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I didn’t expect a marching band to greet me when I came back from Iraq with my National Guard unit. But still, I thought it would be a time of joy and celebration after spending a long year away from home.
Instead, I had been home only a few hours when I found out Sarah Anderson, my finance had ran off with a rich oil man, that Bingo, my faithful dog had died and that our ready mix concrete business owned and operated by my mother and uncle, was having financial problems.
I may as well have stayed in Iraq, I thought, despite all the sympathy I received from my mother, uncle, friends and well wishers. But after my pity party ran its course, I went to work for my folks driving a ready mix concrete truck. It was hard work, but it kept my mind occupied and helped me get used to civilian life again.
Anyway, what happened a few weeks later made my time with Sarah and even my time in Iraq seem like a distant memory. I was going into an Oklahoma City mall one warm summer evening when a full figured young girl dressed in a white Mini Skirt Suit, white hose and white high heel shoes stopped me.
“Pardon me, sir. Do you know much about cars?” she asked, as I opened the big glass door to enter the mall. Now I’m only 23 and calling me sir got my attention.
Cars, I thought. I turned to face her. My brain froze. I was struck dumb by her blond hair, light gray eyes, pale pink lips and a figure that made my soldier mentality want to stand up and salute.
“Oh no, not too much,” I said, fumbling for words She pointed to her car, an old beat up Toyota that was parked nearby in a handicap parking space. As I looked under the hood of her car I wondered how she could be handicapped. It certainly had to be mental for there was nothing wrong with her body, I thought.
“You wait here and I’ll go get you some gas,” I told her a short time later, but she insisted on riding along with me in my four year old Cadillac that I inherited after my dad died.
“You sure have a nice car,” she said, as I drove out of the mall parking lot.
“Well, I hope you don’t get your dress dirty,” I said, while observing her pretty long legs. She straightened her dress and smiled at me. I was so lost in her smile that I almost ran a red light.
“My name is Rosa Jennings,” she said, resting her hand and long red fingernails on the arm rest of my seat. “Do you live around here?”
“No, I live in Lawton, about 85 miles down the turnpike,” I said. “My name is Lloyd “Lucky” Whitman. My high school and college buddies got to calling me Lucky because I was always lucky playing card games.”
“Oh, that’s cute,” she said. “What business are you in?”
“Construction.”
”Oh, a building contractor,” she said.
”Well, not exactly.”
“Are you married?”
“No, I just got back from Iraq,” I said.
“Wow! A war hero and a building contractor! What a combo. I’m pleased to meet you,” she said as we pulled into the gas station.
She thanked me and shook my hand when I got her car started a few minutes later. “Hope I see you again,’ she said smiling and waving at me as she drove away.
I went on in the mall, but forgot what I went in there for. Where did this Britney Spears look alike come from I asked myself. Man, if this is what our country is fighting for I’m all for it, I thought, as I turned on to the familiar turnpike and headed home.
The next day as I drove my noisy concrete truck, almost ignoring the repetition of my work I couldn’t erase the image of Rosa from my mind. During my lunch break I called nine different Jennings listed in the telephone directory before I located Rosa.
“I was hoping you would call,” she said, after I identified myself. “I took my cell phone and walked outside our busy office.
“I thought maybe we could have dinner tonight and continue our conversation we started yesterday,” I said.
“Oh, I can’t tonight. I go to night school. Didn’t I tell you?”
Well, maybe I thought.
“I’m free Sunday night if you’d like to continue our conversation,” she said, laughing.
Sunday nights I usually reserved for going to church, but I was sure the Lord would understand and excuse my absence this time. So the following Sunday night I washed and polished my Cadillac, put on my best suit and drove to Oklahoma City and to the Cozy Nest apartment complex where Rosa told me she lived.
Rosa, dressed in slacks and a sleeveless blouse, seemed glad to see me. After she got through bragging on my car again she suggested we go to a secluded place which I found out later was the most expensive and high class restaurant in town.
During the course of dinner I tried to talk about her, but she insisted on talking about me. “Lucky, are you a war hero?” she asked
“I dodged a bomb blast and help rescue some people from a burning building was the extent of my heroism,” I said.
“Wow! That’s sounds impressive!” she said. “You know, Lucky” she said leaning across the table. “Your brown wavy hair, your nose and cheek structure all fit together in perfect symmetry, but you need to let your sideburns grow out more. And,” she said after a pause. “You have such an honest face.”
What a critique, I thought. I had never been told that before. We had a great time getting acquainted, I thought, but as we left the restaurant some big dude about as broad as he was tall stopped Rosa.
“Hey babe, hey Blondie, I know you,” he said. “How ya doing?” When Rosa tried to ignore him he grabbed her by the arm. “You trying to high hat me sister,” he said.
“Leave her alone,” I said. He stepped in front of me in a challenging way. Now in Iraq I came to the conclusion that I’m not a total coward, but this guy resembled a big mountain cave man and I hesitated. Of course at six feet, three inches tall I’m not exactly a midget. Anyway, when he shoved me I swung at him and connected on his jaw and I think staggered him a little, but then he grabbed me by my tie and almost choked me. We wrestled knocking down chairs and tables and he was inflicting heavy damage on me before the proprietor, thank God, broke it up.
“Come on,” Rosa said... “Let’s get out of here before the police arrive. On the way to Rosa’s apartment she told me the guy I had the scuffle with was an exboyfriend. “You may as well know that I have lots of admirers and exboyfriends that still come around,” she said. Was I going to have to fight all of her ex boy friends, I ask myself as my head ached and a sick feeling invaded my stomach.
When I pulled my caddy up in front of her apartment Rosa examined my black eye and apologized to me for what happened and then gave me a long lingering kiss. “You know I think I’m attracted to you,” I heard her whisper as we said goodnight. Man, I could feel my heart leap for joy at the sound of her words. But later on the way home I thought she’s probably not attracted to me, but only to the rich building contractor that she believed me to be.
The dinner and tips to the waiter cost me two days pay, not to mention the black eye again, but it was worth it. In addition, I gave Rosa all kinds of gifts, candy, flowers and a necklace that all but drained my saving account. Still, I continued to take her to expensive restaurants every Sunday night. In fact, my whole life soon revolved around my Sunday nights with Rosa.
But on one Sunday night Rosa insisted we go to a movie, a musical comedy where we laughed, held hands and really enjoyed ourselves. On our way home from the movie we stopped off at a drive-inn restaurant. While munching on a chicken salad sandwich Rosa handed me an envelope. When I opened it there were nine one hundred bills staring me in the face. “I returned the necklace you bought me and talked the sales person into giving your money back,” she said.
“You won’t accept my gift?” I asked.
“I loved the necklace and the thought behind it even more, but I don’t want you spending all that money on me,” Rosa said.
I hung my head and looked down at the car next to me. There was a group of teenagers all talking at once. It made me think of my own happy teenage years.
“Lucky, you ought to consider finding yourself another girl friend,” Rosa said. “I like you very much, but I may not be right for you. You need to start looking around, start playing the field and maybe go out with other girls,” Rosa suggested.
What a revelation! I thought about debating the matter with her, but decided to let it drop. She was trying to discourage me. She was letting me down easy. She was trying to say goodbye in a nice way. Three cheers for Lucky, I thought. Another girl has turned me down.
I confess that I was in the midst of another pity party when a co-worker who in the past had seen Rosa and I together, confronted me on the job one morning with a shocking accusation. “I saw your girl friend dancing last night in Oklahoma City at the Hide and Seek Club,” he said. “Man, you’re lucky to have a girl friend like that.”
“You didn’t see my girl dancing at the Hide and Seek Club,” I told him. “You got to be mistaken.”
“Maybe so,’ he said, smiling. “Maybe so.”
The thought that he might be right haunted me all that day. That night I went to the Hide and Seek Club. There I saw Rosa’s version of night school which absolutely blew me away. For there on a small stage among the smoke and loud music Rosa was dancing or rather gyrating around in a scantily clad costume. Not in a thousand years would I have ever thought Rosa would expose her body before all these wild eyed drunks and ogling perverts.
I left the club feeling like my insides were going to drop out. I drove aimlessly around town in a daze. I tried to get over my hurt and rage, but the more I thought about it the madder I got. On impulse I made a U turn and headed down a residential street breaking the speed limit and running stop signs in the process. I drove into the parking lot with all its neon lights and double parked at the entrance of the Hide and Seek Club and left my motor running.
I rushed into the club running over a drunk and waded through the smoke and around the crowded tables to the stage and all its flickering lights. There, I grabbed Rosa by the arm, slung her almost nude body over my shoulder and ran over a security man who was guarding the exit door.
I literally threw Rosa into the front seat of my car and took off with a crowd of men chasing after me yelling, “Catch that SOB. Catch that lunatic.”
“Lucky, what are you doing? Are you crazy?” Rosa screamed and stomped her feet as I drove down the street and out on to the open highway. But I ignored her until I had driven at least ten miles away. I parked at what I thought was a secluded location near a lake where I once went fishing as a boy.
I turned to face Rosa who was staring at me with her back leaning against the passenger door. The moon light shining through the window glass cast a light on Rosa’s legs which she tried to fold up under her. She was more beautiful with her clothes off than with them on, I thought. I took a blanket from my back seat that I used on my last picnic outing and tossed it over her.
“That’s the first time I ever been kidnapped,” Rosa said calmly as she pulled the blanket over her.
I looked away from her. I was so mad I could have choked her and couldn’t trust myself to speak. “Rosa, I can’t believe you stripped nude in front of all those wild eyed drunks and perverts,” I said. “Haven’t you got any decency and respect for yourself?”
“I was never completely nude,’ she said.
“Now I understand why you could only go out with me on Sunday night. Well, congratulations, you really made a damn fool out of me!”
“Lucky, I have a confession to make,” Rosa said, sliding over closer to me and demanding my attention. “Now you hear me out before you speak. I quit school in the tenth grade and got married. My husband was killed in a hunting accident three weeks after we were married. I have a three year old son who has leukemia.”
She paused, reached over and grabbed my hand making sure she had my full attention. “I didn’t want to work in a strip club, but there’s no way I could support my son working as a waitress or at some factory job. His medical bills are outrageous. I can make around a thousand bucks a night working as a stripper. It would take me a month or more to earn that much money.”
“Lucky,” she continued. “I didn’t want to hurt you. That’s why I suggested you go out with other girls. I couldn’t bring myself to tell you the truth about my life. I knew it would ruin our relationship and I was having such a good time going out with you. It was like old times. You made me feel like a real person again.”
As I sat there in a state of shock I was convinced Rosa was telling me the truth.
“Rosa, I don’t care about your past,” I said. “I’m not a wealthy man but our concrete business is getting better and I’m going to take over the whole operation some day. I’d like to support you and your son so you’ll never have to work as a dancer or anywhere else again.”
Then I removed a ring from a box I’d been carrying around in my shirt pocket and gingerly placed it on Rosa’s finger. “If you take it off, I’ll understand,” I told her.
“Lucky,” she said. “I’d like to wear it the rest of my life, but are you sure you want me with my reputation and all my problems? “
About that time a red beam of light hit me in the face. Before I knew it four policemen surrounded my car with their lights flashing and with their guns drawn.. “Get out!” they yelled jerking me out of the car. They had me on the ground and tied my hands behind my back. I started to rebel but saw how futile it was.
It was my first time to ever be in jail. It was 2:30 in the morning when I entered the cell with twelve other men. I decided not to call my folks and disturb them until later in the morning. Sometime after daylight a jailer showed me the local newspaper. On the front page in bold black ink the heading of an article read: IRAQ WAR VETERAN KIDNAPPED STRIPPER. Beside the article was a picture of Rosa standing out by a lake with my blanket wrapped round her.
Man, what a disgrace. I’ve really blew it this time, I thought. I was getting ready to call my mother and listen to a three hour lecture when a jailer popped open the cell door. “Your uncle bailed you out and he’s waiting downstairs for you,” he said.
After I picked up my belongings I walked downstairs and exchanged a few words of thanks with my uncle, then went to retrieve my car parked in a storage lot two blocks away.
I stopped by to see Rosa on my way out of town. She greeted me dressed in her house coat and pajamas. Her eyes were red and swollen and she looked ten years older. A little boy was playing on the front room carpet. He had blond stringy hair that wouldn’t stay combed and a pale, ghostly white face with freckles sprinkled lightly across his nose.
“This is my son, Jimmy,” Rosa said when she saw me staring at the boy.
“Hello Jimmy, I’m very pleased to meet you,” I said, reaching down and shaking his motionless hand.
“I’m sorry about what happened last night,” Rosa said, as I sat down and surveyed her small one bedroom apartment.
“Me too,” I said. “Did I cause you to lose your job?”
“I called my boss and told him I quit,” she said, flashing my ring that she still wore on her finger.
“What did he say?”
“He offered me a raise.”
“And what did you say?”
“I told him to go to hell. That I was getting married.”
“You did,” I said. “Who’s the lucky guy?”
She paused searching me up and down. “I’m looking at him,” she said. She sat down in my lap and gave me another one of those long lingering kisses that send my emotions among other things, out of this planet. For the second time, my escape from Iraq with my life being the first, I felt worthy of being called Lucky.
Three days later all legal proceeding against me were dismissed and this Sunday night Rosa and I will unite in matrimony. And then, if the Lord is willing I plan on spending all my Sunday nights with Rosa and every other night as well.
