Love is a Wounded Soldier (7 page)

“I think the question that’s needing to be
asked,” I said, my voice vibrating slightly, but threateningly, like a knife
held in a shaky hand, “is where the hell were you today at Ma’s burying?”

He got a look in his eye like he’d been
shot and hadn’t seen it coming. He was silent. Even in his inebriated state, he
still had enough human decency to know he was deservedly slime in my eyes. I
felt like our roles had reversed, and he was the boy about to get a whipping.
He had no excuse, so he returned to the question of Ma’s will and land titles.

“This ain’t right,” he said, nodding at the
papers before him. “This place is mine, and you’re gonna hafta sign it over to
me, boy.”

“I don’t have to sign over
shit
!” I
told him. Now I was almost challenging him, daring him. He stared at me dumbly
like a cow.

“Your wife just died, and all you’re concerned
about is who gets the goldamn farm?” I shouted, half standing out of my chair
and thrusting my finger in his face to punctuate my sentence. Had Ma still been
lying in the bedroom she would have risen from the dead and boxed my ears for
such language.

“You watch your tongue, boy,” was all Moses
could come up with. I was shocked with how calm he was staying. I’d have
expected he’d be rolling up his sleeves at this point, but he just sat there
stupidly, without defense.

“I’ll be gettin’ some sleep,” he said,
pushing away from the table and pulling himself to his feet. I stared,
dumbfounded. I hadn’t been able to provoke him. His unconscionable apathy
infuriated me.

“Hey!” I yelled, as he turned toward the
bedroom. “If you’re going to be sleeping, it won’t be in my house!” I told him,
and stood to my feet. I couldn’t help noticing that we were looking eye to eye.

“What?” He was stupefied.

“Get the hell off my property. Now!” Had I
not been so angry it would have felt strange to be shouting curse-laden
commands at my father.

Finally, I had done it. It was like poking
a stick in the eye of a buffalo.

“This is my house, and my farm, and no
whippersnapper in short pants is gonna tell me to leave my property, ya
snot-nosed son of a bitch!” he bellowed, and he might as well have had horns,
because he was charging. He crashed into me, and I ducked as his right arm
swung like an oak beam, grazing the top of my head. My face was buried in his
trunk of a chest, and I could smell his sourness as I thrust him off me with
both hands like I was bench pressing his body. He was caught off guard, and
stumbled backwards for a few steps before finding his footing. He’d barely
righted himself when I was on him, dazing him in a pummel of blows. He
attempted a few jabs at me, but found himself resigned to defend rather than
fight. I was high on adrenaline, and his retreat made me almost giddy,
prompting me to rain another fisted flurry on him. Finally, when his hands hung
loosely at his sides, I put my hand on his throat and slammed him into the wall
a few steps behind him, so hard a pot fell off its nail on the adjoining wall. He
was wheezing hard, and his face was scratched, his eyes ringed with bruises,
and he had blood smeared up his right cheek. A globule of blood hung from a cut
on his ear lobe, like a glistening, crimson earring.

“You leave my house,” I snarled, inches from
his face, “and I don’t want to see your ass come back unless it’s on—bloody—knees!”
My voice rose to a hoarse scream by the end of my sentence. I pushed him toward
the entrance, and as he staggered through the kitchen door, he looked back. His
face was contorted with a look of pain and humiliation. He fumbled for the
outside door handle, roughly wiped his eyes with his shirt sleeve, and walked
out, leaving the door unlatched.

I heard his car fire, backfire, and I stood
silently as the
putt putt putt
grew quieter and quieter, until all I
heard was the hushed, horrified whisper of the wind. I went over and gingerly
pulled the door shut, sat down at the table, and trembled. I was almost
fearfully in awe of myself. I felt powerful. Vindicated. Justified. And strangely
satisfied. Moses never came back.

Table of Contents

THREE

ELLEN

The next four years
of my life seemed void and meaningless, yet sometimes, I think they may have
shaped me more than many others. Solitude defined me. Aside from occasional
visits to town, and attending just a few more church services than I missed, I
spent my time on the farm with Charlie. The social vacuum I lived in conformed
me to myself. My perception of myself became who I was. I became proud of my
self-sufficiency. No one had my back, and I preferred it that way.

I did well for myself, despite the ruthless
punishment of the Depression. Pinching pennies here, and cutting back a little
there, I managed to save up enough for a fairly respectable 1930 Buick
Marquette, and had a cozy little nest egg to spare.

Yet, I was restless and malcontent. Part of
me loved the hills and fields, working under kiss and curse of the elements,
seeing the sustaining fruit of my labor. The dull ache in my muscles when I lay
in bed after a long day of toil made my sleep sweet. But I couldn’t let go of
my little dream, to someday do something bigger, get out of rural Kentucky, be
a reporter. I thought about it continually, but couldn’t quite picture how I
could possibly make it a reality. I had no training, no nearby center for
education or possible apprenticeship, so I resigned myself to studying whatever
dated journalistic writings I could acquire through whatever means I could. The
thought of selling the farm to pursue an uncertain future was unnerving, and I
never could quite persuade myself to follow through on it, so the itch to
follow after the unknown persisted.

So I continued as I was, cherishing my
independence, yet sometimes I felt the pangs of loneliness. Sometimes the
companionship of a hound seemed inadequate.

~~~

In 1939, I had the farm in better shape
than it had ever been in, had painted the house, and done some minor fix-up to
the place.

I was farming alone successfully at a time
when even veteran farmers were struggling to keep profitable. Though folks
seldom came out straight and said it, I sensed from the way neighbors and
townsfolk treated me that I had earned their respect. I found myself to be a
frequent Sunday dinner guest at the homes of several local families. After a
time, I caught on to a predictable pattern; the families with the warmest, most
numerous invitations invariably seemed to have an eligible daughter near my
age, and I was seated beside said daughter with odds-defying predictability. I took
that as an endorsement of my desirability as a prospective suitor.
Unfortunately, the part about being invited for dinner that excited me most was
just that—dinner. Every local girl seemed to have some unredeemable flaw that
disqualified her as a possible mate. Too fat, too thin, too short, too tall,
too talkative, too shy, and the list went on and on. One or two were
unobjectionable, but as young as I was, I didn’t think simply not being
disagreeable was a worthy excuse to make a lifetime commitment to a girl. So, I
continued accepting every invitation for dinner, happy to gorge on a hot,
home-cooked meal that I didn’t have to prepare for myself

After a time, though, I began to become
tempted to settle for Mildred Church or Lucille McDougall. I was weary of
working all day, and then having to scrounge for my own meals and do my own
laundry. Still, while the temptation to wed foolishly occasionally arose, my
better sense prevailed, and alone I remained, bleakly holding my romantic
fishing pole over a seemingly stagnant pool of prospects, with my line slack.
That would all change the summer I turned 20.

~~~

One frightfully hot Sunday morning, I got
to church earlier than I should have, considering the muggy, sweltering
weather.

I was hunched forward in a pew, alone,
halfway from the front. The windows were open, but there was no assuaging
breeze, and I could feel my shirt sticking to my slick, sweaty back. I adjusted
my pants as inconspicuously as possible, trying to get rid of the disgustingly
sticky feeling.

Acknowledging the smiles and greetings as
they came, I continued to melt away, thinking maybe I had made the wrong
decision in coming to church. The thought of spending the day alternately
swimming in the creek and lying on a blanket under the shade of an adjoining
tree had me considering quietly exiting the church and doing just that.

An unexpected breath of wind stirred from
my right, feeling much colder on my perspiration-beaded forehead than it
normally would have. It felt so good, and for whatever reason, I turned to look
to my right, toward the open window, as if I would be able to see the wind
entering the building. My eyes never made it that far. Across the aisle from
me, a row ahead, was a woman I didn’t recognize. Her face was turned slightly away,
so it was mostly covered with a cascade of wavy blonde hair that disappeared
where her back met the pew. Tresses, I thought to myself. I’d never used that
word before, out loud or in my mind, about a woman’s hair, and felt a little
sheepish and silly about romanticizing this particularly fine head of it.

Turn your head, I thought, willing her to
look my way so I could ascertain whether her fetching head of hair was falsely
advertising for a disappointing rest of her or not. She looked over her
shoulder to take a quick inventory of who had come to congregate, and as her
head swiveled back to the front, her eyes lingered a moment in my direction and
her lips turned up ever so slightly at the corners, as though measuring out a
prim little, “How do you do?” to me. I felt myself become even warmer, and I
wiped my flushed brow with the sleeve of my shirt. Certainly she must have seen
me staring. I didn’t recognize the woman, but I did recognize the girl she’d
been.

I suppose there’s a time or two in most
men’s lives when they turn around and the skinny girl next door is standing
there in a woman’s body, with eyes that rattle his composure and lips that make
for sweaty palms. Ellen Moore was that girl for me. She’d never struck me as
anything special before, but every now and again, a girl will just blossom
overnight right under your nose, and you wake up, and there she is, so
desirable everything in you aches to be with her. Sometimes you’re unaware
she’s so close to reaching that point, and she’ll just have done a little
something different with her hair, or put a little makeup on, or be wearing a
dress that properly promotes her womanly highlights, and she becomes your
obsession.

I don’t recall what the preacher preached
that Sunday. He could have been spouting damnable heresies for all I knew. My
eyes split their time equally with staring vapidly in the direction of Preacher
Moore, and ogling much more intensely and interestedly at his stunning
daughter. She seemed so different from the snapshot my mind had retained of her
from several years before. She didn’t giggle silently into her hand or pass
notes to her girlfriends, she just sat elegantly, one firm bronzed leg crossed
over the other, her hands in her lap. Her only movements were her eyes blinking
and her one leg swinging ever so slightly, as by habit. Her expression was
pleasant, looking as though a smile was always ready to show itself, but never
in excess. She didn’t look stuffy, but she looked classy and controlled. I
liked that.

After the service, I stayed seated in my
pew, lingering unnecessarily to chit-chat with Delmar Young, a middle-aged
bachelor who’d never married, I’m guessing partly due to the fact that he
didn’t appear to possess the ability to differentiate between people who cared
about what he was saying, and people that were standing there, gazing into
space as he talked ad nauseam. To shake him off you had to rudely walk away,
and even then he usually couldn’t take the hint and would follow you, sometimes
until you shut the door of your car and roared away. The only reason I gave him
opportunity to chew on my ear that morning was because I wanted an excuse to
remain seated until Ellen got up and walked by.

She spent a few minutes talking to friends
and appeared to be exchanging novels with them. Finally, she gathered her
things and got up. I was watching her out of the corner of my eye, and as she
vacated her pew, I turned my head.

“Miss Moore,” I greeted her, trying to look
friendly.

“Mr. Mattox,” she returned. Her voice was
low and soothing, with the resonance of a cello. She hesitated slightly as if
she thought she might stop and chat. Her face shone a little with the warmth of
the room, the tan of her face contrasting pleasingly with her sun-bleached
hair. A wayward ringlet of blonde hair teased the lashes of her right eye. Her
face was heart-shaped, without being pointy-chinned, not long, but not short
and stubby, either. Her blue eyes were serious, but humor always played behind
her full lips. She had a little lipstick on them, you could tell, but that
wasn’t what made her lips so delightful, all it did was enhance the sensual
softness of them. She didn’t say anything, so instead of giggling nervously
like a schoolgirl, she smiled at me and turned to go. I watched her leave,
noting the way her dress hugged her waist before embracing curvy hips and
swaying gently like a canopy over her legs. Her calves weren’t skinny, but
looked strong and muscled, and tapered down to slender ankles. After she’d
sashayed out of my sight, I realized Delmar was still talking to me.