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Joyce Faulkner
Goodbye - 1970
"Please don't go." I sat beside him on the bed.
"I don't have a choice." Marty put his arm around my shoulders.
I dabbed my eyes with a handkerchief. "I hate them for doing this to us."
"You have to calm down. How can I do this if you are going to freak out?"
"Don't do it. Let's run away. Go where they don't send boys to war." My terror was overwhelming -- I couldn't swallow, couldn't breathe.
"What would my parents say?" He stood up and put on his jacket.
"How can anyone that loves you want this for you?" I followed him down the hall. "Don't they know what's happening over there?"
"They think obedience is the same as patriotism." We went out onto the carport.
"You don't believe that do you?"
"No." He tossed his bag into the back seat of our white '65 Mustang and crawled in beside me as I started the engine. "I don't think they are the same."
I backed out of the driveway. "I can't do this again, Marty. I can't live with what it does to a person."
"This is the Air Force. There are tons of jobs that don't involve Nam. That's why I'm enlisting -- so they won't draft me."
I tried to believe him as we headed downtown.
Hand in hand, we climbed the front stoop of the building where he was to report. I sat in the hallway while Marty signed papers and took tests. The minutes ticked by. A middle-aged recruiter eyed my legs.
Footsteps. Voices. I stood up.
"Your husband is one smart fella, young lady." The sergeant winked at me. "Scored right on top of the chart."
The man gave me the creeps. "So are you done here?" I turned to Marty.
"You two have the rest of the day," Sergeant Horne interrupted. "Why don't you go down the street and get some barbeque? Sit and jaw. Just be out to the airport by 2:30."
"I don't like him," I said as we went out the door.
"Big deal. You don't like anyone."
"I like you."
"That's not going to change, is it?" He said as we got into the Mustang.
I swallowed. "I hope not." I didn't want to be married to a soldier - or a veteran either. My sleep was troubled enough already. I thought about Daddy refusing to talk about Iwo Jima when he was sober -- when he was eating and sleeping right -- and I thought of the long horrific stories he told when the pills didn't work and it was dark and he was scared.
Marty led me to the Mustang. "How about some of that barbeque Sergeant Horne suggested?"
"Anything but that."
I stopped at a Mexican Restaurant just outside town.
"Maybe it won't be so bad." Marty tried as we accepted our menus.
I bit my tongue. Did he think he was going to summer camp? His father didn't tell bedtime stories about boys killing each other on black sandy beaches. He didn't know about wounds that never healed. That's what I loved about Marty. He thought it wouldn't be so bad.
"You can come see me down in San Antone once I'm through basic training."
I nodded but in truth, the prospect scared me. Could Marty withstand the ugliness they were going to pound into him? He was twenty-six. Maybe his maturity would protect him. Daddy was seventeen in 1944 - a baby. He bought it all - hook, line and sinker. Would Marty? I shuddered. A smart person would leave now while there were no bad memories to fog up the good ones.
As if he read my thoughts, Marty reached across the table to touch my cheek. "I'll love you all my life."
So much for being tough. So much for leaving.
"This isn't personal, you know." He tried to break through my terror. "It's happening to other couples too."
"The hell it's not personal." I thought about the gun under my father's pillow, the bloodstained Japanese flag in his drawer. "It's our lives we are talking about."
"There, there." Marty tried to soothe me. "Airmen don't tote rifles through the bush. I've told you time and again, it's not the same."
I prayed that was true.
Clouds darkened the sky as we pulled into the airport parking lot. I rolled down the window to get a ticket and the glass fell out of its track. "What else is going to happen?" I grabbed it with my left hand and held it up while I steered with my right. "Now what? Leave the car unlocked?"
"I'll fix it before I leave."
I parked and Marty hurried around to the driver's side to grab the window. I squeezed out under his arm while he fiddled with it. Minutes passed.
"Just leave it." I put my arms around his waist. "Your dad can help me when I get up there -- or I can take it to the shop."
"No, I almost have it." The window slid back into its track. He rolled it up. Rolled it down. Rolled it up. "Like new." He turned in my arms and kissed me.
"Don't let them turn you into a killer."
"Shush. Don't say things like that." He seemed shocked. "I'll probably drive a truck."
"Don't bring home any guns."
"I promise."
We walked into the terminal.
"Yo, Tower. How about those tests?" A red-haired young man approached us.
Marty released my hand to shake his. "Good to see you."
Several other boys surrounded us, introducing themselves. "Horne must be running late," a pudgy fellow said. "He's got our tickets."
I backed away as Marty chatted with the other recruits. They reminded me of the young Marines in Daddy's yellowing scallop-edged photographs -- the boys that never came back.
"Honey, come and meet the guys." Marty beckoned.
I smiled but didn't leave my spot by the window. Daddy's ghosts already haunted me. I didn't want to meet new ones.
"I'm sorry," I said when he came back to me. "I've forgotten how to be polite."
"Hell, they're kids. They're used to pretty girls ignoring them."
I put my arms around his neck. "I wanted to tell you something."
"What is it, baby?"
"Don't believe what they tell you. Rely on your own soul -- your own mind."
He closed his eyes tight. "I will."
"And don't -- ."
Something knocked me sideways against a chair. I heard a sickening thump like a melon breaking against marble. A briefcase slid across the floor. A man's body -- his face gray -- lay at our feet.
Marty and I stared down at him. His eyes were open, his lips turning blue. A crowd formed a ring around us.
I opened my mouth to scream but nothing came out.
Marty dropped to his knees. "Sir! Sir?"
"Maybe his shirt's too tight." I must have said it aloud because Marty loosened the man's tie and belt.
"Holy shit! That man's dead." The red-headed recruit broke my trance.
I pushed through the crowd looking for help. "CALL SOMEONE! THIS MAN IS DYING."
A woman behind the check-in desk picked up a telephone and dialed.
Squeezing between a hefty woman and a hippie couple, I burst back into the circle where Marty knelt over the stricken man.
The man's last exhalation was a long hiss. A glistening puddle of urine spread under the body.
The smell stung my nostrils. I froze, remembering when I found them in their bedroom. My mother covered with a bloody sheet, my father still clutching the gun that finally brought him peace. I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing the image away.
"Sir! Sir?" Marty snapped his fingers in front of the stranger's unseeing gaze.
"He's dead, honey."
He looked up at me, tears in his eyes. "I know."
"SMITH! UDOUJ! TOWER!" Sergeant Horne stood by the outside door holding a clip board. "FRONT AND CENTER."
"I have to go." Marty stood up.
"NO!" I clung to his arm. "It's too soon."
"TOWER?" The sergeant repeated, looking around. The other recruits pointed our way. Horne caught Marty's eye.
A policeman arrived. Speaking into a walky-talky, he pushed people away from the body. "You stay here," he told us.
"TOWER, GET OVER HERE." Sergeant Horne was no longer nice now that the papers were signed.
"Is that you?" The cop asked.
Marty nodded.
The policeman sighed. "Go on. Get out of here!"
We stepped around the body.
The cop tapped my shoulder. "You stay."
"He's leaving." I pleaded. "I have to say good-bye."
"Say it here. Once he gets over there he's going to be busy anyway."
"TOWER!"
Marty looked at me. "I'll call when I get to Texas."
"I wanted to tell you something."
"What?"
"TOWER, NOW!"
I scowled at the sergeant.
"Go on up to Mama's when this is over." Marty whispered in my ear. "She'll take care of you."
"Marty!" My voice broke.
"I love you." He hugged me before joining the recruits. Horne handed him a manila envelope and a boarding pass as the crowd closed around me.
The body lay spread-eagled on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. He appeared to be in his late forties - maybe a businessman. I sank into a chair beside him. Odd. I felt calm now.
The loudspeaker urged passengers to board the plane.
The dead man's glasses lay a few feet away. The crowd was curious -- and appalled. The unappealing smell of urine wrinkled the noses of some who walked off, muttering and laughing nervously. How awful to die among strangers, I thought. I forced myself to look at him.
A trickle of blood was drying under his nose. If I couldn't bear to touch him, no one else would. I knelt and dabbed at his upper lip with my handkerchief.
A paramedic found his way through the crowd. I backed away to give him room. Stepping around the pool of urine, he felt for a pulse -- first on the man's wrist, then in his neck.
"What happened?"
"I don't know. He fell against me and knocked me down. Well, not down exactly."
The hippie couple stared. "I'm sorry about your father," the girl said before they hurried off to board their plane.
At first, I didn't know what she meant. My father? Then the confusion cleared. She thought this poor man was my father. He was old enough. He could have been on Iwo -- or somewhere equally horrible. Whoever he was, he deserved something better than this.
"Are you okay?" The paramedic gave me the man's glasses.
"He's not my father." I handed them back.
The loudspeaker blared again and I realized Marty was gone. I ran to the window, staring down at the jet below me. There they were on the tarmac, queuing up to climb the metal steps. I tapped on the window, knowing he couldn't hear me. "Marty!"
Inexplicably, he looked up. I remembered what I wanted to tell him. "I love you." He smiled and waved.
I watched them take the dead man away. I couldn't help him any more than I could help Daddy - or Marty.
Fat drops of rain splatted on the windshield as I pulled up to the gate. I rolled down the window. It came off its track and I grabbed the glass with my left hand. Nothing ever stays fixed.
"You better take care of that, young lady." The guard took my two dollars.
The rain was cold on my fingers as I pulled onto the highway, clutching the window pane to keep it from falling down inside the door panel.
An ambulance passed me headed toward the airport.
Too late, I thought. Too late for all of them.
I prayed it wasn't too late for Marty.
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