by Tina Maurine
The shack, a small cinder block building, sat maybe 200 yards from the squadron hangar. It was not far from the wash rack and where all the tractors were parked. It made more sense to be out on the flight line when all the work the linemen had to do was out there. Smaller equipment needed to be inspected once a month, and every three months for bigger equipment. Doing the math, this made for a lot of down time.
Working on the Line was a pretty cush job, depending on the day and the flight schedule. If all or most of the birds were up flying, everyone just sat around, chilled and shot the shit until they came back in. If the birds weren’t in the air, if they were downed for repairs, or when the weather was inclement, linemen usually supervised the aircraft washes. They made sure all the ‘chipper’ volunteers that came from the other shops were pulling their weight; inside if it was cold and outside if it was above freezing. Even during washes, there was room to fuck around A LOT.
The scene when I’d visited this shack, or even my prior squadron Line Shack, was the line crew sitting back, feet up, music cranked, and either playing cards or shooting the shit. Seriously. All the time. When the intercom or ‘walkies’ went off, the CD player was paused, everyone shut up, and the supervisor would take the call from the maintenance chief. Fuck, I doubt seriously if even he knew what went on out in the Line.
God, getting to the Shack can't happen soon enough!
Scowling, we busted out the mop buckets and got to work on the floors for the next seven hours, until night check showed up at 1800 for their shift.
When 1800 rolled around, I was OUT. THE. DOOR. Fast. Lightning Fast. I did not want to stick around at all and get roped into doing something else.
I know, I know. I should be busting my ass and making myself stand out, right? Wrong. There is no way to shine and make oneself noticed while mopping floors and cleaning toilets. It was a totally unappreciated job, and we were invisible while working. I cannot tell you how many times people walked on our floors in spite of the cones I had put out, nor how many times I was shoulder-checked as people passed by. I didn’t exist, and as far as I could tell, nobody knew me from the next mop-monkey. So yeah, I was out the door at 1800 and on the bus minutes later.
Two weeks later, I found myself frowning in disgust at the pee stained floor around yet another toilet. What’s wrong with these guys? Aren’t they potty-trained yet? How can they miss so often? Grumbling under my breath, I swished my mop in the sudsy bucket and slopped it onto the floor, spilling bubbles everywhere.
Why the hell did Sammie have to go to the other side of the hanger today? I asked myself for the thousandth time as I scrubbed at the sticky, yellow puddle. Her company might have made this duty more bearable. Yet here I stand alone, mopping up piss and dreaming of my real job. I sighed. At least there’s the bonfire tonight. It will be a nice change from all the time the four of us have spent at the base club, at dinner and watching movies. If I can get this mess cleaned up, that is.
I moved on to the next toilet and closed my eyes. This is worse than the other one. To take my mind off the mess of urine… and other, even less palatable substances smearing the tile, I tried to draw up in my mind an exact image of the last time the four of us had gathered—my roommate and our two new friends—in their room. Under their beds, they fashioned an inviting nook with a make-shift couch of pallets and tons of pillows so they had great views of the TV. The four of us cuddled there like young siblings.
Ace sat with Sammie, I recalled, picturing the two of them leaning on each other. He resembled my mental picture a strong, hardy southern ranch hand or Appalachian mountain man. A bit on the smaller side, with longish, dark hair, he had a stocky build, but was also lean as fuck thanks to his small-town varsity high school football career. He’s nice to look at, I admitted to myself as I scrubbed absently at a stubborn smear, and although I am NOT a fan of Wranglers, I’d wager Ace looks plenty fine in his with a pair of shit-kickers and a flannel shirt unbuttoned 2/3 of the way. He’s single and younger than me. I wonder why I never tried to hit on him… guess he must be more of a brother type; easy to talk to and so, so much fun to dance with at the base club.
Two more toilets remained, and the next wasn’t as bad.
I don’t hit on Lucas, of course, because he’s happily married. That’d be trashy of me, though he’s sexy as an NFL quarterback and built like an Academy Award. Like the Oscar statue, Lucas had wide shoulders and quite a narrow waist on his six foot, lean and fit 170-pound frame. He had an attractive, olive complexion and his hair cut was so high and tight he practically looked shaven. I’d even go so far as to say Lucas had a regal appearance, with a pronounced brow and square jaw. Despite thin lips and modest features, he came together in an attractive package.
Damn. Two hot buddies, and no one to flirt with. This two-week absence of worthwhile opportunity since the one time we went to the Privateer Pub is getting tiresome... as was cleaning this bathroom. At last, I swished mop water around the last porcelain throne, gave a final look at the shining sinks and gleaming tile, and dragged my bucket out of the latrine.
As I walked down the passageway, I ruminated on these past couple of weeks; Sammie, Lucas, Ace, and our other new friends, Ari and Kari. We had hit the base club and Arctic Bowl in our off-time more times than reasonably made sense, and we’d gone to a few parties at the Officer’s Barracks and get-togethers over in the permanent housing quads.
I recalled again our good fortune. As fate would have it, real excitement, something new seemed to find us as tonight we’d been invited to a bonfire tonight somewhere on base. Evidently, the word on the street was nobody would get the final location until night-check had finished their shift at 2230, a good four hours from now. Just enough time to get ready, and do I ever need a shower.
9
“Tess, baabeee…” Sammie drawled out in her best southern accent, as she tugged on a clean shirt, “head with me to the Servmart?”
I squeezed my hair with a towel and turned my head just enough to acknowledge her with a goofy face, the kind of face I always delivered when I felt the answer was obvious. In spite of the saying, “There are no dumb questions,” there actually were, because she already knew the answer before she asked it.
“Buuut of course dahhling,” I drawled back.
We stepped from the safety our warm barracks provided and the strong, stiff-blowing Arctic wind nearly knocked us off our feet.
“Can you believe,” I shouted as I steadied myself, “how much the weather has improved since we arrived? It must be in the mid-twenties.”
“I know, right?” Sammie agreed as she and I pushed the barracks door closed behind us. “I can hardly believe it was negative forty something that day. Windy or not, this is so much better.”
“It’s windy all right,” I replied as I caught sight of the wide canvas straps bolted to both doors. “I’ve heard it’s common for the wind in Iceland to catch a car door and whip it open so far, it gets bent and won’t align or shut correctly after.”
“Burns like hell, too,” she concurred, wiping at the tears that had been ripped from her eyes.
I nodded. Blinking hard only squeezed out more tears, which were blown immediately from my eyes too, leaving them painful and desert dry. I walked behind Sammie. She didn’t quite make a wind break, but it was nicer to follow than to be the lead guy.
As I made my way, I noticed from behind her, that Sammie wore her ill-fitting, boy-styled Levi jeans slung low on her waist, her well-worn flannel and down vest over-sized, and her hair in a ponytail tucked under a baseball cap (whipping hair stings one’s face like a bitch-slap). Her brown Doc Martins trudged forward on the slick, icy sidewalk.
Really, you can’t tell she’s a girl until you saw see her from the front… and then there’s no question.
We ducked into the outside breezeway between two barracks to get a reprieve from the wind. I took this opportunity to pull my brimmed Oakley beanie off my head, gather all the loose curls and tendrils that had
escaped my hair ‘claw’ and re-twisted my mass of curly, wavy red hair back up onto my head. I pulled my cherry Chapstick from my royal blue down vest, which contrasted nicely with the mustard-yellow wind parka I’d worn underneath, and complimented my antique dyed, slightly boot-cut, well-worn and loved Diesel jeans. I rewrapped my chunky scarf around my neck, tucking it up over my ears and down my neckline, before I stepped back out into the windy onslaught. I assumed the lead and thankfully, it wasn’t much farther until we’d reach the base Servmart.
Servmart was the closest thing we had to a 7-11 convenience store. It served much of the base with deeply stocked shelves of quick and easy to prepare foods, awesome selection of frozen pizzas and dinners, and a MASSIVE collection of beers and spirits—equal to and outdoing any stateside liquor store. Here, we could find most any kind of toiletry to get through the weekend until the base grocery store, the ‘commissary’ reopened on Monday.
I bent my head forward and pushed on against the wind until I reached our destination. The automatic slider sighed and parted for us. We stepped out of the biting wind and headed straight to the liquor section to grab a fifth of Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum for Sammie and my usual Bourbon—Woodford Reserve—for me.
“Tell me again why you go for that fancy shit?” Sammie asked.
“Because it’s so much smoother than Crown… just in case you’re taking notes,” I replied.
She pursed her lips and then changed the subject. “Tessa, let’s try to hit the commissary up for ice cream. They have the Haagen-Dazs bars I like, and we have ten minutes before they close.”
Grabbing a box of my favorite ice cream bars isn’t a bad idea. I looked at my watch and saw she was right, we hardly had any time to walk there before they closed. “I’m game, if you take over the lead.”
I tossed her one of my Hollywood smiles; a genuine grin that showed off my undeniably beautiful, straight, white teeth.
It felt like it took the full ten minutes to get there, with how hard the wind was blowing against us. We literally jogged the next long block and a half until we reached the front of the aged commissary. No longer white, the pull through covered area that enhanced the front entrance of the building had been worn by time and beaten by the weather. A long line of European vehicles waited their turn to pull up out of the crazy weather that was brewing outside and load groceries.
We hurried inside the first set of sliding doors, past full, abandoned carts, and people waiting with their groceries for their turn to pull up their cars outside.
Things here in Iceland were just different, but already now seeming less and less so. After all, I’d never seen this kind of organized chaos until I’d gotten here, not even in Puerto Rico where two lanes of traffic become four during rush-hour.
I noticed I was still bent over, uncomfortably so, from fighting that damn wind, so I straightened up. I huffed a warm breath into my frozen hands and made a mental note that I’d need warmer gloves if I was going to keep braving this bullshit Arctic weather. I glanced up at the weather report on the community board that hung just inside the door. The commissary manager updated it hourly, and it read eighteen degrees with wind-chill.
Even a few degrees’ drop makes such a difference with this wind. Well, that explains why I can’t feel my fingers or toes.
As I continued blowing into my hands, I searched the crowd for Sammie. I wasn’t sure exactly where she was—probably already at the frozen section, not wasting any time getting her chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and vanilla, dark-chocolate bars. If I knew her, she was also grabbing mine, since the commissary was closing in just a couple of minutes. It seemed like EVERYONE wanted out as I slowly pushed in. I felt like a salmon swimming upstream during spawning season. How did Sammie make it through this mass of bodies so quickly?
That’s when it happened. My eyes caught his. I was searching, looking left, right, behind me, up close in front of me and then farther out into the crowd, when my gaze stopped hunting and locked onto his. His eyes riveted me and speared into me, enchanted me and searched me. Startled to catch myself staring, I turned my eyes as far away from his as I could, and even in that briefness, I felt vulnerable.
WHAT THE FUCK?
The crowd pushed me backward, and my back actually hit the glass adjacent and to the left of automatic door. I was not squished; the crowd had just moved me out of their way now that the store was closing and everyone was waiting either to get out, get bundled up, or head for their car.
From the time I looked away, was pushed back, and turned my eyes back upward to find his… well, this only took a couple of seconds. Maybe seconds. Maybe even less, but it felt endless. The distance seemed even larger.
When I looked back, up he was still a good twenty feet from me, but I just knew. I didn’t know what was happening, but I was rapt, captivated by glinting light blue eyes draped in thick velvet eyelashes. My mystery man sported dark-chocolate hair in a longer than average crew cut—military style. He had perfectly arched, wide, pronounced eyebrows that couldn’t possibly look that good au natural… he had to groom himself unless he was the baby of an angel. Which I wouldn’t doubt.
His olive brown skin looked like he spent his days on the beach playing volleyball and surfing which, obviously, he hadn’t been. My stranger had a strong jaw and a sexy five o’clock shadow that framed one of the most perfect mouths I had ever laid eyes on. His eyes shimmered, his bronze skin exuded life and energy, and his frame—well, it could NOT look like that unless there were some defined and sculpted muscles under there.
Purely virile.
Wholly male.
Totally unexpected.
My eyes found his again as he moved, gliding through the crowd as it parted for him like Moses parted the Red Sea in the Book of Exodus. As he approached me, I gave him a good once over, which he evidently noticed because he flashed me the quirkiest, most sarcastic smile I think I’dd ever seen. His eyes twinkled, smiling at me.
Holy Hell, I am such a goner.
“There you are!” Sam emerged from somewhere on my right, grabbed my arm and started to pull me backward. I stumbled, righted myself and we scooted out the door, back into the Arctic cold and stormy wind. This time, I welcomed the gusts, which now only felt like breezes, as I had gone searing hot, my breath coming in erratic pants.
“Fuck, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Sammie nudged me.
I had no words for her. Hell, I had no idea what had actually happened and was still trying to process it. The wind claimed the rest of what she was shouting. With our ice cream and booze tucked tightly under our arms, we headed off toward the permanent barracks to wait for word from Ari about the bonfire with his friends.
Once back in our room, I felt the need to share, to get this weird and totally amazing feeling I had just experienced off my chest. I needed to talk to someone, but Sammie wandered down to Lucas and Ace’s room to wait Ari. I wish I could just call Wes up and talk to him.
Fuck, maybe I should just give him a call. What’s the worst that could happen?
I searched though my papers on my carole until I found my Puerto Rico notebook, flipping through the pages until I got to the one on which Wes had written his going-away note to me. As I read through it, his words shocked me by tearing at my heart, even after all these weeks.
My poor Wes. I never meant to hurt you like that. Surely though you’re over me by now.
I cracked my neck and picked up the landline, dialing the numbers to the duty office for VC-12, my old squadron.
“VC-12 Fighting Eagles duty office, Petty officer Martin speaking. How may I help you?”
“Yes, could I please speak with Petty Officer Wes Porter?”
“One moment, please, while I check which shop he’s attached to.” I waited patiently while I heard the person on the other side ruffle through papers. “Here it is; I’m putting you through now. One moment please.”
“Certainly.”
“Corrosion, Porter speaking.”<
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“I can’t believe my luck.” I sharply drew in a chest-full of air.
“Excuse me? How can I help you?”
“Sorry. Wes it’s me—Tessa.” Silence followed. An incredibly long silence. I pulled the phone away from my ear to look at it, as if that would tell me anything. “Are you still there? Wes?”
I heard him clearing his throat on the other side, “Sorry. Tess, you just really surprised me—I mean it’s been so long—what I mean to say is, how are you?”
I could hear the confusion in his voice and wondered if I should be calling at all. Jeezus, I’m being selfish calling him… I suddenly realized. I didn’t even think this would affect him. STILL?
“I’m doing good actually. Really good. How are you?”
“You know how it is here. Craner is up my ass, same as he was when you were here too…” I nodded, not that he could see it. “… and Shewner is dating Ryker. You know, pretty much the same-o, same-o.”
“Yeah but how are you doing, Wes?” I waited in anticipation, hoping he’d say he was ok.
“It’s been rough, I’m not going to lie.” He paused, “Tessa, you know how I feel about you, felt about you, I mean.” He stumbled over his words, obviously flustered. “It’s been hard without you here. I miss you, ya know?”
“I miss you too, Wes… it’s just probably different for me.”
“Yeah, you’ve moved on and I’m still stuck here. So, like, every time I want to go do something, I remember the great times we’ve already had there.”
“That’s true, but not really what I meant about how my missing you is different than how you miss me.”
“Yeah, Tess, I KNOW. I don’t really want to hear again how you love me differently than I love you.”
“Sorry Wes. I never meant…”
He interrupted me before I could finish my apology. “I didn’t mean to steer us down this road.” His voice suddenly took on a more upbeat tenor. “So, what’s up?”