Vic Socotra

17 June 2008

The Warrant

I had a hole in the day’s schedule. It was quite remarkable. I got back from the weekly meeting and checked the schedule I saw that there was nothing between me and the latest storm’s arrival in the afternoon. Things have been so crazy for so long that I was momentarily stunned.

I realized that there was actually time to go and check out the black bike and see whether or not it was something I needed to do or something to I needed to pass by. It was immensely liberating. I rose, walked out of my office without closing the door, plunged down the elevator shaft to the second sub-basement and hit the road.

Driving east and north across the District is a trip across the Americans. Prosperous, self important Arlington gives way to the Federal City of white marble. That is past in a blink, and the pavement begins to disintegrate. The end of the freeway at Pennsylvania Ave is a washboard of black asphalt the ripples like waves.

East of the Anacostia River, the freeway ends, legacy of an ancient battle of neighborhood activists and Freeway planners. There is no direct connection between the freeways, and jog to the endless wait at the light for the left-hand turn to connect to I-295.

This side of the river has no cranes, just summer road construction and an air of quiet desperation.

Federal control does not catch up until the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, and I let the Hubrismobile loaf along in the right lane.

I was headed for a neighborhood just beyond the NSA complex. From the Google Earth image I summoned up on the computer, the neat houses appeared to have been plopped down from the sky amid farms. I could have just followed Donald’s directions; they would have been fine. Knowing precisely where I was going based on menstruated imagery just felt right.

I did not know what to think when I got off the Parkway and drove past the big nightclub with the empty parking lot. Across the road were fields. At the first light there was a strip mall and a couple gas stations. It occurred to me that I had an image about Donald that might not reflect reality.

If I had been headed into Virginia, I would have known exactly what I dealing with. In Maryland, I was in terra incognita.

When I turned into the neighborhood I saw that it was not as upscale as it appeared from above. The houses were nice enough, but some of the yards were un-mowed, giving them a raffish look, like they were down at the heels and the owners were holed up in the basement.

My spirits rose a bit when I eased the car to the curb in front of the address Donald had given me. The lawn was trimmed, and the garage was overflowing with boxes and kid’s play stuff. Under a cover was the object I had come to inspect.

I got out of the car and thought about locking it. I shrugged and walked up to the front door. The door-bell was tagged out, and I rapped on the glass of the storm door, not knowing what to expect, and ready to turn on my heel if it came to that.

The Chocolate Lab retriever and the Marine who answered the door were not at all what I expected.

Donald turned out to be a tall young man whose hair had grown out just beyond high-and-tight. Mid thirties, I thought, as he waved me into the house. “The baby just got down,” he said, “Your timing is perfect.”

I saw the wedding pictures on the mantel, two attractive young people, and later, the product of their union: plastic slides, balls, and a modular play-house in a jumble of bits and pieces on the garage floor.

We looked at the bike, when he could disentangle it from the play equipment, and it was in good shape, of a bit dusty. I looked at it with feigned expertise. There are some things that you can tell without knowing a great deal about them. This machine had been cared for by a professional.

Here is what I learned, on the way to checking the onboard systems of the sleek black machine:

Donald was a Marine Warrant Officer, and the bike was one of those things that happen after you complete a tour on Okinawa. A present to yourself, a token of citizenship. A passport back to the world; something talked about at the quarters, dreaming of the day when you could go back to being an American.

I asked him if he was assigned to the Fort, and he said he was not. See, the deal is that he and his wife have two little kids. She was a sixteen-year Marine, and he had just hit fifteen. He had been a sharp enough young rifleman that the Corps had commissioned him, made him a key link in the chain of command. He still had the erect carriage of a man who could stand with the Silent Drill Team.

I asked him where his next tour was going to be, if he was not at the Fort. I assumed that is why he was leaning down the holdings, maybe going over seas.

He looked at me with a little sadness. “I got out. So did my wife. They were going to send us both to Iraq, and with the two kids…well, it got too hard.”

I sat on the bike, and tried to process that. Between the two of them, they had more than thirty years of service. They got out with nothing; no pension, no commissary benefits, no health care. For a lifer like me, the thought was inconceivable, and I told him so.

“It really wasn’t that big a choice. The kids come first. And now the bike goes. This is not the neighborhood you want to spend a lot of time in.”

We talked about some of the features on the machine, and agreed to discuss the matter in greater detail later. It appears that there is weakness in the expensive toy market, and a late low-model Harley may not be worth as much as the blue-book would suggest.

I suspect it is a buyers market for the big boy toys, the secondary effect of the fact that the houses in the new suburbs have become prisons of a sort, and retrenchment is the order of the day.

Second echelon effects. I thought about that as I motored back to the office. Getting out with fifteen years, three-quarters of the way to the pension. To qualify for the lifetime benefit, all the both of you had to do was pass through al Anbar Province and come out alive on the other end.

That is a hell of a bill to pay for a young family, isn’t it?

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