Flanders (44 page)

“Won’t make it,” Uncle Tim said. He was all for putting down the litter. It was pouring rain. Mud was to our thighs. Hard enough to get out of that muck without dragging that dying corporal. Daisy-cutters kept dropping on us, too. I didn’t bother turning to look back, but I could hear the sharp cracks as they hit.

“Put a bung in it,” Turnhill said. “I knows the lad.”

Mugs said, “Know him or not, he’s done for. Filling up with blood like a flaming balloon.”

“If he’s going to die,” I said, “somebody grab that message.”

Mugs pried it out of his rigid fingers, handed it to me. I opened the paper. It was addressed to Miller and was signed by Major Dunn.

Your field telegraph is out,
the message read.
Please attend to it.
I stuffed the message in my pocket, and we picked up the litter and floundered on.

It was a long way to the aid station. Once in a while Turnhill or Mugs or Uncle Tim would call out to “Let up for a tick. Can’t let up?” and we’d put the corporal down. In the thigh-deep embrace of the mud, my eyes would close. Gradually, relentlessly, the wet earth would start dragging me under like a slow current of the sea. Then somebody would call, “Ready!” and we’d cuss, lift the litter, and struggle on.

By the time we climbed over the sandbags that day, we were so covered in mud that we looked like rough clay statues, and the corporal was dead.

Turnhill stared down at the litter, his face moronic with exhaustion. The corporal’s belly wasn’t swollen anymore. A crimson trickle ran down his side, had congealed in a black jelly around him.

“Oh, well,” Turnhill said. “Bugger it.”

We try the best we can, Bobby, but the battle’s lost. It’s been lost for nearly forever. When the earth falls around us, it vomits out corpses: black-faced Boche, skin loose and scummy with rot, their bright hair falling out in patches, rats nesting in their bellies. At night I roll that spine bone in my hand, round as the world, prickly as danger.

It’s still sunset in the graveyard. Dunleavy’s gone again, and except for me and the sleepers, the twilight most of the time is empty. But even though it’s lonely, I relish being there. The air’s so sweet for the breathing. I suck it down deep—all cool crystal. It’s the way that I remember air used to be.

Two nights ago I saw someone skipping beyond the monuments and the trees—the little girl that LeBlanc had murdered. She was laughing. Her white wedding dress swirled. I walked toward her, but she dashed away giggling, grave to grave. Her laughter danced with her up the steps and fell down on me like confetti.

I’m so tired and the graveyard’s so peaceful that I ache to stretch out on one of the marble slabs. I wonder if I would die there, sleeping. I wonder if I’d dream of Heaven.

Travis Lee

* * *

NOVEMBER 24, THE RESERVE TRENCHES AID POST

Dear Bobby,

Just when I thought I couldn’t take no more, the shelling let up. The nights are quiet now. I go to sleep hearing the fading calls of “Lights out!” down the trench.

Last night long after lights-out I was curled in my tiny cubbyhole near the aid station. Feet woke me, splashing and thumping up the duckboards.

“Bloody idiot,” Miller said under his breath.

For a minute I thought he was talking to me. The footsteps halted. Outside my narrow door a match flared yellow. I caught the smell of cigarette smoke.

Then I heard a
tsk
and a “Really” from Dunston-Smith. “Mustn’t let on, Richard. Best not to stir things up.”

A mutter of “but it’s murder” from Miller, and then the clear bright words, “keep silent any longer.”

A hissed “Shut up.”

Somewhere out there in the dark the two were discussing LeBlanc.

They walked closer. Dunston-Smith spoke again, his tone reasonable. “Look. One does what one is ordered, Richard. Good God. You can’t afford to be awkward about it.”

Miller said, “Don’t touch me.”

“Sorry.” Dunston-Smith was breezy-toned.

My shoulder was cramping. I wanted to turn over, but I was afraid they’d hear me.

“You’re much too careless with your affections, Colin. Someone might see.”

“And it’s not careless of you to go carrying tales?”

“But Dunn refuses to do anything.”

“You’re bang on, Richard. And you mustn’t speak up either. You haven’t the bloody pull.”

The two of them smoked for a while, there in the concealing dark. Then Miller said, “You know why he’s chosen me again.”

Not really a question. There was no answer, either.

“It’s my success. It irks him. He feels he cannot afford to have me in the army, Colin. He especially cannot have me outperforming his other officers. The bastard will kill half my company simply because I am a Jew.”

So this wasn’t about one man and a handful of battered girls. It was a bigger and uglier crime than that.

Another
tsk
from Dunston-Smith. “You see anti-Semitism under every rock, Richard. It’s becoming tiresome.”

A cigarette butt hit the water with a hiss. Another match blazed. Miller said, “He speaks of bloody surprise. Does anyone believe we can surprise the Boche in this weather? The colonel should visit the trenches. He should see the state of these men. He should try to walk in this blasted mud.”

Dunston-Smith let his breath out in a sigh. “Will you lead them?”

“Otherwise it’s mutiny, isn’t it?”

“But will you lead them?”

Miller was quiet for so long that I was sure he wasn’t going to answer. Then a mutter, “Of course I’ll bloody lead them.”

Pray for us, Bobby. Pray that Turnhill and Uncle Tim and Mugs and me have the strength to carry all the wounded.

Travis Lee

* * *

NOVEMBER 25, THE RESERVE TRENCHES

Dear Bobby,

I thought they’d move us forward, but we stayed. Around us, shells fall thicker. We catch sleep when we can; eat when we have the time. Did Miller win us this reprieve? I’m tired of it, the slow endless shelling. I’m ready to push onward. Sometimes I think that if we go forward far enough, we’ll push through the Boche trenches and on the other side the graveyard will be waiting. I’ll
see Dunleavy again and the calico girl. I can lie down on that marble slab I’ve had my eye on. God, Bobby. I’ll sleep through Judgment Day.

Today we fought our way down the trench, water to our knees, and saw a soldier brought up from his mud tomb, cussing. Cries for help sent us clawing our way over the bags. There, in the pockmarked waste between the trenches, a threesome had been filling sandbags. The daisy-cutter hit them bang on as the Brits would say. Bang on. There was a kid whose head had exploded: brains dripping down his chin like oatmeal, cherry jam splatters on his lips. Another, his thick-walled heart neatly sliced open and lying atop his chest like a medical illustration. There the aorta. There the ventricles. There the empty chamber that had once held his family. I remembered a spring afternoon and Miller quoting:
Mother, whose heart hung humble as a button.
We left the dead to rot.

One boy had been left alive, and he was the worse for it. A piece of shrapnel had struck between his legs. There was only a small rip in his pants. He kept reaching down, reaching down, his palm smeared with blood. His pecker and balls were gone.

Mugs saw. He went to shaking so bad that he had to drop the litter. Turnhill looked away.

“I still there?” the boy asked.

“Yeah,” I told him. Then I told him to stay quiet so we could get him on the stretcher. He kept touching himself, his hands coming away empty. “Can’t feel nothing. I still there?”

We got him on the litter and started wading toward the trench, when I heard a low thrum. A shell was coming, and it was close. I could feel its vibration in the bones of my forehead, in my teeth. Mud trapped me, kept me from running. I remember looking up.

The wind pushed and I went flying. There was no pain. No sound either, but my ears would ring for hours after. I hit the mud face-first, struggled to my feet, surprised to be alive, saw Turnhill rising, saw Uncle Tim sitting up. Mugs was standing gape-mouthed, his fingers curled as if he still carried the litter.

The blast had torn the wounded boy apart. Mugs was painted scarlet with him. The mud for yards around glistened like garnet.

Uncle Tim looked down at the ruins. “All for the best,” he said.

We wholeheartedly agreed.

I kept touching myself the rest of the day. That night I went to sleep with my hand between my legs, wondering how it would be to reach down and touch emptiness.

Travis Lee

* * *

NOVEMBER 28, THE REST AREA

Dear Bobby,

Just when I thought the world would end, just when I wanted it to, they pulled us back. We marched, and by the time we reached billets, the mud had left us exhausted. There were showers and fresh uniforms waiting, and our first decent meal in weeks. I slept deep and didn’t dream, and the next day after inspection Riddell and Blackhall asked me to dinner.

“Captain’s order,” Blackhall said, not sounding happy.

Riddell seemed shy, like he was going on a date. “We’ll go to the place that makes the fish and chips, Stanhope, if you’ve a taste for that.”

And so that’s how I came to be the only enlisted man in the company to go to town that rest period.

It was almost a splendid walk, nearly like I remembered. There was the castle, there the quiet canal. But war had passed by, too. Trash lined the roadside: rusted food tins, discarded wrapping papers, burst and leaking casks. I peered hard into the grove of trees, wondering if the owl was still alive.

The town was barren but untouched—still a gingerbread confection. The bakery shop was open, an old man and woman behind the counter now. The sidewalk in front of the bakeshop smelled of cinnamon, and rounds of potato bread were piled in the window, soft as pillows. I slowed my steps so, Blackhall barked at me to “Come along wif you, Private! Come along!”

The restaurant was empty except for a handful of officers. We ordered Riddell’s fish and chips, and since Miller was paying, the two of them shared a bottle of good French wine. For dessert they ordered expensive cheeses. We enjoyed a couple of rounds each of thick, sweet coffee.

When we were finally finished, Blackhall pushed his chair back, belched. He called for a brandy, asked if I wanted one. I said no. He told the waiter to pour me one, anyway. I looked down into the brandy’s topaz depths, said I thought we ought to be getting back.

Blackhall sent Riddell back to billets. I pushed the brandy glass a safe distance away. After three more drinks, the lieutenant finally got to his feet and told me to come with him. Together, we walked into the gathering dark.

He didn’t look drunk. Didn’t walk drunk, either. Still, I remembered what Crumb had said about Blackhall’s kind of justice. I’d felt it once, and was too tired to take it again. I’d die first. I’d just let my spirit go walking out of my body, and I’d wander No Man’s Land until I found that graveyard.

We headed back to camp, not speaking. I heard the owl hoot, then saw the bird’s lumbering flight, enormous wings beating slow through the dusk.

The last of the twilight slipped away. Near the billets, on an isolated bend in the corduroy road, Blackhall paused to light his pipe. It was misting rain. Faint and far in the distance I could hear shelling—a low, mean rumble, like a growl deep in the throat of a dog.

“ ’E doesn’t think you done it,” Blackhall said.

I knew who he meant. “Harold Crumb’s a good cop.”

“You knows more than you’re telling, though, Stanhope.” His pipe went out. He struck a match to light it again.

“Yes, sir, I do.”

The flare of the match caught his surprise.

“I’ll never tell you all of it, either. It’s just too goddamned shameful. But it has to do with not stopping him, even after I knew what he was doing. It has to do with me being drunk.”