Aftermath Again

By Kathryn Faley

 

Back in those days, after all the chips had fallen, I used to walk down to the docks and dangle my legs over the edge of the pier, half terrified of the waves that would crash up and drench my shirt, half hoping they’d drag me back down with them.

I’d sit there long after the fishermen and wharf-men had gone home and think about the days me and her used to walk down the esplanade less than a mile away from the docks. She used to throw little pebbles at the backs of unsuspecting tourists just hard enough to make them turn around, and then look around all innocent like she was just admiring the scenery.

I, of course, couldn’t lie for shit. Even though I hadn’t done it, I just seemed to have this permanent look of guilt etched into my face. Those old folks just trying to enjoy their afternoon walk in the sun would turn around and curse me to hell, and she’d stand there solemnly like she agreed with every word they were saying.

Then, after they’d stomped off towards the never-ending line of dill-weed, she’d dissolve into fits of giggles, clutching her stomach. My forehead would be lined with beads of sweat from my embarrassment and the heat (it was, of course, the hottest summer since 63’) and I’d pretend to be annoyed and ignore her, but I could never really pull it off.

She knew that about me, that I could never hide anything from her. She used to prove it when we went on dates in the park and she’d grill me endlessly about the gossip I’d picked up working in the butcher’s down in the Garden District.

I’d plan endlessly to romance her - flowers, a picnic, a bottle of wine - and she never used to care. She’d just give me a quick grin and go back to her interrogation, her eyes gleaming with delight. It bothered me at first, the way she wouldn’t fall for any of my same old tricks, but in the end, it was one of the things I loved the most about her. Her relentlessness. Her passion.

It seems only fair that the things I loved about her the most were the very same things that destroyed us.

By the time we were twenty-three, the war had been going on for just over fifteen years. The country was tired - and by tired, I mean it’s resolve was paper thin. Everyone seemed to know that a strong breeze could cause our collapse.

Me personally, I’d been dodging the draft for five years. I claimed that my father, as sick as he was, had no one else to care for him, and could not possibly run the butchers on his own. But then, in the early months of 1970, he passed suddenly, and took my excuses with him.

I didn’t want to go to war. I didn’t want to fight. Countless of my friends from my youth had gone to Vietnam, and very few had come back. I didn’t want to become one of them. I knew, however, the consequences of resistance. The social politics would never have accepted me back into the fold if I didn’t go - more importantly, they’d never accept her.

It would break her heart, that kind of rejection. She’d always been a social butterfly - sneaking out to bars in her late teens with her girlfriends, chatting at book-club meetings, always humming a tune that she’d picked up from those open mics she used to visit. And so, my head swimming of her, I enlisted. Signed my name on the dotted line, ruined everything forever.

She found out on a late night in April.

Of course, she immediately hit the roof. Smacked me right across the face, pounded her fists against my chest, wailed for hours, the whole works. It didn’t matter; I told her. I was going either way. Too late to turn back now. I could count the number of times she spoke to me on one hand in the weeks before I left.

And on those rare occasions she did, she would have this violent blush across her face, her fury in-suppressible. Her mother used to call the house and work herself into a frenzy, yelling over and over again that I couldn’t do this to her baby. What I wanted to tell her (but never did) was that all of this was for her baby. Everything was.

I left for Vietnam in June, when the Louisiana heat was blazing and the air was thick with humidity and something else that I could never quite place my finger on, something just like the feeling that consumes me now.

To say I can’t recall those details of those first few months would be a lie. To say I won’t would be a more accurate statement, because I have no need to. They play on a constant loop at the forefront of my mind twenty-four seven, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.
I have no need to relive them, because I never stopped living them. The war has been over for three years now, but inside of me, it never really stopped. I bought it all back with me.

What I will tell you, for the accuracy of [redacted], is that six months into the beginning of my service, after I’d experienced some of the greatest horrors that this earth has to offer, after I’d witnessed my brothers die once in reality and a million more times in my dreams, after I’d spent days absolutely stock still in the abandoned rice field pretending to be dead, waiting for them to leave so that I could crawl towards the bodies of my comrades and try to find a path back to safety, she turned up.

I didn’t think she was real, at first. We all spent a long time without water back then, because taps were scarce and purifying river water required resources we barely had. Naturally, I thought I was seeing things.

It was only when she saw me looking at her, dumbfounded and stock-still, that she finally started striding towards me - so visceral and real and absolutely furious that she couldn’t be a ghost. No, she was real, and she was angry.

She stomped towards me with a face like thunder, her camera swinging where it hung off her neck - for a moment, I was transported to seven months ago, when she’d slapped me across the face.

It was silly to be scared of her having faced everything I had. But then, when she was about two steps away from me, she dissolved into tears and threw her arms over me. It was then I knew everything was going to be ok, even though nothing was even remotely alright.

She told me then that she’d come here as a journalist. At this point, towards the end of the war, there weren’t so many of those left. They’d all fled or had been killed. The first thing I told her is that she had to get on the first flight home and never come here again - never think about me again, if that's what she had to do.

She told me that she’d come here to document the war, and to convince the folks back home that they had to protest against this. I’d managed to find us a quiet spot under a temporary shelter to give us some privacy and relief from the sweltering midday sun, but it hadn’t stopped either of us from turning red. While mine was from the heart, hers was from her fury. I knew then that she wasn’t leaving that place any sooner that I was.

That she’d stay until the bitter end. God, she was so stubborn. Mind of her own, I tell you. She seemed to have this natural inclination for getting herself into trouble. I suppose I had the same.

We spent just under a fortnight in the same place before I got relocated, deployed further south. It broke my heart all over again to leave her for a second time, and I know it broke hers too. I believe this was around the time her work started gaining traction.

Her mother told me that she sent letters home enclosed with as many pictures as she could print (which, in rural Vietnam, wasn’t so many) and that she didn’t censor a thing. She showed the good, the bad and the ugly, even if people didn’t want to see it. And let me tell you, the ugly really was ugly.

I didn’t know it at the time, but she would write scathing pieces about the war. She’d detail the harsh reality, the brutality that happened out there. Her pieces, obviously, gained a lot of traction, and before she knew it, she was one of the most famous pacifists in all of America.

After I got home, I spent hours and hours poring over her work, reading every last piece with her voice in my head.

I hadn’t a clue what she was doing. Hard to get word out there. Even harder to respond. But by God, if I had, I’d have been so proud of her. So terrified for her. Eternally in awe.

This, I’m afraid, is where the story ends.

By the start of 1974, I was back in America. I lost my arm in Ap Da Bien in October previous and by some incredible stroke of luck, I managed to find a doctor who stopped most of the bleeding - or, well, enough for me to make it. This late in the war, not many of us were getting sent home.

There was a general understanding that we would die in the very country we swore to defeat. But, again, by some incredible stroke of luck, some important politician was getting sent back to the states and there just so happened to be enough room for a cripple like me. It took a lot of coaxing and soothing from my lieutenant, who I am eternally indebted to, but miraculously, I was going home.

After I got out of the hospital, the first thing I did was show up at her mother’s house. I wasn’t entirely sure that she’d forgiven me for the way I’d left things with her daughter, but she saw me and wept, hugging me in a way she never had done before. After sitting me down and making me a drink, she sat down opposite me at their old breakfast table and took my hands in hers

I think part of me knew what she was going to say before she even said it.

She told me that the love of my life had gone missing in Vietnam 8 months before my return. She told me that Elizabeth had changed the course of the war with her journalism - that she’d been persistent enough, caused enough of a scene for the men right at the top of the food chain to pay attention. Her movement had spread like wildfire. Everyone wanted to get on board with her.

I’d find out later that Elizabeth died south-west of Hanoi, down in one of the villages. Her camera was eventually recovered and now sits in a museum. She’s remembered as one of the heroes of the war, and one of it’s many, many victims.

 

Can I go now? Please?

 

[Loud crackling, followed by a long silence]

 

No. As stated before, you can leave when you’ve told the truth.

 

I have told the truth - I have, I have, I swear it.

 

Elizabeth Scott was not a hero. She was a criminal. She did endless damage to the [redacted]

 

[...]

 

Do you agree?

 

[...]

Let me ask again. Do you agree with my previous statement?

 

[...]

 

I suppose we must start again. Tell it to me from the beginning. You know the consequences if you refuse to tell the truth, don’t you?

 

Yes. I know the consequences.

 

Then proceed.

 

Okay. [A muffled pause, interrupted by a shuddering breath]

 

Back in those days, after all the chips had fallen…

 

Kathryn Faley from UK is a first year student at Cardiff University, Wales. She started writing fiction at 14 and have been dedicated to improving her craft since then. She is interested in pushing herself to write in as many genres possible and showcase her range. She wants to start publishing her writing and gaining experience.