First Blood
Page 7
“I’m pretty sure I was born on the farm.”
“You didn’t register for school until you were six?”
“It was in my grandfather’s hands.”
“And what’s his address?”
“Are you going to talk to him?”
“Do you have a problem with that?”
“I’d like to leave him out of it if it’s possible.”
“Wait here,” she said and got up from her seat.
She went into the supervisor’s office and Hunter sat there and looked out at the shoppers with their carts. The recruitment office was attached to a Walmart and he could see into an aisle filled with candy, chips, pop. All the snacks you could dream of.
She came back with her superior. He was the kind of guy who looked like he drove his kids to soccer practice. He was professional.
“Son,” he said. “It seems there’s no record of your birth in the State of Texas or with the federal government. We’ve got these school files, we’ve got the Nebraska hospital record for a gunshot wound in the abdomen.”
“That’s healed up.”
“That’s not the point.”
“You won’t hear me complain about that ever,” Hunter said.
“Son,” the man said, raising his hands, “the school records put you at seventeen years of age.”
“And seventeen’s when you can sign up,” Hunter said. “I looked it up.”
“With parental consent.”
“I told her already I don’t have parents.”
“Your grandfather’s your legal guardian.”
Hunter sighed. “You’re telling me I can’t sign up to join the army without his say so?”
“That’s the rule, son.”
Hunter looked from the man to the woman recruiter he’d been dealing with initially.
“You said you didn’t have me in the system.”
“I don’t,” she said.
“Then why do I need to be seventeen?”
“Because that’s the age you gave us.”
“Maybe I was mistaken. Maybe I’m eighteen.”
They looked at each other. The man spoke. “Son, maybe it’s best you come back and pay us a visit next year.”
“When I’m nineteen?”
Hunter could see the way it was going. They were going to escort him out and put a note on his file and he wouldn’t be getting in the army for the best part of a year. That or speak to the old man, which he wasn’t in any hurry to do.
He sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s all right, son,” the man said.
“Can I just be clear,” Hunter said. “If I was seventeen, I could sign up with my grandfather’s say so?”
“That’s correct,” the woman said.
Hunter reached into his pocket.
“What have you got there?” the man said.
“Something of my grandfather’s.”
He pulled out the Nazi pin he’d taken with him when he left. The eagle clutching the swastika.
The recruiters looked at it.
“This something you believe in?” the man said.
“No,” Hunter said. “This is something my granddaddy believed in.”
The man looked at the woman. She gave him a look of exasperation.
“This doesn’t change the matter of your age,” the man said.
Hunter nodded. “Yes, sir. And you folks need to do whatever’s necessary to get me signed up. As I understand it, I’m old enough to serve in the US army and that’s what I’d like to do.”
There was a pen and paper on the table in front of him and he wrote out his grandfather’s full name and address.
The woman recruiter took it.
“All right,” she said. “I can take it from here and we’ll be back in touch with you shortly.”
“If you end up calling him,” Hunter said.
“Yes?”
“If he’s not, if he’s, dead, would you please not let me know.”
Hunter left the recruitment office and bought a cartload of junk food in the Walmart.
He’d wanted to visit Sherman’s grave but something held him back from doing it. He was in Oklahoma but he couldn’t bring himself to go.
Until he got his army acceptance letter.
The day he got that he went straight to the graveyard. When he got there, he wasn’t sure what to do. He’d missed the funeral. He’d missed all the speeches and nice words.
But he knew the words of the Our Father.
So that’s what he said.
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