Major Conflict

by Jeffrey McGowan, Maj USA (ret. )

  His face changed immediately, and he came out from behind his desk and put his arm around me and walked me to the door.

  “I’m so sorry to hear that. Take whatever time you need. Don’t worry about the paperwork; we’ll straighten it out later.”

  Walking out of headquarters, I began crying to myself. For years I had dreaded this moment. But it had always remained purely theoretical in my head; it never seemed like a real possibility. It would happen eventually, maybe next year, or the next century, but not today, not right now. Talk about kicking someone when they’re down! I’d lost my great love and my grandmother, all in the course of a few months. It sure would have been nice to be able to count on Paul’s support at a time like this, but the good old army had seen fit to make sure that couldn’t happen. I’d never felt more alone in my entire life.

  During the long drive up to New York I thought a lot about my grandmother and how special she was, how she’d managed up until the very end to retain that unique spark she had—staying so active, always going to the senior center at St. Joan of Arc, remaining vitally interested in the people in the building and in the neighborhood, hanging out with her “gray panther” girlfriends, ladies with names like Tessy and Marge and Gertrude and Fran. We talked often on the telephone, and she never failed to mention her friends. And she was always so completely supportive of me, no matter what was going on in my life. Of course, I never came out to her. I’d barely come out to myself by the time she died. And I was convinced she was generationally challenged, so to speak, though looking back on it now, she might have surprised me, who knows?

  She was strong and feisty and full of spirit. If I called her and she sensed that I was angry at something, she would tell me to “kick ’em in the knees.” She bore a strong resemblance to the Queen Mother, and though she was only five feet three inches or so, she could be quite fearsome when she got going. I loved when she told me about going to rummage sales and finding some god-awful piece of bric-a-brac and haggling the price down by half, from fifty cents to a quarter. Nobody—but nobody—took advantage of Maxine Reid. She spoke with her sister, Maude, every day and had a fight with her every other day—usually over something that had happened more than fifty years before—the most contentious of which was affectionately called the “Maude the mule” fight.

  Maxine and Maude, two sisters. One day when she was about twelve years old, Maude was coming home from school, angry and hurt at having been teased by a boy who often razzed her about a popular comic strip character, Maude the mule. As it happened the boy’s house was on her way home. When she reached the house, she’d become so enraged at him that she picked up a big clump of mud and hurled it at the front door and then hid behind the neighbor’s lilac bush. Apparently no one was home, so she went ahead and plastered the whole front of the house. Well, she got into a lot of trouble for this. It was the main reason why she changed her name to Mary. My grandmother spent fifty years trying to get Maude (now Mary) to admit that she’d been wrong, that her behavior had been far short of ladylike. But until the day she died Maude refused to admit she’d done anything wrong. I think they both just liked the story and liked fighting, and they knew if they ever fully resolved it a lot of the steam would go out of it.

  One of the main reasons I think I may have underestimated my grandmother’s willingness to deal with my sexuality has to do with a phone conversation I had with her about a year before she died. It went something like this:

  “Jeffrey? Hello. Oh, I’m so glad you called. I need your advice about something that’s going on in the building.”

  “Really? What?”

  “Well, you remember the Catours on the fifth floor? You know, Father Catour’s parents?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, they decided to sell the apartment. They want to move to a nicer place. I don’t know what could be a nicer place at their age, but they want to go. Did you say hello to them the last time you came home? I hope so. Everybody always asks about you and the army.”

  I rolled my eyes and bit my tongue. She asked this question almost every time we spoke on the phone. In her view it was worse than a mortal sin for me to come home and fail to say hello to every single person I’d ever known in the building and the neighborhood. And I always made sure to do it since if I missed anybody she’d be sure to find out about it and I’d never hear the end of it.

  “Yes, Grandma, I said hello to the Catours the last time. So what happened?”

  “Well, they sold the apartment and a, a . . . person bought it.”

  “A person? Who . . . what’s their name?”

  “Well, now, Jeffrey, that’s what I am calling about, and honestly I just don’t know what to do. This person . . . is a . . . man . . . for now, but soon may not be.”

  I had to think for a second to figure out exactly what she was trying to tell me. “Ya lost me,” I said.

  “Well he . . . wants to become a woman,” she said, with a sharp intake of breath followed by a slow, anxious sigh.

  “You mean to tell me that a transsexual moved into the building?”

  “Oh Jeffrey! Don’t use that kind of language!”

  It took every ounce of control I had to keep myself from bursting out laughing. I knew she was totally sincere, that she was really having trouble getting her mind around the situation, and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

  “Well, Grandma, if you’re a man and you want to be a woman, that’s what it’s called. A transsexual. Same if you’re a woman who wants to be a man.”

  “Well, I’ve never heard that word before. It doesn’t sound nice at all.”

  “That’s the proper word. So what is it exactly that you need advising on?”

  “Jeffrey, please don’t be a pill. This is serious, what do I say?”

  “Whaddya mean what do you say?”

  “Well, what do I call him? How do I greet him? Does he hold the door for me or do I do it for him?”

  “Okay, slow down, Gram, let’s take it one step at a time. What’s his name?”

  “Bob, his name is Bob.”

  “Okay, then, that’s what you call him. Just call him Bob and say hello like you would to anyone else.”

  “Well, I guess.” She didn’t seem convinced.

  About a week later, I called her to see how things had gone.

  “Hello, Gramma, it’s me.”

  “Jeffrey? Oh, I’m so happy you called. How’ve you been?”

  “Good, good, so what happened with Bob?”

  “Bob? You mean Barbara.”

  “Barbara?”

  “Yes, yes, the woman who bought the Catours’ apartment.”

  “I thought it was a guy named Bob who bought the apartment.”

  “Well, the other day I met her on the stoop and I said hello just like you said I should, and ended up talking to her for over an hour. She’s really a nice person!”

  “So, now you know what do when you see him?”

  “Honestly, Jeffrey—her—her name is Barbara, get with it!”

  “Sorry, her, Barbara.”

  “Times, they are a-changing, sonny. You should try to be a little more modern like your old gramma here.”

  “Well when you put it that way . . .”

  I knew that people tend to have different standards for their children as opposed to the children of their friends or strangers. So chances are she would not have been as thrilled about my sexuality as she was about her newfound tolerance of transsexual Barbara living in Father Catour’s parents’ old apartment. But still, I sometimes liked to believe that she would have come around eventually.

  Now, of course, I’d never know. She was dead. The woman who had picked up the slack when her own daughter couldn’t meet her responsibility and took me in and raised me like a son was now dead. As I cleaned out her apartment and planned the funeral over the next few days, I was often struck by the finality of it, of death, and how brutal that finality was. The apartment was so quiet now, and I felt so alon
e in it. There were moments when I was filled with the same horrible feeling I had back in seventh grade when my grandfather died— that nothing would ever be right again, that nothing would ever be the same again. And, of course, nothing ever would be the same again.

  I knew that my grandmother had lived a full life and that it was a blessing that she went quickly in her sleep. I could understand all of that, the big picture, so to speak. But the reality of it on the ground was different, harder to grasp. What about those little things I took for granted? Who was I going to call for advice? Who would keep me updated on the weekly National Enquirer headlines? Or the gossip in the building? My link to Jackson Heights and New York, to the world from which I had sprung, had been abruptly severed, and I felt unmoored now, homeless, in a sense—I was alone now in the world.

  I’m not usually given to emotional outbursts, but, sorting through her things in the apartment, I often found myself crying for no apparent reason. I tried to keep it all together by organizing and prioritizing with military precision all that needed to be done to take care of her affairs and lay her to rest. As the days passed I was touched by how many people dropped by the apartment or simply stopped me on the street to offer their condolences and tell me what a wonderful person my grandmother had been. I didn’t know half of them, but they all acted as if they’d known me for years, my grandmother having been so proud of me, apparently, that she’d kept everyone she knew up-to-date on her grandson’s life.

  On the morning of the funeral, I decided to honor her by wearing my dress blue uniform with full-sized medals. This uniform is considered more formal and can be worn to black-tie and formal day events. I wanted to look impressive so that all these people who seemed to know so much about my life wouldn’t be disappointed. I wanted everyone to see what a great job my grandmother had done in raising me, that I had been a good grandson, somebody of whom to be proud. And I wanted everyone to know that everything I’d achieved was due to her loving support over the years.

  I tend toward the very formal when it comes to the turning points in life—weddings and funerals and such. I believe that the rituals associated with these events make them easier to cope with. Formality and structure have a way of subsuming all emotion and transforming it into something more, something accessible and edifying.

  The funeral took place at the Methodist church up the block from our building. It was a fine old church that lifted your soul. Light flooded through big, gorgeous panes of stained glass on all sides. I waited to receive her on the stone steps alone in my uniform.

  A lot of people turned out to bid her farewell. I had a moment of déjà vu, looking at the group of twenty or so little old ladies sitting in a clump toward the front. It was the same group, pretty much, that had come to my grandfather’s funeral almost twenty years before. My entire seventh-grade class had come as well, having asked Sister Eileen if they could attend in order to be there for me. It was comforting to be reminded that my grandmother had so many friends, that her life had been so rich with people. Even Barbara (formerly Bob) came to the funeral, dressed smartly in a classic black velvet dress.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Fort Bragg: Command

  Standing on the parade field, the entire battery at attention before me, I watched the well-dressed guests take their seats beneath the camouflage netting. It was a stunning North Carolina morning—cool, a startlingly clear blue sky overhead, a gentle breeze ruffling the netting just slightly. I was about to assume command, having been selected to take over headquarters and service battery.

  This ceremony has changed little over the past fifty years. Every commander is given a guidon—a small flag that represents the unit. Originally one of the ways to keep the troops oriented on the battlefield, the guidon today is an anachronism, though the tradition of receiving it still makes for great pomp and circumstance. The ceremony itself is relatively short. The outgoing commander gives the guidon to the battalion commander, who in turn gives it to the new, incoming commander. The torch is passed. The battalion commander then makes a brief speech thanking the outgoing commander and exhorting the new commander to do well. Then the outgoing and incoming commanders make brief speeches, and that’s that.

  It’s a nice, precise ceremony, beautiful in its economy, and I felt tremendously honored receiving the guidon and standing before everyone in that pristine Carolina sunlight. When the battalion commander placed the guidon in my hand, all the grief and pain of the last several months slipped away, and I was filled with a deep sense of satisfaction, realizing that I’d achieved a goal I’d set for myself at the very beginning of my military career. It had been a long time coming, but it had finally happened, and I was thrilled to be leading troops again, as I had in Desert Storm. I believed in the army again. My faith in the institution was renewed as I embraced the serious responsibility the new position conferred. And it had come at just the right time, when I was desperate for reasons to continue in the army, to remain committed to the one thing that had given so much meaning to my life. Knowing that I would have to publicly represent the battery made it easier for me to throw myself into it wholeheartedly as I rediscovered within myself the idealism that had inspired me to join the military in the first place.

  I would spend the next two years doing many of the same things I had done before, except now I would be called upon to offer guidance rather than merely seeking it. When it came to the unit, the buck would now stop with me.

  And so I was a commander at last. And I was at Fort Bragg. Fort Bragg, North Carolina. If you are a soldier and aspire to greatness, Fort Bragg is the place to be. It’s the post with the highest profile. All the hardcore assignments are based out of Bragg. And the sexy ones—Special Forces (Green Berets), the 82nd Airborne, the Delta Force—as well as the JFK School of Special Warfare, where doctrine is formed and foreign armies are trained in tactical warfare.

  Bragg is a massive, insulated institution surrounded by more than a quarter of a million acres of woodlands and mountains. The terrain is rough, like the assignments based there. In a word, it’s not a place for the faint of heart or mind. To be assigned to Bragg is a great honor, and I am extremely proud to have served there.

  Ardennes Street runs straight through the middle of the base. Lined on both sides of the street, with high-rise barracks built in the 1950s, educational facilities, museums, a memorial chapel, and the occasional PX, it often feels more like a small town than the center of an army base that trains some of the world’s finest warriors.

  I always took my morning run on Ardennes Street, which was closed every day between six and seven-thirty A.M. to all vehicular traffic for just that purpose, so that army personnel like me had a place to run. Having an entire stretch of road closed off for your morning run was just one of the many perks that came with serving in what some called, with little irony, gladiator land. I was never a particularly graceful or fast runner, so I was always grateful that Ardennes Street was flat. In a word, I’m no gazelle, and that’s an understatement. I’m closer to, say, a moose on ice skates, actually. But I knew that the surest way to develop endurance for the field was by simply placing foot to ground four miles a day, every day. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but it got the job done.

  And so it was that I made my daily run one gorgeous spring morning in 1997. North Carolina mornings are truly spectacular, and this one was no exception. I knew I was about halfway done when I looped around the giant bronze statue of the Green Beret standing sentry in front of the JFK School of War. I was always hit with a sudden, strong wave of pride when I passed this statue. To wear a beret was special. It meant that you were highly sought after when the shit hit the fan. I wasn’t a Beret, but I was Airborne, which has its own special cachet, so it was a great feeling knowing that you and the men you commanded were thought of as somewhat indispensable. The bronze figure usually gave me the second wind I’d need to get back to the office.

  My office was pretty comfortable by army standards. I had a rather
large oak desk, a nice couch, and my own bathroom, complete with shower, an amenity that distinguished me from the other officers in my building who had to share showers with the troops. It was just one of the perks that came with command.

  After finishing my run, I showered and changed and settled down at my desk to try to get some paperwork done. I had an open-door policy with my troops. I enjoyed being at the center of my battery’s daily activity. My men were hardworking, and I felt it was important that they know I was there for them if they wanted to talk. On this day, though, I really didn’t want to be disturbed since I had so much paperwork to get through. As I began reviewing soldier promotions and organizing inventories of battery equipment, my phone rang.

  “Captain McGowan,” I said automatically, expecting one of the usual problems or requests from subordinates that come with being “the boss with the open-door policy.” But when I heard the voice on the line, I knew right away that this call was different. The man seemed annoyed, and he was speaking loudly. Turns out this was the call no boss in the army ever wants to receive.

  “Yes, hello, sir,” the voice said, blunt, uptight, professional, “My name is Sergeant First Class Johnson. Are you the battery commander, sir?”

  “I am. How can I help you?”

  “Sir, I’m with CID,” he said, his voice thickening with a measured authority that filled me with a dreadful, sinking feeling. My stomach dropped. “We need to see one of your NCOs.”

  It’s never a good thing to have the acronyms CID and NCO in the same sentence. You might think of the CID as the FBI of the military world. They wear plain clothes and work undercover, and there’s a terrible aura of secrecy about them. They’re extremely no-nonsense in demeanor, dealing largely with the nastier, more serious crimes, unlike the standard MPs, who deal mainly with misdemeanor crimes, generally involving too much liquor.

  “Well, of course you can see one of my men, Sergeant,” I said, “that is, after you tell me what it is you’d like to see him for.” I was nervous, but I didn’t want the sergeant to hear it in my voice. The stronger I seemed, the more likely it was that I’d get some information out of this guy. The truth was, he didn’t have to tell me anything. CID doesn’t have to reveal anything about an open investigation. And their jurisdiction runs all the way up to the Capitol Building, and I don’t mean the capitol in North Carolina. Anything I could get out of the sergeant would be helpful in keeping the chain of command informed and would invariably simplify the whole process. If it was serious, and when CID called it almost always was, my bosses would be upset if I couldn’t explain to them what was happening, so that they could explain the matter to their bosses, and so on and so on.