The Time Keepers

Chapter 35

CHAPTER 35 Allentown, Pennsylvania, 1969

J ACK SETTLED INTO THE SOFT SEAT OF THE AIRPLANE AND TRIED to close his eyes. In five and a half hours, if the trip went as planned, he’d be back in Pennsylvania and greeted by the only woman he now had in his life. Becky. The incident at the airport had unsettled him greatly and even after changing into a fresh set of clothes, he felt the woman’s vitriol still clinging to his skin. She had made him feel dirty, and he hated her for it. As much as he tried to push the incident out of his mind, it felt slick and unctuous, as though she had somehow contaminated him with something ugly.

From the moment he arrived in boot camp, he had been trained to forcibly retaliate against anyone who attacked him. Had a man thrown a drink at him and called him a “baby killer,” he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t have thrown him to the ground and then pounded his face in.

He had never been a fighter before his deployment. But now, as he floated in the skies above his own country, Jack realized that the military had somehow permanently altered him. And while he had initially only felt shock and confusion when the woman accosted him, he since had developed a delayed sense of rage.

“Can I offer you a drink, sir?” The stewardess’s kind voice pulled him back.

He ordered a rum and Coke and let the sweet liquid run through him and soften the steely edges he thought he had left back in Vietnam. He reminded himself that he only had two weeks of leave, and most of that he’d also get to sleep in a warm bed next to his Becky. They’d wake up and eat pancakes with maple syrup, and then they’d go back to bed. When they finally rose for the day, she’d take him to her school and show him her new life so he’d have something beautiful to take back with him when he returned to his tour.

He didn’t want to think of the other things he’d have to do once he got home, like bury his mother. He still struggled to comprehend that she was actually gone. His mind could easily conjure her sitting in her big comfy chair, the ashtray beside her as she raised one of her Camel cigarettes to her lips. He could easily recall her deep, throaty laugh and the sounds of her puttering around the kitchen late at night when she came home from work. Part of him wondered if he shouldn’t have come back to bury her, because it was easier to pretend she was still alive while he was back in Vietnam, waiting alongside Becky for him to come home.

As he stepped into the arrival hall at the Pittsburgh airport, he spotted her immediately. She was a beacon of white light amid a sea of shadows. Becky stood in the front of the crowd, her brown hair even longer than he recalled and brushed to a perfect shine. She wasn’t wearing scruffy dungarees and T-shirts like so many of the others in the crowd but was dressed in a lawn-green dress with a matching headband. In one hand she clutched a bouquet of white daisies, and in the other, a handwritten sign that said Welcome Home!

One of the things he loved most about Becky was her stillness. That afternoon, she brought him back to the apartment that she shared with another student off campus, and after he had showered, she pulled him to her bed and kissed him deeply before letting him just hold her.

He breathed her in. He inhaled her sweet fragrance and savored the softness of her skin against his own. She placed her hands on either side of his face and stared a moment before kissing him. “I’m so sorry about your mother, baby,” she whispered before kissing him again. And it was only then, in the safety of her embrace, did he find himself releasing all the pain he’d tried to push deep down inside him. He wept openly in her arms.