The Feathery Read online

  "Are you crazy? Iraq? Why?

  "The Marine Reserve trained me to fly helicopters in combat, and I’ve got to go."

  Diane glared at her husband in disbelief. "You volunteered for this? When do you leave, and for how long?"

  "This coming Tuesday, for a year, unless I’m extended."

  She glowered at him in disbelief for ten seconds before she decided to take two steps forward toward the arms waiting to encircle her. "Oh, Zach, I don’t like this one bit. Please be careful. Don’t make me a real widow instead of a golf widow."

  Zachary Beckman laughed. "I’ll make sure of that."

  Later, when he was with his son on the 15th hole at Balboa, Zack told Scott about his going to Iraq.

  Scott’s eyes filled with tears. "How long, dad?"

  "Should be home in a year."

  Zachary stared at his son for a long time. Scott had the same silver blond hair and blue eyes as his mother. But growing fast at twelve he’d

  be taller than her. His hair had started to meander down below the neck line…not Marine Corps length, but Zachary wouldn’t rebuke Scott about

  his hair style, instead he took a digital camera out of his golf bag and said, "I’d like to take a picture with me of you swinging a golf club…"

  Scott took his stance on the tee and swung a driver from his junior golf set while his dad clicked the camera several times.

  When Zack finished taking the pictures, he looked into Scott’s golf bag. "At the rate you’re growing, you’ll need an adult set of clubs next

  year. I’ll buy you some when I get back."

  CAMP VICTORY, IRAQ

  Eleven months into his tour in Iraq, marine Captain Zachary Beckman was in the backseat, pilot’s position, of an AH-1W Cobra attack-helicopter starting out on what he hoped would be one of his last missions before returning stateside. After the pre-flight activities, he looked at the snap-shot of his son, Scott, taped in a blank spot between several instruments on the fire-wall in front of him, and smiled.

  As the Cobra lifted off, there was transmitted banter with his fire control operator in the seat in front, about the mission and course to the target area. They flew low and fast over the desert for thirty minutes until the reported insurgent strong-hold was reached. They sighted their target. It consisted of two wood frame buildings. As Zachary started his pass to launch rockets at the buildings, all hell broke loose from both sides, front and rear. The helicopter started taking multiple hits from heavy caliber machine guns on the ground.

  "It’s a trap!" Zachary yelled, trying to bank the Cobra in a climbing, tight turn away from the ground-fire, but on that heading ran smack into two Stinger missiles shoulder launched by a pair of Iraqi bad guys. What happened next took place in fifteen seconds. The Cobra chopper started flying erratically because several hits severed a rotor blade and pierced some hydraulic control lines. Zachary tried, with the little control left, to make a hard-landing. But the Cobra was too low and moving too fast. The chopper hit the desert floor with a metal crunching impact followed by a ball of flame.

  First to reach the burning helicopter was a thirteen-year-old Iraqi boy. The wreckage was still burning fiercely when he got there. He picked up a singed snapshot from the sand and studied it for a moment. It was a picture of a kid swinging a strange object. The boy shrugged his shoulders, tossed the photo away and sat down on the sand to wait for the wreckage to cool so he could search it for a much better prize.

  SAN DIEGO

  The rituals of the wake and funeral took on an unreal form for the late Captain Zachary Beckman’s thirteen-year-old son, Scott. The funeral parlor lighting came mostly from four large candles above the closed casket. Burning wax combined with the floral offerings to fill the viewing room with a sickening sweet smell. Relatives, friends and a detail of marines glided slowly passed the casket. Scott and his mother greeted each and listened to their whispers of the proper funeral words. No tears came from Scott Beckman because his sorrow was frozen stoically in place.

  Deep anger stayed with Scott at the graveside on a hill, under cloudy skies. Standing near a solitary palm tree, he watched his father’s casket being slowly lowered into a dark rectangular hole. After the burial words from a rabbi, a marine officer in dress uniform handed Scott’s mother a neatly folded American flag. As she took the flag in both hands, a group of Cobra helicopters flew below the clouds and low over the cemetery.

  A marine standing beside Scott bent down to explain a one-chopper gap in the formation. "That’s a missing-man formation to honor your dad."

  After weeks of holding back, tears started to escape…then Scott’s anger exploded in a sobbing reply: "Lot of fucking good that does…he’s dead."

  He ran through the crowd around the graveside, shoving aside those mourners in his path, then lunged down a hillside, dodging gravestones on the way until he reached a line of parked cars along the roadside. He found his mother’s Porsche and hit it with his fist. A bugler played taps, and that mournful sound was repeated by another horn in the distance. Shortly after the last note was played, Scott clenched his fist to punch the hood of the Porsche once again, but his mother came silently up behind and grabbed his arm with one hand and slapped his face with her black leather-gloved other one.

  "You’ve embarrassed me in front of my friends and associates!" Diane Beckman screamed into Scott’s tear-streamed face.

  It was a Saturday thirteen months after the funeral. Scott was with his best friend, Matt Kemp, who’d lost his father in Iraq when a roadside bomb had detonated under his Humvee. They were hanging out at a strip mall making plans to shoplift a golf club that would be added to the old set they shared when trespassing on Balboa Country Club’s 5th, 6th and 7th holes. Just before sunset they’d approach the course from a wooded area next to the fifth fairway. At twilight, there were seldom any players on those beginning holes to question their trespass. Scott and Matt called playing those three holes their Balboa Loop, and they continued to sneak on the course even after being caught, reported to the police and reprimanded.

  The golf was fun, but the thrill of their law-scoffing transcended the playing of it. The cop that’d reprimanded them told the head-pro at Balboa that their trespassing was likely an outlet for the defiant anger over not having their fathers around to golf with. After knowing they’d both lost their fathers in Iraq, the head-pro at Balboa ignored their harmless twilight intrusions.

  Now they were planning a more serious crime to join that same rebellious hostility.

  "Are you sure we can pull it off this time?" Matt was slouched against the wall at a building across from an All in Sports store. "We blew it last time and got caught."

  "That club was a driver, Matt. This one is going to be a wedge… much smaller to hide."

  "It’s still going to set off the metal detector at the front door."

  "Yeah, but this time we don’t stop…we run like hell, Matt."

  They slowly approached the golf equipment section of the store, feigning a look at other merchandise along the way. When they reached the golf club display both picked up a club and wiggled it back and forth pretending to see how it felt. The club in Scott’s hands was a 60-degree lob wedge. It was a club made popular by Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods for hitting high shots to the green from close range. The price tag hanging on the wedge was $125.00.

  Bill Tivey was sitting in the small security office with his feet propped on a table below three television monitors. Bill was in the Navy, stationed at Coronado, and he augmented his Navy pay by working security on weekends for All in Sports. Cameras scanning several areas in the store fed the TV monitors above him. It was a boring job, but he had the surveillance method down pat, switching his eyes from one monitor to another while reading a magazine and not missing any area scanned by the cameras. Very seldom did he have to pick up his radio from the table and alert the front door security guy that someone was trying to vamoose with shop-lifted goods.

  Tivey’s eyes went to the m
iddle monitor. It was displaying the view from a camera in golf goods, and it caught a kid stuffing a golf club down the pant leg of his baggy shorts. He watched the kid cover the top of the club with his loose fitting sweatshirt. The monitor showed another kid dressed in the same over sized clothes standing close by, acting as a lookout.

  He grabbed his radio from the table to alert the security guy posted at the exit. "Bingo, in sporting goods," said Tivey. "A kid in shorts and sweatshirt just lifted a golf club. There’s another kid with him."

  He was quickly out of his office and on the run. Tivey, with the front door guard, caught up to the boys and grabbed them as they were making a dash to escape through the main exit. They held the boys firmly by the arms and escorted them to the security office.

  "That’s a stupid thing you did," said Tivey. "We have it all on videotape."

  Scott pulled the lob wedge from his shorts and sweatshirt placing it on the table. "We didn’t know you had TV. Last time it was just a metal detector."

  "Yeah, you were caught on Candid Camera." Then Tivey said, "okay, I have to make a phone call to the San Diego police dispatcher." He took a deep breath and paused before asking the question that always saddened him. Bill Tivey didn’t like this part of his job, but the answer he got from Scott made it worse than ever. "Do you want to call your fathers so they’ll be here when the police arrive?"

  Scott answered for the both of them. "They’re dead. Killed in Iraq."

  Those words from Scott shook Tivey. He mumbled something about being sorry. And then he made a decision to call Detective Ross instead of the police dispatcher. He thought Ross might keep these two kids away from more trouble.

  Detective Kyle Ross of the San Diego Juvenile Unit picked the boys up at the store and drove to downtown San Diego where he’d meet with Mrs. Beckman, Scott’s mother.

  Ross was forty-four years old, a rugged six-foot-three African American who’d stayed in shape after playing linebacker for San Diego City College and that same position for the Cherry Point Marine team. He had a full head of premature gray hair that was a handsome contrast to his ebony skin color. After the Marine Corps he became a cop and spent his first years in law enforcement in the homicide division before being transferred to Juvenile. Juvenile turned out to be his calling. Ross helped keep kids from going to jail before that penal system educated them into committing more serious crimes. Ross waited impatiently for fifteen minutes before

  Mrs. Beckman gave the okay for her secretary to usher him into her office. She made a half-hearted apology about being tied up with a client who was about to close on a twenty million dollar property. Diane Beckman was the president of one of the largest real estate companies in California. She had movie star looks. To Ross her makeup appeared as if it’d been applied professionally, and her hair most likely styled weekly. His experience in Juvenile dealing with rich parents told him this woman fit the profile of one whose ambition to succeed in business transcended good parenting.

  "What now?" Diane Beckman asked.

  "Your son, Scott, was caught shoplifting again."

  "Oh shit. Where this time?"

  "At All in Sports. Security there caught him on their surveillance video camera trying to stuff a golf club down his pant leg. He was with another kid…Matt Kemp."

  "Great, last time it was a big golf club. Matt was with him then, also."

  "Yeah, that time it was a driver, Mrs. Beckman. Today it was a lob wedge."

  "Whatever." She shrugged her shoulders. "I know very little about golf clubs. Where’s Scott now?"

  "All in Sports didn’t press charges, and both kids are waiting in my vehicle. They’re sweating out what’s going to happen to them next. I’d like to talk you about those options."

  Diane Beckman anxiously looked at her watch. "Okay, but I’ve a very important meeting in ten minutes."

  Ross gave her a hard stare. "This is about your son, Mrs. Beckman."

  "I know, but there’s nothing I can do to change him. He’s just like his father. Scott’s obsessed with golf like Zachary was." She shrugged her shoulders again. "He’ll probably end up spending all his time golfing just like his father did."

  "What do you think is going on with your son to make him disobey the law?"

  "He loved his father and is still angry about losing him. He won’t accept my attempts to take charge of things. Scott hardly ever talks to me."

  "Besides that…what’s this thing with his stealing golf clubs about?"

  "My husband started Scott into golf before he was called up by the Marine Reserve. He’d taken Scott out to the Balboa Course many times. They’d played that course together, and Scott fell in love with the game. By the way, detective, I hate golf." She paused and seemed to be thinking about how to tell the rest. "His dad was going to buy Scott a set of clubs for his thirteenth birthday when he got back from Iraq." There was another pause. "I was against it. I wanted Scott to concentrate on tennis."

  "And what else?" Ross prodded her to go on.

  "I gave all of my husband’s things to the Salvation Army the day I got notified of Zachary’s death. Maybe it was a crazy thing to do, but I wanted nothing left in the house to remind me of him. And throwing out everything of his helped me work off some anger. You see, detective… Zachary did not have to go to Iraq…he volunteered, of all things."

  After that statement, Ross’ opinion of this career-bent, self-centered woman degraded even more. He thought about the 214 Marines from Camp Pendleton, close by San Diego, who’d been killed in Iraq. His loyalty to the corps hit home, and the motto semper fi came to mind before…"I suppose your husband’s golf clubs went with the other stuff."

  "Yes, especially the golf clubs and his golf balls, golf books. Yes, even his golf shoes and clothes. It’s been over a year since, and Scott hasn’t forgiven me for throwing those golf things out."

  "After you tossed out his father’s clubs, couldn’t you buy Scott his own set?"

  "No, I refused to let him get involved in the game of golf. Tennis, in my opinion, reaches a higher quality of clientèle, and it takes less time away from business to play. Scott still refuses to take tennis lessons, and I’ll not let him take golf lessons or be involved with golf." She looked at her wristwatch again.

  "Well, that takes a lot away from the purpose of my visit."

  "What do you mean, Detective?"

  "I came here to ask your permission to have your son join a program run by a golf pro at El Camino. He’s helped other kids in trouble by keeping them busy at the golf course."

  "Golf…no way, detective."

  Ross stood up, and glared down at her. "Look, Mrs. Beckman, your son has committed a crime. I can take him down to juvenile court and book him or out to El Camino. It’s your choice."

  Diane Beckman’s eyes went again to her wrist. "Do they have a tennis program at El Camino?"

  Her rude time-checking was irritating Ross. "I suppose they do."

  "Well, I don’t like this, but you haven’t given me a good alternative. You may take Scott out to El Camino, only he should play tennis there. Now, I really must go to my meeting, detective."

  "Thank you for your time, Mrs. Beckman. I’ll take Scott out to El Camino today." Ross thought she’d hurriedly made her decision based on the time for her meeting and a tennis program at El Camino for her son instead of golf.

  In the backseat of Ross’ unmarked police car the two boys sat wondering about their fate. To make sure they didn’t run, and for effect, Ross had handcuffed Matt’s right hand to Scott’s left. Scott’s right wrist was connected by another set of cuffs to a handhold in the vehicle. The good-looking fourteen-year-olds were scared. Scott was the tallest at five-feet-seven, and Matt was a couple of inches shorter. Their oversize shorts and sweatshirts hung down below their knees. Scott was a blond with straight white teeth. Matt’s hair was dark red. He had a few freckles and two front teeth that needed to be pulled back in line by an orthodontic procedure. Their hair was long, in need of a goo
d shampoo, and their baseball caps turned backwards didn’t hide that unkempt state. They watched Detective Ross walk toward them across the black asphalt parking lot next to Mrs. Beckman’s office.

  "Jeez, here he comes." Scott’s heart started beating faster. "My mother doesn’t give a shit if I go to jail."

  Matt turned his head to watch Ross’ approach. He self-consciously covered his two protruding teeth with his upper lip. "Mine doesn’t either."

  Detective Ross didn’t get in the driver’s seat right away. He went to the open rear window to ask Matt for his mother’s phone number.

  "She’s not home; she’s in Crawford, Texas. Travels all over the country protesting the war in Iraq. My grandmother’s at my house." He gave Ross the phone number.

  Detective Ross moved away from the car, out of earshot. He called the number to brief Matt’s grandmother and ask her permission to take Matt out to El Camino Country Club. He got the permission and placed another call to the head pro at El Camino, Sandy McNair, to tell him he was on the way there with two more troubled kids.