Good Hope Road: A Novel (37 page)

‘Those flowerin’ trees you talked ’bout,’ I ask, to get my mind on somethin’ else. ‘Apple?’

‘Baldwins,’ he nods. ‘Pippins. Kings. Pink and white flowers, sweet-scented.’

He shift the chaw ’bout in his cheek. ‘We planted a tree for Jim when he was born. Should fruit for the first time this year.’

We fall silent, lost in our own thoughts and trackin’ the paths of them Verey lights.

‘He’s been wanting a dog. Told him when I left for Paris that we’d get him one soon as I got back. I wrote his mother today though, told her to get him one even if—’ he nod towards No Man’s Land. ‘Regardless of what happens tomorrow.’

It’s the most the Yankee ever said ’bout his boy.

‘You goin’ to get him that puppy yourself,’ I say. ‘What kind?’

‘English setter. Maybe a pointer, or a coon hound. A good hunting dog.’

We stand there, side by side, watchin’ them Verey lights climb. The bobwire real clear, black and grey, passin’ again into shadow as them lights drift away.

‘Doesn’t feel right. To talk about him here.’ The Yankee, he talkin’ fast, urgent like, the words fallin’ one over the other. He look at me in the dark. ‘You asked me why I never talk about my boy. He, my wife – they’re part of a different world. Untainted. The mirror still upright, whereas we—’ he flip his palm over, a quick, small movement.

He don’t complete his sentence, but there ain’t no need. I ain’t fully reckoned what a mirror got to do with anythin’, but the rest of what he tryin’ to say, I get. See, there two different worlds – the one we left behind, and this one, turned upside-down and inside-out by the war. Make sense, to keep the two apart. So that no matter how hard this one get, he still got the memory of the other, untouched by the killin’, by the filth and devil-spawn stink, that other world, just as he left it, waitin’ to welcome him back.

That why he don’t talk ’bout his wife or son.
That
why he ain’t said nothin’ ’bout me to his wife, I figure, thinkin’ back to the socks and cap he given me at Christmas. Obadaiah, you sure a ninny, thinkin’ ’bout such foolish things with tomorrow’s advance comin’ up, but all the same, a warm feelin’ spread like butter inside me. The thorn that been prickin’ these few months, the notion that our friendship, it just don’t matter that much to Yankee James, that thorn, it just ’bout fold up and melt away.

‘He’s a good kid,’ James say, his voice gone all quiet once more.

Them Verey lights keep goin’ up, their glow on the trees.

‘My father fought in the Civil War. Do you know what those veterans would ask each other when they met?’ He continue without waitin’ for an answer. ‘“Where’d you lose your grin?” That’s what he told me they’d ask, the first thing they wanted to know – “Which battle did you lose your grin in?”’

A thought strike me, and soon as it come, it feel so right, I wonder why it ain’t occurred to me before. I pull the gris-gris from my pocket. ‘Here.’

He look surprised.

‘Go on,’ I say, ‘take it.’

He open his mouth to protest but I cut him off. ‘Ain’t given you nothin’ for Christmas,’ I point out.

‘Don’t be a damn fool,’ he say, frownin’. ‘It’s your precious magic voodoo mumbo-jumbo charm. I can’t take it.’

‘Sure you can – it a gift. And it called a gris-gris.’

‘Don’t be a fool.’ He shake his head. ‘I don’t even believe in these things.’

‘Well, I do. This here a powerful good luck gris-gris. For your boy’s sake,’ I say. ‘Take it.’

He do then, reluctant like.

‘Keep it on you when we head out.’ He nod, head bent over the gris-gris, turnin’ it over gently in his fingers.

‘It got powerful juju,’ I say again. ‘Ain’t nothin’ too bad goin’ to happen to you tomorrow, not so long as that gris-gris on you.’

James look up, with a sudden, shy sort of smile. It make him look young. ‘I suppose we’d best stay close during the charge, then,’ he say.

Talk start to wind down, until there silence through the camp. Gaillard tell us
jeune
chickens to rest up, get as much sleep as we can, that rooster goin’ to call for us real early tomorrow. I try, but keep wakin’ through the short night. For once, we ain’t none of us complainin’ when it come time to rise.

We all of us wired and jumpy, even the officers. They carry their watches in their hands, lookin’ at them, then over at No Man’s Land. They in full dress uniform. Medals won in wars over the past twenty years or more sit all polished and cocky on their chests. Most don’t even carry no bayonets, just a swagger stick in their hands. They check their watches over and over, gloves shiny white as they tap them against their palms.

Dawn break with a crash of guns. Our artillery been lined up to give the enemy lines a poundin’, softenin’ them up for our charge. Shell after shell; sound buildin’, then foldin’ over itself like the musicfilled pleatin’ on a squeezebox. The tree line come into view with the first light of the mornin’. Then it gone, vanished into smoke. Sparks shoot from the branches as they fall. Three hours, our artillery keep it up. We can’t see nothin’ of the Boche lines no more, nothin’ but fire and explodin’ earth. At 10 a.m. sharp, we get our signal.

‘
Avancez!
’ the officers roar.

Four thousand men answer. ‘
Vive La Legion
!’ We push forward, first the fourth line, now the third and now, the second line of the advance trenches. Wait, wait for the whistle. My breathin’ sharp and shallow, the ground, it as if she buckin’ and movin’ from the force of them guns. Now the first line of legionnaires go out on to the battlefield. ‘
La Legion
!
La Legion
!’ A shinin’ line of bayonets through the dust and smoke. Then they and the men holdin’ them are gone.

En avancez!
Another shinin’ line take the place of the fallen, pourin’ out over the top.

Forward once more, this time to the front trenches. Our artillery still at it, the sound hammer at my bones. The ladders be covered in slicks of mud – red, wet. Hurry, Obadaiah, don’t you fall now and make no fool of yourself. James just ahead of me. He turn, search somewhere to the back and above our heads with a strange sort of look, then we racin’ forward, up over the ladder, chargin’ across No Man’s Land.

No time to think, no time to be ’fraid, our legs goin’ like pistons.
En avancez, mes enfants!
Goin’ so fast my boots ain’t hardly even touchin’ the ground. We shoutin’ and yellin’, what, I ain’t got no idea, the shells so loud I can’t hardly hear myself.

There’s singin’, swinging sounds I start to make out, shinin’, whinin’ sounds, and I realise they bullets. I’m flyin’ through them, right past, and there, ahead, the roll of bobwire, when a shell burst right by me. A wave of heat, and I’m lifted clean off the earth.

I’m flyin
’.

Everythin’ go real quiet. I wonder if I’m dead. I can see smoke, so thick it like the mornin’ sky gone dark. There, and
there
, a bunch of coats, the blue coats of the Legion, floatin’ through the air like wings . . .

I land hard on my side and lie winded. The thin echo of metal in my ears.

I stumble forward once more. A legionnaire, what left of him, is gaspin’ for air. I’m afeared as I look at his face, but even under the dirt and blood, I can make out enough to tell that this man a stranger. A sharp slide of relief in my belly. I stick his bayonet blade down into the mud, the signal for the medics that a wounded man lyin’ here. Ain’t much more I can do for him.

Where James? Gaillard, Karan, the others
?

I go faster, and now I’m runnin’ again, pushin’ forward. Men fallin’ all around me. So many, droppin’ to the ground together, all at once, that I think the officers given an order for us to get down and take cover. I start to slow but then I look closer and see them men, they dead.

Still the whine of bullets, tearin’ through bodies like paper. Bullets, and shells, still them shells, and it only now, when I turn a ear to their song, that I realise. Those shells tearin’ into us, those shells are ours. They
ours
.

I ’member the look on James’ face just as we gotten up the ladder, that disbelievin’, anger-filled look. He done realised back there, just like I’m doin now –
our damn artillery got their range all wrong
. Along with poundin’ the Boche trenches, they tearin’ up No Man’s Land, and us, their own soldiers, advancin’ through it.

It set my blood to boilin’ and make me want to laugh my guts out at the same time, but I ain’t doin’ either ’cause I’m still runnin’, keepin’ on chargin’ and I’m past the wire. Sandbags through the smoke, the same sort of parapets on which them Christmas trees stood shinin’ only a few months ago. Christmas trees, lit up with gold, and I’m rollin’ over the sandbags, slidin’ down the rubble. I’m inside the first of the Boche trenches.

The Legion’s charge been so fierce, we taken ten kilometres of ground that day. Ten kilometres! Only, the generals back in the command offices never expected no such advance. One kilometre, maybe two, but ten? The reserve troops needed to hold the line we just broken through are delayed. We got no choice but to fall back, a killin’ rage in our hearts as we ordered to give up all but four kilometres of this hard-won, blood-fought ground.

Dead and wounded everywhere. Of the four thousand who gone in this mornin’, not even half have made it back. Two-to-one odds, and James and I, we been among the lucky ones: ain’t one bullet that touched us.

Chevalier, we learn, has been killed.

Blue coats risin’ through shell smoke, like wings.

My hands shakin’ as I take a cigarette from the pack that James pass around.

I think I understand now, what Gaillard say ’bout Taras dyin’. ‘
Une bonne mort
.’

It
was
a good death. I figure it ain’t where Taras died that been important, whether in a ditch by the road or here on the wire, what count is
how
he died. The same way that our dead gone today: facin’ the enemy full on, set on not lettin’ their buddies, their brother legionnaires down.

My hands – why they shake so bad? I got to try quite a few times before I can light up that cigarette. My skin feel like it don’t sit quite right on me, the world ain’t spinnin’ the same.

James nod towards No Man’s Land. ‘They may as well,’ he say dazed like, ‘have come picnicking by our wire.’

He talkin’ of them Lusitania passengers, of the comment he make last night, of folks back home havin’ no idea of what it like over here.

A picture jump sudden like into my head, of little old ladies in their Sunday best, shakin’ out red and white picnic cloths. ‘Could y’all be a dear and pass the salt,’ I say unsteadily, tryin’ to make a jest.

His mouth twitch. ‘Picnicking by our wire,’ he repeat. It ain’t funny, but we start to laugh all the same, laughin’ so hard, there tears in our eyes.

We in reserve for a month, waitin’ for new troops to take the place of those we lost. Us
jeunes
, we drink long and hard alongside Gaillard and the
anciens
. Turns out they don’t treat us like
jeunes
no more. As if we seen enough, done enough, proven ourselves in this May offensive. We adjust to this new status, makin’ believe that in those two-to-one odds we just gone and beaten, there be some hidden purpose, some higher meanin’ around our makin’ it through. We speak little of what we seen out there, of all that we done, of the dead who be patrollin’ our dreams.

Come June, we headed once more for the Front. The banner of the Legion fly high above fields covered in wildflowers. Summer time in the trees, thick and green. Long lines of infantry and cavalry passin’ in their shade, all headin’ the same way. Allied troops everywhere. James point out a Belgian battery with English harness and Canadian mounts. I ain’t no horseman, but even I can see how beautiful they are, them horses, their coats chestnut-coloured in the sun. James stop to rub their noses. They prick their ears, as if listenin’ to our songs.

The mornin’ of the attack heavy with summer heat and waitin’. The horses flick their tails at the flies worryin’ their hides. Although I just went, I want bad to take a piss again. I stare at James’ back, try and get my mind someplace else. There’s sweat stains on the square of white cloth on the back of his shirt. Hopefully we cut those squares large enough. We each got one, stitched on to our shirts, so our artillery can tell us apart from the Boche. There’s observers too this time, stationed on rooftops, so they can signal our advance and positions to the batteries.

Lord, but I want bad to piss. When’s the damn whistle goin’ to sound anyway? I bunch up a fist, practise my upper jab just for somethin’ to do. I catch Gaillard’s eye and he wink, givin’ me a thumbs-up. He—

The whistle sound, on the dot. Again the mad rush up the ladders. Sprint-
drop
-sprint, run like madmen across No Man’s Land. The noon sun on high; there ain’t a single shadow of our charge.

Once again, the attack don’t go to plan. Always room for fuck-ups at the Front. The observers, they been among the first to be killed. Those white squares of cloth ain’t done much – once again, our 75s torn up their own.

Again, the generals gone and misjudged our advance. Come dusk, we holdin’ on to Hill 119, waitin’ desperately for back-up that ain’t nowhere in sight.

Relief troops finally come the followin’ night. Somehow we crawl back to our lines. When they take the roll call that night, only one in five men answer. Name after name called with nobody to claim them, only ‘
mort
’, ‘dead’, left to be written beside. James, he got thrown into a trench. Banged up his shoulder, but the medic set it right. His left eye troublin’ him ever since the fall. He don’t say nothin’, but I see the way he keep blinkin’ to clear it, pressin’ a palm against it to stop its waterin’. We each been wounded this time around – him hit through the arm, me along the side where a German bayonet gone through. Both lucky again – they only flesh wounds.

‘
Je meurs content puisque nous sommes victorieux. Vive La France
.’ The medics find this note on a young officer. He dipped a piece of shrapnel in his own blood, for pen and ink. ‘I can now die happy as we are victorious.’