This surprised me. “Why?”
“Because I knew I was going, sure as shit.”
I gave that a moment of thought. We had a classmate volunteer for the marines, and we all thought that was about the stupidest thing ever. The marines were always in the shit. “Why’d you volunteer for the marines?”
William dropped the cigarette butt into the beer can and tossed it aside, opening a second beer. He offered a second to me.
I declined. “I’m good.”
“I was a wrestler in high school,” William said. “My junior year I won state in my weight class. I had scholarship offers, which I needed to pay tuition. My parents didn’t have the money.”
“Mine don’t, either. I’m heading to community college.”
“Mikey told me. I wasn’t that lucky. My senior year I tore my shoulder and the scholarships went bye-bye. Without wrestling I lost focus, screwed around, and almost didn’t graduate. College was no longer in the equation, so I wasn’t going to get a deferral. I got my draft notice and went down to the draft board to take my physical. The line for the army was out the door and it was about ninety degrees on the blacktop. I wasn’t going to stand in that heat all day. I looked over at the Marine Corps office in the same strip mall and there was no line. I mean no one. So I asked the guy in line behind me to hold my place and I walked over and asked the marine recruiter, ‘How long do I have to enlist for?’
“Recruiter says, ‘If you volunteer, two years active, one reserve.’
“‘How much time in Vietnam?’
“He says, ‘Thirteen months.’
“The army was two years active with twelve months in-country, so I figured it wasn’t any different and I wouldn’t have to spend all day on that asphalt. Plus, I was told if I did well on my AFQT—that’s the Armed Forces Qualification Test—I could choose my MOS.”
“What’s MOS?”
“Military occupational specialty.”
“What did you choose?”
“I got the highest score you can achieve, so I chose MOS 4341, combat correspondent.” My interest was piqued. I intended to study journalism and creative writing in college. “But they ended up denying my first choice—I think because I turned down OCS. They made me a combat photographer. I figured maybe I could put together a portfolio to get my foot in the door at a newspaper somewhere.”
“That’s what I want to do.”
William nodded. “Mikey told me. He told me you were valedictorian. I figured you had to be smart.”
“I haven’t felt like it the past two days. Todd looks at me like I’m a moron.”
“Nah, he don’t feel that way. If he did, he would have fired you.” William lit another cigarette and blew smoke over his head. “Todd doesn’t care how smart you are. He cares how hard you work. You’ve saved him time and money getting the driveway and the roof done this quickly. Reusing the roof beams was also smart. Those boards are expensive.”
I felt good about that. “How come you didn’t pursue photography?” I asked, thinking maybe I would like to see William’s photographs.
William lost the grin and the chuckle. “Didn’t work out,” he said, and I got the impression he didn’t want to talk about it. Then he said, “I got a camera and training on how to use it, but I also got a rifle, because a marine always carries a rifle. Always. I thought that I’d be working out of the combat information center at Da Nang, but the marines were down in numbers because of casualties, and I had high shooting marks. So they embedded me at a firebase along the Laotian border. I got combat photographs published in Stars and Stripes, but those were the photographs the military wanted people to see. They didn’t want people to see the others I took—like me sitting on an armed personnel carrier strewn with dead bodies.”
“Vietnamese bodies?”
William shook his head. “Americans. Marines.”
The gravity of the situation hit me. “That happened to you?”
“More than once.” William gave me a faux salute. “A marine never leaves a man on the battlefield.” My silence probably spoke volumes because William shrugged. “You get immune to it,” he said, but it didn’t sound like he had gotten immune to it. It sounded like the thought I’d had the prior night, with my friends, that we were only bullshitting ourselves.
William motioned to my chest. “I saw your cross.”