The fair-haired girl with the face of an angel flinched as she struck the match. Although its tiny rasp sounded no different from the thousand other times she had scraped one red-tipped sliver of wood along the roughened side of a little box, nothing else was the same. This time hot bile rose in her throat as she tried to fathom a future without the boy by her side.
She was only nineteen, the blue-eyed boy twenty-three. He was holding the piece of thick paper he’d brought with him, the one bearing the words ‘Registration Certificate’ above the official crest of the United States of America. It looked such a dull, mundane document. How easy it would be to mistake it for an inoffensive government notice.
She leant so close to the boy she could smell the sweet scent of his skin. Then she put the match to the white rectangle, watching intently as the tiny lick of light crawled down one edge. Frowning, she wondered if the modest flame might expire, for the warm breeze coming in from the south on that hot spring night was making it flutter and wane. Instead, the yellow dart grew stronger, until it became a dancing orange flame.
The boy gave her a quick grin, then thrust the fiery draft card high. Within seconds his action was duplicated by the thirty-nine other young men ranged in front of the soaring white pillars of Berkeley’s Sproul Hall. Each bore the same expression: intent, jubilant, united by a desire to resist. They would not enlist in the US army. They would not fight in a foreign land called Vietnam.
Entranced, the girl stood quite still, her hair streaming behind her in pale ribbons as the breeze intensified. The dramatic scene looked like an ancient rite, a trial by fire perhaps, or an unholy baptism.
The moment passed quickly. When flames threatened to scorch the young men’s tender fingers, the burning draft cards fluttered to the ground. Her ears rang with their whooping and hollering as they stamped on the charred paper, their treasonous act now turned into ash.
She couldn’t help sharing the euphoria; it throbbed in her chest like a chord wrenched from an electric guitar. Then came the fear, vanquishing her high spirits with a stab so sharp that she winced. A line had been crossed; a price was certain to be exacted.
Tensing, she turned her head in the direction of a high-pitched squeal – sirens. Any minute now, California’s state troopers would swoop down upon the demonstrators.
Despite the balmy night, a shiver ran through her. The last thing she wanted was for her lover, with his quick mind and gentle hands, to be forced into military service, but surely an even worse outcome now awaited him…
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