My Father, My Brother, and the Democratic National Convention

(in circulation) i

Most likely they’d never have gotten along no matter the era or ways of the world. Their natures simply conflicted, and partly because some of Zack’s nature had been formed by Dad. Not lovingly formed and nourished, but how winds can shape a landscape. I suppose they loved each other though the word meant different things to each of them just as they both loved America but for different reasons. And finally, history was against them; they were together at that time and that particular place on Earth, and though Dad and Zack had been battling for years, I was too young that summer of 1968 to know what was coming.
Sometimes I’d sit against a tree in front of the house wondering how the place could still be standing with all the turmoil inside. Why hadn’t the roof blown off or the walls crumbled? But there it was in sturdy red bricks, white window frames and rain gutters, Mom’s flowers blooming along the walkway. What happened inside of the house couldn’t be seen from outside though you sure could hear it as Mom—her pleas for peace useless long ago—hurried to shut all windows and doors so the neighbors wouldn’t know Dad and Zack were at it again.
Even when younger Zack seemed a constant target for Dad; Zack never trimmed the bushes quite right, that he was a ‘bird-brain’ because he liked hearing birds in the morning and once said something about it, and Dad hated the music Zack played—“That’s the Beatles,” he said to Dad in quiet amazement. Dad also called Zack a dreamer but said it like that wasn’t a good thing; he kind of snarled the word, then shook his head, disappointed.
I never understood why Dad was always on Zack’s case because he was a good kid. He never got in trouble except that one night he and his friend were ‘disturbing the peace’ for barking at a dog a little longer than they should’ve, but he always did his chores around the house and was a great brother. He took me places with him, sometimes even with his friends, taught me to play baseball, and each Saturday night had set up the den all dark and scary for horror movies on Shock Theater. And though I always tried doing nothing for Dad to get angry at me, I loved him too. He was my dad, and I’m named after his own father William. Actually Wilhelm but changed to sound less German. I was Billy back then, and maybe our sister Debs was right when she teased me that I was loved most, being the baby of the family. But Dad never had to yell at me, and though conflicts were often brewing between my father and my brother, the heat really turned up after Zack went to college.
Dad didn’t like Zack’s bushy hair, his moustache that looked too big for his face, his clunky boots, the peace sign on the back window of his used Corvair and a “Bobby Kennedy for President” sticker right in the center that remained even after Bobby Kennedy was killed. “And you’re studying English,” as Dad shook his head with irritation and bewilderment. “Study German or Spanish, that I can understand,” then he raised his big, empty hands. “but you already speak English. What’s to study?” After Dad threatened not to “give a dime” for Zack’s college if he majored in English, Zack said, “So don’t,” and paid for it himself though Dad sent him $100 each month.
Zack’s friends stopped coming over; Dad asked one guy, “Is that a pretzel?” and pointed at the peace sign made of wood dangling around his neck. He asked another guy with long hair if he was a boy or girl though to me the guy looked like a guy just with long hair, like Jesus and Vikings. Dad even asked one of Zack’s friends if he wanted to shower. Yet even this guy—like the others—merely laughed uncomfortably and shot nervous glances at Zack whose eyes glared at Dad. Mom offered lemonade though the guys never stayed long and Zack left with them, but the worst of their fights were about that war in Vietnam.
I didn’t know much about the war but many young people didn’t like it, especially since they couldn’t vote for the politicians who decided those things. Even then I felt Zack was right about that. At the dinner table on the day Zack had registered for the draft he said, quiet and troubled, “I’m old enough to burn villages,” and shook his head, “but can’t drink a beer afterwards.”
He looked hard at me sitting beside him and said that if government policy doesn’t change “they’ll try shipping your ass to Vietnam.” That’s just how he said it, “your ass to Vietnam.”
“So run to Canada,” Dad said flippantly.
“I’m not running anywhere,” he snapped back at him. “This is my country, too.”
“And when your country calls,” Dad declared, puffing his chest, “you answer.”
“Even if we’re wrong?” Zack cried.
“My country right or wrong!”
Zack just stared expressionless at Dad a moment, then asked, “Do you even know why we’re in Vietnam?”
    “I’d rather fight them there,” he replied assuredly, “than California,” and Zack was furious.
“The Vietnamese don’t want California,” as a vein along his neck swelled just like Dad’s sometimes did. “They want their own country and want us out of it!”
And the louder Zack and other young people shouted, “Hell no, we won’t go” and “Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh, the Viet Cong are gonna win,” Dad and others like him became ever angrier, especially when seeing on the news an American flag burned on a street in America.
He had enlisted in the Army right out of high school soon after Pearl Harbor, and some of his favorite movies were about that war. He met and married Mom then, and in their wedding picture framed on her dresser she looks beautiful in a white dress and Dad the proud soldier in uniform. He loved his country, and Chicago, and John Wayne, and his big Buick Roadmaster which he carefully inspected for a spot Zack may have missed after washing it each weekend. If the car looked good Dad would grunt, nod a few times at Zack, then head back in the house.
Sometimes fights occurred if the news was on TV or at dinner; one of them said something and the other talked back, then suddenly they were at each other as Mom’s eyes grew wide with fear and she begged, “Please don’t let’s start” but they never listened. During one fight Zack stood up and left the table though Dad demanded, “Get back here!” We all waited but Zack never did, and after several deep breaths, his lips tight against his teeth, Dad let it go; I was amazed and relieved. He aggressively resumed eating, Mom picked a little, and though not hungry anymore I took a few bites so as not to anger Dad.
All three of us children had been spanked sometimes, but it was about the time of this Vietnam War that I feared most for Zack because sometimes Dad would take a swing at him, a slap upside the head which Zack soon learned to duck, which only angered Dad even more. And Dad was a big man, and not just because we were kids. He was bigger than most dads and still had the body of that proud soldier, while Zack was shorter than most guys which might’ve bothered Dad because it indicated something weak about Dad. In time I grew taller than both of them which was a great relief to me and surely Dad, though Zack always called me “little brother” anyway.
One day while Zack was home on break from college he stormed into the den holding up the front page of the Chicago Sun Times while Dad was watching Hogan’s Heroes.
“See this?” he cried, angry and distressed.
Dad turned a reluctant gaze at the huge headline.

                                       28,000 DEAD

“All heroes,” he said, then returned to his show.
“And that’s what you want for me,” Zack sneered unhappily.
“I think the Army would be good for you,” Dad said, almost smiling. “They’ll cut off all that hair and slap those stupid ideas out of your head and maybe even make a man of you.”
Mom hurried from the kitchen looking very worried: “Boys please, please don’t start.”
“I am a man,” Zack answered quiet and slow, “just a different kind than you.”
“That’s the only part of you that’s a man,” Dad exploded, pointing at Zack’s fly as Mom rushed through the house closing windows and doors.
After a while I realized what was happening in our house was happening across the country, that some adults wanted young people to look and act a certain way and the young people wouldn’t do it.
“For the times,” came a wailing voice that couldn’t sing too well on a record Zack played in our room, “they are a changin’ .”
This was very difficult for my father to tolerate because he wanted the world as polished and orderly as his wingtips lined up in the closet. He never cared if his children knew math sums or the capital of Idaho; of all the marks in school, conduct was most important to him. Zack had always received a minus for conduct—never for being bad, just mischievous and distracted—but Dad’s threats and punishments never worked on Zack who once told him he gets mad the way Ralph Kramden did on The Honeymooners and Dad lost his temper just like Ralph Kramden. After Dad called Zack a loser Zack locked himself in our bedroom and blasted a Beatles song “I’m a loser, I’m a loser, and I’m not what I appear to be…” over and over again. Soon he wasn’t even afraid of getting slapped. When he said cops were pigs Dad swung at him, and though Zack ducked that flying backhand he put his face right back in the line of fire to give Dad another swing. I admired Zack for it though knew I’d never have that much nerve, and I began realizing he couldn’t accept some things simply because that’s how they were; now he was part of a generation questioning every law, even the law of gravity.

              Please get out of the new one if you can't lend a hand…     

       And that’s how it was in our house the summer Zack refused to come home from college when the semester ended.
He stayed away, I think, because he knew the months ahead would be one endless fight with Dad. If anyone asked Mom about Zack she’d say, “He’s down at school taking a special seminar held only in summer” and smile through the lie. Some nights she’d call Zack and quietly plead for him to come home. Even Dad would get on the line and calmly pledge how they can work everything out only it had to be “face-to-face, man-to-man,” but those calls always ended with Dad shouting into the receiver and Zack shouting on the other end. Dad stayed angry when the call finished—pacing the kitchen so forcefully the dishes in the cupboard rattled—but soon it seemed as if the air were let out of him; he’d stand in one place looking suddenly very tired, then raise hopeless eyes to Mom.
Summer comes hard and fast to Chicago. Southerly breezes roll up from the plains and turn up the heat before anyone can get used to it. On dry days a sprinkler watered Mom’s flowers, rainbows forming in the spray, and one night Debs called Zack while she was home for dinner. I never knew how my sister felt about the war, and though only a year older than Zack they didn’t seem part of the same generation. She worked in a boutique on Rush Street, shared an apartment with two other girls in Old Town, and liked Elvis more than the Beatles. She told Zack how unhappy he was making Mom, and had he’d seen for himself he might’ve come home after all. Something seemed to hang on Mom, slowing her down, burdened, and each time she told someone about the special seminar exhausted her; I think with Zack away like this meant for her that there was a flaw in the family which she’d always thought—despite all that happened in the house—was perfect.
With Dad it was harder to tell; except when angry you never knew how Dad felt. He often seemed to brood, and for a while I thought it was because of Zack. Only later did I realize that something was always eating at him; he never made enough money for the way we lived, that his father left debts, that he was born unlucky. Back then it seemed something always bothered him and he kept looking around for it; that summer he knew just what it was—his son was defying him—though how to get Zack home remained beyond both my father’s power and understanding.
“I just might drive downstate and drag him home,” Dad declared, his thick legs planted with determination.
“Time heals everything,” Mom assured him, but Dad was an impatient man, wanting his way and wanting it now, and while walking through the living room one late July morning perhaps he was thinking that very thing when he stopped like he remembered something, clutched at his heart as if shot with an arrow, then fell to his knees. I was terrified, having no notion why. Mom screamed and ran to him, her hands protecting his head as he collapsed to the floor. She hurried to the phone and called for an ambulance while I watched my father gasping for breath and realized he may be dying but amazed how big he looked sprawled on his back on the floor
The ambulance arrived and two men wheeled Dad out on a stretcher, and since I was too young to stay home by myself for long I went in the ambulance as well. Mom held Dad’s hand. He looked asleep but with an oxygen mask over his face, and I hoped that the last sound of the world he heard wasn’t the hysterical siren.
After some time in the emergency room Dad was placed in intensive care. By then Mom had called Debs who soon arrived with panic in her eyes, and when a doctor told us that Dad would be fine Mom finally let herself go, covering her face with her hands and, through tears, thanked God again and again.
That night she called Zack who was home late the next day, a red bandana across his forehead like an Indian. He looked grim and said nothing though gave me a hug. Mom was at the hospital, so we drove there in his old Corvair which sounded like a lawn mower pulling a chain but was stick-shift which I thought was cool. Complicated but cool. He asked if Mom was all right, and I wondered did he blame himself at all for what happened to Dad. I sort of blamed him a little, though knowing Dad he’d probably have had a heart attack even if Zack hadn’t stayed down at school and probably had one sooner if Zack were home.
Zack had removed the bandana before slowly entering Dad’s room, his hair sticking out like Bozo the Clown. Mom kissed his cheek and told him Dad would be fine, then he took a breath before shuffling awkwardly over to Dad who seemed to have shrunk a little, as if all the tubes and machines hooked up to him slowly drained his life away. Although cloudy with medication he smiled when he saw Zack, then pushed his hand to the edge of the bed. Zack put his fingers on Dad’s as Dad looked to Mom and tried speaking but his lips were dry and stuck together. She gave him a sip of water, and in a weak voice he said to her through a faint smile, “Told you I’d get him home.”
When Dad was released from intensive care Zack drove down to college for a day and returned with a duffel bag of clothes and a box of books. We’d always shared a room but now he set himself up in the basement. Part of the basement was regular basement with a washing machine, a dryer, and boxes of stuff on a cement floor, but another part of the basement had paneling, a big rug, a TV and sofa bed. This became his bedroom, and as much as Dad’s condition worried me it was nice having my brother back home even with him in the basement. He did the chores around the house, all the yard work, washed both cars each week, grocery shopped, and kept an eye on me so Mom could visit Dad at the hospital. Zack picked up some night shifts parking cars and being the grave-shift bellman at the hotel where he’d worked the past few summers, and late one morning we went to watch the Cubs at Wrigley Field. As always Zack liked getting there to watch warm-ups and batting practice, and as always after the game we were among the last fans to leave. When Dad took us to games we always left early no matter the score so he could beat the traffic. Even if the game was close we left early, and the cheers I heard beneath the stadium or from the parking lot always tore at my imagination as we listened to the last few innings on the car radio while heading home. But with Zack we stayed no matter the score. The stands emptied, shadows stretched across the infield and the outfield grass turned deep blue, and there was hardly any traffic when we finally drove home.
On the morning of Dad’s release from the hospital Doctor Cohn explained to us about Dad’s condition and ways to help his recovery. We sat in his big office lined with medical books, framed diplomas, and dark illustrations of men performing surgeries which had frightened me when I was younger and which I still found unsettling.
“His condition is delicate,” the doctor told us, “but he has survived a great blow to his body.”
“So please Zachary,” Debs said impatiently, “try not giving your father another heart attack.”
“Debra,” Mom whispered harshly.
“Many conditions contributed to your father’s coronary,” Doctor Cohn said in her in particular, and then to all of us. “His weight, his diet, certainly his temperament. Right now,” and his eyebrows lifted, “loving care is the best remedy.”
And so when Dad came home Zack stayed out of his way. He got a haircut, kept the music low in the basement and the door closed, and never again burned incense ever since that morning last year when Dad burst into our bedroom in his boxer shorts, shaving lather on half his face and thinking he smelled fire.
“A nut!” he shouted at Mom though she was right beside him in the doorway, “that’s what you’ve got for a son, a damn weirdo!” as Dad stormed from the room and wavy, fragrant smoke followed as if to annoy him even more. And though Zack laid low and Dad really did want Zack home for the summer, they couldn’t avoid each other entirely nor change their ways any more than they could change the color of their eyes, and now events were occurring a few miles away that drove my father and brother towards an inevitable collision.
That summer in Chicago the Democratic National Party was picking its candidate for President, and for a week before the convention there were confrontations in the streets and in Grant Park between protestors against the Vietnam War and the police. On the first night of the convention Debs came for dinner.
“Where’s Zachary?” she whispered to Mom who nodded towards the basement door and my sister sighed in relief. “He’s staying home tonight, isn’t he?” but Mom lifted her eyebrows with uncertainly.
Dad had been up and around a little. He was sitting in the den with the windows open to the August twilight, reading the papers and watching the news on TV. Except for having lost a few pounds and that his face was a little pale he looked pretty much like before the heart attack, though he must’ve felt something fundamental had changed and was only just realizing it. Like the rest of us, Dad had believed he was indestructible, that the security of our family could rest firmly on his broad shoulders and legs strong like pillars. But he must’ve doubted himself now that a massive coronary nearly killed him, and this threw a gloom into his spirit as if discovering the house itself lay on a cracked foundation.
While Mom fixed dinner Debs sat with Dad and me in the den. Trouble was brewing because protestors in Grant Park were intent on demonstrating in front of the Conrad Hilton Hotel where the Convention delegates were staying but Mayor Daley wouldn’t allow it.
“It’s our Constitutional right,” a bearded young man in the street told a reporter, then the camera cut to a news conference where the Mayor’s jowled, bulldog face vowed that “Order will be maintained.”
We always had dinner around the same time though it was getting dark a little earlier each night; Zack had once said that the second day of summer meant winter was coming though I had no idea what he meant. Despite a tension in the kitchen like smoke from a scorched frying pan, it was nice having everyone at the table again. Mom and Debs kept up a flurry of light pleasantries but Dad kept shooting glances at Zack who didn’t look at anyone and said nothing except telling Mom how good was the pot roast. He didn’t want seconds or another ear of corn, and when he asked to be excused from the table everyone froze an instant and Dad leaned back a little, his eyes fixed on Zack.
“You may,” Mom said.
He cleared his plate and was leaving the kitchen when Dad was about to say something but Mom quickly asked him, “And what would you like for dessert? Pound cake? Fruit salad?”
A few minutes later Zack returned to the kitchen. He wore the same jeans and those clunky boots but had changed into a ragged U.S. Army t-shirt. Like other protestors I saw on TV, Zack often wore Army clothes as if he and the others identified with the guys in the military, guys his own age, some even friends in Vietnam, as if wearing what the soldiers did showed that the fight was not with them but the people trying to draft them, those wanting to ‘send my ass to Vietnam.’
“Well,” he said and took a deep breath though I held mine, “good night.”
“Good night, Dear,” Mom replied with strained buoyancy.
He started for the door just as Dad asked what we hoped he wouldn’t: “Where you going?”
Zack slowly turned, looked at Dad for a count of five, and said what none of us wanted to hear: “Grant Park.”
Mom sighed, exasperated, Debs angrily whispered “Zachary,” and Dad smiled a little while leaning further back in his chair like a gunfighter sitting at a poker table ready to draw his six-shooter.
“Well I say you’re not.”
Zack looked at the floor, shifted a little from side to side, then looked at Dad and said firmly, “You can’t stop me.”
Dad’s smile vanished.
“I’ll stop you if I have to get out of this chair and break both your legs.”
Dad used to threaten this when Zack was a kid but it made no sense now. Dad wasn’t able anymore to break Zack’s legs even if he hadn’t had a heart condition, but it was as if Dad just wouldn’t adopt to those days having ended.
“Please stop,” Mom begged, then to Dad, “and you know what the doc—.”
“Zachary,” Debs cut in, “there’s a lot of people down there tonight. One less person won’t end the war any sooner.”
“What if everyone felt that?” Zack asked her quietly. “What if everyone stayed home so their parents don’t get upset?”
“Just tonight,” she said, then moved closer to Dad and put a hand on his shoulder. “You can think of someone besides yourself just for tonight.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Dad said to Debs. “Worry about him,” and he pointed at Zack as if aiming a gun, “after I break his legs!”
Zack looked at the floor again, shook his head several times, then said, “I’m going.”
That was something I couldn’t understand about my brother. If he wanted to go where Dad told him not to, why say it? Tell him, ‘Out with a friend’ or maybe ‘To the lakefront,’ but in some ways he was like Dad: they both had green eyes, high hairlines, and never gave an inch.
“As long as you live in this house,” Dad declared, his thick fingertip poking the tabletop, dessert dishes rattling, “you’ll do what I say.”
Zack shrugged his shoulder and said casually, “I’ll move out tonight.”
“Fine!”
“No one’s moving anywhere,” Mom cried, then brought her palms together. “Please, boys, please stop!”
“Don’t you see what you’re doing?” Debs asked Zack. “Don’t you see or do you just not care?”
Nothing happened as Dad and Zack didn’t just look at each other, they watched each other, and whether Debs’ words got to him or else the possible outcome of further confrontation lay as clear as the vein swelling along our father’s throat, Zack shook his head several times, looked at Debs a moment, nodded once, and headed for the basement.
After dessert, after helping Mom with dishes and sitting with Dad in the den, Debs left for the night. I went into the den to catch the ball scores on the news but there were no scores on that night, not then, and my parents watched in amazement, in a kind of shock, at what was happening right downtown.
There were riots in the streets of Chicago, mayhem intense and terrible. Before on TV I’d watched conflicts in the streets or on a college campus when the commentators said the police were trying to keep demonstrators from entering a building or laying down in the middle of a highway, but I’d never seen anything like what was happening now. The police were going crazy on the demonstrators, beating them with nightsticks, then dragging them away, sometimes by their long hair. Michigan Avenue was cloudy with tear gas as people ran from it and right into another police line emerging from the smoke like an alien army wearing gas masks with shirts and shiny helmets blue as robin eggs and wildly wielding nightsticks.
“You see this?” Zack cried, standing enraged in the doorway of the den. Mom stared at the screen in a kind of disbelief, but Dad glanced at Zack and muttered, “We’re watching, aren’t we?” Suddenly the picture on the TV screen spun out of control, panning the sky, the fleeing, tilted demonstrators, then for several seconds just the pavement. Instantly the screen switched to news footage in Grant Park and a statue of a soldier on a horse that demonstrators had climbed to unfurl the Viet Cong flag.
“You see this?” Dad yelled at Zack who’d already left the doorway and was stomping down to the basement.
I didn’t see my brother for the rest of the night. After Dad, Mom, and I watched something else on the news—the ball scores were on along with a clip of Ernie Banks homering—we went upstairs to bed but not before Mom called “Good night” to Zack in the basement. There was no reply though he was still awake: a thin line of light under the basement door, the distant sound of the TV.

            Late the next morning Zack staggered upstairs and made coffee. He was barefoot, wore the same jeans and Army t-shirt, his hair pressed funny to one side, whites of his eyes bloodshot.
“Where is everyone?” he asked.
“Mom took Dad to see Doctor Cohn.”
Suddenly he was wide wake: “Why?”
“His weekly check-up.”
He drooped again, sipping coffee and gazing outside like it was raining though it wasn’t. He took his coffee to the den where he sat on the floor and watched live broadcasts from Grant Park. All seemed peaceful though the reporter said more demonstrations were planned for tonight when the Democrats began electing their candidates at the Amphitheatre. The camera cut to the National Guard lined up strong and fearsome on Michigan Avenue, their backs to the hotel and facing Grant Park, rifles ready. When the front door opened Zack kept looking at the TV but I went to the living room where Dad moved slowly towards the den. He didn’t look at me and said nothing. Mom followed, pensive and concerned.
“How’s Dad?” I asked after he passed by.
“He’s fine,” she replied unconvincingly, then said quietly. “His blood pressure is a little high.”
“And I’ve had enough of that,” Dad exclaimed as he entered the den and waved his hand at the news. “Turn it off,” he told Zack while lowering himself carefully into his recliner.
“Turning it off won’t make it go away,” Zack said.
“Yes it will. Now turn it off.”
“Zachary,” Mom begged, “please.”
Zack rose from the floor, stalked over to the TV and hit the knob with the back of his hand. The screen went dark.
“You can try ignoring it,” Zack told him flatly, “but I can’t.’
Dad pushed the arms of his chair; it tilted back and up rose a footrest. He closed his eyes and laid back stiffly.
“Then watch it in the basement,” he said with effort.
“I’m not watching it again tonight,” Zack said.
“Good,” Dad muttered.
“I’m not watching it,” Zack repeated as if doing so gave him a running start, “because I’m going down there.”
Dad didn’t move or even open his eyes.
“Go,” he said quietly, “and I hope they crack your head open.”
“For heaven’s sake!” Mom cried.
Zack laughed unhappily, said, “I’m sure you do,” and while leaving the den he flipped the TV back on. We heard a reporter yelling into the microphone as three policemen beat a kid with their clubs. He was on the ground and they kicked him many times before throwing him into a police van, one policeman hitting him repeatedly after he was inside. Dad’s eyes, unblinking, were fastened on the TV.
“Those cops,” he whispered in barely restrained fury, “those damn cops!”
Mom looked at him in amazement, then she rushed to the TV.
“Enough of this,” and she turned it off, then went over to Dad, easing his shoulders back into his chair. After a few moments he took some deep breaths, looked at her, closed his eyes and nodded a couple times. She passed her hand across his forehead, lingered there a moment, then said, “I’ll make some lemonade,” and hurried to the kitchen. Dad grasped the arms of his chair until the fabric indented under his fingertips. When his eyes opened he stared at the ceiling before noticing me.
“What are you doing?” he asked grimly.
“Nothing.”
He closed his eyes again, then said, “Do it somewhere else.”
Zack left the house later that day. He didn’t say good-bye to anyone but I saw his car was gone. Dad was quiet at dinner, sitting at the table like he wasn’t feeling well and staring at a stain on the tablecloth. Mom quietly served the meal, resigned. No one mentioned Zack. Dad went upstairs early without watching the news in the den, climbing the stairs with slow, heavy steps, and for the first time–despite the heart attack, the hospital, his broodings—I felt bad for him.
I sat outside against the trunk of our elm tree listening to crickets and gazing at the house, window frames and rain gutters pale in the darkness, and waited for my brother to come home. I was so afraid for him. I couldn’t get out of my head those images from the TV, and now Zack was there too. The light was off in Mom and Dad’s bedroom but the TV was still on, waving shadows along the window-curtain, and every so often that curtain parted for just a peek into the dim, yellow glow of the porch lamp dissolving into the troubled night.