3 Love Stories

by O'Neil De Noux

  I wrap my arms around her.

  “Hold me,” she says.

  “Oh, I will. I will.”

  THE END of “Language of the Heart”

  This story is dedicated to debb

  Five Days Left

  SHE HEARD them in the hall, the doctor and her mother talking about her.

  “She’ll be all right,” the doctor said. “In time.”

  Her mother’s voice was too low to make out, but was wrought with emotion. Linda closed her eyes and pulled the bed sheet up over her heard as the voices moved down the hall, away from her door.

  A few minutes later, Linda moved the sheet from her face and looked at the French doors of her bedroom, and beyond at the bright green leaves of the camellia bushes outside in the garden and the snowy clouds hovering in the brilliant New Orleans sky. It should be black outside, the sky, the trees, everything.

  Rising slowly, Linda Lewis Rousseau stood in her white nightgown, barefoot standing five-two, weighing a hundred pounds, with long dark brown hair parted down the center, reaching half-way down her back. She wore no make up, her blue eyes red from tears, her fine cheeks puffy from crying.

  She stepped over to her dresser and picked up the yellow envelope with a shaking hand. Sitting on the edge of her bed, she pulled the telegram from the envelope and for a moment saw the sad face of the army officer who’d personally delivered the telegram that morning. He came with Father Clover from St. Alphonsus and she knew the moment she opened the door.

  She straightened the telegram across her knee and started to read it again …

  The Secretary of the Army regrets to inform you that Corporal Benjamin C. Rousseau, RA 434-02-001, was killed in action at An Loc, Vietnam on Thursday 4 July 68 …

  Linda closed here eyes to keep the tears from falling on the telegram. Her husband had been dead four days and she didn’t know. That was the hardest of all. Refolding the telegram, she put it back on the dresser and took down a white envelope with Ben’s last letter to her. It was dated July third.

  My Darling Linda,

  I’m writing this under a bright moon, the same moon shining on you back in New Orleans. I just learned we don’t have to watch for Charlie creeping up at night. We just listen for him, so I can use my eyes to write this.

  Sorry if my writings a little shaky. It wasn’t Charlie, but a goddamn scorpion big as my hand. It ran up my arm and I knocked it away and woulda shot it if Atkins hadn’t grabbed me and stomped on it. Sarge Atkins is taking good care of me. I showed him and the guys your latest picture and you’re still number one. The prettiest wife. I like how your growing out your bangs. Your hair looks so long and soft. Oh, how I miss you Babe.

  Thanks for sending the crab boil for the crawfish. We went back to that little river and caught so many crawfish, big ones too. I boiled ‘em up back at the firebase and treated the Yankees, teachin’ ‘em how to suck heads and eat tails. Remember Lopes, the Chicano from east L.A. who teased about us in Louisiana eating bugs. Well he’s a crawfish convert now. Wish he’d quit talkin’ to me in Spanish. He still thinks I got Spanish blood no matter how many time I tell him I’m Cajun and we all dark down on the bayous.

  Which brings me back to my white girl wife. Can’t wait, Babe. Can’t wait. I’m a third of the way though this. Lucky short timers with only thirty days left get to spend it all in Saigon out-processing, then over to Fort MacArthur, Calif. You can meet me there. It’s in San Pedro, part of L.A., Lopes tells me. All I got is 243 days and a wake-up.

  I’m back at the firebase now and it’s day time. It was bad last night. Damn radio played that Hank Williams song I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry. When he sang “I wonder where you are” I started crying. Now don’t get worried. I ain’t all babified here. I still got the edge when it comes to Charlie, but sometimes it’s bad, Babe.

  I have all your pictures in front of me now, looking at them. You know my favorite, the one with you in the short skirt. I keep playing it all back in my mine, like a movie, going over every one of our dates, from the first dinner at How Toy’s and you wearing leg make-up instead of stockings because someone told you it would be cooler and how it got all over the car seat.

  I keep thinking about your eyes and your lips and your body, Babe, and how lucky this lil boy was moving to New Orleans and running into you at that little bookstore. Maple Street Book Shop, all crammed with books and we brushing against each other and neither leaving so we could meet the other. Man, that was magic, Babe. Magic.

  I’m gonna end this letter with another old Cajun saying that I remembered last night in the middle of that song. About a sick old man telling his wife, or maybe it was Gabrielle telling Evangeline sitting next to his death bed. It goes, “If I have only five days to live, I’d give up three to spend the two with you.” With us, Babe, It should be, “If I have only five days to live, I’d give up four to spend one with you.”

  Love Forever,

  Your Ben

  Linda put the letter down and covered her eyes again and let it flow. She waited until she dried her hands before carefully refolding the letter. She put it and the telegram with the others in the shoe box in the top drawer of her dresser.

  A darkness came to the room and she looked out at a thick gray cloud moving in from the lake, blotting out the sun. Linda stood by the French doors and watched the rain move in.

  The heavy, black branches of the huge magnolias trees seemed to dip and sway in the sudden wind. The door rattled as fat rain drops fell, only a few at first, then in droves, peppering the rubbery magnolia leaves, bouncing off the stone steps leading through the garden, pummeling the camellia bushes. The rain came in waves, like a distant ocean, rising and falling. Puddles formed in the backyard and as suddenly as it came, the rain went away, stopping as if a giant spigot had gone dry.

  The sun returned. Linda sat on the edge of her bed and watched the shadows of the trees slowly cross the yard until twilight. Her mother came with soup and Linda ate and drank a little red wine. She left the pills her mother brought next to the soup bowl.

  Crawling back in bed, she feel asleep quickly, reaching for it, welcoming the unconscious oblivion, hoping she would sleep a long time.

  She wasn’t sure what the noise was, but it woke her and she sat up slowly in bed and looked around her empty bedroom. Bright moonlight filtered though the French doors filling the room in a pale, yellow light.

  She shoved the sheet off and fanned the front of her nightgown, suddenly hot against her skin. The room was stuffy. Linda got up and started for the door to check the thermostat in the hall, to crank down the central AC, but opted for the French doors instead, throwing them open, letting the summer breeze in. The air smelled damp, but the wind was strong enough to cool her immediately.

  Stepping through the doors, she felt the cool stone steps beneath her feet. She ran her hands through her hair and shook it out, stopping when she saw the figure standing beyond the garden.

  She heard him suck in a deep breath as he stepped from the magnolia tree and took off his helmet. He took another step and dropped the helmet. Another step brought him from the shadows beneath the tree into the moonlight and she recognized that smile, those bright brown eyes and she opened her eyes wider.

  Please, please don’t wake up!

  Stay with me.

  Ben moved closer and opened his arms and she ran to him, feeling the wet grass beneath her feet. He hugged her tightly, squeezing her so hard she couldn’t breath, then easing up and pulling away to stare into her eyes.

  His uniform was wet and dirty and he needed a shave and he never looked so good to her. She could see in his eyes, he felt the same way as he stared at her face, tracing trembling fingers along her jaw line, lifting her chin.

  The first kiss was feathery, barely touching before it engulfed them both and they pulled each other closer.

  “Oh, Babe,” she gasped when she came up for air.

  He put his fingers on her lips and shook his head. Taking her hand
, he led her back into the bedroom and slowly took off his uniform. She waited for him to finish before unbuttoning and dropping her nightgown.

  He stared her up and down, his eyes glimmering in the moonlight. He had that little-boy look again in his eyes, the same look he gave her the first time he saw her naked, as if it was the greatest thing he’d ever seen. She felt her heart stammering now.

  They made love in the moonlight with the French doors open, feverish kisses and bodies sweating with pleasure. They made love again later, longer and more loving with more feathery kisses. They lay entwined in each other’s arms after and Linda fought to stay awake, knowing if she fell asleep, this dream would go away. She felt his steady breathing as his chest rose and fell against her. Her eye-lids drooped and she struggled to keep them open and succeeded again and again.

  Linda Lewis Rousseau didn’t realize she’d fallen asleep until she woke to the morning sun and her empty bedroom. She almost cried out, reaching across the bed, trying to find any lingering warmth. The bed was dry. Sitting up she looked at the floor but there were no boot prints. Climbing into her nightgown she went out into the garden but there were no footprints.

  Her chin sank and she fought back the tears.

  Maybe, just maybe he’d come again tonight or another night. Maybe, just maybe she’d see Ben again.

  SHE HEARD them in the hall, the doctor and her mother talking.

  “The baby’s fine,” the doctor said. “They all run a little temperature sometimes.”

  Her mother’s voice was too low to make out, but Linda didn’t care to hear. They’d gone over it again and again. Today was April first, April Fool’s Day, but that wasn’t it. The numbers didn’t add up. She’d insisted on putting Ben’s name on Annie’s birth certificate as the father and the state let her, although the numbers didn’t add up.

  She’d overheard her parents talking just before Annie was born.

  “Who could it have been?”

  “She’s barely left the house.”

  “Maybe someone at her new job. At the bank.”

  “She hasn’t been there long enough.”

  Her mother asked her only once, outright and she’d told her the baby was Ben’s. She could see her mother didn’t believe her. Not for a moment.

  Sitting on her bed with little Annie in her arms, she looked at her daughter’s flushed face and said, “It’s OK, Baby. The medicine will bring your temperature down.”

  Annie sucked on the bottle and stared at Linda with that fixed, almost hypnotic stare babies have, studying Linda’s face with Ben’s brown eyes. Turning to the French doors, Linda remembered the “discussion” she’d had with her parents. They were happy, relieved actually, to have her stay here as long as she wished. It would be easier for Annie, easier all the way around.

  Placing sleepy Annie in her bassinette, Linda reached into her top dresser drawer and took out the shoe box. Sitting on the bed once again, he pulled out Ben’s last letter to re-read for the thousandth time, so glad she’d taken such good care of the letters so Annie could read her father’s words.

  She read the letter slowly, lingering on Ben’s final words to her, “If I have only five days to live, I’d give up four to spend one with you.”

  Annie moved and Linda looked in at her baby, at Ben’s last gift to her, coming from the garden on his last day. He’d given the rest to be with her one more time.

  THE END of “Five Days Left”

  This story is dedicated to debb

  The Stuff of Dreams

  IF I close my eyes – I can see the B-24 as she circles the field, the sun glimmering on her wings. I have to put both hands over my eyes to shield them from the bright, south Pacific sun. The B-24 descends slowly, like a bird of prey, then gently touches down on the landing field we carved from the jungle. As she rolls closer, engines rising then falling into a smooth rhythm, Terry Longbaugh, the co-pilot raises a ‘thumbs-up’ to show us it was another successful mission.

  The plane’s exhaust fumes fill my nostrils.

  No –

  I blink my eyes open. It’s not the B-24’s exhaust I smell, but the cars passing along Decatur Street. And the sun I feel on my face is the strong New Orleans sun reflecting off the Formica table tops here at Café DuMondé.

  I reach for my cup of café-au-lait and notice my hand shaking. I guess I’m more anxious than I realize. I fold my arms and look around the open-air cafe. On my left, a group of tourists wearing cowboy hats are eating those powdered-sugar donuts called beignets with their coffee. On my right, a group of young girls check out the waiters as they pass.

  I look across Jackson Square at the clock on the spire of St. Louis Cathedral. It’s ten until ten. Ten minutes from now I’ll finally see her. I reach into the interior pocket of my suit coat, draped across the back of my chair, and pull out two dog-eared black and white pictures. The first shows the entire crew standing in front of our B-24. I’m the tallest, taller even than our pilot, Bobby Parker. He has a wide smile on his round face and I remember, again, how we used to rib each other. He thought it was his plane, because he flew it. As ground crew chief, I knew better. She was mine.

  The second picture shows the front right fuselage and the bright painting just below the canopy. I can barely make-out the painting in the faded picture. But I know it, know every line and curve, every detail as if I’d painted it myself. She has long dark hair and a lithe figure, a classic face with wide, dark eyes and a wide smile. Standing, she wears a red pleated dress that she’s lifted to show her shapely legs. It’s the stuff of dreams. Next to her right leg are the words, Louisiana Lullaby.

  I look at the faces of the crew again, at Parker and Longbaugh and square-jawed Eddie Aiola and Black-Jack Tyree and P. J. Stephens and Noah Feldstein and the big Cherokee Jim Beau, who painted her image on the plane from a picture he’d seen in Yank, the weekly armed forces magazine. She was ‘Miss Legs of New Orleans, 1943’.

  What I remember most vividly, I guess, was the night they didn’t come back. Me and the rest of the ground crew watched the other planes return, then waited as the sun fell, waited through the steamy night until the unrelenting sun drove us to bed. Later that morning we received confirmation that our Louisiana Lullaby had been shot down by Zeros over the Coral Sea.

  I tuck the pictures back into my coat pocket, reach for my coffee and see a splash of red moving through the cafe. Her hair is shorter and streaked with silver. As she steps around the tables, I can see her figure is still lithe. I feel my heart race as I stand and wave and she spots me and moves through the tables to me. I suck in my belly and lean my shoulders back, for whatever good it’ll do for a man pushing seventy.

  Her face is lined, but as she smiles inquisitively at me, I know her. I smile back and say, “Miss Legs, I presume.”

  She smiles widens as she says, “Sergeant Leo Minosa, I presume.”

  I start to move around to pull a chair for her, but she pulls a chair out and sits and crosses her legs. Still smiling warmly, she brushes her hair out of her face and I find I’m staring. I can’t believe she’s still that pretty. We’re nearly the same age, but she looks twenty years younger and wears her make-up like a fashion model, her lips a deep red.

  A white-clad waiter steps up and I order two coffees. As he leaves, she reaches into her purse and pulls out the copy of the picture I’d sent her after the private investigator I’d hired located her for me.

  “I still can’t believe this,” she says in a gentle voice, a voice that sounds almost familiar in its softness. “Me. On a bomber.”

  My mouth is so dry, I feel like a school boy trying to talk to his first girlfriend. Thankfully the waiter returns with our coffees. I pay him and we use up a minute pouring sugar and stirring our coffees. I watch her, trying not to stare.

  “Your call was such a surprise,” she says as she lifts her coffee cup.

  I smile and take a sip of the strong coffee-and-chicory blend. The steamy coffee leaves my mouth dryer, and I feel p
erspiration on my brow now. I wipe it with a paper napkin.

  “I guess it’s never this humid in Wyoming,” she says.

  “No. Never like this.” I pull my gaze away from her face and watch a horse and buggy full of tourists pass along the street. “This is more like the south Pacific.”

  She puts her coffee down and props an elbow on the table, resting her chin in her open palm. “You said the Louisiana Lullaby was lost at sea, but you didn’t tell me how.”

  “Zeros caught her on her return leg. Over the Coral Sea.”

  I see her chest rise and fall.

  “You sure you can’t come to the party with me?,” she asks. I know it’s just a child’s party, but I’d like you to meet my husband and son. And my grandson. He’s four today.”

  I can’t do that. I don’t want to meet the man she’s spent most of her life with. I can’t.

  “I have to catch my flight back,” I tell her and then take another hit of coffee. “I’m glad you came though.”

  Her eyes narrow a little. “It isn’t often a girl gets to meet a man who used to dream about her.”

  I feel my neck grow hotter and know I’m blushing. I shouldn’t have told her that on the phone, how I laid awake on those hard, hot tropical nights and dream of those legs. I could never tell her what a man does when he’s that alone.

  “That was a long time ago,” I tell her to try and break the spell.

  She starts to take another sip of coffee, but stops and says, “This is making me hotter. Would you like to take a walk along the river? It’s probably cooler there.”