There's a Man With a Gun Over There (18 page)

This is good, I think, yes, the Form 150. I write it down and circle it.

“The SSS on those forms, what does that stand for?”

“Boy in the front row is going to ask questions—bet all your teachers think that you're just the best little scholar, don't they? Selective Service System. Old General Hershey up there in Washington. He always reminds people that it's not a universal draft. Oh no, it's a
selective
system. You'd think, wouldn't you, that he was cherry-picking the nation's youth. Taking just a few of mama's precious little boys.”

I write that down, too. “Not a universal system. Mama's precious little boys.”

“Funny,” I said. “That's what my mother called me. Her precious little . . .”

“What's your name, Baby Blue?”

“Ryan. Rick Ryan.”

“Good. They'll like that in the army, the way you start with your last name. Such a good, healthy American name you got there, Rick. Me, I'm Arnie. Rick . . . that'll look good on a tombstone with your service number underneath. Do you know your number?”

“No,” I say. Somehow this isn't going the way it should. I don't have anything to write down.

“Yes, you do, Baby Blue. It's your Social Security number. They've just changed the system—made it easy for you. In the old cradle to grave services of the government, the grave's just coming a little sooner than you thought.”

He grabs SSS Form 150 out of my hands.

“What am I thinking? It's too late to fill out Form 150. Once you get SSS Form 223, it's a whole new ball game. That changes everything. You had your chance to get out and you threw it away, Baby Blue. Threw it away, you dumb fucking shit.”

At that moment in that dark house on that lovely day I felt this strange jerk in my vision, as if a slide changed somewhere, though I wrote down Form 223 in my notebook and then beside it “Changes everything.”

“Of course you didn't think anything would happen, did you? You thought if you just lay low, they'd overlook you somehow. You're mama's special little boy, right? Besides, it was too embarrassing to apply for conscientious objector status, wasn't it? You'd been out there in the bushes with your cap gun and your Roy Rogers hat playing cowboys. You were a red-blooded American boy. Didn't want anyone to think you were a coward. Well, they're not dummies, those Selective Service people. They've got the mid-American psyche of yours all figured out.”

“What's Form 223?”

“Order to Report For Armed Forces Examination, Bucko. It might as well be your induction notice. It ain't called a Pre-Induction Physical for nothing. They take pretty much everyone.”

And now the temperature dropped. It suddenly seemed cold in that room.

“You got medical problems, Baby Blue?”

“As a matter of fact, I have a catch in my back. Had it the other day. Took my breath away.”

He laughed—threw his head back and slapped his thighs.

“Vague back problems. I can already see the stamp, Baby Blue. The doctor hits the inkpad and then raises it up a little for dramatic effect. Whap, he hits Form 88. 1-A, Baby Blue, in slightly smeared black ink. 1-A. Ready to go. Old Form 88. Rocket 88, Baby Blue. You're taking off; you're on your way. Now the forms say DD. Know what that is?”

I shake my head. I'm slowly writing “Baby Blue” in my college-ruled notebook and drawing stars around the words.

“Department of Defense. The first of those is DD Form 62, the Certificate of Acceptability. You've made it then. You're in Club Death. He's got another stamp for that. Major Fucker, MD, it'll say, and then he'll sign it. You're on Cemetery Road at last.”

A voice I didn't recognize, from somewhere deep inside of me.

“I don't want to go.”

“They're smart—take a couple of deer from the herd, and the others just stand there like they think they got a magic wall around them.”

“What am I going to do?”

“Here are your choices . . .”

“Wait, let me write them down.”

“Such a student. Here they are: Canada or jail. Of course you could injure yourself. Here take a copy of AR 40-501.”

“What's that?” I'm writing the title down. It's like some kind of strange Bingo game. Letters and numbers being called off.

“It's got a couple of titles. The one I like best is PROCURE-MENT MEDICAL FITNESS STANDARDS, like you're some kind of part they've ordered, a vehicle they've procured.”

“What's it for?”

“Just what it says over and over. ‘The causes for rejection are . . .' It gives you a nice list of how to mutilate yourself. Here, see paragraph 2-9, item 2.1: ‘Absence (or loss) of distal and middle phalanx of an index, middle, or ring finger of either hand . . .' There you go. Just cut off the two joints, though be sure you cut two. One's not enough. You don't want to screw that one up—cut part of your finger off and still get drafted.

“That's the way I would go, Baby Blue. Shake two of those index finger joints loose. You'll be free, thank God Almighty, free at last, Baby Blue.”

He smiled and handed me a copy of the army regulations.

“Take this, too.”

He gave me a copy of the
Manual for Draft-Age Emigrants to Canada
.

“I'm sorry, Ryan. You're probably a nice, straight American kid. Not like me—got a couple of drug busts, and I think the FBI is on my tail for draft dodging. But I just keep moving around from New York to Madison. Pretty soon I'm headed to Berkeley.”

He went over and looked out the window. I wrote down FBI in my notebook.

“You didn't park out there, did you?”

“I'm a few blocks down the street. Why?”

“They're out there.”

“Where?”

“They're everywhere.”

The afternoon—with its golden glass of beer, its white tufted sailboats, shelves of books, and streets of girls—was gone forever. I could imagine dark-suited men supervising my Chevelle as it was towed away. No more Rolling Stones; no more reverberator.

“You know what I would do if I were you, Ryan?”

He came over and grabbed my hand. The gesture so surprised me that I dropped the notebook on the floor. He began to circle around me, as if we were dancing.

“I'd carve a great big
Fuck You
in my back and let it fester. Get the letters all filled with green pus and let the doctors see that. Green pus and black blood. Oh, that'll freak them out.”

We were spinning together, faster and faster.

“The other thing you need to do is get your football helmet and come to Chicago. We're going to have a little jousting match with the Democratic Party. We're bringing the war to their front steps. Be there, baby. Be there with that bloody Fuck You so America can see what it's done to you.”

That said, he spun me toward the door.

“Yeah, carve a big
Fuck You
in your back. Let it fester so it turns green. That'll get you out, I guaran-fucking-tee it.”

I started out the door.

“You could also cut the end of your trigger finger off. Cut it off, let it dry, and then mail that stiff fucker to the Pentagon. Attach a tag. Write this on it: ‘One less finger for the war, motherfuckers.' Now, if you go that route, Baby Blue, be sure you slice the first two joints off. One's not enough.”

Then he grabbed me by the front of my shirt and pulled me close. His breath smelled like garlic.

“One more thing, Baby Blue. When you get to your physical, you'll have to fill out this security questionnaire. They have lists of Commie organizations. Check a few of those rascals off. That'll get you an FBI file going. And write on that form
I believe that the war in Vietnam is morally wrong
. Write that a whole bunch of times. In fact, Baby Blue, write that everywhere there's space. Then write
I'm a homo
, too. Whowhee what fun you'll have. You'll be too dangerous to draft.”

He pushed me out the door and slammed it shut. The door opened suddenly, and he stood there in an old top hat. He took it off, slowly bowed, and slammed the door again.

As I walked back down State Street, the sunshine and the girls and the books seemed meant for someone else. I wanted to scratch my back where I imagined all the letters of “Fuck You” were festering. I kept crossing and recrossing the street and looking over my shoulder to see if someone in a dark suit was following me. As I got in the Chevelle and pulled away from the curb, I looked in my rearview mirror and saw a man in round sunglasses, a leather vest, and sandals staring at my car.

Of course, I thought, the FBI's incognito these days. They probably followed me the whole way. I turned on the radio.

The FM station was playing cuts from
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
, and I thought the Beatles would cheer me up, but the reverberator got stuck, and final syllables of words sounded like machine-gun fire.
Pepper
turned into
Er-er-er-er.
The last syllable of
lonely
became
Le-le-le-le
. I turned the radio off.

That day in August of 1968—why, that was the day
my
music died.

“What'd he say?” my mother asked when I walked in the door of 863 East Memorial Drive. “Can they get you out?”

Suddenly that question seemed so funny. I started to laugh.

“What's so funny?”

I laughed and I laughed until I was making hoarse, barking noises. My mother got me a glass of water.

“My three main options seem to be cutting two joints of my index finger off, carving swear words in my back, or going to Canada.”

Then my mother began to pucker up, and her face turned red.

“My little boy,” she sobbed. “My precious, little boy. Just like that, they take you away from me. Just like that.”

“Funny, that's what Arnie called me. Look, I've heard that Toronto is a pretty nice city.”

“I'll never see you again if you go there. You can't do that, Rickie. Can you just tell them I'm a widow? They wouldn't take a widow's only boy, would they?”

She began hiccupping as she sobbed, a pudgy little old lady who'd been a yellow rose in the Rose Parade in Pasadena in 1925.

29.

T
he fabled 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention began on Monday, August 26th. My mother and I sat with pizzas watching it in the slightly overdone colors of the television set at 863 East Memorial Drive.

Here's Anita Bryant in a blue dress singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” She has thick eyelashes on for her part of the battle. The camera pans across the placards with the names of the states held aloft. Up and down, and back and forth go Iowa, Oregon, Massachusetts, Florida, and Arizona like cards in a board game. Bang, goes the gavel. “The chair recognizes . . .” The man doesn't so much speak as rattle the syllables out. “The chair recognizes . . .” The camera cuts to a close-up of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, fat lipped as he whispers in the ears of men who scurry off. The men wear suits and narrow ties. The women have lacquered hairdos with stiff flips and walk in their high heels as if they don't quite touch the ground.

It's all a great American ritual, sponsored by recessed-filter Parliament cigarettes, Continental Insurance, and Aqua Velva aftershave lotion. “So why be alone?” the announcer asks, and the camera cuts to the minuteman emblem of Continental Insurance. And then: “There's something,” a husky-voiced lady says, “about an Aqua Velva man.” My mother and I light up cigarettes every time a Parliament commercial comes on.

Oh yes, we do what we're told, out here in America, don't we?

Do you remember the CBS correspondents who covered the floor of the sixty-eight convention while Walter Cronkite sat up above in his glass-windowed booth overlooking everything? They all wore earphones with these antennas on their heads that looked like bent clothes hangers and these matching, tightly fitted gray suits, as if they were crew members in an early version of
Star Trek
, as if the floor of the International Amphitheatre in Chicago were some strange planet that the
Enterprise
had landed on, as if the convention delegates— all those jowly men from Chicago and Mississippi and New York—were aliens from some other planet.