This is not an ultimatum. I know we’ve got five more months ahead of us. But you need to know what it’s like for me, and I want you to give this serious thought. With your talents I know you can get a good job that will allow us to live as a family. Lots of our friends are airline pilots, and your brother has a good job in Chesapeake. You can fly for the naval reserves, can’t you? That seems like a good balance. You’ve done much more than your share, and have nothing to be ashamed of. Come back to me, James.
I love you so much, and pray for you every day.
Love always,
Mary
Wilson sat back and propped up his chin with his fingers, reeling from her words. He stared at Mary’s Strike Fighter Ball picture, a photo taken about four years earlier. He thought of their years together as he studied her face and her gorgeous smile. She has not changed from the day I first laid eyes on her, he thought.
Or had she? She was older, and in his mind’s eye, he studied the face of the woman who dropped him off at Oceana four weeks ago. It was a long morning, the culmination of what to Wilson always felt like the countdown to a death sentence. It began two weeks before each deployment. Two weeks to go. Ten days to go. Four days. Tomorrow. Two hours. Fifteen minutes. Wilson remembered standing next to the hangar gate in his flight suit as he watched Mary pull the minivan out of the parking lot that morning. His heart begged her to look at him and wave one last time. Instead, she drove off without a glance. That face, discounting the puffiness around her eyes as she had hugged and kissed him goodbye moments earlier, had lines in it. Lines he and his profession had put there over the years.
Then he remembered the glimpse through the tinted back window of little Derrick from his car seat. As Mary made the turn onto 1>st Street, Derrick lifted his hand to wave. Wilson fought to keep his composure as they faded from view. Then he turned to salute the gate sentry and walked toward the hangar to get ready for the flight that would begin his fifth deployment. And Mary was right. It was a deployment he wanted to be part of.
“Damn,” he whispered, as he pushed himself out of the chair to go to the ready room.
Zydeco, the kind of music Cajun loved, blared from the stereo speakers as Wilson entered Ready Room 7. Most of the officers were in their seats, but several gathered around the water cooler. Gunner held court with the JOs in the back and sipped on a glass of red bug juice that complemented his red flight deck jersey. The pilots were in flight suits except for khaki-clad Psycho at the duty desk. The XO drank his coffee hunched over the message board with his green pen, oblivious to the laughing and banter around him.
