Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel (22 page)

It wasn't the first time she and Nelson spoke
– when he came up to her after choral practice during her freshman
year and introduced himself. It was the next choral practice. He
asked to walk her back to her dorm.

Leafless trees arched overhead as they walked
along the path towards the school dorms. At first they talked about
their majors. Wendy said she chose sociology "because I'm not sure
what I want to do after college and sociology offers a broad
background." Nelson said he was studying history – "even if it is
white history."

He stopped at a fork in the path and took her
hands. "Only by studying the past can we learn how to improve the
future," he said. "Martin Luther King, Jr. is showing us the way,
but we can't expect him to do it all for us. We have to do our
share."

Then Nelson dropped her hands and told her
about his father, who had been decorated in World War II for
bravery in combat in an all-black unit in Italy. "He came home a
war hero – to discover that the only job he could get was a porter
for the railroad.”

Wendy didn’t say anything. She waited to hear
what else Nelson would say.

"I'm the oldest of five children. My mama
comes home exhausted every day from cleaning white folks' houses.
Sometimes she brings home the leftovers – of food, clothes, and
toys. We are appropriately grateful for this 'bounty.'"

"How did you get to come to college?" she
asked.

"Scholarship. My parents are proud that I'm
getting to better myself. And they didn't say anything when I told
them that two years of ROTC are required here."

"ROTC?"

"Reserve Officers Training Corps." He paused.
"Now I've decided I’ll stay in the program after the two years.
Told my parents that being an officer was a whole lot better than
being an enlisted man. My father agreed. 'More respect. Less
KP.'"

Wendy stood on the path next to Nelson trying
to take everything in. There was so much – his parents, his
siblings, his fervor – that the ROTC part got submerged. She only
understood that he would be an officer and that this would be good
for his future.

After that night, as they spent more and more
time together, she didn't discuss ROTC or the army with him except
in the vaguest way. And she avoided seeing him on campus on the
days he wore his uniform.

She did resent the times he went on overnight
exercises with his ROTC unit. She hated being left in the dorm on a
Friday or Saturday night while the other girls were out with their
boyfriends, going to parties, seeing movies. "Nelson's busy; tons
of school work," she'd say if asked.

Only the morning they left for Ft. Knox, the
morning after her papa's big speech, did she really believe that
her husband was to serve in the U.S. Army for two years. Even so,
she visualized two years of living somewhere in the U.S. while
Nelson had a regular job, just one requiring an olive green
uniform.

Vietnam was halfway around the world. Surely
he wouldn't be sent there.

**

The next morning Nelson says "There's still
time to change your mind" as she clears the breakfast dishes. "You
can drive me to the post so you'll have the car."

She shakes her head. What would she do with
the car? She went to the commissary yesterday, she doesn't have a
committee meeting today, and it isn't her day to visit the
hospitalized soldiers. Sharon asked her to come swimming at the
Country Club now that the pool is open, but Wendy isn't sure she'd
be comfortable there.

What she says to Nelson is, "I have letters
to write today. I'll be fine at home."

To keep her company she has Nelson's framed
photo of Martin Luther King, Jr. His eyes stare at her as she turns
on the radio. A commercial praises air conditioning units at a
store in Elizabethtown.

"Now back to music," the announcer says,
"with the song ‘He Was My Brother’ from Simon and Garfunkel's first
album – ‘Wednesday Morning, 3 AM.’"

Wendy stops piling the breakfast dishes in
the sink. She may have been sheltered from experiencing much of
racial discrimination, but the song’s image of a freedom rider
being killed for his beliefs always brings tears to her eyes:

He was singin' on his knees

An angry mob trailed along

They shot my brother dead

Because he hated what was wrong …

As the song finishes she clicks off the radio
and wipes her eyes with a tissue. Then she takes a dish scrubber
and takes out her anger on the crusted frying pan.

She doesn't know very much about the white
Freedom Riders who came down to the South to register black voters
in the early 60s. There hadn't been any in her hometown and she was
too busy as a self-absorbed teenager to notice what her parents
kept from her anyway.

Yet one night, a month after she had said yes
to Nelson’s marriage proposal, she and Nelson took a walk around
campus. The moon crowned the trees, moonlight sparkling their path.
The bell struck as they passed the campanile.

Nelson stopped below the tower. She stood in
silence with him until the bell struck the ninth and final time,
then they walked on.

Nelson waited until they had gone quite a
distance further before he finally spoke.

"That bell reminds me of when I heard that
the three white civil rights workers had been murdered over in
Philadelphia, Mississippi,” he said. “I felt so bad, so useless
that I wasn't there too, that I ran over to our church and pealed
the bells for them."

"What could you have done in
Mississippi?"

"Maybe nothing."

The next day he met her after classes holding
a record album. "This is a gift for you. Listen to the song 'He Was
My Brother.' I don't know if it's about those three people in
Mississippi or some other Freedom Riders. Yet every time I hear it
... I relive their deaths."

Nelson didn't have much money. The song had
to be really special for Nelson to have bought the album. She took
it back to her dorm room and played it on the stereo her father
sent with her to college.

And that was the first time she cried when
she heard the words, cried for the "brother" who'd been killed
trying to help blacks, and for Nelson, who believed he failed in
some way.

She places the last of the washed dishes onto
the dish drying rack. Now what? There's always the television. Yet
even looking at it turned off makes her uncomfortable, reminding
her of the story told her by Marylou Williams, the daughter of the
white man who loaned his hunting lodge for Wendy and Nelson’s
honeymoon.

Wendy didn't know much about Marylou, who was
a few years older, except that Marylou married an army officer.
Marylou – who was back home visiting her parents at the time of
Wendy and Nelson's wedding – called Wendy before the wedding with
instructions about using the lodge. "Make sure you turn the hot
water heater on two hours before you need it or you'll be taking
cold showers." Wendy thanked her for the advice.

"As long as I'm on the phone," Marylou said,
"is there anything I can tell you about the army, one officer's
wife to another?"

One officer's wife to another?

Wendy asked
the
question. "Has your
husband been to Vietnam?"

"Yes," Marylou said, "yes he has. But he’s
back now."

"What did you do while he was gone?"

"I worked. Went out with my friends. I saved
my money and bought him the biggest motorcycle and television I
could find as coming home presents." Marylou paused. "Then the son
of a bitch called to tell me to meet him in Hawaii for a week. He
wasn't finished with his mission and he was extending his Vietnam
tour another six months. I sold the brand-new motorcycle and
television – I was so furious!"

What did the woman mean by "his mission?"
What could he have been doing in Vietnam so important that he had
to finish it rather than letting someone else take over? And not
come home to his wife when he could?

Later she asked Nelson about Marylou's story.
"What could be so important that a man would risk his life for six
more months while his wife waits for him?"

"Honey," Nelson said, "you just don't
understand. It's a man's duty. People's lives depended on him."

A man's duty? Little boys played with toy
guns, threatening to blow off their mama's head when called in for
dinner. Grown-up boys played at real war, getting to blow someone's
head off when called upon to do so.

Guns. Wendy's papa offered her and Nelson his
gun when they were packing to come to Ft. Knox. "You never know
when you might need it," he said. Nelson shook his head no.

"I'd feel better if you took it," her papa
said. "I can always get another one."

They insisted they wouldn't need it. This was
1970 and Nelson was a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army. They
assured her parents they would be fine.

Guns kill.

They left without the gun.

“
The thoughtful wife will keep a record of
courtesies extended to her and her husband and make some kind of
repayment.”
Mrs. Lieutenant
booklet

The sun slants across their backs as Sharon
and Kim settle down for another afternoon by the pool at the
Country Club. Since Memorial Day they have taken advantage of the
open pool each afternoon. Sharon now sports a beautiful tan
although Kim’s skin remains pale thanks to the generous slathering
of suntan oil.

Sharon looks around the pool at the other
women and some men. How many of them truly want to be here and how
many simply accept army service as a temporary way station on their
life’s journey?

Sharon flashes on what she learned when last
Friday night she and Robert attended the post's religious services
for Jewish personnel. She and Robert had arrived a few minutes late
at the army chapel, a frame building whose interior barrenness
trumpeted its use for the services of different denominations. The
Friday night service to greet the start of Shabbat – the Jewish
Sabbath – had already begun.

"They obviously start on military time, not
Jewish time," Robert said.

They took two small prayer books from a stack
of books – "Look, Robert, an official army Jewish prayer book." On
his head Robert placed one of the provided black satin
yarmulkes.

"I'm the only woman here," Sharon whispered
to Robert as they sat down.

Sharon had a decent Jewish religion
background. She attended Sunday School from kindergarten age,
started Hebrew School in third grade, had a Bat Mitzvah at age 13
(a Friday night chanting of the week’s Haftorah followed by an Oneg
Shabbat dessert kiddish; not the Saturday morning Torah reading
service followed by a sit-down luncheon that her brother had), and
continued religious school education through Confirmation in
10
^th
grade. She could read along in the Hebrew although
she couldn’t translate what she read.

During the brief army Friday night service,
shorter than the Friday night service to which Sharon was
accustomed, all but the most important prayers were recited in
English rather than Hebrew. Most of the men wore fatigues and their
olive drab uniform "baseball caps." A few wore suntans and their
uniform green garrison caps. Robert was the only one in civilian
clothes and the satin yarmulke.

The Jewish army chaplain, a young rabbi in
suntans with a blue-and-white crocheted yarmulke on his head, said
a few words on the Bible portion of the week. At the conclusion of
the service he invited everyone into the social hall for cookies
and soda pop.

The chaplain came up to them. "I'm Chaplain
Daniel Levin." Robert shook his hand while Sharon smiled.
"Lieutenant Robert Gold and my wife Sharon."

"Welcome," Chaplain Levin said. "Please join
us for refreshments."

The chaplain turned towards the social hall.
Sharon touched his arm. "Excuse me, but why are there no women
here?"

"You mean why aren't there any wives?" He
smiled. "Ft. Knox is a basic training post. We have a lot of Jewish
draftees here."

"Jewish draftees!" Robert said. "I never
expected so many."

The chaplain nodded. "They're mostly National
Guard and Reserves. And even if they never go to synagogue at home,
they come here."

"Why?"

"Because for enlisted men it's an approved
way to get out of their units for a couple of hours. You know, get
out of cleaning the latrines or some other distasteful task. And
it's an opportunity to be with other Jews."

Sharon could certainly relate to that.

"The few Jewish officers – the ones who have
their wives here – they’re mostly doctors and they don't come. On
Friday nights they're home with their wives or at the Officers
Club."

"Chaplain," Robert said, "if there's ever any
problem, just let me know. I'll do whatever I can."

"That's what I'm here for, Lieutenant. I know
every drill instructor and basic training company commander on the
post. Besides, you'll be gone in how many weeks?"

She and Robert probably won't go back to
services at Ft. Knox. It's bad enough to feel out of place being
Jewish in a non-Jewish environment. It's altogether another thing
to feel out of place in a Jewish environment.

Two days later on Sunday on the way to have
lunch with her grandparents she had said to Robert, "You were
right. You made the right decision."

Robert didn't take his eyes from the road.
"Right about what?"

"It is better to be an officer."

"What are you talking about?"

"When we went to services – all those
enlisted men."