Wait: The Brazen Bulls Beginning

by Susan Fanetti

  She’d never felt either of her own children kick so strongly. They’d died before they were big enough to do more than flutter lightly inside her. No one but she even believed they’d been children. No birth, no death, no life. Only to her had they been.

  But she had healed. She worked and loved and laughed. She moved forward into the rest of her life.

  And girded herself against the memories that would not fade.

  Brian must have sensed her wakefulness, because he rolled to her and set his hand on her hip. He nuzzled through her hair and kissed the nape of her neck, humming with restful pleasure.

  He had grieved, too, and had done all he could to help her heal, but he couldn’t understand. For him, their children had been abstract things, promises for later. It was her body that had changed, her body that had nurtured life, and her body that had failed that life.

  But Brian’s focus on her, his care and concern for her, had shifted something in his moods. Since she’d lost this baby, he hadn’t gotten drunk or come home from work brooding and glum. He worked as hard, for the same ogre of a boss, but he smiled for her when he was home, and took care of her, no matter how terrible his day had clearly been.

  She knew it was her weakness that had returned his strength, but she was glad nonetheless. It was the root of their love: to trust each other with their worst, and support each other through it.

  “You awake, sweetheart?”

  “Mm-hm,” she answered.

  He snuggled even closer behind her, pulling her into the curve of his warm body. “How you doin’?”

  “Okay. How’d you sleep?”

  “Pretty good. Looks like it’s gonna be a nice day.” As he spoke, in that sexy, deep rumble roughened by smoke and sleep, his hand eased under her nightgown and began rubbing her thigh and hip. Long, soft circles, his fingers splayed, his tough palms like the fine-grain sandpaper he’d used between coats of finish on their new kitchen table he and Lenny had built.

  They hadn’t made love since before the miscarriage. Mo had bled for about two weeks after it, and they’d been told to abstain for six weeks. But they could make love now. In fact, she’d had a period two weeks ago, so, if they meant to try again, this was maybe the perfect time.

  She wanted to try again. God, how badly she wanted to carry a baby like Faye could so easily, and like Maggie, too. She wanted to hold a newborn and smell that sweet scent and know the child was hers, hers and Brian’s, born of their love. The best of them both.

  She wanted it so badly.

  Brian was ready. He’d tried a few times—gently, without pressure—in the past two weeks. He wanted to make love, and to make a baby. Like her, he wanted a family.

  Unlike her, he was ready.

  The thought that it might happen again horrified her. How could she survive a third time? The doctor had said she was healthy, there was no reason to think it would happen again, it was a ‘fluke’ that it had happened twice. Obviously, he’d said, she had no trouble conceiving. So just keep trying, he’d said. One would take eventually.

  One would take eventually.

  But the thought of failing a third baby froze her heart. And the thought of making love and not trying, when they both wanted a child, was like giving up.

  Brian was being patient, so patient and careful, but she knew he wanted to make love. He wanted it right now. She could feel it in his caress, in the press of his erection behind her, in the weight of his breath across her neck. It had been months now, and before, they had scarcely gone more than a day or two without.

  But she couldn’t.

  So she turned over in bed to face him, tucked her head beneath his chin so she didn’t have to see his eyes, and wrapped her hand around his cock.

  At the touch, his hips twitched sharply and he sucked in a breath. A wet bead had formed on his tip, revealing the extent of his need. But he put that strong, rough hand over hers and stopped her.

  “No, Irish. You don’t have to do that.”

  “I want to.”

  “No, you don’t. And I don’t need it.”

  She brushed her thumb over his tip, through that drop of slick wet, and his whole body quivered. He tightened his grip on her hand and pulled her away.

  “I don’t need it until you want it, Mo.”

  “What if I can’t ever want it again?” She could only manage a tight whisper.

  “I don’t need it until you want it,” he said again. He pulled her arm out from between them and enfolded her in an ardent embrace. “I love you, and I’ll wait as long as you need.”

  ~oOo~

  A few days later, Mo came home late from school after a PTA meeting to plan the spring carnival. Brian’s truck was parked on the street—he always left the driveway for her—but the house was surprisingly dark. He hated the house to be dark. The garage was dark, too, so he wasn’t in there. He’d bought a wrecked 1965 Harley from the want ads shortly after the miscarriage, and had been occupying his destructively busy mind trying to get it restored and running. But he wasn’t working on it now.

  When she got in the front door, she saw the faint fluorescent glow of the kitchen overhead reaching from the back of the house. She flipped the switch, and the overhead came on in the living room. As she hung up her jacket and put her school bag aside, the floor creaked with Brian’s steps. He met her at the doorway between the living room and their bedroom.

  “Hi.” She smiled. “How was your day?”

  His expression was serious—more than serious. Heavy. Goosebumps rose up across the back of Mo’s neck and shoulders.

  He took her hand. “We gotta talk, sweetheart. Come sit with me.”

  “What happened? Is everybody okay? The kids? Did something happen to Maggie?”

  “Everybody’s okay,” he muttered and led her forward—but not to the sofa. Back to the kitchen.

  On their beautiful new table was a letter. Official-looking, its ends lifted up at the folds.

  “What’s that?”

  He picked it up as if he meant to hand it to her, and she saw the insignia on the top: United States Army.

  All at once, she knew, and she shoved him away before he could hand that horrible filth to her. “No. No! Fuck no! You can’t! Don’t you fucking dare!”

  Brian pulled the paper back and stared down at it. In a voice tight with pain, he said out loud what she’d already understood. “I’m being recalled. I’m sorry, Mo. I’m so sorry.”

  “Did you fucking do this?”

  His head shot up. “No! I don’t want this. I’m done with that bullshit. I want to be here with you. I need to be here with you.”

  Her heart pounding in her ears, loud as a roaring mob, Mo snatched the paper from his hands and read. But she couldn’t make sense. The only words she could see were recalled to duty, and the date—a week away. One week away. Only one week.

  “They can’t do this! They can’t! You gave them three years over there! It’s not fair!”

  “It’s not fair. And I’ve never heard of anybody getting recalled after as much time in-country as I’ve got. But they can do it. I’m on inactive reserve for four years after I separate, and they can recall me any time, for any reason. I told you about that.”

  He had told her—a long time ago, while they were dating. He’d first gone into the Army in October 1963. He’d first separated in December 1967. It was March 1972—more than four years after. Mo stared unseeing at that terrible sheet of paper and understood the real horror.

  “You reset the clock when you went back.”

  “I guess so.”

  Her first impulse was pure, incoherent rage. It filled her in every corner, every nook. She wanted to hit him, to hurt him, to shriek and scream and howl. He had done this to them. Yet again, that horrific choice he’d made in 1969, made and acted on in a burst of crazed impulse, without any thought of her, had exploded between them.

  She wanted to hurt him the way he kept hurting her. She wanted him to fucking bleed.

 
But then, her fury died out, like a candle flame drowning in the last bit of molten wax. She simply didn’t have the energy for the fight. She let the paper fall from her fingers and drift to the table.

  “I thought the war was ending,” she said. The words came soft and slow as her fire guttered out. “I thought they were drawing down the troops. I thought your unit had come home.”

  She could see he’d expected her to fight him. He cocked his head, his eyes narrowing into a confused squint. “They did, last year. I’m not being recalled to the 173rd.”

  “What? Then why?”

  He took the long, deep breath he took when he had to dig deep for patience. Mo finally understood the heaviness that hung on his face: it was rage. He was as furious as she was. He really didn’t want to go.

  Knowing that eased Mo’s hurt while it deepened her desolation at the same time. He wasn’t leaving her again. He was being snatched away. At a time when she’d never needed him more.

  “It’s Saigon. I’m being called to headquarters. And I fuckin’ know why.” He kicked one of the folding chairs they were still using at the new table. It rocked back, folded, and hit the floor with a metallic crash. “FUCK!”

  “Can you fight it?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I could file a request for exemption, but with a report date so soon, I’d have to report before I had an answer. And then I’ll be there, and …”

  “And they’ll keep you there, where they want you.”

  “Yeah.”

  Brian had spoken very little of his experiences of war. Mo didn’t know anyone he’d fought with and had only the barest details even to create an image of what it might have been like beyond what the nightly news had been showing for years. She knew it haunted his dreams, and his waking hours, too. She suspected that his moods and short temper, his periods of needing to fight, to beat and be beaten, all of it came from war.

  It didn’t matter. He had been called back. He’d gone when he hadn’t been ordered, and he’d given over his soul. He had no choice, and neither did she.

  Mo turned on her heel and left the kitchen.

  “Irish?” Brian called, but she ignored him and went forth. It was like walking through fog—no, not fog. Fog had no weight. It was like walking through oil. Everything in her life, in her heart and soul and mind, in her world, became sluggish and muffled.

  She went to the bedroom, to her desk, to the drawer still full of his letters. They were bound now, wrapped in green ribbons and tied with careful bows, one packet for each month he’d been away. Tucked under the top ribbon was a bead chain and two flat oblong discs.

  The morning after he’d returned to her, he’d picked them up from the floor, coiled them in his palm, and handed them to her, empowering her to do anything with them she’d wanted.

  No doubt, he’d expected her to throw them away. To destroy them. But they had been crucially important to him, and it was crucially important to her that he’d given them to her. In some fundamental way, they were him. So she’d kept them, safely tucked with his letters, all part and parcel of the warrior he was.

  Now she pulled the chain free, coiled it in her hand, and turned around.

  Brian stood right there. He’d followed her. Sorrow and worry creased his face.

  She picked up his hand and set his dog tags in his palm. “Please come home. I’ll be waiting.”

  He stared for a moment at what he held in his shaking hand. Then he dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around her hips. Burying his face against her empty belly, he groaned, “I’m so fuckin’ sorry.”

  Mo folded over, wrapped her arms around him, and let him pull her down into a knot of shared despair.

  ~oOo~

  The night before he was to report for duty, the Kempers had a dinner for the whole family. Were it not for Faye and Lenny’s four wonderful children, it would have been a somber affair. But only Paul was old enough to understand at all what it meant that Uncle Brian was going back into the Army, and, at eight years old, he wasn’t quite old enough to understand it truly. So the children played as always, and new little Jeffy, a calm, happy baby, drew doting attention, and they kept the mood light enough.

  The adults, however, understood what Brian was returning to, and sadness pulsed steadily beneath the bustle of family.

  But the hostilities in Vietnam were waning. The war was dragging its weary legs toward an ending. Troops were coming home at a much faster pace than new ones were shipping out. And Brian was headed to Saigon. To a desk job, not a combat post. His commanding officer from the 173rd, a man named Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Cornish, whom Mo hated with the molten fire of the sun, was now based at headquarters. He had wanted Brian to stay more than a year ago, and he was now forcing his hand.

  A desk job. In a city. Not a tent in the jungle. Brian would be safe. He would be well. He would come home.

  And this blasted war would end and leave them finally alone to build a life.

  ~oOo~

  Brian tied off his duffel and heaved it up off the bed. He carried it from the bedroom to the living room, where Mo knew he’d set it near the door, ready for tomorrow.

  She sat cross-legged on their bed and waited.

  His dress uniform hung on the back of the closet door, and his hat, still wrapped in its plastic, sat on Mo’s dresser, looming there like a stalking beast. The dog tags sat in a tight swirl beside it; he hadn’t put them back on yet.

  He came back in and stopped at the doorway, and their eyes locked and settled into a heartbroken gaze.

  He’d gotten a shave and a haircut that afternoon, before they’d gone to Faye and Lenny’s. He’d kept a trimmed beard, and hadn’t cut his hair, since he’d come home the last time, and his beard had been full and his hair past his shoulders. Mo liked him that way—rough and tousled and not remotely like a soldier. She’d even grown to love his beard.

  When he was shiny and tidy like this, she knew she was losing him.

  “I’m so sorry, Mo,” he said for about the millionth time that week.

  “Oh, love,” she whispered, because she had no other words.

  She didn’t blame him. It took too much energy to be angry, and only made her feel more alone. This was the man she loved, at his worst or at his best, just the same. She’d told him more than once that, so long as he never meant to hurt her, she could withstand whatever storm he brought.

  His storms would take him from her again and again, it was clear. Maybe when the war finally ended, the winds would stop. More likely, though, another gale would rise up from another direction and carry him off again. He was a warrior at heart. He would find another fight, and it would take him away.

  But this was the man she loved, and never had he meant to hurt her.

  So she would love him, and he would love her, and he would leave her, and she would wait for him to find his way home.

  He came in and sat on the side of their bed.

  Mo made a decision. She leaned over and opened the little drawer in his nightstand, where they kept the condoms. They hadn’t made love yet since she’d lost the baby, not even during this week of looming loss, and the thought still frightened her for all the same reasons and now more besides, but she couldn’t let him leave her again without giving him this thing he’d been waiting so patiently for her to want again.

  Brian put his hand on her arm before she could pull the box out. “I just want to hold you tonight. I just want to hold you all night long. Is that okay?”

  Mo nodded and pulled him to her, lying with him. As he tucked his head against her neck and rested on her chest, she let her tears fall as they would, but kept them quiet.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  20 Apr 72

  My Irish,

  God, I miss you. I did three years in the thick of combat, but I think they were easier than this. I’m not bored, there’s plenty to do, but I’m so pissed off every second of every day to be here I think I’m giving myself an ulcer.

  Brian set his pen
down and wadded up the piece of paper. There was no point in complaining to Mo, and most of what he wanted to say would get him in trouble if anybody other than Mo read it.

  He started again.

  20 Apr 72

  My Irish,

  Saigon is a beautiful city. It’s taken some hard hits during the war, but if there’s anyplace that still shows what this country used to be, it’s probably here. I only spent a weekend here before, and back then my head was so deep in the fight I barely remember those few hours of R&R. After three tours in combat, it’s strange to be in uniform, sit at a desk most of the day, then leave in the afternoon like a regular job. I walk around town, get a bite to eat, head back to my quarters. There’s a little shop (more like a cart) in an alley around the corner with the best pho I’ve ever had. Pho—it’s like soup, full of noodles and meat and vegetables, and damn, it’s good. Beats the hell out of MREs, I can tell you that.

  It’s not that I forget there’s a war going on. There’s signs of it everywhere, but I think that makes it feel even stranger, to see kids playing in the streets, and couples holding hands, while I’m here officially as part of a combat unit. But I guess that’s what the people here have been living with every day for years. Trying to make a life in the middle of a war that won’t end.

  The war wasn’t ending, there was still no clear end in sight, though it was now a foregone conclusion. North Vietnam would win eventually, unless by some miracle a peace was reached in Paris.

  The US involvement was winding down, and Brian was deeply involved in that process, helping to plan, organize, and schedule troop deployments out of combat. Those troops were leaving the country every week, in bigger and bigger batches. When he’d separated the last time, he’d thought the troops would be out by the end of 1971. His timeline was off some, sadly, but the drawdown was indeed happening. There were fewer than 100,000 troops in-country now, down from a high of almost 550,000 in 1968. And most of those left would be gone by the end of the year, whatever happened in Paris.