Up Country by Nelson DeMille Read Free Book Online Page B

days.”
    There was a long silence, then he said, “Say a Hail Mary and an Our Father for penance. Good luck, my son, and God bless you. I’ll pray for you.”
    I went to the communion rail, happy that I’d gotten off easy, but halfway through my Hail Mary, I realized that saying you were going to Vietnam was like saying “Father, have mercy on me,” and a cold chill ran down my spine.
    Poor Peggy spent about an hour on her knees reciting the rosary while I passed around a football with some guys at St. Brigid’s High School playing field.
    Afterward, we’d both sworn to be sexually faithful for the year I was gone. There were probably about a half-million such vows made that year between parting couples, and maybe some of those promises were kept.
    Peggy and I talked about getting married before I shipped out, but
she’d defended her virtue for so long that by the time I discovered she was a hottie, it was too late to get the marriage license.
    In any case, we were unofficially engaged, and I hoped officially not pregnant.
    This story could have had a happy ending, I think, because we wrote to each other regularly, and she continued living at home and working at her father’s little hardware store where her mother also worked. More important, she didn’t go weird like most of the country did in ’68, and her letters were filled with patriotic and positive feelings about the war, which I myself did not share.
    I came home, in one piece, ready to pick up where I left off. I had a thirty-day leave, and I was looking forward to every minute of it.
    But something had changed in my absence. The country had changed, my friends were either in the military, or were in college, or were not interested in talking to returning soldiers. Even South Boston, bastion of working-class patriotism, was divided like the rest of the country.
    In truth, the biggest change was within me, and I couldn’t get my head together during that long leave.
    Peggy had somehow regained her virginity and refused to have sex until after we were married. This at a time when people were fucking their brains out with total strangers.
    Peggy Walsh was as pretty and sweet as ever, but Paul Brenner had become cold, distant, and distracted. I knew that, and she knew that. In fact, she said something to me that I’ve never forgotten. She said, “You’ve become like the others who have come back.” Translation: You’re dead. Why are you still walking?
    I told her I just needed some time, and we decided to give it another half year until I was out of the army. She wrote to me at Fort Hadley, but I never wrote back, and her letters stopped.
    When my time in the army was up, I made the fateful decision to re-enlist for three years, which eventually became almost thirty years. I have no regrets, but I often wonder what my life would have been like if there was no war, and if I’d married Peggy Walsh.
    Peggy and I never saw each other again, and I learned from friends that she’d married a local guy who had a football scholarship to Iowa State. They settled there for some reason, two Boston kids in the middle of nowhere, and I hope they’ve had a good life. Obviously, I still think about her now
and then. Especially now, as I was about to return to the place that had separated us, and changed our lives.
     

     
    M y contact still hadn’t shown up, and I was finished with my coffee and two bags of peanuts. The clock on the wall said ten after eight. I considered doing this time what I should have done last time—getting the hell out of that airport and going home.
    But I sat there and thought about this and that: Vietnam, Peggy Walsh, Vietnam, Cynthia Sunhill.
    I took my e-mail to Cynthia out of my overnight bag and read:
Dear Cynthia,
     
    As Karl has told you, I’ve taken an assignment in
Southeast Asia. I should return in about two or three weeks. Of course, there’s the
possibility that I may run into some problems. If I do, it’s important for