Just a Kiss Away (29 page)

She grimaced. He picked up a pair of pants, shook them and the buttons fell off too.

“Every shirt, every pair of pants, at least the ones that weren’t stuck to the pots, has the same problem.” He dropped the clothes. “Forgot about them, did you?”

As he spoke his speech was less controlled, something that worried her. She nodded. “But you dragged me in here and I—”

“I’m surprised you didn’t smell them burning,” he interrupted. “The rest of the camp did. Hell, the Spanish probably did!” he shouted as he walked toward her, stopping only when he loomed over her.

She tried to keep from flinching. His neck was purple again, a sure sign that something she’d touched had once again turned to mud.

You will sew every button back onto every piece of clothing in that pile.” He dropped the box on the cot. “You wanted something to do. Now you have something to do.” He turned, made it to the door in a few long strides, and left the bungalow.

She stared at the closed door for a moment, gave the pile of clothes a quick glance, then opened the box. It contained row after row of black thread and a big tin of pins and needles. She grabbed a basket and bent down to pick up the scattered buttons.

An hour later, the basket was filled with buttons of various sizes and the clothes sat there waiting. She looked at them and frowned, then gave a deep cleansing sigh of resignation. Sam was right about one thing: now she had something to do.

Five hours later
she bit off the thread, held up the twenty-seventh shirt, and eyed the buttons. Only three of the eight were the correct size. She frowned. She’d gone through the whole basket but instead of the pants having one set of a certain size, and the shirts another, they must have all been different. She tried to ram an oversized button through the hole. It wouldn’t fit, so she did what she had done to the others: she snipped the end of the buttonhole. That solved the problem, at least for the oversize buttons. The ones that were too small were just gonna have to stay that way.

Someone knocked, but before she could rise the door opened and Jim Cassidy stepped inside, her meal in his hands and Medusa on his shoulder.

“Awwk!” The bird flapped twice and flew from Jim’s shoulder to Lollie’s head, her favorite place to perch. Medusa bent over and tried to look at her upside down, which made her laugh for the first time in a while. Then the bird began to sing, “Ohhhhh-ohhhhh, way down south in the land of cotton . . .”

“Oh, Medusa, I’ve missed you,” she whispered, holding out her hand while the bird sang to its heart’s content. Still singing, and with a clear Southern accent, Medusa stepped onto Lollie’s hand. She brought the bird down to eye level.

“I wish you’d teach her something else. I’ve been listening to that song for two days. That and Madame Devereaux’s Rules of Feminine Deportment.” Jim crossed the room, the tray still in his hands. “You women don’t really believe that stuff, do you? Like don’t discuss music when the temperature is over eighty?”

“You have a big mouth, Medusa,” she mumbled, stroking the bird a few times. Then she looked at the tray, let the bird hop onto her table perch, and turned so she could take the meal.

“I especially liked ‘Don’t make acquaintances you will be ashamed of in town.’ Sam said you were a snob—a looker, but a snob nonetheless.”

She took the tray from him, ignoring the way his eyes roved over her like hands.

He looked at the clothes, then at her. “Got into a little hot water?”

She slammed the tray down and glared at him. “That comment was in poor taste.”

“I have no taste, although”—he moved toward her—”I wouldn’t mind tasting you.” He closed in, backing her up until the backs of her knees hit the side of the cot. “I like snobs.”

“Saaaaam!” she screamed as loud as she could.

Jim grunted, shook his head, then said, “He’s not here.”

“Where is he?” She didn’t like the look in Jim’s eyes.

“He’s in San Fernando, but I’m sure he heard you.” He stroked her cheek.

“Stop it!”

“I can’t stop, and I don’t think you want me to.” She batted his hand away. “Leave me alone!”

Out of the corner of her eye she caught a flash of raven black, swooping out the open window. They’d scared Medusa away, which made her even angrier at Jim. She reached up to shove him away, but he grabbed her hands and began to kiss them while he pulled her forward. She kicked him.

“Damn!” He flinched, and suddenly his seduction wasn’t so slow. He pinned her hands against his chest and clamped his arms around her, tight. She wiggled and tried to kick, but he pressed his legs against her until the edge of the cot cut into them.

She opened her mouth to scream. His mouth slammed over hers. She tried to pull away, but he held her head in a one-handed vise grip that wouldn’t allow her to move. His tongue tried to force its way past her lips.

An instant later she was free. It happened so fast, she fell back on the cot, her vision catching only the flash of Sam’s long black hair whipping by. She scrambled up to the sound of fists hitting flesh and grunts of pain. Sam and Jim rolled around across the floor, fighting—or at least Sam was fighting. He was the only one throwing punches.

“I told you to leave her alone!” Sam grabbed Jim by the collar and hit him so hard he flew out the open door. Sam bolted out after him. Lollie ran to the doorway.

They rolled in the dirt, shouting. A crowd gathered, forming a circle around the two men. Sam arched back to throw a punch and Jim threw an arm up and blocked Sam’s flying fist, planted his boot on Sam’s chest and shoved him over. “You’re crazy! We’ve never fought over a woman. And what the hell are you doing back?”

“I’m damn glad I came back,” Sam growled, shot up in a cloud of dirt, and lunged at him.

Jim rolled, then struggled to his feet. “Stop it, buddy. I don’t want to have to hit you.”

Sam was on his feet, facing his friend. “Hit me! Go ahead and try. Come on, Cassidy, hit me!” His chin shot up and he pointed to it, daring Cassidy to throw the punch. “Come on, come on.” He panted, his look lethal while he circled his friend. “Hit me, so I can goddamn kill you!”

“You keep saying you don’t want her, you pigheaded bastard!” Cassidy ducked Sam’s left fist, but the right connected, knocking him to the ground. He scrambled up and blocked Sam’s next punch, then landed one of his own, but it didn’t stop Sam, who was on him, hitting him again and again, like a man crazed with the need to smash another human. It was awful.

Lollie ran down the steps. “Stop it! Stop!”

Neither one paid attention, but now Jim was hitting Sam so hard Lollie could hear the crunch of knuckles hitting jaw full force.

She looked out at the soldiers. “Do something! Please! Stop them!” The men just stared at her, didn’t blink, didn’t move. They turned away and watched their American commanders beat the devil out of each other.

She turned, ran inside, and grabbed the water bucket she used to wash in. With both hands she lugged it out the door, down the steps, moving toward the tumbling, bloody men. Sam must have seen her, because he paused, fists up, and whipped his head around.

She swung the pail back. Jim threw a knockout right into Sam’s jaw. She heard Jim’s fist connect. Sam sank to the ground, unconscious. She squeezed her eyes shut and threw the water. The bucket went with it, hitting Jim in the head with a loud clunk. A second later he, too, was out cold.

“Oh, dear.” She pulled her hands away from her horrified face. The rebel soldiers watched her, their looks as hostile as if she were Judas with her hands full of silver. Some of them mumbled things, and she was glad she didn’t understand their language. But she didn’t need to. It was clear that they blamed her for the fight between Sam and Jim. The heat of those looks told her as much.

Taking a deep breath, she took a step toward Sam. The soldiers cut her off, moving in a crowd to where the two men lay and forming a wall that left her outside, an outcast. It was the most helpless, feeble feeling she’d ever had, and as she watched them carry their commanders away, that aching feeling just intensified until once again she could see nothing but blurred images of the soldiers’ backs.

An empty wooden
thread spool rolled across the plank floor. Lollie followed it with her eyes. Medusa was playing with it. Head down and black wings up, she’d butt the spool across the floor singing her newest song, “Amazing Grace.” Whenever she hit the “me” in the chorus, she’d turn and roll sideways with the spool.

Lollie crossed to the door, dodging the other spools on the floor.

“Awk! To save a wretch like meeeeeee!” Medusa sent the spool caroming off the table leg.

Slowly Lollie opened the door and peered outside. No one was near, but a small group of rebels stood in the middle of the compound between the cook hut and her bungalow, and another bunch had lined up nearby. Her heart sped up a little.

She’d thought about this, planned it the whole time she’d been sewing those clothes. She knew of no other way to make up for her mistake. She felt around in the pocket of her pants. She had only a few nuts for Medusa, and she needed more. With one deep fortifying breath, she left the refuge of her bungalow and walked toward the cook hut. Each thud of her boots in the dirt matched the heavy thud of her heart.

Conversation tinged with laughter came from the line of soldiers standing about ten feet from her. A couple of men turned toward her and stared. The others still talked and laughed. But that didn’t matter because she’d noticed their clothes. The shirts were buttoned, but there were large gaps every so often. One man’s collar was a good two inches higher on one side than on the other. She winced and then saw the worst thing.

The sleeves were too short and some of the men’s shirttails had pulled out of their waistbands. And the pants were even worse. On some of them, one pant leg was particularly shorter than the other, and every man had a good three inches of leg showing between the hem of his pants and his boot tops.

She’d cooked their clothes so long they must have shrunk. She stopped, talked to herself for a full minute to get her courage up, and started to walk past them. As she did, she tried desperately not to let them see how nervous she was. She neared, and their laughter died. She didn’t look at them. The conversation tapered off until there was nothing but the sound of her boots on the ground and her heart pounding in her ears.

She could feel the contempt in their stares. She swallowed, a reaction to the tension of the moment, but she kept walking, her eyes ahead. She refused to look at them, choosing instead to tilt her chin up a bit more than normal and bluff her way past them, an internal litany of “Gawd give me strength” going through her mind.

Southern pride and pure determination were all that kept her from collapsing in a heap right there on the ground. The closer she got to the hut, the more soldiers appeared, all of them looking like an army of misfits in their mangled clothing. Gomez stood on the steps to the hut, and she walked past him. He didn’t smile, didn’t say anything, just moved aside, but she could feel his eyes on her just before she closed the wooden door of the hut.

Leaning against the closed door, she exhaled the breath she’d held for an eternity and looked around. A couple of men worked in the kitchen. One stood at one of the four ranges, stirring something, and another scooped flour out of one of the barrels that lined one wall of the rectangular room. Both men looked up at her.

“I need some nuts. For Medusa,” she said, watching as one man gave a quick nod toward a back room, then returned to baking his bread. She hurried into the supply room and searched until she found a burlap bag of peanuts in a corner. Scooping out handfuls, she filled her pants pockets, her shirt pockets, and her shirt front with the nuts and then went to the small doorway, peeking at the men to make sure they were busy enough not to see how many she was taking. Not that it really mattered. She hadn’t been denied any food since she’d been here, but she didn’t want to explain why she was taking so many nuts.

With her arms crossed over her shirtfront, she left, walking briskly past the men outside and heading for her bungalow. The minute she rounded the corner she made a sharp turn and took off toward the men’s barracks. She passed the first three and had only one more bungalow to pass before she reached the camp’s jungle edge. The last bungalow belonged to Sam and Jim. She paused.

She’d tried to get someone to take her to see Sam, but the men just looked at her as if she intended to hurt him. Their looks were so accusing that she felt guilty, even though she tried to persuade herself that it wasn’t really her fault. Although part of her knew that if she hadn’t come here, this wouldn’t have happened, which was why the men blamed her.

Her mind flashed with the image of Sam standing in the hut, after Colonel Luna’d had him beaten. This time Sam had instigated the brawl, with his friend, lecher though he was, and Sam had done it because he was trying to protect her. For that reason alone she needed to see if he was okay.

Tiptoeing along, with her body brushing the bungalow’s wood plank wall, she moved until she was under the first narrow window. It was too high for her to see in so she grabbed the ledge and tried to pull herself up. She didn’t have much arm strength and slid back to the ground.

Taking a deep breath, she knotted her fists, bent her knees, and leapt up with all the momentum she could put into her small body. She caught a brief glimpse of a male form on a cot. Then her feet slammed onto the ground with a jarring thud, and a whole slew of peanuts flew out of her shirtfront and scattered on the ground like hail.

She stared at the peanuts in disgust. She’d forgotten about them. She looked up at the window. She couldn’t tell who was in the cot. It could have been Sam or Jim. She leapt again, this time holding her shirt closed. She jumped up repeatedly, her boots crunching on the spilled peanuts, but she still couldn’t recognize him.