We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

(though he confessed he “sure as hell” hoped he wasn’t drafted into the army, come graduation) and Patrick was the dissident—of course. Though only fourteen at this time, a weedy-lanky boy with a cracking voice, Patrick was an admirer of the war-protesting Berrigan priest-brothers and warned he’d run away to Canada as a conscientious objector if necessary. Dad said ominously we’d see about that if the time ever came, God forbid! Mom wrung her hands saying you see, you see!—the war is tearing American families apart! Patrick, incensed, had a habit of pushing his glasses against the bridge of his nose as if he hoped they’d break, declaring he was a pacifist, he’d been reading Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience,” he could not shed blood, not even animal blood let alone human blood, and no mere earthly political power could change that.
    It was strange, though: Mike and Patrick never quarreled with each other on this issue. Patrick shrank from confronting his big brother (in fact, bigger than Patrick by about twenty-five pounds) and Mike seemed mainly amused by Patrick, regardless of what impassioned words issued from his mouth. Mike just wasn’t one for debating abstract issues. (“BS-ing” he called it.) Just laughed and shrugged his muscular shoulders, a mannerism of Dad’s that meant Hell, live and let live. In this case, Fight and let fight. His philosophy was the trustworthy team player’s: you do what your buddies are doing, and you don’t let them down.
    Marianne, flush-faced like Mom, but by instinct the peacemaker in the family, said she hated war, any war, and prayed the Vietnam War would end soon, and all wars would end, forever. And then no one would be mad at anyone else, ever again.
    Judd who was eight years old kept his thoughts to himself. He hoped to join the Air Force as soon as he was old enough, and be a bomber pilot.
    Private First Class Dwight David Duncan’s picture from the Mt. Ephraim Patriot-Ledger was carefully clipped out and tacked to the kitchen bulletin board, where it prevailed for months, a smiling and not accusing presence, until, eventually, it was covered over by newer clippings, Polaroid snapshots, Mom’s FAMILY CALENDAR , pages of brilliant color from Burpee’s seed catalogue.
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    Mike “Mule” Mulvaney, a fullback on the championship Mt. Ephraim football team for the ’71–’72 season, had been with some of his teammates that night, but not the guys who did it.
    Whatever it was, exactly, they did. With Della Rae Duncan. Or to her.
    If you could believe half the wild tales making the rounds! You know how guys exaggerate.
    Guys who weren’t even there, for Christ’s sake.
    That night following the game, and the big celebration party, Mike didn’t have a car. He was with his buddies Frankie Kreigner, Brock Johnson, some others. Jammed into Frankie’s dad’s Cadillac and it was true some of the guys were drinking, passing cans of beer to one another, and also a flask of vodka, and somebody’s dad’s Wild Turkey. So maybe the boys were violating the law, drinking in a moving motor vehicle, but only technically. Nobody was actually drunk, anyway not Mule Mulvaney, not much. Nor Frankie, who was driving.
    Mule could be a rough guy sometimes, a tough customer on the football field (you don’t get baptized “Mule” by coach, for nothing) but his rep was that of a helluva nice guy. Not mean. Sure he’d hit you square in the solar plexus with his shoulder and lift you off your feet like a cartoon character too astonished to register surprise before you landed, hard, on your ass, but it wasn’t to hurt , like some guys, it was more to—well, impress. So you’d know that he meant business. So you’d respect him. And stay out of his way next time, if you could.
    And he was the kind to help you up off the ground afterward, clamp a hand