“Oh my, you scared me.”
The Colonel smiled took a couple steps toward Maggie. This was her opportunity. Today was one of those days when Maggie just might have to use her feminine wiles on the Colonel and she was more than willing to do it for the girl who reminded her so much of her Rose.
The Colonel walked around Maggie and stood next to the table where she laid out his lunch. “Good to know I can still scare some people.”
“Oh? What does that mean?
“Ah, sometimes it seems like a free-for-all around here. People do whatever they want as if my authority means nothing, you know?”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Never mind.” The Colonel turned to look at Maggie. “There’s plenty of food here. Join me?”
Maggie smiled coyly. “Oh I couldn’t do that, Colonel. I have to get back.” She took a step toward the door, knowing that the Colonel would stop her.
He reached for her hand and held it. Then he whispered. “We’re alone. You can call me Bill.” He watched Maggie’s smile light up the room. “Now, Maggie, you don’t want me to have to eat alone again.” He held her hand against his chest. “Are you going to make me beg, Ruby?”
Ruby was a nickname the Colonel gave her a while back. He commented about how her ruby red lips matched her red hair. The nickname stuck, and it sent shivers down Maggie’s spine when he called her that.
Maggie agreed to join the Colonel for lunch. There was only one plate and one fork, so they shared. Every so often, Maggie took a forkful of food and fed it to the Colonel rather seductively. She noticed that he seemed to like it.
“So, it’s going to get pretty quiet around here soon, isn’t it?”
The Colonel knit his brow. “What do you mean?”
“A lot of our boys are going to be shipped out soon, I gather. Some boys have already been deployed.”
The Colonel pushed himself away from the table a little and he looked at Maggie suspiciously. “How do you know about that?”
Maggie rested the fork on her plate. “The Commissary is like the pulse of the base, Bill. Everyone eats there every day. And some of them leave an impression. People miss them when they’re gone. Like Private Zacharius, for instance. The girls in the Commissary have been quite taken with him.”
“Oh. Him. Well I can tell you this, Ruby. My Sergeant’s a much happier man with Zacharius out of the picture.” He picked up the fork and continued eating.
“Oh?”
“Zacharius was a thorn in Richards’s side. Richards finally found a way to move him on.”
“Move him on? What do you mean?”
Bill looked up at Maggie. “Why do you care?”
“Oh. No reason. Just what I said. The girls in the cafeteria were asking about him. So ... why did he leave earlier than the others?”
Bill pushed his plate away, drew the cloth napkin across his mouth, and stood up. “Thanks for lunch, Maggie. I need to get back to work.”
Maggie got up and stood in front of Bill, blocking his way to the door. “Bill wait, please.”
“What’s going on? Why all the questions about Zacharius?”
“I told you,” Maggie said earnestly, “the girls in the Commissary ....”
Bill placed his hands on Maggie’s arms. “The truth, Maggie. I want the truth. What’s it to you?”
Maggie looked up at Bill and he leaned toward her. Before Maggie knew it, Bill’s lips were on hers. She had a brief but heated internal debate about pushing him away, but decided to return the kiss.
“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, Ruby,” he whispered. “But you need to give me something in return. And you know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”
Maggie’s heart raced as she looked into Bill’s eyes. She knew exactly what he wanted from her. It was the same thing he wanted almost from the moment they met. Was it worth it for Maggie to get the information for Cathy this way? Or was Maggie using Cathy’s request to get something she needed too? A woman could get very lonely being away from home for so long.
She slowly nodded. Bill threaded his fingers through Maggie’s auburn waves. He kissed Maggie again, harder this time as he backed Maggie against the conference table, pushed the dishes aside and made love to her.
Chapter 74
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
--Winston Churchill
While they were getting dressed in the conference room after making love, Bill answered all of Maggie’s questions. He told her that he gave Louis free reign over the situation, because Zacharius had driven the Sergeant to distraction. It was more important to Bill to have a contented administrator than to keep an enlisted man who was a discipline case. Bill even showed Maggie the signed orders.
When Maggie saw the signature, she became furious. She wadded up the document and she threw it at Bill. He couldn’t understand why she was so upset. After all, Zacharius meant nothing to her. And, he would have been deployed soon anyway, so Bill saw no harm in sending the Private away a month early.
Maggie entered the Commissary through the back door leading to the kitchen. She wished she never offered to help and she had no idea how she was going to tell Cathy what she found out.
The lunch crowd was thinning out when Maggie returned to the Commissary line. And Cathy immediately accosted her. “Did you find anything out?”
Maggie nodded as she ladled up some food and dished it out. “I did. I’ll tell you later.”
“No, you have to tell me now!” Cathy pleaded. “Please Maggie, what did you find out?”
Maggie looked at Cathy’s face and the pain in her eyes broke Maggie’s heart. How was she going to tell Cathy what she learned -- that Louis blackmailed Michael into agreeing to an early deployment in order to save Cathy’s job on base? She was just going to have to be honest.
Maggie lowered her voice and continued to dish out food. “I found out that Michael actually did agree to be deployed early, honey. But he was coerced. You might even say he was blackmailed.”
Cathy pretended to be working too, but she was more interested in what Maggie had to say than she was in serving customers. “Blackmailed??? By who?”
Maggie whispered. “Do you know Sergeant Richards?”
“Yes. He hates Michael. He’s the one who confronted us the day we got back from ....” Cathy remembered Louis’s threats that morning, talking about a Court Martial for Michael and getting Cathy fired. “Michael never did anything to him.”
Maggie tilted her head from side to side. “Well, the truth is, he did. Michael embarrassed the Sergeant on a number of occasions. And Louis wanted revenge.”
“And so he blackmailed Michael?”
Maggie slowly nodded. “Yes dear. He told Michael he would have you fired and thrown off base for being an accessory to stealing that motorbike, and for leaving base without permission.”
Cathy remembered the confrontation with Louis that morning, and how Michael seemed more concerned about protecting her than in defending himself. “And that’s why Michael agreed to leave? To save my job? But it’s just ... a job.” Then she recalled a conversation she and Michael had a couple months back when she told him she would rather stay on base than ever go home. Her stomach turned when she realized that Michael must have remembered it too, and that’s why he made a sacrifice like that.
“Essentially, yes,” Maggie replied. “But Louis didn’t have the authority to do that. I mean, he couldn’t have fired you. He doesn’t have the authority to fire a dog, let alone a civilian volunteer like you,” she explained. “But Michael didn’t know that.”
Cathy gasped. “Are you serious? We can’t let him get away with this, Maggie. Can’t we report him to someone?”
“Welcome to the Army, honey. They have their own code of ethics and their own set of loyalties. The Colonel backed him up on this.”
Cathy felt the fury rise in her breast. “I hate this place!”
“In the
Sergeant’s defense, he could have legitimately brought Michael up on charges for going AWOL and stealing the bike, but according to Bill -- I mean the Colonel -- that’s not what Louis was using for blackmail. He wanted to get back at Michael, plain and simple. He found Michael’s Achilles heel and he was using it against him. You’re his Achilles heel, honey. I hate to tell you this, Cathy, but Michael agreed to an early deployment to protect you.”
“He did it ... for me?” Tears began rolling down Cathy’s cheeks. Michael really did love her. She really was special to him. Up to now, no one ever made any sacrifices for Cathy. “But why didn’t he tell me? Why didn’t he even say goodbye?”
“Louis swore him to silence. He told Michael that he couldn’t communicate with you at all, that he had to leave without saying goodbye.”
“Oh my God. That’s ... so cruel.”
“Ha! I had a few other choice words for what Sergeant Richards did. And for the Colonel too for condoning his behavior.” Maggie saw that Cathy was trembling. “You okay, sweetie?”
Cathy shook her head no. “I’ve never felt so sad, Maggie. I’ve known a lot of mean and cruel people before, but ... to play with people’s lives like this ....”
Maggie put an arm around Cathy. “He wanted revenge against Michael, honey. If it’s any consolation, when Michael signed the early deployment orders, he wrote the words ‘signed under duress’ next to his name.”
“That didn’t make any difference though. He was sent away anyway. Who knows when I’ll even see him again.” Cathy wondered how she and Michael would find each other after the war. They made no specific plans. She knew his family used to own a coal mine in West Virginia. And there couldn’t be too many Zachariuses listed in the telephone directory. That was a place to start, at least. Cathy was starting to feel ill knowing what Michael must have gone through, what he was probably going through right this minute. “It’s not fair,” was all she could manage to say.
“I know it’s not fair, honey.” Maggie noticed that Cathy turned pale and was perspiring. Cathy covered her mouth with her hand, looking like she was going to throw up. “Honey, are you alright?” Maggie asked. “Do you need to go back to the barracks and lie down?” When Cathy didn’t answer, Maggie said, “Stay here. I’ll get you a glass of water.”
Maggie turned around to get Cathy some water, and almost as soon as Maggie left her side, Cathy’s knees gave way and she crumbled to the floor.
“Cathy!”
Chapter 75
“United in this determination and with unshakable faith in the cause for which we fight, we will, with God's help, go forward to our greatest victory.”
-- General Dwight D. Eisenhower
His face was so close to hers. For a minute she thought he was going to kiss her. He was touching her in a way that felt vaguely intimate -- touching her face, her neck, her chest, her stomach, her arms, and her hands.
Looking at him used to make her heart skip a beat, but not today. Even his touch didn’t arouse her in any way. Today, there was another man on her mind. And right now, she was just nervous about the doctor’s diagnosis. What was Dr. Mason going to tell her? Was she sick? Why did she faint? Can a broken heart cause you to faint?
David took the ear tips of the stethoscope out of his ears and leaned away from Cathy. “You can sit up,” he said.
She sat up on the examining table and dangled her legs over the side. “What’s wrong with me? Am I sick?”
David picked up a clipboard and a pen and was about to write something on a chart. He looked up and gazed at Cathy for several moments.
“What?” Cathy’s question was more urgent this time. The longer the doctor stayed silent, the more nervous she became. “Tell me already. What’s wrong??”
David put the clipboard down at the foot of the examining table and slid onto the table to sit next to Cathy. “I need to ask you a question, okay?” Cathy nodded as the doctor’s expression grew increasingly somber. When he took her hand, Cathy thought she was going to faint again from the suspense. She was scared to death. Was she dying? Finally, David spoke. “When was the last time you menstruated?”
Cathy pulled her hand out of David’s and she scowled at him. “None of your business.” How dare he ask her a personal question like that.
David smiled. “I’m asking you as your doctor. When was your last menstrual cycle?”
Cathy looked away from David and stared straight ahead. “Um. I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it. I ... I think ... I think two months ago. Something like that. Why?”
David answered slowly, choosing his words carefully. “Cathy, is it ... is it possible that you’re on the nest? Have you been ... um ... have you been having relations ... with a man?”
Cathy thought for a minute about David’s question. Having relations. ... Missed period. ... Cathy’s lips parted. Her eyes grew wide and she looked at David in shock. She was utterly speechless, but she knew it made sense. She missed at least one period, maybe even two, but she didn’t even notice because she had so many other things on her mind. Good lord! She was pregnant.
David picked up the clipboard and scratched Cathy’s name off the top of the chart. He turned the piece of paper over. “I’m going to write you some instructions. It’s mainly common sense, but you need to make sure you drink at least four glasses of milk every day. Don’t skip any meals. Get a good six to eight hours of sleep. And don’t do any heavy lifting for the next seven or eight months.” He handed the piece of paper to Cathy and gently placed his hand on her shoulder. “And don’t worry, I won’t say anything about this to anyone. I’ll figure out some medical reason why you need to get sent back to the states.” David slid off the examining table.
Cathy nodded. “Thank you,” she said quietly, while looking over the instructions through water-filled eyes. “Dr. Mason, wait. It’s not what you think. I mean ... I’m not the kind of girl who ... you know.”
David smiled sympathetically and placed his hand on top of Cathy’s. “I know.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Thank you for not judging me.”
Chapter 76
Cathy wandered out into the Quad feeling strange and unfamiliar emotions. She was scared, yet she wasn’t scared. She felt lonely, yet not lonely. She felt sad and worried, yet happy and excited.
She was having a baby. Michael’s baby. Proof positive of their love for each other. She signed up with the Army to find direction in her life, and this isn’t at all the direction she expected. She never expected someone like Michael to enter her life, or his child to enter her womb. But somehow it seemed right.
She imagined the look on Michael’s face when she tells him about the baby. She pictured his dimples at their deepest. He’ll be so happy, she was sure of it.
She didn’t want to go back to the Commissary yet. There was still plenty of time before the dinner shift. Besides, she couldn’t face Maggie right now. She knew Maggie would want to know what happened, why she fainted, what the doctor said. Cathy shook her head. No, she wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. For now, it was her little secret.
Without realizing it, she walked to the wooded area that surrounded the encampment and was standing in front of the tree, hers and Michael’s.
With her finger, she traced the heart carving and the words “M & C 4 Ever.” She took a step back and she stared at the tree quizzically. Something was different, but she wasn’t sure what it was.
And then she saw it. She gasped and covered her mouth when she realized what changed.
She came here many times since Michael left base, but she never really looked at the carving on the tree until today. The last time they came here together, it just said “M & C” inside the heart. Now, it said “M & C 4 Ever.” The “4 ever” was new. It wasn’t there before. Michael must have added it before he left. All this time, she was distraught that there was no message from him, no communication, no goodbye, but it was here all the while. He did leave word for her. Just one
word. He added the word forever as a private message to let Cathy know that he meant what he said in the farm truck that day. He really did love her. He really did plan to have a future with her.
She once called the tree carving a “sweet gesture,” and now it felt so much more important than that. He was able to put into words the feelings they had for each other, long before she could.
Tears rolled down Cathy’s cheeks when she touched the tree with one hand and her belly with the other. “M & C 4 Ever.” The future now looked bright.
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