Clouds like cotton candy rest in a baby blue sky. The muddy ground is covered with brown needles and crunchy dead leaves. We’re on the obstacle course. We scurry over obstacles and run to the next like ants through a picnic.

Jon Roberts, a single son from Arizona, is doing the over/under. A tent shaped obstacle five feet wide with beams of wood spaced—like rungs of a ladder—every foot, its peak fifteen feet above the ground. The objective is to crawl over one beam and under the next and so on and so forth until the end. Now Jon Roberts, who left his single mother home alone six weeks ago, who writes her a letter everyday, who receives a letter from her everyday, crawls to the top of this obstacle. And falls. And he didn’t fucking listen.

“Now listen up privates,” drill sergeant Johnson bellows before we start. “If you fall do not, do not, stick your arms out to break your fall. Here’s how you should fall.” He crosses his arms over his chest, tucks his chin into his chest, puts his feet together, bends his knees, rolls, stands up. “Easy,” he says.

Maybe. But Roberts forgot during his two second fall to the soft ground. He sticks his arms out in front of him. It sounds like a rifle shot when he hits. We wince, turn our heads.

“Medic!” Johnson yells.

Roberts is silent. His face, red from the sun, is gray. He rests on his back. His jaw clenches and relaxes, clenches and relaxes. He stares up to where he just was.

“Fuck,” Johnson breathes over him. “What the fuck Roberts? Didn’t I tell you to tuck your fucking arms in? Fuck.”

The medic jogs up, chewing gum, a large bag strapped to his back. He drops the bag, pulls out a pair of shiny scissors and cuts up the sleeve of Roberts’ uniform. “Don’t worry man,” the medic smacks his gum. “No big deal. You’re gonna be just fine. Look at me. Look at me. Open your eyes.”

Strange, I think, no blood. Only bone and cartilage like cottage cheese. Red muscle like ground-beef waiting to be cooked. Ten of us gasp. Elbows weren’t meant to bend like that.

Roberts looks at us. “How’s it look?”

“Okay,” I say. And I shouldn’t, but I’m curious: “How’s it feel?”

“I can’t feel shit.”

“That’s good,” Jackson says from behind me, turns and throws up.

“What the fuck are you privates gawking at,” Johnson yells. “Get your asses to the next obstacle.”

We jog to the next obstacle. Two privates run past us carrying a long green litter.