A soldier named Butch Ferguson completed a year’s combat tour in Vietnam, then returned to Fort Bragg where he promptly got himself and another kid killed in an auto accident in December 1966. Talk about irony. Butch and I weren’t close, but I knew him. The company first sergeant asked me to escort the body home since I was an NCO and known to be strac. Sounded like good duty for ten days at fifteen dollars a day per diem extra. All I had to do was catch a commercial flight with the casket to Tulsa, Oklahoma, make sure the body was transported feet first according to protocol, attend the funeral and present the flag off the coffin to the next of kin, which in this case was the mother.
I packed my bag, put on dress greens with scarf and blouse, spit-shined jump boots, and flew to Tulsa. A hearse from Moore’s Funeral Home met me at the airport. I rode to the funeral home in the hearse with Butch and stayed in the viewing room with the body as military escort.
About eight o’clock that evening, mother, father, and little sister came in. I snapped to attention like a well-drilled toy soldier and introduced myself with a little canned speech.
“I’m Sergeant Ron Alexander. I accompanied Butch home. If you need any assistance with paperwork or anything else, that’s what I’m here for. I’ll be here as long as you need me.”
I bowed politely and formally. Little sister Sandy was tiny. I doubt if she weighed one hundred pounds dunked and soaked in the Arkansas River. I towered over her by nearly two inches. She was blond and as cute as any guy’s baby sister ought to be. Crying for the past two or three days had reddened her eyes and puffed them, making her look even younger. She had little to say when her father invited me to their home for dinner. I was alone in the city and had nowhere else to go except to my motel room.
Dinner at the Fergusons’ turned into rather a strained, quiet affair. The house felt heavy with grief. Afterward, her father asked, “Will you ride in the family car with us tomorrow during the funeral? You can be Sandy’s escort, since she isn’t married.”
I blinked while I tried to cover my double-take. What was with these Okies? The little girl couldn’t be more than twelve years old, thirteen at the most. Why would she be married?
Sandy surprised me even further by offering to drive me back to my motel. She laughed. Apparently, she was used to it.
“I have a driver’s license,” she said. “Do you want to see it?”
I cleared my throat tactfully. “Uh . . . How old do you have to be in Oklahoma to get a license?”
She laughed her amused laugh. “I’m twenty years old,” she explained. “I’ll bet you’re no older than that yourself.” Her blue eyes looked me up and down, appraising me. “And you’re certainly not much bigger,” she added.
I felt my face turn red. Right on both counts. I liked her direct manner, even though it left me slightly nonplussed. I suspected she could tell you off faster than an Oklahoma dust devil could whip through a pile of leaves.
She picked me up again the next morning at the motel in time for the funeral. After the ceremonies, she sprung yet another surprise on me.
“Would you like to ride with me to Okmulgee to pick up my daughter?” she offered. “I’ll give you the Blue Ribbon special tour of Tulsa when we get back.”
“You have a driver’s license and a daughter?”
“Her name’s April. She’s three. She’s with her father’s folks.”
“I didn’t think you were married.”
“If I were still married, do you think I’d be picking up soldiers?”
She was better at the snappy comeback than I. We were old friends by the time the afternoon was half over. We word-dueled, wise-guyed, and laughed, totally at ease and comfortable with each other. Her baby daughter April was as blond as her mother and every bit as delightful. I found myself thinking, Why can’t they live closer to Bragg?
“Do you have a girlfriend?” Sandy asked.
“Not so you’d notice. Why?”
“Just asking.”
“How about you?”
“I have lots of girlfriends.”
We had dinner together and ended up in a redneck bar shooting pool and listening to shit-kicking country music on the jukebox. She had her hair pulled back in a long ponytail and wore jeans, a shirt and sneakers. I noticed how blue her eyes were when she looked me directly in the eye. The girl was completely without pretense or guile, as open and direct as a military regulation. She also shot a mean cue stick.
She ran the table on me a couple of games. We had a beer or two and I started winning.
“You’re too drunk to see the balls,” I laughingly accused, although neither of us drank much.
“You think so, short stuff?”
“How about a little bet on the next game?”
“What do you have in mind, Minnesota Fats?”
“I don’t know. A kiss?”
She stood straight at her end of the table, outside the dim hooded illumination of the light, hands on her girlish hips, pretty head cocked to one side in a challenging manner.
“I’ll go you one better,” she said.
Was I going to get lucky or what?
“If you beat me,” she proposed, throwing it out offhandedly, “you’ll have to marry me.”
I took it as a joke. “You’re on, girl.” I laughed.
I beat her. We were married at a justice of the peace in Nowata, Oklahoma, the next day at four P.M., less than seventy-two hours after I met the little blond girl with tear-reddened eyes in a Tulsa funeral parlor.
When I returned to Fort Bragg, I learned that the escort for the other crash victim had gone to a bar, picked a fight and got the shit kicked out of him. I ended up married. The first sergeant exploded. “Nobody from this outfit goes out on escort duty again, ever!”
In January 1967, I went before the OCS board, passed, and received orders to report to artillery OCS at, of all places, Fort Sill, Oklahoma. I was going to be an artillery officer.
“This is great!” I exhorted. “It’s not far from Tulsa.”
Sandy was more cautious. We were only married a month. “What about Vietnam?” she worried.
I brushed her fears away with a dismissive gesture. “Don’t worry, honey. I can get out of it. By the time I graduate from OCS in five or six months, most people won’t even remember where Vietnam is.”