Upsetting the Balance (25 page)

He’d wondered the same thing Over There. Once you were in ’em, the stretches of shell-pocked German trenches you’d taken didn’t seem as if they could possibly make up for the guys who got shot while you were taking them. But you kept doing it, over and over and over, and eventually the
Boches
couldn’t stand the hammering any more and gave up.

Mutt had figured it was what Mr. Wilson called it: the war to end war. But then up popped Hitler and up popped the Japs, and you had to go off and do it all over again. And then along came the Lizards, and all of a sudden you weren’t fighting in some godforsaken place nobody’d ever heard of, you were fighting in Chicago, for God’s sake. Hell, Comiskey Park, or whatever was left of it, couldn’t have been more than a mile away.

Freight-train noises overhead said the Lizards were going after the mortar crews. Mutt didn’t wish those crews any harm, but he was just as glad to have the aliens’ artillery pounding at something in back of the line.

On his belly, he scrambled toward the hulk of a dead Model-A Ford that sat on four flat tires. Small-arms fire was picking up; the Lizards didn’t feel like leaving the neighborhood. He was almost to the car when he got shot.

He’d gone through months in France and more than a year in Illinois without a scratch. He hadn’t thought he was invulnerable; he knew better than that. But he hadn’t thought his number was up, either.

At first he felt just the impact, as if somebody had kicked him in the rear, hard. “Ahh, shit,” he said, as if an umpire had blown a close call at third base and wouldn’t change it back no matter how obviously wrong he was. He twisted around, trying to see the wound. Given where he’d been hit, it wasn’t easy, but the seat of his pants was filling up with blood.

“Jesus God,” he muttered. “Everybody goes and talks about gettin’ their ass shot off, but I went and did it.”

Then the wound started to hurt, as if he had a red-hot skewer stuck into his hindquarters. “Medic!” he bawled. He knew he sounded like a branded calf, but he couldn’t help it.

Dracula Szabo slithered over to him. When he saw where Mutt was hit, he started laughing. “Sorry, Lieutenant,” he said after a moment, and even halfway sounded as if he meant it. “I was just thinkin’, I’ll be damned if I’m gonna kiss it and make it better.”

“I ask for a medic an’ I go an’ get W. C. Fields,” Mutt said. “You got a field dressing on you?” At Szabo’s nod, he went on, “Stick it on there, will you?”

“Sure thing. Lift up a little, so I can get your pants down and get at where you’re hit.” When Mutt obeyed, Dracula bandaged him with cool competence that spoke of the practice he’d had at such things. His appraisal also told of that experience: “Doesn’t look too bad, sir. Not quite a crease, but it’s a through-and-through, and it’s just in the ham, not in the bone. You sit tight an’ wait for the medics to take you outta here. You’re gonna be okay, I think.”

“Sit tight?” Mutt rolled his eyes. “I ain’t goin’ anyplace real fast, not with that, but I don’t wanna sit on it, neither.”

“Yeah, well, I can see that,” Dracula answered. He swatted Mutt lightly on the shoulder. “You take care. Good luck to you.” Then he was gone, back to the fight. In the space of a moment, Daniels had gone from platoon leader—essentially, God’s right-hand man—to part of the detritus of war.

He sang out again: “Medic!” That ran the risk of drawing Lizards to him, but he was willing to take the chance. The Lizards were pretty decent about not butchering wounded men, probably better than either the Germans or the Americans had been in the last war.

“Where you hit, soldier?” The man with the Red Cross armband was black; at that moment, Mutt wouldn’t have cared if he’d been green.

“Right in the butt,” he answered.

“Okay.” The black man had a partner who was white. Mutt noticed that, but didn’t say anything about it, even when the Negro kept on being the spokesman: “We’ll get the stretcher over by you, and you slide onto it on your belly, right?”

“Right.” Mutt did as he was told. “Got me what the limeys used to call a Blighty wound: too bad to go on fightin’, but not bad enough to wreck me for good. They’d get shipped back to England and they were done with the war. Me—” He shook his head.

The Negro chuckled sympathetically. “Afraid you’re right about that, Lieutenant. They’ll fix you up and send you out again.” He turned to the white stretcher bearer. “Come on, Jimmy. Let’s get him back to the aid station.”

“Right, Doc.” Jimmy picked up his end of the stretcher.

“Doc?” Mutt said. He’d wondered why the colored guy had done all the talking. “You a doctor?” he asked. He’d learned not to tack “boy” onto that.

“That’s right.” The Negro didn’t look back at Daniels. For the first time, his voice got tight. “Does it bother you, Alabama? If I’m not lily-white enough to take care of you, I can leave you right here.” He sounded deadly serious.

“I’m from Mississippi,” Mutt said automatically. Then he thought about the rest of the question. “I been out of Mississippi a while, too. If you’re American enough to want to patch my ass, I reckon I’m American enough to say thank-you when you’re done.” He waited. He’d run into a few educated black men who were just as good at hating as any Ku-Kluxer.

Doc didn’t say anything for a couple of steps. Then he nodded. “Okay, Mississippi. That sounds fair.”

It damn well better,
Daniels thought.
You’re not gonna get anything more out of me.
But he didn’t say so out loud. The colored doctor was doing his job, and seemed willing to meet him halfway. Given Mutt’s own present circumstances, that was about as much as he had any right to expect.

The aid station had a big Red Cross flag flying in front of it, and several more on the roof. It was a big, foursquare brick building not far from Lake Michigan. Doc said, “Hey, Mississippi, you know what this place was before the war?”

“No, but that don’t matter, on account of I got the feeling you’re just about to tell me,” Mutt answered.

“You’re right,” the Negro said. “You don’t let much bother you, do you? This was—still is, I guess—the Abraham Lincoln Center.”

“Just another damnyankee,” Daniels said, so deadpan that the colored doctor gave him a sharp look over his shoulder before chuckling ruefully. Mutt went on, “Doc, I’ve done two turns of soldiering now, and in between ’em I was a bush-league manager for about a hundred years. So a smartmouth, even a smartmouth doc, that don’t bother me much, no. Gettin’ shot in the ass, now,
that
bothers me.”

“I can see how that would mess up a man’s day,” Jimmy, the other stretcher bearer, put in.

Some dogfaces trudged past Mutt on their way up to the front. About half of them were grimy veterans like him, the rest fresh-faced kids. Some of the kids looked at the bloodstained bandage on his backside and gulped. That didn’t bother Mutt. He’d done the same thing the first time he saw wounded in France. War wasn’t pretty, and you couldn’t make it pretty.

What did bother him was that about one rifle-toting trooper in four was black. The Army was segregated, like any decent and proper outfit. Seeing white and colored soldiers together in the same outfit bothered Mutt as much as having white and colored ballplayers on the same team would have.

Doc didn’t look back, but he didn’t have to be a mind-reader to figure out what Daniels was thinking, either. He said, “When you’re fightin’ to stay free, sometimes you get freer.” Mutt just grunted.

Doc and Jimmy lugged him into the aid station. His nose wrinkled at the stink of wounds gone bad. “How messed up is this one?” somebody called from farther in.

“Not too,” Doc answered. “Needs a tetanus shot, if we have any antitoxin, and some stitching. Should be okay, though.”

“Yeah, there’s antitoxin,” the somebody—a worn, harassed somebody, by his voice—said. “It’s slow right now, so why don’t you sew him up quick before they bring in half a dozen bad ones all at the same time?”

“Right” Doc and Jimmy set Mutt down where he wouldn’t be in the way of other stretcher parties carrying in the wounded. Doc came back with a syringe, a glass jar partly filled with a clear, oily liquid, and a clean rag. He jabbed Mutt in the backside with the needle.

“Ow!” Mutt said. “Why didn’t you give me the ether first?”

“Mississippi, if you can grouse about a needle after you took a bullet in the cheek, I think you’re probably going to live,” the colored doctor told him. He opened the jar, soaked the rag, and held it to Daniels’ face. The stink of the ether made Mutt cough and choke. He tried to pull away, but the doctor’s hand at the back of his head wouldn’t let him. His vision got frayed and fuzzy and faded out like a movie.

When he woke up, his mouth was dry as a salt mine and tasted like a latrine. He hardly noticed; he had a headache worse than any he’d ever got from moonshine, and that was saying something. His backside felt as if an alligator had taken a good bite out of it, too.

“Doc?” Mutt’s voice was a hoarse croak.

“The doctors are busy,” an orderly said. “Can I get you some water?”

“Oh, Lord, I wish you would,” Mutt answered. The orderly sounded like some kind of pansy, but if he’d bring some water, Mutt didn’t care what he did in his spare time. He shook his head, which made it hurt worse. A nigger doctor and a pansy orderly, colored troops fighting side by side with white men . . . what the hell was the world coming to?

The orderly brought not only water but a couple of little white pills with
BAYER
on them. “I found some aspirin,” he said. “It may do your head a little good. You probably don’t feel real well right now.”

“Buddy, you ain’t kidding,” Mutt answered. His hand trembled when he held it out for the aspirin tablets. He grimaced in self-reproach. “You’d think I had the DTs or somethin’.”

“You’re still woozy from the anesthetic,” the orderly said. “That happens to everybody, not—” He shut up and held out the water to Daniels.

Not just to old geezers like you:
Mutt could fill in the blanks for himself. He didn’t care; what with his head and his ventilated backside, he felt as elderly as he probably looked. He popped the aspirins into his mouth and washed them down with some water. It probably came straight out of Lake Michigan; Chicago didn’t have running water, or even guaranteed clean water, any more. But you had to go on drinking, even if you did get the runs now and again.

“Thank you, friend,” he said with a sigh. “That was mighty kind of you, even if I do wish it was a bottle of beer instead.”

“Oh, so do I!” the orderly exclaimed, which made Mutt blink; when he thought about queers—which he didn’t spend a lot of time doing?he pictured them sipping wine, not knocking back a beer. The fellow studied Mutt’s bandages, which made him shift nervously from side to side. Just because he had to lie on his stomach didn’t mean . . . Then the orderly said, “You’re probably one of the few people who’s glad—for a while, anyhow—the toilets don’t work. With that wound, squatting over a bucket will hurt you a lot less than sitting down would.”

“That’s true,” Daniels said. “Hadn’t much thought about it yet, but you’re right.” He was beginning to feel a little more like himself. Maybe the aspirin was starting to work, or maybe the ether cobwebs were going away.

“You have trouble or need help, you just sing out for me,” the orderly said. “My name is Archie. Don’t be shy, I don’t mind—it’s why I’m here.”

I bet you don’t mind.
But Mutt kept his mouth shut again. Like the colored doctor, this guy was doing his job. He was entitled to enjoy it—if he did—so long as he didn’t make a nuisance of himself. Mutt sighed. The world got crazier day by day, though he wished it hadn’t got crazy enough to shoot him in the ass. “Thanks, Archie. If I have to take you upon that, I will.”

Sweat ran down George Bagnall’s face. When summer finally got to Pskov, it didn’t fool about. The grass on the hills outside of town was turning yellow as the sun. The forests of pine and fir to the east and south, though, remained as dark and gloomy in summer as at any other time of year.

A lot of German troops in Pskov went around bare-chested to get a suntan. The Russians didn’t go in for that. The ones who weren’t in uniform and were lucky enough to have a change of clothes switched to lighter, baggier tunics and trousers. Bagnall’s RAF uniform wasn’t much more than tatters these days. He mostly wore Russian civilian clothes, with a Red Army officer’s cap to give him a semblance of authority.

As happened on account of that, somebody came up to him and asked him something in Russian. He got the gist—which way to the new stables?—and answered in his own halting Russian. “Ah!” the fellow said.
“Nemets?”

“Nyet,”
Bagnall answered firmly.
“Anglichani.”
You never could be sure how a Russian would react if he thought you were a Jerry—better to set him right straightaway.

“Ah,
Anglichani. Khorosho,”
the Russian said: Englishman—good. He rattled off something Bagnall thought was thanks for the directions and hurried off toward the street to which Bagnall had pointed.

Bagnall headed on toward the market square. As a fighting man, he got plenty of black bread, the cabbage soup called
shchi,
and borscht, along with the occasional bit of hen or mutton or pork. The Russians ate and thrived, the Germans ate and didn’t complain—the winter before the Lizards came, they’d been eating horses that froze to death in the snow. Bagnall wanted something better, or at least different; he wanted to see if any of the
babushkas
would part with some eggs.

The old and middle-aged women sat in rows behind rickety tables or blankets on which they’d laid out what they had for sale. With their solid, blocky figures and the outlines of their heads smoothed and rounded by the scarves they all wore, they reminded Bagnall of nothing so much as figures from those cleverly carved, multilayered sets of Russian wooden dolls. The immobile stolidity with which they sat only enhanced the illusion.

No one was displaying any eggs, but that didn’t necessarily signify. He’d found out good stuff often got held back, either for some special customer or just to keep it from being pilfered. He walked up to one of the
babushkas
and said,
“Dobry den.”
The woman stared at him, expressionless.
“Yaïchnitsa?”