Off Limits. Lindsay McKenna

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СКАЧАТЬ next weekly serial to come on.”

      Relief washed over Jim. He saw Alex struggle to be polite although anger still lurked in her eyes. “I can remember as a ten-year-old kid hardly being able to wait for the next Lone Ranger and Tonto story. I liked them, I liked what they did. They were always saving people who were in trouble.” The corners of Jim’s mouth lifted with the memory. “I used to make believe I was the Lone Ranger. I went out back, found a saplin’ and cut it down. That was Silver, my horse. When I wasn’t doing chores or huntin’ with Pa, I’d be galloping around the hills, pretending I was saving people in trouble.”

      Alex shut her eyes. “I—I remember those times...the radio shows. That seems so long ago....”

      “We were young ’uns.”

      “I was eight years old.”

      “Who was your favorite?”

      Alex opened her eyes. “I always liked Tonto.”

      “He never said much, but then, he was an injun.”

      “I liked him because he saved the Lone Ranger when he got into trouble.”

      “I guess we both wanted to help people,” Jim whispered. “Nurses definitely do that.” He frowned. “I thought recons helped, too, but, I was wrong....”

      “There’s nothing wrong with helping others,” Alex said. “You said recons saved a lot of marine lives. I think that’s positive.”

      Jim smiled faintly at Alex. “Maybe.” Her face held such serenity in that moment. She was pretty, and there was a wide streak of goodness in her, too. Desperate to get off the topic, Jim said, “You remind me of Molly Pritchard, a gal whose folks were our closest neighbors.”

      “Oh?”

      “Yeah, Molly was kind of like Tonto, always quiet and something of a shadow. She had five older brothers, so she was kind of pushed aside in favor of them. She had hair like yours, the color of rich, brown earth. The kids at school made fun of her.”

      “Why?”

      With a shrug, Jim said, “Molly was board-awful ugly. Not that it was her fault. She had buckteeth and she squinted all the time. A lot of city kids picked on her, but I used to stand up for her. Partly because she was hill folk like me. And partly...well, she was like a little brown mouse, so quiet and afraid. I always had a soft place in my heart for underdogs.... So, I kinda became her protector.”

      “What happened to Molly?” Alex was touched by Jim’s admission.

      “We were in the third grade together and this teacher, Missus Olgilvie, used to walk up and down the rows with a three-foot-long ruler in her hands. Anyone not studying got whacked across the shoulders. She always picked on the boys, not the girls, but poor Molly lived in dire fear of Missus Olgilvie smacking her. Molly couldn’t see the blackboard, so the teacher kept moving her closer and closer to the front of the room. Finally, the teacher sent a note home to Molly’s parents to get her eyes checked.”

      Jim smiled fondly in remembrance. “Little-brown-mouse Molly got her eyes checked at this fancy eye doctor’s office. I remember the day her folks loaded everyone in their beat-up old Ford pickup and went off to the city. That was a big deal, you know? Hill people are real poor, even today, and we just didn’t have that kind of money around. I remember Ma and Pa loaning Mr. Pritchard forty dollars of money they’d been saving, so that Molly could get this test and a pair of glasses.”

      Jim tipped his head back and closed his eyes. “The Pritchards came home late that evening, close to dark. They stopped at our cabin on the way home. I remember coming out and standing by the door. Molly was in her finest dress, a cotton print with yeller buttercups all over it. Her brown hair was tied up in a yeller ribbon, too. My mouth dropped open as I walked out to the pickup where she sat with her brothers. There she was, proudly wearing those black horn-rimmed frames. I stood there for a long moment realizing just how pretty Molly Pritchard really was, ’cause she no longer had to squint her eyes to see. No, she had the most beautiful green eyes I’d ever seen.”

      Touched to the point of tears, Alex kept her gaze fixed on Jim’s softened features. “What happened after that?”

      Jim chuckled. “Molly went back to school wearing those glasses as proudly as I wore my marine uniform when I first got out of boot camp. The glasses gave her confidence, real confidence, and she no longer was a shadow. When Molly walked, she strutted, her head held high for the first time. She no longer had to sit in the front row to see the blackboard, and her grades started coming up. She turned from an ugly ducklin’ into this purty young girl with huge green eyes. She wasn’t a shy, backward, little brown mouse anymore.”

      “I can relate,” Alex whispered.

      Jim nodded. “That’s the reason you remind me of Molly—you’re shy and quiet, but underneath, you’ve got real strength.”

      “I don’t know about that. It’s funny to hear you describe Molly, though, because in my family, I’m called `mouse’ by my brothers and father.”

      Frowning, Jim set the bowl of rice aside. “Your pa ought not to call you that.”

      “My father praises aggression, athletic ability and confidence. My brothers have those qualities—I don’t.”

      Jim snorted. “Yet, you just survived a helicopter crash in enemy territory when no one else did. Does that sound like a mouse?”

      Alex smiled halfheartedly and closed her eyes. His warm tone made her feel more emotionally stable. “You said you were proud to wear the marine uniform. What made you join up, Jim?”

      He shook his head wearily. “Lookin’ back on it, I must have been addled, but at the time, it felt like the right thing to do. My pa had been a marine during the big war, and all my life I’d been a weak, sickly child. I was tall and skinny, too.

      “In school, when the city kids called me names, ganged up and pushed me around or wouldn’t let me play sports with them, I would daydream, pretending the school was Dodge City, full of desperadoes, and that I was the Lone Ranger. It helped me get through school, I guess. One day, when I was in the eighth grade, these military recruiters came to our school auditorium and gave us a talk about joining the military as a way toward better education. I remember seeing that marine sergeant in his dress blues, how his uniform stood out from the rest, and how proud he was. His back was ramrod straight, his shoulders squared, and you just knew that he was a far better man than any of the others sitting on the stage, waiting their turn to talk to us.

      “I went home and told my pa that when I was old enough, I was gonna join the Marine Corps.” Jim’s voice lowered with feeling. “I remember tears came to his eyes. Tears! I’d never seen my pa cry. He didn’t say anything, he just grabbed me and held me so tight I couldn’t breathe. When he finally released me, he took me into their bedroom to an old wooden trunk. I knew of the cedar trunk, but I’d been given strict instructions never to open it. So, when Pa opened it, I was in awe.

      “There, inside, was his dress blue Marine Corps uniform, carefully folded in mothballs to stop the moths from eatin’ holes into the fabric. I remember he took my hand and pressed it across all his ribbons and medals from World War II. His voice shook as he told me about each medal—the four purple hearts, the bronze star and the silver star. Pa was a genuine hero, and I’d never known it until that moment. When he’d finished telling СКАЧАТЬ