NONFICTION
On the Range
by Carter Jefferson
Two companies of cadets stood stiffly at attention, while behind them Texas blackland prairie dust settled in the morning sun. My lieutenants snapped the orders that put the trainees in position; my sergeants, all experts, squatted at twenty stations along the firing line, ready to turn green privates into passable marksmen. Fifty yards in front other cadets cautiously manned the pits, heads down, ready to communicate success or failure when bullets hit the targets or went whizzing by.
Only a high school senior, but a major in the Reserve Officers Training Corps, I commanded the rifle range at the annual summer camp. The Army commandant, Colonel Coleman, stood on the sidelines, gray hair clipped short above a weary face earned by a life in uniform. He trusted me to run things the way they should be run.
Each rifleman shot until he produced a respectable score. Now and then, when one of the instructors found himself stymied, I'd stretch out beside the shooter and help bring forth the skill we knew was there. My second-in-command, a captain, gave the firing orders. Like the colonel, I let my subordinates do their work in peace when they knew how to do it well.
The captain shouted "Cease fire!" Time to turn loose the successes, bring up new candidates to train. Ten feet away I saw a sergeant hectoring a hapless victim and slid in alongside.
"Got trouble, Private?"
The sergeant butted in. "Hell, Major, he can't blow his nose!"
The boy's eyes pleaded. I took the rifle from his hands, wrapped the sling around my arm, and then lay prone.
"See my position?"
Doubt still lurked in his face, but he managed a tiny nod.
Fully engrossed, determined that he would learn, I showed him the proper form. Then I took aim and squeezed the trigger. The report reverberated in total silence. And then I knew: "Cease Fire!" the captain had said. And never said "Commence!"
My heart raced, blood flowed into my face, and my sphincter began to loosen. A second later, the flagman out ahead signaled a perfect shot. Thank God! At least I hadn't killed anybody.
I struggled out of firing position and came to my feet. The colonel waited right behind the line, looking at the ground. And then he spoke to me.
"Made a mistake there."
"Yes, sir. A really bad mistake." Frozen, I waited for him to strip the insignia from my shoulders. I had committed the unpardonable sin — "Cease Fire!" is never a suggestion.
"Well, get on with it," he said. And then he marched back to the sidelines.
I nodded to the captain.
"Ready on the right? Ready on the left? Commence firing!"
My shame nearly drowned out the fusillade. A few minutes later, the captain shouted again: "Cease fire!"
He looked at me and grinned. "Got that, Major?"
Carter Jefferson, a former naval officer, journalist, history professor, and psychotherapist, now teaches writing to the senior set at U. Mass./Boston. His stories have appeared in a literary magazine and in e-zines, and he even sold one, hand-bound and illustrated, in an art gallery. He also published a political biography, but that was a while back. His book reviews have appeared in the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune. All sorts of stuff is available at his web site: http://carterj.homestead.com/.
Copyright 2006, Carter Jefferson