Homefront Hero (11 page)

Chapter Fourteen

L
eanne was reconsidering her agreement to meet John today. Yes, they needed to prepare for Monday’s photograph session, but she wasn’t at all sure time alone with John was a good idea. Before the ball, they’d decided it would be smart to have John’s sock heel nearly completed in the photographs. It would show off well, and most knitters knew turning a first sock heel was a significant accomplishment for the novice knitter. She wanted John’s sense of victory to show up in the photographs, hoping to convince the intended young boys to see how challenging knitting could be. Still, it was a complicated lesson, requiring much more interaction and—regretfully—much more touching than she would have liked given how things had transpired after the ball. To cancel, however, felt like too much of an admission, and she needed to return the sock he’d left at the Red Cross House last night. She suspected John saw right through her insistence that they meet outside “for the good sunlight.” The way he looked at her now, Leanne had little hopes of hiding how she fretted over the prospect of being in close quarters with him.

“I half worried you wouldn’t show,” he teased when she arrived at the bench they’d designated. Leanne felt like a walking battle—the conflict of “just fine” and “horrid” tumbling in her chest—whereas John looked as if nothing had transpired between them.

“You can’t go forward without this,” she ventured without too much cheer as she produced the unfinished sock, which only served as an unneeded reminder of the previous evening. “And I could never miss the great Captain Gallows turning his first sock heel.” Leanne steeled her determination to get past this awkwardness and focus on the work to be done. She changed the subject by asking “Does your leg pain you much today?”

“It hurts twelve ways to Sunday this morning. You’d think I’d set the thing on fire last night for the way it’s acting up. Not to mention my head. I hardly slept.”

Leanne hadn’t slept much, either, but for entirely different reasons. “I’m sorry.”

“Dr. Madison seemed to take no end of pleasure in torturing me this morning. Lectured me like some rascal schoolboy about how I had no right ‘gallivanting around like a circus pony’ last night.” John shifted uncomfortably on the bench. “A circus pony. The man’s a monster who feeds on other men’s pain.”

She sat down cautiously next to him. One the one hand, John did strike her as a petulant child, sulking and thrashing about. On the other hand, it was clear Captain Gallows nearly always got his way and suffered obstacles with little grace indeed. “He is trying to keep your best interest at heart.”

“My
best interest,
” John barked back, “is waiting for me back in France, if Barnes would stop listening to overcautious coddlers and just sign the orders.”

“It’s good we have such an engaging project to distract you. Sock heels are challenging.”

John stretched out his stiff leg. “You’re alone in your enthusiasm. I’ve been called ‘a heel’ so often in the barracks this morning, it’s losing its appeal.”

“Don’t listen to them. A sock heel is a great personal victory. Just the sort of stuff warriors thrive upon.” Now she was letting her nerves make her hopelessly wordy. Perhaps friendship with John Gallows wasn’t possible after all.

Not with the way he stopped her hand when she pulled her knitting from her bag. “Leanne.” It was unfair how the sound of his voice danced over her name.

“Yes?” It came out a tight, girlish gulp.

“I do know how to be friends with you. I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”

To know her discomfort lay so transparent to him just made things worse. His words were perfectly aimed at the very thing that troubled her most; John Gallows very rarely bothered to be a perfect gentleman. She’d heard the stories, she’d seen his full-blown charm unleashed. It would be so much easier to hate him, to dismiss him as a cad, if he behaved badly. If he pressed his cause, or even if he discarded her for some other, more permissive female, she could dismiss him as the overblown, cinema-worthy hero with secret feet of clay. To her dismay, he did not. In fact, today John seemed more natural, more “offstage” than she’d ever seen him. The effect only heightened her attraction. His efforts to be “friends”—and the knowledge those efforts were exclusively on her behalf—well, that was distracting beyond measure.

Leanne fled for the safety of the stitchwork. She pointed to his sock, determined to keep her hands from his for as long as possible. “Start across here, stopping three stitches from the end.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He’d never “yes ma’am-ed” her in any of their previous sessions. How on earth did he manage the paradox of such a respectful twinkle in his eye? To keep going with this was risky indeed, playing with fire. Were this any other task, she would simply write down the directions and leave him to his own devices. Turning a sock heel, however, really was something that needed teaching face-to-face.

“Will you look at that?” John said when the heel began to cup, to take on the distinct curvature that turned a tube into a sock. At first she thought he was joking, but he was genuinely impressed. With himself, of course, but with the technique as well. He held it up, turning the work this way and that. “I’ll never dismiss a sock as ordinary ever again.”

What red-blooded American knitter could dismiss a man’s respect for a well-turned heel? “It is extraordinary, isn’t it?”

“Extraordinary,” he said all-too-smoothly, dropping the knitting to look directly at her.

Leanne raised an eyebrow and applied a “please behave” expression to hide her inner smile.

“In the most platonic of ways, of course,” he declared, not bothering to hide his grin one bit as he continued the required stitching. “You’re right, this is going to be far more difficult than I thought.” When she looked at him, he added, “The knitting, I mean. Tricky stuff, this.”

Leanne began to wonder if her resolve would last an entire sock.

* * *

“Turn a little to your left, please, and hold the thing up a little higher.” The photographer assistant’s voice grated like a rusty hinge as the afternoon heat increased the friction. Leanne was trying hard to be pleasant, but the stiff starch of her nursing uniform—they’d asked her to come in uniform today—grated like Mr. Palmer’s voice.

John had stopped trying to be nice twenty minutes ago. “It’s called a
sock,
Palmer,” he snapped at the young assistant. “I know it doesn’t look much like one now, but that’s the whole point of this, isn’t it?”

“It is a rather fine ankle and gusset. It will photograph wonderfully, don’t you think, Mr. Palmer?”

“Just
grand,
Miss Sample.” Mr. Palmer droned as if rather be doing just about anything else.

John bristled. “You wouldn’t take that tone if you’d just put your feet into a warm, dry sock after four days in the trenches.”

Leanne hadn’t the nerve to ask John how his morning session with Dr. Madison went, but it didn’t take a cross examination to see John wasn’t pleased. It made her grateful she’d had her first soldiers’ class this morning and hadn’t been in the gymnasium. John stalked through the photography session like a uniformed grizzly bear, smiling when called upon but otherwise dark and surly.

The photographer peered around his large camera. “Slide a little farther over on the chair, Captain Gallows. We don’t need that much of Nurse Sample in the shot.” Evidently photographers had little need to master social graces for he seemed to have no idea how dismissive his command sounded; as if she were a vase to be moved or a lamp casting an unwanted shadow.

John nearly growled. “Nurse Sample is in the shot or you’ll have no captain to shoot. Do I make myself clear?”

The photographer’s remark did sting a bit, but Leanne had no wish to become the center of a photographic squabble. “I assure you, Captain Gallows, it’s not necessary that I be featured.”

“These young boys aren’t interested in learning knitting from their grandmothers. They want to know pretty young ladies like Nurse Sample will spend time with them if they sign up. They won’t
know
that if you don’t
show
it, now will they?”

The photographer’s words may have been “Yes, of course,” but his tone was much closer to
you stick to your job and I’ll stick to mine.
By the end of the session, Leanne couldn’t imagine how any of the images would do the Red Cross much good.
I don’t know much about “red,”
she thought with a sour humor as she pulled her knitting from the prop basket they’d given her to use at these sessions and returned it to her usual canvas bag,
but “cross” certainly applied today
. John looked as if he would throw his cane across the room at the next person to ask him to smile. He dumped his sock on a table at the back of the room and hobbled out into the hallway at the first opportunity. She’d never seen anyone slam down a piece of knitting before.

She caught him in the hallway. “John…”

“I need to stop all this parading and get back to France.
Now
.”

Leanne touched his elbow gently. “You have things to finish here, John.”

He turned to her. “I’ve nothing to…” He caught himself, running one hand down his face while the other gripped his cane with white knuckles. “It’s not that what you do isn’t important. You wouldn’t understand, I’m afraid.”

“Perhaps you should try to explain it to me.” She started to tell him to sit down, but remembered how poorly he took such orders. “Would you care to rest your leg on that bench over there?” she said in a deliberate tone meant to highlight it as a request, not a command or manipulation.

John didn’t answer; he simply set off toward a bench in irritable, limping silence.

Leanne let him arrange himself to his comfort on the bench, then sat next to him, her knitting bag on her lap. He brooded wordlessly for a minute or two, clearly not ready for conversation. Deciding it was better to wait him out than try to draw him out, Leanne reached into her bag and began the process of stitching up the toe of the sock she’d used in the photographs.
If he needs to speak about it,
she prayed, genuinely stumped as to how to help the captain out of his bitter gloom,
let him do so to me. You know best what he needs—likely better than he knows himself.
The prayer calmed her, and she stitched on at peace with his prickly silence, trusting God knew when and where to start the conversation. She would show patience, even if he had none.

Chapter Fifteen

“I
am first and foremost a soldier,” John opened up after they sat there awhile. “Not a spokesman. I wonder some days if the army sees me as anything more than a mouthpiece, a hired verbal gun.”

He’d said as much other days. She started to remind him that his speaking was a true gift, but stopped herself. He was blind to that gift, at least for today. Instead she tried a different tactic. “It can’t be a bad thing to respect your body’s need to heal. What possible purpose could be served by going back before you’re fully capable?”

John gave a bitter grunt. “Capable? Who’s ever truly capable of facing battle? All men go to war with wounds, whether they are physical or otherwise. You think these boys, these young fellows funneled straight out of school onto ships, are
capable?
”

No, she didn’t. Some of these boys looked so young and glory-hungry it made her heart break to know some of them would return with Private Carson’s hollow shadows in their eyes. “You’re an impatient man.”

“You bet the…” She watched John swallow a curse. “Yes, I am, but even a patient man would be tested by Barnes’s dawdling.”

She watched the way John’s leg relaxed and regained a bit of its flexibility. Did he realize how much his temper tangled his healing? It made her wonder if the skewed importance he’d placed on that waltz hadn’t been half the reason for his failure. He’d waltzed smoothly in the gymnasium. His gait always evened out when she got him talking. His pain seemed to disappear onstage. “I believe you will go back, John. Does that help?” It was true, but only half the truth. She believed he would go back whether it was wise for him to go or not. She was coming to realize that, wise or not, spiritually sound or not, a small part of her would leave with him when he left.

He turned to look at her, and Leanne feared that part of her would not remain small for long. The blue in those eyes conquered her reason all too easily. “I must go back. I don’t know that I can explain it any more clearly than that. Honor comes close, I suppose, but I don’t know that I could explain that to you, either.”

She could see that. Despite the fact that all the scheming and persuasion might lead one to think otherwise, John Gallows was a warrior, a man driven by pride and honor. “Yes, I suppose honor comes close.”

“Honor takes different shapes for different men. Don’t you see? That’s what makes a man into a soldier or a sailor, not the outcome of some physical test. Tomorrow is a foolish exercise in things that don’t matter.”

Tomorrow. John had an exam with Dr. Madison the next day to assess his physical progress, one he’d hoped to circumnavigate with his waltz in front of General Barnes. Dr. Madison had told her it was a straightforward enough exercise—timed completion of tasks, measurements of flexibility ranges, such things.

Such things as could not be manipulated. Facts even the cunning John Gallows could not bend to his liking, could not wield to serve his notion of honor.

She nearly gasped, so striking was her insight: John’s body was at war with his honor. That’s what drove him to try anything—even a waltz—to sidestep his physical assessments. She instantly understood the basic struggle that drove him to do what he did. It had been there all the time in the steel edge in his eyes, the defiant way he brandished his cane, the cocky nature he hid behind: his honor would never, ever surrender to his body. The fact that he’d suffered a serious injury would never override his warrior nature—in fact, she was quite sure it would only feed the man’s need to prove himself.

* * *

John hated when she looked at him like that. All too often in conversation with him her eyes would widen, her lips part in the most unsettling way and her face would alter as if hit by a ray of sunshine. It always gave him the nerve-racking sense that she was receiving some sort of divine revelation—usually about him, which made it all the worse. He would have much preferred God left him alone. “I think I understand,” she said as though that was the last thing she expected.

It certainly was the last thing he’d expected. “Really? I rather thought I’d botched the explanation, myself.” He waited for some speech of chastisement from her, the “be sensible,” “you’ve suffered a serious injury” or worst of all “don’t be such a selfish, ungrateful cad” sort he’d been expecting her to launch into any moment. Especially after the way he’d just behaved in that insufferable photographic session. He’d deserve every word of it if she did decide to scold.

She didn’t. She just stared at him for a long moment, as if reading some startling new information in his face, and then resumed her knitting. With the most confounding smile on her face. She understood. How, he’d never guess, for he knew the thought was foreign to her. She was a creature of peace and comfort, he of pride and battle. He mostly just let her knit in silence because he was truly stumped at how to respond. Land sakes, when was the last time a woman stumped him?

A few minutes later she came to a decision of sorts, for she put down her knitting, sat upright and turned to looked him in the eye. “John, I should like to ask you something.”

Did she have any idea how beautiful she looked when she got like that? Warm and effervescent as if she held the secret of life in her hands? “Anything.”

“Well, actually, I would like to ask you to let me do something.”

He couldn’t help himself. “Why yes,
of course
you may kiss me.” The resulting flame in her cheeks was entirely too irresistible, and he laughed until she did as well.

She covered her face in her hands like a schoolgirl. “You are incorrigible. Really. I am trying to be serious.”

He’d known that, knew it would mortify her and had been helpless to rein in his impulses. Only half of him regretted it, which was a dubious sign indeed. “My apologies,” he said, truly meaning it. “I made a promise to be a gentleman the other night, and I mean to keep it. Very well then, let us be serious. What is your request?”

She could not raise her eyes. “I cannot ask now. You’ve dashed my courage.” He felt her words like a thorn, knowing he deserved the prick. She pushed her knitting back into the bag and went to rise.

John caught her elbow. He could not, would not let it go after she’d been so forgiving of his misbehavior after the ball. “Please,” he pleaded, tugging her back toward the bench. “I am sorry. Truly. Please, Leanne, ask me anything you like. I can’t imagine denying any request you have to make.”

Leanne let her eyes fall closed for a second, mustering her nerve. What could possibly be so difficult for her to ask? “I should like to ask…if you would allow…I should like to pray for your leg. I don’t see any other way for you to pass the exam as quickly as you feel you must save with God’s help. If not for your peace of mind then for mine.”

John didn’t know what he’d expected, but this surely wasn’t it. “You want to pray for my leg? For the test?”

She looked embarrassed by the thought. “Yes.”

He blinked. It had been a long time since someone surprised him so. “For
your
peace of mind?”

“What you want seems terribly foolish and a waste of many of your gifts. And yet, somehow, I can see why you want to be there even when you are so needed here. I don’t know which is right, so how can I do anything but leave it to God to decide? I cannot go on having no peace about it. And, quite frankly, neither can you. When you are angry and frustrated your leg is only worse.”

“Your prayers are yours to make, by all means.”

Her face reddened further, and he felt heat prickle his own palms. “I meant here. Now. With you.”

John’s discomfort with the notion was nearly physical, and yet he found himself completely unable to launch any refusal. She was genuinely trying to help, and it clearly meant a great deal to her. “He’s bound to know I don’t…subscribe. Why assist someone who shows Him no regard?”

“Because we are all His children, and He delights in granting our requests—if they are for our good, of course.”

Now it made sense to him. “So if you pray for my success and I achieve it, then you can be assured God considers it for my own good? And should I fail tomorrow’s test, the same assurance holds?”

“That is rather putting it oddly, but I suppose, yes.”

“Doesn’t speak much for my role in the achievement, does it?” He shifted in his seat. “I suppose I should feel rather insignificant now that you put it that way.”

She smiled. “I don’t think you are capable of feeling insignificant.”

He coughed, rattled beyond words. This was going to be awkward. He could already feel a sweat breaking out above his collar. The photographic crew had left, and they were essentially alone, but they were still in a
hallway
. In the middle of a
building
. Ought such things happen rather in churches, in private or on ancient mountaintops? Here seemed so—ordinary. Yet try as he might, he could not find it in his heart to deny Leanne this request. “I’m not at all sure how one goes about such things.” He sighed, trying not to sound put out. “Closing of the eyes and folding of hands, isn’t it?”

A warm amusement replaced the flush on her features. “Nothing is required of you. You may close your eyes if you like—I always do—but you need not pray with me, only allow me to pray for you.” A sparkle lit her eyes. “It won’t hurt. I suspect you won’t even feel a thing.”

I doubt that,
John thought, although he didn’t know what on earth he’d do if he
did
feel something other than the acute uneasiness he currently suffered. God did not simply show up on army benches at the request of insistent young ladies. John realized he did not especially want God showing up in any of the everyday parts of his life, did not welcome the idea of the Almighty following close behind his ordinary undertakings, even at Leanne’s insistence. He watched her fold her hands, fighting the urge to take a deep breath as she closed her eyes. He’d dived off high cliffs into unknown waters with less trepidation.

“Holy Father,” she began in a tender voice, “I come to You on behalf of my friend John and his desire to serve.” John shut his eyes, finding the moment too intimate to keep them open. “Cast Your hand over all that happens tomorrow. Let Your will be accomplished. If it is through the strength of his leg and the regard of General Barnes, then let it be so. Your will is to be trusted, so help us both to trust that tomorrow’s outcome is as You wish. I thank You for the many who serve, for the comfort of all those who have lost—lost abilities, loved ones, dreams and health.” John found her voice so peaceful and so full of grace, he had to open his eyes to confirm they had not amazingly transported to some sacred space. She was so changed when she prayed, and yet it came from her as easily as any common words she spoke. “All lives are precious to You, and I thank You for the price You paid for our lives in the sacrifice of Your Son, Jesus. May You guide my path and John’s both tomorrow and always, in Jesus’s name, amen.”

After a second’s hesitation, Leanne opened one eye to his startled gaze and whispered, “It is customary to say ‘amen,’ if you agree with the prayer.”

John didn’t know if he agreed with either the prayer itself or the woman who prayed it, but the “Amen” sounded full and satisfying as it slipped from his mouth.