The Magical Stranger (19 page)

“Come get me. Things got fucked up.”

“What happened?”

“Just come get me.”

Sherm arrived a few minutes later. He saw my glazed eyes—bloodshot from chlorine, the right one missing a contact.

“What happened?”

“They're making me pass the same tests that the actual pilots have to pass.”

“That wasn't the deal. You're only flying once.”

“You tell those fuckers.”

My eyes began leaking. Sherm tried not to notice. I followed Sherm back to his place, negotiating Deception Pass Bridge with my one good eye. Sherm told me he would call the skipper. I went to my room, called Alix, and went into full meltdown. I blubbered. In that moment, I was nine years old in the same area code, crying my eyes out because I couldn't hit a baseball or build a catapult, all the things that confer acceptance on a young boy. And there was no one to help. No father, no brother, nobody.

Sherm got off the phone with the swim qual folks. He didn't have good news.

“You have to pass the same test. I don't know what happened, but they said the rules are the rules.”

We worked out a small and profoundly humiliating compromise. I wouldn't try to pass the test tomorrow; that was assured failure. Instead, I would work with Seaman Nate for three or four hours a day in the pool, converting my civilian stroke into Navy strokes. Then on Friday, I could try to pass the qualifications under Mr. Instructor's watchful scowl.

My phone rang. It was Tupper. He tried to buck me up with a few “nothing worth having comes easy” bromides. I wasn't in the mood.

I
headed back to the base that evening. I had thought it would be cool to stay in the Bachelor Officers Quarters while preparing for my flight. The BOQ was where my family spent the first three weeks on Whidbey while we waited for our house to be finished. The building was essentially unchanged from 1974; it had the same squat three-story Warsaw Pact–era design, the only addition being televisions in each of the rooms. The place was designed to depress you so much that you would find your own place pronto.

One night as a seven-year-old, I wandered the same halls in a semi-sleepwalking state. I soon found myself lost, trying random doorknobs until one opened. It was a young aviator, his flight suit draped over a chair. He was wearing nothing but his white T-shirt and briefs. He asked my name and then called down to the front desk. He asked for Peter Rodrick's room number but told the operator not to ring through.

He took me by the hand and led me back home. The pilot opened my family's room and lifted me into my single bed next to my sister. My parents slept a few feet away. He held his finger to his lips in the universal shush signal.

“It will be okay—just go to sleep.”

Thirty-six years later, I repeated the pilot's line to myself: It will be okay, just go to sleep. But I couldn't. From my third-floor room, I had an unobstructed view of the chapel where my father's memorial service was held. I lay on my bed for a while, calculating the minutes until I had to be back in the water, an exact replication of how I counted down with dread the minutes until school or baseball practice as a boy.

I couldn't sleep, so I headed over to the base McDonald's and self-medicated with grease. I drove over to the chapel and pulled into the exact parking space in which we had parked our Buick station wagon on the morning of my father's memorial service. It was where my family sat paralyzed afterward. I looked out my window and could see Laddie Coburn standing there, telling my mother she could start a whole new life. And I saw my mother there, just whispering no.

I stared at the taillights of Prowlers circling the base in the midsummer night. And I said over and over again, I am not trying to be my father, I am not trying to be my father. I couldn't tell if I was saying it with pride or shame.

I
met Swimmer Nate the next morning. For the next seventy-two hours, he became my best friend and torturer. Nate had done a long stint on a hospital ship after the invasion of Iraq. He had seen some bad things, so trying to get a profoundly uncoordinated fortysomething man to swim laps in the Navy style didn't faze him. I told him I was divorced and he excitedly high-fived me. He was too! This would become our ritual. Every time I swam a stroke right for even five yards he'd high-five me and do a spot-on imitation of the drill sergeant in
Full Metal Jacket
.

I told him I was thinking of heading back east, working on my strokes for a month, and then returning. Nate assured me this wouldn't be necessary.

“You. Are. Not. Going. To. Do. That.”

His R. Lee Ermey imitation was top drawer. I felt a little better. The breaststroke was my major malfunction. For hours, we broke the stroke down. First, I used a kickboard and concentrated on the back end of the stroke, bringing my legs to my chest, thrusting them outward, and then snapping them together. This was hard, but not unmanageable. But when I lost the kickboard and tried to coordinate my upper body with my leg kick it all went to shit. Actually, shit became my favorite word. I'd start swimming the stroke, screw up, stop in the water, and scream “Shit!”

The boss watched my progress doubtfully. He gave me an instructional video to watch back in the comfort of my BOQ room. That night, I slipped the DVD into my computer. It was vintage early-1980s, with Village People mustaches on the aviators giving the film a survivor gay porn vibe. But the DVD kept stopping just as a blond man in a khaki uniform started doing the strokes. I handed it back to Mr. Instructor the following morning.

“The DVD is scratched, I couldn't watch it.”

He disappeared for a moment into his office.

“It plays fine on my computer; maybe you didn't try hard enough.”

I thought of punching him but did a quick cost-benefit analysis and walked away. In the pool, Nate was his smiley self. He kept telling me I was making progress as I swam laps across the short side of the pool. I disagreed but kept my mouth shut. Every minute I hoped Nate would throw his hands up in disgust and ship me back to Brooklyn. Then I prayed that someone might pull the fire alarm. Then I wished for an actual terrorist act. I started holding my breath in hopes of inducing a heart attack. Nothing worked. After three hours, I told Nate I was exhausted.

“Okay, well, let's work on your stretching.”

We then spent forty-five minutes trying to strengthen my core. This seemed like a good idea, but not something that was going to pay dividends by Friday. This routine went on for three days. I worked on the stroke for hours, ate a pile of fast food, and went back to my room. There, I watched a new copy of the instructional video and tried to pantomime the strokes on my bed, humping the mattress.

Before I went in on Thursday, Sherm told me a compromise had been brokered. I'd still have to pass the swim test, but some of the other requirements would be waived.

We had a laugh at how inapplicable the swim quals were for a Prowler crew. The Prowler was too heavy: there would be no Captain Sully landing on the Hudson. In a Prowler, you either hit the water and your body disintegrated, as happened to my father, or you ejected, floated down in your automatically opening chute, landed in the water in a self-inflating life vest, and waited the ten or fifteen minutes until the helicopters plucked you from the sea. Mr. Instructor's standards seemed to be based on some vision of Amelia Earhart ditching a single-engine somewhere near the Azores. At the end of Thursday's remedial session, he walked into the pool area. It was time to swim the strokes.

“Okay, let's do this.”

He went inside to ask another diver to get into the water in case I drowned in my efforts. I walked laps around the pool, trying to calm myself. It didn't really work. By the time everyone was assembled, I was clutching my hands together behind my back so no one could see them twitching.

Unfortunately, my knees were shaking too. I climbed the tower again. I prepared my hands for the drop as I had been instructed but got too close to the edge. I lost my balance and fell into the water with the grace of a kitten tangled in a burlap bag. I sprang up to the surface, sputtering.

“Sorry, sorry. Let me try that again.”

Mr. Instructor just shook his head.

“No, just go. Go!”

I tried to take Nate's advice. Go slow; this wasn't a race. Still, I found my breaststroke breaking down into an imitation of a wheezing accordion. But I didn't hear anyone yell stop, so I kept swimming. I finished my laps and squinted up at Mr. Instructor.

“Well, that wasn't perfect, but it will do.”

My elation was fleeting. The boss disappeared for a minute and reemerged with a flight suit, combat boots, and a helmet. I put them on and was thrown in the water. I was told to swim fifty meters in the gear utilizing the Navy breaststroke. I tried to remember my up, in, out, and glide checklist. It didn't quite work, and soon I was doing an out, out, and dog paddle movement. Still, I made it back and forth.

The next task was to manually inflate my life vest. Mind you, this must be done while wearing thick flying gloves. I would just manage to get one tube out of the vest and start blowing air in before I'd swallow a slug of water.

The boss shouted at me.

“Just put your head down, that helmet floats. You can't drown!”

He had a point, but I had a hard time breathing into a thin tube while I was face down in the drink. Talk about a logistical nightmare! It took ten minutes, but I got the vest inflated. Nate high-fived me. Mr. Instructor almost cracked a smile.

“Okay, well, you got that out of the way. We'll see you tomorrow.”

I thought the hell you will, I am done. But I didn't say anything. I got dressed and slipped back over to my room. A few minutes later, I got a text from Sherm:

Come over to the squadron ASAP.

I knew this couldn't be good news. I met him in the parking lot. Sherm did his wince of a smile.

“I've got some good news and bad news. The bad news is, I got bad information yesterday. You have to pass all the quals tomorrow except one.”

I slapped my hands on the asphalt and cursed. Sherm cringed.

“The good news is you don't have to do the dunker tomorrow.”

The one thing Sherm had gotten me exempted from was the Dilbert Dunker, a contraption shaped like the inside of a helicopter. It is dropped in the water with four passengers onboard, then spun around; after that, the passengers have to find their way out. If the instructor is feeling particularly sadistic, he makes you do it blindfolded. When I asked what the purpose of this was, Mr. Instructor cheerfully said, “Well, this is in case you're rescued and then your helo crashes.” I told him that would be the point where I would just say good night and prepare to meet the baby Jesus.

Skipping the dunker was a good thing, but that left all the other shit.

The next morning I headed over to the swim center. There were four other officers there for their tests. We put on our flight gear and jumped into the water. The first requirements were easy; a line was dropped from a forty-foot tower. All I had to do was hook it to a ring on my flight suit and be pulled up. But from there, things took a bleak turn. I climbed to the top of a platform and was strapped into a parachute harness. I would be dropped and then dragged back and forth across the pool until I extricated myself from my gear. This would require real dexterity since I would be wearing the godforsaken flight gloves.

The four officers got out of their chutes quickly, earning cheers from an elderly tour group that was sitting in the bleachers. Then I was dropped. I was dragged once, twice, three times across the pool before my fingers were able to push up on my metal fasteners and slip out of the harness. The confused old folks went silent, a single out-of-time handclap meeting my accomplishment.

I was led back up to the tower. This time, I'd have to extricate myself from the harness while wearing blackout goggles and using only my “bad” hand. I didn't know what that meant. An instructor filled me in.

“Hold your good hand flat to the side. You're right-handed, right?”

“Uh, yes.”

This was a lie. I felt bad about it for about a minute until I remembered the naval aviator's modern mantra: “If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'.” This time I was dragged five or six times, but I was past caring. Eventually, I got out of my harness.

I thought the end was in sight. I jumped off the platform again and was told to climb into my tiny life raft, a maneuver harder than it sounds when encumbered by water-soaked boots and helmet. But I did it and let out a yell.

“Fuck, yeah!”

Mr. Instructor looked at me sideways.

“What are you so excited about?”

“I'm done.”

“You're not done. Back up the platform, you've got to untangle your parachute.”

I climbed back up. This time, I jumped in and a mashed-up parachute was thrown on top of me. I sucked in a half pint of chlorine. For a moment, I nearly cried for help, which would have resulted in a nonpass. Instead, I took a second, gathered myself, and began passing the white mess hand-over-hand until I was in the clear. Mr. Instructor helped me out of the pool.

“Now you're done. Are you sure you don't want to do the dunker?”

“Do I have to?”

“No.”

“Then fuck no.”

Mr. Instructor cracked a smile. I staggered over to the bleachers. Nate was waiting for me. We exchanged an extremely uncoordinated but heartfelt chest bump. I watched the real guys do the dunker—man, that did not look like fun—and then stumbled into the changing room. I had rarely been happier.

An hour later, Sherm and some of the guys met me over at the officers' club for a celebratory beer. The guys gave me high-fives. Everyone agreed it was insane that I had to go through the paces for a two-hour flight that would be 99 percent over land. Listening in was Socr8tes, the junior officer Tupper was grounding for his bad radio calls. He looked guilty and slowly nosed his way into the conversation.