Whenever I felt a little depressed, I would bury myself even more in my work. The harder I applied myself, the more the cravings of wanting to be a normal teenager disappeared. And more important, the inner voice bubbling inside me, fighting for the answers to my past, remained quiet.
For me, work meant peace.
In the summer of 1978, at age eighteen, in order to further my career as top-rated car salesman, I decided to drop out of high school. But months later, after a statewide recession, I found myself as a legal adult, with no diploma, no job, and my life savings quickly draining away. My worst nightmare had come true. All of my well-thought-out plans of getting ahead and sacrificing while others played vanished into thin air. Because of my lack of education, the only jobs available were at fast-food restaurants. I knew I could not make it by working those jobs for the rest of my life.
Ever since I had been Mother’s prisoner, I had dreamed of making something of myself. The more she would scream, curse at me, and leave me sprawled out on the floor in my own blood, the more I would fight back and smile inside, telling myself over and over again, One day, you’ll see. One of these days I’ll make you proud. But Mother’s prediction was right: I had failed. And for that I hated myself to the core. My idle time awakened my inner voice. I began to think that maybe Mother had been right all along. Maybe I was a loser, and I had been treated as such because I deserved it. I became so paranoid about my future that I could no longer sleep. I spent my free evenings trying to form any strategy I could to survive. It was during one of those endless nights that I remembered the only piece of advice my father ever gave me.
In six years as a foster child, I had seen my father less than a dozen times. At the end of my last visit, he proudly showed me one of the only possessions he had left: his badge, representing his retirement from the San Francisco Fire Department. Before loading me onto a Greyhound bus, Father mumbled in a dejected voice, “Get out of here, David. Get as far away from here as you can. You’re almost at that age. Get out.” As he looked at me with darkened circles under his eyes, Father’s final words were: “Do what you have to. Don’t end up . . . don’t end up like me.”
In my heart I sensed that Father was a homeless alcoholic. After spending a lifetime saving others from burning buildings, Father had been helpless to save himself. That day as the bus pulled away, I cried from the depths of my soul. Every time the bus passed someone sleeping beside a building, I’d imagine Father shivering in the night. As much as I felt sorry for him, though, I knew I did not want to—I could not—end up like him. I felt selfish thinking of myself rather than my stricken father, but his advice, Don’t end up like me, became my personal commandment.
I decided that joining the service was my only chance. I even fantasized about serving in the air force as a fireman, then one day returning to the Bay Area and showing Father my badge. Trying to enlist proved to be an ordeal. After struggling to obtain my GED, I had to fill out mounds of paperwork for every time I had been bounced from one foster home to another, then explain on separate forms why I was placed in another home. Whenever the air force recruiter pressed me about my past, I became so terrified that I stuttered like an idiot. After weeks of evading these questions, I caved in and gave the sergeant a brief explanation about why Mother and I did not get along. I waited for his reaction. I held my breath knowing that if the recruiter thought I was a troublemaker, he could refuse my application.
Every morning, for weeks, I stood outside the door, waiting for the office to open, before I hurried in to fill out more paperwork, and studied films and whatever booklets the recruiter had available. I became possessed to enlist. The air force was my ticket to a new life.
After the paperwork was filled out, double-checked, then reverified, I had to get a physical examination. During the battery of tests I was poked and prodded on every inch of my rail-thin body. At the end, as I sat nearly naked, the doctor kept circling around me as he questioned the ancient bumps on my scalp, the scars on my body, the marks on my right arm where Mother had burned me on the gas stove. I simply shrugged off the doctor’s questions, telling him I had been a clumsy kid. The doctor let out a sigh and raised his eyebrows. Immediately my heart seized. I just knew I had said the wrong thing. Fearing my statement would disqualify me, I quickly added that it was a stage I had gone through when I was a kid. “A kid?” the doctor asked, as if he were not buying my story.
“Yeah, you know, when I was six, seven years old. But”—I raised a finger to stress the importance of this point—“I’m not clumsy now! Nope, not anymore. Not me. No sireee . . .” The doctor waved me off and told me to get dressed. I felt a surge of relief as I saw him mark the block that claimed I was medically qualified to enlist. I was on top of the world, right up until the moment I leaned too far and crashed against the table. Folders containing other recruits’ paperwork exploded in every direction, and, still struggling to pull on my pants, I tried to grab the papers, only scattering them more. The doctor ordered me to stop trying to help and get out of his office as fast as humanly possible. As I hurried out the door, the doctor flashed a smile. “Over that clumsy period, eh?”
Hours later that same day, I sat frozen in front of a computer next to an air force sergeant who typed in an endless stream of information. Finally, the sergeant paused, turned toward me, and nonchalantly asked, “So, what day do you want to enlist?”
I shook my head, not sure I had heard what the sergeant just asked. I leaned forward and whispered, “You mean, I’m in? I can join? You’re actually asking me if I want to join?”
“Don’t make a federal case out of it. Yeah, you’re in—that is, unless the FBI tells us you’re a criminal,” the sergeant teased.
My mind immediately flashed back to all the close calls I had had with the police for speeding tickets when I was a teenager. My heart skipped a beat. I knew that if the air force found out about my past, I was a goner. The sergeant startled me when he tapped on my shoulder. “Hey, Pelz-ter, relax. So . . . when do you want to enlist?”
I was lost in a daze. Now you have the chance to make something of yourself. Now is your time to build a life. I simply could not believe that after struggling over six months, I had actually made it.
I allowed myself the reward of smiling. “When’s the soonest I can join?”
He snapped back, “Girlfriend problems, eh?” Before I had a chance to respond, the man bowed his head and feverishly pounded on the computer keyboard. “Well,” he began, “if you really feel the need for speed, I can have you on a plane and in basic training by . . . tonight. Or, if that doesn’t suit you, you can enlist next week. So, what will it be?”
I immediately knew what I had to do, but a wave of shame washed over me. For months I had lied to my foster parents, telling them that I was taking specialized tests and interviewing for a job, which in a way I felt I was. The Turnboughs had no idea what I was really up to. I felt a sudden urge to run off and enlist and then simply phone them from boot camp. Besides my foster parents and a handful of close friends, I had no one in my life. No girlfriends, no work buddies, no friends who picked me up to go cruising or see movies, no relatives to speak of—no one. I felt that if I fell off the face of the earth, less than half a dozen people would even notice. But deep in my heart I knew that I owed my real family—my foster parents and whatever friends I had—more than a long-distance phone call. Above all, it was a matter of honor. I let out a deep sigh before answering the sergeant. “Next week.”
“All right, next week. You sure about this?” he politely asked.
Without blinking an eye, I nodded my head. “Yes, sir!”
The sergeant pressed a button, and the computer began printing a stream of papers. “Sign here, here, here, here and . . . here,” he informed me without a trace of emotion. I stared at the blocks with the bright red Xs. This is it! I told myself. I snatched the government pen and scribbled my name so hard that I nearly tore through the sheets of papers. As the sergeant took the pa
perwork and typed in more commands to his computer, I killed time by looking at the framed glossy photographs of the high-tech air force fighter jets. My mouth began to water at the sleek, crisp lines of the airplanes against the endless blue sky.
“Sir, is that the F-15 jet fighter?” I asked, pointing at a photograph above his desk.
Without looking up from the computer, the sergeant replied, “Nope . . . F-16.”
I nodded my head to the sergeant’s answer, then stated before thinking, “Excuse me, sir, but if I’m not mistaken, that’s the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle: first strike, air superior fighter, capable of speeds in excess of Mach 2.5, produced by a pair of G.E. F-100 after-burning engines. . . .”
The sergeant turned toward me with his mouth hung open.
“Did I say something wrong, sir?” I thought for a moment of what I had just said, and even I was surprised how easy the basic technical aspects of the airplane came from my mouth. All these facts I had learned from the recruitment brochures and stream of books I had digested over the last few months.
He simply nodded for me to continue. Immediately I thought this was part of some strange test. I closed my eyes to recall as much as I could. “Uhm, I know it has a comple . . . dent—I mean, complement of AIM-7 Sparrow and AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles. And . . . I think . . . it was two, maybe three years ago that a modified F-15 Streak Eagle beat the time-to-climb altitude record held by a Russian MeG.” I paused to catch my breath and waited for his reaction. Craving acceptance, I didn’t want the sergeant to think I was trying to show off. By the smile in his eyes I realized he was not only impressed, but interested in planes as well.
“That’s ‘MiG’ Pelz-ter, not ‘MeG,’ ” he countered. “Okay, smart guy: What base did they launch the Streak Eagle from?”
“Grand Forks, North Dakota!” I stated with confidence.
“All right, not bad. Now,” he said, “the big one: Why Grand Forks?”
I smiled back, enjoying the game. “Molecule compression. The colder air allows the plane to reach speeds and altitudes quicker while at the same time consuming less fuel. I mean . . . I think that’s the idea.”
The sergeant responded with a wide grin and slapped me on the shoulder. “Where in the hell did you . . . ?”
By instinct, I hesitated. For a second I thought I had just revealed military secrets. “I read, sir.”
“You read?”
“Ah . . . yes, sir. I read a lot. I’ve always wanted to . . . I mean, Sergeant?” I asked in a low voice. “You think they’d ever let me fly?”
“My Lord!” He coughed. “You’re a piece of work, aren’t you?
“Hey, Max,” he bellowed to the next cubicle. “I got the next Chuck Yeager over here! Wants to know if he can fly!” As a small roar of laughter erupted, I closed my eyes. I always seemed to say the wrong thing at the wrong time and make a jerk out of myself.
After I let out a deep breath, the sergeant caught my eye. I stated in a firm tone, “Chuck Yeager was enlisted before he flew.”
The sergeant thumbed through my paperwork. “Listen, Pelz, you barely made it in. You’re a high school dropout, your aptitude scores are way below average, and you have the body of a skinny rat with the eyesight of Stevie Wonder. A fly boy? Thought you wanted to be a fireman. Listen,” he said, “here’s what you do: Learn your trade as a fireman and get some college classes under your belt. Heck, the air force will pay for your tuition. And then after a few years if you want to reenlist, you can apply for a slot. That’s a major goal, but if you’re serious, we’ll meet you halfway. Okay?”
I swallowed hard, realizing how lucky I was to even enlist. “Yes, sir. I understand. Thanks for the advice.”
“Hey, that’s what I’m here for.” He stood up, indicating he was through with me. “Not to worry, Pelz. You keep studying and they’ll have you piloting the SR-71.” He then raised his eyebrows. “I assume with your plethora of aeronautical knowledge, you do know about the Blackbird, don’t you?”
My eyes lit up at the mention of my favorite plane. “Yes, sir!” I exclaimed. “I know about the Blackbird, like nobody’s business!”
“Well then, we’ll see you next week.” He extended his hand.
“Thank you, sir,” I said as I shook it. “I’ll make you proud. You’ll see.”
The sergeant let out a chuckle, released my hand, then snapped to attention and gave me a crisp salute. “See ya, Airman Pelz-a-Yeager!”
Later that afternoon, before I chickened out and changed my mind, I informed my foster parents, “I enlisted in the air force! I leave next week!”
“Oh, really?” my foster father, Harold Turnbough, casually replied.
I searched their eyes for any kind of reaction to my explosive news. After what seemed like an eternity of silence, I broke the ice. “I’m going nowhere. I’ve been working myself stupid. I thought I could find the answers—to my past, to Mother—trying to numb myself about my dad. And now, now it’s my time. My time to make something of myself. I’ve already missed so much, but if I stay focused and work hard, maybe someday I can turn this around.” I stopped to gauge their response. My foster parents continued to just sit there. “Isn’t that what you’ve tried to teach me; I mean, to become self-reliant? Well . . . ?” I asked, frustrated.
Alice and Harold, who years ago had adopted me into their hearts, began to nod their heads before exploding with laughter. I shook my head in disgust. Because of the day’s mounting tensions—the test and examinations, my fear of not being good enough to enlist, my lack of sleep, and hiding my secret for so long—I felt sick to my stomach. “Stop it!” I shouted. “What’s so funny? This is serious! I mean it! I already signed the paperwork.”
Alice leaned over to embrace me. “We’ve known for a while, David.”
Harold said with a crooked smile, “With all those brochures layin’ around and your babblin’ ’bout airplanes this, airplanes that, what else would you be up to?”
“So, you’re not mad? I mean . . . ?”
“Of course not, David. But answer this: Why the service? Three years is a long time,” said Alice.
“Four years; I’ll be in for four,” I corrected her. “I’m just fed up. I’m tired of living hand to mouth. Working my butt off, for what? For nothing! I’ve been scrimping and slaving away, and I have nothing to show for it. Check it out: In four years I can grow and learn, I can explore and see things beyond any picture of any magazine.” I stopped and lowered my head. “Maybe getting away will help me . . . help me find my answers. . . .”
Mrs. Turnbough reached over to cup my hand. “David, you may never know. Sometimes, bad things happen. For some things there are no absolutes.”
“No,” I interrupted, “it’s wrong. I have to know. I have to find out. If I don’t deal with this, all I’m doing is hiding ‘the secret’ like everyone else, and if I do that, then what’s to say I don’t become like her or like my dad? Something made them the way they are. Things do happen for a reason. I want to understand; I want to know. And if I don’t find out and do something, who will? How many kids have you taken in who came from the same kind of homes as me? The problem’s not going to go away by turning our backs or sweeping it underneath the carpet anymore. Every day things happen, and everyone acts as if nothing’s wrong. No one wants to talk about things, let alone deal with the consequences afterward. It’s wrong, and it’s about time to take a stand. Isn’t that what you and everyone else has pounded into my head since I was rescued? Be good, be honest and fair, find something I believe in, work hard and keep the faith no matter how long it takes? Well . . . ?”
My foster parents sat in front of me totally mesmerized. In all the years I had known them, they had never seen me so intense, so articulate about my past. I continued in a softer tone. “Listen, it’s going to be okay, I can handle it. I’ll be fine, but please understand, I don’t want to turn out like them. This is something I’ve got to do.”
I took a moment to compose my thoughts. I
did not want to screw up and tell them in the wrong way what I felt in my heart. “You know I love you both very much. You’ve treated me as if I were a real person. But while I’m in the air force, I’m gonna save every dollar I can. I want a home . . . my home. I want to buy a home in Guerneville, on the Russian River. Ever since kindergarten, I knew that’s what I wanted. That’s my lifelong dream. When I lived in Mother’s house, when things were really bad, I’d go inside and dream of a log home by the river with a warm fireplace and the smell of redwood trees. It made me feel safe. Of all the things she did to me, Mother could never get me when I thought about the river. As a kid, that dream gave me something to live for. I want my home.” I hesitated as my throat tightened. Tears began to trickle down the sides of my face. I tried to hold back my emotions, but the years of extreme pressure were just too much.
“David, what is it? What’s wrong?” Mrs. Turnbough whispered.
I closed my eyes before bursting with a flood of tears. “All his life, all he wanted was to have something. . . . And now he’s alone, living on the streets, and has nothing. It’s not right.”
“Who’s alone? Who are you talking about?” Alice probed.
“My father!” I cried. “I’m gonna buy a house and have Dad live with me. It’s the right thing to do. And,” I said, renewing my vow, “I’m going to find my answers, and when I’m ready, I’m going to do what I can to make a difference.” I wiped my tears away, feeling foolish.
“So, you’re joining the air force?” Harold asked with a hint of humor. “Do you think you can manage to stay out of the brig?”
My smile matched Harold’s. “Yes, sir!” I said. “I’ll make you proud, you watch. One day, you’ll see. I’ll make you proud!”