The Death of Santini: The Story of a Father and His Son by Pat Conroy Read Free Book Online

and their water supply destroyed, I flunked the assignment because I’d not followed the rules of engagement. Finally, I could see no difference between the Vietnamese trying to control their own destiny and the American colonists rebelling to decide their own fate. Even though I’ve had harrowing second thoughts about my actions during that war and wished I’d gone in as a Marine lieutenant, I don’t think I was wrong about the futility and fatuousness of that conflict. Smart governments fight only wars they intend to win. Fifty thousand names on that slab of immemorial marble in D.C., and I can’t blow up the dams and harbors around Hanoi? I should’ve served my country, but did not. But if America could not convince a military brat like me that it was doing the right thing, it was going to have to come up with a hell of a sales pitch for the rest of the country. I said no to the war, and it makes no difference if I think I was right or wrong. I marched in peace demonstrations in five cities as eight of my classmates were being cut up and outfitted for body bags in Vietnam. The war gleams like a bloody wound on my generation’s soul, and I’m scarred by both sides.
    I left the graduation stage at The Citadel and took a job teaching psychology at Beaufort High School, where I’d graduated four years earlier. In Beaufort, I rented a small cottage, since my parents were now living in Hawaii. I fell in love with teaching, and thought I’d be doing it for the rest of my life. The students I met in the next two years changed my perception of myself, since they found me hilarious, and not bad to look at (according to my female students). I’d never known either of those things about myself.
    At night I wrote poetry in my cottage that overlooked the Beaufort River and did some innocent, though fixable, damage to the Englishlanguage. In the American Government course I taught, I brought in Marines who’d fought in battles around Vietnam, as well as antiwar activists who were eloquent in their refusal to accept the premises of that war. The debates were fierce and stimulating. I thought a class functioned best as an honorable field where all ideas were welcome visitors.
    In those years following my graduation, Citadel classmates began to argue with me about the wrongness or rightness of the Vietnam War. By then several of them were veterans of battle. Steve Grubb, for example, had been severely wounded in the foot, so that I had to help him into my house as he struggled with his crutches. Steve, who had been president of the honor court, a member of the sword drill, and a battalion major voted most likely to succeed, had been my model of the perfect cadet when I was at The Citadel. Although I revered him, we argued long into the night about the war. As low tide changed to high and the sun rose, we were still tossing ideas back and forth. When I helped him out to the car, we hugged each other hard, and I thanked him for his visit.
    I didn’t think to thank Steve Grubb for his service to his country, however. It never crossed my mind to thank him for shedding his blood, and the numerous medals he had won for valor. That’s how a gentleman and a son of the South, a Citadel man and a true liberal, would’ve handled that most delicate situation.
    Four months after my meeting with Steve Grubb, I walked into my new job on Daufuskie Island, where I became the first white person to teach black children in that part of the Jim Crow South. Already, the sixties had me by the throat.

CHAPTER 3 •
Daufuskie Island
    My childhood was but prelude and crucible for the mess I was about to make of my adult life. On October 10, 1969, when I married Barbara Jones, a Vietnam War widow with two small children, I was in my first months of teaching on Daufuskie Island, a position I took after two years teaching at Beaufort High. I was proud of the job and aware of its historical significance, and was starting to make some headway with children