Fight for Glory (My Wounded Soldier #1) (15 page)

“You’re burning,”
I said. They all looked then.

“I always do.
Can’t take the sun like…like you.”

“Then stay in the
house,” said I about as friendly as dysentery.

I could feel
Cousin on high alert, ready to try…and I mean try…to put me in my place.

“I…there’s so
much to do,” she said.

“And most will be
done in the barn. Once those sheaves are gathered, there’s days work to be
done, but it can be done sensible in the barn. No need you getting burned like
some hand. You are a woman with a baby to care for, and all the many things.” I
could feel myself letting go then, and I turned to Cousin, “What makes you
think you got the right to come in here, just show up with no invite, no
nothing, and throw your money around like some kind of savior? Where were you
when they were struggling during the war? There ain’t a piece of machinery on
this place. It’s the poorest excuse for a farm in this county. So where were
you all that time? Working the old man for this woman’s money? Stepping in to
be the good son, same as you’re doing now? Stepping in front of a man standing
there like he ain’t there? You think you’re better than me? Don’t matter what
you think. You ever bring a baby into this world? You got the sand to make one
I’ll bet, but you sure wouldn’t be around to bring it in. And how about this
woman ain’t even got a stove of her own, but has to break her back cooking over
a hearth, and that chimney ain’t even proper, or high enough to pull, and
Johnny needs a space of his own, and she didn’t even have a proper shotgun to
defend the family with. Lord knows you been sitting on what’s hers back east
and now you got the pluck, the…..” She’d been pulling on my arm, and telling me
to stop but I was just now realizing. Not that I would of.
Stopped.

He had gotten on
his feet.

“Let’s have it
out, you and me. I ain’t going to let her go with a man I don’t even know can
stand his ground. Let’s see what you’re made of Cousin when you don’t have the
women fawning over you and shining you up and when you don’t have another man’s
shoes to fill.”

He was red in the
face.
So red.
“Pistols,” he told me.
“Fifty paces.”

I laughed. “What?
Fists!
One pace off.”

“Swords!” he
said.

“Knives and skins!”
I yelled. But I didn’t need anything to
kill him with but my bare hands.

Johnny stood and
he was yelling. Not good yelling, just kind of yelling like a loon. He stood in
front of me, his mouth open wide at Cousin, just screaming.

Addie was trying
to stop him, but she looked at me frantic. I turned him to me, but he couldn’t
see me, he was just yelling. “Johnny,” I said shaking him.

He stopped then,
looking strangely at me, recognition coming slowly. “Tom!” he cried, throwing
his arms around me.

He cried and
cried and I picked him up for frankly I was wearing him like a shirt. Saints
alive, he’d also
peed
his pants.

“You see where
this took us?” Addie said, to me, not Cousin, but me!

I walked away with
Johnny. I took him to the poor excuse of a barn, and walked him around in
there.

In time he went
to sleep, and I laid him in the hay then. Time was wasting in the field, but I
didn’t have the peace to leave him. Someone came, but it was Cousin. I had hoped
it would be Addie and we could have it out, but it was him.

“May I have a
word with you?” Cousin said all grave in the face.

I looked at
Johnny, but he was out, so I walked right outside the door. Cousin stood there.
We were the same height, though he was thinner. I folded my arms over my chest
waiting.

“I…I want to
thank you for all you’ve done for this family. I realize I’ve been remiss in
doing that. The night I thanked your family…you were hurt and you weren’t
present. I have neglected my duties, as well as my manners. I hope you can
forgive me.” He stuck out his hand, and I admit, it was a mess, cut and
blisters open and reopened. It gave me some small satisfaction to see it. This
was the life he’d left them to. Now how did he like it?

When he saw I
wasn’t going to shake it, he let it drop.

“You’re right to
question me. It’s fair,” he said, as if I needed his blessing or something. I
just let him go on.

“I don’t agree
with the way things have transpired either. We’re more in agreement than you
might think. That’s why I’ve come. When we saw the story in the paper you can
imagine how harsh it was for Mother to find out about Richard’s murder. I can’t
blame Adeline.”

“You’d best not. Not
to me or within my hearing. And her name round here is Addie.
Or Missus.”

He nodded
quickly. “I have never blamed her for anything. Not even when she stood up to
Charles. I understood. I only wish….”

“You had a willy
as big?” I said.

He flumed red at that.
I wished he’d come at me. We were not
so in agreement.

“Her husband
didn’t. He was in the doldrums that one.” She had compared me to him. I would
never heal from that.

“Richard was
given to bouts of melancholia. But Adeline…Addie, was so good for
him,
such an obvious change came over him.”

But it didn’t
last, she had said. That’s what she feared.

“He was no prize,
not nearly. Not good enough for her,” I said. “Best part of him is in Johnny.”

“He was a good
man. You didn’t know him. I don’t believe you did…correct?”

“I know enough. I
got eyes.” I looked around the place.

“You’re a hard
man to get to know. What I’ve seen is…lots of temper. That worries me. I wonder
if Johnny will be alright.”

“He protects me,”
I said. “He knows I’ll keep him safe. He saw the killings. He called and I came
running. In a fight, he knows I’ll stand.”

He didn’t like
that so much, and he shifted his fancy boots around. Then I remembered he would
offer Johnny a store, and that made me madder than hellfire again.

“Exactly what are
you putting on the table for this family?” I asked. “You came in here with you
fancy clothes and big talk of money. So what is the offer?” I moved my hands to
my hips.

“You’re in love
with her,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Does she return
your sentiments?”

“You’d have to
ask her. But be sure you do.”

“I see. And I
showed up…and you resent me.”

“Hate you. I hate
you.”

“I see.”

“You don’t see
nothing
. You have offered her money. And then you hope love
will show up. Well love is the one thing you don’t have. But it’s all I have.
 
The rest comes and goes, but I’ve got the
love.”

“Then…you must
hate me.”

I nodded and
refolded my arms.

“But she must
choose. It’s only fair.”

“To whom?”

“To her, of course.
She must choose. I’ve laid out my terms.
Have you?”

“Just this morning in fact.”

“Oh. I see. Well
then, we shall wait on her. She is going home with me in two weeks.

“So I hear,” I
said. “You corner her with guilt over the mother and the scant hope you’ll give
her some crumb from the cake rightfully belonged to her husband and two years
ago at that when his pa died. For two years we have not seen the likes of you
and don’t say you didn’t know they were here because your uncle sent them
missives at least once to let his boy know he’d bought his way out of the war.”

“I shall be
frank…I did know, but I was torn. I didn’t want to hurt Richard further with
news of the will.”

“Then why didn’t
you step away? You’re a thief.
Fancy and legal and all…but a
thief.”

“You are the most
difficult…I’ll try to win her. Here I am…inept at best. There…I am comfortable.
And I will stop at nothing to marry her. Perhaps guilt can be more powerful
than love.”

If I killed him
now he wouldn’t be going anywhere. And I wouldn’t be guilty about it.
 
“Give her what is hers…and stand back like a
man.”

“That’s not fair
to me. I worked hard for what I have, long after Richard deserted us. When
Charles got sick I carried everything. We would have no store if it wasn’t for
me. And I intend to make a very good life for this family. I have always
favored Adeli…Addie. And I’ll be good to the children. They’re my blood,” he
said.

“I am good to
these children. They are…,” I tapped my chest over my heart.

“So it’s up to
her. You must know…I am in your debt. But I am determined she will marry me.”

“Best keep your
eyes in your head around Lavinia then. A distracted man will never attain his
goal,” I said.

Now I’d tromped
on his good intentions, and he was getting huffy. Now I was starting to see
what manner of man he was.

Tom
Tanner

Chapter
Nineteen

Addie left the
house and walked toward me and Quinton. I realized she didn’t have a screen for
the door, and knew such would allow so much heat out of the kitchen. Then I
felt even more anger at this Cousin who still stood there waiting for me to
take back everything I said, like this was the schoolyard. Then I wondered if
he was watching her hips sway, too, and I wanted to kill him all over again,
even as I remembered her in the yard that morning, so beautiful and welcoming I
nearly fell to my knees.

I imagined she
had cared for Janey, and was coming for the other now. I knew she blamed me for
the sins of this world. She was sizing up the two of us, wondering how it was.

“I will carry him
in,” I said, meaning Johnny.

“Is he sleeping?”

“In the hay,” I
said. It’s where I planned to sleep myself this
night,
waiting like a stray cat she had made the mistake of feeding. I wanted to be as
near to her as I could get.

“Have you made
peace?” she asked looking from me to Cousin.

I turned my head
and spit in the dirt. He was still trying to stanch the blood from my
bull’s-eye comment about Lavinia.

He shuffled his
feet. “For the sake of everyone, we must shelve this disagreement.” He walked
off to the field and I tried not to throw a rock.

Addie walked past
me into the barn. She looked down on Johnny. “He’s had a trying day. This
morning when he woke you were the first one he asked for…always the first he
tries to get to. He’d sleep with you if he could.”

And I’d sleep
with her if I could. I reached and pulled that bandana off her hair. That mane
of glory was twisted in a bun at the nape of her slender neck. I touched it
then, the field scrubbed off her. Such a spot of sweetness I nearly stuttered
out some kind of mating call.

“Don’t,” she
whispered, but her eyes closed.

I went from love
to madness for the hundredth time. “I came back,” I said. “If Johnny wouldn’t
have come…I was trying to leave.”

She opened her
eyes. “Maybe you should. I was ready to go for the shotgun when you started
with Quinton. You shamed him there. You put notions in Johnny’s head.”

“Did I? And
offering him a whole store now his pa is gone ain’t putting notions in his
head? He’s family shoppin’.”

Her hands went to
her hips again. She eyed me and her mouth was open. I tied her bandana round my
neck and stared at her like a relentless son of a bitch.

“You made him out
to be another Boyle Monroe the way you talked. I don’t know where you got such
notions about him. And you made us out to be pitiful share-croppers. I’m purely
ashamed the way you must see us—him the villain and me the damsel.”

I kept staring. “I’m
shaming him, no one else.”

She looked
suspicious, raising one of her brows in such a fetching way. “You’re the one
who has no shame. I don’t know what you’ll do next.” She snatched at my prize,
“Give me my bandana.”

I stepped back. “Come
and get it.”

“I declare, Tom
Tanner, you’re worse than Johnny. You are putting me under a millstone. That’s
what. I have told you I must return home. You came back to cause me trouble. It’s
revenge!”

“I came back to
see you again. I don’t know why. But after this morning…I needed to see you
again.” I stepped closer, “I want you.”

“Dear God,” she
whispered, like it was more a curse than a prayer.

I didn’t know
what else to say. So she let me put my arms around her. I held her loosely, but
I fought every instinct when I didn’t smash her against me. We grew quiet like
that, staring at Johnny nesting there.

“I…I hurt for you
carrying such about Garrett. I hoped you laid it down with the telling of it.” Her
voice sounded like I’d knocked the wind out of her finally.

“That’s all you
got to say?” I looked at her. “I’m reprobate.”

“Sounds like you
pity yourself.”

I did not expect
her to say such.

“Go on,” I said.

She twisted out
of my arms, and let that knot of hair loose to trail down her back. “If you’re
reprobate, that
takes away all the hope you gave me about
failing to protect my husband. Guess I’m reprobate, too.”

“What are you
talking about?”

 
“I can’t believe a thing you’ve said to
encourage me.”

“Woman…why do you insist on making me rabid?”

“You speak out
both sides of your mouth,” she was nearly whispering. “There’s one set of laws
for you, and another for the rest of us. We get to make
mistakes,
we get to fail, but not you.” Her voice was picking up speed, “You have to do
every little thing as well as God Himself, or you call yourself reprobate,” she
poked me hard with her finger and it hurt. “Well hubris can take many forms,
Mr. Tanner. And you are not God, fact is no one is praying to you, singing you
hymns, or reading the good book you wrote.”

She was all teary
eyed, and looked mad enough to choke me.

“I….” I just did
not know what to say. “I’m not worthy,” I whispered, like she must see this.

“You have to give
yourself some mercy, Tom. I only know you as worthy. Your family, they would
agree. I don’t know how it was with Garrett, but I suspect you’ve taken all the
things out of your mind that are worthy. You’ve set the worst of it in stone
until you’ve decided you ain’t fit to live.”

“I don’t know….”

She grabbed my
arms. “I have never known a more worthy man in my life than you, Tom, and if
Garrett was here with us, he would back me up! Do you think his last thoughts
didn’t include your anguish as well as his
own!
”

I shook my head
at her. How could she know all this? “Do you mean this?”

“Yes,” she
shouted in a voice that seemed to come from her toes. “I will say it one
hundred times. Yes.” She was staring me down again. I wanted to fall at her
feet. I wanted to worship her.

“Then don’t you
dare marry him.”

She was chewing
that bottom lip, but her eyes were digging into mine.

“I will try not
to.”

I pulled away
from her and ripped her bandana off my neck and slapped it again and again on
my leg, raising a small cloud of dust. Then I turned to her, and she was
backing as I advanced, and I was making some kind of noise that even scared me,
and she was able to go no further cause her back hit a gate, so she cringed
back, and her face had this look like a madman was upon her.

“You marry him I
swear to God above I’ll come there and kill him…I’ll put my hands around his
scrawny city boy neck and I’ll squeeze and squeeze until I feel the cracking
and popping, and his eyes bug out and the red lines break through them and he
gets that nice deep red color, and his tongue flags out, and the spit runs out,
and then he pees and shits himself and goes limp and I will throw him down and
stomp on him.”

I leaned over
her, but I had not touched her for my hands were twisting that bandana.

I stopped then,
for such a terrible feeling had broken loose in me, I stepped back from her and
I stumbled, and caught myself, and ran a hand over my face, and saw Johnny
looking wide-eyed at me, still in that curled position.

She yelled then,
running for me with a board she’d gotten her hands on. She held it like a club,
and I had to sidestep her, grab her round the waist and take it from her.

“Let me go,” she
yelled.

“Addie,
Addie…I’m….”

We were just
breathing then, both of us looking at Johnny. She swallowed, and still huffed
as she said, “It is fine, Johnny. Tom and I….” Her tears broke loose and her
shoulders moved, and I pulled her against me, my arms around her middle, my
face against her hair.

“You have to go,”
she said. “I’m scared to be without you. And I’ve grown scared of you. I know
you’ll blame Quinton, but…don’t you see? I can’t talk you out of it, and it’s
like I said, I’ve been here before. So please, please…let me go.”

I was stuck there
for a minute. When I took my arms away, I’d be letting her go. I didn’t know if
I could. I was stuck where I was, inside and out.

I took in a
breath and I let her go then, forced my arms to agree. “Be a good boy, Johnny,”
I said, and I walked
quick
.

She was scared of
me. I thought it was all him—Cousin. But she was scared of me. I’d told her…and
she was scared. And I’d been scary.

Johnny did not
speak, but I saw him rise, and he followed and crashed into me, and I kept
walking, turned and pried him loose, and kept walking then, in the sunlight,
and the heat, I pried him off two more times.

She came after,
“Johnny,” she called.

“Boy,” I said,
“you stay with your ma like we said. Go to your ma.
Right
now.”

“No,” he howled,
falling on his knees. “Don’t leave us Tom. Don’t go.”

She was running
to him, fell beside him and wrapped herself around him for he was fixing to
come after me again.

I could not bear
to hear that sound, him cater-wailing and I knew it came from deep in. I picked
it up then, breaking into a run soon as I cleared the yard. I ran and ran. I
ran from their pull and their call, I ran.

When I was far
enough away I could no longer look back at them or hear
,
I walked for a spell. I had no thoughts. I had no feelings. It was one mile in
before I knew where I was or what I was doing.

I slowly came to
myself. There was the bent oak, there was the north field breaking out into the
horizon. There was a black-tailed hawk swooping for supper. There was the pale
sky and the blazing ball of fire.

And there,
crushed in my hand…was her bandana.

I would do no
hard thinking until I was well on my way. My mind was made up. It had dropped
in and locked in. Always fast, always strong, I ran then. I ran and I ran so I
could put miles between us, so she’d be safe. And I did not look back.

In my room, the
things were already piled. I should have left this morning. But I’d waste no
time now. I would make it to Greenup before sundown. So I filled my knapsack,
strap on my shoulder I went to the house for my Enfield. Ma sat in the rocker a paper on her
lap. I could see the pot boiling over on the stove, but she didn’t seem to
care. “Are you going too?” she said.

“Too?
Who else is going? You mean Addie?” It hurt to say her
name.

Then I realized
she’d been crying. Seth told me she did this. She would never stop mourning
Garrett, I knew.

“Ma…I am going. I
will write.” I dealt with the pot.

“You think it
will take that long to bring them home?”

“Ma?
Garrett is not coming home,” I said carefully.

She looked
shocked. “Gaylin and Allie!” she yelled shaking her glasses at me.

“What
are you talking about
?
“They’ve run off!
Him to join that posse and my baby girl to
marry Jimmy!”

“Hellfire!
Hellfire!”
I yelled just
as loud, going to the metal box for all the ammunition I could set my hands on.
“How long ago?”

“I don’t know! I
figured Allie was sick with her monthlies so I let her lie abed. But Gaylin did
not come to table, and when Pa returned for dinner he thought Gaylin had gone
to Varn’s farm to help in the field. Later I called Allie and when she did not
respond Pa climbed the ladder and found the letter!”

I went to her and
took it from her hand. It said some nonsense about elopement, and not to worry
for Gaylin was accompanying her and he was going to join the posse.”

“Hellfire!”
I yelled again because that was the worst I
could say in Ma’s hearing.

I would kill
Jimmy for sure. Then Allie, now widowed, would have no recourse but to return
to her senses and her home. Gaylin could go straight to hell and probably would
once he got his breads shot off by some cross-eyed farmer.

“God Almighty,” I
yelled through my teeth. “Ma,” I said, “I will send them to you…never
you mind
.”

She nodded, but
she did not speak.

“Where is my pa?”

“He headed cross
field on Bess to find you.”

“Tell him to stay
put. Tell him I will bring them home safe and sound. You hear?”

“Yes Tom,” she
said, more docile than I’d ever seen.

“Ma,” I said,
“I…love you.”

Her chin trembled
then, and she nodded. I squeezed her hand and went out.

I saddled my
horse and packed my gear. I muttered plenty, but I kept it mostly in. The town
of Greenup was only a two hour ride. Least the way I’d fly over dip and holler.

I pushed hard and
got to Greenup close to sundown. I was not prepared for the amount of folks
that glutted the square. Everywhere a man could put his boot was some sodbuster
eating a can of beans or priming his old firearm. Young men ran in packs. You
could smell the home brew and eager sweat. I had not seen such an assortment of
misfits and weaponry since the day we left for the army.

I took my horse
to the livery and had they not known me they would have turned me out. I walked
then, through this melee, listening for him as much as looking. I made my way
to the sheriff’s office, but there sat Michael instead of Jimmy or William. “Where
is he?” I said.

Michael was at
the desk, boots and spurs crossed on the roll-top. He slammed his feet down
when he saw me. I was no captain in the war, but I had my shot to climb the
ranks and I said no, not me. But still they listened to me.

“He’s on the
street,” Michael said.

“Where?”