Way of the Warrior Kid 3: Where there's a Will... (A Novel)

by Jocko Willink

I tried. But as I got to the bottom of the hill and headed back toward the finish line at my driveway, I slowed down just a little tiny bit. Uncle Jake seemed just too far ahead to keep up with.

  When I finally crossed the finish line, Uncle Jake said, “Six-fourteen.”

  Six minutes and fourteen seconds. That was my fastest time yet.

  “Yes!” I shouted, “A new record!”

  Uncle Jake just looked at me. “Not bad,” he said.

  “Thanks Unc—”

  “But not good,” Uncle Jake cut me off. “You can do better.”

  “How much better?” I asked, wondering if I would ever be good enough for Uncle Jake’s standards.

  “You can get a sub-six-minute mile,” he replied flatly.

  “Sub-six?” I asked him, wondering exactly what that meant.

  “Less than six minutes. You can do a mile in less than six minutes. That is the goal. Okay?”

  “Of course, Uncle Jake. That sounds pretty cool,” I told him, and it did sound pretty cool.

  “Well, it won’t feel cool, Marc,” Uncle Jake said. “You have already done the easy part—getting to where you are pretty fast. You have shaved a bunch of time off your mile run. But to shave off more now is going to be hard. You are going to have to earn every second you get off that time. It is going to take hard work. Really hard work. Okay?”

  “Yes, Uncle Jake. I’ll work hard.”

  “Good,” Uncle Jake replied, and then he stood quiet for a minute, but I could tell he had something else to say.

  “Now. What did you learn from Nathan James last year?"

  This seemed like such an easy question. “I learned that some people have a rougher life than me. Nathan didn’t have much money for food or clothes. He had to return cans and bottles to buy his lunch and dinner. His life was tough and I needed to understand how hard it was to live without much money.”

  Uncle Jake shook his head. He wasn’t happy with my answer.

  “Wrong,” he said. “That’s only part of the lesson. The more important lesson is that you don’t know what is going on with people in their lives and you shouldn’t judge them. Sure, Nathan and his family don’t have much money, but that isn’t the only hardship people can face. There are all kinds of things people have to go through.

  Right now, you are judging Danny, thinking he is lazy or doesn’t like you, but you don’t actually know what is going on in his life.”

  “But I do,” I told Uncle Jake quickly, proud of the information I had gathered about Danny, “I already told you, he has plenty of money! Shoes and bikes and cars and backpacks—he has everything!”

  “I just told you,” Uncle Jake said with a serious look on his face, “life isn’t all about money. Money isn’t the only problem people have and money doesn’t solve every hardship. There is more to life than just money. You need to get to know Danny a little better before you judge him. Do you understand me?”

  “Okay, Uncle Jake,” I said. I wasn’t quite sure what Uncle Jake meant, but he seemed a little aggravated with me, so I figured I should just listen to what he was saying so I could try to figure it out. But even as I thought about it, I couldn’t understand why Danny wouldn’t want to come over and help us. It didn’t make sense.

  chapter 16

  Today Nathan, Kenny and I had a TON of work to do. When we completed our first house, we had to go immediately to the next one, and then the next one and the next. By lunch time, we had worked four houses and still had four more to do.

  I know Uncle Jake wanted me to be friends with Danny and all that, but today I just had had enough and couldn’t help from saying something about it to Nathan and Kenny.

  “I can’t believe Danny won’t help us! I wonder what he does all day?!?”

  Nathan and Kenny laughed. Then Kenny got a serious look on his face and said, “I wonder what he does do?”

  “He always says he’s ‘doing something with his older brother,’” I told them.

  “Everyday?” Nathan asked.

  “That’s what he tells me,” I replied.

  “Who would want to hang around your older brother all day every day?” Kenny asked.

  “Yeah! No kidding,” Nathan added, and then continued, saying, “and what about the money? We are making a lot of money! Doesn’t he want the money?”

  “Yeah! Who doesn’t need money?” Kenny said.

  Nathan and Kenny stood there shaking their heads. I know I was supposed to be keeping my ego under control, but honestly, it felt kind of good to hear Kenny and Nathan realizing that maybe Danny wasn’t so perfect after all! I felt a little bad, because I knew Uncle Jake wouldn’t want me to be saying anything bad about Danny. But, at the same time, everything I was saying was true! Why should I feel bad about saying something that is actually true? So I explained some more things about Danny, “I think Danny doesn’t need money.”

  “What?” Nathan said with a surprised look on his face, “Who doesn’t need money?”

  “Danny,” I replied. “Have you seen his parents’ cars? The kind of shoes he wears? The Bentlee bike he rides? Even his backpack is a super-nice, brand new jiu-jitsu backpack! I don’t think he needs any money at all! His parents are rich, and it seems like they give him whatever he wants!”

  “Yeah,” Nathan said shaking his head, “now that you mention it, he does seem to have pretty much everything.”

  “Spoiled!” Kenny shouted.

  I didn’t answer that or agree with it out loud. I knew that was going a little too far. But, inside, I felt the same way and my ego was sure happy to hear these guys finally understanding that Danny was not the kind of person to look up to.

  “Well,” I finally said, “The bottom line is he isn’t here, and he isn’t going to be here, and all this talking won’t get these lawns taken care of, so we better get to work!”

  Nathan and Kenny agreed and we packed up the wagon and headed to the next house and then the next and finally, the last one.

  By the time we were done, we pretty much went straight to jiu-jitsu.

  Once we were there, I figured I had better make another attempt at getting to know Danny better, so I invited him to work with us again.

  “We were working all day today, Danny, and we could really use some help. Are you sure you can’t help us tomorrow?”

  Just as I expected, Danny said the same old thing, “Sorry, Marc. But I’m going to be doing some things with my brother tomorrow pretty much the whole day.”

  “Okay,” I said. Then I thought to myself, Maybe Danny just doesn’t want to work. After all, he has plenty of money. So I changed tactics.

  “What about after jiu-jitsu tomorrow? Do you want to come over and just hang out?”

  I could have guessed it! Danny said the same thing, “Well, I’ll be hanging around with my brother tomorrow after jiu-jitsu.”

  “What about the next night? Same thing? Hanging around with your brother?” I asked, showing that I was not really believing him.

  “Well, yeah, actually. That is what I am doing.”

  “Is that all you ever do, Danny? Hang around your brother? Doesn’t it get boring? Don’t you want to hang with us kids?”

  Danny sat there for a minute, looking a little bit sad.

  I didn’t get it at all! Why would he be sad? He was the one that didn’t want to do anything with the rest of us.

  Then he finally said, “Why don’t you come over to my house tomorrow after jiu-jitsu. I have to check with my parents, but it should be okay. That way you can meet my brother.”

  That kind of surprised me. I didn’t understand why he didn’t want to come to my house, but didn’t mind me going over to his house. And, I knew Uncle Jake wanted me to learn more about Danny, so I figured I better just go.

  “Okay. I’ll have to check with my mom, but she won’t mind.”

  “Great. I’ll get your phone number and call you when I get home to make sure my mom says it’s okay.”

  That was that. After we talked,
we trained some more and we trained pretty hard. I didn’t tap him out, but he didn’t tap me out either. And, of course, as usual, he was super nice to me the whole time. When we finished, I gave him the phone number to my house.

  “Well, he’s not coming over,” I told Uncle Jake when I got in the car to head home.

  “Did you—” Uncle Jake started to ask me a question, but I cut him off—something I don’t do very often!

  “But I’m going over to his house!”

  Uncle Jake smiled. “Nice work. When?”

  “Should be tomorrow after jiu-jitsu. He is going to call tonight to make sure his mom says it is okay.”

  “Perfect,” Uncle Jake said.

  We got home, made dinner, and were sitting at the table eating when the phone rang.

  “I got it!” I said, knowing it was for me as I got up from the table and picked up the phone.

  Just as I thought, it was Danny. He said his mom had said it was okay if I came over the next night after jiu-jitsu. I sat back down at the table.

  “Well?” Uncle Jake asked me.

  “I’m going,” I told him.

  “Perfect,” he said, “now you can learn something about what makes Danny tick.”

  “Yes, Uncle Jake,” I replied. And I was starting to really wonder the answer to that exact question. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.

  chapter 17

  What happened today was very unexpected, but I sure learned a lot. We had a pretty light day of work, but had fun doing it. Kenny and Nathan are really fun to have around. When we finished, Kenny and Nathan headed home, and I cleaned up, got ready for jiu-jitsu and brought a change of clothes so I could go over to Danny’s house afterward.

  Jiu-jitsu was fun too. We did “monkey in the middle” with takedowns, where the person that got taken down leaves the mat and a new person comes in to challenge the person that won. I did pretty well—but it is very tiring and, eventually, everyone gets taken down.

  After practice, we cleaned the mats and I changed clothes. Danny was waiting for me and we walked outside to his car. His car was really nice.

  “This is my mom,” he said, “Mom, this is Marc.”

  “Nice to meet you Mrs. Rhinehart,” I told her as I got in the car.

  “Nice to meet you too, Marc,” she responded with a nice smile.

  They didn’t live too far from the gym, and as we drove, Danny and I were laughing about one of the takedowns I had tried to do, but accidently fell and was immediately out.

  As we pulled into Danny’s driveway, it was just as I expected. The house was HUGE and completely perfect. It looked like a mansion. And the yard was very well taken care of—they had no need for Marc’s Meticulous Mowing.

  As soon as we went inside, I heard someone yelling, “DANNY! DANNY!”

  It was Danny’s brother, and he came running down the stairs toward us. As soon as I saw him, I could tell there was something different about him.

  “Hi, Danny!” Danny’s brother shouted. “Who is that?” he asked, pointing at me. His voice was a little hard to understand as he kind of blurred the words together, sounding almost like he had some food in his mouth while he was talking.

  “That’s a friend of mine,” Danny answered. “Hello friend.”

  “His name is Marc. Marc, this is my brother Anthony."

  “Hi, Anthony,” I said.

  “Hi, Marc,” he said back.

  “Do you want to see my train collection?” Anthony asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “GREAT!” Anthony replied as he ran up the stairs.

  I looked at Danny, and Danny looked at me.

  “He has a developmental disability,” Danny said in a serious voice.

  “Oh, okay,” I replied, unsure of how to respond.

  “It means he is developing slower than most kids.

  He can’t do some of the stuff we can do and probably never will be able to. It also means he doesn’t get to hang around other kids as much as we do. So, that’s why I spend a lot of time with him.”

  Wow. Here I was this whole time, thinking that Danny just didn’t want to hang around us other kids, and the whole time he was just taking care of his brother.

  “DANNY! FRIEND! Come on up!” Anthony shouted, “I got the trains out!”

  “Okay!” Danny yelled back. Then he looked at me and smiled. I smiled back.

  “Let’s go!” I said.

  We went up the stairs and into a big giant playroom. I call it a play room because it wasn’t a bedroom—there was no bed—it wasn’t a living room—there were no couches—it was just a big giant room filled with toys.

  And a lot of those toys were trains, the simple wooden trains with that come with a bunch of pieces of wooden tracks that link together to form big tracks.

  “TRAINS!” Anthony shouted when we entered the room.

  We sat down on the floor and started building a giant track. Danny was so nice and patient with his brother, it was amazing to see.

  And we had fun! We built a crazy long track with all kinds of curves, tunnels, and bridges, and then we pushed the trains around the track and set up different tracks and different trains. It was fun.

  But at the same time, I realized, this is what Danny did all the time. And even though it was fun to do for an hour every once in a while, it had to be hard to do it every day like Danny did.

  “Does he like to do this every day?” I asked Danny.

  “He sure does,” Danny said back.

  “Do you get bored?”

  “Yeah, I do. But if I didn’t play with him, especially in the summer time, he really wouldn’t have anyone to be around. And beside, it makes me realize that I am very lucky to be able to do what I do. We both are.”

  “Yes, we are,” I replied.

  We kept playing with the trains until Mrs. Rhinehart came up and said it was time for her to give me a ride home.

  “Okay, Marc, I’ve got to take you home. Danny is going to stay with Anthony,” she said.

  “No problem,” I replied.

  I stood up and walked toward the door.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Danny,” I said, “and I’ll see you again sometime Anthony.”

  “See ya,” Danny said.

  “Wait!” Anthony shouted, then he ran over and gave me a hug. “Thanks for playing with me!”

  “No problem, Anthony. Your trains are SUPER COOL!” I said with a smile.

  “I know!” he said.

  And with that I smiled and headed out the door. I followed Mrs. Rhinehart down to her car and she drove me home.

  When we got to my house, I opened the door and got out.

  “Thanks Mrs. Rhinehart,” I told her looking back through the door.

  “Thank you,” she said back. “Thank you for being understanding. Danny really likes you and appreciates your being his friend. And thanks for being so nice to Anthony.”

  “No problem at all, Mrs. Rhinehart. It was fun.” With that she smiled and I closed the door.

  Once in the house, I told Uncle Jake about Danny’s house and about Anthony and about his disability and about the trains. I said that Danny spends all his time with Anthony because otherwise, no one else would.

  After I told Uncle Jake everything, he looked at me and asked, “What did you learn?”

  “Well, I learned about Danny’s situation and about his brother,” I said.

  “But what did you learn about you?” he asked.

  I wasn’t quite sure what Uncle Jake meant by this.I must have looked puzzled, because after a quiet moment, Uncle Jake said, “You should have learned a few things. You should have learned that just because people appear to have everything doesn’t mean that their life is easy. You should have learned—once again—not to judge people without knowing them. On top of that, you should see your Warrior Kid Code number five, where you say ‘A Warrior Kid always tries to help others.’ Danny is really living that every day as he tries to help his brother. And, you also should h
ave learned, like Danny has learned, that you are lucky to be healthy and that you need to take advantage of that and be the best you can every day.”