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October 22/23, 1962
The telephone rang again.
BJ dragged himself up to answer it, a glass of whiskey dangling from his fingers. He didn’t indulge as much as he used to, but if ever there was a night for it, this was the night. An ‘explicit threat to the peace and security of all the Americas’ seemed like a good thing to drown. Part of him wished he hadn’t agreed to listen to Kennedy’s address in the middle of surgery. Pika case. The pieces of plastic he pulled out of the boy’s stomach came dangerously close to looking like shrapnel as he dropped them in the trash.
When he got home, Erin had looked up at him with round, little-kid eyes, the way she didn’t do so much anymore, now that she was in double-digits and thought herself to be quite grown up.
“Are we going to get bombed?” she asked him.
He wanted to smile and say: “No, honey, of course not.” He wanted to reassure her the way he used to about monsters under the bed and first days of school. It was harder to lie now, at least to her.
“I sure hope not,” he told her instead. Maybe in ten years or so he’d figure out whether that had been the right thing to say. So long as they didn’t get bombed.
He picked up the phone. “Hunnicutt residence.”
“Hey Beej.”
BJ slumped against the wall. “You too?” he asked, slamming the rest of his drink.
“Always. What’s your beverage?”
BJ grimaced. “Wasting that Glenfiddich Margaret sent me. You?”
“Chamomile, not that it’s doing me any good.”
“What time is it there anyway?”
Hawkeye chuckled, crackling, down the line. “Late. Early. Never mind. It’s bombs o’clock somewhere.”
“Always is.” BJ let himself slide down until he sat on the floor, staring through the opposite wall’s tasteful beige to green canvas. He pictured Hawkeye as he had been, in a red bathrobe. He was probably in a bathrobe now, sitting in a decent chair in a house with four walls and a roof to keep out the nor’easters. BJ tried and failed, as always, to picture him wearing his glasses.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have called,” said Hawkeye, quietly. BJ felt him rubbing his eyes, all the way in Maine.
“No, no. I’m glad you did. Really.” He wished he’d brought the bottle with him. “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather talk to right now.”
“Where’s Peg?”
“On the Valium Express. Can’t say I blame her; she’s got a lot to do tomorrow.”
Hawkeye hummed. “Tell her hi for me when she rejoins the living. You know, she probably has the right idea. Sleep it off and go to work in the morning like nothing happened. If you can’t see them, they can’t start World War Three.”
“That’s my practical Peggy.”
“Tell me something, Beej — am I overreacting? Or am I right to be so scared that my soul’s left my body preemptively?”
“Where’d it go?”
“It’s caught in the ceiling fan. But really, BJ, help me out here, am I —”
“I’m terrified.”
“Okay.” Hawkeye swallowed. “Okay. Good. Well, not good, but you know what I mean. Existential dread loves company.”
“Yep.”
“I just — dying is one thing, you know? I’m not saying I’m keen on the idea, I mean I like my skin right where it is, thanks, but you’ve got to have some perspective. When I’m dead there’ll still be kids playing baseball, and apple trees, and, and — if this really kicks off, I mean if it really kicks off, then, then what was it all for?” Hawkeye breathed in shakily. BJ pictured him pacing, swinging the phone in one hand and clutching the receiver in the other. “Why did we ever bother with poetry and bowling alleys and ice cream and loving people? Why can’t we just — Jesus, I know I sound like a kid, but why can’t we all just agree to not blow up the world? Is that so damn hard?”
BJ squeezed his eyes shut against the ache. “I know, Hawk. I know.”
“Nothing changes. Nothing ever goddamn changes.”
BJ wanted to tell him otherwise. He reached for the false statements and false smiles that used to come so easily. And when he couldn’t find them, he reached out, blindly, for someone a continent away. Damn that prohibitive distance. Damn the delayed flights, the canceled medical conference, the illness and death in the family and just plain life getting in the way that had kept them from touching for nine years. Damn BJ, for the way he had always felt relieved somehow, at those near misses.
“BJ?”
“I’m here.” He pressed the phone to his ear so hard it hurt, trying to pick up all the little sounds that got waylaid in the static of long distance.
“You’re there and I’m here.” Hawkeye shifted, back on his imagined chair. “I miss you.”
“I miss you too. So, so much.”
“Listen, if we don’t all die before then, we’ve got a date, okay? Less than a year away. The big one-zero. Be there or I’ll come down to San Francisco myself armed with a giant butterfly net.”
“I’ll be there, I promise. No rain nor snow nor gloom of night’s going to stop me.”
“You’d better. You owe me a dance.”
“That’s right.” BJ tried to conjure it — real and true, living outside of vague imaginings tossed around in letters between old army buddies — all of them back together again. Hawkeye, in his arms, with silver hair and glasses and civilian clothes. They would share a dance, bickering about who should lead, and for a moment BJ could successfully ignore all the clear and present dangers of a world permanently on the brink of destruction.
“Did you ever think you’d know this much about Cuba?” Hawkeye asked, apropos of everything.
“No. I never thought I’d know how to say ‘put it on my friend’s tab’ in Japanese, either, but here we are.”
“Do you remember explaining to that old lady who ran the bath house — the one where they were slapping the bejesus out of that pilot guy with the sticks — do you remember telling her that in the American northeast, people name their firstborn kids after stoves?”
“Did I do that?”
“Mm-hm. It was especially funny when you waited for a laugh because you were too drunk to realize she didn’t speak a word of English.”
“I remember that bath house, though. In Tokyo.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I remember the way the steam made everything seem like it wasn’t real. And all the little water sounds. Mostly I remember you smiling.”
He couldn’t remember what he had for breakfast, but he could remember that in perfect, technicolor detail. Hawkeye lay back that way forever, hair plastered to his forehead and skinny arms on the edge of a wooden tub, smiling his rare contented smile that was all in the eyes. There was something provocative about it that BJ couldn’t mentally justify. Something that threatened a profound change in the status-quo. He had looked away. He always looked away. But sometimes, in such strange times as these, there was nowhere else to look.
“There was a point to this phone call,” said Hawkeye, suddenly solemn. “And I should probably get to it before we go further down memory lane and I lose my nerve.”
“A point other than commiserating about the state of the world?”
“Separate but related, if you like.” There was a soft thunk, as if he had set something down. “I just want to tell you something. You know, in case it all goes wrong.”
“Come on, Hawk —”
“No, listen. This is important to me. So just let me say it, okay? You can give me a hard time when I’m done.” There was a rustle of shifting fabric. BJ pictured Hawkeye sitting with his forearms on his thighs, at the edge of an army cot. “I know it’s been a long time. Too long.”
“I’m sorry. Really, I am.”
“Not your fault. Nobody’s fault. We knew it would be tough. But I just want you to know that even though it’s been a decade, you’re still the person I care about the most.”
BJ’s organs stopped working.
“Maybe that’s strange; I don’t know,” Hawkeye barrelled on. “And I know it’s not mutual, but that’s alright because it shouldn’t be. I love that it’s not, actually. I’m so glad that there’s a kid out there who gets to have you for a dad. I’m glad there’s a woman out there who gets to have you for a husband. I’m glad that you get to have them and they get to have you, and that you all get to be happy together. Please don’t take this the wrong way. I just need you to know, just in case —” Hawkeye sucked air. “Just in case we never get to go dancing. I need you to know that it’s you. I —” His voice broke apart, harsh staccato breaths barely audible under the crackle.
“Hawk…” BJ scrubbed at his eyes. Fuck restraint. Fuck the central concerns of his life. The abyss around them gaped, and if Hawkeye could find the courage then so could he.
“Beej —”
“I love you too.” It wasn’t news. It wasn’t even the first time he’d said it, subtle emphasis aside. Nothing exploded. The moon still shone faintly through the window, and somewhere, he knew, the night air caressed the glass windchime on Hawkeye’s front porch. They sat on opposite sides of the country, breathing in each other’s ears, and the world kept right on turning without them.
“Did I screw up?” Hawkeye asked at length.
“No.”
“It feels like I screwed up.”
“No. No, it’s good. I’m glad you called me. I’m glad we — I’m just glad. I don’t know what happens next, but I’m glad.”
“Nothing happens next. Except that if we’re all still here next July, we’ll see each other again. And if we’re not, then … I guess I’ll have one less thing to regret.”
BJ squeezed the receiver as if it were a hand. “Me too,” he whispered.
He didn’t know if he believed in next July. Next July was a strange country, as much as it had been nine years ago. He couldn’t foresee the shape of it, or what costs or casualties might be incurred if it arrived. But he knew, whatever happened, in the coming years or the coming hours, that the only person who could talk him through the end of the world was Hawkeye Pierce.
“Hey Hawk?”
“Yeah?”
“Tell me a fantasy.”
Silence. A rustling, a gathering of thoughts, a wiping of eyes. “Okay. Sure, a fantasy. Okay.” Hawkeye stood up and circled the tent, climbing over furniture, bathrobe flapping around him. BJ’s ass hurt from sitting on his hardwood floor in the suburbs.
“Alright.” Hawkeye settled at last, on his cot in Korea and somewhere in a living room BJ had never seen. “The year is 1965,” he started, in a wavering tv broadcaster voice. “World peace has been declared. In celebration, everyone is taking a holiday. After some consideration, you’ve decided to check out the Dead Sea. The sun is shining, the salt is white, the palm trees sway. You’re floating in the water without a care in the world.”
“Wearing?”
“Pink trunks and heart-shaped sunglasses.”
“Excellent.” BJ smiled and tipped his head back, letting the last of his tears run down the lines around his eyes. “Who am I with?”
“Funny you should mention that. There’s a lifeguard keeping an eye on you. She looks familiar, but you can’t place her. That is, until she bats those eyelashes. Any guesses?”
“Elizabeth Taylor.”
“Nothing gets past you.”
“But I’m all alone out there in the water?”
The distance between them hissed in the quiet. “Who do you want to be with, Beej?” Hawkeye asked softly.
“Right now?”
“When else is there?”
“Then I think I’d like to be with you.”
“Okay.” Hawkeye took a deep breath and let it out through his nose, like he did before a difficult cut or that one drink too many he knew he shouldn’t have. “I’m with you, out there in the water.”
“Wearing?”
“An itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini.”
BJ laughed too loudly. “Elizabeth Taylor is immediately distracted from me by your exotic charms.”
“Hey now, whose fantasy is this?”
“Ours, I guess.”
“Well lay on, Macduff.”
BJ licked his lips. The water spread out before him, in turquoise National Geographic photos and in dreams. “I pull you out to sea to escape her lecherous gaze.”
He heard Hawkeye balance, tipping one way and then the other: strenuous, comic objections building under his tongue and then discarded. “Where are we going, Beej?” he asked instead.
“Anywhere. Everywhere. There’s world peace; we can go wherever we want. Or we could stand still, if we felt like it. We could make our own country.”
“That doesn’t sound half bad.”
“Think we could?” BJ asked, kicking an imaginary boot with his own.
“Could what?”
“Make our own country.”
“At this point I’ll try anything once. Hell, I’ll try anything twice.” Hawkeye muffled a yawn.
“What time is it there?”
“Little past three.”
BJ swiped his sleeve over his face. Midnight, where he was. “You should get some sleep.”
“So should you.”
“I will if you will. We can start our country tomorrow.”
“Call me?” Hawkeye asked tentatively.
“Of course. Every day, if you want. At least until this thing blows over.” He left out the ‘if’ part of the equation.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think that’d be nice. You calm me down, you know that? Despite appearances.”
“Feeling’s mutual.”
Hawkeye hesitated. “Come July,” he said carefully. “I’ll be really glad to see you. And I don’t want you to worry about anything then. Stuff’s different when the world’s not ending.”
“I know.”
BJ closed his eyes against the shadows on the ceiling. He hoped Erin was getting some sleep, wrapped up in the old quilt that had once been his own. He hoped that the guys who mattered in the grand scheme of things were thinking about their own kids wrapped up in their own old blankets, rather than about the other important men on the other side of the world. Mostly, he hoped they wouldn’t screw it up.
“Goodnight, Hawk,” he said.
“Goodnight, Beej. I’ll see you when I see you.” The ‘if’ hung between them like telephone wire, running for too many miles.
“Promise?”
“I promise.”