They’re both remembering the shower.
Finally James takes a step forward and lowers his voice, pointing a finger straight at Sydney’s chest.
“Look, all of this shit you think you know about me, all this shit you’re trying to trick me into saying . . . Who the fuck did you talk to, huh? How the fuck have you known so much about my life since day fucking one.”
“Who did I—who did I talk to?”
“Swear to God, was it Lori?”
Sydney looks up at the sky and feels his chest clench in frustration. “Lori? I don’t even know who the hell ‘Lori’ is! I didn’t talk to anybody. Didn’t have to ask anyone.”
“Then how?”
“I just looked at you and I figured it out, that’s how!”
James shakes his head. “You don’t know a thing about me, kid. Not a fucking thing.”
Incredulity blasts across Sydney’s face. “Not a thing? What the hell ever happened to ‘I’ve never ever talked to anyone about the war, Sydney,’ or ‘Here, Sydney, let me tell you all about how I learned to surf’?”
James pulls at his hair with his hands and frowns, then sputters, “Who—what—who the hell is Sydney?”
Sydney freezes. He hadn’t even noticed the name slip out. Panic starts to blare through his limbs, even more than it already is. The air crashes down onto him, burying him under too much breeze and oxygen and bright sun.
He desperately hopes he didn’t pause too long, and his voice when it finally leaves his lips is churning with frustration. “Look, that’s not the point. Just, what the hell are you so afraid of? You’re so terrified of me seeing into your little head—knowing more than just the smallest fucking detail about you. And while you’re at it, what the hell is stopping you from leaving your shitty-ass job you hate so much, or your shitty-ass apartment? From actually moving on?”
“Oh, you’re one to talk! Why are you so afraid of someone actually having a real conversation with you? Answer me that, Mr. Sunglasses.”
“That’s a low blow, James, even for you,” Sydney spits back. He can’t breathe, chest heaving against clenched muscles.
“You know what a low blow is, Danny?” James asks. There’s a dangerous fire blazing around the blue edges of his eyes. “Telling a fucking veteran who’s had a bullet blasted through his fucking chest that he doesn’t have anything to be afraid of—that he should just move on.”
Sydney’s legs start carrying him away before he even decides to do it, striding off across the rocky tide pools and leaving James Campbell as far behind him as he can get. He calls back over his shoulder with a final roar.
“Sorry for taking up so much time of your precious second chance at life, then!”
“Oh, you want to run away?” James yells at his back. “Turn and face me like the fucking man you pretend to be all the time!”
At that, Sydney bolts around and plants his feet, squaring his shoulders. There’s a furious and ashamed and absolutely panicked retort on the tip of his tongue when he sucks in a gasp and freezes—retort forgotten.
He barely has time to register the enormous wave rushing towards James’ back, and the way his bare feet are clinging precariously to the edge of the slick rock. The way his back is to the sea while he screams at Sydney as he runs away like a coward.
He barely has time to scream, “James! Look out!” before the wall of forcing water crashes into James with a booming slap, throwing him to the ground and smashing his head straight against the craggy rocks.
Sydney’s vision whites out to everything but the sight of James’ limp body being dragged out to sea by the wave, tumbling and thrashing in the whitewater like a ragdoll. His legs are numb. His tongue feels too big for his mouth. He’s running faster than he ever has in his life, sprinting into the foam and nearly slipping across the slick bed of rocks and coral.
He hears someone screaming, and he realizes distantly in his mind that it’s him—screaming James’ name. Screaming out into the void.
A second wave crashes over James’ body, burying him in a cloud of sand and foam, leaving only the backs of his calves barely visible on the surface of the churning water.
Sydney reaches him right before a third wave slams down and grabs the first part of James’ body he can reach. He yanks him as hard as he can, heaving his body against the rushing pull of the tide. With gritted teeth and a wild noise in his throat, he finally hauls the dead weight of him up out of the waves and onto the rocky stretch of shore.
He grabs him under the armpits and flips him onto his back. Wet sand covers James’ still face, plastered through his hair. A stream of deep red blood pours down from the gash in his forehead, mixing with the saltwater. His eyes are closed, and his lips barely parted.
He isn’t breathing.
Sydney curses out loud as a panicked hotness prickles at the back of his eyes. He can’t lose it now. He absolutely cannot.
He sprints through his memories searching for something, anything to help, and a certain memory flies up and smacks him in the face—he’s seventeen, spying on the lifeguard training course from the shady wall of trees, wishing they would just get on with it so he could have his stretch of beach back, watching them practice CPR.
His hands and fingers move without him, ripping open James’ tank top to see his chest, plastered with more wet sand and flecks of broken seaweed. He doesn’t even know if this will help—if this won’t just hurt him even more. But James’ chest stays frozen and flat, and his lips stay still, and Sydney can’t fucking watch James Campbell die on the sand knowing the last thing he ever saw on earth was Danny Moore running away from him like a coward, accusing him of unspeakable things and telling him he’s been anything but brave.
The memory of the lifeguard training flashes like a sputtering film through his mind as he positions his shaking hands on James’ chest. He doesn’t even pause to take a calming breath, but starts to push. Hard. Pumping down with all his might until James’ ribs creak and sag under the weight of his trembling palms. He hears his momma’s favorite hymn in his head, steady in time to his beat.
“Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart . . . Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art . . .”
He stops after fifteen (Was it supposed to be fifteen? Thirty? Five?) and grasps James’ jaw, moving his lifeless head back to open up his neck, hating the heavy weight of it as it flops in his hand. He brushes the blood off his face, and shivers as it clings wet and sticky to his palm. He can’t stop to think about it. With a deep breath he holds James’ chin with his hand and leans down over him, pressing his dry lips to the grimy sand- and saltwater-covered skin.
James’ lips are still warm. Sydney puffs up his lungs with air and forces the breath into James’ throat, hearing the roaring rush of the air pump down into his lungs. His own cheeks are vibrating, stiff and sore as he leans up just enough to suck in another breath before covering James’ mouth again with his own. The tide pushes and pulls at his shins, cradling James’ body before trying to pull him back out to sea. Sydney holds on to James’ upper arm so tightly he feels straight through to the bone.
After three breaths, he suddenly hears a soft gurgle in the back of James’ throat, a quick catch in his chest. A tremor.
Sydney’s heart pounds uncontrollably as he forces another breath into James’ body, praying like he’s never prayed in his entire life that this will do it—that this will be the one to keep James’ lips from growing any cooler beneath his. He’s so earnest in his thoughts, lost in the haze of blindingly focused panic, that he doesn’t immediately notice the slight change in pressure beneath his mouth.
Out of the chaos, out of the swirling noise, he feels a subtle pushback on the air he’s forcing into James’ throat—a backflow of outgoing breath moving steadily out of James’ lungs. Sydney moves to lift his mouth up, to see if he should place his hands back on James’ chest to try pushing again, when suddenly James’ lips move beneath his own, softly latching on to his bottom lip and giving a
wet suck.
For exactly one second, Sydney freezes.
The soft jaw below his moves to further capture his mouth, and James exhales a beautiful, steady stream of breath from his nose straight onto Sydney’s trembling upper lip.
Sydney’s eyes fly open. He feels his own mouth start to move softly against James’ wet lips, tasting the hints of crackling salt, and then he sucks in a startled breath. He yanks back from James’ face just as James starts to cough and heave in great gasps. With numb fingers, Sydney turns him over onto his side and watches wide-eyed as James coughs up mouthfuls of seawater and gulps down air.
“Thank God,” he hears himself whisper. He can still feel the warm, wet, ghostly pressure of lips gliding against his mouth.
Just as Sydney goes to lean over and glimpse James’ face (brush back his hair? touch his cheek?), rough hands suddenly grab his shoulders, throwing him back from James.
“The fuck are you doing to him? Get the fuck off him!”
Sydney looks up wildly to see Rob and the rest of the guys sprinting towards them in the sand. The one who got there first hauls Sydney to his feet by his collar, practically spitting with rage.
“You fucking perv—making a fucking move on him when he just fucking drowned!”
Sydney doesn’t register the punch in time to duck. The man’s fist slams into his cheek, throwing him down into the rocky sand with a flash of white. He cradles his face with his hand on his knees and grunts out at the pain shooting through his skull. Sydney marvels that he had no idea it was possible to time-travel back to high school again.
He squints open his eyes, still flexing his aching jaw, and looks up from the wet sand just in time to see Rob brushing the wet hair back from James’ face. To see him whispering to him, gently holding his hand. To see James’ eyes open and blinking, chest rising and falling as he steadily breathes.
Sydney stumbles to his feet as one of the guys sprints past him to the road, presumably to find a call box for an ambulance. He stands back from the little group in the sand, gasping and helpless, still clutching his throbbing face as the rest of the men kneel around James amongst the tidepool foam.
He hears James’ voice rise above the murmurs and wants to weep at the sound.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he’s saying in a thin voice. “Just got sucked under, that’s all, I’m fine.”
He says the words over and over; Sydney wonders if he actually believes them. If he realizes that he’d lain there in the wet sand beneath Sydney’s shaking hands without breathing. If he, too, still feels the ghost of lips pressed hotly against his own.
All of a sudden, Sydney knows he can’t take a single minute more. That the longer he stands there staring at James Campbell lying limp in the sand, the more he’ll never, ever want to get on a plane and leave.
He tears his gaze away after reassuring himself one last time that James is, in fact, breathing, and then turns to walk as fast as he can back across the sand to his board. He wipes furiously at a tear that escapes down his cheek, James’ dried blood cool and thick on his palm. His other hand still clutches at the blooming bruise beneath his eye.
He hears footsteps chasing after him in the sand, and he turns and tenses his body, ready for round two of the fight. Instead he sees it’s the other friend running his way—the quiet one.
“Hey man, don’t go!” he calls out, panting as he sprints. Sydney stands still and waits for him to catch up, even though he desperately wants to turn and flee far away in the other direction.
“Sorry about Kip, man, he was just scared,” the friend says. Sydney huffs and experimentally flexes his jaw, then winces at the fresh shoot of pain.
“I know you were just doing CPR on him,” he adds.
“Yeah, well, you could’ve shared that with your friend over there before he fucking decked me,” Sydney snaps. He turns and starts striding away again, feet numb and heavy in the sand.
“He’s asking for you!” the friend calls after him. “Jimmy’s asking for you!”
Sydney’s chest pangs, and a small moan escapes the back of his throat. He licks his lips against the ghost of James’ mouth pressed against his own. Feels the memory of James’ head rolling heavy and limp in his palm.
He doesn’t respond.
He makes it back to his stuff and heaves his board under his still-shaking arm, steadfastly not looking at James’ board lying next to it unassumingly in the warm sand. Then he books it up towards the road to hitchhike back to Hermosa.
He doesn’t once allow himself to look back towards the shore.
10
The love affair never even began.
It was broken. Dead on arrival. The part of the “J” in James’ name where the pen briefly ran out of ink while he stood leaning over a desk and signed his name on an enlistment form. The part of the “J” he never went back to try and fill in.
It was already dead when James stepped up out of the station wagon one foot at a time onto the already-hot asphalt of LAX at four o’clock in the morning, Auntie Cath’s mostly-for-show sobs echoing out across the empty drop-off lane and Uncle Ron’s hand slapping his back just once, hard enough to bruise.
Dead when he touched down onto a muddy training field next to the base camp outside steaming Saigon and Run, seaman, I said get your ass into gear and fucking run or them Viet Cong’ll cut your balls off! And dead when the Lieutenant shoved him off the top of the diving platform into the freezing cold, chlorinated pool below, and he thought he was gonna die of fear before his back hit the water.
You need to know how it feels to fall off the side of a ship without pissing yourself, they said.
They also said hold this gun like you’ve been holding it your whole life and don’t fucking shoot at anything that’s got the damn Stars and Stripes on it and if the ship goes down with a fucking torpedo and those sons of bitches capture you, you don’t say a fucking word about our Intel no matter what they do to you, you fucking hear me, seaman?
“Sir, yes, sir!” with no soul behind the words. “Sir, yes, sir!” before hunkering down in the back of a camouflage jeep alongside the hidden jungle Navy dock and whipping out packs of cards, and smuggled cigarettes, and little folded up photographs of naked pinup girls wearing fishnet tights and sailors’ caps.
“Sir, yes, sir!” when James was dismissed from his midnight to five a.m. shift keeping watch up on the deck, and you scrub the hell out of that grease stain on your uniform collar before the next time I see you, seaman, or you’ll be scrubbing decks wishing you were a POW instead. He went down into his tiny, swaying hammock bunk and pulled out a sheet of lined paper and pen to write to Auntie Cath and Uncle Ron for the first time since he stepped onto the boat. To tell them “All is fine,” and “The food on the ship is alright, but not as good as your tuna casserole,” and “Last week I saw a monkey climbing along the trees on the shore.”
Instead he wrote a tear-stained letter to Helen Campbell. Told her that he wished he’d gone on and stayed in college instead of enlisting. That he’d just taken the chance with being drafted into the Army, destined never to return home.
(You have a hell of a lot more chance in the Navy, they’d said. Boy your age oughta enlist out on the sea before they draft you and drop you in the middle of the jungle face to face with the barrel of a Viet Cong gun).
Told her that this was the first year he couldn’t go drink half a strawberry milkshake alone on her birthday since that night she never came home. The first year he couldn’t eat all the whipped cream. Told her that he didn’t want to die.
Written, but not signed. Dropped into the ocean before the whistle for first watch. Gobbled up quick by a fish.
~
Keith Hartman knew that James Campbell’s mother’s name was Helen.
He knew it in the dead of night, standing shoulder to shoulder on the starboard deck looking out over the lifeless, glassy sea, necks rubbing raw under starched uniform collars and eyes drooping shut to the steady lull of the ship
rocking on the waves.
Keith Hartman’s love affair began when he signed his name on that crisp white piece of paper, pen ink flowing smoothly throughout the whole entire “K.”
He had green eyes like the grass on a baseball field, and hair that’d been cropped in a military cut since he was born, and a whole hallway back at his momma’s home in Alabama covered in Navy medals going all the way back to 1805. Straight gleaming white teeth that could be their own lighthouse in the middle of the foggy, black nights out at sea.
He wrote letters home every Tuesday night to his girl Lila May, waiting and praying for him on an Alabama farm. He told the other sailors during mess hall that her tits were the prettiest little buds you ever did see. He told James in the black of night, shoulder to shoulder on the starboard deck, that really she was keeping her skirt pulled down and her blouse buttoned up until the day she had a wedding ring on her finger.
He had danger in his eyelashes and adventure between his toes. Lit up like a firework when he stood at attention with James at his side and found out the two of them were among those chosen for The Mission.
“Sir, yes, sir!” when James followed in Keith Hartman’s trail like the tail on a comet as they strapped themselves with dark green and rusting supplies and not enough water and too many bullets. Surely there were far too many bullets.
It was supposed to be easy. Deliver the supplies. Pass off some Intel. Say hello to the Army buddies exhausted from trekking on foot through the jungle. In and out in five hours. Come back on board with the same amount of bullets they left with.
Instead it was far, far too quiet along the coast, where they hunkered down in the silent camo dinghy with guns drawn and pointed at the lifeless shore. Far, far too empty along the stretch of beach where the Army men were supposed to signal them down to meet them. Far, far too still.
The Sea Ain't Mine Alone Page 13