Homefront Hero (12 page)

Chapter Sixteen

J
ohn had grown to hate the gymnasium. Without Leanne, it loomed as a drab battlefield on which he waged his personal war against the leg that had become his enemy.

“Gallows. Ready to show me what you can do?” Dr. Madison walked over with the clipboard and pen John had come to loathe almost more than his leg. The doctor was sly, always adjusting the paper so that John could not read whatever notes were being taken. To make matters worse, Madison had a habit of becoming disturbingly cheerful when a benchmark approached. The doctor’s upbeat manner made John feel like a child about to take a school test. Some days he half expected to walk out of a session with a letter grade marked on his forehead. Today was the ultimate “pass” or “fail.”

The exam consisted of several exercises to show his flexibility, two tests of strength and the dastardly test of stamina. “How far, how fast” haunted him every lap of this place, especially when Leanne was not by his side. And she was not by his side today—by his choice, not hers. The distraction of her presence was a risk he could not take. Today was John against pain, pure and simple. John would prevail, pure and simple.

“Weights first, shall we?” Dr. Madison’s smile broadcast confidence as they walked over to the groupings of free weights, pulleys and dumbbells that occupied the north corner of the room. Some considerate soul had placed these benches next to the windows, so that soldiers had a view of a lovely patch of green as they endured therapy. “You worked eighty pounds easily on your left leg last week. If you can get to forty-five degrees with sixty pounds on your right leg, I think you’ll have shown grand progress.”

It was the angle that always posed the problem. Any brute could hoist a pile of iron. It was bending like a pretzel while one did it that always eluded him. “And we all know I’m nothing if not grand.” John smiled as he removed his tan day uniform shirt and hung it on the series of pegs by the wall. He settled himself on the bench, breathing deeply while Nelson loaded the weights.

Breathe in. Brace. Extend. Bend.
The healthy left leg complied with ease. Nelson removed half the weights so that John’s right leg hoisted forty pounds. Some pain, but nothing to faze the likes of him. Fifty pounds hurt enough to silence his chatter, but still he managed it with the appearance of ease. Fifty-five stung. Nelson loaded the final five-pound weight and John focused every ounce of his being on the muscles in his right leg. The last six inches of the extension were nasty, but he made it not once but twice. Nelson smiled.

“And the flex next, please.” Dr. Madison merely raised one eyebrow in appreciation as he made some mark on his paper. John rolled over as if in the comfiest of beds. The flex was much easier.

Three more exercises met the requirements John knew Dr. Madison placed on his return orders. “Range of motion, your specialty,” the doctor joked as they moved to a wall marked with a large collection of arcs and lines.

“Where are my cameras?” John casually wiped the sweat from his brow with a rough towel.

“Ever the comedian. To the right, if you will.” John held the bar bolted to the wall and swung his left leg to the right. While it was hard to hold his full weight on his bad leg, the move wasn’t that challenging. It’s opposite—moving his right leg to the left—produced some pain. It was the next exercise—side steps with his body weight involved, precisely the move Leanne was attempting to improve with her waltzing scheme—that proved difficult. He closed his eyes, imagining his careful twirls around the room with Leanne, grafting her image into his memories of easy dances and carefree parties before the war. His leg cramped up a bit with the second try, but he was able to meet the black mark on the wall he knew to be his goal. How irritating to have one’s future hanging on a smudge of paint two inches out of reach.

“Nurse Sample’s ingenuity agrees with you,” Dr. Madison remarked with amusement. “Two inches greater range. Perhaps we should enlist more violinists.”

“I’d prefer if you enlisted better cooks,” John said as he turned to stand with his back against the wall, bending to the far left as instructed. “I’ve lost weight in the time I’ve been here. How is it the army managed better rations in France than on its own…” He caught a sight out of the corner of his eye that stole the end of his thought. Through one corner of one window, perhaps where she thought he could not see her, John saw Leanne. She was seated on a small bench by the corner of the yard outside the gymnasium—one of the many chairs set out for reconstruction patients to sit and take in the sun.

“Captain?” Dr. Madison pushed his clipboard into John’s vision. “On its own what?”

“…soil,” John finished, fishing the thought back up from the depths of his brain where the sight of Leanne had banished it. He’d asked Leanne not to attend today’s examination, and yet there she was, sitting on the hill facing the gymnasium. “Soil,” he repeated, fighting the urge to blink and shake his head as he performed the “touch your toes” movement he knew came next. “How is it the army can’t cook on its own soil?”

“I expect it is the sheer number of mouths to feed now.” It was true: Camp Jackson had swollen beyond capacity weeks ago, with men and facilities tucked into every conceivable corner. Dr. Madison peered down to see how close John’s hands got to his boots. John pressed the extra two inches to brush the top of his laces, pretending the lightning bolt of pain currently shooting up his right leg wasn’t really there. He returned to upright, half expecting to find Leanne gone, the image of her under the tree a figment of his imagination.

“Again, please.” Dr. Madison’s tone was dry, rather less impressed than John would have liked.

He started to say “Why?” but replaced it with “Certainly,” making it sound as if reaching for his boots was the highlight of his dressing routine rather than one of the most painful parts of every morning. When he returned upright for the second time, he fixed his eyes on Leanne to block out his leg’s complaint. Why would she come here when he’d asked her not to? The answer hit him when he recognized the particular fold of her hands. Why must he continually experience the sight and sound of Leanne Sample praying for him? That’s what she was doing, he could tell. Hang her, she had to pick the one thing he’d find even more distracting than her presence! She had no way of knowing he’d catch sight of her, probably thought she was hidden, and if Dr. Madison had not asked him to bend to the left in this particular spot, he most likely would have missed her. Which begged the even more disturbing question of how “fate”—for it was much easier to consider it fate than Who he knew Leanne would credit for the coincidence—had lined up this glimpse at this particular moment.
She’s praying for you. Right now. Your name is leaving her lips, flung toward the vault of Heaven to do something she doesn’t even think is wise.

“Gallows? Captain Gallows!”

John managed to wrench his attention back from Leanne’s folded hands. “Pardon?”

“Are you finding your exam so dull as to daydream out the window?”

“It’s so dreary without the pain,” he lied, enjoying the disbelieving
“hrmph”
the remark drew from the doctor. “I’m all healed, thanks to you.”

Dr. Madison gave him the look of weary toleration he gave all John’s “I’m healed!” lies and pointed toward the track painted on the gymnasium floor. “You’re much improved, I’ll grant you that. Laps, please.”

Laps, as they had always been, were the true test. John could gut through any measure of pain for the handful of seconds it took to produce a pose, but laps were his ultimate enemy. No matter what mental fortitude he possessed, he could not will his knee not to buckle. He could not persuade his tendons to unfreeze, could not fool his way through a final lap without the help of his cane. John could sway the muses of speech and appearance, but time and distance were two masters he could not best. He’d grown to hate the incessant tick of Dr. Madison’s stopwatch and the battlefield of those cold green ovals with their merciless white borders.

“One mile, eighteen minutes?” John tried to make it sound as if he were selecting between steak or lobster entrees.

“Twenty will suffice.”

In truth, John’s best time at the mile had been twenty-three minutes, and they both knew it. In fact, they never talked as if any of this were ever half as painful and difficult as it truly was. That was the game they played. “Well, as I’ll not be stalling for time with the lovely Nurse Sample on my arm, I expect that should pose no problem.” With a wink and a salute, John set off.

* * *

She shouldn’t be here. He’d told her not to come and she’d argued against it, until he’d told her she would prove too much of a distraction. Part of her told herself he was a soldier who needed to focus on the vital task at hand, but another, more rebellious part of her latched onto the look in his eyes when he’d asked her to stay “where that pretty face can’t undermine the mission.”

“I’m not blind.” She’d sighed to Ida the evening before as they’d each sat on their beds after supper. She’d just related how she’d dared to pray over John’s leg, and the dozen emotions of that encounter washed over her with new vigor. “I know my heart is beginning to wander toward him.”

“He’s mighty wander-able.” Ida’s West Virginia drawl languished over the words and she braided her hair into the thick plait she did every evening. “I can’t blame you at all, but you’d best keep the eyes of your soul wide open, as my daddy would say.”

“John has so many good qualities…” She’d told herself that over and over.

“But there are so many…considerations in his case.”

“Considerably!” she joked. “He maneuvers people and situations to suit his own ends far too easily. He is a charmer in the best and worst sense of the word—a silver-tongued man if there ever was one.” Leanne curled her toes up under her skirts and let her head fall back against the bedroom wall. “And he couldn’t be further from any kind of faith. He’s an unsuitable prospect on any number of levels.”

“Were you picking a horse, I might agree. Matters of the heart don’t come quite so clear-cut, I find. Even in horses, though, it’s the yearling that makes the least sense on paper that just may well take the race by storm.”

Leanne managed a chuckle. Ida often had the strangest way of looking at things, and yet they made their own kind of wise sense. “Are you calling Captain Gallows a long shot?”

“I’m just saying the finish line is a long ways off, and you’d best take this race one turn at a time.” Ida tied her braid up in a silk ribbon—one of the few luxuries still within wartime reach. “You’ve put tomorrow in God’s hands. How about you leave it there?”

Leanne had gone to sleep meaning to do just what Ida said, but couldn’t now that the day was here. She’d made too many errors during her rounds this morning, to the point where the doctor had sent her home an hour early and told her to rest. Rest? How could she rest not being allowed to watch John’s test? Unable to stay completely away, Leanne had hid herself on the hill where she could see just into the gymnasium but not in a spot where she’d see him in particular. From here she could watch over
where he was
without watching over him, and John would never catch sight of her.

She had brought her Bible, hoping to find comfort in the words, but found herself lost in fervent prayer instead.
I fear his leaving, Lord. I fear he means too much to me. I fear he’ll never know You and that means we must never be together.
Thoughts and surges of concern washed up over her, disjointed as they were heartfelt.
Guard his leg from pain. Send strength to those wounded muscles. Send him calm, Lord. You know his fear won’t serve him well today.
The prayer that barely formed itself into words, the one that covered all the others, was simply,
Do what’s best for him. Save him from going if he ought to stay. Send him if he needs to go. He can’t yet see what You want for him—spare his life until he sees You at work in it. Spare him. Spare me this storm I’ve tried so hard not let into my heart.

Leanne hadn’t even realized how much time had gone by—she’d been watching the lights in the tiny corner of the gymnasium she could see, foolishly thinking they’d shut off when John was finished. A tap on the bench back startled her, and she jumped in fright only to see the tip of John’s cane resting on the seat beside her.

Chapter Seventeen

“Y
ou’d make a poor spy.”

John, on the other hand, would make a very good spy, for while his voice sounded tired, nothing of the day’s outcome showed on his face. There was no hope of hiding what she was doing, and she found she didn’t really want to keep her concern a secret. “How was the testing?”

He eased himself down beside her, slowly, the way he did when his leg pained him most. “I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t know. It could go either way, I suppose. I met some of the standards, came close enough in three more that Madison could sign the orders today—if he chose to.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” She noticed his fist was clenched around the arm of the bench.

“I would rather have left him no room to choose.”

That was John, always needing the world to turn on his own terms. No wonder his brush with mortality had rattled him so. “How do you feel about the results?”

“You mean other than the wrenching pain and the frustration?” He attempted a smile—the false one he applied to make light of his pain—and tapped his cane against the boot of his good leg. “I think Madison will send me off.”

He said it so easily, as if he’d been asked to take the hallway on the left instead of the right. The part of her that tried to trust God with today’s outcome fell prey to a surge of panic. He might really go back. “You do?” She nearly gulped it.

“Mostly because I told him I’d make his life a living nightmare if he kept me. It isn’t wise to cross a Gallows, you know.” The momentary dark flash in his eyes showed John for the warrior he was. It was probably a very dangerous thing indeed to wake the ire of such a man. Just as quickly, the darkness receded and he raised an amused eyebrow. “And you know I asked you not to come here.”

“You asked me not to attend your testing and I did not. And, well, I thought I’d placed myself where you couldn’t see me.”

John looked as pleased to hear this as she was embarrassed to admit she couldn’t stay away. “Had Dr. Madison not asked me to bend to the left, I wouldn’t have. As it was, I happened to look up at just the right moment to see where you were…and what you were doing.”

He knew! Leanne felt as if she were glass, her emotions laid plain to his insistent eyes.

“Isn’t God everywhere? Still you had to be here, watching over me in the gymnasium?” His eyes fairly glowed. It wasn’t fair that he was so handsome at this moment when she felt so vulnerable.

She wouldn’t answer his question. He wasn’t really seeking an answer in any case. Leanne knew exactly what he was doing, peeling away her excuses for needing to be here, forcing her to admit what they both already knew. What they’d brushed up against the night of the ball.

John moved one hand to touch her arm. “I was angry at first. You’re a terrible distraction, and I did miss one lift simply because you threw my concentration.”

She looked down, but John ducked his head to catch her eyes and return her gaze to him. “Then during the laps, those horrid, endless laps when my leg was screaming and I needed to walk faster, I thought of you. Out here, doing…what I knew you were doing. And…”

She could see he was deciding how far to step out, what to believe about the test he’d just endured. Had God shown His face to John in those laps? Could it be that simple? “And what?”

“And I gritted my teeth and walked faster than I’ve ever walked before for longer than I thought possible. Because I felt…pulled along. By you. Or by…well, I don’t know just yet, but I suspect you have several theories.”

It was the closest thing to a consideration of faith she might ever get from him. A smile bubbled up from the part of her heart she’d tried so hard to ignore. “No, only one. I prayed exactly that. I prayed that God would pull you mightily toward the outcome He had planned, even if it wasn’t what you or I wanted.”

John stared at her, deeply, his eyes a mighty pull of their own. “What is it you or I want?”

“Captain Gallows, you’ve never drawn a single breath not knowing exactly what you wanted.” She’d meant it as a snappy retort, a way to stave off the warmth in his steady gaze, but they were the wrong words. He’d turn them on her, most certainly.

He did. “You’re right. I do know exactly what I want.” He reached for her hand. “If you didn’t want it, you’d have been able to stay away from here.”

What would be the point of denying it? It was so clear, so strong, resonating between them even now. She ought to pull her hand away, to resume her insistence that they couldn’t be together. She couldn’t draw the breath to do it. The heat of his hand on hers, the way his thumb followed the shape of her wrist dashed every sensible thought from her grasp. When he feathered one finger down the side of her cheek, Leanne felt as if she’d dissolved into thin air, mere breath and yearning. When he took her face in his hand and gazed at her as if the whole world were found in her eyes, everything else fell from existence. “You’ve undone me, Leanne. I don’t know how, I don’t know when, I don’t even know what to do about it, except this.”

His kiss was careful, reverent, unlike anything she’d expect from the dashing Captain Gallows. It wasn’t Captain Gallows’s kiss, she realized; it was John’s kiss. A kiss filled with one young man’s wonder, as though it were the first honest thing this hero had ever done. She’d read novels where men “claimed” their women with powerful kisses, but this wasn’t anything like that. He’d surrendered to her in this kiss, surrendered to the pull between them neither of them seemed able to stop or control. He inhaled as though the scent of her could heal his pain, clung to her as though her touch flooded him with peace. It was as if the whole world shimmered, as if the war itself paused at the sudden gush of grace.

* * *

Every inch of John’s body, every corner of his being burst out of some dull fog he’d not even realized was there. Leanne was the opposite of everything he sought in a woman and yet, that was just the point—he
hadn’t
sought her. He hadn’t set out to win her; rather, they’d been pulled steadily toward each other since that first day.

“Did you know,” he said as he let his forehead fall against hers—a hopelessly romantic gesture he’d vowed never to do—“how easily I picked you out of the audience that day? Oh, I cast my eyes over the full crowd because that’s what I’ve been trained to do, but it was as if all I could do was crave the sight of your wide eyes.”

She made a little gasp that wrapped itself around his heart. “Then it wasn’t just me? You really
were
staring right at me? I thought it just a trick of presentation, the acclaimed Gallows oratory technique.”

It felt important—poetic, even—that their eyes had so locked in a crowd of hundreds of people. It lit a glow in his chest to know his gaze had affected her so strongly. “So you felt it, as well?”

She cast her eyes up to the tree limbs that shaded the bench. “Oh, I must admit it made you terribly intimidating. Had I not seen you bend over in the stage wings, I might never have thought you a mere mortal.”

John liked to think no one caught him with his guard down. Not especially at an event like that. “You saw me in the wings?”

“Don’t be upset. It was my first glimpse of the person you really were. I think that’s when I first began to…”

She couldn’t even bring herself to finish that sentence. Were her feelings that strong? Or was she that much of an innocent? “I can’t even tell you when or how I first ‘began to.’ Like I said, you snuck up on me.” He kissed her forehead, finding the flutter of her lashes against his chin a most exquisite sensation. He moved to kiss her mouth again, wanting to cover her in a dozen tender touches.

Leanne pulled away slightly. “You are too persuasive, John.”

He moved back in, grinning with a pure happiness he hadn’t expected. “It is one of my many gifts.”

She pulled farther away. “No, truly, John, I must ask you not to take advantage of how I feel. I’m…I’m not used to such strong attentions. In fact, I should never have let you kiss me.”

She had an analytical look in her eyes, as if solving a thorny problem. Certainly not like any woman he’d just kissed so soundly ought to look. “I’m rather glad you did. I’d like to think you were glad I did, as well.”

“That’s just it. I can’t think clearly with you so close, looking at me like that.”

“It is a classic symptom, you know. I’m having a bit of trouble thinking myself.”

She took a deep breath. “John, please. There are so many complications. How am I to deal with the truth that we ought not to be together? Not now. Not when…you’re…leaving, perhaps.”

How like Leanne to look straight at the thing he was trying to deny. “But it is not also truth that I’m here, now, and feel what you feel?”

“Life is more than ‘here, now,’ John, even in wartime. And while it is true that I…feel what you feel, there’s another truth. You don’t share my faith, and even what I feel can’t change what I believe about the match of hearts and souls. How can it be right to consider a future when we don’t share the God who holds that future?”

He placed his hand over hers, and while she tried to pull it away, he wouldn’t let her. “I don’t believe that has to come between us.”

“I do.”

Her voice wavered. She turned to look at him, and he saw how he’d unraveled her resistance. The honorable part of him admired her all the more for clinging to her convictions, while a darker part of him wanted to pull them down one dishonorable kiss at a time. It stung the conscience he wasn’t sure he still had. Where was the grace and mercy Leanne attributed to God in a tangle like this?

“You feel something for me, and I for you. If God creates us, then He surely creates what we feel. He must have known this would happen. He must know what you feel, what I felt when I kissed you.”

“John, the choice is neither yours nor mine. I am under orders, just as you are. I am no more free to ignore God’s instructions simply because I wish differently than you are to ignore the general’s.”

“But you
do
wish differently. That must matter for something.”

“It makes little difference. Faith means I surrender to God’s will in my life, trusting He knows better than my foolish heart.”

Her sad smile was a torturous enticement. She was velvet and porcelain and tenderness, and she was stealing his heart even now by refusing it. He couldn’t recall wanting a woman more ever in his life. “What if I don’t want to surrender you?”

She stood up, putting distance between them. “Please don’t press me beyond my strength, John. If you do care for me, grant me that.”

He hated the idea of her thinking of him like some advancing foe, something God must protect her from, something she must flee. Still, Leanne was right; he never stopped pushing until he got what he wanted, and now that he’d realized what—
who
—he wanted, he knew his own nature. Dark as it was to admit, John knew himself perfectly capable of charming her beyond her resistance, unforgivable as it was. “I can’t not be near you. You can do no better, today’s already proven that.”

Leanne covered her face in her hands. “Perhaps it is God’s wise kindness, then, that you do leave.”

She’d done it. She’d found the one way to cause him greater pain than any of his wounds.