Further applause from the crowd, slightly more subdued this time, but still powerful and sustained. Arnold’s initial shock at the Colonel’s announcement was already giving way to a deep, burning jealousy. He clapped along absently, standing on the tips of his toes to catch a glimpse of Mike Raboteau. But his view was mostly obscured by the podium, and all he saw was Mike’s hand, clasped in the Colonel’s larger one, pumping up and down in a warm, prolonged handshake.
EVO-PSYCH FLEET SHELLS HAWAIIAN DEFENSES
Invasion Considered “Imminent”
With the 3rd Postmodern Anthropologist Marine Expeditionary Brigade, Kauai (AP)—Shells from Evolutionary Psychologist ships fell on Marine positions here in the early-morning hours on Sunday. By the Marines’ own estimate, 30 percent of the defensive structures on the immediate coastline, including concrete pillboxes, antiaircraft batteries, and artillery emplacements, were destroyed or rendered useless. In addition, daybreak revealed that tank traps and other defensive obstacles placed on the beach had been cleared with explosives by teams of Evo-Psych commandos.
Entering Mr. Oswalt’s classroom on Monday, Arnold smelled Colonel Redmond before he saw him. Even with a window open the air in the room was laden with an unmistakably masculine scent, like Armor All mingled with cigar smoke. The Colonel sat on a stool in the corner, almost behind the door; Arnold moved to his place near the back of the room (past Mike Raboteau’s desk, conspicuously vacant), wondering where the smell was coming from, and only noticed the Colonel when he turned to take a seat himself.
“Gentlemen,” Mr. Oswalt said when everyone was seated, “I’ve got good news for those of you who neglected your reading this weekend—you’ve got another day to get it done. You’ll remember Colonel Redmond, whom many of you saw at the parade yesterday—except of course for Messieurs Davis and McCutcheon, whom I’ll have words with after class. The Colonel has asked that he be allowed to speak with you, and I agreed to give him today’s period to discuss the military’s need for new recruits and, as well, the obligation that you bear to defend Postmodern Anthropology. Colonel?”
“I don’t know about all that,” the Colonel said, rising from the stool and smoothing the front of his uniform. He grinned, revealing teeth too square and white to belong to a man his age. “Not to undercut your teacher here, boys, but I bet if I started going on and on about free will versus genetic predetermination and how PoMo Anthro is superior to Evolutionary Psychology in every which way—well, I bet your eyes would just gloss over and you’d drift off on some daydream until this old soldier finished with his spiel and left you alone. I mean, you get that sort of thing in here every day, and man, you’re sick of it. Am I right?”
The grin widened, inviting them to admit they had little interest in yet another ideological sermon. Most of the boys, except for Arnold and Kelly McCutcheon, cast nervous glances in the direction of Mr. Oswalt, then slowly ventured smiles of their own.
“So what I’d like to talk about instead—well, it’s two things. First thing I want to talk about is guns. You boys like guns, right?”
An affirmative murmur rippled through the classroom.
“Well, let me tell you, when it comes to guns nobody can hold a candle to the PoMo Marines.” The Colonel ran a hand over his stubbled scalp in the same gesture Arnold had noticed the day before. “Now some of you have probably gone hunting with a 12-gauge or some pussy-ass .22. You may even have an old man who’s a gun nut and had a few beers one day and said to himself, Self, the boy’s growing up quick. Probably time to let him try the old .45 on for size. But I’d be willing to wager my retirement—and it’s pretty substantial, boys—that you’ve never even laid eyes on a CAR-15 assault rifle with a bottom-mounted M203 grenade launcher, much less fired one. If any of you have, tell me and I’ll cut you a check from my pension right this minute.”
Silence from the group.
“That’s what I thought,” the Colonel said. “How about an M134 minigun? We’re talking a rate of fire near six thousand rounds per minute. Just one round can crack the engine block on a semi. No shit. Or how about the AT4 anti-armor rocket? Turn an Evo-Psych tank into a flaming hunk of junk with one little twitch of the trigger. Have any of you ever felt the kick from one of those babies? Sound off loud and clear so I can hear you.”
“No,” the boys said in one voice.
“No, sir,” the Colonel said.
“No, sir!”
“Well you will,” the Colonel said, his voice suddenly low and conspiratorial. “If you join the Marines.”
He turned away, taking a few steps back toward Mr. Oswalt’s desk to let his words sink in.
“The other thing I want to talk about,” he said after a moment, turning on one heel to face them again, “is money. Now, you’ve got a nice little town here. I noticed some decent places on the waterfront on my way in yesterday. But let’s be honest—no one here is getting rich catching alewife and flounder, and that’s what you boys are looking at when you leave this school—a lifetime of popping Dramamine and stinking like fish shit, and when you finally kick you’ll be lucky to have enough cabbage to pay for your own casket. Any of you looking forward to that? Sound off, now.”
“No, sir.”
“Besides, what little money there is in this town doesn’t belong to any of you,” the Colonel said. “You want something, you’ve got to ask your old man to buy it for you. And that in my opinion is a shit state of affairs, for grown men like you not to be able to get what they want when they want it.”
The Colonel leaned against Mr. Oswalt’s desk. His voice dropped again into the conspiratorial hush. “So listen here,” he said. “What if I told you that the Marines will give you twenty thousand dollars just for signing up? I wouldn’t lie to you, boys. You show up at the recruitment center, sign a few forms, get a few shots, turn your head and cough, whammo—they cut you a check for twenty grand right there. Take it to the bank and cash it that afternoon. Now I want you to think about that a minute.”
The Colonel folded his arms and gazed at the class, still smiling.
“You thinking about what you could buy with all that money?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Good. Take your time. There’s lots of things a man should want.”
Arnold, incredulous at the Colonel’s performance, watched the red second hand wind slowly around the face of the clock on the wall behind Mr. Oswalt’s desk.
“Okay,” the Colonel said brightly, clapping his hands together. “That’s it, boys. I don’t need to sell this anymore, and you know it, because this shit sells itself. I assume you know where the recruitment center is here in town. Open seven days a week. Thanks for humoring an old man.”
The boys looked to Mr. Oswalt, who nodded, and they rose and began filing out of the room. The Colonel stood at the front of the class, laughing and clapping backs, but when Arnold tried to slip through the doorway the Colonel put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed with surprising strength.
“Son,” he said, “I noticed you weren’t sounding off with the rest of the boys.”
“No.”
“No, sir.”
“No, sir.”
“Did you not like what I had to say?”
“No, sir, it’s not that. I—”
“Son, I think I have an inkling what the problem is,” the Colonel said. “You’re a smart kid. That old guns-and-money routine won’t work on you. But you’re exactly the kind of young man I’m trying to reach. I’d trade in all the boys in this class for just one of you. And you know why?”
“No, sir.”
“Because you know why we’re really in this fight, and you care about it,” the Colonel said. “So do I. What you saw here today, that’s just a little recruiting razzle-dazzle. A sales pitch. I don’t feel good about it. Never have. But we need warm bodies on the field, now more than ever. And this is the way to make that happen. Do you understand?”
“I think so, sir.”
“More than that, we need
men like you, son.”
“Like me, sir?”
“Men with conviction,” the Colonel said. “Men with heads on their shoulders. Men who can lead the guns-and-money bunch.”
The Colonel unfastened the top button of his jacket, reached in, and removed a business card. “Take this for me,” he said. “You think about it, and you give me a call. We’ll talk.”
“Sir, I don’t—”
“Take the card, son. In a few days you’ll be glad you have it.”
Selia and Arnold hadn’t spoken more than a few words to each other since the argument, but on Tuesday morning she stopped him on his way out to school and offered a bagged lunch of smoked Atlantic salmon, Brie, stone wheat crackers, and homemade pudding. Arnold knew his mother well enough to realize this was not a peace offering or an apology so much as an attempt to resume the discussion in a more civilized tone.
“Thanks,” he said, taking the bag.
“Listen,” she said. “Let’s you and me take our dinner up to the natural pool tonight.”
“Okay,” he said. “What about Dad?”
“He’s a big kid. He can feed himself.”
The natural pool was a large bowl-shaped formation of granite on the north coast of the island that filled with seawater and small fish at high tide. As the sun retreated toward the mainland later that day, Arnold and Selia picked their way along the rocky shore leading to the pool, iridescent shards of clamshells snapping and gritting underfoot. They cast long early-evening shadows on skittish Jonah crabs and knots of seaweed that waved and shimmered in the unsettled water. On a flat slab of granite overlooking the pool, they spread a blanket and set out their dinner from the basket Selia carried.
Arnold knew his mother wanted to talk, but he offered no openings, giving curt one word answers to her questions about school and gazing for long minutes out toward the horizon, where the delineation between sky and sea was fading along with the daylight. By the time they finished eating Selia had given up trying to spark a conversation. She lit a cigarette, the second of the two she allowed herself each day, and joined her son in watching the whitecaps roll in from the open ocean.
Arnold took his phone out and typed a message:
Divine Amanda: I’ve been noticing lately how I share many odd mannerisms with my father. The way I say hi to strangers on the street in a bright, clipped way, somehow shortening the word to half a syllable. Or how sometimes I catch myself pursing my lips when concentrating on a task, like setting the first few threads on a screw, just like he does. These behaviors could be learned, I guess, but the lip-pursing thing in particular seems for some reason to clearly be genetic.
Always,
Selia pushed her sunglasses back on her head and looked over at him. “I wish you had half as much to say to me,” she said, smoke drifting from her mouth as she spoke. “Hours and hours, typing away. What do you write about to that girl?”
Arnold didn’t answer. Instead he began another message:
Divine, exquisite Amanda: Until yesterday I was certain it was time for me to leave here and join the Marines. After Colonel Redmond visited our class yesterday, though, I don’t know what to think. All that idiotic crap about guns. Although he did pull me aside at the end and explain, told me that I was the kind of guy they were really looking for. Which may have been just another sales pitch, to use his term. I guess ultimately it doesn’t matter whether he’s sincere or not, whether or not he believes. What matters is whether or not I believe. And I do. I believe more in this than in anything else, except y—
“I asked you a question,” Selia said, snatching the phone from Arnold before he could finish the message. She stood quickly and turned away from him, giggling as he got to his feet and tried to reach around her to take the phone back.
“How the hell do you work this thing?” she said.
“Mom,” Arnold said. “Mom, give it back.”
“I want to see what the big deal is,” she said, turning to block his reach. “Scroll up/down. Okay, now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Mom!” Arnold said.
“Oh!” Selia’s eyes went wide with amusement. “Divine Amanda,” she breathed, pressing the back of one hand to her forehead in a mock swoon. “Oh, this is rich, kiddo. This is really rich.”
“Selia!” Arnold yelled. He’d stopped trying to take the phone from her and stood with his fists clenched at his sides. “Give me the fucking phone!”
But suddenly Selia wasn’t laughing anymore, and she seemed not to hear him. The hand dropped from her forehead as she continued reading, scrolling down, reading. Arnold waited, breathing hard. His face burned with equal parts anger and shame. When Selia was finished she held the phone out to him, and he unclenched his fist and took it.
Without a word Selia set about gathering the plates and utensils and leftover food from their dinner, throwing them haphazardly into the basket. She picked up the blanket, wound it into a ball, and tossed it on top of the other things. Then she lifted the basket above her head and heaved it into the natural pool, where it landed with a splash, bobbed a moment on the ripples it had created, then slowly began to sink.
Selia watched the basket going down. “Here’s something you don’t know,” she said, her voice barely audible over the pulse of the surf. “Years ago, your father had another son. Your half brother. He died. So did your father’s first wife. In one of those earlier worlds I was telling you about.”
Arnold had no idea how to respond. A peculiar sensation of minute trauma had started up between his eyes, as though he were being tapped there repeatedly with a ball-peen hammer. He realized in a distant way that this was his heartbeat.
Selia turned to face him. “I hate you for making me say this,” she said, and at the word hate Arnold felt suddenly much smaller than he was, impossibly small, like the infant he had no memory of being. Tears stung his eyes in an instant. “I hate you for making me sound like some hysterical idiot. But I have never been so sad or angry in my life, and all that’s coming to mind right now are clichés. So here goes: If you join the Marines—if you go to that ridiculous war and break your father’s heart again—you are not my son.”
Selia’s eyes were dry. She turned away from Arnold and retraced their path along the rocks, not looking back. Arnold watched her recede and felt the first sob rising from his gut to the back of his throat like a surge of vomit, and though he resisted, knowing Amanda would be ashamed of him, in a moment he was overcome. He sat on the edge of the granite slab with his legs dangling above the pool and typed through his tears:
ivine, amanda: fuck her fuck her fuck her fuck her fuck her
LOCAL BOY EARNS MARINE COMMISSION
By Linda Merrill, Staff Writer
Quantico, Virginia—Arnold Ankosky, 17, of Bar Harbor, completed OCS training at the Postmodern Anthropologist Marine Corps Officer Candidate School in Quantico on Thursday, part of a graduating class of 42. Ankosky was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant and will be assigned to the 7th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, based in San Diego. The 7th is currently engaged in bitter fighting against Evolutionary Psychologist forces in Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountains, where Ankosky will join them as a platoon leader.
My Brother the Murderer
And Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear.
—Genesis 4:13
Coming home from work on a Wednesday evening, I see an ocean of emergency vehicles massed outside the High Hopes Mental Health Center—ambulances and police cruisers, their lights painting the autumn night with bright flashes of red and blue. There are twenty or thirty of them, parked haphazardly along the road and in the center’s parking lot. Some of the police cruisers are staties, and this is the first indication that something very bad has happened. The town I live in is small but has a sizable police force; the state troopers are called on only rarely, when the local police are in over their heads.
As a traffic cop waves me past with his hooded flashlight, I notice that parked
among the ambulances and cruisers are three CNN news vans with out-of-state license plates, along with the local media.
I hurry home. The streets are empty and I run a red light. I don’t bother stopping at the store for cigarettes and orange juice, as I had intended.
When I step through the front door I can hear the news on the television in the living room. Melissa is waiting for me. She is sitting at the kitchen table with her hands wrapped around a mug of tea. Her hair is pulled back in a loose ponytail and she has been crying. She gives me a strange look—sadness mostly, but something else too—revulsion, maybe? Or dread? I can’t tell, but it’s not good.
What is it, Lissa? I ask, though somehow I already know, somehow I knew the moment I saw all those police cars. What the hell’s going on?
And she tries to tell me, but it takes her a while, because she keeps breaking into fresh tears and stopping short to collect herself and wipe her eyes. Once she stops in midsentence and stares down into her mug for several minutes without speaking. Eventually, though, she gets it all out, and I have to look down at my legs to make sure they’re still there and I sit down with her at the table because otherwise I might collapse on the kitchen floor. The two of us sit silently for a while. Melissa sips her tea. I feel something warm slide down my face and drop from my chin and I look down and see a small circle of moisture on the table and realize that I’m crying now, too.