1942 Anne Frank's family went into hiding in the Annex, Amsterdam
1947 Spain voted for Francisco Franco as Head of State for life until death
“This is why old people seem distant and distracted, [Felix] thought. We aren’t living in the past; the past is living in us.”
“The wisdom that comes with age was needling, [Cal] found, because it brought the clarity of hindsight without the means to change anything.”
“Over and over, [Becky] learned that what the dead most often conveyed was love and forgiveness. She could only conclude that these were the two most important things in the world—so important that people carried them into the afterlife for the sole purpose of being able to hand them back to the living.”
“What was becoming clearer, however—and had probably always been clear to her mother—was that she [Margaret] was looking for understanding where there was none to be found. She was looking for understanding in an act of wanton selfishness. Forgiveness, the way her mother had described it, wasn’t something that shot up out of the soil; it had to creep in over time, like a vine.”
Yesterday I wrote that I was considering closing the covers on this novel and moving on because of the implausibility of Becky communicating with the dead, or of the dead communicating with her or anyone. It's another way of doubting that there is any life after death, that there's a soul or spirit that survives after a corporeal body dies. I say "implausibility" because no one knows whether there is any life after death. Millions say they believe there is, millions deny it, and no one knows, including me. Are Becky's beliefs and behaviors plausible novelistic devices to make points and move a plot along? The success of Buckeye says 'yes.' Author Ryan's point, I suppose, is that love and forgiveness are the most important things in life, and his entire story about his principal characters supports this.
None of the four characters is a hero, and none is a villain. Each has strengths, and each has flaws. Each is a believable, complex human being. Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner. To understand all is to forgive all. Cal committed double adultery with Margaret, but only when Becky had rejected him for ousting the shifty promoter Casey LaGrange. Margaret had the passionate affair with Cal only after years of sexless marriage to the secretly gay Felix, and lonely separation from Felix's for years during the war. Felix had his affair with Augie Varick only after years of profound sexual frustration. He also hid his homosexuality from Margaret. All of the principals contributed in some material way to the liaison that resulted in Cal's fathering Thomas Aquinas Salt. All contributed to keeping Cal's paternity a secret from Tom, and all (except Margaret) contributed to finally telling him the painful truth at age 24.
The novel makes me wonder again about free will and determinism. Sapolsky argues that every action is brought about by all of the conditions - biological, genetic, environmental, historical, hormonal, emotional, etc. - that precede and accompany the action. He posits that our choices in life are not only conditioned by all preceding conditions but are determined by them. Was it inevitable, inexorable, unavoidable that Margaret and Cal would have their affair? Was it foredoomed that Margaret would tell Felix of her affair with Cal and of Tom's biological father? Sapolsky's case seems pretty strong to me.
It also makes me wonder about the role that Chance, Luck, Fortuitousness, or Happenstance plays in our lives. Margaret just happened to be in front of Cal's hardware store when V-E Day was broadcast on the radio. Why was it Skip's transport that ran over the landmine outside Hué. What role did Chance play in Cal's being born with one leg 2 inches shorter than the other? Emily Dickinson: In this short life that only lasts an hour / How much - how little - is within our power.
I was particularly struck by Buckeye's description of the experience of draft-eligible men, and of their parents, during the first massive draft lottery on December 1, 1969. I was in my last year of law school at the time. I was 28 years old, married and a father, and had already served 4 years of active duty and 2 years in the (inactive, but Ready) reserves. My classmates were not so fortunate (if "fortunate" is the correct term). The nation was awash with anxiety. In the novel, Skip had already joined the Marines and been killed almost two years before the lottery when his transport vehicle struck a land mine outside Hué in northern I Corps.
[Cal and Becky] spent two years worrying about the draft. Becky had sat down with two different mothers from Bonhomie whose sons had died in Ia Drang. She had sat down with a father who had a son missing in action since mid-1966. She told Cal that if Skip had got called up, she'd do her best to convince him to go to Canada. . . . . It hadn't occurred to them that he would enlist.
And at the Salt house on Lottery night:
Tom came home. The lottery was like some grim game show where nobody wanted the prize. Every date on the calendar was assigned a corresponding number. Those numbers were put into capsules, placed in a big jar, and drawn out one by one. The first 195 numbers drawn indicated 195 dates, and, if you were eligible, and one of those dates was your birthday, you were called up. Felix watched, sitting forward, elbows on his knees and hads clasped together supporting his chin, Tom sat back on the sofa, his arms tucked around himself. By chance, his number was in the 300s. The relief they both felt was ardent, but subdued.
These stories of Vietnam anxieties remind me of my sister relating to me the story of my mother opening the letter I sent from Japan, telling the family that I was on my way to Vietnam. She broke down in tears as she read it, and I suspect she never drew an easy breath until she learned I was out of Vietnam and on Okinawa, and probably not until I was back in the States. I'm reminded, too, of the parents for whom I was the dreaded casualty assistance calls officer delivering the news of their Marine son's death or wounding in 1966-67, and of the millions of parents who weren't visited by a CACO, but feared it every day and every night while their son was deployed. The novel reminds me of the horrors of the Vietnam War not only for the Americans and others who fought it, and for the Vietnamese who endured it, but for all those parents, spouses, siblings, children, and others with a loved one 'in country.'
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