Chapter 13
It was after eleven in the morning when the march began. The busload of anti-war protesters spilled onto Broadway without warning, and spread out across the westbound lane, causing traffic to come to a standstill.
This quickly caused honks to start to blare from the obstructed cars, and pedestrians on the side of the road to stop and stare at the multi-coloured group with their slogan signs, fronted by a woman with a kazoo in her mouth and a bullhorn to amplify its decidedly annoying noises. Sam was near the back of the group, walking beside Marsha, who held a sign proclaiming: ‘Hell no! We won’t go!’
Sam felt surprisingly at-ease for the situation he’d fallen into. Even though he knew this wasn’t going to accomplish a thing, and they were putting themselves at great risk of being arrested, it was as though he was channelling the energy of the people around him. He felt like he was just where he needed to be.
“Get the hell out of here, hippie scum!” cried a man from the side of the road. He stepped down off the kerb and began shouting obscenities at the protesters. Sam didn’t know quite why, but he looked familiar. He slowed, looking the middle-aged man up and down. He couldn’t pick it, but he definitely felt like he’d met the guy before.
When the man locked eyes with Sam, they widened, and he rubbed at them in apparent confusion.
“Bobby?” the man said. “What in the hell are you doing with these damn peaceniks? You don’t belong with them!”
Bobby?
Sam exchanged a puzzled look with Marsha. He didn’t know why he’d just been called Bobby, but for some reason it rang a bell—just enough to want to follow his curiosity.
“Listen,” he said in her ear, “I’ll, uh, catch up with you later, okay?”
Marsha nodded. “Okay, Al. We’re meeting back at the bus at sundown, okay?”
“Got it.”
Sam wove his way out of the protest and approached the heckler.
“Sorry, but who are you?”
The man grabbed him by the arm, pulling him towards the sidewalk.
“Bobby, it’s me, kid!” he said with some hurt in his voice. “Harvey! What the hell did these dropouts do to you? Did they brainwash you? And what are you wearing?” He used his free arm to pull at Sam’s open vest and beads. “You’re not running off or something?!”
Sam furrowed his brow. “I think you have me confused with someone else, okay?” He pried Harvey’s fingers off his arm. “Listen, I appreciate your concern—I do! But I don’t know you. Whoever Bobby is, it isn’t me.”
Harvey leaned in close. “Have you been taking… you know… drugs?”
Sam frowned. “No, actually. I haven’t. But I don’t see how that’s your business, honestly. I’m not who you think I am, I promise.”
“Nonsense,” Harvey continued, and redoubled his grasp on Sam’s arm, pulling him along the pavement in the opposite direction of the march. “I’m takin’ you home, awright?”
“Hey… come on, let me go,” Sam said. “This is all a misunderstanding.”
And as Harvey roughly yanked his arm, Sam began to realise that this was usually when he would defend himself—but he had absolutely no will to fight back.
There really is something the matter with me, isn’t there?
And at that moment, a white Chevrolet Corvair pulled up, and the door swung open. A burly man jumped out, slid over the hood, and threw a heavy punch into Harvey’s shoulder.
“Oww!” Harvey shouted, letting go of Sam.
“That was for the other night, Harvey. If you can actually recall that you tried to punch me in the face,” the unknown man said, pointing a finger in a way that Sam found familiar.
Harvey then got a look at his assailant’s face, and went pale as he looked between him and Sam. “Bobby, I—”
“Harvey, listen to me,” the man—Bobby, apparently—said, “tell anyone you saw him and it’ll be your face next, understand?”
Harvey nodded dumbly.
“Okay. Now get lost.” Bobby pointed down the road. “Go!”
Harvey gave a final, confused look at Sam, and turned to leave.
“Uh, thank you,” Sam said to the blond-haired rescuer.
“Are you out of your mind, Richard?” Bobby hissed. “Get in the car before anyone else recognises you.”
Sam tensed up and nodded silently, opening the car door and sliding into the seat without protest.
Bobby jumped into the driver’s seat and peeled back onto the street. The car filled with the heavy chords of Helter Skelter, which Sam found terribly distracting.
“I don’t know why you’d show up here and draw so much attention to yourself,” Bobby said, eyeing his clothes. “Pretty careless.”
“And, uh, why wouldn’t I want to attract attention?” he asked, trying to gauge who this person was to Richie.
“Maybe because you’re a fugitive,” Bobby said with a smirk. “But if you need to blend in, you’ve got the right face for it. I’ll lend you some clothes.”
Fugitive? It was then that he connected the dots to what Al had stated, about Richie fleeing the draft.
“I knew you’d have something to do with why I’m here,” Bobby added under his breath, and Sam raised an eyebrow at the wording.
“Uh. Thanks for saving me there, I guess,” he said as his eyes fell upon the rear view mirror.
A mirror! Finally!
He tilted it towards him and felt his heart skip a beat as he gazed upon the same face as the one in the driver’s seat beside him. Square jaw, dirty blond hair, sharp widow’s peak. So that was why Harvey had called him Bobby. They were clearly closely related, and probably twins.
“Oh boy,” he whispered, causing the man beside him to give him a funny look.
“You know, I don’t know why I came this way,” Richie’s doppelgänger said. “When I got stuck behind that protest, I was getting pretty frustrated. And I kept saying to myself, ‘just turn onto another street already.’ But something stopped me. And then there you were.” He snorted, giving Sam a tired-eyed glance. “Why did you come here, Richard?”
“Well, that’s pretty fortuitous,” Sam said. “But I came because I needed—”
“You needed to visit your brother before he got shipped off to war, perhaps never to return?”
Sam’s mouth fell open. “You’re going to war?”
The twin raised an eyebrow. “How could you not know that? We both got drafted at the same time, didn’t we?”
“Oh, right,” Sam said quietly. “When do you ship out?”
“Just a few days now. You really didn’t know?”
Sam shook his head slowly. “I was here because of the protest,” he said. “But now that I know you’re shipping out, I’m really glad I could see you. I’m so sorry. Where I’m living, there’s not a lot of—uh—external stimuli.”
“Oh, right. The commune,” Bobby muttered.
Sam barely noticed the remark, instead turning his attention to the radio, which was getting on his nerves. He turned the dial until he found Bridge Over Troubled Water playing on another station, and left it there.
“Why did you change that?” Bobby demanded. “I was listening to that!”
“It was too angry,” Sam said, folding his arms.
“Well maybe I’m angry and I wanna listen to something angry.” Bobby turned it back.
“Why are you angry?”
Bobby gripped the steering wheel tightly with one hand, and began gesturing animatedly with the other. “Well, I’m about to go fight and maybe die in a pointless war, to start off. Oh, and get this: Brenda’s pregnant, and she hates me because I told her to stop drinking. Can you believe that?”
“But alcohol is harmful for a developing fetus!” Sam said, horrified.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell her, but the damn research on the topic won’t be published for another—” he shook his head, “—never mind.”
Sam raised a curious brow at this, but the angry guitars were bothering him too much to really pay it any mind, and he reached for the radio dial again.
“Hey, no you don’t! Not again!” Bobby reached over and slapped away Sam’s hand.
It was at that moment, both twins found themselves looking at Sam Beckett.
“Oh boy,” they both said at once.