They docked in absolute silence, crept up along the messy jungle shore with pounding hearts and unsteady hands. Whispered orders. Whispered curses. Camouflage uniforms disappearing one by one into the thick and airless jungle weeds. Wet, green leaves tugging softly at gun-toting arms. Swallowing up the boots on their feet and reminding them all that they were far, far away from the sea. Keith looked like he wanted to fly.
The first bullets felt like little puffs of wind. A respite from the heavy, wet sun hanging above them and dripping down onto their backs.
Then the world exploded.
There was chaos, and an explosion of sound, and orders screamed out into the void, half at the sailors, half into buzzing old radios. There was sweat dripping down into terrified young eyes, and James followed Keith Hartman in front of him and ran and ran and ran. And that’s when it started to rain.
There wasn’t time for “sir, yes, sir!” when the order came to get the hell down and find some goddamn cover and hold your fucking ground and shoot the hell out of anything that moves, I said shoot, goddammit!
James trembled on his back on the other side of a dirt mound and felt the earth shaking beneath him under the force of the bullets and the fire and the bombs. Hot and steaming water poured down onto his face, into his eyes. Dirt clods ricocheted off his metal helmet and hellfire rained down above him, pounding down into the earth and sending up towers of fire into the smoking sky. There wasn’t enough time to ask for orders. Wasn’t enough time to be scared.
James fired off bullets shoulder to shoulder with Keith, feeling Keith’s gun’s recoil shoot straight through to his own body. They fired searing metal into a wall of thick, choking smoke. The enemy emerging from the flames of hell.
No time for “sir, yes, sir!” when the order finally came to move out, goddammit I said fucking move out! And Keith Hartman pulled James by the collar to his feet, and they ran and ran and ran.
James didn’t know whether they ran towards the sea or away from it. Bullets whizzed like fire past sweaty, trembling cheeks. Eyes stung shut against the blinding smoke. Jungle leaves and vines wrapped around legs and ankles and pulled sailors down into the heaving, hot palms of the earth. Reminding them they weren’t on a ship that could glide away into the horizon.
(You have a hell of a lot more chance in the Navy, they’d said.)
James turned to see a wall of screaming fire explode on top of Roy and Lawrence. Their bodies disappeared, swallowed up in crackling red smoke. There wasn’t enough time to stop and register the noise—hear the ripping booms of exploding bombs, or the screaming orders, or the thrash and crack of the palm trees riddled with bullets, or the rain pummeling down into the soft, steaming earth. To hear the last screams of Roy and Lawrence deep in the red mud.
Keith ran and ran and ran away from it all. And James followed.
They ran for hours, days, years. They ran for eleven minutes. And then Keith Hartman tripped and fell flat on his face, and James looked down and saw he’d tripped on Jack’s muddy, smoking body, with three limbs left instead of four. And Keith hurled Jack up onto his shoulders and screamed at James to run ahead and save yourself, Jimmy, for God’s sake save yourself and run!
So James did.
He ran for eight more minutes. Eight more years. The jungle was thinning out, and he could tell he was on the verge of reaching a safe, silent shore, and his lungs were burning in acid and legs on fire with trembling adrenaline.
That’s when the enemy jumped out in front of him from the snarling green shadows, holding a black gun. And James wailed from the deepest part of his chest, and raised his gun arm without even thinking about it, and shot him before he could even check the uniform for a sign of the Stars and Stripes.
When he did crouch down and crawl on his hands and knees to check, he saw the face of a kid staring up into the sky, one eye covered in long black hair. Not even old enough for a driver’s license.
No Stars or Stripes.
James hurled himself to his knees and ran towards the shore, vision blacking out except for the tiniest slip of ocean peeking out through the palm trees. His numb legs carried him through the last dense brushes of the jungle, hot and screaming at his back, and the crystal blue water in front of him lapped gently at the soft white sand.
The silence was a slap in the face.
He looked up towards the sky, with his mud and sweat and blood covered cheeks, and spotted a rescue helicopter swerving toward him way out in the distance, hovering over the calm sea. He ran out knee deep into the ocean, and waved his arms like a madman, watching the swinging ladder sway in the breeze, and the rain cleared up just like turning off a faucet.
He turned back one last time to the churning chaos of the jungle, praying he would see Keith Hartman burst out alive from the smoke and fire, and that’s when his chest just under his left shoulder exploded.
~
James learned it all later, when he was laid up in a hospital bed near base camp under crisp white sheets, folded down at the corners.
How Keith Hartman finally did come running out of the jungle, vomiting with exhaustion from carrying Jack’s corpse on his back. How he’d seen James’ body floating face up in the shallows, sinking deeper into the red water, rising and falling in the blood-soaked foam.
Keith won a medal for it all, in the end. For saving Jack’s body for his funeral and saving James Campbell’s breath in his lungs. He visited James in the hospital, holding his thin hand in the uncomfortable silence, and James clamped his mouth shut so he wouldn’t ask Keith why the hell he didn’t just leave him to rest in peace on the beach.
It was hard to talk if they weren’t standing shoulder to shoulder on the starboard deck. Keith slipped a bullet casing into his hand before he left, and neither one of them said goodbye.
They promoted Keith Hartman after that. Shipped him off to a war office with a comfy leather chair. And James never saw him again.
Later, when James tried to think about it—what happened after his chest just under his left shoulder exploded—he could only remember two things, but they were crystal clear.
That someone, somewhere on the pristine little beach was screaming out in tears for their momma, and that the last conscious thought he had was of whipped cream on a pier.
~
Get down there to China Beach, Jimmy. It’ll cheer you up in no time, they said.
So James hauled himself from his crisp white sheets and clutched his creaking shoulder and hitched a ride on one of the supply jeeps traveling thirty minutes south from Da Nang.
The beach was a zoo. A rolling stretch of white sand covered in camo and GI’s, with a hand-built driftwood lifeguard tower splattered with graffiti paint jobs and a line of shirtless soldiers all along the shore watching two men surf out in the waves.
Watching two men surf. Surfing in the middle of the chaos. Surfing on the other side of the world.
James sucked in a breath and stared speechless, hovering at the edges of the crowd. He felt like he’d just entered a time machine with a sick twist—doomed to stand frozen like a statue forever while he viewed a scene from his past life in Los Angeles. He stood there gaping until someone came up and handed him a lukewarm beer, and another laughed and said, relax, dude, you’re in paradise now, and another one handed him a surfboard, dripping wet from the sea.
It was hand built from extra Army supplies—wood painstakingly sanded down and covered in cheap Army issue wax. A big white peace sign painted on its belly.
How did you know I can surf? James asked.
Because everyone who watches the waves like that knows how to surf, they said.
They told him to take a breath. Take it for a ride or two and enjoy himself. So James Campbell stripped down to his fatigue pants and an undershirt, and threw his old boots down into the hot sand, and waded out slowly into the crashing waves. One foot in front of the other, sinking into the soft, cool deep. His first time touching ocean water without bullets strapped to his back in l
ifetimes. Touching the same molecules of water, the same great, breathing sea, that he touched growing up outside his little Long Beach trailer.
It was painful to paddle out with his wounded shoulder, and his back spasmed as he tugged himself along one-handed. The water was too flat and his mouth too dry. He wanted to turn back. End it all before he embarrassed himself, or ripped open the stitches in his skin.
But a little swell came in, and he paddled out to meet it, and before he knew it James was standing on his board on shaking legs, feeling the wind and spray rush against his face in a long lost kiss.
He was surfing.
He was surfing.
He felt the smile take over his face in a great burst, and a tear on his cheek mixed in with the salty spray. He rode that wave until it was just a whisper of foam across the shallows, and the smile stayed on his lips even as he leaned back and let the wave finally swallow him up, enclosed in the sea. It threatened at the corners of his lips as he dragged the board behind him back up to the sandy shore, handing it off after that lone ride to the group of soldiers lounging around in the sand with a quiet thank you.
They looked into his eyes and nodded. They understood.
He blinked the saltwater out of his eyes and breathed as he walked slowly along the shore, feet sinking deep into the soft, wet sand, the sound of joking and laughter from the group echoing at his back. He looked up to the clear blue sky, free of smoke and fire, free of the sound of screaming.
James smiled, and he licked his lips, and they tasted like a crusty old shrimp.
~
On Day One of his new life, James woke up in the back of the station wagon which Uncle Ron had left him after he and Auntie Cath assured he was still alive and breathing. They’d visited him in the VA recovery hospital down in the Valley in between church and bingo on a Sunday (Well, what can we say, Jimmy? You’ve been gone for so many years. We’re glad you’re alright.) and then packed up and moved to Sacramento two weeks later, three days after James hung up the phone from giving them a call to tell them he was out and looking for an apartment. Better house prices up there in Sacramento, they’d said. Take the car, you’ll need it. Got less traffic up there in Sacramento, you know.
James brushed his teeth over the gutter, buttoned up a shirt and walked into the work office for the Long Beach dockyard. Can you be on time? Yes. Can you work manual labor? Yes.
They never asked if he knew how to fall off the side of the ship. If he knew how to hold and shoot a gun at anything that moved.
He stayed alive for two months. Working and eating and sleeping. Breathe in, breathe out. Eyes open in the morning and closed at night. Keep an ice pack in the freezer to put on his shoulder the second he crawled in the door from work each day at six-forty-five.
And after two months of only being around other people when he was bent over at work, one day he made his way with a sagging spine and lowered neck down to the shoreline next to the pier. He’d never gone down there before, always packed up and left right after the end of day whistle.
He stood awkwardly in the sand. Fiddled with the bullet casing in his pocket. There was a group of surfers out there, laughing and playing in the ocean spray, faces turned up towards the sky. Just a few years younger than him.
James stood there and tried to remember how it felt to surf that little swell along China Beach and couldn’t anymore. Just couldn’t.
Instead he thought of wanting to tell Keith Hartman that he should have just left him there, should have left him to rest in the shallows with his last conscious thought about whipped cream on a pier.
And then a man appeared in front of him, all tan shoulders and wet hair pulled back and saltwater dripping from his calves. He put out a hand and waited for James to shake it, his grip wet and warm and firm.
And he said, “Hey, man, my name’s Rob. You surf?”
11
The air tastes like flowers, soft and warm on his tongue.
James stops in his tracks on the curb outside the Honolulu Airport terminal and takes a deep breath in, letting it fill up his lungs, replacing the stale air from the plane in his system.
The healing cut on his forehead throbs as he looks up to the full, bright sun, and he winces as the dull ache makes its way behind his eyes. He hadn’t even ended up needing stitches—head wounds always bleed ten buckets more than you’d think they would from the size of them. It’s just a tiny line now, barely visible unless you knew it was there.
The ache remains, though, to remind him. Remind him that he had bullets shot at him halfway across the world, and yet the thing that almost did him in was a puny little tide pool on a sunny Laguna Beach shore, right in the familiar safety of broad daylight an hour away from home.
It’s fucking embarrassing. James’ feet are rooted to the pavement as he watches taxi after taxi pass him by. He can’t bring himself to wave one down. If he does, then he’ll have to open his mouth and give an address, and he’ll have to let himself be driven clear across an unfamiliar island, and he’ll have to follow through with this absolutely insane, ridiculous, moronic plan.
He’ll have to see Danny Moore again.
It all started in a hospital room four days ago. He’d spent the previous six hours nearly begging and pleading to be released. He was fine, he felt totally normal, his chest was just a little bit sore, no his heart wasn’t stuttering. But they’d ordered him to stay overnight for observations since his body had done the goddamn inconvenient thing of trying to stop breathing, and Rob had stood in the doorway of the room with his arms crossed over his broad chest and practically dared James with just his eyes to try and get past him.
So he’d lain there under crisp white sheets, folded down at the corners, and tried desperately not to think of the last time he was left to stare up at a hospital ceiling. He instead focused all his attention on the sounds of Rob and Lori’s voices, nervously chatting about anything and everything to keep the room from falling into silence.
He’d stared at the ceiling and remembered it all as if it had been caught on film. How Rob had pushed his hair back from his forehead there on the beach with the tide rushing in around his weak and sore body, trying to drag him back out to the depths. How Rob had held his hand and leaned over him and whispered, “Christ, Jimmy you could have died. You could have died on me. Don’t know what I would’ve done if Danny hadn’t pulled you out and known how to get you breathing again.”
And James had stared at the ceiling and realized that it hadn’t all just been a dream. That he really had come back to consciousness to the feeling of warm, wet lips pressed against his own, and he really had thought for one fleeting, ridiculous second that he would open his eyes to find Rob’s deep brown ones gazing back at him. And instead he’d seen two little droplets of ocean, blown wide with fear and covered with a mop of brown curls, a whispered, “Thank God” passed between full, trembling lips.
He’d realized, lying there in the drone of the fluorescent lights, that that zing up his spine, that overwhelming, soul consuming feeling of “I have to fucking survive this,” had come upon him at precisely the moment he’d looked up at those two terrified eyes. Had felt it because they were blue and not brown. Eyes that were frantic and young and powerful—desperate.
He’d known then that he didn’t want to be left to rest in peace on the beach, floating in the blood-soaked foam. He’d known that he didn’t want to die. Again.
And James had remembered how he’d coughed up another lungful of seawater and choked out, “Where is he?” And Rob had gone silent as Kip bit his lip and muttered, “Sorry, man, I thought he was doing something nasty to you, so I . . .”
James had gritted his teeth and turned his head. Had seen Danny walking, no, running away from them all in the sand, one hand clasped up to his face, the other one covered in blood. Running away as fast as he could from Dean’s calls.
The memories had continued to flash through his mind the whole time he’d been in the hospital, an endless hell
ish loop. Until finally he’d gathered his courage and asked Lori if she could finagle one of the girls who’d worked the ISF check-in table with her for the pro circuit surfers if she could get her Danny’s address in Hawaii.
Rob had looked at him like he was insane while he explained to them that he’d probably get a week off work in sick time after this, and he already had his plane ticket bought for the Billabong, and he obviously wasn’t going to surf it now, but maybe he could still take a Hawaii vacation? And maybe he could watch the competition and pick up some tips for next year, if he ever even made pro again? And maybe, just maybe, he could thank Danny Moore for pulling his lifeless body from the surf?
Rob never even asked him why he didn’t just want Danny’s phone number to give him a call.
And then Kip, Dean, and Steven had come in, with hands held awkwardly behind their backs and their heads turned so they weren’t looking directly at James in the hospital gown.
“That’s a gnarly scar you got there, man,” Dean had said. “Your shirt got ripped open when . . . you know. Never noticed it before.”
And the air had turned thick and tense when James shrugged his shoulder and said, in a too-casual voice, “Yeah, I was shot.”
Kip had missed the unspoken explanation and asked, “Where?”
And James had looked up at the ceiling and whispered, “Not here.”
And now, after four long days of staring out his apartment window thinking more than he ever had in his whole damn life, even on the nights he’d kept watch on the ship without Keith by his side to talk to, James finds himself standing on the curb of the Honolulu airport, with a rucksack slung over his shoulder and an address written on a folded-up note in his pocket in Lori’s script.
He tastes the flowers in the air, squares his shoulders, and flags down a taxi.
The drive across the island is gorgeous. It leaves James with his jaw hanging open and eyes scared to blink out of fear they’ll miss another waterfall, or another tropical flower, or another craggy mountain. It reminds him of Vietnam—the beautiful coastlines they passed from the decks of the ship, the breathtaking, endless green they trudged and clamored through in guzzling camo jeeps.
The Sea Ain't Mine Alone Page 14