Personal Effects (3 page)

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.”

But. But he, and Dad . . .

“If I had stayed . . .” T.J. shrugged, his arms moving up and down over the letters across his chest. “I have no idea where I’d be, assuming Dad and I didn’t kill each other, or . . .” T.J. swallowed the thought, a sour one by the look on his face. “The point is, this was the right thing for me. For
me.
Then. Now. I’d do it all over again. But, Matt, we’re at war. Wars that aren’t going to end anytime soon. You enlist now, and you’ll be deployed somewhere within a year, maybe sooner.”

I swallowed hard, my throat tight and dry.

“Fine if you’re ready. They’ll train you up, teach you what you need to know. But they can’t teach you to want it. So, if you know what you want, and what you want is to serve, then you choose it — eyes open, fully committed, your choice. But if not . . .”

A shudder rolled through me.

“Yeah,” he said. “If you let him bully you into it before you’re ready, you’re gonna be thoroughly screwed.”

I was screwed no matter what. But . . .

“And if you’re not sure, wait.” He nodded and leaned closer to me. “Wait. It’ll be there. Do something else for a while; see what you want. And if you decide later to join up, then great. It’ll be your decision, and I’ll be there to cheer you on. But don’t do it for him, or me, or because you don’t know what else to do. Do it because you want it, or not at all.”