The Cadet

by Doug Beason

  The first time Rod exceeded the speed of sound, he flew in the back seat of an F-100F, a two-seat trainer. High over the Atlantic ocean, the ship barely quivered as Rod watched the Mach meter jump past 1, indicating they were flying faster than the speed of sound.

  It took him two flights before he was comfortable enough to take the controls. Up to then, he had filled airsickness bags to the brim, and held them up for the crew chiefs to see when they taxied back from the mission.

  “Don’t worry about it,” clicked the pilot in the front seat over the jet’s intercom. “Some people lose their cookies the first few times they perform acrobatics. Better to barf now and get used to it, rather than fight it and lose your concentration when you’re the only one in the cockpit.”

  The days of flying and touring swept by. One day he was high over the Appalachians, soaring at twenty thousand feet in a simulated dogfight; the next he was visiting the aircraft carriers docked at Norfolk Naval Base, fifteen miles south of Langley. At night he’d join the fighter pilots at the Officer’s Club bar, shooting down “afterburners,” an evil concoction of Wild Turkey and crème de menthe, mixed together and lit with a match. The drink shot up in flames and the pilots had to quickly gulp it down before it burned their throat.

  After one evening of afterburners, Rod woke up with his head pounding. He vaguely remembered sitting on an air-conditioning unit outside the O-Club, vomiting a geyser of green slime all over the parking lot.

  That was the last night in his life he drank afterburners.

  His classmates spent their weekends at Virginia Beach while Rod caught a hop on a courier flight up to Andrews AFB, located outside of Washington, DC. He spent Saturday walking the mall with Julie, touring the Smithsonian, eating pretzels and mustard dogs at the sidewalk stands. They walked hand in hand to the reflecting pool. Sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, they waited for the sunset, watching the tip of the Washington Monument grow pink as the sky around it diffused into darkness.

  Rod stayed the night at Bolling Air Force Base, across the Potomac from the city. Lying awake in the Bachelor Officers Quarters, he wondered how life might be if he and Julie were married. He knew she didn’t want to go to law school, but she was vague about what she wanted to do instead. It drove him crazy that she dropped hints she would go on to graduate school; but every time he tried to pin her down, she changed the subject. She must not even know herself what she wanted to do.

  If she did attend graduate school, he didn’t look forward to spending three years away from her. The relationship with Sandy hadn’t lasted more than six months once he’d reported to the Academy; although the more he thought about it, their high school romance probably wasn’t based on anything more than her infatuation with him being a cadet.

  The relationship with Barbara had been even shorter. But still, her intellect, the way she held herself, her beauty, and those incredible ice-blue eyes were intoxicating.…

  He wondered if his obsession with Julie was grounded in something deeper than just sex. Sometimes it didn’t appear that way. He wished he had spent more time talking to Hank about what had kept him and his mom together, especially through all the separations they had endured; after all, he’d gone off to a war, and not just a few years to attend a military academy.

  As he drifted off to sleep, his thoughts jumbled together. There were so many things he had to do before he graduated, yet he didn’t have the time. He tried to talk it over with Julie, but she had to put on judge’s robes before Captain Whitney would let her sit in the cockpit of his fighter. Rod ran across the hot, scalding runway to see her, but his boots kept sticking to the tarmac and he could hardly move; as he climbed the metal stairs to join Julie in the jet, a female crew chief helped him climb on board. He turned to thank the woman. She took off her cap and swung her long, blond hair around. It was Barbara, smiling and silently mouthing that she would be there after it was all over and see him after the flight.…

  ***

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “Magic Moments”

  August, 1958

  USAF Academy, CO

  A heav’n on earth.

  —John Milton, Paradise Lost, Bk. IV

  Back from Third Lieutenant and finished with training the new class of doolies in BCT, Rod prepared to fulfill his adoptive father’s dream.

  Forty miles south of Denver, the Academy bus rounded the Black Forest curve and started up a hill. The bus was third in line of a convoy; inside the vehicle the atmosphere was charged with excitement, cadets laughing, all feeling giddy. They rounded the top of a rise, and the view opened up to show a caravan of staff cars in front of them, winding their way to the Rampart Range.

  A jabber of excited talk raced through the bus as the cadets spotted the Academy. There, sitting midway up the forested range, gleamed the long aluminum academic building and the east end of the dormitory. Shangri-la. From the distance, the buildings looked like toy metal boxes set into the side of the mountain, surrounded by trees the size of toothpicks.

  Rod stood up in his seat and looked outside the window as they took the final curve into the Academy grounds. To the right he saw his parent’s home, perched on a bluff overlooking a meadow.

  Rod held a hand over his eyes and squinted. He caught a glimpse of movement by the house. His mother stood on the wooden deck and waved an American flag slowly back and forth, welcoming the cadets to their new home; Hank stood at attention by her side, saluting the procession of cadets.

  Rod swallowed and felt a surge of emotion. He wished his father could be on the bus with them; with his class finally entering the new campus, and with his promotion to squadron commander, he knew Hank would be proud.

  A thrill ran through the cadets as they drove past crowds of people lining the road. Leaving their cars parked in the tall prairie grass by the side of the pavement, men, women, and children from Colorado Springs and Denver welcomed the cadets by cheering, waving American flags, and holding hand-lettered signs over their heads. Teenage girls in ponytails wore blue jeans rolled up past their ankles, white socks, sneakers, and untucked shirts; they lounged on the hoods of their cars and waved coyly at the busload of cadets.

  Up ahead, an officer stepped out of a wooden building near the road and waved his hands over his head; the bus slowed and pulled to a stop.

  “What’s going on?” Sly said.

  “Beats me. I’ll find out,” Rod said. He moved to the front. Stepping outside, he was greeted by cheers from the watching crowd. The adulation rolled over him like a roaring tsunami. He grinned; this was great. He waved then strode toward the officer, saluting as he approached. They spoke quickly before he turned back to the bus.

  He climbed on board and tried to not show his disappointment. He grabbed a metal pole extending from the floor to the ceiling and faced the cadets in his squadron.

  “All right, listen up,” Rod said. A low murmur swept through the bus as the cadets were hardly able to contain themselves. “Gather up your gear. It’s a five mile march to the dorm from here, and we need to look sharp. There’s going to be so many brass around we’ll be saluting every few steps, so I want everyone’s uniform squared away. Any questions?”

  “No, sir!” The new basic cadets in the class of ’62 shouted.

  Someone shouted, “What?” The upperclassmen looked at each other and started talking among themselves. The din quickly escalated until Rod almost couldn’t hear himself think.

  “Quiet down!” Rod said, raising his voice. “I asked for questions, not complaints.” The cacophony abated to low grumbles.

  “Marching?” Sly said. “What gives?”

  “Someone decided at the last minute that we should march to the dorm.”

  “It seems silly to bus us sixty miles to the north gate and have us march the last few miles just for show. Especially since they’re trucking our stuff to the campus.”

  “You should know by now it’s not supposed to make any sense,” Rod said. “But it will
look good in the papers.” Rod shouldered his pack, picked up his M-1 rifle, and shuffled to the door. “Let’s move it, gentlemen. Fall in.”

  This time he ignored the cheering crowd and directed his squadron into formation. The sky was perfectly clear, smelling of ozone. Douglas fir and scrub brush lined the hills. It seemed more like the cadet wing was going for a hike in the Rockies rather than moving to their new quarters.

  Within minutes, the cadets were marching up the long asphalt road. Reporters stood by the side, taking snapshots of the cadets and scribbling in tiny spiral notebooks.

  As the cadet commander of Third Squadron, Rod marched in front of his cadets, feeling conspicuous at all the attention. Someone from at rear started singing a jody, and the cadets picked up the marching song within seconds.

  The new Commandant, General Sullivan, rode up and down the long line of cadets in a jeep. He stood in the back seat with his hands on the roll-bar. Accepting salutes from the squadron commanders, he nodded at the cadets and pointed out items to his aide.

  They marched uphill and wound through the newly laid boulevard. Piles of freshly dug dirt were heaped alongside the road. Construction equipment was parked every few hundred yards, showing just how recently the Academy had been finished. The cadets had been briefed the night before that it would actually be years until the final construction was completed as the design of the cadet chapel and ancillary buildings were still being debated at the Air Staff and in Congress.

  Looking like a stream of ants, the cadets flowed past the honor court to the Terrazzo, located at the center of the new campus. It was both the visual and geometric focal point of the Academy; gleaming aluminum buildings bordered the Terrazzo, making it a showpiece. It was the perfect place to hold the opening ceremony for dedicating the Academy.

  Time flew by for Rod as the cadets formed up around the flagpole, next to a podium and chairs lined up in precise rows. Dignitaries milled about and spoke in low voices.

  He barely remembered General Sullivan’s speech during the dedication ceremony, his words echoing across the Terrazzo and reflecting off the sterile aluminum buildings. The multiple reflections gave the new Commandant’s speech a weird, hollow sound, as if the hi-fi speakers booming his voice were not quite synched up.

  An hour later, once they were dismissed, Rod turned to his squadron. “Third Squadron Flight commanders, escort your flights to the squadron area. We’re located on the fifth floor.” He pointed at the dorm. “Our squadron assembly room, the SAR, is that glassed-in room across the quadrangle. We’ll meet there tonight after the evening meal. You doolies stay here. The rest of you are dismissed.”

  The upperclassmen broke ranks and ran excitedly to the dorm. The Terrazzo seemed to undulate as the upper three classes flowed toward their new living quarters; a few of the cadets raced to be the first to enter the jet-age, glassed-in stairwells, contemporarily decorated with deco blue and yellow tiles.

  Rod waited until the upperclassmen dispersed before speaking. He surveyed the Fourth classmen; their heads closely shaven, the doolies stood in formation at rigid attention.

  Rod put his hands on his hips. “Moving trucks are parked underneath the dorm. I want you smacks to load our squadron’s gear into the freight elevators and move our stuff up to the hall outside the CCQ desk on the fifth floor. Be forewarned: this is the last time you’ll be able to use the ’vators until you’re recognized next spring. After today, you’ll always use the stairs. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  He glanced at the pebbly concrete that made up the Terrazzo. “One more thing. Look over here and gaze down at the Terrazzo.” Eyeballs clicked as the doolies looked at his feet without moving their heads. White marble slabs, a foot square, outlined the edge of the Terrazzo; every fifty feet the marble cut patterns across the concrete, making a mosaic pattern. “See the marble strips outlining the area?”

  “Yes, sir!” Their eyeballs clicked back up.

  “Stay on the marble strips when you’re on the Terrazzo. The only time you are allowed off them is when you join a formation; so if you need to cross the cadet area, don’t cut a diagonal line. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Now dump your stuff in your room and get that squadron gear out of the trucks. Let’s move it, you’re already late!”

  “Yes, sir! Good morning, sir!” The doolies executed an about face en masse and scurried away, running at attention on the marble strips and holding their rifles at port arms. As soon as the Fourth classmen hit the stairwell, Rod heard upperclassmen lay into them, correcting them for every egregious thing the doolies had done wrong, real or perceived.

  Rod shouldered his own weapon and started for the stairwell. Before going inside, he stopped and looked over the new campus. He saw shiny aluminum, polished marble, and gleaming windows, all framed by the majestic Rampart Range towering high in the west. The air was crisp, smelling incredibly fresh. They’d been briefed the night before that the campus was 7,258 feet above sea level and that it might take a while to fully acclimate, but he felt invigorated.

  A movement caught his eye, and looking up, he spotted a brown prairie falcon soaring high over the campus. It wheeled in the clear blue sky, rising with the thermals. Was it that same falcon he’d seen when he used to come here with his father? Or when they’d flown over the new campus?

  He swallowed, feeling the same surge of emotion he had felt when he had seen his mother slowing waving the American flag, his father saluting the cadets.

  He’d been able to see the Rockies from the Academy’s temporary home at Lowry AFB, but they were so far away that the mountains didn’t seem real. But here, the Front Range thrust above the Academy, dominating the landscape with strength, with timelessness, and perhaps even with purpose. No wonder his father had tried so hard to build the Academy in this very place.

  Turning, he entered the dormitory to start his final year as a cadet.

  O O O

  “Hey, Rod, you have a phone call.”

  Rod stopped just as he was about to shut the door to his room. “Classes start in fifteen minutes. Who’s calling at this time in the morning?”

  The Third classman shrugged. “Don’t know; they wouldn’t say.” The gray braid looped around the underclassman’s shoulder signified his job as CCQ for the day.

  Rod stepped back into his room and dropped his books on his desk. The rooms were supposed to be in AMI condition, but unless Captain Ranch was going to inspect this morning, he should be okay leaving the books there for a while.

  He trotted down to the phone room and flashed a “two” to the doolies who saw him coming. Anxious to get to class, Rod picked up the phone. “Simone.”

  “Rod. It’s me, Julie.”

  “Julie. I … I hadn’t heard from you since we moved to the new campus. How are you doing?”

  “Miserable. I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you, too. Look, today’s the first day of class and I have to lead the squadron marching this morning—”

  “You’re a squadron commander. My, gosh, that’s so exciting.”

  He felt a surge of emotion that she’d care about this. “Julie, it is exciting. You can’t imagine what it feels like, being responsible for so many cadets.”

  “And you’re just the right person to do it.” Her voice truly sounded as if she missed not only him, but the cadet experience as well. He didn’t know why, but he suddenly thought that this was a major difference between Barbara and her—Barbara had never even seen the Academy, much less experience what it was like to have him leave on Saturday night at taps and not see him again until a week later.

  He put a hand on the glass window of the telephone booth. “When do your classes start? Georgetown doesn’t open until after Labor Day, does it?” He glanced at the clock above the door. He had five minutes to make it to formation by first call.

  “Rod … that’s why I called.”

  “Is there anything wrong?”

  �
�I’m not going to Georgetown.”

  “But you were accepted at Law School—”

  “And I won’t show up when classes start.”

  A dozen possibilities swam though Rod’s head. He was almost afraid to ask. “What are you going to do?”

  “I can’t stand being away from you. I want to move to Colorado Springs. I can get a job, rent an apartment. That way I can be near you.”

  “But Georgetown University.” He shook his head. “This is crazy. You’re turning down one of the best schools in the country.”

  “My heart’s not in it.” She laughed. “Not exactly out of character, is it?”

  “You’re throwing away the chance of a lifetime. Not many women have this opportunity.” He had a sudden thought. “What does your father say?”

  “What do you think he’ll say? Georgetown doesn’t start for another three weeks. I haven’t told him yet.”

  He’ll go nuts. Rod raced through the implications. Mr. Phillips would blame him, and that would make a bad situation between them even worse—but she’d be here, in Colorado Springs.

  And he’d see her every weekend.

  He remembered the long, cold winter nights up at Lowry, where the wind blew so strong that the snow tumbled into every crack. It had been lonely for him even when he was surrounded by several hundred of his classmates. He wondered how she would do, living all alone in an apartment in Colorado Springs during the week.

  “Rod, do you want me out there?”

  He hesitated. His head said no. It didn’t make any sense.

  He needed to be alone, to be able to study weekends and devote himself to winning that scholarship, prepare for flight training. Last year they’d almost broken up because he couldn’t prioritize things in his life. It had been a miracle that he’d been able to turn his grades around, and now a national scholarship was within reach. If their feelings were this strong for each other, a year apart shouldn’t matter—