Love is a Wounded Soldier (8 page)

“and so I told him, ‘That horse wouldn’t
make sticky glue,’ and he keeps wantin’ to trade a 20-year-old horse for a
3-year-old milk cow.” Oblivious to my distraction, Delmar had started a new
story.

“Ha ha,” I feigned amusement, “I’ve got to
go.” I grabbed my Bible and rose abruptly.

Undeterred by my hasty departure, Delmar
continued jabbering at my disappearing back until I was out of earshot, and for
all I know, was still flapping his gums in the same pew Monday morning.

~~~

After that, I wasn’t one to be missing
church services or any other event Ellen might be at. All my thoughts revolved
around her. I can’t even count the times I plowed a cock-eyed row, forgot to
slop the pigs, or neglected some task because my mind was far from my duties. I
imagined coming home to her after working all day, a hot meal on the table,
with her smelling good and waiting to welcome me with her lips.

Several months later, Willie Michaels told
me his sister Nell had it from a reliable source that Ellen had been sweet on
me for years, but thought my bearing to be austere and was a little intimidated
by it. Once I found that out, I tried to show a lighter side around her,
joking, teasing, and smiling smiles I hoped didn’t look too phony.

But, she was only 17, so I thought I should
give her a little time to finish her schooling before attempting to court her,
so I spent the better part of a year being satisfied with flirtatious exchanges
and glances across the room. In that time I worked even harder than before,
trying to make my house more suitable for a woman, trying to squeeze a little
bit more yield out of the land to pad my pockets.

My icy resolve to hold off on asking to
court her dripped away with every warm smile she shone at me, and her every
innocent, endearing gesture and mannerism rendered me helpless. I had thought
that the spring of 1940, when she turned 18, would be a good time and
appropriate season to pursue her in earnest, but she proved to be too much. The
Moores began inviting me over regularly for Sunday dinner, and after I dined
there on two consecutive Sundays in January of that year, I was almost
convinced it was more than pity on a hungry bachelor that was prompting their
hospitality. After I was invited on the third Sunday, I knew it was no
coincidence. As smitten as I was, I decided it was now or never.

~~~

On that particular Sunday afternoon, Ellen
and I bantered over dumplings and apple pie, and when the dishes were put away,
we gathered in the parlor to play some games. My head was far from the game on
the table, and rather, continued to direct my mouth in laying down the verbal
pieces of a game of far greater significance to me. I flirted scandalously with
Ellen; I goaded, insulted, complimented, flattered—everything I could think of
to see if I could reveal a chink in her composure or elicit some sort of
reaction, but she remained serenely unflappable, coloring slightly at times,
but usually quick with a retort, or else she clamped her mouth shut and ignored
my witticisms, as one pretends not to notice a yappy little dog circling and
nipping at the heels. All the while I was anxiously hoping I could scrape up
the nerve to talk to her father, and praying an opportunity to buttonhole him
would arise.

Later that afternoon, the preacher and
Joseph buried themselves in coats and hats and let themselves out to tend to
the few cows, horses, and smaller livestock that called their barns home. I
abruptly excused myself from a game of dominoes, threw my own coat and
accoutrements on, and trudged out to the barn, my palms sweating despite the
chilly wind, my mind arranging and rearranging words in my mind like you
shuffle Scrabble letters. I strung words like “love,” “court,” “Ellen,” and
“marry” together, frantically trying to reach the most effective combination
before reaching the barn.

The daylight was failing and soon it would
be time for the evening service at church. The preacher was rationing out oats
to his team of horses near me, while Joseph freshened the bedding for their
milk cow at the opposite end of the barn.

“Robert!” the preacher greeted me, looking
a little surprised to see me, but then his look relaxed, and it almost seemed
he perceived the purpose of my visit.

“Need a hand with anything?” I looked
around to see if there was something handy I could put my hand to, yet still
keep a close proximity.

“No, we’ve pretty much got this covered,”
he replied. “This isn’t exactly the King Ranch we’re running here,” he added
wryly. I snorted out an odd-sounding chuckle and hoped I didn’t sound too
strained or ill at ease.
How do I start this?

“How old is he?” I nodded toward the horse
snuffling through the pile of oats in front of us.

“Twelve,” he replied, roughly scratching
the heavy bay gelding’s mane between the ears as he eagerly lipped the oats
into his mouth.
Should I start now?

“Looks good, for that age,” I commented
lamely, shifting my weight nervously from foot to foot now.

“Um-hmm,” the preacher agreed tepidly.
Is
he angry?
I looked askance and saw what looked to be an amused expression
on his face, but the dim light made it hard to tell. The lingering silence was
painful.

“I-uh . . . I need to talk to you about
something, sir,” I finally ventured, stiffly leaning up against the wall, all
the while trying to look at ease. Another pregnant silence.

“Well, I’m listening, Robert,” he said, and
now I could see an unholy amusement tugging the corners of his mouth. It seemed
he knew what I wanted and found it entertaining to see me squirm!

“It’s about your daughter, sir,” I
proffered cautiously.

“Esther?” he queried with furrowed brow,
referring to his daughter of six or seven. He was concealing his mirth badly
now. He knew it, too, and turned away and scrutinized the work Joseph was
doing. I was now feeling a little foolish for being so timid and allowing him
to play with my emotions like I was a child. Emboldened by the thought, I
grabbed the edge of the trough firmly as I assumed a much looser stance, and
decided to quit beating around the bush and grab the bull by the horns.

“Ellen,” I said, “I’d like your permission
to court Ellen.”

“Hmm,” he responded, feigning surprise as
he turned back to face me.

“And what would be your motive for
requesting this privilege?” he challenged, looking me in the eye.

“I love her, sir,” I said, with no hesitation.

“Ah, of course,” he smiled, his tone
ridiculing my statement ever so slightly. I didn’t know what to say. He allowed
a minute of silence to linger. The only sounds were the gelding munching and
the pounding of blood in my ears.

“Do you know when I began loving my wife,
Robert?” he asked me, serious now. I shook my head. By now Joseph had caught on
that we were having something of a personal discussion and had made himself
scarce.

“During our third year of marriage, when
Ellie and Joseph were just babies,” he began, looking down as he pinched his
chin between his thumb and forefinger, “Caroline got a case of smallpox, and
she had it so bad, you could almost smell the Grim Reaper’s breath, he was that
close. And I nursed her, and I cared for our babies, and I fell on my knees and
begged God and cried for hours that he’d spare her life. And he did. Now I’ve
never been quite sure whether I cared for her and about her because I loved
her, or if I really began to truly love her because of the unending, unbearable
weeks of sacrifice I made for her, but after that, I felt such an unbelievably
strong love for her that I couldn’t have begun to fathom before then.” He
stopped, wiping a tear off the end of his nose, his cold lips forming a stiff,
thin smile. After hearing his story, I felt a little silly for using the word
love so carelessly.

“Do you still think you love her?” he
probed, curious, not challenging now. I deliberated a little in my mind and
finally pieced together a fitting answer.

“No, sir,” I shook my head, “but I like her
plenty, and she’s a fine girl. And the way I see it, I could learn to love her
easier than any other girl I can think of.”

He dispelled the tension with a low laugh
that I imagined gurgled up his esophagus like a burp. I laughed too, relieved
that the mood had lightened. I still expected a rigorous cross-examination, but
I suppose he must have been adequately convinced of my integrity, because he
said, “Well, now I guess it’s just up to you to persuade Ellie,” and smiled at
me the way I’d always wished my father had.

High on clearing the first hurdle, I
cockily responded, “Oh, that shouldn’t be so hard!” My bravado was
substantially outpacing my bravery, however, and I immediately began steeling
my heart for asking Ellen. It would be one thing if her father rejected me, but
quite another to have the object of my desire outright refuse me.

“Well, go along,” he nodded toward the
house.

I turned to go, trying to swallow a
grapefruit of angst as I walked back toward the house with fear and trembling.
At that moment I began to understand what a woman is.

A woman is a terrifying thing. A woman is a
velvet hammer that softly pounds your will from around your heart, leaving it
bare, vulnerable, defenseless. When a woman gives you her heart, she gives with
it the feeling that you are the sole monarch of an infinitely precious domain.
A woman is drink, a tonic to one, poison to another. A two-edged sword that can
mince the strongest heart, or surgically repair the fainting one. A woman can
inflate the value of your life to unfathomable worth, or make you wish you’d
given up the habit of living long before you met her. A woman is a driving rain
that drowns your spirit, or a refreshing sprinkler of sustenance to your soul.
A woman is the sun; the power of life and death are in her hands.

A feeling of absolute helplessness pummeled
my guts as I took off my coat and boots. My destiny was in her hands, and it
seemed my mind, soul, and body rebelled at the thought of having so little
say-so in how this was all going to end.

Mrs. Moore and Ellen had started with
supper. I walked into the kitchen and stood in the middle of the floor, feeling
awkward, conspicuous, and unsure.

“Hungry?” Mrs. Moore smiled at me as she
transferred a steaming pot of cooked potatoes from the stove to the strainer.

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied woodenly, failing
to recognize that at the moment, my throat was so tight I couldn’t have shoved
a pea down it with a ramrod.

I moved to the table where Ellen was
slicing bread and pulled out a chair, but didn’t sit down. I stood
indecisively, not wanting to talk to her around anyone else, but not sure what
to say when I did. She looked up briefly from her work and smiled at me, her
hands never stopping. A gold necklace draped her smooth neck, the opal pendant
nestled like an inlay in the nook of her collarbone, which looked like an
elegant embossing, strong and beautiful. She noticed me staring and looked
again, and I wanted to avert my eyes, but knew it would look juvenile, so I
held her gaze as she looked at me with a pleasant look of perplexity. The time
was now.

“Can I talk with you, you know, uh, alone?”
I asked, so nervous I feared she might feel my pulse through the floor. She
quickly masked her initial look of realization and unease with an expression
would have passed for calm if she hadn’t reddened slightly and bit her bottom
lip nervously as she hung up her apron and excused herself. I followed her into
the empty parlor. She turned to face me, but we both didn’t sit down.

“So I, uh, was talking to your pa,” I
began, looking down at my hands as I picked away at a loose thread on the arm
of the red and gold sofa we were standing beside.

“Uh-huh,” she said, her eyes showed a hint
of pity for me and encouraged me along. I decided I at least needed to be man
enough to look her in the eye, so I didn’t look down again, just stared
straight into her soul.

“Well, he said it would be alright by him
if I courted you,” I unloaded.

“Uh-huh,” she said again, looking more
relaxed now.

“And so I was just wondering if, if . . .”
Drat!
As badly as I wanted to ask her flat out if she wanted to go with me, I just
kept thinking that the more directly I phrased things, the more directly I
could be refused, so I switched horses in midstream and tried to be a little humorous.

“I was wondering if maybe I could set an
appointment to ask you if you’d like me to court you,” I propositioned safely.
A smile flitted briefly over her face, like the shadow of a bird is there and
gone, and you wonder if you really saw it at all.

“Why certainly, Mr. Mattox!” she replied,
the anxiety having been replaced with her usual coolness. “Does Sunday after
next, at two o’clock, work for you?” she queried.

Befuddled by her reaction, I struggled to
regain my mental footing and managed a delayed, “Yes, yes, that will be fine,”
trying not to look too stunned that she hadn’t caught on to the absurdity of my
suggestion. A dopey smile not unlike the one her father had been wearing only
20 minutes previously played on her lips, and finally, it broke into a broad
smile and she laughed a throaty, contagious laugh I was sure I could listen to
until the trumpet sounded.