Sharpshooter
Authors: Chris Lynch
M
y pal Morris is a top-shelf guy, but man, enough already with the pledges. If the boy had a motto it would be,
A pledge for everything, and everything in a pledge.
Since we were kids, the four of us â myself, Morris, Rudi, and Beck â have been signing up to one solemn oath after another: to say we would not ever compete for the same girl, that we would back each other up in any hopeless, stupid endeavor, and that our four lunches were basically joint property. It's dangerously close to communism the way we do this, but because they're such great friends I make the necessary effort to overlook it.
The big pledge, though, is going to be the test.
Morris started getting these nightmares, on account of the nightly news. (Thanks a lot for that, Mr. Walter Cronkite.) The Vietnam War is coming over loud and clear and blood-red every night, and it's scaring the ever-loving out of our sweet, sensitive Morris. Practically every day he comes to school with tales from the Technicolor horror of his subconscious â tales that always end with the grisly death of the four of us in Vietnam.
But so what?
“Everybody's got to do their bit, Morris, when the call comes,” I say as we change into our red gym shorts and gray T-shirts. We have gym class together in this final semester of our whole school lives.
“No,” he says, grimly and quite seriously.
“No?” I respond. “No? How do you figure no?”
“Listen, Ivan, man,” he says, “I can't live with it. Okay? I can't live with the idea of us, of
you
” â in a highly uncharacteristic gesture he pokes me hard in the chest â “of any of us, going all the way over there to be slaughtered. The dead part will be horrible enough, but the right-now of it is, I swear, eating me alive.”
I finish tying my sneakers, get up off the bench in front of my locker, and stare down at him. “So,” I say, “bump yourself off now and eliminate the unbearable suspense.”
“Ivan,” he says, scrambling after me as I head for the gym. He hasn't even had time to do up his laces. “I'm not joking. We have to talk about this.”
“No,” I say, “we don't.” I am longing for the relentless, bouncing, echoey sound of the cold brick-wall gym full of nut jobs dribbling and hooting and implying disgusting things about one another's mothers.
As I get to the door, he catches up and, in another unusual maneuver, grabs the waistband of my shorts hard with both hands, yanking me to a halt. I stand there, motionless, refusing to turn.
“Ivan?” he says, and he sounds so pathetic I am panicked somebody will hear us together and I will be lame by association.
I sigh. “I detect the stench of a pact coming on, Morris.”
“You cannot join up,” he says.
I sigh a little more dramatically. You see, I am a military man. My dad is a military man â he rode with Patton in North Africa, saved the world and all that, and had a fine time doing it. I am a fighter. I was born to fight. I like to fight, as long as it is a good and proper, righteous fight.
This pact is about me. Rudi, Beck, and Morris are in no danger of putting themselves forward for duty. But Morris is asking something big of me here, and he well knows it.
And I know there is nothing in the world I could not ask of him. That's the thing. The rat.
“What if I get drafted?” I ask.
The pause indicates he has not even dared to consider this. But he responds true to form.
“Then I'll join. If any one of us gets drafted, I'm joining.”
I laugh out loud at him. I laugh at the notion of Morris in any kind of military situation. And I laugh at the drop-dead certainty of his offer.
“You don't have to do that,” I say.
“Yes,” he says, “I do.”
Of course he does. He is Morris. Truer and bluer do not exist in nature.
I push open the door into the bouncing gym madness and Morris steps up next to me.
Then
boom
, he takes a ball right in the kisser and drops to the floor like a dead man.
I look down at him as he attempts to shake his faculties back to life.
“How many?” I ask, holding up four fingers.
“Four,” he says. “But that doesn't prove anything because you always hold up four.”
“Good answer,” I say, offering him a grin but not a hand up. I am too busy for that as I spin and stomp away.
I have to go polish the gym floor with somebody's face.
It wasn't even a dodge ball. That was a basketball, so no, this cannot be allowed to stand.
This early, and already I am in for a fight and detention.
Jeez, Morris, you and your pledges.
I
f there is anybody built to fight more than me, it's my father. He claims a genetic link to every legendary legion history has ever produced. Spartans, Huns, Vikings â he swears he's got their blood in him. Romans, Ottomans, Prussians â there is not an empire that has passed over the earth without also passing through Dad's bloodline somewhere along the way.
Nothing makes him prouder, though, than his American Indian heritage, which he swears is Sioux despite the fact that his father always insisted it was the less famous, less feisty Narragansett tribe. No matter.
“The
right
fight,” he says, pointing his gnarled tree-root of a finger at me. To get the fingertip to point at the spot between my eyes, he has to aim somewhere around my right jaw muscle. He got that condition in North Africa, fighting shoulder to shoulder with General Patton. That was a famously â
“Right fight, Ivan.”
“I recognize one when I see one, Dad,” I say.
The two of us are doing something we do a lot: watching the news together. We watch it the same way some folks watch sports. Edge of our seats, much gesturing, much commentary. Mom can't watch these days. Because of the war. But my younger brother, Caesar, is with us, half playing, half serious, totally working on imitating my father â his postures, words, ideas.
He could do a lot worse, Caesar, than to imitate the old man.
He's only thirteen, though, so he's got a good while to practice.
The two of them are eating their dinner in front of the TV, pointing sweet late-summer corn on the cobs at the scenes of wild Vietnam action.
“That is a right fight, Dad,” Caesar says.
“Any fight your country is in is a right fight, son,” Dad says.
Dad claims his famous martial bloodline was flowing on
both
sides of the battle of the Little Bighorn. He says, relative or not, General George got what he had coming to him.
“When do you go, Ivan?” Caesar asks me.
Rats.
He hasn't even bothered to ask me
if
I'm going. That's who we are in this family. We are so natural and comfortable with the idea of warfare that my little brother can be eating and watching bloodshed on TV at the very same time as wondering casually when I'm going to throw myself on the spit, too. He could just as easily be asking me to go shoot baskets at the Y down the street.
So it's okay to be casual about marching off to war, but it sure ain't okay to be casual about not marching.
The subject of the pledge has come up only once in the two weeks since I committed myself to not committing myself. That conversation went well â my father mocked me so mercilessly that I pretended it was all a joke.
Dad thought it was the stupidest thing he ever heard.
I kind of feel that way myself, which makes this situation even worse.
They are eating and I am not because I am, in fact, going out to meet Morris and the guys up on Peters Hill at the Arboretum, like we do on a Thursday night. I bring the drinks, Morris brings Fontaine's amazing boneless fried chicken, Beck freaks me out by bringing baked goods
that he makes himself
, and Rudi shocks everyone by bringing himself, not getting run over, and possibly remembering some more drinks.
“I don't know, Caesar,” I say, standing from my chair, pointing at him like I am making an appointment to discuss the matter in greater detail at a later date.
Dad takes a bite of pork chop, looks at me with a squint, and gives me a very similar, more loaded point with his crooked finger.
“I know, Dad,” I say, backing out of the room, calling good-bye to Mom in the kitchen, and hustling myself out of harm's way and into the night.
I am far more afraid of telling my father than facing any Vietcong or North Vietnamese Army.
In fact, I am
itching
to face those guys. I'm feeling a little cheated, not going.
Â
I stop at the store on the way up to the Arboretum. I pass two stores before I stop at the one I stop at, Garcia's, because Garcia's is the one that carries Moxie. Moxie is the world's finest drink. It started out as a medicine, and I am convinced it gives me strength. On the long list of things that make America great, Moxie comes in around five or six. And because apparently Moxie is a thing that is largely unappreciated outside of New England, that is another good reason why New England is right up there. And Garcia's, too, since they have the good taste to carry Moxie, as well as being the only place around where you can get batteries on Christmas Day if you get a present that needs them.
It is a good long hike from my house up to Peters Hill, but I don't mind at all. I like a good long hike.
I am thinking about exactly that as I hike along.
I like a good long hike.
Something's got to give.
I am supposed to bring a full six-pack, but Moxie helps me think. I pop open a can, put the pull tab on my pinkie like jewelry, and I hike and I think.
Two things are right here, but they are in opposition.
One: You cannot break a pledge. No man worth spit ever breaks a pledge. Your word has got to be your word.
Two: You cannot shirk your duty when you know your duty.
Rats.
I haven't walked a half mile before I open a second drink. But it's working. I can feel it. I am thinking more clearly. The evening air, the brisk pace, the magic of Moxie.
It is the lamest pledge we ever made, after all. Certain pledges deserve to be unpledged.
But not broken. That's a violation right there, and violations won't do.
We are going to have to talk about this. We have to come to the negotiating table, and if it means I am responsible for Morris's nightmares going atomic, that may just have to be my burden to bear.
As I march up the steep hill to where the guys are, I don't even feel the gradient. It is as if I am walking level or downhill, even. I am full of energy and purpose and rightness. I have to sort out this pledge thing and get it behind us and get the enemy in front of us. Well, in front of me, at least. The rest of these tad-poles can do what they want with the next four years.
I see Beck and Morris as I approach, before they see me. They are sitting on the granite slab that acts as a bench for looking out at the Boston skyline. They look awfully cute, sitting there side by side like they're on a date or something, until eventually Beck has the sense to put Morris in a headlock. Their version of fighting. I bet the Vietcong are pretty relieved these guys are staying home.
“Hey, is this what happens when I show up late?” I ask.
They turn to face me, and I am prepared to launch right into my case for joining the Army.
But I see their faces, and I flinch. Stupid Morris and his stupid nightmares. This should be easier.
“Ugh,” Morris says, “again with the Moxie? That stuff tastes like carbonated tires.”
The ungrateful little wart, I should tell him right now. I should tell him I signed up for the Army and while I was at it I volunteered him, too.
But I have too much self-discipline for that. So I tell him another necessary truth instead.
“Quiet. Nobody needs Moxie more than you do.”
“You were supposed to bring a full six,” Beck says.
I'm
supposed
to be joining the Army,
I say in my head.
“Yeah, well, I mugged myself on the way over,” is what I say out loud. “I put up a brave fight, though. Where's Bozo, anyway?”
“Not here yet,” Morris says. The two of them have plucked drinks off the rack I brought. It feels like a hostage exchange when I go for the chicken. Fontaine's boneless fried chicken is the kind of thing you defend your country for, and I cannot be shy about going for it. I reach into the bucket and pull out an uncivilized fistful. Then I walk a few feet away to plunk down on a boulder and gather myself, my thoughts, and my words, and I wait for Rudi to complete the picture. When he does, I gotta talk. I tear into the chicken and hardly even chew it. I look like a caveman on my rock. I don't care.
“There he is,” Morris says after only a minute. Rudi is coming, straight up the steep and grassy side of Peters Hill, where the Boston skyline is floating above the trees and high above the boy himself. It is the hard way up.
If there is a hard way to anything, Rudi takes it. Unintentionally.
I laugh to myself, thinking that. Then I stop laughing.
This is insane that I feel like this. This is stupid. Every cell in my body knows I want to go to Vietnam, and every cell knows I should go.
And then I think about these guys. These three jamokes have been just
right there
in every piece of my life for as long as I've been taking notice. Dumb as they can be, and much as I would hate to admit it out loud, these pledges mean something. They have always meant something. They were always the cement that made us one structure rather than the modules we were otherwise. I mean, in what universe would Morris and I be part of an unbreakable
thing
? Or Rudi and Beck? This universe. Ours.
But there comes a time.
Guys gotta grow up.
Things gotta be broken.
“What's that he's carrying?” Beck asks.
Rudi is nearing the top, flapping and panting as he approaches. Then he stands there in front of us for a few seconds. He sticks a sheet of paper in front of Beck's face.
“Does this mean what I think it means?” Rudi whimpers. “Tell me what it means, Beck, man. You're smart, I'm stupid. Tell me I got it wrong, and it doesn't mean what I think.”
Beck starts reading, and from the sinking look on his face it doesn't take long for the meaning to come clear â to me, anyway.
I know the wording. I think my family once had napkins with this printed on them.
“âYou are hereby directed to present yourself for Armed Forces Physical Examination â¦'” I recite.
I had completely forgotten. Although Rudi graduated with us, he is a year older because of having gotten kept back in fourth grade. That means he is nineteen. That means once he performed the miracle of graduating high school with the rest of us, he became eligible for the draft.
It's Moxie time.
I pop my third Moxie, decorate a third finger with a metal pull tab, and watch them try to put it all together.
“Have a brownie, pal,” Beck says to Rudi. Rudi takes the brownie. He begins crying. He fits himself in on the rock between Morris and Beck.
I grow impatient watching the three of them poring over the paper like a bunch of overgrown six-year-olds trying to read along to a hymn sheet. And trying to make it say something other than what it says.
I get up and step right over to them. “What?” I say, then snatch the notice right out of Beck's hands.
I'm reading the words, and checking the details, and getting the picture the others do not want to get. I feel my hips start to shimmy. I feel myself smiling. I don't want anybody to be upset, really I don't. But this is right. The other thing was wrong. What is happening should be happening and I could not pretend to be unhappy about this rightness if I tried.
When it comes down to it, I don't know if I was going to be able to break my pledge. I like to think I would have done it.
But I like better that I didn't have to.
I dance with the sheet, dance with Rudi's notice to report. I dance it to the edge of the hill, with my boys behind me and my Boston all in front of me. I spin back to the guys, then back again toward the skyline, with my hands in the air.
“We ⦠are ⦠goin'⦠to â¦
Nam
, boys!” I shout.
I slam that notice onto the ground in celebration, then I rush up to Rudi, thanking him, congratulating him.
He shakes back. Tries smiling. Does more crying. His face, I see now, looks like it's being pulled by tiny wires in all different directions.
Oh. I'd have known this if I were thinking. I should have known this is how he'd feel. But oh.
“Rudi, buddy, you're gonna be fine,” I say, grabbing him by the shoulders. “You're gonna be more than fine. You're gonna be a man. And you're gonna be a hero.”
Morris does his version of being helpful. “Or maybe he'll fail his physical,” he says.
“This boy ain't failing nothin',” I say, being more helpful, though less truthful.
Because, truth is, our man Rudi could fail the task of falling flat on his face, if falling flat on his face was called for. And if you're being shot at it could well be called for. He's already failed at
receiving
his notice for his physical, as he has arrived here this evening with honest-to-goodness pee staining the front of him.
Beck jumps away from him. “Jeez, Rudi, you didn't even change your pants?”
“I came running. I had to. Had to see you guys ⦔
I decide in this situation the best thing to do is to mock and ridicule Rudi. So that everything seems normal.
“The Rudi peed his pants
dance
,” I sing, adding a crisp sorta conga dance thing. “The Rudi peed his pants ⦔
But as I scramble my brain for rhymes to keep this going, I stumble on
peed
and
need
. He rushed here soaking wet because in his hour of need, his need was us.
And so I cut the dance, and the song, and for a second there I almost give in to getting all emotional.
But we all need some thing or other. That's just how it goes. And this is how this goes.
“Army, baby. The armored cavalry, just like my old man,” I say when Morris has the nerve to question my happiness. “Wait 'til I tell my dad. He always thought Morris's pledge was an ol' nancy pledge anyway.” Or he would have if he believed it was anything but a joke. “No offense, Morris.”
“Of course not,” he says.
“Now we got a real pledge, boys,” I say. “A
man's
pledge.”