by Tricia Dower
16
Most days it’s so quiet she can hear the woods shiver.
She’s kneading bread and Ron is out front cleaning the gutters when Carl’s muffler shatters the calm. She checks her reflection in the toaster. By the time Ron brings Carl into the kitchen, she’s rounded the dough in a bowl and covered it to rise. “Carl has a proposition,” Ron says. His face is a study in patience, Carl’s in sullen exasperation.
“More a request,” Carl says, worrying the change in his pocket. He’s been working outside all summer by the looks of him. Sun-bleached hair. Butterscotched skin. Shoulders beefier under a denim shirt. She can see him in a fistfight, can see him winning.
Ron bends over the sink as if hinged, turns on the tap and lifts his voice over the running water. “He wants us to harbor a criminal.” He shoves his sleeves up, scours his hands.
“Jeez, man …”
“Just telling it like it is, man.” Not like Ron to be sarcastic.
“You can always say no.”
They turn to her, like brothers tattling on each other.
She rinses the flour off her hands. “Coffee?”
Carl gives her a grateful smile. “My innards could use a warming.”
Radiator weather already. Her toes are chilly in sandals she’s loath to put away even after a summer so torrid she waved her fist at it. Imagine humping an eighty-pound rucksack around a steaming jungle, wearing seven pounds of flak jacket, sidestepping landmines in two pounds of combat boots, an eight-pound fully loaded M-16 assault rifle over your shoulder, like the G.I. she saw interviewed on TV.
She asks about Helen, their summer. Ron stares out the warped window as though she and Carl aren’t there. Helen’s good. Construction work is steady. The intensity she finds most striking about Carl is missing from his terse answers. Unlike her, he doesn’t pretend to enjoy chitchat. She fills three mugs, steers the guys to the dining room where sun has left a warm stain of light on the dark planked table. Ron commandeers one end as if chairing a meeting but doesn’t speak. Carl sits opposite Lin, his hands hovering over steam from his mug. He says Canada is accepting young, educated war resisters who have the potential to work. He wants her and Ron to take in a Darren Skaggs for a few days until he can get somebody to drive the guy across the border. He leans across the table and, in a conspiratorial whisper carrying a bitter smell, says, “Your place is perfect, so isolated.” He nods towards the breezeway door. “That stay locked?”
“Only at night,” Ron says.
He’s been so quiet his voice startles her into taking too great a swallow of coffee. It burns on the way down. She strokes her neck, says, “No one’s ever come through without knocking,” neglecting to add when we’re here. “Why wouldn’t we take him in, Ron?”
“Because it’s against the law to aid and abet anyone evading the draft.”
Carl cracks his rough, dry knuckles. “Aid and abet’s on my head. Skaggs is a big-hearted cat, busted his ass marching for migrant workers this summer. I’m just asking you to shelter him for a few days. I’ll make sure he’s not here on Sunday.”
“We get the occasional visitor other days,” Ron says. “I won’t lie to anyone.”
She envisions the parsonage as an Underground Railroad stop, celebrated one day. “If someone asks, we can say he’s a friend of a friend. Not a lie, is it, Carl?”
“We were arrested together at a protest in Berkley. A moment like that can make you pretty fast friends, wouldn’t you agree, Parson?”
Ron ignores that, blows on his coffee. He looks vulnerable in dungarees and a stained sweatshirt, hasn’t shaved today, contributing to the effect he’s been caught unawares, as of course he has by Carl’s request. She hates to add to his distress but asks it anyway. “Isn’t the church supposed to offer asylum to those facing persecution?”
He gives her a steady look. “Military service isn’t persecution.”
“It would be for me if I was forced into it,” she says. “The Selective Service has the same initials as the Nazi secret police.”
Ron plucks at his lower lip, turns to Carl. “Can’t he stay with you and Helen?”
“Nah, too easy to trace him to me.”
“Why not hop a plane if Canada’s so keen?”
“He’s already been drafted. The FBI may have issued a warrant for his arrest and notified the airlines.”
“Won’t Canada send him back if there’s a warrant out on him?”
“No. They don’t have the draft. Evasion isn’t a crime there.”
Ron’s recalcitrance embarrasses her. What’s the point of their ministry if it isn’t to stand on principle? She asks when Carl can bring Darren there.
“Monday afternoon. He’ll be gone by Thursday morning.”
Today is Saturday. She has time to give the spare room a thorough clean.
Ron stands. “We’ll talk it over and get back to you.”
Carl throws her a helpless look. Ron walks him outside. Lin punches down the dough for the second rise. Smashes its face in.
Later, at dinner, Ron says, “It would put you at terrible risk. I can’t bear the thought of you in prison. This Skaggs fellow should stay and confront the government with his refusal.”
“They’d arrest him.”
He slaps the table and she startles. “Exactly! If everyone refuses, they’ll fill the jails like we tried to do in Mississippi. The strength of any resistance movement is its openness.”
“You think moving to Canada is cowardly?”
“I suppose I do. Irresponsible as well.”
She watches a bite of pork stew navigate his Adam’s apple and worries she’s given it a dusty taste with too much sage until she remembers people are starving in India. “No matter what a man’s view of war is, seems he’ll suffer for it,” she says. Did men get saddled with war and women childbirth in some cosmic balancing act?
Ron looks away, turns back slowly with a pinched look. “Some days I’m stricken with guilt at how easily I’ve escaped. I asked Mom if I should surrender the ministry’s protective cloak and serve as a chaplain. She said the boys need a chaplain who believes they’re doing God’s will. We agreed that’s not me.”
“No, it’s not.” She’s been trying to be more approachable like The Minister’s Wife as a Counselor suggests. But even her own husband would rather confide in his mother. She butters her bread with more force than needed. “Lucky you, having a choice. Why should somebody else go to prison for following his conscience? Is God concerned more about legality or justice?”
His shoulder twitches as if she punched it. He closes his eyes for a moment and sighs. “Anything you don’t want stolen? I’ll lock it up in my file cabinet while the friend of a friend is here.” She slips around to his side of the table. Kisses his mouth, the hollows in his cheeks and the soft back of his flushed neck.
The next day in church he dedicates a special reading from Matthew to her: “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?’ And the Lord will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’”
Monday morning he drops her off at class, comes back and changes the locks on the front, back and breezeway doors. “Let’s see how long it takes the Parsonage Committee to discover they can’t get in,” he says with a defiant grin when he picks her up. By the afternoon when they’re at the front window, watching for Carl’s car kicking up dust along the gravel road, you’d think it was his idea all along to take in a draft dodger.
Thurs, Sept 22/66
Darren’s on his perilous way, less than 3 days after he got here. I’m a little bereft, to be honest. Carl sent someone this morning to driv
e him across to Thunder Bay & put him on a bus to Toronto. I suggested he’d make a better impression at the border if he shaved and cut his hair, hardly recognized him after. He’s supposed to make his way to a Baldwin St where kindred souls will take him in. He looked petrified. I said: We get brutal winds from Canada, time we sent something back.
He shows up all laid-back cool, only his freaked-out eyes giving him away. He’s lean-hipped with long, scraggly brown hair, beard and droopy mustache. He took a bus all the way from Tulsa. Carl picked him up at the station in Minneapolis, drove him straight out here in an old gray Studebaker he borrowed because he’s convinced the FBI has a permanent tail on the VW van. The stranger climbs out and extends his hand to first Ron, then Lin. “Darren Skaggs,” he says. “Much obliged for this.” He pulls a battered leather gym bag from the backseat. Lin hopes it holds something classier to wear over the border than the Jefferson Airplane T-shirt, scuffed cowboy boots and ripped dungarees he’s shown up in.
“It’s warm enough today,” she says, “but you’ll need a jacket in Canada.”
“Yes ma’am. Got one in here.”
Carl waves from inside the car, calls out, “Best I don’t hang around.” Ron bustles over to Carl’s side of the car, leans in to say something.
Lin says, “You got a suit in there, too, for crossing the border?”
“No, ma’am. Didn’t reckon I needed one.”
“It’s Lin,” she says. “Nobody calls me ma’am. Do I look old to you?” She smiles as she speaks but it irks her. Carl said Darren is twenty-three, same age she is.
His face reddens, at least what she can see of his face under all that hair. “No, ma’am. Sorry. Lin. Just a habit of mine.”
She gives him a whatcha gonna do shrug, says, “Okay,” tells herself to relax. He’s as nervous as she is.
He looks around, says, “It’s nice here. Quiet. Secluded.”
“It sure is,” she says. Downright spooky.
Carl drives away with a wave and three short notes on the horn.
Ron grabs Darren’s bag. “Come on in. I’ll show you to your room.”
Lin should do that but Ron says she’s not to be alone with Darren, not to make breakfast in her robe, not to leave Kotex in the bathroom cabinet or her douche bag hanging over the shower. She follows them up the front steps, says, “I’ve put your towels on the bed and emptied the top dresser drawer for you.” He turns and grins, dips his head at her. She wishes the guest room bedspread had something more manly on it than yellow irises.
She hovers in the dining room, listening to Ron’s ministerial voice instruct Darren to keep himself hidden, not answer the phone or door when he and Lin aren’t around. She and Ron have decided to keep up their regular routine so as not to arouse suspicion. They need to trust Darren enough to leave him alone at times. Yield to faith, not fear, as Ron likes to say.
She fixes fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans and biscuits for dinner. “Everything I love,” Darren says as he sits down across from her. He has washed his hands. She can smell the antiseptic soap Ron insists she buy. He takes a healthy portion, says, “Didn’t get much to eat on the bus.”
“Whereabouts in Oklahoma are you from?” she asks.
“Stillwater born and raised, ma’am.” He shakes his head. “Sorry again. Lin.”
Ron says, “You go to Oklahoma State?”
“Yessir. Agriculture. My daddy’s a rancher. Collects spurs.” He laughs. “I’ve always found that funny.”
Lin smiles. She likes this guy. He talks like her favorite uncle in Kansas.
Ron smiles, too. “How many does he have?”
“Over four hundred pair, I reckon.”
Ron says, “So what took you to California? Carl said he met you at a protest there.”
Darren starts to pick up a drumstick with his fingers then seems to think better of it, attacks it with fork and knife like Lin and Ron. “I wanted to get in on the action and there wasn’t much happening in Stillwater. Folks there pretty much cheer for the army. You probably know it was a war training center in the forties.”
Lin swallows a bite of biscuit. “I didn’t. I’ve never been there. Is it hot?”
“Sometimes. Mostly it’s windy. Feels like your face is gonna blow off.”
“What’ll you do in Canada?”
“Be lucky to get a job washing dishes. The only thing I know about that country is it’s at the top of the TV weather map. I should be ashamed to admit that, I reckon.”
Reckon again. Mother still says that sometimes. Weird how people in the same country use such different words. It’s purse, not pocketbook, here. Jeans, not dungarees.
Ron says, “Anybody ever talk to you about becoming a conscientious objector?”
“I don’t believe in magical beings.”
Lin chokes back a laugh. Ron’s eyebrows nearly touch his hairline.
Darren laughs. “Just yanking your chain. Yeah, I checked into it. Not easy to qualify if you aren’t Quaker or Mennonite.”
“What are you?”
“Nothing really. Was baptized Presbyterian but nobody in my family goes.”
Ron sits back in his chair. “Well then, it would be hard to demonstrate you have religious convictions against war.”
“Yessir. Besides it makes you part of the system. Every time someone’s deferred, another’s drafted in his place.”
“Same when someone skips to Canada. Why not stay and fight it?”
Darren’s eyes widen. “And go to prison? Get beaten, raped? Come out a convicted felon?”
His words hang over the table like flares. Lin takes a slow sip of water. She didn’t know men could be raped.
Darren looks embarrassed. “I say something wrong?”
Ron shakes his head. “No, no. How does your family feel about your plans?”
“My old man says I’m too selfish to give up two years of my life for the country that’s protected me. Says there are too many spoiled and selfish kids with not enough to do if they’ve got time to protest one thing or another. I’d give my two years if they’d promise not to send me to be killed. Anyway, my folks have disowned me because of the disgrace.” He reaches into his pocket for his billfold, takes out a photo of a blonde in a shirt so shrunken you can see her belly button. “This is Betsy. I asked her to come with me but she didn’t dig the exile part.”
“Leaving all you know takes courage,” Lin says. To risk a life as uncertain as prayer, she doesn’t say, not wanting to invite an argument from Ron about the efficacy of prayer. She doesn’t know why she said anything at all except she feels sorry for this guy whose family has judged him so harshly.
Nobody offers much after that until Lin says, “Dessert? I made apple pie.”
“Sounds good,” Darren says, “but I’m bushed. Think I’ll turn in if that’s okay with you.”
“Sure,” Lin says. “You can have pie tomorrow.”
“I’d like that,” he says and pushes his chair under the table. He comes out of the guestroom a few minutes later with a small leather bag, ducks into the bathroom. The sound of running water unsettles Lin, feels too intimate. Only Mother and Daddy have stayed overnight.
She and Ron eat their pie in the kitchen to give themselves and Darren some privacy.
Washing the dishes later, Ron quietly asks, “Do you find him attractive?”
She pretends to be horrified. “With all that hair?”
He laughs.
“In that prison farm,” she asks, “were you…?”
He stops washing and looks at her as if he knows what she wants to ask. “What?”
“Did anybody, you know?”
“Rape me?”
“Yeah.”
He dries his hands on her dishtowel and takes her in his arms. “No, sweetheart.”
His shirt smells li
ke chicken. “Thank God,” she says. “That would be terrible.”
“Yes, it would.” He smooths her hair.
“This is a good thing we’re doing,” she says into his chest, “letting him stay, isn’t it?”
He sighs. “I hate the secrecy of it but, yes, it’s a good thing.”
The sun drops lower in the sky each day and, before long, is gone by dinner. Like a migratory bird sundered from his flock, another anxious young man arrives each week, sometimes in a loud T-shirt, sometimes a suit, his face somber, cheerful, dazed, eager or mistrustful. Lin records each arrival in the journal she keeps locked in her desk. You don’t know what this means to me, they say. Some bring grocery money, for which she and Ron give vociferous thanks. Ron dubs them “Carl’s Fugitives,” as if they have their own TV show.
The clandestine nature of harboring war resisters excites her. A seductive wish to get caught washes over her at times. She’ll be reaching for mustard at the store or a high note at choir rehearsal and thoughts of the secret she and Ron share will radiate from her in feverish waves. When Bolivia executes Ché Guevara she’s unaccountably sad and experiences a scary rush of desire for Ron, an unremitting burning down there. She couldn’t admit to finding a Marxist sexy. Childhood admonitions still hammer at her psyche and the war news is all about “good guys” killing Reds. Carl says it’s mostly those who can’t afford college being drafted, nearly three hundred thousand there now. Fifty-five hundred dead so far and that’s just US forces. Sometimes she catches herself thinking those are the only deaths that matter. The Vietnamese look so strange in their pointy hats, like ducks when they squat.
17
Thurs, Oct 27/66