Fight for Glory (My Wounded Soldier #1) (24 page)

Tom
Tanner

Chapter
Thirty-Two

I was just a man.
But I felt like a king. I had my queen. I had slayed all the dragons in my way,
and I had her.

So leaving her
again was killing me. But here’s what had to be. I brought her home after two
hours with her in that boarding house in a hired bed. I was used to hanging my
hat, so to speak. But she deserved more.

She had talked in
the bed, and she talked in the carriage. I loved her words, her thoughts, and
God above, her voice.
And her attention, let’s not leave that
by its lonesome.

With the mother
just died, the wake would be in place on the morrow. Presently, she was gone to
the undertakers for embalming. The rich had more ideas on how to spend their
money, but since the war it was fashionable to preserve
themselves
so they could get the honor due them and still smell good before their seed was
planted.

It would be a
matter of two weeks before the business would be settled. That was Addie’s
guess, though she couldn’t ask with the death barely settled on Quinton. He’d
known his aunt as mother and doted on her.

So Addie needed
the few days to handle things for she had no call to ever return, and felt she
must be there for the settlement. Quinton had offered a generosity to Johnny
and hoped to see to his education when he grew old enough. If Johnny would
desire such, Addie felt she owed him that opportunity and Richard would have
agreed.

Course Quinton
had hoped to make Johnny his son, but even still, he would see to him, and
thereby acknowledge Richard Varn’s contribution to the building of his empire. Secretly,
and probably pridefully, I hoped I’d helped put the fear of God in Cousin on
that one.
Too bad for Janey though, not that she would need
him.
She’d be saddled with no pa but me. And I planned not to be a
hardship. Richard Varn had put her in, but it’s me pulled her out.

My people took in
others and loved them fierce. And I was their cloth.

But like Addie, I
was being pulled at. I did not know how Jimmy fared. I had business of my own,
for the good of this, my family, I needed to pay attention to the money I had
coming. Jimmy was right about the reward. If we didn’t stand up and press, they
wouldn’t come looking to hand it to us. For sure, they’d figure William
wouldn’t be able to call them out, and they’d just as soon cut the rest of us. There
would be stories and a lot of tongues flapping. We’d started this thing, and we
needed to see it through. My gut told me William was with the horses. Those
animals would pull at him like Jimmy pulled at me. We knew it wasn’t finished,
not even close. There were sheaves to bring in, and winter was upon us in
symbol and truth.

I had a house to
ready. There was so much when I thought about
it,
I
couldn’t let myself think about it yet.
For I had learned to
parcel my load and lift it in pieces, not all at once.

“I will go for
home, and take Johnny by horseback with me,” I said. “You come on the train
with Janey and Lavinia when you’re done here.” I did not like it, not with the
picture of that train and those dead ones so fresh. But that had been a savage
act. The army would bring peace, mayhap. I could take no chances with Addie and
Janey, not them. But if I held too hard I would lose it all. I told myself to
take courage, and I heard Jimmy again, “Fight where it counts the most.” Having
Addie’s hand in marriage, my next battleground was Springfield.

“You’ll take
Johnny?” she said. She saw the sense in all but this.

“It will help
him, I think,” I said, for I did not have words to back me up, just a knowing,
a
hope. “I will bring him to Ma. By the time he gets there
he will have calmed some and he can get started in the new term at school. And
you’ll be on our heels.”

She hung on my
arm and stared at me hard. I reckoned she had not trusted another with him before
in such a grand way. And I had the wounds. And trouble was my middle name,
though I planned to turn over a new leaf now I was married and a pa. But oh,
she was torn.

“Don’t look at me
with those eyes that get me,” I said laughing. “I can tell you this…he’s at
that place he leaves his ma and turns to his own kind.”

“He is eight,”
she fought me.

“He has seen
things. And he’s full up on it. He’s knows the helpless place, too much. He got
took there, and many men don’t come out, yet he is…eight.”

“I never wanted
this,” she hissed. “I meant to keep him from it.”

I thought she
meant that day she shot the one. But this was more, old sorrow in her eyes, oh
that was what I saw when I looked so deep. That fist in my stomach started to
tighten. There was so much I never heard. She never told.

I just looked at
her. “Tell me,” I said.

She shook her
head.

“Tell me,” I
said, hands on her arms. Then I softened and slid my arms around her and held
her. I cradled her head against my chest. “Tell me,” I said soft.

“I know you won’t
look down on me for it.”

“I will not,” I
said tightening my arms.

“You will
understand.” She put her hands on my arms and lifted her head to me, “It’s why
I love you so.”

I looked at her,
my beauty, my love. I nodded.

“I will tell you.
But not on this day.”

I breathed in. This
was not a day for sad stories.
“Fair enough.”

We stayed that
way, wrapped in one another in that carriage.

After a while she
said, “Johnny is yours too, now, though I may have to be reminded how to share
the load.” Then with fear, “I don’t know how!”

I smiled as I
rubbed the back of my fingers over her soft cheek. “Reckon I can borrow him a
spell. Then I’ll give him back. We can do it like that.
Like
churning butter, our hands on the rocker, first you, then me.”

She nodded at me.
“You’ll want to…give him back.” And we laughed.

“Thank you,” I
said. I kissed her forehead.
Then her nose.
She
giggled like a girl. Oh, she did please me.

Tom
Tanner

Chapter
Thirty-Three

I left that girl,
my woman, standing on that curb by that Sycamore, but it was the wrong
Sycamore. And I twisted round looking at her like a boy going off to war, the
heart within me tempted to rip.

But the boy was
with me. And here’s how it was between me and Cousin. I took Addie to his house
and we went in that big mansion and here he came like he was the pa and I’d
kept her out late. “I need to speak with you,” I said to him before he could
say it to me.

Well, he saw my
arm upon her, my wife. He saw her face, mine too I reckon, biblical knowledge
upon them, for there was no denying the shine. Before he could say something
we’d both have to cotton to, I said, “We are married.”

Well, Addie and
me
never talked about telling him. He surely knew how it was
with us, he’d seen it time and again now, and frankly I was not willing to draw
him a story. He flushed that deep red, easy to see he was so lily white.

Truth told I did
not want his money anywhere near my family. Not a filthy farthing.
But for her.
Not Johnny, but her. She had it coming, but it
would never be enough. For they’d hurt her. She’d not told me, not yet, but it
brought her to Illinois
and she’d suffered when she shouldn’t, and by God he was going to pay her
retribution. It’s all that kept me civil, knowing that money was God to his
kind. So give over, dig into your golden calf, boy, but you ain’t buying a
thing, is what I knew.

Oh, I was a mean
son of a bitch inside when it came to matters about her. And his look had me
going. Up until now, he’d still had hope. If I wasn’t so full on Addie’s
sweetness …it was hard to tell.

“She wants to
stay on….” I began.

“I was hoping to
wait until after the burying,” Addie said in a soft voice that threw some water
on me. I figured mayhap she could handle Cousin better than me. So I put my top
lip against my bottom one and held on.

About then I
heard him. “Tom,” he yelled from somewhere above. Here he came sounding like
the drummer boy before a charge, rat-a-tat-tat. He came in then and like usual,
didn’t slow until I was nearly knocked down.

He’d gone wild. Lavinia
was behind, breathless from trying to catch up to him.

“Where’s Janey?”
I said.

“Hello, Tom,” she
said soft. “She’s sleeping.”

I nodded, one
hand holding my hat, and the other on Johnny.

“Are you going
with your husband?” Cousin said to Addie, his eyes going to Lavinia’s like a
dog wanting a lick. And that’s exactly what I meant to say. I’d seen this some
back.

Lavinia gasped. “You’ve
married?”

Clean out your
ears, was what I thought. “We have,” I said.

“God’s blessing,
Tom,” Lavinia said, her eyes darting to Quinton and holding worry. Guess she
thought I meant, “We have leprosy,” instead of, “We got married.”

She crossed to
Addie and embraced her like she was practicing for the wake.

“You’re my pa?”
Johnny yelled. Then
he
ya-hooed all over that hallway,
skipping and throwing his arms around like Johnny Appleseed, nearly knocking a
vase over that had its own little podium and all. And he wouldn’t listen when
Addie grabbed him to settle him down, but he frantically pushed her hands away.

I saw how it was
then. I was the weapon he used on Quinton. His ma was in the way of it. Part of
me was in sympathy, but I was Pa now, so I had to demand something better,
though truth be told I had no inspiration but this…he might do the same to me
in time. I could feature him using his ma on me, and I had no inclination for
war in the happy home I’d envisioned. For I knew where her heart strings were
and well they should be, but he would not be the master of the tune we lived
by.

I could fight
rebs. I could subdue outlaws, barring train wrecks. But Johnny Varn…he would be
the stone I broke upon.

“Johnny,” said I,
“if you can get quiet, I’d like a peek at Janey ‘fore I go.”

He made a show of
taking my hand, and leading me up the stairs, a new gumption in his walk, in
the hips, his pumping arm, and his general sense of mission, taking two of
those shiny stairs at a time, sometimes three.

He took me past
some rooms looked like some of the plantation homes we’d rummaged. We’d shot
the mirrors out of that one, but I wouldn’t think of that now. He led me into a
room, the one she stayed in, I reckoned. I wondered where Cousin slept. “Where
does Cou…Quinton repose?” I said.

He was not
fooled. The devil in him was an ancient beast and had the knowledge an
eight-year-old boy couldn’t have on his own. He smiled sly. “He’s far away,
with me between.”

I reminded myself
we were not equals. How was it he gave me such a knowing look? He would have
his own room pronto, mayhap his own cabin if he did not take to bridle.

As I viewed my
Janey, that sweet baby who had grown into a fat pretty cherub since last I’d
laid eyes on her, he fell back on the bed, up on his elbows. “You bring the Enfield?”

What? I furrowed
my brow just to set a different pace. “I am not without it.”

“That’s what I
thought. I told Quinton.”

“Uncle Quinton,”
I said.

He smirked. “Cousin,”
he whispered, picking on the quilt, a demon in his face.

By damn.
“Cousin Quinton then,” I said, trying to take my
own rock from his hand in the symbolic sense. He was smart. Like his mother. She’d
been a teacher. I had done poorly in school, but I was a man of skill.
Yet to match him….

He looked at me
and smiled, wiggling his foot to beat the band.

“See you got
them
boots,” I said.

“See you got
yours,” he said. And when I looked, they were the same.

How to get out of
taking him all those miles home? I had said I would, feeling the hero. But
now…she wasn’t fooling when she said I’d want to bring him back. I already did,
and we hadn’t even set out.

“If you are very
good…I have something to tell you…but I think your ma and me need to say it
together.” I didn’t know the rules. Did I have a right to tell him on my own?

She entered then.
“Say what together?” she whispered.

“The…” I nodded
toward Johnny.

Addie sat on the
bed. I almost groaned she looked so ladylike and beautiful. “Johnny, you must
stay very quiet when I tell you this. Do you understand? Lavinia just got Janey
down.”

“Tell me what?”
he said in a way made my fingers twitch.

“Tom has invited
you to go home with him.”

Well, he rolled
over and yelled into the bed, I’ll give him that. But it had the feared
outcome, and Janey screamed. I went to her quick and scooped her up. She didn’t
like it at first, but I rocked her strong, and it gave me something to do.

“Johnny, Johnny,
look at me,” Addie was saying, struggling to get him to roll over and listen.

He was moving all
over the bed like he was having fits. “Hoo-ray,” he was saying, but happy
though he pretended to be, it was off-set by his disobedience.

Addie had to
stand or have her teeth rattled, not to mention his new boots were flying
toward her. I knew if I went for him, and I couldn’t with Janey, but if I went
for him, she’d never let me take him, and much as I might be tempted to drop
him in the Mississippi, at least for a dunking, I had to inspire trust. I was a
pa, dammit.

I can’t imagine
what he’d been like on the train.
Or would be like for me on
the train.
He was too much for one small woman that already had a baby.

“I’ll take him
tonight,” I said.

That stopped him
cold. He studied me. “Take me where?”

Oh, he was
getting strong now. I saw it. He’d been jerked too much. I eased back then.
“Got us a room.”

He sat up and
pursed his lips. “I ain’t goin’ to bed too soon,” he said.

I ignored this. We
had bigger battles ahead. “Reckon you could pack him?” I said to Addie.

“You are going to
do this?” she said to Johnny, giving him too much choice in the matter. No
wonder he was such a baby. Well, he didn’t know what he was. He knew he wasn’t
a girl. But he had no idea how to be a big boy. I saw the mess in him.

Womenfolk
couldn’t help on this. It came handed down, man to man. If he didn’t get a
strong hand on him, from his own kind, he’d set his own rules, he’d live for
himself, no chance to be a hero to a wife someday and a family.

I’d seen it in
life, and in the army. If you set the rules, you set the line, and met it
yourself, and set it again. Mostly you set it too high and proved to yourself
you were a failure. Even more you set it too low so you could stay small cause
you knew you were afraid, but you didn’t want it to show up to anyone else.

That’s what Iris
was trying to say, but she didn’t know all of it. Not the part about men. Women
didn’t know that part. And we didn’t tell it. It would worry them fierce, and
we didn’t want them meddling for it had to be done. The man, the hero, had to
be found and set free…by another man. Best man to do it…your pa.

So this came down
to me. By damn it did. And the war was just the proving grounds.