A Man Named Dave (18 page)

“So,” Russell said, smiling, “the big question: You gonna see Mom?”

Swallowing hard, I muttered, “I dunno. In some odd sense, I want to. I know it sounds kinda weird, but … I dunno.” I paused. “I can’t explain it.”

“Man,” Russell howled, “you see Mom and Grandma’s gonna have a cow!”

“Trust me,” I laughed. “She’s having a litter of kittens as we speak. Gram gave me so much static over seeing you. It’s like … if something’s not her idea, you shouldn’t do it. I mean, I feel for Grandma and I know she did a lot for us when we were kids and all, but I just can’t help but think that when it comes to dealing with Mom, she doesn’t help the situation any.”

“Man, you’re not there to see it,” Russell broke it. “I’m not pointing fingers, but it’s like they feed off each other. The more miserable one can make the other, the happier they think their world will be.”

Clutching my Coke, I nodded in agreement.

“So, you gonna see her?” Russell again asked.

Feeling gutless, I said, “It ain’t worth it, maybe next time. …” My voice trailed off.

“Yeah,” Russell replied, “I understand, maybe next time.”

We drifted to other matters, until I dropped Russell off hours later. Back at Grandmother’s, she gave me the cold shoulder. The next day I aggravated our situation further when I told Grandmother that I had invited Russell on the trip Grandmother and I had planned to the border of Idaho. Hours later, I again made her upset when I was shopping at a bookstore, buying a novel for Kevin. Grandmother became impatient, announcing she had had enough and stormed out of the mall. Part of me felt bad for her – she had driven Russell and me to Idaho and fed us a nice picnic lunch – but yet I felt I was somehow being manipulated again. No matter what anyone was doing, if Grandmother wanted to go, everyone had to leave at once.

All I could do was continue to wait in line, make my purchase, and sprint after her, for I felt she would leave without me. But in a small sense I was giving Grandmother a message: I would respect her and be polite, but I was not a child whom she could snap her fingers at whenever it pleased her. As I entered Grandmother’s two-door sedan – with the engine running and her clutching the steering wheel – I proudly held Kevin’s book in my hand.

My last afternoon at Grandmother’s, I phoned the air force office that was handling my cross training request of becoming an air crew member. As hectic as my military leave had been, at least I felt that I stood a good chance of fulfilling my lifelong dream. When the sergeant recognized my name, his tone seemed positive. “Ah, yes, Sergeant Pelzer. I saw your file. I got it right here somewhere, hang on.… Yep, ah, give me a second.” I could feel my excitement grow. “You’ve been at my heels for a while now, haven’t you? All righty now, here it is …” he triumphantly announced. “Everything seems to be in order … uh … um … hang on a second.”

My heart sank. “I don’t know how to say this,” the sergeant’s tone softened, “but it seems there’s been a mistake. Somehow your paperwork went to ground refueling, not midair refueling. Not to worry, this happens all the time –”

“Excuse me, sir,” I interrupted. “What does this mean? It’s fixable, right? I mean, you can correct it, especially since it’s not my fault?”

“I’m sorry,” he answered. “I know how bad you wanted it, but by the time I received your paperwork, it was too late; the slots had been filled. You just missed the cutoff. Don’t sweat it. If this is any consolation, I know in about eight, maybe nine months or so, we’ll have another batch of slots to fill. I can’t make any promises, but as much as you check in, I can advise you when to resubmit directly to my office. I have to be fair to everyone who applies, but I can guarantee you’ll get a fair shot.”

“But, Sergeant!” I pleaded, “I don’t have eight months! My enlistment is up in six, seven weeks! I don’t understand; I did everything. I took math, even trig. I studied planes inside and out. I’ve got good annual progress reports. I’ve got medals. I graduated jump school. I even got a letter from Kelly Johnson.” I was yammering like an idiot. “I’ve wanted this forever. What else can I do?”

“Your package is not being questioned. It’s sound. If there was a slot open, I’d give it to you. But right now that’s not the issue. I am sorry. I feel for you, but there is nothing, nothing I can do.”

I stood in a frozen state, still clutching the phone. I had strongly believed I had a chance. I thought
this time
my hard work and determination would pay off. Ever since Father passed away, I had found something I could focus my efforts toward, a longtime dream that I could achieve for myself. For months, in the barracks on Friday and Saturday evenings, while the other guys would party outside on the building’s ledge, I’d dangle my legs over the same ledge and absorb my latest mathematical equation. Around the squadron, I’d discovered that peers that I didn’t really know were silently rooting for me, a mere cook, to cross over and become an air crew member.

As Grandmother came toward me, I could see she was not happy. I remembered that she had lectured me to keep the phone call short. I had been speaking to the sergeant for at least ten minutes, which I assumed was nine minutes too long. Besides being overly polite and careful where to tread, I felt my visit with Grandmother was not the tender homecoming I had imagined. I genuinely did not know this relative, and she did not know me.

“The phone,” she snipped.

I looked down at my hand grasping the phone. It felt ice cold. “Oh, yeah, sorry.” My eyes darted toward the floor as I replaced the phone in its cradle. Grandmother remained by my side, as if waiting for a report.

“So?” she asked.

I shook my head like a scolded puppy. “Oh … sorry,” I said. “It was nothing. Just air force stuff, no big deal. It’s nothing, nothing at all.” I wanted to tell her. To grab her frail body and open my heart to her. Not to necessarily moan about my latest futile crusade, but rather as a way to finally come to know Grandmother as a real person – her hopes, her dreams, her anxieties. To know of her life experiences as a child, as a woman, and a single parent who raised two children during hard times. There was much I admired about her. Grandmother was one of the original “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” people. In a way I still believed she and I were alike. The whole purpose of spending a few days with her was to get to know her better. All my life I had been led to believe that any sensitive matter was to be instantly buried. As an adult, I still knew nothing about my parents and how they came to be. Yet as I stood beside Grandmother, I knew that all we could manage was idle chitchat, at best, praying one of us didn’t step into forbidden territory.

“Well, then,” Grandmother heaved, breaking the tension, “did I tell you about the time I played golf with an officer from Hill Air Force Base? I think he’s a general… anyway …” And so did Grandmother and I kill time on my last evening, until we finally went to bed.

Early the next morning, I strapped my oversized green sleeping bag, my military backpack, and, upon Grandmother’s unwavering insistence, a coffee can containing her homemade snickerdoodle cookies onto my motorcycle. After an impassive departing embrace, I rode off. Hours later, in the blazing heat, as my body became numb and dehydrated from the miles of endless interstate, my sole thought was getting back to my Florida base, where I could begin my outprocessing. I was quitting the air force.

I barely made it back from Utah to Hurlburt Field in Florida. The chain from my motorcycle stretched so much from the cross-country trek, that nearly all the teeth from the rear sprocket sheared off, almost leaving me stranded in Texas at the height of a heat wave. By the time I limped through Mississippi, my rear tire became bald, and all I could do was disregard it. I had to spend the remainder of my funds filling up my gas tank, praying every mile I’d make it.

Hours after coasting into the base, I reported to the office that handled out-processing. As luck would have it, I no sooner came before a young airman – newly assigned, frantic, and confused – before he informed me to report to the section chief, pronto!
Great,
I thought,
now what?
I was exhausted, ready to give the next person I met a piece of my mind. As I stormed through the passageways, I felt betrayed. After four years, none of my efforts had paid off. Joining the air force to become a fireman was nothing more than a joke. I slaved away like I had years ago, but this time from the swamps of Florida to the Egyptian desert. And for what? I didn’t mind paying my dues, but for once, just once, I wished I could get lucky.

The more I felt myself getting hot under the collar, the more I tried to brush aside my ego. Okay, I was a cook, but one with jump wings who had actually seen the great pyramids. I’d had a chance to be reassigned to work in an office where I was appreciated, enabling me, a high school dropout, to go to college. I had a couple of bucks socked away, and for four years the air force had given me a home. In all, what did I really have to complain about? So I didn’t snatch the golden ring of becoming an air crew member; big deal. What truly mattered to me was that I had done my best. There was a sense of satisfaction knowing I hadn’t faltered. I had taken a few hard knocks and I never quit. By the time the receptionist ushered me into a captain’s office, I was back to my old self. Standing ramrod straight, I popped out a crisp salute. “Sergeant Pelzer reporting, sir!”

A towering black gentleman rose from behind his gray metal desk. He maintained a thin smile as his eyes ran up my pressed uniform. “Take a seat. So,” the captain paused, “we have a situation?”

“Sir?”

“You still want to be a crew member?”

I wasn’t sure what he was asking. “Well, I do … I mean, I did, but that’s no longer –”

“The bottom line is,” he interjected, “the way your submission was processed, the air force made a mistake.
I
have a problem with that,” the captain stated with pride. “So, I have a proposition for you. The air force is willing to grant an extension on your enlistment. You can use it to resubmit your paperwork. If you get accepted as a crew member, you reenlist. If you don’t, you can out-process, then get out. Understand, just by getting an extension in no way means getting a slot as a crew dawg. But,” he said with a sly grin,
“you’ll
be able to track your paperwork along the way. You’ll be jumping through a lot of hoops, and in the end there are no guarantees, but this is a square offer.”

I had just pulled an ace out of thin air. “I’ll take the deal!”

Dashing to my supervisors, I informed them of my luck. Without hesitation, they varied my work schedule so I could indeed oversee the necessary paperwork, which had to start from scratch. The next several weeks flew by as I literally ran around the entire base collecting the right forms, dropping them off at the appropriate office or, if I was lucky, hovering over them as I collected either signatures, initials, or boxes properly checked off. Then I had to collect additional forms that required further verification, again in the proper sequence, until, finally, I returned to the captain’s office with a perfectly completed package.

“Got a whiff from Sergeant Blue,” the officer began, “the guy who handles your specialty request. Says he may have some slots open pretty soon.” This time he broke into a wide smile. “I’ll Q.C. – quality control – the paperwork, give it my blessing, and send it up the pike. You maintain tabs, and within a week you should be getting a call from Sergeant Blue.”

“Thanks … Cap,” I saluted.

He returned the gesture. “Like I said, air force made a mistake.
I
had a problem with that.”

Weeks dragged by with no word. I desperately wanted to call the sergeant, but feared that pestering him would blow my opportunity. I kept myself busy any way I could, fighting to keep my mind off the package. After another week I caved in and phoned. “Been expecting your call,” Sergeant Blue nonchalantly began. “We had a problem …” I exhaled, waiting for the sky to come crashing down. “You’re not going to believe this, but it seems the paperwork ended up in the hands of ground refueling again.” As he paused, I wondered, What did I have to do? After all I had been through, I was not going to roll over and quit. “Anyways, like I said, we
had
a problem,” Sergeant Blue went on.

“Say again?” I asked, catching his emphasis on the word
had.

“Let me just say this: they’ve been educated on the errors of their ways. I got the paperwork in time. Now,” he added, “we have
another
problem.” My stomach turned. Clearing his throat, Sergeant Blue stammered, “It – it seems I won’t be able to grant you your base request.”

I quickly saw my opening. “I’ll take anything you have. Anything! Even Minot!” I thundered, knowing that Minot Air Force Base was located in the far region of North Dakota and was infamous for its extreme arctic-like winters.

“No can do,” he informed me.

In my head I calculated. I would never have a chance of resubmitting another package. I had run out of time. There were no other options. Suddenly, I thought of a different tactic. “What do you have?”

“Well, the best I could do is …” – I could sense Sergeant Blue’s restrained excitement, and the hairs on my arms began to rise – “… this base out in California, west of the Sierra Nevadas.”

“Beale!” I shouted.

“Home of the Sled. Congratulations. Once you’ve earned your crew wings, you’ll be an in-flight boom operator for the SR-71 – known to crew dawgs as the Sled. I was just waiting for your call.”

In a swirl of emotions I profusely thanked Sergeant Blue. Hanging up the phone, I clasped my hands together. Calming down, I began praying, thanking God.

Ten months later, in the summer of 1984, an SR-71 Blackbird stabilized in a hovering state, flying ten feet below and forty feet behind a KC-135 Q model refueling tanker, waiting on me – a recently certified crew member – to fulfill my part of the mission. Staring out of the glass that not only protected me at an altitude of twenty-five thousand feet, but gave me an unlimited view of everything within hundreds of miles, I drew in a deep breath to collect myself. I felt the unique sensation of needing to merely reach out through the glass and touch the Blackbird, as both planes made their way south at speeds exceeding five hundred miles per hour on a specialized refueling track above Idaho’s aqua blue Salmon River. It wasn’t the heavenly scenery or being lucky enough to be a part of a distinctive air force program that was important to me, but that it was my first solo flight. I was fulfilling a childhood dream. I was no longer confined to a dark, torturous environment, hopelessly wishing I could “fly away” from danger. After years of sacrifice, my life had made a turn for the better.
For the first time in my life, I began to feel good about myself.
I always knew as a child, deep down inside, I could make it if I had the chance. And now my entire life was on track. I no longer wore a mantle of shame. I was becoming a real person. I could lower my guard, relax, and live life.