Flanders (9 page)

Two days ago he sent Marrs and me out to forage for water, and we found a quaint pond with swans and then we found some picturesque Boche. They’d broken the line to the south, and Miller had sent us down to meet them.

The incursion was only about ten men or so. Marrs got a bullet in the butt, which sounds a lot funnier than it looks. We scrambled up the bank of the pond, swans flapping and honking. We ran, him bleeding down his leg. We never fired back a shot.

Why is it all of a sudden that I scare Miller? Does he feel he has to shut me up? I need to tell somebody, and I hear what’s said in confession can’t be repeated. Still, would that really be smart? All I
know is, Bobby, I can’t trust Miller’s orders anymore.

Travis Lee

JUNE 18, FLANDERS, THE RESERVE TRENCHES

Dear Bobby,

Sorry I haven’t written, but the army’s kept me busy. Three days up, three days back, three days in reserve. When I’m “up,” my job is to run along the front-line trench, jumping on the firestep and looking for targets. The other sharpshooters need a man to compute range and bearing. Me, I always find my target, and I find it alone.

See, Bobby, the Boche stick their heads above the parapet once in a while. Some have to, for standing sentry or fixing sandbags obliges them. Some get lazy and just plain forget that I’m there, or forget where the parapet ends. Riddell keeps bets on how many I’ll take down that day. When the boys in the company win, they give me spoonfuls of their jam or stuff their folks sent from home. I finagled myself in with Dewberry, our rum wallah, so everybody can bet with their issue jiggers, too. The work’s not bad, really. The Boche fall clean and sudden, just like bottle targets at a fair.

The bad part comes on the third day when they pull us back. The rear trenches are sons of bitches, the dugouts cramped and wet and leaking. The walls are sandbagged mud. They shell us nearly every night. All that stands between us and the explosions is a slab roof “elephant” of poor-fitting iron.

The first night I was there I was picking lice and listening to the whizzbangs when from behind me came a ringing uproar loud as all of Judgment Day. I jumped up so fast, I knocked my head against a bunk.

Sergeant calmed me. “Well, ’course it’s loud, lad. It’s our own artillery, ain’t it.”

Our own artillery. Good. They’re giving some of the same back, like I give bullets. Still, I get tired of the noise. Trantham must have, too. Last week we were in the front trenches, mind, just the front trenches, when we heard the Boche start up their big guns; and even though everyone knew they were aiming for the rear, Trantham went running out of the dugout, up the ladder, and straight into our own wire. I don’t know where he thought he was running to, but that’s where the Boche sniper got him. You couldn’t expect us to go out and fetch him down, so Trantham hung like a piece of windblown trash on a fence. Flies landed. It rained and washed the blood and drove some of the flies away. It rained harder, and we went into the dugout and left him dangling. When night fell, Marrs and Smoot cut him down.

Later I thought that I caught glimpses of him on the wire, hanging skin-tattered, the way dead cows look if you leave them awhile. Since then, I’ve dreamed of the pretty graveyard with the dusty paper flowers and the rain-stained angels. From beyond the cypress I hear a voice calling for help. It sounds like the voice might be Trantham’s.

Lucky I don’t dream of everyone. We’ve lost eighteen out of our company; but except for Trantham our platoon is more or less intact. We had us a new lieutenant for about a week. Forget his name now. A Boche sniper took him with a head shot. It’s the damned scopes they have, Bobby. Any asshole could shoot with a scope. I told Riddell to get me one, and then I’d show those Boche. Shit. I could take the Kaiser from here.

You never told me if you got Pa to leave. Is he needing a white cane and a dog yet? You know what I’ve a hankering for is some of Ma’s molasses cookies. You never send me anything, Bobby. Why is that? Must be because you’re a no-account little son of a bitch. Why don’t you send me something? I’m hungry all the time. The others get packages from home. It’s the only thing we have to look forward to; and every mail call I stand there with nothing but my pecker in my hand. If I’m lucky, you send me a one-page letter. I put up with the hard biscuits and the lice and the flies and the shelling, the whole shit stink of it. I wiped your snot when you were a baby. I sheared Ma’s goddamned fancy goats. I stayed up nights when they were born. I wore blisters on my shoulders from toting them goats water, and I never once asked you nor Ma for fucking nothing. Can’t you just send me a goddamned package

Travis Lee

* * *

JUNE 21, FLANDERS, THE FRONT LINE TRENCHES

Dear Bobby,

That cocksucker Corporal Dunleavy. I’m sick of him and his bullying. This morning he came by and pulled me off the firestep. “Drunk!” he was yelling. “Drunk in the trench! Who gave you that liquor?”

“Not drunk, sir! And this is mine. I been saving this up.” I was no more drunk than he was. The rest of the men were lounging around. I was holding onto the rum ration I’d just won; and I was sprawled in the mud where he’d thrown me.

“You’ll not give me that smart look like you gives the other officers. Up, Stanhope! Off your bleeding arse!”

I got up. I didn’t mean to jostle him. The trenches are pretty narrow there.

“Cheeky bastard!” He knocked me down again.

I came up angry and quick this time and butted my helmet into his stomach. I drove him so hard into the wall that one of those floral sandbags the women make us broke. We were both avalanched by stinking black dirt. It was funny, Bobby. That was all. I didn’t mean nothing by laughing. But next thing I knew, the barrel of Dunleavy’s side arm was shoved into my stomach.

“I’d shoot you soon as look at you, Stanhope.”

The rest of the platoon started to yell, “Stand down, Stanhope, yer bloody fool! ’E means it, ’e does!”

Then Riddell was there, saying in that calm way of his, “Put your pistol away, Dunleavy.”

“He’s drunk in the trench, sir.”

“Will you shoot ’im, then? Well? Go ahead and kill the man, if you’ve a mind to.”

I went cold. Dunleavy and I were face to face, me so near him that I could smell his gamy breath. In his eye was that killing urge I’d seen so many times in Pa’s. Funny. When I figured I was about to die, you’d think I would have struggled; but I went helpless, just like I used to do.

The hard ugly thing left Dunleavy’s stare. He stood back, let his pistol hand drop.

Riddell said, “Best you’d take ’im to see Captain,” and his voice was placid, like no worry had ever broke his surface.

Dunleavy, his side arm aimed more or less in my direction, marched me down the trench and into Miller’s dugout. Miller was reading by the light of his lantern. His batman was mending a shirt. The dugout was huge, larger than what we had for six men. There was a real bed and a real table and chairs. It had wallpaper, too, Bobby: green leaves on one wall, pink roses on the other.

When we entered Miller put his book down. I kept looking at those dainty roses, those green leaves.

“Drunk in the trench, sir,” Dunleavy said.

Vines curled about cracked and ancient columns, and if you looked close, you could see birds hiding there. A quiet place Miller had made himself, a spot like my graveyard.

“What have you to say for yourself?”

“Wasn’t drunk, sir.”

Dunleavy said, “Won’t say who he had it from. And he’s a smart mouf on him.”

“Yes. That he does. Stand on one foot, Private.”

“Sir?”

“One foot, please.”

I couldn’t balance for long. “Got a cold, sir. Makes me woozy.”

“I see. Count backward from one hundred if you will, Private.”

It was slow going, but I reached eighty-six when he told me to stop. Then we stood around and waited a while.

“Sir?” asked Dunleavy.

Miller said, “That will be all. Harter? Dismissed.” The batman put down his mending, got up, and followed Dunleavy through the door, closing it quietly behind him.

Miller never took his eyes off me. “You are skirting the edge of drunkenness. Next time I might have you shot.”

“Sir.”

“At ease. You’re an interesting problem, Stanhope. I did not give you permission to sit.”

My leg ached something fierce from where Dunleavy had thrown me down. “Yes, sir.”

“You are perhaps the most amusing person I’ve ever known. And your cloddishness does not serve to completely disguise your intelligence.”

“Thank you, sir.” The roses bothered me—they were a faded dusty color, as if the flowers had been too long away from sun.

“It was not meant by way of compliment, Private. I intended to point out that you are smart and perceptive; and therefore I believe that you will take this suggestion in the manner in which it is meant: Do not spend so much of your free time around Private LeBlanc. He is a bad influence. I see that surprises you.”

It shocked holy hell out of me. “Sir. Can I speak frankly, sir?”

“I was under the assumption that this is a friendly talk, Stanhope. Not quite a dressing-down.”

The dugout smelled of Earl Grey tea. A kettle sat on his primus stove, a plate of sugar cookies by it. If it was a friendly conversation, he would have asked me if I wanted a cuppa and a biscuit. I could near taste those cookies of his, Bobby. Sugar glistened like ice across their tops. They were yellow with butter, the way Ma likes to make them. I imagined my teeth sinking into the soft dough, crunching through that hard sweetness.

“So what is it, Stanhope? I’m attentively waiting.”

“Who am I supposed to talk with, sir? I mean, if it’s not LeBlanc, who else?”

“Um. Odd. I was not under the impression that LeBlanc was acquainted with the English Romantic poets. Is he?”

“No, sir.”

“Then what is his attraction for you?”

“Well, sir, he’s funny.”

“Funny.”

Miller saw everything. Hadn’t he seen the humor in LeBlanc? “That boy cusses up a storm, sir. And he’ll flat say anything that comes into his head.”

“I see.” Those watchful eyes. Not like Pa’s, but something in them scared me. Abruptly he said, “Sit down.”

My leg gave out. I aimed for the chair and collapsed, leaving Miller shaking his head and smiling. Well, I amused him.

“Stanhope? I will tell you something in confidence. LeBlanc did not join the Canadian forces willingly. He was running from a spot of trouble. No. Don’t ask. I will give no details. But other than his brush with the law, I also find him—as did his fellow Canadians—insolent and surly to the point of boorishness. He does not follow orders and he fails miserably to get along well with others. He is an excellent killing soldier, but a poor excuse for a man. You are not. I need your cooperation, Stanhope. You would do me the favor, please, of helping your platoon run smoothly.”

“If you need me so bad,” I asked, “then why the hell did you try to kill me?”

Not as much guilt as I’d hoped for. The skin between his eyebrows creased. “What are you talking about?”

“That time you sent Marrs and me for water, sir, and the Boche were waiting, and Marrs got shot in the butt. You had to have known they would be there.”

“Is that what you’ve thought? Good Lord. I ... Why would I take it in my mind to kill you?”

“You’d know best, sir.”

He sat back in his chair and regarded me, perplexed, like my face had just sprouted a hairy ass. Finally he said, “You are the best sharpshooter in the battalion. Because of you, my company totals are extraordinarily high.”