I can’t believe he just said that. I protest: So the fact that I follow the rules makes me a fobbit?
Now, whoever is saying that? he counters with a lopsided grin.
You just did! You claimed I was hankering after a desk job.
Do you always take things so personally, Tom?
I stand my ground because I suspect that this, too, is a test.
I was trained to follow the rules, I tell him, trying hard not to
shout. I was trained that the rules are there for a reason—and that’s why they count. Rules save lives. They make the system foolproof.
Foolproof, eh?
Yes.
Combat soldiers seldom follow the rules, Lieutenant Butterbars, he says with a drawl. Garrison soldiers follow the rules. What I’m sayin’.
I shake my head, speechless. I simply don’t know how to react.
He claps a comradely hand on my shoulder. You’ll learn, he says.
He gives me a quick smile, like a conspirator.
In the meantime, he says, we’ve got a job to do.
He springs back and holds the locker room door open for me.
I shoulder past him, wondering how in my very first week with the company I managed to let him talk me into a ridiculous ten-mile run around Kandahar Airfield. Not that I had much of a say in the matter, I reflect bitterly: as a newbie second lieutenant, I’m well aware that I’m being assessed in terms of my potential as compared to the hard-bitten legend I’ve replaced, David Hendricks, a veteran of Bosnia and Iraq. It’s just that I’m a swimmer, not a runner; it’s always been a drawback for me in the infantry. I guess I should have joined the Marines. All the same, I decide to pace myself carefully in order to avoid total humiliation.
As we make for the glare outside, my eye catches the digital thermometer on the wall. I flinch and decide to appeal to my companion’s rationality one last time, even though I’m aware it will make no difference whatsoever.
Why are we doing this, Lieutenant? I mean, it’s ninety-eight degrees in the shade! It’s going to be like the fires of hell outside. We’ll bake, and then we’ll burn.
Immortality, Lieutenant, he says gaily. We’re doing this to blazon our mark on fleeting time. Remember Pheidippides at Marathon. He ran one hundred and fifty miles on bad roads all the way to Sparta. Compared to that, ten miles on a flat track is kid’s play.
I’m not about to give in to some obscure classical bullshit. I say: He ran in one-hundred-fifteen-degree heat?
It was probably warmer, he says. Greece in summer, the worst time of the year. And he was running under duress. He had to get to the Spartans in time to ask for their help before the Persians attacked.
I suppose I’m not Pheidips, then.
Phei-dip-pides, he says, correcting me.
All right. You know what I mean.
You’ll forget how hot it is as soon as you settle into your stride. Besides, we haven’t traveled all the way from Tarsândan to chicken out at the last minute. We’re already signed up, remember? We’ll be a laughing stock if we quit.
He grins and puts on wraparound shades.
All right, tough guy, he says. Let’s see you strut your stuff.
I grit my teeth and follow him into the sunlight.
It doesn’t work. By the fourth mile, I’m pretty much completely dehydrated and ready to drop. Then I pull my hamstring, and the next thing I know I’m sprawling headfirst onto the ground.
Frobenius slows down and comes to a halt. He turns around and looks at me. Down for the count, huh, Lieutenant?
The amusement in his voice exasperates me.
Really, Lieutenant, what do you expect? I snap back. I’ve only been in this country nine days. I’m not used to running in hundred-degree heat.
A couple of Marines streak past with long strides. Frobenius gazes after them. I guess I’ll have to do this by my own lonesome self, he says.
He flexes his knees and stretches—then breaks into a run again.
Can’t let the Marines show us up, he says over his shoulder. See you later, Ellison. Go get yourself checked up.
I’m icing my thigh in the waiting room when he joins me at the end of the race. His face is beet red; he’s drenched in sweat.
How’re you holding up, Tom? Anything torn?
Nope, just sprained. I’m fine, thanks.
The Marines cleaned the field, he says sourly. There was one Brit SAS and a couple of Special Forces runners in the top ten, but other than that, it was the U.S. bloody Marines all the way. Those guys train hard.
He flops down on the bench and gazes at CNN news on the television screen. The newscaster goes from reporting on a presidential trip to Toronto to a meeting of world business leaders in Spain.
You’re taking it too personally, Nick, I say slyly.
Damn right I am! I like to be on the winning side.
I’m sorry for letting you down.
He glances at me but doesn’t say anything. A bit later, he nods at the screen. Fucking Creons, man, he says. We’re run by a bunch of fucking Creons. His face twists with loathing; he seems genuinely disgusted.
Sorry … what?
For the first time since I’ve known him, he seems embarrassed. He flushes brightly.
Don’t mind me. I’m talking to myself. I do that a lot when I’m beat.
It would help if I knew what you were talking about.
Let it go, he says. It’s too complicated to explain; and I’m too tired.
Picking up his towel, he begins to wipe his face and arms.
Abruptly, he puts down the towel and says: Creon was the king of Thebes in ancient Greece. He was a tyrant and a dictator, but even he had nothing on these clowns. They’re all suit and no soul. I tell you, man, the military is the only institution left in America with any conception of honor—or any of the virtues that once made the good old U.S. of A. the place the whole damn world looked up to. Think courage, endurance, integrity, judgment, justice, loyalty, discipline, knowledge. The rest of them—the civilian leadership, especially—are just a pile of crap. They’ve absolutely no vision. The politicians
are shameless: all they care about is power. And the big businessmen and bankers look after their own, and the rest of the country can go fuck themselves. And these are the people who run us, who dictate what we do and how we can do it, the shitheads. They’ve saddled us over here with a government that reeks of corruption, they’ve handcuffed us in an operational straitjacket with no clear guidelines, and then they forget about us and expect us to work miracles. It stinks, man; the whole damn show stinks to high heaven. I’m sorry, but I’d like my one and only life to be different. I’d like to be proud of my country and what we represent. Call me a hopeless idealist—I don’t care—but that’s why I joined the army in the first place. I think of my friends from college in their high-rise air-conditioned offices and with their trophy cars and houses, and I think, there, but for the grace of God, go I.
I stare at him in astonishment, his words echoing in my ears.
I’m not sure I heard you right, I manage to say at last, but did I just hear you call our president a fucker?
What?
I’m trying to remember the exact words …
Oh, for Christ’s sake, he says in exasperation. Just forget it, okay?
I’m just trying to understand—I mean, he’s our commander in chief.
No, really, forget it.
He got elected, Nick.
Let’s stop while the going’s good, okay?
His voice is curt, dangerous. I pause a moment, checking my words.
Then I say: Our military is constitutionally subservient to the civilian leadership. It’s part of a clear chain of command.
He does not answer. He stares at the screen, then glances out of the window. I finish icing my leg but hesitate to say anything more.
Finally he acknowledges me with a look.
So that’s me, he says. Now you know why I’m here.
I do, I reply. I used to wonder. I mean, you went to Vassar.
Yes, but I had to drive all the way down to Fordham University in New York City to take Army ROTC classes. It was two hours each way on top of my regular course load at Vassar.
Wow, that’s insane!
You’d get along very well with my wife, he says drily, before correcting himself: My ex-wife. She thinks I’m nuts.
I don’t think you’re nuts!
No?
Of course not, Lieutenant. I respect you—and I’ve noticed, especially, the way the men respond to you. It says a lot to me. You’re a natural leader, and I’m proud to serve alongside. We might have our differences—I don’t know, I’m still processing what you said—but that has nothing to do with our roles here.
He turns his entire body to stare at me, his expression charged and at the same time ambivalent. It’s a strangely blank look, almost as if he’s suddenly become a stranger. I see the perspiration on his face. His jaw is clenched, his eyes locked on me. And yet, I can’t tell if he’s looking at me or somewhere else.
Tell me, he says quietly. Why did you join the army, Tom?
That’s a good question, Tommy, Dad says, one that I’ve been trying to figure out ever since you told us. What’s the army got to do with you?
I put away the Doritos I’ve been munching and look down at the floor to compose my thoughts. I’m sprawled out on the shag rug, which once used to be bright yellow but has since turned a mottled shade of caramel owing to Mom’s liberal use of bleach wherever Wannabe the cat has puked, which is practically all over. Dad’s sitting in Grandpa’s old rocking chair, looking out of the French windows at the mile-long stretch of meadow and woods sloping down to the bay. My sister, Annie, is sitting at his feet, as she often does, leaning against his knees as she reads a book. Mom’s in the kitchen washing up after supper, a Sunday evening rite in which she banishes all of us from “her
turf,” as she puts it, and gets to work at the sink with an unholy rattling of pots and pans that sends Wannabe racing out of the house and into the fading light where he can have some peace and quiet. The moon’s out already: it lights up the pond at the boundary of the meadow and the woods. When Annie was a baby, she’d point to the pond and then to the sky and say: Look, Tommy, up moon, down moon!
I know Dad’s waiting for me to speak, and his patience isn’t infinite.
You saw the towers go down, Dad, I say at length. People died. Tons of people.
He pushes his glasses back from the tip of his nose.
That was three years ago, Tommy. And we got our own back after that. We bombed the bejeezus out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
I know, but I still feel it inside me. Those terrorists are still around. They haven’t gone away.
This is Maine, Tommy. No one’s coming after us here. Get real.
That’s not the point. The country needs people to sign up.
I’m about to say more when I pause, feeling ridiculously self-important having put it like that, so I add: You must know what I mean.
It isn’t why we saved money for your college.
I know. But ROTC can help us out with that too. I’ve covered all the bases.
I’m not gonna take blood money! Dad protests. I’m not gonna let them buy you! I’m not taking money for my son’s life!
They’re not buying me, Dad. It doesn’t work like that. I want to join up.
You could get killed. Tad Murphy’s boy died in Iraq.
I notice that the rattling in the kitchen has stopped. Mom’s leaning her elbows on the counter. She doesn’t say anything, but I can tell from her face she’s listening. Then I notice that Annie isn’t reading either but just holding on to her book and waiting for me to answer.
I clear my throat. Something’s pricking me inside my gullet; it
must be the damn Doritos. I sit up and clasp my arms around my knees.
Someone’s got to do it, Dad. Think about it for a moment: I could be an officer if I qualified.
Annie drops her book, then picks it up again.
Tommy, Dad says quietly, it’s time we had a little talk.
There’s no need, I reply. If you don’t want me to do it, I won’t.
It isn’t that, son, he says, sounding suddenly tired.
What is it, then?
For the first time he looks at me directly.
He says: Who’s going to look after the boat? Who’s going to take over from me when I retire? I can’t do this forever; I’m sixty-nine. I hadn’t reckoned on your bailing out on me.
I drop my gaze. I can’t meet his eyes. Lobstering’s been in the family for generations, passed down as a living from father to son. Dad began by helping out his father from the age of five, as Grandpa had his father before him, and as I myself have been going out on the boat since I was nine. I can see his point even as I want to tell him that his expectation’s unfair because it’s always been the oldest boy who takes over the boat—but we don’t talk about Andy anymore, or, at least, not since he got out of jail and moved into an Airstream in someone’s backyard in Bar Harbor. The last we heard of him, he was doing odd jobs and working part-time for some trash removal company, but he no longer stops by, and we don’t call. Matter of fact, I don’t even think he has a telephone.
I turn my head and look out at the bay, the little that can be seen above the treetops. I love this place; I love its sense of serenity and timelessness. Under different circumstances, I’d have taken over from Dad, no questions asked. But those collapsing towers changed everything for me. I haven’t even been to New York City, or Washington, or that field in Pennsylvania. But I do know right from wrong, I know you live life by the rules, and someone broke the rules and hurt us bad, and I’d feel like a failure if I didn’t do my bit.
Annie takes Dad’s hand and holds it between her own. His fingers are chapped from a lifetime of working with salt water and frayed ropes and rusty lobster traps. Annie’s fingers look delicate, almost translucent, against my father’s gnarled hand.
Mom enters the room and wanders over distractedly to her favorite Christmas cactus in the corner, next to the porch door. She picks off some of the dead flowers before walking past me and standing behind Dad’s chair.
You’ve made up your mind, haven’t you? she asks me.
Before I can reply, Dad nods. He’s leaving, he says tersely.
Mom’s kneading Dad’s shoulders as if they were made of dough.