Flanders (52 page)

His was a quick death, and therefore easier than most. He faced it well, and did not shrink. All his men were there with him at the end. I must tell you, I find it odd that we became friends. He was a Jew, and I had never before known one. He was an officer, and I was not. He believed in justice.

Whatever you are told, sir, I wish you to know the truth of the matter: Captain Miller died trying to do what was right.

Sincerely yours,

Travis Lee Stanhope

I sealed the letter—figuring it was worded safe enough to make it through the censors. After a while the boys came back out of the wet. Calvert brought me a fried egg sandwich.

“Shit,” I said in surprise. “When’s the last time I saw something like this?”

“Best fall down and kiss me feet, is what I says. Bit of a trick, that egg.” He sat down by me. “Eat, Stanhope. Go on, chum. ’E’s dead,” he said reasonably. “Nothing’s to be done.”

The bread was fresh, the egg white firm in the center, crisp on the edges. Butter and yolk ran down my arm. I licked every bit of it off me.

After lights-out, I heard Calvert shifting around in his bed, his cot creaking. “Wish Pickering was ’ere,” he finally said.

In a week or so, the army would move Pickering out. First the train, then the choppy ride across the Channel, then the damp smoky streets of home. I’d never again see him.

“Funny old war, innit,” Calvert said. “ ’Ow men come and go.”

Faint as ghosts, sometimes. Even with your hand out, you can’t catch them. I went to sleep, there amid the smells of the men I knew, in the drowsy mutters and the familiar sounds of their snoring. I slept hard, and I didn’t dream.

Travis Lee

DECEMBER 15, A POSTCARD FROM THE REST AREA

Dear Bobby,

Got your letter. If the Edelhauser place is up for sale, you need to go on ahead and buy it. Talk to old man Reichwald at the Fredricksberg bank. Doesn’t matter to me that they’re German. The war’s not personal like that.

Tell Ma I’m sorry to hear she’s down in her back; and y’all have a Merry Christmas, too.

Travis Lee

* * *

DECEMBER 15, THE REST AREA

Dear Bobby,

Our new captain is a highly uninformed public school tightass named Gilchrist. He ordered us out in the field today and we stood in the freezing wind while he told us that he would not stand for insubordination. He gave this long speech about how he had heard we were troublemakers and how our former captain had allowed slack soldiering. He said things would be different from now on.

The sixteen of us stood as still and attentive as we could. Goodson’s old wound was bothering him, and he was leaning cattywampus. Halcomb’s frostbitten toe was giving him trouble. Still, we stood straight enough. We listened to the green captain drone on in his plummy, upper-class voice about how no-account we were and how our negligence was the talk of the entire battalion.

When he was done, Blackhall bellowed, “Attention!”

We were tired, but we saluted real fine. The rain had let up for the day, but the wind had a bite. It came whipping down from the North Sea, carrying with it the salt smell of ocean. I remembered a ghostie who once showed me a fishermen story. It was a wonderful story, all about boats bobbing on gunmetal waves and dripping, heavy nets. Funny. I couldn’t remember if the dead man had been Scots or French or German; and I didn’t know why I had ever thought that was important. While we stood there waiting, I remembered lots of things. I remembered the taste of that fried egg sandwich: the thick yolk, the sweet greasy butter. I remembered the white puffs from the rifles, and Miller slumping in his straight-backed chair.

The new captain’s eyes kept sliding away, as if we were sixteen radiant suns.

“Very well,” he said, waving a hand. “I suppose that will be all.” He turned and wandered back to his quarters.

Blackhall told us to fall out. We stood there in the field and looked at each other.

It’s all changed, Bobby. After the new captain, the green troops came—an invasion of them, ignorant and happy, chatty as a flock of sparrows. Calvert and Halcomb and the rest of us sat there in the barracks and watched them stow their gear. When a boy put his pack down on a bunk near Goodson’s, Goodson knocked it off.

“You a nutter or sommit? Eh? You! Porridge face! Talking to you! You a bleeding nutter? Can’t see that’s Fowler’s?”

The boy picked up his pack and cradled it against him, slack-jawed. “Didn’t mean nothing.”

Riddell came over, asked what the problem was.

Angry arm-waving from Goodson, like the discourtesy went beyond explanation. “Wanted to put his bleeding pack down on Fowler’s bed, is what.”

Gently, Riddell said, “Fowler ain’t coming back.”

Goodson’s flailing arms—his mute and violent grief.

Riddell told the boy, “Find yourself another cot. Go on.”

“Why’s ’e so mad? Didn’t mean nothing.”

“Go on.” Riddell grabbed Goodson’s elbow. “Look at you,” he chided. “ ’Aving yourself a blinking paddy.” He held on until Goodson stopped fighting the air. “Fowler got himself a Blighty. You know that. ‘E’s on ’is way ’ome.”

“That’s his bunk there,” Goodson said.

Riddell nodded. “All right.”

Goodson said real loud, eyeing us all: “That’s Fowler’s bunk there.”

I wish I had an empty bunk like Goodson does. There’s nothing for me to hold onto. I can remember the taste of that egg sandwich better than I can remember home. The dreams don’t come to me anymore. At lights-out I try, but hard as I look, I don’t see anything sparkle. No ghosties visit. Lately I’ve wondered if it was all my imagination. If, for a brief and glorious while, I just went crazy.

Travis Lee

* * *

DECEMBER 17, THE RESERVE TRENCHES

Dear Bobby,

We marched back to the trenches in the sleet, in the kneedeep mud. A sparse rain of shells came down. Around us, Jack Johnsons flowered sudden and black and smoky; whizzbangs fell with thunderous cracks. One good thing about it: The shelling finally made the new boys shut up.

When we reached the trenches, we found they were flooded, the sumps not working. The place held the old familiar stink of piss and shit and decay. When Uncle Tim and me were stowing our gear in the aid station, we heard screaming. In the dugout next door one of the new boys had burst a sandbag. There’d been a dead Boche behind the wall, and when the bag ruptured, maggots spilled down over the boy like grain from a feedsack. He was standing in them ankle-deep.

Uncle Tim and me laughed. The other new boy was trying to help, plucking maggots off his friend fast as he could. He got his dander up. “You blokes is ’round the bend!” he shouted.

To the rear, shells started falling. The air vibrated. Artillery heavier than Jack Johnsons. The boys went still and pale.

Behind the boys, maggots still dripped slow and wiggling from out the dead Boche’s sleeve. Time had stripped his hand to the essentials: dun tendon, cream bone. I wanted so bad to see that German boy sparkle.

“Trick is, you drown maggots, just like you does lice. That’s the way you kills ’em.” Uncle Tim walked up to the boys, pulled his pecker out, and pissed on their feet. Urine splattered. Maggots flew. The two boys backed out of his reach.

Uncle Tim stowed his pecker and walked away. I followed. Once in the trench, he elbowed me. “Good chuckle, that.”

I thought of the spray of urine, the way those maggots went spinning wild and free. I started to grin.

“Teach them others, you know.”

They would. My grin widened.

“ ’Ave all them boys pissing on each other.”

We laughed all the way through lunch just thinking about it.

But that afternoon, Calvert came looking for me, said he wanted to talk. We sat on a couple of crates near his dugout. It was snowing—fat white flakes coming down slow.

“Can’t go on.” Calvert was so tired he looked stupefied. “ ’Ad enough. Sat there last night listening to them bleeding shells coming in. Nearly ran for it. If I do, they’ll shoot me. And wif less of a party than they made for Captain Miller.”

A snowflake drifted down lazily, settled on Calvert’s shoulder and perched there like an angel.

“Another thing: Don’t want to go shell-shocked, Stanhope.

Seen ’em clawing at their mouths, grinning like simpletons, shaking like they ’as the Saint Vitus dance. Can’t have that. Can’t go useless like that. Rather stick me rifle barrel in me mouf and pull the trigger meself.” Then he asked shyly, “You ’elp me?”

I told him I would.

He hadn’t expected it to be so easy. My agreeing moved him, and he blinked back a few tears. “A regular gent, you are, Stanhope.”

Something in me knew for sure that if he didn’t leave now, he never would. I didn’t tell him that. I said I figured we were square, said I knew he’d have done the same for me. Said I never asked him, for he was such a lousy shot.

He nodded, hitched a sigh. “Don’t duff it.”

I promised I wouldn’t. Then I got my rifle and my gear. We headed down the old firebay into the traverse. I checked to make sure the magazine was full.

“Crikey.” Calvert was brave enough; but his voice shook when he joshed me. “Thought you was a sharpshooter. Shouldn’t need but one.”

I cocked that Lee-Enfield, made sure I had a bullet up the spout.

“Wait till the shelling picks up,” he said.

It seemed for a while that the Boche artillery was planning on a cease-fire. We cussed them until the shells started coming faster. Thumping, thunderous whizzbangs. A nice flurry like a giant’s scampering footsteps, ones that made the ground shake. I aimed one-armed, put my free hand on Calvert’s shoulder. I looked into his eyes.

“I’ll miss you,” I told him.

“Don’t duff it.”

I fired. The recoil nearly flung the rifle out of my grip. I saw him go down. He fell so sudden, splashing into the standing water, hissing air though his teeth, “Bugger it. Oh, bugger it. Flaming ’urts.”

I sat down in the flooded trench with him. The bullet had shattered the kneecap. His leg was turned wrong. Blood poured nice and even down his pants leg.