A Man Named Dave

for the rest of my life.
    Ever since I had been Mother’s prisoner, I had dreamed of making something of myself. The more she would scream, curse at me, and leave me sprawled out on the floor in my own blood, the more I would fight back and smile inside, telling myself over and over again, One day, you’ll see. One of these days I’ll make you proud. But Mother’s prediction was right: I had failed. And for that I hated myself to the core. My idle time awakened my inner voice. I began to think that maybe Mother had been right all along. Maybe I was a loser, and I had been treated as such because I deserved it. I became so paranoid about my future that I could no longer sleep. I spent my free evenings trying to form any strategy I could to survive. It was during one of those endless nights that I remembered the only piece of advice my father ever gave me.
    In six years as a foster child, I had seen my father less than a dozen times. At the end of my last visit, he proudly showed me one of the only possessions he had left: his badge, representing his retirement from the San Francisco Fire Department. Before loading me onto a Greyhound bus, Father mumbled in a dejected voice, “Get out of here, David. Get as far away from here as you can. You’re almost at that age. Get out.” As he looked at me with darkened circles under his eyes, Father’s final words were: “Do what you have to. Don’t end up … don’t end up like me.”
    In my heart I sensed that Father was a homeless alcoholic. After spending a lifetime saving others from burning buildings, Father had been helpless to save himself. That day as the bus pulled away, I cried from the depths of my soul. Every time the bus passed someone sleeping beside a building, I’d imagine Father shivering in the night. As much as I felt sorry for him, though, I knew I did not want to – I could not – end up like him. I felt selfish thinking of myself rather than my stricken father, but his advice, Don’t end up like me, became my personal commandment.
    I decided that joining the service was my only chance. I even fantasized about serving in the air force as a fireman, then one day returning to the Bay Area and showing Father my badge. Trying to enlist proved to be an ordeal. After struggling to obtain my GED, I had to fill out mounds of paperwork for every time I had been bounced from one foster home to another, then explain on separate forms why I was placed in another home. Whenever the air force recruiter pressed me about my past, I became so terrified that I stuttered like an idiot. After weeks of evading these questions, I caved in and gave the sergeant a brief explanation about why Mother and I did not get along. I waited for his reaction. I held my breath knowing that if the recruiter thought I was a troublemaker, he could refuse my application.
    Every morning, for weeks, I stood outside the door, waiting for the office to open, before I hurried in to fill out more paperwork, and studied films and whatever booklets the recruiter had available. I became possessed to enlist. The air force was my ticket to a new life.
    After the paperwork was filled out, double-checked, then reverified, I had to get a physical examination. During the battery of tests I was poked and prodded on every inch of my rail-thin body. At the end, as I sat nearly naked, the doctor kept circling around me as he questioned the ancient bumps on my scalp, the scars on my body, the marks on my right arm where Mother had burned me on the gas stove. I simply shrugged off the doctor’s questions, telling him I had been a clumsy kid. The doctor let out a sigh and raised his eyebrows. Immediately my heart seized. I just knew I had said the wrong thing. Fearing my statement would disqualify me, I quickly added that it was a stage I had gone through when I was a kid. “A kid?” the doctor asked, as if he were not buying my story.
    “Yeah, you know, when I was six, seven years old. But” – I raised a finger to stress the importance of this point – “I’m not clumsy now! Nope, not anymore. Not me. No sireee …” The doctor waved me off and told me to get dressed. I felt a surge of relief as I saw him mark the block that claimed I was medically qualified to enlist. I was on top of the world, right up until the moment I leaned too far and crashed against the table. Folders containing other recruits’ paperwork exploded in every direction, and, still struggling to pull on my pants, I tried to grab the papers, only