One Second After

“The rest agreed to stay. Remember how several years back we had all those discussions in faculty meetings about orienting the college more to service? A couple of other colleges in the area, our rivals, were touting that all the time, so we put into the curriculum community service. That’s what we’re doing now.”

“Dan, there’s a helluva difference between kids working at a homeless shelter or community day-care center and drilling like an army.”

“I don’t think so, John. The times, as the old song went, are a-changin’.”

The column of students turned and marched back across the green, weapons at the shoulder, and the sight of it sent a chill down his spine. He looked back at Pyle’s painting and then back to them.

My God, no difference, John realized. The tradition of close-order drill was a primal memory left over from the days when armies really did go into battle that way, shoulder to shoulder. Today it was supposedly about discipline and spirit and the fact that soldiers were at least expected to march. But no different, no different from what he used to talk about with such enthusiasm at the Civil War Roundtable and see at reenactments.

The difference was, though, this was for real. From close-order drill Washington would take them to elementary tactics: fire and movement, holding a fixed position, laying down fields of fire, assault of a fixed position, marksmanship, leadership in combat, emergency first aid, infiltration tactics, hand-to-hand combat, how to kill with a knife, how to kill with your bare hands.

The sight of them drilling such struck home, as forcefully as what John had been forced to do in the park.

“Washington thinks the world of you,” Dan said. “By the way, he told me what happened in the park. Said you handled yourself well.”

“Handled myself well? I puked my guts out.”

“No, not that. First time you shoot someone, if you got any heart in you, any touch of the divine spark, you should be horrified.” He looked off.

“I lost my leg during Tet. The day before that, though, I was on point, turned the corner of a trail, and there he was….” He sighed, shaking his head. “The Thomas Hardy poem, remember it?”

John nodded. “‘I shot at him and he at me, And killed him in his place.’”

“Well, I got him first; he was walking point for his unit and we just ran into each other. Before I even quite realized it I emptied my M16 into him. Hell of a firefight exploded, and I was on the ground, lying by his side, and I could hear him gasping for air. Do you know what he said?”

John was silent, half-suspecting.

“He was crying for his mother. I understood enough of the language to know that….”

His voice trailed off and John could see tears in Dan’s eyes.

“The kid I shot,” John said, “certainly wasn’t calling for his mother. He died filled with hate.”

“Perhaps he sees things different now,” Dan replied. “I know it’s not orthodox with some, but I have a hard time not seeing God as forgiving, even after death.”

John tried to smile. There were some on campus who were rather traditionally “hard-line” in their views of salvation. Dan had never voiced this view before and it was a comfort, for the memory of that twisted kid’s final seconds lingered like a recurring nightmare.

“Washington told me how you reacted and the kids know that, too. Remember, this is a Christian school and the reaction could have been bad if it seemed you were cold-blooded about it. So a lesson was taught there, John, but it’s what you said as well that resonated.

“Washington and later Charlie Fuller told me that at that moment we as a community were balanced on a razor. Charlie had made the right decision, but he did not know how to see it carried through correctly.

“You did. At that moment we could have sunk into a mob or, worse, a mob that would then follow a leader, even a leader of good heart like Charlie, but still follow him with bloodlust and thus would start the slide.

“You’re the historian; you know that of all the revolutions in history, only a handful have truly succeeded, have kept their soul, their original intent.”

Though it struck John as slightly melodramatic, Dan pointed to the portrait of Washington kneeling in the snow.

“I don’t think we are in a revolution,” John said. “We’re trying to survive until such time as some order is restored. Communications up, enough vehicles put back on the road to link us together again as a nation.”

“But suppose that never happens,” Dan said quietly.

“What?”

“Just that, John. Suppose it never happens. Suppose the old America, so wonderful, the country we so loved, suppose at four fifty P.M. eighteen days ago, it died. It died from complacency, from blindness, from not being willing to face the harsh realities of the world. Died from complacent self-centeredness. Suppose America died that day.”

“For heaven’s sake, Dan, don’t talk like that,” John sighed.