Now and Again by Charlotte Rogan Read Free Book Online Page A

individual’s source of moral and physical strength. That’s something every one of you is going to need.” Then he bluntly announced that the tours were being extended, no exceptions, end of case. “I am headed to Command Headquarters this afternoon to receive new orders. I will brief you again as soon as I return.”
    Miller was standing stiffly at the colonel’s side, glaring at the troops arrayed before them until one by one the men and occasional woman stood at attention. One by one they stood tall and straight and focused on the middle distance, not looking at their colonel—just as he was not looking at them—but at the nothing the army had taught them to look at in order to avoid distraction, in order to be completely attuned to the form of things, in order to be tensed and settled and ready for whatever might be coming next. Content would follow form, the army had promised them, and for the colonel, it had. He believed in the mission completely and in the soaring American spirit backed up by the taloned might of American power. But sometimes he wondered if anyone knew what they were trying to accomplish. Sometimes he asked himself, What the fuck?
    Falwell was nearing the half-century mark, and what lay beyond the middle distance when he dared to look that far was no longer what he had seen there as a young man or what the young men before him would see if they refocused their eyes. What lay beyond the middle distance, for him, was not the terror or ecstasy of youth, but resignation and a belief in partial truths. And beyond those things was the face of Sarah as she had been on the day of their wedding and also as she had been on the day of their divorce. He arranged his features to convey fierce devotion to duty. He straightened his already straight shoulders, and then he barked out, “Dis-missed!”
    The men in the front started talking quietly, but the men farther back resumed their jokes and laughter.
    “But sir,” said Miller, “I don’t think they heard you.”
    The wind was blowing again, shrieking, really, and maybe it had never stopped.
    “Not now,” said the colonel. “It’s already past fifteen hundred hours. I’ve got a chopper to catch. I’ll get my gear. Have the driver bring my vehicle out to the yard.”
    2.2 Penn Sinclair
    C aptain Penn Sinclair’s outlook had changed since joining the army. For one thing, he no longer heard his father’s voice in his head saying, “You’re a Sinclair, son, and the Sinclairs have never been Keynesians.” He led a logistics unit, tasked with making sure supplies got to the soldiers who needed them, and it was more likely that the voice in his head would say, “You name it, we’ll get it for you or die trying.” He no longer needed to decide if existence preceded essence or if the universe was a grand illusion perpetrated by an unseen force or if there was a foolproof way to distinguish right from wrong or if numbers were real or constructed. “I no longer wonder if you and I see the same thing when we look at the color red,” he had told his girlfriend of four years over the telephone only the day before. “But I could build a school for you in less than six weeks.”
    “I like you better this way,” Louise had replied.
    “So do I,” said Penn.
    “I’ve changed too,” she told him. “The old me would have tried to convince you that red is only good as an accent color. Of course, I still believe a little red goes a long, long way, but now we’re meeting somewhere in the middle—conversationally, I mean. What’s halfway between macro and micro?”
    “Six to eight trucks,” said Penn, because at just that moment his NCO, a steady man who was known as Velcro, came over to remind him he was late for a briefing.
    “You see?” cried Louise triumphantly. “I was thinking the exact same thing, except about bridesmaids. The optimal number is six, seven including the maid of honor.”
    “Big enough to cover each other, but small enough