One to Count Cadence

She said nothing for almost a minute, then, once again between folded hands, "You didn't say you loved me."

I started to shout, though what I never found out, but she giggled into her hands, stood up, fell beside me, kissed me, then lay her head on my chest.

"You idiot," I said, holding her against me. But I let her be silent too long.

"You didn't say you loved me, Jake," she said, her words muffled against my chest.

I waited, sighed familiarly, then said, "And I won't say it either. I don't believe in love, baby. I'll like you, respect you, and cleave unto you all of my days, but I don't believe in love. I told you that when this started."

"It didn't matter then," she whispered.

"Why not?"

She rolled over, kissed me again, then said, "I only loved you a little bit then. Now I want you to marry me." She blushed, then moved away, and lay face down on the blanket.

I went numb. "What in God's name for?"

"I knew when I saw your face in the sunshine. You need me; I want you. I get out in six months, and I want you to marry me."

"Just be quiet for a while, will you?"

She closed her eyes, and I lay on my back watching the peaceful white clouds fluff the blue sky.

Abigail had been, in her early years, what is commonly known as a town punch, though she was never as promiscuous as she was thought to be – not virtue, but a lack of able candidates, she was able to laugh now. She admitted that she earned the title. Only daughter of a fat merry high school principal and a thin nervous English teacher with a love for Gothic romances, Abigail grew up torn between the castle of eighteenth century love and the battering ram of nineteenth century virtue. Her maidenhead had burst, of its own accord, when she was fifteen, and she slept with twenty or more boys before she was eighteen – dry, senseless pilferings in the back seats of cars. Her reputation followed her the twenty-eight miles down Route 6 from Marengo to Iowa City, and she fell into the sad pattern of repeating old mistakes, until she fell in love. A boy just out of the Navy three years after Korea, a drunk at twenty-two, dated her because her roommate was busy, and because he was more interested in drinking than fucking, and because she enjoyed the same thing he enjoyed, namely sitting by the Iowa River with an icebox full of beer. He found the shy lovely girl under the reputation. He drank less; she fucked not at all; love.

She told him; he suggested that they refrain to refute her past. Three months of happiness, then in January he, drunk, stepped through an air hole in the ice covering the river; the body wasn't found until spring.

She said she spent her weekends parked up there, sitting in the car in the midst of crystal winter, cold blue snow and a pastel sky, cursing, cursing her sin and her untimely virtue. She had no shell to draw about her, but she made herself be careful. There had been a college boy, two pilots, a dentist, and nearly Gallard, but none of them had come to anything permanent.

When she told me I should marry her, I couldn't decide if the knot in my stomach was fear or love. I believe it was love, now, but I couldn't decide then. My life had too many loose strings, and I thought I'd best be about the business of tying them without knotting them. And I didn't believe in love or anything.

"Can you wait and not push?" I asked.

"Not forever," she said, looking up then moving beside me, "but for now." She kissed me, her lips cool on my face, but in only an instant we flamed together.

"Cut it out," I said, "The cast's in the way."

"Nonsense," she said, and she was right.

Gallard came by late that night as I was making pencil corrections in the manuscript I had finished the night before.

"Through with that?" he asked.

"For now."

"May I see it. It was my idea, you remember," he said.

"How little you know, doctor," I said, holding the pages to my chest.

"You told Morning that I was a magician and that I would raise him from the dead. Obviously, you think I know a great deal."

"Will he get up from the dead?" I asked.

"The spinal column was bruised and pinched, in layman's terms, by a bullet sliver, but I fixed that. He'll walk when he gets over feeling guilty. I understand that you helped that today. Do you know what he is guilty of?"

I laughed.

"I thought you two were friends?" he said, puzzled.

"Joe Morning is guilty of being guilty; he's done nothing."

"Don't make riddles," he said, peeved.

"That's your game, huh? Here, take this mess. Everything I know about Morning is in here." I handed him the manuscript. "I hesitate to let you read it; it tells about me, too, and I ain't always pretty. You understand that I'll deny the truth of it, if you try to do anything about it."

"I don't understand at all."

"You will."

This was Joe Morning's first day.

Gallard took my manuscript, notes, journal, whatever, then left for two weeks in Hong Kong. He put Morning in a neck-high cast, promising that he would walk after two weeks of total rest. He also, after seeing the condition of my cast, took my wheelchair away for two weeks, promising me a smaller cast and crutches in a fortnight. One day of mobility, one taste of Abigail, and chained once more. They also moved me from my room into a ward (where I shall remain until the end) and Abigail and I could talk but not touch; but most of our talk concerned messages from Morning to me.

"He said tell you thanks," she told me the next day.

"Tell him he's welcome," I answered, slipping my hand down the side of the bed to clasp her thigh. She had arranged me with an empty bed on either side. Sharp girl.

"But he also said that you would have to take him seriously someday," she said, moving away from my hand, blushing, smiling. "You horny bastard. I'll have you arrested."

"Don't give them an excuse. They'll lock me up forever if they get the chance."

She fluffed my pillow, trapping my hand between her belly and my bed. "From what Pfc Morning tells me, you should be. He says you're a reactionary moralist at heart and that you believe in ghosts."

"Right," I said, pinching her, "but I'm a lovely guy anyway. Horny bitch, lieutenant."

"Don't hold it against me, sergeant. Rank has its privileges." She poked me in the ribs with a sharp fingernail. "And responsibilities. Good-day." She turned to leave, then handed me a letter. "Your mail." I recognized the handwriting. "Your stateside sweetheart, sergeant?"

"My, ah, ex-wife."

"Tell her she can't have you back," she whispered, then walked away.

"Hey," I said.

"What?"

"Tell Morning I always took him seriously."

"Tell her I take you seriously too," she said, nodding toward the letter.

The jealousy was nice, but the possessiveness worried me, but she smiled a little as she left.

I let the letter sit for a minute as I basked in the love of a good woman, then I opened it, ready for another bout with tolerance and political persuasion.

Dear Jake, she began, As you can see from the return address, I'm staying with your folks for awhile. I hadn't seen, though. I've come back from Mississippi to rest and my father wouldn't have me in the house. After the things I said to him after our divorce, I don't really blame him. I guess I don't blame anyone for anything any more. Just me.

As I said, I'm back from Mississippi, to rest. I was already feeling old – pushing 29 and childless is old – when I lost a bit of my fervor. (Politics is such a dirty business, in spite of the cliché, just dirty as hell, and I couldn't stand it forever.) Teaching was all right, in fact, I loved it. Fifty- and sixty-year-old women learning to read, even one seventy-year-old man, right in front of your eyes. Jake, it was great. But the other side, the cold pla