And a hard rain fell.
Just an excerpt I wanted to share from The Ground You Stand Upon…
In the night, Martin Quinn shook Will awake for his turn at guard. He took off his watch with illuminated dials and gave it to Will. In the distance, little more than the skyline of mountains across the valley could be discerned, and the foreground before them was nothing but black shapes. Sitting in their foxhole, Will studied those shapes, waiting for one to move. The vast void was filled with insect and animal noises as the moist air carried the faintest sounds for miles. The distant thumping of artillery echoed through the valley.
Filling his mind were images of home—Dad filling the silo with a cigarette dangling from his lips, Mom working in the kitchen, Mike riding his bike, and their old collie Chester chasing along the yellowish sandstone driveway that ran through the farm. He tried to concentrate on the dark shapes and think of more immediate concerns. He needed his own illuminated-dial watch. He wondered when they’d get to rest at another firebase. He wished his feet were dry.
He thought about how it was October now, and how it would feel like football weather back home, and how it would smell—the leaves, the grass, the popcorn and hot cocoa from the concessions stand—and how there really were no seasons in Vietnam, just rainy and dry seasons that went from wet to hot. And the images from the past continued. His old Ford Custom and his friend Larry Geissler, the night they were all dressed up with their prom dates. Coach Grip leading them onto the field on a beautifully cool Friday night beneath the stadium lights—a vision of midwestern Americana, with the marching band, and the rocket’s red glare, and cheerleaders doing flips and cartwheels, and fans holding up signs that said, “Go Macks!” and waving banners and flags, American flags and Vietnamese flags. Looking for Eddie and Millie, he saw Vietnamese children in the stands shouting, “G.I. numba one!” and SSG Burtis walking the sidelines with a clipboard.
And then it was the last game of the ’63 season, where they were losing to Prairie Du Chien in a drizzling mist. He stood there, helmet in hand, as the players and referees walked off, abandoning the football that lay near the fifty-yard line of the muddy field. The announcer was reading off the names of local boys who’d been killed in Vietnam, and a hard rain fell. Fans with umbrellas shuffled down the bleachers. He looked up into the rain and watched the clock on the scoreboard wind down to zero. And then he was staring at the black shapes in the wilderness, and he was in Vietnam, and it was raining.
He pulled out one of two remaining Camel non-filters. He lit it beneath the ledge of their foxhole, careful to keep its glowing end out of sight. SSG Bobby Hayslip whispered, “You awake?” Will looked back and nodded. “Any smokes left?” They spoke quietly in the darkness for a while, then Hayslip continued checking on his men.
