Chapter 2: Our Life Stories

“I guess my story starts when I graduated high school. My brother had graduated the year before and started college. He dropped out his freshman year. Dad wanted him to come to work in the family business. Dad owns a private investigation company. Vic and I had no interest in that. I mean Bobby and his wife work there, both my sisters and their husband work there, so where would we fit in? Our family has a long history with the Marines so after I graduated Vic and I joined together.

Let’s skip ahead for eight years. I am back in Afghanistan for my fourth combat tour. Think about that for a minute. Four tours in 8 years. Barely time to de-compress before you are back dodging bullets again. Hell, I know Camp Leatherneck and Helmand Providence better than I know the neighborhood where I grew up. Anyway, about 3 months in, we are taking heavy fire from this house out in the middle of nowhere. My platoon commander orders me to take a fire team and get around behind them so that’s what I do. As we approach the house from the rear a door opens and a machine gun appears. Before I kill the gunner, he kills three of my men. I am not hit. Not a scratch. But something snapped. When the shooting was over my Lt. found me sitting with four dead bodies. I had scalped three of them and was working on the fourth. He said I told him they were my kills so they were my scalps. He talked me down from my rage and put me on a medical chopper. The doctors said I suffered a mental break, and it would be best for the Marines to sever their relationship with me. They said I may do this again. The Marines gave me a medical discharge, and I went home to Florida. Part of my deal with the Marines is that I seek help at the V.A. I tried at the hospital in Tampa, but things were not helping. My dad thought it best that I am not around his business. He sent me to live on the farm with my grandparents. I have a cousin who is good at helping people adjust to things in their lives, so I have been talking with her. I think she uses hypnosis. Anyway, it is helping more than any of these doctors. You know how people like to talk and gossip. Everyone knows about the crazy Marine who scalps people when he gets angry. So that’s my story what’s yours?”

I am sitting at the table with a big crazy man! I know he left out part of the story. I mean he went into a house where there were four heavily armed terrorists! He killed them all by himself! How? I am sure they did not go gently into the good night, as the poet suggests. No, they fought to the death and he killed them! The Marines would have given him a metal if he had not scalped them. How did they cover that up? I am sure scalping is against the rules. But now he wants to hear my story. Well, here goes!

“I was a difficult child. Very rebellious. When I was sixteen, I wanted to go to a concert and my mother said no. I had a fake I.D. that said I was 18 so I snuck out and went. The next day mom and I had a big fight. I packed a suitcase and left. I bought a bus ticket to Los Angeles. My dream was to get a job as an actress or a model. I was 16, naive and just stupid. I answered an ad for models and that was my big mistake. This guy said he was an agent and knew of just the part for me. He took pictures. No nudes just pictures of my face and some of me posing with my clothes on. He called the cheap hotel where I was staying the next day and said something about a movie and the people wanting to see me. I was to get ready and we were going to a party that night.