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Show RFVER It was 1972. The war was still dragging on-even in Cairo. The vets had come down from St. Louis to support a black boycott of white stores. They were trying to convince the merchants to put pressure on the police to quit shooting up the ghetto. "There's a civil war going on up there," said one of the vets, pointing his thumb across the swamp to the town. In the three years since I'd been in Cairo there had been gunfire exchanged 250 nights a year, on average. The vets asked me what I was doing and I tried to explain. One of them asked about my draft status-a common question at the time. I didn't have any. I'd registered on my eighteenth birthday in Salt Lake City, asked them to transfer the records to San Diego, and never heard from the Selective Service again. Both offices were notoriously inept, but to this day I don't know any male my age who got off so easily. I'd thought about the draft question in theory and had decided-in theory-that if it came down to it, I'd go to jail. Since I never got any greetings from the president, I still don't know what I would have done if I'd had to face the same question that these ex-soldiers had faced. I had to admire them. After the veterans left I wandered around the park, settling in. Behind the point was a three-storied concrete lookout shaped like an impressionistic towboat. A locked-up concession stand took up the ground floor. From the upper decks you could look out over Illinois, Kentucky, and Missouri and see the Ohio and the Mississippi become one as they rolled south, filling up the entire southern horizon. The rest of the park was covered with windblown trees, scattered cement picnic tables, fire rings, and a parking lot. Between Cairo and the park was a primordial swamp, still jungle-like even in the dying winter. -15- |