Early Warning

Jeff MacDonald knew somebody on East Seventy-third Street, so they left the Falcon there and walked to the park. Even by 9:00 a.m., Manhattan was so busy that Debbie had to grab David’s hand so as not to lose him. When they got to the Seventy-ninth Street entrance, a small sign directed them to gather with other students, but it looked to Debbie as though everyone was milling around together. The official signs were large and white — Debbie thought the one that read “Children were not born to burn!” was more effective than “Stop the Bombing!” Other signs were homemade: a pair of twins had two signs, “Hey Hay LBJ How” and “Many kids U KILL 2DAY?” They marched shoulder to shoulder through the crowd, deadly sober and carefully holding the signs so that they could be read together. There were families, too — couples with babies in carriages, old ladies, even some men in old army uniforms from the war. Just before eleven, she and David followed Jeff to the rocks near the bottom of the Sheep Meadow. There Jeff climbed on a rock and burned his draft card with a lighter, while she, David, and the other boy, Nathan, formed part of the human chain protecting the small group of draft-card burners. Debbie looked over her shoulder to see if they were going to be rammed by police, but she could see no police, only more protesters lining up behind her, shouting, as the cards burned. When his card was a blackened ash falling into a can, Jeff raised both his arms in a salute, and everyone shouted “Hell, no! We won’t go! Hell, no! We won’t go!” Then everyone got organized and headed downtown.

On Park Avenue right before Forty-eighth Street, Jeff MacDonald got an egg right on the forehead. The egg broke and splattered over his glasses, and David almost laughed but didn’t. Debbie ducked — another egg hit the ground in front of her feet. Then they all started looking up and hurrying a little bit, but there was no panic. Jeff just put his glasses in his pocket and kept shouting. They passed three guys with short hair, holding a sign that read “Hang the potesters!” “Protesters,” Debbie wanted to stop and point out, was spelled with an “r.” But the march pressed forward, so she just raised her fist and gave them the finger.

Debbie didn’t start crying until Phil Ochs started singing. Debbie was not a screamer. She had one Beatles album, and she liked to listen to the acoustic Bob Dylan. Her sole pop-music memory was from three years ago, her freshman year, at a Peter, Paul and Mary concert, when she had gone up afterward to get an autograph from Paul. She was six people back in the line; it was late; she yawned, and Paul saw her. He looked right at her and sang, “On a Desert Island.” But Phil Ochs was handsome and graceful, and he had a rich voice, even in this crowd. And when he looked out at them and sang “Is there anybody here who’d like to wrap a flag around an early grave?” she decided that he was singing to her, for Tim, and she burst out — wa-wa-wa — very embarrassing, so upsetting that David Kissell put his arms around her. And he followed that with “I Ain’t Marching Anymore.” She heard David whisper the words “Her brother was killed,” and then there were a few tentative pats on her shoulder. Would Tim have come to this march? Debbie had no idea. But maybe his ghost would, knowing what it knew now.

—

JANET, TOO, was at the march. The week before, she had gotten a letter from Aunt Eloise. Aunt Eloise was interesting to Janet, if only because every time her name came up Dad laughed and Mom said, “Oh, Frank,” then laughed, too. They thought Aunt Eloise was an embarrassment, but she wrote more faithfully than either Dad or Mom.

Dear Janet—