Christmas Presents and Past

His voice was completely dull. “I didn’t want to go to college. I never turned in my application.”

“But I gave you a check for the fee!” His mother stared at him in complete bewilderment. “I assumed they just didn’t cash it until they sent out acceptance letters.” Her face crinkled. “But you were accepted. I’m sure you said…”

He just kept shaking his head. “I let you think whatever you wanted.”

The expression of shock and horror on the two women’s faces might have seemed comical under other circumstances, so alike did they momentarily look.

But Dinah’s transformed to outrage, and she crossed her arms in front of her. “How could you?”

“It was my decision,” he said stubbornly.

“But you’re not the only one affected. How do you think I feel? And your mom and dad?”

He heard himself give an ugly laugh. “Dad’ll be proud if I go to Vietnam. He served, so I should, too. He’d probably have been embarrassed to admit to his friends that his kid was hiding behind a student deferment.”

“That’s not true!” his mother protested. “He loves you.”

Tears spurting in her eyes, Dinah cried, “I thought you loved me! But you lied to me!”

“I never lied….”

“You let me think you’d applied to S.F. State, too. Why?”

“Because you took my parents’ side!” Will yelled. “You refused to understand!”

She looked at him as if he was incredibly stupid. “That you could die? Yeah, I got that. Only, now I’m starting to see that maybe you want to die so we all feel guilty. Well, I’m not going to!”

Sobbing, she raced past him and out the door. He turned to take a step after her, but the door slammed in his face and within moments, he heard the roar of her car’s engine.

Behind him, his mother said, “Dinah is absolutely right, Will O’Keefe!” Her voice sounded thick, and he turned to see tears welling from her eyes. “How could you?”

She walked away from him, too, closing her bedroom door firmly shut behind her.

Will no longer felt like a husk hollowed out by despair. Too many emotions raged in him now, including anger that they didn’t feel sorry for him. Him! He was the one who would be shipped halfway around the world to become a soldier in a war he didn’t believe in.

But mostly, he felt shock. Because he’d never really believed he would be drafted. The odds were two to one against it, and he’d always been lucky. He’d thought his parents were using the threat of the draft to pressure him into doing what they thought he should do with his life.

Alone in the living room, he grappled with the concept that maybe they really had been scared. That maybe Dinah had been, too.

And that maybe she was right, and he’d been too wrapped in self-pity to think about anyone but himself.

Two days later, Will was waiting outside when Dinah got off work, and of course she had to forgive him right away.

He sat there in the car, face ravaged, and said, “This sounds unbelievably stupid, but I really thought I’d get a high number.” His self-mocking tone could have scored glass. “Nothing really bad could happen to me, right? I talked about being scared of the draft, but I wasn’t. Not down deep.” He touched a fist to his stomach. “I was convinced my parents were using the threat of the draft to make me go to college.”

“But what about me?” Dinah asked. She couldn’t tear her gaze from his hands, which were locked around the steering wheel of the car although he hadn’t even turned the engine on. They were tanned. Scabs, new and healing, made them the hands of a working man. But what got to her was that his knuckles were white, he was gripping that wheel so tight. As if…as if he was holding on to the wheel of his old Chevy for dear life.

He didn’t answer for a long minute. When he did, he spoke haltingly. “I knew that…well, that you were scared. So I just…pretended, you know, that you were just way more establishment than you talked, and you wanted your boyfriend in college. Because if I hadn’t believed that…” He stopped.

“You might have really been scared, too,” she whispered.

He turned to her, his eyes anguished. “God, Dinah. I am scared. What am I going to do?”

“You could go underground. Or to Canada.”

He was shaking his head even before she finished. “That would kill my dad. Maybe my mom, too. But he’s…well, he’s pretty conservative, you know. We’ve had knock-down, drag-out fights about the protests I’ve gone to.”

“But you said you wondered whether he really believed in the war.”

“He admitted that he thinks the troops should come home. But that doesn’t mean—” his voice took on gruffer intonations meant to mimic his father “—that a young man should turn his back on his country when he’s called.”

“Oh, Will.” Tentatively, she laid a hand on his arm. It was rock hard, and he seemed not to feel her touch.

He did turn his head to look at her. “You should have seen his face, Dinah. It was…” He closed his eyes for an instant. “I think he was close to crying. I’ve never seen my dad cry. He said…” Will had to clear his throat. “He said, ‘I’d hoped you could avoid service honorably. But you made a choice, Will, and now you have to live by that choice.’”

Her heart almost broke. “Oh, Will.” She couldn’t seem to say anything but that, because she could see in his face that he had already made his decision.

“He was right, Dinah.” Now his jaw was set, his voice raw. “I do.”

“You don’t! You don’t!” Tears burned in her eyes. “Your dad loves you. He’d probably secretly be glad if you went to Canada….”

He shook his head, no longer the easygoing boy with whom she’d fallen in love. “No.”

Just that one word. Determined, and knowing what this decision might cost him.

“If you want to quit seeing me now, I understand.”

Like a skipping record, she again cried, “Oh, Will!” but this time she flung herself at him and he let go of the steering wheel to accept her into his arms.

He kissed her as if he’d never stop, as if he feared he’d never hold her again.

And as December drew on and a joyless Christmas neared, he kept kissing her that way. He didn’t want to talk about the future. Even his description of the physical for which he was required to report was so terse, she couldn’t imagine it.

“Mom said when I was younger, I had a heart murmur. This doctor couldn’t hear it. I’m 1-A.”

Desperate, she tried to continue an argument he wouldn’t hear. “You shouldn’t go to Vietnam for your dad. You should do what’s right for you!”

Will only shook his head.

They had to have been desperate for men, because Will received his induction notice before Christmas. He showed it to her. It had his name on top, and said, Willful failure to report at the place and hour of the day named on this Order subjects the violator to fine and imprisonment.

He was to report in three weeks.

Sometimes it felt as if Will was already gone. Perhaps a part of him was. When they had the chance, they made love fiercely, knowing how little time they had. Dinah, for one, could never forget that he might not make it home alive. But otherwise he seemed distant as he gave notice at his job and took finals to earn his high school degree.

Their worry drawing them together, she and his mother became friends in a way they’d never been. Once, when Dinah had arrived early and Will wasn’t yet home, Mrs. O’Keefe talked about her husband’s experiences in basic training.

“John told me once that boot camp was hell on earth. I keep imagining…” She gave a hiccup that Dinah could tell was a suppressed sob. “Will was always so sensitive. I can’t bear the thought…”