Flanders (20 page)

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Goddamn it. Don’t hit me again. You can’t treat me like this. I’ll report—” He rammed the toe of his boot into my crotch. The pain was bigger than sight or thought or hearing. My ears roared with it, My spine went weak. I fell curled, wanting like blazes to hold myself, working my wrists against the cuffs.

“Where?”

I couldn’t breathe.

He kicked me in the kidneys so hard that it brought tears to my eyes.

“Where?”

I tried to explain, Bobby. I said I’d felt twitchy that day. Said I’d walked out of camp just so I could be by myself for a little while. He didn’t listen. A metal-tipped toe slammed into my ass, too goddamned near my balls.

“Where?”

“In the country. In the country, In the country.”

“What’d you do there?”

I started talking fast. I swore before God that I hadn’t done nothing. A kick to my stomach doubled me up again.

“Liar,” Blackhall said, and the way he said it sent a shiver up me. “Who’d you see?”

Christ. I couldn’t tell. Not for Dunston-Smith’s sake. God help me. I couldn’t do that to Miller.

A kick to my thigh. Not so bad. I knew I wouldn’t walk without limping, but all in all, not so bad. “Nobody. Please. Didn’t see nobody.”

“I’ll beat you senseless, you bastard.”

The whisper of the truncheon through air, breathtaking agony in my kidneys. Another soft whistle, something rammed into the pit of my belly.

“Best stand back, Lieutenant,” one of the red caps said.

My stomach contracted, felt like it folded in on itself. Bile erupted up my throat. It gushed, stinging, out my nose. It pooled, hot and sour, under my cheek. I couldn’t raise my head, but Blackhall grabbed me by the hair and raised it for me.

“I got my eye on you, Stanhope. I been hearing how you sneaks out and about. But you never met the likes of me. I ain’t no wristwatch officer. Ain’t gone to the right schools. Don’t drink me tea with me little finger lifted. I was a copper, and my beat was the East End streets. So I knows me tarts. I knows me lifters. I knows me soaks and me sods.” He let me go. I fell back into the puddle of vomit. “And I know you,” he said.

He stepped back. “Get off your arse, Stanhope. I’m sending you up tomorrow with the rest of the company. And best you don’t tell nobody about our talk tonight, else I’ll have you doing a stunt a week. See how long you last.”

It took some doing to get to my feet. I stood there swaying.

“Mind you don’t go sneaking again,” Blackhall said.

The next day we marched and my back hurt from the pack, my balls felt sore and pulpy. The bone-deep bruise on my thigh made me limp.

Marrs told me it was good to see me. He asked me what the matter was, and I didn’t dare tell him.

When we stopped for lunch, LeBlanc sat down next to me. “Worked you over, eh? The bastards. Brought you a present.”

A spare canteen, full of brandy.

“Don’t drink it all at once, for Christ’s sake. You get too happy around here, they’ll knock the smile off you every time. Hide it.”

Hide it. Hide the happiness. The comfort. Hide the truth about Miller. The army is after us, Bobby, Miller and me.

Travis Lee

* * *

AUGUST 14, THE RESERVE TRENCHES

TOO SAD TO SEND

Dear Bobby,

Time’s all out of whack. We’re off schedule. How long have we been in reserve? I forget, and I’m scared to ask anybody. Still hauling shit. I stopped pissing blood three days ago. Or was it four?

Nye doesn’t tell me funny stories now. Nobody sleeps in my dugout anymore. Maybe there’s too much stink. Pickering and Marrs come to visit sometimes. They bring me candy that their families sent them. Toffee, brown as the shit on my hands. They don’t stay long. LeBlanc comes to visit, too, and he brings me comfort. He brings me forgetfulness. Not a bad boy.

Ma always called me her bad boy. You remember that? No. Too many years between us. You and me, Bobby. The good boy and the bad.

Every night the Boche have been giving us drumfire. One big gun, then the next. All along the horizon, a fast drum-roll flourish; above us, the high piping squeals of shells falling. I sleep, anyway. That’s the magic that LeBlanc brings.

Some shells fall with a soft whuffle. They burst with the bakery-shop smell of mustard gas. Foy came back from the hospital in time to catch the whiff of bonbons. He got his mask on in time, but his arms broke out in yellow blisters. They sent him away again. Poor Foy. Poor life.

Travis Lee

* * *

AUGUST 18, THE FRONT LINE

A LETTER TO KEEP WITH ME

Dear Bobby,

Today O’Shaughnessy found me. “Travis. The lieutenant will be wanting to see you.”

I started to shake. I trembled so bad I had to put the shitcan down.

“Come wash yourself.”

Nye watched in bewildered jealousy as O’Shaughnessy took my arm and led me away. We went down the trench to his cozy little dugout. When we were safe inside, he pulled the blanket across the doorway. He poured me a basinful of water. He handed me a bar of soap and watched as I scrubbed.

“Travis? I hear that you haven’t been eating, lad.”

The water felt clean. The soap smelled astringent, like that lavender stalk I’d had for a while and then lost. I remembered the curl of the letter’s Gothic script. The fondness in it. “I had a stalk of lavender once.”

His quiet, “Did you now?” Then, “Ah. But things leave us.”

“There was a place I used to dream about,” I told him. “A graveyard and a pretty woman. Smoot and Thweat and Charlie Furbush were there. I haven’t been back since Dunleavy left. So goddamned peaceful. And the girl’s so sweet. I don’t know why he would want to leave that place. Nobody would.”

The air was close with the blanket pulled to. The dugout smelled of damp and incense; a shit smell that was me. I stripped off my uniform blouse, plunged it into the basin.

“Tell me about the woman,” he said.

“I miss her. I miss going there. Lord, but it was a pretty graveyard. The platoon was resting, and she promised she’d take care of them for me.”

“And do you believe her?”

From down the trench, muffled laughter. My hands knotted on my shirt.

“I think I got to.” Around that makeshift curtain, sun drew a halo of sublime light. “Listen. The lieutenant’s going to send me on a stunt. He wants the alleyman to get me. He wants to see if I can dodge Emma Gee.”

“Are you afraid, Travis?”

“No,” I said. Funny dreamlike names for bare bone realities. All these months being afraid of the Boche, the Frenchie’s dread
Allemagne.
I’d been terrified of shells and ghosties and machine guns. Now that there wasn’t anything but death left, I wasn’t afraid at all. “I think I’m ready to see the lieutenant now.”

“You can’t die, lad.”

The flat, hard tone made me turn.

His eyes were flat and hard, too. Stripes of sunlight lay docile as wings against his cheek. “You daren’t die yet. Fear will keep you from the place you’re wanting to go. And anger. And drink will keep you from it, too. You’d roam, Travis. And you such a fine lad, really. A good lad.”

Like I was already dead. Pity. Always such a good boy.

I took my shirt out of the basin, wrung it as dry as I could. I put it on. “I want to see Blackhall.”

Lieutenant was waiting in a support-line dugout, like he had been made a real officer or something. When I came in, he threw a report across the room. Papers fluttered to the dirt floor, a fall of pale leaves.

Blackhall glared at O’Shaughnessy. He glared at me. “Stanhope?” he said. “Report to the med officer right away. None of your lounging about, mind. ’E wants to ’ave a look at you.”

But I had been so ready, Bobby. I was prepared like Trantham was prepared just before he ran to the wire. All the war to go, and I don’t know if I will ever be that ready again.

“Damn yer eyes! You deaf or sommit, Stanhope?”

“No, sir.”

“Best get him out of here, padre, ’fore I sticks me boot up his arse.”

A hand on my arm. I turned. O’Shaughnessy guiding me again. We walked down the trench to the medical dugout, where an orderly had me take off my clammy uniform blouse. He told me to sit on a cot. He checked my eyes and temperature and heart, then called for the med officer.

The doctor took himself away from lavaging a soldier’s arm wound. It was a small angry cut the doctor was occupied with, one too ragged for bullet or shrapnel. Rat bite, probably.

The officer bent to peer at me closely. “Well, you’re right, padre. He’s looking decidedly infirm. Shooting pains up your shins, soldier?”

“No, but my legs hurt.”

“Specifically up your shins?”

“No.”

He clucked over me and asked how else, then, was I feeling?

I told him I was just so damned tired.

“Breathe deeply.” He touched the cold toe of a stethoscope to my back. “Again.”

He stepped back. “Well! A spot of good luck, padre. No trench fever; but a bit of congestion, and he’s definitely warmish. The leg pain worries me, and I don’t care for the bronchial sounds.” The doctor turned to the orderly, who pursed his lips in disapproval. “Coming down with some ague is my guess. Best send him back before he infects the whole battalion.” He took up a clipboard and marked on a page. “Soldier, I’m ordering you back to the reserve trench and the regimental aid post there. Report to Major Landis. Major Landis. Can you remember that? Good show. Tell him that Captain Fielding has sent you there for observation. Think you can make it on your own? Good. Excellent. Blake? Give the boy here an aspirin and send him on his way. Well, ta-ta, padre,” he said brightly, and went back to his basin and gauze and oozing wound.

O’Shaughnessy escorted me to the communications trench. “Do you think you can make it from here, lad?”

I thought of the canteen in my dugout, but the comfort was too far away. The world was stretched to the point of exhaustion. “Yes,” I told him. I left without saying thank you. He saved my life, I think.

It was a long tiring shuffle to the reserve trenches and the aid post there.

“Feverish? Nauseated? Leg pain, you say?” Major Landis asked. When I nodded, he did, too. We were in complete agreement. “Yes, quite. And faint, I shouldn’t imagine. I’ll wager you’re dehydrated. Take that cot there.” He pointed. “Clear fluids and salt. Jennings! Get the private here a measuring bottle to piss in. Soldier? I expect one hundred cc’s every four hours.”

I took my measuring bottle to bed with me. Every hour the orderly filled a pint glass with water and told me to drink. He made me nibble on salted crackers. Then he’d take a look at my measuring bottle and make a note of how much I’d pissed. He didn’t smile. There was a private with an abscessed tooth in the cot across from me. He didn’t smile, either. My piss was measured with the gravity of a court martial. Direct orders: one hundred cc’s. But the piss came out rust colored and muddy looking, and there wasn’t nearly enough.

The aid post was quiet. It smelled of carbolic and packed damp earth. The walls were wood paneled and sturdy. I closed my eyes and listened to the birds sing. Shells fell, harmless and far away.

It wasn’t the graveyard I dreamed of, but the creek that runs through the ranch. It was just like I was there, Bobby: the glassy water, the murmur and gurgle of the spring. Cedar trees crowded around like they were gathered to the most wondrous thing in the world. And I was so thirsty. And the air was cedar-sharp and clean. I knelt on the bank and plunged my face in. The water was cold, the way it always is. I drank, and the cold spring water numbed me. It tasted like it had flowed through summer: all mown hay and lemonade. I filled myself to bursting, so that in the dream I knew that I’d never have to be thirsty again.

I lifted my head, water dripping. On a limestone boulder in the dark grotto of cedar, the calico girl sat dunking her feet. By her hand was a stand of maidenhair fern, clumped leaves like lime-green bubbles.

So quiet there. I could have stayed, if O’Shaughnessy hadn’t cheated me.

She looked up, too. Her laugh came, bright as specks of sun. “You can’t stay here. That’s an order.” She kicked water at me. It sprayed up rainbows. It fell in icy droplets on my cheek. “You’re to piss one hundred cc’s.”