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Chuck likes working in a little tobacco shop.
Specifically, he likes working in a tobacco shop that he owns.
For one, that means that the layout never changes, that there are no arbitrary rules or habits set by some boss that he’ll try to remember but end up breaking or forgetting because that’s just—how his brain works now. It’s a familiar routine, selling cigarettes and tobacco. There’s not much variety in it. If he were still a boy, he’d look at himself and call it boring, but Chuck as a five-year-old is no longer the same as Chuck forty years later. Now, he’s thankful for the fact that if someone comes in asking for two packets of Lucky Strikes, he knows exactly which drawer to open to find them. And if he forgets, there’s that map he drew up with his wife when they set up shop in the first place, that hasn’t changed in five years because he doesn’t want it to, and he can do that, because it’s his shop and he makes the rules.
For two, the location’s nice. They managed to snag a nice plot—small, but sufficient for what they were looking for—on a busy enough street in San Francisco, and every morning when the sun rises it streams in through the front windows and bathes him with light and warmth. He’ll never take that for granted, not after everything he went through in Europe. Some of the memories are gone now, carved out of him, but he can’t forget the way his bones ached as he shivered in a foxhole in Bastogne. It’s why he went back to California after the war—whilst he didn’t end up back in Los Angeles like he thought he would, and whilst San Francisco’s cooler, being a little further north, it’s by no means cold.
For three—damn it. Good things come in threes, and it would probably sound better if he had one, but if he had something there to say his brain’s just gone and forgotten it now. It happens, even on the good days—of which this seems to be one, God allowing.
He looks up when the bell rings and the door swings open. Enough musing about whatever thoughts are gone and probably won’t come back—it’ll be a nice surprise if they do, but Chuck isn’t counting on it—and time to put a little more cash in that shop till so this business can keep trucking over into a new day, new month, new year.
“Afternoon,” he says to some middle-aged guy, probably around his own age. Chuck can’t always tell. It’s harder to, given that half the guys his age in the city probably went to war, and came back looking older than they should have. God only knows that there’s grey in his hair, curling even over the puckered patches of skin and scarring from where the bullet once went in. He’s not really that bothered by it, really, but he does have to admit that it was a surprise. Well. At least it doesn’t look like he’s going bald.
The guy just gives him a nod of acknowledgement, then comes up and asks for two cartons of Marlboros, and that’s always been one of the more popular choices, so Chuck’s hand moves almost on instinct to find them in their spot in the back drawer, and his mouth moves on instinct to tell him the price. He’s not as good at math as he used to be, but he knows how much two cartons of those cost after all these years.
Guy tips his hat and leaves, but there’s no time to rest—there’s another one coming in behind him wanting some loose tobacco, and then some Lucky Strikes for the guy after that, and more Marlboros for a young lady in a dress that rides up far higher than they used to when Chuck was a bachelor. They keep on coming—perks of running a tobacco store is there’s always customers, because he knows as well as them that it’s a habit that carries on unless you really want to break it, and Chuck doesn’t for as long as it keeps him in business.
Once he does get a little bit of a lull, he lets himself slump down a little. His shoulders relax now that he doesn’t have to suffer with the weight of customer service.
Oh. That’s another thing he appreciates about owning his own store. The fact that he’s his own boss. Allowed to sit on a chair all day whilst he’s on the counter rather than having to slog through with an arm that still doesn’t work like it used to and a limping leg that turns to jelly if he stands on it for too long. No, Chuck’s good where he is, where he can sit and not tire himself out. He’s a bit done with physical exertion, to be honest—he still walks around the block in the mornings, but it’s slow, and it’s never more than a walk. Nothing like he used to be able to do, and nothing like some of the guys still can when he meets up with them for Easy reunions now and then. Makes him feel inadequate, a lot, but he’s sorta gotten used to it, after all this time.
It’s a good day, which doesn’t always happen, but that doesn’t mean he takes his comfy chair for granted as he looks down into his lap for just a moment and catches his breath.
Bell rings, and someone comes in, but he doesn’t look up just yet. It’s not that he doesn’t like his customers—they’re good people, a couple of regulars who come in and make small talk, and a whole bunch of strangers he’ll never see again, but sometimes with his head they can get a bit overwhelming. He can’t turn them away, not when they’re perfectly good business, but he does tend to grab every calm moment he can whilst he’s in his shop, because he knows he’s gonna need it.
“Hey, can I get a pack of Luckies?” says the guy, and Chuck’s head snaps up, eyes wide, because it sounds just like—
It isn’t Lieb.
He gulps down a breath. “Sure, I’ll just get that for you,” he tells a blonde guy who looks nothing like Lieb who’s looking at him like he’s grown a third eye or something, then turns back so he won't have to see the guy staring.
“Sorry,” says the guy. “Didn’t mean to scare ya.”
Chuck shakes his head. “Wasn’t that. You just—sounded like someone I used to know,” he says, hoping the guy will pay for his smokes and leave it at that. “Figures. San Francisco guy too. Of course you’d sound pretty similar.”
The guy shrugs, and pays, and doesn’t ask more questions. Chuck’s thankful for that at least.
That meeting stays in his mind for the rest of the day, somehow. He doesn’t know what it is. Doesn’t know why, when it’s just another person in a sea of strangers in this big city—
That’s a lie. He knows exactly why it is. He just doesn’t want it to be affecting him so much.
He still can’t get it out of his head after they close up shop, so he takes a light jacket and goes for another walk before dinner.
His wife asks him if he’s feeling alright. Chuck doesn’t really know how to answer.
The block is familiar—he must have done hundreds of loops around it by this point. Takes about ten to fifteen minutes to get around the whole thing if you go as slow as he does—the kids could probably run in in four or five, but Chuck isn’t the kids and never will be again—but he keeps doing it because the docs tell him he should be keeping his body healthy as it can be even if there’s something permanently changed up in his head.
Normally, he’d keep his head turned down. Try to ignore the people walking by because he can see the thoughts whirring in their heads when they pass him. “Why’s he look like that, Mama?” asked a little girl, once. The mother had told her not to be so rude. Chuck went home with a bitterness in his mouth that didn’t go until he lit up a cigarette.
But he looks, this time, because that guy who wasn’t Joe Liebgott but sounded just like him is still playing in his ears. And not for the first time, Chuck’s looking for him in the crowds of San Francisco.
It might be a stupid thing to do, really. There’s no saying that Lieb’s still in the city, nothing to say he hadn’t packed up his things after the war and gone some other place because he wanted somewhere new. Chuck would know—he married a girl from San Francisco both because he liked her and because he just couldn’t face up to Los Angeles anymore. Home didn’t really feel like home.
But that doesn’t stop him from looking.
It’s been over ten years since the war ended, and they all came back home, and Lieb fucked on out of Chuck’s life without so much as a word for goodbye. He got sent home at a different time to some of the other guys, but when the dust had settled and people started missing each other, people started writing letters—well. Luz started writing letters, and Babe and Bill were thick as thieves ever since they got back to Philly, and somewhere in between they’d all made a habit of seeing each other every so often. Just to be among friends. Just to remember those bonds forged in blood and sweat and the bowels of hell.
But Lieb never did. Apparently, he’d said goodbye in New York to some guys who were on the same troop ship, and then just never spoken to anyone again. And someone tried asking, tried writing to the address he’d scrawled down before he decided to disappear, and all they’d gotten was a note from his family saying that he didn’t want to be messed with.
So, the picture’s clear as a lake in July—Lieb does not want to see him. Lieb doesn’t want to see any of them. Looking for him’s only gonna make things harder on Chuck’s bruised soul.
And yet he looks anyway.
He remembers Lieb a lot, somehow. Kinda silly sometimes, to keep thinking about an old war buddy who doesn’t want to know you anymore, but he just can’t cut three years out of him, not when they’d been through almost all of it together.
It doesn’t always happen—Chuck’s not obsessive or pining like a lover or anything, and he respects Lieb’s decision even if he wishes he hadn’t made it. But there are reminders, creeping up like vines when he doesn’t mean to think about it.
The honking of a cab when it's stuck in a line of traffic, or when he’s trying to flag one down any time he needs to go further than the block because he can’t really drive properly anymore. Any time someone calls it Frisco rather than its full name—before Chuck moved up, Lieb was the only person he knew who did that. The acrid smoke of a cigarette through your mouth, down your throat.
It’s stupid, again. Everyone smoked back in Easy. It’s what men did, what men still do. It’s the reason Chuck has a business that turns over enough for him to keep it going. Even men who didn’t smoke before the war started probably ended up doing it by the end, to take the edge off the pain, or just for a semblance of warmth whilst they were freezing their asses off in the snow.
But it’s because of that he remembers Lieb when he lights up, sometimes. A month of being stuck in foxholes with dwindling supplies, shit food, no winter clothes. Having to divvy out their smokes even more than they already did given they only got a couple of packets in their rations. You shared smokes with a buddy when you knew he needed one. You knew he’d do the same for you in return.
He wasn’t the only person Chuck did that with back in the war, but he was the one he shared smokes with most often. And if someone asked him who his best friend was whilst they were standing in foreign lands, staring down Germans because their lives depended on it—he’d probably say Lieb as his first instinct. Babe Heffron, later, but Lieb was there before that.
How could your best friend just walk out on you like that?
It’s a question he’s pondered many times over the years. Lieb—and Tab too, no one’s heard from him since they got back. Just can’t find him. Like both of them walked off the face of the earth, and yet Chuck’s just got this feeling that they’re still hanging around in California somewhere.
Maybe that’s why he keeps on looking. Because all their friends on the East Coast, or gone back down to the South, they’re never gonna run into old friends by chance. But Chuck can. When it happens—if it happens, he can just play it off as a happy coincidence, can try not to burst out with floods of questions he’s been bottling up for the last ten years.
He hopes that happens one of these days. He doesn’t want to think about the opposite.
He finishes his slow walk around the block. He’s winded and slightly out of breath when he gets back to the shop, where his wife’s waiting inside in case he needs a hand getting up the stairs, and he smiles at her because he doesn’t know what else to do. If he can’t be properly happy all of the time, he can at least try to smile for some of it.
God, he hopes they’re happy. He hopes they’re all happy, all those brothers still around to enjoy life in the aftermath. But he really hopes those old friends that he can’t call to light them up with a joke whenever they might be a bit down are happy at least some of the time. They might just be doomed to be ships passing each other in the night, with new coats of paint, so they can’t pick each other out by touch, and if that’s the case then he hopes they’ve got something like his little tobacco store. Something like peace.
Chuck lights up a smoke, just like old times, just to keep himself warm, and remembers.