Golden Widow #1: Awakening

4

"Move, move!" The officer ordered deafeningly, swinging his arm haphazardly in the metal pole's direction. All of the candidates, except Steve, sprinted over to it as though it were a three course meal and they were starving and homeless, attacking it like rabid wolves. "Come on! Get up there!" Hodges threw himself onto it, and began pulling himself up. The pole wobbled under his weight. Immediately he slipped to the ground, and I grinned at the thought of him having to run with the others. I didn't like him, especially after seeing how he treats people like Steve and Peggy. My eyes couldn't stop flicking over to Steve, and I wondered why he wasn't doing anything, why he was just standing there. He had obviously caught his breath again whilst the others fought one another and the flagpole.

"If that's all you got, this army's in trouble!" The training officer screamed abuse at them, ignoring my brother behind him. Peggy sighed, and the sound of furious scribbling on a wooden board scratched playfully at my ears. She had explained what the clipboard meant, the first night I was here, but I didn't fully understand, and I didn't want to ask her again.

I didn't want to seem thick.

So, instead, she'd taught me other things, fun things. Like how to do a backbend. I still struggle with that when I'm on my own, but she's helped me when she can, and when she can't, I've used a wall.

"Get up there Hodge!" The officer screamed, and I snapped out of my trance. I looked up to see Hodge further up the pole than he had been previously. A lump formed in my throat; I didn't want to be seated next to that bully on the ride back. Plus he smells like sweat and old, dirty cologne.

"Come on! Get up there!" As he wriggled, slithered, and squirmed higher up, clinging on for dear life. His efforts ended up being fruitless, as he slipped back down to the ground, the palms of his hands squeaking painfully against the cool metal. I winced as the sound scraped uncomfortably at my ears. The men screeched and shouted, swarming around it like wasps. I felt a bit sorry for the flagpole; it didn't deserve having men scrambling around at its base, scratching their way up before sliding back down.

"Nobody's got that flag in 17 years!" The training officer gloated, folding his arms tightly against his scrawny chest and smirked.

"17 years?!" I whispered to Peggy, and she nodded, a small piece of her coiled hair slipping down by her ear, drifting in the spring breeze. Despite the ruckus everyone was making mere metres away, you could still hear the birds chirping contentedly in the trees above our heads. That was something we never really got back home in Brooklyn, at least not to the extent we have here at the training camp.

The candidates, still scrambling to ascend the pole, didn't appear to have heard.

"Now fall back into line! Come on, fall in!" He ordered, and the group dispersed, leaving one man clinging onto the pole momentarily with his arms and legs, hugging it tightly to his torso before slipping back into the dirty track. Peggy turned back around, but I stayed facing the flag. They began to jogging away, although Steve didn't join them.

Instead, he walked up to it, tilting his head to look at where the flag gently tickled the sky, a wash of blue and wispy white clouds, antagonising and taunting everyone back down on the ground.

"Rogers! I said fall in!" The officer screamed, but he didn't take any notice. Instead, I watched Steve as he bent over towards the ground, his hand reaching for the base of the pole. His fingers wrapped around the pin holding it steady, jiggling it slightly with his wrist to ease it out, and straightening back up.

The pole fell like a timber, clanging as it bounced off the ground for a second. I jumped slightly at the sudden impact. Peggy turned back around as the pin fell from Steve's hand. Everyone had begun to watch him, and some murmurs from the candidates, dumbfounded and  staring at him, tickled my ears. I turned to face Peggy, grinning from ear to ear, and she smirked at the officer. "See," She whispered to me, watching my brother as he knelt down to pick up the flag from the ground. "He was the only one who used his mind, and not his muscles."