Christmas Presents and Past. Janice Johnson Kay

to Canada.”

      He was shaking his head even before she finished. “That would kill my dad. Maybe my mom, too. But he’s…well, he’s pretty conservative, you know. We’ve had knock-down, drag-out fights about the protests I’ve gone to.”

      “But you said you wondered whether he really believed in the war.”

      “He admitted that he thinks the troops should come home. But that doesn’t mean—” his voice took on gruffer intonations meant to mimic his father “—that a young man should turn his back on his country when he’s called.”

      “Oh, Will.” Tentatively, she laid a hand on his arm. It was rock hard, and he seemed not to feel her touch.

      He did turn his head to look at her. “You should have seen his face, Dinah. It was…” He closed his eyes for an instant. “I think he was close to crying. I’ve never seen my dad cry. He said…” Will had to clear his throat. “He said, ‘I’d hoped you could avoid service honorably. But you made a choice, Will, and now you have to live by that choice.’”

      Her heart almost broke. “Oh, Will.” She couldn’t seem to say anything but that, because she could see in his face that he had already made his decision.

      “He was right, Dinah.” Now his jaw was set, his voice raw. “I do.”

      “You don’t! You don’t!” Tears burned in her eyes. “Your dad loves you. He’d probably secretly be glad if you went to Canada….”

      He shook his head, no longer the easygoing boy with whom she’d fallen in love. “No.”

      Just that one word. Determined, and knowing what this decision might cost him.

      “If you want to quit seeing me now, I understand.”

      Like a skipping record, she again cried, “Oh, Will!” but this time she flung herself at him and he let go of the steering wheel to accept her into his arms.

      He kissed her as if he’d never stop, as if he feared he’d never hold her again.

      And as December drew on and a joyless Christmas neared, he kept kissing her that way. He didn’t want to talk about the future. Even his description of the physical for which he was required to report was so terse, she couldn’t imagine it.

      “Mom said when I was younger, I had a heart murmur. This doctor couldn’t hear it. I’m 1-A.”

      Desperate, she tried to continue an argument he wouldn’t hear. “You shouldn’t go to Vietnam for your dad. You should do what’s right for you!”

      Will only shook his head.

      They had to have been desperate for men, because Will received his induction notice before Christmas. He showed it to her. It had his name on top, and said, Willful failure to report at the place and hour of the day named on this Order subjects the violator to fine and imprisonment.

      He was to report in three weeks.

      Sometimes it felt as if Will was already gone. Perhaps a part of him was. When they had the chance, they made love fiercely, knowing how little time they had. Dinah, for one, could never forget that he might not make it home alive. But otherwise he seemed distant as he gave notice at his job and took finals to earn his high school degree.

      Their worry drawing them together, she and his mother became friends in a way they’d never been. Once, when Dinah had arrived early and Will wasn’t yet home, Mrs. O’Keefe talked about her husband’s experiences in basic training.

      “John told me once that boot camp was hell on earth. I keep imagining…” She gave a hiccup that Dinah could tell was a suppressed sob. “Will was always so sensitive. I can’t bear the thought…”

      So easily, Dinah began to cry. “He doesn’t seem as worried about dying as he is about seeing things like the massacre at My Lai. Everyone says stuff like that happens all the time. What if he has to shoot a child, or a pregnant woman, or…or push someone out of a helicopter?”

      She’d heard a story from a guy at a party who’d been drafted and was back. He talked about taking guys up to interrogate them, then when they were done, just pushing them out. She hadn’t been able to tell when he talked whether he was horrified by what he’d done, or whether things like that were so commonplace over there, he didn’t see anything wrong with it. Gooks, he’d said. And he’d laughed as he talked about this “gook” flailing in the doorway before being sucked out and plummeting toward a rice paddy far below. Saying “gook,” Dinah thought, meant that he hadn’t thought of that guy desperately trying to stay in the helicopter as a man, like him.

      Or maybe he just couldn’t let himself think of him as a man.

      What if Will came home safely but changed so much that he could talk like that about terrible things he’d done? Dinah couldn’t believe he would, but the possibility scared her as much as anything.

      “Will you call me whenever you hear from him?” Mrs. O’Keefe begged. “I’ll do the same.”

      “Of course,” she promised, and they hugged for the first time.

      Will and she spent the day of Christmas Eve together. The weather was cold and damp, but they walked out on the breakwater anyway, holding hands. Sea spray dampening their hair and the surge of the waves as background music, he cupped her face in his hands.

      “Promise me if you meet some guy, you won’t say no because you’re afraid of hurting me. You’re still in high school, Dinah. You ought to be able to have fun.”

      “Have fun?” Her voice broke. “How can I have fun, knowing you might already have been wounded and I wouldn’t have heard yet?”

      She couldn’t say, Knowing you might already be dead.

      “I don’t want you to stay faithful out of guilt.”

      She tried for a smile that must have been an awful sight. “It won’t be guilt. I love you, Will.”

      He closed his eyes for a moment, then said in a thick voice, “I love you, too.”

      She unwrapped his present while they sat in the car in front of her house. Inside the paper was a shoe box, full of candles. Twelve of them, she counted. They were different sizes and shapes: a toadstool, a troll, a flower. Their scents mingled, creating a heady fragrance.

      “One for every month I’ll be away,” he said. “When you burn the last one, I’ll be home.”

      “Oh, Will!” Crying again, she flung herself into his arms.

      “Promise you’ll write,” he said against the top of her hair. “Even if you meet someone else.”

      She wrenched back. “I won’t meet someone else!”

      “Even if you do,” he repeated, almost steadily.

      Feeling her face crumple, she nodded. “I promise,” she whispered, tasting the tears.

      Neither of them could say the words Merry Christmas.

      Chapter 3

      Two weeks after Christmas, Will’s Dad drove him to the Army base.

      At first Will’s letters were hopeful. Basic training wasn’t so bad. Dinah wouldn’t believe the muscles he was developing, he bragged.

      She and his mother exchanged news, phoning each other the minute a letter arrived. Dinah was now calling his mother by her first name, Barbara, instead of Mrs. O’Keefe.

      With support waning for the war, Will wrote, he and the other recent draftees believed they might never end up abroad at all.

      The 3rd Marine Division was sent home at the end of November, and the 3rd Brigade 82nd Airborne just a few weeks ago. Why would they withdraw experienced troops and then send a bunch of us who have to be taught how to tell the barrel of a rifle from the butt?

      Dinah