Their Bit

by Corbert Windage

tradition reward. The Headmaster had promoted the Cadet Major and Cadet Captain to Cadet Colonel and Cadet Lieutenant Colonel respectively. The entire school attended the ceremony. The colonelcy promotions were an honorarium given to departing seniors for a high school ROTC career well done. They held the rank, complete with the appropriate insignia, for one day. This allowed their junior class replacements to assume the rank of Major and Captain during the same ceremony. Tomorrow, the newly minted juniors would assume their duties while the seniors would be considered 'retired'.

  Still laughing, Clara said goodbye and headed back toward the cafeteria. Braden and Lauren parted with a quick hand squeeze. They had plans for a leisurely lunch at Deux Pont, in Jefferson, some thirty miles away. Rhoda fussed at Lloyd to let her go. She had two hours of student teaching to finish with Mrs. Vandermeter's kindergarten before her High School bondage was over. Lloyd and Braden planned to hang out in the arboretum, courtesy of the class of '18, on the south side of the school. The duck pond, situated among the trees, was a favorite place for all students. When the local mallards were in session, no one could resist paying them a visit, usually bringing extra bread. Everything considered, it had all the hallmarks of being a classical last senior day.

  Lloyd - Melancholia

  Telling a departing Rhoda he'd see her at noon, Lloyd turned to Braden. "Whadda ya say we turn in these uniforms."

  "Let's say goodbye to the ducks first." Braden said, "You know Lloyd once we take this uniform off we'll never put it on again."

  Lloyd threw him a mock salute. "Yes sir, Colonel sir." Braden rolled his eyes as Lloyd went on. "I swear Bray, I do believe you genuinely enjoyed all these years of playing soldier." They headed to the pond for a final goodbye to the ducks. Braden was silent for a moment.

  "Well in all honesty Lo, I did," Braden said as they made their way toward the arboretum. "And I thought…," he paused then went on. "I thought, despite all your complaining, so did you."

  Lloyd sobered up immediately. "Bray, you've been a good commander. You've been a better friend. More than I deserved sometimes. But you know we're almost night and day different. Maybe that's why this worked, you and me. You were born to do this; to command, I mean. You're a natural son. People will always follow you because you have that certain something."

  Lloyd paused his face contorting in concentration. "Oh hell! What's that French phrase I'm trying to think of?"

  Braden laughed. "Je ne sais quoi."

  "Yeah, that one," Lloyd exclaimed. "French, what a language. I got hopelessly lost after bon jour."

  "Yeah, not exactly your strong suit," Braden agreed.

  "But that's my point Bray. You have the whole package. I would have bombed French big time without your help. There's not one of the Rifles that hasn't been made a better cadet, not to mention a better student, and therefore, by extension a better person, because of the time and patience you invested in them. They would have followed you in a coup d'ecole if you would have suggested and led it."

  Braden couldn't control his laughter. Lloyd was funny sometimes, especially when he was trying to be noble or overly complimentary. But Braden knew that he spoke from his heart. Despite the gruff exterior he liked to project, Braden knew his best friend's nature harbored the heart of a decent, honest person. And this honest nature had always been an enduring quality that Braden admired.

  But sometimes, like right now, he had a tendency to gush over into a melodramatic sentimentality that was down right embarrassing. Luckily, Braden knew the secret to bringing him back to earth.

  "And you, Lloyd the Fair. Would you be by my side in this grandiose coup that everyone would supposedly follow me into?"

  "Me?" Lloyd said in mock horror, putting his hands up in surrender. "Oh no, Colonel sir. I give up at the first whiff of trouble." Then turning his palms toward one another and tilting his head he flashed a quirky grin. "Lover not a fighter here. That's why us Fosters will stare long and hard at the statues of the O'Days on horseback and wonder how we got stuck with the job of cleaning all that pigeon crap off of 'em."

  At this they both laughed and enter the outskirts of the arboretum.

  It was nine twenty-three.

  Twenty minutes later, HTS secretary Freda Glass slammed the phone receiver down harder than she meant to. Something had snafued the phones, and the exchange down in Schonefield didn't appear in much of a hurry about getting it fixed. She called Lauren over from the copier and asked her to hold down the front desk while she went outside and tried to contact the phone company on her vide phone. Not that she believed she had much of a chance, as reception this far out of town was still a dicey proposition at best.

  Lauren stopped. Jim had been dividing his attention between both kids, desperately trying to absorb the sheer normalcy of what they were trying to convey. Lauren was sitting at the same place where Freda Glass had asked her to watch over things. The desk pocketed by shrapnel splinters probably created when Harvey Miles's surprise party favors properly introduced themselves to the intruding horde.

  Jim initially thought that Lauren had succumbed to the strain of retelling. She gave him a weak smile and pointed to the clock facing her on the opposite wall. Unlike the desk the clock was brand new, but not working. It was frozen at 9:47:13.

  "I asked for that clock to be put there," Lauren said. "Nine forty-seven and thirteen seconds. Funny how one remembers things, isn't it?" Jim nodded.

  "That's the exact moment I looked at it before Mrs. Glass came running back in here saying that something was terribly wrong in town. I was sitting here. Rhoda was down in 208 teaching the Kindergarteners their colors. The boys were at the pond talking about the future. The front doors were open. I remember, I remember the birds chirping in the distance. Then all of a sudden they stopped. Then you heard it. It was like gunfire but it wasn't that. Backfire, that what it was. The engine was whining like a dying elephant up high and down. Then backfire. Pop Pop Pop. Mrs. Glass was saying something to Mr. Morgan in his office. I couldn't catch it because that noise was getting louder and louder."

  Lauren was locked in a faraway stare. Jim opened his mouth to say something, anything. The truth be dammed! There was no way in hell that this was healthy. Lauren wasn't just a young woman telling a story anymore. She appeared more like a rape victim reliving the attack. But the movement of her hand stopped Jim cold before he could utter a word. She raised it palm out in the universal sign to stop. She was there, and she knew Jim's concern would pull her back. But this one- way trip she had to make in one go or never at all. The thread was too delicate to be subjected to the constant strain of fits and starts. Constant pauses would break that gossamer fabric of realism only she and Lloyd could provide, forcing them to tell the story by rote. Meanwhile the healing property of truthful recall could be forever lost.

  Intermission

  Fate is a roller coaster.

  A clamorous slug carrying the righteous and wicked

  Toward the summit of choice conclusions

  Each

  Dali-esque scream and adrenaline dream

  Toward pseudo flirtations with the scythe

  Of

  Defection frozen in worm's arc

  Invariably knowing too late that

  Each deal seals the plunging side while anticipation still climbs with the other

  -Fated to Die

  By Lauren Hartman-Ortiz

  English 337

  Lloyd – The Ducks: A Flying Farewell

  The pond still retained the dying signature of winter's visit in the form of an icy crust remnant around the shadow contours the sun, this early in the year, had yet to touch. At its edge the silent sentinel concrete bench held the hopes and dreams that Braden and Lloyd now freely shared as well as their collective weight. Their talk centered around the future, and of course the girls. It was then that Braden shared his nearest and dearest secret with his best friend. A shocker, no doubt, Braden thought. Still, if you can't share with your best friend.

  A
pair of mallards eyed them suspiciously at first, then sensing no danger cruised over in hope of a hand out. The male, then a second later, its mate, turned their heads west and a moment later altered their course away from the boys. In an instant they were water walking and honking a plaintive warning as they took off to the east, leaving their potential meal tickets to wonder what had spooked them.

  "Squirrel hunting this early in the year?" Braden wondered aloud, picking up the distant report.

  "Bet that's the -," Lloyd started, figuring it was the Raizor boys, a local family that were friendly enough on the surface, but ornery enough to take a deer out of season with no qualms what so ever. He had stopped on hearing the second bang, now considerably louder and closer. He was already halfway off the bench when Braden flew past him. Now the pained whining of an engine was clear. Whatever was making that racket was coming straight toward the school.

  George Morgan

  No one would ever know the exact conversation between Mrs. Glass and Headmaster Morgan. However Lauren's story made it clear that two, three minutes tops was about all the discussion time they would have had before Officer Harper's dying cruiser rolled to a stop in front of the building.

  It was a stroke of luck, (many had regarded it as a design flaw) in constructing the school that George Morgan deliberately neglected installing any west facing