by Tricia Dower
The women chat easily as they lay claim to the stuffed white couch and love seats, the borrowed folding chairs. Some find room on the thick rose carpet. A few confess they haven’t told their husbands about the survey. Curly-haired Patty Thompson from Grace’s church says that, as far as tonight goes, she’s at a Methodist Women’s meeting, technically not a lie. She’s invented a recipe exchange and come with several index cards she’ll claim are from others if she needs to. Lin covets the Ham Logs with Raisin Sauce.
Most of the women have at least ten years on her. She could’ve worn something more grown-up than knee socks and a pleated skirt. She’s prepared questions in case the conversation lags. Would withholding conjugal privileges get men to oppose war as in Lysistrata? How about, as Virginia Woolf suggested, refusing to bear children, make weapons or nurse wounds? But the conversation doesn’t lag. When she reports most respondents agreed war is sometimes necessary, thin-lipped Phyllis McRoss volunteers that she, for one, did not. The Revolutionary War might have been necessary but even then she’s not so sure. She likes the Queen. Phyllis can be contrary at Crafty Gals, too.
Joyce Strunk from Northfield pounces on that: “You’d have let slavery go on? Hitler?”
Phyllis’s response is a massive, disdainful shrug.
Lin’s mind drifts back to an ethics class exchange about the swords-into-ploughshares passage in Isaiah. One guy said if you choose nonviolence and lay down your sword, what’s your obligation to the weak, the powerless? Might not the moral choice be to pick up your sword and defend them? If she weren’t moderating she’d raise that question and risk Phyllis’s contempt.
Cross-eyed Mindy DeForest, who’s in the choir with Lin, says she’s not surprised survey respondents were more in favor of the two world wars than of Korea and Vietnam. “They don’t look like us.”
Nancy Powell, whose teeth are too big for her narrow head, asks who “they” are.
Mindy says, “The gooks.”
Lin gasps and immediately regrets her lapse in moderator objectivity, regrets, as well, her own uncharitable thoughts about the Vietnamese. Nancy juts out her chin and says that isn’t very Christian of Mindy, who says she’s just voicing what others would if they were honest.
That seems to awaken a grudge in Renate whose grandfather was treated like a pariah during the First World War and her uncle locked up in a North Dakota camp during the Second simply because they were German, even though, and she shakes her head in disbelief, her ancestors were among the first Methodists in Minnesota.
Barbara Renslow claims those were real wars. We shouldn’t have gone into Korea “a-tall” if we weren’t prepared to win it. She believes the same about Vietnam.
Several women nod and say, “That is true.” People around here say that a lot.
Phyllis wonders if winning means getting our men back in coffins or with missing parts, scrambled minds, nightmares and suicidal thoughts. Her husband volunteers twice a month at the VA Hospital. They should ask him who’s winning.
At that, the room goes so quiet Lin can hear icicles break off from Grace’s roof.
It’s hard to let the silence stand. She tells them the biggest surprise from the survey, for her at least, is how significant having a son was in attitudes toward Vietnam. Fern timidly raises a hand and waits until Lin acknowledges her. “I did not give birth to my boy,” she says, “to send him off to die.” A tear skates down her cheek and off her chin. Carolyn Hamlin reaches over from her spot on the carpet, pats Fern’s knee and says, “Nobody does but it’s our duty to hand over our sons for our country. Everybody’s got to sacrifice.” Carolyn has two daughters and no sons. Lin is about to ask why anyone should sacrifice when the doorbell rings.
Grace excuses herself.
Lin recognizes Peter Hemstad’s voice. He makes no effort to be discreet, bellows, “I’m here to rescue my wife from this den of sedition.”
His daughter, Melinda Wright, slumped on the couch beside her mother, says, “Uff dah!” Peter’s wife, Alice, says, “Behave yourself.” A few women snicker until a sour-faced Peter, cap in hand, marches into the living room in the faded army uniform he’s worn to church since his belligerent torrent: olive drab breeches, jacket, leggings, ankle-high boots. His collar looks tight.
Lin takes a brave breath. “Feel free to join our discussion, Peter.” Her voice wavers under his glare. “We’re reviewing the results of a survey.”
“Fomenting dissension, you mean,” he says. “Inciting treason and blasphemy like your husband. Demeaning the holy war against Communism.”
Melinda straightens herself on the couch and says, “Dad, that’s not fair.”
“Is it fair you get to sit in this warm house free to speak your mind when millions slaughtered by the Jerries don’t?” His voice is full of fury, his posture rigid. “Is it fair your uncle suffered a slow, agonizing death from mustard gas, skin covered with yellow blisters, eyes stuck together, lungs fighting for breath? He never got the chance to father a mouthy daughter.”
Melinda flops back on the couch, turns her head away.
Grace says, “Will you sit, Peter?”
“Thank you, dear lady, but no. Get your coat, Alice.”
Seventyish Alice, her hair a white puff, fixes Peter with a steely gaze. She must’ve been a looker. She retains that kind of self-confidence. “Melinda will take me home if you can’t wait till we’re done here.”
He says, “I’m not going without you.”
“You’d better sit then.”
He scans the room with eyes like a trapped animal’s. Lin feels almost sorry for him as he tries to decide what to do. Patty offers him her folding chair, lowers herself to the floor. He studies the chair for a moment, then sits with rigid back, cap in mottled hands.
Grace breaks the awkward silence. “What was your brother’s name, Peter?”
“Angus.” He stares into the fire.
Lin says, “I was about to report that respondents in high school and college were less supportive of war than the other women I surveyed.”
Peter’s laugh is short and scoffing. “What do women know about war? Angus and I were just kids when we signed up in 1918. Two of a million recruits, all male.”
A calm comes over the room, a drop in temperature.
Debbie Austin, who often shows up for choir rehearsal with hay dust in her hair, clears her throat. “If we’re not done talking about the survey, I’d like to go on record as objecting to the income question. There was no place to account for all I do on the farm. It’s in Dan’s name but it takes up most of my time.”
Carolyn says, “I had the same problem.” She’s a legal secretary in her husband’s practice.
Lin groans inside. She was avoiding that survey result. Only six respondents seem financially independent of men, their answers not statistically divergent enough to draw meaningful conclusions. In exchange for all wives do for husbands, apparently they’re supposed to be content with vicarious recognition. She’s about to stammer a response to Debbie and Carolyn when Peter says, “We asked to be together but they put us in separate divisions. Sent us to the Argonne, under Black Jack Pershing. We were to cut the German railway supply route to France and Belgium. We got it done but not before a division’s worth of men died, a hundred thousand wounded. If not for Armistice, my number would have come up too.”
The room sags. “That must’ve been awful,” Phyllis says.
He doesn’t acknowledge her, stares into the fire. “Forty-seven days it went on. We were sogging wet and ready to drop. Greenhorns. The Frogs, the Brits and the Aussies had to teach us how to fight a trench war.” His voice softens. “They swapped a few jokes with us, too. Say what you like, it brought us together, taught us respect for what we could do as one.” The look he gives Melinda slices through Lin, lord knows what it does to his daughter. “In case you forgot, the French gave us the Statue of
Liberty. We’re right to help them in Vietnam.”
Tears perch in Melinda’s eyes. “Why haven’t I heard you speak of this before?”
“Maybe you didn’t ask.”
“Oh I did, Dad, believe me I did.”
He frowns as though she must be mistaken, addresses the room. “Fellows who didn’t know me from Adam saved me from sure death. Somebody taking a bullet for you…” His voice cracks. Several women hug themselves. “You shouldn’t deny a man the chance for that kind of love.” He clears his throat and stands. “Thank you, missus. I’ll leave now.”
Alice stands. “I’ll come with, Peter.” Grace gets Alice’s coat.
Patty says, “I wish I could do my survey over.”
How strange we’d gathered to talk about war, a venture from which, as women, we’re pretty much excluded. Yet we (they!) had so much to say until Peter arrived. It brought me back to Douglass days when most of us spoke up w/confidence. I didn’t attribute that to the college being all female. I assumed it was the same anywhere. But the girls at St. O soft-pedal their views while the guys go on & on like Socrates. I saw it last nite, how the focus shifted to Peter & his personal war. Not that what he said wasn’t relevant or interesting. It’s that we acted different when he was there & let him take over. All of it, Peter’s tale, our capitulation & the terrible sadness of war, made me want to sit down & weep. That’s how it went, I told R.
Fern nabs her before Bible class, says she wanted to speak to Lin at Grace’s on Thursday but it didn’t seem appropriate after Peter’s paean to war. She wants to know how to keep Jeff from the draft. He has to register in a couple of weeks when he turns eighteen. Lin’s first counseling request! She’s bouncing up and down inside, her heart riding a wave at the Jersey shore. She doesn’t want to blow this, tells Fern she’ll see what she can find out.
She phones Carl and gets Helen, who tells her about a minister she met at an inner city services meeting new at a church that rents space to draft counselors. (“Another Methodist church, would you believe?”) When Lin tells Ron his name, he says, “I’ll be darned.” He insists on visiting the church with her, wants to see what’s become of the Reverend Arthur Gilchrist.
They drive into Minneapolis on Tuesday afternoon. Finding a place to park is easy despite all the spots lost to plowed snow. Signs of abandonment overwhelm the traces of life. A nearby convenience store is boarded up, a yawning hole marks a demolished building and the corpse of a tiny diner is all that remains after a fire. Only a liquor store is open. The neighborhood seems resigned to its decay.
Redemption Methodist sits beside a torn billboard ad for Old Thompson Whiskey. The three-storey red brick church clearly had aspirations once. Missing mortar gives it a lacy effect. Someone has piled snow at its feet like an offering. Hand-written DRAFT COUNSELING signs outside and inside the entrance point the way to creaky, dark wooden stairs. A long narrow room at the top hosts two wooden tables, four metal folding chairs and an upright mahogany piano. Weak sunlight through a lonely window lands on the coppery hair of a young guy at one of the tables. He’s using the phone, his voice low. A blond guy at the other table lifts a hand and says, “Afternoon.” The room is cold and damp, the floorboards spongy. Farther in, she has to cinch her collar against a gust from the window frame. The blond guy grins, sticks out a hand in a gray wool fingerless glove. “I’m Steve. That’s Herb.” Herb doesn’t look up.
She and Ron remove their gloves and reach for Steve’s hand at the same time. Ron wins, says, “We’re looking for the pastor of this church. Is he around?”
“We’re also looking for advice,” she says, excited, impatient. “A friend, a widow, wants to keep her son out of the Army. We’ve driven up from Prairie Fire.”
One table holds pamphlets and Hell no, we won’t go buttons for sale at a dollar each. Steve hands her a pamphlet. “Tell your friend to have her son call us.” He turns to Ron, says, “Artie’s usually here around three,” and looks at his watch. “You could get lucky.”
She says, “He might not want to stay out.”
Ron says, “Thanks. Where should we look for him?”
Steve says, “In his office, downstairs, back of the church.” To her he says, “Say what?”
“Our friend. She’s not sure her son wants out of the Army. They disagree on that point.”
“Then she needs family counseling, not us.”
Ron yanks off his parka hood, rakes a hand through his hair. “We’ll head off to Gilchrist’s office. How long are you here, in case we have more questions?”
Steve says till five. “I have more questions now,” Lin tells Ron. “Go on. I’ll find you when I’m done.”
He frowns. “You sure?”
She smiles and strokes his jacketed arm. “I’ll be fine. Really.”
Reluctantly he tromps down the stairs. Herb gets off the phone and stands beside Steve, pinch-mouthed. His face looks almost burned from freckles. She introduces herself. To Steve she says, “If my friend’s son did want to stay out of the Army, what would you tell him to do?”
Herb answers, “We don’t tell anyone what to do.” His tone is accusatory. “We give options. A guy’s got to make his own decision. He’s the one who has to live with it.”
Fern would say she has to live with it too. So would the families of the draft resisters Lin and Ron have seen on their way to Canada. “Okay, then, what are his options?”
“They’re in the pamphlet. Tell your friend it’s against the law for Americans to counsel draft evasion.” He picks up a pamphlet, opens it and reads: “We present the potential inductee with his choices in neutral and factual terms, advise him of the probable consequences of each choice and help him find a course of action which will best serve his individual needs.” His voice is icily precise. She has an urge to pinch his nose.
She points to the buttons. “Hell no, we won’t go doesn’t sound neutral to me.”
The phone rings again. Herb lunges for it, looking relieved to be done with her.
She chats with Steve, discovers he and Herb quit college to set up this service, knowing they’d lose their student deferments. They’re waiting to be called up so they can refuse induction and go to jail. Steve looks neither happy nor sad about this. She doesn’t know whether to admire or pity them. They rely on donations and button sales to keep the service going. “We get twenty walk-ins a week and twice as many phone calls,” Steve says. “One guy this morning, he’s married, has a kid, should be safe, you know? But his dad’s a cop and two weeks after daddy-o detains a member of the draft board for drunk driving, the son’s drafted.”
The randomness of luck can gobsmack her at times. She digs in her purse and pulls out a five-dollar bill. “This is all I can manage today.”
“Thanks. Feel free to take five buttons.” She takes two and a dozen pamphlets.
Ron’s voice rises from the bottom of the stairs. “Lin? Artie has to leave soon.”
Steve says, “We’ve got a mailing list,” points to a yellow pad and hands her a pen.
“Be right there,” she shouts down. She hurriedly writes her name and address, descends the stairs clumsily in her snow boots.
Ron is with a short, solid man wearing dungarees and a thick hooded sweater. With his crew cut and Buddy Holly glasses, he’s like a sweet shadow of her teenaged, lovesick past before Eldon Jukes. Grinning, he grabs her hands and rises up on the toes of his black sneakers. “Brunson’s a lucky s.o.b.” He gives a jerky nod toward the stairs. “Get what you need up there?” He stares into her eyes as though memorizing her.
“I think so.” Her face pounds with blood. The very air around this man is charged.
“They set up shop a month ago, a few weeks after I got here,” he says. “Can’t vouch for what they do but the church needs their rent. Some people questioned the bishop’s decision to appoint a minister at all. He figured I couldn’t d
o much more damage here than the soulless malls and the lily-livers deserting for the suburbs.” He’s still gripping her hands, making them sweat. Not even Ron has looked at her this intensely. He leans in closer, spools out words so fast her brain has to sprint to keep up. “Too many blacks moving in, you know. Can’t have that in a religion inspired by a dark-skinned bastard who gave his life fighting for the poor and the dispossessed.”
She wonders if zeal induces a need to shock, frees her hands from his. The warm pressure lingers. “Why would Bishop Nall assume you’d do any damage?”
“I made myself unpopular at my last church. Folks there didn’t like me saying Christianity has lost its passion. When I slammed the war in Vietnam, too many people left for Nall to ignore. Even the organist defected. I’m a human wrecking ball.” His smile is more proud than apologetic. She and Ron exchange looks. Open Door has lost a dozen or so members since Ron’s first sermon against the war. Harold Schroeder has recruited an equal number of Carleton students but they don’t replace the lost tithes. Artie pushes his glasses up on his nose, smudging the lenses, squints down at his watch. “Gotta go. Did we exchange numbers, Brunson? My memory’s the pits.”
“We did.”
“Terrific. Let’s keep in touch. Either of you play guitar?”
They shake their heads no.
“Worth taking up when the organist leaves.”
Back at the parsonage, Lin phones Fern, tells her there are eighteen separate draft classifications, fourteen of them deferments. “Jeff can wait to register. If he’s found out, he can plead forgetfulness and register then.”
Fern says, “That’s just putting it off.”
“He can become a conscientious objector.”