Claire Ascendant

She was never really far from my thoughts, but they were such as to well-wish for her and to wonder about her children. I felt sympathy and concern for them, but time dilutes such things, so I didn’t remember to think of her very often any more. I was out of wives and stayed pretty much away from women. “Never again!” quoth I. I so determinedly quoted it that I came to believe it. Maybe I could get a liaison job overseas somewhere and find a grateful peasant lady. Nah. My career was going well, and I had just been promoted into field grade ranks. Over all, I was reasonably happy, if very cynical. The ex ux had been gone for more than three years, and I was over her. In fact it was like she fell into the well at the world’s end: I hoped that’s what happened. I never heard of, or from her again, but even that was too much. She was certainly not worth the pain, and I don’t know why I didn’t see it at the time. It was nice to drive my hypersonic blue Porsche to the flight line and fly away in a jet: it made no difference to anybody, but it felt good.

In the spring, some of my group and I decided to fly a gaggle of four airplanes around the West, practicing navigation, flying formation, shooting instrument approaches, flight planning, and doing strange-field landings. At last, we landed at Buckley ANG Base near Denver. Somebody’s cousin met us and hauled us to a hotel in the city. I never liked Denver: too much smog and too many weird folks. I liked Colorado Springs, Big Spring, Sand Springs, Hot Springs, Cold Spring, and Alice Springs…but not Denver.

Even dressed in civilian clothing, it was clear from our haircuts and demeanor that we were military. We made reservations at a nice restaurant that was walking distance from the hotel, and so our little knot of flyers marched down the sidewalk, shooting the bull and laughing, making silly banter, like “when I was in fighter pilot trade school, we learned that when you pull the stick back, the houses get smaller.” ha ha ha. Then another piped up, “well, when I was at fighter pilot GRADUATE school--from which I graduated--we learned that if you keep pulling the stick back, the houses get bigger” heh, heh, heh, in reference to a deep stall. Another: “I found out that if you kick the rudder when the stick is all the way back like that, the airplane goes round and round, and you have to jump out. I had to jump from my airplane, and they didn’t have another one, so I didn’t finish fighter pilot graduate school.” Ha, ha, ha, this in reference to spinning an airplane and not recovering.

We met some women coming from the opposite direction. I paid them no mind, but one of my guys pulled up short and asked one of them, “I know you! Aren’t you Claire Oberdorff from Laughlin? I’m Reagan Hammond.” There was a squeal of delight; they knew each other from pilot training at Laughlin. It had not yet seized my attention as to who this pretty girl was. She was rather well dwarfed and hidden by Hammond, and they were hugging one another and patting backs. She stepped back and turned her eyes toward me, and recognition, for each of us, was instantaneous. Her eyes widened, and she gulped a breath. I’ve no idea how stupid I must have looked, but my heart was beating hard and loud. A bolt of energy—something—zapped between us. Hammond began an introduction as we started walking toward each other. “Claire, this is my boss,“ he said, as she interrupted: “I already know Captain Griffith.” I extended my hand, but she walked past it and into my embrace. Hammond managed, “that’s Major Griffith now. Where….How…” A trickle of tears appeared from the corners of her eyes. Her expression was a mixture of pain and delight, sudden confusion, and my innards were worse. I almost couldn’t breathe, and I grinned so big that my teeth got dry and stuck to my stupid lips.
“He came to JC’s crash and figured out what happened. He was good to the kids and me, and we shared some difficult times together. He proved it wasn’t JC.s fault.” She paused and looked at me: “I’ve often wondered what happened to you.” Lady, if you only knew.

Here she was, as I had never seen her—on her feet, mended, happy. She had gained a few pounds and looked… well…beautiful. The grimace lines of grief were mostly gone, and her eyes were alive and bright. She looked really good. Her figure was perfect, and she was well-dressed, and not in black. She was back, a true thoroughbred, the brightest flower in the vase. My spirits soared to see her, and to see her thus. This little crystal soldier had not broken!

We all went to dinner, where Claire and I sat together. No one else needed to be there: in fact, it seemed as if we were there alone. I swear I couldn’t see nor hear any person, but her. Any reserve, finesse, or savoir faire I might have had seemed to vanish into utter toadism. I sat making conversation with the loveliest woman I ever saw, and she was happy with that! For a little while, perhaps one minute, I thought of keeping the professional reserve that came from the manner in which we met. Not. She was too much woman, and the searing, horrible events we had shared provided a tough glue. I had given her some measure of comfort by vindicating her husband, and by explaining what had happened to him some years ago. Later, I made a trip to her home in Pennsylvania to give her the final and official findings of the accident board. I called her one time a year after that, maintaining the air of condolence and with scholarships from the unit for her children, Then, I lost touch, but I thought of her…a lot, and then less and less. It still grieved me to think of the terrible times she had endured. Apparently, I was one of the good guys in her book, and I was ecstatic. I really liked Denver, the city of infinitely valuable gifts. In fact, I liked everything.

The night flew by, it seemed, and we spent it talking, catching up, coming to know one another. It was glorious. And then it was over. I had to find an airplane and my buddies, and she had her things to do, but insisted that she drive me to the air base about noon. I wasn’t sleepy. I wasn’t tired. I was awfully shaken up, talking to myself, grinning for no reason. I was too old and mature for this crap, but I couldn’t wait for noon to come.

She came as appointed, wearing dark glasses and a scarf, and a fresh change of clothes. She looked like a movie star, only better. I wore my stink bag, that is, my flying suit. I had been living in it off and on for three days and feared it might be a bit ripe, but she took a long look at me, up and down, and I knew that she was remembering another stud in a stink bag. Then she walked up to me and we embraced. She smiled and said, “Boy! That looks familiar.” We kissed, very lightly, very quickly and broke the intimacy and started talking. It was as if nothing happened, but it did. It exposed my bachelorhood as the sham it was, and it scared hell out of me. She seemed to back off from me in some manner. I acknowledged it, but paid it no mind: too many things were coming at me too fast.

We went into base operations, where the other guys had already flight-planned. One of them handed me a Form 70, and we were ready to go. “Can I watch you fly away from me?” she asked, and added, “and will you fly back to me?”

“I’ll be back in a few days,” I promised, meaning it, and “I’ll call you tonight.”

For propriety’s sake, we declined an affectionate farewell, but there was a hunger in her eyes. As for myself, coherent thought proved difficult, and so an awkward shaking of hands and formal utterances of good-bye, so-nice-to-see-you-again had to do, but a little later, when I taxied the airplane by her, she stood as a Madonna. She blew me a kiss, with a delicate wave of her hand She positively radiated sunshine with her smile, intelligence with her eyes, and she was lovely. Dare I wish any more than this?

I called her that night, and we spoke for an hour, excited and happy, filling in blank spaces, and making plans. I called her every night, and she called me. We often spoke two or three times a day. I returned to her twice a month, and more on a good month. She came to see me, too. In fact, I moved into a new and more spacious condo in order to provide a more comfortable place for her. One of us was never far from the thoughts of the other. Everything meshed. Everything was perfect.

Now and then, though, she brought up the subject of my career and how she feared it. She had lost one key man in her life, and she could not suffer another such loss. I understood her feelings and allowed as to how I was immune. Further, my primary job was no longer in the cockpit. I was a staff weenie. The tension usually went away, but sometimes it lingered. I never seriously considered quitting my job, but I gave it some thought, like: what would I do? Farm? I didn’t know a rudibegger (that’s misspelled) from an onion (that’s not). Bank? Airlines? Cowboy? Nah: nothing I could think of fit. In short, I was fat, dumb, and happy making my living in a stink bag. Her father would hire me, she said. He owned hardware stores, but that had no appeal to me: for one thing, I didn’t understand equipment that had no “ON” switch, like shovels and hammers and paving stones.

I got along fine with her kids. It did not require much time to get them over-excited, noisy, show-offish. It began at the pond, where the kids were shy with me. I went to the water and threw little bread crumbs to the minnows and soon had a cloud of minnows at my feet. Then a duck came…and another, and finally about 20. No kid can withstand such temptation. Then came sparrows and other kids. I was a pied piper.

Each child would claim as much of me as he or she could hang onto, sit on, or jump from. We had a few minor calamities. I was more a playground oaf than a father-figure. We had candy, cokes, and French fries, and jumped off rocks into the river, swung round and round, and bandaged lots of scrapes. We swung, hop-scotched, and hid from one another. I told one bed-time story that scared the daylights out of them, and both ended up in bed with us. Dang! In the middle of the night, one kid lay perpendicular to me with her feet kicking on my belly. I rearranged her so I could sleep, and from the other side of the bed came a sleepy sounding Claire: “you asked for it, Dummy.”

The relationship became serious. We were accelerating into space, orbiting behind the moon, where we could not see ahead clearly, so we stumbled some. Those were yellow days, though, the best I had ever lived. No one else mattered, no one else was involved. Her parents were glad to see her happy. My own injuries and past hurts disappeared, and nothing lay ahead but blue sky, or so we thought. There was a hurdle between us and that blue sky, and it would not go away. As orbits do, however, we flew from behind the dark side of the moon into glorious sun and an infinite universe, and so it went.

The apogee of our time together came that winter, at Snow Mass. I leased a small condo on the edge of the bunny slope, quite near the lifts. We skied and explored, shopped, and sampled fine wines. We went to the saunas and snow-mobiled up long, lonesome trails amid pines and rocks. I rented an airplane and we flew the canyons and summits, explored frozen lakes, followed the canyons of the Colorado. We were head over heels in love. The picture I conjure of her in my mind’s eye is sweet. She looks up at me with shining bright eyes and perfect teeth, her complexion rosy from cold and wind, with snow flakes in her so-black lashes and hair. She is filled with mirth, and it shows. Her little red boots are doll-like, and her ski pants cover a perfect figure. Her expression says, “I am happy, and I never want this moment to end, and I am completely in love with somebody: guess who?” I must have appeared like old Huckleberry alongside her. We wore matching sweaters, very red against the snow. I have seen perfection, and it was she.

We spent Thanksgiving with her parents, her sister, her husband and two kids, along with Claire, with her two kids, and me. It was superlative, because it was family—great food, friendly associations, excited kids—cousins—and the trappings of fall, complete with snow and football. I was reminded of a life style that I last enjoyed as a college kid, and now I could have it again. I wanted it. Claire and I were crazy about one another and we did not hide it, but did manage to maintain decorum. Her dad told me how glad he was to see her so happy and radiant again. Then he said that she surprised him by bringing home another soldier. That took me aback, somewhat, and he must have known it and tried to make a recovery: he did not mean it the way it came out, and so on…

Our Christmas was going to be special. We would announce our engagement at that time, ski, and spend. What could be finer? She arrived at my place the Wednesday before Christmas on Tuesday. I was going to start leave on the day before Christmas and be off thirty days. I had the most beautiful ring for her and a whole room full of hydroponic roses. My hubris told me that all was safe, the race all but won, and little could happen to dump my wonderful life, but something did happen. The ONE thing that I could not afford—and she could not abide—happened. The phone rang, and it brought the tidings of death and loss: there had been a crash near Nellis, and I was to be the investigating officer. I was to proceed ASAP to the Command Post for orders and to report to base operations for transportation at 1600 hours…, etc. ad infinitum. There seemed to be an anvil hanging from my aorta.

I told her, and she wilted. She slumped and hid her eyes with her hands. Then she said: “Well, you’re not going, are you?” I delivered the death sentence to our affair: “Honey, those are orders. I HAVE to go.”

She sobbed silently and looked up at me with an expression that nigh killed me: “Then you have made your choice. I uttered some bullshit about duty and responsibility and we could take up right where…. She cut me off. “You are responsible to ME. I have placed my life and happiness—as well as that of my babies—in your hands. You know how I feel about the military. My children and myself—and YOU—are my principle concerns. If you go…I don’t know what I’ll do, but I won’t be here when you come back. Call me when you have time for us, and we’ll go from there, or not.”

My idiocy continued. “Here, take the Porsche. I’ll rent a car when I get back and come up to your place.”

“Thank you, Major Griffith, but no. I must be adept at caring for myself. Oh, and you’d best call before you come.” Now she was angry, as well as hurt.

There was more to this scene than I report. Most of it is jumbled up in my mind. Still, I hated the fates that interfered so, that so surely splashed my heart and innards against a cold cement wall. I hated the idea of my having made a victim of her at the hands of the Air Force, again. I was the bearer of that grief. But so was I a victim. I had been chosen for this assignment because I was not married, and so Christmas would mean nothing to me, an unattached junior major, but, as it had turned out, they were wrong. Even so, soldiers and such must leave the wife and kiddos behind at the service’s pleasure, a service that—at some level—disapproved of wives, anyway.

The ideal soldier/airman/marine would be one of singular dedication, unmarried, very intelligent, extremely savvy in his art, and fearless. There could be no room made for emotional stress problems, no PTSD, no room for faltering in the ugly face unconscionable death or the destruction of a civilization. A robot. They would think that humanity was the weak link in soldiering. It was not. Humanity was its strength, especially of the citizen soldiers who produced results, all the while holding the feet of their commanders to the fire. Technocrats building and operating out of the range of the human soul are dangerous. Warriors operating remote from the scene of the fight are dangerous. The ideal soldier is the draftee, well-trained, who wants to get the job done soonest and get out of the service and go home. My own humanity at this time was almost beyond my ability to cope. I knew I was losing her, but…
I did my duty: I left my love standing broken-hearted and disappointed, and went to fill the service’s needs. For two weeks we froze and worked in the mountains north of Las Vegas, eating pork and beans and coffee. My performance was not up to my own standards. I could not give the two dead young captains the attention they deserved, but we found the problem.

The outboard wing section of the F-4 is designed to fold upward to save space on an aircraft carrier. The Air Force version had the same airframe, but never used it. In this case, while the airplane was being maneuvered at low altitude, high g, and high airspeed, the corroded pin that locked the outboard wing down failed. That part of the wing flew up, broke off, and smashed through the horizontal tail slab. The airplane immediately rolled in the opposite direction, due to asymmetrical wing loading. The nose also pitched down (relative to the airplane). In two or three seconds, the stricken aircraft smashed into the rocks and exploded. The backseater almost made it out. His seat had cleared the cockpit, but he was too low, and he smashed—face first—into the rocks at four hundred knots. No wonder Claire hated this business. I did, too.

My thoughts never left her. Where was she? How was she? Would she take me back? What was I going to do? I did not find out until after the New Year.

I stopped at the first phone I found and called her. She was not at her place, so I called her parents. When she came to the phone, it was without animation, without the excitement or joy to which I was accustomed. Small talk soon led into to large talk.

“I might wait for you a little while,” she said, “but not long. My life is still in tatters and I am going to piece it together for myself and for my kids. I don’t know why you feel such loyalty to those people: they have so many people that they RIF (Reduction in Force) them out. The nation certainly doesn’t care. They don’t even like military men. You could make two or three times the money, even here with me. I think I am a good woman and a good mother. Once upon a time, I was a good wife. Now, I am forced to do something I hate: to give up the man I love for personal, selfish reasons, but I have to move on. That means dating, which I hate. It means hurting myself and you, which kills me, but I have to have an anchor, and you can’t seem to find the bottom. I must have what you can’t give, but I am not what I have to be to you—top priority—every day, always, no exceptions, and that is exactly what you would also get from me.”

Between the lines, my brain knew that this was the end of us. There could be no return, because irreparable damage had been done. It no longer had to do with the original difficulties. She was right; I had made a choice, and she was the type of woman who would not accept such a negation from her significant other.

I knew something of broken dreams and shattered happiness. The fickle nature of living has taught me any number of lessons. I knew that what was to come was a unique brand of misery, insoluble and cruel. It was cruel, but time dilutes those things, and they become bearable. The loss of such love is synergistic: not only does one lose the lover, but a significant part of self. So I determined to give it a year or two, and I would be back to near normal, but I would never forget her.

Her name was………….CLAIRE……..and she was a crystal angel, and I wrote a poem for her. The idea for this poem came from Robin Hobb in the last book of her Tawny Man trilogy. It is the second of two trilogies, six of the best books I have read. This poem was named WHEN WE, and it is good.

When we’ve taken all our chances
And our common threads unwind—
When we’ve danced out all our dances,
Then I hope we’ll keep in mind

That when we’re not together,
And I share with you no more,
It will likely be forever—
Not as it was before.

When we have separated,
And I know you’ll not be mine,
And our sweet times have faded
O’er a wrenching stretch of time:

When we’ve danced out our last dances,
And I partner you no more—
And I watch another lead you
As you exit from the floor,

I hope he treats you kindly,
And your heart can mend with him,
And that our time together
Was not a foolish whim.

When we’ve lowered our last fences,
And I bid our life good bye,
I shall let you go with longing,
But I’ll love you ‘til I die.

We didn’t just cut it off there. We came together a few more times, but slowly drifted out of each other’s principal orbits. We remain fairly close, send Christmas cards, check up on each other by phone. She married a dentist, an older fellow, and recently ended up a widow again, but he was home every night. That is ironic, since I am still hanging around. We talked about that. The kids grew up and did fine. Maybe we’ll visit again, but the glitter that I once owned has died. The perfection I knew has withered, my own life skewed off in strange places, but I did manage to have that baby I wanted—a daughter— and she is perfect, despite the imperfections of her mother. We grew old and found that all life is finite. Life is a day dream—a fantasy—except one awakens in fits and starts and disappointments, and finally dies. It really is a fickle, pointless son of a bitch, and I can but wonder if its ending makes any difference at all, even to me. Peggy Lee sang it: “Is That All There Is?” Listen to it. The times of passion and health, fun and learning, all pass. Even memories mildew. Then it is time to die, not looking back, because all is gone, tone and tint.