His face had gone red. He’d started this in front of two hundred soldiers, and it wasn’t going the way he’d planned.
“That’s it,” he said. “You and me are taking a walk to the gate. Get up.”
I didn’t get up.
He straightened up. He looked me over, from my white hair down to my church shoes, hunting for something else to use against me.
And he found it.
On the collar of my gray coat, there’s a pin. It’s small. The brass has gone dark with age. The blue enamel is chipped on one corner.
Ezoic
It’s a blue shield with a white heron, wings spread wide.
It’s the same as the one on his chest. Mine’s just fifty-six years older.
He stared at it.
Then he jabbed his finger at it, an inch from my throat.
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“Where did you get that?”
I set down my glass.
“That’s my battalion’s crest,” he said. His voice was shaking now. With anger. “Men bled for that. Men died for that. You don’t buy it at some flea market in Hopkinsville and pin it on your coat to get a free lunch. Take it off.”
“No,” I said.
It was the first word I’d spoken to him.
“Take it off. Or I’ll take it off for you.”
The young private at the next table stood up. I shook my head at her, just a little, and she stopped.
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I looked up at that young man. Then I looked past his shoulder. At the wall over the serving line.
There are words painted on that wall. Blue letters, a foot high, across thirty feet of cinder block. He’d eaten his lunch underneath them every day for three years.
“Sergeant,” I said. “Before you put your hands on me, I’d like you to turn around and read me what it says on that wall.”
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He didn’t move for a second.
“I know what it says,” he said.
“Then it won’t take you long. Read it to me. Out loud.”
The room was so quiet now you could hear the steam table hissing.
Something in my voice must have reached him. Because slowly, Staff Sergeant Reese turned around.
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Ezoic
And he read it.
“We Carry Our Own.”
That’s the battalion motto. Every soldier in that unit learns it on his first day.
“Keep going,” I said.
Underneath the motto, in smaller blue letters, there was a second line. Most soldiers never bother to read it. It’s just part of the wall. Like a fire extinguisher. Like the clock.
He read it slowly. I watched his lips move.
“This dining facility is dedicated to First Lieutenant Quinn Hollis, Army Nurse Corps, who carried forty-one of ours home. May 1969.”
Ezoic
He stopped.
He stood there with his back to me for a long time.
Then, very slowly, Staff Sergeant Reese turned around and looked down at the woman in the gray coat.
“Ma’am,” he said. His voice had gone small. “What did you say your name was?”
Ezoic
“I didn’t,” I said. “You never asked. You asked my rank.”
I folded my hands on the table.
“It was first lieutenant,” I said. “And my maiden name was Hollis.”
