Hero–Type (18 page)

Or maybe I'm just getting messed up enough that he's starting to make sense to me.

Either way, though, I have to admit he's got more experience at ... well, just about everything. So I might as well use it.

Another commercial comes up. Dad reaches to fast-forward the tape, but I jump in:

"Hey, Dad. How do you stop people from being stupid?"

He grunts and rolls his eyes. "You don't."

"Really?" You're kidding me. I thought for sure that at some point someone must have figured this out.

"I've tried to explain to people when they're being stupid," he says, "but then I realized something: Most people
like
being stupid."

"I don't get it."

He pauses the game as it comes back from commercial. "Some people just prefer it. It makes their lives easier if they let other people think for them."

"But that doesn't make any sense. That's just stu ... Oh."

He nods in satisfaction and starts the game again.

"Hey, Dad?"

He does one of those hiss-y inhales that makes me think I've bugged him one too many times, but then he pauses the game. "Yeah?"

"What, uh, what do you think about flag burning?" Riordon's jab is still bugging me.

"You planning on burning a flag?" he asks with such stern disapproval that I feel guilty for something I've never even contemplated doing.

"No."

"Well, good. I mean, it would be a stupid thing to do. You'd get people so riled up that they'd miss the point. There are better ways to get your opinions across."

"But what about the people who
do?
"

He shrugs. "Who cares, really?"

"But the flag's, like, a
symbol
of our country. People died for it."

"When I was only a little bit older than you ... There was a picture, OK?
That
picture..."

He shakes his head. Clears it. It's a good talking day for Dad, I guess. "I remember seeing a picture. In the paper. The collapse. You know, the collapse of the Soviet Union. A Russian soldier, burning a Soviet flag. You see? If
he
can ... I remember thinking to myself, 'If he's free enough to do that over
there
...' Isn't that what it's all about, Kevin?"

Well, OK. Tell the truth, I'm not 100 percent sure what the Soviet Union is or was. But anyway, I get his point—if people in other countries can burn their flags, then shouldn't we be allowed to, here in this, "the freest country in the world" according to John Riordon?

"Thanks, Dad."

He nods sort of dreamily, like he's glad he doesn't have to talk anymore. Did he always know this kind of stuff, back when I wasn't listening to him? It's tough to know someone's smart when they don't talk. Mom always said he was smart, but Mom also said she loved him.

I stay up late thinking about it all. Dad's right: People will stay stupid if they can. And in being right, he confirmed what I was thinking before, so that's cool.

What people don't get is that symbols may be great, but they're just
symbols,
right? And the problem with a symbol is that you don't always know what it means, or what it means to someone else. So you think you're on the same page, but you're not. If it took us hours of arguing in English class and we still couldn't agree on what the moors symbolize in
Wuthering Heights,
how the hell can we assume we all agree on what the
flag
symbolizes?

I saw a guy on TV once who said that the flag didn't symbolize freedom—it symbolized years of slavery and oppression. I don't really agree with that, but who am I to tell him he's wrong?

So it's like everyone can dump whatever meaning they want on a symbol, which means that you can't really rely on it. You can't be sure it means what you think it means, so it's better to go to the truth of the matter, to the meanings themselves.

Right?

My head hurts. This stuff is complicated. I'm not used to it.

OK, here's the thing—no one died for the flag, for the symbol. That's stupid. They died for what the symbol
represents.

I mean, the flag represents freedom. To me, at least. And that's fine and I'd probably be willing to die to protect my freedom.

But would I be willing to die to protect the
flag?
Duh—no! It's just a flag. It's just a piece of fabric.
No one
would die for that. Even the people who think flag burning is wrong—if you put them in that position, I bet they'd choose their own lives instead.

In fact, around about midnight, I have something of a revelation, which is very cool. The right to burn the flag is the greatest possible symbol of our freedoms. That's what I realize.

So, I consider burning a flag at school. Just to make my point. Leah couldn't
help
but be impressed, right?

Only it wouldn't be a
real
flag. It would be one with forty nine stars. Or one with a single off-white stripe. Or something like that. Some tiny, minuscule difference, just to show how stupid it is to get upset about it. Because, like, burning that extra star somehow makes it terrorism or what Father McKane used to call "apostasy"? (I love that word. It sounds cool when you say it, but how often do you actually get to use it?
Apostasy.)

But two things stop me: One, Dad's right. The act of burning the flag would get everyone so pissed off they would miss my point.

And second of all—I don't know where to get a flag with just forty nine stars or a single off-white stripe.

So, I settle for a rebuttal. It's not fair that Riordon got to critique everything I said but I didn't get the chance to bash him back. I'll take up Fam's offer to help and I'll go to the Doc and demand a rebuttal.

I drift in and out of sleep. I've got Dad and Fam and Leah and Dr. Goethe and Reporter Guy all yelling and screaming and cajoling inside my head, and who can sleep with
that
kind of racket going on?

Mom joins in the chorus, too. I still haven't told Dad about her offer. I need to, but I can't for some reason. I mean, I'm definitely going. There's no question about it. I'm going. I need to get away from Brookdale, away from the whole hero/villain thing, away from Leah, because ... Because it's not good for me to be around Leah.

I think of what I
really
wanted to ask Dad: Is it true what they said in the
Loco?
Did you betray your country? What happened, Dad?

I mean, I
need to know.
Because I feel like I'm following in his footsteps, in a way. And I need to know if it's the right thing to do, or if I'm gonna end up pissed off and depressed and just plain messed up, emptying garbage cans for a living.

So after Dad leaves for work in the armpit of the morning, I start snooping through his stuff.

It takes longer than I figured it would. Dad's bedroom is tiny, but, like the rest of the apartment, it's piled high with all kinds of un-garbage. Three broken vacuum cleaners, one of those powered mop things with a cracked plastic case, the guts of a computer monitor, and two different nightstands with the drawers removed and stacked up in a corner.

I go pawing through all the junk, looking for hidden stuff, then go through the dresser. Dad's clothes, in total opposition to the surroundings, are folded and stacked all military-like. I'm very careful handling them—for all I know, Dad has memorized exactly how everything is positioned.

Nothing in the dresser, so I move to the tiny closet. There's boxes of my stuff in there, things I haven't looked at in years. I don't let myself get caught up in it, though—I have a mission.

At the bottom of the closet, way in the back, I find a shoe-box that doesn't look all that sexy, so there's gotta be
something
in it for Dad to have kept it. I sit there for a second, holding the box, and I'm sure that when I open it it's going to actually
be
shoes, because that's the way my luck seems to run.

Instead, there are two smaller boxes inside, and some papers. I try to read the papers, but it's all military gobbledegook and my brain gives up because the boxes are much more interesting.

I open them.

Wow.

Medals.

N
OW, MY DAD HAS TOLD ME IN THE PAST
that the army gives out medals at the drop of a hat. They have medals just for being in the army during a time of war, for example, whether you fought in that war or not. (Dad calls that one the "CNN Medal" because you get it for watching the war on TV.) They give you medals when you pass certain tests. So just having medals doesn't necessarily mean anything.

But I recognize one of them—a Purple Heart.

The other one is shaped like a stop sign. It has an eagle on one side and says, Soldier's Medal for Valor on the other.

Valor.
That doesn't sound like something they give to guys who betray their country.

I sit there on the floor for a long time, staring at those medals. I have a lot of trouble imagining my dad as a guy who would do something that would be medal-worthy. He's just, you know, my dad. Everyone has a dad. Most of them are nothing special. Mine hauls garbage and is surly a lot and can never finish a thought when it's a really important one and can barely cook enough food to keep himself alive. What could he have done that's so great that the army would give him two medals?

And what did he do that was so bad that they kicked him out?

I put everything back where I found it and go back to bed, but now any chance of sleeping is totally shot.

I have to know.

It's three in the morning, so in California it's only midnight. Mom and Rita are probably already asleep, but I can't help it—I watch my hand pick up the phone, watch my fingers punch the number in.

Mom picks it up on the third ring. Her voice is clotted with sleep. "John?" she says. "Did something happen to Kevin?"

"It's me, Mom."

"What are ... Do you know what time it is?"

"Yeah."

"Is something wrong, honey? Is your dad OK?"

"Yeah, Mom. Look, I'm sorry I woke you up, but I have to ask you something."

"Wait. Hold on. Can't this wait until morning?"

"It
is
morning."

"I know. I just meant..."

"Please,
Mom."

A long sigh. And then I hear her say something that's not meant for me. Talking to Rita, I guess. And then: "Hold on. I'm switching phones."

And then she's on a different line and Rita hangs up the bedroom phone. "What is it? What do you need to know? Is this about coming out here?"

"No. Mom, why was Dad kicked out of the army?"

She doesn't say anything for a little while. I sort of expect her to explode at me, to be all like: "You woke me up for
this?"

Instead, she says, "Honey, I don't think we should talk about that."

"Come on, Mom. Don't I deserve to know?"

"You don't need to know about this. Really. Maybe when you're out here we can sit down and talk about it. You know, face to face. But I just..."

"Come on, Mom. Please."

It takes some time, but she's tired and I'm persistent and I wear her down and she tells me.

She tells me everything.

I hang up and I manage to get a little bit of sleep before I have to leave for school. When I grab my keys in the morning, though, I can't help looking at the key to Brookdale hanging there. It's like my own personal medal, I realize.

They build you up and then they tear you down,
Dad said.

And he would know. He would know.

I head to school with a sort of righteous fire burning in my belly and run off to the office before the bell can ring for homeroom.

"I want another chance," I tell Dr. Goethe.

He looks at me from behind his desk, his eyes weary and his face a little flushed. I think of all the trouble he went through last year when Flip hacked the lacrosse team's grades and I feel a little bit sorry for him, but no one's keying
his
new car and following
him
home from school and cornering
him
in the locker room, so the sympathy doesn't last very long, tell the truth.

"Kevin, this is over."

"The debate on free speech is
never
over." It just kind of spills out of me, but I like the way it sounds. Very action-movie-hero-ish. There should be music playing in the background.

"You had your say. John had his say. Let's put an end to this, OK?"

"But, Dr. Goethe—"

"But nothing. You're here to learn, Kevin. Not to take potshots at each other on the morning announcements. I let you and John have some time and some fun because I felt it was an important lesson for your classmates. But it's time to get back to the business of learning."

Fun?
He thinks this is
fun?
I want to know what he's smoking and if I can have some of it, because I could
use
a good dose of fun right about now!