Read Online Dear Digby by Carol Muske-Dukes - Free Book Online

wanted to see him.
    To say good-bye.
    We stood facing each other.
    “That’s an interesting outfit,” he said. “You look like the antiwar celebrity you’ve become. I saw you spitting on me on all three channels on the six o’clock and the eleven o’clock news.”
    “Yeah, I’m a real star. Too bad I had to get my nose broken and my jaw slightly realigned in order to do it.”
    “Sit down, Willis.”
    I noticed a slight unsteadiness. Had he been sipping a bit?
    “Yes, yes, I’ve had a drink,” he answered, as if I’d asked the question out loud. “Would you like something? Scotch? Mixed drink? Wine?”
    “No, thanks. Still hitting the sauce, huh?” I rearranged my button so that a FUCK THE WAR emblem caught a shaft of cool white light from his desk.
    “Willis,” he said, pouring a straight Scotch, “I admire you for putting yourself on the line like this, for getting your head bashed in because you care so much about protesting this war. However, you don’t know shinola about what I’m trying to do—and while I would never expect you to admire me, I would ask that you reserve judgment of me.”
    Much to my horror, I found myself starting to cry, losing a breath as the tears stung the swollen flesh around my nose. “Wait a minute … waaaait a minute … shinola. Is that the stuff you guys use to shine your boots with? Shinola. Is that the stuff that burns the skin off little kids’ faces—or eats up the grass and the trees? Yeah, I know that stuff. This is the Shinola War, isn’t it?”
    He laughed and took a drink and looked away. “You’re proud of that mouth, aren’t you?” he said.
    He turned around suddenly and faced me, terrifying and quiet.
    “Contrary to what you believe, there is an organized program of withdrawal. I’m going over there to assist that movement out. However, it’s going to take time; patience—a virtue that you’ve never cultivated—is required.”
    “How can you sit there and lie like that?” I stood up, accidentally nudging my jaw and winced. “You know as well as I do that all we have to do to end this war is to get out.”
    “Willis, wake up. There’s an entire population of Vietnamese who are now dependent on us. What’s going to happen to those people if we turn tail and pull out? Anything good, do you think? Mass executions, petty dictators are just the—”
    “I’m going now. I don’t know what I came here for, but it certainly wasn’t to hear a lecture on the U.S. global conscience. That’s what started this whole thing.”
    “Willis,” he said more insistently, “you do what you believe. I’m doing the same thing. How the hell can I help what you think of me? But I’m doing the only thing we can do over there. I wouldn’t mind if you got that straight.”
    “Good-bye, General.” I started to walk out and then something made me stop and turn around. He had his head bowed, his hand over his eyes.
    I found myself walking toward him. I paused at the edge of his desk.
    “The gun just went off that night,” I said. I started to cry. “We were rolling around on the floor and then the gun went off … and Matthew Kallam was dead.”
    I was crying harder now. “It wasn’t my fault. The gun just went off. Why did you leave me in that tent? Why?”
    He kept looking down. “I raised you to be fearless, Willis—and you are, I think.” He looked up at me. “You are. But being a woman and fearless”—he shook his head, troubled, and took a drink—“men will back away from you for that. I wasn’t wrong to make you strong, was I? I was wrong not to tell you that men fear fearless women. How about a little mercy, Willis, how about a little mercy?”
    I stood still, shaking. The room was perfectly silent. I reached over the desk and touched his cuff. “Good-bye, Father.”
    He touched my hand.
    Six weeks later he was dead of a heart attack in Da Nang. They flew the body back, and at the funeral, after the rifle salute, when they took the