Saturday: The Big Day

The morning was humid and warm, but still rather pleasant. A whore’s bath and good tooth brushing, and getting dressed just as Buddy Spell commenced the camp meeting a little ways outside the tent.

Buddy is a lawyer from New Orleans, part of the Louisiana Activist Network, and one of Cindy’s lawyers (his wife’s another). He’s a tall, bald charmer with a deep voice and a Big Easy accent, and he’s funny and sharp and warm. His instructions for Saturday: respect the invisible line down the center of the road; do not cross it for anything. “There will be people here who want to hurt you physically. Do not engage.” The sheriffs, he said, were there for our protection, but if they had to arrest one of us we’d be in jail until the judge came back on Monday.

Thus the plan for the day was laid, and we went down to Food Not Bombs for excellent coffee and oatmeal and apples. I had the pleasure of watching the first arrest of the day; a Bushie who I think walked into no-man’s-land, or maybe used profanity or something. They put him in the plastic handcuffs and sat him on a tailgate. Buddy won a $5 bet on whom the first arrest would be.