Page 20 of For This We Are Soldiers
“Could you … could you let me have the key? We’ll only be a few minutes.”
Mr. London handed it over. Colm took Audra by the arm, but that suddenly wasn’t close enough. He put his hand on her waist, and with a sigh, she sort of melted into his side. Mr. London’s back was turned, so he kissed her cheek.
The canteen was dark and cool, smelling of stale beer, trapped smoke, and spittoons that needed attention. It was no place to propose, but that was army life. Silent, he sat them both down. Her breath came a little fast, but he didn’t think she would hyperventilate. If she did, he could find a paper bag for her to breathe in.
Her fingers shook, but she took out his letter and spread it on her lap. He took out her letter and did the same. He read quickly and let out a deep breath. Maybe it was worth a lifetime’s famine to read “beloved,” and know he was the one beloved. His clinical mind almost suggested to him that “adore” was over the top, but for once, his heart overruled his brain.
She finished first. “Yes, Suh,” was all she said, but it said the earth, moon, planets, and a galaxy or two.
No expert, he kissed Audra Washington. She kissed back, no expert either. They were both in good health; they had years to improve.
In the cool of the enlisted men’s canteen, he told her of his plans to take the medical boards in the fall, and to find a little town that needed him in a territory with nothing but little towns. “I’ve saved for years. I can set up an office.”
“I’ve saved too. We can have a house with running water.”
She was on his lap then, both arms around him, head pressed to his chest, where his heart was doing things that, in a big city, would have landed him in a cardiac ward.
“I wish … I wish we could tell that dear old man. Would you mind … If Deadwood doesn’t work out for Mr. Locke, we could find a place for him with us, couldn’t we?”
“Certainly.”
Lysander Locke could wait. Colm Callahan wanted to kiss Audra Washington a few more times before Mr. London got curious. Maybe they could honeymoon in Deadwood. Colm did like to check up on his discharged patients.
A Season for Heroes
Ezra Freeman died yesterday. I don’t usually read the obituaries; at least I didn’t until after Pearl Harbor. With four grandsons in the service now and one of them based in the Solomons and missing over a place called Rabaul, or some such thing, I generally turn to the obituaries after the front page and the editorials.
There it was, right at the bottom of the column, in such small print that I had to hold the paper out at arm’s length …Ezra Freeman. There was no date of birth listed, probably because even Ezra hadn’t known that, but it did mention there were no surviving relatives and that the deceased had been a veteran of the Indian Wars.
When I thought about Ezra Freeman, I ended up thinking about Mother and Father. Still carrying the newspaper, I went into my bedroom and looked at the picture of Mother and Father and D Company hanging on the wall next to the window. It was taken just before Father was promoted and bumped up to a desk job in San Antonio, so he is still leaning on a cane in the picture. Mother is sitting on a bench holding quite a small baby, and, next to her, his shoulders thrown back and his boots together, is Sergeant Ezra Freeman.
The picture was taken at Fort Bowie, Arizona Territory. I was ten or eleven then, and that memory was one of the first that really stuck in my mind. It was where Father nearly got killed, my little brother was born, and I discovered a few things about love.
My mother was what people call lace-curtain Irish. She was born Kathleen Mary Flynn. Her father owned a successful brewery in upstate New York, and Mother was educated at a convent, where she learned to speak French and make lace. She never owned up to learning anything else there, although she wrote with a fine copperplate hand and did a lot of reading when Father was campaigning. The nuns taught her good manners and how to pour tea the right way. Father could always make her flare up by winking at her and saying in his broadest brogue, “What’ll ye hev to dhrink now, Kate Flynn?”
She had beautiful red hair that curled every which way. Little springs of it were forever popping out of the bun she wore low on her neck. She had a sprinkling of light brown freckles that always mystified the Indians. I remember the time an old San Carlos Apache stopped us as we were walking down Tucson’s main street. He spoke to Father in Apache. Father answered him, and we could see he was trying to keep a straight face.
We pounced on him after the Indian nodded, gave Mother a searching look, and walked away.
“What did he say, Father, what did he say?”
Father shook his head and herded us around the corner where he leaned against the wall and laughed silently until tears shone on his eyelashes. Mother got exasperated.
“Whatdidhe say, John?”
“Oh, Kate Flynn,” he wheezed and gasped, “he wanted to know … Oh, sweet merciful me …” He went off in another quiet spasm.
“John!” Mother didn’t approve of even wooden swearing, as she called it (which made garrison life a trial for her at times).
“Sorry, Kathleen.” Father looked at her and winked. I could feel Mother stiffening up. “He wanted to know if you had those little brown dots all over.”
We children screamed with laughter. Mother blushed. A lesser Victorian lady would have swooned, I suppose, but Tucson’s streets were dusty then, and Father was laughing too hard to catch her on the way down.
Mother and Father met after Father’s third summer at West Point. He had been visiting friends of his family in Buffalo, and Mother had been a guest of one of the daughters. They had spent a week in each other’s company; then Mother had gone back to the convent. They corresponded on the sly for several months. Father proposed during Christmas furlough. They were married after graduation in June.
There had been serious objections on both sides of the family. Papa Flynn made Father promise to raise any children as Catholics, and Grandpa Stokes wanted to be reassured that he and Grandma wouldn’t be obliged to call on the Flynns too often.
Father agreed to everything, and he would have raised us as Catholics, except that we seldom saw a priest out on the plains. Besides, Mother wasn’t a very efficient daughter of the Church. I think she figured she’d had enough, what with daily Mass at the convent for six years straight. In spite of that, she always kept her little ebony-and-silver rosary in her top drawer under her handkerchiefs, and I only saw her fingering it once.
