When he spoke his voice was low, on the edge of control. "I want you like I never wanted a woman before in my life. You know that, Elly?"

"Come here, Will," she whispered.

He flung his shirt aside and moved behind her chair, stretching a hand over her naked shoulder, his fingers trailing over her breast. He dropped his head and she tipped hers to give him access to the side of her throat. She lifted her free arm, looped it around his head, feeling the unfamiliar stiffness of his bristly hair. His skin smelled of unfamiliar soap as his hand slipped over the unoccupied breast.

Her eyes drifted closed. "How much time do we have?"

"I have to report back at 1800 hours tomorrow."

"What time is that?"

"Six P.M. I catch a train at two-thirty. Lizzy’s done eating. Can’t we put her down now?"

She smiled at Will upside down and asked, "Is it always like this for you?"

"Like what?" he asked, his voice soft and gruff.

"Like you’re gonna die if you have to wait another minute?"

The hand on her breast closed… lifted… molded. A thumb ran across its hardened tip.

"Yes, since the day I stood at the well with egg on my face and fell in love with you. Get up."

She rose and watched Will hurriedly push the chairs back together, counting seconds as he spread them with a quilt. When she bent to lay Lizzy down, his hand rode her naked shoulder. She straightened and they stood on opposite sides of the chairs, staring at each other, anticipating, suffering one last self-imposed hiatus that only made their blood beat stronger. He reached out a hand and she laid hers in it, feelings pouring already between their linked fingers.

His grip tightened, drawing her along the length of the makeshift crib while their eyes clung, dark with intent.

When they met it was lush and impatient, two bodies starved for one another, two tongues parched by months apart. It was love and lust complementing each other to the fullest. It was impact and immediacy following one upon the other, a fast hard seeking to touch all, taste all, even before their clothing was removed.

"Oh, Elly… I missed you." His hands skimmed low, drew her in.

"Our bed was so lonesome without you, Will." She ran her hands over his trousers, reaching for his buckle.

Their clothing fell like furled sails. Murmuring, they fell to the bed.

"Let me see you." He pulled back, let his hands and eyes travel over her, kissing where he would.

She fell back with arms upthrown, becoming the chalice from which he sipped. Likewise, she tasted him, and their timidity fled, chased by the distant acknowledgment of last chances.

Joined at last, they fit exquisitely.

They spun a web of wonder and trembled upon it, suspended in the sweet awaited union of hearts and bodies. They locked out the specters of death and war, those unpretentious intruders, and steeped themselves in each other, accepting gratification as their mortal due.

"I love you," they reiterated again and again in hoarse whispers. "I love you."

It was the sustenance they would take with them when they left this room.


The sun was setting somewhere on a horizon they could not see. A bell buoy chimed in the distance. The smell of humid salt-air drifted in the window. An arm, wilted and weighty, lay across Elly’s shoulder, a knee across her thigh.

She hooked his lower lip with a finger, let it flip back up. He grinned tiredly, but his eyes remained closed.

"Hey, Will?"

"Hm?"

"Am I ever glad I came clear across Georgia on them dirty trains."

His eyes opened. "So’m I."

Their grins faded and they gazed at each other, replete. "I missed you so much, Will."

"I missed you, too, green eyes."

"Sometimes I’d turn around and look at the woodpile and expect to see you chopping wood there."

"I will be again-soon."

The reminder took them too close to tomorrow, so they withdrew into now, touching, whispering, kissing, loving being lovers. They lay brow to brow and trailed fingers up and down, fit knees and feet in places that accommodated as if made for the purpose. When they had rested they ignited one another again, and savored their second love-making at a more sedate pace, watching each other’s faces as pleasure once more leached their bodies.

In time, when they had spoken of home and necessary things-the temperamental wind generator, the fall butchering, the gold mine of used auto parts-he lit another cigarette and lay with his shoulder pillowing her cheek.

She stared at the sheet draped over his toes and took the plunge she’d been dreading. "Where they sendin’ you, Will?"

He took a deep, slow drag before answering. "I don’t know."

"You mean they haven’t told you yet?"

"There’s scuttlebutt about the South Pacific but nobody knows where, not even the base commander. The CO’s keep using the word "spearhead’-and you know what that means."

"No, what?"

He reached for an ashtray, laid it on his stomach and tapped it with the cigarette. "It means we’d lead an attack."

"Attack?"

"Invasion, Elly."

"Invasion?" She lifted her head to search his eyes. "Of what?"

He didn’t want to talk about it and, in truth, knew nothing. "Who knows? The Japs are all over the Pacific, controlling most of it. If they’re sending us there we could end up anyplace from Wake to Australia."

"But how can they send you someplace and not even tell you where you’re going?"

"Surprise is part of military strategy. If that’s how they plan it we follow orders, that’s all."

She digested that for long minutes, while his heart beat steadily beneath her ear. At length she asked quietly, "Are you scared, Will?"

He touched her hair. "Course I’m scared." He considered and added, "At times. Other times I remind myself that I’m part of the best-trained military unit in the history of the world. If I got to fight, I’d rather do it with the Marines than anybody else. And I want you to remember that when you get worried about me after I’m gone. In the Marines it’s everybody for the group. Nobody thinks of himself first. Instead, everybody thinks of the group, so you always got that reassurance behind you. And every Marine is trained to take over the next higher position if his CO is injured in battle, so the company’s always got a leader, the squad’s always got a leader. That’s what I have to concentrate on when I start gettin’ the willies about maybe being shipped to the Pacific, and that’s what you got to concentrate on, too."

She tried, but images of bayonets and guns got in the way.

He saw the images, too, the ones from the movie theater in the black and white newsreel. "Hey, come on, sweetheart." He crushed out his cigarette and gathered her close, rubbed her naked spine. "Let’s talk about something else."

They did. They talked about the boys. And Miss Beasley. And Lydia Marsh. And the way Will had filled out. And the way Elly had learned to apply makeup and fix her hair. When dark had fallen they took a bath together, touching and teasing, giggling behind the closed bathroom door. They made love against it and ate the cold hamburgers and he talked about the food at the base and taught her all the "leatherneck lingo" he’d learned in the galley. She laughed at canned milk called armored heifer; eggs, cackleberries; pancakes, collision mates; tapioca, fish eyes; and spinach, Popeye. Around midnight they made love on the maroon rug with its green leaf design. Sometimes they laughed-perhaps a little desperately as they felt the hours slipping away. He told her about his buddy, Otis Luttrell, the carrottop fellow from Kentucky, and how they were hoping they’d ship out together. He said Otis was engaged to a pretty young woman named Cleo who worked in a grenade factory in Lexington, and that he’d never had a friend he liked as much as Otis.

The night sped by and they sat on the windowsill, watching the distant darkness where they knew ships rested at anchor. But all was pitch black, blacked out lest some German submarine be slipping through the East Coast defenses.

The war was there… happening… no matter how they tried to block it out. It was there, coloring each thought, each touch, each fleeting heartbeat they shared.

Toward dawn they slept, against their wills, touching even in slumber, then roused again to hoard each wakeful moment like misers counting pennies.

When Lizzy awakened shortly before seven they brought her into bed with them and Will lay on his side, head braced on a hand, watching once more the sight he’d never grow tired of. After the feeding he said he wanted to give Lizzy her bath. Elly watched, wistful and yearny while Will knelt beside the deep tub and took joy in caring for the baby. He did it all, dried and diapered her and dressed her in clean rompers, then lay on the bed playing with her and laughing at her gurgling baby-talk and teddy-bear poses. But often his eyes would lift to Elly’s, on the other side of the baby, and the unspoken sorrow would be rife between them.

They ate in their room and remained in it until a different bellgirl came to inquire if they were staying a second day. They packed their meager bags and stood in the doorway, looking back at the room that had provided a haven for the past eighteen hours. They turned to each other and tried to look brave, but their last kiss in private was one of trembling lips and despairing thoughts.

They took to the streets of Augusta, ambling along the hot pavement until they found a park with a deserted bandstand surrounded by iron benches. They sat on one and spread a blanket on the grass where they settled Lizzy to play with Will’s dog tags. They looked at the trees, the clear blue Georgia sky, the child at their feet-but most often at each other. Occasionally they kissed, but lightly, with their eyes open, as if to close out the sight of the other for even a moment was unthinkable. More often they touched-his hand lightly grazing her shoulder blade or her palm resting on his thigh while he toyed with the friendship ring which had, indeed, turned her finger green.