Dear John (13 page)
In the future, I know I’ll relive our time together a thousand times. I’ll hear your laughter and see your face and feel your arms around me. I’m going to miss all of that, more than you can imagine. You’re a rare gentleman, John, and I treasure that about you. In all the time we were together, you never pressed me to sleep with you, and I can’t tell you how much that meant to me. It made what we had seem even more special, and that’s how I always want to remember my time with you. Like a pure white light, breathtaking to behold.
I’ll think about you every day. Part of me is scared that there will come a time when you don’t feel the same way, that you’ll somehow forget about what we shared, so this is what I want to do. Wherever you are and no matter what’s going on in your life, when it’s the first night of the full moon—like it was the first time we met—I want you to find it in the nighttime sky. I want you to think about me and the week we shared, because wherever I am and no matter what’s going on in my life, that’s exactly what I’ll be doing. If we can’t be together, at least we can share that, and maybe between the two of us, we can make this last forever.
I love you, John Tyree, and I’m going to hold you to the promise you once made to me. If you come back, I’ll marry you. If you break your promise, you’ll break my heart.
Love
,
Savannah
Beyond the window and through the tears in my eyes, I could see a layer of clouds spread beneath me. I had no idea where we were. All I knew was that I wanted to turn around and go back home, to be in the place I was meant to be.
H
ours later, on that first lonely night back in Germany, I read the letter again, reliving our time together. It was easy; those memories had already begun to haunt me and sometimes seemed more real than my life as a soldier. I could feel Savannah’s hand in mine and watched as she shook the ocean water from her hair. I laughed aloud as I recalled my surprise when she rode her first wave to shore. My time with Savannah changed me, and the men in my squad remarked on the difference. Over the next couple of weeks, my friend Tony teased me endlessly, smug in the belief that he’d finally been proven right about the importance of female companionship. It was my own fault for telling him about Savannah. Tony, however, wanted to know more than I was willing to share. While I was reading, he sat in the seat across from me, grinning like an idiot.
“Tell me again about your wild vacation romance,” he said.
I forced myself to keep my eyes on the page, doing my best to ignore him.
“Savannah, right? Sa-va-nnah. Damn, I love that name. Sounds so . . . dainty, but I’ll bet she was a tiger in the sack, right?”
“Shut up, Tony.”
“Don’t give me that. Haven’t I been the one watching out for you all this time? Telling you that you gotta get out? You finally listened, and now it’s payback time. I want the details.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“But you drank tequila, right? I told you it works every time.”
I said nothing. Tony threw up his hands. “Come on—you can tell me that much, can’t you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Because you’re in love? Yeah, that’s what you said, but I’m beginning to think you’re making the whole thing up.”
“That’s right. I made it up. Are we done?”
He shook his head and rose from his seat. “You are one lovesick puppy.”
I said nothing, but as he walked away, I knew he was right. I was head over heels crazy about Savannah. I would have done anything to be with her, and I requested a transfer to the States. My hard-bitten commanding officer appeared to give it serious consideration. When he asked why, I told him about my dad instead of Savannah. He listened for a while, then leaned back in his seat and said, “The odds aren’t good unless your dad’s health is an issue.” Walking out of his office, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere for at least the next sixteen months. I didn’t bother to hide my disappointment, and the next time the moon was full, I left the barracks and wandered out to one of the grassy areas we used for soccer games. I lay on my back and stared at the moon, remembering it all and hating the fact that I was so far away.
From the very beginning, the calls and letters between us were regular. We e-mailed as well, but I soon learned that Savannah preferred to write, and she wanted me to do the same. “I know it’s not as immediate as e-mail, but that’s what I like about it,” she wrote me. “I like the surprise of finding a letter in the mailbox and the anxious anticipation I feel when I’m getting ready to open it. I like the fact that I can take it with me to read at my leisure, and that I can lean against a tree and feel the breeze on my face when I see your words on paper. I like to imagine the way you looked when you wrote it: what you were wearing, your surroundings, the way you held your pen. I know it’s a cliché and it’s probably off the mark, but I keep thinking of you sitting in a tent at a makeshift table, with an oil lamp burning beside you while the wind blows outside. It’s so much more romantic than reading something on the same machine that you use to download music or research a paper.”
I’d smiled at that. She was, after all, wrong about the tent and the makeshift table and the oil lamp, but I had to admit that it did paint a more interesting picture than the reality of the fluorescent-lit, government-issued desk inside my wooden barracks.
As the days and weeks wore on, my love for Savannah seemed to grow even stronger. Sometimes I’d sneak away from the guys to be alone. I would take out Savannah’s photograph and hold it close, studying every feature. It was strange, but as much as I loved her and remembered our time together, I found that as summer turned to autumn, then changed again to winter, I was more and more thankful for the photograph. Yes, I convinced myself that I could remember her exactly, but when I was honest with myself, I knew I was losing the specifics. Or maybe, I realized, I’d never noticed them at all. In the photo, for instance, I realized that Savannah had a small mole beneath her left eye, something I’d somehow overlooked. Or that, on close inspection, her smile was slightly crooked. These were imperfections that somehow made her perfect in my eyes, but I hated the fact that I had to use the picture to learn about them.
Somehow, I went on with my life. As much as I thought about Savannah, as much as I missed her, I had a job to do. Beginning in September—owing to a set of circumstances that even the army had trouble explaining—my squad and I were sent to Kosovo for the second time to join the First Armored Division on yet another peacekeeping mission while pretty much everyone else in the infantry was being sent back to Germany. It was relatively calm and I didn’t fire my gun, but that didn’t mean I spent my days picking flowers and pining for Savannah. I cleaned my gun, kept watch for any crazies, and when you’re forced to be alert for hours, you’re tired by nightfall. I can honestly say I could go two or three days without wondering what Savannah was doing or even thinking about her. Did this make my love less real? I asked myself that question dozens of times during that trip, but I always decided it didn’t, for the simple reason that her image would ambush me when I least expected it, overwhelming me with the same ache I had the day I’d left. Anything might set it off: a friend talking about his wife, the sight of a couple holding hands, or even the way some of the villagers would smile as we passed.
Savannah’s letters arrived every ten days or so, and they’d piled up by the time I got back to Germany. None was like the letter I’d read on the plane; mostly they were casual and chatty, and she saved the truth of her feelings until the very end. In the meantime, I learned the details of her daily life: that they’d finished the first house a little behind schedule, which made things tougher when it came to building the second house. For that one, they had to work longer hours, even though everyone involved had grown more efficient at their tasks. I learned that after they completed the first house, they had thrown a big party for the entire neighborhood and that they’d been toasted over and over as the afternoon wore on. I learned that the work crew had celebrated by going to the Shrimp Shack and that Tim had pronounced it to have the greatest atmosphere of any restaurant he’d been to. I learned that she got most of her fall classes with the teachers she’d requested and that she was excited to be taking adolescent psychology with a Dr. Barnes, who’d just had a major article published in some esoteric psychology journal. I didn’t need to believe that Savannah thought of me every time she pounded a nail or was helping to slide a window into place, or think that in the midst of a conversation with Tim, she would always wish it were me she was talking to. I liked to think that what we had was deeper than that, and over time, that belief made my love for her grow even stronger.
Of course, I did want to know that she still cared about me, and in this, Savannah never let me down. I suppose that was the reason I saved every letter she ever sent. Toward the end of each letter, there would always be a few sentences, maybe even a paragraph, where she would write something that made me pause, words that made me remember, and I would find myself rereading passages and trying to imagine her voice as I read them. Like this, from the second letter I received:
When I think of you and me and what we shared, I know it would be easy for others to dismiss our time together as simply a by-product of the days and nights spent by the sea, a “fling” that, in the long run, would mean absolutely nothing. That’s why I don’t tell people about us. They wouldn’t understand, and I don’t feel the need to explain, simply because I know in my heart how real it was. When I think of you, I can’t help smiling, knowing that you’ve completed me somehow. I love you, not just for now, but for always, and I dream of the day that you’ll take me in your arms again.
Or this, from the letter after I’d sent her a photograph of me:
And finally, I want to thank you for the picture. I’ve already put it in my wallet. You look healthy and happy, but I have to tell you that I cried when I saw it. Not because it made me sad—though it did, since I know I won’t be able to see you—but because it made me happy. It reminded me that you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
And this, from a letter she’d written while I’d been in Kosovo:
I have to say that your last letter worried me. I want to hear about it, I need to hear about it, but I find myself holding my breath and getting scared for you whenever you tell me what your life is really like. Here I am, getting ready to go home for Thanksgiving and worrying about tests, and you’re someplace dangerous, surrounded by people who want to hurt you. I just wish those people could know you like I know you, because then you’d be safe. Just like I feel safe when I’m in your arms.
Christmas that year was a dismal affair, but it’s always dismal when you’re far from home. It wasn’t my first Christmas alone during my years in the service. Every holiday had been spent in Germany, and a couple of guys in our barracks had rigged up a tree of sorts—a green tarp braced with a stick and decorated with blinking lights. More than half of my buddies had gone home—I was one of the unlucky ones who had to stay in case our friends the Russians got it in their heads that we were still mortal enemies—and most of the others trooped into town to celebrate Christmas Eve by getting bombed on quality German beer. I’d already opened the package Savannah had sent me—a sweater that reminded me of something Tim would wear and a batch of homemade cookies—and knew she’d already received the perfume I’d sent her. But I was alone, and as a gift to myself, I splurged on a phone call to Savannah. She hadn’t expected the call, and I replayed the excitement in her voice for weeks afterward. We ended up talking for more than an hour. I had missed the sound of her voice. I’d forgotten her lilting accent and the twang that grew more pronounced whenever she started speaking quickly. I leaned back in my chair, imagining that she was with me and listening as she described the falling snow. At the same time, I realized it was snowing outside my window as well, which, if only for an instant, made it feel as if we were together.
By January 2001, I had begun to count down the days to when I’d see her again. My summer leave was coming in June, and I’d be out of the army in less than a year. I’d wake up in the morning and literally tell myself that there were 360 days left, then 359 and 358 till I was out, but I’d see Savannah in 178, then 177 and 176 and so on. It was tangible and real, close enough to allow me to dream of moving back to North Carolina; on the other hand, it unfortunately made time slow down. Isn’t that the way it always is when you really want something? It reminded me of being a kid and the lengthening days as I waited for summer vacation. Had it not been for Savannah’s letters, I have no doubt that the wait would have seemed much longer.
My dad wrote as well. Not with the frequency of Savannah, but on his own regular monthly schedule. To my surprise, his letters were two or three times longer than the page or so I’d been used to. The additional pages were exclusively about coins. In my spare time, I’d visit the computer center and do a bit of research on my own. I’d search for certain coins, collect the history, and send the information back in a letter of my own. I swear, the first time I did that, I thought I saw tears on the next letter he sent me. No, not really—I know it was just my imagination since he never even mentioned what I’d done—but I wanted to believe that he pored over the data with the same intensity he used when studying the
Greysheet
.
In February, I was shipped off on maneuvers with other NATO troops: one of those “pretend we’re in a battle in 1944 exercises,” in which we were supposedly facing an onslaught of tanks through the German countryside. Kind of pointless, if you ask me. Those kinds of wars are long since over, gone the way of Spanish galleons blasting their close-range cannons and the U.S. Cavalry riding horseback to the rescue. These days, they never say who the enemies are supposed to be, but everyone knows it’s the Russians, which makes even less sense, since they’re supposed to be our allies now. But even if they weren’t, the simple fact is that they don’t have that many working tanks anymore, and even if they were secretly building thousands at some plant in Siberia with the intent of overrunning Europe, any advancing wave of tanks would most likely be confronted with air strikes and our own mechanized divisions instead of the infantry. But what did I know, right? The weather was miserable, too, with some freakishly angry cold front moving down from the arctic just as the maneuvers started. It was epic, with snow and sleet and hail and winds topping fifty miles an hour, making me think of Napoleon’s troops on the retreat from Moscow. It was so cold that frost formed on my eyebrows, it hurt to breathe, and my fingers would stick to the gun barrel if I touched it accidentally. It stung like hell getting them unstuck, and I lost a good bit of skin on the tips in the process. But I kept my face covered and my hand on the stock after that and marched through icy mud brought on by the endless snow showers, trying my best not to become an ice statue while we pretended to fight the enemy.
We spent ten days doing that. Half my men got frostbite, the other half suffered from hypothermia, and by the time we finished, my squad was reduced to just three or four men, all of whom ended up in the infirmary once we got back to base. Including me. The whole experience was just about the most ridiculous and idiotic thing the army ever made me do. And that’s saying something, because I’ve done a lot of idiotic things for good old Uncle Sam and the Big Red One. At the end, our commander walked through the ward, congratulating my squad on a job well done. I wanted to tell him that maybe our time would have been better spent learning modern war tactics or, at the very least, tuned in to the Weather Channel. But instead I offered a salute and an acknowledgment, being the good army grunt I am.