Shoot Like a Girl

by Mary Jennings Hegar

  I immediately set my sights on pledging an ROTC organization called the Arnold Air Society (AAS), which was sort of like a military fraternity and clearly boasted the top cadets. Although there was only one other female in the group, I knew I could hack it. Between the hazing—which could get intense—and the endless grilling of the cadets on military general knowledge, completing the process was pretty overwhelming and my GPA suffered for it. But surviving the eight-week pledge process and being welcomed into the AAS was my greatest accomplishment to date.

  The semester I pledged AAS was the first time in my life I truly felt I’d proved to myself just how tough I could be. In the years to come, I’d face many challenges; that semester gave me the mentality that if I could survive those hellish months, I could make it through just about anything. After that, my second year of college was an absolute breeze.

  —

  In the summer of 1997, after completing my sophomore year, I went off to field training, which was essentially boot camp for Air Force officer candidates. And yes, I know this is going to sound strange, but field training was pretty much my version of Disneyland.

  Field training is similar to enlisted boot camp, but it is shorter and is more focused on leadership rather than the brutal breaking down and building up of troops like you see in the movies. This was a rite of passage and a requirement for all cadets after their second year. It was only offered in the summer, but I was more than happy to leave the sweltering Texas weather behind and head to New England.

  In June of that year, I shipped off to Dover Air Force Base, Massachusetts. Upon arrival, the hundreds of cadets were split up into flights, and each flight had a couple dozen people assigned to them. We bunked in barracks that always had to be inspection ready, and we were woken up before dawn every day by reveille and the even louder Military Training Instructors (MTIs). There were plenty of tough moments in field training, but honestly, I think meals were the worst part for me. I’m a slow eater in general, so I had a harder time than others basically scraping my entire tray into my mouth in fewer than seven minutes. You also had to get at least a couple of glasses of water down in that time, and you weren’t dismissed until the water was gone. At the end of each day, we were all utterly spent from being physically and mentally challenged every waking minute. So it was a sweet relief to fall into our rock-hard beds every night to the gentle, comforting sound of Taps playing in the background. For most people, this was torture. But some of us felt right at home.

  Several days into the training, we were finally sent out on the obstacle course. I could barely contain my excitement—I’d been looking forward to this since our arrival. None of us knew what the course would look like before we arrived, but we probably all had pictured the worst. I was relieved to see that the first few obstacles were challenging but easy enough. We would have to low-crawl under barbed wire, jump over logs, and clamber up cargo nets. I was like a kid in a candy shop. Finally, I felt like I was in the real military.

  I coasted through the first three obstacles, but then I was met with a surprise at the fourth. The obstacle looked like a huge ladder built by a drunken giant. The rungs were two-by-six pieces of wood nailed to telephone poles at slight angles. It looked intimidating but awesome, and I couldn’t wait for my turn. But as we lined up in front of it, the drill instructors shocked us with the news that the women wouldn’t have to complete this particular obstacle. I shook my head in fury and immediately stepped to the front of the line. There was no force on earth that could have stopped me from getting over that obstacle. I walked toward it, eyes narrowed, utterly focused.

  It was easy at first—you just stood on one board, leaned your hips against another board, and reached up to grab the third. Pushing down with one hand on the board at your hip, you would haul yourself up by holding on to the high board while lifting your legs up to the hip-level board. As you neared the top, however, the boards started getting farther and farther apart. My five-foot-four frame wasn’t ideal for the task, and by the time I got to the second-to-last board, I could no longer stand on one board and reach the last board at the top. I paused for a moment and thought. I’d have to jump, hoping I wouldn’t miss grabbing on to that high board. It was the only way. So I jumped.

  I didn’t miss. I grabbed hold of the topmost board and used it to get my legs over the hip-height board. Finally I could pull myself over the top, swinging my leg up over the last board. Then I sat for just a moment to take in the view. It was beautiful. The thirty or so other cadets assigned to my flight were all going crazy twenty-five feet below me. The surprised drill instructor, ignoring the raucous cheers, was looking up at me as if to say, “What the fuck are you doing? Get the fuck down here!” I laughed and flipped over onto my stomach to start making my way back down to the bottom. The way down was still scary, since I was unable to feel the plank under my foot before having to commit to each drop, but I felt so amazing, I barely noticed.

  On a high from the cheers, the adrenaline, and the satisfaction of shoving that “chivalry” back in my instructor’s face, I faced down the next obstacle. Piece of cake. It was a large log, about two feet wide and horizontal, held up at both ends by wooden braces leveled at about shoulder height. To “set up” the obstacle, the instructors would roll the log a few inches toward the cadet. This way, when the cadet would run at, jump on, and swing their leg up over the log, the log would begin rolling away from the cadet, so we could roll with the log to the other side. I volunteered to go first again, eager to keep my awesome streak alive. Running full steam ahead, I hit the log and threw my leg up. However, the instructor hadn’t reset the obstacle, so instead of rolling with me, the log had rolled toward me.

  The smack of my knee on the log sounded like a mallet tenderizing a steak. The next smack was my back hitting the ground. I looked up at the beautiful sky, the same one I’d been enjoying from on high a moment ago, and an intense pain exploded up my leg and into my back. It was clear to everyone that I was badly hurt. I was instantly surrounded by my flight as the drill instructor pushed his way through the crowd to get to me. Then he called for assistance on his radio. My baggy cargo pants started to feel tight.

  The instructor, noticing the swelling, pulled a pocketknife out and cut my uniform right above my knee and gasped audibly. He keyed his mic again and upgraded his request to an ambulance. He began to gently unlace my boot, but the pain was intolerable, so he just cut the laces and removed my boot. As the paramedics loaded me into the ambulance, my instructor climbed in next to me. He knelt beside me and held my hand as the driver bumped along the uneven ground. I gritted my teeth, willing myself not to cry.

  I was in warrior mode, refusing to shed a tear, but then everything around me started to sort of sparkle. Darkness was creeping in at the edges, my vision shrinking to an ever-smaller ring. The drill instructor began smacking the back of my hand, trying to get me to talk.

  “Hey . . . HEY. What’s your name? Where are you from?”

  I felt like I was going to puke, but I managed to bark out, “Cadet Jennings, Austin, Texas, Drill Sergeant!”

  He chuckled. “You can turn it off, Jennings. You’re going to be fine, but stay with me. You want to be a pilot, right?”

  I was shocked. How did he know that? I guess pretty much all of us did.

  “Yes . . . why?”

  “You do know that if you ever pass out and that gets on your record, you can’t fly, right? So if you’re hurting, just fucking scream and cry already. It’s better than going unconscious.”

  It turns out that the collision between the log and my knee had succeeded in cracking my kneecap completely through. Luckily, it was still in one piece. You can’t cast a broken joint, though, so I was just told to stay off of it. My mom and dad, who were picking me up from the airport, held hands and watched with pitying eyes as I was wheeled over to them in a wheelchair by the airline attendant. I had gone off to show everyone just how t
ough I was, but I couldn’t even return home under my own power. I couldn’t have known it then, but I would end up returning to officer training the following year and graduating in the top 10 percent of my class, but I’d have to complete the training with a knee injury that would plague me for the rest of my life.

  As I rolled down the airport walkway to the baggage claim in a wheelchair, my dad ruffled my hair. “Aww, come on, sweet pea. Don’t look so sad. You’re not invincible, ya know. We still love you, darlin’.”

  My trademark hormonal teenage bad attitude always came out at the worst moments. Instead of letting myself be consoled, I refused to meet his eyes. “A lot of good that’ll do me,” I growled.

  —

  For some reason I still can’t quite understand, I was always pretty brutal to my stepfather. David was absolutely wonderful, and I did love him with all of my heart, but I made it a point to never admit that to him. Maybe I just wasn’t ready to trust another father figure.

  As I grew older and realized I did want to tell him that I loved him, it had been built up so much that I wanted to wait for some kind of memorable occasion. I pictured him giving me away at my wedding, and before we walked down the aisle I’d turn to him, kiss his cheek, and finally tell him I loved him. I pictured this scene more often than I care to admit.

  But later that fall, I’d have my last chance—and I’d miss it. On the night of October 5, 1997, I was at my parents’ house doing laundry and mooching dinner like any good college student. It was my junior year in college, and by then I had mostly recovered from the broken kneecap. My knee would never be the same, but I was no longer in a lot of pain.

  After dinner I helped clean up the kitchen, and we all started winding down for the night. Then David told me he had a gift for me, that I’d be getting my Christmas present early this year, which was very uncharacteristic of him. He handed me a box with a huge smile on his face, and I flopped on the couch, rolling my eyes at his enthusiasm, to open it up. It was a cell phone! In the late nineties, this was a huge deal—I couldn’t believe it.

  “Now, if that doesn’t get me a hug, nothing will!” David said, holding out his arms for a hug, thrilled by my excited reaction. But I didn’t even look up from my new phone. Instead, I walked right around him and into my room, already programming in all of my phone numbers, wanting only to play with my new toy.

  “I love you, sweet pea,” he called out after me.

  “Yeah, I know. Thanks,” I said.

  That was the last time I ever saw him alive.

  David went off to work the next morning, forty-nine years old, full of life and happily married. I woke up a bit later and drove into Austin to go to my nine a.m. class. At around ten a.m. I received a phone call from a hysterical secretary at my mom’s office. She was screaming that David was dead, that my mom was having some sort of breakdown. I guess the secretary didn’t realize that she wasn’t just talking about my mom’s husband. She was also telling me that my father was dead.

  “Wait . . . what did you say?” I must have repeated the question about five times. I understood that my mom needed me, but my brain refused to register any other information. The secretary told me my mother was huddled under her desk, screaming and crying, and no one could get near her. I got in my car and drove like it was the end of the world, running red lights and using the emergency lane on the highway.

  To be honest, I don’t remember what happened when I got there. Instead of being helpful, I entered into a sort of a zombie-like state of numbness and disconnection. I don’t even really remember leaving her office that day. I do know that I didn’t cry. I didn’t make eye contact or talk to anyone. I drove to the airport to pick up incoming relatives who would pretend to care, but I said almost nothing. I was stone-faced; no one could tell that I was barely hanging on to my sanity.

  David worked for Praxair, a natural gas company. His coworkers told us that he had been checking the level of one of the tanks with a flashlight tied to a long rope. We were told that the standard procedure was to lower the flashlight into the tank in order to ascertain the level of the liquid by measuring the rope. Apparently, he had slipped on the ladder either on his way up or on his way down. The flashlight’s lanyard got wrapped around his neck somehow, and he had accidentally hung himself. As soon as his coworkers had found him, they cut him down and administered CPR, but it was too late. And while we all had our theories as to how he fell, we would never know exactly what happened. The only thing I knew for sure was that the world had become an ugly, unfair place very quickly.

  Suddenly, I found myself unable to trust any kind of happiness. It was too fleeting, completely temporary. It would be almost fifteen years before I’d let myself be truly happy again.

  I’ve been in love with the same poem, “High Flight” by John Gillespie Magee Jr., since I was a child. It had always represented the joys of flight to me, and I’d kept it pinned up in my room for many years. But after David’s accident, it would forever bring to mind thoughts of my dad and my hopes that he was in a better place.

  Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

  And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

  Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

  Of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things

  You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung

  High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there

  I’ve chased the shouting winds along, and flung

  My eager craft through footless halls of air.

  Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

  I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace

  Where never lark or even eagle flew—

  And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod

  The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,

  Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

  —

  After David died there was nothing anyone could do to break through to me. At that point I had dropped out of my classes and moved home to help my mom, but I don’t think I was much help to anyone. The two years I had left in college loomed large before me, and I was trying hard to remember why I should keep pressing on toward my goal when life would just rip anything I obtained away from me and replace it with pain. Then, just two weeks after David died, in the midst of my pity party, I got a phone call. A friend of a friend, not knowing about my tragedy, called to tell me that she had found out about a White German Shepherd at a nearby shelter. She knew I had been looking for one for months and was excited to let me know there was one nearby. I immediately dropped everything to head out to the shelter to meet the dog.

  When I arrived, they shook their heads and apologized to me, telling me that I’d wasted my time making the trip. They informed me in no uncertain terms that he was “not adoptable” and that I should look elsewhere. This dog was aggressive and heartworm positive, but I begged them to let me meet him anyway, and in a rush, I told the clerk about my dad. The news about this dog, I told him, trying not to cry, was the first thing that had cheered me up since his death. Out of sympathy, the man handed me some dog food to give him through the fence to help me make friends. He walked with me down the wet cement hallway to show me where the dog’s cage was located.

  “He’s the seventh down this row on the right. Don’t get too attached, though. He’ll be put down tomorrow.”

  As I walked down the row, the dogs started barking. I ignored the chaos and kept walking, but when I reached the seventh gate and looked in, I didn’t see a White German Shepherd. I saw a brown dog, all jutting ribs and sad eyes, with a broken and floppy left ear. It was the only dog not barking. He didn’t even look at me. That was okay—I knew exactly how he felt.

  I sat down next to his cage and started talking to him, but the dog still wouldn’t budge from the back of his kennel. The other dogs had settled down by now, but st
ill, the dog wouldn’t move. On a whim (and because I really didn’t care if I got hurt), I opened the gate and climbed inside the cage with him. The kennel was just a patch of cement floor about three feet wide and twelve feet deep, surrounded by a chain-link fence.

  I decided to get comfortable, bracing my back against the fence on one side and putting my feet up on the other side. It looked like getting to know each other might take a while. I tossed some food toward the dog, but he wasn’t interested. So I leaned my head back against the fence and started telling him all about my dad. About how much I adored him and how angry I was at God for taking him from me, especially when terrible people like my biological father still breathed air.

  “I don’t even think there is a God,” I told the dog. I hung my head and finally, finally, the tears I’d been holding back ever since I got the news about David started to flow. As I cried and cried, the dog finally stirred in the back of the kennel. Inching toward me, he started eating the food I had offered him. Eventually, he came close enough to start eating it straight out of my hand.

  Just then all the other dogs started barking again, loudly. The dog grew visibly agitated and began shaking. A little nervous, I made eye contact with him for the first time. The yelping of the frenzied dogs reached a crescendo, and the German Shepherd lunged at me. I gasped and covered my face, bracing for the worst, but all I felt was his fur on the back of my hand.

  I opened my eyes and saw that this beautiful, dirty, weak dog had protectively placed his front paws on my right side and his back paws on my left. He was standing guard. The dog was shaking and ready, poised to kill anyone who would try to hurt me.

  I reached out my hand to pet him, and he flinched at my touch but didn’t pull away. I ran my hand along his side and could see the white hair beneath the layer of dirt and grime. It made me wonder if I was also still there, somewhere beneath all this misery. I began crying again, knowing I had found my dog. The clerk, whose appearance had caused all the barking, had come out to check on me. When he arrived at our cage, he was shocked at what he saw. He opened the gate and helped me up, cautiously eyeing the growling shepherd. As the door latched behind me, I caught the clerk’s eye.