Jody Chapter One

Staff Sergeant Lane Pierce is a different man in my novel than Sergeant Lane Pierce is in this piece, set two years earlier, before September 11 and Operation Anaconda. I started this as a bit of back story, an explanation for a single line of dialogue in my novel.

MAY

Tiffany Avilla paused in the doorway to her barracks room and smiled up at Lane Pierce. “I had fun tonight.”

“Me too.” The tall Texan admitted.

Avilla hesitated for a moment like she wanted to say something. Like she wanted to do something. For his part Pierce stood like a fence post in the hallway, clutching his grandfathers old silver Stetson in his big hands like an 1870s cowboy talking to the town school marm. She was easily nine inches shorter than he was and when he looked away from her big dark eyes he could see over her head into her cluttered barracks room. It was shockingly filthy compared to his identical room in the Infantry barracks across post. Dirty clothes were piled in the corner and personal hygiene items were scattered around her sink. There was a pink faux fur blanket balled up on the foot of her unmade bunk, but more importantly there was a lump in her room mates adjacent bed.

Before either of them could find the words to say what they were thinking, the lump groaned. “Turn off the fucking light!” a voice ordered from underneath a pile of blankets.

Avilla sighed and rolled her eyes.

“I’ll let you go.” Pierce told her.

She hesitated. Just for a second. She made a decision, he could see the thought process play out in her big, dark eyes. She smiled one last time, said “Good night”, and Pierce stood in the hallway until she closed her door and he heard the deadbolt click into place.

Alone in the bare barracks hallway, Pierce sighed and put his Stetson back on. You’re a fucking Infantry Sergeant. He reminded himself. A Ranger.

He shook his head and laughed quietly at himself as he turned toward the door, his boot heels clicking on the waxed and polished tile floor as he marched down the long, empty, hallway.

He’d been right there. He’d been standing in her doorway, within sight of her bed. He was drunk and tired and that pink faux fur looked as soft and warm as Avilla did. But you fucking choked bud.

Probably for the better. He reminded himself. Sleeping with a platoon mates ex was always a risky proposition and Pierce didn’t need any further romantic complications. One issue was enough. Besides, Dewayne’s waiting in the truck.

Except Specialist Daryl Wayne and Pierce’s battered 1993 Ford Ranger were both missing when Pierce stepped back into the parking lot. The parking spot in the front row where they’d been sitting just a few minutes earlier was empty.

“Son of a bitch!” Pierce cursed out loud.

Dewayne and Pierce had been buddies for months, ever since Pierce had promoted to sergeant and been forced to leave the Scout Platoon in Headquarters Company to take over a fire team in Bravo Company. They shared a latrine and a love of cold beer and country music. The big Iowa farm boy was friendly, loyal and hard working but rock dumb and drunk as hell. Pierce left the keys when walked Avilla to her door and now Dewayne and the truck were both gone.

“Motherfucker’s got my room key!” Pierce told the empty parking lot.

There was only a mile between Avilla’s service and support battalion barracks on South Riva Ridge Loop and Pierce’s Infantry barracks on North Riva Ridge, an easy fifteen minute walk for an Infantryman, even drunk and wearing cowboy boots. It was late May and the night time low temperature in Upstate New York was hovering somewhere between 40 and 50 degrees, chilly for a born and raised Texan, but still far more comfortable and safer than the usual bone chilling, icy, winter lows. Still, Pierce found himself staring back at Avilla’s building and thinking about how soft the pink faux fur blanket had to be.

He shook his head and lit a cigarette as he watched a pair of raccoons nosing around a nearby dumpster. What am I gonna do? He asked himself. Knock on her door and tell her Dewayne ditched me? Ask if I can sleep at her place? It sounded like some bullshit pickup line. It sounded like a good way to lose all the good will he’d somehow managed to accrue.

It was a moot issue, he realized, because he wasn’t quite sure which of the hundreds of identical doors belonged to Avilla. She was in the left hallway, on the right side, somewhere before the second fire door, but he couldn’t be sure it it was the fifth or sixth door. Truth was he was three beers too many into a Saturday night and while he still had most of his faculties the world was in soft focus and he’d been paying far more attention to Avilla than the numbers on the door.
Could ask the CQ. He thought, but immediately realized that would create a whole new series of problems.

Unlike the Infantry Battalion where Pierce was assigned, Avilla’s Service and Support battalion was coed, so male and female soldiers walking down the hall together didn’t merit any interest from the Charge of Quarters or his runner. They’d barely looked up from their magazines when Pierce walked through the first time, but if he returned, especially to ask about Avilla’s room number, they’d realize he wasn’t one of them and if their visiting hours weren’t over then they soon would be. After four years in the Army Pierce knew soldiers well enough to know that the bored Pfc and the disheveled, fat, sergeant snoring at the CQ desk wouldn’t appreciate an Infantryman poaching on what they certainly viewed as their private game preserve.

He sighed. Really fucking knocking it out of the park tonight ain’t you?

With no other option, Pierce started walking, across the neatly cropped grass and past a row of trees to the street and then North on the sidewalk. Post was quiet and there wasn’t a moving vehicle to be seen when Pierce looked left and right so he jogged diagonally across the first intersection stopping in the beam of a streetlight to check the time on his watch.

It was still early, barely fifteen minutes after midnight. A half block to his left was the club he’d left only a short while before. Straight ahead, three quarters of a mile to the North were his barracks. The club was still open. The beer was still cold and there was plenty of time for him to sneak back in and have two or three before the bartender announced last call. But Pierce knew from painful, personal, experience, that two beers more would be five beers too many and nothing good happened in the club after midnight. There was a six pack of Labatt Blue and a hot shower waiting in the safety and comfort of his room.

He continued North. After four years in the light Infantry walking came natural. His long legs made taking big strides easy and he soon fell into a familiar and comfortable rhythm that allowed his mind to wander.

He’d come so close. He’d made it to her door step. He’d made it within sight of her bed and the pink faux fur comforter there. She hesitated in the doorway and he knew…

He laughed at himself. Evidence suggests you don’t know shit bud.

It wasn’t a particularly fair assessment, but self assessments after midnight on a drunken Friday night rarely were. Pierce once had a high school girlfriend, but that relationship ended the day he joined the Army. After thirteen weeks in an all male Basic Training company he’d been assigned to the 2nd Infantry Division in Korea. He’d loved his year in the ROK, but he spent more time near the DMZ than he did American women. Local girls had little interest in redneck American soldiers and he couldn’t bring himself to pay. Fort Drum and nearby Watertown, New York proved only marginally better.

And then there had been Scout try outs, Air Assault school, the Ranger Indoctrination Program and almost five months at Fort Benning, Georgia for Ranger and Airborne schools. Then Mountain Warfare school in Vermont, and back to Fort Drum for another month of Primary Leadership Development School. Add in range time, field problems, a Mountain Peak exercise, two trips to the Joint Readiness Training Center in Louisiana and Sergeant Lane Pierce hadn’t had much time for relationships.

He'd had a brief fling with a blond barrel racer while he was home on holiday block leave and a weekend with a Canadian girl in Ottawa, another with a Syracuse coed and little else that he could speak of until Tiffany Avilla appeared one night in his latrine.

Except for Megan…

He forced the thought from his head and focused instead on the memory of the night he first met Avilla. She’d forgotten to lock the latrine door and he didn’t know Dewayne and his roommate had female guests so he didn’t knock. They were lucky that she was finished and he had a towel wrapped around his waist. All he saw was the faintest hint of white cotton panties on tan skin as she hurriedly buttoned her jeans and tugged down her red blouse but what he remembered the most was the fire in her big, dark eyes when she snapped “You forget how to knock!”

“You forget how fuckin’ locks worked?” he retorted. But despite being almost a foot taller and outweighing her easily by fifty pounds he beat a hasty retreat under her fiery glare

Goddamn she was mad. He thought with a smile.

He stopped for a minute on the sidewalk in front of Magrath gym and lit a cigarette, using his body to shield his lighter from a strong north wind gust. There was the faintest hint of the Canadian arctic on the breeze, enough that the sweat on his back turned chilly. After a long, cold, dark, winter spring had finally come to Upstate New York but even in May there was still a threat of lake effect snow flurries blowing in from nearby Lake Ontario and there was always little reminders that the cold would soon return in force. June, July, and August would be tolerable, even pleasant if not for the swarming black flies but by September nights would turn cold again. By November the ground would be covered in snow and by the new year snow would be piled ten feet high. Winters on Fort Drum were long, dark, and brutal. After three years Pierce was exhausted of them and when his re-enlistment window opened in a few weeks he had plans to PCS somewhere warmer, with palm trees and beaches.

He took a drag of his fresh cigarette and started walking again, his mind wandering back to Avilla, white cotton on tan skin, and how tantalizingly close he’d been to that pink faux fur comforter on her bunk.

“What’s the deal with the Mexican girl?” He asked Dewayne later that first night, when he’d drunk enough Labatt’s to blame the booze if the big man took offense.

“Tiffany?”

“Nah the other Mexican girl in our shitter.”

“She’s Peacock’s old lady.” Dewayne explained.

Of course she was.

Every platoon has their Lothario, the member who seemed to always have a bevy of good looking women around, the guy who always got laid. In Bravo Company’s third platoon that soldier was Chris “Peacock” Donahue. Peacock was almost Pierce’s inverse. Where Pierce was tall and lanky, Peacock was short and heavily muscled, spending hours a day in the post gym to maintain a fitness magazine physique. Pierce’s blond hair was so light and fine that he looked almost bald, especially with a fresh Army high and tight haircut. Peacock had thick black hair that he wore just barely within Army minimum standards. Pierce was raised by his maternal grandparents in a small, sagging, wood framed house in rural central Texas. Peacock grew up in a gated community in suburban New Jersey. Pierce drove a 1993 Ford Ranger. Peacock drove a new Nissan Altima with after market rims and an expensive stereo. Even their military careers were different. Pierce spent his time as a rifleman, grenadier, scout, and now fire team leader while Peacock had been assigned to a gun squad for his entire tour, first as an ammo bearer, then assistant gunner, and finally an M240B machine gunner.

The two men were far from friends. In fact they loathed each other, but Peacock was Dewayne’s roommate, which meant he shared a latrine with Pierce. And that meant so did Tiffany Avilla when she visited.

And she'd visited almost nightly all through the long winter. They crossed paths and exchanged barbs in the hallway. She made a big show of slamming the latrine door shut and loudly locking it each time she used the restroom. Sometimes he could hear her laughter, faint and pleasant, through the cinder block wall that separated his room from Peacock and Dewayne's. Far too often he could hear the pair arguing and he had to turn his stereo up to drown the angry voices. Dewayne would inevitably make his way into Pierce’s room where they’d drink beer and shine boots while good country music drowned out the pornographic sounds from the room next door as the couple made up.

There was a rosary tattooed on Avilla’s left forearm and Pierce sometimes wondered if she confessed what she did with Peacock. He wasn’t anymore proud of the thought than he was about the fact that he could still remember white cotton on tan skin turned olive after the long winter darkness. Besides, he had far worse sins to confess…

But that’s over. He assured himself.

Still he froze when a marked Military Police car rolled slowly by. Through the windshield he could see a pair of MPs eyeing him as they creeped slowly south. While it wasn’t technically illegal to walk home drunk from the club, MPs and Infantrymen are natural enemies and the MP company on Fort Drum wasn’t known for it’s strict adherence to the constitution, law, or local policy letters. They weren’t above jacking up a poor dumb grunt just for fun, and Pierce had a secret that if it were ever discovered would make him, personally, a target. While he was one hundred percent certain his problem’s husband wasn’t working that night, he still didn’t breath easier until the patrol car had disappeared from view.
Once again Pierce turned his mind back to more pleasant thoughts.

He’d never been alone with Tiffany Avilla. Aside from their first awkward meeting in the latrine and a handful of pointed barbs in the hallway he’d never exchanged a word with her until she wandered into his room one unnaturally warm Saturday morning in early spring. Pierce had stayed in the night before. He’d told himself it was to stay out of trouble. He’d planned to stay sober and save money but Dewayne had a gallon bottle of blended Canadian whiskey and Pierce had a twelve pack each of Dr. Pepper and Labat blue. He woke hungover, his barracks room littered with empty beer bottles, plastic cups and his stereo still playing, working it’s way through one hundred discs worth of country music one random track at a time.

He must have forgotten to lock the door between his room and the latrine, because one minute he was laying on his bunk alone shielding his eyes from the harsh morning light, and the next Avilla was standing in the foyer by his wall lockers looking almost like a lost child.

“You forget how to knock?” he asked.

“You forget how locks work?” she replied.

He couldn’t help but smile weakly.

Avilla gestured at his stereo which was playing Dwight Yoakham and Buck Owens “Streets of Bakersfield.”

“I like this song.”

“You a country music fan?” Pierce asked hopefully.

“Not really.” Avilla answered. “My foster dad was.” She added as she inspected the Stetson that hung on the outside of his wall locker. “And he’s from Bakersfield so…”

“You’re really into this cowboy stuff huh?” She changed the subject quickly away from family.

Pierce could see her judging his few things, the Texas state flag that was the only decoration covering the bare, white, cinder block walls, the bookshelf full of paperbacks and the expensive stereo that were his only source of entertainment, his cowboy boots lined in a neat row next to his spit shined combat boots. She found his High School rodeo buckle, still threaded into the belt loops of last nights Wrangler jeans, picked it up and read the inscription.

“So you’re the real deal huh?”

“My grandpa was.” Pierce answered.

“This says ‘champion.’”

“It also says High School.”

She tossed the jeans, belt and buckle back on the floor and he cringed when he heard the silver of his buckle smack against the waxed and shined tile floor. “Sorry.” She said, looking genuinely contrite.

Pierce sighed. “Why are you fuckin’ here?”

Avilla shrugged as she slouched onto his Army issued desk chair and tried to get comfortable. “I came to visit my boyfriend.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“Because he would rather play basketball with his idiot buddies.”

Pierce had planned a response in his head, one that he hoped would usher Avilla quickly out of his room, but there was something sad in her tone that made him hesitate. He couldn’t help but notice that the fire was gone in her big, dark, eyes, replaced with something else. Something that looked as melancholy as he felt. Unsure of what to say, Pierce pushed himself off his bunk, walked across the room to where his jeans lay piled on the tile floor, and dug a crumpled pack of Canadian cigarettes out of the front pocket. He lit one for himself and offered the pack to Avilla.

“I don’t smoke.” She told him. Then after a moment, as if she’d just remembered her manners, she gave him a small smile. “Thank you though.”

“You want a coke or something?” He offered. “I got Dr. Pepper or beer.”

“I’m okay.” She assured him.

Shrugging again, Pierce took an ashtray off his desk and flopped back onto his bunk. He took a long drag and flicked the ash into the ashtray and after a moment asked, “California huh?”

They talked for a while about Central California and Central Texas, then Pierce told her about his year in Korea and a trip to Japan. When that subject ran out they picked on Dewayne for a while. Eventually, inevitably, the conversation turned to Peacock…

Pierce had never liked Peacock. He hated the little man by the time Avilla finished saying what she seemed to need to say. There was genuine hurt in her big, dark eyes. Hurt so intense Pierce wished he could do something, anything to make it go away. But as much as he wanted he couldn’t. Tiffany Avilla was Peacock’s girl. Peacock was in Pierce’s platoon thus barracks ethics made her off limits and as much as Pierce disliked the machine gunner from New Jersey and liked the little dark haired girl from California he couldn't act on it. He wasn’t a Blue Falcon, he wasn’t Jody.

Normally… He thought bitterly.

So he’d kept his mouth shut and let her steer the conversation to something safer. They talked for a while about movies, then books, and she told him about the Emily Bronte she was reading for an English 201 class she was taking at nearby Johnson County Community College.

“College girl huh?” he’d joked.

“I don’t plan on staying in the Army forever.”

Between the GI Bill, the Army college fund, and a few semesters of community college she hoped to get accepted into one of the University of California schools.

“I want UCLA.” She told him sheepishly, like she was confessing the idea for the first time in public. “But any UC school will be fine.”

She listened politely while he talked about his plan to re-enlist, though he could see in her eyes that she thought he was crazy and she laughed when he admitted that he liked going to the field. He’d known for months that Tiffany Avilla was petite and pretty but he was surprised to discover she was also funny. It genuinely hurt the way she leapt up as soon as they heard Peacock and Dewayne crashing into the room next door.

“It was nice talking to you.” Avilla told him before she left. She’d smiled when she said it, like she meant it, but she was already making her way to the door.

There wasn’t a spark. There wasn’t some magnetic attraction. He had no great urge to touch her and he didn’t wonder what her hair smelt like or her lips tasted like. It was just…nice. It’d been months since he’d had a sober conversation with the opposite sex and weeks since he’d been around anyone but infantrymen and just her presence had been somehow something special. Soft and warm and comforting in a way he didn’t understand. He wanted to ask her to stay. He wanted to ask her if maybe she’d want dinner sometime. Maybe a movie. He wanted to tell her to stop by any time, but she was Peacock’s girl and the little shit was in Pierce’s platoon. So instead he muttered, “Yea, me too.”

You know you’re too fucking good for that little prick Peacock, he’d thought but didn’t say out loud.

Still she stopped. She looked back at him and smiled one last time before disappearing out of view as she passed through the latrine back to Peacock and Dewayne’s room leaving Pierce alone with memories of white cotton, tan skin, and big, dark eyes.

A few minutes later Dewayne wandered in from the same direction wearing nothing but a pair of Army issued PT shorts and flip flops. He had a civilian beach towel tossed over one massive, pale, shoulder. He took a beer from the fridge without asking, tossed the cap in the garbage like he was shooting free throws then chugged half as he walked across the room and collapsed into the chair Avilla had just left.

“They fuckin’ or fightin’?” Pierce asked.

Dewayne belched loudly and wiped his mouth with the back of his massive arm. “I’d put money on fightin’ but only time will tell.” He answered. “Since when do you give a shit which sergeant?” he asked, mangling the word “sergeant” until it came out as “sar-ent.”

Pierce’s truck was parked in it’s usual spot under a street light in the second row when he finally made it to his barracks parking lot, which meant Dewayne was at least safe off the road and Pierce could get his room keys. Inside, the barracks were quiet. All of the doors were closed and aside from the CQ runner mopping floors at the end of the hallway Pierce could have been alone with the familiar echo of his boot heels clacking on the polished tile floor as he made his way to Dewayne's door.
He had to pound hard on the door before he heard movement inside. After a moment the door swung open and Dewayne’s bulk filled the doorway.

“What?” the big man demanded groggily as he scratched his bare chest.

“You fucking left me.”

Dewayne shrugged. “Thought you were gettin’ laid.”

“Why the fuck would I ask you to wait in the parking lot if I thought I was gonna get laid?”

Dewayne considered the question like it was of great import. “I dunno.” He admitted after a moment. “Sometimes shit works out.”

“That’s twice tonight you’ve fucked me!” Pierce snapped as he pushed past Dewayne into the room and turned on the light. He snatched his keys off Dewayne’s desk then pushed past the big man again as he made his way to the latrine.

“Just because you got shot down doesn’t mean you gotta be a dick.” Dewayne grumbled.

“I didn’t get shot down!” Pierce corrected as he passed through the latrine, slamming the door to Dewayne's side closed as he did.

I fucked up. He thought as he opened the door to his room and groped for the light switch. But I didn’t get shot down.

Tiffany Avilla disappeared after that lazy Saturday. Pierce and Dewayne left their barracks long enough to run to Burger King and the Class Six to replace Dewayne’s gallon of blended Canadian whiskey and when they returned she was gone without any explanation. Within a week Peacock had replaced her with a chubby local blond. By late April Pierce had mostly forgotten about her. As the weather warmed his battalion became more active. There were rifle ranges, PT tests, road marches and a week in a National Guard camp near the city, plenty of soldiering to distract him. After a while Avilla became just another warm, soft, distant memory, little different than the blond barrel racer back home, or the brunette from Ottawa who had a thing for southern accents.

Pierce stayed in during those weeks. When he wasn’t in the field he was in his room, drinking beer, reading paperbacks and listening to the stereo, or in the day room watching television and trying to stay out of trouble. But Dewayne was always there, with a plastic cup full of cheap whiskey and a smile, trying to coax him out.

“It’s socializing when you drink a six pack at the club.” The big midwesterner slurred after a drink or two. “It’s just alcoholism when you do it sitting in your room.”

Pierce shook his head, but Dewayne was unrelenting.

“Come on sergeant.” He said. “You need some pussy.”

“No the fuck I do not.” Pierce answered, meaning it.

“Well I do.” Dewayne countered with a smile.

“You’re just gonna get shit faced and pass out and I’m gonna have to carry you home again.”

“I won’t.” Dewayne promised. He held up two fingers in an approximation of a Boy Scout salute. “Scout’s honor.”

“I was in the Scout platoon long enough to know scouts have no honor.”

Dewayne drained his drink and smacked the plastic cup on top of Pierce’s desk.

“I’ll prove it.” He said. “Gimme the keys.”

Pierce laughed. “You’re gonna drive?”

“I’ll have two beers.” Dewayne lied.

“Bullshit.”

“It’s our last weekend on post all summer.” Dewayne pointed out.

It was that argument that convinced Pierce. In four days their company was scheduled to leave Fort Drum for West Point where they would spend their summer teaching future officers and gentle people how to handle small arms without shooting themselves in the foot. If Pierce passed up an opportunity to go out it may well be his last for sixty days, and besides, if anything went wrong, if he made any old familiar mistakes, he’d be a hundred miles away before the shit could really hit the fan. So he ironed a shirt and his favorite jeans, pulled on his favorite pair of cowboy boots and broke out the expensive Silverbelly Stetson his grandfather had left him and by nine o’clock he and Dewayne wandered into the post bar.

The club on post was housed in a nondescript building on South Riva Ridge Loop that from the outside could have been a troop clinic or an armory. Inside was little better. The space was somehow both gaudy and generic, like a venue that hosted cheap wedding receptions and Bar Mitzvahs. There was stainless steel and purple neon and tall tables with bar stools, a bar, a small dance floor and a DJ booth manned by an off duty soldier from the Division Artillery but no personality. No faded beer posters or buzzing neon signs. No sawdust. It was a generic and dull multi use space but it was close to the barracks and cheap. And Friday nights were “country” nights.

Dewayne ordered two beers while Pierce found an empty table in a shadowy corner, sitting like an old west gunfighter with his back to the wall, watching for any trouble that might come walking through the door.

The trouble Pierce anticipated never arrived, but at 10:30 Tiffany Avilla did, sauntering through the doors in blue jeans and a red top surrounded by a group of women Pierce assumed were her friends. She didn’t notice him, sitting, watching her from his shadowy corner.

“Well that’s a pleasant surprise.” Dewayne slurred as he took a sip of his third beer.

The big man’s eyes were blood shot and half closed so Pierce couldn’t tell if Dewayne was trying to make conversation or a joke at his expense.

“We been...I been comin' in here almost every Friday night for two years.” Dewayne continued. “And you ever seen her in here before?”

“Nope.” Pierce admitted.

He picked up his beer bottle only to find it empty. Across the room, Avilla and her friends found a seat in between the bar and the dance floor.

“You should go talk to her.” Dewayne suggested.

Pierce ignored Dewayne and looked into his empty beer bottle like if he stared hard enough he could find an extra drop hidden in the bottom.

“If you don’t I will.” Dewayne threatened.

Pierce set his beer bottle down a little harder than intended and it landed with a “bong” shaking the other empties on the table. “She’s Peacock’s ex.” He pointed out.

“So?”

“So Peacock’s in our platoon.”

“So?”

“He’s your fuckin’ room mate.”

Dewayne shrugged. “He’s also fuckin’ someone else right now.”

Across the club Avilla was laughing at one of her friend’s jokes and from a hundred feet away Pierce was certain that he could see the light in her big, dark, eyes. He had a sudden memory of her curled up in his Army desk chair and talking about English lit on a dull Saturday morning that she’d made so pleasant and comfortable it had haunted him for weeks. Then he remembered white cotton on tan skin and fire in her dark eyes.

Dewayne must have been reading his mind. “You don’t I will.” He threatened again with a drunken grin.

Pierce knew Dewayne was lying. He also knew Avilla was trouble. There was Peacock. There was his pending deployment to West Point. There was…another issue. But Tiffany Avilla was warm and soft and pretty. She was smart. She was comfortable. For months he’d wondered what was hidden under white cotton and she was right there. So he pushed himself out of his chair, made sure his shirt was properly tucked into his jeans, straightened his grandfathers Stetson and chickened out. “I’m gonna get a beer.”

That was it. He was gonna get a beer. If Avilla saw him and she smiled and waved then fine. If she came over to talk to him then maybe. But Sergeant Lane Pierce wasn’t a Blue Falcon and he wasn’t…normally…Jody so unless she initiated anything he was going to walk to the bar, order another Labatt, and walk back to his table alone. Except she saw him in the mirror, and even in the reflection he could see the recognition in her eyes.

She smiled and Pierce found himself drifting off course, like a small boat fighting a strong ocean current, he was walking toward the bar but being pulled toward Tiffany Avilla.

The other girls were looking at him appraisingly then. He could see them huddling together, whispering among themselves and to Avilla, passing judgment. Pierce could feel his limited confidence ebbing under their gaze. If Avilla hadn’t been smiling. If she hadn’t looked so pretty and inviting, he would have turned and headed back to the bar. Instead he forced a smile that he hoped looked casual and cool.

“Thought you weren’t a country music person?” he accused, trying hard to make it sound like a joke.

“I’m not.” She answered.

The DJ was playing a newer, mainstream, song from a girl band that Pierce didn’t care for, but it was mid-tempo, an easy two step, and the dance floor was largely empty. Pierce knew only one play, so he smiled and offered her his hand and asked, “Would you like to dance anyway?” and hoped it sounded charming.

It must have, because Avilla took his hand and let him lead her to the dance floor.

Pierce could blame alcohol for getting into fights or tearing up his jeans or trashing his room but it was music more than beer that made him weak for women. Something about holding a girl close, feeling the softness of her hands and the warmth of her belly, smelling her hair and her soap and her perfume. He could and often did fall in love before the end of the first verse. With Avilla he didn’t even make it to the dance floor. He realized as he put his right arm around her slim waist that he’d wanted to touch her for weeks. She looked up at him with her big, dark, eyes and he thought back to white cotton and tan skin and forward to what she might look like, sleepy and disheveled in the morning light. He wondered if her eyes would still sparkle.

Years of Saturday night Salsa nights made her swing her hips too aggressively, but Avilla was a competent enough dancer that she didn’t step on his feet and she allowed him to steer her in small circles around soldiers and their dates who swayed on the dance floor like 10th graders at a Sadie Hawkins dance. One song became two. Two became three. Each slower than the one before and as the tempo slowed she let him pull her closer until they were belly to belly and her head was against his chest. After the last song he spun her expertly around and smiling, tipped his Stetson and she laughed.

For a moment they stood on the emptying dance floor just looking at each other, each trying to decide what to say. Pierce wanted to ask “Do you want to get out of here?” They could ditch Dewayne at the barracks and drive out to Longways Diner by the interstate, sit at the bar and drink coffee and talk. Maybe afterwards he could drive her home and then maybe…

Pierce had spent the last four years of his life memorizing battle drills until he could execute them almost without thinking. Squad and platoon attacks, raids, close quarters battle, reacting to a near ambush, he could execute them all quickly because he’d done them over and over and over again until it was muscle memory. With Tiffany Avilla looking up at him with her big, dark, eyes, he found he didn’t know what to do. He had no SOP. He had no battle drill. He had no plan and little successful experience in creating one. While he tried to find the right words to say the silence between them lingered and slowly turned awkward, all the while Avilla kept looking up at him with big, dark, expectant eyes.

“You wanna join us?” She offered finally, gesturing over her shoulder to where her friends sat, watching with thinly veiled amusement.

“I got Dewayne.” Pierce muttered, gesturing vaguely toward the dark corner where the big man sat alone.

If there was disappointment in Avilla’s eyes Pierce didn’t notice it. She smiled and squeezed his hand one last time, then they both went their separate ways.

Pierce found Dewayne hunched over a double bourbon and coke when he returned to their table. The big man’s round, pale face flushed red and his eyes half closed from the liquor. “Whatta ya doin back over here?” he slurred with a drunken grin.

“Asking myself that same fuckin’ question.” Pierce admitted as he slouched onto a bar stool. He looked at Dewayne's nearly empty whiskey glass, sighed, and held a hand out. “Give me the goddamned keys.”

As Dewayne dug the truck keys out of his pocket Pierce shifted in his seat ever so slightly so he could keep an eye on the door and still see Avilla. He knew from experience that the DJ would play three line dances, then three up-tempo songs before playing another set of slow songs. In roughly twenty minutes he planned to walk across the room and ask her to dance again, plenty of time to figure out what to do after, when he once again found himself standing alone with her.

Fifteen minutes later he watched in dismay as Avilla’s friends stood, gathered their purses, and walked toward the door. “Looks like you waited too long sergeant.” Dewayne drunkenly said out loud what Pierce was secretly thinking. But Avilla broke away from the group and made her way through the growing late night crowd to the dark corner where Pierce and Dewayne sat.

“My friends are heading off post.” She announced with a smile. “I don’t guess you can give me a ride home?”

“Sure.” Pierce answered without hesitation.

The overhead fluorescent light fixture blinked slowly to life and filled Pierces room with stark, white light as he hung his grandfathers Stetson in it’s place on the outside of his wall locker. He stood for a moment and looked at his almost sterile room and his bunk carefully made in Army linens with just a camouflage quilted poncho liner to wrap up in at night and couldn’t help but think of the chaos and clutter of Avilla’s identical room across post and the faux pink fur comforter wadded on the foot of her unmade bunk. There wasn’t much room in the cab of a 1993 Ford Ranger, especially with Dewayne’s bulk in the passenger seat and he could remember the warm weight of Avilla’s leg pressed against his and the way she pretended he didn’t accidentally brush the inside of her thigh while he was shifting into second. He caught the faintest whiff of her perfume as he unbuttoned his shirt.

So close.

He considered one last beer and decided against it. A headache was already building and yet another beer would only make it, and his self pity worse. Now that it was too late, now that he was once again alone in his almost empty room staring at the white, cinder block walls, Pierce could see every little sign he had missed and knew every mistake he’d made. Maybe he couldn’t help that Dewayne was drunk. He certainly couldn’t change the fact that Avilla’s room mate was sleeping in their room. There was no way he was going to get laid and the truth was he wasn’t sure he wanted to. Not yet. He hadn’t earned it. He still could have kissed her though. Or at least tried for a hug. He hadn’t even gotten her room number. Not even a phone number.

Some fuckin’ Scout you are.

He opened his spare wall locker and tossed his shirt into the laundry bag that hung inside the door. For a moment he stood, staring blankly at the gear piled inside, his helmet, flak vest, load bearing equipment, rucksack, and duffel bag. Piles of green and camouflage nylon that he would have to start packing as soon as he woke up.

Pierce sighed as he looked at it all.

Equipment layouts were scheduled for Monday. Tuesday he’d empty and defrost his mini fridge then inventory his high dollar value items and lock them away in his wall lockers and ensure that his team did the same. Trucks were scheduled Wednesday morning to transport the company five hours south to an old POW camp on the West Point campus where he’d spend the next two months living in open bay barracks and assisting with cadet summer training. If he’d read every signal and done everything right, if he’d tried for a kiss, if Avilla’s room mate hadn’t been in their room it would’ve changed nothing because no matter what could have happened, within a week he’d be gone. It wasn’t fair, to him or to her, but that was the Army.

It’s for the best though. He told himself. At least I don’t have to worry about any unwanted complications.

Still he slept fitfully that night, dreaming about white cotton on tan skin, big, dark, eyes and a soft, pink, faux fur comforter.