I recognized the girls from school but had never seen the guy, who wore a scrawny goatee and “McGovern for President” and “ERA Now!” pins all over his jean jacket.
“Sorry I’m late,” I said, “but I was on the phone with an underground Weatherman, and you know how long those underground Weathermen can talk.”
Darva laughed, but the others looked at me with blank faces.
“Are you making fun of what we’re trying to accomplish here?” asked Ellen, whose slightly pink nose and large front teeth made me think her favorite food might be carrots.
“Relax, Ellen—he showed up, didn’t he?” Darva rolled her eyes and smiled at me. “We’re just a little frustrated; we were hoping for a much bigger turnout.”
“I warned her,” said Wes, he of the weak-willed goatee. “There’s no one more resistant to change than the average high-schooler—even if he might be called upon to fight a war.”
“I don’t think we have to worry about being drafted anymore,” I said.
“Well, I did. I graduated from high school two years ago, and I had a really low draft number.”
“Did you go?” I asked.
“Wes is a conscientious objector,” said Darva proudly, leaning into him, and it was at that moment I realized they had a thing going. It was at the same moment that I realized it bothered me.
“Cool,” I said, when what I wanted to say was, “Chickenshit!” It wasn’t as if I was pro-war or anything—if the draft had affected me, I’d be crossing the border into Canada before you could say “deserter”—but I didn’t like this guy and his smug goateed face and the way he put his arm around Darva and stroked her neck with his pointer finger. What an asshole!
“So what else do you do?” I asked as a waitress finally noticed my existence and slapped a laminated menu on the table in front of me.
“A Coke,” I said to her, handing back the menu, and to Wes I said, “Besides conscientiously object.”
“I go to the U,” said Wes, “if that’s all right with you.”
“Hmmm,” I said, considering this. “I’d prefer if you went out of state.”
“What is the matter with you guys?” asked Darva, impatience sharpening her voice. “Are you trying to waste all our time or just some of it?”
Smirking as if she was scolding only me, Mr. Goat Man stroked her neck with his finger again, a finger I now wanted to break at the knuckle.
Instead, I crossed my arms, leaned forward in a posture of great interest, and said, “So what have you got planned?”
A look of relief passed over Darva’s face, and I saw in her smile an acknowledgment that I was the better man.
“We’re going to have a sit-in,” she said. “Next Friday, during the pep rally.”
“During the pep rally? How do you have a sit-in during a pep rally?”
“You know how the cheerleaders always run into the gym and try to get everyone all fired up right when the football players come out?” said Sheila, widening her eyes as she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “We’ll come in right after them—when everyone’s standing up and cheering.”
“Yeah,” said the rabbity Ellen. “Imagine the statement we’ll make.”
My stomach suddenly felt as if something cold and clammy was passing through it. The statement we’ll make?
“So who—” I cleared my throat and any remaining soprano notes that might come out of it. “So who do you expect to be a part of this sit-in?”
“Why, there’s us, of course,” said Sheila, “and anyone else who wants to join us.”
“Our dream is that the whole school’ll rise up,” said Ellen.
“Rise up?” I said. “Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of a sit-in?”
I got no response, but that was okay—I didn’t feel like laughing either.
There were those jocks for whom a pep rally was something evangelical, but most of us were just glad for the excuse to get out of class. Still, there was something about this pep rally—it was the last game of the season and our football team had surprised everyone by winning lately, so much so that we had climbed out of second-to-last place and into second-to-first. The whole school was jazzed—even the freaks and stoners who usually skipped assemblies to get high outside in the parking lot.
The plan was that after Mr. Brietmayer gave his little speech (the principal seized every opportunity to remind us that he had been an all-conference running back in college) and after the football players raced into the gym to the rousing accompaniment of bounding cheerleaders and the school band playing the Ole Bull fight song, our Gang of Four (Wuss—I mean Wes—had only accompanied Darva to the planning meeting and was not a participant) was to enter the gym through different doors and walk (“Solemnly, guys,” said Ellen. “Remember—solemnly”) to the little stage that had been constructed, where we would sit down and unroll the “Stop the War!” banner Darva had shoved in her waistband.
“I’m a little nervous,” Sheila had admitted earlier that morning when we rendezvoused in the parking lot. “What do you think’ll happen?”
“Anything,” said Darva. “But whatever happens, remember: We’re on the right side.”
The hallways emptied, and after the last of the students straggled in, I left my post by the bathroom and stood by the gym door, waiting for my cue. From my vantage point, I could see a section of bleachers, filled with the laughing, jostling students who would soon become either my hecklers or my supporters. I saw Mr. Brietmayer sitting on a chair on the stage, palming the sides of his Brylcreemed hair. He sat with his legs spread wide apart, the fabric of his brown suit pants stretched tight across his thighs, and I wondered if a guy who sat like that—as if to remind everyone not to worry, his testosterone level was still up there even if he didn’t throw a pigskin ball around anymore—would take a sympathetic view toward matters of free speech when practiced by his students.
“What’s the matter—wouldn’t they let you in?”
I spun around, as if in the vortex of a hot wind.
“Kristi!” I said with the same guilty surprise a kid says, “Mom!” when caught with his hand in whatever cookie jar he wasn’t supposed to have his hand in.
With the big bass drum strapped around her, Kristi stood there, hands on hips, shaking her head.
“Shouldn’t you go in there?” I asked.
“Shouldn’t you?”
We stood looking at each other for a moment, me trying too hard to look as if I had every right to be standing in the hallway and she looking as if I did not.
“Don’t tell me,” she said, slowly swinging one mallet back and forth, “you’re with those antiwar dorks.”
“Antiwar dorks?” I said, my face flushing.
“Listen, Joe,” she said impatiently. “People care about the war, but they don’t care about the war in a pep rally. Don’t let those saps play you for a sucker.”
I was about to ask her which Jimmy Cagney movie playing on the late show she’d stolen that line from, but a whistle blew and suddenly she was off, banging on her drum as the band started playing the school song.
The thunder of more than two thousand pairs of feet stomping the bleachers rose to my ears, and then I watched as Ole Bull’s football team burst through the main doors.
A roar went up and the team, escorted by the frantically jumping cheerleaders and Kristi’s driving beat, ran around the gym, their faces grim, their fists held clenched to their sides, as if their business was as serious as gladiators facing a pride of lions.
The roar and the school song both got louder. I saw Leonard Doerr rush out to join the team, and then I saw Jim Klatz shove him aside.
Jim Klatz was a tackle who had a full scholarship to Nebraska, and if All-Around Nerd was a prize given, Leonard Doerr would win by a wide margin; these facts were givens. Still, you didn’t have to see Leonard’s apologetic shrug to know this sort of thing happened to him all the time. Never mind that he was dressed head to toe in school colors; never m
ind that he took meticulous play-by-play notes of every game the Bulls played; never mind that he was the student manager of the team, for Christ’s sake.
Even though I wasn’t the most gung-ho participant in this protest, that Kristi thought it was a bad idea had made me want to do it, had made me want to show her that, unlike the rest of the world, my reason for being wasn’t to serve her. But seeing the ultimate football groupie getting shoved by the ultimate football player made me tired and made the pointlessness of an antiwar protest in the midst of a pep rally seem like a big bottle of NyQuil. To stop the fatigue, I turned around and walked down the hallway and, checking to make sure no one was around to witness my illegal act, I took the little hammer out of its box and broke the glass of the fire alarm with it.
In the minuscule pause between the noise and the recognition of what the noise meant, I raced into the john, only to emerge seconds later in the crowd that filled the hallway.
“We could do the sit-in here,” said Darva later that afternoon as we watched the Polar Bears score their third touchdown of the game.
“Not much point to a sit-in when everybody’s already sitting,” I said, and shoved another handful of booster-club popcorn into my mouth.
The October air was cold and sharp, and seeing her chin tremble in a shiver, I leaned into her, warming her.
“You better cut that out or that bull of yours is going to charge up the stands after me.”
“Funny,” I said, looking down at Shannon, who was pawing at the ground with her leg as Kristi brandished an invisible red cape.
“The Bulls are gonna hit, the bulls are gonna gore,” screamed the cheerleaders, “and then the Bulls are gonna get out there and score, score, score O-lee, O-lee, O-lee Bull!”
“So how long have you and Wes been going out?” I asked, and from my tone of voice you would have thought I’d asked her how long she’d been dating Spiro Agnew.
Darva laughed. “What do you care?”
I shoved another handful of popcorn into my mouth, trying to think of a reasonable answer.
When I couldn’t think of one, I swallowed and said, “I’m who set off the fire alarm.”
“What?”
I shushed her, letting her know I didn’t think it was necessary that the kids in front of us hear my private confession.
She looked at me for a long moment, hooking behind her ear a strand of hair the wind had blown across her face. A play on the field caused some attention from the stands, but we ignored it.
“Why?” she finally said. “Why’d you blow a chance for us to do something?”
“Give me a break, Darva. It’s not like four kids sitting down during the middle of a pep rally was going to change the world or anything.”
“And doing nothing is?”
“It just seemed so…I don’t know, so high school.”
“So it wasn’t a march on Washington,” said Darva, her voice a cold, fast whisper. “We’ve got to work where we’re at.”
“Pithy slogan. Did that guy Wes teach it to you?”
Darva smiled at me as if she didn’t immediately understand what I said and wanted to be polite until she did.
“Excuse me,” she said finally, and as she stood up I leaned back to let her pass. I stayed sitting like that for a long time, too disgusted with myself, with everything, to follow her through the crowd, which collectively moaned as the Polar Bears scored another touchdown.
Four
* * *
From the Ole Bulletin, November 1971:
Barring some unforseen reescalation, it looks as if the Class of ’ 72 is not going to be drafted to Viet Nam. That is, the Bulls aren’t going, but what about the Cows? In this age of equality, what are women’s obligations during war time? Your Roving Reporter thought he’d find out by asking, “Should women be drafted?”
Donna Shelton, junior: “I’d go in a second—I mean, how hard would it be to be surrounded by cute young guys in uniform?”
Mrs. Wanda Meegan, English teacher: “I would move to Canada if they initiated a draft for girls; of course, I would move to Canada if I were a boy and was drafted. You’d think we would have figured out by now that war creates more problems than it solves and that we do not achieve peace through strength. We achieve peace through peace. Drafting women would be an abomination, but it’s my opinion that drafting men is an abomination too.”
Sean Knutsen, sophomore: “No way! What kind of war could we win if girls were fighting alongside us? It’s like these girls who think they should be able to play basketball or baseball with the guys—what are they, nuts? They can’t throw for *$!*—they probably couldn’t even lift a gun, let alone shoot it!”
Charlie Olsen, senior: “Bring ’em on! I wouldn’t mind being in a foxhole with a bunch of foxes! I’m all for making love, not war, but if girls were let into the army, I could do both things at the same time….”
* * *
Hockey was a big sport at Ole Bull High, and it is not an overstatement to say that after scoring twice and assisting the game-winning goal during my first game, my life changed.
Kids I didn’t know congratulated me in the hallways.
“Great game, Joe!”
“Keep it up and this time we’ll get to state!”
“Nice slap shot!”
Mr. Eggert compared my back-checking to art.
“You might think of dancers when you hear the word choreography,” he told the class at the beginning of the period, “but there’s poetry in motion in a sport well played, as evidenced by our Mr. Andreson.”
He raised the chalk eraser as if it was a glass of wine he was toasting me with, and I ducked my head in embarrassment and pleasure.
During our next game, against Southwest, my line was able to hold off Darryl Sobota, who, last season, had been the third-highest scorer in the state. I also intercepted a rebound and took the puck up the rink and shot into the top shelf of the net. It was to be the only goal of the game, and after the Bull fans counted down the last ten seconds on the clock, they went nuts.
My teammates circled around me.
“Fuckin’ Bobby Orr, man,” said Wilkerson, smacking my helmeted head with his own.
“Glad you left fuckin’ Hooterville for the big time,” said Olsen, smacking my pads with his stick.
“Great game, Joe,” said Blake Erlandsson, smacking my back with his hands as he bear-hugged me.
The next day during morning announcements, Mr. Brietmayer congratulated the team and me in particular, and when everyone in my homeroom erupted in applause, I thought, I could get used to this.
We won the next four games and I was pretty convinced that the world was my oyster, especially one night after practice when Kristi Casey stopped by.
We were all at the piano when the doorbell rang.
“Collection,” I said. As a former paperboy, I recognized a certain persistence to the ring.
Beth sighed as she got up. “I’m going to call his mother and tell him she shouldn’t allow him to collect after dark.”
As she wondered aloud where she left her purse, my mother and I got back to singing “Till There Was You.”
We sang every verse, and when we were done, I assumed the applause I heard behind me was my aunt’s.
“Come on, Miss Channing,” I said, riffing a little on the introduction to “Before the Parade Passes By.” “We’re ready for your solo.”
The laugh I heard was not my aunt’s, and as I turned toward its source, a wave of heat torched my face, singeing my hairline and blistering my ears.
“Hey, Joe,” said Kristi, baring her crocodile smile.
“Hey, Kristi,” I answered, the thrill I felt from her standing in my living room (why was she standing in my living room?) slapped down by the mortification I felt knowing she had seen me sitting around the piano with my mother, playing Broadway show tunes, for Christ’s sake.
“I didn’t know you played piano.”
“Well, my mom is a music teacher,”
I said, as if apologizing. “She sort of made me.”
“Nonsense,” said my mom, nudging me in an isn’t-he-silly gesture. “We couldn’t keep him away from the piano—even as a toddler, he’d climb up on the piano bench and try to pick out tunes with his chubby little fingers.”
Everyone laughed at this little item of interest while I, way past mortification now, brayed, “Maaaa.”
“So you guys sit around and sing together?” said Kristi, her smile not going anywhere. “Like in The Sound of Music?”
“Sure!” said my aunt. “In fact, I’ll bet Joe would be happy to put on his lederhosen if you asked him nicely.”
She held up her hands as if to fend off the look I gave her.
“Beth,” said my mother, getting off the piano bench, “why don’t we scrounge around the kitchen and see if we can find something to eat for these kids?” She patted Kristi’s shoulder before taking my aunt’s arm. “Take off your coat, dear, and make yourself comfortable.”
“Thank you,” said Kristi. “I’ll do that.”
I watched as she unbuttoned her pea coat and laid it on the couch, watched as she took off her wool hat and fluffed her hair, and I tried to breathe normally.
“So what brings you here?” I said, the suaveness I tried to project undermined by a little squeak in my voice.
“I was in the neighborhood,” she said lightly, and as she came toward me, I braced myself. For what, I didn’t know.
She sat next to me and I smelled Love’s Baby Soft, the baby-powderish perfume all the girls were wearing. She flipped the songbook to its cover and read, Best of Broadway.
“It…it’s not that I like—”
“Play this one,” said Kristi, and because it didn’t occur to me to do anything different, I did.
The song was “Try to Remember” from The Fantasticks, and I had only played a couple of measures when she said, “Sing too.”
And so I sang, because whatever Kristi wanted, you were happy to give it.