The Box - 10. Chapter 10

July 6, 1999

I was lounging on the deck, enjoying the morning air and my morning tea, waiting impatiently for JP and Brad to get their asses out of bed. I was transfixed on the diary, on this link with my father, even though my obsession made me feel a little guilty. There were a lot of skeletons buried there, and I knew they were causing JP a lot of pain and discomfort. He wouldn’t talk about it, but I knew him so well. I could tell. I thought about stopping, about reading it privately, but knew that wouldn’t work. We had started the journey together and we would finish it together. Still, I couldn’t help but feel that we were like moths being attracted to one of those bug zappers, the ones that lured you in and then killed you.

I saw Bradley walking out onto the deck, fully awake, looking like he’d been up for a while. “Good morning,” I said cheerfully.

“We have a problem,” he said seriously.

“We do?” I was enjoying life, relaxing on the beach. I saw no problems.

“We lost that Microstation deal,” he said.

“That was the new company that makes routers, was it not?” I asked. He nodded. “It is not a big problem. We were concerned about the numbers on that deal anyway,” I said philosophically.

“We lost it to Amphion,” he said. Amphion was a venture capital company that had seemingly come out of the woodwork about six months ago. And they seemed to have a particular interest in trying to beat us out of deals. We’d run into competition from them constantly.

“We seem to encounter them quite frequently, almost as if they are trying to interfere with our business,” I told him. “It seems almost intentional, as if they are trying to cause us problems.”

“You think they’re gunning for us?” Brad asked.

“Who are they? Do we know who is running the show, who is behind the organization?” I asked.

“The front man for the organization is a guy I knew in high school,” Brad said. “Cary Chase. We had a run in or two, when he was giving Billy a bunch of shit, but I thought we were friends. He and Robbie got along pretty well too.”

“Do you think this is personal?” I asked him. If that was the case, then we needed to adopt a different strategy. Up until now, I’d assumed it was just normal competition.

“I don’t know,” Brad said. “I’m really sorry Stef. If this is my fault, and I’m costing us money...” I stopped him.

“We do not know whether or not you are the reason they have painted a target on us. We also do not know whether it is costing us money. I am not convinced that deal was a good one. We are supposed to be lightening up on our tech sector anyway.” I was irritated about that. I kept emphasizing the need to reduce our exposure to technology stocks, but both Brad and Luke kept pushing them. I’d significantly cut back in my own portfolio, and planned to be down to 25% technology by the end of the year, but in my venture capital firm, our exposure was still at over 70%.

“You’re right,” Brad said. He looked guilty. “It just seems like minting money, investing in these dot.com companies.”

“And that should make you nervous,” I told him. “When it gets easy, then it is about to get very hard. The tech market is inflated, possibly over-inflated. It will come crashing down. You should make sure your own portfolio is diversified away from it.” He nodded, but I don’t think he was convinced. He was like a son to me, and that meant I loved him unconditionally. It also meant that I couldn’t tell him what to do, I could only offer guidance.

“I’ll have to see what I can unload,” he said.

“In the meantime, see if you can find out who is behind Amphion. I have not heard of this Cary Chase, so I find it hard to believe he is the driving force behind these new moves on their part. But I think it is urgent enough to hire a private investigator to find out who we are dealing with.”

“Let me go make a call. Then maybe we can read the diary?” He seemed so cowed by this. I was worried about him, worried that he would decide there was a vendetta directed against him and take it personally. He walked off, looking deflated.

I did not worry about the politics of this industry we were in. I relied on the pure business aspects. If a deal seemed good, we’d jump in. If it did not, we would stay out. Letting emotion interfere was a good way to lose money. I was worried that he’d let that happen to him. And I was worried that if he did, and if Luke went down that road too, it would end up costing all of us a great deal of money.

“Good morning,” JP said. “Did I hear Bradley out here?”

“He had a phone call to make,” I said. “We seem to have a firm that is trying to derail all of our deals. We are trying to find out who is making mischief.” I kept my tone playful. There was no reason to add to his stress levels.

Before he could answer, Brad came back in. “We should know who it is soon. In the meantime, let’s see what Steve and Aaron are up to.”

December 7, 1941

I will never forget this day for as long as I live. I have all these emotions pouring through me, and some of them are embarrassing, so that’s why I came up here to write in this diary. The day was actually going along pretty well until about 6:00pm. I was goofing around, just talking to my grandfather, when Aaron came bursting in, really excited and really upset.

“The Japs bombed us!” he said, almost in a panic.

“What?” My grandfather had asked. He looked really upset, and really nervous.

My mother came running in, having heard Aaron’s loud voice. “Is everything alright?”

“The Japs bombed us. Sank our whole fleet at Pearl Harbor,” he said. There was fire in his eyes. He was pissed off, really mad that someone would do that to us. It was outrage based on patriotism. I felt the outrage transfer from him to me. They bombed us? We’d fucking blow them to the moon.

“The whole fleet?” she gasped, and her hand involuntarily went to her throat. We all got up purposely and walked into the living room and turned on the radio. My father came in, and we all sat there quietly and listened.

The radio, or the voice on the radio, told us the details that they had, although it wasn’t much. The most outrageous thing, though, the thing that had the guy on the radio steamed, and really set us all off, was that it was a sneak attack. Our guys had been going about their business on a normal Sunday morning and the whole Jap air force came out of the skies and blasted the crap out of our ships and airfields. It seemed so sneaky, to attack someone without a declaration of war. I didn’t even realize they were that mad at us.

The casualties were probably in the thousands, no one seemed to know how many. Many ships were burning; the whole harbor was said to be on fire. Lots of ships were sunk; maybe even our whole battle fleet in the Pacific was destroyed. The USS Oklahoma was reportedly torpedoed.All those guys, burned or just killed. I sat there and felt the rage boiling in me, felt it possess me. I wanted to hit something. I wanted to kill Japs.

“So now we’re in it too,” my mom said somberly.

“We are at war with the Japanese, but not the Germans and Italians,” my grandfather pointed out.

“How’s that work?” Aaron asked. “They’re allies, aren’t they?”

“The Japanese attacked us, so we’ll be at war with them. Nothing says we have to fight the Germans,” he said calmly. “But I think in the end we will have to.”

“I’m going to go fight,” Aaron announced.

“You can’t go yet,” my mother said firmly, and that made me smile. If he could beat my mother, he was ready for the Japanese. “You’re not 18 and you’re still in high school.”

“My country needs me now,” he said, sounding kind of stupid.

“There are plenty of boys to join up and train right now. They’ll need you in a couple of years, when it’s your time,” she said forcefully. And that made sense. Still, I could see where he was coming from.

“They’re going to need everyone,” Aaron persisted.

“Yes they are, but they can’t train everybody at once, and there are plenty of things we can do to help here at home,” she said. “I doubt this war will be over before you turn 18. You’ll have your chance.” There was a look of sadness in her eyes when she said that.

“They’re saying we’ll beat the Japs in a year,” Aaron said.

“Who’s saying that?” my grandfather asked. “The same idiots who said that about the Great War? Told the French and British soldiers they’d be home by Christmas, and it was four years long.”

“Yeah, but the Brits have already been fighting for a while. Maybe it will be like last time. Maybe we’ll jump in and it will only take a year,” Aaron said.

“Think about it for a minute,” my grandfather snapped, which was rare for him. That showed me how angry he was about this, even though he seemed all calm on the outside. “In 1917, the Germans were tired; they were already showing strains of the war. Do you see that with the Germans today? They’re about to take Moscow and knock Russia out of the war. And the Japanese. They’ve just destroyed our whole Pacific fleet. Our whole west coast could be invaded.”

“You think they’ll invade?” I’d asked him, stunned. I guess I never thought I’d see foreign troops marching down our streets.

“They’re not going to invade,” my father said dismissively. “They’ve got to take Hawaii and some other islands first. By that time, we’ll be ready for them.” The Japs might take Hawaii? That was pretty scary all by itself.

We stopped arguing and I led Aaron up to my room. My parents hadn’t calmed Aaron down at all; he was more keyed up than I think I’d ever seen. He pushed past me, leading the way. I followed him into my room and closed and locked my door. I figured that he’d want to talk all about this shit. But when I turned around and saw him, all I saw was an animal. His nostrils were flaring, his breathing was rapid. He moved up to me and grabbed me; kissing me almost violently, then he tore my pants off, tossed me onto my bed, and then jumped on top of me. I grabbed the Vaseline and slapped some on my ass just in time. I felt his big cock probing my hole, then pushing in, and then once he got it lined up, he just shoved inside me. And then he went crazy. He fucked me like he’s never fucked me before. All of his anger, all of his rage, was directed through his cock right into my ass.

I sensed his mood, sensed that he wanted to dominate me, to work off his aggressions, so I just lay there and let him do his thing. Or at least I tried to, but he was so in charge, that as he slammed into me over and over again, I couldn’t stop my body from responding. He was so dominant; it was really getting me going. I blew my load before he did, but not by much. After he came, he got all weird.

“I’m sorry Steve. I shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

“I’m not complaining,” I said with a smile, trying to lighten the mood, but it didn’t work. I got serious. “It’s cool. You needed a release. I’m glad I got to give it to you.”

“Shit, we’ll be in the army soon. We shouldn’t be doing this,” he said. I started to freak out, but got a grip. My mind started working in high gear.

“You know, you’re the only reason that I have my dick under control,” I said. “If I have to go off and fight, well, that’s fine. But I want to be happy in the mean time.”

He’d looked at me, given me a small grin, then gotten his pants on and left. God I hope he’s not about to go on some emotional snapped out thing again. It’s bad enough that the fucking Japs had to attack us, but now I don’t get laid anymore because of them? I’ll kill those bastards myself, all of them.

So here I am, writing in this diary, and I’m wondering why I don’t feel his desire to run off and fight. I don’t want to fight in a fucking war. I mean, I know I have to, I know it’s my duty, so I’ll do it, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to kill someone else, and I sure as hell don’t want to die. If I told Aaron that, or any of my friends, they’d call me a coward. Well I’m not a coward. I’ll do what I have to do. I just don’t like it. Figures that just when I get my life to a really good place, dipshits like Tojo, Hitler, and that Italian guy have to go and fuck it all up.

December 11, 1941

So there it is. The whole fucking world is at war, and our side is getting our ass kicked. It’s kind of weird how everyone started out in school on Monday all fired up, ready to go kick some Jap asses. It was this rage, just like Aaron experienced on Sunday. I was pissed off, but I didn’t get as, I don’t know, zealous as the other guys. Does that mean I’m less of an American? That I don’t love my country? I do. I really do. But if that’s true, why don’t I have that same rage that they do?

I tried to convince myself that I’m just a calmer, more introspective person, but then I think about how I fight with my mom, and that theory kind of falls apart. I know I’m going to have to go fight, and I don’t want to. Maybe I am a coward. What makes you a coward? I’m not afraid to do it, to fight. Is that what it is? If that’s true, then I’m not a coward. I just don’t want to go. I guess I’m just pampered and selfish, here in my nice world with my fancy-ass Packard, getting laid all the time.

So what do I do? I fake it. I watch the other guys, watch how they react, and do what they do. I feel like a fraud, but then again, I’ve been doing the same thing for a long time now. I love Aaron but I play it off like I don’t, like we’re just best friends. That’s a big lie. Why wouldn’t I tell another one? Just tack this one on, this false outrage.

It seems like the news just gets worse and worse. The attack on Pearl Harbor was as bad as we thought. All of our battleships are apparently out of action. Who knows for how long. The Air Corps planes there were mostly destroyed. The only silver lining is that our aircraft carriers survived, but weren’t battleships the ships that mattered? I guess if they were, then the Jap air force wouldn’t have been able to sink them while they were sitting in port.

Then the Japs declared war on the Brits, and started kicking their asses too. They invaded Hong Kong and a bunch of other places in the Far East. They’re even bombing Singapore, the Gibraltar of the East. Seems the Brits sent two battleships out to protect their bases, the Repulse and the Prince of Wales. Some protection they turned out to be. Today, the Jap air force sank them at sea. That was the big argument, that if our fleet had been at sea, they’d have been able to avoid getting sunk. Well, here’s a pair of English battleships sailing around in the middle of the ocean and the Japs sank them. I mean, I’m sure our ships are better, but still, it can’t make that big of a difference. Why don’t the admirals get this? Why didn’t Churchill fire them all?

I was kind of wondering if they’d actually invade Hawaii. It sounded like a really swell place, with palm trees and luaus and hula girls. Getting bombed like that, it was like bombing paradise. But they didn’t, or at least they haven’t yet. Instead, the Japs invaded the Philippines. Those bastards are busy. At the same time they’re blowing up our fleet, sinking British battleships, and invading Hong Kong, they still find enough men to invade the Philippines too. It’s pretty depressing. I’m sitting here whining about having to go off and fight. The question I should be asking myself is whether or not we can even win.

And then there’s the big news, the most depressing news of all. The Germans declared war on us. I guess we all knew it was coming, but shit. So we’ve got those Jap bastards raging through the Pacific with only a few of our aircraft carriers to stop them, while the fucking Germans are making Europe their own. The Russians aren’t fighting worth a shit. They’re about to lose Moscow. How long until they get knocked out of the war? Then it’s just us and the British. Are we strong enough to win? I mean, the Brits have a whole Empire, but right now it just seems like that gives the Germans and the Japs more to conquer. The Italians declared war on us too, but no one really gives a shit about them. They couldn’t even conquer Ethiopia. Oh, and Hungary and Romania declared war on us too. They’re even worse than the Italians, unless they can get Dracula to come over here and turn us into vampires. I guess with the Japs, I thought we had a chance, but Germany is way more powerful, or at least it seems that way.

It’s been pretty somber. I haven’t done anything with Barbie lately, and Aaron is pretty closed up now. He goes home after school, and we haven’t hung out since Sunday. I’m not spazzed about that, because I don’t think it has anything to do with me, but it still sucks to see the whole world ripped apart, especially my own. And then when it upsets me, like now, I end up feeling like a selfish bastard.

January 14, 1942

It’s really creepy, how much my life has changed in just over a month. I’m working on my once a month pledge to write in here, and so far, I’m doing it. Of course, it’s only been a month, but then at this point, any small victory is good. Because that’s the only place we’re having victories.

Christmas and New Year’s were pretty somber. It’s like no one wanted to do anything too festive because we’re at war now. Or at least that’s what they say. I didn’t notice my parents going to any fewer parties than last year. This year they all had some sort of war-related theme, usually urging people to buy war bonds. My father says they’re lousy investments, but my grandfather says it’s important to support the country. I think this time my father is right.

Both Aaron and Barbie have been ticking me off. Aaron is so obsessed with going off to fight, he’s driving me crazy. It’s all he talks about. We still fuck around all the time, and it’s nice, but I don’t get why he’s so anxious to leave me in the dust and go blow up Japs or Germans. I guess he just wants to do his duty as an American. It’s his single, most important focus in life.

Barbie, on the other hand, has gotten a lot more withdrawn. She doesn’t want to go out much, maybe once a weekend if that. We go out, and we have a nice time, usually hoofing it up, but she’s only let me fuck her once since Pearl Harbor. She doesn’t spend much time with me at school either. It’s like she suddenly decided that she doesn’t like me. It hurts to be treated that way, but I still have Aaron around, and I really love him. If he were normal, and not so fucking crazed about killing Germans and Japs, I’d be fine with the cold shoulder from Barbie.

All the news from overseas is bad. The Japs took over Manila, and it seems like it’s only a matter of time before we lose the Philippines. I guess that’s a big deal, even though I’d never heard of them before the war started. You’d think there would be some good news, but there isn’t. The Japs declared war on the Dutch a few days ago, which kind of surprised me. Haven’t the Germans already smashed them under their boot? Seems the Dutch colonies weren’t conquered, so the Japs decided to fix that problem by invading the Dutch East Indies, capturing some place called Kuala Lumpur. My grandfather went out and got a big map of the world and put it up in the study so we could follow all these moves, and that made it more interesting, but still depressing. He told me that the Dutch East Indies were really important because they supplied a lot of raw materials, like rubber and oil, and that’s why the Japs wanted them.

Then yesterday I was really freaked out. The Germans torpedoed a ship off the East Coast. I guess I thought our coasts were safe. The Japs would have to take Hawaii first before they attacked California, and after Pearl Harbor, I figured we were smart enough to make that really tough to do. The Germans were busy with the Russians, or at least too busy to launch an invasion across the Atlantic. Besides, even if they did, we still had enough ships, and so did the Brits, to stop them. But I didn’t even think about those fucking U-Boats. So they sank a ship right off of our coast. What was next? Were they just going to go sailing into New York harbor and start blowing shit up?

School was really strange, and not just because of Barbie and Aaron. We’re juniors now, and next year, we’ll be seniors, the top of our class, the kings of the school. Only that’s all changed now. I’ll bet half of our seniors are gone. They went off and enlisted right after Pearl Harbor. So now, it’s kind of like an upper-classman ghost town. Only the girls are still there, but they’re doing this thing where they’re all devoted to their guys that went off. It’s not like I want to fuck them or anything, it’s that they’re trying to act all noble about it. I guess I’m just an asshole, a big dick about this stuff, but I don’t say anything about it anywhere but here. At school, I listen to their sacrifice in writing to their guy each day while he’s at some camp, learning how to be a soldier. I pretend to be impressed. Then I sneak off by myself and just roll my eyes.

When baseball starts up, I’ll probably get to play a lot more, since half of our pitchers are gone. I feel bad about that, because I’m not real good, but the coach told us that the other teams are dealing with the same thing. I’m not sure that makes me feel any better, to know that we have a chance because they’ll be just as bad.

March 5, 1942

Will things ever get better? Will we ever win a fucking battle? This is unbelievable. The Germans are sinking ships like crazy on the East Coast. My grandfather told me it was over 200,000 tons, which sounds like a lot. Then he told me there were over 30 ships sunk, and that made it seem more real. All those ships sunk right off our own coast. Maybe we need to fire all of our admirals too. What is wrong with our side?

There was a big naval battle in the Java Sea, in the Dutch East Indies. Dutch, British and American cruisers, five of them, all ended up sunk, along with a bunch of destroyers. No major losses to the Japs, apparently. More depressing news.

That was all bad enough, but the whole country just snapped when a Jap ship, they think it was a sub, appeared off the coast of California and shelled a refinery in Santa Barbara. They’re saying there was no major damage, but then, just a few days ago, some big floating object was seen over Los Angeles. It had to be some Jap plane or balloon. What else could it be? First they shell the coast, and then they float balloons overhead? Everyone’s saying an invasion is coming any day now. I never thought that would happen, but it seems like it might be true. Shit, every time the Japs or Germans run into our ships, we practically just sink ourselves.

Aaron is going crazy, convinced that if he could just join the navy and get involved, he could save the world. Sometimes he’s an arrogant ass. We got into a big argument yesterday because he wanted to go join up right now. I know he wants to, he says it every fucking day. It’s driving me nuts. Part of me wishes he’d just go, so I didn’t have to listen to him, but I know that’s not true. It’s just so weird now, with so many guys already gone, and the ones who are still here just waiting for their time to come. At least the war hasn’t changed our sex lives. We still fuck like rabbits. Damn is it fun.

I’m talking about all the small shit, well, not small shit. The war is a big deal. But I’m talking about all the stuff that doesn’t really affect my life, instead of the one thing that happened that really did. Barbie broke up with me today. I guess I should be really sad about that, and I should be crying on this diary, leaving tear drops all over it, but I can’t. I really liked her. I mean, I really liked her. But these past few months, she’s been really distant, and really cold. But I keep trying to be a good boyfriend, and trying to do fun things with her. She keeps shooting me down, and I keep trying, which is what happened today when I walked up to her in school and asked her out.

“I can’t go to the dance with you this weekend,” she’d said.

“Why not?” I’d asked her. I’d probably been too belligerent, but we were going steady, and it was a school dance. We should go together. That’s how it works.

“I just don’t feel like it,” she’d responded.

“You never want to do anything with me anymore,” I’d said, more of an accusation. I wasn’t being nice, and underneath the words was the issue of the hour, that we hadn’t fucked in forever.

“Just because I don’t want to go with you to the dance this weekend is no reason for you to yell at me,” she’d said.

“I wasn’t yelling at you,” I’d said, almost yelling. “But that’s fine, you stay home. I’m going. I’ll just have to find someone else to go with me.”

Her eyes had really bugged out when I’d said that. “Fine. You go right ahead and do that. I guess this means we aren’t going steady anymore.”

“Well since you won’t go out with me, I guess that’s already how it is,” I’d said, in a really nasty tone. We’d just sort of glared at each other, and then I’d stormed off. So now I have to find someone else to go to the dance with me this weekend. It shouldn’t be too big of a problem, what with all the senior guys already off fighting. I don’t want to fuck someone else’s girlfriend, but I do want to piss Barbie off and to do that, I have to have another date.

This all happened during lunch, so I managed to meet up with Aaron after school and tell him all about it, distracting him from talking about joining the Marines for about five minutes.

So I tell him my tale of woe, and how I don’t have anyone to go to the dance, and what does he say? “They say that when you’re 17, you can enlist if your parents say it’s OK.”

“How does that help me get a date for the dance?” I’d answered in this really snotty tone.

“It doesn’t asshole. Who cares about dances? We have a war to win. If we don’t win, there won’t be any dances,” he’d said with this air of superiority.

“Look dumbshit, in a year, when I’m done with high school, I’m going to have to fight in this war,” I’d said. Only I’d gotten right in his face when I did. I don’t know what my deal was today, but I was feeling really aggressive. “So I don’t want to spend that year planning on how I’m going to join. I know how I’m going to join. I want to try and do what I can while I’m here, and enjoy my last bit of time before I have to fight.”

“Well maybe you can just ignore that the country is losing its ass in this war, but I can’t,” he said, making me sound like a traitor or something.

“No, I just know there’s not a God damn thing I can do about it,” I’d said loudly. “You aren’t going to save the world. They have lots of guys signing up now, guys they have to train and get out in the field, guys who are over 18 already. What makes you so special? What are you, some super-hero or something?”

He’d stared at me all indignantly. “I think I could make a difference.”

Then I felt like shit. I’d basically told him that he didn’t matter, that he didn’t count. “Look, I’m sorry. I’ve just had a really bad day and it bugs me to hear you talk about going off to join up.”

“Why? I figured you’d want to go fight too,” he’d said.

“I do,” I’d said, lying. “But there’s no way I can, not until I’m done with high school. Even then, it’s going to require a major argument with my parents.”

“Well that’s you, not me,” he’d said, being a dick.

“Yeah, it is, but you’re my best friend, and I don’t want to be here alone without you. Plus I kind of figured that we’d do this together, that we could join up together,” I’d told him. I kind of regretted it when I’d said it, because it sounded like I was saying that I loved him, and that had gone over so fucking swell.

“You want to do this together?” he asked. I’d just nodded. Then he got this big grin on his face. “What do you want to join? Army, Navy, Marines, which one?”

“You mean you’ll wait and go with me?” I asked.

“Hell yeah,” he said. “Now that I know you’re going.”

Then I got it. He was waiting to make sure I wasn’t going to be a weenie and not go. “You thought I was a coward?”

“No, I don’t think that at all. Really,” he’d said, and he was so sincere I believed him. “But your parents may not want you to go, and they’ve got enough, well, power and money to keep you from having to fight if you didn’t want to.”

I thought about that. “You may be right. But I’m not a coward. I’ll do my duty when my time comes. They can save all their political favors for Jim. He’s a big punk anyway.” Then we’d laughed about it, and he’d told me about a couple of girls to ask to the dance. We were joining up together as soon as we graduated. That was the plan.