Water Song (10 page)

After going into the bathroom to put on her long white nightgown and undoing the pins from her hair, she crawled into bed.

Outside the window to her left came a familiar whistling sound. She turned toward it in time to see a bright flare out in the fields. A missile had gone off. In the distance she heard the deadly
rat-tat-tat
of machine gun fire. Another battle had begun.

Pulling the pillow over her head, she shut her eyes tightly. Her nose and eyes tingled, making her expect to cry but no tears came. Maybe, she considered with some alarm, she had none left.

Emma bolted to a sitting position there in the darkness of the bedroom.

A horrible strangled sound, like someone being choked to death, had awakened her.

"Jack!" she realized, throwing off her covers and stumbling to him in the dark. Out in the fields, an exploding shell lit up the room and she saw him thrashing in the big chair.

"I'm coming! Hold on! I'm coming!" he shouted.

She sagged with relief. It was a nightmare, no doubt set off by the battle outside.

"Jack," she said, reaching to shake him. His flailing arm knocked her to the floor. "Wake up!" she shouted, grabbing hold of his leg as it kicked out, nearly hitting her in the face. "Wake up! Wake up!"

His eyes snapped open, wide with horror, larger 
than she'd ever seen them.

"It's okay! You're safe," she soothed him.

She saw he still wasn't sure where he was. His teeth chattered as a tremble ran through him. She settled on the arm of the chair and rubbed his shoulder. After a moment, he came fully awake and buried his face in his hands.

"Do you want to talk about it," she offered cautiously, "or would you rather not?"

He looked up at her, opened his mouth to speak, but then hesitated.

"It's all right. You don't have to protect me. I can take it," she assured him softly, though she was not entirely sure this was true.

"I dreamed I was back at the gas attack," he began. "When the gas hit, there was a kid in the trench next to me, just fifteen years old. He lied about his age to enlist. I lost sight of him durin' the attack. He was callin' to me in the haze, but I couldn't find him."

"It must have been horrible," Emma murmured.

"It was. I hope that kid made it out. If I hadn't been able to hold my breath for so long, I don't know if I would have made it out of there."

"You came a long way," she commented.

He nodded. "I just kept tryin' to find trees and water to shield me from the gas."

"Did you really sign up simply to get the uniform?" she asked.

"Naw," he said with a grim laugh. "I was just messin' with ya when I told ya that. I got swept up in 
the excitement of the whole thing. And I didn't think it was right that America was stayin' out of it. England is our ally, right? So you got to stick up for your friends. That's the way I saw it, anyhow."

"Awfully idealistic," she observed.

"Could be," he allowed. "Might just be awfully dumb."

"No," she disagreed, "not dumb."

"I really thought you were going to make a run for it today," he confided.

"Why did you think that?"

"I have feelin's sometimes, premonitions, I suppose. My mam had 'em too. People came to her to have her predict things. She taught me to trust those feelin's, but this time I was wrong, it appears."

"You were nearly right," she confessed. "I was about a quarter mile into the woods, but I came back."

"I guess I'm not the only idealist," he remarked seriously.

The comment made her smile wistfully. "We're some pair, eh?"

"Yeah, you right about that," he agreed, "a coupla real dopes."

Emma startled to waking. She'd fallen asleep still on the chair arm, her head resting against its back.

A strip of brilliant hall light shone in from the door. Rough orders were barked in German as three soldiers were pushed into the room.

Emma hurried to the dresser and turned on the 
lamp. Three soldiers stood before her. From their uniforms she saw one was French, one was Canadian, and the third, the youngest, was English.

Jack had awakened and risen from the chair. "Hey, Kid," he said cheerfully. "Nice of you to drop by. I was just talkin' about you."

A look of happy amazement appeared on the young soldier's thin, pale face. A bloody gash ran across his forehead. As he went to speak, he staggered backward, tumbling to the floor.

Jack rushed to his side. "I'll get a wet cloth from the bathroom," Emma said, hurrying off to get it.

"He just got out of the hospital where he's been since after the gas attack," the French soldier said in French. "We were sent to find out who was up here and we were caught. He fell over and hit his head on a rock when they fired at us. Luckily the bullet missed him."

Jack lifted the boy's jacket to reveal that his shirt was soaked in blood. "It didn't miss him entirely," he replied in French.

Emma awoke the next morning, curled in the chair. After washing the boy's wounds as best they could, they'd laid him in the bed. The two other soldiers stretched out on blankets to sleep on the rug.

Jack had also slept on the floor, but he wasn't there now. The door to the bathroom stood ajar, and she craned her neck for signs of movement but all was silent inside.

Dressing quickly in the bathroom, she returned. The Canadian and French soldiers both sat with their backs against the wall. Claudine had come in with five plates and a serving bowl of oatmeal with no accompanying milk.

The German guard who had come in with Claudine barked for her to put the tray down and leave the room. She cast an apologetic look at Emma, but there was clearly nothing she could do. Before this they 
had been getting the same meals as the soldiers but now apparently they were to be fed prisoner's rations.

"The soldier on the bed is injured," Emma told the guard in German.

"I will tell the colonel," he replied as he left with Claudine.

A few moments later, Colonel Schiller arrived. "He's been shot," Emma told him.

"I am aware. I shot him myself," the colonel replied.

"He needs help."

Colonel Schiller glanced at the other two soldiers and then turned back to Emma. "We tended to your husband because he is not the enemy. We do not owe this soldier anything. If he dies, he dies."

The Canadian soldier swore at him, but it only made the colonel laugh. "Spies take their chances and deserve what they get," he remarked. "Speaking of which, we shall have a talk later about your recent trip to the market." He gazed around the room. "Where is your husband?"

No handy story came to her lips this time. She hadn't the slightest idea where he had gone or how he had done it. It was as though he had just vanished!

"Your husband?" Colonel Schiller pressed.

The air filled with tension as she again failed to answer. With darting eyes she looked to the soldiers for aid. Had they seen where he'd gone? With the smallest of movements, they shook their heads and lifted their eyebrows, indicating that they couldn't help.

"Ya, you right. That faucet knob is stuck tight, honey pie," Jack said, stepping out of the bathroom as if they'd been engaged all along in a dialogue regarding the plumbing. "I can't turn it either."

Emma forced herself to be bright. "See? I told you, dear."

With an annoyed cough, Colonel Schiller left. Emma immediately rushed to Jack. "Where were you?"

Without answering, he returned to the bathroom and took her net grocery bag from the linen closet, handing it to her. It contained milk and a hunk of cheese, a small round loaf of bread. The things she'd brought back from the market were already gone. These were new. Had he made a trip all the way to the market to replace them? How would that have been possible? "Where did you get these things?" she asked.

He grinned. "Louisiana magic."

"No, really?" She insisted on knowing, following him into the bedroom.

"You don't have to believe me if you don't want to," he said.

"Tell me," she demanded.

"Claudine left the back door to the kitchen open," he revealed in a reluctant whisper as he lifted a small bundle tied in cloth from the string bag.

"What's that?" she asked, coming alongside him.

As he untied the bundle a foul stench poured out of it. It reminded Emma of a dead animal decaying.

"Oh! Awful!" she cried, recoiling. "What is it?"

"It's exactly the magic that Kid, here, needs." Jack inhaled as though it were an apple pie baking, closing his eyes with delight. "Mud, lichen, and, best of all ..." Reaching into the bag he pulled out something brown and shriveled. "Bat wing," he said, crushing it into powder over the bag's opening. "There's all sorts of good minerals and healing aids in there."

"You can't be serious!" Emma cried.

"I most certainly am serious. Do you know what a prize this is, a wonderful piece of luck? I found the poor little fella lying on the ground. My mam believed bat saliva could prevent a stroke or a heart attack. She read to me about a fella named Pliny in ancient Rome who believed that if you put bat blood under a woman's pillow at night, she'd wake up and be in love with you."

"That's ridiculous," Emma maintained.

"Is it? Mam met a man from Trinidad who swore drinking bat's blood could make you invisible."

"Ugh! How nauseating," Emma said with an expression of disgust.

He smiled at her repugnance over the bat.

"Where is the rest of the bat?" she asked.

Ignoring the question, he poured the mixture he'd made onto one of the plates and wet it with some of the milk he'd brought in. Taking scissors off the dresser, he went to sit beside the boy sleeping in the bed and snipped off a half inch of his blond bangs.

"I think you've gone mad," Emma commented as 
he sprinkled the hair into the brown, reeking concoction he now cupped in his palm. She looked to the other two soldiers for confirmation of this, but they simply shrugged as they poured milk on their oatmeal.

"Wake up, Kid," Jack said, shaking the boy gently. "Doctor Magic is here to fix you up. Soon you'll be right as rain."

Almost as if his words had brought it on, thunder clouds abruptly dimmed the light. Raindrops splashed against the windows. Jack laughed, delighted. "It's what I'm sayin'--right as rain!"

The next day, the British and Canadian soldiers were taken to a separate room. Emma guessed it was her old bedroom by the direction and distance of the footsteps and the closing door. Colonel Schiller allowed Kid to stay in the room with Emma and Jack probably because they were taking care of him so well.

Astoundingly well, Emma thought with amazement as she sat in the big chair one afternoon with her copy of
Wuthering Heights
in her lap. Jack's disgusting salve applied over Kid's wound had stopped the bleeding entirely. By the next morning the injury was no more than a raised, twisting, red mark.

"It don't even hurt, Jack," Kid said now, sitting up in bed and gazing at Jack with awe and gratitude.

"Lucky thing the bullet passed right through you," Jack noted as he sat on a hard-backed chair and watched the rainstorm continue to pound the windows.

"I'm sure glad I came upon you here," Kid told 
him. "Most of the guys in the fields don't run into doctors as good as you. I sure was lucky."

Jack smiled before turning his attention back to the rain-soaked window. Emma turned in the big chair and put down
Wuthering Heights
to observe him; he watched the rain as if entranced by it. What was he thinking about? Surely he was crazy as a loon.

"How are you doing this?" Emma asked him once Kid had fallen off for a nap. "How did you learn all this ... I don't know what to call it ... folk medicine?"

"My mam was the queen of healin' magic in our parish and she taught me all she knew," he replied.

"How are you getting out of here?" she asked.

"More magic."

"Be serious."

"Maybe I'm drinkin' bat's blood and turnin' invisible."

"Stop! I thought we were going to be friends," she reminded him. "Friends don't keep secrets."

"Sometimes they do," he disagreed. "Some secrets are too powerful to share--or too dangerous."

"I don't know if we can be friends if you feel that way," she said.

"Fine by me, sug. Truth be told, it's not only your friendship that I wanted. If I can't have your love, I can live without your friendship. Who needs it?"

"You are so arrogant!" Emma shouted at him, and then lowered her voice to a fierce whisper in deference to Kid's need to sleep. "You want me to love you? Right now, I don't even like you! I was only trying to 
abide by my promise, which I made only to get my locket back. Do you think I could love a superstitious fool who believes in all this nonsense magic?"