Combat Zone Read online

  It’s no longer a question but a statement. An order. And all orders are to be obeyed.

  Dad pulls out his phone and makes a call. I use the time to text Eric.

  It’s late, but there’s got to be a party someplace (although as Eric always says, “Just Man, where we are, that’s where the party is”). Eric answers with an address I don’t know. I’m tired, so I’m having second thoughts until I see three words “Erin Drunk Hurry” flash on my phone.

  The cool of the evening is about to heat up.

  5

  “Just Man, glad you made it!” Eric smacks my back as his welcome-to-the-party gesture.

  “Is Jimmy with her?” I ask, looking around the crowded party for Erin.

  “He’s here, but staying mostly in the basement playing quarters,” Eric slurs. He offers me a red cup full of something, but he should know better. I follow the athlete’s code of honor to the letter. Looking around I see fellow players, like Anton and Mychal, ignoring it. Mychal’s hero enough to get away with it, but Anton’s game isn’t at immunity level. He’d better watch himself or else.

  “Where is Erin?” I see other fine females of various shapes, sizes, and colors.

  Eric points toward a crowded screened-in back porch. It’s only ten feet away, but I could use a couple of blockers to get through the packed room. I’m almost there when this junior semi-hot girl, Allison Sanders, steps in front of me, drink in hand, and my name on her lips.

  “Justin, what are you doing here?” she whispers in my ear. I smell whiskey on her breath.

  “Just looking for a friend,” I answer as she latches onto my arm. She wears gold rings on every finger, four blue bracelets on both wrists, and a silver stud in her nose. “I gotta go.”

  “But you just got here.” She pretends to pout with lips as red and ripe as cherries.

  “Like I said, I’m looking for a friend.”

  She wraps her arm around my neck, pulls me closer. “I could be your friend, Justin.”

  I don’t push her away. She’s fine, but there’s something about Erin, maybe because she’d be hard to get. I’d be doing her a favor if Jimmy can’t man up. “Maybe later, Allison.”

  “You should call me.” When she reaches for her cell, she spills her drink on my chucks.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I hear Anton’s voice from behind. I turn around. There stands Anton with Mychal and some of the other black players on the team. “She’s drunk. That’s sad.”

  “All the girls go for me, drunk or sober,” I spit back at him.

  “I was . . .” Allison starts, but Anton steps in front of her. She takes the hint and leaves.

  “We shouldn’t be at this party,” Anton mumbles. I shrug and start again for Erin on the porch. “I messed up big time. We could get in trouble with Coach. We should bounce. You got a ride?”

  “Look, I’m here to…” I start but stop speaking when I see Jimmy is now by Erin’s side. Ding, ding, ding, game over.

  “I don’t trust these people. They’re not family, like us,” Anton says. I don’t correct him. A football team isn’t a family; it’s a bunch of people wearing the same uniform. The Seals are family—bound not by name or uniform, but tradition, honor, and duty. Words a civilian like Anton couldn’t understand.

  “Can I talk to you about something, Justin?” Anton’s pushy, like lots of transfer kids, trying too hard. Since we share the defensive line, he seems to think that we should be best buddies. He’s broken off from the group as Mychal and the others leave to look for more wine, women, or both.

  I pull a Dad and answer by saying nothing, turning my back, and heading for the door. I’ve lost my appetite for going after Erin. Like a shadow, Anton’s behind me. I pick up the pace and I hear his heavy footsteps follow. When I get to my car, he’s standing there a little out of breath, looking like a lost puppy.

  “Can you give me a ride home?” Anton asks. He’s got the same tone Allison had.

  “No.” I shut him down like he was a halfback thinking he could get around me on the outside.

  “Please, Justin,” Anton says in such a little voice coming from a big guy. I start to say no again, then I think about all the times I was the new kid in school and got treated like crap until I showed them who I was. But Anton hasn’t got the same drive. That’s another casualty of a civilian childhood: you take life for granted rather than as a life-or-death proposition. “Please.”

  I text Eric and Mychal, tell them I’m leaving and motion for Anton to get in the car. He’s like a little kid at Christmas in the Shelby. “I owe you,” he says, all nervous.

  “Don’t worry about it.” I turn the key, put it into drive, and push the metal to the floor.

  “There’s something I need to tell everyone on the team. Since the guys kinda look up to you, I thought you’d be a good person to come out to first,” Anton blurts out. “Especially since your—”

  I screech the car to a halt. He’s still trying to talk, but he can’t finish the sentence. That’s hard to do with my fist rearranging his facial features.

  6

  “Justin, you’re grounded,” Dad says as we walk from the principal’s office to our cars. He walks two feet in front of me like he doesn’t want to be seen with me or something.

  “Dad, wait up!” I shout after him, but he doesn’t turn around, so I pick up the pace.

  “I didn’t do anything!” I protest.

  He opens his car door, not taking the bait.

  “It’s not my fault!” When I’m wrong I can man up, but I’m right. We both got to know it.

  “You broke Anton’s jaw,” Dad says through clenched teeth, sounding like his own jaw was shattered. “You’re lucky he isn’t pressing charges.”

  “I was defending myself. And I did drop him off at home.” I repeat the same thing I told him, the principal, and Coach Young. “He came on to me. I don’t want some messed up freak—”

  “Enough!” Dad shouts so loud and hard it feels like a punch to my face.

  “You taught me to defend myself,” I remind him.

  He narrows his eyes like a wild animal about to strike. “So you wouldn’t be bullied.”

  “I don’t see how this is any different, some filthy—”

  “Enough!”

  Dad and I stare at each other just the way I lock eyes with the guard across from me on the line, the wrestler across from me on the mat, or the son-of-a-Seal fighter that I’m battling for turf. He blinks, so I man up and apologize. “Look, I’m sorry. I’ll tell Anton that. I overreacted. You’re angry.”

  Now Dad won’t look at me. He studies the school parking lot pavement like a Seal would memorize a map before a mission. “I’m not angry at you, Justin. I’m just…”

  I know what’s coming. Maybe if I say it, then it won’t sting as much. “Disappointed.”

  “No, I’m ashamed of you.” He turns his back and opens the car door. My knees melt in the heat, and the screech of his tires driving away feels like a bandage ripped off a fresh wound. If only he knew that I’d done it for him.

  ***

  By practice, everybody’s heard about me punching out Anton. I don’t tell them the truth like I did Dad, so I tell them a story about the two of us fighting over Allison. Everybody buys it.

  Coach Young puts us through a hard practice, punishing everyone with his anger at me for forcing him to find a new right tackle. Coach said he’d let this pass, but that I’d better not screw up again or I’m gone.

  Some guys hit the weight room after practice, but I’ll save my lifting for home—maybe Dad will be cooled off by then. I guess he expects, no matter what the circumstances, for me to display discipline, but I wonder what he would’ve done if some gay freak came on to him. After I shower, I head toward the Shelby. I’m about to text Eric when I hear Mychal call my name.

  I stop and face Mychal. He’s smaller, faster, and almost as popular as me. He’s one of these guys, like Dad, when he walks in a room, everybody stops and wants
his attention, his approval.

  “So that whole thing you said about Allison, that’s BS,” Mychal says. “Anton’s gay, right, so something else happened…”

  Mychal’s my best friend on the team and a Seal son, so I tell him how Anton came on to me and I had to defend myself. He thinks it’s funny that the reason I was at the party was to hit on Erin, and then I ended up getting hit on. I fail to find the humor in any of it until he starts talking about fixing up Anton and Jimmy. “That frees up Erin from Jimmy and gets Anton out of your hair, or pants, or wherever.”

  He puts the bad mouth on Anton for a long time until it’s time for me to bounce. I like hanging with my friends, but I never miss dinner with Dad. It’s a ritual and a rule.

  When I get home, I see Dad’s car is gone; either he’s working late or hanging out with his buddies. There’s a bucket of chicken on the table. It’s still warm, so he just left like he wanted to avoid eating dinner with me. Next to the food is a note. I wonder if it’s another slap to the face.

  But it’s worse. It’s a kick below the belt. It says, “It’s your mother’s birthday. Call her.”

  I salute the note from Colonel Ladd before I crumple it up and toss it in the empty trash.

  7

  “Justin, you look so handsome,” Mom gushes. As always, we’re on Skype, which I grew to know very well during Dad’s various deployments. When I was a kid, Dad seemed like a character on a TV show. I saw him more on a grainy screen than in the flesh.

  I grunt, fake a smile, and try not to roll my eyes. Every conversation with Mom since the divorce, Dad getting custody, and her moving back to Japan has been the same. There’s a huge distance between us, which would be true even if she was living next door rather than across the ocean.

  “So how is your senior year?” Mom asks. “You must be so excited.”

  That’s so Mom, trying to tell me how I should feel. Like when Dad was deployed, she’d try to do all this crap to get me to connect to my feelings. I was trying to be strong for Dad, but she was making me weak, like her. “I’m ready for it to be over and get into the Academy.”

  The Naval Academy in Annapolis. Dad wants it as bad as me, sometimes more. He came up the hard way, joining the service at eighteen and working his way up the ranks. I’d do it his way, but his mind is set on this. There’s no denying the desires of Colonel Edwin Ladd.

  “I do wish you’d reconsider that, Justin,” Mom says in that hypercritical tone. “The Navy life is—well, look at what it did to our family.”

  I want to say my family is fine because you’re not part of it, but I don’t. There’s a burning rage of anger at her that I can’t control or understand. I used to think Dad left home all the time to get away from her. I thought he’d rather die in some lonely desert than live with Mom.

  I pull a Dad and leave her twisting slowly in the silence, before I say. “I can’t.”

  She pauses, sips some tea, and paints on another smile. “How is your father?”

  Mom and I talk maybe once a month because Dad insists, but he’s certainly not setting an example in this area. As far as I know, they’ve not spoken for a while. I’m not sure what, if anything, to tell her since his life is none of her concern, but if I talk about Dad, then I don’t have to talk about me. “He likes being back at Pearl. He has lots of friends.”

  “Men do gravitate toward your father,” she says. “He’s got a presence, I admit. I remember the first time I saw him.” And she’s telling me this story again, but her version, which is all romantic. Dad’s version is simpler, with a lesson: “I was young and stupid. She was a mistake but you were not, so I tried to make it work for your sake, son. Don’t be stupid like me.”

  As Mom talks, I hope she doesn’t notice me texting Eric to set up a time to work on some AP English, but he’s not answering. I hit up Mychal and a few teammates until I get some guys to say they’ll come to my house. I need help with my grades; I need a reason to get off this call.

  “Mom, sorry, I’ve got to get to some homework,” I say, all truthful. Now.

  “I understand.”

  “So, happy birthday. I’m sorry I forgot to say it when we first talked.”

  She smiles, the fakest one yet. “That’s okay, Justin. I’m just glad you called.”

  I don’t tell her Dad made me call and had to remind me in the first place. “Maybe I’ll come over there during winter break if I don’t have wrestling meets,” I say, knowing full well we always have a holiday wrestling tournament. I doubt she recalls that, so it seems like a real offer.

  “I’d like that,” she says. “I miss you, Justin. Be careful.”

  “I always wear a helmet for combat sports,” I joke, but she doesn’t laugh.

  “No, listen, Justin, be careful now that it’s just you and your father. He is…”

  And she pauses, or maybe the screen freezes, so I finish it. “He is a great man.”

  “He’s a good man.” Her fake smiles vanishes. “But he’s not the man you think he is.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I shout at the screen, but she’s hung up. There’s no longer an image of my mom on the computer, but a blank screen, a black mirror reflecting my hurt face.

  8

  “Justin, this is so cool,” Calvin Parker says, all excited and immature like the kid brother I never had or wanted. He rode up Tantalus Mountain on the back of his dad’s machine but then down with Dad. He got back on his dad’s Harley for the rest of the ride to the north shore.

  “It’s a great way to spend a Sunday.” I wonder if freshmen understand senior sarcasm. I have so much to do, and yapping with Calvin isn’t on the list. Even being grounded because of Anton, except for school, practice, and trips with Dad, I’m falling behind in my classes. But worse, I’ve been too busy to find someone to invite to the Homecoming dance. Erin? Allison? Who?

  “How long have you guys been riding your bikes?” Calvin asks. The two of us sit at a rest stop bench under a hot midday sun. Surfers, swimmers, and skydivers frolic on the beach behind us.

  I wish Dad and Colonel Parker would return from wherever they took off to so I could get back home and away from this human mosquito buzzing in my ear. I don’t let my thoughts go any further in that direction. “Two years.”

  “I can’t wait to get my license so Dad and I can ride up here together like you guys.”

  “Calvin, who knows if you’ll even be here in two years,” I say, shutting him down. “You know how many places I’ve lived in eighteen years? Ten, and this is my third time living in Hawaii, except this time with the wars done overseas, we’re staying. We’ve not bugged out in four and that’s a record.”

  “That’s what my dad says too,” Calvin says. “You like it here?”

  “No, I don’t like it here, I love it,” I say, trying not to smile. “I mean, not only is it a paradise, you got your Seal family all around you. Sun. Sand. Beaches.”

  “Bikinis,” he says and then giggles.

  “How do you like Mrs. McFadden?” I ask. More giggles.

  “I’d like to see her in a bikini.”

  “Or less.” I add. He laughs like a man rather than giggling like a girl this time.

  “Are you going to teach me to fight?” he asks. I sip from a water bottle. He does the same as we wait for our fathers to return. “Do you know karate, kung-fu, judo, maybe ju-jitsu?”

  “Why, because I’m part Asian?” I snap. “Do you want me to make you sushi, too?”

  “No, Justin, sorry, nothing like that,” he says, sounding scared.

  “Well, if you want to be a good fighter, stop backing down,” I tell him. “If you’re the aggressor, then the other person has to fight your fight. What are you good at? Kicks? Throws?”

  “Mostly getting knocked out, but that’s not much of a skill.” He laughs again. I join in.

  “You have to learn how to take a strike, but also how to use someone’s striking ability to your advantage,” I say. “Fighting is just like chess but
it’s way faster and with more blood.”

  “Except you’re a king and I’m a pawn.”

  “Well, maybe I can get you to bishop level.”

  “Great, then I can only move diagonally.”

  I laugh again. This kid’s actually pretty funny.

  “My dad taught me how to defend myself when I was young so I had a heads-up on these guys,” I say. “With some practice, you’ll be tough as nails.”

  “Thanks, Justin,” he says. “I really want to fit in since we’re staying here for good.”

  “So, why do you think that you guys are taking root?” I sip the cool water, lean back on the bench, and soak in the sun. I wait but Calvin doesn’t answer. “You hear me, Calvin?”

  Calvin mumbles something. I sit up straight and stare at him. He’s blushing. “Yeah.”

  “So, why didn’t you answer me?” I ask. “Why do you think that you’re staying…”

  “You know, Justin,” Calvin says softly.

  “Know what? The sun’s messing with you. How would I know anything about your dad?”

  He leans in toward me and whispers, “You know about our dads.”

  Just as I’m pulling back to hit him, Dad and Colonel Parker ride up. Before they can get their helmets off, I’ve taken off on my bike.

  9

  “Justin, slow down,” Dad’s voice screams right in my ears, thanks to the Bluetooth.

  For eighteen years I’ve done whatever he asked, whenever he asked. I speed up on the Harley, even as I come to a sharp turn to turn off the main road, heading back toward Pearl.

  They’ve got Calvin on the back of one of their bikes so they’ll have to go slower. And I guess they just can’t separate from each other. I keep expecting Dad to pull up behind me but I’ve got a good head start now.

  I drive straight for the house. I consider riding the Harley until it runs out of gas or I run out of road, which I guess is the worst part about living on island: there’s a limit to how far you can go.