Alone Together 4/4
Title: Alone Together 4/4
Author: buffyaddict13
Fandom: Band of Brothers
Rating: PG-13
Total Words: ~22,000
Characters/Pairing: Gen, Ed Tipper, Joe Liebgott, Jim "Moe" Alley, glimpses of the rest of the Easy Guys
Disclaimer: I don't own the Band of Brothers book or miniseries. This fic is based on the series and not the real men. I have always loved the scene in Carentan where Lieb comforts Tip and I based this fic on the friendship I created for them. This fic is gen, but if you squint and look sideways, it might be considered slash!lite if you like that kind of thing. It's a love story about friendship, if that makes any sense.
A/N 1: The first chapter is from Tip's POV, the second chapter will be from Liebgott's, and the third and fourth chapters will go back and forth between their POVs.
A/N 2: It used to break my heart some that Joe Liebgott never contacted the rest of the Easy Company guys and that he didn't tell his family he was in the war. And, although that makes me sad, I also understand his decision for distancing himself from what he went through and I respect him beyond words. I love how he pulled himself together and created a new life for himself. Most of all, I love that he found happiness. Joe Liebgott, I salute you. Psst. You too, Tip.
A/N 3: Thank you very much hiyacynth and luckinfovely for the beta. If this is any good, it's because of them.
What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.
~ T.S. Eliot
When Ed wakes, he has no idea where he is.
He can hear somebody thrashing around nearby. Lucidity creeps back into his brain. He's in San Francisco. With Lieb. Tip wipes his mouth on the back of his hand and peers toward the bed.
Joe's muttering to himself, talking in his sleep. Ed's trying to decide whether he should try to wake him or not when Joe crashes onto the floor. Holy shit.
"Hey Joe, you okay?" Ed rolls off his assembled mattress.
Joe's crouched beside the bed, head down.
Ed's first mistake is touching Joe's shoulder. It's almost his last.
Joe pounces, shoves Ed over sideways. He hits the hardwood floor with his hip and shoulder, then elbow. Fuck that hurts. "Kraut cocksucker," Joe hisses, and he's kneeling on Ed's chest, hands latched around Tip's neck.
Oh shit. Shit, Lieb's gonna kill him. "Joe," he croaks, pulling at Lieb's fingers. "Stop. It's me."
"Die, you fucker," is Lieb's reply. "You're not gonna get me." His hands scrabble up Tip's face, search for his eyes. His eye.
Ed's fear ratchets into panic. "Liebgott!" he shouts. "It's Tipper!" He turns his head and Joe's thumb finds his empty eye socket. Pain lances through his face, his head.
Joe's fast and wirey but Ed's taller, heavier, and stronger. He arches his back and twists, grabs a fistful of Joe's thick hair and pulls.
Lieb yells, tumbles off. The sound of heavy breathing fills the dark between them. Then Joe's voice comes, tremulous. "Tip? Tipper?"
Ed rubs his face, his neck, coughs. He sits up slowly. "Yeah. I'm here."
Joe scrambles backwards, flicks on an old lamp beside the bed. They're both plunged into a golden circle of light, but the lamp does little to dispell the darkness in Joe's eyes.
"Oh, fuck." Lieb says, and takes a step back.
Ed clears his throat, pushes himself cautiously to his feet. He's okay. Nothing broken. "Joe, don't--"
"Oh, fuck," Lieb repeats, and his voice is a nail. He pounds it into the ceiling above his head. "Oh Jesus Tip, what'd I do?"
A headache blossoms inside Tip's skull; he can feel a welt bloom along the skin of his eye socket. "It's okay," Tip says, and he means it. He shouldn't have touched Joe. He should have realized what would happen.
Joe sinks to the floor, as if he's deflating, his back against the wall. He draws up his knees, presses his face against them, knots his hands into his hair. He's shaking, his shoulder blades and the knobs of his spine tap a Morse code of failure against the plaster.
Ed eases himself down beside Lieb. He slides an arm around Joe's shoulder in an attempt at comfort, to hold him still.
"Don't touch me," Lieb whispers miserably. "I'm sorry, Tip. I'm sorry."
"No harm done," Ed soothes.
Joe shakes his head, speaks into his knees. "I coulda killed you. Jesus fuckin' Christ."
Tip tries to make light of it. "Apparently you think you're stronger than you are."
Lieb lifts his head long enough to give Ed a look that makes him regret opening his mouth. He rubs at his forehead with a palm. Joe's still trembling; he lets Tipper keep his arm around him. Jesus. Tip feels like crying again, and it's not because of the pain in his head.
"This is why I wish it had been me," Joe mutters. "If I'da got that mail you'd be havin' a nice life, have a nice girl. Instead you got fucked and now you're stuck wastin' your time with me. You come all the way out here cuz I send you some fuckin' letter and when you get here I try to kill ya. Shit, Ed."
"I'm not wasting my time," Ed tells him. "You're my buddy. I'd do anything for you."
Joe sniffs. "Looks like your a real chump then, ain'tcha."
Ed ignores Joe's declaration and asks: "You think I was Nazi?"
"I don't wanna talk about it." Joe's voice is muffled.
Ed pats Lieb's shoulder, rests his head agains the wall. He has a new plan. He'll just wait Joe out. If there's one thing the Army tought him, it was how to wait.
The clock in the kitchen ticks. It sounds loud, as if it's amplified at night. Tip wonders if he should risk getting the cigarettes, if Joe would let him get close again. He decides it's better to just stay where he is. He can smoke a fuckin' pack when this is all over.
Ed learned to wait in the hospital, too. He waited for the pain to stop, for his legs, his knee, to heal. He waited to learn how to walk again, first with crutches, then without. He waited to get used to his strange new face. He waited to get shipped home, to see his parents. He waited for his mother to stop crying when she looked at him, for his father to stop treating him like he was going to break. He waited to hear from Joe. Some of those things took longer than others, but eventually, all that waiting paid off.
He doesn't expect anything less now.
So Ed waits and listens to the tick tick tick from the kitchen and the sound of Joe's breathing. This barely even counts as waiting. He's not marching, he's not stuck in some foxhole, he's not doped up on morphine, he's not hiding in his bedroom. He's sitting in an apartment with his friend. That's all.
Ed waits. His left foot falls asleep. So does his ass. It doesn't matter. He's been through worse. Much worse.
Eventually, Joe sighs heavily. He turns his head very slightly. He wraps his arms around himself, and begins to talk. His voice is dull, a low monotone. Tip lowers his head next to Joe's and listens.
Joe says: "I thought you were a Nazi. We were in Foy, me and the guys, and Perco just got shot. Only Speirs couldn't reach I Company and we got overrun. It was bad. There were Nazis, SS there, and one of them was tryin' to stab me with this big trench knife. There was a swastika on the handle. He kept sayin' he was gonna cut my heart out. And I knew if he didn't kill me, I'd end up someplace that made Buchenwald look like a fuckin' palace."
Joe says: "I think about the camps a lot. Mostly Landsberg, since we were there. But the others too. There were so many dead people, Tip. So many. More'n I ever saw in Normandy or the Island, more than anywhere. More dead people than there should ever be. And they didn't even look like people, that was the worst. It's like the Nazis did something worse than kill them. They took away their dignity, their--I dunno. Humanity or somethin'. They looked like bundles of sticks and rags tied up with string. I don't--I don't know how they stayed alive.
"There were piles of bodies everywhere. Like garbage. The smell, God. It was horrible. Horrible. And they kept lookin' at us like we was some kind of fuckin' heroes, but we weren't. If we'd been heroes we'da got there before there were bodies stacked up like goddamn firewood."
Tip's mind tries to conjure up images of the things Joe's describing. He tries to see broken people, vacant eyes, pyramids of dead. He can't.
Joe can't stop seeing them.
Joe's voice is a harsh whisper now; it scrapes Ed's ears.
Joe says: "And the thing is, Tip, all those dead and dyin', they're my people. Not all of them, but a lot. They were Jews. And I had to keep them there, I had to tell them to go back inside." Lieb squeezes his eyes shut, his face contorts. His voice cracks, words splinter. "They looked at me like I was--like I was one of the fuckin' Nazi bastards when I told 'em that.
"And even though the war was shit, at least I was with my buddies. I had you and Alley and Hoobler and Muck and Perco and Toye and Web. And now half those guys are dead and the other half I can't look at without seein' that fuckin' camp." Joe coughs, the sound is like a bruise. "I couldn't even kill Koch. I tried, but I fuckin' missed, I missed and then my gun jammed and Skinny had to shoot him even though the war was over, and it's my fuckin' fault."
Ed has no idea who Koch is, but he knows Sisk, and Skinny wouldn't kill anybody without a reason. He moves his hand to the back of Joe's neck. He can feel the divets in Lieb's skin left by shrapnel. They match the ones in his own neck.
Tip stares at Joe's bowed head. Joe's fists are still pulling, twisting, at his hair. Tip aims his words between Joe's hands as carefully, as clearly, as he can. "What happened at Landsberg--that is not your fault," he says. "Whatever Skinny did isn't your fault." He can't imagine how Joe can assign himself that kind of burden, that much blame. How can he stand beneath the weight of it?
He can't.
Joe says: "I wanna put the war behind me, but it won't get outta my head." His hands pull and pull. "I can't get it out."
Tip moves his arm, tries to get Joe to let go. "You can't smoke if you're pulling out your hair," Ed finally says. "People are gonna think you're a lousy barber."
Joe drops his hands. Ed can see strands of hair between his fingers and Tip's stomach lurches. Fuck. Joe's still hunched forward, curled into himself.
The Luckies are still by the love seat. Ed brings the pack, along with the lighter he filches from Joe's pants on the floor. He puts two cigarettes in his mouth, lights both. He hands one to Joe. Joe takes it.
"The only reason I can talk to you is because you weren't there," Joe says. Smoke curls around his words. "I tried to talk to Web, but he always made me feel so fuckin' stupid." Joe rubs roughly at his chin. "I don't think...I don't think he meant to."
"You're not stupid."
"Yeah. Just nuts."
"Christ, Lieb. You think you're the only guy who brought the war back home? There's lots of guys who have shell shock, can't sleep, hear all kinds of stuff that isn't there. I was in the hospital a long ass time, Joe. I saw things you wouldn't believe." He pulls smoke into his lungs, holds it, exhales. He shrugs a shoulder. "Or maybe you would."
"Nobody talks about it," Joe says quietly.
"That's because most people are stupid." Most people don't want to listen. But Tipper does. He leans his shoulder against Joe's. "Just not us."
"We enlisted in a fuckin' war and jumped out of air planes. On purpose."
"Then I take it all back."
Joe huffs, half sigh, half laugh.
"I mean it," Ed says. "You're not stupid."
Joe squints into the shadows. "And you ain't average."
Tip considers that, nods. "Deal."
The clock speaks up from the kitchen, tick ticks its agreement.
Joe says: "I just can't figure out why the hell I survived." His face is drawn, sharp edges planed by exhaustion and guilt.
"I don't know why I survived," Ed counters. "Maybe we don't need to. Maybe we aren't supposed to know."
Joe shakes his head, like that's not good enough. "I don't know why I did half the shit I did over there. I just wanna forget." He's still shaking his head, desperate. "I don't know what to do."
Ed thinks about Toccoa and Currahee and marching to Fort Benning. He thinks of Aldbourne and D-Day and smoldering boots and months of physical therapy. He thinks of Joe and Alley getting hit with shrapnel, freezing in the winter woods, of Joe staring at hundreds of dead Jews, sitting alone in his apartment, lost in the present and the past.
There's only one thing Joe can do.
"You keep going," Tip says quietly. "Whatever you did then doesn't matter, Joe. You were in a war. You were a soldier, not a civilian. There are different rules and you know it. I don't know how to help you forget all that stuff, I wish I did. But you have to think about now, not then. You have to keep running up the hill, even if you think you can't take another fuckin' step." For the first time in his life, Ed's actually thankful to Herbert Sobel for teaching him how to keep going. How to persevere.
Lieb stubs his cigarette out on the floor. "Jesus, Tip. Runnin's all I been doin'. I ain't gettin' nowhere."
"Maybe that's because you've been running in the wrong direction." Ed smiles faintly. "You need somebody who knows how to read a fuckin' map."
* * *
Joe manages to sleep a few more hours without trying to kill Ed. When he wakes up, Tip is bitching about the lack of milk, cereal, and eggs. "I was gonna make us breakfast but there's nothing here. Jesus, Lieb."
"So eat an apple."
An apple comes sailing across the room, but it doesn't land anywhere near Joe. "You've got shitty aim," Joe points out.
"You'd have shitty aim too if you lost an eye."
"Nice try buddy, but you couldn't throw for shit if you had three eyes."
Ed makes a face. "Come on, get dressed. We're gonna go get breakfast and you're gonna show me some interesting shit about town."
Joe snorts. "Did you just say about town? Christ." He rolls out of bed and pulls on some clothes. He feels like he might be smiling, but he's not sure.
They take Tip's car. Lieb drives. Joe keeps expecting it get awkward, for Ed to finally lose his shit--or patience--and pop him one right in the face. Or jump out of the car. Or start screaming about the fact Joe tried to kill him.
Only Ed doesn't do any of that. Joe can see the purple fingerprints he left on Tip's neck. The patch hides the damage to Ed's face. But Tip just points at buildings and oohs and ahhs over cable cars and architecture. The morning's clear for once and Joe's glad, he doesn't want to deal with fog of any kind today.
Joe's been off pancakes ever since Bastogne, so they stop for waffles. They go down to San Francisco Bay and walk from the Pier to Fisherman's Wharf. They sit down now and then, watch the people from benches. There are Christmas decorations, a tinny version of White Christmas blares from ribbon festooned speakers. Good luck with that.
Joe chomps on a stick of Juicy Fruit, elbows resting on the back of the bench, legs stretched out in front of him. Ed's got his head back, squinting at the multicolored crowd of tourists.
"Bored yet?"
"Gimme another five minutes sitting next to you."
They walk some more. Ed tells him he's in college now, studying to be a teacher. Joe approves. Tip'll make a great teacher.
"What subject?" Joe wants to know.
"Literature."
Joe thinks of Web, sitting in the back of a truck, smiling. He wonders if Webster's back at Harvard, if he's writing the great American novel yet. Joe hopes so.
"And not just the classic stuff like Dickens and Shakespeare," Ed adds, "I want to expose the kids to everything. Captain Marvel, Willie and Joe, The Flash."
Holy shit. Ed's gonna be the best teacher ever. "I love The Flash!"
Ed smirks. "I know."
There's a new restaurant down by the Wharf called Coy's Steaks and Seafood. They go there for lunch and Ed pays. Joe tries to protest, but Ed explains when your best friend tries to choke you, you get to do whatever the fuck you want. Joe scowls at the checkered table cloth, guilty and pissed. Until the clam chowder comes. After that, he just eats. It's like a miracle, like his mouth has been sleeping for the past six months. Jesus, he's gonna eat soup here every day for the rest of his life. Or until he runs outta dough, which should be by the end of next week. Still, it's gonna be a good week.
The walk back to Tip's car is substantially slower. They crack jokes, check out the pretty girls, shoot the shit. Tip elbows Joe. "Look at that asshole." Ed nods to a guy walking in front of them.
The guy's wearing blue trousers, a white shirt, suspenders. He's carrying a newspaper. He doesn't look like any more or less of an asshole than anybody else.
Joe lifts an eyebrow, wonders what he's missing. "Whaddya mean?"
Tip shoots Lieb a look like he's got brain damage. "His hair," Ed finally says. He spreads his hands, the gesture matching the tone of his voice.
The guy's hair is a little long, but Lieb's seen worse. "What about it?"
Ed grins, face bright with amusement. "He needs a fuckin' haircut, is what. Too bad there aren't any good barbers around here."
Joe frowns, looks down at his feet. "Ed, I ain't cut nobody's hair since before D-Day."
"Sounds like a good time to start then, don't you think?"
Liebgott's thankful for the concern--sorta--but Ed don't know what he's talkin' about. Joe can't just throw on a sandwich board and tromp up and down the street offering to cut hair. He'd need his own chair at a barber shop, and it's been years since he cut hair regularly. He'd probably cut some poor bastard's ear off.
"I could use a hair cut," Ed says, a little too innocently. He shoots Joe an appraising look. "So could you, for that matter."
"I'm not cuttin' your hair," Joe declares. "I'd probably manage to poke out your good eye. Jeez, I already tried once. Just how crazy are you?"
"Pretty fucking crazy," Ed admits.
Joe shrugs. Even if he wanted to cut Ed's hair--and he don't--his stuff's gone It's all back at his Ma's place. And his Army Barber Box disappeared while he was in Normandy. Not that he woulda brought it home if he'd still had it.
Ed chuckles, rubs his hands together. "Say, did I tell you I brought you a Christmas present?"
* * *
Joe cuts Tip's hair. It's like they're back at Benning or Aldbourne. Tip bitches about the hair going down the back of his shirt; Lieb tells him to sit still, turn his head, shut the hell up.
Lieb doesn't even want to do it, not at first. But he feels like he owes Tip, especially when he opens the box with the scissors, razor, strop.
While he trims Ed's sideburns, the hair on the back of Tip's neck, something strange happens. Joe relaxes. He loses himself in the work, the snick of the blades, the tilt of Tip's head. When he sweeps the cut hair from Ed's shoulders, he's whistling.
"Sorry that was such a friggin' nightmare," Tip says drily.
Joe considers glaring at the smug bastard, but decides to give the guy a break. "Eh, I survived." In fact, he liked it. It's the first he's felt like himself in a long time. Too long.
Joe sweeps the floor while Ed goes to take a quick bath, wash his face. He sweeps hair and dirt and cigarette ash into a dust pan, dumps it in the garbage can beneath the sink. He stares at the can for a long moment, trying to think up a new math problem.
Throwing his medals and mementos away was a good start. But not enough. He can't throw his memories away obviously, but maybe he can come close. What did Ed say? Think about now, not then. Keep running up the hill. Easier said than done. His feet really fuckin' hurt.
Lieb leans the broom in the corner, thinks about the shop downstairs. He can't exactly scrape all the ugly shit out of his head, but he can do something almost as good. Something...what's the word? Metaphorical? Metaphysical? Metasomething. Web would know. So would Tip, probably. Joe's not about to ask.
He listens. He can still hear the sound of running water in the tub. Joe calls, "Ed?" No answer. Joe doesn't really feel like barging in on Tip, so he scrawls a quick note, leaves it on the kitchen table. Be right back, gone to get milk. Happy now?
Lieb jogs down to the corner Schwab's Pharmacy, buys a bottle of milk, Corn Flakes, and a pack of Wrigley's. He stops at the shop below his apartment. It's called The Cigar Box, which happens to be exactly what he wants. He buys an empty box for a nickel. The inside of the store still smells like Bull, but the box doesn't. It smells like dust and paper.
Joe takes the steps upstairs two at time. When he opens his door, he's only been gone ten minutes, tops. Lieb enters the kitchen, reaches out to set the milk bottle on the table. Maybe Ed's crappy depth perception is catching, because the bottle's only half on when he lets go. It falls. Joe tries to catch it, misses.
Glass shatters on the floor, milk splashes in all directions, flooding the floor, soaking his shoes.
Well, fuck a duck. He hopes Ed likes dry cereal.
There's a muffled voice from the other side of the bathroom door. "Joe?" The door swings open and Ed stands there in his skivvies, squinting.
He's also gasping, covered in blood, both his legs shattered.
Both Eds ask: "Joe, is that you?"
If Joe hadn't already dropped the milk, he'd sure as hell drop it now. He sags against the table, his feet leave milky footprints.
Now Ed take a couple of steps forward, toweling off his hair. "I thought I heard--" Ed stops cold. He looks from the floor, to Joe's face. "What's wrong?"
Then Ed fades away, but Joe can still hear his choking, labored breathing, smell the smoke and blood. He can feel Tip shivering beneath his hands. Lieb looks down, but all his hands are holding is an old, empty box.
Ed pads closer, drops his towel into the milk, rubs it around with a bare foot.
Joe shoves Tip back roughly. He's angry, but not at Tip. "Don't. You'll cut your goddamn feet." Joe drops the box on the table. Then he bends down and carefully starts picking pieces of glass out of the milk, throws them onto the towel.
"What happened?" Tip asks. He pulls on a pair pants, steps into his shoes.
"I'm a klutz, that's what happened," Lieb snaps.
He keeps his face down. He can see the ghost of his reflection in the wet floor. Joe's been thinking of putting his past away as best he can, maybe even moving to LA. A whole fresh start kinda thing. He'd been hoping he could keep Tip in the present.
Which, he sees now, is just plain stupid. Tip was with him through a good part of the shit Joe went through. Hell, part of the reason Joe's as fucked up as he is, is because of what happened to Tip. And even if he could overlook all that, Ed knows about Landsberg, Koch, Skinny. Joe can't unsee what happened and he sure as hell can't untell Tip. That's just the way it is.
That doesn't mean Joe hadn't been hoping, really fucking hoping for a different outcome. But seeing Ed standing there in the bathroom doorway, hearing his broken voice, seeing his broken face, Joe can't do that again. No matter how much he loves Ed. He won't.
No fuckin' way.
So Joe stares down at his murky reflection, trying to calculate if the present - Ed Tipper = peace. When a sliver of glass bites into his finger he doesn't even know it, doesn't realize he's bleeding until thin red tendrils curl into white. Like blood on snow. His finger don't hurt at all, not compared to the sick feeling in his gut.
* * *
Some part of Ed has known all along.
He's known all along this is the last time he'll see Joe. He accepts it, tries to at least.
Tip wants Joe to get better, more than anything. So leaving Joe with his new barber kit and fragile dreams is the least Ed can do.
Besides, he's got his own life waiting: his parents, school, his future. He's going to teach, make a difference, listen. To some extent, that's what he's been doing with Joe. So maybe Lieb's his first student. Students leave their teachers all the time. He's going to have to get used to it.
None of Tip's careful, precise logic makes him feel any better.
The kitchen floor is clean. Joe's hand is wrapped in a bandage. Every time Tip sees a bandage, a Band-Aid, he thinks of Roe. Not all the hospitals and nurses, the pain. Just Gene Roe and his calm hands and crooked smile. He wonders what Joe thinks of. Lost limbs? Muck's death? Tip bleeding all over Joe's jacket?
They're both sitting at the kitchen table. No sandwiches now, just beer and cigarettes. And a box. The petty, angry part of Tip hates that box. The better, bigger part of Tip wishes he'd thought of it first. He fixes a smile to his face, clamps a hand around the bottle. He's not going to make Joe feel bad about this. Joe's been his best friend for years, and he's going to stay that way, whether Ed sees his bitchy smirk again or not .
The cigar box is open. Inside are three items. A pair of silver jump wings. Dog tags with Joe's name on the front, the letter C on the back. An unopened letter addressed to Pfc. Joseph D. Liebgott in Ed's faded handwriting.
They both stare at the box. Joe won't look at him. His eyes are red-rimmed, bleary.
Tip silently curses war, the men it kills, the men it wounds with outward scars, the men it wounds with inner ones. He turns his smile toward Joe. "I don't think I'm going to fit in the box."
Joe sits there, hands folded on the table, eyes focused somewhere above Tip's head. Joe's lips barely move, his words sound flat and old. Used up. "You deserve a long and happy life of peace," he says. He blinks rapidly, rubs at his face with a sleeve.
"So do you," Ed whispers. The smile feels too small for his face. He wants to say more, but he's afraid he won't get the words out before he starts blubbering.
"I'm sorry," Joe tells him, and now he does look at Ed, just for a minute. Joe looks so bereft, so guilty, any lingering anger Ed might have been clinging to evaporates. Joseph Liebgott is a good man. He just came out the other side of a war with his life turned upside down. Ed promised he'd do anything to help Lieb, and if that means keeping his distance, by God he'll do it.
"Don't be." Ed's laugh is watery. "But you better have yourself a fucking good life, Liebgott." Tip reaches out, closes the box. "Who'd have thought you'd be more eloquent than me?"
Joe coughs. Or maybe he's laughing too. It's hard to tell. "Fuck eloquence," Joe sniffs. "I stole those words right outta a German general's mouth. That's the last thing I stole during the war." Joe looks wistful. "And the only thing I kept."
Tip lifts his bottle, holds it out to Joe. "To peace."
Lieb clinks his bottle against Tip's. "To peace." He ducks his head. "And friendship," he adds. His voice breaks on the last syllable, but when he looks back up, he's smiling a little.
Ed saves that smile. He doesn't have a box to store his memories, but he knows that smile is something he'll never lose. Joe Liebgott is nearly thirty now, but he's still got a young face. A boy's smile. Only his eyes are old.
Tip and Lieb drink warm beer and smoke Lucky Strikes until the middle of the night. Then they lie on their respective beds in the dark, talking. Joe tells Ed stories from when he worked at Lefty's Barber Shop on Main. Tip talks about college, his classes, the people he's met. They talk a little about the future in voices that sound like faltering steps.
Joe says softly, "You're gonna be a good teacher. If I'da had a teacher like you when I was in school maybe it wouldn'ta been so boring."
Ed smiles into the darkness. "It would have been even more boring." He wants to tell Joe's he's going to be a great barber--hell, he already is. But he's afraid he'll sound condescending and that's the last thing he wants.
Silence stretches between them, punctuated now and then by the hum of the refrigerator, the clock. It's a comfortable quiet. Ed opens his mouth, shuts it. When he finally finds the courage to speak, he talks to the ceiling. "You're a good friend, Joe."
There's no reply. Nothing but the night pulled close around them. Ed thinks maybe Joe's sleeping, or pretending to sleep. He exhales softly, closes his eyes.
Joe's voice, when it comes, is barely a whisper, but it finds Tip. "You too."
* * *
They don't say goodbye. Joe wants to, Ed can tell. But Tip won't. Without a goodbye, there's a chance they'll see each other again. Without a goodbye, this doesn't feel so final, so rushed. That's what Tip tells himself, anyway.
Joe offers his hand and Ed rolls his eyes. He pulls the smaller man into a hug. Lieb pats Ed's back. His smile is bright, but his eyes are shadow.
"See ya," Lieb says. He pulls himself up straight, salutes. He laughs weakly. "My last salute."
Tip salutes back. "Mine too." He picks up his duffel, swings it over his shoulder. "You can put it in your box."
Joe looks stricken at that, and Tip feels like a first class heel. "Joe, I didn't mean anything. I'm not trying to be an asshole." He shrugs. "Sometimes it just comes naturally."
Joe's expression softens. He whittles a thin smile onto his face. "To you and me both, buddy."
Tip pats Joe's arm a final time, heads to the car. He slides behind the steering wheel, starts the car. When he looks in the rearview mirror, Joe's still standing there. Watching.
* * *
Ed's quiet when he gets home. His folks ask about his trip, but he gently rebuffs their questions. He doesn't want to talk about it.
When the next semester starts at the University of Michigan, Ed's there. He studies hard. He gets above average grades. He has a lot of friends. Bill Guarnere calls him up, tells him to get his ass to the next reunion if he knows what's good for him.
Ed feels embarassed, like he wasn't in the war long enough to warrant a reunion. Bill promptly replies "That's the dumbest fuckin' thing I ever heard. And I heard a lot of dumb fuckin' things." Ed laughs, agrees to show up that summer.
"Oh, one last thing," Bill blares into the phone. "Got any idea where the the fuck Liebgott got himsef off to?"
Ed doesn't even think about it. "Sorry," Tip tells him. "I got no idea."
* * *
The box helps a little. Maybe. Joe pretends it does. It doesn't stop the nightmares. It doesn't quiet the voices of the of past. But it makes Joe feel better, and that's what matters.
When he moves to Los Angeles, some of the voices stay behind in Frisco. Some of the nightmares, too. His dreams hold less terror now, more melancholy.
In three weeks he's cutting hair again. He's a barber at the Avenue Barber Shop and he loves it. Everybody needs their hair cut. It's simple. Guys walk off the street, he cuts their hair, they leave happy. The end. The shop does steady business, the buzz of electric razors, the scrape of blades against stubbled skin fills his ears, the scent of shampoo and hair tonic fills his nose. There are no dead here.
Joe's been back in the States for eight months when he finally has the guts to go home. He doesn't even have a chance to knock on the door. Ma and Pop are already running down the porch steps, his little sisters and brother trailing behind them. It's like his own welcome home parade. He wants to say he's sorry, apologize for being a shitty son, but Ma won't let him talk. She just throws her arm around him and kisses his cheek, again and again and again. She says "My Joseph" and "Sonny" against the side of his head and the fear that's been holding him stiffly in place, relents. He relaxes into her arms, his tears mixing with hers.
His little sisters latch themselves around his shins, holding on like they'll never let go. Pete's already asking him if he wants to play catch. Joe cries, relieved, loved. He's surrounded by his family, prodigal no longer. He's crying, but he's smiling too.
He grins at Ma and Pop and Pete and Anna and Rose.
He thinks he might never stop.
* * *
Tip goes to the reunion, has fun. He misses Joe, but God damn, it's good to see Alley and Toye, Guarnere and Luz. He's pretty sure he laughs more in the space of those forty-eight hours than he has during the previous twenty-four years.
When Tip's not in class, he's building strength in his legs. He buys an old bicycle, rides it everywhere. He starts jogging. It's about time he starts running in the right direction too.
By December 1946 Ed's in his own apartment. Everyone's complaning about all the snow, but Tip doesn't mind. So far he's been downhill skiing, snow shoeing, hiking.
He's got a girlfriend, but they're not that serious. Not yet anyway. Ed's also got a glass eye. Sometimes, for hours at a time, he forgets he's even missing an eye. He hangs the eye-patch from the handle of his medicine cabinet to remind himself.
He gets over a dozen Christmas cards. Some are from relatives, most are from Easy guys. Ed hangs each one from his little Christmas tree, proud of himself for coming up with free ornaments. The last envelope doesn't have a return address, but he recognizes the handwriting.
Ed sinks onto the couch, stomach churching. He opens the envelope carefully. Inside is a single photo. It shows the front window of a barber shop. Tip stares at the photo, and he can feel the excitement start inside his stomach, work its way up his throat until he's laughing, all by himself, like a fool.
The back of the photo is blank but Tip doesn't care. He doesn't need words to know that Joe's okay. Ed sticks the photo on the top of his tree like a star.
* * *
Joe stops at a Dairy Queen after work, orders an ice cream cone. He sits outside, watching the passers-by. He finishes his cone, drapes one arm over the back of the bench.
A pretty girl walks by, eyes him. She's got a nice face, wavy brown hair. She's got medium-size titties that look plenty soft. And when Joe winks at her, she's got a smile that knocks him flat. Jesus. He nods to the ice cream shop. "Can I buy you a cone?"
The woman considers, lips pursed out. Then she shows him that smile again. "Sure."
"I'm Joe," he says, and sticks out his hand.
"Mary," she says, and takes it.
Six months later they're married. There are plenty of jokes about their names, lots of jibes about what they're gonna name their first kid. Ha fuckin' ha. Mary just laughs, and winks. She fuckin' winks. At him!
Joe used to lie awake, wondering why he lived through the war. Now he knows. It's so he could meet Mary. So he could spend the rest of his life with this woman who--for reasons he can't figure out--loves him. Mary never asks about the war. She just holds him close, kisses his forehead when he wakes up crying. Or screaming. She teaches him how to make apple pie. Badly. She reads his Captain Marvel comics. She's the best, most beautiful woman in the fuckin' world and she's all Joe's. If he still believed, Joe would thank God every day for giving him Mary.
He buys them a house. It's old and drafty, big. It reminds him of that house from the Jimmy Stewart movie. The one with the angel and Zuzu's petals. Once, Joe told David Webster he was gonna fill up a house just like this with little Liebgotts. That's exactly what Joe and Mary do.
* * *
When they're first married, Ed's wife asks about the framed picture on the mantel. She frowns at it, holds it this way and that.
"Why do you have a picture of a barber shop?" she wants to know.
Tipper smiles. "I thought I'd get my hair cut there some day." He wants to tell her about Joe. But he doesn't. He tells her other things about the war, stories about other places, other men. Tip isn't willing to share Joe Liebgott.
The photo becomes a running joke, a family myth. When their daughter's old enough, she asks the same question.
"It's where I met your father," her mother says, eyes shining with merriment.
"It's where I had my first hair cut," Ed says, "back in 1897."
Their daughter is nine. She looks from one parent to the other. For some reason, they're both laughing like they just said something really funny.
"What?" the little girl demands, pouting. "I don't get it."
* * *
The years are good to Joe. They give him new memories. Better ones. More often than not, when his mind drifts now, he sees the faces of his family, his friends, his customers, and not the green, bloated faces of dead Jews.
He and Mary have eight children. Johnny's the oldest. He smiles all the time. His smile's brighter than Mary's, sharper than Joe's. Joe loves to be on the receiving end of that smile.
Jesse comes next. He loves animals. He brings home stray cats and three-legged dogs. Even the squirrels follow the kid home.
Jack's a tough guy. He likes to wrestle around with his brothers, with Joe. He likes to play ball, shoot hoops, annoy his sisters.
Emily takes care of everyone. Especially her brothers, much to Jack's chagrin. She mothers them more than Mary does.
Jake is quiet. He's content to sit back and watch everyone else. He makes up elaborate stories and reads them aloud, while Emily and Johnny act them out. Eventually everyone clamors for Jake to read at bedtime, instead of Joe.
Lucy is extremely pissed off at being born a girl. She hates dresses, dolls, anything pink. She dresses in Johnny's old hand-me-downs and makes everyone call her "Lu." She spends her days chasing after Jack and Johnny. They punch each other, climb trees, go fishing.
Beatrice loves music. She plays the piano at five, the flute at ten. She gives impromptu concerts for her siblings. If she begs hard enough, Joe plunks on the piano with her.
Jeff's the baby of the bunch. He loves to read. He loves comics, Robinson Carusoe, Tom Swift, almost anything with words. But what Jeff loves best is fighting dragons. One Christmas Joe makes swords out of scraps of lumber for the kids. They have an epic sword fight around the tree, up the stairs and down again. Mary's nearly run through, but the kids rally around her and Joe the dragon dies a slow and exaggerated death. When the dragon's dead, the kids all jump on Joe at once, tickling, laughing, shrieking with delight.
It's Joe's favorite Christmas. It's a memory he keeps with him at all times. It never goes near the cigar box buried in the back of the closet.
Sometimes, usually around the winter months, Joe looks at the box. He even goes so far as to touch the top of it, run his fingers over smooth dusty edges. But he doesn't open it. That box contains another life.
Joseph Liebgott is happy with the one he has.
It's long and peaceful.
~end~
If you love Joe Liebgott as much as I do, check out this video by shanghai_jim . You'll be glad you did.
Author: buffyaddict13
Fandom: Band of Brothers
Rating: PG-13
Total Words: ~22,000
Characters/Pairing: Gen, Ed Tipper, Joe Liebgott, Jim "Moe" Alley, glimpses of the rest of the Easy Guys
Disclaimer: I don't own the Band of Brothers book or miniseries. This fic is based on the series and not the real men. I have always loved the scene in Carentan where Lieb comforts Tip and I based this fic on the friendship I created for them. This fic is gen, but if you squint and look sideways, it might be considered slash!lite if you like that kind of thing. It's a love story about friendship, if that makes any sense.
A/N 1: The first chapter is from Tip's POV, the second chapter will be from Liebgott's, and the third and fourth chapters will go back and forth between their POVs.
A/N 2: It used to break my heart some that Joe Liebgott never contacted the rest of the Easy Company guys and that he didn't tell his family he was in the war. And, although that makes me sad, I also understand his decision for distancing himself from what he went through and I respect him beyond words. I love how he pulled himself together and created a new life for himself. Most of all, I love that he found happiness. Joe Liebgott, I salute you. Psst. You too, Tip.
A/N 3: Thank you very much hiyacynth and luckinfovely for the beta. If this is any good, it's because of them.
What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.
~ T.S. Eliot
When Ed wakes, he has no idea where he is.
He can hear somebody thrashing around nearby. Lucidity creeps back into his brain. He's in San Francisco. With Lieb. Tip wipes his mouth on the back of his hand and peers toward the bed.
Joe's muttering to himself, talking in his sleep. Ed's trying to decide whether he should try to wake him or not when Joe crashes onto the floor. Holy shit.
"Hey Joe, you okay?" Ed rolls off his assembled mattress.
Joe's crouched beside the bed, head down.
Ed's first mistake is touching Joe's shoulder. It's almost his last.
Joe pounces, shoves Ed over sideways. He hits the hardwood floor with his hip and shoulder, then elbow. Fuck that hurts. "Kraut cocksucker," Joe hisses, and he's kneeling on Ed's chest, hands latched around Tip's neck.
Oh shit. Shit, Lieb's gonna kill him. "Joe," he croaks, pulling at Lieb's fingers. "Stop. It's me."
"Die, you fucker," is Lieb's reply. "You're not gonna get me." His hands scrabble up Tip's face, search for his eyes. His eye.
Ed's fear ratchets into panic. "Liebgott!" he shouts. "It's Tipper!" He turns his head and Joe's thumb finds his empty eye socket. Pain lances through his face, his head.
Joe's fast and wirey but Ed's taller, heavier, and stronger. He arches his back and twists, grabs a fistful of Joe's thick hair and pulls.
Lieb yells, tumbles off. The sound of heavy breathing fills the dark between them. Then Joe's voice comes, tremulous. "Tip? Tipper?"
Ed rubs his face, his neck, coughs. He sits up slowly. "Yeah. I'm here."
Joe scrambles backwards, flicks on an old lamp beside the bed. They're both plunged into a golden circle of light, but the lamp does little to dispell the darkness in Joe's eyes.
"Oh, fuck." Lieb says, and takes a step back.
Ed clears his throat, pushes himself cautiously to his feet. He's okay. Nothing broken. "Joe, don't--"
"Oh, fuck," Lieb repeats, and his voice is a nail. He pounds it into the ceiling above his head. "Oh Jesus Tip, what'd I do?"
A headache blossoms inside Tip's skull; he can feel a welt bloom along the skin of his eye socket. "It's okay," Tip says, and he means it. He shouldn't have touched Joe. He should have realized what would happen.
Joe sinks to the floor, as if he's deflating, his back against the wall. He draws up his knees, presses his face against them, knots his hands into his hair. He's shaking, his shoulder blades and the knobs of his spine tap a Morse code of failure against the plaster.
Ed eases himself down beside Lieb. He slides an arm around Joe's shoulder in an attempt at comfort, to hold him still.
"Don't touch me," Lieb whispers miserably. "I'm sorry, Tip. I'm sorry."
"No harm done," Ed soothes.
Joe shakes his head, speaks into his knees. "I coulda killed you. Jesus fuckin' Christ."
Tip tries to make light of it. "Apparently you think you're stronger than you are."
Lieb lifts his head long enough to give Ed a look that makes him regret opening his mouth. He rubs at his forehead with a palm. Joe's still trembling; he lets Tipper keep his arm around him. Jesus. Tip feels like crying again, and it's not because of the pain in his head.
"This is why I wish it had been me," Joe mutters. "If I'da got that mail you'd be havin' a nice life, have a nice girl. Instead you got fucked and now you're stuck wastin' your time with me. You come all the way out here cuz I send you some fuckin' letter and when you get here I try to kill ya. Shit, Ed."
"I'm not wasting my time," Ed tells him. "You're my buddy. I'd do anything for you."
Joe sniffs. "Looks like your a real chump then, ain'tcha."
Ed ignores Joe's declaration and asks: "You think I was Nazi?"
"I don't wanna talk about it." Joe's voice is muffled.
Ed pats Lieb's shoulder, rests his head agains the wall. He has a new plan. He'll just wait Joe out. If there's one thing the Army tought him, it was how to wait.
The clock in the kitchen ticks. It sounds loud, as if it's amplified at night. Tip wonders if he should risk getting the cigarettes, if Joe would let him get close again. He decides it's better to just stay where he is. He can smoke a fuckin' pack when this is all over.
Ed learned to wait in the hospital, too. He waited for the pain to stop, for his legs, his knee, to heal. He waited to learn how to walk again, first with crutches, then without. He waited to get used to his strange new face. He waited to get shipped home, to see his parents. He waited for his mother to stop crying when she looked at him, for his father to stop treating him like he was going to break. He waited to hear from Joe. Some of those things took longer than others, but eventually, all that waiting paid off.
He doesn't expect anything less now.
So Ed waits and listens to the tick tick tick from the kitchen and the sound of Joe's breathing. This barely even counts as waiting. He's not marching, he's not stuck in some foxhole, he's not doped up on morphine, he's not hiding in his bedroom. He's sitting in an apartment with his friend. That's all.
Ed waits. His left foot falls asleep. So does his ass. It doesn't matter. He's been through worse. Much worse.
Eventually, Joe sighs heavily. He turns his head very slightly. He wraps his arms around himself, and begins to talk. His voice is dull, a low monotone. Tip lowers his head next to Joe's and listens.
Joe says: "I thought you were a Nazi. We were in Foy, me and the guys, and Perco just got shot. Only Speirs couldn't reach I Company and we got overrun. It was bad. There were Nazis, SS there, and one of them was tryin' to stab me with this big trench knife. There was a swastika on the handle. He kept sayin' he was gonna cut my heart out. And I knew if he didn't kill me, I'd end up someplace that made Buchenwald look like a fuckin' palace."
Joe says: "I think about the camps a lot. Mostly Landsberg, since we were there. But the others too. There were so many dead people, Tip. So many. More'n I ever saw in Normandy or the Island, more than anywhere. More dead people than there should ever be. And they didn't even look like people, that was the worst. It's like the Nazis did something worse than kill them. They took away their dignity, their--I dunno. Humanity or somethin'. They looked like bundles of sticks and rags tied up with string. I don't--I don't know how they stayed alive.
"There were piles of bodies everywhere. Like garbage. The smell, God. It was horrible. Horrible. And they kept lookin' at us like we was some kind of fuckin' heroes, but we weren't. If we'd been heroes we'da got there before there were bodies stacked up like goddamn firewood."
Tip's mind tries to conjure up images of the things Joe's describing. He tries to see broken people, vacant eyes, pyramids of dead. He can't.
Joe can't stop seeing them.
Joe's voice is a harsh whisper now; it scrapes Ed's ears.
Joe says: "And the thing is, Tip, all those dead and dyin', they're my people. Not all of them, but a lot. They were Jews. And I had to keep them there, I had to tell them to go back inside." Lieb squeezes his eyes shut, his face contorts. His voice cracks, words splinter. "They looked at me like I was--like I was one of the fuckin' Nazi bastards when I told 'em that.
"And even though the war was shit, at least I was with my buddies. I had you and Alley and Hoobler and Muck and Perco and Toye and Web. And now half those guys are dead and the other half I can't look at without seein' that fuckin' camp." Joe coughs, the sound is like a bruise. "I couldn't even kill Koch. I tried, but I fuckin' missed, I missed and then my gun jammed and Skinny had to shoot him even though the war was over, and it's my fuckin' fault."
Ed has no idea who Koch is, but he knows Sisk, and Skinny wouldn't kill anybody without a reason. He moves his hand to the back of Joe's neck. He can feel the divets in Lieb's skin left by shrapnel. They match the ones in his own neck.
Tip stares at Joe's bowed head. Joe's fists are still pulling, twisting, at his hair. Tip aims his words between Joe's hands as carefully, as clearly, as he can. "What happened at Landsberg--that is not your fault," he says. "Whatever Skinny did isn't your fault." He can't imagine how Joe can assign himself that kind of burden, that much blame. How can he stand beneath the weight of it?
He can't.
Joe says: "I wanna put the war behind me, but it won't get outta my head." His hands pull and pull. "I can't get it out."
Tip moves his arm, tries to get Joe to let go. "You can't smoke if you're pulling out your hair," Ed finally says. "People are gonna think you're a lousy barber."
Joe drops his hands. Ed can see strands of hair between his fingers and Tip's stomach lurches. Fuck. Joe's still hunched forward, curled into himself.
The Luckies are still by the love seat. Ed brings the pack, along with the lighter he filches from Joe's pants on the floor. He puts two cigarettes in his mouth, lights both. He hands one to Joe. Joe takes it.
"The only reason I can talk to you is because you weren't there," Joe says. Smoke curls around his words. "I tried to talk to Web, but he always made me feel so fuckin' stupid." Joe rubs roughly at his chin. "I don't think...I don't think he meant to."
"You're not stupid."
"Yeah. Just nuts."
"Christ, Lieb. You think you're the only guy who brought the war back home? There's lots of guys who have shell shock, can't sleep, hear all kinds of stuff that isn't there. I was in the hospital a long ass time, Joe. I saw things you wouldn't believe." He pulls smoke into his lungs, holds it, exhales. He shrugs a shoulder. "Or maybe you would."
"Nobody talks about it," Joe says quietly.
"That's because most people are stupid." Most people don't want to listen. But Tipper does. He leans his shoulder against Joe's. "Just not us."
"We enlisted in a fuckin' war and jumped out of air planes. On purpose."
"Then I take it all back."
Joe huffs, half sigh, half laugh.
"I mean it," Ed says. "You're not stupid."
Joe squints into the shadows. "And you ain't average."
Tip considers that, nods. "Deal."
The clock speaks up from the kitchen, tick ticks its agreement.
Joe says: "I just can't figure out why the hell I survived." His face is drawn, sharp edges planed by exhaustion and guilt.
"I don't know why I survived," Ed counters. "Maybe we don't need to. Maybe we aren't supposed to know."
Joe shakes his head, like that's not good enough. "I don't know why I did half the shit I did over there. I just wanna forget." He's still shaking his head, desperate. "I don't know what to do."
Ed thinks about Toccoa and Currahee and marching to Fort Benning. He thinks of Aldbourne and D-Day and smoldering boots and months of physical therapy. He thinks of Joe and Alley getting hit with shrapnel, freezing in the winter woods, of Joe staring at hundreds of dead Jews, sitting alone in his apartment, lost in the present and the past.
There's only one thing Joe can do.
"You keep going," Tip says quietly. "Whatever you did then doesn't matter, Joe. You were in a war. You were a soldier, not a civilian. There are different rules and you know it. I don't know how to help you forget all that stuff, I wish I did. But you have to think about now, not then. You have to keep running up the hill, even if you think you can't take another fuckin' step." For the first time in his life, Ed's actually thankful to Herbert Sobel for teaching him how to keep going. How to persevere.
Lieb stubs his cigarette out on the floor. "Jesus, Tip. Runnin's all I been doin'. I ain't gettin' nowhere."
"Maybe that's because you've been running in the wrong direction." Ed smiles faintly. "You need somebody who knows how to read a fuckin' map."
* * *
Joe manages to sleep a few more hours without trying to kill Ed. When he wakes up, Tip is bitching about the lack of milk, cereal, and eggs. "I was gonna make us breakfast but there's nothing here. Jesus, Lieb."
"So eat an apple."
An apple comes sailing across the room, but it doesn't land anywhere near Joe. "You've got shitty aim," Joe points out.
"You'd have shitty aim too if you lost an eye."
"Nice try buddy, but you couldn't throw for shit if you had three eyes."
Ed makes a face. "Come on, get dressed. We're gonna go get breakfast and you're gonna show me some interesting shit about town."
Joe snorts. "Did you just say about town? Christ." He rolls out of bed and pulls on some clothes. He feels like he might be smiling, but he's not sure.
They take Tip's car. Lieb drives. Joe keeps expecting it get awkward, for Ed to finally lose his shit--or patience--and pop him one right in the face. Or jump out of the car. Or start screaming about the fact Joe tried to kill him.
Only Ed doesn't do any of that. Joe can see the purple fingerprints he left on Tip's neck. The patch hides the damage to Ed's face. But Tip just points at buildings and oohs and ahhs over cable cars and architecture. The morning's clear for once and Joe's glad, he doesn't want to deal with fog of any kind today.
Joe's been off pancakes ever since Bastogne, so they stop for waffles. They go down to San Francisco Bay and walk from the Pier to Fisherman's Wharf. They sit down now and then, watch the people from benches. There are Christmas decorations, a tinny version of White Christmas blares from ribbon festooned speakers. Good luck with that.
Joe chomps on a stick of Juicy Fruit, elbows resting on the back of the bench, legs stretched out in front of him. Ed's got his head back, squinting at the multicolored crowd of tourists.
"Bored yet?"
"Gimme another five minutes sitting next to you."
They walk some more. Ed tells him he's in college now, studying to be a teacher. Joe approves. Tip'll make a great teacher.
"What subject?" Joe wants to know.
"Literature."
Joe thinks of Web, sitting in the back of a truck, smiling. He wonders if Webster's back at Harvard, if he's writing the great American novel yet. Joe hopes so.
"And not just the classic stuff like Dickens and Shakespeare," Ed adds, "I want to expose the kids to everything. Captain Marvel, Willie and Joe, The Flash."
Holy shit. Ed's gonna be the best teacher ever. "I love The Flash!"
Ed smirks. "I know."
There's a new restaurant down by the Wharf called Coy's Steaks and Seafood. They go there for lunch and Ed pays. Joe tries to protest, but Ed explains when your best friend tries to choke you, you get to do whatever the fuck you want. Joe scowls at the checkered table cloth, guilty and pissed. Until the clam chowder comes. After that, he just eats. It's like a miracle, like his mouth has been sleeping for the past six months. Jesus, he's gonna eat soup here every day for the rest of his life. Or until he runs outta dough, which should be by the end of next week. Still, it's gonna be a good week.
The walk back to Tip's car is substantially slower. They crack jokes, check out the pretty girls, shoot the shit. Tip elbows Joe. "Look at that asshole." Ed nods to a guy walking in front of them.
The guy's wearing blue trousers, a white shirt, suspenders. He's carrying a newspaper. He doesn't look like any more or less of an asshole than anybody else.
Joe lifts an eyebrow, wonders what he's missing. "Whaddya mean?"
Tip shoots Lieb a look like he's got brain damage. "His hair," Ed finally says. He spreads his hands, the gesture matching the tone of his voice.
The guy's hair is a little long, but Lieb's seen worse. "What about it?"
Ed grins, face bright with amusement. "He needs a fuckin' haircut, is what. Too bad there aren't any good barbers around here."
Joe frowns, looks down at his feet. "Ed, I ain't cut nobody's hair since before D-Day."
"Sounds like a good time to start then, don't you think?"
Liebgott's thankful for the concern--sorta--but Ed don't know what he's talkin' about. Joe can't just throw on a sandwich board and tromp up and down the street offering to cut hair. He'd need his own chair at a barber shop, and it's been years since he cut hair regularly. He'd probably cut some poor bastard's ear off.
"I could use a hair cut," Ed says, a little too innocently. He shoots Joe an appraising look. "So could you, for that matter."
"I'm not cuttin' your hair," Joe declares. "I'd probably manage to poke out your good eye. Jeez, I already tried once. Just how crazy are you?"
"Pretty fucking crazy," Ed admits.
Joe shrugs. Even if he wanted to cut Ed's hair--and he don't--his stuff's gone It's all back at his Ma's place. And his Army Barber Box disappeared while he was in Normandy. Not that he woulda brought it home if he'd still had it.
Ed chuckles, rubs his hands together. "Say, did I tell you I brought you a Christmas present?"
* * *
Joe cuts Tip's hair. It's like they're back at Benning or Aldbourne. Tip bitches about the hair going down the back of his shirt; Lieb tells him to sit still, turn his head, shut the hell up.
Lieb doesn't even want to do it, not at first. But he feels like he owes Tip, especially when he opens the box with the scissors, razor, strop.
While he trims Ed's sideburns, the hair on the back of Tip's neck, something strange happens. Joe relaxes. He loses himself in the work, the snick of the blades, the tilt of Tip's head. When he sweeps the cut hair from Ed's shoulders, he's whistling.
"Sorry that was such a friggin' nightmare," Tip says drily.
Joe considers glaring at the smug bastard, but decides to give the guy a break. "Eh, I survived." In fact, he liked it. It's the first he's felt like himself in a long time. Too long.
Joe sweeps the floor while Ed goes to take a quick bath, wash his face. He sweeps hair and dirt and cigarette ash into a dust pan, dumps it in the garbage can beneath the sink. He stares at the can for a long moment, trying to think up a new math problem.
Throwing his medals and mementos away was a good start. But not enough. He can't throw his memories away obviously, but maybe he can come close. What did Ed say? Think about now, not then. Keep running up the hill. Easier said than done. His feet really fuckin' hurt.
Lieb leans the broom in the corner, thinks about the shop downstairs. He can't exactly scrape all the ugly shit out of his head, but he can do something almost as good. Something...what's the word? Metaphorical? Metaphysical? Metasomething. Web would know. So would Tip, probably. Joe's not about to ask.
He listens. He can still hear the sound of running water in the tub. Joe calls, "Ed?" No answer. Joe doesn't really feel like barging in on Tip, so he scrawls a quick note, leaves it on the kitchen table. Be right back, gone to get milk. Happy now?
Lieb jogs down to the corner Schwab's Pharmacy, buys a bottle of milk, Corn Flakes, and a pack of Wrigley's. He stops at the shop below his apartment. It's called The Cigar Box, which happens to be exactly what he wants. He buys an empty box for a nickel. The inside of the store still smells like Bull, but the box doesn't. It smells like dust and paper.
Joe takes the steps upstairs two at time. When he opens his door, he's only been gone ten minutes, tops. Lieb enters the kitchen, reaches out to set the milk bottle on the table. Maybe Ed's crappy depth perception is catching, because the bottle's only half on when he lets go. It falls. Joe tries to catch it, misses.
Glass shatters on the floor, milk splashes in all directions, flooding the floor, soaking his shoes.
Well, fuck a duck. He hopes Ed likes dry cereal.
There's a muffled voice from the other side of the bathroom door. "Joe?" The door swings open and Ed stands there in his skivvies, squinting.
He's also gasping, covered in blood, both his legs shattered.
Both Eds ask: "Joe, is that you?"
If Joe hadn't already dropped the milk, he'd sure as hell drop it now. He sags against the table, his feet leave milky footprints.
Now Ed take a couple of steps forward, toweling off his hair. "I thought I heard--" Ed stops cold. He looks from the floor, to Joe's face. "What's wrong?"
Then Ed fades away, but Joe can still hear his choking, labored breathing, smell the smoke and blood. He can feel Tip shivering beneath his hands. Lieb looks down, but all his hands are holding is an old, empty box.
Ed pads closer, drops his towel into the milk, rubs it around with a bare foot.
Joe shoves Tip back roughly. He's angry, but not at Tip. "Don't. You'll cut your goddamn feet." Joe drops the box on the table. Then he bends down and carefully starts picking pieces of glass out of the milk, throws them onto the towel.
"What happened?" Tip asks. He pulls on a pair pants, steps into his shoes.
"I'm a klutz, that's what happened," Lieb snaps.
He keeps his face down. He can see the ghost of his reflection in the wet floor. Joe's been thinking of putting his past away as best he can, maybe even moving to LA. A whole fresh start kinda thing. He'd been hoping he could keep Tip in the present.
Which, he sees now, is just plain stupid. Tip was with him through a good part of the shit Joe went through. Hell, part of the reason Joe's as fucked up as he is, is because of what happened to Tip. And even if he could overlook all that, Ed knows about Landsberg, Koch, Skinny. Joe can't unsee what happened and he sure as hell can't untell Tip. That's just the way it is.
That doesn't mean Joe hadn't been hoping, really fucking hoping for a different outcome. But seeing Ed standing there in the bathroom doorway, hearing his broken voice, seeing his broken face, Joe can't do that again. No matter how much he loves Ed. He won't.
No fuckin' way.
So Joe stares down at his murky reflection, trying to calculate if the present - Ed Tipper = peace. When a sliver of glass bites into his finger he doesn't even know it, doesn't realize he's bleeding until thin red tendrils curl into white. Like blood on snow. His finger don't hurt at all, not compared to the sick feeling in his gut.
* * *
Some part of Ed has known all along.
He's known all along this is the last time he'll see Joe. He accepts it, tries to at least.
Tip wants Joe to get better, more than anything. So leaving Joe with his new barber kit and fragile dreams is the least Ed can do.
Besides, he's got his own life waiting: his parents, school, his future. He's going to teach, make a difference, listen. To some extent, that's what he's been doing with Joe. So maybe Lieb's his first student. Students leave their teachers all the time. He's going to have to get used to it.
None of Tip's careful, precise logic makes him feel any better.
The kitchen floor is clean. Joe's hand is wrapped in a bandage. Every time Tip sees a bandage, a Band-Aid, he thinks of Roe. Not all the hospitals and nurses, the pain. Just Gene Roe and his calm hands and crooked smile. He wonders what Joe thinks of. Lost limbs? Muck's death? Tip bleeding all over Joe's jacket?
They're both sitting at the kitchen table. No sandwiches now, just beer and cigarettes. And a box. The petty, angry part of Tip hates that box. The better, bigger part of Tip wishes he'd thought of it first. He fixes a smile to his face, clamps a hand around the bottle. He's not going to make Joe feel bad about this. Joe's been his best friend for years, and he's going to stay that way, whether Ed sees his bitchy smirk again or not .
The cigar box is open. Inside are three items. A pair of silver jump wings. Dog tags with Joe's name on the front, the letter C on the back. An unopened letter addressed to Pfc. Joseph D. Liebgott in Ed's faded handwriting.
They both stare at the box. Joe won't look at him. His eyes are red-rimmed, bleary.
Tip silently curses war, the men it kills, the men it wounds with outward scars, the men it wounds with inner ones. He turns his smile toward Joe. "I don't think I'm going to fit in the box."
Joe sits there, hands folded on the table, eyes focused somewhere above Tip's head. Joe's lips barely move, his words sound flat and old. Used up. "You deserve a long and happy life of peace," he says. He blinks rapidly, rubs at his face with a sleeve.
"So do you," Ed whispers. The smile feels too small for his face. He wants to say more, but he's afraid he won't get the words out before he starts blubbering.
"I'm sorry," Joe tells him, and now he does look at Ed, just for a minute. Joe looks so bereft, so guilty, any lingering anger Ed might have been clinging to evaporates. Joseph Liebgott is a good man. He just came out the other side of a war with his life turned upside down. Ed promised he'd do anything to help Lieb, and if that means keeping his distance, by God he'll do it.
"Don't be." Ed's laugh is watery. "But you better have yourself a fucking good life, Liebgott." Tip reaches out, closes the box. "Who'd have thought you'd be more eloquent than me?"
Joe coughs. Or maybe he's laughing too. It's hard to tell. "Fuck eloquence," Joe sniffs. "I stole those words right outta a German general's mouth. That's the last thing I stole during the war." Joe looks wistful. "And the only thing I kept."
Tip lifts his bottle, holds it out to Joe. "To peace."
Lieb clinks his bottle against Tip's. "To peace." He ducks his head. "And friendship," he adds. His voice breaks on the last syllable, but when he looks back up, he's smiling a little.
Ed saves that smile. He doesn't have a box to store his memories, but he knows that smile is something he'll never lose. Joe Liebgott is nearly thirty now, but he's still got a young face. A boy's smile. Only his eyes are old.
Tip and Lieb drink warm beer and smoke Lucky Strikes until the middle of the night. Then they lie on their respective beds in the dark, talking. Joe tells Ed stories from when he worked at Lefty's Barber Shop on Main. Tip talks about college, his classes, the people he's met. They talk a little about the future in voices that sound like faltering steps.
Joe says softly, "You're gonna be a good teacher. If I'da had a teacher like you when I was in school maybe it wouldn'ta been so boring."
Ed smiles into the darkness. "It would have been even more boring." He wants to tell Joe's he's going to be a great barber--hell, he already is. But he's afraid he'll sound condescending and that's the last thing he wants.
Silence stretches between them, punctuated now and then by the hum of the refrigerator, the clock. It's a comfortable quiet. Ed opens his mouth, shuts it. When he finally finds the courage to speak, he talks to the ceiling. "You're a good friend, Joe."
There's no reply. Nothing but the night pulled close around them. Ed thinks maybe Joe's sleeping, or pretending to sleep. He exhales softly, closes his eyes.
Joe's voice, when it comes, is barely a whisper, but it finds Tip. "You too."
* * *
They don't say goodbye. Joe wants to, Ed can tell. But Tip won't. Without a goodbye, there's a chance they'll see each other again. Without a goodbye, this doesn't feel so final, so rushed. That's what Tip tells himself, anyway.
Joe offers his hand and Ed rolls his eyes. He pulls the smaller man into a hug. Lieb pats Ed's back. His smile is bright, but his eyes are shadow.
"See ya," Lieb says. He pulls himself up straight, salutes. He laughs weakly. "My last salute."
Tip salutes back. "Mine too." He picks up his duffel, swings it over his shoulder. "You can put it in your box."
Joe looks stricken at that, and Tip feels like a first class heel. "Joe, I didn't mean anything. I'm not trying to be an asshole." He shrugs. "Sometimes it just comes naturally."
Joe's expression softens. He whittles a thin smile onto his face. "To you and me both, buddy."
Tip pats Joe's arm a final time, heads to the car. He slides behind the steering wheel, starts the car. When he looks in the rearview mirror, Joe's still standing there. Watching.
* * *
Ed's quiet when he gets home. His folks ask about his trip, but he gently rebuffs their questions. He doesn't want to talk about it.
When the next semester starts at the University of Michigan, Ed's there. He studies hard. He gets above average grades. He has a lot of friends. Bill Guarnere calls him up, tells him to get his ass to the next reunion if he knows what's good for him.
Ed feels embarassed, like he wasn't in the war long enough to warrant a reunion. Bill promptly replies "That's the dumbest fuckin' thing I ever heard. And I heard a lot of dumb fuckin' things." Ed laughs, agrees to show up that summer.
"Oh, one last thing," Bill blares into the phone. "Got any idea where the the fuck Liebgott got himsef off to?"
Ed doesn't even think about it. "Sorry," Tip tells him. "I got no idea."
* * *
The box helps a little. Maybe. Joe pretends it does. It doesn't stop the nightmares. It doesn't quiet the voices of the of past. But it makes Joe feel better, and that's what matters.
When he moves to Los Angeles, some of the voices stay behind in Frisco. Some of the nightmares, too. His dreams hold less terror now, more melancholy.
In three weeks he's cutting hair again. He's a barber at the Avenue Barber Shop and he loves it. Everybody needs their hair cut. It's simple. Guys walk off the street, he cuts their hair, they leave happy. The end. The shop does steady business, the buzz of electric razors, the scrape of blades against stubbled skin fills his ears, the scent of shampoo and hair tonic fills his nose. There are no dead here.
Joe's been back in the States for eight months when he finally has the guts to go home. He doesn't even have a chance to knock on the door. Ma and Pop are already running down the porch steps, his little sisters and brother trailing behind them. It's like his own welcome home parade. He wants to say he's sorry, apologize for being a shitty son, but Ma won't let him talk. She just throws her arm around him and kisses his cheek, again and again and again. She says "My Joseph" and "Sonny" against the side of his head and the fear that's been holding him stiffly in place, relents. He relaxes into her arms, his tears mixing with hers.
His little sisters latch themselves around his shins, holding on like they'll never let go. Pete's already asking him if he wants to play catch. Joe cries, relieved, loved. He's surrounded by his family, prodigal no longer. He's crying, but he's smiling too.
He grins at Ma and Pop and Pete and Anna and Rose.
He thinks he might never stop.
* * *
Tip goes to the reunion, has fun. He misses Joe, but God damn, it's good to see Alley and Toye, Guarnere and Luz. He's pretty sure he laughs more in the space of those forty-eight hours than he has during the previous twenty-four years.
When Tip's not in class, he's building strength in his legs. He buys an old bicycle, rides it everywhere. He starts jogging. It's about time he starts running in the right direction too.
By December 1946 Ed's in his own apartment. Everyone's complaning about all the snow, but Tip doesn't mind. So far he's been downhill skiing, snow shoeing, hiking.
He's got a girlfriend, but they're not that serious. Not yet anyway. Ed's also got a glass eye. Sometimes, for hours at a time, he forgets he's even missing an eye. He hangs the eye-patch from the handle of his medicine cabinet to remind himself.
He gets over a dozen Christmas cards. Some are from relatives, most are from Easy guys. Ed hangs each one from his little Christmas tree, proud of himself for coming up with free ornaments. The last envelope doesn't have a return address, but he recognizes the handwriting.
Ed sinks onto the couch, stomach churching. He opens the envelope carefully. Inside is a single photo. It shows the front window of a barber shop. Tip stares at the photo, and he can feel the excitement start inside his stomach, work its way up his throat until he's laughing, all by himself, like a fool.
The back of the photo is blank but Tip doesn't care. He doesn't need words to know that Joe's okay. Ed sticks the photo on the top of his tree like a star.
* * *
Joe stops at a Dairy Queen after work, orders an ice cream cone. He sits outside, watching the passers-by. He finishes his cone, drapes one arm over the back of the bench.
A pretty girl walks by, eyes him. She's got a nice face, wavy brown hair. She's got medium-size titties that look plenty soft. And when Joe winks at her, she's got a smile that knocks him flat. Jesus. He nods to the ice cream shop. "Can I buy you a cone?"
The woman considers, lips pursed out. Then she shows him that smile again. "Sure."
"I'm Joe," he says, and sticks out his hand.
"Mary," she says, and takes it.
Six months later they're married. There are plenty of jokes about their names, lots of jibes about what they're gonna name their first kid. Ha fuckin' ha. Mary just laughs, and winks. She fuckin' winks. At him!
Joe used to lie awake, wondering why he lived through the war. Now he knows. It's so he could meet Mary. So he could spend the rest of his life with this woman who--for reasons he can't figure out--loves him. Mary never asks about the war. She just holds him close, kisses his forehead when he wakes up crying. Or screaming. She teaches him how to make apple pie. Badly. She reads his Captain Marvel comics. She's the best, most beautiful woman in the fuckin' world and she's all Joe's. If he still believed, Joe would thank God every day for giving him Mary.
He buys them a house. It's old and drafty, big. It reminds him of that house from the Jimmy Stewart movie. The one with the angel and Zuzu's petals. Once, Joe told David Webster he was gonna fill up a house just like this with little Liebgotts. That's exactly what Joe and Mary do.
* * *
When they're first married, Ed's wife asks about the framed picture on the mantel. She frowns at it, holds it this way and that.
"Why do you have a picture of a barber shop?" she wants to know.
Tipper smiles. "I thought I'd get my hair cut there some day." He wants to tell her about Joe. But he doesn't. He tells her other things about the war, stories about other places, other men. Tip isn't willing to share Joe Liebgott.
The photo becomes a running joke, a family myth. When their daughter's old enough, she asks the same question.
"It's where I met your father," her mother says, eyes shining with merriment.
"It's where I had my first hair cut," Ed says, "back in 1897."
Their daughter is nine. She looks from one parent to the other. For some reason, they're both laughing like they just said something really funny.
"What?" the little girl demands, pouting. "I don't get it."
* * *
The years are good to Joe. They give him new memories. Better ones. More often than not, when his mind drifts now, he sees the faces of his family, his friends, his customers, and not the green, bloated faces of dead Jews.
He and Mary have eight children. Johnny's the oldest. He smiles all the time. His smile's brighter than Mary's, sharper than Joe's. Joe loves to be on the receiving end of that smile.
Jesse comes next. He loves animals. He brings home stray cats and three-legged dogs. Even the squirrels follow the kid home.
Jack's a tough guy. He likes to wrestle around with his brothers, with Joe. He likes to play ball, shoot hoops, annoy his sisters.
Emily takes care of everyone. Especially her brothers, much to Jack's chagrin. She mothers them more than Mary does.
Jake is quiet. He's content to sit back and watch everyone else. He makes up elaborate stories and reads them aloud, while Emily and Johnny act them out. Eventually everyone clamors for Jake to read at bedtime, instead of Joe.
Lucy is extremely pissed off at being born a girl. She hates dresses, dolls, anything pink. She dresses in Johnny's old hand-me-downs and makes everyone call her "Lu." She spends her days chasing after Jack and Johnny. They punch each other, climb trees, go fishing.
Beatrice loves music. She plays the piano at five, the flute at ten. She gives impromptu concerts for her siblings. If she begs hard enough, Joe plunks on the piano with her.
Jeff's the baby of the bunch. He loves to read. He loves comics, Robinson Carusoe, Tom Swift, almost anything with words. But what Jeff loves best is fighting dragons. One Christmas Joe makes swords out of scraps of lumber for the kids. They have an epic sword fight around the tree, up the stairs and down again. Mary's nearly run through, but the kids rally around her and Joe the dragon dies a slow and exaggerated death. When the dragon's dead, the kids all jump on Joe at once, tickling, laughing, shrieking with delight.
It's Joe's favorite Christmas. It's a memory he keeps with him at all times. It never goes near the cigar box buried in the back of the closet.
Sometimes, usually around the winter months, Joe looks at the box. He even goes so far as to touch the top of it, run his fingers over smooth dusty edges. But he doesn't open it. That box contains another life.
Joseph Liebgott is happy with the one he has.
It's long and peaceful.
~end~
If you love Joe Liebgott as much as I do, check out this video by shanghai_jim . You'll be glad you did.