“Definition of war, “I said, “Ninety parts boredom, to nine parts acute bodily discomfort to one part sheer gibbering terror.”

            Orvis stretched, until the toes of her jungle boots touched the opposite bank of sandbags. A little sand sifted down from the ceiling, flittering in the dim light from Leroy’s battery lantern.

            “We even out of dirty jokes, “She drawled.      

            “What about the one about the difference between a whore, a lover and a wife?” I said, and Orvis replied,        

            “Yesterday morning ‘bout ten thirty.” She and Leroy both looked up at the ceiling and chorused,

            “Beige. I think I’ll paint the ceiling beige.” The two of them cracked up. Officially all personnel not absolutely essential were supposed to be in shelter, in full protective gear. Leroy and Orvis had the oversuits on, thickly padded shapeless green things that were supposed to protect against all variety of chemical horrors. They had set their gas mask carriers close by, in a little bunker close to the radio station trailer where Maculhaney still worked, playing cheerily raucous rock music and reading little announcements about saving for college and the symptoms of heat exhaustion.

  

          “These things are like a body-sized odor-eater, “Leroy plucked at the front of hers, which bulged out until she looked like nothing so much as an OD-green Michelin man. “None of us have had a shower in days, but you couldn’t tell!”

            “Sweetes’ smelling military in history, “Orvis agreed. “Say, I wanted to show you a picture of my Kenny. Come in the mail on Friday.” She unsnapped the front of her own oversuit, fished diligently in the front pockets of the garment underneath, and brought out a smudged and crumpled envelope. A couple of snapshots kept the envelope stiff and square. She unwrapped a letter from around them, and handed one to me. “He’s the one in the middle, “ She said, and I looked at it. Three young men in chocolate-ship desert BDU trousers and sad-colored tee-shirts clowned around with a video camera, against a background of sky and sand. The one on the left--- holding the camera--- wore mirrored shades and a desert hat at a rakish angle. The other two were…

            “Oh, he’s…” I blurted, and into the embarrassed silence, Orvis observed dryly,

            “Not much gets past you, does it, Reporter Lady?”

            “The word you’re lookin’ for is ‘white’, “ Leroy put in kindly. “Sunny’s husband is white. Anglo. WASP. Good ol’ boy. Po’ white trash.” Orvis kicked her firmly on the ankle, and I said.

            “I… I’m sorry, I guess. I hadn’t realized I had made an assumption, and then I compounded it with something stupid and rude.”

            “Well, we’ll have had a good life, if that’s the rudes’ thing anyone has ever said, or will say ‘bout us bein’ married.” Orvis looked mollified, and I let curiosity overtake me.

            “DO people say rude things?”

            “Not often, not really.” She shrugged and I looked at the pictured face. Kenny grinned, a guileless, happy grin. He looked like taller, lankier Kevin Bacon, with the in determinant light brown hair of someone who was a towhead when they were little. I would have never imagined Orvis, all five-foot ten of cappuccino-colored intensity married to a Kevin Bacon clone, but there you are.

 

           Orvis took back the picture and said, “Oh, we get the look, sometimes. Always surprises me, ‘cause Kenny ‘n me, we don’t see the color when we look at each other. Never did, really. It’s like lookin’ at who we really are, inside the color, below the surface. Wasn’t like that at first, though.”

            “So, what did you think at first?” I asked.

            “Oh, I thought he was one of the biggest fools I ever laid eyes on! We met at tech school, up at Lowry AFB. You ever been t’Colorado? Never forget that fus’ time, not if I live to be a hundred and five. Second day of class, one of those cold spring days, a wind like ice-water come straight off those mountains, still with snow all over ‘em. This other women, she set next to me in class, on break she whisper ‘One of the guys, he been watchin’ you all morning!’ an’ I say , ‘Which one?’--- she say, “Tall goofy white dude, last row, on the end.” ‘An I turn around, an’ here’s this skinny tall white kid, watching me! Ever time I turn around, he watching, ‘til I can feel his eyes on the back of my neck, like drillin’ a hole! The next break, I march right up to him and aks him straight out, why he be watchin’ me all morning. I swear to god, he look right back at me, perfectly serious, an’ he say, ‘Cause you’re the most beautiful woman I ever saw,’ an’ I say, ‘Boy, you are straight outta your lil’ tiny mind!’ An’ he look at me an’ say, ‘Ahm Randall Kendrick Orvis, I’m from San Angelo, Texas, and ahm gonna ask you to marry me!’ I bust out laughing right there, an’ I say, ‘When WHERE freezes over?”

            “He scores ten out of a possible ten for romantic gestures on the spot, “I said, thoughtfullly. “It’s a record-breaker, right there.” And Leroy said,

            “Only thing comes close, last week Mackie got a red rose, a tape of goopy Moody Blues songs and a letter full of quotes by some guy named Thu-row, and I don’t think it was the Doonsbury guy.”

            “I believe he’s married anyway, “ I said, “The Doonsbury guy, And you’re thinking Thoreau, and he’s dead.”

            “Doesn’t stop a lot of guys that I noticed.” Said Leroy, “ In either case. Go on, Sunny.”

            “I jes thought he was foolin’ with me, for the longes’ time, but whenever we was in the same place, he was watchin’ me. Pretty soon, I’d know he was there, and I’d look at him. You shoulda seen him, skinny white kid, perfectly confident an’ serious. You jes’ knew he had been told all his life that he could do what he wanted to do, be whatever he wanted to be. You’d a’thought it would be kinda scary, this guy always lookin’ out for you… but it came off kinda sweet, an’ pretty soon I was lookin’ back, all the time. An’ then there was this class assignment.”

 

            In the silence, artillery rumbled, from far, far away, like summer thunder on a windless day, something you could almost more feel, than actually hear. Orvis stared intently into the distance from which the sound had come, until I hinted,

            “And…?” With an effort, Orvis brought herself back to the present.

            “We got assigned to do it together, One afternoon after class, I went him to his room, ‘cause we had to work on this together, you know… an’ damn if he wasn’t playin’ Coltrane on his stereo! We started talkin’ and damn if I didn’t turn around an’ it’s two in the morning! Kenny an’ I, we had talked damn near half the night!”

            “They were doomed, “Leroy commented, humorously.

“Got that right,” Orvis agreed. “After that, I never looked at another man an’ he never looked at another woman. From that time on, it was like that would be the only way for the two of us. It wasn’t a sex thing, though. It was a talk thing, at first. We had so much alike an’ so much different, an’ we still got things to talk about. We had jazz in common, an’ the Air Force in common, an’ getting that one picture down perfect in common! But Kenny, he lived his whole life in one place, little place jus’ like damned Mayberry, I swear! I lived in one Army post an’ kaserne after another, an’ my Daddy an’ Mama dragged me into more museums ‘n you k’n shake a stick at! He never seen any more’n pictures of cows an’ bluebonnets ‘til I took him to the museum in Denver! My Daddy, he still on active duty--- Kenny’s daddy killed in a car wreck. His Mama raised him an’ three lil ones by herself. He gotta thing for strong women, thas’ why he like me so much, I think. Mama Orvis, she stick up for Kenny when we got married, but my Daddy, he have his doubts. Not the color thing, jes’ Daddy think no one good enough for his babies.”

 

“Do you and Kenny have children yet?” I asked, and Orvis shook her head.     

“No… maybe after all this. We still not ready for it… not in a hurry, anyway. Thas’ something happen in it’s own time. Kenny an’ me, we’re still workin’ on each other. He’s my steady anchor, an’ I’m his launchpad. Or maybe the other way around. Hard t’say, really, It’s like it’s s’posed to happen between us, but I didn’t see it at first. He was meant to be my other half…. An’ when I’m with him it’s like there’s this bubble all ‘round me, like there’s nothing allowed that might hurt or disrespect me. Kenny, he thinks I’m jus’ fine, a world-beater, the bes’ there is, there ain’t nothing I can’t do, ‘cause he believes I can do it. Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened, if I hadn’t gone to Lowry, an bin some other AFSC else instead.”

“Now, I believe, “Said Leroy into the aching silence, “That for anyone, there’s about six or ten other people in the world that would suit. You wind up with the one you meet first. You met Kenny straight off, but you might have met someone else just as fitting, at the grocery store or walking the dog, renting a movie. You might look at them and it’s love at first sight, or you might be friends for a while and not think anything of it… But one day you wake up and decide there is nothing for it but to get married.”

 

“How did you meet your husband?” I asked, and Leroy grinned.

“He pulled me over and gave me a speeding ticket. Turned out we lived in the same apartment building. I used to see him around the pool, never new he was a cop until he caught me doing 45 miles per in a 30 mile area. You gotta know,” she said earnestly, “I wasn’t a party girl but I wasn’t no innocent, either. I was on my second enlistment, just made E-6. Had my own apartment off-base, a new car… first new car anyone in my family had ever owned. I fell in love every couple of months or so, had my heart turned into road pizza an’ a couple weeks later I’d be in love with someone else. You ever see that poster that says “Before you meet the handsome prince, you have to kiss a lot of toads”? Mackie used to call the guy of the moment “Lee’s Current Toad”, an’ dayamm, did I kiss my share! Meantime there’s Mitch, hanging around the pool, this older guy I never paid much mind, never even considered him as a date. Sometimes when I had to work late at night, he took to waiting outside the Main gate and following me home, just to make sure I was OK. He was like that for the other people in the apartments. Everybody’s big brother, always looking out for you. One night I asked him in for coffee and pretty soon he took to coming over for a beer after work, and we’d talk… it was just like he was my brother, or cousin. Once he even checked the guy that I was dating for wants and warrants.”

 

Leroy fumbled in the front of her own protective suit. She drew a wallet-sized leather case out of her BDU pocket and handed it to me. A pair of pictures faced each other: a dark-haired man in a polo shirt and three little boys posed in front of a Christmas tree. Leroy continued, “We knew each other for about two years or so, but we didn’t really get close until one Sattiday afternoon a rainstorm blew in and ruint the barbeque we was having around the pool. Couple of the younger guys were fooling around on the diving board with the rain coming down like a monsoon… one of ‘em slipped and fell, cracked his fool head on the side of the pool. Bled like a sumbitch,” Leroy shook her head. “I never saw so much blood! Well, one guy was an EMS tech, an’ he and Mitch pulled him out of the pool, bandaged him up, called for an ambulance. The EMS tech rode in with the injured kid, they was buddies anyway an’ the rest of us went to pick up what was left of the barbeque. I see Mitch, just sitting on one of the chair in the pouring rain, just looking at the rain washing the blood away from the concrete, got this funny look on his face, as if he were seeing something else. I say, ‘Hey, Mitch, he’s gonna be OK” something like that, and Mitch just shakes his head and his eyes look all weird like he’s on something, and finally he says, “Gotta cigarette on ya?” and I said sure, my place is just a few feet away and he mutters something about helicopters. Eh, I knew something was wrong, he was just too straight, too good a cop to be on something. I got him into my place and his hands are shaking so bad he can’t even light the cigarette. I… well, I had a good idea of what was the matter. When I first got in, seemed like I spent a lot of time listening to vets get drunk and tell me all about Vietnam. They’d pret’near always have to get drunk, it seemed like, and you had to be a pretty good friend. Nowadays, someone tells me about Vietnam and they’re sober, I automatically think they’re shooting a line.”

 

“He had a flashback?” I said, “Triggered by the blood?” Leroy nodded.

“He poured down Southern Comfort like it was water. Said he had nightmares for a couple of years, thought he was pretty well over it, but out of the clear blue and for about fifteen seconds he’s back at an evac hospital, walking wounded, and watching the rain wash away the blood on the pavement where they’re doing triage. The smell of it and the rain, and the sound of helicopters and the triage crew running around, the whole damn thing and he’s stone cold sober and then click! He’s back in the present again, wondering what the hell is going on. He finished off a whole bottle of Southern, talked about Vietnam for half the night and then fell over dead asleep on my living room sofa.”

“Pouring that kinda shit on your problems ain’t no cure at all,” Orvis shook her head disapprovingly and Leroy replied,

“Yeah, but for a while it does make them more bearable, ‘long as you don’t make a habit out of it. Next morning he has a hell of a hangover, even after he got done with the porcelain bus, and it takes a bit of time for me to see that things are different between us. We know the worst there is about each other and we’re still friends.” Leroy frowned, thoughtfully. “You know all that stuff about love at first sight and forever? That stuff’s for kids. Don’t mean nothing wrong with it,” she added hastily as Orvis looked as if she might object. “You and Kenny was kids. There wasn’t any past, only the sort that kids have. It was all right, doing that look-into-each-others’-eyes-together-forever stuff, because you’d grow together, with nothing that ‘ud be a disillusion. Someone like Mitch and me…. Well, there was a past, there. We… he had a whole life, long before we’d ever met. There was stuff there that we had to know about as friends, and deal with it, long before we ever thought about love.”

 

“I think you mean that instant live at first sight is for kids, but the friendship that turns into love is the only way to go for adults,” I ventured, and Leroy nodded.

“Look at them fool men, marrying teenaged girls--- it’s because they can’t handle someone that had a real life, without them, before they ever met. It just makes things harder, usually… not wanting to deal with the person you’re really married to….”

The artillery rumbled again, a little closer and Orvis said, a little louder to banish the sound of it,

“So, when did you give up the toad-kissing, Lee?”

“Well, when I had a year to go on that assignment and I realized I had got used to having him around, and I didn’t want to move on. I went to talk to Mitch about it, and he listened, and said, well, since he felt that way, too, there was two things to do. Apply to extend my tour and for us to get married,”

 

“An’ that was it?” Orvis was scandalized, “Jus’ like that?”

“God is my witness,” Leroy insisted, “Sitting at the dinette table in his place, with a can of Bud. He dug his mama’s engagement ring out of his sock drawer, and we went out to dinner at the Black Angus. We ain’t romantic, just practical. On his next free day, we went to the courthouse. I figured the money for a fancy wedding was better spent on rent, and it turned out I was right, too. Next year, he got his knee all tore up in a wreck, an’ that was the end of police work for him. Got a disability pension, now.”

Orvis was still scandalized,

“You didn’t even get yourself a proper dress, get married proper in a church, with all the family? My mama liked to kill me, I did that!”

“Shee-yit!” Leroy chuckled, “My mama was so relieved I’d finally settled down with a real good man, they didn’t quibble over the details. An’ I seen your wedding pictures. Yore Daddy looked like someone was holding a gun on him, telling him he’d better act natural. He wasn’t real happy about you and Kenny, was he?”

“Not at first,” Orvis agreed, “But Mama brought him around an’ we had a real wedding. Small, but proper.”

“I have a theory myself, about fancy weddings,” I said, “The bigger the bash and the more money spent on it, the bigger the crash when it gets to divorce court.”

The artillery rumbled again, and the sparkling dust sifted down.

“Hey,” Orvis folded away her letter and picture of Kenny.”Whatever works.”