For now I’m planning on hanging around here until Robin’s semester ends. Then we’ll spend June and July in Boston. Robin’s roommate’s family owns a restaurant where we can work part-time. The rest of the time, we’ll be working for the Student Mobilization Committee to End the War. Then in August Robin wants us to go to Europe for two weeks. I thought we could hitchhike around and camp out, but she insists that we get Europasses, travel by train, and stay in hostels. Did I hear you mutter “henpecked”? Who, me?

So that’s it for now, my friend. We’ll be home for a week before we go to Boston, and I’ll give you a shout. And as I said before, it’s fantastic to have you back in one piece on this side of the planet. I’m glad you want to get your high-school diploma. You’ve got too much on the ball to spend the rest of your life operating a junk-mail inserter.

Peace, brother,

Lucas

As great as it is to have Chris home, there are still hundreds of thousands of kids like him over there killing and dying. Last November, a couple of months before Chris finished his tour, Robin and I marched in Washington, D.C., in a giant protest against the war. And just days after that, the world saw the photos of all the Vietnamese women and children who were massacred by U.S. soldiers near My Lai a couple years ago. Who knows how many other atrocities like that haven’t yet been revealed? We have to stop this war. Now.

May 1970

“Nervous?” Robin asks as we pass an orchard of trees covered with white blossoms. We’re driving home from Vermont in her VW Beetle (she learned to drive a stick last fall when she got this Bug). A few hours ago, she took her last final of the spring semester.

“Yeah.” I haven’t been home since October. Will it feel strange reentering the house of dashed dreams? Seeing the folks again? Will it be just as tense as when I left? But I am looking forward to seeing Alan, Arno, and Milton. Arno and I exchanged a few letters over the winter. Sounds like he managed to make friends at Bucknell without needing to sell acid or display someone’s finger in a jar on his desk. And I spoke pretty regularly on the phone with Milton; he and some pals at MIT built something called a blue box that allows them to make long-distance phone calls for free.