Julie looked tired, still, she was a beautiful young woman, with hair the color of straw and a body as lean and straight as an arrow, and brilliance showing behind her bright blue eyes. Both boys looked at her and recommitted to her love again.
'Are you okay?' Donny asked.
'I was in the lockup at the Coliseum.'
'Oh, Christ.'
'It was fine, it wasn't anything bad.'
'You killed a girl,' said Peter.
'We didn't kill anyone. You killed her, by telling her being on that bridge mattered and that we were rapists and murderers. You made her panic, you made her jump.
We tried to save her.'
'You fucking asshole, you killed her. Now, you're a big tough guy and you can kick the shit out of me, but you killed her!'
'Stop screaming. I never killed anyone who didn't have a rifle and wasn't trying to kill me or a buddy.'
'Peter, it's okay. You have to leave us alone.'
'Christ, Julie.'
'You have to leave us.'
'Ahhh ... all right. But don't say--anyhow, you're a lucky guy, Fenn. You really are.'
He stormed away in the darkness.
'I never saw him so brave,' said Julie.
'He loves you. So much.'
'He's just a friend.'
'I'm sorry I didn't get here earlier. We were on alert.
There was a lot of shit because of Amy. I'm very sorry about Amy, but we didn't have a thing to do with it.'
'Oh, Donny.'
'I want to marry you. I love you. I miss you.'
'Then let's get married.'
'There's this thing,' Donny said.
'This thing?'
'Yeah. By the way, I've technically deserted. I'm UA. Unauthorized absence. I'll be reported tomorrow at morning muster. They'll do something to me probably.
But I had to see you.'
'Donny?'
'Let me tell you about this thing.'
And so he told it: from his recruitment to his attempts to enter into a duplicitous friendship with Crowe to his arrival at the party to his strange behavior that night until, finally, the action on the bridge, Crowe's arrest and tomorrow's responsibilities.
'Oh, God, Donny, I'm so sorry. It's so awful.' She went to him and in her warmth for just a second he lost all his problems and was Donny Fenn of Pima County all over again, the football hero, the big guy that everybody thought so highly of, who could do a 40 in four-seven, and bench press 250, yet take pride in his high SATs and the fact that he was decent to his high school's lowliest creeps and toads and never was mean to anybody, because that wasn't his way. But then he blinked, and he was back in the dark in the park, and it was only Julie, her warmth, her smell, her sweetness, and when he left her embrace, it was all back again.
'Donny, haven't you done enough for them? I mean, you got shot, you lay in that horrible hospital for six months, you came back and did exactly what they said.
When does it end?'
'It ends when you get out. I don't hate the Corps. It's not a Corps thing. It's these Navy guys, these super- patriots, who have it all figured out.'
'Oh, Donny. It's so awful.'
'I don't work that way. I don't like that stuff at all.
That's not me. Not any of it.'
'Can't you talk to somebody? Can't you talk to a chaplain or a lawyer or something? Do they even have the right to put you through that?'
'Well, as I understand it, it's not an illegal order. It's a legitimate order. It's not like being asked to do something that's technically wrong, like shoot kids in a ditch. I don't know who I could talk to who wouldn't say. Just do your duty.'
'And they'll send you back to Vietnam if you don't testify.'
'That's the gist of it, yeah.'
