Fifteen minutes later I went downstairs. I suppose my eyes were red but I was
smiling and no longer stunk and I was dressed in Sunday best. I hurried to him and
offered my hand. `Mr Bronson! We are all so proud of you!’
I don’t remember details of the next hour or two hours or whatever. I sat there in a
golden haze of bittersweet happiness. My country was at war, my husband was off to
war, but at last I knew the deeper meaning of `better death than dishonour’ – I knew
now why Roman matrons said, ‘With your shield or on it.’ Those hours of believing
that my beloved Theodore was not what I had believed him to be but a coward who
would refuse to defend his country – those hours had been the longest, most hateful
hours of my life.
I had not really believed that there were such subhuman creatures. I had never known
one. Then to have it rum out simply to be a bad dream, the result of a
misunderstanding over words… I’ve read somewhere that pleasure is relief from
pain. Psychologists are a silly lot, mostly, but that night I enjoyed that sort of
ecstatic pleasure. Even my fires of libido were banked and, for the time, I did not
worry about Briney, so joyed was I that Theodore was indeed what a man to be loved
must be: a hero, a warrior.
My big girls did their best to stuff him full and Carol made him a sandwich and
wrapped it to take with him. Father was full of man-to-man advice, old soldier to
new recruit; my big boys were falling over each other to try to do things for him,
and even Woodrow was almost well-behaved. At last they all lined up to kiss him
goodbye, even Brian junior, who had given up kissing save for an occasional peck on
his mother’s cheek bone.
They all went up to bed but Father… and it was my turn.
I have always been of such rugged health that winning testaments for perfect
attendance at Sunday School was never any trouble to me – so wasn’t it nice that I
had two testaments when I needed them? I did not even need to think up a new
inscription; what I had written for my husband was right for any Lucasta to any
warrior off to the wars:
To Private Theodore Bronson
Be true to self and country.
Maureen J. Smith
April 6, 1917
I gave it to him, saw him read it, then I said, `Father?’ He knew what I wanted, a
decent amount of privacy.
`No.’ (Damn him! Did he really think that I would drag Theodore down on to the rug?
With the children awake and only a flight of stairs away?)
(Well, perhaps I would.) ‘Then turn your back.’
I put my arms up and kissed Theodore, firmly -, but chastely… then knew that a
chaste kiss was not enough to say farewell to a warrior. I let my body grow soft and
my lips come open. My tongue met his and I promised him wordlessly that whatever I
had was his. ‘Theodore… take care of yourself. Come back to me.’
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Heinlein, Robert A – To Sail Beyond the Sunset.txt
Chapter 13 – `Over There!’
My father, having been refused a return to active duty in the Army Medical Corps,
was then turned down again when he tried to enlist as an infantry private (he made
the mistake of showing his separation papers… which showed his 1852 date of
birth), and then tried to enlist in St Louis with a claimed date of birth of 1872
but was tripped up somehow – and finally did manage to enlist in the Seventh
Missouri, an infantry militia regiment formed to replace Kansas City’s Third
Missouri, which was now the 110th Combat Engineers training at Camp Funston and
about to go `Over There’.
This new home guard, made up of the too young, too old, too many dependents, too
halt, or too lame, was not fussy about Father’s age (sixty-five) in view of his
willingness to accept a dull job as supply sergeant and the fact that he needed no