before the Corps shipped our squadron off to fun and sun and gun in the desert, Beth and I did the deed and got ourselves married. A half-drunk preacher culled from a local bar near Beth’s apartment, Jake Freivald standing by my side as best man, and Harold Hennenson, who was often found scrubbing toilets with his toothbrush—not because he was forced to, but out of a fanatic zeal for order—signing all the witness papers in triplicate.
Unlike Harold Hennenson, Jake Freivald would live through the war. Like me, he would return to America feeling lost, without purpose, and without the necessary training to compete in what was already a staggeringly technological job market, where computer programmers were cast onto the street with the morning’s refuse when they couldn’t learn the latest version of C-Triple-Plus quicker than their counterparts. And, like me, he would turn to the one thing that had always sustained him through difficult times, the one piece of hide-saving equipment with which the military way of life had vested us:
We could kill people and not care all that much.
But during the wedding we knew none of this. Harold was alive, and Jake and I were just a couple of knob kids trying to get our business done before jumping onto a transport plane heading into the heart of darkness.
“Somebody here to swear?” gurgled the preacher. During the short ceremony, he kept turning his back to us, ostensibly to cough, but it was pretty clear from his breath that he was belting down a new slug of rotgut with every spin. “Swearing, anybody?”
Harold glanced at me, shrugging his shoulders, wondering what to do. I shrugged back, so Jake took the reins and stepped up. “I stand up for this man,” he improvised. “I swear for him.”
“And…who gives…who gives the lady?”
We hadn’t discussed this. I turned to Beth, afraid that our lack of foresight was about to put a kibosh on the whole deal, when she whispered in my ear, “Harold can do it.”
“You sure?” I whispered back. “We can wait, I guess…Find someone else.”
“Harold will do fine.”
And he did. Stepped up, gave me my lovely bride—hair up; no veil; gown long, rented, slightly frayed at the hem—and backed away just as quickly. The preacher mumbled through a few benedictions, pronounced us husband and wife, and split to go find himself an after-hours club that didn’t bounce men of the slightly stained cloth.
We made love in a motel room I rented for two hours, sweating fantastically in the San Diego summer heat. When it was over, when our time was up, I put on my military fatigues, bundled up my belongings, kissed my wife goodbye, promised to write her every day, and headed up to base and out to the battlefield with a new, purposeful stride in my step.
She took off work for the rest of the night. At least, that’s what she told me.
In a letter she sent me while I was ensconced in one metal monstrosity or another during the war, Beth explained why Harold was the best choice to give her away. “He was the only man who had the chance to screw me and didn’t,” she scribbled, “and that makes him chaste enough in my book.”
Stupidly—thoughtlessly—naively—I wrote back, “We could have waited and called your father.”
I knew it was coming even before I got the reply letter, this one three days later than her usual response, the hurt and pain after all those years of good, healthy psychological burial resurfacing in every angry scrawl. “You’re such a sweet kid,” she wrote in part, “but sometimes you can be a complete asshole.”
No argument.
Enough reminiscing. I’m going outside today. Here’s hoping I make it back.
CHAPTER 5
P resent day, present time, and my heart rate is back to normal—the audible series of beeps from the remote control welded onto my hip tells me I’ve reentered acceptable ranges—and I imagine my adrenaline levels have cooled from their nuclear-reactor
Unlike Harold Hennenson, Jake Freivald would live through the war. Like me, he would return to America feeling lost, without purpose, and without the necessary training to compete in what was already a staggeringly technological job market, where computer programmers were cast onto the street with the morning’s refuse when they couldn’t learn the latest version of C-Triple-Plus quicker than their counterparts. And, like me, he would turn to the one thing that had always sustained him through difficult times, the one piece of hide-saving equipment with which the military way of life had vested us:
We could kill people and not care all that much.
But during the wedding we knew none of this. Harold was alive, and Jake and I were just a couple of knob kids trying to get our business done before jumping onto a transport plane heading into the heart of darkness.
“Somebody here to swear?” gurgled the preacher. During the short ceremony, he kept turning his back to us, ostensibly to cough, but it was pretty clear from his breath that he was belting down a new slug of rotgut with every spin. “Swearing, anybody?”
Harold glanced at me, shrugging his shoulders, wondering what to do. I shrugged back, so Jake took the reins and stepped up. “I stand up for this man,” he improvised. “I swear for him.”
“And…who gives…who gives the lady?”
We hadn’t discussed this. I turned to Beth, afraid that our lack of foresight was about to put a kibosh on the whole deal, when she whispered in my ear, “Harold can do it.”
“You sure?” I whispered back. “We can wait, I guess…Find someone else.”
“Harold will do fine.”
And he did. Stepped up, gave me my lovely bride—hair up; no veil; gown long, rented, slightly frayed at the hem—and backed away just as quickly. The preacher mumbled through a few benedictions, pronounced us husband and wife, and split to go find himself an after-hours club that didn’t bounce men of the slightly stained cloth.
We made love in a motel room I rented for two hours, sweating fantastically in the San Diego summer heat. When it was over, when our time was up, I put on my military fatigues, bundled up my belongings, kissed my wife goodbye, promised to write her every day, and headed up to base and out to the battlefield with a new, purposeful stride in my step.
She took off work for the rest of the night. At least, that’s what she told me.
In a letter she sent me while I was ensconced in one metal monstrosity or another during the war, Beth explained why Harold was the best choice to give her away. “He was the only man who had the chance to screw me and didn’t,” she scribbled, “and that makes him chaste enough in my book.”
Stupidly—thoughtlessly—naively—I wrote back, “We could have waited and called your father.”
I knew it was coming even before I got the reply letter, this one three days later than her usual response, the hurt and pain after all those years of good, healthy psychological burial resurfacing in every angry scrawl. “You’re such a sweet kid,” she wrote in part, “but sometimes you can be a complete asshole.”
No argument.
Enough reminiscing. I’m going outside today. Here’s hoping I make it back.
CHAPTER 5
P resent day, present time, and my heart rate is back to normal—the audible series of beeps from the remote control welded onto my hip tells me I’ve reentered acceptable ranges—and I imagine my adrenaline levels have cooled from their nuclear-reactor
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