Love is a Wounded Soldier (42 page)

“You see, Robert, the Apostle Paul talked
about a sorrow that leads to repentance—a good sorrow.” He sighed and wiped his
eyes before continuing. “Ellen . . . Ellen had a repentance that led to a
sorrow so deep she just couldn’t overcome it.”

I felt so culpable, so responsible, so
angry at myself for the sorrow that had driven Ellen to take her own life. “I
should have come sooner,” I said with an impassioned woefulness.

“Don’t blame yourself, Robert,” he told me
through quivering lips, “I was here, but—” he broke down and spoke between
sobs, “—but—I—wasn’t—here . . . for her.”

He covered his face with a trembling hand
as the sobs shook his body. He looked like a frail, broken old man whose days
on earth would be too long no matter how long he lived. I knew the pain and
regret he was feeling, for I felt it, too. I wanted to comfort him somehow, but
knew there was nothing I could say or do to allay what he felt, so I let him do
his grieving, and I did mine.

Then, through the sadness and guilt, I felt
something else—relief. It seemed there was a finality about death that was much
easier to cope with than what I’d anticipated I’d have to deal with in
attempting to rebuild my marriage. No longer would I have to expend energy
trying not to think about how Ellen had wronged me, and trying to accept her
child. I could begin thinking about starting a new life. A life that wouldn’t
be without its trials, but certainly wouldn’t have the daily struggles I would
have had in trying to resuscitate a moribund marriage. My spirits rose. I began
to feel free, like a soldier who thought he was being sent back into battle who
has been told he’s going home instead. Then I remembered that Ellen was dead,
and I felt ashamed for my feelings of relief.

The old man and I sat together in silence,
as two men sit when there is nothing more to say, but much to think about.

I began to wonder what to do when I left
that front porch. Where would I go? Should I stay and try to begin farming
again? Should I sell the farm and move back to Pa’s place, or strike off in
another direction? These thoughts followed each other around in my head, and I
began to wonder if I was going to sit in that seat until I had things figured
out.

The front door creaked open, and I heard
someone step onto the porch. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see it was
Mrs. Moore.

“Robert, I’d like you to meet someone,” I
heard her say.

I looked up slowly, into a little round
face. Mrs. Moore was holding a blue-eyed, tow-headed tot that peered at me
shyly from behind a worn flannel blanket.
The baby!
For some reason it
hadn’t occurred to me that Ellen’s baby hadn’t died with her. I looked away,
fearful that I would see some resemblance of his father in him.

“Robert, this is Joshua,” she said quietly.
I mustered enough courage to look back up. I searched his face, but all I saw
in him was Ellen.

Mrs. Moore set him down in front of me, and
he stood there, staring at me. I felt myself begin to cry. All I had left of
Ellen was standing in front of me, sucking his thumb.

“Joshua, this is—this is—” she looked at me
for help.

“Daddy,” I said, looking at him through a
blur of tears, “you can call me Daddy.”

Table of Contents

EPILOGUE

THE ROAD TO ANYWHERE

And so on that terrible day, Joshua and
I began our life together. I took him back to the farmhouse that very
afternoon. It was an instinctive action that needed no internal debate. I saw
him as my son to raise, and I suppose I felt I owed a debt to Ellen, so it was
the least I could do in her memory.

My care of Joshua quickly ceased to be a
duty and instead became a privilege. I fell in love with the little boy, and he
loved me, too. He gave me purpose in life, a reason to be alive, a motivation
to abstain from alcohol when the demons got me down. Just looking at him could
make me so happy and so sad at the same time.

Living on the property where my mother had
died, and where I presumed my wife had committed suicide, was not my
preference, but it seemed to be my only immediate option. I couldn’t walk into
the barn without thinking about how I’d found Ma lying on the floor, I couldn’t
look up at the rafters without wondering if Ellen had hung herself on one of
them. Everywhere I looked there were memories I couldn’t escape, and it didn’t
matter whether it was a beautiful memory or a horrific recollection, both of
them evoked the same sadness. To me, it felt like the place was cursed.

I thought about selling it and moving in
with Pa, and though I knew he’d welcome us both, I just didn’t feel right about
it, so Joshua and I remained hunkered down, waiting for some sort of direction.

For the first month or so, I puttered
around the place, spending time with Joshua and doing some much-needed
maintenance. However, I soon realized it would take more than tidying up the
place to put food on the table. Farming really wasn’t an option, since all the
livestock had been sold, and the arable land had been rented to neighbors for
years. Besides, mid-summer is not the time of year to begin farming, and
farming had never appealed much to me in the first place, so instead, I took a
part-time job at a small sawmill to make ends meet, and left Joshua in the care
of his grandmother when I was working. I didn’t much like the arrangement, but
I told myself it would have to do until I received the divine guidance that I
prayed for every day. As it turned out, no one was more astounded than I was
when my direction came in a most unusual way.

~~~

Joshua burrowed sleepily into my side as we
chugged along on a crisp December morning. We’d only driven 10 minutes and he’d
already fallen asleep beside me. He slumped forward, his chin on his chest. I
put my arm around him and pulled him toward me. He looked angelic with his
droopy bottom lip and long eyelashes. I pulled him against me as tightly as I
could without crushing him, as a powerful charge of love surged through me. My
eyes watered, and I wondered if he’d ever know all the paradoxical things he
symbolized to me.

We were on a mission that had begun the
previous night. While giving my bedroom a thorough cleaning, I’d come across my
satchel, which I had shoved under the bed and forgotten. I’d assumed it to be
empty, but took a peek inside it before stuffing it in the closet.

In the bottom, far in the corner, I saw
something I’d forgotten about. It was Johnny Snarr’s lucky shell. I picked it
out, sat down on the bed, and studied the piece of brass I held in my hand.
There were so many stories connected to that dull golden casing, so many
memories of Johnny and other men that had died so terribly. I allowed myself to
think about them that night, the good and the bad alike. Some of them made me
chuckle, others made me shiver, all of them made me want to cry.

I thought about Johnny’s last days and felt
guilty once again that I’d allowed him to continue to fight when it had been so
obvious he was mentally unfit to. I almost felt sick when I thought about how
he’d searched through the mud and slush for his lost shell as the gunfire had
splattered all around him.

Then, I remembered something, not something
I had forgotten, just something I hadn’t remembered in a long time. I remembered
what Johnny had told me when he’d hurtled back over the wall.

“When I die, promise me you’ll give this to
Maggie,” he’d said. It was eerie that he’d spoken those words mere hours before
he had died. He had seen the end coming.

As much as I would have liked to keep that
shell as the only memento I had of my friend, I knew that that had not been his
wish. It did not belong to me, so that’s why Joshua and I were driving toward
Jacksboro on a Saturday morning. I didn’t know where Johnny’s widow lived, or
if she still lived in the Jacksboro area, but I was determined to make good on
the promise I’d made to my friend.

Fortunately, Jacksboro was even smaller
than Coon Hollow, so locating the residence of Maggie Snarr took less time than
I had feared. I could feel my heart jump as we pulled up in front of a
humble-looking house that narrowly escaped the title of ramshackle by virtue of
its neatness. Though I wasn’t bringing fresh news of her husband’s death, I
still felt like I was a bearer of bad news, so I felt some trepidation as I
prepared to deliver something that would remind a widow of her loss.

“Come on, sleepyhead,” I smiled at Joshua
as I lifted him out of the car. He blinked and smiled lazily back at me as we
walked across the brown lawn to the front door.

As I lifted my hand to knock on the door,
the door opened. A petite, brown-haired woman stood in the open doorway.

“There you are! Come in!” she said, as
though she’d been waiting for us and was relieved we’d made it safely. I was
taken aback. I had expected to drop the shell off at the door with a short
explanation and be on our way.

“Were—were you expecting us?” I asked as I
shut the door behind me. I was completely perplexed. She smiled wanly. She
looked harried and jaded, and her hair was pulled back in sort of a spinsterish
fashion.

“As a matter of fact, I was,” she affirmed.
“I prayed this morning that God would send an angel to help me.” I laughed
nervously, not sure if she was tetched or what.

“Um, well, we’d better move along before
that angel of yours shows up,” I quipped uneasily. Being identified as an angel
was a pressure that I really hadn’t prepared myself for. She laughed quietly,
and her face relaxed.

“How about I make you a coffee and we can
talk while I wait?” she proposed. I chuckled, beginning to feel a little more
at ease.

“Sounds like a deal,” I told her. We both
stood, staring at each other for a moment.

“Are you Mrs. Maggie Snarr?” I finally
asked. It seemed that would be a good fact to confirm to start with.

“Maggie to you,” she replied. “And you
are?” she asked.

“Robert Mattox,” I replied, and extended my
hand. She shook my hand with an honest strength, and while her bones were
delicate, I could feel her hands were no strangers to work. They reminded me of
my ma’s hands.

“
Sergeant
Robert Mattox?” she asked,
her voice tinged with something that sounded like the excitement one might
expect to hear from someone meeting a celebrity.

“Yes,” I responded, surprised she had heard
of me.

“Johnny spoke so highly of you!” she said
to me with warmth and admiration. “Come!” she beckoned, and Joshua and I
followed her into the kitchen.

Maggie put on some water to boil and
excused herself. As I waited for her to return, I looked around the room. The
place was old, and it looked drafty. The table was rickety, and had I been a
heavier man, I wouldn’t have trusted the chair I sat on.

“Howdy!” a cheery voice startled me from
behind. I turned and saw a little girl standing in the kitchen doorway, holding
a doll. I realized she must be the curly-headed toddler that Johnny had shown
me a picture of long ago, but she was a young girl of six or seven now.

“Why, hello!” I smiled back at her. While
her face bore many of her father’s physical features, she certainly hadn’t
inherited his reserved nature.

“I’m Elizabeth,” she announced loudly as
she walked boldly toward me. “Who are you?” she inquired, looking up at me as
though she had a right to the information.

“I’m Mr. Mattox,” I replied amusedly.

“What’s his name?” she pointed to Joshua.

“Joshua,” I responded. She appraised him
for a moment.

“He’s cute,” she decreed, and somehow I got
the feeling that the matter had been in doubt until she gave the say-so.

“Lizzie, don’t be making a pest of
yourself,” Maggie scolded as she entered the room. She had let her hair down
and put on a black skirt and a white blouse that contrasted nicely with her
dark hair. She looked younger and less tired than when she’d left.

“She’s just being a good hostess, that’s
all,” I defended Lizzie, and winked at her.

Maggie brewed me a cup of coffee, steeped
some tea for herself, and sat down at the table.

“Would Joshua like something? Cookies and
milk?” she asked, looking at Joshua. Though he was too young to speak
intelligibly, his excited burbling seemed to indicate he understood the
question.

“I think that would be a yes,” I laughed,
and she went and retrieved some cookies from the cupboard and a glass of milk
from the fridge. I noted how bare her refrigerator looked when she opened it
up, and it seemed to confirm my suspicion that Maggie Snarr was having a little
trouble getting by.

I broke the cookie into bits and fed them
to Joshua.

“Cream, sugar?” Maggie offered.

“No, thank you,” I declined, and took a
careful sip of the piping-hot coffee. Joshua took a few more bites of cookie,
but then became more interested in Lizzie’s doll, so he slid off my lap,
toddled over to her, and grabbed the doll by the hair.

“No, Joshua, you have to hold her nicely,
like this,” Lizzie told him like a bossy big sister, and helped him cradle the
doll in his arms.