Remember Ben Clayton (30 page)

“We’re looking for Arthur Fry,” Maureen told him.

“Arthur Fry?” The puzzled look returned. “May I ask—are you his family?”

“No,” Maureen said. “Just friends. But we’ve come a long way to see him.”

“Well, of course you must see him then. We hold Arthur in very high regard, along with all Americans. He is a great friend to Somme-Py. But I must tell you, during the war he suffered an—”

“We know about that,” Gil said.

“Then let me take you to him. He’s in our temporary city hall at the moment. I’ve set him to work helping us sort out the town records. We were fortunate to save them from the devastation.”

They followed him into the wooden building, a drafty hall that looked more like a warehouse, with hundreds of boxes stacked against the walls and half a dozen young men—some dressed in coveralls like L’Huillier, others in threadbare suits—sorting through them.

“Supplies from America,” L’Huillier said to Gil and Maureen. “Clothing and blankets and saucepans, that sort of thing. All critically needed here, of course. When the Germans came our people had to leave with only what they could carry, and when they came back everything they had left behind was gone.”

He gestured to an open doorway cut into a plywood partition that served as an interior wall.

“Here you will find Arthur,” he said. He smiled again and discreetly withdrew to talk to some of the men cataloging the supplies. There was a stiffness in the man’s stride that Gil had not noticed before, and a palsied rigor in his upper back where part of his shoulder had been shot away.

Maureen touched her father’s arm as they were about to enter the room.

“I think I should see him alone. Just at first. Do you mind?”

“Why should I mind? Please go ahead.”

HE WAS
sitting alone behind a desk. Like the building in which it sat, the desk was made of new lumber, a broad plank supported by sawhorses. His head was down, bent to the task of sorting his filing cards, and his concentration was deep enough that he did not look up when she entered the room. He wore the same coveralls as some of the other workers. His hair was sandy. When he lifted his head a bit and turned to sort through the filing box she saw his face. One side of it looked like something that had collapsed and then been awkwardly shored up, an assemblage of disproportionate planes that was only a rough structural approximation of the flesh and bone that had been blasted away.

He had not yet seen her; she still had the opportunity to silently withdraw without ever disturbing him. But instead she spoke his name.

He looked up at her and almost instantly shifted his head to the left, trying to hide his damaged face from this unexpected visitor.

“I’m sorry. I know you told me not to come.”

She took a step or two forward.

“I’m Maureen.”

He stood up politely, his hands at his sides, his face still turned away.

“Is it all right that I came? Please tell me if it’s not and I’ll go.”

“No, ma’am,” he said. “It’s all right, I guess.”

His voice was soft and slurry. The left side of his mouth was lipless and did not move when he spoke, though the joinery beneath the skin shifted in a way that was unsettling to see.

She walked up to him and offered her hand.

“I think we should say a proper hello.”

He was wearing a glove with the fingers cut away and he took it off to shake her hand, looking down as he did so.

“My father is outside. He’d like to meet you as well.”

“All right. I ought to finish this work, though.”

“Of course. The last thing we want to do is get in your way. Maybe we can have dinner together, after you’re off work. Are you angry with me, Arthur?”

“No, ma’am. I said I wasn’t.”

“Do me a favor, then. Call me Maureen instead of ma’am.” He nodded. She was about to go, but something else needed to be said.

“Please let’s not be shy with each other. I’ve seen your face now. That’s what you were afraid of, wasn’t it? Showing me your face?”

“I expect so. I don’t like it when people see me for the first time.”

“Well,” Maureen said, “the first time is over.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

T
hey sent Stuart ahead to spend the night in Verdun. There were no accommodations in Somme-Py, but André L’Huillier, the young man who had greeted them on their arrival, had insisted it would be his great pleasure to set up cots for them in the temporary town hall, and to host them for dinner in the shell of his former home.

“I was born in this house,” L’Huillier declared as he poured the wine. They were seated at an Empire dining table, a proud piece of furniture half shattered by shrapnel. Crowded together on mismatched chairs were Gil and Maureen and L’Huillier and his young wife and, looking uncomfortable, Arthur Fry. “Of course when I was born it actually
was
a house and not the ruin you see today. But there were two walls left standing after the war, and that by itself was something of a miracle.”

Candles burned on the table, and there was heat enough from the cookstove to make things reasonably comfortable, but the wind pressed against the canvas roof and vacant walls, and whistled wherever it managed to pass through the tied-down flaps. Madame L’Huillier had made a cassoulet, and Gil and Maureen had insisted on contributing to the meal with the baguettes and cheeses that Stuart had packed as a picnic lunch.

“This street was called rue du Clichet then,” L’Huillier said. “It is rue Foch now. The war took away everything, even the names of our streets.”

He raised his glass in a toast. “But tonight it has brought us new friends.”

He was inquisitive, courteous, generous, his good nature intact after somehow surviving the slaughter on Mort-Homme during the defense of Verdun. He spoke fluent English and graciously translated the conversation for his wife, who spoke only French and who seemed vaguely oppressed by her husband’s loquacious hospitality.

L’Huillier genially interrogated Gil on what had brought him and Maureen to Somme-Py, and when he heard the story of Lamar Clayton’s unusual commission he asked a dozen informed questions about the work of the sculptor and the complicated process for transforming a clay or wax original into bronze.

Gil answered his host’s inquiries as he glanced toward Arthur, sitting at the end of the table, carefully spooning cassoulet into the working side of his mouth, attentive but excruciatingly silent. Gil had not yet had the occasion to say more than a few words to him. As soon as Maureen had walked out of the
mairie
after meeting Arthur, L’Huillier had swiftly invited them all to dinner, which had necessitated a hurried logistical discussion with Stuart, who clearly had not relished spending the night in a bombed-out village when there was a warm bed waiting for him at a pension in Verdun.

Gil had barely had a chance to absorb the devastation of the boy’s face. It was hard to train his eyes away from it, partly because he was as transfixed by horror and pity as any other mortal would be and partly because as a sculptor his instinct to shape and repair was so strong.

L’Huillier was talking about the fashion show that his friend Harry Collins had put on at the Willard Hotel in Washington for the Somme-Py relief fund.

“Jeanine and I were greeted with such great generosity,” he said. “So many people so eager to help our little village. And to walk through the streets of Washington, to see the monuments and the White House! Very emotional for me. And your President Wilson is not well. I’m very sad to hear this.”

He stood and raised his glass to Wilson. And then to America itself. His eyes were shining with emotion. He reached out and gripped Arthur by the shoulder.

“Monsieur Fry here, he is one of the Americans who helped save my country. Who is still saving it. Arthur, my friend, we in Somme-Py cherish you as one of our own. To us, you are a citizen of our village and of France. You have paid for this citizenship with your blood.”

He was crying openly when he sat down, smearing the tears away and whispering a few embarrassed words in French to Madame L’Huillier, who patted his hand in comfort. He took another sip of wine. He drank too much, Gil suspected, and he also suspected his host was in a great deal of pain from his wounds. L’Huillier seemed like a naturally reticent man whose emotions had come unanchored by the horrors of the war. He hid nothing, his tears flowed easily, explosive pronouncements of love and friendship were elements of ordinary conversation. Surviving the war had left him so raw and grateful that he dared leave no tender thought unsaid.

And then there was Arthur Fry, whose thoughts were secret, whose anchor chains were tight. He was naturally bashful, but his shattering wound made him incalculably more so, his face always subtly averted so that when you looked his way you could get only a glancing impression of him. He responded courteously when spoken to but waited for the conversation to come to him. When he spoke, his voice was obstructed by the brutal device that held his face together, and you could feel the pain that it cost him to form the words.

“And so, Monsieur Gilheaney,” L’Huillier declared, pronouncing his name “Zhil-ha-
nay
,” “you must be a remarkable sculptor.”

“You would have to see my work to judge, Lieutenant.”

“I see it in your face, Monsieur. In the way you move and talk. You reveal your genius.” He turned to Maureen. “He
is
a genius, I hope. I wouldn’t want to be mistaken.”

“You’re not mistaken,” Maureen said, smiling slyly at her father—a welcome reminder of the warm repartee they had shared until recently. But then her attention returned again to where it had been all evening, to Arthur Fry. Though he was crowded in with them at the table, he seemed to be in a room by himself.

Gil had intruded upon Arthur’s wary solitude because ever since abandoning the Clayton statue, he had felt his life going wrong, his work leveling out at a high level of craft that would never again rise to art. The clay crumbling off the armature had seemed to confirm the futility of his quest for greatness. The sight of that young man the other day in the Luxembourg Garden, the look of expectation in his eyes, had given him an idea of a way back in to the Clayton piece. But the door had opened only a crack. He needed to push it open, and his instinct told him that the place to try was here in the Devastated Zone, in the presence of this devastated boy who had been Ben Clayton’s friend.

But he had only half-guesses about what Maureen was looking for, why she had traveled so far and reached so far to make a connection with Arthur. Was she trying to prove herself against her father, to let him know that she sensed value and vitality in a project that a disappointed old man had cast aside? Or did she just feel so betrayed by Gil and by Vance Martindale that she needed to be in a place that was already foreign, where there were no established trusts that could be broken?

Madame L’Huillier whispered to her husband. Gil no longer considered himself fluent in French, but he caught what she was saying: “Ask them to tell us something about this young man.”

L’Huillier translated for Maureen, who was the only one at the table who did not speak French.

“My wife would like to know about the subject of your statue.”

“Arthur is the one who knows about Ben,” Gil said. He shifted his eyes to the young man at the end of the table. Arthur looked down at his plate. Everyone else had finished dinner, but eating was such a painstaking process for him that he had only made it through half his serving of cassoulet, and he seemed to regard the remaining portion as an unfinished chore.

Arthur looked up at Maureen, as if asking for instructions.

“Please,” she said. “Unless it makes you uncomfortable.”

“No, I’m comfortable enough talking about Ben, I guess,” he said. He turned to Madame L’Huillier and spoke in French, apologizing for having to speak in English. She smiled patiently.

“I don’t know what exactly to say, though,” he told Maureen. “We were friends, that was pretty much it. I liked Ben better than most of the other boys in the company, and he got along with me fairly well, I guess. I remember we sat next to each other on the train almost all the way from Fort Worth to Hoboken, at least we did when we could get a seat. Some of the time we just had to lie on the floor, the train was so crowded. And of course we didn’t know we were going to Hoboken. They wouldn’t tell us anything and we couldn’t write home about where we were. We crossed through Arkansas. That was the first time either Ben or me had ever seen a pine tree. Some of the boys thought we were going to go to Mobile to ship out for France but then we changed trains and headed up north.”

Arthur paused and looked down again at his plate and then looked up again. His mouth was rigid and inexpressive. You had to look at his eyes to know he was smiling.

“But I guess you didn’t want to know all about me riding a train and seeing a pine tree. You wanted to know about Ben. We talked a fair amount on that trip. I was pretty homesick already, but he wasn’t, not that I could see. He’d already lost his mother and he didn’t get along too well with his dad.”

“Did he say why?” Gil asked.

“He mostly just said he was a sonofabitch.”

“Sonofabitch. One of my favorite American words,” L’Huillier said, and tried to translate it to his puzzled wife. L’Huillier laughed, but Arthur didn’t laugh along with him. He met Maureen’s eyes again. She could tell he knew more about Ben and his father than he was willing to disclose, but she wasn’t going to press him.

“He talked kindly about their housekeeper. She had some kind of funny name.”

“George’s Mary,” Gil said.

“Yes sir, now I recollect. George’s Mary it was.”

He paused and took a painful sip from his glass, carefully sluicing the wine into the side of his mouth.

“Ben knew a lot about how to do things. I guess it was growing up on that ranch. Nothing seemed to surprise him, he didn’t get excited about anything much. I grew up in town mostly and I guess you could say I was a little more nervous in general about things than he was. On that train we were all pretty excited but we were scared too. All of us trying to hide it one way or the other. With Ben, though, it seemed like nothing bothered him much, at least not at first.”

“Not at first?” Gil asked. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know what I mean. I was just saying that, I guess.”

Gil was about to press him on the point, but he felt Maureen’s touch on his arm, silently asking him to desist.

“I remember before we shipped out we had a day’s leave in New York City. Most of the boys wanted to go to Chinatown and go to the hop dens but Ben wanted to see the Brooklyn Bridge. He said his mother had told him if he ever got to New York he ought to stand on that bridge and look at the view. I don’t believe she ever got up that way herself but I understood from him that she wanted to real bad. So I guess he did that for her. I was glad I went along. We stood up on that bridge for about two hours. It was windier than any place I’d ever been, even windier than West Texas, but it was a clear day and I don’t expect there’s a better view anywhere else in the world. We watched the troopships sailing down the river and knew in a couple days we were going to be on one ourselves and we started talking about what it would be like. What France would be like and what war would be like. We sure found that out before too long. I remember Ben said we oughtn’t to worry none because we were friends and would look out for each other and if we got killed then that would just be the way things turned out. I’d been a little scared and a little blue that day, being so far away from home, missing my folks, but Ben put my mind at ease. I reckon he always did that pretty well. If somebody was to give me back a day out of my life, I believe I might choose that one, ’cause I felt peaceful up there on that bridge with Ben.”

Madame L’Huillier began to gather up the dishes. Arthur spoke to her in French, complimenting her on the meal, apologizing that he was unable to finish his portion.

“I’d like to know something about how he died,” Gil said. He was aware of Maureen’s disapproval at his probing, but he also knew that if he didn’t probe, the possibility of learning anything of significance would be lost.

“Why do you need to know that?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I thought you weren’t doing the statue anymore.”

“I’m not sure of that either.”

“For some men,” L’Huillier explained to Gil, breaking into the silence that had now settled over the dinner table, “it is not a problem to talk about the war. For others it is.”

Gil nodded but kept looking at Arthur, who finally spoke.

“He was hit by machine-gun fire in the chest. It was in the town. We’d mostly taken it by then but there were still Germans on the other side of the Arne, this little river they got over here. He got killed and that’s about all there is to it.”

“I don’t think that’s all there is to it,” Gil said. “You said in your letter to Maureen there was something Ben was upset about, something that he’d just found out.”

“Daddy!” Maureen said.

“If I said that I don’t recall what I meant,” Arthur told him. “I don’t see what difference it would make to anybody anyway.”

“I’d like to know.”

Arthur lifted his head and faced Gil full-on for the first time that evening, as if consciously challenging him with the sight of the wound that had taken away almost half his face. Gil could hear him breathing through the prosthesis, a laboring wheeze that was louder just then than the wind beating against the canvas walls of the house.

“It’s pretty late,” Arthur said at last, and stood up to go.

WHEN THEY LEFT
the L’Huilliers’ house Arthur walked alone down the dark main street of Somme-Py. Maureen followed him, not bothering to answer her father when he asked where she was going, just swiping away the question with a backward wave of her arm. She felt her father’s eyes on her, the bitter recognition that she had passed out of his control, and then heard him turn and walk back in the other direction, toward the
mairie
, where they were to spend the night.

She caught up with Arthur just before he was about to enter a small wooden hut.