12. To Shining Sea

Dear Bucky,

Remember all those times we went to Coney Island? Even if we didn't have any money we still just sat on the boardwalk and listened to the people behind us and stared out at the Atlantic in front of us. Remember how the ocean stretched on forever, full of shipwrecks and strange animals, and eventually ended at another continent? It was full of endless possibilities and led to new worlds. I remember that time you painted a sunrise when we were in art school. Neither of us were morning people, but you insisted that we drag our butts down to the piers while it was still dark, just so you could memorize what colors to use later that day in class. I fell asleep in the sand, and your mom thought I would get pneumonia and made me drink a gallon of tea when we got home.

I saw the Pacific Ocean today, Bucky. For the first time I watched the sun set over the waves and I looked out and it was just as endless as those days we looked out over the Atlantic from the edge of Brooklyn. Somewhere over the horizon was Hawaii. We actually passed by a Japanese internment camp or two on our way into California. Some of the people on the bus made jokes, or said things to the extent that this is what they got for Pearl Harbor. But those people had about as much to do with the bombing as Erskine had to do with Hitler. Just because he was German doesn't mean he's the enemy. Same thing here. We're doing here exactly what we're fighting against over in Europe. It was hard to feel like Captain America for a bit after that.

So I came back out to the beach and listened to the waves and watched the stars. The sand got in my shoes and for a moment I was a kid in Brooklyn again, only it was too warm to be Brooklyn.

Whenever Mrs. Headley gave us geography tests, I would stare at that map she had on the wall: the one that was blank, except for the state lines and the rivers and big lakes, remember that one? I thought about what it would be like to go from one coast to another, but Brooklyn was our world. My journey as Captain America started when I dove off the docks in New York into the Atlantic to keep a Hydra agent from getting away. Now I've watched the sun set over the Pacific and sold war bonds all across America. I still don't know when it'll be enough, when I'll get to do the job they made me for. I want to be content doing this, but somehow knowing that the only beaches I'll be storming are fake ones on movie sets makes it hard for me to graciously accept my lot.

If you see the newsreels over there, I'm not really fighting. I'll be honest with you, Buck, because I always have been, and this would be a lousy time to start lying. It's an illusion, like Dorothy's Oz was. Only instead of over the rainbow, I'm dreaming of over the ocean.

We won't be taking the show to Hawaii; it's too much of a security risk. We're heading north up the California coast; I've been promised a stop at the Golden Gate Bridge, and Kevin mentioned Brandt himself would meet us there. I haven't seen the senator in a long time. I hope he's decent to Kevin. Maybe he could pull some strings and get Bill's wife some leave to see her husband; Bill deserves something after volunteering to play Hitler! I think at this point I've 'punched' him in the face a couple hundred times. After all this it's up through Oregon, then Washington, and then… I don't know. Back home? Back the way we came? Singing and dancing our way across the northern states?

It felt like this would go on forever, but now that we've hit the west coast it feels like our time is up and I wonder what's next. I don't think it's the front lines for me, even though Kevin seemed hopeful at the beginning that this could lead to something. I suppose I could ask Brandt when we meet up, but what if he says no? The only good thing about not asking is that he can't say no. Maybe it's off to some SSR lab, like Phillips promised me at the beginning.

For the first time in my life I'm doing something that's bigger than me (to be fair, for a long time, everything was bigger than me). I'm doing good work, and the honest truth is I don't want to stop. What happened when humans were stopped by the oceans? We found a way to cross them. Then we found faster ways to cross them. My point is, it's natural to want to overcome obstacles and break barriers. I'm living proof of that.

But there will always be more barriers to overcome, more oceans to cross. You get to one coast, you can only keep going so far inland before you eventually find another. And you look out across it and you know there's more over the horizon. It must have been something else for you to cross the entire Atlantic. Maybe one day I'll know what that's like.

Sailing On,

Steve