FB - Best Student

'I'm Teasle.'

'Well, I'm Sam Trautman,' he said. 'I've come about my boy.'

Three more lorry trucks drove by, National Guardsmen standing in back holding rifles, faces pale under their helmets in the dark; and as the headlights flashed, Teasle could see Trautman's uniform, his Captain's insignia, his green beret tucked neatly under his belt.

'Your boy?'

'Not exactly, I suppose. I didn't train him myself. My men did. But I trained the men who trained him, so in a sense he's my boy. Has he done anything more? The last I heard he killed thirteen men.' He said it clearly, directly, without emphasis, but all the same Teasle recognized the things subdued in his voice; he had listened to them too often before, too many fathers at night in the station, shocked, disappointed, embarrassed over what their children had done.

But this was not the same, not that simple. There was something else hidden in Trautman's voice, something so unfamiliar in this kind of situation that Teasle was having trouble identifying it, and when he did, he was bewildered.

'You sound almost proud of him,' Teasle said.

'Do I? I'm sorry. I don't mean to. It's just that he's the best student we ever turned out, and things would certainly be wrong with the school if he hadn't put up a good fight.'


- First Blood, Part 3, Chapter 2