Wounded Heroes Boxed Set

by Judith Arnold

  The squawk of a crow cut through the fog, and then the energetic chatter of a pair of sparrows flitting from one tree to another in the distance.

  "It wasn’t you," he whispered, so softly she almost didn’t hear him.

  "What wasn’t me?"

  He shuddered. His head was still bowed, propped in his hands. "Upstairs, in bed. It—I didn’t even know it was you. It could have been anyone." His voice was hoarse from the effort of containing his emotions.

  She understood that he’d resisted telling her in an effort to spare her feelings. Of course it hurt to know he hadn’t cared who was with him. She fought the impulse to take offense. She had demanded that he tell her the truth, and she forced herself to accept it.

  "That night, when I was lying there... It was the most—the most alive thing I could think of. A man feels so alive then, so alive when he..." He faltered, then tried again. "I just needed someone that night. Anyone. Just a woman. I didn’t care.... I lay in the forest, terrified out of my mind and hard for a woman." He drew in a sharp breath and stood. "I’m sorry, Bonnie. I’m sorry you got caught up in it. I’m sorry I’m even telling you this." He crossed to the back door and went into the house.

  Bonnie stayed behind, listening to the thump of the door slamming shut behind her, running her fingers over the round porcelain surface of her mug and watching the fog drift above the ground. In a few hours her alarm clock would be buzzing; she would have to get dressed, eat breakfast, pack her tote and drive to the elementary school, where she would be expected to instruct twenty-six nine- and ten-year-olds on the significance to their lives of long division.

  She couldn’t do it. Not when her body was still burning from Paul’s aggression and her mind was reeling from his words. Not when she was confronting so many complex truths, when she was contending with the very real possibility that what Paul had lost in Vietnam was worse than what she had lost when Gary had been run down by a drunk driver who might or might not have been aiming at him. At least she’d been left with Shane, a precious life. All Paul had been left with was a promise—and a burden of guilt no sane man could bear.

  She couldn’t bring herself to follow him inside. His final statement echoed inside her head: I’m sorry I’m even telling you this . She felt brutalized by his words, his secrets. If she went after him he might say something more, and she’d feel even more overwhelmed.

  What she needed was time alone to sort through everything he had said, everything she had felt, everything they had shared since he had entered her house last night. She needed to acknowledge what she’d given to him, what he’d taken from her and what it meant. She couldn’t possibly face a classroom full of boisterous youngsters today.

  Yet she would. She had to. She had learned, ten years ago, that no matter what horrors you faced or what tragedies you were dealt, you had to keep going. The storm eventually let up, the fog burned away and the sun returned, bringing with it another day.

  And life, however incomprehensible, went on.

  Chapter Ten

  * * *

  "GENTLY," PAUL CAUTIONED Shane. "Watch the branches—don’t let them get snagged on anything. Remember, just because these trees are no longer in the ground doesn’t mean they aren’t alive."

  Shane carefully separated the branches of two slender pear trees and passed them, one at a time, down from the bed of the truck to Paul, who propped them up against a wooden display frame near the parking lot. A day and a half after the storm, the nursery had been pretty well cleaned up. The rhododendrons which had been planted in a low-lying area had taken on too much water and needed some nursing, and the wind had hurled a dead branch against one of the greenhouses, cracking a pane of glass. The ground was still soft and strewn with puddles. But all in all, the nursery had survived without serious damage.

  Paul wished he could say the same for himself.

  In spite of the night he’d spent in Bonnie’s house, he and Shane were getting along well. Shane had shown up for his first Saturday of work promptly at nine o’clock, and he’d been running at full throttle all morning. Possibly it was the official Tremaine Nursery shirt Paul had given him to wear that had inspired him to work so hard. It was equally likely, though, that he was motivated by the trust and responsibility Paul had conferred upon him. As soon as he finished a task, he’d race through the greenhouses or the warehouse in search of Paul, shouting, "All done stacking the hoses! What should I do next?" or, "I loaded the fertilizer in the lady’s station wagon. Find me something else to do."

  A half hour ago, Paul had handed him a pair of heavy work gloves which seemed to excite him as much as the shirt did, and had driven with him to one of the perimeter fields where some pear trees had been harvested and their root balls wrapped in burlap the day before. They’d spent a few minutes clearing out the litter of leaves and branches that hadn’t been picked up the day before, then set to work loading the trees into the truck so they could be transported to the lot by the main greenhouse and tagged for sale. They were reasonably light in weight, and Shane had no difficulty lifting them up to Paul, who stacked them in the truck bed.

  Back in the lot, they reversed positions. Shane stood in the truck bed, lowering the pear trees to Paul. "Their branches are so, like, tangly," he remarked, less a complaint than an expression of astonishment. Anyone could have guessed that he was a city kid who’d grown up believing pears came not from trees but from supermarket shelves.

  "They’re pretty spindly at this age," Paul agreed. "Just be gentle when you separate them. Pulling them out of the earth is enough of a trauma to their systems. Right now they haven’t got the strength to recuperate if they get injured."

  Shane grinned. His hair blew in the sun-warmed spring breeze and his eyes sparkled, alert and inquisitive. "Isn’t it kinda weird, worrying over a bunch of trees like they were people or something?"

  "They’re living creatures," Paul reminded him. "You’ve got to treat them with respect."

  Shane shook his head and adjusted the bright orange gloves on his hands before he reached for the next tree. "It’s just...I mean, you’re making such a big deal over these trees and you’ve, like, killed people."

  Paul went very still. His lungs stopped pumping, his heart stopped beating and his skin grew cold. He stared at Shane but didn’t see him. Instead, he saw a vision of Bonnie, her hair splayed across a pillow beneath him, her eyes unfocused, her lips bitten raw and her nightgown hiked up and wrinkled. The image lasted for one frozen instant, and then his body began to function again in a rush, his vision washed with red and his gut aching from the sudden, searing return of sensation.

  "Where did you hear that?" he asked in a deliberately bland voice.

  "Well..." Shane extricated another pear tree from the stack and passed it to Paul. "My mom told me you fought in Vietnam."

  Paul accepted the tree and spent several long minutes balancing it against the frame. What else, he wondered, had Bonnie told her son? That while he was spending Thursday night at his friend Matt’s house Paul was wrestling with the sheets in the guest room, screaming in his sleep, delirious with dread? And that when Bonnie had come in to comfort him he’d wound up assaulting her? And that, in some half-crazed effort to atone for what he’d done to her, he had confessed things that he’d never before shared with another soul?

  Had she told her son that Paul was dangerous, reckless, certifiably deranged? Had she told the kid that even though she’d done nothing wrong Paul despised her for being too generous, for being somewhere she shouldn’t have been, for forcing her way into his wretched dream and becoming a part of it?

  "If I did kill anyone," he said slowly, keeping his back to Shane, "it’s not something I’m proud of." He pulled off one of his work gloves and rearranged a few of the delicate branches, concentrating on the texture and flexibility of the tree, the tart, fresh scent of its leaves. Then he turned back to the truck, put his glove on again and took the tree Shane was extending to him. "Maybe fighting in a war deepens yo
ur appreciation for all living things," he said. "Even plants."

  Shane’s eyes shone with curiosity. As similar in shape and color as they were to Bonnie’s, Paul detected none of her condemnation in them. "What was it really like over there?" he asked as he delivered the tree into Paul’s waiting hands. "I mean, like, was it exciting?"

  "It sucked," Paul said tersely, then stood the tree against the frame and rethought his answer. "I suppose it was exciting," he added, determined not to be brusque with Shane. "Not in a pleasant way, though."

  "My mom, everything with her is black and white," Shane remarked. "But it’s like, well, you watch shows on TV and stuff, and—I mean, yeah, I’m sure war sucks, but it looks exciting, too. All that life-and-death stuff, it really gets you kind of pumped up, doesn’t it?"

  Paul swore under his breath. When Bonnie had warned him that Shane would want to discuss certain subjects with him, he had assumed the specific subject she’d had in mind was sex. He’d never guessed that Shane would want to grill him about his experiences in combat.

  "There are much healthier ways of getting pumped up," he said quietly. "Pass me that last tree, Shane."

  Shane appeared about to continue questioning Paul, but he read the tacit request in Paul’s expression and held his words. Paul didn’t like having to silence Shane, but he preferred that to the alternatives—lying to the boy, telling him things his mother would disapprove of, or ordering him to leave the nursery and never come back.

  "So," Shane said brightly, leaping down from the tail gate and latching it shut. "What do we do now?"

  "We attach price tags," Paul answered. "Do you want to help me with that?"

  "Sure." Noticing that Paul had removed his work gloves, Shane did, too. He fell into step beside Paul as they headed for the warehouse.

  Halfway there, Paul spotted Bonnie standing near the entrance to the parking lot, engrossed in a conversation with a gray-haired, bespectacled man. She had on evenly faded blue jeans, a short-sleeved white shirt and brown leather sandals. Her hair hung loose, luffing in the breeze that swept across the parking lot. Paul observed the graceful length of her bare arms, the peach-toned hue of her complexion, the sleek line of her chin, her slender build, her narrow waist, her attractively proportioned legs.

  Tearing his eyes from her, he took note of the man with her—Edwin Marshall, from the town council. Ed was showing her some documents; she studied them intently while she talked, her lips moving with a sensuous fluency that lured Paul’s attention back to her. He was too far away to hear what she was saying, but not too far to recall the way her mouth had felt one afternoon in the greenhouse, seemingly ages ago, when he’d stupidly believed a relationship could develop between her and himself. The kiss they’d shared had been so dazzling, so rich with promise...

  Why did she have to be so damned desirable? Remembering that kiss put Paul in mind not of what had actually occurred at her house a couple of nights ago but of what he wished had occurred. He wanted to make love to her, properly. Sensitively. Passionately. He wanted to love her, not some undefined fantasy-figure in a flashback nightmare. He wanted her to give herself to him not in charity but in ecstasy—and he wanted to give her everything she gave him, and more.

  Conceding the impossibility of that, he wanted to flee. But it was too late. Shane had spotted his mother. He waved at her and yelled, "Hey, Mom!" before breaking into a run. Paul lagged behind, fighting the temptation to run in the opposite direction.

  Hearing Shane’s voice, Bonnie looked up from the papers and smiled at her son. Then she saw Paul and her smile faded.

  With Shane and Ed Marshall as witnesses, he had to try to behave normally. "Hello, Bonnie," he said, doing his best to filter the emotion out of his voice. "Ed," he went on, quickly turning from her and extending his hand. "What brings you here? Don’t tell me Celia’s had problems with her daffodils again."

  "She didn’t plant any bulbs this year," Ed responded with a chuckle. "I wouldn’t let her. She’s massacred them every year she’s planted them, and I just couldn’t stand the carnage anymore." What he’d intended as a joke struck Paul like a blow. Glimpsing Bonnie, he saw her wince at Ed’s ill-chosen words.

  "Truth is, Paul," Ed went on, unaware of the impact his remark had had on two of his listeners, "I came by because we’ve received some design proposals on the memorial and I wanted to show them to you. I was just letting Mrs. Hudson have a look at them."

  What could be better? Paul thought with a bitter smile. Here was Bonnie, sandwiched between a man who’d attacked her and a man who would be instrumental in constructing a war memorial she despised on principle, getting stuck looking at the designs when all she wanted was to pick up her son. This must be her red-letter day.

  Shane did Paul the favor of breaking into his dismal thoughts. "Hey, Mom—check out this shirt, huh?" He struck a pose. "Paul said I could keep it. And these gloves, too. Check them out, Mom—they’ve got suede palms and everything!" He wagged the work gloves under her nose. "Are these nasty or what?"

  "I think you ought to leave them here at the nursery," Paul suggested, happy to focus on Shane instead of Bonnie. "That way you won’t run the risk of forgetting to bring them with you next week. I can put them somewhere safe for you here."

  Shane shrugged and gave him the gloves. "How about my shirt? Should I leave that here, too?"

  "No. You should take that home and run it through the washing machine," Paul advised. "You worked up quite a sweat today."

  "Yeah," Shane boasted, turning to his mother. "I worked real hard, Mom. You wouldn’t believe how hard I worked."

  "You’re right," she said, attempting a grin. "I wouldn’t." She glanced at Paul, discreetly keeping her gaze level with his chin. "Did he do all right?"

  "He did great," Paul said, obeying her unspoken plea and not allowing his eyes to meet hers.

  "Well... I’m glad it worked out." She nodded toward the mud-splattered Subaru parked in one of the spaces near the entrance. "I guess that’s it for today, Shane. You’ll get another chance to work up a sweat next Saturday."

  "Yeah, okay." Shane turned to Paul, his eyes still bright and shining, poignant in their youthful enthusiasm. "I’ll see you next week."

  "Take it easy, Shane." He watched as they strolled across the lot to the car, Shane’s self-importance evident in his strutting gait and his satisfied grin. In contrast, Bonnie’s steps were slow and cautious, her gaze on the gravel a few yards ahead of her and her arms crossed in front of her, each hand gripping the other elbow. She was hugging herself, holding herself in, and Paul felt another stab of guilt.

  Too much , he thought grimly. He was carrying too much guilt: about the people he might have killed in ’Nam and about the friends he’d lost, about the marriage he’d failed in and the career he’d abandoned, and now Bonnie. Most of all Bonnie.

  "Anyway, I’ll just let you check these designs out," Ed Marshall was saying. "I’ll tell you later what the members of the council thought of them. If you haven’t got time to look them over now, I can leave the folder with you. Just drop it off at town hall later. I won’t be in, but one of the clerks can take it."

  "All right," Paul said, accepting the folder from Ed. "Thanks." The nursery was swarming with customers at the moment, but he would somehow find the time to examine the designs. He’d make the time if he couldn’t find it.

  Paul was not going to break his promise to his friends. He was not going to give himself another reason to feel guilty.

  ***

  BONNIE SAT UNDER an oak tree on the town green, across the street from the school yard. The tree cast a broad shadow over the grass; its trunk was straight and sturdy, surprisingly comfortable against her back. She gazed from the vacant school yard to the to the stark granite war memorial on the other side of the green, and then to the thick manila envelope in her lap. She’d stayed up half the previous night reading its contents. Now, having completed her grocery shopping, housecleaning and classroom preparation for the
following week, she intended to read the manuscript again.

  She had just driven Shane and Matt up to Lowell to see a movie—why they wanted to spend a warm, sunny afternoon shut up inside a Cineplex was beyond her, but Shane deserved to celebrate his first day at his first real job any way he wanted. Janet Molson was going to pick them up afterward, so Bonnie had the afternoon pretty much to herself.

  She opened the envelope and pulled the manuscript out. Kevin McCoy had clipped a note to the top page: "Bonnie—here’s a rough draft of the first section of the book. I’d appreciate comments and corrections. I’m sure this will undergo alterations, but I thought you’d like to see what I’ve done so far." Nothing about his conversation with the police officer who’d filed the accident report on Gary’s death, nor about any discussions he might have had with Tom or Marcie. Nor was there anything about Gary’s death in the manuscript section he’d sent her.

  While reading it last night, she’d jotted down a few notes: an incorrect date on page fourteen, a misleading implication in a reference to Gary’s parents at the end of chapter one. But she’d been distracted, constantly searching for some mention of the circumstances surrounding Gary’s death.

  It would be stupid to become obsessed with it at this late date. Nothing Bonnie could possibly learn about the accident would change its outcome; nothing would bring Gary back. Whether or not he died a martyr’s death couldn’t affect the meaning of his life.

  And yet it did, somehow. Dying for a cause was far different from getting run over by an intoxicated barfly. One was noble, the other prosaic. Thousands of people were killed each year by drunk drivers. Few were slain for their principles. If Gary had to die, he should have died a martyr’s death.