The Soldier on the Night Watch

I pulled a lot of overnight guard shifts at an old installation that had been in use since before either of my grandfathers was born. Most of the buildings were newer, but the perimeter road ran past a row of original barracks that nobody used anymore.

Around two one morning I saw a figure walking the fence line ahead of me, moving slow and steady the way you do when you have walked a route a thousand times. His uniform was wrong — heavy, old-fashioned, a cut I had only seen in museum photographs. I called out the challenge, the way you are trained to, twice. He did not slow and he did not answer.

I followed at a distance, my heart going hard. He walked the entire length of the old barracks and turned the corner. When I reached the corner maybe four seconds behind him, the road was empty in both directions. There was frost on the ground, a clean sheet of it, and mine were the only bootprints on it.

I reported it, because you report everything. The senior sergeant did not laugh, which surprised me. He said men had been challenging that same soldier on that same stretch for as long as anyone could remember, that he only ever walked the old line, and that he never once answered a challenge because, the joke went, he outranked all of us and was still on duty.

I saw him twice more before I rotated out. Both times, same slow pace, same silence, same empty road around the corner. I stopped challenging him. I just let him finish his watch.