“Yup. They’re pretty cool.” He skimmed his fingertips slowly across his jawline. “They’ve hounded me to keep my grades up ever since Andy got drafted.”
“What about graduate school?” I asked, sure I’d come up with a way to keep him out of VietnamandCanada. “That’s a way to drag out your deferment.”
He shook his head. “Ended last year.Unless... I go to divinity school.” He chuckled. “I could never be a priest. A reverend in a different church where sex is allowed,maybe. Hey, I’d do just about anything to avoid ’Nam.”
“You’d make a good minister.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said with a grin. “But I’d be a better minister than a soldier. Would you sing in my choir?”
I smiled back. “Definitely.” That was a delicious fantasy.
Johnny leaned over Livy and me to tap Leon’s knee. “Guthrie’s tripping, man. Can’t you tell?”
Leon nodded without comment. It was hard to talk over the music unless you were sitting next to the person. When Johnny turned back around, Leon leaned closer to me. “He’s moving to Canada as soon as we get home.”
“He’s really gonna do it?”
“Hell yeah. He got called up for his physical. Never showed.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yeah, uh-oh. He’s been listeddelinquentby the selective service. They’ll throw his ass in Leavenworth if he doesn’t get out of here.”
“That’s awful,” I said, imagining Ron locked up in prison.
“Better than Vietnam. Canada’s his only option. Thousands of American boys have already crossed over,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “Bad thing is you could lose your citizenship.”
Leon’s words dripped through me like hot wax from a burning candle. And gave a jolt to my sleepy head. What a terrible choice. Keeping your American citizenship while locked up in prison, or losing your birthright to move to Canada for freedom. Or, worse, risking death while fighting a senseless war.
What young American boy ever considered he’d have to make that decision?
Woodstock
Day Two
Saturday, August 16, 1969
3:00 a.m.
“There’s nothing you can say, except the fabulous lady,” the announcer said. “Let’s welcome Joan Baez.”
When the person I wanted to hear most on Friday finally made it to the Woodstock stage—amid yet another round of drizzle—I had nothing left. Drowsiness, the kind that was impossible to battle, overtook my body. I couldn’t fight it. I’d been up since four in the morning. I’d walked ten miles, even more since arriving. My bones ached. My eyelids drooped. And my head hurt. I was soaking wet, cold, and ravenous. All I could do was blink, in a comatose state, at the great Joan Baez.
Everybody in the audience stood up and cheered when she walked out. Desperately trying to rouse myself, I clapped like she was Paul McCartney. I cheered. I hollered for her. “Yay, Joan!” I yelled. Yet fatigue wrapped around me like a heavy blanket.
A few stanzas into her first song, “Oh Happy Day”—my favorite gospel tune—Joan abruptly stopped singing. “Sit down,” she commanded, in a nice tone.
As soon as I felt the quilt cradle my butt, it called me to recline. But I refused to give in.
During Joan’s next two songs, I literally held my eyes open with the tips of my fingers pressed into my cheeks and eyebrows. Short of jogging around the farm in the chilly night air, or finding an elusive carafe of hot coffee, my luck was running out.
I rallied a little when she told the audience about her husband, who had indeed been imprisoned for draft resistance. “David is fine,” she said. “And we’re fine too.” She patted her pregnant belly, then explained how he had been shipped from county jail to federal prison, which, she said, “is a big summer camp after you’ve been in county jail long enough.”
The thought of Ron and which choice I’d have rather he made ran across my weary, near delirious mind. Would he have been better off standing up for what he believed in federal prison or fighting a senseless, heinous war because the government—and our dad—required him to do so? The odds of Joan’s husband dying in a federal prison camp were almost nil. Obviously, that was his point.
Joan’s next song had a much slower tempo. It was precisely the lullaby I needed to send me off to slumberland.
3:45 a.m.
