Fathers To The Men

Kenny Davis's father worked for the Transit Authority. "Not a driver or engineer," he said, as if expecting the question. I didn't ask. I knew better, as my father worked for Pan Am, but in an office, not a plane.

Likewise, Kenny's father worked in an office, he said, but doing exactly what, he didn't know. "He sure gets up early, though," he said.

He was proud of his father, as I was of mine. About military service, too. Kenny's father had been in the Air Force; mine was a Marine.

"Never would I be a Marine," Kenny said. "They make you dig holes, and if you don't do it fast enough? They hit you in the head with a shovel. Then they make you hold up big bags of sand 'til you cry." We both laughed. "I swear, I saw it in a movie."

"That's what's good about the Air Force, I guess," I said. "They can't make you dig holes in a plane."

"My father told me he ate good in the Air Force," he said.

"My father said in the Marines, if they didn't eat fast enough, they got hit in the head with a pan." More laughs.

"I don't know about the army, now, though," I said. I meant the military in general. "You know about Vietnam?"

"Mmm," Kenny said, which could have meant yes or no.

I followed politics. I wrote in the streets in chalk for LBJ in 1964. I was in the crowd when he campaigned in our neighborhood, driving through in a huge flatbed truck.

I read the News and the Post every day, cover to cover. I watched talk shows on Sunday mornings - and took notes. Oh, yes I did. Aged 7. I knew about Vietnam.

"It's supposed to be a war," I said. "But it's not a war."

"Nobody attacked us, right," Kenny said.

"Yeah," I said. "It's a little country with and jungles and swamps. Steaming hot. People wear pajamas and flip-flops. There's Communists and not-Communists. But nobody has anything.

"It's a million miles from here. We have soldiers over there. They don't even know who we are. But we're killing them, so they're killing us back. They have, like, bayonets. We have bombers, bombing everything. It's insane. It's a sin, even, I think."

That slowed the talk a bit. Kenny was Catholic, too. Sin is serious.

"Why are we doing it?"

"To show who's boss." I paused. "Even to ourselves. They're making kids go. Go over and kill people, and get killed, maybe, because we said so. If you don't, you go to jail.

"But if you go to college, you don't have to go. That's for rich people. Although I'll go to college, some way."

"Me, too," Kenny said, bouncing a ball on the ground. "I mean, I want to go anyway."

"Or if you're married? Then you don't go."

"Shit, I'll do both," he said. We both laughed. We generally didn't swear. This was for comic effect, as I think we were starting to scare ourselves. "I know two girls to get married to. Three."

"That's good odds," I said. We were back to joking, I thought; but Kenny said,

"You talk to your father about this?"

"No," I said. "My mother."

"What's she say?"

"We talked all about it. I told her I ain't going to no Vietnam. She said she don't intend to let us. Me and my two brothers."

"It's good to have your mom on your side," he said.

I nodded. "Best," I said.