Thrilling Thirteen

by Ponzo, Gary

  His knees buckle and he sits in the sand.

  “How many?” Lowry’s voice is still amused, but the mocking tone is gone. It better be, Samuel thinks.

  “One hundred.”

  Lowry whistles. “Good show.”

  The sweat is pouring from Samuel. His shirt drips with perspiration. He needs a drink.

  Lowry clears his throat then says, “Listen, normally I would do this in my office, but I needed to track you down right away. There’s been a change of plans.”

  Samuel studies Lowry’s face. The big glasses, the weak chin. He looks like a weasel, Samuel thinks. And like a weasel, he’s about to squirm out of something, Samuel has a fair idea of what it’s going to be.

  “There are some changes in ordnance due to Chief Petty Officer Wilkins’ death. Things are going to be re-shuffled a bit. These changes are going to affect a lot of people. Including you.”

  “How so, sir?” Samuel asks. His mind is calculating - it can be anything - he doesn’t give one piece of shit what it is - as long as he’s eligible to go back to BUD/S training in twelve months. That’s all that matters.

  “You’re being rotated out.” Lowry gives him a good ol’ boy smile.

  “Where to, sir?”

  “You’re going home, son.”

  Samuel’s heart drops into his shoes. He’s being discharged? Impossible! He’s not eligible for BUD/S training-

  Samuel sees the look on Lowry’s face. It’s not the face of a man kicking someone out of the Navy. Samuel realizes what he’s going to say a split second before Lowry utters it. He looks out over the water, sees the egret spear a mullet and swallow it whole.

  “I’m going to be-

  Lowry claps his hands together.

  “-the best damn recruiter Lake Orion, Michigan has ever seen!”

  Samuel keeps his gaze out toward the water. The waves have grown bigger, the swells more intense with white water foaming at their peaks.

  “Best of all, “ Lowry continues. “You can head out to Coronado in less than a year for BUD/S training. Maybe this time you’ll make it.”

  Samuel smiles back at Lowry.

  “I’ll make it. Or die trying.”

  Thirty-Three

  The physical therapist is a moderately portly woman with a big smile and eyes that Beth thinks have seen a lot of pain. Mostly others. Her name is Judy and she gets right to work.

  “We’ve got a lot to do, Beth. How’s the drainage?”

  “It’s been seeping like a Vermont maple with a bucket slung around it.”

  Judy smiles and says, “A sense of humor is going to be very important for you to get through this, Beth.”

  “I promise to be a barrel of laughs, Judy.”

  “Now did they drain it recently?”

  “Yesterday,” Beth says. A terribly horrible procedure that Beth would like to block from her mind forever. For now, the brace is back on and Judy is pulling Beth to her feet. The crutches are leaning against the wall in the physical therapy room. An odd little space full of mats and pads and exercise bicycles and weights. A bright room Beth views as a torture chamber. She knows instinctively that she will grow to hate this room, hate Judy, and probably herself.

  But most of all, she’ll hate the room. Probably have nightmares about it.

  Judy instructs Beth on the proper way to stand, and then says, “Okay, let’s apply just a little bit of pressure, okay Beth?”

  Beth complies and the pain shoots through her body. She gasps, feels the blood drain from her face. She starts falling and Judy catches her, but a wrenching pain rockets up her leg and the she screams.

  Judy eases Beth into a chair.

  The fury and anguish rise up in Beth and she holds her face in her hands, tears streaming between her fingers.

  “It’s all right, honey,” Judy says. “That was good.”

  Beth snorts, a wet, sloppy sound that she instantly recognizes as perhaps the most pathetic sound she’s ever made.

  Judy takes it in stride. “Maybe just a little too much pressure too soon. Okay?” Judy pats her on the back.

  And then Beth hears the words that she knew were coming and that she knows she will dread for the next nine to twelve months.

  “Let’s try it again.”

  Thirty-Four

  Bird passes to McHale. McHale kicks it back out to Bird who sinks a twenty-footer. The rotation perfect, the form, the touch, it’s all perfect. I used to be able to do that, Beth thinks. I had that touch. But I also had speed. And I had the instinct. The killer instinct.

  She looks down at her leg on the ottoman. A year, she thinks. A year before you’ll let me play ball. By then, the scholarships will be gone, I’ll have lost the edge. It’ll take me another year to get back to that level, if I can. Besides, only one school was going to give me a scholarship. And now that scholarship is in the quick little hands of the Tank. She’ll be there for four years. Why would they give another scholarship to a point guard? Answer: they won’t.

  God fucking help me, Beth thinks.

  ESPN takes a break from the ‘87 Celtics Lakers game and a commercial comes on. A ship slashes through the wide open ocean. A helicopter lowers a stretcher into the water, men and women in uniform stand on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

  The Navy.

  Beth immediately flashes to memories of her father. He was in the military.

  Could she follow in his footsteps? She almost laughed. What a joke. A ruined knee, can’t play basketball. So join the military? A friend of hers had done it, and they’d had something called DEP, the delayed entry program. She could join and then wait almost a year, year and a half before she actually got shipped out.

  Yeah, but the Navy?

  No, Beth thinks. Not for me.

  She looks around the living room. The dingy carpet, the ugly walls, the image of her mother slapping her.

  Hitting her.

  Fucking A, Beth thinks.

  She visualizes the picture of her father.

  What would he think of her joining the Navy?

  She sits there, the pain in her leg momentarily forgotten, the crisp passes and amazing moves of Magic and Bird, forgotten. The cheap clock on the wall chimes the hour.

  Beth hears none of it.

  Instead, she reaches for the phone.

  Thirty-Five

  Samuel waits in line with fifty or so other sailors who have completed the recruiter training. Their grades, (pass/fail) are posted on a single sheet of paper on the second floor of the Alfred P. Knox building. Most of them are anxious to see that they’ve passed and can then apply for where they’ll be posted.

  Samuel already knows where he’ll be going.

  Lake Orion, Michigan.

  It is warm in the hallway. No windows are cracked, the air hangs flat and heavy and wet. A thin line of sweat has broken out along Samuel’s forehead and he wipes it off with the back of his hand. His shoulders are tense and he rotates his head, feeling the muscles pull and relax with the effort.

  It’s been a dreary two weeks for him. Day after day of classes, sitting in a big room with two hundred people going over endless information on salesmanship. Learning how to master the art of luring young people into the eternally grasping hands of the Navy. Not really an art though. A science. They even have a name: PSS. Professional Selling Skills. Samuel, waiting in line and tired of staring at the neck of the sailor in front of him, unconsciously reviews the tenets.

  1. Opening. Be positive. Friendly, but in an honest way. Move promptly to the business at hand.

  2. Probing. Use open probes to help discover the needs of the potential recruit.

  3. Acknowledging. Build empathy by acknowledging the potential recruit’s needs.

  4. Supporting. Show how benefits of Navy meet expressed needs of potential recruit.

  5. Closing. Review next steps.

  Five professional selling skills designed to swell the ranks of the Navy and guarantee more funding. It was all about money, Samuel
thinks. Well, he can’t blame them. After all, he has his own agenda.

  The line moves forward and Samuel can almost make out the paper ahead of him. Ackerman should be the first on the list, as usual. There’s little doubt in his mind that he’s made it. The principles were easy. He’s always hated salesmen, but their tactics are easy to learn, understand, and use. Besides, the classes are designed to help even the stupidest motherfucker on the planet learn the system. They weren’t out to fail anyone.

  In his mind, potential recruits seem like tomatoes ready to be squashed. Simply convince them to step up onto the conveyor belt and ignore the giant metallic hammer waiting for them at the end of the line. For Samuel has no respect for the Navy, by and large. Most of the sailors are idiots. Stupid kids with dead-end lives who will never amount to much.

  Like he used to be, in fact.

  Only the elite members of the Navy, and the military in general for that matter, are worthy of Samuel’s respect.

  At last, the line is done inching forward and Samuel is face to face with the report sheet.

  Ackerman, Samuel F.

  Pass.

  Samuel’s face shows no sign of emotion. He walks down the stairs and out into the Florida sunshine. It was a chore. A huge pain in the ass. And it’s really just the start. He’s got eleven months and three days before he’s eligible to participate in the BUD/S course.

  In the meantime, he’s had his recruiter training. Now he’s got to pack, make travel arrangements, and play the part of the recruiter.

  Thirty-Six

  Gray.

  From one gray world to the next.

  Samuel stands on the small hill overlooking the cemetery. The sky is one long gray cloud. Michigan. Lake Orion. No lake to be seen. Just gray bullshit. Just like the Navy.

  It’s been two days since his departure from the base in Pensacola. A mind-numbing journey depositing him into the sheer chaos of Detroit Metro. Then onto Lake Orion and a cheap flat, a trip to the store for groceries and necessities.

  Now, it’s Monday morning and he’s on his way to the recruiting office in Troy, a suburb of Detroit.

  But first things first.

  He stands still, a faint palpable moisture is in the air. The cemetery sits across the street from a tennis court and a church. A row of small homes is on the other side.

  Both of his parents are buried here.

  Samuel’s head starts to throb.

  It’s almost as if the air here is tainted. As if the memories, the images hang in the thick stillness and now that he’s back, they’re descending on him like locusts. Masses of them, dark against the sky, filling his head with an incessant humming.

  His father’s voice booms at him. He can feel the impact of those giant fists knocking him around. His own hysterical sobbing a tragic two-part harmony.

  Suddenly, Samuel’s body goes still and his body seems to be sucked through a whirlwind of pain, agony and humiliation. He’s very young and he’s in the dark. A shaft of light sneaks under the closet door. He’s huddled among clothes and shoes and boots. It smells vaguely of wet wool and musty cotton. His body is shaking, tears stream from his face. His teeth chatter.

  He doesn’t remember why he’s in the closet. He just knows that he’s done something very wrong. Maybe being born was the bad thing. His father hates him. Thinks he’s a fucking piece of-

  And then it happens.

  A steel fist crashes into his temple and everything goes black-

  Samuel takes a step back from the cemetery, his body shuddering. For a moment he was back there - back in the closet. He realizes he’s sweating and that his mouth is dry. His stomach churns the small breakfast he’d eaten less than forty minutes ago. He turns, his legs like rubber and walks away from the cemetery. Suddenly, he wants to be very far away from this place. He runs toward the car, gasping for breath. His shiny black shoes, pounding on the pavement. He trips on the asphalt and skins the palm of his hand. The knees of his uniform are white with scrapes. He runs to the car, throws the door open and gets behind the wheel. He slams the door shut and closes his eyes, forcing the horror of the past from his mind.

  He slams the car into gear and roars away from the Lake Orion cemetery.

  He’s got to hurry.

  He’s going to be late for his first day of work.

  Thirty-Seven

  The nose is Italian. There’s just no getting around it. It’s not a Jimmy Durante nose or the one like that baseball manager - what’s his name? Joe Toree. It’s not as big as those two. But the nose in the mirror is definitely Italian. The pores are bigger, too. If you look closely at the tip of the nose, where it gets kind of bulbous, you can see the pores are bigger.

  Both of her parents were Italian. Her father had finer, sharper features, which three of her brothers inherited. The other brother and herself got her mother’s more bulbous face. Julie imagines her mother, admires her beauty, but sees none of it in herself.

  She just sees the nose.

  Julie Giacalone looks at her face in the mirror. Her eyes seem to move on their own volition to her nose. It’s relatively normal at the bridge, but as it moves on it spreads out and seems to inflate a little bit at the end. She would be pretty, she thinks, except for the nose. No, that’s not right, she corrects herself. That’s too harsh. She is pretty. Just not as pretty as she would be with a smaller, more normal nose.

  The nose is just so Italian.

  Like she does every morning, she remembers the day she went to the plastic surgeon after having painstakingly saved the six thousand dollars necessary to do the procedure. She’d even picked out the nose in a book. Very similar to what she already had, just a slimmer end. She didn’t want a drastic nose job - the kind where people didn’t recognize you. Just a somewhat subtle improvement. Where people would recognize you, but then immediately ask you if you’d lost weight or were wearing a new dress. That was the kind of nose job she’d wanted.

  She followed all the pre-surgical rules to the tee. Had driven to the doctor’s, got as far as the waiting room when she had suddenly changed her mind. She would not fix her nose. The very idea of keeping it sent a sudden burst of pride through her and she turned around and walked out.

  Now, like nearly every morning since that fateful day, when she looks into the mirror she wonders if it was a mistake.

  Instead of a new nose, she drove immediately from the hatchet man’s office to the car dealership where she got rid of her run-down piece of shit Toyota Corolla and brought a jet black brand new Ford Mustang. And she used a six thousand dollar down payment.

  She in fact, traded in her new nose for a new car.

  Now, Julie walks from the bathroom to her bedroom and stands before the full-length mirror. The only thing she’s wearing is a dark purple thong. She looks over her body. It’s lean and firm, but she’s no petite thing. Having four brothers forced her body to adapt. From when she was small she ran, chased, tackled and fought with all of them. She understands why she’s in the Navy - she’s used to being outnumbered by men.

  She’s tall, with long legs and broad shoulders. Her breasts are smallish, her hips full and curvy. She lingers for a moment on her breasts. They’re small, she thinks. But she remembers hearing somewhere that the perfect sized female breasts fit nicely into a champagne glass. She’d tried it once when she was drunk - on champagne naturally - was it after her promotion? Whatever, but her breasts were perfect - fit right into the champagne glass - filled it beautifully. But hidden under her Navy uniform - no one would ever know.

  The rest of her body is flat and hard. She works out at the base gym and muscles ripple just beneath the surface of her skin.

  Julie puts on some deodorant and reaches for her uniform shirt and pauses. She’s got a new recruiter starting today. Last name Ackerman. First name Samuel. She got his file two days ago. The picture showed a serious man with a strong face, handsome even, and piercing eyes. Her hand reaches for the bottle of French perfume on the dresser top. She gives
a quick squirt - just a little - at the base of her neck. She has to be a professional after all. But fuck it, she is a woman, hadn’t gotten any for something like six months and even though she is Petty Officer Giacalone, head of the Naval Recruiting for Midwest District #3 - the toughest recruiting district in nearly the whole country - and she has single-handedly brought the numbers up to at least respectable levels - she is still a woman for Christ’s sake.

  Even though no one she works with seems to notice.

  She steps back in front of the mirror again. As satisfied as she can be on a Monday morning after another weekend with no romance, she puts on her Navy blues and pins her hair back. Her eyes are wide and brown, her face pretty.

  If you can get past the nose, she thinks.

  She goes down to the kitchen, gobbles down a bowl of Cheerios, chases it with the remains of her lukewarm coffee, grabs her briefcase and hops into the Mustang. She fires it up and heads for the office.

  Her new recruiter should be arriving any minute.

  Thirty-Eight

  It doesn’t take Samuel long to get to Troy from Lake Orion. Just a quick stretch of I-75, exit on the Metro Parkway and before he knows it, he’s smack in the middle of Troy, Michigan. The ultimate Detroit suburb: shopping malls, strip malls, heavy commercial/industrial sites and a shitload of traffic. The sky is typical for Michigan at this time of the year: Navy gray.

  Samuel glances at the directions on the sheet of paper next to him. He veers slightly over the center lane and someone honks his horn at him. Samuel jerks the car back, sees the cross street he’s looking for and minutes later, pulls up in front of District #3 headquarters for Naval recruiting.

  Samuel looks at the building. It’s got Navy written all over it. Dull, impersonal, and not a trace of personality. Just a small brick square with glass doors at the center and an American flag waving proudly in front.