3 January 2010 KALEIDOSCOPE EYES by Jen Bryant, Knopf, May 2009, 272p., ISBN: 978-0-375-84048-7
"Obie looked at the seeing eye dog, and then at the twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, and looked at the seeing eye dog. And then at twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one and began to cry, 'cause Obie came to the realization that it was a typical case of American blind justice, and there wasn't nothing he could do about it, and the judge wasn't going to look at the twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. And we was fined $50 and had to pick up the garbage in the snow, but that's not what I came to tell you about.
"Came to talk about the draft."
-- Arlo Guthrie, "Alice's Restaurant"
The draft ended a couple of months before I turned eighteen. I didn't come near having to make the decision between what I saw -- given my beliefs -- as my two real choices: going to Canada or going to jail.
On my mother's side of the family, I have four older male cousins who each were of draft age during the height of the Vietnam War. None of the four had to serve a day. Nor did they have to resort to the alternatives I was considering for myself.
Each of these four cousins were from white suburban middle class families headed by fathers who served in WWII. When my uncles returned from their war and started making babies, it was not in their game plans that their offspring would get out of high school and get shipped off to another war.
It is my belief that if every single American family in the same circumstances as my cousins' families had been forced without exception to have their sons go to Vietnam as soon as they turned eighteen, then those white middle class families across America would have forced an end to the Vietnam War within months of the 1968 Tet Offensive -- if not sooner.
In KALEIDOSCOPE EYES, a free verse novel about friendships and treasure hunts set in 1968, the Draft is arguably not the central issue of the story. Yet, its impact is far more important than anything else that goes on in the story; it's the elephant in the room.
Rather than having characters rail about the Draft, Jen Bryant provides just enough information to hint at the inequities surrounding who did and did not get shipped off to that misguided war and to spark recognition of how the inevitable and devastating impact of a war reaches deep into the typical American community.
KALEIDOSCOPE EYES is a coming-of-age tale about thirteen year-old Lyza Bradley, who is best friends with the tall, quiet, and thoughtful black boy, Malcolm Dupree, and the small, hyperactive white girl, Carolann Mott. In a dysfunctional family where her mother has deserted them and her father has buried himself in his teaching career, it is Lyza's two friends along with -- surprisingly -- the older, hippie sister she has such a poor opinion of, who will be there for Lyza.
The treasure hunt (and related geology lesson) at the center of the story involves the mysterious set of maps left in an envelope for Lyza by her beloved grandfather when he dies. Gramps was a career Navy navigator who has taught Lyza his skills, and has also sought to share his sense of adventure -- if only on paper:
"'Where shall we sail today, Lyza?' he'd ask,
and I'd reply, 'Australia!' or 'Jamaica!'
and, using a compass and a ruler,
we'd plot our course across the water
just me and him together,
a real adventure.
Once, Gramps showed me photos of when,
years earlier, he'd tried to sail
alone
from Florida to Maine,
with just his maps, a compass, a radio, and a two-week
supply of water and food.
He didn't make it. The Coast Guard rescued him,
a big storm having blown his boat
onto the rocks of the Massachusetts coast.
'Weren't you scared?' I asked him.
"Terrified--almost the whole time,' Gramps answered.
'But,' he added, 'I'd never felt more alive.'"
When Lyza finds the puzzle pieces for Gramps' final and unfinished adventure -- searching for a pirate treasure lost centuries ago -- it is the support and assistance of her friends that permits Lyza to grow beyond the confines of her family problems and seek the solution to the puzzle.
But irregardless of what happens with the three friends and their adventure, at the end of the story it is the fresh gravestones down the street, the boy in town with blown-off legs, and Malcolm's brother somewhere deep in the jungles of Vietnam who are the real story here -- the story of 1968 in America. And that, by itself, makes KALEIDOSCOPE EYES a book well worth owning.
"So we'll wait for it to come around on the guitar, here
and sing it when it does.
Here it comes."
I have two kids of draft age right now: a daughter who is eighteen and a son who is seventeen and a half. But I don't care if it is this year or twenty years down the line -- you won't find me supporting any war unless I am ready to literally sacrifice my own children's lives to it.
Don't hold your breath waiting for that.
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