“That’s my thing,” Masterson replied.
“You got your things, I got my things, sir,” she said. “Or really, actually, I’ve got a lot of your things, too. All your Bradleys. All your Humvees. All your transmissions. All your fuel lines. A maintenance platoon is like the equipment manager, sir. We’re pretty quiet but we do get our hands on a lot of important gear.”
“And?”
“And so I’d love to help you as a teammate. But I’m going to need my soldier and my shackles back first. Otherwise, things might get out of place.”
“That’s it? That’s your battle plan? Help people?”
“If you’re strong,” Fowler said, “you help the weak.”
That was it, pretty much. It wasn’t exactly a complicated thought. Wasn’t likely to win any Nobel Prizes. But yes, that was pretty much it when it came to her convictions. Like most things, it sounded stupid once you’d said it, but at least now she had.
Or at least it seemed stupid, until she had waited on the bench long enough for the second thought to occur to her: That’s exactly what you did with Harris. You cut him out when he was weak.
“Let’s try it my way once,” Masterson said. He ambled over to the squat station and, lifting the bar one-handed, carried it out from the frame that surrounded it and set it on the rubber-padded floor. Yet again, Fowler wasn’t sure whether he was referring to his command style or to the weights. “I think you are a practical woman, Fowler. And I don’t think you’re all as goody-goody as you play. So I tell you what. Every guy in my unit is required to be able to squat at minimum twice their weight. I think you can do it. Moreover, I think you want to do it. I don’t think you have any interest at all in being weak. And I think you understand exactly why I’ve got your Sergeant Beale out at my camp and have been abusing him like a lame puppy.”
“One-thirty,” Fowler lied, standing up. “That’s what I weigh.”
“How about we say one-fifty and you don’t have to get on a scale?” Masterson said, grinning. He peeled two of the largest plates off the weight rack and added them to the bar’s end. “Peer pressure, it’s a wonderful thing.”
“One lift,” Fowler said. “Two-eighty. What do I get out of it?”
“You do it, you get your shackles back.” He’d finished adding weights by then. The bar had three forty-five-pound weights and a five-pounder on each side. It looked like something from a Tom and Jerry cartoon. “Hey, fellas,” Masterson shouted to the entire free-weight section of the gym, fifteen guys, all of whom, she would’ve guessed, could’ve qualified for Mr. Fort Riley, and all of whom, she was sure, were infantry. “We got a bet here. Lieutenant Fowler here believes that we have committed the grave sin of stealing some of her platoon’s shackles, which I know is a deeply offensive accusation for all of you honorable Christian men.” Laughter now, more clearly audible. Even Fowler thought the line wasn’t so bad — made a note of it, as if it might be something that she herself could use. “So, because I am committed to the principle of equal opportunity as much as the next guy, I’m going to bet the lieutenant that if she lifts twice her body weight”—here Fowler heard what sounded like a lowing sound, deep and guttural, which caused her to flush and focus on the shiny textured grip of the bar between her feet—“then I will give her all the shackles she could ever want.”
With her head bowed and her knees bent, Fowler lifted her hands up beside her shoulders and allowed Masterson and another soldier to set the bar into them, until its full weight rested against her back. She could feel the full horizontal press of it along the vertebrae of her neck and both shoulders, as if the wall of a building had been set down there. She almost fell forward once, light-headed, but Masterson was right about one thing: the mooing had helped her focus, the opposition and scorn and distrust of the soldiers in the room did give her something solid to press against. She blew out a breath, focused all her energy, and drove up, huffing and groaning — sounding, she was sure, completely idiotic, but at this point who gave a shit — until her vision blurred and she felt her legs extend and lock at the knees and she stood there quivering and triumphant, hearing nothing but the silent defeat of Delta Company. Then she blinked once, twice, and saw that the free-weight room was empty, the barbells still out at their stations, but the soldiers gone, including Masterson, and she was stuck, without a spotter, unable to take a step. With great effort she managed to turn her head to the racks of elliptical trainers and stationary bikes at the far end, where a few other support soldiers like herself were pedaling quietly, none of them in the slightest bit interested in looking her way. “Little help here?” she said.
12
“I can’t believe that my own platoon sergeant would let another officer waltz right into our equipment locker and steal our shit,” Fowler said.
“Maybe Beale didn’t think of it as stealing,” Pulowski said. “Maybe he figured that Masterson would bring the stuff back.”
Fowler didn’t answer this. “I fucked up,” she said. “My whole life, my whole career, the most relentless suck-up you’ve ever met. Oh, jeez, I want to be a good officer, sir. Please like me. And then, when I gotta make an actual decision, I gook on my shoes. I fucking can’t take care of people. I can’t protect these guys. I’m good at pretending that I can take care of people, that I know what I’m doing, but I don’t, okay? Maybe Harris is right. We are two months out from going to Iraq. I think we’re trained. But maybe all I’m doing is checking off boxes of what I think I’m supposed to do, Pulowski. I don’t have any convictions! Beale at least has some convictions. Masterson has convictions! They’re fucked-up convictions, but they still exist. Even Seacourt and Hartz, they at least presumably believe in the way we’ve been getting trained!”
“But you don’t?” Pulowski said.
“No, that’s your conviction, Pulowski.”
“Hah, that’s just my pose.”
“Oh, really?” Fowler propped herself up on her elbow. Pulowski was spread-eagled atop the motel bed’s sheets with a bag of potato chips on his chest, a small flap of coverlet flipped over his groin. “I thought this was your pose,” she said.
Pulowski glanced down at his own body wryly, his head cocked at an angle by a folded pillow. He wriggled his toes where they rose up into the lower corner of the TV, where they obscured the legs of Tom Hanks as he sat talking to Jay Leno. Then he reached out and gently cupped a hand beneath her breast.
“How do you suppose you can tell the difference?” he asked.
“What, between a conviction and a pose?”
Pulowski rumpled his lips and shrugged, as if this were a choice that she had defined on her own, rather than something he’d led her to — though of course he hoped he had. “That’s a pose,” he said, nodding at Jay Leno, and then, rolling onto his side, he kissed her breast, right atop the nipple. “And this is a conviction,” he said.
How the hell did he come up with crap like this? He’d had a knack for it ever since Fowler had first crossed the lawn between their apartments, knocked on his door, and stood there, looking actually angry as she said, “Would you like to go to lunch?” and he’d said — he’d somehow known to say—“Well, if you’re going to ask me out, you could at least look like you think I might say yes.” He’d never specifically said that self-doubt was a bad habit of hers, but every time she tried to get him to admit to some flaw that she had — as opposed to discussing his flaws — he’d twist and turn and evade the question, turning it into a joke, as if there couldn’t be anything more ridiculous than taking such talk seriously in any way. Part of her appreciated that. He felt it, a little click.