299 Days: The Preparation (4 page)

He did have one weapon that no one in his class could match. He was funny; hilarious, in fact. He could turn a phrase, make a play on words, recall lines from movies, and do amazing impressions. His impressions of teachers and other kids had people rolling on the floor. Even if they thought he was a loser, they laughed at his jokes and were entertained by him. Grant was the most well liked loser at Forks High School.

Since he was a loser, he could instantly identify with other losers. This would have a major impact on his life. He knew what it was like to be humiliated and he hated it. So Grant helped other losers whenever he could. It was more than just being a sheepdog and helping people who happened to be losers. Grant had a loser bond with all fellow losers. They were all in a club, The Loser Club. But, hey, it was still a club.

Grant’s best friend in high school, Steve Briggs, was a lot like Grant—except Steve wasn’t a loser. Steve was the typical Forks redneck kid. He wore flannel shirts with red logger suspenders. He always wore a baseball hat with the Stihl chainsaw logo like most other males in Forks. Steve’s dad was a logger, like everyone else.

Steve was one of the most outgoing guys Grant had ever met. He loved Grant’s sense of humor. He was a truly tough guy and was extremely confident. So he didn’t care if other people thought Grant was a loser; Grant was his friend, so everyone else could screw off if they didn’t like that. This was just what Grant needed in a friend. The two were inseparable.

People find escapes in many different ways. Many kids in Forks did drugs and everyone drank (except the handful of Mormon kids). Grant did his share of drinking. Quite a bit, actually. But his real escape was something no one expected him to do.

Chapter 2

What a Beret Can Do for a Loser

Civil Air Patrol (CAP) was the Air Force auxiliary. They had a cadet program for high school kids. Back in those days, CAP was responsible for much of the search and rescue for small civilian planes. With all the mountains around Forks and the rest of western Washington, they had plenty of work. CAP also provided military training like drilling and basic Junior ROTC kinds of things. The Air Force and the other military branches got a lot of recruits out of CAP. It was the best way a high school kid could see if the military life was for him or her.

And, for a sheepdog like Grant, CAP was heaven. They actually went out and rescued people in plane crashes. What could be better for a sheepdog than that?

Steve Briggs joined the tiny Forks squadron of CAP because he wanted to go into the military when he graduated from high school. Steve told Grant all about how cool it was: getting to fly in planes and occasionally helicopters, wearing military uniforms, saluting, getting to go out in the woods and looking for crashed airplanes.

“We spend almost every weekend training,” Steve told Grant. Weekends away from home—Grant was in.

Grant learned the basics of military culture. He learned how to salute and how rank worked. He learned about uniforms. He also learned the bare basics of how a military unit operated, which would be very valuable later.

Pretty quickly, Grant became the cadet squadron commander of the Forks squadron. He was really good at motivating people and making them want to be around him. He treated each and every cadet like a valued member of the team. Fellow “losers” felt especially at ease around him because he could see their potential and figure out a way for each of them to shine. Grant managed to get the very best out of people.

His first role in search and rescue was “base support.” CAP operated out of little air civilian airfields where their small Cessna search planes would go out and look for the crashed plane. Cadets couldn’t fly the planes; adult CAP volunteers did that. Since CAP was so small, every search team member needed to know just about every role. This included fueling small planes and taxiing them. Grant learned this quickly.

Base support also included making sure the aircrews had food and a place to sleep. Grant was an organizational whiz. He would get local restaurants and hotels to donate to the search effort. Another task at the search base was dealing with the press when they were covering a story about an airplane crash. He first got noticed by the CAP leadership for his ability to handle the press at age sixteen. He was a fresh-faced teen in a uniform who would keep the newspaper and occasional TV reporters updated on the status of the search. He artfully dodged questions asking for information that wasn’t public. He was amazingly articulate and mature for a kid.

That was great, but what Grant really wanted was to go out into the woods and actually do the searching. Grant, being a hillbilly kid, was good at the outdoorsy search and rescue parts of CAP. They learned how to survive in the woods, navigate with a compass, use radios, climb rocks and repel down cliffs. Out in the woods, Grant wasn’t a loser. He was a leader. He was rescuing people. He was in his element. His guys loved him.

The CAP cadets were the junior, extremely junior, civilian version of the Air Force pararescue special operations squadrons who would search for crashed military aircraft and crews behind enemy lines. The Air Force searchers were called “PJs” which stood for “parajumpers.” One of the adult CAP officers, Capt. Smithson, was a PJ in Vietnam. Grant and all the other cadets idolized him. CAP cadet searchers were about 1/1,000th as tough or skilled as the Air Force PJs but the fifteen to seventeen year-old CAP cadets convinced themselves they were “just about” PJ material, which was laughable, but harmless.

Grant planned on joining the military. He wanted to try out for the PJs. While that would be very cool, he would be happy doing just about anything as long as it was far from Forks. He went to the nearest “big” town, Port Angeles, and talked to the Air Force recruiter.

He learned that one of the complications from his birth prevented him from joining. He was born without pectoral muscles on the left side of his chest. The pectoral muscle locks the arm in place when it’s lifting or holding a lot of weight. The lack of a pectoral muscle didn’t affect anything in everyday life except that he couldn’t hold heavy things up easily with his left arm, or do pushups or pull ups.

Grant was disappointed that he couldn’t join the military, but he would be fine with just going to college far away so he could become a white collar guy living in a nice house. Anything as long as it wasn’t in Forks.

Another CAP experience shaped Grant and directly contributed to how he handled future big events. During Grant’s senior year of high school, he earned his way, along with Steve, onto the elite statewide CAP search team called Squadron 3. There were six cadets on the team out of the 1,000 or so in the state, although only about a hundred tried out for the team. But still, they were elite. A loser like Grant had never been “elite” before. It was awesome.

While he was pretty good at the search and rescue things like land navigation, he wondered why he got into Squadron 3. There were guys in Squadron 3 who were way better than him at the technical aspects of search and rescue. He asked their commander, the former PJ, Capt. Smithson, what Grant did to get selected for the Squadron 3.

“You remember,” Capt. Smithson asked Grant, “the land navigation final course where your team carried a team member in a stretcher for six miles through the woods?” Capt. Smithson was smiling.

“Yes, sir,” Grant said. He thought for a while but was embarrassed to say what was true. Finally, Grant said, “I was leading the team but I made a wrong turn at the ridge and we came in second. I thought I wouldn’t make the team for that.”

“Oh, yeah, that wasn’t good,” Capt. Smithson said. “I’d forgotten about the wrong turn. But do you remember what you did when you got back to base, Matson?”

“Not really, sir,” Grant said. Then he thought some more.

“Well, I went back out, linked up with the teams that were still running the course and encouraged them.”

Capt. Smithson was smiling even wider then. “Exactly,” he said. “You went back out and motivated the others. You were cracking jokes and getting them focused on getting the job done. That’s why you’re in Squadron 3. You’re a born leader, Matson.”

Later in life, Grant would understand why he went back out to motivate the stragglers. He knew what it was like to come in last and he felt for the guys who didn’t come in first. He wanted all of them to make it across the finish line with their chins up high.

As members of the Squadron 3, they were the only CAP cadets who got to wear a beret and jungle fatigues (like the PJs). At age seventeen, Squadron 3 thought they were the baddest asses on the planet. That beret was the second most important thing to him. The first was his team members.

Grant would do anything for his team members. They would do anything for him. The team was like a gang; one that saves people’s lives, not one that hurts people. It was hard to get in, but once they were in, the teammates had each other’s back. The team would go through a lot together, and they got through it because they helped each other. They shared scarce food out in the woods. They would carry a guy’s gear when he was hurt. Their life was literally in each other’s hands, like when one is climbing a cliff and another teammate has the safety line. They shared victories together like rescuing someone in a plane crash, which Squadron 3 did on more than one occasion. They would do anything—absolutely anything—for their team members. Grant would never forget that feeling. He would have that same feeling decades later with another team.

CAP Squadron 3 was the best thing to happen to Grant up to that point in his life. He was confident. He knew he was good—really good—at something important. He was “elite.” He had respect from his CAP peers. It was the exact opposite of being a loser at Forks High School. Squadron 3 was precisely what Grant needed.

Chapter 3

Oklahoma

Another much needed escape, and good influence for Grant, was his grandparents’ ranch in Oklahoma. He was named after his grandfather, Wallace Grant. Grandpa was a real live Indian; a Creek (sometimes called the Muscogee Creek Indians) to be exact. He lived on a ranch, and owned horses, guns, and everything cool. On his ranch in the South, there was no talk of corporations and imperialism. His grandparents even went to church. Grandma and Grandpa were nice to each other. They didn’t hit each other or scream. They were happy. They were “normal.” They were the complete opposite of what Grant knew in Forks, Washington.

From elementary school through high school, Grant and Carol spent every other summer in Oklahoma. Grant grew very close to his grandpa. Grandpa didn’t like Larry for the obvious reasons. Grandpa didn’t like it one bit that that lazy communist Larry married his daughter and was poisoning his grandchildren’s minds with all that socialist stuff. So Grandma and Grandpa tried to show Grant and Carol everything they could about how decent people lived. They prayed a lot that their grandkids would turn out decent, given the strikes they had against them.

Grandpa was a war hero, but he wouldn’t talk about it. Grant learned that Grandpa was in the Army Air Corps in World War II. His plane got shot up over Northern Germany and they managed to limp it over to Sweden. They bailed out over Sweden and landed safely. The Germans couldn’t touch him in Sweden because it was a neutral country.

Grandpa got to the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm and spent the war working there. He would never say, but everyone knew he was spying there. Grant thought this was the coolest thing ever.

Grant asked Grandma about it one day. “Isn’t it great that Grandpa was a spy during the war?” He expected Grandma to be so proud.

She wasn’t. She acted like she hadn’t heard him.

“Grandma,” Grant asked again, “isn’t it great what Grandpa did during the war?

She looked right at Grant; anger filled her eyes. He had never seen her that way. “No, it isn’t,” she said and walked out of the room.

What was that all about? Grant asked Grandpa why Grandma was so mad about him being a hero.

Grandpa didn’t want to talk about it, either. Finally, he said, “Grandma didn’t want me to go off to war. She wanted me to stay in the states and be safe. She felt…,” he was getting teary, which Grant had never seen, “that I was going off on some big adventure and leaving her at home. We love each other very much, but I must admit, Grant, that Grandma and I were never the same after I left for the war. She wouldn’t even come to greet me when I got back home after the war. It took her several years to get over it.” Grandpa smiled and said, “Things are fine now. But she still gets a little mad when people bring it up.”

“Sorry, Grandpa,” Grant said. “I didn’t know.”

“That’s OK,” Grandpa said. “She’ll be fine in a few minutes.

But do me a favor; never go off to a war that you don’t have to.” Never go off to a war that you don’t have to?

That sounded odd. Why would someone do that? Decades later, Grant would remember this conversation vividly, and understand it fully.

One of the best parts about going to Grandpa’s ranch was his guns. Specifically, his cowboy guns, which are a big deal to a boy. Grandpa and Grant went shooting all the time during Grant’s visits. Grandpa taught Grant how to shoot properly and safely, and how to clean and maintain a gun. Grandpa gave Grant a .22 and he took it back home to Forks where he shot it all the time. He earned money for. 22 shells with his paper route and lawn-mowing business. At the hardware store, Grant could get a box of fifty shells for $0.99, which was a lot of money to him, but worth every penny.

Guns became a powerful symbol to Grant. A symbol of how normal, decent people lived, like in Oklahoma. More importantly, guns meant safety to Grant. He understood that having a gun meant people couldn’t hurt him. He could use a gun to make a bad person go away, like when he had the .22 by his bed back in Forks after the knife incident. Grant loved to hold a gun just because he instantly felt safe with one in his hand. He couldn’t explain the feeling but that was it: he felt safe with a gun. He felt instantly calm and able to handle any bad situation.