Flanders (8 page)

“Not much, sir. Sorry. Reverend Tom.”

“Why the lack of faith ... ah, Private Stanhope, isn’t it?”

“Travis Lee.”

His eyebrows rose. “You were the one injured. And those to either side of you killed. Was that not enough proof of God for you, then?”

“He’s a son of a bitch for irony, ain’t He, pastor?”

“Pardon?”

“God. Like those men in there, smiling so ferocious that you’d think they feel joy, but the joy they feel hurts like holy hell. Any minute that joy’s going to come exploding out, and when it does, it’ll kill them.”

A puffball cloud came over: flawless white at its top, a soft rabbit-gray at its bottom.

“Did you ever stop and think, my son, that because these men felt so much fear, God took them to someplace kinder?”

“No, sir,” I said. “I don’t.”

O’Shaughnessy has an intensity to him that’s disturbing.

Only the rumble of thunder—softer than any artillery—brought his head up and took his eyes off me. He squinted at the sky. “Great good heavens. What time is it getting to be? Nearly three,” he said, checking his watch. “Dear, dear. I’m due to meet with Colonel Caraway, and he’s not one for waiting. Travis, is it? We must talk again sometime.” He had a nice handshake—not the Baptist preacher pump I’m used to.

“Don’t want to be prayed over, Pastor. I’ve been prayed over before, and it never took,” I told him, and that’s about the truth of it.

Someplace kinder. That only happened once. And it wasn’t God I was with, but a calico-clad girl. All the times I hid as a boy knowing Pa was going to come in after, all the times I listened to Ma beg him to leave her be—God never took me away, Bobby, and I asked Him lots of times.

Early evening I was sitting enjoying a smoke when I saw Miller walking with O’Shaughnessy. Their heads were together and they were speaking quiet-the pastor with his head bent, like he was listening to sin.

LeBlanc sat down on the steps beside me. “Look at ‘em. Captain better keep his pants buttoned, eh?”

That brought me bolt upright in a hurry. What LeBlanc said next eased the startlement out of my spine. “You can’t trust micks. O’Shaughnessy’ll go hunting for some balls to play with.”

Above us, clouds had gathered, and the late afternoon was fast becoming night. A damp breeze misted my face. Cool for nearly summer. Sweet weather, still I knew a storm was coming. “You believe in God, LeBlanc?”

“I believe in a good fuck,” he said. Then he said, “I believe in horses.”

I watched Miller and O’Shaughnessy, shoulders touching, fade into the gloom. What were they talking about so seriously? Not God, surely. Why, God isn’t a serious thing at all.

Next morning all of us would move out, agnostics and believers together. I said, “I believe in horses, too.”

Travis Lee

* * *

MAY 9, ON THE ROAD

Dear Bobby,

We made poor time to the billeting area, marching in a driving thunderstorm, pelted by bullets of rain. Wind bent the poplars this way and that. My wet pack weighed me down. Waiting for Miller and O’Shaughnessy and the subalterns at the end of the march was a warm farmhouse occupied by a cordial-looking farm family. For the other two hundred and forty of us there was a leaking stone barn and a hayrick—no place to build a fire without unintentionally barbecuing some milk cows.

We cleared a spot and heated a Tommy cooker, for all the good that did the cold tea. Sergeant sent Smoot and Dedoes to the field kitchen’s tent. They brought us back dixie cans of bully beef and hard biscuits, and not near enough of that.

When we griped about the food, Smoot chortled, “It’s the motto, ain’t it? Eat Less to Save Shitting. Get it? Eat Less to Shave Sitting,” and then he’d howl so with laughter that I knew he’d been in the rum ration.

I chipped at my biscuit with my bayonet. Foy, disgruntled, was all for stealing and eating a chicken. He would have, too, except that Riddell got wind of it. He grabbed Foy by the scruff of his neck and bellowed, “Thieving, is it? I’ll
have no thieving ‘ere! You’ll do nothing in this platoon but that you’d do for God and King.”

By the time Riddell was finished dressing him down, Foy was pale and shaking. LeBlanc sidled up to me. “Riddell took McPhearson’s shouting place, you notice? Wants Miller to name him lieutenant, I figure. McPhearson’s ass always puckered for God and country, too. Say. I heard we were going to get a green lieutenant, but a whizzbang landed dead in his lap, so to speak. Platoon’s screwed. Speaking of which, your whore any good the other night?”

“Not as I recall. Your pecker find a resting place, LeBlanc?”

He shrugged. I pounded the biscuit until a piece broke off. I put the bread chip into my mouth and sucked a little flavor from it. Outside, the rain went on and on. Pickering found himself a barn cat to play with and laughed when it turned up its nose at his bully beef. The air smelled of cows and mildew. Through the chilly blue dusk I could see the welcome glow of the farmhouse windows. I wondered how Miller was faring, and if he had bread and cheese and wine, and if he was enjoying the company.

Late spring, but it was cold in that barn. I hiked my coat about my shoulders and had started writing you this letter when LeBlanc leaned over. “Hey. You’re always writing to people. What is it with you, Stanhope? You got some pussy waiting?”

“Not unless my brother’s changed in new and interesting ways. Anybody at home for you?”

“Nah. All dead and buried. But that’s the secret to life, you know—dying. Jesus and Mary. Just look around at the idiots here, Stanhope. They really think that one day the army’ll let ’em go home. You and me, we never had any illusions, did we?”

I don’t know, Bobby. I break off pieces of life and suck what flavor I can: the memory of Ma’s drop biscuits, the sheen of my mare’s hide, delicate-hued as a doe’s. The tastes of chili and cornbread. The hot straw smell of high summer.

Just a fool, I guess.

Travis Lee

* * *

MAY 11, ON THE ROAD

Dear Bobby,

When we left the barn there was sunlight and mud; and as we went, we tiptoed as careful as we could through the farmer’s kale field. The 10th Platoon started up a song that Miller soon shushed, not from critical sensibility but from caution. We passed signs of battle: a row of saplings that had been mowed down like the troops at Shiloh. Their stumps were shattered but still standing—their fallen branches like surrendering arms.

We stopped for lunch in a meadow embellished with grassy shell holes and cheerful yellow flowers. While we lounged, one of our aeroplanes buzzed us and everyone waved. The pilot waved back before flying on. I lay back on the damp grass and thought of how free I could be sailing through that silence of air. I don’t know, Bobby. Is it better to go out and meet death head-on, or wait for it to come in and get you? Maybe I should have given myself the choice and studied flying. That pilot might have been an American himself; and nothing special, just any farm boy from Ohio, any city kid from New York.

A shadow moved between me and the sun. From a height, a round face looked down. “Sentimental me, but I can’t help thinking that aeroplane pilots are closer to Heaven,” O’Shaughnessy said. “And that to gather that man to His bosom, God need only reach out His hand.”

From the grass next to me came LeBlanc’s acid “Crashed and buried, though, eh? In the end it’s the goddamned ground that gets ’em.”

I suppose LeBlanc was hoping for an argument. O’Shaughnessy ambled away. Next thing I knew, Riddell was scowling at the both of us. “It’s a smart mouf on the pair of you.”

“He did it,” I said right quick.

LeBlanc elbowed me.

Riddell
tsked
and shook his head. “And you a good Catholic lad, too. Sister a nun and all. Well, me mum raised me Church of England, didn’t she. But I’ve noticed it’s not our C. of E. chaplain what goes out to comfort the wounded with the bullets whizzing and the shells flying. It’s that papist. And for all his idol-worshipping and Mary silliness, well, in the end it’s ’im what has the pluck. So watch what you say, lads, or you’ll have my boot up your bums.”

When Sergeant walked away, I told LeBlanc, “I thought your family was all dead.”

LeBlanc sat up. He tore off a stem of pasture grass and stuck the end in his mouth. I asked him, “Well, are they?” but he got to his feet, grabbed his pack, and wandered off to where the rest of the platoon were gathering.

That night we bivouacked in an abandoned chateau, its walls untouched by war, its interior stripped of furniture and paintings, its owners months or years gone. Outside was an herb garden, wild and overgrown. All during that long afternoon Riddell wandered, beaming, through its scented tangles. Later, I saw Miller and O’Shaughnessy seated in the freckled shade of a garden bench, deep in conversation.

“There goes an interesting bit of work, Father,” Miller said as I passed. “A cowboy and literary scholar.”

I turned around. They were eyeing me.

“Most of the lads will be getting off their feet now, won’t they, Travis, me boy? After the long march, I mean.”

“Well, Father, I do believe Stanhope’s enjoying a bit of sightseeing. He likes sightseeing, don’t you, Stanhope? France is new to him, you see. And if you will take care to notice the boots ...”

“Ah! And what fine boots they are.”

“Dislikes shoes intensely. That’s because he’s part wild Indian. Stanhope! Recite us a bit of poetry. I’ll
start one for you, shall I? ‘O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being ...’ ”

I had to take that shit from the Harvard Congregationalists, but I wouldn’t take it from him. Heat rose in my face. Before my rage turned billy hell loose, I stalked away. I could hear them laughing all the way to the house.

Just before dark we heard shelling, muffled and far away. I thought about the farm family of the night before: craters marring the familiar places where war had brushed past. I spent the night in a grand ballroom that smelled of nothing but dust. In the dark our lowered voices echoed along the arched and painted ceiling. I wondered where the wealthy family had gone, and if it was hard to go so completely from a place that you leave nothing, not even scent, behind.

The house was too big for me: wide open, with no crannies to hide in. I don’t know, maybe I got too familiar with dark, tight places to ever make much of a pilot.

I went to sleep soothed by the murmurs of the platoon and the low booms of distant shelling. I dreamed about a graveyard, terraced and old, with peeling whitewashed steps running up and down. Low plaster walls outlined the graves, while at their heads sat attentive marble angels. Cypress stood quiet vigil at the borders: candles with melancholy green flames. Some of the graves were mounded with paper lilies, Bobby, and some had roofs of glass; and down in those beds little girls in frilly white dresses slept, encircled by dusty flowers.

It was peaceful. I fell asleep mad at Miller, but woke up not caring a bit, for those graves were soft and deep, perfect little hidey-holes; and the graveyard was so quiet, seemed like nothing could go stalking there.

Does the earth always get you? Maybe, if you end up in a graveyard like that, even falling out of the sky to reach it might not be so bad.

Love,

Travis Lee

* * *

MAY 15, STILL ON THE ROAD

Dear Bobby,

It’s getting worse. Can’t tell you all of it. Miller’s under pressure from high up. Yesterday he rode by and I caught him eyeing me. His position here is shaky, and he probably figures I can’t be trusted to keep his secret. Shit. Me telling what I know. Wouldn’t
that
bring him down.