HOLDING ONTO CLOUDS

By Jo

Part five:

After a while, Charles pulled himself to his feet, slowly, unsteadily making his way around to

the back of the house. He stopped, shocked, at the sight of a fresh mound of earth to one side.

With his double vision, he could only make out the large 'E' on the crosspiece of a simple,

board marker.

"Eugenia!" he moaned.

Coming closer, he grabbed a fistful of the thick clematis vine that grew on a pole, trying to

support himself.

Ezra, the name was Ezra. He was relieved...sorrowful...bewildered, and sank down onto his

right hip, taking most of the clematis with him as he went. Ezra? Yes, Ezra had died trying to

keep the deserters from taking Eugenia. He remembered seeing him come around the house

with a rifle, remembered the man nearer the lane shooting him. Reaching out a hand, he picked

up some of the dirt atop the grave, letting it sift slowly back. He had no memory at all of

burying Ezra, however. But who else could have done it, would have done it? All the other

men who worked for Eugenia had fled. No one was here, no one but...him.

Sparks of pain shot through his head, exploding like fireworks inside his skull. Thinking was

just so hard. He lay down on his back, his left hand still clutching torn sections off the clematis,

his right coated with dirt from Ezra's grave.

Two young nurses stood just out in the hallway, looking into Richard's room. Anne sat close

beside his bed, holding his hand. "Why doesn't anybody but her ever come to see him?" the

brown-haired one asked.

"Visitors are restricted," the other replied. "Sometimes that director gets in, but usually it's

just her."

"What about his family? Why don't they come?"

"He doesn't have any. Haven't you read about that? He was an only child and his parents died

about four years ago. There isn't anybody to come."

"Somebody as famous as he is and nobody comes?"

"They don't want a lot of people coming. They're trying to keep this as quiet as possible."

"Well, plenty of reporters try to come for sure!"

"It's like you said. He's one of the most famous men in the world. People want to read about

him, anything at all."

"Yeah, true or not."

Just that morning the Hollywood Exposed tabloid had had a headline reading Richard

Coordaleen's Fatal Film Stunt. It had gone on to write that he was dying from his injuries

and that his co-star, Anne Dale, was waiting faithfully at his side for him to die, despite the

fact he had betrayed her openly with Marsalene Whitcomb last year.

"She does stay with him hour after hour," the brown-haired nurse commented. "Do you

suppose it's true, what was said about him and Marsalene?"

Charles was in the kitchen again, needing more to drink. He'd been surprised by the basket

of freshly-baked biscuits on the table and after locating a pewter tankard to avoid the danger

of damage to Eugenia's fine teacup, and drinking his fill of water, he was sitting on a stool,

chewing a large mouthful of soft, light biscuit. He hadn't noticed them when he was in the

kitchen earlier, but now the scent of them was everywhere. Turning, he saw a large pot of

honey on a shelf. Yes. That would be wonderful.

Marsalene had read the Hollywood Exposed article, too, and sat frowning in her DC hotel

suite. This was all her fault that Richard was being written about in such terms, her doing

that there had been the scandal in the first place. And she'd kept silent, enjoying the publicity

that came with the concept that Richard Coordaleen would have found her attractive enough,

would have desired her enough, to be unfaithful to Anne Dale. Several minutes later she was

on the phone with her publicist, getting him to set up a group interview later that day with

the leading magazines that wrote about the social and the private lives of the rich and famous.

Charles was walking again. He hadn't been able to find Cygnus and the other horses in the

barn, even the two mules, were all gone. He was heading generally south and west...he hoped...

trying to find Lee's army. It was out here somewhere. The sun was hot and he wished he had

his hat. His beard was hot, too. If he'd lost his hat, why couldn't he have lost his beard? He'd

shave it completely off, yes, he'd do that when...when what? When the war was over. That

had to be what. He liked to keep it very short and neat, but hadn't been able to for a while.

Why was that? Oh, yes...battles. He'd been in a lot of battles lately, hadn't he? Grant, yes,

Grant's army was following Lee's, part of it swinging south, trying to cut Lee's off, trying

to squeeze it to death, trying to make it bleed so much it would die.

He came to a stone wall along the road and sat down, watching a crow picking at something

small that had died several yards away. Closing his eyes, he wished it were songbirds instead

of the crow. Hadn't he sat here before, listening to birds singing in the dawn? No, that couldn't

be right. He would have been on Cygnus when he came through here.

It had been a full week. Anne could tell from Dr. Steele's face that wasn't good. When he left,

she leaned close to Richard's ear. "You've got to hear me, Richard. Please hear me! I need

you to come back to me. I need you to come back to me now."

Charles lost track of how long he'd been walking. He hadn't found Lee's army, hadn't even

found Grant's. He'd found no one, nobody. Every farmhouse he came to was deserted, the

animals gone, too. From time to time he'd go inside one. There were always fresh biscuits in

the kitchen, fresh biscuits and honey...and water. It was always the same, smelled the same,

tasted the same. At least it kept him going.

He'd been spending his nights in empty farmhouse beds. If only he could find a horse, even a

mule, he'd be able to cover more ground. As it was, from dawn to dusk he slogged endlessly

onward in the heat. Wasn't it April? Why did it feel more like August?

There were times, especially in mid-afternoon when he was getting really tired, that it almost

seemed he could hear Eugenia calling to him. He hoped desperately that meant she was still alive. He needed her to be alive. Her voice, so familiar and dear, came to him sometimes as

though it drifted down through the thick canopy of woodland leaves. If he were in open

country, it rose up from between the deeply-plowed brown furrows, rich and round, wanting

him to come, to find her.

He thought about going back to her house, that possibly she'd returned, but, no, that didn't

seem right. She wouldn't be there. He had no idea how he knew she wasn't there any more,

he just did. He had to go somewhere to find her. If only he knew where that was. So he simply

kept putting one foot in front of the other, day after day after day.

"Come, Richard, come back!" Anne begged.

I'm trying, Eugenia. I'm trying so hard.

ON TO PART 6

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