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“The yanks think they’re bloody rockstars out here…”
The air is hot and humid, surrounded by green tents, military personnel, and rows of endless jungle. The smell of gun smoke and cigarette butts lingers in the air. Just like Hopper's stories from the war, but later and hotter than how he had described it.
El feels the humidity through her hoodie before she sees the two battered soldiers sitting in front of her, talking amongst themselves with green plastic mugs full of mysterious dark brew.
“I reckon…”
One of snorts, his left eye swollen completely shut, the other barely blinded by a burst blood vessel. He sounds just like Crocodile Dundee, but El isn't here for them, so she takes off.
Fortunately, Akers is not hard to find despite the buzzed head, fatter cheeks and prominent tan. She had found him leaning against a truck across from where the ADF soldiers were, wearing different greens, laughing with an American who called him ‘Bobby’. Choice words about haircuts and women are thrown into their conversation. El rolls her eyes and turns away.
“Mouth breather…”
She’s too far back.
“Geist! Fuck Knuckle!”
Their lieutenant barks at them. El barely brushes shoulders with him as she moves into a tent—
Now, El is standing in a kitchen. Akers looks skinnier and more tired this time, leaning against the wall with a phone pressed tight against his cheek. His buzzed hair was just starting to grow out. He’s obviously been home for a while now.
“I know you just got back from Vietnam, but—“ the sentence guts Robert before it’s even finished. He already had that sad look in his eyes, but now he looks like a kicked puppy. “—I don’t think now is the right time…”
Robert swallows hard, his knuckles turning white as his grip tightens around the phone. He’s been home for 6 months.
“Okay…”
Robert speaks dully into the phone. He hears the man sigh. Perhaps out of relief.
“I’m so glad you have an understanding. Thank you, Rober—“
Robert hangs up the phone. He can’t stand the way that man talks. Too many gentle long words, speaking to Robert like the way a therapist speaks to a child. Condescending almost. They hurt him enough and make him feel compelled to rip the phone out of the wall.
“Bobby, are you home?”
So he does just that, ripping the wallpaper off behind it in the process. A young blonde woman—perhaps his girlfriend at the time, was walking in the moment the phone hit the ground, smashing into many dark red pieces.
“Cheese…”
El cringes hard at the sight.
“Bob—oh my god!”
“I told you not to call me that!”
“What the fuck is the matter with you?!” The shrillness of her voice and the Brooklyn accent make El’s ears ring. “My Ma’s gonna kill us—”
El storms out of the kitchen and exits through the front door, immediately brushing up against what seems to be a headstone. She finds herself standing on a grave and in between the grave she sees a man who kinda looks like Akers, but shorter and more put together. He has Akers nose and eyes, but a weaker jawline. Akers appears next to him, staring at the brother with eyes full of hatred.
El steps off the grave out of respect. She doesn’t read who it belongs to. For her sake and especially Akers, it was best she didn’t. But she doesn’t know that yet.
In this memory, Akers has the same haircut as he does now, but it’s freshly cut and shorter. She must be close. She assumes. However, instead of continuing on her search, she can’t help but listen to his conversation with this familiar-looking man.
“I didn’t want to meet you this way, Robert,” The shorter man appears to be acting sincere, but El senses something short of disgust radiating off him when he looks at Akers. “It’s all too bittersweet. A shame, really that you never got to meet him.”
El already hates the way this guy talks and the more she listens to him, the more he reminds her of someone she’d rather forget. She turns to the headstone barely for a second, only catching 1986 and nothing else. The Lieutenant’s voice had stolen her attention back.
“I did meet him,” Akers tells him bluntly. “Once…”
“Was that with your mom?”
The brother clears his throat, staring at his nicer-looking shoes. Akers furrows his brows and nods.
“It’s not like I didn’t call either because I did…a lot, but it’s whatever, Rick…”
Akers shrugs, shuffling his shoes in the dirt awkwardly. There’s this tinge of agitation deep in his voice. Akers looks like he wants to argue, but he’s fighting it to please this Rick.
“It’s Richard.”
To please Richard.
“Richard…”
Akers corrects himself. El repeats his name under her breath out of habit. She doesn’t intend to remember it.
“Robert,” he sighs carefully, stepping forward and pressing his thumb into Akers’ shoulder in an attempt to comfort. “It was never your fault. You never asked to be born.”
His words hit too close to home for El. She winces, watching Akers hold back everything inside of him. He is in pain. She can see it in his eyes and feel the anger radiating through his memory. El doesn’t know why she’s stuck here. This is tragic like the soap operas that she and Joyce used to watch back in California, but she can’t look away. Then, in her peripheral, she sees two little girls playing far away. Their high-pitched squeals of joy caught El’s attention just for a second.
Akers doesn’t find comfort in Richard’s touch, sneering before swatting his hand away. The brother sighs and turns back to the headstone, looking at it in silence before Akers interrupts.
“Are those your kids?”
He asks, gesturing to a gaggle of girls climbing a tree in the far distance. El turns her attention back to the men. She shakes her head. She’s gotten distracted and must leave. But as she searches for a doorway out, she can’t help listening, walking slowly towards an open grave.
“Hm? Yeah, those are my girls.”
Richard hums, barely glancing at Akers.
“Can I meet them?”
Something in Akers softens. He gives Richard a genuine look. A familiar smile, mixed with the essence of his father. Richard knows Akers, the affair baby, looks more like their father than him and it’s not fair.
“Robert, I don’t think that would be wise,” Richard’s expression drops, looking over his shoulder then back at Akers. “My mother is over there too.”
Akers feels his face square with pain. His jaw ticks as he stares coldly into Richard’s pale pimpled face.
“I won’t upset her…”
Akers finally exhales sharply. Richard steps forward sternly.
“After everything that happened years ago with your mother—”
And El has had enough. She places one foot after the other in the 6-foot deep hole and lets them dangle. She tunes out, catching a glimpse of red lightning beneath her heels. Okay, now she’s getting somewhere. Before she dives in, a shout from Akers breaks through and knocks her off balance.
“I’m sure Mrs. Brenner’s church would love to meet me—her dead husband's secret-”
“Robert, there will be major consequences if you interfere-”
”Fucking sue me, Rick!”
In a less dire situation, maybe El and Max would enjoy this. Max would’ve made fun of Akers —or Robert and El would’ve only watched her insult him with amusement. Although, she naturally felt a little sorry for the bastard after that funeral scene. That didn’t make her want to forgive him or opposed to killing him.
After more digging, 3 girlfriends, 2 funerals and many arguments later, El finally catches Akers memories in Hawkins. A sigh of relief washes over her as she finds herself sitting up in the backseat of a Humvee, driving past the familiar streets of the town. She catches Akers face through the rearview mirror, eyes locked on the road as he drives. Another soldier sits beside him.
“Heather Locklear, Brooke Shields and Sybil Danning.”
“That’s not how you play Fuck, Marry, Kill, Burns. Can’t be famous people. Gotta be people we actually know…”
“Okay, okay…Polzin’s wife, that European scientist at Gable Ridge and Major General Dr. Kay.”
“Ugh, you’re sick in the head. I’d run that old bitch over and reverse back over her. As for the other two, I don’t think I could ever fuck another Lieutenant’s girl-”
El listens to them and scrunches her face in disgust. Gross. In an instant, she opens the door of the moving Humvee and hurls herself out, escaping the soldier’s disgusting conversation. The impact of the concrete knocks her into some sort of half-sleep. She feels like she’s swimming in thick cold jello like the stuff the nurses inject into Max’s stomach as she lies lifeless in that hospital bed.
In the darkness, all El can hear is the soldier's voice, gunfire and screams in the background. She is paralysed, eyes half open as his memories slideshow right in front of her face.
He’s arguing with a doctor. He’s arguing with his mother. Akers is jumping up and down, yelling his face off at both of them.
“I told you I am not fucking sick!”
His voice fades into silence. His mother suddenly rises and swings her right hand across Akers cheek. The impact knocks him into a chair.
Afterwards, theres a glimpse of him flushing something down the toilet—pills. The name on the bottle belonging to him. Then he’s crying in the shower, curled up and naked on the floor before the curtain is engulfed in flames, shrivelling up like a burning picture. Peeling back to reveal the jungle. The men inside are on fire. All of them except Akers who appears confined to the jungle floor in his own cowardice, eyes squeezed shut, screaming at god for forgiveness.
El falls into a panic as images of violence and death flash in front of her eyes. Her body trembles, trying to close her paralysed eyes. There’s this whimper she can hear and she cannot tell if it is her or him.
When it goes quiet again, she can hear a fast heartbeat, pounding like the sound of multiple racehorses running. There’s a heavily pregnant lady in the distance, dressed in old 1950s maternity clothes, rubbing her belly with one hand and wiping away her tears with the other. She sits alone solemnly, her dress swaying in the wind. El immediately recognises her as a much younger version of his mother, weeping over the child who must be him.
Now, she’s really too far back.
El finally manages to close her eyes and everything goes silent. When she comes to, she is back in the void. Akers form sits not far from her and Hopper's voice lingers beside him.
Okay, let’s try this again…