Another Kind of Eden (Holland Family Saga 3)

“Saber Bledsoe.”

“He was killed?”

“He was listed as MIA. There were four hundred POWs not accounted for after the war. Maybe they were moved across the Yalu and used in medical experiments. Maybe Saber was one of them.”

“Why are you hiding all this?”

“I don’t like to talk about it,” I said.

“You have to.”

“Wrong.”

“I’m not going to put up with this, Aaron,” she said. “You’re killing yourself, which means you’re killing me.”

I looked at the re-creation of my face on the canvas and the typewriter that never produced a publishable story and the burning candle that consumed itself in order to become a knotty pile of wax and the shadows that became prison bars.

“I didn’t mean to say that, Aaron.”

“Didn’t mean to say what?”

“About you killing me. You’re the only person in my life.”

“That’s not true. People love you.”

“But you’re the one. You know what that means, don’t you? When a woman says it?”

“I’m just the way I am, Jo Anne. There are things I can’t get out of my head. I think I’ll always be like that.”

“What things? The war?”

“It’s what I did in the war. Or rather, what I didn’t do.”

“Then say it.”

The metal band that had been my companion for many years was back in business. I don’t think I have described it adequately. It had a turnscrew on it and was operated by someone I never had the opportunity to see. But he was a master. I felt him turning the screw, crushing my skull, shutting down the flow of blood to my brain. My eyes were jittering.

“Maybe I bugged out.”

“You did what?”

“That means run for the rear. I was running, and an artillery round knocked the breath out of me. Saber was behind me. The Chinese were throwing grenades we called potato mashers. They’d clank them on their helmets to set the fuse, then throw them. But their flamethrowers were exploding the potato mashers before the fuses could. It was like being inside hell. I’d lost my steel pot and my rifle. I got up and started running again. I didn’t go back. I left Saber behind.”

I was weeping now, uncontrollably, my head down, my hands cupped like claws under my thighs.

“Aaron?”

I couldn’t answer.

“Aaron, listen to me.”

I saw her s

hadow on the floor, saw it come toward me and fall across my face and body. I felt her hand touch my head, then stroke my hair. “You’re brave now, and you were brave then. You didn’t desert your friend. You ran from the flames and explosions and probably certain death. You think your friend would have wanted you to do differently?”

I wiped my face on my sleeve. “I apologize.”

“Don’t say that. You’re the most kind and good man I’ve ever known. You don’t know how much you mean to me.”