White Ring Quilt

In his room above the only café in Vaimont, Federico lay on his back in bed.

He lay atop a white ring quilt, where he had been deposited by his girl and himself moments before.

She had come to meet him in Vaimont. She was his girl. That’s what she said, and it’s why she had come.

She first saw him in the alley, leaning back against the wall as if to rest and wait for her, which really was what he was doing. Resting and waiting.

And that’s where he’d said she could find him, but of course he hadn’t said why. And he hadn’t told her in person. That was not possible. He’d sent the word with Jorge, his friend, who was going through her nearby town anyway and was happy to carry the message for him.

Had he been able to tell her himself over the distance between the towns, which of course he could not, he might have blurted out the why too. He was certain of it. Why he couldn’t come there. Why she would have to come all this way—three kilometers—to meet him. In some ways, she was a very selfish girl. She would have asked him why, and he would have told her.

But the why was not a good thing, so he’d sent the message with Jorge and kept the why to himself. Jorge knew the why, of course, and the two of them had saluted each other with a glass of wine before Jorge had departed. Jorge was a true friend. He was not selfish at all.

When she saw him there in the alley, a smile exploded across her face. Her long black hair formed a neat triangle on her forehead. It shifted side to side as she ran to him, and her knees alternately pressed against one side, then the other, of her long, dark, pleated skirt.

Federico watched as she ran, and he tried to smile for her. He thought maybe he did smile. It was odd. Her bare feet made no sound on the cobbles as she ran. Probably she ran on her toes. And she was still as slender and fit as he’d remembered from all those months ago.

*

It was a precious time, those months back when his unit had passed through her town and the captain had called a halt. Then he had surprised them all. “Two days,” he said, “We will rest here for two days.” Then he’d pointed at the ground, a scowl on his face but his voice very light and his moustache twitching as he said, “Form two ranks on this very spot in two days’ time at sunrise.” Then he’d wagged a hand back and forth and added, “Or perhaps within an hour of sunrise if you’ve better things to do.” Then he’d laughed. It was how the captain was. He was a good man.

And later that morning Federico had seen the girl in a café very similar to the one he was leaning against now. She was sitting alone at her own table and he at his, and as he watched her she watched him, and when he gestured for her to come over to him, she picked up her saucer and cup and came. And they talked and she liked his smile, she said, and she liked his curly black hair and his moustache and even his ears and she would like very much to spend more time with him, if only they could, if only he didn’t have to go to the war.

And he’d told her he had two days, and that if she didn’t have to get home right away he would spend every moment of it with her if he had his way.

And she said she had no home anymore, that the Germans had murdered her parents—she said murdered, not killed—only a month earlier and that since then she’d had no home, only a house. And it was large and empty and would he mind terribly if they spent the next two days there?

And of course he agreed because he was smitten, and she was smitten that he was smitten and it all worked out very well.

They were both very young, of course, and both single and both very much alone so they made love right away and then again a short time later and then three more times that night. They made love three more times the next day and night as if each desired to devour the other. But they also talked, at first about his life and hers before they had met and started theirs.

He told her of his life on a farm outside of a very small town in Spain very similar otherwise to this one and spoke of tending cows and pigs and that he only minded taking the heads off chickens, though he thought he wouldn’t mind that as much now, after he’d been to the war.

And she told him stories of her papa and her mama and how good they both were to each other and to her and that they apologized often for not living in a larger town where their daughter would have more opportunities.

And he told her he had no girl but he liked her very much and had known, somehow, he would find the right girl someday and he’d often wondered why he was in France at all but now he knew.

And she said she hoped the right girl was her and he said he was certain of it and they were very happy for two days.

And the talking continued late into the night and all the next day and into the night again. It stopped only for a half-hour at a time when the urge to devour overcame them again.

And when the second day started to grow light and he finally told her he had to go stand in ranks and meet the captain she said to take her heart with him because she was his girl now if he would have her.

And he said yes, of course he would do that and he was the luckiest man alive and now he felt no fear and he was certain he would live forever because he knew she was his girl.

And she said he was only the second luckiest human alive because she was even luckier to have found him and they laughed and touched pinkie fingers and said oaths and considered themselves married. And they agreed that sometimes such things must be done in haste and that haste had no bearing on feelings and true love, except perhaps to deepen both.

*

They had agreed on much, Federico and the French girl, and then he’d gone off to the war and now he’d come back as far as he could and had sent word to her and she was finally racing up the alley toward him as he leaned against the wall of the café resting and waiting.

When the girl was almost to him on her soundless feet, the broad smile turning to a joyful laugh, her skirt blowing back against her legs in the breeze so he could plainly see the roundness of her knees alternating from one front of the skirt to the other, nothing about any of that warned him what was about to happen.

She laughed and launched. Her arms went up and around his neck. Her knees went up and locked on his hips and something, some little but significant thing, came loose.

The girl’s face turned up, her blue eyes glistened, and she kissed him, hard, passionately, possibly because they were hidden away in an alley, and besides he knew she wasn’t any kind of a bad girl.

And he did know, and he knew she was his girl and his alone, and he lived for that knowledge, which is why he still was able to stifle a groan and withhold the why and hold her as closely as she was holding him. It was important only that he held his position, that he kept his butt pressed against the wall where he’d been resting and waiting.

But as the soft skin of her arms surrounded his neck and as they kissed and as he felt her knees on his hips at last, he’d rested long enough and the wait was almost over. He said to her, quietly in one ear as her luxurious hair tickled the side of his eye and his ear and mouth, “I have a room upstairs, my love.”

And he called her “my love” because it was true, she was his love, but in the moment, he couldn’t remember her name. And what was a name anyway other than the noise people made when they wanted to get your attention? Names, like labels, like farmer or soldier or bastard or daughter were not important. What was important was their love for each other and nothing else mattered.

And she said, “All right” and slipped to the ground on her silent feet and took his hand and started for the door, which was only a short distance away.

But he said, “Wait, please” without much breath and she waited and she frowned only a little.

And he slipped his right arm around her shoulders and put no little weight on her and smiled at her and said, “We should be this close always.”

And something slipped. Something that had once been significant that had come loose and was not where it ought to be slipped, but that was probably all right now.

And she moved her left arm around his waist and smiled again and said, “Always, my love, always.” And she blushed lightly and said, “Federico, right?” and he only smiled at her and said, “Yes, my love, Federico” and she said nothing else because “my love” was more than good enough.

And they moved to the door and they acted as a team as they both knew they were meant to do always, since time immemorial. She opened the door with her right hand and he caught it with his left and they both helped ease him through. They made their way through the back door and across one corner of the back dining room, and it was empty so there was no one there to see them and no one to whom they had to explain anything.

And they started up the stairs, but slowly, slowly, with something that had once been significant slipping down a little inside the right leg of his pants and she looked at him with her head canted more than once and he could tell she was going to ask why and he hoped she wouldn’t because he didn’t want to say it.

And though he didn’t mean to, he moved as if he was drunk and each step threatened to force a grunt from him, which he swallowed each time, and pain fired from his right hip up through the back of his head and he swallowed that too and the once-significant thing slipped lower and by the time they reached the second landing after the switchback, his stomach was feeling ill from all the pain it had swallowed and from the blood that was maybe welling there too.

And when they got into the room and she opened the door with her left hand he aimed for the bed and told her he’d like very much to lie down and then they could talk please for a time.

And that alone was enough to let her know he meant that only he should lie down and perhaps there was a why attached but she didn’t want to ask because too many things were wrong and too many things were not right and she didn’t want to know why.

So together, as it should always be in matters of the heart, the two of them got him almost to the bed before the insignificant slipping thing slipped one more time and fell down past his boot to the floor and she probably didn’t see.

And then he was on the bed on the white ring quilt and she helped him lie back and she gently smoothed his hair from his brow with her beautiful long fingers and she adjusted the pillow beneath his head and she straightened and said she would get them some wine.

And he smiled and nodded and moved his lips to say “Please hurry back, my love” but all that came out was “mulv” because so much of his strength had gone into helping her help him get through the door and across the corner of the dining room and up the stairs and into the room in the first place. And the final push to the bed was maybe just a little too much and he needed to rest now for a while and wait.

So he lay alone on the bed on the white ring quilt and the mattress felt soft beneath him, almost as if he was floating on a cloud.

And beyond his feet—which were still in the heavy black boots with dried brown mud stuck to the laces and the inside of the right one and he hoped it wouldn’t flake away and fall onto the white ring quilt and stain it because he truly loved the girl and he wouldn’t want to embarrass her ever in any way even after the fact—beyond his boots, the small, drab dresser leaned slightly against the far wall. The back legs must be only that much too short, he surmised, and so it leaned.

And bits of the dried brown mud flaked away and fell from the laces of his right boot and onto the white ring quilt and that was all right but he wondered idly why there was no dried brown mud on the laces of his left boot.

And the door thrust open and the girl came back in, her long, thin fingers clasped at her waist and a frown on her face and called quietly and fearfully, “Federico?”

And he opened one eye and hoped she wasn’t crying, and she wasn’t and she wasn’t carrying wine either but she was looking at something on the floor and understanding things she should never have to understand and he was sorry.

And to avert her attention from the white ring quilt and the brown flakes lying next to his right boot and save them both any embarrassment at all he told her about the two back legs on the dresser and that’s why the dresser leaned back against the wall like that, just as if it was resting and waiting and he tried to laugh but only a quiet cough came out.

And the girl looked across the room at the dresser from where she was standing as if she was afraid to move and she shrugged and she didn’t look at him again and she said at least the legs were the same so the dresser leaned evenly and wasn’t that all that really mattered, Federico? Wasn’t it?

And he said yes, yes, he supposed so and she looked at the floor again and without looking up she said, “I’m going to get some wine now, but I’ll sit outside and let you rest, all right?”

And he tried to say no, he tried to say please stay with me and he tried to say he would even tell her the why and that he hadn’t meant to renege on all the things on which they had agreed and on their love and their eternity and all of those things, but that it appeared he had no choice.

But he had no choice in that way either as the words took up residence in his mind and refused to come out through his lips and then the door closed softly.

And he sighed and he rested and he waited.

To his left was a broad window and a happy light was coming in and the bottom was open and the thin white curtains were dancing slightly into the room pushed by the breeze and the warm air felt good on his cold arms and on his cold hands, which he’d carefully folded on his waist because that’s how he’d seen it done and he wanted to do as much of it himself as he was able.

And the wound in the front of his right hip—which Jorge himself had dressed and into which Jorge himself had inserted the plug that had worked loose when the girl’s knee jarred it and which had worked its way down the inside of his right pant leg as they’d climbed the stairs and that had slipped out past his boot as he neared the bed—the wound began to seep and then throb and then pulse and he thought maybe the wait was over and maybe the rest would feel very good but he would miss the girl very, very much.

And the last sound he heard was her quiet, disbelieving laughter from the table below the window through which the happy light was shining and the warm breeze was pushing against the curtains and then all of that dissolving into her quiet sobs.

*******

About the Author

Harvey Stanbrough was born in New Mexico, seasoned in Texas and baked in Arizona. For a time, he wrote under five personas and several pseudonyms, but he takes a pill for that now and writes only under his own name. Mostly.

Harvey is an award-winning writer who follows Heinlein’s Rules avidly. He has written and published over 45 novels, 8 novellas, and over 200 short stories. He has also written 16 nonfiction books on writing, and he’s compiled and published 30 collections of short fiction and 5 critically acclaimed poetry collections.

To see his other works, please visit HarveyStanbrough.com.

For his best advice on writing, see his Daily Journal at HEStanbrough.com.