“It hurts.”
“Jackson, sit still. You’re being difficult.”
“Maybe a little sympathy’s in order. After all, I found you and brought you home.” She actually seemed to be taking pleasure in torturing him.
“Stop. I’m not hurting anyone. This Mercurochrome only stings a tad. And can’t possibly hurt as much as the side of the factory did when your hard head met it. Face-to-face.”
Thank You, God. She hasn’t lost her sassy sense of humor. Thank You. I mean it. You led me right to her.
For the first time since Pearl, Jackson felt connected to God in a way he hadn’t even known when he had left. He trusted Him with his entire life. For good, for bad, from here on out.
“You think—” he gestured to his battered face “—this is funny?”
“I think you are funny. Always have. That first time when you flirted with me through the window of my father’s car. Then when you trapped me under the mistletoe. Oh, you’re funny all right.” Her eyes crinkled at the edges, tugging at his heart.
“Here,” he said. Had she really meant what she had said to him? Did she really love him? He had to give it a try. Had to be sure it was love and not merely pity she felt.
“Here what?” She squinted, stared as he pointed. “You’re cut there. Let me get a bandage on and pull the edges together.” She cut a swathe of gauze.
“Don’t bother with that. Look. This spot.” He pointed to his chin, his heart thudding louder than the thunder. “Feel like I was kicked by a mule.”
“You’ve been kicked by mules?” she teased.
“You know what I mean.” His hand sweated; he rubbed it against his slacks and then touched his finger to his chin once again. “Maybe if you kissed right here.” He waited, his heart doing its best to break out of his ribs.
Barbara leaned back enough to be eye level with him. “Let me see. Oh my, yes, that cut does look bad. Not the kind to fix with a bandage, at all. You poor thing.” Her lips brushed the edge of his face. “That better?”
“Much.” His breath hitched.
Her eyes flitted over his face, inch by inch. She blinked. “And here.” Her hand slid gently over his eye. “This looks awful. Must be the side of the building jumped right out and hit you.” She kissed his forehead, but he could tell she avoided the worst of his swollen brow by kissing over the top of his injury from Pearl.
He swallowed hard. She wasn’t afraid of his scars.
“And here?” He indicated the cut above his lip, which had swollen right away.
“Where?”
He longed to wrap his arms around her but was afraid to stop the moment.
She followed his hand. “I see. Right above your lip. Yes, that really does look painful, Jackson.” Her fingertips, like feathers, caressed his mouth.
Her head dipped, and she touched her lips to his ever so gently. “That the right spot?”
He couldn’t refrain another second. Lifting his arms, he drew her onto his lap and enclosed her in a tight embrace. Pain or no pain, his lips found hers before she could take a breath. With more love than he figured he deserved in an entire lifetime, she kissed him back. Softly, gently, but with purpose. A kiss that told him she would accept no more excuses about who he was or what he looked like.
* * *
Barbara thought he’d kiss the air right out of her. Now that was a kiss worth waiting for. Protected, safe, secure—loved for the very first time by a man other than her father. She snuggled against his chest. He nestled his face into her neck, the pulse at that very spot pounding out its rhythm. Then she opened her eyes and stared into the handsomest face she’d ever seen, blood, scars and all.
“I hope you’ll let me stay here a while. I sort of like the feel of your arms around me.”
His lips attempted a smile, but with the swelling, a lopsided grin that drove a velvety stake through her heart emerged instead. “Understand one thing. I’m no VanDusen.”
“Thank goodness. I want more than just a name.” She straightened and stared into his eyes. “Jackson, do you think we could talk later tonight? I mean, really talk.”
“How about if you finish patching me up, and then we’ll do anything you like.” He let his eyebrows lift up and down until she slapped his arm.
* * *
After his folks had retired for the night and he was no longer chilled through to his muscles, he pulled Barbara next to him on the sofa, the fireplace softening the room with a calming light. The only words he could say were, “It’s time.”
Her smiled curled into his heart, turned two or three times and found a comfortable spot—for both of them.
“Time for what, Jack?”
“I like when you call me Jack. Just never Jackie. Promise? If only Bets knew how irritating that nickname is.”
“I won’t call you Jackie, and I promise I’ll never tell her. She loves you so.”
His arm slipped around her shoulder and he pulled her as close as they could get. This was not going to be easy. “Can you...I mean...will you be able to listen to what I say?”
Barbara touched his cheeks with the palms of her hands, avoiding the bruises. He allowed the softness to put him at ease.
Her eyes met his. “About Pearl Harbor? I can listen to anything you want to tell me.” She surprised him by casually planting a kiss on his jaw. “Or would you rather wait ’til another time?”
“No. I’ve waited long enough.” Muscles twitching, his face tightened at the thought of Pearl. “I’ve tried to hide the reality from myself for so long, I’m not sure where to start. The black-and-white reels couldn’t capture the horror of that day.”
“Jack, just start at the beginning.”
He closed his eyes, breathed out air that felt like it had been trapped in his lungs since that day when he had held his breath, diving under the water. Time and again. “I’ll tell you from the first second I can remember.” He sucked back, steadied his breath, calmed his heart rate.
“I was sleeping following midwatch, that’s night duty, and I awoke to the sound of a huge blast. It came from somewhere starboard, near the bow. Then sirens followed a couple more bursts of noise. Most of us figured another drill, and we pulled the covers over our heads. But after that first small blast came a deafening roar port bow.”
When her face crinkled in confusion, he said, “That means the front of the ship. One gigantic explosion and the message, ‘Air raid, Pearl Harbor. This is not a drill,’ told us to get a move on. Then the call to General Quarters. We flew from our racks, pulling on clothes as we ran outside unprepared for what we’d see.
“Dozens, no hundreds of men jumped into the water while thick gray smoke blanketed the harbor. A deep, continuous buzz streamed overhead and when we squinted through the smoke, a mass of planes flew above us like a well-disciplined flock of geese with one thing in mind—their mission. The meatballs on the fuselage and wings—” he stopped, knowing she wouldn’t have a clue “—the large red circles on the sides of the planes were so close you could almost reach out and touch ’em if you tried. No one was sure what they meant at first. But in no time, we understood it was the rising sun of the Japanese flag.
“Ollie, who’d been on days, ran across the deck toward me, screaming for us to get off the ship. One minute he was next to me—right next to me. I looked him in the eyes. He was there and in a millisecond, he was gone. The deck collapsed at the very spot where he stood and he pitched forward, plunging into the water. I grabbed the rail and hung on by sheer will. By then, even though only seconds had passed, oil and debris from numerous ships covered the harbor. Some patches burned. Others were simply thick pools of the ships’ lifeblood. All I could see of Ollie was his face looking up with those big googly eyes. He tried to paddle but went under. Up again, he screamed, ‘Help me, Jack. I can’t swim.’
“I had to reach him, but at the moment, he seemed a mile away. If I jumped and hit the debris, I’d be gone and he wouldn’t have anyone to save him. Men were sh
outing on either side of him, ‘Open the lockers and throw the vests! Get us out! Over here.’ You couldn’t look in any direction without seeing a mass of men, burning, crying, shouting for rescue.”
Barbara placed her hand over his, her voice merely a whisper. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea how bad it was.”
Jackson choked down tears. “My dilemma was immediately resolved. A man came barreling at me from behind and both of us were catapulted into the water. I hit my back on a sheet of metal going in and then it bobbed back up in the water, crossing over me, cutting my face. Ollie, now hanging on to a wooden plank, watched in horror. The water from my entry drove straight up in the air and struck him in the face, driving his glasses from his nose and him from the board.
“‘Jack! Don’t leave me here, I’ll die.’ Then the metal sheet clobbered him in the skull. He shot under a second time. When he came up again, water shot from his mouth as he gulped in air. ‘Save me, Jack!’ I’d tried to teach him to swim on at least a dozen occasions while we were docked. How does a guy who can’t swim get in the navy?
“I reached out and grabbed him, but he slipped through my fingers. I thought I had him by his tags, but they broke loose from the weight and the way I’d wrenched him, trying to grab hold. I got the tags and a chunk of his shirt.
“By then, oil covered my arms and a bit of my neck. I saw flames lick at the water not twenty or so feet from me. I was holding my breath, diving, returning to the surface, diving again. But no Ollie. I held it so long I thought my lungs would burst.
“Hands grabbed me from behind, slapping at my skin. That’s when I noticed the oil burning on my arms and hands. Then two men lifted me into a raft.”
He couldn’t help it, his line of vision settled on the worst of his scars. Then he shivered, hating the expression he saw on Barbara’s face.
“Men died everywhere that day, Barbara. You could reach a hand in any direction and find a man choking back his last breath. You can read about hell in the Bible, but we lived through it. Fire burned on the ships, in the water, in buildings, on the land. It covered men’s entire bodies. No matter where you looked, there was burning and devastation. There wasn’t a single place you could go to escape the sweltering heat.”
Barbara turned her head aside, and he caught a glimpse of her drawing a hand toward her eyes. He wished with all his might he wasn’t causing her this pain. “Are you sure you want to hear the rest of this?”
“Jackson, if you talk about what happened, you’ll begin to heal. To put it behind you.”
“I s’pose.”
She brushed hair from the cut on his forehead. “With all that you went through, why do you blame yourself for your friend’s death?”
He pulled his arm from around her shoulder and straightened, almost militarily. “Ollie. He trusted me to take care of him. He was only seventeen, Barbara. A kid whose parents waited at home for the call or telegram that would say: The President of the United States and the Secretary of the Navy regret to inform you that your son was killed in action on December 7, 1941. Please accept the thanks of a grateful nation. Or something equally mundane.”
“Where did they take you?”
Her face blurred before his eyes. “I hardly remember. Guy Stryker had me in his arms like a baby, running through what had been a street leading to the hospital. By that time, the sun tried to push through the smoke, and just the hint of it on my arms scorched like a blow torch. Men around me rushed toward the hospital to get help for their friends, some already dead in their arms.” He choked back tears.
Barbara reached out and he wanted to pull her close, but the memories separated them.
“Jackson, I’m so sorry,” she said.
“No one could have known what would happen. And if they had, they couldn’t have stopped it. God help the men who died there, and more importantly, those who didn’t. They’ll have to live with the memories like me.”
* * *
She pressed fingers over his rough, scarred hand. “I didn’t realize.” What else could she say? Try as she might, she would never understand what Jackson and the others had endured. But now, after talking about it, she could see a change in his demeanor. He would always carry the emotional scars, but at least he was willing to try and get past this.
Silent now, he sucked his lower lip in, biting down.
He turned, looked her direction. “Oliver was barely older than my brother, you know. A kid with his entire life in front of him.”
“Oliver?”
Jackson’s fingers steepled. He slumped against the sofa back, closed his eyes.
She caught herself holding her breath, afraid to let it out and break the silence, but she asked again, “Oliver? I thought you said Ollie.”
“Yeah, Oliver McHale. My rack mate. We all called him Ollie. Should have called him Owlie. He had these big eyes that looked even bigger behind his Coke-bottle glasses. Probably wouldn’t have taken him in the navy if we hadn’t been headed for war.”
McHale? “Oliver McHale?”
He opened his eyes and crooked his neck to the side. “Yes. Why?”
“He’s alive, Jack.”
He sat straight, gripped her wrist, his face contorted. “I don’t know if you’re trying to console me, but...”
She lifted palms to his chest. His heart beat strong through the shirt. “It’s not a joke. I rode on the train with his mother. She and Mr. McHale had been to see him. He’s still in the hospital, but he’s alive, Jackson. She said it took a while for them to identify him. No tags.” She tried to stop her grin from spreading, felt it fan out and cover her face.
He tugged her head onto his chest and buried his face in her neck. “I don’t know what to say. For more than five months I’ve harbored the notion...now you tell me Ollie’s alive. I feel like hopping the first train.”
Barbara lifted her head and wrapped her arms around him. They sat, intertwined for over an hour, neither one of them speaking, only the soft breathing and the echo of two hearts beating as one. When, at last, he raised his head, his eyes had filled and he didn’t even try to brush the tears away. “Barbara, I’m so ashamed.”
“Ashamed?”
“If I told you what I’d planned.”
“Planned for what, Jack?”
“For after Betty’s wedding. God forgive me for even contemplating anything so selfish.”
“Jackson? You don’t need to say another word.” She didn’t move, didn’t dare.
“Tonight I want to hold you as long as you’ll let me here on the couch, then go upstairs and climb into my bed.” He grinned. “And sleep. For the first time in five months, I plan to sleep. And Barbara?”
With hope spilling out of control, she smiled. “Yes?”
His voice—husky and full of love—caressed her like a piece of fine silk. “No more running off. My poor old body can’t take it.”
She squeezed tighter. “Oh, Jackson.”
“Jack. I like when you call me Jack.”
“Whatever you like, Jack. Just kiss me.”
Chapter 17
Jackson popped the last bite of warm sticky bun in his mouth and swigged coffee from his cup. Holding it out, he smiled at his mother. “A little more cream?” She plopped a dollop into the cup. “Thanks. I really didn’t expect you to get up and bake so early.”
“It’s time we fattened you up a bit. Here, have another.”
“I’ve gotten fat and lazy as it is.”
“Oh, lands, boy. You need pick on those bones. May have muscle still, but we need to fill you out again, don’t we?”
He smiled. All seemed right in his world for the first time in a very long while.
His mother patted his hand. “Barbara slept in. Poor little thing.”
“Thanks for all you’ve done for her.”
She blushed and pushed the platter closer.
“Whoa.” Jackson chuckled. “Dad, make her stop. I want to fill out, not fatten up like this year’s Thanksgiving turkey.”
“Fiddlesticks.”
“I’ll have to work all kinds of overtime to keep from getting fat, Mother. Slow down there.”
“Are you serious, son?” His father leaned forward, nearly upending his own coffee. “Because Fred’s way in over his head at the factory. Even asked me if I’d start to look for another manager so he could step down.”
Jackson shook his head. Fred wasn’t manager material, and they all knew it. “Yeah, about that.”
“I think you might be able to put things to right.”
Jackson nodded. He loved this house. Loved these people. How had he allowed himself to become so caught up in his own misery? Last night he had seen some of the first good sleep he’d had since coming home, but he hadn’t slept long. For much of the night he had spent in prayer. Reconnecting with the Father who hadn’t let him down after all. There is a reason for everything that happens. Father, how could I have doubted You?
Never again would he allow the doubts to consume him in such a destructive manner.
“Why are you staring? Aren’t I just about the handsomest man you’ve ever seen?” He clipped his mother under the chin.
She reached out and patted the side of his face like she’d done a hundred times when he was a child. “You are that. And then some.” Her eyes traveled to his father. “Just like your handsome daddy. You all right, son?”
“I’ll be fine now.” Should he broach the subject? “And I think she will, too. If I ever get around to asking her.” He raised his brow, hinting at his intentions.
His mother pushed the pan of buns aside and threw her arms around his neck. “I’m so happy for you, son.”
He threw his head back and laughed aloud. “Don’t put the horse before the cart, dear lady. I haven’t made it official yet. You and Father are the only ones who know I’m going to pop the question. Mum’s the word. Don’t say anything to Will. Especially not Will.”
“There’s something in my sewing basket I have to get.”
“What’s that?”
With Eyes of Love (Heartsong Presents) Page 15
