AWOL

AWOL Stephen Dunn I've told many stories about how I became a poet, because only many might begin to approach the truth of the matter. This is another, in part about luck and self-interest, and how various manifestations of the latter during my charmed stint in the Army led to my first significant scribbles. In actuaUty, it's more about a time of great carelessness, an extended moment between wars when I must have believed anything was possible. Either the gods were on my side, or bravado sometimes can make a potion of luck that's stronger than the gods' corrective impulses. Whatever the case, I owe much ofwho I am to those serendipitous years. It's 1968. My wife and I are in our apartment in Kew Gardens, Queens, five miles from Forest HiUs where I grew up. I've returned to famüiarity after a year of living in Spain. We've landed jobs in Manhattan, temporary stops on the way to graduate school where we hope to continue changing our Uves. America is out of control, the government with its war, young people and those not so young with their opposition to it. It's a Saturday morning. I've just picked up a package at the post office that was too big to deliver—marked United States Government. In it is an Honorable Discharge from the army, which I stare at, wondering how this is possible. But there it is, official looking and, in fact, official. It seems comic to me, like a Catch22 entirely in my favor. No less than a year before, I'd planned on fleeing to Canada. I was stiU considering it as an option. In a few months, reading a New York Times front-page article, I wiU understand everything. But now I just srmle, and show the official document to my wife. We hug and cheer in our happy ignorance, the line between successful crime and blessed good fortune more blurry than ever. In 1962, when I was twenty-three and a year out of coUege, I enlisted in the National Guard for six months active duty, which also meant that I'd be 109 110Fourth Genre obUgated to go to Guard meetings one night a week for six years, plus two weeks ofmore intense duty in the summers. The alternative was to wait to be drafted, and serve for two years. I was sent to Fort Dix in NewJersey for eight weeks Basic Training, after which I'd be assigned to a different fort for more specialized training. Athletic and in good shape, I could endure the daüy physical rigors ofBasic. But my shorn head, the doorless, open-on-aUsides commodes, the humüiation ofbeing regularly yeUed at by sergeants— that stripping away of one's identity for what often seemed Uke invisible imperfections—bothered me considerably. I must have given off some essence that comes from having read books rife with irony and ambiguity, the suspect essence of a coUege boy, a contrarian, merely there to get his obUgation over with. The army immediately recognizes such a person, who might hesitate instead ofcharge when the order is "Charge!" It is important that he be reformed. But it was peacetime. The ColdWar had its reaUties, yet it was nevertheless cold. I found it difficult to connect my training with necessity. Besides, I'd been a history major with a concentration in Russian history. I knew words like "détente" and "realpolitik." Cleaning my weapon felt like a game at which I became proficient so I wouldn't be yeUed at. Firing it meant Uttle more than intrasquad competition. But latrine duty has a way of chastening the uppity. CrawUng on your beUy under barbed wire with a rifle in your hands is a trial designed with a disinterest in your considered opinion about it. Each day I was more and more impeUed to think about the immediate task in front of me. By the end of Basic, my made bed could pass inspection, my shoes were briUiandy spit-shined, I was no longer constipated . I could march in tandem with the other men. I even felt...