Page 2 of Deserter

“None of that matters now.”

I didn’t recognize the voice and briefly wondered if I was already dead. The stinging in my chest was my only reminder that I was still clinging to life.

Barely.

They weren’t really here; I knew that. It was a dream I didn’t want to wake up from though. The ticking slowed, ready to stop at any moment.

This was it.

No second chances—no time to make amends.

“Listen to me,” I bit out as a strong hand gripped mine. “The girls—you have to tell the girls everything.”

The sacrifices we’d made for them.

The threats we’d kept hidden.

Instead of words of wisdom, I was leaving my family in no-man’s-land; forced to fight a war they never started, for a man they never really knew.

I panted, each shallow breath taking me away from the pain. If I had to do it over again, I never would’ve deserted them.

I was no hero, but if they knew the truth, they could be different.

Better.

Maybe my pathetic existence would serve as their origin story. The best I could hope for at this point was when all the cards were on the table, they’d understand why I’d done it.

Chapter One

Jamie: 1972

“NBC Radio News on the hour, this is Russ Ward reporting. Communist tanks and troops in the northernmost province of South Vietnam have overrun another district town and moved to the outskirts of Qu?ng Tr? City, nineteen miles below the demilitarized zone. Heavy US air and naval support has been directed against the enemy drive. US destroyers offshore fired ten thousand rounds against the Communist position north of Qu?ng Tr?,but the enemy troops continue their advance. More on the story from Jim Laurie—”

“Turn that shit off, James,” my father sneered before tipping back the rest of his Budweiser and lighting up another cigarette. The bottles littered the coffee table in front of him; he’d taken the time to peel the label off of every single one and had stacked them in a neat pile in the center.

“Yes, sir.” I shut the small radio off and sank back down into the armchair with a sigh. Beer made him angry, like almost everything else, but not enough to do anything about it. It was when he drank the ‘hard stuff,’ as my ma called it, that I steered clear of him.

“You think you know what I went through because you listen to your little radio every day? You don’t know a goddamn thing about war, son.” He rested the back of his head against the couch and exhaled a cloud of smoke while staring up at the ceiling. “Nobody knows shit about what I went through.”

My old man had been drafted into the Army in 1965, two weeks after my first birthday. Most of the soldiers I knew had served their two years and returned straight home to their families. Not my father though. My ma told me that he was too important to the fight and because I didn’t know anything else, I let it go.

When he stepped off that bus in his uniform last year, our lives changed forever. It went from being just me and my mother, something I’d unfortunately taken for granted, to living with a monster.

He’d been sent home after taking shrapnel to his knee and now walked with a slight limp. He looked nothing like the man in the wedding photograph that hung in the living room. In fact, I’d whispered to my mother that he reminded me of the Incredible Hulk, only he wasn’t green.

“You know how they repaid me for all my years of service?” my father asked the ceiling. I’d heard this story more times than I could count but knew to keep my mouth shut and let him tell it again.

“There was a crowd waiting for us when we got back to the states and I thought it was a welcome home parade. I gave them the peace sign and you know what I got in return? You know what those fuckers did to me after I fought for them?” He turned his head and glared at me, waiting for my response.

I knew but replied like the obedient son he wanted me to be. “No sir, what did they do?”

“They spit on me and called me a baby-killer! The country that I went to war for has forgotten all ‘bout old Donald Quinn. My GI benefits are a joke, and nobody wants to hire an infantry veteran.”

I wasn’t sure what I expected when he came back; my mother’s parents had passed on before I was born, so my only experience with fathers until him had been the TV variety.

My old man was no Steve Douglas or Mike Brady though.

While my mother worked on the weekends, I was forced to sit and relive Vietnam with him until he passed out. He’d rant about how Uncle Sam had screwed him over and turned him into this. She’d promised me that he’d go back to the man he was before the war, but I didn’t believe her. I’d only ever known him like this.

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