Chapter Text
“Too much,” Louise said as she passed the bathroom on her way to the stairs.
John stuck his head out the door and watched her plaintively. “We lived in a tent we called the Swamp. It was accurate to its name, including the smell. I'm afraid he won't recognise me without the whole bottle of aftershave.”
She laughed which put him a little more at ease.
At the top of the stairs she turned. “Try half the bottle. If he looks confused, we'll dump on the rest while he's not looking.”
“Good thinking, Hun.”
“You're welcome!” she called, already halfway down the stairs.
He turned to wash off some of the aftershave. A small head popped up in the mirror beside him. She had the bottle in her hands.
He caught it before she could apply it and get it on the dress Lou picked out.
“I wanted to try!” she protested.
“What do you need aftershave for Kitty-Kat? You don't shave.”
She peered up at him from the mirror. “I could. Ma shaves her legs.”
He laughed. “Yeah, but you still have some time on that.”
“It's like Ma’s perfume,” she said very reasonably, because she was eleven and had become expert in finding ways to trick her father.
John McIntyre: ace surgeon, rebellious captain, and a somewhat clever guy always fell for it.
“Well yeah, but it's for Daddies.”
“Why?”
See? This was what happened! Walked right into her trap. Such a simple innocent question that he didn’t know the answer to. He didn't know why. In fact, he had always got a little thrill when he was with a nurse that still smelled like Hawkeye's aftershave.
He might have to pass Kathy the moniker of Trapper one of these days.
“Well…” he said slowly trying to come up with a reasonable reason. Lou wouldn't be happy with their little girl smelling like an army doctor’s mating aroma. Ah hah! “If you wanna smell nice, why don't we get you a little spritz of Ma’s perfume?”
There. Perfect.
Kathy scrunched her nose. She turned to look up at him. It was amazing what a pitch perfect imitation it was of Lou when she didn't find him particularly intelligent with just a twist of his own condescension on her wide mouth.
“What? You don't like Ma’s perfume suddenly?” he asked defensively, knowing he was cornered.
“I've tried it,” she said. "I haven't tried yours."
He remembered all the stupid big men with big important titles he had met in the military. Remembered how good it felt to run them into the ground. Now he was the big man being brought to his knees by the little guy.
Your rules are arbitrary and make no sense! Why should I listen to you? If only he had seen it coming.
“Just a little.” He caved like a General after he and Hawk had their way with him.
He dabbed just a little bit on his finger and applied it on both sides of her jaw.
“It tingles.”
“It does that.”
Sometimes he worried about things like this.
Not about Kathy. Kathy was perfect. It was him. What he was teaching her, what he might be passing onto her. Was she going to chase girls or dress up like a man? Was she going to be a queer? How did he stop that from happening?
A voice in his head that sounded a lot like Hawkeye's rolled it's eyes. How a voice could roll eyes he wasn't sure. But the sentiment was definitely there, and in that Hawkeye way that made it seem ten thousand times more ridiculous.
Would you fix yourself? that voice asked.
And it would be easier maybe if the answer was yes, but it wasn’t. The idea that he could have Lou and Hawkeye… it made him feel complete.
But he knew what being what he was meant, and he didn’t figure it out well into adulthood. Kathy was eleven. He knew how to protect himself. He thought of George. Being queer came with pain. He couldn't stand the idea of Kathy in pain. Neither could Lou.
“Don't tell Ma,” he told her.
She offered him his own crooked grin in return and was out of the bathroom in a flash.
He sighed, washing some of the stink off. Was this one of those things that he needed to be honest about?
Lou and he had come to the conclusion that it wasn't the sleeping around that hurt, it was the lying about it. Her not knowing where he was. Him knowing she wasn't telling him something. Unable to get it out of her. She had thought for years that he hadn't even loved her.
So rule one of this new marriage of theirs was honesty.
But this wasn't a lie to protect himself. He could take a scolding about letting Kathy have her way, and Lou would probably be right.
But Lou and Kathy were having a hard time with each other right now. He remembered eleven, distant as it was. That exciting terrifying time he began to explore the world for himself instead of holding onto his Ma’s skirts. How rough it was when he brushed up against things his parents didn't like. How impossible it was to make them understand why he did what he did. How maddening it was when ‘shutting the hell up’ was always the answer to any questions asked.
Not that Lou was like that with Kat. Lou was very good about explaining things. About the whys and why nots, it was just that Kathy didn't stop at the reasonable explanations and kept going.
And it wasn't that Lou was mad for the questions. It was more that she was scared.
She'd quote her own mother:“Girls get by on charm. Those kinds of questions and behaviors aren't charming.” She never said it to Kathy, but she said it to John in the middle of the night as she worried about how Kathy would survive on all wit and no charm.
Probably, John mused, inspecting his face in the mirror, whatever damn way she pleased.
He sniffed himself. Probably Lou wouldn't even be able to smell her over him. Oh well, Hawkeye had smelled worse.
Hawk...
Ever since Trapper's misadventure in Crabapple Cove he couldn’t stop thinking of Hawkeye Pierce. Like the floodgates had finally opened and everything he pushed further and further downward and into himself was pushing back out again. Trapper John was pushing out. Not College Trapper, who played football and got his hands on girls in train bathrooms, but Hawkeye's Trapper.
John didn't know how that version of himself could exist in the life he had scrapped back together with Lou's help, but… it felt like a piece of him had been missing. Before meeting Hawkeye and after leaving him.
They had been exchanging letters. Well. Exchanging was a strong word. At first it was a one man show. Every week like clockwork he would send a letter out to Crabapple Cove on Thursday. Hawkeye had always been fond of Thursdays.
“A day that could be alternatively titled: so close and yet so far. The day when all the bananas, crackers, and nuts get served as excitement for the weekend mounts.”
“You get a weekend? Why didn't you tell me?”
“I didn't want to disappoint you, the army manufactures their weekends in the mess tent, and it's the only thing they don't order in triplicate.”
He didn't get any replies for months. Then came the rapid fire letters responding to letters Trapper couldn't actually remember the context of. Hawkeye was a wonderful human being, but he was also an absolute prick who would start a letter with: Dear Trap, in regards to the letter you sent to me on September 21st: Yes. No. Yes. Yes. Definitely not. Sometimes when I’m sleepy.
He knew exactly what he was doing.
John was tempted to drive up to Maine, break into his house, and see if he could find the letters just for the questions to the answers he had been given.
It was painfully Hawkeye. Having the answer and no longer holding on to the context. That's the kind of effect he had on everyone. He was so dazzling, so clever.
And Trapper couldn’t even get back at him for it, even if he wanted to. Hawkeye's memory was sort of scary. He probably could recite every letter he sent , the same way he could read a journal article and know the exact placement of where his instruments needed to be.
Trapper knew he deserved it. He should thank his lucky stars Hawkeye had even decided he wanted to write at all, and he did soften up. Real talk. A bit about what happened after he left the 4077th, a bit about Hawkeye’s feelings for Trapper.
The first time you smiled at me my heart skipped a beat and I knew I was fucked. I'm shaking in my boots. I have to live with this guy that could star in every cowboy fantasy I had since I was ten? Wasn’t bad enough I was in the army? Now I was in the army with one of my wet dreams made manifest on one side and Frank Burns on the other! My dick didn’t have a clue on what to do with such extremes. And that was just the lust. Then you had the nerve to be hilarious and generous and wonderful.
He couldn’t imagine it, Hawkeye knowing all that time. Never making a pass. Never taking more than was offered.
Trapper felt like a real shit. Both for letting him go through that, but also for his own greed. He knew what he wanted now. He wanted Hawkeye. The only reason he hadn’t driven back to Crabapple Cove facing an ocean of Pierce cousins to get to him again was that Lou talked him down. She reminded him of what he promised Hawk. That he would let him decide the timeline.
Thank God for Lou. He was sure he would have wrecked it (again) by now if it wasn’t for her.
Louise and Hawk exchanged letters too. He felt a buzzing heat in his gut. It was going well between them. He caught the way Louise would cover her mouth to hide a smile, or catch a laugh. He loved Louise's laugh, but her sister told her once that she laughed like a horse and now she was sensitive about it. Boy John hated her sisters. Louise had the prettiest laugh he had ever heard, open and joyful. He couldn't wait to hear it harmonze with Hawkeye's.
Even with how much he wanted both of them, John half expected he might start to get worried. He wasn't the jealous type. Not when he knew what was going on, but it seemed like the natural thing to feel when the man you love and the woman you love get along, but he wasn't. He was happy.
When he and Louise had worked out their … arrangement there had even been something hot about it, imagining her with other men, smelling them on her, but her in his bed at the end of the day. Her whispering how she had been touched, asking him to touch her like that, or do the things to her that only he could do. Adding Hawkeye to that equation couldn't be more exciting.
He realised with a start that it was the same with Hawk too. In fact, maybe that's where he learned it. There would be nights Hawkeye would have a date and Trapper wouldn't. He'd be alone in the Swamp, bored, listless and idly start to fantasize about his pal’s conquest. Imagining the pretty nurse he was running with. He and Hawk had bragged enough to each other that he knew Hawkeye’s moves. He could picture him trailing kisses down her stomach lower and lower, warming her up with his tongue.
And Trapper would touch himself, imagining the nurse (because of course he couldn't be imagining his buddy). How would they sound? How would they look?
And then Hawkeye coming back in, too tired to shower, the smell of the nurse's perfume and sex on him. He'd fall into his cot with an exaggerated moan. Then he'd lean on his elbow in laguid satisfacton and tell Trapper ever single detail.
And Trapper would listen, drifting in his own orgasmic bliss as he played it all in his head again.
How many times had he ‘playfully’ seduced Hawkeye's girl of the week away? Smelling him on her sometimes. Imagining how Hawkeye might have kissed her.
Kissing him indirectly.
Before Trapper left the 4077th, he tried to get Hot Lips–Margaret, he had to remember, he had slipped one letter and the next one from Hawkeye had been a doozy. He had tried to get Margaret to kiss him. Explained how he wanted her to kiss Hawk goodbye for him. Wouldn’t that be the best going away gift he could give? A kiss from Hot—Margaret Houlihan from him. It would be perfect. But he was so sloppy drunk and desperate that his usual charm escaped him. His only consolation was that she’d have never willingingly kissed Hawkeye Pierce anyway.
But the idea of a kiss felt so important. He grabbed Radar by the shoulders, leaning down to lock eyes with him.
“You gotta give Hawk somethin’ for me if he doesn't make it back before I'm outta here.”
Hawkeye had called it a milquetoast kiss. It had not been a milquetoast kiss.
He winced at the memory. Poor Radar. Not his finest hour.
He shook his head at himself. He really was blind back then. It shouldn’t have had to take Hawkeye’s cousin assuming he and Hawkeye had something to figure it out that... that well, that they did have something.
If Trapper had only opened his eyes to it.
The house was perfect. The only area not fit for adult human eyes was Kathy's room, and there was no reason that Ben would go in there.
She breathed through her nose. It would have been nice though, if Kathy could have taken herself out of the garden and put one hour's time into sorting it out.
‘We lived in a tent called the Swamp,’ John was always eager to remind her. Especially when she set him to work on the lawn and the windows on his day off, as if that would reassure her.
He didn't seem to understand. He was a man. Ben Pierce was a man. They didn't expect tidy spaces from each other. But if Ben walked into her house and it was covered in muddy boot prints, fabric scraps, empty glasses, and cat hairballs, he would see a household in chaos. The woman of the house a failure at maintaining her domain.
To John’s credit (and Becky’s) they both fell in line for the cleaning regime in the week leading up to Ben’s visit. Kathy … well, at least she had helped with the yard work. The garden did look beautiful.
“Look! Hot Dog’s dressed up too!” Becky proclaimed proudly. She held poor Hot Dog under his front legs, the rest of him hanging down almost as long as she was. One of Becky’s pretty pink ribbons has been tied elaborately around his neck in a bow.
Hot Dog offered her a dejected look she felt deep in her soul.
“That's nice, Becks. Let ‘em down, okay?”
Hot Dog was dropped to the floor. For such a fat cat he could certainly move when he wanted to. He brushed by the corner table in his haste. The little bump unbalanced the lamp perched on top. It came crashing down. Hot Dog picked up speed and disappeared around the corner, probably to claw and bite at the ribbon.
“Crap!” she yelled at the broken lamp.
“I'll get it!” Becky quickly volunteered, trying to be helpful.
“No you won’t! You'll cut your hand or get electrocuted!” She grabbed Becky before she could approach. She saw on closer inspection that while Becky had decorated Hot Dog, Hot Dog had decorated Becky. “Oh no and you've got cat hair on your dress!”
Becky looked down. Her dark green dress was covered in white fur. “Sorry Ma.”
Louise just knew she was making a mess of this. It wasn't Becky's fault. She was trying to help. How many times had Louise helped her own mother with the house or with her sister's pagents? How many times had she ended up in her room in tears?
“No, no, it's fine–” but there was so much to do, she didn't have time to get Becky in another dress, or find the lint roller, not when the final touches of dinner needed to be done, and the cake, and the lamp–!
The kitchen timer went off.
“Wow that smells good,” John said. He looked perfectly at ease wandering down stairs as he tied his tie. He had wanted to wear a Hawaiian shirt. She talked him down to the horizontal pinstripe. It was ridiculous, and he wasn't allowed to wear it in public, but it did suit him (and she was sure it would be just to Ben's tastes).
“What's wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing!” she snapped.
He looked around the living room, his clear hazel eyes noticing the broken lamp and Becky’s red face.
“Okay… what needs to be done?” he rephrased, unbothered by the uncalled for sharpness. She slumped.
“The lamp broke. Becky has cat hair on her dress. The chocolate cake needs to be iced and the ham–”
“Right. I'll take the lamp and Becky-Bear. You do the food,” John said breezily. For all of John's nonsense (which she did enjoy most of the time), he was very calm and collected. She was sure this was how he was as a doctor. Seeing what needed to be done and doing it. Putting everyone panicking around him at ease.
“I don't know where the lint roller is,” she tried, almost wanting him to see what a desperate situation she was in. He wasn’t ruffled.
“We didn't have your fancy lint rollers in Korea,” he joked. "Becks and me will handle it."
She felt herself smile against her will, her panic falling. Not long ago he wouldn't even mention the country had existed, much less that he had spent a year and change there.
“Thanks, John.”
The truth was, more than anything, she wanted it all to be perfect for John’s sake, even if he didn't get it. It didn't matter how many promises she and Ben made to each other. She knew if she was deficient in some way, then John would lose the man he loved.
And she knew that John wouldn't leave her for that. He had convinced her that he loved her. But she loved him too! She didn't want to fail him.
And after months worth of letters directly communicating with Ben … she didn’t want to lose him either, or have him miss his chance with John.
Everything was on her shoulders, they just refused to see it!
“Whatever you need, Honey.” John kissed her temple and went to get the dustpan.
Easy as that. Whatever you need.
Okay. Okay.
She went to the kitchen and cursed. She had forgotten the timer. She checked the oven. The glazed ham looked just fine, thank Christ. She went about getting the side dishes in order when her eyes caught on Ben’s latest letter. She had read it while cooking breakfast, but she realised with everything buzzing in her head about what needed to be done, she hadn’t properly taken it in.
She compulsively picked it up and read it again.
𝒟𝑒𝒶𝓇 𝐿𝓊𝓁𝓊,
𝒲𝑒'𝓇𝑒 𝑔𝑜𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓉𝑜 𝓂𝑒𝑒𝓉 𝒶𝓉 𝓁𝒶𝓈𝓉! 𝐼'𝓂 𝑒𝓍𝒸𝒾𝓉𝑒𝒹! 𝐼'𝓂 𝓉𝑒𝓇𝓇𝒾𝒻𝒾𝑒𝒹!𝐼 𝓌𝒶𝓃𝓉 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝓉𝑜 𝓌𝓇𝒾𝓉𝑒 𝓂𝑒 𝒷𝒶𝒸𝓀 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓁𝒾𝑒 𝓉𝑜 𝓂𝑒 𝒶𝒷𝑜𝓊𝓉 𝒽𝑜𝓌
𝒾𝓉'𝓈 𝑔𝑜𝓃𝓃𝒶 𝒷𝑒 𝒻𝒾𝓃𝑒 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓎𝑜𝓊'𝓇𝑒 𝑔𝑜𝓃𝓃𝒶 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝑒 𝓂𝑒 𝒷𝒶𝒸𝓀,
𝒷𝓊𝓉 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓂𝒶𝒾𝓁 𝒾𝓈𝓃'𝓉 𝒻𝒶𝓈𝓉 𝑒𝓃𝑜𝓊𝑔𝒽 𝒻𝑜𝓇 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉.
𝒮𝓌𝑒𝒶𝓉𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒷𝓊𝒸𝓀𝑒𝓉𝓈 𝒶𝓈 𝓌𝑒 𝓈𝓅𝑒𝒶𝓀,
𝒴𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝐵𝑒𝓃
Okay.
Chocolate cake. Carrots. And where was her pen?
“Is Ma mad?”
“Nah, she's just excited to meet your Uncle Hawkeye.”
Becky stood obediently for him as John folded up some tape and pulled off the long white cat hairs strand by strand. Not as fast as a roller, but it would get the job done. When you were Radar O’Reily’s unofficial auntie you learned how to remove animal hair off a dress uniform. Hawkeye enjoyed nothing better than preparing the kid on the rare occasion he got a date. He’d give him terrible advice while Trapper primped. Who knew guineapigs could shed that much?
“I didn’t mean to break the lamp,” Becky told him forlornly.
“I think it was Hot Dog that broke the lamp from what you told me, Sweetie.”
“He didn’t mean to either.”
“Of course not, he and Mommy are good friends, aren’t they? She forgives him. You know sometimes Mommy gets worked up, she wants things to be perfect.”
Becky nodded in understanding. “Me too! I wanted to help.”
“You did. I’m sure Uncle Hawkeye will be very impressed with the grooming job you did on Hot Dog.”
Becky’s happy smile was back.
“Is Uncle Hawkeye nice?”
“Come on Trap, you're the one that's good with ankle biters, not me.”
“When was the last time you spent time with a child?”
“Before college! When I was a child myself! And they didn't like me! They beat me up all the time! I have a few baby cousins, but none of them respect me either! They beat me up too!”
“I’ll protect you.”
“I'm serious, I'm really not good with them. I never know what to say,”
“They speak Korean, Hawk. They wouldn’t know what you were talking about even if you could say it.”
“They’ll hate me.”
“Don't be stupid, they love clowns.”
Naturally, he was an immediate hit. Thing was, Hawkeye didn't need to know how to speak to kids. His first impulse in his panic was to start juggling. They were enamoured. Ice broken, he relaxed. He treated them like he treated the boys in post-op, with smiles and good humour. He told simple jokes that relied more on sound than words, did funny faces, and was a big kid himself. He was the perfect distraction for inoculation day.
He didn't make a habit of visiting like John. He was more than happy to rob what they could spare from the supply room (care of Captain Tuttle) for when Trapper and the Father were going in that direction, but he didn't often join them.
Still, he made a big impression on those kids. They always asked after him.
"Keun-Sae! Keun-Sae!"
Sister Teresa explained that due, to some translation errors going back and forth from English and Korean, they called him Big Bird.
When Hawkeye heard that he squawked, much to the childrens' delight.
“He's very nice, Sweetheart. You're gonna get along great. Alright, not a hair to be seen.” He kissed the crown of her head.
“Much better,” she declared seriously. She definitely had Louise’s sensibility when it came to looking proper. Louise’s mother, Madge hinted about beauty pageants, which he quickly shut down. Louise got enough of that from her awful sisters as a kid. Becky didn't need to be put on display, and Kathy didn't need to be compared in looks to her little sister.
“Don't worry, we’re gonna make sure he likes you Daddy,” Becky reassured him.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Ma says you're nervous. Don’t be nervous, Daddy. Ma and me will make sure everything is perfect.”
“Oh?” he blinked rapidly. He might start crying about his precious baby girl if he didn't pull himself together. It blew him away how empathetic Becky could be. How kind. “Not Kitty-Kat?”
“Kathy will help!” she protested on her sister’s behalf. “She’ll do the messy jobs.”
He laughed and pulled her into a hard hug. Now she probably smelled like his aftershave too.
“Where is your sister?” he asked, realising he hadn't seen Kathy since bending to her will about the aftershave. Becky shrugged.
“Garden?” she suggested.
Ah damn. Not just a two smelly daughters, but a muddy one as well, and Hawk was due any minute.
“Whatcha doing?”
What Hawkeye Pierce had been doing, was sitting in his car with his head pressed to the wheel trying to convince himself not to drive all the way back to Crabapple Cove and hide in his old treehouse.
Because he would ruin it. He was going to ruin it. Whatever it was. Trapper had left him and never wrote him back. Louise was the woman Trap loved. They didn't need him, they were both wonderful and perfect and had each other. Where the hell did a broken army surgeon fit? The only reason he was here was because Trapper felt nostalgic and tried to visit him, and Bill got devious and stole his car while somehow convincing Trapper he was queer, and—and where did Hawkeye fit? A two storey house in a nice neighbourhood that even Charles might backhandedly call acceptable. He was... he was...
Spiralling.
That's what he was doing.
He looked up. The kid had Trapper's eyes. Was this Becky or Kathy? They were pretty close in age.
“What are you doing?” he shot back, feeling a little defensive.
“I asked first,” she pointed out with easy logic.
“I suppose you did. Well, I'm not actually doing anything.”
“I see that,” she agreed bluntly.
The corner of her lip was tugging up, just a little. Just how it would when Trap was trying to hide smugness at getting a good one off on Frank.
“Well, what are you doing?” he asked, turning the tables on her.
“Putting out the beer.”
“Oh.” He had no idea what that meant, or why a kid needed beer. “Can I join you?”
She shrugged. “Sure. You gotta get out of your car though.”
So he got out of his car.
The girl was in a pretty blue party dress, the effect ruined by the mud on the hem and grass stains on her knees.
“Your dress is dirty,” he pointed out as he followed her to the bed of flowers.
“So?”
He had a flashback to Frank’s red face. “Captain Pierce! You're out of uniform!”
“So?”
He liked this kid already.
“I'm Hawkeye,” he told her.
She opened a can of beer and poured some into a little bowl.
“I know,” she told him as if he were an idiot. He probably was. “We had to clean up the whole house because of you.”
He let out a startled laugh. “Oh?”
“Ma’s in a tizzy about it,” she explained, world weary about the idea of cleaning. She knelt on the ground and placed the bowl of beer in a little hole beside one of the flowers. “The house was already pretty clean.”
“Can I have a some?”
“It's for the snails.”
“I rank lower than snails?! I wasn't the one that made you clean up,” he protested in amusement. He could definitely see Trapper in this kid. Unbothered and stubborn and unbending toward authority figures. Wait, was he an authority figure now?
“It's so they don't eat the flowers.” She rolled her eyes at him. "It' drowns 'em. They like the smell and fall in. I gotta do it when my sister's not around or else she'll scoop them out."
“Alcoholic snails. I’ve heard of falling off the wagon, but never at a snail's pace.”
“You're weird.”
“So?” he asked pointedly. This earned him his first crooked smile. It was so beautifully familiar. His heart melted.
She wiped her nose and shrugged.
“I'm guessing you're Kathy.” From both parent's descriptions it would fit. Trapper told him the garden Hawkeye had admired was mostly under her care. Louise told him a wonderful sunny-day story of the two of them visiting the Arboretum at Harvard.
“You guessed right Mr. Hawkeye,” Kathy confirmed.
“No Mister necessary. Hawkeye's just fine.”
“Dad calls you Uncle Hawkeye.”
Hawkeye laughed nervously. Trapper already inserting him into his kids' lives made him feel nervous.
He was working on it, but it was pretty hard not to imagine all the worst case scenarios with every single child he met after… (Sidney’s voice echoed: I know it hurts, Hawkeye, but you can’t shy away from it. You can’t let yourself bury it again) after the bus. Especially when he had additional fuel for his nightmares in the form of little girls and boys of all ages on his table in the O.R. with shell fragments and missing limbs.
It was bad enough that B.J. encouraged Erin to call him Uncle (like he can be trusted), and he had actually met Erin face to face on his way through San Francisco. Peg had insisted on having him for the night even though B.J. was weeks away. He was getting home by ship so he could bring his deathtrap with wheels stateside. B.J. planned it with her via telegram. It was a surprise, just for him. He almost hated him for it, for making him see Erin in ways that a photo couldn’t convey. How she had B.J.’s smiling eyes when she was happy. How her hair was his exact shade of dark gold without the grey. How her smile was Peg’s and so was her little laugh. He had to know that now. Carry it in his heart that was filled with bullet wounds and blood and silence.
When he did get home, B.J. had excitedly written a letter about how it was soooo cute when Erin called him her Unkie Hokey.
He didn’t write back about how his beautiful little girl gave him nightmares. Instead, he made a dumb joke about the Hokey Pokey.
Now was not the time to go down that road. He was already out of the car. His treehouse was miles away.
“Should I call you that?” Kathy prodded when he was silent too long.
“You don't have to call me Uncle Hawkeye either if you don’t want to.”
“It's fine. Ma calls you Ben. I thought you were two people.”
“Sometimes I feel like two people,” he had meant it to be a flippant joke, but it came out candidly.
She seemed really struck by that. “Me too,” she said seriously. Then she nodded as if she had made her mind up and handed him the half empty can of beer as a peace offering. “There's some left. All yours, Uncle Hawkeye.”
There was mud on the lip. He raised the can toward the snail trap and drank it anyway. “So, I think there's a party we're supposed to be attending. I just gotta get a few things out of my car.”
“Okay, I gotta sneak in and change. Can you give me five minutes before you knock?” she requested unrepentantly.
“Sure.” He shrugged.
She circled to the side of the house and climbed in through a window. Hawkeye watched her.
Well.
That had gone good.
He went back to his car, talked to himself to get his brain in order, collected what he needed, and headed to the front door when enough time had passed.
He was out of the car. No turning back now.
There was a piece of paper tapped to the knocker.
𝒟𝑒𝒶𝓇 𝐿𝓊𝓁𝓊,𝔇𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔅𝔢𝔫,
𝒲𝑒'𝓇𝑒 𝑔𝑜𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓉𝑜 𝓂𝑒𝑒𝓉 𝒶𝓉 𝓁𝒶𝓈𝓉! 𝐼'𝓂 𝑒𝓍𝒸𝒾𝓉𝑒𝒹! 𝐼'𝓂 𝓉𝑒𝓇𝓇𝒾𝒻𝒾𝑒𝒹!𝐼
𝓌𝒶𝓃𝓉 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝓉𝑜 𝓌𝓇𝒾𝓉𝑒 𝓂𝑒 𝒷𝒶𝒸𝓀 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓁𝒾𝑒 𝓉𝑜 𝓂𝑒 𝒶𝒷𝑜𝓊𝓉 𝒽𝑜𝓌
𝒾𝓉'𝓈 𝑔𝑜𝓃𝓃𝒶 𝒷𝑒 𝒻𝒾𝓃𝑒 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓎𝑜𝓊'𝓇𝑒 𝑔𝑜𝓃𝓃𝒶𝓁𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓂𝑒 𝒷𝒶𝒸𝓀,
𝒷U𝓉 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓂𝒶𝒾𝓁 𝒾𝓈𝓃'𝓉 𝒻𝒶𝓈𝓉 𝑒𝓃𝑜𝓊𝑔𝒽 𝒻𝑜𝓇 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉.
ℑ'𝔪 𝔫𝔢𝔯𝔳𝔬𝔲𝔰 𝔱𝔬𝔬,
𝒮𝓌𝑒𝒶𝓉𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒷𝓊𝒸𝓀𝑒𝓉𝓈 𝒶𝓈 𝓌𝑒 𝓈𝓅𝑒𝒶𝓀,
𝔜𖹭𝔲𝔯 𝔏𝔲𝔩𝔲
𝒴𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝐵𝑒𝓃