Flanders (24 page)

I felt a tug at my sleeve. Heard Marr’s concerned, “You all right, Stanhope? Need some fresh air, then?”

I shut my eyes quick. When I opened them, the ghosties were gone.

I left, too. Left Foy with his prolonged and hideous dying. In the fresh air of the yard I bent double, sucking air. A passing nurse eyed me. I started walking fast, past the surgical hut, toward the road.

O’Shaughnessy’s call stopped me. “Travis!”

I watched him scurry over the grass. He had a purple stole over his shoulders. It flapped, its embossing scattering the light. He was holding a Bible in both his hands. When he reached me, he didn’t speak. All around that meadow I could hear the low, sad song of the wounded.

“ ‘Magnificat,’ ” I said.

He cocked his head and squinted, a gesture so near to what Foy had done that ice balled up in my belly: O’Shaughnessy trying to see me through the crust the both of us had built.

“Tell me what it says.”

He smiled. “Ah. ‘My soul doth magnify the Lord,’ lad. ‘And my spirit hath rejoiced.’ Was that what you were seeking?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” Nearby were piles of garbage from surgery: red mountains of gauze; a blue-white arm, its graceful fingers splayed.

“Will you not sit down and have a chat with me, Travis?”

I took in a deep breath. Rotting flesh, but under that, the sweet smell of damp earth, the perfume of crushed grass.

“You’ve been to see Foy I take it?”

I nodded.

“Good that you did, lad. He’ll be appreciating that.”

Foy’s slow march of the hours. None of us could go with him, not even those poor bastards whose screams had been stolen; not the ghosts who had already passed through these painful billets and were awaiting orders.

“A hard death,” O’Shaughnessy said. “And hard to look at. Don’t go blaming yourself for turning away.”

Wide of the mark. Like Miller had been that time. Misunderstandings from men who should have known me better. “It makes me mad, sir. That’s all.”

“Don’t be mad at God, lad. Wasn’t Him sent Abner Foy to war. It was the British Army. And still, Travis, you see the horror of it surely, but you’re a thinking man, and so I know you see the glory, too. Suffering the more to appreciate Heaven. Suffering as Christ himself did. Seen that way, why, pain becomes a blessed thing.”

“Should tell Foy. He’d like to know that.”

“I have told him. I tell them all. Come now. I can see how distressed this has made you. Come. Sit down and let’s have a chat.”

Misunderstandings. He put his hand on my arm. I pushed it away. “You talked about things I told you private-like. I thought priests weren’t supposed to do that.”

“And what would that be?”

“About the whore. You told Miller, didn’t you?”

O’Shaughnessy’s attention wandered from canvas hut to dying soldiers to a far line of trees. “I could tell you that what we had was nothing that near to confession, neither the form nor the fact that you’re not of the Faith. You’re an apostate, lad. And there are ten bishops at home who would pass over what I did without a squeak about my breaking the seal. Well, truth is, there would be ten bishops as well who would tell you that I’m a poor excuse for a priest. But it was just that Captain told me what the police had found, you see. Then he told me you had scarpered off somewhere that night. He was horrified by the implications, I can tell you, and frightened what the rest of the officers were gossiping. He asked if I thought you could do something so terrible.”

I felt the first strong emotion since the ghosties’ hand-me-down despair. It was rage.

He said, “I told him no.”

Coming out of a door into the cleansing sunlight were Riddell, Pickering, and Marrs. Foy would still be inside, his leaking body on its stained bed.

“But I had to tell the captain the rest, Travis, for you’re a puzzle whose pieces don’t quite fit. And if it meant breaking a vow and taking on the sin of it, I intended to save your soul.”

“The army would have give a ten-minute court-martial, then took me out and shot me. What about trying to save my life a little before you went off blabbing about me, sir?”

“Ah, lad. If it was lives I wanted to save, I’d be telling all these boyos to go home.”

Marrs, Pickering, and Riddell were waiting. By them, an officer. I ached to confess to someone, anyone, about seeing the ghosties, but it was too late.

I had started away when I heard O’Shaughnessy’s quiet, “Sorry, lad.”

Said serious enough, but he was grinning. In the middle of screaming and dying men, talking about suffering and glory. Smiling forgiveness for his own sins. In his purple stole, magnifying the Lord.

I trotted across the grass to Riddell. The officer with him turned to watch my approach.

“ ... a week, I shouldn’t guess.” The officer was a major, one with medical corps insignia. “A bit of bad luck, that.”

Foy’s body weeping into his sheets. Bad luck. A blessing.

From Marrs a shockingly irate “But I thought he was getting better.”

The major didn’t take offense. Get used to gassing victims, I suppose, you can get used to disrespect. “Um. Yes. Looked better for a while. Thought he’d turned the corner, what? But it had worked its way into the lungs. No way to know until the lesions started suppurating. Still, a kind word, a familiar face. Cheering them up does wonders, I always say.”

“It’s possible, then? He could get better?” Marrs asked.

The major cleared his throat. “Well! I’m sure that he enjoyed his little visit. There’s that.”

I left Pickering shaking his head at Marrs’s question. I went back into the ward and closed the door behind me. No one, not the patients trapped in their grotesque bodies, not the overworked nurses, paid any attention to my entrance. No ghosties came to lend me memories. I walked over to Foy’s bed.

He was either dead or asleep. I stood and watched until I saw the slight rise and fall of his chest. Too bad. Poor Foy, brimming over with blessings.

I reached down and took his swollen, scaly hand. “There’s this graveyard, Foy. Look for it, will you? You’ll know when you get there, because there’s no other peace like it. There’s marble angels and a mausoleum with a glass ceiling, glass so thick that light from it shimmers down on the tiles a pure water blue.”

I couldn’t tell if he was hearing me. The tip of his dry tongue came out, licked his lips. The inside of his mouth, I saw, was bleeding.

“There’s a woman,” I said. “You’ll like her. Tell her I sent you. Tell her she needs to take care of you special. She’ll do that for me. This is the truth, Foy. I’m sure of it now.”

I started to leave, but he held onto my fingers for a heartbeat, so light and brief a holding that it might have been reflex.

I squeezed back, careful not to hurt him. “That graveyard. It’s a goddamned beautiful blessing.”

The four of us didn’t talk much on the walk back. It was coming on twilight. We passed under a line of poplars, disturbing a roosting flock of pigeons, sending them flying, rustling softly through branches, fluttering and cooing above our heads, tree to tree. We walked like potentates, the birds announcing our coming. Rabbits in a nearby meadow lifted their heads to watch us pass.

When we hit the rest area, Riddell had a long private conversation with Blackhall. He came back grinning. “Got us a few hours more leave. That inn? Frenchie cook has learned ’imself fry-ups. Does a fair fish and chips. Anyone want to go?”

The fish was soggy, the fries cut too big. I had a few glasses of wine and tried to explain to the cook about cornmeal and buttermilk, about the need for bacon drippings.

Pickering just had to visit the whores, and even Riddell took a turn. I got the skinny one this time. Her hair was all done up in dark curls. Ringlets framed her cheek. We lay side by side, not talking, not fucking. She had the most amazing milk white skin, Bobby, and rosy little nipples. I ran my hand all over her slow. A miracle how whole her body was, what a blessing. She kept trying to kiss me. She played with my pecker. But after a while she stopped trying to earn her five shillings so hard. She stared at the ceiling, and she was smiling a little. I stroked her. I smelled her skin, Bobby. I buried my face in her ringlets and smelled her hair.

When my nose and hands knew her, I rolled on top and nudged her legs apart. Being in her felt safe. I rested there for a while. My head was against her chest. I could hear her heart beating, a sound to sleep to.

I took hold of her hand and put it to my cheek. Whores are good at understanding what a man needs; and so she caressed my face, my shoulders until I felt real again. She moved against me slow, and we rocked together into loving. She showed me a nice time, and I left her a pound note for her trouble. When I started to go out the door, she grabbed my hand to stay me. She ran her fingers over my forehead, my cheek. She kissed me real light on the corner of my mouth.

“All right,” she said in her broken English. “All right,” she promised, stroking me. “Is all right.”

It
is
all right, I think. When I got downstairs, Riddell was beaming, so proud of himself he was near to bursting.

“A fine night, d’ye think so, Stanhope?” As if a good fuck had turned him into Pickering, he punched me in the arm. “Fine night.”

And so it was.

Travis Lee

* * *

SEPTEMBER 2, A POSTCARD FROM THE FRONT LINES

Dear Bobby,

They got me sharpshooting the way Blackhall says it should be done. No more acting on my own, either. Got me a partner. Gives me somebody to talk to, I guess. Heatwave’s broken; the weather’s fine. The nights are downright chilly.

Travis Lee

* * *

SEPTEMBER 2,

ONE YOU DON’T NEED TO SEE YET

Dear Bobby,

Blackhall called me into his dugout today. “I’m putting an end to your little game, Stanhope. Starting tomorrow, you sharpshoots from No Man’s Land, the way the other sharpshooters does.”

My knees started to buckle. I would have sat down then and there if I’d had a place to sit. Instead, I took a quick step back so I could brace myself against the sandbags. From his perch on an ammo box, Blackhall looked up at me. He knew how scared I was. That’s why he was smiling.

“Lacks the belly for it?”

I tried to keep my voice from shaking. I wouldn’t give him the damned pleasure. “Sir. Aren’t my totals good enough, sir?”

Blackhall’s dugout, like most, was open to the trench. A breeze found its way to me down the traverse, but it wasn’t enough of one. I was sweating. Farther down, men argued as they repaired the walls. Over the ceaseless barrage of grumbling came Pickering’s braying laugh.

“Ain’t your totals. Don’t like your attitude is what.” Blackhall scratched furiously at his belly. He’s a hairy man, with bunches of black curls climbing the front of his collar and springy tufts growing out his ears. The lice get to him bad. “You don’t get your head shaved like the rest of us. Got to stay pretty, don’t you, nits or no. Lifts extra rum. Or won’t tell me who gives it. Don’t sharpshoot like the others. Can’t bear to do sod all the way anybody else does.”

Despite the sluggish cool breeze, it stank in Blackhall’s dugout: the lieutenant’s rank animal odor, my own sharp fear.

“Nights, you reads your bloody poetry. Waste of candles, my opinion. Schoolgirl notions. Takes the fire out of your belly. Won’t have it.” He leaned back, took out his pipe, packed and lit it. He took his time, maybe hoping I’d leave. I didn’t.

“Sir? When I started sharpshooting, they gave me a choice. I proved I could get me enough kills without moving any closer. Point is, aren’t my totals good enough? If they’re not up to snuff, just send me out there. Do whatever you goddamned please. But seems to me that if something ain’t broke, you don’t go trying to fix it.”

“I’m tired of your insubordinate, degenerate ways.” He made an O of his lips and blew a smoke ring my way. It rose toward me like a gray halo before dissolving into ghosties. “I won’t have nobody bucking my orders or stealing rum or scarpering off. I wants real soldiers in this platoon, not prissy little sods who go giving others ideas.”

“What the hell kind of ideas you talking about, sir?” I knew what the bastard meant, Bobby, and my knuckles itched to knock him down.

He smiled. There was a dark gap where three of Blackhall’s front teeth were missing. The Tommies have bad teeth, damned near all of them. Maybe Blackhall resented my teeth, too.