Speak
Words are flying out like
endless rain into a paper cup
They slither while they pass
They slip away across the universe
- The Beatles, Across the Universe
Max knew he wasn't the worst off, his ward mysteriously emptied and refilled daily. Guys didn't last long in the Veteran's hospital, for most it was just a pit stop between two hells: 'Nam and death. The draft letter they send out in the mail might as well be an order to stand in a line to be shot in the head for how much chance they all had of coming home. He was one of the lucky ones, home, alive, and with all his body parts still connected.
Jude had hugged him hard just before he left and, with his accent swirled through the words, told him, "Come home in one piece you crazy bastard."
Those words had echoed through his head every time he'd been shot at or heard an explosion. He'd done his best, but his side would look mangled forever and they kept saying something about his head that he couldn't quite understand, but he had a feeling it had nothing to do with the bandage wrapped around his forehead and everything to do with what was going on inside.
Lucy was there every Sunday. She wanted him to talk to her, but he couldn't. What was there to say? The thoughts in Max's head were all negative, not what Lucy wanted to hear. 'I watched the guy next to me die two nights ago. He screamed for hours.' 'I woke up last night and couldn't breathe. I begged a nurse until she gave me morphine. It's all I care about anymore.'
Sadie had come a couple times and sang to him softly. She'd tried to make light-hearted jokes but there were tears clinging to her eyelashes as she watched him stare blankly at the wall.
"God, Max," She'd finally broken during one visit, gripping his shoulders as she knelt over him and cried. "Don't give up on us like this. We need you, man. It's all going to shit."
He'd wanted right then more than ever to say something, to tell her he was going to be fine, they'd all be fine and all they needed to do was fall back down the rabbit hole to the summer of love and they'd make it. The words never made it past his lips though, and Sadie left with a promise to return with one of her famous silk shirts for him to wear.
Sometimes he'd hear screaming. The wild, tortured cries would echo through the room but Max could never figure out who it was, every time it happened nurses would surround him, blocking his view as they tried to talk over the noise. "Give him another dose?" The little mousy one always was ready with a needle, the screams scared her. A taller girl with black hair and a strong jaw usually took charge. "No, he had one an hour ago, he's got to wait." Max didn't like her much, she was never one to dish out the blue magic that he wanted in his veins.
Jude only ever visited at night. Max never saw him come or go, he always showed up while Max was asleep and would wake him with a punch to the shoulder. He'd sit in the chair beside his bed, shoes off, feet resting beside Max's hip. "Thought yer gonna sleep through me visit." He would always say as he lit up a cigarette. Max was nearly positive that smoking wasn't allowed in the hospital, but there didn't seem to be anybody stopping Jude. Max could only ever speak to Jude. He could say all the shit that was going on in his head and not worry about freaking him out. He could moan and curse about everything in the damn hospital and Jude would bark out a laugh. "Been a hard day's night, yeah?" He would ask and smile crookedly.
"Shit, man, you don't know the half of it." Max would tell him. It never occurred to Max that he and Jude and the same conversation every visit.
Jude would stand to leave and his dark eyes would go hazy. "I luv yew, mate. Yew know that, yeah?"
Max would crack a small smile and bat his eyelashes. "Aw, Judey loves me?"
"Sh'up ya bugger." Jude would joke and swat at the back of Max's head. Max would jump out of the way, the move failing to send pain riveting through him as it should have. Everything was better when Jude was around. They would laugh and Max could never deny how good it felt to let the sound explode from his mouth.
He always remembered Prudence sitting up with him one night when he was sick. He'd had too much to drink and Pru was the only one sober enough to take care of him. She'd cracked a joke, something stupid and cheesy, but just funny enough to send him into a fit of giggles. He'd felt better then and she'd smiled sweetly. "Laughter is the best medicine." After that night, every time she was feeling down he would tickle her until her fingernails bit through the skin of his shoulders and her eyes were wet with the tears of laughter. He would whisper her words into her ear and kiss her neck until she pushed him away. It wasn't until she was gone, and he was facing leaving for 'Nam, that he realized that she had never loved him. For Pru, it had always been Sadie, but for Sadie it would always be JoJo. Max still held onto the memories of her tiny body beside his own in bed and how her black hair glided against his skin like one of Sadie's shirts he loved so much. But he could never let himself remember how she looked, if he did, she always morphed into one of the bloody, dead corpses he'd stepped over in the jungle. After a while the bodies on the ground were hardly as noticeable as the flora. A dead person in Vietnam wasn't human. They were just a statistic. Pru was a human, he wouldn't remember her as anything else.
Max barely remembered his days at Princeton anymore, it felt so long ago. All he really remembered was Jude. Jude with the funny accent who was looking for the janitor. He didn't remember much else, until Chris Grover had showed up beside his hospital bed, hands deep in his pockets and looking anywhere but at Max's face. Then he remembered everything. Chris talked about how he'd finished school in May and was working for his dad in New Jersey. He was engaged to Heather, his high school sweetheart. His brother Ross had gotten killed in Vietnam three months ago and when he'd heard that Max Carrigan, yeah that Maxwell Carrigan was in the VA ward in New York, he had to come by. Through it all Max listened. His head was clear for once, he was getting less morphine these days. The nurses were weaning him off.
"You know, Carrigan. I still got half your shit in my apartment. No one ever came to get your stuff from the dorm so we just divvied it up." Chris smiled shifted his weight to his other foot. "I got your dad's clubs. Man, do you remember hitting balls off the roof?" Max remembered. "Good times. Don't know why you left, Max. But you never really were the college type."
A nurse, the small mousy one, sidled up beside the bed, syringe in hand. It was his last dose of the day. It was suppose to last him through the night, so he always went out immediately after. The blue waves of medicine pulling him into a painless sleep. Max pushed her arm away when she reached to inject him. He was almost more surprised by this than she was, but he was enjoying Chris's company. It wasn't as good as talking to Jude, but to be treated like he was still the same Max, even if he clearly wasn't, felt nice.
"Do you want me to come back later?" She looked from him to Chris.
Chris shifted again, pulling on his jacket. "No, I should go anyway. I was supposed to be home a while ago." The small nurse nodded and politely stepped away to let the friends have their goodbyes. "It was good to see you, Carrigan. Look me up when you get out." He stuck out a hand for the injured soldier to shake. Max's grip was weak in Chris's firm hold.
His parents decided to visit. It was the second time he'd seen them since coming back to the states, but he didn't really remember the first visit, he'd been on a lot of morphine then, still crazed by the pain and the blood and the sudden lack of jungle. He was off the blue stuff altogether now. He was raw and the world was harsh, bright, and loud. His mother's worry and his father's disappointment came through especially strong. Lucy wasn't there to speak for him as she had last time and he had to find the answers to their questions on his own.
"How are you?" A shrug.
"When are they going to let you go home?" Another shrug.
"Does Lucy visit often?" Max nodded.
After a few minutes they ran out of questions and the silence hung heavy with the whimpers of fellow soldiers and beeps of monitoring machines.
"Well, Maxwell," his father began and Max was already dreading whatever it was his dad had to say. "What are you planning to do with yourself when you get out of here?"
"Arthur!" Mrs. Carrigan exclaimed at her husband. "Our son is in the hospital. He fought in Vietnam. For once cut him a break. I almost lost my baby." She reached out and cupped his face in her hand. Max reflexively leaned into the touch. No one in his family, except Lucy, and especially not his mother, ever stood up for him. He was positive he hadn't even gotten a hug since the time he ran away at fifteen. A cop had picked him up ten miles out of town where he was trying to hitchhike to New York. When reunited with his parents, there was a lot of yelling and cursing and his father slapping him upside the head while his mother sat by silently. When Mr. Carrigan stormed from the room, his wife had sank into the couch beside her son and hugged him hard. "Don't you ever scare me like that again." She'd told him. "It'll kill me." Max hadn't been able to get her words out of head the whole time he was in the jungle. A bit like Jude's, they had buzzed around his brain like the thousands of bugs that encircled his head in the tropical hell.
"Think logically, Susan. He wouldn't be hurt now if he hadn't dropped out of college. He needs to recognize the consequences of his actions." Arthur Carrigan's voice had dropped to a lower, calmer tone while his wife's became more shrill.
"You need to get a heart. Our boy almost died and it's like you don't even care." Max watched as his mother's eyes simultaneously filled and overflowed with tears.
"Susan, please don't cry." Mr. Carrigan said, putting a hand on his wife's shoulder. "I care." He pleaded with her and then turned and met his son's eyes. "Of course I care."
Max broke his gaze and reached out to his mother, touching her arm with the back of his hand. Susan Carrigan sniffled and took his hand between both of hers. "You're so cold, Max. I do worry about how your sister will keep you warm in that crumbly apartment of hers. I think our home is a much more appropriate place to recover."
"Susan, you promised you wouldn't get into this. You promised Lucy." Mr. Carrigan reminded her.
"I know, I know I did, but he should know his options. If he wants to live at home, he needs to know he's welcome." For Max, Connecticut hadn't been home for a long time.
Lucy decided he needed to get out of the ward for a while. The first floor of the hospital had an atrium and she got permission to take him downstairs. The wheelchair squeaked every few seconds and Max's head hurt. He picked at the bandage pressed to his forehead subconsciously until Lucy pushed his hand away.
"Max, stop. Don't you want any part of you to heal?" The meaning behind her words was not lost on her older brother. Lucy hissed audibly after the words left her mouth. She didn't mean to be cruel. Max didn't say anything, but he still wasn't saying much these days. Except to Jude. He could talk Jude's ear off and the Limey didn't care, he'd just laugh and take a drag off his cigarette.
The little atrium was crowded but Lucy found a quieter spot near a fake tree. She rolled his chair near a bench and sat beside him. He fidgeted with the silk fabric in his lap. Sadie had come by a few days ago, she was leaving for another tour, this time with JoJo in tow and a much better attitude. His landlady was once again beaming and drunkenly in love with her guitarist. She'd brought his favorite of her shirts, blue and floral He'd tried to hand it back to her as she left, but she'd pressed it back into his hands.
"It looks better on you, baby." She'd kissed his cheek. "And gain some weight before I come back, you're too skinny."
He was too thin, even the nurses said so. But the food sucked and he wasn't ever really hungry. In the jungle a full meal was nonexistent, the rations were to keep them from starving, not to fill them. Before leaving for 'Nam, he'd lived mainly off Captain Crunch, weed, and beer. The idea of a full meal made him think of that Thanksgiving, the one that felt so long ago now, when he'd dropped out of college and left for New York. Lucy didn't say anything about it, but he could tell that she was eyeing the way his hospital gown hung from his shoulders and how thin and stick-like his arms looked within the sleeves. His face was sunken, his stomach concave. Every rib was visible, and bones stuck out at odd angles from his body.
Lucy sat on the bench and braided a piece of her long blonde hair. She blinked hard every few seconds to keep from crying, that was one of her rules about visiting him, she wouldn't let herself cry. She had another one about mentioning Jude but Max didn't know why.
Sadie's apartment was cold and Max huddled in on himself in the clothes Lucy had bought him. The view out his bedroom window was the same as it had been the day he and Jude moved in, but Max still sat staring out of it. The people in the windows he could see had all changed. The middle aged single woman with four kids had given up her permanent spot, in the window with her cigarette to be replaced by a college aged guy who sat at his typewriter all day. The druggie that had lived above her was a boarded up window. The young girl who had visited many of their parties now held a toddler in her lap. The happy elderly couple with the window flower box was now just a sad elderly man. The flowers in the box were dead.
The day was hazy, the sky a heavy gray that threatened of rain later.
Rain. Rain. Everything soaking wet. Nothing dry. Water everywhere, all of it contaminated with poisons from the gas and decaying bodies no one had bothered to clean up. Thirty, so thirsty. Can't drink the water, don't drink the water. Thirsty. Thirsty. Thirsty.
"Max?" Lucy's voice was gentle. She was sitting on the cement ledge, her legs dangling over the water. Max had taken up residence in a small, mostly broken wooden boat that was caught up in the rocks. The old pier was rundown and falling apart, but, as Lucy had told as he drove them down here in his taxi, Jude had once brought her here. "Are you okay?"
Max didn't say anything; he turned and fixed his eyes on the water again.
They waded through knee-deep water. Snakes, fish, insects, God knows what else, moved from the way of their boots. Gunfire. Explosions. Get Down! Get Down!
Max wanted to die.
It was raining and the air was thick with death. That was all Max remembered about the night he got hurt. The therapist that Lucy had hired wanted more.
"Talk to me, Max. Your sister worries that you aren't saying what needs to be said. What do you need to say?" The office was supposed to be calming, Max figured. There was incense burning in one corner, plush furniture, and a soft rug under his ratty tennis shoes. The quack had a cat in her lap. That was enough to set Max off. He hated cats, always had. Sadie had a cat, but it was a stray that came and went through the window as she pleased. She kept her distance and Max made sure to keep his.
"Max?" She asked again and the patient shifted uncomfortably, bouncing his knee up and down. "Why don't you tell me about Jude?" She said his name like she knew him, like he wasn't halfway around the world, like it hadn't made everything ten times worse that he was gone. She said it like the name wasn't a direct punch to Max's stomach.
He stood suddenly and went to the bathroom. He threw up the eggs Lucy had made for him that morning and took two morphine pills that a fellow 'Nam Vet had given him in a bar. He spent the rest of the hour floating. The therapist told Lucy not to waste her money anymore.
That night Max listened to his sister cry herself to sleep. He took another morphine pill.
The screaming had started again.
Sadie's apartment, once so full of people and life and noise, was empty. Lucy was on the night shift at the diner, Sadie and JoJo were on tour, God knows where Prudence was, Jude had been deported, all the other tenants had moved out and he was alone. He'd fallen asleep on the couch in the Whatever Room after getting high and almost getting laid by a girl he'd found at Club Huh? They'd just been getting to the good part when her hand landed on his side just so and pain had filled his world. The mood was obviously broken and the girl had stumbled from the apartment quickly, tearing her dress in the process.
But now, what must have been hours later, as the beginning of sunrise appeared, Max could hear the screaming. He was trembling and covered in sweat. He wrapped his arms around himself as a shield and blunt nails bit into his skin.
3…2…1…
He was back in Vietnam. The air was too thick to breath. He raggedly coughed and held his gun closer, as if it were a friend. There were no friends in hell, only blood and death and pain. The sky was red as the sun struggled to rise against the layer of smoke that had filled the air. The gunfire had begun just after sundown and had yet to stop. Explosions surrounded him and men went down on all sides. It was a death battle and they were losing.
He screamed and fired and fired and fired and screamed until his voice failed him and his gun ran out.
Then there was only silence.
Jai guru deva, Om…
Cold hands. Worried blue eyes. Pink lips, moving. Muffled words. Muffled words. Muffled words.
Nothing's gonna change my world.
Nothing's gonna change my world.
"Max!"
And then he was back and Lucy was there and the screaming had stopped.
Sadie found him. That's how it happened.
The singer and her band had come back the week before, filling the apartment with life again. Max thought he would feel better, that being around the constant party that seemed to follow Sadie would snap him back to Max again. The old Max. The one from before the army and before Vietnam and hospitals. The Max from before morphine. But the return of Sadie had only brought a new low to his state of mind. He couldn't find it in him to party, to smile and dance and have fun. He couldn't be that Max anymore. That's what the problem was. If he couldn't be that Max he didn't want to be any Max at all.
He didn't really plan it or anything. Or maybe he'd had it planned all along and just hadn't known.
The razorblade belonged to one of the guys in Sadie's band. It reminded him of Riley, a guy he'd known in the army. He'd had a blade just like that, a lot of guys did, but Riley, Larry Riley, he'd somehow kept his shiny and clean. The jungle seemed to have no effect on the metal.
"I don't know how you stand it man." Riley had said to him one night while he shaved with that blade. "You've been here longer than I have. And I'm ready to blow my brains out."
Max took a long drag from his cigarette.
"I mean," Riley continued. "Does it get any better? Cause, you know what, Carrigan? I go out there every day and get my ass shot at." Riley cleaned the razor off in the water that he'd put in his helmet. "And every day, all I think about is how easy it would be to just take a bullet, right to the heart. Everyone at home would think I was some kind of hero, you know? They'd say, 'Ole Riley went down in 'Nam. Man was a real champ.' They wouldn't remember all those times I screwed up, they'd forget all about how I didn't get into college got drafted instead. They'd, they'd quit comparing me to my brother. Bastard gets a PhD and suddenly he's some kind of god, but not ole Larry. Ole Larry, he went down in 'Nam. Ole Larry would go zero to hero. One bullet, Carrigan. That's what I think about." Riley dumped the water from his helmet and put away his razorblade.
The blade in his bathroom wasn't nearly as shiny as Riley's had been, but Max still held it carefully in his hand. One bullet. One cut. That was all it took.
He'd lost himself in thought and hadn't felt the pinch of the metal against his wrist, he hadn't seen the blood. He hadn't planned it, or maybe he had. He didn't know anymore.
Sadie had come to find him; he'd left the door open. "Max, honey?" She poked her head around the corner. "Max what are you…" And then she saw the blood. "Oh God." She slowly reached around and took the razor from his hand. He didn't fight against her; he barely even noticed she was there.
"Max, baby, why'd you do it?" He was on the couch and Sadie was holding him in her long arms. He let Sadie baby him. He'd missed her. JoJo didn't seem to mind another man stretched across his girlfriend's lap, but maybe it was just because it was Max.
Max was nearly asleep when Lucy came back from work. His eyes were closed and his head was tucked against Sadie's shoulder.
"What happened?" Lucy whispered.
"Sadie found him in the bathroom. He cut his wrist open." JoJo's deep voice was as calm as ever. Max heard Lucy inhale sharply.
"Shh, honey, it's okay. Max is okay." Sadie soothed. "The cut is real small." She touched Max's bandaged wrist softly.
"But, but what should I do? I can't just stand by and let him kill himself." Lucy had sat down, she sounded like she was crying. Max wanted to feel guilty.
"You think he was trying to kill himself?" JoJo asked.
"Well, what else would he be doing slicing his wrists open?" Sadie spoke up.
JoJo sighed. "Kids back home, man. They'd get a razorblade and cut themselves up. They said it released the pain they were feeling."
"Do you think that's what Max was doing?" Lucy asked.
There was no answer.
Sometimes Max thought about choices.
He'd made his share, slacking off, dropping out, drugging up, but it seemed that the ones he hadn't made mattered so much more. He hadn't chosen to go to Vietnam, but he'd gone and now… he wasn't sure. About anything.
But really, when he thought about choices, he thought about Jude. He'd chosen Jude but Jude had chosen Lucy and Lucy chose him back and there was nothing he could do about it.
The very first sign of morning broke over New York City. Max was in a bar, where he'd spent the majority of the night, smoking and drinking. He rubbed a hand across his face, against the roughness of his mustache. He didn't get around to shaving much. The scar on his wrist was maybe half an inch long but it had caused him more than enough problems. Lucy now had a permanent expression of worry tattooed on her face. Max hated that look.
"Last call, pal." The bartender said. Max didn't bother moving. He took a drag off his cigarette and exhaled slowly.
A mirror image of him stared back from behind the bar like a Max from another world, one that said, 'what the hell are you doing?'
Max honestly didn't know.
He thought about his sister singing about blackbirds. Her soft melodic voice carrying through the air, hollow with her pain, her worry. Her voice flowing out, over the water, around the world, to Jude. For Jude. Every time he looked at Lucy he knew, she needed him.
Max met his eyes in the mirror. 'Do something.' It told him.
Max opened his mouth and spoke. "Hey Jude."