I didn’t even find out about Alan’s little stunt until about a week later. I was chilling at home when the phone rang. When I answered, I heard the crackling of what I now recognize as a SAT (satellite) phone, followed by a faint voice.
“Hey man, what’s up?” he said, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Hello? Alan, is that you?”
“Yeah man, I’m in Kuwait.”
“What?” I said, stunned.
“Yeah, I can’t really talk. I only have a minute on this thing. Tell everyone that I love them and that I’m here with Davis and it’s all good.”
“Okay. You guys kick some ass. Love you guys.”
“Same here.”
The phone call ended as quickly as it had started. Knowing what I know now, I have no idea how the fuck a lowly E-3 in the Marine Corps even got to use a SAT phone. Back then, they were like a hundred dollars per minute. When my dad got home and I told him Alan had called, and where he’d called from, and how he’d called, my dad just shook his head, just like Davis had.
But that was Alan: unstoppable. There was no obstacle he couldn’t overcome, no bull he couldn’t shit. Not cancer, and certainly not the pesky regulations of the United States military. He never complained, he never made excuses, and he never asked for pity or a break. He just did his job. That, as much as anything else, really pushed the baby out of the stroller for me when it came to the idea of joining the military.
Alan’s calmness and deliberation and fortitude were an inspiration for me from the day he got the news—of his diagnosis, of the planes hitting the building, of the long road ahead for him. I was fired up for patriotic reasons too, of course: I wanted to do everything I could to defend my country and the freedom it provides to all of us. But the real motivation came from within my own family. Watching how Alan and Davis turned into men as the war filled them with purpose, I remember thinking, “I want that.”
Chapter 3
You’re in the Army, Now?!
There is a simple truth that comes with sibling rivalry, especially when you’re the baby of the family: It is never as easy as following in your brothers’ footsteps. Doing what they have done is never enough. You have to exceed them. To quote Jay-Z, “You have to go farther, go further, go harder, and if not, then why bother?” If they learn to skydive, you have to BASE jump. If they BASE jump, you have to HALO jump. If they HALO jump, I don’t know, then fucking Red Bull it from space. It doesn’t matter. The point is: In my mind, I had to be better than my brothers.
This quest to be the better Best started with learning everything I could about the military. I immersed myself in military culture and quickly became obsessed to a nearly unhealthy degree, like the Japanese are with poop or the Germans are…well, also with poop. I started with movies. I watched every single war movie I could get my hands on: Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Born on the Fourth of July, The Deer Hunter, Patton, The Thin Red Line, Black Hawk Down, Hamburger Hill, Saving Private Ryan, Apocalypse Now, Major Payne. I studied these war flicks the way conspiracy theorists study the Zapruder film—pantsless.
After I was done with every military film ever made, I turned my attention to learning about generals. George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, Dwight D. Eisenhower. We mostly remember them as presidents now, but as generals those motherfuckers iced a serious number of bad guys in the name of #Merica. And as much as I eventually wanted to be the guy who put the bullets in those bad guys, initially I wanted to understand strategy and the psyche of the war mind as well. I wanted to understand what it meant to be lethal in every way possible.
Next I tried to memorize all the different ranks in all branches of the military. I still wasn’t sure at this point where I wanted to enlist after high school, but wherever I ended up I was sure there would be men and women there who were not only bigger, meaner, faster, smarter, and stronger than me, they would also be in charge. I was confident that I would be able to recognize the hellfire headed