The Prank

by Miles W.

It was July 4, 1972. My family and I were on the Chesapeake Bay to set off fireworks. We were going to our spot, the same one we had been going to for seventeen years. My parents first decided to go the 4th of July after Lauren, my sister, was born. I’ve only been going for the fifteen years I’ve been alive, though. Suddenly, I heard a sputtering and turn around.

A patrol boat in Vietnam

Max, my 12 year old brother, said, ‘The motor gave out. Looks like we’re going to have to row back to shore.’

‘Ugh, again?’ Lauren complained.

‘Shut up, Lauren. It’s not like you have to row anyway,’ I replied.

‘Yeah, but it takes soooo much longer.’

‘Here, let me check it out.’

I went over to the motor and started looking at it. It seemed fine from what I could see.

‘It seems fin--’ I started. Then I felt a push in my back and cold water on my face. Max had pushed me in. I should have seen it coming. He always did this. He did it because my dad always did it to people. My dad loved jokes at someone else’s expense. ‘The more elaborate the better,’ he used to say.

‘I hate you so much right now.’

‘Calm down. It’s not like you fell in or anything.’

‘I did!’

‘No, you got pushed in.’

We then spent the next three hours on our boat shooting off fireworks.

When we finally got home, Max ran right to the mailbox to see if we had gotten a letter from Dad, who was fighting. He wasn’t really fighting; Dad was just on a boat that took people to the place where they started their mission in Vietnam.

'Still nothing?' I asked.

'Still nothing,' he replied.

It wasn’t there. It almost never was anymore. I couldn’t understand why he stopped sending them. He couldn’t be dead. He specifically requested this job because he wouldn’t get shot or shot at.

The letters had gotten less and less frequent, and it was tearing my brother apart. Sometimes I thought the letters were the only thing that kept him going. He had gone into a slight depression because of the lack of letters. It had been three weeks since the last letter and it was taking its toll on him. His grades dropped (from what he told me), he didn’t have any energy, and he didn’t give any effort.

When Lauren and I were coming home from school the following Monday, when we got back he wasn’t there. Since he went to the middle school and we both went to the high school, we got home at different times. By about 5 P.M. we realized he had ‘run away’ again. Since he was a really emotional person, he ‘ran away’ all the time. Max was really interested in soccer. He might have gone to see one of the World Cup games. By ‘ran away’ I mean he went to one of his friends’ houses for a day or two and came back home. We weren’t very scared, since this was usually the case. But this time was different.

When we were about to eat dinner, there was a knock on the door. I walked downstairs to get the door. I opened the door and standing there was Max and a bearded man in a wheelchair.

The man looked familiar. A little too familiar. Then I realized it was my dad. I couldn’t breathe.

Dad then sniffed the air and asked, ‘steak?’

I managed to get out a ‘yep.’

I had to sit down. It was too much to take in. I heard my sister screaming and crying upstairs. I didn't know what to do. I was too surprised he was coming home. I couldn't think. I then called my mom down to see him. I left to get Lauren to see him. Once I got her, I just lay down in my bed and didn’t do anything. I hate it when people get too emotional, and I could still hear my family crying downstairs.

We talked at dinner about what had happened to him.

'It all started after we dropped a guy off for his mission. On the way back I heard our motor sputtering and then giving out. I went back to check it out and then heard a bang and felt water splash my face. Then I felt a sharp pain in my thigh and fell in the water. I climbed back onto the boat using my adrenaline as a propellor and told the other guys to cover me while I fixed the motor. There were so many gunshots around me I couldn't even hear myself think. I was in the middle of getting it fixed and felt another pain in my calf. I had been shot twice at this point. After around 30 seconds, which seems like an eternity in a gunfight, I got the motor working again and passed out almost immediately. We then floored it to our camp, where they took us to a M.A.S.H. When I came to, they told me my leg had gotten infected and had to be amputated. Since I didn't have a leg, they sent me home because I wasn't much use anymore. I had been sending letters almost the entire time I was there. I just had Max keep a few to himself so I could surprise the rest of you when I got home. When you thought he left, he just called a cab and went to the airport to come home with me. I thought it would be funny to scare you guys a little bit so I asked him to make it look like he was getting distant. Because then when he left it would be believable. We stayed the first arcade in DC and watched part of the World Cup final after school ended, just to mess with you guys.’

Almost a year later, our army left Vietnam.