“For the love of webfooted friends in the forest,” I complained. His hands tightened spasmodically on my knees and shoulder. It was another of my father’s favorites.
Laird was more careful angling me into my room but he stopped halfway in. I was shivering uncontrollably now, grabbing tightly at his neck and arm to try to still the shakes.
“Colder’n hell in here,” he muttered and backed out.
Downstairs, through the dining room, out into the corridor he carried me, kicking open a door into what had been the original house. The room was about twenty feet square, narrow windows high in the walls just under the ceiling. A huge fireplace, its coals banked for the night, radiated tremendous warmth. As the major lowered me to the studio couch, I had a revolving impression of doors and bookshelves and Merlin sniffing around the room.
The major covered me tightly with the blankets, holding them down against my shaking body.
“Chilled riding that goddamfool baggage car with your overgrown wolf. Made a pig of yourself with stew so what else can you expect from a half-well organism like your body,” he muttered.
I tried to will myself to relax to the warmth that surrounded me. He pressed the covers more tightly to me. Then, with that queer whistle he could make without compressing his lips, he ordered Merlin up beside me. In the variable light from the dying fire his face assumed satanic qualities, the flames alternately flaring to illumine the scarred surface, then dying to cast it completely in shadow.
With a snort of impatience he turned to the fireplace. He came back with a shot glass full of liquor.
“If you haven’t started drinking, you’re about to learn at the insistence of your guardian.” He held the glass against my lower lip and tilted it deftly, so that despite my chattering the fluid got into my mouth. I gulped it down, grateful for the burning stuff although I’m not fond of Scotch. It always tastes to me the way ants smell formic acidy.
“It’s a dog’s dose,” he remarked, “but I’ve got to warm you up. You’re so thin you’ll break bones shaking like that.”
He poured another stiff drink, and disregarding my weak protest, propped my head in the crook of his arm and kept forcing the Scotch down my throat.
By the third shot I couldn’t focus and I didn’t bother to resist. But the shivering had stopped and I felt exceedingly warm and cozy. I was also sure that there was, somehow or other, a coating of ice, smooth and unbreakable, over my entire body. I told him so. I suggested that he stand me upright in the fireplace. If I put my head in the chimney I’d fit and then the ice would melt before I could get burned.
I remember he had a very pleasant laugh which was the first pleasant thing I had noticed about him. I told him so and was rewarded by another laugh. Something caught me by the back of the neck in one convulsive jerk and I remember that he held me against him and patted my head gently. He talked about a girl who had a curl in the middle of her forehead. I felt insulted enough to point out that I had too damned many curls all over my head and he was welcome to all he wanted to help hide his scar. I remember his hand over my mouth and that I was very very warm and very very sleepy.
Something heavy lay across my chest and my right arm was asleep. I woke up. I must not have been completely sober at that point because I looked down, quite calmly, at the major’s arm across my breasts. It didn’t seem at all improper that I was in the same bed with him because I was warm. This had been terribly important some long past time ago.
A kerosene lamp, flickering as the wick used up the last of the fuel in the well, gave a feeble light from the shelf over our heads. The major’s pajama sleeve had slid up and I could see the terrible gashes, rawly red, where shrapnel had sliced through the fleshy part of the arm. Yet his hand was long-fingered, well shaped, and strong, the nails flat, deep, and well kept. My father had always watched a man’s hands as he saluted or shook, not the face. Dad always maintained he could separate men into categories by the shape and care they took of their hands.
Regan Laird would surely have passed that test with honors. So his face didn’t matter and the surgeons would work their minor miracles and put him back together again. In repose his right profile lost some of the distortion it had in waking. The eye did not seem so drawn nor the grin such a travesty. He had lost half his right eyebrow, which gave him a curiously bald look. The scar tissue extended up into the hairline but his thick black hair had been carefully cut to hide most of it. The worst furrows of keloidal tissue stretched across the cheekbone down to the jawline. I remember my father mentioning how Regan took care of the petticoat problems in the regiment. An ambiguous statement. Now I had seen the major’s good side, I imagined all manner of interpretations.
Scarred or not, Regan Laird was muy hombre as old Turtle Bailey would have said in that gravel-pit voice of his. So different, I sighed to myself, from what infested the campus. Irresistibly tempted, I carefully twitched a long piece of hair away before it tickled his nose and roused him. His hair was unexpectedly fine and silky under my fingers and, feeling foolish, I stroked his hair back over the scar. He moved and, startled, I withdrew my hand. But I didn’t remove the arm he had thrown across me. Big warm heavy Merlin was firmly planted along my left side so I was wedged between two male bodies. Would Merlin constitute a chaperon in Mrs. Grundy’s eyes, I wondered?
The kerosene lamp flickered and went out. The quiet hiss of the fire lulled me. Warm and feeling safe for the first time since Dad had shipped out three years before, I slept.
A loud crack-pop woke me. A log had split on the fire. I looked around, startled to find neither the major nor Merlin in the room. The kerosene lamp, filled and trimmed, burned brightly on the shelf. Gray light filtered in from the high windows, the gray light of a stormy day, not early morning.
I was warm but the memory of last night’s chill had not receded far enough for me to want to rise from the comfort of the bed. I heard Merlin’s nails clicking. I heard a door open to the accompaniment of Merlin’s glad barking.
I pictured him outside, trying to bite snowflakes, leaping and twisting his big frame in an awkward return to puppy-hood. I imagined him sniff-casing the yard, leaving “sign” on every likely bush and stone.
The door to the back hall opened, letting in a billow of frigid air. The major entered, his hands occupied with a tray, adroitly kicking the door closed with a deft foot.
“Is there anything that dog doesn’t know about you?”
“Hmmm?”
“He’s been sitting in front of the door for the last hour,” the major explained as I struggled to a sitting position so he could put the tray on my lap.
“Tea?” I cried in horror.
“Better for your stomach after last night. Yes, Merlin told me in plain language you were awake. He considered he could be relieved of sentry-go and he wanted out.”
I grinned at the major.
“Dad always said Merlin had more sense than most sergeants even if he didn’t take to K-9 training.”
The major raised his left eyebrow questioningly. The right one did not move. His face, plainly visible in the daylight, did not seem so grotesque. I suppose you can get used to anything to the point where you don’t even see it.
“Yes,” I went on, stirring plenty of sugar in the tea to take the curse off it, “Merlin chickened out of K-9 training. He wouldn’t attack.”
” ‘Damn all sugar in our tea?’ ” the major asked, pointedly watching the teaspoonfuls I ladled into the cup. “So they discharged him, huh?”