Alongside Night(19)
Elliot vowed never again to allow fear to control his mind. Then he took a deep breath and walked on.
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Alongside Night
He had only walked a few steps, though, when he realized he was not walking to any place in particular. He was lost. He knew the names of the streets, all right, and where they went, but he did not know where they would lead him. Where to, kid? he asked himself silently, where to? There was no answer. He stood, gazing up at the Oracle’s news marching across the top of One Times Square:
TEAMSTER PRESIDENT WARNS POSSIBILITY OF ARMED FORCES
WILDCAT STRIKES IF PENTAGON DOES NOT MEET DEMANDS …
Are you just going to stand here forever?
NEW DOLLAR AGAIN DROPS SHARPLY AGAINST EUROFRANC IN
HEAVY TRADING …
C’mon, c’mon, Elliot told himself, we haven’t got all day. SENATE DEBATE ON WAGE-PRICE CONTROLS STALLED PENDING CFS PROTEST MARCHES IN SIX CITIES TODAY …
A helluva lot of good you are! Elliot told himself. An echo in his mind agreed.
In despair, he decided to choose a direction—any direction—
and start walking. He hesitated another moment, then began marching up Broadway.
He had hardly started when a wiry, short man with curly black hair rushed up to him and said intensely, “If Thou art God, I offer myself and, in exchange, ask proof!”
Elliot kept walking. Not another Gloaminger.
“I said, ‘If Thou art God—’”
“I heard you the first time,” Elliot told him.
“Oh, hell,” said the Gloaminger. “You’re not Him, either.”
“Don’t you people ever give up looking?” Elliot asked.
“No time to talk,” the Gloaminger said. He handed Elliot a Alongside Night
69
tract and walked up to a little girl nearby. “If Thou art God, I offer—”
Elliot looked the pamphlet over. It was called God Here and Now?—An Introduction to Gloamingerism, and was published by the Church of the Human God. The Septagram—symbol of the Gloaminger’s “Seven Paths to One God”—embellished the front of the tract.
The Gloamingers believed that God was a human, on earth
“at this very moment,” but that He did not know Who He was. The question was supposed to trigger His memory in time for the Apocalypse. “Ask the question of the next person you meet!”
the pamphlet said. “GOD WALKS THE EARTH TODAY. Now!
He may reveal Himself to you!”
Elliot tossed the pamphlet into the nearest trash container. He was not about to start looking for God. He had enough trouble just finding his family.
Ten blocks farther up Broadway Elliot noticed wooden NYPD
barricades along each sidewalk, and began to see an unusually large number of city police distributed around him—some sitting in police cars, some mounted on horseback, some on foot directing traffic or talking into headset transceivers. Elliot wondered what they were all there for, then remembered. The march and rally, of course! Broadway would be the parade route.
The first impulse he had was to put as much distance between himself and all those police as possible, but they did not seem to be interested in anything other than assuring an orderly demonstration, paying him no attention. His caution gave way for a moment to an even greater curiosity to see the demonstration his father was to have addressed, Elliot deciding that in the anonymous throng of bystanders he would be as unnoticed as the musicians in a striptease club. Elliot first spotted the marchers as he approached Columbus Circle. He had no idea how many there were, but it seemed 70
Alongside Night
to be thousands, stretching uptown as far as he could see. He could hear from the distance that they seemed to be chanting repeatedly, but he could not yet make out the words. They were still too far off for him to read picket signs or banners. Finding himself a relatively uncrowded spot near the barricades at Columbus Circle, he waited. Soon the march was upon him, led by a huge linen banner stretched across the first rank that read, “NO MORE CONTROLS!” with “Citizens for a Free Society” written in smaller letters underneath. Behind the banner were hundreds of smaller, handmade signs mounted on rolled cardboard (wooden picket signs were illegal), with slogans such as “CONTROL POLITICIANS, NOT PRICES! …SMASH RATIONING! …IN
GOLD WE TRUST! …NO MORE BLUES!” and dozens that read
“WAS VREELAND MURDERED?” This last shook Elliot. Other signs had a distinct left-wing tinge. “THE FED IS SAPPING OUR SURPLUS LABOR VALUE!” and “MISES OVER
MARX!”
A number of demonstrators carried black flags. Now he concentrated on listening to the chanting, difficult to understand immediately but clearer with each repetition. A voice on a bullhorn asked, “WHAT DO WE WANT?” The marchers answered, “FREEDOM!” The bullhorn asked, “WHEN DO