What do you know? And for once, you know that your father is right. You have not known losses and woes and the tiredness that comes with disappointments. Your grandfather lost everything,
his land, his riches, his country. Your father inherited exile. You have seen the quiet losses your mother wears on her face without complaint. And you? You are eighteen years old. The world lies before you. The new and large and vast and beautiful world—it
lies before you. You ache for it. You yearn to make it yours, this large and vast and beautiful world.
But the world is made of bullets.
The world is made of a draft card.
The world is made of people who are urging you to fight as
if a war were nothing more than a football game and you, on the team, carrying the football down the field. Run! Run! Score! For God! For Country!
It is morning. You wake. The world is new. It is not the
274 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p world you hoped for. And your heart is lonely and bare and
desolate. Your heart is a piece of fallow land—an empty field
where nothing will ever grow. Not one stalk of corn. Nothing.
Not ever.
And the taste of stale beer is buried in your throat.
a b e
I liked Sundays when I was growing up. Not that we really did
the church thing. But we did the family thing and I liked that. It was real nice. My mom, my dad, my sisters, my little brother, we’d all hang out. My mom and dad would listen to the radio and read the newspaper and talk. My dad would make waffles, the only
time he ever did anything in the kitchen.
My mother was Catholic and my father was a Lutheran. They
must have fought about how to raise us. I know my father prom-
ised to raise us Catholic because they were married in a Catholic church. But I got the feeling my father didn’t mean it. He wanted to marry my mother, but he wasn’t much interested in marrying
her religion. Yeah, I think they fought about it. In the end, I think they both gave up the church thing. They chose each other over religion.
So none of us were religious. Whatever that meant.
It’s not that I didn’t believe in God. He was there. I didn’t
276 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p fucking doubt that. But the thing is, he was over there and I was over here, and we pretty much left each other alone. We sort of got along that way. And me and God, well we sort of came to
an understanding after a while. I used to watch all those people in my neighborhood go to Mass every Sunday, all dressed up,
everyone either walking to Holy Family Church or driving to St.
Patrick’s Cathedral. Sunset Heights was like that, full of Catholics and families with lots of kids. It seemed like a nice way to grow up. But everything always seems nice from the outside. And it wasn’t as if we weren’t a good family.
Still, somehow, the other families seemed more, well, you
know, more like real families, going to Mass and then coming
back home and sitting down to a Sunday afternoon dinner, then
everyone sitting around the television and watching The Ed Sullivan Show in the evenings. Well, we had all of that in my house, too. Except the Mass. We even prayed before we ate. You know,
the Bless us O Lord thing.
I missed my family on Sundays. Missed them like hell. And
at basic training, you know I got into this thing of doing busy work, while about half the guys went to do their church thing.
You know, Sunday mornings, we’d clean our guns one more fuck-
ing time, shine our shoes another fucking time, do all that fucking busy work they had us doing. Your boots could never be too shiny. Your gun could never be too clean. In the Marines, when you train, if you’re awake, then you’re doing something. No such thing as doing nothing.
You know what a vacation was? It was having the time to
smoke a fucking cigarette. It was having the time to listen to some jackass tell a joke you’d already heard.
You know, one Sunday, those of us who didn’t go to church,
we were doing our busy work and these two guys went at it. We
had to break ’em up. All I had to say was that I wasn’t gonna
fucking run PT just because those two hotheaded assholes with
a b e l 277
no fucking discipline hated each other. That’s what I told them too. Motherfuckers. Told them they had to work this shit out
another way, and that was it. Told them it was a fucking waste of energy to make enemies out of each other when there was a real enemy out there.
Shit, we were lucky there weren’t any DIs around.
I mean, some of these bastards, they just didn’t think.
That’s the thing. War is a thinking man’s game.
And Vietnam? Well, if I ever got the chance to wind up there,
I was gonna be a fucking player. I wasn’t gonna go just to be
fucking cannon fodder. Not this guy. Not this half Catholic, half Lutheran, non-churchgoing Marine guy. Hell no. There was just
enough religion in me to make me a fucking man.
g us t avo
C onrad García has a conscience. I found that thought written in one of my notebooks when I was in the seventh grade. I don’t
remember writing it, but there it was—in my handwriting.
Conrad García. To borrow from my brother Charlie’s obses-
sion, if my body was a map, then Conrad García was a holy city.
A religious capital. He was Rome. He was Mecca. He was Jeru-
salem.
I met Conrad in the first grade at Holy Family School in 1955.
He was holding his mother’s hand. That was my first memory of
him. He looked up at his mother, squeezed her hand, smiled, nodded, and whispered something to her. She walked away. Slowly.
Xochil and I were standing there, just waiting. For school or life to begin. He waved at us tentatively. We waved back.
At recess, some of the boys decided they were going to kill
a horny toad they had cornered against the building. Even at
the age of six, Conrad never approved of mob mentality. Group
g us t avo l 279
think, that’s what he called it. Somehow, he managed to become a part of the mob, take possession of the horny toad, hold it in his cupped hands, then run across the playground and set it free.
He watched it run away. I remember running after him. I
remember his smile.
One of the boys threatened him and called him a joto. Sissy.
Queer. He shrugged. The words didn’t seem to have an effect on him. The rest of us ran from that word, protested, yelled back, fought, argued, anything but that. Conrad stared at the word,
then let it fall to the ground like a dead leaf.
He didn’t win any friends that day. Well, except for one guy.
Me. I decided I liked him—not that liking someone is a decision.
That’s not exactly how it works. I think he made me feel ashamed of myself for going along with the group think of the rabble—
because something in me knew the rabble was wrong. And the
rabble was mean. I don’t think I cared about that horny toad
one way or another. But there was something disturbing about
the way a group of boys behaved on a playground when adults
weren’t around. Conrad’s presence changed the equilibrium of
things from the very first day of school. He brought something out in me—and I was happy to discover that I had a conscience
too. It wasn’t as well developed as Conrad’s, but it was there and it made me feel better about myself. I always needed to feel better about myself.
When we were in the sixth grade, a group of guys was throw-
ing rocks at a stray cat. One of the rocks hit the cat in t
he leg and hurt it. The cat, unable to move, tried to be brave and futilely clawed at the air and made a screeching sound. The cat had nothing left to rely on except instinct and strategy. Sensing that he was about to meet his end, the only thing left for him to do was to try and scare off its attackers. But my classmates, good Catholic boys all of them, smelled blood. They were poised to stone the cat to death. And they would have stoned him too—except that
280 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p Conrad García happened to be around, hovering, like some kind
of guardian angel.
His response was swift and immediate. He ran to the wound-
ed cat, picked it up amid the rock throwing, and held the cat
in his arms. A rock caught him in the shoulder, another in the thigh. The cat scratched him. That was his only reward. But he remained unfazed. Conrad never built his life around a system of rewards. Everyone walked away, cursing Conrad, though I think
some of the boys wouldn’t have minded throwing a few rocks at
Conrad instead of the cat. Conrad was a bigger target. Easier to hit. But they weren’t brave enough to face the consequences.
Conrad had ruined their fun. They hated him.
He sat down on the ground until he calmed the cat. I walked
up to him and shook my head. “What are you going to do with
that cat, Conrad?”
“Take it home.”
“It probably has fleas. Or something. Maybe rabies.”
“Is that a reason to kill it?”
I smiled at him. “Guess not.”
When we were walking home that day, he was holding the
cat in his arms. And he started to cry. It was then I realized that Conrad paid a price for having a conscience.
“Don’t cry,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.
“Why, Gustavo? Why do we always have to be so mean?”
I had no answer.
That Sunday morning when I woke, disoriented, the taste of stale beer and cigarettes was still in my tongue, my throat, the pores of my skin. The whole world had changed.
The house was empty.
It was Sunday.
Everyone had gone to the twelve o’clock Mass at Holy Fam -
ily. I felt lost and hung over and sad and depressed and numb
g us t avo l 281
and I didn’t feel that much better after I showered. I walked into my grandmother’s room and stared at all the pictures she had
hanging on her walls. There was one picture in particular, one I’d always liked—it was taken at Charlie’s first communion party. In the picture he is standing between me and Xochil and he is staring at the camera, the happiest kid in the world. And Xochil, already she has the look of a woman—though she was only twelve.
I’m looking down and grinning and I’m sure Xochil must have
said something to me and I was trying not to laugh.
I took the picture off the wall. I felt entitled to it. I put it under my bed, stared at my hands, and saw that they were trembling. It was then that I thought of Conrad. I picked up the
phone and called him. “My grandmother died,” I said. And then
I blurted out, “And I got my draft notice.” I was surprised at my confession. But I wanted to talk to someone—and I trusted him.
Not that I didn’t trust Xochil and Charlie and my mother. But it seemed easier to talk to Conrad—because the knowledge that I’d received my draft notice wouldn’t wound him.
“You want to come over?”
“Sure,” I said. He lived a couple of streets down. “I’ll be right there.” I hung up the phone and left a note.
We went for a walk. Conrad talked better when he walked. Xo-
chil was like that too. It’s because they couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t either—that’s why I smoked. But walking was better for you than smoking, so, of course, I elected to smoke.
It was a clear and soft day, that’s what I remember. The storms from the night before had cooled off our part of the world and the air smelled clean. I can still picture Conrad talking to me as we walked. I can still hear his words. “Will you go?”
“I don’t know.”
“You might know.”
“What do you mean I might know?” I lit a cigarette.
282 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p
“Sometimes we just keep things from ourselves.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Sure it is. People keep secrets from themselves all the time.”
“So you think I know what I’m going to do?”
“Yes. You just haven’t let yourself know it yet.”
“This isn’t helping.”
“Sorry.” He reached for his own cigarette, held it, “You know
what I think?” He lit his cigarette.
“I always want to know what you think.”
He smiled. “Sure you do.” He took a deep drag, blew out the
smoke through his nose, then turned his head, popping it. He did that, popped something in his neck or his shoulders.
“You don’t,” I said.
“I don’t what?”
“Keep secrets from yourself. You always know what you
think.”
“Not always.”
“You know exactly what you think about killing. You know
exactly what you think about the war.”
“So do you.”
“I’m not a conscientious objector.”
“There is more than one way to object to the war.”
“But you’re doing it the direct way.”
“I got turned down, Gustavo.”
“What? When did you hear?”
“I met with my lawyer on Friday evening.”
“And they just turned you down?”
“Yes.”
“But you had letters from teachers and people who’ve known
you all your life and a letter from Sister Angelina—and even a letter from Father Sullivan.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters.”
g us t avo l 283
“Not to our draft board, it didn’t.”
“But why?”
“They didn’t say why.”
“They have to tell you why.”
“No they don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Those are the rules.”
“Fuck the rules.”
Conrad laughed. “Well, actually, it’s the other way around—
the rules fuck us.”
“And what did your lawyer say?”
“She said she talked to one of the members of the draft board.
Off the record, he told her there was no such thing as a conscientious objector. And she told him that he was being ridiculous and reminded him that Congress had made a provision for conscientious objectors and that there were certain religions that didn’t allow for military service—the Quakers and Jehovah’s Witnesses being but two examples.”
“And what did he say to that?”
“He said I was neither a Quaker nor a Jehovah’s Witness, and
that Catholic boys did their duty just like everyone else and that on top of that Congress was wrong to have provided such a legal provision. And she told him that it was arrogant for a local draft board to behave as if they were above the law. And he reminded her that they were speaking off the record and that the draft board had made their decision and that their decision was final and then he reiterated to her that the draft board, unlike the Supreme Court, didn’t have to state their reasons for their decisions.”
“So it’s final?”
“No. We’re appealing to the State Draft Board in Austin.”
“So you might still win.”
“And I might still go to jail.”
284 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p
“And you’ll go, won’t you, you’ll go to jail?”
“If I have to
. I don’t have a choice.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I don’t. Gustavo, if there was no such provision in the law for conscientious objectors—”
“Which apparently there isn’t, according to local custom.”
Conrad smiled. “Well, we live in Texas.”
“Yeah. Texas. Fucking great.”
“But even if there wasn’t a provision, I still wouldn’t go. I
wouldn’t go, because I can’t go. I can’t go, because I don’t believe in taking a human life. I don’t believe my life is worth more than another’s. I don’t know how that sounds to other people. I know how it sounds to me. I have to live what I believe.”
“If they turn you down on appeal, go to Canada.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“This is the road I’ve decided to go down, Gustavo. I’ve
thought and thought and thought about it.” He flicked his cigarette. “If I was going to go to Canada, then I should have gone by now.”
“Conrad, if you go to jail—it’s not right. You’re not a criminal.”
“Some people wouldn’t agree with you.”
“Fuck those people.”
“I got news for you, Gustavo. Those people run the world.”
“Oh, so that’s why it’s so shitty.”
Conrad laughed. “I like you, Gustavo.”
The words slid out of him so easily. Why was it so hard to say I like you too? What was so hard about saying something as true as that?
“And you, Gustavo, what are you going to do?”
“I’m not as pure as you.”
Conrad laughed. “Yeah, well, I’m not as pure as you think.”
“I hope you win, Conrad.”
g us t avo l 285
“It’s not about winning. It’s about living your life.”
We didn’t say anything after that. We just smoked a couple
more cigarettes and walked around. I thought about that cat he had saved. I thought about the time those guys were beating on him. I’d never asked him how and why that happened. But it was too late to ask. Sometimes, if you wait too long to ask a question, then you don’t deserve an answer.
We bought a Coke at the Sunset Grocery Store. We’d done
that all our lives, me and Conrad, bought Cokes at the Sunset
Grocery Store. We finished our Cokes sitting down on the curb, watching the cars drive by—people waving. We waved back. Before he headed his way and me, mine, he told me he was sorry to hear about my grandmother. I nodded and I don’t really remember what I said. I thought for just a second that I was going to cry and I thought, What is this? Enough of this crying shit. What is this?
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