Lieutenant Colonel Ortiz leaned back in his chair.
“Ma’am, I want to be straight with you about what happens next,” he said. “Staff Sergeant Reese had no authority to demand your identification. He used disrespectful language in front of junior soldiers. He threatened to physically remove an item from your clothing. That’s conduct unbecoming a noncommissioned officer.”
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“What are you going to do to him?”
“At minimum, a formal written counseling in his file. Possibly a letter of reprimand. He’s up for promotion to sergeant first class in February. This could end that.” He paused. “That’s my decision to make. But I wanted to hear from you first.”
I looked out the window of that conference room. Across the parade field, I could see the dining facility. The blue letters on the wall inside.
“Colonel,” I said. “Did you know that boy’s daddy?”
“No, ma’am. Before my time.”
“I did,” I said. “Not well. I met him once. In 2006. At a Heron Family Day picnic out at the lake. He brought his two little boys. The older one had on a T-shirt three sizes too big, with the heron on it.” I smiled. “He kept trying to salute everybody. His daddy was so proud of him he could hardly stand it.”
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Ezoic
I took off my reading glasses and folded them.
“That boy lost his daddy at eleven,” I said. “He’s been trying to be the strongest one in every room ever since. Because somebody told him that’s what his daddy would want. And nobody ever told him different.”
“That doesn’t excuse what he did, ma’am.”
“No,” I said. “It doesn’t. And I want him counseled. I want him to know exactly what he did wrong. In writing. In his file.” I looked at the colonel. “But I’d ask you not to end his career over it. Not over me.”
The colonel and the sergeant major looked at each other.
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Ezoic
“Then what would you like, Mrs. Braddock?” the sergeant major asked.
I thought about it.
“I’d like to talk to him,” I said. “Alone. Before you decide.”
At one-thirty, there was a knock on the conference room door.
Ezoic
Staff Sergeant Tyler Reese stood in the doorway. His first sergeant, a stocky woman named First Sergeant Lopez, stood behind him.
He came in and stood at attention in front of the table. Eyes straight ahead. His jaw was tight. His hands were shaking a little at his sides.
“Sergeant Reese reporting as ordered, sir.”
“At ease, Staff Sergeant,” Lieutenant Colonel Ortiz said. He stood up. So did the sergeant major and First Sergeant Lopez. “Mrs. Braddock would like a word with you. Alone.”
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Ezoic
They walked out and closed the door behind them.
And then it was just me and that big young man, standing in a conference room under a photograph of the Herons in 1969.
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