by Trent Reedy
“Like what?”
“Like mad.”
“I’m not mad,” I said. “Well … I’m pissed about drill. That’s all.”
“You are mad. At me. I know you way too well by now not to be able to see through your lame attempt to cover it up.”
First the drill change, then this news. I didn’t trust myself to say anything, so I drove on in silence. But JoBell wasn’t one to keep quiet.
“I know that you’ve had a lot on your mind lately besides college applications, but I think you should apply to U-Dub too. It would do you some good to get out of this old town. You know? Get out and see something new.”
How could she say that? Freedom Lake is where we grew up. Where all our friends lived. Where we fell in love. “I’ve been to Seattle before.”
“This would be different, and you know it.” JoBell rubbed my arm. “Okay, this has come as a shock, but think about it for a while. We could go to Seattle and get a brand-new start. It could be really great. Plus, you know, we wouldn’t live in a state where the National Guard was sent out to murder innocent people.”
Always back to that. I couldn’t think straight. I blurted out the first excuse that came to mind. “I doubt they’d take me with my straight Cs.”
“Your grades aren’t that bad,” JoBell said. “You have all year to bring them up. And even if they don’t accept you right away, you could still do a semester at Seattle Junior College until you had the grades to get in.”
She was living in a fantasy world. I didn’t want to go to Seattle Junior College. Shouldn’t she know that about me by now?
“We’re seniors, Danny. We have to start planning for the future.”
“I do have a plan,” I said. “Schmidty will want to retire soon. I’m going to buy him out of the business and run the shop myself. I’ll take some good auto tech classes at North Idaho Community College and —”
“Babe, that shop isn’t making much money.”
“It will when I update it, when we can do more work on natural-gas hybrids and solar tech.”
“You could find more advanced and interesting work with machines with something like a mechanical engineering degree. Why just change the oil on old cars when you could design new ones?”
“I do a lot more at the shop than oil changes,” I said.
She slid her hand down my arm and squeezed my elbow. “I know that. But I —”
“Anyway, I can’t leave Mom. She needs me.”
“I know she needs you, Danny,” said JoBell. “But you need to live your own life too.”
“I can’t abandon —”
“Hear me out,” JoBell hurried on. “We both know that even though she has problems, she is a strong woman. She doesn’t handle abrupt changes very well, but she does adapt in time. You had to start really slow with rodeo and football, remember? She got used to it.” She had a point. I let her continue. “When we go to Seattle, we’ll come home every weekend at first. After she handles that okay for a while, we’ll drop it back to every other weekend. Then once a month. Then every few months like normal college kids. I know she’ll be okay. I would never do anything that would hurt her. I love your mother. You know that.”
She made it sound like it would be almost easy. But I knew I wasn’t college material. I didn’t have the grades or the smarts to go to some big university to become an engineer.
I parked the truck in the school lot and leaned forward against the steering wheel. I felt JoBell’s warm hands sliding up and down my back. When I faced her, she leaned over in this great, low-cut sort of wrap shirt, and she smiled with the morning sun shining on her golden hair. We kissed for a long time. Amazing how that always made everything feel better.
She touched her forehead to mine. “I need to get out of this town, Danny. And you may not realize it yet, but you do too.”
—• I’m standing in a field off the southeast-bound side of Highway 84 over Snake River, where the Idaho National Guard has been mobilized to set up this checkpoint behind me. As you can see, Guardsmen are searching all traffic coming into Idaho, apparently in an effort to make sure no outside soldiers or law enforcement agents enter the state from Oregon. Civilians are free to come and go as they please, but while the soldiers are moving rather quickly with each car they search, this is obviously causing some difficulties with inbound traffic. Earlier today a number of small law enforcement watercraft patrolled the river, stopping at this checkpoint to fuel up before •—
—• those of you just joining us here on KRPK 780 AM the Rock, northern Idaho’s number one Christian talk station, I’m Mike Veenan. Welcome to The Call, the show where we do our prayerful best to answer your questions or offer prayers for whatever your concerns may be. Please feel free to give us a call at 1-800-555-ROCK, that’s 1-800-555-7625. Let’s go straight to the phone lines. Hello, Cindy from Sandpoint, Idaho, grace and peace to you through our Lord Jesus Christ. What’s on your mind today?”
“Mike, I’ve been following what’s been happening lately in the news? With these checkpoints? And the people shot in Boise? And I … I don’t know, but I’m really scared. How are we as Christians supposed to respond to all this? I mean, I’ve been praying for America and for peace and all, but, I mean, I don’t want to sound crazy, but this almost seems like the end-times.”
“Cindy, of course you’re doing the right thing by praying. And you do not sound crazy at all. Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us in Matthew chapter 24 verses 6 and 7, ‘You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.’ Now this is Jesus telling his disciples, telling us, about the signs of the end-times. I think you are absolutely right to wonder if recent events are the beginning of the end, but remember, our Lord tells us to see to it we are not alarmed. So … Spiritually prepare yourself? Certainly. And maybe we need to begin to stockpile shelf-stable food and bottled water, to make sure we have enough fuel in case •—
That evening I stood with my platoon on the armory drill floor, waiting for First Sergeant Herbokowitz to call the formation to attention so that our commander, Captain Leonard, could address the company. A lot of guys in the company were missing, but that was mostly because a bunch of them were already on state duty. I checked my watch. The first sergeant was taking a long time to get things rolling. Formation was supposed to be at eighteen hundred, but they were already ten minutes late. That never happened.
Finally, Herbokowitz came out of the orderly room onto the floor. He faced us and stood at attention. “Company!”
The platoon sergeants standing in front of each platoon turned their heads and yelled, “Platoon!”
But the regular routine was interrupted when Captain Leonard marched out on the floor. “Top,” he said to the first sergeant, “just skip it.” He held his hands up in the air, waving to us in a “come here” gesture. “Huddle up.” We all looked at each other for a moment before we crowded in around the commander.
Captain Leonard stood with his hands on his hips. He bit his lip for a second before pursing his lips and blowing out a deep breath. “These have been difficult times for the 476th Engineer Company. Most of our soldiers are deployed to Iran, and most of the rest of us had a rough time in Boise.” He paused and swallowed. “Being a soldier means dealing with tough stuff and helping your fellow soldiers deal with tough stuff.” He was quiet for a long time.
Luchen elbowed me and shot me a look like, What’s going on? Sparrow’s expression was unreadable.
The CO continued. “Maybe I should have done a better job helping my fellow officers cope. Now we’re all going to have to help each other get through this.” He stood up straighter. “It is my sad duty to report to you that Second Lieutenant Chad McFee took his own life with a sidearm this afternoon.”
A noise somewhere between a groan and a gasp came from the group, and I felt dizzy.
“He was twenty-three
years old, a fantastic and dynamic trooper,” said the commander. “A good officer.”
McFee had killed himself? I thought he hadn’t looked so great the last time I saw him. And what had I done to help him? Nothing. I’d allowed one more casualty from the Battle of Boise.
“Please join me for a moment of silence.” A cutting quiet fell over the group. “Now, we recently had our annual mandatory suicide prevention briefing, so I’m not going to make you all sit through that PowerPoint again,” said Captain Leonard. “But the chaplain will be around at drill if any of you need to talk to him. I encourage you, I beg you, if you are having trouble, talk to someone. Anyone. And all of us need to remember to be there for our fellow soldiers. Now. We have a lot of work to do, and as hard as it may be to focus on our duty, let’s remember that we are always ‘mission first.’ Let’s go to work!” He turned to Herbokowitz. “First Sergeant, take charge.”
We didn’t waste any time. Our squad and team leaders had everybody pack for a weekend in the field, checking to make sure we had everything we needed.
“Hey, Wright, I finally figured out what PMCS stands for,” Luchen said later when we were looking for leaks or other mechanical problems on our five-ton truck.
He was winding me up for a joke, but I wasn’t in the mood. “Preventative —”
“Preventative Maintenance Checks Suck!” He snickered with that idiotic laugh of his.
“Good one,” I said.
Luchen’s smile faded. “About McFee. Do you think it was our fault?”
My throat burned with that acid feeling that came right before I puked. Why did he have to ask me this? It wasn’t our fault. It was my fault. I’d started the whole mess that had torn McFee up bad.
“Clear your fingers,” Luchen said right before he slammed the truck’s hood closed. “Because I was thinking that maybe if we’d tried to —”
“Damn it, Luchen, what did I tell you about thinking?” Sergeant Meyers’s big form rounded the front of the truck next to ours. “The lieutenant killed himself because he was a coward. He didn’t have the guts or strength to deal with life. Now, I don’t want to hear any more of this kind of talk. Get this truck ready. We’re rolling out in fifteen minutes!”
I had always kind of disliked Staff Sergeant Meyers, but now I hated him. Enlisted soldiers never got to know officers very well, and I had known Lieutenant McFee even less than most. But it wasn’t hard to see that he’d been devastated by everything that had gone wrong at Boise. He must have wondered what he could have done differently to prevent the bloodshed. He actually cared about the people who were hurt there, couldn’t get the images of the blood and the memory of the screams out of his mind. It was cutting him up inside, burning in his dreams. Wanting to find a way to end all that pain didn’t make him a coward. It made him human.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see Specialist Sparrow. “You okay?”
“He wasn’t a coward,” I said quietly, struggling to keep myself together.
Sparrow gave my shoulder a squeeze. “I know he wasn’t,” she said. “Don’t listen to Meyers. He’s an asshole.”
I nodded and we finished up with the truck so we could get it in line for the convoy. I was picked as codriver, riding with my unloaded M4 in the cab with Sergeant Kemp, who chose to drive. We headed out of town and followed the highway as it curved around the north side of Silver Mountain. Then we hooked a left onto Elk Road and headed west for a few miles.
When the vehicle in front of us pulled over, we finally had a good look ahead. On the left side of the road, a brown wooden sign read IDAHO-WASHINGTON STATE LINE. Soldiers were already hard at work on the Idaho side, pounding steel pickets into the dirt and rubble where the highway used to be. Supplies had been stacked on the front lawn of a nearby farm — pallets with more steel pickets, rolls of barbed wire, and stacks of coiled concertina wire.
I’d seen this setup before. We’d had a class about it during my first drill. “They’re setting up a wire obstacle,” I said.
“Eleven-row concertina,” said Sergeant Kemp. “It can stop a Russian main battle tank.”
“They’re closing the road?”
Kemp pulled over and parked behind the truck that had led us out here. “So much for a simple training exercise.”
After we all unloaded, First Sergeant Herbokowitz gathered us around him in a loose cluster near the work site. “Listen up, 476! We’ve had some difficult news, but we still have to soldier on. This weekend drill is going to be high-intensity and fast-paced.” He pulled his comm from the cargo pocket on his thigh and read from it. “Governor Montaine has ordered all Idaho Guardsmen to attend MUTA-Five drill this weekend. The objective is to take all necessary measures to ensure no further armed federal incursions are able to enter Idaho.” Herbokowitz put his comm away. “What that means is that the entire border of Idaho is being fortified. That is no small job! We’re starting by seizing control of major roadways. Obviously civilian traffic will be allowed through. Only outside military or law enforcement will be forbidden to cross the border. The task of the 476th Engineering Company is to secure Elk Road by wire obstacle with an easily closeable civilian bypass. We will be setting up overwatch positions on the hills that border this valley. Finally, we will bring down trees on our side of the border so that we have some standoff room, so that it’ll be easier to spot any federal forces that cross into the state.”
This was unbelievable. This was wrong. We were digging in? For what? To get ready for a fight with American soldiers? With our own guys?
Herbokowitz droned on about the plan for work, going over the usual stuff about the need to remember safety and for the leadership to make sure the men drank water. “We’ll work until dark. Then we’ll go to 50 percent security. So leaders, draw up your guard plan. We’ll resume work at first light. Any questions?”
I hadn’t been in the National Guard for long, but in the time I’d served, I’d learned some things. The first lesson was, in general, to shut your mouth and do what you’re told. I squeezed the barrel of my M4. I knew I should follow that first lesson, but I couldn’t help myself. I raised my hand.
Herbokowitz narrowed his eyes. “PFC Wright? You got a question?”
“First Sergeant,” I said. “Is all of this even legal? I mean, to tear up a road like this?”
“Damn it, that’s exactly the kind of shit we don’t have time for!” Herbokowitz’s face flared red. “An order has come from our chain of command. It’s not up to us to ask if it is legal or illegal, right or wrong. We don’t get to make that decision. The lawmakers do. Idaho lawmakers have decided this is legal. Our commanders have ordered us to comply. It’s our job to figure out how to obey that order and then to get the job done! You all signed your name on the line and swore an oath, so I don’t want to hear no more of that kind of talk. Besides” — he seemed to calm down a little — “we’re not being ordered to commit some sick war crimes. We’re not killing babies or burning villages or anything like that. We’re building a damned wire obstacle and a couple fighting positions. We do this stuff at annual training every summer. The only difference is that instead of doing it on some training ground, we’re doing it out here.” Herbokowitz put his hands on his hips. “So let’s go! We have to work while we still got light!”
Luchen slapped me on the shoulder and shot me a look like, You should have kept your mouth shut. Maybe I should have, but this still felt so wrong. First National Guard checkpoints at major roadways, and now we were digging in using tactics that were designed decades ago when we were preparing for World War III with the Russians. Weren’t we taking this whole thing too far? How would Idaho and the Fed ever work out their differences if we were converting our state into a fort?
But maybe the first sergeant was right. We were all sworn to obey orders, and these were the only orders we had. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if the president told us to take this wire obstacle down.
“Let’s go, Wright! Don
’t just stand there! Move your ass!” Sergeant Meyers yelled.
I hurried to join the others, who were scrambling to grab pickets and spools of wire. What followed was the hardest, fastest work I’d done in a long time. NCOs shouted orders, calling for soldiers to pound steel pickets into the ground. Then other soldiers wearing wire mesh gloves bounced coils of concertina wire over the pickets, looping each end onto the last picket in the line.
“Move it, ladies!” Sergeant Meyers shouted.
Specialist Sparrow unsnapped her chin strap so she could tip back her helmet and wipe her forehead. “I really wish he would shut up.”
Me and Luchen chuckled.
“Stop messing around, Luchen, Wright,” Meyers said. “This is a basic combat engineer task. Let’s get this obstacle in.”
That was easy for him to say. He was only shuffling his fat ass around telling others what to do, and how and when to do it. He knew his stuff and kept us moving, but by the sixth time I had lifted the steel pounder by both handles and slid it over a picket, I was ready to punch the guy.
Shortly before dark, we were allowed to stop, but we only had three rows done. I sat on the ground at the side of the road with Luchen and Sparrow, who, like me, drank madly from their CamelBaks.
“This sucks,” Luchen said. “Two more days of this shit. Don’t know if I can take it.”
Sparrow elbowed him. “Come on, I thought you were supposed to be a tough guy.”
“Don’t you ever get tired?” Luchen asked her.
“’Course I do,” she said. “But I have to hide it more so I don’t catch crap from Meyers and you guys.”
Sergeant Kemp stepped up behind us. “I just got word that our team is going to be setting up fighting positions somewhere over there.” He pointed to the north edge of the valley, toward a hill that was covered in pine trees on the Washington side of the border, but at least partially cleared on the Idaho side. “We may be doing a live demo mission to bring down trees faster, but I doubt they’ll actually find us any C4 for that. Anyway, grab your rucks, ’cause we’re stepping it out right now. We’ll work on it as much as we can before dark, and then finish up tomorrow morning.”