“You going back home, Dad?”
“Yep. I was up in Boston. More problems up there.”
I read Richard and lawyers in his expression, but he didn’t offer me any information.
“I think I’ll just go back to Yardley with you.”
“Okay, you going to stay awhile or just visit?”
I needed somewhere to start my life over, preferably my old bed rather than some barracks bunk. “Don’t know. I need to get myself together, but I think I just got drafted.”
I told him about the letter from Selective Service.
“Sounds like some kind of government snafu. Probably happens all the time. Go down to Philly tomorrow and tell them your side of the story.”
“Sure, they’re reasonable enough. They just specialize in death and destruction.”
“You don’t have much of a choice, do you?”
“I don’t know. I just know I’m not going into the army.”
We rode without speaking for awhile as the implications of my last statement made the tires hum louder, the heater too warm, and the traffic uncomfortably congested.
Dad changed the subject. “Richard’s in trouble again.”
“What now?”
“The DA was gung-ho on a retrial—”
“Hope they nail him this time.”
My father grunted disapproval, gave me a sharp look.
“I just think he attacked Betsy, Dad.”
“Well, apparently Richard’s lawyers must not feel too comfortable about another trial. A deal’s been worked out.”
“What?”
“The judge made an offer to Richard—join the army and all motions for a retrial will be dropped.”
“Man, that’s bizarre. Did he take it?”
“Yes.”
We cruised, back in silent mode, until we stopped for gas and some food.
When we resumed talking, Dad lectured me about my life choices, and I challenged his opinions. We philosophized, not wavering in our viewpoints. War, Richard, my art career, college, the draft, protesters, the Beatles, my long hair. I would turn up the radio, he’d turn it down. Nobody mentioned drugs, and I guessed he hadn’t figured out that I partook in their consumption. At times he was grumbling and angry, sometimes understanding and sympathetic. He looked frightened when he tried to assure me that not every draftee goes to Vietnam, angry when I said I’d rather go to jail. We broke the tension every once in a while with the same joke about seeing my sister Stephanie or Mom with their thumb out, hitching a ride.
Hours later, we pulled into our driveway. Dad turned off the engine and set the parking brake. “I’m sorry about you and Teresa. She’s a nice girl. Maybe give yourself some time, and if you feel it’s right, go back and see her. Mom refused to see me after our first date.”
“Yeah? I never heard about that.”
“Ha, well, after all these years, it’s still a sore spot.” He paused, a faraway look finally settling on the home he and my mother had built together. “We’d been set up on a blind date and gone out to dinner. The evening was a bit awkward, but the food was good, and we managed our way through it. Afterwards, we sat on a hanging swing seat on the porch of her sorority house to get to know each other better. I remember it being a warm night, with the moon just rising. Romantic, right? Well, your old man was exhausted from studying for exams, and, damn, I fell asleep while she was talking to me. I let out a tremendous snore, so loud I woke myself up. Your mother was across that porch and into the front lobby before I even realized I had been snoozing. I didn’t completely wake up until I heard her snap at one of her friends, saying, ‘Don’t ever set me up with a drip like that again.’ ”
I laughed, glad for my parents and delighted to escape into the story’s innocence.
Chapter 62
Outside the induction center, I joined a group of about forty anti-war activists waving signs and chanting, “Hell no, we won’t go.” A volley of water balloons were launched at the building, splattering against the glass windows. When fellow protesters learned I was presenting myself for induction, they reacted sympathetically. Many gave me advice on how to beat the physical exam—overdose on hot dogs and orange crush, don’t eat for a week and live on amphetamines, say you’re queer. One girl said she’d give me her underpants to wear. Others told me I was dead meat if I walked into that building, and a silver-haired woman said she had friends in Canada I could stay with.
I hadn’t made up my mind if I was going to refuse induction or be one uncooperative soldier, but my head was reeling with all my worries, and I needed to resolve this particular one now. I decided to act and play it by ear. This problem had a solution. Jail, Vietnam, skip out across the border—were all finite answers—which I couldn’t find in the burden of a baby with a woman I didn’t love, the agonizing heartache of not being with Teresa, or Monster Alley’s surreal nightmares.
I felt a tug at my arm. The girl who’d offered me her underwear stuffed a pair of pink panties into my hand.
“Take these. If they don’t fit, put them on your head and act crazy.”
I entered the building and told a clerk my reason for being there, stating my objection that I had never received any prior notifications for a physical. He had my first New York address on file. I didn’t offer that I had moved three blocks from that apartment to Teresa’s place, neglecting to tell my local board, nor that I no longer lived in New York. Mad at the fact I was told to report in Philadelphia, he pounded his typewriter in reprisal. The soldier muttered to himself as he searched fruitlessly to find a copy of my draft notice. Finally locating my name on a delinquent list, he pushed it aside, seemingly ignoring it. I couldn’t follow his bureaucratic entanglement as he slammed the typewriter return bar while cursing Whitehall in New York, but I was still standing and hadn’t been told to sit with the crowd of inductees looking resigned to their fate.
The clerk glanced up at my stitched neck, asked if Deets was my real name, stamped a bunch of papers, typed up another form, handed it to me, and said I should report for a physical back in New York in three days. When I stepped outside, I raised my hands in the air and yelled, “Three day reprieve.” The small crowd burst out in a cheer. I handed back the pink underwear to the generous girl while the silver-haired woman told me that asthma, possibly flat feet, and certain stomach problems would get me a medical exemption.
Asthma. I had spent many nights between the ages of six and fourteen with my head draped under a towel tent as I bent over a steaming pot of water with eucalyptus oil in it, gasping for air and swallowing gobs of Vicks Vaporub. I had struggled to breath back then, but maybe that battle would clear away the army’s threat to my life now.
I walked across town making plans—see my family doctor about my medical records, contact Sam to attempt to better our relationship, tuck Monster Alley away in some faraway part of my mind, start working on my art again.
I stopped to get a pretzel and was delighted to see the prostitute Mandy, standing nearby in a yellow miniskirt and knee-high boots, her winter fur jacket unbuttoned, revealing a cleavage that presented a hazard to every male trying to negotiate a path around her. I bought a salted pretzel, tucked a folded five dollar bill into one of the holes, and offered it to her as I said, “Hello, want a snack?”
She spotted the five and snapped at me, “Not here. You some kind of fool? I don’t accept no treats like that one out here on the street.”
“No, just take it. I owe it to you.”
She eyed me cautiously. “Do I know you?”
“From two years ago. You dropped it, I found it.”
She glanced around. Satisfied no one was setting her up, she took the pretzel. “Well, thanks. You want to take a walk?”
“No, you don’t understand. I owe this to you.” I smiled. “We had a good time one afternoon.”
“Oh, yes, honey, the best. How are y
ou doing?”
She had no idea who I was.
“Fine, just fine. Maybe I’ll come visit you again someday.”
She squeezed some mustard onto the pretzel, took a bite, and washed it down with a swig of Pepsi. “You do that. Two years, you say? Why’d you wait so long to come see me?” She dabbed at her salty, mustard lips and giggled. “Oh my lord, I eat too many of these.”
I moved on, hoping I had absolved myself of a debt to one of the women I had wronged.
Doc Hayes enthusiastically gave me duplicates of my medical records. He proudly demonstrated how his brand new Xerox machine worked, and I watched him closely, never having used one before. He wrote a letter outlining my history of asthma attacks, noting their severity and frequency, and stating he was of the opinion my breathing problems would impede me in the military.
“Deets, you’re welcome at Quaker Meeting anytime. You’ll find a lot of people there who aren’t sympathetic with this mess we’re getting ourselves into in Asia. Say hi to your folks.”
At Whitehall Induction Center, I sat on a metal chair until my name was called. As I walked down a hall to see a doctor, I passed a long-haired guy holding a container in one hand while he pissed on the floor. Two soldiers yelled at him to stop and grabbed at him. His arm was jostled, his aim went wrong, and he pissed on the pant leg of one of them. They hustled him away—his cock hanging out, them screaming in his face that he was an idiot.
He was yelling back, “I gotta piss. I was told to piss. You gotta obey orders.”
The doctor shuffled through my papers and told me I wouldn’t have to bother with the rest of the physical. He stamped and signed a paper with the symbol of freedom on it, 4-F.
Funny how I could breath easier now that I had been found to have trouble breathing.
Outside I saw the hallway pisser.
“You get out, man?” His concern was palpable.
“Yeah, asthma. What happened to you?”
“I’m a schizophrenic urinator. No way they want me in Vietnam.”
“Cool.”
“Hey, man, let’s go find some Mary Jane and celebrate.”
His name was Clyde. We hitched up to the Village and stayed at Chang’s place for a few days, rolling jays, getting stoned, and jamming on guitar. He knew his music, so when he and Chang got involved in some funky progression, I sat back and listened, grateful that I was free from the threat of military service, feeling happy a piece of my life had worked out in my favor.
I was standing in a phone booth telling my mother that I had flunked the physical, apologizing for not calling sooner, when I saw Teresa’s van drive by. Catching a glimpse of her—winter cap on, mouth grim, concentrating on her driving—it felt unnatural to be disconnected from her plans and dreams. Where was she going? What was she thinking?
Guiltily, I turned towards Sam’s neighborhood, my emotions fossilizing into dread. My feet dragged. I stopped four times to have a cigarette and stare at my surroundings. Petrified. Fatherhood. Odd, beautiful Sam.
Rebecca answered the door.
“She’s gone, Deets. Said she had a ride to California.”
“Oh, man. I don’t know what to do.” I shoved my hands in my pockets, looked at the floor. “Hey, I’m sorry about all this. For whatever, y’know.”
“Yeah. C’mon in. Do you want to smoke a joint and make peace?”
We talked and listened to music. Rebecca told me as much as she knew about Sam’s background as we tried to figure ways to find her. Sam had been haunted by her upbringing and kept a lot to herself, but I found out she was from Los Angeles.
“You have more reason to find her, Deets. If you do, let me know, okay?”
“Samantha Wilson, somewhere in the world, maybe California.” I sat back staring at the ceiling, not having any idea what to do next. “There must be about a million Wilsons in California.”
I returned to Yardley, set up a sofa that doubled as a bed in the studio, took walks down to the river, argued with my parents about the war, and listened to Stephanie giggle and shriek on the phone as she talked about boys with her girlfriends. Mostly, I thought and drew, falling into a hermit’s lifestyle, drawing fifteen, sixteen hours a day, then collapsing, sleeping until noon, working until four in the morning.
After a week, I had completed a two foot by three foot drawing of a half-human, bull-like creature entwined passionately with a beautiful leopard woman, flowers flowing from between her legs and stars from her eyes—Teresa and myself, in love, in our grotto on the hill.
But I suffered, growing despondent with thoughts about my hurtful behavior towards women. Secretly, delving into the torture that consumed me, I drew a purely pornographic rendering of Sam, Teresa, and I together. Frightened that someone in the family would see it, I hid the drawing, sandwiching it between two pieces of cardboard, taping them together, and only bringing it out when I longed to relive the erotic abandonment of the three of us. Frequently, though, I found myself terrified at the raw portrayal of my baby’s possible moment of conception, would stick the illustration back into its hiding place, light a joint, and wander the fields and woods near the river carrying my sketch pad, seeking relief from the ravages of a guilty soul.
I took solace in my ventures, reflecting on the mysterious and fantastic all around me, entranced by the stories told by the forest floor—a tiny yellow flower surrounded by a clump of snow, bedraggled and beaten but stubbornly hanging on into late December; delicate mouse-size footprints of mud tracking across an orange leaf; a white feather spinning down a little creek. I let myself become preoccupied by these small wonders and began to draw miniature landscapes of twigs and dead grass blades, wintergreen shoots, and curious paths tracing over and around pebbles and ice crystals.
Wrapped tightly in my scuffed corduroy winter coat, I hunched over my sketch pad, my eyes taking in an old, gnarled tree root as I drew its ridges and scars. A lumpy, dark knot resembled a sleeping bear and soon the drawing shaped itself into a beast made of bark. I heard a faint splash and looked up to see a black bear crossing a stream not fifty feet from me. It plodded away from where I sat, turning its head once to look sleepily at me.
I called the drawing Winter Rest.
Chapter 63
Pennsylvania, 1967
In early February, I gathered together eight new drawings and went out into the world once more. I wanted to see Teresa’s show at the HooDoo and share my newest work with Daisy.
The main gallery glowed with the pastel palette of Teresa’s watercolors. I stood, astonished and rooted in place, in front of one large painting I had immediately been drawn to even as tears blurred my view of it. I let the wetness roll down my cheeks but was still able to make out the details of a shower of yellow flowers delicately settling onto a half-bull man, who was embracing a woman covered in leopard spots. Her lips were parted as if whispering in his ear. Light-sparkles danced across the lovers' bodies before blending into a sea of stars they lay on.
Teresa and I had shared our visions many times over when talking about making love in our private Poconos hideaway. We had been indelibly marked by the oneness of not only our emotions but also our visual and tactile melting together.
In our time apart, we had both recreated that same sacred moment.
Daisy gave me a hug and expressed enthusiasm about the direction my art had taken.
“Let’s go for lunch. Just this morning I received an interesting phone call concerning you.”
“Me? Was it the FBI or LBJ?”
“Neither.” She rubbed her thumb and forefinger together. “It was big money.”
Wiping our hands and mouths constantly as we indulged in lamb souvlaki, battling the sauce oozing from the flat bread, we talked about the phone call she had received.
“I imagine you remember that man you, well, practically accosted at your opening last year.”
He’s back. Rusty-throated, reptile-tongued Doctor Steel is making his move again.
“What about him?”
“He came into the gallery to see Teresa’s work the other day.”
“Steel.” The strength in my shoulder felt good, my mind refreshed, but I didn’t believe I’d ever be ready for his moves.
“Yes, he called this morning. Odd, he mentioned you coming into the city today. I thought maybe he had talked to you also.”
“Nope.”
It was going to be a bold move, whatever it was.
Daisy continued, “He said his job involves traveling to foreign lands and promoting trade between international companies. In the process, he introduces prospective partners to cultural aspects of the different countries involved. One of the more popular ways to do this is to give gifts related to each country.”
“Like a bottle of vodka from Russia? A cowboy hat from the USA?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm.” What was Doctor Steel up to?
Daisy took a bite of her sandwich. “My, that is good.”
“Make a good gift from Greece.”
“He has a client, Esso Petroleum, that would like to put together a book, along with postcards and a calendar, highlighting the culture of Venezuela. That’s a country in South America.”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“There’s a celebration there where people dress up in bizarre masks and dance through the streets. He says your style of drawing would be perfect to interpret the masks. Your show last year reminded him of the devil dancers in the festival.”
“So? What’s he want?”
“The offer he made was for you to do a dozen drawings. Maybe two or three of them will make the final publication. Esso would fly you to Venezuela and provide a guide. You’d be down there in late May, early June for about a month.”
May, June, that’s when the baby will be born.
“Why not use a local artist?”
Mayhem (The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker Book 1) Page 32