Daring Chloe

by Walker, Laura Jensen

  “So, Annette, what’s the deal?” Becca asked. “I thought you’d be really good at all this camping stuff since you were in the Air Force. Didn’t you have to go through boot camp?”

  “Basic training. And if you need marchin’ lessons, I’m your girl. But beyond that not so much.”

  Jenna licked teriyaki sauce off her fingers. “But I thought part of basic training was physical conditioning and learning how to survive in the wild or a war zone.”

  “Not when I joined in the mid-seventies. At least for the women. We did have this one-day obstacle course and physical conditioning, but that was just runnin’ around the track and doing a few sit-ups and female push-ups.”

  “Female push-ups? What the heck are female push-ups?”

  “Hand me that towel and I’ll show you.”

  Annette spread Kailyn’s striped beach towel on the uneven ground and stretched out on her stomach. She placed her hands at shoulder-level, palms down, in standard push-up position, and bent her legs upward at the knees so that the soles of her feet pointed towards the sky. In that position, she raised her body off the ground, keeping her knees bent, and pushed up and down twice. “See? Like that.”

  “Those aren’t even real push-ups!” Jenna said.

  “What can I say? We were just followin’ orders. When we ran laps, we had to hold our imaginations the whole way.”

  “Your imaginations?”

  “Our boobs.” Annette giggled. “Since male recruits often marched by the track where we were running and Uncle Sam didn’t want them distracted by our runaway feminine charms, we were instructed to run with our fists pressed together beneath our bosoms, holding them in place. No jigglin’ allowed.”

  “You have got to be kidding. Jiggle police?” Becca said. “How ridiculous is that?”

  “You want to hear ridiculous?” Annette chomped on a Dorito and chased it down with a swig of diet cola. “One day our entire flight was lined up single file at attention while the beauty instructor went down the line one woman — ”

  “Beauty instructor?” Jenna yelped.

  “Yep. One woman at a time and plucked our eyebrows with these special slice-and-dice tweezers. Ma’am, yes Ma’am!” Annette saluted. “Your tax dollars at work, ladies.”

  “Did you shoot your machine guns before or after the eyebrow plucking session?”

  “Shoot? Women weren’t allowed to shoot guns back then. It wouldn’t have been machine guns anyway,” she said. “While the male recruits were getting their M16 rifle training down at the shooting range to become proud American fighting men, we were reportin’ to beauty class where we learned to walk, talk, wear our hair, and apply makeup.” Annette waggled her sculpted eyebrows. “In the event we were ever taken prisoners of war, at least we would be fashionable POWs.”

  “What? ” we roared in outraged estrogen unison.

  “Oh, honey, I’m just getting started.” Annette unzipped her hooded sweatshirt and fanned her face. “Is it hot out here, or am I flashin’ again?”

  “You’re sitting too close to the campfire,” Tess said. “Just back up a ways and tell us some more about your feminine boot camp. This is better than ghost stories.”

  “I’ll say.” Paige giggled. “Although I’m not sure which is scarier.”

  “Well, in the seventies, not only was the prevailing feelin’ in Uncle Sam’s Air Force that women didn’t need to know how to shoot a gun — since of course they would never go into combat — what was really important was that our bars of soap were never marred by an errant bubble. During our daily inspection when our TI would go through our lockers, she inspected everything. Even our soap. And if she found one tiny speck of lint on your bar of soap, or even a soap bubble, it was an automatic demerit.”

  “But that’s impossible.” I rubbed my eyes beneath my glasses. “No way can you use a bar of soap and not get a soap bubble on it.”

  “Exactly. Which is why after that inspection, every single bar of Dove, Ivory, and Zest in those dusty Texas barracks was wiped clean of any offendin’ specks and put back into its plastic flip-top home inside each airman’s locker — not to see the light of day again until those six weeks of basic were up. Basic training is a six-week mind game,” Annette explained. “It’s all about followin’ orders, no matter how ridiculous or outrageous they may seem.”

  “I’d never have made it,” Paige said.

  “Me either.” Kailyn looked at her mom with new respect.

  “Never,” I agreed.

  “Oh you’d be surprised what you can do when you have to,” Annette said. “Right, Tess?”

  “You got that right.”

  Kailyn looked at Tess in surprise. “I didn’t know you were in the military.”

  “I wasn’t. But I went through my own basic training with twin seven-year-old boys after my husband died.”

  Tess didn’t talk about that time much, but a look of shared sorrow flickered between us at the remembrance of my beloved Uncle Ted. One day at work he had just dropped dead of a heart attack at the age of thirty-nine.

  “You learn pretty quick how to replace a broken toilet when you don’t have money to hire a plumber,” Tess said.

  I squeezed her hand before directing my attention back to Annette. “What other kind of weird stuff did you do in basic training?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t all pointless and irrelevant activity. I learned the very valuable skills of foldin’ my underwear into equal thirds, rollin’ my pantyhose into a jelly roll measuring exactly three-fourths of an inch in diameter, and spacing my hanging uniforms exactly two fingers apart in my locker.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “How did you ever stand all that ludicrous Mickey Mouse stuff?” Becca asked.

  “There were times I didn’t.” Annette gazed into the flames with a pensive expression. “Once I was lyin’ on the floor beneath my cot, tugging the flat sheet through the chicken-wire frame that held my lumpy mattress to try to get a tautly made bed that would pass inspection. I started bawlin’, and while the tears were running down my cheeks and into my ears, I thought, What in the world am I doing here? I’m an intelligent, creative woman! How did I ever wind up here? ”

  “And how did you?” Paige asked gently.

  “Yeah. Why’d you join the Air Force in the first place?” I grabbed a handful of Doritos from the bag Becca was hoarding. “You don’t seem the type.”

  “What type is that?”

  “I don’t know.” I flushed. “Rugged. Athletic. Outdoorsy?”

  “Those aren’t the only kinds of women who join the Air Force, sweetie. In fact, when I joined in 1974, I heard from a lot of good ol’ boys that there were only three kinds of women who went in the military.” Annette ticked them off on her fingers. “Whores, lesbians, and women searching for a husband.”

  “No way.” Jenna’s high cheekbones darkened with anger.

  “Yep. That was the mind-set at the time. Why else would a woman want to be in the military?”

  “To serve her country and see the world?” Paige offered.

  “Exactly. And to get the GI Bill to go to college afterward. My mama and daddy sure couldn’t afford to send me,” Annette said, “and I surely couldn’t do it on my own. Besides, my daddy had his heart set on me marryin’ the son of one of his good ol’ boy pals — a boy who chewed tobacco and whose idea of a good time was to play pool and drink himself into oblivion at Virgil’s Bar every Saturday night.” She lifted her chin. “So I ran off and joined the Air Force instead. I thought my folks would burst a blood vessel, ’specially Daddy, but I’d just turned eighteen, and there wasn’t nothin’ they could do about it.”

  “Good for you.” Becca gave Annette a vigorous thumbs-up.

  Becca had also left her family the minute she became legal. Only it was her mother who had the drinking problem in the family, not her father. At least as far as she knew. Her parents divorced when she was in the first grade, and Becca had only seen her dad one other time after that
, at her ninth birthday party.

  Paige sent Annette a quizzical glance. “Tell me this. If you had it to do all over again, would you still join the Air Force?”

  “In a heartbeat, honey. It taught me a lot, helped me grow up, and helped me get my college education. And the sweet cherry on top of my Air Force sundae was that by the time I was twenty-one, I’d visited thirteen countries. Not many people can say that.”

  That’s for sure. I’d only been to one other country in my entire life: Mexico, on some high-school mission trips to help out at an orphanage, and, of course, on my honeymoon. On the second missions trip I forgot about not drinking the water and spent most of the trip bolting to the outhouse before I committed a hygienic indiscretion. My stomach threatened to turn at the memory, and I took a deep breath of fresh Mother Nature air.

  “Hey, what’s that funny smell? It’s kind of sweet.”

  “Well, it sure isn’t charcoal.” Becca pressed her thumb and forefinger together as if she were holding something, raised the imaginary object to her lips, and inhaled deeply.

  Jenna nodded in the direction of the hippie campsite behind us. “Talk about getting a natural high.”

  Duh. And I thought Kailyn was naive.

  “I remember those days,” Tess said.

  “You smoked weed?” I stared at my favorite aunt and moral compass.

  “I tried it a couple times when I was a teenager.” She offered an apologetic shrug. “An eternity ago. But it never did anything for me.”

  “Me either.”

  The campfire lit up Kailyn’s shocked face. “Mom! You got high?”

  “Relax, baby girl. I tried smokin’ pot once when I was stationed in Germany — it was the seventies, remember — but I didn’t like it. And good thing, too. One of the guys in the supply squadron got busted with a couple joints and had to serve a few years in a German prison.”

  “Sounds like Midnight Express,” Paige murmured.

  “Except that was a Turkish prison. The German ones weren’t as bad, but they were still nothin’ I cared to see up close and personal. Giving up four years of my life to Uncle Sam was one thing — my choice. But spending four years in prison, and an overseas one at that? Not on your ever-lovin’ life.”

  “Glad to hear it. Somehow I can’t picture myself introducing you as my mother, the ex-con.” Kailyn giggled. “Although, it’s pretty hard to picture the pressed-and-proper woman who doesn’t jaywalk, steal towels from the Holiday Inn, or drive over the speed limit, lighting up an illegal substance either.”

  We all laughed at the mental image of Sergeant Etiquette doing anything remotely illegal.

  Paige speared two marshmallows on a shiny metal skewer and extended it over the flames. “I didn’t realize we’d be playing True Confessions this weekend.”

  “Well, I’m all ears if you’ve got anything you’d like to confess,” Annette said. “Like maybe who ate my last M&M?”

  “No clue.” Paige batted her innocent baby browns, removed her skewer from the flame, and slid the toasted marshmallows onto a waiting graham cracker with a square of Hershey’s chocolate in the center.

  The rest of us followed suit.

  “Now that’s what you call a little piece of heaven right there.” Becca closed her eyes in rapture and licked the blackened marshmallow and melted chocolate from her upper lip. “Thanks for bringing all the s’more stuff, Tess. I haven’t had these in years.”

  “It’s not a camping trip without s’mores. Ask my boys.”

  “Speaking of boys, how old are yours again?” Kailyn’s man-radar blinked on full alert.

  “Sixteen, so dial it on down a notch.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not into robbing cradles. That’s more Chloe’s territory.”

  “Kailyn!” Annette sent her daughter a reproving look.

  “What? I was just joking. You know I was only teasing, don’t you, Chloe?”

  Every now and then Kailyn would come out with something totally snarky and sarcastic. I usually chalked it up to immaturity and insecurity. Even though she was the most gorgeous woman in our group, I sensed that at times Kailyn felt intimidated by some of our more well-read and intellectual members. So I let it slide.

  Besides, the trees were wafting their evergreen perfume through the campsite and the stars were putting on a gorgeous silvery light show above our heads. Amidst all that natural beauty, I felt peaceful and magnanimous. “No prob. I know you didn’t intentionally twist the Chris knife, Kailyn. That’s all ancient history anyway.”

  I pulled out a couple of puffy air-and-sugar carb bombs and stuck them on the end of my skewer, holding it high above the flames and turning it slowly. I preferred a golden-toasted marshmallow to Becca’s charred-to-a-crisp crudite.

  As I removed my gooey stick from the hot flames though, I heard a twig snap. The hairs on my arm stood up. And all at once I got the uneasy feeling that we were being watched. Had hippie-boy heard our giggling over his weed-smoking proclivities? And was marijuana just the tip of his chemical-abuse iceberg?

  Maybe he was high on methamphetamine and this very moment was on his way over to take us all out with his honkin’ Texas chainsaw.

  Casually, ever-so-casually, I glanced toward the woods, where my eyes locked on another pair of eyes, bright and beady, and peering at me through the darkness. A soft hiss of air escaped through my clenched teeth. It couldn’t be our hippie neighbor, unless he was skulking on his stomach, dragging his bloodied Black & Decker chainsaw behind him.

  “Um, don’t anyone freak out or anything,” I said in as quiet and calm a tone as I could muster, “but, there’s some kind of ” — I swallowed hard — “creature in the woods staring right at us.”

  “Where?” Kailyn would have popped up like a jack-inthe-box if it hadn’t been for Jenna’s strong, restraining arm holding her down.

  I cut my eyes to a cluster of trees just beyond the campground. “Right there. See?”

  The glowing red eyes moved closer. I dropped my marshmallows into the fire.

  “Relax,” Becca said. “It’s probably a chipmunk or possum.”

  “Aren’t possums just giant rats with long tails?” Kailyn squeaked.

  The bright, beady eyes cleared the undergrowth, and a dark blob waddled into the light.

  “Aw, that’s just a sweet little raccoon.” Annette blew out a sigh of relief.

  We all did.

  “Isn’t he cute? I love that little bandit mask they have.”

  “Sweet, nothing. Those little suckers are mea — ” Becca broke off abruptly. “Kailyn, what are you doing?”

  Our resident girly-girl had brushed off Jenna’s hand and was walking toward the woodland creature with a couple graham crackers in her hand. “Shhh, you’ll scare him away. I just want to give him a little something to eat.” She made kissy noises. “Here little fella. Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you.”

  The raccoon advanced cautiously.

  “Stop right there,” Tess ordered.

  “She’s right. Put. The. Cracker. Down,” Jenna said in her best Young Frankenstein voice.

  “Oh, all right.” Kailyn tossed the graham cracker to our raccoon guest, who deftly picked up the edible rectangle with his little black paws, held it, and politely nibbled at it with all the manners of a society matron at afternoon tea. “Isn’t that sweet?” Kailyn cooed. “Didn’t I tell you they were friendly?”

  Rocky Raccoon took another two steps toward her and looked up expectantly.

  “Aw, he wants some more.” She started to reach for another cracker, but Tess stopped her cold.

  “Don’t do it,” she warned. “Really. Not a good idea.”

  “Sorry, little fella. That’s all.” Kailyn waved him away. “Shoo.”

  The raccoon made an angry trilling noise and took a couple of additional steps toward her.

  Kailyn began backing away cautiously. “Shoo,” she said again weakly. She clutched the remaining graham crackers close to her chest.

&
nbsp; The raccoon raised himself up on his hind legs.

  “I think he’s going to attack!” Kailyn’s voice took on a hysterical tinge. She took another step back, and as the raccoon began to advance again, she flung the graham crackers past him toward the woods.

  “Nooooo!” I screamed as visions of hungry, marauding bears filled my head.

  Instantly, additional little furry bodies scurried from the darkness and pounced on the crackers Rocky Raccoon missed. Only these furry creatures didn’t have charming bandit masks. They were black with a broad white stripe down their backs.

  “Nobody move,” Tess ordered.

  We froze as imaginings of not-so-heavenly and most definitely not Victoria’s Secret perfume filled our trembling olfactory senses. But after the family of Pepé Le Pews finally finished up the last of the cracker crumbs, they wandered slowly back into the woodland darkness.

  I let out my breath and dropped to the hard, cold ground. “Whew. I thought we were skunk spray for sure.”

  “I was already planning how I’d give us all a spaghetti sauce bath,” Tess said.

  “Spaghetti sauce?”

  “Tomato juice is one of the best things to get rid of skunk smell. I had to drench our dog in it years ago when he surprised a skunk under our back deck — took forever to get him clean. But since we don’t have any tomato juice, I figured spaghetti sauce would be the next best thing.”

  “Smokey the Bear and his buddies would have really come running for a little Italian dinner, don’t you think?” Becca stood up and brushed off the back of her jeans. “That’s an offer they couldn’t refuse.” She turned to Kailyn. “And on the subject of refusing, the first rule of thumb out here is don’t approach the animals. And definitely don’t feed them. Unless you want to wake up in the middle of the night with a hungry raccoon clawing at your sleeping bag. Those little suckers are mean.”

  Great. Now I could add raccoons as well as bears to my nightmare list. Thanks, Bec.

  Jenna began collecting the dirty plates and shoving them into a trash bag. She assured us that as long as we put all the food and trash away and locked it up tight in the car, we’d be fine. Everyone pitched in on clean-up. Paige and I washed the cooking pans and silverware, Annette and Kailyn stored the leftovers in the largest cooler and then sat on it to ensure it snapped shut tightly, and Tess and Becca hoisted the cooler into the back of Annette’s van.