The Hummingbird War Read online

  “I understand him better than you can imagine.” She took my hand and we kept walking. She leaned on me, and I slowed my pace to match hers.

  A shaft of sunlight pierced the tree limbs and landed on my face, melting away the cobwebs in my head like a spring thaw. I realized I’d never asked about her life. Our conversations were always about mine. “What about your family, Lilly?” I hoped she wouldn’t refuse to tell me something personal after all I’d admitted to her.

  There was a slight pressure on my hand from her grasp, as if my question caught her off guard. “There’s not much to tell. My marriage fell apart a long time ago. My family, um…” When she looked at me I saw the loss I knew too well. “I have someone who helps me now and then, but I live alone. I’m much more interested in how you’re doing. You make me feel needed.”

  “Of course you are,” I said, only half-believing my words. I was so caught up in my own grief I hardly recognized someone else’s needs. “You’ve never told me your last name. Just in case, you know.”

  “I use my maiden name now. It’s Hughes. It’s much easier to live with. And if you ever need to get in touch with me the group at the church will help you.”

  When we reached the fountain at the south end of campus we turned around and headed back. I had homework to do, and Lilly’s eyes were heavy with the need for rest. As we came to the corner across from the church, I asked her what she thought about my getting a part-time job.

  “A little money to pay the bills on the house and save for next year’s tuition,” I said. “But it would definitely have to be a job with flexible hours. That’s the only way I could swing it.”

  “That sounds like a good idea.” She perked up and her pace quickened. “Of course, I hope I still see you now and then. You sound as if you’re taking those first steps into your new life. Take it slowly, Diane. You’re at a place now that could become, well, complicated.”

  I nodded as if I understood what she meant. “Don’t worry, Lilly. School comes first.”

  “Check at the financial aid office for a job.” she said. “That’s the place to go.”

  I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but I said I would go there. She seemed to know more than I did about how to find a campus job.

  We parted ways as we arrived in front of the church. She told me she was going inside to call for a ride to take her home. She didn’t tell me where she lived, and I didn’t ask. As far as I was concerned, the church was her home and the Friends of Bill were her family.

  It was two days before I made it to the Financial Aid office to check the list of work-study jobs they kept on file. There were a number of campus office jobs listed, but they needed someone who could work either early or late in the day. My chemistry class was early some days and my biology class didn’t start until three in the afternoon with a Tuesday lab that ended at six. Then I found one listing for a job outside the university. They wanted a person who could do light office work, and the pay was a little more than the other on-campus jobs. Someone had even written in red ink at the top of the listing: Flexible Hours.

  It was as if it were made for me. I called the contact person and set up an appointment for an interview. His name was Matthew and he said he’d meet me the next day at his office on 47th Street, conveniently halfway between school and my apartment.

  *****

  The door was open when I arrived. An oversized oak desk was piled high with papers and books. There were stacks of folders on the floor. Double-hung windows faced west, and the early afternoon sun lit up a hazy layer of grime. No one had cleaned the place in years. I was tempted to pick up the papers on the floor and put them in some kind of order as I waited, but I didn’t. Because I was fastidious about my own surroundings didn’t mean everyone else was, and I didn’t even have the job. Maybe if I got it I could work some cleaning into the schedule and get paid for my efforts. Housecleaning helped me to believe I was putting my life into some sort of order, and my side of the bedroom at the duplex shined with the polish of a need to forget the pain and confusion circling my life.

  The sound of someone humming came from the hallway. A man walked into the office and stopped in his tracks when he saw me. I couldn’t say for sure why he seemed so surprised. I was on time; he was late.

  “Hello. Am I late? You’re Diane, right?”

  His dark hair was long enough to brush his shoulders, and he looked like a sharp dresser, a man with some style to his life. He was pretty young, but he was better dressed than most of the professors I saw on campus. His immaculate, white shirt was perfectly pressed and probably starched. He wore a paisley silk tie with his tailored wool suit. I couldn’t see his shoes from where I stood but I would have bet money they were shined.

  “Yes. I called yesterday. You told me to come at one-thirty.”

  He glanced at his gold watch. “Oh, gee, I’m sorry I’m late” he said. “I’m a little unprepared here…giving someone a ride…that’s what I get for trying to run this place single-handed.” He held out his hand. “I’m Matthew Bluestone. Please, have a seat. Sorry for the delay. I’ve been busy and with no help…” He took off his suit jacket and draped it on the back of his chair. Gold cufflinks at his wrists caught the afternoon light from the window behind him. He grabbed a pile of newspapers from the chair facing his desk and motioned for me to sit down.

  “So, you know I’m here about the job,” I said, folding my hands in my lap, anxious to get things moving along to the business of employment.

  He sat down and rested an ankle on his knee in what I thought was an attempt to seem casual after his flustered entrance. Then I saw that his shoes were shined — to within an inch of their lives, gleaming. “Well, Diane, I’ve been having a hard time finding someone. I hope I don’t scare you away, too.”

  “Why, are you a slave driver?” I asked, trying to inject a little humor to make myself seem confidant, even though I was anything but confidant.

  “You can type, right? Would that be too much to ask?” he asked, his mouth turning up in a slight smile.

  All at once the idea of him as a friendly, intelligent, charming, and sexy man swept into my head. I couldn’t believe I was thinking about him that way. I was betraying Bobby, but it had been a long time since the pull of attraction had brought romantic thoughts to my mind. I supposed it was normal, if upsetting to me, so I tried to push the thoughts aside, although my stomach fluttered in a way I’d forgotten it could.

  “Yes, I can type well enough to do my term papers. I suppose fifty words a minute. Can you tell me something about the job besides the typing part? I want to know if I should run out the door or stick around,” I said. I was sure he was looking at my jeans and old pullover sweater as dowdy and immature compared to his stylish clothes. I was just a college student, and he was, well — a man. He had to be at least twenty-five. That would make him about the same as Bobby if he had lived. Maybe even a little younger. I wound a strand of hair around my finger in my nervousness as one of my concocted defenses collapsed. I’d have to find another reason besides his age to keep him out of my thoughts.

  “It’s like this, Diane. I’m running the local SDS chapter, and some students who’ve come about the job don’t want to get involved with what we’re doing. People are afraid of what they don’t understand, you know? One of the girls I interviewed thought it would negate her scholarship because it was from the government. Another thought we were Communists. The list is as long as it is foolish.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what SDS stands for,” I said. He would probably come back with a complicated and erudite answer to make me look unsophisticated like the naive girl I was. I felt like his polar opposite as I sat across from him in my outdated clothes and my mind swimming upstream against all the things in life I had yet to learn.

  “Well, at least you haven’t heard anything bad about us. The organization has been keeping a low profile on this campus. That is, until now. People are moving up here from California and bringin
g the movement with them, and I intend to make this school a model for non-violent revolution.”

  Violence? Revolution? I was confused. “You didn’t answer my question. What is the SDS?”

  “You’re right. I guess I can’t get anything past you, can I?” He smiled that heart-melting, perfect smile of his again. “The SDS stands for Students for a Democratic Society. It’s a national organization that started at the University of Michigan and has moved outward from there. Our main function, as far as I’m concerned, is to bring the protest against the war to the next generation who will be running this country, the students.” He leaned back in his chair with his hands clasped together behind his head, waiting for my response.

  “But you’re not a student,” I said.

  “No, I’m not. But I’m here to lead the students of your school, help them organize their protests more effectively. Right now I’m trying to organize a strike for the Ten Days of Resistance.”

  “So it’s a business that protests the war?” I asked. I didn’t know about the organization and had never heard of any strike.

  “Business isn’t the word I would use. We’re an organization.” He pronounced the word slowly as if I had to take it in gradually to get used to the taste of it.

  “To protest…the Vietnam War, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one.” His expression turned somber. He bit his lower lip and took a breath as if he was bracing himself. “You know that undeclared war going on in Southeast Asia where soldiers and civilians are dying every….”

  “I know,” I said too loudly. “I know where it is and what it is.” Blood rose to my face and my ears burned with the fear I might lose any small piece of self-control I had left. I listened to the clock on the nearby wall tick the seconds away as I waited for my heart to slow to a manageable pace.

  “By the sound of your voice, it seems you might have a desire to work for our cause. Am I wrong?” He sat up straight in his chair and leaned towards me.

  I hesitated, wondering if it was foolish to take a job no one else wanted just because this man was running an office that protested the war I hated. I didn’t understand what he could do to make a difference. There had to be a catch. “I might. But let me get this straight…it’s an organization, not a business, but you’re going to pay me. I can’t afford to volunteer.”

  “No, you’ll be paid. I’ll write you a check every week. If you want the job, it’s yours,” he said.

  It all sounded too good to be true, but who was I to question the procedures of a national organization or an educated, sophisticated man like Matthew Bluestone? It seemed so right. I mean, he was working for a cause he believed in, and judging from his appearance, he could easily have been working in a higher paying position someplace like New York or Washington instead of sleepy, little Seattle.

  We talked for a few more minutes about what he expected me to do in the job, and I told him I’d give it a chance. I’d start the next day. I must have been sent to him by some mysterious force, he said. According to Matthew, we were meant to be a team. He’d been looking for a partner like me for a long time. The others who came for the job had fallen aside like tin soldiers to make room for me. I was the real soldier he’d been waiting for.

  I found it hard to believe I had the chance to work for an organization that was fighting the government who had sent the man I loved to his death. The job was exactly what I needed. I thought of Lilly’s warning and tittered at her hesitation; there was nothing complicated about any of it. It was just simple good luck, maybe even fate. I had my chance to make a difference and prove my love for Bobby was still strong. How could I turn Matthew Bluestone down?

  Chapter Four

  New people, budding ideas, and shaky-legged feelings poured into my life at the speed of a springtime watershed. As the distant mountains, peppered with a zillion giant evergreens, exploded with the life of another season, my life also bloomed. Classes at the university were ramping up for final exams while I was spending four or five hours a day at the office. I woke at dawn and never went to bed before midnight. I was so exhausted I didn’t have the energy to question the theory I’d concocted to explain why I loved my job at the University of Washington’s SDS headquarters: I was going to right the wrongs of the world. I didn’t want to consider the selfish aspect of why I arrived at the office every day with a smile on my face. It had more to do with what I needed from the job than what the job needed from me.

  I woke by six each morning to arrive before Matthew, and by the end of my first week I’d washed the windows, cleaned the floor, organized the file cabinet, and made a corkboard for meeting notices. My secretarial skills improved each day as I typed letters to different SDS offices across the country. I learned how to make reservations for Matthew to fly to rallies from coast to coast and ran to the printer to collect the material for distribution at the protests. I answered the questions of students who came into the office seeking information or wanting to join the cause. Each day I built my familiarity of the organization’s inner-workings until I believed I could run the office on my own — which I did during Matthew’s absences when he flew to New York or Chicago or Washington or Detroit or San Francisco. LGA, DCA, ORD, DTW, SFO. I’d come to know most of the big-city airport codes by heart, although I’d never been on a plane in my life.

  I didn’t even consider my work a job but credited my endless energy to my quest to keep others from dying in a war I was now certain was unjust and senseless. Every article which crossed my desk spoke of the futility of the actions of our government’s mandates. It didn’t take long to convince me I had to work as hard as I could to put a stop to the pointless killing any way I could. I was working for Bobby’s sake. I couldn’t even consider that I might be working myself to death to be with Matthew every day.

  He arrived each morning looking as well-dressed as the first day I’d met him. I found it hard to believe he could afford the shirts and ties and suits he wore on the salary he would make working for a non-profit. He even carried a gold fountain pen with what looked like an engraved eagle on the end. I would have sworn the thing was military, but that would be ridiculous, considering all the anti-war letters he signed with it. The picture of him seated at his desk in his impeccable clothes and gold pen was incongruous with what we were doing, but it was a time in which turbulence and disorder were common, so the disparity I saw in Matthew was pushed aside.

  He walked in each morning around nine in his starched shirt and shined shoes and asked me if he could get me some coffee, even though I told him repeatedly I didn’t drink coffee. And every day he teased me again with the routine I never tired of.

  “Don’t drink coffee?” he said, scratching his head. “How can you get through the day without it?”

  I looked up from my desk where I had been typing a letter. “Believe me, if coffee helped I would carry a gallon of it. The last thing I need is a stimulant. I want to be able to concentrate and know what I’m doing.”

  He leaned over his desk, rested his chin in his hand, and looked at me. “I think you know exactly what you’re doing. You’re so mysterious. We’re stuck together in this office day in and day out, and you never say anything about yourself.”

  “There’s nothing interesting to tell. I go to school, come here to work, go back to the apartment, do homework, go to sleep, and then start all over again.”

  “You must have had another life before you came to the university. You’re not the run-of-the-mill college coed,” he said, narrowing his gray eyes as if he thought if he tried hard enough he would be able to see into the heart I locked tight as a safe.

  Run-of-the-mill was a term about as far from my reality as one could be. “I guess I’m not. I didn’t start college until I was twenty-one. By the way, does the job run through the summer?” I’d been foolish not to ask when I took the job how long it would last. Most college jobs were over when the spring semester ended.

  “The job will be here for you as long as you�
�re here. I told you, we’re a team. Can I get you some coffee?”

  “For the millionth time, I don’t drink coffee.” I blew a strand of hair out of my face in mock frustration. “Don’t you believe me?”

  “I believe you say you don’t now, but if I keep asking you’ll start,” he said.

  “What does that mean?” I almost allowed myself to laugh.

  “It means I don’t give up easily.” He walked over and leaned on the front of my desk, resting his weight on his hands. “I want you to share the same vices as me. Is that so bad? After all, we’re in this together.”

  “You can keep asking, but I’ll keep turning you down,” I said.

  He winked at me, something I thought of as an antiquated gesture from my father’s generation. “I think you’ll change your mind sooner or later. I can wait,” he said, as he walked out the door.

  I sighed at his little joke, but as I turned back to my typing, I was pretty sure he wasn’t referring only to coffee when he had talked about changing my mind. I thought maybe he meant something more than just work when he said we were a team. But I could have been imagining this, maybe hoping for something in his words that wasn’t really there. He was probably just a flirt and that was the last thing I needed. After everything I’d been through, I needed solid ground to stand on.

  The job had been advertised for twenty hours a week, but I ended up working over thirty hours most weeks. I came in on Saturdays and typed and filed all morning, spent the afternoon organizing for the coming week, and returned to the apartment to study until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. When I was handed an exam book or a homework paper with an A or B+ I didn’t even stop long enough to congratulate myself but ran on to the next task and the next.

  After I’d been working at the SDS office for a few weeks and beginning to feel as if I could handle anything the job could throw my way, Matthew offered me a raise. Out of nowhere came his pronouncement that I deserved more money.