Christmas Presents and Past
Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Dedicated with love to my brother, Karl, my fellow

traveler through all those tumultuous years

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 1

1968

The cough and choke of Will O’Keefe’s 1952 Chevy brought Dinah racing to the front window. This was the second time he’d picked her up, but their first real date. The other time they’d been going to that jam session at Miguel’s and Will had just been a ride—although it hadn’t turned out that way, since they’d stuck together the whole night as if it was a given.

By the time she peeked around the drape, he’d slammed the car door and started up her steep driveway. That’s when dismay punched her in the chest. In his hands was a gaily wrapped Christmas present with a bright red bow atop. It had to be for her!

But they’d only met two weeks before, at Terri’s party. They’d talked there for hours, and then again at Miguel’s. But that didn’t really count, did it? They weren’t going together or anything, so why had he bought her a Christmas present?

Her mind raced. Had she bought anything for her brother or father that she could pretend was for Will? But neither present was right. The album she was giving Stephen maybe, but she had no idea whether Will liked Country Joe and the Fish, and anyway…She didn’t have enough money left to buy Stephen something else before Christmas! If only she’d thought to bake cookies, or make fudge, and had some saved for him. Since it was almost Christmas.

The doorbell rang. She was out of time.

Dinah took a deep breath and opened the door. “Hi,” she said brightly, then looked at the gift as if she hadn’t already seen it. “Oh, no! I didn’t get you anything.”

“Why would you? We just met.” He offered her the smile that had made her heart skip a beat when Terri introduced them. It was genuine, even sweet, not marred by pretence or self-consciousness.

Will O’Keefe wasn’t exactly handsome. He was only a few inches taller than her five foot seven, maybe five-ten. He was actually pretty skinny, although he had big hands and feet that gave him a puppy-dog look. And his face was, well, the kind her eye skipped over in a crowd. Just ordinary.

It was definitely the smile that had gotten to her. The smile, and his eyes, an amazing shade of blue, all the more unusual with his dark hair.

“Then why…” she asked, gesturing at the gift in his hand.

“Why?” He looked down. “Oh. I got stuck with my Mom the other day while she was Christmas shopping. And I saw this, and thought of you.” He thrust the package at her as if to get rid of it. “It’s no big deal. It was probably a dumb idea. I just thought…” His shoulders moved in an awkward shrug.

She glanced at the Christmas tree near the front window and the gifts piled beneath it. “Should I save it? Or, um, open it now?”

“Now,” he said. “Since I’m here. Unless you want to save it.”

“No. Now’s fine. Do you want to sit down?”

“Sure.” He shut the front door behind him and chose a place on the Danish modern sofa with the olive-green upholstery fabric that made Dinah’s legs itch if she was wearing shorts.

She perched at the other end of the sofa, turned to half face him, glad no one else was home. Her mother would have raised her eyebrows at some boy she’d never met buying her daughter a present, her dad would have nodded in approval because Will’s hair was short and Stephen would have given her a hard time about going out with a guy who looked so square. He wouldn’t believe her when she said Will wasn’t, that he’d cut his hair so he could be on the wrestling team at his high school. According to Will, his coach was like this Nazi, who practically measured every strand of hair to make sure his wrestlers looked like these perfect, all-American boys.

Dinah hesitated. Will smiled encouragement and she tore the paper to find a plain box inside. He looked nervous, she saw out of the corner of her eye. He really wanted her to like whatever he’d bought. She opened the box and stared in puzzlement at folded white canvas, like that of a sail.

“I had to wad it up to get it in,” he apologized.

Dinah lifted it out, then breathed, “Ohh,” as she saw what he’d bought because it made him think of her.

An apron. A chef’s apron. A real one, the kind professionals wore, extra wide so it would wrap around her and long enough to reach her knees.

“When I picked you up Saturday you were wearing that little flowery apron.” Will gestured at his front. “And after you’d told me how much you love to cook, and how you’d like to be a chef or caterer, I thought you should look like one instead of wearing your mom’s apron.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “You believed me.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“My parents don’t. They want me to go to college, not culinary school.” She hugged the apron to herself and sniffed. “Thank you. I love it.”

“Really?” With hopeful eyes, he looked more than ever like a puppy.

“Really.” She scooted across the sofa and kissed his cheek.

Because he was a guy, he turned his head and found her mouth with his. Not for the first time. He’d kissed her Saturday night, before he dropped her off just in time for her 1:00 a.m. weekend curfew. But that kiss was like any first one, with Dinah, at least, worrying about what he’d think if she touched her tongue to his, or if she wrapped her arm around his neck or shifted more to face him. It was funny, because Dinah had spent all evening—while they sat side by side on the floor in the hall at Miguel’s—thinking about how much she wanted him to kiss her. And she’d looked at his hands, splayed on his thighs, and wondered how they would feel touching her. But when he did bend his head to kiss her…Well, she’d had the panicky feeling that it was coming too soon. She wanted to keep wondering. She knew she was going to be really disappointed if he grabbed her breasts and reached for her zipper while mumbling in her ear, like Toby had when she let him kiss her at a party, that “sex is natural, man.” When she’d pulled away from Toby, he’d asked her with genuine puzzlement, “Why are you so hung up?” Maybe she was, but she didn’t want some guy pushing inside her when she hardly even knew him. And she hated the idea that Will might be like that, just assuming. But he hadn’t assumed anything. That first kiss had been so self-conscious and brief, she’d worried instead that he was turned off and didn’t care if he touched her breasts or not.

But now he’d bought her a Christmas present that told her he’d listened to her and that he liked her. And he was kissing her again, and this time wasn’t nearly as awkward. Their shoulders brushed, and their thighs, but otherwise their mouths were the only connection. The kiss went from gentle to passionate and back again, and by the time he moved his face back an inch or two and they smiled foolishly at each other, Dinah felt incandescent, as if a candle had been lit within her and the light glowed through the translucent layers of her body.

Just like that, she was ready to give up her virginity. She was the last holdout of all her friends. In fact, she might be the last virgin in the junior class at Half Moon Bay High School. Or maybe at the whole high school. She did have hang-ups. But finally, she knew what they were. She’d been waiting. Not for the right time, but for the right guy.

“Hey,” Will said. “We’d better get going. We’ll be late for the movie.”

It took her a moment to remember what their plans for the evening had been. “Oh. Right. This was such a cool present. Thanks.” She kissed his cheek again, then jumped up, took the apron to her bedroom and grabbed her purse. She paused to brush her hair again, checking herself out in the full-length mirror on the back of her door.

She wore men’s shrink-to-fit Levi’s, a Mexican peasant shirt embroidered down the front, sandals and big gold hoops in her ears. Her strawberry-blond hair hung straight and smooth from a center part, reaching to the middle of her back. She looked hip enough not to stand out in the Haight-Ashbury, except she was cleaner than she would be if she was sharing an apartment with ten other people. Dinah had gone to places like that with friends and seen how one big group lived on practically nothing but still somehow had hashish to fill a bong. It seemed like they were passing one around anytime several of them were home, sitting cross-legged in the living room on the mattresses that substituted for furniture. The bedding was always disheveled and grungy. She’d felt uncomfortable and passed the bong on without doing more than pretending to take a draw. She didn’t actually like being stoned. And, despite being antiwar and in favor of loving everyone, some part of her was too materialistic to want to live that way. No, too establishment. If she ever had a boyfriend she really loved, she wouldn’t share him. And she hated being dirty. So maybe she was a pretender, a traitor to her generation.

But Will seemed to like her, didn’t he? He straddled two worlds, too. He told her he’d also gone to antiwar demonstrations, and they’d seen some of the same concerts at the Fillmore Auditorium and Winterland. Only, he was a really good student, and he cared enough about making state in wrestling to cut his hair.

They saw the movie Bullitt, a police drama with Steve McQueen that was really good. Afterward, they stopped for a burger and fries, and talked about the movie and eventually the war and their parents. Will wouldn’t be graduating in June with his class; he’d gotten meningitis when he was a freshman and had been really sick, so he was enough credits short he had to go half-time first semester the next year.

“What a drag!” She couldn’t imagine having to go back after all your friends had tossed their graduation caps in the air and were gone to college and jobs.

“Yeah,” Will said, sounding gloomy, “but the thing is, I don’t know what I’m going to do after graduation anyway. I guess I’ll apply at San Francisco State,” he said, swirling ketchup on his plate with a French fry. “Or I could go to Skyline.”

He was from Pacifica, which was close to Skyline Junior College, so he could easily live at home and take classes there. Dinah lived in El Granada, half an hour farther south along the ocean from San Francisco. If she were going into the city, she’d drive right through Pacifica.

“You don’t sound like that’s what you want to do,” she said, resting her elbows on the table.

“You can tell, huh? The thing is, I like to build.” His face lit with enthusiasm. “I thought about going for a degree in architecture, but I’m not very good at art. I can see what I want to do with wood, but I can’t put it down on paper. Anyway, design, that’s not the same thing as actually building something with your own hands.”

Dinah nodded. She knew exactly what he meant. She did enjoy creating new dishes, but mostly what she loved was the act of cooking. Reading a cookbook wasn’t the same as appreciating the textures of everything from flour, which was puffy and lighter than air, to ginger root, which could be tough, filled with threads and yet bursting with moist sweetness. She found satisfaction in perfecting the techniques to draw out the most flavor, the precision of measurements, the exhilaration when a flash of creativity proved to be genius instead of a gigantic, mouth-puckering mistake and, in the end, from the beauty of the food arranged on the plate. She liked to touch, to mold, to roll out pastry, to chop and stir. Will just liked doing the same things with wood and tile and drywall.

“My parents keep telling me I’m too smart to be a carpenter,” he continued, his expression brooding. “And then there’s the draft.”

“But you don’t have to worry yet, do you?”

He grimaced. “I’ll be nineteen in August. I started kindergarten a year late.”

“Oh.” The realization stole Dinah’s breath. A couple of boys who’d gone to her high school had died in Vietnam. She’d known one. Not well, but enough to be shocked when she heard. Donald had played football, and a girl who’d been in Dinah’s geometry class had gone to the prom with him. He was drafted, sent overseas and killed six weeks later. Dinah was already worrying about her brother. “It’s awful!” she burst out. “What would you be fighting for, anyway?”

“That’s why they have to hold a draft. No one wants to enlist anymore.”

The awful thing with the draft was its unpredictability. How did young men plan their future when they could get drafted anytime? A student deferment was about the only protection, and that was temporary. Everybody knew now how awful it was in Vietnam. Every night, the news was filled with gruesome images. The Tet Offensive had been heavily covered by reporters and cameramen. Supposedly Nixon, just elected, had a plan for ending the war, but nobody under thirty believed that. And now Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy had both been assassinated, silencing their voices. Dinah sometimes felt as if there was no hope.

Now, feeling desperate, Dinah said, “But if you go to college, you’ll be safe.”

Will pushed his plate aside. “Now you sound like my mother.”

It went against the grain, but Dinah stuck to her guns. “Maybe she’s right. If you get drafted, you could die. For something you don’t even believe in.”

“Yeah, but what if the war goes on and on? Being stuck in college…” His face showed his struggle to find the right words. “It would be like treading water. I wouldn’t be going anywhere!”

“At least you’d be alive,” she said passionately.

“I might not get a low draft number.”

“But what if you do?”

“I don’t know!” he almost shouted.

Dinah bit her lip. “I’m sorry. I guess I do sound like your parents. It’s just because the idea scares me.”

He reached across the table and took her hand. “I know. It scares me, too. But it makes me mad that I should have to spend years more in school because of Nixon, even though it’s a waste of time for me.”

She nodded. It didn’t make sense. There must be tens of thousands of guys taking college classes they didn’t even care about, just to keep from having to go to Vietnam. And that was horribly unfair to the ones who couldn’t get into college and win a deferment.

“None of it’s fair,” she said.

He squeezed her hand. “Let’s not worry about it right now. I don’t even have to apply to college until fall. That’s a long time away. The war might be over by then.”

She nodded. “If Nixon starts withdrawing troops, the way he’s talked about, they might not need to keep on with the draft anyway.”

“Right. So let’s forget it.” Will grinned at her. “You want to split a hot-fudge sundae?”

While they were eating it, laughing when their heads bumped as they dueled with plastic spoons for luscious drips of chocolate, Dinah thought of all the things her mother was afraid she did whenever she was out at night. Mom lay awake worrying that she was smoking pot, at least, if not dropping acid or having wild sex. Here she was instead, eating a hot-fudge sundae with a boy who hadn’t even had a drink. How innocent could it get?

Their relationship stayed innocent for a couple of months. Will always drew back when their making out got too hot and heavy, as if…She didn’t know why! Did he think she wasn’t ready? Just because she’d stiffened a couple of times when his hand touched her waistband? She was a virgin! But even though Dinah was nervous, she wanted him to unbutton her jeans and slip his hand inside her panties anyway. She just didn’t know how to tell him.

The night Dinah started lying to her two best friends about her sexual experiences—or, actually, the lack of them—the three girls were having a sleepover at her house. The family room was downstairs from the bedrooms, so they had complete privacy. Christina had run ahead and claimed the sofa, so now she was queening it over Dinah and Susan, who sat on the floor where they’d spread their sleeping bags.

“So, what did you and Will do last night?” Susan asked.

“His parents weren’t home, so we just hung out.” She hadn’t planned to lie, but when she blushed at the remembrance of what she and Will had done, they both got wide-eyed.

“You finally did it?” Christina crowed.

She was too embarrassed to say no. So she nodded, and they both cheered.

“Far out. It’s about time!” Christina exclaimed. A curvy brunette, she’d always been ahead of the other two. She had her first boyfriend when she was thirteen, and lost her virginity when she was fifteen. She always got this rosy glow when she talked about sex. Dinah could tell she really liked doing it.

“You know, we only started going out two months ago,” she argued, knowing it was futile.

Susan, who’d lost her virginity on her sixteenth birthday, gave Dinah a look. “Two months is forever.”

Christina’s eyes widened. “He wasn’t a virgin, was he?”

“Of course not!” Dinah disclaimed, although she started to wonder. He was a really good kisser, but that would explain why he might be shy about going further, too. “Thank goodness. One of us had to know what to do.”

Her closest friend from the time they were in the same kindergarten class, Christina gave her an evil grin. “Haven’t we given you adequate instructions?”

They had, although secondhand descriptions of sex didn’t make it sound very appealing. Which might be one reason, Dinah thought privately, she hadn’t been in any hurry to try it.

The other reason being guys like Toby, who thought sticking his tongue in a girl’s mouth was enough preamble to sticking his dick into her, too. Forget romance or anything approaching tenderness.

Susan moaned, “Wow, bummer! If you’d waited just a few weeks, you could have done it for the first time on your birthday, too. That would have been cool, having something like that in common.”

Her birthday would be perfect, Dinah thought. One of the things she’d wondered was whether Will thought she was too young, but on her birthday she was turning seventeen, and he was still eighteen for a few more months. Officially, only one year older than her until summer.

Immediately scheming, she realized she would never be able to tell her best friends when she did finally have sex with Will, now that she’d lied. No, maybe someday she could, when they were old, like maybe thirty, and still best friends and could laugh about her being totally humiliated to still be a virgin when she was ready to turn seventeen.

Her birthday was on Thursday, but her party was planned for Friday night. Thursday would be for family, and for Will.

Mom invited Will to dinner—by this time, he practically was family—and he was there when Dinah blew out seventeen candles on her cake. Then she opened her presents. Mom and Dad gave her a shirt that was actually okay, and a promise that Mom would take her shopping for a dress to wear to Will’s senior prom.

Stephen was disgusted. “I can’t believe you’re going to the prom. Nobody goes but the cheerleaders and jocks.”

Will didn’t act insulted. “I guess I’m a jock.”

Dinah stuck out her tongue at her brother. “It’ll be fun. You’re just skipping yours because nobody’ll go with you.”

Stephen was a senior at Half Moon Bay High School. It was a little bit irritating, following him through school. Teachers always remembered Stephen, because he had a big mouth. Fortunately, after a couple of weeks they’d forget she was Stephen Gallagher’s little sister, because she was an A student and always good. Nauseatingly good, according to him.

He gave her the new Grateful Dead album she’d been wanting. Will’s present was a paring knife, which brought puzzled looks from her family.

“Will knows I like to cook,” she said. “Chefs have their own sets.”

“Oh.” Her mother smiled. “How thoughtful.”

Her father scowled. Of course, he wouldn’t approve of anyone “encouraging” her in such an unsuitable ambition.

Stephen, of course, looked disgusted. He probably thought Will should have given her some really high-quality LSD, right in front of Mom and Dad.

“Smothers Brothers is on,” Mom said. “If you two would like to watch with us.”

But they were okay with it when Dinah said they thought they’d go out. “I did my algebra problems right after school,” she said, anticipating any objections.

Once they were in Will’s car, she suggested they just go to his house. “Your parents will be bowling, right?”

“Yeah, they won’t be home until nine.” He waggled his eyebrows at her. “We can do anything we want.”

She wriggled over to snuggle against him. “I know what I want to do.”

They kissed, right there in front of her house even though it wasn’t dark yet. Then Will drove faster than usual, slowing down only along Devil’s Slide, the stretch between Montara and Pacifica where Highway 101 had been carved out of a cliff high above the ocean. The sharpest curves always scared Dinah. The guardrail wouldn’t keep a car from plunging over the cliff and onto the rocks where the surf crashed dizzyingly far below.

Will lived in a development where all the houses looked alike, stucco-sided and two stories on small lots mostly landscaped with palm trees, red or shiny white gravel and swaths of ice plant in bloom. Will’s mother had planted bougainvillea in their yard that climbed up to the second-story balcony and smothered the railing with purple flowers. Without that vine, if Will had parked in the driveway of the houses on either side, Dinah would have headed for the front door without noticing they were at the wrong place.

They left his bedroom door ajar so they could hear in case his parents came home early for some reason. Will flopped on the bed and drew her down atop him. They made out, his hands roving up and down her back and even squeezing her butt. But the moment came, as it always did, when he turned his mouth from hers and rolled to one side, so she no longer lay astride him.

“Um, maybe we should…”

She took a deep breath for courage. “Why do you always stop?”

He froze for what had to be ten seconds. Then, voice hoarse, he said, “You don’t want me to?”

Suddenly shy, Dinah shook her head, her hair falling over her face to shield the heat in her cheeks. “Not anymore,” she whispered.

His hand on her upper arm tightened. “You’re sure?”

She nodded. “I am seventeen now.”

“Yeah. Wow.” He sounded dazed. “Have you ever…you know?”

She shook her head again and buried her face against his shoulder. “Have you?”

“Um…yeah. A few times.”

He still hadn’t made a move. Dinah mumbled, “If you don’t want to right now, that’s okay. I mean, I just thought I’d tell you…”

“Not want to? Are you kidding?” He rolled abruptly so that, this time, his upper body pinned her down and she couldn’t avoid looking at him. “I just thought…I mean, you seemed shy. I didn’t want to, like, scare you away.” He tucked her hair behind her ears, his fingers lingering. “I have some condoms down in my car. In the glove compartment. Will you wait here?”

Emboldened, she lifted her head and kissed his jaw. “I’m on the pill.”

“Really?”

“After I met you, I started complaining every month about my cramps. So Mom was okay with it.”

Will was still laughing when his mouth claimed hers. Almost immediately he began to tug at her clothes. She tried to help, and they whacked their noses against each other, both of them laughing again even though they had tears in their eyes, too.

Then he spotted his bedside clock and exclaimed, “Damn! We need to kind of hurry. It’s not that long until my parents get home.”

So they did, shedding clothes and eyeing each other shyly but with rapt interest, kissing deeply, Will thrusting his thickened penis against her. Even after she parted her legs, it took some fumbling on his part to find her opening.

When he pushed, Dinah felt first pressure, then pain. When she stiffened, he went still.

“Are you okay?” He was breathless.

She managed a nod, although her teeth were clenched.

“Because I can stop.”

“Do you want to?”

“No!”

“Then…then just do it!”

So he did, and she felt as if her innards were being ripped open. She panted while he pumped a couple of times, then jerked and collapsed on her. Even when his penis shrank and slipped out of her, she kept hurting.

Wounded and indignant, she thought, Why didn’t anybody tell me it was so bad the first time? Christina and Susan had giggled about losing their virginity! And “J,” the author of The Sensuous Woman—which they’d all passed around and Dinah, at least, had read with a flashlight under the bedcovers so her mother wouldn’t see the book—didn’t say anything about how you had to just lie there rigid the first time and hope sex wasn’t always like that. Because if it was, who’d want to do it again?

“I’m sorry,” Will said. “I didn’t know it would be so hard to push through your, um…”

“What?” she snapped. “Or you wouldn’t have done it?” She rolled away to hide her tears.

He was quiet for a minute. Then, voice low, he said, “I wanted you so much. But maybe you weren’t ready.”

“I was!” she cried, turning back to him, her face wet. “I just didn’t know it would hurt so much!”

His eyes were a rich, dark blue, and so kind she cried harder. “It’s not supposed to hurt ever again.” Then he said, “Oh, crap!” and jackknifed to a sitting position.

Dinah heard it, too, the sound of the garage door being opened. “Oh, God, I’m a mess!”

She jumped up, grabbed her clothes and raced down the hall for the bathroom. There she cleaned herself up, got dressed and washed her face over and over. While using a brush she found in a drawer to smooth her hair, she stared at herself in the mirror in despair. Her face was still blotchy, her nose red and her eyes puffy. But she couldn’t stay in here forever!

Finally she just walked out. Will was already in the living room, talking to his parents like nothing was any different. Glancing over his shoulder at her as she came down the hall, he said, “I’d better take Dinah home.”

At the sight of him, lanky and reassuring and, oh, just Will, her eyes welled with tears again.

“I’m sorry,” she said to his mom and dad. Inspiration came to her. “I just…I heard this guy I knew in school was hurt really badly in Vietnam. And I was telling Will, and…” She fled back to the bathroom for a tissue.

When she came back out, they were really nice. That made her feel guilty for lying to them, so she cried again once she and Will were in his car driving away from the house.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me!” She mopped her tears.

“Do you wish we hadn’t made love?”

“No! That’s not it.”

But it was why she couldn’t seem to stop crying, Dinah realized. She had this huge iron cauldron of emotions bubbling inside her, and it was hard to separate one from another. She closed her eyes and imagined herself cooking a stew, skimming one emotion after another from the top. Disillusionment, because the experience had been pretty awful. And mixed in like pepper, stinging, was some fear that it had been such a comedown for Will, he wouldn’t want to be with her anymore.

In her mind, she kept skimming, trying to identify fleeting whiffs of emotion. Despite the tears, she felt exhilaration because she’d done it and she wasn’t a virgin anymore. Guilt because she had to hide the fact that she was a woman from her mother, who was living in the fifties or maybe even the forties and really, really thought her daughter might wait until her wedding night. And sadness, because Dinah couldn’t talk to anyone, not her mom and not her two best friends. She felt grief, too, as if she’d lost something meaningful although she didn’t know what that was.

“I’m a mess,” she said aloud.

Will took his hand off the steering wheel to clasp hers. “Yeah, but I love you anyway.”

“Do you?” She searched his face. “I mean, really? You’re not disappointed in me?”

He gave her a smile of such sweetness, it pierced her heart. “That’s insane! Why would I be disappointed? You chose me to be the first guy ever. That’s, like, the most amazing gift.”

“Oh.” Something eased inside. “Next time will be different.”

“Yeah.” He grinned at her. “You’ll see.”

She pictured his body, even skinnier than he looked in clothes, but also the jut of his erection, not skinny at all, and actually felt a buttery-soft melting low in her belly.

He pulled up in front of her house. She scooted over, kissed him quickly and whispered, “I can hardly wait to find out,” then jumped from the car, slammed the door and raced up her driveway.

Chapter 2

As Will put away the last plates and hung up the wet dishtowel, his mother let the water drain out of the sink and turned to him with an especially bright smile he knew was fake.

“So, do you and Dinah have plans tonight?”

Wary, he shrugged. “We’ll probably just hang out. Maybe go over to Miguel’s. Some guys are jamming tonight.”

She gave a delicate shudder. “It’ll be a wonder if any of you have any hearing left by the time you’re thirty.”

Will rolled his eyes. Like anybody worried about what would happen when they were thirty!

“Didn’t you see Dinah last night?” his mother asked. “You two seem to get together every day.”

“So?” He stared back at her, not giving an inch. “It’s summer.”

“But you have to get up so early for work. You look tired, honey. Why don’t you stay home tonight and get a good night’s sleep?”

Aching to escape, he repeated, “It’s summer. I’m supposed to be having fun.”

“You’re supposed to be working and saving up for college.”

“I am working, and saving. Does that mean I can’t do anything else?”

“I’m not saying that.” She came to him and smiled, patting his cheek, oblivious to how he stiffened. “But you have other friends. It doesn’t seem like you ever see them anymore. What about Alan? What’s he up to these days?”

“Hanging out with his girlfriend.”

“Now, don’t sound so testy,” she admonished. “You know your father and I think the world of Dinah—she’s such a nice girl. But we worry that you’re getting too serious about each other, considering you’re only nineteen and still have college ahead of you before you can even consider getting married.”

Frustration buffeted him. He took a step back from her. “College?” His voice was too loud, and he saw her eyes widen. “What about the draft? Have you forgotten that? They’re saying they might get rid of the student deferment. You know, I might have to go to Vietnam. I might come home in a body bag. So excuse me if I want to live a little first, okay?”

He walked out, his stomach churning. His parents lived in some pretend world where nice boys and girls followed the life plan laid out for them and didn’t have to worry about shit like getting sent involuntarily overseas to shoot women and babies in little villages carved out of the jungle. They needed to get a clue.

With it being August now, the late afternoon was warm. Most days, fog massed offshore, ready to roll in by four o’clock, but today the sky stayed clear. When he picked Dinah up, he said, “Do you really want to go to Miguel’s? My mom was hassling me, and I don’t feel like a party.”

Dinah smiled at him, her eyes soft, and shook her head. Her hair, almost reaching her waist now, shimmered like a length of satin. She had the prettiest hair he’d ever seen, the color between moonlight-blond and pale peach. She had a redhead’s freckles, too, but like her hair they were pale, scattered across her nose and cheeks, and on her chest. In contrast her stomach and breasts were creamy white, and the freckles she said she had on her shoulders and legs were lost in the tan she’d acquired from lifeguarding all summer at the high school swimming pool.

“Let’s go over to the Point,” she suggested. “We can just walk on the beach.”

The Point was a finger of land that jutted at an angle, forming a natural bay that had been further enclosed with a stone breakwater to shelter fishing boats. A military radar dish dominated the high wedge of land, but a rutted dirt road allowed local access to the wild stretch of beach on the other side.

“Why don’t you grab a blanket and some matches,” he suggested. “Maybe we can have a fire later.”

Will’s was the only car when they reached the top and were able to see the Pacific Ocean stretching onto the curve of the horizon and farther. They had to hike down a switchbacking trail to reach the beach below, where driftwood flung ashore by winter storms nestled against the cliff. The waves surged in a rhythm that felt eternal.

Not talking much, Will and Dinah walked along the pebbly beach until they found a spot between the water-worn stump of a giant tree and a crisscross of silver-gray logs. He spread the blanket there, and they lay quietly, her head on his shoulder, watching the sun sink toward the horizon.

It was no more than a fiery orange half circle when Dinah asked, “What was your mother hassling you about?”

“College. Filling out applications. Saving money to pay tuition.” He was silent for a moment. “She thinks we’re seeing too much of each other. She doesn’t understand.”

Her hand found his and squeezed. “That our generation knows we may not have forever, the way they thought they did.”

“There could be a nuclear war tomorrow,” he agreed. “We might only have today.”

She turned onto her side to face him. “Then I’m glad I’m with you.”

“I need you,” he said simply, and cupped her cheek, drawing her down until their lips met.

They made love there, as vivid color spread across the horizon and then faded, as darkness settled and made their faces indistinct to each other. Touch alone was enough. In the last months, they’d become as familiar with each other’s bodies as they were with their own. Tonight especially they moved in harmony, the joining so sweet, Will almost cried. They crested together, their hands clasped, his face in her silken hair, her sigh given to the crook of his neck.

Afterward, as they lay in each other’s arms, Dinah asked in a low voice, “Do you really wish you were done with school?”

He nodded. “But I guess I’m glad right now that I’m not, too. You know?”

“College will give you time. The peace talks have to go somewhere. They just have to!”

He didn’t say anything. He felt her trying to make out his expression in the dark, but finally she jumped up. “Let’s build a fire.”

They pulled on their clothes, then tugged apart a small shelter someone had built nearby, piling the pieces. Along with the matches, Dinah had brought the day’s newspaper. He crumpled the sheets, remembering the headlines about U.S. bombers in Laos. Vietnam and the war felt so distant, unreal, and yet loomed over his life as terrifyingly as the monster he’d been sure lived in his closet when he was a kid.

It occurred to him that then, as now, his parents had tried to banish his fears by insisting the monster didn’t exist. They’d been right about the childhood bogeyman, although the tactic hadn’t made him less afraid, but this time, they were wrong and unwilling to admit it. His dad was proud to have served in World War II, and wouldn’t let himself see that this war was different.

Dinah lit the match, and they stood in awe as their bonfire caught, crackling and shooting flames toward the black sky.

Telling himself his eyes were burning because of the heat, Will pulled her up against him. “I love you,” he whispered.

Her smile was glorious. “I love you, too.” If she saw tears on his cheeks, she didn’t say anything, only kissed him and held on to him as tightly as he held her.

The Paris peace talks went nowhere. The newspapers reported atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers at a village called My Lai. Some people denied that American boys could have done anything like that, while others wondered aloud whether such horrors might be more widespread than just the one instance.

President Nixon talked about a “Vietnamization” program that would hand over responsibility for protecting South Vietnam to their own soldiers, but that would require training them first. Will and Dinah went together to the Vietnam Moratorium in San Francisco, part of a nationwide protest held on October 15th. Supposedly a million Americans, including fifty members of Congress, participated in the rallies and vigils across the country. In response, Nixon announced that he planned to withdraw American troops, but it would be on his own secret timetable.

And instead of ending the draft and going to an all-volunteer army, Congress gave him the authority to institute a draft “lottery” system. Before, men could be called up anytime they were needed until they turned twenty-six. The idea was to end uncertainty. It was hard for guys to start a career or plan to buy a house when they didn’t know if they’d have to serve or not. Now only nineteen-year-olds would be subject to the draft, each possible birthdate to be drawn and randomly assigned a number from 1 to 365. The lower the number, the greater the chance of being inducted. The day you were born would determine whether you went to Vietnam or not.

So, once the lottery was held, Will would have a good idea one way or the other. Either he’d have a low number and be subject to the draft, or he’d get a high one and be able to go ahead with his life. Rumor had it that the bottom third were likely to be called up to serve, which meant the biggest uncertainty would be for guys whose birthday drew a number such as 125. They might get a draft notice, or they might squeak by, depending on whether their local draft board met its quota or not.

That fall semester, Will was taking classes at the high school only in the mornings, and working afternoons for the same local contractor who’d given him summer jobs the past couple of years. On December first, the results of the lottery for guys born in 1950 would be announced. The numbers had been drawn, Will had read, from the same glass fishbowl used for the World War II lottery.

Three of the guys on Will’s construction crew were nineteen and therefore subject to the draft. The foreman said nothing when the beat of hammers ceased and everyone listened to the dry voice coming from the portable radio.

Guys born September 14th had “won” the lottery and were number 1.

“Poor bastards,” someone muttered.

Jose Guillen crossed himself when the announcer reached his birthday. February 24th, number 236. Pump of the fist—his life was his again. The rest of the crew slapped him on the back, congratulating him.

Richie Johansen wasn’t as lucky. Number 103. The chances were pretty good he’d get drafted, but probably not right away. Richie would spend the year waiting, his heart pounding every time the mail came. Some said anyone with a number around one hundred would probably get an induction notice by late summer of 1970.

A couple of guys got back to work, hammering studs on an interior wall of the house they were roughing in.

The announcer reached August, and Will shouted, “Will you shut up?”

Silence. Even though he was sweating, a chill crept over Will’s skin. If not for the audience, he’d have vomited.

He could be celebrating in a couple of minutes, like Jose. Yeah. It could happen. Two hundred or above. That’s all he asked.

August 29th, number 61. August 30th, number 333.

A raw sound escaped his throat. Here it was. His future.

“August thirty-first, number eleven.”

He stood, unmoving, slow to comprehend.

“Bummer,” one of the guys whispered.

“September first, two hundred twenty-five.”

Eleven? One day different either way, and he’d have been safe, but because his mother went into labor on August 31st, he was screwed?

When at last he looked around, gazes slid away from him.

“Get back to work!” the foreman yelled. He set a hand on Will’s shoulder. “You need to take the rest of the day off, kid?”

Will shook his head. “I’m okay.”

It was a lie. Later, he couldn’t remember a single thing he did. When they laid off at five, he felt like a husk of himself, as if he’d died inside. He got in his car and drove home, and he didn’t remember that, either.

Dinah’s car was in front of his house. His mom’s was in the driveway, even though she didn’t usually get home from her job at the assessor’s office until closer to six.

Will didn’t even wonder if they knew. He just parked and trudged up the driveway and the front steps.

The moment he opened the door, Dinah flew to wrap her arms around him.

“Will, I heard! Thank goodness you’ll have a student deferment.”

He just stood there, unable to lift his arms to respond to her embrace, not even wondering if she’d just stood up and walked out of class.

His mother hovered behind his girlfriend, her expression anxious. “Is it true? You’re number eleven?”

It took enormous effort to nod his head. The effect was peculiar, as if he were outside himself, watching.

“Someone at work told me she’d heard rumors they’re thinking of ending student deferment,” his mom said. “But I can’t believe, once you’re in school…”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I never applied.”

Talking right over him, his mother continued, “Ending the deferment for kids to be drafted next year is one thing, but it’s unlikely the government would let boys start and then yank them out of class. If you concentrate on getting tip-top grades…”

But Dinah, she’d heard. He could tell, because she went so still, she had to have quit breathing.

At last, she pushed back and interrupted his mother as if she weren’t talking. “You what?”

His voice was completely dull. “I didn’t want to go to college. I never turned in my application.”

“But I gave you a check for the fee!” His mother stared at him in complete bewilderment. “I assumed they just didn’t cash it until they sent out acceptance letters.” Her face crinkled. “But you were accepted. I’m sure you said…”

He just kept shaking his head. “I let you think whatever you wanted.”

The expression of shock and horror on the two women’s faces might have seemed comical under other circumstances, so alike did they momentarily look.

But Dinah’s transformed to outrage, and she crossed her arms in front of her. “How could you?”

“It was my decision,” he said stubbornly.

“But you’re not the only one affected. How do you think I feel? And your mom and dad?”

He heard himself give an ugly laugh. “Dad’ll be proud if I go to Vietnam. He served, so I should, too. He’d probably have been embarrassed to admit to his friends that his kid was hiding behind a student deferment.”

“That’s not true!” his mother protested. “He loves you.”

Tears spurting in her eyes, Dinah cried, “I thought you loved me! But you lied to me!”

“I never lied….”

“You let me think you’d applied to S.F. State, too. Why?”

“Because you took my parents’ side!” Will yelled. “You refused to understand!”

She looked at him as if he was incredibly stupid. “That you could die? Yeah, I got that. Only, now I’m starting to see that maybe you want to die so we all feel guilty. Well, I’m not going to!”

Sobbing, she raced past him and out the door. He turned to take a step after her, but the door slammed in his face and within moments, he heard the roar of her car’s engine.

Behind him, his mother said, “Dinah is absolutely right, Will O’Keefe!” Her voice sounded thick, and he turned to see tears welling from her eyes. “How could you?”

She walked away from him, too, closing her bedroom door firmly shut behind her.

Will no longer felt like a husk hollowed out by despair. Too many emotions raged in him now, including anger that they didn’t feel sorry for him. Him! He was the one who would be shipped halfway around the world to become a soldier in a war he didn’t believe in.

But mostly, he felt shock. Because he’d never really believed he would be drafted. The odds were two to one against it, and he’d always been lucky. He’d thought his parents were using the threat of the draft to pressure him into doing what they thought he should do with his life.

Alone in the living room, he grappled with the concept that maybe they really had been scared. That maybe Dinah had been, too.

And that maybe she was right, and he’d been too wrapped in self-pity to think about anyone but himself.

Two days later, Will was waiting outside when Dinah got off work, and of course she had to forgive him right away.

He sat there in the car, face ravaged, and said, “This sounds unbelievably stupid, but I really thought I’d get a high number.” His self-mocking tone could have scored glass. “Nothing really bad could happen to me, right? I talked about being scared of the draft, but I wasn’t. Not down deep.” He touched a fist to his stomach. “I was convinced my parents were using the threat of the draft to make me go to college.”

“But what about me?” Dinah asked. She couldn’t tear her gaze from his hands, which were locked around the steering wheel of the car although he hadn’t even turned the engine on. They were tanned. Scabs, new and healing, made them the hands of a working man. But what got to her was that his knuckles were white, he was gripping that wheel so tight. As if…as if he was holding on to the wheel of his old Chevy for dear life.

He didn’t answer for a long minute. When he did, he spoke haltingly. “I knew that…well, that you were scared. So I just…pretended, you know, that you were just way more establishment than you talked, and you wanted your boyfriend in college. Because if I hadn’t believed that…” He stopped.

“You might have really been scared, too,” she whispered.

He turned to her, his eyes anguished. “God, Dinah. I am scared. What am I going to do?”

“You could go underground. Or 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 wanted to believe he was right, but she read in the paper about how the government was spying on everybody who participated in any kind of antiwar protest, and that didn’t seem to her the action of an administration committed to ending the war and healing the country. And even though troop levels were declining, CBS News reported there were still 475,200 U.S. military personnel left in Vietnam at the end of 1969. With one-year enlistments, hundreds of thousands of those must need replacements, and the draft had been held for a reason.

She didn’t say that aloud to his mother, though, or in her letters to Will. As it turned out, she didn’t need to. A hastily scribbled note arrived, telling her his battalion was shipping out.

Dinah kept writing almost every day. She was afraid that her day-to-day news must seem pedestrian to him, but Will assured her that wasn’t true. So she hid her worries and continued to write about classes, local gossip and her own struggle with her parents over her future.

We settled on a compromise, she wrote, pausing with her pen above the paper as she remembered the last in a long line of scenes. Beside her burned a tall, twisted candle, the first she’d lit to measure the months until Will would be home, filling her room with a sweet, fruity fragrance that reminded her of Grape Nehi.

The latest scene had taken place over the dinner table. It seemed as if half the time Dinah and her mother ended up silently scraping most of the food into the garbage. Nobody had much appetite when they were fighting. If she and her father weren’t clashing, then Stephen and he were. They fought over Stephen’s hair, his grades, his friends, his music. Dinah, at least, was still torn between the desire to please her parents and her outrage at the world her generation would inherit. Her brother was far more outspoken and unapologetic about his rebellion.

But Stephen hadn’t been home for dinner tonight. Lucky her, she had her father’s full attention. Face apoplectic, he’d slammed his fist onto the table, making dishes rattle. “You’re going to college and that’s final!”

Dinah’s heart was pounding so hard she could hardly breathe, but she kept looking at him with outward calm and said, “What if I don’t?”

Her mother hastily interceded. “Dinah, you have your whole lifetime ahead of you! We simply want to make sure you have the grounding you need to succeed. You’re too good a student to quit now….”

“If you don’t go, you’ve had the last penny of support from us,” her father roared.

“Are you going to tell me what I have to major in, too?” she yelled back. “What if I go for Women’s Studies?”

“You know that’s not…” her mother started to say.

He bellowed some more. Dinah jumped up and fled to her room, so upset she was ready to throw some clothes in a bag and take off. Susan’s and Christina’s parents were too conventional to let her stay with them, but she bet Monique’s mom wouldn’t care if she moved in until graduation. She could get a part-time job to supplement her summer’s earnings and help buy groceries.

She’d actually started grabbing clothes from a drawer when there was a soft knock on her door.

“Who is it?”

“May I come in?” her mother asked.

After a moment she sank down onto the bed, hugging an armful of shirts to her chest. “It’s your house.”

Opening the door, her mother said mildly, “I’ve always respected your right to privacy.”

Tears prickled in Dinah’s eyes. “I know you have.”

“May I sit down?”

She nodded.

They sat side by side for a long moment.

“Honey, I know you’re sure cooking is what you want to do with your life. Your dad…well, he just doesn’t see it as a profession. He thinks short-order cook.”

She rolled her eyes. “If he’d just educate himself…”

“Let me say my piece. You’re seventeen…. Yes, almost eighteen.” She waited while Dinah started to protest what she knew was coming—you’re too young to make smart decisions for yourself, blah, blah, blah— then subsided. Mom started just as she’d anticipated. “We all think we know what’s best when we’re your age, but most of us find out somewhere along the way that we were wrong.”

There was something just a little sad in her mother’s voice that made Dinah ask tentatively, “Did you?”

“If you mean, do I wish I hadn’t married your father, no.” She laughed a little. “Despite his occasional bullheadedness. But I hate my job, and I hate knowing I could do better than the men I work for. So yes. I was sure at eighteen that all I wanted to do was get married and have a family. Now I wish I’d gotten an education first. I wish I’d majored in business. I’m thinking about starting to take some classes.”

“Really?” Dinah asked in surprise. She was ashamed to realize that her mother’s grumbles about her job had just been background noise to her. She hadn’t really listened. “That’s great!” she said. “Is Daddy okay with it?”

“He’s the one who’s been encouraging me. It’s taken me a few years to see he’s right.”

Dinah blinked. “Daddy?” Her father was willing to surrender some of his creature comforts, maybe even some income if Mom cut back to part-time, so that she could find more personal satisfaction in what she did?

Seeing how stunned Dinah looked, her mother shook her head. “You don’t listen to him any more than he does to you. You’re both bullheaded.” She hesitated. “Whether you’re willing to see it or not, the truth is, he wants what’s best for you. He’s just convinced he knows better than you what that is.”

Dinah grimaced. “I noticed.”

“You and Will both talk as if college is like being on a chain gang. Everybody I know who went thinks those four years were the best years of their lives.”

“But I don’t want to be a teacher, or…or…”

“Most of what you learn in college isn’t vocational. Would it be so awful to develop analytical skills, or become a better writer? Maybe more informed about world events?”

“I’ve been in school for thirteen years.”

“College isn’t like high school. And there’s no reason, even if you go to a state school, you couldn’t live in the dorm. You’d be independent, without actually having to pay the bills or cook and clean.”

She’d thought her parents would expect her to commute to classes to save money. That it would be another four years just like high school.

Still…it would be four more years.

She said slowly, “What if we made a deal? What if I agree to go to college for two years, and then if I’m still sure I want to go to culinary school instead, you and Daddy would let me do that?”

There was a moment of silence.

Excited by her idea, she continued, “I’d be twenty then, not eighteen. You’d been married a whole year by the time you were twenty. So Daddy couldn’t argue that I wasn’t ready to decide what I wanted to do with my life.”

“No, he couldn’t, could he?” her mother murmured.

“Doesn’t that seem fair?” She held her breath, waiting for an answer.

“Yes.” Her mother nodded, at first a small bob of her head, then a more decisive dip. “Yes. I’ll talk to your father. But it sounds like a deal to me.”

Dinah wrote to Will about the situation.

Daddy agreed, so I’ve applied to both San Francisco State and the University of San Francisco. My parents winced at that, because tuition is so high at private colleges, but I’ve applied for a bunch of scholarships, too. At least I know getting into S.F. State won’t be a problem. I don’t want to have to go farther away, even to Davis or Chico. I want to be here once you come home.

It was a whole month before she heard back from him, and it didn’t sound as if he’d gotten that letter from her yet, because he referred only to things she’d said earlier.

Flying in, I thought Vietnam was beautiful. Lush and green, laced with brown rivers, these perfect squares of rice paddies and rubber plantations laid out like checkerboards. But, man, it’s hot here. By the time we carried our duffel bags across the tarmac to the truck, we were all dripping wet, it’s that humid. And it stinks. I mean, the whole country, as far as I can tell. I keep asking guys who’ve been here for a while, and they say it’s untreated sewage and rotting vegetation and who the hell knows what else, but this one guy who is on his third tour in-country says it’s death. Bodies rotting. Seems to me he’s enjoying trying to scare us, like an older camper telling ghost stories, but it made my hair stand on end, I gotta tell you.

Dinah called Will’s mother right away to tell her she’d gotten a letter, but when she read it out loud, she left out that last part. She skipped right from “who the hell knows what else” to his next paragraph, where he told about landing at Bien Hoa and riding in a convoy past shacks of corrugated tin and skinny children chasing the trucks and begging.

Man, people tell me not to wish for the rainy season, but the dust has us dirty all the time right now. You couldn’t recognize me. The dirt here is red, and when you sweat—all the time—it sticks to you. I already feel like my skin is stained with it.

His letters for the next couple of months were like that. He described water buffalo, enormous beasts with rings in their noses. Even small children seemed to handle their family buffalo with ease, as if they were pets.

Although I don’t think the buffaloes like Americans. Every time I see one, it eyes me and snorts.

She laughed at that, and at his claim that the rats over there were as big as terriers. She didn’t laugh when he wrote about voracious mosquitoes or leeches or centipedes, but she kept thinking, As long as a few bug bites are the worst thing he has to worry about.

But she couldn’t seem to forget that first letter he’d written from “in-country,” and two things he’d said.

When we got off the airplane, guys who were heading home were waiting to board. They looked so much older than us, even though they’d only been here a year. It was their eyes, I think. They looked as if they knew things I don’t want to know.

There was that, and then there was the smell.

It’s death.

After the things she saw on TV, she believed it.

After even a couple of months in ’Nam, Will felt himself changing. It wasn’t as bad here as it had been a year or two before, he knew that, but it was bad enough. Not for everyone—guys with any pull at all got themselves assigned to support and stayed put in Saigon or Cu Chi, where the living was good. There were officers’ clubs, enlisted clubs, swimming pools. Will had heard of one guy who was drafted, too, only somebody found out he had his lifeguard certification and now he was putting in his year as a lifeguard at a base swimming pool. Will spent his days guarding engineers sweeping the roads for mines, and his nights, after what sleep he could snatch, stumbling through the jungle and splashing through rice paddies on some kind of patrol looking for the enemy, scared the whole time. Where was the justice in that?

Being bitter wasn’t new. Having a good reason for it was. Lying on his cot trying to sleep but thinking about home instead, he was embarrassed about how much he’d resented his parents and for so little reason.

He was hardening. Not in ways he liked or was proud of, but he didn’t think he’d have survived if he’d stayed as naive as he’d been, or as affected by the sight of suffering and death. Man, even in Cu Chi, soldiers smoked weed right in front of God and their superiors, shot up heroin with little more discretion, refused orders and bought sex with local prostitutes for a couple of bucks. Yeah, Ma, life here is a little slice of America.

What bothered him most was that now he could look at dead bodies lying beside the road and feel nothing. He’d quit wondering what Vietnam had been like back before so many villages had been bombed or huge stretches of the landscape had been denuded by napalm. He’d discovered quickly that you didn’t want to get to be really good friends even with your fellow soldiers. There was an intense closeness, sure; when a helicopter dropped off six or seven of you somewhere in the darkness, man, you might as well all have been attached by umbilical cords. You breathed together, you listened together, you stuck together. Nobody was cocky at night. Charlie was better in the dark than American soldiers were. Nobody disputed that.

But the other guys got themselves killed sometimes, and Will found he couldn’t let himself care so much it paralyzed him.

Mines and booby traps were the big threats. If there were any big NVA concentrations out there, Will’s company never found them, though that was the stated goal of the nighttime forays. He was in a few firefights, where branches around his head exploded and he emptied the magazine of his M-16 into the woods where he saw answering flashes of fire from enemy weapons. But most of the deaths happened when someone stumbled over a trip wire or when the engineers missed a mine buried in the road that went off when the next truck rattled over it. The first time Will saw a guy get his legs blown off, he lost it. But it got so he was just so damn grateful he wasn’t the one to have put his foot wrong, he didn’t waste the energy mourning the guy who had. No, that didn’t make him proud.

One of the things that got to him was the fact that the U.S. was making no headway. Guys were dying, but for what? The U.S. never seemed to gain a foot of ground. The NVA melted away when American or South Vietnamese soldiers entered a village and reappeared as soon as they were gone. At first when he went out, he didn’t even know where he was going, but after a couple of months Will began to realize he was seeing the same stretches of river, the same rubber plantations, the same banana trees, over and over. They weren’t fighting a concrete war that was earning them anything to write home about. And nobody thought the South Vietnamese troops, to whom they were gradually handing over responsibility, were going to be able to hold back the North Vietnamese.

Then word came down: they were going into Cambodia. Everyone knew the Vietcong supply lines passed through Cambodia, and supposedly a sizeable chunk of the North Vietnamese Army lurked there. Will was scared but also exhilarated. Finally, they were going to do something meaningful.

On April 29th the combined U.S. and South Vietnamese force pushed across the border. The first camps Will’s platoon found were deserted. They felt like ghost towns. He had the uneasy feeling that eyes watched from the surrounding jungle.

They damn near stumbled over a camp hidden in thick bamboo and found pots still cooking over fires.

“Don’t touch anything!” the lieutenant reminded them sharply.

“Yeah, you think we’re stupid?” McAlister muttered. They’d been warned that everything would be booby-trapped.

Pretending not to hear, the lieutenant signaled them. “Let’s keep moving.”

The bamboo stirred as they started back into it. Will wouldn’t have wanted to be point. Even moving behind others in his platoon, he watched carefully where he put his feet.

The long whistle of incoming mortar gave them a split-second warning. Will threw himself flat onto the ground and scrabbled with his hands as if he could dig himself into the earth. He heard obscenities and prayers all around him and didn’t know if some of them were coming from him. Rounds shredded the bamboo above him. He heard grunts and screams but didn’t dare lift his head. Then the rat-a-tat of a machine gun firing, and Emilio Ramirez, the one guy he could see, jerked and flopped like Raggedy Andy, blood wetting his uniform and the ground.

That was too much. Will brought up his M-16 and opened fire on full automatic. Rock and roll, the soldiers called it, just emptying at the berms he could see ahead now that the bamboo was cleared.

“Back, back!” voices called out.

He crawled to Ramirez and pulled him along as he went, rounds exploding around them. Medics met him, but they were shaking their heads within seconds. He wasn’t surprised, but he couldn’t have left Ramirez there.

“You hurt?” they asked. “Where are you hit?”

He looked down in surprise and saw that he was soaked in blood. “I don’t think so. I don’t know.”

Helicopters roared overhead.

They looked him over and decided the blood was Ramirez’s. He ran to help load wounded into the medevac helicopter.

In the wake of the gunships, they took the NVA position, but by that time the enemy soldiers had fled, leaving only their dead and a few wounded behind.

The whole campaign ended ingloriously, with no major victory to claim.

Will wrote about it to Dinah, and in her next letter she told him that the nation had arisen in protest when Nixon announced the incursion into Cambodia:

He didn’t even have the guts to call it an invasion. College students across the country are rising to demand the end of this unjust war. I’ve been joining the protests. When I told my parents I wasn’t going to classes, they didn’t say a word. That tells you how deep the outrage goes, when even their generation no longer speaks up in the president’s defense. We’ll bring you home, Will. I promise we will.

In May, she told him about the Kent State shooting, students gunned down in cold blood by National Guard soldiers. He already knew about it, and had seen the photograph of the girl kneeling over a prone body screaming in shock and disbelief.

Dinah sent him a photo of herself about then, surrounded by other protesters at some demonstration. She had changed. Her face was thinner, more determined. She wore an embroidered band around her head, ragged bell-bottom jeans and a short jacket painted with a crude peace symbol. The guy next to her carried a sign that said Stop Killing Babies.

Is that what she thinks we’re doing? Will asked himself in shock. There were stories, sure, and once he’d helped burn the hootches in a village that had been harboring Vietcong, but nobody bayoneted babies. He hated remembering the terror on the faces of villagers they’d herded out before lighting the straw roofs, but they’d made a choice.

He’d been antiwar himself before he came. Now, he didn’t like knowing that part of the reason the troops were frozen in never-never land was that people back home weren’t giving them the support they needed to actually win. Whether the war was right or wrong no longer seemed to matter. Widely reported demonstrations gave the North Vietnamese hope. They could keep melting away. Every time bombing was halted, the outcome turned further their way. All they had to do was outlast American will. In the end, Vietnam would be theirs. Everyone here knew it. And that meant that tens of thousands of American soldiers had died for nothing. Whatever he’d thought or believed before he came, Will had a fire in his belly now when he read about the demonstrators who weren’t just demanding the end to the war, they were implying that he and every other guy who’d come hadn’t had the guts to refuse, or else they’d enlisted or accepted induction so they could rape women and kill babies.

And his girlfriend was one of them. She was using him as an excuse. She was doing it for him, not thinking that he might be more likely to come home in a body bag if she made it more dangerous for him here.

He didn’t know how he felt about the increasingly strident tone of her letters or the things she was telling him. Eight members of Congress had attended an antiwar rally in D.C. Will’s country had sent him here to serve, and now even members of Congress were saying his presence was wrong. He was confused enough that he kept writing about day-to-day stuff, like the red ants or the ice-cold Cokes they’d been able to buy from Vietnamese peddlers, but not about how angry he had begun to feel at her lack of support.

That month the monsoons arrived, adding new miseries to everyday existence. Storms hit with a ferocity Will had never seen before, drenching soldiers. To cross rice paddies they’d once walked through now required boats or a willingness to swim. Under fire one night, Will had to spend a night in a foxhole, and with the rain hammering down he was chest deep in water by morning. The mosquitoes thrived, and snakes wriggled by in thick streams of water. Will and the other soldiers improvised all kinds of folk remedies to make the leeches drop from their flesh. The one blessing brought by the incessant rains was some surcease in skirmishes.

The rains continued into September. He’d now become a short-timer. Nobody wanted to die, but the idea of dying when you only had months or weeks or days to go seemed worse. He started to think, Maybe I’ll survive, and that was dangerous, so he took to wearing his flak jacket again, discarded an eon ago because the damn thing was so heavy it was all but unwearable in this climate. When he walked by to the latrine or grabbed grub at dinner, guys took to calling after him, “Hey, San Francisco! Gotta wear flowers in your hair when you go home.” At first he laughed, but it began to bug him. Hippies wore flowers in their hair, not vets like him. He started wondering if when he eventually stepped off the airplane he’d feel like a stranger in a strange land, instead of embracing a sense of homecoming.

He had some hope when Dinah told him about the amendment that senators McGovern, Hatfield and others introduced that demanded the withdrawal of all U.S. troops by the end of the year. It might not help him—his enlistment would be up early in January anyway—but at least it would all be over. Everyone would come home, not just him.

But then Dinah wrote him that the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment was defeated in the Senate. The Paris peace talks might as well not be happening. Maybe it would never end.

He asked her whether her brother had registered for the draft and she wrote back:

Stephen’s refusing, and my dad doesn’t know how to feel. He doesn’t like the idea of defying our government, but he doesn’t want Stephen to serve in such a pointless, inhumane war, either.

Maybe he was getting sensitive, but Will didn’t know how he could not feel insulted by lines like that. Stephen wasn’t going, so why had he?

Eventually her brother did register, according to Dinah, but only after insisting that if he drew a low number he was running to Canada. Of course he didn’t have to; Stephen got number 245, she wrote triumphantly. Now he could brag, Will thought cynically, that he wouldn’t have gone, without actually having to make a sacrifice.

Will figured he was down to five weeks—man, was there any chance he’d get shipped out before Christmas? Get to finish out the last couple weeks of his enlistment at Fort Ord?—when he was ordered out on a sweep and search. Seven guys were airlifted to look for NVA activity in a wooded area past a village that had already been burned to the ground. Will, who recognized the valley, took point, something he hated. It was hard to stay aware of their surroundings and also keep his eyes fixed on the ground for booby traps or mines. Is that grass or wire? Why is a stick lying in the middle of the path? They all knew about stick mines, in which the piece of wood was attached to a mine with a trigger device. Step over it? On it? Nudge it aside? Take long strides? Short? Is it better to stay on a path that might have been mined, or beat through the vegetation and make so damn much racket Charlie would hear them a mile away and prepare an ambush?

One second he was walking, worrying, scanning the woods, scanning the dirt in front of him. The next, there was a clap like thunder, and the explosion picked him up, flung him forward and then slammed him to the ground. He felt pain everywhere, like fire ants running over him, biting, but the most excruciating was in his ears. Screams were far off, and he lay with his face in the dirt, too confused to grasp what was happening.

Somebody shook his arm. “O’Keefe? Goddamn it, O’Keefe? Hang in there, we’ve got a medevac coming.” Even the voice was muffled, like real crappy reception on the radio.

He rolled to the side and shoved himself to his knees. No idea how much time had passed. Five minutes? An hour? His brain was settling like a snow globe after you quit shaking it. A mine. It had to have been a mine. Shit. Had he triggered it? That last stick in the path? He’d stepped over it…. No, he realized, mind still working real slowly, if he’d triggered it, he probably wouldn’t be able to kneel.

Oh, God, God. Roaring like a wounded water buffalo, he swung around to see the men who’d been walking behind him. The blood. God, God, the blood. That had to be Van Gorder who no longer had legs, and who was that behind him? He couldn’t be sure, because the soldier no longer had a face and was clearly dead. Others were wounded; the cries were theirs.

Will groaned and flung himself to the side, puking up everything in his gut.

Shit, yeah, he’d stepped over the stick. But Van Gorder hadn’t. And Will was responsible. He’d led them to their deaths.

Things became a blur then: the eventual arrival of a helicopter, blades beating and leaves flying; getting loaded; medics hovering over him. Eventually an operating room in Cu Chi, where he shook with the cold and realized it was air-conditioned.

A surgeon with a mask over his face appeared in his line of sight. “I’m knocking you out, Will. You’re going to be fine, but we need to clean shrapnel out of these wounds and stitch you up.”

He threw up when he awakened, and again after they let him suck ice cubes.

“Lucky you were wearing your flak jacket,” he heard twice. Most of the damage was on his legs, although they’d pulled a sharp piece of metal out of the back of his neck.

Eventually an officer visited to tell him that he might have made it back to his unit under other circumstances, but since his enlistment was about up, he was going home.

“Do my parents know I was wounded?” he asked.

“They were notified.”

Going home took two more weeks. At last he flew into Travis Air Force Base. He’d recovered enough to make his way down the steps himself and to hobble across the tarmac. Wives and parents were crying and holding out their arms. He searched the crowd for faces he knew.

At last, there they were. His mom and dad, and with them was Dinah, older but definitely the girl he knew, not the hippie in the photograph. Her hand was pressed to her mouth, and tears ran down her cheeks.

They collided as much as reached for each other, all four of them. They were all trying to hold him, and shit, yeah, he was sobbing like a baby.

The drive home was surreal. It was evening, and fog hung low and thick. Through it he kept glimpsing Christmas lights. That made sense. He’d left right after Christmas, but somehow he hadn’t even thought of the holiday. Earlier, he’d planned to buy presents for his parents and Dinah before he flew home, but he’d expected to have time. He had only a few souvenirs, but they were all of a war Dinah despised. She wasn’t proud of his service, so his Purple Heart wouldn’t be deeply meaningful to her.

He and she rode in the backseat of his parents’ Buick. She reached over and took his hand. In a quiet voice, she said, “We’re so glad you’re home, Will. We’ve been so frightened.”

“Yeah. Boom—” he clapped his hands “—and, hey, you can go home, O’Keefe. Kind of a surprise ending to the party.”

He felt her surprise at his levity. His mother turned her head, too.

“They said…some other men were killed?” she asked hesitantly.

Bile rose in his throat. He swallowed it. “There was a mine. I was lucky.”

His mother turned to face the front so quickly, he knew it was to hide her distress, though he might have had trouble seeing it in the dark.

Beside him, Dinah said fiercely, “Well, things will be different now.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I brought something for you.” She held out her hand.

Puzzled, he took what she handed him. It was stiff, but cloth. A patch? Headlights coming the other way briefly illuminated it. It was a peace symbol—white—embroidered against a blue background.

She touched the front of his fatigue jacket. “I’ll sew it on there for you. Now you can speak out.”

He wanted to drop the patch, or thrust it back at her. Instead, he just sat there. His voice sounded a little strange. “My Christmas present?”

“Well…” She chuckled, a musical sound he’d dreamed about. “I have others for you. But…yes. A first present.”

Something he didn’t want. Didn’t understand. A symbol that repudiated everything for which the men around him had died.

“I’m so glad you’re home for Christmas,” she murmured.

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