1Disclaimer: Harding and Wilson Welsh belong to Alliance Communications. All other characters are my own invention. Although this story is based on actual historical events, no character in this story is intended to represent any real person, living or dead.

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Paul Quarrington for creating such a vivid tale of family tension, and for leaving those tensions unresolved at the end of "Doctor Longball." I also want to thank my beta readers, Jo March, Vicki West, and Magnes, for their valuable contributions, and all my friends on the RideForever list for their patience and encouragement.

Chicago, 1968

by Melanie Mitchell

Chicago, 1968. To Americans of a certain age, these words are much more than just a city and a year. They are a watershed, a moment when the structure of society collapsed in a cloud of tear gas and fear; a time when free speech was a brick, and justice was a billy club.

In the midst of the chaos stood twenty-two year old patrolman Harding Welsh, a young man caught between tradition and change, striving to do the right thing on a night when every good decision was wrong.

Chapter One

"Harding?"

Harding Welsh groaned at the sound of his younger brother's voice, and ducked his head under the shower to rinse out the shampoo. As the stream of tepid water played across his scalp and face, he tried to remember why he had thought it a good idea to give Wilson a key to his apartment; it was for emergencies, of course, but Wilson seemed to think it was an open invitation to drop by any time.

Wilson rapped on the bathroom door. "Harding, you in there?"

"Nothing gets past you, does it?" Harding yelled loudly enough to be heard over the sound of the shower. He turned his back to the spray one last time, and ran his fingers through his hair to check for any remaining suds. He was reluctant to turn the water off, because the shower was the coolest spot in the apartment on a steamy August morning. Not for long though, because a loud "thunk" in the pipes warned him of an impending change in water pressure--somebody downstairs must have flushed a toilet. He quickly shut off the water before he could be scalded, and reached around the orange plastic shower curtain for his towel.

He wasn't happy that the Democrats had chosen Chicago for their '68 national convention, but at least the extra 12-hour shifts meant lots of overtime pay for a cop. After payday he'd have enough money to buy a window-mounted air conditioner at Sears' Labor Day sale, and long tepid showers would be a thing of the past.

As he toweled off, he noted his reflection in the bathroom mirror. A few weeks short of his twenty-third birthday, he was at his physical peak-- tall and broad, just a hair under 200 pounds and none of it fat. His dark brown hair was trimmed conservatively short, showing just a hint of its natural wave. His mouth tended to be firm and tight-lipped, but his deep-set blue eyes often twinkled in direct disagreement with his most serious expressions. Like his grandfather, his father and his brothers, he was born to be a cop.

"Harding? You okay in there?"

He wrapped the damp towel around his waist and yanked the bathroom door open. "What's your hurry?" he barked. "You got a date or something? 'Cause I didn't invite you and I don't want to stop you if you got somewhere more important to be."

The baby of the Welsh family at twenty-one, Wilson got his cherubic looks from their mother's side of the family. His hair was straight and fair, and he was half a foot shorter than Harding. He grinned apologetically. "Wanna beer?"

"Yeah."

Wilson headed over to Harding's galley-style kitchen, and pulled two bottles of Pabst from the tiny refrigerator. He popped the tops with the bottle-opener attached to the underside of the cabinet beside the fridge. At the same time, Harding pulled on a clean pair of boxers and an undershirt, and dropped the towel on the sill of the open window. Not a breath of air was stirring there; he turned on his oscillating fan and made a conscious choice not to finish getting dressed yet.

As Wilson walked past the small dining table, he wrinkled his nose at his brother's uniform shirt, which was draped across the back of one of the worn wooden chairs. "What's that smell?" he asked, as he handed one of the bottles to his brother.

Harding scooped the shirt up and tossed it into a laundry hamper beside the bathroom door. "It's piss, you moron."

"Piss? What do you mean, piss?"

"Some goddamn hippie threw a water-balloon full of warm pee at me last night. All right?"

Wilson let out a soft whistle. "Not all right."

Harding grunted, then took a long swig from his beer. As he swallowed, he held the cool glass bottle against his forehead. "It's ten-thirty on a Wednesday morning, Wilson. Why aren't you in class?"

"Academy's not in session this week. I guess all the instructors were needed down at the convention site, so we get a little vacation."

"Lucky cadets. For the rest of us, we got mandatory twelve-hour shifts, no time off, and all vacations cancelled. In August! Damn this stupid convention."

Wilson started to speak, then paused and had another swallow of beer instead. A long awkward silence settled between them as they drank. But soon the bottles were empty, and Wilson gave a gentle cough.

Harding looked up sharply. He knew his younger brother's cues; there was something weighing on Wilson's mind but he couldn't bring himself to begin. He needed a push. "You didn't come all the way here just to drink my beer."

"No."

"So what is it?"

Wilson didn't answer in words; instead, he pulled the right sleeve of his white t-shirt up to expose an angry purple bruise that extended in a wide stripe from his shoulder halfway to his elbow. The sight of it called up something primal in Harding's thoughts. "Who did that to you?"

"Hell if I know." Wilson pressed his lips together, trying to contain his anger. "One of my Brothers in Blue, apparently."

"A cop?"

"A cop? He was wearing the uniform, but you know what? He wasn't wearing a badge. None of them was wearing a badge. There were dozens of 'em, whaling around right and left with their nightsticks, and not one of 'em was wearing a goddamn badge."

Wilson's words evoked Harding's memory of the night before. "You were there? Last night, in Lincoln Park? With the demonstrators?" Incredulous, Harding lashed out at his brother. "Jesus H. Christ, Wilson, are you out of your mind? You're a month away from graduating from the Academy. What the hell were you doing in Lincoln Park?"

Wilson matched Harding's stare and answered him with defiant patience. "I was exercising my Constitutional right to assemble peacefully, to petition my government for a redress of grievances," he recited.

"What's happening in Lincoln Park isn't a peaceful assembly. It's a mob of dirty, pot-smoking rich kids who've got nothing better to do with their lives than spit on the political process. They were dangerous, throwing bricks and bottles at anybody in a uniform, and they had no permit to be in that park after dark!"

"We just want to be heard! We're trying to send a serious message about the war in Vietnam."

"By nominating a pig for president?"

Wilson snorted. "Pigasus? Harding, Pigasus is a joke. A. . . you know, a satire. Political satire, like. They're trying to make a joke about politics."

"Goddamn pig almost took a piece outta me!" Harding pulled up his undershirt to reveal his own bruise, green and blue across the left side of his stomach, ending just above his navel. The center of the bruise was distinguished by a neat line of red teeth-marks.

"Pigasus did that to you?"

Harding yanked the shirt down again. "Don't you dare try to tell me that pig is a joke!"

"It's the Yippies who have the pig, Harding. I'm not a Yippie, I'm with the McCarthy supporters." He spread his arms wide. "I'm Clean for Gene!"

"Clean for Gene." All the frustration of the week boiled over at that moment, and Harding laid it all out on his brother. "You want to be part of the political process? Fine! Do it on Election Day; throw your vote away on McCarthy. Vote for the fuckin' pig if that's what you want! But if anybody finds out that you were part of that protest, your can kiss your career with the Chicago P.D. goodbye. Hell, if Pop finds out, you can kiss you ass goodbye."

"So. . . what? What? Because I'm a cadet, I have to give up my right of free speech? Because I'm Art Welsh's son, I can't have my own opinion? Because I'm your brother, I can't stand up for what I believe?"

Harding lashed out, "Because you're Grant Welsh's brother, you don't go saluting the flag of the goddamn Viet Cong!"

Wilson rocked back, stunned. "Is that what you think of me? I participate peacefully in an anti-war demonstration, in support of a legitimate candidate for the presidency, and this is how you judge me? Tell me something, Harding: How many McCarthy supporters did you swing your stick at last night?"

"You listen to me, Wilson Welsh--stay the hell away from the goddamn protest!"

"Thanks for the beer," Wilson said quietly, and set his empty bottle on the table as he turned to leave. He paused at the door, and turned back. "You know what I don't understand? Why weren't they wearing their badges?"

Harding had no answer for that. He stared in resentful silence, as Wilson slipped out and closed the door behind him. Alone in his tiny apartment, Welsh remembered the chaos in Lincoln Park--the caustic smell of tear gas mixed with marijuana and tobacco smoke; the crush of bodies, some fleeing, some fighting, others sitting limply on the ground; the sound of untrained voices singing off-key, "We shall overco-o-o-ome, we shall overco-o-o-ome, we shall overcome someda-a-a-a-a-ay. . . ." He recalled the taunts, the spitting, the bottles and bricks flying around; the hot, wet impact of the piss-filled balloon on his back, and the laughter of the Yippies who scrambled away as soon as it hit. Worst of all, he remembered the humiliation of being knocked down and mauled by that monstrous pig.

He walked over to the chair where he had left his pants, and slipped his hand into the right-hand pocket. As he pulled his badge from the pocket, the sharp point of the pin sank into his thumb and drew blood.

In just a few hours he would be back on duty, facing that mob again.