Second Quarter 2010: Flash Fiction Winner
NOT ALL ABOUT ME
by Marie Shield
I hadn’t known him very long. Long enough to know he served in Vietnam, long enough that he knew I participated in midnight vigils and a couple of peace marches. Long enough to have had some serious arguments about our differences. I loved his passion. He loved mine. I used to tell him I loved him because I’d found a worthy adversary. He pissed me off when he told me he loved me because I had great tits. At the same time, it pleased me a great deal when he said it.
I thought it was all about me. I always think it’s about me. My ideals, my thoughts, my feelings. It was great to find a guy who didn’t just roll over and agree with every thing I said. Who had opinions of his own and didn’t back down.
We went to the party. I didn’t know it was a retirement party for one of the men from his division. A lot of guys had come alone, but there were wives who had been left at home while their husbands went off to war. They were older, tired looking. And there were new and younger model wives and girlfriends. Like me.
Most of the guys called him Sarge. A couple called him Sir.
The party started off fun, with old war stories, lots of laughter. Talk about basic training, talk about the new guys who showed up regularly. Talk about the officers and playing tricks on them. Man talk. Army talk.
They still laughed and shook their heads as the conversation turned to botched orders, lack of radio communication, supplies and air support. And how the guys sent over fresh out of boot camp were often more hindrance than help. A lot of it didn’t seem funny to me. They slapped each other on the back and said, “Nothing like it.” As if it was a good thing. The shots of Jack Daniels kept flowing smoothly, in the glass and down the hatch.
Around midnight, things got serious. One guy started to cry. “If you knew what I did. I didn’t want to come back. It was…”
The other men were gentle with him, big strong guys; at least they had grown larger than life to me over the past few hours. They touched him.
The redheaded guy who seemed so drunk a minute ago, sober now, said, “It’s okay, Dave, we all did. We did what we had to do, man.”
A chorus of “at’s right, you got it, say it like it is” rumbled across the bar.
The man named Dave fisted tears from his eyes. “No. He was just a kid, maybe ten. I shot him. His mother ran out of their hut and fell on him. I shot her too. I didn’t even know which side they were on….”
A tall quiet man, a man I didn’t know until tonight, put his arm around Dave’s shoulder. “Them or us, buddy, them or us.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Marie retired from her day job to become a full time fiction writer. Her short stories have recently been published in Long Story Short, Houston Literary Review, Mindprints Literary Review, West Side Story Contest 2007, MYTHOLOG, Timber Creek Review, Insolent Rudder, Salome Magazine, Static Movement, Apollo’s Lyre, Stymie Magazine, Fiction Flyer, The MacGuffin, the anthology Curiouser and Curiouser and others She lives in the Los Angeles area with her husband Michael.
JUDGE’S COMMENTS:
Excellent ending for flash fiction. These types of stories need to pop, and this one did. The author overused the generic word “it”. The story is very nice, but the writing needs tightening. This 500-word flash could have the same or better impact tightened to 400-450 words. Loved the opposite presentation of the protagonist and her beau. Nice job.