[Desert Roses 02] - Across the Years (8 page)

He’d changed his name shortly after learning Ashley was dead. The journalists were hounding him for comments and interviews, for he was heralded as a hero and everyone seemed to want the intimate details of his experiences. When he was stuck in the hospital, there was little he could do to escape the attention. But once he was out, he wanted only to be free from the memories that were stirred every time someone mentioned his deeds. Pity that changing his name hadn’t also altered the dark images in his mind.

So he had become E. J. Carson, using the initials of his first and middle names, Ethan James. Carson came compliments of his mother’s maiden name. And now he was here in Winslow, where the woman he had long believed to be dead had lived her life for the last decade.

Ashley. He moaned softly and covered his eyes with his hand as if to block out the picture of her standing there in the afternoon sun.

“How can this be happening?” He’d given up hope so long ago.
She was dead, they had told him. Dead to influenza. It was reasonable to believe; after all, his own parents had succumbed to the illness, as had vast numbers of other victims. He’d managed to catch it himself after coming home that winter of 1918. Weakened from his injuries, he’d nearly died—so many times he’d wished he had.

He sighed and folded his hands together behind his head and again looked at the ceiling as though it might offer some answers for the questions in his mind.

Ashley’s mother must have lied to him. She hated him from the very beginning.

He remembered the night Ashley had first brought him to meet her folks. They were having a celebration of sorts. Ashley’s oldest brother had just been made a partner at the bank where he worked. Friends and family had gathered to wish him well and applaud his good fortune. Ashley had insisted on bringing Ethan to the party. Her parents were clearly not pleased, although they had not made a public scene over the matter.

That wasn’t true, however, of the next visit he made to their plush Baltimore home. Ashley’s mother had made little effort to hide her displeasure. In fact, she’d made more than one comment alluding to Ashley being spoken for—of their plans for her to marry well.

By the time Ashley brought him around for a third visit, Leticia Murphy was willing to speak quite frankly and tell him that he was to leave her daughter alone. When Ashley had gone upstairs to change her clothes, her mother had even offered him money to never see Ashley again. He’d been deeply offended; so much so, in fact, that he’d told Ashley what had happened. Shortly after that incident, Ashley agreed to marry him and on March twentieth they had done exactly that.

Ethan had never known such happiness. He could still see Ashley standing there, her beautiful chocolate brown hair done up in a loose bun. . . .

“She’s cut her hair,” he murmured, recalling how her hair
was bobbed in a fashionable cut. He had never wanted her to cut her hair, but he had to admit the cropping did nothing to take away from her beauty. If anything, it only enhanced her delicate features. No wonder Natalie had appealed to him so much. She looked just like her mother.

Sweat trickled down the side of his face. He wasn’t perspiring from the heat, however—it was more a nervous energy that had built inside him since seeing Ashley again. Now, in the quiet of the night, he could scarcely believe the events of the day.

Why hadn’t he just told her who he was? Why hadn’t he taken her in his arms and . . .

Because you’re a coward, that’s why,
he told himself.

But it wasn’t that simple. If it were, that would be easy. Ethan had always found ways to muster up his courage for the moment. No, this was much more difficult and so very complicated.

First there was the obvious problem of letting Ashley know he was alive and well. But then, perhaps she knew that already. Perhaps she had agreed with her parents that Ethan was no good for her and had annulled the marriage. But if that were the case, why had she raised Natalie to believe her father had died in the war?

But was he Natalie’s father?

The questions poured in around him like sand through a sieve. What possible good would it do to come back into Ashley’s life after all these years? Even if he were Natalie’s father, wouldn’t it be more harmful than helpful to suddenly make that announcement?

As the night wore on, sleep overcame him and with it came the nightmares that always haunted him. Tossing fitfully, E. J. fought the war all over again. The smell of death permeated the air around him and blended with the heady scent of raw earth. The battle raged and Ethan, with his Springfield rifle, bayonet fixed, waited for the whistle signal that would send him over the top of the trench and into the embrace of eternity.

Suddenly the artillery barrage that had begun at seven that morning stopped. The silence was uncanny, almost deafening. Then without warning, the shrill metallic scream of their advancing signal rent the air. A battle cry rose up from a hundred soon-to-be-dead men as the forces moved up and out of their protective trenches.

Ethan looked to the man on his right—John O’Malley from Boston. They had bonded easily because of an interest they shared in architectural studies. Ethan saw the sheer terror on John’s face—and it was as if Ethan stared into a mirror. The man’s expression reflected his own heart. They stalked the no-man’s-land together, and although hundreds of other uniformed men did likewise, it was almost as if they were alone.

Ethan felt the sweat run down his back and chill him to the bone. The anticipation of enemy fire . . . waiting for the adversary to move from their bunkers to the machine guns . . . waiting for that first spray of deadly rain. It was like a madness—an insanity. How was it that they should find themselves here, like this? How was it that farmers, painters, teachers, and architects were now bearing arms against one another—fighting a war of kings?

Ethan forced himself to keep stride with John and the others as they moved out across the crater-ridden landscape. Someone had mentioned how beautiful the landscape had once been, but Ethan saw only the scars and ugliness. This was the third major battle the area had hosted, and the damage from the artillery had left a desolate and barren land. Even the grass was gone and what trees had existed were now charred, wraithlike figures that rose in ominous fashion—almost as if they were skeletal guards of what had been left behind.

And then the machine guns began their staccato symphony. Bullets zipped past their heads, and the men dove into the nearest crater. All around them soldiers did likewise, some making it without harm, others crying out in pain as the bullets ripped into their flesh.

“For sure it’s gonna be a long day,” John called over his shoulder. Already he was heading out over the top of the crater. Digging his elbows into the ground, he crawled away from Ethan, pausing only momentarily to raise up his rifle and fire.

Ethan followed, all thoughts of patriotism and bravery faded. All around him men were dying, dropping to the ground with stun-faced expressions. It was almost as if they hadn’t expected the possibility of death.

“Help me,” one soldier, looking to be only a boy, cried out. He reached out to Ethan in sheer misery. Then his expression changed, the pain vanishing in the noiseless sigh of his last breath. Ethan pushed back the boy’s arm and pressed on. The haunting expression stayed with him, however. What had the boy seen on the brink of death? Ethan and his buddies often sat around discussing their lives back home, and every once in a while someone would bring the topic back to the war and the possibility that they would be killed.

John had voiced the question just the night before. “Do you suppose you hear the bullet coming when it’s for you?”

Ethan wondered that also as bullets shot past his head.

The danger grew as they closed the gap between their trenches and those of the enemy. The air was thick with smoke and cries of wounded men. With more of the desolate stretch of empty no-man’s-land behind them than in front, the men of Ethan’s unit and others pushed forward. A charred scarecrow of a tree offered them the tiniest defense. They paused to catch their breath, then saw their comrades moving out.

A sudden
thud
caused the hair on Ethan’s neck to rise. He tasted blood and realized he’d bit his own lip. Then, as if time stood still, Ethan froze in place. A potato masher landed only a few feet away. There was no time to yell out a warning. No time to seek cover or turn away. The explosion blasted, sending shrapnel ripping through the lower half of Ethan’s face. For a moment there was nothing but the searing
heat and sensation of something gone terribly wrong. Then the pain radiated throughout his entire body.

Ethan rolled to his side and touched his face. His hand came away wet with blood. Looking across to his friends, he saw one man’s hand torn away. Another man suffered a leg wound. The agony of their pain rose up like a banshee cry on the winds. John was nowhere in sight.

“Oh, God, help us,” moaned the man with the leg wound. “Oh, help us, Jesus.” The man groped around him for his rifle.

Someone screamed in the distance as another explosion of machine-gun fire cut the air. The scene was unreal; slowed in motion, it seemed to take forever for the unit to move even a few feet.

Ethan struggled to sit up. The rapid-fire barrage of bullets poured over and around him. Across the field, men were struggling to advance, struggling to stay alive. The sight caused something to snap inside him. He was tired of being afraid. Tired of spending his nights in trenches. Tired of this war. Without warning or even stopping to see if he could help his friends, Ethan got to his feet and stormed across the remaining distance to the machine-gun nest.

He could hardly see out of his right eye; blood and debris barred his sight and made his depth perception questionable at best. But it didn’t matter. Staggering as his foot hit a hole, Ethan still refused to stop. Pain shot up his leg and he didn’t know if it was from the misstep or a bullet. It didn’t matter. Either way, he had a mission to complete.

Pushing past the barrier of sandbags and logs, he fired as he jumped into the enemy trench. The stunned faces of the German soldiers would always haunt him. He shot the gunners first, then bayoneted them even as they cried out in their misery. One man took off down the line and Ethan, in a blood haze that overcame common sense, followed the man.

He couldn’t say how many men he killed that day, but he could remember the looks on their faces and the feel of his bayonet stealing the life from them. A dozen or more men
dropped their weapons and raised their arms in surrender. Yelling,
“Kamerad! Kamerad!”
But Ethan didn’t care that they now wanted to be his friend—that they were willing to give themselves up. He wanted them all dead. He raised his Springfield once again and fired into their pleading expressions.

“Ethan!”

He looked up through the haze and saw John, along with several other men he didn’t know. A dizzying sensation overcame him. John and the others pointed their rifles at the enemy just as Ethan felt himself beginning to fall. Helpless, he reached for the open air as if to find something to hold on to, but there was nothing.

E. J. awoke with a start and a cry as he always did. Looking around the darkened room, his mind refused to accept the safety offered there. He got to his feet and turned on a light. The rapid pounding of his heart left him lightheaded and breathless.

“It’s all right. It’s over,” he said aloud.

But would it ever really be over?

He sat down on the edge of the bed, panting for breath. “Oh, God, where are you? Why do you hide yourself from me? Why must this torment go on and on?”

CHAPTER SIX

Ashley sat crocheting a sweater for Natalie, marveling at how much her daughter had grown over the last year. The sweaters she’d made last fall no longer fit and had been given away to friends in the neighborhood. Hooking the red yarn in and out of the loops, Ashley knew in the blink of an eye Natalie would be grown. And then what?

She had tried to save money in order to send Natalie to college, if she desired to go. Right now Natalie wanted very much to train as an architect, but Ashley had no way of knowing if that passion would follow her into adulthood. Natalie would most likely marry, whether or not she went to school. It was just the way of most women. A girl would be frowned upon if she remained single for too long. Even a widow became the object of ridicule if she refused to remarry. Many fellow Harvey workers urged Ashley to consider settling down with one of the railroad men. But Ashley couldn’t bring herself to do such a thing. The men, while kind and attentive and often very handsome, were simply not appealing. She’d given her heart to Ethan, and everyone else paled in comparison.

Still, one day Natalie would make a life for herself. Once Natalie did marry, she would probably move away—maybe far away. She’d have a family of her own.

Ashley shuddered at the thought of being alone.
Maybe I should remarry,
she thought.
I could never love anyone as much as I loved Ethan, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t have a good companion. A lot of people marry without love,
she told herself. But what kind of life was that? Would there ever be satisfaction, contentment in such an arrangement?

She was still considering this when the lawyer, Simon Watson, showed up to finalize all of Grandpa’s final requests. Ashley put aside her crocheting and opened the door to admit the man.

“Good morning, Mr. Watson,” she greeted, reaching out to take his gray fedora.

“Good morning.” He smiled ever so slightly and nodded. “Is your grandfather awake?”

“I’m not sure, but I know he’ll want to see you. He’s weakened considerably since you saw him last week. I’m glad you could make these arrangements quickly because, frankly, he needs the pain medication and he won’t take it until his affairs are in order.”

The middle-aged lawyer nodded. “He’s said as much to me.”

Ashley knew there was nothing else to be said. She’d wanted to make certain the lawyer understood Grandpa’s plight and apparently he did. “I’ll go make sure he’s awake,” she finally said. “Why don’t you have a seat in the living room?”