Good Hope Road: A Novel (22 page)

The moon, she rise higher, dancin’ on my eyelids all the while.

Three months, we’d given it, three months to this war, to give the Boche a right sound thrashin’ and send the Kaiser whimperin’ back to his hole. No such thing. Thanksgivin’ just ’bout upon us. Christmas and the new year around the corner and we still here. The Boche be givin’ good as they get, and oftentimes better.

A real lickin’ they given us yesterday. It started slow. Two shells they send our way at first. One fall wide, the other just miss our trench. It land to the back, right on the parados, sendin’ a mess of shrapnel and sandbags fallin’ all over us. When the blast settle, we sit up shakily and look ’bout, everybody nervy, jumpy like, over how damn lucky we just been, and tryin’ not to show it. Our ears still ringin’ from the blast as we listen for the screams that be followin’ a shellin’. There’s none, not this time, and we dust off our jackets, tryin’ for our hands not to shake, lookin’ with relief at each other from the corners of our eyes, and actin’ all the while like it ain’t no big deal at all.

Danny, he make a big show of brushin’ off the letter he been writin’ before the shell hit. ‘Hey James,’ he ask, pickin’ up his pen, ‘how do you spell “delightful”?’

We laughin’, our voices comin’ higher and louder from relief, when the real shellin’ start.

Minnies. Potato mashers. Coal boxes. Shells of all shapes and sizes; everythin’ that the Boche got, they send our way. Whizz bangs that sound just like their name – whizz, then bang! and only pink mist where a livin’, breathin’ man been a second ago. Jack Johnsons, yes, named for the champ, so big and beefy, they leave sinkholes where they land, takin’ out chunks of ground and everythin’ livin’ on it, nothin’ left but a cloud of black smoke.

And the racket. Such a racket. The shells come screamin’, roarin’ towards us, blottin’ out the day with their noise. They fall hard and fast, blowin’ the ground right from under us. Louder and louder, rattlin’ my ears and fillin’ my lungs, so big and angry that sound, it got a shadow all of its own. The dark centre of it, filled with a killin’ rage. I feel its evil, its pressure, its hard weight pressin’ down.

My gut and every inch of my bumfuzzled brain’s yellin’ at me to get up and run, get away fast as I can. Only, ain’t nowhere to run to, nothin’ we can do but lie here as the sound of the shells rip through our heads.

My breath come in bursts and each breath I take, it fill me with surprise ’cause all around me, men are dyin’. Torn and thrown apart like ragdolls with the stuffin’ spilled from them, while I’m still breathin’, in, out, in, out. I dig my hands into the earth, huggin’ her close as she buck and shudder like a live, breathin’ thing. I don’t know no more where I begin, where I end. It’s like I been stripped clean of skin, of muscle, and all that left is smoke. The shells, they still roarin’, and I don’t know no more if I’m alive, don’t know where I am, I can’t think, I can’t think with this noise, this roarin’ that fill my ears.

Still the shells fall, suckin’ the light from the hour, nothin’ to see no more but clouds of dust and earth. I’m breathin’ in smoke and the drowned-out cries of the dyin’. I can feel each of their wounds, their screamin’ agony, and still they fall, them shells, till I can’t take it no more, can’t take their roaring. The roarin’, the smoke spillin’ from my mouth back into the cold takes me with it, wingin’ me away from here, please, away, anyplace but here, far, on a thin peel of grey.

A warm day in Louisiana, the water flowin
’
like silk beneath the pirogue. I glance at Pappy’s back to make sure he turned the other way and trail my fingers through the water, drawin
’
shine through the brown. It loggin
’
season, and I’m headed with Pappy and some of the others down to the swamp. A right big cypress goin
’
to be cut down today and I’m happy as a pup with two tails at being allowed along
.

She big, that tree, the fattest I ever seen. Right by the edge of the swamp she stand, towerin
’
over the others. Branches thick with moss, spreadin
’
long and wide over the brown water, throwin
’
shadow stripes on Pappy’s arms as he guide our pirogue closer. Big, real big. When I stand at the bottom of her and look up, that trunk, it seem to go on forever. So thick that two of me could have tried to circle her waist where the girdlin
’
been done and the bark removed, and even then, it wouldn’t have been enough
.

They start sawin
’
at her and I stand close as I can, unmindin
’
of the chips that fly out. ‘Stay clear,’ Pappy remind me, and I move away for a few minutes before workin
’
my way back again. She just so big. Make a grown man look no bigger than an ant, she do, and it fill me with a strange thrill, the thought that we can bring her down all the same
.

Pappy yell at me, real annoyed, and I can tell he mean business. ‘Alright, alright,’ I say, and slip off to the other side of the tree when he turned the other way
.

I stand in the heart of her shadow, stretchin
’
my neck far as it will go but I still can’t see the top of her. Just branches, so many, with its and bits of blue showin
’
through. A boy, he could climb those branches, up, up, all the way to the sky. She tilt a little as I stand there. Tilt some more, just a bit, and the men back off. I mean to as well, I do, but somehow I just stand there starin
’
as she tilt again real slow, and that tree, she begin to fall
.

‘Obadaiah!’ Pappy yellin
’
at me to move, run boy, hard as you can, get outta the way. All those branches swayin
’
like there’s a wind; a creakin’, groanin’ sound, so loud, and it seem like that sound, it come from below the ground and above my head all at the same time
.

‘RUN!’

Now I run, fast as I can, but I’m right in the drop zone. That tree, she headed straight for me as she fall, as if mockin
’
what I was thinkin
’
earlier, ’bout how easily we cuttin
’
her down. The
thunder
she make, crackin
’
and breakin
’
through the other trees. Such a terrible, angry sound
.

I run fast as I can, but that roar, it get louder and louder and I’m screamin
’
now, but all I hear is that sound. The shadow of it over me, blockin
’
out the sun as I splash into the water – please Lord, stay the ’gators – and there ain’t noplace to go, no way to outrun that roarin
’.
I take a deep breath and dive for the bottom. Bubbles through muddy water, my heart fit to burst as the tree, she crash into the water above me, the tips of her branches brushin
’
against my neck
.

Pappy yanks me ashore. His face white as a ghost. The men shake their heads; they laugh and slap my back, and I cough up water. My ears ringin
’,
my legs got the shakes real bad, mind swimmin
’
with the memory of that roarin
’
and the way it filled my lungs
.

All afternoon long the Boche shell us, our artillery firin’ in return. When the guns finally go quiet, it the turn of the wounded. It’s only now we can hear them.

‘
Brancardiers
!
Brancardiers
!’ Cries for stretchers, for the medic, for water.

I sit up, and the earth feel like she still movin’. Take a while for my eyes to focus, to make sense of the shapes movin’ through the dust. Men stiffly gettin’ to their feet, coughin’, weakly cussin’, as we take count of hands and arms and legs, pickin’ ourselves up again.

I breathe in. Out. There a firework smell to the air. On account of it still being early in the war, on account I ain’t yet gotten bone-sick of it all, I breathe, giddy with relief that I made it through.

Danny, he didn’t. I find that letter he was writin’. I dust it off, and ‘delightful’ – the word swim up between my hands.

Nightfall be quieter than usual, touched still by blood smell. James hand me a plug of chaw. I place it in my jaw, feel the juice beginnin’ to take. The air still bangin’ ’bout in my chest, like wind in a hollow. I think again ’bout that long-ago cypress. Later, after he cooled down, Pappy showed me the stump. It had more rings than any tree I ever seen.

‘A thousand-year cypress,’ Pappy had called it then, half in jest, watchin’ as I touched those rings.

‘I seen a thousand-year-old cypress once,’ I hear myself say now, as if from very far away. ‘Seen it up close, heard it roar as it fell.’

James shift the chaw ’bout in his cheek as he stare straight ahead, at the wall of the trench. There a cut on his head; the blood shine wetly red, as if still new.

‘Trees have words,’ he say then, as if in a dream. ‘You go to the heart of the sugarbush and listen long enough, you start to hear it, their maple song.’

stay my shovellin’ to stamp my feet, shakin’ the frost from them boots. The mornin’ sun been slowly thawin’ them out. Weather’s turned so cold now, our boots freeze at night, the leather cuttin’ into our feet like blades. I stamp ’bout again, and the water inside them boots go sloshin’ back and forth.

So much wetness be collectin’ inside there that I can’t hardly feel my toes no more. I try and curl them, cussin’ at the pain. These past weeks, Karan, he been hackin’ at that precious robe of his with his bayonet, handin’ out make-do System D socks for us that ain’t got better. We make Russian socks with the strips, tyin’ them ’bout our feet and ankles. The warmth of the wool help, but it ain’t enough. Newspaper then, plugged into the gaps between leather and wrapped foot. The mornin’ melt soak the paper and our feet through and through. Our orders be to keep our boots on at all times in the trenches. I don’t want to be takin’ off those boots no how. Once they come off, I ain’t sure if I’m goin’ to be able to get them back on again.

This young
jeune
, he couldn’t stand it no more and pulled off his boots against the order. I seen his feet then. A mess of blisters and shiny red skin, raw as meat and stinkin’. Gaillard, after he yell at him somethin’ fierce, shown him how to grease a thread in candle wax and pass it through the blisters to slice them off. The kid suck it up, but when it come time to put on them boots again, the pain was so bad he pass right out and mess his pants. James and I, we got them boots back on for him; ain’t nobody made no jokes ’bout his pants either when he woke.

My belly rumble as I pick up my shovel again. Shellin’ turned so bad, ain’t no way for the supplies to reach the Front. We got bread rations, once we got a thin soup that George the cook manage to get through to the trenches. We hole up in the dugouts and listen to the shells, and each day, there more of the dead and wounded. Worst are the horses from the wagon trains. They scream all night in pain.

I start shovellin’ again, workin’ through the muck. Been so much shellin’, the trenches keep fallin’ in. We be steady diggin’ new ones and re-diggin’ the old; I done so much shovellin’ that I ain’t sure no more if I’m legionnaire or ditch digger, first-class. We supposed to dig the trenches in this part of the line eight to ten feet deep – there’s plenty snipers watchin’, just waitin’ for a chance to aim at a legionnaire’s cap. The trenches, they supposed to have all sorts of twists and turns in them too – smaller chance that way of Boche bullets makin’ it down the line.

‘Fuck.’ James leans on his shovel, wipin’ the sweat from his forehead. He ain’t said a word ’bout his feet, but I can tell they been botherin’ him too, the way he been settin’ them boots down real careful like.

‘At least we only got to dig narrow,’ I say. From two and a half to three feet wide, the trenches got to be. Narrower the better – less space for the Boche shells to drop inside.

He look at me, the breath hangin’ like white cotton ’bout his beard. He point his shovel down the zigzag shape of the trench. ‘Only here,’ he say, ‘are narrowness and crookedness virtues.’

We keep workin’. There’s messes left from the shells; when we raise the duckboards from the stinkin’ slush at the bottom of the trenches to dry them out in the sun, sometimes among the rats that been growin’ fat as cats, we find its and bits of what once been men.