Taking Flight: Departure

by Donna Faye

  Stella soaked up every facet of her training with her predecessor before taking over the reins. After about two weeks, she felt a decent grasp of the details. The role required her to manage groups of volunteers, one for those who guided the base tours for her, and another for the speakers’ bureau – people willing and able to give speeches in the community as requested.

  Peace settled into Stella’s bones as she adjusted to the calmer atmosphere of ComRel. There was an instant relief with the new pace and change in responsibilities. Every bit remained important and even vital, but longer deadlines allowed her to juggle multiple events with much more ease than the weekly dash to the press with the current newspaper.

  Her introductory e-mail to all the volunteers received a warm welcome, and as she got to know the people, Stella finally began making friends around base.

  A few volunteers dropped in to introduce themselves. One of these included a particularly handsome and charming sergeant from the services squadron who invited her to lunch. Dateless since leaving Fabian, Stella accepted Tech Sgt. Kurt Lexor’s impromptu invitation.

  With a scheduled interview for immediately after lunch, she opted to follow behind Kurt’s jacked up jeep. She eyed it warily, her truck had plenty of bells and whistles, but she had to wonder about the amount of after-market parts and work on his tricked out vehicle. He’s got to be compensating for something. She giggled and shook her head at the path her mind had taken. So what if the boy liked his toys?

  When he pulled into a nearby pizza parlor, Stella parked beside him and quickly climbed out of her cab. He met her at the sidewalk and led the way in. Stella’s phone chirped in her pocket. She pulled her phone out, and looked down at the screen as she followed him through the door. The door swung shut and thumped her shoulder. Ouch! She rubbed her shoulder and shook it off, her eyes scanning the room for her companion. He’d found them a seat near the back and was already perusing the menu. She rolled her eyes at his impatience and made her way to the table.

  Kurt, though handsome, rudely drowned their conversation meal in a litany of his life experience. But it was odd the way he avoided eye contact. She shook her head, amused and perplexed at the way he spent his entire monologue gazing past her shoulder. How odd. Stella discreetly peeked behind her chair, curious to see what’d garnered his attention. There she found an enormous mirror on the wall. He’d been watching himself the whole time. Ugh, gross!

  She swallowed the laughter in her throat and signaled the waitress to ask for a separate check.

  “So, Kurt, I want to thank you for inviting me out. It’s so nice to meet a new friend on base,” Stella said. “I need to run, I have that appointment across base.”

  She paid her half of the check and rushed off – a half hour early, but she wouldn’t let him know that.

  In the week that followed, she must’ve shooed him from her office at least a dozen times. He seemed to think it okay to drop in for random, impromptu visits. She suddenly transformed into the busiest woman on base whenever he entered the building – he was a textbook example of a narcissist. No thanks.

  Plus, her first month in the new gig really did keep her busy with her promise to Sgt. Compton for a series of features on top of her regular duties – and she’d be damned if she ever let that woman down.

  The two had forged an interesting bond, with her supervisor having taken the role of trusted mentor. She regularly invited Stella to join her family for dinner, where her husband, Mel, had welcomed her with warmth and good humor. Their inclusion meant the world to the lonely airman.

  The Comptons, despite being in their mid-forties, had two small children. Occasionally, she babysat to allow the couple a date night, because Faith and John were two of the coolest kids she’d ever met.

  In her quest for the promised features Stella wrote four lengthy stories and snapped photos to accompany them. The first four featured the hardworking crew members who maintained the fuel tanks in the KC-135 air tankers; the airmen who worked in Foreign Objects Detection, known as FOD, they worked to keep deadly debris off the runways; the airmen who changed the oil on the base’s fleet of vehicles; and the civilians who cleaned the offices and bathrooms around the base.

  Sergeant Compton praised Stella for her choices because she included guardsmen and civilian contractors, an often-overlooked part the base community. She insisted Stella write a sidebar story to introduce the series and include her e-mail address for people to recommend other feature topics. Stella played around with that story, and garnered a surprising amount of attention. The headline “Got Grit?” nabbed the spotlight and became her column’s title.

  The base responded in a huge way. Emails jammed Stella’s inbox with great ideas and points of contact for story leads, as well as rave reviews. It surprised her, since she’d already been doing this, just without the fanfare of calling it a column. That was the newspaper’s job, after all…framing it differently didn’t change the fact that they’d already done this every week. Whatever. Maybe more people would read the paper, not just use it to line their birdcages.

  As winter thawed with spring’s arrival, Stella worked harder than ever before. In addition to her column and regular duties, the commander decided he needed an honorary commanders program. To accomplish this, Stella reached out to various business and community leaders in the surrounding area, to match them with the numerous commanders around base. In other words, she had to cold call civilians as if trying to sell them on supporting the base.

  The commander’s goal – to offer more contact with the civilian world in the time of military drawbacks – meant showing civilian leaders the professionalism and dedication of the troops. Their aim was to lead businessmen toward choosing military folks when they hired in the civilian sector.

  Also, an informed community makes for better neighbors – they’d understand when the number of sorties, or flights generated, increased because they were supporting the war efforts. In short, an actively involved community better understood the nature of the base and the people involved in the mission.

  Finding willing participants to become a sort of counterpart to the various commanders proved no small task. For example, she sought a manager at a shipping company for the logistics squadron, and a restaurant chef to pair with the services squadron, the people who managed the chow hall.

  And Sgt. Compton piled onto her workload with Stella’s long-awaited upgrade training, which was essentially a series of technical workbooks that supplemented on-the-job training. She’d do one workbook a month for the next six months, taking the test at the end of each book. The light at the end of the long, dark, tunnel would be earning a journeyman skill level in public affairs.

  The content of the training manuals was dry, at best. At worst, they worked like a tranquilizer dart to the neck.

  Often Stella read things two and three times to grasp what the text was about. And more than once, she chuckled at the irony that the instruction manuals for people trained as writers having been written so poorly. She broke up this new task into six sessions of fifteen minutes a day. That was the limit to her attention span while reading the textbooks.

  The end result would be worthwhile – not only would she become eligible for deployments, but she would finally be able to return to college during her downtime.

  Stella was determined to earn her degree, so if that meant learning the rules of the Freedom of Information Act, then she’d master that complicated mess – God help her.

  Just the thought of the base education center sent a thrill up Stella’s spine. There they hosted dozens of colleges offering classes for a seemingly unlimited variety of available degrees. The Air Force needed well-educated airmen, so it brought the colleges to them.

  But before she could accomplish all that, she had to find honorary commanders.

  Stella, ever efficient, grouped together her meetings with potential candidates to avoid venturing out every day. With warmer weather, she opted for her blues uniform with the
skirt. It not only looked professional, it made her feel prettier than wearing head-to-toe camouflage and heavy boots.

  Apparently others thought she looked good, too. Several of her meetings inspired invitations for dates, which she promptly declined. It wouldn’t do to mix base business and her pleasure. Plus she had no desire to date a civilian – if she ever settled down again, she’d need someone who understood the military lifestyle. Her early experience at MEPS aside, every woman knew there was just something about a man in uniform.

  More than once, she amused herself thinking of the inevitable heart attack some of those men would have if they’d seen the lingerie she wore under her uniform. Their hearts couldn’t handle her version of under armor – pretty undies served as her own personal morale booster since her marriage’s demise. No matter how badly her day went, she felt attractive in her beautiful knickers.

  …

  “Shut up!” Stella shouted as Audrey roared with laughter on the other end of their video chat.

  “Wait, so he seriously took his mom with him to Korea?” Tears streamed down her sister’s face as they guffawed over tales of failed first dates. “Korea is the place wives and kids don’t even get to go along, but he brought his mommy!”

  “That guy will probably bring her on his honeymoon. I pity the woman who marries him,” Stella replied.

  With writing her column, she’d met airmen all across the base who’d asked her out on dates. She’d accepted a few.

  “I swear I’m a dud-magnet!”

  Audrey doubled over in laughter. “Mom always said you gotta kiss a lot of frogs.”

  “Well I wouldn’t bring my lips near any one of them,” Stella responded in good humor. “One dude acted like my life’s ambition should be to worship at his feet, bare his children, and make sandwiches on demand. As if!”

  “Gag. I can’t figure out why you seem to draw in all the weirdos,” Audrey replied.

  “There’s been a string of losers, that’s for sure. At least I met them at the place rather than have them pick me up. I wouldn’t want any of them tracking me down later. One actually got crazy-jealous of the waiter – the very gay waiter, I might add. He’d been checking out my shoes!”

  “I know. I’ve had some doozies too,” Audrey soothed.

  “Sure, but did any of them make you wish you’d worn your Gore-Tex?” Stella asked with a chuckle. “One dude kept talking with his mouth full. I swear he was spewing spit and chunks of food everywhere. Yuck! I swear the Compton’s toddlers had better table manners. And his breath was rank, like you could smell it a block away. Too bad, he was a hottie.”

  Audrey howled with laughter. “It’s always the hot ones. It’s like they think they can get away with anything. For Christmas I’ll get you a shirt that says “My milkshake brings all the narcissistic assholes to the yard.”

  Stella guffawed. “Ugh! It’s been one long, loser parade.” She wiped the tear from her eye, laughter truly was the best medicine. “I think I’m just gonna focus on my training. I need to finish that and get my degree. What a nightmare.”

  Audrey’s eyebrows drew together and she frowned a little. “I get that, but don’t shut down. You deserve someone who’s amazing.”

  Stella smiled and nodded her head. “I won’t, don’t worry.”

  Was the old lament wasn’t true? Were all the good ones weren’t already taken or gay? Stella’s faith in the male species was almost nonexistent, where were all the decent men like George or Running Man?

  “I just need to finish my degree, ya know? I put Fabian first and look where that got me. It’s time to take care of myself first.”

  As she closed her computer a little later, Stella sighed in relief. Her conversation with Audrey had helped a lot. She still hadn’t met any other women around base that she could laugh with about those horrible dates. She needed a peer – it wasn’t as if she could talk to Sgt. Compton about her love life, or lack thereof. Sure, she chatted with Audrey and Elaina, but phone calls, web chats, and social networking lacked impact and personal touch.

  And she’d kill for a ladies night out with friends…laughter over martinis would go a long way in chasing out the blues.

  …

  While her personal life sucked, Stella’s professional life thrived over the next few months. She’d nailed her part in the honorary commanders’ program – the general commended her more than once on a job well done. Having completed four of the six workbooks for upgrade training and written a stockpile of her column allowed for some breathing room in her deadlines.

  Base tours became the highlight of her work. She loved to go out and run the tours on her own instead of relying on her pool of volunteers from around the base, but more often than not it was her guides who had that pleasure as the other ComRel duties kept her busy.

  Though Stella had basic tour packages available for pre-arranged group outings, she occasionally received special requests for activities from school and scout groups, or other community organizations.

  Toward the middle of June, she received a request to help a scout group earn their avionics badge. Stella just knew Team Fairchild would blow their minds. She set up a day-long excursion filled with stops at Air Traffic Control, flight simulators, and a tour of a hangar with loadmasters who led them through static aircraft – planes parked and safe to allow the students to climb all over the insides while air crew members answered their questions. The children would have a blast and earn their badge by the time Stella finished with them.

  Having spent so much time and thought in planning the tour, Stella opted to lead the group herself, rather than assign one of her guides. Plus she could do double-duty as a reporter – it wasn’t every day they did tours like this. She’d snap some cute pictures and cover it for the paper as well.

  Along the course of that gorgeous July day, Stella became fast friends with the scout group’s unofficial leader, Lucy Wright, a tall brunette with vivid, cobalt blue eyes.

  “So how did you end up in charge of this motley crew,” Stella asked the young woman as they rode the bus across the base to the flight simulator.

  “Jared’s dad and my mom aren’t very supportive of Jared’s activities.” Lucy pulled a face, her blue eyes showing anger. She lowered her voice a bit more. “And none of the other parents would to lead. They’d help, but they wouldn’t take responsibility. Jim’s work keeps him busy.” She rolled her eyes at this statement but continued, “Someone had to do the work. But it’s their loss. We have fun despite them.”

  “I can’t imagine it’d be common for siblings to do this, much less step sisters. Aren’t the scouts supposed to be big on father involvement?” Stella asked.

  “Well…yeah, as far as they know, Jim’s in charge. But” – she shrugged her shoulder – “none of their dads stepped up so, the guys are stuck with me. I had to jump through a whole mess of hoops to be allowed to volunteer. Whenever possible, we drag Jim along, but we get there in the end. It helps that we can get some parents to come along because I can’t take them on my own.”

  Stella laughed. “I bet.”

  Lucy giggled. “Taking a bunch of middle-school boys out is a lot like trying to herd cats. But I’m actually not allowed to go out without chaperones, that’s part of the protocol for volunteering with kids these days.”

  Stella noticed Lucy’s group was fairly large and suspected it was because their leader was a beautiful woman, especially compared to the other chaperones. Where Lucy was energetic with youthful vibrancy, the other two middle-aged mothers huddled together as they gossiped and ignored their charges, as well as everyone else in the vicinity.

  “So what do you do that you can take off a weekday to play on base?” Stella asked.

  “I’m a student at Eastern,” Lucy said. Eastern Washington University was nearby, in fact Stella had looked into their marketing program. “We plan the meetings around my classes.”

  As they chatted, Lucy lamented the lack of group dad participation and how none of
the mothers were outdoorsy.

  “The boys need to go camping and learn survival skills, but I seriously have no idea how to do any of that,” Lucy said. “Jim is useless with anything that isn’t computers, and I definitely don’t have the stomach for bugs and dirt.” She gestured flamboyantly, waving her hands about to amplify her disgust. It was completely endearing.

  Stella laughed long and hard at her new friend’s expression of horror and how she shivered as she mentioned bugs and dirt. “I’ve never really roughed it, outside of basic training, but, I might have a solution for you.”

  Lucy bounced up and down on the edge of the seat, eagerness oozed from every inch of her. “Please tell me you know someone. I thought about asking around on campus, but I really don’t want to bring any college guys around the kids.”

  “Don’t quote me on this, but I might be able to help you,” Stella whispered to her new friend, not wanting to get anybody’s hopes up. If she pulled this off, it’d take a miracle. “One of the units we have on base is SERE School, the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape training.”

  When a look of horror crossed Lucy’s face, Stella chuckled.

  “Now stop it. We won’t haze your guys. The last time I checked, there’s no waterboarding badge,” she teased.