All Things Nice » Band of Brothers

08: Rifle

"How'd you make Currahee so fast?" Toye asked her one evening when they were all enjoying free time before bed. He was watching her curiously from where he was reclined on his bed, hands crossed behind his head as he puffed lazily on a cigarette.

Posey sent him a small smile and a bashful shrug. "Not sure. I guess I just focus, is all."

"Focus?" Guarnere piped in, his voice ever reaching her ears like nails on a chalkboard. "What d'ya mean focus?"

"You know, pay attention. I try not to think about anything except the ground in front of me, instead of how hot it is or how tired I am or how bad I need to breathe." She left a beat for the words to sink in before she looked down at her lap with a smug smile. "I wouldn't expect you to understand, of course. I shouldn't expect you have sufficient brain power to focus on anything."

Guarnere scoffed. "Yeah, well you might be good at runnin' up that fuckin' mountain but I've got you beat in everything else. Maybe try focusin' there, too."

Posey rolled her eyes and mimicked him childishly which earnt her a laugh out of Luz and, if she had caught it correctly, the tiniest of grins from Roe. She smiled to herself in victory at noticing this but soon turned back to her book.

From the corner of her eye, Posey watched as Luz rifled around in his footlocker and attempted to slyly remove something. She smiled to herself, shut her book, and turned to him.

"Luz," she said.

She watched with thinly veiled amusement as he jolted and attempted to hide whatever it was he was holding. "Yeah?"

"Can I ask you something?" She gestured for him to come over and, after hiding this mystery object back in his footlocker, he did. "Where are you going to hide your contraband?" she asked quietly, and grinned when he sputtered.

"My - uh - I don't -" He cleared his throat and stood up straighter. "I don't have any contraband."

Posey only laughed. "Right. Of course. And neither do I." She shook her head with a smile. "But say, hypothetically, if you did have contraband, where do you think you'd hide it? Because, hypothetically, I wouldn't have a clue where to hide mine."

"Right," Luz replied with a growing smile. "Well, I'd have to say it depends what the contraband is. Plain sight might work."

"In the pillow?" she wondered aloud, giving her own pillow an experimental poke as if to see whether it would work as a potential hiding place.

Luz shrugged. "Sure. Or under the mattress. I think that's where I'd hide mine. Hypothetically."

"Sure," Posey replied. She considered his words for a moment and then nodded, satisfied. "Good talk."

Luz laughed and turned to head back to his bunk to do whatever he was about to do with his contraband. Posey didn't bother to turn and look - she had to trust he wouldn't try to seek out her contraband and she hoped that in ignoring his, he would ignore hers. She was banking on a big lot of luck, she knew, though that seemed to be the case with everything these days.

She hid Teddy the teddy bear in her pillow as soon as night fell. Home felt somehow closer now that he was sleeping in the same bed as her again.

They began weapons training the following day.

"Those rifles you have been given are M1 Garands," declared the captain due to train them. It wasn't Sobel, nor was it any of the other officers in Easy. Posey thought his name was Captain Michael. "You'll have the same one for the entirety of your training here so look after it." These words were enunciated slowly and properly, a short pause between each word.