Read Online Love is a Wounded Soldier by Blaine Reimer - Free Book Online

possible, trying to get rid of the disgustingly
sticky feeling.
    Acknowledging the smiles and greetings as
they came, I continued to melt away, thinking maybe I had made the wrong
decision in coming to church. The thought of spending the day alternately
swimming in the creek and lying on a blanket under the shade of an adjoining
tree had me considering quietly exiting the church and doing just that.
    An unexpected breath of wind stirred from
my right, feeling much colder on my perspiration-beaded forehead than it
normally would have. It felt so good, and for whatever reason, I turned to look
to my right, toward the open window, as if I would be able to see the wind
entering the building. My eyes never made it that far. Across the aisle from
me, a row ahead, was a woman I didn’t recognize. Her face was turned slightly away,
so it was mostly covered with a cascade of wavy blonde hair that disappeared
where her back met the pew. Tresses, I thought to myself. I’d never used that
word before, out loud or in my mind, about a woman’s hair, and felt a little
sheepish and silly about romanticizing this particularly fine head of it.
    Turn your head, I thought, willing her to
look my way so I could ascertain whether her fetching head of hair was falsely
advertising for a disappointing rest of her or not. She looked over her
shoulder to take a quick inventory of who had come to congregate, and as her
head swiveled back to the front, her eyes lingered a moment in my direction and
her lips turned up ever so slightly at the corners, as though measuring out a
prim little, “How do you do?” to me. I felt myself become even warmer, and I
wiped my flushed brow with the sleeve of my shirt. Certainly she must have seen
me staring. I didn’t recognize the woman, but I did recognize the girl she’d
been.
    I suppose there’s a time or two in most
men’s lives when they turn around and the skinny girl next door is standing
there in a woman’s body, with eyes that rattle his composure and lips that make
for sweaty palms. Ellen Moore was that girl for me. She’d never struck me as
anything special before, but every now and again, a girl will just blossom
overnight right under your nose, and you wake up, and there she is, so
desirable everything in you aches to be with her. Sometimes you’re unaware
she’s so close to reaching that point, and she’ll just have done a little
something different with her hair, or put a little makeup on, or be wearing a
dress that properly promotes her womanly highlights, and she becomes your
obsession.
    I don’t recall what the preacher preached
that Sunday. He could have been spouting damnable heresies for all I knew. My
eyes split their time equally with staring vapidly in the direction of Preacher
Moore, and ogling much more intensely and interestedly at his stunning
daughter. She seemed so different from the snapshot my mind had retained of her
from several years before. She didn’t giggle silently into her hand or pass
notes to her girlfriends, she just sat elegantly, one firm bronzed leg crossed
over the other, her hands in her lap. Her only movements were her eyes blinking
and her one leg swinging ever so slightly, as by habit. Her expression was
pleasant, looking as though a smile was always ready to show itself, but never
in excess. She didn’t look stuffy, but she looked classy and controlled. I
liked that.
    After the service, I stayed seated in my
pew, lingering unnecessarily to chit-chat with Delmar Young, a middle-aged
bachelor who’d never married, I’m guessing partly due to the fact that he
didn’t appear to possess the ability to differentiate between people who cared
about what he was saying, and people that were standing there, gazing into
space as he talked ad nauseam. To shake him off you had to rudely walk away,
and even then he usually couldn’t take the hint and would follow you, sometimes
until you shut the door of your car and roared away. The only reason I gave