Heaven’s Gate
59 MP
There were three more babies on the ranch in November and I wasn’t the father of any of them! Dawn popped first and since she was our midwife, Dr. Jan was kind enough to come out to help with the birth. Poor Larry couldn’t sire a boy from either of his wives. Teri Catherine Vargas Irving was born on November 3. Dr. Jan stayed around for Cathy’s birth the next day and Carl became a father. He was also surrounded by women. Lorelei White Fisher made her presence known loudly.
Dawn was up and around and insisted she was fit for duty when Sarah delivered her second child to Lamar. Evelyn Renee Trane came into the world on the eighteenth and was as beautiful as both her parents. The whole clan had a lot to be thankful for on Thanksgiving.
Whitney was on duty Thanksgiving week, but I drove over to Fort Leonard Wood on Friday. She gave me directions to her apartment and was home by the time I got there. It was a nice little place about ten miles from the base. Whitney had picked up her car from her mom and I was thinking she might need something more dependable than the old vehicle she got in high school. She liked it, though.
She had a complete Thanksgiving Dinner for two prepared Friday night. Turkey, dressing, potatoes, green beans, gravy, cranberry sauce, and mincemeat pie. She knew I wasn’t that enthused about pumpkin. I asked her when she had time to fix all this and she just laughed.
“I picked it all up at the PX, ready to serve,” she said. “They put together meals for different size families for all the guys who don’t or can’t cook. A lot of us ate in the mess hall yesterday, but since I had a kitchen, I bought the dinner for two package. All I had to do was put it in the oven for an hour to warm up. The mess hall dinner was great, though. Families come, there are ice sculptures, and a fabulous quantity and quality of food. I think the troops eat fried baloney for a while before Thanksgiving to provide the budget for the meal, though.”
“Cool! That’s one of the best things I’ve heard of for military food.”
“They take pretty good care of us,” she said. “It’s not like we eat gourmet food all the time, but it’s healthy and plentiful. That’s on base. Deployed in combat, soldiers carry what they need to eat on their backs. That’s what the whole rations thing that you hear about is for. And embassy duty is even better most of the time. The cooks are preparing meals for a smaller group of people—maybe a hundred or two hundred in the embassy total. There are over 5,000 military and 2,500 civilian workers on base. The cafeterias reflect that.”
“Whitney, don’t you get lonely?”
“I have buddies. Not as many here as I had in Germany. And there’s always some separation between officers and enlisted men. They transferred my whole team. My headquarters team, not the whole unit. There are five of us who will be cycling through several camps to train hand-to-hand combat skills. It’s not like we go out drinking together,” she sighed. “To be honest, I kept most people away from me when I started.”
“Why?”
“I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“I was afraid that I’d be lonely and meet someone and let things go too far and fall in love and forget about my family back home,” she said all in one breath. “I was afraid I’d lose you.”
“Oh, Whitney. I never want you to be afraid to have a relationship. It’s different for me. I have all our hearthmates around me all the time. Even when I’m on the road, one of them travels with me. I have my children. I would never begrudge you a lover or a companion,” I said. I should have had this talk with her before she enlisted. Well, I did, sort of. But I was a jerk. All I could think of when she entered the service was that she was leaving me.
“But I don’t want to, Brian. I joined the Marines because it was right for me. You know what that’s like. You do what’s right. Of course, now they go off and start a professional women’s basketball league. They could have done that five years ago! But then what? I’d be living in Seattle or Miami or Boston like Lionel is in Charlotte.” We moved from her kitchen table in the small apartment to the living room. The place was really only three rooms and a bath. We settled onto a sofa that took up a complete wall. She touched her wine glass to mine.
“To us,” I said.
“And to living close enough that we can see each other more than once every six months.” I kissed her long and lovingly, but Whitney wasn’t finished talking. I had a feeling that she missed conversation as much as she did sex. “I joined the MPs on purpose. I had 5803 on my enlistment papers as my MOS. Of course, I could have washed out and been shoved into anyplace they needed me, but I knew that I wanted to be part of the Military Police.”
“Is it safer?”
“Nothing is safe in the Marines. That’s not why we’re here. I talked to Coach a long time. I guess there was a little hero worship there. He was a Master Sergeant MP, and organized MP training here at Fort Leonard Wood. I’ll never forget the day he sat down across from me and said, ‘We are Marine MPs. We are tougher than other Marines. We are not friends with Marines who are not MPs. We stand apart from our fellow Marines because we have to ensure peace and order on our Bases. We do things we are not proud of but we do them because we chose this position. Be proud. You will not only be a Marine; you will be a Marine MP.’ I wrote that down and memorized it. It’s the same lecture I gave my unit when we were deployed last year. When I train MPs here at Fort Leonard Wood, I will give them the same lecture.”
“Geez, Whitney. It sounds so… solitary.”
“It is. But you know what? It has its rewards. When I come home on leave, or when you come to visit me I can look you straight in the eye and I can welcome your loving into my pussy knowing you are the only man who has ever been there. I can see the pride you and our hearthmates have in what I do and know it is not misplaced,” she said. “This is what I can do to protect and defend the ones I love. I will be the best that I can possibly become.”
Whitney had a week vacation at Christmas. She arrived at the house in her BDUs and stood inside the door until we’d all come to greet her.
“I’m about to get out of this uniform,” she said. “We are not required to wear any kind of uniform when we are off-base. In fact, we’ve been discouraged from wearing any uniform when off-base or not deployed except in transit between base and home. I expect that will become a regulation before long. But I was coming from the base to home. And I wanted my family, my cónyuge and my hearthmates to see this.” She pointed to her collar. There were now two silver bars connected by small bars on her pin. What the military calls railroad tracks. “As of two o’clock yesterday afternoon, I am Captain Whitney Anderson, USMC.”
“Captain! Wow! They kept their agreement,” I said.
“Brian, Marines always keep their agreements. Just like we always have,” she chided me.
“Well, now that we have seen your bars, Captain,” I grinned, “we have a house uniform for you while you are on leave. Let’s get you out of this one.” Rose and Dani came to help me undress Whitney in the entryway. It took a while to get her boots unlaced and off. The rest of the uniform came off pretty easily. Pretty soon, she stood there naked. I smiled at her.
“A new uniform?” she asked.
“You’re wearing it,” I said. I led her to the big chair and she cuddled in my lap. A few moments after we were settled, Xan crawled up with us. She saluted Whitney and then began petting her face before she settled against her chest and went to sleep.
I’d begun to wonder whether either Dani or Xan actually slept when they did this. They were certainly completely relaxed, but I had a feeling they were aware of everything that went on in the room. Whitney didn’t sleep. She cuddled Xan and snacked on the appetizers that were served as we all chatted about her new responsibilities.
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