Whitney Terrell - The Good Lieutenant

“Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, jeez, I don’t know, sir. I thought we were talking about what happened to that Iraqi out by the RG. I thought we were talking about me.”

“The second thing I’d do is ask myself, ‘How do I help my team?’ All of us, every single soldier on this entire base, practically, is sick to death about what happened at the intersection. We’re all trying to fix it, and I think you need to consider whether this report of yours is contributing to that. Have you done that?” Fowler shook her head. Mostly she felt a strange, rising excitement at the thought of having sunk so low that she didn’t have to care about these kinds of things.

“Oh, come on, Sherman,” she said, trying out this new Pulowski-freedom by using her superior officer’s first name. “Even if they clear me on this — which would be a total crock, but possible, I admit — there’s no way I’m getting my platoon back.”

For the first time, Hartz’s glance flickered back at her and, in his reflection in the windshield, she saw him give a covert grin. “I don’t think your hand is as bad as all that.”

“We’re playing poker now?”

“My advice to you,” Hartz said, “is that you listen when the colonel talks to you and if he makes you an offer, you take it. He won’t offer again.”

* * *

She was feeling fairly cocky the next day as a guard escorted her out back of headquarters to the latticed gazebo that had been constructed as a congratulatory present for Colonel Seacourt’s assumption of command. If there was one thing she’d learned from Pulowski, it was the power you could gain by not caring. By stepping away. She also figured the colonel — who was waiting for her in the gazebo’s dappled shade — had more to care about than she did. He was about five foot nine, wore a Swatch, a lieutenant colonel’s brass star, and a gold wedding band, and to go along with his extremely normal stature he had an extremely normal, clean-shaven face with a proportionate nose that maintained a permanent pink sunburn but never tanned. He pulled out a metal office chair and patted its back, inviting Fowler to be seated, as if she were somebody’s wife at a battalion party. False confidence was how she read that. Nerves. She stayed in place. “This is Major Henry Harmon,” he said, introducing a lanky, dark-haired major on the opposite side of a folding table, a manila folder in his hand. “Henry and I were lieutenants together back in Saudi,” Seacourt said. “How long ago was that?”

“Forward Operating Base Bastogne,” said the major. His voice carried a faint southern melody that set her teeth on edge. “In the good ol’ days of 1991.”

“Hard to imagine what we were like back then,” Colonel Seacourt said. He’d attended West Point and had a graduate degree in political science from Florida State, but in presentation he emphasized his midwestern roots, his lack of adornment, his faith. Having abandoned his attempt at chivalry, he’d circled back around to his seat. “A young lieutenant, first time in combat, terrified of making a mistake — and then sick to death when, as is inevitably going to happen, things don’t go according to plan. These are … well, they’re the mental habits of a responsible officer, wouldn’t you say, Henry?”

“If they weren’t, we’d have to court-martial half the generals in the Army,” Major Harmon said. “Not to mention pissant majors like me.”

“Does that apply to lieutenants, sir?” Fowler said.

The two friends exchanged glances again, a very brief communication in which, if Fowler had to interpret it, the colonel asked, How much should I tell her? And the major had raised his eyebrows to say, Whatever you think is right.

Maybe Pulowski was wrong. She felt something at least mildly human there.

“I brought Henry in to investigate your report, because I think the major is capable of lending a friendly ear,” Seacourt said. “How do I know this? Because, back in Saudi, I was once involved in an incident that was as ugly as yours. I felt as bad about it as I possibly could — worse, actually. And I believed that the only honest thing that I could do as an officer and a man … or woman, in your case”—the transition here was abrupt and professional, no hint of embarrassment—“would be to write a report like this one you’ve written, in which I basically forced the Army to court-martial me.”

“If I could ask, sir,” Fowler said. “How’d the major help with that?”

“He convinced me that self-destruction is not necessarily an honorable choice,” Seacourt said. “Particularly when it isn’t warranted by the facts.”

“So you’re saying I shouldn’t take responsibility for the Iraqi, sir?”

She asked this question by design, to shock — borrowing one of Pulowski’s techniques. To her surprise, Seacourt reacted to this in stride. “Not at all. Did I say that, Henry? No, obviously, your testimony has to be the truth as you see it. It’s only that Henry here — because he’s an old friend — has alerted me to certain discrepancies that are indicative, to him, of an officer who is — how did you put it, Henry?”

“ In extremis ,” the major said, shrugging and yawning, as if he were discussing a subject as innocuous as a baseball game. “Possibly experiencing battle fatigue.”

“I’m not sick, sir,” Fowler said.

“I’m not saying you are,” Colonel Seacourt said. He spoke with the same offhanded and ingratiating tone that he’d used when she’d first entered, but the words contained a bit more heat. “I’m saying you’re in a difficult situation. You’ve got a soldier who has done something wrong. You’re interested in protecting him. You feel responsible for him. But I am trying to tell you that, in certain situations, there are individuals that you can’t save. You’ve got to let them go, or you’ll go with them.”

For the first time, Fowler felt her confidence waver. The one thing she hadn’t expected was for Seacourt to speak as if he was on her side.

“Let me just fold in a couple of questions here,” said the major, like the host of a dinner party gently guiding the conversation back on track. He slid Fowler’s testimony across the table. “ Before you allegedly injured the Iraqi, did Sergeant Beale follow basic tactics, techniques, and procedures established for detaining a civilian in the field?”

“In my opinion, sir, Sergeant Beale acted with extreme bravery and courage in leading my men out of a fire zone, in an attempt to—”

“Did you see him do all of this?”

“As the report indicates, I saw movement in the tree line on the far side of the canal. So I remained at the RG in an attempt to identify the unfriendlies.”

“Who shot at you.”

“Sort of,” she said.

“So your testimony is that you identified their vehicle, moved your soldiers to safety, drew enemy fire, got an ID on the shooter’s vehicle, radioed this information in — all of this entirely clear-headed. All good things. And once your men were safe and you’d handled every single threat, you proceeded down the canal, found an Iraqi who’d been properly detained by your sergeant, and then you decided to ruin your career?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, you did hit the Iraqi, or yes, you did not?”

Fowler sat back in her chair, feeling almost mesmerized. It was a good story. Had she really done all that? It was exactly the story she would’ve liked to tell about herself. Why couldn’t she just accept it and let it be?

“So wait, I just want to be clear,” she said. “’Cause this means a lot to me, sir. Your concern, trying to keep me out of trouble. I only have to change the stuff I wrote about Beale and not the intersection?” She was surprised by the bitterness beneath these words — she would never have allowed herself to speak this way in front of her platoon. But here, with Seacourt, the bitterness felt good. “It really would be easier if I could just take this stuff about this being my fault out. And nail Beale for the whole thing.”