The sky here is beautiful. The pink of dawn, the deep, azure blue of a summer's day, and the golden hues of dusk. I hardly watch it during the day anymore, though. When you look up, you so often see helicopters, and when you see them, you put your head down and run.
The sky at night is different, in many ways. When the night is clear, when it's calm and quiet, the sky up above is a different creature entirely. A thing of beauty, endless and strange, just like the air here it feels like a living, breathing creature. Something to marvel at. Something to share with someone. A friend.
The night air was cool against her skin, and as she closed the door behind her she became aware of just how hot her face was. It felt like it should sizzle when it came in contact with the outside air.
For how long had she worn a mask now? She couldn't even remember when her shift had started. Only that it had gone on and on and on, the flow of wounded never-ending, like an avalanche.
Now, they had an hour before the next load was supposed to arrive. An hour, that was such a stupid amount of time. Time to eat something and prepare. Not enough time to get any rest, but enough time to think. Way too much time to think.
Margaret moved her head and winced at the crackling noise her neck made. She took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled. Her breath made a cloud. Fall. A fall evening and an hour to spare. She groaned a little as she started to move, her whole body stiff and tense. And so, so tired.
Ahead of her stood a crate, someone had left a pile of laundry on top of it. Really, was it too much work to put it in the hamper? People were so unbelievably lazy. She jumped a little when the pile spoke.
"My, my, Major, how heavy you moan."
"Jesus, Pierce!" She saw that the pile was a person as he shifted a little.
"What are you doing, why are you lying here? Are you okay?"
"Fine and/or dandy. I stepped outside, stretched, and happened to look up, and the sky seduced me by being gorgeous. Have you ever seen so many stars?"
She looked up. She sky was endless, lit with tiny speckles of light. For a second it made her head hurt, just the vastness of it. The sheer magnitude. After staring at things right in front of her for such a long time, the distance felt almost threatening. Cold. But beautiful. The sparse lighting in camp sure had its advantages.
"That is beautiful."
She walked over to the crate he was lying on. He pulled his legs up towards him as she approached, making room so she could sit down. She sat, leaned back and looked up again. From inside she could hear muffled voices, and somewhere a dog was barking, but other than that the world was quiet.
She half expected the stars to sing. Vibrate in harmony. She had seen the northern lights once, and had expected them to sing too, play a symphony maybe, grand, and pompous. But those lights had been soundless too, just moving and painting the sky with hues of green in silence.
If the northern lights had been a symphony, the stars in the September sky over Korea were a blues. Played on a solo saxophone. God, it was beautiful.
"Do you know their names? The constellations?"
Pierce's voice was quiet, and it sounded a bit slurred. Solemn. The way it did when he was tired, his drunk slur was different. Whether he was happy-drunk or angry-drunk, his tongue lost control in a way it never did when he was just tired.
"Yeah," she said without taking her eyes off the sky.
"Me too. But they're not the same here, are they? When I was a kid, right after mom died, my dad and I sort of existed next to each other, you know? We didn't really talk, not about things that mattered, we sort of lived parallel lives for a while. But neither of us liked to be inside, we could still smell her perfume in the house, and dad never got around to put away her stuff. One night, I was sitting on the porch and dad came out with blankets and told me to come along. He spread them out on the lawn and we just lied there, and he started to talk about the stars, pointed out the constellations, told me the stories behind them. Then we had root beer and tuna sandwiches and we started to talk. You know, for real. All thanks to the stars."
The night got quiet, not even the dog barked anymore. Margaret could barely make out his face in the dark, so instead she pictured the little boy, lying on a lawn back in Maine with his father. Unaware of the man who would one day gaze at the stars from another continent.
"What about you?" He nudged her shoulder with his knee. "Did your father teach you about the constellations?"
She sighed. Dear lord no, she very much doubted her father had ever taken the time to tilt his head back and look at the stars. Unless it was for navigation.
"No. Books taught me about the constellations."
"Oh."
He sounded a bit sad, sad for her. Strange, she had never thought of that as a sad story. Books weren't sad, were they?
"My friend Jenna and I made up our own names for them, though," she said, trying to keep the sadness from seeping into her too. There was no more room. "When we were about 11, we used to run away from home."
"Really?" She could hear the smile in his voice. It sounded warm. "That was very rebellious of young Margaret."
"I know. It was this one summer, we slept at each other's house all the time, and sometimes we would sneak out, hike through the woods and up a hill. It took about 5 minutes and there was this broad path the entire way, but back then, it felt like the greatest adventure. On top of the hill, you could see the whole neighborhood, and beyond it too. And we would sit there and talk about what our lives would be like if we did run away, for real. We would move to LA or New York and be movie stars or models. Or travel the world and dig up treasures. Or join the circus even. Jenna wanted to ride pretty, white horses with feather plumes on their heads, and I..."
"Wanted to be a tightrope dancer," he interrupted. "Right? In a glittery skirt."
She smiled.
"No, a lion tamer, actually. And in a way, my dream has come true, hasn't it?"
He chuckled, and she did too.
"Then, on other nights, we named the stars. We had 'No Man's Land', 'The Watch Guards', 'The Great Tank', 'The General's Cluster'."
"I think I'm sensing a theme here."
"We were army brats, what did you expect? And then, there was this one constellation with a big, bright star right in the middle, and that was 'Good Boy Lenny, the Puppy dog'.
The night got quiet again for a second, and then Pierce's laugh broke it. It made her flinch, but then she laughed too.
"See, this why I like you, Houlihan, you are full of surprises."
He groaned as he swung his legs over her head, ignoring her snapping at him to be careful as they brushed over her hair, and sat up, dangling his legs next to hers.
"Here I was, feeling somewhat sad and tired, but now I know that Good Boy Lenny watches over me from above, and I feel a whole lot better."
"Well, he is a very good boy."
"Hence the name, I'm sure."
She smiled. His voice was warm, and so was his body next to hers. Solid. They sat in silence for a little while, Good Boy Lenny shining bright in the sky above.
Margaret's mind wandered back to Jenna. God, it had been so long. Their friendship so intense that summer, fall, and winter, and then spring came and there was a move. Distance did what it always did. Margaret could remember Jenna's face in the summer nights up on that hill, the freckles Margaret envied not visible in the velvety dark. It really had felt like the two of them could just leave, be completely different people somewhere else, their own persons, no fathers telling them what to do, where to go. It had felt thrilling and dangerous. Two girls on top of a hill, the word at their feet. All they had to do was turn left instead of right when they came down, and their new lives would begin. But they always turned right, snuck back inside, and obeyed their fathers.
That winter, the class had been skating down at the ice rink, and one of Jenna's skates got caught in a crack. The impact of the fall sent her upper teeth straight through her lower lip. Margaret had pressed her mitten against Jenna's mouth, telling her it would be okay over and over again, while the white yarn turned red. When Jenna came back to school on Monday with stitches all over her lip, Riley Finn laughed and said her face looked like barf. So Margaret punched him in the nose. Then his face looked like barf too. Margaret wondered if Jenna still had a scar on her lip. The last she heard, Jenna had moved to San Diego and was working in the reception of a law firm. So in a way, she had turned left after all. Eventually.
"My nose is cold," Pierce said, making her return to the present. "Is your nose cold?"
He felt the tip of her nose with the back of his hand.
"Your nose is cold. So, do you wanna go eat something?"
"Not really."
"Me neither. Should we go eat something anyway?"
She sighed and kicked his foot lightly with her own.
"Yes."
"Okay then." He groaned again as he got off the crate and reached his hand out for her. "Margaret Houlihan, lion tamer and namer of stars, discoverer of Good Boy Lenny the Puppy Dog, may I treat you to some lukewarm mystery meal in the mess tent?"
"You may."
She took his hand and got off the crate too. He squeezed her hand quickly before letting go, and they walked together toward the mess tent in silence.
Sitting on a crate, getting lost in the past, with the stars playing a soundless blues up above. That was one way to kill an hour before everything started over again. A not so horrible way.