Note: This is juvenilia, written when I was a teenager. I'm a bit embarrassed by it, but I'm leaving it up here because a number of people were kind enough to read it and say complimentary things. Feel free to enjoy it, if you will, but don't judge me on it. ;-) - May 2020.
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It Only Shows Up In Photographs.
Boston, Massachusetts.
Trapper John reached for the cinnamon, and smiled as his glance fell upon the photograph. This one was the oldest. It was obvious straight away. It had faded, the colours neither as bright nor as potent as they once were. The edges were rubbed smooth so that the corners curled and creased inwards. It was frameless, perched on the wooden shelf above the fish tank, surrounded by stacks of recipe books and spice racks, Becky's knucklebones, a broken pencil, a blue toy car.
He passed the cinnamon to Kathy, and watched with a little half-smile as she showed her brother how to stir it into the cake mixture. A little of the brown spice had fallen onto the photograph, and Trapper wiped it clean with a corner of his shirt. The faded picture bore the evidence of many such mishaps, but he was glad that he had left the picture framless. Frames were order and regularity, and four square corners, and somehow he knew quite clearly that none of them would have wanted that.
It was a photograph of them. The old Swamp Rats. In this photo, they looked young, with bright, laughing eyes. That's why he liked it. Back then, somehow, stupidly, even in the middle of a war zone, they had thought themselves invincible. They were all there, the whole gang of them, cocky and twisted, and somehow irresistible. Gin glasses in hand, they lounged there in front of the signpost. Spearchucker with his football and violently orange bucket hat; Fresh-faced Duke Spalding perched on an oil drum with his blissful baby smile and his inseparable guitar; Klinger in a strapless pink number and hideous gold pumps; Radar with his teddy bear, Henry in his stupid hat, the Painless Pole, Ugly John, Margie, Ginger. Dago Red, Ho Jon, the Cowboy...
And them. Hawkeye and Trapper, the old double-act. Hawaiian-shirted, laughing, arms slung carelessly about each other's shoulders. Blue eyes and brown, sparkling with evil, ebony locks and golden mingled together, Brilliant, malicious devils' grins.
In the photograph, they were invincible. That's why he liked it. This was the only photograph, Trapper reflected, in which you could still see the laughter in their eyes.