We Call Dead Names

WASHINGTON, D. C.- The Justice Department had dozens of cops inside, peering out the windows, insuring justice. The building is too big and too sturdily built to be saved by an anti-war march, or by a commando raid. Efram Zimbalist often strides through its huge metal dors on his TV show. The building is closed to visitors this week.

The March Against Death is a tiny thread of flickering light-candles stuck inside dixie cups so the wind won't blow them out too often. There are gaps in the line, because it has to stop for traffice lights. Washington has lots of traffic lights.

The line of march starts between monuments to two assassinated Presidents. It passes the monuments to America's deadly bureaucracy-enormous buildings shining under flood-lights, deserted in the early morning except by police inside and out.

We marched from 2 to 4 a. m. Friday, in a chilling light rain. The march assembled in green and white plastic tents on the far side of the Potomac. Before they march, people are smiling and optimistic; they joke about the lousy toilet facilities.

Single file and almost silent, the marchers move across Memorial Bridge, past the drab Navy offices to the White House, and on to the Capitol. Each marcher carries a candle and a placard with the name of an American soldier killed in the war.

Our dead soldiers were Earl Patterson and Patrick Haggerty. The only people who heard us shout their names at the White House were others in the March Against Death. And they were too busy trying to remember their own dead men's names to notice us. It was so hard to remember their names.

Marshals grin rather embarrassed grins at the marchers as they file by. Most of the cops smile, too. They have little clubs: they will have bigger ones Saturday.

There were few observers except for marshals and police, and fewer hecklers. But one man stood outside the Internal Revenue Service and called out, "Did you ask Earl Patterson if he wanted you to carry that light? How about Patrick? Did you ask him?"

No one responded to him; no one in the White House responded to the 40,000 names shouted. We could not see the White House even though we passed along Pennsylvania Avenue a stone's throw away (had we dared). We couldn't see because of enormous, blinding lights set up so we couldn't see to throw. We could only see the guards in the gatehouses along the fence.

Nixon was inside resting for his trip to Cape Kennedy ('40). Tricia had said earlier she hoped she would have better things to do than watch anti-war protestors. Perhaps watching the Saturn would be better for her.

Outside candle drippings graced the sidewalk where people had to wait for traffic lights. How quickly can the government clean up the streets? It can pay more from petty cash to clean them than the Mobe can afford for the candles.

At the Capitol marshals took the placards bearing the dead men's names and stuffed them into rough pine caskets. They took the candles we had carried so they could be used again.

Earl Patterson and Patrick Haggerty. They are dead. Some marchers get Vietnamese villages to shout out. Dead villages, Marchers can also request the name of a dead relative. Whatever is dead, the marcher shouts the name at the White House, which isn't listening-unless some supersensitive bug hidden in the glare of the light records all the marchers' voice prints for future reference.

But no, nothing is that real about the march. It is only 40,000 marchers with 40,000 names to shout at a luminous cardboard city; 40,000 names borne on placards lit by candles.

A thin, symbolic line spreads through a city of false fronts. Washington is supposed to be a city of beauty, but Friday morning it was a horror city of despair and fear. Not even a terrible beauty had been born.