It was Sunday, a full day off from work. That meant I had the whole day to devote to my other job, the one I should have concentrated on years ago. I planned to do some serious work on my thesis. On the wrong side of my thirty-fifth birthday, I, Joseph Middleton, was a college boy.
I was an average student in high school. My grades weren't good enough to get into a decent college, which didn't matter to me at the time. I just didn't care about much except hanging out with my friends and trying to get laid. The problem was, I had no marketable skills. No one was going to hire a lazy dumb kid to do much more than, well, flip burgers, which was what I was already doing. Not what I wanted.
So, I enlisted in the Army. It was much harder than I expected at first, but I matured almost overnight. Part of it was basic survival instinct, but somehow, I suddenly wanted to be GOOD at something. It turned out that I was good with a rifle. Very good.
Honestly, I'm psychologically healthy enough to say that there was a certain satisfaction in being a sniper. I did my job well. A lot of American soldiers got to fight another day because of me. A number of enemy soldiers didn't. This was the simple necessity of war. Part of me wanted to make a career of the Army, but the other part of me wanted to go home and make my way in the civilian world.
The appeal of civilian life won out. I got my honorable discharge and came home. Strong, proud, confident, smart, and tough, I had a fistful of medals. Unfortunately, there aren't many civilian jobs for guys who can shoot a gun, but who don't want to be police snipers. There was no way I was going back to two all beef patties and special sauce, so I wound up getting a job as a construction laborer.
It was tough work to some of the kids on our crew. I immediately knew which of the guys needed training and conditioning, which kids were unmotivated, and who should just be fired. I wasn't vocal about it, but everyone on the crew knew I had their number. I liked the work, and the boss apparently liked me. New training and promotions came easily.
Still, I thought I wanted more out of life. I could continue like I was, and maybe, some day, have a small construction company of my own. But I began to think about how cold it was working outside in the winter, and how stiflingly hot it could be on a job-site in the summer. Muddy boots were losing their appeal. So were nights sitting at home alone, too bone-tired to go out and have any fun.
A television ad for part-time and online courses at the nearby university caught my eye. I called and found out I could audit a course for only a couple of bucks, so on the next miserably rainy day, I went to the campus. A nerdy kid was working as the receptionist in the main office. He pulled up the form I had filled out online and then made a phone call.
Cupping his hand over the receiver, he said to me, "I can send you to a freshman English class or a freshman biology class."
"I can read and write, but I hate dissecting frogs. I think I'll go with the English class," I said.
That was ten years ago. Now I'm working on my master's thesis. I'm not going to teach high school. I want to teach at the same university that's been robbing me of sleep for all this time. I could have taken the easy way out. The G.I. bill would have allowed me to go to school full-time and just take a part-time job for spending money. Flipping burgers.
I stayed with the construction firm. Six years in the Army and all those years on job sites have kept me young. I'm healthy and big. I look like I live at the gym, but I don't have the time. When I'm not at work, I'm busting my ass with school. It's paid off. I've already been promised that the university will hire me as soon as I complete my degree.
My apartment is on the second floor of an old house. The steps from my balcony lead down to the parking area in the alley where the neighborhood kids ride their skateboards. These kids aren't serious athletes like the board jockeys you see on TV. They are having fun though, and they stay out of trouble. They know that I know they're there, and they also know I won't call the landlord to have them removed, as long as they stay away from my car, keep the noise down, and pick up their trash when they leave. I was a kid once too.
To those of you who haven't done it, I say to you, don't think academics aren't "work." They are. Not the physical labor I've grown accustomed to as a civilian, and not the work of being a combat soldier, but work, nevertheless.
For this work, I needed relative quiet so I could concentrate. It was a nice spring day, so my windows were open. The sounds of trucks rumbling down my narrow, badly paved street were louder than usual, but I had my trusty radio for music. It didn't take long for chatter, laughter and occasional shout of the skater kids in the alley below to mix well with the rest of the background noise. I started working.
There was a small thump outside. Then I heard crying. Most of the kids who played in the alley were young teenagers. When they fell, they would laugh, or if they actually hurt themselves, they would try to act macho and utter some ridiculous combination of vulgarity they had picked up in middle school. Occasionally, some wannabe-skank twelve year old girl would hang out, but they were too tough to cry in public, too, and besides, they often just sat on the steps and tried to get the older boys to notice them. This crying sounded like a younger child. The kid was pretty loud, and the wailing didn't stop.
"G. I. Joe! G. I. Joe! " A kid of about fourteen who called himself "Slash" came bounding up my steps and knocked on my screen door. The skaters called me "G. I. Joe" because of the Veterans of Foreign Wars license plate on my car. From time to time, one of them would ask me a question about my military service, but we were barely more than nodding acquaintances. None of them had ever come upstairs to my door.
"Sean's hurt. We don't know what to do," Slash yelled through the door. "G. I. Joe?"
Damn it. I was just getting started on the conclusion to my paper. I had come up with a great idea, and I could feel it slipping away.
"G. I. Joe? You in there, dude?"
"Coming!"
I got up and went to the door.
"Sean's hurt. Can you help him? Should we call an ambulance or something?"
A young boy, maybe seven or eight years old, was sitting on my bottom step, bawling his eyes out.
"What happened, Slash?" I asked the teenager as I followed him down the steps. "Who is he?"
"His name's Sean. He lives over on Poplar Street, across from Dogbreath's house." Dogbreath was a pudgy, scruffy-looking boy, part of the crew that skated in my alley. "He tried to jump his board up on to the curb. We told him he couldn't do it, but he wouldn't listen."
By this time, I was kneeling next to the young boy. In the most comforting voice I could manage, I said, "Sean, my name is Joe. I live upstairs. Tell me what hurts, son."
"My knees," Sean wailed.
I could see some brush-burns through the torn fabric of his pants. "OK, Sean, I need you to calm down and listen to me. Can you do that?"
"Yes," he whimpered.
"Does anything else hurt besides your knees?"
"My hands." There was some road rash on the palms of his hands. They would be sore for a while, but there was no bleeding or swelling.
"Did you hit your head?"
"No. Mommy makes me wear my helmet."
"How did you fall? How did you land?"
Sean sobbed, but tried to compose himself. "I wanted to jump up on your step like the big kids do. I didn't jump high enough. My board hit the step and I fell."
"Did you fly off your board and land on your hands and knees?"
"I guess."
"The little dude almost made it," Dogbreath said. "His wheels hit the edge of the step. The board stopped, but he didn't. He didn't face-plant. He landed on his knees and slid a little, but he got his hands out. I don't think he hit anything else."
"I want to go home," Sean said, trying to stifle a sob.
"Can you stand up? I'll walk you home," I said.
"OK."
I went upstairs and locked my door, and then took Sean to his house. The kid was a trooper. He picked up his skateboard and started to walk, but I could tell it really hurt him. Poplar Street was at the other end of my alley, and by the time we got there, I decided that it would be faster and easier for him if I carried him.
With Sean on my one hip and his board and helmet in my other hand, we made our way to his house. Sean, who had been calm the whole time I carried him, started crying again as I put him down. He ran into the house yelling, "Mommy!"
A little while later, I was back home, trying to piece together the killer idea I feared I had lost for my paper. A knock came on my screen door again. Shit. Now what? All I wanted was to work in peace.
I stood up and went to my door.
She was silhouetted by the afternoon sun at her back. I didn't know who she was. "Yes?"
"Are you G. I. Joe?"
