CALL TO DUTY

Square-chinned and tranquil, with a deep Dixie drawl, Johnson understands the vague isolation of his rural existence. There is one mall in Meridian, "and it don't even have a Gap," he says. He watches "Viva La Bam" on MTV while a train whistle blows in the distance. On Friday nights, he and his friends hang out at the Sonic drive-in until the waitresses chase them off, and when there is really nothing to do, they meet at the boat ramp where they stand around a 55-gallon drum and burn trash.

"Pretty redneck, huh?" he says, smiling.

The men in his family operate cranes, install cable and lay telephone lines. His father was mostly absent from his childhood. His mother held the family together, going back to college for her two-year degree. She now works as an IT specialist at Peavey Electronics. They live in a mobile home on two acres of cleared land that cost $3,000. A house would be nice, but Diane Johnson is afraid more manufacturing work will shift to China, leaving her with a mortgage payment and no job.

Such fragility makes the military the best job going, but there are also cultural forces. Johnson jokes about being a hick, but the powerful realities in his life are hunting, church, Confederate soldier memorials and American flags. His public school has brightly painted "Prayer Request" boxes in the hallways. Students held a Godapalooza on campus this year, and 170 souls stepped forward to be saved. Unlike some schools around the country, Clarkdale warmly welcomes military recruiters.

"Not to feed a stereotype of the South, but the people here believe in God and country," says Roy McNeill, the high school principal. "For the most part, they believe the president has their best interest in mind. These are not high-and-mighty government thinkers; they are young men and women who just want to help their country."

For such notions, they pay a price. The football field at Clarkdale is named after a 2003 graduate who joined the Marines and was killed in Iraq. This is the same field where Blake Johnson played quarterback this year, and the same field where he suffered a knee injury that hurt his chances for a college scholarship, which is what led him to meet with the military recruiters.

"If you don't have a college degree, you have to work on the railroad or [the oil rigs] offshore," Johnson says. "Or get a cashier job that don't pay nothin'. Around here, people are like, 'Why don't you go to the military?' "

And yet the weeks and months of his senior year roll by and he does not sign the paperwork to enlist. One night as baseball season gets underway, he goes to the mall and runs into a Clarkdale graduate wearing a red Marine Corps T-shirt. Wiry and taciturn, Matthew Addy pulls up his sleeve to show off his tattoo.

"I'm still studying up on Navy SEAL karate," he tells Johnson, standing outside the food court. "In a bar, I can't even throw the first punch. Being with the martial arts and being a Marine, I'll get charged with attempted murder."

Johnson nods. "You're a dadgum deadly weapon," he says.

Addy rides him for not committing to the Marines, and he delivers a message from some of the recruiters: "They told me to tell you they don't like you for [wimping] out."

Preparing to Ship Out

'There is danger in anything you do'

The redbuds are starting to flare along the roadsides. Spring is here, and graduation is not far behind. Young Marine recruits are receiving their ship dates for basic training at Parris Island. One warm Saturday afternoon, 10 young men gather for an orientation at a recruiter's house in Meridian. The house is in a new subdivision and is palatial by the standards of many in Mississippi. Gunnery Sgt. Mark Ramos likes to bring recruits here to show them what they can have if they become Marines.