Jack’s Story - 1967

Novel Bites is a series of short stories from the perspective of secondary characters in my novels. This one was posted in my substack newsletter before I started doing audio there and linking them to read here. Jack is Alice's hippie father in the novella Alice. He's talking to us about his own history here.

When I got home from ‘Nam, all I wanted to do was forget all of it and find something good. My high school sweetheart had gotten knocked up and married while I was slogging through jungle trying not to die. But still, going home was automatic. Where else would I go?

My mother couldn’t stop touching me the first week, every time she came near, like she had to be sure I was real. I was her only child. My being at war had been hard on her.

Nothing I’d worn in high school fit. I’d always been a skinny kid. The military and ‘Nam had filled me out. So my first excursion out of the house, I took some of my combat pay and bought two pairs of bell bottom jeans, some tee-shirts, and a jean jacket.

My father said I looked like a hick, that I needed to get a proper suit and come work at the car lot with him. Mom talked me into giving it a try, but he kept bragging about my medals and wanting me to tell his customers and buddies the stories that went with them.

He knew better. I’d told him, a lot of people I called friends died on those days, and other days. He knew I didn’t want to talk about it with anyone. And I hated how he talked as if I was a hero when all I’d done is survive.

Then he caught me with some Mary Jane. He started in on me about using dope, when it was just marijuana and I could have come home hooked on heroin. I started telling him about that, and some of how it had been, and he got huffy and yelled at me for lying and bad-mouthing our country. Mom tried to tell him to stop, but when she reached for him, he swatted her arm away and I lost it. I’m not sure how she got me off him.

I packed everything worth having into my duffel bag and walked out the front while she patched him up back in the kitchen. Hadn’t even bought myself a car yet, so I hiked to the highway and caught a ride heading west.

San Francisco and the Summer of Love were all over the news, so that’s where I went – fatigue jackets all over the place, but on long-haired boys and even girls. People getting high out in the open. Girls wearing thin tops with no bras and long filmy skirts, with flowers in their hair, just like the song. Odd combination that – the long skirts and tops that showed everything, or no tops at all. But I wasn’t going to complain. And that circle with the upside-down tree was everywhere, a peace sign, and kids chanting to make love, not war. That was all good, but the crowd started making me feel closed in, so I walked north, away from the Haight, and stuck out my thumb.

A flowered VW bus pulled over minutes later and Sunshine popped out of the side door. “Hey! Heading north of the Bay?” She waved for me to climb into the vehicle.

My life changed.

I climbed in past her luscious breasts free under a thin gauze top. She wore one of those skirts, too. We were making love before we got across the Golden Gate.

Sunshine was the love of my life. I still carry a photo of her – standing barefoot on grass, holding her arms out in welcome, flowers in her hair. Her smile still warms me when I look at that picture. It’s a miracle I have it. We didn’t carry around cameras, but before me, she’d been with a journalist briefly and he’d given it to her. It never mattered she’d been looking at him when that photo was taken; it never mattered we weren’t sure when she’d gotten pregnant. The baby was mine from the moment I first felt her move.

I called home that Christmas, ready to tell Mom I was going to be a daddy in a few months, and found out she’d passed. She hadn’t wanted me to know she had cancer when I first got back, but the old man blamed me for not calling sooner, as if that would have changed things. He didn’t need to know about Sunshine or the baby. I never told him, even when it was just me bringing up Alice on my own. We did fine without him.