Free The Magical Stranger by Stephen Rodrick

wallet. He shakes their hands and we head home.
    Our new garage is filled with boxes and crates. Our garage is always filled with boxes and crates. Some of them with Florida and Rhode Island addresses predate me. Even when we are settled, we are not. Green and gray stickers from moving companies remain on the side of Dad’s desk until Mom gives it away forty years later. Dad says everything is always ready to be packed up and shipped because there could be a disagreement with the Russians. I don’t understand; the Russians seem like pretty decent folks in the Soyuz scrapbooks Dad gives me on my birthday.
    Dad is stuck flying A-3s out of NAS Alameda. I don’t understand much, but I know this makes him mad. Vietnam is winding down and he never got in the fight. Late at night, Mom and Dad talk of classmates shot down and in prison camps or dead.
    â€œPete, you’ve got two small kids. Thank God you’re not there.”
    I’m pretty sure Dad doesn’t thank God. His buddies are flying Skyhawks and Intruders. He’s flying something named a Skywarrior, but everyone calls it “the Whale.” I think this is an odd name for a plane. One day, Dad gives me a mimeographed piece of paper with the history and photo of the plane. He reads it to me. The A-3 was created big and heavy in the mid-1950s so it could launch from an aircraft carrier and deliver nuclear bombs a thousand miles away. But the Whale’s mission was made obsolete by intercontinental ballistic missiles that could deliver twice the nuclear payload twice as quick. The A-3 was turned into a tanker, circling carriers and refueling planes as they went off to bomb Vietnam and Cambodia.
    In the early 1970s, the A-3 is converted into a radar-jamming plane hoping to stop the surface-to-air missiles killing Dad’s friends in the skies over Vietnam. But Dad misses that too. His first A-3 cruise begins in the summer of 1973, just as naval air operations over Vietnam are ending.
    I don’t understand all that. I’ve got sports. Dad is a casual Celtics and Red Sox fan, but my interest is something else. I memorize the sports section of The Guinness Book of World Records and torture neighbors with stray facts about quarterbacks who caught their own passes. Mom and Dad have season tickets to the Oakland Raiders, but I’m too young to go. (Or so they tell me.) I listen to the three-hour pregame show and then watch the game with a babysitter.
    The Raiders are my heroes. One day while Dad is gone I see an ad in the Oakland Tribune for a charity fundraiser featuring future Hall of Famers Gene Upshaw and Art Shell. I beg a neighbor to take me. He says no at first, but I turn on the waterworks and he gives in. Upshaw and Shell are the first black men I’ve ever touched or talked with. It is the greatest day of my life. But Dad isn’t there. He isn’t there when I burst into tears when the Raiders lose to the Steelers on something called the Immaculate Reception. But Mom is there.
    â€œIt’s only a game. Jesus. Don’t be a baby.”
    She tries but doesn’t understand. I’m starting to get it. Dad’s never there. I learn a new term: workups. This means Dad gets up at five or six in the morning, throws his duffel bag in his car, and vanishes for three weeks at a time. He explains it to Terry and me one night.
    â€œBefore we can go on the big cruise, we need to do little cruises.”
    I don’t know what a big cruise is. Let’s face it. I have some issues. School is so hard. I am seven and I can barely write my name and I definitely can’t ride a bike. And I can’t tie my shoes. I sit on my bed, practicing for hours, but never get my fingers to move my laces up and around. I go purple and cry.
    I do the same thing at school, especially during art class. One day, we are making tepees for Thanksgiving. The other kids cut their paper, put on glue, and draw on their new creations with