Chapter Text
Part I: Some Folks Inherit Star-Spangled Eyes
A childhood in Lawrence, Kansas is apple pies cooling on window sills. It’s the cheers from the stands at summer Little League games. It’s pancake breakfasts in church basements and holding Mom’s hand when she goes shopping for the best cuts of meat at the downtown grocer’s.
It’s huddling under the covers with Sammy to read comic books about Captain America fighting nefarious communist agents and sneaking into a dark theater to watch movies about UFOs landing in Kansas fields. It’s penny candy and fly-fishing and camping out in the backyard to spot fireflies.
It’s the floaty happiness of the night when As Time Goes By comes on the radio and Dad says, “Hey, that’s our song.” He scoops Mom up in his strong arms and twirls her around the living room. The two of them laugh and laugh and trade chaste kisses, and Dean thinks he might be the luckiest kid on the face of the earth.
It’s Fourth of July parades with VFW floats, and the whole town cheering for the vets and waving little American flags at them. Dean’s ready to burst with pride whenever Dad marches past, wearing his old uniform and all his medals. It makes him want to nudge everybody in the crowd so he can be sure they’re paying attention.
One of Dean’s very proudest moments, though, is the day after his eighth birthday, when Dad lets him touch his medals and polish them up a bit for the first time. Dean makes sure to use the special soap that Mom got from the drugstore, and the softest cloth they have in the house. Dad shows him exactly how to make the metal shine and the ribbons gleam.
The next time Dean asks about cleaning the medals, Dad tells him to do it by himself. Though Dean’s maybe a little disappointed that they won’t get to work together again, being trusted with a task so important makes him feel ten feet tall.
He sometimes wishes that he could have been alive to see the war himself, so that he could talk to Dad about it more. But he was born in January of 1945, almost exactly nine months after Dad was sent home from Europe with shrapnel in his shoulder and two Purple Hearts, as well as a Bronze Star for exceptional bravery in combat.
The funny thing is, Dad likes to scoff at how anybody could get a Purple Heart for tripping over their own feet in a combat zone, but he never talks about why he got that Bronze Star. The only reason Dean knows the story at all is because Martin Creaser, an old war buddy of Dad’s, sometimes comes by the house.
“Well,” Martin says one afternoon in 1954, taking a sip of his whiskey as he leans back in his rocking chair on the porch. (Dad’s in the other rocking chair, with Dean sitting at their feet, eager to soak up every word. Sammy went to play in the backyard, bored with the war talk.) “We were stuck in this Belgian village, and we couldn’t move forward or back ‘cause this sniper was in a window up high in one of the bombed-out buildings, and he had his rifle trained right at us. He’d already taken out three men from our company by the time we all got to cover. One of ‘em was this guy Caleb, good buddy of your dad’s. Goddamn shame.”
Shivering with excitement at the gory details, Dean glances from Martin to Dad, wondering if he’ll weigh in. But Dad’s face is a brick wall, blank and unyielding.
“Anyway, that Nazi scum had good aim,” Martin continues, warming to his story. “Would’ve taken your skinny ass right out.” He points at Dean as he sets down his whiskey glass, the better to mime holding a rifle and peering through a sight straight at him. Dean giggles, delighted. Dad shifts in his chair, but Dean’s stopped watching him, his attention all on Martin now. “Then your dad, crazy bastard that he was, abandoned his cover and zigged-zagged right down the street. Drew the sniper’s fire. I’ll never forget it; it was that crazy.” Martin snorts, shaking his skinny, bald head at the memory. “This other guy, grumpy asshole by the name of Elkins, he used the distraction to get up in that building and take out the sniper.”
Dean gasps, in awe of Dad’s bravery, and scoots a little closer to his feet along the sun-warm boards of the porch. His eyes are riveted on Dad’s face, waiting for a smile or a look. But Dad’s attention is on Martin, and he’s scowling.
“Dunno why we gotta dredge up all that ancient history,” he says. To Dean, he adds, without a glance, “Close your mouth, Dean, ‘fore you catch flies.”
Dean’s mouth snaps shut.
Martin returns Dad’s scowl, and then some. “Well, the boy damn well asked, didn’t he?” he says, and Dean feels his eagerness and pride shrivel inside him. Dad and his friend are angry at each other, and it’s all because of him.
He slinks away soon after that to find Sammy in the backyard. They play cowboys and Indians, but Dean’s heart isn’t in it.
***
Castiel Novak is born across town from Dean Winchester in September of 1945. Any apple pies he gets to eat are made by the family cook and his father doesn’t have any medals. Instead, he has an empire of grocery stores that spans the state of Kansas, and plenty of opinions about communists.
“We’re blessed in this country,” Father likes to proclaim at the dinner table, “and the Reds, they can’t stand it. Somebody ought to go over there and put the fear of God in them.”
Mother nods along to these speeches, smiling her thin smile, and admonishes Castiel not to slouch.
Castiel isn’t usually asked to contribute to discussions over dinner, unless it’s to agree with something his father said. But when he’s six, he discovers, almost by accident, that he’s quite good at memorizing things — Bible verses, poems, entire passages of books. In the wake of that discovery, his parents sometimes ask him to recite psalms and prayers for guests. By age seven, he’s so sick of Psalm 23 that the mere mention of green pastures and still waters makes his skin itch.
By age eight, Castiel’s skill at memorization has made him a teacher’s pet at the parish school where his parents sent him in an effort to shield him from the alleged moral corruption (and racial integration) that prevails in the Lawrence public school system.
However, being a teacher’s pet is hardly a good thing, since his popularity with teachers makes him extremely unpopular with his peers. He’s often the target of bullies, especially one highly unpleasant boy named Nick Morgenstern, who has a sneering grin and a posse of boys that hangs on his every word.
Castiel has never seen the point of looking for a fight, but he also isn’t the sort of person to lie down and take it when a big brute like Nick comes at him with his fists raised.
And so, on occasions when Castiel’s mother chides him over how he has returned home bruised and bloodied like a common street urchin, he’s able to tell her that he gave as good as he got. His mother is not impressed by such declarations, but they never fail to earn him an approving pat on the back from his father.
***
Every once in a while, Dean wakes up to the sound of screaming. It doesn’t happen every night, but it’s frequent enough that he has a routine for it. He sneaks over to Sammy’s bedroom and climbs into his bed, telling his little brother that he shouldn’t even think about getting scared or worried, because that would just be stupid.
“Dad had a nightmare, that’s all,” he says, and curls around his little brother. “Everybody gets those, right?”
Sammy nods and goes back to sleep, but Dean never drifts off with quite that same ease. Maybe it’s because he knows Mom’s smile is going to be just a little dimmer the next morning.
One time, Dean asks her if there’s anything wrong with Dad that makes his nightmares so bad. She ruffles his hair and kisses his forehead and says, “You’re a good boy, Dean, but that’s not for you to worry about.”
And for the most part, Dean’s fine not talking about it, because there are more good days than bad. On the good days, Dad will take Dean and Sammy fishing, or teach them how to wrestle. He’ll play catch with them in the yard or let them watch while he works on his old Ford truck.
But when a bad day does come, Dad turns quiet and sullen, speaking only when spoken to. On those days, Mom will tell Dean and Sammy to go play outside, no matter what the season. They have good, well-padded coats and hats, and the pond near their house freezes over in the winter, so it’s no hardship to be outside even in the frosty Kansas January. They’ll play hockey, or just slide around on the ice, trying to push each other off their feet. Dean puts on a good face for Sammy, hollering and wrestling out on the pond, but more often than not, his thoughts are back inside the house with Mom and Dad. No matter how often Mom tells him not to, he can’t help worrying.
The worst of all the bad days comes in the summer of 1957.
Dean will never be sure what woke him that night. Later, he’ll say that he heard the back door creak. But maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe it was just that indescribable, tingling feeling that something terrible was going to happen. A sense of the world holding its breath.
Either way, Dean sneaks down the stairs quietly, not wanting to wake anyone. If there’s an unseen danger menacing his family, he’ll be the one to fight it. He’s twelve years old after all — practically a man.
He pauses in the kitchen to pick up a knife off the counter, and then he slinks through the back door, out into the yard. It’s a thick, balmy night — warm enough to sleep under the stars — but little pricks of cold still travel down Dean’s spine as he pads barefoot onto the grass.
Dean’s heart stutters at the dark figure just beyond the fence, but he relaxes when the clouds covering the moon shift and he recognizes Dad. Dad’s standing in the field that separates their property from the woods and he's holding his shotgun in one hand, the double barrel pointed at the ground.
“Dad?” Dean says quietly. Then, louder, “Dad!”
Slowly, Dad turns. His smile is barely visible in the dark as he says, “Don’t worry, son. I’m just going on a hunting trip. I’ll be back in a few days.” Dean means to say that it’s a strange time to be going on a trip, but Dad’s already started to walk away towards the forest. After a few more steps, he stops, looking back over his shoulder at Dean. “Watch out for your Mom and Sammy, huh?”
That’s the last time Dean ever sees his father alive.
The next morning, Dean finds Mom crying in her bedroom, a hand-written note crumpled in her hand.
***
Castiel is well aware that according to his father’s wishes, he’s not supposed to have political views; certainly none that disagree with his father’s own. But he can’t help being a voracious reader, and by age thirteen, he spends a good deal of his spare time at the Lawrence Public Library, studying anything he can get his hands on, including history and politics.
He comes to realize that his father’s opinions about communism — and most other topics — are founded on bias and half-understood bits of news rather than on any actual knowledge, but he doesn’t dare to say so out loud. Being quiet and obedient has mostly served him well, and he resolves that he’ll continue to be so. Though his parents have their faults, Castiel doesn’t want to disappoint them.
Then one day, he realizes that disappointment is going to be inevitable. It’s the day he meets the boy who lives on Eldridge Street. Castiel takes his bike to the library, it being a fine afternoon in early fall. On his way back home, he hits a rock at an odd angle and tumbles face-first onto the pavement.
When he looks up, blinking dazedly into the sun, the boy is there, his slender face wrinkled with concern. His eyes are blue like Castiel’s own, but his hair is the color of straw and his lips look pink as candy.
“Are you alright?” the boy asks.
Unable to speak, Castiel nods, though the scrapes on his knees and palms burn, calling him a liar. For some reason he can’t entirely explain to himself, he doesn’t want the boy to see him cry or think him a coward. He’s never cared a great deal about other children’s opinions of him, so the change puzzles him.
“Okay,” the boy says, and walks away.
Castiel never learns the boy’s name, but from then on, he makes sure to always pass his house on the way home. Sometimes, they wave to each other and smile. Whenever Castiel has another run-in with Nick or one of his cronies, or whenever his father has a harsh word for him, Castiel pictures the boy’s smile and feels a little glow of happiness in the center of his chest.
And so, over the course of a couple of months, Castiel begins to suspect that his political views aren’t the only thing he’s going to have to keep to himself.
***
Life gets harder after Dad is gone.
The day a policeman stops by the house to tell them Dad’s body has been found, Dean asks Mom what Dad’s note said. Her only reaction is to stroke his hair absently and tell him, “You’re a good boy, Dean. But that’s not for you to worry about.”
Sam was sent up to his room when the policeman came, so he has a lot of questions when Dean goes to check on him: where is Dad? When’s he coming back? Is he going to bring them something good to eat from the woods?
Finally, Dean has enough.
“Don’t you get it, Sam?” he yells, loud enough that his voice cracks and goes high-pitched. “He’s not coming back at all! He’s dead!”
Sam bursts into tears, and Dean immediately feels awful. Dad gave him a simple order; one that he’s already failing to follow. So he hugs Sam tight and tells him, “Hey, Sammy, it’s not even that bad,” and they sit on the floor for nearly an hour, just being quiet together.
At the funeral, Dean holds on to Mom and Sammy’s hands the whole time, never once letting go. This is his job now: taking care of the two of them, because Dad left them alone and left him in charge.
It doesn’t take Dean long to start getting angry about that. His anger buzzes beneath his skin like a swarm of hornets, and it needs a way to escape before it eats him up. That year, he’s suspended from school twice for fighting. After the second time, the principal calls Mom into his office to tell her Dean will not be welcome back if it happens again.
That night, Dean finds Mom crying in the kitchen, and he makes her a solemn promise that he won’t fight anymore. He’ll be good and work hard and help her get by.
He keeps his promise. He doesn’t get into any more fights, and as soon as he’s old enough, he takes a part-time job at the hardware store to supplement their income. Mom works eight hours a day at Novak’s Grocery Emporium, but the money’s never quite enough to live as comfortably as they used to when they had Dad’s salary.
They only eat meat two days a week, and sometimes only on Fridays. More often than Dean would like, the portions are so small that Sammy complains of an empty stomach. When that happens, Dean pretends he isn’t hungry anymore and gives the rest of his food to Sam.
Mom mouths a silent “thank you” that only Dean can see and gets this soft, dewy-eyed look on her face that makes it all worth it. Even when the growling of Dean’s stomach keeps him awake later that night.
***
When Castiel is sixteen, he’s kissed for the first time, by a girl named April.
April’s family recently joined the Novaks’ church, and Castiel’s mother has taken it upon herself to make them feel welcome. As part of this effort, she encourages Castiel to spend some time with April. Apparently, she is a sweet girl who will make someone a good wife someday.
Castiel doesn’t dare to say that he has no interest in making April, or any other girl, his wife. So he nods along to his mother’s request and takes April out for a soda every Sunday after church.
They don’t have much in common as far as he can tell. Castiel has never been much of a conversationalist, so he falls back on telling April about the things he’s interested in; mainly books. His preferred reading still includes history and political theory, but he’s also become interested in science fiction: Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, about the suppression of dissent and the burning of books. Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, about a society where military elites rule the country and only those who serve in war enjoy full citizenship.
“I’m not sure I agree with Heinlein very much,” Castiel says, stirring his cherry soda with his straw. He glances diffidently across the booth at April, who looks bored, her eyes drifting across the people passing by on the sidewalk outside. “He seems to assume that war is the only way to solve conflicts. But I think—”
“It doesn’t seem very nice to read books about war,” April says, and wrinkles her nose. She leans forward, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I read romance novels sometimes, even though Mom told me not to. I hide them under a loose board in my room.”
Castiel supposes it’s at least one thing they do have in common: the need to keep secrets from their parents. Still, it doesn’t provide much basis for conversation, so Castiel comes to dread their weekly trips to the soda fountain. For the most part, they sit in silence, and Castiel entertains himself by picturing the blond, blue-eyed boy in her place.
As far as he can tell, April isn’t any more interested in him than he is in her. He can’t exactly blame her either. When he looks in the mirror, he sees a wiry boy with unusually plump lips and messy hair that won’t submit to comb or oil, no matter how much he tries. He isn’t muscular or broad-necked like some of the other boys at school, and he isn’t much interested in exercise, other than running around the track near his school. So it comes as a surprise when, one day, April pulls him into the alley behind the soda fountain and presses a wet, hard kiss to his lips.
Pulling away from him, she frowns. “I thought kissing would be nicer,” she says. Castiel privately agrees.
After that, he isn’t asked to go out with April anymore. He wonders if April told her parents that Castiel got fresh with her, but he never gets into any trouble. All things considered, he’s simply glad not to have to spend time with her anymore.
After April, there is Daphne, and after Daphne, there is Margaret — Meg, for short. Meg is by far the most interesting, having read some of the same books Castiel has, and mostly agreeing with his views of them.
But when Meg sneaks a hand onto Castiel’s thigh while they’re having lunch together at the Round the Clock Diner, he flinches away, and she gives him a look that’s altogether too shrewd for his liking.
“This isn’t going to work out, is it?” she asks.
With a sigh, Castiel shakes his head. “I like you, and you’re very pretty,” he says, though it comes out sounding resentful. Whether he’s resentful of Meg for being pretty, or of himself for not being able to appreciate it properly, he isn’t sure.
“But,” Meg says, grinning around her straw before she takes a sip of her milkshake.
“But,” Castiel agrees, and that’s that.
***
Dean turns eighteen in January of 1963. A week later, he goes for his mandatory physical with the local draft board. It takes the doctor all of ten minutes to declare him 1-A, fit for military service.
If Dad was still alive, Dean would have happily volunteered then and there — signed his name to enlistment papers and done it with a smile on his face. Because although his feelings about Dad have become a twisted knot, tinged with anger and hurt, Dean still remembers people cheering for the veterans in parades and waving flags at them, and he never stopped being spellbound by stories of heroism and courage under fire.
So if there’s going to be another war, as their neighbor Mr. Devereaux is convinced there’s bound to be soon, Dean wants to be a part of it.
“You mark my words,” Mr. Devereaux tells Dean right across the white picket fence that forms the boundary between their yards, “the President’s going to have ground troops in Vietnam within a year. Two at most.”
Dean doesn’t know much about the details of what’s going on in Vietnam. He’s heard the name Ho Chi Minh, and he’s heard that Americans are over there “advising” the South Vietnamese government on how to keep Ho Chi Minh’s communists from taking over their half of the country. But it’s not like watching the news is going to make much difference as to whether or not he’s called up to fight.
So he keeps busy working, trying to pass his senior year of high school and taking out Lisa Braeden, the pretty brown-eyed girl he’s been dating off and on.
Besides, Mom won’t hear of him volunteering for service. “You’re needed here at home, with me and Sammy,” she tells him the one time he brings it up, looking angrier than Dean thinks he’s ever seen her. “If the government wants boys to fight a war on the other side of the world, they can take somebody else’s.”
“It’d be a stupid reason to go to war anyway,” Sam adds, because he’s fourteen now and has a lot of opinions. Mom quiets him with a quelling look and a snarl of “Mind your language, Sam.” But after a contrite grimace and a few silent forkfuls of dinner, Sam gets right back to it.
“I’m just saying,” he continues, “if the President wants to stop the communists, what good is trying to prop up some corrupt regime in Vietnam? From what I hear, the people there don’t even like that government. Maybe they want to be communists.”
Mom gives him a tired look and says, “Eat your dinner, Sam.”
Dean stays out of it, and that’s the end of the conversation.
But he doesn’t stop thinking about getting away. Sometimes, when he isn’t busy working or studying or taking out Lisa, he’ll retreat to his bedroom at night and read. Mostly, he’s interested in adventure and science-fiction stories — it doesn’t matter whether they’re set in the Alaskan wilderness, the silent darkness of outer space or the grim heat of the African jungle. He reads them, and he dreams of a life where he can leave behind his responsibilities — his mom, his brother, Lisa, school, all of it — even just for a little while, to go prove himself on the other side of the world.
Later that year, Dean graduates high school and gets himself hired as an apprentice mechanic at Singer’s Auto Repair and Towing. Like Dad, Bobby Singer is a World War II vet. Unlike Dad, he doesn’t mind telling stories of what he saw in the war, especially when he’s trying to get out of doing paperwork in the back office. Sometimes, he’ll even teach Dean the few phrases of Japanese he still remembers.
Over time, Dean comes to feel that spending time with Bobby is a little bit like having Dad alive again. He and Bobby work on cars together every day, and though Bobby grumbles about his paperwork, he’s never unkind. Not even the day Dean nervously confesses to him that he’s half-hoping to find a conscription letter in his mailbox whenever he gets home.
“It ain’t too surprising,” Bobby says, shrugging, while he goes to work on the engine of a Buick Skylark. “Every generation of boys has their own dumb mistakes to make, and I know better than to think you’ll be discouraged by an old coot like me.” With a sideways glance at Dean from under the Skylark’s hood, he adds, “Just try not to die when you get there.”
***
It’s the early summer of 1963, and Castiel is going to turn eighteen in a few months.
Though his father is fond of declaring that the President ought to send troops to Vietnam to fight the ruinous spread of international communism, Castiel soon realizes that this conviction doesn’t extend to having the sole heir of his grocery store empire drafted into the military.
Castiel comes to this realization one night in June, when his parents invite a local physician to dinner. Dr. Gaines isn’t the family’s usual physician, and Castiel can’t recall ever meeting him before. When he speaks up during the meal to ask, politely, how Dr. Gaines knows his parents, a stiff silence descends.
Dr. Gaines smiles at Castiel over a forkful of pot roast. “Your father and I do business together,” he says. “He invited me to listen to a proposition.”
Father nods stiffly. “There’s no need to concern yourself with such matters, Castiel,” he says. Turning to Mother, he adds, “The pot roast is excellent, dear. Do give Cook my compliments.”
Castiel understands this to mean that the subject is being changed.
A few days later, he’s called into his father’s study. Castiel has always found it an intimidating room with its dark, square desk and tall bookcases full of leather-bound books whose spines have never been cracked.
His father’s head is bent over some papers, and he doesn’t look up when Castiel enters the room. Instead, he stretches out his hand, extending a plain white envelope towards Castiel. He’s clearly expecting Castiel to take it.
“When you go for your physical at the draft board,” his father says, his attention still fixed on his papers, “give this to them. They’ll find you unfit for service.”
Castiel’s hand closes around the letter. The simple piece of paper feels bizarrely heavy in his hand. “Thank you, sir,” Castiel says numbly, because it’s what he’s expected to say.
He’s already turned to go when his father calls him back. “Oh, and Castiel?”
“Yes, Father?”
Father finally looks up from his papers to fix Castiel with a considering frown. “Don’t go running for a while. It wouldn’t look good.”
Castiel knows better than to ask follow-up questions. Instead, he takes the envelope to his room. It isn’t sealed. Inside, there’s a letter from Dr. Gaines, stating that Castiel has a severe respiratory condition that makes it dangerous to engage in strenuous physical activity.
Castiel stares at the letter for a long time, trying to ascertain how he feels about all this. The draft has been on his mind, but he hasn’t exactly been afraid of it. He’ll be going to college for the next four years, which would have earned him a deferment. And after that, he would have gone to war if told to do so.
To get out of it because his father has bribed a doctor to write a letter — it seems dishonest. No, it is dishonest. Not to mention unfair toward those who can’t bribe their way out of military service.
But as he sits and thinks, something else occurs to him. He’s read enough about the draft to know that one of the medical exemptions is for “homosexual tendencies.” Which means that if he were to tell the examining physician the truth about who, or what, he is — a truth he’s quite sure of by now — the result would be the same.
So what does it matter if he tells one lie, as opposed to another? The Army doesn’t want him anyway.
That September, Castiel goes for his mandatory physical. He shows the examiner his doctor’s note and is found 4-F — permanently disqualified from military service.
***
By the fall of ‘64, more than a year has passed since Dean’s high school graduation, and sometimes, he feels like an old man. Sure, nineteen isn’t a ripe old age by most standards, but it seems to him that a young man ought to have his whole life ahead of him. His own life often feels like it’s already over.
He likes his job, sure, and he likes Lisa well enough, but he feels like he can already see the next five decades of his life spread out ahead of him: more of the same work, more of the same girl, eventually a kid or three.
It’s such a dreary prospect that he almost can’t stand it. But what choice does he have? Mom and Sam need the income from his job at the garage. There’s barely enough money for them all to live comfortably, and there’s no way in hell that he can abandon the two of them just so he can go traveling and see the world.
As far as he can tell, the only way he gets to do that is if he gets himself drafted.
Of course, Sam is still dead-set against the idea of America getting more involved in the conflict in Vietnam, as are many others, including their neighbor Mr. Devereaux. And it’s never entirely made sense to Dean either, how GIs going to fight someplace in Southeast Asia is going to stop communism from coming to America. But sometimes… sometimes he pulls out his old, battered copy of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and loses himself in descriptions of the African jungle.
“The wilderness had patted him on the head,” he’ll read, “it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation.”
The words dance around Dean’s head, as confusing and lovely and unattainable as a movie star on a screen, and he wonders if he’ll live to see a place like that.
***
Castiel never had much choice as to his path after high school. It was decided for him, more or less at birth, that he would go to the University of Kansas to get a degree in finance, then join his father in running the family business.
And so, Castiel goes through the motions that have long been expected of him. All through his freshman year at KU, he continues to live at home, and Father spends a good deal of time instructing him to steer clear of “riff-raff” he might encounter on campus. (This term is one of Father’s favorites, flexible enough that it can stretch to encompass anyone he doesn’t approve of, from communists and colored people to anti-war protestors, workers and the poor.)
Castiel promises faithfully that he will, but in practice, this is easier said than done. Though Lawrence is hardly an epicenter of subversive activity, the presence of a large university makes it a less conservative place than much of the rest of the state. Castiel is too young to remember the 1948 sit-in at Brick’s Cafe that marked the beginning of the end for segregation at Lawrence’s lunch counters. But he sometimes overhears other students talking about it, and about more recent sit-ins in the Deep South. He hears black students give speeches on campus that borrow freely from the words of Dr. Martin Luther King.
As Castiel’s first year at college moves from winter to spring, it becomes more common to encounter anti-war sentiment as well.
On an unseasonably warm and pleasant day in February of 1965, Castiel’s sophomore year, he turns a corner in downtown Lawrence and finds himself face to face with a little over a dozen KU students. They’re wearing suits and carefully pressed dresses, and they stand quietly with signs that read END THE WAR IN VIETNAM and NEGOTIATE NOT ESCALATE.
Castiel hurries past, keeping his head low. Still, he hears another passerby stop to rant at the students and call them names. He wants to turn and say, These people are protesting peacefully. The Constitution gives them the right to do so. Instead, he lengthens his stride and continues on his way.
Only weeks later, Castiel hears that the local Civil Rights Council is staging a sit-in that day in front of the KU’s Chancellor’s office in Strong Hall to protest racial discrimination in university policies. All morning, he wrestles with himself. He has two classes to attend, both of which take him within a stone’s throw of Strong Hall.
Lunch time finds him standing opposite the building, watching as people walk in and out the front door, leaving no clue as to what’s going on inside. Finally, his heart in his throat, Castiel stops a young man about his age who has just come out of the building.
“Excuse me,” he says, “do you know what’s going on with the sit-in?”
The young man shrugs. “Not much right now. People are mostly just sitting around and doing homework. But I heard someone from the paper’s coming to meet with them.”
For another thirty minutes, Castiel stands in the plaza outside Strong Hall. He stops three more people who have just come out, and slowly, he learns of the protestors’ demands: they’re asking the Chancellor to sign an executive order prohibiting racial discrimination on campus, which he’s apparently refusing to do. They also want the KU newspaper, the Daily Kansan, to stop accepting advertisements from organizations practicing racial discrimination.
These seem to Castiel like reasonable demands. While he hasn’t had much personal interaction with black students, he’s heard that they have difficulty finding housing near campus, and that some fraternities and sororities still refuse to let them join.
Before he’s given them permission to move, his feet carry him forward and through the front door into Strong Hall. Inside, the corridors are buzzing with conversation. It feels like stepping into a swarm of bees. Castiel has never had occasion to visit the Chancellor’s office before, but it’s easy to find, based on the noise of the crowd.
When Castiel reaches the third floor, his breath snags in his lungs. Through the double doors that mark the Chancellor’s office suite, he can see hundreds of students sitting on the floor. They’ve left a small path down the middle to allow people to pass, but the corridor is sufficiently wide that the crowd can sit three or four students deep. Some have piles of books next to them, others have notebooks open on their laps, but most are chatting amiably.
Castiel’s fingers tighten on the strap of his leather satchel. He takes a step forward, and another, until he’s gone all the way through the double doors. He’s actually going to join a protest. He thinks he might be sick. But part of him is also trembling with excitement.
Blindly, he sits down in the nearest open spot, holding on to his leather satchel with both hands, like a security blanket.
“Hey,” somebody says from nearby. “Are you okay? You look kind of pale.”
Castiel turns to find a boy with floppy brown hair sitting next to him. His legs are folded almost all the way up to his ears, giving the impression of a tall person trying to take up as little space as possible. His pants are at least an inch too short, revealing the tops of white tube socks in his scuffed leather shoes.
“I don’t know,” Castiel says honestly. Then, looking at the adolescent pimples on the boy’s forehead, he adds, frowning, “Are you… a student here?”
The boy grimaces. “I mean, I’m a student. Just… not so much at KU. Not yet anyway.” His face lights up with eagerness. “I’ve been accepted for next year though. I’m Sam, by the way.”
Sam stretches out one of his long, gangly arms to offer Castiel his hand. Castiel takes it, surprised by Sam’s strong grip. “Castiel,” he says. And because people usually ask follow-up questions, he adds, “It’s the name of an apocryphal angel. My mother is very religious.”
“Nice to meet you, Castiel,” Sam says, taking back his hand and wrapping his arm once more around his drawn-up legs.
“You as well,” Castiel answers. He lets his eyes stray over the buzzing crowd that surrounds them. Nausea rises in his throat again, so he turns back to Sam to continue their conversation. “Shouldn’t you still be in school?”
Sam grins sheepishly. “I told my teacher I wasn’t feeling well. He sent me home.”
Suppressing a shudder at the kind of trouble he would have gotten into for skipping school as a boy, Castiel asks, “What about your parents? Won’t they find out?”
“It’s only my mom and my older brother,” Sam says, shrugging. “And they’re both out of the house all day. So if the school tries to call them, they won’t be around."
“Is this your first time joining a protest?” Castiel asks, still trying to keep his attention off the rest of the students to stem the tide of his anxiety.
Sam grins, his cheeks dimpling with it. “Nah. My first one was in Kansas City almost two years ago. I took the bus to join a peace walk. Dean, that’s my brother, he was so mad when I called him from the bus station.”
Jostled out of his nerves by Sam’s infectious enthusiasm, Castiel smiles. “It sounds like he’s very protective of you.”
Sam sighs wearily. “You have no idea. Just ‘cause I skipped a grade in middle school, everybody treats me like a snot-nosed five-year-old. Especially Dean.”
He sounds so bitter about it, but it seems wonderful to Castiel, to have someone care for you that deeply. Castiel has often wished for an older brother, or even just a good friend, who would be protective of him and love him the way people ought to be loved. His parents only ever seem to go through the motions.
(Every once in a while, he thinks about the possibility of romantic love too. But that notion seems so far-fetched as to be laughable. Even at KU, he’s never met a man who admitted openly to being interested in other men.)
Castiel watches as Sam reaches into his canvas backpack and pulls out a creased paperback. He recognizes it immediately as one of his own favorites: Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut.
“Oh, I love that book,” he says, before he can stop himself. “What do you think of it?”
Sam shrugs. “I don’t know yet. I just started. Dean’s read it a bunch of times. He’s really into sci-fi and adventure novels and stuff like that. I don’t read much fiction, but this one looked interesting.”
Interest stirs tentatively in the back of Castiel’s mind. He hasn't met many people who like the same sorts of books he does. “Your brother, Dean… does he go to KU?”
Sam looks at him with both eyebrows wrinkled, as though this is the most ridiculous question Castiel could possibly have asked. “Hell no. Dean’s a mechanic.”
“Oh,” Castiel says, not sure what else to add. It surprises him that someone who hasn’t gone to college would read Vonnegut. But perhaps that’s just his father’s prejudice, filtering into his own assumptions.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Sam adds, eyes wide. “I’m not saying he’s stupid or anything. He just never liked school much.”
Castiel can certainly understand that sentiment. When Sam doesn’t say anything further, he pulls out one of his own books — a desperately boring text on actuarial practices — and tries to focus on it. The effort isn’t a great success, but slowly, he feels at least some of the tension in his shoulders relax.
About an hour after he’s sat down, some reporters from the campus newspaper arrive and begin speaking in low tones with a small group of students who, Castiel assumes, are the organizers of the sit-in. This is confirmed when one of them turns to address the crowd.
“Friends,” he says, raising his voice to be heard over the hum of conversation, “The Kansan has agreed to meet our demands. They won’t be accepting advertisements by known racist landlords and organizations any longer.”
A raucous cheer goes up from the crowd, and Castiel feels a smile pull at his cheeks. He hasn’t done anything except sit on the floor of a university building for an hour, but he somehow feels that he’s played some part in accomplishing something today. Something real and meaningful that might lead to change down the line. It’s an intoxicating feeling.
After the cheers have died down, a few people get up and leave, but most stay in their seats, and Castiel remembers that the Chancellor still has yet to meet the protestors’ demands. He wonders if he dares to stay longer.
“Hey,” Sam says, nudging Castiel’s arm. “D’you have the time?”
Castiel shakes back his sleeve to check his watch, and his stomach plummets. “It’s almost two. I’ll be late for my afternoon class.”
All thoughts of staying at the sit-in forgotten, he jumps to his feet. Sam gets up too, unfolding his long limbs. Standing, he’s a little taller than Castiel, though he has to be at least two or three years younger.
“I’d better go too if I wanna keep from getting in trouble at home. It was nice to meet you, Castiel,” Sam says, smiling warmly. “See you at the next one, maybe?”
“Maybe,” Castiel agrees, and the idea of making such a rebellious plan, however tentative, sends a little thrill through him.
***
That night at dinner, the sit-in at KU is a subject of much conversation. Though perhaps it would be more accurate to call it a monologue, since Castiel’s father is the only one speaking.
Apparently, when the doors of the Chancellor’s office were set to be closed for the day, more than a hundred students refused to leave, and the police moved in to arrest them. Hearing that, Castiel is glad Sam was long gone by then. Selfishly, he’s even more glad that he himself was long gone.
“Goddamn ungrateful, unpatriotic pinkos,” Father says, brandishing his fork. The vein on his forehead stands out prominently, and his face has turned an unhealthy shade of purple that contrasts strangely with his carefully trimmed beard. “If I ever hear of you being in any way associated with this filth, there will be dire consequences, Castiel. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Father,” Castiel says, aimlessly scraping his fork through the mashed potatoes on his plate, letting them mix with the gravy covering the thick cut of rump steak on the other side of his plate. The food is likely delicious, but he doesn’t feel much like eating.
“I’d rather have no son at all than a son who doesn’t honor his superiors and his country,” Father says, with the air of Moses pronouncing God’s commandments at the foot of Mount Sinai.
“You’re so right, Charles,” Mother said, smiling thinly. “Love of country is the most important thing.”
Castiel knows better than to bring up the fact that he would have been content to serve his country in the military, but is never going to be asked to, thanks to his father’s efforts.
He thinks of Sam, with his soft, pimpled face, floppy hair and gangly limbs. He’s going to be exempt from the draft while he’s at college, but what about after? And his older brother, who likes the same kinds of novels as Castiel, is over eighteen and working as a mechanic. He could easily be drafted if President Johnson chooses to send ground troops to Vietnam, as many people seem to think he will.
The rest of dinner proceeds in silence. After, Castiel goes up to his room to re-read his copy of Cat’s Cradle. It’s a warm, pleasant day for early spring, so he keeps a window open while he sits cross-legged on top of his bed.
He grows so lost in his book that he barely notices the time until it's fully dark and he’s forced to switch on his bedside lamp. The air is growing cooler too, and Castiel shivers as he goes to close the window.
His hand is already on the latch when something stops him. It’s a song, drifting softly in from outside. Later, Castiel will learn that the singers are some of his fellow students, marching peacefully outside the Chancellor’s residence, a mere block away from Castiel’s house.
For now, he stands at the open window and listens to the song, a strange yearning pulling at his chest.
We shall overcome, we shall overcome
We shall overcome someday.
Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe
That we shall overcome someday.
***
On March 9, the CBS evening news shows footage of American combat troops landing on the ground in Vietnam for the first time. The force consists of two Marine battalions, who have been ordered to a place called Da Nang to defend an air base there.
For once, Dean is interested enough in the news to play close attention to the footage: grainy, black-and-white images of Marines stepping off a landing craft and onto a peaceful South Vietnamese beach. They’re greeted by pretty, smiling Vietnamese girls holding flowers.
Sam glares at the TV as though it’s personally offended him. “Well, at least they can’t draft me anytime soon,” he says. With an unreadable sideways glance at Dean, he adds, “They could draft you though, if they start sending more troops.”
“Let’s not talk about that,” Mom snaps. She's leaning forward in her armchair, sitting at the very edge of it. Her knuckles are white in her lap. “Can’t we change the channel?”
Dean says nothing. Sure, he’s grateful that Sam’s going to get his college deferment, but as for himself, he’s going to keep watching the mailbox for a letter from the draft board.
That night, he dreams of smiling Vietnamese girls and of a chance to go prove himself in the jungle wilderness.