FIC: Closure (repost) Chap. 3
Aug. 26th, 2005 10:22 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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mash_slashCHAPTER THREE of repost
Story: Closure, chap 3
Pairing: Hawkeye / B.J.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Just when the dirt appears to have settled... Sparked by the letters of a broken Hawkeye, BJ starts to feel what he never felt all those years ago, while being tortured by guilt and memories of what could have been, what is, and what might come to be. (FF.net summary)
NOTE: In case you haven't figured it out by now, time changes are indicated by switching of tenses, present tense being, well, the present, and past tense being... wait for it... the PAST! Oh, what absolute genius! Oh, and big chunks of italics are part of letters, or a letter in its entirety.
None of the characters or anything are mine.
CLOSURE
Chapter 3: Branded by Korea
“Hey, Hawk, did you notice anything strange at breakfast today?”
“What, besides the food?”
“Yes, no, yes, besides the food,” B.J. insisted with broad sweeps of his arm, nearly shattering his glass against a pole. “Really now, with Frank and... and Major Houlihan giving him the cold shoulder.”
“Well, what other kind of shoulder could she give him?”
“Nonono, I think there’s trouble on Paradise Island, Hawk.”
“How would you know? We’re stuck here in Korea!”
“Yeah yeah. C’mon, Hawk, lets go do a little,” B.J. steadied a bombed Hawkeye, who swayed as he struggled to put his boots on, “do a little bird watching.”
The door shivered, slamming into its frame.
***************************
Silence crowded the empty compound, but for the distant clicks of heels on gravel. The heat, humid and dizzying, bogged down the air as a drunken Hawkeye and his not-so-hammered sidekick oozed their way along the road to the tent of one Major Margaret Houlihan, happily betrothed to one Lieutenant-Colonel Donald Penobscott , and not-so-happily burdened with the affections of one Ferret-Face Burns.
In the still of the Korean night, B.J. covered Hawkeye’s lips with a large hand as they sat leaning against each other, ears hovering by the canvas tent-wall. The palm over his mouth, holding in whatever silliness that might have tried to escape, was uncomfortably wet as Hawkeye’s lips, loose and slick with saliva, lent proof to his inebriated state. ‘That’s my bunkie.’
***************************
Dear B.J.
This is Margaret. Sorry to trouble you, but I think you might want... well... enclosed is a letter that I found crumpled In a wastepaper basket. I snooped, I know, but I worry. He is so thin, Hawkeye I mean. I know he has been writing to you, and I know that he has stopped for the past month or so. He talks to me.
He didn’t mention this in his letter- how he showed up at my door- but he visited Trapper. Or at least he went. I found him on my doorstep with the weight of the world in bags under his eyes. He told me, “I went to see Trapper... His wife said he was putting in a late night at work, sorting out some files with his secretary. I think that was the most ‘himself’ he’s ever been. Glad to have gotten the best of it,” and he just collapsed. B.J., no woman should be able to carry a six foot something man over one shoulder. I worry, B.J., but I don’t know him. I only know the Hawkeye from Korea, and honestly, were any of us ourselves there?
Margaret Houlihan
P.S. I’ll try to get him to write and sent you a letter himself. God knows he needs to do something besides mope around the house. I’m surprised he hasn’t found himself a wife yet. He needs the shoulder (I can just hear him adding that the rest wouldn’t hurt either, but maybe that’s just a memory speaking. I thought he was asleep.)
I’d write more, but Hawkeye is having another nightmare. I’ve got to go. Here is Hawkeye’s unsent letter.
***************************
“Major Burns! You can’t come traipsing into my tent in the middle of the night! If Lieutenant-Colone-”
“But Margaret, I-”
“That’s Major Houlihan to you!”
“I was only trying to show you th-”
“I cannot go accepting kisses from chinless, lipless, underdeveloped m-... OH! I’m to be a married woman, Major!”
“So? I’m a married woman too, Margaret!”
B.J. tightened his hand over a particularly ferocious bout of sniggering.
A bead of sweat itched at his left temple, his clothing plastered to his skin, hot, sticky, as his ears buzzed in the heavy silence. Hawkeye’s sweltering breath on his neck made B.J.’s head swim and his stomach churn with the intolerable combination of heat and alcohol.
***************************
Dear B.J.
So much for everything getting better. Shit. Really, I mean it. Bucket of shit with a spoon. I have no substance. Really, shit, spoon = me.
I visited Klinger. We met at Paco’s. He wore a black shirt and tan pants. I missed the dresses and told him so. A man -his friend, maybe, I don't know, I was out of my element... bad water and drowning- asked me ‘what are you, some kind of pervert’, and Klinger said ‘hey hey, I’d have worn my earrings if my holes hadn’t closed up’.
Story of my life. Or somebody’s, I ‘ve lost track.
Holes closed up, huh.
I was in a miserable mood by then and offered to rip him some new ones- see what he could hang in there- yelled, tipped a table, planted a wet one on his anti-pervert friend and left.
I do not suffer fools gladly.
When I told all of this to Margaret, she said that I was a drama queen, and I said how dare she call me a drama (I don’t think she heard me). She humphed and said I probably don’t even feel ashamed, she said, I never do, she said.
What, has Hawkeye become an animal so as to be immune to feeling? Is he wood? A rock? Truth is he bleeds as much as any of those pink hairless helpless kids laid open on the slab all those lifetimes ago, back home on the embers of hell... maybe he bleeds more than others. I think. How could he not? I don’t think I know him so well. Know me. Basket case, invoking use of third person, not good sign.
Right?
Right?
I stubbed my toe yesterday on a table leg and then stubbed my fist on the window. Margaret nearly cried, even though I told her I’d buy her a new one, with promises and all of that. But I don’t think I apologized. And why did I feel like laughing when I thought of that?
***************************
A muffled bumping and slamming of drawers filtered through the canvas. In a stupor, B.J. pulled his hand away from Hawkeye’s mouth, glistening ropes of saliva stretching, breaking; he wiped it on his pants.
“Major Burns, I’m trying to get undressed!”
There was a thump as Frank stomped his foot like a petulant child.
“Tryin’ ta cure peeping-toms a.. ag’in, Margaret?” a new voice put forth. Hand was clapped back over Hawkeye’s mouth.
“Save your breath, Frank. You’ll need it to blow up your date later.”
“But Margaret, it wasn’t me!”
A cicada droned in the distance.
“Hawk, you idiot!” he whispered sharply.
“Huh wha?”
“There’s someone out there, Margaret, “ a nasal voice whimpered.
“Get out from under the bed, Frank, I know there’s someone out there.”
Footsteps. Hurried.
B.J. pushed Hawkeye to the ground.
“Beej? Wha...”
“Hawk, just can it for a minute.”
“Yes, darling.”
The wood-and-screen door slammed open, slammed shut, (Margaret, is anyone there? and Margaret knew that there was, that there must have been, but she really only wanted to sleep, and no Frank, go back to your tent, nobody’s there, Frank, go to sleep, while she really only wanted him gone) and B.J., lying on top of Hawkeye in the shadows, exhaled in relief as his long body shifted on the shorter one below it.
B.J. didn’t really know why it was so important to hide but it was hot, so hot, so humid.
Hawkeye shifted beneath the heavy weight of B.J., and let out a halting snore. Fantastic, he’s asleep. B.J. propped himself up on his elbows and stared at the slightly open mouth below him. A bubble of spit at the corner of Hawkeye’s mouth burst with his next exhalation, a foul breath of raw booze wafting up to curl B.J.’s nostrils.
“Hawkeye, wake up!” B.J. shook his friend gently.
“Trap’uh... not now...”
B.J. slung the dead weight over his shoulder as he staggered towards their tent.
“Let’s get you back to the Swamp.”
“But will y’ still r’spect me in th’ morning?”
“Hawk, I never respect you,” puffed B.J., struggling to haul his bunkmate back to their tent.
“But... y’r girls... wife... Becky... Kathy...”
“Grumpy, Dopey, Bashful, Hawk, what on earth are you talking about?” B.J. asked half listening, sandwiching Hawkeye between his body and the door frame as he struggled to open the door.
“You know, Trap, you know...” Hawkeye murmured in a low sultry voice that simply melted into the Korean heat.
“Trap? Trapper? Hawk, I’m B-”
“Shh hshh, they’ll ‘ear us... and to be hon’st, blue discharge’s nev’r bin my fav’rite color”
“Blue dis-... come on Hawk, just wake up already. Anyway, that’s only for...”
***************************
My antidepressant is running low. I’d go to the liquor store and get some more, but it might get together with the pills and and have some fun of it’s own. I hate medicines. Rarely take mine. And how dare they think of wreaking havoc without me? I hate medicines. Doctors are stupid. Just let me die, dammit, and I don’t care if I die happy or sad, with love or alone, so long as I die happy and with love. Doctors are also the worst patients. I can feel it in my bones, though...meds can only do so much- even less when you don’t take them. Pisser.
It’s not always gloomy and raining on my parade, though. Sometimes it hails instead. Or sleet. Sleet is especially common these days. But fear not for me, rainy season approacheth once again.
But it’s not always that torturous. Sometimes I dream of Korea (the people, the place, the new beginning- and now I sound like a travel brochure-, though never the bloodbath) and I am deliriously happy, but then I wake up in the morning with the sickening sense of it all being over and never really having meant that much to anyone except for me.
I confided all this to Margaret and she called me crazy and then I called her crazy for calling me crazy and that I should know, being crazy. Then I went to make her a cup of hot tea for her headache. She said she might as well drown herself in hot tea for all the headaches my living with her until This is over will give her. I gave her a kiss and she slapped me. I think I love the woman.
This living arrangement is only temporary though, Beej... I’m giving myself a week. This isn’t what I want. I need it, but I hate hate hate hate and feel like a child and want to throw a temper tantrum. I want to scream and explode and be held and cut the rope all that the same time. At times my anger is unstoppable. I need her right now, her strength. But even she’s changed, now that she’s given up on the army, on a husband, on All That which made her Bulldozer Margaret Houlihan.
To be away from home is to be away from everything that made me, says Margaret, and to be away from everything that made me, when it dies, is my own death. I told her that it is the home that made me that breaks me now, and being away from it, in Korea, you know, (of course you know) is what broke and built me anew (oh how poetic), then shattered me by lasting too long, when I still need it to last longer. Or it hasn’t ended. I mean, what I mean is that I am away from my roots (that made me) and away from them, I DID die, and coming back to the place that made me, I found that it had died AFTER me. But then, the me that the Cove made is left in Korea, and the me that was created in Korea, it is wandering. Maybe you’ll choose not to understand this. God knows I tried. Margaret said I was rambling and told me to stop being maudlin.
The dark reaches for darkness everywhere. How’s that for depressing. I like it, though, even though I know I shouldn’t.
***************************
B.J. jumped, pulling away from Hawkeye as though bitten. For all his impaired reflexes, Hawkeye still caught himself on the garbage barrel before he hit the ground.
“Wha- hey, what am I, lunch?”
B.J. backed off, air crackling between the two men, sizzling, focusing between his eyes, he was getting a headache... Hawkeye wasn’t... he chased girls. He drank and chased nurses and kissed them on the lips and more and he liked it and did it over again and Father Mulcahy liked him and he made people laugh and never hurt children or B.J. himself but Hawkeye was... and it wasn’t wrong but... it was Hawkeye and... and in the same tent and they showered together and Hawkeye would sling a casual arm over B.J.’s shoulder and ask him to dance and he always had a deceiving word cloaked in humor and never seemed to be more than a mouth and a set of hands with nothing more important to do than chase NURSES... and kiss them... and he had Carlye... but he had... he had others... Trapper... Trapper Trapper Trapper, who he was replacing and did Hawkeye look at him too and think about Trapper or worse, think about him, B.J., about...
HOMOSEXUAL
Like a cattle brand, red hot and smoking.
HOMOSEXUAL
HOMOSEXUAL
So clinical, but real as anything ever was, and B.J. ran, leaving the... Him... since when had Hawkeye become a Him, an It? Frank was a Him, Jesus was a Him, and Hawkeye was Hawkeye... was a Him... was one of ... and B.J. ran away from Him, stumbling over his own long limbs, head spinning, dust and grit dancing in his wake.
***************************
Speaking to you next day here. Got a letter from Klinger-In-Pants asking me if I was ‘really... well, you know.’ I sent him back a blank sheet of paper with a gorgeous imprint of my very own lipsticked kisser. Margaret got mad at me for ruining her best color (that stuff’s harder to put on than one would imagine). I told her every color was her best color, and tried to kiss her again. I write to you nursing a sore lip. This is what I need.
Everybody seems to be after me, see Hawkeye Hawkeye how’ve ya been? Sometimes, when I see their faces, in the second before they start to talk and act, when they are just a face to a past, my heart vaults into my throat, and then plummets back to wherever it normally hides itself when it sees the change of the years in the people who were frozen before in my mind as ageless.
Wear and tear of time. I should be a songwriter. Or a cliché. Oh, wait, I am one. I hope that that comment isn’t supposed to bring me a great sense of purpose. All I feel is... uh, I’ll get back to you on that one.
And then they attack with their questions, B.J., see whether I am still the golden boy or if I have rusted; sink their teeth into me to see whether I am gold or copper. Let them bite. They will break their teeth either way.
Margaret, I think, is reading over my shoulder but I refuse to turn around and call her on it. It’s what she expects. Ah, you trickster, you contrary munchkin, you, silly Hawkeye... everyone loves you, everyone wants to know you, stand in your shadow to feel the sun on their faces... Margaret says I get more letters these days than Santa Claus. I remind her that I WAS Santa Claus once upon a time, but in reality it’s because I know where all the bad boys live, har har.
’I’Il stop talking about it. No, I haven’t forgotten about you and how you feel about Things Like That. I wonder where good ol’ unsuspecting Margaret would stand if she found out that... well...
Um.
Christ.
***************************
Flies were wailing to the moisture beading at his temple. B.J. slumped, back against a rock, drawing out its coolness, Korea buzzing about him. Perhaps his palms were scratched from a tumble.
They shared a shower. He let HIM do the hard-to-reach pats of his back. HE held his face with clinical gentleness while he vomited. Clinical, but contact. Oh, he knew it wasn’t contagious. But that not-knowing, that... being friends with... and did HE think it was more? Never before had B.J. had Thoughts, but now he could picture, with a hot, sick swoop in the pit of his belly, he could picture slapping, arching, wet, rasping, sinking, deep, to think that his roomie, his -dare he say it (and he briefly thought how over dramatized everything was becoming, how Hawkeye he was, how if Hawkeye could transmit his personality, well...)- Best Friend was a blueboy, a pervert, a back-alley lurker, illegal. His best friend liked it up th- no, no, he couldn’t... ?
B.J. felt sick, a rank taste in his mouth, and wished it were only the alcohol. He wanted to vomit, purge himself of his own thoughts, but- he realized- this time there would be no one there to hold his head.
Hawkeye was drunk. B.J., come on, you’re a grown man. Cope. He was three sheets to the wind, talking a blue streak, load of silliness, our Hawkeye. He might not have meant it, no he didn’t mean a word, to be sure. Nothing happened. After all, the last time he was this sloshed he bought Frank a new shaving brush as a peace offering. Didn’t remember a thing in the morning. R + R. Spent the night recreating, didn’t come back to the room until late, reeking of two types of sin (or three, god, three, and I joked about a woman).
B.J., go back to the tent. Suck it in and go back to the tent. Nothing happened. You’re no close-minded fool. Why does it bother you? What is wrong with you, man. Go back to the Swamp, B.J., nothing happened.
***************************
B.J., go back to bed. Suck it in and go back to Peg. It isn’t happening. You love your wife. Why does this bother you? What is wrong with you, man. Go back to your room, your wife, get out of there, don’t let him drag you down. You love your wife. Go love your wife. This isn’t happening.
Erin lets out a cry in the next room. She is having a nightmare. B.J. is only too glad to go and soothe his daughter of her demons, the demons that spring on her in her sleep, the demons that dance in her mind as things spiral out of her control. He whispers soft words into the darkness, stroking his wife’s curls off of his daughter’s forehead. Erin would understand this. But this isn’t happening. B.J. gives his daughter with Peg’s hair and nose and cheekbones his love, and means it with all of his heart as he tries to forget the long, warm, smoky, heavy, moving body smelling of gin and blood that never lay beside him. Erin’s breathing grows steady and deep as only the breath of one deeply and peacefully asleep can, and, in the silence, B.J. leans his forehead against the cool metal of the bedpost and exhales.
Absolution.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Again, I hope that nobody is bothered by the repost. ~moose
Story: Closure, chap 3
Pairing: Hawkeye / B.J.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Just when the dirt appears to have settled... Sparked by the letters of a broken Hawkeye, BJ starts to feel what he never felt all those years ago, while being tortured by guilt and memories of what could have been, what is, and what might come to be. (FF.net summary)
NOTE: In case you haven't figured it out by now, time changes are indicated by switching of tenses, present tense being, well, the present, and past tense being... wait for it... the PAST! Oh, what absolute genius! Oh, and big chunks of italics are part of letters, or a letter in its entirety.
None of the characters or anything are mine.
Chapter 3: Branded by Korea
“Hey, Hawk, did you notice anything strange at breakfast today?”
“What, besides the food?”
“Yes, no, yes, besides the food,” B.J. insisted with broad sweeps of his arm, nearly shattering his glass against a pole. “Really now, with Frank and... and Major Houlihan giving him the cold shoulder.”
“Well, what other kind of shoulder could she give him?”
“Nonono, I think there’s trouble on Paradise Island, Hawk.”
“How would you know? We’re stuck here in Korea!”
“Yeah yeah. C’mon, Hawk, lets go do a little,” B.J. steadied a bombed Hawkeye, who swayed as he struggled to put his boots on, “do a little bird watching.”
The door shivered, slamming into its frame.
***************************
Silence crowded the empty compound, but for the distant clicks of heels on gravel. The heat, humid and dizzying, bogged down the air as a drunken Hawkeye and his not-so-hammered sidekick oozed their way along the road to the tent of one Major Margaret Houlihan, happily betrothed to one Lieutenant-Colonel Donald Penobscott , and not-so-happily burdened with the affections of one Ferret-Face Burns.
In the still of the Korean night, B.J. covered Hawkeye’s lips with a large hand as they sat leaning against each other, ears hovering by the canvas tent-wall. The palm over his mouth, holding in whatever silliness that might have tried to escape, was uncomfortably wet as Hawkeye’s lips, loose and slick with saliva, lent proof to his inebriated state. ‘That’s my bunkie.’
***************************
Dear B.J.
This is Margaret. Sorry to trouble you, but I think you might want... well... enclosed is a letter that I found crumpled In a wastepaper basket. I snooped, I know, but I worry. He is so thin, Hawkeye I mean. I know he has been writing to you, and I know that he has stopped for the past month or so. He talks to me.
He didn’t mention this in his letter- how he showed up at my door- but he visited Trapper. Or at least he went. I found him on my doorstep with the weight of the world in bags under his eyes. He told me, “I went to see Trapper... His wife said he was putting in a late night at work, sorting out some files with his secretary. I think that was the most ‘himself’ he’s ever been. Glad to have gotten the best of it,” and he just collapsed. B.J., no woman should be able to carry a six foot something man over one shoulder. I worry, B.J., but I don’t know him. I only know the Hawkeye from Korea, and honestly, were any of us ourselves there?
Margaret Houlihan
P.S. I’ll try to get him to write and sent you a letter himself. God knows he needs to do something besides mope around the house. I’m surprised he hasn’t found himself a wife yet. He needs the shoulder (I can just hear him adding that the rest wouldn’t hurt either, but maybe that’s just a memory speaking. I thought he was asleep.)
I’d write more, but Hawkeye is having another nightmare. I’ve got to go. Here is Hawkeye’s unsent letter.
***************************
“Major Burns! You can’t come traipsing into my tent in the middle of the night! If Lieutenant-Colone-”
“But Margaret, I-”
“That’s Major Houlihan to you!”
“I was only trying to show you th-”
“I cannot go accepting kisses from chinless, lipless, underdeveloped m-... OH! I’m to be a married woman, Major!”
“So? I’m a married woman too, Margaret!”
B.J. tightened his hand over a particularly ferocious bout of sniggering.
A bead of sweat itched at his left temple, his clothing plastered to his skin, hot, sticky, as his ears buzzed in the heavy silence. Hawkeye’s sweltering breath on his neck made B.J.’s head swim and his stomach churn with the intolerable combination of heat and alcohol.
***************************
Dear B.J.
So much for everything getting better. Shit. Really, I mean it. Bucket of shit with a spoon. I have no substance. Really, shit, spoon = me.
I visited Klinger. We met at Paco’s. He wore a black shirt and tan pants. I missed the dresses and told him so. A man -his friend, maybe, I don't know, I was out of my element... bad water and drowning- asked me ‘what are you, some kind of pervert’, and Klinger said ‘hey hey, I’d have worn my earrings if my holes hadn’t closed up’.
Story of my life. Or somebody’s, I ‘ve lost track.
Holes closed up, huh.
I was in a miserable mood by then and offered to rip him some new ones- see what he could hang in there- yelled, tipped a table, planted a wet one on his anti-pervert friend and left.
I do not suffer fools gladly.
When I told all of this to Margaret, she said that I was a drama queen, and I said how dare she call me a drama (I don’t think she heard me). She humphed and said I probably don’t even feel ashamed, she said, I never do, she said.
What, has Hawkeye become an animal so as to be immune to feeling? Is he wood? A rock? Truth is he bleeds as much as any of those pink hairless helpless kids laid open on the slab all those lifetimes ago, back home on the embers of hell... maybe he bleeds more than others. I think. How could he not? I don’t think I know him so well. Know me. Basket case, invoking use of third person, not good sign.
Right?
Right?
I stubbed my toe yesterday on a table leg and then stubbed my fist on the window. Margaret nearly cried, even though I told her I’d buy her a new one, with promises and all of that. But I don’t think I apologized. And why did I feel like laughing when I thought of that?
***************************
A muffled bumping and slamming of drawers filtered through the canvas. In a stupor, B.J. pulled his hand away from Hawkeye’s mouth, glistening ropes of saliva stretching, breaking; he wiped it on his pants.
“Major Burns, I’m trying to get undressed!”
There was a thump as Frank stomped his foot like a petulant child.
“Tryin’ ta cure peeping-toms a.. ag’in, Margaret?” a new voice put forth. Hand was clapped back over Hawkeye’s mouth.
“Save your breath, Frank. You’ll need it to blow up your date later.”
“But Margaret, it wasn’t me!”
A cicada droned in the distance.
“Hawk, you idiot!” he whispered sharply.
“Huh wha?”
“There’s someone out there, Margaret, “ a nasal voice whimpered.
“Get out from under the bed, Frank, I know there’s someone out there.”
Footsteps. Hurried.
B.J. pushed Hawkeye to the ground.
“Beej? Wha...”
“Hawk, just can it for a minute.”
“Yes, darling.”
The wood-and-screen door slammed open, slammed shut, (Margaret, is anyone there? and Margaret knew that there was, that there must have been, but she really only wanted to sleep, and no Frank, go back to your tent, nobody’s there, Frank, go to sleep, while she really only wanted him gone) and B.J., lying on top of Hawkeye in the shadows, exhaled in relief as his long body shifted on the shorter one below it.
B.J. didn’t really know why it was so important to hide but it was hot, so hot, so humid.
Hawkeye shifted beneath the heavy weight of B.J., and let out a halting snore. Fantastic, he’s asleep. B.J. propped himself up on his elbows and stared at the slightly open mouth below him. A bubble of spit at the corner of Hawkeye’s mouth burst with his next exhalation, a foul breath of raw booze wafting up to curl B.J.’s nostrils.
“Hawkeye, wake up!” B.J. shook his friend gently.
“Trap’uh... not now...”
B.J. slung the dead weight over his shoulder as he staggered towards their tent.
“Let’s get you back to the Swamp.”
“But will y’ still r’spect me in th’ morning?”
“Hawk, I never respect you,” puffed B.J., struggling to haul his bunkmate back to their tent.
“But... y’r girls... wife... Becky... Kathy...”
“Grumpy, Dopey, Bashful, Hawk, what on earth are you talking about?” B.J. asked half listening, sandwiching Hawkeye between his body and the door frame as he struggled to open the door.
“You know, Trap, you know...” Hawkeye murmured in a low sultry voice that simply melted into the Korean heat.
“Trap? Trapper? Hawk, I’m B-”
“Shh hshh, they’ll ‘ear us... and to be hon’st, blue discharge’s nev’r bin my fav’rite color”
“Blue dis-... come on Hawk, just wake up already. Anyway, that’s only for...”
***************************
My antidepressant is running low. I’d go to the liquor store and get some more, but it might get together with the pills and and have some fun of it’s own. I hate medicines. Rarely take mine. And how dare they think of wreaking havoc without me? I hate medicines. Doctors are stupid. Just let me die, dammit, and I don’t care if I die happy or sad, with love or alone, so long as I die happy and with love. Doctors are also the worst patients. I can feel it in my bones, though...meds can only do so much- even less when you don’t take them. Pisser.
It’s not always gloomy and raining on my parade, though. Sometimes it hails instead. Or sleet. Sleet is especially common these days. But fear not for me, rainy season approacheth once again.
But it’s not always that torturous. Sometimes I dream of Korea (the people, the place, the new beginning- and now I sound like a travel brochure-, though never the bloodbath) and I am deliriously happy, but then I wake up in the morning with the sickening sense of it all being over and never really having meant that much to anyone except for me.
I confided all this to Margaret and she called me crazy and then I called her crazy for calling me crazy and that I should know, being crazy. Then I went to make her a cup of hot tea for her headache. She said she might as well drown herself in hot tea for all the headaches my living with her until This is over will give her. I gave her a kiss and she slapped me. I think I love the woman.
This living arrangement is only temporary though, Beej... I’m giving myself a week. This isn’t what I want. I need it, but I hate hate hate hate and feel like a child and want to throw a temper tantrum. I want to scream and explode and be held and cut the rope all that the same time. At times my anger is unstoppable. I need her right now, her strength. But even she’s changed, now that she’s given up on the army, on a husband, on All That which made her Bulldozer Margaret Houlihan.
To be away from home is to be away from everything that made me, says Margaret, and to be away from everything that made me, when it dies, is my own death. I told her that it is the home that made me that breaks me now, and being away from it, in Korea, you know, (of course you know) is what broke and built me anew (oh how poetic), then shattered me by lasting too long, when I still need it to last longer. Or it hasn’t ended. I mean, what I mean is that I am away from my roots (that made me) and away from them, I DID die, and coming back to the place that made me, I found that it had died AFTER me. But then, the me that the Cove made is left in Korea, and the me that was created in Korea, it is wandering. Maybe you’ll choose not to understand this. God knows I tried. Margaret said I was rambling and told me to stop being maudlin.
The dark reaches for darkness everywhere. How’s that for depressing. I like it, though, even though I know I shouldn’t.
***************************
B.J. jumped, pulling away from Hawkeye as though bitten. For all his impaired reflexes, Hawkeye still caught himself on the garbage barrel before he hit the ground.
“Wha- hey, what am I, lunch?”
B.J. backed off, air crackling between the two men, sizzling, focusing between his eyes, he was getting a headache... Hawkeye wasn’t... he chased girls. He drank and chased nurses and kissed them on the lips and more and he liked it and did it over again and Father Mulcahy liked him and he made people laugh and never hurt children or B.J. himself but Hawkeye was... and it wasn’t wrong but... it was Hawkeye and... and in the same tent and they showered together and Hawkeye would sling a casual arm over B.J.’s shoulder and ask him to dance and he always had a deceiving word cloaked in humor and never seemed to be more than a mouth and a set of hands with nothing more important to do than chase NURSES... and kiss them... and he had Carlye... but he had... he had others... Trapper... Trapper Trapper Trapper, who he was replacing and did Hawkeye look at him too and think about Trapper or worse, think about him, B.J., about...
HOMOSEXUAL
Like a cattle brand, red hot and smoking.
HOMOSEXUAL
HOMOSEXUAL
So clinical, but real as anything ever was, and B.J. ran, leaving the... Him... since when had Hawkeye become a Him, an It? Frank was a Him, Jesus was a Him, and Hawkeye was Hawkeye... was a Him... was one of ... and B.J. ran away from Him, stumbling over his own long limbs, head spinning, dust and grit dancing in his wake.
***************************
Speaking to you next day here. Got a letter from Klinger-In-Pants asking me if I was ‘really... well, you know.’ I sent him back a blank sheet of paper with a gorgeous imprint of my very own lipsticked kisser. Margaret got mad at me for ruining her best color (that stuff’s harder to put on than one would imagine). I told her every color was her best color, and tried to kiss her again. I write to you nursing a sore lip. This is what I need.
Everybody seems to be after me, see Hawkeye Hawkeye how’ve ya been? Sometimes, when I see their faces, in the second before they start to talk and act, when they are just a face to a past, my heart vaults into my throat, and then plummets back to wherever it normally hides itself when it sees the change of the years in the people who were frozen before in my mind as ageless.
Wear and tear of time. I should be a songwriter. Or a cliché. Oh, wait, I am one. I hope that that comment isn’t supposed to bring me a great sense of purpose. All I feel is... uh, I’ll get back to you on that one.
And then they attack with their questions, B.J., see whether I am still the golden boy or if I have rusted; sink their teeth into me to see whether I am gold or copper. Let them bite. They will break their teeth either way.
Margaret, I think, is reading over my shoulder but I refuse to turn around and call her on it. It’s what she expects. Ah, you trickster, you contrary munchkin, you, silly Hawkeye... everyone loves you, everyone wants to know you, stand in your shadow to feel the sun on their faces... Margaret says I get more letters these days than Santa Claus. I remind her that I WAS Santa Claus once upon a time, but in reality it’s because I know where all the bad boys live, har har.
’I’Il stop talking about it. No, I haven’t forgotten about you and how you feel about Things Like That. I wonder where good ol’ unsuspecting Margaret would stand if she found out that... well...
Um.
Christ.
***************************
Flies were wailing to the moisture beading at his temple. B.J. slumped, back against a rock, drawing out its coolness, Korea buzzing about him. Perhaps his palms were scratched from a tumble.
They shared a shower. He let HIM do the hard-to-reach pats of his back. HE held his face with clinical gentleness while he vomited. Clinical, but contact. Oh, he knew it wasn’t contagious. But that not-knowing, that... being friends with... and did HE think it was more? Never before had B.J. had Thoughts, but now he could picture, with a hot, sick swoop in the pit of his belly, he could picture slapping, arching, wet, rasping, sinking, deep, to think that his roomie, his -dare he say it (and he briefly thought how over dramatized everything was becoming, how Hawkeye he was, how if Hawkeye could transmit his personality, well...)- Best Friend was a blueboy, a pervert, a back-alley lurker, illegal. His best friend liked it up th- no, no, he couldn’t... ?
B.J. felt sick, a rank taste in his mouth, and wished it were only the alcohol. He wanted to vomit, purge himself of his own thoughts, but- he realized- this time there would be no one there to hold his head.
Hawkeye was drunk. B.J., come on, you’re a grown man. Cope. He was three sheets to the wind, talking a blue streak, load of silliness, our Hawkeye. He might not have meant it, no he didn’t mean a word, to be sure. Nothing happened. After all, the last time he was this sloshed he bought Frank a new shaving brush as a peace offering. Didn’t remember a thing in the morning. R + R. Spent the night recreating, didn’t come back to the room until late, reeking of two types of sin (or three, god, three, and I joked about a woman).
B.J., go back to the tent. Suck it in and go back to the tent. Nothing happened. You’re no close-minded fool. Why does it bother you? What is wrong with you, man. Go back to the Swamp, B.J., nothing happened.
***************************
B.J., go back to bed. Suck it in and go back to Peg. It isn’t happening. You love your wife. Why does this bother you? What is wrong with you, man. Go back to your room, your wife, get out of there, don’t let him drag you down. You love your wife. Go love your wife. This isn’t happening.
Erin lets out a cry in the next room. She is having a nightmare. B.J. is only too glad to go and soothe his daughter of her demons, the demons that spring on her in her sleep, the demons that dance in her mind as things spiral out of her control. He whispers soft words into the darkness, stroking his wife’s curls off of his daughter’s forehead. Erin would understand this. But this isn’t happening. B.J. gives his daughter with Peg’s hair and nose and cheekbones his love, and means it with all of his heart as he tries to forget the long, warm, smoky, heavy, moving body smelling of gin and blood that never lay beside him. Erin’s breathing grows steady and deep as only the breath of one deeply and peacefully asleep can, and, in the silence, B.J. leans his forehead against the cool metal of the bedpost and exhales.
Absolution.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Again, I hope that nobody is bothered by the repost. ~moose
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