Read Online A Question of Mercy by Elizabeth Cox - Free Book Online

The air smelled of rain, but May rain felt more like summer than winter. She took a few crackers, some of Sam’s letters, and drank an RC Cola. A spray of birds blew across the tiny window and landed on the shed’s roof.
    Sweet Jess ,
    I’ve had more time to think about you, since we’re having three days of rest camp. We’ve got clean clothes, showers, haircuts, and, also, we’ve been fumigated because of fleas and lice. It feels good to be clean again. And to shave. There are times when I would not want you to see me, but never a time when I don’t want to see you. Yesterday we found some time to hunt. Me and Carl Hill and Billy Keifert (all of us southern boys who grew up hunting with our dads) went bird hunting. Billy dropped a bird and when it fell, it set off a land mine. We were hunting in an old mine field and didn’t even know it! We left fast, and won’t ever go there again .
    We get so hungry, and had planned to eat the birds we shot. Did I tell you about the South Korean service guys (choggis)? They stay in their own tent (not far from mine) and they have a little stove. I can smell food they’re cooking, and one day I went over to their tent. They were cooking a big pot of rice, with fish-heads. It smelled good, but I could see little bugs in it. I motioned to them that I wanted to eat and they moved over and we all ate together, with our fingers. It was good, I tell you. I didn’t care what was in it. The other guys said they would never eat that stuff. I kept telling them it was good .
    Here’s something else. I found a guy here (in the next camp over), somebody I went to school with named Petey Ross. We went to grammar school all the way through high school together. We weren’t friends or anything, but I wanted to see him real bad. I asked my Capt. for permission to go. He said I probably shouldn’t, but I kept insisting and finally, he let me visit him. Petey was in a mortar unit and we met in the Mess Hall. We talked about high school mostly. It started getting dark, and I had a hard time finding my way back. I had to say the password to get back in my camp. The password was “Hopalong Cassidy.” I said “Hopalong” and the guy on guard duty said “Cassidy.”
    When I get home I want us to get married and live in a nice house somewhere near a fire station. I want an American flag to fly on holidays, even Christmas. I want our kids to know what America is. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I guess thinking about Hopalong Cassidy makes me homesick. Seeing a friend from grammar school meant the world to me, and I think about Roy Rogers and Hopalong and I get a lump in my chest. When I think about you all I want is to hold you. Remember when we spent long mornings together? I keep remembering .
    Jess remembered too. She smiled and wished she could be clean, fumigated, or eating something cooked by someone else—without the bugs. She and Sam were sharing parallel lives, only Sam had an enemy trying to kill him and Jess was just alone. She wondered about the things he had to do, and all that he was not saying, and she wondered how different he would be when she saw him again. How different she would be.
    She opened the sack of oranges and chose one, digging into the peel with her thumb. An orange mist sprayed her face. She ate the sections, relishing every bite, then licked her fingers and palms where the sweet juice had dripped. She wrapped Adam’s raincoat tightly around her and lay back with the taste of oranges in her mouth.

— 9 —
    O n the first night that Clementine moved in with Edward, Adam wandered through the house like a restless wind. He kept asking where he was and, after a few unsettling nights, Clementine let him sleep in the locked basement. “Because sometimes when Adam goes to a new place,” Clementine explained, “he tends to wander off in the middle of the night. I think