"Hold still, you big baby," Dean ordered and Bobby yelped again when he scrubbed more of the dead skin from his arm.
The two of them were in the steamed up bathroom, Bobby sitting on the closed toilet lid still wet from his shower scowling at his nurse.
"Didn't this hurt?"
"What do you think, Einstein?" and Bobby yelped again while Dean smiled pleasantly, scrubbing much harder than he needed to.
"Where is he anyway?"
"I don't know. He and my car were gone when I got out of the shower. I just hope he brings back food."
Dean went back to tending the oozing messes on Bobby's arms, both of them silent, the five hundred pound dragon neither of them wanted to talk about sitting in the room with them.
Finally Bobby spoke and said, "I never met Ty's sister."
"So she just hates you on principle. Good call."
"I guess you could say that," he chuckled and they fell silent again.
Dean finished up and closed up the first aid kit and Bobby wished he could say he felt better but the pain in his arms was worse than before. How crazy does one have to be to want to burn to death? How insane had he been?
"Listen Bobby, I know since I hit puberty and thought I knew way more than you ever could, that I've been a pain in the ass...but these last few months, they've been really tough on me but I've had Sammy to talk to. And I just want you to know that of you want to talk about anything..." Dean knew he was rambling and had to force himself to just shut up.
"Let's save the chick flick moment for some other time, huh?" Bobby said and stood up, brushing past him.
"God damn it," Dean said under his breath looking in the bathroom mirror to see if sucker really was tattooed on his forehead.
The one time he'd dared to open himself up to the old bastard and he'd been bitch slapped and if Sam hadn't taken off with the Impala, he'd have been out the door and on his way to never laying eyes on Bobby Singer again.
After a few minutes, he walked out of the bathroom and, Impala or no Impala, he was fully prepared to go to the spare room, grab his backpack and head out the door but Bobby stood barring his way, a bottle of twenty five year old scotch whiskey and three glasses in his hand.
"I've been saving this for..." he felt uncomfortable but he was determined to finish, to make amends "Hell, I don't know what for. I only knew that I never wanted to drink it alone, maybe with friends."
He held out one of the glasses and Dean took it, still wary but willing to drink with the man and they sat down in two camp chairs with an upended wooden crate between them, pulled close to the pot-bellied stove.
Bobby reached over and filled Dean's glass, then his own. The third glass, the one that Dean had believed to be for Sam, Bobby turned over and set bottoms up on a small table.
He looked at Dean and raised his glass and said, "A toast, my friend, raise your glass to Absent Companions!"
Dean knew the toast well and knew the third glass had never been for Sammy but for his father and he said, his throat constricted with emotion, "Absent Companions!"
They upended their glasses and drank up. Bobby refilled them and they sat in silence again, Dean waiting patiently until finally Bobby spoke up.
"You know what I remember most about Viet Nam?"
And with a half smile on his face Dean just shook his head knowing Bobby would tell him.
"The fucking heat."
Viet Nam was hot. So mother fuckin' hot that sweat dripped from every pore of his body, soaking his fatigues and actually puddling in his boots. It was 19:00 hours and as soon as the sun came up, his uniform would dry up and actually crack like salt covered cardboard, until he started sweating again.
The second evening of the three days of celebration of Tet, the Vietnamese New Year, was well underway and newly turned 20-year-old, PFC Bobby Singer watched the festive crowd as it ebbed and flowed, from side to side and up and down the street as people from far and wide returned home to be with family and to visit with friends.
Laughter and wishes of "Chuc mung nam moi" could be heard everywhere while little kids laughingly shouted "Song lau tram tuoi" to both young and old, then ran away down the teeming streets.
In contrast, the Marines were stationary, solemn and on high alert.
After 1968, Tet wasn't a celebration of the annual awakening of nature to the Marines but a grim reminder of death, swift and sure coming from out of the darkness as Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Regulars attached Saigon and outlying cities.
It was now Tet 1970, the year of the metal dog, and Bobby wasn't worried about a repeat of '68 as his regiment had been beefed up two fold and fifteen of his fellow soldiers had been posted along the street in front of the military hospital to aid in crowd control. He'd been in country for a little over eight months on his first tour.
Everyone said he was fuckin' crazy to enlist in the Marines but he'd always wanted to join the military and figured with the war raging, in for a penny, in for a pound. And besides, once you got over the shock of every jack mother in country trying to kill you, including the kids, it wasn't a bad place, especially if you were stationed near the military hospital in Da Nang.
The hospital was crawling with nurses and Donut Dollies but if you weren't at least a major in the Army or the Corps, you didn't stand a chance with any one of them. The only officers of lower rank who could score with an American woman were the jet jockeys.
Bobby was only a Marine grunt but he had managed to meet and shack up with a pretty Vietnamese girl off post in the civilian district. She was also a nurse in the hospital taking care of the sick and injured indigenous and came from a respectable family who had frowned on the arrangement but appreciated the c-rats, the American cigarettes and the US military script he gave them nonetheless.
Ty was the eldest of the two girls in her family and considered an old maid as her sister had been married and gone from the house for over two years and rarely visited. Her parents had hoped she'd marry a doctor but she had met an American Marine with a quick wit and an infectious smile and had fallen head over heels in love with him.
By the time he'd met her, Bobby had already gone "native' learning the language, even eating Nuok Mam sauce much to the delight of Ty's mother and felt more comfortable celebrating with them than getting drunk with the other Marines in the E.M. club.
Ty Van Nguyen was a good girl and Bobby had been her first. He loved her and if he could get through all the red tape without drowning he would marry her and take her stateside, providing he made it through the remaining five months of his tour in one piece.
And now, his future bride would be coming by his post shortly, a participant, along with her parents and her younger sister, in the dragon parade.
As she went by, he would grab her and pull her into the ally and slip it to her if she would let him, otherwise he'd just kiss her and send her on her way until he could be alone with her in their shabby apartment. He had presents for her, new clothes, a prunus persica branch for getting rid of evil spirits and rice wine in a gourd for a rich and comfortable life.
His smile was ear to ear as the huge head of the red and gold dragon came into view, the people parting like the Red Sea in "The Ten Commandments" allowing the dragon to run first to one side of the street, then back across to the other, dipping its massive head from side to side.
"Chuc mung nam moi, Chuc mung nam moi" the dragon roared and the onlookers cheered and as the Dragon passed by him, Bobby spotted Ty and her family and then the large red paper fish.
Thrown from somewhere in the crowd, it arched high in the air and fell at the feet of one of the Marines and exploded. Bright red paper flew out in all directions followed by the staccato bursts of firecrackers and having lived with the locals, Bobby knew that the firecrackers and other explosives were used to drive away evil or dangerous spirits.
But someone, either one of the FNGs or an overly cautious short timer, assumed they were under attack and opened fired on the crowd. Bobby stood rooted to the spot until he saw Ty vanish under the feet of the wildly dispersing crowd as machine gun fire continued unabated with more of the Marines, thinking they too were under attack, joining in the deadly volley.
Bobby couldn't reach Ty before the bullets slammed into his back and he went down in an ever-spreading pool of his own blood. Minutes later he was being carried into the hospital, hours later he was on his way to Germany where he languished for a month. He hadn't scored a million dollar wound and the powers that be returned him to the Nam.
Back in Da Nang, he asked everyone he'd ever met about her, but there was no trace of Ty or her family. He finally gave up looking and guessed rightly that they had all been killed the night of the Dragon Parade.
But he didn't mourn her passing because he was effectively 'dead' on the inside and when he was reassigned to Alpha Company and sent out into the jungle, he tried his damnedest to become dead on the outside, too.
Loosely written and translated:
"Chuc mung nam moi" - Happy New Year.
"Song lau tram tuoi" - Live up to 100 years: used by children for elders.