The Obstacle Course (8 page)

I was running the obstacle course in my dream. I was in slow motion, flowing like the wind to the cheers of the spectators who were lined up to watch. I ran effortlessly, smoothly, all power and grace, every muscle working in harmony.

I came to the last hurdle, the highest one. Springing at it, I cleared the top with ease, soaring into the air, up and up and up, flying like a young god towards the sky.

M
ACGREGOR’S HOBBY SHOP
is the most complete model shop in the Washington area. It’s way over on Georgia Avenue, in Silver Spring, which is in a different county, but it’s the only place to buy your models if you’re a serious builder. I take the bus near my house down to the Mt. Rainier depot and transfer to another bus that goes to Montgomery County, which takes more than an hour, or I hitchhike, which can take a lot of time, too, depending on the rides. Even so, I mostly hitch unless the weather is bad, because I’ll put my money into a model over bus fare every time. I was checking out this frigate, a Confederate model from the Civil War. I like frigates; I like older boats in general, they come from a time I wish I’d lived in, such as when Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and those guys lived. I’ve built a couple frigates, one from scratch even; I found these old drawings and diagrams in this book I checked out from the library in Hyattsville, it took me three months and it didn’t come out exactly the way I’d wanted it to, but it was a good ship, I had a lot of fun making it. Building ships is fun, especially sailing ships. Someday when I’m old and retired from the Navy I want to be a ship’s architect and builder.

One thing I’ve got to do first is learn how to sail. I’ve never actually been on a boat, I mean I’ve been on them but they were always tied up at the dock, not counting boats like canoes and rowboats, I’ve been on those of course, just not a real sailing boat. This summer I’m going to learn, I’m going to go up to Annapolis and find somebody that owns one and volunteer to help out in exchange for lessons. I’ve seen these ads posted around the harbor looking for people to crew, I could be good at that, I’ll be old enough to be away from home on my own, it’ll probably be a relief for my folks to have me out of the house for a while—the feeling would be mutual on my part, too. I’ve been looking forward to it for months, actually, I’ve even figured out how many weeks it’ll be before school’s over.

Besides the frigate there was also this battleship that interested me. It was a World War Two model, really big. It would be the biggest model I’ve ever built. It isn’t graceful like a sailing ship, it’s more just raw power, meant for hunting and destroying. It’s the kind of ship I’ll be in command of someday.

I really like frigates but I’d already built a bunch of them. It was time to build a battleship. I started looking at the plans.

There were a couple other kids in the store besides me, but they were with their dads. These professional-quality models take too much time for a kid, plus they cost real money, a kid would have to be pretty rich to be able to afford them. I’ve tried to get a conversation going with a couple of these kids but we don’t talk the same language. Like I said, I’m a serious builder.

“Now that is a ship.” Bill, a man about my dad’s age who’s one of the owners of the shop, came over and looked at the plans with me. “You’re going to have your hands full with that one, Roy.” Bill’s a really neat guy, we talk about models all the time, he doesn’t talk to me like I’m some dumb kid, like my teachers do. If some of my teachers could see me in here with these complicated models they’d be pretty impressed.

“I know,” I said. “I’ve never built one this big.”

“I guess your dad’ll be helping you, huh?”

What guys like Bill don’t know won’t hurt them.

“He likes ’em, but I do most of the work. He just kind of tells me how great they are. He’s real proud of me.”

My old man’s never seen one of my models, not up close. The times he’s looked in my room he was usually drunk and ragging on me, he wouldn’t know if there was a full-size boat in there, the shape he’s in those times. If he ever did check them out for real he’d think they were junk I’d wasted my money on.

“I want to try a new kind of glue,” I told Bill, moving the conversation off my family, “that kind you were telling me about that dries slower but holds better.”

“These are what the old pros use,” Bill told me, reaching up on the shelf for a handful of bottles. “You have to be very careful with them. I usually don’t recommend them to fellows your age but I think you can handle these, the sophistication level of models you’ve been building.”

He glanced up at a man who was waiting to pay for some brushes.

“What do you think, Admiral,” Bill asked, “isn’t this the brand you like?”

I turned around. This older man was standing behind me. He picked up one of the bottles and examined it with a practiced eye.

The man had salt-and-pepper hair, wore these old-fashioned rimless glasses, and stood erect, like he had a coat hanger in his shirt, except he was relaxed, too, like the way the midshipmen at the Academy stand. I felt myself standing up straighter without thinking about it. He was an old guy, definitely older than my old man, maybe as old as fifty, the kind of man you felt you had to respect just because of the way he looked, like Admiral Halsey, who I’ve seen in the old war newsreels they show at the movies, or MacArthur. MacArthur’s in the Army, not the Navy, but he’s a neat-looking guy, with the aviator sunglasses and the corncob pipe you always see between his teeth. I’ve got this corncob pipe which I hooked from the dime store after I saw this movie about Huckleberry Finn, the one with Mickey Rooney. Once in a while me and my friends go out in this abandoned field near our houses and lie on top of the tall grass and smoke cigarette tobacco in our corncob pipes. It’s nice out there in the fields, it’s like we’re not in Ravensburg at all.

“Yes, I use this brand,” the old guy said, turning to me. “What model are you planning to build?”

“This one,” I said, showing him the battleship kit.

“That’s a large undertaking. You must be an experienced model builder.”

“Roy’s as capable as any of my adult customers,” Bill told him, gushing all over me. Usually I hate it when people do shit like that but when Bill does it it’s okay, because he means it, he isn’t trying to snow me like my teachers do when they’re talking about my so-called wasted potential.

“You should see some of the frigates and cutters he’s completed,” he went on. “He brought one in last month, I swear you would have thought it was crafted by someone who’s been building these things for a lifetime.”

This was getting to be too much, this bragging on me that he was doing. I’m more used to being told how crummy I am at things, not how good.

“You like building ships, do you?” this old guy asked.

“Yes, sir. Someday I want to have a full collection, every ship that’s ever been commissioned by the U.S. Navy.”

“You must have salt water in your blood,” he said, smiling at me.

“Yes, sir.” There was something about him that made it natural to call him “sir,” it wasn’t phony or anything, I didn’t feel like a brown-noser doing it. “I love it, when I graduate high school I’m going to Annapolis.”

I’ve never told anybody that before, not even my best friends. They’d mock me for it is why. This old guy, though, he didn’t look the type who’d mock anyone.

He stared at me for a minute, this unblinking stare.

“I’m a graduate of the Naval Academy myself,” he informed me, not bragging or anything, just stating a fact.

“You are … were …?” I felt dumb saying it like that. He didn’t seem to notice, fortunately, or I’d have really felt stupid.

“Class of ’23.”

“I’ll bet you’ve been all over the world.” This was a real Navy man standing in front of me, the first one I’d ever actually had a normal conversation with.

“I’ve seen my share.”

“I guess you were in World War Two.”

“Yes, I was.”

“Which theatre?” I asked.

“Pacific.”

“The big one.” I nodded. I’ve studied all the battles of World War Two. I pretend I’m in them, commanding a battleship or a destroyer. “Did you know Admiral Halsey?” I asked.

“Yes, we knew each other.”

“Nimitz?”

“I knew him as well.”

“The admiral’s being modest,” Bill cut in, from behind the counter, “he was Nimitz’s right-hand man before he retired.”

“You were?” I was in awe, I shit you not. He was just this little guy, he kind of looked like old President Truman, who was a little guy too, although he was a tough motherfucker from what my teachers have said. Here I was standing at a counter in this rinky-dink hobby shop talking with a guy who’d been a real Navy admiral, who’d worn stars on his collar.

“For a time.”

“During the war?”

“Yes.”

For one of the few times in my life I was speechless.

“Where are you from, son?” he asked me, it was like he could tell how I was feeling.

“Ravensburg, sir. Over to Prince Georges.” It was pretty obvious since I was wearing my Ravensburg High jacket, but he was the kind of polite guy who would ask you where you were from even if it was obvious.

“A town I know,” he said.

“You do?” Ravensburg’s a hick town, how could a man like this know it? Heard of it, maybe, but
know
it?

“The British burned it on their way to the capital during the War of 1812,” he informed me.

“Oh yeah, that.” Big fucking deal, it’s Ravensburg’s one claim to fame, something that happened a hundred and forty years ago. Nothing else has ever happened since, that’s the kind of town it is.

“And it’s on the road to the Academy,” he added. “Have you ever been there?”

“I go every weekend practically,” I said. “I practically live there weekends.”

“Really?” He seemed impressed at that.

“Oh, yeah, I really like it up there, I hang around, eat with some of the midshipmen, run the obstacle course and stuff with them …” I trailed off—something told me this wasn’t a guy to throw a load of bullshit at.

“And you want to be one of us,” he said. “An Annapolis man.”

“It’s my dream, sir.”

That made him smile, although I felt self-conscious about saying it, since I never do.

There wasn’t much more to talk about after that. A fourteen-year-old kid and a retired admiral in the Navy—except for liking models and the Navy we didn’t have a lot in common, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I was pretty tongue-tied, from who he was and what he’d done.

“Good luck on your model,” he told me, offering his hand, which I shook.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Perhaps we’ll meet again. Continue our discussion.”

“Sure,” I said. “Okay.” I felt like a complete moron, even though he was trying hard to be nice and make me feel easy. I couldn’t help it; he had too much class for me to be comfortable with him, not right away anyway.

He paid for his purchases and walked out. I watched him go. An admiral—a Naval Academy admiral. I’d actually talked to one.

“Hell of a nice guy, the old admiral,” Bill said, bringing me back to earth. “Good model builder, too,” he added, “he’s in here almost as much as you are. You’ll probably run into him again sometime. You can compare notes.”

Sure, I thought. Like some Navy admiral wants to talk to a kid like me. He’d been polite, that’s all. But we had talked. From now on, any time I worked on a model, I’d remember that.

We were cruising around, me and Burt. Not really cruising, you need wheels for that, just kind of bopping here and there, fucking off, trying to keep from being bored out of our gourds, which is pretty easy to do in a chickenshit town like Ravensburg. Be bored, I mean. First we hit Doc Goldberg’s drugstore and read through about half the comic books before Doc came over and told us “library’s closed, boys.” That’s his favorite expression. I’ve been reading comic books in there since first grade, which is how I learned to read, sitting on a pile of ladies’ magazines and working my way through the comic books in Doc’s drugstore. He’s a pretty good guy, just don’t swipe nothing from him, Dickie Chast stole a comic once, one measly comic, and Doc called the cops on him. Dickie had to go to jail all night long until his old man bailed him out, for a dime
Plastic Man.

Just about everything was closed, seeing’s how it was a week-night. Everything closes real early around here during the week, except the places that sell booze. There ain’t no clock on drinking, as my old man likes to say.

Finally we wound up down at the bowling alley, which is this low-slung unpainted cinderblock job connected to the skating rink, which is where I spend quite a few of my Saturday afternoons when I’m not up at Annapolis. Everybody hangs out at the rink, you can see all your buddies there, plus all the girls in town go, all the neat ones anyway. It’s got a big parking lot in front. There ain’t a hell of a lot of money in Ravensburg but what there is goes into wheels. You catch some cherry vehicles cruising around this town, best cars in the whole D.C. area.

The alley and rink are in the south part of town, the real white-trash section, about as far south as any sober white man wants to go at night. Any farther you’re looking to get your head bashed in by one of the hobos living in the jungle down by the railroad tracks, or by some nigger voodoo doctor wanting some white blood for one of their sacrifices. The niggers live past the railroad tracks on the other side of the Anacostia River. Nobody’s crazy enough to go down there, that is for shit-sure. I don’t know anybody who’s actually had his veins opened up by any of the coloreds, but I’ve heard the stories since I was a kid, and I don’t want to ever find out if they’re true or false.

I didn’t really want to go in the bowling alley, but it’s about the only place open at night where kids can go in, and they’ve got a whole lot of great pinball machines, which Burt likes playing with a purple passion. That boy is one mean pinball player, he could win contests if they ever had any.

The reason I didn’t want to go in was because my old man was inside. Tuesday night’s his league’s bowling night. He’s on the Lions Club team, the Ravensburg Lions. Not exactly an exclusive club, not with my old man being a member. They’re a motley crew, they can’t bowl worth a shit except for my old man, they’re always down at the bottom of the standings. Not that they give a shit—they just want a night out so’s they can drink and check out the women bowlers. Nobody ever comes with their wife or husband, it’s like an unwritten law, nobody wants their style cramped.