"Ruin and Redemption"

Josiah Makes it Home

It was a beautiful sunny day, with just a touch of wind, when Josiah reemerged from the woodlands. He looked around his farm awkwardly.

“Here we are, Woodrow. Home.” Joe said to his companion, grinning. He hobbled around on his crutches, turning in a circle. With only one good eye, he needed to view things from a number of different angles to get a full perspective. Things looked normal, he was relieved to see. The house and barn were both where he had left him, and the appropriate crops for that season were under way, although a smaller area than usual had been cultivated.

When he had completed his circuit, he started bringing the crutches forward and swinging along behind them. Contrary to what he had written, there was no wooden leg, not yet. He had hoped to have one, but it had proven uncomfortable and awkward, and made walking more difficult, not less. His right leg, where he had been shot had grown infected and it had been amputated below the knee. His pants leg had been tied up below the nub to conceal it and keep it warm. Pain in the leg that was no longer there woke him up at night still, and gave him a shock when the hurting part failed to appear.

As he made his way towards the house, he called their names. “Izzie! Mindy!”

Mindy was the first to fly out the door to greet him, running into his arms so hard and fast that she almost knocked him over. “Josiah! Josiah! You made it back home!”  She reached around him, feeling bones she had never known existed in a man’s skeleton. His face was skeletal, too, and his hair was longer than she remembered and matted in odd ways. There was a scar across one cheek, where a bayonet has gashed, and the worst of all was the patch of cloth taped where his eye should have been. She felt terrible looking at her handsome husband reduced to this, and even more terrible for the secret she was keeping from him. He was alive! He was back! And she had failed him horribly as a wife! He had promised to return, and yet she had never truly believed with a certainty that he would do so! She clutched him tightly. Never again. She could care less if there were other wars, or what they were about. From now on, Josiah was not getting out of her sight, or off their land without her right there beside him.

Izzie hung back, studying her brother. She had decided not to say anything. Then she had decided she would tell. Right now she stood studying her brother, wondering what was best. Her only certainty now, was that if Derrick came on their land without his wife in tow, she would surely shoot him again. Shoot him in the nuts this time, if she had to, so he’d never take a woman again. He wasn’t going to wrong her brother again. Some ass who couldn’t control himself wasn’t going to make a mockery of her brother, who had always done his best to treat her and every woman in his care with the utmost respect.

With his good eye, Josiah looked over the top of his wife’s head to Izzie. What was bothering his sister so much that she wasn’t running out to greet him right away? Was it his appearance? But Izzie had never been squeamish. If anything, he had worried how Mindy might respond to him the way he looked now, and she was holding him tightly, so hopefully it wasn’t as bad as it could be. She could at least stand to touch him! Maybe he had mistaken Izzie for someone else. Surely she would come to him right away! He squinted and rotated his head like an owl. Sure enough, it was definitely Izzie. There was no one who looked remotely like that in this county.

“Izzie? You O.K.?” He called.

He saw the figure nod, then look down. Izzie’s gun was strapped across her shoulder, as if it belonged nowhere else. When had she taken to carrying a gun everywhere like that?

“I must look horrible,” He murmured to Mindy. “Izzie’s takin’ her time comin’ to me. Didn’t think I’d scare her, Mindy. Thought you’d be the one scared.”

Oh if he only knew! It was so wonderful to hold his scarecrow thin body to hers once more, to have him safe in her arms. But, still, his appearance was disconcerting. A scar across his face, a large patch of brown over a hollow space where his eye once was. It was frightening looking at him. That was the other reason her face was buried in his chest. She wasn’t going to let him go. Neither did she feel up to looking at him again! She hoped she did not give away her fear that night, when they slept together in the dark room, and she caught a glimpse of that face just before falling asleep! She would have to get used to it during dinner. Josiah. Her love. Her husband. The one who should have been here with her these past months of her pregnancy, not Derrick, Josiah, the father of her child. He was finally home, blessed Jesus! Just why couldn’t all of him have made it? Why did he have to leave his eye, and half a leg on the field of battle? Why did he have to sacrifice that blood?