Tennessee Waltz
"Meet me under the clock at Grand Central Station in ten years. We'll go dancing."
BJ Hunnicutt sighed tiredly, and leant against the bar. It was late. He should go home. The thought entered his mind but he made no move to act on it. He sipped slowly at his drink, and passed a tired hand through his thining hair.
"I'll have a dry martini."
BJ's eyes slid disinterestedly towards the newcomer. The man was tall and rake-thin, with close-cropped, greying curls and a weary, disenchanted gaze. His voice was light and confident, but BJ's war-hardened mind detected something vaguely bitter in the tone.
"No, dryer than dry. Arid. So dry that -"
"There should be dust on the olive." BJ supplied the line out of subconcious habit.
The stranger slid him an appraising look, but declined to comment. BJ was too tired to care. The man accepted his drink and slipped the change into the pocket of his faded shirt. BJ sipped his own drink, scotch and water this time. He didn't drink gin any more. Figured he'd had enough to last him a lifetime. Besides, he'd never liked the stuff, not really.
BJ rubbed his eyes and glanced back along the bar. The tall, Hawaiian-shirted man had slipped a quarter into the jukebox and selected the Tennessee Waltz, to the assembled groans of some of the younger folks. BJ was silent for a moment, listening to the words of the old song. The man along the bar seemed lost in his own thoughts.
"I remember the night and the Tennessee Waltz, now I know just how much I have lost.
For I lost my little darling the night they were playing the beautiful Tennessee Waltz..."
The soft strains wove comfortably through the smoky haze, scratched and grainy, but sweeter than he remembered. Old words sung low and lyrical, in a rough, cigrette-softned tenor. BJ was surprised to discover the tightness in his chest. He cleared his throat, and offered the grey-haired man a tired smile.
"I had a friend once used to sing that song." he said softly by way of explanation. "I never liked it. What sort of sweetheart would she be who leaves you over some guy at a dance?"
The man smiled a tight little half smile and drained his glass, but did not answer directly. "Where you headed salior? Grand Central?"
"Yeah." BJ answered, a little uncertainly. "Why, you need a lift somewhere?"
"Nah." Quiet, dismissive. "Just headed that way myself. Got an appointment that's long overdue."
"I'll walk with you. It's not far."
"Ok."
The night air was sharp, with a keen wind winding along the pavement, stirring the discarded wrappers and the fallen leaves to a guttering swirl. An empty can rattled against the drain as they passed, and their boots scuffed through a layer of icy mud. BJ glanced over at his strange partner, clad in a yellow cotton shirt, but not trembling.
"You cold?"
A light shrug. "Used to it."
Grand Central was quiet at this hour, the few trains a heedless rumble in the dark, unchanging. Together the two men leant against the brick wall in silence, hands in pockets, lost in their own tired contemplation. Above them, the round moon-faced clock hung, starkly white in the growing dusk. The precise black angle ticked over with a leaden finality, all the weight and agony of time imprisioned in those implacable hands. BJ's companion hunched over, his curly head ducked into his shoulders, hands tense in the pockets of his jeans.
"What you doing here anyway?" It was almost a defence rather than a question.
"I said I'd meet a friend." BJ tried not to hear the catch in his own voice. There was silence for a while. Then:
"You're waiting for Hawkeye aren't you?"
BJ stared at him. The man stared back. Eyes somewhere between brown and gold. Cocky and cynical, in a gaunt, pale face.
"What was he like?"
"Who was what like?"
"Him. Trapper."
And at the sound of that name falls a silence so deafening that BJ wishes he'd never mentioned it, thinks that maybe Hawkeye will not answer at all. Then:
"He was tall. With curly hair."
"Curly hair?"
"And brown eyes."
And that is all. Hawkeye drains his glass, rolls over, and sets his face to the wall so that he will not have to look at the other bunk, and the other captain, who is not Trapper.
BJ's eyes widened in slow recognition.
"Twelve years." says the man. (The man who should be Trapper John, but isn't.) "Twelve years I've been waiting for him: 'Half past nine on New Year's eve, beneath the clock in Grand Central Station. We'll start a riot in a bath house."
BJ smiled as the tears prickled in the corners of his eyes.
"For me it was We'll go dancing'."
The guy smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and stuffed his fists deeper into the pockets of his faded jeans.
"Dancing, eh? I like that."
There is silence for a while, and the two men stand beneath the clock in Grand Central Station with a wealth of memories and nothing to say. Finally, BJ shuffles his feet and draws a deep breath, painful in the cold air.
"Peg'll be expecting me home."
"My girls'll be waiting."
And so they turn and walk back, away from the brick wall, and the moon-faced clock, and the heedless rush of the trains bearing forgotten people. (Forgotten. Like those wordsof his from long ago.) At the archway they prepare to separate, and BJ glances sideways at the other man, not knowing what to say. It is Trapper John who breaks the silence. He who was the eldest, and the first.
"You were wrong, you know. About the Tennessee Waltz. It was never a song about his girl. It's a song about his friend."
'I was waltzing with my darling to the Tennessee Waltz when an old friend I happened to see,
Introduced him to my sweetheart and while they were dancing, my friend stole my sweet heart from me.'
Sweet heart, just like that. Two words, not one.