25 July 1993 - Sunday 5 a.m.
I just had the strangest dream - very disturbing. It was about the Major. It was when he was training me in weapons, tactics, and survival, so I must have been 25 or so. I didn't see myself. I seldom do. I don't think it was "Sight" related - just something dredged up by Nick's presence and my own overwrought state.
The Major was screaming at me that I wasn't good enough. He was vicious and almost physically violent. I could smell alcohol. This wasn't the Johnny Boyle I knew, not the one that "pulled my fat out of the fire" more than once. Perhaps it was a spectre tainted by my own emotions and insecurities regarding Nick. I simply don't know what to make of the boy. I'm no nearer to understanding him now than when he first came - perhaps farther, if the truth be told.
I know from Arthur Middleton and Mother that Johnny at one time had a drinking problem - toward the end of his second tour in Vietnam and shortly after. He was not an easy man. Mother said that he never knew how to be anything other than a soldier and a field officer, and Vietnam made it worse. She's right. His entire psyche related to the world in that manner. It can't have been a particularly happy marriage or household, but then a Legacy life tends not to be conducive to contented, settled matrimony. At the moment, the only happy marriage I know belongs to the Sloans. The four of them make a true family - one to be envied.
On the other side of the coin, although Johnny put me through nine ways of hell, he was never violent or disparaging in a personal way with me. I know that I never met his desired levels of physical ability or marksmanship, but I never failed to stick it out - no matter what - and I certainly mastered anything of a technical nature he tried to teach me - everything from "meatball" medicine to Landmines 101. I wish I was as adept with computers. Ask me to build a bomb - yes. Ask me to purge the computer of a virus - no.
Under the Major's tutelage, there were days that my memories of the worst hell holes of my life almost pale in comparison, but it was all a means to an end - to shape me into what I needed to be for my own survival and for the benefit of the Legacy.
I must do the same for Nick, but in a different way. I think he possesses what his father wanted of me as a soldier and an officer, but he needs to grow in ways that his father was unable to grow. When he doesn't notice me watching, I see a gentleness and curiosity in him that I never knew in his father. But more valuable than that I see an intelligence that could burst forth like a blossoming rose if allowed and nurtured. I need to find the key - to prime him and to win him. Perhaps, I'll write to Mother. Better that I write than call. It will force her to ponder the question and organize her thoughts. She was a friend of Jean Boyle. I think they've stayed in touch over the years.
I "sense" a potential precept in Nick. Maybe the precept who can replace me when the time comes.
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