Work Text:
‘It must be very cosy in your Upper West Side apartment, sipping chardonnay with your friends, and jokin’ about how evil the military is, while young men and women are bein’ blown to smithereens by car bombs!’
‘I’m gonna have to object to any insinuation that I’m somehow anti-military or anti-troops. My father was a door-gunner on a Huey in Vietnam. He was in three chopper crashes and he got a purple heart. Listen, I support our troops! And that’s why I wanna stop the Pentagon from prescribing a pill that could kill them! … Sir.’
22 years earlier: White Plains, NY.
‘Now class, I’d like you to jot down the date I have on the board here, May 13th. That’s when we’ll all be making our presentations. Any questions?’
Casey’s hand shot up,
‘Yes, Casey?’
‘Miss Trent, does it have to be on someone famous?’
Her teacher let out a small chuckle, ‘No, it doesn’t have to be someone famous. You can make your presentation on anyone you’d like. As long as you consider them…’ She pointed at the prompt on the chalkboard, ‘… Your Hero.’
Casey nodded her head, taking in the chalkboard again,
My Hero
Class Presentations, May 13th
She knew exactly who she was going to talk about.
‘Now we do have a little bit of time before final bell so if you’d like to start working on them now before we pack up for the day…’
Casey took that as her cue to grab her pencil and begin scrawling in her workbook.
05.02.1983
My Hero. By Casey Novak, Third Grade.
My Hero is my dad. He was a army soldier. He fought for our country in V…ee…
Her hand shot up again minutes later,
‘Yes, Casey?’
‘Miss Trent, how do you spell Vietnam?’
That piqued her teacher’s interest and she walked over from her desk to take a look at what Casey was writing, standing over her by the desk,
‘Oh, that’s a lovely idea, Casey! It’s V…i…e…t…n…a…m. That’s it! Oh, and…’ She pointed at what she’d already written, ‘… See the vowel? You’ll wanna put ‘an’ army soldier.’
‘Thank you.’ Casey beamed up at her. She loved learning, and couldn’t wait to go home and tell her parents all about this. In the meantime, she carried on,
My Hero is my dad. He was aN army soldier. He fought for our country in Vietnam…
She carried on writing when the final bell rang, the class exploding into chaos as the other kids around her shot up from their desks, scrambling with their backpacks. Casey usually let the rabble go on ahead, she didn’t like being pushed around. So it was hardly a surprise when, once again, she was the last to leave the classroom.
‘Casey?’
She turned on her heel as she reached the doorframe, her thumbs tucked under the straps of her backpack, ‘Yes, Miss Trent?’
‘Y’know, Memorial Day is coming up. I like the sound of your presentation. Do you think your dad would like to come and speak to us soon?’
She was once again left beaming at the praise, nodding enthusiastically, ‘I’ll have to ask him first, though.’
‘Of course, that’s alright. See you tomorrow.’
‘Bye, Miss Trent!’
Casey bounded through the front door of her house when she got back and went straight to the kitchen, where her mom had already made her after-school snack: half a peanut butter sandwich, carrot sticks and apple slices, all ready on a plate for her as she dropped her bag to the floor next to the island and hopped onto one of the stools,
‘Hi, sweetie! How was school?’
‘Good.’, she answered, her mouth already full of carrots.
‘What did you do today?’
‘We learned about oceans in science. Did you know the Atlantic Ocean is connected to all the other oceans?’
‘I did not know that…’ Her mom had her back to her, prepping dinner on the counter
‘It also has the highest tides and the most salt.’ Were she not in the middle of a conversation, the entirety of her attention would’ve been taken up by the plate, not even looking up as she continued to chow down on the fruit and veggies.
‘Very interesting.’
‘And Dougie got Greg with the raisin thing at recess.’
‘Oh well that wasn’t very nice of him.’
‘No, it’s disgusting…’ She moved on quickly, as kids do, ‘… We’re also doing presentations in a couple weeks.’
‘Really? What about?’
‘Our hero, but we get to pick who that is.’
‘And who did you pick?’
She finally looked up, ‘I wanted to do Amelia Earhart, but then Miss Trent said they didn't have to be famous so I changed my mind, I decided I wanna talk about dad instead.’
She turned around, touched by the gesture on his behalf, ‘Aww, that’s very sweet, honey. Why him?’
Casey looked at her like the answer was obvious, sandwich halfway to her mouth, ‘Because he fought for our country?’
‘Of course. Well I’m sure that’ll be very popular.’
‘Miss Trent liked it, she asked if dad would wanna speak to the class before Memorial Day too.’
‘Oh, sweetie, I’m not sure he’d wanna talk about it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because… Well, he saw some not very nice things, it made him very sad for a while. It might make him sad again.’
‘Oh… I don’t wanna make him sad.’
‘I’m sorry, honey… He’ll be home soon though, so why don’t you head upstairs for a while and you can tell him all about your presentation over dinner?’
‘Can I watch TV?’
‘You know the rules, no TV until after dinner and homework.’
‘Okay…’ she slumped off the stool, throwing her backpack over her arm as she trudged up to her bedroom.
She sat on her bed, cross-legged with her workbook on her lap, tapping the pencil off her knee as she thought, pondering over the words on the page.
My Hero is my dad. He was an army soldier. He fought for our country in Vietnam and got a medal.
She panicked when she realised that was all she knew. There was no way she could make a good presentation out of this?! Then the familiar sound of the front door opening echoed through the house, causing her to drop everything and bolt to the top of the stairs, watching him take off his coat and shoes,
‘Dad!!!’ she began to bound down the stairs,
‘Hey, champ!’ he barely got the words out before she threw her full weight into him, squeezing him into a tight hug, like she did every night when he came home from work. ‘Did you have a good day?’
‘Yeah.’ Her reply barely audible, muffled by his shirt.
‘Dinner’s nearly ready…’ Her mom began from the kitchen, ‘… Casey, will you set the table?’
‘Sure!’ she peeled herself away and wandered through, gathering cutlery and filling glasses with water, leaving for the dining room while her parents briefly caught up.
They sat down to their dinner of lamb chops, green beans and potatoes, her parents still discussing things she didn’t understand,
‘We’ll be alright, I gotta good salary, there’s talk of a raise, we’ve been putting the disability into our savings anyway, we don’t really need it now it’s paid off the house. Plus it’s only talk at the moment, you know what politicians are like, they’re all talk.’
‘I could talk to Jenny, see if she could get me a couple shifts at the store again?’
‘And who’s gonna be here for Casey?’
She interjected, ‘I can look after myself?’
‘That’s not the point, sweetie…’
Suddenly aware of the smaller redhead at the table again, they changed the subject,
‘Anyway, mom says you have a big presentation at school coming up?’
‘Yeah…’
‘Well, what’s it about?’
‘My Hero…’ she looked down at her plate, moving her food around with her fork.
‘Tell him, honey,’ her mom encouraging her, ‘Tell him who you picked?’
‘… I wanted to talk about you, dad. When you were a soldier.’
He beamed, ‘Well, that’d just be an honor.’
Then he noticed she started to look a little glum, ‘Hey, what’s wrong?’
‘I don’t wanna make you sad…’
‘Why would you make me sad? Did you do something wrong?’
‘No, but mom says you don’t like talking about it because it makes you sad, but I don’t know anything about being a soldier so I don’t know what to say, but I don’t wanna ask you about it and make you sad again.’
Her parents shared a knowing look across the table before he took Casey’s hand in his,
‘So you wanna learn about it?’
‘Not if it’s gonna make you sad… It’s okay, I can change it back, I was gonna write about Amelia Earhart anyway—’
‘If it’s gonna help my little girl, nothing would make me happier. I got some things in the office I can show you after dinner, if you’d like?’
Her mom’s turn to interject, ‘Mike, are you sure—?’
‘Kid wants to learn, don’t ya?’
Casey nodded meekly.
‘Then it’s settled. Finish up and I’ll meet ya up there.’
It was about an hour later, after Casey helped her mom wash and dry the dishes, before she met her dad upstairs, his office converted from the guest bedroom. She opened the door to find he had already pulled out piles upon piles of paper, photographs, and two small, blue boxes. He turned in his chair,
‘Hey, champ! C’mere...’ He beckoned over to her, encouraging her to sit on his lap to get a full view of everything on the desk. He picked up the nearest photograph, a black-and-white of two men in combat uniforms, standing in front of a helicopter.
‘That’s me on the right there, see…?’ he pointed at the other man, ‘… That’s Robert… And that, in the back there, was our first chopper.’
‘You flew a helicopter?! That’s so cool!’ Casey was enthralled, desperate to know more,
‘Yeah, I flew them sometimes, we both did, but you see that little turret there?’
‘Mhmm.’
‘Well that was my job, I had to shoot the gun.’
‘What were you shooting at?’
‘Well… Some not very nice people.’
‘The Vietnamese?’
‘No, no, no. Some of them… Put together an army, and they were hurting their people. So we went over there to help them, to protect them from the bad guys.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, that’s a good question…’ he swiftly moved on, saving the geopolitical debate for when she was a little older, ‘That chopper was a Bell AH-1 Cobra, but we just called it the Cobra, or the Huey.’
‘You said it was your first chopper?’
‘Well… We got shot at by the bad people, had to crash land it in the jungle.’
‘You crashed?!’ her eyes widened, ‘Did it hurt?!’
‘A little, more shocked the first time around.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well it happened two more times after that, before they sent me back home.’
‘Wow… You’re so brave, dad.’
‘Oh I’m not brave, sweetie… I just did what I had to do.’
She spotted the two boxes next, ‘What’re those?’
‘Oh you know what these are, remember I always wear them at ceremonies?’
‘Your medal?’
‘Medals…’ he opened the two boxes. She recognised the one on the left: a bronze circle with a yellow ribbon, with red stripes down the centre and green stripes down the edges. His Vietnam Service Medal, he wore it to ceremonies every Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day, most of the men at those things had one on. Sometimes she had to go with them, and sometimes she found them interesting, other times she really, really didn’t.
It was the medal on the right she didn’t recognise: a purple heart with gold all around the edge, with a purple ribbon, white stripes up the sides. The side profile on the medal, also depicted in gold, looked familiar.
‘Is that George Washington?’
‘Ah yes, my Purple Heart…’ he picked up the box and brought it closer to them, ‘Yeah, that’s George Washington on there.’
‘Did everyone get one of those too?’
‘No, not everyone… They went to people that got hurt out there.’
‘When your choppers all crashed?’
‘… Yeah.’
‘Were you hurt bad?’
‘Well… Y’know how you sometimes gotta speak up a little when you’re to my right? How I sometimes stumble a little?’
‘Uh-huh?’
‘Well, plane crashes are very loud, and it hurt the inside of my ear, that’s why I’m a little deaf on that side. And that affects my balance a little, too.’
‘Oh… I’m sorry…’
‘Well it wasn’t your fault, Casey.’
‘Is that why you get sad?’
‘… Sometimes…’
'Is that why you don't wear that one?'
He stayed silent, so she quickly changed the subject, as she was so adept at doing, ‘So why do you work in an office now if you had a job in the army?’
‘Well, it wasn’t exactly a job… It was called the draft. You got picked out to serve at random and everyone picked had to go for two whole years. If you didn’t go, then you were in big trouble. It wasn’t really my job, it was my duty… To protect us. To protect you.’
Casey giggled, ‘But that’s silly! I wasn’t even born yet!’
‘… Exactly.’
They continued to pour over the pieces of paper and photographs together for a while, depicting the service of Private Novak, before she bounded back to her room far later than her mother would have liked, flicked on the lamp by her bed and picked up her workbook again
My Hero is my dad. He was an army soldier. He fought for our country in Vietnam and got a medal. He served in the US Army in Vietnam from 1969 to 1971. He was a door gunner on a Huey, and received a Purple Heart…
‘… He’s the bravest man I know, and that’s why my dad is My Hero.’
Miss Trent led the class in their applause when Casey finished speaking in front of the chalkboard and she walked back to her desk. She watched intently as the other kids stuttered and fidgeted through theirs, they were all nervous for their first ever solo presentations, except for Casey. She thought she nailed it, and was rather proud of herself.
She liked the way everyone paid attention to her, like she was convincing them all that her dad was the best dad ever with reason, logic and evidence. Maybe she should do something like this when she grows up?