The Secret

Chapter Five

                     © 2013 by tore56789 (GOS) All rights reserved.

On entering, the house was quiet and dark.  Only light on was the room her husband resided in, in the bedroom, which was a room to his left.  He was there because his wife felt it was easier to care for him downstairs. Also it meant her two daughters didn’t have to be disturbed from their homework, sleep, by their father’s hard coughing and painful moans –which could occur at any time, but mostly in the early hours, when the pain killers he was on had run their course, and his wife had to drug him again for comfort.  The only other light he saw through a crack in the door came directly ahead from the main living area, where he had sat down at the table with this family in better times.


“He’s right in here Father.”  She said, after taking off her coat and taking his to hang it on a hook by the door. “You go right in.  Think he wants to be alone with you a spell.  Said that to me before I left?”


The two kids smiled politely when they saw him, and thanked him for coming.  And then as if they had been previously briefed, they both curtseyed, Kelly first, and then Ann, who was two year younger –been twelve.  And then with that, politely, they left, closing the door quietly behind them.


“Father, I wanted to have this time alone with you, before death steals me away.  Sure I can even hear the old bugger now sharpening his sheers as we speak.” He gave a deep cough, and a laugh, “Guess if that old bugger is going to be doing his rounds, it’s on a night like tonight for sure.”  The man had an odd accent, one that was American, but still holding traces of the old country in the tone.  And even though he was only in his early thirties, what was killing him had made him look like at least twenty years that.  And had wasted him away like a vicious cancer.


And then as an afterthought, after the forced formalities he said, “Funny, how we know our time, isn’t it Father? Still what scares me, is leaving them three behind. Even though, I know I haven’t been a great help thanks to how I am for many years.  Which is funny because before the accident in the camp, I could proudly boast I could arm wrestle most to a draw?”


“God’s ways can sometimes leave us lost?  The accident was most misfortunate?  But no one could say Sean you haven’t given your family support with your love.”


The man nodded, smiled, his eyes going watery.  As if he was grateful to have heard these words. And then from his bed, propped up by a pillow, candles flickering beside him on a table, even though the light was now on, he spoke, his face a blank, “What was misfortunate Father, was just being there at that time, when an unloading detail got careless with a barrel of a chemical agent we were about to test out in Nam.  The thing slipped, Charlie, I, and O’Malley, and Fazzari, all got a good dousing of it.  Think it was late 1964, and no one gave hell-squat for no one then, unless you were high ranking.  After that, we were told by an army doctor, our lives would never be the same again.  And we soon found after extended leave, just how true those words were.  The top brass said we should be proud what we gave up for our country.  And be grateful we weren’t coming back in body bags, dismembered parts, as so many others over there were.”


The man in the bed gave a sigh, “I kept up contact with all three after that.  As like me, they also got the same deal, meds, anti depressives, pension.  I even reckon the army had gone light on us, given us such a cosy deal and all –after we signed some papers guaranteeing our silence, because they didn’t want us going off to the boys at the media with our story, letting lose what we were pouring down over there on the Vietnamese, when so many were starting to go against the happenings on the home-side– the reported atrocities?”

 
He stopped for a moment, took his eyes away from the priest, as if he was reflecting on that time, and then redirecting them back, said, “See, the Antiwar-Crowd would have loved to have gotten hold of some military boys coming out with what happened. Could have painted it anyway they wanted.  How Uncle Sam didn’t give sweet tidily squat for his own on his own turf?  Not to even mind the boys over there as young as nineteen getting high on all the cannabis they could smoke –to help with their anxieties – death, the whole caboodle of misery, madness?”

  
“I take it you did a stay there?”


He nodded, “Was about to go back as sergeant, just days before the accident. Hoped I might have been able to help a few conscripts stay alive a little longer.  As what kills you quickest is your own ignorance you are fighting a backward people.  You soon realise though when you step into a leg trap, or get a stake in your foot covered in a man’s faeces, and your down with Septicaemia, just how wrong you had been about your foe –but by then you’re darn near dying.”

 
He nodded, watching a man in the throngs’ of death –of only a few he had witness till then. “Sean, you have suffered so much.  At least God brought a good woman like Mary Ann into your life.”