WAI'ANAE — The boy looks up from the back seat into the rearview mirror, where he meets his father's gaze. "So, how long?" he asks.

The boy means, How long until you're gone? From the driver's seat of his pickup truck, Clayton Beaver feels a pang. He doesn't want his son dwelling on anything depressing during these last days together.

As the truck whizzes along a coastal highway, Beaver talks in the singsong pidgin he reserves for loved ones and Hawaiian friends. Pidgin, he long ago discovered, is especially useful when trying to keep a mood light.

"Wat's da matter with you, brah?" he says and laughs. "You know how long, three days, brah."

"I know that. But when?"

Beaver shrugs, understanding. "Flight probably leaves sometime in the afternoon, brah. Or nighttime, I don't know yet. Monday sometime."

"When do you get there?"

Beaver snickers. "I thought I told you: Tuesday sometimes, brah. Not sure exactly when."

There is a place whose name the boy can't remember right now. It has a Fort in it. Somewhere in South Carolina, which you get to by flying across the ocean to the Mainland, and then across the Mainland to the other side of the Mainland, and so it might as well be on Pluto.

His 40-year-old father is joining the Army. After nine weeks of basic training and then some more instruction, he'll be assigned to a post as Pfc. Clayton Beaver. Soon after, there's a good chance he'll end up in Iraq or Afghanistan. The boy is excited, sad and a little worried all at the same time.

Beaver, staring off in the distance, scratches his shaven skull. At 5 feet 11 and 243 pounds, with a barrel chest and thick thighs, he looks like a ferocious linebacker. Fifty pounds ago, he was a lithe golfer with dreams. Had the dreams been realized, he wouldn't be having this discussion with his son. "Wat else you want to know, brah?" he asks.

Fourteen-year-old Kalani Beaver doesn't answer, just turns to stare out a window at the turquoise ocean. His father silently looks in that direction, too, though not at the water but at tents and makeshift shanties plopped on the beach. The shanties hold the people who have fallen off life's edge. The poor, the lost, the crystal methamphetamine addicts, the hardworking who just haven't been able to make a go of it or who have given up trying — in some cases, people at one time just like himself, Beaver thinks.

The sight sometimes unnerves him as a harbinger of what could be. Chronic homelessness has been a problem on O'ahu for more than a decade, with an estimated 1,500 of the homeless living along the Wai'anae Coast. Beaver grew up in Wai'anae, an area beset by pockets of deep poverty.

HAD ENOUGH

Despair for some has presented opportunity for others: Wai'anae is fertile turf for Army recruiters. One-fifth of Wai'anae Coast residents live below the poverty line, and rents and mortgages are prohibitively high, even for many working-class and middle-income families, who sometimes have no choice but to use a tarp on the beach as shelter.

This summer, when his latest part-time job ended, Beaver decided he had enough of life on the edge. A few weeks after his 40th birthday, he enlisted in the Army, which a year ago raised its age limit for new recruits from 40 to 42, after having raised it for active-duty soldiers from 35 to 40 a few months earlier.

The Army and Beaver have turned to each other out of desperation. Beaver, who had never seriously considered military service as a young man, needed a steady job, income, health benefits. An already strained Army, fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan while maintaining its presence elsewhere in the world, is struggling to make recruiting quotas.

This year, after two months of lagging recruitment numbers, the Army introduced a special offer: Those willing to ship out to basic training within 30 days of their enlistment would receive a bonus of $20,000, atop any other bonus for which they might have qualified. Beaver quickly accepted.

"This is for Kalani," he says, while driving. He envisions better schools for his son and unique experiences for the entire family. As a private first class, he will earn only about $18,400 a year — less than some fast-food workers make. But Army benefits from educational aid to housing allowances more than offset the meager salary, he believes.

Financial relief will quickly come to the Beavers in the form of a $2,100 monthly stipend that the family — his wife, Teresa Beaver, and Kalani — will get for housing in Hawai'i while Beaver goes through basic training at Fort Jackson. It is proof, as he sees it, that better times are ahead, especially for Kalani.

"I don't want him to have to worry about money," Beaver says. "I want him to see everything the Mainland or Europe has to offer. I want him to see the Grand Canyon, the White House, a Major League baseball game. ... I want to have a little money to take him on a vacation. I want him to dream about doing something big. It's hard to dream here; people are trapped. The Army is the only way for me to do it."

Today, he has a few of his son's needs to address. An eye examination revealed that Kalani, a promising baseball player, has problems clearly seeing objects at a distance. They have an appointment at an optometrist's office to pick up his new glasses.

"You're a good hitter now," Beaver tells Kalani. "Imagine how much better you'll be when you can see the ball a little better."

The optometrist strolls by and says hi. An office assistant presents Kalani with his glasses.

"Try them on," Beaver urges his son. "They're good for picking up girls." He feigns a punch at his son's midsection.

Kalani chuckles. "Dad."

Kalani slips on the glasses, and the assistant smiles at him.

"Oh, you're gonna see the baseball better than ever with those things," his father says.

"Oh, no, I don't think those glasses are for sports," the office assistant interjects. A surprised Beaver pulls his head back. "We need something for sports," he tells her. "We thought we were getting something for sports. Could you ask the doctor if these are for sports?"

"Well, he just left — he's at lunch right now," the assistant says.

"He left? I just saw him a second ago."

"You could come back in about an hour," the assistant says. "Or early next week."

"I won't be here next week. Maybe you could call him and I ... "

"He's at lunch," the assistant says, more firmly now.

"This is my only time," Beaver says. "We really need to know what the doctor thinks."

The woman sighs, nods and makes the call. The optometrist confirms that Kalani needs an appointment to get sports contact lenses. Beaver makes the appointment and, on their way out of the office, turns to Kalani. He is determined that his boy see all things better — a baseball, the chances for big Mainland colleges, the opportunities for the future. For that to happen, he needs his son to stay on track while he's gone.

"Listen, you'll have to do this appointment on your own because I won't be here to take you," he says. "You'll have to get to baseball on your own. Have to practice hard on your own, do everything. Did you hear me, son? You'll be doing it all because I won't be able to bug you about it. Are you listening, brah?" Beaver fakes another body punch.

Kalani laughs.

"Before I go, I need to get a picture of you wearing your glasses, so I can look at it when I'm gone."

The boy is quiet all the way home.

ALL IN THE FAMILY

Clayton Beaver walks into his mother's house late on Friday afternoon to see his wife, whom he married in July, holding their 8-month-old grandson, Jassiah. Jassiah is the child of Teresa's youngest son from a previous marriage, 24-year-old Ian, who is in Army National Guard basic training at Fort Benning, Ga.

Jassiah's mother — an 18-year-old local woman going through Army Reserve training at Fort Jackson — has joined with Ian in temporarily giving legal custody of the baby to Clayton and Teresa. The unmarried couple had no choice: The Army does not permit unmarried parents to go through training simultaneously without relinquishing custody.

"We're a big military family now," says Teresa, whose marriage to Clayton is her third. "Everybody's heading off somewhere to train; everybody is looking for something better than they've got."

Teresa's second husband, her father and a brother all served in the Army. When her brother got out, he returned to Hawai'i, where he fathered two children, was often jobless and ran into drug problems, which landed him in jail, according to Teresa.

He hanged himself late last year.

Clayton's Army career "will mean a chance for a new start for us somewhere," she says. "We didn't need to do the Army; we could support ourselves somehow doing something here. But we'd always be struggling. That's a hard way to live."

She grew up spending summers as a pineapple-picker and now works 12-hour days as a banquet manager at a restaurant near Hickam Air Force Base. At 49, she is waiting for one kind of hard life to end and for another to take its place.

"I know that if Clayton or my son is deployed to Iraq that I'm going to be nervous and that it will be a strain," she says. "But what you tell yourself, what you have to tell yourself, is that the tough days will end someday, and that then you'll have something better for the rest of your life. It's the only way to get through it. Clayton tells us: Don't focus on the war; focus on the opportunities."

She calls out to Clayton: "I just got a letter from Ian. Want to hear it?"

Clayton turns on a National Football League game and mutes the sound. "He wrote you in the middle of training, huh? Boy must love his mama."

Teresa beams. "I'm so proud of him," she says. "Okay, I'll read it. Here it goes: 'Hi, everybody. It's pretty hard for me to write this letter ... '"

She is not long into reading when her eyes well up. Her son writes that he has been so stressed in basic training that he almost broke down emotionally while standing in formation with his platoon, that when it happened he wanted to come home. Teresa's hands jut up to her mouth to fight off a choked sob.

"You want me to finish reading it?" Clayton asks.

It is a while before she can answer. "His handwriting is bad. I'll read it."

She reads on. Ian asks her to "tell Jassiah I love him."

This sounds so forlorn to her that she drops her head.

Clayton walks across the room and rubs her shoulder. "It's hard for a lot of people in the beginning, hon. It'll be okay. Really." She nods, hands him the baby and walks out of the room.

"That note isn't going to make my last weekend any easier," he says. "Her boy's hurting, you know? I'll tell you: No notes like that from me. When I get there, I can't be writing home saying I'm breaking down or that maybe I want to quit. I just gotta tough it out, no matter what it's like."

LAW CHANGED

While 40-year-old privates served in wars into the 20th century, the Army had excluded them in recent decades. By the 1970s, when the military draft ended, U.S. law required that no new active-duty recruit in its all-volunteer force could be older than 35, and there the age ceiling stayed for three decades, until Congress, with Iraq in conflagration, gave permission to all military branches to raise their maximum ages for recruits to 42. Only the Army did so.

In recent years, because of the Iraq and Afghan wars, the Army has often struggled — and, in 2005, failed altogether — to meet an annual recruitment goal that has climbed from 63,000 in 1995 to 80,000 today. Military officials acknowledge an increasing difficulty attracting young Americans. Army studies reveal that, as the war and American casualties have persisted in Iraq, a growing number of what the Army calls adult "influencers" — parents, teachers and other role models — have been less inclined to support military careers for young people under their wings.

Welcoming the older recruits is part of a three-legged strategy that has involved relaxing Army standards to admit more enlistees typically regarded as last resorts — including those with criminal backgrounds (misdemeanor and nonviolent felony convictions) and some deemed "Category 4s" — those whose scores on Army aptitude tests fall in the bottom 30th percentile.

In fiscal 2007, the first full year of recruiting for both the active Army and the reserve under the new age ceiling, the Army signed only 240 recruits in the 40-to-42-year-old bracket for the active Army and 138 for the reserve. "We never expected huge numbers ... " says Maj. Gen. Thomas Bostick, head of the Army recruiting command. "We wanted to give a chance to people who wanted to serve and who'd missed a chance to serve earlier. A lot of them love their country and want to defend it."

So successful was the quick-ship program, with its $20,000 bonus, that August marked the Army's best recruiting month in fiscal 2007, an Army spokesman says.

"But all these changes raise questions about what you're getting with these new people, including older soldiers," says Cindy Williams, a security studies professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a defense analyst. "It's quantity versus quality tradeoffs. Service in the Army can be a lot to ask of some 40-year-olds — some of them just don't have the same physical wherewithal of a 20-year-old. Physical stamina counts for a lot in some of the kind of duties and engagements they're coming up against."

According to Bostick, last year, 60 out of 524 active recruits in the 35-plus age group failed to graduate from basic training, an 11.4 percent rate that is about 75 percent higher than the Army's overall attrition in training. The failure rate of older soldiers in training would be higher if the Army hadn't lowered physical performance standards for the 40-plus group. To graduate from basic training, Beaver will need, among other things, to run two miles within 19 minutes and 30 seconds, a mark that is two minutes slower than that required of soldiers in their early 20s.

Even with that extra time, Beaver worries about his ability to meet the running requirement. "I tried running for 20 minutes or so the other day, and, in five minutes, I felt like I was about to have a heart attack," he says. "Halfway, I was dry-heaving; it was bad."

But he has deeper worries about what might be coming after basic training, particularly deployment to the Middle East. "I'm scared sometimes. I admit it," he blurts one afternoon. "Nobody wants to die."

Darkness is descending. Beaver, Teresa and Kalani are driving to a Wai'anae High School football game. As they get close to the school, Beaver says, "The football field sits less than a hundred yards off the ocean. Just beautiful. You don't think how beautiful, till you're getting ready to leave."

He parks the truck and, flanked by Teresa and Kalani, strolls onto a running track encircling the lit field. A few old acquaintances approach to shake his hand. They've heard the news. One man mumbles: "So you're going? The Army?"

"Yeah, I'm going," Beaver says. The other men's gazes shift up from the ground to study him. There is a pause in which no one around him says a thing. Beaver nods. "Leaving Monday."

"For real, brah?"

"For real."

The men slap Beaver's back in a comradely way, wish him luck, tell him to stay safe.

Oblivious to the game, Beaver pauses in front of the booths that ring the track. The Army National Guard has a stand, with recruiters handing out information to students and adults about the benefits of joining up. Kalani points excitedly at a Humvee that is festooned with the words "Hawaii Army National Guard."

A recruiter, seeing the boy ogle the Humvee, sidles over, gives Kalani a pat on the back and hands him a complimentary National Guard football. "That's yours if you'd like it."

"Thanks," Kalani mutters, and twirls the football in his hand.

"High school?"

"I'm a freshman."

"You look strong," the recruiter says. "You in pretty good shape?" He smiles and cuffs Kalani around the shoulders. "Good shape?"

Kalani smiles shyly. "I don't know."

"You look like you are. Whadda ya say you do a few pushups for me? Come on, drop and give me a few; let's see what you can do." The recruiter points at an older kid. "You. You want to try it, too? Here, you want a Frisbee? Come on, guys. Drop and show me what you got."

A grinning Kalani gets on the ground with the other kid and starts doing pushups. Kalani does 13 before the recruiter laughs and says he can stop. "I might want you to talk to me someday."

Kalani stands, spins his football. "Yeah, when I get older, I don't know, I might want to try the Army someday," he says.

PROS AND CONS

Beaver has walked down the track toward another military man. He greets Sgt. Derwin Villanueva, one of his own recruiters. Villanueva smiles and sticks out a hand. Simultaneously, Teresa gives Villanueva a hug.

A Hawai'i native, Villanueva forged a connection with the couple early in the recruiting process. "So, you doing your running?" Villanueva asks Beaver.

"I missed today," Beaver admits. "I had a lot of things to do. But I ate a salad at lunch."

"So, you ready?" Villanueva asks.

Beaver nods. He wants to say something more, but another group of people shouts his way.

Villanueva watches him shaking hands. "I've never had a 40-year-old recruit before," he says. "He asked a lot of questions about how it would be for his family — that's pretty typical for older recruits. He scored well, above average, on his (aptitude) test. He's a good communicator; he relates easily to people. The biggest challenges for him in (basic) training will be the physical ones. Age-wise, he'll be at a disadvantage with pushups and the run, those sorts of things. But his age should help him sometimes there. He's had to deal with stressful situations in his life and cope in ways that 18- and 19-year-olds haven't had to cope."

Beaver turns back his way. "Everybody wanting time with you," Villanueva needles his recruit.

"Brah, they just want to say goodbye to the old man."

Later, after dropping off Kalani at home and having a quick bite to eat, he and Teresa are back on the road, driving east along the beach highway in the dark. They say little. He finally mumbles, "Three days away."

She looks out the window.

"It's not gonna happen here for us," he says. "It's somewhere else. I don't know where, but it's gotta be out there somewhere."

Beaver calls this his "second life." In his "first life," he dreamt of building a comfortable career playing pro golf. Encouraged by his father, who was at different times a high school administrator and football coach, Beaver walked three miles as a boy after school to practice on a course, where coaches lauded his game.

In high school, he won statewide youth tournaments and often shot in the low 70s on courses where pros struggled. He gained admission to Brigham Young University in Utah and played on its golf team, but after a year, homesick and worried about money, he transferred to BYU-Hawai'i and returned home.

The readjustment came with a price: He found it tough to attend class or study amid the familiar attractions of home — the beaches, his friends, parties and old haunts. He admits, "When I got back, there was just too much aloha," by which he means, "Too much fun."

In the early '90s, he dropped out with about $20,000 in educational debts, took a job as an assistant pro at an O'ahu golf course and played local tournaments, where he won a pittance.

Kalani was born when Beaver and his first wife were living in Las Vegas, where Beaver worked at a country club. He spent much of his free time looking after his son. He so adored the child that he got tattoos of Kalani's name on both shoulders. "I'd just sit around with him for hours, playing with him and changing his diapers," he remembers. "That's good for being a father, but it's bad for being a golfer. Success is all about sacrifice. I never sacrificed enough for golf. I have guilt about that. I don't want any more regrets."

When the club was sold, he was out of a job. He came home to take another assistant pro position. By then, his marriage was suffering — there were personality differences and tensions unrelated to money, he says. The couple divorced in 2003.

Beaver moved back into his boyhood home with his mother. Kalani was shuttled between Beaver and his ex. "The divorce was a huge blow to my self-esteem," Beaver says. "I felt like a failure. It leaked over to my work at the country club. I wasn't doing well with much of anything. Everybody agreed that I'd probably be better off working somewhere else, so that was it. My marriage was finished, and golf was finished. I was at the bottom."

He had time to fill for a while. He took some online courses from American Inter-Continental University and picked up enough credits to get an associate's degree in business administration. He accepted work wherever he could find it.

Teresa, whom he'd met around the time of his divorce, tried buoying his spirits. Last spring, she suggested they look at a modest house with a corrugated steel roof, only to learn the asking price was about $400,000. "Made our hearts sink," she says. "We realized we couldn't afford anything. That hit us hard. We realized we needed to come up with a new plan. We were getting bad news everywhere."

Beaver's last job began in February. He worked on a construction crew and, though plagued by a fear of heights, accepted an assignment that required him to ride each day to the top of a tall crane in an elevated basket, step outside the basket and apply oil to the crane while suspended in the air and attached to the crane by only a harness. Another harnessed man doing the same job for a different crew fell to his death last spring. But the job paid well, about $30 an hour, and Beaver was receiving health benefits, all of which he lost in May, when the job ended.

It was the same month he turned 40. "I felt like I was running out of time," he says. He had begun accompanying his grandson's mother, 18-year-old Genesis Miner, when she went to visit Army recruiters, to whom she had been talking about enlisting in the reserve. As he stepped through the recruiting door for the first time, he looked like nothing more than her escort. But Beaver, unknown to his family, was by then pondering his own enlistment. After Miner signed up, Beaver continued visiting recruiters, thinking of becoming a full-time soldier. "It's all a life change for a 40-year-old guy, obviously," Sgt. Villaneuva says. "He was very careful. We took it slowly."

One evening in July, Beaver went home to talk about the possibility with Teresa. At first glance, life as a soldier did not appear very attractive: The salary sounded so meager. But the Army boasts that, at the rank of sergeant, a soldier's total compensation package, including health and educational benefits, commonly exceeds that of a new police officer. And signing up as an active recruit would mean a larger enlistment bonus — $25,000 (the sum of his quick-ship bonus and another $5,000 for becoming a cargo specialist), compared with about $10,000 for the Reserve. The Army would also pay off his educational debt.

Finally, recruiters told Beaver, active would mean a shot at a long and stable career and a pension. If he wanted to finish his undergraduate education while serving in the Army under an initial three-year contract, he would be able to take about $4,500 worth of classes annually, at Army expense.

A few days later, Beaver arrived at his decision. By then, he and Teresa had decided to marry. "It wasn't so much because he (was) going away," she says. "We were always going to do this someday, anyway. But I did think I wanted to let him know that I was going to be here when he got back — or that I was going to be there for him wherever he had to go."

MOTHER WORRIES

Beaver is cooking steaks on the grill, a feast for a few friends due to arrive soon. Inside, his mother is holding baby Jassiah. Divorced from Beaver's father and remarried, Betty Ann Carrancho is trying her best to keep what she is thinking to herself.

"When he first told me he was doing the Army, I couldn't believe it was happening," she says. "I wanted to upchuck. I know he sees this as a good opportunity. I understand why he's doing it, and I'm proud of him for wanting to do the best for his family. But, at my age, I have more fear of things, I guess." She smiles wanly. "He's a grown man who makes his own decisions, but I can't help myself. It's like he's 18 again. He's my baby."

Teresa walks through the room and, recognizing her mother-in-law's stricken expression, reaches for Jassiah. "Oh, I'll take him, Mom," she says. She has tried her best to be a morale booster for her mother-in-law during these last couple of weeks. But Teresa has her own concerns.

"I guess I worry about my husband killing somebody and what impact something like that could have on him," she says. "Emotional problems, things like post-traumatic (stress) disorder: that would be hard. I want the same Clayton. He's really squishy." She means soft and gentle. "But you'd have to be different if you've killed people or seen people killed. How could you not be?"

Teresa's father, Manny Ribeiro, shows up at the house along with a few other guests. Ribeiro, a former military man himself, jerks a thumb at Beaver, smiles and says of his son-in-law, "A lot of people think he's nuts for doing this."

Beaver laughs.

A few of the guests hesitantly ask Beaver about his reasons for joining the Army. From the start of his courting process with the military, he told recruiters he wouldn't take a particular occupation just because it might mean pocketing a few thousand dollars more in bonuses.

"Infantry is infantry," he tells his friends. "It's not like I was trying to avoid all the risk and the front lines, but I didn't want that ... I almost signed up to be an MP — you know, do the military police route. But then one of the recruiters brought to my attention that the MPs are some of the first ones being deployed to Iraq. ... Cargo specialist and crane operating sounded really good after that."

His father-in-law smiles. "Learning a skill."

Beaver nods. "Yeah. And getting home."

"We're all proud of you," says Ribeiro.

The rain has stopped. In the driveway, away from everyone else, Kalani is shooting a basketball at a hoop hung on the garage. "We've never been away from each other for long," he says of his father. "It'll be a little weird for me because he's taught me almost everything, like how to play baseball. Maybe it'll be kind of hard not to hear from him. That will be strange."

He glances at his father, to whom he gives space for the rest of this afternoon to hang out with his guests and join them in singing Hawaiian songs accompanied by guitars and a 'ukulele. But by the next day, their last full one together in Hawai'i, Kalani has reclaimed his dad. The two join Teresa, her father and a few friends on a golf outing. Between shots, Kalani rides alone with his dad in a golf cart, and now and then, his dad leans over and kisses Kalani on the top of his head or drapes a thick arm around him. Beaver, showing his old form, hits one laserlike chip shot after another within a couple feet of several pins.

On the last hole, Kalani's nerves fray. The boy badly shanks a couple of shots and knifes his club into the ground. "You gotta follow through, and you gotta keep your composure," Beaver tells Kalani, who momentarily looks furious at both the ball and his father. Beaver frowns. "Hey, I'm just trying to help, brah. You're pissed off right now, huh? Come on. Let's go." The boy storms up to the green, where Beaver puts an arm around him and pulls him tight against his chest. "It's all right."

IN THE ARMY NOW

The next morning Beaver arrives at the Entrance Processing Station at Pearl Harbor. There are three Marine and seven Army recruits, including Beaver. Nearly all are in their teens or early 20s, and some are handling the moment better than others. One young man has his head buried in his arms, crying softly, shoulders heaving.

Someone in a uniform walks in and calls out: "Attention on deck." An officer enters to conduct the swearing-in.

Beaver takes the oath and is officially Pfc. Beaver. He steps into another room, signs his three-year Army contract, reviews his travel itinerary and then sits quietly with Teresa in a waiting area. At about noon, Villanueva and another recruiter, Sgt. Steve Thomas, pay him a farewell visit.

Villanueva shakes Beaver's hand. "Our last face-to-face with you. Thanks for serving, brah."

Beaver nods. "Off to Fort Jackson."

Thomas pats Beaver on the arm: "Do well. Make us proud." He leans toward the recruit. "If you ever feel like quitting, don't. Especially the first two weeks of training; it can be hard. Find your way. Remember why you're doing this. Some people think of quitting early ... "

"I won't," Beaver says firmly. But, at that moment, he will acknowledge later, he is wondering why he is doing this.

Soon, Beaver and the other recruits board a bus that takes them to Honolulu International Airport. There, they try to relax while waiting for their flights. Within a few minutes, Teresa arrives with Kalani, Jassiah, Betty Ann Carrancho and Beaver's oldest brother, Alfred Beaver.

A handyman who formerly served in the Navy, Alfred tells him: "They'll call you Grandpa. Don't worry about it. Just pay attention to all the details they're giving you. How much they give you in bonus money?"

"Twenty-five thousand."

"Twenty-five thousand?" Alfred is incredulous. "Wow. I could still get in and do it."

"No, no, no, no," gasps their mother.

Alfred smiles and shakes his head. "I'm too old — I'm joking. Besides, the war situation — you maybe couldn't get me to go in."

There is silence for a moment, before Beaver says, "I don't want to live at home the rest of my life."

The brothers hug, wish each other well, and Alfred takes off.

Kalani pipes up. "How much time do we have?"

"Only a half-hour," Teresa says. "No. Less."

Kalani goes to play a video game. Teresa sits with Beaver, holding hands. Beaver uses his free hand to wipe at his eyes.

"It's time," Beaver says. "I've gotta start heading to the gate."

He walks over to Kalani, who is chomping hard on gum and staring at the video game screen. "Son, you almost done there?"

With Carrancho leading the way, they start walking toward the security lines. Beaver stops halfway. "Okay, hold on here," he says. He tells his mom he loves her, gives her a hug, kisses Jassiah on the cheek and then walks a little farther alone with Teresa and Kalani.

"How you doin'?" Beaver asks his son.

The boy is chewing his gum so hard his jaw muscles twitch.

Beaver puts a hand on Kalani's shoulder. "You make every moment count. Make the right choices. Remember everything I've ever taught you." The boy is stoic, and his father kisses him on top of the head and on his lips. "Hey," he mumbles in a strangled-sounding voice and, lunging at his son and wife, clutches the two of them simultaneously. Kalani buries his face in his father's chest. A good distance away, Beaver's mother bows her head, unable to watch.

A SHARPSHOOTER

Five weeks later and 25 pounds lighter, Beaver stands at attention with other recruits at Fort Jackson. A drill sergeant pins medals on the seven soldiers among the 54 in Beaver's platoon who have won sharpshooter awards for above-average shooting with their M-16 rifles. Beaver — who, other than hunting a few times as a child, had never handled guns before — is one of the sharpshooters; he hit a distant target on 30 of 40 shots.

"Congratulations, Beaver," drill Sgt. David Snyder says, shaking his hand. Midway through the nine weeks of basic training, Snyder says, "Private Beaver is squared away," which is Army talk for attentive, determined, skilled, worthy of respect and capable of leading. Snyder has given Beaver one of two leadership positions in the platoon, designating him as 1st Platoon's assistant platoon guide, or the APG.

Beaver helps Snyder with everything from maintaining discipline to resolving personality conflicts among the recruits. If Snyder needs someone to monitor calisthenics, Beaver — whose 70 pushups during a two-minute test placed him above the 90th percentile of recruits in his age group — does that, too.

LEADER OF MEN

At 32, Snyder has dealt with recruits younger and older than himself, and he prefers the latter. "By the second week of training, I saw that he was going to have leadership stripes and be the APG," Snyder says. "He talked to other soldiers. He was helpful to them. He openly expressed his opinions about things they were doing. He led in his own kind of quiet way. ... He's getting fitter — you can see that. The run is a challenge for him, but he's going hard." (In the days ahead, Beaver will pass his running test.) "He won't allow age to hold him back," Snyder adds. "The younger soldiers see that. Some of those guys, even the faster ones, quit if they feel pain. Beaver just keeps pushing."

He looks out at Beaver, who stands in a distant field with the other members of his platoon, all of whom are receiving additional simulated training on their M-16s. "You can see Beaver always concentrating out there," Snyder whispers. "You get the feeling he knows that if you pay attention, you have a better chance of staying safe. Maybe that's age. Maybe he appreciates more what is at stake. ... Some of the kids in the platoon have had everything handed to them growing up. And they're thinking about college money they might be getting from this, or how they might be using their bonus to buy a new car. Their minds aren't always in this, you know? And you get the feeling a lot of them don't respect authority. It's like they think that 'the authority' has kept them down all their lives. I'd say 20 percent of them have an attitude. It's a problem. I'm lucky to have Beaver."

The other leaders of Delta Company, and several of his fellow recruits, are similarly convinced that Beaver has a bright future ahead of him in the Army. Unbeknown to them, Beaver himself is far less confident.

During a short break, he says: "Sometimes I'll ask myself, 'What the hell am I doing?' I left a beautiful place, a beautiful family ... I think this has been the right decision, but if it isn't, I can go back and try again, I tell myself."

Training life revolves around rituals and rhythms, and Beaver has mastered them. His ease in training lets his mind to drift — not always a good thing, he says.

"I was thinking about home on the march over today. Kalani is not doing so good since I left." He looks over his shoulder, tells a recruit to please pipe down.

"Kalani's not playing baseball. I can't believe it," he says. "The only thing I can figure is that I'm not there." His voice catches. He clears his throat. "It's just hard. It's real hard."

Looking at the kids in his platoon has convinced him of one thing. "I don't want my son to go through this," he says. "I'll tell Kalani: 'You're going to school. You're not going into the military.' I hope he won't need to."

THE ADVISER

He has tentative plans for Kalani and Teresa to fly out and attend his November graduation, after Teresa sees her son graduate from National Guard training in Georgia. He hopes they can ride with him to the next phase of his training, at Fort Eustis, in Newport News, Va. "Then we find out where I'll be stationed, I guess." A young soldier calls to him, in need of advice. He bends to whisper to Beaver.

Other young men sidle up for a quick word every few minutes. Kids carrying secrets and worries — like all kids, he thinks. "It feels like I have Kalani and a bunch of other kids now," he says. "When you got kids anywhere, you got issues. It never stops."

"It's a great day for killin' terrorists," Sgt. Snyder greets his charges the next day. "Good mornin' ... Attention!" The platoon snaps to attention.

"Are you motivated?" Snyder asks his platoon and others.

"Motivated, motivated, downright motivated!" they howl in unison.

Snyder gestures at an obstacle called the Berlin Wall and at a couple of other walls, each of which looks about three stories high. "How many of you are scared of heights?" he asks.

About 20 percent of his platoon, including Beaver, raise their hands.

"Well, it sucks to be you," Snyder says. "Now, before we all do this, here's another thing you need to know. You can tell by all the indentations on these walls that many soldiers have lost control of themselves up there and lost some of their chiclets."

This generates nervous laughter. Chiclets are teeth.

"So be careful up there. Hand over hand on the ropes. Use your feet and hands. Don't panic. Again, let me see how many of you are scared of heights?"

Beaver's and the other hands go back up.

Another private standing next to Beaver tells him to put his hand down. "You don't want people to know you're scared, man."

Being scared, Beaver remembers, never stopped him from being suspended in the air and oiling that crane back home. "I can control my fear," he says. "Besides, why not let the scared ones know they're not alone?"

He spends the rest of the morning and early afternoon scaling the walls and, along the way, scurrying up barriers to help struggling comrades. To others, he shouts encouragement. "You gotta represent!" he shouts to C.J. Cannon, a platoon mate who is 41. "Old men gotta represent!"

Although Beaver won a platoon leadership position, Cannon is off to bigger things after basic training. Officer Candidate School awaits him, as Cannon already has a bachelor's degree. Having heard about Cannon's good fortune, Beaver has vowed to finish up his college credits so that he might quickly ascend from private and have a shot at becoming an officer. He howls at his fellow 40-something and exchanges backslaps with him when his feet hit the ground.

"Good that there're two of us doing this," Cannon says.

"The graybeards," Beaver chortles. The sweat pours off them.

The walls finally give way to an obstacle that requires the soldiers to crawl along sand beneath barbed wire. Beaver is among the last to try it, and the others in the platoon wait at the end to cheer him on. They imitate his singsong.

"Wat you say, brah? There's a coconut tree for you if you can get here, brah."

"Come on, Grandpa."

"Brah, you can do it. This is beach. Waikiki and all that. Your thing, brah."

"Let's go, Beav'."

He is scurrying on his belly, and it is the feel of the cool sand in his hands that returns him, he will say later, to Teresa and Kalani, to the life left behind. To the mother who took him in after his divorce. To the O'ahu beaches. To the aloha that was both reason for joy and the cause of his struggles.

"Come on, Beav'!" his mates are screaming, already jogging on. He slithers under the last wire and, with a shout, scrambles to his feet and half-stumbles over a bump, pumping his arms and running to catch up.