January Dawn Read online

  Teague kept on running, looking back only once before he disappeared over the rise and across the grassy field to the finish line.

  I tried to stand, but my ankle wouldn’t take my full weight. I hobbled toward the finish line, jolting with pain in each step. Other recruits ran by me, one or two at a time. None of them bothered to help.

  What was I thinking? This isn’t me. I got too caught up in all the vain glory. Maybe I was getting too big for my britches, like Mr. Stephens said.

  About fifty yards from the finish line, as I stumbled onward, wincing in pain, someone finally took pity on me. With a quick sweep, midstride, he threw my arm around his neck and wrapped his arm around my body. Together, we limped toward the finish line.

  “Thanks.”

  Alex said nothing. The sour look of utter defeat said it all.

  *

  I didn’t know what hurt me more, my ankle or watching Teague revel in the glory of his promotion. He had a silly grin on his face as the platoon surged around him, congratulating him. He cheated and there was nothing Alex, nor I, could do about it. You have to pick and choose your battles and this one was a lost cause.

  I spent the rest of the day in the infirmary with my foot elevated on a stack of pillows. When the doctor took my boot off, my ankle had swelled to twice its normal size and bruised to the color of blue and purple. They took an X-ray and ruled out any broken bones or fractures. That was the good news. The bad news was that I still had a very bad ankle sprain.

  The doctor gave me some drugs for the pain, wrapped my foot up nice and tight with an elastic bandage and an ice pack and ordered me to rest. I was done for the day.

  That evening he gave me a pair of crutches to use. I could feel my face redden as I asked how to use them. I had never seen such a device before. He laughed while showing me how to use them and sent me on my way.

  “You shouldn’t need them for more than a couple days,” he said. “In the meantime, take it easy and keep the activities to a minimum. I’ll talk to your drill instructor about the situation and we’ll get you better in no time at all. Have a good night and don’t have too much fun with them.”

  They weren’t any fun at all. The crutches pinched my armpits when I walked and I almost collapsed three times on my way back to the barracks. I couldn’t get used to the idea of not using my leg to walk.

  After a concentrated effort, I made it back. The barracks was already clean and the platoon was on free time. I checked my watch. Only twenty minutes until lights out.

  Teague was touring around the room flaunting his new chevrons. He caught my eye when I walked in and grinned, holding out his sleeve for me to see the Corporal insignia. It was a double v, one chevron stripe stacked on top of the other. I ignored him and continued hopping to my bunk.

  Carrigan was on her bunk reading some sort of magazine. She dropped the booklet when she saw me.

  “Holy smokes, are you okay?” she asked.

  “What’s the verdict? Are you going to live?” Hayes asked.

  I shuffled over to my locker and grabbed some clean clothes and a towel. “I’m fine.”

  “How did you say you tweaked your ankle again?” Shannon asked.

  “I fell,” I said, excusing myself. There was no need for them to know. Besides, my foot was throbbing and I was still riled up about the whole fiasco. I didn’t want to talk about the race or my foot or Teague, I just wanted to take a hot shower and go to bed.

  I opened the door to the shower room with my crutch and listened. No running water. Good. It was a little juvenile, but I felt more comfortable showering when nobody else was in there. It made it safer for me to get in and out without anybody seeing my scars.

  I thought I’d have the showers to myself, but when I rounded the corner there was Alex Redman sitting on the wooden bench that ran along the center of the room. He was leaning forward with his elbows on his bruised knees and his head resting against his interlocked hands. His clothes were haphazardly strewn on the floor around him and he was wearing nothing but his G.I. boxer shorts. His mouth was moving in silent whispers. I think he was praying. I had seen a couple of the other recruits pray before lights out.

  I shambled by him as I quietly as I could, not wanting to disturb him.

  “Why did you stop?” he asked. “You could have beaten him.”

  I’ve had enough of this. My foot was hurting and for once I didn’t give a rat’s ass what he had to say. I was tired of his pouty, self-righteous arrogance. I’ve tried to help you several times and you spat on me every time. I very nearly blew up on him right then, but he must have seen the frustration on my face.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re the only one here that treats me like a human being. I’ve been a real jerk to you since day one and I’m sorry.”

  I could tell that those words came out painfully for him.

  “I wanted that promotion. I wanted to be platoon leader. I wanted to be top of the class. I wanted, I wanted, I wanted, but what have I accomplished? Nothing. I’m a joke. How can I lead this platoon if all they see when they look at me is my father? I hear them all the time talking behind my back, saying how my father is a traitor, and how he should be shot for what he did. None of them even know the truth, they just go around repeating all the lies they hear.” So that’s what this is all about.

  “What is the truth?” I asked. I had heard all the rumors, but Alex was the only one who could possibly now the truth.

  “That’s the thing, I don’t know. My dad never told me and I hate him for it. This was supposed to be my career. I was going to land the fast track to become an officer. I was going to rise up the ranks and become a great general like he once was. How am I supposed to do that when I’m constantly facing the repercussions of my father’s sins? He knew this is what I would be facing here. Why didn’t he tell me?”

  Alex looked at me through the narrow slits of his eyes, begging for an answer, an explanation, another lie, something to assuage the pain.

  His tight lipped mouth formed a faint line. This was a side I had never seen of him before. He had always been solid and steadfast, but now he was being sensitive and vulnerable. I was right all along. This was a cry for help. I could have kept on walking, but I didn’t. It was clear he was struggling and I was in a perfect position to help.

  I looked into his eyes and saw that he was scared and confused. And I think maybe, he was seeking somebody to explain to him why things were the way they were. Get in line for that bucko. At the very least, he might have simply been looking for a friend.

  “Do you believe your father did what he did for the right reason?”

  Alex paused, his shoulders sunk and he said, “I’d like to think so.”

  “Then that’s all that matters.”

  When I asked that question my mind flicked back to the night of the fire. Why did Mr. Jeffries have to go back? Why couldn’t he have left with me? What were those gunshots? Did he kill Mr. Stephens? Would he do that? My whole life, he preached the virtues of non-violence and forgiveness. He told me that I must not succumb to hate. The world had too much of it already. I was only torturing myself thinking these things. I had to believe that what he did was for the right reason.

  “I want to prove to him that I can be as good a soldier as he was.”

  “Then prove it,” I said.

  “How?” A tear formed in the corner of his eye. He wiped it away before it could drop.

  “There’s always a way.”

  I realized I had been standing since we started talking, so I took a break from balancing on my crutches and took a seat on the bench.

  “I should quit,” he said.

  “You quit and you only prove what they’ve been saying about you.”

  Alex rubbed at his watery eyes. “I must look like a pretty sorry case, don’t I?”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.

  “You know, back in high school I was the quarterback of the varsity football team.
I led my team out onto the field every Friday night and I called the plays and I controlled the ball and I almost won us the state championship two years in a row. I was the big man on campus, living the dream. People trusted me and nobody dared to talk about my father to my face. I heard some of the rumors there too, but not so much, because my father still holds quite a bit of respect in Savannah. But here…here it’s different. Here they…” He didn’t finish his sentence. “How will I ever lead men in combat if nobody will trust me?”

  “I trust you,” I said. He scoffed. “Remember last week when I kept tripping over you during drill?

  “Yeah.”

  “For the life of me, I couldn’t get it down. I had a hard time learning the steps and the timing, but after I started watching you I started to get it. After a few days, I was doing it as well as you. And remember how you used to get mad at me every morning because I couldn’t make my bed correctly? I watched how you did it. I copied everything you did. By the end of the week, I was making my bed by myself. It was the same with a dozen other things, in class or in the barracks, whatever it was, I looked to you. The Army is something very different from what I’m used to and knowing you has made that transition a lot easier.”

  Alex pinched at the bridge of his nose, rubbing away the last of his tears. “Yeah, my dad made me make my bed with hospital corners since I was seven years old. He’s real old school. He even did the whole bounce a quarter on the bed test.”

  “Sounds rough.”

  “Only when he was home. He was usually off on deployment. He would leave my mom to take care of all of us children. All six of us. When he came home for the last time, things changed. They started sheltering us more. They made us stop seeing some of our friends, my dad stopped talking about the military, and he took us out of the military school and put us in a private school. I was too young to understand at the time. I would get angry and get into arguments with my parents a lot. By my junior year I wanted to get out of there and run away from it all. Looks like I didn’t run far enough,” he said, standing up to hang his towel on the hook outside the shower stall.

  He seemed to appear somewhat similar to his old self now and I thought he was ending the conversation, so I held my crutches upright and pulled myself to my feet. My job here is done.

  “Hey, thanks…for listening,” he said.

  “Someone close to me once told me that every once and awhile we need somebody to pick us up off our knees and tell us that the sky isn’t falling and that we need only to open our eyes to see it.”

  Mr. Jeffries did that for me more than a few times. He pulled me back from the brink of self-destruction and gave to me the gift of life. I miss you Mr. Jeffries, wherever you are.

  Alex thought about that for a moment and then shot me an inquisitive look.

  “What’s your story?”

  “You’re not the only one running away from something,” I said, not wanting to say anything more. For a second, I felt that I could talk to Alex and tell him the truth, but the feeling passed. My life was my burden and nobody could help me with it. I had to deal with it on my own.

  Alex nodded understandingly, slipped out of his boxer shorts and stepped into the shower. I took a shower in my usual stall at the end of the room and made it to my rack a minute before lights out.

  As I lay in bed, I was comforted with the fact that I had helped someone in need. When I looked into Alex Redman’s eyes, I could see that I had gotten through to him and that he was back on the right track. I could sense something else in him too, something swarm, something satisfying, something concrete. Whatever it was, it got Alex’s motor running again.

  For some odd reason that I couldn’t explain, that conversation with Alex elevated me from my depressive slump. A wave of hearty cheerfulness flowed through me as I lay there staring up at the ceiling. A smile slinked across my face. I had a warm bed, a solid roof over my head, a full stomach and now, a new friend.

  I could get used to this life.

  Chapter 6

  March 12

  We had been walking for nearly three hours after being dumped out the back of an armored personnel carrier and told to find our way back to base.

  It was one of our final field exercises, meant to test all that we had learned. The entire platoon was taken miles into the woods surrounding the base and scattered about pell-mell, sometimes in twos, sometimes in threes, the rest in singles. They gave us a twelve hour time limit to return to base. We chalked this challenge off as another simple exercise, not knowing beforehand that it would take place in the dead of night or under below freezing temperatures.

  We wore full combat gear, minus the hardware and our helmet. Out here was about mastering the art of camouflage and infiltration. We couldn’t have anything that rattled or shined.

  Alex and I watched as our comrades were thrown piecemeal out of the back of the APC. It only served to build up the tension for when we too were finally dumped on the roadside under the cloudless night sky. We watched the taillights of the APC disappear around the bend.

  Alex and I first needed to find our bearings and figure out which direction to head. This part of the base was unfamiliar to us. Travelling along the open road was a surefire way to get caught by the roving patrols. We knew it was only an exercise, but we had to think about it as if it was the real thing. Into the woods we went.

  My entire relationship with Alex Redman changed after our talk in the shower room. I now shared an affinity for him similar to that of my other friends in the platoon. I understood him better than anybody, simply because I was willing to sit and talk with him.

  I accepted Alex for who he was and he respected me for that, and I him, for never asking questions about my past, even though I knew he was curious. If it wasn’t for Mr. Jeffries voice still echoing in my head, I would have told Alex who I was and where I came from. I will eventually, I thought.

  What was troubling me the most was that I was thinking about Mr. Jeffries less and less as the days went by. His voice of reason was fading. He told me not to trust anyone and here I was betraying his trust by trusting those he told me not to. Am I wrong? My friends are great. They respect me and appreciate me. Were you wrong?

  Hayes and the others were hesitant to accept Alex at first, but I convinced them that he wasn’t the same moody dirtbag that they originally knew him to be. After a while, they accepted him into our little group of misfits and quickly forgot their previous misgivings. Alex Redman was a part of us now, being the leader he came here to be.

  After an hour of traversing parallel to the road, we had a frightening run-in with another pair of First Platoon men, who we mistook for a patrol when we practically collided into each other in the dark forest. Shannon and Pike quickly allayed our fears when they announced their names. They brought us good news and bad news. The good news was that they knew which direction the base was. The bad news was that it was eight miles back in the direction we came from.

  The four of us walked in silence in fear of being overheard by a patrol. We traveled within eyesight of the road on our right, so that we didn’t get lost. Occasionally, we would have to lay flat on the ground when we saw headlights. Their spotlights would penetrate the blackness of night in search of us. The daggers of light vainly lit up only a fraction of the densely dark woods. But it was better to play things safe.

  Vehicles were easy to avoid, but foot patrols were a different story. Several passed within a hundred yards of our position throughout the night. The grisly barking of the war dogs and the blue-white beams of flashlights gave us ample warning and time enough to hide.

  Sporadic bursts of gunfire boomed in the distance, breaking the silence of our hike. We knew the recruits weren’t provided with firearms, so it must have been the patrols. Some unlucky fellow must have gotten shot. Hypothetically speaking, that is. This wasn’t a live-fire exercise.

  Every patrol had a referee attached within the unit. If you were engaged, the referee decided whether or not you wer
e caught, killed or wounded during the altercation. These refs were usually drill instructors or officers from the locally stationed Eleventh Armored Division.

  At around three in the morning, Alex huddled us together in the concealment of shoulder high bushes.

  “Patrols are getting more frequent. I think we’re getting close.” Alex’s face was hidden in the shadows. Only a few puffs of frosty breath could be seen in the chilly night air.

  “There’s no way we can continue our pace without getting caught. We’re walking blind.” Pike said. “These patrols have night optics and radio communication, not to mention their weapons. We have nothing but our knives, and we can’t even use those.”

  Just then, several bursts of automatic fire clacked nearby. It couldn’t have been from more than half a mile out. The echoes of gunfire sent uneasy shivers down my spine. We were being hunted and we had nothing to fight back with. If this is what combat feels like I’m in for a long ride.

  “What if we got weapons?” I said.

  “Yeah, and how do you suppose we do that, white boy? If you haven’t noticed we’re out in the woods being hunted?” Pike asked, while rubbing his hands together for warmth.

  Pike was a cynical man, always quick to dispel anyone’s ideas, even more so if you were white. During my few weeks in boot camp I came to learn that racism was widespread in the military.

  There were several divisions even within First Platoon when it came to race. Some of the white recruits in our platoon refused to have anything to do with the black recruits, and vice versa.

  Pike, one of the handful of black recruits in the platoon, had a reputation for starting fist fights in the barracks. I couldn’t blame him. The comments one overhears in the barracks are not exactly flattering. I heard a lot of the same words that Mr. Stephens used to say to Mr. Jeffries. But Pike’s problem was his inability to determine that not all the white recruits in our platoon were racist. Alex and I harbored no ill will toward him, nor any of the other black recruits. In fact, Private Hayes was a good friend of ours. Pike should have known that.