My Little Rock Airman

by Brittany Fichter

  I tried to smile and shrug it off. “I don’t know about that. I guess my brain just isn’t up to stuff right now.”

  “You know what Madison told me?” She continued as if I hadn’t spoken at all. “She said that Derrick was the one who made the tourniquet for your arm. And the doctor said if you hadn’t had that tourniquet, you probably would have died. The glass was too close to your artery to have survived without it.” Her voice dropped nearly to a whisper. “He saved your life, Jessie.”

  My throat felt too thick and dry to answer. Everything from the tornado was hazy. I remembered grabbing Jade from my classroom and the window blowing out. There had been pain in my arm and blood on my hand. And the train. I would never forget the sound of the train, like it was chugging away over our heads. But sometime during those few minutes in the hall, the world began to tilt, and my vision began to spot. Familiar voices had drifted in and out, and I remember nearly waking when I realized one of the voices was his. And for just a moment, I’d been encompassed by the feeling of security and warmth, like someone was holding me close.

  My mom swore he’d come to see me and had even waited with me while I slept. When I woke up and really came to for the first time, there were even pink roses in my room. But that had been the day after the tornado, when I was still sleeping most of the day away, and I hadn’t seen him in the week-and-a-half since. Not even a text.

  And I think that hurt the worst, knowing he’d been so close, only to retreat again. He was just doing the honorable thing, I was sure. He’d run to the school to check on Jade, and I had just happened to be there. Derrick was the kind of guy who wouldn’t leave anyone in peril.

  But there had been a kiss somewhere in there…I was sure of it. Then nothing.

  “Is your soup all right?” My mom nodded at the bowl in my lap.

  I looked down at it. “It’s fine.” Truth be told, the chicken chunks tasted a lot drier than I had hoped when my mom had ladled it out for me, but I got the feeling that the chicken itself was fine. It was me who had changed.

  Two days later, I was cleared to drive. The area up north by the base and school was pretty torn up still, but I was desperate to go somewhere. Between all the visitors and calls to the house phone to ask how I was, I needed to hear myself think. I couldn’t bear to tell one more person that I was fine when I wasn’t. Because even though my body was mostly healed, my heart felt like it was slowly splitting in two.

  Something had to give.

  After driving what felt like random circles around town, I finally realized where my wandering had taken me. I parked the car and got out. After a moment of searching for the perfect spot, I lay down on the grassy slope, and I closed my eyes. It was peaceful here, like there had never been a tornado in all the world. The birds sang, and even with my eyes closed, the yellow-green of the afternoon sun-lit leaves filtered through my lids.

  What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t stay, and I couldn’t go. I was stuck. And it already felt like my life had been that way forever.

  The roar of an engine interrupted my reverie. I opened my eyes to see a big red truck parked beside my old beat-up car, which had miraculously somehow survived in the school parking lot.

  “Your mom said you were gone, but I thought I might find you here.”

  I sat up, afraid to believe my eyes. “You did?”

  He came to sit beside me on the little grassy knoll. Then he looked up at the church. “I’m still amazed this place wasn’t even touched.”

  I nodded, feeling a little dazed. “Yeah. Um, the weather guy said it bounced in a few places before settling in a steady path.” I looked up at the white steeple as well. “I guess this was one of them.”

  We were silent for a few minutes. I couldn’t move, but my mind felt like a tornado had ripped around inside my head as well. Every hair on my body seemed to be standing on end, as though lightning was in the air. I felt like a magnetic force was compelling me to sit closer, to touch him to make sure he was real. But I kept my hands to myself.

  “Sorry I took so long to stop by again,” he said eventually. “They had us working from sunup to sundown cleaning the damage on the base and doing rescues on and off. A bunch of us volunteered to do more, too.”

  “That’s nice of you.” I nodded, as though this were an everyday occurrence. But inside, it only added to my trepidation.

  More silence. Say something. I needed to say something. This silence held too much…

  Too much what? Truth? How much more could the truth hurt?

  “I always thought I’d get married here,” I finally said.

  He looked up, as though I’d pulled him from some reverie of his own.

  I nodded at the church. “From the first day we visited, I looked around this place and knew I wanted to get married right here.” I plucked a dandelion and studied it as I pulled all the little petals out. “Thought I’d baptize my babies here. Volunteer here. Move through life here. All right here.”

  “And what about when it changed?” He asked, his blue eyes searching mine. Oh, how I’d missed those eyes.

  “Changed?” I echoed.

  “You know,” he said slowly, leaning back on his hands, “in all the places I’ve been, change follows you. Even if you stay in the same place forever, everything around you moves.”

  “I know.” My voice was barely a breath. Everything had been perfect. Then he had come and changed it all.

  There was another silence. He seemed unsure of what to do with his hands because he opened and closed them again, as though grasping for something I couldn’t see.

  “I’m moving to Texas in three months,” he finally said.

  And there it was. The words I’d been waiting for. The ones I knew would one day change the course of my life.

  “I can’t…” My voice warbled, and it was a moment before I could speak again. He wasn’t inviting me to go with him. Just telling me. So did that mean this was goodbye?

  “You can’t what?” His voice was unusually low and his jaw tight.

  “I’ve tried to imagine life as it should be. Life here forever, living out my fate as I always imagined it.” I shook my head and laughed as tears began to spill down my cheeks. Finally, I got the courage to look him in the eyes. “But I can’t.”

  His eyes widened, so I plunged in before I lost my nerve. I’d already turned this man down…and quite rudely at that. It was a wonder he was listening to me at all.

  “I can’t see myself anywhere else or with anyone else.” I reached up gingerly to touch his cheek. “Derrick, I’ve lived six months without you, and I never want to do it again.” I paused. “At least, not without knowing I’m yours, and that no distance is going to change that.”

  Before I knew what was happening, his hands were on my face, and he was kissing me with a heat that dove into my chest and twirled around my heart. When he pulled away, it was only to rest his forehead against mine.

  “Do you know what it felt like,” he was breathing in short, ragged gasps, “running up to that school and thinking you and Jade were gone?” His voice broke, and his shoulders shook. Almost in a daze, I put my hands on them. At my touch, he cried even harder.

  “I thought…” he choked. “I thought my life was over the moment I saw that building.” He looked back up at me, his eyes searching mine, desperate and fierce as his hands traced every angle of my face.

  “I thought you were done with me,” I whispered. “After you left. After you left, and when Amy came back—”

  “Jessie.” He sat up. “I have done nothing but regret those things I said to you since the moment they left my mouth. I’m ashamed of the way I treated you and pushed you away. I was just so afraid to lose you.” He shook his head. “But I was afraid that the moment I left, Newman or some other schmuck was going to make a move, and you’d come to your senses and marry one of them.”

  “I tried.” I gave another strangled laugh. “But I couldn’t even make it through the first date with him before
I knew it wasn’t going to work.”

  “Why?” he breathed.

  I smiled tremulously. “He wasn’t you.”

  He reached behind him and pulled a familiar blue box from his pocket. And when he opened it, that familiar red rose glistened up at me in the afternoon sun.

  “Marry me,” he whispered, “and I will make sure you can fly back here whenever your little heart desires. You can see your mother every weekend if that’s what you want.”

  I opened my mouth, but he held his hand up.

  “Please hear me out. Look, I have five years left in the military. But if those five years pass and you want me out, just say the word, and we’ll never move again. If you want to finish your degree, all you have to do is sign up, and I’ll make sure we can afford it. Just…don’t make me leave you behind again without knowing you’ll be there when I return. Because I don’t think I can handle that.”

  “What about all your travel plans?” I pressed down the corner of his jacket collar and gave him a teasing smile. “All that money saved up to travel.”

  He shook his head, still holding the ring box between us. “Having you by my side will be the best adventure I could ever have.”

  I wanted so much to speak. Every word, though, seemed to be stuck in my chest as I tried to take it all in. His look of hope began to look strained as I struggled to find the right words.

  “Please say something,” he whispered with a nervous smile. “Because if you don’t, I’m going to have to resort to singing like the beast. And though I’ve seen the movie, I can guarantee you that it won’t sound anything like that.”

  “Why?” I whispered. “Why are you so determined to have me?” I thought back to all those horrible things I’d said about and to him, and how cantankerous I’d been on purpose. The way I’d refused him at the ball. All the awful names I’d called him in the letters stashed in my desk drawer.

  He got up on his knees and leaned toward me. “I have never,” he said, taking a lock of my hair between his fingers, “met anyone like you. I tease you about all your self-assigned duty, but the truth is that you’re determined to love those that others won’t. You love my sister like she was your own, and you nearly died proving it. You stoop to lift up the weak without a thought for yourself. And I can’t think of a better person to have by my side as I face this crazy world.”

  “Are you proposing again Derrick Allen?” I asked.

  “Are you accepting this time, Miss Nickleby?”

  I laughed and nodded, tears rolling down my face again as he slid the rose gold ring onto my hand. It fit like it had been made for me.

  “What do you think?” he asked, watching me with an intensity that reminded me of a tiger I’d once seen at the zoo.

  “It’s perfect,” I whispered. Then I closed my eyes and shook my head. It was all too much. Too perfect, like the ending of a storybook.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, looking slightly alarmed.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you the first time.” I bit my lip. “I didn’t want to. I mean, I wanted to say yes! I really did. I just…I was so afraid…”

  “I know.”

  I looked at him. “You do?”

  The corner of his mouth quirked up. “You said so in your letters. Lots.”

  I felt the blood drain from my face. “How did you get my—”

  He grinned wickedly. “Your mother gave them to me.”

  “Oh no.” I lay back in the grass and covered my face with my hands. “She did not.”

  “She did.”

  I felt the sudden change in the air. It prickled with electricity, like someone was very near. When I peeked through my fingers, I found him leaning over me, his face inches from mine, one arm on each side of my head.

  “I also know,” he said, bending until his lips were brushing my ear, and his body was only inches above mine, “that at one point at least, you wanted to have my babies.”

  Was it possible for one’s blush to get stuck forever? Because I thought mine might.

  He skimmed his nose down my cheek. “You know that can be arranged.”

  I should say something. I knew I should. But it was difficult to think with him so close. Deliciously difficult. “You know,” I giggled breathlessly, “the pastor’s office is just across the parking lot. And he has a window.”

  “Fantastic.” His breath was on my cheek now. “We can just ask him to marry us here and now.” He wriggled his eyebrows. “Then we can get started on those babies.”

  I laughed as he gathered me up in his arms and pulled me tightly against his chest.

  “You know what, Derrick Allen?”

  “What?”

  “I think that’s a fantastic idea.”

  47

  The Long Haul

  Jessie

  We did not ask the pastor to marry us then and there. Largely because I still wanted my fairy tale wedding, and also because our mothers would have killed us. Instead, we settled for the week after school got out, two days before Derrick was scheduled to PCS.

  Though I’d dreaded the thought of leaving in all my imaginings and dreams, the day I turned in my resignation, I realized I didn’t feel a lick of remorse.

  “Is this what I think it is?” Mr. Matthews asked when I handed him the folder in his makeshift office. Well, everything was makeshift. After the school was demolished, the district had sent out a bunch of portable classrooms to finish the year in.

  “It is.” I smiled.

  He studied me for a moment before nodding. “Good for you.”

  I laughed. “I honestly thought I’d feel a lot worse about this than I do.”

  “I’m not sure if I should take that as a compliment or not, but I’ll just chalk it up to your happiness.”

  “And that,” I grinned, “is exactly it.”

  He tilted his head. “What about your degree?”

  I fingered the hem of my sleeve. “I never actually applied. I mean, I was accepted, but that was the farthest I could get myself to go.” I shrugged. “I guess I needed a chance to just live for a little while. You know?”

  He looked at my resignation letter and smiled. “I actually do.”

  My mom and Derrick’s mom became inseparable overnight. They were slightly put out with me for having purchased a wedding dress on my own years before…the one frivolous purchase I’d made in college without telling a soul. That is, until they saw it for themselves. Princess cut with a gold tint and light pink roses embroidered into the sheer lace that lay atop layers and layers of golden-white tulle that floated centimeters above the ground. Layered silk hung off each shoulder, and the bodice sparkled with crystals. It was like every book and movie I’d ever read sewn into one.

  Madison was the one part of my life that marred my shining bliss. She and I hadn’t spoken much since I’d turned Sam down. After a year of being nearly inseparable, I had no idea who to make my bridesmaids. And once again, I was reminded of just how much I’d cut myself off from other people since I’d begun teaching.

  One afternoon, just a few days after getting engaged to Derrick, however, someone knocked on my door. I nearly fell over when Madison was the one standing there. She shifted from one foot to the other and clutched at her purse strap.

  “Jessie—”

  “Madison—”

  I did my best to smile. “You go first.”

  She took a deep breath, and her eyes never left the floor. “I…I’m here to say sorry. I’ve been cold and distant, and I kept thinking I knew what was best for you.”

  Enough to ignore me for six months? I wanted to ask. Instead, I just nodded. “You did sometimes. A lot of times, actually.”

  She shook her head. “Nothing that deserved the treatment I gave you. I guess…I suppose I was jealous.”

  I blinked. “Jealous?”

  “You had a whole list of guys you wouldn’t go out with, and Sam was waiting there in the wings. And you know my track record with men. And I just…I wanted us to go on being wh
at we were forever. But you refusing him meant things were going to change. And I didn’t want change.” A tear ran down her face. “I know I can act like I’ve got it all together a lot, but I really don’t. You two were my steady rocks. Without you, I guess I didn’t know quite where I belonged in the world anymore. That made me angry, and I took it out on you. And by the time I realized how awful I’d been, too much time had passed to make it up to you.” She drew in a shuddery breath. “But the tornado was what really opened my eyes.” She shrugged. “Since then, I’ve been trying to get my courage up to apologize to you, but it’s taken this long, and I nearly didn’t come today—”

  I pulled her into a hug. “I miss you,” I whispered.

  “You’re not mad?” She sniffled.

  I probably should be. I should be furious. But I couldn’t be. My life was falling into place, and all I was missing was my friend.

  “What can I do to make it up to you?” she whimpered.

  “Just be happy for me,” I whispered.

  She gave a choking laugh. “I can do that.” Her eyes brightened slightly. “As long as I get to be your maid of honor.”

  Once Madison was taken care of, packing up was the next hardest thing. Putting twenty-four years of memories into boxes as my mother sobbed happily wasn’t exactly my idea of the best day ever, but Dad put on a good face, and then we all went out for boba after, which cheered Mom immensely.

  The whole time, she kept repeating, “I’ve always wanted you to be happy. And now you’re all grown up, and it’s here.” Then she’d burst into sobs again as my dad and I exchanged looks.

  There were times, especially as I tried to finish the year with my kids in a portable with very few teaching supplies, that I never thought the wedding would arrive. But Derrick kept me upbeat and laughing with awful pranks and his terrible teasing as the day drew near. And eventually, it arrived.

  Waking up the morning of my wedding was somewhat like a dream. For just a second, I was still in my room in my bed, and it was just another Saturday. Then I blinked as the morning light spilled through my blinds, and I knew. This would be the last morning I’d wake up alone. Because this was the day I’d no longer be my own.