Heaven’s Gate
Part III: A Really Great Show
31 Permanent Duty Station
Whitney was in transit the first week of October. That meant that she had seven days to get from Fort Leonard Wood to her permanent duty station. Her path led through Corazón, of course, but only for a few days. Then she would catch a plane from Indianapolis.
“Where are you going?” I asked when she got home.
“Stuttgart,” she said. She looked into my eyes. It dawned on me what she was saying.
“Stuttgart? As in Germany?” I squeaked. She nodded. “What does permanent duty station mean? Like forever?”
“That will be my base of operations for the foreseeable future,” she said. “Brian, I’ll miss you all so much. But this is where I’ve been assigned. I’ve been a Marine for sixteen months. I have almost five years to go and two more in reserves or active. I’m a Marine, Brian. I might be a Marine for the full career. Unless deployed, I will be working regular hours at my new duty station. I’ll get time off and even vacation time. I hope… Will you come to visit me sometimes?”
“So far away. Of course, I’ll come. I’ve never been out of the country. I need to get a passport. We can go to the Federal Building in Indianapolis. How long does it take to get a passport?”
“Brian, you have time,” she laughed. “You aren’t going with me. Once I get there and know the lay of the land and how things work, we’ll arrange a time in the spring for you to take a vacation from your very successful television career.”
“I speak German! I could be there to help you.”
“I’ve had a crash course in basic German. Ich liebe dich,” she said.
“Oh, Whitney. It never occurred to me that you’d be so far away. All these last months, I’ve just kept thinking you were only a state or two away and I’d see you in a few weeks. Are you even going to be able to make phone calls?” I asked.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “Though they’ll be short and costly. We’ll have to write a lot of letters. And I don’t know how it will go when I’m deployed. They say our first deployment will be within three months.”
“Wait. You mean you won’t even be in Germany? Where will you be deployed?”
“Stuttgart is the command center for Europe and Africa. I could be deployed anyplace in that area. Narrow it down? There are three likelihoods for a platoon of MPs. We get deployed to a Marine base anywhere on two continents to provide base security and policing. We get deployed to an embassy someplace to provide security for our diplomatic corps. We get deployed to a combat zone if one heats up,” she said. “We’ll know soon after we reach our permanent duty station. It’s not up to me.”
“I can understand deployment to a base or an embassy,” I said. “Why would they ever send you to a combat zone? You aren’t combat troops.”
“Technically we are. And my platoon received training in different types of security. Who do you think is responsible for prisoners of war?”
“Oh, crap!”
The entire casa and most of the clan wanted to spend time with Whitney while she was home, but, of course, there were a few important things we needed to take care of. While we had some common banking accounts for the casa, the business, and the clan, those were managed primarily by Louise and Rose. We each had individual bank accounts and our royalties and wages went to our personal accounts. Louise had account numbers for everyone to auto deposit our pay and deduct specific joint expenses like our share of maintenance for the ranch and the food bill. But none of us really had control over anyone else’s finances. The first thing Whitney did was take me to her bank Monday morning and make me a signer on her checking and savings accounts. She rented a safe deposit box and I was a signer on that, as well. She didn’t have a lot to put in the box. She had a couple stock certificates that she’d been given at graduation, her military awards and certificates, and her will. That brought me up short.
“Brian, you are executor of my will and will have power of attorney over all my personal and financial affairs. It’s a pretty simple will. I don’t have any real property to speak of. But you need to watch my bank accounts and make sure I’m not just putting my money in a checking account that doesn’t earn anything. I’ll have an account on base that I’ll keep my general expenses in so you don’t have to worry about that, but some of this stuff needs to be transferred into stocks or mutual funds. You and Louise can decide what’s best on that,” she said.
“Crap, Whitney! A will?”
“Anything can happen, Brian. What have you done? You have four kids and thirteen cónyuge. How have you provided for them if something happens to you? Think about it? You’re no safer than I am. You’ve already died once,” she said.
That really set me back. Tuesday, we met with Lamar and he took care of the power of attorney, an easy task since the form of it, as well as the will, had largely been supplied by the Navy JAG law officer she had met with. He corrected Whitney’s will so that I wasn’t the executor of her estate since it turned out that I was pretty much her only heir. Lamar became the executor. It was a wake-up call to all of us and Lamar promised to set up a process for everyone in the clan to have a will since we had such unusual living arrangements and relationships.
Wednesday, I took Whitney with me to Indianapolis and she was my guest on the show. We talked about women in the military and possibilities both as enlisted women and as officer candidates. The young women and several of the men in our audience were moved by the words. We were careful never to mention where she was being based or anything regarding her specific platoon or job responsibilities. We even had the Marine recruiter who signed her up in the first place moderate the discussion so we were sure everything was within regulations. She looked incredibly sharp in her dress uniform. She wasn’t just a Marine; she was my Marine.
We stayed at the Sheraton that night and in the morning—well, just after midnight—she gave me my twenty-fourth birthday present. I gave it back until we were both too exhausted to continue. At ten-thirty Thursday morning, I watched her board her plane for the first leg of her journey to Stuttgart.
As I stood there watching her plane depart, with tears filling my eyes, I realized that this had been the first time Whitney and I had been together since she joined the Marines that we didn’t spar.
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