It was a warm night in late September, long after midnight, when Jack Isaksen showed up in the Hagars’ backyard, waking their son with a salvo of small pebbles tossed against his bedroom window. The gangly boy untangled himself from his covers and fumbled for his glasses. Then he sprang from his bed and dashed to the window, sliding in his socks for the last six feet. There was Jack, down in the backyard, swinging his arm in a wild, beckoning motion.

Hags waved back, then yanked on a pair of chinos and a sweatshirt. He opened the sash and threw his enormous sneakers to the ground. Then he clambered out the window onto the porch roof, monkeyed down the corner post, and leaped to the ground.

By that time Jack was at the curb, next to his father’s new MGB. It was only when Hags got to the front yard that he noticed the girl in the passenger seat.

Jack gestured again and said in a stage whisper, “Let’s get going.”

Hags stood there, befuddled.

The girl climbed over the seat and sat on the furled tonneau cover, saying, “Here ya go, take my seat.”

Without budging, Hags glanced up at his parents’ bedroom windows. They were still dark. He turned back to his friend. “Geez, Jack, you don’t even have your license yet.”

“Don’t sweat it, Hags, just hop in. I can drive just fine.”

“I don’t know. If my parents wake up—”

“C’mon, Hags,” the girl said, “we won’t be gone long. Get in, or I’ll take my seat back.”

Hags looked up at the house again, then got into the car.

Jack said, “You know my cousin Rachel, don’t you?”

“Um,” said Hags, “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t know me,” she giggled, “but Jack’s told me all about you.”

“All of it,” said Jack. “All of the worst stuff, anyway.”

Rachel said, “Don’t believe him.” She was smiling at Hags. “He said a lot of nice things too.”

Hags looked back at her. Even in the dim light of the street lamp, he could see her nearly round face, her red hair pulled back in a ponytail, the freckles on her forehead and cheeks. She noticed him gazing at her and gave him another smile that made him blush.

His reverie was interrupted when Jack mashed the starter button and the engine snarled into life. Jack rammed the shift lever forward, grinding into first. Then he revved the engine and popped the clutch. The little car lurched forward and abruptly stalled.

Rachel flung her arm around Hags’ neck to steady herself. For an instant, something soft brushed his cheek. He did his best to pretend it hadn’t happened, but the sensation aroused him. 

Rachel settled back in her seat. “Jack,” she said, “I thought you knew how to drive.”

“Well, I got us here, didn’t I? It’s Hags’ fault. All that extra weight.”

Hags said, “I can get out.”

“Oh, no, buddy boy. We got you now.”

Hags looked up one more time at the house. “Can you keep it quieter? You’re going to wake up my dad. He’ll kill me—”

“Then why don’t you shut up and enjoy yourself?”

Jack restarted the car, gently shifted into gear, and eased out the clutch.

As they moved out into the road, Rachel wobbled unsteadily. “Hags, gimme your hand,” she said.

He extended his left hand backward without looking around. She took it in hers, and when he felt its warmth, he became aware of how cold his own hand was. Without thinking, he gave hers a squeeze. Rachel squeezed back.

Now they were underway, heading east on Route 6. Jack was getting the feel of the car, picking up the pace. He flipped on the radio. Leslie Gore was singing “You Don’t Own Me.”

Rachel said, “Ooo, I like this one.”

Jack grunted and spun the dial, picking up “Little Deuce Coupe.” Rocking his head to the beat, he said, “Yeah! That’s more like it. Now hand me a beer.”

Rachel snapped back, “Why should I? Do you think you own me?”

“Cut it out, Rach. Don’t be such a crabapple.”

“You’re a fink,” she snapped. “I’ll open one for Hags, but you can help yourself.”

Hags said, “No thanks.”

“Go ahead, open one for Hags,” Jack said, “and have one yourself.”

Rachel opened a can of Narragansett and passed it up to Hags. “Here ya go. I borrowed these from my father.”

“I really shouldn’t…”

“For God’s sake, buddy,” Jack said, “you need to let yourself go sometime.”

Hags took a sip of the beer; its sourness nearly made him heave.

“Atta boy,” said Jack.

Rachel opened another can. She held it toward Jack, but when he reached for it, she drew it back. “Apologize,” she demanded.

“For what?”

“General principles, that’s what.”

“No way! Give me the can.”

Rachel dangled the can over the side of the car. “Apologize, or else.”

“Jack, I think she means it,” said Hags.

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I don’t know what for, but I’m sorry.”

Rachel took a sip from the can before handing it to him and said, “There. I sweetened it for you.”

“Who needs sweet beer?” he retorted. He took the can and leaned his head back to take a long pull. As he guzzled, the car veered halfway onto the shoulder.

“Watch out!” cried Hags.

Jack jerked the car back onto the pavement.

To keep her balance, Rachel pulled hard on Hags’ hand, making him spill beer on his crotch. “Maybe you should cool it,” he said to Jack.

“Hah!” said Jack, stomping on the accelerator pedal. “You’re not afraid, are you?”

“No. I mean yes. You’re scaring me. And you almost made Rachel fall out back there.”

Jack slowed the car down but still kept it way over the speed limit. Hags forced himself to take another swig, pleased that this one went down a little easier. Jack polished off his beer, tossed the can onto the road, and asked Rachel for another.

The town melted away into farmland and marsh. Jack’s action with the clutch and shifter became more natural. As the moon peeked from behind the clouds, Hags experienced a little buzz. He discovered that his thumb was caressing the back of Rachel’s hand.

Suddenly they noticed the glare of headlights behind them. Jack downshifted and floored it, Rachel clinging even harder to Hags’ hand. As the MG accelerated, red and blue beams of light played across the road ahead.

At a sign for Ned’s Point, Jack swerved off the main road, racing past homes scattered among dunes and clumps of trees. The red and blue lights, now mated with a siren, pursued closely. Jack dodged around cars parked on each side of the narrow lane, and the lighthouse hove into view. Then, cresting a small hill, they saw the ocean before them.

Rachel screamed, “Stop! Stop!” Hags put his feet up against the dash, but as the beach hurtled toward them, Jack held his course. Rachel threw her arms around Hags’ neck, knocking off his glasses. The car left the pavement, hurtled over the sea wall, and landed in the loose sand.

Jack tried desperately to maneuver, shifting to reverse and into first again, but only dug the car deeper into the sand. Finally the engine stalled. Except for a faint hiss of steam leaking from the radiator cap, all was quiet. Rachel withdrew her arms from Hags’ neck.

From behind them, the Barnstable County sheriff broke the silence. “All right, folks,” he said, “the fun’s over.”

Come dawn the next morning, Hags and Rachel were released to their fathers. Hags was grounded for the rest of June, a punishment that would have felt more severe if he hadn’t been such an introvert to begin with.

Mr. Bolan, Rachel’s father, forbade her to see Hags or Jack ever again. He decided to have a chat with Father Coughlin. Maybe he could talk the priest into letting Rachel back into St. Teresa’s. After all, that fight she’d had with the Hennessey girl hadn’t really been her fault—even if Rachel had broken the other girl’s nose.

Jack was detained for longer. His father did not go out of his way to get his son released—not after what had happened to the MG. The tide had come in before the car could be towed, and salt water got in everywhere—crankcase, differential, transmission, even the brake cylinders. It was Mr. Spivey, Jack’s football coach, who finally convinced Mr. Isaksen to spring his budding quarterback. 

During the war, Lars Isaksen served as a sonar man aboard the submarine Fang. The young man’s uncanny ability to plot the enemy’s range and course was a key factor in making the Fang the deadliest boat in the US fleet. Its accurate fire sank nearly three dozen Japanese ships before one of its own torpedoes malfunctioned. The torpedo doubled back in its course and exploded against the boat that had launched it. The Fang soon hit the bottom in the shallow waters where it had been operating. There were only a few dozen survivors.

Thirteen of these men strapped on their emergency breathing devices and exited the Fang by way of its escape hatch. Only five of them made it to the surface alive. Isaksen was one. A few others who had been on the bridge when the explosion occurred, including Commander O’Keefe, were floating nearby.

The next morning the nine surviving members of the crew were rescued by a Japanese frigate, which had also rescued sailors from ships the Fang had sunk earlier on its patrol. Every day for the rest of the voyage, the Japanese survivors took turns beating the submariners.

One morning, waiting for another round of beatings, Commander O’Keefe said to Isaksen, “I guess there’s some sort of justice in this.”

“Justice?” Isaksen repeated. “Skipper, what the devil are you talking about? What about Pearl Harbor?”

“Just look at these poor guys—mutilated, burnt, from our own torpedoes. Wouldn’t you want to do the same, if you were in their place?”

“Screw ’em,” said Isaksen. “Screw ’em all. I hope one of our subs blows this ship in half. Even if we go down with it.”

“You shouldn’t think like that,” said O’Keefe. “Try to keep your humanity.”

“Where’s the humanity in the rest of our mates lying on the bottom of this stinking ocean?”

“Good Lord, man, don’t let yourself be consumed by vengeance!”

Two of his Japanese hosts grabbed Isaksen’s arms as two more stepped forward to commence the ceremony. Struck in his solar plexus, gasping for breath, Isaksen still managed to grunt, “Screw ’em all. Screw ’em all to hell.”

Isaksen spent the rest of the war in a Japanese prison camp. A year and a half later, he returned to his boyhood home in Watseka, Illinois. It took another year of his mother’s fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and pies to gain back the forty pounds he’d lost in captivity.

In the autumn of ’46, he signed up for some electrical engineering classes at the University of Illinois. The 65-mile commute on straight roads, past endless fields of soybeans and corn, was a kind of therapy. The perfect monotony of the land, horizon, and sky gave him time to think through the principles and formulas he was studying until they were second nature. It was a time to marvel at the beauty and symmetry of the laws of Ohm, Faraday, and Coulomb. Most importantly, it was a time to try to put the horrors that he had experienced out of his mind.

The next year he moved to Urbana, renting a basement apartment on West Elm. He got a job at the dining hall to pay his rent; the GI Bill covered his tuition and books. One day in his Statistics class, the instructor was handing back graded test papers. Isaksen was annoyed because he had received an A-minus, not an A. Then he noticed the paper given to the young woman sitting next to him. It was graded D. A tear fell audibly on the page.

After class he followed her down the hall. Approaching her from behind, he was surprised by how tall she was. He’d never thought of himself as short, but this woman topped him by half a head. She was slim too, with no discernable hips, narrow shoulders, and a plain, narrow face.

“Forget this,” he told himself, and decided to veer off toward the men’s room.

As he pivoted, she turned and caught his eye.

“Hi,” he said, feeling embarrassed, “I couldn’t help noticing that you were having some trouble with that test.”

“I’m so stupid. I can’t figure out how to use the slide rule.”

“Maybe I could help. I’m pretty good at it.”

“Oh, would you? That would be so nice.”

Students were swarming past them in both directions, but Lars Isaksen stood there, gazing at her eyes. How blue they were. How strange, to be looking up at them. 

“When?” she said.

“Oh,” he answered, “I work nights. I don’t get off until late.”

“That’s no problem. I’m a night owl. Where should we meet?”

“How about the library? Twenty-two fifteen in the lobby?”

“What?”

“Oh, sorry, I mean ten fifteen. I was in the service, you know. By the way, I’m Lars. What’s your name?”

“Iris,” she said. “I’ll see you at twenty-two fifteen. Thank you so much.” She smiled, and then she was gone.

After work, Isaksen sprinted the length of the quad to meet her. He arrived winded, beginning to perspire. She was standing in the recess before the library’s entrance, clutching her books to her chest.

“Hi,” he said. “Sorry I’m running late.”

“It’s okay, I just got here myself. I guess that makes you on time.”

He laughed and pulled at the door, but it was locked. He could see figures moving about inside, so he rattled the door until someone came and mouthed the words, “We’re closed.”

“What should we do?” she asked.

For an instant he considered asking her to his apartment. But the idea of that meager, damp space, his narrow cot, the low ceiling with the exposed pipes—in many ways like the bowels of a submarine—canceled the notion. Moreover, she seemed like a nice girl.

“I know a place,” he said. “Muldoon’s. It’s on Green Street.”

A frown scrunched across her cheeks and eyes, but he smiled and said, “C’mon, it’s only a five-minute walk.”

“Well, I don’t know, but…oh…okay.”

During their short walk, they hardly spoke. They arrived at Muldoon’s and sat down in a booth. He ordered a pitcher of the cheapest draft. In the dim light, he explained about logarithms and scales and how to perform basic calculations. He spoke slowly, in simple language, and her confusion began to lift.

“Why don’t you try to solve some easy problems,” he said.

When she pulled out her slide rule, Isaksen said, “Let me see that thing.” She handed him the device. He examined it for a moment and said, “No wonder you’re having trouble. The lens is all scratched. And it’s really a piece of shi…crap…to begin with. Look how sloppy the hash marks are.” He pulled out his own German-made instrument, a mahogany Dietzgen with engine-divided scales. “Why don’t you take this and throw that other one away. I have an even better one at home.”

“Thank you so much…Lars. You’re so kind.”

Isaksen began to stammer, but she interrupted him. “By the way, my name isn’t really Iris. It’s Rose. My father called me Iris because I’m so tall and skinny. He’s a big tease. I’m not very developed, you know.”

“I like Iris for you. Because you have blue eyes. And my mom grows them in front of the house.”

“I’d like to meet her sometime.”

She set down the slide rule and took his hand. At that moment, the lesson ended and their courtship began.

They married during semester break. Commander O’Keefe and a few of the surviving shipmates attended the wedding. Iris dropped out, thirty hours shy of her degree. Her father loaned his new son-in-law five thousand dollars to keep the little family afloat until Lars could finish his own degree.

James O’Keefe Isaksen arrived a year later. The nearly ten-pound infant had to be delivered by cesarean section. While Iris was still under sedation, Isaksen asked her obstetrician to perform a tubal ligation. 

The child took his first steps before he was ten months old and soon became adept at throwing things. The habit upset his father, who was still deep in his studies. One afternoon his son grabbed a pencil that had fallen from the desk, picked it up, and flung it at his father’s face. “Take that little jackass to the park!” Isaksen said to Iris.

She tittered at the characterization to disguise how much it stung her. Isaksen thought she really found it funny, so he began using the term as a nickname for the boy. As the child began to speak, his father dropped the “ass” part, but “Jack” stuck and became the name he was known by.

Despite his mother’s attempts to exhaust him on the playground, Jack had boundless energy. Even when Iris splurged to buy a TV set, Jack would not sit still in front of it. Instead he’d prance about, mimicking the action on the screen, until he got bored and found something to throw. Isaksen frequently had to flee to the library to study and do his classwork. Often Iris and Jack were asleep when he got home.

Only rarely did the nightmares of Isaksen’s captivity return. Only rarely did his anger explode at some trivial provocation. Only gradually did Iris become colder and more distant. She tried to bury her bitterness over her husband’s decision to have her sterilized without her consent, but a chill descended on the young couple, felt most acutely in their bedroom. It drove Isaksen deeper into his studies. 

While he was finishing up his senior project, his advisor handed him a notice that had been sent out by the Electric Boat Company. They were looking for engineers with Navy experience to work on a new, secret project. Countless applicants sent in their transcripts and résumés, but when someone showed Admiral Rickover the one from a veteran of the Fang, a railroad ticket was sent to Isaksen. The interview focused not on his classes and areas of interest but on the Fang’s last, fateful patrol. The Nautilus project had found a new man.

Iris was ecstatic. Her sister Lillian had married a man from Fairhaven, a suburb of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Isaksen wanted to move to New London to be near the Electric Boat plant, but Iris had her way. With help from the GI Bill and another loan from Iris’s father, they bought a snug, clapboarded bungalow on Maple Avenue, just around the corner from Lillian’s house.

Isaksen was proud of his home, which Iris beautifully maintained. He insisted that she plant a bed of iris along the front porch. He didn’t mind the commute to his office, which was no longer than the drive from his boyhood home to his freshman classes at the U of I. The time gave him respite from the petty cares of his new household and the rambunctious toddler who always demanded attention, always left a mess in his tracks.

Isaksen prospered in his career and was soon leading a team of technicians that designed the navigation system for the first nuclear-powered submarine. He drove his team hard, keeping the old bulls from Princeton and the veterans of Bell Labs from warring with the “pencil-neck geeks” who had just graduated from MIT. Isaksen’s war-time reputation commanded respect. He himself was driven just as hard by Rickover.

When the team finished its work on time, on budget, and with a minimum of SNAFUs, Isaksen was honored with an invitation to the Nautilus’s christening. For the occasion, Iris bought a new outfit, everything from shoes to hat, suit to purse. On the day before the event, she spent the afternoon at the hairdresser. Six-year-old Jack got a carefully tailored flannel suit. Isaksen grumbled about all the fuss, but he still went in for a haircut—not that anyone could tell that the barber had removed an eighth of an inch from his military buzz cut.

Jack, however, hated the scratchy wool pants. He fussed and wailed but got no relief from either parent. Finally he crept back to his room, took off the pants, and put on his baggy dungarees. Then he wriggled the suit pants over the jeans. When he returned to the living room, his parents were preparing to leave for the ceremony.

Iris immediately noticed how rumpled his pants looked, then spotted the blue denim peeking out below the flannel cuffs. “What have you done, honey?” she asked.

As Isaksen watched with disgust, Iris reached over and felt Jack’s leg. Then she unzipped the pants and discovered the boy’s secret. “Please go back and dress yourself properly,” she told him. “You’ll look so handsome.”

“No, I hate those pants!” he cried. “They make me itch.”

“Please, darling, take off the dungarees.”

“No! I won’t do it!”

Isaksen said, “Yes, you will. Listen to your mother.”

“No, you can’t make me!”

Isaksen had been a stern father, but he had never struck his son. For an instant he considered laughing at his son’s clever solution, feeling almost proud of his stubbornness. Even as this thought flowed through his mind, however, he saw his son with his arms folded, defiance in his face. Something got scrambled up in his brain—the memory of his Japanese tormentors, the blows that had fallen on him in the daily ceremony on the frigate and, later, as a matter of routine in the prison camp. He felt his arm rise, seemingly under the control of some outside force. Then it swung down, landing a backhanded slap that knocked Jack to the floor.

“I hate you!” said Jack, jumping up. With one hand he rubbed his reddened cheek. With the other he brandished a fist.

Iris thrust herself between her husband and her son. “Lars, you go by yourself. I’ll stay home with Jack.”

Jack began to cry and ran back to his room. His mother followed.

Isaksen nearly followed his wife but stood frozen, his mind a blur. Eventually he glanced in the mirror over the fireplace, straightened his tie, and left by himself.

Initially, this book was to be a retelling of Moby Dick in a more contemporary milieu. Melville’s novel is a manly tale of manly characters, which appealed to me as a young man. But the more often I read it, the more it revealed its layers of psychology and morality. I plan to read it again and again until I can no longer hold it on my lap; I know that I will find more meaning in it each time I return.

The title of my novel comes from Exodus 21, the same chapter that prescribes “an eye for an eye.” The theme of the story, like that of Moby Dick, is vengeance. But the novel is also based on the 1968 indie movie Easy Rider. My protagonist and his sidekick are based on the movie’s Captain America and Billy, chopper-riding drug-dealers who hit it big, then seek to withdraw from their perilous occupation by creating an idyllic life in Florida. But fate intervenes: the hapless pair are murdered by a shotgun-wielding, stereotyped “redneck.” The last scene closes with an aerial shot of the pair sprawled on the pavement, with Captain America’s bike in flames.

This is my point of departure. My protagonist survives a similar blast but loses a leg. My initial intention was to transform Captain America into a latter-day Captain Ahab, obsessed with seeking revenge against the man who killed his pal and made him a cripple. But the more I wrote, the more nuanced the characters became. I explored their youth and described how my protagonist broke with his father and ran away before he was sixteen. After losing his leg, he feels conflicted about pursuing revenge, and in this sense he is more Hamlet than Ahab. Like Hamlet, his hesitation is his undoing. But like Ahab, his quest for vengeance results in tragedy.

This novel ranges back and forth across the country. It traces routes I took in my youth, on the lam, estranged from my own father, on custom motorcycles. Some of the settings and characters in the New Mexico sequences are based on places and people I knew back in the ’70s, but everything else is a product of my imagination.