Basic Training of the Heart

by Jaycie Morrison

  After all the recruits had received their awards, and everyone had been seated, the colonel announced a special citation. “Created by the Congress of the United States on July 2, 1926, the Soldier’s Medal is awarded to any person of the Armed Forces of the United States or of a friendly foreign nation who, while serving in any capacity with the Army of the United States, distinguished himself or herself by heroism not involving actual conflict with an enemy,” Janet Issacson read, and when she called Sergeant Rains’s name, the cheers started up again. Rains stood very straight as she received the medal, pinned to her uniform by Colonel Issacson. “There will have to be an inquiry,” Issacson said as she shook Rains’s hand, softly enough that only Rains could hear over the cheers, “but we wanted to give you this in front of your squad.” Her eyes shifted to Private Smythe and back. “You’ll be on paid leave for a week. It’s just a formality. And when you get back, we’ll talk about your promotion.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”

  After dismissal, it was a madhouse. There were so many parting hugs being given that Bett lost track of Rains after she walked down the platform steps. She was about to give up and get her things from the barracks, when she glanced back one last time and caught sight of a familiar form in front of the reviewing stand. That looks like my father, but it can’t be. She turned back into the tide of bodies, pushing her way forward. When she reached an open space, she saw what she’d never thought possible—Mr. R. L. Carlton talking to Sergeant Gale Rains. Quickly, she was close enough to overhear them.

  “So I understand I owe you a debt of gratitude, Sergeant,” her father was saying. Although his back was to her, she could hear the hint of contempt in his voice. She was quite sure that she could have predicted the disdain in his reaction after being informed that his daughter had been rescued by an Indian. An Indian woman.

  “Not at all, sir,” Sergeant Rains replied. Then, perhaps sensing what Bett knew to be in his tone, she added, “I just did what any red-blooded American would have done.”

  “Be that as it may,” her father said, the double meaning of Rains’s words apparently lost on him, “I would still like for you to have a token of my esteem.” His hand stretched out with a fan of hundred-dollar bills.

  Bett stepped forward, smiling uncertainly. “Father, I had no idea you were going to be here today.”

  “Elizabeth, don’t misinterpret my presence. I’m sure you can imagine how I feel about this escapade and your mother agrees,” her father said to her curtly. “You have finished your training here and proven your point. Now I am here to take you back to California.” He seemed unaware that he was still holding out the money.

  “No, sir,” Rains said, and father and daughter looked back at her in surprise. She indicated the bills. “I couldn’t, sir.” She glanced at Bett expectantly.

  “Oh, come now, Sergeant,” her father insisted, exasperated. He took Rains by the wrist and pressed the money into her hand. “I know you’re not getting rich on Army pay.”

  “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone,” Rains quoted, easily breaking his grasp and letting the money drop to the ground. There was an awkward pause. “Congratulations again, Private Smythe.” She met Bett’s eyes for another brief second. “Sir,” she nodded to Bett’s father, who regarded her as if she were an insect he was about to crush. As she walked away, each long stride showed some blood seeping through the bandage under her skirt.

  “I’m sorry, Father,” Bett said, not the least bit apologetic. “I’ll be staying on here. I have a job to do.” I’m not running away, she told herself with certainty as she turned to follow Rains, not even telling her father good-bye. I’m running toward. “Wait! Oh God, Rains, wait.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Three days after the graduation of her last squad of WAC recruits, Sergeant Gale Rains walked off the Fort Des Moines grounds bareheaded, wearing her jeans, a red flannel shirt over her white T-shirt, and her moccasins—the exact outfit she had arrived in over two and a half years ago. She carried a few other personal items in the used knapsack. The wound on her leg was healing well; now it was just covered by a large Band-Aid, and she was ready to walk.

  But as she went through the streets of the town, it became apparent that her uniform had been a part of her most recent version of invisibility, at least for the people of Des Moines for whom the ladies of the WAC were no longer a novelty. Now, in her own clothing and her braid hanging down her back, she drew stares from almost everyone she passed. She stopped in front of a storefront window and tried to see what they saw. She was tall and lean. Army food had filled her out some from the undernourished high school girl in Miss Warren’s class, and the constant exercises with her squads had kept the muscle in her arms and legs defined. Her coloring was different from most people in this part of the country, and her braid was nothing like the common hairstyles that ladies wore. Was that all that people really saw? What did Bett see? In that moment, Rains noticed her shirt cuffs were a bit frayed and her jeans had been laundered so much that they were a white-blue. She looked up and saw that she was in front of a Western clothing store. She went in.

  As she picked out a few items, she felt almost elated at the experience of buying herself something new with her own money. After she paid, she wore the satin shirt she’d found and her new jeans and boots out of the store, carrying her old wardrobe in a store bag. For a few blocks she walked proudly, not caring if people stared at her or not. Then she remembered Thoreau: Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. Her new boots began to hurt. She found a park with a public restroom and changed back into her old clothes, carefully folding the dressier outfit and putting it in the shopping bag. Another time, she told herself. Bett will like what she sees or she won’t.

  When she finally found the address that Bett had given her, a group of moving men were driving away, leaving one box on the porch. The door was still open, but she rang the bell anyway. “Please come in and bring everything to the back room,” she heard Bett’s voice call. Rains carried in the large box high on her waist and it hid her face.

  Bett saw a body in jeans carrying a box into her house; she’d seen that all day long. It wasn’t until Rains passed by her that Bett saw her braid. “Sergeant Rains! Good Lord, is that you?”

  Rains put down the box and turned to face her. Bett looked her up and down in shock, her mouth just open a bit. “You look…you look…” It was not like her to be at a loss for words. “You don’t look a bit like yourself,” she managed, finally.

  “Actually, I do,” Rains said calmly. “I look exactly like myself. This is how I looked for most of my life. What you know is only how I’ve looked for the last two and a half years.”

  Bett could not stop staring. She felt almost like she was in the presence of a stranger. Wearing jeans and flannel, her former drill instructor looked even younger and wilder, somehow.

  Rains lifted her chin and asked, a bit tightly, “Would it make you feel better if I went back to the base and put on my uniform?”

  “No, no, of course not.” Bett was embarrassed. “Let’s just—let’s sit and talk a bit, shall we?” She started toward a sofa which was piled high with boxes.

  Rains remained where she was. “So this is your house?”

  “Yes, uh, yes. Let me show you around.” Bett couldn’t understand why she was suddenly so nervous, but she really wanted Rains to like the house, to be impressed even. She gave a quick tour of the two-bedroom, two-bath home that had a dining room and a small breakfast area in the kitchen, but only a large den instead of a formal living room. “And I have a telephone now, look,” she said, pointing to the black apparatus, hanging on the kitchen wall, to the left of a small breakfast table and two chairs.

  Rains frowned in the phone’s direction, unable to imagine what kind of strings had been pulled at what expense to get Bett such a device so quickly, now, with the war on. She had not enjoyed the few phone conversations she�
��d had. She’d found it quite disconcerting to speak with someone while not being able to read their facial expression, their eyes, or their true intentions. She turned back toward the den, her eyes moving over everything. “Big,” she said. “My whole family lived in places the size of just this room.”

  “See,” Bett said, “in some ways I feel I don’t know very much about you at all, and I’d like to.”

  Rains walked over and looked out onto a cement patio and a small fenced backyard. “Is this where your dozens, perhaps hundreds of questions come in?”

  Bett laughed. “Yes, unless you suddenly take it upon yourself to start blabbering away about your life, which you haven’t seemed particularly inclined to do, so far.”

  “Hmm,” Rains grunted, still eyeing the fenced yard. She could hear a dog barking in the house next door.

  “For example,” Bett picked up, hands on her hips, “what does that sound you just made mean? Does it mean okay or does it mean forget it or does it mean stop your bloody running on, woman, or what?”

  Rains stopped looking outside and turned her gaze back to Bett, who had a smudge of dirt on her left cheek and hair escaping in all directions from under the kerchief she wore. She was dressed in a dirty white long-tailed man’s shirt with the sleeves rolled up and worn black slacks. She was barefoot. Rains thought she was absolutely gorgeous. Breathing in, she walked back toward her, allowing herself to feel the goodness of seeing Bett again. “Just now it means that I would like to get to know you better also.” She gently took Bett’s hands and turned them over, looking at the dirty palms and then back up into Bett’s eyes. “But perhaps we should talk while I help you clean up.”

  Silly, Bett told herself, Rains isn’t the type to be impressed by material things. She believes in actions. “Oh, Rains,” Bett said, and threw her arms around Rains’s neck. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into me.” When she felt the warmth of Rains’s body, she knew it was all going to go just as she’d dreamed.

  Rains’s breathing deepened and her hands moved gently on Bett’s back, almost as if she were reading Braille. Bett’s nipples hardened in response and she hoped Rains could feel them. They held each other for a long moment. Bett felt her body fitting into Rains’s in a most delicious way. This is what I’ve been waiting for, Bett thought. Just as she lifted her face, the doorbell rang.

  “Bloody hell,” Bett murmured, dropping her head back onto Rains’s chest. She sighed as she stepped back and walked toward the door. “It’s just this mess that’s making me anxious. I’m terrible at organizing but I’m worse about living in such a shambles.”

  Bett signed for a small package and carried it back into the room, tossing it hopelessly on a pile. She returned to where Rains was standing and placed her hands on Rains’s chest. “I know my home isn’t currently up to Army standards, but you won’t give me KP, will you, Sergeant?” She leaned in and brushed her lips across Rains’s.

  “Hmm.” Rains seemed immobilized by the kiss, even though it was different from the kiss they’d shared in the conference room, which had been intensely passionate. This time, Bett kept her lips light and sweet and moved away so quickly that Rains hadn’t really kissed her back.

  “Which means you wouldn’t dream of it, right?” Bett batted her eyelashes so exaggeratedly that Rains breathed out her now familiar chuckle.

  *

  Sergeant Rains needed every bit of her considerable organizational skills to make any semblance of order in Bett’s house. On their break for lunch, Rains asked, “You said at boarding school they called you Pratt. What did they call you at Oxford?”

  Bett was flattered. “Do you remember everything about all of your recruits?”

  “Hmm.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment, then. Well, things at Oxford were much more formal, of course, so in class it was Miss Carlton.”

  “But your friends at school,” Rains persisted. “What did they call you?”

  Bett’s mind flashed back to her first week at university, where she’d developed a kind of self-identity, learning there were other women who felt like she had toward Emma. Her desires might not be acceptable to the wider world, but at least they were genuine. She barely remembered the first girl—Jillian?—only recalling how good it had felt to be touched again. But then she’d panicked, jolted by a desperate need to get away before she felt something deeper and got hurt again. She’d seen other women, briefly each time, only wanting some release, something to fill the void. And now? Bett looked at Rains. Now that the strangeness of seeing her sergeant in civilian clothes had worn off, she found her even more desirable. If she had felt this kind of attraction in the past, she would have dragged whoever into the bedroom—boxes be damned—had her way and then sent them off before the night was over. But she couldn’t imagine Rains taking part in a story line like that. Is this something different? Is this something more?

  Rains was looking at her curiously. She was taking too long to answer.

  “Um, they mostly just called me Bett.”

  Rains contemplated this. “Bett is not enough for you,” she said after a moment. “You are so much more. Your name should be more.”

  “Like what?” Bett asked, pleased by the assessment.

  “Right now I don’t know you well enough to say.”

  “But you’ll let me know?”

  Rains nodded. “What will you call me now?” she asked. “Here in your home?”

  “What do you want me to call you?” Bett asked, amused at the question.

  Rains moved closer and took Bett’s hands again. “Let me explain. I believe that words have meaning and names have power. In my life, I almost lost the tribal family name that is a big part of my identity. And my language is also very important to me. It’s the glue that holds my culture together.” She freed a hand and touched Bett’s mouth very gently. “When it is just you, speaking to only me, call me Rain—without the s.” Her own mouth turned up a bit. “To anyone else I would be Gale Rains. Though I must admit I have never had a recruit say Sergeant quite like you. I can hear your laugh in the middle of it.”

  Bett smiled at this last remark, but her mind was on what Rain had said about her identity and her language. She knew she might not ever completely understand, but she wanted Rain to know she had heard her. Hoping she was posing the right question in the right way, she asked, “How do you say your real name, your…tribal family name, Rain?”

  Those black eyes searched hers for so long that Bett thought she wasn’t going to answer, or maybe she had taken offense at being asked. Perhaps Rain was deciding if she was worthy of knowing something so personal.

  Just as Bett thought she might have to look away, that she wasn’t prepared for such scrutiny, Rain answered, her words slow and almost fierce. “All I have is my childhood name because I wasn’t with my people when I came of age. But my mother always told me that my name was special, and it suits me.” Rain spoke her tribal name, and to Bett it sounded like poetry, or a prayer. “In English it would be Wind and Rain.”

  Bett felt like she had been given a gift. She repeated the unusual sounds with great care, first in her head, then out loud, trying to match the accent and cadence that Rains had used. Reaching out her free hand, she touched Rain’s cheek softly. “Wind and Rain, I want to apologize to you for acting so strangely when you first arrived, and I want to tell you that I like the way you look.” She brushed Rain’s bangs back out of her eyes. “I like it a lot.” Rain’s eyes seemed to deepen, reminding Bett of that moment they had fallen together on the parade grounds. “May I ask what you are thinking just now?”

  Rain’s answer was deliberate, as if she was just formulating the words as the thoughts became clear. “I was thinking how I…” She swallowed again. “How I missed you these last three days.” She nodded, as if relieved to have admitted it. “It was dreary not seeing you or hearing your voice every day. I was thinking that I am glad to see you.” She gently squeezed Bett’s hand back. “I am
very glad to see you.”

  Bett felt that funny flutter of her heart that only Rain seemed to bring on. Could she be any sweeter? She wanted to kiss Rain right then, to start and not stop, but instead she resorted to teasing as she often did to cover her feelings. “But don’t you miss all of your squad members, Sergeant? Mightn’t you be helping any one of them with packing or unpacking, or getting them settled in their new position?”

  Rain seemed to consider this. “I might,” she admitted, and then looked over at Bett with a slight crook of her mouth. “But I wouldn’t at any point be holding their hands.” She stood and pulled Bett up with her so quickly that Bett wobbled a bit and Rain caught her arms to steady her.

  “Good,” Bett said when she had her balance, looking seriously at Rain. She added, “Let’s keep it that way, shall we?” When Rain nodded, Bett settled for another quick, light kiss on the lips and repeated, “Good.”

  After they had gotten back to work, Rain began thinking about how it was for her in Bett’s house. It seemed to be a good space, even a little familiar, maybe a bit like being in Miss Warren’s house. At least she didn’t feel uncomfortable or terribly out of place, and she hoped nothing would change during the upcoming evening.