Love is a Wounded Soldier (44 page)

“Robert, shut up!” Maggie ordered me, but
she was smiling. I shut my mouth and waited for her to speak.

“Robert, when I asked God to send me an
angel today, I just hoped he’d send someone to lift my spirits and be a
blessing to me. But I never, ever . . . wow . . . Robert, that was sweetest thing
I’ve
ever
heard!” She was so emotional she could hardly finish her
sentence. It took her a minute to compose herself enough to speak, and I still
felt embarrassed, just in a different way.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes misty, “if you
really meant it, the answer is yes.”

“Alright, it’s an engagement, then,” I
declared. Things had happened so quickly it hardly seemed real.

“So—so you’re sure you want to marry me?” I
asked, wondering if I’d jumped the gun and not given her enough time to make an
informed decision.

“Yes!” she laughed.

“I mean, look at me,” I pointed to my face,
“I’m ugly as hell! Can you see yourself looking at this for the rest of your
life?” I wanted to make sure she wasn’t overlooking anything, so I turned my
face to give her a good look at my scars.

She chuckled softly as she stood up. She
laid Joshua, who was still dozing in her lap, down on the chair she’d been
sitting on. She walked over to me and sat down beside me, nice and close, and
rested her arm on the back of the sofa behind my head.

“Robert,” she said, looking into my eyes
from inches away as she spoke, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Because
you, are a very, very beautiful man, and I could look at your face for the rest
of this lifetime and the next.” I felt the warmth of her breath against my face
and wondered how her lips would taste.

“But do you think it’s right to get married
for the convenience of it rather than love?” I argued, though not knowing why,
since I wanted to marry her.

“Will you give me trust, commitment, and
faithfulness?” she asked me.

“Yes, of course,” I replied.

“Well, I give you the same,” she vowed.
“and how could love not grow in a soil so fertile?” I knew she was right.

I reached over and pulled her toward me.
She came willingly, and fiercely planted her mouth on mine, as though hungry
for something that had been denied her too long. I ran my fingers through her
hair, took the back of her head in my hands, and pushed her lips against mine
even tighter. She moaned softly, as though my kiss alone were an ecstatic
pleasure. We finally broke apart, breathless and burning.

“Mmmm, Robert!” she sighed, running her
fingertips over my lips and looking at me with the same sort of yearning I felt
toward her. I felt such desire for her, and something rippled through a part of
my soul that I had thought to be dead, the gentle awakening of a feeling akin
to love.

I brought her savagely toward me again,
kissing her at the base of the neck and working my way up toward her ear.

“Maggie,” I whispered, my lips gently
brushing her ear, “I . . . I think I’m going to love you, so much, someday.”

She pulled away gently and looked at me,
her eyes brimming with happy tears. “Me, too, Robert,” she whispered, “me,
too.”

She giggled girlishly as I dragged her onto
my lap and held her tight. It felt like she fit. It felt like she belonged
there.

We punctuated our sentences with kisses as
we talked about our future. We agreed that, considering her current
predicament, the sooner we got married, the better. After all, neither of us
had the time or desire to carry out an extended courtship, and we couldn’t see
any benefits of one, anyway. It seemed getting married immediately would be
advantageous to everyone concerned, and so we decided I would stay until the
following Monday, and we would get married then. The part-time nature of my job
made it quite flexible, so there was no interference in that regard.

We talked and talked, as though neither of
us wanted to be the first to leave the other, but when the clock struck
midnight, Maggie jumped up.

“Oh my gosh, it’s late! I’ve got church
tomorrow!” she exclaimed. “Let me get you some blankets and a pillow,” she
said, disappearing down the hall and reappearing with the bedding.

“I can sleep on the sofa if you and Joshua
want to sleep in my bed,” she offered.

“Oh, no thanks, he can sleep on the floor
beside me as long as he has blankets to lie on,” I replied. “Thanks, though.”

She folded up a blanket several times, laid
it down on the floor beside the sofa, and placed Joshua gently on top of it.

“Can I get you anything else?” she asked,
scanning the room.

“No, I think we should be fine,” I said.
“Well, I could use a goodnight kiss,” I teased.

She fluttered her eyelids coquettishly.
“That could be arranged,” she flirted. She stepped over, bent down, and made my
blood rush with her kiss, gently prying my willing lips apart with her tongue
and driving me crazy with her taste.

“Good night,” she said, ending it abruptly.

“Hey!” I protested as she walked away.
“That’s not fair! You can’t just stop now! That—that—” I sputtered “—that
wasn’t a ‘good-night kiss,’ that was a ‘good-morning kiss!’ That was more like
‘Hel-lo!’”

She let out a full-throated laugh, and it
was a beautiful, sensuous sound to me. “Well, I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy it!”
she mocked me, standing in the doorway with a big smile on her face.

“I did enjoy it!” I almost shouted.

“Shhhhh, quiet!” she held her finger to her
laughing lips as Joshua stirred.

“I did enjoy it!” I repeated in a hushed
voice. “But it just seemed you might have promised more than you delivered.”

“Well, I can’t say I didn’t want to deliver
more than I did, but I knew one of us had to stop before things got out of
hand.” She chided me playfully. “And I was getting the feeling it wasn’t going
to be you.”

“Bah, you didn’t even give me a chance!” I
defended myself weakly. We both laughed, knowing that she was right. I looked
into her eyes, and she looked into mine, and I saw in her eyes what I felt in
my heart.

“I love you, Robert,” she whispered.

“I love you, too,” I answered, and nearly meant
it.

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

I turned off the light and lay down. It was
quiet, except for the sound of Joshua’s gentle snoring, and the occasional
creak of the old house. It had been such a bizarre day, it felt like a dream. A
beautiful dream. It had all happened so quickly, so spontaneously, as though
Maggie and I had both been powerless to fight the fate of togetherness even if
we had had the will to fight.

It was astounding that Maggie, whom I
hadn’t even known a few short hours before, was on the verge of capturing my
love, and had gained my trust and total confidence. The trust of me, a man who
had just the day before believed with all his heart that he could never trust
another woman! It all seemed as if everything that had happened had been predestined,
beyond our control. We had just been characters in a beautiful story that the
great Author was writing.

As I drifted off to sleep, I breathed a
prayer of thanks, and longed to hold my Maggie.

~~~

“Oh, and he cooks, too!” Maggie exclaimed
as she walked in the door after church the next morning.

I was just taking some roast chicken out of
the oven, having opted to avoid adding any grist to the church gossip mill by
staying home with Joshua and starting to pack up some of Maggie’s things.

“Thank you, darling!” she almost bubbled,
looking so much unlike the tired, wilted woman I’d met the day before. Her face
had a little makeup on it, and she wore red lipstick that matched the ribbon
that encircled the crown of her white hat. Her hair hung down to her shoulders
in soft curls. When I looked at her, I couldn’t help but think that she
reminded me of a neglected flower. I could already see the little love and
nurture I’d given her was bringing her back to beauty and vibrancy.

“You’re welcome, and you are gorgeous, my
dear!” I replied, taking off my oven mitts as she stood waiting to thank me
with puckered lips. I gave her a long kiss, and opened my eyes to see Lizzie
standing there, watching us from the side with curiosity and mild alarm.

“Oh,” I said, breaking it off and looking
down at her, thinking she deserved an explanation.

“Did you tell her?” I whispered to Maggie.

“Yes, I told her this morning!” Maggie
chuckled.

“Ma says you’re going to be my pa,” Lizzie
told me solemnly.

“That’s right, first thing tomorrow,” I
smiled at her. “Is that alright with you?”

A big smile split her face. “Yes!” she
replied emphatically, and she ran over and hugged my legs. I gave her a squeeze
and rubbed the top of her head. I winked at Maggie, and I saw her look at us
with happy tears in her eyes.

“Well, I’m glad, too,” I told Lizzie, “I’m
real glad.”

We spent the rest of the day sorting and
packing anything Maggie wanted to take with. Maggie notified horrified friends
and relatives that she was getting married the next day to a man she’d just met
and would be moving to Coon Hollow. Needless to say, her announcement was met
with shock and some heated opposition, but Maggie was undaunted by those who
assumed she was a vulnerable widow who’d been swept off her feet by some shady
fly-by-night character. We were both betting on hope, staking our entire future
not on what we were, but what we knew we could be. And we were going for broke.

~~~

On Monday morning we crammed Maggie’s
possessions into the Buick and tied down a few larger items that wouldn’t fit
inside on the top. She left most of her furniture for friends, neighbors, and
relatives, since my house was fully furnished, plus there was only so much room
in the car for things, and we had no intention of hiring a truck or making
additional trips.

“Good-bye and good riddance!” Maggie fairly
shouted as she closed the ill-fitting door of the house for the last time.

“I can’t wait to begin our new life,” she
sighed dreamily as we walked toward the car together.

“It’s already begun,” I smiled at her as I
opened her door for her. The back seat was full, so Lizzie sat between us in
the front seat, and Joshua sat on Maggie’s lap. It was snug.

“This is going to be quite the ride,” I
said, looking over at Maggie as I started the engine.

“Yes, it is,” she smiled back at me. “It
sure is.”

We stopped in Williston to get married by
the Justice of the Peace. The short ceremony went off smoothly, if one doesn’t
count the brief intermission we had to take so Joshua could get his diaper
changed. It was a simple marriage, that’s all it was, two hearts, two bodies,
two lives being joined together in all earnestness for eternity. There was no
pomp and circumstance, no talk of a honeymoon, no purchase of rings made. To
us, those things were unnecessary luxuries. We were getting married for the
purpose of being married, and that was enough.

~~~

Thus began a fresh chapter in our lives,
not only for Maggie and me, but for Joshua and Lizzie, too. It took a little
adjustment on everyone’s part, and it was not as if we didn’t have growing
pains, but it didn’t take long before we felt very much like a cozy little
family unit. Maggie accepted Joshua as if she’d given birth to him, and Lizzie
became a daughter to me in more than a legal sense.

As for Maggie and me, our love for one
another flourished, putting down deep roots in the soil of trust, commitment,
and faithfulness, just as Maggie had foreseen. She seemed more beautiful each
time I looked at her, and I told her that often. As a woman is prone to do, she
became more beautiful each time I told her.

It seemed the tragedy we’d both experienced
in our lives had shaped us in order to fit us together perfectly. We both had
sorrow in our past, but that only heightened our compatibility and the
appreciation we both had for each other. We each respected the right of the
other to keep the memory of our departed spouses alive through pictures,
mementos, and conversation, understanding that the process of grieving in the
human heart culminates only at death.

Still, we both avoided discussing our
former spouses with each other too much. I didn’t want her to think that I
would have rather had Ellen stay alive than have been given the opportunity to
marry her as I did, and I suspect she didn’t want to lead me to believe that
the memory of Johnny was more dear to her than I was.

Yes, our first Christmas together was a
simple, yet wonderful time, and I always looked back on our first winter
together with extraordinary fondness. Our marriage had filled a huge void in my
life. It was a positive change that I needed, a motivation to do well in all I
did.

But yet, I couldn’t help but feel that more
change was needed. I continued to work at the sawmill, out of necessity, and we
kept on living on the family homestead, out of necessity. To me, working at a
sawmill served its purpose, but I found it decidedly uninspiring, and living on
the homestead felt at times like living in a haunted house where you know where
all the skeletons are hidden. My marriage felt like only a part of the total
life renewal I desired.