Love is a Wounded Soldier by Blaine Reimer Page B

obstructing branches for Ellen, but it
wasn’t much easier going for her than me. I attempted to follow the easiest
path, but there really didn’t seem to be one. Once, I heard her yelp as I inadvertently
allowed a branch I’d pushed past to spring back and hit her. I couldn’t turn
around, but I shouted an apology, and she assured me it had hit her neck, not
her face. After 100 yards or so, the terrain began to decline, and I could see
the brush thinning ahead. The downward grade made it harder to maintain my
footing, and I had to battle to keep the dead weight that surrounded me from
pushing me headlong down the hill.
    We finally arrived near the river. Large
trees were sparsely scattered on the grassy bank. I dropped my bags, almost
dropping with them, and turned and looked at Ellen. My little trooper mustered
a smile, albeit a much grimmer one than she’d displayed twenty minutes before.
She looked down at a family of burrs matted in her hair, surrounded by a small
nest of twigs and leaves. I pulled a caterpillar off my own head, and we both
laughed quietly, as if to say, “This would be hilarious if this were someone
else we were watching.” I wiped the torrent of perspiration from my face, and
saw my wife was positively drenched as well.
    “Well, I guess it can only get better,” she
said, and we both chuckled.
    There was a spot, a long stone’s throw
upstream, where the grass clothed the riverbank until almost the water’s edge.
A small, flat clearing at the top seemed to be a likely spot to pitch a tent,
so I hoisted my baggage and led the way over there. I noted the shallow, rocky
stream bowed sharply at that spot, jutting like the belly of a pregnant woman.
    “I think we stop here,” I said, dropping my
gear and rubbing the places the straps had dug into.
    “I feel disgusting!” Ellen exclaimed. “And
I smell!” I walked over and kissed her wet, salty mouth.
    “Ew, I’m dirty!” She moved away, not
knowing whether to be upset or laugh.
    “You still look beautiful,” I told her,
mostly telling the truth.
    “I need a bath. I feel like diving into the
river right now!” I didn’t have to be a woman to know what she felt like. Dust,
dirt, and forest debris clung to my wet skin and seemed to crawl into every
crease and crinkle in my body. And she’d been wearing a skirt. Her legs must
have been stinging, because I could see angry little scratches on them, but she
didn’t complain. I looked at the river. It appeared we’d found an almost
perfect place for bathing. It was tempting to strip down, dive in, and rid
ourselves of the sweat and filth, but I knew how easily we would get distracted
by each other then, and since the sun was taking a bow, I decided if we wanted
to avoid setting up the tent and gathering wood in the dark, we’d better focus
on that first.
    “We need to get the tent set up before it’s
dark,” I told her. She grimaced a little, but nodded and started taking the
tent pegs out of the bag.
    I took the hatchet that I kept with the
tent and headed over to a nearby tree that had conveniently died several years
before. The little hatchet had seen better days, and so instead of hacking
through entire branches, I notched them and tried to break them off. The sweat
poured off me in buckets. When I finally had enough wood for two armfuls, I
took it back to where Ellen sat waiting for me to help her put up the tent.
That only took a few minutes, and after I gathered a few rocks for a fire pit,
I started a tidy little blaze.
    Ellen produced some towels and soap, and
laid them on a blanket near the water’s edge. I boldly removed my clothes and
laid them on a rock. I felt a little self-conscious as Ellen took time from
removing her shoes to unabashedly gawk at her recent acquisition.
    “What, you never seen a naked man before?”
I laughed.
    She blushed and shook her head as I dove
into the cool, refreshing water. It was clear, clean, and just over waist deep.
I dunked my head and