A Midnight Clear: A Novel (16 page)

I sit there and let the cramps roll. I’m bent in half, head between my knees. I keep feeling if I can only get it all out, whatever it is, then I’ll be OK, but it never works. I hate going on sick call, but I’ll do it when we get back.

I work my way downstairs for the first call-in from Gordon. Nothing. Mundy’s on next. The PANTRANT game is over and everybody’s catching up on sleep. I ask Father to listen for the next call and I go up to find Wilkins.

 

The door to the attic is open and I can see the light from one of the flambeaux. Mother is sitting on the floor surrounded by at least fifteen paintings in big gilt frames. He doesn’t turn around when I come in. I lower myself onto the floor beside him.

“Look, Wont. Look at these paintings. They’re actually not much good, but they’re such a comfort. I can feel the calm and concern of some person who took the time to see and then make something to help me see with him. That’s love, Wont; sometimes I almost can’t believe there’s any love left anymore. These paintings make me glad I’m a human being.”

I look around at the pictures. They’re mostly forest scenes with pine trees and snow, or meadows with flowers in spring. There are two with deer browsing or looking up at us just the way the deer I saw did. There are also pictures of pots and pans, one of some vegetables falling out of a basket. I start out only worried about Mother sitting up here in the dark but then feel myself falling into it with him.

Up to that moment, all my experience with art had been limited to drawing. I never had an art course in high school; everybody was pushing me into math or science; trig and spherical trig, solid and analytic geometry; special classes at Drexel Institute. It wasn’t particularly hard but it wasn’t fun either; only more work, learning new games, tricks for nonthinkers, preparing myself to make a living.

But drawing has been a lifelong private joy. I’d draw on anything, hide drawings everywhere; my schoolbag, notebooks, even textbooks were filled with them. My poor mother would frantically clean out the drawers and closets of my room every few months and throw them out, piles of scratchings. I didn’t mind much; for me it was the process of drawing, not the drawings, that I loved.

I used to run around the art museum at the Parkway in Philadelphia but I never looked at the paintings on the walls. We were only interested in finding secret hidden doors or passages in the wood-lined rooms, getting scared by Egyptian mummies in the basement when we played hide-and-seek.

It’s hard to believe a person could get to be nineteen years old and never even
look
at a painting, let alone
see
one. But with me it happened. The shock of discovery was overwhelming.

It might only have been because I was so miserable, scared, the reality around me so unacceptable. I’ll never know all the reasons, but these intimate presentations of another world, another time, through a mind not my own, had an unbelievably profound effect on my deepest psyche. It changed my life. There, murmuring with Wilkins in the voice of lovers, after love, I knew an aesthetic experience. I dimly perceived what it was all about. I’d never be the same again.

 

Much later, I bring Mother downstairs with me. He’s agreed to try arranging everything up there into three categories. First, what can be burned without committing too great a sacrilege. Next, what could be burned in dire emergency but shouldn’t be. Last, the things we can never burn for any reason, things that must be defended to the death if we want to maintain any status within the species.

It’s almost ten o’clock. We’ve been up in that cold, dark attic, in another place, more than an hour.

I call the squad together, except for Gordon, who’s out on post. I tell them I think tonight we should have two on but only one post, the bridge. Nobody argues. I think none of us was looking forward to being out there alone in the dark.

I’m glad we don’t argue; I’d’ve been forced to pull rank, and that I dread.

I’ll be on down by the bridge with Mundy next. It’ll only be two hours; then we’ll have four off sharing the phone. It won’t be bad. After all, there’s a war on and we’re right in the middle of it, more or less.

I’m still feeling very slow. Looking at the paintings helped but I’m drained, weak. Mundy and I slip on the snowsuits; it’ll make us less visible and also keep that vicious biting evening gulley wind from blowing through us. The snowsuits have hoods we can tie tight over our helmets and around our necks. The trouble is they’re made from some kind of crinkly, noisy material. It makes a sound like Dacron sails when they’re being pulled up. I’m probably the only person in the world who thinks of snow, cold and fear when he hoists his sails on the sunny marina in Venice, California.

 

When we go out, the snow has stopped and the sky is clearing. There’s an almost full moon, and clouds are racing across in clumps. Shadows of clouds roll over the trees and snow as we walk downhill to the bridge. Gordon challenges and we all move together against the wall.

“Any noises out here tonight, Mel; owls, Indians, wood elves?”

“Quiet; nothing except that spooky banshee wind blowing through the trees like background sound effects for a Frankenstein movie. And wait till that moon starts ducking in and out clouds; it’s as if you’re on some kind of shadow-crashing roller coaster.”

Gordon picks his grenades off the wall. Seeing that makes me glad we’ve decided on a two-man post. He starts up the hill. Mundy leans against the wall with his back hunched and his shoulders pushed forward. I stand my rifle against the wall and tighten the string on my snow-jumper hood. Mel’s moved the telephone up onto the ledge. I pull it down again to the base of the wall. We don’t want the post looking like a doctor’s office. Mel’s also rolled himself a big snowball to sit on. He was almost ready to receive patients. Mundy slides over and sits on the snowball chair; I begin rolling one for myself. Shutzer’s right; this is perfect snowman snow. I roll it in a few minutes. We both sit on our snowballs, like two guys side by side on johns in a barracks. I don’t know about Mundy, but I’m not up to much talking. It’s going to be a long two hours. If Mundy starts up again on his save the sinner’s soul crusade, I’ll just tell him to can it. I want to think some more about those paintings.

 

We’ve just finished our first call-in at ten-thirty when I think I hear something moving on the other side of the road! I push my snow hood back and rip off my helmet. I unhook grenades from my pockets and put them on the wall; Mundy does the same.

I don’t know if he heard anything, but he can tell for sure I did.

The moon’s bright just at that moment and we stare hard but can’t see anything. But we can hear it, there’s no doubt now. There’s something moving around in the brush just inside the trees on the other side of the road, less than forty yards from us!

I’m trying to decide if I should call the chateau. I’m afraid whatever’s out there will hear me; it’s so close! There’s the sound of something big moving, so big I almost convince myself it’s some kind of animal, not a man; then there’s quiet again. Next we hear the sound of what can only be digging. There’s also the sound of shuffling and puffing. It’s human all right. We’re tense waiting. Cranking up the damned phone makes too much racket; I take it off the hook so they can’t ring us here. This might be one of those “Miller” cases where the signal will be the sounds of shooting and screaming. We wait.

Then we hear voices, loud whispering, tails of “s” sounds. The moon goes behind a dark, dense cloud; shadows of trees bend as darkness sweeps over them. It’s deeply dark, just snow glow on the ground and everything else invisible, dark. We’re both holding our breath so we can hear. I’m
sure
I see something on the road, something standing up etched in the dark. We hear voices again and we wait.

Then, just before the moon finally comes out, there’s a voice, a louder voice, almost a shout, and more scurrying, snow-muffled cracking of pinecones and branches under foot. When the moon comes out strong, we see him on the road.

It’s a German soldier with a rifle to his shoulder pointing straight at us! Mundy and I duck fast. Nothing happens! I reach up, snatch one of our grenades from the ledge and pull the pin. I lob it up over our wall and count. There’s concussion, a bright flash, the singing thrump of fragments, the smell of nitrate.

Somebody laughs!

Mundy and I look at each other. We slowly, carefully, push our heads over the edge of the wall. The soldier is still standing in that same place with his rifle pointing at us! We duck down again. What the hell do we do? Maybe they
are
supermen. That guy should be riddled with fragments and he hasn’t moved!

I peek again. I hear somebody, not the soldier standing there, somebody in the trees on the other side of the road, trying not to laugh. Then there’s a yell. First one voice, then at least three.

“FOO KIT LUR!” “FOO KIT LUR!” “FOO KIT LUR!”

There’s more laughing. I pick up the phone and dial the château. With all the yelling and thumping going on, one little phone cranking will hardly be noticed. I get Shutzer.

“Hey, Won’t! What’s going on?”

“I don’t exactly know, Stan; maybe we have a zombie or there could be a looney bin near here for totally bonkered-out German ex-soldiers and some of them escaped. The noise you just heard was me throwing a grenade.”

Across the road they’re still yelling, now in unison like cheerleaders at a pep rally.

“FOO KEET LUUR!” “FOO KEET LUUR!”

I hold the phone receiver up over the edge of our wall, then bring it down again.

“Can you hear that, Stan?”

“Hell, yes, we can hear it
without
the phone. What’re they yelling about this time?”

“You won’t believe it, Stan. I think they’re yelling Tuck Hitler, FUCK HITLER’ the way your grandmother would say it; that is, if she’d ever say such a thing.”

“Bull toads!”

“Serious, Stan. I don’t know what to do.”

“Want us to come tearing down, San Juan Hill, Charge of the Light Brigade, anything like that?”

“I don’t think it would do any good. So far, except for the yelling, nothing’s happened. There’s just this crazy guy standing out there on the road pretending grenades don’t hurt. Maybe somebody should bring down a few straitjackets. If we can’t put them on the Germans, we can use them ourselves. This is all insane!”

Then it happens; a grenade comes sailing over the wall and lands near Mundy. I drop the phone and hit the ground. Then I see it isn’t a grenade at all; this is a snowball with a stick pushed into it. I work myself into a sitting position against the wall, unscramble phone wires.

“Stan, this is too much. Honest to Christ, now they’re throwing snowballs.”

I look over at Mundy; he isn’t listening; he’s picked up the fake grenade. He pulls out the stick, packs the snowball more tightly, tosses it back over the wall and across the road.

“Wait a couple minutes, Stan. I’ll call back. If there’s a lot of combat-type noise, have Miller rev up our jeeps and get the hell out of here!”

Of course, you’d know it, a few seconds later more snowballs come flying over the wall, this time without sticks. Mundy’s taught the Germans how to make honest-to-God American snowballs without handles. Every time they throw one, we get the FOO KIT LUR yell.

Mundy’s busy picking up snowballs, packing and throwing them back. I even throw a few myself. We can’t see the Germans and I’m not about to stick up my head higher than our wall. I stay crouched and sling most of the snowballs underhand. But Mundy’s standing straight up, zinging them across the road and into the woods. Theirs are lobbed to drop in on us. I’ve got to say there’s nothing much of hurting anybody with these snowballs. I scrunch down by the phone again and crank.

“Shutzer?”

“Yeah, Won’t! We’re all set. Just give the word. Miller will roll on down in the jeep with Gordon behind the fifty. The rest will close in behind.”

“Well, we’re having a Goddamned snowball fight.”

“Stan, you don’t think maybe the war’s over and nobody’s telling us? I just finished talking to Ware and he sounded peculiar. They wouldn’t do that to us, would they; end the war and keep it to themselves?”

“You’re sure you’re OK down there? Mel snuck halfway downhill and along the ridge. He says it looks as if somebody’s put up a scarecrow in a Kraut uniform near the bridge. He couldn’t be sure but that’s what it looks like.”

“A scarecrow! Damn it, Shutzer, you started all this FOO KIT LUR shit; now it’s snowballs and scarecrows. Why don’t you take over this whole sump hole of a war, just send the rest of us home?”

 

I hang up, then stand straight to take a good look. To be honest, at this point the only thing I’m afraid of is being hit in the face by a snowball.

Sure enough, it’s a scarecrow. What we thought was a rifle is a stick with a piece of paper flapping on the end. From the corner of my eye I catch a movement and somebody steps onto the road from the forest. He waves both arms. He’s far enough away so in the dark I can’t make out his face, but it isn’t the one who looks like Max; that much I can tell. He’s smiling and has a Schmeisser slung upside down over his left arm.

He waves again and slowly steps back into the forest.

“Slaff good, Kraut.”

It’s Mundy standing beside me waving both arms, an Irish windmill. We hear them crashing through the brush uphill on the other side.

My insides begin unwinding. I stoop, pick up the phone and crank it. I stand leaning against that wall and jam the phone box between my elbows. I’m perspiration-soaked from the top of my head down into my boots. It could be from the snowball throwing but I think it’s pure fear. All my clothes are saturated with fear sweat, so it’ll just dry and that’s that. We all smell the same; there’s no use washing. I get Shutzer again.