Once a Warrior

by Fran Baker

  “Something tells me I’m not the only one who performs bed check,” she surmised.

  He grimaced. “I had a battalion commander in California who believed that two weeks on KP was the cure for breaking curfew.”

  “And was it?”

  “If I never peel another potato, it’ll be too soon.”

  She laughed softly. “Three cheers for Uncle Sam.”

  Mike grinned, flashing the Scanlon dimple which, along with his height, he’d inherited from his father. He didn’t just love his mother. He liked her. A lot. She knew when to push and when to pull back. When to punish and when to praise. More important yet, she’d managed to keep her family together after her milkman husband succumbed to pneumonia.

  Following the funeral, he’d offered to quit school and go to work full time to help make ends meet, but his mother wouldn’t hear of it. Neither one of his parents had graduated from high school and they had both been determined that their children would go to college. It was his father’s dying wish that he complete his education, she’d argued—using guilt when all else failed—and it was his duty to fulfill that wish.

  So Mike set a goal of a law degree and, after graduating from high school, got a job as a pipe fitter’s apprentice to save money toward college. To augment his income, he also joined a field artillery regiment of the National Guard. Six months later, his unit was mobilized and he was inducted into the Army of the United States.

  Like the majority of servicemen who’d grown up during the Depression, he came from a family that was too poor to take vacations. Which meant that his exposure to America’s mountains and oceans and monuments was limited to what he’d studied in school. But thanks to Uncle Sam, he’d seen more of the country in these last three years than most hoboes.

  Mike started his tour of duty at Camp Robinson, Arkansas. There, he spent part of the time building sidewalks for the new recruits who would soon be arriving and the rest on maneuvers in Louisiana, slogging through the swamps with a broomstick for a gun. When he learned that his first leave was scheduled for Christmas, he wrote his mother to start looking—and cooking!—for him.

  The attack on Pearl Harbor put the kibosh on his holiday plans. His battalion entrained for California, where he ate his Christmas dinner out of a mess kit. After sitting in several different gun emplacements above the coast to guard against the possibility of a Japanese invasion of the United States, he applied for and was accepted to Officer Candidate School at the Fort Sill, Oklahoma, Artillery School of Fire.

  If war was hell, he quickly discovered that OCS was purgatory. For three months he worked day and night in both classroom and field. His diligence paid off in a commission, and Mike could honestly say that the proudest moment of his life—surpassing even the winning touchdown pass he’d thrown to John in the city highschool championship game—was having those gold bars pinned on his epaulets.

  His first assignment as an officer was to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He’d spent half his time putting men through obstacle courses and the other half serving as defense counsel for the Court Martial Board. From there, he’d reported to Camp Butner for a refresher course and to do his duty in the field as a forward artillery observer.

  Now his next stop, Mike guessed glumly, was Merry Olde England.

  “I have something for you,” Millie said.

  That lifted his spirits. “What is it?”

  Smiling, his mother reached into her robe pocket and pulled out a small wrapped package. “A belated Christmas present.”

  “I thought I opened everything last Sunday.” Mike had come home to a hero’s welcome and to his favorite meal of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy and home-canned green beans from last summer’s Victory garden. For dessert there’d been a chocolate cake with fudge icing that must have cost a month’s sugar ration. After dinner, there’d been presents to open—a pen and pencil set from his mother, hand-knitted socks from his sister, and some stainless steel Kant Rust razor blades from his brother.

  He hadn’t returned exactly empty-handed himself. For his sister, a fashion-conscious highschool senior, he’d brought two pairs of nylon hose at the PX; for his gangly fifteen-year-old brother, he’d picked up some paratrooper’s boots that hadn’t been off his feet all week. For Millie, he’d arranged an increase in her monthly allotment to be withheld from his overseas pay to supplement her stenographer’s salary.

  “This is special.” His mother’s eyes shone as brightly as the silver Service Star she proudly displayed in the living room window. “And since you’ll be busy with the wedding tomorrow and you leave so early on Sunday, I wanted to give it to you tonight.”

  Mike sat down in the glider chair beside her rocker to open his present. He remembered to pass both the wrapping paper and the ribbon back to her so she could use them again next Christmas. Then he just stared at his gift with glistening eyes.

  It was a soldier’s Bible, with the word “Godspeed” written in his mother’s fine hand inside the metal cover and, on the very first page, a mimeographed message from his Commander-in-Chief, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

  “Thanks, Mom.” He cleared his throat, then leaned over and kissed her cheek. “I’ll carry it in my shirt pocket until I come home.”

  Millie wiped her own damp eyes with a handkerchief. She’d done her best to put up a cheerful front this week, Mike knew. On more than one occasion, though, he’d caught her looking at him as if she were trying to impress her memory indelibly with the image of someone she might never see again.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” she said on a sniffle. “You have a letter on the telephone table. It’s got a California postmark.”

  He knew immediately that it was from the naval officer’s daughter he’d dated while he was stationed in El Cajon. “I’ll read it later.”

  “Is it from a girl?” His mother didn’t ordinarily pry into his personal affairs, but this was an extraordinary occasion.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you serious about her?”

  “I can’t get serious about anyone right now,” he said gravely.

  “I understand.” She gave him a last, sad smile before she stood and kissed him goodnight. “I love you, Michael Vincent Scanlon.”

  “I love you too, Mom.” After hugging her tightly, he watched her make her way into the front bedroom she now shared with her daughter. Then, still too restless to head into the back bedroom where he was bunking with his brother, he crossed to the telephone table to get the letter from the girl he’d left in California.

  The blue envelope exuded the same floral scent she’d been wearing the night he’d met her at that USO dance. Her father had been at sea in the Pacific, her mother a Red Cross volunteer. She had worked in a war plant and had proudly called herself a “Bomber-Dear.”

  Mike thought of those late summer evenings when he’d lain in a backyard hammock, eating baby lemons peeled by the dark-haired girl kneeling in the grass beside him. She’d laughed when he’d puckered up after she first dropped the fruit into his mouth. And then one night, when the big orange sun had sunk into the sea and full darkness had enveloped them, she’d crawled into the hammock with him, licking the sweet-tart juice off his lips and whispering “Let’s make love” into his ear.

  She hadn’t been a virgin, which was a relief. Nor had she been shy about expressing her needs. Still, he’d felt a twinge of guilt because he’d yet to tell her that he’d been accepted to OCS and would be leaving soon. But with her firm breasts pressed against his chest and her eager hands undoing his belt buckle, no power on earth could have kept him from taking her.

  They’d kissed until her lips were swollen and his own felt raw. Her cotton dress had risen about her hips, and he’d caressed her through the thin rayon of her panties. Then he’d slipped his hand under the band and she’d opened her thighs so he could stroke the soft, damp velvet of her.

  When he’d entered her, they’d lain in the swaying hammock, locked in the ecstasy of an embrace as old as tim
e, until their yearning young bodies had begun to move and they’d come together like an electric shock.

  Mike stared down at the envelope for a long, reflective moment. He knew he should probably write her back, but after “thanks for the memories,” what more could he say? Without opening it, he tore it into tiny pieces and dropped them in the wastebasket beside the table.

  * * * *

  “For richer or for poorer,” Father Campbell intoned solemnly.

  The priest’s parlor smelled of oil soap instead of orchids or roses. A hissing radiator provided the music, and three straight-backed chairs served as pews for the guests. Though there were none of the tears that were normally shed at weddings, there was an aura of sadness about the couple who now faced each other and their impending separation.

  Still, the groom cut a handsome figure in his “pinks and greens” uniform. And the bride looked as a pretty and fragile as a hothouse flower in her floppy hat and a blue jersey dress that didn’t quite hide the slight swell of her expanding tummy. But it was the maid of honor, a leggy redhead standing across the semi-circle that the wedding party had formed in front of the priest, who held the best man’s attention.

  Mike took a chance and smiled at her. If he thought she would blush or dip her head or demurely avert her eyes, he had another think coming. She looked straight at him and smiled back.

  “In sickness and in health,” Kitty repeated softly.

  Mike knew he should be paying closer attention to the ceremony so that he’d know when to produce the ring that was nesting in the pocket of his dress uniform pants. But he was leaving tomorrow morning, he’d dumped that blonde last night, and the maid of honor might be the last American female he had any contact with for a while. A very long while.

  Pressing his luck, he winked at her.

  She winked back.

  “’Til death do us part,” John vowed gravely.

  Father Campbell cleared his throat then, and Mike realized that it was time for the blessing of the rings. He laid the bride’s slender gold band on the paten the priest extended toward him. When the redhead placed the groom’s wider one beside it, a ray of the chilly gray light washing the eastern window glinted off the matched set of diamonds on her left hand.

  Matron of honor, Mike thought resignedly. He didn’t have many rules where women were concerned, but he lived by one. Never with another man’s wife.

  “You may kiss the bride,” the priest said in conclusion.

  From the corner of his eye, Mike watched the matron of honor watch the newlyweds exchange a chaste peck. Then he did what he’d just sworn he wouldn’t do. He looked directly at her.

  As if she sensed him staring at her, she turned her head and met his gaze head-on. Her eyes were green, large and slightly upturned at the corners, her nose a little too short and pert to balance them against her full, scarlet mouth. Almost daring him to break their visual connection, she moistened her lips in a way that had him mentally placing them and that saucy pink tongue where they’d do him the most good.

  “Time to cut the cake.” Agnes Dill, the priest’s spinster housekeeper, had slipped out of the room the instant the ceremony ended. Now she wheeled a serving cart into the parlor. On it was a pot of freshly perked coffee and a one-layer cake she had baked and decorated herself.

  “Oh, how pretty!” Daisy leaped to her feet, almost overturning her chair, then managed to step on Mike’s toes in her rush to take a picture of Agnes’s culinary masterpiece.

  Charlie, who was slower to rise and even slower to follow her across the room, had lost his sad-sack face and was wearing the look of a well-loved man.

  The small party gathered around the serving cart, trying to make the occasion as festive as possible. Neither the bride nor the groom could muster much of a smile for their wedding picture, though. With both sets of parents conspicuous by their absence, it was hard to keep up the pretense.

  After the reception, John and Kitty were taking the one o’clock train to St. Louis. They’d reserved a hotel room and were going to live out of their suitcases until it was time for him to leave for Chatham Field. She would return to Kansas City then to await the birth of their baby.

  Mike had driven John to the church, so Charlie and Daisy, who were having lunch with her parents in hopes of discussing his going to work in her family’s appliance store after the war, had offered to drop off the newlyweds at Union Station.

  Out in the parking lot, John loaded Kitty’s and his luggage in Charlie’s trunk. Then, while the others were busy saying goodbye, he drew Mike aside and said, “I want you to do me a favor.”

  “You name it, you’ve got it.”

  “Promise me.”

  Mike felt John’s fingers close on his wrist. “Say, what is this?” he laughed. “You need money?” He reached into his pocket with his free hand. “It’s yours.”

  John waved away the small wad of bills he’d pulled out. “I want you to promise me that if I’m killed in combat—”

  “Don’t even think that, much less—”

  “—you’ll keep an eye on Kitty and the baby. She’ll have my life insurance policy and a pension, so she’ll be okay financially. But between her folks and mine, I’m afraid she won’t have the kind of family support she’ll need.”

  Mike sighed. “Has it ever occurred to you that I might be the one who doesn’t make it?”

  “You will. You’re a survivor.” John’s earnest brown eyes bored into his. “Now just promise me, okay?”

  Mike felt both honored and humbled by his friend’s request. He looked away, wondering if he would really be able to keep the promise he was being asked to make. But if the tables were turned, he reminded himself, and he were leaving a family behind, the first person he would ask to watch over them would be John Brown.

  “I promise,” he said, and proffered his hand.

  “Hey, you two, get over here!” Charlie hollered. “Daisy wants to take a picture of the three of us in uniform.”

  They posed in front of his parents’ Chrysler. Charlie, being the shortest, stood between Mike and John. Their arms rested companionably on each other’s shoulders.

  “Smile!” Daisy instructed before she captured their image for posterity.

  The party ended then with a few tears, a flurry of hugs and handshakes, and reminders to write. John and Kitty climbed into the backseat, Charlie and Daisy into the front. The old tin cans that Mike had dug up and tied to the bumper jangled out “Just Married” to everyone within earshot as the Chrysler pulled away.

  “How about giving me a ride home?”

  Mike had completely forgotten about the redhead, who was standing beside the passenger door of his Buick and smiling expectantly at him. She’d been introduced to him as Kitty’s roommate during the reception but he’d let her name slide by for the simple reason that she was married. He’d figured there was no sense in rocking a boat—even a dreamboat—that he couldn’t row.

  Now he squared her in his sights. “Call your husband.”

  She tucked a stray wisp of flame-colored hair into the luxuriant pageboy roll that fell at the nape of her neck. “He’s stationed at Parris Island, South Carolina.”

  “A Marine, huh?”

  “The original lean, mean fighting machine.” She lingered bitterly over the last word.

  Mike cocked his head in curiosity. “How’d you get to the church?”

  “I shared a cab with Kitty because I ran out of gas coupons for my car, and now I’m out of money.”

  “War’s hell on the homefront,” he said dryly.

  “Isn’t it, though.” Reaching up, she ran a scarlet-tipped fingernail over the crossed brass branch insignia on his uniform lapels. “I like your guns.”

  “Cannons.”

  Her green eyes arrowed into his. “They look dangerous.”

  “They are.” Mike had made enough passes, both on and off the football field, to know when he was on the receiving end of one.

  “I live at Thirty-thi
rd and the Paseo.” She hadn’t buttoned her coat, and the January wind played peek-a-boo with the hem of her short, swingy dress.

  His conscience raised a ruckus as his gaze moved down to her shapely legs. “That’s a long way to walk.”

  “Alone,” she added meaningfully, her expression softening when his eyes met hers again. “At least until Kitty gets back next week.”

  “I leave tomorrow morning.” As if he needed another reminder that time was at a premium, the bell in the church tower chimed the noon Angelus.

  “Have you ever pulled down your blackout shades in the middle of the day?” Her glossy lips parted in a wide, wicked grin. “I do it when I take a nap and it makes the room dark as night.”

  Damning the consequences, he unlocked the passenger door and opened it for her. “Ready?”

  “Willing and able, too,” the redhead parried silkily as she slid into the car.

  The seductive way she crossed her legs, flashing him just a glimpse of smooth white thigh where the tops of her stockings met the tips of her garters, told Mike that he was probably in for the ride of his life. He should have been rarin’ to go; instead, he found he was dragging his feet as he cut around to the driver’s side. And when she reached over to unlock his door with her ring hand, he couldn’t help but think that whoever said “All’s fair in love and war” must’ve had heels like himself in mind.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Spinnazola, Italy

  “My darling Kitty: I got your letter yesterday. My new birthday picture of you, too. To answer your question—again—no, you don’t look fat and ugly. You look six gorgeous months pregnant. I only wish I were there to rub your back and your feet when they ache. Or to hold you on my lap, with your head on my shoulder and my hand on your belly, feeling our baby move inside you . . .”