He got off the ferry at New York after spending six months in an army hospital, getting used to the fact he lost most of a leg. Six months of gazing across the hospital ward at Bill Guarnere's face. Bill took the loss of his leg the same way he took every tragedy in his life- he got angry, and used the rage to propel him forward into whatever stunt he was thinking of pulling next. Joe admired that about him for all he was wary of it.
He kissed Bill for the last time in that hospital, when the ward was quiet and the world was still, like the comforting quiet of a womb, for once blessedly lacking the moans of the burned, the tears of the dying.
Three years on, and he still misses his friends like he misses his leg. A vague, phantom pain of something that should be there but isn't. He thinks of were they are now, and wonders if they feel it too.
His wife is a good woman, but she's never seen the things he's seen- and he can't tell her the worst tings because he doesn't want to take her innocence away. His wife believes that there is good in all men, it just has to be found.
Joe doesn't know what he believes anymore. But when he closes his eyes, his dead friends are imprinted on the backs of his eyelids, and he is too tired to seek out what lies within. That's when he cries; when he's tired and he wants to be back running Currahee with Sobel yelling abuse at him.
When he wants to be in a borrowed room in England, writhing beneath Bill.
When his wife and child aren't around, he takes the memory out, and turns it in his mind until he can almost be there again.
Bill was drunk and so was he, just drunk enough to be stupid with it. They'd left everyone else to their own devices, picking up girls, drinking. They sat on Joe's bed, smoking, shooting the shit.
Talk had come round to family eventually.
"Before I left, my Pa told me to watch out for redheads, she said they've got bad tempers. But he was just saying that to piss of my Ma. She's got red hair."
"Nixon better watch out then." Toye was languid by then, and took amusement from Bill's expression. He could almost see the connections being made in Bill's head. Winters had red hair.
"You don't think-" It was almost sly.
"Yeah."
"I don't hold with that sort of shit." Bill pulled himself up, and looked seriously down at Joe.
*Could have fooled me*. Joe remembers thinking.
Bill was still staring down, eyes suddenly intense.
Then they were kissing, and Joe doesn't remember who started it, him or Bill. But its sloppy and hard, and they're both used their tongues to get deeper.
He wasn't sure where to put his hands at first; afraid that if touched Bill it would break the spell.
But Bill began to touch him, and he couldn't keep his hands still. Kissing, kissing like drowning men.
The time from the first kiss to nakedness is a drunken blur, but he remembers the first touch of Bill's naked skin against his is burned forever in his memory like the most perfect photograph.
He flshes back then to his father waving him off, warning him about the army as a natural haven for 'guys like like that' and swallowed a second of panic. Bill's skin was dry in places and his hands were rough, but as they moved together of the tiny bed, he felt whole.
But that was then and this is now, and he's making it on his own without Bill. Without any of the Easy guys. The unnaturalness of it stops him in his tracks when he least expects it. When he's making dinner and he thinks of k-rations and Leibgott's laugh, or Winter's slow smile and the sound of artillery fire. When he lies next to his wife and he thinks, 'This is my life.'
Somehow he always dreamed there would be more than this when the smoke cleared. But its three years later, and he knows it was a lie.
