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Wes Boyd’s Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
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Wes Boyd’s Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
After giving up on her idea of the dental technician training back when Caitlynn was on the way, Cindy had mostly been a stay-at-home mom. She was familiar with some of the paperwork in the insurance business, and she helped out at the office when things were busy, especially after Caitlynn was old enough for day care. But when Celeste, then Patrick came along, she mostly gave that up. Her income was no longer needed to keep the family going, and she understandably had some reluctance to send the kids to day care. When Celeste was old enough for kindergarten, they decided there was no choice but to let her go to school, but Cindy was still less than enthusiastic about it.
Sometimes that meant some long days at home with the little kids, but she never minded it. They wouldn’t be little for long, and having had Caitlynn in day care meant that Cindy had missed some precious time she could have had with her first daughter. This time, she didn’t intend to miss anything.
She and Russ had stayed in pretty close contact with Pat all the time he’d been in Iraq in 2003. There were times when days, even weeks would pass between letters or calls, but the calls always came sooner or later. They had been worried half to death about him, but then he’d gotten out of Gulf War II without a scratch, which gave them no little relief.
They’d been able to see him fairly often through 2004. While he was far away most of the time, he made visits to see them and the kids. Several of those times had involved three-way tag-teaming sex, which Cindy always enjoyed, even though the timing had never been quite right for her to get pregnant again. She still wanted another child, since Patrick and Celeste were growing up very quickly. Luckily, she had the attitude that if it happened, it happened.
The news that Pat was going to be heading back to Iraq in 2005 didn’t set well around the Bradstreet household. Although Russ and Cindy never talked to Pat about it very seriously, they pretty well agreed that Pat had done his fair share and it was time to let someone else get shot at. For no good reason, Cindy was more scared for him this time than she had been in Gulf War II, even though she knew the situations this time was not as dangerous as the one two years earlier.
Even so, she was not prepared for the knocking on her front door that came one day in the early spring. She had no idea who it could be, but didn’t worry until she opened the door, to see an officer and a sergeant in Army greens standing there. “Oh, God, no!” she gasped at the sight.
“Ma’am?” the officer said kindly. “Are you Celeste Bradstreet?”
“No,” she said. “She’s my daughter, she’s in school. Is this about Pat?”
“I’m afraid so,” the officer said. “I’m afraid we don’t have a next of kin listed for him, but this is on record as his home and Celeste and Patrick Bradstreet are listed as his insurance beneficiaries, so I suppose that makes them the next of kin. How about Patrick Bradstreet? Is he home?”
“Yes,” Cindy said. “But he’s only four years old and he’s taking a nap. My husband and I are probably Pat’s closest friends. What happened to him?”
“Well, this is a little irregular, but I guess we don’t have much choice. Sergeant McDonald was badly wounded in an IED incident in Baghdad a couple days ago. He’s been flown to the Army hospital in Wiesbaden in Germany. I’m afraid I don’t know the details, other than his condition is listed as ‘stable.’”
“Is he going to be all right?”
“Ma’am, I’m afraid I don’t have the details on that,” the officer repeated. “About all I can say is that ‘stable’ means that he’s likely to survive.”
“Thank God,” Cindy said in some relief. “He’s . . . well, he’s like a second father to the children. When can I know something more?”
“All I can say is that I’ll be working on it,” the officer said. “I wish I could be more helpful, but I have some contact numbers of people who should be able to provide some more information when it becomes available. However, and this is strictly guessing on my part, I would expect that once they have him ready he’ll be returned to a hospital here in the States. I suppose it could be arranged for you to go to Wiesbaden, but you might pass him coming the other way. All I can say is that I’ll keep you informed.”
The world was just not making any sense to Pat. He was very confused and everything seemed to be spinning. He was sort of aware that time was passing, but couldn’t have said how long if he could have said anything at all. He remembered his impression of the flashBANG outside the Humvee, and then occasionally of doctors and nurses and sheets and Cindy and Russ, all mixed in together, not making any sense whatsoever.
Slowly that began to change. Somehow he began to realize he was in a hospital bed with tubes hanging out of him from several places, monitors, and everything else. One thing was clear: this wasn’t Iraq. While in a way that was good, he also figured out that in a way it wasn’t good, either.
As Pat started to come out of his partly drug-induced confusion, things started to improve. One day – at least he thought it was a day – things began to come together for him when he discovered a nurse by his bedside. In a deathless, time-worn line, he asked the nurse, “Where am I?”
“Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington,” she smiled. “You were brought here from Wiesbaden a couple of days ago, and you’ve been improving rapidly.”
“What happened?”
“We don’t have the details, but an IED went off right next to your Humvee in Baghdad,” she told him. “We know you were hurt pretty bad, but you’re going to get better.”
Pat was still in a lot of confusion, and some pain. “Am I going to be all right?” he asked.
“Pretty much,” the nurse smiled. “Sergeant, you lost a leg below the knee, but they managed to save your left one. That was done mostly in Wiesbaden. You’re going to be a while rehabilitating, but you’re going to walk again.”
Pat was very slow to accept the news – but the reality didn’t look good for him. The bottom line, the important thing, was that there was no way he was going to be able to continue in the Army missing a leg, or even just half a leg – that much was clear. The news sent him down in a spiral; although he was physically improving, he was very depressed. Now what the hell was he going to do?
He was still rather despondent about his future a couple days later when the nurse came to see him. “You have some visitors,” she smiled. “They’ve been here to see you before, but you were too out of it to know.”
Somehow Pat wasn’t surprised to see that his visitors were Cindy and Russ. “Hi, Pat,” Russ said. “How are you doing?”
“Not worth a shit,” he replied glumly.
“We were here to see you last weekend,” Cindy told him. “But you were pretty out of it then. They told us you were coming around, so we thought maybe we ought to hold off till this weekend to come and see you.”
“We thought about bringing the kids,” Russ added. “They both know you have a bad ‘owie’ but they don’t know just how bad, yet. They’re worried about their Uncle Pat and it’s been hard to be positive around them.”
“Shit, I understand,” Pat snorted. “I guess I’m just glad you didn’t bring them. I don’t think I’d be perking them up any.”
“They’re not going to rest till they can see you,” Cindy told him. “It might do your attitude some good.”
“Aw, crap,” Pat snorted. “Cindy, it was good while it lasted and they are good kids. But shit, my life is totally fucked up, and I shouldn’t be passing that attitude onto the kids.”
“And why is your life totally fucked up?” Russ asked.
“Shit,” Pat grumbled. “There’s no way in hell I can stay in the Army with no right leg. I know I’m going to be a while in the body and fender shop getting things put back together, but it’ll never be that good. When they turn me loose, I’ll be on a medical retirement and disability. I might be able to live on that, but doing nothing will drive me nuts.”
“I’ll go along with you on that part,” Russ agreed. “You’re not the kind of guy to sit around and do nothing.”
“On top of that,” Pat continued dejectedly. “From what little I know I’m going to be quite a while getting to the point where I’ll be able to get around at all, and a lot longer than that before I can walk again on my own. Right now, it just doesn’t seem worth the trouble. When they turn me loose, where am I going to go? What am I going to do? I have no place to go outside the Army, and that’s a dead issue now.”
“Pat, you ought to know better than that,” Cindy said, sitting down on the edge of the bed so she could take his hand. You’re coming home with us, Pat. It’s just about as much your home as it is Russ’s and mine. It’s where your kids are, and where your family is. All of your family, Pat, not just your kids.”
“Oh, horseshit,” he replied. “You two have put up with so much from me over the years I don’t know how you can say that.”
“We can say it because you’re family, Pat,” Cindy said, squeezing his hand.
“Pat,” Russ smiled, “You’re not quite getting it because you’ve never quite gotten it, have you?”
“What are you talking about, Russ?”
“Pat, it involves might-have-beens, but we owe you more than we could ever repay. Celeste and Patrick are part of that, of course, but we probably owe you our lives.”
“What are you saying?”
“You’ve never really understood how bad it was for us when we lost Caitlynn,” Cindy said. “I went for a long time not knowing how I could go on. There were several times when I thought about just ending it all. It seemed like the easier way out. The only reason I didn’t was that I didn’t want to take Russ down that much further.”
“And I felt the same way,” Russ agreed. “It was really pretty bad. I’m just glad neither of us came out and admitted to the other one that we’d been thinking about suicide, because I’m just sure as hell that we could have talked each other into it. Then you came along and offered us a way to get out of the mess.”
“I didn’t know that,” Pat said, looking at Russ’s serious expression, at Cindy’s watering eyes.
“Well, at the time you reappeared we hadn’t exactly admitted it to each other,” Cindy told him softly. “But Pat, you brought up hope and new life and a new future. That is something we can never repay. Like I said, Pat. You’re family. We don’t intend to let you go.”
“But what can I do?” he protested. “I just can’t sit around like a bump on a log.”
“You wouldn’t want to, anyway,” Russ told him. “Look, Cindy and I know how you feel about the Army, that it was your career and your life. But Pat, before this happened I looked at the news every night and couldn’t help but think that you ought to be hanging it up at twenty. I don’t see this crap in the Middle East ending anytime soon. It quite literally could go on for years and years, and you could have wound up going back and sticking your neck out again and again.”
“Well, I have to go along with you on that part of it. Things really weren’t getting a damn bit better, and there’s no end in sight.”
“That’s just exactly how I see it,” Russ agreed. “Look, before this happened, I’d made up my mind that I was going to bring this up to you after you got back from this tour, anyway. Pat, I need help in the agency. I’m just about as busy as I want to be and my responsibilities to Cindy and the kids are just going to keep increasing. I know it’s a seat behind a desk and not in a Bradley, but I need help in the agency, and who I need there is you.”
“It might be a possibility,” Pat conceded. “I might as well resign myself to being behind a desk since there’s no damn way I’ll ever be running a Bradley again.”
“True, but face facts,” Russ smiled. “I’ve read your letters and listened to you gripe about it, and your days of running a Bradley were coming to a close anyway, weren’t they?”
“Well, yeah. I might have been able to have a platoon one more time, but the fun stuff was coming to an end. However, I still feel that you guys taking me in like you say would be putting you guys out an awful lot.”
“Then think it through,” Russ told him. “First off, as Cindy said, you’re family. We care about you, and we do a lot. There’s more than just a casual connection there, Pat. “
“Pat,” Cindy said softly. “I’ve felt for a long time that I have two lovers, not just a husband and the father of my children. There’s a big part of me that wants to make it, well, two husbands.”
“Cindy, you can’t do that,” Pat protested. “We can’t do it.”
“Oh, yes we can. We’ve all but done it now, and there’s the perfect excuse for you to be living with us for an indefinite period. No one needs to be the wiser. It may be a little bit difficult with the kids, but . . . well, I’ll let Russ describe it.”
“Look, Pat,” Russ said. “Cindy and I were set to offer you something like this when you retired anyway. Now it’s just sooner and we have to be a little more serious about it. The house we have now is a little small for all of us, but I’ve got my eye on another house not far away. It’s bigger to begin with, and it has a barrier-free mother-in-law apartment attached to the house. Face it, Pat, you’re going to need care for a while, and that gives us plenty of time to work out how to do things, especially with the kids.”
“It sounds good,” Pat replied. “But I really feel like I ought to be holding up my part of things.”
“No reason you can’t,” Russ grinned. “You are going to be getting retirement and disability, after all, like you said, so you’re going to be able to contribute what you feel you need to. On top of that, Wright-Pat isn’t far away, and what we can save on groceries at the commissary and tax-free buying at the BX will damn near cover the cost anyway, and that’s not to mention the medical facilities they have there.”
“You guys are making this sound awful damn good,” Pat nodded. “You must have put this together in a hurry.”
“Parts of it, Pat,” Cindy smiled. “Parts of it have just fallen into place. We were already getting pretty serious about the house, but we sort of wanted to know that you were in on the deal, too. The fact that it’s barrier-free is incidental. The important part is that if we do this, the three of us could live together. You could really get to know your children, and they really could get to know what a neat guy their real daddy is. At the same time, I get to live with both my lovers, who I’m pretty sure are each others’ best friends.”
“Well, I guess you’re probably right on that.”
“Besides,” she smiled. “I still want another baby, and if we’re going to do it, it needs to be soon, since I’m not getting any younger. I realize things aren’t going to be quite the same as they were, but we have some time to grow into it. Please come and join us, Pat. At least this way our family can be together permanently.” She leaned over and put a big kiss on his lips.
“Cindy, Russ,” he sighed when the kiss was complete. “I’m not ready for this, you know.”
“We know it’s going to take months. But when they’re ready to turn you loose and let you go home, you know you’ll have a family to come home to and a future for all of us. Please say yes, Pat.”
Pat shook his head. “Cindy, I’ve never been very good at saying no to you, especially for something that most guys except for Russ would be about ready to kill somebody over. But you make a strong argument. I can’t think of anything else that would work even close to as good. All right, I’ll do it.”
“Good,” she smiled. “I’m the lucky one in this deal. I get to have both my lovers and husbands this way.”
Ten years had not chilled Emily Holst’s disgust at the really crappy dinner that had been served at the tenth reunion of the Class of ’88, so there was no way she was going to allow the twentieth reunion to be held there. It was being held at a smaller place across town, and she made sure everyone she invited to the reunion knew about it.
From letters and e-mails she was pretty sure she was going to have a good turnout, something around half the class, which was both better than she had expected and better than the last time. Perhaps the word about some of the things that had come out at the last reunion had made people determine they weren’t going to miss this one.
Sure enough, there were people she hadn’t seen since they graduated, people like Bob Spheris and Sharon Holdenhoven, and people she only saw rarely, like Sheila Amberdon, who was now a master sergeant, as was her husband. As far as Emily knew – and she didn’t know about everyone from the Class of ‘88 – Sheila was the only person from the class still in the military; she and her husband had been in the Persian Gulf a lot the last few years. Their daughter had usually stayed with Sheila’s mother in Bradford while they were deployed, and the girl had become friendly with Emily’s daughter along the way.
As the bulk of the people started to arrive, Emily was happy to see Russ and Cindy Bradstreet arrive, bringing Pat McDonald along with them, of course. She could see that he was still walking with a cane, but he didn’t seem to need it very much. Emily had been dismayed to hear of Pat’s being wounded in Iraq, but was happy to know that Russ and Cindy had taken him in and nursed him back to health. When a little break in the action of greeting newcomers occurred, Emily decided to take the time to talk to him.
“So, Pat,” Emily asked. “How are you getting along in the insurance business?”
“Starting to get the hang of it,” Pat replied. “It’s taken a while since I really couldn’t do much at first, after Cindy and Russ took me in. Fortunately Russ was able to get me some study materials to keep me busy while I was recovering and learning to use my artificial leg.”
“I see you’re still using a cane,” she commented.
“Just temporarily,” he shrugged. “My knees aren’t what they were before I got torn up, and if I screw up the wrong way in the gym I can find myself needing it. I managed to bung it up earlier this week, but I should be fine in another few days.”
“Dayna said she ran into you, Russ, and Cindy down at the Ohio Renaissance Faire last fall. She said you sure had an eye-catching costume.”
“Well, it’s supposed to be,” Pat grinned. “I’m a little surprised that the three of us got into that renfaire stuff, and we don’t go as crazy about it as some people, but it is fun. You don’t see many pirates running around renfaires with a real peg leg.”
“She said something about it. Isn’t that uncomfortable?”
“I’m not as stable with it as I am with my regular leg and I really have to use a cane, but the socket is the same as my regular leg and it’s not uncomfortable to wear.”
“Are you still living with Russ and Cindy and their kids?”
“Still am,” he smiled. “In the period when I needed a lot of help recovering, I could help Cindy with the kids while she nursed me. After a while it became a comfortable thing to do, and there just hasn’t been the reason to change it. They really are my best friends, and it was extremely nice of them to take me in when I needed it. I mostly live in the mother-in-law apartment out back, but we all spend a lot of time together. The kids are a lot of fun and they’re growing up much too quickly.”
“You sound as if you enjoy them.”
“Oh, I do, especially Charity. She’s almost two now, and it seems like she changes every day.”
“Those days are pretty far in the past for me,” Emily sighed. “And it doesn’t look like my kids are planning on making me a grandmother anytime soon. But I remember how much fun those days were. It’s nice that you like it so much.”
“I really do,” he smiled with a twinkle in his eye. Emily may have known a lot about the kids of the Class of ’88, but she didn’t know everything and didn’t need to, either. “I mean,” he continued, “It’s almost as if they were my own.”
