A Husband For Maria

"Here we have a new wine of the old world, but we must get some root stock from the Torres Estate for the sour grape." Johnny reached into the cooler again and brought out a package which he unwrapped carefully. He spilled out at least fifty cuttings from the Spanish plants.

"Here's your rootstock, courtesy of the United States Air Force Delivery Service."

Everybody was excited with what Johnny had brought home for Maria's Family. She was very, very proud of her husband. Maria sat in his lap and gave him kisses as the others shook his hand or touched his face.

Then Johnny turned to Maria's Mother and Father. "Raul, Teresa, I know that I married your daughter without your blessing and without he blessing of the Church. It seemed the thing to do at the time. Now with your permission I would like to marry Maria again in the church that she was raised in. She told me that it would make her happy if we could do that."

Johnny and Maria were married again the following Sunday at the little church near the winerey with all the friends and neighbors attending. Maria told her mother and the Priest that she didn't think she should wear the white as she had already been married several months. The old Irish priest had the final say. "You will wear the white Maria, you truly deserve it and you are marrying an Irishman, even if he is from Texas. Make this old man's heart feel good and let me marry you wearing the white like I always planned to do."

It was a gala affair and the wine flowed. Maria's family were happy and Maria positively glowed with happiness. Her big Texan was doing it right. Johnny and Maria stayed at the winery for two more days, afterwards they drove back to San Rafael, with Juan and Carmelita following in Maria's Camaro. Johnny had eleven more days off and the two lovers spent the days and nights, making love, swimming, making love, eating, making love and got very little sleep.

Maria and Johnny had been married exactly seven months when she told him one evening, that she was pregnant with his child. Johnny was happy, Maria was happy and Carmelita was probably the happiest of them all. She would have a baby to take care of and spoil. It was good to see Johnny happy again. Carmelita knew that he had been very lonely before that fateful day that he went to play baseball at the University of California, Berkeley.

Maria was very happy as the months went by and she began to grow large with Johnny's child. In her seventh month, her doctor, Major Shaw, asked her if she would take and ultrasound test. He explained that he could hear multiple heartbeats and he needed to determine just how many were in there. On the appointed day, Johnny was not on a flight somewhere, so he went along with her. When the tests were over they went into a waiting room and waited, and waited, and waited. Finally Dr. Shaw came in and got them. He escorted them into a room with several computer-like screens.

"Well, to start with," Major Shaw told them, there are two of those little leprechauns in there....You're carrying twins Maria. Do you want to know their gender?" Johny looked at Maria with adoration. He smiled at her, returning the happy grin on her face.

"Major Shaw," Johnny said, "being a cool, calm, and collected person of Irish ancestry, I can wait to know what the twins are until they are born, but I think my Spanish wife is dying to know." Maria gave Johnny a sock on the shoulder and Major Shaw roared with laughter.

Major Shaw asked, "Well, how about it Maria?" "Yes," she whispered, "Yes yes yes!" "What are you hoping for?" the doctor asked. "A girl." said Johnny. "A son." said Maria. "OK kids you're both gonna get your wish. There is a boy and a girl."

The two parents to be, laughed and cried at the same time. They couldn't wait to get home and start making phone calls. They had already figured out their names. When they arrived at home and told Juan and Carmelia the news, Maria and Carmelita immediately retired to the nursery to start making a list of all the new things that they would need. Johnny got on the phone...."Mom?" he said, "You're not going to have a grandchild....you're gonna have two! A boy and a girl. We just found out today. We've decided to call the boy, Peter Raul O'Rourke and the girl Marjorie Victoria Dorotea O"Rourke. How does that sound to you?" Johnny held the phone for a few minutes while he heard sobs from the woman who, though she was acutally his aunt, was truly his mother too. At last she said, "When are the babies due Johnny, I've got to be there.""It looks like the middle of next month. Can Pop come too?" Johnny asked. "Sure he can!" She replied. Maria walked into the room in time to talk to Margie for a bit and recieve Marjorie's thanks for the names of the new babies. After Maria hung up, Marjorie turned to Pete and said, "Peter, Johnny just called me Mom and you Pop. I never thought I would ever hear him call us that."

Maria called the winery. Needless to say, no more work was done that day at the De La Rosa Vineyard and Winery! Johnny, Maria, Carmelita and Juan arrived by seven P.M.and sat down to a feast. The celebrations continued into the evening. Maria was put to bed by her Mother, Grandmother and Carmelita, who claimed to be mother number three. The men smoked fine cigars and drank good brandy and swapped lies until almost dawn when the three 'mothers' came for them. As Johnny slipped into the large bed, Maria, who was lying on her side, scooted across into Johnny's arms. He held her close while he kissed her neck, nibbled her ear and gently caressed her fully ripe breasts. Maria sighed with happiness.

Major Shaw, who could be a jolly elf as well as an ogre, walked into the labor room with his ogre face on. There were four, count 'em, four..... women crowded around Maria's bed, and all of them speaking spanish. He stepped to the door and bellowed. "Captain O'Rourke, get all the women out of my labor room, I am the doctor here!" From the door of the waiting room, five men pushed and shoved as all tried to get out at the same time. At last Johnny rushed to the labor room and herded them out. "I don't care if you are a brand new captain, you'd better keep 'em out. I understand some Spanish, but not that much or that fast." As Johnny pushed the women past him, the crusty old Major gave him an impish grin. Dr.Shaw wasn't mad, but who could work in that environ-ment? The four women glared at him as they filed into the corridor.

There wasn't room for everybody to pace back and forth in the waiting lounge, so Johnny and Pete walked up and down the corridor. A nurse walked out of the labor room and said to Johnny, "Captain, if we are gonna get in on this, we'd better get you into some greens." Johnny stood there and stared at her, stunned. The nurse snapped, "Let's move it Poppa." Grabbing him by the arm she led him into the delivery room. The nurse was laughing, Pete was laughing, but John Calhoun O'Rourke couldn't say a word.

"I'll kill him!" she yelled. "You tell Johnny O'Rourke that he's a dead man. This hurts!" Maria was telling anybody who'd listen to her. Then Johnny, in green operating room scrubs sat on a stool at Maria's side.

He took her hand and squeezed it. Maria shut up. She grimaced as she pushed, over and over. For hours her labor continued. Finally it was all over and Doctor Shaw took the tiny boy and laid him on Maria's chest. The nurse intended to hand the little girl to Johnny, but, when they looked for him, Captain John Calhoun O'Rourke was stretched out on the floor. He'd fainted dead away.

Johnny was beat. After being dragged ignimoniously from the delivery room. he had only a few minutes alone with his darling Maria and their two new babies. Maria laughed when he told her what she had been yelling in the deliv- ery room. She said to him, "Johnny, next time lets just have one baby, two is a killer." Johnny kissed her tenderly and told her thanks for making him so happy and a new daddy too.

Then the door was wrestled open, pushing the young medic that Johnny had stationed at the door, backwards into the room. Johnny grabbed him and pulled him out of the way of the babbling herd of females. They all gave way though, when Victorio Armand De La Rosa walked to the bedside of his granddaughter. Grandpa Victor leaned over and kissed Maria's forehead twice, once for each child, as he had done when both Maria and Carlos had been born. He placed a hand on each child and said.

"Another generation has come, to both the De La Rosa and the O'Rourke Families. God bless us all." Then he added with a wry smile."And may we all be in heaven, half an hour before the devil knows we are dead." Laughter exploded around the room. Margie gasped, "A Spainiard making Irish prayers. what's the world coming to?

When he left the base hospital Johnny went home. As he got out of the shower, he heard Carmelita in the kitchen. She was making food for all the crowd that would soon be there. Johnny took a slice of bacon from the dish and ate it. He put his arms around Carmelita and thanked her for being so wonderful. Carmelita walked back to her stove, tears of joy streaming down her cheeks.

Maria and the new twins came home after a five day stay in the hospital. The young couple knew true joy as they stood by the cribs and watched the sleeping babies. Maria turned to Johnny and said. "I'm so glad that they are ours Johnny, so very glad. You were my Knight that day and I love you very much." Johnny held Maria in his arms for a long time. He looked down into her lovely eyes and told her in an emotional voice. "I'm glad too my love." Little Pete let out a cry for food and Victoria was right behind him. Johnny sat and watched as his beautiful Maria fed their twins, one at each breast. Life was truly wonderful.

Johnny came off leave when the twins were three weeks old. When he got to work, he got the word. The Squadron was shipping out to Japan, where they'd be flying into Viet Nam.

Chapter Nine

The house was closed. Carmelita and Juan had their passports and all the goodbyes had been said. Maria and Carmelita had flown to El Paso for a week with Pete and Margie, then came back for a week in Napa County. The three adults and the twins were ferried to San Francisco Airport by Raul and Teresa. They boarded a Pan American seven forty seven and were soon high over the Pacific enroute to Tokyo. Johnny's squadron was staging out of Tachikawa Air Base and he had rented a lovely home only three miles away from the main gate.

When the plane landed at Tokyo Inter-national Airport, about mid afternoon, the twins were cranky. Maria carrried little Pete and Carmelita proudly carried Victoria. Poor Juan was left to carry the huge diaper bag. It took a long time to clear customs and get inside the terminal. There Maria spotted a tall blonde female Captain holding a sign that read.

'MRS. O'ROURKE AND PARTY

"I'm Maria O'Rourke," she told the Captain, "Why isn't Johnny here?" "He's flying Maria, so I've been deputized to meet ya'll. I'm Angela Mahoney, Johnny and I went to the Academy together, plus I'm from Texarkana, Texas. My airplane is broke, so Johnny and his crew had to go fly in my crew's place. I know where to take ya'll and I'm to look after getting you settled in. Johnny should be back sometime tomorrow."

Maria introduced Juan and Carmelita and Angela got her first peek at the O'Rourke twins. Then Angela led them to the baggage claim area. Soon they had all their luggage in hand. They had to have four skycaps to ferry the luggage to the stationwagon that Angela had brought to pick them up. It wasn't going to hold half the luggage but, Maria had learned a few things since she'd been married to Johnny. She went inside and exchang-ed some of her money, then asked one of the skycaps to get a taxi for the luggage and they would go with Angela. She gave the driver the address and away they went to their new home.

As they were unloading the luggage, Maria saw Jimmy Myers. With him was a very beautiful woman who was decidedly familiar. She held out her arms to Maria. The laughing eyes made Maria remember her.

"Desiree!" she shouted, then turned to Jimmy Myers and said, "I guess you did taste the wine in Spain, didn't you Jimmy?" Jimmy shuffled his feet, acting foolish, turning beet red and wink-ed at Maria. "Carmelita, Juan,this is my cousin Desiree Torres from Poppa Victor's village in Spain." Carmelita held out her arms to the girl. Then Jimmy laughed and got even redder as he told Maria and Carmelita.

"It's not Desiree Torres any more, It's Desiree Myers and we live just across the street."That news thrilled Maria as she was going to have a close relative with her in Japan.

Johnny arrived about two thirty the next afternoon. His face was pale and rather drawn as he greeted Maria, the twins, Carmelita and and Juan. Jimmy and Desiree were there as well as Angela, so his homecoming was boisterous and happy. As the afternoon wore on, Maria saw Johnny take Angela and Jimmy to one side of the yard and talk to them for a few minutes. Not long afterwards Jimmy, Desiree and Angela left.

When they finally got into bed that first night, Johnny and Maria made sweet, sweet love. As they were starting to drift off to sleep, Maria asked Johnny what he had said to Jimmy and Angela when he took them aside that afternoon. Johnny looked at her solemnly for a few mom-ents. "I told them that I brought out a load of bodies today. The bodies are coming out of Viet Nam on almost every plane that unloads there. I felt for the first time, that we were really at war over there and I need to talk to you very seriou sly about it. I want Juan and Carmelita there whenwe discuss it." Maria sat up in bed and looked at the man that she loved so much. It would not happen to him.....he would not be lost in a war. But she quietly said. "Tomorrow morning Johnny, tomorrow morning."

Johnny was asleep in minutes, but Maria lay there for hours, her thoughts reeling. Then she curled her body against his and slept.

Morning brought solemnity to the household. Maria had told Carmelita about the meeting when she fed the twins at four A. M.. Carmelita was always up to help and she diapered and fussed with one twin while Maria fed the other. Carmelita made Johnny's favorite breakfast. Denver omelets along with the heady 'Nabob' coffee that they got from Canada. Maria had brought twenty pounds of the coffee with her from San Rafael. They all gathered around the big table. Jimmy and Desiree came in and the meeting got underway.

Desiree was aware of what Johnny was going to talk about because she had already discussed it with Jimmy and Johnny.

"There are airplanes being shot down over Viet Nam," Johnny started, "Its a cold fact of war. There are casualties. I brought a plane load of bodies home yesterday. That is why I wasn't so chipper when I got home. Jimmy and I usually fly together so we thought you should all know that something could happen to the two of us at any time. If it does, you have to have a plan. What we want. if we go down, is for you all to return to the house in San Rafael. Desiree goes with you Maria. I want you to see to that. If we survive, we will get a message to you in San Rafael, and if we don't you will all be better off there than here. Promise me that you will do it Maria." Maria looked at Johnny, then at Desiree, who nodded yes, then to Juan and Carmelita. She turned back to Johnny and said, "I'll do what you want Johnny.

"Four hours later, C-130 number 582771 was high over the South China Sea, headed for Viet Nam. Johnny was the pilot and Jimmy was the Navi-gator.

Johnny O'Rourke and Jimmy Myers made twenty three trips to Viet Nam over the next ninety days. Each trip was basically uneventful as they carried load after load of supplies into that war torn land.

Christmas came and the twins first Christmas was pure delight. They got all sorts of gifts, but ended up fascinated by the colored paper and string. Carmelita made a wonderful Christmas dinner and when it was all eaten, everybody sat around, stuffed and happy. Then Jimmy and Desiree told everyone that she was pregnant.

Chapter 10

It was on the seventeenth of March, on a flight from Saigon to Thailand that the rear loading ramp malfunctioned. It came down with a thud and stuck in the open position. Jed Mason was the co-pilot that day, so Johnny (who knew every nut and bolt on the HERC) and Jimmy, who wasn't needed that day for navi-gation, went back to see if they could fix it. They donned their parachutes and helmets, but were hooked to safety harnesses too. Suddenly there was a huge explosion and the big C-130 rolled over on its side and started down, the left wing, a ball of fire. Jimmy, Johnny and Sergeant Jenkins cut their safety lines and jumped out of the burning, doomed aircraft. When Johnny's parachute opened he scanned the sky for more 'chutes. Then the aircraft exploded at about ten thousand feet. There were no more 'chutes, just their three.

The three survivors landed within two hundred yards of each other, but the loadmaster, Jenkins landed in the trees and broke his neck. Jimmy and Johnny landed in a stinking rice paddy. Neither Johnny nor Jimmy were injured. The only problem was that they landed fifty yards from a Viet Cong Battalion encampment. Johnny O'Rourke and Jimmy Meyers were Prisoners of War.

When the blue station wagon stopped in front of their house, Maria knew something was wrong. When she opened the door, the commander of the "HERC" Squadron and his wife were there, their faces somber. Maria looked across the street as Desiree came running toward them. As she reached Maria, the two of them clasped hands and Maria asked the Colonel and his wife into the living room. They waited until Maria had made sure that they were comfortable before Maria asked the obvious.

"They're down, have you any word?"

"No Maria, I have no word except that their plane was shot down about fifty miles west of Saigon. A FAC pilot said he saw parachutes but didn't know how many. By the time he got over the site, they would have been on the ground. He saw only three chutes on the ground, but heard nothing from their Emergency Radios or their Location Beepers. I'm sorry Maria, Desiree, we have to consider them Missing in Action for the present. If anything comes through I'll be sure to let you know."

By the time the Colonel had finished, Desiree and Carmelita were crying, but Maria stared straight at the Colonel and said.

"Johnny isn't dead Colonel, I don't think that Jimmy is either. Within the week we will be in San Rafael, please contact us there with any word. Desiree will be with us as she is my cousin. Thank you for coming here to tell us."

The Colonel and his wife left the house and returned to the station wagon. The Colonel's wife told him,

"They'll be ok Tom, those girls have each other and I'm sure that the De La Rosa family will look out for them both."

Maria closed the door, then turned and looked into the huge black eyes of Carmelita. The two women stared at each other for several moments before Carmelita said,

"You should have told Johnny about the new baby before he flew away from you." Her tone wasn't acusing, just a flat statement. Carmelita walked the few steps to Maria and held her close. That was when Maria began to cry. Carmelita became their "Mother" again with her, 'one hour to cry' and then carry on with being the mother of the twins and now the gaurdian of the whole family.

Chapter 11

For five long weeks the two Airmen were caged in a bamboo box. They were placed in the back of and old French truck and were taken from village to village where the people were told that they were pilots of the hated B-52 bomber that caused so much destruction across the land. The anguished men were spat on, gouged with sharp bamboo sticks, urinated on and had feces thrown on them. As well, they were soundly cursed by any of the Vietnamese peasants who crowded around the rusty old truck. When they reached a fairly large town, they were taken from the Viet Cong by a Colonel of the North Vietnamese Army. The Colonel was regular Army and did not hold with torture. He ordered his soldiers to take Johnny and Jimmy from the filthy cages and give them a shower, a shave and medical treatment for the running sores and lacerations that covered their bodies. He ordered that that Commander of the Viet Cong unit and all their officers be flogged. Regular Army Officers didn't treat prisoners is such an ill manner, no matter what uniform they wore.