The quiet words soaked into Rachel’s consciousness, and she couldn’t breathe. She was in his nightmare and it was horrifying.
He went on in a soft, even voice, “But I didn’t do what I was supposed to do. The old man probably reported me to the local political revision team. And the ‘Cong started setting traps for me.”
He stopped. Then with deadly softness he said, “Do you want to know the rest of it? Is that what all this has been leading up to?”
Rachel supposed she had always known in the back of her mind that it was there, the dark secrets that tormented him. She was suddenly afraid. “No.” She could barely get the word out because it was a terrible lie.
He picked up her hand. He held it in his for a second before he brought it to his mouth and absently kissed her fingers. “Pull the covers back,” he told her.
Rachel was frozen with guilt. He thought she’d planned this. She wanted to take back everything that had been said, roll back time to before her questions began, but that was impossible.
“Go ahead,” he urged her softly. “We’ll match nightmares if that’s what you want. I’m responsible for what Roy and Lonnie tried to do to you, so I owe you.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Sure you do, otherwise you wouldn’t have started this.
Half of DeRenne County wants to know what happened to me in ‘Nam, the other half thinks I spent five months in a stateside army hospital because I was crazy, a mental case. I don’t know which is worse—that, or what really happened.” It was his hand that moved back the sheet, and his hand that grasped her upper arm to pull her into a sitting position. She could see the lean length of his body uncovered, one hand resting lightly on his chest. His hand on her upper arm pulled her downward to make her bend over him.
“The charge was set to tear off the genitals. The grunts were scared spitless of it, worse than any other kind of booby trap. It’s called the Castrator. It comes up under your feet, takes everything away, and if it gets enough of you, they fit you with little plastic bags for body excretions. That is, if you still want to live. Damned few do.”
Rachel couldn’t move. She stared down with wide, alarmed eyes at his beautiful golden body, fully illuminated for the first time in the glow of the bedside lamp. And she felt the breath in her throat expanding as though it were a giant bubble about to burst.
Chapter Sixteen
The force of the blast could be seen clearly on his left side.
On the outer thigh beginning at the kneecap there was a large glistening white plain of destroyed skin down to the muscle. It rose to his hip bone and then seemingly crept around the back to encompass his left buttock; in the front the massive scar extended across the upper thigh into his groin. Against the golden, healthy flesh the devastated area on the lower front of his body was a white, malevolent blight of past pain, past suffering.
“What you’re seeing, Rachel, are skin grafts. Everything was more or less there, it was mainly a patch job. They told me I still had just about everything right away in the hospital, to keep me from going crazy.”
She had to touch him. She had been inexperienced enough, unconfident enough not to have explored his body before in their passionate lovemaking. But now her fingers traced his wounded flesh hesitantly. She could see, bending close, that the dark mat of pubic hair was broken by the same pitted, thick keloid scars, the tufts of dark russet curls interspersed with deadened white skin like a ravaged landscape after a forest fire. But the big, soft, intact shape of his sex, marred only by a few faint lines of old surgical repair, seemed undamaged.
“I was lucky,” he went on in the same harsh tone. “I must have stumbled over a log, or the trip wire was at an angle to my body, or maybe they just hadn’t rigged it right. I took only the peripheral blast.” His fingers closed on her hand in a hurting grip. “It’s ugly, isn’t it? Tell me what you see isn’t ugly as hell.” His voice was raw with pain and anger. “Tell me that you—any woman—would want to put your hand around me and stroke me and make love to me there.”
Shock had followed too many shocks that night, and Rachel was only dimly aware of what he was saying. In her mind’s eye she saw him lying on some jungle path bloody and in agony, not knowing how badly he was hurt. And that if he survived it was possible life would not be worth living. It didn’t matter that the blast had mostly missed him or that the surgeons’ work had been skillful. The suffering and the horror were still there.
He lifted his arm to hold it over his eyes, his hand clenched. Deep grooves in his flesh from nose to mouth were the only thing that showed his emotion. “The first day I thought I was going to die, there was a real danger I’d bleed to death. I had to work on myself with the first aid kit and it wasn’t any damned good except for the morphine. When I could get on top of the pain I broke radio silence and called for the LOACH choppers to come get me out. On the second day they got a fix on me as I tried to move around to stay ahead of the ‘Cong. The first chopper crashed coming in low over the trees to avoid enemy fire. I didn’t know it then, but my best friend, Poke Screven, was on board. He heard I was in big trouble out in the jungle and the damned fool swapped with one of the regular crew. The second chopper brought me in. They thought I was going to die too. I didn’t, but I wanted to when I found out about Poke. I went off my rocker—they had to tie me down in the stretcher flying me out to the base hospital in the Philippines for more surgery, to keep me from jumping out of the plane.”
She leaned over him, unable to move. In all this time no one in Draytonville had known what had happened to him. Except, perhaps, the lawyer, his best friend’s father. And Darla Jean? She couldn’t help wondering.
They were thinking the same thoughts. He said, “I couldn’t go near a woman when I came back from ‘Nam. The skin grafts still hurt, and I created a stampede when I used the urinal in the men’s john in the airport, which was not exactly great for my male ego. They told me in the hospital I was all right, but that was not the same thing as being in bed with a woman, seeing if everything still worked. And it sure looked like hell.”
She stared down at his rigid face, slightly glistening now with beads of perspiration from the effort this was costing him. His mouth curved in a grim line of gallows humor.
“To appreciate this at all, you have to know what I was before I went to ‘Nam—all-time champion DeRenne County stud. I had my first woman at thirteen. I was nearly six feet tall and still growing, hung like a horse a year after my hormones started working. Word must have gotten around, because I found a whole army of women who suddenly couldn’t keep their hands off me. I was practically raped by a good looking county deputy’s wife who met me outside of junior high with a six-pack of beer and took me off in her car. I was dazzled out of my mind. After that I had so many rides in cars, pickup trucks, even taxis after school, that the next year I had to drop off the ninth-grade varsity football team. I had found out that with my wonderful talent, and the way I looked, I could have nearly any female I wanted if I just tried hard enough, and God, I wallowed in it. At nineteen all I knew was making out and raising hell.
“One Thanksgiving weekend I got caught in bed with a married woman in Hardeeville and her husband chased me halfway to Savannah, trying to blow out the tires on my car with a shotgun. Three months later I was up for accessory to an armed robbery I didn’t even know was going on because I was dead drunk in the back of the car at the time. My mother and old Screven persuaded the judge I was too much of a Beaumont to throw in the state slammer for five to ten years, so I was quietly shunted into the service.”
He lifted his arm a fraction to rub his forehead, eyes tightly closed. “When I came back from ‘Nam I wasn’t too damned happy to find out I was right back where I started, here in the scene of all my past glories, except that a bunch of Asians had nearly succeeded in gelding me.”
“Don’t,” Rachel moaned, not sure she was able to bear this.
“Don’t, hell, Rachel. You want to know everyt
hing, right? It took me three years to get up enough nerve to find out for sure if the doctors were right. I was a real jungle vet—I took to the swamps with a vengeance, patrolling the area, half looking for the ‘Cong, living out of my mind. By daylight I worked hell out of my body, trying to forget what was under my clothes that the rest of the world couldn’t see but that I knew damned well was there. By night I boozed it up until I was back in the jungle again.
“One night was drunk in a bar outside Hazel Gardens and Darla Jean climbed all over me. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I put her in the jeep and took her down to Old Beaumont Docks in the damned darkest woods I could find, and had her. Several times. I couldn’t stop. She was happy as hell. So was I. I found out I could make it with a woman after all. Providing it was dark enough.
“Rachel.” His husky voice was resigned. “I never should have touched you, you know.” He took down his arm from his face and smiled his grim, enchanting smile, tawny eyes glinting in the soft light. “I grabbed you that first night when you threw soup on me, and I couldn’t let you go. I wanted to punish the hell out of you and I wanted to have you at the same time. You were so damned soft and desirable ... and not for me. And I knew it. But you were everything I should have had in my misbegotten life, and didn’t. And I couldn’t resist you.” He was silent for a long moment and then said, “I miss all that long red angel’s hair. Is that why you cut it? To get rid of me?”
She only shook her head dumbly.
“Stop crying, Rachel, I don’t need your pity,” he murmured. “Save some of it for yourself. After all, I nearly got you killed.”
She couldn’t speak, couldn’t tell him how she ached to hear his words of bitter defeat, which were so unlike those of the reckless, dangerous man she knew. They were joined together in this moment of mutual pain more closely than she could have ever wished.
She slid her arm over his chest and lowered her face to him, hearing his heartbeat slowly, matching the thudding of her own. And no matter what he said, she knew he was kind and good and brave. She hadn’t been wrong.
“I love you,” she whispered. She knew that she had to do more than speak it, she had to show him.
He heard her soft words and he stiffened. His long, powerful body stiffened even more as her lips trailed down the slightly rough line of hairs that led from the indent of his navel to the flat, smooth masses of scars that began there.
“You’re crazy—who would love me?” he gasped. “Ah, sweetheart—don’t!” His fingers dug into her hair at the touch of her warm, caressing lips.
“I love you because you’re beautiful,” she murmured. She touched him, healing him with her love, her lips kissing the hard, velvety smooth shaft of his flesh softly. “You’re beautiful here, and you always will be. And not just because I love you.” Her mouth followed her words, adoring him, feeling him grow and swell with his potent response.
He made a broken, gasping sound. “Rachel, don’t—please don’t.” He ran rough fingers through his hair in desperation. “Damn, I’m begging you!”
“And I’m loving you.” She put all of her feeling for him in her ardent caresses. “Don’t you want me to show you how beautiful you are and how much I want you?”
When she lifted her head to smile at him he grasped her leg quickly to pull her to straddle him. His gold-flecked eyes were wild with desire and agony, features contorted. “Rachel, sweetheart,” he rasped hoarsely. “Oh, yes ... oh, God!”
She was positioned over his body, feeling him trembling with wanting her. She wanted to show her love for him so desperately it overrode her awkwardness. He seized her hips with feverish hands and lunged into her with a fierceness that made her cry out.
He was so splendidly masculine as he allowed her to make love to him that she sobbed out her joy. He would never be less than a magnificent male for her or for any other woman, but she would never share him if it was humanly possible. As he helped her to meet his rhythm his hands stroked her, loving her, delighting in her breasts, the silky smoothness of her arms and shoulders and hips, and then finally pulling her down to cover her mouth with his own in a kiss that exploded with fervent passion.
There was no time for words, only their desire. But Rachel repeated them breathlessly in her mind and into his devouring mouth—I love you, I love you—until they spun out of time and earthbound reality and together found what they were so desperately seeking.
Afterward what they shared touched them so profoundly that they lay clasped together for a long time, their legs intertwined, his arms around her tightly, their lips touching, sharing their warm exhaustion.
“Are you happy?” he murmured softly into her hair. She could not see his face because she lay with her own nuzzled against the wet column of his throat, breathing his earthy scent. But his eyes were hooded, thoughtful, even sad.
She was still dreaming. “Yes, oh yes,” she murmured. The nightmare was gone; they had buried it for a while.
But he knew it still existed. “Go to sleep, love,” he told her. He kissed her hair softly and whispered to her until she closed her eyes, knowing that he held her safe.
It was bright blazing morning sunlight when Rachel woke, and it seemed as though the live oak trees outside the bedroom windows were filled with a thousand woodland birds joyously singing. For a few minutes she lay blinking, staring up at the ruffled canopy over the unfamiliar bed, telling herself that she was in Beau Tillson’s house at Belle Haven. Then memory unrolled the incredible events of the night in her mind and she examined them disbelievingly. The marsh. Darla Jean and her brothers. They had tried to kill her. Then, finally, she came to what Beau Tillson had revealed to her in this room in the darkness as she lay in his arms. And how she had told him that she loved him.
The knock on the door came again.
Rachel put her legs over the side of the bed and then realized she was naked. She clutched her head with both hands, suddenly uncertain as to just what to feel. She had gone to sleep holding the man she loved. Where was he?
She saw a man’s belted cotton robe at the foot of the bed and knew he had left it for her. She slipped it on quickly. There was definitely a delicious odor of coffee and bacon in the air, and she guessed he was downstairs fixing breakfast. The sunlight looked late, perhaps noon.
Rachel opened the bedroom door to a large, impassive black woman holding a breakfast tray in her hands. As they stared at each other she remembered that Belle Haven had a cook. She’d heard the Butler sisters mention her.
“Miz Rachel, hit’s a sweet morning, how you feeling?” The musical Gullah lilt was strong and almost unintelligible to Rachel. The cook said something more Rachel could not fathom, and looked at her with liquid, sympathetic black eyes.
“Mister Beau,” the woman repeated softly, “he done call the gennelmun to come take you home. He wait downstairs bye ‘n’ bye—so you come when you fix eatin’ your breakfas’.”
Rachel hurried past her to the hall and then the top of the staircase that descended to Belle Haven’s front hall. She understood someone had come to take her home. And Beau Tillson had called him?
She leaned over the mahogany railing and down into the lower hall and Jim Claxton, his broad-brimmed straw Stetson hat in his hands, looked up at her.
But who will reveal to our wakening ken
The forms that swim and the shapes that creep
Under the waters of sleep.
The Marshes of Glynn
Chapter Seventeen
“Rachel, dear,” her mother said, “you have drawn a great deal of money from your trust account.” Elizabeth Goodbody’s words were accompanied by a firm, no-nonsense kiss on her daughter’s ivory cheek as Jim Claxton bent to pick up two pieces of elegant Mark Cross leather luggage.
The commuter flight from Charleston was over an hour late because of thick fog all along the coast. The DeRenne County airport had closed down immediately after the small jet landed, and now it was as though the disembarking passengers emerged from a
milky wall of fog as they approached the chain link fence at the Arrivals gate and the people waiting for them.
It was typical of her small, brisk mother to put first things first: a brief, affectionate hello followed by a reminder of Rachel’s latest transgressions. Her tightly bundled figure in silk scarf and mauve Harris tweed suit almost matched the shade of her hair. She gave Rachel a reassuring hug, but her sharp gray eyes missed nothing. Peering through the mist, Elizabeth Goodbody said in an exploratory tone, “Rachel, have you done something different with your hair, dear?”
“Hello, mother,” Rachel said quickly. “I want you to know the DeRenne County agent, Jim Claxton. He has been a very good friend of the cooperative.”
As her mother extended her hand for a firm handshake Rachel ducked back as much as she could into the surrounding mists. Elizabeth Goodbody’s lightning visit to her daughter was sandwiched between a board meeting of a school for Palestinian refugees on the West Bank and a conference on banning nuclear arms in London, and as her mother had made it plain on the telephone, she was booked on a flight leaving the county airport on Monday morning connecting in Charleston for Chicago and Canada for a world peace meeting. Her mother was spending not quite three whole days in Draytonville, and the reason for her visit was the disturbing knowledge that her daughter had violated a basic tenet of quiet, conservative wealth—drawing money out of her trust.
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