Home of the Brave

We buried Jim Anderson’s boy today, and I don’t know whether to cuss or cry. He was a good boy, smart and well-liked. He had the whole world in his pocket, and some dirty Viet Cong had to shoot him in the head like he was no better’n a mad dog. Poor Jim couldn’t get over their shootin’ him that way.

This morning at the funeral, Jim stood by the coffin, staring at the flag over it. He wasn’t cryin’ or nothin’, but you could feel him bleeding inside. He never did see inside that coffin – they wouldn’t let us open it. All he could do was stand there, stretched up proud like the father of a hero should. I’d give my soul if I could stand that way again.

Now they’re out there throwin’ dirt on a box with Roger Anderson in it, without us ever seeing him to thank him or say good-by.

A boy shouldn’t have to go like that, without a good-by. That’s the least we can do. We send ‘em over there, wet behind the ears – most of them – and they got to fight a lousy war that nobody likes or understands. My boy David put in eighteen months in Vietnam, and he can tell you what it was like. He was tired, and dirty, and scared all the time. Some of the letters he wrote us – they’d tear your heart out.

The thing is, those boys didn’t ask to go over there. We sent ‘em. And a lot of ‘em can’t take it. Look at the drugs, look at the way they try to kill their superior officers. Nice kids like my David and Roger Anderson, they’re going crazy over there. And for what?

It sure ain’t for the thanks they’re gettin’. Why, when David came home he couldn’t even get a job! Eight months he hunted before somebody would hire him, and then it was only sacking groceries at the super market.

My God, what’s this country comin’ to? No wonder some of our boys are runnin’ off. I know, I got a son that’s one of ‘em.

When they told me about Roger Anderson gettin’ killed, first thing I thought of was “poor kid. Well, at least he died with honor. And he won’t have to be humiliated like some of the boys are when they come back.” Some things are worse than dying for your country.

Like my Bobby. He ran off to Canada. You know what I heard the other day? I heard there’s bettern’ 100,000 boys of ours up in Canada now, dodging the draft. And that don’t just mean we lost 100,000 boys. It means 100,000 families back here wondering about ‘em: where we went wrong, why they ran away, and how to explain it to the neighbors. It’s bad enough living with it yourself, but explaining to your friends – the one’s who’ve known you and your boy ever since he was born – well, how would you go about it?

Then you face Jim Anderson. You see the tears in his eyes, the tears he’s too proud to brush away, and you’re dying to beg for mercy. You want to say, “Look, Jim, I lost a boy too.” But you can’t do that. My boy ain’t dead like Roger. He’s up there in Canada with them draft dodgers and Jim Anderson’s not about to forget it, no way!

After Bobby left, I went out and bought me a flag to fly off the front porch. It was a real nice one, nylon and all. My neighbor, Andalucci, came up and watched me putting it up. He said to me, “Are you putting up a flag?”

“What does it look like?” says I.

“It looks like you’re putting up a flag.”

“Well, you’re very observant, Mr. Andalucci.”

“May I ask one more question?”

I knew what was comin’, but what could I do?

“So ask and get it over with.”

“Is it American or Canadian?”

Well, that’s Andalucci for you. He thinks because his old man came over in the bottom of a boat, poor as Job’s turkey, that he’s some kind of super American now. “I love my country,” he says, like nobody else can love it but him. Well, you better believe I love my country too, and their ain’t nobody gonna tell me different. Just because Bobby went to Canada, do they think I wanted him to go?

People are crazy. My boy David spends eighteen months in Vietnam with us prayin’ for him and sweatin’ and worryin’ and never saying one lousy word of disloyalty or nothin.’ Then, just because Bobby runs out on us, suddenly none of that counts anymore. Andalucci is making wisecracks, and Mrs. O’Brien is snubbing the wife at the super market. Lord, just because Roger Anderson is dead, do I gotta get my son killed before I can hold up my head around here?

I tried to tell Bobby what was going to happen. “You know, don’t you, that you’re good as dead, once you cross that border?”

“I know Pop. But I’m worse than dead if I stick around here.”

“What do you mean? Are you afraid of getting killed?”

“I’m not a coward, if that’s what you mean.”

“You’re the one who used the word, I didn’t.”

He turned away from me like he was disgusted, or something.

“Well, that’s got nothing to do with it.”

“Then what are you going for? Explain it to me. I’m willing to understand.”

“Pop, I’ve explained and explained ‘til I’m blue in the face. If you can’t understand now, you’ll never understand.”

He was right there. He had talked and talked, but it didn’t explain nothin’. He had paced the floor, he was so excited about what he was saying. Then he’d get frustrated and crumple up in a chair saying, “It’s no use.” Round and round we went, first him shoutin’ and then me. And still he couldn’t explain it. All I understood was he was heading for trouble, and I wanted to stop him before it was too late.

“Look son, you may be right. Everything you’re saying may be God’s own truth, but please stop and think. Don’t run out on us this way. You’re only buying yourself grief. Believe me, you’ll regret it. Please, for my sake, this once take my advice.”

“I’m sorry Pop, I really am. But I can’t do it. I’m not running out on you. It has nothing to do with you. I just can’t live here anymore.”

“OK, so move somewhere else. But don’t go to Canada.”

“But the draft, Pop, the draft.”

“So? Your brother got drafted, and it didn’t kill him.”

“I know, and I’m real glad for him. But I’m different.”

“Just different, or afraid to be a man?”

“Pop ...,”

“All right, all right, so you’re not afraid. So is it so terrible if you are afraid? It’s not so bad really. You don’t have to be ashamed of it. It’s running from your fear that’ll kill you. Hell, do you think I made it through Normandy without being afraid? You’d better believe I was scared. I had to be to survive. But you got to face it, admit it, and learn to live with it. Once you start running, you’re dead.”

“I know all about fear, Pop. I’m not afraid.”

“Then you’re a traitor. If you ain’t running scared, boy, you’re doing this deliberate – and that’s betraying your country.”

I know now I shouldn’t of said that, but he made me so mad and confused I wasn’t really thinking. I was ashamed of him, afraid of what other people were going to think, and scared of what was going to happen to him. I was trying to bring him to his senses, but all I did was settle his mind once and for all. He was out of that chair like a shot, ready to tear me apart if I got in his way.

“Damn it, Pop, that’s going too far. If you want to know who the real traitors are, then go look at the ones who are running this country and sending us off to an immoral war. If I stayed around here, I’d start to thinking like they do, and then I would end up a traitor. I’d be selling this country down the drain – and the whole human race with it. That’s one thing I’m not going to do. I’d have to be insane first.”

Talk about insanity. Maybe a speech like that makes sense to you, but it went right past me. All I knew was my kid was heading out the door and I was shoutin’, “You’ll be sorry!”

I’ll bet he was, too. Running off like that with nothing to his name. He was so all-fired anxious to get going he didn’t even take his toothbrush. Isn’t that funny? After a fight like that, all I could think of was his toothbrush. I ran to the bathroom and grabbed it and went tearing down the stairs to try and catch him. By the time I got to the back door, he’d already pulled out of the driveway.

So there I stood watching my son drive out of my life, knowing I’d never see him again, and all I could do was wave his damn toothbrush at him. Like I said before, some things are worse than dying for your country.

That was the last time I saw Bobby. It killed me to see him go. I still don’t understand why he went. All I know is I couldn’t stop him.

You know? In a way, as much as I miss him, I’m just as glad he’s gone. The way he was acting and talking, he was heading for a lot of trouble if he stayed around here. Just look at the trouble he put us in. If he couldn’t explain why he was going, how were we supposed to explain it? And if people are rough on us, think how much rougher they could be on him.

Of course, at first I hoped nobody’d ever know it, but I knew that would take a miracle. Then I sorta hoped everybody would think he was off to school getting a PhD or something. But the missus said people wouldn’t buy that. Bobby isn’t the PhD type. Word would get around sooner or later, so we might as well accept it. The way things turned out, it was sooner than we expected.

You see, Bobby used to go with Andalucci’s girl, and though there was nothin’ serious, they had been kind of sweet on each other. So before he left town, Bobby looks her up and tells her the whole story – about how crazy the country is and that he can’t stick around anymore letting it ruin him. He must have been convincing because she went right home and told Andalucci that Bobby was a hero, and it was his kind that was going to save the moral integrity of the country, and a bunch of crap like that.

You can imagine what Andalucci did with that. He couldn’t wait to spread it all over town. If we’d tried to pretend he was away at school somewhere, we’d a looked like fools. Andalucci did a thorough job. It got pretty tough tryin’ to hold your head up.

I was sort of hoping David would “equal” it out, if you know what I mean. You know, make up for Bobby’s running off. After all, David went into the army like a loyal American, and he did his duty. And it was rough duty too, not one of the cushy jobs in the States. By rights that ought’ve counted for something.

And I think maybe people would’ve been a little easier on us too, if David hadn’t gotten into that argument at the super market.

What happened was O’Brien and his wife came in to do some shopping and who should they bump into but the missus. Now we been friends for years, the O’Briens and us. We could always depend on each other, no matter what. But all of a sudden that’s forgotten. Mrs. O’Brien looked right through the missus, like she wasn’t there, and left her standing there.

Well the wife’s no dumbbell. She knows what’s going on. But it was so unexpected, don’t you see? We’d been getting that from a lot of people, and it was O.K. because we knew it was coming. But not from the O’Briens.

Without thinking, she starts after them to stop them to explain or something. I don’t know what. But O’Brien stops her with some crack about how lucky it is that Canada is taking all the hippie radicals off our hands. And that did it. She ain’t been the same since.

David saw the whole thing, and of course he stepped right in to defend his mother. O’Brien got on his high horse then, and said it wasn’t anything personal, but he couldn’t afford to get “involved” with people that’s got a pinko son. You can imagine how that set with David. The missus told me afterward she was afraid for a minute that David would flatten O’Brien right there in the store.

If I’d a been O’Brien, I’d a backed down a little, but he just stood his ground, as smug as you please. He told David he ought to be ashamed of himself, defending that coward of a brother of his who was a traitor to boot.

“And you a veteran of the war and a loyal American,” he says. “You ought to know better.”

If David couldn’t just kept his mouth shut, and let well enough alone, we might have been able to salvage a little pride. But he couldn’t.

“I’m sick and tired of being told what a fine American I am, like Bobby was some kind of a crud. I went to Vietnam and he went to Canada. So what? I did what I thought I was supposed to do. It looks to me like he did the same thing. If I had it to do over again, I’d probably head for Canada too. They tell me it has a healthier climate!”

You can figure out for yourself what people think of us now.

I put up my flag and found it cut down that afternoon. I put it up again, and it was cut down again. I phoned Andalucci and told him what I thought of him, and to keep his dirty hands off of my flag. I put it up a third time, and this time he stole it.

When it came to renewing my membership in the Legion, word got back to me that I didn’t need to bother. They didn’t want to hurt my feelings, but under the circumstances surely I could understand their position, and so on.

The manager at the super market had to put David in the back room where customers wouldn’t see him. He said some people were threatening to take their business to the Food Mart.

Some of this seemed funny at the time. Most of it was understandable, even if I did think it was unfair. But I guess the preacher asking the wife to resign from the choir for a while was the worst blow of all. I don’t know who got to him, or how much pressure they put on him, but you could tell he didn’t like doing it. I tried not to blame him, but - hell, don’t nobody have their principles anymore?

When I heard about Roger Anderson getting killed, I got right on the phone and called Jim to tell him how sorry I was. As luck would have it, O’Brien was their answering the phone for him. He wouldn’t let me talk to Jim. He said he was all tore up and not talking on the phone, and that he had to go to the funeral home to make arrangements. But I just said to tell him I’d be over.

And I did go over too. My wife thought I was crazy, but I made up my mind I was going.

“You’ll upset everybody and make them mad,” she said. “Send him a card. You can write it all down and save everybody’s feelings.”

“No, that would be running away, and I’m not running.”

“Even if it means embarrassing Jim Anderson? You’re not thinking about him, you’re just being bullheaded like Bobby. If you really cared about him, you’d stay away. Believe me, you’ll be sorry if you go.”

I could see her point, but she was wrong. A man has to live with himself, right? Respect was owed to Roger, no matter what people thought. So I went over.

It was like I expected. Jim wasn’t out making funeral arrangements at all. He was there, all right, surrounded with people. The house was bulging with ‘em. They were all feeling real bad, of course. Poor Jim’d lost his wife to cancer a couple of years ago, and all he had left was his son. Now Roger was gone too. Talk about life being unfair – Jim Anderson can tell you all about that.

O’Brien met me at the door and made like he wouldn’t let me in. I ignored him. Andalucci was there too, but I walked right past him. I went right up to Jim and I looked him in the eye, and I said, “I’m sorry. I’m so damn sorry.”

He said, “I know, I know. I’m sorry too.” and he started to cry. Not with any sound, mind you, but big tears came up in his eyes and rolled down his face. He sat there looking at me and more tears poured down. He didn’t try to hide them or turn away. He just cried.

You know, no matter how mean people are, they can still be decent sometimes. I didn’t realize it then, but when Jim started crying, everybody sorta eased out of the room. There was just me and Jim looking at each other. And I was crying too, just as silent as him. Not for Roger or for Bobby. Not even for Jim or me. I was crying for us all because it hurt so much and there weren’t no cure.

After a bit I aid, “I’d like to come to the service, Jim, but I won’t if you think I shouldn’t.”

“Thank you,” he said, “I appreciate the thought. But it isn’t necessary. I know how you feel and that’s what counts.”

“I was mighty fond of that boy, Jim. Roger deserved better’n this.”

“I know. Don’t they all? Your boys too.”

Then we talked. Of old days, before the guns fired and the fighting came to our homes. Night came and still we talked, like we was living in a truce and time was running out.