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Soldier Boy

            Jill and I were at the airport seeing off a mutual friend. He was my age, nineteen. His name was John and last year I met him at a dance at Jill’s high school. I saw him sitting forlornly by himself. My heart went out to him and I asked him to my prom. I had gone to two other proms but it didn’t look like I would be going to my own. So I took a chance and asked him to go to mine and he said he would.

            Later, I found out that he often liked to sit and pout. What I took for a broken heart was just the way that he was. He was always upset about something. Nothing came of our dress up date. We went to a picnic together once after that but we really didn’t have anything in common to talk about or to share.  John had been drafted the year after he graduated from high school. He remained friends with Jill because he and Jill’s boyfriend were also friends.

            Jill called and asked me if I would like to go to the airport with her and John’s family to see him off to a camp somewhere before he shipped off to Vietnam. I said I would go with her. I had three male cousins in the military and two were presently in Nam. Several boys from my school were also soldiers and a neighbor boy was in Viet Nam. We grew up Catholic. My Neighbor, who was also my age, went to Nam a few weeks earlier. His parents gave up drinking beer and betting at the race track, bargaining with God for his safe return. 

            As we were standing with John’s family I noticed that he had a younger brother and he was really handsome, a lot more handsome than John was. I wondered if that would ever work. How in the world could you ever date someone’s brother when it didn’t work out with the guy you had dated previously? I didn’t think it would. It would cause too many hard feelings. I watched his family interact with one another. His mother seemed really devastated. She was trying to be brave but wasn’t able to pull it off. Her face looked like it was crumbling. His dad didn’t look much better. He had this angry look on his face but when it came time to say goodbye, he was shaking with tears streaming down his face. Jill gave him a hug and so did I. He and his brother shook hands. They didn’t look like they were close. That was just my impression though, I could have been wrong. As we were watching him get on the plane, I happened to see a boy who had graduated with me. He was dressed in his uniform and seemed to be directing things in his small group. He had sergeant stripes on his arm. I thought that was pretty impressive for a guy his age. We looked at one another but there was no sign of recognition on his part. He was a handsome guy but I had never had him in any of my classes and had never spoken to him in the four years we had been in school. I thought about telling him good bye but being the shy person that I usually was, I couldn’t bring myself to approach him.  The more I thought about it the more I realized I had nothing to loose. He would be leaving soon and that would be the end of it. Little did I know that this chance meeting in the airport would change my life forever?

            There was a lull in his activities so I told Jill I was going to say goodbye to a friend I had seen. She went off to the phones along the wall to call her boyfriend. I started to walk over to where Allen was standing. He watched me coming toward him and I was praying he wouldn’t turn around and walk away before I got to him. He stayed standing until I got to him. I said, “I just wanted to tell you good luck and be safe.”