Rank

by Richard Compson Sater

  When we promise a lifetime to another person, we tend to forget that time is made up of the passing days, one by one. He and I expressed our passion for each other when we could, as lusty and demanding and satisfying as it is supposed to be, but we got to know each other best filling in all the cracks of a day with snowball fights and Christmas lights and paper kites that linked one minute to the next.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  The general would pin on that second star at the end of January. I hit my eighteen-month point as a second lieutenant a bit sooner, at the end of December, which meant I was eligible for promotion to first lieutenant a month before him. Briefly, we would be five ranks apart instead of six.

  The promotion list had appeared on schedule late in the year. The general’s name was on it, to no one’s astonishment, but I liked seeing it in print just the same. The Air Force Times ran a teaser on the cover—“eight general officers selected for second star”—and put the list inside, with brief biographical sketches of the selectees.

  The NAF, of course, wanted to make a big deal of the general’s promotion. Lieutenant Colonel Cartwright, with the vice commander’s approval, planned to borrow the base theater, engage the honor guard to post the colors and an Air Force band to play the National Anthem, and invite local civic leaders as well as the entire Sixth Air Force staff and all assigned personnel. It would be quite an occasion.

  She put quite a lot of effort into the plan before presenting her grand scheme to the general. And he said hell, no. Good for him, though I was at the center of the storm. Finally, I worked quietly with Julia and the protocol office to build a proper ceremony on a much smaller scale.

  A second star! It was a vote of confidence, and it meant three more years of service, his last three, after a lifetime of Air Force. He’d be looking at retirement at fifty-four, and I suspected he’d be ready. It would mean huge changes for him and for us. I knew he could hang on for three years. I was hopeful we could hang on as well, though I knew the likelihood of a permanent change-of-station before then for him as well as for me. He’d been at the NAF for more three years already. I didn’t know what plans they had for him. He would probably be hauled up to the headquarters as deputy commander or something.

  Neither of us mentioned the future, as if we could somehow stave it off by ignoring it.

  The general decided to hold his promotion ceremony in the NAF headquarters conference room, which had plenty of seats for the staff, his family, and invited friends. He selected a Friday when the commanding general of our parent unit, Air Mobility Command, could fit the ceremony into his schedule. I coordinated with his staff to work out the preliminary logistics. General O’Neill’s father and sister would attend, and I would meet them at last.

  They would have the honor of pinning on star Number Two. I half hoped the general would let me, but such a thing would have been unthinkable. In fact, he apologized even before I could ask. “I’m sorry, Landslide. It can’t be done. I can only buck so much protocol. I’m already on thin ice for downsizing the ceremony. You’ve been eligible for pinning on first lieutenant since the end of December. If you don’t mind waiting a little longer, we can have your ceremony at the same time as mine. Your folks can come, and they can meet my dad and sister, too. What do you say?”

  I consented. I wasn’t about to make a big deal out of promotion to first lieutenant. Barring a murder conviction, every second lieutenant gets promoted. There are no boards to meet and no professional military education involved, just eighteen months of time-in-grade. I guess the Air Force wants us to concentrate on learning how to be officers before teaching us to lead troops and manage air assets. The Air Force Times would not be running a list of second lieutenants who were eligible for promotion.

  Publicly, of course, the general commented he’d decided to promote me at the same ceremony to save time and expense. We’d miss but a single afternoon of work, and he’d have to spring for only one reception. Lieutenant Colonel Cartwright objected, but he overruled her with a raised eyebrow, and she kept quiet after that.

  He also proclaimed rather loudly to all that the ceremony would also mark the end of my sentence. I’d hit the one-year point and would be paroled. As he’d pointed out to me before, aide-de-camp is not a career field, only a career-broadening tour.

  “I won’t be accused of hindering anyone’s chance for promotion to captain,” he announced to me several times when he had sufficient witnesses. “Not even yours.”

  Exhortations from the staff about extending my term met deaf ears. The general claimed he had already begun the search for his next victim. He felt he deserved a captain after all he’d put up with from me, particularly with that second star imminent.

  “I’m ready for some fresh meat,” he said. “Lieutenant Mitchell is already a couple of weeks past his sell-by date. You can smell him a mile off.”

  That usually generated a laugh, however desultory.

  *

  I discovered that the general’s favorite recording of Tosca, released on LP in the late 1950s, had finally been released on compact disc, and I bought it for him as a promotion gift. I wrapped the set in deep blue tissue paper and pressed on two silver gummed stars, the kind your second-grade teacher used to dole out sparingly as a reward for excellence. I hid it in a dresser drawer and tried to forget about it.

  Julia kept a sharp eye on us, looking for any sign that we might betray ourselves, any hint of dangerous complacency. Since Christmas, however, she didn’t have much to observe. The general and I hadn’t spent any significant time alone together, not even New Year’s Eve. He was preoccupied, a world on his mind, and how much was us, I could not guess.

  I grew frustrated, particularly as he grew more demanding and short-tempered in the days before the promotion ceremony. One afternoon, as he barked at me repeatedly, firing one complaint after another at me like bursts of M-16 fire, I could do nothing but stand in front of his desk and repeat, “Yes, sir. Yes, sir.” After the sixth or seventh one, I’d had enough. I slipped in one of these, softly: “Yes, Traveler.”

  Mid-rant, he screeched to a halt. Swallowed a deep breath, took off his glasses, and looked at me. Softly, he said, “Thanks for the reminder, Old Scout. I needed that.” The rest of the afternoon passed at a lower volume. At the end of the day, he insisted I stop by his house so he could properly apologize.

  I hardly expected the penance he had in mind. After a long and necessary embrace upon my arrival, he fixed me a chocolate ice cream soda, the traditional way, with syrup and seltzer water, complete with whipped cream and cherry, in a tall glass with a straw and long spoon. Solemnly, I sat at the kitchen table to eat, and I enjoyed it so thoroughly that he made a second one for me and one for himself as well.

  “Satisfied?” he said as I slurped the last of the chocolate syrup from the bottom of my glass.

  I nodded. As far as I was concerned, he was forgiven.

  “Good. Now get out of here. Don’t you think I have better things to do than soda-jerking?”

  “Actually, no,” I said.

  He grinned. “Maybe I should open a malt shop after I retire from the Air Force. You think your dad would approve?”

  *

  My folks came to town for the big event, of course. My dad took a week’s vacation, boarded the dogs with a neighbor, and they drove out. My apartment was a little cramped for the three of us but not too uncomfortable. I sacked out on the couch and gave them the bedroom. Fortunately, they were far removed and well away from the hysteria at the NAF as the pending ceremony drew closer. I took a couple days of leave so we could spend some time together. I felt I deserved a break, too.

  I knew the general thought all the fuss was ludicrous. If they’d let him, he would simply have started wearing the second star on the appropriate day, but ceremony is part of a general’s game, and the rules must be followed.

  The general’s dad, sister Kathleen, and brother-in-law David came to town a few days before the ceremony. Though t
he house had plenty of room, I knew the general wasn’t terribly excited about having them underfoot. He liked his privacy. And, of course, I couldn’t visit him as long as they were on hand.

  In the months since my first dinner date with the general, I had learned little about his dad and sister. He rarely mentioned them. I assumed he would tell me when he was ready, or perhaps they would speak for themselves. I’d already established that the general and Kathleen were not particularly close, though they were but a few years apart in age. I concluded the general and his dad, Charlie O’Neill, weren’t on the most intimate terms either.

  I did discover that Mr. O’Neill was in his late seventies and quite active for his age. He was an avid golfer, a sport the general truly loathed. On the rare occasions when Mr. O’Neill visited, he brought his clubs and spent most of his time on the course. A retired broker, he’d never served in the military himself. I had no expectations we’d forge any kind of bond, but I was anxious to meet him nonetheless.

  Maybe I was only looking for clues to the general’s past, trying to discover what made him the man he’d become. He’d grown up in a time when being gay was a secret most people kept. I wonder if the general joined the Air Force at least in part to prove to himself and everyone that he could be so much like the “regular” boys that no one would ever question. How much, if any, did his family guess?

  My parents were eager to see the general again, and he felt the same. As busy as he was, he took the entire afternoon on Thursday, the day before the ceremony, and invited my mom and dad to the base for a private tour of a C-5, which they’d never seen up close. I met them at the base’s front gate and escorted them to our headquarters building, and the general took over from there. He’d called the maintenance operations center and instructed the crew to ready a static plane for him, with an external power cart so we’d have electricity for the aircraft systems. A few minutes later, in his staff car, we drove out to the flightline and he led us aboard to begin his show-and-tell.

  A young staff sergeant had been dispatched to hook up the power cart. He was nervous, given the circumstances, but he managed his duties with speed and efficiency and then promptly ducked out of sight. We forgot all about him as the general settled effortlessly into the uncharacteristic role of tour guide. I’d never seen him in such guise before, but it suited him perfectly.

  He’s an expert, even if his affection for the C-5 Galaxy is nonexistent. He was still pining for the old C-141 Starlifter, which had been retired from the Air Force inventory some years back. He had threatened to retire rather than learn to fly a new airframe, according to Mark, but no one really believed it, particularly given the lure of a star on the shoulderboards. He was telling everyone “This old dog doesn’t want to learn any new tricks” until he climbed on the plane that took him to Lackland Air Force Base for the C-5 pilot course. By a wide margin, he was the oldest student in his class.

  I’d flown with the general often enough that the plane was familiar to me, but my mom and dad proved a captive audience. The general was a terrific salesman, and he didn’t miss a single attribute of the Air Force’s largest cargo hauler, the backbone of its transportation mission for over four decades. My parents, fascinated, asked dozens of questions and the general knew all the answers. The statistics were second nature to him. He put my parents in the pilot seats and showed them how they might fire up the engines, take off, and communicate by radio. They were impressed, and I was, too.

  A couple of times in the past I’d heard him comment when he had an appreciative audience that his wife had left him because she couldn’t stand his mistress. “My ex wanted to put the C-5 down as the correspondent in the divorce,” he would say. It never failed to produce a laugh. He had no reason to say such a thing to my parents, but I could see how his love for flight might have made anyone jealous.

  While my mother and father were scrutinizing the engineer’s panel, with its million switches, dials, gauges, and monitors, the general brushed his mustache against my ear and whispered, “Do they still like me?”

  I nodded. “You made the most inconvenient good impression on them at home, and you’re only making matters worse now,” I said.

  “Good,” he said, and I could hear his relief. He squeezed my shoulder. Our tour continued through the bunk rooms with their compact beds and into the rear upper deck, which seated seventy-plus passengers and two loadmasters. He showed off the gleaming galleys designed for food preparation, and even the latrines. He explained the compartments were fully pressurized in flight, just like a commercial jet plane.

  He directed my parents downstairs to the lower deck, but as I moved to follow, he took hold of my shirttail. “Hey, you,” he whispered. “Not so fast.” He folded me into his arms. “Did I ever tell you how damned sexy you are?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  “Liar,” he said. He pressed his mustache against mine, quickly and persuasively.

  “Why you don’t wise up and tell me to get the hell gone from your life?” he said when we separated.

  “You couldn’t stand it,” I said.

  “You’ve got that right,” he said. “Thank you, Flightline. I mean that.” Under his grin, my heart melted all over again. He fingered the nape of my neck, and who knows what he would have done next if we hadn’t been interrupted by a stranger’s voice?

  “Um, excuse me, sir?”

  The general let go of me as if I’d given him an electric shock, and color rose in his face. I froze, wishing I could disappear. The general turned toward the voice and found the maintenance sergeant peering in at us.

  “Well?” the general said, sharp. “What is it?” When the sergeant didn’t answer quickly enough to suit the general’s satisfaction, he asked again with more impatience. “What do you want, damn it?”

  The unfortunate sergeant flinched, no doubt wondering what he’d done wrong. His voice tremulous, he said, “I-I’m sorry, sir. I wanted to find out if you need anything else before I head back to the shop.”

  The general sighed, calmed himself down, and his professionalism returned. “No. You’re dismissed,” he said. “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  “You’re welcome, sir. Thank you, sir.” He disappeared in an instant, and I didn’t blame him, but the general turned his attention back to me, his face a dark cloud. We were, I’m sure, both wondering how long the sergeant had been watching us. What had he seen?

  Would he tell?

  “Good Christ,” the general whispered. “I thought he left a long time ago.”

  “Me, too.”

  “We’ve got to be more careful,” he said at last. I neglected to point out that he’d initiated the contact, not me. My reminder would have served no purpose. His consternation was interrupted by my dad’s voice from below.

  “Son? Are you still up there?”

  “Coming, Dad.”

  I hopped down the ladder and the general followed, and if our close call preoccupied him, he nonetheless assumed his tour-guide duties with grace and ease. The massive cargo compartment presented new wonders for my parents to explore. The general opened both ends of the aircraft to show off the upward-hinged nose and outward-opening “clamshell” doors in the rear, an impressive spectacle. As my parents expressed their amazement, the general roundly dismissed the claims made by his fighter-pilot buddies who claimed that they had the more glamorous job.

  “We’re providing the combat support anywhere in the world. If the troops need it, we can deliver it to them. We’re carrying humanitarian aid. Blankets. Food. Water. Life itself!” He said he wasn’t sure he could have flown a bomber or a fighter because of the possibility of endangering civilians. But cargo and passengers? “There’s no damn better job in the whole Air Force,” he said. “I’ve been flying cargo planes my entire career, and it’s been a privilege.”

  I’d never known him to conduct a private tour for anyone else, and I was pleased that my mom and dad were in appropriate awe. We spent almost three hours on the airplane
altogether, and by the time we were done, he seemed to have forgotten all about our close call with the sergeant. My parents’ unhesitant goodwill was powerfully persuasive, and he responded in kind. Had he been auditioning for a part in our family, he couldn’t have performed better.

  *

  We had dinner at my apartment that night. My mother and the general cooked, listening to his new Tosca on a portable CD player in the kitchen while my dad and I traded sections of the newspaper in the living room. I didn’t know what excuse the general had given his own family for being absent that night. I didn’t care. We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly, and by the time he and I said good night at the front door—my parents having discreetly retired first to give us a few minutes of privacy—midnight had come and gone and we were into the early morning of the big day.

  “Maybe one of these days, we’ll be able to say good night and never have to say good-bye afterward,” I said as he wrapped himself around me.

  “It’ll come. We’re getting a little closer each day, Network.” He cleared his throat. “We have to be a bit more careful at work, however.”

  “You can’t blame me for that, Traveler. If you had kept your hands to yourself—”

  He shut me up by affixing his mouth to mine. Twenty minutes later, we were still good-bye-ing, reluctant to let go of each other. “The two of us can fit on your couch,” he said. “We’ve proved it before. And there are no staff sergeants around to interrupt us.”

  “I’m positive I could persuade you to stick around,” I told him. “You’d better get out of here before I decide to prove it.”

  He laughed. “Are you sure? Bring it on, Double Dog. I dare you.”

  I slid my hand inside his shirt as he mumbled his approval. But as much as he would have enjoyed himself tonight, I knew he would be angry tomorrow for his weakness and the lack of sleep. I extracted my hand from his shirt, even as he protested. “Go,” I said. “What would your family think if you didn’t come home tonight?”