Time to Hunt by Stephen Hunter Page A

crowded and she got a good wash for the first time since leaving Arizona in the Peace Caravan. Some of the boys caught fantasy touchdown passes in what had to have been an end zone.
    But no word at all from Donny. Had he been there on the bridge? She didn’t know. She’d looked for him, but then it’d all dissolved in confusion and tears as more of the gas flooded in. She remembered crumpling, rubbing her eyes desperately as the gas drifted by, and then there was the shock of the Marines and she found herself looking into the eyes of a boy, a child, really, big and booming behind his lenses; she saw fear in them, or at least as much confusion as she herself felt, and then he was by her and the Marine line moved on, and as she watched, teams of policemen pounced on the demonstrators behind the lines and led them away to buses. It was handled very simply, no big deal at all to anybody concerned.
    Only later, in the lockup, did the word come that a girl had somehow died. Julie tried to work it out but could make no sense of it; the Marines had seemed quite restrained, really; it wasn’t anything like Kent State. Still, it was an appalling weight. A girl was dead, and for what? Why was it necessary? In the lockup, they had a television, and Amy Rosenzweig’s young and tender face, freckled, under sprigs of reddish hair, was everywhere. Shelooked to Julie like a girl she’d grown up with, though she could not remember seeing Amy amid the crowd, but that wasn’t surprising, for there had been thousands, and much confusion on the ground.
    They let her out and she went back to the campground in Potomac Park. It was like a Civil War encampment after Gettysburg: mostly empty now that the big week was over and the kids in their multitudes had returned to their campuses and the professional revolutionaries to their secret cabals to plot the next move in the war against the war. Litter was everywhere and the cops no longer bothered. A few tents still stood, but the sense of a new youth culture had vanished. There was no music and no campfires and the Peace Caravan had departed. All, that is, except for Peter.
    “Oh, hi.”
    “Hi, how are you?”
    “Fine. I stayed behind. Jeff and Susie are driving the Micro back. Everybody is with them. They’ll be all right. I wanted to stay here, see if you needed anything.”
    “I’m okay, Peter, really I am. Have you seen Donny at all?”
    “Him? Jesus, you know what they did to that girl and you want to know where
he
is?”
    “Donny didn’t do anything. Besides, I read the Marines tried to save her.”
    “If there hadn’t been any Marines, Amy would still be here,” Peter said obstinately, and then the two just looked at each other. He drew her close and hugged her and she hugged back.
    “Thanks for hanging around, Peter.”
    “Ah, it’s okay. How was the Coliseum?”
    “Okay. Not so bad. They finally reduced charges, parading without a permit. They let us all go today.”
    “Well,” he said. “If you want me to drive you to the Marine Barracks or something, I will. Whatever you want. I have a VW from a guy. It’s no problem.”
    “I’m supposed to get married this week.”
    “That’s fine. That’s cool. Good luck and God bless. Let me see if I can help you in any way.”
    “I think I ought to hang here until I hear from Donny. I don’t know what happened to him.”
    “Sure,” said Peter. “That’s a good idea.”
    T he alert was finally cancelled at 1600 that afternoon, to the cheers and relief of the companies. It took an hour or so to actually stand down—that is, to return the rifles to the armory, to shed and repack the combat gear in its appropriate place in the lockers, to shed the utilities, bag them for the laundry, shower and shave. But by 1700, when the work was done, the captain at last released his men—the married to go home, the rest to relax in town or on base as they preferred, with only a few left on skeleton duty, such as duty NCO or armory