Trent Reedy - Divided We Fall

“Hey, soldier, your… National Guard armory is calling,” said Digi-Hank.

I looked around for something to punch. “Damn it! What the hell do they want now!?”

“Sorry, partner. Should I ignore the call? Maybe you’d… like to listen to some of my greatest hits from your playlist instead?”

Drill was Saturday and Sunday, and Sergeant Kemp had already got in touch with me on Tuesday with his usual leader’s call, reminding me to get a haircut and make sure my uniform looked good. He had also asked if I wanted to volunteer for full-time state duty. They put out these requests sometimes, asking for soldiers to help fight a wildfire or flood. I turned him down. I’d had more than enough extra National Guard duty.

“No, Hank,” I said. “Put the call on speaker.”

“No problem,” said Hank. “You’re a great American.”

“Hello,” I said. “This is Wright.”

“PFC Wright, this is Sergeant Kemp.”

I felt a wave of relief. Better Sergeant Kemp than Staff Sergeant Meyers. Definitely better than a call starting with the code “rattlesnake.” “Go ahead.”

Kemp sighed. “Bad news. I’m really sorry for the late notice, but I was just notified of this myself. Drill has been changed to a MUTA-Five. Formation tonight is at eighteen hundred hours.”

This was bullshit. Most drills were only MUTA-Four, meaning one Saturday and Sunday a month. They couldn’t just change everything the Friday before drill and make it a MUTA-Five. “I can’t make it. I have a game tonight,” I said. “Can I split train at least for tonight?” Sometimes a Guardsman could make up time before or after drill if he had something really important going on.

“Sorry,” said Sergeant Kemp. “Commander says everybody attends, no exceptions. Some big training exercise.”

I bit my lip for a moment, wondering if I should ask what I wanted to ask, but I didn’t need to. Sergeant Kemp went on, “Don’t worry. This isn’t another Boise. We’re heading out to the woods to practice dismounted infantry tactics or something. I’m sorry you have to miss your game. I’ll see you tonight before our eighteen hundred formation.” He tapped out.

“Damn it!” I punched the center of my steering wheel, sounding the horn. I’d signed up for the Guard to serve part-time. Now it was taking over my whole life.

JoBell came out of her front door and practically skipped down the stairs from her porch. She opened the passenger door with a big smile on her face. “Hey, I was hurrying. You didn’t have to honk.” She climbed in. With her bag on the floor, she strapped in, her comm in her lap.

“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people,” her comm said. “Perhaps you would like to discuss several updates to news stories you’ve been following.”

“Not right now, Eleanor,” JoBell said.

Her fingers were already sweeping and tapping her comm.

“I understand. Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.”

“Hey, I have to tell you something,” I said.

“Me first!” she said.

“No, this is really important.” She would be pissed when she found out drill had been changed to MUTA-Five. I knew I was mad.

But JoBell didn’t look up. “Eleanor, can you bring up the document that I was looking at last night?”

“Certainly, JoBell. I’m happy to help.”

“Can you put that thing away for one second!?” I said.

JoBell frowned for a moment, then closed her comm’s cover. “Sorry, baby. I really want to show you this—”

“Sergeant Kemp called a minute ago. It’s total bullshit, but they’re changing drill so I have to go in tonight instead of tomorrow. It’s an overnight thing. I’ll be gone all weekend.”

She froze with a worried look on her face. “Is something happening?”

I reached over and squeezed her hand. “Naw, it’s only drill. Some training exercise. One weekend a month and two weeks a summer, right?”

“Plus wars.” JoBell looked out the window.

“But I’m not deployable until after I finish my job training, and then it will be a while until my unit ships out again, because they’re over there right now. So they won’t be sending me to Iran for a long time. It’s fine, I promise. It sucks that I have to miss football, though. Coach will be pissed. I know I am.”

“Well—” She turned back to me and grinned. “I have something you might find interesting.”

What? I’d expected her to be a lot more disappointed about drill. We were planning on partying after the game and spending some time in the Beast on the Abandoned Highway of Love. The thought of it had kept me going through the week. “If it’s more bad news, I’m really not in the mood.”

She tapped her comm. “No, this is great!” She read whatever she had on-screen. “Dear JoBell. Congratulations! It is my pleasure to offer you admission to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington. After reviewing your strong academic record, blah blah blah… At the University of Washington, you will join a group of students eager to pursue academic excellence, etcetera, etcetera.” She leaned over the center console and hugged me. “I got in! Just like that, the next phase of my life is all set up.”

The University of Washington? In Seattle? When had she decided to go to U-Dub? We didn’t really talk about college much. I knew she’d always wanted to go, but for a while, she had talked about going to the University of Montana at Missoula, only three hours away. Seattle was, what? At least a five-hour drive?

I fired up the Beast, but something was a little off, a weird low growl under her normal engine noise. Something I felt instead of heard. I’d have to check it out next time I was in the shop. Why would JoBell want to leave? Why hadn’t she told me she applied to U-Dub?

“Well,” she said as I drove down the street. “What do you think?”

“It’s… That’s… You know, far away.”

She folded her arms. “How about a congratulations?”

“Well, yeah, obviously. Congratulations.” I couldn’t even look at her. “I didn’t know you’d applied there. You could have told me.”

“I guess I didn’t tell you because I was worried you’d react like this.”

“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.”