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Homecoming
after the war is over
by Raven
PG-13, gen. Hawkeye comes home, through the eyes of Daniel Pierce.
This story won second place for best post-war
story.
One look at my Hawk, and I knew he’d have a hard life.
Even before everything that happened, I knew it.
A small town, this is. It’s small and it’ll always be that way, surrounded on so many sides by ocean. It’s not an island, but it could be. There aren’t many people, and they all know each other, and they always have and they always will, unto the final generation. The people are a part of their town, and the town is a part of the land, a part of the sea, and my Hawk is part of all three and something different besides.
He’s different. He calls himself a doctor; and he is, he’s a good one. Better than good. He calls himself a small-town doctor; and that’s where he’s wrong.
I’m the physician round here. I know the people and they know me. I’m as much a part of the town as the stonework and mortar, and I’m as predictable as it too; steady, reliable, unchanging, everything you want in your family doctor. I only ever did one remotely unusual thing in my life, and that was to call my only child after a character in a book no-one’d ever heard of. It’s a classic, but try telling that to a town of lobster-fanciers. They’re good people, but English literature isn’t their strong suit.
That’s “call,” not “name” – he’s got a proper real name. Whatever that means. In my mind his name is whatever he answers to; but the US government wanted his “real name” when they drafted him, and who am I to quibble?
It’s a good name. Benjamin Franklin, hero in his own time, and not allowed to work on the Declaration of Independence for fear he’d put a joke in it. I can’t hear that story and not think of…
Hawk.
Hawk-eye, white hunter, last ally of the last of the Mohican tribe, through to the tragic, bitter end. I fear that story now. I don’t have my copy any more; I gave it to Hawkeye. It’s his story, now.
I’m sorry, Hawk, but your story isn’t the story of a small-town doctor.
Not you, with that strangeness about you that has always been there, lurking at the corner of my eyes when I look at you.
It’s not the charm that I’m thinking of, though there is that. Oh, Hawkeye’s got that kind of charm, the kind politicians and bureaucrats dream of possessing, but them that’s got it don’t abuse it that way. My son is Tuesday’s child, full of grace, eloquent as hell, can sweet-talk his way out of anything in this world or the other. Everything he touches turns to silver. I like that; sometimes his charm even works on me, and I always thank the powers that be that my Hawk will never be lost for words. But it’s not that.
It’s not that. It’s something else. Something that comes through most clearly when he’s overtired, and I know when he’s really exhausted, so far gone he can barely stand, he loses whatever it is that keeps his thoughts inside his head. The way he talks, sometimes, of cabbages and kings, makes me wonder whether it’s him who’s speaking at all, or something deep inside him, something from somewhere else. It’s so hard to explain, to describe, but whatever-it-is, it clings to him. It’s a touch of the netherworld, where his mother has gone, where the men whose blood covered his hands went to, somewhere far beyond this mortal coil, and Hawkeye carries it with him as careless as if it were an old glove. It’s that strangeness that makes his eyes blue.
He’s lucky. Strange, and silver-tongued, and so talented, and I knew from the start he wasn’t meant to live, grow old and die in Crabapple Cove. I knew he would be drafted long before he did, long before the US government did. I knew his hands would be covered in the blood of soldiers, not children recently fallen from old apple trees and rushed to the family doctor.
I was even afraid he wasn’t meant to live at all. Not when he’s come so close to the otherworld, he’s not a part of this one any more.
He’s so close to me, he’s my son; and he’s so far away, buried in his own mind, so different from how he used to be.
Especially now. I knew when he shouted his goodbyes, laughing and swinging into a rising aeroplane, that I’d never see him again. I’d see the man he was to become, but not the child he was.
And I was right. When he came back he was different. Changed. In the dark of the evening, the strangeness seems to take over his personality. And he’s such a part of me that it begins to overpower me, too, and that’s when I start to feel frightened.
I haven’t done any psychiatry since med school. But even I know sometimes the only thing that can be done is to get the patient to talk. Doesn’t matter what about. Get him to tell you what he had for breakfast this morning. Get him to explain how to mix a Martini in three easy steps. That’s the recurring theme. Easy steps. Everything happens gradually. It’s easy enough when you read it in the book.
It’s even easy enough with a patient, if you follow the simple guidelines. Treat each one as an individual, try and get to know them while staying detached, slowly guide them until they can finally bring the horror through to the conscious mind and deal with it on its own terms.
But I tell you when it’s not easy. It’s when you reach the words “while staying detached” and feel like laughing and crying at the same time, because the “patient” is your own son, and the horror that lurks within him lurks within you, too, and there’s nothing you can do is wait for the storm to be over.
And it’s even harder when the storm refuses to begin.
It’s not hard to get Hawkeye to talk. It never has been, for as long as I can remember. There’s a lot going on behind those big blue eyes, and more often than not, he’ll cheerfully let his thoughts spout forth like a torrent, confusing his listeners half to death. The same thing happens when you put a pen in his hand. I kept all the letters he sent me when he was over there, because they were just so… Hawkeye. Ironically funny, often bittersweet, sometimes depressing, always honest, and his words are so much of a part of him that if I threw them away I’d be throwing him away.
And he lights up when he talks, he really does. I knew Trapper John; he and Hawk were friends in college, but it’s not just him who comes to life when Hawkeye talks. They all do. I feel I understand why Klinger wore dresses, why Colonel Henry Blake “couldn’t make a decision with a month’s notice,” why Colonel Potter kept a mare, why BJ wrote letters to his dog, why Radar knew about things before they happened, and why Hawkeye loves to talk about them.
He loved them.
Loved. In Hawkeye’s mind, everything is past tense. Crabapple Cove is a place where time stands still.
Making him talk is easy. But he’s a carefully objective observer, my Hawk; trying to make him comment on his own feelings is proving difficult. They tell me he came very close to the edge near the end, and looking at him now I can believe it. He watches me watching him, daring me to come out with whatever I’m thinking, and little does he know that I’m thinking how much I love him.
I sometimes wonder what I’m doing, keeping Hawk here. Sometimes I wonder if he needs the kind of help I can’t give him. Help from someone who isn’t digging out decades-old psych notes from a beat-up old box. But then I see him, barefoot in his raggedy old red robe, walking over the wet grass and smiling to himself, and I know the soft air of his home is doing more for him than anything else can, even me. They’ll never take him away from here again. Not if the President of the United States himself came down and asked him. Hawkeye is a part of this place, so much a part of it you might as well try to draft the sea breeze.
But then I wish…
I do wish. I hate myself for wishing it, but I do. I wish Hawkeye would just… crack.
That’s a terrible thing for anyone, especially a parent, to say. But I try to be honest. Like Hawkeye does.
I wish it because then maybe my son would come back to me. He’s so much better than he was. He was burnt-out and exhausted when at last he came home; he slept for a day and a night, and when morning came, he hardly spoke for hours, eyes wide, drinking it all in. He might have been destined for higher things, he might have been a part of a greater cause thousands of miles off, but this is his home. I thought maybe, maybe, Crabapple Cove will bring him back.
But he’s still not back, not my son, because he drifts off sometimes and I can’t follow him. And I can’t help but feel that as long as he stays like this, wide-eyed and vacant, sometimes with a smile, sometimes with tears in his eyes he thinks I can’t see, the pressure will keep on building up, crack. And only then can I feel I’m being as supportive, as compassionate as I’d like to be if only he would let me.
He’s so used to making it on his own, he thinks there’s no other way.
Catharsis. Beautiful word. But Hawkeye’s a tough nut to crack.
It’s strange that Hawkeye’s anger has always been turned in on himself. Anger turned inwards is depression. In some ways it’s a blessing, as I know his temper. He flares up and down, quickly, painlessly. But when he’s really angry, honestly furious, in a long-term sort of way, it turns inwards quicker than quick. I’ve seen it happen so many times, and I worry. Hawkeye is too passionate to live long with his soul intact. Those who suffer from apathy also suffer from a good night’s sleep each and every night. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t check up on Hawkeye of a night, just in case.
In case of what, I don’t know. Just in case.
Sometimes Hawkeye murmurs names in his sleep.
I can’t be blamed for wondering. As well as three years of his life, what else did Hawk leave behind him in Korea?
He’s not one for the pursuit of true love. I think Carlye was too much for him at the time. She didn’t treat him too well, and he didn’t treat her too well, and it all ended in metaphorical tears, when she left him and he was moody and drank a lot.
He mentioned in a letter he’d run into her again out there. He glossed over it, but knowing him, something happened that he isn’t telling me. But if he doesn’t want to tell me, I won’t ask, it’s none of my business.
But she might not be all, and I’m aware of that fact. There’s other people, other affairs, love and more base considerations, and hell knows Hawk isn’t choosy. Well, he is, but in certain matters, he’s not. I worried about that tendency of his, in the military, but he’s got a brain in his head. Don’t ask, don’t tell, and I won’t, on both counts. But I knew Trapper John, you see. I can’t help but wonder.
In recent days, Hawkeye seems calmer. Every night for a week, I’ve checked up on him and he’s been sleeping soundly, and somehow my own sleep has been the sounder for it. During the day, he drifts less and smiles more, and is helping me with my practice. I know better than to ask him to do anything; he does everything that’s needed. He treats patients, the milder cases, the children mostly because they prefer him to me, makes out prescriptions, runs into the dispensary when we need something then and there, and when the ever-present fatigue threatens behind his eyes, I make him stop. No working to the point of exhaustion, not here. But it’s a conditioned response and I’m having to break him of it.
In the calm of the evening, when we’re done for the day, he tells me he’s tired and slips away. I’m pleased; it’s something he used to do, before. He’s lying to me, and he knows I know he knows I know, because that’s not the point. I don’t expect his steady tread on the floorboards above my head; I know where he’s gone. I can hear the front gate click. His footfalls are silent on the wet grass, but I fancy I can hear them recede. I don’t know where it is he goes, and I don’t need to know; all I need is to be here when he gets back. I know he likes the night; maybe he feels he can hide in it, or maybe that’s just my inner psychiatrist talking. Hawkeye was born at night, under a starry sky, and I feel the starlight that shone on him then shines on him now, drawing him out in the dark of the night. There’s strange powers at work under cover of darkness – the darkness of the night, the darkness of shadows, the darkness of despair, the darkness that lurks in men’s souls. It’s that darkness that makes them go to war.
There’s darkness inside Hawkeye, and no probing scalpel would ever touch it, but it’s there nonetheless.
There isn’t always a scientific way to explain things, especially not here in Crabapple Cove. The odd thing is that Hawkeye, card-carrying sceptic as he is, wouldn’t believe me if I told him so. He’s a living, breathing example of things not always being what they seem, and he doesn’t see it himself.
Ah, well, that’s my Hawk. A mess of contradictions.
Time is slow tonight. I sit, and I wait, and I think, and all the time the clock’s ticking gets slower and slower until I feel I’m hearing it from somewhere far away. I hear him come back as if in a dream; I’ve begun to realise I need sleep, too. I wait for the gentle footsteps to fade away. He’s gone to bed, I know, and slowly I get to my own feet and follow him up the wooden stairs. I check the front door is locked, I kick closed the door to the dispensary, which someone has left open, and I try not to let the floorboards creak too much under my tired feet. The air is warm and scented, as the windows have been left open. I know I’ll sleep well. At least, I will if Hawkeye does.
I open his door and look in on him, and know something I didn’t know before.
Hawkeye lies sprawled under a blanket. His bare feet are poking out from under its frayed edges. He’s always slept like this, even when he was a child.
His hair is a sharp dark contrast to the white of the sheet under his head, and it’s longer than it was, covering his eyes. I brush it away, feel his breathing on my hand, and his eyes flicker for a moment, giving me a glimpse of blue. After a moment his eyes open properly. Pupils dilated, unfocused, he isn’t looking at me or through me, but beyond me, to something more than this, something only my son can see. The room is quiet. A night breeze drifts in through the window; I can hear the swish of wings as a dove falls into free flight, a white shape that passes the glass and is gone.
Hawkeye murmurs in his sleep, turning slightly away from me, eyes closing for the last time.
I reach for his outstretched hand, and force him to uncurl his fingers. The last of the pills spill out into my hand.
One look at my Hawk, and I knew.