“Jeez, he hangs one guy, and no one ever lets him forget it,” Howard complained.
“Sorry. Joking is better than crying,” Lincoln responded.
“True. Look, it’s no use arguing with Yuie. She was born to argue. If you want to have a relationship with Yuie, you’ve got to change your strategy.”
Lincoln looked up. “Who said I wanted a relationship?” he asked grumpily.
Howard just stared back at him.
Lincoln coughed. “Well, just suppose, hypothetically I mean, that I did want a special relationship with Yuie. What do you mean, ‘change your strategy’?”
“When Yuie pushes, don’t push back. Change the subject. And give her gifts. Girls like to get gifts,” Howard said.
“Girls like to get gifts?”
“Yes,” Howard said firmly.
“You’re only nineteen. How would you know?”
“Which one of us has a woman in his bed every night?” Howard asked, smirking.
“You got me there,” Lincoln admitted.
“Believe me. Keeping Jean happy would make a man out of anyone,” said Howard with feeling. “But anyway, I would say that the best thing you could do would be to run with Yuie.”
“How will that help?” Lincoln asked.
“Because, Yuie like’s to run. Because you’ll be with her, but neither of you will be talking.”
“Good point,” Lincoln acknowledged.
Kennedy was not brave enough to approach Yuie the next day or the next, but one morning when he saw her doing her stretching exercises, he walked down to the track. Yuie saw him coming, and she thought about beginning her run, but she stayed put. The closer he got, the more nervous she became. He sat down to exchange his boots for a pair of borrowed tennis shoes. Then he rose and stepped onto the track, close to her.
“Hi, Linc,” she said in a subdued voice, and then she added hastily, “I mean, Lincoln.”
He hesitated and then said, “It’s okay if you call me Linc, Yuie. My grandma use to call me Linc when I was a little kid. When I got older, I wanted to feel like a grownup, so I made everyone call me Lincoln. It’s silly, now that I think about it.”
“Um… I don’t mind, ‘Hey Yu,’ that much,” said Yuie. “It’s kind of funny.”
Lincoln was silent for a moment, and then he said, “Yuie, you were partly right about me. One day, when I was in Iraq, one of my people was killed in an ambush. We returned fire, and I killed two of the enemy. But my man, a father with two little kids back home, was dead. When I went and looked at the bodies of the enemy, I was glad that I had killed them. And I still am in a way. But I’m also sad that it changed me. I wish I had never killed anyone.”
Yuie could not speak. There was something lodged in her throat. She turned away from him, so that he would not see her moist eyes.
“Let’s run,” Lincoln suggested.
Together, he and Yuie ran two laps. It was a long way around the meadow. There were twenty acres of grain inside the track. One side ran close to the river, and Lincoln and Yuie passed some kids who were fishing. No one had ever caught anything, but people swore that they had seen fish in the river. Mary Brown had suggested creating a manmade pond in a wide spot, and then stocking it with trout from her pond.
Every day that week, Lincoln and Yuie ran the track together. They made a point of not talking much. After running, they would walk separately to the Lodge, hoping that no one would be taking a shower at that time. Once, Lincoln forgot to take in a change of clothing, and he had to come out of the shower room wearing only a towel. Yuie, standing there waiting her turn, was moved by the beauty of the soldier’s hard body. But on his right side, she saw two puckered scars. They puzzled Yuie, until she realized that they were old bullet wounds.
June moved along. The residents of Petersburg were anticipating the coming election. Gabby did mock polls, and announced that neither candidate was likely to win. Eric made a speech and promised that if he was elected the shower would be converted into a mud bath. No one believed him, and Desi accused him of pandering to the boys.
“I thought about saying I would take down the wall and convert it into a girls’ mud wrestling contest arena, but I was afraid that I would get all the boys’ votes,” Eric confided to Hector.
Hector was in a state of uncertainty. Kathy seemed nervous around him all of a sudden, and he had no idea why. He gave her his usual nonchalant pat on her butt one day, and she squeaked like a mouse. He took some time to think about it, and something dawned on him. She was sixteen now. He thought about it some more, and when he finished thinking, he had a wicked grin on his face. The next afternoon, he asked her to help him survey a site for the sawmill. He took her along the river, down to the end of the meadow, where they were out of sight of the Lodge. They found a dry spot and sat on a patch of low grass.
They talked for a bit, and then Hector said to Kathy, “You are sixteen now, aren’t you, Kat?”
“Uh, yes,” she said, surprised at the change of subject.
“You’re old enough now, aren’t you, Kat?” Dropping his voice, he murmured the words.
“Um… I guess,” she replied cautiously.
“The rules don’t apply to you any longer, do they, Chica?” His voice became silky. He placed his hard hand firmly on the back of her neck.
“Um… well…”
“We’re free to do it now, aren’t we, Chica?” he murmured, his voice sensuous in her ear.
“Um…”
“We can make mad passionate love. Maybe, right here. This would be a good spot for our first time. Right now,” he said as his voice dropped to a whisper.
“Now?” she squeaked.
Hector put his hands under her bottom and lifted her. She stared into his eyes. Her heart was pounding, and her palms were sweaty as their lips met. Hector kissed her long and deep, and then he set her down.
“But,” he said while looking around, his voice back to normal. “It is cool today. And I think there are some mosquitoes buzzing around. We could wait a month or two, until it warms up and become dryer.”
“Oh. Yes,” Kathy replied, catching her breath. “We could wait a month or two.”
“It might be a cool summer. In that case, we could wait until next year.”
She stared at him for a moment, and then she understood. She flung herself into his arms, and he caught her easily.
“Hector,” was all she said, as she held him close.
Then after a time, Hector said, “Kat, just because you are now sixteen does not mean we must begin to be intimate. We have a lot of time, Kat. A lot of time. Stop worrying about it.” He felt her nod against his chest.
They stayed in the meadow for a while longer, and then they walked back to the Lodge together, hand in hand. Someday, I’ll look just like Desi does now, Hector, Kathy vowed silently. On their way, they passed Yuie, who was casting furtive glances toward Lieutenant Kennedy, and Kathy felt a pang of pity for the other girl.
Yuie and Kennedy were ignoring each other, except for the time that they spent running together. Howard was right, Kennedy thought. When we run together, we are comfortable together, and we don’t talk. Talking just gets in our way. The Lieutenant thought about some of the other things Howard had told him, including the Admin’s comment concerning gifts. I should give Yuie a gift. But what? He thought about the traditional gifts that a man could give a woman.
No florist shops around, he said to himself. On the other hand, there are plenty of wildflowers in the meadow. But how do I give them to her. What if she gets embarrassed, or what if she thinks that giving cheap wildflowers to a girl is stupid? Better give them to her in private.