Flanders (33 page)

Light bathed Ma’s iron bed, the double-ring quilt, the one she had when I was a kid, the pastel-colored one whose pattern I used to follow round and round until I was dizzy.

Pa was there. He was sitting on the side of the bed, in that fall of light, his white hair radiant. His head was down, his gentled hands resting in his lap. In his cupped palm lay that carved wooden horse.

Pa had come and took his gift back. I didn’t love enough for him. I wasn’t a good enough son. He knew I was there. He was waiting for me to come in. The house smelled of floor wax and age. It was so quiet I could hear the clock in the living room ticking. I stood at the door a while longer, but he never looked up. In the end, I went away.

I woke up then. Outside my dugout, the sky was clear and so deep a black that you felt you could fall up and just keep falling. The stars were dazzling and close and clean. The confines of the trench, that vaulted, sparkling ceiling; it all gave me a dizzy sense of rushing upward, like the way you feel standing in a Gothic cathedral. I let myself go, drifted down the misty river of the Milky Way, hung for a while onto the North Star, opened my arms wide to catch the Big Dipper’s glittering handle.

But the earthbound part of me remembered how light fell like a shawl across Pa’s bent shoulders, remembered the curled fingers, those gentle-looking hands. God, Bobby. I’ve never loved Pa as much as I loved him in that dream. But then, he’d never been so perfect.

Travis Lee

* * *

OCTOBER 9, A POSTCARD FROM THE RESERVE TRENCHES

Dear Bobby,

Sorry I can’t write more often. The army keeps me busy. Anyway, I’m glad Ma likes her lace tablecloth. Tell her I’m saving up to get her some napkins to match. Now, you wear that beret I sent you tipped to the side, little brother. The French shopkeeper gal who sold it to me said it’s sexy that way. Shit. Them goats’ll swoon all over you.

Love,

Travis Lee

* * *

OCTOBER 9, THE RESERVE TRENCHES

Dear Bobby,

It hurts when you write about how Ma waits for my letters, how she pours over them line by line with her piss-poor eyesight, wanting so bad to read. I can picture her in that wing chair, those damned lace doilies pinned on the arms, the lamp lit on the table. Thank God you’re there to read them to her aloud.

Don’t be nagging at me, Bobby. And don’t accuse me of not caring. I think about you all the time. I think of Ma, of barn dances and fried chicken Sundays. My arms remember wrestling with you; my forehead remembers the tickle of Ma’s kisses. But it’s too late, and I’m too changed. If I wrote more than a postcard, the death stink and the mud would come out.

Y’all don’t need that. Plenty of time later to find out how things were, if you want to. There’s some things folks at home are better off not knowing. Go ahead and think of war as something with honor. Something grand. That way if I die, you can believe I died for something.

So if the British Army has sent you these letters, I want you to think real hard before reading any further. Decide first if myths like duty and honor soften mourning.

It started this way: I was ordered to report to Miller’s dugout this morning. He wasn’t there. While I waited, I got to studying that picture on his wall.

The woman was younger than I’d thought—just a year or two off my age. Her face wasn’t pretty in a comfortable way—nothing soft nor oval there. She was exotic: high cheekboned and sloe-eyed. Her mouth was too ripe for Baptist comfort.

There was a whalebone stiffness to her, too, that I doubted any man was going to break; a curl to her mouth that told me she’d kick the traces—go off and start a career or something. Become a suffragist.

I fell in love, if you want to know the truth—a strong, pretty woman, one raised in the same household with Miller. They’d have argued growing up. Miller was a man who liked to lead, and she didn’t have a follower’s face. This wasn’t a woman who’d make her way around soft-footed nor manipulative, either. Those sad, steady eyes: they’d meet things head-on.

I started wondering how she’d be in bed. I figured her for the type who heated quick to a simmer, turned all tongue and thrusting. Her nipples would get hard as little pebbles. And when she came, she’d heave her hips up, take you deep inside her, pecker and soul.

I wondered if she was spoke for. I wondered what her family would think of me. Hell, I could fit in if I tried hard enough. Go back to school. Be a doctor if I had to.

Christmases with Miller, poetry over the turkey and dressing. After-dinner brandies before the fire, remembering the war, snug in a safe place. Holidays and high holy days, or whatever it was they celebrated. I’d never have to lose him.

I’d become a Jew, if they let you train for that. We’d live in England if she wanted. For a woman like that one, I’d make my life over, burnish it till it was clean and shiny.

When Miller came in, he found me standing, still mooning over that picture.

“That girl there’s got a good face.”

He put his helmet on the table, shot me a cautious look. “Thank you.”

“I don’t mean especially that she’s pretty, even though she is. Pretty, I mean. But she looks smart, too, you know? Like she could hold up her end of a conversation.”

That got a smile out of him. He struck a match, lit the lamp, pulled the door to. “Quite true, actually.”

“She fond of poetry?”

The quiet was filled with the smell of burned match, the hot-metal reek of the lamp. “An opera lover. But she enjoys renaissance works: Shakespeare, Milton, John Donne. She has a mind for trivia. Can recite, like you do, great stretches of things. Only her recitations are of opera lyrics and bloody
Paradise Lost.
A waste of talent, if you must know. A crashing bore.”

Like me. She was like me. I looked at the photo again. “I bet I could get her to recite Shelley.”

“You’d have a fight on your hands, Stanhope. Sarah’s one of those debaters who knows chapter and verse, and doesn’t mind rubbing your nose into your errors. She has quite a wicked sense of humor. Puts most suitors off, actually.”

“If I’m ever in England, you introduce me?”

His surprise set, became brittle.

I said right quick, “I don’t mean to be forward here or nothing, sir. I know what you think of me, but I clean up pretty good. Hell, I graduated Harvard, remember? Wasn’t top man in my class, but they accepted me into med school. All it needs is me going back and taking up my studies again.”

He picked up a pencil from his desk, toyed with it.

“Sir, I’m just saying she seems like an interesting woman is all. I know I visit whores, but if I had me a decent girl I wouldn’t. And strong women don’t scare me none. Hell, I’d be a better bet for her than some old English boy who keeps her homebound all the time. I like a woman with some fire to her. Oh. But, look, sir. I wouldn’t be trying to sweet-talk her into bed or nothing. Don’t get me wrong. I know how to treat a lady. Besides, I wouldn’t ever take no liberties with Sarah, not seeing as how she’s your sister and all.”

He put the pencil down. He said, “She is my fiancée.”

He must have got tired of me standing there with my limp dick in my hand. He sat down at his desk. “Do take a seat, Stanhope.”

I fell down into it. Fiancée. Maybe when the war was over he planned to put away his light-stepping, like boys will put away their late nights and their whores.

“There has been some unpleasantness.” He laced his fingers. “Another village girl was attacked and violated.”

Strange how you can get used to anything: living in shit holes, being shot at, being accused of rape. “When, sir?”

“October third.”

The night I’d got so drunk. I sat back. I knew the answer before I even asked the question. “Who did it?”

“We’re not sure. Your name has been bandied about.”

“I didn’t do it.”

“I didn’t think so.”

I wiped my hands over my face. Cool in the dugout, but I was sweating bad. I asked the questions I should have all along. “The girl all right?”

“Alive. And more’s the pity. She was beaten badly about the head. Beaten silly, in fact. Can’t testify. Doesn’t remember. Don’t know that she’ll ever be right. Cut about the face as well. Terribly disfigured. The man cut her in—shall we call it a private place? At any rate, there’s no marriage in her future, certainly. Can’t even work in her blasted little bakeshop for fear of terrifying the customers. A bloody disgrace.”

It came over me hot and fast, the way Marrs must have felt under the thrall of the flamethrower. The white floury skin, the shop’s yeasty cinnamon smells, the girl’s sweet smile. I got up so fast that I knocked the chair over. I wrenched the door open and stumbled into the rain before I threw up. Vomit splattered duckboard, pattered across the mud. A passing sentry stepped carefully out of the way.

Miller’s calm voice behind me. “I’ll need your boots.”

Damn LeBlanc. Shoving it in her while she was battered and bleeding. Cutting her up, so he’d be her first lover and her last—because she had been a virgin, Bobby. I could tell by those blushes.

Damn me for standing there and watching him do it. For giving myself a hand job while he did. I remembered her spread, submissive butt and how hard I came. Lust inserted itself into my disgust—a bad mix, like the hunger I felt at Marrs’s death. I bent over, threw up again.

“Your boots, if you don’t mind, Stanhope. Have you been drinking? “

I straightened, wiped my mouth. My gullet burned, my throat tasted sour. The trench stank of death and bile. The air was heavy. No matter how much I breathed, seemed like my lungs wouldn’t fill.

“I regret to make this an order, Stanhope, but I haven’t the time to lounge about watching the results of your pub crawl—however entertaining that might be. Your boots, please.”

Seeing the blood. Watching him fuck her, anyway. I pushed past Miller, went back into the dugout and sat down. I pulled at my laces, but they were tied too tight, my hands were too clumsy.

“No need to be rattled, Stanhope. I’m sure this will prove your innocence. The bastard left a bruise on her back, a clear boot print. Here. Here.” He knelt at my feet, said gently, “I’ll have those off for you.” He took out his pocket knife and cut the laces. “No sense taking such care. They won’t be given back, I imagine. I’ve another pair here for you somewhere. I’ve arranged, in fact, an oversized boot. Your feet are wider than the norm. Comes from walking barefooted, I suspect. Which is why I should think the proof of your innocence definitive. I have it on quite good report that the boot which caused the bruise was a small one.”

He slipped my right boot off, checked the bottom of it. “Yes. Just as I thought. Your sale is intact. The marks on the girl’s back show an odd-shaped mark—a broken nail, I do believe—plus two nails which are either worn or missing. Yes, indeed, Stanhope. This should clear you straightaway.” He looked up at me then, and his expression fell into woebegone lines of concern. “What is it?”

“Ask LeBlanc.”

“Pardon? “

“LeBlanc done it, sir. I saw him.” Cold in the dugout, and I was wet. I couldn’t stop shivering.

“Are you certain?”

“We were close as from here to the turn of the next traverse, sir. Saw him clear as day.” Didn’t see him, really. But felt his presence. Heard his voice.

Miller dipped his head, slipped my left boot off.

“Sir, listen to me: I saw him do it. Well, the rape part, anyway. It shames me to say it. I should have stopped him but, hell, I was drunk. Couldn’t even figure out what was going on there for a while. But go ahead and get his boots. They’ll match.”

He set both my boots carefully aside.

“I should have put a stop to it at once, sir. Arrested him right then and there. Called for the police or something. She was a sweet girl. She waited on me once at her bakery shop.” Then lamely, for there wasn’t no other way but lame to say it: “I should have stopped him.”

Miller rose, refused to meet my eye. He found my new pair of boots under his batman’s haversack and brought them over. I thanked him and put them on. “If you want me to testify before a court-martial board, just ask, sir. I’ll be willing.”