Tin Soldier: a short story

TIN SOLDIER

A
Short Story

by Resa Nelson

Copyright Information

Tin
Soldier:  a short story

Copyright ©
2014 by Resa Nelson

Tin Soldier
originally
appeared in
Oceans of the Mind
magazine © 2003 by Resa Nelson

This book is a
work of fiction.  All characters, names, locations, and events portrayed in
this book are fictional or used in an imaginary way to entertain.  Any
resemblance to any real people, situations, or incidents is purely
coincidental.

Table of
Contents

Tin Soldier

About
Tin
Soldier

Rick watched
anxiously as Abby undid the buttons of her silk blouse.  On the last button,
she froze.   He followed her gaze as she looked at the license she’d placed on
her nightstand after retrieving it from today’s mail.  He watched her eyes
trace and retrace the words embossed in gold at the bottom:  “United States
Government -- There is only one good reason to have a child.”

It wasn’t that Abby’s looks repulsed
him.  She was just the kind of woman who failed to inspire a second glance. 
She was doughy and overweight.  Skin pale and freckled.  Hair black and wiry.

The one
beautiful thing was what she didn’t have:  a gene tattoo.

From the way
Abby stared at her license, she must have been on the verge of changing her
mind.  Rick couldn’t let that happen.  He’d invested too many years in her.  “What’s
wrong?” he said.

She didn’t
look at him.  Instead, she focused on the last button, still undone.  “I don’t
know.”

Naked under
Abby’s large and luxurious comforter, Rick slid over to the edge of the bed. 
If Abby wasn’t beautiful, at least she owned a beautiful sky-rise condo in the
heart of Houston.  The rooms were spacious, the carpets plush and feather soft,
and the furniture was heavy and expensive.

With a soft
and gentle touch, he caught her hovering hands inside his.

Abby looked up
abruptly.  “I don’t know.  Maybe it’s because I’m 40 and you’re 28.  Maybe I’m
having second thoughts about--but I can’t be having second thoughts!  I’m so
lucky.  So fortunate.  This is exactly what I’ve always wanted.  Beyond my
wildest dreams, even.  I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t--”

Abby gasped
softly as Rick pressed the back of her hands to his lips.

Rick watched
her closely.  He paid attention to the tiniest hint of color creeping across
her face.  The expression in her eyes.  The flickering of her gaze.

Rick kissed
her fingertips lightly.  “Do you trust me?”

When her hands
trembled inside his, Rick squeezed to hold them steady.

“Yes.  Of
course.  I put my life in your hands every day.”

Rick rose on
his knees on Abby’s bed to face her as she stood next to it.  He let loose the
last button and pushed her blouse off her shoulders.  “Show me where they took
it out.”

Obediently,
Abby raised one arm to show him the underside of her biceps.  The scar was fresh
and tender, about half an inch long.  “I took the bandage off this morning,”
Abby said.

Rick took a
good look at it.  He traced his fingertips around the scar.  He drank in the
moment as if it were well-aged whiskey.  He savored every second.

Her doctor had
removed her Preconceive implant, leaving tiny and precise stitches.  It was
official.  Now she could get pregnant.  Abby was likely to be the richest and
most powerful woman Rick would ever know, but touching the skin around her scar
drove the point home. 

But Abby
looked scared, like a little girl.  For a brief moment, it touched a place in
Rick that made him want to protect her.  The words popped out of his mouth
before he could take them back.  “We don’t have to do this.  Not if you don’t
want to.”

It was all
Rick could do to keep a sincere look on his face.  He had to stay focused. 
Keep his eye on the prize.  Failure was not an option.  He had to get Abby in
bed.

Abby’s words
flooded out from some secret place where she’d been damming them up.  “It’s
impossible somebody like you--anybody who looks like you--is alone.  I keep
thinking you must have a wife.  A girlfriend.  This is terrible and wrong.”

Rick reminded
himself of the cold, hard facts of life.  One:  Life is war.  Two:  Everyone
else is the enemy.  Three:  The only way to win the war is to fight for
yourself.

He kissed Abby
slowly and passionately.  “How could I kiss you like that if I loved somebody
else?”

He could see
Abby steeling herself as she looked deeply into his eyes for the truth.  “That’s
not an answer.”

Rick steeled
himself in return.  He’d already figured out a way to tell her as much of the
truth as he was willing to reveal.  “Even if I did have someone special, I’d
never turn you down.  Nobody ever gets a chance like this.  I swear, Abby, you
make me feel like the luckiest man alive.”

He kissed her
again.  As their tenderness heated into lust, Rick wrapped his arms around Abby
and drew her down into the depths of her own bed.

###

Before Rick
had time to shut his own front door, Shelly’s voice pierced the stale, smoky
air.

“You’re late!” 
Moments later, Shelly walked into the living room, her high heels clicking
slowly and purposefully on the cheap tile floor that spread like a disease
throughout the tiny apartment, part of a rundown complex in a bedroom community
turned ghetto.  Everything in the apartment was chipped or warped or broken
with no hope for repair.

One of the
pleasures of his bleak life was coming home and getting an eyeful of Shelly
every night.  She was a tall, leggy blonde with tourmaline eyes, chiseled
cheekbones, and a body that stopped every man cold.

With Shelly on
his arm, Rick felt like somebody.  He felt like a success, even if only for the
few seconds before anybody got a close look at Shelly’s face.

It wasn’t her
fault.  It was something the government had forced on her.

A “1M” gene
tattoo glowed crimson red just under the skin between her eyebrows.  Her
genetic code indicated risk for ADD, bi-polarity, leukemia, and scoliosis. 
Although medically manageable, all costs for treatment and special education
would fall directly into the parents’ laps.  Hers was one of the worst genetic
rankings possible, and it ensured her Preconceive implant was unlikely to be
removed legally.

Fresh out of
beauty school, Shelly had moved in with Rick’s family after finally landing a
part-time job as a manicurist at the local mall.

“Sorry, Babe. 
I got stuck downtown.”

“Again?” 
Shelly’s face was hard with unspoken accusations. She extended her arms to
embrace him, but Rick knew what she wanted.  As he drew her in for a hug, Rick
saw her nostrils flare slightly.  She inhaled, searching his face, his hair,
his breath, his body for the scent of another woman.

Rick held her
long and close.  He’d cleaned himself up, then spent some extra time on the bus
to work off the equivalent of an honest day’s sweat.  The longer he held
Shelly, the more she relaxed.

But she was
still edgy when she broke away.  “So did you take the bitch to the hospital? 
Did they fill her up with a turkey baster full of your juice?”  Shelly backed
away, her arms crossed.

Rick took off
his thread-bare winter coat and hung it on one of the many hooks nailed into
the wall by the front door.  Judging by the other seven coats hanging crowded
on the wall, it looked like everybody was home.  A loud round of laughter
coming from the opposite end of the two-bedroom apartment confirmed it. As
gorgeous as Shelly was to look at, she wasn’t the easiest woman in the world to
placate.  Rick took a deep breath, then gave it a shot.  Calmly and warmly, he
said, “My day was fine, Honey.  How was yours?”

As usual, it
was the wrong thing to say.

Shelly
clenched her own arms so tightly it seemed impossible that her long, polished
fingernails didn’t puncture her skin and draw blood.  “How was my day?  Your
brother Frank slept in our bed and left drool on my pillow.”

Rick shrugged
it off.  “Frank works nights.  Where else is he supposed to sleep?”

Before Shelly
could answer, Rick’s family streamed into the living room.  Rick’s mother
cradled a large photo album in her arms.

Shelly turned
away with a sick look on her face.

“Rick,
sweetie,” his mother said as she kissed his cheek.  “Come look at pictures with
us.”

“This is
supposed to be my day!” Shelly blurted, near tears.

Everyone
stared at her.  Shelly stared back.

“I got my
first pay check today,” Shelly said.  “It’s supposed to be my special day! 
Wasn’t spending every waking moment of New Year’s Day looking at that stinking
album enough?”

The album was
open in Rick’s mother’s arms.  Photos of Rick and his brothers as kids, made
from cheap, disposable cameras, were glued onto the pages.

Shelly glared
at Rick’s mother with unbridled hatred.  “How can you be so insensitive?”

Rick’s mother
spoke gently.  “Shelly, no one is trying to hurt you.”

Rick’s
brothers settled into the living room sofas as if claiming the front row at a
boxing match.  Frank passed around the popcorn as everyone waited for Shelly’s
response.

Shelly
steamed.  “You never had to suffer.  You had it easy.”

Rick tried to
smooth things over.  “Mom’s from a different generation.”

Shelly ignored
him.  “Looking in a mirror is no big deal for you.  Not like it is for...”

Too upset,
Shelly ran down the hallway.

Rick took a
step after her.  His mother placed a warning hand on his shoulder.  Rick
stopped and looked back at her.

“I hate to say
it,” his mother said softly.  “But when I see girls like Shelly, I wonder if
the government is right.”

Rick turned
and walked down the hallway.  He knew what she meant.  The same as the phrase
he’d seen earlier that day on Abby’s new license.

###

Shelly sat on
the bed, hugging her knees to her chest.  “Why should I help your family with
my pay check when I could move back into my family’s apartment and help them
instead?”

A cold chill
ran down the back of Rick’s throat.  “You can’t go.  Not after all we’ve done. 
Everything we planned.”

Shelly
smiled.  “George Chan got a job at Harvard.”

Rick blew off
the news.  “Doing what?  Mopping floors?”

Shelly’s smile
dimmed.  But only a little.  “Three years from now, they’ll let him go to
school for free.  He’s got the brains for law school.”

“So you’d
spend three years waiting for George Chan to go to law school--and then what? 
Another three years while he’s in school?  That’s six years, Shelly.  You’ll be
pushing 25.”

Shelly gazed
into Rick’s eyes.  For the first time, she looked genuinely sad.  “But I’d be
married to a law man from Harvard.  Not some rich woman’s chauffeur.”

Rick
considered his options.  A bitter fight would get him nowhere.  And he’d maxed
out on begging.  His best option was a crap shoot.

“This rich
woman’s chauffeur can give you everything you want in a year.  Maybe under a
year.”

“You can’t guarantee
that.”

He rolled his
dice without looking to see how they landed.

“No,” Rick
said.  “I can’t.  But let’s stick to the plan.  First we set up all the pins,
then we knock them down.”

“Nothing can
happen until she’s knocked up.”

Rick kept his
voice steady and calm.  “As soon as she’s knocked up, I’ll talk her into hiring
a nanny.  She trusts me.  She’ll hire you.  We wait until she has the baby.  We
wait until she’s ready to travel again.  I hit the road with her, while you
stay in her house with the baby.  When she’s with the customer, I make an
excuse to step out.”

Shelly relaxed
for a moment.  Her face glowed the way it used to when they’d dream about a
better future.

Rick missed
the nights talking about Mexico, where anybody could get the gene tattoo
removed without leaving a scar.  It would be easy to slip back into the States,
but this time with a status symbol in their arms.  Back in the days when the
plan was nothing but a dream, Shelly was soft and warm and tender.

She was the
only one Rick trusted.  If life was a war, she was in the same foxhole with
him, watching his back.

“And then?”
Shelly said, even though she knew exactly what came next.  Her voice had the
wistfulness of a child asking for the story she knew by heart to be read aloud,
just once more before bedtime.

“Then our
lives will be perfect,” Rick said before he kissed her.  It was slow and
passionate, just like the old days.

When they
finished, Shelly gazed back at him evenly.  The hard edge crept back into her
voice.  “Just remember which one of us has the cousin in Mexico.”

###

March 14

“It seems to
have come out of Henry Hickner’s molds, which is no guarantee he cast it,” the
old man said. “And some fool touched up the chipped paint on the elbow.”  The
jeweler’s eyepiece jutted from his face.  He turned a tin soldier slowly in his
hands, inspecting it closely.  He looked more like a gnome than a man, Rick
thought.  The old man’s fingers were curled up and gnarled, and he sat at an
old oak table as tiny and crowded as his shop.

Abby sat
across the table from the old man, waiting patiently.  Rick stood behind her,
forcing himself to at least look patient.  But they’d been here an hour already
and accomplished nothing.  At this rate, they might waste the rest of the day
here--maybe with nothing to show for it.