excerpts from Chapter 4 of book … WELCOME HOME

As the airplane was touching down in Columbus, Ohio, the “what will she look like, what will I say” monomaniacal thoughts coursed through my head. My anxiety grew exponentially. I hadn’t seen Karen since I left for Vietnam twelve months ago. A few pictures she sent looked nothing like the person I had left a year past. We initially wrote letters, albeit infrequent at best. I did, after a few months in the “bush,” wrote and asked her to stop writing. The red mail bag’s arrival without any mail and the constant thought of her was weighing heavy on my spirit. Those emotional “wastage of circumdenudation” was distracting me from what I came to Vietnam to do, hunt down and kill bad guys.

  I feel like I had changed beyond recognition, but would I recognize her. I was thinner, having lost almost forty pounds in Vietnam. That can happen with a plebeian diet and walking, continuously walking, through the mountains and jungles. My psychic had also changed. I left, a puerile teen looking to validate my manhood. I would return with a ripened, mature attitude. Every problem presented to me would be small compared to a year in the bush. Hell, I survived.  

  The airport at Port Columbus looked more like a grain storage elevator than an international commercial hub it would later become. The airfield had two runways and a fence to keep the cows from wandering onto the airport proper. The terminal was a single brick building with one baggage collection caracole and a parking lot to accommodate seventy-five cars. No jetway, just steps that abutted the airplane door allowing the passengers to step down onto the tarmac and move directly to the terminal entrance. The terminus doors opened up into a wide access area that allowed people to walk from the parking lot into the terminal and directly to the airplane gate. The building design had a section at the entrance relegated to a rental car agencies and ticket area. The whole terminal concourse was less than a football field in length. 

  As I took my first step out of the airplane door, I notice two young women on top of the airport viewing deck, frantically waving. My eyes focused on the blonde lass, attired in a white paisley blouse. As I gave a casual smiling head nod to the pair of females, their waving and hoopla became more intense. Was this my homecoming? Was this to be my reward?

  My first thoughts were, the night air sure is heavier than California, and that young blonde sure is heavier than my pipe dreams. I begin to move slowly down the steps onto the tarmac. For some instinctual reason, my moves were slow and deliberate, head down as if I was still walking point in the jungle looking for booby traps. I strolled across the asphalt and walked into the terminal entrance. The two gals on the viewing desk broke visual contact and appeared to hurry down to the flight arrival gate. My trepidation grew.

As I warily stepped into the terminal, I saw the two ladies trot through the entrance door. Though they were a good thirty yards from me, I could see the profile of my blonde aspirations. She was not the remembrance of my utopias ladylove, just an average looking girl with an ugly paisley blouse. As she moved through the terminal, coming even closer, her waving appeared manic as her steps quickened. I remained slow and deliberate, still looking for that booby trap.

  With her rush toward me and the physical distance between us dwindling, I painfully felt our destinies soon would converge. Her nonathletic pace quickened as her thickset features became tattooed into my brain. The classic beauty attributes, perfect skin, and shapely body, I remembered were not. I replaced the devastating disappointment with a process of extricating myself from this oh shit moment. I immediately thought up an “arioso” that would be polite and believable as well as melodious. My critical thinking and military training skills would contrive a way to pull the “ejection handle,” find my high school buddies, get drunk, and raise hell. The idea of a carnal reunion was out of the question. The confluence of our two souls just wasn’t going to happen.

  As she came closer, I suddenly experienced a Vietnam flashback. At that moment, I saw a fragmentation grenade exploding with melancholy. Surreal as if something out of a Jefferson Airplane song. My heartbeat accelerated, the mouth was dry, and my shaking hands were sweaty. I continually assessed the battlefield as the PTSD began to overwhelm me.  

   Within twenty feet, the vision of her was as demoralizing as the 1968 Vietnam Tet Offensive, or worst, Ohio State losing to Stanford in the 1971 Rose Bowl. Within ten feet of our reunion, I made a command decision, our reunifying love was not to be. With a broad, disproportionate smile, this quick-paced blonde reality began to gallop awkwardly toward my prophylactic citadel. With her welcoming arms extended and plumpish physique entering the kill zone, I took a half step forward and shuffled sideways bracing myself for impact. The plan would be to offer a quick hug, a peck on the cheek, and engage in casual dialogue on the ride home. I would elocute, “It’s not you, it me. War was hell, I need time to adjust.” With only seconds to spare, I rehearsed the proverbial canned speech. 

  Then it happened, the gallop didn’t slow down, and the extended arms didn’t widen to embrace. The paisley bloused blonde girl ran right by me. Holly shit! A tactical error. I had just called in an airstrike on my own position. I did a quick BDA (Bomb Damage Assessment) and reconstituted my plan of attack. So, where was the muse I woolgathered for the last twelve months?

  Being a smart, wily combat veteran, I began thinking of a strategy to ensure I didn’t make the same mistake twice. Hell, Charlie couldn’t kill me, I wasn’t about to get blown away in an airport terminal.  I needed to develop a solid blueprint for success. I decided to use the airport paging system to facilitate my ruse. I paged overhead, “Karen Armintrout, please meet your party at the Hertz Rent A Car counter.” After the overhead went out a second time, I positioned myself out of sight from the counter. If the next damsel was not a nymphet, I was bolting out of the airport.

  I waited, not a few moments, but patiently long enough to see my intended. Then the vision, Erato incarnated. A stargazed memento carved into my many imaged slumbers, a hope beyond expectations. She wore a perfectly fitting blue jumpsuit emblazed with white flowers. Her young body filled out the fashion in a way only a professional model could. Her beautiful face could launch a thousand ships, or in my case, a thousand M48 Patton Tanks. Her hair was effulgent,perfectly styled with every golden strand in place. 

  She moved to the designated rendezvous area with a grace and flow of the cultured refinement I fell in love with, this was her. Before I started a move out of my cover and concealment, I needed to make sure that it truly was her. I thought for a moment to drop to my knees and ask God, “Please be this, my destination.” But since I had been asking God for too many things the last twelve months, I decided not to impose and allow him to answer someone else’s prayers. I would take my chances.

  I moved slowly toward this beauty. Recognition was instant, not only from her ambient grace and pulchritude, but from the look in her eyes, smile on the face, and aura infusing our intended cradling. We smiled acknowledgment, touched, then hugged, hugged, and hugged again. Restive at first, then an unrestrained, soft velvet caress, followed by an impregnable clasping that resembled a tethered ship moored in a harbor with the coming of a CAT 4 hurricane. The unspoken outcry, “I’ll never let you go,” was ever-present.

  We spent the next three days and two nights in an amorous tornadic super twister. We took breaks only to order pizza and dine out at that fine culinary establishment, White Castle. She was it, the real thing. Since I had two more years on my enlistment, I would have to go back to Camp Pendleton after my leave was up in three weeks. I didn’t want any more long separations so I asked her to come live with me in California. She said she “wasn’t a hippy” and would not live with anyone without being married. So, I asked her to marry me. Not very romantic but effective. A month later, we were a young married couple living on the beach in Southern Cal, starting our work in figuring out this “life” contest… fifty years later, game, set, match, championship.