The Man Who Walked Away From War, Part vii

           A couple weeks after receiving the letter from Moreland, I got a letter from Charlene. The platoon was five days in the bush. I was showing Adams the finer points of constructing a fighting position at the NDP when Hunter came by. (Hunter had teamed Adams with me. I tried to teach Adams what I knew about staying alive, but he just wouldn’t listen. Three weeks later, when Adams decided there was no logical reason to stay in column and he stepped away from the rest of us, I made a grab for his web gear, but missed. He stepped on the mine, and the thing blew off his left foot and showered me with fragments of steel and Adams’ foot.)

       “Well, well,” Hunter said as I showed Adams how to position tree limbs atop the sandbag walls so we could lay more sandbags for overhead cover. “Specialist Matthews instructing the FNG.”

       “Trying to,” I said.

       Hunter squatted beside the front wall. “I’ll tell you something, FNG Adams,” he said. “You best listen to Specialist Matthews.”

       Adams dropped a branch across the sandbags. “I don’t see why we’re pulling this defensive shit,” he said. He waved a hand. “How come we’re not out there, finding gooks? That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? To kill gooks?”

       I said, “Why we’re here doesn’t matter. But once you’re here, your job is to go home. Once in a while we have to kill gooks, but that doesn’t alter the main job.”

       Hunter smiled, saying, “I got a letter here. It’s for one of you.”  He tapped the white envelope against his nose. “Smells like it’s from a woman.” He tossed the envelope at me. “Congratulations, Robby.”

       I stared at the envelope, wondering who had written to me. Then I read the return address: Charlene McGruder, Rt. 7, Beaver Falls, Iowa. I almost laughed. Beaver Falls? It wouldn’t do for me to show emotion in front of Adams, so I just placed the envelope to my nose and sniffed. “Yep,” I said. “Smells like a woman.” I grinned at Hunter, then said to Adams, “You finish the position. I’m gonna read my mail, so don’t bother me.”

       There was a tall tree 10 meters behind my position. I walked to the tree and sat down, leaning against the trunk. I turned the envelope several times, wondering what Charlene wrote. She didn’t know anything about me, other than what Moreland had written. Placing the envelope to my nose, I sniffed the scent of home. No, I thought. The scent of Charlene McGruder. Wonder if she wears perfume that smells like this?

       I slid my helmet from my head and took out the pictures of Charlene and Charlotte. Setting the pictures on my thigh, I carefully peeled back the envelope flap.

       There were two pages. I studied Charlene’s writing, not yet reading the words. She wrote with a precise hand, the letters slanted as I remembered examples from school. I took a deep breath and began reading.

       “Dear Robby,

       “Keith said you wouldn’t mind if I wrote to you. I read somewhere that mail from home means a lot. I’ve never written to a soldier before, except to Keith, and that doesn’t really count, because we’ve known each other all our lives. I always wanted a foreign pen pal, and since you’re so far from home and in a foreign country, you will be my foreign pen pal, if that’s OK with you. You’re probably busy and don’t get time to write a lot of letters, but if you do have time, I would like to hear from you.

       “Keith sent me some film and I had it developed. The pictures showed everybody in your squad. Keith sent a letter with the film, and he told me who all the guys were. You look nice. You’re taller than the other guys. I guess you know that. The pictures were nice, all of you horsing around or standing real still for the pictures. Keith said you are from Texas. I’ve never known anybody from Texas, but you look like what I imagined somebody from Texas would look like, tall and like you will get on your horse any minute and ride off into the sunset. Not like in the cowboy movies, though, where the hero kisses his horse and shakes hands with a girl before he rides away.

       “I guess I should tell you something about me. I am five feet seven inches tall and I weigh one hundred twenty-five pounds. Do you think that’s too heavy? I don’t. I think that is the weight I am supposed to have. I guess I am six inches shorter than you are. I have blonde hair and blue eyes.

       “I am a senior in high school (Yes, I am 18) and I will graduate in three months. I don’t know what I will do after graduation, besides work. I have worked at Schultz Pharmacy for two years, since I was 16. I’ve thought about college, but I don’t know if I will go or not. My grades are OK, A’s and B’s, except for that C in chemistry. Iowa State College is 50 miles from here, but I don’t know if I’m ready to leave home. That’s kind of funny, isn’t it. Girls are supposed to think about leaving home as soon as they can. With the GI Bill, will you go to college when you get out of the army? Well, maybe that’s too far in the future to think about.

       “I live on a farm. The place has been in the family since 1850. Our house is OK. It’s 100 years old. My great-great-grandparents built a sod house when they moved here from Ohio. The house has been added to and built over in places. It has two stories and is white. My room is on the second story. I have a corner room, being the oldest of four. I have four windows, and at night I can look out the windows and see the big sky.

       “Daddy grows corn and hogs. We’ve had several good years. I drive a tractor and do other farm work. I have a sister and two brothers. They’re all pains. (I won’t say in what.)”

       I lay the letter aside and picked up the pictures of Charlene and Charlotte, fitting the words of the letter to the face that smiled into a camera. Blonde hair and blue eyes and teeth gleamingly white. And, yes, I remembered what Moreland said when he showed the pictures to me. “They sure fill up those shirts, don’t they.” For a fact, I thought. For a fact.

       There was more in the letter. Charlene played on the Beaver Falls High School girl’s basketball team. That year, she led the team in rebounds. “My shooting has been off this year,” she wrote, “and I’m only third in total baskets.”

        She liked fast cars and rock music. “Keith said Armed Forces Radio plays requests for soldiers, mostly from girlfriends, he said. If you want, tell me which song to request, and I will write to them. Maybe you will hear your song.”

       Then, in the next to the last paragraph, Charlene wrote: “I’ve known Keith all my life, and he sometimes embellishes the truth. I don’t know what he has told you about me. He and Charlotte and I sometimes went out together. I don’t have a boyfriend, so they let me tag along. Charlotte and Keith ... I guess I shouldn’t talk about that.

       “Anyway, please write to me when you have the time. I really want to hear from you.

       “Your friend,

       “Charlene.”

       I read the letter again, then slipped the pages inside the envelope and put the envelope with the pictures. An hour or so of daylight remained. Standing from the tree, I walked back to the hole Adams and I would share for the night.

       Adams sat on the sandbagged roof. He looked up. “About damn time you got back,” he said.

       I smiled. “Adams,” I said, and I shook my head.

       “What?” he demanded.

       “Nothing. Not a thing.” From my ruck I got a pad of lined paper. I walked back to the tree and leaned against the trunk and wrote a letter that began, “Dear Charlene.”

       As I said, that was five months ago. Since then, Charlene wrote at least one letter a week, sometimes two. I wrote back when I had the time. After the fourth or fifth letter from Charlene and we were in from the bush, I went to the PX at base camp and put $500 down on a brand new Camaro Super-Sport, midnight black and a 327-cubic-inch engine. In five days, the Camaro will be waiting for me in San Francisco. Of course, there will be processing to take care of first, paperwork the Army insists on at the Oakland terminal. After all that, I’ll get a taxi and ride to my car.

       There is a lot of country between San Francisco and Texas. I figure about three days’ worth of driving. After a couple or three days at home, I’m heading north, through Oklahoma and Kansas and part of Nebraska. It will be a long trip, but well worth the drive to see a girl who could have been a cheerleader, but decided to play basketball instead.

       And I did write a letter to Moreland. Just a few lines.

       “Moreland.

       “You son of a bitch, you finally did something right.

       “Robby.”