“I called my dad ‘sir,’ sir.” If the drugs had really worn off, I probably would have cried at that. Even though Dad was ten years dead.
He looked at my file again. “I’m sorry. Your courtesy is appropriate, generous under your circumstances.”
“How long have they had me sedated?”
“Two weeks. Two weeks since that first Projectile hit Indianapolis. Why the hell did you go to school the next morning, son? You must have been in a state.”
I shrugged. “Mom said not to cut while she was out of town. What do you mean ‘first Projectile’?”
“Jason, since your episode with your teacher, we’re at war. New Orleans, Phoenix, Cairo, and Djakarta were also destroyed. Smashed by Projectiles as big as the Chrysler Building. Not nuclear bombs. Everyone thought Indianapolis was a bomb, at first. Terrorism against America.”
“That’s what my teacher said. That Americans in Indianapolis deserved to die for the way we treat the third world. That’s when I pounded her.”
The judge snorted. “I’d have pounded her myself.
These Projectiles came from space. Jupiter. More are coming.“ The old man choked and shook his head. ”Twenty million dead.“ He removed his glasses and wiped away tears.
Twenty million ? I only knew one of them, but I teared up, too.
His eyes softened. “Son, your problems are a drop in the bucket. But it’s your job and mine to deal with them.” He clung to my file like a life preserver and sighed. “You’re old enough to charge as an adult with assault. But your circumstances mitigate your conduct. Your home was in eviction proceedings before I ever heard of you. Now complete. Rent deficiency.”
I felt dizzy. “Our house is gone?”
“Personal goods are in storage for you. Do you have relatives you could live with?”
Mom’s great-aunt sent an annual Christmas letter, the old, copied-paper kind that always ended “Yours ‘til Niagara Falls,” followed by “Ha-ha” in parentheses. Last year’s came from a nursing home. I shook my head.
He reached across his body with his huge, good hand, hugged his pinned-up sleeve like a bear, and glared. “Do you know how I lost this arm?”
I froze. Beating a juvenile defendant snotless? I realized he didn’t expect me to know the answer. I relaxed. “No, sir.”
“Second Afghan Conflict. The military could channel your anger, and the discipline wouldn’t hurt you, either. The court has broad sentencing discretion. And this is a just war. Have you considered enlisting?”
He sat back and fingered a paperweight. It was some kind of bullet. It might as well have been a dinosaur tooth. For years now the military, especially the ground forces, had become like plumbing. Necessary, unpleasant, and out of sight. Not that you could blame people. The terrorism years had given way to Pax Americanum . Everybody wanted to buy new holosets and to travel on cheap airfares and to be left alone. In the contest between guns and butter, butter finally won. The army? Not me.
“What do you think, Jason?”
My eyes narrowed. Since organic prosthetics, nobody had to display a stump. Was Judge March’s a recruiting poster or a warning?
“I think I don’t want to go to jail.”
“I’ll take that as a ‘no’ to enlistment. Jason, do you think your violent episodes are over?”
“I dunno. I don’t feel like hitting anybody now.” I had a nice float on from the Prozac II and whatever else they’d been pumping into me. Or else I was just numb from what he’d told me.
He nodded. “Your file says you’ve never been in trouble before. That’s true?”
I supposed he meant like armed robbery, not the cafeteria pudding fiasco with Metzger. I nodded.
“Jason, I’m going to dismiss this matter. You’re too old for foster care, but I’ll backdate papers and sneak you in with a family. It’s a roof over your head.”
I shrugged while he wrote with a pen in my file.
He buzzed, and the bailiff returned and led me out. I reached the door as Judge March called, “Good luck and God bless you, Jason. Don’t let me see you again.”
Three weeks later Judge March saw me again but not because I let him. No office visit this time. The bailiff called “All rise!” when Judge March swept black-robed into his courtroom. He sat between two American flags and scowled at me over his glasses.
I looked out the window at leafless trees. Weeks ago the difference between the day sky and the night was blue compared to black. Now the Projectiles had vomited impact dust up into the stratosphere and day and night were just different shades of gray. They said rain and crops might disappear for years. People were hoarding broccoli.
We were at war with somebody we didn’t know, who wanted us dead for reasons we couldn’t understand, and all we could do about it was slow down the End of the World. And cling to stupid rituals of civility.
“You broke the windows out of your foster family home with a bat? And slugged the arresting officer?”
“The world sucks.”
Judge March rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “So does a cell down at Canon City, Mr. Wander.”
Mr. Wander. What happened to the judge’s pal, Jason?
I swallowed.
The courtroom door tapped shut behind me, and I turned to see who’d come in. A guy in a board-stiff green uniform whose chin and skull were shaved so shiny they looked blue stood at attention in the aisle with a recruiting brochure under one arm.
Judge March peered down from the bench. “Your choice, son.”
Chapter Three
It took five minutes for Judge March to assure me that if I chose to enlist, then quit the army, he would have my ass.
Then the recruiting sergeant and I sat on a bench, in a courthouse hallway awash in disinfectant smell. He spoke up to be heard while the whines of handcuffed crack heads echoed off puke pink marble walls. “You sign here, here, and here, Jason. Then we’ll talk about branch preference.”
Branch, schmanch. My preference was that Judge March didn’t jail me with mother-rapers and father-stabbers and throw away the key. I took the pen, signed, and eyed the sergeant’s chest. Ribbons, silver jump wings. He actually looked pretty wick.
I pointed the pen at his badge, long and skinny and powder blue, with an old-fashioned musket stamped in the middle. “What’s that one?”
“Only one that matters. CIB. Combat Infantryman’s Badge. Means you’ve seen combat.”
“You have to be Infantry to get it?”
He shook his head. “You have to see combat. But the way to do that’s Infantry.”
“Isn’t that like marching and stuff?”
“Everybody marches. Infantry marches for a reason. It’s my branch. The Queen of Battle.”
He really did look wick with his beret tucked under his shoulder loop. Unless the army had a sex-and-rock ‘n’roll branch, it was all olive drab to me. And I liked hiking as much as the next Coloradan. I checked the “Infantry” box and the sarge and the Queen and I shared a special moment. The moment lasted as long as it took for him to tear off and fold my yellow copies.
I had a month to jerk off before my orders said report for Basic. The only foster family that would take me were the Ryans. Mr. Ryan spent hours in the yard watching his trees. He’d planted them around the turn of the century, and they’d grown old and brittle like him. Their leaves fell after the dust darkened the sky.
Every Sunday morning Mrs. Ryan clicked down their walk in high heels and off to church while Mr. Ryan hunkered in their living room glued to the pregame. They seemed very normal.
Mrs. Ryan held a turn-of-the-century-style bowl, probably virgin plastic, across the kitchen table. “More peas, Jason? They’re the last of the fresh. From tomorrow it’s all frozen.” She wrinkled her brow. “After that I don’t know.”
