“Or… graduation is in two hours. You could make your own case to the captain in a hearing in one. Nothing to lose.”

I shook my head and felt the cord around my neck. “Does the Drill Sergeant want his toothbrush back?” I wouldn’t need it back in civilian life. I reached up to strip it off.

Ord cleared his throat. “I generally ask for it back after graduation. Nobody I’ve given it to’s ever… quit before. Maybe that was the real you that first day, after all. A no-guts joker.”

The son of a bitch. Just when I thought he might care about me he had kicked me down a flight of stairs. I jammed the brush back inside my uniform blouse. The smart thing was to quit. My breath rattled short and quick. Ord made me so mad I didn’t care about the smart thing. He didn’t smile, but I thought maybe he nodded.

“Okay, dammit! You want guts? Jacowicz won’t get rid of me without a fight I want a hearing and I want it now!”

I sat on the naked steel springs of what had been my bunk while I brushed down my Class-A uniform, then dressed and headed across the company street to my destiny.

Beyond the windows of Captain Jacowicz’s outer office, summer at Indiantown Gap loomed as dark and cold as my future. An orderly sat behind a gray metal desk, his eyes staring blank at a flatscreen while he talked records into silicon chips.

There were empty chairs across from his desk, but I leaned against the wall so I didn’t crease my uniform. I tugged up my trouser leg and polished a patent-leather low-cut on my sock. I plucked at lapel lint. It’s not that I’d turned as gung ho as the captain. It’s just that at the moment he held my life in his hands, so no amount of sucking up seemed like overkill. Frost framed the windows, but under my jacket I’d sweated through my uniform blouse already.

I’d read up on administrative punishment. It was pretty much what Ord had said. The accused threw himself on the mercy of his commanding officer instead of making his case with me so-called protections of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The theory was that you had a better chance to persuade one guy who knew you rather than a bunch of board-up-the-ass officers or noncoms. The trouble with administrative punishment was that if your CO threw the book at you, there was no Supreme Court to save you.

Jacowicz could slap me with a dishonorable discharge, stockade time, both, or I could just get extra duty out the ass or even just a chewing out. The last two seemed improbable.

“Soldier!”

If I hadn’t already been standing, I would have popped up higher than burned toast. The orderly did.

Ord stepped in from outdoors and acted like he didn’t see me. He said to the orderly, “I seem to have misplaced my training schedule. Print me one, Corporal.”

While the corporal printed out a copy Ord looked over like he just saw me. He nodded. “Trainee Wander.”

“Drill Sergeant.”

Ord knew the training schedule like it was tattooed on his scrotum. It was flattering that he’d phonied up an excuse just to see me.

The corporal handed over the printout and returned to his work. Ord looked at me and elevated his jaw just a nudge.

I picked mine up, too. He nodded, then made a fist and pumped it back and forth an inch, like a piston.

I nodded back as he turned and walked out the door.

Something swelled up in my chest, and I almost smiled. That was about as close as Ord ever got to kissing somebody on both cheeks.

The intercom on the orderly’s desk buzzed.

“Send in Trainee Wander!” Jacowicz’s voice hinted of nothing.

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t make my legs move. If I just stood here the worst couldn’t happen.

The corporal jerked a thumb at the captain’s office door. “Yo! Wander. You heard the man.”

I shuffled forward, rapped on the doorjamb and the captain called back, “Come!”

The corporal whispered, “Good luck, man.”

Jacowicz was in Class-A’s, too. Graduation ceremony would follow booting my ass. He returned my salute and shuffled papers.

He looked up, put me at ease so I could sway and talk, but left me standing.

“Do I have to recount the facts, Wander?”

“No, sir. I can do it for you.” I figured the best defense was a good offense. “I ingested a prohibited substance during duty hours. While under the influence a training accident occurred. A—”

The sight of Walter lying there wouldn’t go away. I squeezed my eyes shut and swallowed.

“I know you and Lorenzen were close. That doesn’t make your misconduct less serious.”

“No, sir.”

“Do you dispute the facts in any way?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you have anything to offer in mitigation?”

I took a deep breath. “Sir, I believe the incident taught me a lot. I believe it will make me a stronger soldier. I am strongly motivated to overcome the adverse impact of this event. I am willing to accept any administrative punishment that will allow me to continue to serve.”

Jacowicz rubbed his jaw. “That’s almost verbatim what your drill sergeant’s recommendation says. I don’t believe for one minute that he coached you. I think it is testament to his influence that you reached those conclusions independently. It speaks well for you, trainee.”

My heart pounded. There was a chance.

He flipped a file page. “I’m looking at a copy of a letter I wrote. To Trainee Lorenzen’s mother. It’s the first such letter I have had to write.”

I felt my eyes burn and blinked.

“Trainee Wander, my father was Infantry.”

“Yes, sir. Sergeant Ord has spoken highly of General Jacowicz.”

“He always said that letters like this one measured him as an officer as much as they measured the bravery of the soldiers he wrote about.”

I nodded. I couldn’t tell where this was going.

“I view this incident as a measure of my failure.”

“Sir, the fault was mine.”

“If I should allow you to remain in the service, you will be commanded by other officers.”

“It would be my great privilege, sir.”

“And if you faltered again, they would have to write more letters.”

Oh no.

“That is a chance I am not prepared to take,” he said.

“Sir—”

He grimaced. “Look, Wander. I gave this a lot of thought before you got here. I’m not trying to ruin your life. If you had been a civilian, then taking those pills wouldn’t have meant a damn thing. I am not going to impose administrative punishment of any sort. No forfeiture of pay and allowances, no letter of reprimand to your file. Your discharge will be general, not dishonorable. That’s a lot better for you when you go to an employer in the civilian—”

“Sir, to stay in is the one thing I want!”

He stopped and stared, then turned his chair toward the window and looked away from me.

Seconds crawled by on his display-screen clock.

He turned back and looked up at me.

His eyes weren’t cold, but they were hard. “I’m sorry, Wander. The one thing you want is the one thing I can’t give you.”

I heard myself breathing in hoarse gasps. I had known this was coming, but somehow I thought, somehow—

The orderly stuck his head in the door at the same moment he rapped on it. “Sir, there’s someone here to see you.”

“They can wait. You know I said—”

“Not they, sir. He. He insists.”

The captain stood, balled his fists, and leaned on them across his desk. “Corporal, this is my company. Whoever it is will wait until this administrative proceeding is closed!”