Flanders (21 page)

I woke up with a violent shiver. The aid post was dark except for a single lamp. The open doorway was murky with night, and I had to piss real bad.

I filled the bottle that time. The color looked better. I drank my liter of water and asked the orderly to bring me more. I’ve been pissing ever since.

Travis Lee

* * *

AUGUST 19, A POSTCARD FROM THE AID POST

Dear Bobby,

Don’t worry. Got me a little cold is all. I’m ordered to three days of bed rest, and it’s the first chance I’ve had to write in near a month. They’re keeping me busy, but everything’s fine. Tell Ma I send her my love. Give my mare some sugar cubes and pet her some. Kick Pa’s worthless ass for me.

Travis Lee

* * *

AUGUST 19, THE RESERVE TRENCHES
ONE FOR LATER

Dear Bobby,

Blackhall came to the aid post today to release me for duty. “You’re back to sharpshooter, Stanhope. Them’s the orders.”

I smiled. Things were looking up. Miller. Maybe O’Shaughnessy. Someone was watching out for me.

“Captain wants to see you. Best you go right away.” He stood there, not able to meet my gaze at times, at times staring holes through me. Blackhall was scared I’d tell Miller on him.
“Now,
Private.”

“Sir.” I walked on down the trench to Miller’s dugout. The day was overcast, the sky pearly. I lifted my head just in time to see a flock of birds vault toward a pale biscuit-cut of sun. It was funny, Bobby. The desire to fly was so strong that my arms ached. My body felt heavy and unnatural. I nearly called out for the flock to wait, wait up, that I was coming as fast as I could. When they vanished from my trench-bound strip of sky, I felt abandoned, the way I felt when Marrs and Pickering left me in the jail.

I knocked at Miller’s dugout, my thoughts on the birds. My head felt light, my feet not earthbound anymore.

Miller sent his batman away and ordered me to sit down. “Well, Stanhope. A spot of grippe, I hear. Are you quite recovered?”

“Yes. Thank you, sir.”

“You look ...” His brows knitted, searching for a word. From the shadows at the wall, his sad-eyed lady watched, mute. “Are you
sure?”

Should I tell him about Blackhall? Carrying tales has never proved an easy burden for me. I stared at the single candle. The silence stretched longer than it should have. “I’m sure, sir. Thank you.”

“Well.” There wasn’t a pencil handy for him to play with. His fingers drummed the tabletop. “It seems there have been rumors floating about the battalion, and so I am forced to ask: The night you were arrested for going AWL, where on earth had you been?”

There was that awkward silence again. Miller’s fingers stopped drumming. His small smile faded. He looked stricken. Oh, shit. He knew. Like that time in the poppy field. We’ve never needed words between us.

“For a walk.”

He frowned. “Whom did you see?”

“Nobody.”

“You’re lying to me, Stanhope. I won’t have you lying to me. “

“No, sir.”

“Were you so drunk that you couldn’t remember?”

The tension in my back gave way. I slumped with relief. “Yes, sir. Could have been real drunk, sir. Yes. Come to think of it, that was it.”

He didn’t look any happier. “A girl is dead, and you cannot remember.”

Miller was speaking a foreign language. I should have understood, but taken together, the words made no sense. Girl. Dead. What I pictured was birds leaping up into a pearly morning.

He rubbed his chin. Rubbed it. All traces of his wry humor were gone. “You were drunk. And you cannot remember.”

“Sir, I just went for a walk. There wasn’t any girl.”

“You have just told me that you cannot remember. Which is it?”

“I would have remembered a girl, sir.”

“Would you? Would you recall forcing yourself on her?”

His voice rose. “Would you recall impaling her with a tree branch? Would you remember that, damn you? Or were you just too bloody drunk?”

The ground under my feet opened, Bobby. I was alone and falling, without anything to hold onto. How could anyone have thought that I’d do that? God help me. And my own damned fault.

“Oh, Jesus.” The words came out weak: neither oath nor prayer. “Not me, sir. You know I’d never—”

“You got drunk and soundly drubbed a tart. Do you recall that? Or did she not make an impression on you, either?”

Who told him? Pickering had been there that night. No. He wouldn’t have said anything. O’Shaughnessy? But he was honor bound by promises. “Sir, that was just—”

“A tart?”

Miller’s voice was a splash of acid. It made my eyes sting, my cheeks burn.

“You know I wouldn’t ever do that.”

“No. I do not know anything about you. You are a sot, Stanhope. You shirk duty, you are insubordinate and insolent. You thrashed a whore. And you are lying to me again.”

“Sir, please. I just went walking.”

“Get up! Get up! Didn’t you hear me, you cheeky bastard! Get on your feet! I’ll hand you to the red caps myself.”

I couldn’t obey. My knees wouldn’t hold me. “I watched you and Dunston-Smith.”

Miller fell back into his chair like he’d been shot.

“I didn’t see nothing. Not really. Look. It was just ... All that time in the trenches and the boys were getting ready to play football and I don’t see the goddamned point to that game. I just wanted ... No. God’s honest truth, sir. This flat embarrasses me to say it, but I was following you to see if I could talk my way out of shit wallah duty. I wanted to catch you alone, sir. I didn’t want Blackhall to know I was going over his head. Didn’t think
that
would be smart. And so once you left the road, sir, it surprised me, but I just kept going, too. Didn’t mean nothing by it. But all of a sudden there you were, and there was Captain Dunston-Smith, and there was that hut and—Is that an old stable, sir? I’d been wondering about that.” I ran out of excuses and breath all at the same time.

His cheeks had gone pasty. “Good God,” he said.

“I’m not going to tell, sir.”

Abruptly he was on his feet, pacing. He grabbed his swagger stick and started whacking the wall with it. That close, hot, airless gloom; the old food and moldy mud smell of the dugout. That slapping-like something made by a tiny, furious hand.

“Sir. It’s your business and all. I’m not spreading that around.”

I saw in the light of the candle that his face had turned a bright, embarrassed red. “How long were you bloody there?”

“Just for a while. Well. Just till dark.”

“Till dark?” I knew he was counting off the hours. He’d gone in the hut about five. Had I really waited outside so long? If he asked me why, I wouldn’t have any answer. “Well, Stanhope. You’ve cocked it up again, haven’t you? I’m your only blasted alibi.”

“No, sir! You don’t have to come forward, sir. Not until somebody arrests me.”

He stopped pacing.

Girl. Dead. The repercussions were too terrible to think on. “Are they planning to arrest me, sir?”

“No. There are no proofs, only surmise. The army is bound by good English law, after all.” His eyes had a faraway look. He was thinking hard on something.

“How old a girl, sir?” I asked quietly.

I tore him out of reverie. “Oh. The dead girl? Twelve, I believe.”

Twelve. Reason enough for Blackhall to have gone after me like he did.

“Seems she was murdered late afternoon. Mother was a washerwoman; the poor child was making a delivery. Someone dragged her off the road and into a copse at least an hour and a half’s walk from the hut where you saw me. The police put the death at five or perhaps six o’clock at the very latest. So. It seems my testimony could clear you quickly enough.” He shot me a look. “Should you need it.”

That was my cue. I got to my feet. “I’ll try not to need it, sir.”

He nodded and kept nodding, like he was working up the spit to say something else. I knew it would be a thank you.

I waved the words away and he gave me a feeble acknowledging smile. We understand each other like that, me and the captain.

His words caught me at the door. “Stanhope? You might have a chat with your platoon. I have the feeling they natter on about wild Indian adventures. Bad idea, that.”

“Yes, sir.” I felt the door’s rough pine beneath my fingers.

I wanted to sit down in the comfortable shadows, have a cuppa, and talk Ideas with him. I wanted to get into a pissing contest over poetry. Nobody in this place knew me as well as Miller. But how could he have imagined, drunk or not, I’d do something so goddamned ugly?

I let my hand fall from the latch and turned.

“No, no, Stanhope. It’s quite all right. No need to thank me. You’d enough of shit wallah duty, I think. Simply keep your head down from now on. Keep your hands clean. No running off again.”

Maybe we didn’t know each other well at all. “Can I speak frankly, sir?”

He chuckled, waved an indulgent hand: our private unspoken language.

“Sir? You just accused me of murder and rape and God knows what, and with a twelve-year-old kid, to boot. Well, I don’t care what you think of me, but I got something I want to say, and you can take it for what it’s worth.”

The knowing smile went quizzical, his eyes went guarded.

“Some women take advantage. Tell you straight to your face how much they love you, and laugh behind your back. They’ll leave you crying. I think sometimes that’s what they’re after. Got to be careful of women like that, sir.”

No smile at all now, only the caution, like he thought I was about to confess.

“Well, look. I guess it works the same, sir. The same types. The cock-teasers, the gold diggers. Hell, I don’t know why they do it. But in love, you got to keep your wits about you. And when your pecker’s pointing hard at something, well ...”

Softly, “Is there a point?”

“My frank opinion, sir? That Dunston-Smith’s not near good enough for you.”

He frowned, his eyebrows bunched. I knew for sure that he was about to chew ass; but he burst out laughing. “Oh, my dear Stanhope,” he kept saying over and over, wiping his eyes.

“With all due respect, fuck you, sir. I was just trying to help.”

He came over, clapped me on the shoulder. He was still smiling when he said, “My dear, dear Stanhope. You’ve no idea how you’ve touched me.” But the sentence ended as a whisper, and he wasn’t smiling anymore. His hand felt hot. We were face-to-face, and his eyes seemed far too bright. The candlelight glinted there, as if it had struck water.

He was going to tell me he was sorry. Then I’d tell him that it was all right.

But all of a sudden he was way too close for comfort. His lips came down on mine.

“Oh, shit!” I blundered backward.

Instantly, he let me go. “Sorry.”

I scrubbed my mouth hard.

“Do forgive.” Then, with awkward and comical concern, “Are you all right?”

“It’s okay.” I backed up another step.

“Unbelievably boorish of me.”

“It’s okay. Forget it.”

“Yes, best done, what?” The too-bright glint returned to his eyes again. He ducked his head quickly. “Never happen again.”

I know that it won’t. That kiss laid something to rest between us. I know for sure now that what I feel for him isn’t romance. There’s love there, though. I felt it from him, strong as I’ve felt from any woman.

I stuck my hand out. “No hard feelings.”

Unlike LeBlanc, Miller’s hands were clean. He held on a shade too long. “Thank you.”

He pulled away a careful distance and stood watching me. I could see it in him, plain as day. I guess when I looked at him from now on, I’d see how he wanted me.

“Needn’t worry about this unpleasantness, Stanhope.

Seems you were indeed on a country stroll. In fact, I found you’d caught sight of me where I’d gone windmill viewing. Would have accosted me at the time, too, had you not been AWL. At any rate, seems you’ve verified the places I stopped, what I looked at, that sort of thing. We’ll be vague with our stories, shall we? Windmills. Canals. Picturesque country, that sort of thing.”