Two years before the selection process
It was late night and the car was old and rusty.
Joseph Danforth and his cousin Billy parked on the other side of the gas station, then just stayed there, looking at it for a long time.
Their eyes were still and empty of any feeling, their silence was tense.
Joseph closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then reopened them and gestured to Billy.
Then they both put a ski mask on their heads and got out from the car.
While his cousin was walking to the gas station's entrance door, Joseph slid his sawn-off shotgun into his hand.
On the other side, Billy was armed with a revolver.
The shop windows were well lit From the outside, the gas station looked bright, empty and still. The shelves were full of goods and there wasn't anyone behind the cash register.
Everything was deserted and silent, with the exception of the neon buzz.
Once the two entered the station, they looked again to the cash register, but again there was nobody.
It was too good to be true.
Danforth indicated to Billy the end of the room.
His cousin placed himself in front of the warehouse door, and stood guarding it.
The door had a circular window in its center, so that you could see the next room through it.
While Billy watched the door, Joseph went to the cash register.
As he reached for it, he hit it with the butt of his gun to break it open.
The sound he made echoed loud in the silence, too loud and out of place.
In the meantime, Billy was continuously changing his balance from one foot to the other.
He kept his gun pointed at the back door, but he often turned to look at Joseph... Too often.
When Joseph hit the cash register again, this time it made a sound so loud that they thought the sheriff himself (on the other side of the city) must have heard it.
And yet, the cash register didn't open up.
Some keys bounced away, but the drawer didn't open up.
It was as sturdy as a safe.
Joseph then turned desperately to Bill, and that was the last time he saw his cousin's eyes alive.
While Billy was turned to Joseph, the door behind him exploded in a cloud of splinters, while the gas station was overrun by noise.
Danforth instinctively threw himself to the ground, under the counter desk.
The wood panel was a little raised from the floor, and through that small split Joseph saw his cousin's head falling to the ground with a thud.
The still eyes of his cousin - from inside the ski mask holes - were now staring at him from the floor with no sign of life in them.
They were as still as rocks.
Billy was dead.
The following moment was silent, still and never ending. The circle of blood in front of his cousin's head just grew, and nothing more.
Then Joseph started breathing as fast as dogs do.
He closed his eyes and held them tight shut, trying to calm down.
But when he heard a barely hearable wood sound, his eyes exploded wide open and full of panic.
Two black shoes were carefully coming close to his cousin's body.
One of the feet gave a very slight kick to the body, as to check for any reaction.
Joseph then raised his gun and blindly pointed it at him as if there was no wood panel at all between him and his target.
Now it was his turn to shoot, and he would show him.
Hell yes.
He was almost sorry to shoot in cold blood, but he hadn't any intention at all of being killed or ending up in jail.
Reformatory, reformatory, reformatory and again reformatory.
Then inevitably the jail, even if for one month only.
No... He would never let that happen again.
And whoever the shooter was, he had just killed Billy.
So he pulled the trigger.
The panel took most of the flame and shock wave of the shot: only the buckshot got through.
So all of the the sonic boom bounced back into Danforth's ears, painfully deafening him.
When Joseph got up, his ears were so shocked that he staggered, but he was immediately ready to shoot again, if necessary.
And once he was out from his cover, he saw everything.
The old man (that Joseph had known since when he was a child, and even then he was already old) was doubled up with pain and on his knees, his hands on his chest.
He was clutching his wound and staring at Joseph with questioning eyes.
The blood was already spilling between his fingers and his look was lost, as if he hadn't understood what had just happened.
Then he raised one bloodied hand and showed it to him, as if to say 'you have hit me. You have hit for good'.
Joseph walked up to him and stopped right over him.
The old men breathed slowly and with difficulty, and after a while, Danforth saw the light inside his eyes completely change.
Now the man's mind was full of hate.
He put his dying eyes right on those of the young, ski-masked guy that stood over him and said:
“Danforth's little bastard. It's you and your cousin, isn't it?”
The old man coughed, then added:
“I knew it”
He was dying.
“May god curse you, Joseph Danforth. May god curse you forever”
And that was the last thing he ever said.
And the last thing he ever saw were the two barrels of Danforth's shotgun coming over his head.
BAAM
It was some kind of red and gray explosion, but Danforth immediately shifted his glance away from the mess he had just made, because it was too disgusting.
He also needed to leave very soon.
With one last blow of the shotgun's butt against the cash register, he finally opened it.
Had he opened it sooner, none of that would ever have happened, and his cousin would still be alive.
Then he took the money and ran.
***
A little before dawn, something woke Joseph up.
He had some kind of strange feeling inside him, an anguish in the middle of his chest that urged him to wake.
His hut – his home – was dark, cold and silent.
He couldn't sleep any more, not after what had happened that night.
He lay for a while in his bed, as if he was listening to something.
Inside his home (if you could consider such a hovel somebody's home) the light of the dawn was still blue.
The police were going to come and very soon, he was sure about that.
He was not sure they had any solid proof against him, but they would come in any case, even only to break his balls.
Before dawn, Danforth had wrapped both the money and the shotgun with wax covered paper and had buried them in the desert.
He hid them in a place such that he could find them again many years later, if necessary.
He was already thinking of the time he would spend in jail.
Had the old man not shot his cousin, everything would have been just fine but now, with Billy's body down on that floor, he was fucked up for good because everyone in town knew that he and his cousin had always done all of this shit together.
Danforth felt as if he had a sign hanging right from his neck, saying: 'I am Billy's famous cousin, come and take me'.
He got out of his bed naked, and went to the door.
He took a pack of cigarettes and the zippo lighter.
Then he started thinking.
He had killed the old man with his own hands. The poor bastard had recognized him so he had had no other choice.
And that was the reason why professionals always went out of town to do robberies. Well, it was a little late to understand it.
What an idiot he had been.
Joseph wiped his face with one hand then he lit up a cigarette.
He opened the door and stayed naked just there, with his back on the door jamb, smoking and feeling the cold air blowing against his naked skin and waiting for the police to come in the dawn's blue light.
Joseph Danforth had just turned twenty and yet he had a long beard and hair.
He was skinny and tall and yet he had a potbelly and a pair of too long, ugly arms, too skinny and with too many visible veins, like those of regular drug user.
At twenty he was already a ruined man, most of all because of the booze.
While he was lazily smoking his cigarette, the dawn turned from azure to red.
But there was something amiss.
So he tried to figure the situation out because there was something amiss inside of him, something really bad... And it was that he wasn't feeling anything, nothing at all.
He wasn't even really sorry for Billy, and none at all for the old man.
He wasn't even really scared of ending up in jail, nor on the electric chair.
So he tried to take stock of the situation.
The money was buried, the police would never find it on to him.
They would come very soon – he could feel it inside his bones – but they would never find the money.
He and his cousin used to always drink, take drugs, push and date prostitutes together, and everyone in town knew that. And this was also the reason he was sure he would end up in jail, one way or the other, solid proof or not... It wouldn't make any difference.
And yet he didn't feel a thing, which was quite worrying.
His mother died when he was five.
His father died of booze the last year and Joseph's work for Arnie's garage was never enough to earn himself a living, and neither was pushing and being a pimp either
All of his fucking life nothing he ever did had ever been enough... Never ever.
Every fucking day of his damn life he could remember, had always been nothing but a pain to him.
But a life with no pleasure wasn't worth being lived for him, so he did nothing more than struggle to survive day by day, for all of his life.
He had struggled to survive for so long that he couldn't even imagine a different way of living.
Did it exist?
Had there ever been a single person in the whole world who ever lived a life that was really worth living?
Probably yes, but who knows how many millions of miles away from that shit-hole of a town he lived in.
He saw the first blue flashes really far way, so far on the horizon that in the beginning they looked as if they were at the edge of the world, at least in the beginning.
The lights were slowly running from right to left on the horizon line, pulling some dust in the air as they passed by.
They were still so far away that he couldn't even hear their sirens.
He didn't feel a thing.
His mother, father and cousin had all died (and his cousin had always been his best friend too), so he now was really alone for good.
He had no job nor money saved, and he couldn't even spend what he got from the robbery.
Not now, at least.
And – maybe – the electric chair was just waiting for him.
Anyway, he was sorrier about his cousin than of ending on the electric chair.
He had a forty-five inside his drawer, with a legal license for it and all.
It was a hell of a handgun, the same one used against the Krauts and the Japs during World War Two, so it had to be a good gun for sure.
The two police cars – now much nearer than a while before– took the road that led to his house, not that Joseph was expecting anything different.
As they came down his road, the dust rose even more, and the two cars became bigger and nearer.
Joseph started thinking how good it might have been to take the gun out of the drawer and welcome the cops holding it, thus dying like a real man.
A death with balls, one of those people talk about for a long time.
Both of the cars suddenly stopped in front of his house.
The two men were sheriff Hatfield and, obviously, that Humbert dick-head. The two of them had come using two different cars (God only knew why).
They got out off from their cars armed with one shotgun and a pistol, and both were wearing sunglasses, even if the sky was still red because of the dawn.
Yea, yea, you are really cool, assholes – thought Joseph to himself.
They got out from their cars and immediately pointed their guns at him without even saying a word: no arrest declaration and no rights list... They didn't say a word.
Humbert went inside the house while Hatfield stayed outside to guard Danforth.
While Humbert checked the house, Hatfield got closer to him.
Then he hit him in the stomach using the butt of his shotgun.
Joseph doubled up with pain and fell on his knees.
“Found it” Humbert said from inside the hut, and then he came out with Danforth's forty-five in his hand.
Hatfield took it and held it.
Then he stood like that for a while, with Danforth's forty-five in one hand and the shotgun in the other.
All of the three stood still for a long while, Danforth still on his knees.
Then Humbert said:
“That's not a good idea, boss”
Hatfield raised his handgun, then he shot three times in the air.
The shots echoed in the desert like thunder.
“Don't do it, boss – Humbert said -. I don't like this thing”
Hatfield then kicked Danforth in the face.
The guy spun in the air like a top and slipped back. Then he fell onto the dusty ground and a little pool of blood appeared under his mouth, in the dirt.
“Find the money” Hatfield ordered Humbert, then he spat on the ground.
“Find the fucking money 'cause when you're done, I want him dead, this son of a bitch”
But they never found it.
Maybe the sheriff decided not to shoot Danforth hoping that, sooner or later, the money would show up... Or simply because he really wasn't a cold blooded murderer.
Whatever the reason, the two men never found either the money or the gun used to kill the old man, and the sheriff looked back with regret for a long time that he hadn't killed Joseph Danforth that morning, because sparing his life never gave him anything in return.
Joseph was sentenced for the use of force against a public officer and when he was proposed the army to avoid being jailed, he accepted even if he knew that it would mean ending up in Vietnam, and probably fighting too.
After a nine week basic course – all physical and theoretical, without any practical drill - Danforth fought in South East Asia for a whole year.
There he managed to survive, but between surviving in the real world and in Vietnam, Joseph began thinking that surviving in Vietnam was a better fit for him.
Because while over there, he felt strangely comfortable.
Over there what he was most good at (surviving) was really appreciated.
In Vietnam, amongst people that were either dying or trying to kill you, his ability to adapt and do anything required by the situation was a really sought-after ability by anyone, and everything he had always been suddenly wasn't a disgusting thing for anyone.
It was really like living in another world.
What's more, during his first tour of duty he really risked his life only a couple of times.
To most, that kind of risk would have been unbearable and with much surprise to him, he saw many of his comrades going insane just because of risks.
On the contrary, he was accustomed to such worse things that this affected him very little.
To tell the truth, he probably liked it.
In the end, one year later, his tour of duty was over, he was safe and sound, and he got back to the United States as a free man.
He immediately went where he had buried his money and found it intact.
He changed all of it inside a casino, but he didn't play
He came in, drank a couple of glasses, then he came out.
Now Joseph had his money, and it was clean too.
He still lacked life, but maybe, in the army, he could find one.
So he joined the army again, but this time he also volunteered to join the special forces.
And after a brief psychological interview, the green berets immediately sent him to the SOG selection program.