Flanders (32 page)

“Can’t have them,” Miller said brightly. “Besides, Stanhope here is quite an obliging chap.” He dropped the bantering tone. “A dear chap.” His voice went low. His gaze was level and private. “Couldn’t make do without him.”

There. Damn. The admission hung in the twilight.

“Isn’t that right, Stanhope?”

The purr in Miller’s voice. God. It went right through me. I didn’t know whether to bolt or laugh. Then I noticed that Dunston-Smith sure looked bothered.

So I told Miller, “I’d hope so, sir.”

Dunston-Smith upended the bottle, chug-a-lugged the rest of his beer, then hurled the empty into the gathering night. I heard the splash as it came down. The frogs, taken aback, went quiet.

“Mustn’t keep you, Stanhope,” Miller said. “Needn’t be going in late, having Blackhall angry.”

“Sir.” I saluted. “You two have a nice night, now.” I started away, but turned. They were just darker spots in the gloom. I called back, “No orders for me later tonight, sir?”

The dark spots moved, separated a bit. Then Miller’s voice, sparkling with glee. “Shouldn’t think so, Stanhope. Some other evening, perhaps.”

The willow’s overhang and the darkness swallowed them. “Looking forward to it, sir!”

That Miller and his courting games. Sly with it as I am sometimes with the girls. I made sure that I was out of earshot when I burst out laughing.

Travis Lee

* * *

OCTOBER 6, THE RESERVE TRENCHES

Dear Bobby,

Toward the end of our time in the rest area, I left the others with their drills and found me a rock-and-earth wall. I put some cans along the foot of it, and set about fine-tuning my sights. I’d shot about fifty practice rounds when Riddell came, looked over my shoulder a while, and asked me if I wanted to take a bit of a tramp.

It was a nice day for it: autumn-crisp air, the sun filtering down through low, amassing clouds, an on-and-off mist falling. I shouldered my rifle and we walked deep into the countryside.

We followed a canal seeping its slow way toward the ocean. We went by manure-rich pastures dotted with milk cows. At the next turn of the road, Riddell waded into the roadside weeds and picked a double armful of stalks out of a hedgerow. Grinning, he brought them back, offered me some.

The weeds stank, but he pushed his nose into his own bouquet. “Wormwood. Put it in your clothes. Nothing like it for the lice. Strew it around your dugout.”

I thought not, but I thanked him kindly, anyway.

“ ’Eard from me sister,” he said when we walked on. “Buying ’erself a cottage with a bit of land, she is. Growing ’er some ’erbs. Thinking to make a business, like. Asked me if I’d care to come along with ’er.”

If after-war stories can have happy endings, that would be Riddell’s. Just a short walk into the country and he was already bursting at the seams. Get him in the green, he grows, Bobby. He gets taller and sturdier, somehow.

“Likes me gardening,” he said, “bringing them seeds along. To me, it’s like raising up crowds of green spindly children. Sounds silly, but there it is. Can’t change. But the medicines? Well, nobody’s better at decoctions and salves than me sister. Her and Mum would go tinkering on recipes. Me, I barely boils water for tea wifout burning meself. Give me spade over pan any day.”

I nodded. “Herb gardening with your sister. I think it’s what you should do.”

“Knew you’d understand, Stanhope. Seen you out and about, looking at nature. Knew you ’ad the ’eart of a gardener.”

“Goat herder,” I said.

“Goat ’erding? That’s what you’ll do when you gets back?”

“I don’t know.” For the first time I really didn’t know, and that scared me, Bobby. It was like I was looking ahead, but not seeing any more road. There was this gray place where the future was supposed to be.

I told him, “Getting late. We better get a move on.”

We turned around and started walking back. “I sees me mum sometimes,” Riddell said. “Feels ’er about.”

So that’s what he’d wanted to say all along. The walk wasn’t about gardening. It was about ghosties.

He avoided my gaze. “Bit of nonsense, actually.”

“Maybe not,” I said.

“Still, it’s as if she’s right there wif me sometimes. And you want to know the truf of it, she was there at that last stunt. Boche was firing right down on top of us, wasn’t they. Could see me plain as day. Wasn’t no shell hole about for me to duck into, but I wasn’t scared. I didn’t see ’er, mind. Ain’t like I’m bonkers. But this calm came over me, Stanhope. It’s like ... When you was a boy, you ever wake up in the sickbed and your mum was just putting ’er ’and to your face? Well, there you ’ave it. No matter that the Boche was shooting at us. Knew somehow that I’d make it through.”

I remembered cool fingers against my lips, a hushed and private peace; not Ma’s hand, but the calico girl’s.

My road stretched: war, more war, and then the grayness.

“Nice to tell somebody,” he said. “Good to be finally saying it aloud.”

But him. I could see his future so clear: Riddell walking down a shady lane toward a cottage at the turn of the road. There would be a white fence with climbing roses, dizzy with blossoms and bees. His sister would be on the stoop, waving.

I said without much heart, “It’s going to be great for you, getting home.”

I could go back to school, but that didn’t feel right. Home, maybe? God, how I wanted to. If wishes were power, I’d have walked right though that onionskin page of memory, past the corral with the horses gazing over, up the wooden porch to the fieldstone house. I’d knock, and Ma’d answer the door, beaming.

But I couldn’t make it real, Bobby; not like the way it felt walking No Man’s Land, not as real as the graveyard.

When I got back to billets, I found Pickering and Calvert waiting for me. They wanted to poke some whores.

I thought I’d gotten over missing Marrs, but the walk to town seemed incomplete, and by the time we got there, I was morose.

The three of us went to the estaminet first, ate mussels and hard bread, drank rough red wine, listened to the loud complaints and the louder jokes of the soldiers.

“If you’re going to drink that way, eat bread, Stanhope; else you’ll get up to prang your whore and land on your arse instead, the way you did that time,” Pickering told me.

I told him to shut up.

Calvert said to Pickering, “ ’E’s an old soak, ain’t ’e? ’Iding them canteens, like we don’t know what’s in ’em. ’E knocks down the wine like it’s bloody water.”

I told him to mind his own goddamned business. They thought I was funny.

About that time somebody ran into the back of my chair, pushed me belly-first into the table, and made me spill my wine.

I jumped to my feet and spun.

There was a British private behind me, a kid from our company, 6th Platoon, I think. Dinkens or Blinkens or something. His eyes were wide and startled, and he was trying his best to apologize.

Pickering pulled at my fist, my arm. “Easy on,” he was saying. “Easy on there, Stanhope.”

I coldcocked him, Bobby, sent Pickering stumbling back into another table, sent carafes of cheap wine flying, sent mussels on a last wild ride. When Calvert grabbed me by the shoulders, I knocked him down, too. And when I heard the red caps’ whistles shrieking, I pushed my way through folks who were trying to stay me. I vaulted over the bar and bolted through the kitchen, through a little apartment where surprised kids looked up from their meal. In the next room, I squeezed through a window and landed in an alley that smelled of cat piss.

I must have gone wandering then. There’s a vague impression of throwing up in a canal, of taking a piss against a shed.

The red caps found me just before morning where I was lying passed out in the road. Blackhall marched me in to see Captain Miller, who raised his eyebrows and asked Blackhall what punishment he thought I deserved. The crucifixion this time, field punishment number one, not the glasshouse. Blackhall said they’d be needing me.

So I spent the last rest day lashed to a fence at billets, bound by my neck and ankles. I threw up all over myself. Pissed myself, too. Nye was ordered to give me water when I needed it. There was old shit and piss caked under his nails.

I was hungry, but thank God Nye didn’t feed me. My pecker was sore. A great fuck, and I couldn’t remember a bit of it.

They left me hanging on the fence all night. My feet hurt. My legs went numb. Every time I fell asleep, my head lolled and I started to strangle.

The next morning Blackhall ordered me cut down. He gave me my pack and told me I was moving out. I made it all the way to the reserve trenches, throwing up when I had to, dropping off to sleep when we took our breaks. But I got there. You do what you have to.

Pickering and Calvert filled in the blanks my drinking left in the bar fight. Come to find out I didn’t pay my tab, but I didn’t hurt that Dinkens boy, thank God. And Pickering’s over his mad now; his black eye’s healing.

It was after I’d had myself a swallow or two of rum that I remembered, later that night, a narrow street. I was alone. Light was pouring out of a second-story window, a soft light, maybe a candle. A three-quarters moon was up. Something was happening there in the tight canyon between the houses. I could hear the quiet echoes of meat slapping meat. Somebody beating on someone I thought, until I rubbed my eyes and stared harder. No. Two people fucking.

She was a big woman, and she was leaned over a wheelbarrow. Her skirt was pulled up to her waist. He was going at her from behind. Her pillowy ass was lifted. The man—the soldier—hadn’t bothered to pull his pants down. He was ramming it in her, Bobby. It was an assault of a fuck. In the dead-white light of the moon I could see her big thighs quiver.

They were close—no more than ten yards from where I hid in a cranny between houses—so I could tell there wasn’t any moaning going on. No little female cries of pleasure. The man was as passionate as a damned piston.

Thinking on it now, I don’t know why the scene did me like it did. It wasn’t no more than dogs going at it. Utilitarian was what comes to mind. But despite the wine, despite everything, I got me a hard-on so needy that I had to shove my hand into my pants and hold myself tight.

It was me looking on and them not knowing. It was him fucking her, still dressed. It was her with her bare compliant butt in the air. It was her just spreading her legs the way she did, and letting him.

I like it when girls talk soft to me and croon in my ear. I like it when they groan. Still. That dumb animal contentment. Imagine fucking someone and never seeing her face.

When I couldn’t stand it no more, I pulled that chicken neck of mine out of my pants. Right there in that shallow nook, I choked the hell out of it.

I’m not sure when I noticed the blood. But after a while I started looking at her arm where it was hanging out over the edge of the wheelbarrow. There was a black, glistening stripe down it, and a puddle on the cobbles below.

I’d like to tell you I got my pants buttoned real quick. That I ran over there and pulled that boy off her. That I asked if she was all right. But the real bad wanting had settled in and I couldn’t stop. I pulled on myself, harder, faster. Down the alley, the boy gave it a few last toe-curling pumps and pulled out. In the dim light of the candle, I saw her pussy spread and waiting, saw the slick glimmer of their shared wet. I came so hard I nearly fell down.

That’s when I noticed the boy had turned and was staring right at me, his face dark in the shadows.

“Stanhope?” LeBlanc called.

I buttoned up my pants and ran.

You know, I could have just dreamed the figures in the dark of the alley: the shadow with LeBlanc’s voice and the woman spread and waiting. The memory bothers me. Still, I have dreams sometimes, Bobby. Doesn’t mean every damned one of them makes sense.

Travis Lee

* * *

OCTOBER 8, THE RESERVE TRENCHES

Dear Bobby,

I must have wanted to go home last night, for I was there. The dream was more real than these stinking trenches. I was walking down the hall from the kitchen. Sun was hitting the eastern rooms, casting silver stripes across the hardwood floor, throwing rectangles up the wall.

At the door to Ma’s room, I stopped. Her windows were open, the lace curtains blowing. The morning beyond was overcast; the breeze quiet with autumn, scented with cedar and sour pecan decay.