A Special Providence (33 page)

Both actions already had the unlikely, made-up sound of all second-hand war stories; yet both had taken place right there, within a few yards of him. And it seemed to him now, as he walked and tried to adjust the rifle-grenade bag to ease the ache in his chest, that his own performance yesterday had been ludicrous. What had he done, after all, except to fall asleep on the ridge, to miss out on all the combat, to break a radio, to please an old woman – and even (Jesus!) to admire himself in a mirror?

There was no coherence to the days and nights that followed. There was never a whole night’s sleep, and there was never enough to eat. Mile after mile of what was said to be the Ruhr was slowly consumed in the changeless rhythm of walking on heavy, swollen feet; through a haze of exhaustion the broken towns rose up and divided into broken streets and houses, and the houses divided into rooms; then rooms, houses, streets, and towns closed up and fell behind, and there were more roads, more fields and woods and railroad tracks and factories, with other towns waiting.

And there was something called the Dortmund-Ems Canal, which they had to cross at night. One of the other companies was to make the assault, but Finn’s squad was detailed to work for Battalion headquarters: their job was to follow directly behind the assault company carrying reels of communications wire. The reels each weighed forty or fifty pounds, and the one Prentice drew was missing its handle: it had to be carried by a looped and knotted strand of wire that bit into the flesh of his
hand. Carrying his rifle at the balance in his other hand, he allowed himself to think about nothing but Walker’s helmet, which moved ahead of him on the road as they approached the canal in almost total darkness. He wanted to turn around and whisper “Sam?” to make sure that Rand was following him, but he was afraid to turn around even for a second. It was like that other march into Horbourg, last winter, except that then at least there had been snow to silhouette the figures around him.

The first high, fluttering rush of an eighty-eight sent him sprawling into the roadside ditch with the heavy reel falling against his kidneys –
Slam
! Walker was lying ahead of him, and by reaching out his left hand, with the strand of wire hiked up over his wrist, he could touch the sole of Walker’s boot.

“Keep moving, men,” somebody was calling.

Then came another fluttering rush and another explosion, but Walker’s boot stayed where it was and so did Prentice.

“Keep moving, men …”

– Slam
! And this time Prentice felt something clink on his helmet and spatter across his back. From the other side of the road there was a tremulous, almost apologetic voice: “Medic? Medic?”

“Where? Where are ya?”

“Over here – here he is …”

“Keep moving, men …”

Walker’s boot moved and Prentice followed it, scrambling up to the road and running, rifle in one hand and reel in the other. At the next fluttering rush Walker and Prentice hit the ditch in time –
Slam! –
and then they got up quickly and ran again. Everyone was running now.

Across the road a new voice had broken into a scream: “Oh! Oh! Oh! The blood’s coming out, it’s coming out, it’s coming
out
!”

“Quiet!”

“Shut that bastard up!”

“S’coming out! S’coming
out
!”

“Where? Where
are
ya?”

“Keep moving, men …”

Walker’s back slipped away in the darkness, seeming to turn right. Then it seemed to turn right again, heading for the rear, but Prentice couldn’t be sure. He stood hesitating in the middle of the road, turning around, until he saw it moving again straight ahead. But was this the same back? Wasn’t it too narrow and too short? There was another fluttering rush and the back fell and Prentice fell beside it, grabbing it by the shoulder. “Walker?” he asked after the explosion.

“Wrong man, Mac.”

He was up and running again. “Walker? … Walker? …” The carrying wire of the reel was a burning crease of pain in his hand. He slowed down to keep in step with a short figure who looked like Sam Rand but who, to judge from the authoritative way he was saying “Keep moving, men,” was some kind of an officer. With absurd politeness Prentice said, “Pardon me, sir, can you tell me where the wire detail is?”

And at least the officer, too, was rattled enough to be absurdly polite: “I’m afraid not, soldier; sorry. Keep moving, men …”

Prentice pulled ahead of him and ran out across the road. At the top of the road’s crown he heard another fluttering rush, and he dove for the other side like a ballplayer sliding home, just in time –
Slam
! A man was lying face down in the ditch beside him. “Hey, Mac – you seen the wire detail?”

There was no answer.

“Hey, Mac—”

Still no answer: maybe the man was dead, or maybe just scared half to death. Prentice got up and ran again, and it wasn’t until
much later that he thought: Or maybe wounded. Jesus, was I supposed to stop and feel his heart? Or call a medic?

All he did was run, heading back across the road again, only ducking for the shells now and sometimes not even ducking, feeling brave because he was on his feet and everybody else was falling down.

The road ended and he ran with the crowd down a wide slope of muddy earth. The eighty-eights were falling mostly behind him now, or seemed to be; and now he was running on some kind of wooden ramp – it seemed to be nothing more than a plank flung part of the way across the water, sloping sharply downward and shuddering with the weight of many jostling runners. “Take it easy, you guys,” somebody was saying. “Take it
easy
!” Then there was an ice-cold shock of water up his legs as the plank ended: he was wading thigh deep. Just ahead of him a man fell forward with a heavy splash, and two others stopped to help him up.

Then abruptly the mud of the opposite shore was rising under his feet; he was on land again, but something high and straight was looming ahead, darker than the sky. It was a retaining wall, stone or concrete, ten or fifteen feet tall. Somebody was saying “Ladders … ladders …” and he groped ahead to find slick wooden rungs against the wall. He slung his rifle and thrust his other arm through the carrying wire of the reel, to free both hands, and he began to climb, dimly aware of other ladders and other men climbing on either side of him. The rungs ended short of the top and there was an instant of frantic teetering without a handhold until a pair of arms reached down to help him up. “Thanks,” he said, getting one knee up over the edge, and the man ran off. He turned back to reach down and take hold of the next man’s arms, and the next man said, “Thanks.”

All along the top of the embankment there was a babble of
voices, excited and out of breath: “This way …” “Which way? …” “Where the hell do we go now? …”

They were in a plowed field: the ridged, uneven earth gave like sponge beneath their feet. Prentice followed the sounds of voices into the darkness, running again, while the shells rushed overhead to explode well behind him, back on the other side of the canal. And it was there in the field, slightly behind him and to the right, that he heard Sam Rand’s voice:

“Prentice? That you?”

“Sam! Jesus, where’ve you—”

“Where the hell you been?”

“Where’ve I been! My God, I’ve been looking all over hell for
you
. Where’s Walker?”

“Keep your voice down. They’re all on up ahead; I hung back to look for you. Got your wire?”

“Of course I’ve got it. What the hell do you think I’d—”

“Hang onto it, then. And try to keep up this time. Come on.”

Jogging along in Rand’s wake he felt a bitter sense of injustice; he was angrily determined not to accept whatever reprimand Finn might have for him. God damn it, I
didn’t
fall behind, he silently rehearsed in his mind. For all I know I got across the damn canal before
you
guys did …

The reprimand came half an hour later, just before daybreak, when the wire detail was over and they were crouched, along a wall of the village that lay beyond the plowed field, waiting to be dismissed and rejoin their platoon.

“Finn wants to see you, Prentice,” said Walker in a righteous voice, and Prentice went up to the place where Finn sat against the wall. There was just enough light to see the jaunty angle of his helmet and the thin shape of his angry face.

“Prentice,” he said. “What happened back there?”

“I lost sight of Walker during the shelling, that’s all.”

“Well, why the fuck can’t you keep up?”

“Keep up?” He knew that a mumbled apology now might save him from worse trouble, but he couldn’t stop his voice. “It wasn’t a
question
of keeping up, Finn. My God, I crossed the canal when you did – I may even have crossed it before you did. I mean look, Finn, if you want to pick on somebody that’s one thing, but don’t be telling me I—”

“I ain’t pickin’ on nobody, soldier.”

“All
right
. Don’t be telling me I can’t keep up, that’s all. I got separated, that’s all.”

“Yeah, and you got a big fuckin’ mouth, too, don’tcha? Now you shut up and listen to me.”

Shamefaced and dry in the mouth, there was nothing for Prentice to do but listen. All the other members of the squad were listening too.

“I got no use for fuckups, Prentice. And you done a pretty good job of fuckin’ up right along, ain’tcha?
Ain’tcha?
Well, as long as you’re in this squad you’re gonna soldier with the rest of us, and I don’t wanna hear any more snotty-assed remarks. Got that straight?”

“Finn, I—”

“Got that straight?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Get on back, now.”

It could have been two days or three days or five days after that – everyone had lost track of time – when they marched all day in the rain. Their objective for the day was to take the high ground beyond still another town; and to get there, after they’d cleared the town, was to walk across acres of bombed-out factories and warehouses, a flatland of industrial ruin.

“Keep it spread out, now,” Finn kept calling as the squad
picked its way over the loose bricks, the snaking wires, and the tilting, seesawing slabs of concrete. They were once again in the point of the platoon and company formation.

Far ahead rose a big undamaged brick structure surmounted by a derrick, and beside it, extending for what seemed half a mile across the horizon, was a mountainous heap of coal, as black and shining as licorice in the rain. Coming closer, they could see that a railroad yard lay along the foot of the coal heap – many parallel tracks and switches and sidings, on one of which stood a train of gondola cars. The big building was evidently a loading station: it straddled the tracks on a forest of brick pillars. Almost any point in this intricate scene – the coal heap or the loading station or any of several smaller buildings around it – would make a good enemy gun emplacement or artillery observation post; and so they moved stealthily, carrying their rifles like hunters.

The first eighty-eights came in just as the squad was approaching one of the smaller buildings beside the loading station; all they had to do was run the last few yards and scurry inside and they were safe. But looking back, they saw the panicky disorder of the rest of the company as the shells burst among them: men were running and falling, getting up and running again; some were trying to take cover in the rubble and others were trying to run it out.

Bernstein’s squad made it into the building; so did Loomis and Coverly and Klein, and so did Captain Agate and part of his headquarters group. Much of the rest of the company was safe in the building next door now; others had fallen behind a broken wall a hundred feet back, and only a few could be seen lying in the open: it was impossible to tell if they’d been hit or not.

“Well, shit,” Captain Agate said. “We sure as hell can’t stay here. Let’s get on out across the tracks.”

Finn’s squad crept around the side of the building to the open
place where the brick pillars supported the loading station, and started out across the wide bed of rails. And they were out in the middle of the tracks, halfway across, when a machine gun – no, it was fifty times louder than a machine gun – sent each man leaping for cover behind one of the pillars. In the huge noise of the automatic fire a river of yellow tracers came whipping through, and the bullets – Christ, they weren’t bullets at all, but shells – the shells were exploding against the pillars and the sides of the buildings with sharp detonations –
Pok! Pok! –
almost like flak. It
was
flak: it was an anti-aircraft gun firing in flat trajectory.

Prentice’s pillar was an inch or two wider than his shoulders: if he stood very straight with his back pressed to the bricks, keeping his elbows in and his rifle butt-down beside his right foot in a rigid order-arms position, he was safe from the shells that streaked past him on either side; but there was no way of hiding from the whining, invisible fragments of flak, some of which flew with a
Whunk
! into the pillar above his head or into the cinders at his feet. From the corner of his eye he could see Sam Rand, equally rigid behind the next pillar, and on the other side was Drake.

Captain Agate was standing some twenty feet away, close to a wall whose angle protected him from the line of fire. His eyes were fixed on Prentice as the firing continued, and suddenly his grave, heavy face broke into a delighted smile. “Hey Prentice!” he called into the noise, and Prentice could understand more by reading his lips than hearing him. “Hey Prentice! Par-rade –
rest
!” And he bent over to slap his thigh at the hilarity of the joke.

It probably wasn’t more than half a minute before the gun stopped, but it seemed much longer; and it seemed too that it had stopped only to tease the men away from the pillars. Prentice didn’t know what to do until he saw Sam Rand run for the protection of the building where Agate and the others were. He
ran after him, with the rest of the squad, and the gun didn’t open up again. Drake came last, stumbling and trying to hop on one foot, and Ted the medic went out to help him, half-carrying him back. He had caught a piece of flak in his leg.