With her blessing, I decided to quit college and allow myself to be drafted. When it came time to step forward and take the induction, I would refuse. I'd go the prison route instead. That would be my statement.
This was the time of the lottery, and I was drafted almost immediately. I was disappointed my draft notice didn't say Greetings. I had always heard that it did.
I went to Dallas, took my physical, passed, and refused to go.
The army tried to give me outs. I give them that. One officer even suggested I make a break for Canada. The war had soured even his way of thinking, and he was a lifer.
But I refused to run.
It was suggested I sign as a conscientious objector, but again I refused. C.O. status meant you thought fighting for anything, even your life, was wrong. I didn't believe that. Had I been around during the fighting of World War I or II, I would have gone and done my bit. The causes were just and the wars were fought with a conclusion in mind. I was an idealist, not a coward.
So I went to Leavenworth. Trudy and some of her friends came to see me from time to time and told me 'right on' and how brave I was, and it felt good to hear it. They wrote me nice letters.
But that good feeling didn't last. It didn't relax me at night when I could hear the cons snorting and coughing and crying and farting and sodomizing each other. And there were guys in there who had bludgeoned their grandmothers to death who thought it their patriotic duty to kill me for not signing up to shoot gooks. If I hadn't been a pretty tough country boy with iron foundry muscles, I might not have made it.
Trudy kept coming to see me, but her friends dropped off. She kept writing, but the friends quit. She sent me clippings in her letters that told me what was going on outside, about the causes being fought for, the ground gained, the ground lost.
Then her visits thinned, and finally stopped. Next to last letter I got from her went on about how brave I was again and compared me to a number of counterculture heroes. It said Cheep had died and had been buried in a cream corn can out back of the house, and that she had met a man named Pete who was big in the ecology movement and they had this thing going. The last letter told me that the thing she and Pete had going was now really going, and she was filing for divorce. Nothing personal. She thought I was the bravest man she knew. It was signed like all the others: Love Trudy.
I did my time. Eighteen months altogether. I had planned the day they let me out for a long time. I thought I would come out on a bright warm day with my fist held high, and Trudy would be there looking sexy and soft in a short windblown dress that would give me a good view of her long brown legs, and as the music came up, sweet but triumphant, she would run to me with those legs flashing and throw her arms around my neck and give me a kiss that would knock me silly from head to toes. Then she would load me in a car and drive us away.
But when I came out it was cold and drizzling. I had to talk a guard into calling someone to drive me to the bus station. Between paying for the car and the bus, the money I had when I went in and the money the government gave me for the non stimulating manual labor I did inside was almost gone. Needless to say, I didn't feel like raising my fist.
I went back to East Texas and found out I didn't want to help the underprivileged anymore. I realized I was one of them. I got a job in the rose fields outside of LaBorde, and that's where I met Leonard. He was a Vietnam vet and a certified hardhead. He didn't like my views on a lot of things, but he didn't hold them against me either; I gave him someone to argue with. He was a martial artist, boxing, kenpo, hapkido, and he revived my interest. When I was in high school, until the time I met Trudy, I had been heavily involved in that sort of thing. Guess I dropped it later because I didn't feel it fit my new peace and love image or something. Anyway, I had been away from it for a time. I was glad to get at it again. I got better than ever before. It helped me work out some frustrations.
After a while, Trudy started coming around, and each time she went away she left me a bigger wreck than before. Built me up with promises, then left me sudden and flat. She always found a new man who was big in some movement or another. Supporting lettuce workers or saving seals from the business end of a Louisville Slugger.
Each time she left, I told Leonard I was through with her. And each time it was a lie. But the last time, after the Great Drunk, even I believed it.
And now she was back.
All this was going around and around in my head when she came in buck naked and put her arms around my neck and bent and kissed me on the ear. The minty clean soap smell and the aroma of sex came off of her in waves. I reached up and touched her hand where it rested on my chest.
'I woke up and you were gone,' she said.
'I got thirsty.'
'I got horny. Come back to bed.'
I stood and took her in my arms and kissed her. She was shaking from the cold. I opened my robe and stretched it around her as far as it would go and held her to me. Her hands played at my sides and rump, and finally around front where she took hold of me.
'You're pretty ruthless,' I said, 'treating an old man this way.'
'You don't feel old, sugar.'
We went back to bed, but this time she didn't let loose with the laugh I liked. She lay there when we were finished and finally eased out of bed and picked up her panties and pulled them on. I hated that. I liked the view. Covering that downy crotch of hers with panties was as vile an act as tossing a wet bath towel over the face of the Mona Lisa.
'It's cold,' I said. 'Come back to bed,'
'Hap, I haven't been entirely truthful with you.'
'Not that you ever are. But this time, don't feel too bad. You haven't had a lot of time to lie.'
She walked to the window and stood with her back to me, looking out, hugging herself. She turned slowly, her arms crossed over her breasts. 'You sound pretty vindictive.'
