W E B Griffin - BoW 03 - The Majors

by The Majors(Lit)

  There was something sexy about the black strap against her white back.

  There was a knock at the cubicle door, and someone pushed on it. But it was latched.

  "Telephone, Mrs. Hyde," the saleswoman said. "Your husband,

  I think."

  Good God, it better not be Doc. She was supposed to be with her mother, and her mother was supposed to be having trouble with her back. She unhooked the latch and an arm holding a telephone appeared in the crack of the door.

  "Hello?" Rhonda Wilson Hyde said, when she had the phone to her ear, her free hand pushing the door closed.

  "Can you talk?" Tommy Z. Waters asked.

  "Hello, darling," she said. "I'm nearly through. I should be home in about an hour."

  "I'm up the street," Tommy Z. Waters said.

  (Two)

  Dothan, Alabama

  10 July J9SS

  Rhonda Wilson Hyde examined herself with pleasure in the mirror of the dressing cubicle in Martinette's Finer Ladies Wear

  "How interesting!" Rhonda said. "I'll hurry."

  Tommy Z. Waters hung up without saying anything else.

  "Oood.byc. darling," Rhonda Wilson Hyde said to the dead telephone. Then she opened the door wide enough to put her hand, and the telephone, through.

  When the saleswoman took it from her hand, Rhonda latched the door so she couldn't "accidentally" come in. Rhonda wanted to wear the black underwear, and she didn't want the sales woman to know. She put her own bra and panties in her purse, and paid for her purchase in cash.

  The Downtowner Motel up the street was owned by the

  Downtowner Corporation, whose stock was split among three doctors, a lawyer (Howard Dutton), and a businessman, Tommy

  Z. Waters.

  Five minutes from the moment he had hung up on Rhonda

  Wilson Hyde, she came through the door of the motel room and pushed it quickly closed behind her.

  "I'm always afraid that someone will see me come in here," she said, leaning against the door.

  He didn't reply. Cutting through the Downtowner Motel parking lot was a shortcut to the municipal parking lot on the street behind it. If someone you didn't want to see happened to be in the motel parking lot, or walking through it, you just kept walking to the municipal parking lot (where you had parked your car) or onto South Main Street, where the shops were.

  Rhonda pushed herself away from the door and went to the refrigerator, where she opened the freezer compartment and took out a small, ice-crusted glass. She put two ice cubes in it, and then walked to where five bottles of liquor stood on a chest of drawers. She filled the glass with gin, added an olive from a jar, and stirred it with her finger.

  "Oh, I need this," she said. "You don't want one?"

  He shook his head, "No."

  "Oh, Tommy, darling, do you have any money with you?

  I went out without bringing any."

  That hadn't stopped her from shopping, he thought. She

  had three bags.

  He took a folded wad of bills from his pocket, spread them

  out, and extended them to her. There was three, maybe four hundred dollars in the fan he extended to her. Fifties and twenties and tens. Resisting the temptation to take it all, Rhonda pulled two fifties from the fan.

  The bra and the panties and the half-slip had cost almost that much. It was only fair that Tommy pay for them. She was wearing them for him. Dec would never see her in them. Well, maybe the half-slip, but never the bra and the panties. They would give Doc a fit. She was a respectible married woman, and respectable mamed women didn't wear open-cupped brassieres and transparent panties with everything showing.

  She said thank you, and then tucked the two fifties in her purse, and then she said, "I've got to tinlde."

  When she came out of the toilet, she was wearing just the brassiere and the panties. Tommy was already in the bed, naked, with his hands laced behind his head.

  "Like it?" she said. "I just bought it."

  "Jesus!" he said. "Jesus Christ!"

  She was pleased at what he said, and what happened. His cock got stiff. God, he had a marvelous cock! She went and sat on the bed and lowered herself over him, so that he could get his tongue on her nipple.

  Afterward, as always, she went to the john first, but this time when she came out, she was dressed.

  "What's the hurry?" Tommy asked. That's what he was asking out loud, Rhonda thought. What he was really asking was, "Only once?"

  Until recently, Rhonda was in no greater hurry to leave than

  Tommy was, unless she was late or something. Tommy, in fact, often disappointed her when he just jumped out of bed,

  Wham, Bam, Thank you, Ma'am. Just like Doc.

  "I'm going out to the post," Rhonda said, examining her lipstick one last time in the mirror. "To see about a job."

  "What kind of job?"

  "I took nutrition at the university," she said. "There's an opening."

  "What's Dec think about that?" Tommy Z. Waters asked.

  "I haven't told him yet," she said.

  She sat on the bed and kissed Tommy, just her tongue, so she wouldn't muss her lipstick, and she gave his thing a little pump, just for the fun of it, and then she walked out of the motel room, looking around to see if anybody had seen her, and then got in her car.

  If she got a job at the post, she decided, that would be the end of the motel room. She was tired of it anyway. Doing it with Tommy was getting to be just about as boring as doing it with Doc.

  When Rhonda got the telephone call from the civilian personnel office out at the post, asking if she could come out there for an interview that afternoon, she thought that she was actually going to get the job.

  She'd heard about the job at the New Year's Eve party at the officer's club. The military medical and dental people had gone out of their way to be nice to their civilian counterparts.

  Inviting people who lived in a dry county to a New Year's Eve where Kentucky sour mash bourbon sold for forty-five cents a drink was about as nice as they could be. One of the officers at their table had been a Medical Service Corps officer who had had a hard time keeping his eyes off her boobies. She'd taken a couple of drinks in the afternoon, and that had given her the courage to wear her other open-cupped bra.

  Either Doc was so dumb he didn't notice, or he just didn't

  care, because, despite the way she'd worried about it, he hadn't said a word about it to her. Anyway, the major from the Medical

  Service Corps had told her, sometime during the evening, that the hospital was looking for dieticians, Grade GS-5. Rhonda had picked right up on that. She had her degree in home economics from the University of Alabama, and she'd had a lot of courses in diet and nutrition, and things like that.

  The major said it wasn't up to him to decideŽif it was, the job was hersŽbut that the civilian personnel office made the decision. They went over applications from people and saw whether or not they met the requirements. So Rhonda had filled out the application (my God, the thing was six pages long, and even wanted to know if you had ever been arrested, or been a member of any political organization advocating the violent, or revolutionary, overthrow of the United States government) and mailed it off. And five weeks later, she got the call.

  The civilian personnel officer turned out to be a woman, a skinny woman, a 30-AAA cup, training-bra type woman, not an officer, which had sort of disappointed Rhonda. Women aren't interested in well-dressed women; they just get jealous.

  What the civilian personnel officer, Mrs. Cawthorn, told her was that the dietician, GS-5, job was already filled and that she wasn't qualified anyway. Rhonda was just about to tell her she could have told her that on the telephone and saved her a trip all the way out here, when Mrs. Cawthorn said there was something else.

  Something called the Aviation Combat Development Agency had an opening for an administrative officer, Grade GS-7.

  Rhonda wasn't qualified for that, either, but since she had a college
degree, that made her eligible for what they called the intern program, which was how the government trained people straight from college with no experience. She could start as a

  GS-5, and if after a year's probation she learned to do the job, they would make her a GS-7. Mrs. Cawthorn said she wasn't offering her the job. All she could do was set up an interview for her with the executive officer, a Major MacMillan, and see if he was willing to take a chance on her.

  Mrs. Cawthorn got on the telephone right then and called

  Major MacMillan. The major said he could see her if she would get to his office within fifteen minutes.

  She had a little trouble finding the place, a converted barracks, and when she went inside, there was a secretary, a Mrs.

  Heatter, who treated her as if she was collecting money for

  Russian Relief or something.

  "DO you have an appointment?" Mrs. Heatter asked.

  "He expects me," Rhonda said. "Civilian personnel sent me over about the administrative officer's job."

  Rhonda would have had to be blind not to see that Mrs.

  Heatter was something less than thrilled to hear that.

  "Why don't you tell him I'm here?" Rhonda said, flashing a big smile at her.

  Mrs. Heatter picked up her telephone (a funny looking telephone;

  Rhonda had never seen one like that before) and dialed just one number.

  "Major, there is a Mrs. Hyde here, who says you expect her." Mrs. Heener then m and showed Rhonda into another office. "Mrs. hyde, Major MacMillan."

  Mr dl that formal business, Rhonda expected an officer in full dress uniform, at least. The man who said, "Come in, please, Mrs. Hyde," was wearing what looked like a junior league baseball jacket. It was a violent shade of orange and had a snake embroidered on the front with the word MOCCASIN sewn above it.

  He shook Rhonda's hand, took her application from her, and offered her a seat. Rhonda regretted all the emphasis she'd given on the application to her nutritional and food preparation experience. It made her sound like a short order cook.

  "What the application doesn't show, Major," Rhonda said, flashing him a big smile, and leaning over so that if he wanted to, he could look down her dress, "is that I've been running my husband's office since we were married. All the administration, so to speak."

  "Do you type, by the way?"

  "No," she said, "not very well." She figured she could get away with that; he had looked down her dress. He was all man, she could tell that.

  That must make things tough in your husband's office," he said, and there was a sarcastic tone in his voice, but he left it there and went on: "Here's a copy of the job description.

  Why don't you take a look at it and see if you think you'd be able to do it?"

  Rhonda sat back and read the job description with what she hoped looked like intelligent interest. When she felt Major

  MacMillan's eyes on her boobies again, she sat up and leaned over, her eyes still on the job description, to give him a better look. It was either the boobies or nothing; she didn't understand a word of the job description. She told herself that an office was an office, and once she got the job she could figure out what she was supposed to do. She really wanted the job. Major

  MacMillan was very interesting, indeed, and there would probably be other interesting men, as well.

  "I'm sure that once I got my feet on the ground, I could handle this," she said, and flashed him a dazzling smile. "But

  I have to tell you that I've never had the chance to be around senior army officers before."

  "Do you know what a Multilith is?" Major MacMillan asked.

  "Yes, sir," she said. "We have one at the church."

  All she knew about a Multilith machine was that it was a dirty machine that sat in the preacher's office.

  "And you can run it?" he asked. "Or supervise the people that do?"

  "Oh, yes, sir."

  "I have to tell you, Mrs. Hyde, that this isn't an eight-to- five job," Major MacMillan said. "We would expect you to be available to come into work sometimes very early in the morning, and to work at night, an dover weekends. If you're looking for an eight-to-five job, this isn't it."

  "My time is my own," Rhonda said.

  "What about your husband? And your children?"

  "My mother takes care of the children when the housekeeper isn't there," Rhonda said.

  "Now, don't tell me that now, and then come in two months and tell me you can't handle the hours."

  "I wouldn't do that, Major MacMillan."

  "Can you come to work tomorrow morning?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "About seven o'clock," he said. "We start early sometimes."

  He wasn't that hard to figure out. He just wanted to see if she meant what she said about being willing to come in early.

  "Yes, sir," Rhonda said. That was going to cause trouble.

  Doc would be furious if she wasn't there to make his breakfast.

  Too bad. She had a job, and the prospects looked simply fascinating.

  Doe would just have to get used to making his own breakfast. Hell, they could hire a cook at what she was going to make out here.

  (Three)

  Camp Rucker, Alabama

  16 August I9SS

  Warrant Officer Junior Grade Edward C. Greer's gray U.S.

  Air Force issue flight suit was sweat-soaked and showed white lines where the salt tablets, ingested as protection against the heat, had passed out of his body. He carried a white plastic crash helmet loosely under his left arm as he knocked at the sill of the open door of the director, Aviation Combat Developments

  Agency.

  "Come on in, Greer," Colonel Robert F. Bellmon said. The kid looked exhausted. Bellmon really hated to do what he had to do, eat the kid's ass out.

  Greer saluted, not especially crisply, but, Bellmon thought, with a flair that represented what a salute was really supposed to be all about, a greeting between practitioners of the profession of arms, not, as most people believed, a symbolic gesture of servitude by the junior to the senior.

  "You wanted to see me, Colonel?" Greer asked, but it was more of a statement than a question.

  "Little warm outside, is it?" Colonel Bellmon asked.

  "I mounted a thermometer on the instrument panel," Greer said. "It went to 125 degrees." Bellmon noticed that that, too, was a statement of fact and not a complaint.

  Good lad, he thought. Then, fuck it. I'll eat his ass out later.

  "I thought you would be interested in this," Colonel Bellmon said, and handed him the stapled together stack of correspondence:

  HEADQUARTERS

  U.S. ARMY AVIATION COMBAT

  DEVELOPMENTS AGENCY

  CAMP RUCKER, ALABAMA

  20 July 1955

  SUBJECT: Request for Flight Training in, and 250 hours of, YH-40 aircraft flight.

  USAACDA have access to YH-40 aircraft at the earliest possible time.

  2. Request is made herewith that the following personnel of the USAACDA be given, as soon as possible, flight training in YH-40 airctaft assigned to the USAAB.

  While training by USAAB personnel of all USAACDA personnel listed would be most desirable, should this pose an unusual burden upon the mission of the USAAB, the USAACDA requests the training of Major R. G.

  MacMillan to a level qualifying him as an instructor pilot, in order that he might accomplish training of the other

  USAACDA personnel who will be invofved with the YH-

  40, WOJG Edward C. Greer and the undersigned.

  3. The USAACDA will arrange to schedule training to meet any USAAB requirements.

  Robert F. Bellmon

  Colonel, Armor

  Director, USAACDA

  1st and

  Hq USAAB, Cp Rucker Ala 23 July 1955

  To: Director, USAACDA Cp Rucker, Ala

  1. The USAAB board has been assigned three (3)

  YH4O helicopter aircraft. No additional YH-40 aircraft will be made availa
ble in the forseeable future.

  2. In order to insure that available aircraft will meet the testing requirements placed upon the USAAB by

  DCSOPS, it is the policy of the USAAB that only helicopter pilots of great experience will be assigned to fly