rifle, I stabilized it on a sandbag and sighted my mark on the tree through the empty bore of the rifle. Then I slowly moved my eye up to the Leupold scope and adjusted it click by click until the same mark was centered in the crosshairs. Finally, I put the bolt back in, inserted the magazine and chambered a round. I gently squeezed the trigger, and saw that the shot was a few inches low and off to the right. Then I repeated the process, adjusting the sight a few clicks and fired again, this time dead on. I hit the cross dead center, sending a shower of chips blossoming from the tree.
“Now with all that racket we can be sure we won’t see any deer this morning,” I said. Buddy chuckled.
We lay there side by side for a few minutes before Buddy started talking. I wasn’t surprised. When Buddy paired my brother-in-law and his client off together, I half guessed it was because he wanted to catch up with me. I even wondered if he might have engineered the whole trip for that purpose. He started off slowly, updating me on the town and the tough times the recession caused. Then when he ran out of gossip he paused for a moment and carefully said, “I told you how glad I was that you finally came home. Part of that reason was selfish. I never got a chance to talk to you after you decided to enlist. I’ve always wanted to tell you that I admired the courage you showed when you turned away from that Michigan scholarship to help your family.”
That surprised me. Buddy had put himself out to get those scholarship offers for me. He risked more for me than anyone else in Conestoga. I would have thought he’d still be burning.
I shook my head vigorously. “I walked away from my family. Mother wanted me to give up college and take a job at a machine shop. I couldn’t face,” being stuck in Conestoga I was about to say but I bit my tongue, “…that life, so I enlisted. Nothing courageous about it.”
The folds under Buddy’s eyes deepened as his expression softened. “You did take care of your family, don’t forget that. Maybe not the way your Mamma wanted, but good enough. I kept an eye on her and your sisters after you left. They did just fine with your help. And son, I can tell you as one former soldier to another, that there isn’t a coward born who gets to be Best Ranger at age 18. How on earth did you manage that?”
I wondered for a moment how Buddy knew that about me, but then I realized he was probably still reading Stars & Stripes , and even if he’d missed my name in the story, another local veteran would have told him. Stuff that wouldn’t make a whiff of difference in a city is big news in a small town. I considered my answer carefully.
“I was too obstinate for the regular infantry and I like to run,” I said. We shared a laugh.
The truth was more complex.
* * *
Two weeks after meeting Alpha, I received my field assignment. As Alpha had predicted, I was assigned to Airborne School. I loved the adrenaline rush of the jump, even the tame kind from a static line. Afterward, I was one of a handful of students to move directly to Ranger School without serving a stint in the 82 nd or 101 st Airborne divisions. To me, it felt like advanced hunting training with better weapons. Others found it grueling, but I thrived on the long hikes in the wood with heavy packs and even the nights we spent in the Florida swamps in the third phase. Shortly after Ranger School, I was approached by one of the instructors and persuaded to enter the Best Ranger competition in my first year as a Ranger, partnered with a veteran First Sergeant fifteen years my senior. We won the competition handily, and I became the youngest ranger to win the three-day athletic challenge in the seventeen years of the competition, and with it the title Best Ranger.
* * *
“I was pretty stubborn, too, but I wasn’t any Ranger, just regular infantry,” Buddy said, interrupting my thoughts, “And I didn’t get the Silver Star,
“Now with all that racket we can be sure we won’t see any deer this morning,” I said. Buddy chuckled.
We lay there side by side for a few minutes before Buddy started talking. I wasn’t surprised. When Buddy paired my brother-in-law and his client off together, I half guessed it was because he wanted to catch up with me. I even wondered if he might have engineered the whole trip for that purpose. He started off slowly, updating me on the town and the tough times the recession caused. Then when he ran out of gossip he paused for a moment and carefully said, “I told you how glad I was that you finally came home. Part of that reason was selfish. I never got a chance to talk to you after you decided to enlist. I’ve always wanted to tell you that I admired the courage you showed when you turned away from that Michigan scholarship to help your family.”
That surprised me. Buddy had put himself out to get those scholarship offers for me. He risked more for me than anyone else in Conestoga. I would have thought he’d still be burning.
I shook my head vigorously. “I walked away from my family. Mother wanted me to give up college and take a job at a machine shop. I couldn’t face,” being stuck in Conestoga I was about to say but I bit my tongue, “…that life, so I enlisted. Nothing courageous about it.”
The folds under Buddy’s eyes deepened as his expression softened. “You did take care of your family, don’t forget that. Maybe not the way your Mamma wanted, but good enough. I kept an eye on her and your sisters after you left. They did just fine with your help. And son, I can tell you as one former soldier to another, that there isn’t a coward born who gets to be Best Ranger at age 18. How on earth did you manage that?”
I wondered for a moment how Buddy knew that about me, but then I realized he was probably still reading Stars & Stripes , and even if he’d missed my name in the story, another local veteran would have told him. Stuff that wouldn’t make a whiff of difference in a city is big news in a small town. I considered my answer carefully.
“I was too obstinate for the regular infantry and I like to run,” I said. We shared a laugh.
The truth was more complex.
* * *
Two weeks after meeting Alpha, I received my field assignment. As Alpha had predicted, I was assigned to Airborne School. I loved the adrenaline rush of the jump, even the tame kind from a static line. Afterward, I was one of a handful of students to move directly to Ranger School without serving a stint in the 82 nd or 101 st Airborne divisions. To me, it felt like advanced hunting training with better weapons. Others found it grueling, but I thrived on the long hikes in the wood with heavy packs and even the nights we spent in the Florida swamps in the third phase. Shortly after Ranger School, I was approached by one of the instructors and persuaded to enter the Best Ranger competition in my first year as a Ranger, partnered with a veteran First Sergeant fifteen years my senior. We won the competition handily, and I became the youngest ranger to win the three-day athletic challenge in the seventeen years of the competition, and with it the title Best Ranger.
* * *
“I was pretty stubborn, too, but I wasn’t any Ranger, just regular infantry,” Buddy said, interrupting my thoughts, “And I didn’t get the Silver Star,
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