Exiles by Elliot Krieger Page B

some wineglasses. The guy had dirty red hair pulled back into a ponytail and a scraggly beard, stained at the fringes by nicotine. He was wearing drab olive army fatigues, at least a size too large for his scrawny frame. He looked up from his work as Spiegel approached.
    “ Vad kan jag stå till tjänst med? ” he said.
    “I’m looking for—”
    “You’re Spiegel, right?”
    “Yeah. Is this the place? I thought you guys would meet in a church or a union hall.”
    “Nope, you found us. I’m McCurdy.”
    He put down the stemware and held out his palm to Spiegel for a clenched-fist soul handshake.
    “How long you been here, brother,” McCurdy asked.
    “Week or two,” Spiegel said.
    “It gets easier, man. The first weeks are the hardest.”
    “I’m not here to stay, though,” Spiegel explained.
    “You didn’t come over the wall?”
    “No, I’m just—”
    “Another American looking for a home, right?”
    “I’m here to help the movement is all.”
    “Come on,” McCurdy said. “They’re waiting for you.”
    McCurdy led Spiegel through a double door marked with a big red slash—no admittance—and they went down a stairway into the basement. They walked past several storage rooms packed floor to ceiling with shipping crates, and then to a doorway onto which someone had tacked a Vietcong flag and a photograph of Ho Chi Minh. McCurdy rapped on the door, and they entered.
    Spiegel immediately felt as if he had stepped into another country. This was America, this was home. He could have been in the student union back on his own campus, or in the common room of any college dorm. The linoleum floor was cracked and stained with crushed cigarette butts. The corky walls were splotched with paint and papered with ragged posters promoting long-forgotten marches, rallies, and rock tours. Bulbs dangled from cords that drooped beneath broken ceiling tiles. An asbestos-draped heating pipe coughed and clanked and spit steam from its weak seams. A ratty sofa in a corner near the door was covered with drifts of mimeos and flyers. Tracy stood beside the sofa, folding papers and stuffing them into white envelopes. At the center of the room, Aaronson and two other men sat around a small card table, beneath a cloud of cigarette smoke.
    “You found him,” Tracy said, setting down a fistful of papers.
    “Or he found me,” McCurdy answered.
    “How are you?” She rushed over to Spiegel and gave him a quick hug. “You settling in okay? ”
    “ Bara bra, ” he said.
    “I’m sorry we haven’t been to see your new digs,” Tracy said. “We’ve been so busy, trying to get this group off the ground.”
    “It looks as if you’re underground.”
    “Exactly.”
    “So where’s the meeting,” Spiegel asked.
    “This is it. It’s like a board meeting, a steering committee,” Tracy said. “Not the whole ARMS group.”
    Aaronson turned and waved to Spiegel. He gestured to an empty chair. “Good going, Worm,” he said. “Sit down, take a load off.”
    “Worm?” Spiegel said.
    Tracy tilted her head toward McCurdy.
    “Yeah, they call me that,” he said. “’Cause I unearth so much stuff.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like you.”
    “Welcome to ARMS,” Aaronson said as Spiegel joined the conclave. Aaronson set down his clipboard and his Styrofoam coffee cup to introduce Spiegel. “These are my main men,” he said. Zeke, a black man wearing an Irish-knit sweater, had tied a red bandana around his forehead. He stood and reached his huge hand out to Spiegel. The other guy didn’t budge from his chair. He was dressed in army khakis, cleaned and pressed, and his hair was clipped razor short, as if he had just come off the base. A Boy Scout, Spiegel thought, or else a new arrival. His name was Reston.
    “You, too, Worm,” Aaronson said. “Sit down.” The Worm pulled up a chair, turned it around, and slouched over the backrest. He took a drag from a cigarette, one of three that had been left burning on the lip of a