At Chambley Air Force Base, the Americans had taken the trailers. They had taken the F-84 Thunderstreaks. And they had left everything else, from the popcorn boxes in the base theatre, which I could clearly see when I looked in the door, to the drape on the chapel altar. It had not been molested or touched, since the day the Americans locked the front gate and walked away.
I sat on the front bumper of the rental car with my mother, looking out over where the playground still sat, the swings and monkey bars an absurd sixties sculpture of rust and rampant weeds as the wild French pasture attempted to reclaim its own. We sat at the site of our trailer, and stared out over to where the jets had come and gone in a constant, reassuring background drone of engine roar the whole time we lived there.
And maybe, for a moment, hearing them still.
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Air Force Brat Page 7
