Love is a Wounded Soldier Page 10

  I stopped to breathe, almost dizzying myself with my verbal sleight of hand. Ellen protested wordlessly, shaking her head in laughing disbelief.

  “So thus, even if I be a gentleman, and am gracious enough to count the one fish you caught twice as one and a half fish, I still win seven to six and a half,” I calculated with a victorious smirk.

  The expression on Ellen’s face clearly showed this snake oil salesman would not be selling her any fish oil today. The raft pitched dangerously as she pounced without warning, knocking me and my prizewinning fish into the water, but not before I grabbed her wrist and dragged her down with me. We both tried pushing each other’s heads under the water. She was slippery, though, and I had to be content with splashing water on her, and she returned the favor.

  I swam underwater, found her legs, tackled them, and then swam quickly away before she could retaliate. I stood fiendishly grinning in the shoulder-deep water, waiting for her to come up coughing and sputtering. But she didn’t. We were playing closer to the eddy now. I had thought it to be too weak and shallow to pose any risk, but now I began to worry. She’d probably disappeared for less than a half minute, but it felt like eons. As I prepared to dive under and look for her, wham! I got knocked face forward into the water, gulping a lungful of water, which I found to have an oxygen level entirely unsuitable for my needs. So I was the one who broke the surface, coughing and sputtering, and primed for revenge. She laughed and mocked me from a distance. I tried another underwater ambush, but I couldn’t find her, though I raised my head above the water several times in vain. Finally, I gave up, but nervously scanned the water for signs of another impending stealth attack.

  “Scared?” a voice jeered. I whipped around to see Ellen “hiding,” lying flat on the raft.

  “I like to call it ‘alert,’” I corrected, swimming over to her. “Truce?” She eyed me suspiciously.

  “For real?” she asked, squinting her eyes distrustfully.

  “For real,” I assured, clambering aboard. “You backstabber!” I accused, pretending to be angry. “If you weren’t such a bewitching little river nymph, I’d have killed you!”

  “Yes, you would have killed me—if you could’ve found me,” she corrected with a superior smile. I coughed and tried to catch my breath. The warm wind felt cool as it started to dry my wet skin. My stomach pinched me politely as if to say, “Anytime now. Don’t make me growl!”

  “That lunch is wearing kind of thin,” I said.

  “Well, let’s clean some fish,” Ellen replied.

  We beached the raft and I hunted for some firewood. There was no deadfall nearby, so I did have to walk a ways to find some.

  When I returned, I was mildly shocked to see Ellen had cleaned three fish and was working on another. I’d expected to have to do everything.

  “My, I had no idea my wife came with such skills,” I teased, dropping an armful of sticks.

  “Ma was too squeamish to clean fish, and Daddy didn’t like doing it, so he’d always pay me a penny for each one I’d do,” she said without looking up, scrunching her nose as she threw a head and skin into the trees.

  The fire was ready to go as she washed the fillets in the river and laid them in the frying pan before bringing them over. She’d had enough foresight to pack a pat of butter in our grub box, wrapped in cloth so it didn’t melt. We had no flour, but we did have salt to add some flavor. We had forgotten utensils, however, so I had to carve a flipper and forks out of a tree branch. My forks were too flimsy to be of much use, so we ate mostly with our fingers. I watched her eat, looking proper and pretty even though she’d just cleaned fish, not to mention lived in the wilderness without benefit of many of the conveniences she was used to.

  “What’s with the dopey grin?” she questioned my protracted gaze with a bewildered smile.

  “You’re beautiful,” I said simply.

  “Ha, look at me. Look at my hair!” she waved at her unruly mane with fishy fingers.

  “Some women need make-up and dresses to look beautiful,” I told her. “You . . . you couldn’t hide your beauty if you rolled in a barrel of gun grease.”

  “Pugh!” she scoffed at my hyperbole, but couldn’t seem to rid her face of a little smile.

  “What’s with the dopey grin?” I mimicked.

  “You’re funny,” she answered, finishing the last of her fish. I began dousing the fire with water.

  “We should probably head back,” I said.

  “But we’ve still got an hour or more of light left,” she argued, “and it shouldn’t take that long to go back downstream.”

  “Yeah, but it feels like rain,” I informed her.

  “You think?” Ellen looked at me as though I were kidding.

  “I do,” I replied. I was used to accurately predicting rain.

  “I don’t know,” she shook her head as she looked incredulously up at the cloudless sky and blazing sun, but held any further objections and helped me stow our things back onto the raft.

  We shoved off into the river’s current, and I enjoyed the leisurely trip downstream, using my pole to guide rather than propel most of the time. Ellen sat dreamily, dangling her legs off the rear edge, kicking occasionally to help the raft along.

  After a while she took a fishing pole and began trolling for fish, and was successful in hooking a few.

  Wooly clouds began assembling on the horizon. I kept an eye on the clouds as they amassed and grew.

  “I think it’ll rain,” Ellen predicted with a smile. “I can feel it in my bones.”

  “Oh, and I’m sure it has nothing to do with the sudden appearance of clouds,” I said sarcastically.

  “Actually, it’s starting to smell like rain, too,” she said seriously. I nodded. I’d noticed, too, and had started pushing the raft along with a little more urgency.

  The clouds jostled one another, piling higher and higher into great heaps. They marched from an easterly direction, looking whitewashed and pristine in the sun’s light. Thunderheads. The word itself is almost adequate to describe their awesome, unbridled power. Surely God himself would sit on a throne so pure and white, shooting thunderous bolts of judgment.

  The clouds pressed on, blotting out the sun as the gathering wind blew stray drops of rain around. The rain began falling in earnest, but it wasn’t a cold, driving rain, but rather an energetic, warmish one.

  “I’m getting soaked!” Ellen squealed.

  “Hold the pan over your head,” was all the advice I could offer. She greeted my suggestion with a scornful look, but apparently, it was the best option of a scanty few, so she held the cast iron pan over her head to at least minimize the rainfall on her face and hair.

  “It’s heavy!” she complained after a few minutes.

  “I’m sorry, Your Highness, but they were all out of the light-duty umbrella pans,” I replied unsympathetically. She made a face and set the pan down.

  “What’s the use, I’m sopping anyway,” she said. “Are we almost there yet?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “Everything looks kind of the same right now.” She stood up, almost slipping as she did.

  “Careful!” I cautioned.

  She raised her arms to heaven as though embracing the rain instead of fighting it, and made an indescribable noise that would have troubled an Amazon native. It sounded like something between a whoop and a caw. I must have looked utterly stupefied, because she looked at me, burst out laughing, and did it again.

  “Bet I can yell louder than you,” she challenged. I looked at her disdainfully.

  “Oh, c’mon! Chicken!” she goaded.

  Caving to the pressure, I did my rendition of a wild jungle call, but my feeble attempt sounded more like the squawk of some perishing fowl than anything. Ellen erupted in laughter. I wiped the water out of my eyes and pushed my saturated hair back away from my forehead.

  “You said who could yell the loudest,” I said sullenly. “You didn’t say it had to sound like anything.”

/>   “That’s true,” she said patronizingly. “Well, yell something else.”

  “I don’t know, what should I yell?” I asked, surprised how hard it was to think of something to yell when I could yell anything.

  “Yell that you love me,” Ellen said.

  “I love you, Ellen!” I yelled at what I thought to be a good volume. Ellen’s look revealed she wasn’t quite as impressed as I was.

  “I love you, Robbie!” she blared at the pouring sky. We continued to try to outdo each other until we both succumbed to hoarse giggling.

  “Look, it’s our campsite!” Ellen pointed just behind us. In our preoccupation, we had almost missed our tent. Lord knows how far we would have gone before thinking to turn back.

  We backtracked, and were soon on not-so-dry land. We picked up our gear and ran to the tent, deliberately splashing in the puddles as we went. I’d been uneasy about the water-tightness of my tent, but my worries appeared to be unwarranted; the tent was bone dry, and there didn’t appear to be leaks of any kind.

  We commenced drying off, succumbing to some conjugal frolicking in the process.

  Afterward, we put on dry clothes. It felt so good to be in clean, dry clothing. We were both tired, so we climbed under the blanket together and cuddled as the rain drummed on the tent.

  “Do you have any objections to going home tomorrow morning?” I asked Ellen. I was getting a little concerned with leaving the livestock alone too long.

  “No, that should be fine,” she agreed. “It’s not like it’ll be a good day for doing anything, if this rain keeps up at all.” I lay next to her, feeling more content and happy than I could ever remember.

  “Ellen?” I said.

  “Huh?” she said sleepily.

  “Thanks for marrying me. These have been the best couple days of my life.” She got quiet, then sniffed.

  “I love you, Robbie.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Table of Contents

  FIVE

  THE PARTING

  When we woke the next morning, the rain had stopped, but the clouds still hung low, and they looked inclined to rain some more. We decided to leave while the sky held its peace, and hastily packed our things.

  Ellen borrowed a pair of britches from me for slogging back through the woods. They were far from a perfect fit, but offered more protection from the wet underbrush than her dresses.

  I found what appeared to be a less hostile way back to the car, and was proved right. It was a little longer in distance, but offered less natural obstruction.

  We reached the car, our trousers both soaked to above the knee. I changed into my spare pair, and Ellen changed into one of the many clean skirts she had left. I’d been worried about whether it would be too muddy to leave, but there was an absence of really low spots for water to collect, and everything was covered in grass, so we made it to the main road with only a little slipping and sliding.

  We stopped at a small diner in Gibson for breakfast, and wolfed down biscuits and gravy with tall glasses of cold milk and hot coffee. The rest of the trip took longer than usual, due to the conditions, and we were both happy to get home. Our home. As we pulled up, I said, “Welcome home!”

  Ellen grinned. “Thank you,” she said, and started to pick up her things.

  “Whoa, not so fast!” I said. She stopped and looked at me questioningly.

  “I have to carry you over the threshold first,” I demanded. She laughed and walked around the car to my side.

  “Well, carry me,” she said, holding her arms out in front of her like a baby.

  “Um, I think tradition says carry over the threshold, not up the drive,” I argued, looking at the distance it was to the door. “I don’t know if I can carry you that far,” I whined.

  “So you think I’m fat,” she pouted.

  “Oh, no, you’re the perfect size,” I assured her.

  “Oh, so you’re just weak,” she said, giving my arms a disdainful look.

  “OK!” I caved, scooping her up and carrying her to the door. She managed to open the door, and I was able to get her inside without whacking her head against the door frame. I set her down, slightly out of breath, gave her a kiss, and said, “I’ll get our things.” By the time I had brought in the last of our luggage, she was “womanizing” the place. It felt nice.

  ~~~

  I took to married life like a hound to hunting. It’s easy for a man to adjust to three square meals a day, clean clothes, and the loving of a pretty wife. It seemed to take Ellen a little longer to get settled in, since she had left her home and family, but before long, she seemed to have made our house home.

  Several weeks after we got married, I dropped Ellen off at her folks' place while I went into town. We both wondered what kind of reception she’d get, and so I was anxious to hear her story when I picked her up.

  I drove onto their yard and honked the horn, not really wanting to go inside and feel like the bad guy that had stolen their firstborn daughter. Ellen emerged, and her face indicated it hadn’t been a joyful family reunion. She got in beside me and slammed the door, almost crying with anger.

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “He wasn’t home, but Ma said that he says he doesn’t want us to come around until we’ve ‘repented,’” she said, her lip trembling with emotion.

  “And,” she continued, “until then, he’d prefer if we didn’t come to church, since he thinks we’re a bad example to the congregation.”

  “So, do you wish we hadn’t gotten married?” I finally asked, scared she might not think I was worth the cost.

  “Hell, no!” she replied vehemently. “And if he thinks I’m coming on bended knee to repent for marrying the man I love, he can think again! You take care of me now, I don’t need them!” She sounded like she was partly trying to convince herself of that while she talked. It didn’t surprise me, though. Her family was close-knit, and losing her whole family at once was something of a blow.

  A few weeks later, however, Ellen’s pa had a partial change of heart, due to the fact, I reckoned, that her mother took his decision really hard. He allowed her to visit the family, but only when he wasn’t home, and still discouraged us from fellowshipping with Tobacco Road Baptist until we were repentant.

  While her ma would come to visit us from time to time, Ellen said she didn’t feel welcome to visit her folks’ place anymore. So we didn’t. We didn’t visit there, and we didn’t attend the church. We were our own little island, and were content simply to be with one another, for we lived in uncertain times, and we didn’t know how much longer we’d be together.

  ~~~

  In the early 1940s, World War II was shaking the continent of Europe, and its tremors were felt even in the United States. We received scraps of news through the paper, radio, and most often, by the mouth of a friend or neighbor, stories of the unspeakable atrocities of Herr Hitler. I took most of them with a grain of salt, thinking they were probably being sensationalized, but still recognized that where there’s smoke, there’s got to be some fire.

  In September of 1940, the U.S. Congress passed the Selective Training and Service Act, enacting the first peacetime conscription in the history of the United States. Two days later, President Roosevelt signed it into law, and one could sense the inevitability of getting sucked into the insatiable vortex the war was becoming. The law required every male aged 21 to 30 register with the local draft board, and so I did, with some reluctance.

  Part of me concurred with the common sentiment that the war wasn’t the United States’ problem, and we didn’t need to shed blood on the behalf of another country, but there was also the sense that we had a moral imperative to engage in this great struggle, if indeed the stories we heard were even half true.

  Had I been single and fighting to make ends meet like so many other men at the time, I would have considered volunteering for military service, but now with a new wife and future ahead of me, I was somewhat loathe to register for the draft.
But I did.

  One fellow from our area got drafted in the first lottery in October, and several others were drafted in the following months. I tried not to think about it, but focused rather on enjoying married life.

  I guess I did a good job of not thinking about it, because when I got served notice to serve in winter of 1941, it almost took the wind out of me. Ellen was crestfallen, almost aghast, when she found out. I tried to comfort her by reminding her that I would only serve a 12-month term and come back, but I could tell she wasn’t entirely persuaded that I would be home in a year. Neither was I.

  So, I began the dreadful work of preparing to leave that spring. Ellen couldn’t possibly take care of the entire operation, so I leased the land to one of our neighbors. Any livestock unnecessary for subsistence was either sold or left in the care of neighbors.

  Having little livestock to care for and no fieldwork to do made my idle mind bored, depressed, and anxious as I prepared to leave for basic training. I used my spare time to do some running and exercising to help take the edge off what I knew would be an exhausting couple of weeks ahead of me.

  The day before I left, I watched our neighbor, Mr. Matthews, plow the field adjoining our yard. I had just finished another stiff run, and walked slowly around the perimeter of our yard to cool down. I stopped and stood with my arms crossed. An aura of dust hung languorously around the tractor as the plow turned furrow onto furrow, and I drank in the redolence of the freshly stirred earth.

  A thousand memories flooded my mind; it seemed every post and tree, every inch of ground, had some sort of memory affixed to it. Some were good, some banal, some just plain bad, but today, all of them were mixed together in a bittersweet goulash of emotion. Life’s rearview mirror is glazed with a sentimental hue.