Ellie and I climbed to the Eagle’s Nest before daylight. Something she’d taken to doing lately. And something I loved doing with her. Her athleticism reminded me of Marie, and while I couldn’t explain it, every step we took toward the clouds healed something in me.
At the top, I built a fire in the fireplace while she boiled water for hot chocolate. With fire and steam, we met on the couch. She sat alongside me, threw a blanket across our feet, lifted my arm up and over her shoulder, and then gently pressed her index finger into my chest like she was pressing Play on a cassette player. That was all she needed to say.
My senior year rolled around. My friendship with Marie had blossomed from kids searching for sharks’ teeth, to dragging her out of the ocean miles from shore, to two kids in love and worried about what next year might bring. For the first time in either of our lives, we were staring down the uncertainty of life and unable to answer the questions that swirled beneath the surface. Given Marie’s love of everything other than school, her college options were few and none overlapped with mine. Given track, mine were many. For three days, I kept the letter hidden. Colorado was a long way from Florida. And I wasn’t sure how it had come to be because I’d not sought it out or applied. It simply appeared.
When she found it, she feigned a smile and shook her head. “An appointment.”
I waved it off. Acting as if I’d dismissed it outright.
She waved the letter. “They don’t hand these things out to everybody. You’ve got to be somebody to get one of these.”
While I could run fast, my test scores revealed something I did not know—I possessed a particular problem-solving skill set that the U.S. government valued. Through some analytical engine, they surmised that I was able to make quick decisions based on limited information and not second-guess the decision. Based on this, I had been “invited” to join next year’s cadets at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
Marie looked at me with admiration. I was looking at a map, counting the states between us.
She ran her fingers through my hair. “I’ll come see you. You can take me flying.”
“I don’t . . .”
Marie didn’t like being alone. I’d known this since we were kids. And she knew that I knew this, but she also didn’t want to be the reason I declined the appointment. So she put on a show. “Bish—” Marie called me by my middle name. She was the only person to do so, and most often she used an abbreviated version. She said it again. “Bish, it’s free. You don’t pay a dime. Actually, they pay you while you’re in school.”
That was the loneliest bus ride of my life.
By Thanksgiving I was cold, tired, and ready to quit. Every minute of every day was filled from before sunup to after sundown. Every decision was dictated. What we ate. How we dressed. How we spoke, walked, and marched.
For cadets, calisthenics were a daily requirement. Whether we liked it or not. We marched, we ran, and we did push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups until most of the class either threw up or quit. Once a month, we ran this three-mile obstacle course. For time. Through the woods, over a mountain, up ropes, down ladders, through the mud or snow or ice, and every member of the company was required to cross the line under a certain time. If not, the entire company ran it again. And again. Until the requirement was met. To make matters worse, they started us at two-minute staggers and we were given orders not to assist one another. This was more time trial than group race. It was our job to get ourselves over that line, and they were measuring our individual ability to push ourselves, not our corporate ability to come together.
I understand the need for a fit and strong army. It’s common sense. But some people’s bodies just weren’t made for speed. And even less for power. Few produced both. The first time we ran it, they had started me about fifth—and because it can take over an hour to complete, I passed everyone in front of me. So, having finished a few minutes before everyone else, and staring at a line of cadets strung out across the mountain, I could easily see some would never make it. Much less on time. I understand now that this was part of the weeding-out process and, in hindsight, maybe I should have let them weed out a few. It might have made life easier, but something in me just could not do that.
So, against orders, I turned around. Ran back. Which did not go unnoticed. I didn’t make a very good cadet anyway, so if they wanted to get rid of me, I thought I’d help them out. Some of my fellow cadets appreciated it since they didn’t want to run it again. Some were jealous and thought I was just brownnosing for notoriety and advancement.
Neither was the case.
Regardless, while my fellow cadets were granted a twelve-hour leave, I marched or cleaned or stood at attention in the freezing rain.
The week prior to Thanksgiving everyone in our company crossed the line with seven seconds to spare. The only company to do so. Even my critics were thankful. It meant a weekend pass—even for me. But while I excelled in the physical and mental aspects of being a cadet, I didn’t really fit in and wasn’t good at making friends. I wanted to, but more often than not, I found myself alone and left out. While friendships and packs naturally formed, I remained a group of one. One day two of my company commanders were talking and didn’t know I was listening. One described me to the other as “Does not play well with others.”
I never understood this. And I never understood the constant disconnect between what I experienced and what I intended. It was as if I was living in one world, and everyone else lived in another. Plexiglass in between.
Meanwhile, letters from home dwindled. What had started out as three or four a week became one a week and then one every three or four weeks. Four pages became half a page. For most of our lives, my presence—time with me—had filled the hole in her heart. Marie had grown up with no father. Had never known him. No name. No picture. No nothing. So she grew up with an insatiable need to be needed. To be reminded that she was beautiful and of value. When we met as kids, and throughout high school, I filled that. At least for a time. But during our freshman year at college, word trickled back that she was a regular at most every party. I knew her well enough to know she was hurting, and being around people having fun numbed her ache and medicated the loneliness. Because she’d never known it, physical presence and touch affirmed her at a deeper and louder level than letters from Colorado. So while I wrote every day, the infrequency of her responses told me that either she wasn’t listening or she’d begun listening to someone else.
The only place I found solace, and the only place I knew freedom, was on the track. So when they cut me loose to train, I did. A lot. And because winters in Colorado Springs are both cold and white, I spent hours in our indoor track facility.
Most days, as I ran in circles, a fit, G.I. Joe–looking individual would sit up high in the cheap seats, eat a sandwich, and watch me run. What made the sight strange was his clothing. He wore white robes and a collar. An odd sight amid the uniformed world around me. And what was odder was that my training schedule was determined by other people, so my times on the track changed daily. There was nothing consistent about them, which they did on purpose to keep me from finding comfort in routine. And yet, every day, this robed man appeared high in the seats and watched me.
The first week in December I’d made up my mind that I was finished. The U.S. government could shove their appointment. I was beyond miserable. Over the last month, I’d secretly put in applications to run for schools closer to home. Closer to Marie. In her few letters of the last month, she’d even started talking about dating other people. Just for a while. But nothing serious. Till things get back to normal.
Two weeks before Christmas I was a fuming ticking bomb venting my anger through a workout we called “Flying 200s.” Run two hundred meters, walk two hundred, run two hundred, and so on. And like every other day on the track, White Robes stared down on me while digging his hand into a bag of potato chips, a camera slung around his neck.
After the workout, I was lying on the turf, trying to breathe, when he appeared alongside me, his shadow stretching across me. It was the first time he’d ever walked out onto the track. Mind you, he had not said a word to me in over four months. By now, I had learned not to speak unless spoken to.
He dropped a potato chip in his mouth. “You like Nashville, Tennessee?”
“Sir?”
“Simple question.”
I sat up. “Sir, I don’t—”
He licked his fingers. “How about Montreat, North Carolina?”
“I’ve never—”
“Statesboro, Georgia?”
All three cities contained colleges with track programs where I’d applied in the last month. And I was the only person on planet earth who knew that. Or so I thought. “Sir, I—”
He stepped closer. Within two feet. Emptying the bag of chips into his mouth. “Tell me something”—he spoke around the crunch—“why’d you turn around? Go back?”
I shook my head. “Sir, I’m confu—”
“The obstacle course.” He thumbed over his shoulder. “You went back. Why?”
“They weren’t going to make it.”
“Why do you care? Did you know them?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you now?”
An awkward silence. “I’ve tried, but . . .”
“And?”
I shook my head. “Not really.”
“Not really or no?”
I pulled on a sweatshirt. “No, sir.”
“Why?”
“Well . . . we’re busy during the day and there’s not much time for social—”
“No, why’d you go back?”
I shrugged. For the first time I answered his questions with a question. “Does it matter, sir?”
His eyes studied the track where I’d been running and ended at the puddle of sweat next to me. “You disobeyed an order not to. The obstacle course is, by design, a singular achievement. It’s why they stagger the start.”
“And yet we suffer as a group if one person doesn’t make the time.”
“Orders are orders.”
“It’s a bad order.”
“That attitude’ll get you thrown out of here.”
“Sir.” I glanced around to make sure no one else was listening. I figured any conversation with a priest was protected. “Do I look like I care?”
He raised his eyebrows. “You know you’re only the second one on record to do that.”
“What? Disobey an order?”
“No.” He laughed. “Go back. Return to help the stragglers cross the line.”
“Maybe I was the only one who could, sir.”
He nodded, “Maybe.” Then he wiped the corners of his mouth with a napkin. “All three of those colleges are going to deny your application.”
“But, sir—”
“Along with the other seven to which you applied.”
In truth, I had applied to ten schools. I didn’t know how he knew, but I did know he knew what I’d been doing in my spare time. I said nothing.
He waved his hand across the world of the academy in front of me. “You don’t like our fine institution?”
“It’s not that, sir.”
He knelt. I could feel his breath on my face. “What is it then?”
“Don’t really fit in, sir.”
He nodded. “I’d agree with you.”
Then his expression changed. More curious. Less interrogating. “But that raises the larger question.”
Now I was confused. “Sir?”
“Have you ever?”
“Ever what?”
“Fit in?”
I was about ready to punch this joker in the teeth. I sized him up. My size. Maybe thicker, but I was younger and faster. “Not really.”
“Least you’re honest about it.”
“Never been much of a liar.”
He was about to leave when he turned back. “You haven’t answered my question.”
“Which one?”
His expression softened and his eyes focused on me. “Why’d you do it?”
“You mean turn back?”
He nodded.
“I don’t think you’d understand.”
“Try me.”
It was no use. What would a priest know about that anyway? He was just some passive has-been with nothing better to do than hassle me. A pansy, passivist has-been who, because he couldn’t hack his time here, spent his days now trying to redeem his pathetic life by convincing the disheartened to lay down their arms, choose the pathway to peace, and turn the other cheek. I shook my head. “Just something somebody told me a long time ago.”
He chuckled. “You mean after you climbed back onto Jack’s boat a second time?”
“Sir?” How would he know about that? I didn’t put that in my application, and I’d never told anyone else—save Marie. I stood there with my mouth open.
He leaned closer. “David, maybe we’re not trying to get rid of you.” He patted my shoulder. “Maybe I’m just trying to figure out why you’re really here . . . and who you want to be when you grow up.”
“You said I was the second. Who was the first?”
He considered my question, then without another word, he walked off. Laughing.
Given that all ten schools denied my application just like he said they would, I returned for the spring semester having seen very little of Marie over Christmas break. She’d been aloof, tight-lipped, emotionally distant, and surprisingly fragile. I wouldn’t say unkind because there were moments when she let down her wall and I saw glimpses of the old Marie, which bolstered my hope. But the person to whom I’d returned was guarded. Despite my every attempt, I could not reach her. Where we’d once talked about anything at any level, she’d spent two weeks keeping me at arm’s length, making excuses as to why she couldn’t see me. Even when we did see each other, she never dove beneath the surface. And yet for most of our lives that’s where we lived. I knew something was wrong when I invited her to our island and she turned me down.
Nothing made sense.
If I’d left Colorado in a bad mood, I returned in one slightly worse only to find that my entire academic schedule had been changed. The classes I’d selected were nowhere to be found. I also discovered I had a new advisor. Some guy I’d never heard of in some building I’d never entered in a far corner of the campus to which I’d never ventured. The office was a dungeon of sorts—off by itself and connected to nothing. When I walked in, I found the white-robed eater of potato chips. Pieces of Nikon cameras were spread about the room. Black-and-white pictures on the wall. This time he was dressed in BDUs, his black boots were polished, and the look on his face a little less passive. More chiseled.
“You’re late,” he said without looking at me.
As I studied him, I realized his BDUs were not standard issue for the academy. The color and pattern were different. The one thing that did stick out were the markings on his collar, which said he was a colonel. Of that I was certain. And given the depth to which I’d disrespected him in our last conversation, I was also certain I was headed to either a military prison or a level of discipline I would not enjoy. I had a feeling my weeding out was about to start.
I had just run a mile and a half through the falling snow, which now produced a puddle on his office floor. “Sir, I want to apolo—”
He tossed me a key and pointed to a room next to his office. “Three minutes.”
I held up the key and glanced at the room.
He continued. “Two fifty.”
I thought I’d try a different tactic. I held up my class schedule. “Sir, I think I’m in the wrong . . . Um, I didn’t—”
“Two forty-five.”
While I was not an extraordinary cadet, I had learned when to shut up, and now was one of those moments. So I opened the door and found a locker with my name on it. Inside, I found several sets of clothes, fleece sweats, shoes, boots, and BDUs that matched his—all my size. Having not been told what to wear, I pulled on something similar to what he was wearing and returned to his office. He threw a small backpack at me and said, “Follow me.”
“Sir, I’m going to be late for my next class.”
He spoke over his shoulder. “I am your next class.”
We ran out of his office, through the campus, and immediately up one of the mountains that served as the rather picturesque backdrop for the academy. He took the lead, picking his way up a narrow track with the agility of a cat and strength of a bear. I followed, amazed at his conditioning and his fitness. Never once did he stumble or misstep. When we reached the peak some forty-five minutes later, he wasn’t breathing much harder than I.
Finding a suitable lookout, he sat and motioned for me to do likewise. More than a thousand feet above the academy, all of Colorado stretched out before us. Had I not been so confused, the view would have taken my breath away. He pointed to the trail we’d just run up. “You like my trail?”
“Yes, sir.”
He glanced at me. “But you could have run it faster.”
I could have. “Yes, sir.”
“Why?”
“Why what, sir?”
“Why didn’t you?”
I shrugged.
For the first time I got the impression that he was about to speak with me and not at me or to me. “Lesson number two: no shrugging. Indifference is the twin sister to resignation, and both will kill you or get you killed.”
Evidently I’d missed lesson number one, but I kept that to myself.
He took my pack from my shoulders, emptied the contents onto the ground beneath a rock shelter, and told me to make a fire. Given the subfreezing temperatures, I acted quickly. He pointed at the spread before us. “Thanks for hauling our lunch up here.”
“Glad I could help.”
He took a bite of his sandwich. “Tell me about Marie.”
I swallowed hard. “Sir, can I ask you a question first?”
Before he answered, he pulled out a small bottle of wine and poured himself a few ounces. Then he sipped and nodded. “Sure.”
“I’m pretty confused right now.”
Another sip. “That’s a statement. Not a question.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Ezekiel Walker. My friends call me Bones.”
I was surprised that he had friends, but that, too, I kept to myself. As he spoke, I noticed that his cross dangled beneath his shirt. “How do you know so much about me?”
He weighed his head side to side and pointed at the fire. “Might need more wood for that conversation.”
I scratched my head. “Sir, I—”
He held up a hand, and we watched in silence as a bald eagle floated effortlessly on the updrafts below us. A minute later, it disappeared over our heads. He continued, “I come up here sometimes. To make sense of what I can’t make sense of.”
“What doesn’t make sense?”
He sipped, and when he spoke, he stared through me. “Love in an evil world.” He poked the fire and added wood. He chewed on his words before he spoke them. “If you want to transfer, I’ll help you get into any school of your choice. You’re free to go.”
“How can you do that?”
He smiled without looking at me. “I know people.”
I pressed him. “You’ve got to do better than that.”
“I was once a lot like you.” He waved his hand across the academy spread below us. “Didn’t fit in too well. But I was good at a few things so they kept me around. One summer break I was camping my way across the west. Just me, my truck, and a skinny dog I picked up on a beach in Louisiana. One night, about 1 a.m. at a truck stop in Montana, I was putting gas in the tank when a greasy fat man backhanded a scared kid, sent him rolling head over butt, and then threw him into the cab of an eighteen-wheeler. Something in me didn’t like it. So I started listening. And with nothing better to do, I followed that truck. To a hotel in Idaho. When the driver disappeared into a back door of the hotel, I climbed into his cab, where I found the kid had been tied up and gagged. I carried him to my truck. He had his share of bruises, but it was the fear in his eyes I couldn’t shake. I fed that kid a burger and watched from across the parking lot as the driver returned. Finding his cab empty, he raged and screamed—but he couldn’t go anywhere because of the flashing blue lights surrounding him.
“A few hours later, that kid’s mother hugged her son while the father cried so hard his shoulders shook. Eight days they’d been looking for him—from California to New York and Miami. Eight days of torment that had split their souls down the middle.” He paused and sipped again. “That father is now one of the heads of our government. You’ve seen him on TV. And . . .” This time he turned, and when he looked at me, there was a tear in his eye. “That boy is a cadet in your class. You know him.”
“I do?”
“You helped him cross the line. Something he could not have done without you. So when I tell you I know people,” he said, chuckling, “I know people.”
I swallowed. Even more confused now than before. “But how’d you get from here to—” I pointed at his clothing—“the robes.”
He poured more wine and stared across Colorado and maybe into Canada. When he spoke, his voice was a whisper. “I also priest.”
It was the first time I ever heard him use that word as a verb.
We sat in silence several minutes. The fire warming our backs. “Sir?”
“Yes.”
“Who was the other one?”
“Other one?”
I pointed at the obstacle course winding through the hills below us. “To turn back.”
“You’re not going to let that go, are you?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m alone here.”
“So what good is the answer to that question?”
I shrugged. “Might help me feel not so alone.”
He sipped without looking at me. “You just shrugged again.”
“You dragged me up this mountain and made me carry our lunch without much explanation, so until you start answering my questions and stop speaking in riddles, you can get used to my shrugging.”
A long smile, and then he stared into what I could only guess was memory. “Me.”
“I had a feeling you were going to say that.”
“That surprise you?”
“Can I ask you another question?”
“You do that a lot.”
“What? Ask questions?”
“Well, that too, but you normally start by asking if you can ask another question first.”
“Well, can I?”
“Sure.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“I’ve already answered that.”
“When?”
“That was lesson number one.”
“Must have missed that one.”
“Nope, you didn’t.”
We were perched at about ten thousand feet where the air was a bit thin. “You mind telling me again?”
“No need to.”
“Why’s that?”
“You carry the answer in your pocket.”
When he said that, a giant unseen hand lifted the veil that hung between us. The veil of mystery he had used to disguise himself. As it lifted, I saw the mysterious, riddle-speaking man who sat across from me at the Seagull Saloon. Then, to remove any doubt, he turned around and pointed to the granite wall behind us where someone—no doubt him years ago—had scratched into the stone the same eleven words that had echoed in my mind since he’d slid that coin across the table:
Because the needs of the one outweigh those of the many.
The sound in my mind as this realization settled in was akin to driving eighty on the interstate and throwing the gear shift into park. Stuff was exploding beneath the surface. The connection that Bones had been the man to rescue eleven-year-old me out of Jack’s death grip, and then sit across from me at the Seagull Saloon, sparked more questions than it answered. Why? How? I had no answers for any of this.
I reached in my pocket and pulled out the hand-polished and well-worn coin. “You’re him?”
He eyed it affectionately and nodded. Then he reached in my pack, pulled out his Nikon, and snapped a picture of me with that realization plastered across my face and all of Colorado behind me.
“But—” I protested.
He held up a hand. “In time.” He eyed his watch and the airport in the distance. “Right now I’ve got to catch a plane.” He threw snow on the fire and looked at me with a smile I would later come to love. “Race you down.”
Following that run up the mountain, my experience at the academy changed. A lot. In almost every way. On the surface, I lived the life of a cadet. Responsible for everything my class did and studied. Beneath the surface, I was anything but a cadet. Like Bones, I learned to live a double life. When my class earned a forty-eight-hour pass, Bones would blindfold me, drive me hours into the mountains, drop me with what I carried in my pockets, and say, “Find your way home. Without asking for help.” Sometimes he’d wake me at 2:00 a.m., drive me to a truck stop, order eggs and coffee, and then ask me the color of the waitress’s eyes and what the tattoo on her ankle said. Then there were afternoons when he’d take me far into the dungeon that comprised his world, and he’d teach me weapons systems. Loading. Unloading. Aiming. Trigger reset. Malfunctions and how to fix them. If it breathed fire and went boom, he made me learn what allowed it to do that. Every piece. And how to make it work to my benefit.
One afternoon he handed me a fifty-year-old rifle with ammunition that didn’t come close to fitting it and shut me in a supply closet, telling me, “You can come out when you fire that thing.” The lesson taught me to look outside the box and use what was available. Somewhere toward midnight, I shot a segment of copper tubing through the two-way glass through which he watched me.
Late in my sophomore year I broke the course obstacle record, which had stood since he’d set it ten years earlier.
And then in what was possibly the strangest turn of events, Bones walked into the weapons closet of the dungeon where I was cleaning a rifle and handed me a stack of strange-looking books. “Congratulations. You’ve been accepted. Class starts Monday. Tests every Friday. First two years are online. Get the requirements out of the way. Last two you attend on campus, which shouldn’t be a problem.”
I glanced at the titles. “What are you talking about?”
“Seminary.”
“You must be joking.”
Bones considered this. “I seldom joke and I never kid.” Both of which were lies.
“But I don’t want to—”
“And,” he cut me off, “you can’t be enrolled there and here simultaneously, so I changed your name.”
“What?”
“To God, you’ll be known as Murphy Shepherd.”
“Stupid name.”
“Maybe, but it’s yours, so get used to it.”
“It’s still stupid.”
He didn’t let me finish, which was his way of saying I had no say in this matter. “One day soon, you’re going to encounter people in prison. And often the bars that hold them will be of their own making. It’s one thing to unlock someone’s prison door—it’s another thing entirely to loose the chains that bind their heart.” He tapped the barrel of the rifle. “To do that, you’re going to need to know how to do more than just poke holes in them.”
Thus began my first day of seminary.
Bones’s seminary was as much a mystery as he. Called by an obscure Greek name, Google produced a website and pictures of a campus in Spain with satellites in Italy, Austria, France, South Africa, and, you guessed it, Colorado. Having been founded or chartered by the Catholic Church nearly a millennium ago, the college—if you can call it that—didn’t follow standard academic protocol whatsoever. They had no desire at all to allow for accreditation of any kind. They couldn’t care less. Also unique to the school was the one-to-one professor-to-student ratio. Throughout the course of his study, each student worked with one professor. A priest. Don’t like your professor? Tough. Don’t like your course of study? Too bad. And while administrative offices with a physical address did exist in Italy, Spain, and France, the institution had no formal classrooms. Class location was determined by the priest.
About three months in, having not slept for much of that time, I asked him, “Just when am I supposed to sleep?”
He shrugged. “Beats me.”
“You do realize that the human body needs sleep.”
He shook his head. “Overrated.”
More often than not, our “classroom” was our lookout atop the mountain, which became a welcome break from the sterile instruction of the academy. Strangely, and despite my initial protests, I enjoyed the seminary assignments and found myself engrossed in the writers, thinkers, and philosophers we read. What I noticed throughout my course of study was that, while the academy taught me to calculate, and to do so effectively, efficiently, and with relative speed, Bones was teaching me how to think outside that well-defined box. Both were needed, but each was made stronger by the other. While my fellow cadets accepted deployments throughout their summers, I was attached at the hip to a white-robed, riddle-speaking, wine-sipping priest who was not-so-quietly disdained by his colleagues, more often rogue than team player, and—while older than me—the strongest human being I’d ever met.
The contradictions were glaring.
As was my continued lack of sleep. While my fellow classmates snored in their bunks up and down the hall, I slept—at best—one or two hours a night. Several nights a week I slept not at all. Meaning I constantly bordered on sleep deprivation. Weeks felt like one long day. Much of my waking hours felt like an out-of-body experience, leaving me a little edgy.
A few months later, when the reality of my workload hit me, I threw one of the books at his head and asked him, “Why on earth do I need to know any of this?”
He looked at me as if the answer were self-explanatory. “Because you can’t fake it.”
“Fake what?”
“Priesting.”
All told, ninety-nine percent of my time and experience at the academy was dictated by Bones. When I asked him how he got away with such a singular existence amid such a military mindset, he just smiled. “I know people.”
What I discovered was that Bones was something of a genius. Given his experience saving the son of the then vice president and former head of intelligence for all U.S. government operations, he had been given broad latitude to develop a program with hand-picked people who were a lot like him. Bones was in the elite business of finding people. Specifically, lost people. He didn’t bother with a large organization and lots of people. His singular aim was finding one person at a time. He kept staff to a minimum, and most worked intelligence behind computers.
When Bones explained this to me, I said, “So you work for the CIA.”
He shook his head. “No, but they often work for me.”
When he wasn’t dropping me off in the middle of nowhere or dragging me through the mud and snow, he sometimes disappeared for a few days. And sometimes when he returned, he’d be nursing an injury. Protecting some part of his body. Later that year he returned from a week’s absence with an obvious problem in his shoulder.
I said, “Cut yourself shaving?”
He didn’t respond.
“You want to talk about it?”
He reached into his pocket and held out a bullet. Not the cartridge that contained the shell casing plus the bullet. Just the bullet. The spent projectile, with emphasis on spent. When he dropped it in the palm of my hand, I picked up on the fact that Bones was playing for keeps and this whole clandestine training thing ended somewhere other than a grammar school playground.
He stared at it. “Life is not a video game, and there is no do-over.”
Around the academy, Bones was known as Father B, and as a general rule of thumb, he was looked down upon by most everyone else. People thought of him as a token spiritual advisor who’d been given some plush, no-responsibility assignment because he knew somebody somewhere—although no one could say just who. Seldom seen without a Nikon camera around his neck, he wore nerdy-looking glasses and occasionally taught a class when it didn’t interfere with his schedule of torturing me.
Given the mystery, rumors swirled about his backstory. The most popular suggested that twenty-five years earlier he’d been a cadet who dropped out after his first love shunned him for another. Adding insult to injury, she accepted a career on the Vegas strip, which now explained his self-imposed life of celibacy. The second theory bubbled up from the “Coexist” bumper sticker on his Prius and centered on the idea that an undisclosed experience in the summer of his junior year caused him to dig into his soul. When he did, finally getting in touch with his real self, he discovered—to no one’s surprise save his own—that he didn’t believe in war and violence. Of any kind. True to his conviction, he quit wearing leather, refused to fire a weapon, and went completely vegan. The academy didn’t know what to do with him, so they politely showed him the door.
Whatever the case, and however it had happened, he was dishonorably excused from the academy whereupon he backpacked to Italy or Spain or some such place to study something other than war. Following his foreign education in all things pertaining to God, he responded to a “calling” and returned here by invitation to sway other misguided souls like his own from a wayward life of war-mongering because someone somewhere thought it a good idea that the cadets have a well-rounded academic education free from bias and bigotry. If nothing else, he would serve as the voice of the opposition.
In other words, general consensus agreed that Bones was completely useless.
Which was exactly what he wanted.
Yet during my time in the academy, I knew of twenty-seven high-profile abductions and subsequent rescues that took place in sixteen countries—about which Bones never spoke a word and yet for which I knew he was singularly responsible. Somehow he did all that with astounding secrecy. Everyone around me thought him the court jester while I knew him to be viceroy for the king.
Thanksgiving break of my senior year I’d been granted a ninety-six-hour pass, and my only desire was to get home to Marie. Waiting at the gate for my plane to board, Bones sat down next to me and handed me a picture of a little girl. Ponytails. Not yet ten. “We have forty-eight hours before they transfer her across the border and she disappears.”
I tried not to look at the picture. “Bones, not now . . .”
He waved the picture in front of me.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Bring her back.”
“I’m . . . ,” I stammered, “not you. I’m not qualified. I don’t know anything about how to—”
“Experience is not transferrable.”
Another riddle. The flight attendants were calling my seat. “What’s that mean?”
“Some things I can’t teach you in a classroom. Some things you have to learn on your own.” He pointed through the huge glass windows of the terminal. “Out there.”
“Why don’t you go?”
He showed me a second picture. “Can’t be in two places at once.”
I held her picture in my hand.
Three days later, as I sat exhausted in the driver’s seat of a cattle truck departing from a Mexico border town in Texas, having never seen Florida or Marie, I found I had learned a good deal. First, this line of work—if you could call it that—required not only the ability but the willingness to pivot on a dime without thought. To change plans at the drop of a hat. No matter the emotional connection or damage. Second, this line of work cost far more than it paid.
But when I pulled into Dallas, and the mother of that little girl who slept on the bench beside me clutching a dirty doll lifted her off the seat and sobbed as she held her to her chest, I knew I’d pay it.
Ten thousand times over.
Bones was right. Experience is not transferrable.
A week before my academy graduation I submitted the final thesis required for my divinity degree. Forty pages on one verse in Scripture: Matthew 18:12. When Bones handed it back, he’d written one word on the last page. “Pass.”
“That’s all I get? Pass?”
He shrugged, wrote “Nice Job” next to it, and handed it back.
“Oh, thanks. That’s so much better.” I held up the pages. “I put a lot of work into this.”
“I can tell. And”—he raised a finger—“truth be told, you’re not a bad writer.”
I would remember this in the years to come. And he is quite fond of reminding me how he recognized first what so many have since come to know.
In obtaining my seminary degree, Bones had served as my only advisor and professor. When he handed me the diploma, true to his word, it had been made out to Murphy Shepherd. The fake me.
“What good is this if I can’t take credit for it?”
He responded, “You didn’t get that so you could hang it on the wall. You got it because you can’t fake it.”
I raised a finger. “Correction. I got it because you made me.”
“You could have quit at any time.”
“You picked a fine time to tell me.”
He smiled.
That same day he handed me a box and said, “Inside are three things you might need. The first is something to help you arrive on time. Hopefully you’ll use it, because you’re always late.” Which was a lie. I’d never been late. But he knew this. “Second, there is a memento of our time together. Something to remember me by. On the other hand, you might need it. And third, a letter.”
With that, Bones turned and walked away. No goodbye. No “Nice job the last four years.” No “Have a nice life.” No “Thanks for the memories.” Just his backside walking away. To be honest, I had expected as much.
I opened the box and did in fact find three things. The first was a Rolex Submariner. The time had been set five minutes fast. A note attached to it read:
There are two reasons for this. You didn’t quit when I gave you every reason. Your life would have been easier, but easy is overrated. You should get something for tolerating the hell you endured. Two, if you ever find yourself in a bad way and need to barter out of it, this will get you partway.
The second item was a Sig 220. Another note:
Do this long enough and you will find that the two worst sounds in the human ear are boom when you’re expecting click and click when you’re expecting boom. This one has always gone boom when I needed it, which has been a comfort on more than one occasion.
The last was a key taped to a letter. The letter read:
This fits two doors, both of which lead to the rest of your life. Unlock door number one and I’ll give you a recommendation for any job anywhere or grant you any military assignment you desire. You pick. Walk through this door and I can guarantee you a fast track to advancement and compensation on Easy Street. The world at your feet. You’ve earned it, and I owe you this much. In the years I’ve been scouring talent for someone like you, you’re the first not to quit. Congratulations. The previous thirteen bailed and told me where I could stick certain things. That makes you either crazy or just simply better. I’m still trying to decide which.
Door number two is a little different, and before you unlock it you need to know that once you walk through, there’s no turning back. No “Can I get off now?” No “This isn’t what I signed up for.” No “Oops, I changed my mind.” You make up your mind here and now and you live with it. No matter the cost. For the rest of forever. That’s the price you pay. If you don’t like it or if this somehow offends your sensibilities or if it is hurtful to the child housed within you, then don’t insert that key into this lock. Because wrong motives, mal intent, or a half-baked, half-cocked, “Why not?” naivete only lead to a lifetime of regret. And probably you dead in some ditch or quarry or mine shaft on the back end of the earth with no one to hear your last breath.
Given that you’re still reading, I gather I’ve piqued your interest. What then, you might ask, is the value of door number two? If door number one is cash, prizes, and life laid out on a silver platter, why would anyone in their right mind choose anything else? Why not just ride the gravy train into the sunset? Unfortunately, there’s only one way to know. I will tell you this, and I’m qualified to speak because I walked through the door before you: there is something more valuable than money. Although you will have to dig deep to find it. I cannot promise you that door number two will lead to all your dreams coming true. In fact, a few will be shattered. But walk through it and I can promise you this: one day you’ll look inside and amid the scars and the carnage and even the heartbreak, you’ll find something only a few ever come to know.
While my class celebrated and threw their hats in the air, I stared at the locker in the dungeon. My life encased in a sweaty metal box. I turned the key in my hand and reread the letter several times. While I was not certain that door number two offered the answer, I was certain door number one did not. When I inserted the key, lifted the latch, and opened that locker door for the last time, I found a white robe, vestments, and a collar. Pinned to the robe was a note containing an address for a church in South Carolina and the words, “See you in a week.”
Ellie sat up. “So you walked through door number two?”
The fireplace had melted to coals and Gunner snored before the hearth. “I did.”
“Any regrets?”
“Just one.”
She looked surprised. “What?”
“Not being there when you were born. Watching you grow up.”
She lay down against my chest and threw her legs over mine and then one arm. If I tried to stand up, I’d have to take her with me. Vines were less intertwined than the two of us at that moment.
“Dad? We’ve got time.”