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Dear Joe,
I hope this letter finds you well, or at the very least finds you at all. I have returned to my studies at Harvard as we discussed. I am including with this letter my current address, should you wish to write to me as I am hopeful you will. Know also that my door is open to you if you ever find yourself in the Northeast.
Truly I did not expect to miss the men of Easy company, but I do, and you in particular. I miss the camaraderie we had in the war, if not the food or the damp or the German bullets. We had such characters in Easy company as I've not found the like of in Cambridge, though not for lack of trying.
I find I go for days at a time without anyone saying "bullshit." No one here wants to pick a fight with the War Hero, not even about Chaucer. I'm sure you would hate Chaucer, and so I am embarrassed to say I have imagined instead fighting with you about his qualities. In my mind, at least, you make many good points and I cannot claim to have always emerged the victor from our fictitious discourses.
I must also confess to being very curious as to how you're getting on. Did you return to your job at the taxi company? (If you did, I hope that it is to your liking.) Did you find a Jewish girl to marry? I hope you will write back and tell me of your life as it is now.
Kind regards,
David Kenyon Webster
here
Getting a letter from Web was a real surprise.
It wasn't like they'd said they'd write. He knew some of the boys who said they were gonna keep in touch after, but that was the guys who were close like Toye and Guarnere. Hell, he'd even heard that Major Winters had taken a job that Captain Nixon had fixed up for him in New Jersey.
Joe hadn't figured for getting something from Web. He figured Web was too busy with his nose shoved in a book to even remember that there'd ever been a war in the first place.
He sure hadn't figured that Web'd been thinking about him specifically.
Joe didn't think about Web at all, except for sometimes, hand on his dick, when he remembered the warm inside of Web's mouth and the little noises Web used to make, like it was breaking his heart that Joe wasn't giving it to him harder. How he'd ask, "That's all you've got?" voice strained, eyelashes wet and stuck together into little spikes.
"What do you fucking think," Joe would say, incapable of not picking a fight, but it was all for show. In that moment he'd have done anything Web asked him to. Anything to knock that desperate look off Web's pretty face, replace it with something that Joe had put there for him.
So yeah, except for maybe once or twice a day he didn't think about Web at all.
there
He shouldn't have let it get as far as he did, back at Toccoa. He should have left the thoughts he had about Web's pretty mouth stay in the back of his goddamn brain where they belonged. But there'd been a night, when Joe'd got too deep into the whiskey from Bull's footlocker to not let his mouth run away with him. A night where Web had used that overeducated brain of his to sling some bullshit back at Joe that he just couldn't back down from.
Joe's memories of that night were pretty spotty -- he couldn't tell you what the fuck they were arguing about in the first place -- but he clearly remembered saying, "I may not have gone to fucking Harvard, but I could still show you a few things."
Web had leaned in, closer than he should have in a room full of paratroopers, and asked, "What could you possibly have to show me?"
Joe'd been drunk, sure, but not drunk enough that he didn't know which way was up. This was all gonna end up one of two ways: they were gonna fuck or one of them was gonna get a busted lip and either way was fine by him, so he'd said, "Oh yeah? Meet me out back and find out for yourself, if you ain't too chickenshit."
They'd fucked -- up against the side of the munitions shed, pants barely shoved down their thighs, dripping sweat in the thick, muggy air -- but Web had ended up with a busted lip anyway, Joe clocking him in the face with his elbow when they'd been scrambling to get his pants open. Web'd looked pissed as hell, too, which had made Joe laugh, and when he'd screwed up his face like he was gonna bitch Joe out about it, Joe'd kissed him to shut him up and tasted the copper-penny tang of new blood in his mouth. It had all been stupid and reckless as anything, but he wasn't gonna pretend the whole thing hadn't turned him on like crazy, that he hadn't gone off like a shot damn near the second Web'd got his hand around his dick.
So anyway, it was a bad idea, right from the start. Keeping it going in Georgia, once they got to England, clear on through Holland, that had been a dumb fucking mistake, too. And after Web came back, when Joe'd had time to clear his head but still hadn't gotten Web outta there, well, he wasn't too fucking proud.
On some level, he knew he should have felt worse about what they did, and he would have, if it wasn't exactly what Web had wanted.
He wasn't about to kill himself with guilt over something Web'd been begging him for.
here
The letter sat on his kitchen table, because Joe didn't know where the fuck else to put it.
There wasn't much in his place. Just the rickety table and some chairs that were new around when his grandparents came over from the old country and a bed with a metal frame that rattled like a handful of dimes when anyone so much as breathed on it and a range that wasn't good for much besides burning water -- he ate most of his meals at the diner down the street or the deli around the corner.
Web probably wrote the damn letter sitting at some big oak desk with drawers full of correspondence from the other college-educated pricks he was used to writing to. Look how far the poor thing had come down in the world, sitting as it was on pile of old newspapers folded open to the box scores, dusted in flakes of ash from an ashtray that Joe hadn't emptied in maybe a week.
He ought to have just thrown the stupid thing out. All it was doing was making him feel guilty that he wasn't gonna write back.
What the hell would he even say?
Sure he got his old job back fine, but he was pulling graveyard shifts in a Checker with a bad clutch because the punks that weren't old enough to shave when he left all had three years of seniority on him by the time he got back. And Phil, being the same hardass he was when Joe himself was wet behind the ears, didn't do exceptions for nobody, no, not even you Joe.
Every day was the same, more or less. He rattled his way up and down the hills of San Francisco from sundown to sun up and during the day he laid on his back staring at the cracks in the ceiling, not sleeping. He was flat broke, his army pay having gone into his Ma's mortgage, what little was leftover blown on first and last on his fleabag apartment. He was cold all the fucking time -- San Francisco didn't ever get down to freezing or nothing, but the weather never warmed you up, neither. Loud noises made him jump nearly outta his skin, had him looking around for his foxhole every time he heard a car backfire, like there was gonna be a howitzer hiding behind the goddamn bus depot.
Honestly, if the war had messed him up good, peace wasn't doing him any favors neither. It wasn't nothing worth writing about.
there
After that first time, they'd fucked every time they could get away with it.
It wasn't like it'd been some grand romance or nothing. Mostly they were quick about it. Efficient, if you could call something that messy efficient. After they'd shipped out, after they jumped out of a goddamn airplane, they just didn't have the time to take.
Once, in Haguenau, in the relative comfort of a bombed out husk of a building under the thunder of artillery fire, they'd had a little time. They'd had the time, then, for Joe to watch Web work himself open using God knew what, mouth hanging open, beads of sweat collecting at his hairline. It had been the first time since Bastogne that Joe'd really been warm, hot even, with Web crawling into Joe's lap and lining them up, forehead screwed up in concentration. Web had set the pace himself, but even that hadn't been enough for him, and he'd mouthed off until Joe'd had to flip them over to really give it to him, grinding Web's clean and pressed uniform into the plaster dust, getting it as dirty as the rest of Easy had felt for weeks, months, years .
Joe'd lit a cigarette off a candle afterward, half-dressed, while Web had looked at him like he was something they usually keep in a zoo. It was the kinda look Web would give him that brought out a mean streak in him something fierce, so he'd let some snarl into his voice when he'd asked, "They teach you that in school?"
"Yeah. Sure," Web had said, smiling, turning it around into a joke instead of an insult. Web always did that, somehow, turn Joe around until he wasn't quite as much of an asshole as he was trying to be. "French, comparative lit, sodomy, it's practically a gen ed requirement."
"Well I'm sure you got straight A's," Joe had said, and he'd meant it to sound dirty, but Web had laughed. Laughed and taken the cigarette outta Joe's mouth, cupped the warm palm of his hand around Joe's jaw and kissed him without it leading nowhere.
here
There were all kinds of letters Joe wasn't writing to Web, ones that said things like:
Do you remember when you let me fuck you against a tree so hard the leaves shook? Remember how you made so much noise I had to put my hand into your mouth to make you stop and it hurt like a sonofabitch for hours afterwards cause you bit it hard enough it almost bled? I had teethmarks in my skin until damn near the next week. And when we got back, remember how you turned bright red when Muck found Spanish moss in your hair? You had to play it off like you were choking on something, do you remember that?
You letting some spoiled rich Harvard boy fuck you like that?
No way was he writing that one. No fucking way.
there
Maybe if it'd just been sex, he could have got Web out of his head. If they never marched together, never stood next to each other in the chow line, never sat together shooting the shit. But that wasn't how it happened at all. Web had a mean sense of humor that Joe wanted to hear more of, so Joe sat next to him when he could, looked for him in every damn place they ended up.
After it was over, Joe didn't think much about the war if he could help it -- on account of it being a fucking war -- but some things had stuck. Not the big stuff, like Normandy or Foy, not the stuff that was going to go in the history books.
The day to day shit, he thought about that stuff sometimes.
Like, Joe's Deutsch was always better than Web's, so they practiced sometimes when they were bored or marching or Joe just fucking felt like saying things he didn't want the other guys to hear or understand. If no one was around that could be expected to know their Hintern from a hole in the ground, sometimes he'd say whatever dirty things came to mind until he could get Web to turn red enough the other guys would notice.
"When your mouth hangs open in that way, it makes me want to put something in it," he'd said once, on the road from somefuckingplace, France to someotherfuckingplace, France.
Web had indeed turned bright red, had kicked him in the back of the leg, hissing at him, "Knock it off."
Joe had kept going, because he could, because there was nothing Web could do to stop him. He'd gotten in close, almost whispering right into Web's ear, "You'd like that. You'd like for me to shut you up. For once I could put your mouth to work doing something useful."
"What?" Luz had asked all of a sudden, coming up behind Joe and making him jump half outta his skin.
"What what?" He'd asked back, aiming for pissy and falling short, his heart hammering like crazy in his chest. It rattled the hell out of him, getting caught up like that. Half the damn platoon could have come up up on his six without him noticing, on account of him paying too much attention to the pink flush creeping up the back of Web's neck.
By the time Joe's heartbeat stopped making like a marching band in his ears, Luz had moved on to pestering Web, slinging an arm around his shoulders and asking, "What's he saying? Or do you not actually speak German."
Web'd looked before like he was half about to laugh, but Joe watched as his big brain ground to a halt and he looked caught-out as a rabbit staring down an oncoming Chrysler. His mouth had gaped open a little more than it usually did for a second before he made a sour face, and said, "Lay off my sister, would you?"
"Not on your life," Joe had said back.
Luz had howled with laughter, clapped Web on the shoulder, and then he'd moved on -- no doubt to tell the tale to the rest of the guys and blow it all out of proportion in the process. By the time it got back to Joe a few days later, he'd been asking for Web's fucking blessing.
"That was quick," Joe had said, once Luz was outta earshot. "I'm impressed."
"Not as quick as you," Web had said back, in German. "It's a miracle when you can last more than a minute."
"Ha fucking ha," Joe'd said, but the look Web'd gave him, like impressing Joe had really meant something to him, that had stuck with Joe for a long, long time.
here
Since Joe himself had made no inroads on the finding a wife front since his triumphant return to the States, he said yes when his buddy Jeff offered to set him up with his girl's sister -- just the four of them for dinner and afterwards they'd go dancing. Maybe they'd hit it off. Even if they didn't, he'd be doing Jeff a favor, get Eve off Jeff's case for a while.
"Anyway," Jeff had said, "you can't be worse than that good-for-nothing Deborah finally kicked to the curb last month."
Joe wasn't sure how bad somebody had to get where he looked like an improvement.
When talking up her qualities -- like Joe was really a hard sell here -- Jeff'd swore up and down that Deborah was a looker. Joe'd seen her dozens of times growing up and that wasn't how he remembered it, but it didn't really matter either way. He wasn't doing much else on his night off, besides his right hand.
The woman who followed Jeff and Eve into the restaurant didn't look like the same girl he used to know, and Joe just about made an idiot of himself by asking, "Deborah? That really you?" Lucky for him, Deborah just giggled, like she thought he was being funny.
"You don't look too shabby yourself, Joseph," she said, and smiled at him as he pulled out her chair.
Three years was a long time. Long enough to turn some baby-faced and scrawny thing into a right knockout: pretty, with big eyes and curly hair and pink, soft-looking lips. Pretty in the same exact same fucking ways that Web was pretty, which was just Joe's fucking luck. Anything that reminded Joe of Web was a real fucking problem, because not thinking about Web was the only way he got through the damn day. He prefered to keep that box shut up tight, because once it was opened, all kinds of shit was bound to spill out that he didn't want to look at.
Joe had started the night with the expectation that dinner was gonna be pretty awful -- he wasn't really up to polite company, though he couldn't really chalk that up to the war, exactly -- but it wasn't half bad. Deborah was sharp as a tack, with a smart comeback for just about every damn thing Joe said. She didn't even look down on Joe much, even though she was only working as a typist at the hospital to put herself through college classes at night.
"What kinda classes," Joe asked, and braced himself for her to say English Literature but instead she said Psychology. She told him a little bit about the classes she was in and honestly it all sounded pretty interesting, but afterwards he probably couldn't have told you two things about it. He was too busy thinking about how it sounded like the kinda thing Web would be into -- so it was too goddamn late for him already, the lid had been knocked clean off the fucking box.
But even though Joe was fucking useless, dinner was fine for the most part, and then when they went out dancing Deborah gave him a look like he was being especially slow when he didn't immediately whisk her out onto the floor. It was the kinda look that Web used to give him, damn near all the time, but at least Web used to come out and say he thought Joe was an idiot. Deborah just laughed and took Joe's hand like he wasn't a fucking moron.
Joe put his hand on Deborah's back and thought about how maybe Web was just as fucked up as Joe was. He stepped in close enough to breathe in the perfumed scent of Deborah's hair and thought maybe Web couldn't sleep either. He spun Deborah out into a neat little twirl that made her skirt float up above her knees and thought, maybe Web didn't have anything to say to those pantywaists at Harvard the same way Joe didn't have anything to say to the guys at the taxi depot.
They ended up dancing until well after last call. Jeff and Eve caught a taxi back to Jeff's place, but Deborah lived a few blocks from the dancehall so Joe walked her home. Deborah kept up her side of the conversation like a champ while Joe nodded and said yeah and didn't let on about how it was eating him up a little, thinking about Web at Harvard, the people he was going around with there. No way was Web getting what he needed from those soft, useless pieces of shit. No way.
He knew Web thought about him -- he'd said as much in his letter. He'd said that he pictured Joe mouthing off at him about literature, as pathetic at that was. When Joe pictured Web in his head, his mouth was usually too full to talk.
Before he knew it, Deborah had stopped in front of a little brick-and-ivy rowhouse with crumbling steps behind a little wrought-iron gate and she was looking at him like she expected something.
"I can't invite you up," she said, in the kind of tone that meant she really wanted to. "My roommate's home."
"That's too bad," Joe said, even though it wasn't.
Joe thought, if he showed up on Web's doorstep, gave him what he really wanted -- he'd be doing Web a goddamn favor.
By the time he'd told Deborah goodnight, lied and said that maybe he'd seen her again sometime, his mind was half made up.
Boston couldn't be any fucking worse than San Francisco. Sure Web wasn't Jewish, and his tits weren't nothing to write home about, but maybe that didn't fucking matter. Joe was already used to living with disappointment.
there
Honestly, Joe didn't even want to look at Web after the commandant. He didn't say it in so many words, but Web was smart, way smarter than Joe, and he figured it out on his own quick enough.
But they were in Austria a long, long time, playing out the string. Long enough for Web to stop looking at him like Joe was the big disappointment.
Web didn't say nothing outright, just acted like maybe he was waiting for Joe to say something or do something. Whatever it was Web was waiting for, Joe had some fucking pride left, he wasn't about to just give it to him. Joe didn't owe Web shit , didn't him the time of day if he could help it.
It was when the Japs surrendered and they all got their releases that things changed again. They all got good and drunk celebrating and all of a sudden Joe had found himself back in his old habit of standing too close to Web, staring at him too long, letting Web whisper mean jokes into his ear again. Jokes that made him laugh so hard he wasn't even making a sound, just trying to get air into his lungs, made him laugh so hard that it made his stomach hurt.
He'd found himself with Web in the woods again, moonlight just bright enough to make out a foot around them but no further. It was like they were the only people left in Europe, and he'd kissed Web over and over again, as if they had all the time in the world and not just until the sun came up and they had to face the rest of their fucking lives.
Web had begged Joe to fuck him and that feeling had welled up in Joe again, that need to take care of Web and give him what he needed, because Web was just a little too good for this war.
Web was too good for the whole goddamn world.
After they were done Joe wasn't ready to go back right away, so they'd laid out there in the damp rotting leaves for a while, Web saying something about how he was glad the war was over, but he wasn't ready for it to end.
Joe hadn't said anything in particular in response, just clenched his fingers a little tighter where they were tangled up in Web's hair. That was OK, Web liked the sound of his own voice plenty and he talked about Harvard, about the Atlantic ocean, on and on like Joe -- who'd spent his whole life in spitting distance of the Bay -- didn't understand about water. But Joe'd just listened with his eyes closed and pictured it the way he figured Web did, and it didn't sound like the ocean he knew at all.
"We'll go there," Web had said, and Joe didn't think nothing about it when he said yeah back, but Web's breath caught anyways and his voice had a little something different in it for the rest of the night.
They fooled around when they could after that, too, but it by then it was like time had sped up, a film reel turning too fast, and before Joe could catch his breath it was the last time. Nothing worth remembering, even, just Web on his knees in a tucked-away closet, Joe's back against the door to keep it shut.
"Christ," Joe'd said, "I'm going to miss this. "
When their transport landed in New York and Web said, "Well this is it," Joe just nodded. Didn't say goodbye.
They hadn't talked about what was going to happen when they were through with the army, but Joe figured they didn't have to. Still, the moment had lasted long enough that Joe started to get uncomfortable about the way he was standing and where his hands were and why was Web looking at him like that here where everybody could fucking see? But then Web had nodded too, like Joe had said something when he hadn't, and turned and walked down the gangway when it was his turn.
Joe hadn't looked twice for Web when he'd landed his feet on the dock, but it hadn't mattered anyway. By then Web had disappeared into the seething mass of men in drab, headed wherever home meant to him.
What would Web have done anyway if Joe found him? Grab him and kiss him on the mouth like some dame? It was hard to imagine.
By the time Joe realized maybe he should have said something, he was already in California.
At the time, he just hadn't figured that when Web thought about the future, he'd pictured Joe there with him. That kinda thing just didn't make any goddamn sense.
here
There was another letter Joe wasn't writing, one that said:
Where were you? You were never where you were supposed to be when I fucking needed you. Not when I was cold, not when I was scared, not when you said you had my back. Where the fuck did you go? Where the fuck are you now?
The thing was -- what Joe had come to realize was -- you can't be disappointed by people you ain't got expectations for. When he wasn't too tired to think straight, Joe knew it was fucking stupid to be mad at somebody for being gone that you told to get lost. If the one thing he was mad at Web for was not being where Joe was... Jesus Christ was that ever stupid.
If it was worth fixing, fixing that shit was all on Joe. He knew where Web was. He'd included his goddamn return address.
there
In Landsberg, on a night that Joe didn't ever let himself think about, he'd gone AWOL from his billet and Web had found him, smoking against a tree, one hand cupped around the end to hide the glow of it.
When Joe had said he wasn't in the fucking mood Web hadn't taken the hint and left, instead he'd stolen Joe's cigarette to light one of his own from the tip, leaning against the same tree so that their shoulders were touching, a warm line down Joe's side against the wind and cold. Joe'd kept staring out into the dark nothing, eyes sticky and hot from crying all goddamn day, and he'd felt dried out, like he'd been through the wringer too many times.
They stood there a long time, exhaling smoke, watching it get mixed up with the ghost of their combined breath.
Web finished his cigarette after Joe's was gone -- Joe'd let his burn down until it almost singed his fingers -- and after he stubbed it out, he'd put one hand against Joe's face and turned it into a kiss.
Joe wanted to protest. He'd already said he wasn't in the mood, damn it, but it wasn't that kind of kiss.
"Alright?" Web had asked, and Joe'd realized with a start that it was the first thing Web had said all night. It had felt the whole time like they'd been saying something to each other, even if it hadn't been out loud.
"Alright," Joe'd said, and they'd headed back.
That night had probably meant something, and it wasn't like Joe didn't know that at the time, but it was all mixed up back there. It was easy enough to think something was gonna last forever when you didn't think forever went past next week.
It wasn't his fucking fault that he'd screwed it up in the end, it's not like he'd ever been in love before.
here
Web opened the door on the third knock and if he was surprised to see Joe there, he didn't show it. He just stepped back from the door and let Joe walk past him before he shut it again.
"I'm sorry," Joe said, though he couldn't have said for what. The list was too fucking long to pick just one thing.
Web looked at him, mouth open like it usually was, and didn't say anything back. Just gave Web that fucking look like he always did.
"Look," Joe started again. "I know you don't think much of me."
Web shook his head, said, "You have no idea what I think about you."
"Yeah?" Joe asked.
"Yeah."
For a long, long second Joe stood there and waited for Web to do something or say something -- ready to jump, just waiting for the green light.
Web didn't say nothing or do nothing for long enough that doubt started creeping in, got Joe thinking that he read all this wrong, that Web didn't really mean what he wrote, that Joe had just blown all his cash on a train trip across the whole fucking country for no good reason. He was about ready to turn around -- he hadn't even put down his suitcase for Chrissake -- when Web hooked a finger into his belt-loop and pulled him forward into a kiss. His mouth was so warm -- warm like Joe couldn't get outta his head, warm like it was the only thing on the planet that was gonna be enough to chase away the damp chill that had crept into Joe's bones.
Joe dropped his suitcase, desperate to get both hands on Web, and it rattled hard against the base of an umbrella stand, startling them apart at the noise. They both turned to look at it, and the whole moment felt suddenly ridiculous. They were two fucking grown men -- soldiers, even -- and that made them jump? Christ.
"That's all you've got?" Web asked, pointing at the suitcase, the corner of his mouth turning up, just a little.
"Yeah," Joe said, "I got everything I need."