The Things They Carried - Tim O’Brien

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Stupid, he thought. Sentimental, too, but mostly stupid.

      Lavender was dead. You couldn’t burn the blame.

      Besides, the letters were in his head. And even now, without photographs, Lieutenant Cross could see Martha playing volleyball in her white gym shorts and yellow T-shirt. He could see her moving in the rain.

      When the fire died out, Lieutenant Cross pulled his poncho over his shoulders and ate breakfast from a can.

      There was no great mystery, he decided.

      In those burned letters Martha had never mentioned the war, except to say, Jimmy, take care of yourself. She wasn’t involved. She signed the letters Love, but it wasn’t love, and all the fine lines and technicalities did not matter. Virginity was no longer an issue. He hated her. Yes, he did. He hated her. Love, too, but it was a hard, hating kind of love.

      The morning came up wet and blurry. Everything seemed part of everything else, the fog and Martha and the deepening rain.

      He was a soldier, after all.

      Half smiling, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross took out his maps. He shook his head hard, as if to clear it, then bent forward and began planning the day’s march. In ten minutes, or maybe twenty, he would rouse the men and they would pack up and head west, where the maps showed the country to be green and inviting. They would do what they had always done. The rain might add some weight, but otherwise it would be one more day layered upon all the other days.

      He was realistic about it. There was that new hardness in his stomach. He loved her but he hated her.

      No more fantasies, he told himself.

      Henceforth, when he thought about Martha, it would be only to think that she belonged elsewhere. He would shut down the daydreams. This was not Mount Sebastian, it was another world, where there were no pretty poems or midterm exams, a place where men died because of carelessness and gross stupidity. Kiowa was right. Boom-down, and you were dead, never partly dead.

      Briefly, in the rain, Lieutenant Cross saw Martha’s gray eyes gazing back at him.

      He understood.

      It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do.

      He almost nodded at her, but didn’t.

      Instead he went back to his maps. He was now determined to perform his duties firmly and without negligence. It wouldn’t help Lavender, he knew that, but from this point on he would comport himself as an officer. He would dispose of his good-luck pebble. Swallow it, maybe, or use Lee Strunk’s slingshot, or just drop it along the trail. On the march he would impose strict field discipline. He would be careful to send out flank security, to prevent straggling or bunching up, to keep his troops moving at the proper pace and at the proper interval. He would insist on clean weapons. He would confiscate the remainder of Lavender’s dope. Later in the day, perhaps, he would call the men together and speak to them plainly. He would accept the blame for what had happened to Ted Lavender. He would be a man about it. He would look them in the eyes, keeping his chin level, and he would issue the new SOPs in a calm, impersonal tone of voice, a lieutenant’s voice, leaving no room for argument or discussion. Commencing immediately, he’d tell them, they would no longer abandon equipment along the route of march. They would police up their acts. They would get their shit together, and keep it together, and maintain it neatly and in good working order.

      He would not tolerate laxity. He would show strength, distancing himself.

      Among the men there would be grumbling, of course, and maybe worse, because their days would seem longer and their loads heavier, but Lieutenant Jimmy Cross reminded himself that his obligation was not to be loved but to lead. He would dispense with love; it was not now a factor. And if anyone quarreled or complained, he would simply tighten his lips and arrange his shoulders in the correct command posture. He might give a curt little nod. Or he might not. He might just shrug and say, Carry on, then they would saddle up and form into a column and move out toward the villages west of Than Khe.

       LOVE

      MANY YEARS AFTER THE WAR Jimmy Cross came to visit me at my home in Massachusetts, and for a full day we drank coffee and smoked cigarettes and talked about everything we had seen and done so long ago, all the things we still carried through our lives. Spread out across the kitchen table were maybe a hundred old photographs. There were pictures of Rat Kiley and Kiowa and Mitchell Sanders, all of us, the faces incredibly soft and young. At one point, I remember, we paused over a snapshot of Ted Lavender, and after a while Jimmy rubbed his eyes and said he’d never forgiven himself for Lavender’s death. It was something that would never go away, he said quietly, and I nodded and told him I felt the same about certain things. Then for a long time neither of us could think of much to say. The thing to do, we decided, was to forget the coffee and switch to gin, which improved the mood, and not much later we were laughing about some of the craziness that used to go on. The way Henry Dobbins carried his girlfriend’s pantyhose around his neck like a comforter. Kiowa’s moccasins and hunting hatchet. Rat Kiley’s comic books. By midnight we were both a little high, and I decided there was no harm in asking about Martha. I’m not sure how I phrased it – just a general question – but Jimmy Cross looked up in surprise. ‘You writer types,’ he said, ‘you’ve got long memories.’ Then he smiled and excused himself and went up to the guest room and came back with a small framed photograph. It was the volleyball shot: Martha bent horizontal to the floor, reaching, the palms of her hands in sharp focus.

      ‘Remember this?’ he said.

      I nodded and told him I was surprised. I thought he’d burned it. Jimmy kept smiling. For a while he stared down at the photograph, his eyes very bright, then he shrugged and said, ‘Well, I did – I burned it. After Lavender died, I couldn’t…This is a new one. Martha gave it to me herself.’

      They’d run into each other, he said, at a college reunion in 1979. Nothing had changed. He still loved her. For eight or nine hours, he said, they spent most of their time together. There was a banquet, and then a dance, and then afterward they took a walk across the campus and talked about their lives. Martha was a Lutheran missionary now. A trained nurse, although nursing wasn’t the point, and she had done service in Ethiopia and Guatemala and Mexico. She had never married, she said, and probably never would. She didn’t know why. But as she said this, her eyes seemed to slide sideways, and it occurred to him that there were things about her he would never know. Her eyes were gray and neutral. Later, when he took her hand, there was no pressure in return, and later still, when he told her he still loved her, she kept walking and didn’t answer and then after several minutes looked at her wristwatch and said it was getting late. He walked her back to the dormitory. For a few moments he considered asking her to his room, but instead he laughed and told her how back in college he’d almost done something very brave. It was after seeing Bonnie and Clyde, he said, and on this same spot he’d almost picked her up and carried her to his room and tied her to the bed and put his hand on her knee and just held it there all night long. It came close, he told her – he’d almost done it. Martha shut her eyes. She crossed her arms at her chest, as if suddenly cold, rocking slightly, then after a time she looked at him and said she was glad he hadn’t tried it. She didn’t understand how men could do those things. What things? he asked, and Martha said, The things men do. Then he nodded. It began to form. Oh, he said, those things. At breakfast the next morning she told him she was sorry. She explained that there was nothing she could do about it, and he said he understood, and then she laughed and gave him the picture and told him not to burn this one up.

      Jimmy shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he finally said. ‘I love her.’

      For the rest of his visit I steered the conversation away from Martha. At the end, though, as we were walking out to his car, I told him that I’d like to write a story about some of this. Jimmy thought it over and then gave me a little smile. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Maybe she’ll read it and come begging. There’s always hope, right?’

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