The Men & Boys of Sybelia Drive

by Karin Cecile Davidson

 A friend’s introduction to Tim Hetherington’s photographs of American soldiers asleep in their bunks in Afghanistan led me to thinking about the men and boys of my novel Sybelia Drive. I’d spent so much time thinking of this book in terms of the narratives of the women and girls that I hadn’t considered the treatment of masculinity. Mostly concerned with the home front, the novel peripherally depicts scenes of soldiers in Vietnam, as described in thin blue aerogrammes sent home from overseas, in back story, or from photographs taken in the field.

In Hetherington’s photographs, soldiers sleep, their repose that of exhaustion, and at times, innocence. They lie on their backs or sides, knees bent, hands tucked under cheeks, their mouths slightly parted or open. One can see in their dreaming postures the gestures of children, and yet their bodies are grown, and in this instance, there’s a wish for them to remain sleeping. Inside of the sleeping, there is security. For when they wake, there are only more orders, more patrols, more roadside bombs.

The chapters of Sybelia Drive include multiple viewpoints, for in wartime there are many voices, providing the chance to explore the men and boys who either enlisted or were drafted or had a conscription number coming up. A woman author writing male perspectives—to some appropriation, but to me, a way of honoring and contemplating what it might have felt like to be a man in uniform or a boy in cut-offs during this era.  

Royal is one such character, a Marine Sergeant, in charge of a Combined Action Patrol squad. He has two chapters, one very brief and “in country,” the other back in the states and a more in-depth look. He has returned changed, another version of himself, his right arm gone at the shoulder. 

When approaching this character, I knew I spent months researching military rankings, CAP history, military maps, the language of the soldiers from acronyms to a vocabulary specific to the Vietnam War, the politics and strategies that led to escalation, and on and on. I had many conversations with CAP Marine veterans who had served in Vietnam, and one stayed with me: that in the end what matters most is to translate the emotional world of someone who has fought for his country. The direction of the writing was completely clear to me after that, and inside this direction came a treatment of masculinity I hadn’t expected. 

In Royal’s own words:

Things you cannot do with one arm: hug your daughter, drive a car, carry a load of firewood, row across the lake, turn the crank on an ice cream bucket, build a porch, shoot a rifle, make love, make amends. This is what people think. This is what people will tell you. You never argue. You never disagree and muddy their misconceptions. You let them have them. With ice and rock salt at your side, you invite them over one day. It is summer, and they are neighbors and old friends, and they comment on the rabbit hutches, how your stepson must have helped construct them. You nod, knowing that he did, for a day or two, then disappeared long enough that you tried to finish them on your own. And then your daughter showed up because she knew her brother had abandoned you. Even with a tool belt at your waist, there was still the need for another pair of hands. 

The other men and boys in the novel include Alan, Saul, Titus, James, and others who remain off stage. Alan enlists and is killed in action. Saul is younger, still a teenager, not yet awaiting his number to be called in the draft. Titus is a Private First Class in Royal’s squad, later a Lance Corporal who keeps on re-upping, addicted to the adrenaline of war. James is nineteen when drafted, assigned as an infantryman, his primary Military Occupation Specialty (MOS), and serves as field photographer for his battalion. 

Unlike Hetherington, who worked as a photographer imbedded with troops, James is a one of the collective of soldiers, with an M-16 in his grip, as well as a Kodak camera slung over his shoulder. In the writing, there is the intention of expressing what it is like to be “the fucking new guy,” the grunt, to be overwhelmed and attentive and wild-eyed, to follow orders and shoot pictures and try not to get killed.

In James’s words:

It was Year of the Rat, and we all became water rats, sinking in rivers and rice paddies, my camera and film bag held above my shoulders along with my rifle. We had wit and curiosity, and we were nervous and aggressive. Tagging along behind the point man, itching for a fight, smoking in order to stay quiet. Waiting, listening. I measured my steps, I refocused, I balanced my load, so much smaller than some. The light meter gave me a reading; I adjusted the viewfinder; I pressed the shutter release, advanced the film, and just as quickly discovered the next image, a fraction of the field before me, the picture as contained as the war was wide.

Growing up on the Gulf Coast, especially as a teenager in New Orleans, I met men, boys really, not much older than myself, who had served. Later, I realized their quietude was certainly due to those experiences, which were defined by the era, the war, and their generation’s perceptions of masculinity. When I reflect on the characters of Royal and James and the others, I think back to the boys and men I knew, who held their own intense histories inside silence.

—

Karin Cecile Davidson is originally from the Gulf Coast. Her stories have appeared in Story Magazine, The Massachusetts Review, Five Points, Colorado Review, The Los Angeles Review, Passages North, and elsewhere. Her awards include a 2018 Ohio Arts Council Residency at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, a 2018 Atlantic Center for the Arts Residency, a 2015 Studios of Key West Artist Residency, a 2014 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, a 2012 Orlando Prize for Short Fiction, the 2012 Waasmode Short Fiction Prize, and a 2012 Peter Taylor Fellowship.

Her fiction has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net, as well as shortlisted for the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers, the Nelligan Prize, the Red Hen Press Women’s Prose Prize, and the Faulkner-Wisdom Writing Competition, among others. She has an MFA from Lesley University and is an Interviews Editor for Newfound Journal. Her writing can be found at karinceciledavidson.com.

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing