The Way of the Wolf

by David Archer

  Unfortunately, renting out their lands didn't get them quite the income they’d had from running the farm themselves, so money got a little tighter. In order to make things easier for Mrs. Winston, I asked Mr. Pembroke, the trustee who handled my accounts, for enough to buy myself a used car, and then I went and found myself a job.

  I was working nights at a little place that served fast food fried chicken, and it seemed like a good enough job. I was there for a little over eight months, and I'd done well enough to be promoted to assistant manager, which meant I got to close up every night. I didn't mind, because it gave me a couple of hours to be completely alone. I could do all the necessary paperwork, inspect the kitchen and dining areas to make sure the crew had done their jobs right, and still have a little time just for myself.

  One night, however, my private time was interrupted. Somebody started knocking on one of the doors, and I went over to tell him that we were closed, but he kept pointing at his ear as if he couldn't hear me. I took out my key and unlocked the door so that I could make myself clear, and that's when he shoved the gun against my chest and pushed me back inside.

  “Give me your money,” he demanded, pushing me toward the register on the counter. I watched the gun carefully, but I was paying even more attention to his eyes. They were darting all over the place, and I knew that he was every bit as unstable as my father had been the night he killed my mother.

  “Look, man,” I said slowly and calmly, “all the money has been dropped into the safe. I can't open the safe, only the day shift manager can. There's about thirty dollars in the register, that's what they use to open up with in the morning. That's all there is, but you can have it if you want.”

  The guy started screaming, then, and told me that thirty dollars wasn't nearly enough. He demanded that I open the safe, and I repeated to him that I simply couldn't do it, but he didn't want to hear that. He pointed the gun at me again, and for a split second I thought he was going to shoot me, but then he raised the gun slightly so that the barrel was aimed above my shoulder.

  I spun and kicked, and the gun went flying. The guy started screaming and rushed me, but I caught him around the neck and flipped him over my hip and onto his back, dropping my knee into the center of his chest and knocking the breath out of him. Even so, he was trying to fight, striking at me and trying to claw at my face, so I punched him, and then I punched him again. Each time I did, a little of the fight went out of him, so I kept hitting him until he stopped, his arms falling at his sides, his breath coming in ragged gasps. When I was sure he was unconscious, I got up and took a napkin and used it to pick up the gun, shoving it under the counter behind a box so that if he woke up, he wouldn't be able to find it, and then I called the police.

  They came and arrested the guy right away, but ended up calling an ambulance for him. It turned out that he was strung out on PCP, and by the time I had taken the fight out of him, I had broken his jaw in four places, as well as his nose, and cracked both cheekbones and one of his collarbones. He was taken to the hospital, where he was listed in critical condition for three days, before they upgraded him to stable.

  The story spread around town like wildfires in a forest, and people started looking at me strangely. I noticed only a couple of nights later that business at the chicken place was falling off drastically, and a couple of the employees actually quit, saying they were afraid of me. My boss called me in less than a week later, and told me he'd have to let me go because he was getting several dozen calls a day saying that people were avoiding his restaurant because of me.

  The problem wasn't so much that I had beaten a robber, it was that, despite the fact that it was well known that I was skilled in martial arts, I had never laid a hand on anyone in anger before. That made it seem to a lot of people that I had gone crazy that night, and it brought up the whole story of what happened to my parents, all over again.

  Like father, like son, was what people were saying. It would just be a matter of time, according to rumor, before I would murder someone. Of course, there were those who thought that I must have been using drugs myself, to be so violent, but I had agreed to a drug test that very night, so the police knew better. As far as they were concerned, I had acted in self-defense, even if some of them did feel that I took it a bit too far.

  Within days, I was a pariah. If I went into a convenience store to pick up a soft drink, other customers inside would simply put down their purchases and leave. If I tried to stop at a restaurant, the manager would be out within moments to tell me that I wasn't welcome there.

  I suppose the real problem was that people believe that an acorn never falls far from the tree. The local town folk expected me to become a killer, like my father. Nothing I could say would make any difference, and anyone who tried to speak up in my defense would only find themselves just as ostracized as I was.

  Finally, I decided it was time for me to move on. It was still four months before my eighteenth birthday, and I was still in the foster care system, so I called Ms. Gamble and told her I needed to speak with her. To her credit, she had never turned her back on me, not through the entire ordeal.

  We met the next morning at her office, and I told her that I wanted to leave town. She said she could try to arrange a transfer for me, but I shook my head. I had never forgotten the things my grandfather had said about duties, and I had come to think a lot around that time about defending my country. I'd seen a lot of war movies, read a lot of books on the subject, and decided that Grandpa had been right. America was my country, and serving it seemed to fit into my sense of logical right.

  I smiled at Ms. Gamble. “I'm thinking about joining the Army,” I said. “I think it's time for me to just move on, and at least there, all this history of mine won't be a handicap. I can do something good for once.”

  She didn't argue, and even agreed that she thought it might be a good idea. She made a couple of phone calls, and was able to get the local judge to appoint her my legal guardian, so that she could give me permission to enlist. I went to see the recruiter the very next day, and only a week later, I was off for testing. Three days after that, I was sworn in, and the very next day I reported to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, for basic training.

  EIGHT

  THE FIRST FEW days at Fort Leonard Wood were spent getting me set up with uniforms, getting all the paperwork done that made me a soldier, receiving shots and taking tests and forty-seven other kinds of ridiculousness. Over the years, I had become so adept at passing myself off as normal that dealing with psychiatrists and psychologists had gotten to be sort of a game, to me. I could look them dead in the eye and answer their questions, figuring out the best reply to make them think whatever it was I wanted them to think.

  It dawned on me sometime later that the reason I was able to do this so easily was because, after almost ten years of having to live this way, I had probably become the most intensely devoted student of human nature that ever lived. I didn't study psychology, I didn't look at how people thought, I looked at how they acted. Those actions would translate into my own, based entirely on whatever was going on around me at the moment. My almost computer-like brain had the uncanny ability to look at any situation, then find one in my memories that would give me direction on how to handle it.

  The shrinks all decided that I was pretty normal, although a few of them thought I was more intense than most of the other recruits. One even said he felt that I might be suited to intelligence work, or perhaps sniper school. If only they had known, right?

  Finally, I was assigned to my basic training unit, Echo Company, Fifth Battalion, Third BCT Brigade. BCT stood for basic combat training, of course. My company commander was Captain Babbitt, but the man I had to deal with the most was Drill Sergeant Paulson.

  Drill Sergeant Paulson was a tall and confident soldier. He had already served four tours of duty in the Middle East, and had finally been assigned the task of turning recruits into soldiers, taking raw kids like me and teaching them how to fight
for their country. He quickly became a role model to me, because I saw in him the true soldier's bearing. Drill Sergeant Paulson walked into any situation as if he were its master, and I realized instantly that anyone who was around at that moment automatically responded to him as the man in charge.

  Part of it, of course, was his rank. A drill sergeant is about the next best thing to an officer, in basic training. He's an expert in what we recruits are trying to learn, so that makes him the boss, automatically. For those of us assigned to his platoon, he was our primary authority figure. If there was a problem, we went to Drill Sergeant Paulson first, and he would decide if it needed to go any higher. Most of the time, it didn't.

  Each morning, well before the sun came up, Drill Sergeant Paulson would walk through our barracks, shouting at us to get our lazy asses up out of bed and report to the parade ground for PT. The first couple of days were a little rough for me, since I wasn't in the habit of waking up at four thirty in the morning, but after that I was ready. As for physical training, I was already addicted to exercise; my attitude was easily one of, “bring it on!”

  Physical training took up a good part of each day, starting with an hour in the morning before breakfast, and another hour not long after lunchtime. In between, we went through training on our weapons, which consisted of the M4A1, the M16A2 with M203 grenade launcher, the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW), the M9 Beretta pistol, plus light antitank weapons, hand grenades, and dozens of specialized weapons. We learned to disassemble, clean, reassemble and fire all of these, so that we would be proficient in any position where we were needed in a squad.

  My own favorite training, however, was the hand-to-hand combat. I had told my interviewers about my lifelong interest in martial arts, and had been warned that if I let my instructors find out about it, I might end up as a tutor or assistant instructor. I remembered how much I had enjoyed helping other students, as well as teaching my own friends, so when we started the hand-to-hand training, I didn't hold back. By the end of our first class, Drill Sergeant Paulson decided that I should be helping the instructor, and I was given an armband with acting corporal stripes.

  “This is Private Foster,” he said, pointing at me as I stood before the rest of my platoon. “Because he has had extensive training in martial arts, and has demonstrated a proficiency that is far beyond anyone else we got available to teach you girls how to stay alive when you run out of bullets, he is being drafted as an acting corporal to be your assistant instructor. As long as he is wearing the acting corporal stripes, any order he gives you is a lawful order as long as it is within the context of your training in hand-to-hand combat. You ladies will do what he says, or I will have you doing push-ups until your arms fall off, do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Drill Sergeant,” they all shouted at the top of their lungs. That was my first taste of military authority, but it would not be my last.

  Within a week, Drill Sergeant Paulson called me aside to inform me that he was going to make me an acting sergeant and squad leader. All this really meant was that I would be allowed to relay orders to my squad, which was first squad of the second platoon. My armband had three stripes, instead of two, and the troops in my squad were informed that I was in charge.

  There were nine troops in my squad, beside myself: seven men and two women. Their names, in alphabetical order for no particular reason, were Anderson, Bates, Donaldson, Grable, Lawson, Morgan, Oswald, Quincy and Yates. Morgan and Quincy were the two females.

  I was assigned an assistant squad leader, an acting corporal, and I wasn't terribly surprised when it turned out to be private Morgan. She had proven herself in a number of ways, not least of which being the fact that, even though she was the smaller of the two girls, she was absolutely fearless and had already whipped the asses of three of the guys in hand-to-hand. She was always cheerful, and if she didn't have some terrible acne scars, she probably would have been considered pretty by most men. In short, she had quickly gained the respect of the other soldiers in our squad, so when she was given the corporal's armband, I was confident that she would be an asset to me.

  Having this new pseudo-rank meant additional training for me and Morgan, classes on how to exercise and wield authority, maintain discipline and deal with problems. Those problems could range from something silly to more serious issues. For example, I was approached by a soldier who complained that his bunk mate had offered to wash some clothes for him, but as they were putting the clothes into the washer, it became obvious that the bunk mate had shit himself at one time or another, and the clothes he was adding to the mix were the ones he had been wearing at the time. I suggested that this was a matter that should be discussed between the two privately, and that was the end of it.

  In another case, however, Acting Corporal Morgan brought a soldier to me because he had come to her with the concern that one of his bunk mates had a loaded pistol in his locker, and had made threats against some of our drill sergeants and officers. Soldiers in basic training are not authorized to have weapons, particularly firearms, so I went immediately to confront the soldier about it. At first, he denied having the weapon, but when I insisted he open his locker and let me check, he became belligerent. He opened the locker, but then reached inside and snatched up the pistol, bringing it around to try to aim it at my face. I disarmed him, breaking three of his fingers in the process, then placed him under arrest and took him and the confiscated pistol directly to Drill Sergeant Paulson.

  Drill Sergeant Paulson reamed me wide, because I had not contacted him and allowed him to turn the situation over to the military police. I tried to explain that I saw no reason to do that, when I knew that I could handle the situation, at which point Drill Sergeant Paulson reminded me that I was still a brand-new recruit. The only thing I was allowed to do was what he told me, so while he would let it slide that one time, if I ran into a similar situation in the future, I should remember to come directly to him. I agreed, and the matter was settled. The private who had had the gun was taken into custody by MPs, and we never saw him again.

  Because we were likely to be shipped to the Middle East after basic training, or at least after our advanced training, the entire focus of the cycle was on dealing with desert conditions, how to handle improvised explosive devices and deal with insurgents. Everything about our training was designed to prepare us to go into Afghanistan, Iraq or anywhere else we might be sent in search of terrorists. The war on terror was in full swing, and we all knew that we could end up on its front line.

  It dawned on me one day that I was actually looking forward to the opportunity to see combat. I didn't have any agenda in mind; it wasn't that I wanted to be aggressive or hurt anyone, and I didn't have any buried anger or resentment that I wanted to let out on some nameless, faceless enemy. I simply came to the conclusion that my entire life, ever since the night my parents died, had somehow prepared me to be a warrior. Even my Pinocchio nature, having no emotions, only served to make me more effective and efficient in every area of my training. I excelled in every class, and a lot of my fellow trainees gave me the nickname, “Super Soldier,” which somehow got shortened to “Soupy.” It wasn't long before even the drill sergeants were using that moniker for me, which didn't bother me at all.

  “Soupy!” Drill Sergeant Paulson yelled. “Report to the first sergeant, on the double!”

  That order came in my eighth week of basic training, with only two weeks to go. I dropped what I was doing and took off at a double-time jog back to our barracks, where I would find the first sergeant's office. I walked inside and told the company clerk that I had been ordered to report to the first sergeant, and she told me to wait just a moment.

  Thirty seconds later, I was called into the first sergeant's office and told to have a seat. I took the chair in front of his desk, and waited.

  First Sergeant Haney was an old soldier, probably in his late 50s. He was a career man, that I knew for sure, and he loved the Army the way professional athletes love their ga
mes. He sat back in his chair and just looked at me for a couple of minutes, without saying a word. I have learned over the years that this was a ploy many people use to try to make someone uncomfortable, to make them nervous and unsettled before letting them know what’s going on.

  It didn't work on me. After a full two minutes, at least, First Sergeant Haney sat forward again and grinned at me. “Foster, I've been hearing a lot of good stuff about you. Paulson tells me you're the best he's ever trained, and if you knew as much about that man as I do, you'd know that's an incredible compliment.”

  “Thank you, First Sergeant,” I said.

  First Sergeant Haney laughed. “You might not want to thank me, not just yet. The reason I wanted to speak with you, Foster, is because there is a special directive that came down from on high a few years ago that requires me to make a recommendation of at least one of our recruits each cycle for special forces training. Paulson thinks you're the guy, this time, and from everything I've heard I tend to agree. I wanted to sit down and talk with you for a minute, before I make a decision on whether to put your name in the hat.”

  “Thank you, First Sergeant,” I said again. “I'm more than willing to serve wherever the Army needs me, First Sergeant.”

  He tilted his head to one side, squinted his eyes, and looked at me for another moment. “So, you'd be okay with being shipped off right after graduation to special forces school? We're talking about eighteen months, possibly more, of extremely intense training.”

  “If you believe I'm qualified, First Sergeant, I'm more than willing to go.”

  He picked up a sheet of paper off of his desk, looked it over for a moment, then passed it to me. I saw that it was a recommendation form submitting my name for consideration for special forces training, and at the very bottom there was a paragraph that allowed me to endorse the recommendation, a statement that I was willingly in agreement with the submission, with a space underneath for me to sign. I looked it over, then reached up onto the first sergeant's desk and picked up a pen, scribbled my name on the line, and passed it back.