Chapter Eighteen
I SAT BESIDE Victor on his worn, floral-patterned living room sofa. The small black-and-white television set flickered from its cabinet in front of us. His mother bustled around the kitchen, putting dishes away. In the corner stood a weathered aluminum Christmas tree draped in ornaments and tinsel.
At first glance it would seem like any ordinary Monday night.
Instead it was anything but. I constantly wiped my hands on my skirt.
Victor seemed a million miles away. I could only guess at his thoughts—knowing that in just a few moments, when the first-ever draft lottery went live over the airwaves, his life could change forever.
Even if they did draw his number, he wouldn’t have to go right away. He and I both knew that. But a deferment would only get him through graduation in June. If he didn’t get into Whitehall, then what would become of him?
The SPECIAL REPORT logo flashed across the screen. Beside me, Vic gasped. I squeezed his hand.
“Is it starting?” Mrs. Nelson poked her head in from the kitchen, still wiping a dish with a threadbare towel.
“Yeah.” Victor’s voice croaked.
The announcer was still talking, sounding way too perky, but it didn’t matter what he said or what explanation he gave.
Nothing, no matter how eloquent, could make this anything other than what it was.
All I could do was pray with everything in me that September 7—Victor’s birthday—would be the very last number they called.
Onscreen, old men in suits milled about.
Men far too old to fight and likely far too old to care about the lives that would change—the lives that would end—based on what they did.
One introduced another, some congressman or something, but I could barely hear over the roar of blood in my ears.
The congressman walked over to a huge clear container filled with little capsules.
He had to reach way, way in to choose one but still plunged his hand deep.
Under any other circumstance Victor would’ve probably made some wisecrack about how this old fuddy-duddy was almost too short for the task at hand, but he was silent.
If he was anything like me, he couldn’t summon the oxygen to speak.
The congressman chose a capsule and handed it to the man who’d introduced him.
The camera zoomed in on the man’s hands as he opened it and unrolled a tiny scroll of paper.
He wore a large ring, and . . . were his hands shaking?
They looked a little unsteady. Or was it just that my entire body trembled and so everything seemed a little wobbly?
“September . . .” the voice said, and my heart stopped. He paused for what felt like an entire year. Not the seventh. Not the seventh. Please, Lord God, not the seventh.
“Fourteenth,” he finished. “September fourteenth, zero zero one.”
All the air whooshed out of my lungs. My hand tightened around Victor’s. He’d dodged the first birthday bullet. I turned to him with a smile, but he still stared at the screen, stone-faced. The men in suits were reloading. It was far, far too early to celebrate.
Another, younger man drew the second number. “April twenty-fourth.”
I could breathe again, just for a moment. The announcer handed the little scroll to another man, who pasted it onto a large bulletin board just beneath the first date—002, the number to the left read, and the announcement confirmed it. “April twenty-four is zero zero two.”
“December thirtieth.”
“December thirty is zero zero three.”
“February fourteenth.”
“February fourteen is zero zero four.”
With each date they called that wasn’t Victor’s birthday, my lungs opened just a fraction.
They hadn’t drawn the number I’d dreaded.
His birthday was only one of 360 or so left in that bucket.
Each time there was a less than 1 percent chance that they’d call his.
A greater than 99 percent chance that he’d get to stay home.
October eighteenth was next.
Then they said the month I longed not to hear. “September . . .”
Not the seventh not the seventh—
“Sixth. September six is zero . . .”
I folded in on myself. September 6. The day before Victor’s. It felt like fate. A sign. Like God had answered all my fervent prayers for Victor’s safety.
“October twenty-sixth . . .”
“It’s still going on, Iris.” Victor sounded annoyed.
“Well, yes, of course. But they just called the sixth. There’s no way they’ll call the seventh. Not with over three hundred fifty dates still in there.”
“September seventh.”
What?!
No. No. They didn’t just say that. They didn’t just say September 7. No. They picked the sixth. Just two dates ago they picked the sixth. It couldn’t be the seventh. They couldn’t do that. Not Victor. No. They couldn’t do that to Victor.
The sound of breaking glass, loud as gunfire, jolted me.
Victor’s mother was still standing in the doorway, still holding the towel.
But the dish she’d been drying shattered at her feet.
Pieces of it flew every which way, skittering across the floor.
When they stopped, she clapped her hand over her mouth and started to sob.
That was when I knew this was real. They’d just called Victor’s birthday. He’d been drafted. And unless he got into Whitehall, then the minute after we walked across that stage in June, he’d be shipped off to the jungle in Vietnam.
God, why? Why Victor? Why?
“You can’t go.” I clung to him. “There’s got to be a way to get out of this.”
“And I’ll find it, Iris. I’ll . . . I’ll go to Canada. I’ll flunk my physical. I’ll—”
“You’ll go to Vietnam.”
We turned at the deep voice behind us. Victor’s father stood in the doorway, a bottle of beer clutched in his hand. Based on what Victor had told me, that beer was likely not his first.
“No, I won’t.” Victor’s voice was quiet but firm.
“Yes, you will.”
“No, Dad. I’m not going to ’Nam.” He stood, fists clenched, as if ready for a fight. “I’m going to the Whitehall Conservatory of Music in Chicago. I’m a musician. I’m not a warrior. I won’t go be cannon fodder for a war we shouldn’t even be in.”
“You’ll do whatever your country needs you to do.
” Mr. Nelson stepped toward his son. “That’s what I did.
It’s what your grandfather did. It’s what every Nelson man has done since we arrived on these shores.
It’s bad enough you won’t volunteer. No son of mine will be a draft dodger.
I manned up and served this country, and so will you. ”
“But look what it did to you,” Victor argued. “What you became. You’re an embarrassment. Why would I ever want to become like you?”
With a vicious swear word, Mr. Nelson flung the beer bottle directly at Victor’s head. Victor ducked, and the brown glass burst into pieces against the dingy wallpaper.
Followed a second later by my heart.
Victor muttered something under his breath, crossed the living room in about two steps, and left. He slammed the door behind him, and a picture fell off the wall. The wooden frame split in half.
A second later, I tore out the door after him. “Victor! Victor!”
He was sliding into his father’s beat-up Buick. “Go home, Iris.”
“No.” I didn’t stamp my foot like a toddler, but it took effort to contain the urge. “I’m not leaving you like this. I’m not leaving you alone.”
“But being alone is exactly what I need.” Without waiting for my response, he peeled out of the driveway and down the street at a speed much faster than was proper. His taillights rounded a corner, then disappeared into the night. The rumbly motor faded to nothing.
Frustrated tears pricked my eyes. It wasn’t like Victor to just leave me standing in the middle of the street.
But he wasn’t in his right mind. And now, having seen what his family was like, I knew exactly why.
Draft or no draft, the Nelsons weren’t okay.
It was a miracle Victor had become the smart, talented man he was.
And now I stood on the street outside Victor’s house in the part of town my parents always told me not to go to.
No way could I go back inside, not with Victor’s weeping mother and his raging father.
And I couldn’t call my parents either, because they thought I was at the library studying and they would not be pleased to have to come to the wrong side of the tracks, as Mother put it, to fetch me.
I could just hear her. Oh, Iris, what will the neighbors think? Have you no shame?
Well. At least it wasn’t raining or snowing.
It was chilly, but not as cold as December in Illinois could get.
It was only a mile and a half or so to my house.
I’d just walk. It’d give me a way to burn off my frustration.
My anger. My helplessness that the United States government could just sign death warrants for gifted young men, and for what?
Victor had to get into Whitehall. He just had to.
I didn’t know what would become of him—of us—if he didn’t.