Memorial Bridge (45 page)

A pair of students bracketed the entrance to Gaston, each with an armload of leaflets. They brightened at the sight of Cooney and Dillon, who saw why. The auditorium behind them was nearly empty. Dillon took his leaflet and went in while Cooney paused to read it and then to ask questions of the students at the door.

A lone folksinger was on the stage, strumming his guitar, doing his best to sound like Phil Ochs. Dillon was a jazz buff himself—Brubeck, MJQ, Charlie Byrd. Folk music was too uncomplicated to be interesting. He felt the same way about rock 'n' roll, but wished he didn't. Even his taste in music made him feel out of it.

He approached the stage, uncovering his Nikon. From a position right below the singer he began to shoot. He liked the halo effect of the overhead light in the guy's hair, and as he snapped and cocked, snapped and cocked, he thought about the pictures he was taking the way he imagined Cartier-Bresson would.

A halo, an angel, a saint, an idealist: that's who these civil rights guys were. Richard admired people like that without understanding fully why he wasn't one of them. The singer's hair was almost as long as a girl's, so Richard knew he wasn't a Georgetown kid. He wore a leather fringed
jacket, like Wild Bill Hickok, and Levi's. Not an angel, he thought then, but a lonesome cowboy singing his sad song, only instead of "Red River Valley," it was "The Times They Are A-Changin'."

Richard took a seat three chairs in from the aisle in the second row. He felt sorry for the singer, as he sensed that the others in Gaston were ready for him to finish. Scattered around the raked auditorium that could hold seven hundred were perhaps fifty people. On the stage, seated behind the singer, below the familiar bust of Dante Alighieri, were two scruffy-looking students. Each wore the mandatory jacket and tie but with a defiant carelessness that marked them as members of a small circle of misfits. Seated between the students was a white-haired priest, Father Gavin, who had taught Richard theology in his freshman year. He had never had a personal moment with the priest then or since, and he was certain the gaunt professor would not recognize him now. To Richard's knowledge Father Gavin had not been one of the Jesuits to go to Selma or otherwise involve himself with Martin Luther King. Maybe his being a civil rights neophyte was why the priest seemed so nervous as he listened to the mournful singer, then watched as one of the student organizers replaced the singer at the microphone. A few in the audience applauded the folksinger, but the priest only fidgeted with the cincture of his cassock. He glanced awkwardly at a sheaf of papers in his lap and then up and around at the venerable Gaston, as if Jesuit ghosts, their names emblazoned in gold around the ceiling—Loyola, Campion, Xavier, Marquette, Jogues—were about to judge him. Richard wished he'd brought his portrait lens as he lifted his camera, aimed at the priest and snapped.

"Welcome to the first all-university teach-in of the GU Committee of Concern—"

The microphone squealed suddenly, sending an ear-piercing screech through the hall. The student organizer jumped back with a faint yelp of his own. He was acne-faced and rumpled. Dillon sensed that he'd misread the guy's slovenliness as rebellion. He was just a slob, an incompetent slob. He had no idea how to deal with the runaway mike's feedback, and Richard found it impossible not to feel sorry for him too, even as he aimed his camera and snapped.

While the second student came forward to help tame the microphone, Richard opened the mimeographed leaflet he'd taken at the door. Only then, with a potent jolt of adrenaline, did he realize, from the bold words
on the top of the page, what this meeting was. "A Teach-in," he read, "Against the U.S. Escalation of the War in Vietnam."

"Shit," he said under his breath, and he looked around for Cooney, who was just coming down the aisle toward him. Cooney was holding his ears against the feedback screeching which was intermittent now. When Cooney slid into the chair next to him Richard said, "They're peaceniks."

"I know. The priest is going to say the war is immoral."

"That's Father Gavin!"

"Huh?"

"You had him for religion, asshole. Freshman year. What do you mean, 'immoral'?"

"That's what the kid at the door said."

"What, he wants the Communists to—?"

"The Just War Theory. He's going—"

"Sorry, folks," the student organizer said. The sound system bucked once more, then settled down. The other student took his seat next to the priest. "Thanks for coming. We're really glad you're here. We know the turnout is down because of exams, but we wanted to hold this first teach-in anyway, because at campuses all over the country students and professors are meeting to consider the terrible realities of the..."

Cooney wrote furiously, trying to get down everything as the kid shifted into third.

Richard was struck immediately by the contrast between his appearance and his crisp, fluid expression. The kid was speaking without notes. Richard wondered if he was an organizer from another school.

". . .There are three questions to consider when we decide to inform ourselves more fully about Vietnam. One concerns Russia, one concerns China and one concerns the nature of the conflict inside Vietnam. Is it a civil war or not? That is perhaps. . ."

Richard turned in his seat to quickly survey the hall. For the first time he noticed a tight knot of blue-clad students at the right side of the last three rows. They were a dozen ROTC cadets, and the sight jolted him. Except for the insignia on their epaulets, their uniforms were exactly like his father's, and Richard felt a rush of guilt for being there.

Strange how, when he faced forward, what sprang into focus in his mind was not the stage or the speaker but a clear image of his father's profile, framed against a dark automobile window beyond which, across
the river, were the twinkling runway lights of National Airport. Richard was driving his father home from the Pentagon late one night, and they were cruising along the ridge of Anacostia Drive above the river valley. Serving as his father's occasional night chauffeur was a favorite chore of Richard's, and on this night, just a week before going off to Georgetown as a wide-eyed freshman, he had a question to ask. He always had a question for those rides, but this one seemed fraught.

"Dad, I have to decide something."

"About school?"

"Yeah."

"What is it?"

His father looked at him easily. Richard often had the sense that his father listened with a small part of his mind, the larger part having remained behind in the Situation Room where the JCS were staving off war in Berlin or Cuba.

"There's a form in the registration packet asking if I want to join the ROTC."

"Do you?"

Richard looked away from the road toward his father. Their eyes met.

"I don't know," Richard said, and it felt like a confession. He stared forward out the windshield again.

"Would it be air force?"

"They have all three. Air force, army, navy. There's a drill team. And the air force teaches cadets how to fly."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"Sure."

"What's the problem then?"

"Well, Rot-see, it's sort of like 'tin school,' isn't it? Compared to the Academy, I mean. Aren't reserve officers second class? Don't the regulars—?"

"Richard, that's a career issue." His father laughed. "Are you worrying about your career?"

"Yes."

"Rich..." He reached across the car to put his hand on Richard's leg. "It's your freshman year. You're just getting started. When I was your age I'd already decided to be a priest, and look at me now. I was way ahead of myself." His father's gesture, his free hand back toward his chest, was humorously self-deprecating, as if his general's uniform
showed how far short he'd fallen. "Nobody expects you to make career choices now. You just concentrate on getting your education, and the Jesuits will see you get the best. I had the Jesuits, Rich. And you know how pleased I am you'll be at Georgetown. I want you to make the most of it. Big choices come later."

"But I have to decide about ROTC now."

"Make the decision based on now, then. Not on the rest of your life. Don't worry about Academy graduates looking down on you ten years from now." His father laughed again, and Richard realized condescension like that was something he had had to deal with. He could not imagine anyone looking down on his father.

"ROTC is a good way to get your commission. When you go in the service, whether as a career or not, you'll want to go in as an officer. But you can also do that through OCS later. Same with learning how to fly, if that's what you want."

"I thought you'd want me to do ROTC."

His father shook his head. "It's up to you, Rich."

Richard was silent for a long time. His father shifted in his seat and Richard saw in reflection on the windshield the flash of his gleaming silver stars, three on each shoulder. He was not sure, even, that his father was waiting for him to declare himself. At last, without daring to look across, he said, "I love the air force. You know that, Dad."

"I know."

"But I think I'll skip Rot-see for now."

His father nodded. "That's fine."

No problem. No fucking problem at all. Why then had Richard's immediate impulse been to find a sink and rinse out his mouth?

Richard raised his Nikon and discreetly aimed it at the cadets in the rear of the auditorium. He snapped a picture, then poked Cooney. "Look," he whispered. "Fly-boys."

Cooney swung around. "Jesus, what are they doing here?"

Richard faced the stage once more.

The student at the microphone was concluding his introduction. "So those are some of the questions. If it is a civil war, why are we interfering in it? If the Geneva accords said the boundary between North and South was to be temporary, how can we consider the North Vietnamese as foreign aggressors? And why wasn't the Geneva conference election held in 1956 when the boundary—"

"What about the terrorists in the villages?" a voice yelled from the rear of the hall. "What about the Red murder squads?"

Richard did not have to swivel to know it was one of the ROTC cadets.

The student at the microphone was flustered at first, then, after glancing back at his comrade, began, "There will be questions and answers after."

"What about our obligation under the SEATO treaty?"

"And Ho Chi Minh was trained in Moscow!"

The student held up his hands, but instead of calming things, he shouted back, "Ho Chi Minh quotes Thomas Jefferson!"

The priest stood up at his chair while the cadets continued to yell at the student, but as the priest approached the microphone, even they fell silent.

The student looked sheepishly at the priest whom it had been his responsibility to introduce. This Jesuit was the only faculty member who would agree to appear at the teach-in. The student stepped aside for him, saying audibly, "I'm sorry, Father."

Father Gavin put the sheaf of papers on the lectern and slowly took his eyeglass case out from the mysterious folds of his cassock.

Through the lens of his camera Richard saw the flecks of dandruff on the priest's shoulders, and he remembered from theology class how Gavin had reeked of tobacco. His fingers were still yellow with nicotine, and now they shook slightly as he unfolded his glasses and hooked them around his ears.

By the time he began to speak, the silence in Gaston Hall was absolute. "Those of you who had my moral theology course know the distinction..." He peered out across the hall as he had over countless classrooms. A filmy vagueness in his eyes gave him an eerily distracted air, as if he weren't sure where he was. He looked old to Richard. "...between
jus ad bellum
and
jus in bello.
Moral reasoning about war requires two separate judgments: a judgment as to the justice of the war itself, and a judgment as to individual actions committed in the course of that war. Lacking full knowledge about the true character of the various aggressions in Vietnam—whether they derive from an invasion or a civil war, whether a violation of proper accords or fulfillment of treaty obligations—no one here is qualified to make an informed moral judgment as to
jus ad bellum,
but even a just war
must be conducted according to the natural law which is manifest in positive rules of engagement, and on that score, in the matter of
jus in bello,
sad to say, the American government, mounting evidence suggests, is behaving barbarically!"

The priest's voice rose so shrilly on the last word that Richard heard Cooney gasp. Richard's camera sat in his lap, a dead weight. Father Gavin's abrupt display of feeling—so much dense emotion packed in that one condemning word—landed with such weight that Richard wanted to stand up and declare, I'm just here as a photographer. I don't buy this bullshit!

Father Gavin was holding sheets of paper over his head. "These are copies of letters," he said, "provided to the head of Clergy Concerned About Vietnam, letters from American soldiers, not statements by the President or the generals or polemic, for that matter, from irresponsible and unpatriotic radicals, but testimony from GIs themselves, men your age who are over there right now. They are the ones who lay bare the true character of this mismatch between the greatest power on earth and one of the poorest nations. Listen"—the priest found an exact page—"to this, from a young marine. 'The Vietcong aren't the only ruthless ones. We have to be too. Have to. You'd be surprised to know that a guy you went to school with is right now shooting a nine-year-old girl and her mother. Or throwing a Vietcong out of a helicopter because he wouldn't talk.'"

"Oh, bullshit," Richard said in a whispered exhalation, but the word carried and Father Gavin looked up abruptly to see who'd said it. Richard stared right back at him, formulating his rebuttal. The caption under his photo: "Priest Discovers War Is Hell." Big fucking deal. If GIs throw prisoners out of helicopters, then they get court-martialed, and fast. It is that simple. Richard Dillon knew better than this old-fart priest what the American military was about, and that certainly did not include shooting nine-year-olds and their mothers.