STELLA, platoon

Epilogue: I WISH I COULD HAVE SAID GOODBYE

｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆
( 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚 )
epilogue — I WISH I COULD
HAVE SAID GOODBYE

─ 🧳🕸📺📀🦟🌪🎞⌛️
PLATOON.
1967
｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

"THE SAD THING IS," Elias tells Chris placidly, "When we're out here and I haven't got that little photograph from the hutch, I can't even remember her face. A blur of brown hair, thin arms and a pair of legs. Now she may as well just be a fragment of my imagination. She's gone, and yet she's everywhere . . . sad fact is, this war don't just stop when girls like Stella are killed. No matter how much we wish it would. The world didn't give a shit about Stella. The Vietcong didn't give a shit about Stella. And here I am, year later, still fightin' this war. Still wishin' she didn't step one foot wrong in the jungle."

Chris' words are fruitless; they don't even seem to leave his mouth right when he says them. "You two seemed good for each other."

"Nah. She would'a eaten me alive," he shakes his head and chuckles dryly, that familiar mind-numbing ache settling onto his body. The Stella spell. "There were lots of bad things about Stella . . . and good things too, yeah, but after all she'd been through, I think she deserved life rather than death. Just wish I'd had a chance to say goodbye."

"And Shelley Boss? What happened to her?"

He barely speaks louder than the crickets chirping in the underbrush. "Finished her year-long tour, rotated back to the real world a couple'a months ago. She poured over Stella's body, that night she died. Howled like there was no tomorrow, screamin' and cryin', telling people to not touch her, not look at her — not even the doctors could get close. I remember that mane of curly hair she had. Blonde. She was nice," Elias cuffs his joint, keeping its glow hidden in the dark. There's a pause, both of them meditative. "But she weren't Stella."

"Barnes got it in for you, don't he?"

Elias shakes his head, and a look crosses his face that Chris hasn't seen before — defeat. It's in his eyes, it's the cuts on his palms. It's the nihilism taking root into his body, finally, after all this time. "Barnes believes in what he's doing."

"And you, do you believe?"

"In '65 — yeah. And for the most part of '66. Now . . . no. What happened today is just the beginning. We're gonna lose this war."

Chris is taken aback. "You really think so? Us?"

"We been kicking other people's asses so long I guess it's time we got our own kicked. The only decent thing I can see coming out of here are the survivors — hundreds of thousands of guys like you Taylor going back to every little town in the country knowing something about what it's like to take a life and what that can do to a person's soul — twist it like Barnes and Bunny and make 'em sick inside and if you got any brains you gonna fight it the rest of your life cause it's cheap, killing is cheap, the cheapest thing I know and when some drunk like O'Neill starts glorifying it, you're gonna puke all over him and when the politicians start selling you a used war all over again, you and your generation gonna say go fuck yourself 'cause you know, you've seen it, and when you know it, deep down there . . . you know it till you die . . . that's why the survivors remember. 'Cause the dead don't let em forget."

There's a grave scowl on his face. Over time, Chris has come to realise that scowl — eyebrows lowered, flared nostrils and pursed lips — is almost all that is required in order to have those recruits resist the temptation of starting shit with him. He's hard as iron, and yet this soft interaction has left Chris perceiving him in a completely different light. Stella's life-sized ghost lives in his eyes, walking in placid circles around his mind. Like a wisp of smoke, it's waining away with time, but she's there, and he's still haunted by it all.

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THE PERIMETER IS BARE, and Chris and King are hurriedly hustling Big Harold's two-hundred and fifty pounds into the chopper. Chris' body is as numb as the day he was born: he feels unconscious, paralysed with so much intense, traumatising fear that it feels like nothing at all. It's almost like he's running track in high school, or at military boot camp back in the States. His brain doesn't have time to think, just to react. All he wants to do is run. To run as fast as he possibly can, all the way back to his grandmother's pot roast and open arms.

Wolfe, Barnes and Ace lunge in beside them, open-palmed and open-mouthed in fear. Ace's weapon slips from his sweaty grip, clattering onto the open floor of the aircraft. The chopper begins lifting off as another explosion rocks the jungle clearing. Chris sinks back, bile rising in his throat, bitter as cud. His stomach is doing somersaults, and lactic acid burns in his claves and thighs.

Just when he feels like he can allow himself to close his eyes, he suddenly spots something moving, a bloodied shape staggering out of the jungle. Elias. It's Elias who's coming out of the jungle, there's no question about it. Taut, lean arms and bare chest are disfigured with blood, and the messy bandana he always wears is clinging to his face with anguished sweat. He's staggering, holding onto whatever adrenaline he had to run out into the cleaning, hanging on with all his dimming strength, looking up at them . . . trying to reach them. He's wounded, mortally, and the NVA are coming out of the jungle, closing on the spot where Elias is.

The Door Gunner begins manically firing down into the grasslands below as incoming rounds began chopping and the outer armour of the helicopter. Chris cringes away from the firing, burying his face in his shoulder, embarrassed that his cheeks are already wet with salty tears. He wants to shout, he needs to. There's one more man down there. Nothing comes out.

Elias is on his last legs now, pummelled by the incoming fire of the Vietnamese weaponry. He falls to his knees, still stretching upwards for life, his body broken by a thousand bullets. The helicopter dips one more time for the gunner to get a few more clear shots at the NVA, low and fierce over the jungle. They're coming out now, by the dozens, from their concealment against the treeline. Elias crumbles to the ground like a rag doll, crucified.

"We still got one on the deck," the helicaptain announces through the radio. "Bring the gunships in."

Chris finally manages to glance over at Barnes, watching his superior in poorly disguised revulsion. He knows. Barnes is as stoic as always, and he sees his cutting look, but ignores it. The group of them sit there in deafening silence, trying to come to terms with that final, horrifying image of Elias.

There's one thing about the sergeant that remains with Chris for the rest of his life, and it's a quote from Rhah: "Elias didn't ask you to fight his battles for him. And if there's a Heaven, and, God, I hope there is, I know he's sitting up there drunk as a fucking monkey, smoking bowls with our Stella on his knee, 'cause he done left his pains down here."