Losing Julia (8 page)

“No kidding?”

“She remarried. Lives in Florida. Some retirement community.”

“Her husband’s still alive?”

“Died years ago,” I said.

“Now you were a… ”

“Accountant.”

“Ah yes, a numbers man.”

The description made me wince. “I quit right after the divorce.”

“Quit your job?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Quit my job.” I smiled. “I traveled around the country a bit and then got a job teaching history at a small high school in Vermont. Later I quit that and opened a bookstore.”

“That’s why you read so much.”

“No, that’s why I opened a bookstore.”

“So you were living alone before you came here?”

“Until my heart attack. Then I lived with my son for a year but his house is small and I felt in the way. When the doctors discovered cancer I decided to move out before I got worse.”

“You’ve got cancer?” He perked up. “What kinda cancer?” Nothing so fascinates the elderly as diseases, especially cancerous ones.

“Stomach cancer,” I said. “Seems to be in remission for the moment.”

“Stomach cancer?” he said, slowly sounding out the words. “That’s tough.”

“Gotta go some way, right?”

“Yeah but Jesus, I’m real particular about which way.”

“Nice if you have a choice,” I said.

“For example, I can’t stand the thought of drowning.”

“That seems unlikely.”

“You never know. You can drown in just a couple of inches of water. Did you know that?” He hopped over two of my checkers. “And fire. Oh Jesus I’d hate to burn to death. I don’t even want to be cremated. Told my son I said, ‘I don’t want to take up a lot of space when I die but no way do I want to be shoved into some goddamned oven and toasted like some goddamned overdone Belgian waffle.’ Of course, coffins scare me too. You know, some of the poor bastards aren’t even dead. No kidding. Read an article once, I think it was in
Reader’s Digest,
about how somebody dug up a lot of old caskets in England from the eighteenth century and found that ten percent of them had scratch marks on the inside! Ten percent! Imagine that? Awful way to go, eh? Worse than drowning, I’d say.”

I’ll make sure you’re out cold,” I said, as he swept away the last of my checkers.

“Thanks Patrick, I’d appreciate that.”

POINTS TO BE REMEMBERED WHILE FIRING

1. Don’t breathe while aiming. Take a deep breath; let some of it out, and then hold the remainder until after you have fired.

2. Get your sights aligned, and gradually
squeeze
your trigger. Keep your eye open when you discharge the piece. Continue your aim for a moment after discharge.

—Privates’ Manual, 1917.

THE FIRST THING
I killed in France was a horse. One of our horses, a small underfed animal requisitioned from some farm in France or Britain or even America. We were marching through the Aisne-Marne region alongside overloaded French
camions
and the sides of the road were carpeted with rotting animal carcasses, some distended with legs pointed straight and others crumpled in piles of fur and bone. As we passed one horse lying on its side with its legs bent at odd angles I noticed its large brown eyes blink once, then twice. I stopped.

“That horse is alive,” I said.

“Not for long,” said a passing voice.

“We can’t leave it like that. Look at those front legs,” I said.

“Both broken, it looks like,” said John Giles, joining me by the side of the road. A short but powerfully built farmer from Ohio who hated farming but loved horses, Giles dreamed of being in the cavalry until he saw what artillery did to horses. I think that bothered him more than the human carnage. The animals had nothing to do with it.

He looked closely at the maimed horse. “Wonder how long he’s been lying here?”

“I’m going to shoot him,” I said.

“What?” asked Giles, whose boyish, well-freckled face and pronounced overbite defeated his strenuous efforts to look soldierly.

“I’m going to shoot him.” I pulled out my pistol from its leather holster.

“Might get in trouble,” said Lawton.

“For what, disturbing the peace?” I asked.

“Well, it ain’t exactly no German spy you’re shooting,” said Lawton.

The rest of the battalion was steadily marching past. I leaned over the horse and stroked his head. His eyes were filled with terror but he didn’t move.

“What an awful place for an animal to be,” I said.

“How do you think we feel?” said a passing soldier.

“Where should I shoot him?” I asked Giles.

“In the head, of course.”

“I know that,” I said. “But where in the head; which way should I aim so that he dies instantly?”

“Well, the bone is pretty thick between the eyes,” said Giles, leaning over the horse and pointing. “It’s like a bear. You shoot a bear in the forehead and he’ll keep charging you. Probably best up behind the eye, say right about here.”

“Right here, huh?” I examined the spot closely. “You think so too, Lawton?”

“Yeah, that’s the best spot,” he said, stepping back.

I looked down at my pistol and then at the horse. Then I stood sideways to the horse, aimed my pistol, leaned back, and fired. After I put the pistol back in its holster, Lawton, Giles and I turned back to the road. An hour later I saw another crippled horse, on its side with its lips drawn back and its belly split open, revealing bright red and pink and purple colors, glistening. I didn’t stop.

THE HOTEL WAS
completely quiet when I awoke. I must have dreamed about the ceremony because in my first moments of consciousness I could still see the names clearly, as though etched on the insides of my eyelids. I lay in bed for an hour watching the sunlight gradually cut through an opening in the curtain and illuminate a thin slice of dust particles that danced in the air. I imagined Julia lying in her bed and wondered if she was awake yet and if she was thinking of me.

After washing up I went for a walk toward the east side of town, hoping I could still find the house of a French couple I met in July 1918. The father had lost his father to the Germans in 1870 and two of his three sons had been killed on the Western Front, one on the Marne and the other on the Chemin des Dames, which means Ladies’ Way, after King Louis XV’s daughters, who used to ride their carriage along it. Daniel and I had billeted at their house for three nights and I had promised myself to return and thank them for their generosity.

The house was still there, a two-story stucco with a slate mansard roof. The dark red paint on the shutters was chipped and the flower boxes on either side of the front door were empty. I knocked and waited for several minutes but no one answered. Then I found a neighbor returning on his bicycle who told me that Mr. Luchère had died but that his son Pierre, an invalid, lived in the house with his mother. Perhaps they were out and I should try later. I thanked him and then went shopping for a basket which I filled with breads and cheeses and wines from three different stores. Then I sat on the street corner and struggled to write a note in my meager French, then left the note and the basket at the Luchères’ front door.

When I got back to the hotel Julia was sitting out front at a small round table having coffee and reading a newspaper. The sorrow was gone from her eyes and I wondered if she was one of those people who begin each day completely healed from the previous day’s lacerations.

“Hi!” she said, smiling with such enthusiasm that I nearly tripped over the curb. She was dressed in a lavender-colored chemise and her hair hung loosely around her shoulders. I couldn’t detect any makeup and the only jewelry she wore was a small silver bracelet on her left wrist. From Daniel?

“Good morning.”

I sat and ordered coffee, feeling anxious in her presence. Was I staring? Was my hair doing funny things? I discreetly reached up and patted it down, wishing I’d combed it properly.

“How long will you be staying here?” she asked.

I hesitated. “Four or five days. I told my wife I wanted to look around a bit. And you? “

“I haven’t decided.”

Her eyes looked even greener than before, the color of some sort of precious stone formed deep underground. I glanced at her lovely features, her nose and lips, her slender bare arms, before turning my eyes away.

She picked up her coffee cup, leaned forward and took a sip. Then she gently placed it back in its saucer, turned to me and asked, “Are you still game for that hike?”

“Sounds wonderful. I thought we might head toward the ridge east of town. I could show you a few sights, if I can still find them.”

“Yes, I’d like that very much,” she said, and from her eyes I could sense that she was eager to connect the descriptions from Daniel’s letters with the actual roads and ravines and fields of France.

We drove, then parked in the countryside and walked for a while, stopping to rest against an old stone wall.

“Those were the German lines,” I said, feeling myself tense as I pointed toward the low ridgeline about half a mile away across a broad plain. “And if you look closer, you’ll see some of our lines still.” She held her hand flat above her eyes and squinted toward the weathered trenches that snaked across the fields. I wondered if I should tell her that the soil wasn’t soil at all but recycled human flesh; a vast experiment in fertilization. I picked up a clump in my hand and smelled its wet pregnant smell and I thought that this right here in my hand is a man in his afterlife.

“You can’t really tell me what it was like, can you?” asked Julia.

I let the dirt fall from my hand, then brushed my palm off. “It never comes out right so I stopped trying a long time ago. It’s enough that it never happens again.”

“But you don’t mind me asking?”

“Not at all.” I looked down at the little clumps of dirt at my feet. I loved her asking.

“The truth is, I don’t really know what to ask. I thought I’d have so many questions… ”

She was quiet, looking out across the plain. A lone bird landed nearby, then flew away. I felt a sense of sadness in my throat.

“Is there any way to describe it?”

“You mean… ”

“I mean the worst parts.”

“Not really, no.”
But go on, try.

“What was it like, being around so much… death?”

I shrugged, then looked over at the nearest trenches, imagining them filled with men. “It was goddamn terrifying. But at a certain point I got so scared that I felt strangely calm. It was as though there was suddenly
nothing
to worry about.”

“Because you’d accepted your death?”

I laughed. “Not graciously. At times it just seemed so inevitable, that such a tremendous effort was being made to bring it about that I might as well concede the inevitable.”

“And Daniel, how did he take it?” She tensed slightly, as though bracing for my response.

I thought for a moment. “I’m not sure. He always seemed so brave; almost fearless. But looking back, I don’t know. It’s more like he always knew he’d never make it. Some men just had that feeling. They were usually right.”