I awake to the shrill sounds of my alarm clock, an invasive and unwanted ringing in my ears.  6:30 am. I wince at the intrusion and keep my eyes closed for a while after. I enjoy the darkness and the quiet behind my eyelids, blocking out the world beyond them.

It’s 7 am when I finally open my eyes and tune into the sounds of my family outside the door. There's the opening and closing of my oldest child’s closet and the happy burbling of my youngest. I blink slowly and groan as I pull myself out of bed, with my feet landing on the wood-textured linoleum. 

Squinting between the curtains my wife must have opened, I see that fog sits heavily on the ground outside. Dew clings to the blades of grass in my backyard, which is littered with various children's toys. I see a slightly muddy patch with tiny green soldiers scattered around, confidently holding their plastic rifles.

My eyes stop there for a moment. My concentration is finally snapped away when my bedroom door opens. I turn and see my wife, already dressed and ready for the day. Her halo of blonde hair frames her bright and smiling face.

“Oh, you’re up!” she says in a surprised tone. “Good morning, I was just coming to check if you were awake.”

“Yes, I’m awake. I was just about to get ready,” I say tiredly, rubbing my face with both of my hands.

“Okay, breakfast is in about half an hour, so don’t take too long,” she says.

“I won’t,” I promise.

“Attaboy,” she says with a wink, before leaving the room and clicking the door softly behind her.

I smile at where my wife stood, even after she has left and closed the door.

Heading to my wardrobe, I open the doors and push through the racks of clothes. I get to the suit section and take out my favorite one. As I pull it off the railing, something falls out of the pocket and lands at my feet. I lean down and pick it up, flipping it between my fingers.

Upon further inspection, I find that it’s a few pamphlets that are folded up within themselves. I unfold them in my hands and read the printed text on them.

Your son next? is written in an offensive and bold black text, above a stark cross gravestone with a helmet resting on it. It's printed on brown paper.

The other says If this mother and child were not American would you care? on white paper with purple abstract line art. It shows an embrace between two figures, with sadness practically spilling off of the paper.

I hold the paper between my fingers. The sensation is somehow overwhelming to my senses. In the corner of my eye, I see the trash can just by the doorway inside the bathroom. It's empty and almost inviting me to hide something.

My eyes flick up to the shelf just above eye level in my wardrobe. It's piled high with articles, reports, and books, stacked and bookmarked in no particular order.

I quickly put the papers back in the pocket where I found them, careful not to bend them, but sure to hide them.

Still there, but currently unnoticeable.

The droning of the television set chokes out the morning news, with the regularly scheduled showing of violent videos and images. 

A normal Thursday morning. 

Sunlight fights through the fog, allowing a creamy glow to come in through the windows. It falls over half of the wooden table and the brightly colored tiles that my wife carefully chose and continues to maintain.

My wife, Marie, and daughter, Rosie, are sitting in the light. Their identical heads of blonde hair are bright in the frosty glow. Rosie waves her spoon around above her bowl of cereal, giggling every time the metal connects with the china and makes a noise. Marie simply watches with a happy smile on her face.

Thomas sits beside me on the darker half of the table, eating his breakfast with an unusual silence. His eyes are glued to the television. I place a newspaper clipping from yesterday beside my plate and begin to cut up my food.

My eye is caught by the images and voices coming from the screen behind my wife.

“Last month, thousands gathered at North Carolina State University to protest against the war in Vietnam, and they are expected to again later this week—”

The screen is filled with images of bell-bottomed and peace sign-carrying teenagers and young adults. They're waving banners with an almost religious ferocity, shouting and yelling their outrage and objections. I move my eyes back to my plate and take my first mouthful.

“How brave of them,” my wife sighs, her face bathed in the sunlight as she smiles affectionately toward the screen.

“Brave in what way?” I ask.

“Standing up for what they believe in. It's admirable,” she answers. She takes a sip of her coffee and leans toward the table to spear a piece of bacon with her fork.

“It’s not that I don’t agree with them, I just can’t see what changes they are making,” I say with a disappointed sigh, before taking a mouthful. “I just feel it is a waste of time.”

“Maybe.” She shrugs passively and takes her bite, but still watches the screen with a slight sparkle in the corner of her eye.

Rosie begins to fuss, forcing Marie to divide her attention and give her a small, metal car. Rosie makes engine noises as she pushes it along the edge of the table.

The report on the television changes to a helicopter emerging from the clouds, landing in a meadow in a wooded area. It spills out a stream of soldiers. Some are fumbling with their guns as if they don’t yet know how to hold them. The others are moving them smoothly, as if they were a fifth limb.

I can’t help but notice the boys' faces, lined with dirt and fear. Sweat clings to their fingertips and slips around the handles of their oversized weapons.

“Must we watch this so early in the morning?” I ask, dropping my fork and knife on the edges of my plate with a loud clatter.

My wife jumps slightly at my sudden outburst, and I realize the volume that I didn’t care to contain.

“We can turn it off. I only put it on because Thomas asked,” she says, with a hurt expression. Her mouth creases at the corners slightly and a furrow between her brows begins to deepen.

“Really?” I look over to my son beside me, suddenly not so interested in the screen.

“There’s no harm in keeping up to date,” he says with a shrug. His eyes are downcast, with curly brown hair falling over his forehead, much like mine used to when I was his age.

“Read my articles if you care so much," I say flatly, flicking open the morning paper that was rolled up in front of my plate.

Weather, protests, civil unrest, sports...

“I would if they weren’t so boring,” he says, almost whispering.

“Thomas! You cannot say things like that to your father. Apologize,” Marie says in a harsh tone. It's different from her usual gentleness.

Thomas stays silent.

“What do you find so boring about my articles, son?” I ask, putting down my fork to meet my son's annoyed look.

I move my eyes away from his and gesture for my wife to turn off the television. She stands up, not before giving me a pleading look, and turns off the television with a click. The room that was filled with the faint noise of reporting and gunfire is now filled with a crackling quiet, the silence almost deafening.

“Never mind. Sorry,” Thomas says.

“That’s what I thought,” I answer, giving my wife a thin-pressed smile.

She answers with a roll of her eyes and sits back down in her chair with her arms crossed.

I just can’t win this morning.

I finish my plate and pick up the morning newspaper, The Washington Post, that my wife had laid out for me. I do try to read it, but the writing style is so frustrating. These kinds of articles jabbing at the anti-war movement make me want to quit my job, they’re such terrible wastes of paper. I may not want to participate in it myself, but I sure as hell would prefer protest over the alternative.

In the corner of my eye, my gaze is caught by the article clipping I had brought in with me. I’d kept it on my bedside table since I first read it yesterday afternoon. I sigh and lazily fold the oversized embarrassment of a newspaper in half and drop it on the table. I unfold the clipping, running my fingers along the well-worn fold lines as I begin to read.

William L Calley Jr., 26 years old, is a mild-mannered, boyish-looking Vietnam combat veteran with the nickname "Rusty." The Army is completing an investigation of charges that he deliberately murdered at least 109 Vietnamese civilians in a search-and-destroy mission in March 1968 in a Viet Cong stronghold known as "Pinkville."

Calley has formally been charged with six specifications of mass murder. Each specification cites a number of dead, adding up to the 109 total—

“James?” I vaguely hear.

“Hm?” I pull myself out of my trance, returning to the world of my kitchen. I feel my eyes still twitching to look back down as I try to drag them away from the unfinished sentence I had been reading. 

Well, rereading.

“I asked if you wanted more coffee,” Marie asks gently, in her eternally patient tone.

—and charges that Calley did "with premeditation murder… Oriental human beings, whose names and sex are unknown, by shooting them with a rifle."

“Oh, sorry, honey, I was reading. Yes, please,” I say after my pause to read.

I smile up to her while folding up the article clipping into a few more squares than necessary. Enough that the words that are visible can no longer be strung together into those brutal sentences.

“You work too much.” Her perceptive eyes look at the words beside my thumb, scanning over the sentence: carrying out orders.

“Have you been sleeping enough?” she asks with an intake of breath. She rests a hand on the side of my head and runs her fingers through my hair.

“Probably not,” I admit.

She rolls her eyes disapprovingly, but still brushes a thumb along the side of my cheek. I smile up at her appreciatively, just briefly enjoying the moment.

“So I was talking to Joe the other day,” Tom begins to say.

“Oh, honey, every time you talk to that Joe character you start saying the most ridiculous things,” Marie says with a sigh.

Her hand drops away from my face and rests on my shoulder while she pours coffee into my mug. The contact allows me a sigh of relief, my anxiety lessening.

“Thank you, and your mother is right. That friend of yours is bad news,” I say with a frown. I pick up my coffee and take a sip, looking my son up and down.

“Why’d you say that?” he asks. His face sours as he grips his fork in his fist, knuckles flushing white.

“First, it was that concert in August he wanted to take you to... What was it, Woodstock? Then it was the car project with the—” I begin, with a deep breath.

“Car!” My daughter giggles in a carefree manner, bashing a toy car into her cereal bowl with a smile.

“Oh, no,” Marie whines, pacing to the other side of the table. She wipes the milk off Rosie’s face and coos at her soothingly.

“My point stands. I don’t like Joe.” I turn my eyes away from my wife and daughter and look at my son.

His body is tense, his knee bouncing under the table and his eyes looking down at his breakfast plate.

“He’s got good ideas sometimes…” Tom says.

“Such as?” I ask.

“A job for after high school,” he answers, uncertain.

Well, that gets my attention.

“What kind of job?” I ask cynically.

I take another sip and readjust my position in my chair to face him. The wood of the chair legs drags against the tiles in the quiet of the kitchen.

“The kind with good money and lots of benefits and… team building skills," Tom says.

I place my mug down carefully and swallow harshly. My eyes briefly move to the now dark, but still warm, television set.

“James—” I hear my wife say, in a soft tone.

"Now, what kind of job has that kind of benefits right out of high school with no qualifications, son?" I ask. I ignore my wife and measure my voice to stay calm.

“Sure does sound like a great deal, but there must be downsides to such an attractive prospect, no?” I go on, with a tilt of my head and a snap in my voice.

I can feel a nervousness rising in my chest, just like my reaction to the news on the television and in the newspapers and—

"The Marines," Tom says, finally meeting me with a steely glare in his eyes and a defiant grit to his jaw.

"Absolutely not,” I say.

"Dad—" Tom starts to say.

"You know how I feel about this. Absolutely not,” I repeat.

He freezes at my reaction, and I realize just how loudly I said that. I make a conscious effort to calm my voice, but the tension in my voice remains.

“I find it uncomfortable enough to have to read and write about it at work, let alone allow my son to be involved in such a situation,” I say harshly.

As I watch his body language, I realize he is simply waiting for me to finish talking. It just makes the anxiety inside me build to a boiling point.

“I avoid this war as much as I can, because I truly hate it, and I will most definitely avoid my family being affected by it," I finish at a louder volume. My voice wavers in the last sentence with barely controlled anger.

Tom's mouth twists like he can taste his unspoken words stuck in his throat. It is so similar to my own frown, whenever I have lost an argument I should have won or had a story unfairly stolen from under me.

“I didn’t realize it was so bad—” Tom says.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You would benefit from reading some of my articles sometimes. Ralph does column upon column about the war, more than I would like if I am being entirely honest,” I say.

My nervousness fades and my voice quiets at his apologetic tone. I pick up my newspaper and start reading again to avoid his or my wife’s accusatory looks.

“What do you think I should do after high school, then, if you think you know everything?” Tom asks, an argumentative tone creeping back into his voice.

“Anything but fighting the Viet Cong, Tom,” I sigh with finality before looking at his face. It is stormy and creased, frustration dug deep within the furrow between his eyebrows.

“I can see if I can get you a job at your grandfather's garage, how about that? Or you could go to college?” I ask helpfully, but the damage is already done. 

I straighten out the newspaper in front of my face to block my view of him, ending the conversation. I hear his sigh from his half of the table, and the clatter of his fork on his plate. A scrape of his chair and the soft padding of his feet against the floor, and he's left the room.

"James," Marie says. "You could have been nicer."

"Marie, the war is brutal and horrific and there is nothing to be nice about in relation to it. I stand by what I said," I say.

“It’s not that I don’t agree with you on that, but he’s scared. Don’t you remember what it was like when you were 16, 17?” she asks, in a disapproving tone.

I shrug in passive agreement, turning to the sports page. In the silence, I turn the corner of my paper down to look at her.

Marie is sitting next to Rosie with a spoonful of cereal still hovering in the air near her mouth. Rosie sits with her mouth open, waiting for a spoon that is yet to come. But my wife's eyes are glued to the front page, moving back and forth as she reads the headline. I close the sports page and flip the paper over in my hands to look at the front cover page that I had not read.

I skim it briefly. Dozens dead, communists coming out of the trees and young American soldiers massacred. The regular headlines.

"You could have some sympathy, you know," she says softly, shaking her head as I move the paper.

She finally spoons the last mouthful of cereal into my daughter's mouth. Rosie claps her little hands together and jumps in her chair.

"For who? The Viet Cong? The brainwashed American soldiers? Goddamn Nixon?" I ask in frustration, closing my newspaper. 

I go back to eating my breakfast, scraping eggs and bacon onto my fork and shoveling them into my mouth. Marie's eyes are still on the paper on the table, so I shift it under my plate out of view and wait for her answer.

"Any of them," she says, disappointment heavy in her tone.

I frown and tilt my head in confusion, but before I can question it, she takes my daughter out of her chair and carries her out of the room.

I am left alone in my kitchen, fork and knife in hand as I look out of the window. A crease grows between my eyebrows, and the glaring, frosty rays of sunlight shine on my table.

As I step onto my front porch with my briefcase in hand, I turn, hoping to see my wife. Usually she would wave me away with a smile on her face, but right now she is nowhere to be seen. I sigh in defeat and close the door behind me.

I slip the folded up article into my pocket. My fingertips brush against the other two pieces of paper.

I shove the newspaper under my arm to be able to hold my car keys. I walk down my front pathway, careful not to step on the beautifully-cared-for flower beds when I make my way to my 1965 Chevy Impala. 

I get into my car, going to toss my paper and briefcase in the seat to my right. I grumble with annoyance as I see interior design magazines on the front passenger seat. I move them to the back seat to make space, and finally my hands are free. I turn on the ignition and smile at the comforting purr of my engine, pulling out of my driveway onto the street and switching on my radio.

“Good morning, Washington DC! It is a cold November morning, with high fog cover and a temperature of about 40 degrees, and here is the news. Last night in South Vietnam below the 17th parallel—”

I can feel the paper digging into my stomach from inside my pocket. I wince and pull the corner of my jacket so the pocket sits at my hip. I readjust myself and change gears as I switch lanes to pull onto the highway.

I use my free hand to turn to different radio stations. The radio crackles as I twist the tuner, the murmur of mumbled words as I try to tune into one.

“Nixon has—”

Not that one.

“Casualties have—”

Not that one, either.

I know I need to know a lot about the war, especially when I spend all my days editing articles about it. But that starts when I walk through the office doors. I avoid it as much as possible before that point. Well, I usually do…

I take the pamphlets and the article clipping out of my pocket, suddenly hyperaware of their presence. I place them on top of my newspaper, allowing the radio to crackle without my tuning.

I return my eyes to the road, focusing on the boxy red back of a Ford Mustang in front of me and the crunch of my radio. But I can still feel them in the corner of my eye: the purple line art, the black gravestone. Without taking my eyes off the road, I tuck the scraps under my newspaper. That’s better.

I heave a sigh of relief, releasing a breath that I hadn’t realized I was holding onto.

I go to tune my radio again, finally landing on a station that doesn’t seem to be spewing an exhausting program of fearmongering. The back end of a song that I’ve heard before trickles off, with the fading of the guitars and a soul style of singing.

“Wow, what a great tune from Three Dog Night, their hit song ‘Eli’s Coming’ at number 10 on the billboard hot 100. Next up, we’ve got a song highly requested by our younger listeners, so this one's for you guys!”

I hear the opening of drums, and of a twangy guitar riff, building up to a vocalist singing.

“Some folks are born made to wave the flag

They’re red, white, and blue

And when the band plays ‘Hail to the Chief’

They point the cannon at you, Lord.”

I prefer the British ones. The Beatles, I think they’re called.

I keep my eyes on the car's fender in front of me, turning up the radio. I gently tap my fingers along the top of my steering wheel, curled around like I'm scared someone will see. It’s a popular song, it’s not a crime to like it.

“Yeah, some folks inherit star-spangled eyes

They send you down to war

And when you ask ‘em, ‘How much should we give?’

They only answer, ‘More, more, more.'”

My mind strays back to my son, the defiance in his eyes and the insistence in his voice. The words of my wife ring true in my ears: “Don’t you remember what it was like when you were 16, 17?”

Suddenly, that emotion in his eyes looks less like defiance and more like fear. A fear that I see in my own eyes more often than not when I look at myself in the mirror. I’ve managed to avoid thinking about this for a while now. 

I’m too old to be drafted, and my son was young enough that I could avoid it up to this point. But with his 18th birthday months away, the draft lottery looms over my mind like a heavy cloud. But never in my wildest dreams could I imagine that he would want to enlist rather than be drafted.

It’s practically suicide.

Does he know that?

I don’t notice when "Fortunate Son" has finished. I don’t even notice when a few songs have passed. I barely even register when The Beatles start playing, my mind still blank with fear. I really only shake myself back to reality when I’m parked in my spot in front of a small office building with a sign above it that says The Washington Daily.