In the gray, fume-filled auto shop at Lawrence High School, all Larry Tuthill wants is to get it done.

Not that the alignment on his classmate’s brother’s car isn’t important — Tuthill knows it is — but Larry has other goals in mind.

Next year, while most of the other students in his senior class will go off to college or work, Larry Tuthill will be wearing fatigues as a member of the U.S. Army.

See, all Tuthill wants to do is work on cars. He wants to know them inside and out.

After his military career, he hopes he will know everything about cars. He and his family also hope he’s still around.

But for Tuthill, there are no fatigues yet.

Now, Tuthill wears a white T-shirt covered in grease. He bangs on the side of one of the Dodge Stratus’ tires, moving the wheel inch by inch.

Now, he is trying to learn how to make things better.

Difficult adjustment

While Tuthill labors in auto tech trying to make sure the Stratus drives straight, Cheryl Tuthill is just getting back to her south Lawrence home, where she lives with her son.

LAWRENCE HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR LARRY TUTHILL works in the high school's auto shop. After graduating, he plans to enlist in the U.S. Army.

In a few hours, when Larry comes home, Cheryl knows Larry will try to talk to her about cars. It’s a game they play, she says.

“I know nothing about cars. So we play the ‘Uh-huh’ game,” she says. “He tells me something, and I just say, ‘Uh-huh.'”

But for now, Cheryl is alone. She’s trying to get used to being that way, when Larry leaves for basic training next year.

Right now, she’s not sure what she will do with Larry’s vacant room. An office, maybe, she says.

But that’s the easy stuff, Cheryl knows. Her son’s absence won’t be as simple as changing around his room.

“There’s no preparation for it,” she says of her son leaving for the military. “I’m proud of him, but…”

She sinks down a little on the couch in the front room. On the coffee table, an old newspaper’s headline tells of more deaths in Iraq.

“I told him I’m worried,” she says. “He thinks I’m just being a mother.”

Cheryl tried to give her son options, she says. Even though the family doesn’t have much money, she told Larry that she would find a way to pay for college if he wanted to go.

And for a while, Larry considered it, looking into WyoTech, a chain of two-year vocational schools. But Larry insisted he would join the Army one way or another, either before or after college.

“I think he likes the idea of a military career,” she says. “He likes the thought of 20 years down the line. Retirement with a pension, and he’ll still be able to work.”

But today, Cheryl knows joining the Army has different implications than it did four years ago.

Cheryl won’t even say the word Iraq.

“I think he’s OK with that,” she says of the possibility of her son going to war. “But it’s just so different when it’s your son that’s going.”

Making decisions for themselves

“We see that a lot,” says Sgt. George Ramsey, of the Army Recruiting Office, 2223 La. “The kids want to enlist, but their parents don’t want them to go.”

A Time magazine cover — the “Person of the Year: The American Soldier” issue — hangs on Ramsey’s office wall.

“The war is a big reason they don’t want kids to join,” he says. “But there’s no guarantee that just because they enlist, they will see any combat.”

So when parents bring their kids to the recruiting office, or when Ramsey visits their homes or speaks to them on the phone, he tells parents the same thing:

“Parents don’t feel that their children are capable of making decisions for themselves, or that if they enlist they will go to war. If we leave with nothing else, we make sure they don’t have those misconceptions.”

But the kids can’t just make a decision to join the military and head off to basic training the next month. The process, Ramsey says, is a long and sometimes restrictive one.

There are exams — first the ASVAB, the military’s aptitude test, then physical and psychological tests, and a legal history check.

They don’t want students with tons of legal or school problems, Ramsey says. They want students like Tuthill — good kids with no past problems who want to be there.

“Most of these kids are looking for some type of training,” he says. “Our job as recruiters is to fill that need for them, to help put money in their pockets.”

But can’t college do the same thing?

“In this town, the perception is that everybody’s going to college after graduation,” Ramsey says. “But not everybody’s going.”

• Out front of the Tuthills’ home, two cars are adorned with U.S Army stickers. Larry put them there the day he got accepted into the army.

Inside, Larry and Cheryl sit, watching the post-game show after a Chiefs game.

“I don’t know,” Larry says about what he would do if he had to go to Iraq or another combat zone. “I would respect the people that I work for.”

For a time, Cheryl is quiet.

“I think he’s aware of the possibilities,” she says finally. “He was going to do this with or without me.”

Larry has been getting some reactions from his friends at school

“One friend of mine with a Navy family told me that I’d be lied to,” he says. “Some people say, ‘You’re stupid. You’re going to die in Iraq.'”

Larry: “If I get sent to Iraq, I want to be the best one to go. I would take a lot of pride in that. It would just be taking the good with the bad.”

Cheryl: “I guess you mean taking the bad with the good.”

They both shake off the topic, turning their heads back to the TV.

Then Larry says: “I expect it will be like any other 8-to-5 job. It’ll be a good work environment. I’ll be able to get in shape. Plus, I’ll have a lot of job security.”

Cheryl says that he seems level-headed, like he knows what the possibilities are.

“Sure,” Larry says. “I’ll be working on cars. I like that sense of accomplishment. I just want to make things work again, to make things better.”