There are some who say that I got what was coming to me, and hell, some of those people are me. But back then I sure didn’t think so, nor did I have any real expectation that it would all work out for the best. There was a time or three I even contemplated filling out my discharge papers with a 9mm. But smarter people than me restricted my access to firearms so I’m still alive to tell you my tale. A story of hubris and honor, duty and desire, true love and epic hate and this is the way it all started…

PART TWO

Her ice water was used a minute late to rouse me back to consciousness. I guess I should be thankful on my clothes behalf, that she wasn’t drinking her Coke after all.

“Wake up Tommy!” Jess yelled holding a second glass at the ready in case it was needed.

“Huh, I’m up, I’m up!” I said getting on my feet and back into the booth I had slipped out of while unconscious. “It’s the funniest thing but I thought you said that you were pregnant.”

“She did,” interjected an old man whom I assumed to be the Manager. He gave me a look that made me feel like I had too many legs and was crawling on the underside of his boot, while he handed me a white towel from the busboys cart. “You make sure to do the right thing boy, or you don’t ever come back here again. Do you hear me?”

“Everything will be quite all right sir, thank you for the towel.” said Jess trying to shoo him away.

“Jessica,” I said trying to collect my thoughts that were whirling about a mile a minute. “How did this happen, I mean I know about the principles involved but I thought you said you were on the pill?”

“I was… I am, but the doctor said its only 99% effective and that % is significantly reduced when a woman’s body undergoes a fever. I wish I had been taught that in health class. But then there was a quite a bit that mule faced Sister Serephina never talked about in my 8th grade health class.”

“I knew catholic school was dangerous”

“Now is not the time for jokes Tommy,” commented Jess pulling off a good impression of a nun herself.

“Who’s joking?”

“I know this is a shock,” she continued primly. “It’s not a pleasant experience for me either. I’m sure my father never thought he would make me an unwed teenage mother when he set aside all that money for a fancy boarding school but it is… what it is. And now it must be dealt with… now, tomorrow morning if you can be ready at 9-”

“Marry me,” I interrupted suddenly.

“What?”

“Jessica Katherine Scott, will you do me the great honor of being my wife?”

“I thought I said I wasn’t in the mood for jokes,” She stated with an irritated look like I had just asked her to wipe my runny nose and not make me the happiest man on the Earth.

“I’m not; we were always going to get married. Now we’ll just be doing it sooner than expected... You always were an overachiever. Had to finish everything early,” I said with a slight and what I hoped was a helpful smile.

“I can’t marry you.”

“Says who, I’m 18 and so will you be too in 9 days. At 18 we don’t have to ask anyone’s permission anywhere. We can marry here or back home with your family.”

“I have no family Tommy, you know that.”

“Well I know your mom and dad, but I figured you would want your cousins and aunts and uncles, grandparents...”

“We’re not close.”

“With my family then, soon as I figure out how to tell them.” I said rubbing my forehead with both hands.” Aunt Alane will probably let us use the house in Jacksonville. May in Florida is actually tolerable. We can get it all done before plebe summer if we hurry.”

“That’s just it, we don’t need our parent’s permission to marry but we damn sure need the Navy’s. They don’t accept married midshipmen if you remember.”

“They have already accepted us. And if they try to ding us for doing something perfectly lawful while we were civilians merely because it is against custom. My father and a couple of crack sea layers will make a fight of it!”

“A hell of a way to begin your military career!” she argued forcefully.

“Damn right, begin as you intend to continue, no other way to live. Besides remember they let that married mustang petty officer in from the enlisted commissioning program. So there is precedent.”

“He also had the Navy cross, if I remember correctly.”

“The details are vague...” I granted with a wave of my hand which somehow ended up rubbing my aching for head.

“Tommy, think it through, YOU may be able to get by just fine wearing a wedding band. But they are not exactly going to let me at the academy while I am waddling down hallways heavy as a beached whale. Pregnancy is a deal breaker, end stop, do not pass go and no pair of gold bars at the end. And there isn’t exactly dependent housing or a nursery or daycare at the academy. Could you imagine me trying to breast feed in the barracks? Even if they did let me in.”

“Well, yea... now that you put that picture in my head I can.”

“Tommy!” Jessica shouted at me.

“Ok, I’ll grant you that one was meant as a joke.” I said as I took her hand and tried to comfort her. “This isn’t the end of the whole damn world Jess, we can get through it. With your grades and a Phillips Exeter diploma you can get into any college in the country. Civilian universities are much more reasonable about these sorts of things. We’ll get you set up in Georgetown it’s not that far away we can see each other on weekends...”

“People who got into Georgetown applied for it last year, I can’t just get in like that!” she said snapping her fingers to add emphasis. “Every good college is full up at this point Harvard, Yale, Princeton. And I don’t care what you say they are not exactly gonna welcome a pregnant coed with open arms.”

“A state school then, the University of Maryland, or Bob and Slick Willy’s Polytechnic Institute and Trade School. It doesn’t really matter for the gen-ed requirements you can be all ready for the next years round of applications. Or you could take a year off. That’s what they do over in Europe after high school.”

“What about my career? It started out your dream but its mine now too! Maybe more! All you need to do to get a little respect is stick that chin of yours out. If I’m not going to be treated like a life-size empty headed blond Barbie doll all my life I have to fight for it. I have to fight for everything!”

“There is ROTC while you are going or OCS once the degree is done. Lots of fine Marines have gone to OCS and not the academy. Hell Chesty himself never went to either.”

“Chesty Puller also had FIVE navy crosses and a World War, and he was never a teen mom. Tom...things would just be so much easier if there, if there just wasn’t a baby,” said Jess looking down dejectedly upon her plate.

“But there is Jess, I know it’s not the...something we ever talked about, kids don’t talk about this sort of thing, but we stopped being kids when the doctor gave you the news... And I, I have an unreasonable objection to my child being killed... I’m sorry but that’s just the way it is.”

She started crying then, I felt like a son of a bitch and the manager seemed to agree with me because he gave me that too many legged stare again and I sort of felt like I deserved it. Jessica may have had a catholic school education but old General Ryan had given me mine and the girl saying she was on the pill and everything was fine was warning sign #3 on a very short list of things to remember. I should have worn a condom too and he was never going to let me forget it. I got up and moved to her side of the booth and gave her as big a hug as I could manage considering her delicate state.

“It’s no great tragedy to be a marine wife and mother Jess, mine managed five times and seemed pleased with the experience.” I said in as calm and soothing a voice as I could.

“Well mine died in childbirth!” She shouted back. “And everyone says I look just like her!” Jess shoved my hands away and bolted up from the booth and towards the exit.

I settled the bill and followed her out, the pizza was worse than usual.

***
Jessica was waiting by the car when I got outside. I half expected to have to chase her down but it appeared she wasn’t quite that unreasonable yet. I unlocked the car and we both got in without saying a word. We continued not saying a word all the way back to campus and the student parking lot. And all I was able to get out of her was a simple good night to my repeated questions. I didn’t press it, I figured she needed some time to think and hell, I needed even more. It’s not every day a boy is told he’s gonna be a father. Well, maybe it does happen every day as many kids that are born but it was the first time it had happened to me so I was kind of still a bit punch drunk.

I escorted her right to her bedroom door, despite the raised eyebrows of the house mother, and then walked back to my own room for a long hard think. Times like these I wished I wasn’t so virtuous as getting drunk off of illicit bootleg alcohol would probably have made me feel tons better. But it was almost certainly for the best anyway. The local gentry being what they were, the price of black-market hooch at Phillips Exeter was about 20 times what it would be in a local liquor store. And I was going to need every bit of my money if I was gonna do right by my girl.

The trouble was unless I took matters directly into hand I don’t think she would let me. Set in her ways is sort of an understatement. Once she had made up her mind not all the armies of hell or all the angels of heaven beside would change it. Trouble also was in The United States and other so called civilized countries a father didn’t have many rights when it came to abortion. It was times like this that made a man miss the 19th century. Sure you had to deal with typhoid and outdoor plumbing, and hostile natives, but a woman was the property of her father until she was the property of her husband. And problems like a father’s parental rights just didn’t come up.

I woke up the next morning, if by woke you mean stopped trying to sleep, and checked my texts to see that Jessica had written me a short message.

APT. IS THSDY AT 1:15PM. LOWELL MASS. MEET ME 9AM FRONT OF MY ROOMS BRING $$$. I DON’T WANT TO TALK TO YOU TILL THEN. --- JESS

Dash dash dash was it? Usually she ended her messages with an XOXO. So I guess I was in the doghouse. She practically had to force me our first time and somehow this was all my fault? Women are put on this Earth to make New York Times crossword puzzles seem easy and uncomplicated. Thursday, she said. Today was Wednesday; I guess she couldn’t get an appointment right away. I’m not sure if that made me happy that I still had time, or sad that such things had waiting lists.

***

Mother’s cousin Festus was a slimy blue dog lawyer but he was still family. And what with being named Festus and all, had learned how to defend himself at a very early age and the dirty tricks he didn’t know was because he knew some even dirtier that worked better. From what I remember he usually rolled into work just in time to take a long lunch but I had his cell phone number so I broke one of my cardinal rules and asked for help. I wouldn’t do it for just anyone... but little whoever currently in residence inside Jessica, was family. And you do just about anything, for family.

My 70’s made in America car looked old, odd and out of place next to all the well waxed foreign cars people usually drove around here. But the only shame I felt over it was that I wasn’t in funds enough to give her a proper decal paint job of her own. I was ready in front of Jessica’s rooms at 8:55 and she came down promptly at 9:10. I could see that she wasn’t happy with what she was doing, but at least she was calmer than the last time I saw her. The unhappiness was, I hoped, a sign that she could be reasoned with. The calmness I knew wouldn’t last.

“Thank you for driving me,” she said benevolently as she buckled her seatbelt. “Did you bring the cash?”

“My credit card,” I quipped “I’ll get the points.”

“I only thought, “she said strangely, obviously confused on whether I was using my legendary bad sense of humor. “That you wouldn’t want a charge for planned parenthood showing up on your billing statement for your parents to find.”

“My parents stopped auditing my finances when I proved to them I could balance my checkbook during my first summer job at age 12.”

We got pulled out of the school parking lot and didn’t speak to each other again for about ten minutes. When we passed a major intersection though, Jess came out of her funk long enough to catch on what was happening.

“Tommy, Massachusetts is south of us,” said Jess hurriedly pointing to a road sign for Manchester.

“So I have been told.”

“We are heading north.”

“Looks like,” I agreed.

“Why are we heading north?” fiery steel slipping into her facial expression.

“Cus that’s where Brentwood is.”

“Brentwood?”

“The county seat.”

“Tommy, I can’t get an abortion in New Hampshire.”

“I know that, but Brentwood is where they keep the marriage licenses.”

“Tommy, what is going on? We TALKED about this.”

“So we did, but you obviously didn’t hear me or take me seriously. So I mean to force the issue. This is a reiving party, or rather the necessary paperwork prelude to a reiveing party which I guess takes some of the fun out of it but we live in fallen age. Back in the good old days when a young Celtic buck felt it was his time, he headed off into the night and stole himself a bride. I’m just following our heritage.”

“I’m an American citizen, and the last I checked so were you!”

“With a name like Scott there has got to be a sheep shagger somewhere in the woodpile.”

“Thomas Sullivan Ryan, you turn this car around or let me out right now!”

“No and no,” I said while she tried forcing the lock on her door. I had spent the morning cracking the panel and removing the locking mechanism from the inside. The only way out for her was to climb over me or wait until I got out and unlocked it from the outside. I did this because I didn’t want her making an escape from a moving car and accomplish her goal by accident. Jessica has sort of got a little spunk in her and I wouldn’t put it past her. “There is a folder on the back seat; I want you to take a look at it.”

She could tell from the tone of my voice that I meant it, and while anger was her primary emotion at the moment, and not likely to pass anytime soon this geologic era. Curiosity was also a big feature of her psyche. It’s what made her such a brilliant girl. She looked it over for minutes turning pages harshly at first and then so slowly it was like she was in shock. In the end she decided the most mature thing to do was tear them into little pieces and then throw the shards of what was left into the back seat again.

She wasn’t speaking, but she was crying enough that I rather knew what she was trying to communicate. It takes brave man to look into eyes like hers and tell her what she didn’t want to hear. But faint heart never won fair lady.

“You may rip them up, I don’t care, there are plenty of copies. I have taken out an injunction in Massachusetts, AND in New Hampshire, and New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island, pretty much anywhere you could get to without a car of your own or the cash for a bus fair. I can’t stop you forever, but I can stop you for long enough. You’re still a minor, for the next week. And I know you didn’t get wicked stepmothers permission. You should also know, I’ve written a letter… Well, six letters to make sure the right person got the information. I’ve let the Navy know that you are pregnant. I included a copy of the student health exam you took on Monday. The schools server is not as secure as they think it is... I signed your name at the bottom.”

Hatred burned in her eyes; if she was from krypton I’m quite sure that her gaze would have incinerated me. I’m quite fortunate; I realized then, that she was a normal human girl.

“If you carry on and try to show up for plebe summer and pass the medical induction it will be because you violated a legal court order and they ding you. If you wait until after your birthday you won’t be able to have enough recovery time and they ding you. If you miss out on plebe summer it will delay your admission to the academy this term. And if you miss out on the academy you might as well go the whole way. I’ve known you for four years now Jessica, and I think you believe you have to do this but I know that you don’t WANT to. Well... I’m telling you that you don’t have to. I will be with you in every way that I can. I’ll even drop the academy myself and go the OCS route if that would make you accept this.”

We were now in the parking lot of the county courthouse. I pulled into a slot on the west side closest to the entrance turned off the engine and leaned over to embrace her. She fought me at first and then sort of went limp. I took that as a good sign.

I was willing to take anything I could get.

“I love you Jessica Scott,” I said. Taking her head and looking her right in the eyes. “Never doubt that. I would do anything for you, I would die for you, I would trade places with you if I could. But I also owe a duty to our unborn child. And I know deep down inside you think you do too. Marines were put on this earth to defend the helpless and it doesn’t get anymore helpless than that.

***

I did get those points on my credit card, but the woman behind the counter who handled the transaction kept giving us odd looks. I played the part of the eager young groom well enough but Jessica was like a puppet with the strings cut one moment and then all seething dragon rage the next. But she showed her ID when asked too and signed where she was told to well enough. And I was content.

She didn’t take me up on my offer to drop Annapolis too, and a piece of me deep down inside was ashamed to be grateful for that. We talked about what she would do while I was at plebe summer; or rather I tried talking about it. All she replied was that she had it covered and since I knew she was picking and punching away at her laptop well into the evenings of our last week at school I knew that she was hard charging on her future. That was my girl, and why I loved her.

We also decided not to tell our families we were getting married. Hers wouldn’t have cared anyway and mine were so scattered to hell an gone across this globe that there was no way we could get them all in one place for a ceremony in time. We would invite them all to Maryland maybe after the baby was born and have a second service then. My parents weren’t even coming to graduation. Dad was deployed again, and being the runt of the litter. My mother had sort of gotten over the whole mystic experience of a high school graduation after four separate occasions. We had spoken a few months ago and she offered me a deal. I could have my mommy with me when I became a man or I could have half the cost of the not insignificant transatlantic airfare and hotel accommodation. I took the cash and was grateful for it then. I’m even more grateful for it now.

Graduation was on Saturday and was the largest collection of the rich and famous, at least on the parents’ side of the aisle, and gaudy glitterati I never did see. The son of a software baron thought it would be a good idea to wear no clothes under his gown. He let us all know about that when a stiff north wind caught the fabric and gave us and the audience a good money shot of his groin. Breeding will out I guess, since he carried on like normal and gave us a sneer like it was our own bad manners for looking in the first place. He would one day be in charge of a multi-billion dollar company and that sort of frightened me.

We were invited to a few of the cool kids parties but I could tell that Jess wasn’t in the mood so we spent that evening in her common room eating takeout lobster and crabs and cookie dough Ice cream. I would have made a joke that the cravings were starting early but this was a semi-usual fare for us so it would not have been appropriate. Or something I could have survived, if I had been stupid enough to actually say it. Jess was cold to me all evening, every once in a while after I made a joke, or something on TV distracted her I thought I could see the vaguest hint of her defrosting but then she would freeze up again. I thought about blaming the pregnancy hormones but thought that would probably get me killed too. And I had a family to think of.

We had ten days before I had to leave, three days before we could have the wedding. Thankfully enough the school were tight asses about money and we were paid for the full month of May even though we were all done by the second week. So we had room and board for a while but despite this place being the sight of our meeting, courtship and several sexual romps it wasn’t exactly the stuff that little girls dreams are made of when plotting wedding nights.

“So,” I asked finally gathering my courage. “Is there any place special you would like to go for the honeymoon? I’ve got just under a thousand in the ‘pizza and parties’ budget. And I’m not going to be spending much of it once I put on the uniform.”

“I’m sure whatever you pick will be fine Thomas,” she said with a smile. I could tell the smile was forced, but since she was making the effort I was willing to take that as another good sign.

“There is a bed and breakfast upstate, overlooking what’s left of The Old Man Of The Mountain. It sits on an honest to goodness babbling brook and I am reliably informed by Harry Palmer the third year I played football with, that if you slip the manager a fifty he doesn’t look to carefully at the registration when you order a bottle of champagne for room service.”

“Won’t alcohol hurt the baby?” she asked snarkily.

“An alcohol OVERDOSE would sure, but a glass or two at this stage won’t hurt anything and might help. We’ll take breakfast in bed until mid-afternoon and read all those books we never had time to read because it wasn’t scholastically relevant. I’ve been hoarding a box of those tawdry fantasies you and I like so much. Come on… scantily clad princesses and the shirtless knights who rescue them. Evil Wizards, good witches, good wizards who fall for evil witches, you know you want too.”

“How tawdry?” she asked with a smile I knew was not forced.

“It will make you feel like a real New England puritan for not already knowing some of those things, I promise.”

“Well, you are a man of your word. It sounds lovely.”

***
I got married in the Brooks Brothers suit I graduated high school in. When I thought about my wedding, when I thought about it at all, I always thought I would be doing it in my dress blues. My bride’s wedding dress was, well, a dress. I couldn’t tell you the make and model on it other than it wasn’t white, instead, a subdued light pink. I suppose wearing white would not have been appropriate for a justice of the piece job, just shy of being a shotgun wedding. Shy of it of course, because the metaphorical shotgun was a not so metaphorical bit of blackmail and it was usually the groom being forced to marry and not the other way around. Still, I felt sorry that she wasn’t wearing white. And while she sure look pretty in her dress and plenty pretty enough for me, I knew it wasn’t enough for her and that made me sadder.

Our witnesses were the county clerk and his secretary. Who also happened to be man and wife. They gave us their best wishes and waived the fee by way of a wedding present which I thought was big of them and I just might have voted for him if I had been registered here in the next election. It was a two hour drive through windy mountain roads to our honeymoon spot. Rocinante my noble steed of a car huffed and puffed but it kept on running and I couldn’t have cared even if it did die. I was feeling so on top of the world wonderful I felt I could have lifted the car on my shoulders and carried it and my new wife the rest of the way just on the sheer power of my will.

I knew intellectually, things were going to be tough, tougher than I probably figured to be honest. Most marriages end in divorce, and military marriages even among those who are in the same service are harder than most. My own parents were two of the sanest most compassionate and in-love couples I had ever seen but even they had the occasional knock down drag out danger close fire support fights. But people had been having babies for quite some years now and the species hadn’t gone extinct yet. Love finds a way.

And I did love my Jessica, so very much.

The little bed and breakfast was even prettier than advertised. There was plenty of parking and I got a spot only ten feet from our suite. I signed us in as Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Sullivan Ryan and couldn’t keep the grin off my face. I even remembered to add a fifty dollar bill on top of the paperwork and said I didn’t want to forget the room service fee. With a wink and a nod, the manager thanked me for my noticing his oversight and then stuffed the bill in his shirt.

I tried to carry my new bride over the threshold sedately, but hotel doors are designed to close and latch after they are opened and it slammed shut before I could get a good grip on Jess. So I handed her the key card and then lifted her up, one arm under her back one under her knees. Jess used the card and I kicked the door open and we entered like I was a conquering hero, and I felt every bit like one. I laid my queen down gently on our king sized marriage bed and I didn’t let the fact that I was then carrying in a metric shit ton of stuff inside our room spoil the mood any.

Girl still hadn’t learned how to pack.

We were finishing, an hour later, a four course meal with a nice bottle of iced bubbly when I reached over and took my wife’s hand.

“I know Jess, that this isn’t the way you wanted it to be. It’s not the way I wanted it to be either, we should have done this ten years from now but it is, what it is. And I also know that you are scared about the birth.”

“I’m terrified about it Tommy,” she corrected me yanking her hand away. “I could die.”

“You’re not gonna die baby,” I said, trying to reassure her. “Not for nothing but there has been two decades worth of medical advances since you were born. And that means you got twice the chance your mother did. And you know about the risks ahead of time and can take better care of yourself than she ever did so you got ten times the chance. And you got me pulling for you, which means you got a hundred times the chance.

“Think you’re that good are you?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I know I’m that good, and so are you. Better than even odds my sperm and your egg between us manufactures a baby fully up to milspec, he will burst forth a month early, already ready to spit napalm and piss concertina wire.”

“It’s the bursting forth part that bothers me Tommy, and how exactly am I to change such a creatures diaper.”

“You’ll improvise, overcome, adapt,” I said, leaning over to give her a kiss. “The marine way, I don’t want you to get soft without me there every day to keep you on your toes.”

She looked at me and her eyes lit up with an emotion I couldn’t quite figure out but assumed was love and said simply, “let’s go to bed, a marriage needs to be consummated to be legal.”

“I always was one to follow regulations.” I said grinning ear to ear.

I took off my suit and folded it carefully on the hanger, Jess was much more eager because by the time I was only down to my skivvies she was already totally naked and patting the bed suggestively. I hurried up my act somewhat after that. I chose not to dim the lights, we had never actually done this when I could see things fully and I wanted to admire every last bit of my wife.

“Like what you see?” she asked me sexily.

“Very much,” I nodded.

“Good, I would hate for you to have buyer’s remorse. These will you know, be the only pair of breasts you will ever have,” she said looking down and emphasizing with her hands.

“I’ll never regret this,” I commented confidently.

“I’ll hold you to that.”

I meant to do my husbandly duty like I had when I was a mere boyfriend. Slowly building up the crescendo of my girl’s orgasm, but she was having none of that. Once the minimum amount of lubrication was achieved she grabbed me by a piece of my anatomy that was rather precious to me and guided it directly in. I’m sad to say I didn’t put up much of a fight, and if that’s the way she wanted it I was happy to oblige. A couple of good thrusts and I could already feel my climax building and Jess was helping things out with her powerful pelvic movements. I didn’t think I had been at it long enough for her to come already but the last thing I can remember seeing was her beautiful face in exquisite anticipatory pleasure.

And then our well lit room went completely black, as I lost consciousness.