melancholy: the last hurrah
sledge/snafu, mini-series (part one)
by frooit
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So the war is over.
At least you're mostly sure of that. The violent enemy you fought tooth and nail with for what was three years of your life has been silenced by the mega ton arousal of the most devastating weapon never before imagined. They call it the A Bomb or the Fat Man, and doesn't that just beat all? Like fumigating an old house. An extermination. A bomb that can silence an empire, that can shut off kamikaze and banzai efforts and the endless swap of bullets and artillery thunder, the haze of clumsy conquests, the eventual surges of shame and disgust. Unthinkable.
It hasn't stopped the remnant anger and the flashes (clear cut) of brutalities come and gone. It won't eclipse what you've seen with your own two eyes. Men just boys gutted and torn on either side (yours and theirs) and the bodies just keep piling higher still. But it's over now, or, at least it is for you. In all respects of fighting and dying and serving your country on the front lines of combat and despair, you're done, let loose, free to be free (even if you're unsure of that). You're on your way back to your respective point of origin, back to Mobile, and that should bode better than it is.
Your mother and father, your white Georgia Cottage, your green fields, your oak-lined avenue and hot water. The aromas of cooked foods, untainted sunlight and clean, white sheets. They're all waiting. No more long, suffering nights or stomach pains, or loose bowels, or a dry tongue, or chapped lips, or unyielding thirst and borderline insanity (goddammit, keep your head down!). That's not the entire list either. This list in full resides next to your heart, in your breast pocket, lining the word of God.
"Excited?"
You tilt your head up.
Snafu is looking out the window, watching the scenery run by as reeled film.
"Well, yeah," you say. "Of course I am."
You're drinking your third cola in the last two hours and still savoring the forgotten taste.
It's in that reverent, heady place that you say, "What about you?"
Snafu continues his vacant watch, his stand off with the quasi-reality out the mirrored window pane.
You lick the stickiness from your lips.
The constant movement of the train under and around you fills in the gaps in his verbal absence (and otherwise). Civilians and soldiers (mostly soldiers) ramble and laugh and sing around you, filling the gap further with a general good air, a relaxed nature. It might as well be quiet. It might as well be still ocean. It might as well be a foreign language. You'll avoid certain emotions until you can approach them again in a quiet, solitary place. Become reacquainted with joy, bliss, carelessness.
You don't quite recognize them now.
The stewardess hums about the car, stopping along the way to lean her bosom into the view of some lonely military boy. Making those rounds she eventually has to stop by you.
You're still waiting on Snafu.
You'll be waiting a stretch.
She appears now and buzzes a question at you both, her voice all languid tones and sugary song, her pale skin all too abundant and dying to escape. Snafu ignores it. You smile your best smile (or what you can remember as your best smile) and shake your head, no, I'm alright, thank you, but you forget to give her your empty cola bottle as she dims and moves on.
You set it on the seat next to you and look back to your companion.
His eyes have shifted to watch the girl depart.
"Nothin' to get excited 'bout," he says, watching the stewardess' tail.
Just like he did the time before.
You smirk and take a little jab.
"Why's that?"
He doesn't like personal questions (anything remotely personal). There was no how's your family, where do you come from, what does your father do as they went along, fighting, dying, crying. Even in the beginning. None of that. He gets touchy about a simple hey sometimes. He'll sneer or flip you off. It's take your best shot when it comes to him, or, maybe it's you should care less.
He sets his jaw, rolls it, chews his lips.
That's all you're gonna get.
You leave the dialogue incomplete. It fits right in with your new feelings and future worries.
That too-sweet cola syrup swamps your palate, screaming contrast.
You shouldn't have had so many.
"Think I'll shut my eyes."
His long, strong jaw, it's angled away and toward the window again. His fingers pinching the dying remains of a cigarette. His neck and collarbone, hidden behind his uniform best, are smooth and clean, unbroken by metal shrapnel or polyp skeletons or bullet strafes or sudden falls or itching insect bites. He's washed that off and healed that away. On the outside. In his sleepy eyes, that refuse again to combat your own, they're hollow, vacant, drained.
You'll both be fighting wars for some time.
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to be continued...