“I didn’t have it that bad,” she insisted again.
“Because you had a roof?”
“I was a REMF. It wasn’t like being out in the jungles orstuck on a firebase in the middle of nowhere.”
“You weren’t a rear-echelon anything, Claire. Trust me.”
Outside, another band of rain was approaching, thethunder grumbling irritably in the distance. The owl wascalling, a lonely, sad sound in the darkness, and the treeswhispered to each other. Here in this shadowy little room,Claire kept her eyes wide open. Kept her body still. Held onto Tony like the lifeline he was.
“What is your most vivid memory of Vietnam?” heasked.
That quickly, her breathing stopped. Her protection disappeared. “My most vivid memory of Vietnam? What areyou talking about?”
“Just tell me.”
She shrugged, skin rubbing against skin, her cheek nestled against his throat so that if she wanted she could seethose terrible scars she’d examined with her hands just moments ago. “I told you. I don’t remember that much aboutVietnam. Why?”
“Want to know mine?”
No, she thought with dread. “Yes,” she said instead.
He tightened his hold on her just a little, lazily fingered her hair as if it were the gold from which he mined hismemories. “My platoon was ambushed,” he said easily, hisvoice hypnotically calm. “One minute we’re walking along, the next my face is in the dirt. Guns firing, guys yelling andhumpin’ for cover. Suddenly the weirdest thing happened.It was like the whole world disappeared. All the noise, thegunfire, the shouting, everything. Right there in front of me,I saw the most beautiful little wildflower. I remember sodistinctly lying there on my stomach with my rifle under mejust staring at that flower as if it was the most fascinating thing in the world. I knew people were yelling at me, but itdidn’t connect. I was too amazed by that little flower in thedirt. Then it was like this wave of sound washed over me,like the world had receded and then poured over me again.Everybody’s yelling at me to see if I’m okay, and Charlie’sfiring at anything that moves, and I’m just lying there. I gotback into the action, and we got out of there. But I’ll never forget that flower.”
“That’s your most vivid memory? What about when youwere injured?”
“Actually I don’t remember much of that at all. Justvague images, like a dream. That flower is much sharper.”
For a long while, Claire simply lay against Tony’s chest,his arm around her, his hand in her hair, his chest rising andfalling beneath her, that old candlewick bedspread holdingoff the cold. She saw a flower, purple, maybe, there in thedirt in the middle of a firefight, and a young man with sea-water eyes watching it. She thought of memories and she thought of Jimmy.
Claire opened her eyes. Focused on Tony’s chest, hisstomach beyond. The evidence of what he’d survived. Shedidn’t have the courage he did. She couldn’t do this.
“I was in my hooch getting dressed,” she said in a small voice, the image suddenly as sharp and clear all over againas the day it had happened. “I was due on duty in half anhour and I couldn’t get my boots on. I remember one of myshoelaces was stuck. Suddenly we get a call for mass cal—mass casualties. Everybody has to respond. I’m throwing onclothes and already I can hear the dust-offs coming in. So Igrab the coffee I was drinking and I head out the door toward triage. And as I’m running trying to beat the choppers, I’m thinking it must be raining, because it’s ploppinginto my coffee. I look up, and it’s not raining at all.” Hervoice died a little, even as her heart had as she’d looked up.“There’s a chopper overhead. What’s dripping into mycoffee is blood from the wounded.”
The pain rose, hot and heavy. Swelling in her chest past the sweet delight of lovemaking, the slow pleasure of companionship, the easy camaraderie of the day. Old pain, hardpain, pain she thought she’d kept in its place.
Images threatened to follow that one. Jimmy called to her,and Claire refused to listen. She brutally shoved him backinto his place where he belonged. Where they all belonged.
“And you don’t think you have the right to be affected bythat?” Tony asked quietly.
In the daylight, she wouldn’t have answered. Separatedand forced to face him. Here in the dark in his arms, where her protection was around her instead of before her, Clairefound her voice.
“I never had to kill anybody.”
“And that’s the only reason a person should suffer from a war, because they have to kill?”
She struggled to get free. He wouldn’t allow it. He kepther right where she was, so that she could answer in safety when she didn’t want to answer at all.
“I did my job,” she insisted yet again. “I just did myjob.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you do your job? Why did you go to Vietnam?”
Claire opened her mouth to answer, but the wordswouldn’t come out. The words that committed her, that indicted her.
She wanted to help.
