Mitch and Helen

“Mitch!  Mitch!  Over here.”  He walked right by me, she thought.  He had to see me.  I know he’s going to take this personally. 

He stopped and turned.  “Helen.  I hoped you’d be here.   But you’re on the wrong side of the goddamn fence.  This is Mayor Daley’s veterans’ celebration.  Patriotic veterans are marching.  What the hell are you doing protesting with those friggin’ hippies?”

“Navy Pier belongs to all the people, Mitch.  And it’s not only the Viet Nam Veterans to Support the Troops who are patriots.  Most of these ‘hippies’ are vets too.” 

“Then they’re chicken vets!  Your sign if full of s***.  ‘Support the troops – Bring Them Home’.  Bullshit.  Support the troops – tell them they’re doing a great job.  Tell them true Americans are 100% behind them”, Mitch responded.

“Mitch, let’s get a beer.  Your un-bathed biker vets can get along without you for a while.”  His infantryman physique still made her think of earlier times when she had known that body.  He’s stayed in great shape, she thought.  Maybe we gave up too easily.  No…thinking like that will just get me in trouble.

She could still turn his head.  Her long red hair turned many heads.  There were guys in Nam who might have blown his head off to get to her.  Today she wore it in a ponytail.  At her age, most women had given up the cute style.  But on Helen it still looked good.  She made his hard-bitten façade melt a little. 

They took a patio table at the Billy Goat Tavern.  Each ordered a Killians Red draft.

“It’s been a while, Mitch.  How are you?”

“I’m good.  I’m real good.  You look great, Helen.  You don’t look a whole lot different than you did in Nam.  You must be on anti-ageing pills or something.” 

“Hard work and clean living, Mitch.”

“I can still remember when I woke up in your tent in Viet Nam.  I couldn’t remember a thing of what happened to me.  But I thought sure I’d died and gone to Heaven.  You had to be an angel – a red-haired angel in jungle fatigues.  I’d heard about beautiful Army nurses, but you were beyond belief.”

“You believed later – when we woke up together”, she said.

“A long time later”, he said.  “I was sure I was going to lose my leg.  I only kept hoping because you told me to.  It was you who make believe I’d walk again.  And you who made me walk when it hurt so bad I’d rather have lost my goddamn leg.”

“I wanted you to walk again.  I wanted you to walk with me.  With all the beautiful, young captains who came through that hospital, why were you the one that caught my eye?  What was different about you?”

“I was a challenge for you.  The rest of those guys were pussys.  They did whatever you told them.  I was the only soldier man enough to stand up to you.  All the others just wanted to get in your pants.  They’d have done anything to get to you”, he said.

“And you were the only one who did!  I must have been mad”, she smiled. 

“No, you just had good taste”, he answered.  “You knew a real man when you saw one”.  They laughed together.

“I loved you, Mitch.  I wished those weeks of R&R in Hawaii could have gone on forever.  You were so different when you got away from the fighting.  You were a real gentleman.  You were gentle and considerate.  You could talk about anything.  And you didn’t dwell on the way.  Remember?” she said.

“I remember my physical therapy.  Lying in the sun and swimming in that beautiful ocean all day.  God, you could see clear to the bottom in thirty feet of water.  And making love all night”, he recalled.  “Life was perfect.  You were perfect.  I never told you that part of what I enjoyed so much about Hawaii was seeing the envy on the faces of the other GIs when they saw me with you”. 

“Do you think I didn’t enjoy the envy of the other nurses who saw me with you?  You were a hero and everyone knew it.  And you were a beautiful man – and all the girls knew it!” she said. 

 “What happened, Helen?  Why didn’t we work out when we got home?” he asked.

“Our needs changed, Mitch.  Our world in California was different than it was in Viet Nam and Hawaii.  And the gifts we had to offer each other didn’t match our needs.” 

“And evidently it’s kept on changing.  Me marching with these guys and you standing behind your signs.”

“Our experiences make us see the world differently, I guess”, she said.  “You see this conflict through the eyes of a soldier.  I see it through the eyes of someone who deals with injury and suffering and death every day”.

“Still patching up gun shot wounds at County Hospital?” he asked.

“Sure.  Once you get hooked on adrenalin it’s hard to get off it.  You know that.  I hear you’re still a cop.”

“Yeah, I’m still hooked too.  But I’m planning to retire next year.”

“Good for you.  Then what?”

“Fishing!  I own a part interest in a place in Florida.  I’ll fish here in the summer and in Florida in the winter.”

“That’s it – fishing?” she responded.

“Well, I may do some drug prevention work.  I’ve been working with schools and parent groups.  I’ll probably do some traveling and talking – and maybe some writing.  Somebody has to get to the kids to help them stay clean”, he answered.

Navy Pier was noisy with the veterans rallying and the usual crowd enjoying the Pier.  There was a cool breeze that brought the smells of popcorn and hotdogs from the vendors along the seawall wafting across their table. 

 “I miss you sometimes, Mitch”, she said.

“I’ve missed you a lot of times”, he responded.

 “We were good together, most of the time,” she said.

“Most of the time,” he replied.

“It was the other time that did us in”, she said.

“We should have figured out a way to get through the other time, Helen.  Sometimes I think we were foolish to give up.”

“I don’t think my husband would agree.  He talks about you sometimes, Mitch.”

“How is Arnie?  I think I’ve missed him as much as you.”

“Something grows between guys serving together in a war doesn’t it?  You were good buddies.”

“Yeah.  But Arney and me were like you and me.  Once we got home, we didn’t have much in common anymore. 

“Mitch, what are you doing with those meatheads?  Don’t …”

“Don’t do that, Helen.  They weren’t meatheads in Viet Nam and they aren’t now.  What are you doing with those assholes?  Don’t you know that every time you hippies gather you’re putting a bullet in the gun of some sheik to kill our guys in Iraq?”

Every muscle in her body tightened.  She thought the comparison between Viet Nam and Iraq was wrong and it made her mad.  She glared at him. 

“Bullshit, Mitch.  That’s Viet Nam talk.  It wasn’t true then and it’s not true now.  Every rally you guys hold says to the cretins in Washington who started this war that they were right to send our pilots to kill 100,000 Iraqi women and children?”

Mitch lit a cigarette.  When something got under his skin, it was the one way he could keep cool.  He took a deep drag. 

“Helen, that number is just a wild guess.”

“No, Mitch.  It may not be precise, but it is a reasonable statement of what we’ve done to that poor country.”

“So what should we do, Helen?  Turn our backs and run, like we did in Viet Nam?  That would totally dishonor the troops who have given their lives in Iraq,” he said.  “And if we did, we’d probably lose more people in the process than we’ve already lost.  And Iraq would be in total chaos.  No, leaving is no answer.”

“We’re not saying ‘just up and leave’,” Helen answered.  “But a measured withdrawal can be done.  And it can be done with ‘honor’, since that is so important to all of you, misplaced as it is. 

Mitch took a drink of his beer, staring at her.  He pictured the months they had been together in Viet Nam.  She had been everything to him then.  She made him forget even his company and his commitment to that war.  He wished he could do that now.  She really is beautiful and still a tough cookie. 

Quieter, he said “Helen, it’s that attitude that will make the soldiers and marines have the same experience coming home as we had.  Remember?  People spat on us walking down the street.  Remember?  It happened to you!  Do you really want that for these kids?”

Helen winced.  “I remember walking around San Francisco enjoying the beauty of the place, until they spat on me.  They weren’t even hippies or protester types.  They looked like ordinary college kids – people my age.  The kind of people I would have been, but for the war.  I went back to my hotel and cried from anger and regret for the rest of my layover.  No, I don’t want that for them.”  

“But it’s not my attitude that risks that happening to them”, she said.  “The country is turning against this war, Mitch.  All we see is more and more kids getting killed, along with more and more innocent Iraqi civilians.” 

“Do you really think supporting the war is making our own security worse, Helen?” Mitch responded.  “Do you really believe taking a patriotic stance is harming the country?  Do you really think saying to the troops facing death every day ‘We’re with you, goddamn it, and we’re proud of you’, is harming the country?”

“You bet I do!  The stupid, blind, avaricious politicians hear you and you’re playing right into their hands.  And the worldwide jihad hears you.  And they are saying, ‘We must have more soldiers for Allah because the Americans want to kill all of us and kill Islam’.  You guys are the best thing that ever happened to them. 

“What happened to you, Helen?  You used to be a patriot.”

Helen took a drink of her beer and waited to answer.  She gazed at him, slowing the pace of their argument. 

“No Mitch.  I have become a patriot.   A patriot is someone who puts the good of the country above his own private or political or ideological interests.”

“You’ve bought the liberal’s line, Helen.  That’s the only way they can win – by making otherwise patriotic Americans think we’re the enemy. 

Softly she responded, “We’re not enemies, Mitch.  We’re not a bunch of unpatriotic hippies and your friends are not fascists.  “We’re all patriotic Americans.  We all want the best for America.” 

“That’s why we have to work even harder, to show the country the real threat, if we don’t stop them over there”, he answered.  “If we don’t, we’ll be fighting them in New York and here, in Chicago.  Remember the World Trade Center?   That was their signal that they’re coming – hell, they’re here.”

“I admire your passion, Mitch.  That’s part of what made me love you.  You’re a real believer. 

“And you’re a beautiful and passionate woman, Helen.  Maybe if we’d stayed together you’d be on the right side of this war.”

“Or maybe you’d be, Mitch.”  Helen looked at her watch.  “I’ve got to go.  I’d like to see you from time to time.  So would Arnie.  We were important to each other once.  We shouldn’t forget that…or let it die.”

They rose and hugged each other, lingering just a moment longer than a casual, friendly hug.  

“We will, Helen.  And maybe when this war is over we can work on something together.  Our joined passions could be dynamite.” 

As they parted, Mitch gave her a power fist sign.  She responded with her fingers spread in a “peace” sign – and the hint of a tear in her eye.