# Chapter 19: Home
They shipped out in March.
The process of leaving Vietnam was bureaucratically identical to the process of arriving — forms, processing, waiting, more forms — except that everyone moved through it with the particular quality of people who had decided not to fully believe it was real until they were on the plane.
Tim believed it when the wheels left the ground.
He sat back in his seat and felt something release in his shoulders that had been there since September and looked out the window at Vietnam getting smaller below them and said nothing.
Forrest was asleep within ten minutes.
Bubba was looking out his own window with the expression of a man making plans.
"Shrimping" Bubba said without turning from the window.
"Yeah" Tim said.
"Soon as we're home."
"I'll be there."
Bubba turned and looked at him.
"You mean that."
"I shook on it" Tim said. "I mean it."
Bubba nodded slowly with the satisfied expression of someone whose plans had just acquired another solid point of confirmation.
Then he looked back out the window.
"Gulf water's different from this water" he said. "Cleaner. Smells right."
"How long before you miss it?" Tim said.
"I already miss it" Bubba said. "Been missing it since October."
Tim looked at the clouds below them.
"We'll get there" he said.
---
Fort Benning processed them out over two days.
Tim moved through it efficiently, signed what needed signing, collected what needed collecting, and came out the other side a civilian again with a duffel bag and a jacket pocket full of letters and the particular feeling of a chapter closing.
Forrest called his mama from a payphone outside the processing building and talked for twenty minutes.
Bubba called his family and talked about shrimp for most of it.
Tim found a payphone at the end of the row and dialed Alex.
She picked up on the second ring.
"Hey" he said.
A pause that lasted exactly one second.
"Where are you" she said.
"Fort Benning. Processing out."
"Are you—"
"Fine" he said. "Both of us. Bubba too."
He heard her exhale.
Not dramatically. Just a quiet release of something that had been held for a long time.
"Jenny's here" Alex said. "She wants to talk to Forrest."
"He's on the next phone over."
"Tell him."
Tim leaned out and caught Forrest's eye and pointed at the phone. Forrest wrapped up his call with his mama with the speed of a man who had just been told something better was available and moved to the adjacent phone.
Tim leaned back against the payphone housing.
"Tim" Alex said.
"Yeah."
"Come home."
"On my way" he said.
---
Greenbow was exactly as he'd left it.
Small and specific and entirely itself in the particular way of places that don't feel the need to change just because time has passed. Mrs. Gump's house sat at the end of the same road with the same tire swing moving in the same Alabama air.
Alex was on the porch when the cab pulled up.
Tim got out.
She came down the steps and he met her at the bottom and she put her arms around him and he held on and neither of them said anything for a while because nothing needed saying.
After a moment she pulled back and looked at him with those eyes.
Checking. Running her own assessment.
"You got hit" she said.
"Healed."
"I know it healed." Her jaw was tight. "I said you got hit."
"Multiple times" he said honestly.
Her jaw tightened further.
"Okay" she said finally. "Okay."
She took his hand and they went inside.
---
Jenny was in the kitchen.
She looked at Tim for a moment when he came through the door with the particular expression of someone who had been holding something carefully for a long time and was deciding whether to put it down.
Then she crossed the kitchen and hugged him once, briefly, and stepped back.
"Forrest?" she said.
"Right behind me" Tim said. "Twenty minutes."
Jenny nodded. Sat back down at the kitchen table.
Looked at her hands.
"It was a long six months" she said.
"Yeah" Tim said.
"Alex pretended she wasn't worried."
"I know."
Jenny looked up at him.
"She was worried" Jenny said.
"I know that too."
Jenny looked at him for a moment with those eyes that had been learning to see clearly for years now.
"Thank you" she said. "For coming back."
"Wasn't planning on doing otherwise" Tim said.
Mrs. Gump appeared from the other room with the expression of a woman who had been waiting a appropriate amount of time before arriving.
"Sit down" she said. "I'll make food."
Tim sat down.
Alex sat beside him.
Outside through the kitchen window the Alabama afternoon was doing exactly what Alabama afternoons did and would keep doing regardless of what happened to the people in it.
Tim looked at it for a moment.
Then he looked at Alex beside him and the kitchen around him and Jenny at the table and Mrs. Gump at the stove.
Then Forrest came through the front door and the kitchen got loud and Tim let it wash over him and decided that loud and alive was exactly right.
*TBC*