PROSPECT, PENNSYLVANIA.
JULY 24, 2004
As I stood beside the tank, strapping on another ammo belt, the sounds of the battle were getting closer. In the woods to the east of us, I could hear bursts of rifle fire, the screams of the wounded, the braying of an enemy officer rallying his men.
“Time to mount up,” T. J. growled, and flicked away his cigarette. Dawn was already manning the tank’s cannon, and Debra, one of the gunports. The swivel-mounted turret gun on top of the Panther was all mine.
Just as I stooped to enter the tank, a young woman dressed like a ninja warrior and waving a Magic Marker ran up and asked me for my autograph. “Thank God I caught you before you left,” she said, panting, her eyes brimming with concern. “The fighting’s heavy out there…”
“T. J. knows what he’s doing,” I said to console her. She handed me the pen, and as the tank’s engine roared to life, I signed my name where she wanted it. “Please be careful,” she said, and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek.
I climbed into the tank, sat behind the turret gun, and let off a few rounds to test the rate of fire. As the Panther rumbled into the woods toward the battle, snapping saplings, the ninja shouted, “T. J.! Take good care of him!”
Now this, I thought, is the way to go to war.
But in truth…if there were a picture in this article of my graying, tubby sixty-two-year-old self then and another of the lovely ninja warrior, you would no doubt be moved to wonder why the person in photo B could possibly desire the autograph and physical safekeeping of the person in photo A. Well, the answer to that is rather a long story, and one every bit as bizarre as a Wes Anderson film.
MARTHA’S VINEYARD, MASSACHUSETTS. JULY 1980
Hayes Noel—my main man then and now—is the most competitive person I know. He will compete with you at anything: At a friend’s cocktail party one night, with nothing better to suggest, he offered to bet me on how many bricks composed the host’s fireplace. In the summer of 1980, Hayes and his wife, another couple, and my wife and I rented a house together for two weeks on Martha’s Vineyard, where Hayes and I competed daily at tennis, clam digging, you name it. Grilling bluefish and drinking rum and tonics by a fire one night, he recounted that he and a friend had recently stalked each other through some woods, feigning murderous intent, and that the resulting rush felt better than any drug.
“Who won?” I asked.
“Who do you think?” Hayes said. “I have a highly developed instinct for survival.”
No question that is true. In the kill-or-be-killed jungle of the New York Stock Exchange, Hayes had flourished for years. But. “You and your friend were in the woods,”
