Edited Version. Finally . . .
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The Midshipmen
Piggg
I’m heading north on I-83. It’s after ten. The road’s finally emptied out. I slow down a few miles per hour as I drive under an overpass, smiling when I remember why.
* * *
“That’s where the cops like to hide,” my brother told me. “They back in at an angle so the bridge blocks their taillights.”
“Why?” I asked.
“So your headlights don’t reflect off.”
As he said this, he hit the gas and weaved into the left lane, then back into the right lane to pass the next car.
He was sixteen and had been driving a few months at the most.
“You know, some day, I bet, they’re going to have sensors on the white lines and in your car so you won’t even have to steer on the highway,” he said.
“Dad was saying that they could put infrared sensors on the front of cars and that way, your car would match the speed of the car in front perfectly and you could tailgate safely.”
He laughed. “I tailgate safely.”
“No you don’t,” I told him. “No human being can safely tailgate. It’s a reaction time thing. You take so many seconds to react and in those seconds you travel a certain distance and if you don’t keep that distance between you and the car, you’ll hit it.”
“I have a very fast reaction time. Watch,” he said, stepping on the gas, full of enthusiasm and recklessness.
* * *
I signal right as I pass the minivan and wait until I can see both headlights in my rearview mirror. I turn around to clear my blind spot and then pull into the right lane. It starts to snow. I turn the heat up, hoping the flakes don’t start to stick until I get there.
I lose my radio station about thirty miles later and hit scan until I come up with something else. I remember the station my brother always used to listen to at Cornell. It was the Star or something like that, but I can’t find it.
It’s eleven when I hit the back roads. Slowly, things become familiar. In the dark, I can make out the shape of a bike shop and a video games store, followed by the café where his girlfriend worked. She was never around much, so it wasn’t surprising when they broke up.
* * *
It was just before they split when I visited. He invited me to his military ball celebrating the two-hundred-and-thirty-eighth birthday of the Navy. Katie was, not surprisingly, out of town. We were sitting with Morrissey, Thomson and their girlfriends.
Mary was talking about college and giving me plenty of unsolicited, but well-meaning advice on why I should really be applying to Cornell and the best essays to write for college applications.
I was starting to tune out when Thomson got up and got some cranberry juice.
“What, are you on your period?” my brother said when he came back.
“******** you, Josh,” Thomson said.
“It’s from a movie,” I told him. He didn’t hear me.
“Nobody even drinks cranberry juice for their period,” Mary said, not having heard me. “But it’s great for your complexion.”
“Yeah, cause that’s so much ******** better,” Morrissey said.
“You know what, Mary? I’ll fight you,” Thomson said leaning into her face.
“Come on, man,” Morrissey said. Morrissey was six foot six then and thickly built. He was playing rugby.
“No, Mary, take it back. No, screw that. Let’s go outside, and I’ll fight you.” She punched him in the arm, and he punched her back.
“The funny thing is, she could take him out,” my brother whispered to me. I laughed.
Then the Captain got up to make a speech. “The US Navy was founded in 1776,” he said. “The British Navy had one hundred ships and the US Navy had but twenty-five. Yet, with American spirit within us, we prevailed. They were Goliath. And we were David. Today, more than two hundred years later, we have grown strong. We are now Goliath and surrounding us are Davids. Davids who hate us, who are willing to bomb us, and shoot us, and fly planes into us. Now more than ever, the US must be a strong Goliath and fend off these Davids.” The Captain took his seat, honest to God, thinking he had given an excellent speech.
“Dude needs to brush up on his Old Testament,” my brother said to me.
“Is it just me?” I asked, “Or is it still funny after two years that his name is Captain Weed?”
“Still funny,” he said.
We went out for cookies after the ball was over. It was Thomson’s birthday – his and the Navy’s – and my brother had organized a surprise party. He gave Thomson a ride home, and then instead, drove to Insomnia Cookies. Everybody was there. It didn’t matter that nobody liked Thomson; my brother asked, so they came. There were platters of cookies, all with “22” written on them in Navy-blue icing. We sang, and then as a joke, somebody handed Thomson a glass of cranberry juice, but he was too busy beaming to notice.
* * *
I turn left and pull into the parking lot outside Barton Hall. It’s locked, but I can see the lights on inside. I wish I could go in. It used to be an airplane hangar until they turned it into a massive gym. Inside are six basketball courts and a track as well as all of the ROTC clubhouses. My brother always took me into the Navy clubhouse. He showed me the closet with all the muskets that only he and the Gunnery Sergeant had a key to. He showed me the room that Jon Stewart used as a dressing room when he came to Barton Hall. He was trying to impress me with the fame of the place, but what I liked best was the fact that it was a real, working clubhouse. We’d spent every summer building clubhouses in the backyard, but they never came with real guns and real soldiers to fight our pretend battles.
I pull out and drive off campus. I was going to pass the frat house and Katie’s apartment but it’s late and I’m tired. I park the car in front of the Homewood Suites and get my suitcase out of the back seat. I pull my coat on and button it up. I always forget that it’s ten degrees colder here than in Phillie, guaranteed. I’m shivering as I push through the revolving doors into the lobby.
I can’t sleep in my room so I turn the TV on and the lights off and lay there on top of the bedspread thinking of the page in the Worst Case Survival Guide Handbook about dirty hotels. It had a diagram of a typical hotel room in which everything that should not be touched was highlighted red. It included the toilet, the shower, the sink, the doorknobs, the carpet, the remote control, the drapes, the alarm clock, the switches on the light and the lamps, and of course, the bed.
In the morning, I switch the TV off and get in the shower. I can’t remember if the shower curtain was highlighted red, but I still touch it. I blow-dry my hair and pull on the dress. I put on the high heels, and then switch them for flats so I can walk in the grass. I look in the mirror. I remember Thomson’s date telling me how much I look like my brother. I don’t see it. I pack the suitcase, put on the coat, and check out.
* * *
I sit in the car outside the church for a while. I’m early at first, and then on time, and then borderline late. More cars are still showing up. I never wanted to go to this anyway, but he asked. The heat is blasting and my lips feel chapped.
“******** it,” I say.
I turn the car off and get out, slamming the door and locking it behind me. I stuff my hands into my pockets and hurry inside as my breath condenses before me. I don’t pause to remember being a dragon on cold mornings at the bus stop.
I try to sit in the back, but Mary sees me and waves me up to their pew near the front. Her lips are curled in tight and her eyes are red. Morrissey leans forward with his elbows on his knees and chin on his hands looking straight forward.
Mary nods and I nod back. I don’t ask her about work or about the baby and she doesn’t ask me about school. I sit there and fold my hands and then take off my coat and hold it in my lap as we stare at the coffin in front of us.
That’s all I do the entire service. I sit there and stare at the polished wood and the colors of the flag. And then we’re standing and they’re carrying Thomson out and we’re all following.
* * *
My car has a magnetic purple flag on its roof and I wait until the parking lot is nearly empty to follow the procession. I can start to feel my heart cracking open so I focus on keeping my right wheel exactly on the white line. I maintain the speed limit to the mile per hour. I crack the window. I pull up to the cemetery.
Somehow, I end up standing next to Morrissey. Mary’s not beside him. He looks at me. He’s still six foot six and he’s still big enough to make anyone else look small, but all I can think is that he looks gray.
“He asked you to come, didn’t he?” he asks. He looks like he might cry. I hope he doesn’t.
I nod. “He’s still over there.”
He nods. “Yeah. And for a while.”
* * *
When I got to the building where they were holding the ball, I couldn’t tell which one was my brother. They were all dressed in blue and wearing swords. All of their heads were buzzed down to the skin. I tried to examine their faces, but only when my brother jogged up to me with his arms open for a hug could I recognize him.
“You gotta watch this,” he said. “We’ve been working on it all morning.”
He steered me over to a folding chair in the middle of the room and I watched as all of them marched in step, some of them carrying flags in special flag-carrying-belts and others carrying muskets, which as he told me later, had the barrels filled in so they couldn’t be fired.
They marched in careful formation until they reached the center of the room and then one of them produced a laminated card from his pocket and read a commemorative birthday message off of it. His jacket was too large on him and his sword-belt was on was tight, so it made the uniform look almost feminine the way it pulled the fabric. One of the midshipmen was a half step behind all the rest and another was always a second faster. They reminded me of a third grade talent show. None of them cracked a smile.
When it was finished, my brother ran over and asked me if I was impressed. I told him that I was and dutifully did not laugh.
* * *
Morrissey and I stand together in the cold as the flag is folded.
“With the red and the blue showing,” my brother once told me. “We screwed it up the first time we did it and had to read the part about the stars and the stripes being evident even though all we had showing was the stripes.”
These marines get it right. I’m glad. Thomson’s mother doesn’t seem like the type who would smile if they messed it up the way Thomson and my brother did.
Morrissey folds his hands behind his back and attempts a smile. Then he tries to mold his face into the dutiful look the marines are wearing. Neither works.
They lower Thomson down. Morrissey shakes my hand. “It was nice of you to come,” he says. “Tell Josh we’re thinking of him.”
“I will,” I say. His hand is too large for mine and his grip is too light. He walks away to find Mary. I look around. Thomson’s girlfriend isn’t here. They must not have stayed together. Neither is Captain Weed. I doubt he has a good reason not to be there. ******** him. ******** Captain Weed and his ******** stupid a** name.
I walk back to my car. It’s not ******** funny and it never ******** was.
I sit down and yank the door shut and hit the lock button and stick the key in the ignition but never bother turning it. I put my head on the wheel and let the tears come, hot and salty and dripping down my nose and into my lap. I let my chest heave up and down while my nose stuffs up until I can only breathe through my mouth. I stop myself. I take a tissue and blot my face and pick up a water bottle from the floor in front of the passenger seat and take a sip. It’s cold. It’s been in the car for weeks.
I drive through the gates and onto the highway. After sixteen miles, it’s four o’clock, and I pull over into a Dunkin Donuts and call him.
“Yeah, it was a nice service,” I assure him. “Happy to go for you. I miss you. I love you.”
He has to go because the guy in line behind him needs to call his wife. I hang up and get back on 83 and drive back to school. I put on the radio and reassure myself that there is some great cause motivating this, that this is not waste, that I’ll get a call next week, and the week after that, and the week after that, but knowing all along that there’s always the chance that all the wishes on birthday candles were worthless, the assurances were moot, and he’ll be the next one laid out under that flag.
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