He did look at me then, a grin flashing across his face. “That’s what I like about you, Gary. You get your fight up when you need it, but everything else you take in stride. It makes you a good player. I’d like to see you as a co-captain next year.”
“Yeah, me too.” I shoved my hands into my pockets with a sigh. “But it ain’t gonna happen, Coach. That’s why I gotta talk to you. I’m dropping out of school at the end of the semester and enlisting.”
Coach quit walking like he’d hit a wall. He’d fought in the first war, and I could see all of those memories rise up and whiten his face before he got ‘em under control an’ looked like he was tryin’ ta sound reasonable: “What in hell would you do that for?”
I shrugged. Hands in my pockets meant I couldn’t wave ‘em around like I was asking for forgiveness. “The GI bill, Coach. It’s the only way I can figure payin’ for the rest of college.”
“We can find you a scholarship—”
“Nah, Coach.” I kept my voice quiet, remembering this conversation from most of a lifetime ago. “I got the grades for ‘em, but it’s late in the year, and other guys have snatched ‘em up.”
“There are private avenues, people I can talk to—”
“Coach.” This one wasn’t worth arguing. If I didn’t join the Army, I’d never go to that USO dance and I’d never meet Annie. No way I was risking that big of a change to my life. “I don’t need the special treatment, Coach. This is what I’m gonna do.”
“They’ll send you to war, Gary. You’ll go to Korea.” There was a tremor in Coach’s voice I hadn’t been able to hear fifty years ago, when I was young and dumb an’ full of fire. The way most of me was right now, ‘cause the kid was in charge an’ the old man was only a voice of experience along for the ride. I wanted to make that kid say I know, Coach. I know what it’s like, I know about the sleepless nights you get for a lifetime after. I know about the faces that don’t go away. I understand, and I wanna thank you for looking out for me. But this is what I gotta do anyway.
I couldn’t, a’course, not anymore than I could have when I was twenty years old and feeling a little smug about my prospects and not a bit afraid getting sent to war. Best I could do was try not to sound condescending, like I thought I knew what I was talking about, when all I said was, “I know, Coach. I’ll send a postcard from Seoul, all right?”
Saunders got a tight pinched smile an’ patted my shoulder. “All right, son. I wish I could talk you out of it, but if your mind’s made up…”
“It is, Coach.”
“Then you send me that postcard, and I’ll put it with the rest.” He shook my hand and we walked away, my heart bangin’ with a young man’s excitement and an old man’s dread.
Next step I took was into the recruiter’s station, though real memory told me weeks had passed, that I’d said g’bye to all my buddies, gone out drinking more than I shoulda and kissed a few girls who weren’t mine to kiss. I stood up an’ got measured, six foot two, two hundred ten pounds, good vision, no asthma, strong heart, all of it ticked off on boxes like I was a piece of meat being processed until I was pronounced fit for duty. Another step and I was in uniform, in Basic, turning back to give a fellow recruit a helping hand, an’ the drill sergeant was in my face givin’ me hell for doin’ it. I said, “Sir, yes sir!” and “Sir, no sir!” like I was supposed ta, and next time gave the guy a hand again. Little skinny black fella named Andy, he told me that time. Andy from Alabama. Him and me would stay friends the rest of our lives, all the way into the next century. I wanted to say somethin’ to him when I gave him a hand the third time, maybe this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but I was starting to get it then.
This was a young man’s life. This was me, an’ I wasn’t just going through the motions. I was living this, living it for the first time, the way anybody would, except I had just enough awareness to know how to change things if I wanted to.
“Horns,” I said out loud and a little desperate, “not every minute, buddy, or I’ll go crazy. Give it to me in chunks. Lemme just touch down at the important parts—” Because if I sat in the back of my own head for fifty years, judging and second-guessing and making my older self re-think every choice I’d made as a kid, knowing I had to make the same damned choices every time anyway just to get where I was going, then I wouldn’t make it through. Everybody liked to say “If I knew then what I know now,” but knowin’ then, acting on it then, would make now different. Nobody could do it the same way twice, live the exact same life a second time. It wasn’t humanly possible.
I got the faintest idea that Cernunnos was laughing, like maybe he hadn’t thought about humanly possible ‘cause he wasn’t human, and the idea of my life started speeding up again. He would send me through my life the same way I’d just skipped through the games and volunteering for the Army, like I was seeing the highlights reel. Big events stood out, an’ some of those little moments a guy can’t shake for some reason, like trippin’ over my shoelace comin’ around a corner during Basic. Nobody saw it except me and some birds, but a lifetime later I still got hot around the collar thinking about it.
I muttered, “Thanks,” and hunkered down in my own head to watch the highlights, tryin’ hard not to think too much about what I was doing when I took Andy’s hand and pulled him up for the third time. Not the last, either, but he offered his own hand to me a lotta times down through the years, until neither of us could count how many or who’d done it first.
But I wasn’t gonna worry about that, or anything else. I was just gonna hold on, and live…now.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Basic training ended with two days of leave. Me an’ a buncha squirrely guys who hadn’t seen a doll in weeks came outta the gates like scatter from a shotgun. Half of ‘em split off right away, heading for the bars and the docks. Me and Andy and some of the others thought better of ourselves, and headed for the USO dance. I guessed it wasn’t that we weren’t hoping ta get lucky. It was more a matter of pride, and maybe of figuring the world wasn’t gonna end if we didn’t score. Not even if we got shipped off tomorrow an’ didn’t see another woman for months.
‘sides, we were all looking pretty good in our sharp new dress greens with the seams pressed crisp an’ the shoulders sitting square. Ten weeks of training got even the softest of us in some kinda decent condition, an’ the guys like me who’d been athletes to start with were leaner an’ harder than we’d ever been. Way I saw it, there was a dance floor full of girls who were just waiting for some fresh new Army boys to come say hi, and I hated to disappoint ‘em.
The dance hall was an Eagles Club, plenty big for a city with a base the size of Fort Ord. Even with half the lights in the joint off, an eight-piece band was easy to see at the far end of the hall, ‘cause hardly anybody was on the dance floor yet. The band was dressed even better’n we were, and the singer was so light-skinned he looked white. A whole group of Negro girls near the stage looked like they might be there for the band insteada the boys. Mosta the white girls were standing in little groups against the walls, though a few were dancing together and a few more were standing all alone looking forlorn.
Andy just about backed outta the room the minute he walked in. Woulda, in fact, if I hadn’t been right behind him and getting my toes stomped by his spit-polished shoes. I shoved him forward. “Where you going? We just got here.”