Honestly Ben Page 17

  Up came two articles from the Boston Globe. The first was an obituary. I pulled it up, and it was a re-hashing of what the Natick Newsman had in its write-up. The second was more of a surprise. The headline was, “Students Turn Out for Massive Anti-War Demonstration.” I figured Peter Pappas would probably be quoted as a counterargument. Like, these students were against the war, but here’s one local student who isn’t.

  That wasn’t the case.

  Peter Pappas, a strapping 16-year-old from Dorchester who attends the prestigious Natick School, chained himself to a fence post in front of the State House.

  “The current administration has blood on its hands,” Pappas said. “We are allied with a corrupt regime, blindly battling an enemy based solely on ideology. The powers that be are too old to fight, so it’s my generation that will die, and for what?”

  A tingle crawled up my spine. This was more like the Peter Pappas from Model Congress. How could this be the same Peter Pappas who went to fight in the very war he was lambasting here?

  I scanned the article more, and I saw that his sister’s name was Lolita.

  What was the real story of the guy for whom this award was named? How could an anti-war guy wind up fighting in that war? And how many Lolita Pappases could there be in the greater Boston area?

  I typed her name in Google. A Facebook page came up for a gray-haired woman with high cheekbones and a scarf around her head. It mentioned Dorchester as her hometown. I checked whitepages.com and found her phone number. I scribbled it down and hurried out of the library.

  Back in my dorm room, I called the number.

  “Hello?” a woman’s voice said.

  “Is this Lolita Pappas?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “My name is Ben Carver. I’m this year’s recipient of the Peter Pappas Award at the Natick School.”

  “Eh,” she said. “Whattaya want?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to bother you. I’m confused about something I read, and I wondered if you could help me out.”

  “It’s a long time ago. Not sure what I could tell you. That award still happenin’?”

  She pronounced “sure” as show-ah and “award” as awahd, and her Boston accent put me at ease a little. I was used to the way people talked at home, though my dad especially worked hard not to speak in New Hampshire vernacular, because he thought it sounded common and he didn’t want people to think he was poor. When I came to Natick, I expected everyone would talk like, Pahk yaw cah in Hahvahd Yahd. Turns out it’s a class thing. Rich kids generally don’t speak that way.

  “The award is not a family thing?”

  “The award is some big foundation. Our father was involved before he passed. Bunch of corporate chuckleheads from Boston, nothin’ to do with us.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “So whattaya want me to tell ya?”

  “I was researching your brother for my speech, and I read this old article in the Boston Globe. It was about an anti-war demonstration, and it said you guys both went. I thought, Wait. Peter enlisted. How could it be that a year before he was all anti-war?”

  The other end of the line was quiet.

  “Ms. Pappas?”

  “I’m here,” she said, pronouncing it he-ah. “Just thinkin’.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I gave her a minute. As I sat there on the line, I thought about what she might be about to tell me. I couldn’t quite imagine. Did something happen to change Peter’s mind? It would have had to be really important to make him go from protesting the war to sacrificing his life for it.

  “How do you feel about war? What did you say your name was?”

  “Ben. And I’m generally anti-war. Why?”

  She exhaled. “I just don’t have the time to waste with chuckleheads. The war people. Took too much from me, and nowadays I’m too tired to argue with someone who thinks we had any business in Vietnam.”

  I didn’t really have a strong opinion on Vietnam. I knew more about World War I and II, and they were more clear-cut to me. But I agreed with Peter’s argument against the war in his Model Congress speech, and I didn’t think the United States needed to intervene every time a country decided to go in another direction.

  “No. Definitely not a warmonger here. When I read the article in the Natick Newsman about your brother, um, I guess I couldn’t really fathom why someone would give their own life for a concept.”

  She laughed a little. “Good kid,” she said. “Stay that way. You wanna know the truth?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “You sure? Because, this award? It ain’t right, to my way of thinkin’. I think my brother would go nuts if he knew about how he’s been remembered these last forty years.”

  “I’m sure. I want to understand who he is.”

  “You got a car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you get to Dorchester?” Dawchestah.

  “Sure.”

  “You want to take me out for coffee? There’s the Flat Black over on Washington. I know traffic is the shits on a Friday afternoon. Could ya come tomorrow?”

  “I can, but,” I said. I wasn’t sure how to explain that I had a debit card for gas, and otherwise had seventy-two dollars to last me until June. What the hell. This would be worth it. “Sure. What time?”

  We made a plan to meet in the early afternoon, and I hung up with my mind racing. The last thing I needed was more stuff on my brain, but sometimes it was hard to resist.

  Dorchester was a forty-minute drive from Natick, just south of Boston. I’d never been there, but I wrote down the directions and kept them on the seat next to me. I almost asked Rafe if he wanted to come along and make a day of it, but in the end I decided to take the trip alone.

  My phone rang while I was heading east on the 93. I glanced down. It was Hannah. My heart pulsed.

  I picked up and put it on speaker. “Hey,” I said, almost like an apology.

  “Are you dead? What the hell, Ben?”

  I laughed, uneasy. “No, not dead. Just insanely busy. Right now I’m driving to Dorchester to—”

  “I don’t give a fuck,” she said. “I am just, like, incensed with you. We were doing great and then you act like an asshole at the dance and I give you an easy task—just tell me that I matter more to you than your boyfriend or whatever he is. And what do you do? Absolutely nothing!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Really.”

  “Well, yes, that makes sense, for starters. What the fuck is taking you so long?”

  I was quiet for a few seconds. “It’s complicated.”

  “You’re gay. You’re bi. Is that what I’m hearing here?”

  “No. I’m. I’m—I just don’t want to lie to you. You asked me a really important question when we last talked. You asked if I wanted to spend time with you more than I do with Rafe. I want to make sure. I know how I feel about you. What I don’t know is how I feel about—him. Okay?”

  She took a deep breath. “No. Not okay. I mean, I get what you’re saying, but no. Not okay. The way I feel right now is definitely not okay.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I promise I’ll call you within a few days. I absolutely promise. I’m a man of my word.”

  “Knock yourself out. I’ll be waiting restlessly by the phone, obviously,” she said, deadpan, and then she hung up.

  Shit. I’m so stupid. Of course I should have called. Just said anything. Even if it wasn’t entirely, totally true, just said something to reassure her, because she’s amazing, and I really like her, and she could be, like, a great girlfriend. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  I parked at the coffee shop and carefully navigated the black ice on the sidewalk. Inside, the stench of burnt coffee invaded my nostrils.

  I saw Lolita right away. She looked exactly like her photo on Facebook. She didn’t smile at me, exactly, but she waved me over to her table in the back. She had a purple folder in front of her.

  “Hey,” I said.
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br />   “Price of admission is a large regular,” she said. Lahge regulah.

  I nodded and went to the front to get it for her. A few minutes later, I returned with her drink and a cup of water for me, and I sat down across from her.

  She laughed. “You don’t like coffee?”

  “It’s okay,” I said. In fact, I loved coffee. I was hoping to use birthday money to get a coffeemaker for my room next year. But I only had enough cash for one cup.

  Her eyes got wide. “Oh, shit,” she said. “I figured … ”

  “What?”

  “You’re a scholarship kid, ain’t ya?”

  I looked down at my outfit. Was I that obvious? I was wearing Dad’s hand-me-down jacket, and I realized that of course, in the world of Natick, the way I dressed was pretty much a dead giveaway about my family’s lack of money. I said nothing.

  “Where ya from, Ben? You a Southie too? Don’t sound Southie.”

  I shook my head. “New Hampshire.”

  She smiled. “Up north! Shit, look at me, stereotyping boarding school kids. We grew up in Dorchester. Our father worked in a flour mill. Ever since Petey went to that school, I’ve been a little pissed. Of course, it didn’t help when he died and a bunch of fat cats named an award after him that made him sound like some war hawk.” Wah hock. “I get so mad. Still.” She held her hands out at me, fingers wide.

  I gave her a smile. “I definitely get it.”

  She stood up. “What kind of coffee?”

  “It’s okay—”

  “What kind,” she repeated.

  “Just regular.”

  “Milk? Sugar?”

  “Milk,” I said. “Thanks.”

  She came back to the table with my coffee, and we got along a lot better after that. Like Hannah, Lolita was a bit of a firecracker, saying whatever crossed her mind. And like Hannah, she seemed to immediately accept that I didn’t speak quite as openly as she did. She cracked a few jokes about “the establishment,” which I laughed at even though I only thought they were a little funny, and then she told me her brother’s story.

  “Petey and me, we grew up here. Dad worked at the factory, Mom was at home. This is not—how do I even say—an intellectual place. But Petey.” She shook her head. “Man oh man. What a brain on that kid. I like to think I’m pretty smart, but jeez. He was reading Tolstoy in sixth grade. I remember when JFK was shot. Petey must’ve been in eighth grade, because I was in tenth. He created this huge project about the president’s unknown accomplishments. We all thought it was a school project, but it wasn’t. He just did it and brought it in to show his teacher.

  “That’s when Dad figured out he was special, I guess. Applied to Natick and got a nice scholarship, so that’s where he went for high school. Petey was just so excited because of all the stuff he could learn at a fancy private school.”

  I shook my head. It was uncanny, the similarities. I’d never done extra-credit projects at school back in Alton, but I’d go to the library back home and be the only kid there. The only person under fifty, usually.

  “Why you shakin’ your head?”

  I smiled. “His story is a lot like mine. I mean, I don’t think I’m as special, probably. But the same—trajectory.”

  Now it was her turn to smile. “ ‘Trajectory,’ eh? Yeah. You sound kind of similar.” Similah.

  “Going to Natick was interesting, because it changed my brother. Or maybe it was more like, away from Dad, he wasn’t so afraid of his smarts. He spread his wings some. Growing up, I could always count on being the rebel, and Petey toeing the line for Dad. And suddenly around ninth grade, Petey had all these political ideas. Liberal ones. They weren’t in line with Dad’s way of thinking, that’s for sure. Petey told me stuff, because we were always close. And suddenly Petey was anti-war, and I was just glad to have an ally.

  “But he wouldn’t say nothin’ around Dad. Never could do it. And we started to go to rallies. He’d drive back east from Natick, and I’d meet him in Boston. After I graduated high school, so maybe that was eleventh grade for him. When Dad saw that anti-war demonstration article in the Globe, he flipped. Threatened to pull Petey from Natick. He said it was brainwashing him.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  She nodded. “Petey was torn. Dad was his idol, and suddenly Dad is talking down to Petey, treating him like he always treated me, I guess. Everything I ever did was wrong. And boy, was Dad good at spreading that around. Man. I’d hear him on the phone with Petey, and see them at Sunday dinners, and Dad really let him have it. The brave kids were going and fighting for our country’s freedom while a bunch of un-American hippies like who Petey had become sat on their asses and whined. Education was for sissies. And Petey … It just broke him. I remember getting a call from him at Natick. My brother, in tears. Saying he couldn’t do it anymore. I don’t know if he ever knew what it was, but I did. Out of the spotlight of Dad’s admiration, he felt like he was nothing. I always wondered why Dad’s approval mattered to him so much. Three months later, he shipped out. Skipped his senior year to do it. I was so wicked pissed at him. Felt like he’d abandoned me. And then, of course, he was gone.” She wiped her forehead, and instinctively I did the same.

  “And Petey, the idealist, the anti-war demonstrator, my brother, he disappeared. Like he never existed outside of being a so-called war hero.

  “I’m amazed you’re the first one to have seen the article. Don’t you boys do your research?”

  “I guess not,” I said.

  “Well, good for you for doing it. It turns my stomach that Petey is honored by some foundation as something he most certainly wasn’t. Before he let our father’s disapproval change him, he would have been so pissed to think that one day he’d be thought of as a symbol of that stupid war. He was so much more than that, Ben. So much more. He loved Russian literature. The Red Sox. Carl Yastrzemski. He could throw a ball from the wall in right field to home plate on a line. He sang like an angel and he loved the Beatles. None of that mattered after he was gone. Just that he was a war hero, whatever that means.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Thank you. Thanks for telling me.”

  She pushed the purple folder over to me. “This is for you.”

  I opened it. Inside were several photocopied, handwritten letters. I flipped through. They were all dated from the late 1960s.

  “Read these,” she said. “It’s more complicated than they make it seem.”

  “How?” I asked, looking up at her.

  “Read,” she said, smiling. “I can tell you’re a good kid, Ben. I trust you with my brother’s story. You do what you think should be done, okay?”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Really. Thanks.”

  Back in my dorm room, I started reading Pappas’s letters randomly, choosing one from the middle of the small pile.

  December 25, 1967

  Hi Lo,

  A merry merry to you, Sis!

  Christmas in Vietnam is oddly festive. The guys put up a tree outside our barracks. It’s called a “thingan,” and it’s not quite an evergreen but it will have to do. The guys hung empty beer cans from the branches, and last night we did a white elephant gift exchange. I got Ring Dings, which was perfect, as you well know.

  I have one buddy here, Clete, from South Carolina. He’s the only one who understands me when I talk books. Everyone else just says, “Pappas is getting heavy again” and walks away.

  You always got me. You never walked away. Even when suddenly we were at different sides politically. Thank you for that.

  We got to watch LBJ’s speech, and you know what? When he says the entire free world is at stake here in Southeast Asia, it makes me feel like I’m doing something, you know? I know. You’re still dead set against it. You’ll come around soon.

  Did you watch the speech with Dad? Did he say anything about me?

  I’m picking up some language from the locals. “Chào” means “hi”; I say it every time I go to the store now. I’ve also learned “Tôi mong quý hòa
bình,” which means “I wish you peace,” and “Tôi có thể giúp thực hiện bất cứ điều gì cho bạn?” That means “Can I help carry anything for you?” Chivalry is not dead.

  I love you.

  Bye,

  Your Petey

  January 21, 1968

  Hi Lo,

  Thanks for the books. Just getting a package at all reminded me that there’s a world back there, and I kind of need that reminder right now. Good choices. I started with The Sun Also Rises. I like the crisp prose; I’d always intended to read it, but you know me and my summer reading pile. The book transports me to Paris, and it’s almost jarring when I look away and find myself in our hooches. You ever smell week-old coleslaw? I can’t get any closer than that to describing the peculiar stench.

  There’s a lot of waiting in war. When there’s contact with the enemy, it tends to be violent and sudden and then over before you can really register what is happening. I have not fired my weapon yet. I hope I never do.

  Please don’t ever tell Dad this, but these last few months I’m all over the place on this damn war. You look into these people’s eyes—the Vietnamese peasants—and you see the fear. I do think the Vietcong are evil, and perhaps we will succeed and push them back, but at what cost? Until you see a frantic mom carrying a bloodied infant with half its leg hanging off, it’s hard to really explain why I may never actually fire my weapon. Maybe it was enemy mortar fire; perhaps it was one of us who did it. Who knows? We are just doing our jobs, and if our job can result in that atrocity, it makes no sense.

  Dad would scoff at me if he knew that I’m petrified to pull the trigger. He’d call me a sissy. And maybe I am a sissy, because it just doesn’t seem right to me. I think maybe I’m broken. How else does a guy go from war protester to soldier to whatever the hell I am becoming now?

  Are you still angry at me for volunteering? Some days I am.

  I don’t care what you think about God. I don’t give a crap what I think of Him. Pray for me, Lo. Pray for all of us.

  Love,

  Your Petey