On Her Way Home (27 page)

Jo swam over to Mac, who had spent all afternoon in shallower water entertaining Sam and teaching him to swim. “I’ll play with Sam for a little bit so you can swim,” she offered, slurping up a mouthful of water and shooting it out in an arc to make Sam giggle.

For the next hour, they played together sitting on the beach and building “rock houses,” as Sam had named them. He built a house for everyone except Jo, whom he said could share his and daddy’s house, causing a warm melt in Jo’s heart. Kirby and Mattie rode down to the beach a little later, and seeing that Sam had grown sleepy from his afternoon of play, they carted him home with them on the horse.

Mac swam to shore then called to Jo as he athletically jogged from the river with his lean granite body dripping sheets of water. “Did you send Sam with them?”

Jo nodded her head in the affirmative. “He was falling asleep in the rocks,” she smiled.

“I bet,” Mac answered, sitting down on the warm rocks and thinking to himself that he’d like to do the same. Jo plunked herself down next to him, curling her legs up to her chest and wrapping her arms around her knees. The sun warmed her chilled skin with its yellow rays.

Mac was staring quietly out over the river, lost in his own thoughts, when Jo’s finger trailed lightly down his side like a breath upon his skin, tracing the white outline of his jagged scar. Mac gasped and jerked away as if she’d burnt him with a hot iron. The thick tan muscles along the side of his back flexed and coiled tightly at the unexpected touch.

Snatching her hand back, Jo stammered, flushed and hurt, “I’m so sorry.” Excruciatingly embarrassed and deeply regretting her bold familiarity, she looked away from him, pretending to be distracted by Charlie and Leif’s antics.

Jo’s touch hadn’t hurt him. The scar had been healed and sealed over for years now, but the haunting memory of its pain still lived in Mac like a red-hot poker. He had cradled and protected that side of his body for months after it was torn apart, so long, that flinching had become habitual to him. That habit, along with Jo’s soft fingertips brushing achingly against the place on his body that had once been the most vulnerable, had startled him. He didn’t know if it was Jo or the memory of that pain, but instantly he was defensive. From the corner of his eye, he watched as she feigned interest in the pile of pebbles she was sweeping up with her hand, all the while her cheeks flaming red, belaying her discomposure.

Intending to flee and escape the uncomfortable blunder she’d made, Jo stood up from the beach, brushing the pebbly sand from her knees. As she turned to go, Mac’s hand snaked out, catching her around the wrist and halting her flight.

“You don’t have to go.” His voice was hard and forceful, almost authoritative.

Humiliated by his abrupt rejection, Jo hesitated, her eyes wide and skeptical, trying to decide if she should stay or bolt. Only a few hours ago, Mac was hugging and flirting with her during the water fight. Now, tense, angry waves were rolling off his bare back. Jo stared at the large tan hand wrapped tightly around her wrist. At her gaze Mac’s grip slackened, and the white imprint of his fingers along her arm turned pink as blood rushed back into her veins. Pulling her arm all the way back from him, she cautiously returned to her spot on the ground. She scooted close to Mac and folded her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them protectively.

Mac should have let her go, but he’d watched her interact with Charlie and Leif for hours today, captivated by every move, every smile, every expression on her face. It was foolish, but he wanted time with her.
Just one afternoon
, he told himself,
that’s all
. Her sweet confession from this morning that she wanted to spend time alone with him was still ringing in his ears. It had been the motivating factor for him in taking the afternoon off, and he wasn’t ready to let her go.

Jo was confused by Mac; he obviously didn’t want her to leave, but neither did he seem to want talk, his jaw set at its firm, unyielding angle. Glancing furtively at the long, wicked scar down his back, she pried cautiously, “Does it still hurt?”

Mac released a burdened sigh. “Why won’t you just leave it alone?” His eyes raked her, searching for the answer, but she just looked steadily back at him. Stricken, he dropped his head between his arms and answered her question, albeit unwillingly, “No. It doesn’t hurt.”

Well, that went better than I thought
, Jo reflected inwardly. She was still wary of his cool demeanor, but decided to push a little further. “How did you get the scar?” It was too far.

Instantly, Mac swung his eyes to hers, the light blue orbs narrowing into an icy black abyss. He glared at her, a deep haunting repulsion filling his face, causing the corners of his mouth to curl unconsciously in a vapid sneer. His looming, anguished eyes, void of light and teeming with bitterness shocked Jo. Never had she seen such torment or watched it rage so quickly. As rapidly as the swell of pain filled his eyes, it was gone, whipped and herded by Mac, back into its hiding place, leaving a chiseled stony demeanor upon his face once more. His resistant countenance shouted at Jo to leave. He pushed her away with his eyes as forcefully as if he were physically pushing her.

Jo, sensing the battle momentum had shifted, would not retreat. She covered his hand with her own shaky palm and petitioned with all the tenderness her spirit possessed, “Don’t, Mac... Please. Don’t push me away.” It was a call to him, an offering to share whatever burden it was he struggled to shoulder alone.

Mac pulled his hand out from under Jo’s, picked up a flat stone from the beach, and tossed it into the river where it skipped and sank. His eyes extended up the vibrant rock wall that glittered in rusty hues until they met the opaque sky. The knot in his throat bobbed as he swallowed and succumbed. “The Argonne Forest.”

A still vapor swallowed up the bubbly echo of water over rocks and the noise from Charlie and Leif, sheltering Mac and Jo in its reverent, intimate cocoon. Mac dropped his head and picked distractedly at his fingernails, a faraway expression in his eyes. “It’s a dense stand of woodland on the northern border of France. In the war, the Germans held it for years, so by the time we arrived, the forest was a series of tunnels, trenches, and pits with barbed wire and the Huns crawling all over it.” Mac paused, picking up another rock and tossing it over the river. “I was a first lieutenant in a battalion… Our objective was to take control of a road and railway line so that we could move allied supplies up the line and cut off German support. Part of our battalion was ordered to stay behind while the rest of us moved forward, continuing up a hill that was crucial to the offensive. We didn’t know it…but at the same time we were fighting our way up the hill, the French to our left were under a German counterattack and fell back. The companies we’d left behind to our right did the same. We had the hill, but we were surrounded by the enemy.” Mac’s eyes narrowed, as he glanced to his left to look at Jo. She was listening intently, her chin tilted up toward him. She gave him an encouraging nod, her eyes warm and supportive.

“Before the offensive began, the general issued a ‘no retreat’ command.” Mac’s mouth twisted in a hard, sardonic line as the words “no retreat” slipped acidly from his mouth. He stretched his long legs out in front of him, pausing again in his recitation almost as if he was deciding whether or not to continue on. Jo held her breath and remained still, afraid that any movement on her part would dispel the fragile bubble in which he felt safe enough to share.

Clearing his throat, Mac continued, “We hunkered in on the hill, creating a ‘pocket’ and burying ourselves in holes several men deep to avoid sniper fire and mortar rounds. The Germans were in front of us, to our right, to our left, and at that point…we thought they might be behind us as well. We sent out runners to connect with the troops we’d left behind, but none of them came back…either capture or killed by the enemy. We battled them for days, but the Germans were closing in on us, and we had no supplies, no food, and we were running low on ammunition. Despite the ‘no retreat order,’ there was debate about falling back. We held the hill for four days, leading small squads out to clear machine gun nests and trying to progress, but all movement resulted in heavy casualties. Every time we stuck our heads up, lead rained down from all sides. The firing was so heavy at times that a soldier could be shot right next to you, and you’d have no idea where the bullet came from, the right, the left, the Germans, even your own weapon.”

Jo’s mouth gaped open, stunned by the idea that soldiers would accidentally shoot each other. Mac answered the question in her eyes with a steeled edge to his voice, “Soldiers were cut down all the time by ally ammunition: artillery, bullets, grenades; there was a hundred different ways to die in the miserable pit, and not all from the enemy.” Mac sighed heavily. “The worst I saw…was a young soldier we’d sent out as a runner. He was fast and smart—and I don’t know how—but fearless. He’d become, sort of a favorite of another…”—Mac gulped—“of another lieutenant in our company. So, we tried to keep him close to us and shield him as best we could, a useless undertaking,” Mac said with a sneer, the words spewing sardonically from him. He took a deep breath. “Anyway, to our left the Germans were rallying, and we were pinned down under heavy artillery fire, I think…from our own allies. With rounds exploding all around us, we needed to send a message to the men down the hill to the right. Our captain chose that particular private and sent him out, flying over rotting bodies and weaving between trees and barbed wire to a small trench about a hundred yards away from us. We protected him with cover fire as best we could and thought he was going to make it, but fifty yards out of the hole, a potato masher exploded next to him.” Mac looked at Jo, her eyes drawn together in question. “A grenade,” Mac explained. “The force of the explosion tossed him through the air and dropped what was left of him on top of a tangled heap of barbed wire.” Again Mac hesitated, the images rushing putridly back into his mind.

“The lieutenant next to me screamed and clawed his way out of our musty hole, crazy with rage and shock. The private was already dead though, half of his body blown away and the other…hanging lifelessly in the wire. I tackled the lieutenant from behind and dragged him back to the trench while he cursed, punched, and bit at me…like an animal. We fell into the hole on top of each other, and I just held him in my arms until he grew cold and still, staring at the body dangling fifty yards away from us.” Mac stared directly into Jo’s eyes, the vivid images pouring from his pupils into hers. “You want to know what the real rub was?” Mac said, revoltingly. Jo didn’t, her stomach already churning turbulently. “We watched him hanging there for a full day, while German snipers butchered his corpse with lead…for the sport of it.” Swiftly, Jo turned her head away, opening her mouth to draw in deep gulps of air. “Every time I see barbed wire, cross it, or have to string it, I see his body hanging there.”

Jo ached over Mac’s disclosure. Barbed wire was part of a rancher’s life, an everyday item in his existence, like boots, cows, or horses. The idea that this gruesome image was called into Mac’s mind every time he encountered barbed wire explained his cold and shifting moods.

“We couldn’t get to him,” Mac’s voice broke achingly. “The allies were dropping artillery on us, short of the German line, so we wallowed in our rotting pit, starving and immobile, with decomposing bodies stinking in the air and the sounds of mangled and moaning men…we could do nothing for, dying around us. The next day our allies’ shells were finally shooting over us, but the Boshe were attacking. We were so mixed in with them at that point that it was brutal hand-to-hand combat. We beat them back, but sustained more losses; whoever wasn’t taken prisoner was either dead or starving. We had access to water but had to crawl through the filth on our bellies in the night time to get to it, and we had almost no food, only what we could scavenge off of dead Germans…and they were as hungry as we were. If a soldier died, we un-wrapped his stiff and bloody bandages and reused them on other men’s wounds. My socks were holding the disfigured arm of a man in place, and I’d taken off my underclothes and shoved them into the gaping chest wound of one of our boys.”

Mac’s eyes were black and haunted. As he got deeper into the memories, his sentences strung together rapidly. “Over the next few days, the Germans sent messages by way of captured Americans, asking for our surrender, but the major would have none of it. At this time, the whispers of retreat were deafening arguments, and when we weren’t fighting the Germans, we were fighting amongst ourselves.”

A memory flashed over Mac, a tight strain crinkling the corners of his eyes. “The lieutenant,”—Mac looked at Jo—“the one who had lost the private, he was urging for retreat against the orders of the major, but the command was clear…forward movement only. Even if we weren’t under orders, I don’t know that we could have created a big enough hole to escape the pocket anyway. That night, the lieutenant and our captain got into a brawl over the orders. The captain got wind that the lieutenant was undermining him. He reminded the lieutenant of the consequences awaiting any officer who issued the call of retreat.” Mac tapped his temple. “I can still see it…so clearly in my mind…the muddied hands of the lieutenant yanking the captain up off the ground by his filthy lapel and rolling with him in the darkness out of the trench and down the slope. They rolled to a stop under a piece of downed timber with the lieutenant on top of our captain. Spitting with feral eyes, he shrieked into the captain’s face, ‘How many more of us will die in this place?’ And he shook him viciously…like a rag doll. The captain broke free from the hold, using the force of a brutal kick to push himself away and screamed back at him. ‘It’s not my call! We have orders!” Mac repeated the words from memory, crying them out as if he were hearing them in his mind.