He hasn't even dropped his suitcase or taken off his shoes at the front door before he asks, "Where's Erin?"
BJ's expression solidifies; the soft curves of his face harden and the lines in his forehead grow deeper as he tightens his jaw. "In the garden."
She's sitting hunched over on the wall that borders the yard, bare toes skimming the grass, tanned legs contrasting sharply with the beige bricks. A loose, honey-colored braid hangs over one shoulder.
"Hey," says Hawkeye.
She looks up and smiles, but it doesn't reach her eyes. "Hi. How was your trip?"
"Oh, you know," he says. "I had to change my shirt in the bathroom on the plane because the guy next to me missed the bag when he threw up during takeoff. The usual."
She pulls a face. "Gross."
He shrugs. "It was okay, I've dealt with worse things than some guy tossing his cookies." Erin winces, visibly flinches, and he sits next to her, close enough so their shoulders touch. His coat is uncomfortably warm in the sun, but he doesn't take it off.
"I'm not going to beat around the bush here, Erin. How're you holding up?"
She lets out a chuckle that is no more than a sharp exhale. "Not so great. He's already been gone for over a week but I figure I've already been through all five stages of grief twice. I'm probably on my third round of depression by now."
"Well," says Hawkeye. "Well, I won't give you any platitudes about how it'll all be fine and how I'm sure he'll come home safe, because nobody can or should promise that."
She twists her mouth into a kind of grimace, and picks at the hem of her shorts. A lawn mower roars to life next door, then sputters and dies.
"Can I ask you something?" Erin finally says, kicking at the grass with her toes. "I—I would ask Dad too, except he knows Randy—I mean, so do you, but Dad really knows him well, and I think he wouldn't want to tell me the truth because he doesn't really want to think about it any more than I do. But I have to know…what are his chances?"
"The chances that he'll survive are good," he says, slowly, carefully. "The chances that he'll come back the same guy…they're not so good." He pauses, and watches a bee land on a pansy in the flower bed. Glancing up at the back of the house, he notices BJ standing by the kitchen window scrubbing at something in the sink, determinedly not raising his eyes to look through the window. "I never met anyone in Korea who wasn't affected in some way by the things they saw."
"You changed a lot by the time you got back home," says Erin. It is both a statement and a question. "And so did Dad."
"Yes," agrees Hawkeye. "We all changed. Some for the better and some for the worse."
"For the better?"
"Well, some of us grew up. I wasn't always this flawless vision of maturity that you see before you now, you know. And some of us—like Margaret, for instance—learned who we really were. And who we wanted to be."
Erin nods, still picking at the hem of her shorts.
"Randy—he, um. He asked me to marry him," she mutters, blushing faintly. "Nothing official, really. There wasn't a ring or anything. But today…before he got on the bus, he asked me to wait for him because he wants us to be married when he gets back. I haven't told Mom or Dad yet." She glances at him for a reaction, but he keeps his face blank.
"And what did you say?" he asks evenly.
"I said yes. But like you said…he might not be Randy when he—if he gets back."
Hawkeye sweeps sweaty hair from his eyes. All that time in Korea, and he still never learned to handle this much anger, this much hatred, so he deals with it the only way he knows how. He laughs. He laughs, sharp edges in his throat, because Vietnam is the mirror-image, second-coming of Korea, and Randy's life is being torn apart by war as surely as Hawkeye's had been almost two decades ago. And all for what?
"You know, it's a sorry state of affairs when wars lack originality," he says, chuckling. "Why not mix it up and actually throw some meaning into the bloodbath?
"Are you okay?" asks Erin, alarmed.
Hawkeye has always made a point of never lying to Erin. BJ is one of the Greats, one of the truly good dads, but Hawkeye and Peg both agree that he tends to sugarcoat things. So Hawkeye sobers up and says, "No. No I am not."
And he says, "I have something for you." He pulls a thick manila envelope from his inside coat pocket and hands it to Erin. "Before you open it, I want to tell you what it is. In 1952, or maybe the beginning of '53, your dad went off for a day of R&R. While he was gone, a doctor was killed at Battalion Aid and they called us to send in a temporary replacement. It was your dad's turn, but since he wasn't there I was sent in his place.
I'd been to Battalion Aid before, but that time it was different. There I was, resting after hours of surgery. The doctor who had died was killed by an explosive not ten yards from where I was sitting, my teeth were rattling in my skull from the force of the mortar, dust was coming down from the ceiling like a snowstorm in Maine, and I pulled out a pad of paper and started to write my will. I left most of my stuff to my dad, and some personal things to members of my unit, but I couldn't figure out what to give your dad. Nothing that I owned seemed valuable enough to represent what our friendship meant to me.
Eventually I came up with this idea." He taps the envelope with his forefinger. "The best gift I could give him was a gift to you. And I know I'm not dead yet, but I always planned on giving you this in person if I could, and think you need it now. Open it."
She peels back the tab and pulls out a thick stack of papers. In Hawkeye's spidery, faded handwriting are names, written one under the other. She flips through the pages. Private Jonathan Davis, Major Frederick Evans, Corporal Howard B. Green, Captain Gavin Turner, Sergeant Roger Watson. There are hundreds of names, thousands, even. "What—" she says, and Hawkeye murmurs, "Keep going." She reads more slowly, squinting at names that are difficult to make out. She reaches the last page, traces her fingers over the last name listed, and asks, "What is this?"
"It's a list of all the boys your dad treated in Korea. At the time I began writing it, I had wanted to give it to you so that you would understand why he had to be gone for so long, but now..."
Erin's hand reflexively tightens around the stack of papers. "But now?"
"But now," says Hawkeye quietly. "I want to give it to you because it's important that you understand that there are some good guys out there. War is a lot of things, but to the individual soldier it's just a bunch of guys on the other side trying to shoot your buddies. And your buddies, the boys next to you, they're the best friends you'll ever have. If Randy ever gets into trouble, someone out there in Vietnam is going to bust a gut trying to help him. There'll be people there, people like your dad, who will do their best to keep him safe, and sane. It's not a guarantee that he'll come back the same, but it is hope."
Erin falls like a marionette whose strings have been cut, collapsing heavily against his shoulder, pressing her face into the side of his neck. Hawkeye puts an arm around her, breathes in the warm air. "Eleven," Erin chokes out. She's crying so hard she can barely draw breathe. "His draft number was eleven. It's not fair, it's not fair."
"I know," murmurs Hawkeye, pressing his lips to the top of her head, "I know."
"H-he was going to go to school next s-spring," she says, her voice pitching. "He'd fin-finally saved up enough money for a few semesters."
He smooths his hand against her back, rubbing in small circles. BJ is openly staring from the kitchen window, a torn expression on his face. They make eye contact, and Hawkeye shakes his head very slightly. Erin will go to him when she is ready.
Slowly, the heat seems to leech from Hawkeye's bones until he is left frozen, fingers numb. Erin straightens, wiping her eyes with the heel of her palm. She smiles, and it's nothing but an embarrassed, almost imperceptible curve of her lips, but her expression reads hope, and Hawkeye watches her in a daze, his heart ripping in two, because, as he learned in his very first day in Korea as he trembled in his blood-caked boots, and as Randy will learn as he huddles in the jungles of Vietnam, hope is never enough.
Author's Notes:
Get ready for more detail than you care for:
This story takes place sometime in late spring-early summer of 1970, which means Randy's lottery number was drawn on Dec. 1, 1969, a lottery drawing that was reserved for men born from 1944 to 1950. I wanted him to be nineteen with a a draft number of 11 and therefore his birthday is August 31, 1950. Erin, on the other hand, is 18 assuming she turned 2 in mid to late July 1953 as suggested in Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen.
Title is a reference to Paul Simon's Mother and Child Reunion.
ANYWAY, I hope you enjoyed, comment if you want but please be kind with any criticisms!