He discovered the source of the problem quickly, shortly after we'd installed a fresh battery, changed the plugs, oil, and fluids, and attempted to fire up the Chevy engine for the first time. He listened with a practiced ear to the pathetic idling of the engine, looked into the compartment for a moment, and then told me to shut it down.
"Head gasket is blown." He told me happily.
"Okay." I said, not knowing what that meant. Like my old man I knew next to nothing about the internal combustion engine. "Can we fix it?"
"Are you serious?" He asked, shaking his head.
"What do you mean?"
"I can do it in a day for less than a hundred bucks." He told me. "The head gasket is the seal between the head and the engine block. If it's blown it fucks up the compression and lets oil and shit spray out. That keeps the engine from running or from cooling right. If that's all that's wrong, we'll have this thing up and running next weekend."
"No shit?" I asked, impressed.
"No shit." He answered happily.
So the next Saturday he came over at nine in the morning and we went to work. First we visited the auto parts store where he requested the appropriate parts and I paid for them. We took them back to my garage and he opened his toolbox. We went to work, me very much in the apprentice mode.
I had noticed that he was preoccupied with something else throughout the day but I didn't broach the subject. Mike was not the kind of person you tried to draw out. If he wanted to tell you what was wrong, he would do it. If he didn't, you weren't going to get it out of him.
It was after we'd removed the head and placed it on some newspapers on the garage floor along with all of the other parts, as he was scraping the old gasket off, that he finally spilled it. Our hands were grimy and greasy and both of us were dripping sweat from the high humidity. We were both drinking cans of beer that my Dad had supplied us with.
"I'm thinking about joining the Air Force." He told me, scraping away with a razor.
That one sentence sent chills through my body, even before my mind completely processed it. The Air Force? I could almost feel fate pulling at Mike, could almost sense it as a hostile, aware presence in the garage with us, a cloaked figure with a satisfied smile on it's face.
"What did you say?" I asked quietly, hoping I hadn't heard him right, or that he was merely joking with me.
"The Air Force." He repeated, grinding away at a stubborn piece of gasket. "I got a call from this recruiter guy the other day and I talked to him about twenty minutes. He was a really cool guy."
A really cool guy. Not surprising. Recruiters were, after all, salesmen. A good one would have gone out of his way to learn the lingo of his target group and would talk just like a teenager, even if he was a fifty year old man. They were paid to seduce the young and they were good at it.
"What did he say?" I asked, my mind in overdrive trying to think of a way to counter this situation.
"Well we talked for a little bit." He said. "And I told him that I was interested in firefighting. He says that every Air Force Base, everywhere in the world, has a fire department. They handle all of the medical aids and fires on the base housing. They also get extensive training in aircraft fires and rescue. If I spent four years in doing that it would almost guarantee me a job when I got out. Think of how that would look on my resume, being trained in aircraft suppression, HAZMAT, and with four years of practical experience doing it."
I realized two things as I listened to him. One, was that he was repeating, almost word for word, what the recruiter had thrown at him. Mike would never have said anything like "resume" or "practical experience". The second thing was that he was seeking my approval of his plan. Whether he was doing it unconsciously or consciously, he was running his idea by me hoping I'd say it was a great one. This gave me hope that I could divert him from what I was sure would be a destructive path. I had no illusions about what would happen if Mike joined the Air Force. But I needed to do it carefully. If I pushed too hard, my words would have the opposite effect that I intended.
"Did he tell you that you could go into the fire department?" I asked.
"He said that I could put that in as my request for skills and they would try to place me there." Mike said. "It sounds like a pretty good deal."
"Yeah." I nodded thoughtfully. "It sounds like one."
"I made an appointment to talk to him tomorrow." He said.
I chewed my lip a little, knowing that the recruiter had every intention of getting Mike to sign his name to the line tomorrow, knowing that Mike would most likely do so if left to his own devices. What to do?
I picked up my beer, which was warm at that point and tasted like shit but I took a big drink of it anyway.
"I've looked into the military a little bit." I told him.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." I affirmed. "It could be a good career move under certain circumstances, but there's a few things you have to realize."
He scowled a little bit. "What do you mean?"
I took a deep breath. "Well," I said. "First of all there's the recruiter. You have to understand what his purpose is. In our country we have a volunteer military. There's no draft in place so they have to staff everything with people who have signed their names of their own free will. In order to do that, they have to make the military look attractive to their prospects, to draw them away from civilian life. That's where the recruiter comes in. He probably sounded like he was your best friend, right?"
Mike shrugged, scraping away a little more gasket. "Yeah, he was pretty cool."
"That's because he's a salesman. His job is to sign up people for the Air Force. He wouldn't be doing it if he wasn't good at it. So he'll pretty much tell you anything in order to get you in there. He'll go on and on about how great the Air Force is but he won't tell you the unpleasant parts because that might put you off a little. So the first thing you need to realize is that the recruiter is not really your friend. He has a job to do, and his job is to sign you up."
"Yeah," Mike scowled further, "But…"
"Now hold on." I interrupted. "I'm not saying the military is a BAD idea. I'm just trying to get you to see that the recruiter can not necessarily be trusted to hold your best interests in mind. Can you see this?"
He thought for a moment and finally nodded. "Yeah." He agreed. "I see where you're coming from."
"For instance," I said. "Did he mention the ASVAB to you?"
"The az-vab?" Mike asked.
"Armed services vocational assessment battery." I translated. "The ASVAB. It's a test they give you once you're committed. It's a general knowledge exam designed to get into your mind a little and see what makes you tick. Psychologists and so forth have designed it and it measures what your strengths and weaknesses are. From that, they determine what job you're going to be assigned to once you're in."
"But he told me they'd put me into the Firefighting School." Mike protested.
"No no." I corrected. "You yourself just told me that they would put that in as a request for skills and TRY to assign you there. He didn't actually say that you would be put in there, did he?"
Mike thought for a moment. "No." He finally said. "He didn't. But still, my request will be in. Why wouldn't they put me there?"
"Lots of reasons." I explained. "First and foremost your ASVAB might say you wouldn't be a good firefighter. If that's the case, then you won't get it no matter what. If your ASVAB says you'd make an excellent, oh, missile technician in some silo in North Dakota, then that's where you're going to go. But even if your ASVAB says you'd make a good firefighter, there might not be any openings for that skill. I imagine that firefighting and MP skills are taken up pretty quickly."