Martilena
Blueshirt
Veteran
Posts: 565
|
 |
« on: Aug 15 '09, 01:14:01 » |
|
She swept the dirt out the door and off the small porch, then shaded her eyes and looked down the shady, sun-dappled road to where it dipped behind the horizon. How many times had she done this very thing? She was always looking down that road. He had marched away to a war she didn’t understand for a cause she couldn’t grasp. But, he had felt called to go. He had felt it was his duty. How many times had she looked for him down that road? Too many. For she had begun looking almost the day after he left. No. Not the day after. She had waited a year. It was after the first year that she began to look for him … to long for him with a aching heart and achingly empty arms. She had endured that first year but he had not come. Nor the year after that, nor the following year. The war had lasted four long years. It had been over almost a year before the small settlement had received word. A year later and her man was still not home. And the whispers had started. Poor dear, they said. Poor thing. Her man’s not coming home from the war. She just won’t give up hope. But, she needs to let go. She needs to move on. Perhaps, they were right. Perhaps, he wasn’t coming home. Yet, her heart told her a different story. Her heart said he was alive and he was coming home. Any day now. Any day he would come down that road. But, it was two long years since the war was over… or since they had received word that it was over. Two long years, plus the first four and she was tired of running the farm alone. She was tired of being alone. Tired of crying herself to sleep at night as the loneliness she fought off all day with work finally came in to stay.
Mrs. Byrd down the road made it a point to tell her she was too thin from working too hard. To tell her she wasn’t getting any younger. To tell her she should let Joe Marshall come courting. He was a fine catch. A strong man to do the hard work of the farm. A fine catch, indeed! As if she’d allow that drunken lout on her property! Mrs. Byrd was the only one who thought he was a fine catch, and that only because he was her sister’s son. But, Mrs. Byrd wasn’t the only one who thought she needed a man. Several of her so-called friends insisted on fixing her up with one or another of the single men of their small community. She sighed. She was the only one who believed. She was the only one who wanted to believe that her Tom was coming home.
Of course, it was old lady Trout with her wicked tongue who hurt the most. Insinuating that Tom might be alive but didn’t want to come home. That he had changed in his feelings for her. It was true that she wasn’t the girl he left. She knew he was likely not the boy that marched away. The few letters she’d gotten showed that he was changing, growing. Both of them had grown up a lot over the years. Wasn’t that only natural? Wasn’t it only right that they should change? That didn’t mean they couldn’t still love each other. So, what if she was no longer young and girlish looking. She’d never thought of herself as pretty. She’d always known her sister was the pretty one. Everyone said so, even their parents. But, to Tom she’d always been pretty. When he came calling that first time, he almost shocked Ma to death when he asked for Jane and not her sister, Mary. But, he had said it was Jane he wanted and Jane he meant to woo and win. She remembered that with a fondness and joy that only a woman who had learned what true love is can feel. And the love she shared with Tom was true. So, true that she knew that if her Tom was dead, she’d feel it. She’d know it.
She turned to go back inside the house. She had lots of chores to do and standing here daydreaming about the past wasn’t going to get them done. She had her hand on the door handle when she froze. Was that a speck of dark hair on the road? No, she decided. She was just imaging. It was just another dream. But, even as she told herself that, the speck got larger. She let go of the handle and moved to stand at the top of the three steps and once again shaded her eyes as she looked down the road. Was it? Could it be? After all these years, was it finally … She knew that hair. It was speckled with a bit of gray at the temples now, but she knew that hair. She was running down the road like a giddly little school girl. She didn’t know when she’d left the porch and she was half way down the road before she knew it. And then he was there. Tall, a little gaunt like he’d been sick or hurt, but he held her in is arms just as tight as always.
“I’ve missed you, little girl,” he breathed into her hair.
“I’ve missed you, too,” she muttered into his shoulder. She pulled back from him a bit. “I’m not such a little girl anymore. I’ve been so afraid…”
He silenced her with a gentle finger on her lips. “You’ll always be that same pretty gal, I married. No matter how old and gray and wrinkled we get. You’ll always be beautiful to me. And, honey, it wasn’t an old gray mare who came flying down that road to meet me.” He was grinning that grin she adored and she was laughing and crying at the same time. “I ‘spect we both changed a mite over these long years. We got us a lifetime ahead to worry about getting use to them. Let’s go up to the house and pretend that its Sunday. We’ll drink tea and gab the day away and I’ll just drink up the sight of you and all the good hard work you’ve done to this place.”
She smilled. “All right, Tom. We’ll do just that.”
The End
|
