"Unfortunately, no," she laughed. "Oh, Richard, you are the most romantic ..."
"Forty-three dollars does not buy romance, my dear. Romance you get with the deluxe; that's the sparkly stuff you have to pay extra for. You know we have to watch our pennies."
I looked at her for a second as I drove. "Does it feel any different to you now? Do you feel any more married?"
"No. Do you?"
"A little. Something's different. What we did in that smoke-house a minute ago, that is what our society recognizes as the Real Thing. What we've been doing till now hasn't made any difference, the joys and tears together, it's signing the paper that matters! Maybe it feels to me as if there is one area less where government can mess with us. You know what? The more I learn, wook, the less I like governments. Or is it just our government?"
"Join the crowd, my sweetie. I used to get tears in my eyes at the sight of the Flag, I loved my country so. I'm lucky to live here, I thought, I mustn't take it for granted, I must do something-work in elections, participate in the democratic process!
"I studied a lot and slowly came to realize that things were not quite the way we learned them in school: Americans were,not always the good guys; our government wasn't always on the side of liberty and justice!
"The Vietnam War was just heating up, and the more I studied-I couldn't believe . . . the United States, suppressing elections in someone else's country because we knew we wouldn't like the outcome; America supporting a puppet dictator; an American president on record that we were there not because we wanted justice in Vietnam, but because we wanted its tin and tungsten!
"I'm free to protest, I thought. So I joined a peace march, a legal, nonviolent demonstration. We weren't crazies, we weren't looters throwing firebombs, we were the super-straights of Los Angeles: lawyers, doctors, parents, teachers, business-people.
"The police came after us like we were mad dogs, they clubbed us bloody. I saw them beat mothers holding babies, I saw them knock a man out of his wheelchair with those
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clubs, blood running on the sidewalk! And this is Century City, Los Angeles!
"I kept thinking, this can't be happening! We're Americans, and we're being attacked by our own police! I was running away when they hit me, and I don't remember much else. Some friends took me home."
Glad I wasn't there, I thought. The violent me, so carefully under guard within, would have gone blind with fury.
"I used to think, whenever I saw a picture in the newspaper of someone taking a beating from the police, that they'd done something terrible to deserve it," she said. "That evening I learned that, even here, the only terrible thing you need to do is to disagree with the government. They wanted the war, we didn't. So they beat the hell out of us!"
I was tense and trembling, I could feel it in my hands on the wheel. "You were a huge threat to them," I said, "thousands of law-abiding citizens saying no to a war."
"War. We spend so much money on killing and destruction! We justify it by calling it Defense, by spreading fear and hatred of other people, countries we don't like. If they try a government we don't approve of, and if they're weak enough, we smash them. Self-determination's for us, not them.
"What kind of example is that? How much do we reach out in kindness and understanding to other people? How much do we spend on peace?"
"Half of what we spend on war?" I said.
"Don't we wish! It's our sanctimonious God-and-Country mentality that gets in the way. It's the obstacle to peace in the world.
It sets people against each other! God-and-Country, Law-and-Order is what clubbed us in Century City. If there were any other country in the world to go to, I used to
think, I'd go," she said. "But, bully that it is, scared as it is, it's the best country I know. I decided to stay to try to help it grow up."
And you love it still, I wanted to say.
"Do you know what I miss most?" she said.
"What?"
"Looking at the flag and being proud of it."
She slid over next to me on the seat of the car, determined to change the subject.
"Now that we have government out of the way, what else do you want to talk .about on your wedding day, Mister Bach?"
"Anything," I said. "I want to be with you." But part of me would never forget. They had clubbed this lovely woman, when she was running away!
Legal marriage was another long step away from the person I used to be. The Richard who hated obligations was legally obligated. The one who despised the bonds of matrimony was legally bound.