'I heard of them,' I said. 'Started out getting people to register to vote. Pushing the ideas of a democracy, then they splintered. The ones that continued to call themselves the Mechanics were kind of like the radical branch that split off from the Students for a Democratic Society and called themselves the Weathermen.'
'You got it. The splinters all died out pretty quick without their original leader. He was a charismatic kind of guy. Had come into the group as one of the Indians, but in no time was chief. A few of the Indians split, tried to form their own tribes, but the diehards stayed with him. And it took him to hold things together, keep the Mechanics on track.
'So the Mechanics got their monkey wrenches and went to work. Said to hell with this democratic society shit, the answers are in the street. You got to wreck some things to get them built up new and different. We went underground. Got guns, started hitting anyplace we thought didn't jive with human rights or supported the war in Vietnam. There were lots of targets. We bombed a few ROTC buildings throughout the state. Moved on to other states. Traveled all over and didn't get caught. We were a different kind of criminal than the FBI had dealt with before. Smart people with a smart leader. We had a cause, and there's no one more dangerous than the zealot, and we were that in spades.'
'How many of you were there?' Leonard asked.
'Twelve at first. Took in a few more here and there off college campuses. Did some sneaky recruiting. We had been students, so we knew where to go to talk to the right people— people with a similar political mind. We hooked them in, fed them radicalism like pudding. The leader of the Mechanics was especially good at talking that shit. Thought he was one of life's poets, one enlightened sonofabitch. Didn't hurt either that back then every college kid wanted to be Che Guevara.
'We were good at what we did. Knew how to forge documents, make new identities. Worked what jobs we could get, spent very little, moved often. Stayed near college campuses mostly; all kinds of free stuff you can get at the bigger ones. Play it right and live simple, you can do well mostly on the labors of others. And that struck us as right. We saw ourselves as ripping off a capitalistic society.'
I had been sitting there trying to remember a name, and suddenly it came to me. 'Gabriel Lane,' I said. 'That's who the leader of the Mechanics was. Goddamn! That's you, isn't it, Paco?'
'Long ago. I'm Paco now, and Paco I'll be till they find me somewhere dead in a cheap motel and cart me off to a pauper's grave.'
'I think you guys were fucked up,' Leonard said. 'Doing what you did.'
'Our hearts were in the right place, but we got caught up, and pretty soon our hearts shifted. An innocent bystander dies when we bomb some capitalistic bank, some ROTC building, boy that's tough, we hated it, but hey, it happens. The end justifies the means. We'd blow you up for peace and love.'
'General consensus is you're dead,' I said. 'You were supposed to have gotten killed in an explosion, if I remember right.'
'I may look blown up,' Paco said, 'but here I am. Talking and smoking and making your morning bright and gay.'
'I'm gay,' Leonard said, 'but I don't know about the day and what you're doing for it.'
'Gay?' Paco said. 'You saying what I think you're saying?'
'I fuck men,' Leonard said. 'Does that clear it up for you?'
'I believe it does.'
'You say people died because of what you were doing?' I said.
'That's right,' Paco said. 'Toward the end we lost some of our own. Cops—or the pigs, as they were popularly referred to then—cornered four of the Mechanics in a house in Chicago. I was out at the time. Making a gun trade. Had two of the group with me. I forget what the rest were doing. But the bottom line is the cops got wind of where we were, hit the house, and killed four of us. Bobbie Remart among them. She was a top radical at that time. On the FBI list right under me. She was kind of my lieutenant. My lover too. After that, things went from being political to being personal.'
'You got to feel bad about that shit,' Leonard said. 'I mean, I killed gooks in Nam, and I was supposed to kill them. Thought I was fighting for my country, doing what was necessary. Still feel that way. But I hate I had to do it. But you guys ... I don't know.'
'You don't look to me like somebody who could do that kind of thing,' I said.
'You kidding,' Paco said. 'I look like death warmed over . . . but I know what you mean. Listen here. You been around, you should know better. Can't judge things by what you see. Look at something long enough, and it'll start to look like something else. Watch me long enough, you might see something you don't see now. Whatever, there won't be any of the old me to look at. That's a guarantee.
'Back then, I thought what we were doing was right. Like you thought what you were doing was right in Nam, Leonard. Felt we were patriots. Least until what happened to Bobbie, After that, I was like something taxidermied that moved. Right and wrong were words. I couldn't see the line of difference anymore, couldn't tell if I was crossing it or not. For me, that line has long been gone and nothing's going to bring it back.
'Anyway, what happened was we were hiding out in this house in Chicago, and I had the Mechanics building a bomb to blow something or another to hell, and I was supervising. I was the one taught them how to build bombs, see, and I wanted to be sure they knew I was still the big daddy. Sasha was the one actually working on it, and the rest of the group were gofering for her. Way they were treating her was making me a little jealous. Sasha was strong-willed and kind of new to us, and the Mechanics weren't turning to me quite as often as before. She was starting to get some of my thunder. I wanted to make sure she knew her place, you know. I looked over her shoulder, and she was doing all right, working safe, but like I said, I had to be big daddy, and I said something to her about how she needed to work smoother, and she didn't take to it. She was the only one had my number. Knew my ego. Knew how fucked up I was over Bobbie's death. She planned to take things over. I could tell that. She could have done it too. Still had the cause in her. She knew my days as leader were numbered, that I was burned out, just doing by rote. She wouldn't take shit from me. She turned around and started telling me what I could do with my advice, got her mind off what it ought to have been on. Must have let the wrong wires touch. Next thing I knew, the world was bright and hot, full of stone and glass, and I was rolling around in rubble. Ego and explosion had kicked my ass.
'I awoke outside, down in a pit, the house all around me, ears ringing, cold air cooling me down. Somehow the blast had brought the whole place down, and by a goddamn miracle, maybe because Sasha was in front of me, the
