Love is a Wounded Soldier (37 page)

The rain had almost stopped, but drops
still dripped off the trees as I walked toward the house with my satchel slung
over my shoulder.

“Is the place yours?” I asked as Moses
opened the door and I stepped inside.

“Rentin’ to own,” he replied. “Brother
Sanders used to live here. He and his wife built that house yonder ten, fifteen
years ago, so this one was sittin’ here empty. He told me I could have it for a
song if I wanted it, so I took him up on it and fixed it up. Should have it
paid off in a little over a year.” His personal satisfaction was once again evident
as he showed me around his home.

“You can stay in here,” he said, flicking
on the light in the spare room. The room was small, but tidy. The bed was made,
and there were two neatly folded towels and a washcloth on the bed. I realized
he’d prepared the room ahead of time just for me.

“The restroom’s down there,” he pointed to
the end of the hall.

“Thanks,” I said. “I think maybe I’ll get
cleaned up and take a nap.” I still felt hung over from the night before.

“Sounds good,” he said.

The smell of meat cooking woke me up
several hours later. The sun was visible through the bedroom window as it tried
wedge itself between two clouds. Hunger gnawed at my belly. My body reminded me
it was overdue for a taste of alcohol. I got out of bed and walked to the kitchen.

“Smells good,” I commented. Moses dumped
some diced vegetables into a pot of stew meat.

“Should be ready in 20 minutes,” he said,
as he took a long look at my clean-shaven face.

“Didn’t know you could cook,” I ribbed him
lightly.

“I didn’t know either, until I had to,” he
smiled.

I sat down at the table and watched him
working at the stove, marveling at how much he’d changed in the past decade.
But what was more amazing was that not only did I no longer hate him, it didn’t
bother me that I didn’t hate him anymore. I didn’t have the desire to hate him.
I didn’t want to hate him, because I had been carrying around too much hate and
anger inside me for too long. I felt like a drowning man with a bellyful of
lead.

“Say, uh, you wouldn’t happen to have a little
something to drink around, would you?” I asked hesitantly, as my craving for
alcohol intensified.

“There’s water in the tap, and milk in the
fridge,” Moses pointed to the fridge with a fork. “And apple juice,” he added.
He gave no indication that he understood what I was really asking for.

“Oh, OK,” I said, and got up and began
going through the cupboards under the pretense of finding a glass, but I was
really looking to see if he might have a little bottle of something tucked away
in a dark corner.

“Glasses are in there,” he pointed to the
cupboard over the sink that I’d already opened and closed.

“Oh!” I tried to sound surprised. Taking a
glass out, I walked over to the fridge and looked inside. Milk and apple juice.

“Say, uh, you wouldn’t happen to keep some
bran—medicinal brandy or maybe a little wine—you know, for—for your stomach’s
sake?” I inquired hopefully. The silence that followed almost frosted up the
windows.

“I don’t allow any of that stuff in the
house,” came the sharp reply. I could tell he almost said “shit” instead of
“stuff,” because it came out sounding like “shtuff.” It was clear if I wanted
to see him get worked up, talking about alcohol would be a sure bet, so I
dropped the subject, poured myself some apple juice, and sat back down.

He set the pot of stew down on the table,
sat down, and bowed his head. “Thank you Father, for this day,” he prayed. I
sat with my eyes open, staring at him. His face showed he meant deeply each
word he prayed.

“Thank you that your mercies are new each mornin’,
and for the grace you provide abundantly to all who ask. I thank you for
bringin’ Robert to my home in this most unusual and miraculous way. Bless this
food to us I pray. Amen.”

“Help yourself,” he smiled warmly at me,
and I did. We ate in silence, and I sat thinking about how unlikely and
unforeseen it was that I was the dinner guest of none other than Moses. When
we’d both sopped our bowls clean with bread, I took out a pack of cigarettes
and offered one to him.

“Haven’t touched tobacco in years,” he
declined as he got up to make us coffee. I lit a cigarette and leaned back in
my chair.

I wanted to avoid talking about my problems
or getting my life straightened out, so I made small talk and steered the
conversation toward safe, neutral topics. After a half hour or so, I allowed a
lull that was just a little too long, and Moses started talking.

“You know, Robert, I went back to Coon
Holler last summer,” he said as he topped up his cup of coffee. I looked at him
like he’d just zapped me with lightning.

“Why?” I finally asked, not sure if I
really wanted to know.

“More coffee?” he asked.

“No, thanks,” I said, so he got up and put
the pot away.

“Well, there were a few reasons. I wanted
to put some flowers on the grave of a woman I spent most of my life with, but
never really knew. I treated her somethin’ awful, and never did get to say
sorry,” he said regretfully.

“Then, there were people in town I needed
to make some things right with. So I did that,” he continued soberly. He took a
sip of his coffee and set it back down.

“But the main reason I went was to see my
son. A long time ago, my son told me to leave. He told me I could only come
back if I came back on my knees, and I got the feelin’ he was pretty serious
about that.” I gulped guiltily. Moses stared up at the ceiling, I stared down
at the floor, and he kept talking without requiring or expecting any response.

“Well, I had reached that point, and knew I
would never, never have total peace if I didn’t go to the son I’d wronged and
hurt and trampled on and make amends. So I went. And I knocked on the door of
the house I’d last seen him in.” He blew a soft chuckle through his nose. “I
knocked on the very door he’d kicked me out of.”

I bit my nails nervously, which was
something I never did, as I anticipated what he’d say had happened when the
door opened.

“The door opened, and there’s this pretty
blonde girl standin’ there, holdin’ a baby.” I couldn’t have flinched harder if
he’d stabbed me in the face, but he kept on talking as though he hadn’t
noticed. He spoke slowly, evenly, in a deliberate, careful way I’d seen men
pick their way through a minefield. Each word was like a step taken only after
proper consideration of where it would land.

“She said she was his wife. I was a little
surprised. Hadn’t thought to think he might be married.” I struggled to keep my
breaths steady as I visualized his story in my mind.

“I asked her if I could speak to my son,
and she said he wasn’t in, so I asked if she knew how long he’d be gone.” He
paused and cleared his throat.

“She looked at me and said, ‘Sir, I don’t
think he’s
ever
comin’ home! He left when he came home from the war, and
I don’t even know where he is!’ Then she started wailin’ and carryin’ on
somethin’ awful! I tried to comfort her the best I could, but she was a wreck.
It really got my dander up, to see my son had left his wife and a wee little
baby like that. I told her he must be as useless a son of a gun as his pa was,
and I said a few more unchristian things about him. She just looked up at me
and said, ‘Oh, no, sir, it’s not like that. You don’t understand!’” He let out
a long sigh, as though speaking was taxing his strength.

“And then she started tellin’ me how it was
. . . And then, I did understand. She managed to get the story out, spittin’
out a few words here and there between sobs.”

I saw him shake his head out of the corner
of my eye.

“Man, she was tore up! Real tore up!” He
took a sip of coffee.

“So I listened to her as she told her
story. She just poured her heart out like I was the only shoulder she had to
cry on.” He paused thoughtfully. “I guess maybe I was. Well, I listened to her
talk for a while about how sorry she was and how she missed her husband and so
on, and by the end, I was almost cryin’ myself. I consoled her the best I
could, and by the time I’d left, she’d even managed to smile a little.” He
peeled his eyes off the ceiling, leaned on the table, and fixed his gaze on me.

“I got in my car, and I drove off, thinkin’
about that poor little girl and how sorry I felt for her.” His look was so
intense now I felt my head turn toward him, almost involuntarily. His eyes
locked on mine and I couldn’t look away.

“I drove for an hour or two, just thinkin’
about it, and suddenly, wham! Another thought hit me like a Mack truck,” he
said, tapping his fingertips on the table.

“Suddenly,” he paused, his mouth quivering,
“suddenly, I remembered I had a boy out there somewhere. My boy! My boy was out
there, and he was hurtin’!” He tapped his fingers harder and faster as he
fought to subdue his emotions.

“I looked at the darkness all around the
car, and imagined that somewhere out in the darkness, God knows where, was my
boy, hurtin’, and—and bleedin’, from a big ole hole in his chest where he’d had
his heart ripped right out.” He moved his head in a motion that was neither a
nod nor a shake.

“And then . . . and then I got angry!” he
rapped his knuckles forcefully on the table. Flashes of that anger he recalled
lit up his eyes.

“And I said to myself—” he stopped, his
face trembling with feeling. He composed himself to continue. “I said to
myself, ‘It ain’t right!’” He shook his head and clenched his teeth. “It ain’t
right! Nobody—
nobody!
—has the right to hurt my boy like that!
Nobody
!”

He took a ragged breath and kept talking,
unashamed of the tears that coursed down his face.

“And I started prayin’, and cryin’, and
prayin’, and cryin’. I prayed and I cried all the way home. I was beggin’ God,
‘Please help me find my boy! My boy needs me! Please help me find him!’ I
prayed every morning, every night, and every time in between, for close to a
year.”

Tears ran down my cheeks in salty waves as
he paused and took a deep breath.

“And then last night, someone called me up.
Said there was a wild man with a gun at the saloon, pokin’ holes in Vern’s
jukebox.” He smiled through his tears and shook his head. “It was my boy.”

We both laughed and wiped the tears from
our faces. It felt like it had all happened a lifetime ago. He pulled out a
hanky and blew his nose, and I did the same with my napkin. Then I sat there wondering
what he was thinking, and wondering if he was wondering what I was thinking.

“So, Pa,” I began, “when—” I halted,
realizing I’d called him “Pa” for the first time I could remember. I hadn’t
meant to, it had just slipped out. For the first time, it had just felt right
to say it. I glanced at him to see if he’d caught it, and he just smiled at me
as if to say, “Yeah, son, you can call me Pa,” so I picked up my sentence from
where I’d dropped it.

“When I pulled the gun on you last night,
why did you holster your pistol?” I asked. He leaned back and looked
reflectively down at his hands which he had folded over his stomach.

“Well,” he began, before taking a moment to
think. “When I realized it was you, I knew there was no way I was gonna shoot
you, so it didn’t make much sense to have it out.”

“Did you think I wasn’t going to shoot?” I
probed. He thought a moment and looked at me.

“I didn’t know,” he admitted, “but the way
I figured it, if you did shoot . . . maybe I had it comin’.”

My throat knotted up as I thought about my
pa living with a guilt that had him believe he’d wronged me so badly he thought
perhaps it would be the fulfillment of justice if I would shoot him. I shifted
nervously in my chair as words flowed unbidden to the tip of my tongue. They
were words I’d thought I’d never be able to say to my father. They danced on my
tongue and demanded that I open my mouth. I thought surely Pa would hear my
nervous heart pounding in the silence that became only more uncomfortable as it
grew. The words would not be denied.

“I forgive you, Pa,” they flew out quickly,
but quietly. He smiled, glossy-eyed. I looked down.

“Thanks. That means more to me than you’ll
ever know,” he said, his voice unsteady.

My heart slowed, and I felt more relieved
than if I’d just stepped down from a podium from which I’d delivered an address
to the whole world. We settled back into a silence which I found much more
comfortable, until the clock chimed, startling us both.

“Oh, my, it’s time an old goat like me got
to bed!” Pa joked, looking at the time.

“Yeah, I reckon I could use some sleep
myself,” I said as I stood up and stretched.

“Say, tomorrow’s my day off. Would you like
to do some fishin’ or somethin’?” Pa asked.

“Shouldn’t I be looking for work tomorrow?”
I responded.

“There’s always Tuesday,” he replied with a
smile. I thought about it a minute. I’d never gone fishing with my pa.