Love is a Wounded Soldier Read Free

cheeks and jaw always seemed to have about a
week’s beard growth on them, rarely more or less.
    I didn’t see that much of him growing up,
yet it still seemed I saw him too much. Moses was a drunk and a brawler. He
would spend a few days on the farm, working with a little encouragement from a
brown bottle. Then, after two days, or three, or four, if he was strong, he’d
just drop what he was doing and be gone.
    One time when I was nine, I found our plow horses,
Shiver and Shake, calmly grazing unsupervised in a meadow about a quarter mile
from our yard, still hooked to the plow that had caught up on a stump. That
might have alarmed most children, but not me. That’s what happened when the
intermittent swigs from Moses’ bottle could no longer fend off his mind’s
craving to be bathed in alcohol. He would leave. Sometimes two days, or three,
or four, if he was weak.
    There were times when I was younger, when
he was almost sober, that I’d see a ray of humanness in him. A faint warmth,
like light timidly shining through a clouded bulb. There were brief times I
reached toward that light, moments I thought Moses might be changing,
salvageable, lovable. But I learned soon enough not to invite disappointment by
anticipating the change that would never come: the day Moses would become Pa.
Nonetheless, I yearned for his affirmation, alternately wanting him close, and
then never wanting to see him again, until the latter feeling completely
usurped the former, and I was filled with a glowing rage that smoldered, just
waiting for a breath of an excuse to burst into a fiery fury.
    ~~~
    There’s a day when I was 12 that
particularly stands out in my mind. The occasion was the Tobacco Road Baptist
Church annual picnic. That picnic was one of the two or three highlights of my
year, and as always, I was looking forward to the three-legged races, foot races,
relay races, horseshoes—heck, there would be more things to do than time to do
them in.
    And the potluck tables would groan with a
superfluity of salads, baked beans, pig’s knuckles, great dripping slabs of
watermelon, and pies almost erupting with sweet fruit.
    But as much as I anticipated the activities
and food, it was all overshadowed by one thing: baseball. That year was what I considered
to be my “breakout year.” It was the year I really learned to love playing
baseball, mostly due to the fact that my gawky limbs were learning to take
orders. Our school was too small for a team, and there was no such thing as
organized ball in our little town, so I had to be content with playing during
recess and after school with whomever we could scrape up. I played baseball
whenever I got a chance.
    The picnic was on a Saturday. Moses was
about as sober as I’d ever seen him, and for reasons none of us will probably
ever know, he had decided to come with us to the picnic. Ma was happy, because
he hadn’t darkened the church door since they got married, and I think she
hoped maybe a little mingling with church folk might help turn him around.
    So Ma and I climbed into our black 1917
Ford Model T, Moses cranked her to life, and we rattled our way toward Coon
Hollow, several miles down the valley. I held my worn, hand-me-down glove on my
hand and ground my fist into the faded, supple palm, imagining myself scooping
up an ankle-high line drive before flopping down on my belly in dramatic
fashion. I hoped Moses would be watching the baseball. Never was I more excited
about playing a baseball game. Moses had never seen me play, and I was
determined to put on a show.
    By the time we arrived at the picnic
grounds, I'd made the difficult decision to abstain from participating in the
other games in order to save my strength for baseball, and when it came time to
dig into the mouth-watering mounds of food, I ate like a bird—partly because I
didn’t want to feel too sluggish, but mostly because I was just too nervous to
eat.
     
    “Let’s play ball!” Deacon Wilke bellowed
through a