Page 44 of Walking Wounded

It was muscle memory overlaid with sense memory, stepping up to the swing and catching the rope in one hand, palming the fat rubber of the tire with the other. He started up a slow pattern of pull and push, until there was enough momentum that he was barely touching, merely keeping the tire in its arc.

Finn clung tight to the rope, threw his head back, and howled at the moon shining through the door.

June 1950

On June 25, 1950, communist North Korea invaded South Korea. North Korea advanced with Russian tanks and weapons, and American-allied South Korea was woefully unprepared to meet the assault. What followed was, in short, a shit show.

July 1950

Will was working for Alan Ware, Leesburg’s most notable and trusted accountant, and he’d asked Will to commute to split time between home and college so he could stay on and help him with the business. He’d lost his secretary to motherhood back in the spring, and his other young student had gone off and enlisted, needing the money. Will was his only employee at the moment.

Truth be told, Will didn’t mind. The office wasn’t busy most afternoons, and he could work on his homework at his desk. He spent three days a week At Georgetown University, bunking with a classmate, and drove home to spend the rest of the week working. And he got to spend evenings with Finn and Leena, going to the movies and dances, having milkshakes. He was their official third wheel, and people around town had stopped questioning it. Most of his dates went horribly, and Leena had quit trying to set him up with her friends.

Speaking of Leena…

He was at his desk in the front window of the office one day when he spotted a familiar figure walking toward the door, her hourglass shape encased in a fitted dark dress that did amazing things for her legs. He didn’t stare at his best friend’s girl, hedidn’t. She came into the office with a notch between her brows and a frown tugging at her mouth.

“Leena, hi.” Will started to get up from his desk, but she waved him back down. Came to perch on the edge of it.

“Mind if I smoke?”

“No.” He offered her the lighter in his desk drawer, but she already had one, hands shaking a little as she lit one up and took her first drag.

He didn’t smoke often, and when he did, Finn usually instigated it. But there was something alluring about the way Leena crossed her legs, tucked her elbow into her side and held her cigarette aloft, blowing a thin stream of smoke through her lips. It added to her mystique.

“Something on your mind?” he asked.

She took another drag and slanted a look toward him as she exhaled. “You’ve seen it in the papers?”

“Seen what in the papers?”

She huffed out a sound that wasn’t a laugh. “Korea. The communists invaded it.”

“That’s too bad for them.”

“No, Will. The communists invaded, and America’s going to do something about it.”

It dawned on him slowly, and then all at once. “Oh shit. Pardon my French.”

“Fuck your French,” she hissed. “You know what this means.”

And he did. Since the War ended, there’d been no rallying cry to arms. No reason for Finn to go enlist. He still wanted, still talked about it obsessively. But what was a soldier without a war?

Will swallowed a rising knot of panic. “He hasn’t said anything to me yet.”

“He will, though. Will.” She leaned in close to him, lipstick smudged from the cigarette. “When he tells you that he’s signing up, you have to tell him not to. He can’t go off and fight some war in Korea. He can’t. I can’t–” She cut herself off with a shivery sigh. “Will, please. He’ll listen to you.” He’d never seen her afraid, but that’s what she was now, fear like dark diamonds in her eyes. “Promise me,” she said.

What could he do?

He nodded and said, “I promise.”

///

Will’s mother baked a two-tiered chocolate cake for Finn’s twentieth birthday and Leena handled all the invitations. Friends and family turned up at the Maddox house and Will was sent out in the Chevy to collect Finn from work at the grocer’s.

Will found his best friend behind the store, shirtsleeves rolled up, sweat gluing his dark hair to his forehead, huffing his way through a shipment of canned peaches as he moved them in one crate at a time.

A grin split his face when he spotted Will. He let go of the crate he’d been about to lift and rested a hip against the side of the truck instead, wiped his damp forehead on his sleeve and pushed his hair back. “You finally decide to get out from behind the desk and work a real job like the rest of us?” he joked.

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