Black and Gold: The End of the Sixties. Mike Jr. Trial
below by one of green. Mark rolled over on his back and contemplated the blue sky, the glare of the sun. He backflipped onto his belly and, guiding the air with his arms and legs, he let the airstream glide him closer to Dave. They linked hands for a moment, then drifted apart. Mark formed his body into an arrow, head down, and glided away. He stabilized just upwind of the orange circle of pea gravel that marked the target landing area. The ground was slowly spreading open to receive him, hypnotically engaging the eye as it expanded, imperceptibly increasing its speed.
Mark pulled the ripcord, his chute slid open and he hung in silence, two thousand feet of clear air below his boots. “Nice jump,” Dave said conversationally from above him. Dave had his toggles pulled down, spilling air to drop faster until he was even with Mark.
“Yeah. Perfect air.” They sat in silence admiring the unparalleled view of familiar streets lined with elms and oaks. “Our town. Our time,” Mark said to himself.
On the ground they tossed their chutes into their cars. Dave idled his TR3 over to Mark’s Chevy. “Let’s come out again next Sunday.”
Mark jumped in his car. The Ozark Airlines flight from St. Louis was just taxiing up to the terminal. “I’ve got to pick Jennifer up right now. Why don’t you meet us for a beer at the Heidelberg around seven?”
Dave and ran a hand through his shock of black hair. “No time for the Berg tonight. You and Jennifer going to live together this year?”
“No.”
Mark drove around the hangars to the little terminal’s parking lot just as the DC-3’s door opened. Jennifer was the third person out, dressed in a blue miniskirt, tanned and slim, long silky black hair parted in the middle. She came down the steps with coltish grace, burdened with a purse, a sweater, a huge red Carnaby Street shopping bag, and a small wooden box. He kissed her, breathing in Chantilly perfume. “Welcome back,” he said.
“I’ve missed you.” She handed him a small box containing six Florida oranges. “My parents insisted.”
Mark laughed, “Thank them for me. It’s thoughtful of them.” In the hot front seat of his car their kiss was passionate but familiar.
“I missed you this summer,” Mark said. The door closed on the Ozark DC-3, and it pivoted, glinting silver and green in the late afternoon light. “I should have come to visit you in Florida. I thought about you all the time.” He looked away. “I used to replay in my mind all the times we spent together, from our first blind date, to the first night we spent together, to…”
She blushed. “I was so…”
“...naïve, in the best sense of the word. We both were; we both are. We made love and we talked about love.”
She smiled. “Do we dare say the word ‘love’ right now, out in public, in daylight?”
He took a deep breath. “Yes. I love you.”
“I love you too,” she said. The DC-3 passed overhead, glinting in the golden light.
Mark started the car and they drove to Columbia College. “After you get settled into the dorm, let’s go get some food and a beer at the Berg.”
Jennifer put her hand on his arm. “Not tonight Mark, I have to be in the auditorium at seven for orientation and afterwards there’s a get-acquainted session from eight to nine, and I need to unpack my stuff. I should have come back yesterday, but I didn’t.”
Mark helped Jennifer get her things up to her room in North Hall. Girls filled the halls, meeting and greeting and unpacking.
“See you tomorrow night,” Mark said, exiting the chaos.
* * *
Car windows down, Hendrix on the radio, the balmy air rolling in, Mark couldn’t keep the grin off his face. What had Dave said? Our time, our turf. He told himself he should do some reading for his first classes tomorrow, but when the light turned green at Conley Street, he found himself turning toward campus, full of anticipation. This was the new age of enlightenment, the Age of Aquarius. Everything was acceptable, and the unexpected was expected. On the streets, students were everywhere. Mark jostled his way through the milling crowd in front of the green door of the Shack, through the boisterous crowd in front of the open door of the Italian Village bar. A jukebox blasted the street with Janis, furtive freshmen darted away from swaggering upperclassmen, foursomes of newly pledged fraternity guys eyed foursomes of newly pledged sorority girls, a miasma of Shalimar and English Leather hovering over them. Mark stepped into the Heidelberg and spotted Jeff. For Mark, and Dave and Jeff, the Berg was their turf, a safe haven for the few last months before they faced the working world, the draft, and the war. The Berg was a time capsule where they knew their undergraduate years would always exist.
And the Berg was also the home of cheap beer: draft Hamm’s in ten-ounce glasses for twenty-five cents, fifteen cents during happy hour. Mark poured some from the pitcher.
“Didn’t see you at the mixer last night,” Jeff said.
“I changed my mind, didn’t go,” Mark said. “”How’d you do?”
Jeff shook his head, and looked around the room. “Damn. Here comes Mitchell. That guy’s an obnoxious loud-mouth.”
Larry Mitchell elbowed through the crowd and shook hands with Jeff and Mark. “Hey guys,” too loud even in the noisy bar.
“What’s up?” Mark said, handing him a glass of beer. Mitchell was another townie. Loud and brash, he had always seemed to need to demonstrate that he knew more about whatever the subject of conversation was.
“Bad news,” he said, drawing up a chair.
Mark and Jeff exchanged glances.
“You guys remember Tim Bryant don’t you? Kind of a geeky guy, but nice.”
Mark nodded, “Sure. He was in Business and Public Administration, flunked out of MU but got accepted at some diploma mill in Nebraska I think. I knew him pretty well. We used to race slot cars together.”
Larry gave Mark a disdainful look.
“I remember Tim,” Jeff said. “Always wore black-framed glasses, still had braces on his teeth. Dated Diane what’s-her-name all through high school.”
Mark nodded. “Yeah, that’s him. What about him?”
Larry frowned at his beer. “Well, his parents and mine go to the same church. My parents were talking to them last Sunday. Tim got killed in Vietnam last month.”
The statement lay there between them and the bar seemed suddenly silent.
“He flunked out of that college in Nebraska,” Larry continued. “Got drafted, shipped to Vietnam…” He shrugged. “Only in-country a few weeks before he got it. Funeral’s Wednesday.”
Chapter 2
Dave and Carol stood across the living room of Dave’s apartment. “I’m moving,” Dave said finally. “I’ve rented a room in an old house over on Paquin.”
Carol pushed perfect blonde hair out of her eyes in that characteristic gesture Dave had been so smitten with when he first met her, but now just found irritating. “Moving into some cockroach-infested dump in the student ghetto won’t solve this ‘dissatisfaction’ you’re talking about. You can do so much more by staying involved, working for a political solution…”
“That was last semester. The system is corrupt, it’s hopeless trying to change it. Besides, I’m seeking clarity. I need time…”
“Clarity? Is that what it’s called? Contemplating your navel rather than doing something about the problems in the world?” Carol’s mouth set in a line, her crystal blue eyes flashed. “I thought you were better than that.”
She began to pace, irritating Dave further. “Ever since I’ve known you, Carol, we’ve done nothing