Once an Eagle (27 page)

Traprock grinned. “Well, if it isn't the crummy little Mick jailbird, still hanging a—”

Devlin started for him. Sam called, “Dev!” but the warning was unnecessary. Merrick's good hand flowed back to his belt, reappeared with a trench knife—a fearfully quick gesture. Devlin stopped, his eyes on the blade.

“Threatening an officer, ah?” Merrick taunted him, his eyes alight with the feverish glitter. “Three months' confinement and reduction to next inferior rank, forfeiture of all pay and allowances—but I'll waive that. Come on, Mick.” Devlin made no reply. “Want to play, Mick? Do you? Come on, then …”

Devlin looked at him, his mouth working—unslung his rifle with a snap of his arm and elbow. Damon lunged out and gripped him around the shoulders, pinning the weapon to his body. Devlin struggled against him in silence.

“—Dev,” he said, “cut this out, now! I mean it!”

“Let him go,” Merrick was saying, “let him try it—I'll blow a hole in him you could put your fist through …”

“—You bastard,” Devlin shouted all at once at Merrick, “—go ahead, kill me, kill every frigging living thing on earth!—that's what you want, isn't it?”

“Dev—”

“Then you'd be happy, wouldn't you—you rotten no-good blood-drinking son of a bitch!—”

Sam had his rifle and was pushing him back now, murmuring, “Dev,
Dev
…”

The Sergeant dropped his arms. “Ah, the bastards,” he moaned; he was shivering and tears were running down his dirty cheeks. “The no-good, butchering bastards …” And looking past his anguished, bony face, Damon saw four old men in baggy blue blouses, moving steadily across the long field, around the black lumps of bodies, their scythes rising and falling in an even rhythm. The field where they had left Krazewski and Moore and Saunders. Watching the mowers, he felt his own eyes fill with tears. He turned away and called, “All right! Let's move out …”

“Ah, you milksops,” Merrick shouted hoarsely. “You timid old women—you want sugar-titty to suck …?”

His laughter followed them across the long field.

8

The rain kept
falling, as though there were a hidden purpose in it, some clever strategic plan to inundate all of Western Europe, perhaps wash it clean again. When they reached the bridge Damon told the driver to pull off under the trees, and got out.

“I won't be more than twenty minutes. Don't leave this wagon for any reason, will you?” He slapped the door of the big army Dodge.

“No, sir. I won't.”

It was the same bridge, the same promenade under the chestnut trees, the same narrow, upturning streets without curbs or sidewalk. It was the same, and yet somehow strangely altered—as though the past several weeks, the coming of autumn had laid it under some spell. A pretty little town, as French towns on the rim of the war zone went these days. He turned up the collar of his trench coat and buttoned it. The big guns couldn't be heard anymore; the leaves were ocher and yellow and hung limply, waiting for death. The stone towers at the ends of the bridge looked curiously worn and insubstantial, like sugar towers dissolving in the cold rain.

He walked past the railroad station, turned left and went uphill, past the bakery, the confectioner's shop, still closed—when would it open again?—the forge, where he could hear the dry sizzle of steel being ground against stone. Without pausing, he swung open the great oak door and went in, climbed the stairs in silence and paused. Inside he could hear someone moving, the clink of a plate. He knocked twice, briskly. The movement stopped, there was a swift subdued murmur; then footsteps came to the door and Michele's voice said: “Qui est là?” A wary, guarded tone.

“Courier, Madame,” he said in a hoarse sing-song, and stood motionless. After nearly twenty seconds the bolt was shot back and the door swung open a crack.

“Oh, Sam,” Michele said. “What a surprise!—You make a joke with me …” She still had not opened the door any farther. “Denise is in Pontoise, she has been there for three weeks now, I thought you knew—”

“I've come to see Dev,” he said.

Her face gave an almost imperceptible little quiver. “Jack?” she queried. “Jack is not here, Sam, I am sorry, why should he be here?”

“That's what I don't know,” he answered.

She must have sensed something from his tone, for she said: “I am sorry, Sam, but I cannot visit with you now. Perhaps tomorrow, all right?”—and she tried to close the door; but he had eased the toe of his right boot into the crack while they'd been talking, and now blocked it. Slowly he forced the door open with his hand.

“Sam, I have already
said
—”

“I just want to talk to him, Michele. Nothing more than that. I know he's here.” He moved into the room and sat down in the high-backed wooden chair near the table.

“I tell you,
he is not here
…” Her slim, pretty face was pinched with fear and anger. “I ask you to go.”

“Michele, I've been riding half the day.” He opened his coat but did not take it off. The door into the bedroom was closed. All at once he felt weak with fatigue: his head was floating and his belly burned. “Dev,” he said in a low voice, without moving.

“If you do not go,” Michele warned, “I call the police …”

“Dev,” he repeated. “It's me. Sam.”

Michele came up to him swiftly and said: “Go. Please go. I will tell you where you can see him tomorrow, only
please go
—
!
”

He made no reply. He was too tired to argue with her, and beyond that he had really nothing to say. He was here. Dev was here. That was all there was to it. There was a heavy silence, invaded subtly by the forge across the street—a long-drawn metallic whine, broken off sharply by several measured blows of iron on iron. The hammering stopped, there was another interval of silence—and then the bedroom door was flung open and Devlin stood there, staring at him. He was wearing a faded blue shirt and a pair of baggy trousers gathered in at the waist with a narrow yellow leather belt.

“—Jack,” Michele said sharply.

“Oh Christ. I told you this wasn't any good.” He stood there doggedly in the doorway, watching Damon. His face looked gaunt and very pale. “Hello, Sam.”

“Hello, Dev.”

“You—get leave?”

“No. I took off for a day.”

“Did you? What the hell for?”

“To see you.”

Devlin took a pack of Gauloises out of his shirt pocket, put one in his mouth and offered the pack to Damon, who shook his head. After a moment Devlin lit his cigarette; he still had not looked at Michele, who was standing perfectly motionless by the long windows. “Why, I haven't got a whole hell of a lot to say to you, Sam.”

“I suppose not.”

For the first time he noticed the new insignia on Damon's shoulders. “I see you made captain.”

“Yeah.”

“Congratulations … You look kind of tired, Sam.”

“Yes. The burden of command, and all that rag.”

“And all that rag. How's the outfit?”

“Rocking along.”

“What's left of it.”

“What's left of it.”

“How's old Jumbo—he a little upset about my taking a powder?”

“Jumbo's dead.”

“No …” Devlin's glance darted to the wall, to Michele, back to Damon. “Why Christ, it was only a—it was only a slug in the arm, Sam—”

“Well, it—he got gangrene.”

“Jesus … who's sergeant major now?”

“Right now there isn't any. Nobody wants the job. A new man named Taylor's coming in, a transfer.”

“Well. That's charming. C'est drôle, hein? très drôle.” Devlin laughed once, became sober again; sauntered up to the table and swinging a chair around straddled it, his arms over the back. The two men looked at each other in silence.

Finally Damon said: “You haven't been out for a while.”

“No—I've been taking it easy. Getting rested up, for a change.” His face was white and drawn in the dull light. “Getting ready to go up again, aren't you?” he demanded suddenly. The Captain nodded. “Sure. Why not? Nothing better to do … Well, this was real nice of you to drop in. Right out of the blue …” He grinned mirthlessly. “Getting a touch lonesome, eh? Misery wants company. That it?”

“They miss you, Dev,” Damon answered in a low voice. “The whole bunch. Raebyrne was talking about you only yesterday. He said all sergeants were ornery and stampageous, but if God made him choose—”

“The hell with that,” Devlin broke in flatly.

“What?”

“I'm not going back, Sam. I'm through.”

“I see. For good?”

“For ever and a day. There's no point in it, Sam. No point in it … All that slaughter. At Brigny and Soissons. And for what? So the frigging brass could foul it up all over again. You and I could have done better than that stupid bastard Benoît. A five-year-old kid could have done better—you know that …”

“I guess you're right. The only trouble is, the five-year-old kids aren't running it.”

“No, they aren't—they certainly aren't.” He leaned forward, his eyes infuriate. “I'll tell you who's running it though, Sam, because I've seen them. The fat little porkers in their Prince Albert coats and their black limousines, with their fat little poules on their arms. You think they want Foch to end it—you think they want
anybody
to wind it up? Jesus Christ, they're having the time of their lives, turning out the shells, hoarding all the butter and bacon and stashing it away …” He waved one arm. “I heard one of them. Right down there in the square. Dressed to kill, with a droopy mustache and eyes that would turn you to stone. His dirty sidekick asked him something, and he said, ‘Il faut faire des concessions mutuelles, mon gars'—and then he turned to me and told me to polish up the headlights on his chariot. Handed me a five-franc piece, and walked off. Just like that … Concessions mutuelles, all right. And we've got to creep across a thousand fields for that? So that they can go on making a fortune on hand grenades and uniforms?”

“Maybe you're right.”

“You know I'm right. It's a dirty, filthy game—there's no
sense
in it, Sam …”

Damon nodded. “You figure on lying low till it's over.”

“That's right.”

“And then—what'll you do then?”

Devlin shrugged once. “Get me a job. Carpenter, cabinet maker—I used to do carpentry back home, you remember … ”

“I see. Sure. And then, after that?”

“After what? What do you mean, after that?”

“After a few years have gone by, and you want to go back to the States, back home, see your family—”

“The hell with that.” Devlin scowled. “I won't ever go back.”

“Or you want to go for a little trip. To London or Luxembourg. A vacation to get out of the rut.” Devlin made no reply. “Out into the country. Take the train: Brigny-le-Thiep, Verneuil, Soissons …”

“Look, Sam—”

“Verdun, Metz, Saint Avold … And then they come to the border, and the customs inspector wants to see your papers—”

“No!” Michele came up to the table and leaned over it. “He is not going back to your filthy war. He is staying here. No more killing. No! Go on back—leave us and go back there and blow each other to bits, until no one is left in this endless madness …” Damon watched her in silence, while she struck her breast with her fist. “He will stay here and live, with me. In love. Yes, love!… You think I don't know?—you think I am a fool, a weak woman and a fool?” She whirled around, darted to the huge oak chest, wrenched open one of the doors and began pulling out an armful of framed photographs, spilling them on the table in front of Damon, striking the glass with her nails. He saw a handsome officer with a graceful dark mustache seated on an upholstered chair, a heavy-set older man, a farmer or perhaps a mechanic, wearing a helmet, two young boys in tight-fitting tunics, hatless, their arms around each other's shoulders, smiling in a sunlit courtyard. “My father, at Le Cateau, my uncle, at Verdun. My brothers, l'un mort, l'autre grand mutilé de guerre—” she was abandoning her English in her rage “—et mon cousin Guy, et là, là, mon fiancé Edmonde, aussi à Verdun … Et pour quoi, donc? Dites moi, Capitaine! Dites moi, je vous en prie.”

She stopped, panting a little. “You think he is a coward to stay with me, hein? Ah, of course—because you are all so heroic, so noble, so brave … Well, he is worth ten of you, a hundred, a thousand! Un homme plein de sensibilité, plein d'émotion … You find that strange, do you?” she cried, though Damon had not changed expression. “That a man wants to live in peace and dignity, in 1918? Why couldn't you leave him alone—since you knew he had come here … But no—you could not, could you?” She leaned forward, her arms at her sides, her large, dark eyes glittering. “You, Captain. You have killed, have you not?” Damon nodded, almost imperceptibly. “Ah yes, of course—all those medals … How many, Captain,” she pursued savagely. “How many?”

“Mitch—” Devlin began.

“Be still!—How many, Captain? Make me an estimate.”

“… Too many,” he said softly.

“Ah oui, assurement.” She laughed, a brittle, silvery laugh. “And it pleased you, hein? When you did it. It gave you a deep, secret pleasure in your soul—”

“No,” he muttered. “No.”

“Oh yes, I say yes!” she hissed. “You found it a secret, and sweet.”

“Mitch, no,” Devlin protested, “he was only obeying orders, like any other poor son of a bitch …”

“Ah—
orders!
—”

“No more of that,” he shouted at her. “You don't know anything about that! You can't judge him that way—”

She whirled on him. “What are you all—some glorious freemasonry of death?” she cried. “Some privileged élite guard of disaster? with secret countersigns? You are the only ones who can speak of suffering? And the other part, too—the dirty, secret pleasure …” She turned back to Damon again. “You have decided in all your wisdom he is a coward to stay here.” She leaned forward again, her breasts rising and falling passionately, her face flushed, her lovely dark hair disheveled. Her anger beat in her cheeks, her eyes; she looked breathtaking and terrible, and Damon thought with a pang of that afternoon after Brigny, a hundred thousand years ago, and two figures in close embrace, swaying in the twilight, with the curtains stirring in the soft breeze off the river. “No! I say he is brave to stay, the bravest of the brave—and you, all the rest of you, are the cowards, the cattle, the craven, drunken fools …”

She stopped and turned away. For a moment no one said anything. Across the street they could hear the thin, sibilant whine of the scythe blade being ground again.

“Yes,” Damon said after a moment. “Maybe it
is
more courageous, Michele. I don't know for sure. Maybe you're right … But that isn't all of it.” He glanced at Devlin, who was gazing at him imploringly—as though the force of Michele's appeal had stripped away his harsh defiance layer by layer, leaving only a raw, naked anguish. “Think of your life, Dev. The whole rest of your life. What will you do? What will you think about? When it's over, and some old doughboy comes through here, looking for landmarks, for graves. When she has a boy of yours, who begins to ask a thousand and one questions. When you're lying in bed late at night and you can't sleep … You'll get to hate yourself, Dev. You will. You'll even get to wish you were with Starkie and Kraz and Turner and the rest of them.”

“—Yes and I God damn near did end up with them, too. All the good guys … and what for?—so the slackers and profiteers can feed on our carcasses? I say fuck it!” he cried. “I say fuck this filthy war …”