The Jamba Juice was across from a recruiting center, so servicemen and -women came in all the time and Spencer, who by then was, above everything else, just bored, started quizzing them. Before he learned to tell by their uniforms, he asked what service they were in, and if they could do it all over again, which would they choose? He mined vicarious joy from it: he could see himself doing the tours they did, on the adventures they had. He pictured himself on the deck of an aircraft carrier, in a desert in Afghanistan.
He started to think that the cure for his boredom might just be to join up. But not just join up; he wanted to do it in a big way. He wanted to be the best of the best, make his family proud, maybe be a Navy Seal, a Green Beret. He talked to his friend Dean from Del Campo, who was training to be in the US Air Force Pararescue, and Spencer began reading about it. It harmonized with his own thoughts about how to approach life—an emerging sense that he wanted a change, wanted to go, to leave here for a while and have an adventure, to be where the bullets were flying, to be a little crazy, and take a few too many risks, but to have a good reason. And it fit with the notion that the way you could justify doing that was by helping people. So what better service than one that sent you into battle, dropped you from a helicopter while people were still shooting, to get soldiers stable, get them out, save their lives? Whose very motto was That Others May Live?
The more he thought about it, the more he resolved that pararescueman was the perfect job for him. Maybe the only job for him. More than a job, it was a calling. They were elite, the Navy Seals of the air force, but somehow almost more badass since their purpose was saving people.
He wanted it badly. He had to have it. He imagined himself flying above the battlefield in Fallujah, in Kunduz, deploying a parachute at a thousand feet or leaping off a helicopter with a harness and rappelling down to a wounded soldier, talking a man through his most frightening moments. Putting hands on him and drawing him back to life. It raised his pulse. Nothing else would do. Plus he’d end up with a paramedic license, and after his contract was up he could get a job at the local fire and rescue department. It all made perfect sense.
But he was overweight. And he hadn’t ever really worked very hard at anything. Ever. Now that he thought about it, not once in his life had he ever really applied himself. Everett was the achiever, Everett who passed the California Highway Patrol test. Kelly, his talented and hilarious sister, had gone down to LA to at least give the entertainment industry a try, and what had Spencer ever done? What risks had he taken? He’d never been very motivated to study, perhaps a bad taste from the private Christian school that never went away. He’d given up football to focus on basketball, given up basketball when he couldn’t get playing time.
The only thing he could really remember was once, when he was working as a bag boy for the local grocery store, a man tried to run out with $300 worth of stolen liquor. Spencer helped run him down, chased him out into the parking lot where an off-shift cashier laid him out. That was it. When else had he ever gone above and beyond the call of duty? He couldn’t remember. He’d barely summoned the interest to try higher education. He’d signed up for a few classes up at American River College but couldn’t stay focused, couldn’t see the point.
Here he was then: he didn’t have college, he didn’t have a plan, he spent his days pressing, blending, cleaning, then going to the market to sweep and tidy up there, then hanging out and going to bed. The least glamorous life he could imagine was his own. Maybe the worst part of it was, he kind of liked it. He had no pressure on him and his mother had stopped pushing; she’d resigned herself to letting Spencer live his life out at his own pace. He loved his other friends. He and Meghan had a warm, if never articulated, protective instinct for each other, and Dean was a stabilizing force, loyal to Spencer and always available for a little advice. Should he really be asking for more than that? Maybe he had what was important: a steady job, the occasional bender, some good friends. In Meghan blending smoothies next to him, in Dean, in Anthony starting at Sacramento State across town, Alek just across the state line. Life was pretty good.
But without glory.
What if he grew old, never having pushed himself to accomplish anything?
He felt he could do more; he wanted more. Being a pararescueman felt like exactly that: something more.
His first big personal project was going to be trying to join one of the most elite units in the entire military.
“Hey, man, big news,” he wrote to Alek. “I’m signing up for air force pararescue.” He figured Alek would be thrilled for him. A minute went by, five minutes; finally, later in the day Alek replied, “That’s great, good luck.”
A little lukewarm for such a momentous decision, but that was Alek. Never one for words.
If Spencer was going to have it, he needed to be in peak physical form, and sporadic jujitsu classes during trial gym memberships just weren’t going to cut it. But he couldn’t afford to do them more regularly.
No problem; he’d set off on his own journey.
He started working out twice a day. He ran six miles, swam two thousand meters, then hit the weights, then did it all again the next day. He gave up his favorite foods, ate cleaner than he ever had. He had liquid dinners for a year. Jamba Juice was the perfect job, even if it was only $8 an hour and the work was monotonous, because when the boss wasn’t around he could make his vegetable juice concoctions—and juice was freaking expensive.
He did his first pull-up. He’d never been able to complete one before; too much weight to carry, but now he had less. Now he was stronger.
Six months passed, then eight; he dropped fifty pounds. He convinced the manager at a swim club to let him come in early before the guests arrived, pull the pool covers back, and practice holding his breath under water. He’d need to do two whole laps to qualify, and a whole lot more if he wanted to actually make it through the program. All he talked about at Jamba Juice was the pararescuemen, which he learned to start calling para jumpers, then just PJs, like it was a club he was already part of. All he thought about, all he talked about, was what he had left to do before joining the PJs, what he’d do when he was there. Meghan smiled and shook her head.
Ten months passed; he topped out at thirteen pull-ups and still didn’t feel ready. He’d built his weight back up as almost twenty-five pounds of muscle, but wouldn’t enlist until he could do fifteen pull-ups and seventy pushups in two minutes.
A year passed and still he didn’t join; he wouldn’t risk it all being for nothing, he wouldn’t screw it up, he couldn’t screw it up, it had become his identity and even though he felt like Superman he could be better. So he would wait, and wait, and only sign up for the test when he knew he was ready.
Finally he heard from Dean, who’d been kicked out of pararescue training for a pulled groin, and had some advice. “Look, Spencer, you gotta pull the trigger. If you don’t do it now you’ll never do it. You’ll get hurt, or something will come along in life and distract you from it. Sign up now.”
So he did. He signed up. He’d built up too much muscle though, was thirteen pounds overweight. Within three weeks he’d lost it; within a month he was in a car with the recruiter, driving out to a Cal Fit so he could take the special operations physical test, jittery with nerves. But then something amazing happened: he passed every single fitness test. He performed better than everyone else on every test but one, and he ran his best recorded time, a mile and a half in under nine minutes. It was all almost too good to be true. He’d tried as hard as he could to prepare, and he was prepared. He was flying high. A few months later he spent the night at the sprawling DoubleTree hotel near the Arden Fair mall, and went out in the morning to MEPS, the Military Entrance Processing Station, for the final step. He was about to achieve the only thing he’d wanted for a year, the thing he’d worked the hardest for in his life, something for which