MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” Hamlet said to his friend after encountering the ghost of his, Hamlet’s, father.  In Shakespeare’s time, people believed in otherworldly things.

Fast forward to 1991.  I took a trip back to my hometown where, at the local university, I researched the letters of an acquaintance of mine, “Tim” I will call him, who died in the Vietnam War.  The reason I was researching his letters was because I wanted to refer to him in a book I was writing.

When Tim was drafted, he declared himself a conscientious objector, the I-O classification, but he ultimately bowed to pressure from his conservative family and community to where he went in as a I-A-O noncombatant.  He’d be a medic.

Tim’s letters, mainly to his parents, were from his training as a medic, and then from the front lines of the war.  Often they were about how much he hated the war, all wars and all killing.

I, too, hated the war, all wars and all killing, and I, too, when drafted, declared myself a conscientious objector.  Like Tim I also felt pressure from my conservative family and community, and especially from the local draft board, who said I also should go in as a I-A-O noncombatant medic.  I-A-Os, by the way, added to the draft board’s monthly quota, whereas I-Os, who served in a civilian capacity, did not.  Since the job of a I-A-O medic was to patch up soldiers so they could go back into the war and do more killing, I could not accept that route.

I doubted Tim himself truly wanted to be a medic, doing so just to keep the peace, so to speak, among those around him.  With this in mind, I read every one of his letters to his parents and friends, until I felt very close to him, indeed.  Spiritually, I felt close to him.

When I got to the final letter, it became very dark outside all of a sudden, and loud claps of thunder echoed down the valley.  Then came a violent storm, a fierce, windy, driving storm that pelted the windows with rain like rocks.  The blinds whipped back and forth, and the overhead lights flickered on and off.   

But then, just as abruptly as the storm had appeared, it vanished.  I didn’t let myself think that this had anything to do with Tim and his letters, even though the hairs still standing on the back of my neck told me that it did.   

Indeed, on the front page of the local newspaper the next morning there was a large picture of Tim, along with the reminder that he did not last a month in the war.  He rushed into a field to tend to a wounded comrade, only to get gunned down himself, fatally.  That was in 1969.

Again, this newspaper article was in 1991, twenty-two years after Tim’s death, at age twenty-two coincidentally, leaving me asking what were the odds of it, what was the likelihood of his picture appearing the very next day on the front page of the local paper, after my reading his letters and then that violent storm? 

As for that I-O classification I had insisted on, the local draft board rejected me at every turn, which should not have surprised me in a conservative state where young men, like cattle, were always shipped off, no questions asked, to whatever the war might be. 

I had no choice but to refuse induction, whereupon I was arrested, put on trial, and convicted by a jury who also had no choice; the judge’s instruction to them was to base their decision only on whether or not I had refused induction, which obviously I had, twice in person at the Induction Center.   

As I braced for being taken into custody, to begin my five years in prison, that dreaded five years, the judge, astonishingly, permitted me to be free on personal recognizance to be with my family at Christmas; the trial was eleven days before Christmas.  The prosecution strongly objected. 

A sentencing date was set for just after the holidays, but by then I was already out of the country, in exile, where I remained for the next six years, a year longer than had I gone to prison.

I visited Tim’s gravesite on that same trip back to do research on him, and he was there.  He was everywhere in those hills.  He was in the judge even.  “There are more things in heaven and earth--“