Chapter 12 -Unfinished Business
Hawkeye leant back in the chair so that only the two back legs made
contact with the floor. He stretched his arms over his head until he
heard a crack. The roll of laughter outside brought his attention back to
the window he was sitting in front of.
Outside, five year old Maria, named after his mother Marianne, was
running her grandfather ragged as she ploughed through the piles of
leaves he had been carefully raking up all morning. Hawkeye smiled at the
scene and then drew his eyes up towards the sky, "I wish they could have
known you" he whispered to the clouds.
Hawkeye still remembered the day Margaret had announced she was pregnant.
He was filled with a mixture of immense joy, excitement and fear. He had
no idea how to be a father. Ever since Korea he had never even thought
about it. But then little Maria came along and changed everything.
Holding her for the first time he knew it was going to be ok, he knew he
was going to be ok. Margaret was a natural mother.
Ah Margaret, he was a lucky man and he knew it. Margaret sacrificed so
much to be with him. She stuck with him through all the bad times when he
would experience a relapse and fall into a deep depression. She gave up
her job, her life in the city, she would have even given up her father if
she had to. But thankfully Alvin was now a regular guest at the Pierce
household. He and Daniel would take the boat out and go fishing, they
never caught anything but it didn't matter.
Yes he was a lucky man. He had a beautiful wife and two beautiful
children. Benjamin John or BJ as he was more commonly known was born two
years after Maria. Right now the three year old was having a nap on the
sofa behind Hawkeye, his gentle snoring the only reminder that he was
there.
Hawkeye focused once more on the blank sheet of paper in front of him and
began to type:
My name is Benj....
"Ah crap!" He pulled the sheet out of the typewriter, balled it up and
threw into the wastebasket that was now full of similar sheets that had
met the same fate. He started once again on a fresh sheet:
Tommy Giles was my best friend. I knew him since grammar school. We
played together as kids and we fought over the same girls as teenagers.
Now he lay bleeding on the operating table in front of me and there was
nothing I could do. One of the bullets had penetrated his chest right
near the heart, he was dying. The last thing he ever said to me was "I
heard the bullet!" The irony in his voice was wasted on me at that
moment.
"Scalpel" I cried knowing I was wasting my time. "I need help here!"
"Pulse is fading" the anaesthetist announced.
Tommy was my best friend and I watched him die, that was nothing unusual,
I watched kids die all the time. Kids died long before Tommy got there
and they continued to die long after he was gone.
I sit here today a survivor, writing and thinking of all the things Tommy
should have in his life by now, a wife... children, just like all those
thousands of other kids we left behind.
Tommy gave his life for this book and having read it I can now see why.
It was never enough for him to sit in a cosy office, miles from the front
typing out the words 'War is hell' over and over. Tommy always needed
proof. He paid the highest price for it in the end, dying alongside the
boys he was writing about.
He left us with this book as a constant reminder of what war really is;
just mindless, senseless destruction. Sometimes you hear the bullet and
sometimes you don't! That's what war is. I think Tommy understood that
too in the end.
There is no right way to end this book just like there is no right way to
end a war. The important thing is that we do end it, once and for all.
The next time you hear the politicians talk about waging war, think of
Korea and think of Tommy Gillis. Then think of the hundreds of thousands
of other people who died out there and say "No more!"
Hawkeye read back over what he had just written. His emotions were
beginning to take over and he had to stop. He didn't want to pour too
much of his own feelings into this book, after all it was Tommy's book
and he didn't want to take from it.
He had only picked up the courage to read the book a month earlier. Once
he started he couldn't put it down. It felt strange reading his old
friends work. He hadn't read anything of Tommy's since high-school. There
was no doubt he was a gifted writer.
The book almost tore Hawkeye apart at times as the imagery became far too
real for him. It brought him back to places he never wanted to go again
but he read on. The very last page was particularly poignant. Hawkeye
figured he must have written it the night before he died in some foxhole
while thousands of Chinese lay on the horizon waiting to attack at the
first evidence of dawn.
"Daddy, mommy says your lunch is ready!" came the voice of his five year
old cutting through the noise of the mortar shells that now filled his
head.
"Ok sweetie, I'll be write there!" he replied as he began gathering up
the sheets he had written. He placed them at the back of the book under
the chapter heading 'Sometimes you hear the bullet'.
"What are you doing?" she asked curiously.
"Oh just taking care of some unfinished business!" he said picking her up
and resting her on his knee. There was no doubt she was a daddy's girl,
he spoiled her rotten at every opportunity. And why shouldn't he? She was
something that eight years earlier he would have never imagined having in
his life. It all seemed so long ago now, the days when he would go off to
the cliffs and drink a whole bottle of scotch to himself. The memories
caused him to go into a trance-like stare.
"Daddy, are you sad again?" Maria asked in all her innocence.
"No baby, I'm not sad anymore!"
In truth, finishing Tommy's book was almost therapeutic. He felt the
demons that had been clinging to him since Korea were losing their grip
one by one. All the faces he carried in his memory of all the boys that
he had worked on began to fade, even Tommy's. The guilt he carried eased,
he felt that although he could not save all those boys, at least he could
make sure they would not be forgotten by getting this book out there for
the public to read. And he could think of no better way of honouring his
friend's death than to oversee the publication of his first and last
book.
There were some demons of course that he would never shake, the image of
that lifeless baby still occupied many of his dreams, and Henry would
drop in too from time to time. It was always the same, Henry was hanging
from a cliff and Hawkeye would try to pull him up but he could never
reach him and in the end he always fell.
"Come on, we better go down stairs before Mommy has a fit!"
The little girl ran out in front of him. He picked BJ up on the way out
and gently placed him on the sofa downstairs. BJ hated to wake up alone
so they always kept him near by.
"Mmm, something smells good!" he exclaimed as he grabbed his wife around
the waist and nuzzled her neck.
"Yes it does, now sit down and eat before it gets cold" Margaret ordered
pushing him off her. "Maria don't play with your food like that!"
"Did you get the book finished?" she inquired.
"Almost" was his simple reply.
Hawkeye laughed to himself as he watched the kitchen scene in front of
him. Daniel had some strings of spaghetti hanging out of his mouth and
was pretending to be a sea-monster for Maria.
"So that's where she gets it from!" Margaret cried in exasperation.
"No doubt about but I am a lucky man" he thought as he stood there
watching his family.
*****************************************************************
Later that night Hawkeye woke suddenly from his sleep. He had managed to
wake Margaret too with his tossing and turning. She could see he was
shaking and visibly upset.
"What is it?" she asked wiping the sleep from her eye.
"I just had a very strange dream." he said staring straight ahead.
"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked as she placed a reassuring arm
around his shoulder.
"I... I was hanging from a cliff, I couldn't climb back up and then..."
"What?" She was used to hearing his dreams by now. Although she never
enjoyed being woken in the middle of the night she never the less always
made sure she would listen to him. She knew he drew great comfort from
small simple gestures such as that.
"Then Henry appeared, he just appeared at the top of the cliff and he
reached down and pulled me up!"
"What do you think it means?" she asked. This was a new twist to his
Henry dream.
"Rule Number One!" Hawkeye whispered.
"What?" Margaret asked not fully understanding.
"Nothing, it doesn't matter, go back to sleep!"
Margaret snuggled in close to Hawkeye and fell back to sleep. Hawkeye on
the other hand remained wide awake. "Rule Number One" he thought to
himself as a smile came across his face. He understood the dream, it was
Henry's way of telling him it was ok to move on, that he didn't have to
feel guilty about his or anyone else' death anymore.
Following Tommy's death Henry said the most profound thing that Hawkeye
had ever heard him say. He said that in all wars there are certain rules,
Rule Number One is that young men die and Rule Number Two is that doctors
can't change Rule Number One.
All along Hawkeye had been trying to save Henry when really it was Henry
who was trying to save him.
"Thanks Henry" he said softly as he closed his eye and fell fast asleep.
*******************************************************************
-*-*- Well that's it, all finished, my very first fanfic. As Frank Burns
would say, "I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed bringing it to
you!" As always emails and comments are welcome.
Thanks for reading.
-*-*-
Hawkeye leant back in the chair so that only the two back legs made
contact with the floor. He stretched his arms over his head until he
heard a crack. The roll of laughter outside brought his attention back to
the window he was sitting in front of.
Outside, five year old Maria, named after his mother Marianne, was
running her grandfather ragged as she ploughed through the piles of
leaves he had been carefully raking up all morning. Hawkeye smiled at the
scene and then drew his eyes up towards the sky, "I wish they could have
known you" he whispered to the clouds.
Hawkeye still remembered the day Margaret had announced she was pregnant.
He was filled with a mixture of immense joy, excitement and fear. He had
no idea how to be a father. Ever since Korea he had never even thought
about it. But then little Maria came along and changed everything.
Holding her for the first time he knew it was going to be ok, he knew he
was going to be ok. Margaret was a natural mother.
Ah Margaret, he was a lucky man and he knew it. Margaret sacrificed so
much to be with him. She stuck with him through all the bad times when he
would experience a relapse and fall into a deep depression. She gave up
her job, her life in the city, she would have even given up her father if
she had to. But thankfully Alvin was now a regular guest at the Pierce
household. He and Daniel would take the boat out and go fishing, they
never caught anything but it didn't matter.
Yes he was a lucky man. He had a beautiful wife and two beautiful
children. Benjamin John or BJ as he was more commonly known was born two
years after Maria. Right now the three year old was having a nap on the
sofa behind Hawkeye, his gentle snoring the only reminder that he was
there.
Hawkeye focused once more on the blank sheet of paper in front of him and
began to type:
My name is Benj....
"Ah crap!" He pulled the sheet out of the typewriter, balled it up and
threw into the wastebasket that was now full of similar sheets that had
met the same fate. He started once again on a fresh sheet:
Tommy Giles was my best friend. I knew him since grammar school. We
played together as kids and we fought over the same girls as teenagers.
Now he lay bleeding on the operating table in front of me and there was
nothing I could do. One of the bullets had penetrated his chest right
near the heart, he was dying. The last thing he ever said to me was "I
heard the bullet!" The irony in his voice was wasted on me at that
moment.
"Scalpel" I cried knowing I was wasting my time. "I need help here!"
"Pulse is fading" the anaesthetist announced.
Tommy was my best friend and I watched him die, that was nothing unusual,
I watched kids die all the time. Kids died long before Tommy got there
and they continued to die long after he was gone.
I sit here today a survivor, writing and thinking of all the things Tommy
should have in his life by now, a wife... children, just like all those
thousands of other kids we left behind.
Tommy gave his life for this book and having read it I can now see why.
It was never enough for him to sit in a cosy office, miles from the front
typing out the words 'War is hell' over and over. Tommy always needed
proof. He paid the highest price for it in the end, dying alongside the
boys he was writing about.
He left us with this book as a constant reminder of what war really is;
just mindless, senseless destruction. Sometimes you hear the bullet and
sometimes you don't! That's what war is. I think Tommy understood that
too in the end.
There is no right way to end this book just like there is no right way to
end a war. The important thing is that we do end it, once and for all.
The next time you hear the politicians talk about waging war, think of
Korea and think of Tommy Gillis. Then think of the hundreds of thousands
of other people who died out there and say "No more!"
Hawkeye read back over what he had just written. His emotions were
beginning to take over and he had to stop. He didn't want to pour too
much of his own feelings into this book, after all it was Tommy's book
and he didn't want to take from it.
He had only picked up the courage to read the book a month earlier. Once
he started he couldn't put it down. It felt strange reading his old
friends work. He hadn't read anything of Tommy's since high-school. There
was no doubt he was a gifted writer.
The book almost tore Hawkeye apart at times as the imagery became far too
real for him. It brought him back to places he never wanted to go again
but he read on. The very last page was particularly poignant. Hawkeye
figured he must have written it the night before he died in some foxhole
while thousands of Chinese lay on the horizon waiting to attack at the
first evidence of dawn.
"Daddy, mommy says your lunch is ready!" came the voice of his five year
old cutting through the noise of the mortar shells that now filled his
head.
"Ok sweetie, I'll be write there!" he replied as he began gathering up
the sheets he had written. He placed them at the back of the book under
the chapter heading 'Sometimes you hear the bullet'.
"What are you doing?" she asked curiously.
"Oh just taking care of some unfinished business!" he said picking her up
and resting her on his knee. There was no doubt she was a daddy's girl,
he spoiled her rotten at every opportunity. And why shouldn't he? She was
something that eight years earlier he would have never imagined having in
his life. It all seemed so long ago now, the days when he would go off to
the cliffs and drink a whole bottle of scotch to himself. The memories
caused him to go into a trance-like stare.
"Daddy, are you sad again?" Maria asked in all her innocence.
"No baby, I'm not sad anymore!"
In truth, finishing Tommy's book was almost therapeutic. He felt the
demons that had been clinging to him since Korea were losing their grip
one by one. All the faces he carried in his memory of all the boys that
he had worked on began to fade, even Tommy's. The guilt he carried eased,
he felt that although he could not save all those boys, at least he could
make sure they would not be forgotten by getting this book out there for
the public to read. And he could think of no better way of honouring his
friend's death than to oversee the publication of his first and last
book.
There were some demons of course that he would never shake, the image of
that lifeless baby still occupied many of his dreams, and Henry would
drop in too from time to time. It was always the same, Henry was hanging
from a cliff and Hawkeye would try to pull him up but he could never
reach him and in the end he always fell.
"Come on, we better go down stairs before Mommy has a fit!"
The little girl ran out in front of him. He picked BJ up on the way out
and gently placed him on the sofa downstairs. BJ hated to wake up alone
so they always kept him near by.
"Mmm, something smells good!" he exclaimed as he grabbed his wife around
the waist and nuzzled her neck.
"Yes it does, now sit down and eat before it gets cold" Margaret ordered
pushing him off her. "Maria don't play with your food like that!"
"Did you get the book finished?" she inquired.
"Almost" was his simple reply.
Hawkeye laughed to himself as he watched the kitchen scene in front of
him. Daniel had some strings of spaghetti hanging out of his mouth and
was pretending to be a sea-monster for Maria.
"So that's where she gets it from!" Margaret cried in exasperation.
"No doubt about but I am a lucky man" he thought as he stood there
watching his family.
*****************************************************************
Later that night Hawkeye woke suddenly from his sleep. He had managed to
wake Margaret too with his tossing and turning. She could see he was
shaking and visibly upset.
"What is it?" she asked wiping the sleep from her eye.
"I just had a very strange dream." he said staring straight ahead.
"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked as she placed a reassuring arm
around his shoulder.
"I... I was hanging from a cliff, I couldn't climb back up and then..."
"What?" She was used to hearing his dreams by now. Although she never
enjoyed being woken in the middle of the night she never the less always
made sure she would listen to him. She knew he drew great comfort from
small simple gestures such as that.
"Then Henry appeared, he just appeared at the top of the cliff and he
reached down and pulled me up!"
"What do you think it means?" she asked. This was a new twist to his
Henry dream.
"Rule Number One!" Hawkeye whispered.
"What?" Margaret asked not fully understanding.
"Nothing, it doesn't matter, go back to sleep!"
Margaret snuggled in close to Hawkeye and fell back to sleep. Hawkeye on
the other hand remained wide awake. "Rule Number One" he thought to
himself as a smile came across his face. He understood the dream, it was
Henry's way of telling him it was ok to move on, that he didn't have to
feel guilty about his or anyone else' death anymore.
Following Tommy's death Henry said the most profound thing that Hawkeye
had ever heard him say. He said that in all wars there are certain rules,
Rule Number One is that young men die and Rule Number Two is that doctors
can't change Rule Number One.
All along Hawkeye had been trying to save Henry when really it was Henry
who was trying to save him.
"Thanks Henry" he said softly as he closed his eye and fell fast asleep.
*******************************************************************
-*-*- Well that's it, all finished, my very first fanfic. As Frank Burns
would say, "I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed bringing it to
you!" As always emails and comments are welcome.
Thanks for reading.
-*-*-
