Sharpshooter (4 page)

“Sorry,” he says. “I thought that counted for both of us.”

“Don't think, son,” Dad says. He says it in a way that is totally different from how any of us would have said it. No joke, no teasing. He says it with warmth and sincerity and hope that Rudi will be able to take that really good advice with him into the Marines and carry it all the way right back to this table after it's all over.

“Yes, sir, I won't,” Rudi says. “I mean, no, sir. Yes, sir.” He looks at my dad with the scared puppy-in-love eyes that normally tell me that I am his hero.

“Oh, get over here, Rudi,” Dad says, breaking protocol every which way now under Rudi's peculiar spell.

Just then my little brother, Caesar, comes bounding in and presents himself in the doorway.

“Oh, what part of the induction program are we at now?” he asks mischievously.

“Tattoo Worship,” Mom responds with a giggle.

“Hah,” Caesar says. “At least I haven't missed the ritual buzz-cutting ceremony. I skipped dessert over at Nick's for that. And they were having Moon Pies.”

“Ritual
what
?” Beck asks. Beck really likes his hair. It's auburn, halfway between curly and wavy, and hangs just below his ears. He is the closest we come in this group to anything approaching hippie.

“Regulation haircuts,” Dad says, like he's Monty Hall pulling the curtain on
Let's Make a Deal
. “Professional
and
free.”

I keep my hair pretty close to regulation as it is, so another sixteenth of an inch one way or another never matters much to me. Also, I knew this was coming. Now's the time for me to sit back and enjoy.

“Well,” Morris says extra calmly, “don't they give us haircuts as soon as we report for duty?”

“Of course they do,” Dad says. “But you want to make a good impression, right from the get-go. Like I did. The Army didn't even wind up giving me a haircut, after the one I gave myself.”

Yes. Himself.

“Trust me, men. A good impression goes a long, long way when you enter the service, especially in wartime. The very last thing you want to do is show up looking like hippies, let me tell you.”

Dad's hippie-ometer is set for ultrasensitive. He has considerably less patience for them than I have, and I have none at all.

“Who's first up?” Dad asks.

For the second time ever I see Rudi shoot his hand up into the air.

“Well done, my boy, that's the spirit,” Dad says. He gets up and crisply leads a small procession out to the barbershop I know so well. That would be our back porch. Rudi is actually sort of marching, trying to stay in lockstep with my father, whose natural stride is a kind of march. Morris follows right behind, in a way that is completely descriptive of him. You can't quite tell if he is for or against what is happening, but there is a sureness to his commitment to it anyway. It's a sort of determined slouch in the direction of events.

Beck and I meet at the doorway at the same time, stopping to face each other. Caesar squeezes past us while Mom pats both our cheeks on her way to the kitchen.

“You'll love it,” I say, grinning. “You'll feel like a new man. Hey, you'll feel like a man, period.”

“No, I won't,” he says.

“Oooh,” I say, “is that a confession? I always had my doubts about you anyway.”

He laughs. “After you,” he says.

“No, after you,” I reply.

Then we go through the door at the same time, calculating just right to get wedged in there, stuck together, arms flailing and making Mom dissolve in giggles.

A love for the Three Stooges is probably the strongest bond between Beck and me.

By the time we reach the porch, Rudi is sitting happily up in the big chair with a baby blue bath towel tucked around his neck. Dad is checking his hardware: sharp scissors, electric clippers, straight razor.

“So,” Rudi chirps, sounding more like the barber than the client, “did you hurt your knee in the war, then?”

Morris is having trouble with patience. “Rudi, please, just get your hair cut without saying anything else.”

“It's all right,” Dad says, patting the top of Rudi's head. “I relish the opportunity to educate. Wounded Knee was the battle that represented the effective end of the Indian Wars. The end of that whole period of history when the native peoples still had a fighting chance to retain their land. And it was set off by the killing of Sitting Bull.”

In silence then, my father starts cutting Rudi's hair.

“I wasn't even close then, was I?” Rudi says, and Dad just keeps on cutting.

The first cut takes no more than five or six minutes. I jump in next, and that takes maybe three. Caesar, not due for a trim for a solid week yet, jumps in and out just as quick. Then Morris gets his de-hippifying.

Dad gestures at the chair, dusting it off for the last appointment of the day.

“No, sir. But thank you, sir,” Beck says. And if respect were smoke we would all be choking now. Beck is not challenging my Dad here.

All the same I wish he would just get in the chair.

“You don't want a free haircut?” asks The Captain, formal as you please.

“Ah, get a free haircut for cryin' out loud,” Morris says.
Just go along to get along
is what he'd like to say.

“Look, feel mine,” Rudi says, pausing from feeling it himself just long enough to shove his dome in Beck's face. Beck rubs the dome, kisses it, then shoves it away again.

“You're just gonna lose it in a few days anyway,” I say wearily. Beck is an exceptional guy who can be very hard to talk to sometimes.

“I know that,” he says. Then he turns back toward the evening's host. “And I appreciate and respect your offer, sir. But I just feel like I need to fly my freak flag for just these few more days.”

Ah … why? Why did he have to do that? He meant it as a joke, I know. He meant it to be playful, in a way that would get a fake-angry response, a challenge. Delivered in a way that said he was different from my father's world but not necessarily opposed to it.

In a way that my father could never, ever appreciate.

Caesar looks straight up in the air, then slinks into the house like he's doing the limbo under an invisible crossbar.

“Is that the flag you want to fly, young man?” Dad says, clearly working to maintain composure.

“Dad, Beck was just —”

He holds an index finger up in my direction. “Out of turn,” is all he says.

“I am very sorry if I was out of line, sir,” Beck says. He looks, for the moment, as he basically never looks — uncertain and nervous. “I did not in any way mean to offend you. You are a great man and a great host. I apologize for my lapse in manners.”

The harmful electricity in the air starts buzzing just a little bit less now.

“Well, young man,” Dad says, “you do deliver a quality apology, I'll give you that.”

“Thank you,” Beck says. “With my mouth, I've had to learn.”

Dad bows, then gestures to the chair again.

Sheesh. No cease-fire yet.

“Sir, I just want to wear my hair a few more days. I want to wear it through the doors of induction and pledge my allegiance. I want to say my small piece for freedom of speech, which we Americans hold dear. Let's call this my First Amendment hair.”

Holy smokes, do we have the two superpowers of blowhard going at it here?

Then suddenly Dad steps away from his barber chair. He walks, stern as Cochise, right up to Beck's face. Beck's face doesn't go anywhere, but I see the shakes on the inside of him threatening to come trickling out his eyes. I feel unable to move a muscle, and I am the toughest nonveteran here by some ways.

“Sir,” Dad breathes into Beck's face. Never thought I'd feel like feeling sorry for Beck but, yup.

“Sssir?” Beck responds, clearly pronouncing those extra S's.

“First Amendment Hair certainly has a better ring than
freak flag.
” Beck definitely catches a bit of the spittle of contempt on the end bit there.

We do a group exhale.

“Thank you, sir.”

“And you have got a certain amount of courage. You will most definitely need it.”

“Yes, sir,” Beck says.

Dad extends his hand, Beck takes it. Dad holds him in his famous manly military death shake for several seconds.

Then the sound of the electric clippers, like a tiny little fighter plane, as Dad swings his left hand from behind his back, over his shoulder, swooping down on Beck.

Beck breaks away and stumbles toward the door and back into the kitchen.

I laugh, and Morris and Rudi join me as Dad proceeds to sweep up. It is mostly the laugh of relief, but it feels good.

“Go ahead in, boys,” Dad says. “I'll clean up.”

Morris holds the screen door open as Rudi goes in, then me. He puts a hand on my shoulder, pushing me in.

“Who says your dad doesn't have a sense of humor?” he says.

“Who says he was joking?” I say.

For the record, he wasn't.

Off the record, I'm ready. I've got my orders and I've got my baldy cut and I've got my head of steam. I want Boston in the rearview mirror and Vietnam in my sights. I want to get on with it.

I want to get these guys out of my house.

Rotten, right? I can't help it. This phase is over. This moment is over, and the moment I know that is when Rudi gets up off my couch, trailing oatmeal-raisin crumbs across my mother's nice carpet, and rubs Morris's head and makes a wish
for the sixth time tonight.
Everybody laughs. Again. Mom whips out her trusty carpet sweeper and cheerfully collects crumbs before they get ground in. Again. Dad addresses the troops, again, on one more of the many indigenous peoples of Southeast Asia and what we had better be on the lookout for. The guys hang on every word like they all add up to one greasy pole of dear life. Yes, for sure, The Captain has done his homework, but come on now.

“Do you see any parallels between any of these tribes, sir, and the ones you know well among the American Indians?”

That question could come only from Beck.

And it could only bring me to one conclusion, as this is the only time in my knowledge that anyone has had to
prod
my father into more of this kind of thing.

They don't want to leave.

I should have seen it earlier, and I should be understanding about it now, and sure it makes some kind of sense, and yes these are my best pals in the world, but jeez, like I was saying, I am
ready.

“Right,” I say, standing up and clapping my hands twice, crisply. “I don't know what any of you are doing tomorrow, but I for one have an early and long day ahead. So …”

No rude boys here, I have to say. Crybabies and mama's boys, maybe, but the manners are grade A. Everyone is standing, milling, preparing to leave before the echo of my clap is even dead. Both Mom and Dad scramble out of the room with a sense of purpose.

We see that purpose when we tromp to the front hallway and find a small honor guard: Mom and Dad, on either side of the doorway, waiting to see the boys through. First through is Morris.

Dad shakes his hand so hard I can feel it five feet away. He winces just a bit.

“Bring the maximum of death to the minimum of people,” Dad says. Morris then turns around to face my mother, who kisses him, hugs him, and hangs a scapular around his neck. It's like a fabric necklace with a sort of postage-stamp Jesus face hanging off it.

Beck steps up, and it feels a whole lot like Mass because my mother is all kinds of Catholic.

“… maximum of death to the minimum of people.”

It is a variation, anyway, on the Mass.

“Rudi,” Dad says, his first diversion from the script. “Follow orders. Follow every single last order, son, and follow it all the way.”

“Ow,” Rudi says.

Mom kisses him, scapularizes him, hugs him for an extra-long time — about the time of the other guys combined.

My parents have done their thing and nod at me as they melt away. They are nodding that they know this is our moment. Me and my boys, finally … no, not
finally
, but for now having our farewell. Our time. When my parents go, I stand in the doorway, the three
other
stooges on my porch, under a yellow light and a squadron of moths.

We stare in silence. This is our
big moment
, apparently.

“See ya,” I say.

Beck laughs out loud, waves me off, and starts down the stairs. Morris shakes his head in amazement, slaps me five, and follows. Rudi stands there, staring at me.

I stare back. “Follow orders,” I say. “Go.”

I snap off the light right over his head.

He stares.

They call for him to come, already pulling away.

I close the door on Rudi.

 

After a sleep slashed open with excitement, I am up with the crickets, still at it. I skip my parents' bedroom altogether just like I told them I would. I grab my bag and I head to my new life, my always life, my destiny.

I open the door to Rudi.

“Oh, man,” I say.

No indication either way if he has been frozen in that spot all night or just managed to hit his spot precisely, but I don't care.

“I don't care,” I say, sweeping right past him.

“I wanna talk,” he says.

“Rude, y'know, I got something kind of important to do this morning.”

He's at my heels like a puppy as I make my way down the street toward the bus station.

“I wanna talk,” he says. “I can't believe you don't wanna talk.”

“I don't wanna talk.”

“I wanna talk.”

“I don't wanna.”

“I wanna.”

Rudi loses at absolutely everything. Except this. He can do this forever.

“I don't wanna.”

“You can't do that.”