Wildcards

"Some of them might trip over their own goddamn feet, too." Gimli's voice boomed. Down the street, several of the cops looked toward them, pointing. "Since when did you decide that the revolution was too dangerous, Sondra?"

"When did you decide that we had to hurt our own people to get what you want?"

Gimli stared back at her, one hand shielding his eyes from the sun. "It ain't what I want," he said slowly. "It's what fair. It's what's just. Even you said that."

Sondra set her mouth, wrinkles folding around her chin. She brushed back a wisp of gray hair. "I never wanted us to do it this way."

"But we are." Gimli took a deep breath and then bellowed toward the waiting jokers. "ALL RIGHT YOU KNOW THE ORDER-JUST KEEP GOING NO

MATTER WHAT SOAK YOUR HANDKERCHIEFS. STAY IN THE RANKS UNTIL WE REACH

THE TOMB. HELP YOUR NEIGHBOR IF HE NEEDS IT OKAY, LET'S GO!" The power was in his voice again. Sondra heard it and saw the reaction of the others; the sudden eagerness, the shouted responses. Even her own breath quickened to hear him. Gimli cocked his head toward Sondra, a mocking gleam in his eyes. "You coming or are you going to go fuck someone?"

"It's a mistake," Sondra insisted. She sighed, pulling at the collar of the dress and looking at the others, who stared at her. There was no support from them, not from Peanut, not from Tinhorn, not from Zona or Calvin or File-none of those who sometimes backed her during the meetings. She knew that if she stayed behind now, any hope she had of holding Miller in check would be gone. She glanced back at the park, at the groups of jokers huddling together and forming a rough line; the faces were apprehensive, but nonetheless resolute. Sondra shrugged her shoulders. "I'm going," she said.

"I'm so happy," Gimli drawled. He snorted his derision.

THREE DEAD, SCORES INJURED IN JOKER RIOT

The New York Times, July 17, 1976

It was not pretty, it was not easy. The pla

The jokers spilled out of Roosevelt Park and onto the wide pavement of Grand Street. That in itself was not a problemthe police had blocked traffic on all through-streets near the park as soon as the reports of the gathering had come in. The barricades were across the street not fifty yards from the entrance. It was hoped that the march organizers would simply fail to get the protest together or, coming upon the ranks of uniformed cops in riot gear, they would turn back into the park where officers on horseback could disperse them. The police held their clubs in ready hands, but most expected not to use them-these were jokers, after all, not aces. These were the crippled, the infirm, the ones who'd been twisted and deformed: the useless dregs of the virus.

They came down the street toward the barricades, and a few of the men in the front ranks of the police openly shook their heads. A dwarf led them-that would be Tom Miller, the JJS activist. The others would have been laughable if they were not so piteous. The garbage heap of Jokertown had opened up and emptied itself into the streets. These were not the better-known denizens of Jokertown: Tachyon, Chrysalis, or others like them. These were the sad ones who moved in darkness, who hid their faces and never emerged from the dirty streets of that district. They'd come out at the urging of Miller, with the hope that they could, in their very hideousness, cause the Democratic Convention to support their cause.

It was a parade that would have been the joy of a carnival freak show.

Late:; the officers indicated that none of them had actually wanted the confrontation to turn violent. They were prepared to use the least amount of force possible while still keeping the marchers off the downtown Manhattan streets. When the front ranks of the jokers reached the barricades, they were to uickly arrest Miller and then turn the others back. No one ought that would be difficult.

In retrospect, they wondered how they could have been so damned stupid.

As the marchers approached the barrier of wooden sawhorses behind which the police waited, they slowed. For long seconds, nothing happened at all, the jokers coming to a ragged, silent halt in the middle of the street. The heat reflecting off the pavement sheened the faces with sweat; the uniforms of the police were damp. Miller glowered in indecision, then motioned forward those behind him. Miller pushed aside the first sawhorse himself; the rest followed.

The riot squad formed a phalanx, linking their plastic shields, braced. The marchers hit the shields; the officers shoved back, and the line of marchers began to bow, buckling in on itself. Those behind pushed, crushing the front ranks of jokers against the police. Even then the situation might have been manageable-a tear-gas shell might have been able to confuse the jokers enough to send them ru

Someone screamed in the crush. Then, like tenpins scattering, the first row of the riot squad went down as if some miniature tornado had blown them away. "Jesus!" one of the police screamed. "Who the fuck…" The police clubs were out now; as the jokers hit the lines, they began to use them. A low roar di

For an hour the formless battle swirled within a few blocks of the park entrance. The injured lay in the streets, and the sound of sirens wailed, echoing. It was not until midafternoon that any semblance of normalcy could be restored. The march had been broken, but at a great cost to all involved. That long and hot night, the police patrolling Jokertown found their cruisers pelted with rocks and garbage, and the ghostly shades of jokers moved in the back streets and alleys with them: glimpses of rage-distorted faces and raised fists; futile, frustrated curses. In the humid darkness, the residents of Jokertown leaned down from fire escapes and open windows in the tenements to throw empty bottles, flowerpots, trash: they thudded against the roofs of the police vehicles or starred the windshields. The cops stayed judiciously inside their cruisers, the windows up and the doors locked. Fires were set in a few of the deserted buildings, and the fire-fighting crews that came to the calls were assaulted from the shadows of nearby houses.

Morning came in a pall of smoke, a veil of heat.

In 1962, Puppetman had come to New York City and there found his nirvana in the streets of Jokertown. There was all the hatred and anger and sorrow that he could ever wish to see, there were minds twisted and sickened by the virus, there were emotions already ripened and waiting to be shaped by his intrusions. The narrow streets, the shadowed alleys, the decaying buildings swarming with the deformed, the i