Summer of '69 Page 11

  “Therefore, according to my belief, to fight in Vietnam shouldn’t come down to a choice between kill or be killed, because it is wrong for us to be there in the first place. But if I did find myself in a position where I was ordered to kill another human being, I wouldn’t be able to. I’d refuse and suffer the consequences.”

  Charles flicks ash onto the floor. (Why doesn’t he use an ashtray? Is this an act of rebellion? Or a statement about how he feels about the church?) His eyes lock on mine.

  “I’m not bullshitting you,” I tell him. “I really can’t imagine killing another human being.”

  “Think you’re the only one who feels that way?” Charles swings his boots off the desk and leans closer. “Basic training’s not just about getting you in shape and teaching you how to fight. It’s about desensitizing you to violence and the suffering of others. The army doesn’t expect you to be a killer when they draft you. They expect you to be a killer after they’ve trained you.”

  I feel myself squirm inwardly. I really thought I’d built a good argument.

  “Look, it’s not a bad start,” Charles says. “But you’re going to have to go a lot deeper on your moral responsibility if you’re going to have a chance of convincing them, dig?”

  Go deeper? I flash on something I heard my mother say a long time ago, back when my parents still had people over on the weekends for dinner. The grown-ups were sitting at the dining table, chatting. Mom’s hair was coiffed. She was wearing red lipstick. She may even have been smoking a cigarette. “Well, to tell you the truth,” she said, “I’ve discovered that deep down I’m really quite shallow.”

  The table erupted with laughter, no one laughing more gaily than Mom.

  It took me hours and hours of reading and research to come up with, and memorize, the answers I’ve just given Charles. And now he says I have to go deeper? Depth is not my forte. I’m a practitioner of the quip. The short, pithy poem. Or the rambling love letter. Constructing long arguments based on philosophical polemics might be someone else’s bag, but it’s sure not mine.

  “What about trying to flunk my physical?” I ask, feeling defeat creep in: Charles has already warned me that the doctors at the army induction center in Brooklyn have seen every faked physical ailment known to man. But there has to be something I could try. (As far as a deferment on psychological grounds, mere letters from psychiatrists may work in other places, but in Brooklyn they’re useless unless accompanied by long, well-documented histories of mental illness. So no sense in asking Dr. Hill. I’m reminded of one of my favorite books, Catch-22, in which soldiers at war discover that anyone who asks for a psychological discharge is automatically turned down. Because not wanting to engage in bloodshed is clear proof of sanity.)

  “The thinking in Washington has changed,” Charles says. He’s not quite as scornful tonight as he was two weeks ago. “Up till now, seventy percent of the guys getting drafted have been poor, working-class, or minority. Nixon’s figured out that it’s bad political mojo if they’re the only ones dying in Nam. Because what does that make the college student deferment? Just another way to maintain the status quo, dig? You know that blacks and minorities die at twice the rate of whites over there?”

  “Seriously? Why?” I ask.

  Charles flicks his ash and gazes at a bright-yellow poster on the wall of a flower with the words WAR IS NOT HEALTHY FOR CHILDREN AND OTHER LIVING THINGS. “Why? Because whites get promoted to officer positions and blacks don’t. So while you white boys are behind the lines giving orders, my black brothers are up front catching lead.”

  He may not be as hostile as he was two weeks ago, but he still sounds angry and resentful — with good reason.

  “Listen, man, would you prefer I found someone else to work with?” I ask, since it feels like that’s where he’s going.

  Charles’s mouth falls partway open, and he looks at me with surprise. “No, man. I told you last time, my job is to help everyone. And as long as I’m here, that’s what I’m going to do. I just think you should dig what’s really going on.”

  A little while later, sitting in Odysseus in the church parking lot, I wonder if what’s really going on is more than I can handle. If I’m going to have a chance of succeeding with the conscientious objector thing, Charles says I’ll need to do more research and have deeper and better-thought-out arguments. Everything is starting to feel overwhelming. If the ground was disintegrating before, now it feels like I’m surrounded by walls pressing in.

  A moment like this calls for an infusion of ganja. I close Odysseus’s windows and fire up. It hasn’t been easy to keep my promise to Robin about cutting back, but I’m trying. It’s 9:30 p.m. and this is only my second joint of the day. I’ve only smoked half a dozen cigarettes, too. I pray it’ll count for something.

  Darkness has fallen. Lucas the Pummeled holds the sweet smoke in his lungs. It’s been five days since Robin’s last letter. Oh, how he wishes she’d write again. Maybe she has. It’s been more than two weeks since he signed the change-of-address form. There could be a bunch of perfume-scented lavender envelopes sitting in a mailbox in Bay Shore. . . .

  And while you’re building castles in the sky, goofball, why not add a personal note from Nixon exempting you from the draft?

  Tap tap . . . At the sound against the window, Lucas the Dreamer nearly jumps out of his seat. Heart thudding, he turns to look, expecting a cop. But it’s Charles. Light-headed relief floods through Lucas’s THC-infused synapses.

  “Gonna bogart that joint?” Charles asks with a grin.

  A moment later he folds himself into the passenger seat and looks around. “Groovy bus, Lucas.”

  “Thanks.” Lucas hands him the joint, and Charles takes a hit that burns nearly half an inch off, then starts to cough, his long body quaking as he hacks over and over.

  Lucas takes the joint back. Now that Charles is on his turf, it feels like they’re equals. “Gee, Charles, I thought all you brothers knew how to smoke dope.”

  In the middle of his coughs, Charles starts and stares. Then he laughs. “Touché, white boy.”

  “Next time, try a smaller hit,” Professor Lucas advises.

  Charles complies. “Man, this is good stuff. No seeds popping or twigs.”

  “No one ever told you to pick that crap out?” Lucas asks. “Where you been, man?”

  “The Congo for the last four years. And before that, homeschooled.” Charles holds up the joint. “Not much opportunity for this, dig?”

  “Why homeschooled?”

  “Jehovah’s Witness. Then four years in the jungle building schools and kingdom halls.”

  They each take another hit. It’s good to get a buzz going. Lucas the Heretic may believe there is no God, but he sure appreciates the empty dark parking lots the Good Lord provides each evening after his work is done.

  “You see my conflict, Lucas?” Charles asks.

  “Sorry?”

  “Helping rich white kids stay out of the draft.”

  Lucas is tempted to argue that he’s not rich, but compared to a lot of kids, he guesses he is. Look at Chris. He once told Lucas that the four people in his house shared one bathroom. On the other hand, grass-smoking Charles with his Afro, cowboy boots, and Marlboros doesn’t exactly fit the image of a Jehovah’s Witness. Every now and then a couple of primly dressed ladies will knock on the front door of the house of dashed dreams, offering a publication called The Watchtower. “You really a Jehovah’s Witness?” Lucas the Skeptical asks.

  “Disassociated. What you’d call lapsed. But it got me a One-A-O deferment. I’m doing my community service at Creedmoor.”

  Creedmoor’s a local state-run mental institution. When it was first decided that Barry needed to be institutionalized for a while, Lucas’s aunt and uncle briefly considered sending him there, but the shrink was vehemently against it. Lucas got the impression it’s a real hellhole.

  “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?” Lucas asks.

  “You don’t wa
nt to know, my man.” Charles takes another hit, leans his head back, and gazes up at the cartoon of Mr. Natural. “‘The whole universe is completely insane.’ Ain’t it the truth.” He reaches for the door handle. “Thanks for the smoke, Lucas. I’ll let you get home.”

  He’s halfway out the door when he stops and looks back, his lips grimly pursed. “Listen, my man, I know it’s a bitch, but keep working the CO angle. We’ll give it our best shot. If it doesn’t work, you’ll still have some options.”

  “Something besides federal prison or Canada?”

  “Hey, don’t knock ’em. You’ll stay alive and you won’t have to fight in an immoral war.”

  A fair point. But . . . “Any other possibilities?”

  “You can always chop off a finger. But somehow you don’t strike me as the type.”

  “They went all the way to the moon to take a nap.” Arno’s stubby toes press against the edge of his desk while he reclines in his chair. A narrow ribbon of bluish incense snakes from a small brown ceramic pot nearby. It’s close to nine p.m. The lunar module touched down on the moon’s surface about six hours ago. On TV they’ve been saying that the astronauts are going to take a nap and then do a bunch of things inside the LM before they venture out.

  A rolled-up towel is wedged against the bottom of the bedroom door. Arno’s holding a mirror in front of his face while conducting a blackhead search-and-destroy mission. The sunburn has pretty much faded. A few days ago, when his skin started peeling off in sheets, he really looked like a napalm victim.

  I’m perched by the window, which is open just enough to keep the pinner we’re smoking outside. I’m still cutting down, but it would be awkward not to smoke with my friends. Arno would want to know why, and if I told him it was for Robin’s sake, he’d be sure to call me pussy whipped. Besides, we’re only getting mildly fried. In a little while, when we go watch TV with Arno’s parents, we can’t appear too wrecked.

  Tommy is on Arno’s sound system. At home, I’ve got a record player the size of a small suitcase with a turntable and two little attached speakers. In comparison, Arno’s system is otherworldly: Kenwood stereo receiver, Garrard turntable, Acoustic Research speakers the size of milk crates. Plus a ton of albums filling the bookcase, stacked against the wall, and in two big piles in his closet.

  The Who is Arno’s all-time favorite band. When “Pinball Wizard” comes on, he puts down the mirror and begins to air-drum along with Keith Moon. Less than a month from now, Pete Townshend and company are scheduled to come all the way from England to perform at the music festival. Other than making himself rich selling acid and being part of our last hurrah before parting ways in the fall, seeing the Who is one of the chief reasons Arno wants to go.

  Milton is cross-legged on the floor, reading Newsday. A thin wire connects a plug in his ear to the small black transistor radio in his shirt pocket. He’s the only person I know who can listen to music, read a newspaper, follow a ball game on his radio, and engage in a conversation all at once.

  While Arno air-drums and Milton reads, I’m thinking about the drive up to Camp Juliette in five days. It’s been eleven days since Robin’s first and only letters arrived. The paterfamilias says he’ll “definitely” get down to Bay Shore sometime this week to pick up whatever’s been forwarded there. (I’ve been tempted to go myself in Odysseus, but I don’t have keys for the place, so how would I get my mail? And what if I went and there were no letters?)

  Oh, how I ache for her. Only sometimes at night, Tinsley gets mixed into that wistful yearning. Not that I expect to ever see the pixie princess again. It’s been almost two weeks since she showed up at the factory and we went over to the Planting Fields. Haven’t heard from her since. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised, considering the way the afternoon ended. I tell myself it’s just as well. But in Robin’s absence, when the hormones start simmering, I do sometimes wonder if I was too quick to turn down Tinsley’s generous offer.

  Arno Moon finishes drumming with a dramatic air trash-can flourish, flips his invisible sticks away, and comes over for a hit off the skinny joint. This close, I can smell his aftershave. He exhales through the gap in the window and asks if I’ve heard from Robin.

  “Yeah, everything’s good.” What a lie. I might as well be General Abrams over in Nam, claiming we’re winning the war. Arno may be my closest friend, but sometimes I’m not comfortable talking to him about Robin. He’s always been jealous of me for dating her. Not because she’s taken up so much of the time I used to spend with him. And not because he, and many other guys, always considered her one of the most desirable females in our grade. But because she’s a constant reminder that the Semi-Miraculous Transformation happened to me, not him.

  “You are such a lucky fuck,” he says for the thousandth time.

  “Was a lucky fuck,” Milton corrects him without looking up from the newspaper.

  “Right.” Arno starts to sing along to “Pinball Wizard,” making up his own lyrics:

  “He’s a Vietnam draftee,

  Couldn’t get a deferment,

  A Vietnam draftee,

  Gonna get his ass shot off.

  A Vietnam draftee,

  He’ll soon be ducking bullets,

  But it’s only a matter of time . . .

  dah dah tah dot dot dah . . .

  Till he comes back in a

  Flag-draped pine box.”

  “Aluminum,” Milton says, his face still in the newspaper.

  “Come again?”

  “The army caskets are made of aluminum. So they can be reused. Saves money. Soldiers are expensive to train, feed, house, and transport. Once you’re dead, the army doesn’t want to waste another cent on you.”

  “Uh, right.” Arno gets down on his belly and starts to crawl under his bed.

  “What was today’s count?” I ask. Milton follows the daily casualty count as closely as he follows Roy White’s batting average.

  “Sixteen today. Thirty-eight yesterday.” Milton looks up and our eyes meet. We are brothers in disarmament. The war has torn his family apart. It threatens to tear my family apart (not that there’s much holding it together).

  My simmering resentment at the injustice of it spills out. “It’s un-fucking-believable. The only reason we’re in this war is because we don’t have the balls to admit we were wrong to get into it in the first place. And now we can’t get out without admitting defeat.”

  “Hey, don’t forget the fat cats making all the shit that war uses up,” Milton reminds me. Together we list some of the items companies supply to keep the war going:

  “Bombs.”

  “Guns.”

  “Bullets.”

  “Uniforms.”

  “Rations.”

  “Pocket-size Bibles.”

  “Think of it like this,” Milton says. “War is the addict. Young draft-age men are the drug. The military-industrial complex makes the syringes. As long as this country keeps injecting soldiers into Vietnam, the owners and shareholders of those syringe companies get richer and richer.”

  Since meeting with Charles last week, I’ve been trying to “go deeper” into my moral argument against war. But it’s hard to focus, hard to make myself work. It reminds me of what Miss Landers used to say. She was convinced I showed a talent for writing and would get aggravated when I wouldn’t muster the energy to edit and revise my papers, or even correct my spelling and grammar. We had a strange love-hate relationship, surely the most intense connection I’ve ever had with any teacher in my life.

  A sneeze explodes from under the bed. “Goddamn dust!” Only Arno’s feet are visible, sticking out from under the bed. Whatever he’s searching for must be pretty far back.

  “Look at this.” Milton gestures to a story in the newspaper about five guys on trial for burning their draft cards. “They’re facing five years for burning pieces of paper.” He points at a name: New York State Supreme Court justice Leopold R. Wagner. “And the SOB who’s presiding over the trial? Lives a co
uple of blocks from here. Bastard plays chess with my father.”

  Something is different about Milton this summer. Last fall, only a few weeks past his sixteenth birthday, he went off to MIT an innocent genius. He’s never been one to talk openly about his feelings, but I sensed he was uptight — not about how he’d do academically but about living on his own away from his family. He’s come back more confident. He made it through freshman year. He’s more apt to reveal his emotions now.

  And yet, when he heaves the rolled-up newspaper against Arno’s closet door, it catches me by surprise.

  “What was that?” Arno’s muffled voice asks from under the bed.

  “I’ve had it with this civil disobedience crap,” Milton seethes. “All this Gandhian drivel about winning the government over with love and patient suffering. There’s still half a million American soldiers over there. They’re still bombing the crap out of Cambodia and North Vietnam.”

  I drop the pinner outside and close the window. In one of Chris’s first letters to me, he wrote about how in areas where there’d been intense bombing, he noticed that the scattered bodies left behind were sometimes naked. He was puzzled by this until his squad leader explained that a bomb’s shock waves often tear the clothes off a body. In another letter, he wrote about walking through a bombed village and finding a child’s foot lying on the ground. Nothing else. Just the foot. Chris has been over there for about six months. Six months to go.