The Cadet (39 page)

Wearing his winter blue cadet uniform, Rod felt vastly underdressed, especially for an intimate Christmas Eve reception; he wished he’d brought his mess dress. But when he saw the first Army general officer show up, resplendent in his braid, rows of medals and gold shoulder boards, Rod was glad he didn’t have to compete visually with the high-ranking officers.

Julie stood by his side as they wove through the reception. She clutched his arm and introduced him to her parents’ friends.

Mr. Phillips’ non-military guests wore tuxedos, impeccably fitted down to the perfect cut of their cuffs, showing a hint of gold Rolex watches, class rings from Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. Trophy wives adorned the arms of at least a fourth of the men, women not much older than Julie, who were stunningly beautiful and deeply tanned, wearing ornate jewelry that weighed down their thin necks.

Wearing a long, black dress cut below her shoulder blades at the back, Julie looked radiant, freshly scrubbed and was the only person in the entire room that put him at ease. As people drifted by and introduced themselves, the memory of Rod’s father taking him to a reception at the Smithsonian ten years earlier flashed through his mind. A sense of déjà vu enveloped him—he saw the same glances, the same quick summing up of stature: Where does this person rank in the pecking order with respect to me? Will I be doing him a favor if I stay and talk, or is there anything I can gain from this encounter?

Mr. Phillips strode over and placed a hand on Julie’s shoulder. He held a glass filled with two fingers of bourbon, straight. Everyone in the room turned as he guided her to the fireplace.

Rod stepped away to stay in the background, but Julie pulled him close, tightly clasping his hand. “It’s Daddy’s annual toast,” she whispered. “Help me.”

Feeling the heat of the fire against his backside, Rod stood slightly behind Julie and Mr. Phillips. Several people spoke in low tones, glancing at Rod.

Looking flushed and obviously quite proud, Mr. Phillips tapped on his glass. The murmuring in the room drew quiet.

“Colleagues. Dear friends, Yale classmates, and other riff-raff in the room.” A few chuckled. “Tonight as we celebrate Christmas, I’m pleased to announce another event of Biblical proportion.”

Rod felt suddenly panicked. Had Julie told them she was pregnant? Julie had never formally agreed to marry him, and he had at least wanted to go through the ritual of asking Mr. Phillips for her hand in marriage.

Mr. Phillips held his glass up, his voice slightly slurred. “I give you the prodigal daughter, newly returned from the West, freshly degreed—back to family, to home and to civilization.”

The crowd clapped politely. Julie looked annoyed.

“As you know, she graduated from university but returned to Colorado to pursue a career. We haven’t had the opportunity to honor her publicly, so may I present the miracle of the modern age, Miss Julia Phillips.” He raised his glass. Julie pulled Rod close. Spotting the movement, Mr. Phillips said in a monotone, “And of course, her beau, Cadet Simone.” The cadet was faintly stressed.

“Hear, hear.”

Her long dress swishing as she walked, Mrs. Phillips glided over to her daughter and kissed her on the cheek. “We’re so proud of you, darling.”

“Yes, we are,” Mr. Phillips said. “Who would have thought that after attending three universities we would finally be so lucky to find one that would allow her to graduate? Incredible. And to think of the contribution the Phillips estate has made to sustain our national academic infrastructure.”

“Edward.” Mrs. Phillips warned in a low voice.

Mr. Phillips looked pleased with his wit. “And to clinch the deal, she has acquired a government-funded escort. What more could a father ask?”

Nervous tittering ran through the crowd. Rod felt that the guests sensed tension in Mr. Phillips’ voice. Whatever was happening tonight, it was clear that Mr. Phillips was annoyed at his daughter’s choice in giving up Georgetown law school as well as her choice of companion. Rod tightened his mouth, determined not to let this get under his skin. He’d be gone tomorrow and would put this behind him. Julie hadn’t officially accepted his marriage proposal, so this might even be the last time he saw Mr. Phillips.

Julie picked up a glass and lifted it high. “I’d like to propose a toast, Daddy!”

Mr. Phillips blinked. Momentarily set back, he composed himself and then raised his own glass. “Certainly, dear. To whom does this honor go?” He looked quizzical.

Julie lifted her chin. She looked around the crowded room. “To Cadet Roderick Jean-Claude Simone, who in five months will gain three titles: first, as a second lieutenant in the United States Air Force.” Smiling, she paused. “And second, as my husband.”

Mrs. Phillips dropped her drink. Champagne splashed on her dress as the thin glass shattered on the floor. A waiter pulled a white towel from his arm and knelt to mop up the glass. A crowd of people surged toward them.

Mr. Phillips bent close to his wife and scowled. “Control yourself.” He straightened and turned to a clique of his classmates to perform damage control.

Mrs. Phillips put a hand to her mouth and another on Julie’s shoulder. “Oh, baby. I’m so … so—”

“Happy?” Julie said.

“Yes. Of course. But, baby, isn’t this a little hasty?” She threw a glance at her husband. “And Edward. Edward won’t allow this to happen.”

Julie reached out to Rod and held his hand tightly. “Daddy has no say in this, Mother. I am on my own, and Rod is, too. We’re old enough to make our own decisions.”

“But you can’t do this to us. What will we tell our friends? Edward’s firm?”

“Tell them your daughter is marrying a graduate of the Air Force Academy’s first class,” Julie said coldly. “Tell them she is going with him to graduate school and that she is having a small wedding.” She put her arm around Rod’s waist. “And tell them she loves Rod very much, because not only is he an honorable man, but he is the best thing to ever happen to me.”

A murmur swept through the crowd. One of the men walked briskly up to Rod. “Congratulations, son,” and shook his hand. Someone slapped Rod on the shoulder.

Mr. Phillips drained his glass of bourbon and picked up another drink from a waiter’s tray. He turned from his Yale classmates and unsuccessfully tried to hide a scowl. “Hell of a way to announce an engagement, Rod,” he said under his breath.

“Well, sir, we kind of just decided today.” Rod was just as stunned as everyone else. Plus, it seemed as if everyone at the reception was listening to him.

Mr. Phillips took a sip of his drink. “I don’t recall that murderers are allowed out of prison to attend weddings, Rod. Have you thought of that?”

Rod drew in a breath, narrowing his eyes. He couldn’t be pushed much more.…

Mr. Phillips turned and stood between Julie and his wife, ignoring Rod. He kept his voice purposely low, but Rod still heard his words. “Julie. You’re barely out of college. You haven’t even had a chance to work in Washington.”

A smile tugged at Julie’s lips. “You and mother were married before you graduated from university.”

“That was over twenty years ago. Times are different. I won’t allow this.”

“How are you going to stop me?”

Mr. Phillips opened his mouth but didn’t speak. Mrs. Phillips took his arm. “Edward,” she said. “We should be happy for her.”

Mr. Phillips scowled and drained his glass. Lifting his chin, he spoke loudly, as if he couldn’t allow Julie to have the last word. “You said your fiancé would have three titles, and you only gave two.” He smirked at Rod. “Husband and lieutenant, though too bad he isn’t a doctor, or better yet, an esquire.” He sniffed. “What’s his third title, prison guard?”

“It’s Daddy,” Julie smiled, drawing her hand to her stomach. She turned so everyone could see the slight bulge under her dress. “I’m three months pregnant.”

***

Chapter Forty-Two

“Personality”

January 1959

Second Semester, First class Year

United States Air Force Academy

Colorado Springs, Colorado

FIGMO (adj.)—That state of being which causes one to place a de-emphasis on matters of military or other importance and proceed to “kiss it off.” In the vernacular: “Forget [or another, vulgar verb denoting a sexual act] It, Got My Orders.”

—Contrails

Rod’s last semester started slowly after the Academy’s disappointing tie at the Cotton Bowl. The football team ended the season with a 9–0–1 record, having just missed winning the national championship—normally a stellar performance, especially for a major university in its first year of eligibility, but disappointing nonetheless to a class of seniors who for the past three and a half years had excelled in everything they did.

There was still no word from either the congressional investigation or the El Paso County court, so he’d helped his parents clean their house before they interviewed several real estate agents. The agents convinced them to wait until May to put their house on the market, when demand would start to rise; so they’d scraped enough cash together to hold out the next few months until late spring and Rod’s graduation.

Now Rod sat glumly at his desk, his military studies text open but unread. Every time he tried to concentrate, the meaning of the words seemed to wander off, as if each sentence meandered away on its own, without a point and utterly boring.

Sly slammed a pile of navigation books on the desk, jerking Rod awake. “You haven’t moved since I left an hour ago.”

Rod stretched and closed his book shut. He scooted his chair around. “I can’t concentrate. This stuff seems so inane, especially compared to navigator training.”

“I could have told you that when we were doolies!”

“I can’t get motivated to study, especially with my parent’s situation up in the air. But the national scholarships haven’t been awarded yet, so if I let my grades slip, the Academy might not allow me to accept one.”

“You’ve been moody ever since Christmas. You’ve got to snap out of it.” Sly lay back on his bed, his hands behind his head. “I tell you what. This weekend a couple of us are heading down to the Springs. Goldstein met a girl whose dad owns a liquor store. She’s going to let us in there after it closes. Why don’t you come with us? Julie can drive you back.”

Rod shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Hey, it’s not like you’re engaged or anything, is it?” When Rod didn’t answer, he swung his feet to the floor, sitting abruptly up. “Rod. You are not engaged. Are you?”

Rod stood and started pacing. “A lot of things happened over Christmas.”

“Such as?”

Rod didn’t answer, and instead kept pacing.

“Rod,” Sly demanded. “What’s going on?”

“I’ve got to get out of here. This place is driving me crazy.”

Sly glanced at the clock and lifted an eyebrow. “It’s an hour until taps. You’re not thinking about going OTF?”

“No, just out of the dorm, someplace where I can burn some energy.”

“The gym’s closed.”

Rod thought hard. Where could they go on campus? It wouldn’t be fair to drag Sly along, but he needed to talk as well. And then it hit him.

“I’ve got an idea.” Rod pushed his chair across the floor to the storage compartment over their closet. Normally reserved for storing out of season clothes, upperclassmen could also use the space for keeping personal items.

He opened Sly’s compartment and pulled out two of Sly’s golf clubs, a five iron, a three wood, and two dozen golf balls. “Here.” He handed the items to Sly.

“What are you doing? Get my putter if you’re going to play putt-putt.”

“You’ve always said there’s nothing better to take out your frustration than by hitting some long drives.”

“Where?” Sly said. “The athletic fields are outside the cadet area.” In order to prevent the cadets from meeting their girlfriends on the grassy playing fields after dark, the athletic fields had been deemed off-limits during academic call to quarters.

Rod grinned as he leaned over to his own storage compartment. He pulled down his bagpipes and stepped down from the chair. “Now we’re ready.”

They bundled up in their parkas and left the room after stuffing the golf clubs and bagpipes in their dark blue laundry bags to avoid drawing attention.

Mystified, Sly followed Rod down the long hallways of Vandenberg as they walked all the way to the last squadron, located next to the Honor court. They crept out of the stairwell, keeping watch for the Senior Officer of the Day.

They slipped across the Terrazzo, hurried to Harmon Hall, the admin building housing the Superintendent’s offices, and walked up the stairs. Lying at the far western end of the cadet area, Harmon Hall ran north-south, perpendicular to the cadet dorm.

Tiptoeing down the second story hallway, Rod tried a maintenance door by the elevators. They both had to shove, but soon it creaked open, revealing steep stairs.

Sly grabbed Rod’s shoulder. “Have you been up here before?”

“Nope. I saw one of the janitors head up to fix something on the roof, though.”

Minutes later they stood on top of Harmon Hall. Gravel spread across the roof for insulation crunched underneath their feet as they walked to the edge.

The Terrazzo lay far below to the east. They had a spectacular view of Vandenberg Hall, its quarter-mile length jutting eastward to the dark prairie. Lights burned from cadet rooms, and they could see cadets in parkas walking slowly from the still-uncompleted library. Fourth classmen ran on marble strips, their greetings echoed unanswered in the night.

Across the Terrazzo to the east, stretching north-south, the academic building looked like a checkerboard of light. Far to the south an orange glow reflected off the clouds, lights from Colorado Springs.

“Wow,” Sly breathed. “This is neat-o.”

“Go ahead,” Rod said, bending over his pipe bag. “Tee off.” He pointed behind him, to the Rampart Range at the west.

Sly pulled out his golf clubs. He held them up, inspecting each. “Let’s see. The Air Garden’s at least a three wood.” He leaned over and placed a golf ball on the gravel. Stepping back, he assumed a golfer’s stance, aiming for the cadet area.

“Hey!” Rod straightened. He pointed behind them. “Are you crazy? There are cadets down there. Shoot at the mountains, not the campus. There’s nothing back there to hit!”

“That’s right—there’s nothing to aim at, either.”

“I mean there’s no people or buildings to hit, you moron.” He pointed northwest. “There’s that small reservoir just west of Academy Drive—it’s not more than a couple hundred yards away, or can you shoot that far?”

Sly snorted and turned to the mountains. He addressed the ball, wobbling the club back and forth. He looked up before hitting the ball. “So tell the truth. Are you engaged?”

Rod paused. “Yeah. But that’s not all.” He fell silent.

“Well?” Sly nudged Rod with the golf club. “Come on. Out with it.” He drew back to swing.

“Okay.” Rod took a deep breath. “Julie’s pregnant.”

Sly’s shot sliced wildly. He straightened; his face was white. “What!”

“She’s due mid-June, right after graduation.”

“Do her parents know?”

“About the baby?” Rod remembered the Phillips’ shock. “Now they do.”

Sly wavered. “What are you going to do? You can … you can always request an assignment in Alaska. It became a state two weeks ago, you know. That will get you far enough away from Mr. Phillips that you might even live.”

“Julie and I are in this together, Sly. I’m not running.”

Sly was quiet for a moment. “What about your parents?”

Rod pressed his lips together. “They’re taking it in stride.” He remembered his mother’s reaction when Julie had stepped out of the car at Thanksgiving; his mother had figured it out immediately and had known weeks before him. At least his mother had calmly admonished Hank to settle down when he broke the news.

He then gave Sly the whole story on his father’s woes.

“Oh, boy.” Sly leaned on his club. “Boy, oh, boy. You’ve got a lot going on.” He hesitated, “And with all this, you’re sure the baby’s yours?”

“What do you think?” Rod shot his friend a glare.

Sly held up his hands. “I’ve heard the legal department is great at winning paternity suits. It’s just something to consider.”

“Well, I’m not considering it. The baby is mine.” He winced as a fleeting memory of fighting with his father high overhead the Academy raced through his mind; some girls will do anything to get some excitement in their life, run away from a bad situation. But Julie would have never done that … would she?

Sly was quiet for a moment. “I know you like her—”

“Love, Sly. I love her. I’m marrying her because I love her, not because I like her.”

“And does she love you?” Silence. The atmosphere was icy.

“What the hell kind of question is that!” For some reason Rod felt queasy. Sly’s question was a little too close to what he had been thinking himself. Does she really love him? She said she did. She was certainly proud of him, and stood up for him all the time. Yet despite all their time together it seemed she’d never fully opened up, bared her innermost feelings, what she wanted to accomplish. But maybe that was because he was subconsciously comparing her to Barbara. And if that was the case, then he needed to put it behind him, right now.

“Okay, okay.” Sly stepped back. “I didn’t know how serious you were about her.”

Rod hefted up his bagpipes. He ran his hand over the cloth and didn’t look at Sly when he spoke. “Very serious.” He wet the reed, still uneasy at Sly’s question.

“Are you serious enough to make a commitment for the rest of your life?”

Rod turned to look at the Terrazzo. He took in a panorama defining his whole life: the campus his father had worked so hard to establish; a static display of an F-100 Super Sabre fighter jet which he might someday fly; to the south, light in the sky reflected from Colorado Springs; and to the northeast, the lone light on the prairie where his mother and father lived.

The words he had spoken to Julie on Christmas Eve morning were just as vivid to him now as they had been then: I want you to marry me.

He really did love her. He wasn’t doing this out of a sense of duty, or because he felt obligated to marry her just because she was pregnant. Still, he felt odd. Even after a year and a half, after sleeping with her, and now being engaged, he still felt as if he didn’t really know her.

She once said she only wanted to enjoy life. Was he really her ticket to freedom?

Or was it the other way around—did Julie give him the wild, unbridled side of life that he’d always had missing? And now, once he had her, was he was finally a complete person?

“Yeah,” Rod whispered. “For the rest of my life.”

“So what’s the problem?” Sly looked stumped. “Plenty of our classmates are getting married on graduation day.” He was silent for a moment, as if he were debating something with himself. “Aw, heck, Rod. You might as well be the first to know. Carol and I are getting hitched right after graduation, so I know exactly how you feel.”

“Hey, that’s terrific!” Rod pounded him on the back.

“With me dumping that scholarship to law school and going to pilot training, we’d actually been talking about this for a while. We just wanted to break it to our parents first.”

Rod felt a surge of happiness for Sly after all they’d been through the past three and a half years. “Congratulations, classmate.”

“Thanks.” They shook hand. Sly turned and addressed the ball, preparing to tee off toward the mountains. “I wonder how many of our classmates are getting married graduation day?” He lifted his club.

“How many of us are getting married with an instant family?”

Sly hooked the ball. A blur of white zipped away from the roof. “Crap! Look at what you made me do!” He pointed the club at Rod’s bagpipes. “Come on, daddy-o—this calls for a celebration. A little mood music, please.”

Sly placed another ball on the roof and waggled his club. “Too bad old Captain Whitney isn’t pulling SOD duty tonight. I’d like to use him for target practice. Do you think he’d believe these golf balls were meteors?”

Rod brought the pipes up. He wet the reed again and started to fill the bags with air when he noticed movement on the west side of Harmon Hall. He held out a hand as Sly started to swing. “Quiet.”

Sly lowered his club. “What is it?”

“There.” Rod crept up to the side of the roof and looked down. He thought he saw something slip by the pillars underneath the building.

“Did you see something?”

“Yeah.” He turned and walked over to the opposite side of the roof, looking east over the campus. A dozen or so cadets walked slowly across the Terrazzo from the library to the dorm. Sly stepped up to him and they scanned the area below.

Suddenly, a long brown figure crept out from underneath the building. Moving on four paws, it moved stealthily toward the center of the grassy Terrazzo.

Rod and Sly jumped back.

“What the hell is that?” Sly said.

“Quiet!” Rod hissed. He peered out over the edge. “It’s a mountain lion!”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Look at it,” Rod pointed. “My Mom’s had to use her new shotgun to scare them away from our house. This winter they’ve been coming down from the mountains hunting for food.”

“It sure doesn’t look like it’s heading toward Mitchell Hall.”

“It’s stalking those cadets.” Rod placed his pipes on the roof and started waving his hands above his head. “Hey! You cadets! Get out of there!”

They both started yelling as loud as they could, but no one paid them any attention. They jumped up and down, even trying to throw gravel from the roof to warn the cadets, but they were ignored; either the wind was carrying their voices away, or the cadets didn’t think the warning was directed at them.

“What do we do?” Sly sounded almost hysterical. “They’re being stalked.”

Rod bent over and picked up Sly’s three wood. He tossed it to him, then picked up his pipes. “Hit golf balls at it, scare it away. I’ll do the same with my pipes.” He started filling his bag with air. Within seconds the pipes started a low hum.