Outline of the Chapters for Novel “The Zooer Memoirs”
by Lee Barckmann
Revolution – May 1970
Herbie and Tobin two college freshman sneak out of their dormitory during the curfew and Campus turmoil following the Invasion of Cambodia and the killings at Kent State. They assault a police car with rocks shattering the windshield. Tobin is caught and Herbie escapes by being hid in a basement by Paula. They have a sexual encounter and Herbie learns that Paula is a prominent member of the radical leadership on campus. We go to a rally where she introduces Herbie to the crowd bringing him to the attention of the local authorities. A freshman, Herbie is only interested in sex and drugs. Tobin released from jail on the bail money from his Aunt Esther Spears a well known politically conservative writer and speaker. Tobin spends the summer in San Francisco instead of returning his home in St. Louis while Herbie goes back to New Jersey.
Valkyries – October 1970
In a dorm the following semester, Fred a small town Kansas boy and George a Kansas Farm boy are smoking dope with Tobin and talking about Herbie and the aftermath of last year. George tells a story about another student Leone a Texas boy with strange sexual practices. George tells about seeing a beautiful girl who made a brief appearance in the 1st chapter. They are interrupted by Herbie who brings with him some others, notably Tom, who suffered a splashing by boys in another part of the dormitory. Herbie is trying to get the boys to rise up a avenge their wingmate. Not all decide to come. They meet a free-spirited woman Joan, who leads them on a primeval streaking through the cafeteria at dinner. The chapter introduces and gives a basis for relationship with many of the main characters, include Gail a pretty sensitive idealistic women who is angry with the ruckus cause because it interrupts a dorm council meeting.
Smartwheat – November 1970
Cold rainy day, George Herbie and Tom smoke pot and go to dinner. They met up with Gail and Kathy and discuss all manner of under-graduate topics. We get to know a little more about Tom, a certified engineering and math genius even when he was in High school. He is becoming interested in issues of consciousness and how it might be measured and changed.
The same day Fred is staying late talking with his instructor, Paula, Herbie’s lover from the first chapter. She is a behavioral psychologist and Fred is becoming interested in the implications of behavioral psychology.
Meanwhile, in an airplane we get a peek at the thinking of Esther Spears on he way to a speaking engagement at a conservative University near Washington DC. She is composing a speech as she flies and thinks about the fate of her nephew Jacques Tobin.
Cardinal Richelieu –November 1970
Continues the same day as previous chapter. Fred is pondering course in life. Meanwhile feeling insulted at dinner and wanting to give the boys a taste of their own medicine, Kathy and Gail plan an attack on the their bathroom, planning to pee in the urinals with douchebags sticking out of their pants.
Herbie gets to know Tom better and we learn a little of his upbringing in Idaho. Tom, whose mother is an India Indian from Trinidad and whose father is a jack-Mormon, tells about some of his technical accomplishments, mostly in super ham radio reception. He reveals some of his insecurities and Herbie and he become friends.
When the girls make their attack on the boys bathroom, it results in George and Kathy disappearing into his room, while Gail falls in unrequited love with Tom, while Herbie becomes enamoured with Gail.
Meanwhile Esther is still on the plane and she spies a semi-sinister looking man, Steward, a CIA, White House, Military intelligence guy. She fantasizes about him and she having read her books and recognizing her also fantasies about her. When she finds out he works for Nixon she remembers her own previous encounter with the President –Where the title of the Chapter is revealed. She is going to speak at a University and is being met by one of Steward campus agents so they have a chance to meet. They end up in bed together.
Back in Lawrence Kansas, Herbie and Gail go out for a midnight snack downtown. They meet Tobin and Fred on the way, and Gail, stoned for the first time in her life that day discovers that the boys are becoming her friends and vis-versa.
RiverBoat Gambler –April 1971
Tobin at a 50’s dance worried about his upcoming trial for the stoning of the police car. His Aunt is giving him grief about it and he is trying to decide what to do. He goes to a nearby bar and begins to play pinball his passion. He racks up game after game until he tilts the machine. Tilt becomes his mantra, upset the game when you can’t win.
He thinks back to the afternoon when he took acid with Milton Russell a black homosexual who had served as Fred’s mentor in when Fred had been in High school. A Ph.D. candidate in psychology like Paula, he is driven by a strong bond to the Taoist principles and a belief in friendship and love. Tobin, totally cynical rejects Milton’s approach to his problems.
Back at the dance, he sees his ‘friends’ Herbie and Gail and the woman he loves, Kathy in the arms of George and seeks confrontation with his switchblade knife. But everyone thinks he is just playing a ‘50’s’ role and ignores him. Paula, observing the dance sees him and pulls him into her orbit. It is implied that he confines in Paula about his legal worries. He seems to have an idea.
Meanwhile Herbie George Kathy Gail and Leone repair to George’s new apartment where they sort of have an evening of heavy drinking and doping and semi - group sex.
Showboat of the Living Dead – July 1971
Esther Spears at home in suburban St. Louis. She trips out on history as she often does thinking about the Mormons thinking that Missouri was the Garden of Eden and Greek conspiracies that might have corrupted Christianity itself.
She spins back to a month before when she and Jacque and his new friend Paula drove to the St. Louis country club to met her friend Steward, who she met before on the plane. He is there in the name of the White House to ask, vainly as it had turned out earlier that day, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to hold off from printing the Pentagon Papers. During the lunch he is charmed more than a little by Paula.
She comes back to her evening in St. Louis. Her daughter is having a sleepover and the are watching “Night of the Living Dead”. She watches from the top of the stairs and thinks of her favorite movie “Showboat”. Watching the movie she sees interesting parallels between the two movies that highlight some troubling contradictions in her political thought.
Tickets to the Fireworks –July 1971
Herbie and George, have moved into a new apartment away from campus. Herbie is infatuated with a 17 year old high school girl next door while George is exploring the internal attributes of power in America. They start out the morning of the 4th of July taking some very powerful orange barrel LSD.
Meanwhile Fred is having an affair with Paula. He wakes up in the house she shares with several other people to find her hurrying off to work on something. He comes downstairs and discovers them cutting up 40 LB of freshly picked peyote. It seems the whole campus community is in the apartment eating ingesting peyote in many different ways. Fred has his with orange juice.
He is living with Tom who is deep into the design of a modified biofeedback machine that Tom hopes will feedback more information than any machine ever previous designed. George who had spent the previous semester working at the Meminger Clinic with world renown Biofeedback experts has given Tom the benefit of his notes and experience.
He gets on his bike and rides aimlessly ending up at George and Herbie’s place where they are sitting on the front steps in the sunshine. Herbie’s High school tease come over to give them the Lions Club tickets to the Fireworks, which allows them to sit in the football stadium to watch the fireworks instead of on the hill opposite the stadium, where the hippies traditionally sit.
George Fred and Herbie head toward the campus. But on the way, they get picked up by a psychedelic-colored school bus. They drive over to the campus and hang out in the park there.
The people in the bus are Zen and blonde surfer god Rainbow his lithe dew-eyed girl friend, Muffin and Randy two earth hippies.
Fred is almost completely lost in the sparkle of his Peyote while George falls deeper and deeper into disdain of the hippie culture. Herbie meanwhile sees the beautiful red haired girl who he has run into several times before. She appears to be alone but as he gets closer Tobin comes up to her and before Herbie can get closer Tobin has talked her into going up to his apartment.
They sit-down with Paula. Tom joins them. They discuss the merits of benevolent social engineering and control. Paula sees her behavior research moving in that direction. They all disagree with her and Fred leaves with Rainbow who is scared of Zen. Herbie and George leave to sit in the stadium to use the tickets that the high school girl gave them. Tom wanders off. Zen arrives angry that Rainbow has abandoned him. Paula takes him to an isolated place to calm him down and he rapes her.
Herbie and George return to their apartment where George invites himself into the shower of the biker chick who lives upstairs. Things progress pleasantly for him that evening.
Herbie convinces the high school girl to come down to the basement and even though his only rubber breaks, he presses forward and is about to get to it when her father’s voice interrupts them. She dresses and scurries away, leaving Herbie to contemplate his fate.
Paula meanwhile is angry, not so much at Zen but at her friends Herbie and Fred how left her with him. She is now more determined to continue with her plan.
A Modest Proposal –August 1971
Switch to Washington DC the Old Executive Office Building of the White House. Steward comes in early on a Saturday to get some work done. He catches two burglars in the act of rummaging through his office, a man named Howard and another named Gordon. With burglary techniques and disguises that seems vaguely familiar to students of recent American History they explain themselves to Steward that they aren’t checking up on him but just practicing. They are planning some interesting operations. (One of the funniest scenes in the book –author)
They leave and Steward checks his safe. Although the safe had been opened, the Manila envelope in his inbox is unopened. He opens it to find a memo from Paula that outlines a plan to develop a government controlled agency that is responsible to positively reinforce desired behavior in people the government wants to control. She outlines an experiment to prove the concept. The experiment will keep a promising scientist-engineer working on approved projects by influencing his peer group – helping his friends achieve positions of influence and power on the campus and in the government itself. In a written note she says that it should also satisfy the desires of Esther Spears in seeing that Jacque is pulled away from his degenerate lifestyle.
Sliding Downhill –January 1972
End of finals party. Its snowing and everybody is drinking. Paula is being pawed by Herbie, but it’s no fun for her anymore. Earlier that day Herbie had been pulled out of bed by the local sheriff charged with stoning the police car almost two years ago. Paula got him a lawyer and got him out. Herbie is completely confused as to why it happened now and where they got the information.
They get some cafeteria trays and have sledding party. Tobin sees Paula alone – ‘He think I squealed’ –Doesn’t matter – Rhinerman through the justice department – ‘sorry clerical error’ set up the Sheriff and then didn’t come through with the promised evidence. Herbie how had been in bed with Joan when the sheriff broke in now goes after Gail, who finally thinks she has a chance with Tom who is so preoccupied with his Biofeedback project that he allows her to sneak into his life. Kathy though is there for him. They sled and drink and sled and drink and Herbie slams into a parked car wiping out the tendons in his leg. Kathy takes him back to his apartment – Tobin waits in his apartment until Kathy leaves and he follows her. And she stays with him.
George has been offered a position as the new director of the Campus Radio station. Leone is now Editor of the campus paper. Gail has received an offer to be ai Intern translator at the UN. And Kathy has been invited to Scotland to study the people of the Hebrides. And now the indictment hanging over Jake was gone. All this is told by George and Leone as they sit up in Leone’s apartment, watching Tobin walk Kathy home. They wonder how it all happened. A few days later Herbie, with plenty of prescription pain killers for his injured leg is bragging about how everything seems to work out for him. Joan who has taken care of him for the last week is very happy.
Mormon Women – March 1972
Tom is back in Boise for his father’s funeral. He’s outside the house, all of the guests are inside. All of his father’s buddies from the railroad yard are outside with him drinking and smoking and remembering his father. We go back in time to when Tom’s father met his mother. He had been a Merchant Mariner who jumped ship in Trinidad – She was a 19 year old Indian girl trying to make sense of her gift for reading people’s minds. Religion is very important to her. Raised Hindu and secretly a Christian she is intrigued by Mormon missionaries who come to her Uncles Restaurant and talk to her. Tom’s father is in there one day and scares them off. He is a jack Mormon, raised in the faith but no longer following it. They begin a strange courtship. She uses her gift to find him another ship and he takes her to America, to Idaho to live where they had Tom.
After the funeral, Tom decides to go over and visit Fred who has moved to rural Washington state where is living in a cabin with his Rainbow, and her daughter. His Mom senses what he is doing and tries to discourage him. She is ok in Idaho, all the Mormon women have taken her in – She is a source of power to them and they make her feel very at home. Tom hitches across Oregon and Washington toward Leavenworth. He gets picked up by Milton, also on his way to visit Fred.
Up in a cabin among the apple orchards, Tom tries to talk Fred into coming back to help him finish his Machine. Milton who is not told everything about their project, nevertheless recognizes its dangers from a metaphysical standpoint and objects to them continuing. Fred, who has always resented Milton - Milton had taught at a Jr. College in Fred’s hometown and they had known each other when Fred was in high school – decides that he will come back and bring Rainbow and Sara. Oddly enough he had just received a letter from Paula inviting him to come back – she had got a grant and has money to pay him if he would help her with her research.
Meanwhile back at the Mullen Corp. Bennett had been reading Stard’s memos on the work of the subject of his White House experiment. Of course the Memos are written to seem as though Steward’s experiment with Tom’s friend is the reason that Tom is progressing so fast on his project. Bennett is more excited about the fact that Tom is ‘a Mormon boy’. He decides to fly to LA for a meeting with his friend, and biggest client, also a Mormon Church leader, Bill Gay, the chief executive of Howard Hughes personal retinue.
Inferno -April 1972
A long day in the life of Joan and Herbie, the Chapter is somewhat ‘experimental’ for the author. They break up, they take Acid, they get back together. It really doesn’t advance the plot, but it does give some insight into Joan and Herbie. It also give more insight into Herbie’s strange Historical-Political ideas. All major characters make humorous cameos. The only piece that is in 1st person (Herbie).
SkinnerBox – May 1972
Steward visits Paula in Lawrence. She takes him out to a creek south of town. They walk along the running stream. Steward is talking up how well things are going. Nixon is going to win and he is headed for a big position with a huge budget for the next term. She was going to get her chance to apply her theories of Macro operant conditioning – But there is a problem. Steward is falling in love with her. Paula doesn’t give him any reason to think that will be a problem.
They go through the inventory of their experiment. He asks how Tom’s project is coming. Fred has helped she says. Leone is with the newspaper, George with the radio station, Kathy in the Hebrides, and Gail in the UN. Even Herbie’s freaky girl friend Joan gets a promise of a theater gig with the Performing Arts Center in Washington DC after she graduates.
That leaves Herbie. Rhinerman decides to handle it himself. He goes to Herbie’s apartment disguised as a State Department recruiter. His history teacher has spoken of his amazing clarity of thought and the imaginative nature of his ideas, Steward says.
Herbie gives him a demonstration, a tour de force though world history and how we got here and where we are going.
Dr. Kissinger is looking for minds like his. He is offered a position with the State Department. He would communicate with his contact by mail until he graduated. He would be paid pretty well.
Herbie takes it in stride as if it must happen to anyone who is a genius in world affairs.
Steward is shaken from the experience.
Shantee’s Vision –August 1972
In the wake of Watergate, Steward resigns from his ‘Mental Health Advisor’ position in the White House and goes to work for the Mullen Corp. They put him to work studying Biofeedback, LSD and sensory Depravation. He knew what Mullen was and just considered it going back to work for the Company. Now, though he was meeting in a cold dark parking garage with the ‘Colonel’, one of the highest officials in the Government, who was warning him to pull the plug one his and Paula experiment.
You mean Gordon and Howard went in there because they thought the democrats had ‘mind reading’ equipment? Steward says. Yes.
Meanwhile back in Salt Lake Shantee has been summoned to the Church headquarters. The church wants Tom back. They tell her that Tom is working on some very important and dangerous technology but that he is in League with dark forces and must be saved. She recognizes on of the Churchmen talking to her as one of the young missionaries who talked to her in Trinidad so long ago. They ask if she wants to be with her husband in heaven. They had never been married in the Church. With the threat of eternal damnation on the table, she sees her husband in a distance while they talk to her. He is standing on the Great Salt Lake miles away. She strains to see what he is saying. She doesn’t know what to do. She looks harder and harder and suddenly it is gone, all of it. Her power is gone and she is alone and has to decide whether to help them get Tom back to the Church.
Back with Steward walking out of the garage. He realizes that although the Colonel knew something strange was afoot he still knew nothing about Tom’s box. Steward has already started canceling any Government connection – no more money for Paula – and Herbie’s idiot State Department job was finished – But no one said anything about Tom’s box.
In the Tank – November 1972
Thanksgiving recess – everyone is going out of town for the holidays. Fred is thinking about his ‘research’ with Paula where he is getting paid to do nothing. Paula tells him she is in love and is going to spend the holiday with a friend in Washington DC. Says that maybe they will run into each other later at the Bierstub, a bar.
Leone and George are getting ready to leave. Leone complains about all the work running a newspaper especially the sport section where he spent most of his time and effort. George talks about his radio show and how he fakes it.
George in his car sees Fred on campus. They talk about Tom and his project. They stop by the apartment and Fred shows George the sensory depravation tank and the electroencephalograph. Tom is gone for the holidays. They decide to go get Herbie. Herbie who has started seeing Joan again is going through the breakup blues again. He career as a long-distance member of Henry Kissinger research staff is going no where. He knows he doesn’t see any of the real stuff and no one is responding to his papers on foreign policy. He opens a letter and is told he is off the team. ‘Program cancelled – best of luck” signed by some nobody. And Joan was leaving him again. He is drinking in his underwear when George and Fred come in.
They decide to write something. They sit down in turns and tag-team write a three page science fiction story. It has promise, they think, but isn’t satisfying them tonight. They decide to head for the bars.
They have a heavy metaphysical discussion on the way and then Herbie and Fred have a Karate fight in the parking lot. No one is hurt and they go in.
In the bar, a handsome frat boy is with Ursalla, the red haired girl that Herbie has been dreaming about since that night in front of the Student Union fire, and the one Tobin picked up in front of him at the Fireworks. George of course wants her too, and they try to convince her to leave her boy friend and come with them to the ‘old hippie bar’ the Bierstub. She is getting drunk. But she leaves with her boy friend.
They are pissed and drunk thinking about violence. They get to the Bierstub and there is Paula, drunk. George and her start kissing and he fondles her as the crowd in the little bar is very dense. Then they see Ursalla show up alone. They are all drinking and talking. Last call they decide to go over the Fred and Tom’s place. Paula is very, very drunk.
They get there and decide to try out the box. They clean up and tend to some technical things and tend to drunk Paula. Fred and Herbie get in the Tank, while George and Ursalla sit naked on the rug, plugged in as well. Herbie looks at Ursalla as he gets in.
Zooer December 1972
The boys plot to take Tom’s invention public. Herbie is in a pissy mood. He came over to Joan’s apartment late the evening before and found her naked with some guy he’d never seen, (she hadn’t either until the same evening). They are in the mood to red-line whose in and whose out. Fred is worried about the larger implication of introducing the technology to the outsiders. He’s worried about screwing up other people’s mind. George says we keep the women out of it because they have big mouths and they always complicate things. Shantee is visiting Tom and Fred has pretty much moved in with Rainbow and her child Sara. Randy and Muffin are in town as well.
Meanwhile the women are getting pissed at the men in general. Joan, who has never been particularly good friends with either Kathy or Gail is trying to get them to realize how they are being used – Gail by Tom, who she has carried a torch for 2 years and Kathy who has bounced between George and Tobin. Gail goes into her frustration with Tom who won’t share any of his work with her.
Fred and George take charge of the publicity. “Zeroed Out On External Reality”. The radio waves are full of plans to unveil a new technology that will change everyone’s perception. They plan to unveil it just before the Christmas break. It is to be styled like a ‘be-in’. No attempt is made to make it seem like its legit only that it will be a hell of a party. A lottery will be drawn to see who gets to use the machine. George interview Herbie on his radio show who is acting as an ‘agent’ for the mysterious inventor.
Overheard at Sunrise December 1972
Its 3 in the morning on a cold Kansas December night. Milton has a fire going Joanie Mitchell’s latest Album “For the Roses” is turned up real loud and Milton is smoking his pipe and listening. He has been asked, politely, since he has made it very clear that he won’t teach again in the department and that he has no interest in finishing the simple standard requirements for his Ph.D. Then he would have to vacate his office in Frasier Hall. We get a look at Milton’s domestic life, his need for tranquility.
He has decided to move his stuff out this morning. He walks up to campus and goes up to the top floor of the highest point in Eastern Kansas, the highest building on Mount Oread to watch the sunrise. While he’s in there he hears Paula and somebody else come into her office next door. Its her and Rhinerman and he overhears a plot to steal Tom’s box and kidnap Tom before they go public with it.
Milton hears the one side of the phone conversation. Paula is telling someone “I don’t want anybody hurt” Steward is shushing her.
Milton overhears them talk about the whole thing, Paula’s Project the CIA end and now the Howard Hughes angle.
He overhears promises for even more men, but is told they have enough for the job.
Milton sneaks out of the building.
Meanwhile back at Fred and Tom’s place they are getting the place set up to test the ZOOER Machine. “Zeroed Out on External Reality” Banner hangs in front of the house. Milton talks to Gail.
You’re are being watched. They are going to be moving in to steal the machine. And they are going to take us all out if we don’t get out of here.
When in about 30 minutes
Milton from listening to Rhinerman knows which house the agents are in a block away. He also knows where the lookout is.
Milton convinces them all to get the fuck out to leave the machine and leave town. We can’t fight the government.
Joan takes care of the lookout by coming up and crying and pulling him away from his job. She is irresistible as usual.
Muffin and Brillo bring the bus around and they all get in quickly.
Except Herbie and Tobin. “I know this guy.” Says Herbie
“Me too.” Says Tobin.
“We’ve got to finish this.”
The bus heads south for an abandoned farm George knows about.
About 10 minutes after they leave Rhinerman and his men rush the place. “Damn.” Joan had succeeded in distracting the lookout.
“Where’d they go.”
“Fuck you”. So the are both tied up and shot up with knock out drugs. “Get the Machine –Let’s get out of here”
Shakedown in Managua –December 1972
Drugged and kidnapped, Herbie is in and out of consciousness on the plane. He wakes and is taken off a Lear Jet in a tropical airport, hot and humid.
In a car with Esther on her way to a safehouse in Leawood Kansas to pick up her nephew, who had been caught and and held for 5 days by Rhinerman’s agents at the CIA Intertet. Steward had told her that the real power behind the whole operations was Howard Hughes. At last, we’ve taken Government out of it and has a true patriot running things, someone who knows what they are doing and is using his own resources. Esther sees H.H. as the kind of man who can save the republic. She had heard him the year before scotching the false story that Clifford Irving had concocted and was so impressed how he remembered all those details about his plane. She goes on.
She picks up Jake at the safehouse and takes him back to St. Louis. Jake is completely changed. The five days in custody has had a ‘good’ affect on him. Cleaned up with a hair cut he is ready to come home. He is even taking about getting an MBA at Washinton University after his last semester. Esther is trying to think of way to keep him from returning to finish. She is quite confident she will. She is so happy that Paula’ plan to Help her Jacques has succeeded.
Back in the hotel room where Herbie is being held Herbie and Paula come to terms with their past and what they are. Of course Herbie is mad at her for completely selling him out but it is a strange almost gentle encounter for two people in that situation. Of course Paula plays it as a great chance for Herbie to meet powerful people and get a great start on a career. He hasn’t been kidnapped just escorted. Herbie is wise to her but plays along.
Herbie is escorted, (after being sanitized and covered with tissue paper and face mask to deal with Hughes fear of germs) into HH presence.
The tank and machine are set up the way they were in Tom’s workshop, but not connected yet. Hughes Mormon aides are standing around trying to figure it out. HH comes in. HH and Herbie get along very well – similar people. Hughes has a drug habit and they compare highs. HH is complaining about the aides and how they are screwing him. They sold his father’s company, Hughes Tools out from under him only 2 weeks before and he is pissed. Hughes sleeps and Herbie nods on Hughes drugs. He talks to Rhinerman. Are they going to kill me he asks – No – Steward is trying to figure out who he is working for –The US – The Ambassador to Nicaragua and Somosa seem more loyal to Hughes than to the US. Was he? He promises to protect Herbie because he loves Paula and she made him promise. He is carrying a gun but knows he’s outnumbered.
Back to SE Kansas at George’s Uncle’s abandon farmhouse. Fred, Rainbow, her little girl, Gail, Kathy, Tom and Shantee, Tom’s mother and Milton are all crowded into the little space only heated by a fireplace in the middle of the Kansas winter. Milton and Shantee over the course of the Christmas season bring them together in a way they have never known, with love and sharing and caring. They share the work and seek truth through the Taoism and Hinduism, which Shantee and Milton teach them. They begin to be a real commune of love without any cynicism or jealousy. No drugs, no booze, only sex for love.
Leone and Joan show up. Leone is pissed that the abandoned Herbie and Tobin. They had to do something. Leone reminds them that they have been taken in by Paula and Rhinerman’s experiment – Him too. Now they should use their power to get Herbie and Tobin back. The radio station and the AP wire machine in his office is where they can start. Fuck this hippie shit one of the boys has been snatch. Tom remembered how Herbie rallied them to avenge his douching. Joan is jumping up and down trying to get them to do something.
Milton takes over. Calms them down. Herbie is doing what he is supposed to do. What should we do? Have confidence in Herbie. Stay together and love. Throwing ourselves into the pit is an empty gesture. He over rides Leone and Joan and settles them all down. They will wait for Herbie to come back. Shantee of course supports him and teaches them about her father’s religion Hinduism.
Back to Managua. Howard is up and continues his rant against his Mormon aides. He calls them his jailers. He sounds out Herbie and Paula and Rhinerman. Will they help him? The aides try to take over but Rhinerman shows his gun and Howard backs Steward up in a rare show of lucidity. So they back off.
Herbie can’t figure out how to finish hooking up the tank, (which is the reason they brought him) but Howard the old airplane engineer does in a pretty funny scene. Herbie and HH get in the tank. We see Rhinerman and Paula eyeing the nervous aids as time passes. Paula and Rhinerman can’t decide whether to move to Australia or Marina Del Rey in California. Howard had explained that he still owns the resort South of LA. He offered them a place there earlier.
On Howard’s insistence, Herbie and Howard get in the tank. The time passes quickly but seems like forever to the aides and Paula and Steward.
Suddenly thing begin to shake. The great Managua Earthquake of 1972 begins. Things are falling all over the place. The aides pull HH out of the tank. Dazed they put him on a stretcher and move him down the stairs from the 9th floor. Paula pulls Herbie out while Rhinerman gets a handtruck and puts the machine on it.
They all make their way out of the building. Herbie is Howard. He remembers it all fucking Jean Harlow, the senate committee hearings, the plane crashes it is all in his mind. Paula tries to pull him back pleads with him not to lose it reminds him that Hughes is insane and that he had to come back or he would be insane - Does he want Mormons giving him enemas? Paula has to decide. Does she stay with Herbie or Steward – she goes with Steward looking back and Herbie looks at her.
Paula and Steward get separated from Herbie. A hole opens up in the earth and swallows them and the machine.
It is a strange calm. Comfortable weather and screaming on every street corner. 6000 people dead. Roberto Clemente is dead in a plane crash bringing supplies for a relief effort. Herbie slowly comes around and Herbie joins the relief effort. He becomes a servant of the injured and homeless and saves many people. Exhausted the Red Cross flies him to New Orleans and gives him a $100.
Meanwhile back in Washington, Watergate is getting hot and the White House rolls up what’s left of the Rhinerman operation. They hear from the embassy in Managua he is probably dead, and are able to cover it up so it never comes out.
Homeward bound –January 1972
Herbie hitches hikes up through the south toward Kansas. He is slowly coming back to himself and is help by the several colorful characters who pick him up.
He gets close to Lawrence it is the days before finals start. Ursalla picks him.
They start all over. Herbie starts to get his hound dog feelings again.
She talks about getting back to her place and building a fire. She talks about what they could do on the floor in front of the fireplace.
Herbie asks her if she started the fire in the student Union so many years ago. She looks at him smiles and says lets quit the revolution. Let’s call it a tie.
That’s it.
