The Chaplain's War Read Online Free PDF Page A

a couple of centimeters, so he actually had to look up into my face. His jaw was clenched and I sensed from him the urge for violence. Much as the Professor had once sensed it from me. With the odds being three to one, I figured I’d get my ass handed to me if the major really wanted to pick a fight. I felt sweat springing out across my skin as we stood there in the middle of the chapel glaring at each other.
    “You’ve been warned,” he finally said. “Screw with me again, and I will make you sorry for it. Understood?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Yes, sir ?”
    “Yessir.”
    Hoff pivoted quickly on a heel and stalked out, his henchmen following.
    I braced myself on the backs of two pews, breathing deeply and heavily while the adrenaline of the moment slowly wore off.
    God, I hated pricks like that.
    Not all Fleet officers were as bad as Hoff. But enough of them had rubbed me wrong to make me understand that I had not been, nor would I ever be, a great soldier. Taking orders from people I judged to be idiots just wasn’t my thing.
    With no one in the chapel, I began to wander up and down the rows of stone benches, collecting bits of detritus that had been swept in on the feet of visitors. When noon arrived and I still had no one, I made myself a modest meal and propped a stick-built chair at the front door so that I could get a little fresh air while afternoon wore on into evening.
    Purgatory’s sky was dappled with clouds.
    I suspected there might be rain in our future.
    Heaven knew we needed it. The sparse cold-season snows on the peaks didn’t last long into the warm season. The handful of valley lakes usually began to run dry just a little after the midpoint of the warm months. Thus drought was almost a perpetual state for us, making the rare thunderstorm a welcome thing.
    The chapel had a catchment system which I’d engineered into the roof.
    It would be nice to have fresh, relatively clean water instead of the silty stuff I was always pulling out of the distant creek.
    A figure wearing a poncho and a wide grass hat walked up. The brim of the hat was pulled low so that I couldn’t see the person’s face.
    “Did that major come to bother you?” said a woman’s voice.
    “Hoff?” I asked, recognizing Deacon Fulbright.
    “Yeah, that’s the cocksucker.”
    I chuckled. The Deacon had been a noncommissioned officer—and a gunner—before turning her attention to Christ. She still had her salty mouth. Whether or not she had any actual pastoral bona fides from her previous civilian life was a mystery to me. Not that anyone gave a damn here.
    So much of the valley’s religious fabric was like that. Once the mantes had us beaten and it was obvious we weren’t going anywhere, dozens of would-be congregational leaders sprang up from the ranks.
    Deacon Fulbright and I had been on good terms since the beginning.
    “Come take a load off,” I said to her, going inside and bringing out another stick-built chair.
    She sat, and together we leaned against the wall of the chapel while the sun set.
    “Hoff’s trying to rally as much of the former officer corps as he can,” she said.
    “Is he having much success?”
    “Yes and no,” she said. “There are some colonels who aren’t taking kindly to Hoff’s attitude. I think if he keeps this up there’s liable to be an ass-whippin’ at his expense.”
    “Couldn’t happen to a more deserving man,” I said.
    The Deacon snickered at my sarcastic comment.
    I stared at the sky as the clouds continued to thicken.
    A low rumble, almost so far off we couldn’t hear it, told me my earlier suspicion of rain would turn out to be correct.
    “Harry,” she said—we only used first names when things got candid.
    “Yeah?”
    “Are you sure you don’t know anything more than I know?”
    “What do you know?”
    “What Hoff said I know.”
    “And that’s all I know too,” I replied flatly.
    She stared at me.
    “You’re a bad liar.”
    “And you’re not the first one