Free The Totem 1979 by David Morrell Page B

seem much difference between how the town had looked back then and what it looked like now. A few new buildings maybe, and of course the slogans had been erased from the walls, but really nothing much was changed. The same wide central street, the same two-story buildings that went straight down on both sides, their clapboard walls painted white. A pocket of tradition. Continuity. The place had likely looked the same back in the fifties too. Dunlap had seen pictures of the confrontation in the town, beaded hippies face-to-face with stern-eyed men in cowboy hats, state policemen standing by patrol cars waiting for trouble; fights and local people jeering; flying stones and bottles, broken windows, tents and garbage through the park-and more fights, further confrontations, each day worse than the one before until the roundup in the park, patrol cars all around it while the troopers went in from all sides and pushed the hippies toward the center, county buses waiting for them, those on foot at least, others forced to start their cars and trucks and vans and get the hell out from the town. The state police cars stayed with them right through the town and valley, up the pass, and only left them when they reached the other side. There were some who, stubborn, came back, but they didn’t last long, forced to leave again, and then that part of everything was over. The story idled.
    There was nothing doing. Newsmen and photographers soon left. Potter’s Field was by itself again, except for Quiller and the compound.
    So much for the files that Dunlap had gone through in New York. Parsons had been right, of course. The press had sided with the hippies. Civil rights and freedom of expression, not to mention that the hippies were the underdogs. All the same, Dunlap couldn’t blame the town. It really hadn’t been prepared for several thousand strung-out, West-coast freaks descending on them. There was just too little understanding. It didn’t matter anyhow. That wasn’t what he’d come for, although he’d have to note it for perspective in his story. What he wanted was the story of what happened next, the story no one else had covered, the subtle many-year changes that when isolated didn’t have much drama but when put together and compressed might make a dramatic point.
    Quiller and the compound, what went on up there behind those sentries and that gate? Dunlap was guessing that the new republic failed, all that wealth and innocence not good enough to make a difference. Lofty ideals compromised, gold turned into lead. Not that Quiller’s ideals had been very deep or complicated. Regardless of the I.Q. they had come from, they were mostly well-phrased slogans. Sure, there was the paradox of using wealth to make a way of life that didn’t need it. There was, too, the paradox of Quiller, straight and clean-cut, leading all those hippies, his classic Corvette at the head of all those music-blaring buses. Nonetheless, for all that Dunlap knew, Quiller had just made himself look straight so he could use the system to create his enterprise. The only way to know that was to talk to Quiller, and as much as Dunlap was aware, no one from the outside had heard news of Quiller since he’d closed the gates and gone back in the wood-enshrouded compound back in 1970. It was almost twenty-three years ago exactly. Parsons had been right. Next month, the middle of July, would be about the time the trouble had reached its worst within the town. Dunlap guessed that if the compound went to hell, its members simply drifted off, Quiller with them, so dejected no one wished to talk about it. Could be Quiller lost his wealth and disappeared, no longer powerful, only disillusioned and anonymous. Could be. All the same, you’d think that someone would have told.
    Well, the only way to know was to do the research, get the facts, and get out of here. Dunlap sat before a microfilm machine. He was in the newspaper’s basement, in a small room at the far