One Second After

“Their advance party is in Old Fort to secure the place for the rest of them later today. I’d bet by late afternoon their advance will start probing, and we’ve got to meet them forward of the potential line of battle. They see our setup, get a good judgment on our strength, we’ll have even more problems holding. They’ll laager in Old Fort tonight and tear the place apart, then hit us before dawn.”

“We’ll be prepared,” Washington said sharply, and stood up.

“We feed the troops, then move them into position today. Washington, we’ve talked about this scenario, so we both know the plans. I want officers’ briefing within the hour. Tom, start to evacuate all homes behind our fallback line beyond the old toll road as we’ve talked about before. Charlie, I want every citizen who can carry a gun as our reserve. Mr. Barber, I hope you can stay up in the air most of the day. Keep high, though, sir, real high; just keep an eye on their movements,” John said.

Washington looked around the room, a thin smile on his face. Charlie, shriveled with emaciation, said nothing, but his gaze communicated volumes. John was now in charge.

“I think we should get to work, gentlemen,” John said.

Tom headed back to his car with Don by his side.

Washington looked over at John and Charlie.

“Gentlemen, I think it’s important you join us in chapel and for our meal.”

Two hours later, after the officers’ briefing and a map exercise, the 1:25,000 geological survey maps taken from the small map store in Black Mountain spread out on the table, John felt everyone understood their mission. Several of the platoon leaders were students, Jeremiah and Phil having been promoted to second lieutenants, in the first and second platoons of Company A. The others were vets from around the town, a good sprinkling of men from Desert Storm, a few from Nam.

John walked into the dining hall. Strange, it still looked basically the same. The counter where kids used to get their meal cards swiped with a laser scanner, circular tables, the twin doors leading into the food-serving area.

It was a room filled with a lot of happy memories and a few poignant ones. This school was unlike what he had expected when he had first come here. He feared that his old commandant, in his rush to get John a job where Mary once lived, had most likely hooked him into some fundamentalist camp meeting. Not that he had any particular objection on a philosophical level as an American, but still, he was a Catholic kid from Jersey. His fears could not be farther from the truth. It had turned into the warmest place he had ever worked in.

He had been greeted with open arms into a community where friendly intellectual debate was encouraged. Though a few might be a bit judgmental, most were actually very open-minded, saying that was the true spirit of what Christ tried to teach and not the nuttiness most outside the South believed of them, and all were guided by a desire to put their students first. The school was better than John ever imagined and now, at this moment, he realized yet again just how much he loved them all, especially “the kids” now sitting at the tables, decked out in camo gear, weapons stacked along the walls.

The tradition with faculty was not to eat segregated off but rather to join a table with their students, laugh, debate, argue, tease, stimulate.

Mary had attended this college her first year before transferring to far more competitive Duke, and coming here was coming home for her. Several of the professors had even taught her long ago.

Towards the end, she often came here to join John for lunch, and always kids would gather round their table and those who fully knew her condition would usually leave her with a kiss to the forehead, an embrace, and, “I’m praying for you every day, ma’am.”

And then she was gone.

But still, in the four years afterwards, so many happy days here, of shared meals, of the absolutely ridiculous but still touching dumb skits by the faculty for the Senior Breakfast the day before their graduation.

But now…

The cafeteria lines were closed, the food service off to the far side, tables set up near the back door, the grill outside smoking madly with the slabs of bear meat. Most of the students had already taken their plates, each proportion carefully cut, a slab of bear meat, some greens, a cup of herbal tea, that was it, but still a pound or more of meat, while downtown, at this moment, everyone else was getting thin soup with just a couple ounces of meat mixed in.

And yet in spite of their hunger, they remained restrained. None had yet to cut in; all sat around their tables, talking, but not touching the food. John looked over at Charlie. “You will eat,” John said sharply. “John?”

“Charlie, you will eat.”