He Picked the Wrong Corporal in the Chow Line — Then a Private Raised His Phone
"Step back, sweetheart," he said, and his open hand came across her face before the tray rail had even stopped rattling.
Corporal Leanne Porter hasn't slept a full night in three weeks. She's third from the front of a chow line that barely moves, and she is too tired to do anything but tell the truth: the line is going as fast as it can.
Randall Grice doesn't care. He's a Kestrel Logistics contractor with a laminated badge clipped to his belt, and on this base he has learned that a badge gets him past anybody in olive. He walks the rail like it belongs to him. Sixty people in the hall look at their trays and let him.
The wet crack of that open palm is the only loud thing all evening. Her folded olive bandanna skids across the tile and stops near the drains. Nobody gasps. Nobody films. The fan hums. Sixty pairs of boots shift as one.
Then a private first class, three places back, sets his tray down on the rail and slides his phone from behind it.
"Hey. Hands off her."
Grice turns the whole width of his shoulders, delighted, the way a man turns when he finally has an audience worth performing for. "And who are you, private?"
"The one holding the phone."
Grice steps in close, badge out, chin up, telling the private exactly what a Kestrel ID is worth when it's his word against a brand-new uniform — and inviting him to say one more word, right here, so everyone can hear what happens to privates who talk back.
Which is when you notice what the private has been doing with that phone the entire time. Not filming. Thumbing.
The serving line door at the far end of the hall opens, and Master Sergeant Estelle Okonjo walks in, khaki pressed, three rows of ribbons.
Grice gets there first. Smooth, fast, familiar — a man who has charmed his way out of mess halls on more than one installation. He is still talking when she walks straight past him.
She stops in front of the private. She looks at his face, then at the phone. "Bring it here, son."
He turns the screen toward her.
It's one frame. Still. Grice's right arm drawn back over Corporal Porter's cheek, palm open, flush high on his face, her bandanna already off her head at the edge of the frame. Three pairs of boots behind her. Same tile, same light. He was standing one step back and to her right when he pressed the button.
Sergeant Okonjo looks at that number on Grice's belt. She pats her own breast pocket once, the way a woman does when she is sure of what is already inside it.
And she has not yet decided what to do with the number 0447.
Why has Randall Grice been escorted off three installations before this one — and why does the duty officer already have the paperwork in her pocket before anyone says a word?
Keep reading — the rest of the hall's price, and Leanne's first full breath in weeks, arrives in the first comment below.
Advertisement