[Some of you have never known a man like Tank. I had the privilege. Perhaps this story of fiction mixed with events and feelings quite real will give you a glimpse into what Tank meant to me. I'm putting the story in Romance because from 1968 on it really was love.]
*
Weather.com gave me the bad news. The drive to Tank's funeral wasn't going to be fun. There was a big storm moving into the area between Salt Lake and the little town in South Dakota where he was being buried. The woman talking on the video said the storm would be dropping almost three feet of snow.
Mrs. Good-Times, my wife of thirty-six years, had already said she wasn't going and didn't see why I wanted to go. I explained it to her but she either was more dense or less caring than her usual self and said I was an ass. Tank had saved my ass three times in a year in South East Asia. He had a small piece of lead in his shoulder from the third time. Yeah, I was going. I'd catch and recatch hell for it, but I was going.
My truck already had the snow tires on. I had Mike at the station give it a fresh shot of anti-freeze and change the belts and hoses. He also changed the oil and checked everything else. I'd known Mike for almost thirty years and we served on a couple community service organizations helping kids over the years. He agreed to cover for me at the food bank on Saturday. I went to the market and bought emergency food, just-in-case rations. I boxed them and put them inside the cab high shell over the bed of my pick up. Two packing blankets, a big thermos of coffee, me, dressed like Nanok of the north and I was ready to go. Six hundred and seventy miles in three days was the goal.
Mrs. I'm-Happy-to-be-rid-of-him saw me off in her housecoat and slippers, without leaving the kitchen table or standing for her Good-Bye kiss. As I left town I used my cell to call our kids and they each said I was nuts to drive seven hundred miles to say good-bye to a dead guy. Sharon, the oldest even used the same tone of voice and words her mother had used. What was it people say about the fruit not falling far from the tree? I sometimes think Sharon was a graft directly from her mother.
As I drove east I thought a lot about Tank, Willi, Mike and Jose. Four men I spent a year with, not by choice but they were good companions and all five of us came back alive. Now that Tank was gone I was the last one still alive. Forty years since we came back and four funerals. I'd been at every one. Charlotte, my wife, had gone to the first funeral. She hated it and never went to any of the others.
Near home I always listened to the Oldies station on the radio. As I drove east I had the truck radio on that same station. Every fifteen minutes they gave the trucker's weather report. When I was seventy miles from home it started snowing. No biggy, I thought. It was light snow and dry. It came down at a slight angle and blew along the ground. I turned on the truck lights and cut my speed a little.
Two hours later the guy on the radio started sounding concerned. Two big rigs had fallen over up ahead. I'd still get by but the four lane was now one. When the traffic backed up and slowed to a crawl I looked at the map and decided I'd stop in Rock Springs. When I got to Rock Springs the weather guy said, "The storm will continue to intensify and by eight o'clock he expected the main roads to be closed. "Get off the road and hunker down. Once the roads close they probably won't open for three days."
"Shit!" I said. Before I left home they expected the storm to barrel through and be gone by morning. Now it looked like three days in Rock Springs, Wyoming. I saw a big hotel ahead and pulled in.
The people at the front desk gave me a big room on the third floor. Same price as a room with just one bed, but my room had two king sized beds. I used their luggage cart and hauled in my supplies. I was ready.
In my room I opened the drapes and saw that I was looking east. The storm was blowing from the west so I had a good view of the snow blowing off the roof and away from my side of the building. It wasn't pretty but better than the view on the other side of the building.
I watched the parking lot filling up. At about five-thirty I went downstairs to the restaurant and had dinner. When I went back to my room I used my new cell phone and called the wife. She laughed at me. "I told you not to go. Tank's already cold, he doesn't care if you come to the funeral. Well, enjoy your stay in Dip Shit Wyoming." She hung up before I could give her my retort, "Blow me!"
I watched TV for a while and kept the drapes open so I could see the storm outside. I expected to be bored silly by the time the storm freed us. I was wrong.
At almost ten-thirty the phone next to my bed rang.
"Mr. Peterson, this is the front desk. We need you to come down to the desk, please."
"What's up?"
"The storm has brought us more people that we can normally accommodate. We need to make some changes and we need to have a conversation with you and some others who have rooms like yours."
"Ok, I'll be down."
When the elevator doors opened I thought I was at a convention. A man standing just outside the elevator directed me to a room just off the crowded lobby. When all the guests they had invited to the meeting were in the room someone closed the doors and a man wearing the sport coat logo of the hotel stepped to a microphone and spoke to us.
He told us all about the storm and how the hotel wanted to help as many people as they could to remain inside and as comfortable as possible. That would mean that they were asking us to share our rooms with the people in the lobby. They would make every effort to let us choose who we shared with, and not cause divorces or murders in the process. Some laughed but we all understood what he was saying.
He outlined how the process would go. He would call us out of the room and into the lobby one at a time, in room number order. We would say how many people we could take and then people would step forward. If we accepted them the hotel staff would assist in getting their things and them to our room.
I sat and got comfortable. They were going in room order. I was on the third floor. Many people went to talk to the guy up front. I heard some of the conversations. A woman traveling alone who had a room with two queen beds wanted to know if she had to accept a man into her room. The answer was no, but she might be asked to take three women, two in the first round but she might get a call later if they needed a bed for another woman.
A man asked if he could take a woman to share his room with one king bed. The answer surprised me. "If one volunteers, yes, you can accept."
One by one room numbers were called and people left the room. By midnight there were about thirty-five of us left in our room. My room number was 312. When they called 311 I saw two large truckers stand and walk through the doors. Those men needed a queen bed each!
My number was called. I walked into the lobby. It looked to me like the numbers would work out about right.
The man with the microphone asked if there were any questions anyone wanted to ask me. A man asked, "How many beds in your room?"
"Two king sized." The man with the microphone answered.
A woman asked, "Are you married?" Some laughed. I held up my left hand and said, "My wife is not traveling with me." More laughter.
"Are you a Christian?" Another woman asked. I nodded. She walked up to me and whispered, "I've got two daughters traveling with me. Would we be safe with you?" I nodded again.
She faced the man with the microphone and said, "We'll accept him, if he'll accept us." I hadn't seen the daughters but I said, "Sure." The woman hooked my arm and we moved through the thinning crowd towards the elevators. A bellman followed us with a luggage cart filled with soft luggage. It wasn't until we got in the elevator that I saw the daughters. One word says it all: HOT!
Mom was wearing an overcoat and hat so I had no idea what she looked like, really. The teen daughters were dressed warmly in jackets, tights, skirts and boots.
On the way up to the third floor I was introduced to the daughters. Teri and Ayla. On the way down the hall to 312 I asked Mom if she had a name or was "Mom" it?
The oldest daughter, Teri said, "Her name is Crystal. Crystal Franklyn. We're going to South Dakota and we're supposed to be there tomorrow. We won't make it in time."
I opened the door and they swarmed inside. I asked the girls to go into the bathroom and allow the bellman to deposit the luggage in the room. I gave him a ten when he was done and he left. The girls came out and looked the place over. Crystal asked how I wanted them to set up.
I sat on the bed, on the side I wanted as mine. I said, "Ladies, as long as I have a path to the bathroom and this side of the bed, you can put your things anywhere you'd like. When I announce a need for the bathroom I don't mean in twenty minutes. I mean either move quickly or in one minute you will have company."
They hung their jackets in the closet. That gave me my first look at the three women I was living with. Teri was thin and moved like she had taken dance lessons for years. She seemed proud of her chest and her legs. Ayla wasn't proud of anything. She didn't stand as tall as her sister, wasn't as busty and her hair said "tom-boy". Crystal was all woman. Standing in the elevator I was aware she was slightly taller than my wife. Dancing she would have her head on my shoulder not against my chest. Her large breasts moved nicely inside the dark blue sweater she was wearing. Her legs sprang from slim hips and a pair of ski pants.
"Do you have kids?" Ayla asked.
"Nope, not anymore. They grew up and moved away. Sharon is thirty--three, Della is thirty and Nick is twenty-five."
"You on your way to see them?"
"No. On my way to say good-bye to an old friend."
