He heard a voice making sympathetic noises, felt the weight of the backpack being lifted off him, the straps tugging over his arms. His ribs ached, his knees were throbbing, and the slow wind rolling over him felt like waves of heat from a furnace grate. The fire. The explosion. The crash. Involuntarily, his stomach spasmed again, trying to wring out the last ounce of bile.
“Rinse your mouth with this.” Clare bent over him, water brimming in her cupped hands. He slurped a mouthful, swished it around his mouth, and spit it out.
“More?” he managed to say. She reappeared with another handful of water. He gargled it into the back of his throat and spat again. She wiped the rest of the water on his face.
He sat back on his haunches. “Sorry.”
She was all practicality. “Take off your shirt. I’ll soak it in the stream. You’ll feel better.” Her matter-of-fact attitude helped him feel less embarrassed about tossing his lunch. He peeled off the stinking, sweat-soaked garment, and when she brought it back, he rubbed the sopping cloth over his face, neck, and hair before putting it on. It was shockingly cold for a moment, before his skin got accustomed to the clinging wet. The cool barrier against the heat attacking him everywhere helped him to breathe again. He sank back into the ferns. Clare sat beside him, cross-legged. She reached out and began stroking his forehead, pushing his wet hair back, her hand cool and firm. And her touch undid him, just undid him. He felt a knot in his chest loosen, and there he was, opened like a package. He closed his eyes.
“We were flying into the central highlands. It was hot, heavy VC activity in the area, and the artillery units were hammering the place night and day, laying down fire to clear out enough space for the slicks to land and for the squads to set up their perimeters. So we’re in the chopper, me and my friend Mac and a bunch of other guys and our lieutenant.” He opened his eyes, looking into the green leaves above him. “We were kind of goofing, getting ourselves revved up, ’cause we figured we were dropping straight into a firefight. All of a sudden, we get hit. The helicopter starts to drop. The pilot’s screaming, ‘Jump! Jump!’ and the chopper’s bucking like a bronco and we’re all hanging on for dear life. I could see out the door we weren’t too far above the trees. The lieutenant yells, ‘Come on,’ and me and Mac stand up, but the other three guys are yelling that there was no fucking way they were going to jump into the fucking jungle. The pilot’s still screaming, ‘Jump, jump,’ and I look at Mac and he kind of shrugs. The lieutenant sees it, and he slaps his pistol into my hand and yells, ‘Go for it,’ like he’s got to stay with the other guys, maybe persuade them off. Like he had more than a minute anyway. So we jumped. Mac and me.”
He glanced at Clare. She was sitting very still, not looking at him directly, looking just past him, as if the ferns were something she had never seen before. She nodded without taking her eyes off the ferns.
“I bounced down through some trees, and next thing I know, I’m on the ground. Right away, I knew I had broken both my legs. I’m looking around for Mac, when the whole sky lights up. The slick had crashed and exploded. And I could hear…there was so much noise, but I could hear guys screaming and screaming like animals trapped in a burning barn.” He paused for a moment. “Then over the sound, I can hear Mac. Above me. He’s kind of sobbing and moaning. And for a while, in the light from the fire, I could see what had happened to him.” He shut his mouth for a moment. “I don’t know how long it went on. When I remember it, it seems like an hour, but it couldn’t have been. Mac hanging in the tree, going, ‘Kill me, Christ, kill me,’ and crying. And the noise from the chopper dying down, the fire burning out. And I knew…knew Charlie was closing in on us, and that as soon as the VC heard Mac, they would find us. So I…I took the lieutenant’s gun and I…did what Mac wanted.”
She took his hand in hers and squeezed hard.
“They came about a half hour after. They didn’t find me, and no one else was alive, so they went away after awhile. I tried dragging myself a ways, but where could I go with two broken legs? So I gave up and laid there in the brush beneath the tree until this squad of marines came around and hauled my ass out.”
Clare laid her other hand on top of his. “How long were you there?”
“Two days.”
“Beneath the tree.”
“Yeah.” He looked at her directly for the first time. “Only three people have ever heard about this. And you’re the third.”
She rubbed his hand between hers.
“I didn’t tell you so you’d feel sorry for me.”
“I don’t feel sorry for you. I—” She shut her eyes slowly and then opened them again. “I hurt. For what you had to go through. For the boy you were. For what you have to keep in your head.”
They were both silent for a moment. He felt lighter somehow, as if he’d been lifting weights for a long time and then put them down and taken a cool shower. Tired out, but fresh at the same time.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For being there. For going over and doing what you did. For being faithful to your country even when what your country asked of you was terrible and futile and confused. Thank you.”
He started to laugh. “Only you, Clare. Only you.”
He let go of her hand and stood up, his legs trembling and his sides aching. Clare rose in front of him, holding his glasses. He hadn’t even realized they had come off.
He put them on and glanced up the last hill. No signs of fire. He recalled, from the weekly volunteer fire department’s report, that the hazard was low to moderate. Still, it didn’t mean they weren’t in danger. He looked downstream. God. Right now, he felt as if he would collapse if he had to take one more step.
Clare touched his arm. Her hand was still wet. “Do you…Should I…” She pressed her lips together and shut her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she said, “What do you need to do right now and how can I help you?”
He felt an ache, a tenderness so real, he thought he might see a bruise on his sternum if he looked beneath his soggy shirt. He knew if he wanted to, he could lie down in the ferns and have her bring him handfuls of water. Knew that if he sent her ahead to find help, she would do it. Knew if he said he couldn’t go on, she’d make a travois for Waxman and drag him out of this forest. She didn’t need him to be the leader, to make decisions, to stand in front. And because she didn’t, he found he could take that one more step after all.
