Note: Juvenilia, written when I was a teenager. I'm now a bit embarrassed by it, but am leaving it up here because a number of people were kind enough to read it and say complimentary things. Feel free to enjoy it, but don't judge me on it. ;-) - May 2020.
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WE LAUGHED, HE CRIED, I NEVER LAUGHED AGAIN.
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Through early morning mists I see visions of the things to be, the pains that are withheld for me...
Once, Captain Spalding wrote a song. Well, to be more accurate, Captain Spalding wrote a lot of songs, most of them trash, and all produced in a swirling, incoherrant, gin-induced haze. Only one of them was ever worth remembering, (And now it's almost the only part of him that I do remember.) Somehow, it spoke to me, through the blood and the gin, and the rain. I learnt the chords too, but I don't play any more. I left my guitar behind me in Korea, along with a bloodstained Hawaiian shirt, a bottle of vodka, and a kiss.
I realise and I can see that suicide is painless, it brings on many changes, and I can take or leave it if I please...
Suicide is painless... I wouldn't know. Perhaps that's the irony of it. Because you can only ever know when you're so far gone that all the pain in the world doesn't matter to you, when even suicide is easier than the alternative.
There's something painful now inside, when I think of it. Of him, of Korea. (But there's a strange kind of comfort in the pain, because at least that way I know I'm still alive.) It's something that no amount of time can heal, that no song, no matter how bleak and desperate, can describe. I used to wish sometimes that it was within my conscience to take the easy way out. They would laugh if they could hear that. (Hell, even he would laugh.) Trapper McIntyre is not supposed to know words like conscience.
I try to find a way to make all our little joys relate without that ever-present hate, but now I know that it's too late...
There were so many of us back then. So many names, whose faces (although I won't admit it, even to myself,) I cannot remember now. Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake, his plane shot down over the Sea of Japan. (Who used to putt golf balls into a bedpan, and wore a pale blue bathrobe.) Captain Oliver Harmon Jones, honourably discharged. (With one arm missing, so that Spearchucker couldn't play ball now, even if he wanted to.) Sergeant Tommy Gillis, died in defence of the American Dream. (Lying bare-chested on the operating table, suffocated on his own blood. Just like in the movies. Funny one ay?) Captain Calvin Spalding, who all the guys used to call Jukebox – Duke for short. Golden haired, blue eyed, with the blissful baby smile... Well, maybe suicide is painless.
The game of life is hard to play, I'm gonna lose it anyway. The losing card I'll someday lay...
There are so many others as well, the ones who I don't know what happened to. (And maybe, I don't ever want to know.)Ugly John, Margie, Leslie, Frank and Hotlips, Nancy, Ginger, The Cowboy, Radar, Klinger, Father Mulcahy.
Hawkeye.
The only way to win is cheat, and lay it down before I'm beat, then to another give my seat, for that's the only painless feat...
Oh God. Hawkeye. There are no words that I can use, nothing left to say. He never gives up, Hawkeye. Never lets go. All those goddamned memories tumbling, rushing through me as though he himself set them there just to get even. His face, his voice, his wild, hysterical laughter even when nothing was funny. The red bathrobe that he always wore; the sure, slender fingers rolling the stem of a martini glass contemplatively; the stupid Groucho Marx glasses; the tousled hair parted rakishly to one side (And the black streaked through with silver now that never used to be there.), the silver dogtags clinking against his bare chest, his devil's smile, his eyes.
I remember Hawk's eyes were blue. Blue like a Korean summer sky. Every nurse on the whole goddamn base had been in love with those eyes. (Yes, even her.)
The sword of time will pierce our skins. It doesn't hurt when it begins, but as it works its way on in, the pain grows stronger, watch it grin...
We used to laugh together. And then once, just once, I saw him cry. When Henry died. (Oh God, Henry.)And we all just sat there in the mess together, what seemed like days, and all of us, every goddamn one crying and crying, and Margaret and Ginger holding Radar while he hugged his teddy bear like it was the last thing on earth, and all of them sobbing and sobbing, and not caring any more who saw them. And even Father Mulcahy like a little lost kid, clutching at his crucifix like it could do one ounce of good now, his head bowed, and I still don't know if it was praying, or just crying his eyes out like all the rest of us. (And Hawk. With his arms around me so tight that it hurt, and his head back, screaming like some wounded animal.)
We laughed together, and then we cried, and I don't think we ever laughed together after that.
A brave man once requested me to answer questions that are key: 'Is it to be or not to be?' and I replied 'Oh why ask me?'
I miss him. Hell, I love him. He was everything. Two goddamned, stinking years in that Korean sewer, closer than my own brother, drowning together in a sea of blood. (And he saved my life. Without him, even though I'm home, I know the tide would still be rising.) I love him, and I hate him too. Hate him for suffering so much, for being so goddamned oblivious, for feeling and living, and destroying himself over the pain of every kid in that war. I never send the letters that I write. Because far more than any nightmare, I am haunted by the place that those letters would go. By the thought that one day there might be no reply. (And that's worse than not knowing, right? Far, far worse.)
More than anything, I wish I'd said goodbye. Wish I could know that he received that final kiss, wish that just sometimes he would take down a dusty old guitar from its high shelf and think of me.
Suicide is painless, it brings on many changes, and I can take or leave it if I please... And you can do the same thing if you please.
Most of all, I hope to God that he doesn't remember the words to Captain Spalding's song.