Chapter Forty-Three
The Knife That Cuts Too Deeply
General Malcolm Reed
The wheelchair.
I hate that fucking wheelchair with a passion. It represents everything thathas been done to me, everything that has been taken from me: my strength, my independence, even my capacity to defend myself.
But Commodore Tucker says I can't manage the distance we need to go, even with the Zimmer frame. He calls this a 'walker', as if I am almost a toddler just gearing up for my first steps, but that name for it seems to be an Americanism, because Liz also used it until one day when I gave her it in the neck for infantilising me; so it's the wheelchair or a shopping trolley, and on the whole I think the wheelchair is slightly less injurious to my dignity.
"It's time you make yourself useful," he says, with a cheer that makes me want to grind my teeth together. Besides which, the words leave me cold with fear and suspicion. However much I may be beginning to trust him, (and I think I sort of do, just a little more than I did), that word 'useful' will always set me on edge now, however harmless the context it's used in. Still, I try to control the slight, almost reflexive shiver that runs through me, and try to relax and feel less like a condemned prisoner being delivered to the gallows.
My amiable bête noir delivers me to the kitchen, where it seems that a more industrial than commercial operation is taking place. There I meet Mama (Elaine) and Daddy (Charles II) Tucker, the commodore's sister Rachel and his brother Bert. I'm more relieved than I ought to be to find Miguel there, too; the Tuckers are large and loud and strong, and I find them far more overwhelming at close quarters than I'm prepared to admit after so long of being effectively isolated.
Not that I'm going to admit that. It would feel too much like an admission of weakness and I Admit Nothing.
"This operation only runs if everybody pulls his weight," Tucker tells me, still wearingly cheerful. "We all have to wear a lot of hats, an' Miguel tells me you're strong enough to start earnin' your keep. I'm sure Mama can find somethin' for you to do that'll double as physiotherapy for your wrist."
He expects me to look happy? Being expected to work in a bloody kitchen?
Now that I'm recovering, I'm starting to feel boredom. I'm used to being active when I'm well – as part of the Triad, there wasn't a second of any available hour when I didn't have to be ready to respond to any emerging situation. There weren't many nights when I got a full seven hours' sleep, and I thrived on constant stimulation, both mentally and physically. I want to be up and doing; honing my thought processes, recovering my manual dexterity.
But not in a kitchen.
OK. I'm not one-third of the effectively most powerful trio in the Empire any more. I'm not in a position to lift one eyebrow and have the lot of them taken out and shot without even a pretence at a trial. But this feels like I'm having my nose rubbed in that unpalatable fact – with violence.
Time was when every last damn one of them would shit themselves if I locked eyes with them, not just glance at me as if I'm something not very interesting and then just carry on with whatever they're doing. But as it is, that's what they do, apart from the 'Hi' or just a nod when they're introduced to me.
'Hi' or a nod. Lucifer, how the Wheel of Fortune turns.
So I don't make any attempt to look happy. I know I'm behaving like a petulant child and I don't care. I don't give a shit if they think I'm an arsehole. As a matter of fact, I don't give a toss what any of them think. As long as Trip Tucker 'wants me for something' they can't kill me, so that's the bottom line. Even short of that, doing me any significant harm would presumably set back this plan of his, so I'm safe enough from that too.
"I don't exactly see myself being particularly useful as a scullery maid in my current condition," I say sullenly.
But even the commodore is apparently expected to chip in and help, and therefore so am I. I am promptly introduced to a tub of clean water and a second tub of water holding a mound of potatoes large enough to have lasted my mother a month, and she cooked for a family of four. It must be at least the entire contents of a two-and-a-half kilo sack, and from it, I begin to get some idea of the size of Tucker's staff here in the bunker; there's easily enough spuds here to feed more than a dozen people well and allow for seconds.
Still, I've been brought here to be useful, so useful I shall be. Pleasant? No. Sociable? No. But useful – yes, siree, I can do useful. Lucifer knows I've had enough bloody practice at that recently.
The peeler isn't much different from the one Mum used to use. It takes me a couple of swipes to get the hang of not removing strips of skin as well as strips of potato peel, and then I set to, grimly silent. Around me the chatter flows unheeded, a cheerful background irritation which I steadfastly ignore.
I don't know if anyone speaks to me. And I don't care. Frankly, I'd be just as happy if they regarded me as nothing more than an automated appliance and left me alone to do my work of mechanically grabbing a potato from the tub of dirty water, stripping it of its skin, and transferring it to the tub of clean water, over and over again.
At first it's easy enough; peeling potatoes isn't exactly weight-lifting. But as I work my way through the mountain of tubers, I find my hands getting tired and clumsy. One of the few exercises my imprisonment on that bio-bed allowed was the flexion and extension of my hands, so they're not nearly as bad as the rest of me, but even so the muscles have lost some of their strength and endurance. My wrist aches, and I'm bored beyond bearing, which doesn't help.
I have a couple of narrow escapes and try to concentrate, to make my weary fingers stronger and defter than I have the resources for. I manage for a little while, and I'm just thinking to myself with relief that I've only a few more of the bloody things to go when my luck runs out. The peeler slips, I'm too sluggish to jerk the swipe aside properly, and the blade sinks into the ball of my thumb.
"Fucking bollocks!"
A small, startled silence falls.
Across the table from me, Mama Tucker lifts her head from contemplating some big lump of dough or something she's been rolling out for the last five minutes and says, mildly enough, "General Reed, I think language like that is a little more vulgar than the situation justifies."
I'm bleeding into the dirty water, the cut stings, and I'm having Commodore Fucking Tucker's mother tell me off like a five-year-old. Momentarily I allow myself to picture her being marched to an Agony Booth, and wonder what she'd say then. I don't think she'd lecture me by the time she got out.
No siree Bob, she wouldn't.
But the commodore is very family-minded, and very fond of his Mama. He's still wearing that bloody cuff, so telling her what I really think might not be the best survival strategy.
"Daft old cow," I mutter – mostly to myself, really – as I look around for something to dry my hand so I can assess the damage properly.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a hefty knife hits the butcher-block table inches from my bleeding hand.
The loud thwack it makes as the blade pierces the wood is startling enough to make me jump. From the angle at which it's leaning, the direction the handle is pointing, and my assessment of the other occupants of the room, I can guess who threw it, but I silently curse myself for not having seen it coming. Once upon a time I could have spotted it in my peripheral vision and caught it in mid-flight without interrupting my search for a towel; now I'm lucky I didn't need to duck out of its way, because I'd have been skewered.
Of course, I'm not the only one who stops what he is doing when Charles Tucker II shoves himself away from the sink and approaches me with all the deliberation of a wolf closing in on a wounded deer. As the others wait for the drama to unfold, I push myself away from the table, instinctively trying to get myself into clear space to face whatever's coming; I feel the wild dread of being trapped again pour over me, but I don't turn because I have no escape routes.
I swallow hard in a dry throat, suddenly remembering that I am not – at the moment – someone to be feared, and from everything I have surmised about Tuckers in general, they are not usually fearful people anyway. Though time was when I could have taught them to be, and though I may have had a promise of good behaviour extracted from me as regards Miguel, the rest of them can be regarded as fair game. And will be, if necessary.
If I survive that long, of course.
'Daddy' Tucker is the mirror image of his son, right down to that odd birthmark in his cheek, or at least he would be if not for Commodore Tucker's radiation-damaged face. Oh, and Daddy is a good fifteen centimetres taller and thirty-five kilos heavier than the commodore, and none of it is the soft bulk that a man his age normally starts to put on as he slows down in his golden years, either.
He doesn't try to use his size to intimidate me; he doesn't need to. I suspect it happens naturally so often that he has come to expect it as a given, and as much as I would like to say that he doesn't scare me, it would be a lie. In my current condition, I doubt I could give him a run for his money in a shouting match, let alone survive any kind of physical confrontation with this great bear of a man. So I stay very quiet and still in my wheelchair as he comes up and squats beside me.
Even with him down on my level, I feel as if he could squash me like an insect.
"Daddy…" the commodore begins warningly.
"Shut it, Trip," the older man commands quietly, and 'Trip' shuts it, just like that.
"You know who I am, don't you, son?" he asks with terrible gentleness.
I nod silently, staring straight ahead at the knife – which, I notice, is somewhat sturdier and has a completely different handle to any of the kitchen cutlery – as if even the sound of my voice might be enough to tip him from angry but controlled to outright psychotic.
"Where I come from, it's rude not to look at your elders when they're talkin' to you, an' downright disrespectful not to speak your answer when they ask you a question."
I swallow audibly, and decide I'll wait till later to be embarrassed by that, and I turn to look at the big man. It's an effort to hold his gaze, but I manage it; at least his is human, and not bright blue.
"Yes, sir, I know who you are." I can't remember the last time I called anyone 'sir', but I don't dare not do it now. And back when I was young, calling a male adult 'sir' was an indicator of my polite manners, not of my opinion of the male in question. I hold on to that reflection. It helps me to speak civilly rather than allowing the fear I feel to seep into my voice.
Furthermore, I may be weak and I may be pretty well defenceless, but I'm a Reed. Reeds die with their heads high, and so I keep mine up and face him.
"Good," he nods, and still talking in that slow velvet voice, he points to each of the others in the kitchen, one at a time, and says, "Then you know that Trip an' Bert are my sons, Rachel is my daughter, an' Miguel is as much my son as any of the boys I fathered.
"Now those four, I've taught 'em the best I could. They're grown an' independent, an' they're not my responsibility anymore. They want my help with anything, all they gotta do is ask, but I'm not buttin' in uninvited. So if they got a problem with you, they'll handle it when an' how they see fit. Unless they ask me to do somethin' about it, I won't interfere, understand?"
"Yes, sir," I say quietly. I feel like I'm back in my ordnance disposal days, defusing an explosive with a mercury switch for a trigger. Handle it carefully, move it smoothly, and keep it level, and everything will be fine. One wrong move, though – jolt it, jar it, tilt it or tip it – and the liquid metal flows over the contacts, completing the circuit. Then it's BOOM! Look, Mum, no hands! if you're lucky.
"Elaine, on the other hand, is my wife," he says, indicating the one person he has so far left out. She has turned away from the pastry board and the dough to join the rest of the company in watching this exchange between her husband and me, and the knowledge that my coming humiliation is to be made public Tucker property runs up and down my spine like a hot itch; it sends darts of fire into a memory I've buried so deep that even I barely remember it, and the cool white shapes of windflowers crystallise around the image of him on my retinas. "More'n forty years ago, we made some promises to each other. Now, I don't know what it's like where you come from, but as far as I'm concerned, 'to love, honor, an' cherish,' includes not lettin' little shits like you run her down. Is that clear?"
"Perfectly, sir."
He continues staring stonily at me, as if expecting something more, but for the life of me – and I get the feeling that particular figure of speech might just be a bit more literal than it usually is – I don't know what else to say or do. The knowledge that my grip on sanity is slipping is no comfort; the haft of the knife is pulsing redly in my peripheral sight, as if calling me to make a grab for it, and while the sane side of me knows that I wouldn't stand a snowball's chance of getting to it before Charles Tucker II does, the other half doesn't care.
My pride is being lacerated. It feels as if I've been thrown into a vat of acid. My sheer helplessness roils in my gut like a poison I can't vomit up.
Our dear commodore wants me for something, that's plain. So theoretically he won't let Tucker Senior kill me. But short of that, it seems that public humiliation in front of his entire family is something he has no objection to allowing me to endure.
It would appear he values his father's opinion more than he does mine. This may well prove rather unfortunate next time he tries to make me 'co-operative'...
It feels as if the whole room is balanced on the edge of that knife with me, all of them holding their collective breath anticipating whatever happens next. I feel my heart rate accelerating and the air seems to be growing thin. It's a wonder my physician doesn't step in and scold the elder Tucker for stressing me.
Whatever is happening here, it certainly is not a stare-down. A stare-down requires an act of defiance and a simultaneous act of subjugation. This is just the Tucker paterfamilias watching me, waiting for something I can't give because I don't know what it is, and me, knowing better than to look away before I am dismissed.
At this point, my mind gives way.
It feels like something fractures, literally, inside my head. I'm no longer inside a busy kitchen. The air I suck into my lungs is sour with fear-sweat and pain-sweat, and the rank odour of wolves.
–HungerDiePainFearDieHungerWantNeedLive–
I stare up into implacable blue eyes. I want to curse, I want to spit defiance, but more than that I want to live. And for that, I must acknowledge defeat.
I can hardly move. I'm sick and weak with hunger, and the pain shoots up my leg from my broken paw in ragged, rhythmic pulses in time to my heartbeat. But letting myself fall is easier than trying to keep myself upright like a man, and so I do it, and roll over on the hard ground, whimpering my submission and exposing my vulnerable belly so that I will be allowed to live, allowed to eat, allowed to survive.
The sounds around me make no sense to my broken brain at first. They are voices, but they are the voices of wolves, and only slowly do I begin to pick out words. They are loud, and by the tone probably ones of shock and concern, but since they are not uttered by the one person on whom my survival depends they pass through my awareness, leaving no mark upon it.
The man who stares down at me cowering and begging for mercy stares from behind a superimposed furry mask.
I have surrendered. I do not try to understand or to impose conditions. I am Pack now. I will be obedient.
The deep voice comes from behind the mask. "This is my mess. I'll clean it up."
I can only whimper like a frightened puppy as he lifts me effortlessly back into the chair and starts giving orders, and it becomes abundantly clear who's in charge now. Commodore Tucker may be one of the most powerful men in the Imperial Fleet, if not the Empire, but Charles is Head of the Tucker clan. "Trip, finish washin' the dishes for me, an' then help your mama."
"Look, Dad, maybe I should..."
"Miguel, if you're here doin' what you've been asked to do, I'll know where to find you if I need you." Looking around, he asks his eldest son, "Where can I take him?"
"The dining room is safe, but the only way you can leave there is to come back through the kitchen."
"Fine. Bert, fetch me my apple jack an' a couple of glasses."
"Dad, he really shouldn't..."
"Miguel, so help me God, son... Look, we all know you're a brilliant an' dedicated doctor, but it's not your medicine he needs right now. Sometimes, treatin' a man like a patient just makes him sicker. Is one drink gonna hurt him?"
"No, sir."
"Then one, an' only one, drink it will be." Bert hands Charles a quart jar of an amber liquid and a pair of whiskey glasses. I whine softly as he tucks them in beside me.
I am bizarrely aware of my animal behaviour, and yet unable to stop it. It feels quite simply as though I have forgotten how to react in any human way. I understand now that the people around us are human, and I know who they are and understand their language, but my own humanity is as far beyond my reach as it was back in the laboratory, when the regimen began that was to drag me, biting and snarling, back to some version of normality.
Through the silence, I am wheeled into the dining room, and the door is closed behind me and my new alpha.
My wheelchair is parked up carefully beside a green leather sofa along one wall. He fetches over one of the dining chairs, puts it in front of me and places the two whisky glasses on it. Then he pours a generous measure of the amber liquid into each.
I look at them silently. I cannot eat or drink without permission.
He picks one up and hands it to me. I wrap my paws around it and glance at him.
He nods, picking up his own glass.
The tumbler is quite narrow, and I am afraid of dropping it and earning punishment. So I try to be as careful as I can as I tilt it so that the amber liquid inside runs within reach of my tongue.
Over the months I grew deft at lapping, but that was from pools and streams. The edge of the glass knocks against my teeth as I try to manoeuvre my mouth to get better access for my tongue, and the small sound scares me. I do not know what may draw down this new alpha's wrath upon me.
"Malcolm." His eyes are steady beyond the top of his own glass.
I blink. If he wishes to call me Malcolm, that is what I will answer to. Unfortunately I have no tail, or the very tip of it would wag propitiatingly under my belly.
"Put that down just a minute."
I have managed to get a little of the liquid onto my tongue and it tastes good. But I know better than to disobey.
Submit and survive.
Carefully I set down the glass. I let my tongue flick lightly around my lips, so that I appear grateful and hopeful.
"Come here." He points to the floor beside him.
However weak and tired and afraid I may be, and however confused I am, resistance is not an option. Hoping that if I am prompt enough I will be allowed to drink the rest of the liquid afterwards, I slide out of the wheelchair again to my knees.
Direct eye contact is a challenge that I dare not issue. I flicker nervous glances up at him, looking down again immediately to show that I am simply waiting for orders and trying to understand my situation. His gaze does not seem hostile, merely thoughtful and a little troubled.
The movement of his hand frightens me, though I control my instinctive jerk away; if he wishes to touch me I must allow it.
He reaches out slowly, and I freeze as he cups his massive hand around the back of my head. It had not occurred to me before, but it darts into my mind that he may have a very specific form of domination in mind, now that we are alone and I am submissive.
Submit and survive.
But he does not begin to pull me in close. Instead, his hand begins to stroke my hair, a steady, rhythmic gesture that I find at first acutely unnerving. But he continues with it until presently it becomes not just unthreatening, but actually surprisingly soothing.
He doesn't speak for some time, but when he does his voice is low and quiet. "I'll tell you now, General, when Trip first told us the risk he was takin' to get you out of the trouble you were in, I didn't understand it. 'Cause you did some pretty awful shit when you had the power, an' I won't soon forget watchin' that guy die by inches with you cuttin' him to death. I don't think any man with a decent bone in his body wasn't sickened by what you did that day."
Thoughts ricochet and collide in my brain, fracture and re-form like the colours in a kaleidoscope. White and green, green and white, smelling of crushed grass and sweat and fear. Memory is welling up from the depths like vomit.
"When I came here I expected to find a monster," the deep voice continues. "A broken monster, but a monster just the same. I'll be honest, I thought Trip was just plain crazy tryin' to turn you."
They held me down, pinned by the wrists and ankles so I couldn't struggle. I was so naïve I didn't even realise why they were stripping me, apart from having a laugh. God help me, I found out soon enough.
"But now you're here an' I'm not so sure about you. You're broken, right enough, but I'm startin' to think you were broken long before you got the power you did. You were broken, an' you've used the power ever since to make sure no-one will ever hurt you that much ever again."
My forehead is resting against his muscular thigh, and I am not at all sure how it came to be there. I hardly recognise and cannot control the sounds that burst out of my throat, but the vomit is spewing into the light on a torrent of sobs and snarls.
I have never told anyone, not even Alpha, what happened to me that day back in the grounds of Nottingham Old Hall. In my right mind, I would probably never have allowed it close enough to the surface of my thoughts to be articulated, let alone spoken of. But suspended above the abyss of madness as I am now, the floodgates open.
Charles Tucker II now holds my sanity in his cupped palm like a soap-bubble.
He does not interrupt, or attempt to check the flow. When I pause for breath, or in the attempt to pull the flayed edges of skin back over my exposed lacerations, he quietly repeats what I have told him, shorn of emotion. Names, acts, sensations, words, reactions – everything I've managed so successfully to bury, even from myself. Sometimes the rhythmic movement of his hand pauses just fractionally, but it starts again and goes on, until finally I have retched out everything that has poisoned me ever since and simply hang there, shuddering and spent.
There is a long pause, while his hand goes on stroking. Finally, "Lift your head, son."
I'm not sure if I have the strength. My knees are literally shaking with the effort of simply supporting my pelvis, and there's no way I have the power left now in my upper body to kneel upright, but I must obey an order, and so I lift my forearms and place them gingerly on the thigh at either side of my head. Using them for leverage, I raise my face to view, a sodden, sorry, snotty mess for his inspection.
From somewhere he produces a clean handkerchief and wipes it. The instruction to blow my nose takes me back more years than I care to remember, but the simple, tender action is a healing one, offering me a fragile lifeline back to humanity.
He clearly understands that my strength is at an end. He lifts me again, but not back into my wheelchair. Instead he places me on the sofa beside him, and hands me my glass.
I go to place my paws around it, but he stops me gently. "Take it like the man you are, son."
I search around the fragments of thought available to me, turning them over carefully to inspect them. Finally I find the action that is required. It's probably just as well that the glass is only half full, because between my mental and physical exhaustion, my hand is trembling, my control of it only tenuous. But I manage to get the tumbler to my mouth.
Instincts war.
Finally I manage to tip it.
My tongue is trying to be in the right place and do the right things, but isn't sure what these are. My hand doesn't help much either, sending far too much liquid into the fray at once. Frankly it's a wonder I don't spit and dribble and choke on the strong, apple-flavoured alcohol, but somehow I gulp most of it down, and only some escapes, dripping down my chin like 80-proof drool.
The burn of the applejack in my stomach steadies me. In a couple of increasingly better co-ordinated gulps I get the rest of it down, though the way the world begins to swoop around me is a reminder that dropping this lot onto an empty stomach probably wasn't the cleverest thing I ever did.
With a shaky sigh, I lower the now empty glass and hold it against my belly. For want of anything better to do in the void in which I find myself, I study the incisions in it, running my thumb idly along them. The man beside me is drinking his own alcohol, though in smaller and much better-managed swallows, and the silence is oddly companionable.
Maybe later I will begin to feel and have to deal with the ramifications of what I have said and done. But for now I feel strangely cleansed, almost as though I have indeed vomited the curdled contents of a sick stomach; though a sick soul may be far less easy to empty and treat.
When Charles has finished his drink he takes my glass from me and sets both of them back on the dining chair. Then, with a huge simplicity, he turns to me, takes my face between his hands, and kisses me on the forehead.
Before I can deal with this, almost before I can comprehend it, he pulls me in and presses my face into his shoulder.
"I know you've a family of your own, son," he says quietly. "But there's never a family so big there's no room for another in it, an' if the time comes when you want to be one of us, the invitation's there.
"An' I'll say one more thing. I'm guessin' you've said things here today that you've never been able to say to anyone before. If that's the case, it must have been almost more than you could bear to do that, an' I'm glad for your sake you've finally found a way to let out all that dreadful pain you've been carryin' all these years from what those bastards did to you.
"It probably wouldn't hurt for you to talk it over with Ginny someday, but you'll do that in your own time, or not, whatever suits you. Either way, I swear on everythin' I hold dear, there's no-one else will ever hear a word of anythin' you've confided in me. You can rest easy on that."
At first my hands are flattened against his broad chest, defensively holding us apart. But slowly they separate and creep around his body, and I sink into the hug.
I have embraced many bodies in my time – mostly by way of holding them still while I used them. Now and again, particularly recently, I've experienced some hugs that took me back to my childhood, and some that offered a strange extension of my affection for Liz. But none to date have enveloped me in quite the same sense of protection and peace as I experience now.
He does not move. He waits patiently until I draw back, and pats me lightly on the shoulder to show that he accepts my wish to put some distance between us again.
"Reckon we ought to go back to the others before Trip an' Miguel start organisin' a rescue party," he says with a slow smile. "But before we go, there's one thing we need to get settled."
"My disrespect to your wife," I admit, low-voiced.
A nod. "I'm sure your daddy wouldn't have stood for you or your sister not respectin' his lady wife, an' I won't stand by an' see anyone not respectin' mine. Son, general, or the Empress herself, if they come into my house they'll treat her as she deserves to be treated, or I'll know the reason why."
"I was wrong. I'm sorry."
"I appreciate you sayin' that, son, but it's not me you need to say it to. Now, General, I'll give you a hand to get into that chair o' yours an' then we'll go back into the kitchen an' start over, with a better understandin' between us from now on."
He's perfectly right, of course. I accept his help to get back into my wheelchair, and he pushes me back into the kitchen, where faces turn as if expecting to see black eyes and bruises. No doubt they see evidence on mine that the intervening time has not been easy on me, but they're tactful enough not to say anything about it.
I was in the wrong. As a Reed, I have to keep my head up and act in the manner in which I was raised.
Clearing my throat, I turn to his wife.
"Ma'am…"
"You can call her Mrs. Tucker," I'm told gruffly.
"Yes, sir," I agree with a glance in his direction. "Mrs. Tucker, I am genuinely sorry for my foul language and appalling behaviour. It's bad enough to be sullen in good company, but to be disrespectful of you is inexcusable. I hope you can forgive me."
"Of course I do, sweetheart," she says immediately, and, I must admit, with more warmth and sincerity than I've any right to expect. "Trip hasn't shared any of the details, but we all know you've been through a really rough patch. Charlie won't admit it, but he acts like a bear with a sore head when he's under the weather. An' if Mrs. Tucker's a mite formal for you, call me Elaine, if you want. I'm givin' you my permission, an' not even Charlie Tucker will argue with that, if he wants to eat tonight."
The Tucker in question grunts at that and pulls his knife out of the table. I see him slip it into his sleeve as he goes back to the sink where he was washing dishes.
"Now, you seem to have hurt yourself," she continues. "Will you let me have a look?"
"I can do that, Mama," Miguel says, taking a step or two in our direction.
"You just finish shreddin' that cabbage for coleslaw, Miguel," she says sharply. "I'll bet he's just sick to death of your hoverin' as it is. The day I can't handle a little kitchen first aid, you can put me in the old folks' home, but until then, I am the boss in any room that holds my family and a cookstove."
"I-It's fine, really," I assure her, tucking my injured thumb into my fist and shoving it down in the corner between my hip and the side of my wheelchair.
The look she gives me, while completely nonthreatening, is no less stern and businesslike than her husband's oppressive glare. Knowing when I am defeated, I comply immediately.
"It doesn't hurt that much," I try telling her.
"Maybe not now, but if you don't wash those potato starch crystals out of that wound, it'll be sore for days," she says. "Besides, you're bleedin', an' I'm not havin' your blood in my scalloped potatoes. Trip can finish peelin' an' slicin' them when he's done makin' the dressin' for the slaw."
She fetches a large bowl of warm water and has me soak my hand while she brings out the first aid kit and prepares a plaster with some antibiotic ointment. Then she dons sterile gloves, adds a squirt of antiseptic soap to the water and gently washes my cut. When she is satisfied that all the potato starch must be out of the wound, she has me place my hand on a clean, dry towel that she has laid out for me and pats the area around the cut dry with a gauze pad. She uses a cotton swab to apply some anaesthetic first aid cream, and finally applies the plaster.
Then, seemingly without a thought, she places a quick, motherly kiss on it.
I'm so surprised my jaw drops open and I grunt softly. Commodore Tucker, who is fortunately the only one in a position to see what she's just done, gasps quietly.
She spares him only the most perfunctory of glances, and then looks me square in the eye.
"Sorry about that, General," she tells me. "After six children an' four grandbabies, so far, kissin' it better has become such a part of the routine I guess I do it without thinkin'."
She favours me with a gentle smile, and all I can think to do is smile back. "No need to apologise," I tell her. "It feels much better now. Thank you."
Now that I feel more comfortable – if chastened – I would like to stay here rather than be wheeled back to the lonely, boring isolation of my room. Obviously peeling potatoes is now out of the frame, so I ask if there is anything else I could do.
Mrs. Tucker thinks for a moment, and then asks me to fold the napkins, listing off the people who will be dining with us. There will be twelve of us there, myself included (rather to my surprise): the commodore, Mr. and Mrs. Tucker, Bert, Miguel, Rachel, Liz, Amanda Cole, me, and three unknowns whom Mrs. Tucker refers to merely as 'the boys'.
Rachel wheels me into the dining room and while she sets the dishes out, I sit at one end of the table and begin folding the crisp linen squares into elegant bird-of-paradise flowers.
She stops suddenly, staring at me.
I'm still a little wary of strangers, even Tucker strangers, so I freeze. "What? Have I done something wrong?"
She takes a step forward, studying my handiwork. "No, but we usually just make a little pocket to hold the silverware."
"Ah." I start to unfold the one I'm working on, but she puts out a hand and says quickly, "Don't change anything! Mama'll like it."
I have to admit, if only to myself, that the thought of making Mrs. Tucker smile pleases me.
"I just wouldn't have expected you to…well…"
"What? Have any appreciation for elegance, grace, and style?" I finish a little ironically when she trails off.
"Well, that, an', honestly, the knowledge an' skill to make somethin' like that," she answers ingenuously.
For some reason this sparks a memory.
"It's something my mother taught me," I say, not sure why I want to share part of myself with her; perhaps confiding is dangerously addictive, though this is hardly on a par with what I revealed to her father earlier. "We moved around a lot when I was a child, because of my father's work, and one of her ways of making friends in the neighbourhood was to throw themed dinner parties or invite the lady neighbours to a fancy luncheon. It was my job to fold the napkins. One time, she threw a garden party. I learned to make these, and rosebuds, blooming roses, water lilies, tulips, daylilies and something that resembled an apple blossom."
I laugh then, when another memory comes back to me.
"When we spent a year in Australia, she joined the opera society. They held a dinner meeting at our house. I did my best to create the Sydney Opera House, but it looked more like a defective armadillo."
"So, it was an almost perfect likeness," she quips, with that same mischievous grin I've sometimes seen on her brother.
"Oh, most definitely…"
She goes back to the table-setting and I go back to the napkins, but the silence between us is comfortable.
It will need long hours in solitude and probably more than one conversation with Doctor East for me to even begin to process what has happened, but this has been an extraordinary evening.
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