Fight for Glory (My Wounded Soldier #1) (25 page)

Tom
Tanner

Chapter
Thirty-Four

I left her by
that tree, smaller in my eye, bigger in me.

Then I turned to
this boy who had her eyes, and part of her soul mayhap. Well, he had a million
questions about this room we would share. And he’d never been to a boarding
house before, and when were we eating supper?

I could eat me a
bear or two. So we went on to the diner, and I paid that driver and told him to
return next morning, soon as the sun came up to take us to the ferry so we
could head home. From there we would seek the train to carry us back to Rigsby,
and there we would, I hoped, find our horses.

At the diner, we
had to wait to get a seat at a table. I stood
still,
and him against my leg. “Ma said you
was
in trouble
that day we saw you at the train. You had the revolver in your pants,” he said,
“like now. I can see it.”

The woman in
front of us turned and looked, turned away again quick. I bent over and said
low, “Bring that voice down.” Well, if I said the word, “pants,” in mixed
company at his age, my ma would have given me a piece of soap to suck on. “Get
on the trail you have to learn to use hand signs,” I told him, trying to bring
us to a friendly track. “Sometimes if there be outlaws….”

“Like rebs?” he
said so loudly it’s as if the entire establishment came to a halt and looked
around for the source of that word.

I stood, my hand
on him, looking them down, for they’d been me they’d done the same.

So they got back
to it. I bent to Johnny, “Church voice here.” I was proud I’d made it simple.

“Ma
don’t
let me talk in church at all,” he said.

The girl came to
us then, reminding me of that one back home who called me mean. She pulled
Johnny’s hat from his head and handed it to him. I should have had him remove
such when I did mine. I had to remember this.
To think for us
both.

She led us toward
a table. Then he taught me a sign before I had a turn to teach him one. He
looked back at me and held his nose as if to say the woman smelled. And he
didn’t care who saw him.

One big stride to
him, and I took him by the arm.

“Miss,” I said to
the girl though she had her back to us, “we have to step out.”

I pulled him
along, but he did not come easy, asking all the way and loud as bells, “Where
we goin’ Tom? You said we were going to eat! I want some beans!”

We were like a
traveling show for all the attention he brought on us. He kept saying it all
around that building until we were behind it. I whipped him around so we were
nose to nose. “Listen here, Johnny, we don’t make signs behind people’s backs,
particularly grown folks, particularly women folks. Not
no
time.”

“You ain’t my
pa,” he shouted, really yelling on the ‘pa’ part.

The back door of
that diner opened then.
Had them a Cookie, black-skinned arms
big from slinging hash.
“What this?”

I pulled Johnny
further into the sparse yard and ignored Cookie. “Let me go,” he yelled, then
squinted his eyes closed and yelled top of his lungs, “You ain’t my pa,” then a
big breath and even louder, “I’m…hungry!” Only he said it more like,
‘hun-graaay.’

Cookie was
chewing on a cold cheroot. I put my hand up to let him know not to interfere. I
was still bent over trying to reason with this demon
who
had swallowed my sanguine Tom-worshipping Johnny. I wished I could just pull my
revolver and stick it against his nose, just to get his attention for a minute,
but I knew that wasn’t the way. Not with Cookie looking on.

So I gave him the
littlest shake. “Shut that yapper,” I said cold.

He shut it for a
minute. This was new for us. We’d been pards. Now we were something else. I
didn’t know what, but it felt like we’d hit the shores of a hostile land.

He stuck out his
bottom lip and folded his arms, glaring at me.

Now I was getting
mad. “I’m gonna take you home to Quinton and tell him to send you to boarding
school with all those little rich farts. That what you want?”

I felt those new
boots then, right where he kicked me in the shin.

“You little…,”
said I, looking quick to Cookie, then back at him. “You ever do that again,
you’ll be walking barefoot all the way to Greenup.”

“I…hate you!” he
yelled.

Well that did it,
we took to wrestling then, me trying to get him over my leg without any of the
dirty tricks I would usually use to get a man, even a small one, where I wanted
him to go.

I felt a hard
knock on my shoulder, and it was Cookie. I moved back quick and got on my feet,
hand on my gun.

He looked at my
hand, and I looked at his, and saw the biscuit there.

Johnny stood, his
nice clothes dirty, and his shirt untucked. He was looking from me to Cookie,
waiting to see what I was going to do. I took the biscuit. “Thank you.”

Cookie nodded at
me. Then he looked at Johnny, a fierce look. “I
be
makin’ sausage tonight with the moon full. You let me know this boy don’t come
around,” he said.

“I will,” I said
wishing I had me some time to get more advice from the likes of Cookie.

That sausage idea
was purely inspired.

Johnny stared at
me, his eyes big just like Addie’s when I’d let the beast out at her. I handed
him that biscuit and he took it in his dirty little hand. But he kept his eyes
on Cookie. He moved closer to me as he nibbled, watching Cookie cross the yard.
But before he went in, Cookie turned and winked at both of us.

“Liar!”
Johnny screamed at Cookie throwing the rest of the
biscuit at him. Then he took off running down the gangway back toward the
street. And I took off after. The little smarty-britches ran right in front of
a team of four. That front horse reared and pawed and that driver had his hands
full I tell you.

I followed those
boots pumping dust, my eyes nailed on that pint-sized backside I hoped to light
into once I got my hands on him. He got across the street, his heels clicking
on the sidewalk, then between a saloon and an apothecary he flew. I followed
him down, and I was gaining before he turned behind that saloon. My boots hit
just a few beats behind him, and I rounded the corner and skidded to a stop. A
woman was in the yard there, standing next to a pile of wooden kegs and flats. She
was older on closer
look,
dressed in a loosely tied
robe, no corset for those things were hanging to her waist. Her long blonde
hair looked like she had a curly yellow dog on her head, and her face was
painted like a fancy doll’s face. She was smoking a pipe filled with the
stinkingest mix of tobacco in all of Shiloh.

Rode hard for sure.
She was sizing me.

“Where’d he go,”
I said.

She wasn’t in a
hurry, chewing the stem. “Who’s askin’?” She had teeth like old piano keys.

“You see that
boy?” I was looking for where he’d be. This yard was closed in by a fence kept
poorly. He might have gone over for there was trash all around to help him out.

“Mebbe I did,
mebbe not. Why don’t you buy me a drink and we’ll talk about it?” She sucked
that smoke and blew it out in rings. Well she had that lip rouge on thick, and
some bled into the lines round her mouth. I had a powerful hee-be and I cleared
my throat.

“Johnny,” I
called out. He had to be hiding in this mess. I went to the pile of kegs and
threw one off.

“Calm down
soldier,” she said.

I didn’t know how
she figured me for a soldier. I dug in my pocket and fisted some coin, offering
it to her. She looked at my hand and laughed, offering me her palm, which I
filled pretty much. She put this money in a little pouch round her waist.

“You that kid’s
pa?” she said.

“Where’s he at?”

She nodded at the
back door. I yanked it, and it was a storeroom of some kind, then I went in the
big room near the bar. Bar-keep looked at me, and there was Johnny, sitting on
the bar, a big mug of sarsaparilla in his fist, four, five drunks gathered
round him laughing at the way he was downing that drink.

I strode to him,
pushed through those fellows, and stood there. Johnny peered over the top of
the glass as he drained it. He was backdropped by a big painting of a naked
woman reclining on her side. If Addie could see him…see us now…Lord.

“You through?”
I asked him as he burped about in my face.

He wiped his
mouth with the back of his hand and nodded, setting his empty glass on the bar.

“Get down,” I
said, and he jumped lightly to his feet.

“Thanks Mr.
Clyde,” he said to one of the drunks. I dug in my pocket again and slapped a
nickel on the counter. I took Johnny’s hand and held it tight in mine as I
marched him out the door.

We walked back to
the diner, not a word spoke, except him burping now and again. When we got in I
whipped that hat off his head and held it with my own, but his hand I did not
release. The girl came to lead us to our table, for the crowd had thinned
considerably. We sat and she said they had stew left, and I said we’d take it,
but Johnny said, “I wanted beans….”

But he let it die
when I gave him the hand sign for, “Shut it,” which was a banging fist upon
that table made the forks fly up and clatter down.

“You want me to
get him?” I meant Cookie, and he knew it, too. He made those lips a thin line
of contemplation then. And we had no talk until the plates of brown stew and
orange carrots and yellow potatoes were set before us.

“What say you?” I
said.

“Thank you,
Ma’am,” he said to our serving girl, picking up his spoon and sighing to be put
upon.

I figured we
needed the prayer at least and I had to do it to set him right. So I bowed and
him, and I said, “Thank ya.”

We fell on it
then, both of us attacking our plates, me eating the white bread I loved, and
him eating all the butter, then lifting his plate to lick it clean.

When we were
finally in the room, I lined our boots up, the small beside the big. He was
already
face
down on the bed, still in his clothes,
sound asleep. His face was scrunched on the pillow, his mouth open and
drooling. I was bent over him, my hand moving toward that hair the color of his
ma’s. I ran my hand against it, looking at his face, hoping to see inside that
head of his, noticing those freckles, like constellations of stars in the sky,
there were patterns. Then I let my hand settle on his back and felt his pump,
his breathing. “Oh God,” I said, “
this
is Johnny. Help
me to keep him alive is the thing. Amen.”

I pulled my hand
back, and continued to study him while I took off my shirt. Then I got in next
to him. Sun was setting, and
come
first light we’d be
cutting it for the ferry.

Well, I had my
one hand on my stomach, and the other stretched where pillows met the
headboard. Johnny rolled then, his arm flopping over me. “Tom,” he said, and I
thought he was awake. But no, he was out. His head came right up on me, and his
arm tightened some over me. He threw his leg on me, too. And I stroked his
hair. He was mine, I knew, and I’d figure a way other than the sausage mill. Little
by little I would.

Next
day we made it to the ferry. I had my pack, and I’d outfitted him with the
same. Least I knew he couldn’t take off running so easy with his own gear to
carry.

Once we boarded,
we rested our gear against the ferry’s railing. He had climbed on it enough he
could bend over and look down on the water. “How deep is it?” he asked, for he
had a hundred sincere questions about everything.

“Way over your
head,” I said, grabbing his suspenders and yanking him back.

But he pulled
against me and ended up going right over plunging
quick
into the water. “Johnny,” I
yelled,
my hand on the
rail and over I went right after. Someone shouted, “Man overboard.”

My hand hit
against him as I passed him going down as he was coming up. I started to kick
and got back to him, not that I could see a thing. I just grabbed him blind,
and dragged us both to the top. He was gasping when we broke, panicking. I
turned him away and took hold of his suspenders, pulling him to the rope
someone had cast from the deck. It was only a matter of minutes we were back on
board.

He wouldn’t take
his arms off me then, his face buried against me, both of us breathing hard. I
held him tight, ignoring all the fussing around us from folks we’d likely
scared to death with our circus act.

I carried him
around some of the carriages, staying clear of the horses, ignoring folks and
their remarks. He was shaking like a leaf. I patted his back until he was
still, looking off as the shore drew closer. I walked the whole circle of the
deck, ending up at our packs where we’d gone over. I set him on his feet then,
and fixed his pack on his back, then took up mine. When I reached for his hand,
he slid it in mine, and we waited our turn as we walked off the rig. Hand in
hand we were.

When our feet hit
the dirt of

He’d been quiet
that day, and we had us three or four signs now, so there’d been times of no
talk at all, just his hands moving and mine answering. He liked to make his own
signs and
a couple were
pretty funny, like pointing to
his butt-hole for “I gotta take a shit,” and opening his mouth for, “hungry.” We
would go back into town in the morning and catch the train to Rigsby. I planned
to find us a car we could ride in didn’t include regular folks. We’d see about
that.