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After the first seventy-two hours, Dad gave him a double-dose of secobarbital to knock him out. Hawkeye couldn’t blame him—they’d been a pretty bad seventy-two hours—except that as soon as he shut his eyes, he was dreaming about BJ. They were back at the 4077, lying on their backs in the field upwind of the cesspool, and it was sunny and clear and totally without choppers. Just a nice spring day. He looked over and saw that BJ had a stalk of grass in his teeth like a farmer, his old patchwork hat resting on his stomach. He looked warm and burnished gold against the grass, his left knee knocking lazily against Hawkeye’s right knee, and Hawkeye felt safe and calm and a little turned on.
“I thought there might be something we have to say to each other,” BJ said after a while, in his affable, beloved Beej voice.
“You said that already,” Hawkeye said.
“Oh,” BJ said, and got up on one golden elbow to look down at him. The hat slipped off his stomach into the grass. “Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure,” Hawkeye assured him. “You said a lot of things to me, Beej.”
BJ smiled at him. “Did I ever tell you’re cute?”
“As a bug’s bottom,” Hawkeye said, and reached out to coquettishly run his bare foot along BJ’s calf, in case it was one of those dreams.
“Then I guess I’ve said it all,” BJ said easily. “What about you? Anything you want to get off your chest?”
“What’s the rush?” Hawkeye kept playing footsie, and BJ rolled his eyes and caught his foot between his two strong calves. Hawkeye shivered.
“I’ve got a flight to catch,” BJ said, and caught one of Hawkeye’s hands in his for good measure. “I’d hate to miss it.”
“Well now that I think about it,” Hawkeye said, sure it was one of those dreams now, “I love you madly and every night I fall asleep picturing your dimple.”
“I don’t have a dimple.”
“Not on your face you don’t.”
“Flatterer,” BJ said, and kissed Hawkeye’s knuckles.
“Philanderer,” Hawkeye said comfortably. “Kiss me for real.”
“People might see.”
“You’re right. Let’s charge them a nickel first.”
BJ laughed and kissed him, a warm tickling press of mustache and mouth. Hawkeye sighed and wound his arms around BJ’s neck. There was something he wanted to say, he realized dimly, there was something important he was forgetting. He pulled back from BJ’s lips to say it, but then discovered that instead of a warm firm body, he had his arms around a big gunny sack full of rice. He tore open the top, looking for Beej, and the rice spilled out in a big susurrating rush into his lap. He lifted up a palmful, and it slid out of his hand like sand in an hourglass.
He looked up, and the green field was gone. The only thing around him for miles were drifts and dunes of dried rice, under a gray sky. It was like the world was a grain silo. “They always turn to rice before I finish,” he complained.
He got up and started walking through the rice. It was hard to move at full speed, his feet kept sinking down with each step down and then getting heavier with each lift up. It was like running through sand, or walking through snow. It was so slow it made him think irritably about how he used to snowshoe to school when he was a kid, on bad snowy days. He wished he had snowshoes now. Or skis. Or a sleigh.
He rounded a dune and blinked his eyes and Tommy was there, sitting on one of the beat-up wooden sleds they’d loved all the way back in fourth grade, sure to go smooth as butter over the rice.
“Hey Tom, Tom,” Hawkeye said, making grabby hands. “Give me that! I gotta get out of here.”
Tommy didn’t get up off the sled, making a big production out of it, wiggling his butt harder into the seat. He was always a joker, that guy. “What’ll you give me for it?”
“Two Captain Americas and a Superman.”
Tommy made a face. “I hate Captain America. He’s such a good boy.”
“Well, what do you want? I keep telling you, I’m in a hurry.”
“Lacey Mulligan’s underwear. The pink ones Matty Benson saw on the laundry line.”
“I don’t have Lacey Mulligan’s underwear.”
“Too bad, Hawk.”
Hawkeye tugged at his hair. “Isn’t there anything else you want?”
“What are you in such a hurry for, anyway?”
“I need to get to the airport. Come on, Tommy, please.”
Tommy pretended to consider, tapping his chin. “Here’s a wager: what I win in the woods will be yours, and what you gain while I’m gone you will give to me.”
“Oh, not that old yarn.”
“That’s the deal, boy-o,” Tommy said, and waggled his eyebrows. “What have you gained while I’m gone? Anything good?”
“Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full,” Hawkeye said, rolling his eyes. He stepped in close to Tommy, dropped to his knees in the rice, and kissed him, as sweetly as he could. Tommy made a nice little hmm sound into his mouth, and Hawkeye’s chest ached with missing him.
“Thanks for that, sweetheart,” Tommy said softly, when Hawkeye pulled back to breathe. He smiled and slid out of Hawkeye’s arms, even when Hawkeye made a protesting noise. “Sled’s all yours.”
“Well, now, wait a second,” Hawkeye said, suddenly worried. “What about you?”
“Oh, you know me,” Tommy said. He was slowly sinking into the rice, like it was quicksand. “I’m always alright.” First the rice went up to his knees, and then to his waist.
“I have to say, this doesn’t feel right,” Hawkeye said, as the rice got to Tommy’s chest.
“You’re in a hurry,” Tommy reminded him, laughing. The rice was up to his neck. “Go on, lover boy. Be good.” The rice swallowed Tommy up.
Hawkeye got on the sled, and the sled skimmed down the hill like a dream. He started going faster and faster, taking hairpin turns down the dunes that scared and thrilled him at the same time, whooping into the wind.
The dunes resolved into a beach, a vast silver lake lapping at the sand. It was actually sand, now, instead of rice. He wasn’t sure when that had happened. The sled slid right down to the water, and then Hawkeye had to get up. He squinted at the water, shielding his eyes with his hands. He thought he could see something. He was sure he could see something: a little rowboat, with a woman inside it.
“Hello!” he called out, doing a jumping jack to get her attention. “Hello, hello! I need to get to Kimpo Airbase! Please, I’ve only got ten minutes!”
The boat drifted closer, and he saw that the woman was Kyung Soon. She smiled at him. “Get in.”
He climbed over the side, and the boat rocked with his weight. He landed in the bottom with a thud, and saw that Kyung Soon had a baby in her arms. His chest went gooey.
“Who’s that?”
“Yuna,” she said, bouncing the baby a little bit. The baby was maybe a year old, with thick black hair that curled around her ears, brown eyes, and freckles. “Yuna Rachel Pierce.”
“Rachel was my mom’s name.”
Kyung Soon smiled at him. “I know it was.”
Hawkeye reached out to brush the baby’s small pink foot with his fingertip. “She’s mine?”
“She could have been,” Kyung Soon said, and kissed the baby’s head. “Do you want to hold her?”
“Yeah,” Hawkeye said, opening his arms. Carefully she passed him the soft, warm, weight. Yuna blinked up at him. “I would have loved her,” he said. “I would have loved her so much.”
“It’s not a happy world,” Kyung Soon said softly. “You stopped writing to me, Hawkeye.”
“I know,” he admitted. He bounced Yuna in his arms. “You stopped writing to me too. It hurt too much to keep going.”
“You could have come to look for me,” she said. “When the war was over.”
“I got scared of what I’d find,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He picked up Yuna’s pudgy hand, and kissed it. “I’m sorry, Yuna.” Yuna babbled sweet baby nothings at him.
“It’s alright,” Kyung Soon said. “She doesn’t really exist.”
He lifted his head up from the baby to look at her. “And you? Are you alright?”
She shrugged. “You don’t think I am.”
While he’d been looking away, Yuna disappeared. “I’m looking for somebody.”
“You didn’t look for me.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, heart aching. “I wish I had.”
“I think all of us would have been happy,” Kyung Soon said, “if we’d met in another life.” She knelt down in the bottom of the boat and pulled a gold key out from a chain around her neck. She fit the key into a lock, turned it, and opened up a trapdoor in the bottom of the boat. Inside was a light so bright you couldn’t see the bottom; it made a pretty pattern on her face.
“Thanks,” Hawkeye said. He swung his legs into the trapdoor, and looked at her one last time. “I really am sorry.”
“Just go,” she said, and he took a deep breath and jumped.
He landed in a poky old folding chair in Colonel Potter’s office, except it clearly wasn’t Colonel Potter’s office. The filing cabinet was in the wrong place, the wall of horse photography was missing, and Henry Blake was sitting on the other side of the desk, resting his chin in his hand, looking just as unshaven and sweet as always.
“Time for a belt?” Henry offered, getting up to go to the liquor cabinet.
“Boy, am I glad to see you,” Hawkeye said, making grabby hands for the drink. “I’m looking for BJ.”
“Who’s BJ?”
Henry handed him a tumbler of whiskey, and Hawkeye gladly accepted it, knocking back half the glass. “He’s my bunkie. My best friend. My comrade in arms. My slightly less evil half.”
Henry got that soft look on his face that he usually reserved for Radar or films from Cuba with titles like ‘The Frivolous Juanita.’ “Well, tell me about him.”
Hawkeye blinked. “I just did!”
“It's just, you could have said all that about Trapper,” Henry said. “What’s this BJ got that means you’ve got to see him so bad?”
“Well,” Hawkeye said. “He’s married.”
“All the good ones are.”
“He’s got a beautiful little girl. She’s five. I met her once.”
“Did you? In Korea?”
“In New York. We had a reunion.”
Henry smiled. “That’s nice, Pierce. You gotta share the poop. Was Radar there?”
“Sure he was,” Hawkeye said, smiling back. “He’s married now. So’s BJ.”
“You already said that.”
“Oh. His wife’s a knockout. A tiny blonde who can charm the socks off just about anybody. I hate her guts, obviously.”
“Obviously.” Henry tilted his head to the side, in that nervous ‘am I in charge here or are you’ way that he had. It was getting sort of difficult to look at him, like he was in a persistent shadow, and Hawkeye’s eyes couldn’t adjust to it. “Tell me why anyhow, though.”
“Well,” Hawkeye said, “she didn’t call.”
“She didn’t call?”
He shook his head. “She wrote a letter instead, about the accident. If she’d have called, I could have been there, maybe. Hopped on a flight to San Francisco.”
“Maybe you’d have never made it in time,” Henry said gently. He was almost totally gone, now, just a pair of resigned eyes in the dark.
“No,” Hawkeye said, “No, no, you don’t understand. By the time the letter got to me, it was too late.”
“That’s something every doctor’s got to learn, sooner or later,” Henry said, just his voice left in the gloom. “Sometimes it’s too late.”
Hawkeye pushed his way out of the tent and walked into the kitchen of his childhood home, his mother stirring something on the stove.
“Hi, mom,” he said, and she turned around.
“Ben!” she said, and came towards him with a spoon. “Taste this.”
He opened his mouth and tasted the most wonderful, fragrant, perfect chicken soup he’d ever tasted. “Oh no,” he said, and sank down to his knees on the kitchen floor. “Oh, I wish you hadn’t done that.”
“What are you doing on the floor? Ben, what’s wrong?” She came over and felt his forehead with the back of her hand. He felt tears pressing on the inside of his hot eyes; he tried to hold them in so he could keep leaning into her hand.
“What’s wrong is that your soup is perfect,” he said helplessly. “It’s the best goddamn soup on earth. And I’m never gonna taste it again.”
Her arms came around him, perfect and comforting, and he buried his face in her apron, his eyes squeezed tightly shut.
“All good things must come to an end,” she said, and rested one of her soft hands in his hair.
“It’s not fair,” he said, and clutched her to him. “Mom, it’s not fair.”
“I know it’s not, sweet boy.” She kept on stroking his hair. “You don’t need to have any more soup if you don’t want it.”
“But I do,” he said, selfish, miserable. “I do want it.”
She sighed. He was scared to open his eyes, in case she disappeared again. “Then you’re going to have to be brave. Can you be brave, Benjy-boy?”
“I don’t know,” Hawkeye said, trembling in the dark. “I can try.”
“That’s good enough for me,” a familiar dry beloved voice said, and Hawkeye opened his eyes and BJ was there.
Hawkeye cried out and made a wild grab for him; BJ caught him easily. Hawkeye gripped his ribs firmly and kissed the corner of BJ’s mouth, and then his nose, and then under his left eye.
“What’s that for?” BJ asked, smiling and close.
“I missed you,” Hawkeye choked out.
“It’s only been three days.”
“Three days and three years, Beej.”
“What about New York?”
“One lousy reunion didn’t stop me from missing you.”
“Still. Three days and three years, minus two weeks.”
“Would you stop quibbling,” Hawkeye said, and kissed him again, a brief firm press, then back to looking at him. “I’m trying to tell you I love you. I think you’re the great love of my life, actually.”
“You’ve got about five of those,” BJ pointed out, but he was stroking over Hawkeye’s cheekbone with his thumb when he said it, which made it sting less.
“No one like you,” Hawkeye said honestly.
BJ smiled at him. “Is that what you wanted to tell me?”
“No,” Hawkeye said, and dug his fingers into BJ’s waist. “No, no, what I wanted to say was, ‘don’t leave me.’”
“Too late for that, I think.” A tiny kiss.
“Can I say it anyway?” Another tiny kiss.
“Say anything you like.” A third.
“Don’t leave me,” Hawkeye said quietly, as desperately as he’d ever begged for his life, or fought for the lives of his patients. “I’m begging you, Beej. Please don’t leave me.”
BJ looked at him solemnly, his eyes grey and enormous. “We’ll meet again,” he said, equally quiet, equally serious. Then the corner of his mouth tugged up. “Don’t know where‚ don’t know when—”
Hawkeye couldn’t help laughing through his tears. “That’s awful,” he said, “BJ, that’s awful, you know I hate Vera Lynn—”
“—but I know we’ll meet again some sunny day,” BJ said smoothly, like it was a monologue and not the cheesiest, drippiest soldier song they’d ever irritated Charles with. His eyes were shining.
“You dope,” Hawkeye said, still laughing, “You cheeseball, you ungallant goofus.”
“And don’t forget it,” BJ said.
There was still a smile on his lips when he opened his eyes.
It took a second to place himself in time. Boston. 1956. He was tucked into his own bed, and his head hurt something awful, probably from the seventy-two hours of severe dehydration. By the light, it was early. Peg’s letter was still sitting on the bedside table, the paper gone wavy from the gin he’d spilled on it the first night. A double-dose of secobarbital, he remembered.
“Vera fucking Lynn,” Hawkeye murmured, and rubbed a hand hard over the cracked plate of his heart. “You asshole.”
He exhaled slowly. He got up and went to dig through his desk until he found the letter he wanted. Not Peg’s letter—BJ’s last letter.
It had arrived two weeks ago. It was normal, boring, banal. Dear Hawk, here’s a story about Erin mispronouncing the word “fork.” Here’s another story about the Santa Ana winds. Here’s a story about a patient who came into the ER with a balloon up his you-know-where. It could have been any letter BJ had sent him over the last three years. It ended like this:
Well, Hawk, that’s about it for this month’s letter. Give my love to Margaret if you see her, and to Charles if you don’t.
See you around,
Beej
Very gently, Hawkeye kissed the paper, then put it back in his desk. He could hear his dad stirring in the other room, where he'd been folding his old man body onto a sofa for the last three nights, out of love and worry. He took a deep breath in, then let it out, and went to go and live the rest of his life.