Page 29 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
Just last month there was a big protest at NYU against Dow Chemical for manufacturing napalm. Last week, Columbia students held the dean hostage, although Nathaniel thinks that had more to do with racism than with Vietnam.
Every time Nathaniel looks at the newspaper, there’s a protest in Detroit or Paris, Los Angeles or Mexico City. The entire world seems to have taken to the streets to protest a host of wrongs, and while Susan and even Patrick see this as a promise of change, Nathaniel’s waiting for the other shoe todrop. Every protest reveals the opposition more clearly: people whowantwar and bigotry, who want teenagers to be shot in the street and Vietnam burned to cinders. None of this is a surprise to Nathaniel; he worked for that opposition, even when he didn’t want to acknowledge it. It’s the widening divide that worries him now. He’s seen what happens in countries where there are irreconcilable factions.
Soldiers with machine guns were stationed on Capitol Hill during the protests after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. The National Guard drove tanks through downtown Memphis. It would have taken nothing at all for one of these soldiers to pull a trigger. It would have taken nothing at all for a cop at today’s school walkout to have grabbed his billy club and put it to use.
Nathaniel likes these children; some tired and cowardly part of himself wants Iris and Hector to have stayed safe inside their classroom, even though he realizes this is impossible. The entire point is that they aren’t safe.
“It really wouldn’t have happened a year ago,” Susan repeats.
“Wait. Who threw what?” Nathaniel asks, catching up. His gaze roams over the twins, looking for signs of damage.
“A counterprotester threw a rock into the crowd,” Iris says. “Hector threw it back, but nobody saw. At least I don’t think anybody saw.”
“I didn’t throw it back. I tossed it aside. Underhand.”
“Who the fuck throws rocks at children?” Patrick asks.
Everyone stares at him. Patrick is not a man who swears in front of kids.
Iris recovers first. “The same people who want to bomb children and burn down their homes,” she says, with an impliedobviously.“And now Hector’s going to get an FBI file and Mami will kill him.”
“Nobody’s getting an FBI file,” Susan says. “You aren’t getting arrested. There are probably five hundred other people they’d need to arrest first.”
Nathaniel makes a choked sound, because he thinks Susan might be delusional. Patrick evidently agrees with him, because he catches Nathaniel’s eye and winces.
Everyone falls silent, the only sound a Doors album playing in the back of the shop.
“Tommy DeAngelo enlisted,” Hector tells his sister. “Remember him? He graduated last year. Glasses, stupid haircut?”
Iris is momentarily speechless. “Why?”
“Said he was going to get drafted anyway, and this way at least he could pick the navy. Navy’s safer.”
“But,” Iris starts, and she’s obviously going to start in on all the very good reasons nobody should enlist in this war or possibly any war, and how the government is lying and the war was ginned up by profiteers. She’ll be right on all counts, but there’s nobody in this room who needs to hear it.
Besides, Nathaniel has spent the last two months listening to people act likenotdodging the draft is effectively a war crime. Maybe they’re right—at this point, the one thing he’s sure of is that he’s the least qualified person in this building to make any kind of moral judgment. But he thinks it’s missing the point to blame the men who either enlist or comply with selective service.
“Some people enlist,” Nathaniel snaps. “Some people will always enlist,” he repeats, a little less testily. “There will always be true believers. There will always be people who trust their government not to be embroiled in a gigantic, evil conspiracy or to be tragically incompetent. If the president says we need soldiers, the people who believe him are the optimists.”
“They’re wrong,” Iris says.
“Of course,” Nathaniel says, trying to remember that he’s dealing with children, not jaded CIA analysts. “But I want to live in a world where the true believers are right.”
8
One sunny morning in May, Nathaniel goes by himself to the A&P for a pint of milk. He manages to get almost all the way home before the abyss catches up with him. He unlocks the shop door with shaky hands, his heart thudding from the perils of the dairy aisle and a cloudless sky.
He heads directly to Patrick, because Patrick is…soothing, Nathaniel supposes. He’d be useless up against any actual threat—if someone tried to mug him, he’d buy the mugger a sandwich and give him the coat off his back—but against more existential threats, he’s practically a magic amulet. He’sgoodin a way that Nathaniel finds incomprehensible and which he’s certain he doesn’t deserve any part of.
But Patrick’s in the shower and Nathaniel has just enough self-respect not to barge into the bathroom. He goes upstairs to Susan’s on the pretense of getting Eleanor.
“You look awful. Did you sleep at all?” Susan asks, instead ofgood morningorthanks for taking my hellion daughter off my hands.
“No, thanks for asking,” Nathaniel says. Eleanor gurgles up at him. He lay awake half the night, enumerating his sins and dreaming up all the ways they might catch up with him. Hence, the early morning trip to get milk before he’d even had a cup of coffee. He doesn’t even take milk in his coffee, for pity’s sake. But Patrick does.
Susan’s looking at him a little too carefully. Scrutinizing him, really, and he suspects she isn’t only seeing the circles under his eyes. She shakes her head and pours him some coffee from her own pot. “It’s my last cup, so you’re welcome.”
“Brew more, you harridan.” He jostles Eleanor onto his shoulder and takes a sip. Susan’s coffee isn’t as good as Patrick’s.
