by E. M. Kokie
It’d be nice if Dad stayed on my side, but I know he’ll find a way to be pissed at me — like maybe he’ll tell me T.J. could have beat them so bad they would have told Pendergrast they kicked their own asses. You only broke his face? What, Matt, too much of a wuss to break his whole goddamn head? Well, we’ll just have to fix that so you learn to hit right.
Dad shifts his focus from Pendergrast to me. A long, sweat-inducing stare. Then he narrows his eyes and gives me a once-over, his forehead collapsing into wrinkled layers between his hairline and his eyebrows. The look doesn’t so much ask if I’m all right as try to assess if anything requires immediate medical attention. Short of a severed limb, there will be no doctors. Stitches are for wimps and pretty boys. We Foster men swear by butterflies, surgical tape, and, for those really stubborn cuts, Super Glue. First time Dad whipped that shit out, T.J. ran for it. But it worked: sealed the cut right up.
I can feel his eyes sliding over me, taking inventory of my wounds. When he looks at my eyes again, I shrug to let him know I’m cool. Not because I am but because I can’t let him know just how hurt I let myself get. A shiver races up my spine, and I lock my knees to keep steady. My head can’t take another round tonight, not even the openhanded slaps Dad thinks are kidding around.
Pendergrast shifts from foot to foot next to us. He coughs. “Mr. Foster?”
Dad ignores him for one more beat and then stalks into Pendergrast’s office without even looking at him. Pendergrast follows like he’s the one in trouble.
Their voices bleed through the closed office door — not enough to hear the actual words, but I can make out the back and forth. More back than forth as Dad gets on a roll, probably with his big “What is wrong with this country?” speech. I can picture Dad: rising out of his seat, slapping the desk, spearing the air with his finger. After a while it becomes clear that Dad’s the only one talking. At least he’s blowing off some steam. Blowing off steam is good. The longer he rants at Pendergrast, the less he’ll have left for me.
Eventually I lean my head back against the wall and close my eyes. Big mistake. With nothing to see but the red-tinged dark of my eyelids, I can’t ignore the pain. Everywhere hurts. My right hand, resting on my leg, feels full of wet cement, heavier with every minute. My head pounds in time with my pulse. I open my eyes and shift around until I can see the clock on the far side of the office. Pressing my left thumb against my temple, I watch the second hand on the wall clock.
One minute. Two. The ache in my head pools in my temple, under my thumb. I can’t swallow. There’s no spit left to swallow. My tongue feels too big, and like it’s wrapped in wool.
“Are you thirsty, Matt?” Mrs. Danner asks from behind the counter. “Need some water?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I sit up straighter.
“Come over here.” She waves me around the counter. I freeze at the invisible line between the waiting area and the secretaries’ desks. “It’s OK,” she says. “Here, sit down.”
After I’ve folded myself into the chair next to her desk, she hands me a large plastic cup of water. The first tentative sip slides around my mouth. Relief, cold and clean and so good. Maybe the best-tasting water I’ve ever had. I take small sips, swirling it around my tongue each time before swallowing, just to savor it.
“Thanks, Mrs. Danner,” I only think to say when half the water is gone. Her eyes crinkle at the edges. For the first time in hours, my gut relaxes. She’s clearly not scared of me or worried I’m gonna lose it again. She doesn’t even seem that unnerved by Dad. And when she smiles and rests her chin on her hand, I almost feel like me again — like last-year me, not the guy I’ve turned into.
“Some more?” She pours me another full cup without waiting for an answer.
I take a really big gulp, holding it in my mouth as long as I can before swallowing. My “Thanks” comes out like a gasp. I need to slow down. No way to know how long Dad’ll be in there.
“You’re in a lot of pain, aren’t you?” Mrs. Danner asks.
“Nah, just some scrapes, a few bruises.” I flex my swollen hand out in front of me. “No problem.”
“No,” she says, “inside, you’re in a lot of pain, aren’t you?”
The question knocks the air out of me more than any of the hits I took.
I can’t breathe. Or speak. She won’t let me off the hook, staring into my eyes. The vise around my lungs clamps tighter.
Pendergrast’s office door swings open and slams against the wall, jarring me free. Saved from Mrs. Danner by Dad.
He looks at the empty chair where I should be. His eyes go wild, and he swings around. But before I can say anything, he sees me and says, “Let’s go.”
DAD DOESN’T SAY ANYTHING ALL THE WAY TO THE CAR, NOT even after we’re buckled in and pulling out of the parking space.
At the first red light, we sit in silence. He’s not giving me any clue as to how much trouble I’m in.
“Didja shut ’em up?” he finally asks.
“Yes, sir,” I reply in the strongest and most assured voice I can muster.
I glance sideways without moving my head — a skill honed by years of gauging my father’s moods.
His only response is a slight flexing of the muscle in his jaw.
The light changes, but he doesn’t move. I wait for whatever’s coming. A car horn sounds behind us. He hits the gas.
Watching him freaks me out. I press my face against the cold glass of the window and watch the houses pass by. He turns out of town, instead of toward home. He doesn’t say why, and I don’t ask. I don’t even care.
Another turn and we’re headed to his office. He must have come straight from the site he was inspecting today. He’ll want to drop his stuff at the office and check the mail and messages. Can’t deviate from his precious routine, even if his kid is dying in the passenger seat.
Outside his building, he turns off the truck, climbs out, and slams the door behind him. No warnings to stay put, no caring “I’ll be right back.” Not even a look in my direction. He’ll take whatever time he wants, and I’ll wait, without saying a word.
I close my eyes and roll my forehead against the glass.
Last spring, in the worst of bad timing, Dad’s grand plan, his dream — that I would go to State, rise through the ranks of ROTC, and go on to Officer Candidate School — burst the week before T.J. came home for leave. The college counselor practically laughed in Dad’s face when he asked about my chances of getting into State. While she stuttered on about my “options,” Dad tuned her out. It was amazing he didn’t crack a tooth the way he clenched his jaw for the rest of the short meeting.
After, he didn’t let me get in the truck, and he wasn’t in the house by the time I walked home. I almost pissed myself when he came in late that night. I was ready to bolt until I heard him head upstairs. He didn’t say one word to me the entire week, not until an hour after T.J. got home, when it was becoming obvious. Then he tried to put on a good face, but I could tell the stress of trying not to kill me in front of T.J. was grating on his nerves. I think even T.J. could tell. Maybe that’s why T.J. came up with the plan to turn our usual day hikes into five days away on our own. That or he couldn’t take one more day cooped up in our house, either.
From the moment he got home, T.J. couldn’t relax for a minute. That whole first afternoon, he twitched and fidgeted. All week he paced around the house. He didn’t sit still for long, jumping up five minutes after he sat down, even during meals. He wasn’t goofing around or teasing me, or even really seeing any of his old friends. He wasn’t talking much at all. And when he did talk, even his voice was different: deeper, lower. I only saw him relax when we took off on our own.
We’d been hiking together since I was twelve. T.J. came back from his first tour with big plans for us to actually do stuff together, at least during the few weeks a year he came home on leave. That first time, the “hikes” were like a stroll for him — he was twenty and combat fit; I was scrawny, even for twelve.
But every time he visited, we would drive to some state park for an afternoon, and I’d try not to let on how hard those hikes were for me and he’d pretend not to notice. For my fourteenth birthday, he bought me my first really cool pair of boots and a book on the Appalachian Trail. In the front cover, he wrote we’d hike it together someday and until then, we’d be in training. Every time he’s been home, we’ve tackled bigger trails, longer hikes, getting ready one visit at a time.
When he was home last spring, we started talking for real about the Appalachian Trail. We’d need five or six months, maybe seven, to thru-hike the whole thing — not possible while T.J. was still on active duty. But he said we could start section-hiking it, doing a part every year. My job while he was deployed was to plan the first section hike for the summer after his tour.
That local five-day trip last spring was supposed to be kind of like a trial run. We got a spot at a campground out past Pittsburgh, so we could do a bunch of day hikes on some new, more difficult trails. I thought there was no way that Dad would go for it. But he didn’t say anything about the plan, not even when we were packing the truck to leave. Instead, he hovered, staring, making me nervous and T.J. tense.
“Junior.” Only Dad called T.J. that. “Run his ass off. Got to start getting him ready for Basic.” He was looking at T.J., but he was talking to me. “We’re gonna make a man out of him yet. Knock out the pantywaist he’s in danger of becoming.”
T.J. eyed me, then the truck. But before I could get around and in, Dad cuffed me at the temple, toppling me into the side of the truck.
“Lay off, old man,” T.J. said.
“Or what?” Dad stood in the way, keeping T.J. from tossing the last of the bags into the back. “I kicked your ass into gear. Think I’m gonna let this fairy —”
“I said enough.” T.J. bumped Dad to the side with his shoulder.
Except for his bleached-out hair, just long enough to curl, T.J. looked more like Dad than ever, with his Dad-like gray-green eyes and his face tanned dark. Dad tensed in combat stance; only the gray in his receding crew cut giving away his age from behind. T.J. barely looked defensive at all. He was two inches shorter than Dad, but rock solid and seemingly relaxed, except for his jaw and the arms bulging across his chest. I left them to their staring and put my still-scrawny pansy ass in the car, well out of their mutual way.
The standoff ended abruptly with a silent truce — maybe Dad remembered that he wanted T.J. on his side in the campaign to make me enlist, or maybe T.J. decided kicking Dad’s ass would just lead to more crap. Or maybe they both just decided it was stupid, or I wasn’t worth it. Whatever the reason, they both backed off and we were on our way. All cool, except for the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that whatever just happened wasn’t really over.
T.J. and I were stopped at a light fifteen minutes outside of town when T.J. jumped into the conversation we had been avoiding for all of his leave, and probably longer.
“Matt, you’re not seriously thinking of enlisting, are you?”
My gut twisted. “Sure. Why not?”
He scratched at his arm, watching for the light to change. “Any chance you could go to college? You know, if you got your grades up?”
“No.” There didn’t really seem much point in debating the possibility that some shitty school somewhere might take Dad’s money despite my grades. I wasn’t going.
T.J. grunted, shaking his head and tightening his grip on the steering wheel: so much like Dad, with a lot of the frustration, but with the very important lack of desire to kill me.
The light changed. We drove on. And T.J. chewed on whatever he wanted to say. And whatever it was, I knew I didn’t want to hear it.
“Hey,” I said, trying for levity, “Basic’s gotta be a helluva lot better than four more years of school. It’s shorter, and who knows, after life with Dad, I might enjoy the gentle strains of a drill sergeant and the predictability of Basic Training. Not to mention meals cooked by someone else at regular intervals.”
“No. You wouldn’t,” T.J. said. “And Basic isn’t what I’m worried about.”
I didn’t need a lecture.
“Matt.” He grabbed my shoulder and squeezed it until I looked at him. “I’m not saying you couldn’t get through Basic, though I do think it would kick your ass. But later, the reality of actually being in the Army?” T.J. shook his head, rolling to a stop at the next light. “I’m just saying I don’t think you want that, and . . . I don’t think I want that for you.”
“You think I’m not strong enough? I’ve got a year to get ready. I’ll be so —”
“Whoa, killer. Chill. I’m not saying you couldn’t make it. I’m saying you’d be miserable. I’m saying you’d hate it. Every day. And I’ve seen too many guys . . . hate every minute of it.” He stared through me until the light turned green, and then he settled in to drive again. “See, I’m saying you’d be better off doing something else, something that can’t get you killed.”
It felt like he’d punched me. He might as well have said to leave the fighting to the men, who could handle it, unlike me. I wanted to climb out of the truck and walk home rather than spend the next five days with someone who thought I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t strong enough — hell, wasn’t man enough — to do what he did, and what lots of other guys he knew did.
“Look,” T.J. said. “You don’t want to go, right?” I tried to make myself say I wanted it. “Right?” he asked again. The silence stretched until we coasted up to another light. “Then you shouldn’t go. Because even when you want it, when you sign on ready for it, it’ll kick your ass. But the guys who don’t want it? Who sign on ’cause they have to or think they have no other choice? I’ve seen too many of them crack up in Basic, or worse. The ones who do make it through, well, some of them never really get their feet under them. And by the time they realize what a huge mistake they’ve made, it’s too late, and they’re shaking scared the whole fucking time, which makes them dangerous to themselves and to everyone around them.” T.J. looked at me for a quick, tense moment before focusing on the road again. “Too many of them end up dead.”
I couldn’t move.
“Being miserable all the time can really screw with your head, can slow you down. Make you sloppy. Get you killed. Get a whole lot of people killed. So if you want it, go for it. I’ll cheer you on. But if you don’t, if you’re just doing it for him, or me, or whatever, then don’t fucking sign up. You can’t.”
My eyes stung, prickling and blurry.
“Do something else,” he added. “Something where you won’t get shot if you are so miserable that your mind wanders or you just stop caring.”
Having said his piece, T.J. seemed fine with the quiet, with letting it go now that he was done, like we could just push all the you’re-not-good-enough behind us and go pretend everything was great. That he hadn’t just confirmed exactly what I thought he thought of me.
I couldn’t let it go.
“It’s not like I’m really gonna have a choice,” I said, looking out the window. “I’m not going to college. And he’s always said college or —”
“Don’t let him bully you into it. Stall. Figure something else out. Junior college or some other kind of school. Or get a job. I’ll help you deal with Dad. But you’re gonna have to figure out what you’re gonna do instead.”
“Stall?” My voice cracked like it hadn’t in years.
“Jesus, Matt, it’s time to grow a pair. You’re gonna have to stand up to him sometime. Until you do, he’s just gonna keep going at you.”
The shame of hiding in the car while he stared Dad down rushed to my face.
“It’s your life, Matt. What do you want to do? Dad can drag you down to the enlistment office. But even if he hauled you through the door, they wouldn’t accept you unless you willingly signed the papers. So, what do you want?”
“What do I want?” He had to be shitting me. “I want to not have you and Dad on my ass all the time.” I wanted Dad to
go a week without trying to make me flinch or shoving me into a wall. “You left.” I wanted T.J. to come home, to want to be home. Even when he visited, he wasn’t really here. “You’re never here. You have no idea. Why . . . I mean . . . who the hell are you to, to . . .” I lost steam when my eyes started stinging worse. “What do I want . . .”
At the next intersection, T.J. turned and looked at me. “Do. Not. Enlist.” Each word bounced off my brain. “Period.”
“Oh, you mean, like you did?” There was so much pressure in my lungs and ears. “And you did OK, right? I mean, you didn’t really want to join, at least not at first, but you made it. You’re OK, right? I can handle it.”
T.J. coasted to the wide shoulder on the side of the road and put the truck in park. He released his seat belt and rubbed his hands over his eyes. He stared out his window for a few seconds before he turned and looked at me again. He crossed his arms over the letters spelling ARMY across his shirt and let out this long sigh.
“Matt,” he started, and then trailed off, taking another deep breath and letting it out before continuing, “I chose to go. I talked about it with Dad. I met with the recruiter and decided on my specialization. Me. I chose it.”
Scenes flashed through my head. Dad tossing brochures at him across the dinner table. T.J. slamming his door and yelling. All that summer before, the tension between T.J. and Dad over it. That last morning, T.J. acting like such a jerk and refusing to have breakfast with us and stomping out to the car. He and Dad yelling at each other in the car while Mrs. Gruber held my shoulders to keep me from running after them.
“I knew, deep down, that I needed to get out of here,” T.J. said. “I was nothing here, less than nothing. And things with Dad . . . Yeah.” T.J. smiled. “I fought Dad. Just enough so he didn’t think I was going ’cause he told me to. But deep down, I was relieved. I wanted to go. It was my best chance to actually become something.”