"Jesus Christ," breathed one of the kids at last. "He's really Establishment."
Diane said, "Your kind of politics doesn't work for us. The Establishment won't listen to us."
"We've gotta fight for our rights!"
"Demonstrate!"
"Fight fire with fire!"
"Action!"
"Bullshit," Kinsman snapped. "All you're going to do is give the cops an excuse to bash your heads in—or worse. Violence is always counterproductive."
The night and the argument wore on. They swore at each other, drank, smoked, talked, yelled until they started to get hoarse. Kinsman found himself enjoying it immensely. Diane had to get up to sing for the customers every hour, and they would call a truce for the duration of her set. Each time she finished she came back and sat beside him.
And the battle would resume. The bar finally closed and Kinsman got up slowly on legs turned to rubber. But he went along with them down a dark and empty Berkeley street to someone's one-room pad, up four creaking nights of outdoor stairs, yammering all the way, arguing against them all, one against ten. And Diane stayed beside him.
Eventually they started drifting away, leaving the apart- ment. Kinsman found himself sitting on the bare wooden floor halfway between the stained kitchen sink and the new-looking water bed, telling them:
"Look, I don't like it any more than you do. But violence is their game. You can't win that way. Tear up the whole 13 damned campus and they'll tear down the whole damned city just to get even with you."
"Yeah," admitted one of the girls. "Look what they did in Philadelphia. And with a black mayor, too."
"Then what's the answer?" Diane asked.
Kinsman made an elaborate shrug. "Well . . . you could do what the Quakers do. Shame them. Just go out tomorrow in a group and stand in the most prominent spot on campus. All of you ... all the people who were going to march in the parade. Just stand silently for a few hours."
"That's dumb," Eddie said.
"It's smart,"Kinsman retorted. "Nonviolent. Conscience- stirring. Like Gandhi. Always attracts the news photogra- phers. An old Quaker trick."
"I could call the news stations," Diane said, smiling.
A burly-shouldered kid with a big beefy face and tiny squinting eyes crouched on the floor in front of Kinsman.
"That's a chickenshit thing to do."
"But it works."
"You know your trouble, fly-boy? You're chickenshit."
Kinsman grinned at him and looked around the floor for the can of beer he had been working on.
"You hear me? You're all talk. But you're scared to fight for your rights."
Looking up. Kinsman saw that Diane, the blonde smok- er, and two of the guys were the only ones left in the apartment. Plus the muscleman confronting him.
"I'll fight for my rights," he said, very carefully because his tongue was not quite obeying his brain. "And I'll fight for yours, too. But not in any stupid-ass way,"
