I Loved You First | Not Easily Conquered ▸ [STUCKY]

Ch. 10

1977

Southern Vietnam is dry in the winter, just the opposite of that wet cold that Bucky hated so bad about Europe. Steve had done some reading before hopping a plane here, but he can't say he was expecting this kind of weather - that reading was mostly about the clothes he should bring and what gestures not to make, and a few more language books because really, one phrase book was not going to get him through when he was all alone.

And he is all alone. This isn't unusual, but he doesn't think he's ever actually been alone before in a foreign country. 

Southern Vietnam is dry in the winter, and wet in the summer, and Steve had not expected that. 

Southern Vietnam is riddled with land mines and people who don't trust him for very good reason, but he speaks Vietnamese pretty well even though he butchers the dialects fabulously. So the locals get to laugh at his pronunciation, and his earnest way of learning when they correct him, and pretty soon people mostly like Steve. Which is good, because otherwise he wouldn't get fed. 

Admittedly, he is pretty useful, because he can pull livestock out of muddy rice paddies on the occasions when they get stuck, and move lots of bags of rice, and whatever else, but you have to get people to trust you at least a little before they'll take you up on your offers of help. 

Speaking of people and land mines, he has to be told by the locals of wherever he is where not to go all the time, and there are still accidents among the people who supposedly know this land. People lose limbs like Bucky used to lose nuts and bolts working in the garage - all the time, and unnecessarily. 

Steve never liked bullies, didn't matter where they were from.

The mines were planted by both sides.

He thinks of Morita telling him maybe he should write a letter back to Bucky, see if it would help. He can't think of much to say and there's not a scrap of paper out here to spare anyway, but when he thinks about it, thinks of writing home, it goes something like this:

I know I will never find every mine, because hell, the villagers may never find every mine, and a hundred years from now there may still be land mines beneath farmers' feet. But for the time being, on the days when they trust me, they tell me where not to go because there are explosives there, and so I walk to the edge of wherever that place is - and it's always too close to someone's house, it's always land they could be farming for the starving stomachs of the children who also know where the land mines are - the children, who come to watch me as I stand on the edge of the place where the land mines are. And there, I throw heavy things and watch the explosions, and think about my birthday in the summer, and I remember how sometimes explosions represent freedom and sometimes, well, sometimes they're just feared. 

For a long time after he came home he'd jump six feet in the air every time he heard a firework. Nobody but Peggy knows that. He spent a lot of birthdays in the basement with the record player turned up high.

Southern Vietnam is dry in the winter, and when the rice isn't growing, Steve detonates land mines, hurling heavy things sometimes very great distances and watching holes get blown into the earth. 

Sometimes he wishes his shield wasn't in storage, because he could hurl that too.

So when he can Steve stands up from the dinner table, thanks the family of this week for the food, and walks to the hill to set off bombs again. There's a pile of heavy things waiting for him. Isn't there always?

Steve stands up.

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