Duty(41)

I nod, looking down at her. “I will. And Lindsey, I really appreciate this.”

“I appreciate it too,” Lindsey replies, reaching down to grab her patrol cap cover. She's an admin clerk in one of the MP battalions. She's not authorized to wear the maroon beret, which is a shame. She'd look good in it. “Okay, I'm off.”

Lindsey leaves, and I look around the living room carefully, curious. I feel a little bit like a spy as I walk toward the back of the house, checking out Lance's bedroom. He's got a cute little bed with Buzz Lightyear sheets, and the furniture is about what you'd expect for a three-year-old, with a plastic tub in the corner that is full of his toys. I don't know most of the characters or what that purple thing with three eyes is supposed to be, but I guess that's normal. If I get a chance, I'll let Lance tell me all about them.

Across the hallway, I see what is obviously Lindsey's bed, and what strikes me right away is that she's sleeping in a twin set bed, obviously as unlucky in the bedroom department as I am. She kind of said as much last time, and I have to really work to turn away and go back to the living room. I'm here to babysit and take care of Lance, not pull a creepy voyeur bit.

Lance wakes up just like Lindsey anticipated at a little after seven thirty while I’m sitting back and re-reading Lindsey's list of rules she left me. The only hard one, I think, is going to be keeping him away from sugar after five o'clock, but I can understand. I wouldn't want to be dealing with a kid going gaga off the walls when I get home from duty either. “Good morning, Lance. How're you doing?”

Lance yawns and shakes his head, rubbing at his hair. His hair may be the same color as his mother's, but he wakes up like me, that's for sure. It took me nearly all of plebe year to get used to waking up early, and even now, I tend to treat non-duty Sundays as a day to see if I can sleep the sun down.

He mumbles something, but I’m not sure what, then plops back down. “Okay, buddy. Mind if I turn on some TV?”

Lance waves his hand, and forty-five minutes later, he opens his eyes again. He blinks and smiles, and I have to admit my heart melts a little. “Apple Jacks?”

I laugh. I can't help it. He knows exactly what he's doing. “Sorry, little man, but I read your Mommy's rules very carefully, and rule number three was no Apple Jacks, Smacks, or Cocoa Puffs for breakfast. So, from what I saw, that leaves Cheerios or Wheaties.”

“Yuck,” Lance grumbles, and I laugh.

“If you don't want that, how about we go out then? Nothing in the rules about not having waffles. Think you'd like to be taken out to breakfast?”

“Can we?” Lance says immediately, brightening. “Where?”

“Where else but Waffle House? And if you promise to play hard afterward, I might even bend Mommy's rules a little and let you put the thick syrup on them with the butter. How's that?”

Lance helps me with instructional commentary as I struggle with his car seat until finally, I get it and him buckled in and we head out. After a good breakfast of a big waffle for him with butter and blueberry syrup and hashbrowns with eggs for me, we go to a state park near Pope Field, because apparently, my son loves to watch airplanes.

“What's that one?” Lance asks as a rumble fills the sky and I look up, smiling.

“That's a C-130, buddy. The Air Force calls them the Hercules, but we don't really worry about the names in the Army.”

“Oh. What is it doing?” Lance asks.

I shrug and give him a smile. “You never know, buddy. It could be a group getting ready to try an airborne drop. It could be some reservists getting their flight hours in.”

“Are you the boss?” Lance asks. “Mommy says officers boss people around a lot.”

“We do,” I say with a laugh. “But I hope that when I give orders, I do it for a reason.”

“Why?”

“Because my job is to do everything I can to take care of my soldiers, to keep them safe and to make sure that if we ever do have to go fight, that they have the best chance to come home safely. At the same time, I have to do the job that my bosses say, to complete the mission so that everyone in other units has the best chance to come home safely. It's . . . it's sometimes difficult to understand.”

“So are you like when Velocicycle forms up with the other Velocifighters to form Hypertron, but they still have to listen to Commander Houston?” Lance asks.

“I have no idea what you just said,” I tell him. “But it sounds right. So, what do you like to do outside, besides watching the planes?”

The rest of the morning is absolutely a blast as Lance and I play in the park. He's working on kicking, and for nearly an hour, I chase him around while he kicks his little soccer ball, scoring between the two 'goals' that we set up using some trees and some stuff from my car.

After lunch at the mall, I take Lance to a movie, some new animated film that is playing in IMAX. It's not what I normally go for. My typical chill out movie involves aliens, explosions, or even better, exploding aliens, but it's still nice. Lance is tired when we finish, and I take him home, putting him down for a nap not too much past his normal time.

I nod off as well, waking up when he wiggles over and puts his head on my thigh. He looks up at me “I’m hungry.”

“You're a growing boy. So how about . . . liver, raw onions, and lima beans?” I tease, but Lance smiles. I don’t know if he somehow knows I’m messing with him, or if it’s just the expression on my face. “Okay, but no burgers. Let's see what's in the kitchen, okay? I'm not taking you out for three meals a day. Your mommy would kill me if I did.”