Mom made my favorite foods: steak and homemade trench fries, corn on the cob, and fresh green beans and tomatoes. My aunt made my favorite cake, buttermilk chocolate, and put on it the peppermint boiled white icing that only she seemed to know how to do. I couldn't eat much of it. I didn't say, "Pass the tucking salt," as I've heard some of the guys say they did, but I didn't say much of anything else either.
So when Mom found the medal, she thought it was a topic of conversation.
"Honey, this is a Silver Star, isn't it? You didn't tell me you'd won a medal. Can I call Mr. Mingel at the Kansan and tell him?
He's been wanting to interview you when you came home."
I should have unpacked it myself, before she got around to it. The fatigues I had been in when I was admitted were still in there, and that's not the kind of thing you want your mother to see. But my attitude was "burn the whole damned thing." My stuff from Da Nang was being sent later.
Mama's eyes were troubled when she opened the box someone had packed the medal in. I hadn't brought it along. I guess whoever threw my stuff in my bag had done it. I wished Janice had come back to say good-bye. Or Llewellyn.
"Silver Star, huh?" I asked, and glanced at it. Sure enough. I guess the general felt I needed a little higher bribe than a simple Purple Heart to keep my mouth shut. Those things take months to review and award normally. It made me a little sick to think that they were trying to buy me off with something most people earned with the loss of one or more limbs, or maybe their lives. "Don't mean nothin', Mama. Please don't call the newspaper man. I don't have anything I want to tell him."
"Well, if you're sure," she said uncertainly, then patted me on the cheek. "You know your daddy and I love you and we're very proud of you, honey."
I felt as if she'd hit me. Tears stung the backs of my eyes. Proud of what?
I'd killed a man, had been the cause of death for two others, and had abandoned the little boy I'd been trying to save in a Vietcong village.
Nothing had turned out right. The medal was a mockery. A Hollywood happy ending. Fuck. I'd give it to Duncan. He liked that kind of shit. I'd make up a funny story about it, and give it to him. And then later, maybe he'd hold me and I could tell him how it really was. If I could just tell everything to him, I could really start to feel at home again. That was a good idea. If I could talk to him, he'd make me feel better and then I could be a little more normal around the folks. He was living in Independence, Missouri, now, according to the third and final letter I'd received from him. I sat down on my folks' bed and tried to call, but nobody answered.
I drove out to Independence the next day. Mom and Dad disapproved. They thought I should sit around and regale the relatives with more war stories. But I needed to see Duncan badly. If he was gone, maybe I could wait. I stopped and called again from a 7-Eleven store.
"Kitten! You're home!" He said. "God, that's about the most wonderful thing I've heard. Hell, yes, come on out. I've got so much to tell you."
Maybe it would be all right. Maybe he cared more than I thought. Maybe he had realized how much he missed me. I drove into the parking lot at his apartment complex and felt my stomach knot as I came to the front stoop of his apartment, rang the doorbell. The door opened.
A mane of wild red hair held back by a blue bandanna over whelmed a girl who wore rubber gloves, cutoffs, and an overtaxed halter top and who had legs up to her armpits. Maybe I-'d gotten the wrong apartment after all. Maybe he'd moved and had kept the same phone and had forgotten to tell me.
"I'm looking for Duncan-" I began.
She grabbed my hand in her rubber gloves and chirped, "You must be Kitty McCulley! Oh, that rat didn't tell me you'd be here so soon I've been cleaning this place all morning trying to make it look nice for when you got here. Duncan has told me so much about you I've just been dying to meet you." She dragged me into the hall and peeled off her rubber gloves. "I'm Swoozie," she concluded, as if that was supposed to mean something. Duncan had definitely not told me all about her.
"Uh-hi," I said, looking beyond her to see if he was there. Across the living room was a stairway. Upstairs, a faucet shut off, there were a couple of footsteps, and then Duncan came bouncing down the steps, attired in fresh jeans and a starched, button-down shirt. I'd forgotten men could look that clean.
He grabbed me in a bear hug and, to my surprise, I didn't feel any more like hugging him than I had Mom and Dad. I just looked at him. If he really meant that hug, who the hell was she?
"I see you met Swoozie. Great, isn't she?"
"Umm," I said noncommittally.
"She's made us chicken for lunch. You like chicken, don't you, Kitten?"
He didn't wait for an answer. The chicken amply showed off her domestic skills, and the way she hung on Duncan showed off others.
When she had detached herself for a second I said, "Duncan, I've got so much I need to tell you."
"Oh, yeah, and I really want to talk to you too, hon. But it's going to have to be later. Swoozie and I have to run out to her folks' farm for an hour or so. You can entertain yourself, right? The TV's in the bedroom."
I didn't say anything and he didn't ask anything. The two of them piled into his Camaro and drove away. I wandered around the house, thinking I should just leave. He was behaving as if I came over every Sunday for dinner. As if I'd never been away. And to me, his apartment didn't even look real. I drifted upstairs. I'd have to look at the TV. I think I was still hoping he'd get halfway to whatsername's farm, slap himself on the head, say, "Oh, what a fool I've been! I need to get back and talk to Kitty. We can take care of these trivial errands later." But though I strained my ears listening, I heard nothing. I opened the closet door and the smell of his cologne and fresh-pressed clothes drifted out. I lifted a shirt sleeve and sniffed. Before I left, I'd asked him to keep my letters, and I wondered if he had. I didn't expect to find them so easily. But there they were, in a pile, with a rubber band. I picked up the pile, all written on stationery with helicopters and Big Chief tablet-style lines. When I removed the rubber band, I understood why his letters never made reference to mine.
He hadn't opened them. Incredulously, I pawed through the pile. Not one was opened.
I picked them up, tucked them into my purse, and got back into Mom s car. I drove into the countryside, hoping by some coincidence I'd run into them and he could explain. It had been a rainy day, and as I drove down a small dirt road with trees on either side, it rapidly grew darker. I didn't care. I took the curves very fast and ended up plowing through the woods. I was still focused on the letters, and on Duncan, and it took me a while to realize that I wasn't on the road and was heading down a steep embankment. I forgot about braking until the shock of impact hit me, and the fender was crumpled against a tree, the radiator spewing water.
I got out of the car and walked until I found a farmhouse. I called Duncan, and he and Swoozie came to get me, and called a garage.
I didn't ask him about the letters then. But the next day I called a VA hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, and was accepted as a staff nurse almost at once.
I thought what I needed was to get back to work, to get back into the swing of things, to stop dwelling on my problems and help other people.