Through All the Years

by Rod Carstens

  "Me, I'm just a fireman. I don't nothin' bout no Hollywood shit."

  "Oh, so now your a some dumb hick from Florida."

  "If the shoe fits. But at least I am not trailer trash from North Carolina."

  Kate stood and threatened him with her small fist.

  "Help, help a little bitty person is going to hit me." Tom said.

  He grabbed her and pulled her into his lap. She laughingly let herself be pulled down into his embrace. She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him with all the excitement she felt for them and her new project.

  "Jesus, babe I've made it. Like Sally Field said 'you really like me.'"

  "Help now she quoting other actresses Oscar speeches already."

  "A girl needs practice you know. Never know when I might need my own."

  Tom put his arms under her legs and stood up with her in his arms. He turned and walked back into the house.

  "Where are you taking me sir?" Kate said.

  "We are going to celebrate the good news that my beautiful, and talented woman is going to be in a Spielberg movie." Tom said with a laugh.

  "Oh, darn I thought you were going to fuck me."

  "Oh, yeah that too."

  "Goody, I like that the best."

  Tom stopped in his tracks and looked down at her resting in his arms.

  "Thank god there are no microphones to record our silliness. I think they could put us in a home for thinking we are teenagers again."

  Kate laughed then said. "Shut up and take me into the bedroom before I get out of the mood."

  "Fat chance of that."

  Kate gave him one of her looks and said.

  "You do remember that Gretchen and Rachel are coming over for dinner. We will need time to straighten up a bit."

  "We'll have plenty of time."

  "I don't know about that buster. You know what you carrying me into the bedroom does to me."

  Tom kicked the door to the bedroom shut and threw her on the bed.

  "Well you better get started there kiddo. We've got a lot of work to do."

  "Shut up." Kate said as she lay on the bed waiting for him.

  CHAPTER 64

  They were sitting on the deck after breakfast the next morning enjoying another perfect day in California. Did they ever have a normal old rainy day or one too hot to sit on the deck? California was beginning to get on his nerves. Or was it California? If the dreams that kept him awake last night were any indication it was something else.

  "You were awfully quite at dinner last night. Gretchen even asked me is something was wrong." Kate said.

  "No, just listening to you three talk Hollywood. I didn't have much to say. I am not up on the latest percentages or front money and back money or whatever you call all that stuff."

  Kate looked at him. There was a tone in his voice.

  "Nothing."

  "Tom damn it what is bothering you?"

  "It is just that it reminded me a whole lot of the night that you heard how excited everyone was about you in the Big Waves."

  "So?"

  "Well we know where that lead and well it slowly dawned on me this is as big of a career change for you as that was and we know how that turned out."

  "I hadn't thought how this could sound to you. Or what it would mean to us."

  Tom smiled and leaned forward and took her hand.

  "When you really care about someone you don't think of good news like this through some prism of what will it mean for me. No sweetie, as good as these days have been as you said we put aside all of the "us" stuff. We've been able to live like we did when we were kids. It's been wonderful but it has all been another special time that we have been given. Something that will not and can't last."

  "Goddamnit Tom. This means I will have more money that I can count, fame like I've never had before and all of that adds up to power. Power to make my life anyway I want it to be."

  Tom took both of her hands in his and squeezed them gently.

  "Your exactly right you can make it just the way you want it to be, with bigger and better projects. You will leave a mark that few actresses have the opportunity to do. People will be watching your movies long after we are gone. But you can't do that with some fireman in your life."

  "Bullshit.."

  Tom put a single finger over her lips.

  "Shhh. Now, it's your turn to listen. I feel about my little job just the way you feel about acting. It was what I meant to do and you heard me at the gravesite the other day. I am repaying a debt and it is the only thing that holds me together. So I'm not moving out here to be the guy who holds your purse. I've paid attention over the years. I had thoughts about us. Fantasy's really but every time some actress has a husband not in the business his life is wrapped around her career. It can't be any other way. Your life is too big. Unless I'm absorbed in it, it will crush me. No sweetie we need to enjoy the time we have."

  "I could come down and see you, between projects. Anytime I had time off."

  Tom sighed and leaned back in his chair, his face suddenly serious.

  "Look you have no idea how much my job intrudes into my life off duty. I have ambitions too. I want to be Chief of the department some day. I have a shot but like you I have a lot of hoops to jump through before I even get a chance at the job. Look do you realize I'm an hourly worker. I get paid by the hour like your gardener. I have a certain number of days off a year and a certain number of vacations days. I work fifty-six hours a week on average. One week I work forty-eight and the next week I work seventy-two so it averages out to fifty-six hours a week that I'm gone. And when I'm at the station I might as well be in New York. There are no lunch breaks, nothing not even bathroom breaks, when the bell goes off I go. No matter what I'm going. I am completely out of control of my life when I walk into the station. It is driven by the calls. Then when I come home I'm not really home. Since I turned forty the all nighters have gotten harder and harder they take longer and longer to recover. Even if I wasn't that busy the night before I still sleep at least until noon. If it was a busy night I might sleep into the afternoon. So instead being gone twenty fours hours for me at least I am gone for closer to forty-eight hours. That gives me twenty-four hours of my own. They it starts again. And it includes Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years Eve, birthdays, and any other important date you can think of. We go to work. That does not count the bad ones, the ones that you don't sleep off. The dead babies, the god-awful things people do to themselves or happen to them and we end up picking up the pieces. I spent my days off after one of those just being quite and trying to get past it. It takes time and that means I am there but not. And the last thing we want to do after one of those is talk to someone who doesn't understand what we go through. Only we can do that. Everybody laughs when they should cry or cry's when we are laughing. I stopped talking to civilians about it a long time ago. I stopped more than one non-firefighter party by simply answering the question "did you have anything this week." I remember one poor woman who was trying to goad me into getting into the party mood by saying "what's the matter with you?". I was in no mood so I told her. "Too many dead babies this week." I think she left the party not long after that. We have not talked about this part of my life at all. Yet with all of that said I would not be doing anything else in the world. I love it."

  Kate sat there staring for a long time absorbing it all. Not saying a word. She had been hatching a plan for the last couple of days for a campaign to get him over this thinking that they could not bridge the gap in their lives. Before the phone call Kate had no big projects in the works for a couple of months and she knew with a couple of months to work on him that they could work out something now this changed everything. She would be in Europe for most of a year and it would be hard to get back and forth. She needed to get through to him and hammer out something before she left. She decided she would have hit this mule between the eyes with a two by four to get through to him so here goes.

  "You said it the other day
babe. We just live right now. Because I know that way too well. I see it almost everyday on the job." Tom said.

  "Enough of that bullshit Tommy. Just plain enough. We are not two eighteen-year-old kids anymore. We are adults with divorces and careers and children and all the other things that a life has in it. This is not an either or situation."

  "Honey, there are some things that all your money and fame can't change. One of them is me and the world I love. It would never fit into your world and you would never ask me to give that up. Would you?"

  Kate stood up her hands in fists.

  "Who is asking anyone to give anything up? Jesus Tommy it's like your stuck in 1968. I would never ask you to give up the department and I would never give up acting but there a lot of in between that you are forgetting. I not that needy young girl fighting her demons; I am a grown ass woman who can take care of herself and does not need her hand held. And you are not a young Marine who has to go back to Vietnam or they will put you in jail. We have lives. We have free time. We can have time together if we work at it. Sure it would be nice to live together but since that is not feasible we can sure make a lot of time for each other."

  "But..."

  "There are no buts here buster. You and I both know that it has been like no time has passed since we last saw each other. Over twenty years and here we are right back in bed and talking our heads off when we're not screwing. Just like we had been on separate trips and were catching up. That is true and you know it. Right."

  Tom looked at her and started to say something about their differences but he knew she was right. It had felt as if no time had passed they had slipped right back into a relationship without trying.

  "Goddamnit Tommy I love you and you still love me. There I've said it. The L Word. I am not afraid of it anymore not when it comes to you. Rarely do people get this kind of chance in life I am not going to let this one get past us. Do you understand?"

  "But how would it work?"

  "Tommy we have close to a week together. Seems to me we can figure things out if we work at it."

  "I don't know Kate. Your life is so different. I am not sure where I would fit in."

  "You would fit in at my side as my lover dumb ass. What is it the money?"

  Tom shook his head.

  "No I don't care about your money. I'm not going to be a purse holder at some opening."

  "Who in the fuck asked to be my purse holder?"

  He had not heard cuss like that since she was a kid. She was really mad. Before he could say anything she continued.

  "I had decided that I would start a campaign to show you how all of this could work when we got back to Florida but now with my new schedule I don't have time to be patient with you. I am going to have hit you in that hard head of yours to get your attention."

  Tom couldn't help smiling when called him hard headed it was one of his ex-wife's favorite saying about him. Kate sat down in the chair opposite him and took both his hands in hers.

  "Tommy you know we've something special. I love you. I love you. I love you. And this is no little girl talking this is woman who knows all the ways that word can be miss used but for the first time in life I am using to describe the way I feel about the right person. Do you love me?"

  "I've never stopped loving you no matter how hard I tried."

  Kate smiled a small smile.

  "Then you need to give us a chance to figure this out ok?"

  He was still did not think it would work. There were too many differences that could come between them.

  "Look enough Kate. We're too different our lives don't and won't fit. It all nice and easy when we are here and our lives are not in the way but everyday that is something different."

  "Goddamn you. Grow up and stop being scared. We can work this out."

  "Bullshit I'm not scared. It sounds so nice sitting here on the deck but the day-to-day reality won't work and I'm not going to try. Just look at the girl at the airport and the bartender at the wake, much less all of the Hollywood types that ignored me. What are you going to do? Go to the things you need to attend without me so people won't ignore me because I'm some fireman."

  Kate only got more frustrated and angry.

  "Tommy what is the matter with you. It is not about what other people think or do. It is about us and the way we feel."

  "Not in your business and you know it."

  With that Tom stood up and practically ran down the stairs to the beach and started walking away. Kate could only stand there more frustrated and angry than when she started. She watched him stride down the beach until she lost sight of him in the crowd.

  CHAPTER 65

  Tom glanced down at his legs again as walked. The shins on both legs were dotted with a dozen small white scars. He had not thought of how he had gotten those scars in years but now that day in Hue was vivid and raw once more. He could almost feel the concrete ripping them open as AK47 rounds tore into the street around him. Being here with Kate again after all these years had brought it all back. Suddenly Vietnam and the Sixties were as fresh as yesterday.

  All the forces that had shaped them, thrown them together, and then tore them apart were roiling just under the surface of today. Jack's death had stirred the mix; then being here had thrown him backwards in time. He thought he had come to terms with what had happened. They had both been kids. In a real way nothing that had happened had been either of their faults, they had been victims of forces beyond their control, forces that shaped a country and a whole generation. Yet they both had made choices. When you make choices in you life you can always second-guess them, even after twenty something years, for those choices had shaped his life from those days forward.

  Now she wanted to make new choices ones that would bring them together. Yet Tom was not sure they overcome the past and the memories that were brought back so vividly since he had returned to Jack's beach house. Here he was again walking down the same beach over twenty years later with Kate waiting for him back at the house. So much had changed yet the same problems still separated their lives. In different ways and for different reasons but the separation remained. Seeing her again had opened so many doors he had thought he had closed. Or had he just been fooling himself? Had those doors really been open all these long years? Their lives had gone in opposite directions back then, and they were still headed down those same separate paths. He was just a firefighter and she was the Kate Newhouse.

  As he walked he heard music blare from a radio, it was an oldies station. The songs of the Sixties came pounding out of the speakers. It was their sound track. The Beatles, the Stones, Credence Clearwater Revival, Cream, Jefferson Airplane, the Who songs all brought back memories of very specific moments in Vietnam and their relationship. The Rolling Stones "Paint it Black" filled the air. He was back in Jack's car headed for the airport that final night in California returning to Vietnam.

  I look inside myself and my heart is black.

  I see my red door and must have it painted black.

  Maybe then I'll fade away and not have to face the facts,

  It's not easy when your whole world is black.

  Visions of Vietnam took over with the song. Memories of war flooded through him. Diving into a hole in Con Thein as rockets landed nearby. He could almost smell the tear gas, and smoke of Hue. Other battles before and after mixed together into a maelstrom of fear and death. Searing memories of fatigue, dirt, blood, and pain. There were also memories of friends and friendships that can only be forged in war and the crushing pain of their loss. A loss he still felt even after a lifetime. A lifetime they never had a chance to experience. He crushed the lighter in his hand until he could feel the Marine Corp emblem against his palm.

  "Let's Spend the Night Together" the Stone's celebration of young love brought her back as specifically as if she was standing next to him. She had put the song on the record player that first night at the beach house as an invitation. Record player that was how long it had been, they had listened to rec
ords together. Music as much as the war was entwined in their weeks together, they had tired to ignore everything except the beach, the music and each other.

  You need some guiding baby

  I'm just deciding baby, now

  I need you now more than ever

  Let's spend the night together

  Lets spend the night together now

  Oh my my my my my my

  He could still see her smiling and dancing on the deck, her hair blowing in the soft Pacific breeze as she moved slowly to the music. Smiling down at him and singing along with the song as she motioned him up from the beach. Illuminated by the golden light of the setting sun she looked more like some vision instead of a real girl. So beautiful, so young and alive that it now seemed like a dream instead of a distant reality.

  Memories of her washed over him tumbling him back to their time together. He could still find the love he had felt for her buried deep under the passing years, feelings more intense and pure than anything that he had felt since. The music transported him back as if it was some sort of time machine, to a time when he lived everyday as if it were his last. The war intensified everything and made their time together all so very specific and urgent.

  Yet the memories of her were so connected to Vietnam and Mac that it was impossible to separate them. Love, loss, fear, duty, all rolled into a Gordian knot of competing and conflicting emotions that he could never hope to sort out. In fact he had never completely dealt with them through all the years. He had simply come to terms with what had happened. Yet those feelings were suddenly as fresh as if they had happened yesterday.

  He stood watching the surfers in the water, his memories changing with the song, and what he felt changing with the memory. The memories did not seem real; they felt as if they happened to someone else. In a real way they had, they had happened to a very young man in a very old war. He had a career he loved now, a son he could not have been more proud of, a daughter-in-law he who was like a daughter to him and a granddaughter that lit up his world. He had built a life that he loved. Kate was so much larger than life now she could fit nowhere in that picture. Meeting her had been such a one in a million chance. If he had taken another flight or been assigned another seat on the plane everything would have been different. If there had been no Vietnam they would never had met. If she had not met Jack, if, if, if. There were too many ifs to line them up and try to understand it all. A chance meeting decades later was turning his life up side down today just as it had then.