Читать книгу Komatke Gold - Benjamin Vance - Страница 7

My wife and I never talked about the call, but it came between us in my mind. I guess I let it. When we had sex I found myself trying to visualize Myra and always felt guiltier. It’s hard to take the Southern Baptist out of the boy. I called Myra a few times from the office and always got caught by a secretary or subordinate. Of course I took this as a sign that I was a true sinner, beyond any redemption. Our minds continue to play such dirty tricks when conditioned early! Finally, I stopped calling and my heart hardened and began to corrode.

I found solace in acquaintances with the hardest soldiers, toughened by combat or personal loss or both. I took the most difficult and most distant jobs in Korea, the Philippines, Germany and finally the most distant place on earth, the Pentagon. As I neared retirement, I must have feared it; dreading free time most of my life. I also found myself forever exposed to women who for a kind word or gesture would have given themselves, but I was always true to Myra. Punishment for what I’d done? Who knows? Who cared? After a while I was just a content android, going about my tasks making rank and honors, and no lasting friends.

Although my two sons are alienated from me thanks to their mother, I did have them then and I used them to justify staying with my wife. I hadn’t had a real father, but by God I was going to make sure they had one. By most standards, I had a good career. Since I was older when I joined the Active Army, I got passed over for colonel and that stroke of luck finally changed my life. I could have stayed for another nine years, but why travel a dead-end street? I needed a break anyway. Of course, my wife didn’t see it that way.

My youngest son was entering college, and she argued he needed our constant help with his tuition. Actually, she loved the Army even more than I. She didn’t have a good education; she’d hardly made it through high school. The Army gave her the “rank” and status she craved, but could not have gotten otherwise. When she couldn’t talk me out of retiring, she tried to get the most out of active duty and scheduled herself for a couple of helpful surgeries, including the correction of a deviated nasal septum. Although it should have been a routine surgery, she was never the same after recovery. She giggled for no reason for about three days, and seemed to drift in and out of reality. I talked to the doctors, but they threw up a stone wall and I got nowhere.

I learned much later that she must have had a bad experience from the “depot effect” of anesthesia that remained in her fat after surgery. What there was of my marriage went downhill from there and ended in divorce two years after retirement in Florida. She divorced me citing irreconcilable differences. The differences were one-half of my retirement pay, thanks to the Soldiers’ and Sailors Relief Act, the house and its contents, three timeshares, and a sizable alimony each month. She had a great Florida judge and I had a lousy lawyer!

However, I still had marketable skills, a decent second career offer in D.C. and for the first time in my life I was free to do what I wanted. Of course all of our friends became her friends, and my kids held me responsible for the divorce, so not only was I free, but I had a lot of time on my hands as well. I believe it was just about that time I realized there was more to life than the Beltway and semi-retirement.

Gazing at the ceiling one night in D.C., I remembered my safety deposit box in Virginia had been completely overlooked during the divorce. It hadn’t even been mentioned. I paid the bill every year, but there was really nothing of consequence or value in it. We’d rented it prior to my going to the Philippines, which was then very susceptible to a periodic coup. Upon return I’d almost emptied it, and just kept it for my mother’s things and some other old memorabilia that connected me to the past. The map too; the map my father had in his safety deposit box was still in there! For over twenty years, I’d considered it a great fabrication, and now I had time to prove it was junk; just the excuse I needed to go back to Arizona.