Jack Archer

Three years after Miriam and I wed, she gave birth to our son, Jackson Vidal Archer. Jack became our greatest collaboration. Miriam studied child rearing as voraciously as she did ancient peoples. She synthesized best practices from around the world and exposed Jack to worldly studies long before he could spell. And it was important to me that even the smallest project Jack and I did together had some fact-based origin. I made sure that every sand castle or building block structure we built was backed up by sound architectural principles and relative to the era they were built. Arches were rooted in Roman masonry techniques and the toothpick ladders that leaned against the Pueblo walls of his fourth grade diorama were to scale. After one particular Hebrew School class, Jack came home intrigued with Solomon's Temple. We spent the rest of that afternoon and evening rebuilding it with Legos based on known architectural descriptions and my Masonic training. That plastic temple remained on Jack's dresser for years under constant reconstruction and reinforcement until spirited away to the attic before he left for college. Nebuchadnezzar himself would be hard-pressed to destroy the thing.

Despite our overzealous parenting toward the perfect American child, Jack reminded us time and again that it was his power of imagination and abstract thought, not our fact-based academic approaches, which ruled his internal kingdom. He began to purposefully mix Pueblo adobes with Roman arches and kivas became diving pools for every historical action figure from the Civil War to Desert Storm. And we could tell by his sideways glances as the Union soldier walked through the Roman arch and dived into the kiva pool that he knew this archaeological and anthropological mish mash would irk us a bit. But knowing that he knew the difference was enough for us.

Once he did learn to spell and write our presents for any occasion became pieces written and read by him. These oratories mixed academic lexicons and inside jokes that confounded onlookers but kept Miriam and I doubled-over and unable to breath. Partly from Jack's sharp wit, but mostly from pride because, where he found the humor meant he understood the facts.

One afternoon when Jack was about 9 years-old, he came across my Army Trunk in the garage. Fortunately, I had the forethought to pad lock the box years earlier because inside—beneath the photos, framed diplomas and some cylinders Miriam saved from some museum in Iraq before Desert Storm —was a pristine and assembled M110 Semiautomatic Sniper System rifle. Like that period of my life, I had completely forgotten about the trunk and all its triggered memories. Of course, when a 9 year-old American boy sees an M110 SASS and there's no bright orange tip on its barrel, the intrigue doesn't let up until it is either fired or forbidden. We spent the next several weekends in the open space picking off cans and old G.I. Joes.

Almost immediately, I noticed a change in the way he would set up his plastic soldiers for war play in the living room. Instead of bringing out the heavy artillery and columns of marching troops to clash en masse, he would set up intricate scenes of randomly placed crowds around a single general and one sniper—a click away, atop a couch cushion, lying very, very still. Despite this boy's fascination with military scenarios, he now much preferred taking one single, evildoing officer out from afar then slaughtering whole squads of enlisted men. As did I. For all our attempts to mold a philosopher-king, what was evolving before us was a warrior-poet.
He continued to develop his marksmanship but as the years passed, his attention turned from blocks and action figures to mobile Apps and chess boards. Both of which he adroitly navigated. I recall the first time he beat me at chess for real. It was going to be another game where I would deliberately make bad moves to allow his pieces to shift into checking postures. I would then watch as he scanned the board and come in for the kills. But not that day. He had been playing a lot of online chess and said he wanted to try some different moves with me. We set the board and, in loving condescension, I gave him the whites thus the first move.

He moved his King's pawn one space. I moved my Knight out to begin to show him a different strategy. He then moved his King's Bishop three spaces diagonally through the hole left by the Pawn. A little aggressive and vulnerable I thought but decided to remain silent. I moved my Pawn to allow my Bishop to come out on my next move. He paused for a moment as if regretting his last move but then moved his Queen out diagonally two spaces. My Bishop moved into the field next to my Knight like a Templar on the outskirts of Jerusalem. But, just as the opening credits of my epic Crusader movie rolled in my head, his Queen swooped to my line, slew the Pawn before my Bishop and, in the softest, sweetest and most ego crushing voice I had ever heard, announced "Checkmate".

I scanned the geometry of the possible moves I could make to reverse this misfortune to no avail. He had beaten me with the most elementary four-move checkmate designed to weed any field of novice players. I went from professorial father figure to schoolyard weakling in two syllables. From that game forward there were no more merciful bad moves on my part.

I suppose now that, if Miriam had to die at all, it was better that Jack had reached this level of play and had chess to focus his mind on. Because I was no help to him at all. In chess or in understanding our loss. Part of me knew that he quietly resented my singular focus on work. Each time our au pair, Lucy rang the doorbell, Jack's expression would turn from his normal refrain of discerning wonder to one of surrender. That bell meant that Dad was off to the airport for days or weeks. But, like his mother, there was never a complaint. Just a solemn acceptance of whatever was happening. Besides, I would tell myself, he loved Lucy Rose. She was a distant cousin of the Vidals from Tordera and she looked and carried herself a little like Miriam. I told myself that she was a positive stand-in for Miriam and that it was healthy for him to spend time with Lucy while I tried to get our practical needs met out in the field. I was so disassociated though, during that time, that it was Jack who called me regularly when I was gone. Once in the morning to say hello and again each night before bed regardless of what time zone I was in. And I, at least, had the presence of mind and Miriam's voice in my head to answer every single call.

As the years passed, Jack studied military history, joined the ROTC and trained his mind and body. He spent his eighteenth birthday at the Army Recruiters going over options. His grades, extracurriculars and his marksmanship skills placed him on a track toward the 101st Airborne and the 5th Special Forces at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Jack pleaded with me to get the Governor and my own military vets to write letters on his behalf. I did so but only because I knew the look in his eye. It was the same look he got when he first saw the M110. Fire or forbid? I fired.

I received a communiqué from him three weeks ago by way of the Sentinel Post in Vail. All he could tell me was that they were being "...deployed to the northern region of the Appalachian theater..." His texted words were tight and formal but the detail he gave of his preparations conveyed his excitement. This was the hottest fighting east of the Mississippi Sea and I've been on edge ever since. For the past three weeks the dread I've felt came from the questions I couldn't stop asking myself. What if he never found that damn trunk? What if I forbade the firing of the M110 instead of making it a father and son activity? What could I do now to make him safe?