48 Hour Short Story Contest

         “It’s my turn to be Viet Cong!”
         “But you got to be Viet Cong last time!”
         Paul stiffened, his eyes darting back and forth over the children playing war in the side yard. His brother, eight, and mine, twelve — neither aware of the stress and gravity of this. Vietnam meant nothing to them besides some faraway fragment of an entirely intangible place where their fathers and brothers were; it conjured no images of blood and Agent Orange, no hatred of communism, no stench of death. I reached a hand across the table and set it gently on Paul’s before he could say anything more. “Not today,” I whispered. “Not today.”
         He didn’t look at me, but he didn’t recoil, either. I knew he wouldn’t move now, not for me, not for this. Instead he looked out over the yard to the other side, pretending he couldn’t hear what our brothers said.
         The sun hung low in the sky. It was hot, even for July, and drier than usual. We heard on the radio the day before that it was raining in Seattle, but the storm never came our way. Instead the heat stretched the day even longer, dragging on and on until the one moment that would matter more than any other.
         “I want to get out.” Paul suddenly jumped out of his chair and stood, stiff and angry, arms crossed as tightly as his knitted eyebrows. “Come on, Laura. Let’s go. Now.”
         “Where?” I asked cautiously, having grown slightly more used to his abrupt impatience in the past few days as today — tonight — approached.
         “God, I don’t care! Any damn place we want!”
         I flicked a worried glance at the kids, but they seemed unaware of his outburst. “Paul, don’t, not in front of—”
         At this, he grabbed me and kissed me, his lips wet and sloppy and hard. His hands shuffled everywhere, from my hips and waist to higher. “I shouldn’t fucking do this either,” he drawled, “but your dad isn’t here to kill me, is he?”
         “Okay,” I breathed, “let’s go.”

         We drove together down the avenue between two opposing rows of identical navy houses. Here was mine, and his across the street; the next street over there were a thousand more. Worried like me. I glanced at Paul in the driver’s seat, but his eyes were dead-set on the road, and he didn’t notice. There was no way that this could happen – no way. Paul had as much interest in war as I did. That was why he’d never joined the Navy in the first place — why he’d broken his family’s tradition. Didn’t they know that? Didn’t anyone?
         We didn’t speak. He drove, and I stared out the window. We passed the headquarters, the school, the baseball fields; we passed three groups of children riding their red and blue Schwinn bicycles through store parking lots; we drove all the way out of Bremerton and onto the bare highway. Maybe everybody else was at home, pretending that today was just like any other day. I wasn’t. I would have died to let it be any day besides today, and for now, I just refused to believe that July 1st had come so quickly.
         As we drove east the trees and hills grew progressively larger. How many times had we gone this way before? How many times would we be able to again? Paul finally turned on the tiny, winding access road that lead away from the highway — away from the world. I felt myself calm almost instantly. In the dark, under the stars, this place was my favorite, but even in the daytime I knew it more intimately than any other.
         Once we had passed a few more miles of deciduous trees and ancient ferns, Paul finally pulled to the side of the road. Without speaking, I followed his lead and got out of the car. Here, hidden away in our favorite place, the trees scraped the sky better than any building ever could, and greenery clawed at elbows, ankles, any uncovered skin. This was where I’d fallen in poison ivy and Paul had tripped in poison oak, where he’d taught me constellations, where he’d screamed and I’d cried when we heard the draft date: July 1st, 1970.
         We trudged up the skinny trail to the waterfall. Paul muttered something under his breath – I couldn’t hear it. I clicked my tongue lightly and sat down on the flat rock just out of reach of the falls. He continued to pace; I leaned over and picked up a stone from underneath a fern leaf. There were caps from beer bottles under there, too, from months before. I crawled to the edge of my stone sofa and skipped the pebble across the surface of the pond the waterfall created. “Look,” I said softly, “four jumps.”
         Paul said nothing, but he stopped his pacing, instead turning to look up at the waterfall. My eyes clouded just watching him. “Why do people think this is okay?” he asked finally, his eyes unwavering from the falls. “Why do they think they can just draw my birthday and I’ll…I’ll be…”
         “I don’t know.” I lay back on my side against the cool ledge. This cruel fate was something I would never understand.
         When he came back to me, his face sang shadows and sweat. I slid an inch to the side, leaving him room to lay beside me, and he did, carefully draping an arm over mine. “It’s the waterfall,” he whispered, wiping away the tears that dribbled down my nose.
         “Just the waterfall,” I lied, closing my eyes. It couldn’t happen. What were the chances of Paul, my Paul, being so unlucky? Surely no one would draft boys born on Christmas Eve.
         “My father,” Paul said slowly, “said that he wouldn’t offer me an out on this.”
         I opened my eyes. “What?”
         “If I get…you know.” He pulled me closer. “He won’t write a letter for me, to get me out. To get me deferred. He won’t do it.”
         Paul’s father, like mine, fought in Korea years before, but now he taught at the naval base. It wasn’t active duty. Paul wasn’t safe. “Why not?” I wondered aloud. “He knows you don’t want to—”
         “It will build character,” Paul intoned, adopting a tone I instantly recognized as his father’s. “Your country needs you.”
         But I need you too. I looked away – it shouldn’t matter, should it, what I need when it comes to America. Hadn’t I always been taught that? Hadn’t my father always told me that? We were battling communism, we were freeing Vietnam, we were saving the world from Russian encroachment. That's what they'd called it in history class, Russian encroachment. America mattered more than my silly teenage love. It was all that mattered. We were right.
         But it wouldn't anyway, I promised myself. His birthday wouldn’t come up. He wouldn’t get drafted.
         “Maybe I should have done better in high school,” Paul mused. “I could have claimed college then, you know. I could have been a teacher’s pet like you—” he smiled ruefully “—and be going to college in September.”
         “Paul, I—”
         “Don’t.” He shook his head and turned away, eyes focused once again on the waterfall. Normally I tuned out its constant roar of cascading water, but today the noise dulled all my other senses, lulling me into complacency. Every so often speckles of white floated through the air, landing as cool pricks on my arms, my cheeks, my nose. I drew closer to Paul, nestling my head on his shoulder. He wouldn’t leave. He wouldn’t be called. I was sure of it.
         “Temperate rainforest,” Paul said softly. “That’s what this is called, isn’t it? That’s different from Vietnam.” I had nothing to say. “But the ferns are the same, and the heat. When the last of them were shipping out in April, that’s what my father was talking about, but how there are bugs and gorillas—”
         “Guerrillas,” I corrected.
         “Guerrillas,” he repeated. “It’s half a world away, but the trees and the plants and the dirt—it’s all the same. Think about it, Laura. No matter where you go, the dirt’s always the same.”
         I didn’t think that was true, but I didn’t want to argue. Not on such a precarious day. Instead I slid off of the rock and crouched beside the largest fern, moving its fronds aside to reveal a year’s worth of bottle caps. “The plants are the same.” I laughed. “You think they hide beer bottles under them, too?”
         “Clearly.” Though he forced a smile for me, his eyes were no different.
         I plopped down on a patch of grass close to the water and pulled off my shoes. “What are you doing?” Paul asked from his perch on the boulder.
         “Nothing.” I stripped off my stockings and dipped my toes in the water, then tugged at my blouse. “It’s hot, and I’m doing nothing. Want to do nothing with me?” I wriggled out of my pants and threw them at him – he had already pulled off his own shoes and was working on his pressed black dress socks.
         “Laura!”
         I cannonballed into the pool of water and giggled at him from the water. “Come on, it’s warm.” Actually, it was freezing. “I bet you can go faster than that.”
         He hurriedly pulled off his shirt and followed me in. “You—”
         “Please,” I whispered. What if it’s the end?

         I ate dinner with my mother and brothers, but at the end of the meal I didn’t clear away the place setting ceremonially laid for my father. What would he have said, if he were here instead of in Saigon? He wouldn’t have waved my fear away like my mother did, wouldn’t have told me I just needed to toughen up. He would have let me be with Paul when they held the drawing instead of insisting I stay at home. He wouldn’t be lecturing me now on watching my brothers when I needed—needed—to see the Congressmen begin.
         When my mother stepped out to get the laundry I flew to the television and twisted on the knob just in time to see the first capsule drawn: July 9th. My cheeks flushed with relief. Paul was okay, temporarily reprieved. A thousand other boys weren’t, of course, everyone with a birthday eight days from now. They weren’t even nineteen yet. How could war demand anything of boys who weren’t even nineteen yet? How could they do anything?
         Paul isn’t nineteen yet, either.
         The next ball came: July 25th. I glanced down at my knuckles, clenched white on the armchair’s blue fabric. More July boys – not Paul. It wouldn’t happen. It couldn’t. They would never—
         December 24th.
         No. No, no, no. I froze in the armchair, waiting for the number to be repeated, willing it to be different. Maybe I’d heard wrong. Maybe he’d misspoken. Maybe they’d said—
         December 24th.
         I tore out of the house. I had to see him, had to know it, had to feel it all one last time. On the porch the warm air bit my bare arms and legs, but there was nothing else there. The lights shone from my house, and from every single house on the block. My mother’s voice calling my name came alternately louder and softer, like she was wandering down the hall and didn’t know where I was. I took two more tentative steps out into the street, the asphalt burning through my thin shoes. It was darker and hotter than it should have been in July.
         A draft. God, a draft. I thought of Paul and all the other boys who'd be sent away by something so arbitrary as their birthdates: boys who never wanted to fight. A draft. I'd expected it for months, dreaded it even longer, but now it was as foreign to me as any inaccessible thing, painfully dark.
         Across the street Paul’s front door swung open, the light inside dwarfing his silhouette. I broke into a run again, anxious and desperate; he strode toward me with hunched shoulders. We were both so suddenly broken.
         I didn’t touch him. I couldn’t. There were tears on my nose but I didn’t think I was the one crying; it didn’t feel like it. All I felt was nothing. I couldn’t cry if there was nothing. I couldn’t…
         “I hate,” he said softly, “how they choose it."
         I gaped at him—that was all he had to say? Everything had stopped, everything was ending, and that was all he had to say? I had to lock my knees to keep from falling, because I didn’t want to waste this, not now—
         “Maybe I’ll have flat feet.” He glanced down the street but there was no one else there. There was no one in the world but us. “Maybe my father will write a letter after all. Maybe there’s still a way to—”
         “Paul—”
         “It’s going to be okay.” He looked down softly. “It’ll be just like you going to college. Like study abroad,” he chuckled, “except I’ll have to shave my mustache.”
         I wanted to speak, wanted to scream at him, wanted to do anything that would get out the explosion inside of me. But my throat closed up, my open mouth silent. Always silent. “It’s going to be okay,” Paul whispered again. “I promise. It’s going to be okay.”
         I shook my head and found my voice. “I don’t believe you.”
         “I know.” He sighed. “I know you don’t believe me. Nobody thinks it’s going to be okay. I mean, God, look at all the protests and the marches, and how except here everybody hates—” He stopped short: he must have known that he was only giving the arguments I’d thought of myself a thousand times. “You don’t believe me,” he began again, “but you don’t have to. I’ll…I’ll be…”
         "Two years, Paul," I whispered. "Two years."
         "I know." Holding me closer, he pointed out a constellation in the eastern sky. “We’ll watch the same stars. In the summer we’ll see Draco, and Scorpius, just like right now. In the winter we’ll see Orion and Ursa. And look.” He pointed out the last one, the one I knew he’d pick. “I’ll be Hercules. Just like that. And I’ll miss you and I’ll hate it and everything will be horrible except when we look up and it’s the same. I’ll be right there, Laura. Hercules.”
         I cried silently. I let him kiss me. I never told him that I knew how Hercules died.


Word Count: 2443
Link: "Constellation"  [13+]