Fight for Glory (My Wounded Soldier #1) (14 page)

Tom
Tanner

Chapter
Eighteen

First off I
started walking. The birds were calling, singing, deer in the field, mother and
fawn and if I had my gun I’d a shot them both.

I told her. I
said it. Put words to every evil in me, seemed like.

We were through,
her and me. She chose him.

“I put a bullet
in him,” I repeated. I put a bullet in him. Lord, did I really say that? I
didn’t think it through, the doing or the saying. I got mad…and I said it. “I
put a bullet in him,” I said again. I put a bullet in him.
God
Almighty.
I picked up a rock in the road and hefted it. I sent it
soaring. God Almighty that woman….

I had to get a
hold. Let’s see…I hadn’t written my pard in St. Joe yet, so that door was still
wide. I’d go there as planned, that’s what. I’d shake the dust of this place. He
and Seth could get in her corn, for what did it matter now, her back east and
married to him. It was his then. It was
all his…Johnny
and Janey, and my seed in her making another at this moment with the sun just
coming up. He was taking everything from me.
All that was
mine.
And was never mine.

I found a stick
this time and sent it spinning.

She took me down
the glory road and stuck a knife in my gizzard, that’s what. She dug out my
confession, that’s what it was the whole time, using herself to get at me.
But why?
Why do it if she didn’t love me.
Then
blaming me like I wasn’t on my knees.
Was she the devil?

Well, I told her
who I was. She would have plenty to think about, that’s if she ever gave me
another thought. But I would not be getting that corn in…his corn. I was done.

I was done, damn
it to Hades. There weren’t enough sticks or rocks in this county to throw. I
was done.

I walked those
three miles in no time. I went to the barn and looked around for what I’d take.
I had put what really mattered in a small pile. I hadn’t come with much, and I
would leave the same. I put the leather pouch on the table. That would be for
Johnny.

So he came
running then, stopping at my doorway only long enough to catch his wind and
barrel across to where I stood. He plowed into me like always, and I bent over
him and caught him round the shoulders.

“Don’t go Mr.
Tom,” he sobbed into my legs. “Don’t leave us.”

I knelt down and
took his small shoulders in my hands. “We knew this day was coming.”

He was wiping his
nose on the sleeve of his shirt, but the tears kept coming. “Ma says you’re
going, and I got to be a good boy, but I said
hellfire no I
ain’t going back there
, I ain’t leaving. I want to go with you, Tom. I
don’t want to see that old lady. If we go, you’re going to take off west, and I
want to go with you, Mr. Tom. I’ll be real good and I don’t eat much. I’m a
real hard worker.
You seen
me in the field.” He
grabbed me around the neck then, and hung on tight.

I let him cry it
out some. I bitterly thought of how Addie let me cry it out that morning,
before she put the knife to me.

He quieted pretty
soon, sniffing and such. I pushed him back and went to my box for the clean
handkerchief Ma kept there. I gave him such and he blew it out. Then I took it
and commenced to wipe his sweaty face. We sat on the bed side by side, a fine
pair. “Feel better?” I said.

“No sir,” he
said, every now and again shaking through.

“You know you’ve
got to go with your ma. You got this one chance to see your grandma.”

“Why do I want to?
She’ll just die. I want to go with you, Tom.”

“And I say you
can’t.”

“Don’t you want
me to?”

“Of course…I want
you to. I don’t want to say good-bye, but that’s how this life is sometimes. You
have to be a man about it. If you aren’t, you’ll just be a crybaby all the
time, and you won’t be helping your ma.”

“I’m not a
crybaby,” he said strongly.

“Then stop
crying. It ain’t easy to part ways. But look here,” I went to the table and got
the pouch. “This is marked with our company,” I said. “I want you to take it.”

He took it in his
small hands, still sniffing. “Thanks.” Then he looked at me in earnest, “Can I
have the bayonet, too? You said it was useless.”

I had a flashing
picture of what he did with the stick at the church that day. “No. You’ve no
need of such.”

“How many did you
kill with it again?”

“None,” I said. “I
used it to roast my chow.”

He laughed.
“Nah!”

I laughed too,
though it was no laughing matter for a few other pictures flashed in my mind,
faces looking surprised and stuck. I didn’t want to think on it.

“Never mind about it.
Maybe we could write sometimes.”

“Where would I
send it?”

“Give it to Ma. When
I’m fixed I’ll let her know.”

“Then when I’m
big, I’m coming west to live with you, Mr. Tom. Ma says she don’t know you’ll
ever visit.”

She had me packed
up and gone already. What a fine kettle she made, banishing me from everything.
It wasn’t my
confession,
she did this before I ever
told her the worst thing a man could do. But in the good book, even Cain had
him a wife. “Go on home now, Son.”

He threw himself
on me again, crying. Lord have mercy couldn’t she know what she was doing to
us? I walked and carried him like a baby monkey, though he had some girth to
him from over the summer and Ma’s good table.

Then it hit me, I
wouldn’t see her again. I had not held Janey one more time. I had stalked off,
needing the three miles to bleed off my foul anger. And it was hard to just
send Johnny off and know he’d forget me soon enough. “Come on,” said I. “I’ll
see you home.”

And on the walk
back to Addie’s farm, I had me a thought or two. I would see some regret in her
at least. Not that pity of this morning, but regret. Whatever she said, we had
shared something. She admitted it was real and true. Her husband never fought,
but she was something to stand against, I tell you. But I was a fighter.
Cussed stubborn when engaged.
Had I retreated too soon? Was
I just going to hand over to this fella Quinton Varn? I had not even said my
piece to this dowager. This put some spine in my step. Johnny ran most the way
to keep up. Leastways he wasn’t crying anymore.

At Addie’s farm I
got my knives, strapped the short one to my boot and took the big one in hand,
and I went straight to the field. She was out there, her hair wrapped in a
bandana. We did not take our women to the fields, though many did. Women kept
many of the farms going in the war. But Pa did not believe a woman should take
on the curse of Adam along with her own. He bore this for Ma out of love, he
would say. So we did not allow such as Addie was doing now. But I was not sorry
she was near.

She had brought
water. Lord I loved her, plain and true. But she made me mad, so mad. “I’ll
have some of that,” I told her, marching up, Johnny behind sulking
cause
I wouldn’t let him have a knife for the corn. We’d been
through that and the stitched finger.

I took the dipper
and drank it down, my eyes on her the whole time, and her just a little
uncertain, and surprised to see me. I wished I could see a little joy at my
return, but not her. Don’t give a man hope or nothing. Just bed him in the
field and send him
packing, that
was her. Seth and
Quinton were chopping, though Quinton did not arm his boot so he could only use
his hands.

“Missus,” I said,
eying her over like I’d had no
raising
. I wanted to
shame her I reckon. I wanted her to know that I was seeing beneath that little
thin dress. I had knowledge. I handed her the dipper, letting my hand touch
her, go to her breast and graze her there.

Now I did get
something, a spark in those dark eyes, to match the one in my hand, for it was
that way when I touched her.
Then a quick lick of her red
lips.

I could be
unpredictable too. Lord, she had no idea. She turned from me then. I
huffed
a sound, so she’d know it didn’t hurt me none she’d
turned away. But it did make me mad.

I looked around. Old
Cousin was a fool. I’d had her in the night, and there he was chopping away,
just trying to live through it. I could
a took
her and
he wouldn’t have noticed so locked in his own battle was he.

I eyed where I
would begin. I didn’t want some greenhorn taking my hand off with the knife, so
I kept a piece away from him. And I left her regretfully. My anger was rising
like a spring flood.

Once she set the
crock of water in the wagon, she was back, making sheaves. She and Johnny
chattered about it as they worked. I heard my name from Johnny’s lips, but I
could not make out his words as I was leaving them behind. And even this hurt. Even
this distance bothered me. I wanted them. I wanted her in my arms. I had yet to
crawl from the feel of her on the ground this very day, this very day
damn
it. Did she shake it off already? Shake me off like
some bug? I had her taste.
Still her smell.
And her feel.
She had stood and shown me all she was. Did
she think I would share? Would she make him the same offer? Had she?

I hacked at those
stalks,
I kicked at them, too. There was no keeping up
with me. There never was when I got going and now I had the anger. I worked
some that way, all fury. And I thought again of what I’d told her, heard myself
saying it, about Garrett, about the bullet. Long time passed. Sun lifted high.

I knew what I
would do, I left off. I threw down the knife. I walked with heavy purposeful
steps to where she was. She was a good ways off, bending over gathering stalks.
She straightened and her arms were full. Her eyes grew wide when she saw me,
and she stood there still, watching me get closer. I knocked those stalks out
of her arms, and I looked at her. Then I put my hands on her. She didn’t fight.
So I pulled her to me, but it was not what I thought.

I kissed her
gentle. It was all right there, all the feelings, and her mouth so sweet. I
pulled back then, and she was still staring, confused, but paying attention for
sure.

I let her go
then. I took a few steps back, grinning at her, but it wasn’t in fun, but
something more, and painful as a meat-hook in my chest. And I went back to my
knife.
Back to the corn.
And I started in.

We went to the
house for dinner. Lavinia had set it under a tree. So we gathered there and ate
quick
. I was standing. I shoveled,
cause
that’s how we ate when there was work or war.

But this one, he
was sitting at the base of the tree, leaning there, being served by Lavinia
who, I noticed, hung on everything he said like it was sunshine coming out of
his mouth and not his ass.

And he liked that
she liked it so much. “Adeline,” he called, “
remember
that one old gentleman from Boston.”
Well, on he went and it was quilting bee talk for all the sense it made. I kept
my eyes on Addie when Johnny wasn’t pummeling me with talk.

“What if I just
wore me a knife on my shoe?” he asked. “I need some boots like yours, Mr. Tom. Reckon
I could get me some, Ma?”

Cousin
interjected something about how they carried boots at the store and he would be
able to pick him out some when they all went home. I was proud when Johnny
said, “No thank-you.”

I knew it was a
mite disrespectful, and Addie did say, ‘shame on you Johnny,’ or some-such, but
he looked at me then as if to offer his aid in this battle, and I gave him the
eye, for I was not drafting troops.

It grew quieter
then, as if battle lines were being drawn, or trying to be drawn. I was not
reasonable. I had given her no chance to say if she wanted a killer like me
forcing affection while she toiled like a field hand. I knew I was toeing over.
I knew it. And I cared not a pig’s fart.

Cousin was not
better than me. I was not much good, on the inside, but I could work hard and I
knew how to protect what was mine, if it would just give over and be mine, that
is. Yet I had failed to protect. I had become the menace in the end. What if I
did that here? I had wanted to kill her only that morning. But if I had, I
would die from grief.
Not that it wasn’t in me.
I was
a blackard, I knew that, but to do in another, and this one a mother, an angel,
my angel…then Lord take me. Why did you let me live anyway when so many more
deserving didn’t. And before I’d hurt her…I’d eat my Enfield for dinner. I would.

Then I knew
something. I remembered a time, not long ago, when I planned to go west and disappear
one way or another. If I couldn’t find some spark out there, some reason, I
figured I could go off and no one would know, they’d just wonder sometimes
mayhap, what become of me, but they wouldn’t know. They could imagine something
good.

That’s what going
west had meant. Then after her, it went away. She was my west and all other
directions, she was my look-see. And now I was rejected. Lord she made me
furious.

She came near me,
her holding the tea, asking me if I wanted more. I would always want more, is
what I wanted to say, but Johnny was near, so I held out my cup and she filled
it. There was grime on her neck, and a finger of sweat clearing a path as it
went toward that valley over her collar-bone. She was too red, and it made me
angry that he hadn’t stopped her from the field. I blamed him. He was blocking
my path like a bovine in the road, one that stood there calling out for what
was mine.