Dom pretended not to notice but he did glance back toward the path that led through the woods to White Eagle, where he knew Veronica and his sister were doing some girl thing like having tea. He’d rather be nibbling muffins and tiny sandwiches but the Colonel had given him an order to follow, and when he gave an order, you obeyed.
Champ, his thick brown coat spotted with leaves, leapt in and out of the woods.
“Champ, you knucklehead!” his grandfather shouted. “Get out of the goddamn way.”
“Um, excuse me, Grandpa,” Dom said. “Are you supposed to hold it so close to your face? What about the kickback?”
His grandfather dropped his arm and the gun smacked against his bright-red golf slacks. He turned to Dom and his features, already set close in the center of his face, scrunched in disgust. His left eye, frozen in a perpetual squint, had always reminded Dom of Popeye.
“Somebody’s been watching too many cop shows on the television,” he said. “And when you talk to me, you show some respect and call me Colonel.”
“Yessir,” Dom said, wondering if he should salute, bow, click his heels, scrambling for the right choice as clips from classic war films he’d watched on cable reeled through his mind.
The Colonel struck a limp-wristed pose—just like those assholes at school—mocking Dom in a babyish voice. “Yessir? Say it with some testes, man. Yes, sir!”
“Yes, sir!” Dom barked, mimicking the tone he’d heard in movies like Taps and Full Metal Jacket. “I’m sorry, sir!”
“Don’t apologize, boy. It makes you look weak.”
“I’m sorry,” Dom said before he caught himself and lifted his chin. “I mean I’m not sorry, sir!”
His grandfather laughed—a heh-heh that reminded Dom of a gangster. As in, I’m laughing, but what I’m really doing is thinking of pumping you full of metal.
The Colonel pointed a finger at the sky. “The history of free men,” he announced, “is not written by chance, but by choice!”
“Free will,” Dom said, nodding.
“You know who said that?” the Colonel asked. And before Dom could confess ignorance, he continued, “Of course you don’t. They teach you nothing in schools today. Ike said that. The president of the US of A? Now, let me translate.”
He wrapped a cold hand around the back of Dom’s neck and pulled him forward so their foreheads were almost touching. Dom resisted the urge to pull away. His grandfather smelled unwashed. Like he’d just woken from a nightmare. “In other words, you got to grab the beast by its balls, boy. Before its horns tear your throat out. You hear me?”
Dom saw the red starbursts of blood vessels on the old man’s nose. There was a spot of dried ice cream stuck in his silver stubble and Dom wished they could go back to White Eagle. Maybe they could watch the ball game. Anything but C-SPAN. The Colonel turned into a raving madman when news of the election, and especially Bill Clinton, came on.
“Loud and clear, Colonel,” Dom said, relieved when his grandfather released him.
“Now, you got to imagine your enemy’s face on the front of those cans,” the Colonel said as he squinted down the nose of the gun. “Like right now, I’m seeing those vandals. Dirtying my island with their cockamamie slurs!”
He squeezed off a few more shots. He hit just one can.
“Goddamn,” he shouted. “Horsefeathers!”
Dom held his breath so as not to laugh and then the cold metal was being pressed into his hands and he was holding the gun with his pinchy fingers.
“Don’t dangle it like a shit-filled diaper.”
It was heavier than Dom had expected and while the metal barrel was cool, the wooden grip was warm from the Colonel’s hands.
“How does it feel?”
“Real good,” Dom said.
The Colonel mocked him again, using that same sissy voice, wobbling his bald head. “Real good? What. Does. It. Feel like?” He spat out the words like each was a bullet.
Dom wished he’d had more than a nip from his thermos of OJ and Smirnoff vodka, because his hands were shaking even worse than the Colonel’s and he was starting to feel majorly pissed off. He took a long, deep breath that made his chest burn and steadied his hands, wrapping his fingers tight around the gun. He thought of his Greek gods and imagined the gun was one of the totems that gave mortals transformative power. Wasn’t it the power to kill without consequences that separated man from god? Via thunderbolts, poison-tipped arrows, tridents, spears, and swords.
“Fan-tastic!” Dom shouted. His hands had stopped shaking.
It was the first time he’d seen the Colonel smile.
“You’re my boy, Dominic,” he said, and the way he nodded slowly, approving of Dom—would he, could he, Dom thought, ever know how much that meant to him?
“Thank you, Colonel.” It was all he could squeak out. What he wanted to say was I love you. Please take care of me. Let me follow you. He wanted to confess the terrible thing that he’d done in the woods behind the school while that psycho MJ Bundy whispered hot threats in his ear.
“I want to make you, Dominic Pencott, my second in command. My lieutenant.”
Dom was too excited to correct the Colonel—his last name was LaRosa not Pencott.
“Yes, sir!”
He would be Hermes, the winged messenger, worshipped by generals, merchants, travelers, and great athletes like the WWF wrestlers. Hermes to the Colonel’s Zeus.
“But…” Dom began, realizing how incapable he was. He was all those things the dipshits at school called him. A wimp. A loser. “What if I … choke?”
There was kindness in his grandfather’s eyes when he stepped close and clamped a hand on Dom’s shoulder.
“I understand, Dom. I’ve seen many men question their worth. Even at the most decisive moments in battle.”
Dom remembered how his father had seemed to enjoy telling him about the Colonel never having seen combat—he’d been hurt, his back broken in a factory accident months before he was scheduled to be deployed as a navy pilot in the new war. His father, Dom decided, must have been wrong, or, more likely, lying to make the Colonel look bad.
“I promise you, Lieutenant Pencott, you spend enough time with the lion, and roaring becomes more and more reasonable.”
It was like something straight out of Zeus’s own mouth and it made sense to Dom when so little these past few months had.
“Yes, sir!”
“Now, repeat after me,” the Colonel commanded as he squeezed Dom’s shoulder, his eyes closing solemnly as if in prayer, “I, Dominic Pencott…”
“I, Dominic Pencott.”
“Do solemnly swear…”
“Do solemnly swear.”
“That I will defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…”
Dom repeated all the important-sounding words—enemies, faith, allegiance—and he felt himself grow stronger. Invincible. Until the world was blocked out. Just him and the Colonel in a halo of light. Gone were the birdcalls and twigs cracking and the relentless drone of the caterpillars. Poof! MJ, Victor—all the dickheads at school … Gone.
“I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter,” Dom repeated.
“So help me God,” the Colonel said.
“So help me God.”
The Colonel was squeezing his arm hard now, until Dom thought he’d either laugh or cry out.