*
Major General J.C. Frazetta rose at dawn to the sound of mockingbirds chattering outside the window, and had a hard time resisting the impulse to head for work early. It was the general’s first day on the job, not counting the ceremony the day before, in which command was officially transferred by the outgoing commander. Frazetta was too full of nervous energy to go back to sleep.
So Frazetta prepared herbal tea, fried some boudin that had been purchased while driving through Louisiana to Vicksburg a couple days earlier, and prepared a soufflé cockaigne, with Parmesan and Gruyere cheese. It was too aggravating to merely wait for the soufflé to rise, so the general sautéed some Italian squash, fried some leftover boiled potatoes with onions and green pepper, and threw some popovers in the oven along with the soufflé. Made coffee for Pat, the spouse, and sniffed at it longingly as it bubbled from the Braun coffeemaker. And thought about making coffee bread, because excess energy could be usefully employed in punching down the dough as it rose.
The general looked at the clock. No, not enough time.
Pat, who was not a morning person and who generally ate nothing before 11:00 A.M., was nevertheless sensitive to Frazetta’s moods and ate a full share of the preposterous meal.
The only comment offered by Pat on all this activity was to retire to the workshop and pluck out “I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General” on his fiddle.
Which was all, General Jessica Costanza Frazetta had to conclude, that she deserved.
Exactly on time, to the minute, 0900 hours exactly, General Frazetta greeted her secretary. Her driver, the experienced Sergeant Zook, seemed to know to the second how long it would take to deliver her to her new headquarters.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning, General Frazetta.” The secretary smiled. “Can I get you some coffee?”
“Not exactly.” The general opened her briefcase, produced a box of tea bags, Celestial Seasonings Caribbean Kiwi Peach. She handed the box to her secretary. “Would you mind bringing me a cup of this?”
“Not at all, General.”
Major General Jessica C. Frazetta, U.S. Army, closed her briefcase, thanked her secretary, and walked into her office. Closed the door behind her.
And grinned like a chipmunk. She walked to the map of the Mississippi Valley that hung on one wall.
Her domain. She had just been appointed to command of the Mississippi Valley Division, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The President had appointed her to the presidency of the Mississippi River Commission, the outfit that with the MVD ran all federal projects on the river, but that would wait on the approval of Congress.
It was a great job. She was, for all intents and purposes, in charge of the entire Mississippi River and its 250 tributaries. The drainage basin included all or part of thirty-one of the lower forty-eight states— and also a part of Canada, which was a bit outside of her jurisdiction. All of the federal works on the river— the cutoffs, levees, dikes, revetments, spillways, and reservoirs were in her charge. All the dredges, the dams, the floodwalls, and locks.
All the responsibility. Which didn’t bother her at all— she liked being in charge.
Where she told the water to go, it would go, or she would know the reason why.
She turned to the photograph of the President on the wall behind her desk and gave it a wave.
“Thanks, boss,” she said. And tossed her hat across her desk and onto the brass hat stand behind.
By the time her secretary came with the tea, Jessica was seated behind the desk and was halfway through the stack of congratulatory messages and faxes that had arrived from all over the world: from Bob in Sarajevo, from Janice in Korea, from Fred in some place called Corrales, New Mexico.
“Thanks, Nelda,” she said, and sipped at the tea.
“Does it taste okay?”
“Tastes fine. It’s only weeds and water, after all.”
Nelda smiled. “We’re mostly Java drinkers around here.”
“Never cared for it myself.” Jessica preferred not to explain that she avoided caffeine on the theory that it might exaggerate her hyperkinetic manner, which she had been told, occasionally at length, was not her most attractive characteristic.
“Anything else I can do?”
“Can you get me Colonel Davidovich?”
“He’s out at the Riprap Test Facility at the moment, but I can page him if you like.”
Jessica considered. She wanted private meetings with all her senior staff, as well as the officers who commanded the six districts that made up the division. Davidovich was her second-in-command, and she wanted a meeting with him first.
“No— don’t bother. You wouldn’t happen to know when he’ll be in his office?”
“By eleven-thirty, General.”
“I’ll call him then.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
She returned to the congratulatory notes. Then, because it was hard to sit still, she opened her briefcase, took out the photograph of her husband Pat Webster, and put it on her desk. In the photo Pat was leaning back in an old armchair, sleeves rolled up, boots up on a table, playing a banjo.
Next to Pat, she placed the photo of her parents, taken on their fiftieth wedding anniversary, and the photo of her sister with her husband and children.
There were empty picture hangers on the wall where her predecessor had hung various photos and certificates, and she was able to fill the blank spaces with her own. Jessica had an impressive number of credentials to display, even considering her rank and number of years in the service.
One reason for the large number of degrees was the Army’s uncertainty, when she graduated from Engineer Officer Candidate School, as to exactly what to do with a female military engineer. There weren’t very many precedents. Her arrival at her first assignment— in Bangkok, of all places, scarcely then or now a bastion of progressive feminist thought— had been greeted by jeers and catcalls from the enlisted men. But her fellow officers, who appreciated the presence of a round-eyed woman, were supportive enough, though perhaps a little uncertain as to the social niceties.
That uncertainty— what was her place, assuming she had one at all?— resulted in the Army’s apparent decision to keep Jessica in school as much as possible. Which resulted in her getting a master’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Virginia and another master’s degree in contract management and procurement from the Florida Institute of Technology. She had graduated from the U.S. Army War College, the U.S. Army Engineer Basic, Construction, and Advanced Courses, Army Command and General Staff College, the Medical Service Corps Advanced course, and even the Naval War College. She belonged to the National Society of Professional Engineers, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Army Engineer Association, and the Society of American Military Engineers.
The end result of all this education, the overwhelming weight of her credentials, was that it had become very difficult to refuse her any job that she really wanted.
She really wanted the Mississippi Valley Division. And now she had it.
And she was only forty-one years old.
She paused, a framed certificate still in her hand. She had run out of picture hooks. Apparently she had a few more credentials than her predecessor.
She laughed. This was probably a good sign.