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It began like most flirtations do, Eugene supposes. Maybe a little different. Quieter, more secretive, but similar enough that it couldn’t be mistaken for anything else.
It was Snafu offering a cigarette and calling him ‘Gene’. It was the touch of fingers to backs of hands, to palms, to wrists, to the sweaty small of a back. Eugene learned to know Snafu by the cadence of his breathing, by the way he walks, the way his body bends the darkness on a warm, starless night. Questing hands in the dark and laughter even when laughing is the furthest thing from what you want to do, but it’s either laugh or cry, and God knows you’re too dehydrated to cry. Snafu’s neck is downy where his thick curls give way to skin, and Eugene knows this because it’s his favourite place to touch. Snafu softened for Eugene like he’s never softened for anyone before. Softening up in the same way that the war was hardening Eugene.
Flowers don’t bloom in the torn up mud and shattered rock of the various islands they’ve hopped since setting foot in the Pacific. Eugene thinks it makes what’s unfurling between him and Snafu all the more sweet.
“Cigarette?” Snafu asks, coming up silently from behind Eugene in that catlike way he has. He grins when Eugene jumps, something playful in his eyes as he raises the proffered smoke. “What you doin’?” he asks, after Eugene takes it.
“Journalling,” Eugene says, tilting his face up for Snafu to light his cigarette. With a roll of his eyes, he does it, and Eugene puffs on it to get it going. “Thanks.”
Snafu takes a seat by Eugene’s side, settling in close with a grunt as he leans back on his hands. He’s brown all over from their few weeks of relative relaxation on Pavuvu; Eugene has to drag his eyes from the slick of sweat on his chest with great difficulty. Teasingly, Snafu’s dog tags wink the sunlight back at him as he shifts.
“You write ‘bout me in there?” he asks, face tilted up to catch the sun. Eyes closed, lids flickering. Eugene takes a drag from his cigarette, and swings his gaze back out to the sea, to the bodies bobbing in the surf. He likes to think of this spot as their spot, as teenage as it is. A little overgrown pocket of the beach far enough from both the water’s edge and from camp that they’re rarely disturbed. The palms and low shrubs keep them from being seen from camp, so it’s become their own shady hideaway.
“Gene?” Snafu prompts.
“Sure,” he murmurs, and closes the notebook up, tucks it away in his pocket. “I write about everythin’.”
Snafu slits one pale eye open, mouth curling in a smirk as he says, “Yeah, but you write ‘bout me the most.”
Eugene grins at him, feeling warm and indulgent as Snafu sways closer to him, cheek pressed to one bony shoulder. “Yeah, Snaf, I catalogue every second of your day in here,” he says, and laughs when Snafu bumps against him. “Quit it, everyone’s swimmin’ today.”
Quickly, covertly, Snafu kisses him. They’ve gotten so good at it Eugene thinks Snafu could kiss him in front of their CO and the man wouldn’t bat an eyelid. When he draws away, his smile is huge, and toothy, just as it gets when he’s really pleased with himself. “You wanna swim?” he asks, and Eugene just shrugs.
“I’m happy here,” he murmurs, pushing his bare feet through the hot sand as he glances back out to the sea. It’s calm today, placid; the whole world still as though it’s holding its breath. Even the palms over their heads don’t sway, everything golden and turquoise, some picture-perfect photograph. He wonders if he and Snafu fit well in it. He wonders if they fit well anywhere outside of this pocket of the world they’ve carved out for themselves.
“Alright,” Snafu announces, and flops down onto his back. His chest heaves with a contented sigh, ribcage swelling against his skin. “If you’re happy, I’m happy.”
I’m happy, Eugene thinks. It feels an odd thing to think, balanced on this tightrope of finite peace between campaigns. Pelielu still tugs at him daily; worse in the nights. The heat of the day becomes fetid, the stink of camp turns his stomach, making him sweat and toss and turn on his narrow rack. Every time he closes his eyes, Pelielu is there to find him. Eugene’s eyes burn with tiredness. He feels stupid and lethargic with it, and can see it in Snafu too, even if he’s far too proud to ever admit to something affecting him so. It’s not the meanness, the prickliness; that’s just Snafu. It’s the bruised rings around his eyes, the sight of his sternum through his skin, the ends of his collarbones at his shoulders. Smoking smoking smoking, telling one rough joke after another, but Eugene sees how he looks when he thinks no one’s watching him.
Still, isn’t it a feat to be happy? “If I didn’t have this, I think I’d go mad,” Eugene says, out loud, and trusts Snafu to understand the roil of his thoughts. He’s a surprisingly good read of people. Eugene expects it has a lot to do with how hard of a read Snafu is himself.
“I know,” Snafu murmurs, and his thumb rubs affectionately at the side of Eugene’s thigh.
“Do you ever think about what’ll happen after?” Eugene asks, and turns so he can watch Snafu’s face for any reaction.
It’s perfectly blank. Snafu’s very good at it. So expressionless that he’s almost animated. “Gotta be an ‘after’ first,” he says, and settles his hand over his chest, fingers curling absently in his tags. “Doesn’t pay to get ahead of yourself.”
But what if? Eugene wants to ask him, childishly. But what if! He knows there’s no point. Snafu is always so resolute in his avoidance of the future. He may indulge Eugene in a lot, but he’s yet to indulge him in idle talk of what could be. Still, wouldn’t it be so nice to play pretend?
Instead, Eugene hugs his knees to his chest and watches the sea, watches the bobbing heads of their fellow marines in the water. Snafu dozes quietly by Eugene’s side, hand limp on his chest, brows furrowed even in sleep. The heat and noise from the ocean is making Eugene sleepy, eyelids heavy as he sinks his chin to his knees. Then the wind picks up, and the breeze it brings with it smells briny and fresh. Next to him, Snafu mumbles in his sleep. Eugene imagines waking up next to him, falling asleep next to him, every single night for the rest of their lives. It feels good just as much as it hurts just a little.
Three days later they ship out to Okinawa, Snafu’s fingers clutched tight in Eugene’s fist as the smell of the sea crashes over them.
————
War is one of things which is only complex if you’re not the man fighting in it. Eugene imagines it must give some higher-ups some real goddamn headaches all the time, but not him. No, the worse war gets the more simple it becomes. One foot in front of the other, keep your hands on your rifle, point, shoot, reload. Repeat ad nauseam.
He’s an automaton made flesh. He’s a dog yanked on a chain. He’s his rifle and his rifle is him.
“You’re bleeding,” Snafu says, his eyes the same grey as the landscape, as the sky overhead. When Eugene thinks about that beach and their private little spot on it, the colours in his memory are so bright they hurt. “Genie,” Snafu says, and something that sweet shouldn’t exist here but it does, and that softens the teeth snapping away behind Eugene’s ribcage. “Press this over it.”
He’s handed gauze. His hands dirty it immediately, but he raises it to the wound on his head despite it. Burgie and Snafu are watching him closely, Burgie’s blue eyes like chips of ice in his dirty face. The only colour for miles around. Sometimes war is so easy it’s frightening.
He and Snafu have been fighting since they set foot on this soaked, godforsaken island. Eugene can’t remember what softness felt like. He only knows the slimy give of mud, the tattoo of rain on his helmet. Even the gauze is rough. His feet have been wet for weeks.
“Leave me alone,” he mutters, quietly, and when the words get lost under the thrust of the rain he repeats it, louder. Snafu, who had been fussing at his head, recoils. Eugene watches distantly as his expression shutters, and hardens.
“You ain’t easy to care about,” he spits, eyes wild behind the shadow of his helmet. “You don’t make anythin’ fuckin’ easy, you know?”
“You ain’t one to talk,” Eugene retorts, all the little annoyances bubbling over like a boiling pot left unchecked. His brain is hissing, frothing, blowing everything up so big that it becomes bigger than anything, bigger even than the war. War is easy, war is simple, but of course Eugene had to come and complicate it with … this. Snafu, his huge eyes angry but the line of his mouth hurt, stalking away from Eugene until he’s a vague dark spidery shape through the driving rain. Eugene can’t even remember what it was like to have a closeness with him. Their nights spent in the same muddy hole are a bastardised play compared to what they had before.
Burgie is watching him. Eugene can’t meet his eye.
“I think you and Shelton need to have a talk,” he says, and Eugene just scowls at the horizon.
We can’t, that’s the whole damn problem, he wants to hiss, but knows that Burgie doesn’t deserve it. He can take his frustration out on Snafu because Snafu knows he can do the same with Eugene. Familiarity might breed contempt, but it also breeds understanding, unsaid forgiveness. Snafu will curl his body around Eugene’s in their hole tonight, and neither of them will have to say they’re sorry. Eugene isn’t sure he’d be able to apologise if he tried. For some reason, every single thing out of his mouth in Okinawa seems determined to irritate Snafu, or to hurt him, anger him. He doesn’t know whether the fault lies in his mouth or Snafu’s ears, but somewhere in the air between them the words warp and —
Two days later, they’re back to it.
“I’m sick of you,” Eugene bites out. “I’m sick of your fuckin’ hovering.”
He’s not. He’s not sick of it. So why is he saying so?
Snafu, reeling back, lips curling back from his teeth like a dog. “Don’t speak to me like that.”
And Burgie’s hand, pressing firmly to Eugene’s chest. Forcing them apart. He’s always to be counted on, when Eugene and Snafu find themselves at each other’s throats. It’s as if the war wasn’t bad enough, God had to throw Eugene one more ball to juggle and drop.
“Do you see how you’re bein’ idiots?” Burgie asks, practically shaking them both by the scruff. Snafu and Eugene glower at each other, even as Eugene aches to be so angry at him. It feels unnatural, like a part of himself has been taken out and put back in wrong. Like the wires in his brain have been shifted around, and dug through.
Then Burgie releases them, and the fact that Eugene can’t go to him stings. Snafu’s hazy through the lashing rain, a wraith all made up in tattered dungarees. When Eugene thinks the beach they spent all their days on together, he can barely believe it exists on the same planet that Okinawa does. That’s the balance, he knows Snafu would say. No good without bad. But where’s the good to outweigh all this bad now?
“I’m exhausted,” Eugene murmurs into the space between them. Burgie has left. It’s just them, and the slate-grey sky, and that endless rain. “I don’t know how to tell you how exhausted I am.”
Snafu touches his fingers to the back of Eugene’s hand, and that is more complicated than any war man can dream up. Eugene doesn’t know what to do with all the things he wants to speak aloud, tearing up his throat from how he has to keep swallowing them down. The more I love you the more it hurts.
Snafu’s eyelids dip, like he heard it. The war grinds on.
————
From the very first day Eugene had met Snafu, he’s carried this book with him. Battered, stained, dog-eared to hell and back. How the pages are still clinging to the spine is beyond Eugene; he’s seen the thing melting in the Japanese sun and swollen with rainwater more times than he can count. It’ll probably get a Purple Star at the end of all this, for its service.
“It’s toilet paper,” Snafu had said to Eugene, offhand, months ago when he’d asked after it. Then he’d grinned, that one that’s little more than a baring of teeth. If someone had told the Eugene-of-then that Snafu would be giving him sad, lovesick glances across a foxhole not six months later, he would’ve laughed in their face.
It’s not toilet paper, that’s just Snafu’s way of ending conversations he doesn’t want to be in. It’s an ancient copy of Djuna Barne’s Nightwood, and something that Eugene’s sure Snafu is very precious about, considering how he’s managed to lug the slim volume around through three years of war. Eugene’s never read it. Snafu’s oddly cagey about it, in that way he gets with the few items he can call his own. Like Leyden’s asking to look at his gross Japanese pocketknife he’d stolen because he wants to steal the thing in turn. Though the two of them are very much cut from the same godawful cloth, so maybe Snafu has a point in being wary there.
The book’s important. Eugene has been watching Snafu thumb his way through it over and over for months, hunched up with the book open on his knees, ash spilling on the pages from his cigarette as he smokes and leafs through it. It means that when he thrusts it in front of Eugene’s eyes one impossibly sunny morning in Okinawa, Eugene recoils.
Above him, beyond the swollen, shedding old paperback, Snafu’s eyes are soft stone. The twist of his mouth belies the brusqueness in his tone as he edges the book closer, and says, “C’mon, take it.”
“What?” Eugene asks, even as he takes it. “I ain’t got time for readin’.”
“Just the first chapter,” Snafu says, taking a seat next too Eugene with a grunt. Their shoulders knock together. Snafu’s hands twist restlessly between his knees. “I think you’ll like it.”
“Okay,” Eugene mutters, not understanding. “If it’s that important to you.” He smooths a hand over the curling front cover. “Jesus, Snafu, first thing I’m gonna do is get you a new one’a these.”
Snafu shrugs, chin to his shoulder as he watches Eugene try to straighten the cover. “I like it like that.”
“You sure like a messed up thing,” Eugene agrees, opening the book to the title page. Sweetly, Snafu has scribbled his name there; Merriell Allesandro Shelton, in his heavy hand. Again, like anyone would even take it from him. Eugene huffs at it, amused, and Snafu elbows him in the side.
“You don’t see me laughin’ at your damn tallies.”
“I ain’t laughin’,” Eugene murmurs, gently. When he glances up to meet Snafu’s eyes, they’re curved softly, the rest of his face hidden behind the arm he’d sunk his chin behind. He likes to curl up like that; knees to his chest, arms folded over the top of them, boots crossed over the top of each other. Like he’s holding himself together. Eugene wishes he could kiss him, could ease him from his knot of limbs.
“You gonna read it?” he asks, and Eugene smiles, leans into his side affectionately. The bright morning has him feeling better than he has in a little while. Like his chest isn’t as locked up as tight as it was. Nothing had prepared him for Okinawa; not boot camp, not Peleliu. It feels good to know that as bone-deep exhausted as he is, there’s always hope for these little pockets of goodness.
“I’ll read it,” he says, and tucks the book into his pocket alongside his bible. They sit quietly together for a little while, enjoying each other’s closeness. Eugene wants to apologise for every poisonous thing that’s left his mouth over the last handful of weeks, but doesn’t know how to say it with bored, curious ears nearby.
It starts to rain. Snafu spins his helmet slowly between his knees, having shifted from his knot of limbs to smoke. His hair is growing long again, curling in the misty rain. Eugene can feel the warmth of his skin through two layers of clothes, and it makes his heart squeeze with affection. Hotheaded, hotblooded. Tame, for now. If they were on their beach, Eugene would be leaning close to him, and asking, how come you always settle down for me, huh…
“Gotta smoke?”
Eugene jerks out of his reverie. Leyden, his big mouth in tow. Next to Eugene, Snafu perks up.
“Not for you, ya freeloadin’ bastard,” he quips, a smile tugging at his mouth. Eugene slumps back against the rocks he and Snafu are sat against, and knocks his helmet down over his eyes.
Leyden laughs, that bark of a laugh. “Was up to a different kinda freeloadin’ last night with your mama, Snaf —”
Snafu drops his helmet in his lunge to slap at Leyden’s head. “You asshole.”
The day shifts. Eugene spends it wondering when the next fleeting moment of alone time with Snafu will come.
The nature of war is to keep you just unhappy and uncomfortable enough that you will lash out and blame your fellow man, but not so much that you’ll desert, or die. Half of this is engineered by your bastard CO and the chain of bastards above him, and the other half seemingly by God Himself.
The forces keeping Snafu and Eugene from each other seem to fall into the latter.
After a week of people interrupting whatever tiny moment of calm they’re able to carve out of the day, Eugene finally starts in on Nightwood. It’s some last ditch attempt at feeling a sort of closeness to Snafu, since every other attempt has been thwarted before they’ve even begun.
They’re fresh from slogging through miles of mud, and Eugene’s calves are aching, his thighs burning. He feels cranky and dirty, exhausted, hungry. Every negative emotion under the sun, it feels like. He’s tired of it. Tired of being filthy, tired of the stink of churned up mud and dead bodies, shit and blood and rot. Sometimes he just wants to sink his nails down his cheeks and scream with how tired he is of it. And even worse, he knows the skies will be lit up bright with the barrage aimed right at their heads tonight, just as it is every other night. Some sort of twisted Fourth of July firework show, the fire hazy through the sheets of rain, his fellow men ghoulish and grotesque; hunched faceless figures in the darkness. Eyes glowing beyond the shadows of helmets, the wind whipping at their ponchos and making hunchbacks of their packs.
So when they stop, he smokes a cigarette, and he reads. His fingers make dirty smears on the pages. Snafu’s have done the same.
“I was wonderin’ when you’d get to it.” Snafu’s voice comes from above. Eugene barely glances up. “Gene? I got coffee?”
“Alright, sit down,” Eugene says, and burns his fingertips on the hot canteen-turned-cup as he takes it from Snafu. He’s absorbed in the book; it’s not really his sort of thing, but anything is welcome if he gets his mind off their surroundings. He can’t remember the last time he read a book, and is fairly surprised to find his brain still works at all beyond what’s necessary for marching, not-sleeping, and killing.
The light is fading fast, softening out to a paper-thin grey as Snafu sighs, and settles his shoulder against Eugene’s. “Do you like it?”
“Only read a few pages yet,” Eugene replies, and Snafu hums, leans back on his palms. When Eugene glances at him, his eyes are closed, face smoothed out and tipped up towards the sullen sky above them. Like a cat basking in a sun that isn’t even shining. Eugene’s heart pulses in his chest. “How d’you look so handsome even covered in shit?” he breathes, and the corner of Snafu’s mouth curls.
The book is a short one, which means that Eugene’s savouring every page as the escapism it is. Reading it with such a fine tooth comb that when he comes to the end of chapter one, the sight of handwritten text barely makes him pause. The prose itself is disjointed, borderline baffling, rewarding to read only in its difficulty; wouldn’t it make sense that Barnes might do the same with the layout too?
But then Eugene reads, maybe we can speak here, and looks to Snafu so quickly he upsets the ring of water that’s settled in the lip of his helmet from the earlier shower of rain. It trickles cold down past his collar, making Eugene hunch his shoulders as he searches Snafu’s face. It’s still, expressionless. Eugene skips from the soft wedge of Snafu’s nose to the fullness of his mouth, the scruff darkening his jaw. He wants to laugh, wants to grab Snafu by his shoulders and give him a shake for being so smart.
A group of men tramp by, the mud sucking and kissing at their boots as they go. Chatter of voices, the smell of cigarette smoke and dirty bodies. Eugene puts his nose back into the book, and finishes reading Snafu’s short note.
I can’t sleep at night knowing you’re awake next to me. I think I know why you’re angry so much but it took me a long time to work it out because I was angry too. maybe we can speak here. it’s not the same, but I ain’t good with speaking what I feel so maybe it’ll be what you need. the beach can wait, but it doesn’t mean we can.
Eugene reads it over twice, heart ripe and dripping in his chest as he lingers over the round, deliberate letters, the way Snafu had pressed so hard with his pencil that he’d dented the page beyond. And to think, just as he was beginning to understand Snafu’s avoidance of the future. The ebbs and flows of the man’s moods are a mystery. It’s a sweet, deeply intuitive gesture, and one that Eugene guiltily thinks he’d never have expected from Snafu. His pencil is out before Eugene can think about what he wants to write; scoring a thick line under Snafu’s note before beginning to scrawl his own. Writing quick, the words and feelings he hasn’t been able to say or express piling up behind his eyes, pushing against his skull for a chance to be let out. The pencil scratches over the paper, inaudible to anyone but the two of them, covered over with the cacophony of war.
At his side, Snafu snorts. When Eugene throws him a glance, he’s smiling, eyes still closed. A few minutes later, Eugene nudges the book towards Snafu, who takes it. Their fingers brush. Something about it feels so illicit and secret that Eugene can’t help but grin. Snafu mirrors him, that wide, toothy grin that Eugene loves so much.
“Good read?” he murmurs, tucking the book back away. Eugene nods, silently. Snafu’s smile grows.
———
It becomes their secret, their game. Passing notes back and forth like teenagers. Half of Eugene is sure they’re gonna get caught for how conspicuous it must be, whereas the other half of him is sure it’s the perfect crime. All around them, men are swapping things back and forth. A tattered old paperback is sure not to draw any attention. If anyone glanced at them and saw Eugene’s head bent over the book, writing, he’s sure they’d take it for a bout of impassioned book study. After all, the alternative — the truth — is rarely anyone’s first guess.
He thinks it’d be hard to stop doing it even if people did grow suspicious. It’s a rare little light in their long days of unpleasantness. As soon as Snafu offers him the thing, smile hitched behind his cigarette and eyes lazy and indulgent, Eugene’s day brightens. Snafu is strangely eloquent, on paper. It means that Eugene is getting to see a new side of him, getting to understand one of the many facets that Snafu seems to be made up from. Every time Eugene thinks he has Snafu figured, he lets something else slip. In writing he’s measured, thoughtful, if a little acerbic. Filling the blank spaces that linger after a chapter ends, and then when those are exhausted, scrawling notes over cover pages, the few blank sheets in the back, and then they’re both turning to the margins, to the breaks between lines, to —
“I think we need to source a new book,” Eugene mutters. Snafu, who is marching next to him, grunts. The war is gripping them tighter than ever, and Snafu has been getting quieter and quieter. Eugene glances at him, takes in the hollows around his eyes, the ever-present cigarette between his teeth. Snafu, Eugene realises, has been at this a long time. “Are you okay?” he asks, and Snafu’s eyes slide to meet his own. There’s little behind them.
“The sooner we get off the island, the better I’ll be,” he says, turning his eyes frontward again. Eugene does the same. Eyes to the back of the man in front, the lot of them moving through the island like an endless dun-brown snake, shedding scales in the form of men in its wake.
Hamm died two days ago. Nightwood had been filled up a day before that. Eugene wishes he could crack the nut of Snafu’s head just to know what’s going on in there.
Books are few and far between in a place like Okinawa. It hurts, to sink back down into the distance that their scratchings in Nightwood had bridged. Burgie seems to notice it too; the fact that Snafu is more sullen and withdrawn than ever. Quick to bite. Eugene feels the same. Mean and hard-edged and so unlike himself that he doesn’t know how to fix it.
“How’re you the same person you were when you came here?” Eugene asks Burgie, one idle, bright afternoon. The COs are in good spirits; Eugene has been hearing mutters of the end of war all over for a week now. He’ll believe it when he sees it. Okinawa has chewed him up and spat him out a wary, mistrustful shade of himself.
Burgie gives him a strange look. “You mean to tell me you ain’t?”
Eugene shrugs. “Don’t feel much like myself.”
Snafu is six feet away, smoke making a cloud around his head in the still air. Eugene can tell he’s listening. There’s something in the deliberate way he’s got his head turned away that gives him up. Burgie snorts, and draws Eugene’s attention away from Snafu’s bony wrists, back to the conversation at hand.
“You’re still you,” Burgie mutters, in that sure, brusque way he has. Strangely, it makes Eugene feel a little better. Burgie always makes everything sound so goddamn sensible. “You’re tired, hungry, sore. That ain’t enough to change you.” He pokes Eugene in the chest. “See? Still all one-forty pounds of skinny Southern meat. Just like you were when you got here, when me and Snaf ran you outta our tent.”
“Think I’m a little skinnier these days,” Eugene says, and snorts, rubbing at the middle of his chest where Burgie had poked him. “How come you make me wanna believe everythin’ you say, huh?”
Burgie huffs, a smile playing around his mouth as he ducks the end of his smoke into the flame that springs from his lighter. He puffs on it, the cherry flaring. “‘Cause I’m right, and you know that.”
Eugene smiles into his lap, passing his thumb over the face of his ring until the jet catches the sun cleanly. “Maybe deep down,” he mutters, and snorts when Burgie nudges at him, playfully.
From his spot a metre away, Snafu stubs his cigarette out into the ground below. The line of his shoulders is slumped, cheek pressed to his shoulder so all Eugene can see is the gentle rise and fall of his profile, the overlong crop of his curls.
“Are you tired too?” he asks Burgie, and watches as Snafu’s eyes close.
Burgie hums. After a moment, he speaks, voice so surprisingly small that Eugene tears his eyes from Snafu to look. “I’m tired,” Burgie says. His thumbnail worries at the palm of his other hand. “I’m so tired I know sleep ain’t even the fix for it.”
“What’s the fix?” Eugene asks, numbly.
Burgie shrugs, and when he lifts his head to stare off into the distance, Eugene notices for the first time the exhaustion steeped into every line of face. His red-rimmed eyes, the tightness around his mouth. “Goin’ home. Seeing Florence, seeing my parents, my siblings, my nephew.” He waves a hand, ash from his cigarette fluttering to the ground. “Bein’ back with the people I love.” Then he throws Eugene a wry glance, smile curling the edge of his mouth. “No offence.”
A week later, the war ends. And Snafu comes to Eugene with a bottle of bottom-shelf whiskey, and a cheap pulp novel, Burgie in tow.
“You never struck me as much of a pulp fiction reader, Gene,” Burgie says, watching as Snafu hands the paperback off before taking a seat a few feet away. “Where’d you even get that, Snaf?”
Eugene is curious too. He flips the book over, and frowns amusedly at the cover. A muscled, shaven-headed man scowls up between the creasing and water-staining of an obviously well-handed-around book; Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life.
“Begged, bartered, et cetera,” Snafu quips, and then tears the cork from the whiskey with his teeth. “Now, you wanna talk, or you wanna celebrate?”
There’s a viciousness to the celebrating. Like it’s less of a celebration and more of a sprint to drunkenness, to the beginnings of forgetting. Eugene lies with his boots in Snafu’s lap, a cigarette hanging from his mouth as he flicks through the pulp novel. Holding it close to his face so he can make out the pencil markings of Snafu’s handwriting in the darkness. His mouth is thick with the taste of whiskey. Absently, he notes that Burgie and Snafu are talking; some long, drunken, meandering conversation he hasn’t been keeping up with.
The pages of the book are thin, each one dog-eared as though it’s passed through every single hand in the company. Eugene wonders if whoever Snafu had tricked this book out of knows they won’t be getting it back.
By the light of the moon, he reads, I missed you. He reads, I think I’ve forgotten how to speak. He reads, Do you think we’re the fix for each other?
———
The weeks pass by quickly, now that Snafu has tapped into the well of pulp novels and dirty dime store books circulating throughout the ranks. They shift from Okinawa back to Pavuvu, briefly, where Snafu steals from Leckie’s makeshift library while Eugene keeps watch, and they finally get to kiss on their beach before getting shipped off to China. The uncertainty makes it all interminable. Burgie can’t stop complaining about how his cousins are already home; how it’s just their luck that they’d get stuck with clean-up in a whole other country. Eugene’s secretly pleased that he’s got a little more time with Snafu, but hasn’t said it out loud yet. It brings up the topic of After, of The Future, and both of which are topics that Snafu still takes great pains to sidestep.
Eugene writes, do you see us knowing each other ten years from now? on the inside cover of a dirty book Snafu had gotten from Leyden. He flicks the cover over to look at the woman, impossibly large-chested and forever swooning in the arms of her handsome, long-haired man. Snafu’s watching from nearby, bundled up between his hat and the high collar of the woollen coats they’ve taken to wearing as the temperature in Peking has dropped. Pale eyes wicked as he extends a gloved hand to take the book from Eugene.
“You thinkin’ ‘bout changin’ your mind?” he asks, and when Eugene just frowns at him, he shows him the cover. “Switchin’ sides? You wanna be the big tough man?”
“Like you ain’t the damsel already,” Eugene counters with.
Snafu grins, shows him all his teeth. “You’d like that.”
Later, Snafu slips him his reply. i think i’ll fuck it up before then. And, as if to negate the seriousness of his response, he’s drawn a crude rendition of himself swooning in the arms of someone who must be Eugene, judging by the nose. Underneath, he’s written, let’s not talk ten years. lets just talk ten months, huh?
so talk, Eugene scribbles under it.
Snafu is cleaning his fingernails with the blade of his penknife when Eugene lets the book drop onto his bunk, and he barely glances up. Cigarette wobbling in his mouth, he mutters, “Burg was lookin’ for you.”
Eugene groans. “Did I get put on night watch again?”
Snafu winks at him, carving a disgusting half-moon of grime from under his thumbnail. He’s been brighter, since the war ended. On weekends they get passes to go drinking in the city, and there’s something in Snafu’s new settled mood that gives him the bravery to sling his arm around Eugene’s neck when he’s drunk. They haven’t yet carved out a place in Peking like they did in Pavuvu, but Eugene thinks they might be on their way.
The city is freezing, when the sun drops. Eugene and and Burgie pace briskly around the cobbled streets, smoking cigarettes and taking nips from a flask to keep them warm and awake. Their breaths fog behind them, more smoke than air.
“You and Snafu,” Burgie says, and then stops. The world is silent but for their footsteps, their breathing. Only Eugene is holding his breath now; his lungs squeezed tight with sudden fear. “You know, I’ve known him a long time,” he adds, finally.
“Okay,” Eugene replies.
Burgie clears his throat. “He likes his flights of fancy.”
Eugene says, “Okay.”
Burgie nods. “Alright.”
The rest of the watch passes with nothing to note. When Eugene wakes later in the day, it’s to find the seedy romance novel at the foot of his rack, and Snafu nowhere to be found.
He reads it while brushing his teeth, stood chilly in the communal bathrooms as he listens to someone shower. shit scares me, Snafu writes. i want everything i can’t have. part of me is glad we’ve been made to stay away from home a little longer, just so i get more time with you that i don’t have to worry about. ain’t that bad? burgie’s damn near driving himself mad from not being with his family. the only person i wanna be around is you. but how would it work?
Eugene spits into the sink. From behind him, someone says, “Hey, I read that one. The ending’s not what you’re gonna think it’ll be.”
Later, Eugene writes, we could make it work. if we can’t make it work now, we can’t ever. come to mobile. i’ll come to new orleans. whatever it takes.
They carve out a spot in Peking; the barracks in the middle of the day, when they’re both somehow idle. Eugene breathes fast and rough into Snafu’s nape, inside of him for the first time in months. Afterwards, Snafu kisses him slow and languid, like they have all the time in the world.
The book gets filled up. Snafu takes that one and the rest with him when he leaves Eugene sleeping alone on that train, a handful of weeks later.
————
“Eugene,” his mother says, brows pulled down in concern as she lingers in the doorway. “Is there really nothing I can get you to eat?”
Even with the blinds closed, sunlight still pushes into the room. Eugene’s eyes follow the dusty beams of it; strong at first, then dissipating into nothing. In the afternoons, it’s deep orange, and catches in the mirror on his dresser. In the mornings, it’s grey, and reminds him of war.
“No,” he croaks, and rolls over so he doesn’t have to see the light. The bed creaks under him. “No thanks, Mom.”
She doesn’t say anything else, but Eugene knows she’s still there. Can feel her presence at his back. It’s one of those strange new senses that the war has left him with. Sometimes he feels like a raw, open nerve, sensitive to everything around him. Sometimes he feels like nothing at all.
“Well, if you get hungry…” she trails off. Eugene listens to her fingernails tap against the doorframe. “Tell me. Or tell Rose, she’ll cook you up something better than I could.”
Eugene presses his face into his pillow. “Sure, Mom.”
She leaves. Eugene relaxes against the mattress. He can hear her going downstairs, can hear the muffled conversation she has with Eugene’s father at the bottom, his gruff reply. They don’t like him closing his bedroom door anymore. Eugene doesn’t know what they think he’s gonna do behind a closed bedroom door that he wouldn’t be able to do behind a closed bathroom door, but doesn’t want to ask. It’d give them ideas. He doesn’t think either he or Nella, their housekeeper, would recover if they started forcing him to shower with the door open.
Outside the window, a bird is singing. A sweet, warbling song. Eugene pulls his covers over his head.
It’s been one month since Eugene returned home. He remembers little of the whole thing; remembers Sid picking him up at the station, remembers his mom making such a grand, indulgent dinner that he’d vomited afterwards. Remembers sitting with his brother on the porch and getting drunk as an idiot for a long string of nights. And then the nightmares. Since then, Eugene has mostly kept to his bedroom.
How is it fair that he’s more haunted by the war now that he’s clear of it, rather than when he was sunk down into it? Eugene wanders the house at odd hours now, like some strange sleepless ghost. The porch is his most frequent haunt, and it’s where his mom finds him most mornings, asleep and wet with dew from passing out on the furniture out there.
“Oh, Eugene,” she always says, when she finds him. “You’re gonna catch your death one of these nights.”
He doesn’t know how to tell her how he’s more comfortable sleeping outside without sounding mad. He likes the ambivalence of the night sky overhead. He likes the smell of Mobile blooming in the summertime in his nose. He likes to watch the dawn rise up from the horizon, and swallow the night whole.
His brother cajoles Eugene out of bed a couple hours later. Edward is a little more forceful than their mom; just comes into the room, grabs Eugene by the foot sticking out from his covers, and yanks.
“Jesus, Ed!” Eugene catches himself on the edge of the bed before his head can make contact with the ground, and glares at his brother, who is still holding him by the ankle. Eugene shakes him off. “You asshole.”
Edward ignores him. “C’mon, Rose made pancakes, then we’re gonna go for a walk.”
Eugene gathers himself up, straightening his pyjama shirt that’d come askew in his trip out of bed. “I don’t wanna go for a walk.”
“Tough,” Edward says, and begins rifling through Eugene’s dresser for some pants, a t-shirt. “Your legs are gonna atrophy if you lie around feelin’ sorry for yourself any longer. Mom thinks you’re about to off yourself.”
Eugene catches the balled-up clothes that Edward tosses him. “I ain’t feelin’ sorry for myself,” he mutters. Edward crosses his arms, and leans up against Eugene’s desk.
“Oh yeah? Then come eat breakfast, and go for a walk then.”
Again, Eugene doesn’t even know where to begin to put words to how he feels. If only he could write it down — but that stings too. Everything stings, every-fucking-thing hurts. He glares at Edward. Edward glances at his watch.
After a moment, Eugene begins dressing himself.
They eat, then take the trail into the woods that starts near the house, the river running along beside them. Eugene keeps his head down, hands in his pockets. Edward is quiet; offering up the odd comment but leaving Eugene to his silence for the most part. It’s one of the things Edward does best, besides being the better Sledge child, and probably half the reason he’s such a good doctor. Sure, he’ll pull Eugene bodily out of his bed and into the sunlight, but he’ll leave him alone and not nudge and prod him once he’s done it. He gets it from their dad. Eugene gets his neurotic need to push and prod from their mom.
The world is cool and quiet once they leave the track behind, the thick trees overhead keeping the sun from them. It dapples the forest floor, everything smelling lush and green and teeming with life. The only sounds the singing of birds, the crunch of their feet through the undergrowth. He and Edward used to spend entire days in these woods when they were children; Rose would pack them some sandwiches, and they’d disappear until dinnertime. Edward always liked to go fishing at the creek the woods spits you out at, and Eugene always liked to watch the birds. He hasn’t thought about it in years.
“Remember the games we used to play down here?” he asks, and Edward laughs.
“I remember the games you were always buggin’ me to play.” He falls silent, and when Eugene glances at him, he’s smiling at the middle distance, eyes faraway. “Ain’t it funny, how much all those silly things mattered back then?”
Eugene snorts, and nods. “Wish I could go back to when the biggest problem in my life was Rose making sandwiches with Mom’s horrible grape jelly.”
“The year she got into canning was a dark one,” Edward agrees, and they laugh, and lapse into silence.
Slowly, Eugene feels the knot in his chest unwind. It’s been with him since he’d woken up alone on that train, maybe forty minutes out from New Orleans and barrelling towards Alabama with no idea of the pain one of its passengers was in. At first he’d thought it wasn’t real. Had half-woken to find no Snafu, and had assumed he’d gone to the dining car, the bathroom, gone to chase tail for a laugh. But twenty minutes had stretched to an hour, to a whole afternoon, and before he knew it Eugene was alighting in Mobile and getting spun into a bone-crushing hug by Sid.
Eugene knows his emotions had been slapped all over his face. Sid, because he’s a good person, did his best to ignore it.
It’s like the universe had decided that it wasn’t enough to stick him with months-delayed nightmares and a kind of lethargy that clings him to his bed for days on end. It had to open his chest out and dig up everything that would’ve made all that better, and throw it to the birds. Eugene can’t think about Snafu without feeling physically nauseous. It’s like their disconnect on Okinawa magnified by a thousand, layered over with confusing feelings of guilt and anger and blame. Sometimes Eugene is glad that Snafu had taken those books all full of their feelings, their flirtations, their hopes and wants. Sometimes all he wants to do is self-torment by sitting down and reading them, trying to figure out when it all went wrong.
The worst part of it all is that there was no warning. Snafu had kissed him slow and heavy in the bathroom of that damn train, just hours before he left, and now Eugene can’t think about it without seeing it for the goodbye it must’ve been. He’d just been too stupid and love-drunk to know it then.
It hurts. Eugene looks to Edward, who has none of that sallow, haunted air that Eugene knows he himself does. It can’t all be because of Snafu. Is Eugene just uniquely sensitive?
Edward catches his eye, the trees overhead throwing mottled shadows onto his face, onto his hair. “What’s on your mind?” he asks, and Eugene glances away, back to the path they’re strolling down. It disappears as the path bends, a tunnel of green cut short. He sighs, and digs his cigarettes from his pockets.
“Why do you think it affected me more than you?” Eugene asks, and hopes his brother will understand what he’s talking about.
Edward seems to mull it over for a minute, as Eugene strikes a match and gets his cigarette lit. The smell of smoke mingles pleasantly with the smell of the warm day, of the greenery around them. Achingly, it reminds Eugene of Pavuvu, almost. His fingers twitch for the worn, marked-up pages of all those old books.
“I’ve been home six months longer than you,” Edward settles on, the two of them walking slower now. “But I felt it when I got back, Gene. I was like you.” Edward slides him a sidelong look. “You ain’t been back long, you know.”
Eugene grumbles. “So why does Mom expect me to be back to normal?”
“Everyone goes at their own pace,” Edward says, and shrugs. “I guess she expected me and you to have similar ones.”
“Well,” Eugene says, after a beat. “What’s the secret to it?”
Edward shoots him a curious look. Over their heads, a bird trills. “What do you mean?”
Eugene shrugs one shoulder. “I feel like I’ve been standin’ still, like I ain’t even got a pace to go at.”
The forest echoes Edward’s laughter back at them. “Hell if I know, Gene. Small steps, I guess.”
Later that night, when Eugene is doing his usual insomniac loop of the house, he fetches up against the fridge. Light floods the dark kitchen as he opens it, eyes scanning the contents. For the very first time in a while, hunger is curling in his stomach. He’s dropped weight since he got home; hadn’t had much left to lose after the war got rid of his baby fat. Everything had been too rich at first, and then afterwards it just kept continuing to turn his stomach. But now, bare chest goose-pimpling from the chill of the fridge, Eugene feels like a starving man who’s just seen food again after years.
In the darkness, he eats two slices of Rose’s famous blueberry pie, washes it down with a Cola he’d found rattling around in the door of the fridge. He feels ravenous. Body acting on impulse as he yanks the fridge open again, hands going the bowl of chicken salad his mom always makes up for when his dad comes in late for work. Bread from the box, just on the alright side of stale; Eugene eats it all. He hasn’t felt so hungry since boot camp, when they were running miles for PT and not getting fed enough.
Slowly, he eats a giant bowl of ice cream on the porch as he watches the sun rise over the trees. Then, a cigarette, and once he’s done Eugene goes upstairs, and sleeps in his bed for the first time in weeks.
——
After that night, Eugene seems to find his pace. It’s a slow one, and a stumbling one, sending him looping back on himself and falling on his ass more times than he can count — but he’s moving. It’s something.
His mom smiles more now. He sits and eats breakfast with her in the mornings. He’s gaining weight. Most nights, Eugene sleeps in his bed, even if the nightmares do still find him there. Forcibly, he makes himself think of Snafu. Makes himself remember the way the sunlight used to look on his skin, the way his smile looked when he was really amused by something, and not just pretending. Those pale, heavy-lidded eyes — the way he looked at Eugene. As real as the war.
“Do you think it’s better to have had something really good, even if it was just for a little while?” he asks Sid, one afternoon they spend together fishing. Or rather, Sid’s fishing. Eugene had lost his taste for any kind of hunting a long time ago.
Sid hums thoughtfully. “Maybe.” Then his eyes flick curiously to Eugene’s. “Hey, what, you had somebody?”
Eager to avoid another recount of the girl in Australia who’d stolen both Sid’s virginity and his heart, Eugene shakes his head, quickly. “No, no.” He swallows, glances out across the stream. The sunlight catches it just so; leaving the ripples golden under its touch. “Just read a book, got me thinkin’.”
Sid shakes his head. “You and your books. We’ll get you a date soon, Gene.” He laughs, and tugs on his line. “I’m making it my responsibility.”
Please, don’t, Eugene thinks, internally. He’s already fielded his mom’s picks, he doesn’t think he has the strength to keep this forward momentum going and keep Sid’s attempts at fixing his love life at bay. It’s a struggle enough to keep to his bed after a nightmare, and not go roaming the house, smoking the night away on the porch. Eugene doesn’t want to so much as think about romance; not now, maybe not ever. The whole business with Snafu wasn’t just bad for his betrayal — though that was bad enough. No, the worst part of it all was that he opened Eugene up to what could be, how good it felt to live even a secretive authentic life. Now that Eugene’s been shown all that, he doesn’t think he could go back to pretending if he tried.
Snafu’s been on his mind a lot lately. Partly due to Eugene’s own silent exposure therapy, partly due to his own subconscious mind. He’s dreaming a lot. Dreaming of Snafu. The fact that Eugene can’t work out whether these dreams are worse than the ones in which he dies is a testament to how hung up on Snafu he still is.
Eugene wonders if he’ll ever get over Snafu, or whether he’ll spend the rest of his life chasing what he could’ve had.
Despite his stuttering progress, the year turns. The world has a pace to keep just as Eugene does. Eugene gets to experience fall in Alabama again for the first time in years. Edward’s wife has a little baby girl. Eugene quits smoking, for a time, and then picks it back up again once Sid and his mom start to conspire together about finding him a girl. He still gets nightmares, but they’re more spread out than they were, and no longer have him waking himself up with his own panicked shouting. Christmas comes, then New Year, and Eugene kisses a very pretty girl he used to go to high school with when the hour turns past midnight, and doesn’t feel a thing.
He wonders if ’46 will be the new leaf he’s hoping for, and then in the same breath, wonders how Snafu is celebrating the end of the year.
February brings with it Eugene’s old nightmares, the waking-self-up-yelling nightmares. The lethargy, too. He sits in bed for whole days, cheek pressed to the sill of the window above his headboard, listening to the bird out there sing. It’s a bluejay; a vivid little pop of colour against the backdrop of a late-winter Alabama. Eugene’s mom makes him keep the bedroom door open again. He loses weight, again.
“What’s making you unhappy?” she asks, sat on the end of his bed with her hands in knots in her lap. “What can I do to help you?”
All Eugene can say is I don’t know, I don’t know, over and over until he’s hoarse from it.
Sid visits, drags him out to watch him fish. The sight of the trout flopping and gasping on dry land turns Eugene’s stomach, and shamefully, he cries. Sat on his ass on the riverbank, crying into his hands like a child. Sid pats his back, and rocks him. Murmurs, I’m sorry, Gene, I’m really sorry, until Eugene’s tears stop.
No more fishing. Double the walks, the forced marches. Edward brings his daughter to visit; the baby fat and happy and grabbing at Eugene’s t-shirt when Edward passes her off to him. Eugene’s so afraid to drop her that he sits her on his chest to bounce her, reclined back on the bench he used to spend nights sleeping on, almost a year ago. They’re sat out on the porch to enjoy the first couple warm days of spring; Mobile opening up and blooming all around. Rose had made lemon madeleines. Edward drinks a coffee, and talks about work. When Eugene falls asleep, nobody says a word; they just drop their conversation quieter, and watch him and the baby nap.
It’s not long after this that Eugene receives the package.
His mom brings it upstairs to him one morning, depositing it on the end of his bed with an exaggerated huff. Eugene, who is sat gathered against his headboard, sketching the bluejay on an old legal pad he’d exhumed from his dad’s study, laughs.
“Can’t be that heavy,” he comments.
“Pretty heavy,” she says, and lingers. Her hand touches his shoulder, and he angles the pad so she can see the drawing better. “That’s lovely, Gene. Really lovely.”
He angles the pad away. Keeps sketching. His mom leaves him to it.
Eugene doesn’t get to the package for the rest of the afternoon. Once he’s done drawing, he showers, lets Rose cook him up some potato hash for him to pick over. The lethargy is ebbing. The days have been getting longer lately, which is a good sign. When Eugene is deep into the exhaustion, days pass like minutes. He feels like he barely lifts his head off the pillow before it’s time to lay it back down again. No doubt he’ll have another frenzied kitchen clear-out soon. For now, Eugene busies himself with a smoke on the porch, and then comes back inside to wash his dish, and head back upstairs.
He assumes the package is from Burgie, who he’s been writing back and forth with for a few months now; exchanging news about their lives, talking about the war sometimes. So when Eugene picks the package up, he looks it over curiously. He can’t imagine what Burgie would have sent him, because his mom hadn’t been kidding, the box has a real heft to it that Eugene can’t work out. And it’s bruised, heavily stamped, like it’s been knocking around in transit for a long time. Carelessly, Eugene glances at the return label, and when he sees the handwriting his blood runs cold.
Unmistakeable. The same handwriting that had spelled out half of the hopeful little history tucked away in all those books Snafu had taken with him when he’d left. Eugene swallows thickly against the sudden dryness in his mouth, and takes a seat on his bed as his knees wobble. Emotions keep washing over him in waves, some so quick that he can’t even glance at them to work out what they are. Fear. Anticipation. Anger. He edges his fingernails under the packing tape, ripping at it so quickly the box tears. Eugene can’t help thinking that it should smell like him — like cigarettes, like the crown of his head, like the soap he liked to use — but then he works the last of the tape free and opens it, and his mind settles into a comfortable nothingness.
It’s not the same nothingness as the last few weeks. Not even the nothingness that had clung to him after Eugene had returned home. No, this is —
“Gene,” his mom calls up the stairs. “Did you eat?”
“Yes!” he calls back, trying not to let his emotions come through in his voice. There’s a beat of silence, and then he hears the creak of the entryway, Rose’s voice over his mom’s. He sighs, and sets the box next to him on the bed.
This nothingness is calm. It’s the rush of waves lapping against the shore. It’s the sun overhead so hot that all you can do is be quiet, and still. It’s the moment after you cheat death. The warm, gooey second after you wake up, before the world is real.
Eugene pulls the contents from the box, then knocks it to the floor. Books. Their books, in all their cheap, ragged glory. Eugene’s breath is short in his chest as he lays them all out, looking flimsy and dirty against his clean sheets. There’s more than he remembers. The cardboard box had been packed to the gills with paperbacks.
Once done, Eugene steps back to survey them. His heart is fluttering in his chest. The bluejay is singing again, carried on the breeze that stirs his curtains, stirs the air. In his small room, the books seem to pulse with life. Is this how it feels, to unearth an ancient tomb? Eugene itches to open one, to read it, but knows that if he does he wouldn’t be able to keep from reading them all.
His heart is hammering so hard he can feel it when he lays his palm over his chest. The movement makes him shift, and with that his eyes catch on a gleam that stands out amongst the dull, worn covers that blanket his bed. The sunlight, glancing off a shiny cover — new, untouched. Nightwood. Eugene snatches it up before he can register the urge to.
Inside, four words. Can we try again?