, Carol stood alone at the stern, acknowledging the end of a life chapter. 
Watching the shoreline get smaller and smaller, she agonized that some information she held fast remained unshared.

The “What ifs” were driving her crazy. So long after the fact, what possible good could come from revealing them now, she wondered agonizingly.

Several years earlier, she had briefly dated a man of the Vietnam era. In getting to know each other, exchanging stories, he shared his disqualification from the draft. He’d been classified 4-F, not fit for physical reasons. His affliction? Nuts. An allergy to nuts compromised soldiers in the field. C-Rations, in cans or dehydrated, were concocted for the masses. Nuts or remnants inevitably were accidentally mixed in. To some, even the slightest exposure to nuts was fatal. Soldiers suffering those maladies were a liability.
Lindy, along with his brother, suffered severe allergies to nuts. 

How was it that the subject of his life-threatening allergy had never come up? Not one question during his Army exam. Not one question during his Army interviews. Not a mention during any Army conversation. Even after he became ill because of his exposure to nuts in a Christmas cookie while imprisoned, the subject still never ever came up that a serious allergy such as his would have automatically disqualified him from service. 

It has been very hard for this author to let go of those speculations.

AUTHOR’S NOTES………..

The story of the Presidio 27 is a cautionary tale.
In 1995, the former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, a key architect of U.S. Policy, wrote the following. “We were wrong, terribly wrong about Vietnam. We owe it to future generations to explain ‘why’.”

We’re still waiting.

In 1975, the United States pulled out and Vietnam fell to the Communists. The poll numbers of citizens against the conflict were growing. They felt that a Communist triumph was easier to stomach than a never ending confrontation which at that time had killed over 58,000 Americans. The additional damage suffered from injuries, Agent Orange and re-occurings nightmares ruined the lives of thousands more.

In one of his letters, my brother Lindy wrote, “War makes murderers out of otherwise decent human beings.”

The military trials convicting my brother and twenty-five others of mutiny ended up costing the taxpayers five million dollars. It was the longest and most controversial series of court martials in American history.

My brother Lindy was a complicated man. 
He was fully aware of his rage affliction. Moderated by his Buddhist philosophy and a playful whimsical streak, anger didn’t completely dominate his life until increasing pain and age took their toll.

The years between 1965 and 1975 brought the largest opposition in history to our government’s decision to go to war.

President Eisenhower was right when in his farewell he warned of the perils of a gigantic military complex. In 1965 the military budget was 55 Billion dollars. This year it is in excess of 2,500 Billion.  Vietnam was the last war of conscription.  They didn’t want to deal with those pesky protesting soldiers so now we just pay them. The budget also bloated because now the military sub-contracts services such as food, laundry, and maintenance on almost everything, to giant private corporations like Halliburton.  Other examples of excess abound.

I wrote this story to celebrate his relentless resistance to injustice in all its ugly forms and to tell the public what it cost him. He, along with thousands of other resisters, changed the conscience of our country. It was their belief that when the government was wrong, it was every citizen’s sacred duty to speak up and act out. 

                                                  
                       Rest in Peace dear brother…….