Heaven’s Gate
22 Whatever Is Necessary
Lieutenant Jones drove Whitney and me to the hotel, saluted Whitney and left. In ten minutes, I was buried in her pussy as deeply as I could press my shaft. Of course, we were late getting out of the base for her leave at 1800. Captain Reynolds insisted that she be checked out in the infirmary and the doctors checked me, as well. An X-ray showed that I had a cracked rib and a lot of bruises. Whitney was to be watched for signs of a concussion. Eventually, we were set free.
“What was that?” Whitney gasped as we joined. “It wasn’t fire, water, air, or rock. You took my staff out of my hands! I thought I caught you when I could match fire with fire. What was it?”
“I don’t know,” I said moaning as I slipped between her wet folds and into her heat. “Oh, God, I don’t even care.”
“Yes, you do. It was something. Something new.”
“I guess I’d call it redirection,” I said. “I knew if you connected that blow I’d be out cold. I knew if I blocked it, you’d break my arm. I just kept it moving and pushed it in a different direction. When it went that direction, you couldn’t keep hold of it. Suddenly it was in my hand.”
“I love you, Brian. I love you. God! Come in me!” Whitney was off on her first of many orgasms that night. That weekend. We did eat. Other than that, we made love.
Whitney was on a bus back to Quantico that would get her there by six o’clock Sunday night. I spent the rest of Sunday evening on the phone with my other hearthmates in Indiana. I was on a seven o’clock flight to O’Hare Monday morning and Dani was there to meet me with Xan in her center back car seat and Frankie and Chuck on either side.
“We needed to watch some live interaction,” Frankie said. “We’ve got new ideas for material, but we need to see you in action with the audience.”
We drove out to Northwestern and by three o’clock, I was relaxing in Mu House before the show. Every time I moved, I groaned. I’d heal. Eventually.
I wasn’t happy that I couldn’t be home for C-Ray’s first birthday. I had to be in Minnesota. But we celebrated on Easter and I got to take her for her first horseback ride. I knew she didn’t understand a thing about what was going on, but I just loved the thought of having her in the Snugli and riding out through the woods in the early spring. When we passed it, we stopped to pay our respects to Lexi and the River of Life. Two years. C-Rae was born on the first anniversary of Lexi’s death. We would never forget. Samantha met us out there and hugged me with C-Rae between us. Lily and Sly were waiting for us when we got back to the ranch. How do you mix so much joy and so much sorrow together?
I guess it’s called hope.
The last week of April, I was at Notre Dame for four days. We’d intended to end the season with a week at IU, but then plans got switched around and I was going to continue five a week broadcasts through June. The reason I was only doing four days at Notre Dame instead of five was because I was doing the fifth day at my alma mater, St. Joe Valley High.
Dani officially traveled with me that week. Mom, Anna, and Dad were thrilled to have Xan visit and we stayed in the guest room. Several others from the ranch took the opportunity to visit ‘home’ as long as we were there. Unfortunately, finals were the next week so everyone who had classes needed to stay put. Samantha and Cassie both elected to stay in Corazón because their parents had moved there and they had no home in Mishawaka. Still, there were a lot of the old crowd who showed up at the school Thursday afternoon.
The principal, the second since we left, droned on about how students needed to behave during the presentation and how they should respect a hero who had come to give them pointers. By the time he was finished, I was ready to chuck it and leave. If I’d been a student, I’d have risked cutting the convocation. Fortunately, Sam had lined up a good local band that was gaining a lot of popularity and rather than go straight to the monologue, April directed them to give us a full five minutes of music before I came on. I’d been tempted to wear my prison break shirt, but I realized that was seven years ago and the kids in convo to see our show would only have been in third and fourth grade when Cassie and I debated the school board rules. This wasn’t even the same building that we went to school in, but was the new school that had eventually been finished.
Between the music and a performance by the Trojan dance team, things loosened up okay. Eventually, though, I had to conclude things with my inspirational thought for the day.
ME: The last time I stood in the gymnasium at St. Joe Valley High, it was for a self-defense demonstration. There were two phenomenal martial arts masters who gave us instruction along with Coach Hancock. They were Coach Jack Phillips from Logansport and Master Cho. Both of those men said things that have resided in my heart to this day.
Coach Phillips told us that school is a safe place compared to the world at large. What I discovered since graduation is how true that is. The world is not safe. Even when I was a student here, one of my close friends was murdered after the prom. Two years ago, I saw another dear friend, a former cheerleader here at SJV, gunned down in a random act of violence on campus where we all thought we were safe.
I know that some of you lost a close friend in an auto accident last fall. I didn’t know Debbie Caxton, but simply knowing that fifteen-year-old will never graduate, will never laugh, never love, will never have a career, or family, or any kind of life, rends my heart.
But despite the world being a dangerous place, school is not a place to nurture your fears. School violence in the U.S. has increased steadily since the first recorded act in 1932. Last year there was an average of one fatally violent act in school every week in the United States with over 150 deaths recorded. That is a tiny percentage of the murders in the country that year. That is what safety looks like. Only 150. But we don’t walk around our halls suspicious of every other student. We exercise normal safety measures. We don’t drink and drive. Right? We stay out of dark alleys and dangerous bars. But we don’t walk around afraid all the time. The only defense against death is to live life. Every second of it. Fill it with meaning. Fill it with love. Life is only this moment. Death is forever.
Master Cho, in a tiny little voice that we had to strain to hear, said, “De-escalate.” It’s taken me all the time since he said that one word for me to begin to grasp what he meant. When I learned of my friends’ deaths, I was so angry I wanted to go out and do damage. I raged to the point of being sick. But when we start broadcasting our fear and anger, it simply fuels the fires of violence.
I learned from Coach Hancock a valuable form in playing basketball when it looked like bigger opponents were going to physically manhandle us on the court. We called it the water method. We would simply practice flowing around the aggressive players and not being in the way of their fouls. Do you know what was amazing? The number of fouls committed by both home and opponents for the rest of the season dropped. Not only were we out of the way of their aggression, we were committing fewer fouls as well. It was our form of de-escalation.
I’ve already been asked by different students and some of the faculty, even by Principal Schumaker, what it felt like when I got between a gunman and his targets two years ago. I’ll tell you. It hurt like hell. I felt my gut ripped to shreds and my pelvis breaking. Bile burning in my throat. Piss filling my pants. That was physical pain.
I felt the loss of hope. I felt I had let down the people I loved and would never be able to tell them how much they meant to me. I would endure the physical hurt every day if it meant I would never have to feel the other kind. If it meant that I had prevented Lexi and Rebecca from dying, Samantha from having her shoulder ripped apart, Dani from having her face blown open, Courtney from having that bullet dimple in her butt… I would do anything necessary—anything—to protect and defend those that I love.
That’s really all I’m asking of you. Whether it is your girlfriend, your child, your country… if you love, you do whatever is necessary.
Think about it.
Dani and I got to my parents’ house Friday night in time to catch Dad bouncing Xan on his foot chanting, “Ride a pony down to town. Cross the bridge and the bridge fell down!” On each down, his leg would straighten and Xan would gasp and then giggle and bounce some more. Dad would start over. Mom and Anna were in the kitchen and had a snack prepared for us. Jennifer hadn’t gone with us to the school since she didn’t graduate from there, but she was sitting at the table talking to her mom. After we got home, others of the clan who had come to Mishawaka began showing up. Carl, Brenda, and Louise had come just for the show today. Liz had come to spend the time with her parents. Her mother was positively giggly over the coming baby and when she got to the house, Mom was all over her. Rose came over with Mary. They’d come up for the day together. Doug, Rhiannon, and Matthew were there, but Doreen had to work. I was told that Theresa had taken C-Rae. Elaine, Hannah, and Nikki all arrived at the house straight from Corazón. The taping was already over and they just wanted to come and visit with us. It was a blast.
After a buffet dinner, we settled in to watch this evening’s show. I begged off and went out to take a walk. I hadn’t gone far when Hannah caught up with me. She took my hand and we walked out toward the woods. We didn’t get very far. Without our regular horse traffic, the trails weren’t really open. Oh, you could tell where they’d been, but it was getting dark and we couldn’t really see well enough to pick our way through. We sat on a fallen log and just held each other’s hand.
“It’s all different, isn’t it?” she sighed as she leaned against me.
“Yeah. The kids I talked to today only went through junior high in the old school. Their whole high school career has been in the new building. The only thing original is the gymnasium, and I hear they’re planning to replace that next year. None of them really had any idea who I was.”
“Dani said there was a whole section who were wearing prison break shirts,” Hannah laughed.
“A whole section of ten or twelve. And you know they had to have gotten them from older brothers or sisters. These kids were still in elementary school during the prison break,” I said.
“What about Brett?”
“He and his two friends were disappointed that I didn’t talk about the agreement. They’ve used it for three years, even though it’s only been the three of them. Kind of cool. They weren’t even dating each other.”
“Does he still want to come to IU and live with us?” she asked.
“More than ever. In fact, I invited all three of them for the summer. The two friends haven’t decided if they want to be part of the clan or just spend the summer. Brett thinks he wants to live on the ranch in the dorm,” I said.
“Do you think he’s being influenced by the fact that his sister lives in the dorm?” Hannah asked. “They seem to have an interesting chemistry.”
“It’s possible. They are closer to the same age than you would think. Brett is eighteen and Pam will be twenty-one in August. But from what I hear, Pam has gotten kind of serious with that guy she met in Fashion Merchandising class. And if I had to guess, Brett has his eye on someone else.”
“Reese.”
“Right.”
I held Hannah in my arms and she lifted her lips to mine. We kissed for a long time and for a few minutes it was like I was back in high school.
“I give you explicit permission to touch me anywhere above my waist, inside or outside my clothes,” she whispered against my lips. I was not about to ignore that permission and kissed her again as I lifted my hand to her breast. We kissed and petted for a long time before we finally decided it was time to go in. “I might give you permission to rub my feet later on,” she giggled.
Our friends had just wrapped up watching the show. There were a couple whispered conversations. Dad came up to me and just gave me a hug before he turned and went upstairs. Mom and Anna stopped before they followed him.
“I don’t think anyone is leaving tonight, honeybunch,” Mom said. “You know where blankets and pillows are. You can all sleep in the family room.”
“Proper sleepwear must be worn at all times, of course,” Anna intoned.
“Anna-Mom,” I moaned.
“After seven a.m.,” she amended. Both Mom and Anna kissed Hannah and me goodnight and went upstairs. As soon as they were out of sight, people started moving furniture and throwing pillows on the floor. Doug and Carl came out of the bedroom with the mattress off the big bed there and then went to the guest room to get the mattress from there.
“What’s going on?” Dani squeaked. I realized she was the only one in the room who hadn’t been with us for a sleepover in high school.
“We used to have these sleepovers in high school,” Rose explained. “They were always upstairs, but Brian’s parents moved up there as soon as we all left for Bloomington. It’s where we started the tradition of the big bedroom.”
“But with the other casas?” Dani asked.
“With the whole clan, honey,” Jennifer said. “I’ll be happy to be on baby duty tonight if you’ll cuddle with me, Danielle.”
“Of course, I’ll cuddle with you, Jennifer. You must miss Courtney.”
“She’d have come down tonight, too, if it weren’t for preparing for finals next week. She just realized how hard it is to prepare to give a final exam,” Jen laughed. “Come on. Let’s take sleepy Xan and get her settled down.”
There were whispered conversations all evening as we got ready for bed, cuddled with our sleepmates, and did a lot of kissing.
“Brian?” Rhiannon said softly but loudly enough for all of us to hear. “I got elected tonight. We don’t all have a chance to tell you and we all want you to know that we love you. And each and every one of us would do whatever was necessary.”
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