CHAPTER 20

Dinner was delicious, as I hoped it would be. I didn't want my last gift to Darla before leaving town to be mediocre. Tonight needed to be special—and it was. . . .

After much discussion, weighing the pros and cons of various possible jobs I could work at (aside from flying), Darla came up with a really novel idea—literally. She suggested that I write stories about my adventures as a naval aviator. "You can either make them stories of exactly what happened, or fictionalize them and create a character with a different name who will, in a sense, be a stand-in for you."

"I don't know," I said doubtfully. "I've never been all that good with words. I can barely even write a coherent mission report."

"I could help you, you know. I am a writer, after all. Who better to help you tell a true-to-life war story than a journalist?"

"They're not all war stories, D. I did get involved in some rescue missions and humanitarian efforts from time to time."

"All the better. People like a well-rounded hero."

"Hero? Me? Uh-uh." I shook my head.

"The best and truest heroes are those who don't see themselves as one. That's you, Jack. You've always been much more heroic than you've ever given yourself credit for."

"I know I've always been one in your eyes, anyway." I sighed. "I suppose, if I did fictionalize it a little bit, it might not be so bad. . . How would we actually go about writing these fact-based fairy tales, anyway?"

"Well, I suppose we could start with you telling me a really good story from your early career. (If we're going to write a series of books—or even just short stories—we should get them in as close to chronological order as possible.) It might be easiest if you dictated it onto a tape; then I could play it back and work it into a first-person narrative prose. . ..

"I think the main character should be newly-retired and looking back on his naval career with some melancholy . . . remembering both the good and the bad times in equal measure."

"Nothing about his personal life?" I asked.

"That's up to you, Jack. I know how painful your personal life has been. If you don't wanna get into the character's personal life, don't. Our protagonist could be a man who was so completely dedicated to his career that he never had much of a personal life. He doesn't have to be exactly like you. If you prefer, your military experiences could be the only fact-based element in the stories we write."

"Hey, I kinda like that idea. That way, I could embellish them and/or change them up a bit. The protagonist could have issues I don't have. . . We could really have some fun with this!"

"That's the spirit, Jack! That's pretty much what I had in mind when I suggested fictionalization. The adventures our protagonist relates will be based on your experiences. They don't have to be 'gospel truth.' We can embellish as much as you want—as long as the embellishments don't make the tales so far removed from what the situation was really like that any military types who may have had similar experiences would read one and say, 'What the—? Afghanistan was never like that!'"

I nodded. "I see what you mean. Accuracy in time, place and circumstance is important, even if the details of the experience itself aren't."

"Exactly. Say . . . after bailing out of a plane (not that I know whether you ever did or not, but just for the sake of illustration we'll say you did), you found a teenaged boy wandering aimlessly in the desert, shell shocked, dazed . . . tired, hungry, thirsty. . . You gave him water, a few rations, patched up any wounds he might've had and helped him find his way home, which, incidentally, got you to the nearest town, too. In the fictionalized account, you could make it a little girl, six or seven years old, dragging a ragged old doll behind her and crying her eyes out because her village had just been bombed. . . Something like that."

"Oh, you're gonna be good at this!" I told Darla.

"The stories will be yours, Jack," she reminded me. "And I think the narration should be yours, too. . . Picture a grizzled old navy pilot, sitting in a swivel chair behind his mahogany (or oak) desk in his den at home, a bottle of twelve-year-old scotch and a glass in front of him. . . For the first time in almost forty years there's no place he needs to be and nothing he needs to do. So, he stares at the scotch, pours some into the glass and downs it. Then, as he unconsciously begins reminiscing about the career that has just come to a sudden and ignominious end, the memories start to come . . . one right after the other. He has no choice but to put them down on paper (or type them up on his computer, or whatever). It simply has to be done. The stories have to be written because he can't rest until he relates every one of them."

"D., you should've been a novelist instead of a journalist. You really know this stuff."

"I watch a lot of TV and movies, Jack. I don't know anything. I just know how to write, is all."

"You paint a vivid picture with words, I'll give you that—even just vocalizing. You're good, D.; real good."

She smiled. "Thanks, Jack; but don't forget: this is going to be a collaboration—your stories, my writing skills. Together, we'll be a smash!"

"I believe you, Deej. . . So," I said, holding up my glass of Dr. Pepper in a toast, "here's to 'The Adventures of Admiral . . . Daniel T. Carter, USN'."

We'd pretty much finished eating by this time, and I was feeling energetic enough to do a little bit of dancing. The dance floor was a ways away, since we were at a secluded table; but, neither of us minded the walk.

The music was being played over the P.A. system; there was no live band or orchestra. But it was good music to dance to. Whoever picked the songs and made the mix knew what they were doing.

The song that was playing when Darla and I entered the dance floor was an instrumental rendition of "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", a great slow-dance tune if there ever was one.

I was particularly fond of it because it brought back memories of my very first dance at a friend's eighth birthday party. I'd danced the first dance with a cute little blonde named Nancy. She didn't like me at all, but I didn't care. Mrs. Kennedy, the party hostess, made sure that each girl danced once with each boy. There were four of them and four of us, so we each danced four times. It'd been fun, which was something I hadn't expected. At that young age, I was still more interested in chasing girls for the purpose of tormenting them than I was in wanting to get personal with them in any way. Of course, that was before Darla entered the picture. . ..

But now, here I was, about fifty years later, holding Darla in my arms on the dance floor. This time we really danced. No more just moving around in circles to the rhythm of the music.

As the song ended—followed almost immediately by another (a waltz this time, though I can't for the life of me remember which)—I asked Darla, "When did you take off your wedding ring? I'm wondering because the indentation in your finger is still pretty deep; and, if you'd been without your ring for a year or more, it would've started to return to some degree of normalcy by now. . . Believe me, I know."

"I didn't stop wearing my rings 'til right before I came here, when your dad first called me. Until he mentioned you, it didn't occur to me to take them off; I couldn't bring myself to."

"But you wanted me to know—when I saw you—that you were now . . . available."

She nodded. "Yes, exactly. . . Jack, if any other man in the world had hit on me—be it . . . Pierce Brosnan or George Clooney—he would've been rebuffed. I had no interest in meeting or getting involved with anyone else. . . You, Jack Beckham, are the only man in the world who could've gotten me out of my wedding ring and my mourning clothes. Only you, Jack. Only you."

I gazed into her eyes and stated, "Nothing else you could've said would've made me happier than that, Darla. Knowing that you still love me that much—that you would've turned down any other man . . . that means a lot to me." I raised our entwined hands to the vicinity of my lips and kissed hers. "I have so many regrets . . . ." I clasped her hand to my chest again and we continued dancing. I don't think we were even waltzing anymore.

"Don't, Jack," Darla said, shaking her head at me. "What happened, happened. It's all water under the bridge now. Life took us where it did, and now we've come together again. . . It's like . . . we were walking side by side for years; then our paths diverged and went different directions, going onward as we matured and experienced life, each in our own way. But then your father intervened and brought us both back here. Our love for one another took it from there. I have no regrets, Jack. I'm so grateful for what we had and for what we have ahead of us. When I'm in your arms, I feel like I'm home—really home. And it doesn't matter if we live here or in Washington . . . or the other Washington; or New York, or . . . wherever. As long as we're together, we're home."

"Home. That sounds so good. You had that; I didn't. You had a family, with four bright kids. And now you've got grandkids. That blows my mind; I can't even imagine it. You had a husband who loved you—and you, evidently, loved him. I envy that. . ..

"If there's one thing I've learned over the past few days, D., it's that you are the only woman I've ever truly loved. You and I, Darla—we're forever. . . I don't know where that's gonna put Frank, but . . . if, in the next life, he wants you back, he's gonna have a fight on his hands."

She was smiling. Then she giggled. "That sounds like the Jack Beckham I know," she said. "It's been a long time since you've offered to fight for me—in any sense of the word."

"And you're enjoying it, aren't you?" I was smiling now, too. "C'mon. Let's go pay the check and get out of here. Time to go back to your place for a little passionate necking. And, as a bonus, on the way home I'll tell you all about Operation: Revenge."

(*)

After dinner, Jamie and I sat on the sofa in her living room and talked. We talked about the first time we met, when she was about three and I was thirteen. Man! Ten years' age difference between us! Ouch! And Jack thought he and Darla had it bad!

(Joan, Darla's older sister, was about 2½ years older than Darla. Like Darla, she had gotten married right out of college and Jamie had come along a year later. At the time of our first meeting, Joan and her husband had come to tell Mr. and Mrs. McIntyre that they were expecting another baby.)

"I vaguely remember this cute older boy walking around the back yard of the house next door," Jamie said with a soft smile.

"You thought I was cute?"

She nodded. "I said 'hi' to you while you were walking around picking up trash that had blown into the yard, so you wouldn't run over it with the lawnmower. You smiled at me and said 'hi' back, and I was a goner. Those dimples of yours are real killers, Mac."

"I remember a cute, chubby little tow-headed girl in bib overalls and a t-shirt, with bare feet and smudges of dirt on her face. At first I thought you were a boy 'cause you're hair was so short and wispy."

"Yeah, it took a while for my hair to grow out and thicken. As for the overalls . . . I was a bit of a tomboy. Mom got tired of me ruining all the little girlie clothes she got for me. The best she could do to identify me as a female was to dress me in little girls' T-shirts—mostly pink ones . . . and I hated pink!"

"What was your color of preference?"

"Black. . . Shiny, leathery, fear-inducing black."

"How very . . . Darth Vader-ish of you."

She laughed. "Actually, I wanted to be Emma Peel."

"The Avengers? I thought that was off the air by the time you were born."

"It was, but I saw it when it went into syndication."

"Makes sense. At what age did you decide to follow in the footsteps of the infamous Mrs. Peel?"

"Ten. Up till then, I pretty much wanted to be Jane Goodall. I loved apes."

"You've had a wide range of interests. How'd you end up doing the whole . . . wormhole thing?"

"While watching The Avengers, I got interested in science fiction. Sci-fi took me to other worlds, other star systems, other galaxies. I thought it would be fascinating to actually be able to do that—travel to other worlds, like they do in the movies and on TV. The notion of wormholes was presented a time or two during my teenage years—although I don't remember where—and I latched onto it like a dog with a new chew toy. It fascinated me."

"Enough that you decided to pursue it."

"Exactly; and it wasn't an easy decision to make. I mean, it's so far out there. Most serious scientists won't even discuss it. As fascinating an idea as it is, most of them consider it so totally out of the realm of possibility that they won't even hypothesize about it. . . Well, maybe it is impossible right now. But, I'm hoping to find a way to make it viable. It may not happen in my lifetime, but I'm going to give it my best shot and pass on what I learn to the next generation."

"Isn't that what all scientists do?"

She nodded. "Basically, overall, yes. It's a legacy that each generation builds on. Sometimes a later generation will discover that an earlier one was completely off-base. Their theories and hypotheses were a bunch of rubbish. Someday someone may say that about my work." She shook her head. "That doesn't matter. I'm doing what I'm doing in the here and now, hoping to benefit the world in the future. That's all I can focus on. If I start letting other people's opinions affect me, I'll lose focus and won't accomplish anything."

"Stick with it, kid. You're a brilliant woman. If there's a way, you'll either find it, or get close enough to it that the next generation will be able to complete what you started."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence. It means a lot."

"Jamie?"

"Yes, Mac?"

"Would it be out of line if I were to . . . kiss you right about now? I've been staring at your lips for over two hours, and they're really . . . getting to me."

"I think maybe a kiss or two might be okay."

Famous last words . . .