The Magical Stranger

by Stephen Rodrick

  He turns highway drives into scary trips. He thrills at pushing another forty miles after the gas gauge reads empty, particularly in thunderstorms that force cop cars and eighteen-wheelers to the side of the road. Mom and I watch in white-knuckle horror. She whispers to him as she glances at the driving rain, “Peter, please,” but Dad drives on.

  Mom might let us skip Mass from time to time, but it never happens on Dad’s watch. When we visit my grandparents in Alabama, we drive sixty miles through the Deep South to find a Catholic church. At home, there is a weekly battle. Dad is a devout Catholic but an equally devout sleeper. Every Sunday, Terry and I move stealthily around the house, hoping he will sleep through 10:30 Mass, the last one of the day. But then he arises at 10:07 and has everyone out the door in twenty minutes.

  Even at church, Mom is the center of attention. She sits out communion because she is on the Pill, a mortal sin. My parents only argue about one thing when I am little: Mom’s insistence that two kids are enough. Dad protests, but she won’t give in. She tells him she can’t take on more if he’s going to be gone so much. But I know it’s something else. It’s me. I’ve scared Mom off.

  At home, we have a picture Bible, but that isn’t good enough for me. I find an old Bible of Dad’s and start reading it cover to cover. My classmates read The Hobbit. I’m reading the book of Revelation. Dad always said the Bible is the word of God, so I take what I read literally. That means things aren’t looking good for me. Stealing is a violation of the commandments and a mortal sin. Those who steal are going to burn in hell. This frightens me because I steal almost every night.

  I wake up around 3:00 a.m., starved, and sneak downstairs. I grab a handful of Chips Ahoy!, sneak back upstairs, and eat them in my bed while listening to Larry King on the radio. If I die before I confess my sin I’ll burn forever. Fortunately, I am a bumbling altar boy known throughout the parish for ringing the bells at the wrong time. One Christmas Eve before midnight Mass, the priest offers to hear the altar boys’ confessions. He says we can talk to him face-to-face rather than behind the screen since we all know each other. This seems like a really bad idea. My turn comes and I sit in a chair facing Father Massie and begin crying hard.

  “What is wrong, young man?”

  “I’m a thief, I’m going to hell. Every night I steal.”

  “What do you steal? Money from your mom’s purse?”

  “No, I steal cookies. Chips Ahoy! cookies. Every night.”

  The priest sighs and hands me a tissue.

  “God will not send you to hell for eating cookies in the middle of the night. If he does, you’ll see me right beside you. God knows you’re a growing boy. Tell your mother you get hungry at night. Go say two Hail Marys.”

  I say my prayers but I don’t tell Mom. I’m not crazy.

  She’s already pissed about my grades. Every quarter, there’s a mishmash of checks and check minuses. Mom stores them in a drawer and then throws them on Dad’s lap when he comes home.

  “See what’s your son’s doing? Absolutely nothing.”

  Dad doesn’t say much. He looks at Mom and me like we’re both retarded.

  “Barb. It’ll work out.”

  I don’t quite believe him. I already know from books how hard it is to get into the Naval Academy. Dad must have already had his act together when he was my age. He is always in control. Was he born that way?

  One day, he comes home early with a big smile on his face and a bottle of champagne.

  “I screened for command.”

  Even I know what that means. He’s going to be skipper of a Prowler squadron in a year or two. He is thirty-three. This is a big deal. But there’s bad news. Before he can take command, he tells me, he needs to learn how to be a leader, so we have to move to the Armed Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, for six months.

  We take a train across the country. My beloved Oakland Raiders finally win the Super Bowl but I miss it, hearing the score at a Montana train station. In Norfolk, we live on base for half a year and the strangest thing happens: Dad is home every night for dinnertime. He plays in a softball league, does the dishes, and helps with homework. It’s like we are on a long, glorious vacation.

  But something is wrong. Mom has tears in her eyes every day. This never happens when Dad is around. At dinner one night, Dad says he has an announcement. Terry and I look at each other, wondering who died. But then he breaks into the widest smile.

  “Your mother is pregnant. You’re going to have a baby brother or sister.”

  My reaction is swift.

  “I’m going to be sick.”

  I run into the bathroom and dry-heave for five minutes. I get that from Mom. We both panic at good or bad news. I come out and Terry and my parents are still sitting on our couch. In Dad’s eyes, I can see the light: he looks so happy. But Mom looks like me. Dad puts his arm around her and smiles, but she says nothing. Late at night, I hear them talking. Mom sounds like she’s crying.

  “Barb, this is going to be different. In two years, I’m done with sea duty. I’ll be there this time.”

  My reaction to the news continues to be less than ideal. Mom’s belly grows and I get squirrelly. In my twisted head, the presence of new life makes me realize I’m going to die. I don’t like that. I do the math; under the best of circumstances I might make it to 2050. That doesn’t seem that far away. At night, I think of my grandparents: they must have been young once, right? Now they smell of mothballs and Avon and Budweiser. Soon, they’ll be gone, and then my parents, and then me.

  It’s one of the first days of Lent. I’ve given up sweets, and one afternoon I pace the rooms in our house alone battling sugar withdrawal. Mom comes home from the grocery store and I’m crying in the kitchen.

  “What’s wrong with you? Did you hurt yourself? You weren’t whittling, were you?”

  “I don’t want to die. Mom, I really don’t want to die.”

  She drops herself into a chair and exhales loudly.

  “Christ almighty, I can’t deal with this. Wait until I talk to your father.”

  That can’t happen.

  “Please, don’t tell him. I’ll be good. I promise.”

  She nods and starts putting the groceries away, her left hand supporting her belly.

  “I won’t say anything, but grow up. I’m having a baby. I don’t need you acting like a baby.”

  I can see her point. We move back to Whidbey in June. Two months later, Dad wakes me up in the middle of the night.

  “You have a sister. We named her Christine Marie.”

  I’m groggy and don’t quite understand.

  “Who delivered her?”

  Dad laughs and digs his two-day beard into my neck, equally ticklish and painful.

  “Who do you think, knucklehead, the paperboy?”

  But then Dad turns serious.

  “You have to look out for her, okay? No matter what.”

  I tell him I will. I am nearly eleven and feel grown up.

  “I promise.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Navy aviators live on the line between bravery and stupidity, science and idiocy. One day you’re planning a complicated twenty-eight-jet air strike over Afghanistan, the next your buddies are urging you to take a shit on a Dubai boulevard after your tenth Jack Daniel’s. It has always been that way, fly hard, get drunk, and chase skirt. Tupper wasn’t against it. His days with the Gutter Rats were filled with idiocy. He knew that naval aviators had the capacity to instantly toggle between the heroic and the moronic.

  His Black Ravens were no different. There were rock stars like Beav and lovable goofs like Lieutenant Al Delvecchio. The son of a Reno cop, Delvecchio was a muscle-bound, well-meaning lout not afraid to call you a pussy if he thought you weren’t drinking your fair share of Irish car bombs at a squadron bachelor party. Last year, Delvecchio had launched on a
five-hour mission over Afghanistan without a piss tube, a piece of plastic you shoved into your flight suit when you had to urinate. He was dying in the backseat when his seatmate offered up a Ziploc bag that she’d brought a sandwich in. Delvecchio grabbed the bag gratefully and filled it to the top. His fellow backseater pulled out a cell phone to take a picture. Delvecchio triumphantly held up the bag and began waving it around like a water balloon.

  That was a mistake. He caught the bag on a switch and it ripped. Urine spilled across the dashboard, shorting out circuits and the jamming pods. The plane limped home, and Navy accountants calculated the damage to be near $40,000. Delvecchio had his call sign: “Ralph,” aka “Retarded Al Pissed Himself.”

  Tupper preached to his men that in the new, uptight Navy you had to pick your spots: one DUI, one blown assignment, and your career was dead-ended. But they didn’t always listen, just as he hadn’t listened when he’d been a JO. Everyone had to learn the hard way.

  A few days after Tupper’s flight with Buttons, a Prowler managed to get in the air with no problems. Flying the plane was Lieutenant Carl “Hot Carl” Ellsworth, a fun-loving South Carolina boy with a quick smile and a knack for finding mischief where others found monotony. Hot Carl had Turd next to him and Crapper in the backseat.

  They were running the Prowler through some mandatory checks and were bored out of their skulls. But then they saw a shiny bauble just a few miles away. It was Midway Island. The location of one of the United States’ most important naval battles wasn’t even a naval air station anymore, just a deserted speck of coral surrounded by endless blue ocean. It was late afternoon and there were no other planes in the area. They had fuel to burn. Hot Carl turned to Turd and asked him if he wanted to buzz the place. Turd said, “What the hell,” no one had told them not to.

  It wasn’t even much of a buzz. Hot Carl took the Prowler down to 1,500 feet and flew over the island, blasting his twin Pratt & Whitney engines. They noticed a deserted-looking airfield and a lot of birds. Crapper jumped on the radio.

  “Man, what a hole.”

  They made one more pass and then headed back to the Nimitz and landed with no problem. The following morning, Tupper was awakened by a call from a pissed-off CAG. Hot Carl’s Midway pass had everyone’s panties in a twist. Midway’s airfield wasn’t active, but there was a controller on standby in case a civilian or military plane had problems while crossing the Pacific. The controller had already gone home for the day but rushed back after Hot Carl’s first pass, thinking the Prowler was in distress. He put the airfield on high alert.

  That was the least of Tupper’s problems. The bigger shit sandwich was that Midway Island had been rechristened Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in 1993. Midway had gone from world’s largest naval battle to home of the world’s largest gooney bird refuge. Someone at the refuge had snapped photos of the Prowler flying low and scaring the hell out of the gooneys. That guy complained to his boss at the Department of the Interior. The Department of the Interior then complained to the Department of the Navy who complained to the fleet in Honolulu who complained to the Nimitz’s CO. The shit ran downhill until it reached CAG.

  Now he was hammering Tupper. He listened to CAG’s complaints, but his initial response was a flashback to his JO days. He didn’t say anything except “Yes, sir,” but he thought “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Sure, no one had said they could fly over Midway, but no one had said they couldn’t. If you couldn’t blast your jet over a hunk of coral every once in a while, what the hell was the point? Let the men have some fun.

  This was a mistake. That afternoon, CAG called Tupper and the crew into his office. He told them about the complaints. A smirk crossed Hot Carl’s face. CAG let him have it.

  “You think this is a joke? You think this is fucking funny?”

  CAG ripped the crew a new one for twenty minutes. All Tupper could do was keep his hands clasped behind his back, saying nothing. The crew was dismissed, but Tupper lingered behind. He wanted to ask his boss a question.

  “Did you chew them out because you didn’t trust me to chew them out? Because I can chew some ass.”

  CAG said that wasn’t it, but Tupper didn’t believe him. CAG’s punishment was making the crew chart and file new air maps for flights over Midway taking into account the gooney birds’ nesting sites. (In the end, Tupper wasn’t happy with the crew’s work and did the maps himself.)

  To Tupper, it was a ridiculous situation—a deleted chapter from Catch-22—but he noticed a change in CAG’s attitude toward him. Gone was the “We’re all in this together” bonhomie; in its place was “What are you doing now to screw with my air wing?”

  The Nimitz hit Yokosuka Naval Base outside of Tokyo a week later. It was the ship’s first port of call, but that didn’t mean the work stopped. Tupper held another captain’s mast, this time over maintenance leaving a small wrench in a Prowler cockpit. It sounded inconsequential, but when the jet started twisting and turning at five Gs, the wrench could fly up and bean the pilot or smash his instruments. Tupper busted three more sailors, but he didn’t restrict any of them to the ship for the port call. Everyone needed to blow off some steam.

  Tupper was no different. On their last night in port, Tupper and the department heads jumped on a commuter train and headed to the suburb of Kanagawa and a Korean barbecue dive recommended by Stonz who had been stationed up the road in NAF Atsugi a few years back.

  They were miles from the ship and they cut loose, the sake disappearing faster than the beef. They talked shop for a while, made fun of CAG, and grew quiet when Stonz worried about his son on his way to Afghanistan.

  They closed the restaurant and missed the last train home, leaving them with five hours to kill until the first morning service. The men were dressed like software nerds, in khakis and loud Tommy Bahama shirts, and the locals gave them a wide berth. There may have been some public urination. Tupper was particularly hammered. He mumbled that it would be awesome if there were a base with a Bachelor Officers Quarters (BOQ) nearby. The men staggered around a corner and found Camp Zama, a sprawling U.S. Army base. Magically, his wish was granted. The men high-fived each other; they couldn’t believe their luck. They flashed their IDs at the guard station, and the MPs called for a van to take them over to the BOQ. They were all drunk and profusely grateful, none more than Tupper. While checking in, he asked the desk clerk a question.

  “I want to personally thank the base commander for his hospitality. What’s his phone number?”

  The clerk wasn’t sure if Tupper was serious.

  “Uh, sir, it’s 2:00 a.m. I think he’s asleep.”

  Tupper would not be denied.

  “Wake him up. I HAVE to thank him personally.”

  Eventually, Vinnie steered Tupper away from the desk. The men went up to their suites and changed into BOQ-issue kimonos and slippers. They hung in the hallway bullshitting for a while. Tupper was still pissed off.

  “I want to thank the base commander. It’s the fucking right thing to do.”

  Vinnie let out a sigh.

  “Skipper, we can call him in the morning.”

  Tupper wandered away while his men kept talking. Then they heard the door to the stairs slam at the end of the hallway. That popped them out of their stupor. They looked around and Tupper was gone.

  In their inebriated state, it took a few seconds for them to understand the implications. Turd and Vinnie sprinted toward the door. They stumbled down the stairs and were now outside. At first, they didn’t see anything. But then Vinnie spotted a familiar-looking man a few hundred yards away hightailing it in kimono and slippers. It was Tupper and he was making a break for Zama’s officers’ housing. They gave chase.

  By the time they caught up with him, a military police van had sidled up next to Tupper. The skipper was still on his mission.

  “I just want to thank the base CO for his hospitality.
Can you help me out? Which one is his house?”

  The MPs were flummoxed. But then Vinnie flashed his ID. He sweet-talked the MPs into letting them walk Tupper back to the BOQ. Upstairs, Vinnie made sure his boss was asleep before he went back to his own room.

  The morning came quickly, and the massively hungover men caught a ride back to the train. Nothing was said about Tupper’s midnight run. They all understood. Sometimes, you just had to light your hair on fire.

  But this was different. Tupper wasn’t a junior officer pissing into a glass in a hotel room. He was in charge now. If he had found the base commander’s house and awakened him at two in the morning that would have brought down more shit than a dozen flights over Midway. This was the new Navy. One call from the MPs to the Nimitz and Tupper’s command tour might have ended before it really started.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mom and Dad come home from the hospital empty-handed. Christine stays behind for an extra day because of a bad case of jaundice. What they do bring home are some hospital brochures on sudden infant death syndrome. That night, I read the words a hundred times. Could this happen? Could Chrissie just go to sleep and not wake up?

  I remember Dad’s words to watch over her. He leaves on workups a few months later. Mom is home alone, this time with three of us. She rocks Christine to sleep and then places her in the crib. I sit quietly in my room and wait. Mom drifts off to sleep, and I slip back into Christine’s room and make sure she is sleeping on her back and hasn’t thrown her blankets over her head. I do this every night before and after my cookie raids. Mom catches me one night and tells me I’m banned from Christine’s room after dark. I disobey her the next night.

  I’m in junior high now. I come home, toast up two blueberry Pop-Tarts and wait for the Seattle Times to be delivered. I pore over every page from “Dear Abby” to “Dondi.” One day, I hear another Navy kid is moving away and the paper is looking for a new paperboy. Dad had a paper route when he was a kid. I can do it too! Mom agrees, reasoning correctly that anything that gets me out of her hair is worth a try. Dad is skeptical.