The Right Side

by Spencer Quinn

  He said nothing, showed no sign he’d even heard. What was this about? She remembered he’d applied for work at a golf course—which had turned out to be the one where Ryan’s father played, a fact she’d kept to herself. Maybe he’d gotten turned down. But why? Her dad was a hard worker, and he could fix anything with a motor in it. She glanced at the papers he’d brought, now held loose in one of his big hands. Had the golf course sent him a bunch of complicated forms to fill out? And now he was embarrassed to ask for help?

  “Dad?” she said. “Is this about the golf course?”

  The smile, confused or not, vanished at once. “Golf course? What fuckin’ golf course?”

  “Wasn’t it Desert Springs? The one on the way up to Cave Creek?”

  “That’s enough about golf. You know what golf is? A sign of our weakness, nothing more, nothing less. Think the Muslims are playing golf? Think they’re lining up putts in Afghanistan?”

  LeAnne laughed. “That’s silly, Dad.”

  For a moment, he looked like he was about to blow. But then he gave his head a hard shake, like he was unscrambling things inside, and he laughed, too. “That goddamn laugh of yours,” he said. He reached out with his free hand, patted her knee. “By the time you get your commission, the pansies in charge’ll have us out of that cesspool, one potential worry off the table.”

  “What cesspool?”

  “Afghanistan. They’ll teach you about tactical retreats at the Point—tactical retreats that are goddamn routs in disguise. That’s what this country’s all about now.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “And what’s more,” he said, raising a finger, “you don’t have to do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Go to the Point. You got other offers—UCLA, Rice, Vanderbilt.”

  “None of them are full rides, Dad. But the main thing is I want to go to the academy. I thought you wanted that, too. Don’t you?”

  Her dad’s eyes seemed to mist over a bit. He narrowed them down to fierce slits. “They don’t deserve you, that’s all.”

  She half rose, gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. He dabbed at his eyes with his sleeve, then got busy with the papers.

  “Damn paperwork,” he said. “You’d think you could make up your will in one or two sentences, but no.”

  “Your will?”

  “Irresponsible not to have one at my age.”

  “But you’re still young!”

  “Ha ha.”

  “Comparatively.”

  He shook his head. “Cut the bullshit. The point is everything I’ve got goes to you. Not a hell of a lot, as you know, but not nothin’ either, on account of this here.” He handed her some stapled-together sheets of paper.

  LeAnne leafed through. “Insurance?”

  “Exactly right. Life insurance policy I took out the day you were born, using my share of the settlement. A goodly part, in any case.”

  “Settlement? I don’t understand.”

  “From the fire.”

  “The fire? But that happened long before I was born.”

  “So? I still had the money, or at least some. What matters is I locked it in, and you’re the sole beneficiary.” He leaned over, jabbed his finger at some clause on the page.

  LeAnne handed back the papers. “Well, that’s very . . . nice of you, Dad. But it’s all theoretical.”

  “What’s with you and all the fancy words?”

  She shrugged.

  “Aren’t you even gonna ask the amount? The payoff on the policy?”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re a hard-ass, you know that? I’m gonna tell you anyway.”

  LeAnne covered her ears, the most anti-hard-ass move she could think of.

  The worst thing about Willis was that his food had to be alive. Bernice handled the feedings, which took place just before closing time every third afternoon and involved small rodents. LeAnne made herself watch the whole performance her first summer on the job, once and once only. On one of those third afternoons, not long after the life insurance visit, LeAnne was sweeping the porch and Bernice, wearing rubber gloves, was on a stepladder, lowering some sort of rat down into Willis’s cage, when a squad car from the sheriff’s department drove up, parking near the cage. Two uniformed deputies got out and looked around. That distracted Bernice, who took her eyes off Willis, coiled down below and making plans.

  “Bernice!” LeAnne shouted. Bernice jerked away, letting go of the rat. Willis’s head shot up to where Bernice’s hand had just been, fangs flashing in the sunlight.

  “Nice try, Willis,” Bernice said, climbing down off the stepladder and stripping off the rubber gloves like nothing had happened. She walked toward the deputies, giving her hair, sprayed into a hard sort of helmet, a pat or two.

  “Can I help you?”

  “That a rattler in there?” said one of the deputies.

  “Perfectly legal,” Bernice said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Looking for a LeAnne Hogan,” said the other deputy.

  “What’s this about?” Bernice said.

  LeAnne stepped off the porch. “I’m LeAnne.”

  The deputies approached her. “Daughter of Rex Hogan of 2241 Lost Hills Road?”

  “Yes.”

  “Best if you’re sitting down for this.”

  “What? Tell me.”

  Bernice was now at LeAnne’s side.

  “We’re sorry to inform you that your father was killed in a wreck up in Wickenburg at approximately two forty-five this afternoon.”

  “No.” Everything solid inside LeAnne, mostly meaning her foundation, weakened at that moment. “No. Please no.” The hot, late-afternoon sun seemed to turn liquid and spill across the sky. “No.” She had no idea at what volume she was speaking, or even if she was producing any sound at all.

  “Afraid so.” The rims of the deputies’ hats shaded their eyes from view. “He was dead on arrival at St. Joe’s.”

  “No.” The hot liquid sky blazed down, but LeAnne iced up inside.

  Bernice gripped her arm. “What kind of wreck?” she said.

  “Not good.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “There was a strong smell of alcohol in the cab of the deceased’s vehicle. In ideal driving conditions, according to eyewitnesses, the vehicle swerved directly into a bridge abutment, just south of the county line.”

  LeAnne almost toppled over. Bernice, a very small woman, kept her on her feet.

  The day after that came the results of the blood alcohol test: 0.39, the legal limit being 0.08. She looked up blood alcohol level 0.39, learned that it could be deadly just by itself, no driving involved; which would have been better. LeAnne wrote two letters, one to West Point withdrawing her application, the other to Gina Torrelli thanking her for everything, taking care that no tears stained them. Two days later she buried her father, then drove to the nearest recruiting office and enlisted in the army.

  LeAnne awoke, found herself alone in Marci’s bed, the prosthetic leg pressing uncomfortably against her side. She sat up, checked the time on the wall clock, forgot it, and checked it again.

  “Marci?” she said, making no sense in the empty room. “Marci?”

  Silence; that hospital silence of beeps and murmurs and distant sirens on the move. LeAnne rose, with a plan in mind to go down or up to PT, wherever it was, and find Marci. Then came a knock on the door.

  “What?” LeAnne said.

  “LeAnne? Are you decent?”

  She felt her face. Her goddamn patch had slipped off again, the way it always seemed to when she slept. She turned to the bed and was rummaging through the covers when she heard hard-soled footsteps in the room.

  “Afternoon, Sergeant. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

  LeAnne turned very slowly, more than a reluctant movement, actually one she had to force. Then she just stood there, not knowing what to do. Normally a salute would start things off, this being her commanding officer, Major Ladarius
Sands, and he was in uniform, but she was not and would never be. She kept her hands at her sides. Meanwhile, he had a good long look at her face, his own showing no reaction whatever. Then he took off his hat, came forward, and gave her a hug, a warm, tight, brotherly hug.

  “So good to see you,” he said, patting her back. “Especially looking how you do, way, way better than the last time.”

  “The last time?” LeAnne gazed into the hall. A nurse came to the door, glanced into the room, went away.

  “The last time I saw you.” The major gave her another pat or two. LeAnne tried to remember the last time she’d seen him. In the chow line just before that last mission, a mission he hadn’t been on because of some quirk of scheduling she no longer remembered. But not the point. The point was that at that hour, that night, she’d still looked like her old self. Therefore . . . therefore he’d seen her since? She had no memory of that.

  The major stepped back but still held on to her upper arms. “Everyone says hi and how much they miss you,” he said. “All the guys, and the CST team. Here’s a card, signed by everybody.” He reached into an inside pocket of his jacket and handed her an envelope. She took the envelope but made no move to open it. “And here’s something else,” he said, “which I’m honored and proud to present.”

  He gave her a small box, the size earrings might come in. She made no move to open it, either.

  “To tell you the truth,” he went on, “never more honored and never more proud.”

  LeAnne opened the box. Inside was a ribbon with red, white, and blue stripes, and on the end of that ribbon hung the Bronze Star. She looked up at him. The expression in his eyes was indeed one of pride, mixed in with a kind of sorrow as well. LeAnne couldn’t bear the thought of him feeling sorry for her, and was thinking of giving the Bronze Star back to him, when she suddenly pictured herself saying to Marci, “I almost gave it back to him.” Just to see Marci’s reaction. So she didn’t return the Bronze Star, instead simply said, “Thank you.”

  “No,” said the major. “Thank you.”

  The nurse appeared at the door again. “May I come in? Just for a moment?”

  LeAnne shrugged. The nurse came in, walked quickly by them, picked up Marci’s prosthetic leg, and headed for the door.

  “Hey,” LeAnne said. “Where are you going with that?”

  The nurse stopped and turned.

  “Are you taking it to Marci? I can do it, if you want. Where is she?”

  “No one told you?”

  “No one told me what?”

  The nurse took a quick, deep breath. “Marci threw a blood clot in her lung. It all happened so fast. There was nothing we could do.”

  “What are you saying?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Is that how you hold your girlfriend?” LeAnne said.

  “Sorry, ma’am?” said the pimply recruit lying at her feet.

  “Am I a commissioned officer, Dracut?” Dracut had been in her life for less than five minutes and because he was prone, his tag couldn’t be seen, but she’d already memorized his name. She always learned the names, first thing.

  “Uh, I’m not sure, ma’am.”

  “Look at my arm.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What do you see?”

  “Stripes, ma’am.”

  “How many?”

  “Three, ma’am.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Sorry, ma’am?”

  She heard smothered laughter from down the line. “Cruz. Give me twenty.”

  Cruz started doing push-ups.

  “Those are pathetic, Cruz. They count as minuses. So now you owe me twenty-three.”

  Cruz did twenty-three push-ups, a bit less pathetic, but not much, his soft middle touching down first every time.

  “Dracut?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Christ Almighty, Dracut. What’s the meaning of three stripes?”

  “Sergeant, ma’am?”

  “So what do you call me?”

  “Sergeant?”

  “Very good, Dracut. Also very slow. How does slow stack up against the enemy, Dracut?” All the prone bodies seemed to change a little bit, like they’d felt something inside.

  “Not good, ma—sergeant?”

  “Worse than that, Dracut. Real fuckin’ bad.” She let that hang for a moment or two. “Back to your girlfriend. Is that how you hold her?”

  “I don’t have a girlfriend, Sergeant.”

  “But let’s say by some miracle you did. Is that how you’d hold her? Crushing the life out of her?”

  “No, Sergeant.”

  “Then why hold your weapon like that, Dracut? Hold it nice and it’ll be nice back.”

  Dracut relaxed his grip slightly on the M16.

  “Steady,” she commanded. “Breathe in. Hold. Squeeze.”

  Dracut fired a round. The silhouette, distance one hundred meters, went unscathed. Not just the circle at the center, meaning the actual target, but the whole thing. A snicker came from down the line. Without looking that way, LeAnne said, “That’ll be twenty, Ferguson.”

  “Wasn’t me, Sergeant!”

  “Thirty.”

  LeAnne turned back to Dracut. “Do you know how to hold your breath gently, Dracut? So your face doesn’t go that disgusting shade of purple?”

  “I think so, Sergeant.”

  “Is anyone asking you to think?”

  “No, Sergeant.”

  “Then don’t think. Just hold your breath gently.”

  “Yes, Sergeant.” He held his breath gently.

  “And don’t pull that goddamn trigger ever again. Squeeze doesn’t mean pull. Look it up. Squeeze is the way you’d press the thing at the top of a pen to get the point out. Ever used a pen, Dracut?”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “It’s just like that. I ever see you pull a trigger again, I’ll have Ferguson bite your finger off.” She glanced at Ferguson, still doing push-ups, all of them crappy. “Isn’t that right, Ferguson?”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” he said.

  “You constipated, Ferguson?”

  “No, Sergeant.”

  “You sound constipated. How many’s that?”

  “Twenty-six, Sergeant.”

  “Those last two are minuses, Ferguson. Add ’em on.”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “Dracut.”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “Steady. Breathe. Hold. Squeeze.”

  Dracut fired the weapon. This time he hit the very edge of the silhouette, bottom left-hand corner. The class checked Dracut’s target through their scopes.

  “A flesh wound at best,” LeAnne said. “Maybe it’ll get infected.”

  “Sergeant?” called a voice from the far end of the line, the only female voice in the class. “You can see that without a scope? Where Dracut hit, I mean?”

  “You doubting me, Haynesworth? Give me twenty-five.”

  Then, from behind: “Excuse me, Sergeant.”

  LeAnne turned, found herself facing the range officer. Standing beside him was a woman wearing silver eagles on her epaulettes, the highest-ranking woman she’d seen in person so far in her career. She saluted.

  “Sergeant Hogan, like you to meet Colonel Bright.”

  “Ma’am,” said LeAnne. She shook hands with Colonel Bright. Colonel Bright’s hand seemed to be the exact size and shape of her own, plus she squeezed pretty hard. LeAnne squeezed pretty hard right back.

  “I apologize for interrupting your class,” the colonel said. “Which seems to be going well.” The recruits lay prone, unsure, gaping. LeAnne hoped to God none of them shot themselves while her back was turned. “But,” the colonel went on, “I’d like a few moments of your time.”

  “Recruits,” she said. “Safeties on.” She heard a click or two, knelt to examine the nearest weapon, the stock shiny with newbie sweat. “See where it says ‘Semi’?’ Switch it to ‘Safe.’ ” A sweaty, grimy finger made the right move. That was followe
d by click, click, click down the line.

  “Your record is outstanding,” Colonel Bright said.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” said LeAnne.

  They sat in a corner at the back of a Burger King near the base, LeAnne still in the MultiCams she’d worn on the range, the colonel in dress blues.

  “For a, quote, ‘non-combatant,’ end quote, you’ve seen a hell of a lot of combat. The situation’s a joke, of course—once you’re in a combat zone, you’re in combat. But still—you’ve been a model for what’s coming. And while we’re at it, I’d be interested in more details about that suicide bomber episode south of Herat. You were with the Fifth Infantry? Bob Keefer is an old friend of mine.”

  “As far as I know, those details are still classified,” LeAnne said.

  The colonel’s lips, glistening with hot pink lipstick, and quite a lot of it—turned down. “Meaning you’re not going to discuss it?”

  “I’d never want to be in a position of refusing a direct order, ma’am.”

  Colonel Bright laughed. “Bob warned me about you.” She took out a nicely bound leather notebook, glanced at a page or two. “End result, you saved the life of some tribal muckety-muck by not missing a detail that everybody else missed. That the gist of it? Just nod.”

  LeAnne nodded.

  “What do you think about those tribal muckety-mucks in general?”

  “That’s not really my assignment,” LeAnne said.

  “First, I’m not so sure about that whole compartmentalized way of dealing,” said Colonel Bright, dipping a French fry into a pool of ketchup and popping it into her mouth. “Second, if everything goes the way I think it will, those questions are going to be very much on your plate.”

  LeAnne thought about the tribal leaders question. “They mistake restraint for weakness,” she said.

  “Agreed. So what do we do about that?”

  “On the ground, ma’am?”

  “On the ground. For example, we could go on-purpose crazy once in a while, shoot up some folks just to make a statement.”

  LeAnne had seen something like that a couple of times, bad scenes that no one talked about after. But had they worked? Not that she could tell. “Better to show them that we’re the ones who don’t go crazy, no matter what,” she said.