Jen Stoll

     By looking at him, this July night, you'd never know he's a certified genius. He laughs hysterically at Leno.  Not Letterman--too vulgar, he says.  He laughs at jokes about Bill Clinton as I am working on  my financial aid package at the dining room table.  "Okay, dad, the government and school will pay $13,286. 57 of the $13, 972.00."  
     "What?" He shouts.  "We have that much to cover!"  He has figured out, by this point that the remainder is exactly $686.43, an amount that, added to my living expenses, seems infeasible.  His shock doesn't detract from his attention, though.  Leno's monologue is pointed at draft-dodging Clinton, now.  Dad laughs at Married With Children, instead.  

     I was four when I first saw my dad cry.  We lived on Hickory Street in Liberal, Kansas.  Dad and I were working in the yard.  My plastic, bubble blowing mower followed his trails. Dad's cousin, Doug, limped over to our house carrying a cane and a case of Coors.  "Not in my house, Doug."  So, Doug sat on the porch.  "Not on my property, Doug."
     "You self-righteous, cop-out son of a bitch!"  He aimed for dad's face but hit his left shoulder only slightly.  He walked away in, what even I knew was, shame.   Dad looked at the half-mowed lawn and bit the inside of his left cheek. He wasn't crying because he was hurt.  I knew that when he hurt, he yelled "Lord have mercy!"  I only knew he was crying because he wiped under his eyes for a
long time with the thumb of his right fist.
     "What's cop-out, Dad?"
     "Coward."
     "Oh."  I didn't know what that meant either but he seemed too separated from me for me to feel right about asking another question.  I finished mowing with my Li'l Tykes mower while dad sat on the porch step and watched the two-o-clock brightness turn into the six-o-clock dusk.  

     I was seven or eight when I got the solo for the Brighton, Colorado Centennial celebration.  I sang something about the Continental Divide.  I sang the words to that song a lot at home.  Mom asked me if I knew what the Continental Divide was.  Of course, I thought.  It's the place where America is divided in half.  "Yes," I answered.
     "Did you know that rivers flow away from that line?  It separates the waters and makes them go in different directions."  I didn't know that.  She showed me, on the way to the festivities the night before my performance, where the continental divide was.  I had been there a lot.  So had my dad, he said.

     I learned about Charlies in my second grade class.  My friend, Toby, brought his dad to school.  Toby said he went to a place called Nom.  It sounded intriguing to me.  Mr. Harkless said that he went there to find Charlies.  I asked him if that was his brother.  "No," he laughed.  "They are the enemy.  Vietnam was a war.  Charlies were the Commies."  I didn't know what that meant but I
knew that Russia was the same way.  We hated Russia at Elmwood Baptist Academy because they didn't believe in God.  
     Sometime, during the day, I asked Mr. Harkless how old he was.  He was 33.  The same age as my dad.

     Both of my grandpas were in World War II.  I discovered this when I asked a question about Jews in a place called Dock Ow.  Grandpa and Grandma Miller were living with us and Gramps smiled and said, "Don't worry, Darlin'.  They aren't still there.  That's why I went to the war."  I asked if the Jews were named Charlie.  "No," he said.  "That is your daddy's generation."

     I finally, at the age of eight, quit sucking my thumb.  My babysitter gave me a figurine as a reward.  Dad thought I stole it.  He spanked me really hard.  I remember crying not because of the pain but because he refused to believe me. After I spent the half-hour in my room "considering my actions," I went out to check on Dad.  He was in his bed sleeping.  Really hard, like I did when I cried a lot.  I woke him up.  "I am sorry I hit you, Babe."  I asked him if I was Charlie, now.  He didn't understand, so I told him what Mr. Harkless said.  "No, you aren't Charlie.  And Charlies aren't bad, like Mr. Harkless said.  They're just different."
     "Why did your generation want to get 'em?"
     "I didn't.  Most of them didn't."
     "Did you find any?"
     "I never looked.  I didn't go to the war.  I was what they called a
Conscientious Objector, a CO, a cop out."

     Dad's uncles and aunts and cousins held a reunion once every three years or so.  It was in 1989 when 'Nam came up.  Having Mennonite roots meant that about half of the men in my dad's generation stayed in the States for the war, while half went to Vietnam.  Most of those who went were the family drunks, the ones we were afraid of because they made weird jokes and smelled like smoke and wore a lot of leather.  I remember thinking, They learned to hate Charlies and so now they think the Charlies are us and their moms and wives and kids and even themselves.  Saturday night, the night before we all went home, a huge argument erupted between the haves and have nots, or rather the wents and went nots.  Doug and Dad's other war-hero cousins started yelling at what must have been 12:30 or one a.m.  I sneaked down the stairs and listened in.  Dad was trying to stop it.  He told Doug he was right.  The North Vietnamese were wrong.  Yes, he agreed, the South needed some protection.  
     My sleepy-eyed mom noticed I was out of bed and came to find me.  She heard Dad say this, too.  She told me to get back to bed--long day tomorrow.       
     I lied in bed that night, thinking that if Dad really thought the war was a good idea, he should have gone, himself.  Why couldn't he go, but all of the others could?

     I was 16 when my parents' divorce was finalized.  I knew it was for the
best.  Convincing the extended family of that was more torturous than the event itself, though.  Dad moved four hours away from me and Mom.  My sister, Kylie, went with him.
     
     War wasn't a big consideration for me once the Cold War was resolved. Even during the Cold War, because my life and the lives of those around me were not in danger, I just didn't think about what war was, the effect it had on people, the effect it had on my parents.  I never had to consider what Conscientious Objection was until Hal Dick, a classmate, used it as his Junior Thesis topic.  He didn't do a very good job with it and I learned only a little bit more about it than I already knew.  COs weren't always allowed, for instance. The consideration this prompted was minimal.  By this point, the consideration I had to give to my dad was minimal.  I hardly ever talked to him, let alone saw him.  I had no reason to care about his CO status or his little inconsistencies.
     
     Carolyn Pierce, my International Relations instructor, my senior year, changed my life.  While I was considering my views on issues such as Peace and Just War (knowing I would be going to a college closely associated with a peace church), she built and fortified the belief that America was tops at everything. She created such a profound--yet unmemorable--argument about the validity of the Vietnam War/Conflict that I saw no reason for anyone to object to the premise.  Stop Communism.  Prevent the Domino Theory from becoming reality. Who wouldn't support such an effort?
     Dad and his bad decision repulsed me.

     I moved into college with the help of Dad and his fiancee and Mom and her boyfriend.  Dad called once a week.  It was never scheduled, but I knew when to expect the call:  Whenever I started to feel homesick.
     Mom seldom called or wrote.  Once, maybe twice a month.  Never any more than that.

     My mid-January birthday fell just four days after Dad's.  For the first time, I forgot to call him on his birthday.  He somehow knew I was staying at my mom's this night--not at the dorms--and he called me there.  It was 10:38 p.m.  I had been in bed for 23 minutes.  It was Martin Luther King Jr. Day and I had heard his youngest daughter speak about the peace that he tried to establish.  She read some of his Letters from Birmingham Jail, written after the Selma March of 1963. I know people from the college who were there.  Who saw the movement.  Who marched for peace.
     Dad supported a war.  He wasn't there.  He didn't see.  He did nothing. "Dad, why did you claim CO status?  I don't get it."
     I can almost see him at the First Interstate Inn in Oakley, Kansas, behind the front desk.  He holds the phone in his right hand, has his left on his head and is resting himself against the counter.  
     "Well, I didn't believe, at the time, in killing anybody for any reason."  He watches the cars drive by on Interstate 70, wishing he were in one.  Or at least
that one would take the exit and rent a room.  
     "You do now?"
     He scratches his head through that thick, black, but greying, hair. He raises one end of his mouth at a time, considering.
     "It was hard.  My friends abandoned me.  They said I was a coward.  At one point, I went back to the office to change my decision."
     "Where were you when this happened?"
     "Colorado.  Forty miles or so west of Denver.  The office was that old, brick building we passed on the way to town.  You remember?"
     "The one by the Continental Divide?"
     "Yeah.  That's it."

     For the first time in three years, I felt I needed to be with my dad for the summer.  My freshman year in college had taken its toll on me and I needed to be with the one person who made me feel complete, competent.  While I had made friendships full of passion during the term, I needed time for myself.  They couldn't help fulfill the need I had to understand my own value system.  This time of introspection had to be isolated from my familiar safety nets.  
      Dad praised me at every possible point, with one exception.  My insistence upon changing the channel from Rush Limbaugh to CNN at 12:30 every day annoyed him.  Nevertheless, he always smiled and gave in.  On June 18th, the Hesbollah, based in Beirut, attacked Israeli troops in South Lebanon. My friend with whom I shared the most passion was living at home that summer,
in Beirut.  Both Netanyahu, the Prime Minister-elect of Israel, and Peres, the lame-duck Prime Minister, promised retaliation.  Upon hearing this news, I switched the channel to Rush for my dad who was making us sandwiches and went to my dirty room.  He knocked on the door and told me that lunch was ready.  I didn't respond.
     He must have turned the channel back to CNN.  They were doing an analysis of the attacks' effect on the power shift.  I sobbed myself to sleep by the time Dad entered the room.  He made some noise which woke me up.  I didn't open my eyes.  I didn't feel like talking.  He pushed my hair out of my face and kissed my exposed cheek.  He put his face next to mine and his tears merged with mine.  
     He wasn't there for long.  

     Dad taught me, that summer, to change the oil in my beautiful new 1978 Pontiac.  He was patient like I remember him being when I was really little.  He unscrewed the nut on the engine and let a little oil drain all over his arm as he retightened it and let me do it.  He unscrewed the oil filter and tightened it again. I unscrewed it and removed it.  He took me to the auto parts store and showed me the books with which I determined the type and size of oil filter I needed.  He waited out in his car as I paid for it.  We finished the job together.  He did the task.  Undid the task.  I repeated his motions.  
 
     Christmas was pretty interesting.  Tim, my step-brother, was the envy of all
of the guys at his high school.  He was dating Lexi, Miss 8th in the nation in Track and Field events.  I don't know how he landed her.  Apparently, neither did the guys from the high school.
     He and Lexi met for a movie at Oakley's one and only theater.  Tim was to walk home.  His midnight walk was interrupted by J.J., who thought it would be a good idea to try to beat up this first string linebacker.
     Tim came home with bruised eyes and a hand-held tooth which originated from his own mouth.  His mom, Dena, was irate.
     "Why didn't you fight back against that little chickenshit?"
     Dad told her to take it easy on the kid.  He handed Tim a bag of ice and put his tooth in a glass of milk.  Dena called the doctor.
     Tim was crying.  This was discordant with his general nature.  "What's her problem?  Gary, I was so pissed I would have killed that son of a bitch."
     Dad cringed.  "Look, don't let him get to you like this.  Don't let him get in your brain.  You did the right thing."
     Dena heard this and stormed to their room.  Tim was bigger and stronger than J.J.  There was no reason for him to be hurt, in her mind.

     My sister and I asked Dad about Tim's situation with J.J., a few months later.  She said something about Tim not being able to beat up J.J.
     "No, Tim could have cremated him."  Dad said.  Tim was his son.  As true of one as he would ever have.  His pride was evident in his voice and in the glean of his eyes.  
     "So, why didn't he?" Kylie asked.
     My dad shook his head.  "I am proud of you for qualifying for Nationals. What is your state ranking?"


     I was in my early 20s the next time we were able to go to a family reunion. It was in Colorado.  Dad, his new family, Kylie and I all went.  The trip was hell. Alexa, the four-year old step-niece was fun, but overly energetic for the trip.  Dad was her favorite person and she insisted on riding with him, at all times.  Family dynamics mandated that Alexa's mom, Tiffany, my sister and I were all in one car along with Alexa and my dad.
     Constantly bombarded with questions, Tiffany, my sister and I closed our conversation to Lex.  She willingly engaged with "Papa."  Dad tenderly explained to her, as the plains were slowly replaced with the Rocky Mountains, that in the mountains there was a lot of snow.  It melted in the late spring so the rivers of Colorado seldom dried up.  She didn't really understand, but she nodded her head and pretended she knew exactly what he was saying.     
     We took the Highway 40 exit off of Interstate 25.  This route was familiar to Dad and I.  Kylie was too young to remember, but I suspect she had vague flashes.  I looked around and a feeling of warmth overwhelmed me.  New bright red playground equipment replaced the rusty old swingset in the park centering our old neighborhood.  Our white house was now cream with brown trim.  It looked better than it used to.  The old yard with dying brown grass was replaced
with bright green, lined by white and bright pink peonies and some daffodils.
     I fit myself into the corner of the car and drifted to a slumberless sleep. Tiff and Kylie were talking about some guy Tiff would set her up with.  
     "Papa, what's that building?"
     I opened my eyes.  I wanted to know, too, I guess.  The red brick was crumbling and the buildings around it were more devastated than I remember them being.  The paint was not even existent, anymore.  The wood was grey and splintering.  The windows were all broken or at least cracked.
     "It's an old Army Recruitment Office, Lexa-Love."
     "Oh."  She didn't know what that meant but she wouldn't ask another question.