good friend, too. His name is Paul Montgomery. Maybe you remember him. He is a very nice man, and I bet the two of you will be fast friends when you come home. He’s supposed to be the gym teacher at Big Antler Elementary, but really he’s varsity football coach, so the boosters make his life a little better. We might be going to state this year. He drops off lesson plans for his “helper,” the real gym teacher, and then he drops by my office when he is on his free period. He’s been awfully good to me, making sure I didn’t get lonely while you were away, keeping my mind off those terrible things they report on the news each night, going to evening prayer service where we pray for your safety, and the safety of all of our other boys who are with you overseas.
I imagine you know what I am leading up to here, and you have always complimented me on being plainspoken, so here goes. Paul has asked me to marry him and I have accepted his proposal. I have tried to write this letter in many different ways, Tommy Jack. I have even used up most of this year’s stationery but it is coming close to the holiday season, so I want to make sure my momma has reason to give me this gift. It is not so dear, so her savings account won’t suffer so greatly, and it is something I use. Our church has given us the names of other GIs who might want letters, that the Red Cross had given them (I guess not everybody has someone at home to write to them), and there is a big letter-writing campaign throughout the school. Isn’t that the most darling? Maybe someone in your grouping or platoon or whatever it is will get a letter from one of our little boys or girls, and you can tell them all about life in Big Antler, Texas. Won’t that be a hoot? I am writing some letters too, but I wanted to write this one to you first.
I am looking forward to your coming home and us all being the best of friends. I am sure it will all work out. I won’t write to you again while you are over there. I suppose there is the possibility that you won’t want to be hearing from me for a while, anyway, and don’t you worry, I am not mad at that. I can understand it perfectly. I guess I will sign off here, as there is school tomorrow, and October is the beginning of flu season, and that means the beginning of the busy season for the school nurse. Please look me up when you get home, Tommy Jack. I am not sure where we’ll be living, but definitely it will be somewhere in Big Antler and we will be in the telephone book, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Montgomery. Just give us a ring to let us know when you’ll be coming a-calling, it will be so good to see you. Well, here comes one of those little kids from the school. This one is dressed up like Batman.
Best to you,
Liza Jean
Tommy Jack McMorsey
Yes, that was the letter that started it all. Funny that when I got home from North Dakota and the Big Antler Daily would run that story on me and the Japanese girl, I would be getting the same kind of looks around town I got when I returned from Vietnam thirty-three years ago to see my high school and college sweetheart married to someone else. I could have let it go with those original newspaper stories, where my name wasn’t even mentioned in the syndicated story, but some old boy down at the Big Antler Daily had to read a little more carefully and recognized my name in the full wire service report.
This time, it wasn’t just “Guess who your girl is married to, Tommy Jack?” or “What kinds of things did you see and do over there, Tommy Jack?” their looks were saying at me. This time, the Morse code they were blinking at me with their eyes, even as I bought my quick picks and my dailies and my weeklies, had a different feel, similar, but just different enough. “How come you didn’t save that girl, Tommy Jack?” “Was she another one of those ladies you make time with on the road, Tommy Jack?” “Did you do something you didn’t want her talking about, Tommy Jack?” That last one was probably the one that got me the most. So I just wanted to get it all out in the open, that I tried to save that poor young woman, but then that stupid article got this whole other ball rolling.
Who would have ever thought anyone read the Big Antler Daily besides the folks living in this pissant town, anyway? I never realized the larger syndicate works both ways, and once a story gets out there, well, it carries on. All I wanted to do was stop those people looking and whispering again, like they had over thirty years ago. A small town like this, it has got one big and long memory. I’ve never totally been the shy type, generally willing to do whatever it is that needs getting done, but I have also never gone much out of my way to draw attention, either, and those stares were working my nerves, all over again.
You know how it is, they knew you probably killed some people in the war, and they just applied that knowledge onto you all the way around, even though they weren’t remotely involved. They never had to do and see the things I did and saw. They were sitting back home, watching the TV, maybe some of them even writing to me, because some of them did, hi-how-you-doing-get-back-safe kind of stuff, but what did they really think we were doing in the jungle, throwing mud balls? Pushing each other in the water? Maybe punching someone in the head if things were particularly bad? They were all well and nice when I made it home, even invited me to the occasional party they were having, once they realized I was back, but the looks were there. Did I do some of those things that were being hinted at in the newspapers and magazines, cutting off ears and wearing them as necklaces? The answer is no, but they thought what they wanted, anyway. Soon enough, this country will be at war again, with that crazy new president. Lord, did he have to come from this state? Seems like he’s trying to drag Iraq in, but no matter where it is he wages war, those young men and women are going to come home to some of those same looks, and I do not envy them one bit. The draft might be gone these days, but I don’t imagine any rich man’s son is eagerly signing up for the military right now, and anyone signing up now, you know that bastard has no other options.
I returned to U.S. soil the very night I zeroed out, left the jungles, arrived back into the shipping depot in Oakland sometime later but it’s hard to remember those things—not because they were terrible or anything, just the opposite, but a jolt is still a jolt, however you cut it. The day before we zeroed, we had been out on patrol, and had been for a month. I had nearly forgotten I was scheduled to be coming home. This was unlike me, as I had been a day counter from day one. That was one of the last times I ever participated in a Fireball game and it was for sure the last time Fred did. He declined to play when I went to visit him at his reservation in New York. Though he didn’t think I noticed, I always pay attention to stuff like that. Just like I could remember everything that happened with the Japanese girl and was getting ready to tell it all and stop these looks around town.
“Tommy Jack, they’re gonna be here soon. Are you dressed? I left a shirt and tie out for you, on the bed,” Liza Jean said the morning the TV crew was scheduled to arrive, coming from her bathroom, where she had checked her makeup for the thirtieth time since she put it on an hour or so before. That bathroom’s off our bedroom, but I was banished to use the one down the hall, years ago, because of splash concerns and poor aim. But in the hall bathroom, I can leave out my floss and sunblock and whatever magazines I want, and if there’s a little splash now and then, I don’t care. It cleans up.
“A tie? What the hell for?” I asked, tying it anyway, knowing this was another argument I would lose if I chose to engage it.
“Well, why are you doing this in the first place? I mean, Tommy Jack, if you want people to just go on believing something happened to you out there in Minnesota, then you might as well just call up those reporters and cancel this altogether, and we can get going to Cascabel now.”
“And you’re thinking this here tie is going to change minds in ways that my speaking the truth doesn’t?”
“Well, is it going to kill you to wear a tie?”
“I’ve got it on.” She came back through, straightened it, kissed me on the cheek, then licked a paper towel and wiped her kiss from me. She ran through the living room, fluffing pillows, moving figurines an inch or two to the left or right, or forward or backward. I had no idea what she was doing, while I stuffed into jeans and tied up a nice pair of brown Rockports with both of the laces matching. She sat on the sofa, going through five or six positions, locking her knees, tucking her legs under, crossing them, leaning one arm on the sofa pillows, one over the cushion, watching her own reflection on the big-screen TV, imagining what she would look like when they finally broadcast this here interview. She