Ord strolled by behind us. I shut up and shot.

Later the drills sat around a wood outdoor table adding scorecards while the rest of us eyed three deuce-and-a-halfs parked behind them. The old, internal-combustion-engine kind that ran on diesel fuel. As heavy as they were, battery power wasn’t an option. One truck had litters and a medic aboard. A makeshift ambulance. Anytime we practiced live fire the army made sure we had plenty of Band-Aids close by.

The sight moved me near tears. Not with emotion at the army’s concern for our well-being, but at the realization that there were three trucks. Four platoons. Lowest-scoring platoon was going to walk six miles home with full pack.

Ord stood and read from a Chipboard. “In first place, Second Platoon.”

Those dicks whooped and piled into a truck.

Ord watched them go, then said, “First Platoon also achieved perfect scores across the board. Most impressive!”

Everybody perfect? I got a sick feeling. Maybe the other drills had tipped their platoons off about the creative scoring system. Ord had left us to figure it out for ourselves, and at least Walter hadn’t. We were screwed.

Fifteen minutes later Third Platoon trudged toward the post, six miles away. Ahead of us the last truck disappeared, leaving us to eat Fourth Platoon’s dust. At least we didn’t have to listen to them hoot and make sucking sounds at us over the tailgate anymore.

“Nice work, Wander! The only guy in the company who scored less than perfect!”

If I said a word about how it happened, Third Platoon would kill Walter. Even the stress of field-stripping his rifle made his hands shake. If the other guys crapped on him for this, he’d crumble. They already hated my guts. I could take it.

But still, as I marched alongside Walter, the injustice of it all made my hand quiver as it clutched my rifle sling.

“Jeez, Jason. If you’d asked me I would have helped you practice. I bet you could learn to shoot just as good as me.”

I don’t know what happened. Maybe it was Pittsburgh. Maybe it was that Ord and this idiotic, insensitive army kept us playing target practice when all those people had died. I just grabbed Walter by his scrawny fucking neck and choked him. His helmet popped off and rocked on the ground.

“You ignorant, four-eyed toad! Get a clue!” We fell and rolled in the road while the rest of the platoon gaped.

“At ease!”

My fist froze midway to Walter’s nose. Ord’s voice could stop a falling piano thirty stories up. He dragged us to our feet by our field-jacket collars.

A blood string trailed from Walter’s left nostril. He peered at me through cracked glasses, with hurt-puppy eyes.

Ord frowned at me. “Wander, when will you learn that you will all get through this together or you will all fail separately?”

Me? I was Mr. Teamwork here. These other assholes were the problem.

Ord moved the platoon out, and as we marched, he walked alongside me, and said, “Wander, after you have cleaned your weapon and returned it to the armorer and attended to tomorrow’s uniform requirements and your policing duties you will report to my office.”

“Yes, Drill Sergeant.” My heart sank. But at least the rest of the platoon wasn’t getting screwed for my fuck-up.

“Oh. That’s right. I should be sure you get back early enough to get all that done, Wander.”

Forty-nine pairs of boots crunched Pennsylvania’s frozen earth. What could be worse than six more miles of this drudgery with full pack?

“Platoon! Port arms .”

My heart shot into my throat. When you walk with a rifle, you carry it over your shoulder. You carry it across your body, at port arms, when you double-time .

Ord was going to run us all six miles back to camp. As a favor to me.

I should change my name from Mr. Teamwork to Mr. Popularity. Nobody had breath to curse me, so it was a quiet six miles.

Lights were out when I stepped up to the wedge of light that spilled from Ord’s open office door. He sat behind a gray metal desk, hat alongside him. How his uniform looked morning-fresh off the hanger at 2200 hours I couldn’t fathom. I rapped on the doorjamb.

He didn’t look up. “Come! And close the door behind you.”

Oboy. I stepped in front of the desk and froze at attention. “Trainee Wander reports, Drill Sergeant.”

He was reading an old, paper greeting card. He slipped it and its envelope under his hat brim while I swallowed, blinked, and breathed.

I survived many a pop quiz by reading somebody else’s paper upside down. Ord’s card read “Happy Birthday, Son.”

The envelope’s return address was Pittsburgh.

My God. Ord had just lost his mother. When I lost Mom I beat the crap out of everyone who crossed my path. And here I stood in front of Ord. I clenched my jaw and braced for the worst.

Finally, Ord swallowed, then looked up. “Why are you here, Wander?”

Was this a trick question? “Because the drill sergeant told me to be.”

“I mean in the army.”

Because if I wasn’t here, Judge March would lock me up with the scum of the Earth until I was so old I creaked. “I want to be Infantry because Infantry leads the way, Drill Sergeant!”

“I don’t mean the bullshit answer. I know how you came to enlist. I know about your mother. And I am genuinely sorry.” His eyes were soft, almost liquid.

I wanted to tell him I knew. Knew what he had lost. Knew how he had suffered. But soldiers don’t do that. I thought.

“I don’t know, then.”

“Son.”

Now there was a word I thought was outside Ord’s vocabulary, until now.

He rocked back in his chair. “I’m not sure you belong here. This really is about working together, eye-rolling cynicism to the contrary.”

“Together? Those other assholes cheated at the range!”

He nodded. “Lorenzen scored you honestly at seventy-eight of eighty. I doubt anyone else in the company really broke sixty. I’ve seen lots of perfect scores, but only two trainees have actually hit seventy-eight targets in the last ten years.”

My jaw dropped. I should have realized that Ord knew about the scoring. Ord knew everything. And my chest swelled a little about the seventy-eight.

“Wander, your Mil-SAT math score was average, but your verbal pulled it up so your overall score is higher than Captain Jacowicz’s was. And he’s a West Pointer! Infantry seems like a lowest-common-denominator exercise to a bright guy like you, doesn’t it?”

Another underachiever lecture. I sighed loud enough that Ord heard.

“Mock foot-soldiering if you choose. But it’s really about the toughest thing men or women can discipline themselves to do.”

I swallowed. I wasn’t mocking. I understood the discipline that let Ord carry out ordered training even though he had just watched his mother die.

It wasn’t disrespect, but wonder, that made me roll my eyes.

But Ord didn’t know I knew, didn’t know I understood. Whatever softness had been in his eyes disappeared. “The world’s dying, Wander. I don’t know whether the Infantry is destined to reverse that. But I do know that it is my job to assure that every infantryman I train is ready if destiny calls. An infantryman who’s not part of the team isn’t just a pain in the ass. He’s dangerous to himself and to other soldiers. Would you like to quit?”

Like to? I’d love to. But I couldn’t, or I’d go to prison. I shook my head.

He sighed. “I can’t order you to quit. But I can make sure you consider carefully how badly you wish to stay.”

I swallowed. I didn’t wish to stay.

He bent, reached into a desk drawer, and came up with a plastic bag. From it he drew a purple, pencil-size object and displayed it between thumb and forefinger. A manual toothbrush strung on a cord loop. “Wander, do you know upon what you gaze?”

I squinted. “Toothbrush?” It was stained in that way that Mom would say you didn’t know where it had been.