Flanders (34 page)

“Need to change your socks more often, Stanhope. Wouldn’t want trench foot. Be your own fault.”

The new boots were almost comfortable. I tied the laces. “Yes, sir.”

“No excuse, you know.”

Our eyes met. I got up, saluted and left.

Mark this day, this time. It was the first I ever thought about suicide. And it wasn’t that I wanted to rest in the graveyard. No, I wanted to lose myself in the dark.

That girl’s rape. The shame of what I’d done was like swallowing a knife. Every which way I’d turn, it’d poke at me. It was tearing my guts out.

In the end, I went down to O’Shaughnessy’s dugout. I waited until he was finished talking to a soldier, and then I went inside. It was quiet and cool and dim. He was sitting, a candle beside him on the table. I knelt in front of his chair and crossed myself the way I seen Marrs do.

“Bless me, Father,” I said, surprised that it came easy; and then I told him the rest. When I was done, he asked me what penance I thought my sin deserved.

I said what I’d done had no forgiving.

“You make too harsh a god, Travis.”

I told him I’d burn myself alive, then, the way Marrs got it. Told him I’d go running off toward No Man’s Land the way Trantham did, leave myself hanging on the wire.

He said, “An unforgivable sort of sin: despair.”

I told him the shame hurt too bad to abide, asked him how I could stop it. He told me he didn’t know. Then he asked me to get up off my knees and sit in the chair. He lit a cigarette, handed it to me.

“Why didn’t I stop him?” I asked.

And he said, “Lust.”

A one-syllable explanation for my shiftless nature and even for my drinking; for it was lust I felt for the bottle, too. I took a deep drag, let it out, watched smoke curl toward the board ceiling.

“I need to quit drinking,” I told him.

“Pray,” he said. “Ask after Sergeant Riddell’s herb cure.”

I promised I would. I promised, too, I’d quit.

He said, “Don’t do your promising to me, lad.”

“They put LeBlanc in front of a firing squad?”

He checked his pocket watch. Did it so sneaky that I barely caught what he was doing.

“It’s what he deserves, Father.”

O’Shaughnessy stared into the corner for a while, then asked if I wanted tea. Whatever appointment he had was going to be broken.

I said I’d be appreciative of some tea, and he put water on the primus. He opened a tin of butter cookies with currants and put it on the table.

“Should imagine it will go hard for Captain.”

My cookie stopped a few inches from my mouth. “Why?”

“Because he’s a Jew, and that lad’s the most decorated soldier in the battalion. Don’t be altogether surprised, Travis, if nothing comes of it. When word gets to Command, they’ll be blaming it on the girl herself, on the natural lusts of a soldier, on Captain not keeping a watch when he knew the boy had a history.”

I put the cookie back in its stiff paper cup. So hurting women was the trouble Miller tried to tell me about.

The water started steaming. O’Shaughnessy went to tend the tea. “Well, Pierre’s a hard and bitter lad. A troublemaker as well, which is why the Canadians wanted rid of him. It was Major Dunn who took a liking to the lad’s combat record and asked after the transfer; but it won’t be the major taking the blame. No, it will fall on Captain, and him only having pity for the boy.”

“LeBlanc murdered that little girl, and Miller knows it. He knew it all the time. Goddamn him, anyway.” I can tell you how betrayal tastes, Bobby. It’s gall-bitter, with an aftertaste of tarnished-penny rage.

“The worst shame of it is that she’s been forgotten already. One death among thousands now. Let it go,” he said quietly and firmly. “Let it go.”

“I’ll kill LeBlanc, Father. Or he’ll kill me out there. He’s bug-eyed crazy.”

“He’s lonely, Travis.”

“Lonely, shit.”

“Comes from being raised without a family, and the Sisters of Charity no replacement. Comes from running the Toronto streets. He’ll be looking for belonging, yet pushing friendship away. One has to feel pity for a boy like that.”

“I don’t have to feel a goddamned thing. That’s your job, Father. I’m shut of him.”

I left. We never drank that tea. I never ate the cookie. It’s night. Hours have passed. I haven’t told Pickering, even though he keeps asking what’s wrong. I don’t dare tell him. LeBlanc hasn’t been arrested yet. Maybe he won’t ever be.

Anyway, tomorrow we march to the front lines. There, I’ll be crawling out into No Man’s Land with a murdering boy. Tonight LeBlanc’s curled in his covers, wrapped in his lies, safe. Maybe he’s dreaming of his fantasy horses, his imaginary family. Maybe he’s dreaming about fucking that mangled girl.

Travis Lee

* * *

OCTOBER 12, THE FRONT LINES

Dear Bobby,

Still not arrested. And LeBlanc knows I know. The first day out in No Man’s Land with him was a day of terrible silence. I plinked away at Boche. It was all I could do not to blow LeBlanc’s brains out.

That night I dreamed red dreams, and when I woke up, my jaws ached from chewing on fury.

I ate some breakfast before dawn, careful not to wake Pickering and Calvert. By the time I was done, LeBlanc was waiting for me outside the dugout. I didn’t speak a word to him. We climbed up the ladder and snuck out into the dark.

It was about noon that I got started thinking about that girl. I probed the memory like a mouth ulcer, wondering how many other women LeBlanc had hurt. God knows I wasn’t blameless. I wondered what I would have done if I’d seen him with that twelve-year-old girl.

“Three yards to the right of that white post.” He was peering intently through the field telescope.

“Fuck you.”

Rain was beating on us in that halfhearted way it does here.

He looked around, said, “Take the shot. Don’t be an asshole.”

I snapped one left instead, scared the bejesus out of a Boche officer, dinged the prong off the top of his helmet, sent him diving for cover.

I was ready for LeBlanc, too. When he reached out to slap me like he does when he thinks we’re playing, I struck back, left-handed but knuckle-first. I slammed him hard on the side of the mouth, Bobby. Knocked his helmet off, split his lip for him, made blood run. It felt good. I hit him again, right-handed this time—clubbed my fist down on his ear.

My hand hurt. Christ. Hurt all the way to the elbow.

The blow stunned him. I saw it in his grimace, the way he cupped the side of his head.

“You lying chicken shit bastard,” I said. “You want to ride a horse? Let’s put you on Miller’s damned sorrel. You’d crap your pants, city boy. See, I know all about you, about the orphanage, about how you go fucking women. Is that the only way a girl’ll have you?”

A blow from an unexpected direction. He kicked, bruised the hell out of my thigh, missed my balls by an inch. My rifle, his telescope, went sliding down the mud incline and into the water. He grabbed me. We went slipping down the mud, too, and hit the water, still pummeling each other.

There were dead things down there. The water wore a greasy film of putrefaction. It was greenish-yellow and saturated with gas. I pushed him face-down into it, tried to hold his head under. I was bigger, but he was desperate. He pushed me off, came up sputtering.

“Holy shit, Stanhope!” he yelled.

He rolled out from under me. I hit him again—a glancing blow off the side of his jaw. He gave me one back, but he wasn’t nearly fast enough. I ducked under, grabbed him one-handed by the throat. I saw terror come all over him. He pulled away, started crawling fast up the incline.

I grabbed at his tunic, got a handful of mud for my trouble. He kicked, caught me, sharp and painful, on the side of the neck. I snatched at his trouser leg. He squirmed free.

I climbed the hill after, caught him in the flat, rolled him belly-up. He tore at my face, at my eyes. A bullet smacked a hillock of mud near us, splashed my face. A quick, violent tug at my leg. Not LeBlanc. The Boche sniper had shot my boot heel off.

That surprised me, made me relax my grip. LeBlanc skittered away, fast as a crab. I went after, caught him on the downside of another hole, flipped him over. His eyes were wide. His mouth was bleeding.

“You’re crazy!” he said.

I hit him again.

“They’re shooting at us, Stanhope! Jesus. Don’tcha see? The Boche sniper’s shooting at us!”

“Who’s scared now?” I asked him.

He kept begging me to stop, kept trying to fight back; but I beat him, Bobby. I pulled him down into a shell hole and beat him stupid. I pounded on him till my hand couldn’t take no more. By the time I was finished, I was too exhausted to move. It took me hours to pry my fingers open.

Both his eyes were swollen nearly shut. There was a star hemorrhage in his right. His nose was broken, squashed flat. His mouth looked like one of those ugly cartoons they draw when they’re making fun of coloreds. He really didn’t look human anymore.

I crawled off, found the telescope and my rifle. When dark fell, I let him make his own way back. I could hear him, though, tagging along behind like a kicked dog.

Jesus, Bobby. What does he want from me, anyway? The horses? My family? Well, shit. He can have all my memories of Pa.

Back in the trenches, Blackhall held up a lantern. He checked LeBlanc’s face, looked at my knuckles.

“A dust-up, is it? Daft, having a row out there. How’d it start?”

I didn’t answer. Maybe LeBlanc’s mouth didn’t work well enough to speak.

“Me, I’d shoot the bof of you, and save the Boche the trouble.” He called for Riddell, who came and blinked sleepily at LeBlanc, looked crestfallen at me.

“Take ’em down to Captain,” Blackhall said. “Let ’im see how ’is two pets is getting along.”

Miller didn’t seem surprised. Unlike Riddell, he didn’t even seem disappointed. He gestured toward LeBlanc. “Sergeant? Accompany this man to the medic. See that both are fined a week’s pay. No free time for a month.”

Riddell said his “Yes, sir”s and “right away, sir”s.

I told Miller, “Think I broke my hand, sir.”

He waited until the dugout door had closed. “Best that you have. That should give you a few weeks apart. Because I shall expect the both of you out sharpshooting when the rotation comes round again.”

“You can’t mean that, sir.”

He sat down, crossed his legs that prissy way the Brit public school boys do. He lit a cigarette, didn’t offer me one. “Indeed I do.”

“I’ll kill him, sir. He’ll kill me.”

He reached into a haversack, threw me a towel. “Clean your face, Stanhope. You’re an utter wog.”

I wiped mud with my good hand.

“What occurred out there?” he asked.

“What occurred in here?”

“Pardon? “

“You never told Major Dunn that LeBlanc raped that woman, did you? You’re scared he’ll accuse you of knowing LeBlanc’s tendencies and not watching him careful enough. Shit, sir. Didn’t killing that little girl like he did teach you any kind of lesson?”

He leaned back in the chair, blew a cloud of smoke my way. “Dismissed, Stanhope. Report to the medical dugout.”

I stayed where I was, the towel wadded in my hand. “Where’s the god damned justice in this, sir? Jesus. Somebody has to do something.”

Miller contemplated the end of his cigarette.

“Well? Don’t they?”

He pursed his lips, tapped ash.

“You forced me into teaching him a thing or two, sir. Just ’cause somebody had to. Now he’ll be hunting for me. I know him. I know how crazy he is. You’ll find me laid out somewheres, stabbed in the back.”

Miller stubbed his butt out on the side of the table. A shower of sparks fell. “Now that you have trounced him, Private LeBlanc will respect you. He is a dog of sorts. Had you beaten him in public, he would have been forced to revenge himself. But do take care not to lose his esteem, Stanhope. Tarnish yourself, and he will feel betrayed. Dismissed. Discuss this matter with no one.”

“You’re just going to forget about those girls? He’ll do it again, sir. Can’t break him of the habit.”

“Dismissed, Stanhope.”

“Goddamn you to hell, sir.”

He looked away, said in a tone of utter boredom, “Dismissed.”

Come to find that I only sprained my hand, Bobby. Bruised it pretty bad, too. The doctor wrapped it, gave me aspirin powders. When I got back to my dugout, Riddell came by. He unwrapped what the doctor did and tied me up in a poultice. It feels a sight better, but it still aches something fierce when I try to write.