I relish playing God, having within me the power to give or take life. To take away everything it embodies, everything it is and everything it ever will be — that’s power.
As a boy my dream was to play Major League Baseball. I idolized Tigers Hall of Fame right fielder Al Kaline and dreamed of roaming right field at Tiger Stadium making spectacular catches, and of hitting for average and homeruns, of setting records and winning a World Series. Watching Mickey Mantle launch a blooper intentionally served up by Denny McLain in 1968, just a few months before Mantle retired from baseball, only inspired me further.
But I never had the chance to see if I had it in me to play in the Majors. Fearing I’d get hurt my parents denied me, discouraged me and dissuaded me. “Baseball is for only a privileged few,” Mom advised me, perhaps thinking she was saving me from disappointment. “Learn a trade,” Dad said, “and get a job at a Union shop.” Dad had joined the Marine Corps, avoiding the drudgery of a mundane life, but that was exactly the path down which he was advising me to go. Bad advice that, coming from a man who’d chosen to avoid working an assembly line to become a walking zombie and retire in 40 years with a gold watch.
And then fate struck in the name of Sgt. Schreiber, who’d served with my dad in the Pacific Arena, on Okinawa where some of the bloodiest fighting in World War II took place. Schreiber showed up at our house in June 1974 to attend a Marine Corps reunion with my dad. I was 17 and hadn’t seen Schreiber in maybe five years. He was colorful, larger than life, and had made a life of the Corps. He looked approvingly at me, already over 6 feet tall, and although I was skinny as opposed to muscular, he looked at my dad and proclaimed: “Jim, we’ll make a Marine of him, eh?” Then he asked me: “Do you like to kill?” I stammered something about mosquitoes being the only things I’d ever killed and that while I couldn’t say with any degree of certitude I enjoyed it, I enjoyed a certain gratification in succeeding with my first strike initiatives.
Schreiber left shortly after the reunion and I never saw him again — he was destined to die a few years later the result of being given HIV tainted blood during open heart surgery — but his question stayed with me, haunted me to the point that, after I turned 18, I didn’t register for the draft but instead enlisted in the Marine Corps. It’s strange how sometimes small events impact us in big ways; how a simple question often results in life-changing decisions.
From my perch high in a tree, I watch the VC approach the crossroads. Turn left, I think to myself centering my crosshair on his chest, and I just might let you live. Turn right or keep coming and you will die. At the crossroad he stops a moment, glancing left and right; after a moment he continues straight ahead. He’s maybe 900 yards from my position. He’ll be dead before he even hears my rifle’s report, I reason.
I draw a slow breath, hold it, listen to Schreiber’s voice — Do you like to kill? — and squeeze the trigger. I feel my weapon recoil against my shoulder, and a moment later the VC falls heavily onto his back, and lies still.
That would be a yes.
—JCG/June 2006
As a boy my dream was to play Major League Baseball. I idolized Tigers Hall of Fame right fielder Al Kaline and dreamed of roaming right field at Tiger Stadium making spectacular catches, and of hitting for average and homeruns, of setting records and winning a World Series. Watching Mickey Mantle launch a blooper intentionally served up by Denny McLain in 1968, just a few months before Mantle retired from baseball, only inspired me further.
But I never had the chance to see if I had it in me to play in the Majors. Fearing I’d get hurt my parents denied me, discouraged me and dissuaded me. “Baseball is for only a privileged few,” Mom advised me, perhaps thinking she was saving me from disappointment. “Learn a trade,” Dad said, “and get a job at a Union shop.” Dad had joined the Marine Corps, avoiding the drudgery of a mundane life, but that was exactly the path down which he was advising me to go. Bad advice that, coming from a man who’d chosen to avoid working an assembly line to become a walking zombie and retire in 40 years with a gold watch.
And then fate struck in the name of Sgt. Schreiber, who’d served with my dad in the Pacific Arena, on Okinawa where some of the bloodiest fighting in World War II took place. Schreiber showed up at our house in June 1974 to attend a Marine Corps reunion with my dad. I was 17 and hadn’t seen Schreiber in maybe five years. He was colorful, larger than life, and had made a life of the Corps. He looked approvingly at me, already over 6 feet tall, and although I was skinny as opposed to muscular, he looked at my dad and proclaimed: “Jim, we’ll make a Marine of him, eh?” Then he asked me: “Do you like to kill?” I stammered something about mosquitoes being the only things I’d ever killed and that while I couldn’t say with any degree of certitude I enjoyed it, I enjoyed a certain gratification in succeeding with my first strike initiatives.
Schreiber left shortly after the reunion and I never saw him again — he was destined to die a few years later the result of being given HIV tainted blood during open heart surgery — but his question stayed with me, haunted me to the point that, after I turned 18, I didn’t register for the draft but instead enlisted in the Marine Corps. It’s strange how sometimes small events impact us in big ways; how a simple question often results in life-changing decisions.
*
From my perch high in a tree, I watch the VC approach the crossroads. Turn left, I think to myself centering my crosshair on his chest, and I just might let you live. Turn right or keep coming and you will die. At the crossroad he stops a moment, glancing left and right; after a moment he continues straight ahead. He’s maybe 900 yards from my position. He’ll be dead before he even hears my rifle’s report, I reason.
I draw a slow breath, hold it, listen to Schreiber’s voice — Do you like to kill? — and squeeze the trigger. I feel my weapon recoil against my shoulder, and a moment later the VC falls heavily onto his back, and lies still.
That would be a yes.
—JCG/June 2006
No comments:
Post a Comment