In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • The Lincoln Boys
  • Marianne Boruch (bio)

It was one knockout van, that’s for sure: pulling over in a cloud of dust, a little gravel. Your classic case, or trying hard to be: spray-painted in DayGlo colors, bad R. Crumb rip-offs, cartoon guys angled back as far as they could and still be upright, walking all over the side and up onto the roof in those big shoes and, scattered about, old familiars even then—1971—cast in tall capital letters: KEEP ON TRUCKIN’ and ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE, that sort of thing. GIVE PEACE A CHANCE and FLOWER POWER and TUNE IN, DROP OUT.

I said something—holy hot damn or something—but were they even words?

Woody eased into a faint whistle. Shit, you’ve got to be kidding, he said in a low voice.

Hey, this is the Midwest, Frances said. We have to work overtime. We’re just now catching up to the coast. Besides, they look young. They’re babies.

Bingo!—I guess, Woody said.

We’d been standing out there too long on the prairie—Oh middle of Nebraska, as Woody liked to intone. Hour number four, for this particular wait. Day two in fact, on a trip that felt epic somehow, our hitchhiking from Illinois to California, the three of us: Woody finally out of Vietnam for good, and Frances—especially Frances, whose idea this whole thing was, a widow at twenty and now, a year later, intent on finding out—but how?—what happened out west to her husband Ned those months before the car crash, when he was driving back to her. And me—well, nothing special there. I was lucky. Just twenty, just along for the ride. And now this van, coming toward us, rattling to a stop.

Maybe we were hallucinating.

No. Because I heard it shifting down, coughing, yanked up to stop. And yes, the door opened out—not a slider, that came later. This was the old regular sort of vw door. [End Page 110]

You guys! the driver shouted. You headed somewhere?

A quick decision: tell all, or part? West! Frances yelled, going for general. Then: Denver! Or—she stopped here, weighing the situation. California! she said at last.

All right! Cal-i-for-ni-a! Far out, far fucking out! cried the other guy in pure jubilance, the one in tie-dye everything: t-shirt and jacket and headband awhirl in blues and reds, what we could see from the road anyway.

The driver turned to him: slap me five, bro! Then faced us again. Yo! Get your asses in here! We got everything you want in this here friggin’ remarkable van.

Now where in California? the tie-dye guy riding shotgun said to us once Woody and I wedged ourselves in the second seat, and Frances slipped farther back, behind us. He had turned around and I could see he was a bit younger than we were, but not by much. He put on his wire-rims so he could check us out.

Wow, you in the army, man? he asked Woody, who had taken off his stocking cap. It’s that hair. It gave him away.

Yep. Well, no—just out, in fact. That’s it for me and Uncle Sam, forever and ever. I’m out of there.

He was a medic, I jumped in. He’s really a CO.

A CO? the driver yelled out, over the racket of the van. Right on! But I thought that meant you didn’t have to do nothing except maybe work in a nursing home or teach in the ghetto or something, stateside.

Not according to my draft board, Woody shouted back. I thought that too. No such luck.

Bummer, man. I mean, I hear you, Tie-Dye said. And yeah, I heard that, you know. About how every draft board is different. Then he looked intrigued. Hey, how was it over there, man? Lots of good dope, right? Pow pow pow pow! He spun out his forefinger, firing his hand in a wide half-circle. I bet you saw plenty of blood and guts too.

Woody turned away, staring out...

pdf

Share