Morning Glory (45 page)

“It’s okay.” He lowered himself stiffly and breathed in a great gulp of orchard air.

Down the lane Lizzy continued bawling. Donald Wade tried on Will’s garrison cap, which covered his eyebrows and ears. “Wow!” he crowed. “Lookit me! I’m a Marine!”

“Lemme!” Thomas reached. “I wanna wear it!”

“No, it’s mine!”

“Ain’t neither—I get it, too!”

“Boys, go get your sister and bring her here.”

They dashed off like puppies after a ball, Donald Wade in the lead, wearing the hat, Thomas in pursuit.

Elly sat on her knees beside Will, her arms locked around his neck. “You look so good, all tan and pretty.”

“Pretty!” He laughed and rubbed her hip.

“Well, prettier’n me in these durn britches and your old shirt.” They couldn’t quit touching each other, looking at each other.

“You look good to me—good enough to eat.”

He tasted her jaw, nipping playfully. She giggled and hunched a shoulder. The giggling subsided when their gazes met, leading to another kiss, this one soft, unhurried, unsexual. A solemnization. When it ended he breathed the scent of her with his eyes still closed.

“Elly...” he prayed, in thanksgiving.

She rested her hands on his chest and gave the moment its due.

At length they roused from their absorption with one another and he asked, “So, what’re you doing out here?”

“Tendin’ your bees.”

“So I see. How long’s this been goin’ on?”

“Since you been gone.”

“Why didn’t you tell me in your letters?”

“’Cause I wanted to surprise you, too!”

There were a thousand things he wanted to say, as a poet might say them. But he was an ordinary man, neither glib nor eloquent. He could only tell her, quietly, “You’re some woman, you know that?”

She smiled and touched his hair—it was long again, streaky yellow, bending toward his face just enough to please her. She rested her elbows on his shoulders and wrapped both arms around his head and simply held him, bringing to him again the scent of crushed cinnamon pinks from her skin. He buried his nose in her neck.

“Mercy, you smell good. Like you been rollin’ in flowers.”

She laughed. “I have. I didn’t like the mint, but your pamphlets said cinnamon pinks worked just as good so I smeared myself with them. Guess what, Will?” Exhilarated, she backed up to see his face, leaving her arms twined about his neck.

“What?”

“The honey is runnin’.”

He let his eyelids droop, let his lips soften suggestively and closed both hands upon her breasts, hidden between them. “V damned right it is, darlin’. Wanna feel?”

Her blood rushed, her heart pounded and she felt a glorious spill deep within.

“More than anything,” she whispered, nudging his lips, but the children were near so he sat back with his hands flattened against the hot grass while she angled her head, tasted him shallow and deep. He opened his mouth and remained unmoving as her tongue played upon his in a series of teasing plunders. He returned the favor, washing her sweet mouth with wet kisses, sucking her lower lip.

“What you guys doin’?” Donald Wade stood beside them, holding Lizzy P. on his hip while Thomas approached, wearing Will’s hat.

Leaving her arms across Will’s collarbones, Elly squinted over her shoulder. “Kissin’. Better get used to it, ‘cause there’s gonna be a lot of it goin’ on around here.” Unrattled, she dropped down beside her man on the grass, raising her hands for the baby. “C’m ‘ere, sugar. Come see Daddy. Well, goodness gracious, all those tears—did you think we all run off and left you?” Chuckling, she brought the baby’s cheek against her own, then set her down and began cleaning up Lizzy’s tearful face while the little girl trained a watchful stare on Will. The boys plopped down, doing the things that big brothers do. Thomas took Lizzy’s palm and bounced it. “Hi, Lizzy.” Donald Wade brought his eyes down to the level of hers and talked brightly. “This’s Will, Lizzy. Can you say,
Daddy?
Say,
Daddy,
Lizzy.” Then, to Will, “She only talks when she wants to.”

Lizzy didn’t say Daddy, or Will. Instead, when he took her, she pushed against his chest, straining and twisting back for
Elly, beginning to cry again. In the end he was forced to relinquish her until she grew used to him again.

“The orchard looks good. Did you have the trees sprayed?”

“Didn’t
have
‘em sprayed, I did it myself.”

“And the yard, why that’s the prettiest thing I’ve seen in years. You do all that?”

“Yup. Me’n the boys.”

“Mama let me put seeds in the holes!” piped up Thomas.

“Good boy. Who built the archway for the morning glories?”

“Mama.”

Elly added, “Me’n Donald Wade, didn’t we, honey?”

“Yeah! An’ I pounded the nails and everything!”

Will put on a proper show of enthusiasm. “You did! Well, good for you.”

“Mama said you’d like it.”

“And I do, too. Walked into the yard and figured I was in the wrong place.”

“Did you really?”

Will laughed and pressed Donald Wade’s nose flat with the tip of a finger.

They all fell quiet, listening to the drone of bees and the wind’s breath in the trees around them. “You can stay now, can’t you?” Elly asked quietly.

“Yes. Medical discharge.”

Keeping one arm around Lizzy’s hip, she found Will’s fingers in the grass behind them and braided them with her own. “That’s good,” she said simply, running a hand down Lizzy’s hot hair while her eyes remained on her husband’s face, tanned to a hickory brown, compellingly handsome above the tight collar and tie of his uniform. “You’re a hero, Will. I’m so proud of you.”

His lips twisted and he chuckled self-consciously. “Well, I don’t know about that.”

“Where’s your Purple Heart?”

“Back at the house in my duffel bag.”

“It should be right here.” She lay a hand flat against his lapel, then slipped it underneath because she found within herself the constant need to touch him. She felt his heartbeat,
strong and healthy against her fingertips, and recalled the hundreds of images she’d suffered, of bullets drilling him, spilling his blood on some distant jungle floor. Her precious, dear Will. “Miss Beasley told the newspaper about it and they put an article in. Now everybody knows Will Parker is a hero.”

His look grew pensive, fixed on a distant hive. “Everybody in that war is a hero. They oughta give a Purple Heart to every GI out there.”

“Did you shoot anybody, Will?” Donald Wade inquired.

“Now, Donald Wade, you mustn’t—”

“Yes, I did, son, and it’s a pretty awful thing.”

“But they were bad guys, weren’t they?”

Will’s haunted gaze fixed on Elly, but instead of her he saw a foxhole and in it six inches of water and his buddy, Red, and a bomb whistling down out of the sky turning everything before him scarlet.

“Now, Donald Wade, Will just got back and you’re pepperin’ him with questions already.”

“No, it’s okay, Elly.” To the child he said, “They were people, just like you and me.”

“Oh.”

Donald Wade grew solemn, contemplating the fact. Elly rose from her knees and said, “I have to finish filling the water pans. It won’t take me long.”

She kissed Will’s left eyebrow, drew on her farmer gloves and left the children with Will while she headed back to work, turning once to study her husband again, trying to grasp the fact that he was back for good.

“I love you!” she called from beside a gnarled pear tree.

“I love you, too!”

She smiled and spun away.

The children examined Will’s uniform—buttons, chevrons, pins. Lizzy grew less cautious, toddling around in the grass. The sun beat down and Will removed his blouse, laid it aside and stretched out supine, shutting his eyes against the brightness. But the sun on his closed eyelids became scarlet. Blood scarlet. And he saw it happen all over again—Red, scrambling on his belly across a stretch of kunai grass beside the
Matanikau River, suddenly freezing in the open while from the opposite shore enemy .25 calibers cracked like oxwhips, submachine guns thundered, and a ranging grenade launcher sent its deadly missiles closer and closer. And there lay poor Red, stretched flat with no cover, facedown, shaking, biting the grass, halted by an unholy terror such as a lucky Marine never knows. Will saw himself scrambling back out amid the strafing, heard the bullets’ deceptively soft sigh as they sailed over his head, the dull thud as they struck behind him, left, right. The earth rained dirt upward as a grenade hit fifteen feet away. “Christ, man, you gotta get outta here!” Red lay unmoving, unable. Will felt again his own panic, the surge of adrenaline as he grabbed Red and hauled him backward through mud and tufts of uprooted grass into a foxhole with six inches of muddy water—“Stay here, buddy. I’m going to get them sonsabitches!”—then going over the top again, teeth clenched, crawling on his elbows while the tip of his bayonet swung left and right. Then, overhead, the planes wheeling out of nowhere, the warning whistle, dropping, and behind him, Red, in the foxhole where the bomb fell.

Will shuddered, opened his eyes wide, sat up. Beside him the children still played. At the hive openings bees landed with their gatherings. Elly was returning with the wagon in tow, the two empty metal buckets clanging like glockenspiels as the wheels bumped over the rough turf. He blinked away the memory and watched his wife come on in her masculine apparel.
Don’t think about Red, think about Elly.
He watched until her shadow slipped across his lap, then raised a hand and requested quietly, “Come here,” and when she fell to her knees, held her. Just held her. And hoped she’d be enough to heal him.

Their lovemaking that night was golden.

But when it was over Elly sensed Will’s withdrawal from more than her body.

“What’s wrong?”

“Hm?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Your leg hurt?”

“Not bad.”

She didn’t believe him, but he wasn’t a complainer, never had been. He reached for his Lucky Strikes, lit one and lay smoking in the dark. She watched the red coal brighten, listened to him inhale.

“You want to talk about it?”

“About what?”

“Anything—your leg... the war. I think you purposely kept the bad stuff out of your letters for my sake. Maybe you wanna talk about it now.”

The red arc of the cigarette going to his mouth created a barrier more palpable than barbed wire.

“What’s the sense in talking about it? I went to war, not an ice cream social. I knew that when I joined up.”

She felt shut out and hurt. She had to give him time to open up, but tonight wouldn’t be the night, that was certain. So she searched for subjects to bring him close again.

“I’ll bet Miss Beasley was surprised when she saw you.”

He chuckled. “Yeah.”

“Did she show you the scrapbook of newspaper clippings she kept about all the action in the South Pacific?”

“No, she didn’t mention that.”

“She clipped articles only about the areas where she thought you might be fighting.”

He chuckled soundlessly.

“You know what?”

“Hm?”

“I think she’s sweet on you.”

“Oh, come on, she’s old enough to be my grandma.”

“Grandmas got feelings, too.”

“Lord.”

“And you know what else? I think you kind of feel the same.”

He felt himself blush in the dark, recalling times when he’d purposely charmed the librarian. “Elly, you’re crazy.”

“Yeah, I know, but it’s perfectly okay with me. After all, you never had a grandma, and if you wanna love her a little bit it don’t take nothin’ away from me.”

He tamped out his cigarette, drew her against his side and kissed the top of her head. “You’re some woman, Elly.”

“Yeah, I know.”

He pulled back and looked down into her face, forgetting momentarily the haunting visions that sprang into his mind uninvited. He laughed, then Elly snuggled her cheek against his chest once more, and went on distracting him. “Anyway, Miss Beasley was wonderful while you were gone, Will. I don’t know what I would’ve done without her—and Lydia, too. Lydia and I got to be such good friends. And you know what? I never really had a friend before.” She mused before continuing. “We could talk about anything...” She ruffled the hair on his chest and added, “I’d like to have her and the kids out sometime so you can get to know her better. Would that be all right with you, Will?”

She waited, but he didn’t answer.

“Will?”

Silence.

“Will?”

“What?”

“Haven’t you been listening?”

He removed his arm and reached for another cigarette. She’d lost him again.

There was no doubt about it, Will was different. Not only the limp, but the lapses. They happened often in the days that followed, lengthy silences when he became preoccupied with thoughts he refused to share. An exchange would become a monologue and Elly would turn to find his eyes fixed on the middle distance, his thoughts troubled, miles away. There were other changes, too. At night, insomnia. Often she’d awaken to find him sitting up, smoking in the dark. Sometimes he dreamed and talked in his sleep, swore, called out and thrashed. But when she’d awaken him and encourage, “What is it, Will? Tell me,” he’d only reply, “Nothing. Just a dream.” Afterward he’d cling to her until sleep reclaimed him and his palms would be damp even after they finally fell open.

He needed time alone. Often he went down to the orchard
to ruminate, to sit watching the hives and work through whatever was haunting him.

The smallest sounds set him off. Lizzy knocked her milk glass off the high chair one day and he rocketed from his chair, exploded and left the house without finishing his meal. He returned thirty minutes later, apologetic, hugging and kissing Lizzy as if he’d struck her, bringing by way of apology a simple homemade toy called a bull-roarer which he’d made himself.

He spent a full hour with the three children that afternoon, out in the yard, spinning the simple wooden blade on the end of the long string until it whirled and made a sound like an engine revving up. And, as always, after being with the children, he seemed calmer.