Page 23 of For This We Are Soldiers
I wanted to turn and run, and I didn’t see how Mother could stand it. But there she was, her head on his chest. She was saying something to him I couldn’t hear, and all the while, he was stroking her hair with that filthy, bruised hand.
I backed up some more and bumped into Ezra Freeman. I tried to turn and run, but he held me there. “Go over to him, Janey,” he urged and gave me a push. “He wants you.”
I couldn’t see how Ezra could interpret the slight movement of Father’s hand, but he was pushing me toward the travois. “Pa? Pa?” I could feel tears starting behind my eyelids.
He said something that I couldn’t understand because it sounded as if his mouth was full of mashed potatoes. I leaned closer. He smelled of blood, sweat, dirt, and wood smoke. As I bent over him, I could see under the bandage on his face and gasped to see teeth and gums where his cheek should have been.
Mother was kneeling by him, her hand on his splinted leg. She took my hand in her other hand and placed it on his chest. He tried to raise his head, and I leaned closer. I could make out the words “Janey” and “home,” but what he was saying was unimportant. All of a sudden I didn’t care what he looked like. He was my father, and I loved him.
He must have seen my feelings in my eyes because he lay back again and closed his eye. His hand relaxed and let go of mine. I helped Mother to her feet, and we stood back as two orderlies lifted him off the travois and onto a stretcher. He moaned a little, and Mother bit her lip.
They took him to the infirmary, and Ezra Freeman walked alongside the stretcher, steadying it. Mother would have followed him, but the post surgeon took one look at her and told her to go lie down, because he didn’t have time to deliver a baby just then. Mother blushed, and the two of us walked back to our quarters hand in hand.
Mother spent an hour that evening in the infirmary with Father. She came home and reported that he looked a lot better and was asleep. We went upstairs then, and while she tucked Gerald and Pete in bed, I sat on the rag rug by Pete’s army cot, and she told us what happened.
“The two companies had separated from the main detachment and after a couple days, they found an Apache rancheria. It was at the bottom of a small canyon near Deer Spring. When they tried to surround it before daybreak, they were pinned down by rifle fire from the rim of the canyon.” Mother paused, and I noticed that she had twisted her fingers into the afghan at the foot of Pete’s bed.
He sat up. “What happened, Ma? What happened?” He pulled on her arm a little, and his eyes were shining. He had been down at the creek that afternoon and hadn’t seen Father yet. The whole thing was still just a story to him.
While the candle on the nightstand burned lower and lower, Mother told how Father had been shot while trying to lead the men back to the horses. He had lain on an exposed rock all morning until Ezra Freeman crawled out and pulled him to safety. The two men had stayed in a mesquite thicket, firing at the Apaches until the sun went down. They withdrew in the dark.
Peter fell asleep then, but Mother went on to say that the men had holed up for several days about sixty miles south of us because they were afraid Father would die if they moved him. When it looked like he would make it, they started slowly for the fort.
Gerald fell asleep then, and as Mother pulled the sheet up around him, she said to me, “I can’t understand it, Jane. Everyone else thought the Captain was dead. Why did Sergeant Freeman do it?”
She tucked me in my bed, but I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I kept seeing Father on that travois and the look in Mother’s eyes as she knelt by him. I got out of bed and started into Mother’s room.
She wasn’t there; the bed hadn’t even been slept in. I tiptoed down the stairs, stepping over the third tread because it always squeaked. As I groped to the bottom in the dark, I saw the front door open and then close quietly.
I waited a few seconds, then opened it and stood on the porch. Mother was dressed and wrapped in a dark shawl, despite the heat, and walking across the parade ground. She wasn’t going toward the infirmary, so I trailed her, skirting around the parade ground and keeping in the shadow of the officers’ quarters. I didn’t know where she was going, but I had a feeling that she would send me back if she knew I was following her.
She passed the quartermaster’s building and the stables, pausing to say something to the private on guard, who saluted her and waved her on. I waited until he had turned and walked into the shadows of the blacksmith shop before I continued.
I could see now that she was heading for Suds Row, where the enlisted men with families lived. Halfway down the row of attached quarters she stopped and knocked on one of the doors. I ducked behind the row until I came to the back of the place where she had knocked. There was a washtub in the yard, and I staggered with it to the window, turned it over, and climbed up.
Ezra lived in the barracks with his company, but Mother must have found out he was visiting Sergeant Jackson Walter of A Company and Jackson’s wife, Chloe. Mother and Ezra were standing in the middle of the room. She had taken off her shawl. Freeman offered her the chair he had been sitting in, but she shook her head. I could see Chloe knitting in the rocking chair by the kitchen.
Mother was silent a few moments. “I just wanted to say thank you, Sergeant Freeman,” she said finally. Her voice sounded high and thin, like it did after Grandpa Flynn’s funeral three years before.
“Oh … well … I … heavens, ma’am, you’re welcome,” Ezra stammered.
She shrugged her shoulders and held out her hands. “I mean, Sergeant, you didn’t even know if he was alive, and you went out there anyway.”
He didn’t say anything. All I could hear was the click of Chloe’s bone needles. I barely heard Mother’s next word.
“Why?”
Again that silence. Ezra Freeman turned a little, and I could see his face. His head was down, he had sucked in his lower lip, and he was crying. The light from the kerosene lamp was reflected in his tears, and they shone like diamonds on his black face.
“Well, by the Eternal, ma’am … he’s the only man I ever served of my own free will.” He paused. “And I guess I love him.”
Mother put her hands to her face, and I could see her shoulders shaking. Then she raised her head, and I don’t think she ever looked more beautiful. “I love him too, Ezra. Maybe for the same reason.”
Then she sort of leaned against him, and his arms went around her, and they held onto each other, crying. She was patting him on the back like she did when Father hugged her, and his hand was smoothing down her hair where it curled at the neck.
I am forever grateful that the white ladies and gents of Fort Bowie never saw the two of them together like that, for I am sure they would have been scandalized. As I stood there peeking in the window, I had the most wonderful feeling of being surrounded by love, all kinds of love, and I wanted the moment to last forever.
But the moment passed too soon. They both backed away from each other, and Mother took out a handkerchief from the front of her dress and blew her nose. Ezra fished around in his pocket until he found a red bandanna and wiped his eyes. He sniffed and grinned at the same time.
