Except of course that there really wasn’t anywhere to go ‘out’ to and the fact that they’d ended up at Major Reagan’s quarters sort of belied the ‘girls’ part of it altogether.
It was still a relief however and the fact that when they’d showed up at the Major’s door demanding a couple hours of mission-free, pressure-free time he’d invited them in - it went a long way to helping Julie relax.
The fact that Dr. Mom had smuggled a bottle of Melbec on board certainly helped too.
The professional side of Julie was relieved to see the major open up a little and relax—she even got a chance to see a full smile which didn’t look too bad on him at all. If she was feeling the pressure then it was amazing that he could stand up straight with all that was on his shoulders.
Dr. Mom seemed her usual unflappable self and had deftly gotten the major to talk a little about his personal life; something Julie definitely got the impression that he didn’t do all that often.
“I can’t believe that cooking is one of your hobbies,” Toni said.
“Why not?” the major responded. “A lot of men are chefs and it relaxes me.”
“It’s just that you’re so… macho,” Julie said. After seeing the look on Major Reagan’s face she hurriedly continued, “Not in a bad way! I just mean that you’re like the perfect image of a military leader and cooking seems so… domestic.”
After both Julie and Toni stopped laughing the major smiled and in a conversational spirit recounted how early in his career he had been stationed at Ft Leavenworth, Kansas to spend a rotation at the Army’s Combined Arms Center.
What most people don’t realize is that Leavenworth is just outside of Kansas City.
What even more people don’t realize is that Kansas City is the absolute BBQ capital of the world. Between the American Royal and the hundreds of privately owned BBQ restaurants it was a matter of pride for every Kansas Citian to own a grill, a slow cooker, and/or a smoker; there might even be a law requiring it.
“While I was there,” he continued. “I was befriended by a man who was old enough to be my grandfather and that had served BBQ for lunch at a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant every Wednesday and Thursday for 32 years.”
“What about the rest of the week?” Toni asked.
“Nope, he’d spend all day Tuesday smoking and slow cooking his meets and only served lunch over the next two days. There weren’t more than half a dozen mismatched tables in the whole place but he’d have a line of suits wrapped all the way around the building waiting for him to open.
“I consider myself lucky that he let me hang around most Tuesdays and judging by the comments I get on my brisket I think it’s fair to say he taught me some secrets!”
“No offense Mathew—hey, can I call you Mathew?” asked Julie.
“Actually it’s Matt,” he responded.
“Ok, no offense Major Matt but you don’t seem the most outgoing type. How exactly did you befriend this BBQ guru?”
“What? You don’t believe that I’m immediately able to win the confidence of an aficionado of secret recipes using only my good looks, charm, and great sense of humor?”
When no one responded he sighed and continued, “Well, there was this vandalism thing that kept plaguing the old man. I guess he was grateful that someone was able to discourage the local gang from continuing that activity.”
“So the big strong military man broke some heads, huh.” Julie said in a suddenly flat voice.
“Well maybe a little, at first,” Major Reagan explained. “But all it really took was for the gang leader to get his To-Go order every Thursday like clockwork. Last time I’d checked there hadn’t been a robbery or vandalism since.”
Toni laughed and Julie felt somewhat chastised for possibly underestimating this man, and with that sobering thought she realized that she did have a big day tomorrow and that this was an important mission and that… well, it was time to turn in, say a prayer, and face tomorrow with every confidence she could muster.
The first thing she did the next morning was to seek out the Reverend Dr. Charles Rohn. While she was waiting for Dr. Sullivan to contact her she might as well head back over to the HQ Hub; and besides, there were some questions she wanted to bounce off of the reverend anyway.
Julie’s friends were sometimes surprised to learn that she was religious. She’d never tried to hide it but she probably didn’t fit the stereotype because she wasn’t all that fond of organized religion. She enjoyed attending the Catholic Midnight Mass every year on Christmas Eve and there were few things as uplifting as the full choir on Easter Sunday Service at the local Methodist church but she had always had trouble fitting in or feeling comfortable in groups and this was no different.
Her belief was strong that there was one God and that a part of Him, his son, had walked the earth and sacrificed Himself to give each individual’s essence or spirit the right or belief to go on existing after corporal death. This clearly put her in the camp of the Christians and she was comfortable with that label; it was all the other relatively small details of the differing denominations that she had a hard time with. The idea that dancing was ungodly, that contraception was evil or that praying to the Saints was a requirement to experience an afterlife were examples of concepts that Julie strongly suspected were added by man; not created by God.
It’s not that she thought badly of those that embraced a certain denomination or Christian belief system; most church members she had ever met were basically very good, kind people and this hard cold world could use a lot more of them. As a matter of fact, she was more likely to discuss her detailed personal beliefs with an agnostic than a fellow Christian because she didn’t want to take a chance on discouraging a Believer. For herself, however, Julie figured that she trusted her relationship with God and didn’t always need the man behind the pulpit to interpret every nuance or dictate every detail of His policy.
The other people that she avoided discussing her beliefs with were the dedicated atheists. Being a Medical Doctor and scientist herself Julie had spent a lot of time around this type of crusader and could never really understand their insistence that the idea of God and science couldn’t coexist. To Julie, evolution and mathematics helped explain the mechanics of God’s miracles and the revelations of quantum physics were giving new insight into His creation. Who’s to say that the very act of truly believing you won’t perish after physical death isn’t the quantum requirement to accomplish it? Perhaps believing in a certain way, Christianity for example, is what would unite those spiritual beings in that afterlife. The mysteries of quantum physics are surprisingly compatible with this idea and if it were true then the penalty for non-belief could be nonexistence, or at best a lonely lost soul wondering the cosmos eternally alone—and wouldn’t that be a kind of Hell? Every revelation, every new scientific discovery gave Julie new respect, admiration, and sometimes awe for the Creator.
She found the Reverend Dr. Charles Rohn in his quarters. He invited her in and bade her to sit down while he poured coffee for them both.
Rev. Rohn was a quiet unassuming man who had risen near the top of his relatively small Neo Christian denomination not because of any maneuvering on his part but because he was honest, dedicated, and had no political ambitions. Therefore he was politically safe to all factions inside the church. He suspected, rightly so, that this was also the main reason he’d been selected for this mission and assigned to General Nesbit’s HQ group. He’d been very surprised when the government agents first knocked on his door, and totally unsurprised that since then, with the possible exception of General Nesbit himself, he had been totally ignored by the mission leadership.