Good Hope Road: A Novel (23 page)

It a picnic alright, just as that soldier said at Noisy Le Sec.

This one time, James and I been assigned clean-up duty alongside Chevalier, one of the largest legionnaires we got. Chevalier, he got the face of a child, all smooth, with eyes that remind me of Pappy’s. Quiet he be, and boo coo crazy ’bout his wife; when he talk of her, how she be such an angel and all, Chevalier’s voice go real soft. His eyes shine then, and he looks like he should be in a choir someplace, singin’ praises to the Lord. A right good legionnaire he be, always among the first to volunteer, doin’ whatever need to be done with no fuss or whinin’.

We been muckin’ out a section of the trench with him, when he asks what we been doin’ before we came down here. I tell him ’bout Louisiana and James talk of his apple orchard. Chevalier nod.

‘And you?’ James ask.

Chevalier raise an awful smellin’ plank to his shoulders. There a gentle smile on his face. ‘Me? I’m an artist.’

The sector gone quiet for a few blessed hours when a shot ring out from one of our outposts. Gaillard take me and James along to investigate. We go fast as we can through the slippery trench, splashin’ ’bout in them puddles we got in our boots. When we get to the outpost, we find the young
jeune
, the same one who gone and taken off his boots, shot through the arm. He’s tryin’ to tie a bandage around the wound.

‘Clean through the arm.’ Gaillard’s voice, it got an odd tone to it.

The
jeune
will not look at us. ‘
Oui
.’

‘How many were there?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘A patrol, or a sniper?’

‘Didn’t see.’

‘
Merde
! What did you fire at then?’

‘I didn’t. They – he – shot me before I could do anythin’.’

Now I’m puzzled. Could have sworn it was the low roar of the French issue Lebel I heard, not the crack of a Boche Mauser. From the look on his face, I know James thinkin’ along the same lines.

The
jeune
, he keep fiddlin’ with the bandage. Lookin’ real hangdog, lips all white as he keep windin’ that bandage, way too much of it, ’bout his wounded arm.

James bend frownin’, pick up the rifle lyin’ on the ground. He open the breech and an empty cartridge roll on to the mud.

The
jeune
look at us then. Tears come into his eyes. ‘I want to go home,’ he say. Gaillard say nothin’, but he look awful grim. He search among the sandbags and find the length of bandage that been bunched up and hidden clumsily away. It’s wet, with burn marks around the centre, and stained with blood.

‘Send me home,’ the
jeune
say again, his voice higher as he look at us pleadin’ like, eyes goin’ from face to face.

I ask James later ’bout that wet bandage. He quiet a while. ‘If, before you fire,’ he say then, voice flat, ‘you press a wet cloth against your skin, it prevents the gunpowder markings of a self-inflicted shot.’

The
jeune
is taken away from the trenches. I don’t ask, not James, not Gaillard, what goin’ to happen to him, and nobody say. ‘They done sent him back to his mammy,’ I tell myself, but I dream of him that week.

A cold mornin’, thick with fog. The firin’ squad linin’ up in a quiet courtyard; a young, milk-faced
jeune
, shiverin’ against the far wall.

We been in the trenches so many weeks, been shelled so long, that I just ’bout had it. It a relief to be put on patrol duty. We set off to the far right. The ground is uneven, with shrubs and such that offer cover as we crawl. A small bunch of trees up ahead in a dip where the shells ain’t reached yet. We all thinkin’ the same, and when we reach them trees, the Corporal barely given the signal when we rise to our feet, silent as the night. Sure feel good, to walk like men for awhile, on two legs and our backs upright.

It real quiet tonight, ain’t nothin’ to see and we almost at the far end of the tree cover when a Verey light go off on the horizon. We stay where we are, huggin’ the shadows and wait as it flare upward, die. Things go dark and quiet again though, and our breathin’ ease up. The Corporal signal for us to turn back when the Boche, they send up another Verey light, and two more come shootin’ into the air after it.

It’s so bright, I can make out the stones in the earth. A knot in the tree nearby, shaped like a woman’s hairpiece. The faces of the men around me, eyes starin’ out from under the streaks of camouflage black. I blink, and all I just seen presses white behind my eyes. We still standin’ there, frozen, as the flares die away and the first shells go openin’ up the dark.

James and the others, they hit the ground, shelterin’ behind whatever dip and bend they find. Me myself, I stay where I am. Somethin’ snap inside me and I just keep standin’ there as the shells, they come roarin’ towards us. I’m done. Done with the stink of the trenches, sick of sittin’ ’bout like pigs in a slaughterhouse, helpless and waitin’ for them shells. I’m tired of being so brim-filled with fear and anger that I want to hurl my guts out. Tired of kneelin’ in the mud, tired of lyin’ in the ground helpless as a babychild while I listen for them shells and wait for their train-weight to crush my bones.

Legionnaire Obadaiah Nelson ain’t goin’ to hide and huddle no more. If I’m goin’, I’m goin’ to go lookin’ the damn thing in the face. My hands got the shakes so bad, I can’t even reach for my gris-gris; the butt of my rifle keeps knockin’ against a tree. A shell explode behind us someplace and I see James’ face near my feet. Can’t hear no words, but I know he yellin’ at me to get down, get down, jackass!

Roaring’s awful loud now, that devil-spawn train rattlin’ towards us all, and ain’t nothin’ to do but stand there and greet it head on. That cypress, she come floatin’ up from the bayou and I think of her as I stand there, that thousand-year-old cypress, and how trees got songs, ain’t that what James said? The shells, they keep singin’ overhead, and in that crash and roar of sound, I
finally
begin to make them out.

The
songs
. The shells got
songs
.

‘Get down!’ I make out the words by the way James’ mouth moves.

My hands they still shakin’, the knock-knock rhythm of the rifle against the bark, but I stand there and listen to the singin’, the low note of the shells as they begin their flight, the climb to the high note, the slow fall as they come down, away to the back of our patrol. The trees still standin’, and so am I.

Next thing I know, James come crashin’ into me, two hundred pounds of Yankee anger throwin’ me flat on the ground. ‘Fool!’ he yell in my ear. ‘You goddamned, fucking jackass,’ he shout furiously, and I start to laugh.

I laugh like I gone boo coo crazy, belly upwards, into my head. I laugh ‘cause only a madman would think to jump up durin’ an artillery attack, ’cause only this damn fool Yankee would think to save my hide while riskin’ his own. I laugh ’cause the shells, they’re still fallin’, but finally I’ve learned their song.

I laugh ’cause of James, on account that in this here hellhole pit of the worst kind of madness, I gone and found myself a friend.

I explain after we make it back, to the entire patrol, and James, cooled down enough that the smoke stop comin’ from his ears.

‘They got their own music. Each kind of shell, it got a song, different soundin’ from the others. It start low, hittin’ high at the last point of climb, goin’ low again on the fall.’

Gaillard, Karan and the others lookin’ at me like I gone and hit my head on somethin’ hard, but James frown as he start to get it. ‘So depending on where the high note sounds—’

I grin. ‘Dependin’ on how far or near that high note sounds, you can tell if a shell’s goin’ to fall in front of us, behind, or right on our sorry asses.’

They don’t fully believe me at first. They can’t tell no difference in the sound they say, it all the same banshee cry. I know I’m right though, and when I’m proved as much a couple times, they look to me the next time the Boche let a few loose.

It feel good, this small victory. Feel real good, to be able to stand tall while death sings in the air, to control at least this much: to know if that roarin’, it comin’ for you today or not.

Thanksgivin’ come around and we give thanks alright, seein’ as we being sent to the back of the lines for a bit of rest. There’s no turkeys, no cranberries, and there sure as hell ain’t no pie, but we get it in our heads to have ourselves a Thanksgivin’ feast all the same. Only thing, our pay and the mail both be late comin’ in once more. Ain’t no packages come through in weeks, not even one for Karan. We pool our sous and francs together but we ain’t got enough among the lot of us for a proper dinner out. So many soldiers be passin’ through here these days that the cafés in the village gone and raised their prices. ‘We must eat too, Monsieur,’ a proprietor tell us, spreadin’ his hands. By the look of him, he sure been eatin’ more than enough thanks to the war.

Et voilà
, System D. We break into the back of that fat proprietor’s café. We help ourselves to what we find – plenty of wine, more than enough to go around, but other than eggs, two loaves of bread and a couple of meat pies, we still ain’t got enough food for a proper Thanksgivin’ dinner.

We discuss the problem while sittin’ in the baths that be rigged up for us in an old barn. The water sloshin’ ’bout in the feed troughs don’t stay hot too long, but it feel mighty good all the same. When we done washin’ off the mud from our hair and skin, we be gettin’ right into the troughs, pleasurin’ in what water still be left.

‘How ’bout we cook our own dinner?’ I take a deep drag of the one cigarette we got between us and pass it along to James. ‘The fields outside the village. I could find some potatoes I bet.’

He take a long, slow drag, eyes half shut. ‘There’s still the matter of the main course.’

‘Maybe we go on a hunt, then?’ My words got an empty ring to them though. Ain’t much to hunt around here. Other sectors, we seen rabbits and such, come runnin’ out from their burrows after a shellin’, but not in this part of the Front. Ain’t nothin’ but us men and critters that live in the mud, and I know we are in France and all, but I ain’t ’bout to start eatin’ no snails or toadfrog legs, I ain’t.

James takes another drag, blowin’ the smoke into a long ‘O’ that shivers in the steam-filled air. ‘There’s the woods we passed, on our way from Verzy to the Front. They aren’t too far from here. Maybe there are deer,’ he says thoughtfully. His face brighten. ‘It’s far enough from the shellin’ that there still might be pheasants, in the beech trees.’

I chat up one of the nurses at the dressin’ station and the cher go and arrange a ride for us on a medic wagon bound for Paris. It diabolic early and miserable cold when James and I set out. There a wetness in the air, the sun workin’ up the nerve to rise from behind a mess of blue-black clouds.

James meanwhile, he look right comfortable, even nearabout smilin’ as he takes in the weather. ‘A lowery, New England sort of morning,’ he comment, pleased.

Crazy fool Yankee. I’m too cold to even ask what ‘lowery’ mean. I stamp my feet on the floor of the wagon tryin’ to get some feelin’ into them. Blowin’ into my frozen hands, I make a note never to set foot nowhere near New England in November.

They drop us off near the turnin’ to the woods. I call out thanks and stand awhile watchin’ as the wagon drive away, the shift of the gears echoin’ down the road. After it gone, silence press down like a glove. James already stridin’ towards the tree line and I hurry after him. Frost lie thick on the ground and I turn around to look at the footprints we leave as we climb a bank. Two pairs of boots, just two, clear as can be in the frost. Not like the trenches, with the trampin’ of hundreds of boots, forward and back, this way and that in the mud, toe over heel over toe till there ain’t no tellin’ one man from another no more.

It strike me that this here’s the most I’ve been alone since we gotten to the Front. There’s pleasure in the notion. I figure James, he feel the same way – when I look over at him, I see the way the lines ’bout his jaw begin to ease up as we walk on.

A white mist come rollin’ in from the east, like wet, fine-spun cotton. It drape the trees that back here, still untouched by the shells. Now that I notice, powerful strange they look too, the trees, nothin’ like I’ve ever seen before. They look to me like beech, ’cept they stand no more than four, maybe five feet off the ground.

‘
Les Faux
,’ James say quietly. ‘that’s what they’re called.
Fagus sylvatica
, variety tortuosa.’

‘Tortuosa’ – the word stay in my head. It mean tortuous, James say, when I ask, all crooked. I take in the branches stickin’ out through the mist. They crazy twisted, all knotted and bent over themselves.

James pass a slow hand over his beard, gatherin’ the wetness from it. ‘Legend has it that the disbelievers of the Church were cursed. That their souls are trapped in these trees, held here for ever.’ He shake the moist from his fingers; the droplets disappear into the fog.

How do the Yankee know all these things? I look ’bout me and it give me a turn as I start to make out shapes. Shapes both animal and human, in those strange, gnarly branches.

The mist rollin’ in thicker, mufflin’ all sound. The deeper we go into the woods, the quieter it get, until I can’t hardly hear the batteries no more. Only a few of our footprints that I can make out now in the grass behind, before the mist settle on them like a soft white duvet. Them crooked, tortuosa trees reach towards us. Faces, open-mouthed, with starin’ eyes. Now and again there’s a faint flash of shellin’ from the Front. It colour the mist, a low light that make the branches glow blackly, pointin’ with torn and hollow fingers at James and me as we pass.

Still the fog roll in, pressin’ cotton-soft. White on my hands, in my nose and ears, wet against my skin. I feel the cold reach down my throat, up into my head. We lower our guns as we walk; ain’t a sound now between the two of us. It start to feel like we the only livin’ things left in the world. Feel like a man might roam this strange cloud garden, this forest of the crooked, and if he walk long enough, the mist might swim right through his bones. Walk long enough, far enough, and a man might slowly learn to forget all that he seen. Filled with this white quiet, no more of this crazy war, leave the dead behind with their fixed, empty eyes.