Having shown I could still best Fort Campbell High School’s star running back, I decided to cut him some slack. He was, after all, my brother. Slowing my pace, I waited until I could hear his labored breathing and oversized feet pounding the ground behind me before glancing over my shoulder. “You’ve been slacking off,” I sneered as he was drawing up to me.

“No fair, Runt,” Craig, the younger of my two brothers, shot back between hungry gasps of air. “Those tooth picks you call legs… They only need to move what… Ninety-eight pounds… If that.”

“Ha, ha. Very funny.”

“Okay… How much… do you weight?”

Coming to a dead stop, I watched as Craig shot past me. When he realized I wasn’t with him any more, he came to a screeching halt, turned and bent over. Planting his hands on his knees, he took a moment to suck in air like it was about to be rationed before looking up to where I was standing, staring at him with my hands resting on my hips. “Didn’t Couch Pulaski teach you anything while you were staying with him, like etiquette or at the very least, common sense?” I snipped.

Confused, he cocked his head to one side. “Yeah, sure. Why?”

Dropping my arms to my side, I rolled my eyes skyward before making my way up to where he was and continued on, but at a leisurely pace, more of a trot than a run. After falling in on my left, I took to explaining myself. “For one thing, I would have thought you would have learned by now you don’t go around asking a girl how much she weights.”

“Well, you don’t count,” he replied without thinking.

Having picked up a few tricks on how to deal with troublesome boys from Grams during the time I had spent with her, I responded to Craig’s comment by giving him one of those telling looks girls are so good at, you know, the one they cast out of the corner of their eyes that informs the male carbon unit beside them they’re about to cross a line only she is aware of. “Oh?”

Realizing he’d stepped on it again, Craig winched. After mentally regrouping, he made a desperate stab at regaining his verbal footing. “I’m your brother,” he finally shot back. “I’m authorized to talk to you about things like that. In fact,” he quickly added, “as your ‘older’ brother, it’s my job to look out for my ‘little’ sister.”

Ignoring the emphasis he put on the words older and little, I found myself strangely pleased he was now able to refer to me as his sister without gagging on that word. Once more I slowed my pace, this time settling into a walk. Doing likewise, Craig looked over at me. When he saw my expression, he up and turned serious. “Look Rache, you’re going to have to give me some time to get used to all of this. I mean, you can’t expect me to suddenly go from treating you like I have our whole lives to dealing with the way you are now. I mean damn, I’m only human.”

Not wishing to see one of my moods, an annoying feature of the new me, spoil the last day we’d have together before Craig left for West Point, I tamped down the maudlin reflections that bubbled up at times like this as best I could and instead, turned my full attention to coming up with a wickedly witty retort. “Is that how Brookie sees you now that you’re just another shit for brains plebe, nothing more than a wretched mortal to be pitied?”

Realizing what I was up to, and just as eager to push past the latest round of awkwardness we had veered into despite our best efforts to pretend all was as it had always been, Craig grinned as he glanced over at me and winked. “Oh, Brooke is too smart a girl to make that mistake. She sees me for what I am.”

Unable to resist, I returned his stare, cocking a brow as I did so. “And what’s that? A skinny ass jock who can’t even keep up with his little sister?”

Naturally Craig couldn’t let that stand. Game on.

Now in my family, populated as it is by two older brothers, creatures who had emerged from the depths of Lake Testosterone, a person like me doesn’t stand a chance unless they adopt some very basic survival skills like running fast or being able to deftly dodge a sib bent on extracting vengeance. I’d no sooner finished taking a verbal swipe at Craig the Jock than he turned and lunged in an effort to tackle me to the ground and tickle me until I peed. Fortunately, the slick moves he used to stymie defensive linemen were no match for the fancy footwork my older brother Steve, the Snake Eater, had taught me. With an ease that left Craig grabbing nothing but thin air, I managed to evade him and break into a dead run before he had managed to recover. Laughing, I couldn’t resist the urge to shout back at him even though he was now in hot pursuit. “Wait till the General hears Hudson High’s newest acquisition can’t even take down his kid sister.”

“Kid sister my ass,” he shouted out as he was closing on me fast. “You’re, you’re…”

And there it was, again. What exactly was I?

The General in this story is Major General Thomas Shaw, a second generation Airborne Infantry officer and a proud ring knocker. Yet despite a reputation that caused the soldiers in his division to refer to him as ‘The Chain Shaw’ behind his back, he’s a pretty cool character, at least as far as Steve, Craig and I are concerned. If he weren’t, odds are I’d still be in traction instead of beating feet back to my maternal grandmother’s Wyoming home in an effort to escape the clutches of my brother. You see, I didn’t always go by the name Rachel, the third and by far the puniest of the General’s three children. Until recently, I was known as Richard Shaw, or as Craig and Steve call me, ‘The Runt.’

Backstory alert!

I have no living memory of my mother, for she died of breast cancer when I was four. At least I don’t think I have any real memories of her that matter. Whether the images I have filed neatly away in my mind are derived from the little time I actually had with her or are drawn from the photo albums my father keeps in the bottom drawer of the china closet doesn’t matter. I can honestly say I do not recall what it felt like to be touched by her or to hear her unrecorded voice. They, like my curiosity of what life would have been like had we lived in one place during my entire childhood instead of moving from post to post every few years are something I think about from time to time but do not dwell on. Sentimentality in the Shaw family, while authorized, is seldom displayed in an overt, simpering, huggie, kissy manner. I mean geez, with a father who could give Rambo a run for his money, one brother who was Special Forces and another who was hell bent for leather to be all he could be, for things to be otherwise would have been way too much for a mere mortal such as myself to ask for.

Which leads many to wonder how it came to past that I managed to slip in under the wire and become a part of this family. While Craig and Steve have concocted all sorts of exotic and off the wall theories on this subject, some of which are quite creative thanks to my brother Craig’s warped sense of humor, at the moment they are of no concern to this narrative. Suffice it to say, even before I decided I needed to pole vault over the gender line I was something of an outlier. Where as my brothers were pretty much cookie cutter versions of the General, even before I started down the path I was now trotting along, I looked as if I had been left on the doorstep of my parent’s quarters by the German milkman. That’s how I wound up being saddled with the nickname ‘The Runt,’ a natural enough moniker seeing how my father and brothers all stand well over six feet tall, dwarfing my five foot eight frame that gives a whole new meaning to the term puny. Hooah!

For those who have never had an opportunity to spend time with folks like The General and my brother Steve, Hooah is a term they and everyone in and associated with the Army use for just about anything save no. For example, it can mean I heard what you said and understand, all right!, thank you, say what?, outstanding!, that's cool, or simply okay. Hooah can also be used as a cheer, one heard all over the post whenever a gathering of soldiers have been informed by their first sergeant they’re about to enjoy a rare good deal or they’re scheduled to spend the next eight hours crawling through the obstacle course’s perma-mud. Often it is used sarcastically, especially when someone is in the midst of something that is particularly unpleasant, like cleaning the barbecue grill at the beginning of Spring after one of my brothers put it away the previous fall without bothering to scrape off the old grease and clingy bits and pieces of burnt burger before doing so. At the time, I thought that was about as hooah as you could get. Well surprise, surprise. I was wrong.

Had my pathetic physical presentation been the only distinguishing characteristic setting me apart form the rest of the Shaw clan, things would have been very different and this story would have been a heck of a lot shorter. Unfortunately, there was more than vertical disparity separating me from Dad, Bro One and Bro Two. Despite enjoying many of the same things they did, I did not have what one could call a positive self image of myself. It wasn’t until I was in middle school that I realized it had nothing to do with my failure to physically measure up to my brothers. Rather, as I watched by peers begin deal with the trials and tribulations of being teenagers, ever so slowly I became aware I the wrong side of the great divide.

Check Fire!

Let me rephrase that. What I meant to say was the physical me was sadly out of sync with the primary circuits of my brain housing group, the ones that should have been proudly proclaiming, ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane.’ Instead, the signal traffic they were passing onto my psyche were confusing and, I dare say, more than a little scary. At first I thought I was gay, which I guess would have been a relatively minor issue for most normal people. Unfortunately, I did not live with normal people. At the time this all came bubbling up to the surface, Dad was an assistant division commander of an airborne division, Steve was a cadet captain in West Point’s corps of cadets and Craig was lighting up the scoreboard of the post’s high school by bulling through defensive linebackers as if they weren’t there, scoring on and off the field.

Having been raised as part of a military family bereft of a female parental unit, the pearls of wisdom and advice that flowed from Dad’s mouth sounded more like they were lifted from FM 3-31, the Joint Forces Land Component Commander’s handbook and not Dr. Spock’s ‘Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care.’ It wasn’t really his fault, not when you consider his father, known throughout the Army as ‘No Slack Shaw,’ raised him to be a soldier. I guess that was why Dad never attempted to influence any of his own sons by steering us toward a military career. That Steve, followed in time by Craig chose to go that route was due to their own choice, not his.

Still, Dad didn’t escape his own upbringing unscathed. Nor was he able to set aside his well honed approach to dealing with people when it came to raising what he lovingly called the Three Stooges. Many of the same policies he used to govern his conduct on duty seamlessly lapsed over into the home. Among them were his admonishment that we bring him solutions and not problems. This caused me to fall back on a much quoted maxim of his when I finally came to the conclusion something was rotten in Denmark. In the Shaw family, at least our branch of it, instead of being told to look before you leap, we were always reminded time spent in reconnaissance was time well spent. With this thought in mind, I set out on a journey of self discovery, an odyssey I ever so slowly came to appreciate I could not avoid even if I had I wanted to.

The only thing I can imagine that could possibly be worse then having a father who was a compulsive planner is being one yourself. In his case, this is a good thing. I mean, who would want to go into battle being led by someone who was in the habit of making things up as they went along. I know I wouldn’t. Not that being overly obsessive about plotting your every move is the mark of an exceptional leader. Having spent my entire life surrounded by military types, I’ve had the opportunity to meet a fair number of officers I wouldn’t follow to the bathroom, let along go into combat with. As with any profession, you have the good, the bad and the certifiably dumb.

The down side of doing nothing until you have every little detail nailed down is all too often you find yourself putting off doing anything for fear of having missed something. Dad has been able to push past this quirk only because he had the good fortune to serve under officers who believed in the philosophy that a good plan today is better than scathingly brilliant plan tomorrow. And though this bit of wisdom was added to the usual rotation of fatherly advice, its significance wasn’t driven home with the same force Dad’s superiors used to pound that point home.

Thus, by the time I finally felt I was ready to discuss my problems with Dad it wasn’t a good time for him, or anyone else for that matter. You see he was slated to deploy to the sandbox with the bulk of his division. For anyone who’s ever been involved in such an event, you can appreciate the strain this puts on a family. During the day the military member is harried by a thousand and one details that need to be looked after before they were wheels up and winging their way over to Southwest Asia. At night, when they finally are permitted to set aside their labors, they return to a home where everyone does their best to pretend as if it’s just another day. This enforced domestic normalcy can be just as wearing as the stress and strain a soldier experiences while on duty. So I punted.

Okay, stay with me. This backstory is leading to a point. Promise.

Unlike previous deployments, when it came time to head off to my maternal grandmother’s, I went alone. Craig, who was entering his senior year in high school managed to talk Dad into allowing him to stay with the family of his football coach. Mind you, that wasn’t a hard sell for either man. Coach Pulaski jumped at the opportunity to keep his star running back for another year and Dad, with his heart set on seeing Craig play for the Black Knights the following year, was anxious to do whatever he could to ensure Craig stayed in shape and out of trouble, tasks he expected Coach could handle with ease.

As much as I hated the idea of spending my freshman year in Wyoming, it was infinitely preferable to the alternative, a point Dad made every time I was foolish enough to complain. All he needed to do to shut me up was to remind me his parents would be more then happy to have me. Not that I think he would have actually left me to the tender mercies of No Slack Shaw. Though he never openly criticized his father, at least not to us kids, we all knew there were some seriously unresolved issued between Dad and his father that would, in all likelihood, remain unresolved. Which is why when I finally did muster up the chutzpah to tell Dad I was playing for the wrong team, he took it in stride and heard me out. But I digress. Back to the backstory.

As Army aviators tend to say in lieu of once upon a time, there I was, exiled to Wyoming, a state that beats out Alaska when it comes to population density, but just barely. Rachel Fleming, whom we all called Grams, lived in a suburb south of Cheyenne. Fortunately for me, she was anything but your typical old lady. Though retired, she kept herself busy by teaching several classes in accounting and business administration at the local community college. While I’m hard pressed to think of anything duller than those two subjects, by staying engaged Grams maintained what Dad would call a keen edge. It also kept her in touch with young people and the real world problems they face, giving raise to my plan B.

When I told her I was having issues with my gender, which is how I phrased it since it wasn’t possible for a Shaw to admit he, or is it she, is a transsexual. For her part Grams was neither shocked nor surprised by what I told her, leading me to wonder if she had spotted something in me I had only recently become aware of. Nor did she hesitate to do something about it. With an alacrity and sure-footedness that would have impressed Dad, she took the information I had accumulated to support my position and did her own research. When she was satisfied I wasn’t pulling her leg, that I really was screwed up when it came to the boy-girl thing, she made a series of appointments with medical doctors and shirks who knew a good deal more than simply how to spell transgender.

Ever so slowly we, Grams, me and Dr. Jeannette Wheeler, a psychologist in Cheyenne, began to get a handle on the situation. Physically I was every bit a normal, healthy fourteen year old male. No big surprise there. It was the mental aspect of this dilemma that proved to be difficult to get sorted out. I mean, I wasn’t effeminate by any stretch of the imagination. With one brother who liked to use me as a tackling dummy, another who thought he was doing me a favor by teaching me hand-to-hand combat when he wasn’t otherwise occupied biting the heads off of snakes and a father who prescribed to the notion that anything that didn’t kill you made you stronger, for things had been otherwise would have been unimaginable. Nor was I drawn to the sort of thing one would expect a teenage girl to get all giddy over. Like my brothers, when it came to fashion all my taste was in my mouth, which is why I think they opted to pursue a career where they didn’t need to worry about what to wear in the morning. Going about with a cell phone glued to my ear, gabbing incessantly with my friends or pouring my heart out to them was something I never understood. I mean, just how interesting can the day to day routine of the average teenager be? Besides, though I had a working knowledge of multi-syllable words and put them to excellent use while in school, in a home ruled by a grunt and shared with a jock, they were carefully rationed. And when it came to the sex, Justin Bieber did nothing for me. But then neither did Taylor Swift.

I’ll not bore you with a long winded discussion of how we came to the conclusion Mother Nature had played a cruel trick on me. Not will I dwell on the many nights I spent tossing and turning while reenacting my very own version of Macbeth’s ‘to be, or not to be,’ soliloquy in my head. At the moment all you need to know is that by Christmas of my freshman year, whatever doubts I still clung to on the day I told Grams about my issues were gone. Equally important, both Grams and the shrink were not only onboard, both thought it might be a good idea if I start taking steps to see if playing for the other team was right for me.

By now I expect a fair number of you are no doubt saying, “Wait a minute. How does a normal teenage boy raised in an almost exclusive male environment who’s not a fairy decide becoming a girl is right for him?” That’s an excellent question. As soon as I have an answer that makes sense to me, I’ll break into the story and tell you. All I did know for sure that Christmas in a way that defied my ability to explain was it was the right call.

With this in mind, Grams and I spent the next few days discussing what we, or more correctly I should do. For starters, the idea of informing Dad, at least while he was deployed down range was dismissed out of hand. I mean, I might be royally screwed up when it comes to the gender thing, but do give me a little credit. The idea of sending a man like my father an email or letter informing him a son of his wanted to become a girl while he is in the middle of a shooting war is beyond dumb. Telling either or both of my brothers was also out of the question. Steve was preparing for another deployment to Afghanistan and Craig was in the midst of enjoying his senior year. Besides not being in any position to do anything for me other than try to convince me I was few beers short of a six pack, which was something I was already painfully aware of, one or both of them would inform Dad in the misguided belief they were saving me from myself.

Grams, on the other hand, was perfectly positioned to help me get the ball rolling. With Dad on the other side of the world, she was my legal guardian, armed with a general power of attorney that gave her all the legal authority necessary to follow through on Dr. Wheeler’s recommendations. When we finally sat down to discuss what to do, she made it perfectly clear to me she had no reservations about helping me, provided of course that was what I wanted to do. Knowing full well Dad would not be at all happy with the way we pressed on without bothering to inform him, I asked her if she was sure she wanted to get involved. With a kindly, grandmother sort of smile on her lips, she reached out and placed a gentle hand on my cheek. “Your father’s a good man. He’ll understand. Besides,” she quickly added while chuckling, “I’m already up to here in this,” she pointed out while holding her hand over her head. “As they say, in for a penny, in for a pound.”

I expect a fair number of you are probably saying to yourself, “Yikes! Transitioning in Wyoming? Poor girl.” Well, I am here to inform you things could not have gone better. First off, I did not do anything overt or over the top, at least not at first. While I continued to see Dr. Wheeler and go to school in my male mufti, under Grams watchful eye I ever so slowly dipped a toe in to test the waters. For those who have gone the M. Butterfly route, you know the drill, so I’ll not bore you to tears with long, drawn out descriptions of the shopping trips Grams insisted we take in order to buy a wardrobe suitable for a teenaged girl or how I managed to make a fool out of myself during my first public appearance in female battle rattle. Awkward doesn’t even begin to describe these initial forays out and about as Rachel.

And yet, and yet, in a weird way that was absolutely baffling to me even to this day, I came to appreciate what I was doing was more than right. It was necessary. Had I not come to that conclusion, I never would have found the courage to sit down with Dad and tell all when, upon completing his latest round of God and Country time in Never-Neverland he made his way west to police me up.

I cannot think of any greater fear a child harbors than to be rejected by a parent. For a boy, to have a man you admire above all others look down at you with an unfettered look of disgust is perhaps the most devastating thing imaginable. I know there were times when I had wished Dad would have up and slapped me silly rather than see him avert his eyes and shake his head while letting out a slow, well measured sigh. So, when I sat down with him on the front porch of Gram’s home to inform him about my gender issues, I could not look him in the eye. Instead, I gazed off in the distance as I ever so carefully explained things to him. Even when I finished without him once interrupting me, I could not look as he stood up and slowly walked away without uttering a single word. It was his way of dealing with his children when they disappointed him or, in this situation, dumped a massive ‘S’ bomb on him he needed time to absorb before responding.

Round two came later that evening after a meal he, Grams and I sort of enjoyed in utter silence. When he was sure everyone was finished, he looked across the table at me for the first time sporting a deadpan expression that would have reduced a lesser mortal to tears. Now I’m not saying I’m some kind of demigod or supernatural being, unless of course you’re one of those who think people like me are a twisted version of Satan’s spawn. No, I simply understand dear old Dad and his moods. Having uploaded and processed the data I had provided earlier in the day, he was ready to discuss the matter in a clam, reasonable manner. At least I hoped that was what he was getting ready to do. Given he was a general officer who had just come back from dealing with people who had no idea how to spell Geneva Convention, I could not totally discount the possibility I was on the verge of finding out just what the term rendition meant.

Okay, back to the story.

Needless to say, I didn’t get a chance to play soccer with the All Islamic Jihad team at Club Gitmo. Nor was there any need to dust me off to the nearest trauma center. Instead, Dad informed me if I was really serious about what I was doing and Dr. Wheeler could convince him she knew what she was talking about, he would leave me in Wyoming with Grams over the summer, during which I would assume the role of Rachel 24/7. Though Dr. Wheeler thought this might be a bit premature, she saw no harm in it. In the meantime, my father would return to Fort Campbell alone where he would get on with the business of handing his division over to his replacement as scheduled before moving onto his next tour of duty at Puzzle Palace on the Potomac. At the end of the summer, when he was settled into his new assignment, he promised he’d return to Wyoming, sit down with me and discuss what he called ‘this gender thing’ once more. If, during that time I had come to the conclusion the girl thing just wasn’t for me, I promised I would drop the matter and never mention it again. If, however, the opposite was true, he made it clear he’d take his daughter home with him and see this thing through to the end, consequences be damned.

Hooah!

This is the second time around for this story. Having finished ‘The World Turned Upside Down,’ which by the way is available on Kindle and Lulu.com, as well as a collaborative effort with my favorite Anglo-Irish co-writer even as I am going back to finish ‘Caitlin’, I decided I needed to spend sometime writing something that was a wee bit more lighthearted than revolution and world wars.

Besides, I have been taking advantage of Erin’s kind indulgence by using this website to promote and advertise all my other books, (which, in case I haven’t mentioned, are available on Kindle and Lulu.com). I figure it’s time for a little payback. So I am reposting ‘The General and the Butterfly’ with the intent of finishing it.

Hopefully those of you who read it, even if it is a second time, enjoy the story.

Nancy Cole
a.k.a. HW Coyle

The sound of footfalls descending the steps caused my heart to skip a beat. Pausing, I closed my eyes, sucked in my breath and held it, steeling myself as I did so for what promised to be fresh round of close scrutiny. This would be followed, no doubt, by a less then subtle litany of carefully worded ‘Fatherly’ advice. Mind you, it could be worse, far worse. As Craig likes to remind me, things are always darkest before they go totally black.

Putting the cereal box down, I stepped away from the counter and for the umpteenth time that morning, looked down at the uniform I was wearing. The crisp white, short sleeved cotton blouse was snuggly tucked into my pleated plaid skirt.

We will interrupt this story for a brief panic attack.

God! My skirt! I was wearing a skirt, a skirt that was mine, all mine. “The horror. The horror,” Colonel Kurtz muttered as napalm lit the pre-dawn darkness.

But I digress. Back to the story.

So there I was, standing at the kitchen counter with nothing to defend myself with except a box of cereal, a spoon and my wits as the Lord High Executioner himself drew nigh. Though I expect the General would have preferred it if the afore mentioned skirt was a longer, its hem fell exactly where the school’s guidelines required it to. Mind you, he was anything but old fashioned. He left that to his father, the Prince of Darkness in this narrative. Nor was Dad a newly converted adherent of those precepts of Islamic hijab governing female attire. I am of the opinion that quite the opposite is true judging from the amount of time it took him to dispose of the girly magazines he routinely confiscated from under Craig’s mattress. The answer was far more basic. You see, the General was even less used to seeing me in a skirt than I was wearing one.

It wasn’t until I arrived in Virginia that I gave any serious thought to how much of an impact my actions would have on Dad and his career. Until then, I had been so focused on dealing with my own concerns that I all but forgot just what this would mean to a man like him. You see, not only did the General have to come to terms with what I was doing as any primary parental unit facing this sort of thing must, he would have to deal with the opinions of superiors, peers and subordinates. With precious few exceptions, they were fellow warriors, Alpha males who believed an officer’s true measure was reflected by everything he did, on duty and off.

This philosophy was especially true when it came to an officer’s children. He never told us as much, at least not directly. The General was far too subtle for that. He preferred to use the indirect approach, or as Craig put it after reading one too many articles in Military Review, ‘Asymmetric Parenting.’ Whenever he felt the need to remind us our behavior reflected upon him over dinner or during long drive he’d find a way of telling us how Colonel so-and-so’s son had screwed the pooch, causing his father all kinds of problems, or how humiliating it was for the post commander whenever his daughter got it in her head to go parading about in outfits that left precious little to the imagination. Naturally Dad always ended these tales of dependents gone wild by relating how a friend of his told him if the boy or girl in question was his, they would A – ground the miscreant for eternity plus six, B – ensure they wouldn’t be able to sit down for a month or C – find themselves spending their Christmas vacation learning how to walk again. Now whether these friends Dad spoke of were real, or simply a way of allowing us to have a glimpse of a side of him that earned him the reputation as being a real piss-bringer was something those of us who comprised his household troop were never able to discern. What we did take away from these morality tales was the message they were meant to impart; i.e. don’t mess around.

I expect had I been stricken with an incurable form of cancer or had suddenly developed an extreme case of tourettes, no one would have thought any differently of the General. Unfortunately, in the eyes of an institution that was still struggling to come to terms with its transition from a lean, mean fighting machine to a bastion of cutting edge political correctness, being the father of a son who wanted to be a girl ranked right up there with having a child graduate with honors from a Pakistani madrassa. Having become something of a self centered twit since proclaiming ‘I am woman, hear me roar,’ all of this only became painfully clear to me as I was being in-processed at Fort Myer where, due to his duty assignment we, Dad and I, were assigned quarters.

Throughout that nerve-racking ordeal no one said anything, at least not to our faces as Dad walked me through the chore of having a new dependent ID issued to me using my new name. They didn’t need to. I could see it in their faces as they went about scanning the paperwork before them. Without fail, their eyes would come to a screeching halt when they realized Richard needed to be changed to Rachel. In the same way a person finds they are unable to take their eyes off a train wreck, I would watch as they re-read the documents before them just to make sure we hadn’t inadvertently made an error when filling out the paperwork.

Next came ‘The Look.’ You know the one. First they’d glance up at me to see how they failed to miss spotting what they now suspected was Tinker Bell’s big sister, or brother, or whatever. Next they would turn their attention on Dad as if trying to figure out how an officer like him could possible allow his son to do such a thing. As was his wont, the General returned their gob smacked expression with one Steve, Craig and I had grown up with, one that asked ‘Is there something you’d like to say?’ in a tone of voice that made it clear we didn’t dare do so if we wished to see another sunrise. When it finally became clear they weren’t doing double duty in the Twilight Zone, the admin puke would once more turn their gaze onto me.

As unnerving as it this all was for me, I could not even begin to imagine what it was like for Dad, for he knew how the Army rumor mill worked. His love for me had not changed, not one bit, a point he reassured me of whenever he saw my spirits begin to flag. Unfortunately, there was little I could do or say that would boost his spirits when, after a long day, he returned home and found I was still there, budding perky little breasts that not even one of Steve’s size gigantic airborne Tee shirts could hide. Like him, I knew word of what I was doing would radiate out like ripples in a pond. It would not take long before everyone who mattered to Dad was aware his youngest son was now a butterfly. In time this news would reach the furthest shore before being reflected back to us in ways neither could predict.

That was why I was standing there at the counter, holding my breath while the General slowly made his way downstairs, along the hall and into the kitchen of the four bedroom quarters we were living in. Though we had each did our best in our own ways to deal with the stress my actions had resulted in by whistling our way past the graveyard, we both were natives of Realville. We knew it would be a long, long time, if ever, that something approaching what had once passed for normal in our lives would be restored.

When I heard the footfalls stop, I couldn’t keep from looking over my shoulder to where Dad was, standing in the doorway staring at me. When he realized I had caught him doing so, he averted his own gaze in a vain effort to hide the ruddiness rising in his cheeks. Not knowing what else to do, he scratched the back of his head before making his way over to the coffee maker where he took up a mug I had dug out of the cardboard packing box they’d been shipped in and poured himself a cup.

Having a father who was an infantry officer did have its advantages, particularly when it came to cooking. So long as it was warm and relatively free of dust, Dad would eat just about anything I put before him, which was good since making coffee not exactly my strong suit. As far as he was concerned, it only needed to be black, hot and plentiful.

Hoorah!

Deciding I needed to do something to break the tension, I drew myself up and spun around, which turned out to be a mistake, for it caused my pleated skirt to flare out, causing him to wince. In the week I’d been here I had gone out of my way keep from flaunting my new found femininity in his face. If truth be known, this wasn’t all that difficult. Despite Gram’s efforts to mold me into a fashionable and demur young girl, the best she was able to achieve in what little time we had over the summer was something that came across as a socially awkward tomboy. On those rare occasions when she felt I needed to make the effort to publically sprout my new found butterfly wings, it took a fair amount of brow beating and more than a little cajoling on her part to get me into a skirt or dress, items she had purchased for me which somehow always managed to find their way to the back of my closet, a location she had taken to calling the Bermuda Triangle.

Dad, bless his Kevlar coated heart, didn’t even make the effort, not at first. In the beginning he was content to allow me to dress myself in a manner that was pretty much nondescript. The first time I did make an exception to my self imposed policy of wearing things that were gender neutral after arriving in Virginia was when he and I went to Saint David’s to enroll me in school. Believe me when I tell you, on that day I felt like an unwanted dog who’d been dumped in a Chinese neighborhood on market day. Judging by the way he kept glancing at me out of the corner of his eye, I expect the same applied to the General.

Rather then sending me to the public school in Arlington, we had both come to the conclusion on our own that it would be best if I attended a private school. It was an idea I had initially broached while we were hashing out the details of how we were going to make my whole boy to girl thing work. Without batting an eye, he fully embraced the idea since it would minimize my interaction with the children of other military personnel and provide me with what he hoped would be a safer, more secure environment. Expense was not an issue. With Craig now safely tucked away at West Point, the money Dad had socked away for his education was now available for my high school education. What was an issue, not surprisingly, was my current status, seeing how for the foreseeable future physically I would be neither fish nor foul.

Back to ‘Rachel does St. David’s.’

Dad and I went flat out in assembling my scholastic resume and preparing for the mandatory interview with the school’s admissions officer. Together we dissected the school’s web site and admission standards, gathering up all the documentation they required and then some. Included in this package were signed copies of letters from both the physician I had been seeing in Cheyenne and Dr. Wheeler, notarized documents that attested to the fact that I was a certified, grade A, government inspected transsexual. By the time we had finished it was all very Hooah, impressive and, as it turned out, very necessary.

Academically I passed muster with ease. Even if there had been a problem in that department, I expect my father’s rank would have been sufficient to earn me a provisional bye, for St. David’s, the school we had settled on, made a point of boosting on its web site and in its literature to the parents of perspective students it recruited the best the brightest who just so happened to include the pimply faced spawn of senators, congressmen, foreign diplomats and senior government officials. It was when our discussions with the admissions official turned to my ‘unique’ circumstances that we both expected things would become a wee bit dicey.

With that in mind, the day we went for my interview I wore an outfit that was similar to the prescribed uniform female students were required to wear. The only difference was instead of knee socks and Mary Janes, (eww), I wore stockings and a pair of dressy black flats Grams had insisted I buy. I also skipped the makeup. While Dad thought I did it for his sake, if truth be known at this point wearing make up weirded me out, big time.

Still, despite my efforts to keep things toned down, I couldn’t help but notice the look on my father’s face as he stood in the foyer waiting for me to finish dressing and messing with my hair on the day of the interview. As I was descending the stairs, he followed my every move like acquisition radar tracking a target. Not that I can blame him. After all, this was the first time he was seeing his youngest son in a skirt. My shy, innocent response to his scrutiny didn’t help either, for when I finally came up to him and stopped, the redness in my cheeks, the manner with which I averted my eyes and the way I took to nervously fidgeted with the strap of my shoulder bag only served to accentuate the fact that I no longer was his son in the classical sense.

One of the hallmarks of a man like the General is that he instinctively knows what to do in difficult situations. On that occasion, my father reached out, placed the crock of his index finger under my chin and slowly tilted my head back until I was looking up into his eyes. With the best smile he could scrounge up under the circumstances, he asked if I was ready for this.

I may not have been a cookie cutter replica of the General, but I was his child in every way that mattered to the two of us. Returning his forced smile with one of my own, I replied no, but since we were both dressed and had nothing else planned for the rest of the afternoon, we might as well go and see what the good folks at St. David’s had to say.

Hooah!

If the General was harboring any reservations going into the interview with the school’s admissions officer, he kept them to himself. Instead of being skittish, he conducted himself as if having a son who was in the process of becoming his daughter was the most natural thing in the world. This became quite evident whenever the admissions officer paused, hesitated or took to squirming in her seat as people who find themselves in an awkward situation tend to do. Without skipping a beat, at moments like that the General would give her one of those, ‘Is there a problem?’ looks he’s so good at.

Once, when the woman tried to explain the school might not be able to accommodate all my special needs, he opened the manila folder he was holding in his lap, took up one of the school’s slick brochures and turned to a dog-eared page. Without preamble, he began to read from it. “St. David is a school dedicated to serving the needs of all its students regardless of their race, gender, color, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin.” Looking up from the brochure, he pinned the admissions officer to the spot with a stare that would have made Darth Vader flinch. “While I will be the first to admit I am still coming to terms with my daughter’s condition,” he continued, “I am quite familiar with equal opportunity policies as well as state and Federal laws governing discrimination. So, unless there is something in my daughter’s academic record or her past conduct that disqualifies her, I don’t see any problems. Do you?”

Whether it was my father’s implicit threat or the look on his face as he leaned forward and fixed the admissions officer with a glacial stare, the poor woman capitulated faster then a Frenchman who’d just heard a band strike up ‘Deutschland uber Alles.’

I was in.

After taking a seat at the kitchen table and enjoying a long, lingering sip of coffee while doing his best to keep from looking over to where I was pouring milk over my cereal but failing miserably, Dad broke the awkward silence. “Why so early?”

I waited until I’d taken my place across from him before answering. “New student orientation, remember?” I muttered wistfully without looking up from my bowl of cereal.

“Oh yeah, right,” he mumbled in response before turning his attention back to his coffee while madly scrambling for something to say that would keep us from once more lapsing into another protracted silence. “Are you sure you don’t want me to drop you off?” he finally asked, peeking up at me.

“I’ll be fine, Dad. Really. Besides, do you think for one minute I’m going to pass up the chance to drive Craig’s car every chance that comes my way?” I quickly added in an effort to lighten the mood.

Pausing with his cup halfway to his mouth, he grunted. “Just make sure you don’t do anything dumb that gives the post’s MPs or any of Arlington’s finest an excuse to pull you over. That restricted driver’s license from Wyoming you managed to talk your grandmother into allowing you to apply for may not impress them.”

Unable to help myself, I gave my father a wink. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

“You be careful, you hear?”

“What? And spoil my first day at school?” I replied glibly.

That’s when it happened. Out of the clear blue the General set his coffee cup down, reached across to me, and placed his hands over the one I had on the table next to my cereal bowl. Giving it a gentle squeeze, he gazed in my eyes for the longest time. “Rachel, promise me you’ll be careful.”

He was no longer talking about my driving. Whenever he was bidding Steve farewell before he shipped out and, I expect, as Craig was preparing to head off to West Point, Dad would grasp their shoulder. With a whispered intensity that spoke of a deep-rooted love for his departing child, he’d tell them to be careful. Nothing more needed to be said. And while the sentiment he was expressing to me at the moment was no different, it was the manner with which he was doing so that caused me to wonder if, in his own way, he was blessing the journey I was about to embark upon.

Now if that turned out to be the case, it was most definitely hooah, all the way and then some.

Nancy Cole
a.k.a. HW Coyle

St. David’s, St, David’s. Now what can I say about St. David’s?

What I really mean, is what can I say about St. David’s that can be published here. Hmmm… Let me think on that one a minute.

Okay, for now let’s just stick with the basic 411. St. David’s was a private Catholic school founded in the year something or other for the expressed purpose of keeping good little Catholic boys and girls from being corrupted by the wickedness of the secular world around them. Using the current the crop of students I found myself thrown in with as a measure to judge the success of that goal, I’d have to give the holy fathers and reverend mothers who founded the school deserve a big, fat goose egg on that count.

Before going any further, let me make one thing perfectly clear. I’m no plaster saint, not by any stretch of the imagination. Granted, military brats like me live in a unique bubble, one apart from the very society our parents are charged with defending. That doesn’t mean we’re isolated from its influence or protected from the trials, tribulations and temptations all kids experience as they grow up. If anything, due to the nature of the beast we few, we happy few, we band of brothers, (and sisters), develop unique skills and street smarts at an early age. We have to if we’re going to survive the trauma of moving every two to three years and all that entails. On top of having to say goodbye to one group of friends and go about surrounding ourselves with an entirely new batch in a different state or country, kids who have a father like mine need to find a way of dealing with the ever present fear of hearing the phone ring in the middle of the night, a clarion call to arms men like the General answer without hesitation or reservations, at least none they ever shared with their families.

It was the ever present threat of seeing our father pack up his go to war kit and ship out more than the need to adapt to our new surrounds that left Steve, Craig and I little choice but to grow a thick hide, a quirky sense of humor and a mature outlook on life far in excess of our years, allowing us to deal with just about anything. I guess this is why I wasn’t as freaked out as I imagine I should have been as I sat in the parking lot of St. David’s in Craig’s vintage Subaru wearing a skirt I was beginning to wish was longer and a bra that was irritating a pair of newly discovered nipples that had sudden decided to burst onto the stage at the most inopportune time.

It goes without saying I did need to take a minute to muster up the courage I would have to call on in order to see me through this day. I was, after all, about to venture forth among strangers, kids like me, but not like me, teenagers who would become my friends, my rivals, my detractors, my bitterest enemies and my salvation until, once more, some twit in MILPERCEN whom I would never meet decided I was becoming way too comfortable with my surroundings and issued a new set of orders sending dear old Dad to a strange new place.

To use a phrase military aviators rely on to begin their stories in lieu of once upon a time, there I was, sitting in the Craig-mobile when out of the clear blue a voice cut through my mental fog. “Are you okay?”

I did not hit the ceiling of my brother’s car, although that would not have been all that difficult. My startled expression, however, must have amused the tall, blond haired, blue eyed Hitler Youth stunt double to whom the voice belonged, for he stood there staring down at me through the open window wearing a shit eating grin. It was the kind of smirk cute boys tend to sport when they’ve succeeded in shaking some poor girl’s tree.

Oh – my – God!

What am I thinking? Cute boys? (Note to editor; strike all after ‘shit eating grin’).

Okay, where was I? Yeah, right.

So there I was, sitting in the toasty warm Craig-mobile doing my damnedest to be as cool as I could be in the late summer heat but, based on the expression on The Voice’s face, not doing a very good job of it.

“Are you okay?” The Voice asked once more.

“Yes, fine, great,” I replied as convincingly as possible as I struggled mightily to keep myself from telling him what I was really thinking.

“You’re new, aren’t you?” the Voice asked.

The temptation to inform him of just how new I was did cross my mind, causing me to smirk. Fortunately, that thought was trumped by my wish to behave as normal as possible. (Cue ‘Mission Impossible’ theme). “Yes, I am,” I replied in an even tone, taking care to keep from doing anything that would allow him to think I was being taken in by his lame efforts to strike up a conversation. While he very well could have been interested in making sure I wasn’t a damsel in distress, having played for the other team and seen my brothers in action, this possibility was dismissed out of hand.

“Well if that’s the case, let me show you around,” The Voice volunteered in a tone that was far too eager and cheerful. Since I couldn’t think of a graceful way of turning down an otherwise innocent offer and my IFF, (Identify Friend or Foe), wasn’t up to speed at the moment, I nodded. “Sure,” again taking great care to keep from doing or saying anything that would encourage The Voice.

Of course, with him being a boy and me coming across at the moment as an easy mark, short of regaling him with my well hone repertoire of obscenities or fleeing like a hemophiliac at a vampire convention, I didn’t need to do a bloody damned thing to encourage him other than breathe.

“My name is Todd, Todd Lowe. I’m a senior here,” The Voice informed me once I’d gathered up my backpack and exited the car, taking care to ensure my skirt, (there it is again, ‘My Skirt’), didn’t ride up and give The Voice a show.

“Rachel Shaw,” I volunteered once I had collected my things and locked the car.

“I take it you’re a junior,” he ventured as we began to make our way across the parking lot, me with my head bowed slightly as he watched me like a ravenous hawk eyeing its next meal.

Knowing how seniors felt about freshman and sophomores, I allowed myself something of a grin. “A sophomore, actually.”

That seemed to do the trick, for he blinked as the wheels behind those blues eyes of his began to spin, trying to piece together how a kid in her second year of high school could be driving, not to mention the need to assess whether the stigma of being seen with a sophomore was worth whatever gain he was hoping to derive by striking up a friendship with a social untermenchen such as me. Unfortunately, he quickly overcame whatever reservations he had and pressed on. “Where are you coming from?” was his next question, one I could have answered in any number of ways, some of which were quite creative. But instead of being a smart ass as was my wont, I chose to keep it simple and straightforward. “Wyoming.”

“Wyoming? What were you doing in Wyoming?”

The temptation to answer that question truthfully by telling him I’d been busy becoming a girl was countered by my wish to keep from coming across as ‘T’ Girl, the transgendered caped crusader whose mission was to enlighten my fellow students as to the joys and wonders of pole vaulting across the gender line. Everyone would know what I was soon enough. My hope was they would see me as a person first and accept me as such before ‘That’ came up, no pun intended.

“I was staying with my grandmother while my father got settled in here,” in informed The Voice.

“I see. What does your father do?”

Once more I needed to check myself, least I respond with a snappy comeback that would alienate the boy. Though I had no great desire to befriend The Voice, I knew if I came across as being unfriendly, in no time flat I would have a reputation. While I expected the fact that I was something of a smart ass would eventually become common knowledge, like the gender thing, I had no wish to rush things. So once more I rendered an honest, straightforward answer. “He’s in the Army.”

“I see.” Again a pause as The Voice processed this information. “My father is with State,” he offered.

Not being the sort of kid who felt the need to use their father’s rank or position in order to define who they were, I found The Voice’s need to resort to such a ploy in order to either impress me or, heaven forbid, keep this stilted dialogue going as we made our way along to be a wee bit annoying. This time I made no effort to check my tongue. “How interesting,” I chirped brightly. “What state?”

As expected, by question caused The Voice to blink. “Excuse me?”

“What state is your father with? No, don’t tell me,” I quickly added before he could answer. “I’ll bet he’s with Virginia.”

Not sure if I was being serious or if I was having some fun with him, The Voice regarded me with furrowed brow for a moment before replying. “He’s with the State Department.”

A flat, nondescript ‘Oh,’ served to inform him I was not impressed, causing him to scramble about in an effort to come up with a new line of attack. Fortunately, we reached the building where we parted, but not before he stepped out in front of me, causing me to come to a full dead stop and look up into those blue eyes of his. “Well, I guess I’ll be seeing you around,” The Voice volunteered.

The temptation to reply. ‘Thanks for the warning,’ was checked once more by my desire to keep from alienating him. That, I suspected, would happen soon enough.

No first day of a new school year would be complete without a welcoming assembly during which the principal, assistant principal, the assistant to the assistant principal and all the usual suspects proclaimed how much they were sooo looking forward to making this the most successful and challenging year of our young lives, how important our time here would be to our future, how eager our teachers were to help us navigate our way through the long, long, long, zzzzzz….

Oh, sorry. Where was I?

Yeah, right. Immediately following a small scale reenactment of the Bore War, everyone scattered to their homerooms where individual teachers would once more welcome us, call the roll and go over some of the more salient rules of engagement with which they would govern our time in homeroom. In the process of moving from the school’s auditorium to our assigned homerooms, returning students clustered together, creating jabbering little knots of friends newcomers and social outcasts binged off of like free electrons. At the moment I was quite happy to be one of the former, a condition I wished to cling to as long as possible before I was reclassified into latter.

It wasn’t until I entered the classroom which would serve as my academic forward operating base that I found myself having to make my first major decision of the school year; where do I sit? Sitting up front was ruled out. I mean, duh! Who in their right mind would willingly allow a potentially hostile force to occupy their six. Sitting in the middle was almost as bad. That location offered no tactical advantage whatsoever. To the front would be the nerds and the kiss asses. Behind me would be the academically impaired and the smart asses, which also lead to my decision to avoid taking a seat there as well.

That left the flanks. I was in the process of trying to decide if it would be best to grab a seat close to the door or one near the window when a red haired girl who was also sizing up the room as well sidled up next to me. “It’s always a tough call picking you seat, isn’t it?” she said as her eyes took in lay of the land.

Turning, I gazed into the girl’s eyes as she flashed a quick smile. “I’m new here as well,” she informed me without my having to say a word.

Whether it was her English accent or the way she was able to peg me as another lost soul, I knew without having to give the matter the sort of thought such things often demanded this girl and I were destined to become fast friends. “Over there, by the windows,” I blurted. “There’s two seats we can take if we hurry.” The smile on Red’s face and twinkle in her eye told me she agreed with my assessment, both as to where we should sit and the matter of friendship.

As former friends used the chaos settling in entailed to catch up on things, Red introduced herself. “I’m Katie, Katie Lyttle with a ‘Y’, not an ‘I’” she declared merrily in a light, lyrical voice I envied. “It’s a quirk my Welsh ancestors insisted on clinging to.”

After tucking my backpack under my seat, I thrust my hand out. “Rachel Shaw.”

“Like the playwright?” Katie asked.

Her question caused me to chuckle. “Not even close.” Unfortunately, before I could explain, a quick series of sharp cracks silenced the room.

“Okay people, summers over,” a booming voice declared in a tone that reminded me of the way the General spoke when he was in no mood to be trifled with. “Settle down and take your seats.”

This voice belonged to Mr. Keith Halverson, a very tall man with a linebacker’s build. In time I would come to learn he had played football at the University of Virginia. At the moment, however, I, as well as everyone else in the room was only interested complying with his dictate.

When everyone was settled and he had our undivided attention, Halverson wasted little time with the preliminaries, skipping over the ‘Great to see you all back’ blather. Instead, he took to ticking off the rules governing his classroom in a manner that would have brought a smile to the General’s face. Everything about the man told me he was not the sort of person you screwed about with. As if to confirm this supposition, I noticed how all the returning students sat upright in their seats with their eyes riveted on him as he slowly paced back and forth in the front of the room as he spoke. Not even the back of the room crowd did anything that smacked of ridicule or derision.

When he was finished posting his orders for the day, delivered in a crisp, no nonsense monotone, Halverson stopped, turned to where Katie and I were sitting and fashioned what I assumed passed as a smile for him. In that instant I realized my well crafted strategy of maintaining a low profile, of letting people get to know me before they got to know about me was about to be undone by a man who thought he was doing me a favor. Closing my eyes, I slumped down in my seat, bracing myself as best I could for the verbal hammer blow coming my way.

“We have a rather unique addition to our class this year,” Halverson declared. While unique wasn’t exactly the way I would describe my current status, I imagine it was far better than some of the words he could have used.

“The young lady’s father, and I do mean lady, is newly assigned to the Pentagon.” Unable to help myself, I cringed.

“Miss Lyttle, would you please stand up.”

Wait a minute! Did he say Lyttle?

Opening my eyes, I glanced over at a very red faced girl who was, at the moment, doing her best to be as calm and gracious as she could. Naturally she was failing miserably, almost as badly as I expect I would have had Halverson outted me.

“The Honourable Katherine Diana St John Lyttle Fairfax is the daughter of the Viscount Sir Jeffery Lyttle, an officer of the Queen who is currently the Chief Defense Staff Liaison Officer for the United Kingdom to the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Halverson continued as he blissfully ignored the way the poor girl stood next to her seat, eyes downcast as if searching for a hole in the floor she could crawl into. “As this is her first time in the U.S. I hope the rest of you will take the time to welcome her as well as help her navigate her way about what passes as culture here in the former colonies.” If this last comment was meant to be funny, the humor was lost on Katie.

Mercifully, the bell alerting us homeroom period was over brought a quick end to Katie’s suffering. Gathering up her things, she darted for the door as gracefully as she could, ignoring the gawking stares and whispered comments from our fellow students. Following, I managed to catch up to her in the hall. “That was mean,” I snapped when I saw she was aware of my presence.

Flashing me a wan little smile, she dismissed the entire incident as best she could. “I should have expected something like that,” she sighed. “My mother warned me my plan to simply blend in was a foolish notion.”

Struck by the fact she had been hoping to do the same thing I was attempting, I hastened to express my empathy for her plight. “If it’s any comfort to you, I know exactly how you feel,” I opined. “My father’s in the Army as well, a general no less.”

As expected, this revelation caused Katie to perk up. Upon seeing this, I shared a few quick stories of how awkward things had been for me in the past when I’d been singled out as she had been. Unfortunately, I was way too eager to do so, allowing my tongue to seriously outpace my brain’s ability to properly prescreen what I was saying. “It’s not easy being one of the crowd when everywhere you go people point at you and whispers there goes the general’s son.”

Totally unaware of the fact I’d just inserted both of my size nine wide paten leather Mary Janes in my mouth, I continued to blissfully babble on, sharing with Katie a few of the more embarrassing moments of my young life. If she had been thrown by my accidental revelation, she didn’t show it. Quite the opposite turned out to be true, for in our next class she steered me toward a pair of seats next to the windows. “It might be best if we kept things simple,” she advised as we were settling in. “I expect we’ve both had more than our fair share of changes in our lives as of late without having to remember which seats we’re suppose to take in which class.”

Flashing her a smile, I replied with a southern drawl you could have cut with a knife. “Honey child, you’ve said a mouth full.”

Fortune seemed to with me that day, for Katie’s schedule was a mirror image of mine. The only deviation came toward the end of the day when she turned to head to the gym and I started off for the library. At the time it didn’t strike me in the least bit odd she didn’t ask me why I wasn’t joining her. Instead, I merrily trooped off on my own, satisfied for the moment that the fabric of the universe had not unraveled because of my decision to abandon the SS Testosterone. Even more important, I had found a friend. Just how good a friend she would turn out to be was something I would find out far faster than I could have ever imagined.

Nancy Cole
a.k.a. HW Coyle

P.S. I have finally finished 'Caitlin,' a story about a young Irish officer during the First World War. It will be available on Amazon Kindle sometime before St. Patrick's Day.

The exceptionally good mood I was in after saying goodbye to Katie at the end of what I thought was an incredibly successful day at school begin to take some serious hits the moment I opened the front door, which I found to be unlocked. Unlike the good old days, before the General was the General, when it had just been him, Steve, Craig and little ‘ole me we didn’t need to worry about bumping into members of the entourage that hang around general officers like stray puppies and hungry cats. At present this mewing, simpering gaggle consisted of an aide-de-camp, which is French for boot licking lackey, an enlisted aide who ‘aided’ the General whenever he held a service related function at his quarters and a driver. Thus far I hadn’t met any of the current crop. This was about to change.

Since the aide-de-camp was habitually attached at the hip to the General, I suspected it was the enlisted aide who I heard rummaging about in the kitchen. After tossing my backpack onto a bench in the foyer, I made my way to the back of the house, hoping as I did so this one was a wee bit more switched on than the last one my father had picked. While Sergeant Timothy Kline had been a nice enough guy, he didn’t impress Craig or I was the sort of person you’d want providing covering you with fire in a firefight. Tiny Tim, a nickname Craig saddled him with, had far too much, ‘Yes Sir, General Sir. Right away, Sir,’ in him and not near enough ‘Hooah’ for either us.

This one, on the other hand, was something entirely different. Upon my entering the kitchen she continued inventorying the china until she reached a point where she could stop without losing track of her count. When she did, she turned sharply, drew herself up and introduced herself. “I am Sergeant Maria Burgos, the General’s enlisted aide.”

Both her snappy, staccato delivery and the look in her eye told me this was a woman no sane person wanted to mess with. Physically, she was not all that impressive, standing half a head shorter than me. It was her demeanor, a self assured expression and the way she filled out her ACUs that impressed me as being the kind of woman who could knit a tank out of steel wool. “I’m Rachel,” I replied doing my best to match Burgos’ confident, self-assured manner.

“Yes, I know,” she replied in an even tone that betrayed nothing.

Feeling a wee bit awkward, a sensation that was fast becoming my default response to moments like this, I blurted out the first thing I could think of. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“No. I have everything in hand,” she replied, again in a tone that was punctual without being curt.

‘I’ll bet you do,’ I thought to myself.

“I do have a message for you from the General,” she quickly added. “You will being dining out tonight. He directed me to inform you that you were to wear something appropriate.”

I didn’t bother asking Sergeant Burgos if she knew what the General had in mind. Fact was, I seriously doubted if he had any idea what was appropriate attire for his newly acquired teenaged daughter. Instead I asked the good sergeant what time I needed to be ready. “Eighteen hundred hours,” she replied. Since the General operated on Vince Lombardi time, I knew I needed to be ready to roll not later than 17:45 hours, which gave me a little less than two hours to change and get myself ready.

It goes without saying, (although I am going to say it anyhow just so you can all keep up with things), I was of two minds. Part of me wanted to have some fun at the General’s expense by dressing in something totally inappropriate, like my ‘Team Infidel’ Tee shirt and a pair of ratty jeans. To have done so, however, would not only have incurred his righteous wrath, it would have been an undeserved slap in the face. My father, after all, had gone out of his way to do all he could to help me though the ordeal I had brought on. I had little doubt he had already endured a great deal of grief, both overt and covert, because of what I was doing. And though he never even hinted at it, I owed him big time for all he had done and suffered as he did his damnedest to make my journey on the Genderland Express as painless as possible.

So I settled on a white shift dress with colorful flowers on it. Grams had insisted on buying it for me. “You’ll be needing something nice every so often,” she told me when she saw the expression on my face as she held it up to me in the store. “You can’t go about looking like a cross between a Tom boy and a member of a grunge band all the time.” She was right of course. I knew she was. Still, this was the first time I’d managed to muster up the chutzpah to wear it. ‘Well,’ I thought to myself as I pulled the dress out from the dark recesses of my closet where I’d hung it. ‘Here goes.’

It was only as I was cutting off the tags I’d never bothered removing before that it occurred to me there was more than one way to yank the General’s chain. With an evil grin on my face, I set about doing exactly the opposite of what I imagine he expected.

Hooah!

I stayed in my room when the General arrived home. When he stopped by and rapped on the door with his knuckles before asking if I would be ready soon, I didn’t open the door, calling out in the sweetest little girl voice I could manage that I was almost finished. Even when he came back by my door and informed me in the tone of voice meant to warn me his patience was wearing thin we needed to be going I told him I’d be down in a minute. In the past, such a response would have been akin to calling for fire on your own position. At the moment however, the General was treading lightly when it came to me, either because he was sympathetic to the way I thrashed about from time to time dealing with my new normal or, more likely than not, he was absolutely clueless as to how to deal with a daughter. Regardless, being the devious little toad I could be when I put my mind to it, I took full advantage of the kinder, gentler General in order to have some fun.

Only when I was absolutely ready, which was about thirty seconds before I imagined the General lost his temper, I slowly made my way down the stairs to where he was waiting. My deliberate pace was not due to any attempt on my part to make my grand entrance any more dramatic than I expected it would be. Rather, the two-inch heels I was wearing for the first time demanded I take my time least I tumble down the stairs.

Whatever canned lecture on the need to be punctual the General had been preparing to serve me was forgotten when he looked up and saw me. It takes a lot to unhinge a crusty old cur like him, and believe me, the effort I needed in putting myself together for this moment was, for me at least, a lot. Makeup, hair, dress, stockings and heels all blended together nicely to create an image I found myself having to admit looked pretty damned good. By the expression on the General’s face, he seemed to agree, for he forgot about the time as well as his wish to admonish me and instead, simply watched with mouth slightly agape as I approached him wondering, no doubt, if he should be pleased or appalled by what he was seeing.

With more confidence than I felt, I trooped up to the General, clasped my hands behind my back and puffed out my budding little boobies as far as I dare. “Well, do I pass muster, Daddy?” I asked sweetly.

If my cutesy little voice and use of the term ‘Daddy’ did register, the General didn’t show it. Instead, he simply stood there, scrambling to find something appropriate to say.

(Okay, back to the story)

When he didn’t say anything, I did the coy thing I’d seen girls at school pull on male teachers, dropping my chin a smidge and looking up at the General through lashes coated with mascara. “If you’d like, I can go back upstairs and change.”

As if awakening from a trance, the General blinked and gave his head a quick shake. “No, don’t,” he sputtered. “You’re a… What I mean is what you have on is a…”

“Fine?” I chirped.

“Yes.”

“Good, ‘cause I wasn’t sure if this would prove to be a little too dressy for a trip to Micky D’s.”

Finally realizing I was yanking his chain, the General grunted. “We need to be going,” he muttered brusquely.

Having been so caught up in my own little mind games, it wasn’t until that moment it dawn upon me the General was up to something. “Do we have reservations or something?” I asked calmly.

“Hmm, something like that,” he replied as he regarded me out of the corner of his eye while sporting a devious little smirk, the kind that causes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end.

‘Oh shit.’

~

My efforts to wean any useful information out of the General during our drive into Old Town Alexandria was frustrated as he wrestled the initiative from me by asking how my first day at school had gone. Besides knowing full well the odds of finding out what he had up his sleeve were nil, I was eager to tell him about Katie, especially the way Mr. Halverson had embarrassed the poor girl. “I soooo wanted to crawl under my desk and hide when he was building up to his introduction. I was sure he was going to tell everyone about me,” I informed the General.

“Would it had been all that bad if he had?” the General countered.

“Well duh, Captain Obvious! What do you think?”

“I think you’re playing a dangerous game,” the General countered. “You know as well as I do people are going to find out about you sooner rather than later. When they do, I expect some are going to feel they’ve been lied to. While I expect most will understand why you didn’t tell them right off, those who don’t could very well turn on you in an effort to extract some revenge.”

One of the General’s most annoying habit was his knack for being right. And though I knew what he said needed to be said, I still felt miffed over his timing. Folding my arms tightly across my chest, I took to pouting, another useful girly expression I was still working to prefect. “Way to go, Dad. Nothing like raining on my parade."

He chuckled. “Hey, what are fathers for?”

~

The II Porto Ristorante in Old Town is a top notch Italian restaurant with tons of ambiance. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to enjoy it for very long as the General and I were led to a table already occupied by a young couple. I had no need to ask or even guess who they were. The high and tight buzz cut of the male component of the pair as well as the way he all but popped up out of his chair and stood at attention as if he’d just heard the opening strains of ‘Hail to the Chief’ when he saw us approaching told me he was the General’s new dog robber.

Aide de camps are not always selected for their smarts, at least from what I have observed. Rather, their pedigree is often determines their suitability. As best I could tell, the General’s criteria for selecting his last aide was;

One - He was a member of the West Point Protective Society, a derisive term often used by non-West Point officers and me when I felt like annoying the General and my older brother Steve, who Craig and I had taken to calling ‘The Captain’ due to the way he had lorded over us as we had been growing up.

Two - He was airborne ranger, complete with scrape marks on his knuckles from dragging them on the ground and a perchance for grunting hooah at the most inopportune times.

Three - He had managed to complete a tour in the Sandbox as a company commander without embarrassing himself or his battalion commander.

And four - He was neither a smart ass like Craig and I or a kiss ass like Steve.

It seemed brains and the ability to use them for purposes other than keeping his head from collapsing in on itself were a plus, but not mandatory.

As the senor officer present, the General began by introducing me. “Rachel, this is Captain Brandon Pepper, my aide. Captain Pepper, this is my daughter, Rachel.”

Having suspected during the drive into Old Town the General was up to something, I not only succeeded in dealing with the situation in a calm, nonchalant manner, I was able to use the opportunity to extract a bit of revenge for the way he’d set me up. Flashing a broad, toothy smile, I tilted my head to one side as I offered Captain Pepper my hand. “I am sooo pleased to meet you,” I cooed sweetly. “It’s always such a thrill to meet the people Daddy works with.” Naturally I ignored the dirty look the General gave me as Cee Pee, the nickname I quickly settled on for Captain Pepper turned to introduce his wife, a demure blond named Debbie who, I was quick to discover, was a native of Savannah, Georgia and damned proud of it.

As much as I hate the way the politically correct Gestapo enjoy purging the English language of some it its most colorful and useful terms, I will admit there are a few words and phrases I’d like to see added to that list. Chief amongst them is the phrase, ‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ one Debbie greeted me with as she placed her limp, dead fish hand in mine.

Now, before I go any further, please don’t go getting me wrong. Debbie Pepper was without doubt a dear, sweet lady, the kind who I could not help but imagine had been a cheerleader in high school, volunteered every Thursday afternoon at the local Red Cross, fed stray cats and went from collecting Barbies to Hummels. She was pretty, too.
Unfortunately, when she saw me dressed as I was and on my best behavior, despite knowing I was currently betwixt and between genders, she automatically assumed I would find what she found interesting and enjoyable just as exciting. As if!

Once the introductions were complete, our orders had been placed and menus collected, there followed a brief but very awkward silence as Cee Pee and Dee Pee took to nervously eyeing each other and the General in an effort to see who would take the lead in filling the void with appropriate and acceptable chit chat. I could only assume the General had made it clear to his new aide shop talk during occasions such as this was vorboten. It was a general rule the General lived by, no pun intended. Most military parents who were committed to maintaining an enjoyable domestic life apart from their official duties did their best to leave the day’s troubles and tribulations in the office when it came time to pull pitch and head for the barn. Being a single parent, the General was even more wed to this concept.

Adding to the stress both Captain Pepper and his wife were under was the appreciation they were being tested. Unlike most professions, military spouses are considered to be an important element of an officer’s overall suitability to be an officer. In addition to running the officer’s household and ensuring the officer’s children did nothing that would adversely reflect upon him and, by extension, the unit he is assigned, when forward deployed the officer’s spouse was expected to look after the welfare of their subordinates’ families. While a wife who does not measure up to the high standards some commanders place upon them seldom impairs an officer’s ability to close with and destroy the enemy by the use of fire, maneuver and shock effect, she could easily prove to be an embarrassment to her husband and sound the death knell of his career if she showed up at the annual military ball sporting tats of fire breathing dragons up and down her arm, pink spiky hair and a vocabulary that would make a trucker blush.

Then there was me, sweet, innocent little ‘ole me. At the moment I was enjoying the show, behaving myself as I surreptitiously watched Cee Pee squirm and Debbie glance from one person to the next while the General eyed them both as if he were studying a pair of lab rats frantically scurrying about a maze. When Debbie realized her husband, who like most airborne rangers possessed all the social graces of a socially awkward Neanderthal, wasn’t going to step up to the plate and take a swing at opening an acceptable line of discourse, she took the initiative.

I will give the woman credit for knowing some of the more common opening gambits needed to be avoid, questions like, ‘Rachel, what do you do for fun,’ or ‘Tell me all about yourself.’ To my surprise, she started by asking me if I enjoyed riding. Whether she was better informed than I had given her credit for or if she just happened to hit upon something I did enjoy didn’t matter. It allowed me to gracefully play the part the General expected me to in this little social experiment of his.

“Yes, I do, Mrs. Pepper,” I replied smoothly. “My grandmother in Wyoming owns several horses I ride every chance I get when I’m staying with her.”

“How lovely,” Debbie cooed, pleased with herself at having managed to save her husband and finding something we the girls had in common. “Do you compete?”

“I’ve done some barrel racing,” I replied, not realizing her idea of suitable forms of equestrian completion was poles apart from mine.

“Have you ever competed in hunter-jumper events?” she asked, betraying more about herself as she did so than I suspect she imagined.

Rather than responding with something more akin to what I ordinarily would have responded to such a question, I simply shook my head. “No ma’am.”

Upon hearing this, Debbie regaled me with a warm, home grown southern smile. “I’d wish you’d call me Debbie, Sweetie,” she declared. “Why, I expect we could almost be sisters.”

Instinctively I glanced over at the General out of the corner of my eye. When I saw him eyeing me with his Darth Vader glare, I once more set aside the first response was on the tip of my tongue and instead informed Debbie doing so was out of the question, though I did manage to sneak in a quick jab. “Oh, no ma’am, I couldn’t. Daddy would never stand for such familiarity or unladylike behavior from me when dealing with my elders.”

Having been blessed with a vivid imagination, I could almost feel the General’s invisible hands closing about my throat. The temptation to pretend I was gagging as Craig and I often did at times like this was dismissed. I expect I was already sailing precariously close to the wind as it was.

“I see your father is very much like mine,” Debbie continued while glancing over at the General and giving him a wink. ‘Oh! She’s good,’ I thought to myself. As it turned out, she was too good by half.

~

When the General said nothing after we left the restaurant and headed home, I knew I had nothing to worry about. Had he been displeased with my behavior he’d have laid into me the moment we were alone in the car. So I felt no trepidation when I asked it was that was bothering him.

At first he didn’t answer, which told me he was still mulling whatever was troubling him over in his mind. It was the look he gave me out of the corner of his eye while we were stopped at a red light that clued me in there was something he wasn’t quite ready to share with me, something, I suspected, I wasn’t going to be thrilled to hear. But before he got around to sharing his thoughts with me, my next opportunity to excel in a seemingly endless parade of challenges needed to be dealt with.

------------------

HW Coyle