Love is a Wounded Soldier (14 page)

“Some women need make-up and dresses to
look beautiful,” I told her. “You . . . you couldn’t hide your beauty if you
rolled in a barrel of gun grease.”

“Pugh!” she scoffed at my hyperbole, but
couldn’t seem to rid her face of a little smile.

“What’s with the dopey grin?” I mimicked.

“You’re funny,” she answered, finishing the
last of her fish. I began dousing the fire with water.

“We should probably head back,” I said.

“But we’ve still got an hour or more of
light left,” she argued, “and it shouldn’t take that long to go back
downstream.”

“Yeah, but it feels like rain,” I informed
her.

“You think?” Ellen looked at me as though I
were kidding.

“I do,” I replied. I was used to accurately
predicting rain.

“I don’t know,” she shook her head as she
looked incredulously up at the cloudless sky and blazing sun, but held any
further objections and helped me stow our things back onto the raft.

We shoved off into the river’s current, and
I enjoyed the leisurely trip downstream, using my pole to guide rather than
propel most of the time. Ellen sat dreamily, dangling her legs off the rear
edge, kicking occasionally to help the raft along.

After a while she took a fishing pole and
began trolling for fish, and was successful in hooking a few.

Wooly clouds began assembling on the
horizon. I kept an eye on the clouds as they amassed and grew.

“I think it’ll rain,” Ellen predicted with
a smile. “I can feel it in my bones.”

“Oh, and I’m sure it has nothing to do with
the sudden appearance of clouds,” I said sarcastically.

“Actually, it’s starting to smell like
rain, too,” she said seriously. I nodded. I’d noticed, too, and had started
pushing the raft along with a little more urgency.

The clouds jostled one another, piling
higher and higher into great heaps. They marched from an easterly direction,
looking whitewashed and pristine in the sun’s light. Thunderheads. The word
itself is almost adequate to describe their awesome, unbridled power. Surely
God himself would sit on a throne so pure and white, shooting thunderous bolts
of judgment.

The clouds pressed on, blotting out the sun
as the gathering wind blew stray drops of rain around. The rain began falling
in earnest, but it wasn’t a cold, driving rain, but rather an energetic,
warmish one.

“I’m getting soaked!” Ellen squealed.

“Hold the pan over your head,” was all the
advice I could offer. She greeted my suggestion with a scornful look, but
apparently, it was the best option of a scanty few, so she held the cast iron
pan over her head to at least minimize the rainfall on her face and hair.

“It’s heavy!” she complained after a few
minutes.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness, but they were
all out of the light-duty umbrella pans,” I replied unsympathetically. She made
a face and set the pan down.

“What’s the use, I’m sopping anyway,” she
said. “Are we almost there yet?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Everything
looks kind of the same right now.” She stood up, almost slipping as she did.

“Careful!” I cautioned.

She raised her arms to heaven as though
embracing the rain instead of fighting it, and made an indescribable noise that
would have troubled an Amazon native. It sounded like something between a whoop
and a caw. I must have looked utterly stupefied, because she looked at me,
burst out laughing, and did it again.

“Bet I can yell louder than you,” she
challenged. I looked at her disdainfully.

“Oh, c’mon! Chicken!” she goaded.

Caving to the pressure, I did my rendition
of a wild jungle call, but my feeble attempt sounded more like the squawk of
some perishing fowl than anything. Ellen erupted in laughter. I wiped the water
out of my eyes and pushed my saturated hair back away from my forehead.

“You said who could yell the loudest,” I
said sullenly. “You didn’t say it had to sound like anything.”

“That’s true,” she said patronizingly.
“Well, yell something else.”

“I don’t know, what should I yell?” I
asked, surprised how hard it was to think of something to yell when I could
yell anything.

“Yell that you love me,” Ellen said.

“I love you, Ellen!” I yelled at what I
thought to be a good volume. Ellen’s look revealed she wasn’t quite as
impressed as I was.

“I love you, Robbie!” she blared at the
pouring sky. We continued to try to outdo each other until we both succumbed to
hoarse giggling.

“Look, it’s our campsite!” Ellen pointed
just behind us. In our preoccupation, we had almost missed our tent. Lord knows
how far we would have gone before thinking to turn back.

We backtracked, and were soon on not-so-dry
land. We picked up our gear and ran to the tent, deliberately splashing in the
puddles as we went. I’d been uneasy about the water-tightness of my tent, but
my worries appeared to be unwarranted; the tent was bone dry, and there didn’t
appear to be leaks of any kind.

We commenced drying off, succumbing to some
conjugal frolicking in the process.

Afterward, we put on dry clothes. It felt
so good to be in clean, dry clothing. We were both tired, so we climbed under
the blanket together and cuddled as the rain drummed on the tent.

“Do you have any objections to going home
tomorrow morning?” I asked Ellen. I was getting a little concerned with leaving
the livestock alone too long.

“No, that should be fine,” she agreed.
“It’s not like it’ll be a good day for doing anything, if this rain keeps up at
all.” I lay next to her, feeling more content and happy than I could ever
remember.

“Ellen?” I said.

“Huh?” she said sleepily.

“Thanks for marrying me. These have been
the best couple days of my life.” She got quiet, then sniffed.

“I love you, Robbie.”

“I love you, too.”

Table of Contents

FIVE

THE PARTING

When we woke the
next morning, the rain had stopped, but the clouds still hung low, and they
looked inclined to rain some more. We decided to leave while the sky held its
peace, and hastily packed our things.

Ellen borrowed a pair of britches from me
for slogging back through the woods. They were far from a perfect fit, but
offered more protection from the wet underbrush than her dresses.

I found what appeared to be a less hostile
way back to the car, and was proved right. It was a little longer in distance,
but offered less natural obstruction.

We reached the car, our trousers both
soaked to above the knee. I changed into my spare pair, and Ellen changed into
one of the many clean skirts she had left. I’d been worried about whether it
would be too muddy to leave, but there was an absence of really low spots for
water to collect, and everything was covered in grass, so we made it to the
main road with only a little slipping and sliding.

We stopped at a small diner in Gibson for
breakfast, and wolfed down biscuits and gravy with tall glasses of cold milk
and hot coffee. The rest of the trip took longer than usual, due to the
conditions, and we were both happy to get home. Our home. As we pulled up, I
said, “Welcome home!”

Ellen grinned. “Thank you,” she said, and
started to pick up her things.

“Whoa, not so fast!” I said. She stopped
and looked at me questioningly.

“I have to carry you over the threshold
first,” I demanded. She laughed and walked around the car to my side.

“Well, carry me,” she said, holding her
arms out in front of her like a baby.

“Um, I think tradition says carry over the
threshold, not up the drive,” I argued, looking at the distance it was to the
door. “I don’t know if I can carry you that far,” I whined.

“So you think I’m fat,” she pouted.

“Oh, no, you’re the perfect size,” I
assured her.

“Oh, so you’re just weak,” she said, giving
my arms a disdainful look.

“OK!” I caved, scooping her up and carrying
her to the door. She managed to open the door, and I was able to get her inside
without whacking her head against the door frame. I set her down, slightly out
of breath, gave her a kiss, and said, “I’ll get our things.” By the time I had
brought in the last of our luggage, she was “womanizing” the place. It felt
nice.

~~~

I took to married life like a hound to
hunting. It’s easy for a man to adjust to three square meals a day, clean
clothes, and the loving of a pretty wife. It seemed to take Ellen a little
longer to get settled in, since she had left her home and family, but before
long, she seemed to have made our house home.

Several weeks after we got married, I
dropped Ellen off at her folks' place while I went into town. We both wondered
what kind of reception she’d get, and so I was anxious to hear her story when I
picked her up.

I drove onto their yard and honked the
horn, not really wanting to go inside and feel like the bad guy that had stolen
their firstborn daughter. Ellen emerged, and her face indicated it hadn’t been
a joyful family reunion. She got in beside me and slammed the door, almost
crying with anger.

“What did he say?” I asked.

“He wasn’t home, but Ma said that he says
he doesn’t want us to come around until we’ve ‘repented,’” she said, her lip
trembling with emotion.

“And,” she continued, “until then, he’d
prefer if we didn’t come to church, since he thinks we’re a bad example to the
congregation.”

“So, do you wish we hadn’t gotten married?”
I finally asked, scared she might not think I was worth the cost.

“Hell, no!” she replied vehemently. “And if
he thinks I’m coming on bended knee to repent for marrying the man I love, he can
think again! You take care of me now, I don’t need them!” She sounded like she
was partly trying to convince herself of that while she talked. It didn’t
surprise me, though. Her family was close-knit, and losing her whole family at
once was something of a blow.

A few weeks later, however, Ellen’s pa had
a partial change of heart, due to the fact, I reckoned, that her mother took
his decision really hard. He allowed her to visit the family, but only when he
wasn’t home, and still discouraged us from fellowshipping with Tobacco Road
Baptist until we were repentant.

While her ma would come to visit us from
time to time, Ellen said she didn’t feel welcome to visit her folks’ place
anymore. So we didn’t. We didn’t visit there, and we didn’t attend the church.
We were our own little island, and were content simply to be with one another,
for we lived in uncertain times, and we didn’t know how much longer we’d be
together.

~~~

In the early 1940s, World War II was
shaking the continent of Europe, and its tremors were felt even in the United
States. We received scraps of news through the paper, radio, and most often, by
the mouth of a friend or neighbor, stories of the unspeakable atrocities of
Herr Hitler. I took most of them with a grain of salt, thinking they were
probably being sensationalized, but still recognized that where there’s smoke,
there’s got to be some fire.

In September of 1940, the U.S. Congress
passed the Selective Training and Service Act, enacting the first peacetime
conscription in the history of the United States. Two days later, President
Roosevelt signed it into law, and one could sense the inevitability of getting
sucked into the insatiable vortex the war was becoming. The law required every
male aged 21 to 30 register with the local draft board, and so I did, with some
reluctance.

Part of me concurred with the common
sentiment that the war wasn’t the United States’ problem, and we didn’t need to
shed blood on the behalf of another country, but there was also the sense that
we had a moral imperative to engage in this great struggle, if indeed the
stories we heard were even half true.

Had I been single and fighting to make ends
meet like so many other men at the time, I would have considered volunteering
for military service, but now with a new wife and future ahead of me, I was
somewhat loathe to register for the draft. But I did.

One fellow from our area got drafted in the
first lottery in October, and several others were drafted in the following
months. I tried not to think about it, but focused rather on enjoying married
life.

I guess I did a good job of not thinking
about it, because when I got served notice to serve in winter of 1941, it
almost took the wind out of me. Ellen was crestfallen, almost aghast, when she
found out. I tried to comfort her by reminding her that I would only serve a
12-month term and come back, but I could tell she wasn’t entirely persuaded
that I would be home in a year. Neither was I.

So, I began the dreadful work of preparing
to leave that spring. Ellen couldn’t possibly take care of the entire
operation, so I leased the land to one of our neighbors. Any livestock
unnecessary for subsistence was either sold or left in the care of neighbors.

Having little livestock to care for and no
fieldwork to do made my idle mind bored, depressed, and anxious as I prepared
to leave for basic training. I used my spare time to do some running and
exercising to help take the edge off what I knew would be an exhausting couple
of weeks ahead of me.

The day before I left, I watched our neighbor,
Mr. Matthews, plow the field adjoining our yard. I had just finished another
stiff run, and walked slowly around the perimeter of our yard to cool down. I
stopped and stood with my arms crossed. An aura of dust hung languorously
around the tractor as the plow turned furrow onto furrow, and I drank in the
redolence of the freshly stirred earth.

A thousand memories flooded my mind; it
seemed every post and tree, every inch of ground, had some sort of memory
affixed to it. Some were good, some banal, some just plain bad, but today, all
of them were mixed together in a bittersweet goulash of emotion. Life’s
rearview mirror is glazed with a sentimental hue.

As I reflected on the past, and fretted
about the future, I heard footsteps on the grass behind me. Two arms slipped
around my waist and held me in silence for a minute.

“Whatcha thinkin' about?” Ellen asked
tenderly.

“Everything,” I replied, after concluding
that was the only answer that encompassed my scattered thoughts.

“Um-hmm,” she agreed, her voice unsteady.

“Me too,” she added softly.

We watched as Mr. Matthews pulled the plow
out of the ground and left for home, the snort of the tractor slowly fading as
he got farther and farther away. I pulled Ellen to my side, and we stood there,
watching nothing in particular. She reached up and wiped away the tears that
ran silently down her face. I felt my throat tighten, but fought it.