Crush Depth

from a fast-track planning job at the Naval War College, in Newport, Rhode Island. The war broke out in July, and Challenger’s previous XO did not meet Captain Wilson’s high demands preparing for combat.

“They liked what I’d been doing in Missouri,” Michael Fuller went on. “Somebody liked the cut of my jib, to use your lingo. Reached over there for me, and here I am.”

Jeffrey’s father finished drying his hands. He stuffed the paper towels in the trash bin harder than he needed to, almost resentfully.

“I’m supposed to be good at getting people to cut out the blame games, cut out the turf fights, get them to work together better. That’s what the secretary told me, anyhow…. I did a lot of soul-searching after you left home, asking myself where I coulda gone wrong, you turning out the way you did, all those fights and games in the house, a stranger to your own family…. Maybe I married too young…. Maybe I shoulda stopped with two kids. I always seemed better at raising daughters…. I guess it paid off, sort of, all that thinkin’ because of you, paid off at work anyhow. Me, the Great Compromiser. And here I am.”

Jeffrey studied his father. The man’s face was deeply creased with worry lines. His middle-age spread was gone. His suit looked expensive. He wore a perfectly knotted silk tie, not the polyester clip-ons Jeffrey remembered from when he was a kid. His father exuded an air of active intensity and drive that Jeffrey had never seen before. But maybe it had always been there, and he’d been too self-absorbed and immature to notice.

Michael Fuller peered at his son as if to take in every inch of him. “You look older.”

“War does that to people,” Jeffrey said.

“Tell me about it…. You look good in that uniform.”

“Thanks.” This was the closest thing to a compliment Jeffrey’s dad had ever paid his naval career. Jeffrey decided to take a chance and reciprocate. “I like your suit.”

The man’s face softened. “One has to look the part. I got a big staff now, spend time at the White House, testify before Congress…. I’ve been hearing rumors about you.”

“Sir?”

“You don’t have to call me sir. I’m your own goddamn father. I’ve heard things, whispers. Scuttlebutt, I suppose you navy types would call it. About stuff you’ve done. Recent stuff. Good, important stuff, to make a man feel proud.”

“I can’t talk about it, Dad.”

“Yeah, yeah. The walls have ears. Loose lips sink ships. It isn’t funny anymore…. But I hear you’ve been doing a fine job out there. You know, where it matters, the sharp tip of the spear?”

“I guess so.”

His father looked at Jeffrey very appraisingly. “It’s what you always wanted, isn’t it? Since you were a kid? To be a big naval hero, in a big shooting war?”

“Dad, nobody wants to be in a war. Jesus, especially not like this one.”

“So you did learn something, since reading all those books. Good for you…. How’s your old wound doing?”

“It’s okay.”

“In other words, it still hurts.”

“Sometimes, yeah.”

His father seemed lost in thought for a minute, lost in the past. “I know those were tough times. Nancy dumping you and all.” Nancy was Jeffrey’s ex-fiancee, from the mid-1990s — she’d walked out on him while he was in orthopedic rehab after being hit in the thigh by a bullet on a secret SEAL operation in Iraq. He got a Silver Star and a Purple Heart; then, while he fought the pain to learn to walk again, Nancy returned his ring. Once more on active duty, Jeffrey was rated unfit for Special Warfare missions because of that wound. He loved being underwater, in scuba gear or otherwise, so he chose to transfer to subs; he wanted to stay in a specialty where each individual could really make a difference.

“This war’s forced me to think about a lot of things, son. I–I sometimes wish I’d been there for you better, back then.”

“I didn’t make it easy, Dad. I know a lot was my fault, from way back.”

“Big killing wars make people think, son.” Michael Fuller looked off into space again, as if he hadn’t heard the last thing Jeffrey said. “You see neighbors get the telegrams… yes, they still use telegrams…. You see black ribbons in the windows. It makes you realize how much you have, how easy you can lose it, lose everything. It — it reminds you of mortality, this war does, of how very little time we really get.”

“I know. I’m almost forty.”

“Crap, I just turned sixty. Don’t rub it in.” Michael Fuller actually smiled at Jeffrey. Tears nearly came to Jeffrey’s eyes, for this small moment of closeness with his father, and for the decades of closeness he could have had but threw away. He saw his dad’s eyes moisten too, for just a second. “You got a land job now?”

Jeffrey nodded.

His father’s face grew tough.

“You don’t look happy,” Michael Fuller said, almost accusingly. His dad had seen right through him.

“A lot’s been happening….”

“Don’t lie to me. You want to get to sea again.”

Jeffrey hesitated. “Yeah.”

“Christ, haven’t you learned anything? Haven’t you done enough? Have you been to Arlington Cemetery lately?”

Jeffrey shook his head. He knew what was coming, and that only made it more painful.

His dad grew sarcastic. “It’s practically around the corner from here, damn it. Like some kind of cause and effect, the pair of them, the Pentagon and Arlington… Have you seen the daily funerals, crowds of mourning relatives, all the fresh-dug graves? No, I thought not. Well, I see the statistics, the real ones. People out there on the ocean are getting creamed! What use is a dead hero to me? You wouldn’t be my son anymore, you’d just be dead, fucking dead… forever dead.”

“Dad—”

“Didn’t you hear anything I told you when you were a kid? There ain’t no glory in war! There ain’t no honor in being a corpse! Warriors get paid to die. I lost my own brother to Vietnam, and it still hurts every day. In your line of work we’d be lucky if there was enough left of you to even bury! Think how that would make your mother feel.”

Jeffrey wondered if this was his father’s way of expressing love, this worry and anger, just like years and years before. Had it always been Michael Fuller’s way of showing love to a rebellious son — a disrespectful son, one hell-bent on military service — and Jeffrey didn’t see it?

How to explain to the man that some people needed to volunteer, that preparedness for a big war couldn’t wait for the shooting to start? How to convey that there was just no substitute for experience at sea, and Jeffrey had the experience, and when your country needed it, your soul ached for you to go? How to convince his father that Jeffrey did miss his uncle too, a man he’d never known except from photographs, killed in the Tet Offensive seven years before Jeffrey was born?

“A guy your age should be settled down, raising a family already. Not gallivanting off to win another medal, and get roasted alive in some mushroom cloud.” His father turned away. “There’s enough death as it is. Way too much death… I–I just—”

Someone barged into the men’s room. “There you are, sir,” he said to Michael Fuller. The intruder — that’s how Jeffrey thought of him — was in his late twenties, handsome, smooth, and smug, in a gray pinstripe suit. “They’re ready to start again.” He seemed impatient, and glanced at Jeffrey in his uniform as if he were some kind of alien creature.

Jeffrey’s father frowned, and looked at Jeffrey, and looked at the younger man. “Tell them I’ll be along in a minute.” The younger man left.

His father sighed. “Look, I gotta go. Big meeting. I can’t keep half the Joint Chiefs waiting.”