Chapter 12

Kid opened his mouth to talk, but stopped when he felt Louise's body tremble. "Are you cold, Lou?" he asked, rubbing her bare arms up and down.

"A bit," she admitted softly.

"Let me get another blanket then," Kid offered, and easing out of bed, he walked to the wardrobe where there were extra blankets. Then he spread it over the length and width of the bed, making sure that Louise was warm and cozy. "Better?" he asked as he lay back down beside her.

"Much better… now," Louise replied, wrapping her arms around his torso. Then without a warning, she leaned across and joined her lips to his. Her touch was soft and tentative, but as Kid invited her to deepen the kiss, she let herself get carried away. Hunger and thirst for each other was evident in the way they responded and felt. The kisses continued passionately, ardently, as they moved at the familiar pace of their hearts. Lou's hand snuck under his long john top and eagerly explored his bare skin while Kid stroked the curves shaping her hips. Without stopping adoring her lips, Kid rolled Louise over and had her lie on her back.

Knowing that he had to force himself to make a break now, or there would be no stopping, he whispered breathlessly. "Lou…" His lips softly brushing hers as he spoke, "Do you really want me to carry on? You know I long for you, and if we keep going, I don't think I'll be able to stop."

"And we agreed to talk," she said softly, her expression denoting she wished she had bitten her tongue when she had voiced that promise. "I… I want you… so much."

Kid smiled, caressing her face softly. "Me too. It's been almost ten years since the last time. But Lou, I really want you to know who this man you're ready to join your body and soul to really is. I've changed in many ways from the boy you first met, and most of the changes are due to everything I lived during the war. Maybe when you hear my story, you'll change your mind again, and be willing to file for a divorce."

Lou did not like the sound of his words. It was true that too many years had gone by, but she felt in her heart she knew Kid, and nothing he could say would make her think less of him.

"I'm ready to listen," Lou finally said.

Kid shifted and moved from his position hovering over her, and rested on his side. Louise snuggled closer to him, wrapped her arms around his strong torso, and snuck her right leg between his. "Oh Lou you're killing me?"

"Are you uncomfortable?" Louise asked, feigning ignorance about what his comment meant.

"Too comfortable… so much that I might forget all that about getting reacquainted. Please just don't move too much."

Lou grinned, and as their amused eyes met, they both burst out laughing, clear, natural laughter that reverberated in the whole room. Lou realized that it was the first time in a long time she felt good about herself, and the black clouds haunting her mind were not so dark tonight.

As laughter died down, Lou kept smiling while she said, "I'm here, Kid. Talk to me."

Kid's merry expression suddenly vanished, and his eyes adopted a strange far away expression. "In April 1863 I had already seen so much death and cruelty that…" Kid sighed, and raked his fingers through his hair almost frantically. "Blood and death had become part of our existence as much as eating or sleeping. Your words in that letter accompanied me every day, and I always woke up in the morning muttering, 'You were so right, Lou.' "

"I'm so sorry," Louise voiced, caressing and smoothing the tense lines forming on his forehead.

"A few months before I'd been made the captain of my unit, something I took little pride in," Kid continued. "My men respected me, but I could hardly share the feeling."

"Why, Kid?"

"I… I felt as if I were in hell and fighting a war that was not mine anymore," he mumbled. Again his silence dominated the room, and Lou could see the emotions and the pain battle in his head as his face was a clear mirror of his insides. Shaking his head very slowly, he said, "Oh Lou, I've killed so many men… men who surely had families waiting for them at home. I've left so many children orphaned, so many wives widowed, so many families scarred. How could I feel respect for myself? How?"

Tears shone in Lou's eyes as she heard her husband. Never before had he sounded so distraught, and Louise felt moved by his pain and own fight. "That's war, Kid. You can't blame yourself because you were just doing your duty… maybe a cruel and unfair one, but a duty anyway. None of those men would have hesitated to do the same against you, and now "I" would be a widow." Lou's voice trembled and her body shivered as her own words made her relive the horrible months during which she had believed Kid was gone from this life.

Kid refrained himself from saying that for a long time he had thought it might have been better if he had been killed. Letting out another sigh, he continued, "In fact, by then I hadn't even started to taste what war was really like. That was just the beginning, and the worst was about to come."

"Tell me about it, Kid."

The Southerner nodded. "That day the view before us was a hellish sight. The sounds of gunfire deafened the cries of the hundreds of men finding their deaths. We were in Spotsylvania County, near Chancellorsville."

"I read about it before I even got that horrible letter," Lou whispered. "The newspaper said it was a big defeat for the union, and thousands of men had died."

"There were too many casualties on both sides," Kid continued. "You can't even start to imagine what it was like. A carpet of corpses covered the bleeding fields at the end of every day in that week, and the smell of burned skin and blood was so powerful that it remained in your nostrils almost as a constant reminder of what kind of creatures we've become." Kid paused and, noticing the pallor in Lou's countenance, he grimaced. "I'm sorry, honey," he said, softly stroking her face with his calloused hand. "There are things that should have remained there and be kept here," Kid added, tapping a finger on his head.

"No! I want to know…" Lou exclaimed. "Don't keep anything from me, please."

Kid nodded reluctantly. "All right."

"What happened to you, Kid? What happened to my husband?"

Kid breathed out, trying to muster the courage to relive a part in his personal history he would rather forget. "The battle had been going on for days. My unit was scattered over an area of woodland. The enemy…" Kid paused, and rectified. "The others were too close. Bullets whizzed past too near, and we tried to defend our position. Jack Martin was a few feet from where I knelt behind some bushes. Jack was a reliable fella, and we had struck some kind of friendship almost by chance. A few months before he had received a letter from his family. Since he had very little schooling, he asked me to read it to him. It was from his mother telling him about his wife's death. Apparently she had been suffering some heart disease for years."

"Oh Kid."

"Yes, too sad," he continued. "Naturally, Jack crumbled down, bawling like a child. He was a big man, twice my size, and it was heartbreaking to see him so lost. I did what I could to offer him some inadequate comfort. At some point, I also ended up telling him my story with you. Jack was convinced you were just bluffing, and would be waiting for me. I guess he was right."

Lou gave him a small smile. "What happened to Jack, Kid?"

"Among the sounds of bullets, I heard a loud explosion. We were used to the thunder of cannons in the distance, but this sudden blast felt too close. My eyes moved to the direction the explosion seemed to come from, and realized I was right. Men were shouting, yelling, broken cries that reached my ears unintelligibly. My experience told me we had to pull out. I gave the order as loud as possible to get my men to hear me, and when I turned to look at Jack, he was not where I'd last seen him. He was lying on the ground. A bullet had hit him, and blood profusely seeped through the wound in his stomach."

"Oh Kid…"

"I couldn't leave him there as he weakly demanded I did. He was a big man. I don't know how I did it, but I managed to lift him over my shoulders, much in the same way I did that time I found you wounded so many years ago. Of course I was younger then, and you didn't weigh nearly as much as Jack." The sweet memory of the beginning of his love story with Lou mixed with the bitter fruits of war brought about a strange kind of expression on his face, which was half-way between a sad smile and a scowl. "I managed to carry Jack for longer than I thought, and when I didn't have a single ounce of energy in my body, I had to put him back on the ground."

Kid stopped and closed his eyes in a futile attempt to block the terrible images bombarding him. "And what happened?" Lou's voice managed to penetrate the haze dominating his mind.

Kid opened his eyes again. "A union scouting party fell over us. I shot at one of them, but I couldn't do much. Before I could react, one of the men knocked me out with the butt of his rifle, and I passed out. I never saw Jack again. I was told after quite a long time that he was found dead just where I had left him."

"I'm so sorry, Kid. So sorry," Lou exclaimed, hugging him close.

"Yes, me too," he muttered. "When the war finished, I decided to go and pay my respects to his parents. It wasn't easy. They had lost their only son to the war. Jack's two children were living with them, so in a way I think both the kids and the adults were filling a vacuum for each other."

Louise nodded in agreement. "At least those poor children have somebody to care for them," Lou muttered, feeling in her very soul how excruciating being an orphan had been for her. She sighed, and added, "It was then that they sent you to that war prison, and everybody thought you were dead?"

Kid nodded slowly. "I was there for almost a year, but it felt like ten. If being in the battlefield was terrible, this place was just indescribable. It was there where I reached my limit, and I sank to the lowest trenches of my soul. To say the conditions in that place were hell is a clear understatement and so far from the true reality that it could even be a lie. Every day men died by the dozen from starvation and disease, and I feared that I would find my end in those sordid dungeons. I wasn't afraid of death, but at night I prayed to God I remain alive… I… I couldn't leave this world without seeing you again. Life couldn't be so cruel. That became my personal battle. It was me against the rotten world, and I became an animal. I used every trick to resist, and like a vulture I fought my own brothers for a miserable chunk of bread. I'd even have killed anybody for those crumbs. Eating every day was important to keep alive, but nobody could do anything against disease. In the end, despite my efforts to keep a grip on life, I came down with some powerful fevers, and felt sick. I remember seeing your beautiful face in my feverish dreams, and I cried… cried bitterly as I thought this was my end while you were so far away. I regretted leaving you with my whole heart, and trading all the years, months, days, and hours I could have spent with you for a miserable death."

"But you're here now, Kid!" Lou exclaimed, cutting him off as he was getting too upset. "We are together now, and that's what matters. You said it yourself. We need to leave the past behind, and forget about that year… those horrible years."

Kid rubbed his tired, wet eyes with his balled hands. "I still can't believe I survived," he muttered. "I'd have died for sure if they hadn't accepted that exchange. Prisoners' swapping had stopped months ago between sides, but this was an exception. I don't know why. I can't really remember much of what happened on those days."

"You were then sent to a hospital as you said in your letter," Louise added.

Kid nodded. "I was there for too many months. The atmosphere and the views around me weren't much nicer than in the prison, but at least I felt more normal. I managed to dodge death, but I'm afraid it hadn't become a total stranger. I was surrounded by death in my new lodgings, but after years of this routine, it didn't impress me at all."

Lou snuggled up even closer as if an inch between their bodies was too long a distance. "I'm sorry you had to go through all that alone. You must have felt so lonely."

"During my stay there I got a letter from Rachel," Kid dropped unexpectedly. "It wasn't really the person I hoped to hear from."

Louise blushed, silently accepting the slap his words delivered. "What… what did she say?" she whispered, wondering why Rachel had never said a word about that letter. If she came to think of that, it wasn't that strange, because back then she and the station mistress had been quite at odds.

"You know, the usual. She was happy I was alive and fine, and told me a bit about how things were in Rock Creek."

"Did … did she mention me? " Lou dared to ask bashfully.

"You're my wife, Lou. How could she not mention you?" Kid replied, unable to hide his irritation as he brought back to mind those moments from the past. "She went on and on about how hard it had been for you to think I was dead and also that my letter had literally brought you back to life." Kid paused and then added. "That gave me hope, and that was why I believed I could go back to you. It also made me hope for a second letter… one from you, a letter that never arrived."

The shame and pain she was feeling right now was such that a sharp, brief tug contorted her stomach at the same time as tears blurred her eyes. She pursed her lips tightly together in a vain attempt to dampen her misery, but in the end a sob escaped her control that racked her petite body.

"Lou!" Kid exclaimed mortified, softly cupping her face in his hands. "Please don't."

"I'm so sorry! So sorry!" Louise bawled. "I did want to write to you, and I even considered riding all the way from Rock Creek to where you were. I swear it's true!"

"Lou, please…"

Even though Kid tried to break in, Louise would not even hear his poor attempts. "Every night a heap of crumpled, discarded pieces of paper lay scattered over my table, because I wasn't sure what to tell you. After many days I managed to write one, but.. but… but I couldn't send it… I just couldn't… I just couldn't."

"Lou… Lou, listen to me," Kid finally managed to speak up, and tilting her face, he made her meet his eyes. "Lou, I ain't recriminating you anything. We agreed to be honest and tell each other everything. That was what I felt back then, but it ain't my intention to hurt you. We have both suffered too much alone. I don't want to add more pain to your full hands. I would never harm you, you know that. I told you before. The past will remain there… in the past, but I think we need to leave things in the open before those wounds might start to fester. But if this upsets you too much, I can stop, and…"

"No, I… I'm fine," Lou replied, sniffing and wiping her eyes with an edge of the sheet. "I can also express my sadness now, can't I? Please don't stop."

"Are you sure?"

"Please carry on. Talk to me. Please."