He forced himself to get up and go to the closet, half hoping that the white dress, the honeymoon dress, would turn out to have been just another part of her delirium. But it was there. A little yellowed with the years now, but he knew it, all the same. Because of the lace. He took it down and laid it across the bench at the foot of the bed. He looked at the dress, looked at the woman, and thought, It's going to be more than just a little big on her now. The disease, whatever it is, was crueler to her than she knew... and I guess that's just as well.
Unwillingly, he went around to her and began to remove the nightgown. But when it was off and she lay naked before him, the dread departed and he felt only pity - a pity lodged so deep in him that it made him ache and he began to cry again as he washed her body and then dressed it as it had been dressed when she wore it on the way to Lake Pontchartrain. And when she was dressed as she had been on that day, he took her in his arms and carried her down to the funeral home in her lace, oh, in her lace: he carried her like a bridegroom crossing an endless threshold with his beloved in his arms.
BOOK I CAPTAIN TRIPS Chapter 26
Some campus group, probably either Students for a Democratic Society or the Young Maoists, had been busy with a ditto machine during the night of June 25-26. In the morning, these posters were plastered all over the University of Kentucky at Louisville campus:
ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ATTENTION!
YOU ARE BEING LIED TO! THE GOVERNMENT IS LYING TO YOU! THE PRESS, WHICH HAS BEEN CO-OPTED BY THE FORCES OF THE PIG PARAMILITARY, IS LYING TO YOU! THE ADMINISTRATION OF THIS UNIVERSITY IS LYING TO YOU, AS ARE THE INFIRMARY DOCTORS UNDER THE ADMINISTRATION'S ORDERS!
1. THERE IS NO SUPERFLU VACCINE.
2. SUPERFLU IS NOT A SERIOUS DISEASE, IT IS A DEADLY DISEASE.
3. SUSCEPTIBILITY MAY RUN AS HIGH AS 75%.
4. SUPERFLU WAS DEVELOPED BY THE FORCES OF THE U.S. PIG PARAMILITARY AND DISBURSED BY ACCIDENT.
5. THE U.S. PIG PARAMILITARY NOW MEANS TO COVER UP THEIR MURDEROUS BLUNDER EVEN IF IT MEANS 75% OF THE POPULATION WILL DIE!
ALL REVOLUTIONARY PEOPLE, GREETINGS! THE TIME OF OUR STRUGGLE IS NOW! UNITE, STRIVE, CONQUER!
MEETING IN GYM AT 7:00 PM!
STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE!
What happened at WBZ-TV in Boston had been planned the night before by three newscasters and six technicians, all operating in Studio 6. Five of these men played poker regularly, and six of the nine were already ill. They felt they had nothing to lose. They collected nearly a dozen handguns. Bob Palmer, who anchored the morning news, brought them upstairs inside a flight bag where he usually carried his notes, pencils, and several legal-sized notepads.
The entire broadcast facility was cordoned off by what they had been told were National Guardsmen, but as Palmer had told George Dickerson the night before, they were the only over-fifty Guardsmen he had ever seen.
At 9:01 A.M., just after Palmer had begun to read the soothing copy he had been handed ten minutes before by an army noncom, a coup took place. The nine of them effectively captured the television station. The soldiers, who hadn't expected any real trouble from a soft bunch of civilians accustomed to reporting tragedy at long distance, were taken completely by surprise and disarmed. Other station personnel joined the small rebellion, and cleared the sixth floor quickly and locked all the doors. The elevators were brought to six before the soldiers on the lobby level quite knew what was happening. Three soldiers tried to come up the east fire stairs, and a janitor named Charles Yorkin, armed with an army-issue carbine, fired a shot over their heads. It was the only shot fired.
Viewers in the WBZ-TV broadcast area saw Bob Palmer stop his newscast in the middle of a sentence, and heard him say, "Okay, right now!" There were scuffling sounds off-camera. When it was over, thousands of bemused viewers saw that Bob Palmer was now holding a snub-nosed pistol in his hand.
A hoarse, off-mike voice yelled jubilantly: "We got em, Bob! We got the bastards! We got em all!"
"Okay, that's good work," Palmer said. He then faced into the camera again. "Fellow citizens of Boston, and Americans in our broadcast area. Something both grave and terribly important has just happened in this studio, and I am very glad it has happened here first, in Boston, the cradle of American independence. For the last seven days, this broadcast facility has been under guard by men purporting to be National Guardsmen. Men in army khaki, armed with guns, have been standing beside our cameramen, in our control rooms, beside our teletypes. Has the news been managed? I am sorry to say that this is the case. I have been given copy and forced to read it, almost literally with gun to my head. The copy I have been reading has to do with the so-called 'superflu epidemic,' and all of it is patently false."