CyberChrome


"....You're As Cold As Ice....Unwilling To Sacrifice....," booms out of the stereo speakers in his 57 Chevy. A five hundred watt system is about the only thing not factory original about his glossy black Nomad wagon. Two eighty-three, four barrel, Corvette injection heads heating up Hooker headers. Down shifting from fourth to third, the tranny crunches a tad bit, Billy floors it getting onto the freeway and his Goodyear Eagle tires chirp in protest on the slick paint of a crosswalk, "Damn it, damn anyhow," he pokes at the digital tuner, "I hate that song, bet Foreigner wrote that just for her."

Dad knows his son, Billy, is upset about something again just by the way he screeches into the driveway. Billy is always so overly careful about not scratching or abusing his car. It is his pride and joy. "Harummph, bet Kira had something to do with this," Pop silently thinks amusing thoughts about women, one in particular from times past and best forgotten, a very lovely blond with an English accent.

Sometimes his father finds himself wishing Billy was a boy again. Things were so much simpler then, less painful. The only love his son knew back then was a love of his parents and family. Dad didn't have to deal with the problems of his son being in love. That kind of love is so complex and there are never any quick and easy answers like, "Don't worry Billy. We will have your bike fixed in no time at all. See? Your chain got caught on your pant's leg and has just slipped off the sprocket." Billy's dad, an excellent mechanic, knows he doesn't have the needed tools to mend a broken heart.

"Hi Pops!" closing their front door and trying hard to put on his best happy face, a slightly ruffle feathered fresh college graduate already feels better just being home, just being with dad, just being his boy again, "You are up kinda late for an old fogy Dad?" Pops rolls his eyes and clicks off his television.

"After all the work we put into that sex wagon of yours, I just wanted to be sure you brought her home in one piece. Your car that is," grinning, dad adds, "and without a speeding ticket or a pregnant girlfriend." Billy flat drops his jaw, starts to say something then decids to just grin instead. "Hey Dad, that Muncie four speed we put in it? Well, I think the third gear syncro is going south, kinda crunchy when I downshift. Could you help me rebuild my tranny this weekend?" his dad smiles, nods and thinks, "Billy the Kid. My son will always be a kid. Life is good."

Billy flops down on the couch next to his dad, picks up the remote and clicks the television back on. Once the picture came up, Billy could see his dad had been watching Gilligan's Island again. It was a rerun of an episode with a love struck gorilla chasing after everyone on the island. Now that he is older, Billy is more aware, more experienced. Somehow the antics of that lonely gorilla gave him melancholy rather than his usual laughter of his childhood. It is actually kind of sad, looking for love and being rejected by all on the island. They only ran in fear not understanding the gorilla meant no harm to anyone. He just wanted some love. Billy unconsciously sighs.

"Son, you made a Kira entrance tonight, wanna talk?" hoping young Billy will open up and talk instead of his usual, "Everything is ok. Well, I dunno know, shrug of the shoulders." He really loves his parents and never wants to upset them. Billy shrugs his shoulders. Dad rolls his eyes again.

"Hey Wild Bill Hiccup, how 'bout go get us a couple of cold Coronas out of the fridge," dad has switched over to his best buddy role, no longer the father, "Sure Dad, wanna a lime slice with the Corona?"

Billy's dad was stationed in England just after the worst of the Blitzkrieg which left London and most all of Europe in devastation. He never really had to fight or to kill anyone but what he saw, the human tragedy, all the death, was as horrible. He was just a teenager, lonely and stuck within the middle of events which just didn't make sense to him. How could people do these kinds of things to others? It is all so brutal, so very savage.

He spent his tour of duty helping to evacuate innocent civilians, helping to dig people out of rubble of what was once their homes. Much too often, he would dig out a lifeless body of a child, a mother, a father. Late at night, he found a woman who is near death. She looks to be a decade or so older than him and even through all the blood, dirt and soot, he could see she is stunningly beautiful while carrying her to an awaiting ambulance. In his arms, she struggls and whispers, "Thank you sir." Later he noticed she had bled all over his neck and shoulder while he was carrying her down the mountain made of rubble of homes.

Sir. He had never been called sir before. Somehow he feels much older, more mature, not realizing how mature he had become in coping with daily death and tragedy. He made it a point to visit her everyday at their Field Hospital, a collection of nothing more than raggedy dirty army tents serving the medical needs of all in the area. Each day they talked endlessly. In time he came to know Penny quite well and, she came to know him well. In time he also came to realize he has fallen in love with her.

His greatest personal tragedy while in Europe, was the day she left him. He just couldn't understand it. An older, much older, Medical Corp Captain was his best friend and he often turned to him for talk. Billy's dad felt comfortable with the captain although he was old enough to be his father. His captain treated him like a buddy, not like a son or a child. Remembering that helps him slip out of his father role with his son and become his best buddy, his equal, his partner in both pain and pleasure.

"Did I ever tell you about this wild blond English girl with the biggest ol' hooters a soldier has ever seen during the war over in Eng..," interrupted, "Yeah Dad, dang, at least eighty bagillion times!" Handing dad a Corona dripping with cool wet condensation and neatly crowned with a crisp lime slice. "Well, tell me about her son. What is going on?" Setting his son up for a much needed talk, man to man, almost in the same way a kind army captain would strip himself of rank and get Billy's dad to open up and talk, man to man, so very long ago. Billy wipes cold beer off his lips, belches, "wuuu well whatya mean Dad?" Trying to look confused, his son chugs a big gulp and slumps down on their couch next to his bestest friend in the world, trying to bolster his confidence in closeness.

"She's cold as ice Dad," more mature and educated, Billy acknowledges there is no longer a need for his father to beat around the bush to get him to open up, "Like, I'm really in love with her, I want to marry her.. but...," fading to silence and a dour look.

"Yeah son, I know. My little English Rose was truly wild. It was the horrors of war, the Germans, the fire bombings, survival under, sad conditions. She was too busy just staying alive, too busy trying to have a life, too busy for love," dad emphasizes his word, love, with a deep rumbling beer belch.

After her recovery and leaving the field hospital, Penny was faced with an even more serious threat, simple survival. London had been reduced for the most part to burning rubble. She had lost her income when the factory she worked at was blown to bits. Now she had lost her tiny apartment, her money, her clothes, everything. What she wore was a mis-matched set of clothes donated by those who still had clothes to give away. Her food she ate, came from Billy's dad in the form of pilfered C-rations and a rare hot meal at a church soup kitchen. Her bed was where the ground was soft.

Out in the relatively untouched Moors Penny knew a better life anxiously waited her. If she could only make it back home to her parent's farm, back to mom and dad where everything would be ok again. Only a hundred miles away, food, clothing and her old comfortable clothes and bed waited her return. She had to make a choice. Stay with the love of a kind and generous young American private who saved her life and helped to keep her alive or, go home to lasting safety. She had to decide between love or life.

To stay in London meant slowly starving to death or falling ill from sleeping out in the cold. What good would love do her then? Bill would eventually be shipped back home to America, what then? A sad sacrifice had to be made.

"She's unwilling to sacrifice Dad," finally letting go, "Kira is really a good person, kind, compassionate, hard working, inventive, she's a bitch Dad."

"That's what I thought about Penny when she told me she had to leave London to live with her parents on their farm out in the Moors," wisdom of years speaking, "she was very cold and quite matter-of-fact about it, but isn't that the nature of life? So why do you think Kira is a bitch son?"

"I dunno Dad. We have been seeing each other for almost a year now. I've told her I love her but she never tells me back. She just kinda looks at me or smiles. Sometimes she starts crying and runs off, usually," Billy bolsters his emotions with a deep drink of warming beer, "usually upstairs and out her bedroom door into the woods." He tosses his lime slice into their fireplace waiting for winter, "it..it has.. has a lot to do with her daughter, I think. Kira tells me Traci is the most important thing in her life and is her life."

"Billy if you are thinking of marrying her, you have to marry her daughter as well," Dad slowly twists his lime slice around in the neck of his beer, "Yeah Dad I know, that isn't a problem but that stupid race car of hers is," dad stops twisting the lime and looks up, "what do mean by that?"

"Well how can she say she is dedicated to her daughter when she and her daughter are always off somewhere racing. Kira is risking her life every time she drives, what kind of mother is that?"

"When Penny decided to leave London," dad's lime slice lands next to his son's sending up a small plume of ash, "what I did not tell you is she planned to walk the entire one hundred miles to home, and she did. She had no choice. Her country was devastated, no cars, no transportation. She simply accepted it and, well, she just stated a fact without emotion. She seemed to me, to be very cold at the time. Penny was, is, a very logical woman. She simply looked me right straight in my eyes and, with a somber poker face, said, "Luv, I am walking home. Good-bye." "Logic! I hate it. That's Kira alright," finishing off his beer, "she is always so damn logical. She's too smart for her own britches. I keep getting this crap about calling it as it is. Every time I feel like she is getting close, when I try to touch her heart, she just closes up and starts with all this logic and reason about why it can't happen. Most of the time when we talk she tells me to give her a day or two to think about it," Billy grabs two empty beer bottles and heads for the kitchen for fresh ones.

Dad enjoys the feel of a wet cold bottle of beer. Standing by their fireplace, his son wets his whistle and continues on, "You know what she did Pops?" Dad raises one eyebrow forming a question mark, "I asked her if she was a protagonist. Without a word, Kira gets up and off she goes up her stairs to that bedroom of hers, more like her science lab really. So I got curious and went up there. She is sitting at her desk, she has out a pencil, a pad, a dictionary and a thesaurus. Kira was researching the word 'protagonist' and making notes. So I asked her what the Hell she was doing. Kiralynne tells me each word in our English language has multiple meanings and, she wants to be sure she has understood what I asked in its proper context. I swear to God, Dad she has pointy Vulcan ears under all that corkscrewy brunette hair. She is a Spock, a Data, she is more like, like an android all wrapped up in chrome plated armor with a computerized steel trap mind."

"Son, she is an obsessive intellectual," dad slowly swirls his beer around in his bottle, mixing it with lime juice, "Look at it from her point of view Billy. She has multiple college degrees, teaching credentials up the ying yang, she is a successful road racer, an accomplished auto mechanic, she welds, does electrical work, carpentry and is a published author among many other things. Look at her paid for home, her neighborhood, her lifestyle, she is filthy rich. Dr. Larkin next door? His house cost him four and a half million before he finished building it. Son there is absolutely nothing she needs from anybody. She has virtually everything except for one very important thing, love."

"God damn it!" An empty beer bottle shatters in their fireplace, "Pops, that is exactly what I have been trying to give her and the only thing I want from her, just plain old love.That case hardened chrome steel exterior of hers, it, I couldn't cut through it with a welding torch. I don't think anybody has ever been able to get through to her."

"Billy, somewhere, sometime," Dad slumps and sighs, "somebody got to her. She is a woman who has been hurt really bad. Have you noticed she won't make a single comment about the father of her child? Her silence says much. There is a past in her life she won't even acknowledge at all."

"But Dad, I would make a good father," dad breaks in, "That is not even in doubt son and she knows that all too well. Kira knows you would be a great father for her girl and one of the best husbands a woman could ever want. What you cannot see is how much she loves you."

"Loves me?" Billy is incredulous, "Loves me? Yeah right. We were making love once and I told her I love her. She started crying, asked me to never tell her that again and ran off into the woods like she always does."

Bill has spent most of his off-duty hours for several days fixing up one of the little used supply tents at the field hospital. Boxes are moved aside and neatly stacked. He manages to scrounge up some carpet, cut away the burnt part and then lay it down to cover the dirt floor. His captain found him a small card table for the tent. Bill traded a decent pair of GI boots for a half used candle from a local surviving church. It looks good sitting on his clean woolen blanket doubling as a table cloth. The dishes, silverware and glasses aren't too badly nicked and scratched. His plates are actually a matched pair. He even talked a nurse into loaning him a pillow for this special night.

Penny precedes him into their tent for their dinner date. She smiles at a sight of hand cut paper flowers in a tin can on their table. Wine glasses! They don't match and one is chipped but they are real wine glasses. One of the folding chairs has a bent leg and sits a bit lopsided. Still it is clean, neat and smells of disinfectant. This is a welcome relief from the stench outside in the war. She is thrilled to have a fantasy of a dinner date with a man. She is a little concerned about an army cot with a blanket and pillow, but then it has been a long time since she has been in the arms of man and longs for it.

Dinner is mostly camouflaged C-rations heated up on a can of sterno. Somehow Bill has found some fresh tomatoes for her and they are neatly sliced and served as a salad. Like magic he also produces a bottle of wine. It is a white wine but they can't tell what kind or vintage, the label has been burnt off by fire bombings. Even with little pieces of charred cork floating in their wine, it tastes delicious. It helps Penny to relax and be more receptive to what she knows will happen later. She wants to have sex so bad but also doesn't want it to happen because she loves Bill.

Their love making is as furious as the war and leaves them both sweaty, even in England's winter chill. Sometime early in morning, screaming of air raid sirens startles Bill awake. He feels warm blood dripping on his shoulder. A moment of sleepy confusion causes him to think he is carrying yet another bleeding victim of savagery who so often drain their life on his shoulder.

He feels Penny's warm firm bare breasts pressing against his chest and wakes up enough to remember where he is and a wonderful evening they shared now disturbed by what he knows to be warm tears. His lover is crying on his shoulder. His emotions run wild as they do each time he feels a casualty's blood dripping on his neck and shoulders.

"What is wrong Penny?" with a ring of confusion, "Bill, luv.. this just can't happen. I will only end up hurting you something terrible," her tears stop with her sudden somber mood, "But Penny I love you," he blurts out only to be interrupted, "Bill don't ever say that again. This can't happen." She gets up and quickly dresses in her second hand clothes, "Bill I am so much older than you and know too much. I have to go." With that said, she parts the flaps on the tent and vanishes into a dark drizzle of a war torn morning, leaving Bill sitting on his cot, confused and hurt. His next time to see Penny is when she says good-bye to him.

"How much older is she than you son?" drawing on his own wisdom gained by time and an experience with an English woman almost old enough to be his mother, "She is twelve years older than you. I know, I know, that is really nothing in the sense of physical age. Billy a decade for the body is more like a millennium for the mind. Her eyes see deeper and with greater clarity than yours. Son she loves you enough to push you away. That chrome plated cold steel exterior of hers is not to keep you out, it is to keep her in. Her hard shell is like the chrome valve covers on your car. They are there not to keep you out, but rather to keep the motor oil in. Without that protection your engine would be a mess and would soon fail. She is protecting you in the same way. If she was to open up and let herself out, let herself loose on the world, things would get really messy and your relationship would soon fail just like your engine."

"Dad?" Truly confused, "That is nonsense."

"No son," his father's own pain shines in his eyes having been there once with love lost in a war, "Kira has a history. An unknown father, her mother dying when she is just a babe, having to move off her farm to California with her aunt and uncle when her grandparents couldn't afford to support her anymore, a runaway, foster homes, brushes with the law. She is a bitch son, you are right. Kira has no choice, she has to be more of a bitch than life is. She is a survivor, my English Penny made all over again. Billy, she is a mama wildcat, nobody will ever tame her. She allows you to cross into her territory but she will claw you to death if you try to touch her or her cub. Kira was abandoned by life when just a cub herself. She has basically been alone all these years. She was weaned by life before she was taught how to hunt. She is a savage inside. Billy, she is an instinctive killer and she knows it. That chrome exterior contains her, it is a self made cage. Without it you would be shredded wheat by now son. So you see, she is in love with you and is protecting you. Think about it."

"She is a bitch Dad," running his fingers through his hair, "but I think I sorta see, understand what you mean. She is all hung up on education, on being smart to survive life. Kira is fearful of a pain she has felt before. Any man crossing her path becomes frightened by her aggressive nature and labels her a bitch, because, well, because she is a bitch but not really. I mean she knows she is a bitch but doesn't hide it because she has to test people to see if, but, then she is so kind and loving, like her whole life is her daughters. Dang, Tracilynne will never have a father and Kira will never have a husband because she is so, so, well such a bitch but still she doesn't want to hurt anyone yet she always goes for the jugular. Dad this just doesn't make sense. Kira has almost everything, she doesn't need a man but she does want one really bad. When they try to pet her she bites them, or kills them, shit Dad, I am so confused."

His dad chuckles, "Billyboy, get use to it. God, whom I believe is a woman, put women on Earth to confuse and challenge men. This time son, this one, it hurts me to say this, she is too much of a challenge for you, for the both of us," motioning with his hand for Billy to fetch a couple more beers dad thinks about what he wants to say.

"Bill it would be pointless for you to try and stop Penny from leaving," his captain explains in compassion, "This is her home, her country. Penny's history is here in England, here with her family and their traditions. Don't you think it would be selfish to take her back to America with you? What do you have to offer that could replace all she knows, that could literally replace her life? Love her and let her go Bill. It is the right thing to do."

"Here ya go Dad." His dad, silently judging his own thoughts, runs a finger down a side of his wet bottle of beer, "Billy there is no better or easier way to say this. Son it is time to move on. Go out and find yourself a domesticated woman or at least one that can be tamed. Kira is one of the best women on Earth but no man will ever lay claim to her," Dad quietly says with an imploring look in his sad eyes, "Thanks Dad, I know, I kinda understand, sorta, well, you know I will figure it out, in time."

"Hey Wild Bill Hiccup have I ever told you the story about this wild blond English girl with the biggest ol' hooters...."