“Drink your coffee, Eleanor.”
“No. I want to know what you meant.”
“He was upset at something Grant had done to him. I was resting in the shade when I heard someone chopping with my ax. Well, not really chopping. He’d lift it then let the blade fall. It was too heavy for him to control. I took it away from him, and he disappeared, but he hung around in the trees watching me work, not knowing I knew he was there. I told a squirrel I needed help, because I felt sorry for the little guy—Philip, that is, not the squirrel. The next day when I went back to the glade, the brush I’d cut was piled up and he was hovering in the trees again. You called him and he snatched up his bike took off.
“Then as the days went by we became friends because we needed each other. Even before I knew who he was, what he was to me, I had learned that his mother was going to marry a man named Grant—a man whose head he wanted to chop off. So, knowing that, how could I come to you, Eleanor? I had to wait, to see what was happening. If you had found someone else you truly loved, I was going to leave, let you have me declared legally dead, or let you divorce me for desertion if necessary. But,” he added grimly, “not now. Now I have you, and I have my son, and I have a firm commitment to him. Regardless of what happens between you and me, Philip and I are going to finish that cabin, and we are going to live in it together each and every summer vacation for so long as he wants. I’ll be asking for some of his weekends, too. And you, Grant, all the courts of the land won’t stop me from keeping that promise I made to my son.”
She stared at him and his grim face. “But why didn’t you come to me as soon as you got back? Why did you start building a cabin in the woods on the Anderson place instead of coming to me? And why the Anderson place at all? It’s private property, even though we always did treat that stretch of woods as our own. Why build in the little glade?”
David ignored the first two questions. “The Anderson place is mine, Eleanor. I bought it. The glade was a wonderful part of my memories of you, and I had to live there, to bring you close. If I couldn’t have you, at least I could have that.”
“Oh, David,” she cried, reaching for him, holding him as tightly as he held her. “It was so wonderful, our little glade, wasn’t it?”
He did not answer her with words for a long time, and then, running a finger down her shoulder and arm, he said, “It will be again, sweet, so get well and we’ll go back there together.” He re-tied her robe to keep the draft from her precious skin and sat her up into the crook of his arm.
“It’s just lucky you weren’t wearing this that night I watched you sit at your computer and not work. That silk dress and the way it fit you, especially when you leaned back and stretched, nearly did me in, Eleanor Bear.”
She gasped. “How did you know about Eleanor Bear?”
“I know everything.” He grinned, rubbed his beard against her face. “Thanks to our talkative young Philip.”
“Did he volunteer all this information, or did you…?”
“Pump him? I most certainly did,” David replied, giving her the one answer she had wanted to hear. “I found out you’re not fat, you don’t eat enough and Grant said it was because you were ‘love-lorna’—he thought that meant you are in love with Lorna, like he is—and that your hair is the color of root beer Popsicles.”
Eleanor thumped him on the top of his head with a balled up fist. “Thanks a lot,” she laughed, and then sobered. “But that night… I knew someone was staring at me. I felt it. That’s why I closed the drapes. Then the next morning I saw your foot-prints by the rose arbor and I was glad I had felt it necessary to lock the doors for once.”
“A good thing, too,” he said severely. “I might’ve been anybody… A hobo, a drug addict, an escaped convict…”
“Don’t make fun of me. Why didn’t you come to me that night? I dreamed of you, Dave. I used to dream about you a lot, but all that came through clearly even in the dreams was your voice. That night, though, I dreamed of your eyes. I wonder if my heart knew you were near?”
“It should have. You looked right into my eyes in the restaurant at the hotel. I knew the risk I was taking but I had to see you again. I had to see you with Philip, and with that Grant person. I hoped the beard would be enough to disguise my face in case you did happen to look at me, and at the same time, I hoped it wouldn’t, that you’d see me, know me, dump Grant’s soup in his lap and come running to me.” He shook his head. His mouth twisted wryly for a second. “Foolish dream.
“If it hadn’t been for that little scamp grinning at me all evening, you never would’ve cast your eyes in my direction. Oh, darling! I wanted so badly to rush over, bust Grant right in the chops. I wanted to drag you away from his table and bring you home and make passionate love to you. I didn’t even sleep that night, so you are luckier than I. At least you had dreams. I gave mine up when I saw you laughing with Grant.”
At that moment a loud knocking came on the door and Eleanor jumped to her feet. “David! Get up! Go back to the bedroom! We look like we’ve been—”
“We have been, Eleanor, and why not? We’re married.”
Eleanor wrung her hands in agitation. “Go. Just go, please! I’m not ready yet to… to…”
“Share me?” He grinned. “Well get rid of whoever it is and quick.” He ducked into the hallway, out of sight. Eleanor shoved the extra plate and cup under the couch and went to the door.
It was Bill.
“Three!” he said, by way of greeting. “Three!”
“Three?” Eleanor repeated stupidly, then, as the light dawned, she squealed. “Triplets? Good grief. Three babies? Oh, Bill! How’s Kathy?”
He beamed, jammed a cigar into her hand, and said, “Oh, you won’t want that,” and tried to snatch it back. Eleanor retained it, and he ran on, “Two boys and a girl. Kathy’s tired but feeling great. We’re naming them Graham, Stephen and Eleanor, the boys for the two grandpas and the girl for our landlady. Oh, you’re the landlady, aren’t you? Hey how’s your cold? Kathy said I was to ask. She thinks you’re sicker than you know. Are you?”
Eleanor laughed weakly, and said, “I’m all right.” Then she spoiled it by coughing from deep in her chest. “I can’t ask you in, Bill. You might catch something that would make Kath or the babies—or you—sick.”
“They—my family”—his eyes shone with pride at the term—“have been flown to a neonatal unit in Vancouver. I’m driving down day after tomorrow to stay with Kathy’s folks. I came home to make arrangements with Ralph to take charge for a week or so, and to pack some more things for Kathy, and a bag for myself, too. She’ll be staying until the babies can come home. See you, Ellie.” With that, Bill was off, exuding excitement and wonder.
Eleanor leaned dizzily against the wall for a moment before she found the strength to go back to her bedroom. I surely am weak, she thought with a little giggle, and not just from the fever, either. She staggered, lightheaded, into the bedroom, looking for David. He was gone!
“Dave?” she called hearing the panic in her voice, trying to still it. “David?” The silence in the house pressed into her ears, making them roar and she flung herself onto the bed, still rumpled from the night before, and sobbed hysterically. “Did I dream you…? David? David…” Then, “Oh! David, don’t you ever disappear like that again!” as he came in from the back porch, carrying Casey, and wrapped her in his free arm.
“Sorry, my love,” he said, sounding contrite. “I didn’t mean to scare you. You’re sick, and your fever’s rising again. But I loved hearing that you really want me back,” he whispered against her mouth.
“Can you have any doubts?”
“Still a few, sweetheart, but I can live with them till you’re well enough to take them all away.”
“God!” she said. “How well I remember that lustful look of yours.”
“You aren’t exactly the picture of an innocent, blushing bride, either, my love. In fact,” he added, a frown drawing his eyebrows together, “you’
re looking more flushed than I like. Back to bed, my lady.
“If you’ll come with me,” she said, evading Casey’s lapping little tongue as he kissed her cheek. “Sorry, fella, I only accept kisses from the big-guy here, and a few from your big-guy, but I do not like doggy-kisses.”
“I’ll put him out on the grass for a while, Eleanor, then come make sure you’re all right.”
“I’ll be all right,” she said, “so long as you come back to me.”
“Always, Eleanor. From this moment on, always.”
~ * ~
They woke an hour before Philip was due home. David put his cool lips to Eleanor’s brow. “Fever’s still pretty high, darling,” he said. “You stay here while I run a cool tub for you.” He got out of bed and she watched sleepily as he went into the bathroom. She dozed as the water thundered into the tub. He came back, lifted her and carried her into the bath. David sponged her quickly, dried her gently, fed her aspirins and slipped her into a clean fresh nightgown. He left her wrapped in a blanket on the chair while he changed the linen on the bed and then helped her back into it.
“There you are, my lovely, sick darling. How many times I lay awake nights thinking about this bed, and you in it.” He put his head down on her shoulder and Eleanor caressed his hair, loving the slide of it between her fingers.
“Darling, go have a shower,” she said. “Philip will be home soon.” Oh, how wonderful it was to make sounds like a wife. She lay there, thinking of all the wifely things she would be able to say to him now. She’d had so little time, before, to do that.
When he came back, she asked, “David, what do we tell Philip?”
“The truth,” he replied, rubbing his leg with the end of the towel.
“What—” What is the truth? she had been about to ask when she saw the scar on his thigh. It was long, wide and knotted, an ugly purple pearled with white knobs, and sunken deep into his flesh. “Oh, David!” She flew out of the bed and ran to him. “Oh, your poor leg! What happened?”
“I told you. I got lost, injured… All that.”
“The details, David. Tell me the whole story. All Dad and I ever got was that you and a group of others were overdue, and a search was underway. Then came the word the search had proved fruitless and was called off. Dad… Dad was so upset he dragged the Christmas tree out of the house, decorations and all and threw it on the bonfire pile.” She swallowed hard and firmed her mouth. “I need to know what happened to you.”
David stood, pulled on his clothes and began talking. Eleanor curled up under the covers with him sitting beside her. While he talked, she held his hand.
“I went out, as you know, to be trained in the jungle, and to learn about the trees that grow there. There was a guide, an instructor, two other trainees and myself. We came to a wide, tumbling river that we needed to cross. A bridge had been washed out, but we had to get to the other side because that’s where we were to study the growth patterns of certain tropical hardwoods. They’ve been drastically over-logged and— Sorry, that’s not what you want to hear.
“We hiked upstream, trying to find a way over. After a three-day slog in which we made about five miles—those jungles are thick, Eleanor—we reached an escarpment we had to climb. The river fell in a beautiful cascade down the cliff, and the guide was sure he could see a chasm narrow enough to bridge, way up at the top of the waterfall. We’d just need to drop a couple of trees across it.
“We made it up that escarpment all right and sure enough, the river had cut a deep, narrow groove into the top of the cliff. It was too wide for the trees we’d hoped to use, but the guide managed to sling ropes across it and got us to the other side. We were too far upstream, of course, so we had to backtrack. It was when we were trying to get down the cliff on the right side of the river that the accident happened. We were roped together and one man slipped, pulling the rest of us with him. The instructor and the guide were both killed along with the man who had slipped.
“The two of us who survived were both hurt. I had this,” and he indicated his bad leg, “and my buddy, Juan Mercado, had a broken arm it. It was a terrible fracture. The two bones of his forearm were snapped, protruding jaggedly through the skin. When we both regained consciousness, we were feverish and in a lot of pain. We knew that if we just lay there waiting for help, we would die. Our supplies were gone, no food, no medicine. We both had wives with children on the way…” David was silent for a few moments and Eleanor held him strongly until he was ready to go on.
“Juan could walk, even though he had only one good arm and I had two good arms, but couldn’t move unaided. Juan managed to hack down some small trees with the one machete we had, and some vines. I got a splint on his arm, then together, we fashioned a kind of crutch for me. Since we weren’t far from the river, we put some of the trees together with braided vines and made a very makeshift raft. We finally got it to the water and somehow managed to get both of us onto it.
“We floated downstream until it broke up in some rapids. We were pretty weak by that time and our rebuild job wasn’t very successful. We just lay on that float waiting for it to fall apart again, and when it did, Juan simply drifted off. He didn’t even fight, Eleanor, and I couldn’t get to him.”
The anguish in David’s voice cut into her like a hot knife. She held his head tightly to her breast and said, “That’s enough, darling. No more.”
“No. I want to finish.” His Adam’s apple bobbed.
“I got ashore by clinging the one of the logs from the raft and pulled myself half out of the water. I don’t how long I lay there, but after a while some tribesmen found me and took me to their encampment, then got me to a nearby mission. The nuns there looked after me for a long time… I think I spent seven months there before I could even begin to think about finding a way out. I didn’t know who I was, or where I was from, or what I was doing there. My whole world was like that of a baby, who’d been born into the world full grown, but reliant upon others for everything. It took a further two months, after I became myself again, to convince the natives they had to show me the way out. Finally, three of them agreed to take me back to civilization.
“I was still sick when we got to the city, darling, and when I was finally well again I knew I could never come back here.”
Eleanor remained silent for a long moment, still cradling his head against her. She let her hold slacken when he failed to continue with this, the most important part of his story. He pulled away from her and buried his face in his hands.
She had to ask. “Why?”
“I… can’t tell you… Oh, darling, don’t ask!”
“You must know it’s a question I was bound to ask, David. A question that must be answered.” Why was he holding back? What was he holding back?
“But it’s a question I cannot answer.” He raised his ravaged face to her, reaching out for her and she backed away from him to the other side of the bed. “Eleanor,” he beseeched her, “believe me. I would tell you if I could.”
Familiar sounding brakes squealed up by the farmhouse. Eleanor looked at David with hopeless, dead eyes. “The school bus is in. Philip’s home. Go and meet him. I’m sure he’ll want to thank you for looking after his mother… Jeff.”
“‘Jeff’?” David whispered, agony in his eyes, his voice strained.
Eleanor swallowed with difficulty. She licked suddenly dry lips. “Yes. Jeff,” she replied in a voice she barely recognized as her own “Jeff.” She turned her back on him.
Chapter Eight
David caught Eleanor by the shoulder and dragged her close to him. She stared up into his tense, quiet face. “Why?” he whispered.
“I think you can figure that out. If there can’t be true truth between us, what can there be?”
“He told me,” David said rapidly quietly, a note of desperation in his voice, “he told me you said his father would have to have a good reason if he ever did come back… A good reason for having stayed away. But I have, Eleanor. I have!”
“Then tell—”
“Hey, Jeff! Where’s my mom?” yelled Philip as he ran across the kitchen and into the hallway. “Oh there you are. Are you better now, Mom? You sounded funny and I couldn’t find Kathy and Bill so I got up on Siwash and went to get the Exleys and then Jeff came home before I rode that far and he looked after you for me. Hey, Mom, how come your face is all red now? It was white last night.”
Eleanor subsided back against her pillow and David quickly thrust another behind her. Why—and how—had she missed seeing the striking resemblance between Philip and David? Seeing them together for the first time, Eleanor blinked back tears. Philip’s brown hair was several shades lighter than David’s, and his eyes closer to blue than dark gray, but his mouth curved exactly as his father’s did when he smiled. The cleft in his chin, though, was exactly like the one in hers, small and slightly off to one side. He was a part of the two of them, a combination, a continuation… He was an amalgam of their making, and she didn’t know what to do.
“What, or who, is Siwash?” she asked, feeling more and more wretched with each passing moment.
“My horse,” replied David tersely.
Her eyes flew from the face of her son to that of her husband. “He rode a horse?” she asked in awe.
“Sure, Mom! Me and Casey have been riding on Si for a long time. Jeff holds the reins and we walk around and around the clearing but when you got sick I had to do it all by my ownself. Can I go out and ride him now again Jeff? I like it now. When you got up on him last night, too, and we went fast it was cool.”
“You can go see him,” David said, “but no riding fast alone.” Philip scampered off, jumping over Casey who ran between his feet.
“But…” Eleanor protested. David cut her off with a quick grin.
“He doesn’t know how to make the horse go fast, so don’t worry.”
“Not that.” She found it hard to believe Philip could even climb onto a horse. “His school clothes.”
David called the boy back.
A Father for Philip Page 12
