Behind The Pines

by Lauren Brown

  Hue is in his wheelchair, watching me. He’s holding a rifle right in my direction. He’s mouthing something.

  I continue to stare at him, nonplussed. He sees me. He sees John Livingston.

  He moves closer, holding the rifle close to my face. I am so scared that the realization of what I have just done disappears.

  He leans in towards me, elbow raised.

  “You’ve got a lot of explainin’ to do.”

  Chapter 20

  I’m looking at the wrong end of a barrel through blurry eyes. I put my shaking hands up in the air in the hopes he will lower the gun.

  “Go on, explain yourself,” he commands.

  I start to cry.

  Some time passes before I hear him let out a small sigh. He softly lowers the rifle. He rolls his wheelchair to the bathroom and retrieves a tissue. Then motions for me to stand up and sit on the bed.

  “Look,” he says, leaning forward in his chair, “clean yourself up and tell me what is going on here.”

  He’s yearning for me to say something. “I don’t know what to say. There were a lot of events that led up to this point,” I utter with a shrug. My aching body slouches over the edge of the bed like an uprooted weed.

  I look down at my clasped hands, avoiding eye contact. I wasn’t prepared for this.

  “Why don’t you begin by tellin’ me the truth.”

  I sniff at this. The truth. What even is the truth?

  I squint my eyes, trying to force the tears to stop. If I squint hard enough, I might disappear. I open them again and see Hue sitting at the foot of my bed with the rifle in his lap. His expression has softened slightly, but he still looks deadly serious. I take the tissue and wipe my face. I look up at him through heavy, reddened eyes.

  “How did you know?”

  “I knew somethin’ strange was up with you from the first day you tried to take my seat. Somethin’ inside me was sayin’ that only youngsters argue with an old man about his seat. Of course, I knew you were younger than me, but somethin’ just didn’t sit right. Then listenin’ to your stories at breakfast about where you came from sounded awfully strained, like you were havin’ a hard time remembering where you came from. And your odd demeanor whenever Sarah or Beatrice come into the room, as if you’re always tryin’ not to get caught for something. You sneakin’ off during bingo and movie nights. I am a man of war. I know when someone is hiding something.”

  My brooding eyes look down at my hands as he speaks. My stomach clenches periodically from the previous vomiting.

  “But,” he continues with crossed arms, “I’ve got the rest of my life in this place, and I’m not leaving until I hear the truth behind you. Go on. Tell me what this is all about.”

  I look at his rifle, at his glare. The wall unit beside me kicks on, sending a drumming sound of air through the room. I take a deep breath, pick up my journal and hand it to him. “All you need to know is in there.” I docilely nod to the journal then return my focus to the window.

  Four hours later and he knows. He knows it all. About my childhood, my career, Hope, the Bear, and Rick. He grew more and more amazed throughout the four hours and, now as he finishes, he shakes his head in disbelief.

  “Are you going to report me?”

  “Nah, no point in startin’ drama. I’d say, if anything, you’ve served your punishment.”

  I look at the aged man before me. The scar on his cheek is prominent.

  “I think we’re a lot alike,” he says.

  “I would beg to differ.”

  “We are.”

  There’s a stiff pause.

  “If there’s one thing I can tell you, it’s that you can’t take your life with those things.” He points to the white pills on the bed. “Where is the justice in taking your life with the things that ruined yours and so many others ‘round here? Another day could prove you wrong, prove all your emotions wrong. We aren’t put here to determine the way we go out. Just ain’t how it works.”

  He ricochets his hands off his wheelchair tires, rolling to the window, fixing his eyes on the trees. “You’ve told me your story,” he says into the glass, “now let me tell you mine.”

  There’s another long pause.

  “I can remember the day I got my letter. Vietnam? The word sounded heroic and American to my twenty-seven-year-old self. I hadn’t even been to war yet. I had done my basic training and gradually moved up in ranking during my seven years in the U.S. Navy. I had thought myself a decent man, but never did I think I would be asked to command a hundred men in Vietnam. I had kept up with the news, joked with the other guys over beer about the Vietnamese that would never take our country, but, standin’ there, readin’ that letter, my heart sank. The horror stories I had heard and pushed far away rushed through me. The definition of decent was bein’ tested.

  “The smell of my mother’s famous apple pie filled my nose as I read the letter out loud on our porch. The heat beat down on my bare back as I walked around the open porch in our small two-bedroom home not far from here. We had moved to the Smokies when I was eighteen to live with my Aunt Wilma who could help raise my sister and I while my mother tended to my father. I too lost a parent from cancer when I was young. He died from lung cancer several months into my Navy training and tellin’ my mother I wouldn’t be home for the funeral durin’ my second year of training had broken her heart. I was the only boy in the family, her pride and joy, and now I was tellin’ her that I had been commanded to serve in a country that might never allow me to return home. I was nervous to tell her. I had served my time in the Navy for seven years and my mother had suffered every minute of it.

  “My mother was Jewish, father was a Baptist, and I didn’t believe either of em’. But I remember foldin’ those papers and, although I didn’t believe in God at the time, I think I said a quick prayer. A prayer not for myself, but for my poor mother. I walked into the house, set the letter down, hugged her, and then left town for the afternoon. I figured she’d find it and read it. When I returned, I found her rocking and knitting on the front porch. Dried tear marks stained her cheeks.

  “‘You be safe out there, son,’ she told me through tears. I didn’t respond but kissed her and went inside. We both knew that’s all I could do, just try and stay safe.

  “I left on a rainy Tuesday morning in 1967 with my new crew of a hundred men. I remember the beginning wasn’t all that bad. Boardin’ the ship, a new adventure out there in the distance, temporarily blinded all of us from the truth. There was all this hype and American pride. There were songs about American victory, freedom, and democracy. My men and I were ready, or so we thought, for this mission we had been called to embark upon. I watched my men kiss their wives, hug their siblings, wave to their parents as we undocked and began to drift into the Pacific.

  “Days went fast and nights went faster as we held pictures of our families to our hearts and booze to our mouths. We inched onward, through the dark waves, to the beaches of South Vietnam where we would set base and meet with the other Navy Marines to monitor imports and exports. I can still remember the subtle smell of salt in the air on the water those first few nights. It was the last pleasant smell I can remember from those two years.

  “After days at sea, we arrived at our port near Cam Rahn. We stayed there for months, monitoring the artillery comin’ in and out for our soldiers. A quarter of my men remained on the ship docked in the harbor while the remainin’ men set up camp through the woods. Things were runnin’ smoothly, then, just like that, the routine changed, as did our lives.

  “It was cold that night. Colder than it had been. The monsoon season had just ended, and nights were typically warm and humid, but that night, for some reason, it was colder. I had ventured away from the port and sat on the beach. The beaches are different there than they are here in America. The sand is softer, the waves bigger. I had been thinkin’ about my life up until that point, ‘bout Daddy dyin’ and stuff, ‘bout what my mama was doin’ at that moment. I lost mysel
f in those waves like you do sometimes, thinkin’ about Hope. I lost myself and, before I knew it, I had missed it. I had missed the glimpse, a shimmer in the sky that marked the invasion of the Vietnamese that was about to commence. To me, it was just another star in the sky. Then, and son you’ve never been in a war like this, as the dark, cold night became suddenly bright and hot, they swarmed us.

  “A few of my men came sprintin’ out of the woods. Bullet holes had shredded their bodies. They were holdin’ their sides with one hand while wavin’ to me to follow them to the ship with their other hand. They were screaming, ‘The Vietnamese are bombin’ the camps further back! Retreat!’ Waves of bleedin’ men, some holdin’ dismembered bodies, came hollarin’ in agony out of the trees.

  “I sprinted back to my tent near the port, screamin’ so hard my vocal cords stung. My neighboring men scrambled from their canvas tents, half dressed, and looked up at the sky, grabbed their shirts and their guns, and sprinted towards our ship. Men on the ship started yellin’ that they were droppin’ bombs further inland and were headed straight for us. I yelled for my men on the ship to stay put as I ran into my tent and sent SOS signals to a nearby port for help. But it was too late. I hadn’t been fast enough. I hadn’t kept my watch. I had ventured too far, reflected too much on my past so I had missed the signals. Had I been doin’ my job, been livin’ in the moment rather than the past, I would have been able to save more of my men.

  “I started runnin’ to one of my soldiers who was holdin’ a dyin’ friend in the distance. I tried yellin’, between the sounds of high pitched whizzing noises of plummeting missiles followed by deafening explosions, if there were any survivors. He was shakin’ his head, pointin’ to the woods when I watched him and the man he was holdin’ explode into pieces. I retreated into the woods to find he had been right. Two men, Chip and Lawrence, were beggin’ me to help them. Lawrence was missin’ half his head, bleedin’ and cryin’ for Jesus. Chip’s femur was stickin’ straight out of his thigh. I threw Chip onto my back and set him down in a nearby safety raft in the water. I ran back and got Lawrence who was now unconscious. I threw them in the boat then ran for two men I couldn’t even recognize on the beach. Right as I placed the fourth man in the raft, I watched as the mortars in the distance blew up our ship. Rolls of dark orange flames ballooned into the sky.

  “All but four out of the one hundred died. All but four, John. The men who had entrusted their lives to me and I let them die. I tried savin’ em, I did, and I’d do anything to give my life, this nerve-damaged back and these screwed up legs, so theirs could be redeemed.

  “We floated away, me and my four other men, on a life raft in the South China Sea for five days before we were found. And in those five days, I tried throwin’ myself overboard to the sharks, but my men wouldn’t let me. Told me God didn’t want me to go yet.

  “They gave me a Purple Heart when I got back. And you know what, John? I didn’t want it. I felt like you. Like I had done my men wrong, like I hadn’t lived up to the duties and honor of a true captain.

  “Took me a long time to move on from that night, to pull out the Purple Heart I had been given. It’s an every day battle, tryin’ to move on from those nightmares. When the doctors said I might be gettin’ dementia, I didn’t get mad. I wanted to forget. But, the more I’ve been here in this place, I realize I can’t. I can’t forget what happened that night, because if I did, that would be worse than dyin’.”

  Chapter 21

  I’m sitting at breakfast, thinking about Hue’s story. Vernie and LeRoy are talking to Sarah, but I can’t make myself join in their conversation. I look at the back of Hue’s head as he watches the TV in the lobby. After some time, I hear Vernie and LeRoy stand to leave. Sarah pats me on the shoulder as she stands to begin her morning shift. I decide to join Hue, pulling out a chair beside him. He doesn’t ask me to leave this time.

  “I wanted to say thanks.”

  “For what?” he asks, not moving his attention from the TV.

  “For last night.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  I watch the TV in silence with him for some time before he speaks again.

  “I think you should come to the Bible study today,” he says, turning his focus in my direction.

  “I thought you said you didn’t believe in God.” I rolled my eyes, thinking he might be like Sarah, about to dump his religious doctrines onto me.

  “I was Jewish. Now I’m Christian. You got a problem with that?”

  “No. I guess not. Whatever it takes to make a man tolerate this place.”

  “It certainly helps.” He smiles his first smile I’ve seen since my arrival at Park Pines.

  “Nah, I’ll pass.”

  “Well, it’s in William’s room at four if you change your mind.”

  “Hue, I’ve never been a real religious man. I mean, I told you my story. Clearly, I’m God’s joke of a man.”

  “Well, believe what you want, but every soul matters to the Lord.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  He nods then wheels away back to his room, leaving me doing just that, thinking about it by myself at the table.

  I never went to church growing up. My mother prayed every now and then, mainly when she had cancer. And religion certainly didn’t cross my mind in college, nor did it in medical school. Sure, I had friends who were religious, and Hope’s family was Presbyterian, but I hadn’t affiliated myself with a particular sect. I hadn’t thought much of religion until Hope died. In those depressing hours in the hospital, I thought about it. I thought about it so much I grew to actually hate it. A pastor had visited me once during my hospital stay and all I could feel from his visit was extreme guilt.

  I watch as the TV changes to the morning Johnson City news. Usually Hue stays for the news, but this time, it’s just me. I watch the anchorman talk so casually, so nonchalantly about Mayor Ringgold and his wife and his family’s successes. They flash a picture of him, the infamous tall man with the long, narrow nose; a nose like the barrel of a gun pointing into my face ready to shoot. I catch a quick glimpse of the Bear behind him and can’t help but continue watching. I listen to the mayor talk, his thin eyes too weak to look up from his notecard, to a new school board, explaining the importance of education.

  “And education, I reiterate, is the foundation of a successful city. It is our duty to educate the growing generations in truth and integrity so they may be productive, meaningful citizens of Johnson City. That they may contribute to this city’s growing wealth and maintain the rapid, productive forward pace of our great city. That is what sets and will continue to set this city apart from all others.”

  I grow angry at his every word. Lies. All lies. Yet everyone in Johnson City looks to his skeletal figure and naively sees promise in their lives just as I did. I angrily turn off the TV and go back to my room. I put on my jogging pants and go for a walk around the walking trail to clear my mind.

  I walk for a long time and not because I have to walk slowly to conceal my real age, but because I don’t want to go back inside. The circular trail isn’t very long, but it’s long enough to get close to the tall fence on the backside of the property, winding through pine trees and oak trees, to scratch the surface of autonomy. In my previous life I would have preferred no autonomy at all to barely any, for what is the purpose of freedom if your only freedom is this limited. But here I’m such a prisoner to Theodore Smith, to the mayor and the Bear and the nurses, and, more disheartening still, to my memories, that scratching the surface is all I need. Near the fence, I can at least see the outside world.

  I know I should be collecting pills, but I can’t make myself go back inside. I continue to make the loop, passing behind each building then out through the pines and to the fence and back again. I make my way towards the back one last time and as I get just behind the trees, just out of sight of the buildings, I begin to jog. I jog to the rim of the fence, breathing in the humid air that passed over the mountains ho
urs earlier. The feeling of jogging, of moving my legs into more than just a passive motion, is so incredibly uplifting that I don’t make the full loop this time. Instead, I stay in the back and just jog back and forth behind the thin wall of trees. Another walker may come upon me, but I don’t care. I run back and forth until I can go no further.

  The days pass. I take more pills, and before I know it, it’s the end of June and I’m meeting with Rick again.

  I walk into Vernie’s room to grab a hydro and then return to my room. Hue sees me in the hallway and eyes me with disappointment. I lower my head. He doesn’t understand that taking pills is the only way to keep the remaining people in my life safe.

  I open my drawer and add the eightieth pill to the bottle. I tuck it in my jacket and then head to the lobby to wait for Rick.

  “You should come to the Bible study tonight,” Hue calls to me as I walk down the hallway.

  “I’ll think about it,” I lie as I round the corner and sit in a green recliner.

  “Why are you sittin’ like that over there in that chair. Get up, Mr. Smith. Your brother is pullin’ in, and it’s rude to make him wait,” Beatrice snaps at me. She’s always in a sour mood when Roger is tending to other business.

  I walk outside and get in the car. We pull away as usual without a sound.

  Rick’s cancer and his drinking have worsened with time. His patchwork-colored skin screams sickness through the unshaven stubble. He smells awful. He pulls out a cigarette and smokes with the windows up.

  I start to retrieve the pills but he stops me.

  “I’ll get those in a minute. We got some business to discuss first.”

  “Business?” I ask, irritated.

  “The Bear wanted me to tell you that he has gotten into some type of… conflict with the guys in Brazil. He said not to tell you all the details, but…”