An Anomaly in Time
by Charles Merkel
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
conclusion
Tommy lingered behind the soldiers in line, then watched as the last of the throng squeezed through the entrance to the theatre. He realized his anxiety was so intense that he scarcely felt the bone-chilling wind. A white car rounded the corner, and Tommy swung himself through the door as it stopped.
He lurched back as Lieutenant Wingate floored the accelerator pedal. Then, righting himself, he said, “God, you drive like you give shots.”
She laughed aloud. “Good one.”
He gazed at her for several seconds, then said, “You look really nice, Glenda.”
She was wearing a black dress, with pearls, under a long red coat. He could see a good portion of her legs and noticed that her stockings weren’t white.
“Well, thank you, Tommy. Have you thought about me at all today?”
“Only every minute,” he said.
She chuckled. “All right, when we get to the gate, sit back and relax. They’ll just salute me and wave us through. But, if they don’t, remember, I’m riding you to Rolla to meet a friend. Got it?” she said.
“Sure.”
“Kind of exciting, isn’t it, Tommy? Breaking rules and sneaking off into the night with an officer.” She grinned.
“Well, seeing how you’re the officer, yes, it is.”
Glenda guided her car into a parking slot several places down from the entrance of her apartment building. As they had discussed, she went up alone, then signaled an all clear with the lights. Twenty seconds later, he slipped through her door and locked it behind him.
He sat back on the couch. She brought him champagne then slid in gracefully beside him. After a little small talk, he reached for the bottle to fill the glasses again and almost knocked it over.
“Tommy, relax. There’s no reason to be nervous,” she said. “Drink some more champagne. The dangerous part is over. When I take you back, if anyone should ask, I can just say I recognized you in Rolla from when you were a patient and offered you a ride back to the fort. If that’s what you’re worried about. But then, maybe you’re afraid of me.”
“Nah, don’t be ridiculous. I’m not nervous,” he said with a little gulp.
She snickered. “Yeah, sure.”
After a time, she led him into the kitchen. She had cooked a roast with all the trimmings. She put on a Sinatra album with the volume on low. Only two candles lit the apartment at dinner. Her eyes were incredibly alluring in the soft light.
Following dessert and an after-dinner cordial, she put on another record. “I love this music. Are you going to ask me to dance?”
He sat dumbfounded for a few seconds. “I’m, like, a terrible dancer.”
“Are you going to disappoint me?” she asked. “I love dancing slowly and being held.”
“Would you like to dance, Glenda?”
Part of her living room floor was exposed hardwood, perfect for dancing in the candlelight. Tommy held her close, and put his cheek next to hers. During the fourth song, she asked, “Isn’t this nice?”
“It’s wonderful,” he whispered.
She began to rub the back of his neck. After a few more minutes, they began kissing. She controlled the tempo and they kissed very tenderly. The softness of her mouth was heaven to Tommy.
Between songs she unbuttoned his shirt and began smoothing his chest, not unlike she had all week, only now the sensation seemed much greater. Ever so slowly, they moved, and her comeliness and experience held him in a constant state of rapture. He hoped that, as wonderfully as things were going, that they could still escalate.
Then, to his absolute astonishment, she turned around in his arms and whispered, “Unzip me.”
Her back and shoulders were smoother yet better defined than he’d imagined. As his hands explored her bare skin, it was all he could do to contain himself. While kissing her lightly between her shoulder blades, he noticed that her dress now only draped her hips loosely. With his slightest nudge, it slid to her ankles in a silken heap. Clad only in heels, stockings, and underwear, she led him into her bedroom.
The ecstasy of her sweetest gifts somehow seemed almost secondary to the long periods in which he held her next to him. Several hours flew by, then, at nearly 4 a.m., she said, “I hope I haven’t overloaded your senses.”
“You absolutely have, but I’m going to try to forgive you.” As sleep had just about overcome them, he realized that he would be staying, that this dream could still have another day, and hopefully another night.
Daybreak was wonderful, and for the first time in his life he felt totally free and in true pursuit of happiness. He pondered his years at home and his volunteering for the draft. Between school, the demands of his sport, his parents, his job, and now the army, rules had always kept him either in or out, but always away from what he truly desired. Now, awakening next to a lovely woman in an apartment in a rustic town in south central Missouri, he felt a sense of bliss that he’d never known.
Later in the morning, they wandered through a hilly, wooded area Glenda told him she’d always wanted to explore. That afternoon, afraid that he might have a relapse, she insisted they stay inside. His amazing fortune continued as they heard Notre Dame had beaten Southern California fifty-one to nothing, a victory that would seal the national championship for the Fighting Irish.
“This is too good to be true,” he said. “This weekend is without a doubt the greatest in my whole life.”
She took his hand. “I’m truly glad you feel that way, Tommy.”
That evening was close to a carbon copy of the first. Before he dozed off in her arms, he mused silently, “I am a cool guy, after all. All I needed was a chance.”
She had him back at four on Sunday, two hours before his pass expired.
“Do you think we could do this again, like next weekend, Glenda?” he asked. “I mean if I’m still here.”
She smiled, “I’d say that’s a big if, Thomas. You will soon find that the army moves fast only when you don’t want it to.”
Her words proved correct. On Monday morning he received his orders to report to Fort Polk for infantry advanced individual training. He was to be there on Thursday at eighteen hundred hours.
On Wednesday evening, Glenda picked him up and brought him back to her apartment once again. They had dinner and afterwards another fantastic interlude.
Four hours later, however, as they drove back to Leonard Wood, where he’d be catching a bus to Saint Louis in the morning, Tommy sensed something was amiss. “This has been the best time of my life,” he said.
“I’m glad, Tommy. I really am,” she said softly, but without her earlier enthusiasm.
“Glenda, I love you.”
Silence prevailed for several seconds. Then she said, “That wasn’t part of the deal, Tommy. I obviously care for you very deeply, but we’d just be kidding ourselves about the future.”
“I may not have a future.”
“Obviously, I’ve taken that into consideration. I wanted our time together to be extraordinary for you. I hope I’ve done that.”
“Well, sure you have. It’s been so great that I haven’t really thought about it ending until now.”
“It’s been nice for me too, I mean that. I’ve never done anything like this, I mean with a patient, someone I hardly knew. It almost seems like a dream. It’s something I wanted to do for you. But, Tommy — ”
“Glenda, are you saying that it would be an absolute impossibility? No chance ever?” he asked, cutting her off.
“To say no chance, is probably not fair. But, Tommy, I’m eight years older than you. Do you realize all that would have to happen? I know what I want from life, you don’t really, in any detail.”
“I want to love you forever. And be with you and take you all over the world. And have a family with you, those are details.”
“Tommy, with your potential, when you get out, you need to go to college. Plus, I wouldn’t even consider a serious relationship with anyone who didn’t have an education,” she said, firmly. “By the time you’ll graduate, I’ll be in my mid-thirties. Don’t you think that at least one of us will fall in love with someone else between now and then? Do you think that a handsome, educated, athletic young man of twenty-four would even have any interest in an old maid that much older?”
“Glenda, tell me you’ll write me in Nam. I mean, one thing at a time. I really need for you to do that,” he said, feeling a peculiar panic.
They had stopped in front of the holding barracks, a daring move for her, but neither seemed concerned.
“Tommy, I hate this. I’d be leading you on. I’d be emotionally strained and feeling very guilty about living my life, if I did.”
“No, I promise I won’t take it like you’re leading me on. I just don’t want it to end like this.”
“Tommy, I’m just an army nurse. I’m very ordinary.”
“No, you’re so kind. You love your job. You’re like an angel who came to earth for me.”
“If I knew then, what I know now about being a GI nurse, I’d never have joined. I thought it was patriotic and a good experience. But as I treat this endless stream of young men as they prepare for war, and I realize many of them won’t be coming back, it has become too much for me. I’m getting out in six months. I don’t know where I’m going, but it will be away from this grim, this horrible, empty, scenario.”
She grabbed him and kissed him passionately. “Call me from Fort Polk in a few weeks. I will talk to you. But you must understand, it’s futile.”
Too many thoughts flooded his mind for him to debate her. On one hand, he felt devastated. But, on the other, she had just bestowed on him several days that a month before he’d have given anything for, even if he knew it would end exactly the same. “Thank you, Glenda,” he managed. “For everything you’ve done. But part of the deal or not, I do love you.”
Tommy finished infantry school in early February and acquired the military occupational specialty of 11B10; a rifleman. He called Glenda. He suggested that he drive from Indiana and visit her for a day or two while he was on his two-week leave before Vietnam. She informed him that she was going on vacation with some girlfriends to Florida but, even if she were not, it would not be feasible. She also mentioned a doctor that she had seen a few times.
On an icy, gray February morning Tommy boarded an army bus at Fort Dix, New Jersey. The bus, one in a convoy, would take him and hundreds of other troops to McGuire Air Force Base where they would board C-141 cargo planes, specially adapted for troops. They would fly to Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage, Alaska, on to Tokyo; and then to Saigon. The trip would take over twenty hours.
Never feeling more down in his life, he tried to tell himself he was better off than someone whose final hour had come on death row. He phoned his mother and listened to twenty minutes of crying. Then, on an impulse, he phoned the old hospital at Fort Leonard Wood and asked for Lieutenant Wingate.
When she came to the phone, he told her, “It’s now, Glenda. I’m getting on the plane as soon as I hang up. I wanted to say good-bye.” He tried not to choke up.
Several seconds passed before she replied. “Tommy, please be careful,” she said softly. “I will pray for you and think of you often.”
“I will, Glenda. Thank you for the best two and a half weeks of my life. I’m still kinda hoping maybe you’ll write now and then.”
She surprised him by sobbing. When she finally stopped, she said, “Tommy, forgive me. I so wanted to take care of you when you had pneumonia. I was actually attracted to you. When I decided to do what I did, I thought that, given all you had told me about your young life, all the work, the missed opportunities, the restrictions, and now, at only eighteen, going off to fight a war that I would give you something to hold on to, something truly splendid.
“I didn’t want to hurt you, Tommy. I only wanted then, and now, for you to see me for what I am to you, an anomaly in time, someone, who came along at your most desolate moment and granted you your most torrid, impossible wish.” She sniffled. “God, Tommy, please, tell me you understand.”
“It’s okay, Glenda, please don’t cry. I do understand, and it was the greatest gift I’ve ever had.”
* * *
Tommy sat in the middle of a long row of seats. He could not help but hear the soldier directly behind him consoling another troop. “Hey, man, it ain’t so bad. Only one out of a hundred soldiers die over there.”
For an instant, Tommy felt slightly better. Then, the same guy continued in a lower tone of voice, “Unless, of course, you’re infantry, then it’s like one out of three.”
An older but seemingly friendly soldier with a jagged scar on his cheek, took the seat next to Tommy. As he wiped his blurry eyes and surveyed the cold fuselage in which he would travel, Tommy shook his head in sad amazement that it had no windows and the makeshift seats faced backwards. Then it hit him that he would be one of nearly a hundred troops squashed together for the ill-destined voyage.
“I saw you in the phone booth,” his scarred travel mate was saying. “Must’ve been saying good-bye to your fiancée.”
“Nah,” Tommy said, trying to smile.
“Well, your girlfriend, then.”
“No, she’s—”
“Gotta be some chick that you’re gonna be coming back to or you wouldn’t be so bummed,” the soldier persisted.
“No,” Tommy mumbled, then, after several seconds of staring at the back of the seat inches from his face, he took a deep breath and said quietly, “Just, just, an epic, wonderful anomaly in time.”
Copyright © 2025 by Charles Merkel
