She sat down. “I’m just not used to people showing up here with blood oozing out of them,” she explained. “I’ll be fine.”
“I best get going,” Hick told them. “Thanks, Mag.”
Her pale lips formed the essence of a smile and he walked across to the station for the extra shirt.
17
Hick never realized that one could physically feel darkness. He didn’t know that it could crush the air out of your lungs, that its fingers could tickle the back of your neck, that its whispers could cause you to hear voices that weren’t there. He stood inside of the farmhouse, sweat rolling down his back in spite of the cold. Squinting into the blackness, he saw shadows, ghostly opaque images that flitted before his eyes.
Rigidly, he stood with his back against the wall, clutching his M1, pressing the wood of the gun to his chest. The core of his body shivered, his hands trembled, his breath came in shallow, stuttering gasps through chattering teeth. Everything in the house seemed to be alive, wriggling and squirming, as if the darkness itself was organic.
“Keep your eyes open,” Sergeant Brody whispered. Hick jumped as a rhythmic, tapping noise became audible. He moved his finger to the trigger, his hands shaking, damp with sweat.
“Easy, Blackburn,” whispered Sergeant Brody. “It’s just snow melting off our gear.”
The tapping was behind him, in front of him, all around him, and it continued as he clamped his hands around the gun, opening his eyes as wide as they would go, trying to see anything in the blackness. Tap. Tap. Tap. Hick turned his eyes to his sergeant, who motioned him to remain calm. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Hick sat up, gasping for breath and drenched in sweat, feeling the stifling heat of the house. The windows were closed against the rain that sprayed heavily against them. He reached for his ear. It throbbed and burned, the bleeding had stopped long ago, but it was swollen and bruised. He brushed a gnat away from it and swung his legs around, leaning his elbows on his knees and putting his head into his hands.
Again, he heard it … a patient tapping. He rose from bed, stumbling in the darkness and strained his hearing against the storm. He realized someone was knocking on the door, and he quickly pulled on some denim trousers and threw on his flannel shirt.
Blinking, he edged open the door to find Maggie standing there, dripping with rain. “Mag?” he said in surprise, quickly opening the door and letting her in out of the storm. “What are you doing here?”
She stepped into the dark house, and her eyes were on his face, studying it. “Are you alright? I’ve been worried sick all night, so I had to see you.” She looked around and found the light switch.
She had never been in Hick’s house, and he was embarrassed seeing it through her eyes. The dishes were piled in the sink and a roach scurried across the floor, fleeing the bright light. The ashtray on the table was running over and the newspapers he had taken from Wayne Murphy were scattered all over the kitchen chairs and table. He started to make an excuse but soon realized she didn’t care.
“Let me get you a towel,” he offered. He grabbed one from the linen closet down the hall and returned to the kitchen. She was standing at the sink filling the percolator with water. “Sit down and let me make you some coffee,” she told him. She guided him to a chair and gently pushed him down, then took the towel and wiped the drops of rain from her face.
She cleaned the old coffee grounds out of the basket and refilled it. Then, she reached for the matchbox, lighting the stove as if she had always belonged there and put the coffee on. After moving some old newspapers, she sat down across from him.
“How’s your ear? It looks like it hurts.”
“I was gonna come see you this morning. It ain’t that bad, really. It’s just this little piece.” He unwittingly touched it and winced at the pain.
“Will Tobe be okay?”
“I’m sure he’ll be fine. He was sober when I left him. First time I seen him like that in years.”
She nodded and absentmindedly folded a newspaper into little triangles.
There was an awkward pause and she looked around the house for the first time. “So this is where you live now.” Weakly, she added, “It’s nice.”
He scratched out a small laugh. “It’s a wreck.”
She shrugged her shoulders but smiled, and again began folding the newspaper.
Silence settled around them in the room, occasionally interrupted by a clap of thunder. The rain drummed against the tin roof and the smell of coffee perfumed the air. Hick fixed his eyes on the brown liquid as it spurted up into the glass dome. He glanced at the clock and watched the hand as it slowly inched forward, desperately trying to think of something to say.
“You scared me to death last night,” she finally told him.
“I didn’t know where else to go,” he confessed. “When I saw you through the window … I just needed to hear your voice.” He hesitated and asked, “You didn’t tell Matt what happened, did you?”
“I wasn’t much in a talking mood.”
Hick exhaled in relief. “He’s a great guy. I know he’ll make a good husband.”
Maggie rose and walked to the stove, taking the percolator off the flame. “Yes, he’ll make a wonderful husband.” She turned back toward Hick. “He just won’t be mine.”
Hick’s heart froze. “What?”
“I broke my engagement. I told Matt I couldn’t marry him. Really, Hickory, it wouldn’t be fair. I could never love him.”
“Oh, Mag,” Hick groaned, “Why did you do that?”
She turned away from him and opened a drawer, pulling out two teaspoons. As she reached up to pull down the sugar bowl, her hand trembled. Finally, she sighed and looked down into the blue flame of the burner. “Hickory, for some strange reason, I can’t seem to stop loving you. I have tried and tried, and I’m done trying. I’m a fool, no doubt, but there’s some things I just can’t help.” She turned off the burner with an abrupt snap and her hand briefly wiped her cheek. Then she turned back to the table with a forced smile, bringing the sugar bowl and spoons.
Hick pushed back from the table and stood, motionless, arms hanging at his sides. In an instant, all of the letters she wrote him in Europe appeared before his eyes, all of the kisses, all the quiet moments, all the laughter, all their history. She was as much a part of him as his own self. A sob erupted from somewhere deep inside. “Oh, God,” he moaned. His carefully built wall was giving way, the pain creeping in through the crevices.
She pulled some cups from the cabinet, peering inside of them, and said, “You don’t have to feel bad. It ain’t your fault, really.”
He went to the window. Through the darkness he could see the rain falling in waves, slamming against the pane, breaking into gentle rivulets as it streamed down the glass. Thunder rolled across the delta, low and rumbling, causing the house to tremble. He pressed his forehead to the smooth glass as the sorrow swelled within him, causing his shoulders to shudder.
“Coffee’s done,” Maggie said. He turned and saw two cups of coffee on the table. They looked companionable sitting together. “Your cream is curdled,” she added, closing the door to his icebox and facing him.
He stood, unmoving, and looked at her with pain-filled eyes. “I want it to be over with … but I don’t know how to make it go away.”
She crossed the room. “Talk to me, Hickory. Let me help you.”
“No one can help me,” he said in a dull voice.
She stood close to him and her hand picked up the loose end of his shirt. Looking down at it, she rubbed the soft flannel between her fingers. “Let me try. You could always talk to me before.”
He ran his hand through his hair and shook his head. “I thought I was gonna make it, but then this baby came along.”
“It must have been awful, seein’ a baby like that.”
He looked into her eyes. “It ain’t the first time I seen a dead baby.”
He saw her stiffen as if ready to receive a blow. Her face was composed.
He knew she was waiting. The grief and sorrow that had consumed him, which had become a part of the very marrow of his bones, began to eke out. “I stood by and watched a little girl get killed in Belgium. I didn’t lift a finger to help … I didn’t stop it. I just watched.” He waited, his eyes closed, for the sound of her leaving.
“What happened?” She was still there. Her voice was low and gentle, filled with so much love it made his whole body ache.
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to blot everything out, his face pinched, his forehead wrinkled. Pressing the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, he said in a stifled voice, “I killed somebody that shouldn’t have been killed. A woman … a mother.” He felt something cold and wet form in the corner of his eye and was vaguely aware that it was a tear. “I thought she was a Nazi … I couldn’t see … I was scared. So I shot her.” The room began to close in on him. He struggled to breathe, his head ached, and his throat was tight. “She stayed behind because it was so cold and she wanted to protect her baby. It was so tiny. Couldn’t have been more than a few hours old. They were hiding out in a dark, abandoned house and were wrapped in quilts. It must have been terrifying for her when we ran in there. She jumped and I shot. And then, the baby … the baby started to cry, and my sergeant said we couldn’t take it with us ‘cause it’d give us away.”
His head slumped forward and his shoulders shook. “The next thing I knew he’d killed the baby. Someone would have found her … I know they would have. I should have stopped him, but I didn’t. I just stood there and watched him aim the pistol and pull the trigger.”
“Oh, Hickory.” Maggie’s voice was soft and mournful in his ear, and he realized he was on his knees and she was there beside him. “What could you have done?”
“I could have stopped it, there had to be something I could do. But I didn’t. I killed a woman and might as well have killed her child.”
“You didn’t kill a baby. A monster did that.”
“No,” Hick said, quickly, “Joe Brody was my friend. He came and found me after I got the letter about my dad. He took me under his wing, like a big brother. I owe him my life.” He could feel her hands in his hair, smoothing it, gripping it, and desperately trying to grasp what was happening inside of him. Her face was near his, her breath soft on his cheek.
“I watched Joe aim that pistol and shoot that baby like it was a rat. I respected him; I still do. But I don’t understand how he could do that … with no remorse. He just kind of shrugged and said it was nothing but a damned kraut anyway. But, he’s no monster. I knew him as well as I know Adam or Wash.”
“But they would never do anything like that.”
“You don’t know that, Mag. People are like animals when their survival is threatened.”
“I can’t believe that,” she answered him. “Would you have done that? Could you have killed that child?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so, but I don’t trust myself anymore. I can’t find that one shred of decency in me that might convince me I wouldn’t. If someone were to tell me I’d stand aside and watch a baby murdered, I’d have never believed it.”
“Oh my God,” Maggie said, tearfully “you were eighteen-years-old. It was a war. People die in wars.”
“Not me. I didn’t die there … I just die here in little pieces, a little more each day.”
Her hands were on his face, pulling him toward her. She kissed his forehead, his eyes, and her lips moved across his cheek to his ear. “Hickory, there’s more to you than what you did there. You can’t stop living because of one mistake. You are more than that one moment.”
“Am I?”
“It was an accident. It was war. It’s not fair to blame yourself.”
“Maybe not. But it doesn’t change what happened. I can never bring her back. My God, she was young. I see her face every night when I close my eyes. I replay what happened over and over in my head, wondering what I could have done, what I could have changed. If I hadn’t been so jumpy, if I had waited before I shot.”
“But you didn’t know it was a woman.”
He sighed heavily. “Would it have made a difference?”
“Yes. You wouldn’t have shot. But you didn’t know, and you can’t let that haunt you the rest of your life.”
His head drooped and a solitary tear splashed onto the floor.
Maggie’s hand rested on his cheek. “You can’t bring her back. You can’t change what happened.”
He glanced up at her, afraid to see the disappointment on her face. It was tear-stained and red, her hair tucked behind her ears, hanging in wisps around her neck, her eyes full of love and pain and sorrow. “I thought it was over,” he said, “but then this baby came along. I don’t know what happened to it, and I’m afraid to find out because as far as I know, it could be anyone.”
Her hands moved down his neck to his shoulders and she looked into his eyes. “You’ll find out what happened, and I promise you the sun will still rise the next day.”
He had told no one what he had done, what he had seen. It was as if his heart remembered how to beat, it physically jarred in his chest as if a weight had been released. They were on the floor, kneeling together, and he pulled her close, conscious of the very breath in her lungs, the blood flowing through her veins, unwilling to let her go. Pain that had settled in his soul, erupted from him in painful, convulsive gasps.
He kissed her cheek and her hair, resting his mouth near her ear, breathing in her smell. “When I came home from basic, my dad told me I was gonna see a lot of bad things. He said he couldn’t protect me anymore.” Hick shook his head. “I needed to talk to him when I got back, and he was gone. I knew he was dead, but I could still see him. I’d walk into a room and think he was there, or I’d go out to the shed and open the door and smell his aftershave. For a while I thought I was going crazy. I had to get out of that house because he was everywhere, not alive, but not dead either.” He paused. “And I’m just like him. I can’t even remember what it feels like to be alive.”
She put her lips on his. They filled him with longing, and he wrapped his arms around her tightly. “We can get through this,” she whispered as his lips traveled down to her neck. “I promise, we’ll get through this.”
“I didn’t want to love you. I tried to stop because I wanted you to have better.”
She shook her head in protest, unable to speak.
He pushed her back, looking into her face, his thumb gently gliding across her cheek. “You don’t know how many times I thought about you, wondering if we could start over again.”
“You should have said something. You had to know I was waiting.”
He took her hand and looked down at it. “I don’t know why you would wait, why you would still want me.”
“I’ve wanted you since the day your sister wheeled you over in that little Radio Flyer wagon you used to have.”
He smiled, still looking at her hand. “I remember. You were under the house pulling out some kittens a mama cat had abandoned. My God, you were filthy.”
“And you looked like a little prince being pulled around.”
His face was troubled. “I’m not the same person I was. I don’t know if I’ll ever be the same.”
“People change. I’m not the same either. It wears on a soul, wondering day in and day out if it’s finally time to just give up the fight. It hurts to watch someone you love suffering and not being able to help.”
He shook his head. “I’ve put you through hell.”
“You’ve put us through hell. There was never a you and me … it’s always been us.”
“Do you trust me enough to try again?” he asked her.
She looked directly into his eyes. “I trust you with my life, Hickory. I always have.”
He took a deep breath, then took her hands and kissed each palm. He urged her to her feet while he remained kneeling on the floor.
“Marry me?” he asked looking up into her face.
He
heard her breath catch. “You’ve asked me that before.”
“Will you?”
“When?”
“We can drive to the court house for the license tomorrow.”
“And, then?”
He looked at her strangely. “Are you bargaining with me?”
She smiled, her old teasing smile. “I’ve got a lot of work to do if I’m going to live in this pig sty.”
He rose. “Three days?”
She glanced around her. Holding out her hand to shake his, she answered, “It’s a deal.”
He brushed her hand aside and sealed the bargain with a kiss.
18
Hick glanced out the window of the bathroom. The storm clouds scurried away, the blue sky peeking out in pockets between them. He put on his tie and found Maggie in the kitchen finishing up the dishes. For the first time since Sheriff Michaels hired him, he was going to be late. Pulling his hat far down over his eyes, he asked Maggie, “Does it show?”
She crossed the room and peered at his ear. “Yes. Even if you could get all the dried blood off, it would still be twice as big as the other one.”
“Damn,” he muttered.
“There’s no hiding it. It’s black and blue.” She reached up and shifted his hat back a little. “There’s a little piece gone, too.” She sighed. “He could have easily killed you, you know.”
“I know that,” Hick replied. “But he didn’t.”
“Poor Tobe. Who would have thought he’d turn out this way?”
“I haven’t given up on him yet,” Hick answered.
“You’re probably the only one in town who hasn’t.”
“I’ve never known Tobe to fail at anything when he put his mind to it.”
“True,” Maggie agreed. “God, you two were always so cocky, walking around town like you owned the place.”
He looked at her for a moment. “We were, weren’t we?” he admitted. “I thought I had everything figured out. It’s amazing how wrong a man can be.”
Beneath Still Waters Page 13
