Silent, still bandaged, sitting in a too-big leather chair in an attorney’s office, he listened to his mother pleading.

“You have an excellent case, Mrs. Sharkey,” the man said. “It’s up to you whether to settle or sue.”

On these car journeys to Tripler and to the attorney’s office, Joe became accustomed to soldiers spotting the insignia on the bumper and standing at attention while his mother drove past them as they saluted the car. Seeing them, he touched his face and hoped they could see his bandage.

When his father finally came home, it seemed a satisfaction to him that Joe had endured the attack. Before he hugged him, he touched Joe’s face, saying approvingly, “Battle scar.” And in the next weeks his father and mother met again with the lawyer, Joe in the leather chair listening, or watching them examine documents, the repeated words, “Settlement and release agreement.” Whatever the amount of the settlement, it was enough to allow them to move from their house at Fort Shafter to a bungalow at the edge of Manoa Valley, near Punahou School, which Joe entered that same year, as an eighth grader.

He was now in a world without uniforms, and because the wound took so long to heal and left a thick pinkish purple scar, he was conspicuous, not just a new boy but a new boy with a fresh scar on his left cheek, the stitch punctures clearly visible. The scar and his newness set him apart. He was on the fringe with the marginal boys, the sulkers and rebels, the other newcomers—the malihini, the ones who sneaked and smoked and talked about surfing.

2

Special Forces

Long before his mother told him, he knew when his father was about to arrive home from Vietnam. It was a vibration in the house that trembled in his head, like furniture being shoved in the next room, his mother clumsier, bumping through the parlor with a drink in her hand, fussing to make the house orderly, primping in the mirror as though squinting for approval, visiting the hairdresser, and talking fretfully to herself. “We’ll have to do something about that stain on the table,” or “Those faded slipcovers will have to go,” all of it a sorting-out and preparation, as though for the visit of an inspector.

And it did seem as though his father was making the visit to carry out an inspection: to be brought up to date, to make sure the house was in order, to examine Joe’s school reports. The knowledge that her husband was coming home made Sharkey’s mother nervous—“He won’t like that” she’d say, if she saw that Joe’s room was messy or that he’d broken something.