Wounded Heroes Boxed Set

by Judith Arnold

  Because he did have a debt. The tree was at her house, ready for planting. She couldn’t bring herself to ask Paul to cart it away.

  "I tell you what," she said, hedging. "Why don’t we take it one week at a time and see how it goes? If Shane can’t handle the job, I’ll pay you whatever he owes you on the tree."

  "He’ll handle it," Paul said confidently. He lowered his foot to the ground and straightened up, grinning. "Why don’t I dig up the dogwood and get the birch into place?"

  "Right now?"

  "Sure, right now." He started for his truck.

  "But—you’ll need a shovel, or something—"

  "I’ve got everything I need in the truck."

  Her fingers curling around the railing, she watched as he jogged to the rear of the truck and lowered the tailgate. "Do you want some help?" she called to him, feeling utterly useless as he heaved the sturdy white tree out of the truck bed and propped it against the side of the truck.

  "Sure," he called back. "Is Shane around?"

  She’d meant that she, not Shane, would help him. But it made more sense for Shane to be Paul’s assistant. She reluctantly turned from the railing, gathering her book and her empty lemonade glass on the way, and stepped inside the house, calling for her son to come downstairs.

  Within five minutes Shane was hard at work beside Paul, digging the point of a spade into the grass and loosening the soil around the dogwood’s roots. His enthusiasm for hard physical labor surprised Bonnie. Was this the same kid who whined whenever she asked him to take out the garbage or scrub the dried blobs of toothpaste from his bathroom sink? A tiny flame of indignation burned inside her as she spied on Paul and her son through the living room window. Why was Shane so excited about helping a near-stranger and not his own mother?

  Because she was his mother, that was why.

  Pulling back the lace-trimmed drapes, she gazed wistfully past the decorative crystal hanging in the window. Simply observing the man and boy at work forced her to admit that maybe, especially now that he was entering adolescence, Shane needed a male role model in his life, someone he could work with and look up to.

  She didn’t want that man to be Paul. He was a war hero—Laura Holt from the town board had told Bonnie as much after the meeting. "He served a tour of duty and came home with a chest full of medals," the gossipy gray-haired woman had jabbered. "Funny thing was, until he submitted his proposal for a memorial to us in writing a couple of weeks ago, you couldn’t get him to talk about his war service. He’s the strong, silent type. I’ll bet he killed dozens of enemy troops over there."

  Wonderful , Bonnie had thought bitterly at the time. What a marvelous accomplishment.

  She didn’t want some strong, silent he-man who had killed dozens of people to be her son’s role model. She wanted Shane to model himself on his own father, a man of peace. But that option was no longer available.

  She watched as the two of them gripped the trunk of the dogwood, twisted it and freed it from the soil, and then lifted it up and out of the hole. They worked well together, their movements smoothly coordinated, Shane beaming proudly in response to Paul’s words of encouragement. She was troubled by the camaraderie developing between them.

  Maybe, as good a mother as she tried to be, she was no longer enough for Shane. Maybe he really needed a man in his life.

  If she continued to think along those lines, she might find herself wondering whether she needed a man in her life, as well. So she put the notion out of her mind and wandered into the kitchen to begin preparing supper.

  Chapter Three

  * * *

  "ISN’T HE CUTE?" Marcie whispered.

  Bonnie stared at the young man addressing a crowd of students from the top step of the Widener Library, at the heart of the Harvard University campus. His dirty-blond shoulder-length hair was held off his face with a red bandanna tied into a headband, and his lanky body was clad in low-slung denim bellbottoms and an army surplus shirt with a black armband around one sleeve. In spite of the heat he wore leather workboots, and a peace-symbol pendant hung around his neck. He was speaking into a portable microphone connected to a pair of huge speakers which amplified his words across the lawn. He spoke in a rich, musical voice all the more persuasive for his lack of histrionics and hyperbole.

  "In 1960, President John F. Kennedy told us to ask not what our country could do for us but what we could do for our country," he said, holding the microphone below his chin so as not to obscure his face. "Well, my friends, what your country is doing to you today is drafting you and your brothers and boyfriends and sending them halfway around the world to fight in a war that has no justification, no meaning, and no legal standing. And what you can do for your country is to stop the madness." He raised his fist into the air and repeated the words: "Stop the madness!"

  Entranced, the crowd raised their fists high and echoed: "Stop the madness!"

  "I told you he was cute." Marcie sighed, uncurling her fist and letting her arm fall.

  Bonnie gave her friend a tolerant smile and then turned back to watch the man on the library steps. As calm and reasonable as he seemed, there was something hypnotic about him, something about the electrifying glow in his silver-gray eyes and the defiance in his posture that cut through Bonnie’s soul. Cute seemed too trivial a term to describe him. The man was riveting.

  "What’s his name?" she asked Marcie.

  Marcie tugged her embroidered draw-string bag higher on her shoulder and said, "Gary Hudson. He’s the teaching assistant I told you about, in my American history course. Rumor has it he’s dropping out of grad school so he can devote himself to the cause full-time."

  "Dropping out of graduate school?" Given how hard it was to get into graduate school—to say nothing of a graduate school as selective as Harvard’s—dropping out would be an incredible sacrifice. "He must be awfully dedicated to the anti-war movement," she murmured respectfully.

  "One day in class he told us he felt guilty attending graduate school when so many of his colleagues had lost their student deferments. The guy’s really into it. But it’s not like by dropping out he’s going to lose any status," Marcie noted. "I mean, if you’re going to make a name for yourself in the movement, now’s the time to do it. If he spends too much time vegging out in graduate seminars he’s going to miss the boat, you know?"

  Bonnie chuckled. "You ought to go into public relations," she teased her friend.

  "P.R. for peace. I could hack that," Marcie happily agreed. "See that guy fiddling with the volume control on the speaker?" She indicated a dark-haired man with a scruffy moustache and soulful eyes. "His name’s Tom Schuyler—grad student at M.I.T. Suzanne Plunkett slept with him."

  "No!"

  "Not only that, but Nancy Curtiss told me Suzanne hitched to New York City and got a prescription for the pill."

  "No!" For not the first time since she’d begun her freshman year at Radcliffe last September, Bonnie felt like a hick. She shouldn’t have—she’d grown up only ten miles away, in the Boston suburb of Newton. But some time between her last year of high school and her first year of college the universe seemed to have turned upside-down. A war that had once been little more than black-and-white images on the living room television was suddenly real and dangerous. Boys on this very campus, boys she might have danced with at mixers or debated with in class, were walking around with low lottery numbers and the shadow of the draft darkening their lives. Boys who might have gone to high school with her were overseas, in the thick of the battle. Her contemporaries were killing and getting killed, and it was wrong, so very wrong.

  "If my parents knew I was at this rally right now instead of studying for finals, they’d murder me," Marcie muttered. "I can just hear my father: ‘I’m spending three thousand dollars to send you to that fancy college, and all you do is sit around listening to drug-crazed radicals!’"

  "He doesn’t sound drug-crazed to me," Bonnie said, continuing to watch the clear-eyed man speaking into the micro
phone. "As a matter of fact, he sounds brilliant."

  "Tom Schuyler’s supposed to be the brilliant one," Marcie informed her, gesturing toward the man with the moustache, who had sprinted down the stairs and was now distributing flyers to the assembled students.

  "Yeah?" Bonnie checked him out as he wove through the crowd to their right. He winked at a pretty girl as he handed her a flyer, and then whispered something in her ear. "If you ask me, he looks like he’s hot to score."

  "Suzanne Plunkett would know," Marcie said with a giggle.

  "Is she really on the pill?" Bonnie asked.

  Marcie nodded and leaned toward her. "She even gave me the name and number of the gynecologist she used down in New York. You interested?"

  Bonnie shook her head. How could anyone think about birth control when there was a war raging in Southeast Asia, when young American boys were losing their lives? All she could think about were the fiery exhortations of Gary Hudson, urging his audience to petition Congress, burn their draft cards and refuse to serve. She was spellbound by his words and dazzled by his single-minded adherence to principles, by how very much he was willing to give up for those principles. "This war is a travesty," he was saying, his voice resounding through the brisk spring afternoon. "Those who participate in it—who don’t do everything in their power to bring it to an end—are part of the problem. Refuse to go. Refuse to serve. Fight this evil with everything you’ve got, my friends. Stop the madness!"

  Bonnie flung her fist up into the air. "Stop the madness!" she cried.

  ***

  "HEY, MOM!" Shane hollered through the screen door. "Come on out and have a look!"

  Bonnie dried her hands on a dish towel and left the kitchen. Shoving open the screen door, she stepped out onto the porch and gazed across the lawn. Where the barren dogwood used to be, the birch now stood, all eight grand, sturdy feet of it, its straight white-barked trunk spreading into a generous tear-drop shaped cloud of green leaves. Paul was kneeling beneath it, patting a circular mound of dark soil into place at the base of the trunk, but he rose to his feet at Bonnie’s approach.

  "It’s beautiful!" she exclaimed, descending from the porch to examine the tree closely.

  "You like it?" Shane bounced around her like a hyperactive puppy.

  "It’s lovely," she murmured, circling the tree slowly to assess it from every angle. "Thank you." Her eyes met Paul’s, and for a brief, strange moment she felt drawn in by their profound darkness. She quickly shifted her gaze to Shane. "Thank you both," she said.

  Dusting off his hands on his jeans, Paul scanned the tree critically. "Have you got a hose?" he asked, shoving his hair back from his perspiration-damp forehead. "We ought to wet down the soil."

  "Of course. In the garage." She glanced toward Shane, about to ask him to fetch it, but before she could make her request he was already at the garage door, sliding it open and then ducking inside.

  "He’s a good helper," Paul remarked.

  "Not always," Bonnie muttered, then succumbed to a wry smile as she recalled what Paul had said earlier. "With you, maybe. But I’m his mother."

  She lapsed into silence, wondering whether she should give voice to the idea she’d been tossing around in her head ever since she’d entered the kitchen fifteen minutes ago. Without consciously acknowledging what she was doing, she had calculated how far the chopped beef would stretch, how much lettuce she’d need for an extra portion of salad, how many jars of spaghetti sauce to pull down from the pantry shelf. She’d scanned her meager wine collection and rummaged through the cabinets in vain for something that could pass for dessert. She and Shane never bothered with a formal dessert course, but tonight she and Shane weren’t alone.

  "Would you like to stay for dinner?" she asked Paul.

  He stared at her, the late afternoon sunlight slanting across his face and throwing his eyes into deep shadow. "I’m kind of messy," he said, spreading his earth-stained hands for her inspection. Obviously he detected her ambivalence toward him, and he was offering her a way to back out of the invitation if she’d offered it only out of some obligatory sense of etiquette.

  "I’ve got soap," she assured him.

  He scrutinized her upturned face. "Are you sure you have enough food to go around?"

  "I’m making spaghetti," she told him. "I can make as much or as little as we need."

  He meditated for a moment. "I’ll need a lot," he finally said, smiling tentatively.

  Bonnie returned his smile and headed back to the house. "Then I’ll make a lot," she called over her shoulder. Back in the kitchen, she pulled out her largest pot, filled it with water and set it on the stove to boil.

  After a few minutes, she heard Shane’s voice through the open window above the sink. "We’d better use the back door—she busts a gasket whenever I track dirt through the living room."

  Rolling her eyes at his exaggeration, she greeted Shane and Paul with a grin as they trooped into the kitchen through the mud room. "There’s the bathroom," she said, gesturing with a fistful of dry pasta toward the lavatory. "The towels are clean, so help yourself."

  Paul nodded. "Thanks," he said before disappearing into the lavatory.

  Shane straddled one of the chairs at the kitchen table and presented his mother with a self-satisfied smile. "So?" he asked. "You like that tree or what?"

  "I love it. And I love you." She dumped the pasta into the bubbling water and then gave Shane a smothering hug, which he quickly wriggled out of. To spare him further embarrassment, she backed off and said, "Why don’t you go upstairs to wash? I could use a little help getting dinner ready, but your hands are filthy."

  "Paul’s staying, right?"

  "That’s right."

  "You gonna have wine?"

  She eyed her son with feigned impatience. "Yes, and you can have a taste. Now go wash up."

  "I’d like my own glass," he requested, springing from the stool and starting toward the stairs. "A couple of inches full—"

  "Git!" She shook her cooking spoon at him in a mock threat, then laughed.

  She wound up permitting Shane a half-inch of Chianti in a wine goblet. She served the garlic bread in a napkin-lined straw basket, and she made certain all the plates and silverware matched. She even gave some thought to using the dining room table, but it was covered with the student book reports she’d brought home to grade over the weekend, so she set the kitchen table, instead. That was where she and Shane always ate. She’d feel more comfortable there.

  "This looks delicious," Paul said, once they were all seated.

  "It’s about as good as it gets," Shane warned him. "My mom’s a lousy cook."

  "Thanks a heap," Bonnie grunted, although she was unable to suppress a chuckle. She had never aspired to be a great cook. Back in the old Cambridge Manifesto days, the women who cooked well always ended up doing just that—cooking—while everyone else sat around on the living room floor hammering out proposals and creeds and planning disruptive demonstrations for the group to stage. Thanks to her ineptitude in the kitchen, Bonnie generally ended up at Gary’s side in the living room of the old Victorian house on Avon Street that had served as both headquarters and a communal dwelling for the inner circle, while poor Marcie, who had once made the mistake of boasting that she knew how to bake phylo-dough spinach pastries, invariably found herself in the kitchen brewing tea and slapping together sandwiches for the hungry strategists.

  "My friend Matt, his mom has every kitchen gadget you can think of," Shane informed Paul as he dug into his spaghetti. "Go ahead and guess. Food processor, blender, pasta maker, microwave, yogurt maker, she’s got it."

  "Has she got an ice-cream maker?" Paul asked.

  "Yeah, she’s got one. Last Christmas Matt got her a butter melter."

  "I’ve got one of those," Bonnie joked. "I call it a microwave."

  Paul eyed Bonnie and laughed. "Funny—I always thought the best way to melt butter was to leave it out of the refrigerator for a few hours."

&nbs
p; "Right," Bonnie chimed in. "That’s my favorite kitchen gadget: air."

  "Great stuff, air," Paul confirmed, lifting his wine glass in a salute to her before he drank. "Most kitchens come with it these days, don’t they?"

  "I believe so. But you’ve got to pay extra if you want it warm."

  Shane obviously didn’t share his elders’ sense of humor. "Maybe if I had some more wine I’d know what you guys were laughing about," he grumbled.

  "No more wine, Shane," Bonnie said. "Have some more bread, instead."

  Shane finished his dinner without talking. Every now and then, his sullen gaze would shuttle between Bonnie and Paul, who continued their amiable banter. Bonnie wanted to include Shane in the conversation; she knew he felt left out and probably resented her for monopolizing Paul’s attention. But if she deliberately steered the discussion to a topic Shane might enjoy, he would sense that she was patronizing him. And if she reached out and gave his shoulder a loving pat, he’d probably punch her in the nose. So she let him bolt down his dinner and didn’t question him when he said he would have his dessert while he watched television in the den.

  "He told me you think television rots the brain," Paul commented once Shane had poured himself a glass of milk and stomped off with a bag of chocolate chip cookies.

  "I do," she confirmed. "But I don’t mind if he tunes in to a ball game every once in a while." When Paul peeked through the doorway to the den, she said "You can go on in and watch, too." She knew Shane would enjoy sharing the televised ball games with a like-minded male like Paul.

  Paul remained at the doorway for a minute, gazing into the den. Then he pivoted and returned to the table to gather up a few dirty dishes. "Shane isn’t angry with me, is he?"

  Bonnie shot him a quick glance, then busied herself filling the sink with dish soap. "What makes you ask that?"

  Paul shrugged. "I don’t know. He was so bubbly all afternoon, and now he seems kind of sulky."