Under the Oak

Under the Oak

Inspired by the Dixie Chicks 'Travellin' Soldier'

Natalie La Beau, a diner waitress, meets Remy, a soldier headed to Vietnam. Their fleeting connection under a live oak tree becomes a lifeline as they exchange letters, but the war's shadow looms.

The screen door of Mae's Diner slaps shut behind me, the June heat pressing against my back like a hand I can't shake off.

I tie the pink bow in my hair a little tighter, tucking loose strands of dark blonde behind my ear as I step behind the counter.

The pink dress with its white cuffs and apron fits snug across my chest, and I adjust the fabric over my C cups the way Mama taught me modest, even when there's nothing modest about the way men look.

My white sneakers squeak against the linoleum as I grab a pot of coffee and start the first round of refills for the truckers and farmers who've been here since before sunrise.

It's a Tuesday, slow as molasses, and I'm humming something by Patsy Cline when the bell above the door chimes. I look up, and my breath catches in a way I don't expect.

A soldier walks in not one of the local boys playing dress-up for National Guard drills, but the real thing. Army Class A uniform, olive drab, pressed sharp enough to cut bread.

He's tall, taller than anyone else in the diner by a head at least, with golden tan skin and blue eyes that sweep the room like he's cataloguing exits.

His blonde hair is cropped close on the sides, longer on top in an undercut that frames a face all sharp angles and soft mouth. My fingers tighten on the coffee pot. And my heart skips a beat.

He slides into the corner booth by the window, the one nobody likes because the air conditioning doesn't reach it. I watch him fold his hands on the table large hands, long fingers, nails clipped short and clean.

He's not looking at the menu. He's looking through the glass at the highway, like he's memorizing the asphalt.

I grab a pad and pen and walk over.

"Coffee?" I ask him casually my accent coming out thick, somewhere between a Louisiana bayou and Mississippi.

He startles. Actually startles, like I've woken him from something. Those blue eyes focus on my face, and I watch his jaw unclench by a fraction.

"Yes, ma'am. Please." He drawls.

His voice carries the bayou in it, Catholic South Louisiana, soft around the vowels. I pour his coffee, and the steam curls between us.

"You want some pie to go with that? We got pecan and sweet potato. Both made fresh this morning." I mention

"Pecan. Thank you." He says.

He reaches for his wallet, and I catch the tremor in his fingers. Not from the cold. It's ninety-two degrees outside and the coffee hasn't touched him yet.

I set the pie down in front of him a few minutes later, and he hasn't touched the coffee. He's staring at the sugar dispenser, turning it slowly between those big hands. I should walk away. I have tables to wipe, napkin dispensers to refill, and old Mr. Landry at the counter wants his third glass of sweet tea.

But something about the way he sits there, alone, that uniform crisp and uncomfortable in this heat, those hands shaking around a sugar packet keeps me standing at the end of his booth.

"You just passing through?" I ask, and I'm surprised by how soft my voice comes out.

He looks up. Studies my face for a long moment.

"Yes, ma'am. Bus leaves out of Lafayette at four. Headed to California. Fort Ord." He explains.

The name lands heavy. Fort Ord. I've heard the boys at school talk about it, the staging ground, the last stop before they ship you across the Pacific. Before they ship you to Vietnam.

I slide into the seat across from him. I don't ask permission. I don't know why I do it, except that his eyes are the colour of the river on a clear morning, and they're looking at me like I'm the last familiar thing he's going to see for a long time.

"I'm Natalie. Nat, if you want." I say warmly to him.

"Remy." He says and extends his hand across the table, and when I take it, his palm is warm and dry and wraps around my fingers entirely.

"Remy Landry." He continues.

"Landry." I smile.

"Like half the parish." I say.

He laughs, and it transforms his face. The tension in his jaw releases, and for a second he looks young, not twenty-three young, but young the way a kid is young before he learns what the world can do to him.

"Like half the parish," he agrees.

"You from here?" He enquires.

"Born and raised. Last year of high school. Work here part-time." I gesture at the diner with its pink vinyl stools and checkered floor.

"Not much else to do in Breaux Bridge." I say.

"You like it?" He asks.

I consider the question.

Nobody's asked me that before not the regulars, not Mama, not my friends at school.

"I like the diner. I like the people. I don't know what I'm supposed to do after graduation. Mama wants me to find a husband. Daddy wants me to go to college. I just." I explain, I trail off, picking at the edge of my apron.

"I play guitar. I sing a little. That's the only thing that feels like mine." I say to him.

His eyes light up.

"Guitar. That's something." He says warmly.

"It's not a career." I say almost sounding angry.

"It's a start." He takes his first sip of coffee, and I watch his shoulders drop.

"I was studying nursing. Before the draft letter came. Two years at USL. I wanted to be a medic, maybe work at a hospital in Lafayette. Take care of people." She says his south Louisiana drawl coming through.

"You're a medic now, though, aren't you? In the Army?" I ask.

"Trained as one. They're sending me to finish at Ord, then, then." He doesn't finish the sentence. He doesn't have to.

The clock above the kitchen reads ten-forty. His bus doesn't leave until four. I look at the empty diner, just Mr. Landry with his sweet tea and a trucker paying his check at the register and I make a decision that Mama would tan my hide for.

"You got five hours, Remy. You want to see something besides this booth?" I ask him bluntly.

He blinks. Looks at me. Looks at his uniform, at the duffel bag tucked under the table.

"I don't want to be a bother." He politely says.

"You're not. I get off at eleven. There's a place I go sometimes, out on the bayou. A pier under an old live oak. It's the prettiest spot in the parish." I excitedly explain to him.

He nods slowly, and I see his throat move as he swallows.

"I'd like that." He replies with a grin.

I serve him his pecan pie, and he eats it slowly, deliberately, like he's committing every bite to memory. When I come back at eleven, changed out of my uniform into a white cotton sundress with thin straps and my hair loose around my shoulders, he's standing by the door with his duffel over one shoulder. His eyes move over me, and I watch his chest rise with a breath he holds too long.

We take my truck, a beat-up Ford that Daddy passed down to me and I drive us south of town, past cane fields and crawfish ponds, down a gravel road that dead-ends at the Atchafalaya.

The live oak spreads over the water like a cathedral ceiling, its branches heavy with Spanish moss that sways in the breeze off the river. The pier is old wood, weathered grey, extending twenty feet out over the dark water.

Remy stands at the end of the pier and looks out. The duffel drops from his shoulder. He pulls a cigarette from his pocket, then puts it back unlit. His hands are shaking again.

He has let the southern manners drop and I can tell he is scared, shit scared.

"Tell me what you're scared of," I say.

He turns. The light through the moss dapples his face, shadow and sun.

"Dying." He says, The word comes out flat.

"I'm scared of dying in a place I've never seen, for a reason I don't understand. I'm scared of the boys I'm going with. I'm scared I won't be able to help them when they need it. I'm a medic. I'm supposed to fix people. What if I can't?" he explains.

I step closer. My white sneakers are silent on the old wood.

"What if you can?" I ask.

"Then I come home. And I finish school. And I work at a hospital. And I." He stops. Looks at my mouth.

"I don't know what comes after that." He admits.

"Maybe this." I say as I reach up and touch his face. His jaw is smooth, freshly shaved, and the skin beneath my fingers is warm from the sun. He turns into my palm like a flower toward light. His blue eyes close. His breath shakes out of him.

"Nat." He murmurs, My name in his mouth sounds like a prayer. Catholic. Reverent.

"Tell me what you dream about," I whisper.

He opens his eyes. They're wet.

"A house. A porch. A woman who plays guitar." His hand comes up and covers mine against his cheek.

"Sunday mornings that don't mean anything except pancakes and coffee." He continues as his eyes get wetter.

"I want that too." I say. The words come out before I can think about them, but they're true. I'm eighteen. I don't know where I'm going or what I'm doing. But I know I want a porch and Sunday mornings and someone who looks at me the way Remy is looking at me right now.

I rise onto my toes. He meets me halfway. His mouth is soft and tastes like pecan and coffee, and when his hands find my waist, they're careful so careful like he's afraid I'll shatter. I press into him, and a sound vibrates in his chest, low and aching. His tongue slides against mine, and I open for him, and the kiss deepens into something desperate and hungry and raw.

His fingers spread across the small of my back, pulling me flush against him.

I feel it the hard line of him pressing through his uniform trousers, thick and impossible. My body responds before my mind catches up, heat pooling low in my belly, wetness gathering between my thighs. I gasp into his mouth, and he swallows it.

"Remy." I softly say, I pull back enough to breathe. My lips are swollen.

My hands grip the stiff fabric of his uniform at his shoulders.

"I want. I want." I say softly, gently.

"Are you sure?" He asks.

His voice is wrecked. His eyes search mine, and I see the question there not just permission, but genuine fear. Fear of me. Of this. Of taking something when he might not come back.

"I'm sure." I reach for the top button of his uniform shirt. My fingers are pink-polished and small against the olive drab.

"I want you to have something to come home to." I say softly.

He catches my wrist. Holds it.

"I don't want you to regret." He says but I cut him off.

"I won't." I say cutting him off.

I pop the first button. Then the second. His chest underneath is tan and defined, muscle carved across his sternum, a faint trail of blonde hair disappearing below his belt. I trace my fingertip down the centre of him, and his stomach clenches under my touch.

"I won't regret you, Remy." I murmur softly against him.

We move to the grass beneath the oak, where the moss hangs like a curtain around us and the ground is soft with years of fallen leaves.

He shrugs out of his uniform shirt and undershirt, and I run my hands over his shoulders, his chest, the ridges of his abdomen.

His skin is hot. Everywhere. I find a scar on his left side, just above his hip a crescent of silver where something bit through him once. I press my lips to it, and he hisses.

My sundress comes off over my head in one motion. The air hits my skin, and I'm standing in just my white cotton bra and panties, the moss swaying around us, the river whispering beneath the pier. Remy's eyes move over me slowly, taking in the pink of my nipples through the thin fabric, the curve of my hips, the way my blonde hair falls past my shoulders.

"You're beautiful," he says. It's not a line. Not a performance. His voice breaks on the second syllable.

He reaches behind me and unclasps my bra with fingers that don't shake anymore. His confidence is back.

The fabric falls away, and my breasts spill free C cup, full and soft, pink nipples hardening in the warm air.

His hands cup them gently, thumbs brushing over the stiff peaks, and my head drops back on a moan.

He leans down and takes one nipple in his mouth, swirling his tongue around the areola, and I feel the pull of it all the way between my legs.

"Ah. your mouth is so warm," I breathe, fingers tangling in the longer hair on top of his head. "Remy, you're so gentle. my nipples are so sensitive when you do that." I softly breathe.

He switches to the other breast, sucking the pink peak between his lips, and I gasp, my back arching. His hands slide down my ribs to my hips, hooking into the waistband of my panties. I step out of them, and the humid air touches me where I'm already hot, slick and swollen.

He kneels in the grass. Kisses my stomach. My hip bone. The crease of my thigh. I look down at him this soldier, this boy from the same parish, this man who might die in a jungle he's never seen and I card my fingers through his hair and guide him to where I need him.

His tongue finds me. Flat and broad, a slow stroke upward that ends at my clit, and my knees buckle.

He catches me, hands gripping my thighs, and pulls me down to straddle his face as he settles back into the grass. I'm dripping. I can feel it, can feel myself opening for him, and when he seals his lips around my clit and sucks, I cry out to the oak branches above us.

"YOU'RE! YOUR TONGUE IS SO GOOD! MY PUSSY IS BEING LICKED BY YOUR TONGUE SO PERFECTLY! AHHHH!." I cry out louder than I intend.

The words tumble out of me, shameless and raw. My hips grind against his mouth, and he groans into me, the vibration sending sparks up my spine. His hands knead my ass, pulling me closer, and his tongue fucks into me, deep, wet, relentless.

"Ah!! I! I can't!" I hiss through my teeth.

My thighs tremble on either side of his head.

"Remy, Remy, I'm." I say in gasps.

The orgasm builds like a storm rolling across the bayou, all pressure, heat and electricity. His lips close around my clit again, and his tongue flicks, and I shatter.

"AHHHH! OH GOD! OH GOD! AH! AH! I CAN'T, I CAN'T STAND IT, I'M ABOUT TO! HELP, HELP ME, AH! AH!" I cry in a mixture of screaming, shouting and stammering. This is definitely not the voice on Sundays.

The pleasure rips through me in waves, and I gush against his mouth, my cunt clenching around nothing, my whole body shaking. He holds me through it, gentling his tongue to slow strokes until I stop trembling. As I recover my breath.

He lays me back in the grass. And he kneels between my thighs. He unbuckles his belt, and his cock springs free thick, long, ten inches of him jutting from a nest of blonde curls. The head is flushed and ruddy, fluid beading at the tip. I reach for him, wrap my fingers around the shaft, and he jerks in my grip.

I know I shouldn't want him like this, I was raised to be a good girl. My Mama would tan my hide, Papa would kill him if they knew. But this is 1969, and I know of what happens in the cities of this nation.

"Jesus, Nat." He moans.

His forehead drops to my shoulder. I stroke him slowly, feeling the ridge of the head under my palm, the silky skin over iron hardness. He throbs with each beat of his heart.

"You're so big," I whisper, and it's not flattery, it's wonder.

"You're so hard for me. You feel so good in my hand." I whisper encouragingly.

"I've wanted you since you poured my coffee." He groans against my neck. His hips thrust into my fist, and I feel the wetness of his pre-cum sliding between my fingers.

"Then have me. Take me Remy." I say demandingly.

He reaches into his discarded trousers and pulls out a foil packet.

Army issue, standard. He rolls the condom on with hands that are steady now, and I spread my thighs wider, my trimmed blonde curls damp with my own arousal. He notches the head of his cock against my entrance, and I feel him hot, thick, pushing.

He enters me slowly. Inch by inch. I'm tight, and he's enormous, and the stretch burns bright and overwhelming. I whimper, and he stops.

"Don't stop," I gasp.

"Don't you're so big, you're so firm inside me ahhhhhh... my pussy is being stretched by your cock so completely..." I whimper.

He doesn't know this is only my second time.

He pushes deeper. I feel every ridge of him, every pulse, until he bottoms out against my cervix and his balls press against my ass. We're both breathing hard, and he stays still, letting me adjust.

"Remy. Move. Please." I say breathlessly.

I wrap my legs around his hips, my pink-painted toenails digging into the backs of his thighs. He pulls back and thrusts, and the friction lights me up from the inside. I cry out no words, just sound, just need.

He sets a rhythm that's slow and deep, pulling almost all the way out before sinking back in to the hilt. The wet sounds of our joining fills the space beneath the oak squelch, slap, groan. His mouth finds my nipple again, and he sucks in time with his thrusts, and I'm lost.

"You're so deep. you're so strong. your cock is so perfect inside my pussy. AAhhh, just like that, please don't stop." I say encouraging him on.

My nails rake down his back, leaving red lines across his tan skin. He picks up speed, his hips snapping forward, driving into me with a desperation that has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with living.

He pounds relentlessly into me for a good fifteen minutes.

"I'm going to cum," he grits out against my breast.

"Nat, I, I." He stammers the sweat dripping off his forehead.

"Inside me. Fill me." I command him.

I don't care about the condom. I don't care about anything except this man inside me, this moment, this oak tree and this river and this last breath before everything changes.

"I want to feel you." I snarl to him.

He drives in deep and holds, and I feel his cock pulse, feel the heat of him even through the latex, and the sensation triggers my own release. I clamp down around him, and my orgasm rips through me in stuttering waves.

"AH! AH! I! I CAN'T! OH GOD! REMY! HELP ME! AHHH! AH!" I scream my screams echoing around us.

My words break apart. My body shakes. He holds me through it, his arms tight around me, his face buried in my neck.

We lie tangled in the grass afterward, his uniform shirt draped over my bare shoulders, my head on his chest. The Spanish moss sways above us. The river moves slow and dark beneath the pier. His heartbeat thuds under my ear, and I count the beats steady, alive, here.

"I have to write you," he says finally.

"Promise me I can write you." He says looking at me.

"You can write me at the diner. Mae's Diner, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana." I trace circles on his chest.

"Every letter. I want every letter." I say to him poking him in the chest with every word.

"I've never" He says, He stops. Starts again.

"I've never met someone who made me want to come home before." He continues.

I rise up on my elbow and look at him. His eyes are wet. Mine are too.

"Then come home, Remy Landry. Come home to me." I say.

We dress slowly, and he folds his uniform with military precision. At the truck, he kisses me one more time gentlemanly, soft, closed-mouth, tasting like salt and river water.

I drive him back to town, the drive is silent, I drop him off at the one bus stop in town I watch him get on the Greyhound duffel over his shoulder and then he's disappearing into the haze of Louisiana 's summer.

I watch him until I can't see him anymore. Then I get in my truck and drive home and cry in the shower until the water runs cold.

The first letter arrives on July 3rd, postmarked Fort Ord, California.

It comes in a standard military envelope, his handwriting cramped and small on lined paper torn from a notebook.

He writes about the Pacific, how cold it is, how different it is from the Gulf.

He writes about the other medics, about a kid from Ohio who can't stop vomiting, about a sergeant who calls everyone "sugar."

He writes: "I think about you under that tree. I think about your mouth. I think about the way you said my name. I've never heard it sound like that before."

I write back that night, sitting cross-legged on my bed with my guitar propped against the wall. I tell him about the Fourth of July fireworks over the bayou, about the new pecan pie recipe Mae is trying, about how the live oak looks in the evening light.

I write: "I play guitar on the pier now. I pretend you can hear me."

Every week, a letter. Sometimes two.

He ships out to Vietnam in Mid-September, and the postmarks change, APO San Francisco, the letters taking longer, the paper sometimes damp and smelling of jungle.

He writes about the rain, the mud, the village children who wave at the medics when they come through.

He doesn't write about the wounded. I read between the lines and fill in the gaps with the images I see on the evening news, and I hold my stomach and breathe.

September. October. November. The letters come like clockwork, and I answer everyone. I send him a photo of me in my pink dress at the diner, my hair tied back with the bow, my pink lipstick freshly applied. He writes:

"I carry that photo in my breast pocket. The other guys give me hell, but I don't care. You're the most beautiful woman in Vietnam. When I come back will you marry me?" He proposes to me in that letter.

December. January. I graduate high school. I send him the announcement.

He writes: "I'm so proud of you, Nat. Play me a song when I get back."

The letters are shorter now. The handwriting changes, it's tighter, shakier. I read them over and over, pressing the paper to my face, trying to smell him through the distance.

February. One letter, brief and strange.

He writes: "I think about that pier. I think about the oak tree. I think about your skin. I think about coming home."

Nothing else. I write back immediately, three pages, front and back, pouring myself onto the paper.

March. Nothing.

April. Nothing. I call the post office. I call Mae and ask if any mail came for me. I check the box every day.

Nothing.

May. Nothing.

June. One year. The anniversary of the day he walked into the diner, and I'm sitting on the pier under the oak tree, playing guitar in the fading light, when the school year ends and summer begins and I wait for a letter that doesn't come.

The first Friday in September. Football season. Breaux Bridge High plays host to Opelousas, and the stands are packed. I'm there with my friends, wearing my pink lipstick and a white sweater, my hair loose around my shoulders. The band plays, the crowd cheers, and I'm half-watching the game when the announcer's voice cuts through the stadium.

"Before we continue, folks, we'd like to take a moment to honour the young men from our parish who've given their lives in service to their country this past year." He says his voice firm.

A list of names. I hear them distantly, muffled by the blood rushing in my ears. The band plays something soft. People remove their hats.

"Specialist Four Remy Landry, killed in action, Quảng Trị Province, March." I hear and the world stops.

I don't hear the rest. The stadium tilts. My friend's hand catches my arm, and I hear her voice, but it's coming from very far away.

The names keep going there are others, boys from nearby towns, boys I went to school with but I've stopped hearing them.

Remy. My Remy Landry. Medic. Twenty-three years old. Killed in a jungle in a country I couldn't find on a map when he first walked into the diner.

The game resumes around me. The crowd cheers. The band plays. I sit in the bleachers with my hands in my lap and my pink nails pressing crescents into my palms, and I think about the oak tree and the pier and the way his hands shook over a sugar dispenser and the way they didn't shake when he touched me.

I think about his letters, the last one: I think about your skin. I think about coming home.

He didn't come home. The letters stopped in March because he stopped in March, somewhere in Quảng Trị Province, and I'll never know if he thought of the pier or the oak tree or me in the last moment.

But I know he carried my photo in his breast pocket. I know he wanted pancakes on Sunday mornings. I know he was scared, and he went anyway.

The crowd roars. Breaux Bridge scores. The stadium erupts, and I sit in the noise and the light, a girl who met a soldier in a diner in June and loved him under an oak tree and the rest of the world keeps going.

I go home. I walk out to the pier. I sit under the oak tree with my guitar across my lap, and I play a song for no one, and the river moves slow and dark beneath me, and the Spanish moss sways in the warm September air, and somewhere across the Pacific, there's a place where Remy Landry's blood is in the soil, and my name is in his pocket, and in his heart and the letters he wrote me are still in a shoebox under my bed, and the tree is still here, and the pier is still here, and I am still here, and I play, and I play, and I play.

But he isn't and he will never be. I decide in that moment that I will become a nurse in his honour in his memory.

And the next day I enrol in nursing school.