Homecoming
Ciel Downing
My army buddy Sandy and I stepped off the plane in our dress greens; beyond elated, beyond overwhelmed—we had dreamed of this moment for over a year. With irrepressible foolish grins plastered on, we wanted to smell the air, touch the ground and take in all the diverse faces. 1983 would now forever mean the year we returned to America, though both of us had some time left to serve what we lightheartedly called “our sentences” in the military.
We boarded a bus with our duffle bags to take us to our final terminal. The area reeked of exhaust and jam-packed bodies, but we didn’t care. As we stored our duffel bags, some nearby people yelled, “War mongers!”
It took a second before I realized it was aimed at us; and in the following second, I felt sick. Sandy and I exchanged glances, but neither of us knew what to do or say. We took our seats feeling stunned and glanced out the window as we pulled away—several of them flipped us off.
“Well,” I said, “That was a short honeymoon.”
Sandy laughed, but fell silent. A few moments later she declared, “I’m not going to let it ruin this homecoming. I’m happy damn it.”
Korea’d left its mark on us, both good and bad. I’d joined in part, because I’d gone homeless, but joining had turned out to be far more than reaching an end. Etched in our faces, memories and experiences too foreign to share with others had begun to settle.
Leaving our terminal, we rushed to a bathroom to change out of uniform, stripping quickly to put on civilian clothes.
“It’s pretty weird, huh?” I asked. Sandy knew I was referring to the hostile group.
She nodded, adding, “At least in Korea, we knew who the ‘enemy’ was.”
Grinning, we simultaneously talked over each other:
“Hookworms!”
“North Korean spies!”
“Rats!”
“Spies in general!”
“Army men!”
Cascading into laughter over things once thought unthinkable, let alone laughable, but this was different; we’d somehow landed on “another side” A side I used to think I knew, but rules and sides had shifted and nothing looked familiar. I used to be one of those people in the terminal—filled with contempt for the military and all it stood for. Shame flushed my neck with heat, knowing it was some brand of divine retribution. We dressed in silence, unconsciously keeping our “gig lines” straight, even on our civilian clothes.
“You OK?” I whispered while tying my sneakers.
Sandy let out a wry chuckle. “Do you remember when we went to feed those ROK guys way up in the mountains on that so-called ‘road’?”
Laughter shot out before she finished, half-horrified, half-hysterical over the memory. “Yeah! ‘Road’s’ a generous term! Might not have been so bad if it didn’t run along the edge of a cliff with that 200’ drop-off.”
“It was that monsoon that almost undid me.”
I jumped into the memory, laughing with tears falling. “Oh my God! You scared me half to death when you climbed out of the truck bed, across the cab hood and into the window! One big bump and you’d have been bouncing down a Korean ravine never to be seen again.”
“Me?” She almost screeched. “You’re the crazy one—staying in the back with lightning lifting our wet hair and the truck bed sliding toward the cliff edges.”
We saw it in our minds’ eyes as though it were a moment ago. Sandy looked down, still smiling, “But we made it back. We did that. We went up the side of a freaking cliff in a vehicle that had no business being there to feed the Republic of Korea soldiers. We came back in a monsoon and didn’t die despite all the odds. Those little pissants out there will never know real hardship—their opinions come from watching the television set or their friends. They have no idea.”
“Sandy…” I said hushed, “before we joined, I was one of those pissants.”
“Duh! We all just went along, until for some of us the bottom dropped out. You’re not them anymore.”
“But I don’t feel ‘military’ either.”
“You want a box to fit in?” She snapped, “Here’s one: you’re the badass who knocked the cockroaches off our barracks wall before bedtime so they wouldn’t fall on our beds while we slept. You kept up with everything the men did for the last year and half, only without whining. You hung onto my arm for all your worth when I climbed from that cab roof into the window. You stole a jeep for us so we wouldn’t be AWOL the night we missed the last bus out of Seoul.”
The last one made me snort.
Sandy finished with, “Your box is that you rise—you don’t get defeated, you dig-in and find a way.” She sighed deeply.
Wearing civvies, we left the bathroom to venture out into a war zone of another type. We walked through the terminal and set our duffels down to study the departure board.
A voice from behind us demanded, “Where’d you get the duffle bags?”
My heart hammered defensively. Turning, I took a step toward the young man. “I earned it. I put up with shit from so-called superiors, rodents, living without toilet paper, insects you’ve never even heard of…” building volume and stridency, I continued, “I dodged snakes, bullets, crazy people; I marched and climbed and ran from spies down a mountain with no path; I ate things with heads on them, had Silverfish swarm up my shower drain around my feet and got a bad perm because I didn’t speak the language properly—so you’d better have professional grade insults if you want a piece of me, buster!” I punched up the last word in case there was any doubt that I’d come out swinging if I had to.
The young man stepped back with his palms up, stammering, “I just wanted to know where you got the duffle bag. It looks cool.” He turned and left quickly.
Sandy bent over holding her knees, her body rocking with guffaws.
I raised my eyebrows and took a deep breath, “Well, there’s your badass in action.” I took a bow and shook my head.
We thought we’d be returning to the familiar; but it was now a foreign world, in no small part, because we’d changed. But to some degree, we’d romanticized it—built it up in our minds to encompass all things “home.”
After I left the service, home came to mean memories that make up a life. Family may be included, but it’s more about a collective of familiarities like, “that time we laughed until we choked with sobs,” when Sandy and I parted not fully recognizing that we’d never see one another again, sitting by a lake with my dog, inhaling a Roakes Coney Island. Those things, those moments, they’re what one longs for when away. Before the army, I was homeless; after the army, I realized I can never truly be homeless again. I could lose the structure, but what I had embedded in me, cannot be lost via poverty or geography.
Ciel Downing served in the regular army in the early 80’s. Her writing can be found in The Timberline Review, As You Were, Persimmon Tree Journal, Word & Image, The Squid, & more. She has won the Academy of American Poets Prize, was runner up in the Sally Albiso Award & the Elizabeth Lyons Award, received Honorable Mention for the Kay Snow Award & Neahkahnie Mountain Prize, and has published a collection entitled To Walk The North Direction. See more on her website, cieldowningbooks.com.
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