“Do you want me to push you?” I asked as the elevator pulled us toward the second floor.
“I’ve been wheeling myself around since 1951 and I don’t plan on stopping today,” he said.
We stood (he sat) in line for our calzones and I ordered a spinach and cheese and he ordered a plain but asked the manager to put hot peppers in it for him.
Here was my teammate on the hot-and-spicy team. I might have been wrong about the Ping-Pong.
I moved a chair out of the way so he could wheel up to the table and we opened our calzone boxes and let them cool off. He asked me to grab a few more napkins and I did.
“How come you’re here all the time?” he asked.
“I’m doing a project,” I said, and motioned toward the camera.
“In the summer? A school project?”
“Nah. It’s for me. I guess I made it up.”
“That’s pretty smart,” he said. “Keeping yourself busy until school starts again. What are you? Fifteen?”
“Seventeen. I just graduated.”
“The older I get, the younger you all look,” he said. “Yesterday I swear I saw a nine-year-old driving a tractor-trailer.”
I laughed.
“Can I ask you about your hat?” I asked. “I know one of the USS Pledge boats sank in Korea. Was that your boat?”
“You’re putting me on,” he said.
“What?”
“No one your age cares about Korea.”
I shook my head and finished chewing my calzone. “It was a minesweeper, right? Sunk in 1950?”
He let out a laugh like I’d just told the funniest joke he’d ever heard. I thought this meant I’d said something stupid, so I quickly corrected myself. “Oh. Maybe you were on the one in Vietnam, then. The other USS Pledge?”
“No no. You got it right. I was sunk in Korea. Dragged out of the water and never felt my legs again,” he said. He shook his head. “My son says no one your age gives a flying squirrel about old wars now. I bet my grandson doesn’t know anything about anything.”
“Huh,” I said.
“He’s been brought up in some kind of cult, anyway. Can’t imagine they’re allowed to do much thinking for themselves. What a joke,” he said.
I stopped eating and looked at him. Transmission from USS Pledge guy: His mother didn’t want him to go to war. She thought it was wrong. She blamed him for his injury for the rest of her life.
“A cult? That’s interesting,” I said. “I never knew anyone in a cult.” I wasn’t really following as he spoke. I thought the grandson he was talking about was some far-off grandson on the West Coast or something, and the cult was like those unicorn-loving people Dad’s mother ran off with. But then I remembered who he was—who his grandson was.
“I think all they teach the kids out there is how to freeload off the government. Because…”
“That place is a cult?” I asked. I put my calzone down. “The place out by the lake? With all the RVs?”
“I used to call the cops and ask if I could at least get my grandson out. No luck.”
“What’s your grandson’s name?” I asked again.
He lowered his eyebrows. “You’re not one of them, are you?”
“No.”
“His name is Richard. After me! Can you believe that?”
“I know him,” I said. “I’ve met him a few times.” He looked at me like this hurt him—me knowing Rick better than he did. “I’ll say hi to him if you want.”
“I wish you’d just smuggle him out,” he said. He was joking now, smiling and eating his calzone. “Or maybe you can tell him about the Pledge and how I ended up in this chair. I don’t think he knows, and I bet my idiot son never told him the truth, either.”
“I’ll do it next time I see him,” I said. Then I picked up my camera. “I don’t usually do this, but do you mind if I take a few pictures of you?”
He let me and I snapped a bunch of him at different exposures because I wanted to capture every age spot on his face and every wrinkle. He was a good-looking man for over eighty years old. I told him that.
“It’s not nice to tease senior citizens,” he said.
“I’m not teasing. I bet you were one handsome kid when you were my age.”
“Tell you the truth, I had acne and I was awkward on my feet. Never good at sports or dancing. Always good at math.”
I lowered the camera and looked at him, and I was hit with something I couldn’t describe. It was a mix of panic attack and transmission.
What I saw made me light-headed. It made me dizzy. Made me nauseous.
Transmission from wheelchair-bound Richard USS Pledge guy:
I will be in the tunnel.
Glory O’Brien with stark white hair and wearing men’s combat pants. I will be in the tunnel as it fills with smoke.
I will be with Peter, also white-haired and combat-geared, and a male child.
Behind us will stand about twenty exiles with masks on to block out the smoke. In front of us will stand Nedrick the Sanctimonious’s red-pickup-truck-driving right-hand man. He will be holding a flamethrower. The boy? Will be his boy. He will have curly hair and psoriasis. He will have bare feet because his mother will have been forced to live in the trees for the last three years. He will recognize his father and plead with him not to burn us. His father will choose to burn us anyway because I will be the leader of the resistance, and I will be enemy number one.
The Sniper. Far more important than some bastard son.
“Are you okay?” someone asked me. It could have been anyone.
“Glory?” That was Peter.
Somebody caught me as I slumped out of my chair.
Richard USS Pledge said, “Give the poor girl some air.”