Flanders (41 page)

“You’re spoken for, I hears.” Fowler took the canteen back, handed it to me. “Stanhope here’s available.”

“No, thanks.” I waved it away.

“Me heart’s broken.” He shoved the canteen back.

I could smell it—a raw, harsh wine. A wine with a bite to it. The need came on me so strong that it near tore my guts out. “Quit! I don’t want nothing to drink!”

Pickering turned, beaming. “Oh, right-o! Good on you, Stanhope! Deserves a kiss.”

Before I could escape, he threw his arm around my neck, pulled me close, and planted a big wet one on me. I shoved him away, scrubbed my cheek with my sleeve. “Shit! Goddamn it, Pickering! Stop that!”

Across the field, Miller seemed taken aback. Dunston-Smith was smirking. Blackhall’s eyes had narrowed. The enlisted won’t believe it, but the officers sure will. Old Travis Lee Stanhope done got himself a new boyfriend. As many girls as have delighted in this pecker of mine—ain’t that a pisser?

Travis Lee

* * *

NOVEMBER 8, A NOTE FROM THE RESERVE AREA

Dear Bobby,

I’m sorry for that next-to-last postcard. Didn’t mean to make light. Tell Ma I’m glad he had a nice funeral. Tell her it doesn’t matter that not a lot of people showed up.

Leastways I know all them old church ladies were in attendance, the biddies who go to weddings or funerals just so they can be stepping out. And whether or not Pa’s conversion took, it’s good to have them Baptist hymns for planting: “Shall We Gather” and “I Walk Through the Garden Alone.” They’re good solid songs you can lean on.

Your letter was nice, and I’m sorry I rode you hard for it. I don’t hold forgiving Pa against you, Bobby. Fact is, it makes me happy that he never overburdened you with mad. Maybe you can be more content with what life brings you. Maybe sense will come easier, too.

Travis Lee

* * *

NOVEMBER 10, THE REST AREA

Dear Bobby,

The boys’ last day for playing football this rotation, and it rained buckets. It was so muddy that we didn’t even drill. The officers went back to their barracks; we went to ours. Every rifle is clean. Lord knows we made enough jam-pots and Battye-bombs. Now the platoon’s lounging around playing cards. A few are reading. Those that have to are mending socks.

I’ve been thinking about you. It was past time for that apology, but Pa’s death just caught me sideways for a while. You talk about how you wish I was there. Well, I wish I was, too. Still, you’re wrong to think you need me. You’ve done just fine so far. Don’t let nobody, not Ma, not the preacher, tell you different. While we were growing up I know that Ma always treated me as the clever son, you as just the good; but if I was smart, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have thrown that scholarship away. Goddamn it, Bobby. There won’t be another chance for me, no matter what I promised Ma. No matter what the deans at Harvard said.

It’s not a choice of wanting to. Something—the shelling or the bullets—has ruined me. It’s hard to sit still. My eyes lose their focus. My mind’s dulled to everything except survival. I can hardly make the lines of Keats and Wordsworth make sense.

Pickering said he joined the army to please his father. Calvert said he thought he owed something to his country. I just wanted out—out of the ties of family, out of the damn Yankee East. What a worthy reason to die.

Seems like lately I been treating you the way Pa treated me, only without the fists. That kind of bullying is handed down. Please, Bobby. Let the family tradition end here with me apologizing and you letting it go.

We just now had mail call, the only bright spot in the day. I was left empty-handed again. It’s okay, Bobby. I know you’re busy; know you don’t hear much from me anymore. I’m hoping that when the war’s done and you see the letters I didn’t send, you’ll realize I never once forgot.

Letter or not, though, mail call’s a happy time. Pickering got saltwater taffy from his wife. I ate so much I nearly got sick.

After lights out I heard sniffling. It happens sometimes: bad news at mail call. I knew Willie Whittington’s sister had been sick. I was hoping the crying I heard wasn’t his, but I didn’t dare ask.

I was surprised to hear Goodson’s whisper in the dark, “What’s it?”

Damn. If the weeper had wanted us to know, he’d have told us. We’re pecker to cheeks here, Bobby, but a man’s allowed his own bubble of privacy.

The soft sniveling sounds went on. Above my head, a slow rain pattered on the canvas roof.

Goodson’s disembodied voice again, insistent. “Come on, then. Tell us. What’s your name?”

“Blandish, sir.” The new boy. Hadn’t been issued his privacy yet. Blandish sounded so damned young.

Through the dusky shadows of the barracks came Pickering’s snort. “Not ‘sir.’ Henceforth, Blandish, please address Goodson as ‘sod.’ ”

A creak of wood as someone shifted their weight. “Go on. What is it?” Goodson again.

“I’m homesick,” the boy said.

Quiet, except for the hollow tapping of the rain.

Then the boy, sobbing again. “You just don’t know how it is, being homesick.”

Wind rattled the door softly, made its icy way around the ill-fitting jamb. The air smelled of coming frost. The room was warm with the heat from the coal stove, the body warmth of the resting men. I pulled my blanket tighter.

“No,” Pickering said into the darkness. “Don’t know balls about it. Love it here. Particularly like the shelling.”

Calvert. “Fond of them gas ones, meself.”

Hutchins. “Me? It’s all that flaming mud.”

From his corner, Riddell said, “Leave it be.”

A polite wind. The door shook gently on its hinges. The weather drummed delicate fingers on the canvas. Then Orley said, “Can’t get enough of that Maconochie.”

Chuckles splattered around the room. “Settle it down,” Riddell said.

We slept, lullabied by the drizzle and the new boy’s muffled weeping. I woke before dawn. It had stopped raining. I got my coat and went outside. Under the glow of the lamps, the ground sparkled with frost. I huddled by the barracks wall in the placid yellow light of the lantern, and I finished this letter to you.

Love you, Bobby. Don’t say it near enough. We’d all of us cry for home if we could.

Travis Lee

* * *

NOVEMBER 11, THE RESERVE TRENCHES

Dear Bobby,

We marched to the reserve trenches today. Tomorrow, we’ll head to the front lines. Not much marching to it, really. It’s staggering, it’s sliding, the mud working every step against you. The rain weighs down your pack so that you can hardly stand upright. Takes a whole day to travel what used to take half a morning. Fighting the mud steals your wind. It leaves your legs quivering and weak. They give us breaks every hour. Every time I sit down I wonder if I’ll have the strength to get up again.

That afternoon I found myself slogging next to the new boy. Blandish and me struck up a conversation. I’d forgotten his voice. It was only his weeping that I remembered.

He had a delicate-featured, earnest face and no hint of a beard. “God almighty. How the hell old are you, anyway?”

“Sir?”

The new boys and me—always a problem in translation. “You. How old?”

“Oh. Eighteen, sir.”

He was lying by two years, if not more. He slipped on a rough patch and went down. I watched him struggle to get up, finally gave him a hand.

“You’re the Yank,” he said.

“I’m the American.”

Ahead of us, Pickering slogged beside Calvert. They were taking turns cussing.

“Lieutenant told me to stay away from you.”

“He did, did he?” Blackhall was gone to some sort of meeting, leaving us to slog it out in the mud with Riddell. I suspected that him and the other subalterns would catch themselves a wagon ride to the trenches.

Blandish was staring at me. I started wondering what else Blackhall had said. A strange feeling, knowing you got a reputation. Right then a Jack Johnson came humming down, exploded with a sullen bang fifty or so yards away.

“Crikey!” Blandish yelled. He hunched his shoulders, looked skyward.

Pickering and Calvert turned. “What’s it?” Calvert said.

I rolled my eyes. “The Jack Johnson.”

They laughed, shook their heads, and fought onward through the muck.

Another low thrumming made Blandish peer anxiously about.

“Settle down. It won’t hit us,” I told him.

It hit a good seventy yards to the right, sent a gush of dark mud and smoke upward.

“Gor.” He sounded awed.

It struck me that the boy wasn’t acting strange. We were. Shells were falling. The only sane reaction was fear. We were a whole company of lunatics.

“You’re brave,” Blandish told me.

I laughed.

“No. All of you. Wish I could be brave like that.”

It wasn’t courage. It was adaptation. It was damned lethargy. Another Jack Johnson came down. Pickering slipped. Calvert caught him.

The shell hit, closer this time. Calvert said, “Gor lumme!”

To our backs, McWhorter’s irate “Stanhope! Will ye nae go shoot that fooking muggins oov a gunner?”

A low pitched drone set my head bones to buzzing. “Pickering!” I barked. I grabbed Blandish’s arm and pulled him fast and hard to the right. By the time the shell hit, we were clear.

“Buggering Boche mug!” McWhorter shouted. I looked back at him. He was pockmarked with mud.

The boy had halted. His face was ghastly and waxen. First I thought shrapnel had got him, and then I realized what had wounded him was fear.

I grabbed his bandolier and dragged him along with me.

“I can’t.” He was trying his best to get away. “Please, sir. I can’t no more.” I don’t know where the hell he thought he’d run to. He was leaking tears.

I kept hauling him along. It started to rain, and a while later the shelling stopped. Under a feathery overcast sky, Riddell gave the order for a break. My legs went out. I sat down hard, nearly pulled the kid down with me. My fingers had cramped around his bandolier.

The boy sat down beside me, still leaking those fat, pathetic tears. I loosed my straps, let my pack fall off my shoulders. I got a piece of Pickering’s saltwater taffy out of my pocket and handed it to him.

“Wipe your nose, willya? You got snot and stuff.”

Blandish popped the candy into his mouth, rubbed his face with his sleeve. “He said I was to keep me eye on you, Blackhall did. Said you was a drunkard and rotter of a K.B.B. Said you’d make trouble.”

“Well, shit on Blackhall, too.” I got myself out a Woodbine, lit up.

“You seems a regular enough gent, though, for a Yank. A bit of all right, really. You brassed him off or sommit, sir?”

Miller was coming down the row, riding that sorrel of his. “Brassed him off,” I agreed.

The gelding was slipping every few steps. Fear of the mud had made the horse go lathered and wild-eyed. Every time he lost his footing, he’d jerk his head. Miller had a rain slicker on. The wind was flapping it. The gelding didn’t like that, either.

When he was abreast of me, Miller reined in. “Stanhope? Where is Sergeant Riddell?”

“Up ahead.” I pointed. He knew where Riddell was. But he saw the new boy, saw me sitting by him. Miller was keeping an eye on things. “Best take that martingale off that sorrel, sir. He needs his head in this mud.”

“Haven’t the time.”

“I’ll do it.” I flicked my cigarette way and got up, bitching and groaning.

“I’d prefer you not get under him,” Miller said. “You’ll get yourself trampled.”

I stroked the gelding’s withers. He was blowing and trembling. He looked around at me, as far as the martingale would allow. I scratched his nose. He rubbed his velvet muzzle into my hand.

Miller laughed. “I do believe he remembers you.”

The horse watched as I got under his belly, watched me unbuckle the strap from the cinch. Strap in hand, I reached around Miller’s leg, my head pressing against his thigh.