Chapter 9 - The Seat at the Head of the Table
One year later, the first frost came early to Kentucky.
I had on my good gray coat again. I had polished my church shoes with a little dab of mineral oil, and I had pinned that old brass crest right to the collar, right where it had sat since the spring of 1968.
I drove the forty minutes from Clarksville up Highway 41A, past the pawnshops and the surplus stores, through Gate 4, and pulled my Buick into the visitor parking lot outside the big dining facility.
It was Thursday. Chili day.
When I pushed the heavy glass doors open, the warmth hit me first—the smell of roast beef, cumin, floor wax, and diesel exhaust that never entirely leaves an Army post. The room was packed to the gills. Three hundred paratroopers in their digital fatigues, fresh off a six-mile road march, their faces flushed, their rucksacks stacked in long, neat rows against the vestibule wall.
The buzz of conversation was deafening. Plates clattering, laughter, young voices shouting over the noise of the dishwashers.
I took my place at the back of the line.
I didn't take three steps before a voice cut through the racket.
"Room!"
The command wasn't loud, but it had that peculiar, brass-plated snap that hits a soldier’s spine before his brain even has time to process it.
Three hundred men and women froze.
Forks stopped halfway to mouths. Trays hovered in mid-air. Two hundred pairs of boots snapped together beneath the tables with a single, synchronized thwack that rattled the fluorescent lights.
The line parted like the Red Sea.
Walking down the center aisle, between the rows of orange tables, was a young man with three stripes and a rocker on his sleeve—Staff Sergeant Reese.
His uniform was immaculate. His boots were shined to a dull, battle-ready gleam, his beret pulled low over his right eye at the precise angle demanded by the division’s history. Beside him walked Master Sergeant Holloway, his huge face split into a grin that stretched from ear to ear.
Reese walked straight up to where I was standing in my gray coat with my blue purse over my arm.
He stopped three paces away. He brought his heels together, his eyes locking onto mine, clear and bright as river ice.
He raised his right hand to the brow of his beret, held the salute for three long, perfect seconds, and then snapped it down to his seam.
"Ma'am," Staff Sergeant Reese said, his voice carrying cleanly to every corner of the silent hall. "Your table is ready."
I looked past him.
At the very front of the room, right under the great oak beam that bore the name BRADDOCK PAVILION, table number one had been cleared. There was a white linen tablecloth spread across the plastic top—God only knew where Holloway had found a white linen tablecloth in an Army mess hall—and a real porcelain bowl filled with steaming chili. Beside it sat a plate of hot cornbread and a vase containing a single yellow rose.
The girl who had been sitting at table six the year before—now wearing corporal stripes on her chest—stepped forward and pulled the center chair out with a smile that showed all her teeth.
I looked at Reese.
"You didn't have to do all this, Sergeant," I said. "I just came for the lunch."
"The lunch is on the house, Miss Quinn," Reese said, offering me his arm. "And it will be every Thursday for as long as this roof stays over our heads."
I took his arm. His sleeve was solid as an oak branch under my fingers, but he didn't pull me or rush me. He matched his long paratrooper stride to my slow, shuffling eighty-two-year-old steps, walking me down the center of the hall while three hundred soldiers stood at attention on either side, their eyes front, their heads held high.
As we reached the table, Reese pulled the chair out a fraction farther and helped me ease into the seat.
Before he stepped back, he leaned down.
"We got our orders this morning, Miss Quinn," he whispered. "Company B deploys to the border next month."
I looked up at him, my heart tightening with that old, familiar dread that every mother, wife, and nurse in this country knows too well.
"Are you ready?" I asked.
Reese smiled. He reached up, tapped the little brass crest pinned to his own chest—the twin of the one on my lapel—and then pointed toward the wall behind us, where the faded blue letters caught the fluorescent light.
May you like
"The wire will hold, ma'am," he said.
I picked up my spoon. The chili was hot, the cornbread was sweet, and for the first time in fifty-six years, I didn't feel like I was eating alone.
