Chapter 9 - The Flag at Sunset
The drive back to Westbridge took two hours and ten minutes.
The storm that had threatened all afternoon had finally broken over the northern counties, washing the dust from the asphalt and leaving the night air smelling of wet pine, ozone, and cold clay.
I did not take the highway. I took the old state routes—Route 21 through the small farming settlements of Gurnee and Libertyville, past the darkened feed mills and the two-pump gas stations where the neon signs hummed against the damp darkness.
When I reached the south gate of the academy, the clock on the dashboard read 8:40 PM.
The great wrought-iron gates were open, flanked by two military police officers in white gloves and reflective cross-straps, their batons resting against their hips.
As my Honda cleared the stone pillars, both officers snapped to attention.
They did not salute the rusted fenders or the cracked windshield.
They saluted the gold braid on the garrison cap resting on the dashboard, and the blue state seal of the George C. Marshall Award visible on the front seat.
I parked the car in the gravel turnaround behind Grant Barracks.
The campus was nearly deserted. The four hundred families had long since departed for their celebration dinners in the city, their hotels in Milwaukee, and their suburban homes along the North Shore. The white canvas pavilions had been dismantled, leaving only the dark, rectangular depressions in the grass where the support posts had stood.
I walked to the center of the parade field.
The grass was wet, soaking through the thin leather soles of my low-quarters, but I didn't hurry.
In the center of the quad, standing beside the eighty-foot steel flagpole where the national colors were already being lowered for evening retreat, stood General Prescott.
He was wearing his old green service sweater with the leather shoulder patches, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his gaze fixed on the limestone facade of Westbridge Hall where the last light of the evening was fading from the third-story windows.
I stopped three paces behind him and came to attention.
"Lieutenant Vance reporting, sir."
Prescott did not turn around immediately. He watched as the two junior cadets at the halyards caught the hem of the wool flag, folding the red and white stripes into that tight, dense triangle of dark blue field and white stars.
"Did Alistair sign the papers?" Prescott asked, his voice low, gravelly, blending with the sound of the wind through the tall maples.
"He signed them, General," I said. "The entire eight point two million was transferred to the academy trust at four-fifty-five."
Prescott nodded once—a small, sharp inclination of his white head.
"Marcus Sterling called me thirty minutes ago," the old man said, turning to face me. "He told me that your mother’s country club membership was revoked by the board at six o'clock. He said Richard’s legal partners have already changed the locks on the sixteenth floor of the LaSalle Street office."
He stepped closer, his gray eyes studying the dark swelling on my left cheekbone.
"The board of trustees met in emergency session twenty minutes ago, Audrey."
"Sir?"
"They voted unanimously to name the new physical sciences laboratory after your grandfather," Prescott said. "And they voted to name the cadet brigade barracks after you."
The breath caught in the back of my throat.
For four years, I had walked past the bronze plaques in the archways of Westbridge—plaques bearing the names of boys who had died at Belleau Wood, at Normandy, in the Ia Drang Valley, and along the Euphrates. Names of men who had come from dynasties, from governors' mansions, from houses with three-hundred-foot lawns and silver service on Sunday afternoons.
"I didn't die for this school, General," I whispered.
"No," Prescott said, his hand reaching out to rest firmly on my shoulder, his grip like seasoned white oak. "You did something considerably more difficult, Lieutenant. You lived for it while the people who were supposed to love you were trying to starve you out."
He dropped his hand and looked down at the flag being carried toward the guardhouse.
"Your orders came through from Fort Moore at nineteen-hundred hours," Prescott said. "Infantry Basic Officer Leader Course. Class zero-eight-dash-twenty-six. You report to the brigade adjutant at zero-six-hundred on the first of July."
"Understood, sir."
"You have twenty-one days of leave, Audrey," he said, looking at me with a rare, faint smile that crinkled the scars around his eyes. "Where are you going?"
May you like
I looked past his shoulder toward the north gate, where Route 9 ran into the dark, timbered hills of Wisconsin—miles of open road, of clean water, of small towns where nobody had ever heard the name Vance, and where nobody cared who your grandfather was as long as your tires held air and your checks cleared the register.
"I have an eight-hundred-dollar car, General," I said. "And for the first time in twenty-two years, I have nowhere I have to be before morning."
