Chapter 8

As it turned out, I didn't actually end up being sent in-country. I went through the six weeks of basic training like everybody else, but it turned out I had a knack for logistics. I was assigned to the Quartermaster Corps and stationed at Fort Carson, in Colorado. I breathed a huge sigh of relief at this, and so did Tabby, in her answering letter to my news.

I was stationed there for about a week when I got an urgent message to come to the post hq. It was Tabby, and she was crying again.

"What's the matter Tabby?" I asked, afraid again. Who had died this time?

"I'm sorry Bobby," she said, sounding hesitant and unsure. "I know you're not supposed to get personal calls out there but it's an emergency. I'm pregnant."

I heard a rushing in my ears. Of all the things I expected to hear, this wasn't it.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"Very. It probably happened on that last night we were together. Bobby, are you mad?"

The question flummoxed me. "Mad? Why would I be mad?"

"Well, we talked about kids but it was only hypothetical. But now it's real. Sometimes when it slaps us in the face -"

"Tabby," I interrupted. "I'm not upset or disappointed and I'm not going to desert you. This moves things up a little bit, is all. I'm going to be out of here in a year and we're going to be fine, because I'll have GI Bill money to send me to college."

"That's fine for later, but what about now?" she said.

"Let me finish, my love. I have a very important question to ask you?"

There was suddenly silence on the line. I heard a deep breath.

"Tabbitha Marie Langston, will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?"

"Oh, Bobby. Of course I will. You know I've wanted to marry you since we were six. But how will we do it?"

"I'll have to get back to you on that. But marrying me means we're eligible for base housing and you don't have to try to raise my son or daughter in a shitty little apartment all by yourself. We got really really lucky that I wasn't sent in-country."

I heard her gulp over the line. "You just made me the happiest woman in town, Bobby. You get back to me with the arrangements and I'll take care of finding a dress. Oh I can't believe it, finally."

"I love you, my Ebony Eyes," I said, my heart filling with emotion. It might not have gone the way I originally thought it would, but I was not complaining too much.

We said good bye and I promised to call her again in a couple of days once I had something definite.

I quickly realized that, on a weekend pass, I wouldn't have time to get home and marry that baby of mine. I'd need a minimum of four days at the very least. And I wanted Tabby's wedding day to be special. A girl only gets one first wedding, and I intended her first to be her last.

So I went to the post chaplain, and he authorized me to send for my Ebony Eyes. His name was Arnold Bradbury and he was a white-haired old man who looked as though he had joined the army right around the start of the Great War. Once he heard the story, he arranged a flight for Tabby from Portland to Denver and also helped me get base housing.

My Ebony Eyes was coming to me from out of the skies on Flight 1203, which was due to arrive at five in the morning on February Second, 1967. Just like the army, trying to find the cheapest flight possible. Poor Tabby would have to board the plane at ten in the evening her time.

I called Tabby with the information and she was bubbling over with happiness that her lifelong dream was finally coming true at last. She was getting to marry me, and she was having my baby all at once.

"We're going to be so happy," she gushed over the phone on the first of February. "I only wish Mama and Daddy could be here," she said softly, sounding a bit choked up.

"They're watching over us. I'm sure if I ever treat you bad I'll get a light fixture knocked on my head," I said.

"And not necessarily by them either," she snickered. "I know they're happy for us. I never told you this, but Mama actually helped me pick out the perfect dress when I was fifteen. I had Betsy help me let it out yesterday, and it's folded and ready to go."

"I'm sure you'll look beautiful in it," baby," I said. "You'd look beautiful in a flour sack."

She giggled. "I also have one more thing," she said, now serious. "I've got a portrait of my parents that I want hung above the altar in the chapel. I want them to watch us get married, the way they should have been able to."

I was now a little teary-eyed too. "Of course," I said softly. "I can't see any problem with that."

So there I was, sitting at the airport, amidst two hundred other people waiting for Flight 1203. It was the middle of the damn night and icy cold out. I had arrived at three in the morning just to be sure, much to the amusement of my bunkmates. "Bobby wants pussy bad," Derek Mathews guffawed, making lewd gestures with his fingers.

"At least I don't have to fuck the barrel of my M-16 when I want some," I sniped right back, to loud roars of laughter.

Derek reddened, then busted out laughing too. "Asshole," he smirked. "Wait till I piss in your fucking punchbowl!"

I fidgeted in the hard chair just overflowing with excitement. In an hour or two, I would whisper "I do" to my beautiful Ebony Eyes. And at long, long last, she would be completely mine in all ways, emotional, physical, and legal.

But as the hours wore on, I grew increasingly nervous. It was five-thirty and the plane was way overdue. I went out and looked around and didn't see it in the sky. There were rumors of a blizzard hitting the Rockies, but that was supposed to be to the east of us.

I went back inside to the airlines desk, where a bored guy was reading a magazine. "Sir?" I asked. "I wonder why Flight 1203 is so late. Any ideas?"

He barely looked up from his magazine. "They might've taken off late or run into some turbulent weather and had to alter their course. Flight control hasn't sent anything back to us yet."

I went back outside and waited at the gate, my hands shoved deep into my greatcoat pockets. The wind was cutting across the flat runways in an icy torrent, slow, steady and freezing. Frost glimmered on the ground under the lights of the terminal building. A couple of guys were leaning against the hangar, the glowing coals of their cigarettes punctuating the cold night as they chatted about something.

I stared upward and watched the beacon light from the control tower as it swept across the ebony skies, as if it were searching for my Ebony Eyes. And I waited some more, growing increasingly nervous. Something was up. I just knew it.

I went back in at seven thirty. The flight was two hours late and I wasn't the only one making a fuss now. But before I could join the queue, an announcement came over the loudspeaker, and I fell to the floor in a dead faint.

"Would those having relatives or friends on Flight Number 1203 please report to the chapel across the street at once?"

I don't remember a whole lot after that. Somebody found me on the floor and I was led across the street to the chapel, which was there for just such occasions. Tears were flooding down my face. My head was full of an awful ringing, and I felt a burning deep inside. Tabby was gone. The girl I had loved all of my life, gone in a fiery plane crash, taking my unborn child with her. I pictured her clutching my picture in her hands, and calling my name as the plane fell like an aluminum coffin out of the sky to break apart in the mountains.

The blizzard that was supposed to be to the east had swept around and sprung up in the western slopes of the Rockies. There were no sophisticated navigation systems at that time, and apparently the pilot was a newbie and had crashed the plane into a mountain top. There were no survivors.