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It was Thanksgiving and Hawkeye sat at the dining table in his father’s living room in Montpelier, Vermont, swallowing down his flight instinct with every mouthful of turkey. Every fibre of his being was screaming at him to jump up, grab Radar by the wrist, drag him out to the car, and break the speed limit the whole 280 miles back home to Crabapple Cove. He tamped it down. For his father’s sake. He scooped more mashed potato onto his plate, tapping the dregs off the serving spoon on the side of the plate with a force which caused Radar to shoot him a concerned frown.
His cousin Billy grinned at him across the table.
“Hey, Ben do you remember when we were kids and you fell the pond that time we were fishing?”
Hawkeye put his knife and fork down slowly, gritted his teeth and staring directly at Billy said, “No, I don’t. But I’m sure you’ll remind me.”
Danny leaned back in his chair at the head of the table. Beside Billy his wife, Lucy, leaned her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand. Their children, Millie and David, paused the tug-of-war they’d been playing with a napkin. Radar said,
“Oh boy, I sure do love a good story.”
“Well, go on, Billy. Everyone’s waiting,” Hawkeye snarked.
“Mm, okay. Well…” Billy said, smirking. “Ben was only a little kid at the time. You were—what?—seven?”
“Six,” Hawkeye said quietly.
“Six. Yeah. Of course. It was the summer your—Never mind. We’d borrowed a boat to go fishing out on the pond. You know, Lucy, the one where we took the kids swimming last year.” Lucy nodded. “And you were such a wriggly kid, Ben. You could never sit still. You were sitting on the bench in the middle of the boat and you got up to get more bait and suddenly you lost your footing and fell right in!”
“Did he get all wet, Daddy?” Millie giggled.
Hawkeye glowered across the table.
“What do you think?” Said Billy. “I leaned over the side of the boat but I couldn’t see him and I panicked, of course. I was only 12 at the time. I was about to start screaming for help when I saw bubbles coming up, so I leaned out as far as I dared, plunged my hand in up to the shoulder and—thankfully—I caught ahold of his collar. I pulled him up into the boat and he was coughing and crying like a baby.”
“He was a baby! He was only six!” Said Radar indignantly.
“Old enough to know to watch his footing around water.” Billy waved the comment away. “Anyway, he was fine, weren’t you Ben?” Hawkeye gripped the edge of the tablecloth and said nothing. “Apart from being covered in pond weed and stinking—”
“—Stinking like an old burlap sack,” Hawkeye cut in.
Everyone, except Hawkeye, chuckled at that.
“Seems like you were destined to be a firefighter and save people for a living, Billy,” said Danny.
“I guess he could have drowned if I hadn’t been there.” Billy hid his proud smile behind his napkin.
“It’s funny,” said Hawkeye, slowly, “how I don’t remember that at all. Falling in a pond and being rescued by my cousin: such a dramatic event from my childhood. You’d think it would have stayed with me all these years.”
“Memory can be a funny thing,” said Billy.
“I’ll tell you what I do remember, though.”
“Hawk—” Radar cut in, recognising the dangerous edge in his partner’s tone.
Hawkeye ignored the interruption. “I remember going out in that boat on the pond with you. I remember we had a competition: the one who caught the most fish would get to be the boss of the other for the rest of the day. Whatever the winner said do, the loser had to do it. We used to play that a lot, do you remember?”
“Harmless fun. I usually let you win, you being the younger kid and all. Ahaha,” Billy laughed it off.
I was winning that day on the boat, wasn’t I?” Hawkeye pressed on. “I had two more fish in my bucket than you.”
“I don’t remember,” said Billy.
“Well, I do. It took me 20-odd years, but I remembered.” Hawkeye’s voice was rising in volume and pitch. He was on the edge of shouting. “That’s why you pushed me in. I was winning and you didn’t like that.”
“Ben, please,” said Danny.
“‘Ben, please,’” Hawkeye mocked. “‘Ben, please don’t make a fuss’. ‘Ben, please, your cousin’s a wonderful man. A hero. He saves people.’” He shoved back his chair, got up, and stormed off to the kitchen, leaving a shocked silence behind.
It took all of Hawkeye’s self control to close the kitchen door gently instead of slamming it. He was damned if he’d give Billy any more satisfaction if he could help it. He rummaged through the cupboards until he found what he was looking for: the bottle of rum his father kept in the kitchen for cooking. He poured a generous measure into a teacup and stood leaning his the heels of his hands on the countertop, staring at the drink while he fought to control his desire to down it and pour another and another until the alcohol took away all the pain and guilt and loss that Billy’s presence and his little anecdote had stirred up in him.
“13 months on the wagon,” he muttered to himself. He turned, paced a few lengths of the linoleum, then came back to stare at the teacup and its contents once more. “13 months and I’m going to let the bastard take that too,” he muttered.
“Hawk?”
Radar had crept in so quietly he hadn’t heard him approach. Hawkeye grunted an acknowledgement of his presence and continued to stare at the cup.
“Hawk, you okay?” Radar touched him lightly on the arm. Nothing. “I don’t think rum’s a good idea.”
Hawkeye made no objection when Radar reached for the bottle and cup. He just watched in silence as Radar poured the contents of both down the sink, rinsed them, and set them on the draining board. Radar took his elbow, guided him to the table, and pulled out a chair. Hawkeye sat, still staring blankly ahead. Radar sat down beside him.
“Lucy’s getting the kids ready to leave,” he said, and waited for a response. Nothing. “And Billy said to tell you he’s sorry he upset you.”
“So what? Fuck him,” Hawkeye hissed through his teeth.
“Danny’s real upset and—”
“Oh, Dad’s upset, is he?” Hawkeye exploded. Radar cringed away from the outburst. “Can’t do anything that’ll upset Dad! Or—heaven forbid!—suggest that wonderful Billy—Don’t you know that he’s a firefighter?—is anything other than a perfect, all-American hero!”
“Hawk, please. Calm down,” Radar begged, fearful that Hawkeye’s raised voice would draw the others and the earlier conflict would start up again.
Hawkeye took a couple of deep breathes.
“I’m sorry. Billy hit a nerve, that’s all. Let’s go back and I’ll smooth things over before they leave.”
He got up and offered his hand. Radar took it and followed him out of the kitchen.
Later—once apologises and goodbyes had been exchanged, and the guests had departed; once the remains of the meal had been cleared away and the dishes piled in the sink to be dealt with in the morning; once Hawkeye and Radar had stretched a double sheet over two single beds pushed together in Danny’s guest room, holding a corner in each hand and tried (and failed) to tuck all four corners under the mattresses—Hawkeye sat with his back against the headboard of the makeshift double bed, his knees pulled up to his chest under the blanket. Mindful of the other man’s need for space, Radar occupied an armchair beside the window, reading, his feet tucked under him.
“I go on and on about my perfect, American childhood, but it wasn’t all that,” Hawkeye said.
Radar folded his comic and set it aside.
“People want to remember the good stuff more than the bad,” he said.
“That was the summer my mom died, when Billy pushed me in the pond. It was June. She died at the end of August,” Hawkeye went on.
It was clear he needed to get something off his chest. Radar let him talk without interruption.
“Dad was so caught up in caring for her, I think he was just glad that Billy came and took me off his hands. He’d call for me every day to take me swimming or fishing or to the fair or the beach, and I was really glad to get out of that house too, I can tell you. I’d walk into a room and the adults would stop their conversation and look at me with this combination of irritation and pity on their faces. I didn’t fully understand what was going on, but I sure as hell didn’t like it.
“Billy made everything a competition though. Who could swim the farthest, who could catch the most fish or skim a stone the most skips. Whatever we did it was a contest.” Hawkeye paused and teased a loose thread out of his pyjama shirt cuff. He pulled it slowly between his fingers as he continued: “Of course, Billy would inevitably win, being twice my age, and the prize—the prize was always getting to be the boss of the other person. The loser would have to do whatever the winner told him to for the rest of the day.” He stretched the thread taught between the forefinger and thumb of each hand and examined it in the soft yellow light of the reading lamp.
“It started with things like… like…” Hawkeye trailed off.
“You can tell me, Hawk,” Radar said softly from his chair.
“He’d touch me in ways I didn’t like,” said Hawkeye. “There was one time at the fair when he took me behind one of the sideshow tents and put his arms round me from behind and put his hand down my shorts. He said I couldn’t stop him because he was the boss, that he’d won the right to do what he liked and anyway, I’d only be showing what a baby I was if I got upset. And then there was this time in the woods. We’d been throwing stones at an old tree stump, seeing who could hit it the most times, and of course, I missed every time.”
“You were only six,” Radar said.
“Yeah, I was only six. Of course I was going to miss. And then he made me put my hand in his shorts. And… Well… I don’t want to talk about the rest of what happened there…” Hawkeye trailed off again, absently running the thread back-and-forth across his cheek.
“Gee, Hawk. I’m so sorry.” Radar shook his head slowly.
“At dinner earlier, I didn’t tell them all of what happened before he pushed me in the pond.” Hawkeye continued. "He was mad about the fish. About me getting more than him. But it wasn’t just that. He kept saying that I owed him from the previous day. That he hadn’t got to be the boss properly because he’d had to go to some orthodontist appointment or something, so we’d had to go home early, and he’d only gotten to be the boss for an hour. I counted the fish in my bucket and then in his, and I said it didn’t matter because I had more fish and I was going to be the boss soon anyway, and he just laughed at me and grabbed my bucket and threw all my fish back in the pond. I was livid, you know?” Radar nodded. “I started shouting that he was cheating and about how unfair he was being, and he said I was just a stupid kid. And that made me cry, so he said I could prove to him that I was a big boy, that I could show how mature and grown-up I was. And like a fool, I was so desperate to prove I wasn’t just a stupid kid, I would have done anything.”
“It wasn’t you fault, Hawk. It wasn’t.”
“Thanks, Radar. I know that. But also, I feel like if I’d just done something different—said ‘no’ more, or… I don’t know, something—it wouldn’t have happened.” Hawkeye sighed. “Anyway, he had me kneel in the bottom of the boat and he opened his fly and he put his hand on my head and forced my head into his lap. I tried to wriggle away, but he held me tight and said this was what real grown-ups do. I didn’t know what he meant or what he wanted me to do. How could I? I was just a kid! So I bit him.”
“You bit him? On the you-know?” Asked Radar, eyes wide.
“Yeah. Served him right.” They both chuckled at that. “He was mad, of course. He grabbed me by the collar and lifted me right up off my feet and the boat was rocking and I was screaming that we’d fall in, so he put me down on the bench and told me to stop before someone heard us and thought we were in trouble and drowned trying to rescue us.”
“And what did you do then?” Asked Radar.
“I picked up my empty bucket and dipped it over the side to get some water in it ready for the fish, and then I got my fishing rod and I got up to get some bait—”
“And that’s when he pushed you,”
“And that’s when he pushed me.”
“You ever tell anyone about this?”
Hawkeye shook his head, rolling the thread between his finger and thumb.
“No. Well, I tried once, but…” He trailed off again.
“What happened?”
Hawkeye took a deep breath and puffed out his cheeks.
“It was the weekend after my mother’s funeral,” he said. “Billy and I camped out for the night in a cave by the beach. It was early September and there was a bit of a chill in the air, so we tried to light a fire. Only, we couldn’t get it going. Billy said I’d collected the wrong driftwood, that I should have collected it from above the high tide mark, and it was because the wood was wet that the fire wouldn’t start and it was all my fault. I got up to go and get more driftwood, but he grabbed ahold of me and pushed me face down onto my bedroll and he…” Hawkeye tugged the ends of the thread between his fingers. “…he didn’t… Not properly… He had his hand over my mouth and I couldn’t breathe… I wanted to scream for help, but I couldn’t…” He tugged the two ends harder. “It wasn’t properly, but he… It was on my thighs and my pants and my sleeping bag…” Hawkeye gave the thread one last tug and it broke in two.
“I threw my clothes and sleeping bag in the trash when I got home. Dad gave me hell at when he found them in the trash can. I tried to explain what happened, but he was gripping my arms, asking me over and over why I’d thrown out a perfectly good sleeping bag. Then my Auntie Gina—that’s Billy’s mother, my mother’s sister—started shouting at me too, saying I shouldn’t upset my father like that, so I just stopped speaking and waited for everyone to stop shouting, and then I went and sat in the cupboard under the stairs with the dog.”
Radar got up from the chair and got into bed beside Hawkeye. He touched his knee lightly.
“Do you think you might try telling Danny about it now?” He asked.
Hawkeye shook his head. “We don’t see much of my mother’s family. Billy’s one of the few links he has to her. I couldn’t do that to him.”
“I’m sorry, Hawk. I’ve said that a lot tonight, but I really am.”
“I know. Thank you.” Hawkeye reached for the lamp, switched it off, and shuffled down under the blanket.
Radar put an arm around him and snuggled against his back.
“It can’t have been easy, telling me all that,” he said.
“No, it wasn’t. But I’m glad I did.”
“So am I.”