Love is a Wounded Soldier (34 page)

I’d intentionally chosen a seat on the
right side of the train, so that my scars would face the window instead of the
aisle, but apparently I hadn’t done enough to avoid calling attention to
myself. A little girl about four years old sitting in the seat ahead of me kept
staring at my face with wide eyes.

One eye reappeared. Ordinarily, I would
have enjoyed playing peek-a-boo with a youngster, but today, I felt like I was
part of a freak show, so even having a child stare at my scars caused me
embarrassment. I tucked in my chin and turned my head.

“Daisy, stop staring! It’s not polite to
stare!” her ma reprimanded her. She looked back to apologize.

“I’m sorry sir, she just doesn’t—” her
voice trailed off as I turned my face to look at her, “have—any—manners,” she
ended slowly. It took her a moment to remember her own as she stared at my
face.

“That’s quite alright, ma’am,” I said,
trying to smile understandingly.

“It’s—it’s the uniform,” she explained,
obviously flustered. “She’s not used to the uniform.”

I smiled and nodded as though agreeing that
the tot’s fixation on me had nothing to do with my torn up face. She turned
back, red-faced, and scolded the child again quietly.

She looked back at me. “Thank you for your
service, sir. You’ve done our country proud,” she smiled.

I nodded my head as a teenage boy sitting
across the aisle from me piped up excitedly.

“Did you see much action, mister?” he asked
eagerly, as though priming the pump for a good war story. He leaned forward in
anticipation.

“Oh, I reckon less than some, more than
others,” I replied vaguely.

“Golly, I sure wish I had been old enough
to help you fellows send the Krauts packin’!” he sighed wistfully. He looked at
me enviously, as though jealous I’d been old enough to participate in the
adventure, glamour, and all-around good times of war and he hadn’t. I felt like
telling him that the worms were licking clean the sockets of thousands of
youthful eyes just like his that had once dreamily romanticized war.

“Young man, we are indebted to you. You
truly are a hero,” an elderly woman from across the aisle contributed with a
kind smile. The woman in the row ahead of me had her head permanently swiveled
to face me. I was quickly growing weary of the attention.

“Oh, I’m no hero, ma’am,” I replied, “but I
have helped bury a hell of a lot of them.”

The young mother’s eyes grew wide, and she
looked at her daughter as if she wanted to clamp her hands over her ears before
my last words reached her. I’d forgotten certain words and phrases soldiers use
weren’t proper to use around children and ladies.

“Please excuse the language, ma’am, I’m
awfully sorry,” I apologized. She nodded and turned back to face away from me.

“Well, you may not think of yourself as a
hero, sir, but you’re a fine patriot,” the lad across the aisle reassured me
with an adoring smile. Compared to the foolish youth, I felt as old as
Methuselah and as wise as Solomon.

“Do you want to be a patriot, son?” I asked
him soberly.

“Oh, yes, sir, I do!” he smiled enthusiastically.

“Good,” I said “Then go love your
neighbor.”

The smile fell off his face, and he
couldn’t have looked more puzzled if I’d told him to go kill a Kraut with a
spool of cotton candy. Others looked at me as though convinced I’d had my
screws rattled loose in the war. I didn’t care. At least they were silent.

I leaned up against the window and tried to
sleep, but my mind was too restless.

Maybe I should have sent a telegram ahead,
I anxiously thought to myself, worried that my plan to surprise Ellen might not
have been a good idea. Would the sight of my face shock her? Would we stand in
awkward silence, like two strangers?

I pulled out her letters from my pocket and
began reading through them, repeating lines like, “I’ll always love you no
matter what,” “I’m yours until the end of time,” and “You and I are forever,
sweetheart” to myself. My fears diminished, my doubts lifted, and my angst
drowned in a flood of anticipation and excitement. “You and I are forever,
sweetheart,” I murmured as the train click-clacked its way home.

It was sunny when the train pulled into
Gatlinburg. I got off the train, stretched, and took a deep breath. It was
already beginning to smell like home.

Slinging my satchel over my shoulder, I set
off through the town, taking note of a few things that had changed while I was
away. Soon, I was walking on Catfish Road. My footsteps quickened. I was on the
road home.

Before too long, I heard a vehicle
approaching from behind me. I could hear it slowing down, so I turned to take a
look. It was a blue Ford truck. A thin, older fellow wearing a straw hat leaned
out the window.

“Where you headed, stranger?” he asked.

“Coon Hollow,” I responded, squinting into
the glare of the sun.

“Climb in,” he motioned to the passenger’s
side with his head. I heard another vehicle in the distance, so I ran over and
hopped in quickly.

“Thank you, sir,” I said as I put my
satchel on the floor by my feet.

“Sure,” he said. The truck protested as he
let the clutch out slowly.

“You from Coon Hollow?” I inquired. I’d
known most everyone there when I’d left.

He shook his head. “Kaplan,” he replied.

“Do you smoke?” I asked him, taking out a
pack of cigarettes.

“Yup,” he responded. I lit a cigarette for
him, rolled down my window and lit my own.

“Headin’ home?” he asked, without taking
his eyes off the road.

“Sure am,” I replied, and waited for him to
start quizzing me on the war. But he didn’t.

“I came home in 1919,” was all he said. I
understood him. He was telling me, “I know where you’ve been, I know the hell
you’ve seen, and I don’t feel like talking about it, either.”

We rode in almost complete silence the rest
of the way. Each familiar landmark I saw quickened my pulse. We drove past the
spot Ellen and I had turned off to spend our honeymoon. I couldn’t help but
smile to myself as I thought about it. It was such a sweet memory. We would
visit that very place soon, I promised myself. Maybe as soon as I got home,
we’d pack up a few things and spend a week down by the river together. I wanted
so badly to have her, hold her, kiss her, and just be near to her. I just
couldn’t wait for her love to refresh my parched soul. She would be able to
make me forget the horror that the last year of my life had been. Of that I was
certain.

“You live in town?” the old guy asked as we
approached Coon Hollow.

“No, a few miles south of Cherokee
Crossing,” I said. “You can just drop me off there and I’ll find my way home
already.”

He didn’t say anything. I looked around and
found Coon Hollow much like I remembered it. Little had changed that couldn’t
be attributed to entropy. We approached Cherokee Crossing, and I prepared to
get out as he slowed down, but he didn’t stop, he just turned right, and
continued driving south, down Tobacco Road.

“Thank you sir, but you really don’t have
to do this,” I expressed my gratitude. My game leg hadn’t been looking forward
to the walk home.

“You walked your share,” was all he said.
It was hard for me to argue with that.

I settled back in my seat and watched the
countryside roll by. A tangled blend of early summer scents rushed into my open
window, and I sniffed them happily like a dog, trying to sort them out. Each
farmyard I saw reminded me of some person or story from the past, every dip and
hill we passed prompted recollection of some childhood memory. We drove past
the church, the school, and Ellen’s folks’ place, and I could have stopped and
spent the rest of the day recounting the happenings of days gone by. The
nostalgia only heightened my sense of excitement.

“It’s just up ahead there, by that mailbox,”
I pointed up ahead where I could see the end of our lane. The exuberance I felt
in my chest swelled. A cocktail of emotions stirred up inside of me. I could
scarcely believe it—I was home!

“Just turn around on the lane, I can walk
from here,” I told him. The house wasn’t visible from the road, and I wanted to
surprise Ellen.

He pulled into the drive and stopped. I
already had my satchel on my lap, and I fairly leapt out of the truck.

“Thank you so much!” I said fervently to
the old guy, leaning back into the window. He looked at me with a gentle smile,
and I could see emotion tugging at his wrinkled old face.

“Welcome home, son,” he said. I tossed a
full pack of cigarettes onto the seat of the truck as it began rolling
backward. He waved as he eased slowly back onto the road, and I waved back at
him.

Then, I started trotting up the hill toward
the tabletop that our farm was situated on. The peak of the barn roof came into
view, then the peak of the house, the roof, and finally the whole thing lay before
me.

My pace quickened and my heart galloped as
I reached the top of the hill.

A movement in the garden caught my eye.
Ellen! My beautiful Ellen! She was bent over, facing away from me. Her
loose-fitting, canary-colored sundress billowed in the breeze. She straightened
and stretched, pushing the small of her back with one hand. The sun glinted off
of her long blonde hair.

“Ellen!” I called excitedly, breaking into
a run. She stopped, as though wondering if her ears were playing tricks on her.

“Ellen!” I cried out again, my voice
breaking with emotion as I charged toward her. She turned and covered her mouth
with her hand. I expected her to run to meet me, but she stood as though
stunned.

As I neared her, the feeling that something
was wrong yanked at my soaring heart. I wondered if she could see my scars. As
I approached, she turned away from me, as though ashamed, and when she did, it
was obvious what the matter was. She was pregnant.

There was a moment, one brief, irrational,
delirious moment, before reality splintered the pillars of my world with the
impossibility of the thought, that I believed she carried the answer to my
prayers: my son. For one split-second, I thought, yes! And after that, all I
could think was, no, no, no, no, NO! It simply
couldn’t
be mine!

The realization staggered my mind and body.
I flailed to a stop, in a way not dissimilar from the way Frankie De Luca had
in a field in Normandy. I wanted to die, but unlike Frankie, I didn’t. The pain
just kept coming, but there would be no sweet relief.

Ellen looked at me through red, swollen
eyes and a tangled mat of hair. She’d aged more than four years.

“I’m sorry, Robbie!” she whispered through
her tears. “I—I didn’t know how to tell you!” She stood and looked fearfully at
me, waiting for my reaction.

The English language was inadequate to
express to her what I felt. A stack of dictionaries could not have furnished
words numerous or potent enough to describe the emotions that roiled inside me
at that moment. I could only stand and tremble.

“Oh, Robbie, your face!” she gasped. There
was a tiredness in her bloodshot eyes, a haunted, hunted look that only seemed
to intensify as she stared at the scars on my face. She moved forward like she
wanted to reach out and touch them, reach out and comfort me. I recoiled as
though her movement were the strike of a viper.

That was it. I had to leave. If I didn’t,
there was no telling what I would do. I wheeled and walked toward where the
Buick sat parked in front of the house.

“I’m so sorry, Robbie!” Ellen followed me,
sobbing.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” she
became hysterical. I ignored her and opened the door to the Buick.

“Talk to me! Please! Please talk to me!”
she screamed as I threw my bag inside and got in. She grabbed my shirtsleeve
and tugged on it.

“Don’t touch me, you whore!” I snarled,
swinging my hand wildly and smacking the side of her face. She reeled back from
my blow. I slammed the door shut and started the engine. She pounded on my
window, tears streaming down her face.

“Please talk to me! I’ll explain
everything! Please!” she shouted through the glass.

I threw the car into reverse and backed up.
Ellen stumbled backwards. The tires spat up dirt, stones and tufts of grass as
I put it in gear and mashed the gas pedal. I made it a hundred feet before I
slammed on the brakes. Ellen came running over hopefully as I rolled down my
window.

“Where’s Charlie?” I yelled above the sound
of the idling motor. She stopped and looked like she was disappointed that I’d
stopped only to ask about a dog.

“He died last winter!” she managed through
her tears. She was crying so hard she couldn’t wipe the tears away before they
trickled down to her neck.

“You could have fuckin’ told me!” I
screamed, and kicked the accelerator. I didn’t look back.

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