Once an Eagle (30 page)

He was pointing at the end of the trench when he heard the shot. The unmistakable report of a Mauser, thin as a plate of glass snapping. His head whipped around. Not twenty feet away Devlin had clutched his belly in both hands. He gazed at the Captain—a terribly bright, terribly intense gaze; then sank to his knees, still holding his belt. The rifle fired again and Damon screamed “Cover!” The company scattered, diving into the sections of trench, shell holes, behind piles of rubble. Devlin was on his face now, his hands under his body.

“Cover!” Lieutenant Peters was shouting. “Spread out—”

Damon found himself crouching against the wall. Oh, Dev. The Mauser cracked again, the bullet whined away in a shrill nasal ricochet. It came from the building beside him. Somewhere in the building, in the ruins. Oh Dev. He whirled around and ducked through a gap in the wall of the house. There was no upper story, only a piece of masonry that rose up to where the roof had been, near the peak, and had refused to fall. He swung the Chauchat on its sling so he had it on his hip ready to fire, and picked his way over the débris of fallen timbers and heaps of rubble. On the floor pulverized glass lay in white trails, like salt. An inner wall was intact. He eased up to the doorway—ducked in and away again, caught a glimpse of movement in a far corner behind a chest. He ran forward, firing from the hip. The gun got off one round and jammed. Still racing forward he clutched at his pistol, couldn't get it free. The figure rose up: slight body, long rifle held high. He snatched at the Mauser, tore it out of the German's hands in one savage wrench. The figure moved backward, crouching; Damon saw a round face, snub nose, dark blue eyes wide with fear, a wrinkled uniform buttoned to the collar, the sleeves hanging over his hands. A boy. A young boy. Not fifteen, he couldn't be fifteen—

“Ah!” he gasped. He struck the boy on the side of the head, a backhanded blow. The absurdly large coal-scuttle helmet fell off the sniper's head and crashed on the broken crockery and plaster; the boy tumbled backward and hit the wall. Wordless, Damon followed him, cuffed him as a harsh father might a rebellious child, once, again—whirled away. “Oh shit!” he cried with all his heart. He had never felt such anguish in his life. He gripped the Mauser by the barrel, raised it over his head and brought it down in a fury on the piles of stone and mortar, again and again, until the stock split and shattered and his hands stung.

Someone had hold of him, was shouting something at him over and over. Someone else was trying to pinion his arms to his sides. Why should they want to do that? The German boy was still facing him defiantly, but his lips were trembling; he was trying hard not to cry. Blood was running in a dark thread from the edge of his cheek.

“Captain!” Tsonka was shouting in his ear. “Captain,
Captain—!
”

He dropped the ruined rifle, wrenched out of Tsonka's iron grip, pushed his way past Santos and Miller and went outside. Conger and Monteleone were bandaging Devlin; they had put him on his back with a blanket under him. His eyes opened and closed very slowly, as though he couldn't manipulate them; one hand kept sliding back and forth in the mud.

“Hello, Sam.” A faint, weary voice that seemed to come from behind a mountain, kingdoms away. “I … thought … too good be true …”

“Dev, we'll get you down right away, don't you worry—” He said to Conger: “Pick anyone you want and take him down. Right now.”

Conger frowned. “Captain, I thought you said we—”
“Do as I say!—”

He walked away, afraid to stay near Devlin any longer; he felt as if his entrails were on fire. “All right, you people,” he shouted at them. “Let's get dug in, now! What are you waiting for, a God damn engraved dance card?” They hurried away from him, their eyes slanting back toward him fearfully. He went up to one of the Spandaus and wrestled it over to the far edge of the trench, set it up on its ungainly rocking-horse mount, cleaned it of mud and fed in a belt. Then he sat down on the fire step and went to work on the Chauchat stoppage. He dug out the shell casing and checked it; it was neither cracked nor sprung, which meant it was either the firing pin or the extractor. Probably the extractor. He had spares for both in his musette bag. He took off his trench coat and spread it on his knees and began to strip the weapon. Behind him he heard the murmur of voices as Conger and three others left with the stretcher, but he did not turn around.

“Captain?” Santos' voice: melodious and tentative.

“What is it?”

“Captain, Sergeant Tsonka wants to know what you want done with the—with the prisoner …”

He looked up in a spasm of grief and rage. “Shoot him. Spank him. Give him an Iron Cross First Class and send him home—I don't give a damn … only keep him the hell out of my sight!”

“Yes, Captain.”

The four figures were descending the hill now, joined by their burden; they made an animal, some sort of new, war-created animal with a low-slung, lumpy belly and eight legs …

The stretcher-bearers slipped into a tremulous bubble, and he shut his eyes, bent over the Chauchat again.

Oh Dev. I thought neither of us would ever be hit. I thought if we stuck together, right close together—

No more of that.

It was the extractor, as he'd thought. Broken cleanly right at the neck. He threw the defective pieces into the bottom of the trench, rummaged in his musette bag and found the replacement and oiled it heavily, then wiped it dry. He was conscious of the absence of talk around him; even Reb was silent. Very slowly and deliberately he began to reassemble the automatic rifle, inserting the sleeves and cylinders of metal, warm in the gray October air.

 

The café was
jammed with khaki. Men crowded in shoulder to shoulder at the little bar, or milled aimlessly at the door, or wandered through the press, bending over tables and shouting greetings to one another. Two homely, perspiring girls hurried through the dim light serving drinks, and in the far corner of the room a soldier was pumping away furiously at the pedals of a player piano, while five or six others, arms wound one another's shoulders, roared out the chorus:

 

“She can get herself malade from a lousy Home Guard,

She can Sam Browne all over Paree;

She can spread her dimpled knees for the hairy-assed MP's—

But she'll never make a sucker out of me—

(I've been taken!)

No, she'll never make a sucker out of me …”

 

Damon emptied his drink again and set it carefully in front of him, staring at the ripples in the glass. A tall, redheaded corporal named Dalrymple was saying: “When I get back home I'm going to go into politics. I'm going to become mayor of San Francisco and I'm going to take every God damn bribe they hand me.”

“No—wireless is the coming thing,” Miller answered. He was short and fat, wore glasses, and his expression was genial and very attentive, as though he were talking to some rich, crotchety old aunt. “Think of it—a wireless set in every home in America! Do you realize what that will mean?”

“Won't work,” Raebyrne declared.

“What? Of course it will—it
does
work. Just because you—”

“If I can't see it and feel it and pick it up, it isn't there. And if it isn't there it won't work. Don't argue with a mountain man.” Raebyrne reached into a sack by his feet and pulled up a deep red, long-necked bottle. “Now this here is Leapfrogmilk, I believe. Compliments of the Eighty-'leventh Braveerian Infantry.” Someone jostled his arm and wine spilled on the zinc. “Damn. Give me room. How about a pull at the jug, Skipper?”

“No,” Damon muttered. “No more for me.”

“Aw, come on. It's the pure quill. You can taste the feet of the Pee-roossian maidkins that stomped the grapes … ” One of the French girls came by, her hands full of empty glasses, and Raebyrne reached out with his free hand and called, “Hey now, cutie. Let's us go spooning, all right? A little hoochy-kooching, all by our lonesome?” The girl gave a sharp, exasperated laugh and twisted away and he called, “What's wrong—ain't I upstanding enough?”

“With
that?
” Tsonka demanded. “Reb, you're cock-eyed drunk.”

“I ain't going to put her in the rotarygruel …”

Damon drank the sweet, thin German wine, rubbing his face with his knuckles. Drinking never made any difference: he only became steadily more clearheaded and cold, until his mind's eye became a jeweler's glass, burning down into a pinpoint of diamond light. What Uncle Bill called the German discipline. But his cheeks were numb. Somewhere a glass smashed, there were angry shouts and after a while gentler, more conciliatory voices prevailed. He thought of the bar back at the Grand Western, imagined it choked with foreign soldiery, Pop Ainslie serving them, his sister Peg carrying drinks, dodging the outstretched hands, trying to smile, trying not to hate these sweaty, drunken strangers … He sighed, and emptied his glass again. They profaned everything they touched, shattered and wasted, and the most pitiful part of it was they didn't mean to, most of them: they only wanted to—Jesus Christ, they only wanted to shove certain things away out of sight, they only wanted to remind themselves that they were
here,
breathing, feeling …

“Look at that.” Raebyrne was pointing to a narrow space between their table and another where a body lay facedown, now and then twitching as some soldier bumped it or stepped on it. “You know, that Pulver's pretty drunk.”

“Yeah.” Tsonka crushed out his cigarette in the palm of his hand. “Dumb draftee bastard.”

“I'm a draftee,” Santos said huffily.

“Yeah. Well. You're a Dago.”

“I am like hell a Dago.”

“Well, what are you, then?”

“I'm Portuguese.”

“Portagoose!” Raebyrne crowed. “Well, I'll be dog! I don't believe I ever met up with one before …”

The group at the piano was larger now, and for a moment the singing drowned out everything else.

 

“They say Napoleon's mad

About this jazz-crazy fad,

He's teaching Josie the Grizzly Bear;

And even Aphrodite

Wriggled out of her nightie

To be the hit of the Follies Bergère!…”

 

“Damn all, I never did get to Paris yet,” Raebyrne moaned. “I promised Brewster a tolerable stomp-down time in that villy …” His face fell, he shoved his hair out of his eyes. “Men, I feel like hell is one country mile away and every fence is down. God, it's the only time I feel low, now—sitting around waiting for the horn to blow again. I wish old Brewzie was here. You know that, Mike? He was a finicklish little guy but he was one of the best. You know that, Stonk?”

“He was. One of the best.”

“Or old Clay,” Dalrymple said. “He was full of laughs. Remember the time he filled his canteen with van blonk on the night march to Soissons and puked all over Ferguson's pack? That was some comical …”

“Well actually,” Miller offered in his genial, eager manner, “I know I haven't been with the company very long, but I'd have to say of all the fellows I miss most I'd have to say Sergeant Devlin—”

There was a thump. Damon raised his head to see Miller bent over the table gripping his leg, his eyes fearful behind his glasses. Tsonka was glaring at him and Reb was saying loudly: “Who's cutting out with me to fetch up some devilment? How about you, Skipper—we going to dig up some of this fancy-ass poontang they all talk about?”

He had to get out of here. Now. He thrust himself to his feet and snatched up his trench coat; his chair went over backward. He had planted a foot on poor old Pulver. Miller was looking up at him, frightened, one pudgy hand at his collar.

“—But he's not going to die, is he?” Miller stammered. “I mean, I thought—”

Tsonka said: “Shut up, you stupid four-eyed son of a bitch.”

Damon paused, watching Miller. For a piece of an instant he wanted to smash that fat white anxious face; then the impulse vanished. He jerked his overseas cap out of his belt.

“Pay him no heed, Cap,” Raebyrne said. “Look, where you going?”

“Never mind.” He turned away.

“What's the matter, Skipper?” they called after him. “Hey, what's the matter? Don't go, now …”

He thrust his way through the press, jostling the men in his path. Someone cursed him and he whirled around, ready to fight; but no one was looking at him.

Outside, the day was sliding swiftly toward dusk—a plum-colored light that softened the trees, the edges of the warped, narrow houses. It had stopped raining and the air was cool; the leading edge of autumn. He walked quickly, slamming his heels into the great gray paving stones. Once clear of the town itself he fell into a dogtrot, and finally ran hard across the fields, slipping and stumbling in the wet earth. On his right he saw an orchard and stopped. They were thin, scraggly trees, their few remaining leaves wet and drooping. The smell of rotting apples rose around him densely. He threw himself down on a mound of damp hay and lay there spread-eagled, his head pounding, and stared upward, trying to think of nothing but the Champagne sky, the tortured skein of clouds streaming west. Behind him, toward Mont Noir, he could hear the choked mutter of the big guns. He had a stitch in his side, and his belly was churning. Sitting up he gagged himself with two fingers, but nothing came up. The odor of rotten apples was almost suffocating.

All at once he found himself crying—the hurried, hiccuping sobs of a ten-year-old, his shoulders shaking. “Oh Dev,” he muttered. “Oh Dev, forgive me …” Then it passed, and he wiped his eyes and face with his handkerchief and lay down again, watching the first stars glow their way into being.