Armageddon In Retrospect (5 page)

I kissed that bayonet stud. I like the taste of oil and iron in small amounts, but that ain’t encouraging nobody to bottle it.

“Men,” Poritsky said, “you’re going to see some things out there that’d turn a civilian’s hair white. You’re going to see the Americans counter-attacking the Germans back in olden times at Château-Thierry.” My, he
was
happy. “Men,” he said, “it’s going to be a slaughterhouse in Hell.”

I moved my head up and down, so’s my helmet acted like a pump. It pumped air down over my forehead. At a time like that, little things can be extra-nice.

“Men,” Poritsky said, “I hate to tell soldiers not to be ascared. I hate to tell ’em there ain’t nothing to be ascared
of
. It’s an insult to ’em. But the scientists tell me nineteen-eighteen can’t do nothing to us, and we can’t do nothing to nineteen-eighteen. We’ll be ghosts to them, and they’ll be ghosts to us. We’ll be walking through them and they’ll be walking through us like we was all smoke.”

I blowed across the muzzle of my rifle. I didn’t get a tune out of it. Good thing I didn’t, because it would of broke up the meeting.

“Men,” Poritsky said, “I just wish you
could
take your chances back in nineteen-eighteen, take your chances with the worst they could throw at you. Them as lived through it would be soldiers in the finest sense of the word.”

Nobody argued with him.

“Men,” that great military scientist said, “I reckon you can imagine the effect on our enemy when he sees the battlefield crawling with all them ghosts from nineteen-eighteen. He ain’t going to know
what
to shoot at.” Poritsky busted out laughing, and it took him a while to pull hisself back together. “Men,” he said, “we’ll be creeping through them ghosts. When we reach the enemy, make him wish to God we was ghosts, too—make him sorry he was ever born.”

This enemy he was talking about wasn’t nothing but a line of bamboo poles with rags tied to ’em, about half a mile away. You wouldn’t believe a man could hate bamboo and rags the way Poritsky done.

“Men,” Poritsky said, “if anybody’s thinking of going A.W.O.L., here’s your golden opportunity. All you got to do is cross one of them lines of flares, go through the edge of the beam. You’ll disappear into nineteen-eighteen for real—won’t be nothing ghostly about it. And the M.P. ain’t been born who’s crazy enough to go after you, on account of can’t nobody who ever crosses over come back.”

I cleaned between my front teeth with my rifle sight. I figured out all by myself that a professional soldier was happiest when he could bite somebody. I knowed I wasn’t never going to reach them heights.

“Men,” Poritsky said, “the mission of this here time-screen company ain’t no different from the mission of ever company since time began. The mission of this here time-screen company is to kill! Any questions?”

We’d all done had the Articles of War read to us. We all knowed asking sensible questions was worse’n killing your own mother with a axe. So there wasn’t no questions. Don’t expect there ever has been.

“Lock and load,” Poritsky said.

We done it.

“Fix bayonets,” Poritsky said.

We done it.

“Shall we go, girls?” Poritsky said.

Oh, that man knowed his psychology backwards and forwards. I expect that’s the big difference between officers and enlisted men. Calling us girls instead of boys, when we was really boys, just made us so mad we couldn’t hardly see straight.

We was going out and tear up bamboo and rags till there wasn’t going to be no more fishpoles or crazy quilts for centuries.

Being in the beam of that there time machine was a cross between flu, wearing bifocals that was made for somebody else who couldn’t see good, and being inside a guitar. Until they improves it, it ain’t never going to be safe or popular.

We didn’t see no folks from nineteen-eighteen at first. All we seen was their holes and barbed-wire, where there wasn’t no holes and barbed-wire no more. We could walk over them holes like they had glass roofs over ’em. We could walk through that barbed-wire without getting our pants tore. They wasn’t ours—they was nineteen-eighteen’s.

There was thousands of soldiers watching us, folks from ever country there was.

The show we put on for ’em was just pitiful.

That time-machine beam made us sick to our stomachs and half blind. We was supposed to whoop it up and holler to show how professional we was. But we got out there between them flares, and didn’t hardly nobody let out a peep for fear they’d throw up. We was supposed to advance aggressively, only we couldn’t tell what belonged to us, and what was nineteen-eighteen’s. We’d walk around things that wasn’t there, and fall over things that was there.

If I had of been a observer, I would of said we was comical.

I was the first man in the first squad of the first platoon of that time-screen company, and wasn’t but one man in front of me. He was our noble captain.

He only hollered one thing at his fearless troops, and I thought he hollered that to make us even more bloodthirsty than we was. “So long, Boy Scouts!” he hollered. “Write your mothers regular, and wipe your noses when they runs!”

Then he bent over, and he run off across no man’s land as fast as he could go.

I done my best to stick with him, for the honor of the enlisted men. We was both falling down and getting up like a couple of drunks, just beating ourselves to pieces on that battlefield.

He never looked around to see how me and the rest was doing. I thought he didn’t want nobody to see how green he was. I kept trying to tell him we’d done left everbody way behind, but the race took ever bit of breath I had.

When he headed off to one side, towards a line of flares, I figured he wanted to get in the smoke where folks couldn’t see him, so he could get sick in private.

I had just fell into the smoke after him when a barrage from nineteen-eighteen hit.

That poor old world, she rocked and rolled, she spit and tore, she boiled and burned. Dirt and steel from nineteen-eighteen flew through Poritsky and me ever
which
way.

“Get up!” Poritsky hollered at me. “That’s nineteen-eighteen! Can’t hurt you none!”

“It would if it could!” I hollered back at him.

He made like he was going to kick me in the head. “Get up, soldier!” he said.

I done it.

“Get back with the rest of them Boy Scouts,” he said. He pointed through a hole in the smoke, pointed back to where we’d come from. I seen the rest of the company was showing them thousands of observers how experts laid down and quivered. “That’s where
you
belong,” Poritsky said. “This here’s my show, and it’s a solo.”

“Beg pardon?” I said. I turned my head to follow a nineteen-eighteen boulder that had just flew through
both
our heads.

“Look at me!” he hollered.

I done it.

“Here’s where we separates the men from the boys, soldier,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Can’t hardly nobody run as fast as you can.”

“I ain’t talking about running,” he said. “I’m talking about fighting!” Oh, it was a crazy conversation. Nineteen-eighteen tracers had started going through us.

I thought he was talking about fighting bamboo and rags. “Ain’t nobody feeling very good, Captain, but I expect we’ll win,” I said.

“I mean I’m going through these here flares to nineteen-eighteen!” he hollered. “Ain’t nobody else man enough to do that. Now, get the hell out of here!”

I seen he wasn’t fooling a bit. He really did think that’d be grand, if he could wave a flag and stop a bullet, even if it was in some war that’d been over for a hundred years or more. He wanted to get in his lick, even if the ink on the peace treaties was so faded you couldn’t hardly read them no more.

“Captain,” I said to him, “I ain’t nothing but a enlisted man, and enlisted men ain’t even supposed to hint. But Captain,” I said, “I don’t think that makes good sense.”

“I was born to
fight
!” he hollered. “I’m rusting out inside!”

“Captain,” I said, “everthing there
is
to fight for has already done been won. We got peace, we got freedom, everbody everwhere is like brothers, everbody got nice houses and chicken ever Sunday.”

He didn’t hear me. He was walking towards the line of flares, towards the edge of the time-machine beam, where the smoke from the flares was thickest.

He stopped just before he got into nineteen-eighteen forever. He looked down at something, and I thought maybe he’d done found a bird’s nest or a daisy in no man’s land.

What he’d found wasn’t neither. I went up to him and seen he was standing over a nineteen-eighteen shell hole, just like he was hanging in air.

There was two dead men in that sorry hole, two live ones, and mud. I knowed that two was dead, on account of one didn’t have no head, and the other was blowed in two.

If you got a heart, and you come on something like that in a thick smoke, ain’t nothing else in this universe going to be real. There wasn’t no more Army of the World; there wasn’t no more peace everlasting; there wasn’t no more LuVerne, Indiana; there wasn’t no more time machine.

There was just Poritsky and me and the hole.

If I was ever to have a child, this is what I’d tell it: “Child,” I’d say, “don’t never mess with time. Keep now now and then then. And if you ever get lost in thick smoke, child, set still till it clears. Set still till you can see where you are and where you been and where you’re going, child.”

I’d shake that child. “Child, you hear?” I’d say. “You listen to what your Daddy says. He
know
.”

Ain’t never going to see no sweet child of mine, I expect. But I aims to feel one, smell one, and hear one. Damn if I don’t.

You could see where the four poor nineteen-eighteen souls had been crawling around and around in that hole, like snails crawling around in a fishbowl. There was a track leading from each one—the live ones
and
the dead ones.

A shell lit in the hole and blowed up.

When the mud fell back down, there wasn’t but one man left alive.

He turned over from his belly to his back, and he let his arms flop out. It was like he was offering his soft parts to nineteen-eighteen, so it could kill him easy, if it wanted to kill him so bad.

And then
he
seen
us
.

He wasn’t surprised to see us hanging there in air over him. Wasn’t nothing could surprise
him
no more. Real slow and clumsy, he dug his rifle out of the mud and aimed it at us. He smiled like he knowed who we was, like he knowed he couldn’t hurt us none, like it was all a big joke.

There wasn’t no way a bullet could get through that rifle bore, it was so clogged with mud. The rifle blowed up.

That didn’t surprise him none, neither, didn’t even seem to hurt. That smile he give us, the smile about the joke, was still there when he laid back and died.

The nineteen-eighteen barrage stopped.

Somebody blowed a whistle from way far off.

“What you crying about, soldier?” Poritsky said.

“I didn’t know I was, Captain,” I said. My skin felt extra-tight, and my eyes was hot, but I didn’t know I was crying.

“You was and you are,” he said.

Then I really
did
cry. I knowed for sure I was just sixteen, knowed I wasn’t nothing but a over-growed baby. I set down, and I swore I wouldn’t get up again, even if the captain kicked my head off.

“There they go!” Poritsky hollered, real wild. “Look, soldier, look! Americans!” He fired his pistol off like it was the Fourth of July. “Look!”

I done it.

Looked like a million men crossing the beam of the time machine. They’d come from nothing on one side, melt away to nothing on the other. Their eyes was dead. They put one foot in front of the other like somebody’d wound ’em up.

All of a sudden, Captain Poritsky hauled me up like I didn’t weigh nothing. “Come on, soldier—we’re going with ’em!” he hollered.

That crazy man drug me right through that line of flares.

I screamed and I cried and I bit him. But it was too late.

There wasn’t no flares no more.

There wasn’t nothing but nineteen-eighteen all around.

I was in nineteen-eighteen for good.

And then another barrage hit. And it was steel and high-explosive, and I was flesh, and then was then, and steel and flesh was all balled up together.

I woke up here.

“What year is it?” I asked ’em.

“Nineteen-eighteen, soldier,” they said.

“Where am I?” I asked ’em.

They told me I was in a cathedral that’d been turned into a hospital. Wish I could see it. I can hear from the echoes how high and grand it is.

I ain’t no hero.

With heroes all around me here, I don’t embroider my record none. I never bayoneted or shot nobody, never throwed a grenade, never even seen a German, unless them was Germans in that terrible hole.

They should ought to have special hospitals for heroes, so heroes wouldn’t have to lay next to the likes of me.

When somebody new comes around to hear me talk, I always tell ’em right off I wasn’t in the war but ten seconds before I was hit. “I never done a thing to make the world safe for democracy,” I tell ’em. “When I got hit, I was crying like a baby and trying to kill my own captain. If a bullet hadn’t of killed him,
I would
of, and he was a fellow American.”

I would of, too.

And I tell ’em I’d desert back to the year two thousand and thirty-seven, too, if I got half a chance.

There’s two court-martial offenses right there.

But all these heroes here, they don’t seem to care. “That’s all right, Buddy,” they say, “you just go right on talking. If somebody tries to court-martial you, we’ll all swear we seen you killing Germans with your bare hands, and fire coming out of your ears.”