Windrow Garden Page 3

  When all the letters were returned to her, unopened, she never wrote her parents again. She contacted a bank in the town close to home and enlisted a bank officer to open an account for her mother. Nicole had made him promise to tell her mother about the account but to keep it a secret from her father, and to make sure neither her parents nor siblings would ever go completely without. From that time forward, Nicole sent a quarter of her pay to the bank. When she finished basic training as a corporal, she found a home in the Army but had lost her family.

  As the years passed, she continued to send birthday cards and holiday cards at the appropriate times of the year. She avoided courting the disappointment and the pain of their disapproval by never again including a return address on the envelope.

  Fourteen years later when the bank sent word that her parents had died, they sent along a notarized balance of the savings account she’d contributed to. The contributions and accumulated interest had remained all but untouched. There was no word from her brothers and sisters. All the cords of her life had been cut, and they dangled forever out of reach.

  Nicole grew up in the Army. She’d made her decision and, like the good soldier she was, pursued the idea of being the best that she could be. Nicole learned how to repair, overhaul, and fix any jeep, truck, or car the Army ever bought or invested in. She rose from mechanic to vehicle pool manager in her new family. She was paid, proud, and dedicated. Nicole felt securely comfortable with the life she’d chosen, except for one tiny issue. The Army did not like queers. As supportive of and pleased with her as they were, the bias remained. The Army continued to promote her and give her glowing evaluations, but it would have all ended if her superiors had known or suspected her other life decision.

  They would have stopped the praise and begun an unwavering process toward dishonorable discharge. Ever wary, she pursued her chosen lifestyle with the same commitment with which she cheerfully repaired vehicles.

  The Army’s policy made for a stinking pile of attitude in the service. It was a wrong that was not going to get fixed. The military held the sad, bad philosophy that homosexuals were incapable of serving honorably. Fear and loathing were leisure pursuits of peacetime. During wartime, everyone had the same and equal opportunity to be among the quick or the dead. Prejudice only raised its ugly, ravaging head during peacetime when the Army turned carnivorous and ate its own.

  For more than twenty years, Nicole gave the Army everything she had, except what and who she wanted to have on her time off. The Army got all the work but never the center of her heart. That she reserved for the ladies. There had been some ladies! Tall and short, full and thin, foreign and native to the United States, ladies all. Each was left behind for the next duty assignment.

  The Army had given her several gifts of mixed blessing. Most mixed of all was the realization that she could not sustain a long-term relationship. She never tried. Each fair bounty of womanly delights came into her life and exited with the same understanding that possessed Nicole. All things that had been would end with the duration of the tour. It had not been what she had chosen or wished to have happen. Rather, it had been just one more set of facts she’d taken as truth in the Army.

  She was not alone. Others like her accepted or dealt with the situation as fact and rule. Some did not, but those were the people most likely to be exposed and disposed of at the Army’s earliest opportunity. Disposal was the best one could hope for in the Army. Horror stories of men and women doing serious prison time in a military disciplinary barracks were real and not the stuff of paranoid fantasies.

  She worked with other brothers and sisters in the closet of the Army. They worked shoulder to shoulder, keeping their lives and loves separate from their duties. No less and more often than not, they were much more extraordinarily circumspect that their heterosexual counterparts. They were less likely to make indiscriminate lunges of flirtation in and among the ranks. The military code of justice was an oxymoron.

  Up until recently, Nicole had managed to secure her pension and save her stripes from the snooping of the investigation division. Then things took a different turn, and the Army began to turn its attention to Nicole.

  The security of her world was given a crashing blow in late February. A little too drunk, a bit too sure of herself, and way too quick to bed the fine young flirting corporal from South Carolina, and Nicole had almost gotten caught. The whole episode had been a dangerously close call. The provost marshal had been watching the young corporal for weeks. Twenty-two and fearless, the young South Carolinian played hide-and-seek with the military authorities regarding her sexual preferences. Flamboyant and foolhardy, she risked her own stripes as well as Nicole’s.

  Tiring of her impertinent games, the provost marshal scooped up the corporal after discovering her during one of their stakeouts around the gay bars in Saint Louis, Missouri, where she and Nicole frequently went during long days of leave. It had been a don’t-ask-don’t-tell-be-damned coordinated effort with local authorities. The Army, true to form, utilized eager, slinking homophobes of its own to enter and stake out the world of alternatives.

  The provost marshal’s office held the corporal for thirty-six hours. Between being grilled about her associations and assignations, she was allowed five hours sleep. The Army didn’t cared if the names she offered were known, suspected, best guesses, or lies. When she faltered, they gave her a complete and terrifying case illustration of life in the disciplinary barracks —her life as it could have been for the next five to ten years. The corporal relented, dissolved under their harangue, and agreed to look at a list of names they offered her for her failing memory. She melted under the promise of a general discharge if only she would give names. A lot of names.

  Nicole had begun to hear the rumblings from a long way off. Years of keeping her ears close to the ground, going along to get along, and granting favors that only a master sergeant might provide paid off one time in a big way. The last gift of information came from an officer and gentlewoman Nicole had met years before. The officer had information access, concerns of her own, and fond memories of a youthful, more pleasant billeting with Nicole.

  The officer, affecting interest in the progress of repairs of her staff car, had come to the vehicle pool. While engaging Master Sergeant Jeager in a discussion about carburetors and timing devices, the lieutenant colonel dropped the word. She was safe from the latest round of witch hunting. As assistance post commander, she was in charge of the investigations and rendered an old friend a last act of kindness.

  Reluctantly, Nicole took the officer’s advice, deciding that discretion was the better part of valor. She filed for early retirement. Minimum twenty plus netted Nicole a little over half of her former salary. A dishonorable discharge would have cost her everything and very likely her freedom.

  Nicole walked to the driver’s side of her truck, feeling awkward in her atypical civilian attire of jeans and jacket. She carefully checked the discharge certificate for sly, cryptic lettering and numbers that would have hinted any innuendo of sexual indiscretion or suspicion the Army might have wanted to share with future employers other than what the boldly printed HONORABLE DISCHARGE confirmed. She saw no implication other than conclusion of twenty years of straightforward service. The Army had not tainted her service with cryptic allegations of lesbianism. She would not be barred from future government or security-related employment. She would have not to be subjected to any level of federal or bureaucratic gaze of comprehension when someone reviewed her DD 214.

  At forty, she was a long way from a home she could never go back to and a much longer way from knowing what to do with the rest of her life.

  Nicole rolled the discharge into a tube and tossed it in the backseat of the cab. She walked to the garage next to her old housing unit to retrieve her personal sets of tools. She shifted uncomfortably in her civilian clothes. During her years of service she’d come to depend on wearing green every day and not worrying what to wear for what occasion. The idea o
f having to worry about what to wear for work, if she should find any, sent strange chills down her spine and ripples of anxiety up to a new level as she moved the last of the toolboxes to the truck.

  Nicole climbed into the truck and let the diesel engine continue to hum its well-maintained tune. It rumbled and purred under her touch as she headed down the street and through the post gates for one last time. Out on the highway, she began to wonder if it would be practical to simply take a long vacation and spend some of her stockpiled savings trying to get used to being free. Her monthly retirement checks would give her a fair income. Nothing fancy, nothing indulgent, but it was everything she would need.

  Going nowhere fast, Nicole drove down Interstate 44 to Springfield and then meandered through the rolling hills and bluffs toward Kansas City, Missouri. The miles and hours fell away under the wheels of her truck like the slow awakening from a bad dream. She drove father north, along the river as night settled in.

  As she crossed the line into Kansas north of Kansas City, Missouri, she shuddered involuntarily as she drove past the entrance to Fort Leavenworth. She willed her eyes back on the road and tried to control the angry rise in her throat. It had been a long day. She was tired. She couldn’t remember the roads she’d been traveling. Images of the life she lost howled in her head, held her mind, and cast oppression more substantial than the heavy cloud cover of winter.

  A tenseness crept along her back and down her arms. The eight-hour drive and angry congestion in her heart had taken their toll. As she braked to a stop at the corner of Tenth Street and Broadway in the small, historic military town of Leavenworth, Kansas, she spied a café sign. She decided it was time for more coffee if she was going to keep up her driving pace much longer. She wanted to think. She had begun to realize that her driving had taken her off on a generalized northerly route, as though she intended to wind her way home to Michigan. The full impact and realization of how desperately lost she was emotionally hit her like a mallet. There was no home anymore, and there seemed to be no place to find refuge. She sat in the cab of the truck and looked at the blinking lights of the café and knew she would have to make another decision. The idea of traveling west intrigued her but would have to be examined in the clearer light of day.

  Inside the café, Nicole deliberated about flirting with the dark-eyed waitress, but she decided to keep her ideas and eyes on the coffee cup instead. While sitting and wondering if she should order breakfast, a discarded newspaper caught her eye. Nicole reached for it and, without intending to, began reading through the help wanted section.

  = Chapter 3 =

  Lay of the Land

  The Midwest was the last region of the United States to be imprinted with the American fervor for the organization of space. This part of the Midwest, having been passed up earlier as being a great inland desert, was ignored during the initial movement toward the more fertile western coasts and mountains. Having received the fervor last, the Midwest has retained it the longest. The square homestead of the pioneer, sitting as it does in a corner of a square section, continues to reflect the patterns of the contemporary township.

  These geometric patterns are modified and softened only by the rolling terrain of woods, valleys, and streams. A tendency toward grids sometimes makes a startling effect on a curving landscape. However, there is never a good argument against functional beauty. Improving conservation or enhancing production is never an excuse for ignoring or eliminating natural beauty.

  In the earliest years of homesteading, women carried young trees from their origins as they traveled to their future homes. They foresaw a need to make their homesites attractive and livable. They had visions of the richness of light and form that they did not forsake.

  The most significant dimension of landscaping is time, and time is never static. Trees bring art to landscaping and take nature’s own time to grow, mature, and to finally give back to the earth again. People who plant trees have a greater comprehension of life’s continuity, succession, and connectedness. Trees generally last longer than the people who plant them and longer than the buildings that they complement. Trees provide a union between the land and sky. Trees grouped together, like abiding friendships, develop character as they are touched by the group to which they belong. Those solitary in their posture, exposed to the vagaries of wind and weather, form differently from those that give and receive shelter from their woody companions.

  There are twelve basic principles that should be part of every landscape design. The first and foremost principle, when considering the space in which one lives, is unity. Unity pleases the eye and is the sense of natural form. Unity harmonizes all the elements. People carry their own definitions of unity with them. When people sense that something is unattractive or spoiled, they feel an internal imbalance. People perceive instability when they lose their definition of wholeness.

  After unity come eleven other considerations: simplicity, variety, balance, emphasis, repetition, proportion and scale, contrast and harmony, elegance of shape and line, form, texture, and color. Simplicity eliminates the excess of details that have little to do with sweeping composition. It is a matter of reducing and eliminating frills. Variety is critical. Too little variety, and there is monotony; too much, and confusion reigns. A balance between extremes, although always a challenge, will produce a pleasant accord. Balance may be achieved by the distribution of accents and masses carefully placed over the whole scheme. There is no need to fall victim to symmetry, the refuge for the unimaginative.

  Emphasis occurs when the eye is directed to a portion or object within the composition. It draws the eye to a mild contrast in the overall arrangement. Repetition gives variety its meaning. A variety of lines, textures, colors, and forms arouses interest. Proportion and scale creates a pleasing relationship among the dimensions of length, breadth, and height. It charms the eye, mind, and soul in ways we do not understand. Elegance of shape and line provides lines and curves that tantalize the senses without interrupting them. Form is more attractive when it is natural looking and graceful. Texture is the quality of coarseness or the fineness of appearance. Up close, texture is differentiated by size, surface, and spacing among the various parts of the whole. Texture can change with the seasons. The reflective values of the surface surroundings, as well as the quality of light and shadow, affect color.

  A landscape should be endearing and enduring to the mind, heart, and soul. The challenge lies in avoiding monotony and chaos.

  Groundwork

  On Tuesday, Sally fidgeted at one of the dining tables in Windrow Garden Restaurant. There had been several days suggesting the coming warmth of spring, and Sally had chanced the wearing of lighter clothes for her function as an interviewer. Thick socks and loafers on her feet, a dark green, light woven-wool sweater, and camel slacks made her look more like a Kentucky horse breeder than the no-nonsense farm and restaurant entrepreneur she was. The workweek sounds of the kitchen had been still since Sunday.

  Sally had arrived earlier in the afternoon to turn up the furnace for the interviewees and herself. There was no food in front of her unless one counted the coffeepot and cup stationed near the outer reach of her right hand. She shifted in her chair, leaned back, and glanced at the four people sitting at a larger table who were concentrating on completing the application forms and drinking the coffee she had set out for them. It had been a second small turnout of applicants in as many weeks.

  The winter months had made it hard to secure a reliable farmhand mechanic from their otherwise prudently solid commitments. Sally had originally resolved not to let her need rush her into imprudent decision-making, but time was no longer on her side. Chores were going slow, or worse, and much remained undone. Machinery had to be repaired and reconditioned for spring use, and the work in the fields and orchards needed to be supervised. As hard as her staff worked, they were not accustomed to managing their tasks without coordination and direction. Sally could not be in the fields and the kitchen simultaneously. S
he needed to hire someone. She knew she needed a small miracle, but she didn’t see any that she could readily identify sitting at the table.

  She wanted Bill Cornweir to be well, but that would have required more than a miracle. Bill was still in the hospital. The doctors had confirmed a broken leg, ruptured spleen, and cracked pelvis. He was lucky to be alive. He would need months of treatment and mending before he would be able to return to the farm. Worker’s Compensation still paid him some portion of his wages, but the health-care costs had mounted. If it hadn’t been for his girlfriend, Sheila Ray, moving him to her home and loving ministrations, the hospital stay would have forced Sally’s farm into the red ink side of the ledger. But the money was still flowing out rather than in. Cornweir would heal, but the farm and its needs went waiting. Sally knew she would have to hire someone who had applied during the last several weeks.

  Sally glanced at the woman who sat among the group of men. She had not noticed her when she came in; she must have been distracted by the restaurant bookkeeping when the woman arrived. Sally noticed that the woman’s black hair complemented and accentuated the overall care and confidence in the woman’s presence. That presence held her. Sally’s eyes then drifted to the woman’s clothes, and she found herself almost chuckling as she noticed the sharp creases in the woman’s shirt and blue jeans. She’d never known anyone who starched and ironed their work clothes that way. She looked beneath the table, and her eyes followed the firm muscled leg encased in the blue cloth and noticed the polished combat boots protruding from the pant legs. That was another surprise.