Eric Courtney - The married sister

Rod looked thoughtful. "Better make that neat."

"Neat?" She looked at him questioningly.

He nodded. "Neat."

He looked so different to her standing in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips. Thinner, yes, but changed around the eyes and mouth. Even his attitude was different. She smiled and spun from him, saying, "One neat scotch coming up." In the kitchen, she poured herself a drink that was pretty generous. To cover up, she poured more scotch in his glass.

They sat on the couch together, holding hands, eagerly telling each other any and all big news they had. Rod said he was on leave for a month then only had to report back for processing on his discharge.

"Will you be going back to your old job? Have you written the advertising agency?"

Rod looked down at the floor, took a big drink, then let his head flop back on the couch. "No, I haven't."

"Are you going to call them?"

Rod looked vague. "No, I'm not."

"Why?" Gail bit her lip.

"Well," he gave a little laugh, "I don't think I want to be in advertising any more."

They both took quick drinks and Gail took their glasses to the kitchen and poured bigger drinks. Sitting next to him, she looked at his face and knew he was troubled, that he had come to some new understanding of himself. Having gone through the problem with horrendous consequences, she was sympathetic. Could she, for a few moments, forget her own deep problems? "What do you want to do, then?" she finally asked.

He shrugged. "That's it. I don't know." He gave a little laugh. "I don't have the slightest idea what I want to do."

"Maybe you want to go back to school?" she asked hopefully.

He made a face and took a deep drink. "Nuts. All those long hairs running around and rioting and mouthing off about a lot of causes they don't even understand." Rod was up on his feet and it seemed like he was letting out some of what was bothering him so Gail sat quiet as he talked on. "I'm too old for that crap. Listen, to them, it's all a game. They're over here and bad mouthing and thinking they've got the problems of the world licked and they don't even know what it's all about."

He was striding about the room, drinking, staring off, shooting glances her way while he talked on. "There they are and there I am. There I am in my little chopper, taking off, doing it from the manual, doing just like in training only I'm not in training, I'm in Vietnam and my chopper is loaded down with wounded men. Men blown half apart by land mines and men with their faces blown off by booby traps and kids bleeding, their life blood spilling out of them."

He paused for a moment, drained his glass then went on. "Sometimes I was so loaded I had stretcher cases lashed to my landing pontoons. Sometimes I had such a load of wounded, I couldn't get too much altitude and I'd have to fly between the hills and I'd look out at those guys and see them looking at me with those eyes and sometimes those bastards up in the hills would fire on us."

He paused and Gail got up to take his glass. "Honey, I'm so sorry."

Rod raked a hand through his hair and scoffed. "I'm sorry. Doing a job like that day in and day out can warp your perspective."

Gail shuddered. "I'll bet. You've seen too much suffering."

Rod gave a harsh laugh as he followed her out to the kitchen and stood watching as she mixed the drinks. "It's more than just that. It's the whole God damn country. Corruption everywhere. In the towns, it's all black market, whores, and dope."

Gail looked at him. "Really?"

"The whole place is miserable. There isn't one decent person in that whole stinking country. Sometimes, I just wished I could put it all down and walk away from it. Just say the hell with it."

"What did you do to keep from going crazy?"

Rod took his drink, took a big swig then tilted his glass in a little ironic toast. "Well, booze, for one thing."

Gail cocked her head. "For one thing?"

Rod looked at her seriously. "Yes. Pot, for another. Don't look so shocked or upset. Everybody over there smokes it. The stuff grows wild all over the place. Everybody does it. And with good cause. Keeps you from going nuts and busting the place up."

"I… didn't know," Gail said, wondering if she should tell him she had smoked it, wondering if she should tell him anything about Lee having been there. "You never wrote me about it."

"It's something you don't write home about." With a shrug, he grabbed the bottle and walked back into the living room, sprawling on the couch and saying, "Let's have some music or television or something."

Gail followed him. Her mind was a mixture of emotions and conflicting thoughts. She had hoped he would be calm and strong and take charge of their life and be someone she could lean on; someone she could love and trust and perhaps, someday, confide in and tell all of what was burning in her soul and groin. She needed to tell someone what she was going through and that someone had been Rod. Now, here he was; restless, disillusioned, bitter, drinking, unsure.

The fact that he had confessed he had smoked pot in Vietnam had a double effect: first, a relief in that he had done it too; a way, in fact, of admitting she had done it with Lee and a way of opening up the subject. Yet, at the same time, there was the realization that, if he had smoked pot, he had felt the way she had and he could have found it easy to find willing girls.

"And what else did you do?" she asked, sitting next to him and beginning to feel the blissful relief and relaxation from the booze.

Rod looked mystified. "What else did I do?"

"To keep from going crazy."

"Over there? Oh, the usual. Crap games, card games. I told you about the boozing. Movies, when we could get them. And the dope," he added, waving the bottle a little drunkenly.

"And what else?"

He looked at her owlishly. "What do you mean, what else?"

Gail tried to look coy. "No women?"

Rod gave a humorless laugh. "Naw."

"Come on, you can tell me."

"Say," he said, pausing to drink, "What kind of guy do you think I am?"

"Like every other husband far away from home and lonely, and upset," Gail said with an expansive and tolerating wave of the hand.

"No, not me," Rod answered, looking down at his glass.

"I hear those Vietnamese girls are pretty cute. I've seen them on the news. Some of them are knockouts," she said, teasing, moving closer and letting her hand stroke his thigh.

"Yeah, some of them are, but those aren't the bar girls. You can't get near those girls."

"Yeah, but I bet you didn't have any difficulty getting near those bar girls."

"No," he said, shaking his head. "Oh, a couple of times we fooled around. Couple of the guys used to make out, but I never did more than buy them a couple of drinks."

Gail threw her hand to her mouth and laughed. "I bet. Come on, Rod, I love you. Are we going to have secrets from one an other?" she asked, amazed at her own excitement and lack of guilt. A wild thrill ran through her. She felt like Lee. It was a lewd thrill that made her lean forward, her lips wet and parted, her eyes half closed, her breast brushing against his shoulder as she whispered, "Come on, tell me about it."

Rod burst away from her, getting to his feet. "All right," he said, waving his glass. "So I did. Just once. That's all. I was drunk and lonely and hadn't heard from you for a long while and I met this girl and went and did it."

"I wrote you every day," she said, a little defiantly. Even though it appeased her conscience a little to know that he too had been unfaithful, it hurt her pride and she felt a pang of jealousy creep into her being.

"The mail was held up lots of times and I'd get a whole lot of letters at once," he alibied. "Anyway, that's no excuse. Honey, forgive me. Try to understand. She meant nothing to me and I was lonely and I didn't even enjoy it."