Deferring

"In 67 I had a chance for a deferment then. Berkeley Fire Department. They wanted me to become a firefighter. Public service deferment. I passed up on that because it was so close, I mean, weeks of when I was supposed to leave and I thought, 'Do I really want to be a firefighter for the rest of my life? Probably not.' But it was two years. I mean, I could do two years standing on my head. Who wants to send me to Vietnam?" He laughs, leans back in his chair, his father's chair. "You know, I'm a big screw up, a party boy."

Almost imperceptably he pauses here. I rewind and watch it on the video monitor two, three times. There is a pause, he turns his head slightly and smiles as he lowers his voice and says, "So I passed up on that."

I watch it again and shut the camera off. Later I ask him if he ever regretted turning this down.

When I was six I came home from school to an empty house. I had no key and took shelter in spikey shrubbery two houses up the road. I sat there for an hour, maybe less. It was close to forever. My mother came home and was mortified, it was the only time. Several years back I dreamt a therapy-induced dream. My adult self went down that road and stumbled across the child in the bushes. She sat in my lap and I whispered to her, finger combed leaves out of her tangled dark hair. When my mother called, she got up to go and I cried for two days after this. Cried for the want to stay and keep her warm and green.

I know my father would never admit to this regret. He was a born fighter, a reluctant soldier, a resigned killer, a constant survivor. He doesn't look back.

"No," he says, looking straight at me, slightly to the left of the camera lens. He smiles now, of course. Shifts slightly in his father's oak swivel and says, "What else would there be?"