Why Hawkeye Pierce had chosen a vacation from the freezing temperature of Maine to the freezing temperature of Illinois, he'll never understand. Since the war, he hadn't taken many vacations at all. It seemed the climate of Korea over the last four years had given him all the change he'd needed to last him for a while.
As he came to terms with getting back to the grind of real life back in the states, he couldn't fight the urge that something was left unfinished. He searched himself for what that something was, and found himself in Bloomington, Illinois. He shared a nice dinner with Henry's family, and played for hours with the kids on the basement floor Henry had left unfinished when he'd gone away. He wrote her a check for the remaining expenses so she could hire someone to finish the project in the future.
As he left the following morning, he stopped in one more place before heading home. The wind was picking up, and though tall, he was a thin man, and was being tossed off balance with every gust that came through. He was able to land at his destination, wrapping his scarf firmly around his face and neck.
"Hey Henry." He stopped himself short of the hundreds of things he'd wanted to tell his friend, since he left. Somehow figuring Henry already knew about all of them, from Frank getting a promotion, to the end of the war itself.
"Well I planned on coming here to give you a recap of what you missed, but that seems trivial now…I just felt like I needed to come and give you a final goodbye, although I have a feeling that the special place you hold in my heart can't ever be filled by anyone else." He sniffled a bit, but wasn't sure if was just the cold, or the tears that were coming down his face. "Thanks for making my first years at MASH bearable, chief, I missed you when you left and I miss you now…" He sighed deeply and finished. "Abyssinia."
He stepped back and though any movement up until that point had caused him to fall off balance a bit from the wind, the final one hadn't. On that cold morning in Illinois, a tall man stood alone, saluting the headstone of a man he'd tried his best to forget but never could, and never will.
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