We were talking about maybe getting married this winter. Some of our best memories were Christmas associated. But now because my name had come up, all that was on hold for two years at least.
It was shortly before Halloween, and I was just coming off a double shift at the diner. I was carrying home a bag of food for us, and Tabby was reading a course book. I kissed her and went down stairs to get the mail. And then my whole world fell apart.
In with the bills and some promotional material for the community college was an envelope with U.S. Department of the Army on it. I opened it with numb fingers, still standing right there in the hallway. Inside was a letter from the induction center in Vancouver: an order for me to report for my physical exam.
I felt the way a guy must feel after searching the whole house for his glasses, turning every room upside down, before somebody points out the fucking things are on top of his head. How could I have missed the fact that I might get fucking drafted if I dropped out of college? What kind of idiot was I?
Moving with the air of a man walking to the gallows, I headed upstairs, clutching the letter like it was a dead snake from a compost heap.
Tabby didn't scream, cry, curse or otherwise get dramatic or hysterical. She looked at the green envelope with its prosaic yet momentous contents. Then her shoulders slumped, as though the whole world was being thrust upon them, and she looked at the floor.
"When do you go?" she asked dully.
I pulled her into my arms and stroked her hair. She was crying again. "Why can't we catch a god damn break!" she said thickly, muffled by my shirt.
"Do you want to try and run to Canada?" I asked, trying to cling onto any hopes of keeping a normal life.
She looked up at me and frowned. "And have to spend every minute of every day looking over our shoulders? I don't think so, Bobby. We'll just have to bear up under it the way we always have."
I hugged her back against me and seethed at the world. I had almost ten years of happiness and now it was all going down the fucking drain.
We stood together in the almost barren living room of our tiny apartment and clung desperately to one another. We were all we had now. And I was being ripped away by Uncle Sam.
* * *
A month later I had been shipped out to Fort Campbell in Kentucky. I don't know why they didn't station me at Fort Lewis or Fort Stevens, but that's the army for you. Tabby and I had cried again as we stood by the bus with the other recruits. We were just one of many such couples, being torn apart by stupid ass politicians and their god damn wars.
The night before I was due to depart, Tabby had nearly crippled me with sex. It was a desperate, almost animalistic coupling, because who knew how long it'd be before we saw each other again? Or maybe I wouldn't see her at all. Maybe I would be sent home in a pine box and buried with the other thousands of nameless guys who had been similarly ripped out of their lives. We had coupled four times over that night and then fell asleep clinging to one another like limpets.
"I'll write you every day," she promised now, before kissing me one last time. "Please come back to me, Bobby. You're all I have!" and she cried again.
"Okay girls, get your asses on this fucking bus, we ain't got all god damn day," called the voice of Sergeant Richter over the chattering crowd.
"I'll be thinking of you," I muttered into her ear. "I'll try to call if they'll let me."
And then, with a last kiss, I was on the bus and headed for who knew what, with Tabby's tear streaked face receding in the distance.
Chapter Eight
As it turned out, I didn't actually end up being sent in-country. I went through the six weeks of basic training like everybody else, but it turned out I had a knack for logistics. I was assigned to the Quartermaster Corps and stationed at Fort Carson, in Colorado. I breathed a huge sigh of relief at this, and so did Tabby, in her answering letter to my news.
I was stationed there for about a week when I got an urgent message to come to the post hq. It was Tabby, and she was crying again.
"What's the matter Tabby?" I asked, afraid again. Who had died this time?
"I'm sorry Bobby," she said, sounding hesitant and unsure. "I know you're not supposed to get personal calls out there but it's an emergency. I'm pregnant."
I heard a rushing in my ears. Of all the things I expected to hear, this wasn't it.
"Are you sure?" I asked.
"Very. It probably happened on that last night we were together. Bobby, are you mad?"
The question flummoxed me. "Mad? Why would I be mad?"
"Well, we talked about kids but it was only hypothetical. But now it's real. Sometimes when it slaps us in the face - "
"Tabby," I interrupted. "I'm not upset or disappointed and I'm not going to desert you. This moves things up a little bit, is all. I'm going to be out of here in a year and we're going to be fine, because I'll have GI Bill money to send me to college."
"That's fine for later, but what about now?" she said.
"Let me finish, my love. I have a very important question to ask you?"
There was suddenly silence on the line. I heard a deep breath.
"Tabbitha Marie Langston, will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?"
"Oh, Bobby. Of course I will. You know I've wanted to marry you since we were six. But how will we do it?"
"I'll have to get back to you on that. But marrying me means we're eligible for base housing and you don't have to try to raise my son or daughter in a shitty little apartment all by yourself. We got really really lucky that I wasn't sent in-country."
I heard her gulp over the line. "You just made me the happiest woman in town, Bobby. You get back to me with the arrangements and I'll take care of finding a dress. Oh I can't believe it, finally."
"I love you, my Ebony Eyes," I said, my heart filling with emotion. It might not have gone the way I originally thought it would, but I was not complaining too much.
We said good bye and I promised to call her again in a couple of days once I had something definite.
I quickly realized that, on a weekend pass, I wouldn't have time to get home and marry that baby of mine. I'd need a minimum of four days at the very least. And I wanted Tabby's wedding day to be special. A girl only gets one first wedding, and I intended her first to be her last.
So I went to the post chaplain, and he authorized me to send for my Ebony Eyes. His name was Arnold Bradbury and he was a white-haired old man who looked as though he had joined the army right around the start of the Great War. Once he heard the story, he arranged a flight for Tabby from Portland to Denver and also helped me get base housing.
My Ebony Eyes was coming to me from out of the skies on Flight 1203, which was due to arrive at five in the morning on February Second, 1967. Just like the army, trying to find the cheapest flight possible. Poor Tabby would have to board the plane at ten in the evening her time.
I called Tabby with the information and she was bubbling over with happiness that her lifelong dream was finally coming true at last. She was getting to marry me, and she was having my baby all at once.
"We're going to be so happy," she gushed over the phone on the first of February. "I only wish Mama and Daddy could be here," she said softly, sounding a bit choked up.
"They're watching over us. I'm sure if I ever treat you bad I'll get a light fixture knocked on my head," I said.
"And not necessarily by them either," she snickered. "I know they're happy for us. I never told you this, but Mama actually helped me pick out the perfect dress when I was fifteen. I had Betsy help me let it out yesterday, and it's folded and ready to go."
"I'm sure you'll look beautiful in it," baby," I said. "You'd look beautiful in a flour sack."
She giggled. "I also have one more thing," she said, now serious. "I've got a portrait of my parents that I want hung above the altar in the chapel. I want them to watch us get married, the way they should have been able to."
I was now a little teary-eyed too. "Of
course," I said softly. "I can't see any problem with that."
So there I was, sitting at the airport, amidst two hundred other people waiting for Flight 1203. It was the middle of the damn night and icy cold out. I had arrived at three in the morning just to be sure, much to the amusement of my bunkmates. "Bobby wants pussy bad," Derek Mathews guffawed, making lewd gestures with his fingers.
"At least I don't have to fuck the barrel of my M-16 when I want some," I sniped right back, to loud roars of laughter.
Derek reddened, then busted out laughing too. "Asshole," he smirked. "Wait till I piss in your fucking punchbowl!"
I fidgeted in the hard chair just overflowing with excitement. In an hour or two, I would whisper "I do" to my beautiful Ebony Eyes. And at long, long last, she would be completely mine in all ways, emotional, physical, and legal.
But as the hours wore on, I grew increasingly nervous. It was five-thirty and the plane was way overdue. I went out and looked around and didn't see it in the sky. There were rumors of a blizzard hitting the Rockies, but that was supposed to be to the east of us.
I went back inside to the airlines desk, where a bored guy was reading a magazine. "Sir?" I asked. "I wonder why Flight 1203 is so late. Any ideas?"
He barely looked up from his magazine. "They might've taken off late or run into some turbulent weather and had to alter their course. Flight control hasn't sent anything back to us yet."
I went back outside and waited at the gate, my hands shoved deep into my greatcoat pockets. The wind was cutting across the flat runways in an icy torrent, slow, steady and freezing. Frost glimmered on the ground under the lights of the terminal building. A couple of guys were leaning against the hangar, the glowing coals of their cigarettes punctuating the cold night as they chatted about something.
I stared upward and watched the beacon light from the control tower as it swept across the ebony skies, as if it were searching for my Ebony Eyes. And I waited some more, growing increasingly nervous. Something was up. I just knew it.
I went back in at seven thirty. The flight was two hours late and I wasn't the only one making a fuss now. But before I could join the queue, an announcement came over the loudspeaker, and I fell to the floor in a dead faint.
"Would those having relatives or friends on Flight Number 1203 please report to the chapel across the street at once?"
* * *
I don't remember a whole lot after that. Somebody found me on the floor and I was led across the street to the chapel, which was there for just such occasions. Tears were flooding down my face. My head was full of an awful ringing, and I felt a burning deep inside. Tabby was gone. The girl I had loved all of my life, gone in a fiery plane crash, taking my unborn child with her. I pictured her clutching my picture in her hands, and calling my name as the plane fell like an aluminum coffin out of the sky to break apart in the mountains.
The blizzard that was supposed to be to the east had swept around and sprung up in the western slopes of the Rockies. There were no sophisticated navigation systems at that time, and apparently the pilot was a newbie and had crashed the plane into a mountain top. There were no survivors.
It took a couple of weeks for all the remains to be identified and returned to the relatives for funerals. Tabby's remains were sent back to Washington State, to be buried on her old farm. I insisted on that. Once again, Kathy Langston was there, along with a bunch of other relatives. But this time, I couldn't take comfort from her presence. Seeing her just reminded me of everything I had lost.
"Why is all this shit happening to you, Bobby? It's like somebody up there has something against you."
I didn't have an answer, so I just shrugged. "Who knows?" I said dully. Kathy hugged me but looked extremely uncomfortable, about as uncomfortable as I felt. I wanted to get out of there.
I went back to Base a changed man. I literally had nothing to live for anymore. So I requested and was given a tour in Viet Nam. I just didn't care. So what happened? I went over there and I volunteered for the most dangerous missions I could find. Bullets flew all around me, taking out entire platoons that I went with, but without so much as giving me a nosebleed. The only time I saw my own blood over there was while shaving or pulling leeches off my balls.
I finished my tour with an honorable discharge in 1970 and then I went to school to become an engineer.
I did not date. I remained totally abstinent, women just didn't interest me any more. I did not even so much as masturbate for the next thirty years. I could've been living in a monastery.
I graduated in 1974 and went to work for Bonneville Power. It was a good job and I stayed there, even got promoted to supervisor. But I just didn't care.
So life went for the next thirty years. But I had made a vow to myself, while sitting at that funeral. If I hadn't managed to pick my life up again by the year Two Thousand, I was going to end it. Tabby had been my entire life and it was pointless without her. I know how stupid that sounds, but it was true nonetheless.
Now here it was and I had to make a decision.
I was a creaky old man before my time. I bought a ramshackle old house two years ago and did absolutely nothing with it except eat, sleep and drink in it. I was sitting on the porch steps drinking bourbon and reliving old memories. Greasy tears lingered on my cheeks in the cold night air. Now it was time I made my final decision.
I got up off the splintery steps, tossing a still smoldering cigarette into the coffee can filled with water, where it hissed like a baby dragon. I trudged wearily into the mildewy smelling house, letting the half broken screen door slam shut behind me with a clatter.
I dropped the bourbon glass into the sink and headed toward my bedroom. I couldn't make this decision tonight. I decided to sleep on it. Tomorrow was Sunday so I could spend all day thinking about it.
Without bothering to undress, I kicked off my shoes and flopped onto the bed. The sheets hadn't been changed in almost two months, but I didn't care. I popped an Ambien from the depleted bottle on the bedside table, uncaring about the warning not to mix it with alcohol. It seemed rather pointless to quibble about such things when I was pondering committing suicide.
Gradually my eyes closed and I slept. The only time I ever got any peace was during my drug-induced comas, and I welcomed it. But this time, things were different. This might be the last sleeping pill I would ever need.
The next morning I woke up with a more clear idea of what I wanted to do. Since I was a shift supervisor, I had a key to the substation where I worked. I wrote my letter of resignation, got into my ratty old 1989 Ford Ranger and drove over to drop it off on my own boss's desk. Then I collected my stuff from my office and left the plant without saying a word. I didn't care about that job; it was only something to do so I could keep myself in liquor and not have to live paycheck to paycheck.
When I got back home I sat on the porch again, smoking cigarette after cigarette, just reliving all my memories of Tabby one more time. Smoking was something I had picked up after leaving the army. But I wouldn't have to worry about rising cigarette prices anymore.
I smoked the pack all the way to the end, and then I got up and went into my bedroom. I packed up all of my meager possessions. I lingered for a moment over my old guitar. The one Tabby's parents had got me for Christmas. That guitar had come with me in every little apartment I had gone to, because it was my first. I sat on the bed and plugged it into a somewhat new solid state amp. I strummed it, but it didn't have any of the warmth of those old tubes.
I hadn't played anything since that last gig on graduation night, so I sounded like a rookie all over again. Tears ran down my face as I remembered Tabby telling me that she should be the one getting stroked like that instead of the guitar. I dropped my head and sobbed. And my teardrops fell on the strings, making them shiny as I continued to try and play. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but I thought the strings glowed for a moment. But when I looked back, it was gone.
I gently put the old guitar back in its
case. And I couldn't help it, before I closed the lid I kissed the damn thing. And it felt warm.
Dismissing it once again, I finished packing my stuff into boxes to make it easier for the next occupant to get rid of. I threw all the food out and, after emptying the house trash bags, I took it all in the back of my truck to the dump.
I had written a last will and testament giving my meager saved funds to one of the homeless shelters in the area. I put that document on the table, and I sat on the floor against the wall with a big bucket in front of me, and my old K-Bar in my right hand. Under the bucket was a pile of newspaper.
I stared at the blade as it gleamed dully under the kitchen lights. Could I do this?
I thought of more years stretching ahead, full of emptiness and desolation, rolling on and on like gray waves on a deserted beach. I was fifty-two years old and I could possibly live to eighty, with my luck. So I had thirty more years of this life to put up with. NO way.
I turned the K-Bar over and over in my fingers. I had had this knife ever since I was issued my first kit bag, back in 1966. I had sliced enemy throats with this thing. I had sliced meats for my grill and cheese for my crackers. I had sharpened well enough that I could shave with it if I wanted to. It gleamed coldly in my hand.
Without bothering to analyze it anymore, I placed my hand palm-up on the side of the bucket and I sliced my wrist open along the radial artery and crossed it just below the bracelets of fortune.
The pain was immediate and intense. Blood pattered into the bucket, running across my palm and between my fingers. Quickly, before I lost all feeling, I clumsily did the same thing to my right wrist, biting my lip the whole time.
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