Once an Eagle (31 page)

He was not up to it. He wasn't hard enough. He ought to be like Weyburn, or the Old Man. Maybe it was even better to be like Merrick, carrying on mocking conversations with the corpses of his command as they were borne past him, roaring with mirth as he slaughtered his prisoners. It was better than this—anything was better than this. He was not a real soldier. He was good only in combat, and that would not last: he was full of fear now. At times like this he felt every death, every loss, as if chunks of his flesh were being flayed away. They kept drifting toward him in their agony, flung up in the clarity of surf: Van Gelder panting in the hot dusk, the slow roll of Jason's eyes under their lids, Krazewski's shattered chest, Ferguson, Turner, Clay, Pelletier, Dev—

He squeezed shut his eyes. Listening to George Verney and Uncle Bill he had dreamed of a fellowship of danger and high sacrifice, a soaring affection that laughed at all adversity … and in its place he had found only squalor and bereavement. He had found out about the elephant. Turning his head he could see flaring on the horizon the dulled sheet lightning of the front.

 

Two poilus came
around a corner ahead of him. Walking slowly now, his body chilled from the damp hay, oppressed by his thoughts, he watched them absently, frowning. They'd had several more than they could handle, which was odd because one rarely saw French infantry drunk in the streets. Then the poilus brought up short; the stocky one pulled at the tall one's blouse in a brief, swaying argument. Damon kept walking toward them. The short one started to run, the other held onto him—then both lurched off down the street in confusion.

They were up to something. Something fishy. He broke into a run, caught up with them and said: “Soldats: attention! Qu'est-ce qui passe, hein?”

They stopped, resigned, and came to a tottering attention. The shorter one went into a ridiculous sidewinder salute, swayed backward until he bumped against the wall, and said: “Franzay soldatch. Mwah.”

It was Tsonka. Drunk as a hoot owl. Beside him, blinking, Raebyrne broke into his sheepish, hound-dog grin. “Howdy, Skipper.” He touched the high-horned French garrison cap, which was on his head askew. His arms stuck out of the blue tunic sleeves like long white pipes.

“For—Christ—sake,” Damon murmured.

Tsonka relaxed then, and threw Raebyrne a look of intense disgust. “You and your hillbilly schemes. Fifty frigging streets in this lousy burg and you have to take this one … ”

“Just what in hell do you think you're doing?” Damon demanded.

“Go ahead, bright boy,” Tsonka said wearily. “Go ahead and tell him. Maybe you'll get another craw de gayre out of it.”

Raebyrne swallowed and grinned again. “Well, Skipper, fact is we swapped uniforms with a couple of these here poyloos. They didn't mind none at all.”

“I've got that far,” Damon replied. “Now let's go back into
why
you did it.”

“Well, it was a ruse, Cap. To get on the inside of one of those Frog bee-rothals. Some of that red plush and Gramophones and naked cuties.”

“…You damn fools. Do you realize what they could do to you? out of uniform?”

“Why, we ain't exactly
out
of—”

“Don't argue with me. You realize what you'd get if the MPs picked you up?”

“Seemed like a lewdling idea at the time, Skipper.”

“Oh Jesus, yes,” Tsonka echoed sourly. “Name of the game.”

“They'd spot this silly dodge in a minute. Before you even opened your mouths. Two American NCOs—all right: where are the poilus?”

“The what, Cap?”

“The Frog doughboys, you ninny! The other two chumps … Where are
they,
by now?”

“I suppose back in the staminay.”

“Back in the
what?
”

“The gin mill,” Tsonka appended sourly. “Place with the blue shutters, back of the station.”

“Tell you what, Skipper,” Raebyrne said, “I'll hustle on back and get 'em for you, and we'll—”

“Oh, no you won't. We're going back there and find them together. If you think you can still walk, that is.”

Reb looked hurt. “That's a misling word for an old campaigner, Cap.”

“What'd you try to do—drink the whole sackful empty?”

“Well—no sense saving the stuff.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Hell, we're going back up to the line in seventy-two hours,” Tsonka replied calmly.

“Where'd you hear that?”

“Sanderson got it from Jonesy, who got it from Tillman over at the message center. Swore it was the straight skinnay. Isn't it?”

“Beats me,” Damon muttered. “It probably is.”

“Well, then. No sense leaving it for the fucking casuals.”

They were walking quickly toward the station. Raebyrne was holding himself exaggeratedly erect, his big feet slithering on the wet cobbles. “I don't have the luck of a sick snake,” he observed mournfully. “Trying to get next to a little sin in this man's army is like scratching a poor man's ass.”

“You chumps,” Damon taunted them. He didn't know whether he was angry or amused. “Thought you could saunter past a couple of gimlet-faced MPs in that rig and run on upstairs and pick yourselves up a nice fat dose.”

“Not me, Skipper.” Raebyrne reached in his pocket and drew out a small misshapen knob, indecipherable in the darkness. “I got my Grandaddy Clete's horse chestnut.”

“What do you do with that,” Tsonka demanded, “—rub it against her muff?”

“Hell no, Mike. It's got bacteractic qualities. Like fever root. See, there's a spot on it that's—” The chestnut fell through his fingers and rolled among the cobbles. Raebyrne got down on his hands and knees. “See, Cap? It's trying to find its way back to the soil.”

“Come on, Reb.”

“I
cain't
leave my Grandaddy Clete's tamulook—”

“God damn it, Raebyrne!”

“Skipper, I've been carrying it next to my heart ever since Briny …”

Damon groaned, yanked his flashlight out of his pocket and began to play it over the stones, which looked like hundreds of slick little wizened loaves of bread. “All right, there it is. For God's sake, pick it up and let's go!”

The café, like the one he had left earlier, was crowded, tawdry, wreathed in smoke. Soldiers slumped around the little tables, singing, arguing, staring at nothing through narrowed lids. The woman behind the caisse looked dark and monumental and forbidding.

“There's a side door,” Tsonka said. “Whyn't we use that, Captain?”

The poilus were in one of the two rooms in back, drinking wine from a bottle. Damon recognized them at once. They were obviously ill at ease in the American uniforms, which hung on them like tentage. When they caught sight of Damon entering with their two benefactors their eyes rolled. They jumped to their feet.

“All right,” Damon said, closing the door with his foot. “Let's change back, and fast.”

Raebyrne's eye fell on the bottle of wine. “You mean right away, Skipper?”

“No—next April. The man who takes more than three minutes for the entire change gets two days' company punishment.” He offered a free translation of this warning to the Frenchmen, looked at his watch and said: “Go!”

The four went into a paroxysm of disrobing, snatching at bits of discarded clothing, hopping about eerily. Climbing out of the strange breeches Raebyrne sprawled off balance and sat down hard on the floor, jerking the shirt off over his head. Tsonka was sitting in one of the chairs, tugging frantically at the awkward French leggings. Leaning against the door Damon began to laugh. Jesus. Of all the crazy stunts. Of all the ridiculous, asinine schemes …

“Thirty francs and two perfectly good bottles of Heinie rotgut,” Tsonka muttered, plunging his powerful legs into his own breeches. “Why in hell do I ever listen to you?”

“You didn't find nothing wrong with the idea a while back,” Reb retorted in an injured tone.

“Shut up, both of you, and get dressed,” Damon commanded. And then, watching Raebyrne swaying naked in the small, meanly lit room, he thought all at once of the afternoon on the bank of the Marne; those slim white bodies gamboling in the shallow water, so soon to be shattered, drained of life and grace, dumped into trenches, bloated, putrescent, crawling with flies … His eyes filled with tears.

Raebyrne was staring at him with maudlin solicitude. “Anything wrong, Skipper?”

He shook his head and turned away. When he spoke again his voice was harsh. “Jesus, do I have to ride herd on you jokers
every
minute of the day to keep you out of trouble? Haven't you got more sense than to pull a silly stunt like this?” he demanded savagely. “Haven't you got any
pride?
” He shook his fist at them, glaring beneath his brows—aware that he was acting like a damned fool and not caring, while they stared up at him, worried and rueful. “They need you, those kids—who have they got to look to but you older men? What else is going to glue them together if you're not there? Answer me! I can't show them everything …” He checked himself and lowered his voice. “If I ever catch you in foreign uniform again I'm going to run you up to the Colonel myself, and ask him to throw the whole book at you, chapter and verse. You got that?”

“Yes, sir,” they sang in soft chorus.

“All right. Now get out of here and go back and sack in and sleep it off before you dream up any more trouble. You've had a real good day of it as it is.”

“Yes, sir!”

“All right. Good night.”

“Good night, Cap.”

He swung the door behind him with his shoulder and went out quickly through the smoky hubbub of the café. He could not have trusted himself to say one more word.

10

The front of
the church had vanished in a great pyramid of rubble but the altar end, the transept and ambulatory, were relatively intact; and the wounded lay in two long, curving lines below the leaded windows, whose remaining bits of glass glowed like subterranean treasure against the clouded gray light of day. Damon walked along the rows, past mummy-swathed faces, bandaged arms and bodies swaddled in blankets. Here and there medical orderlies and doctors paused and bent over, or stood in little groups talking, like warehousemen waiting for a work call to ready freight for shipment.

Devlin was two from the end of the left-hand row, lying perfectly still. His face was white and smooth, waxen, lightly sweating, although the October air was cool. His eyes watched Damon steadily as he approached.

“Hello, Dev.”

“Hello, Sam …” His voice was hoarse, and very faint, as though he feared if he spoke too loudly it would jar something irreparably.

“Well, I see they finally got you in church.”

“Yeah. About time, I suppose. How's it going?”

“Worse than ever. The New Yorkers have bogged down completely at Aillettes. We've got to go up the line again, day after tomorrow.”

“No rest for the wicked.”

“That's the pitch.”

“How's the outfit?” Devlin asked; but he was only feigning an interest, Damon knew; he didn't really care.

“All fouled up. Same as usual. We've got some new men. Kids. Most of them haven't even fired a rifle …”

He clenched his hands softly and looked down between his knees. Why was it he could think of nothing to say? People kept milling around in the aisle behind him where he squatted, talking matter-of-factly of knee resections and draining and the next ambulance train leaving for No. 1 at Neuilly, and he couldn't seem to keep his thoughts on anything. It was inevitable, he told himself tersely, the way things were going. It was pure blind chance, that kid could see all of us coming up over the rise: luck of the crazy draw.

It wasn't my fault—

His eyes darted from the shattered windows to Devlin's face and back again. He ought to be full of distraction, amusement, something—for Christ sake
something.
He'd come all the way back here to see his oldest, only friend, comfort him, pass some time … And yet the part he couldn't get around was the way he'd shaken in his boots all that day, so sure it was
he
who was going to stop one, be lying here in—

“—Reb's still feuding with Fucciano,” he heard himself saying, a bit too rapidly. “Told him if he tried to palm that lousy goldfish off on them one more time he was going to retire him to Blooie. Said Fudge had no guts as a forager, and he was going to talk up a general chowline strike until Fudge gave them all an honest-to-God stomp-down bedcord meal.”

“Old Reb,” Devlin murmured with the ghost of a smile.

“They were at it hot and heavy. Fudge said he'd fry in hell before he gave Reb another lick of slum or dunderfunk or monkey meat or goldfish or anything else. And Reb said that was fine by him, he was challenging Fudge to a contest of culinary science in three hours. So Reb and Tsonka took off foraging and scrounged two tough old laying hens, all bone and gristle. They started a fire in a Boche helmet right next to Fudge's field kitchen, and Reb laid his mess gear over that for a frying pan. They'd stolen salt and pepper and a bottle of capers, probably from under Fucciano's nose, and they went into a big business about cooking the birds. By this time half the battalion had gathered around—which was just what Reb had been waiting for. He reaches down into his breeches leg and hauls out a bottle of Rhine wine he's been carrying around ever since we stumbled into that crazy Lotus Pavilion, and while the crowd looks on in horror pours some of it over the chicken, sprinkling it with some beet sugar he's promoted from somewhere. And then the clincher: he gropes around in his overcoat pocket and whips out one of those red-and-white checkered tablecloths and spreads it out on the ground, hauls out still another bottle and invites half the platoon to partake. He'd set himself upwind of the field kitchen and Fudge just about went crazy …”

He had run down, in spite of himself; he'd stopped. Devlin's face looked so white it was almost transparent; the smile had left his lips, he was rocking his head back and forth on his gas mask—a fevered, tremulous motion that seemed obscurely fearsome.

“I'm telling you, Dev,” he hurried on, “you're going to have your hands full with this new bunch. There's a kid from Kenosha named Tuckerbee who won't wear a helmet, he says the metal causes a short circuit in his—”

“Forget it, Sam.”

“What?”

“Never—kid an Irishman.” He raised one hand, dropped it again. “I'm not going back to the outfit. I'm not going anywhere.”

“Sure you are. Of course you are, I've got—”

“I've bought the whole wad. I know.” He looked squarely at Damon. “I'm going to check out, Sam.”

“The hell you are,” Damon said sharply. “Who gave you that crap?”

“I know, Sam. You think I don't know what peritonitis means? Don't—let's not horse around, Sam. I … can't afford it.”

Damon bit his lip. Anybody would say it was just chance, we were in line of skirmishers, milling around, I'd just grabbed Reb around the middle, I was telling him it was only a question of—

“Sam …”

“Yes?”

“Sam, write to my ma, will you? Tell her I was the one hit the till at Natupski's. That's why I joined up when I did. Tell her I told you. But I was drunk, I didn't know half what I was doing, it was on a dare and I was drunk. Sober I'd have known better; I would. Will you tell her that?”

“Sure, Dev.” He paused, said in a low voice, “You want me to—to go to Charmevillers?”

The two men gazed at each other for a long moment. Devlin shook his head once, slowly. “No. No point. It'd only be—hard for her, hard for you. That game's over. She knew.”

Damon looked away wildly. His hands were slick with sweat and his mouth was dry. In the ambulatory window above him a frieze of mounted knights charged valorously, their lances quick black splinters in a medley of plangent blues and reds and golds. One figure lay beneath the hooves, however, its body collapsed in ugly postures. Oh, shit, he thought weakly. Oh, shit. In another medallion nearby a boy in a blue tunic sat by a silver stream and stroked a lyre—

He leaned forward, aware of perspiration crawling down through his scalp. “Dev.” He could not say it. He couldn't. Then he could. “Dev. I wouldn't have had this happen for the whole world. Dev … I swear it.”

The dying man gazed at him unsmiling. “You did what you thought was right, Sam. You're that kind of guy, you see a thing and that's the only way it can be, and you drive right on. You pull people with you, Sam. Nobody can say no to you. Because you're so sure. And so far you've always made it work. You did what you felt was right … But you're wrong, Sam.” And now there were tears in Dev's eyes, huge glinting drops that hung on his lower lids, then broke over and down each side of his nose. “What good was it? Sure, I went back and did what you wanted.—Am I better off now? Is anybody in this whole sad fucking world going to be one notch better off for my being rolled in a poncho and shoveled under? I think not, Sam. Not any way that I can see … ”

He raised one hand and wiped his eyes and nose; his eyes looked enormous in the thin waxen cast of his face. “Sam. Remember the march to Montemorelos? the trooper, the wounded trooper we carried over to the wagon?”

“—Gurney,” Damon said, with a croak.

“Remember how he kept wanting to tell us something, how he kept trying to say something and then he couldn't? Remember?… I know what he felt, now—it's funny: it's something you
hear,
something you've been told, when this happens—something terribly important about life, all of life and yourself and the future, and it's all so
clear!
—but you can't for the life of you explain it to a God damned living soul …” He smiled then—a faint upward curving of his lips that was more desolate than his brief tears. “You don't understand either … I know that sounds foolish. I know.”

“No. It doesn't … I think you need to get some sleep, Dev.”

He made a little movement to rise and Devlin reached out and clutched his wrist—a faint, tremulous pressure. It was so faint! “No. That's just what I don't want … Oh, this is a bad way to go, Sam. A sorry way. If it'd been like Ferg or Starkie—or even Kraz or Turner. But lying here like this, with the thing breaking you down brick by brick. It's no way … Sam, remember the ball games at Early?”

“Dev—”

“Remember old Parrish, the time he made you and Merrick shake hands, that afternoon we beat them? Pulling away at his waxed mustache. ‘We are a family. A select and honorable family.' He was a good man. What happened to him?”

“Lost a leg at Vaux.”

“Well. He's out of it … Remember the Paris parade, with the girls all winging roses at us? Remember all the—Sam, don't leave me here, just a little, you can't leave me here right
now
—!”

Damon eased himself down on the edge of the field cot, which creaked with his weight; he could hardly see. “I won't leave you,” he murmured. “I won't leave you, Dev.”

“Good. Good. I knew you wouldn't run out on a buddy. Your oldest buddy … Sam, remember Jumbo Kintzelman and the rattler, back at Early?” he begged; his eyes were terrible. “When Colonel Hobart's wife went after it with a hoe and old Jumbo standing there silly as a crane?”

“Dev. Try to rest. Try to get some sleep.”

“No. No … Stay with me, Sam. Stay here with me—ah, please …”

Damon put his fist against his mouth. “I'll stay with you, Dev. I swear it. Try and sleep. Try and sleep.”

 

The room was
spacious and high-ceilinged. Heavy velour draperies of wine red hung at the windows. There was a walnut writing table where the Colonel was seated, and a massive armoire against one wall, and a ponderous couch with lions' claw feet and lions' heads on the arms where Damon was. There were chairs and cabinets and hassocks. On the interior wall between the windows was a flamboyant painting in blacks and reds and blues, of a German officer in riotous embrace with a naked woman who wore a devil's horns and tail and had cloven hoofs, while assorted beasts and angels—were they angels?—looked on with avid interest. Damon found himself staring at it numbly.

“Yes, quite a riddle, isn't it?” Colonel Caldwell said. “Queer people, the Boches. I've left it on the wall—I keep imagining if I study it carefully enough I'll learn something profound about the German character. I assume my opposite number commissioned it. Do you suppose I could get Raebyrne to work up something for me?”

Damon turned to him, startled. “Sir?”

Caldwell smiled. “Nothing. I'm becoming fatuous as I grow older. Tell me: what's your strength?”

“One hundred seventy-two, with the new replacements.”

“What are they like?”

“All right, I guess. They're brighter than the old breed, but they're softer. Better at close-order drill, worse at skirmishing. Poor marksmen, on the whole.”

“I hear you're hiking them pretty hard.”

“Yes, sir, I am. I believe it's the best conditioner.”

“So do I.” The Colonel smiled. “How about your new officers?”

“Shaw is good. Zimmerman I'm not so sure about: have to see how he works in. Their spirit is excellent.”

“How's Wilgus working out as first sergeant?”

“Very well, sir. He's just what they need. Solid old-timer with no nonsense about him.”

“He was in Mexico, wasn't he?”

“Yes, sir. He was.”

“Did you know him down there?”

“What, sir?—yes, I did. Slightly. A great stickler for detail. Not quick, but thorough. There was—it's a …” He stopped; he had lost the thread of his thought. His mind was empty; he felt suddenly afraid. Colonel Caldwell was looking at him with that alert, on-point expression. “I'm sorry, sir,” he said simply. “I forgot what I was going to say.”

“What's the trouble, Sam?”

“I don't know, Colonel.” He paused. “Devlin.”

Caldwell said gently: “Is he dead?”

“He's—in a coma. They tell me he won't last the night.”

The Colonel sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yes. Peritonitis. Very good friend of mine died of a bullet in the belly at Macloban. Not very joyful. One of these days they'll find a way to seal up the peritoneum without infection. Of course by
then
they'll have invented a projectile that will infect
every
internal organ on entrance, I suppose.” He got up and going over to a musette bag hanging on an ornate brass hook lifted a bottle out of it, crossed to the armoire and poured some of its contents into two painted stem goblets and brought them over. “Here. Join me in a drink. Not the proper service for it, I dare say. To tell the truth you look as though you could do with one.”

“Thank you, Colonel. I could. I could do with one.”

It was Cognac, a very good Cognac: dry and fiery, it flamed its way down his throat and lodged in his belly, cauterizing, burning away thoughts of betrayal and death. Death and betrayal. He sat still on the imposing Empire couch, his head lowered, tears stinging his eyes.

“Sam, it's not your fault, you know.”

He looked up. “I'm afraid this time it is, sir. Quite definitely.”

Caldwell shook his head. “If he had wanted to stay with her—had really and truly wanted to desert for good—there would have been nothing on this earth that would have pulled him back. Least of all you. No, he wouldn't have lasted two years at that game, and something inside him knew it. He is too proud. Some of them can. They're doing it—some of them are hiding in Paris now, there's a whole bunch in the Montmartre area, the MPs are hunting them down: the rebellious, the craven, the sensitive. The ones that war always destroys, good and bad …” He got up and began to pace slowly back and forth in front of the tall windows, where the rain fell without letup. “Don't torture yourself. When Grant wanted to bow out after Shiloh, they say Sherman talked him into staying on. Uncle Billy used some very clever arguments, but don't be fooled: Grant stayed on because he knew in his heart, all the backstairs politicking and preferment and calumny to the contrary, it was the only proper course for him.” He stopped by the obscene picture, his back to Damon. “Devlin is a good soldier. Something shook him at Soissons. Do you know what it was?”