by Diana Hunter
“You’re the best. Thank you, Beth.”
Both women understood Lauren thanked Beth for more than the loan of a sleeping bag and tent. With a playful swat, Beth sent her on her way and Lauren loaded up her car with a light heart.
* * * * *
Her good mood lasted all the way through packing her Army duffle, even though she had to stop once to deal with some unpleasant thoughts. Afterward she felt quite proud of herself. In the past, she simply would’ve shoved the bag back into the closet, put on some music to drown out her memories and fallen asleep on the living room sofa.
This time, she sat back on her heels, letting the memory play. As if watching from a point of view that was both hers and not hers, the events unfolded before her…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
She could feel the gritty nature of the air, from sand that never seemed to stay on the ground. Her shirt stuck to her back in the ever-present desert heat that surrounded the Humvee. The incredible brightness of a sun unfiltered by trees made her squint.
And the sounds. She flinched when the explosion came as the truck in front of them blew apart into thousands of tiny shards. She braced herself on the dashboard as their Humvee stopped and was already half out the door before the driver had it in park.
A small knoll of sand and rock jutted up about thirty feet from the road. She ran to it, hearing the feet of her fellow nurses behind her. They’d been on their way to Mosul, called in to help with a large number of casualties. They were a medical convoy with the bright red cross prominently marked. Why had they been attacked? They were there to help…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
With a start, Lauren pulled herself back to the present. She’d been so young when that happened. In Iraq what? Six months? Maybe seven. They’d lost five people that day. Once it was determined to be an IED and not an RPG, they’d gotten back in their vehicles, detoured around the smoking remains of the front truck and continued on their way. Others would be by later to clean up. Right then their mission lay in Mosul.
It had been a hard lesson to learn, but she’d learned it well, burying it along with all the other events she’d witnessed. Now she sat by the side of her bed and wept for the soldiers they’d lost that day.
And when she was cried out, she dried her eyes, accepted their loss and looked out her window on the calm summer scene before her. Kids still played in the street and drivers still honked their horns at them. Life went on. She went on. With grim determination, she picked up a sweatshirt, folded it and tucked it inside her Army duffle bag.
Chapter Fifteen
“How long did you think we were going to be gone?” John asked her as he fitted the last of their gear into the back of his truck.
“Four nights, five days. You said it was going to be huge and I hate waiting in long lines. So I brought enough food so we won’t need to go to the store and enough clothing to cover every contingency.” She eyed him. He’d dressed in simple jeans with a light-blue, button-down shirt over a deep blue T-shirt. She liked him in blue. Brought out the incredible deepness of his eyes.
“It’s easier for guys. Jeans are now acceptable clothing nearly everywhere. And you can’t go wrong with a buttoned shirt. It’s like a uniform for you guys. But for women?” She gestured to her own casual attire, which consisted of a plain peach T-shirt with her paisley scarf tossed around her neck for style, a pair of slim-line jeans and flat sandals. “Where you can wear the same pair of jeans three days running, a woman would be highly suspect if she wore the same stuff over and over. And of course, different terrains mean different shoes…”
He handed her into the car, shaking his head. For all her prattle about style, he knew only one of those bags contained the sundries and clothes she’d need for five days out. That meant she hadn’t skimped on the food. Good. He knew a lot of the men really went back in time and did all their cooking over a fire, slept in the thin wool blankets and heavy white canvas tents the way real Union Army had. He admired their dedication to re-creating a true living history that taught tourists more in an afternoon than they could get in a month of lectures in school. His desire to bring some of his experiences into the classroom next fall really went a long way toward explaining why he was here in the first place.
But after several years living in the desert, often without running water and electricity, eating his meals out of a pouch and drinking water that had been shipped thousands of miles, he welcomed the roomy nylon tent and the cook stove. Camping in a campground was living in a mansion compared to what he’d been through.
He climbed in beside her and they headed out. The drive would take them the better part of five hours. Glancing over at her, he was surprised when she pulled out a ball of yarn and a crochet hook.
“Getting into the spirit of the weekend?” he asked her.
“Keeping my hands busy,” she explained. “Something my grandmother taught me how to do to take up time on long family vacations. Said it would keep me out of trouble ’cause, instead of pestering my brother, my hands would be pestered with the yarn.”
“Smart woman, your grandmother.”
“Do you mind? I can talk and crochet at the same time. Just because my hands are busy doesn’t mean my mouth is quiet.”
“Is that a warning?”
She chuckled, her hands not missing a stitch. “It can be.”
He turned onto the interstate that would take them along for the next three hours. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her glance at him.
“Does it bother you? I can put it away if you find it distracting.”
“It doesn’t distract me. Well, except in that I like seeing you like that.”
“Like what?”
“All settled in. Comfortable. Working away at an old craft as if sitting beside me on a long car ride were as normal as eating.”
This time the hook did pause. “I didn’t think of it that way, but you’re right. I am comfortable. We have five hours together in the car and I’m not worried about holding up my end of the conversation, I’ve promised myself I’m not going to worry about IEDs, I’m not worried about directions, I’m not…wait. You did pick up the directions, right? You know where we’re going?”
Now it was his turn to chuckle. “Yes, I know where we’re going. Studied the maps last night. Got the latitude and longitude and did the triangulation so I’d know exactly where…” He stopped when he realized she thought he was serious, this time laughing out loud. “Um, Lauren? You see that little gizmo there? Stuck to the windshield?”
She bent toward him to see the screen from his point of view. The lines and numbers of the GPS not only directed his path but told him his present rate of speed and how much longer he had until they got there.
“And you’re going to rely on that thing?”
“Don’t tell me you’re really a Luddite in disguise.”
She shook her head and sat back in her seat, her hook picking up where she’d left off. “No, not really. But those units are not as reliable as the manufacturers would like you to think they are. Give me an old-fashioned paper map where I can see the world spread out before me and make my own choices.”
“I think maybe we just found our first fundamental difference.”
She didn’t answer, only cocking an eyebrow at him as he wove between two tractor trailers going slowly up a hill.
“Big picture versus looking at a piece at a time. I’m sure there’s a larger analogy there somewhere.”
They bantered back and forth, learning more and more about each other as the miles sped by. The occasional silence slipped in, but not a silence of discomfort where one desperately sought for a topic to share or where one felt a need to turn on the radio to fill the quiet lest the other discover what an uninteresting person one really was.
No, the spaces between the conversations were just that. Spaces. Punctuation marks that gave each a chance to trace down stray thoughts and notice the world that passed them by. Lauren set down her crocheting for longer periods of
time as the scenery became less familiar and they passed into Pennsylvania.
They stopped for lunch at a roadside diner, pleasantly surprised to find they both preferred the mom-and-pop fare rather than the national chain restaurants. Lauren indulged in a turkey club, John had a hamburger loaded with onions and she teased him about the onion breath he’d have for the rest of the afternoon.
The miles slipped by once they were on the road again and soon the GPS had them turning off and into the busy local traffic of Sharpsburg. There the traffic slowed to a crawl. Narrow streets laid down long before the invention of the automobile confined the traffic.
“I should’ve realized everything would be backed up with all the tourists and reenactors coming in for the weekend.”
John sounded almost apologetic and Lauren hastened to reassure him. “It’s fine. I’ve never been here before and going slow gives me time to look around.” She pointed to one particular brick building sitting near the road. “Look at that. I did some reading before we came just to be up on the history. People lived in these buildings and war came to their doorstep.”
“And sometimes inside their houses. The soldiers filled this place.”
Lauren shook her head. “I’ve seen war in people’s homes. It’s never pretty.”
She fell silent at that point, her thoughts thousands of miles away. In a hundred fifty years, would the people of Iraq be able to gather like this and commemorate battles? Probably not. Today’s armament didn’t leave many buildings standing—family homes or not.
“Campground should be just a mile ahead.”
Lauren glanced at the GPS, then started looking for signs. They’d passed out of the small town and Lauren shook her head. “Do you suppose they mind?” she asked.
John glanced at her. “Who?”
She waved her hand at the farmhouses. “The people who live here. They were invaded a hundred and fifty years ago and are now being invaded again.”
“Believe it or not, there are fewer here now than then. And several people make their living off the tourists who come.”
“Fewer? There must be thousands of people here right now.”
“Lauren,” John’s voice, gentle and quiet, caught her attention. “On that one day, a hundred and fifty years ago, over twenty-three thousand men were killed, injured or went missing.”
“Twenty-three thousand?”
“I told you. It was the bloodiest day in any war, before or since, in America’s history.”
Lauren tried to wrap her mind around that number, and failed miserably. She just couldn’t conceive that many dead bodies in one place. They’d have to be lying on top of each other, piled like cordwood. Who would keep moving forward to climb a hill of bodies?
John made the turn into the campground and she shook her head to get rid of the macabre thoughts. She’d seen death, met it up close and personal. But that much of it? In one place at one time? It put her experiences into a very different perspective.
“Will’s already got us a campsite. Let me text him and find out where we are.”
John stopped near the check-in building for the campground and Lauren nodded to the little wooden building behind it. “I’m headed to the restroom. Won’t be long.” At his distracted nod, she climbed out of the truck, stretched her legs and went to answer nature’s call.
True to her word, she didn’t take long and John grinned as he watched her saunter back to the truck. In her T-shirt and jeans, with her hair pulled into a ponytail, she could be just any normal beautiful woman walking along the dirt path. He grinned because she was his beautiful woman. She still noticed every detail around her, but she no longer tried to make herself small. In fact, she flung her arms out as she approached the car.
“This is wonderful weather,” she announced through the open window as she grabbed for the door handle. “I could so easily live where it’s always in the mid-seventies.”
“You don’t like the cold?” John put the truck in gear as she closed her door.
“I think the desert changed me. I just got the tail end of this past winter and it was almost too much for me.”
“Look for number forty-five.” He peered at one of the markers as he drove slowly past. “It’ll be on your side. I’ve even numbers over here.”
“Should be a ways up yet.”
The campground buzzed with activity. The place could be a village unto itself. Huge RVs filled some slots, collections of tents filled others and still more spaces held everything in between. Some men, already in uniform, tended cooking fires and John wondered what the soldiers of the past would think if they could see men sporting both blue and gray sharing the same cook fire and toasting each other with Bud Lights.
“There it is, next one.”
John looked where she pointed. A small RV sat on the lot next to number forty-five. The door opened and Will stepped down, waving them in.
“Glad you made it,” Will called out as John backed the truck into the narrow opening between two trees.
Their windows were still down and Will came over to lean on Lauren’s door as John turned off the engine. “Lauren, this reprobate is William Bondman. He’s the one who talked me into all this. Will, meet Lauren Carr.”
“Girlfriend extraordinaire, or so rumor has it.” He put his hand in the window. “Nice to meet you, Lauren.” Stepping back, he opened her door before she could reply and reached out to hand her down. “If you can put up with Mr. Social Studies Teacher, you must be okay.”
Lauren laughed at Will’s antics and John got a warm feeling in the middle of his chest. He got out of the truck and came around the back end to meet them. “Where’s Jill?”
Will cocked his head toward the trailer. “Inside.” He turned to Lauren. “She’d come out to say hello, but she’s a bit tied up.” Will gave an over-large wink. John knew exactly what he meant. Cautiously, he watched Lauren’s face. She gave Will a puzzled look, then shrugged and reached for the bag with the tent. John hastened to give her a hand, mouthing the word “later” to his friend. Will burst out laughing.
“I’ll leave you two to set up camp and I’ll give Jill a hand.”
“Your friend seems nice,” Lauren told him as she helped get the tent out of the bag.
“He is.”
“Odd sense of humor though.”
John didn’t say anything, suddenly wondering if this had been such a good idea. Maybe Lauren wasn’t ready for this. While he didn’t have any intentions of sharing her, or of doing anything with Will and his wife in a sexual manner this weekend, the possibility of a foursome someday had certainly crossed his mind.
The tent went up easily enough and John was glad to see it was so large. He really hadn’t wanted to sleep with his feet out of a pup tent but then again, he didn’t want to sleep curled up in a ball because the nylon tent was too small either.
No, the tent Lauren had borrowed from her friend could easily sleep several people and he could almost stand up straight in it. Not quite, not even at the peak, but there would be room enough inside for plenty of other movement. While Lauren got the sleeping bags, he pulled out his duffle bag and several coils of clothesline.
She looked up from where she knelt inside the tent, unrolling the sleeping bags. He dropped the coils and she frowned.
“That seems like overkill for hanging clothes.”
“I brought other rope for that. This has a different use.” He smiled and waggled his eyebrows.
“For me?” Her voice went up an octave and she looked out the tent’s unzipped windows. Clearing her throat, she lowered her voice and said it again. “For me?”
“Yes, for you.” He knelt beside her and pulled her into his arms. “I’ve just driven several hundred miles with you beside me in the car, wanting you almost every one of those miles. I wasn’t going to come all that way without a way for us to enjoy ourselves once we got here.”
“But…” Again she glanced up and out the windows. “I make noise.”
�
��And I brought something to keep you quiet. Would you like to see what it is?”
Wide-eyed, she nodded at him. He turned to the bag and unzipped it, then reached in to pull out a shiny roll of silver tape. He held it up for her to see.
“You’re going to… I mean…that’s going over my…”
“It is. Hold still.”
“Now?” She leaned back. “But Will said he’d bring his wife over in a minute.”
“No, that’s not what he said. Think.”
“He said he was going to give Jill a hand.”
John waited to see if she would figure it out. When she didn’t seem to understand, he repeated what Will had first told them. “Jill was tied up, remember. He went to give her a hand.”
To illustrate, he held his hand out, fingers together, palm up as if he were going to hit something with it.
Lauren looked at his hand, her brow furrowed. “Give her a hand… He was going to spank her?” At John’s nod, she looked shocked.
“Go on,” he told her. “Chase it down all the way.”
“He was going to spank her because…oh.” Her eyes grew wide. “OH!”
“Now the light dawns,” John smiled at her and gave her a quick kiss.
But between all that time beside her in the car and Lauren’s sudden revelation, the “quick kiss” became something more urgent. Her lips parted and sought his. Suddenly he couldn’t get enough of her. His hands wanted every inch, his tongue wanted entrance. When his tongue slid between her lips, she opened for him, leaning against him in her answering need.
He slipped his hand down between her legs, pulling down the zipper on her jeans and sliding inside to push her panties up into her pussy. She moaned, her arms around his neck as she shifted and allowed him access. His fingers sneaked between the fabric and her skin, coming around to cup her ass with his hand.
“You turn me into a puddle, Captain McAllen,” she murmured when their lips parted. His fingers plunged into the warm slit between her legs, fingering her clit and making her gasp. She rested her head on his shoulder as she shifted her weight onto one knee. His finger entered her and she cried out, a small sound she stifled by biting his shirt.
