Tin Soldier: a short story Read online

  TIN SOLDIER

  A Short Story

  by Resa Nelson

  Copyright Information

  Tin Soldier: a short story

  Copyright © 2014 by Resa Nelson

  Tin Soldier originally appeared in Oceans of the Mind magazine © 2003 by Resa Nelson

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, locations, and events portrayed in this book are fictional or used in an imaginary way to entertain. Any resemblance to any real people, situations, or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Tin Soldier

  About Tin Soldier

  Tin Soldier

  January 2

  Rick watched anxiously as Abby undid the buttons of her silk blouse. On the last button, she froze. He followed her gaze as she looked at the license she’d placed on her nightstand after retrieving it from today’s mail. He watched her eyes trace and retrace the words embossed in gold at the bottom: “United States Government -- There is only one good reason to have a child.”

  It wasn’t that Abby’s looks repulsed him. She was just the kind of woman who failed to inspire a second glance. She was doughy and overweight. Skin pale and freckled. Hair black and wiry.

  The one beautiful thing was what she didn’t have: a gene tattoo.

  From the way Abby stared at her license, she must have been on the verge of changing her mind. Rick couldn’t let that happen. He’d invested too many years in her. “What’s wrong?” he said.

  She didn’t look at him. Instead, she focused on the last button, still undone. “I don’t know.”

  Naked under Abby’s large and luxurious comforter, Rick slid over to the edge of the bed. If Abby wasn’t beautiful, at least she owned a beautiful sky-rise condo in the heart of Houston. The rooms were spacious, the carpets plush and feather soft, and the furniture was heavy and expensive.

  With a soft and gentle touch, he caught her hovering hands inside his.

  Abby looked up abruptly. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’m 40 and you’re 28. Maybe I’m having second thoughts about--but I can’t be having second thoughts! I’m so lucky. So fortunate. This is exactly what I’ve always wanted. Beyond my wildest dreams, even. I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t--”

  Abby gasped softly as Rick pressed the back of her hands to his lips.

  Rick watched her closely. He paid attention to the tiniest hint of color creeping across her face. The expression in her eyes. The flickering of her gaze.

  Rick kissed her fingertips lightly. “Do you trust me?”

  When her hands trembled inside his, Rick squeezed to hold them steady.

  “Yes. Of course. I put my life in your hands every day.”

  Rick rose on his knees on Abby’s bed to face her as she stood next to it. He let loose the last button and pushed her blouse off her shoulders. “Show me where they took it out.”

  Obediently, Abby raised one arm to show him the underside of her biceps. The scar was fresh and tender, about half an inch long. “I took the bandage off this morning,” Abby said.

  Rick took a good look at it. He traced his fingertips around the scar. He drank in the moment as if it were well-aged whiskey. He savored every second.

  Her doctor had removed her Preconceive implant, leaving tiny and precise stitches. It was official. Now she could get pregnant. Abby was likely to be the richest and most powerful woman Rick would ever know, but touching the skin around her scar drove the point home.

  But Abby looked scared, like a little girl. For a brief moment, it touched a place in Rick that made him want to protect her. The words popped out of his mouth before he could take them back. “We don’t have to do this. Not if you don’t want to.”

  It was all Rick could do to keep a sincere look on his face. He had to stay focused. Keep his eye on the prize. Failure was not an option. He had to get Abby in bed.

  Abby’s words flooded out from some secret place where she’d been damming them up. “It’s impossible somebody like you--anybody who looks like you--is alone. I keep thinking you must have a wife. A girlfriend. This is terrible and wrong.”

  Rick reminded himself of the cold, hard facts of life. One: Life is war. Two: Everyone else is the enemy. Three: The only way to win the war is to fight for yourself.

  He kissed Abby slowly and passionately. “How could I kiss you like that if I loved somebody else?”

  He could see Abby steeling herself as she looked deeply into his eyes for the truth. “That’s not an answer.”

  Rick steeled himself in return. He’d already figured out a way to tell her as much of the truth as he was willing to reveal. “Even if I did have someone special, I’d never turn you down. Nobody ever gets a chance like this. I swear, Abby, you make me feel like the luckiest man alive.”

  He kissed her again. As their tenderness heated into lust, Rick wrapped his arms around Abby and drew her down into the depths of her own bed.

  ###

  Before Rick had time to shut his own front door, Shelly’s voice pierced the stale, smoky air.

  “You’re late!” Moments later, Shelly walked into the living room, her high heels clicking slowly and purposefully on the cheap tile floor that spread like a disease throughout the tiny apartment, part of a rundown complex in a bedroom community turned ghetto. Everything in the apartment was chipped or warped or broken with no hope for repair.

  One of the pleasures of his bleak life was coming home and getting an eyeful of Shelly every night. She was a tall, leggy blonde with tourmaline eyes, chiseled cheekbones, and a body that stopped every man cold.

  With Shelly on his arm, Rick felt like somebody. He felt like a success, even if only for the few seconds before anybody got a close look at Shelly’s face.

  It wasn’t her fault. It was something the government had forced on her.

  A “1M” gene tattoo glowed crimson red just under the skin between her eyebrows. Her genetic code indicated risk for ADD, bi-polarity, leukemia, and scoliosis. Although medically manageable, all costs for treatment and special education would fall directly into the parents’ laps. Hers was one of the worst genetic rankings possible, and it ensured her Preconceive implant was unlikely to be removed legally.

  Fresh out of beauty school, Shelly had moved in with Rick’s family after finally landing a part-time job as a manicurist at the local mall.

  “Sorry, Babe. I got stuck downtown.”

  “Again?” Shelly’s face was hard with unspoken accusations. She extended her arms to embrace him, but Rick knew what she wanted. As he drew her in for a hug, Rick saw her nostrils flare slightly. She inhaled, searching his face, his hair, his breath, his body for the scent of another woman.

  Rick held her long and close. He’d cleaned himself up, then spent some extra time on the bus to work off the equivalent of an honest day’s sweat. The longer he held Shelly, the more she relaxed.

  But she was still edgy when she broke away. “So did you take the bitch to the hospital? Did they fill her up with a turkey baster full of your juice?” Shelly backed away, her arms crossed.

  Rick took off his thread-bare winter coat and hung it on one of the many hooks nailed into the wall by the front door. Judging by the other seven coats hanging crowded on the wall, it looked like everybody was home. A loud round of laughter coming from the opposite end of the two-bedroom apartment confirmed it. As gorgeous as Shelly was to look at, she wasn’t the easiest woman in the world to placate. Rick took a deep breath, then gave it a shot. Calmly and warmly, he said, “My day was fine, Honey. How was yours?”

  As usual, it was the wrong thing to say.

  Shelly clenched her own arms so tightly it seemed impossible that her long, polished fingernai
ls didn’t puncture her skin and draw blood. “How was my day? Your brother Frank slept in our bed and left drool on my pillow.”

  Rick shrugged it off. “Frank works nights. Where else is he supposed to sleep?”

  Before Shelly could answer, Rick’s family streamed into the living room. Rick’s mother cradled a large photo album in her arms.

  Shelly turned away with a sick look on her face.

  “Rick, sweetie,” his mother said as she kissed his cheek. “Come look at pictures with us.”

  “This is supposed to be my day!” Shelly blurted, near tears.

  Everyone stared at her. Shelly stared back.

  “I got my first pay check today,” Shelly said. “It’s supposed to be my special day! Wasn’t spending every waking moment of New Year’s Day looking at that stinking album enough?”

  The album was open in Rick’s mother’s arms. Photos of Rick and his brothers as kids, made from cheap, disposable cameras, were glued onto the pages.

  Shelly glared at Rick’s mother with unbridled hatred. “How can you be so insensitive?”

  Rick’s mother spoke gently. “Shelly, no one is trying to hurt you.”

  Rick’s brothers settled into the living room sofas as if claiming the front row at a boxing match. Frank passed around the popcorn as everyone waited for Shelly’s response.

  Shelly steamed. “You never had to suffer. You had it easy.”

  Rick tried to smooth things over. “Mom’s from a different generation.”

  Shelly ignored him. “Looking in a mirror is no big deal for you. Not like it is for...”

  Too upset, Shelly ran down the hallway.

  Rick took a step after her. His mother placed a warning hand on his shoulder. Rick stopped and looked back at her.

  “I hate to say it,” his mother said softly. “But when I see girls like Shelly, I wonder if the government is right.”

  Rick turned and walked down the hallway. He knew what she meant. The same as the phrase he’d seen earlier that day on Abby’s new license.

  ###

  Shelly sat on the bed, hugging her knees to her chest. “Why should I help your family with my pay check when I could move back into my family’s apartment and help them instead?”

  A cold chill ran down the back of Rick’s throat. “You can’t go. Not after all we’ve done. Everything we planned.”

  Shelly smiled. “George Chan got a job at Harvard.”

  Rick blew off the news. “Doing what? Mopping floors?”

  Shelly’s smile dimmed. But only a little. “Three years from now, they’ll let him go to school for free. He’s got the brains for law school.”

  “So you’d spend three years waiting for George Chan to go to law school--and then what? Another three years while he’s in school? That’s six years, Shelly. You’ll be pushing 25.”

  Shelly gazed into Rick’s eyes. For the first time, she looked genuinely sad. “But I’d be married to a law man from Harvard. Not some rich woman’s chauffeur.”

  Rick considered his options. A bitter fight would get him nowhere. And he’d maxed out on begging. His best option was a crap shoot.

  “This rich woman’s chauffeur can give you everything you want in a year. Maybe under a year.”

  “You can’t guarantee that.”

  He rolled his dice without looking to see how they landed.

  “No,” Rick said. “I can’t. But let’s stick to the plan. First we set up all the pins, then we knock them down.”

  “Nothing can happen until she’s knocked up.”

  Rick kept his voice steady and calm. “As soon as she’s knocked up, I’ll talk her into hiring a nanny. She trusts me. She’ll hire you. We wait until she has the baby. We wait until she’s ready to travel again. I hit the road with her, while you stay in her house with the baby. When she’s with the customer, I make an excuse to step out.”

  Shelly relaxed for a moment. Her face glowed the way it used to when they’d dream about a better future.

  Rick missed the nights talking about Mexico, where anybody could get the gene tattoo removed without leaving a scar. It would be easy to slip back into the States, but this time with a status symbol in their arms. Back in the days when the plan was nothing but a dream, Shelly was soft and warm and tender.

  She was the only one Rick trusted. If life was a war, she was in the same foxhole with him, watching his back.

  “And then?” Shelly said, even though she knew exactly what came next. Her voice had the wistfulness of a child asking for the story she knew by heart to be read aloud, just once more before bedtime.

  “Then our lives will be perfect,” Rick said before he kissed her. It was slow and passionate, just like the old days.

  When they finished, Shelly gazed back at him evenly. The hard edge crept back into her voice. “Just remember which one of us has the cousin in Mexico.”

  ###

  March 14

  “It seems to have come out of Henry Hickner’s molds, which is no guarantee he cast it,” the old man said. “And some fool touched up the chipped paint on the elbow.” The jeweler’s eyepiece jutted from his face. He turned a tin soldier slowly in his hands, inspecting it closely. He looked more like a gnome than a man, Rick thought. The old man’s fingers were curled up and gnarled, and he sat at an old oak table as tiny and crowded as his shop.

  Abby sat across the table from the old man, waiting patiently. Rick stood behind her, forcing himself to at least look patient. But they’d been here an hour already and accomplished nothing. At this rate, they might waste the rest of the day here--maybe with nothing to show for it.

  He knew it never bothered Abby. She’d just think of it as an investment that might pay off in a few months or a few years.

  Rick understood that kind of patience. He just didn’t have it for Abby’s customers. In an effort to keep himself sane and quiet, Rick picked up one of the other tin soldiers from the tabletop.

  “Put that down!” The old man had turned his full attention on Rick in the split second it took him to lift the toy.

  Rick froze, partly in surprise at the harshness and superiority in the old man’s tone, and partly to keep from lashing back. Rick took a deep breath and began to silently count.

  One... two...

  “Mr. Jenkins,” Abby said softly.

  The old man ignored her. “I said, put that down!”

  Three... four...

  Jenkins launched into a tirade. He sounded like a government ad. “Typical of the poor. Lazy, stupid freeloaders. Don’t know a damn thing about responsibility.”

  Rick was acutely aware he was the only one in the room with a gene tattoo between his eyebrows. It wasn’t a bad one -- only a “50K” tattoo. The worst indicator in Rick’s gene code was hypertension. Jenkins and Abby were rich enough to bypass getting tattooed. They’d already proven their worth.

  Five... six... Rick moved in slow motion. With all the care he could muster, Rick set the tin soldier back on the tabletop.

  The old man slapped Rick’s hand. “Thank God for genetic identification. The last thing we need is for poor people to contribute their lousy genes to the pool. This country was founded by risk takers, not bums.”

  Seven... eight...

  “Rick,” Abby said smoothly and evenly. “Would you please show the Wellington set to Mr. Jenkins?”

  Rick exhaled silently. No matter how bad things got, he could always count on Abby to come through for him. He knelt next to the case he’d carried into the old man’s shop. Rick took his time removing the small, polished wood box from the larger case. Even though he’d turned his back on the old man, Rick could easily hear the awe in his voice.

  “Wellington?” Jenkins said to Abby. “The Duke of Wellington?”

  Abby’s tone was smooth and disinterested. “Rick knows more about the set than I do. He’s my Wellington expert.”

  It wasn’t true. Not entirely. Abby had tutored Rick then pointed him toward the best research materials available.
Even if Rick did know slightly more about the Wellington set than Abby, it was because she’d made it so.

  When Rick turned toward the table with the wooden box in hand, Jenkins looked at him in eager anticipation. Abby slid over to make room for Rick to sit next to her.

  Rick sat down gingerly. He felt like an impostor. Abby was the expert in Americana, not Rick. He was nothing more than a chauffeur and a walking sperm bank. Any other woman would have treated him like a servant or gigolo, at best. But Abby had picked a choice antique and helped Rick get his feet wet. If Rick could believe her, it looked like she was game for teaching him how to swim.

  Rick’s voice cracked with nervous tension when he spoke. “The Duke of Wellington got these from his pops for his birthday. The kid was only 8, but somehow he got himself obsessed with the wars over here in America.”

  Don’t blow it, you idiot, Rick thought. You can do this. Don’t screw up.

  As Rick talked, he removed each soldier from the felt-lined box. He arranged them slowly and carefully on the tabletop, just the way Abby had shown him. Each was a different rank from the Revolutionary War. In a few minutes, Rick would describe the differences between the corporal and sergeant and soldier, as well as describe the poise-and-cock-firelock positions. “When the Duke died last January, he knew none of his kin wanted....” No. That wasn’t the right word. “He knew none of his kin appreciated his soldiers. He wanted them to be in good hands, so he made his estate sell them to Ms. Rippetoe.”

  Rick counted to six, just as Abby had practiced with him.

  Rick looked as pointedly as he could muster at the old man. “You do know about Abby--Ms. Rippetoe’s connection to Valley Forge.”

  Suddenly, Mr. Jenkins was flustered. He turned to Abby with fluttering hope. “You have connections?”

  Connections were the rage. They opened doors for jobs, club memberships, and special privileges. Then there was the boom in genealogy research and American collectibles and antiques. There were three ways of proving you’d made it to the world: having a child, having connections, or collecting pricey Americana. One of the above guaranteed prestige. Three out of three guaranteed a life where dreams come true.