Losing Julia (10 page)

Now Helen the Elder pursues me relentlessly.

“How are you feeling today, Patrick?”

I stall a few seconds before looking up from my book, hoping she’ll register my inattention.

“Fine, thank you.”

“And the grandchildren?”

“Fine, thank you.” I am talking into my book.

“Now how many do you have again? Four, right? Or is it five?”

“Three.”

“Yes, three. Of course. And you’ve got a few greatgrandchildren, don’t you Patrick?” The lilt of her voice says: “You old goat you.”

“Yes, I do. Three as well.”

“Three and three.” She always says three and three. “And how are they?”

“Fine, thank you.”

Slowly, I raise my book higher and higher until it covers my face.

“What activities did you sign up for this afternoon? There’s a papier-mâché class at three.”

“I didn’t sign up for any today.”

“Oh. Well, neither did I.”

Once I tried to shake Helen by walking out the front door and then hurrying around back as fast as I could. That’s when I discovered that Helen is faster than I am.

Ding! It was Evelyn Stouffer’s egg timer, which she kept in her lap in lieu of a short-term memory. Ding! Time for breakfast. Ding! Time for lunch. Ding! Time to take some pills. Ding! Time for bed.

The problem is that Stouffer is hard of hearing, so unless she feels the vibration of the bell in her lap she doesn’t always realize that her timer has dinged.

“That’s your timer, Evelyn!” I hollered.

“Huh?” She looked over with that befuddled, empty Alzheimer’s gaze.

“Your
timer,
Evelyn. It dinged!” shouted Helen.

“Oh, my
timer.
Strange, I didn’t hear it.” She held it up to her face and stared at it. “Lunch already?”

“We just had lunch,” I explained, wondering whether any of Evelyn’s roommates had been driven completely batty.

“Huh? Well that’s odd. I don’t take my pills until right after dinner, on a full stomach you know. I wonder why I set the timer?” She held it up and stared at it again, as though awaiting an explanation.

I stood abruptly, hoping to leave Helen embroiled in Evelyn’s confusion.

“Where are you off to?” Helen asked.

“The bathroom. I’m going to the bathroom.”

She smiled that knowing sort of insider’s smile that lovers flash, only her smile fractured along dozens of fault lines across her crocodilian complexion, like dried-out rivers and tributaries seen from space.

I turned and fled.

THE BAYONET NOMENCLATURE AND DESCRIPTION

The bayonet is a cutting and thrusting weapon consisting of three principal parts, viz, the blade, guard, and grip. The blade has the following parts: Edge, false edge, back, grooves, point, and tang. The length of the blade from guard to point is 16 inches, the edge 14.5 inches, and the false edge 5.6 inches. Length of the rifle, bayonet fixed, is 59.4 inches. The weight of the bayonet is 1 pound; the weight of the rifle without bayonet is 8.69 pounds. The center of gravity of the rifle, with bayonet fixed, is just in front of the rear sight.

—Manual of the Bayonet, War Department, 1913.

THE GERMANS
began shelling us just after three a.m. We were dug in to a farmer’s field southwest of Soissons, bracing for their assault when the first murderous concussions stung my ears.

Oh shit, I can’t take this. Clods of dirt smack against my shoulders and helmet. I press against the wall of the trench. Screams? Who is that? I’m thrown backward, then down to the ground. My cheek stings. It’s wet. I crouch lower and lower, curled up against the earth. Something metallic strikes my helmet. My left hand hurts. A gas siren? No, that’s the shells falling. Right? My box respirator hangs in a bag around my neck, but it feels tangled. Everything feels tangled. Something picks me up and throws me down again, hard. I feel seasick. I can’t do this. Oh fucking Christ.

Back on my feet. Am I hurt? I look at my arms and legs and chest. Everything’s there. Down the trench I see Tometti clutching his photograph of Teresa right up to his face and humming a song, tears streaming down his cheeks.

Another explosion. I’m down again. I feel a hand on my shoulder. Someone is pulling me. It’s Daniel. He points to the left, where the trench wall has collapsed. Men begin digging. Daniel grabs a shovel and pushes it into my chest. Dig.

My arms ache as I stab at the dirt; down down down I must dig down farther. Something hits my face. My nose is bleeding. Am I crying? My face is so wet. I fall down again. Who’s screaming? My ears are bursting. Stop the noise,
please.
What’s that on the ground? A head. Johnson. I vomit.

The shells land farther behind us now. I am back on my feet, dizzy. Christ it’s smoky. I can’t see.

“Fix bayonets!”

Jesus God. My hands shake as I struggle with the steel locking ring. Come on come on come on. I hear dozens of metallic clicks up and down the line. Vomit burns my throat.

“The Germans are coming!”

Flares arch up from behind our lines and hover above, as if held by curious ghosts. To my right a Hotchkiss fires and men are shouting and firing and I hear tremendous screams over the parapet. I climb up and peer over the edge and see silhouettes of men running toward me; hundreds and hundreds of men with bayonets gleaming and rifles flashing. They are coming for me.

Holy mother of God.

I aim and shoot and load and aim and shoot as the figures come closer and now I see faces, faces of young men and middle-aged men hurtling toward me and my whole body wants to turn and run and hide from this horror. You bastards!

A sudden weight presses against my right side and I grab and push and pull until I see the face of Mark Castings, barely eighteen, illuminated by the moon. His jaw hangs sideways on his shoulder. I turn and load and fire. The figures are hesitating. I watch them drop to the ground. The rest turn and run back.

I SEE THE
moon, the moon sees me, the moon sees somebody I’d like to see…

“SON OF A BITCH
would you look at that,” says Giles, who has a long cut across his chin and dried mud in his eyebrows. The sun is up and I peek above the parapet. There are dozens, maybe hundreds of bodies. Some moving, some still. And flies. Flies everywhere.

I can’t eat.

“Don’t be a goddamned idiot, Delaney,” says John Galston, the platoon sergeant, pointing his spoon at me. A former police officer from Brooklyn who once clubbed to death an entire German machine gun crew, Galston is short and thick and all business. “A soldier can always eat. Anything, anywhere, anytime. Eat or I’ll kick your ass.”

So I eat, then vomit.

“You’re a goddamned embarrassment. Ought to put you back folding the fucking laundry.”

I would love to be folding the fucking anything.

GOD BLESS
the moon and God bless me and God bless somebody I’d like to see.

THE NEXT MORNING
we counterattack. Daniel squats beside me, snapping open and closed the ten pouches of his cartridge belt one by one.

“You okay?” he asks.

“I’m okay.” I tighten the brown leather chin strap on my helmet, then run my hand along the wooden grip of my trench knife, which hangs from the left side of my cartridge belt. At four a.m., our artillery begins. First the 155s, then the 75s. We go over the top at five a.m., when the covering barrage will begin rolling forward at a rate of a hundred meters every five minutes.

“Stay right with it,” says Daniel.

“Yep, right the fuck with it,” I say.

I am desperate to stop my shaking. Daniel puts his hand on my shoulder. I see his thumbnail is completely torn off. “Look, all you’ve got to do is get your ass out of the trench with the rest of us and run like hell and shoot at anything that moves. Don’t be first and don’t be last. Maybe we’ll even get some souvenirs.”

Yes. Right. Okay. Just crawl up and run. I can do that.

We are perhaps four hundred yards from the German front lines, which are bordered by barbed wire thirty feet deep in some places. Galston warns that several German machine gun teams will inevitably survive the bombardment. “Get to them and the rest is easy,” he says.