A Midnight Clear: A Novel (10 page)

 

The whole of Wilkins’s life at Shelby was only empty space between weekends. When we aren’t in the field, he’s spending all his time making sure his gear’s in order, his rifle’s clean, his webbing scrubbed; all that crap. His wife has moved down into town and has a job as a waitress; all Mother cares about is getting his weekend pass.

Since he’s terribly nearsighted, he carries his head pushed forward on slumped shoulders as if peering through a haze. He doesn’t exactly look like an induction poster for the perfect infantryman, and has a miserable time with the field exercises. He barely gets his marksman medal with the Mi, and he was trying.

Hunt finds out about Wilkins’s wife being in town and makes it tough for him. He calls Wilkins “the perfesser” and rides him unmercifully. Wilkins only presses harder so he’ll get his pass; Hunt was one son of a bitch; big guy, over six feet with a red face and beer belly. His favorite threat was how he’s “gonna stomp the pissin’ outen us.”

One Saturday morning, after inspection, after Ware has done his thing, Hunt comes back, calls us together and gives a speech about how he “ain’t satisfied with the way we’re shaping up.” He’s gonna “turn us into sojurs for our own sakes”; there’s too much mollycoddlin’ going on, and so forth; a typical Hunt speech. Wilkins’d already taken down his overnight bag. He’d put it on his bunk just when Hunt came in. Hunt walks down the barracks to Wilkins.

“And this here’s the worst Goddamned goldbrickin’ fuckoff in the whole fuckin’ outfit.”

He looks at the bag on Wilkins’s bunk.

“Just where in fuck you think you’re goin’, perfesser?”

Mother stands at the foot of his bunk looking straight ahead in his hunchbacked version of attention. He doesn’t say anything.

“Well, you ain’t goin’ nowheres. Your fuckin’ ass’s confined to quarters this weekend. This is one Saterday night you’ll have to live
without
your cunt.”

It’s dead quiet.

“She’s my wife, Sergeant Hunt.”

Mother’s face is whiter than his glasses and his lips are tight, thin, blue.

“She’s just cunt like the rest of ‘em, Wilkins; all cunt wants is reg’lar fuckin’, that’s all. She ain’t no different’n the rest.”

He’s turned his back and is walking through the barracks when Mother lands on him. Hunt goes down under the impact. He had no idea, none of us had. Lewis reaches back and pushes shut the barracks’ door to the stairs.

Hunt’s on his stomach but struggles to his knees. He grunts and roars. Mother has his long legs wrapped around Hunt from the back and his heels hooked into Hunt’s crotch. He has an arm scissor hold around Hunt’s neck. Hunt reaches up to pull Wilkins’s forearm from his throat. Mother jams down hard and Hunt falls forward on his face again. Mother’s glasses are hanging from one ear. Lewis goes over, untangles them, folds them and puts them on Wilkins’s bunk. By now, except for heavy breathing and scuffling of boots against the wooden floor, there’s no sound. Hunt tries standing up again. He gets to his feet but, with a backward lurch, Mother pulls him over so he crashes against a bunk and Hunt rolls onto his stomach. Hunt tries again but his arms and legs are quivering; he slides flat onto his stomach.

We all stand watching; it can’t be more than three minutes since Mother pounced. Corrollo goes over and kneels beside them. They’re half jammed under a bunk. It’s like the last part of a desperate dog or cat fight; nothing seems to be happening anymore. Hunt’s eyes are open and his face is blue-purple.

“For Chrissake, Mother, you’ll kill him.”

“Not yet; I’ve let up some.”

Mother speaks in short breaths, low rasping; hard to hear. It’s deathly quiet. Hunt’s face turns red again, his eyes move. Mother’s voice is low pitched, edge of hysteria; he’s crying; his face is covered with sweat.

“Listen, Hunt. I could kill you now; you know it. With these witnesses, I’d get off with ten years at most. I’d miss the war.”

Mother’s humped himself down so he can talk into Hunt’s ear. Five seconds go by, five blank seconds.

“Hunt, you don’t deserve to live; you’re the scum of this earth. I can’t think of anything to stop me.”

It seems forever with just the hard breathing; Hunt tries to struggle once more but Mother puts pressure on and he stops.

“Do you want to live, Hunt? If you do, kick your left foot on the floor.”

We watch. The foot lifts, kicks the floor.

“To live you need to do just three things. First, apologize about my wife; next, leave me alone from now on.”

We wait. Mother pauses for breath.

“And now, you go to the orderly room. In half an hour I’ll be there for my pass. You understand?”

Mother’s been putting on more pressure as he talks. Hunt’s face is purple again, his eyes watering, his fingers digging into Mother’s arm. A thin line of blood is oozing from his nose. His foot lifts and kicks hard against the floor three, four times.

Mother lets go and stands up. Hunt doesn’t move. Nobody goes to help him. Mother stands over him shaking, the buttons torn from his shirtfront, his whole uniform soaked through with sweat. He stares down at Hunt several seconds, then turns away and lies out on his bunk.

Finally, Hunt sits up. He wipes his nose with the back of his hand and looks at the blood. Then he turns over on his hands and knees; he vomits. He struggles slowly to his feet, bent forward, his arms splattered with the vomit. He looks around. His voice is a harsh whisper.

“He jumped me from the back, you guys saw it.”

Nobody says anything. The smell of vomit is beginning to spread. It’s early May and warm. It could go any way from here.

“Listen, you bastards, I apologize for what I said about Wilkins’s wife.”

Still nobody says anything. Hunt staggers toward the door. Corrollo opens it and Hunt walks down the stairs out of the barracks.

We’re all in a state of shock. Mother sits up on his bunk, removes his sweaty clothes. He goes down and showers. When he comes back, he dresses slowly and takes out his sewing kit. He sews back the buttons that got torn off, then hangs his sweat-soaked suntans on a hanger. We’re half expecting a troop of MPs to come charging into the barracks but Wilkins doesn’t seem excited at all. His face is still red and his glass frames are slightly bent so they sit on his face wrong, crooked; one side half an inch higher than the other.

Without saying anything to anybody, he picks up his overnight bag from the bunk where it’s been all this time and goes down the stairs.

He never would tell what happened in the orderly room but that was it. Until we shipped out, Hunt never bothered him, and Wilkins had his weekend passes right to the end.

 

A week after the Olsheim crossroads, Mother got the letter from his wife about the baby. We didn’t even know she was pregnant. Mother told Father Mundy the baby was born dead, but he still hasn’t said anything to the rest of us.

After that, Mother’s seemed to lose the delusion of his immortality. I think that’s what it is, anyway. Without it, nobody could do the things we all do.

 

It must be fifteen minutes later when the phone rings again. It’s Shutzer.

“Won’t, what’s the chance of there being wolves around here?”

“I don’t know, Stan, could be. These are real forests, the kind Little Red Riding Hood walked through.”

“Mundy thinks they’re owls. Can you hear them down there?”

“Haven’t heard a thing; I’ve been half asleep and not listening.”

“Hot pistols! There they go again! Did you hear them that time?”

“Nothing here. Where they coming from?”

“Sounds like up on the hill behind us and then across the hills on the other side. It’s hard to tell, like echoes or they’re talking to each other.”

“Let me call Gordon.”

Soon as I put the phone down, it rings.

“Suckin’ ants, Wont! We’ve got Indians or something down here. Mother thinks it’s Germans signaling back and forth. I can’t figure it!”

“Hold on, Mel, I’ll be right down!”

I hang up, shake Miller.

“Bud, there’s something funny going on out there: voices or animal noises. I’m going down to the bridge; you sit on the phone. Call Shutzer and tell him what’s up. Then call Gordon and Wilkins, remind them not to shoot me.”

“OK. Probably only some animal; must be all kinds of night hunting going on in a forest like this.”

“I hope so.”

I pick up grenades and bandoliers. I take two extra grenades from the box. It’s too dark for much shooting. I edge down along the side of the road where I ran our wire; they challenge me at about ten yards. I hurry and lean against the wall with them. They’re tense; we whisper.

“Hear anything more?”

“Not since the last one.”

We wait there in the dark; maybe five minutes. Then it comes. It does sound like an Indian, a bad imitation of an Indian imitating a wolf. But it’s human all right; I begin to get scared. Wilkins looks at me.

“Closer that time!”

We wait in the dark some more. I’m trying to decide if it’s better for Wilkins, Gordon and me to stay together, or spread out. I decide we’ll stick it here. This is not so much a decision as what I want to do anyway. I pick up the phone and call Miller.

“Bud, you stay there on the phone.”

“Sure, what’s up?”

“I think we’ve got a German patrol sneaking around us!”

“Jesus! OK, I’ll ring Shutzer and Mundy again. Anything else?”

“Yeah, tell them to be careful, but keep us covered and make sure nobody sneaks up behind them.”

“Right.”

“And, Bud, if anybody comes charging into the chateau, give up, surrender. Got it?”

“Sure, yes, sir, just end the ever-lovin’ war.”

“That’s it. No nonsense, no blue-eyed Aryan poetic hero stuff.”

I don’t hang up. There’s only more quiet. I take off my helmet to hear better. We wait, silent, tense, another five minutes; then there’s some caterwauling up on the hill. It’s almost like laughing, a hyena laugh, or the mad mechanical laugh from the fun house at a carnival. Then, not a minute later, we hear a voice close on the other side of the road.

“Heh,
ami!”

We freeze. I look out the corners of my eyes but can’t see anything. Next, there’s another voice about thirty yards to the right.

“Heh,
ami!
Schnapps? Zig-zig?”

There’s the distinct sound of hard laughing. We wait. I take off a grenade, pull the pin and hold down the handle. I expect every minute something’s going to come in on us, most likely one of those masher grenades. They’ve got to know just about where we are; we should’ve spread out.

There’s nothing I can think to do. I switch the lock off the M1 with my left thumb; Gordon and Wilkins unlock, too; makes an awful racket in the quiet. The phone is still off the hook, exhaling into the night. But if I hang up, Miller is liable to ring us, so I leave it. My legs have started their own private dance and my whole body’s vibrating.

This comes from the same place; then I think I hear movement but still can’t see anything. We wait some more in the dark; there’s the crashing of brush going uphill and away. Miller’s whistling over the phone trying to get us. I pick it up and stoop close.

“Miller?!”

“Hey, what’s going on? I’ve been trying to get you!”

“Anything happening up top?”

“Nothing.”

“They’ve been talking to us down here.”

“Holy bells!”

“I’ll call in ten minutes. Don’t call here.”

“Right.”

I ease the phone back on its hook. I’ve been holding the grenade in my right hand with the pin and ring on a finger of my left. I work the pin back through its handle and let up lightly till it catches. It holds fine. I’m shivering so I could easily just have dropped the damned thing. We squat there, crouched, waiting, ready to run, ready to shoot, not ready to die. After another five-minute year, I motion Gordon close.

“Mel, you go left and I’ll go right. We’ll close in on the other side of the road. I’m fairly sure they took off but we’d better make sure. Wilkins, you cover us. Whatever we do, let’s
not
shoot each other.”

Gordon edges along our wall to the other side of the bridge; I slink along to where it curves. I wait till Gordon starts across the road, then we sprint over at the same time. Nothing happens. We slowly, noisily, close in through the trees till we see each other; no grenade traps, nothing. We wave, then both dash back across the road and jump down the bank beside Wilkins. We’re out of breath, more from fear than anything. Mother looks at me.

“Nothing out there now, Vance, and I’m not exactly complaining.”

“Yeah, I watched you both all the way; nothing moved, I could see.”

I pick up the phone and crank.

“Bud, everything OK here; think they took off. How’re things on the hill?”

“Mundy says somebody up behind them was laughing and they could hear what Shutzer claims is Kraut talk, but that’s all.”

“It’s enough. But they’re OK?”

“Sure, I just talked to them.”

“It’s quarter to ten; tell those guys you’ll be up there in about ten minutes. I think we’ve had our show for the night.”

“You mean I don’t get to end the war?”

“Not this time.”

I hang up. We look at each other. Somehow, now it seems halfway funny; at least we’re smiling.

“Mel, I’m going inside to get warm again and I’ll be right back. If anything else happens, call. Keep me covered on the way up that hill.”

There’re flakes of snow coming down as I start trudging up to the chateau. I was so busy being scared I didn’t notice the beginnings. The ground’s hard and the snow isn’t melting when it lands. When I come in, Miller’s heating water in both our canteen cups. He’s also heating some for Gordon and Mundy. We break in a couple Nescafe packets and sugar, then sit on the beds watching our fire. The damned fire’s eating wood like mad. The phone rings and my heart jumps. It’s Shutzer from the upper hole.