Wounded Heroes Boxed Set

by Judith Arnold

  They went. Hiding behind a twisted, rotting tree stump and a couple of scraggly bushes, he watched his friends hike up the sloping path toward the hill. He stared after their retreating forms, Rigucci moving with a jig-like dancing step, Macon stalking in anger, Swann loose and graceful, probably dreaming about his sweet Jolene. Paul curled his fingers through the mulchy soil beneath him, flexing them into fists, waiting and wondering whether he would be brought down with the others.

  He heard thunder. Or guns. Who the hell knew the difference anymore? He pressed his body to the damp earth and peeked around the tree stump. Swann was ahead, almost at the top of the hill. "Oh, God," Paul murmured, squeezing his eyes shut, "don’t let this happen."

  He opened his eyes and lifted himself up, watching as first Swann, then Macon, then Rigucci vanished over the hill. No, he begged the world around him. No. And then the shot, an infinitely cruel blast tearing through the thick night air.

  Swann cried out. An animal sound, the most basic emotion expressed in wrenching echoes through the forest. Swann.

  More gunfire, Macon barking something, a clap of thunder and a muted, guttural grunt. Above Paul the leaves reflected a fleeting glint of white light. He wished he could believe it was lightning, but he knew it wasn’t.

  Another round of gunfire, the staccato of a semiautomatic. Then silence, then the cough of a pistol. More silence.

  I’m dead, he thought. The others are gone. Now they’ll come looking for me.

  He lay motionless in the mud, hidden by the stump and the bushes, wondering what it felt like to die. Swann had answered that mystery for him, he acknowledged. Swann’s rending cry had told Paul exactly what it felt like to die.

  He wanted to pray. He wanted to beg God for forgiveness, to repent his sins, to say farewell to his parents, to go painlessly. To find heaven at the end. He wanted so much before he died—but most of all, he wanted to cheat death. He wanted to live, to love, to be human. He ached for it.

  Too late for prayers. He was already dead. He knew he was, because he heard himself moaning, just like Swann. He heard himself releasing his breath and his soul in that same endless, agonized cry.

  ***

  "PAUL."

  She shoved open the door and gave her eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness inside. Once they did she saw him sitting at the center of the bed, the blanket crumpled around his waist, his head bowed and his hands covering his face. Sweat glistened across the smooth bronze arch of his back, his hair was wild, his shoulders trembled and the muscles in his arms clenched with tension. He was bent forward, nearly doubled over, and he let loose with a garbled string of curses. His voice was constricted and his entire body shook.

  "Paul." Two steps carried her to the bed. She lowered herself gingerly onto the edge of the mattress, afraid that any sudden move on her part might send him into paroxysms of terror. When he gave no indication of having heard her, she repeated his name louder and touched his arm.

  He jerked away and cursed again. "Don’t."

  "Paul, it’s me," she whispered. "Bonnie." She clasped one hand around his shoulder so he couldn’t pull away. Her brain dimly registered the feverishness of his skin and the adrenaline-fueled muscles beneath it. With her other hand she pulled his fingers from his face. His eyes were open, blazing, staring at her without seeing her.

  "No," he groaned, trying to shrug out of her grip. "Damn it, I’m dying." He shrugged again, this time freeing himself from her grip, and rolled onto his side, presenting his back to her. "Don’t come closer. It’s too dangerous."

  She climbed fully onto the bed beside him and stroked her hand soothingly along his temple and his cheek, brushing his sweat-damp hair back from his face. She thought briefly of the period, just after Gary’s death, when Shane had been besieged by nightmares. Bonnie had been afflicted by a seemingly chronic case of insomnia, herself, and she’d spent night after night in Shane’s bed, stroking his shivering body and murmuring to him, warding off the demons that beset him.

  She would ward off Paul’s demons if she could, too. "Wake up, Paul," she said tenderly. "There’s no danger here. You’re having a bad dream, that’s all."

  "It’s not all," he muttered, at last offering proof that he had heard her. "I’m dying. It’s no use...oh, Jesus." His body jerked again, and he whipped his arms up and buried his face in the pillow.

  His position, with his face pressed down and his arms cradling the back of his head, reminded Bonnie of the few war movies she’d seen. It was the defensive posture of a soldier under fire, hitting the dirt.

  "Wake up, Paul," she said, firmly now. She rubbed her fingertips into the knotted flesh of his upper back and attempted to dig out the tension. "Wake up. You’re just dreaming."

  "You don’t know," he mumbled into the pillow.

  "Paul, I—"

  He lifted his head suddenly, and his expression stunned her. It was both accusing and pleading, turbulent and desperate. "You don’t know a fucking thing," he said with surprising clarity. "I’m dying here. I’m dying."

  She brought her hands forward to his face, cupping his cheeks, wishing she could draw him fully out of his half-awake-half-asleep dementia. His chin was rough with an overnight growth of beard; his eyes were ringed with shadow. Whatever it was, whatever dreadful thing had taken possession of him, she had to make it go away. She had to get through to him. "You’re not dying, Paul," she asserted, her voice steady. "I swear to you, you’re not dying."

  "You don’t know." He sucked in a ragged breath as she glided her thumbs consolingly over the hard ridge of his jaw. "You weren’t there."

  "I’m here," she said. "And you’re here, too. It’s just a dream."

  "It isn’t just a dream," he argued, his voice still strained, his breath harsh and shallow. "It’s real. We all died, everyone." He closed his eyes as a tremor racked his body.

  "Not you." She comprehended only bits and pieces of his ranting, but she guessed that he was referring to the war, reliving some horrendous battle. Of course she hadn’t been there and it hadn’t been a dream—but it was over now, over and done. And Paul was alive. "You survived," she reassured him, combing her fingers into his hair and urging his head to her shoulder, wishing she could comfort him as he’d comforted her earlier that evening. "You survived."

  "I’m scared." He brought his arms around her and held her tightly, running his hands across her back as if to make certain that she was real. He twined the fingers of one hand into her hair and shaped a fist. With a firm tug, he pulled her down to the pillow and then lifted his head to stare at her. "I’m scared," he confessed, his eyes blazing, burning through her.

  His face was etched with fear. His chest was mere inches above hers, his legs hidden under the blanket. In spite of her prim cotton nightgown and her wrap-around robe, she was suddenly keenly aware of the sexual current surging between them. She felt the tension in his muscles, the pressure of his arousal against her belly, the fierce grip of his fingers in her hair, holding her immobile on the pillow.

  There was nothing even remotely romantic in Paul’s attitude, nothing that spoke of love or affection or anything other than dread and a compulsion to prove to himself that he was alive.

  "Don’t be scared," she said, wondering for an instant whether she was speaking to him or to herself. His eyes were dark, implacably dark, filled with anger and anguish. His hips ground against hers and she felt the hardness of him, the straining hunger of his body.

  Tears filled her throat and then vanished, unspent. She was all right, this was all right. Despite Paul’s nearness, despite his rage, she wasn’t frightened. She belonged here with him now, easing his soul, doing whatever she could for him. He was her friend; she cared too deeply about him to let him face this unspeakable nightmare alone.

  He slid one hand forward, over her shoulder and down to her breast. His eyes remained locked onto hers as his fingers moved briefly over the swell of flesh, rough and probing. His hand skidded down to her waist. He didn’t car
ess, he didn’t seduce. His motions were abrupt, anxious, groping. He lowered his gaze to focus on the sash of her robe as his fingers fumbled with the knot.

  "I need to do this," he groaned, his voice rasping.

  She could stop him, she could stop it before it happened. She could do something to bring him to his senses, something to remind him of who they were, where they were.

  But the fear, the haunting, frenzied fear rampaging through him moved her to forget about herself, to offer him whatever she could in an effort to bring him peace. She couldn’t bear his torment.

  A strange sense of calm resolution settled over her as she slid her hands between their bodies, trying to assist him in untying the sash.

  "Don’t," he groaned, shoving her hands away. He succeeded in undoing the sash and yanked back the flaps of the robe. His fiery gaze roamed over the soft cotton of her nightgown draped over the shadowy curves of her body. Then he shoved the gown up to her waist and stripped off her panties. His breath came harsher, his chest pumping, his face contorted with an emotion that seemed much closer to despair than anger. He stared at her but she doubted that he saw her. She wished she knew what it was that he did see—and wished even more that what happened next would obliterate the horror he was experiencing.

  "I need this," he whispered brokenly.

  "I know," she murmured, circling her arms around him and pulling him down to her. "I know."

  ***

  THE STEAMY NIGHT had reached its saturation point; huge drops of water materialized out of nowhere and gathered on the leaves and the tree stump. Paul held himself motionless, his shirt glued to his back, his helmet weighing like a boulder on his head and his feet slick with sweat inside his boots. The air was redolent with the cloying smell of rotting plant life and burning sulphur.

  He wanted a woman.

  An hour had passed since the others had disappeared over the hill. He’d heard the exchange, maybe ten minutes long, maybe less. And now only the sounds of the forest, birds and bugs and drops of rain slapping against the earth. He was afraid to move. The enemy was still out there, and the slightest motion on his part could alert them that they hadn’t wiped out the entire patrol. So he continued to lie, continued to wait, continued to pray.

  A woman. He didn’t care who—a peasant, a Saigon bar girl, an American...it didn’t matter. If he was doomed, he begged God to grant him one last, utterly impossible wish: a woman to wrap him up in her softness and take whatever was left of his life. He wanted her fragrance to overcome the stench of death and decay around him. He wanted her to cushion him from the muck of the forest floor. He wanted to lose himself inside her before he lost everything, to be cared for and held and loved for the simple reason that he was a human being, afraid to die.

  When he opened his eyes he saw the tangled, dripping vines woven into a web above his head. When he closed his eyes he drifted back into his dream of a woman, sweet and accepting, letting him fill her with his life and promising him that everything would be all right.

  It seemed too real.

  ***

  HE OPENED HIS EYES. Instead of the vines and the mud and the humid, smothering, deathly darkness, he saw Bonnie.

  Chapter Nine

  * * *

  HER HEAD WAS turned sideways, as if she couldn’t stand the sight of him. Her hair swirled across the pillow; her breath was shallow, gasping. Her skin was pale and satiny, stretched taut across the delicate edge of her jaw and her slender throat.

  His gaze journeyed lower, to her open bathrobe and the nightgown gathered at her waist. One of his hands was frozen into a fist around the bunched cloth. The thin cotton fabric was white, with tiny embroidered blue flowers along the scooped neckline and down the front. The sight of those pretty stitched flowers caused his eyes to burn with tears.

  He commanded his fingers to release the nightgown. As soon as they did he slid off her and rolled to the far side of the bed. The memories screeching through his skull were no longer of a gruesome night twenty years ago but of now, what had just occurred between him and this woman. He vaguely remembered the thunder outside, long, sonorous rolls of it like distant fire, and the rain pounding down on him, closing in on him, seeping through him. Water torture, his buddies used to call the monsoons. Water torture.

  He remembered tearing off Bonnie’s underwear, moving his hands over her long, slim thighs, spreading them and pulling her to himself, half delirious with need. He remembered thinking that something had to stop. The storm outside the house or the storm inside his soul. It had to stop or he would die.

  He’d only wanted the nightmare to end. In her arms, in her body, he’d hoped to find a way to make the horror stop.

  It hadn’t stopped, though. He could still hear the rain beating down on the roof above his head. He could hear the wind rattling at the windows. His mind clarified itself, and he felt the full force of what he’d done.

  He’d hurt her. She had stiffened and cried out, not in delight but in shock and pain. He’d done nothing for her, nothing to make it comfortable, let alone good. "God forgive me," he whispered. There was a greater chance of winning forgiveness from God than from Bonnie, he thought. It was easier to ask God than to ask her.

  She said something. Her voice was gentle and he refused to listen. He didn’t deserve to hear anything gentle right now, especially not from her. He felt vile and monstrous. The kindest thing he could do would be to leave her at once, to keep his distance, to protect her from himself.

  His toe snagged on his shorts, which were wadded up in the bed linens, and he rapidly put them on. Taking a deep, shaky breath, he swung out of bed, grabbed his jeans from the desk top on the other side of the room and tugged them on. His fingers shook as he fumbled with the zipper.

  She spoke again, her voice clear and pure: "Paul. Don’t do this."

  He kept his back to her. "Do what?" he asked, searching the room for his shirt.

  "Run away."

  "I can’t stay," he said, hating her for slowing him down by drawing him into a conversation. Hating himself for hating her.

  "Paul, please—"

  He wheeled around to confront her. She was sitting up, her nightgown smoothed down over her legs and her robe tied loosely, her sharp, steady gaze impaling him. He examined her lovely face, her gem-like eyes glittering with an unnamed emotion, her cheeks pale and her lips bearing the marks of her own teeth, and his rage spilled over. "Damn it, Bonnie—if you want to have me arrested, call the police. If you don’t, then let me leave."

  "Arrested?" she repeated, her eyes widening in bewilderment. "Why would I want to have you arrested?"

  "Because I—" He couldn’t say the word. It remained lodged in his throat, hard and ugly. Even if God forgave him, and Bonnie, and the police, he would never forgive himself for what he’d done to her.

  Apparently she understood what he couldn’t bring himself to say. She shook her head. "No, Paul, that’s not what happened. I was willing. You didn’t force anything."

  He refused himself the comfort of believing her. How could it be anything but rape when he hadn’t kissed her, caressed her, done a single thing to make the moment, if not pleasurable for her, at least not unbearable? How could it be anything but rape when he hadn’t considered her feelings, when he hadn’t even been aware of her identity throughout the entire act? She could have been anyone. He hadn’t even cared.

  He was sickened by what he’d done, and he resented her for not being sickened by it as well, for not screaming and accusing him and hurting him back.

  "I’ve got to go," he said, yanking his shirt from the back of a chair and shoving his arms through the sleeves.

  "Not yet," Bonnie argued, rising to her feet. For a moment she concentrated on tightening the sash of her robe. Paul gazed at her tapered, graceful fingers as they rearranged the knot. She looked so frail to him all of a sudden, so vulnerable. When she lifted her face to him he noticed the unnatural sheen in her eyes and his soul seemed to compress, shrinking until it
was a small, dense nugget of self-loathing.

  Anything. He would do anything for her, no matter how painful. He could think of few things more painful than remaining in her company right now, but he would do it if that was what she wanted.

  Maybe, he thought ironically, her insistence that he stay and receive her mercy was her own perverse way of punishing him.

  "I’ll make some coffee," she said, gliding past him and out the door. He watched through the open doorway as she walked along the hall to the stairs, her head held high and her bearing dignified. He watched until she vanished down the stairs. Then he turned and finished dressing.

  Unable to stall any longer, he went downstairs. Bonnie stood in the kitchen doorway. "The storm has ended," she said.

  ***

  ONCE THE COFFEE was ready, they went out to the back porch to drink it. Bonnie felt as restless as Paul seemed to be. When he asked if she would mind sitting outside, she was strangely relieved to escape the confines of the house.

  Faint glimmers of moonlight filtered through the gauzy layers of mist that shrouded the house, giving the rear yard a surreal appearance. Bonnie sat on the porch step, which had stayed relatively dry thanks to the overhanging roof. Paul sat beside her—as far from her as possible, she noticed. She curved her hands around her mug and sipped, wishing that somewhere in the aromatic steam of the coffee, somewhere in the diaphanous haze blanketing her small corner of the earth, she would find a way to justify her feelings.

  Perhaps Paul’s perception was right. Perhaps she ought to have been furious with him for having victimized her. But of all the emotions churning inside her, fury seemed to be missing. Nor did she feel like a victim. As she’d told him, she had been a willing participant in what had taken place upstairs. She had known what he was going to do and she’d acceded to it. She had expected nothing more than what had happened—and nothing less.