“Was a lucky fuck,” Milton corrects him without looking up from the newspaper.

“Right.” Arno starts to sing along to “Pinball Wizard,” making up his own lyrics:

“He’s a Vietnam draftee,

Couldn’t get a deferment,

A Vietnam draftee,

Gonna get his ass shot off.

A Vietnam draftee,

He’ll soon be ducking bullets,

But it’s only a matter of time . . .

dah dah tah dot dot dah . . .

Till he comes back in a

Flag-draped pine box.”

“Aluminum,” Milton says, his face still in the newspaper.

“Come again?”

“The army caskets are made of aluminum. So they can be reused. Saves money. Soldiers are expensive to train, feed, house, and transport. Once you’re dead, the army doesn’t want to waste another cent on you.”

“Uh, right.” Arno gets down on his belly and starts to crawl under his bed.

“What was today’s count?” I ask. Milton follows the daily casualty count as closely as he follows Roy White’s batting average.

“Sixteen today. Thirty-eight yesterday.” Milton looks up and our eyes meet. We are brothers in disarmament. The war has torn his family apart. It threatens to tear my family apart (not that there’s much holding it together).

My simmering resentment at the injustice of it spills out. “It’s un-fucking-believable. The only reason we’re in this war is because we don’t have the balls to admit we were wrong to get into it in the first place. And now we can’t get out without admitting defeat.”

“Hey, don’t forget the fat cats making all the shit that war uses up,” Milton reminds me. Together we list some of the items companies supply to keep the war going:

“Bombs.”

“Guns.”

“Bullets.”

“Uniforms.”

“Rations.”

“Pocket-size Bibles.”

“Think of it like this,” Milton says. “War is the addict. Young draft-age men are the drug. The military-industrial complex makes the syringes. As long as this country keeps injecting soldiers into Vietnam, the owners and shareholders of those syringe companies get richer and richer.”

Since meeting with Charles last week, I’ve been trying to “go deeper” into my moral argument against war. But it’s hard to focus, hard to make myself work. It reminds me of what Miss Landers used to say. She was convinced I showed a talent for writing and would get aggravated when I wouldn’t muster the energy to edit and revise my papers, or even correct my spelling and grammar. We had a strange love-hate relationship, surely the most intense connection I’ve ever had with any teacher in my life.

A sneeze explodes from under the bed. “Goddamn dust!” Only Arno’s feet are visible, sticking out from under the bed. Whatever he’s searching for must be pretty far back.