Christmas Presents and Past. Janice Johnson Kay
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squeezed around the door and spilled into the hall. When he walked in, there was this kind of silence. He had on his fatigue jacket, as he almost always did these days. She couldn’t quite figure out why he wanted to label himself a vet, but she could tell that’s what he was doing.
“Hey, man, you coming with us tomorrow?” Ronnie Epstein asked. “Having veterans against the war front and center, that’s far out. It speaks to people, you know?”
Will hadn’t let her sew the peace symbol to his jacket. The only patches were the ones that identified his unit.
He ignored Ronnie and looked at her. “Tomorrow?”
Dinah told him about the demonstration. “You’ve been saying you might come to one.”
His lip curled. “No, you’ve been saying I might.” Just like that, he walked out, as had become his habit when he didn’t want to talk about something, leaving an uncomfortable silence behind him.
This time, Dinah got mad. Seeing the look on her face, people got out of her way and she stormed after him. She caught up with him in the parking lot, where he was opening the door to the beat-up pickup truck he’d bought after returning, the one with a driver’s-side window that wouldn’t roll up.
“What was that about? Were you trying to embarrass me in front of my friends?”
“You shouldn’t put me on the spot in front of other people.”
“You’re against the war!”
“Yeah? So?”
“Then why won’t you speak out?” she demanded.
“What am I going to say?” He paraphrased a popular chant. “‘Hell, no, I won’t go?’ It’s too goddamn late. I went.”
“If you’re ashamed that you went, how you come you wear that everywhere?” She gestured at the fatigue jacket.
“Because I’m not ashamed. I’m damn well not going to sneak back into society like I should be.” His eyes burned into hers.
Her anger faded, leaving bewilderment. “So wear it,” she implored. “Use your service.”
“To undercut the guys who are still over there? Maybe I should have just slipped over to the Vietcong side and told them where to set up an ambush!”
Her mouth fell open. “We’re trying to bring the American soldiers home so they won’t be in danger!”
“Do you know every soldier there hates hippie demonstrators?” His voice raked her. “We’re over there dying, and the NVA is watching TV, seeing half a million Americans marching on the Capitol and knowing they can just keep killing us, because they’re gonna win. Yeah, and then you know what?” He thrust his face out so it was inches from hers. “Then we get home, and those same hippie demonstrators who are trying to save our lives spit on us and call us baby killers!”
Her heart almost stopped as she saw the fury and bitterness in his blue eyes.
“I didn’t know….” she whispered. “Has anybody done that to you?”
His expression closed. Just wham. Fort Knox locking up for the night. “No. I was speaking metaphorically.”
“Do you feel like people look down on you?” Dinah asked.
His laugh had a harsh edge. “Go talk to your friends. Their heroes are the guys who run for Canada. It’s sure as hell not guys like me who were too damn stupid to get a deferment.”
Struggling with shock, she protested automatically, “You’re not stupid….”
“That’s not what you said when you found out I hadn’t applied to college.”
“I was scared.”
He shrugged, suddenly indifferent. “Fact is, I was stupid. I’m just a grunt. But I have some dignity. You’re not putting me on display, front and center,” he mocked, “so I can tell the world I done wrong and now I’m repenting. Just shove it, okay?”
He got in his truck, slammed the door and backed out without looking at her again. Her last glimpse of his face showed it tight, the color of anger hot across his cheekbones. After that, she saw only his arm, where he’d rested it on the door, the dull green of his fatigues a placard she’d been too dense to read.
How was it she hadn’t realized how he felt?
He was ashamed of her, was all she could think, standing there engulfed in the shock. Of course she’d been antiwar before Will was drafted, but it was because of him that she’d plunged with such fire into the movement, helping to organize protests on campus. She’d gotten tear-gassed in Berkeley, even arrested once although the charges were dropped, not just because she believed passionately that the war was wrong but also because she was driven to save Will, who had been compelled to go.
And now he was angry, claiming she’d endangered him and was endangering the soldiers still in Vietnam, as if she hadn’t given any thought to her beliefs or the repercussions of her actions?
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