Chapter 24 #2
“Seventies were some crazy times, man. Patty Hearst gettin’ snatched by the Symbionese Liberation Army and then robbin’ banks.
Oil Getty’s grandson gettin’ grabbed in Italy and losin’ an ear.
So rich people were on edge ’bout that stuff.
And lots of American executives were gettin’ kidnapped and held for ransom, especially down in Latin and South America.
That shit happened all through the eighties and on.
So they and their companies hired me to show them how to stay safe.
Self-defense. How to break free from restraints, talkin’ their way out of bad situations.
Threat assessments so you don’t get in those situations in the first place and also by practicin’ hypervigilance for yourself and your family.
Basic and then advanced weapons trainin’.
Martial arts, hand-to-hand, whatever it took to stay alive and out of harm’s way. ”
“So using your skills from the Army?”
“Me and your father was Green Berets. Delta Force didn’t come into being until after the war was over. If Delta had been a thing, me and Ty woulda been part of it. We were just cut out for the crazy shit.”
“They talked about your Green Beret experience at his retirement party. The places you went to and the things you did while you were there? You were both lucky to get out of southeast Asia alive.”
“Nearly sixty thousand of us didn’t,” retorted Shock.
“I’d like to ask you a question about a recent event.”
“Okay, shoot.”
“Why the episode in the church?” Nash asked.
“Your old man told me to do it, so I did. No hard feelin’s?”
“No hard feelings?” Nash said incredulously. “What you did was public humiliation of the worst sort at my father’s funeral.”
Shock rubbed his bald head and then shrugged. “You still standin’. Right? No permanent wounds that I can see.”
“That you can see.”
“Maybe he made you stronger with his shit, only you didn’t realize it. Maybe what I said in that church was another test for you, too. What do you think?”
“What I think is I stopped having a father at age fourteen, right when having a father was actually really important.”
“I got me four kids. Half would say I sucked, the other two think I’m Jesus. And they both right.”
“So you just pick your battles and your kids?”
“Or they pick you.”
“Didn’t know it was a choice. Good thing I only have the one.”
Shock finished his beer. “So you a perfect daddy? Good for you, Walter, baby.”
“At least I made an effort. My father cut me off because I chose tennis over football. Who knew the choice of one’s high school sport was such an important thing in a father-son relationship?”
“Is that what you really believe?”
“He made it pretty clear.”
“Then you best read the letter. Might enlighten you more than I already have.”
“If you think whatever he could put in a letter will change anything, well, you are as wrong as wrong can be.”
“Read the letter, then we can talk.”
“So you have read the letter then?”
“I told you I haven’t, and I haven’t. But your father didn’t talk ’bout much else the last six months of his life, so I got a pretty good understandin’ of what he was tryin’ to say.”
“Wait, are you telling me he worked six months on the letter?”
“After the VA docs gave him that much time to live, yeah. It was important to him.”
Nash, who was clearly having none of this, shook his head. “Couldn’t have been. Otherwise, he would have picked up the goddamn phone and called me.”
“And you coulda done the same.”
“Don’t try and lay a guilt trip on me, Shock. I tried to talk to him. I tried to reconcile.”
“Okay. But you gonna read the letter tonight?”
“Probably.”
Shock pulled out a card and handed it to him. “Call me when you do. My private number’s on the back.”
Nash looked down at the front of the card. “SCIF?”
“That’s government-speak for Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. I took the acronym as my company name. Sounded cool, I thought, for my training academy.”
“Your training academy?”
“Yeah. I got a condo in town not too far from Ty’s. But my trainin’ center’s in another state. Remote. Nobody around to bother me, or my trainees.”
The business side of Nash kicked in. “How many trainees do you typically handle at a time?”
“Depends. Somebody gets kidnapped or killed, my phone’s ringin’ off the hook. Things calm down then so do my numbers. ’Course I been windin’ things down. I’m gettin’ up there in age, semiretired.”
“So you cheer for chaos then?”
“What do you cheer for?” asked Shock.
“Stability, predictability.”
Shock rose. “Yeah, borin’ as hell. Figures.”
“Well, as you can see, boring worked out great for me.”
“Guess it depends on how you define great,” Shock retorted.
When Nash stood, too, Shock said, “Don’t worry yourself, Walter.
I can find my way outta here. It’s big but I seen way bigger.
Some of my clients fly me out on their private wings to their own fucken island.
They don’t have no houses, see, they got compounds.
Or some own a whole street of big-ass places, so’s they can sleep in a different mansion every day for a whole week, for some fucked-up rich dude’s reason.
And they also got people to tell ’em how great they are and other people to wipe their ass.
Way I see it, those jobs are the same. They both dealin’ with shit. So long, prick.”
As Shock trudged off, Nash sat back down in his chair and stared out at his lovely backyard, but no longer really seeing it or pretty much anything else.