"Lemme!" Thomas reached. "I wanna wear it!"

"No, it’s mine!"

"Ain’t neither-I get it, too!"

"Boys, go get your sister and bring her here."

They dashed off like puppies after a ball, Donald Wade in the lead, wearing the hat, Thomas in pursuit.

Elly sat on her knees beside Will, her arms locked around his neck. "You look so good, all tan and pretty."

"Pretty!" He laughed and rubbed her hip.

"Well, prettier’n me in these durn britches and your old shirt." They couldn’t quit touching each other, looking at each other.

"You look good to me-good enough to eat."

He tasted her jaw, nipping playfully. She giggled and hunched a shoulder. The giggling subsided when their gazes met, leading to another kiss, this one soft, unhurried, unsexual. A solemnization. When it ended he breathed the scent of her with his eyes still closed.

"Elly…" he prayed, in thanksgiving.

She rested her hands on his chest and gave the moment its due.

At length they roused from their absorption with one another and he asked, "So, what’re you doing out here?"

"Tendin’ your bees."

"So I see. How long’s this been goin’ on?"

"Since you been gone."

"Why didn’t you tell me in your letters?"

"’Cause I wanted to surprise you, too!"

There were a thousand things he wanted to say, as a poet might say them. But he was an ordinary man, neither glib nor eloquent. He could only tell her, quietly, "You’re some woman, you know that?"

She smiled and touched his hair-it was long again, streaky yellow, bending toward his face just enough to please her. She rested her elbows on his shoulders and wrapped both arms around his head and simply held him, bringing to him again the scent of crushed cinnamon pinks from her skin. He buried his nose in her neck.

"Mercy, you smell good. Like you been rollin’ in flowers."

She laughed. "I have. I didn’t like the mint, but your pamphlets said cinnamon pinks worked just as good so I smeared myself with them. Guess what, Will?" Exhilarated, she backed up to see his face, leaving her arms twined about his neck.

"What?"

"The honey is runnin’."

He let his eyelids droop, let his lips soften suggestively and closed both hands upon her breasts, hidden between them. "Y’ damned right it is, darlin’. Wanna feel?"

Her blood rushed, her heart pounded and she felt a glorious spill deep within.

"More than anything," she whispered, nudging his lips, but the children were near so he sat back with his hands flattened against the hot grass while she angled her head, tasted him shallow and deep. He opened his mouth and remained unmoving as her tongue played upon his in a series of teasing plunders. He returned the favor, washing her sweet mouth with wet kisses, sucking her lower lip.

"What you guys doin’?" Donald Wade stood beside them, holding Lizzy P. on his hip while Thomas approached, wearing Will’s hat.

Leaving her arms across Will’s collarbones, Elly squinted over her shoulder. "Kissin’. Better get used to it, ’cause there’s gonna be a lot of it goin’ on around here." Unrattled, she dropped down beside her man on the grass, raising her hands for the baby. "C’m ’ere, sugar. Come see daddy. Well, goodness gracious, all those tears-did you think we all run off and left you?" Chuckling, she brought the baby’s cheek against her own, then set her down and began cleaning up Lizzy’s tearful face while the little girl trained a watchful stare on Will. The boys plopped down, doing the things that big brothers do. Thomas took Lizzy’s palm and bounced it. "Hi, Lizzy." Donald Wade brought his eyes down to the level of hers and talked brightly. "This’s Will, Lizzy. Can you say, Daddy? Say, Daddy, Lizzy." Then, to Will, "She only talks when she wants to."

Lizzy didn’t say Daddy, or Will. Instead, when he took her, she pushed against his chest, straining and twisting back for Elly, beginning to cry again. In the end he was forced to relinquish her until she grew used to him again.

"The orchard looks good. Did you have the trees sprayed?"

"Didn’t have ’em sprayed, I did it myself."

"And the yard, why that’s the prettiest thing I’ve seen in years. You do all that?"

"Yup. Me’n the boys."

"Mama, let me put seeds in the holes!" piped up Thomas.

"Good boy. Who built the archway for the morning glories?"

"Mama."

Elly added, "Me’n Donald Wade, didn’t we, honey?"

"Yeah! An’ I pounded the nails and everything!"

Will put on a proper show of enthusiasm. "You did! Well, good for you."

"Mama said you’d like it."

"And I do, too. Walked into the yard and figured I was in the wrong place."

"Did you really?"

Will laughed and pressed Donald Wade’s nose flat with the tip of a finger.

They all fell quiet, listening to the drone of bees and the wind’s breath in the trees around them. "You can stay now, can’t you?" Elly asked quietly.

"Yes. Medical discharge."

Keeping one arm around Lizzy’s hip, she found Will’s fingers in the grass behind them and braided them with her own. "That’s good," she said simply, running a hand down Lizzy’s hot hair while her eyes remained on her husband’s face, tanned to a hickory brown, compellingly handsome above the tight collar and tie of his uniform. "You’re a hero, Will. I’m so proud of you."

His lips twisted and he chuckled self-consciously. "Well, I don’t know about that."

"Where’s your Purple Heart?"

"Back at the house in my duffel bag."

"It should be right here." She lay a hand flat against his lapel, then slipped it underneath because she found within herself the constant need to touch him. She felt his heartbeat, strong and healthy against her fingertips, and recalled the hundreds of images she’d suffered, of bullets drilling him, spilling his blood on some distant jungle floor. Her precious, dear Will. "Miss Beasley told the newspaper about it and they put an article in. Now everybody knows Will Parker is a hero."

His look grew pensive, fixed on a distant hive. "Everybody in that war is a hero. They oughta give a Purple Heart to every GI out there."

"Did you shoot anybody, Will?" Donald Wade inquired.

"Now, Donald Wade, you mustn’t-"

"Yes, I did, son, and it’s a pretty awful thing."

"But they were bad guys, weren’t they?"

Will’s haunted gaze fixed on Elly, but instead of her he saw a foxhole and in it six inches of water and his buddy, Red, and a bomb whistling down out of the sky turning everything before him scarlet.

"Now, Donald Wade, Will just got back and you’re pepperin’ him with questions already."

"No, it’s okay, Elly." To the child he said, "They were people, just like you and me."

"Oh."

Donald Wade grew solemn, contemplating the fact. Elly rose from her knees and said, "I have to finish filling the water pans. It won’t take me long."

She kissed Will’s left eyebrow, drew on her farmer gloves and left the children with Will while she headed back to work, turning once to study her husband again, trying to grasp the fact that he was back for good.

"I love you!" she called from beside a gnarled pear tree.

"I love you, too!"

She smiled and spun away.

The children examined Will’s uniform-buttons, chevrons, pins. Lizzy grew less cautious, toddling around in the grass. The sun beat down and Will removed his blouse, laid it aside and stretched out supine, shutting his eyes against the brightness. But the sun on his closed eyelids became scarlet. Blood scarlet. And he saw it happen all over again-Red, scrambling on his belly across a stretch of kunai grass beside the Matanikau River, suddenly freezing in the open while from the opposite shore enemy.25 calibers cracked like oxwhips, submachine guns thundered, and a ranging grenade launcher sent its deadly missiles closer and closer. And there lay poor Red, stretched flat with no cover, facedown, shaking, biting the grass, halted by an unholy terror such as a lucky Marine never knows. Will saw himself scrambling back out amid the strafing, heard the bullets’ deceptively soft sigh as they sailed over his head, the dull thud as they struck behind him, left, right. The earth rained dirt upward as a grenade hit fifteen feet away. "Christ, man, you gotta get outta here!" Red lay unmoving, unable. Will felt again his own panic, the surge of adrenalin as he grabbed Red and hauled him backward through mud and tufts of uprooted grass into a foxhole with six inches of muddy water-"Stay here, buddy. I’m going to get them sonsabitches!"-then going over the top again, teeth clenched, crawling on his elbows while the tip of his bayonet swung left and right. Then, overhead, the planes wheeling out of nowhere, the warning whistle, dropping, and behind him, Red, in the foxhole where the bomb fell.

Will shuddered, opened his eyes wide, sat up. Beside him the children still played. At the hive openings bees landed with their gatherings. Elly was returning with the wagon in tow, the two empty metal buckets clanging like glockenspiels as the wheels bumped over the rough turf. He blinked away the memory and watched his wife come on in her masculine apparel. Don’t think about Red, think about Elly.He watched until her shadow slipped across his lap, then raised a hand and requested quietly, "Come here," and when she fell to her knees, held her. Just held her. And hoped she’d be enough to heal him.


Their lovemaking that night was golden.

But when it was over Elly sensed Will’s withdrawal from more than her body.

"What’s wrong?"

"Hm?"

"What’s wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Your leg hurt?"

"Not bad."

She didn’t believe him, but he wasn’t a complainer, never had been. He reached for his Lucky Strikes, lit one and lay smoking in the dark. She watched the red coal brighten, listened to him inhale.