Evan Hunter - Sons

“I grew up listening to that man,” my father said.

“You don’t have to tell me,” my grandfather agreed, smiling. “You had that Victrola going day and night.”

His archaic language suddenly rankled. I wanted to get the conversation back to Vietnam, back to the truly modern idea he had offered but only tentatively explored, the idea that this pointless war of ours was beginning to seep into every phase of our national life, the idea that violence as a solution for problems abroad was most certainly being emulated as a solution for problems here at home. I resented the digression. Without so much as a preamble, I said, “First they take the air war north of the Hanoi line, and bomb only eighty miles from the Chinese border, and then...”

“But of course, there’s a great deal of violence everywhere you turn,” my grandfather said, interrupting me, and causing me to frown momentarily. “Not only in Vietnam.” There seemed to be a note of warning in his voice, as though he were anachronistically saying, Cool it, baby. You want to rap about this Yale thing, then let your wise omniscient venerable old guru lead us into it gentle-like, dig? I blinked my eyes.

(The screen conversation is taking a ridiculous turn. The film is becoming even a bit far-out for the likes of Cahiers. Someone asks if anyone has read Up the Down Staircase, someone else — it sounds like Wat but it could just as easily be Foxy Grandpa — says that laughter is cleansing, it is good for America to enjoy a healthy laugh, not to mention a sob or two, over the problems of a teacher in a slum school, the same way it is good for America to enjoy the James Bond cinema spoofs.)

“They’re not spoofs,” I said. I was certain now that both of them, father and grandfather, had veered off on a tangent because they refused to discuss something that was terribly important to me. Together, father and son, they had decided in secret conspiracy to prevent an airing of my thoughts, thereby scuttling my plans even before they were fully formed. So I very loftily said something about the “spoof” label being a very handy way of alleviating our Puritan guilt over enjoying a sado-masochistic reaction to Bond’s screen exploits, the same way we had felt it necessary to call Candy a spoof as well, so that it would then become acceptable reading for all the ladies of Garden City.

“Did you read Candy?” my father asked, surprised.

“Yes, didn’t you?”

“Well, yes, but...”

“But it was a spoof, right?”

“No, it was pornography,” my grandfather said.

“So what’s wrong with pornography?” I said.

“Nothing,” my grandfather said.

“I just didn’t think you were reading pornography,” my father said.

“What’d you think I was reading? Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle?”

“No, but not pornography.”

“I’ve also read the Marquis de Sade,” I said.

“Where’d you get hold of that?”

“From the top shelf of books in your bedroom,” I said.

“Got to be more careful with your dirty books, Will,” my grandfather said, and smiled.

“I guess so,” my father answered, and returned the smile, and again I had the feeling they were excluding me, that their bond with each other was closer than mine with either of them. So I forced the conversation back to Vietnam again, because Vietnam was what was on my mind, and I wanted them to know this, while simultaneously wanting to keep my formative plans from them, telling them that first Ambassador Maxwell Taylor had informed the nation that the aggression was from the north, while 8000 of our Marines landed at Danang, bringing our total number of men in arms to 75,000 with experts predicting 150,000 American troops in Vietnam before the end of 1965. Then President Johnson had said, “What we want to do is achieve the maximum deterrence with the minimum danger and cost in human lives,” and announced that 50,000 more men would be sent there right away, bringing our total to 125,000 with the estimate for year’s end now being 200,000 and the draft quota more than doubled from 17,000 to 35,000 a month.

“Well, you don’t have to worry about the draft,” my father said.

“Pop,” I said, “maybe we all ...”

“He’s a student,” my father explained.

“I know,” my grandfather said.

“Suppose I wasn’t?”

“Weren’t.”

“Weren’t. What then?”

“But you are.”

“But a lot of kids aren’t. And when the bomb falls, it’s not going to ask who’s a student and who isn’t.”

“There’s not much danger of that,” my father said. “Not with a hotline between Washington and Moscow.”

“Assuming somebody has a dime to make a call.”

“It’s not a pay telephone,” my father said, exhibiting monumental humorlessness.

“I once got a call in Chicago,” my grandfather said, “from a man who told me, ‘Mr. Tyler, this is your exterminator.’ Seared me out of my wits.”

"You?” my father said. “Scared you?”

“Sure,” my grandfather said. “Turned out he really was the exterminator. Your mother had called about ants in the kitchen.”

“We’re all scared of the exterminator,” I said. “We’re like a gambler down to his last chip, down to his underwear in fact, with nothing more to lose. We’re saying, ‘The hell with everything, I’ll take my chances,’ and we’re putting shorts and all on the next roll, figuring we’ll either walk out naked or fly home in a private jet.”

“Survival’s always been a gamble,” my father said. “Do you think you’re saying something new?”

“Yes!”

“Well, you’re not. The first time a caveman picked up a club...”

(The screen is filled with the impressive image of William Francis Tyler, publisher and lecturer as he expounds his theories on The Ultimate Weapon, relating to a dozing audience the alarm felt in the civilian population each time a new weapon is developed, going on to explain while the camera zooms in on a busty blond co-ed picking her nose that mankind has always had the good sense, the camera is back on his face now, in close-up, to place restrictions on its own capacity to destroy itself, his voice droning on as the camera suddenly cuts away to a shot of the grandfather, Bertram Tyler, staring moodily out to sea, and then intercuts close shots of Will Tyler’s face with those of Wat Tyler’s, to emphasize the point that this is strictly between father and son now, the provocateur oddly removed. Nobody understands the film any more. The theater is half empty.)

“Yes, thank you very much, Pop,” I said, “but that kind of thinking no longer applies. This Vietnam thing is new. It’s new because a lot of kids aren’t willing to gamble any more, don’t you see? Why should we? So a hotshot Vietcong-killer like Ky can go on running his cruddy little country? Who the hell cares?”

“South Vietnam is important to our security,” my father said.

“Whose security?”

“Ours. Yours, mine.”

“How about the security of the five hundred Americans who’ve already wasted their lives there?”

“Some people would not consider that a...”

“... or the God knows how many more we seem ready to waste?”

“Do you want all Asia to go Communist?”

“I don’t give a damn what it goes, Pop.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I mean it.”

“You don’t.”

“It’s a bad war, and...”

“There are no good wars,” my grandfather said suddenly.

“... and the only way to make it any better is to end it.”