Harbor Lights

by Theodore Weesner

  Jimmy’s rapid rise through the ranks gives him a sense of purpose and direction in a war that swiftly becomes ruthless, but Iraq is transforming into a wasteland before his very eyes; one of burning oil wells layered with the stench of burned corpses as the 2nd Cav obliterate the Iraqi army. And when it’s finally over, will he be able to leave it all behind?

  This timely and well written novel inserts itself into the zeitgeist of the legions of young men and women who return to the U.S. but never quite leave the battlefield, carrying the deepest wounds of heartbreak, shock, fear, and aggression, and how one soldier comes of age in an era or terror and endless war.

  This is not my story, though I’d like the material to have a confessional tone. ‘Confessional’ is the tone in which the material was presented to me. It’s the story of Jimmy Murphy, a teenager from South Boston I met while I was writing stories and teaching on the side at Massachusetts State. A teacher at South Boston High School had his students write to me on reading my young adult novel City Champs. Sending a packet of their letters (as he later admitted) was part of a scheme to get me to visit his class and discuss the writing process with the tenth graders he was introducing to creative writing and literature…a world apart from the hardscrabble lives most of them faced in South Boston.

  In one of the youthful letters, as an aside, a student writer ragged me about the Celtics beating the Pistons (the team in the Michigan setting of my novel), which brash affront made me laugh and say aloud “You little smart ass.” The provocation had me looking forward to ragging the kid in turn on my visit to his class…to show him that real writers could also dish it out.

  As it happened, he was a fourteen-year-old living alone with a mother working second shift at Gillette (his father had died in Vietnam without ever setting eyes on him), and his situation reminded me of my own life with a step-mother working second shift at AC Spark Plug in Flint, Michigan, after my father died and I was struggling to grow up at the same age. On speaking to his class about confessing ‘hard-won truths’ and ‘deeply held beliefs’ for the ‘genuineness’ they can bring to fiction, I had an individual conference with him (as with his fellow students) about a flash story he had written. Through the months that followed, in what morphed into a Big Brother mentoring relationship, we became nothing less than the best of friends.

  It could be said, I suppose, that we dug each other like brothers. I was serious with him in an adult way about his school work and he was serious with me by way of listening and learning. We had a knack for ragging each other but also an ability to distinguish the ragging from serious issues. We knew at once when we were shifting from joking to something meaningful. He was a kid who, despite his age, liked ideas and was committed beyond his bravado to distinguishing the real and true from the false and the phony.

  Whenever I saw him approaching in the school cafeteria for a conference, I had to grin, as did he, in recognition not only of more ragging but of the captivating intellectual information we were about to trade and absorb. To my mind he was an ideal student. He listened and learned. If it wasn’t for him I would have cashiered the high school visits after a single round of individual conferences.

  * * *

  Jimmy Murphy was training at the time as a boxer in an after-school program sponsored by the South Boston PAL. He confided, further, an interest in the army (like his father) and his plan to enlist on graduating high school. As a research paper for his class (one we discussed in conference), he let me know he was writing about Audie Murphy, of all people, the celebrated hero of World War II in Europe. Had I ever heard of Audie Murphy? Well, of course, I told him.

  “Same name,” he let me know. And as he had discovered in his reading, Audie Murphy lived by a code of behavior that had spoken to him where he lived.

  While thinking my mentee should be looking to colleges rather than the military, I admitted that I had loved the army myself and had come of age on enlisting as a GED at age seventeen. Sensing where he was coming from, I knew (even as I had gone on in my own adult life to teach at the college level and to publish a string of novels) that Jimmy Murphy was smarter, certainly in terms of candor, than I had ever come close to being.

  He loved the army, he said, because his father had died in uniform and because of the code he had discovered on reading about Audie Murphy! He also loved the army because of an experience he had as a five-year-old when he was visited, as a surviving child of a soldier killed in Vietnam, by two uniformed sergeants he found to be strong and friendly in ways he wanted to be himself. He was thrilled with how they treated him, loved their brashness, joking, acceptance. Was excited “out of his mind” when his mother let them take him to a South Boston parade, where he rode on the shoulders of one and people along the street saluted as if he was a soldier himself and belonged to a military unit made up of strong, honorable men. It was a high he would never forget.

  In ninth grade he discovered the Audie Murphy code of behavior that had him becoming the Second World War’s most decorated US soldier. A fellow infantryman said of Audie Murphy that in or out of combat he carried not just his oiled weapon but a golden rule of honor, bravery, and fairness in the face of any obstacle. As Jimmy confessed this to me (in the empty school cafeteria at the end of a school day), I knew from his voice that it was the first time he had shared his precious belief. I knew, too, that he was responding to a pitch I had made to his class that beliefs and perceptions would be affirmed as universal if a person was able to disclose them in an even-handed and honest way.

  “That’s my writer’s code,” I admitted.

  To Jimmy, it was a reason to respect the visitor I was to his life and his class.

  * * *

  The one time I saw him box in the ring (driving him to Portland, Maine for the bout) he was beaten badly and was devastated not only by the loss but by the humiliation he suffered on losing face in the presence of his Big Brother. A year had passed since we had met, and I have to say that I think he allowed himself to be overmatched by the manager of the Police League squad and, unfortunately, that he wanted to win for my sake.

  Post-match, in the car, there wasn’t much to say about his devastation...except to treat him to a burger and fries along the highway, and to point out that he had not had the training and experience the other boy had had, that in a sport like boxing experience meant everything…that maybe having a visitor along to watch had made him tense. Further, that it was a lesson in terms of becoming aware of an opponent’s level of ability and motivation as well as the dynamics of your own psyche.

  Jimmy seemed unable to objectify his defeat, as much as I tried to get him to do so. Dropping him off, I promised to call within a few days to see if he had come to his senses. “You be careful,” I said as he vacated my car before the triple-decker where he and his mother rented an apartment. It was the same thing I said on taking him along a couple times to eat, to laugh and talk before walking him to where he went underground to catch the T. The first time I said to him, “You be careful,” he replied, “Don’t worry. Anybody messes with me, I’ll kick their ass.”

  * * *

  A day after the bout, picking up the Portland Maine Times on my way to my office, I found a brief article that I clipped and stuck in my wallet in anticipation of passing it on to Jimmy to keep in his wallet...all while working up in my mind how I might bolster his ego by having him know that when all was said and done he was an individual who did things, who would count, who had a record (in print!) of at least trying to succeed at a challenge that called for training and a willingness to confront all-but-impossible odds.

  Maybe I’d be able to persuade him to see things differently…while knowing he might wad up the article and throw it away. At the same time I knew that one day he might read the lines and grin...not at the loss but at the teenage risk-taker he had been. The doer. Of one thing I was certain: The sooner he was able to snicker, if only at the reporter’s cheap shot about Latin, the better.

  Schoolboy slug
ger learns lesson

  When South Boston’s Jimmy Murphy, “The Schoolboy Slugger,” stepped into the ring on Tuesday night at the Portland Civic Arena to face Hector Chavez, he should have stayed home studying Latin. Chavez, of Toronto by way of Caracus, a classy fighter with blinding speed and plenty of ring savvy, proved why he has been victorious in ten amateur fights for a fifteen-year-old. The top contender for the Greater Ontario Junior Olympic Championships clearly out-classed fifteen-year-old Murphy in posting a third round TKO.

  “The Schoolboy Slugger.” The name (coined by the reporter), I believed, would elicit a smile in time. Nor was it inaccurate. Jimmy was, above all, a schoolboy…as good a student (in independent thinking and in being the man of the house in an other-than-traditional family) as I had seen. Further, it was the third round! as I’d have liked to have reminded the reporter. Anyone who knew anything would know how tough a kid had to be, how much he had to develop and train and concentrate to qualify for a three-round bout with the likes of Hector Chavez. He would know the drive and commitment, the months of conditioning and leashing of the animal in the gut…the string of wins (four) needed to face a fighter who might go on (as Hector Chavez did!) to become one of the top welterweights in North America.

  * * *

  Running late for one of our conferences, Jimmy confessed, out of the blue, a secret fling he had slipped into with a fourteen-year-old African American girl at school. Dahlia Anderson. Geometry. They exchanged a look one day in class. Another look a day later. Passing in an empty stairwell, he motioned to her to step with him in under the stairs on the basement floor, and when she did so, he kissed her on the lips. She withdrew, only to have a smile on her face the next day in class when they looked at each other again.

  “‘The shadow of your smile...’” I crooned by way of teasing, which had Jimmy putting me in my place by saying, “I like her! Her lips are as red as strawberries! I like her a lot! What a kiss! Went to the soles of my feet! All I’ve been wanting to do is kiss her again!”

  “Wow...sorry to tease,” I said, taken aback. “In truth, I’m pleased that you’re able to tell me something like that,” I added. “I shouldn’t be teasing like a dope.”

  “Thanks…Mr. Big Brother.”

  “Thanks to you for holding your own,” I replied.

  “Ever have a secret girlfriend?” he wanted to know in a private way.

  “Once,” I confessed on thinking for a minute.

  “Her name?”

  “‘The Rollerdrome girl,’ is how I think of her,” I admitted. “Age thirteen. For some reason, one Sunday, I went roller skating…rented skates and so on. When they played a pairs song, girl’s choice, this cute girl made me just about pass out by rolling up and asking if I would be her partner!

  “Every Sunday thereafter, all summer, I walked to the Rollerdrome to skate with her. When it was time for pairs, I found her. We found each other…because we knew what we were doing without admitting anything. We skated every pairs tune together. Crossed hands. Hands behind the back. Boys backwards. Girls backwards. Whatever it was, we rolled along, getting better all the time. Falling head over heels is what I was doing...maybe she was, too, though I never knew for sure. Summer ended. Football and going back to school came along. I missed a Sunday. Never saw the Rollerdrome girl again. Or learned her name! What a thrill it was, though…to be smitten at thirteen! So I know where you’re coming from. It was stupid of me to be teasing.”

  “You fell for a Rollerdrome girl!” Jimmy ragged me back at once. “Left her for football? Gee, Professor, you’re breaking my heart.”

  “Shut up,” I told him.

  “You didn’t even learn her name and you’re telling me how to behave?”

  “What a smart ass you are,” I said, knowing he had a point.

  * * *

  On another occasion Jimmy confessed a problem he was having with an African American boxer at Police Athletic League. “Some of those guys are nuts,” he said. “Like they don’t care who they’re fighting as long as they’re fighting somebody... especially somebody white. This one guy…he is a madman. We’re snapping towels and insults, stripping tape and gauze. Stuff like that. I’m tightening my laces, got my foot on the bench, and he gets all serious, going, ‘Get yo feet off the bench! Thas where I sit down!’

  “He says to Webby, ‘Shut yo mouth, nigger, don’t know nuffin’ bout nuffin’!’ And I say…because we’re stablemates, have trained together, gone in the van many times together. I say, testing the word as a friend for the hell of it. I say, ‘Nigger’s the last thing Webby is. Outside the ring he’s a choirboy.’

  “Leon stops cold. ‘Man, wha’d you say?’ he wants to know. ‘Say whaa?!’ Seriousness is ridging his brow he’s so crazy mad…which only irks me because, like I say, we’re stablemates. Everything in the locker room goes slow-mo all at once, like it’s going to explode and serious hurt is going to fly.

  “I grin…like I don’t care. I was only poking him anyway, to make him hiss like a snake. Still I’m thinking that what I’m doing is pushing through a barrier as a stablemate...into friendship. I say: ‘Webby’s no nigger...he’s a choirboy. You deaf? Din’t hear what I said?’

  “Leon doesn’t laugh. He’s like, ‘Wha’ the fuck you mean is what I is axin’? What the fuck you mean usin’ the word? You cannot use the word!’

  “‘You don’t like me using the word?’

  “‘Bitch! Kick yo cracker ass here and now!’ is what he says, which has anger ridging my dumb brow, too.

  “‘I’se just checking, Leon...wanted to see what you’d say I used the word. Wanted to see if we’re friends, which I guess we’re not.’

  “‘Man, do not be usin’ the word!’ he says.

  “‘You own the word?’ I say, because, like I say, I’m pissed on being boxed in for using a word he’s using!

  “‘I own the word!’ he yells. ‘You do not own the word! You do not use the word, white cracker bitch! I own the word! The word is mine!”

  “‘Leon,’ I say to him kinda slowly. ‘I’m not real mad right now. But I’m about to get there. Said I’se checking…see if we’re friends. Which I didn’t think we were anyway. As for the word. Fuck you and fuck your word, okay? I’ll use any fucking word I ever wanna use! That’s a mea culpa, you asshole, so drop it.’

  “‘Me-a-shit! Ain’t dropping nuffin! Do not be using the word!’

  “‘Know what a nigger is?’ I say. ‘Maybe it’s not the same to you as it is to me. Nigger’s a crackhead moron bashing old folks to steal one dollar and twelve cents! Thas what a nigger is! Me using the word offends you? I said I’se checking, see if we’re friends. It’s not real smart, you know…going ballistic over somebody using a word you use yourself all the fucking time! So don’t be gettin’ all hot like you’re the second coming of Mike Tyson, because that is some shit I ain’t gonna eat. Live and let live. You had any class, you wouldn’t be going all racial on a stablemate using a word that can’t be owned anyway by anyone! Let it go.’

  “‘Ain’t lettin’ nuffin’ go.’

  “‘Webby’s a good guy,’ I say. ‘Ain’t some gangbanger killing tourists in Florida because they’re white! A word ain’t nothing but a fucking word!’

  “‘Telling you, I own it! Do not be using it! Cut your throat is what I do!”

  “‘Truth is, you love it!’ I tell him. ‘Love hearing a white guy using it! Turns you on! Sets your dumb ass free! Let’s you be the hate-filled moron you really are! Motivates, mobilizes, militarizes your fucking soul! You don’t fool me for a second! YOU LOVE THE WORD BECAUSE IT GIVES YOU A LICENSE TO HATE! THE WORD’S A DRUG TO YOU…YOU IGNORANT ASSHOLE!!’

  “‘Oddly enough, things all at once turn funny. Webby, who’s skinny…has big eyes like Sugar Ray…he says, ‘Man, I know what youse sayin’. Ain’t nothin to say on the street, ’cept maybe in Southie, but I know what youse sayin’.’

  “‘Thank you, Webby,’ I say. ‘Webby’s a friend,’ I say to Leon. ‘Webb
y’s a stablemate.’

  “‘Leon, he says, ‘You two goin’ steady now?’ and me and Webby can’t help it, we break up.

  “‘We take this occasion to announce we is going steady,’ I say, which gets still more laughs while washing over some of the ill will.

  “‘Got yo steady right here,’ Leon says, flagging a handful of crotch six, eight times…too many times, like he’s all but jerking off. ‘Givin’ me a hard-on,’ he says. As I can see, he’s worked up enough to kill…if not over a white guy using the word, over something. It’s crazy. I like my stablemates, but it’s crazy at times.”

  * * *

  Jimmy stopped talking then and we sat in silence, as I said, “Wow,” in astonishment with what he said. “That’s how stablemates talk to each other?” I ask “Those are fighting words…aren’t they...outside the locker room? Using the word?”

  “You don’t think Leon is like trying to blackmail me? Threatening to cut my throat for using a word he says he owns? How can a word be owned?”

  “Going crazy over a word may not be smart, but words do have meaning,” is my reply. “It’s established that the N-word, used by a white guy, is like spitting in a black guy’s face. Firing a bullet that may not kill, but is wounding all the same.”

  “You believe that? Using a word gives somebody a license to cut somebody’s throat? Isn’t it dumb to get all bent out of shape over a word just because the person using the word is white? I think there are a lot of black guys who get off on hearing white guys use it. Gives them a license to do their hating.”

  This kid. My thought is that he has a mind of his own. “You may be on to something about some black guys loving the word for that reason,” I admit. “That’s interesting. Still, it isn’t smart for you to be unaware that words do provoke and don’t have to be used.”