Chapter Text
Erin Hunnicutt, sleep-deprived, cold but quietly ecstatic, arrives at Benjamin Franklin Pierce’s driveway at 8:17pm on September 1st 1972. It’s a miracle her world-weary Winnebago made it through the journey from California, but luckily it’s just as resilient as her.
She’s been driving around the calm suburban streets for about an hour now, trying to find the address written in a doctor’s scrawl. She’s finally made it to her destination, a pretty house no classier or more run-down than its neighbours, but still charming; Victorian, understated, East coast. Like everything here, it’s familiar, yet new, exciting.
She’s only been on this side of the country once in her life; a week-long vacation to New York in her early teens with her Mom, her step-dad Carl and step-brother Jack. It stuck with her at a crucial point; here was where serious people were, where important things happened, where the seasons exactly mattered. Where everything was brick, brown and peaceful. She knew had to go back someday, somehow. It called to her; it was where she belonged.
The dorms at Harvard won’t be ready for another week. Thinking she could get a head start on finding a room in town, she arrived early. She wants somewhere quiet, to live and study, with little hassle, preferably with other med students.
Her initial plan was to pay for a hotel room for the week and check the noticeboards at college immediately, ask around. Then her Dad told her he knew someone in Boston who could maybe put her up. A Charles Winder-something, who had just responded by telling BJ that Hawkeye Pierce, another army buddy, was also in town, which had surprised BJ, who thought his friend lived in Maine.
So he sent a letter, a letter was sent back, and so here Erin was, only regretting it a little when the air hits her harshly as she opens the door; it’s so cold, and not even fall yet. She’s going to need some warmer clothes.
She decides to leave most of her stuff in the car; the neighbourhood looks quiet enough, and she’s desperate to get inside. With her duffel bag in hand, she double-checks the address, and knocks on the door.
She recognises Hawkeye from an old photo her Dad always kept in his bedroom. He is, of course, older now, with much grayer hair in a short fringe. His body remains hidden in a comfortable well-worn red sweater, and he greets her with a full smile; mouth and eyes.
“Erin Hunnicutt, I presume?”
She nods.
“You have your father’s eyes.” There’s a far off look to accompany this sentiment, and a short pause.
“Come in, come in!” he says, jovially, suddenly broken out of his haze. He takes her bag, apologises for the mess and begins to tidy up, although it’s not necessary.
The house is warm, lived in, and well, homely. Slightly haphazard, with books everywhere; over furniture and blankets, over any place without a knick-knack that already claimed its spot. On the red worn coach, a knitting project rests.
“You have a lovely home.” Erin says, politely.
“Thanks. I don’t mind it. It keeps the rain out.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“About ten years, give or take. You want something to drink?”
Erin says yes and Hawkeye leaves the living room to her, where her eye is immediately drawn to a photograph, a group photograph on the mantelpiece, where she instantly finds her Father’s face. She even recognises a young Hawkeye, in a tux and cowboy hat. The sign above the group is confusing.
“Fort Dix?” she asks Hawkeye when he comes back with the coffee. He glances at the photo and grins.
“Oh, it’s a funny story……”
It is, and Hawkeye tells it well. It’s one Erin has never heard before. Not even from her Mom. Her Dad has always been quiet when it comes to his time at war. She had no idea he had the idea for a party for all his friends’ relatives back home, and that her Mom had gone.
She only knew a few things about one Hawkeye Pierce; Mainer, surgeon, tent-mate. She doesn’t know about Potter or Radar or Margaret or Klinger or anyone else in the photo.
“You know, Klinger, that’s the guy who told his Mother he was at Fort Dix, used to wear dresses to try and get kicked out of the army.” Hawkeye brings up.
“What?!” Erin has to know more.
And so, late into the night, Hawkeye tells her about high heels in a war zone, Statue of Liberty costumes, Scarlet O’Hara dresses, and how none of it worked.
After a good while, Erin’s sides are aching from laughing. She’s learnt more about two crucial years of her Dad’s life in two hours than she ever did in the last twenty years.
“I didn’t realise Dad had some many adventures in Korea. And so many friends.”
“Well, it wasn’t all peaches and roses, I can tell you. But we had fun.” Hawkeye shrugs, refills Erin’s cup of coffee.
“He never talks about it.”
“That’s understandable. Leave the past in the past, and all that.”
“I don’t understand it.” She says. She would have loved to hear these stories from her Dad.
“Well, you’re young. How old are you, exactly?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Christ. Of course. You born just before BJ got drafted. That means it’s been almost twenty years. God. Don’t ever get old, Erin. It sucks.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Erin takes a sip, looks back to the photo, next to only a few other snapshots of strangers, in cheaper frames. “Will you have a reunion soon then?” she asks.
“There was one ten years ago. Your Dad was a no-show, said you were getting your tonsils out.”
Erin nods. “I remember.”
“So?” he demands.
“So what?”
“Did they get them out?”
“Unfortunately there was a complication during surgery. You see, I swallowed them. They’re still swimming around in my digestive tract to this day.”
Hawkeye looks at her. “Lying with a straight face runs in the family, I see.”
They pause, move into comfortable silence. But Erin wants to know more.
“My Dad was a troublemaker, then?”
He scoffs. “Is the Pope a Catholic!? Your Father was a menace. One time, he actually nailed my shoes to the floor. And that was him when he felt amiable! I could write a book on BJ Hunnicutt, but they wouldn’t let me publish on account of obscenity and bad taste.”
“Why did you put up with it?”
He strokes his chin in contemplation. “It was BJ. I never stayed mad at him for long. We had our spats, but………” he drifts off. “It was never anything important. We got along too well.”
“You haven’t seen him since the war?” she asks.
“No.” he looks down, a sad little smile on his face.
“But the two of you seemed close.”
“We were more than close. We were best friends, bosom buddies, each other’s worst half.” Hawkeye tries to be cheerful. It doesn’t quite work.
“You never met up afterward?”
“I don’t know if I can explain it to you. How Korea, how Korea at war, was a different planet. You might as well ask Neil Armstrong why he never kept in touch with the moonrocks.”
“Wouldn’t it be Buzz Aldrin, instead?”
Hawkeye looks up at her. Behind his bright, friendly eyes, there’s a sheen of vulnerability.
“I guess I had better come up with a better analogy.”
Erin looks to the clock. She’s getting tired, the atmosphere is settling down. She yawns to prove it.
Hawkeye takes the hint and shows her to the spare room. There are a few boxes he has to move first.
“My apologies, Erin. These were left by my last tenant. Very messy. Didn’t know his ass from his ear, if you pardon my French. Nice guy, though.”
“You usually rent it out?” Erin asks.
“Yeah. It helps pay the mortgage and gives me some company.” Hawkeye replies, clearing some clothes away.
The room is spacious, with a large bed and closet. Erin looks out to see a dark view of the garden. A tree branch, reddening, taps against the window. Erin remembers the last three years of crowded, cramped, loud, noisy, messy dorms and of roommates who always ate her cereal, and interrupted her studying.
She looks back to Hawkeye, with his gentle eyes, knitting basket and stories about her Father she’s never heard.
“How much?” she asks.