The Strategy (Jess Shankland)

The Strategy
by: Jess Shankland

In the chapter "Bully of the Heart" Billy is spending a couple nights back home with his family. During his stay, he learns of all the troubles his family is going through, but then reflects on his "brothers" from the military and their family histories. It's obvious that Billy and his father are not close; that his dad, Ray, is a private and distant man in the household, an "asshole" as most of the kids call him.

"Yes, family was key, Billy decided. If you could figure out how to live with family then you'd gone a long way towards finding your peace, but for that, the finding, the figuring out, you needed a strategy."
And then:
"Billy thinks he sensed the fatedness of it even then – war was coming and he was bound for the war, and some occult, irresistible father-son dynamic was at work to ensure that this was so." (101)

We can see that Ray is very selfish: the affair, buying the "other" daughter a car, and paying [grand]-fatherly attention to Brian in front of Billy, shooting Billy a "look." This diverted attention cannot actually compare to the horrible things his military brothers have gone through with their families, but to Billy it is all the same. There is a lot of internal thought from Billy, and he keeps referring to a strategy needed to "live with" the family. Soldiers are taught to be strategic. And strategic people make good soldiers. So it seems it is out of desperation to escape or avoid (family, debt, jail), that one joins the military. For on page 73, it is stressed three times: "What else is there."