“She wanted it, didn’t she?”
“ All of ’em want it.”
“Mr. Lucas is sayin, it was more special to them ’cause they took their time.”
“Why would you wanna take your time?”
“You don’t know nothin.”
“I know more than you.”
“How you gonna say that?”
“Cause I get more than you.”
“Since when?”
“Last night.”
“Yeah? What was his name?”
The space filled with taunting “ah-has” and laughter. A balled-up piece of paper flew across the room.
“All right, that’s enough,” said Leo. He nodded to Spero Lucas, who was seated in a student chair in the back of the room. “Come on up here, Spero.”
Spero got up out of his chair and walked to the head of the class. As he passed Ernest Lindsay, he made brief eye contact with the young man, as he had done when he’d first entered the room. Ernest had recognized him immediately, shaken his head with mild annoyance, crossed his arms, and looked away. Now his eyes tracked Spero as he threaded his way across the classroom.
Spero stopped beside Leo, rested one hand over the other below his belt line, and stood straight with his legs comfortably apart. He wore jeans and a clean, fitted T-shirt bearing a winged wheel. His veins were wired out on his biceps and forearms. He knew that young men of this age would respect him as much for his build as they would for any of his accomplishments. It had certainly been that way with him when he was in his teens.
“Want you all to welcome Spero Lucas,” said Leo. “My brother.”
Spero could see the confusion that was plain on some of the boys’ faces.
One young man who could not hold it in said, “That’s your brother, for real? ”
“Yes,” said Leo. “All my life. We shared a bedroom for almost twenty years.”
“Separate beds,” said Spero, which got some chuckles.
“ ’Cept when you had nightmares,” said Leo, which was true.
Leo let the murmurs die down. He wasn’t about to explain the color difference between him and his brother. It was more fun to let the boys wonder.
Leo addressed the class: “This is part of our Reach for Success speaker series. Spero’s gonna tell you what he’s been doing since he got out of high school.”
Spero said, “Thank you, Mr. Lucas,” and began to talk about his life. He covered high school athletics, his stint in the Marine Corps, boot and overseas duty, and his work as an investigator for an attorney who defended homicide and high-profile drug cases. Because they were young men and the subject matter touched on danger, crime, and violence, he had their attention from the start. He told them that he had not graduated from college, but that didn’t mean that he had given up his intellectual curiosity. He stressed that the physical was as important to him as the mental. He told them, with honesty, that many of them were not going to be rich, famous, or wildly successful, and that the years ahead of them would most likely be filled with joyous highs as well as crushing disappointments. That they should try to find work they were passionate about and strive to lead productive lives. The last part sounded like bullshit to his own ears, so he knew it would sound that way to them, but he felt he had to give them something in the way of wisdom, however lame. The truth was, he was still trying to navigate his own path. He had no long-term plans.
“Questions?” said Spero.
“Remember what I told y’all,” said Leo. Spero knew then that they had been prepped not to ask the question they were all curious about.
“You carry a gun on your job now?” said Moony.
“No,” said Spero. “That would be illegal.”
Some of the boys looked at one another and smiled.
Another boy raised his hand. “What kind of gun you carry in I-raq?”
“I carried an M-Sixteen rifle.”
“Like my grandfather did in Vietnam,” said a boy named Hannibal. His peers called him Balls.
“We had a different version,” said Spero. “The A-Two. It had an improved flash suppressor and better sights. Fired three-round bursts instead of full auto. That made it more accurate, supposedly.”
“What about straight machine guns?”
“There were SAWs. Fired seven hundred and fifty rounds per minute.”
“No pistols?”
“Some guys carried M-Nines, which are nine-millimeter Berettas. We also had mounted fifty cals, Mark Nineteens, tanks that fired one-hundred-and-fifty-millimeter shells, incendiary grenades, M-Forty sniper rifles… all kinds of cool stuff.”
This energized the class and caused more chatter.
“What about knives?”
“Yeah, but not standard-issue. Guys bought their own.”
“What the enemy have?”
“The insurgents had AK-Forty-sevens,” said Spero.
“Dag.”
“Pretty much indestructible,” said Spero. “You could pull ’em out of a sand dune and they’d still fire. And they had these rocket-propelled grenades, which we just called RPGs.”
“I seen this one video,” said a boy named Mark Norman, “where these soldiers are in the desert, and they call in the place, on the radio, where the enemy is located at…”
“The coordinates,” said Spero.
“Yeah, and they just vaporized ’em with bombs and stuff. Is that what it was like?”
“Depends on where you were,” said Spero. “There was that kind of conflict. But where I was, in a place called Fallujah, it was a more direct kind of engagement. Straight-up combat. What they call house-to-house fighting. It was…”
Spero stopped himself. He felt he had said too much. A rare silence fell on the room.
“Why they call y’all marines,” said a young man named Marcus Murray. “I mean, marine means the ocean or somethin, right? Seems like the navy guys should be called marines.”
“We’re called marines because we come in from the oceans and the seas. The navy delivers us to the battlefields.”
Ernest Lindsay raised his hand. “Why’d you join up?”
Spero cleared his throat. “Well, first of all, personally, I think I was a good fit. I already told you that I wrestled in high school. Wrestlers who are serious about what they’re doing, they don’t want to just win on points. They want the pin. They’re competitive and focused, and they’ve got a deep need to win. The recruiters targeted me, man. But I didn’t get tricked into anything. I wanted to enlist. I saw some of the guys in my neighborhood goin, and a lot of them didn’t have many other opportunities, and I thought, why should it just be them and not me? I guess what it comes down to is, I know it sounds corny, but I wanted to do my part.” Spero looked directly at Ernest Lindsay. “All the decisions I’ve made, what I can tell you is, I did what I thought was right.”
“He’s not suggesting you go out and enlist, necessarily,” said Leo, looking at Spero out the corner of his eye.
“Course not,” said Spero.
“ I’m goin to college,” said a young man.
“That’s excellent,” said Spero clumsily. “Anyone else?”
“How much money you make?” said Balls.
“That’s not an appropriate question, Hannibal,” said Leo.
“Do marines get much?” said another young man.
“Okay,” said Leo, “I think we’re about done. Let’s give my brother a round of applause.”
The students clapped for him. It wasn’t thunderous but it was respectful. He felt he’d done all right. At least he hadn’t shit the bed.
