"Given their assumptions," Morgan said, "I thought I might discuss their conclusions." The following week the witness returned with help. Pots of tea, hours later, the witness and his help left, baffled, promising to return with an elder. By spring, much of the church's energy was directed at rebutting the doctrinal challenge from the mountains. Morgan was invited to headquarters where an informal truce was reached. "They are an efficient organization in many ways," Morgan said grandly.
"Poor bastards," Joe said. "Morgan is difficult in debate, Mo. He got out of the draft by writing so many complicated letters questioning selective service procedures that they finally figured it would be easier to classify him, 1Y."
"A successful campaign," Morgan said.
"Better than mine," Joe said.
"Could have been worse," Morgan reminded him.
"True." Joe explained to Edie and Mo that he'd enlisted in the Air Force and decided, midway through his hitch, that war was wrong, that people shouldn't kill each other. "Vietnam was heating up. The colonel at my courts-martial listened to my speech, smiled at two lieutenants who were doing on-the-job legal training, and said, 'Airman Burke, you may persist in your attitude and I will sentence you to one year at Fort Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary and a bad conduct discharge, or, you can keep your mouth shut, serve the rest of your enlistment, and I will sentence you to thirty days in the stockade, a five hundred dollar fine, and reduction in rank to Airman Basic. What will it be?'
"He raised the gavel, the son of a bitch. I was twenty; I was stubborn; I had no idea what a federal pen was like. I opened my mouth for another statement of principle, and a voice sounded in my head—that's only happened to me twice. It said: 'you asshole, people kill each other. They have always killed each other. What do you think you're doing?' The voice saved me. 'Thirty days,' I said. The colonel smacked his gavel and read the sentence for the record.
"'Yes, sir.' I said. 'My car is at the BX; I'll just park it behind the barracks.' Two AP's took me by the elbows and marched me to the stockade."
"A near thing," Edie said. "It was a senseless war."
"It sure was," Joe said. "And it was the poor boys from Kentucky who died in it."