Fight for Love (My Wounded Soldier #2)

by Diane Munier

  We rode in silence. He was quiet. I knew he held it against me when I upset her. I was sorry we were sending him from a place of discord. But he had to go and I wasn’t trying to be cruel. Truth to tell I didn’t want to send him off. I was feeling for him. I didn’t want to, but I was. “It’ll be fine,” I said out of nowhere, for I surely never planned to say it.

  “You made her cry!” he yelled with such force I thought I’d heard a bobcat in the tree. I looked at him, and he stared ahead, arms folded against his thin chest. He’d slept on my feet. Did he not know I loved him?

  “You don’t need to worry about me with her.” I pulled on the reins and sat there in the road. “Look at me.”

  He did. His eyes the back up gun. So like her.

  “I will never hurt her. She is safe with me. I will never hurt you or Janey. I am your pa now. I will protect you. Ain’t I always?”

  He looked away. He had to think about it. I didn’t know how many times or ways I’d have to say this to him. “We got us off on a wrong foot this morning. I go home I’ll make it up to her.”

  He looked off now so he could show me the back of his hat.

  “You’ll see for yourself in time,” I said. He kept turned away, and I knew it wouldn’t do any good to make him look at me again, but I wanted to.

  We went on down the road then.

  “I don’t want to go,” he said. I thought about it from his look out. I remembered him the one time I saw him with those his age. He’d been hard on them. But they’d been just as bad. Mayhap he’d have to fight his way in. I studied him from the corner of my eye. He was looking straight ahead, hugging himself.

  “Just be friendly,” I said.

  “They give me any trouble,” he said, his jaw twitching, “they’re gonna wish they hadn’t.”

  “Now hold on,” I said knowing I’d stuck my nose in the hornet’s nest now. “Some of them boys be bigger than you, and you coming in new. Bravest men I ever saw negotiated the lay of the land before they showed their hand,” I said.

  He looked at me. “What’s that mean?”

  “Means you stay quiet and you figure it out. Don’t shoot off your mouth. Stay quiet, be friendly and be watching. You’ll see how it goes…see who is who…who can be trusted…who can’t. You go in fighting they’ll band together and take you down. You got to go in slow and see how it lays.”

  He swallowed loud. I knew he was listening.

  “What if they try to fight me?”

  “Someone bullies you, don’t hit first. If he’s bigger and you’re outnumbered, you run. Run toward someone bigger, not further into the woods. Go for the teacher. You don’t have to snitch, just get near her. Or is it a he? Guess we’ll find out. If they catch you and get the best it’s up to you. It’s me, I’d fight, but there’s no shame if you don’t. Not fighting can make it go faster. You come home licked though, that’s when I go see the pa. You got me for back-up. Don’t forget that.”

  He looked at me now, big-eyed, considering.

  “You get bullied I go see the pa. You get a cross word said I go see the teacher. You let me handle it. They get you alone, you tell them your pa is coming with Sheriff Jimmy Leidner and we are gonna lock them up in jail and throw away the key.”

  He pulled a knife from his pocket then.

  I pulled on the reins again. “Where in the world….” It was a sizable knife.

  “It was Pa’s,” he said.

  “You can’t take that. We’ll get you something smaller cause I know a boy needs him a knife, but that pigsticker there…no. That’ll end up in you more likely. You do know these boys can be big.”

  I put my hand out for the knife. He was slow in laying the hilt of it in my hand. I stuck it beneath the seat. Lord, God, I’d always need to be talking to him or he’d be so far ahead I’d lose him.

  When we got to the schoolhouse, he gathered his things and looked at the different ones running in the yard. It was all I could do not to turn that carriage around. “Tell you what,” I said, “I’m leaving you my horse.”

  We got out and I was tying the horse near the others. “This means you got your tie to home standing here waiting. You ever get in some real trouble, and I mean not some bad mood thing…but real trouble, you come on home. This teacher can’t control his school, I ain’t gonna let you suffer, hear me?”

  He nodded. I had my hand on his shoulder, looking at the boys in the yard, sizing them.

  I had to get a hold of myself. Lord God I had apron strings worse than his mother of a sudden. “I am your back up, don’t ever forget that. They get out of line, you got me. Understand?”

  He nodded then, and I didn’t expect it, but set down his load and threw his arms around me. Well, I looked quick to make sure they weren’t looking. He really didn’t know the rules, he did not. So I dragged us behind the horse to block their view. Then I bent over him and pulled him back. “Stand strong now. We Tanner-Varn men don’t run when we see the enemy. We take a stand.” Except for Quinton. But I kept still on it.

  Johnny nodded like I’d just given him the keys to heaven. I did a thing then, I kissed him, right on the cheek. “I love you,” I said.

  He had tears and I brushed them good with that bandana I had in my pocket. Then I gave it to him. Keep this with you. It’s my lucky bandana. I’ll come back by here later today. I see this tied to the horse’s saddle, I’ll know you’re in trouble.”

  He nodded solemn. “Okay…Pa.”

  Tom Tanner

  Chapter Ten

  I drove straight to her. I did not care for Cousin and his provision. Things were not right between us, and I would not live my life with us offset. So it was home I went to ease her mind about Johnny. To ease her heart about me.

  I had no sooner pulled up at the house once more and out she came, her feet bare, her shirt off, wearing that chemise, her shoulders white and beautiful, her hair long and loose. I got out of the carriage, and she flew down the stairs and into my arms, and I held her like that, her feet off the ground, and I turned us this way and that as we fit back together like halves of the same clay pot. “Girl,” I said, but it’s all I could say for this was our way and words intruded.

  And so it was this until I eased her back on her feet and swept her up in my arms and carried her inside to our bed. Her down first, gentle, then me slow, and I kissed the ever-loving daylights out of her, just that, kissing her in that piece of heaven we made together.

  “You did not close the door,” she panted.

  “I care not,” I said, kissing her over that lace and those ribbons. Enough of our clothing undone so we could join, and so we did, and it was wholeness and relief.

  And after, I held her there, and it was settled between us.

  “I have not told you about me,” she said. And I waited.

  She told me of her mother then. Greta. She took in washing. And brought men home. And my wife, a slight girl scrubbing on the board. That’s what I felt in her hands. So sweetly shaped, so brined to the work. A lady almost, but not in her marrow. There, the laundry girl, the dirty laundry girl. And the men. Her learning to stand, given a knife by the neighbor woman. “Protect yourself,” the woman said. “No one else will.” And so she did, too young, too scared, too soon.

  Like Johnny. He got took to the dark and it stabbed the tender in him and the dark came in.

  I sat up and held her to me, stroking her hair while she told me. I felt so many things with her, the fear, yes, the joy, yes. The old wounds, yes. The new wonder of it, yes. The mother, and back more. The girl, yes. The little broken one, yes. No man to ever rise up, and if he did, she met him with just herself and her brave eyes.

  “Lass,” I said, but only once. I did not wish to let the pump run dry, for her words gifted me an understanding I had lacked.

  I would be the pa to her sometimes. I knew that now. She wouldn’t want it much, but sometimes she would, almost like Johnny, me going back in her, me angry for her, saying what she knew and didn’t get
a chance to rail about. Letting her know I was here now. I was here.

  It was a part of it for us. There was this little one in there still holding that knife, sometimes at me, yes that’s what I saw. That knife she used and left in a man who tried to take her in an alley. That’s when she met him—her husband. She went in his store after the attack. He was kind. But God…he was weak.

  But that’s how he got in. He wiped her face, but he was no hero. She made him feel, and then he couldn’t find it in himself to love her. She was something he hadn’t seen…too alive…too much of everything.

  “I am not him,” I told her, and oh I was not. The dark had its hands around my throat time and time, but it did not finish me. I was just a man, but I stood tall. Like it or don’t, I did the hard thing.

  “I am Tom Tanner, your man,” I said, “the good of him, the ugly, too. But I am not Richard Varn. I have my own sins, but I do not carry the sins of another. Nor will I,” I said, not sure what I meant by this speech, but I said it with force.

  “And Lass, hear me…I will dig him up one day while you and Johnny are not aware. I will take him respectfully to the cemetery at the church, for I have done right by him. It’s where I should have put him that day, but by necessity I planted him there to shield you and Johnny from the sadness.”

  She studied my face, and I sat for her inspection. She knew I spoke the truth. “There is a vault in St. Louis. With his father and mother. It is one of the things Quinton wishes to ask…for the mother,” she said.

  That pleased me. It was a man’s thing to do. My notions of Cousin rose a notch. “We will tell Johnny,” I said. “His father should be with his people where Johnny can give him his due comes the day. In our yard…no shadow. It is his time to move on. I am alive. And I have stepped in.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, Tom.” She moved to put her hands on my face. “In St. Louis…I stood in that alley. I faced the ghosts there…and in the store. I stayed in that house…that study where Charles reigned. I thought of you…standing with me…your arms strong around me. And I knew I’d turned the page.”

  I kissed her soft. “Keep turning that page,” I said. “The wind blows it over, turn it again. You and me, Lass, my beauty…it’s our time.”

  And she did nod.

  Tom Tanner

  Chapter Eleven

  I had left the carriage down the road. I walked close to the school and saw that bandana tied to the saddle. So up to that schoolhouse I went. It didn’t look so different from when we’d stormed its door some years before. They were in there doing lessons. Teacher had them on the benches according to forms, and that put Johnny toward the front. It was always so damn dark in this place.

  “Yes sir?” Teacher said. It was a man so young. Looked to have cut himself shaving and the sight of me must have put him on pins for he stood quick and stumbled a bit.

  I did not know why folks took me that way sometimes, but then I did know concern I saw that rag tied that way and mayhap I looked it.

  “I am Tom Tanner here for my boy Johnny Varn,” I said.

  There was some snickering behind hands. Teacher looked to Johnny who stood and gathered his books and slate. I wondered why his shirt was out long, and streaked with dirt along his spine. I hoped to hell he had not wet himself.

  “I will be taking him now,” I said, my hand on his shoulder.

  “Yes sir,” Teacher said voice high, him a woman in a skinny man’s body seemed like.

  I nodded good-day, then I looked stern at a couple of those laughed, just to sprinkle the fear of God a bit…two birds. Johnny got his hat and jacket and lunch pail from the coatroom and out we went.

  We walked quiet, but his steps were quick. When we got to the horse I untied him. No need for Johnny to ride him now. “You can go with me to the carriage. Why did you tie the rag on?”

  “I split my britches,” he said from deep in.

  Well, we had not prepared for such as that. Reckon the shirt took care of it.

  So it was he accompanied me to Ma’s house and told me how the morning had gone. A big boy had tried to take his biscuit, but he’d kicked him in the shin and the boy had cried. I reckoned it wasn’t the best kind of report, but I’d leave it for now.

  “How’d you split your britches?”

  “Well,” he said, moving to the edge of the seat excited, “after I kicked that big’n, here came his sister, and she knocked me down, and she grabbed my boot, and pulled me around, and I was kicking at her with the other, ‘til she left off. Then I remembered what you said about not running into the woods, so I run to the teacher. He was in the schoolhouse checking sums…an he said, “This is playtime, you need to go back outside ‘til I ring the bell,” and I said…I said…well…yes sir, and I turned to go back out and he said, “You split your britches.” And he said how did I do it? And I said…I don’t know. And he said…pull out your shirt and take your seat and write twenty-five times I will not be foolish and tear my britches. So I did that, then the others came in. Then when we had second playtime the big boy run his finger across his neck like he was gonna slit my throat, and I went out and tied your bandana on the horn. Then he saw me and said, that ain’t your horse. And I said it’s my pa’s horse and he was a soldier. And that boy says, your pa is dead and your ma killed that man, and I said, yep and she’ll kill you if you try to take my food. She hates that. And he just walked away then. So we went in and here you came. How did you get here so quick when I just tied the bandana on?”

  “I told you I would check didn’t I? Some things just work out.” Well, I didn’t know what to think of it all. “Did you learn anything?” I asked.

  “I learned the world wears a belt. It’s right around the middle and they call it Equador, I think.”

  “Huh,” I said. Now what in tarnal was such a piece of education going to get him in this world, and it being wrong to begin with?

  So we rode, and he prattled on, accepting his lot, happy to be headed toward his people, I thought.

  Well, at one point I let the horse have its lead. This was a fine one, raised from a colt by Pa, and he knew horseflesh. Johnny yip-eed, and I laughed. Well this beast had his head, then I gave Johnny the reins and he felt it in his hands and let it go to his arms the right way, “That’s it,” I said. I let them go for a bit, the road was fair here. And so the boy showed strength. “You will be a fine horseman someday,” I said.

  When we reached the home place, Ma came from the house, Lavinia behind, a big apron covering her dress. They should be getting to the end of harvest now and all the putting by. I hugged and kissed my ma and she looked me in the face and said, “Well.”

  Johnny did the same. We took our hats off and nodded for Lavinia. “What is this shirttail dragging for?” Ma asked turning him for a better look. He told her about his britches, then. “Get in this house,” she said. “You can taste those cookies Lavinia just baked while I stitch you up.”

  Johnny followed Ma and Lavinia in on the promise of food and you could smell it from the yard. I went to the barn to look for Pa. Seth was still spreading manure for I’d seen him far on the way in, but Pa was talking horses with Quinton. There was no finer barn in Illinois, and Pa had stock boasted on themselves.

  I passed my old haunt, and knew there was more in there I could pack in the boot. My books for sure. That whiskey mayhap for sometimes.

  I strode the length of that barn a happy man. Just a joy moving in me from deep down and up into my face. Well, I’d had some fine times with my angel of late, along with some sad stories, but that was alright, I bought the whole farm, not just the fallow field.

  Cousin, he was nothing now, just kin to her. What this provision was…didn’t matter. She was my woman. Legal and signed. Gave a man his due. I was contented.

  He stood guarded when he seen me, his suit cut in that way. Pa turned to see who was coming, but showed no surprise. He knew my tread. I shook my Pa’s hand. Then Cousin’s. I was not the same son of a bitch he’d met
that day. I was much more peaceable since this morning. Just ask me.

  Well, I did spit, far enough away to be polite.

  “Thank you for bringing my Missus home,” I said to him.

  “Not a hardship. I am also accompanying Miss Lavinia.” He fidgeted with his fob while he said it. A man in a hurry I guessed, and his hands pretty again, and something in the way he said Lavinia’s name.

  “Addie said you wanted to speak to me concerning?”

  “Yes, concerning the money.”

  Pa moved off, also a man in a hurry seemed. Guess him and Ma didn’t know about Gaylin yet. Mayhap I should tell them sometime. I wondered where him and Rosie ended up. She could of run back to the swing for all I knew. And he’d of followed.

  Cousin started to walk, or I did, anyway we were walking further down, and I was glad for the movement.

  “You were right about me,” he said. “Not everything, but I need to do what is righteous. No strings.”

  “Ah…little on the late side. We are married. So….”

  “I mean…I’ve set aside a good sum of money to compensate Addie for what she and Richard should have had coming. It still falls way short, but it will be on-going. You can draw from it as I’ve set an account in St. Louis. With the smaller banks being robbed so often these days, I was loath to send it to Greenup. Our bank in St. Louis is one of the most secure that exists in these turbulent times. There are still the provisions for the children…Janey also. And Adeline…Addie feared you would not understand about this…that I am buying nothing…on the contrary….she is free to do whatever she wishes with this money. It’s hers.”

  I didn’t like the sound of it, like he didn’t know husbands and wives talked about such things. And of course he was buying nothing. What a slick-assed thing to say. “How much money?” I asked, the sanguine feeling not so strong now.