“Stop it! Stop it!” was the hysterical screech of the second-grade teacher on duty. She pulled little Sean Harris off the legendary Jordon Miller, who was sobbing and screaming in pain. Blood was all over Miller’s face. Blood was all over Sean’s hands. For the first time in his life Sean Harris knew what it was to feel like a man.
“Surely you can understand, Mr. Harris, that we cannot let students just go about taking matters into their own hands.”
Dan Harris had not cared for the principal the first time he had met him; now he was really starting to detest him. The man was young and soft. Not really overweight, but just doughy looking with no sign of visible muscle tissue. The guy appeared to be in his early to midthirties, way too young to be that soft and to have the kind of fat that spilled over the edge of his collar. His effeminate softness was accentuated by the fashionable trim cut of the principal’s clothes. Dan Harris thought any man over the age of twenty-two that wore those tight, “skinny” pants looked like a queer. Now he had one of these candy-pants-wearing queers sitting in front of him, self-righteously explaining how inappropriate it was for his own son to defend himself from some bully that had spent the previous months earning the ass kicking he got.
The older Harris looked over at his son, who had his head down, staring at his feet as if he’d done something wrong. It broke Dan Harris’s heart. It was more than he could stand.
“Listen, boy”—no one as yet realized the reference was to the principal—“just who the hell is my son supposed to depend on to protect him from that dumpy little asshole out there.”
Sean looked up, pleasantly surprised. His father only spoke like this when he was angry or with old Army buddies. He wanted so bad to see his father tear into the principal, and maybe Miss Crane while he was at it.
“You’ve not protected him yet and only been there to chastise him when he takes on a man’s right to self-defense.” Sean felt proud when he heard his father describe him as a man. He was no longer looking at his feet, but at the doughy principal and his father. He was enjoying this.
“Mr. Harris,” the principal interjected, “I don’t think you understand. We can’t have students defending themselves with acts of violence. It violates district regulations. I understand—”
“Hell, I doubt you even understand how to…” Dan Harris decided not to go there with his six-year-old son in the room. “Understand this, you emasculate little twit, my son is no longer enrolled in your school. I would no more entrust his education to you than the goddamn fire hydrant out front.”
Sean loved what he was hearing. He wondered what the principal would do next, but the doughy man sat there red faced, wide eyed, and did not say a word.
“Come on, son. Let’s get your stuff and get out of here.” They got up and turned to leave.
“Mr. Harris, there are certain procedures—” the principal called out, but Dan Harris shut the door and walked on.
In the parking lot, heading towards Dan Harris’s Ford pickup truck, Sean felt on top of the world.
“Don’t get too excited, Sean, your mother and I are going to work your young butt off at home. A man’s best weapon is his brain, and we’re gonna see to it that yours is the sharpest around. You understand me?”
“Yes, sir, and, Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“What does e-mas-cu-late mean?”
Chapter Six
“But you don’t think you missed out?” Joel was baffled.
“On what?”
“You know, friends, socializing, parties…your high school prom! for example.”
“Ha! I’ve not missed out on much that this life on earth has had to offer,” Harris scoffed as he admired the bourbon in his glass and then took a sip. “I better watch this stuff or your recordings won’t make any sense. Is the bourbon not to your liking, Mr. Levine?”
Truth was that it wasn’t. Joel knew it was supposed to be the hot drink among the elites, but he didn’t care for it. He found the taste, the feel of the alcohol too strong for him. It made his mouth and throat burn. Besides, the little he’d had was already making him feel a little dizzy.
“No, it’s fine.” Joel did not want to admit his distaste for the latest alcohol fad. “So you have a lot of fond memories from those years?”
“Absolutely. Those homeschooling years before the war are some of my fondest memories of my life. I spent a lot of time playing with friends. I played baseball, and I was on a wrestling team. I spent a lot of time exploring the woods by the river. I learned archery and firearms. Gosh, my exposure to literature and theater was unparalleled among my peers. I’d never gotten that in public school.”
“Really?” Joel was somewhat condescending in his tone. He wondered how a mere law enforcement officer and a housewife could possibly give their child a superior education. Harris’s eyes locked with Levine’s.
“Don’t be so cynical or elitist towards my parents, Levine. Old fart or not, I can still kill your candy ass before they can stop me.” The scary-looking face smiled. Joel was too frightened by his tone not to believe him. “Both my parents had degrees in English literature. It’s how they met in college.”
This information was news to Joel. Was Harris lying? If not, why would Harris’s file describe his mother as uneducated?
“Time spent with my mother, father, brother and sister,” the old man continued, “those memories, those people are so precious to me now. No, Mr. Levine, I didn’t miss out on jack shit.” The old man’s eyes went distant, like he was in another time and place.
“If it was all so precious to you, why end it by going into the Marine Corps?” Joel interrupted.
Harris’s eyes darted back and stared with intensity into Joel’s. “Because of the war, you goddamn fool.” He immediately softened, as if talking to a child. “You talk about the high school prom? Why the fuck would I want to dress up in a monkey suit and go shake my ass on a dance floor when the ChiComs had invaded our land? That’s just fucking insane! Our land was invaded. Americans were being killed. We were fighting for our very survival!”
Harris’s words reminded Joel of his grandfather.
“Besides,” Harris continued, “those sweet days ended as soon as the war started.” His voice took on a more melancholy tone. “My father would have been exempt from service. He was already a vet and a KBI agent. He could have legitimately served the war effort in Kansas. But not him.” He looked off again. “No, not him. Oh, he loved this country so much. Our culture, our history. He so much wanted to preserve it, to pass it on to us. God, family, country. ‘A man is expendable,’ he told me shortly before he left. ‘A man’s duty is to protect the women and children in his life. If possible, give them a better life than he had.’ He meant it all right. Not like this American castrati, who say one thing and do another. He lived by it and he died by it.”
Joel’s memory involuntarily went back to his own grandfather. With effort he focused on the history he needed to write, trying to capitalize on the reminiscence at hand. “Tell me about the day you learned of your father’s death.”
“I was fourteen years old. It was November 10, the Marine Corps’s birthday, although I didn’t know that at the time. I was at wrestling practice at Prairie View High School. Even though I didn’t go to school there, I was still allowed to participate on the team.”
“Really?” Joel asked, again with his condescending tone that was starting to really irritate Harris. “Does that seem fair, you don’t go to class, but you can benefit from their sports program?”
“Yeah, really, you dumb ass! They were lucky to have me. I was the best goddamn wrestler they had!”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.” Which was true, even though Joel had felt disrespectful.
“The coach got my attention and asked me to follow him out of the gym. When we got out into the hall and I saw one of my dad’s KBI buddies and our pastor from church, I knew what was up. After nearly three years of war, I wasn’t the firs
t boy to lose his father. I saw them, and I wanted to run away so bad. Even then in death, my dad was there. He’s the one who made me man up and confront the situation. They told me my father had been shot down over southern Mexico. He was dead. I’ll tell you, it was easy to hear them say it compared to telling my mother. They took me to our house. My mom had noticed the car pull into the drive. She’d seen us all walking up. She too had been through enough war to know what was going on; we didn’t have to say a word. She opened the door and I saw the pain in her eyes. That was when I lost it. I was trying to be a man at that age, but I was still such a boy. I bawled in her arms. She was such a strong woman.” Harris looked up at the sky and was silent for a minute.
Joel watched the eyes of that evil face tear up from the recollection of his father’s death. He was conditioned to think this Harris despicable, yet he was tempted to feel sympathy for him.
“Within the year, we’d won the Mexico Campaign,” Harris concluded.
“Did you blame the country? Did you blame the Government? Was that the motivation for your treason?” Levine tried to empathize.
“Treason?” Harris let out a sarcastic laugh. “Did I commit treason against the Government? Or did the Government commit treason against me?”
“How can the Government commit treason? Against you?”
“Can no one in government do wrong? Can no one in government be corrupt?” Harris threw back at him.
Of course Levine knew many government workers were imperfect, but he also knew that was nothing to be discussed publicly. He wanted to redirect the interview. “Did you blame the Chinese? Did you want revenge? Is that why you joined the Marine Corps?”
“You bet your goddamn ass I wanted revenge. I wanted to kill all the bastards that had any role in the death of my father. You know, under Clark, for the war effort you could enlist at the age of sixteen if you could pass a graduation exam and had parental consent. That was my new goal in life. I finished the high school curriculum by fifteen. The South China Sea Campaign had gotten under full swing. We needed available men in the war effort. I worked at the scrap yard, collecting metal to recycle into war material. Hell, anybody that was worth anything did something for the war in those days. I couldn’t wait to turn sixteen.”
“How’d your mother feel about you enlisting in the Marine Corps of all things?”
“Well, in those days I had my sights set on the US Army, like my dad had done in the Islamic Wars. But my mom would have no part of it. I told her I would enlist when I turned eighteen anyway, why not let me sign on now? She told me she could wait for me to turn eighteen. I can see her point now. To have lost a husband, and then to send a son off to war. Of course, at the time I was pissed. There was a major offensive to destroy Chinese Communists. The military needed men. It seems laughable now, but at the time I was afraid it would all end before I could turn eighteen. I was still such a boy, so anxious to become a man.
“But then, at least it seemed that way to me, a miracle happened. Congress passed and President Clark signed a wartime law lowering the legal age of enlistment, without parental consent, to seventeen. On my seventeenth birthday, I was up and out of the house before sunrise. Truth be told, I wanted to get out of the house before my mother woke up. I got to the military recruiting complex at the mall about an hour before it opened. I sat out front, eating a chocolate-frosted donut and a milk I bought at a convenience store on the way into town…”
***
“You looking to become a Marine, young man?” The gunnery sergeant stood in the doorway of his office, holding a giant coffee mug with an Eagle, Globe, and Anchor on it. Young Sean Harris was impressed by the four solid rows of ribbons that stood out on his khaki shirt in combination with the blue pants with the red stripe down the side. The veteran Marine’s patch over his right eye seemed to speak to Sean of a life of action and adventure that had been lived.
“Uh, well…I don’t know. I was kinda thinking of the Army, maybe.” Sean had actually been set on the Army, but the Marine recruiter looked impressive and Sean was suddenly hesitant to close that possibility. There had been much news about the Marine Corps’s victories in the Philippines. Like most Americans, Sean was intrigued. There was a mystique that had developed around the United States Marine Corps after President Clark had removed federal training regulations. Sean had liked the statements “Marines know best how to make Marines” and “We’re using the best of our American past to WIN our American future.” News reports harped that Clark was “taking the leash off the Devil Dogs” and letting them train and fight the way Marine Corps generals wanted to train and fight. To Sean the Marine Corps seemed iconic with what Clark called the American Renaissance.
Sean had observed that two different media campaigns had evolved during this war. One side decried President Clark and his war effort and especially the changes in the United States Marine Corps. Clark was undoing the progress made under the Leakey administration to the great peril of the United States. Americans needed to accept a less dominant, more collusive role in the governing of the world. Removing United Nation Humanitarian regulations and inspectors from the American military process was to invite distrust and disaster. Far from winning the war, Clark was making the United States a pariah in the international community.
The other side of this media war argued that there was no progress, only decline, under Leakey. That there was a reason the United States was no longer the great nation of the past: Americans had rejected the cultural values that had made America great. The nation needed a rebirth of Americanism. This side constantly gave historical examples of American greatness: the American Revolution, American Capitalism and Innovation, the Civil War, the Economic Boom of the 1920s, the American War Effort of the World Wars. Clark insisted that Americans were a great people from a great culture: “If we embrace Americanism, China doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell!”
Because of a Supreme Court decision, that this latter side claimed unconstitutional, Clark’s reforms had been limited. Thus the formation of state militias for the war. The only branch free from international regulation was the United States Marine Corps. Over the last few years Sean found himself aligning with the American Renaissance movement; and if the Philippines and South China Sea Campaigns were any indication, he’d chosen the winning side.
“Well, the Army’s got some respectable units. No doubt about that.” The gunny sipped his coffee, turned and began to walk back into his office. “Army recruiter isn’t here yet. You can have a seat in here until he arrives. Or you can stand out in the hall until he arrives, if you want.”
“My dad was in the Army when he served in the Islamic Wars.” Sean followed the Marine recruiter, curious to see inside the office. He recognized some of the posters on the wall from around town, and slogans he had heard on the Internet: “First to Fight,” “Always Faithful,” “If you WANT to fight, Join the MARINES.” On the wall was a picture of a statue of a group of past Marines raising the Stars and Stripes. Sean knew it was from some past battle, and he agreed with so many that had stated how symbolic it was of their current struggle.
“Do you know who your dad served with in the Army? Help yourself to some coffee if you like.” Sean didn’t drink coffee.
“He flew helicopters. He flew a gunship in the Islamic Wars. He did med evac in the Kansas Militia in Mexico. We were told he was shot down while trying to evacuate the wounded from battle.”
“I’m sorry for your loss. It’s a shame to lose so many good men.” The gunny began to sit down. “Please have a seat. And now you honor your father by serving your people. I respect that.”
Sean felt flushed with pride to receive such a compliment from a man like this.
“So tell me, you gonna do your mom a favor and sign up for something safe?”
“I ain’t doing her or my family a favor if we lose this war and our country.” Sean’s voice had cracked a bit from the adrenaline he was feeling. The recruiter didn’t seem to notice or
care.
“I agree with you there. Well, your endeavor speaks well of your father and your mother. So what is it you want to do in the Army?”
“Part of me would like to fly.” Sean sat back in his chair, feeling less intimidated than before. “Part of me wants to be in the infantry.”
The recruiter’s ears perked up. “Infantry?! Now what motivates you for the infantry?”
Sean thought he could see just ever so slight a smile on the recruiter’s face. Sean was feeling rather emboldened. “I want to look those ChiCom bastards in the face when I kill them.” Sean’s voice was not that of a braggart, but of an earnest young man.
The recruiter stared at the young man for a moment. “I volunteered for the infantry as a recruit. I’d still be there if I hadn’t lost my eye and my leg.” The gunny knocked on his right knee. “I’ll tell you though, infantry is an easier choice than a decision. Most men don’t even have the desire to try. Those that do, we lose about forty percent of them through the training. They just don’t have the mental, emotional, or physical stamina to succeed. Those that do stand a better than average chance of getting themselves killed or maimed on the battlefield. Those that survive…” The gunny paused a bit in order to let the gravity of his words sink in. He wanted to be understood. “Those that do will never be the same. In the Marine Corps we will break you, bleed you, and then send you into battle. We will find your inner killer and turn you into a warrior. You will hate it. You will love it. For better or for worse you will be forever changed. That poster”—the recruiter pointed to the wall—“ain’t no bullshit. Once a Marine, son, always a Marine. There ain’t no going back.” The salty warrior saw that he had struck a chord with the kid.
The Last Marine Page 7
