(no subject)
Mary Anne has been a bundle of nervous energy lately.
She can feel herself getting snappish, edgy; she stays out of the bar unless she’s headed for a door. She’s afraid of getting in a fight, afraid of starting one. Shooting at the bar’s gun range, throwing knives at targets, running along the lakeshore (but never never in the woods), beating up on practice dummies and trees and shadows-nothing is enough.
It used to be that when she got like this she’d head back out to Vietnam. She’d spend a month or two without hot showers and hot meals, without human company, just basking in the war until she hit equilibrium again.
But that’s not her place any more.
Doesn’t mean she can’t find a new one.
She packs her knives-smaller blades tucked away, the long curved ones settled on her hips-and nothing else. She writes two notes: one to the Delicate Flowers, asking not to be put on the schedule for a week or so, and one to her husband.
She heads out the front door and doesn’t look back.
She has no idea where she is.
After walking for a few hours, she runs into a man headed in the same direction. He tells her that the army’s recruiting-three hots, a cot, and a week’s worth of training before you get sent to the front. He tells her he’s going to the nearest outpost, that he might as well meet the war before it comes to find him.
She doesn’t ask which army.
She doesn’t ask what war.
She just smiles and says it sounds like a fair deal, would he mind some company?
Six weeks later, she’s in a trench with mud up to her ankles and bullets flying overhead. Staff Sergeant Bell is having the time of her life.
Fifteen weeks later, they're stuck in the middle of an armistace with nothing to do, and Mary Anne is longing for tequila and hot showers. She makes sure her unit will be taken care of, then cashes in on her twenty-four hour pass. If anyone wonders why she’s taking her knives with her for a day’s vacation, they don’t ask.
She never did find out what they were fighting for.