My father calls me one night:

“So I’m having breakfast with Chuck Norris. Yes, Delta Force, black belt, Walker-Texas-Ranger badass Chuck Norris. His step-daughter’s on the basketball team I coach. We’re in Alturas for a tournament. You remember, it’s way the hell up there, up by where we hunted. Even now, it’s just cowboys and fields, three thousand people maybe. Chuck, who’s one hellava guy, has a stack of pancakes, and we’re not talking about basketball at all. The governor, Pete Wilson, has decided to release Melvin Carter, the ‘College Terrace Rapist,’ to a facility called Devil’s Garden just outside of town. This guy’s raped one-hundred plus women. Bad, bad news. So Governor Wilson says we’re going to send Carter out into the wilderness where he won’t bother anyone, way the hell out in the boondocks. Problem is, there’s people up there, and they have Carter’s photo up all over town. Most of the photos have rifle sights printed over his face. There’s writing on the photo at the Laundromat, says, We’ll kill you and Die Rapist. So Chuck Norris and I are eating breakfast. His step-daughter’s a great player, but we’re talking about Melvin Carter, how we’re kind of proud of the town’s sense of justice, at how the cops are going to bring him in, how people are carrying  with the safety off on the street, and I see Chuck get a little fidgety. I can see it in the squint in his eyes. Hell, I’m nervous, but Chuck Norris? Then in walks his 300-lb bodyguard. A huge black guy named B-. B- says, ‘You see the photos?’ and we both nod. So I finish breakfast with Chuck Norris and B- and head back to the gym where we lose the last two basketball games, and get the hell out of there.”

My father may have his dates off a little bit, but if he was there, and he and Chuck Norris  spotted a green-and-white Sheriff cruiser ambling up main street there’s a chance Melvin Carter was folded up in the trunk headed up to Devil’s Garden.

* * *

When I was thirteen I held a gun near that same Devil’s Garden: a Thompson Center Hawkins black- powder rifle I couldn’t aim to save my life. Dad and I had trekked northward for a week hunting mule deer before the winter storms arrived. I remember the barren high-desert outside of Alturas before driving up the pine-filled plateau to the north of town, and seeing signs for the Devil’s Garden conservation camp. Dad said it was a minimal security place - that the prisoners fought fires as their penance - and although we drove another twenty minutes before we set up the old camper, I could feel the nearness of the invisible inmates. That week we scouted the area, and I missed a number of beautiful long-necked bucks. Dad took me to the Oregon border – only a few miles away - marked by run-down barbed wire, and we pissed over the state line. At the end of the long days Dad and I would climb into the small camper and listen to the radio until we fell asleep. I hadn’t heard of the rapist Melvin Carter then, and there was nothing on the radio warning of his future arrival. Instead, it was the World Series: Minnesota Twins versus the Atlanta Braves, deciding game seven.  We listened huddled in our sleeping bags as 36-year-old Jack Morris dominated the Braves with his splitter and fastball, winning the most valuable player after the Twins took the game in ten innings. Morris was the same age as my father, and I imagined Dad, a ball player in his youth and still seemingly capable of anything, on the mound in the Metro-dome flinging knee-high fire down from the heavens. The next morning my father unloaded a distant black-powder blast at a group of deer feeding far across a narrow brown valley. He was elated, and so I was, after one of the animals dropped, but as we made our way up to the kill we took in a doe kicking out the last of her life. A silver-dollar sized hole behind her shoulder pulsed with blood. The embarrassment and shame arrived quickly as my Dad searched for the right words as his body slumped. This being one of my first hunting experiences, I didn’t know what to say or what we’d do about a doe kill. Dad never missed, and he hadn’t here, but he crouched down into the hibernating grass and felt the deer’s head, not to provide comfort, but to search for nubs along the hairy skull. He already knew the answer. “I swore I saw horns.”  He cussed, already scanning the nearby brush. “We have to drag her, son.” And so we dragged the animal by the ears and throat, and left her in the brush for coyotes and birds. Later that week, after resupplying in Alturas, Dad and I drove back to camp at night, passing the correctional facility signs under a cloudless sky. Soon we happened upon the most gorgeous, ethereal animal I’ve ever seen. The mule deer appeared as tall as me, with horns – at least a five by five – that stretched high and wide into the night. Its haunches were thick, and its patience and path, fearless. My insides felt scooped. The animal jogged in the middle of the road right in front of our Dodge pickup heading our direction. Dad slowed the truck down with “my God.”  So we stayed like that for awhile, triangulated and speechless, lest we ruin the moment with words. And then, after what seemed hours, Dad said, “We could bump him. Cut his throat.”  With both hands on the wheel Dad didn’t look over at me, and I’ll never know if he was serious, but I did consider the stuffed buck’s regal head on my bedroom wall, how easily I’d be able to lie to my friends about how it all went down.

* * *

Melvin Carter preyed on women in California: Palo Alto, Berkley, Oakland, and San Francisco. He’d stalk women patiently. He’d break into their homes and recon, sometimes cutting the phone lines and electricity. Before the attack he’d slip on gloves and tape them down at his wrists. His weapon of choice was a knife, often slicing his victims until they submitted.   Some of the women testified that Melvin used a pillow to silence them during the attack. Sometimes he used towels.

* * *

In my high-school locker room, post P.E. class, guys would coil their towels to snap them at each other.  If you wanted to do real damage you’d wet the twisted tip. Once, a kid a grade older than me had his right testicle wet-towel snapped, ripping a half-inch gash. I wasn’t there, but I heard the ambulance siren crescendoing at our school. For a week we showered and dried and dressed without a snap. Instead, guys would punch each other in the shoulder as hard as possible. Back and forth they’d swing, the dull sound of knuckle-driven flesh filling the air. And then an unwritten rule was met and the proud boys – often friends – would clear out, straight-faced and satisfied.

* * *

My first rated R movie was The Delta Force starring Chuck Norris. I was ten and I begged my mom until she said yes. I remember an airplane hijacking, Arabs, and Chuck and an old guy carrying black bazookas. Supposedly, bazookas are incredibly inaccurate.

* * *

A couple weeks ago I sat in a room with the first commander of the real Delta Force, L.H. “Bucky” Burruss. He came to the Air Force Academy, where I teach, to talk to cadets about warfare and character. During his lunch visit Bucky was asked about rules of engagement (when can/should you kill?) for people in the Delta Force, soldiers who experience the most violent and difficult moral combat situations. It’s an impossible question to answer broadly. Bucky wrung his hands. This is a man that’s seen and experienced the far reaches of human hope and desperation. “It’s character,” he said. “You don’t pick it up from a damn manual. Hopefully, you get it from your parents.” At the end of lunch with the English Department he talked about the Special Operations Warrior Fund, which sends the children of fallen Special Operators to university paid in full. He gave personal examples of the amazing work the foundation accomplishes. One of the children that will have this opportunity is Logan Argel, son of Derek Argel, my friend and Academy classmate, who was killed in Iraq.

* * *

The Justice Department estimates that one in five women will experience rape or attempted rape during their college years, and that less than five percent of these rapes will be reported.

* * *

My daughter – Ella - is two and a half. She’s potty training. Right now she’s testing out the word No. Sometimes her No is declarative and defiant; sometimes it’s whispered under her breath. She watches my reaction with each utterance: she wants to know what she can get away with because it has dawned on her that words are power.

* * *

Supposedly, Melvin Carter currently lives in a trailer park near Geneseo State University in New York. Due to legal loopholes he is not registered as a sex offender in the state. Unsubstantiated reports state that he’s been removed from the local campus by police at least twice.

* * *

Chuck Norris served as air policeman in the Air Force in the late fifties and early sixties. He was stationed in South Korea and California. His first few sanctioned fights took place in intra-service bouts. After wetting his feet, he went on to win the Middle Weight Karate Championship. He retired six years later, undefeated.

* * *

My last fight was in sixth grade. I was the bigger child, and I sprawled out on a short kid named Jacob Issacson and locked his head in the crook of my arm and seized down. The world spun wildly in my eleven-year-old mind. The skirmish was quickly broken up by the recess lady, but friends who witnessed the relatively benign encounter told me I screamed out Fuck, over and over and over. “That’s the Devil’s word,” one of them said.

* * *

If my infant son grew up never hearing about the Devil would he ever be ashamed of his body?

* * *

Chuck Norris on the Total Gym:

“Total Gym provides an entire gym full of equipment in ONE machine and best of all, it takes just 10-20 minutes a day to reshape your body into the body you've always wanted. Imagine what it would feel like to be a slimmer, stronger, healthier version of you. Go ahead and get started today. I know it will work for you... you have nothing to lose but pounds and inches!"

* * *

Speaking of loss: 

            From what my parents have told me, I was two. My folks were in Lake Tahoe for a fun weekend. They had brought my infant brother Jacob along. He was still breastfeeding and my mother didn’t want to leave him with my grandparents. The day before my parents were to leave the lake Jacob wouldn’t feed, so they went to a pharmacy and tried everything the pharmacist suggested. By evening, Jacob’s tiny body had turned a shade purple. They called their doctor in Chico and he told them to get Jacob to a hospital right away. They arrived in Sacramento at midnight. There were two days of doctors, updates, set-backs, and improvements. Each medical person seemed carefully centered in the self preservation of their station. They imparted news with stoicism and a sliver of tenderness. Maybe it was the only way. The pediatric wing was full of parents in varying degrees of shock. My parents accompanied them. Their hands shook and the everywhere white of the hospital grated on them. It was a dream world filled with machine beeps and whispers and an indescribable longing hovering in the halls. My mother and father prayed the same prayer over and over. One nurse stood outside of all the others. My father noticed her soapy smell and the fact that every time she spoke with him she came close and touched his arm and shoulder. She brought them fresh pillows and warm blankets. She gave them the code to make long distance calls for free.

            One morning, when my parents returned from breakfast downstairs, they found the same nurse and three other people huddled around Jacob’s bassinet. The medical staff was shoulder to shoulder, and their arms moved in tight, measured jerks. They didn’t order my parents outside but my mother and father turned right around. He pulled my mother tight and felt the bones of her back curve toward him.

            The nurse came out and hugged my mother and then my father.   

            “Go in when you’re ready,” she said.

            My father told me Jacob appeared empty and small, arms open to his sides. They’d put a little blue hat over his head. My mother went to Jacob and lifted him to her shoulder. In the middle of the lift she groaned. It was a guttural sound that rose in pitch before faltering. My father closed the door behind him and sat in a black chair.

            My mother crossed the floor time and time again. Every now and then, she’d hold her infant son out and look at him for a second before closing up on him again.

            
            “He’s warm,” she said with her back to my father. “Why can’t I cry?  Why can’t I cry? My God, he’s burning up. Feel.” 

            
            “Feel,” she said.

            
            “Darcy. Please.”

            
            “I want you to go.”

            
            “Darcy.”

            
            “Go now,” she said. She didn’t raise her voice, but it trembled on the last syllable. My father closed the door behind him and waited outside. There was no window on the door, so he rested his forehead of the dark wood and imagined my mother and Jacob together. She would be speaking to him as if he slept. She would rock him, or maybe she’d do neither.

 
            When my father went back in she handed Jacob over without warning. His blue hat was off. He was warm and light and my father didn’t know what to do so he held him out away from his body in what must have looked like an offering.

            Later, the nurse came in and shut the door.

            
            “You do what you want,” she said, “but it’s four hundred dollars to transport Jacob to the mortuary.”

            
            “Can we take him?” my father asked. “Is that an option?”

            
            “It’s not advertised, but you can do what you want.”

            
            After some paperwork the nurse handed Jacob to them completely wrapped in a white towel. She taped the seams so it wouldn’t open in the car, and showed them to the back freight elevator. My father laid him in the backseat, but my mother told my father to put Jacob in the child seat, so he did, trying to locate Jacob’s back to position him correctly. For some unknown reason, when my father started up the car the radio came on loud, and my parents both shot their arms out to turn the volume down.

 

***

In between the volleys of our black-powder guns Devil’s Garden was silent. Ancient lava flows glaciered the soundproof landscape. Dad and I didn’t speak outside the camper, not wanting to spook the deer, but when we did, it was the only time I was allowed to say Fuck and Shit and Asshole and Bitch. The awesome power of the words filled me with hope and conquest.