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Saw branches lift and shake off snow when birds took flight, startled at the sound. The sun was small and bright in the sky. The rain had let up to a noisy drizzle.
    “How do we do that?” I asked.
    Sterling feigned frustration, but I could tell our solid performance on the range had given us some latitude. “Don’t worry. I’ll help.” He seemed to catch something spilling out of himself and corrected his bearing. My Kevlar was full of rocks.
    “Shit,” said Murph.
    “We just gotta train it up. Practice, practice, practice,” Sterling said. He laid his head down on the ground and put his feet on my upturned helmet.
    Murph started to say something, but I put my hand on his shoulder. “Yeah, we get it, Sarge,” I said.
    He stood up and stretched. The whole back of his uniform was wet, but it didn’t seem to bother him. “It was their idea,” he said. “Don’t forget that. It’s their idea every time. They ought to kill themselves instead of us.”
    I wasn’t sure who “they” were.
    Murph was looking at the ground. “So…so what are we doing?”
    “Don’t worry so much, ladies. You two just hold the tail. Everything’ll be cool.”
    “The tail?” I asked.
    “Yeah,” he responded. “Let me fuck the dog.”
    The reports of rifles disappeared. Our last task was over. We loaded back on the trucks, anxious for a pass and time with our families. I thought about what Sterling had said. I wasn’t sure he wasn’t crazy, but I trusted that he was brave. And I now know the extent of Sterling’s bravery. It was narrowly focused, but it was pure and unadulterated. It was a kind of elemental self-sacrifice, free of ideology, free of logic. He would put himself on the gallows in another boy’s place for no other reason than that he thought the noose was better suited to his neck.
    And then we celebrated. There were banners and folding tables in the base gymnasium. Our families watched as we stood in formation while the battalion commander gave a rousing, earnest speech about duty, and the chaplain injected humor into somber tales of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And there were hamburgers and French fries and we were glad.
    I brought a plate to my mother and sat across from her, a small distance away from the throngs of mothers hanging on their sons’ shoulders, the fathers holding their hands on their hips, smiling on cue. She’d been crying. She rarely wore makeup but it ran down into the hollows of her eyes that day. It smudged on the back of her wrist where she’d rubbed the tears away while sitting in the barracks parking lot in our ancient gold Chrysler.
    “I told you not to do this, John,” she said.
    I clenched my jaw. I was still young enough then for the weak mannerisms of rebellion. I had practiced them from the time I turned twelve until I left our house, when I got fed up with nothing and called the only cab that had ever graced our long gravel driveway. “It’s done, Ma.”
    She paused and took a deep in-breath. “OK. I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. Let’s have a nice time.” She smiled and patted the back of my hands where they sat on the table and her eyes welled a little.
    And we did have a nice time. I was relieved. As I sat up listlessly the night before the range, I’d run through all the possibilities that lay before me. I became certain that I’d die, then certain that I’d live, then certain that I’d be wounded, then uncertain of anything. It had been all I could do to keep from pacing the cold tiles, looking out the window for some sign in the snow or the lamplight. I remained uncertain. But I settled on the fear that I would die and my mother would have to bury a son she thought was angry. That she’d take the flag and see me lowered into the brown Virginia dirt. That she’d hear the salute of rifle shots roll in quick succession through the air, the whole time thinking that they sounded like the door I slammed when I was eighteen and she was in the backyard