He smiled at her, still staring.
“What?” she asked, rubbing the grime from her cheeks with a firm swipe of both hands that stretched her skin tight.
His reply was unexpected.
“I’m more proud of you, Stephie, than of anything or anyone in the world.” She winced, and her gaze fell to the hard dirt beneath her boots. “You’re a hero” he said, “and you give me the strength that I need to carry on.”
Stephie turned away and worked her teeth against each other.
“What?” Bill asked defensively. “Did I say something wrong?” She shrugged, frowning. “What?” he demanded.
Stephie wheeled on him and snapped, “I’m not a hero! I’m just a regular soldier! I’m just doing my job like everyone else!”
“And to me that makes you a hero,” Bill explained in a whisper at which his brittle emotions tugged. Tears filled his eyes and thickened his voice. “All of you. We owe you a great debt, Stephie. Don’t you realize that? You think you’re just doing your duty. There’s a war. You’re eighteen. You go. It’s that simple. But it’s not that simple! You’re only a child! How do you do it? And why? Five years ago, you were just, just…!” He choked on the words.
His face was contorted in agony. His jaw quivered.
She went to him and again removed her helmet. Her hair hung in strings, but she sat beside him and laid her head on his shoulder. A dam seemed to break inside him. His hands shot to his face — covering his mouth, nose, and eyes — but they failed to contain the raging flood of tears underneath. She wrapped her arms around him and felt him shake. Uncontrolled whimpers escaped.
She squeezed and held him tight until the quaking subsided. “We do it for you,” Stephie said in answer to the question that had seemed to trouble her father so. Her smile grew into a grin. “We do it so that you’ll be proud of us.”
He gently broke free of her embrace and stood.
“Is something the matter?” Stephie asked. Her father seemed distracted. “Did I say something wrong?”
He retrieved a linen napkin, which he unfolded. In it lay a plastic bar — black against its bed of white — so small and yet so significant.
“Is that,” Stephie asked, heart pounding, “for me?”
“Congratulations,” her father said weakly and in a scratchy voice. He cleared his throat. “Congratulations, Lieutenant Roberts.”
Stephie leapt to her feet, mouth agape. “I can’t believe it!” she exclaimed, closely inspecting the priceless piece of plastic jewelry from all angles. Laughing, she rose onto her tiptoes and kissed her father’s cheek. He held onto her again, and for a moment she thought he would resume his crying jag. But he released her, and she saw that his face was a pale blank that contrasted sharply with the good cheer that she felt on the huge accomplishment.
“But I’m not a lieutenant, yet,” she said coyly. Her eyes darted to her collar once, and then once again when her father failed to understand. Her master sergeant’s impressive array of chevrons and rockers still occupied the place where the black bar should be.
Bill replaced the old insignia with the new one.
“No-o-w,” she said, “swear me in.”
“What?” Bill asked.
“Swear me in!” she demanded, grinning. “I wanta take the oath.”
“Oh. Well, I’m afraid — I’m sorry — but I don’t know the oath.”
“I do,” she shot back, beaming. “I, sort of, learned it. Word for word.”
She laughed. He looked as if he were ill. Stephie straightened her face, stiffened her back, and raised her right hand, but then giggled with joy and apologized. “Sorry. Okay. Okay.” Standing there, hand raised skyward, she began with mock seriousness, but ended in total earnest.
“I, state-your-name,” she laughed. “No, start over.” She wiped her mouth, as if to manually rid her face of its inappropriate expression, and then cleared her throat. She straightened her back again and she grew an inch taller.
“I, Stephanie Amanda Roberts, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of you,” she smiled, “the president of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”
Her hand remained in air until she felt self-conscious and lowered it, extending it to her father for a shake. Instead, he hugged her tightly, and she hugged him back. “I’m so proud of you, Stephie,” he repeated.
“And I’m incredibly proud of you, Dad,” she replied.
When he pulled away, she saw the dark look on his face again. “Hey!” she prodded in high humor, shaking him with hands on his biceps. “What’s the matter with you, Dad? Are you worried or something? About me?” She shook him again, this time more gently. “It’s okay! I’ve made my peace with God. I’ve lived through more in this war than I possibly could have hoped for. And this is such a beautiful day!” she said, breaking free and gesturing toward the late afternoon sky. “I’ve had plenty of time to get ready, you know, for whatever happens.”
He winced with each point that she made until, in the end, his eyes were near shut as if he were falling asleep. He tried but couldn’t speak, and turned away, drawing oxygen into his chest pant by pant.
“Dad?” she asked, then asked again. “Dad?”
He faced her and handed her a velvet-covered jewelry box. Inside, Stephie found a silver cross studded with diamonds. Her jaw dropped again as she extracted the necklace. “It’s a,” Bill managed to say with obvious difficulty, “a Christmas present.” He sounded like he was in a fog. Dazed. “Merry Christmas.”
With dirt blackened fingers she slipped the silver necklace over her neck. “Wearing jewelry is against those regulations I just swore to obey,” she said. Her father stared at the cross, which glistened in the thin morning sun. “It’s beautiful,” she said with her chin tucked to her chest before dropping it under her body armor but holding her hand pressed flat above it.
She rose onto her toes and kissed his cheek. He grabbed his chest and turned his back to her. She thought he might be having a heart attack. She held her hand up to touch his shoulder, but her fingers hovered above his suit jacket. He seemed so close to breaking down again.
They returned to the highway holding hands. Both were oblivious — for different reasons — to the entourage of bodyguards that fanned out a hundred yards in every direction. Stephie chattered, telling him tales of everyday life. Her father remained mute and pasty in color. Several times she stopped talking midsentence and looked down at her hand, which he crushed tightly in his clammy grip.
A truck pulling a flatbed trailer with a huge, low-slung main battle tank atop it belched dark clouds as its old engine tried to resume highway speed after slowing to pass the parked convoy. “Vic-to-ry!” shouted a young soldier who hung out of the open window of the cab. He held two fingers in a “V” to the president. In the traffic jam behind the slowed tank carrier came trucks filled with young men and women, all Stephie’s age. They peered at the spectacle on the sides of the road — at Marine One, the well-dressed Secret Service agents, the president — from around canvas, from cabs with windows lowered, from machine gun mounts atop armored cars, and they began to hoop and shout. Bill acknowledged each vehicle with a wave, but then the next truck applauded and cheered.