Whitney Terrell - The Good Lieutenant

“I heard some of those rounds are spent uranium,” said a wiry blond in a Peterbilt cap. “You know Steve Roebuck? He’s got a cousin down at Fort Hood. He says when this is all over, there’s gonna be soldiers ending up with exactly the kind of health claims they had with Agent Orange in Vietnam. Lawsuits all over the place.”

Pulowski’s battle plan for this particular family gathering was to keep his head above water, float along, remain present but unobtrusive. Stay detached. Avoid politics. But a silence followed this observation and Pulowski realized that it had been left for him. “Well,” he said, “that might’ve been true with the invasion, but we’re not going to be in a real artillery-friendly situation over there. Or at least that’s what it looks like to me.”

“So why the hell you all practicing so much?”

“’Cause it makes people feel good,” Pulowski said. “I mean, look, we’ve got enough satellite coverage there, we can see the muzzle flash right out of a mortar. And now that we’ve got bases set up, our response system’s mechanized — automatic fire. Soon as that mortar’s in the air, they got coordinates and ten seconds later you’ve got four or five rounds on the way. It’s a programming problem, mostly.”

The head-bobs that followed this explanation seemed to suggest that in this room of men, he was, shockingly, an authority. The women in the family bustled in the kitchen, and the prairie wind buffeted the house outside, and as the network cut to videos of the turkey-eating soldiers, shot against the dune background of tents or bunkers, Pulowski began to say whatever in the hell came to mind. True, Fowler would’ve called him out on some of the bullshit he came up with — and it seemed odd to him that they hadn’t already asked her about these same issues. But Fowler wasn’t there. “Did your daughter ever tell you the story of how our battalion commander got the nickname Bucky?” He glanced up at the men’s expectant faces, then hesitated theatrically. “I probably shouldn’t tell it. I doubt she’d approve.”

Donny Fowler wheezed and coughed in the chair beside him, waving his hand as if to suggest his outburst should be ignored.

“So you do know it,” Pulowski said.

It was Bob Summers, sprawling back and observing the scene with a milder, wiser grin on his face, who filled him in. “Naw, son, it’s just we all have had a little experience with the lieutenant”—he said this in ironic quotes—“disapproving of something. Ain’t that right, Donny?”

“I don’t think she disapproves of cursing, does she?” Pulowski asked. “’Cause that’s what Colonel Seacourt does.”

The men considered him through the haze their cigarettes left in the living room — it was the first real case that Pulowski had seen of indoor smoking — as if he’d just declared that the colonel had two heads. Donny Fowler was still coughing, his eyes wet with amusement from Bob Summers’s joke. “Come again?” he said.

“No cursing — that’s how the colonel got his nickname,” Pulowski said. “I mean, he can’t outlaw it, exactly. Not in the entire Army. But he did have everybody on his personal security detail sign a pledge that they would quit.”

“I would sign a pledge to kick his ass,” Bob Summers said.

Pulowski lowered his voice to a whisper. “So one day the colonel’s got the base commander, General Nunce, out for troop review. We’re going to do a convoy-protection exercise for him. The one thing Colonel Bucky tells everybody to do is make sure they keep enough distance between their vehicle and the one in front. Don’t speed. Don’t rush it. Don’t cowboy anything. You know, just keep in line.”

“Uh-oh,” Donny Fowler said. “I think I’ve seen this movie.”

“That’s right. First thing, first thing that happens — right in front of the grandstand, which is where we’re doing this—”

“Because,” Bob Summers put in, “they’ve got a whole lot of grandstands in Iraq, don’t they?”

“Right in front of the grandstand, a private pops his clutch and runs his Humvee right up under the back of an Abrams tank. Bumper gets pinched, immediate traffic jam. End of the exercise. But get this, get this.” Pulowski was waving his hands now, leaning in. He had his audience, he could feel that. “The colonel, he’s standing off to one side of the grandstand, and you can just see his face.” Pulowski made a drooping motion with his fingers along his cheeks. “I mean, he is furious. Head’s about to blow off. He stands there for a second, then he does an about-face and heads off under the grandstand. The guys around him wait. He doesn’t come back. Finally, this major — a guy named McKutcheon, he’s my CO — he goes after him, and he finds Bucky just whaling away on one of those I-beams with his boot. Just kicking it. And you know what he’s saying? “ Buck, buck, buck— ”

* * *

The kitchen of the wood-frame house was tiny, a cramped hutch — nothing at all like the place his mother had refinanced back in Clarksville, with a granite counter and a bright and shiny Sub-Zero refrigerator. The wives of the men in the front room were gathered there — including Bob Summers’s wife, who introduced herself as Aunt Carla — all wearing similar combinations of sweatshirts, massive purses, tennis shoes.

The back door crashed open and Fowler charged in, dressed in a pair of jean shorts and flip-flops, her hands black with soot. “All right, Aunt Carla,” she said, “I got the coals going.” She gave Pulowski a flickering glance that he had a tiny bit of trouble trying to interpret: partly accusatory, partly worried, mostly flighty, as if she wasn’t quite sure what to make of him standing in the kitchen. It was uncertainty, he realized. Divided purpose. That’s what made it seem unfamiliar, enough so that he enjoyed standing there.

“Your father was going to do that,” Aunt Carla said.

“Well, do you see it happening?” Fowler asked. “Are there coals started? I’ve got fourteen people to feed, and I’ve got three birds to make, and salad to get started, and—”

She grabbed one of the three chickens that Aunt Carla had lined up on the narrow counter. “Hey, hey, don’t touch that,” Aunt Carla said. She pointed at three black smudges that Fowler’s fingers had left on the bird’s skin. “You got to wash your hands before you’re handling the meat.”

Fowler held her hands up, splaying her fingers. “We’re cooking this on a fire, right, Carla? Am I right about this?”

“ On a fire,” Aunt Carla said, her head bent stubbornly, her thick fingers parting a clot of chicken innards. “Not in.”

“What I’m saying is it doesn’t matter. The whole thing gets cooked anyway, right? It’s not like this is bacteria or something — it just burns off. It’s a little smudge. Right, Pulowski?”

“That’s sort of a false dichotomy there, if you ask me,” Pulowski said. He edged his way past Aunt Carla’s ample rear end, removed the chicken carcass from Fowler’s smudged hands, and carried it to the sink. “Think of it like a weapon,” he said.

“She’s in charge of weapons?” Aunt Carla said.

“The better question would be, what weapons isn’t she in charge of?” Pulowski said. “Squad automatic weapon, fifty-caliber machine gun, M4, that cute little Beretta she walks around with all the time.”

“Is that right?” Aunt Carla said. She was shuffling over to the oven disapprovingly, showing them her wide back. “So what you’re saying, Lieutenant Pulowski, is that Emma’s good enough to play rifle with her soldiers, but not good enough to remember to buy a Thanksgiving turkey for her family?”

He followed Fowler out back a few minutes later, carrying two of the chicken carcasses that he’d cleaned, stifling any further argument. The plan was to make beer-can chicken, a recipe that Pulowski had heard about but never seen prepared: A rub, he thought, possibly. Or a marinade. But he had a hard time paying attention, with Aunt Carla’s jealous sniping still floating about his head, a fart-scented mist of stupidity.