“I see.”
“See what? What is there to see?”
“Bobby,” he said. “He was in your head that night, you said. Coaching you on.”
“He was.” Forearms resting on my knees, I laced my hands. Thinking about Bobby’s running commentary that night made my trigger finger start to twitch.
“Bobby’s your big brother. And he’s a Marine. You look up to him.”
“I do. I actually don’t think I’d have made it that night without him.”
Dr. Koenig nodded again, like all of this confirmed another theory he’d hatched beneath that shiny dome of a scalp. He tapped his pen on his pad and the notes I couldn’t see. I let him think through whatever he had to think through.
Then he said, “I think we need to talk about Bobby.”
12.
I can understand why Dr. Koenig wanted to know more about my brother. What better way to map someone’s internal programming than to examine the people he admired? A man’s heroes offer you a glimpse of that which sets him apart from the frogs and mosquitoes in his backyard. They show you not only who he is, but who he wants to be. Who, given the right circumstances, he may just become.
Bobby hit every life obstacle before I did, so our childhood was a story of him confronting demons, breaking their limbs and tossing them aside while I followed behind and gave their prone bodies a kick or two before moving on. He installed my values. With my father gone all the time and my mother drunk all the time, where else would I get them but television and Bobby? Being older, he also stood taller and ran faster. He snagged a beautiful girlfriend who turned into a beautiful wife, he joined the Marine Corps and he took up arms for his country even though wealthy parents would have paid his way into any lucrative, cushy career he chose. How could I not look up to this guy?
But external indicia of superhumanity win only so much admiration. And growing up in a big house on a golf course limit a boy’s opportunities to show inner strength and determination. Other than my mom lying around drunk, Bobby didn’t have a whole lot of adversity to confront. So while I always looked up to him, I didn’t really begin to appreciate him as a hard son of a bitch until we both reached adulthood. And although I understood that he possessed a certain bad-assedness just by virtue of joining the Marines, I didn’t realize how deep that ran before he got mugged.
We’d grabbed a booth in the corner at Raw Bar in Wrightsville Beach in the last days of July, 2002 after I had just finished taking the bar exam in Raleigh. Bobby’s treat: beer, which I needed then, badly. There came a pause after the second or third pitcher when the conversation lulled, and we both fell silent amidst the cacophony of clinking glasses, laughing drunks and blasting rock n’roll. His eyes drifted over the stumbling college kids and sandblown beach bums, and then he said, “Did I mention I got mugged last night?”
My eyes widened. “Uh, no.”
A proud smile. “You want to hear about it?”
Proud? Proud of getting mugged? Why would anyone smile proudly after announcing they got mugged last night? “You’re damn right I want to hear about it!”
On the table, a half-empty pitcher of Budweiser stood beside a fully empty sibling. I leaned forward to hear better over the Linkin Park piece playing on the jukebox. Bobby’s face glowed red from his time in the sun.
“So I’m tired,” he said, still grinning, “been running around in the woods all day, sweating my balls off. Not getting enough to drink, water discipline. Finish up the march, and I’m like, take me to the river. I’m gonna stick my head in and suck it dry.”
He paused to stare at the bouncer who had just walked by, slowing as he eyeballed us with absolutely no attempt to conceal it. Bobby wore a golf shirt neatly tucked into his khakis, but his haircut screamed “jarhead.” I, fresh off the barber’s chair only yesterday, realized that I’d cut my own hair so short that I probably looked like a Marine, too. One bouncer had probably said to another, there’s two Marines in here. Keep an eye on them, lest they raise Hell.
The bouncer thought I was a Marine just like Bobby. This idea, as much as the titanic amount of beer I had consumed in a relatively short period of time, brought an excited flush to my face. I stared back at the bouncer and thought, what are you looking at, asshole?
The bouncer moved on.
“What’s his problem?” I muttered.
“I know, right?” Bobby snorted. “Punkass. Anyway, where was I?”
“You were going to stick your head in the river and suck it dry.”
“Right. Okay, so I pound all this water, then I get me a Gatorade for the ride home to Wilmington. I don’t even hit the back gate before my dick’s, like, Bobby, I gotta piss. I say, hold it. Dick says, okay, Bobby, I’ll hold it, but you have to move that ass. So I get through the back gate, and I’m on Highway 172, and my dick pipes up again. Bobby, he says, find a gas station or something. And I’m like, goddamn, we’re on 172, there’s nothing out here. Dick says, look, man, you skipped your salt tablet, I’ve got no sodium backing me up, you need to find a gas station or someplace where I can let go of all this water. I say, chill. I figure I can make it to Holly Ridge. My eyeballs will be floating by that point, but I’ll make it.
“So anyway, by the time I hit Highway 17, not only are my eyeballs floating, but it’s leaking out my ears. I’m sweating piss. My dick says, change of plans, here, Devil Dog, pull over. I’m like, you can’t be serious, someone could see me, and my dick replies, find cover. You got thirty seconds, then you’re wetting your pants. Seriously, man, I have never had to take a leak so bad in my life. And there’s nowhere for me to go. I’m in BFE.”
Bobby chuckled, shaking his head.
“But I have to do something, you know? So there’s this abandoned gas station there on the right not long after you turn onto 17 South. It’s pretty dark by now, not as dark as I’d have liked, but this place is abandoned and has no lights. Windows and doors all boarded up, gas pumps gone, weeds as tall as you are shooting up through cracks in the concrete. There’s an old algae-covered boat on a trailer that’s been parked there ever since I got stationed at Lejeune, next to a broken-down old Buick packed to the gills with some redneck hoarder’s shit. Other than that, nothing, nobody. So I pull the Mustang right up alongside and hop out. I waddle around behind the building. I whip out my dick. I start to piss all over this wall.”
The lead singer from Linkin Park had tried so hard and come so far, but in the end, it didn’t even matter. I could have cared less; I listened with rapt attention.
“And I mean piss. It’s the deluge, man, it’s like, yo, Noah, hurry up and get the zebras on the Ark, you know what I’m saying? I piss, I piss and I piss some more. And as I’m pissing, I hear this engine approaching.”
He poured himself another beer. His powerful forearm flexed as he filled his glass. His hands shook not at all.
“I hear brakes, I hear the rpms drop, and I’m like shit, somebody’s stopping. Sheriffs? Highway Patrol? Some shitbag that wants to jack my rims and my radio? I finish up as fast as I can, shake it off, zip it up. Trot around the building. I see the car, and I’m like, awww, fuck.
“It ain’t the sheriffs. It ain’t Highway Patrol. It’s one of those mid-eighties Cadillacs with the tinted windows and those stupid wheels with the thin tires and humungous shiny rims. Gangsta-mobile, you know what I’m saying?”
I nodded.
“Guys that drive cars like that? They don’t stop to help motorists. They don’t stop to help anybody. So I double-time back to the Mustang just as the Caddy comes to a stop behind me. Passenger door opens, this guy gets out and says hey, stickman, where you going? I ignore him and jump in the car. I crank the motor. But my starter’s beginning to wear out, right, so it doesn’t catch until Homeboy shows up at my open window and sticks a gun in my face. He says, ‘Break yourself, motherfucker!’