Three Soldiers (16 page)

Chrisfield felt powerless as an ox under the yoke. All he could do was work and strain and stand at attention, while that white-faced Anderson could lounge about as if he owned the earth and laugh importantly like that. He held out his plate. The K.P. splashed the meat and gravy into it. He leaned against the tar-papered wall of the shack, eating his food and looking sullenly over at the two sergeants, who laughed and talked with an air of leisure while the men of their two companies ate hurriedly as dogs all round them.

Chrisfield glanced suddenly at Anderson, who sat in the grass at the back of the house, looking out over the wheat fields, while the smoke of a cigarette rose in spirals about his face and his fair hair. He looked peaceful, almost happy. Chrisfield clenched his fists and felt the hatred of that other man rising stingingly within him.

“Guess Ah got a bit of the devil in me,” he thought.

The windows were so near the grass that the faint light had a greenish color in the shack where the company was quartered. It gave men’s faces, tanned as they were, the sickly look of people who work in offices, when they lay on their blankets in the bunks made of chicken wire, stretched across mouldy scantlings. Swallows had made their nests in the peak of the roof, and their droppings made white dobs and blotches on the floor-boards in the alley between the bunks, where a few patches of yellow grass had not yet been completely crushed away by footsteps. Now that the shack was empty, Chrisfield could hear plainly the peep-peep of the little swallows in their mud nests. He sat quiet on the end of one of the bunks, looking out of the open door at the blue shadows that were beginning to lengthen on the grass of the meadow behind. His hands, that had got to be the color of terra cotta, hung idly between his legs. He was whistling faintly. His eyes, in their long black eyelashes, were fixed on the distance, though he was not thinking. He felt a comfortable unexpressed well-being all over him. It was pleasant to be alone in the barracks like this, when the other men were out at grenade practice. There was no chance of anyone shouting orders at him.

A warm drowsiness came over him. From the field kitchen alongside came the voice of a man singing:

In their mud nests the young swallows twittered faintly overhead. Now and then there was a beat of wings and a big swallow skimmed into the shack. Chrisfield’s cheeks began to feel very softly flushed. His head drooped over on his chest. Outside the cook was singing over and over again in a low voice, amid a faint clatter of pans:

Chrisfield fell asleep.

He woke up with a start. The shack was almost dark. A tall man stood out black against the bright oblong of the door.

“What are you doing here?” said a deep snarling voice.

Chrisfield’s eyes blinked. Automatically he got to his feet; it might be an officer. His eyes focussed suddenly. It was Anderson’s face that was between him and the light. In the greenish obscurity the skin looked chalk-white in contrast to the heavy eyebrows that met over the nose and the dark stubble on the chin.

“How is it you ain’t out with the company?”

“Ah’m barracks guard,” muttered Chrisfield. He could feel the blood beating in his wrists and temples, stinging his eyes like fire. He was staring at the floor in front of Anderson’s feet.

“Orders was all the companies was to go out an’ not leave any guard.”

“Ah!’

“We’ll see about that when Sergeant Higgins comes in. Is this place tidy?”

“You say Ah’m a goddamned liar, do ye?” Chrisfield felt suddenly cool and joyous. He felt anger taking possession of him. He seemed to be standing somewhere away from himself watching himself get angry.

“This place has got to be cleaned up. … That damn General may come back to look over quarters,” went on Anderson coolly.

“You call me a goddam liar,” said Chrisfield again, putting as much insolence as he could summon into his voice. “Ah guess you doan’ remember me.”

“Yes, I know, you’re the guy tried to run a knife into me once,” said Anderson coolly, squaring his shoulders. “I guess you’ve learned a little discipline by this time. Anyhow you’ve got to clean this place up. God, they haven’t even brushed the birds’ nests down! Must be some company!” said Anderson with a half laugh.

“Ah ain’t agoin’ to neither, fur you.”

“Look here, you do it or it’ll be the worse for you,” shouted the sergeant in his deep rasping voice.

“If ever Ah gits out o’ the army Ah’m goin’ to shoot you. You’ve picked on me enough.” Chrisfield spoke slowly, as coolly as Anderson.

“Well, we’ll see what a court-martial has to say to that.”

“Ah doan give a hoot in hell what ye do.”

Sergeant Anderson turned on his heel and went out, twisting the corner button of his tunic in his big fingers. Already the sound of tramping feet was heard and the shouted order, “Dis-missed.” Then men crowded into the shack, laughing and talking. Chrisfield sat still on the end of the bunk, looking at the bright oblong of the door. Outside he saw Anderson talking to Sergeant Higgins. They shook hands, and Anderson disappeared. Chrisfield heard Sergeant Higgins call after him:

“I guess the next time I see you I’ll have to put my heels together an’ salute.”

Anderson’s booming laugh faded as he walked away.

Sergeant Higgins came into the shack and walked straight up to Chrisfield, saying in a hard official voice:

“You’re under arrest. … Small, guard this man; get your gun and cartridge belt. I’ll relieve you so you can get mess.”

He went out. Everyone’s eyes were turned curiously on Chrisfield. Small, a red-faced man with a long nose that hung down over his upper lip, shuffled sheepishly over to his place beside Chrisfield’s cot and let the butt of his rifle come down with a bang on the floor. Somebody laughed. Andrews walked up to them, a look of trouble in his blue eyes and in the lines of his lean tanned cheeks.

“What’s the matter, Chris?” he asked in a low voice.

“Tol’ that bastard Ah didn’t give a hoot in hell what he did,” said Chrisfield in a broken voice.

“Say, Andy, I don’t think I ought ter let anybody talk to him,” said Small in an apologetic tone. “I don’t see why Sarge always gives me all his dirty work.”

Andrews walked off without replying.

“Never mind, Chris; they won’t do nothin’ to ye,” said Jenkins, grinning at him good-naturedly from the door.

“Ah doan give a hoot in hell what they do,” said Chrisfield again. He lay back in his bunk and looked at the ceiling. The barracks was full of a bustle of cleaning up. Judkins was sweeping the floor with a broom made of dry sticks. Another man was knocking down the swallows’ nests with a bayonet. The mud nests crumbled and fell on the floor and the bunks, filling the air with a flutter of feathers and a smell of birdlime. The little naked bodies, with their orange bills too big for them, gave a soft plump when they hit the boards of the floor, where they lay giving faint gasping squeaks. Meanwhile, with shrill little cries, the big swallows flew back and forth in the shanty, now and then striking the low roof.

“Say, pick ’em up, can’t yer?” said Small. Judkins was sweeping the little gasping bodies out among the dust and dirt.

A stoutish man stooped and picked the little birds up one by one, puckering his lips into an expression of tenderness. He made his two hands into a nest-shaped hollow, out of which stretched the long necks and the gaping orange mouths. Andrews ran into him at the door.

“Hello, Dad,” he said. “What the hell?”

“I just picked these up.”

“So they couldn’t let the poor little devils stay there? God! it looks to me as if they went out of their way to give pain to everything, bird, beast or man.”

“War ain’t no picnic,” said Judkins.

“Well, God damn it, isn’t that a reason for not going out of your way to raise more hell with people’s feelings than you have to?”

A face with peaked chin and nose on which was stretched a parchment-colored skin appeared in the door.

“Hello, boys,” said the “Y” man. “I just thought I’d tell you I’m going to open the canteen tomorrow, in the last shack on the Beaucourt road. There’ll be chocolate, ciggies, soap, and everything.”

Everybody cheered. The “Y” man beamed.

His eye lit on the little birds in Dad’s hands.

“How could you?” he said. “An American soldier being deliberately cruel. I would never have believed it.”

“Ye’ve got somethin’ to learn,” muttered Dad, waddling out into the twilight on his bandy legs.

Chrisfield had been watching the scene at the door with unseeing eyes. A terrified nervousness that he tried to beat off had come over him. It was useless to repeat to himself again and again that he didn’t give a damn; the prospect of being brought up alone before all those officers, of being cross-questioned by those curt voices, frightened him. He would rather have been lashed. Whatever was he to say, he kept asking himself; he would get mixed up or say things he didn’t mean to, or else he wouldn’t be able to get a word out at all. If only Andy could go up with him, Andy was educated, like the officers were; he had more learning than the whole shooting-match put together. He’d be able to defend himself, and defend his friends, too, if only they’d let him.

“I felt just like those little birds that time they got the bead on our trench at Boticourt,” said Jenkins, laughing.

Chrisfield listened to the talk about him as if from another world. Already he was cut off from his outfit. He’d disappear and they’d never know or care what became of him.

The mess-call blew and the men filed out. He could hear their talk outside, and the sound of their mess-kits as they opened them. He lay on his bunk staring up into the dark. A faint blue light still came from outside, giving a curious purple color to Small’s red face and long drooping nose at the end of which hung a glistening drop of moisture.

Chrisfield found Andrews washing a shirt in the brook that flowed through the ruins of the village the other side of the road from the buildings where the division was quartered. The blue sky flicked with pinkish-white clouds gave a shimmer of blue and lavender and white to the bright water. At the bottom could be seen battered helmets and bits of equipment and tin cans that had once held meat. Andrews turned his head; he had a smudge of mud down his nose and soapsuds on his chin.

“Hello, Chris,” he said, looking him in the eyes with his sparkling blue eyes, “how’s things?” There was a faint anxious frown on his forehead.

“Two-thirds of one month’s pay an’ confined to quarters,” said Chrisfield cheerfully.

“Gee, they were easy.”

“Um-hum, said Ah was a good shot an’ all that, so they’d let me off this time.”

Andrews started scrubbing at his shirt again.

“I’ve got this shirt so full of mud I don’t think I ever will get it clean,” he said.

“Move ye ole hide away, Andy. Ah’ll wash it. You ain’t no good for nothin’.”

“Hell no, I’ll do it.”

“Move ye hide out of there.”

“Thanks awfully.”

Andrews got to his feet and wiped the mud off his nose with his bare forearm.

“Ah’m goin’ to shoot that bastard,” said Chrisfield, scrubbing at the shirt.

“Don’t be an ass, Chris.”

“Ah swear to God Ah am.”

“What’s the use of getting all wrought up. The thing’s over. You’ll probably never see him again.”

“Ah ain’t all het up. … Ah’m goin’ to do it though.” He wrung the shirt out carefully and flipped Andrews in the face with it. “There ye are,” he said.

“You’re a good fellow, Chris, even if you are an ass.”

“Tell me we’re going into the line in a day or two.”

“There’s been a devil of a lot of artillery going up the road; French, British, every old kind.”

“Tell me they’s raisin’ hell in the Oregon forest.”

They walked slowly across the road. A motorcycle despatch-rider whizzed past them.

“It’s them guys has the fun,” said Chrisfield.

“I don’t believe anybody has much.”

“What about the officers?”

“They’re too busy feeling important to have a real hell of a time.”

The hard cold rain beat like a lash in his face. There was no light anywhere and no sound but the hiss of the rain in the grass. His eyes strained to see through the dark until red and yellow blotches danced before them. He walked very slowly and carefully, holding something very gently in his hand under his raincoat. He felt himself full of a strange subdued fury; he seemed to be walking behind himself spying on his own actions, and what he saw made him feel joyously happy, made him want to sing.

He turned so that the rain beat against his cheek. Under his helmet he felt his hair full of sweat that ran with the rain down his glowing face. His fingers clutched very carefully the smooth stick he had in his hand.

He stopped and shut his eyes for a moment; through the hiss of the rain he had heard a sound of men talking in one of the shanties. When he shut his eyes he saw the white face of Anderson before him, with its unshaven chin and the eyebrows that met across the nose.