Mark was twenty-two. Mary was twenty-one—three years of marriage had gone by in a flash. During this spent time, Mark joined the Marine Corps. He learned respect, teamwork, morals, family values, discipline, and pain. Mary never approved of his enrollment (“What if you get hurt?”), but ever since the introduction to the Marines in high school, Mark had wanted to join. She rolled her eyes the first few times he walked in with his camouflage and Velcro badges, but as the months passed, she began to find him quite adorable in his suit. The cold bus to his training ground and the harsh treatment during the first few weeks made him cry, but he felt wanted like never before. He didn’t feel like a part of civilization, but a part of the Marines, and learned the motto, “For God, Corps, and Country.” After twelve weeks of kissing the mud in the rain, fighting the tears, and learning brotherhood, Mark finally joined a unified platoon and moved his wife to a military base on the coast of California. They lived on the base for years, attending church services as a couple, getting ice cream afterward, and watching cars roll by. Because of his new arrival to the base, they lived near an artillery practice range, every morning, waking up at 5:30 a.m. by the fire from the heavy arms until 9:00 a.m. rolled around the corner. Almost every person was from out of state, deployed in California for a short time. Mark continued to work up branches while Mary learned the basic rules of living on government land. Commissaries—government grocery stores on the military base—were cheaper than the regular stores. Mary loved it. She ran in on Monday mornings and bought groceries by the cartful, steaming up stromboli, baking pecan pies, mac-and-cheese-stuffed potatoes, buttery Texas bread, and other countless dishes. The little kitchen would always be filled with complex, pleasant scents of baked goods from the yard-wide off-white oven, or boiled and fried meals from the charcoal-black cooktops, spotted with permanent stains the color of brown bears or the hairs of a coconut. Mark, although exhausted with dry sweat and blisters on his shoulders and hands, would trot over to their house with excitement to see his wife and the new creation she would craft in the kitchen.
Mary also noticed the differences in police enforcement between the town of Tucson and the California base. For instance, the police were less lenient with the five-mile gap over the speed limit, which most practiced in the seemingly empty roads in Arizona. Yet at the same time, neighboring families welcomed the Wegmans with open arms and gave them a warm sense of security. Mark continued to rank higher while at the base, jumping from private first class to lance corporal, and eight months later, with twelve months of training in total, a corporal. The sheer skill learned early in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) at high school promoted him fast and swiftly. His bulked, strong, tall, youthful body also took a heavy role in the Marines; most had very heavy, lean muscle structures, but nothing compared to Mark. He was like his father Henry in construction, an icon. Mark was quick thinking, muscular, broad, and tall. He grew to be six foot seven, like his father before him, and developed fantastic marksmanship, excelling beyond the others of equal rank. However, with his constant kindness and certainty, like the main and suspender cables to the Golden Gate Bridge, he wasn’t openly accepted as their rank’s leader—but it was common knowledge that their main support came from him.
After a total of two years, Mark became a sergeant. With countless weeks of training on the ground, he became a well-known leader on the base, catching the attention from captains, colonels, and even a general on one warm Thursday afternoon during a drill on infiltrating a terrorist base, using team spirit and team flow as the two key areas of focus. He knew how to lead small squads into horrific war, how to perform simple on-hand medical tactics, and how to carry out a mission with the squad clean and stainless. The promotion wasn’t on accident. Mark was on the top of the list and became an excellent leader. His understanding of politics, tactics, artillery, and battlefront made teachers proud, and many—in humility—saluted him upon graduation. They knew that Mark was born for greatness, that he would be one of the future leaders for the Marines. That month, Mark, instead of being serviced in the Active Federal Service for the primary zone, became enrolled in the secondary zone. A promotion program where commanders chose highly qualified people to have the chance in expediting promotions.
Mark taught his team loyalty, discipline, and brotherhood and warned them of the dangers of war. Although Mark has never truly been in a war, his experience in the classroom, reenactments, and lessons on the base were more than the others had. His favorite comrade, if that’s what you call it, was Tom Freeman. His name was old-fashioned. After the Civil War, the millions of freed African Americans were given the last name Freeman. Which might seem now like a simple last name, but to the many who were newly freed, it meant the world, and American citizenship. To this day, Tom never talked about his ancestors or the origin of the last name but did explain his family tree all joining the military, fighting major wars in the late twentieth century, beginning with their freedom by the Civil War to the day Tom spoke about it in the 1990s.
Tom’s father, John, was in the Vietnam War from 1969 to the last retreat in 1973. He was only five foot four, yet broad, swift in movement, and when they were chased, he ran back to the choppers like he was on fire. His friends called him Jo and sometimes JoJo when they were drunk in their tents, while smoking a few military-produced cigarettes and laughing like hysterical hyenas. John never told stories; many of those friends who had called him JoJo either ended up in pieces from an unexpected mine or could not run fast enough from the bullets or their country’s own napalm attacks. Then after he returned, unlike the return of World War II veterans where parades were arranged around every city and town (God- and country-loving heroes), there was no celebration or honor for returning from Vietnam. The war was disgusting. He landed to find a crowd spitting on them and hauling insults about their morality and human decency. He was threatened, rejected from his family, and ultimately left bottling up the war with cigarettes, scotch, and women. Chaos was what John became, and as a result, Tom was born.
The man who willingly signed up for war because of his father’s legacy was a fool. Tom’s grandfather served in the Korean War, walked the entire country, and pushed the communists back until he reached the Chinese border. Ron Freeman was considered a hero and in fact received the Medal of Honor for jumping onto an RG-42 hand grenade, leaving fragments of the metal shell scattered in his chest and calves. Ron was five foot six, moral, compassionate, and patient to all. He carried a Bible in his bag that had been given to him from his own father when he was young; it was all tattered up with yellow pages and weak, cheap binding, carrying a potent smell of dust and old ink wherever taken. Ron was known for his storytelling and quirky personality, something John was always told even decades after his father’s death, and was always called “Ron’s little man” even while entering his late forties, as if he were still four years old and desperate for his father’s return.
When his father’s aged friends began to recite compelling stories of Ron, they also always seemed to carry an old sparkle in their aged eyes. Yet the thing John was always amazed by in his father was how, even though he was black, there was very little racism from the military, the locals, and even his own American comrades. One reason would be because they were all facing the same monster, sharing the same nightmares of death in the following days as they continued to travel north. But the main cause was because he was so pleasantly kind and gentle, and John could only imagine Ron like so, filling up with a mixture of pride, misery, and unworthiness ever since he was four. Therefore, while John grew up, the pain from being fatherless made boxing a relief, a way to empty the rage kept inside, to throw the years of pain and tears toward the other man in the ring. During his boxing career, John was very light and always made it into the championship. An interview with Tom’s father was done after a tight boxing match in the sixties, with twelve rounds of fighting and sweat mixed with blood, where he told them, “I blame the man for my father’s death and fight like he’s a cold-blooded murderer. That’s how I win.”
But one man always destroyed him, which forced him to never win a single championship. His name was Joe Brown, champion of the light belt, lightweight fights, since 1956. He was undefeated, and John never stood a chance, his face smashing against the ground before he could even comprehend that the bell had rung and the fight had begun.
“In the dark boxers is Joe Brown, and in the white boxers is John Freeman,” said the announcer.
Ding, ding!
This is all me, John thought. He murdered my father and will not make me look like a fool! He picked up those hands, Joe the same, and with one strike, John fell. His nose split in two like it did the year before, rebroken and splattered across his face, sounding like a child crunching on a lollipop. He fell as swiftly as he had the year before, stiff as a rock and helpless as a drowning fly.
About a week later, John was chosen for the draft, his eyes slightly blocked from his thick gray-white nose cast while smoking a Camel cigarette, reacting in a mysterious way. His eyes began to widen and a smile crept to each cheek, as If he had won an all-expenses-paid trip to New Zealand on a radio raffle. Except this was a trip to the thick jungles of Vietnam, and he knew he would probably die. He thought about this while the smile widened even more and his hands gripped the envelope even tighter. The year was 1969, an already unpopular war, yet John, twenty-one years old, saw the shipment to war as an opportunity to make his deceased father proud, to not feel like a generation of failure to the military name of the Freemans, to be worthy enough to be a Freeman. He drove to a drive-in theater and bought a pack of beer that night, celebrating in his vaguely nicer Tucson apartment, achieved for always winning silver.
But Tom himself was only eighteen when joining the Marines, a tight curly-haired half-African American boy. He loved baseball, the feeling of catching, tossing, slowly striking a man out, with the tension running down the spine, the panic in their eyes. He was small compared to Mark but fast and strong, with aspirations to achieve greatness in the military and surpass his father. His father was the man who abused him, gifted in boxing from an era long ago, yet instead of a crowd, now only Tom and the stained brown carpet knew John’s present talent. Tom hated his father and had dreams about fighting him, like Aaron, except he imagined catching his father in the act, with some hidden tape recorder or by calling one of his friends to watch and testify. Yet at the age of nine, before he could execute the idea into words, CPS came and saw the stained brown carpet, his bruised face, and John leading the tour, the one who made the call. John was also the birth-giver to analytical questions of Tom’s wonder as a child, toward his own self-worth, while on the bottom bunk in a community foster home and with a broken arm. He fell into a pit of worthlessness.
Mark closely knew everyone in his five-man group, their strengths, weaknesses, struggles in life, and reasons to fight. But Tom was special, taken under Mark’s wing, and he taught Tom to notice every detail toward the operations of war and noticeable signs of danger.
One night, a little over a year after Mark’s promotion the previous August, Tom, Mark, and Mary came together for a dinner. It was almost autumn. The sun had left for the Pacific and the three were feasting on spaghetti and spiced meatballs. Mark had known Tom for almost two years. Tom was nineteen now.
“Mary?” Mark said. “Tom? Did you know this is the last time we’ll be together while you’re a private?”
“Yes, and did you know its ten thirty-seven?” Mary said while yawning dramatically.
“No, this is big,” Mark said, turning to Tom. “Out of everyone in our squadron, you have shown the most growth, and I’m proud.”
Tom smiled under a cold cheek and tipped his head, wondering if his achievements were in part because of his close relationship with Mark.
“Thanks, but it’s nothing really, sir. Following your orders and rules is the secret.”
Mark and Mary looked at each other in confusion. What do you think’s wrong? Mary said through her look.
I’m not sure, should I ask? Mark asked by an expression.
Ask just to be safe.
Mark turned to Tom and smiled.
“Tom, is everything okay?”
Tom didn’t answer on call and the room fell silent. Mary saw the sadness in Tom’s eyes and caught the sense of fear. A scared boy not living with any guidance for almost a decade and now facing fears of the future.
“Mark,” Mary calmly said. “I’ll be in the art room painting.” She stood up and kissed Mark on the head. When she left, he asked Tom again.
“Is everything okay? I’m here, Tom,” Mark said in a whispered, parenting tone. Tom looked up and smiled very widely.
“I can’t be any better, Mark. I just have moments.”
“Moments of what?”
“Of pity,” slurred out Tom, denying his own words. Mark became concerned. He never heard or could imagine Tom say words like those. He had never shown any weakness for the two years Mark had known him. He was never silent but never frightened, accomplishing the harsh training with ease and with the movements of a man born for his hands to cradle an M16 rifle. He was bolted down by assurance and understanding of the world, or so Mark thought with his vague understanding of Tom’s past. Mark has never seen him cry and, on this occurrence, felt a feeling of awkwardness, like watching a stranger cry, but locked his discomfort away.
“Why? You never seem like that,” Mark softly spoke.
“Because what if we get deployed?” Tom said while his eyes watered heavily.
“Why are you afraid? You trained for this,” Mark said firmly, certain. “I trained you in everything I know. If we’re deployed, just listen to what I’ve taught you and you’ll be okay. This is also why you joined the Marines, right?”
There was a silence while Tom wiped tears off his cheeks, then another silence of uncertainty. “Y-Yes, sir.”
“Tom, tell me why you’re afraid.” Mark’s strong voice rattled the house. Tom sharply looked over and responded.
“My grandfather died in the Korean War, and my father became a drunk from Vietnam. I’m afraid I’ll become one of those two, but most of all I fear that I’ll become like my father, that I will never be any better.” Tom began to stare down, and Mark gently tapped the table until Tom looked up to find Mark strictly staring down with anger.
“Hey! I’ll never let either of those happen. Not on my watch. Never!” Mark’s eyes became strained, and his eyebrows arched down into an intense look of fury and love. Confidence radiated off Mark’s skin, instantly providing a wind of assurance through the room, his hand clenched into a fist on the oak table. But underneath, his heart was beating like a hummingbird. There was fear; none of them had truly been in a war.
Tom slightly smiled and began to cry comfortably, assured and adopted into safety.
“Thanks, sir.”
Mark fell back into his seat and let out a big sigh, which relaxed the room’s atmosphere.
“And also, don’t call me sir. I’m your brother now, corporal,” Mark quietly spoke and smiled with a quick wink. Tom winked back, very excitedly. Then, with eyebrows and cheeks rising, Tom yelped out two little words.
“Y-yes, Dad.”
Although Mark and Tom were only a few years apart, Mark took the orphan into their house, and although they could be brothers, after that day, Tom never fell short in calling him Dad.
Then Mark rolled his eyes to a shadow he saw in the hall and yelled, “Mary, you can come out of the hallway.”
“Everything’s okay?” she yelled back, sticking her head out of the darkness.