Chapter 45: Job Prospects

I called Kelly as soon as I had finished a couple of slices. It was a Thursday, so she promised to come home that night and spend a long weekend with me. I told her I was heading over to the apartment and to find me there. It would be late when she got there, but that didn’t matter much to me. I went back to the kitchen, grabbed another slice of pizza and a beer, and sat down in the family room. Bobbie Joe returned my keys. When I was finished, I kissed Mom on the cheek and headed out.

The one thing I didn’t have to worry about tonight was explaining to Grandma and Grandpa why I had a black eye and a split lip. They were taking a few days off in Pensacola and wouldn’t be around. Mom said she was going to call them and let them know about the barbecue on Sunday, but they wouldn’t be back for a couple of days. With any luck both the eye and the lip would be mostly healed by then.

I tossed my stuff, what there was of it, into the Subaru and headed out. It was rattling a lot worse than I remembered, and while I didn’t recall the mileage I had on it when I left for Iraq, the odometer seemed a lot higher now than before. I was glad my brothers had enjoyed it. I would have to think about a good way of thanking them! More likely I was going to have to sell it or trade it in on something newer. I got to the apartment and let myself inside, to find several cartons, my chimp box, and a few duffle bags inside, stacked neatly to one side. I sighed as I realized I would need to sort out and clean everything. I also realized I had to stock the pantry some. Nothing was there, not even a warm beer.

It was a bit stale and stuffy, so I flipped on the air conditioning and then headed out to the nearest shopping center. I figured that if Kelly came home, we could do some shopping over the weekend. For the moment, I just picked up some beer, soda, snacks, mixers, and booze. I could be domestic in the morning. While I knew exactly what Kelly and I were going to be doing as soon as we saw each other, I was pretty sure I was going to have to take a break at some point. Since the shower in the apartment was too small to use jointly, we could clean up without temptation and go shopping then.

Once I got back to the apartment I started going through my stuff, sorting it out. I figured I had two piles to work through. Army stuff I put in one pile. That could go back into a duffel bag for storage, though I couldn’t imagine what I was storing it for. I’d probably put it all in the back of a closet and forget about it until the moths ate it or I outgrew it. The second pile would be my civilian clothing, both from before I shipped out and more recent stuff from when I came back. Mostly that could be washed and kept, but probably some would have to be tossed, and all of it would have to be cleaned.

Shortly before midnight I saw lights enter the driveway, so I put down what I was fiddling with and looked out the window. Kelly’s little Miata was coming towards the garage. I headed towards the door. There was a covered stairway on the side of the garage, and while I had left the light on, I opened the door and came outside. Kelly had popped out of her car, and when she saw me, she waved. I went down the stairs to meet her, but ended up at her Miata, where I met her.

Kelly wrapped her arms around me and hugged me tightly. “You’re home now?”

“I’m home.”

“For good?”

“For good!”

Kelly hugged me even tighter. After a minute I untangled us and grabbed her bags. She followed me up the stairs and closed the door behind us. I tossed the bags to one side and turned to face her. I could tell she had come over in a hurry, since she looked like she was in average, ratty clothes, not something she was wearing for me. I didn’t care. She looked marvelous to me.

I must not have looked so marvelous to her! “Grim! What happened to you?”

I rolled my eyes. I was going to have to answer this the entire weekend. “I’m fine, babe. It’ll be all right.”

“Grim! You’ve been fighting! What happened?”

“Kelly, calm down. I haven’t been fighting.” Getting punched by a cop when your hands are cuffed behind your back is not much of a fight. “I’ll explain it later. Don’t worry. Everything will be just fine.”

“Grim!”

There was only one way to settle my fiancée down, and that was to divert her attention to something else. I went to her and pulled her into my arms and lowered my head to hers. “Let’s talk later,” I told her. After that I pulled her over to the bed and we didn’t talk for quite a while.

It was very late, or perhaps very early, when we did get around to talking, and I explained what had happened earlier. Kelly simply nodded in understanding, which surprised me. “I’d like to say I’m surprised, but I’m not. We’ve been having a lot of problems with the cops lately. I don’t see much of it since I’ve been living mostly over in Athens for the last few years, but I hear about it from Mom. Your father and your grandfather will probably be able to tell you more. I know a black kid got killed a couple of years ago, and there’s been a lot of stuff in the paper and on the news. They even had a riot over on Bleecker Street.”

“A riot!”

“Uh, huh. Ask your parents.”

“Huh!”

“Grim, you’re out now, right?” she asked.

“What? Out of jail or out of the Army?”

“The Army.”

I nodded. “Pretty much. I’m in the Individual Ready Reserve, at least for another few years, but they would have to call me back to duty first. I mean theoretically they could, but I doubt it. Why?”

“So, it’s for real. You’re out and we can get married?” she asked.

Kelly was laying half on top of me, looking up at me as she said this. I smiled at her and nodded. “Just say when.”

“When! Ask me, ask me again!”

“Hmmm?”

“Say it again! Ask me to marry you all over again! Make it real this time, like we can really get married,” she told me.

I laughed but nodded. “Okay, Kelly Bridget O’Connor, would you please make me the happiest man in the world and marry me and be my wife and bear my children and grow old with me? Is that good enough for you?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes! I’ll marry you; I’ll marry you!” Kelly sealed the deal with a kiss, and then we stopped talking again.

At our next break I asked her, “So, now that I’ve asked - again! - and you’ve said yes, what’s the plan? When did you want to do this? I need to get a job, if nothing else, and you’re still in school.”

She gave a small grimace but nodded. “No, I need to graduate first. It’s not that there’s a rule against it, but it would take up so much time that I’d probably be delayed graduating another semester. It’s going to be tight for next May as it is. Besides, that’s over in Athens, and you’re still going to be here.”

“That still beats you in Athens and me in Watertown.”

That earned a big grin. “Very true! So, you find a job and we’ll plan the wedding over the winter and get married right after graduation.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I agreed. We didn’t talk for a bit more, and then fell asleep.

I was up early and pulled some shorts on, and then went outside. With Kelly sleeping next to me, I didn’t have The Nightmare. It was brisk in the fall dawn, not quite chilly, but not summer any longer. I hoped my grandparents would let me stay here for the time being. I had my savings from my time in the Army, and that was about $75-kay, but I could easily blow that. I needed a job and I had to start going back to school. I wanted to finish my two-year degree, at the least. That could qualify me for a lot of things my high school diploma wouldn’t qualify me for. I needed to get a job and figure out where I could live that I could afford. I needed a new, or at least newer, car. Ultimately, I might end up following Kelly where she would go. She was the one getting the doctorate in math, so she would be making a lot more money than I would. Life was a whole lot more complicated out of the Army than in.

I took a final deep breath of that crisp and clean and unencumbered Georgia air, and then went back inside. Kelly was up and in the bathroom, so I cleaned up a bit and made the bed. When she came out, I grabbed my toilet kit and went in. We could go out to breakfast and then do some shopping. I needed to be house trained again, she had told me.

Or not. When I left the bathroom, I had a towel wrapped around my waist. Kelly hadn’t gotten dressed, though. She was wearing a tiny satin robe and laying back seductively on the bed. “Grim, I’ve been wondering what kind of husband you’re going to be. I’ve heard about husbands who are always demanding that their wives satisfy them. Are you going to be that kind of husband?”

I smiled at her. “Satisfy them? How?”

“Are you going to be the type of husband who demands his wife satisfy his needs all the time? The type who uses his wife all day and all night?”

I came closer to the bed. That robe was very small and very sheer. “And if I was?”

“Then I had better practice, shouldn’t I? I’d hate to have you unhappy with me.” Kelly rolled over towards me and tugged my towel off and tossed it aside. “Maybe you need to make sure I’m the right woman for you.”

Well, we could always go out for lunch.

By lunchtime both our stomachs were growling, and I was no longer capable of standing up and saluting without some serious nutrition. We both cleaned up again, but this time we got dressed and headed out in Kelly’s Miata for some lunch and groceries. As we drove around town, we made plans. Kelly agreed that I needed to replace the Subaru, though with what we couldn’t decide. I was no longer living in the land of ice and snow, so a four-wheel-drive car was no longer a requirement. Likewise, I didn’t have any boats to haul around, so a gigantic pickup truck like my father’s was probably overkill. She suggested something small and cheap to run, no matter how ugly it looked.

“You’re pretty bossy, you know,” I commented.

“Grim!” she protested.

“I mean, earlier, you were wondering if I was going to be the type of husband who was demanding. How do I know you’re not going to be the type of wife who’s demanding?”

Kelly giggled at that. “Maybe I will be. I think you’ll like what I demand, though.”

“We’ll have to see about that.”

We went over to the Pig to pick up some groceries and staples, and then we went over to Wal-Mart to pick some household-type stuff. For instance, the toaster that was in the apartment was broken on one side, and I hadn’t had a toaster in the barracks at Drum (banned, along with hot plates and toaster ovens.) I was trying to keep my spending down, but I did need to pick up some stuff. I also made a list of things I needed that I should discuss first. For instance, I really needed some extra drawers or a dresser or something for clothing, but maybe somebody in the family had some old furniture to get rid of. I could ask at the barbecue on Sunday. Kelly nodded, and said her parents would be there also, so I should ask them, too.

A big topic was our future together. Kelly was in her last year at UGA and was finishing up her doctoral work. She tried to explain it once, but it was in something she called algorithmic design, and my eyes started glazing over before she finished the first sentence. She said it was cutting edge, whatever that meant. With any luck at all, she would have most of the work finished by Christmas or New Year’s, and then spend the rest of the school year polishing it and defending it. I offered to lend her some body armor and a helmet, but she said it wasn’t that kind of defense.

One very interesting thing she told me was that she already had feelers out to both Matucket State and M-Triple-C. She was looking for an assistant professor position at either school since that would allow her to stay in Matucket. “I really don’t want to move away, Grim,” she told me.

“Huh. I figured I’d be the one following you around, not the other way.”

She nodded. “I know. That still might happen, but this is my home as much as it is yours.”

“How’s the professor thing work, anyway?”

“Well, pretty much like anywhere, I guess. I know I’ll have to apply for the job, like with any job, but they judge me based on the research I did and the papers I’ve written. I’ve had my name on a couple of things my professor has written, you know, down in fine print at the bottom. My doctoral dissertation will be the big one, of course.”

“You’d be a P-H-D, right?”

She nodded. “The first step is called an assistant professor, which is a tenure track position. If you do well at that, you can become an associate professor. After that you can be promoted to full professor. Once you’ve got tenure somewhere, things are easier. You can go to a different school, and when you negotiate you can insist on having tenure there.”

I had to get Kelly to explain tenure to me, which took a while and sounded odd. She also explained that the requirements were different at a four-year school like Matucket State than at a community college like M-Triple-C. To teach at Matucket State you needed a doctorate, like she would have, but a community college usually only required a master’s degree.

“Which pays more?”

“Matucket State, I’m sure. They’ll also have a lot more opportunities to do research and write papers. On the other hand, junior college involves less time. Those are mostly teaching colleges, which is why they have a lot of adjuncts. You must have seen that when you were taking classes at Fort Drum.”

I nodded. “Sort of. I know we usually had some teachers who were doing it part-time. They might have a regular job or might teach high school and then come over to the post afterwards.”

“That’s typical of adjuncts. You only need a master’s to teach there, so you get a lot of business guys with MBAs or accounting or law degrees. Schoolteachers, too, since you have to have a master’s to be certified as a schoolteacher. Still, there are rules about how many teachers can be adjuncts, so community colleges need to have full time staff, and they like doctorates for that,” she explained. “Here’s an idea! I could conceivably get a job teaching math at either Matucket High or East Matucket High, and then be an adjunct at M-Triple-C or Matucket State. I’d probably make as much money. It wouldn’t be tenure track, though.”

“Huh.” I didn’t know what to tell her, since she knew way more about this than I did. “Well, if you can stay in Matucket, good. I’ll have to ask around myself. I need to line up a job. I don’t think your father will be too happy walking you down the aisle to meet an unemployed bum.”

“Maybe he knows a place you can work,” she commented.

I laughed loud and long at that. “I think your father would figure the perfect job for me is back in Iraq catching bullets! No thanks!”

“Grim! Daddy’s not like that!” she protested.

“Yeah? Remember when he caught us back when we were kids? Be glad he doesn’t own a gun!”

Kelly giggled at that. “Can you blame him? Still, that was years ago. I think he’s gotten over that by now.”

“Let’s just say I don’t want to chance it!”

We took the groceries and other stuff over to the apartment, but rather than start screwing around again, we headed back out. I wanted to drive around a bit and see Matucket some more. We ended up at the East Wind China Buffet for an early dinner, and then we drove over to the lake. We grabbed a cold six pack and a disposable foam cooler at the Deli-Mart and drove up to the O’Connor property on the east side. It seemed like it had been years since we had been up there. Kelly and I opened the shed and dug out a ground cloth and a blanket and laid them out.

“It seems like forever since I’ve been up here,” I told her. I sat down and cracked open a beer.

“It’s probably been two years,” she replied. “You went to Iraq in March of 2006, but you hadn’t been home since the Christmas before, and it was too cold to come up here then. We probably haven’t been here since your first leave after getting back from your first tour.”

I started doing the math in my head, but she sounded right. “More than two years, more like two-and-a-half. God, that seems like forever. No wonder it looks different. It’s been growing all that time.”

“I know,” she agreed. I looked at her curiously. “I haven’t been up here all that often, either. Occasionally I would come up with my parents, but this place always seemed like it was our place, yours and mine. I hope my parents don’t sell it or something. Even if we’re in an apartment somewhere, I’ll still want to come up here with you.”