“Every week another piece. The steering wheel, the exhaust pipe. On and on. Like sending home souvenirs, messages in a bottle. Front right tire: I’m still here. Windshield wiper: I’ll be coming home soon. Seat cushion: please don’t forget me.” Hawkeye draws his knees up to his chest and sits there awkwardly, off-balance, rocking just perceptibly back and forth as if in a parody of grief. In a smaller voice, he says, “Please don’t forget me. Please understand me.” Charles takes off the boot, avoiding Hawkeye’s glance, and starts on the other. He can feel Hawkeye regarding him, vacant-eyed. “Handing pieces of his life out into the ether, see? And I got to thinking: actually it was a terrific joke. He was sending that jeep home as if his family had the first idea what to do with it. What do Iowa farm people know about Army jeeps? They wouldn’t have any idea how to reconstruct it. They wouldn’t recognize what it meant.”
I hate to pick out a "best bit" but on first read-through, this is where I knew this story was going to be special.
no subject
This is brilliant.
“Every week another piece. The steering wheel, the exhaust pipe. On and on. Like sending home souvenirs, messages in a bottle. Front right tire: I’m still here. Windshield wiper: I’ll be coming home soon. Seat cushion: please don’t forget me.” Hawkeye draws his knees up to his chest and sits there awkwardly, off-balance, rocking just perceptibly back and forth as if in a parody of grief. In a smaller voice, he says, “Please don’t forget me. Please understand me.” Charles takes off the boot, avoiding Hawkeye’s glance, and starts on the other. He can feel Hawkeye regarding him, vacant-eyed. “Handing pieces of his life out into the ether, see? And I got to thinking: actually it was a terrific joke. He was sending that jeep home as if his family had the first idea what to do with it. What do Iowa farm people know about Army jeeps? They wouldn’t have any idea how to reconstruct it. They wouldn’t recognize what it meant.”
I hate to pick out a "best bit" but on first read-through, this is where I knew this story was going to be special.