Across the River and Into the Trees (2 page)

“Listen,” the man in the boat called. “Don’t shoot toward the boat.”

I’ll be a sad son of a bitch, the shooter said to himself. I will indeed

“Get your decoys out,” he called to the man in the boat. “But get them out fast. I won’t shoot until they are all out. Except straight overhead.”

The man in the boat said nothing that could be heard.

I can’t figure it, the shooter thought to himself. He knows the game. He knows I split the work, or more, coming out. I never shot a safer or more careful duck in my life than that. What’s the matter with him? I offered to put the dekes out with him. The hell with him.

Out on the right now, the boatman was still chopping angrily at the ice, and tossing out the wooden decoys in a hatred that showed in every move he made.

Don’t let him spoil it, the shooter told himself. There won’t be much shooting with this ice unless the sun should melt it later on. You probably will only have a few birds, so don’t let him spoil it for you. You don’t know how many more times you will shoot ducks and do not let anything spoil it for you.

He watched the sky lightening beyond the long point of marsh, and turning in the sunken barrel, he looked out across the frozen lagoon, and the marsh, and saw the snow-covered mountains a long way off. Low as he was, no foot-hills showed, and the mountains rose abruptly from the plain. As he looked toward the mountains he could feel a breeze on his face and he knew, then, the wind would come from there, rising with the sun, and that some birds would surely come flying in from the sea when the wind disturbed them.

The boatman had finished putting out the decoys. They were in two bunches, one straight ahead and to the left toward where the sun would rise, and the other to the shooter’s right. Now he dropped over the hen mallard with her string and anchor, and the calling duck bobbed her head under water, and raising and dipping her head, splashed water onto her back.

“Don’t you think it would be good to break more ice around the edges?” the shooter called to the boatman. “There’s not much water to attract them.”

The boatman said nothing but commenced to smash at the jagged perimeter of ice with his oar. This ice breaking was unnecessary and the boatman knew it. But the shooter did not know it and he thought, I do not understand him but I must not let him ruin it. I must keep it entire and not let him do it. Every time you shoot now can be the last shoot and no stupid son of a bitch should be allowed to ruin it. Keep your temper, boy, he told himself.

BUT he was not a boy. He was fifty and a Colonel of Infantry in the Army of the United States and to pass a physical examination that he had to take the day before he came down to Venice for this shoot, he had taken enough mannitol hexanitrate to, well he did not quite know what to—to pass, he said to himself.

The surgeon had been quite skeptical. But he noted the readings after taking them twice.

“You know, Dick,” he said. “It isn’t indicated; in fact it is definitely contra-indicated in increased intra-ocular and intra-cranial pressure.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” the shooter, who was not a shooter, then, except potentially, and was a Colonel of Infantry in the Army of the United States, reduced from being a general officer, said.

“I have known you a long time, Colonel. Or maybe it just seems a long time,” the surgeon told him.

“It’s been a long time,” the Colonel said.

“We sound like song writers,” the surgeon said. “But don’t you ever run into anything, or let any sparks strike you, when you’re really souped up on nitroglycerin. They ought to make you drag a chain like a high-octane truck.”

“Wasn’t my cardiograph O.K.?” the Colonel asked.

“Your cardiograph was wonderful, Colonel. It could have been that of a man of twenty-five. It might have been that of a boy of nineteen.”

“Then what are you talking about?” the Colonel asked.

That much mannitol hexanitrate produced a certain amount of nausea, sometimes, and he was anxious for the interview to terminate. He was also anxious to lie down and take a seconal. I ought to write the manual of minor tactics for the heavy pressure platoon, he thought. Wish I could tell him that. Why don’t I just throw myself on the mercy of the court? You never do, he told himself. You always plead them non-guilty.

“How many times have you been hit in the head?” the surgeon asked him.

“You know,” the Colonel told him. “It’s in my 201.”

“How many times have you been hit
on
the head?”

“Oh Christ.” Then he said, “You are asking for the army or as my physician?”

“As your physician. You didn’t think I’d try to wind your clock, did you?”

“No, Wes. I’m sorry. Just what was it you wanted to know?”

“Concussions.”

“Real ones?”

“Any time you were cold or couldn’t remember afterwards.”

“Maybe ten,” the Colonel said. “Counting polo. Give or take three.”

“You poor old son of a bitch,” the surgeon said. “Colonel, sir,” he added.

“Can I go now?” the Colonel asked.

“Yes, sir,” the surgeon said. “You’re in good shape.”

“Thanks,” the Colonel said. “Want to go on a duck shoot down in the marshes at the mouth of the Tagliamento? Wonderful shoot. Some nice Italian kids I met up at Cortina own it.”

“Is that where they shoot coots?”

“No. They shoot real ducks at this one. Good kids. Good shoot. Real ducks. Mallard, pin-tail, widgeon. Some geese. Just as good as at home when we were kids.”

“I was kids in twenty-nine and thirty.”

“That’s the first mean thing I ever heard you say.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant I didn’t remember when duck shooting was good. I’m a city boy, too.”

“That’s the only God-damn trouble with you, too. I never saw a city boy yet that was worth a damn.”

“You don’t mean that, do you, Colonel?”

“Of course, not. You know damn well I don’t.”

“You’re in good shape, Colonel,” the surgeon said. “I’m sorry I can’t go on the shoot. I can’t even shoot.”

“Hell,” said the Colonel. “That doesn’t make any difference. Neither can anybody else in this army. I’d like to have you around.”

“I’ll give you something else to back up what you’re using.”

“Is there anything?”

“Not really. They’re working on stuff, though.”

“Let ’em work,” the Colonel said.

“I think that’s a laudable attitude, sir.”

“Go to hell,” the Colonel said. “You sure you don’t want to go?”

“I get my ducks at Longchamps on Madison Avenue,” the surgeon said. “It’s air-conditioned in the summer and it’s warm in the winter and I don’t have to get up before first light and wear long-horned underwear.”

“All right, City Boy. You’ll never know.”

“I never wanted to know,” the surgeon said. “You’re in good shape, Colonel, sir.”

“Thanks,” said the Colonel and went out.

THAT was day before yesterday. Yesterday he had driven down from Trieste to Venice along the old road that ran from Monfalcone to Latisana and across the flat country. He had a good driver and he relaxed completely in the front seat of the car and looked out at all this country he had known when he was a boy.

It looks quite differently now, he thought. I suppose it is because the distances are all changed. Everything is much smaller when you are older. Then, too, the roads are better now and there is no dust. The only times I used to ride through it was in a camion. The rest of the times we walked. I suppose what I looked for then, was patches of shade when we fell out, and wells in farm yards. And ditches, too, he thought. I certainly looked for plenty of ditches.

They made a curve and crossed the Tagliamento on a temporary bridge. It was green along the banks and men were fishing along the far shore where it ran deep. The blown bridge was being repaired with a snarl of riveting hammers, and eight hundred yards away the smashed buildings and outbuildings of what was now a ruined country house once built by Longhena showed where the mediums had dropped their loads.

“Look at it,” the driver said. “In this country you find a bridge or a railway station. Then go half a mile from it in any direction and you find it like that.”

“I guess the lesson is,” the Colonel said, “don’t ever build yourself a country house, or a church, or hire Giotto to paint you any frescoes, if you’ve got a church, eight hundred yards away from any bridge.”

“I knew there must be a lesson in it, sir,” the driver said.

They were past the ruined villa now and onto the straight road with the willows growing by the ditches still dark with winter, and the fields full of mulberry trees. Ahead a man was pedalling a bicycle and using both his hands to read a paper.

“If there are heavies the lesson ought to say a mile,” the driver said. “Would that be about right, sir?”

“If it’s guided missiles,” the Colonel said. “Better make it two hundred and fifty miles. Better give that cyclist some horn.”

The driver did, and the man moved over to the side of the road without either looking up or touching his handlebars. As they passed him, the Colonel tried to see what paper he was reading, but it was folded over.

“I guess a man would do better now not to build himself a fine house or a church, or to get who did you say it was to paint frescoes?”

“Giotto, I said. But it could be Piero della Francesca or Mantegna. Could be Michelangelo.”

“Do you know a lot about painters, sir?” the driver asked.

They were on a straight stretch of road now and were making time so that one farm blended, almost blurred, into another farm and you could only see what was far ahead and moving toward you. Lateral vision was just a condensation of flat, low country in the winter. I’m not sure I like speed, the Colonel thought. Brueghel would have been in a hell of a shape if he had to look at the country like this.

“Painters?” he answered the driver. “I know quite a little about them, Burnham.”

“I’m Jackson, sir. Burnham’s up at the rest center at Cortina. That’s a fine place, sir.”

“I’m getting stupid,” the Colonel said. “Excuse me, Jackson. It is a fine place. Good chow. Well run. Nobody bothers you.”

“Yes, sir,” Jackson agreed. “Now the reason I asked you about painters, is these madonnas. I thought I ought to see some painting so I went to that big place in Florence.”

“The Uffizi? The Pitti?”

“Whatever they call it. The biggest one. And I kept looking at those paintings until madonnas started to run out of my ears. I tell you, Colonel, sir, a man who hasn’t been checked out on this painting can only see just about so many madonnas and it gets him. You know my theory? You know how crazy they are about bambinis and the less they got to eat the more bambinis they got and that they have coming? Well, I think these painters were probably big bambini lovers like all Italians. I don’t know these ones you mentioned just now, so I don’t include them in my theory and you’ll put me straight anyway. But it looks to me like these madonnas, that I really saw plenty of, sir, it looks to me like these just straight ordinary madonna painters were sort of a manifest, say, of this whole bambini business, if you understand what I mean.”

“Plus the fact that they were restricted to religious subjects.”

“Yes, sir. Then you think there is something to my theory?”

“Sure. I think it is a little more complicated, though.”

“Naturally, sir. It’s just my preliminary theory.”

“Do you have any other theories on art, Jackson?”

“No, sir. That bambini theory is as far as I’ve thought it through. What I wish is, though, they would paint some good pictures of that high country up around the rest center at Cortina.”

“Titian came from up there,” the Colonel said. “At least they say he did. I went down the valley and saw the house where he was supposed to be born.”

“Was it much of a place, sir?”

“Not so much.”

“Well, if he painted any pictures of that country up around there, with those sunset color rocks and the pines and the snow and all the pointed steeples—”

“
Campaniles
,” the Colonel said. “Like that one ahead at Ceggia. It means bell tower.”

“Well, if he painted any really good pictures of that country I’d sure as hell like to trade him out of some of them.”

“He painted some wonderful women,” the Colonel said.

“If I had a joint or a roadhouse or some sort of an inn, say, I could use one of those,” the driver said. “But if I brought home a picture of some woman, my old woman would run me from Rawlins to Buffalo. I’d be lucky if I
got
to Buffalo.”

“You could give it to the local museum.”

“All they got in the local museum is arrow heads, war bonnets, scalping knives, different scalps, petrified fish, pipes of peace, photographs of Liver Eating Johnston, and the skin of some bad man that they hanged him and some doctor skinned him out. One of those women pictures would be out of place there.”

“See that next
campanile
down there across the plain?” the Colonel said. “I’ll show you a place down there where we used to fight when I was a kid.”

“Did you fight here, too, sir?”

“Yeah,” the Colonel said.

“Who had Trieste in that war?”

“The Krauts. The Austrians, I mean.”

“Did we ever get it?”

“Not till the end when it was over.”

“Who had Florence and Rome?”

“We did.”

“Well, I guess you weren’t so damned bad off then.”

“Sir,” the Colonel said gently.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the driver said quickly. “I was in the Thirty-Sixth Division, sir.”

“I’ve seen the patch.”

“I was thinking about the Rapido, sir, I didn’t mean to be insolent or lacking in respect.”

“You weren’t,” the Colonel said. “You were just thinking about the Rapido. Listen, Jackson, everybody who’s soldiered a long time has had their Rapidos and more than one.”

“I couldn’t take more than one, sir.”

The car went through the cheerful town of San Dona di Piave. It was built up and new, but no more ugly than a middle western town, and it was as prosperous and as cheery as Fossalta, just up the river, is miserable and gloomy, the Colonel thought. Did Fossalta never get over the first war? I never saw it before it was smacked, he thought. They shelled it badly before the big fifteenth of June offensive in eighteen. Then we shelled it really badly before we retook it. He remembered how the attack had taken off from Monastier, gone through Fornace, and on this winter day he remembered how it had been that summer.