The lyrics in this chapter are from the song "Traveling Soldier" by the Dixie Chicks.
With that, on with the show.
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit story, I don't own American Dreams.
I cried.
Never gonna hold the hand of another guy.
Too young for him, they told her,
waiting for the love of a traveling soldier.
Beth sat in the Pryor's kitchen late one night, thinking that it was probably time for her to go up to bed. After all, John would probably wake her up early tomorrow, wanting to be fed.
As hard as she tried, though, she couldn't make herself get up. She glanced at the clock: 11:30; She took another sip from the glass of water in front of her, hoping not not wake anyone up.
It'd been about six weeks since JJ had come home from Vietnam , and things were still a bit awkward between them. For the past two months JJ had been staying with Pete, not interacting with the rest of the family much. He was helping with Johnny, but to her he still seemed distant, and hesitant. She knew it had something to do with his time in Vietnam, that much went without saying. To complicate things, he'd asked her to marry him that evening, and she'd said yes. But something was off, and she couldn't keep him on the topic long enough to find out.
She hadn't been told of the exact circumstances surrounding the time when he was missing in action, and part of her felt it wasn't her place to ask. After all, she and JJ weren't together while he was overseas, and the experiences he'd had over there might not be the types of things he wanted to relive by talking about them unessicarily .
Anyhow, she was working part time at The Lair again, now that she'd had the baby. Mrs. Pryor and Meg had both offered to watch him while she worked. She'd even been thinking out taking some college courses once the spring semester started, that way she'd be able to get a better job and support herself. She had to have a back-up plan, she'd decided that months ago, in case JJ wasn't there...
"Beth?" JJ stood in the kitchen doorway, clad in his light blue pajamas and denim colored robe. "It's late, how come you're still up?" Having come downstairs to get a late night snack, he hadn't expected to find anyone there.
It was only since his proposal a few hours prior that he'd told her he was going to move back into the room he and Will had shared. That way he could be around more often to help with the baby, or so he said. But she'd known from the night he'd returned that being in the Pryor house with eveyone else made him somehow uncomfortable. Then again, it could've just been the lack of room left since the last time he'd lived there.
"I couldn't sleep. I didn't want to wake anyone, so I came down here." She said as he came towards her, pulling out a chair.
"Are you okay?" Genuine concern filled his eyes, and the light from the chandlier above them caused the metal handle of his cane to glimmer as he rested it against the table.
"Yeah, I was just thinking." She smiled wistfully. "Sometimes I still can't believe you're home."
He nodded, and then paused for a moment, as if trying to decide if his next thought was all right to share. "The first time I heard Trip cry in the middle of the night, it reminded me of the villages my platoon would raid in Tri Lang..., all the kids there, and I woke up thinking I was still in-country, you know?"
"You think about it often, being back there, don't you?" She thought back to that morning, when she had awakened to discover him in the midst of what looked like a very gruesome nightmare.
"Not really." He replied, and she knew he was lying.
"Please, JJ. I want you to be honest with me."
He debated what he should do. He could tell Beth about all the things that had happened to him while he was in Vietnam, all the things he'd seen, but did he really want her to know?
On one hand, she was still a young woman, did he really want to expose the evils of the word to her when it could be avoided? During his enlistment, he'd served his country, done what he had to do to survive, and there was nothing else to tell.
On the other hand, she was only trying to help him, to understand what he'd gone through. She was the Mother of his son, his fiancé, didn't she at least deserve to know where he'd been, and what had happened to him these past few months?
"Beth, a lot of that stuff, my time over there, It's all..." He stopped, sighing deeply. "It's all really hard to explain. It'd be better if we all just tried to forget about it."
"We can't forget about it, JJ. You know we can't. Brushing this under the rug is just going to create a bigger dust ball later on." She looked into his eyes, pleading with him. She'd spoken without raising her voice, but she said her words with as much conviction as if she had.
"I don't want to see this happening to you, holding this on your shoulders alone. It's killing you, I can see it." Her eyes bore into his from across the table. "Tell me what happened, Jack. Please."
In the four or five years he'd known her, she'd never called him Jack, or even John, for that matter. This was serious, and knew then that she was right, as he watched what he could swear was a tear roll down her cheek.
"It's really hard to keep everything straight." He began as she put some more tap water into another glass and placed it in front of him.
"You get used to one group of guys, and then the next thing you know, half of them are wounded or KIA, and some more guys are brought in to fill the gap, and then half of them end up hurt, so there's another rotation, so you end up with, maybe, two or three of the guys from your original platoon by the time your enlistment's over. At the same time, though, you don't really notice who's there and who's not anymore, because you're too focused on staying alive. "
As he spoke she kept her attention fixed on him, nodding occasionally in confirmation. As the story of his time in Vietnam unfolded, she began taking note of his features;the faint lines she thought she saw in his forehead, lines which, at age ninteen, he was much too young to have.
Some parts of his recollection were so awful that Beth faought back tears on several occasions. And yet, at other times, she wanted only to be able to hold him, thrown into memories that seemed as if they'd taken place decades ago. In realiy, it was only a year and a half ago that both of them were seniors at East Catholic High School.
"There was this guy, a Frenchman, he found me in the forrest a couple weeks after I escaped. He said he'd help me, that he had a deal with the Viet Cong. By then, I had nothing to lose. I hadn't had a sqaure meal in over a week, and I didn't have a gun on me, so I figured I'd be worse off going with him than I would be stayin' out there."
Something inside Beth clicked. His leg... "He was the one who shattered your knee, wasn't he?"
"Yeah." The thought clearly pained him, more so than anything else he'd said so far. "He came off okay, nice enough guy, but I didn't wanna take a chance by over staying my welcome. So after dinner I slept for a few hours, and once he'd gone to bed I decided to take off."
"I was halfway to the door when one of the kids, the baby, started cryin'. I walked back over to the crib a-." He paused, trying hard to continue without breaking down.
"It was like something was pulling on my heart. I looked at him, and I thought of all the kids in Tri Lang and Da Nang, all the villages we'd destroyed. Everything I'd been trying not to think about, everything I'd pushed to the back of my mind; My parents, Notre Dame, You alone with the baby... I don't know what it was, but I panicked."
And that was when the barrier broke. He lowered his head, as if in shame, but it was useless, for the tears fell out of his eyes despite his efforts to discreetly wipe them away.
He talked for a while longer, explaining how he finally managed to locate an ally base.
"We were all so relieved where we found out you were okay." She said, her tears replacing the ones he'd shed earlier. "I was so glad that you'd get to see John, that he'd get to know you; The whole time you were gone I kept telling your Mother that I was sure you were all right, so when we got that tape at Thanksgiving, I almost gave up hope."
Guilt overwhelmed him suddenly."I'm sorry, Beth. I know it must have been hard for you, going through everything alone. I should have been here."
"Don't you dare say that! Don't you think for one second that I'm holding anything against you, JJ, because I'm not. You were doing what you had to; I know that you would've been here if you could have." She had raised her voice this time, but hopefully not enough to wake anyone up.
"I was fine here. Your parents were more than generous, letting me stay here. Especially when your Dad ran for Councilman. "
"Your parents, did they know I was-?" He started, but she cut him off, knowing what he was going to ask.
"My Dad came over about a week before you came home, and your Mom insisted I Iet him see Johnny. He asked when your enlistment was up, and I had to tell him, there was no way around it."
He nodded, not nessicarily in approval, but at least in understanding. Still, there was something else he wanted to ask her, but he didn't exactly know how.
"When you had the baby, you were all right, weren't you?"
"There weren't any complications. But, there was a blackout the night I went to the hospital, and the lights were blinking the whole time I was in labor. "
He chuckled slightly at the thought, and then, a bit tentively, reached across the table to take her hand in his. "I'm never going to leave you again. I promise, Beth. We'll be the family we should've been this whole time."
She knew he meant what he was saying, but his words were somehow hollow.
She brushed her hand lightly over his. "Remember this morning when I said I was different person than when you left, and then later, you said that it was you who was different? I think we're both right. We're both different people, JJ, and we'll probably never be the same. We've both grown up too much to ever go back to that point in our lives. But, that doesn't mean we can't just continue on as the people we are now, right?"
"I don't care how I spend the rest of my life, I just want you and Johnny with me." He smiled genuinely for the first time, Beth thought, since he'd been home.
Then the thought she'd been having since he'd proposed resurfaced. "JJ, I know you want to get married, and I do, too. But, with everything that's happened, I'll understand if you want to hold off for a while, try to work through everything first."
"No, I don't want to put this off anymore. I'm sorry for everything that happened in Hawaii, and I wish I could take back everything I said, but I can't."
"I-" She began, but he kept going.
"Listen. A year ago, I didn't think we'd ever be together again, but, I don't know, everything that we were fighting about doesn't seem that important anymore. I have nothing to work through, because I know who I am and where I want to be, and it's because of you."
He was right, and she agreed with him. The war had ripped them apart, but it couldn't do so any longer. If they waited around for things to be perfect again, they'd be waiting for a very long time.
"Okay. But, you have to keep in mind that John isn't big enough to be the ring bearer, and that's all there is to it."
But he hadn't heard anything she'd said, he was too focused on pushing a stray hair out of her eye.
"I love you, Beth."
They were the words she'd been waiting to hear again, however subconsciously, since he'd gone overseas, and she'd been a bit disappointed when he hadn't said them after proposing.
"I love you, too, JJ."
He was home again, truly.
Our love will never end,
waiting for the soldier to come back again.
Never more to be alone,
when the letter says,
the soldier's coming home.
Thanks for reading, please review! -Tessie:)