Home: Part 29

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Expect nothing, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for a while.

July 1974

Mitchell called a few days after I got home. "You need to stay home more," he said when I answered the phone. It was still early for me even though the sun had been up for hours.

"Why?" I asked.

"So people who call you don't have their hearts broken when you don't answer."

"I've been home," I said. "I was away for a while, but now I'm home."

"Quit trying to sound poetic."

I pulled the phone's chord as far as I could, opened the kitchen window, and sat down at the table on which a half-full glass of Scotch still sat. "Where are you?" I asked.

"Heading to Pensacola."

"Where are you now?" 

"Christ. Poetic and angry. That's not a good combination."

"Why not?"

Mitchell laughed. "Because they just don't mix. When did you ever write a love poem when you were angry?"

"I've never written a love poem." 

"Bullshit. Who was that girl in high school--Minnie? Molly? M-something."

Here name had been May, but I wasn't going to give in. Mitchell and I had been friends since we met on the volleyball court during gym glass in our freshman year. He was picked last, even after me and my fake leg. Some time during high school I'd tried to write poetry, and only Mitchell had seen it. He'd had the grace to say he liked it. After graduation, he'd enlisted in the army just to get away from being selected last for anything. He'd come home from basic training fit and confident, and had then volunteered to go to Viet Nam. 

"So, you know it's early here, right?" I said.

"It's always early there, isn't it?"

"Now who's trying to be poetic."

"Come back here for a visit," he said. "I'm working with the navy for a while, but I'll have my own 
place off base."

"Pensacola?"

"F-l-a," he said. "Well, it's more like South Alabama. It's full of righteous Baptists and frustrated housewives. I'll buy you a ticket."

"I just got home. I need some time to recover."

"Recover? You're getting old! Look, I'm at a payphone in the airport in Atlanta. I'm running out of time. When I get to my place, I'll call you and we'll figure things out."

"We'll see, Mitch. I've got things to do here."

"You never have anything to do anywhere, so you might as well do it with me. I'll call you in a few days."