SEAL's Code (8 page)

“Vivid dreams. With all this physical training we’ve been doing, I sleep hard, don’t you?”

“Fuckin’ A. But I don’t dream of dead family members.”

It was an odd remark and Danny reminded himself not to bring up the issue of family again, until Jeffrey was ready to open up about it.

The two were inseparable during Hell Week, giving each other the thumbs up when they heard the DOR, or Drop on Request bell.

“Still here,” was the silent refrain they mouthed to each other when they could have eye contact.

By the time they’d finished Hell Week, over half the class was gone. Danny and Jeffrey congratulated themselves as they saw the row of helmets along the walkway outside the equipment room, all belonging to guys who went home. Their dorms were sparse, cinderblock-type construction Danny was familiar with on the res. The view out the one window in their room was of a dirty inlet floating with garbage. They referred to it with lavish words, calling it the romantic “babbling brook of love.”

Though hard, neither man found anything that took them to the brink of wanting to quit. But at the beginning of Second Phase, things turned for Danny. This was where his swims became timed swims. He had to do basic combat diving, going through a variety of obstacles with various pieces of equipment. Danny had never thought of himself as a swimmer, and this particular phase was making him understand that perhaps he wouldn’t be able to go forward.

In the middle of the training, he developed a sore throat and swallowing became a problem. He also started getting so tired his times were increasing. Jeffrey was screaming at him during their tandem swims and Danny just didn’t have the energy to push further.

One weekend, Jeffrey took him to a clinic and there they got the results that Danny had come down with mono. All the long days, lack of sleep and forced physical exercise had taken a toll on his body. Jeffrey was struggling as well, but didn’t have the added burden of Danny’s medical condition.

“You gotta tell them, Danny. All they’ll do is roll you back to the next class.”

“Don’t want to go to the next class. I want to finish it.”

“You’ll make yourself sicker, Danny.”

“I don’t care. I’m not quitting. They’ll have to pull me, but I’m not quitting.”

The instructors were all over Danny, sensing there was a crack in the Navajo’s armor. He received insults as the instructors called him a pot-head.

“Wanna go outside and get a little toke? That what your problem is Indian boy? You just need a little weed to get you through the day?”

“You sure you don’t want to go back to your little cushy bed, and those nice chiquitas back home? You know, the ones who get all horny and turned on and spread their legs for you when they get stoned?”

“You want some ’shrooms?”

“Hey Indian boy, I got a squaw waiting for you back at the No-Tell-Motel. She’s hot for your bod. She just loves giving head. You can lie back and relax and she’ll do all the work on you. Lips made of honey. Suck the cum right out of you.”

On and on it went. Danny wouldn’t quit. He suspected Jeffrey let it be known to a couple of the guys on the squad that Danny was ill. They began cleaning his gear, letting him use the shower first and get a little extra rest. Day by day, Danny found he was not getting worse, but was maintaining. They brought him extra protein, made sure on the timed swims he got to swim drag. When they carried poles down the beach each of the men carried a little more weight so Danny could get by. All he had to do was survive one more week, pass the underwater pool test and he was done. He’d have a week to catch up with his sleep.

From the first day he jumped into the cold pool water, his body began to tense, and then cramp up. His fingers were splayed at odd angles like they’d been broken at the joints, making it hard to make the adjustments with his breather, put on his equipment, untie the kinked hoses that were set up as traps for the boys. Holding his breath became extremely painful. His lungs were on fire. His right eye popped a blood vessel. Each day after the testing, Danny came up on the short list, the list of guys who were on the verge of being cut. They only had three tries at one last underwater exercise and Danny had not passed the first two.

Tomorrow his fate would be sealed.

“So what do you guys do when you need that extra strength, Danny?” Jeffrey asked that night before the trial. “You got any secrets, sacred shit you can call on?”

“Nah. Just the chanting. They do a blessing. Protection is big on the res. But fighting? We don’t pray for that.”

“Why the hell not? Everyone else does?”

“Just not our way. Fighting is a whole other language.”

“Okay, so who protects you in times of lack. When things are the blackest?”

Danny looked out over the inlet to the night sky. The moon was large and yellow. “That’s what we call the warrior, the hunter moon. We tell the stories in the fall, right now, about the great hunts, the warriors that came before.”

“So you pray to that moon right now, Danny.”

“No you don’t pray to a moon, man.”

Then Danny listened, and yes, he heard the singing coming back as he thought about the October stories he’d heard from his grandfather. He allowed the singing to envelop him as he stared into the center of the moon, felt its power and the warmth of its glow on his face. He felt his body healing. He wasn’t cured, but he allowed the singing and the moon’s light, covering him like a healing paste, to bring him the strength to finish the trial one more time.

“Tomorrow’s the day, Jeffrey.”

“Yup. Your right of passage, my man. I’ll be standing on the other side of the tank with all the guys who are gonna go on, and I’ll be the first one to pull your sorry ass up to stand with us.”

Danny didn’t take his eyes off the moon.

The next morning
his jump into the pool jolted him again like it always did. He felt the familiar panic creep through his veins, making his skin feel like a prickly cactus. His instructor’s face was round, and its color was the color of the moon he’d seen last night and dreamt about. He didn’t focus on the hand signals but watched the man’s face. He took his instructions from the people he felt next to him in the water, his People. Their chant was soothing, and then lilting as Danny felt himself want to fall asleep. He watched bubbles from his mouth rise up to the surface, the face of the man above him get smaller and smaller. The color in the blue water got darker and darker blue until he touched the bottom with his toes.

He was out of air. He was supposed to do something with his equipment, take something apart and then reattach it, but he was confused and tired. The People held back the panic that wanted to run inside him like wild horses. He recognized he was failing for the third time. Saw two men above him remove their shirts and shoes and he suddenly wanted to be quicker than they were.

He could feel his ancestors pulling on the arms of the man in panic inside him, holding that man at bay as Danny slowly removed the mouthpiece, untied the knot in his airline, and blew to clear the line with the last few drops of air he had left, watching the small bubbles ascend to the surface. This was the point at which he would either inhale water or air. The singing silenced, and then again the drum and the steady voices of his People came back. The drum became louder and he realized it was his own heartbeat. He inserted the mouthpiece.

The sweet taste of air filled his lungs as one of the men was ready to jump above him, but another held him back. They leaned over and watched carefully. He thought perhaps he heard cheering through the water. As he touched off from the bottom of the pool and began to ascend to the surface, he heard Jeffrey’s voice louder than the others.

It was pandemonium. He almost forgot to give the instructor his last signal, the thumbs up, which was quickly mirrored by the three instructors.

By the beginning of the third phase, only about forty of the original class remained. All the
big shots
were gone, all the guys they’d started out being most impressed with. Guys who had a plan and thought they had it mentally figured out and liked to speak about it often were the first to go. Danny slept the week between nearly twenty-four hours a day until he felt himself get stronger. His focus improved. He tested best in his class at marksmanship. His runs got faster. He’d earned the respect of others and was one of the leaders in the class. The insults lessened. He sensed a new level of respect from his instructors. He worked longer, came off the range last.

That old wildcat Trident was definitely in his crosshairs. He could almost feel the weight of it on his uniform, the gold glinting in the sunlight.

The wilderness training his grandfather had given him had toughened Danny up. The running, swimming or in the snow in Alaska during SQT, or SEAL Qualification Training, made him stronger. With each phase he felt he was developing into the man of steel he’d always intended to be.

Old Chester had taught him how to deal with hunger, and on some of their hunting trips, they purposely didn’t eat for sometimes two to three days so as not to spook their prey. He knew how to operate a slingshot with deadly skill and knew, even if he’d gotten stranded in the remote desert, which was home, or the icy cold of the Northwest and all parts in between, he could survive on the land, and have plenty of food and water to sustain himself. His grandfather had told him stories of World War II and the Navajo Code Talkers who hunted and ate quite well in their jungle environs, while the rest of their platoons had to exist on military K-rations.

He began to understand what it was like for his grandfather, what he had sacrificed. Danny felt he could do it too.

He liked to sneak up behind people like a ghost and learned how to make himself and his scent too small to be detected by most of the animal population as well. He found sport in doing that to Jeffrey on a regular basis.

As they were finishing their SQT, Jeffrey spoke about it one day. “You know, big guy, you’re starting to make me nervous. You sure you’re not working out some ancient form of cowboys and Indians on my sorry ass? I don’t see you picking a fight or sneaking up to scalp any of the other recruits.”

Danny didn’t mind his nickname,
big guy.
The games the two of them played reminded him of the happy years growing up with Wilson. It was one of their favorite games to play, Cowboys and Indians, except they’d always fought over who had to be the cowboys, since the Indians always won.

He missed Wilson and wondered how he was doing.

“So, you got anyone at home?” Jeffrey asked one day.

“Not really.” Danny found himself going shy. There wasn’t a day that went by when he didn’t think about the encounter with Luci. How he wished that one night had been at least two or three. Again he reminded himself that he wasn’t a good bet as far as a relationship went, and he was probably doing her a favor by not entangling her more.

But how he wished he could entangle her in the bedsheets tonight and every night before he fell asleep. All the drugs and alcohol were out of his system for weeks now—except for occasional causes for celebration, like when one of the recruits received a
Dear John
letter, which was always something the whole team celebrated heartily—he was seeing things more clearly. He was feeling things he hadn’t in years. The numbness to his emotions was wearing off and he found himself considering whether he could handle the intensity of a relationship with a strong female. Not an occasional hookup. Someone proud and strong and fearless.

The chanting had become more melodic, the tone softer, and it didn’t jar him like it did when he was trying to drown it out in Ukiah. He listened to the words and found he could understand some of them.

Mother Earth is calling,

Wearing herself out on the seasons of wet and dry,

Birthing and watching a little portion of her body dying,

With each new creature she breathes life into.

And then one day, he heard his grandfather’s voice, just as clear as if he’d been standing right next to him. He knew what he had to do next.

‡

L
uci discovered her
pregnancy barely a month after her evening with Danny. Over the ensuing months, she agonized over whether or not to reach out to tell him about the baby, but decided to just resign herself to the fact that now there would be one more reason to want to get herself and Sarah off the reservation. It made everything she had to do, more difficult. There would now be one more mouth to feed, one more person she needed to protect.

She began applying for jobs in Las Vegas and San Francisco—any place Sarah had expressed an interest in attending college. She hoped she’d find another position before she started to show. There wasn’t any point in crying over what was done. And she definitely was going to have Danny’s baby. This sort of thing was happening more and more both on the res and everywhere else. It wasn’t the shame that it once had been, to have a baby without being married. She could always say she’d planned the baby but didn’t want the father and half her co-workers would believe her.