with him instead of friends, I wanted out. Like most boys, I started to care about other things: sports and girls and cars and music, primarily, and by fourteen, I was spending little time at home. My resentment began to grow as well. Little by little, I began to notice differences in the way we lived when I compared myself with most of my friends. While they had money to spend to go to the movies or buy a stylish pair of sunglasses, I found myself scrounging for quarters in the couch to buy myself a burger at McDonald’s. More than a few of my friends received cars for their sixteenth birthday; my dad gave me an 1883 Morgan silver dollar that had been minted in Carson City. Tears in our worn couch were covered by a blanket, and we were the only family I knew who didn’t have cable television or a microwave oven. When our refrigerator broke down, he bought a used one that was the world’s most awful shade of green, a color that matched nothing else in the kitchen. I was embarrassed at the thought of having friends come over, and I blamed my dad for that. I know it was a pretty crappy way to feel—if the lack of money bothered me so much, I could have mowed lawns or worked odd jobs, for instance—but that’s the way it was. I was as blind as a snail and dumb as a camel, but even if I told you I regret my immaturity now, I can’t undo the past.
My dad sensed that something was changing, but he was at a loss as to what to do about us. He tried, though, in the only way he knew how, the only way his father knew. He talked about coins—it was the one topic he could discuss with ease—and continued to cook my breakfasts and dinners; but our estrangement grew worse over time. At the same time, I pulled away from the friends I’d always known. They were breaking into cliques, based primarily on what movies they were going to see or the latest shirts they bought from the mall, and I found myself on the outside looking in. Screw them, I thought. In high school, there’s always a place for everyone, and I began falling in with the wrong sort of crowd, a crowd that didn’t give a damn about anything, which left me not giving a damn, either. I began to cut classes and smoke and was suspended for fighting on three occasions.
I gave up sports, too. I’d played football and basketball and run track until I was a sophomore, and though my dad sometimes asked how I did when I got home, he seemed uncomfortable if I went into detail, since it was obvious he didn’t know a thing about sports. He’d never been on a team in his life. He showed up for a single basketball game during my sophomore year. He sat in the stands, an odd balding guy wearing a worn sport jacket and socks that didn’t match. Though he wasn’t obese, his pants nipped at the waist, making him look as if he were three months pregnant, and I knew I wanted nothing to do with him. I was embarrassed by the sight of him, and after the game, I avoided him. I’m not proud of myself for that, but that’s who I was.
Things got worse. During my senior year, my rebellion reached a high point. My grades had been slipping for two years, more from laziness and lack of care than intelligence (I like to think), and more than once my dad caught me sneaking in late at night with booze on my breath. I was escorted home by the police after being found at a party where drugs and drinking were evident, and when my dad grounded me, I stayed at a friend’s house for a couple of weeks after raging at him to mind his own business. He said nothing upon my return; instead, scrambled eggs, toast, and bacon were on the table in the mornings as usual. I barely passed my classes, and I suspect the school let me graduate simply because it wanted me out of there. I know my dad was worried, and he would sometimes, in his own shy way, broach the subject of college, but by then I’d made up my mind not to go. I wanted a job, I wanted a car, I wanted those material things I’d lived eighteen years without.
I said nothing to him about it one way or the other until the summer after graduation, but when he realized I hadn’t even applied to junior college, he locked himself in his den for the rest of the night and said nothing to me over our eggs and bacon the next morning. Later that evening, he tried to engage me in another discussion about coins, as if grasping for the companionship that had somehow been lost between us.
“Do you remember when we went to Atlanta and you were the one who found that buffalo head nickel we’d been looking for for years?” he started. “The one where we had our picture taken? I’ll never forget how excited you were. It reminded me of my father and me.”
I shook my head, all the frustration of life with my dad coming to the surface. “I’m sick and tired of hearing about coins!” I shouted at him. “I never want to hear about them again! You should sell the damn collection and do something else. Anything else.”
My dad said nothing, but to this day I’ll never forget his pained expression when at last he turned and trudged back to his den. I’d hurt him, and though I told myself I hadn’t wanted to, deep down I knew I was lying to myself. From then on my dad rarely brought up the subject of coins again. Nor did I. It became a yawning gulf between us, and it left us with nothing to say to each other. A few days later, I realized that the only photograph of us was gone as well, as if he believed that even the slightest reminder of coins would offend me. At the time, it probably would have, and even though I assumed that he’d thrown it away, the realization didn’t bother me at all.
Growing up, I’d never considered entering the military. Despite the fact that eastern North Carolina is one of the most militarily dense areas of the country—there are seven bases within a few hours’ driving time from Wilmington—I used to think that military life was for losers. Who wanted to spend his life getting ordered around by a bunch of crew—cut flunkies? Not me, and aside from the ROTC guys, not many people in my high school, either. Instead, most of the kids who’d been good students headed off to the University of North Carolina or North Carolina State, while the kids who hadn’t been good students stayed behind, bumming around from one lousy job to the next, drinking beer and hanging out, and pretty much avoiding anything that might require a shred of responsibility.
I fell into the latter category. In the couple of years after graduation, I went through a succession of jobs, working as a busboy at Outback Steakhouse, tearing ticket stubs at the local movie theater, loading and unloading boxes at Staples, cooking pancakes at Waffle House, and working as a cashier at a couple of tourist places that sold crap to the out-of-towners. I spent every dime I earned, had zero illusions about eventually working my way up the ladder to management, and ended up getting fired from every job I had. For a while, I didn’t care. I was living my life. I was big into surfing late and sleeping in, and since I was still living at home, none of my income was needed for things like rent or food or insurance or preparing for a future. Besides, none of my friends was doing any better than I was. I don’t remember being particularly unhappy, but after a while I just got tired of my life. Not the surfing part—in 1996, Hurricanes Bertha and Fran slammed into the coast, and those were some of the best waves in years—but hanging out at Leroy’s bar afterward. I began to realize that every night was the same. I’d be drinking beers and bump into someone I’d known from high school, and they’d ask what I was doing and I’d tell them, and they’d tell me what they were doing, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out we were both on the fast track to nowhere. Even if they had their own place, which I didn’t, I never believed them when they told me they liked their job as ditch digger or window washer or Porta Potti hauler, because I knew full well that none of those were the kinds of occupations they’d grown up dreaming about. I might have been lazy in the classroom, but I wasn’t stupid.
I dated dozens of women during that period. At Leroy’s, there were always women. Most were forgettable relationships. I used women and allowed myself to be used and always kept my feelings to myself. Only my relationship with a girl named Lucy lasted more than a few months, and for a short time before we inevitably drifted apart, I thought I was in love with her. She was a student at UNC Wilmington, a year older than me, and wanted to work in New York after she graduated. “I care about you,” she told me on our last night together, “but you and I want different things. You could do so much more with your life, but for some reason, you’re content to simply float along.” She’d hesitated before going on. “But more than that, I never know how you really feel about me.” I knew she was right. Soon after, she left on a plane without bothering to say good-bye. A year later, after getting her number from her parents, I called her and we talked for twenty minutes. She was engaged to an attorney, she told me, and would be married the following June.
The phone call affected me more than I thought it would. It came on a day when I’d just been fired—again —and I went to console myself at Leroy’s, as always. The same crowd of losers was there, and I suddenly realized that I didn’t want to spend another pointless evening pretending that everything in my life was okay. Instead, I bought a six-pack of beer and went to sit on the beach. It was the first time in years that I actually thought about what I was doing with my life, and I wondered whether I should take my dad’s advice and get a college degree. I’d been out of school for so long, though, that the idea felt foreign and ridiculous. Call it luck or bad luck, but right then two marines jogged by. Young and fit, they radiated easy confidence. If they could do it, I told myself, I could do it, too.
I mulled it over for a couple of days, and in the end, my dad had something to do with my decision. Not that I talked to him about it, of course—we weren’t talking at all by then. I was walking toward the kitchen one night and saw him sitting at his desk, as always. But this time, I really studied him. His hair was mostly gone, and the
