He had to admit, as he led his mother down the ranked stairs of the bleachers and onto the familiar flat varnish of the basketball floor, that he definitely felt something subliminal going on. It certainly wasn’t rational. He’d seen Fowler a thousand times, dressed and undressed, seen her in her jog bra, her black and yellow Fort Hays sweats, but he’d never seen her with his mother, which, apparently, was an entirely different way of seeing things — because otherwise Fowler looked the same as usual. Still kneeling, she was now sorting through an open ruck (while at the same time, if he had to guess, ignoring the colonel’s speech, so she didn’t have to feel disappointed by it), her hair pinned back, cheeks lightly flushed — nothing out of the ordinary, unless you counted the Beretta strapped to her thigh. Certainly nothing that could rationally explain the thickness in his throat and the charge that electrified his scalp when he swung his mother around to greet this woman, his mother with her public radio tote bag and her chapped face. “Hey, LT,” he said. “You looking forward to this historic opportunity?”
“You got a bag?” Fowler asked, without glancing up.
“Sorry?”
“You got a baggie or something, Pulowski?” she said. “Come on. Beale’s wasted, and he packed all fucking wrong. Look at this!” She held up a pair of Hawaiian swim trunks. “He’s got so much crap, I’m going to have to cram some of it in with my gear.”
“Did your brother show up?” he said.
“Does it look like he did?”
“He might have liked the speech,” Pulowski said, squatting beside her.
This would have normally been a comment that Fowler would’ve enjoyed, but instead she tucked her chin and kept rummaging through Beale’s ruck, more and more contraband spilling out. “Is that your mother?” she asked.
“Yes, that’s my mother.”
“You want me to meet your mother.”
“I’m standing right here,” Pulowski’s mother said.
They stood up. Fowler approached stiffly, arms behind her back, and her chin out stubbornly, as if his mother — in her crewneck sweater — might at any minute punch her in the face. “Yes, ma’am,” Fowler said. “I’m sorry I’m a little busy here, ma’am. I hope you are enjoying the colonel’s speech.”
“Not really,” Pulowski’s mother said. “I’ve heard better.”
Fowler flashed him a look of panic and uncertainty. A regular person might have interpreted this as a look of hostility, but Pulowski felt confident that it only meant that Fowler was afraid — not of going to Iraq but of his mother. Fearful that she might not measure up, which was the usual thing that made Fowler afraid.
“I’m not sure what you would’ve wanted him to say instead.”
“Oh, I don’t know. A little bit of honesty might have been reassuring. Fewer clichés wouldn’t have been bad. Have you ever read any Orwell, Lieutenant?”
He could tell by the wrinkled pucker of Fowler’s chin that she was working hard to remember her Orwell. And that she’d begun to get nervous about them standing together in the open like this, particularly in view of her platoon. “Emma was a history major,” Pulowski said, breaking in. He put his hand on her elbow, shielding this gesture so no one could see. Then to Fowler he said, “Mom teaches English. And public speaking. So she’s got some strong opinions on this.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not sure what kind of honesty she exactly means. We’re going to win and we’re going to come back. That’s what we’re doing. That’s how it’s going to be. I’d assume you don’t want to hear anything different.”
“I don’t think Mom’s opposed to that,” Pulowski said. “Are you, Mom? I mean, if Pop was going, that might be different — I just think she felt like the speech was a little too rah-rah, a little too cheerleady for her. So I thought I would bring her down and talk to somebody who actually knew what she was doing.”
Fowler flushed, glanced back at her platoon. “I’m not sure that we’re all exactly ready for inspection,” she said. “I’d sure as hell like to meet that person.”
“Wouldn’t we all?” said Pulowski’s mother.
“Don’t let the lieutenant fool you,” Pulowski said. Because it had gotten awkward holding on to Fowler’s elbow, he squeezed it once and then backed off and gave her a chuck on the shoulder, harder than he normally would — hard enough that she would know that he was fucking with her. Which, judging by her brief, suppressed smile, and the flash of anger in her eyes, she did. “She and her platoon have just spent the past three weeks standing around in the snow, loading about fifty thousand tons of equipment onto railcars, while the rest of these lazy fucks”—here he gestured at the auditorium as a whole, and particularly the soldiers from Masterson’s infantry company, who’d camped out in the visitors’ bleachers, under a sign that read DELTA ME TO DEATH—“sat around and polished their boots. Three weeks of preparing for the DRIF is no small thing.”
“What’s the DRIF?” Pulowski’s mother asked. “I was married to an Army surgeon, so I’m used to the acronyms, but that’s a new one for me.”
“The acronym is really DRRF,” Fowler said, with the first real confidence she’d displayed in the conversation — much to Pulowski’s satisfaction. “What that means depends on who you’re talking to. The colonel translates it as Deployment Ready Reaction Field. That’s where we get our stuff ready to be loaded onto railcars. But it’s also a state of mind. So we leave an R out and call the whole thing the DRIF.”
“Sounds even worse than OIF,” Pulowski’s mother said. She squatted down with her tote and began to examine the ruck that Fowler had unpacked.
“One or two?” Fowler asked.
“I don’t know. Any number.”
“Or DFAC,” Pulowski said.
“My ex-husband used to talk about the NBFC zone,” Pulowski’s mother said.
“No bullshit from civilians,” Pulowski clarified.
“He was a surgeon at Fort Campbell,” Pulowski’s mother said. “We used to call him the Dr. Ratched of the OR. Very schedule-driven person. Rule-oriented, big fan of the acronym. One of the things he liked best about the Army was that its rules kept everything from being messy. But of course things are messy, and the best things are always messy — or at least that’s what I’ve always believed.”
“So I’ve heard,” Fowler said.
“Have you?” Pulowski’s mother said. “From where?” A coy smile there, his mother’s best.
“Not from me,” Pulowski assured her. “Excellence, strictness, and clarity are my buzzwords. Superb soldiering. Honor your country. Organization before oneself. Fowler knows all this. You’ve seen my dominant scores at the rifle range?”
But they were already working, dragging over and unzipping Fowler’s ruck, which he knew from experience would be at least as poorly organized and overstuffed as Beale’s, and had already forgotten him. Of course, he could have helped Fowler repack her gear more efficiently. And he would’ve recommended that she just throw away Beale’s extra stuff. He’d told Fowler a thousand times that she needed to think about herself more. She might have been excellent at strapping tanks onto railcars, but her skills at personal organization — her skills at personal life in general — had always been suspect. Naturally, she’d refused his aid.