Chapter 49

I got woken up by a bag of damn frozen peas being placed onto my face.

“Get up, it’s time for breakfast. You have to take us to the airport later.”

“Yes, Grandmother. Are you guys all packed and ready to go?”

“Almost. We’ll be ready.” I got out of bed as she left, holding the bag of peas to my face but had to set it down as I got dressed and ready.

Getting to the kitchen, it was a good breakfast of eggs and bacon. I had taken the day off work, so I just relaxed on the recliner afterwards with a new bag of peas.

“Let’s go, it’s time to leave.”

I looked at Grandfather and nodded; guess I had dozed off. Loading the luggage, I was given instructions as how to load everything by Grandmother. Seemed I was doing it wrong and not quick enough.

We eventually got on the road and the conversation began with that I needed to have a second talk with Mom. I said I would do it after dinner and was then reminded by grandmother to keep up with her remedies for my eye. I agreed to use the frozen peas but was mum on the rest.

Pulling into the parking garage, I got out and started pulling suitcases onto the tailgate as Grandfather went to go get a cart.

“Barnim, give your mother some time to process everything.”

“Grandmother, she’s had almost 22 years. I’ll be patient, but that won’t last forever.”

She let out a sigh. “I know.”

Grandfather came back, and as we walked into the airport, he summed up his attitude about the whole thing.

“Barnim, you need to do what’s best for you. Make your decision and stand behind it.”

They got checked in and I walked them to their gate. We said our goodbyes and Grandfather whispered into my ear.

“Be good, stay strong and don’t be a dick.”

“I’ll try.”

I drove home using the time to kind of organize my thoughts for the conversation with Mom. As I got near the house, I decided to swing by work.

Walking in, I looked at the table and chairs that sat next to the big picture window. It was like the typical scene of an old Southern general store or feed and seed with usually a couple of old gentlemen sitting there shooting the shit and playing checkers.

No different here, as bunch of different old retired guys were there at one time or another. I hoped to get by them unnoticed, however these two were particularly lively smart alecks.

“Hey stock boy, come over here.”

Seemed who ever worked here became “stock boy” to them, and I was not getting out of this.

“What can I do for you fine gentleman?”

“Guess it’s true you got your ass beat on Saturday?”

“No, I took some damage, but the other guy looked a lot worse. I won the fight.”

“Well, he’d have to be dead to look worse than you.”

“That’s funny. Y’all have a good afternoon, I know it’s close to nap and dinner time for y’all.”

“Good one kid.”

I walked off and they were chuckling, so I knew there was no hard feelings. I found Mr. Pope in the back, pulling some stock to bring out to the shelves. He looked at me and did a fake scream.

“Who the hell let the freak monster in my store? Someone call the monster hunters.”

“Ha, ha. Very funny.”

“Well, you look better than I thought you would. Though what are you doing here, you’re supposed to be resting.”

“I was on my way back from the airport and decided to stop by.”

“Ah, so what do you need?”

“I’ll be in tomorrow if that’s OK? I’ve got about 2 weeks until school starts, and I need to work as much as I can.”

“I get that, though I figured with your windfall Saturday you’d be sticking to your normal schedule.”

“Nope, that’s going in the bank. The bet money is being set aside for later.”

“Let’s see your face.”

I pulled the bandage down.

“Holy shit! I didn’t think that you could get any uglier. You’re going to need the extra money you’re putting away for hookers. Hell, even Marine dress blues aren’t going to be able to overcome your ugly mug.”

“Nice. So how much did you spend on hookers when you were in the Marines? Looking like Quasimodo, it had to have been a huge amount.”

“Good one.”

After putting the bandage back on, I helped him with what he was doing, then went home. I had a couple of hours, so I got out my notes for the plan to go over them once again, changing a couple of things here and there, but it was nothing of significance.

I was keeping track of a couple of things that I eventually wanted to invest in. I knew I could make a decent investment that would blossom and serve me well later on.

Knowing the dot.com boom would be big for a while was an opportunity, but I really didn’t know enough about it to invest without a lot of risk. My focus was looking at things that would be consistent and grow as time went by. I had never really followed the stock market or its trends during the first go round, just living from paycheck to paycheck mostly.

I needed to talk to SGM Okorie so that I could find out which recruiting station I was going to use. It had to be one away from the house, maybe near kick boxing. I had most things figured out about enlisting.

The phone rang as I was putting away my notes and locking the drawer.

Master Boripat had some news for me. They would be going to schedule the championship fight once I had a clear x-ray. The doc had told me to schedule one in about a month and half, seeing as he figured it would be a 1 to 2-month recovery time. It seemed that the Georgia Athletic Commission was meeting Friday to determine the fate of Laguerre. They would let me know by Wednesday night if I needed to come down and be a witness.

Mom called for dinner, so I cut the conversation short and headed down to the kitchen. As we were eating, I turned and looked at Mom.

“You and I need to have another conversation.”

“About what?”

“The way you are treating me.”

“OH. Can it wait until your brother and sister are asleep?”

“Yeah.”

I went upstairs and turned the TV on and watched one of my guilty pleasures, WWF wrestling. Now I’m not one of those “Wrastling ain’t fake” people, it’s literally an action male soap opera. It was a boring episode, though one of my favorite weird wrestlers was on. How can you not like a guy called Duke “The Dumpster” Droese, whose character was a garbage man. When it was over, I went back to the kitchen, sitting down at the table and waited.

Mom finally came into the kitchen and sat down. “So, what is this all about?”

There was that attitude that just screamed this whole thing is pointless and unnecessary. It was dripping with sarcasm and disdain.

“Well, I can see this is probably not going to go well. Though I’ll reserve judgment until this conversation is over.”

“Then let’s get this over with.”

“I’ve had a conversation with Grandfather. It was rather enlightening. I’m wondering why it is that you feel the need to treat me as if I’m my father. You have taken Ellie’s side rather than your son’s because of it. I’m curious why?”

I sat there waiting as she formulated her response. There was only so long I was willing to wait, so after a few minutes it was time for a drink. I got up to grab one of the beers Grandfather had left.

“Where are you going?”

“To get a beer. I need something to drink while you figure out what it is that you’re going to say.”

Sitting back down and opening the beer I looked at her. “Well?”

“I don’t really know where you’re getting this from. I don’t project the faults of your father on you.”

“You know, before Grandfather said something, I might have bought that. You are doing just that, and he also said that you probably already poisoned what little bit of relationship you had left with your older children.”

“You have no clue what you are talking about.”

“Let’s see, I’ve explained how our relationship is set up. The reason that you’re giving that it can’t be true is because that’s not how you would do it is bullshit. You have been calling me a liar through this whole thing, and honestly don’t seem to give a crap about my feelings. I am finally seeing things as they truly are.”

“That’s not true.”

Here we go, this was going to continue along this circular path. I’d make a statement, she’d deny it with no reasoning, and we’d continue down that path repeating it over and over. I couldn’t see a way forward from this, she couldn’t take any responsibility for her own actions.

“This is going nowhere. You need to sit down and do some soul searching and introspection on this. What’s the most dismaying about this, is you are destroying the progress that’s been made since we had our first conversation about how I was being treated.”

“I think you’re being overly dramatic about this whole thing. On top of which you’re not willing to admit your faults.”

“Mother, you’re past the point of no return with Jan. Stosh is almost there and this will push him over the edge. I’m quickly getting there, so please take some time and contemplate this.”

I got up and went to bed.

Work was going well, though the old guys in the store and the farmers were constantly giving me shit. The funniest was when one of the farmers asked me what preteen girl beat me up.

It turned out that I had to show up at the Georgia Athletic Commission hearing and possibly answer questions. Talking to Bob on the phone, he said that there wasn’t a need for him to be there seeing as it wasn’t an actual legal process.

Showing up, I was slightly surprised, thinking it was going to be a pretty formal hearing, though only the very beginning was. They read statements from the witnesses that couldn’t be there.

I was surprised that the defense Laguerre and his camp used was to say that I loaded my gloves as well. That was shot down when my gloves and wraps were presented along with statements from the paramedic and ER doctor.

I gave my statement as to what happened and what I felt during the fight. The whole thing took about 3 hours including the deliberation. The finding of the judgment was that he had cheated by loading his gloves. He was given a 5-year ban from kick boxing in the State of Georgia, and the commission was going to inform the surrounding States of the ban. Laguerre might be able to fight in those States but would be under a lot of scrutiny.

I was walking out of the hearing room when a person from the hearing called to me.

“Excuse me? Barnim, do you mind if I call you Barnim?”

“Do I know you sir?”

“I’m Ralph Kupelin, I own the fight promotion. I wanted to apologize for what happened to you during your fight.”

It turned out Mr. Kupelin was just as I expected, a rich guy who enjoyed going to the fights. There weren’t really any fight promotions in Georgia, so he created one.

“Why should you apologize, you didn’t do anything.”

“We should have seen something in the prior matches.”

“Not your fault. Well, I need to get going, so have a great day.”

“You too. I’m going to find a way to make this right.”

I went and did a half a day at work. Mr. Pope reminded me that I had an appointment with 1st SGT Gibbs the following afternoon as I left.

That evening before dinner while relaxing, it got interesting as Stosh called me. He yelled at me for not telling him what was going on in the house and why he had to hear about the whole thing from Jan. It seemed that Grandfather mentioned it to Jan, then the news made its way to Stosh. Stosh moved into Jan’s camp; he was done with Mom. To top it off, she really hadn’t even made any effort with him.

His opinion was that I just needed to avoid her as much as possible and basically just cut ties when I enlisted. I didn’t know if I’d actually be able to do that as I really enjoyed spending time with Erin. I’d just have to see what happens in the next 7 months or so.

After dinner there was another phone call that I wasn’t expecting. It was Jules wanting to know if I was going to be her fuck buddy or not. I told her that we’d sit down and discuss it after school got started, she was OK with it.

I was surprised that mom was avoiding me around the house, it wasn’t like her not trying to lord something over one of us. At the same time, work was pretty busy, and I was making decent tips.

As I was coming in after lunch, Mr. Pope stopped me; I was done for the day and was sent to go meet 1st SGT Gibbs over at the high school football field. Though I didn’t want to make the meeting with 1st SGT Gibbs to keep up with the training, I needed to in order to keep the plan moving forward.

I was early and changed into PE gear as I waited There was only one thing I was going to do and that was run.

1st SGT Gibbs came up, and as we were walking to the football field, I was informed that this was to be a two-event day. It was going to start with the Initial Physical Fitness Test (IPFT), then after a slight break it was going to be the actual Physical Fitness Test (PFT).

This was going to suck, and I was going to be sore tomorrow.

The IPFT was 50 crunches in 2 minutes, 3 pull-ups and a 1-1/2 mile run in 14 1/2 minutes. 1st SGT Gibbs said not to go all out during the IPFT to be ready for the PFT. The crunches were first and I did 60 in the time limit. After a couple of minutes, the run started. I got into a rhythm that seemed right, finishing with a time just under 14 minutes. Then I did 5 pull-ups which seemed a good number. I walked a bit to cool down during about a 10-minute break.

I then got what would more than likely turn out be good advice.

“Look Barnim, you need to go all out on this one. I want to see what shape you’re actually in, you need to damn near kill yourself to finish this. Your PFT is a major factor that will be used by promotion boards in scoring you, so the better you do, the better chance for promotion. It’s done annually, so you need to make sure you’re in shape at all times. Now let’s get going.”

It went in the same order as the IPFT. I ended up with 99 crunches. I wanted the extra one, but the timer went off before my arms touched my thighs.

As I was getting ready for the run, 1st SGT Gibbs told me to relax my arms and upper body while I was running. It was supposed to help with my breathing and the oxygen flow to the muscles while not taxing the muscles as much.

I pushed myself as hard as I could, lengthening my stride as much as possible without unbalancing myself. It was a 1/4-mile track, so did 12 laps, finishing with a time of 19 minutes 12 seconds. It was then pointed out that I technically didn’t run 3 miles. Turns out that the track was 31ft short of a mile when doing 4 laps, so total a total of 93ft short of 3 miles.

After a couple minutes break, I approached the bar and noticed that the tip about relaxing my arms helped. My arms weren’t as bad as they normally were when I ran on my own. I churned out 18 pull-ups and noticed that the info was being written down.

It was quiet for a few minutes.

“So, here’s what all this boils down to. This would be a first class PFT score. There is some room for improvement, the easiest being be the run time. I think you could shave of between 30 seconds to a minute. Now go home and rest, we’ll do this again in a few months.”

The rest of the day wasn’t bad. I was at the point where I took Stosh’s advice and was only talking to Mom when absolutely necessary. She hadn’t made any attempt to talk to me, so it wasn’t hard to avoid a conversation. It was a good soak, dinner and then bed.

The next week went by fairly fast. School was starting the 29th, so I went about getting all the supplies that were needed. Work was good, and it wouldn’t slow down until about the end of October. I got a call from Master Boripat to go ahead and take another week of resting as I seemed to have earned it.

There was a continued mutual avoidance still going on between Mom and me. Whether she took the time to contemplate the things going on with our relationship, I had no clue. I didn’t think she would as it didn’t seem to be in her nature from my point view. How this was going to play out was going to be interesting.

Waking up on the 29th for the first day of school, I got into the same workout schedule that I had last year.

Getting to school, I ended up walking into homeroom about 10 minutes early. I said hi to Mrs. Hensley; she had a shocked look on her face.

“Good morning Mr. Badzinski. It’s good to see the young man you’ve turned into. So out of curiosity, what happened to your face?”

I explained how my face had come to its current look. She was surprised that I was fighting.

“Thank you for your concern ma’am, and might I say you don’t look a day over 30. We’re lucky to have you as a teacher.”

“Such a flatterer, now go sit down.”

We got issued lockers and I was happy that mine was across the hall from homeroom. It was also central to all my classes, so I wouldn’t have to be scrambling to get books.

I made my way to Economics and was glad I brought my book bag with me. It seemed that they were issuing text books the first day, a little different than last year. This class would be key in helping me keep my plan moving forward, as it would give me the basics of the stock market and then I’d need to expand on that. Mrs. Mattson seemed like she’d be a good teacher.

Walking down to the Vocational hallway where my next two classes were going to be, I made way to the Auto Shop class.

I had an issue that had to be worked out about Fridays, that being uniform day in NJROTC. I’d need to figure something out, because of on top of the uniform, I didn’t want my normal clothes getting messed up either.

Mr. Prieto, the Auto Shop teacher, asked how many of us had cars, about half of the class raised their hands. The first thing we were going to study was how engines worked using lawn mower engines. Starting about mid-October, those of us with cars would be able to bring them in and work on them. A bonus to this was we would get a big break on parts. The school had a deal with the NAPA auto parts store by the interstate.

A solution came to my mind on the clothing issue. I went up to Mr. Prieto’s desk a couple of minutes before the end of class.

“Sir, I have a question for you.”

“You’re Mr. Badzooski right?”

“Close, sir, it’s Badzinski.”

“It’ll take me a couple weeks to start to get everyone’s names down. So please don’t take any offense if I butcher it for a little bit. So, what’s your question?”

“Is there somewhere for us to store some sort of covering clothes for class?”

“Yes. The wall behind my desk is actually lockers accessible from the other side. You’ll want to get a lock. Just know if I think that there is something in there that shouldn’t be, I’ll have no problem pulling out the bolt cutters.”

“I have no problem with that sir.”

The bell rang. “Now get to your next class Mr. Badzinski.”

“Good day, sir.”

I grabbed by bag and headed to NJROTC which was only about 400ft down the end of the Vocational Hall. I knew what to expect in class, the first day was always the same. Hand out the Naval Science books and then issue uniforms.

In all the classes, the rank structure of the Navy was in place. When class ended last year, I had reached the vaunted rank of Seaman (SN). This year I was informed that I had somehow attained the rank of Petty Officer 3rd Class (PO3). 1st SGT Gibbs said this was because of what I’d shown during our Saturday get-togethers. I did mention to him if he tried to make me an officer, that I’d lead a mutiny. All he could do is laugh and shake his head.