Free Bea by Peggy Webb

sound, soft, like the whimper of a puppy thrown into a muddy ditch on the side of the road?
    “Bea?” He rolled over, squinting his eyes in the dark. He could see a dark shape on her side of tent. “Bea? Is that you?”
    “Russ?”
    Her head came up, and in another flash of lightning he could see her eyes, wide and scared. Sound and bright unnatural light filled the tent. Bea shuddered, and huddled down into her bedroll.
    Russ was touched. Here was a woman who wanted all the world to know how independent she was, and yet she cried at romantic movies and cringed at thunderstorms. All of a sudden he felt strong and important and necessary.
    He sat up and made room on his pallet.
    “Would you like to come over here and sit with me awhile?”
    “No.” Her soft hair had covered the side of her face, like the broken wing of a bird, and she peered sideways at him through that curtain of black. “I’m doing just fine.”
    Another boom reverberated through the mountains. Bea jumped, then settled back into her covers, shivering.
    “You know,” he said, “I can’t help but want a little bit of companionship at times like these. If you’d just sort of scoot over this way so we’d be close, I’d really appreciate it.”
    “You would?” She knew darned well that he was making it all up, and she never liked him as much as she did at that moment.
    “I truly would.” A flash of lightning illuminated his smile.
    Without giving herself time to think too much about what she was doing, she scooted across the tent floor and onto his warm pallet. He took charge, arranging her so she was tucked under his arm with her head resting on his shoulder.
    “There,” he said. “That’s better.”
    He felt her shiver as nature vented its wrath on the mountains. He started to talk then, for he guessed that what she was feeling was much akin to what he’d been feeling not so long ago—an intense lonesomeness that sometimes disguised itself as fear.
    “When I was a little boy, not much more than four, I’d guess, my mother used to tell me stories every time it came a thunderstorm. My favorites were the ones about Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh.”
    “And the Hundred Acre Wood,” Bea said. “I loved those stories, too.”
    “Did you sing the songs?”
    “Yes. But not very well.”
    “I was marvelous.”
    He gave her a demonstration, his great rich voice wrapping about the simple, silly little words of the Winnie-the-Pooh songs until they weren’t silly anymore, until they were words of great truth and wisdom. He sang of friendship and of how it always made the world seem a kinder, more forgiving place.
    And soon Bea felt safe. Her head nodded and she went to sleep, resting on Russ’s shoulder. Outside, the storm continued to lash the mountain.
    Russ wrapped both arms around Bea, thinking about the home he’d had when he’d been four—green shutters at the windows and a white fence with roses that smelled good in the summertime. Strange that Bea should bring all that to mind.
    As the storm abated, he thought of tucking her back into her sleeping bag on her side of the tent. But it felt good to be touching her. In the end he decided he would ease down onto his pallet and let her sleep there at his side.
    “One night won’t hurt.” He slid downward, being careful not to wake her. “What can one night hurt?”
    She sighed and cuddled close to him, settling against his side as if she belonged there. Russ had a sudden vision of how different his life could be, of coming home to logs burning in the fireplace and chicken stewing on the stove, of walking through the door and straight into the arms of a woman much like Bea. Not exactly, mind you. Someone sweeter, gentler. Perhaps someone who put Bea’s fragrance on the blue-veined arch of her foot. Yes. Surely that.
    If he were looking for a woman, he’d like a woman who smelled exactly like Bea. She reminded him of flowers in the springtime when the earth was green with