by Glen Tate
Franny rang the metal triangle that was the meal call. It was one of those metal triangles like in the cowboy movies.
Pastor Pete, who was trusted enough to know about the actual activities out at the farm and had become the unit’s chaplain, came out and was ready to say a few words before the meal.
Grant started off by getting everyone’s attention. The squad leaders made sure their squads quieted down to hear from their commanding officer.
“What can I say?” Grant started off with. “What can I say? Here we are. A group of strangers a few months ago. Most of us were wondering what the hell an ‘irregular unit’ was and why the hell we’d volunteered for this. Now we know, don’t we?”
“Yeah!” and “Hooah!” people shouted.
“We’re here to …” Grant paused. Everyone expected a speech about fighting for liberty. Nope. Not today, Grant thought. Not today.
“We’re here to be thankful,” Grant said. “For all we have. For a place out here that’s safe. For supplies. For HQ. For comms. For a medic. For food. For water. But for something much better than all of that: for each other. We have what a lot of people don’t: a family. Not your normal kind of family with weird uncles and annoying cousins. A family of people who’ve got your back. Who will die for you. And you’ll die for them—although we’ll do our best to not give you that opportunity.”
That got some laughs. But it was true.
“You guys have what most people never will,” Grant continued. “You have a band of brothers.” Grant felt bad using the name of a movie instead of something original, but the term fit so well.
“I’m not leaving out the ladies,” Grant added. There were six women in the unit. No fraternization problems. Yet.
“By ‘brothers,’” Grant continued, “I mean people you’ll never, ever forget as long as you live. People who will take a bullet for you and vice versa. People you can count on to run through fire to save you if you’re hit. Remember these days, ladies and gentlemen. Remember them. Savor every memory out here. Every one of your fellow soldiers. Remember and savor them. You’ll be telling stories about these days for the rest of your lives. Your kids and grandkids and great grandkids will retell the stories.”
Grant paused and looked at the amazing spread of food. Turkey, stuffing, potatoes and gravy. Even butter. Oh, wow, there was butter for the rolls. Grant hadn’t had any for months. It was so creamy, so sweet, and made whatever it was on taste so much better. Butter made foods taste “normal” again.
But the star of the show wasn’t butter. It was the pumpkin pies. Kathy even got some cream from one of the Pierce Point dairy cows and Franny whipped it up.
With the amazing spread of food on the tables and the whole unit there (except a skeleton crew of guards), it was time for Grant to say something to kick off the feast.
“Today is Thanksgiving,” Grant said. “This will be the most memorable Thanksgiving of your lives. I know it will be for me. Sit down. Eat. Eat some more. Talk to the guy next to you. Get up. Sit down and talk to another person. Enjoy this time with your band of brothers.”
Applause. Lots of nodding.
“Now Pastor Pete will say something,” Grant said.
“I can’t add much,” Pastor Pete said. “Just be thankful. ‘Be joyful always, pray at all times, and be thankful in all circumstances.’ First Thessalonians 5:16. ‘Be thankful in all circumstances.’ Thankful you’re not out there. Thankful we’re going to fix this mess. Thankful that we can. But, like Lt. Matson said, be thankful for each other. This unit isn’t anything without each and every one of you. Now let’s eat.”
And they did. It was a joyous time. Everyone was smiling. People were laughing. Squad leaders were handing out turkey wishbones for breaking for good luck. Everyone was telling stories about their Thanksgiving traditions back home. Several stories about past football games played on Thanksgiving were being told. People were talking about their family’s special Thanksgiving recipes. Oh, and crazy uncles. Everyone seemed to have a story about a crazy uncle who came over for Thanksgiving and did something off the wall.
The big hit of the meal was the sliver of pumpkin pie—with whipped cream!—everyone got. People were slowly eating each bite. Savoring it. Closing their eyes as they ate it and grinning.
Grant lost count of how many people said, “I’ll never forget this Thanksgiving” and “I’ll never forget all of you.” He knew that the story of this Thanksgiving would be told for decades to come. It was legendary.
By now it was 10:30 a.m. and time for Grant, the Team, and Pastor Pete to get back to the Grange for the Pierce Point Thanksgiving. “Tough duty,” Grant joked. “We’ve got another feast to attend—work, work, work,” he said with a smile.
Grant signaled to Scotty, who got on his radio and called in to Rich to come and get them. They couldn’t get a ride from just anyone, only someone who could know they were out with the “rental team” at the farm.
“I don’t want to leave,” Ryan said. The rest of the Team nodded. “This is amazing,” he said. He had been in combat. He knew how important this kind of bonding was. He just kept looking around the room and nodding with a smile on his face. He had been in a band of brothers in the Marine Corps in Afghanistan and knew what it felt like. He was feeling it a second time out at Marion Farm.
The band of brothers made this whole shitty job of killing people and getting killed tolerable. Men (and some women) were wired that way, and had been since men began fighting each other, which had been as long as there had been men.
Chapter 233
Different, But Normal
(Thanksgiving Day)
As they approached the Grange, they saw over a hundred people standing in the parking lot. Most were holding coolers or other food items. It had stopped raining about an hour earlier, so it wasn’t miserable to be standing outside.
There were so many people that Rich had to park a few hundred feet from the Grange. Rich, Pastor Pete, and Grant got out to hear cheering and applause.
As Rich, Pastor Pete, and Grant were walking toward the crowd, people started yelling out their thanks for the meal. Not for the food, although that was nice. They were thanking Grant for thinking of having a big Thanksgiving dinner. For Rich going into town and somehow coming back with turkeys. For organizing this. For making this the most memorable Thanksgiving they would ever have. Smiles, laughs, high-fives, and pats on the back. Grant felt like a million bucks.
As they walked into the Grange, there were more smiles and cheers. The place was packed. Rifles had been placed against the wall in the entryway. Grant took his rifle and kit off, which he never did. But, just like he didn’t wear a rifle to church, he didn’t want to have a rifle here. That wouldn’t help Thanksgiving feel “normal.” He wanted this to be a community feast; taking off the rifles would foster that feeling. So he did. The Team, seeing him do it, followed suit. Most people in the Grange had never seen the Team without their rifles and kit.
The smells. Not just the turkey, stuffing, and potatoes and gravy smells. Now the smells of all the food people brought was mixed in. There was fresh bread, desserts, all kinds of foods. Coffee, too. And sweet potato pie. Betty—the hippie chick organic gardener who had been ahead of her time and to whom rednecks now flocked to for gardening advice—had managed to grow some small sweet potatoes and made the pie. There was Gideon talking to her. Guess who was getting a big ole’ slice of that pie? A man who earned it.
Grant and Rich couldn’t just sit down and eat so they went into the kitchen to see if Kathy needed anything. She just shook her head and kept telling people where food went, where the plates were, and the million other things it took to feed five hundred people in one day—with no grocery stores, almost no transportation, and no big dining facilities.
“This is just the first shift,” Drew said as he came up to Grant. There was Eileen, Lisa, and the kids. They were eating. Except Lisa. She had people talking to her about their medical needs. She was used to i
t by now. At some point, she would need to eat some before it got cold. Grant decided to help her do just that. He sat down next to her said, “Go ahead and eat, dear.” The person next to her realized she was impeding Lisa’s meal and politely excused herself. Mission accomplished.
Lisa smiled when she saw Grant. “This was a really cool thing to do,” she said. “Remember when we had Thanksgiving at our house and you put too much water into the stuffing?” Lisa and Grant talked about their Thanksgiving memories as they ate. About when the kids were little and they had to drive to distant relatives’ houses for Thanksgiving and one time Grant fell asleep at the wheel driving home. Today’s feast was entirely different than a “normal” Thanksgiving but … it was entirely normal to have Thanksgiving. So it was different, but normal, which was exactly what Grant was trying to accomplish.
Different, but normal. That’s how life was out there now. Thank God for normal. Even if it was different.
Manda was talking to Cole, asking him what he was thankful for. “Mom and Dad and Sissy,” he said. “And Grandma and Grandpa, too.” Grant couldn’t ask for any better answer, especially from a kid who wasn’t supposed to be able to talk very well. Grant and Lisa looked at each other. They communicated with each other with just a glance: They were thankful for what Cole had just said.
Manda was scooting over, with Jordan right behind her. He looked even more grown up than the last time Grant had seen him. He was sporting a beard. Of sorts. It wasn’t thick, but he was seventeen. It showed that he had grown up in a hurry during the Collapse and was trying to look like a man.
Grant whispered to Lisa, “Bringing a boy over for Thanksgiving dinner. You know what that means?” Lisa laughed. They had this joke about bringing a boyfriend or girlfriend over for Thanksgiving. It always meant they would get married. They had seen that in their own Taylor family Thanksgivings. Grant had known that when Lisa invited him to Thanksgiving back in college that they would end up getting married. They watched as cousins at the big Taylor family Thanksgivings brought guests over and then got married.
Grant was proud of Manda. Being on the path to getting married at this very early age was not what Grant had envisioned for her, but he was okay with it.
The whole college, job, kids in your early thirties thing was just what people did at the time; it wasn’t set in stone that that was how human beings were supposed to live. In fact, throughout history and in every part of the world, it was the opposite. America in the late 1900s and early 2000s was an anomaly. Things were returning to normal now; to how the rest of the world did it and had always done it. Different (for Americans) but normal (for the rest of the world).
“Welcome to Thanksgiving, Jordan,” Grant said, breaking the tension. Manda was still worried that her dad was being overprotective. Grant wasn’t. He accepted and even welcomed Jordan. He just didn’t want his daughter to make any rash, teenager puppy-love decisions. He had to admit, however, that Jordan was a very fine boyfriend for her out here.
Accepting Jordan meant accepting that America was done for and would be for some time. Accepting Jordan meant Grant had given up on America returning quickly to the college, job, kids in your early thirties world. Even if this were over today, the rebuilding would take … a generation? More?
Manda was the rebuilding generation. If her generation worked hard at rebuilding, maybe her kids could go back to the college, job, kids in your early thirties thing. Maybe. If that made sense to Manda’s kids’ generation. It might not. That was their decision.
So the very real prospect of his daughter getting married as a teenager was the point of no return. After that happened, things would never be (pre-Collapse) “normal.”
Mark Colson came up to Grant. He looked concerned. “Have you seen Paul?” he asked.
“Nope,” Grant said. “Why?”
“We can’t get him on the radio,” Mark said. “He was supposed to be here for Thanksgiving.”
“He probably has his radio off,” Grant said. Mark seemed really freaked out.
“Since last night?” Mark said. “He hasn’t responded since then.” This was serious. Grant excused himself from the table. He hated to end the great family Thanksgiving dinner, but this was important. Lisa understood.
Grant got Scotty, who had the ham radio. Scotty went outside where he could hear the radio. A few minutes later, Scotty came back. He was pale.
Chapter 234
Purple Heart
(Thanksgiving Day)
Scotty was in shock. He motioned for Grant to come over.
“Paul is missing,” Scotty whispered to Grant. “The Chief found his boat drifting without Paul in it. The Chief is looking for him.” Scotty looked very seriously at Grant. “It doesn’t look good.”
Oh God. The perfect, happy memorable Thanksgiving had just been shattered. It was memorable, all right. They would remember losing their first man that day. On Thanksgiving of all days. How would Mark and Tammy—and poor, sweet little Missy, Paul’s daughter—ever face Thanksgiving again?
“What do we do?” Scotty asked Grant who didn’t have any good answers.
“Go and try to find him,” was all Grant could say. He knew it would probably be futile. Paul had probably fallen into the water. He didn’t wear a life jacket, despite the Chief’s constant barking at him to put one on. Paul didn’t think a life jacket looked “tactical.” After a while, the Chief just gave up on it. There’s another victim in all this, Grant thought: the Chief. He would feel guilty the rest of his life for not somehow making Paul wear the life jacket.
“Should we tell Mark?” Scotty asked.
“I think we have to,” Grant said. He was dreading this, but he knew he would be doing this a lot in the coming months.
Grant got Mark and took him outside, to the back of the Grange so no one else would hear.
“We’re going to go and look for Paul,” Grant said. “The Chief found his boat.”
“Good!” Mark said. “Why did he have his radio off for so long?”
This was going to hurt. “Paul wasn’t in the boat,” Grant whispered.
Mark looked at Grant and tried to figure out what Grant was saying. How could Paul not be in the boat?
Then it hit Mark. Paul was gone. Forever.
“No!” Mark yelled. He would not accept that Paul was gone. “He’s on a beach somewhere,” Mark said it like he knew it was true. “He made it to shore! Let’s go pick him up.”
“Sure,” Grant said, wondering if maybe Mark knew something he didn’t. “Did you come in your truck?”
Mark nodded. He couldn’t speak. He just wanted to get down to the water to go find Paul.
“Bring it out back here,” Grant said.
“Get the Team,” Grant said to Scotty. “Make sure they do it discretely. If they run out, people will know something’s up and they’ll worry the whole time. I don’t want to blow this Thanksgiving for everyone.”
Scotty nodded. He calmly went back into the Grange and whispered to Pow, who nodded and whispered to the other guys. One by one, they discretely got up and excused themselves. The Team Chicks were upset that they finally had a nice meal with their guys and now they were leaving, but they had come to know that if the Team had to go and do something, it was important.
Scotty realized that they couldn’t leave their rifles there. They had felt naked without them slung across their chests. He went into the entryway and stealthily grabbed their rifles and kit and loaded them into Mark’s truck, which was waiting in the back.
Grant went over to Lisa, who had figured something was wrong, and said, “Sorry, honey, gotta go.”
Lisa understood. “Glad we got a little Thanksgiving together, at least,” she said. He kissed her. At that moment he realized how thankful he was that his family was safe and sound. None of them were missing. Thank God.
When the Team assembled around Mark’s truck out behind the Grange, Grant said, “Sorry guys. I know you were enjoying Thanksgiving, but something obvio
usly very important has come up.”
“No problem,” Bobby said. “Band of brothers, dude. Band of brothers. Paul’s a brother. You go out and try to save your brother.” The guys nodded.
“Yeah,” Ryan said after a while. “Paul would do the same for me. It’s how this works.”
Ryan paused some more and thought about what he’d gone through with his unit in Afghanistan. “It’s the only way it works,” he said. Ryan looked the guys in the eyes and said, “If I don’t know you guys will come out and look for me, then I don’t want to go out there.” Everyone understood the deal: I’ll die trying to save you. And you’ll do the same for me. There was no stronger bond.
Grant realized that Mark was waiting on them to go find his son. “Let’s go,” Grant said and got into the cab of the truck. Mark was fighting to control himself, almost having spasms. He was so amped to go and find Paul.
Mark threw the truck in gear and sped out of the parking lot. They went flying down the road toward the beach. Way too fast; the guys in the back of the truck had a hard time staying in the truck bed. It was wet, but they ended up lying down on the wet bed just to avoid being flung out.
Grant didn’t say anything to Mark. In fact, he was getting very nervous riding with Mark. Mark was driving so fast it was frightening. It was the most scared Grant had been in quite some time, and that was saying something. Finally, as Mark was taking up both lanes of the road and overcorrecting the steering wheel, Grant said, “Slow down, man. We need to get there in one piece.”
Grant wasn’t sure if Mark heard him. Mark was in a trance of some kind. He eased up on the gas just as they were cresting a hill. The guys in the back were lifted up and slammed down as the speeding truck flew over the hill.
“Slow down!” Grant yelled. He was really concerned now. Mark had lost his mind.
Mark still didn’t respond. They quickly came to Over Road. There were two taps on the roof of the cab. Mark looked perplexed.