A/N: So this piece was originally an assignment for my creative writing class but I liked it so much that I decided to share it. It's set in 1969 Vermont. It's a bit shorter than my usual stuff but we had a page limit that I tried to stick to. I hope y'all like it.
"National Guard Kill 4 in Kent State Protest."
Olivia read the headline almost as an afterthought, her eyes too busy fixating on the picture below it to really pay it any attention. A young man in a plaid shirt half-tucked into torn jeans stood a few feet in front of the crowd, a sinewy arm raised to extend a peace sign to the rife-toting National Guard soldiers frowning at him. She only looked at them briefly before her eyes travelled back to the man, who looked so much like her own that she could feel her heart drop when she read that he was one of the dead. Her own man sat on the fire escape, his long fingers casually strumming the strings of the guitar that he loved almost as much as her. He wasn't in a body bag. There was one waiting, but it hadn't claimed him yet. If there was a god standing behind the sun drenching the kitchen window's dirty glass and the dirty dishes in the sink below it, she prayed the body bag would never caress the limbs of her lover.
The photo was black and white, but she was sure the man's hair was the same shade of brown, the color of whiskey that got her drunk and made her laugh and got him drunk and made him sing, and curling in the same lazy way as the locks that had grown out to his shoulders. He'd have to cut it to be a soldier. He'd never look the same. The dead man would never get another haircut. If her man died, she wouldn't let them cut whatever had grown back. He would die her Fitz, not the one Uncle Sam set up in the grandest scheme to date.
And that shirt. He had so many like it. She wondered if the man gotten it a thrift store, if it had been mended where he tore it. She wondered if he washed it in detergent with the same scent as her man, if there was someone out there remembering that smell and pricking their eyes with tears because they'd never wash that shirt again. Fitz's shirt sat in a laundry basket in the bedroom. He'd wear it the next day, just like he always did after she washed it. She looked at the picture on last time then threw the newspaper in the garbage, turning to look at Fitz. She knew what she would see before she turned completely: his tall frame bent around the guitar as he sat on the windowsill, his hair wound in a loose knot at the crown of his head with one of her hair ties. She turned and found him already smiling at her, looking at her as if he'd known she was going to look at him just then.
"You're thinking about me." She hadn't heard him duck through the kitchen's other window. It had always seemed an odd window, especially as the fire escape was attached to it, but she liked that it was his spot. He stood before her, handsomely tousled, his head almost brushing the low ceiling. She ran her hands through her hair as he rounded the rickety kitchen table they'd gotten from a flea market, its wood marred with the carvings of children that didn't belong to them. His bare feet slapped the linoleum floor as the hems of his jeans—hems she'd have to re-stitch again one of these days—dragged with a whisper.
She loved watching him. It was the sight of him that pulled at her heartstrings before he ever said a word. The blue of his eyes, sometimes cornflower, sometimes sapphire, sometimes almost gray. His lips, always curled in a smile or a frown, never ambivalent or bereft of expression, that seemed more in love with her temples and fingertips and hipbones and the backs of her knees than her mouth. The faint whisper of his beard that drove her need for him to unbearable heights when it caressed her naked skin. His long arms that loved to wrap her in his warmth. The youth of his walk with its slight bounce from a baseball injury. Even when she was angry, or frustrated, or ecstatic, watching him always stopped her. Watching him brought her peace.
"I wasn't." He wrapped his arms around her, fitting her into his body where she'd been so many times before. She tucked her face into his neck.
His smell always got her. She could always smell him before she saw him. His curls smelled of fresh peppermint shampoo, her shampoo since he wouldn't buy any. His gray t-shirt, its logo faded into inexistence except a lone scratchy patch over his heart, smelled like detergent. She thought again of the man in the picture and wondered if his shirt was as soft as Fitz's, if he wore and loved it so much that it had to be washed almost to the point of tearing apart. His hands smelled like lemongrass as they caressed her cheekbones on their way to her hair. She remembered how long it had been when she met him on a bus stop, almost to her waist in permed curls. Now it fanned out like a halo around her face. She hadn't permed since Christmas when her body rounded out. And his hair had been much longer, almost as long as hers, but he'd cut it when it got hot. He slicked her cottony tufts back to kiss the crown of her head. "Tell me."
She let him go, retrieved the paper from the garbage. It smelled like the coffee grounds tossed after his morning cup. He read the headline and looked at the picture then tossed it on the table. "Damn."
She moved back into the curve of his body, wrapping his arms snugly around her. "If they're gonna kill you here, why even send you to Vietnam?"
His number had been called up, two years after he signed up for the draft after graduation. She didn't understand why the wanted him now, why they didn't want him until he became too much hers to do without.
"Livvie." He murmured her name like a prayer. He cupped her face and she turned to kiss the heel of his hand. His skin tasted like ginger, zinging but sweet, from the tea he'd made her after she vomited that morning. She stood on her toes, kissed his Adam's apple. She'd miss the taste of his sweat, soapy and salty after a long day when he crawled into their little bed and the arches of her hips claimed his body as hers. He tangled his fingers in her curls and kissed her head again. "It's okay…isn't it?"
She wouldn't bring her eyes to his so he lifted her face and kissed her lips. He tasted like the jam from his toast that morning, sickly sweet and sticky because she'd made the jam herself. It was boysenberry, his favorite. If he didn't come back, she'd never make it again. It wouldn't be sweet and tart like he liked, but bitter and mocking her with its refusal to be what he loved.
"It has to be," she finally said in a small voice.
"Stop it." He hated when she got small and quiet. She was the lion. He was the lamb. He didn't like when her roar disappeared. If she couldn't be strong, he couldn't either. He kissed her forehead between her eyes, made the soft wrinkle dissipate. "You know I'll come back to you."
"You can't come back if I don't let you go." Her fingers clung to his shoulders as she smashed her belly between them. It was as round as a ripe cantaloupe now, pulling the hem of her gauzy white tunic up to her thighs when it had once reached her knees. His hands found the taut sides and he began humming "You Are My Sunshine," his lips on hers to make her stop frowning. But she wouldn't. She couldn't. "Sing. I want to remember you singing."
"You're the apple of my eye/ You're cherry pie/ And oh you're cake and ice cream/ Oh you're sugar and spice and everything nice/ You're the girl of my dreams." She loved Sam Cooke and he knew it. He knew she would smile. But she didn't, so he lifted the corners of her mouth until she did. She couldn't help thinking of his scratchy, sleepy voice in the morning half-light, and the way he sang loudly in the shower, and how silent the house would be without him until the baby came. But where would he be? On a plane? On a train? In pieces somewhere she'd never get all of him back? She could hear the gentle thud of his heartbeat, and feel the rhythmic kicks of the heartbeat they'd created. Would they ever be so whole again?
"Just hold me," she said when his singing brought a lump to her throat. She would engrain the feeling of him in every fiber of her being. If she never got to feel it again, she'd hug herself and remember. Vietnam couldn't take her memories, even if it stole their star.
"We've gotta go." The ride to the bus station was an hour. His plane ride would be longer. He had to get a move on. The rest of his life—and maybe its end—were waiting for him in the front seat of the rundown yellow pickup truck that she loved so much. He wondered where the baby seat would fit, and how they would all fit together when he got home. But he couldn't dwell on it. It made his fingers tighten on her flesh in a way that made her wince.
Everything in the bus station seemed too vivid, too intense. It would overshadow the memory of their quiet car ride, their intertwined fingers. It was too bright with too many lights. She felt like she was in an operating room, waiting to be split open and have something vital taken from her. She frowned when she realized that she was doing that very thing, just in a different place. The building was loud with chatter and luggage wheels and announcements. How could she remember what he sounded like when he said goodbye with all that commotion rattling around in her brain? They found his bus and he pulled her into his arms once more as the hatch doors opened with a hiss. His lips still tasted like jam.
He didn't say goodbye, instead smiling the way he did, the way she loved, and declaring, "See you in a while, crocodile."
She smiled, putting bends in the rivers of her tears, and let him cover her face in kisses. He released her, hefting his bag onto his shoulders, and she stopped him before he turned. She took off the peace symbol necklace around her neck, a half piece that matched one around his own, and insisted they switch. "Now you have to come back. You have something that's mine."
"And you've got something that's mine," he replied. He knelt and she could hear him whispering to their love bumping around inside her. He kissed her navel then rose to his full stature. He climbed onto the bus and her eyes pricked with tears at the sight of his right pocket hanging by dark blue thread. She watched him go to the back and take an unoccupied seat. He had sat next to her in much the same way the day they'd met. It was a hello that she'd never believed would have a goodbye, but there she was, waving at him through the window.
Olivia didn't see anyone as she left. She didn't hear the radio playing his favorite song, or the announcement that her favorite band was coming for a show. She didn't smell the marijuana coming from the apartment above hers, just turned on the ceiling fan in the bedroom as she pulled the plaid shirt from the basket and put it on over her tunic. She didn't notice its softness against her skin. It would never feel as good as his calloused fingertips leaving constellations of bruises on her hips. In the kitchen, she finished his second piece of toast but didn't taste the jam. It wasn't as good as the remnants on his mouth. She didn't hear the creak of the chair as she lowered her heavy body into it to finally cry, her tears splashing the newspaper. He had taken her senses with him. And if he didn't come back, nothing would ever be right again.
A/N: Don't forget to review! XOXOXO