Flanders (42 page)

At my touch, Miller tensed. The gelding started.

“Easy, easy,” I said, as much to the horse as to Miller. I moved on slow and gentle, gathering leather, till I got to the chest strap. “Give me your reins,” I told Miller quietly. He did. I pulled the reins through, handed them back. “There,” I said. “He’ll like that some better.”

“I should suppose you’ll take that with you,” Miller said, “as I myself have no place to carry it.”

I put the martingale over my shoulders.

“You’re welcome, sir.”

“You are thanked, Private.”

We saluted each other, and he rode away.

I went back to Blandish, collapsed down in the mud next to him. He was watching me, round-eyed. “Captain spoke to you like you was a mate or sommit.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Strange thing, innit? You two so chummy and all.”

“We’re not chummy.” He made me uncomfortable. I lit up another cigarette.

“Go on. All the men here, and he stops and talks to you. All that cheeky ‘you’re welcome, sir’ of yours. As much as ignoring his orders. Don’t see him talking like that to nobody else.”

I took a drag off my Woodbine, sucked it in until the smoke hit bottom. It felt good, but not as good as a drink.

Blandish laughed. “Chums with the captain. Thinks I know now how you brassed Lieutenant off, sir.”

Smart kid. Guess he’s figured out a little part of the answer, at that.

Travis Lee

* * *

NOVEMBER 14, THE FRONT LINES

Dear Bobby,

The day before we jumped the bags together, I met Harold Crumb. Riddell introduced us, and we shook hands. He was older than standard Emma Gee fodder, forty or so. Old enough to know better. And he was so green that the new hadn’t worn off his uniform yet.

I asked him if he was okay with the duty, and he said he was. I told him to meet me in that same firebay the next morning, that we’d go out into No Man’s Land a hundred yards or so. He didn’t blink.

When Harold came yawning down the trench the next morning in the dark and the drizzle, I asked if he was planning on taking that haversack he was wearing.

He set his lantern on the firestep. “Needs a ’aversack.”

“Them Boche boys’ll just shoot it off you. Stuff your food in the gas mask pouch there. Take your canteen and your field scope. Follow me. I reconnoitered us a good trail yesterday.”

I watched until he’d stripped down some of his gear, then I climbed the ladder and set off into the dark. I’d gone a ways when I realized I didn’t hear him behind me. “Harold?” I called. He didn’t answer. I turned around and headed back. About six or paces later, I stepped on him.

He yelped.

“What you doing down there, Harold?” I asked.

“ ’Ands and knees is what we’re told.”

“It’s dark.” The world was black the way it can only be at three o’clock in the morning. “Them Boche ain’t gonna see you.”

I heard squishing. Then he was on his feet beside me. “But best to crawl, ain’t it? No telling what’s out there. Can’t see me ’and in front of me bleeding face.”

“I reconnoitered us a trail, like I told you.”

I sang so that he could follow. Not as good a voice as Marrs, not as pretty a song, either. “ ‘Shall we gather at the ri-i-iver,’ ” I thought of Pa decked out in his finest, pale hands folded, surrounded by flowers.

Behind me Harold said, “Can’t put a bung in it? They’ll blinking ’ear us.”

I imagined the funeral Pastor Lon had given, a long sermon, one from “no one knows the hour” to “washed in the blood of the lamb.” All Pastor Lon’s funerals were altar calls. “ ‘The beau-ti-ful, the beau-ti-ful ri-i-iver.’ ”

Old Harold must have been scared to stay close. He wandered off the trail a few yards. I heard a thud as he fell. Heard a splash. Heard a resigned “Blast.” Must have found a shell hole.

“ ‘Gather with the sa-aints at the ri-iver.’ ”

Behind me. “ ’Old on! ’Old on a tick, Private Stanhope!”

I listened to him wade toward me through the mud. Too old for this kind of war. He was puffing and blowing.

“Sing along with me, Harold. ‘That flows by the throne of God.’ ”

He didn’t sing, but after his little dip, Harold stayed close. I found us a nice bit of shelter, one that wasn’t flooded. I spread the tarp and settled down.

Day was coming on. The sky was turning pearly. Birds started to chirp. I looked up at him. “You need to get your head down now.”

He seemed more afraid of me than he was of the Boche.

“I ain’t no poof, Harold. I’m not going to go sticking my hands in your pants. Promise.”

It was what he wanted to hear, I guess. He plopped himself down, not as close as a spotter should, but still.

That morning I snapped a couple of shots off—not any good targets, but I dinged some helmets. The day stretched, long and boring. Harold didn’t want to talk at first, but by noon I got him jawing. Seems he’d been a flatfoot back home. Blackhall had been his sergeant.

“Beat cop, huh. Why’d you join up?”

He tipped back his helmet. His face was all dry washes and gullies. “Me wife left, didn’t she.”

Was it suicide he wanted, or lost-youth adventure? He shouldn’t have come. He was a pitiful excuse for a soldier. I had to show him everything: how to move from defilade to defilade, how to hold the spotter scope so it didn’t reflect the light. He would have ended up with an array of head holes if I hadn’t kept pushing him down.

But he was a good cop. At lunch, he said he’d left his canteen behind and asked for a sip from mine. Took a real cautious first sip, too.

“I don’t drink no more, Harold,” I told him.

He pretended he didn’t hear me. He handed the canteen back, wiped his lips. “Can’t abide the bleeding chlorine.”

While we ate, he fished around conversation-wise, found out in a sneaky way what I thought about women.

“I fuck ’em nice, Harold. I don’t rape ’em, if that’s what you’re asking. It was Pierre LeBlanc who beat that girl. Now, I know Blackhall looked at our boots. I know he told you what he found. I figure he wants to nail somebody for the rape, and since he can’t get LeBlanc, he’s out to get me. Doesn’t like me worth a good goddamn, the lieutenant doesn’t.”

At this point Harold was looking a little scared. Well, shit, Bobby. I was the one with the gun.

“Head down!” I snapped.

He ducked, but he was still kind of pop-eyed.

“Harold? I’m just going to tell you once. I’m not a poof. More than anything else on God’s green earth, I like to fuck women. I never raped one. I used to be a rummy, but I don’t drink no more. Won’t bother me if you want to check my canteen every once in a while, but I wish the hell you’d bring your own. Now. We’re gonna have us a day out here of sharpshooting, Harold. We’ll have us the rest of our lunch and a little dinner, and when the sun sets, we’re going back. That okay with you?”

He nodded.

And that’s exactly what we did.

Travis Lee

* * *

NOVEMBER 16, A POSTCARD FROM THE FRONT LINES

Dear Bobby,

Harold Crumb’s not the hardass I thought he’d be. It took us a couple of days to settle in, but now we get along fine. He’s a good, solid spotter. Doesn’t get spooked when they toss mortars our way. Doesn’t go horsing around like LeBlanc did, either. His only drawback is a predilection for puns.

Travis Lee

* * *

NOVEMBER 17, THE FRONT LINES

Dear Bobby,

For a long time now the graveyard’s been with me in fits and starts: a glimpse of whitewashed steps leading down, leaves settling across the gray shoulders of an angel. But last night I went and stayed a while.

The sun was going down; the light had turned the mausoleum’s dome the delicate hue of a shell. Leaves were falling—from that close sky of branches, a gradual rose-gold snow. I wondered how the nights were here. Had to be a quiet sort of majesty: The marble angels would glow, the flowers glitter.

In the pink twilight by the mausoleum’s iron gates Dunleavy was waiting.

“I came back,” he said, “to tell you something.”

I searched the peach-colored twilight for the calico girl. The steps, the terraces, were empty.

“Something very important,” Dunleavy said.

Leaves were strewn across the mausoleum’s floor, had gathered in piles of tarnished brass in the corners. Across the tile, watery blue light shone.

“Something in here.” Dunleavy pressed the flat of his hand to my chest. Power surged through me; it tingled down my arms. The force of it rooted my feet to the spot. When he dropped his hand I felt abandoned, like Blandish had the night he cried.

“It will be all right, Travis,” he said.

It would. Dunleavy had put all that power inside me somehow. I could feel it churning.

When I woke up, I got my rifle, my satchel. I met Harold at the firebay. We set out across No Man’s Land.

When Harold got to the wire he made some pun about playing a concertina. Then he said he’d been looking slanty-eyed through the scope and spied a Chink in the Boche defense.

I just didn’t feel like talking.

The sun rose in shades of drear. Harold said he’d gotten to hugging on his housewife bag in his sleep and pricked his cock right fair on one of his pins.

I thought about the tender hue of light in the graveyard, remembered Dunleavy’s hand coming down on my chest, that stunning rush of power.

“Quick, Stanhope! Two meters left of the forward sap.”

A Boche was there, peering through field glasses. An officer, by the looks of the shoulder patches. I raised my rifle, found my target, but I couldn’t pull the trigger. That clear target: a Boche officer, his face as bright as a candle flame.

“Shoot!” Harold hissed.

Beautiful, the living. Fragile as a match in a wind.

“Stanhope?”

I turned. Harold Crumb shone. The mud behind him twinkled. I put my rifle down. “I’m sorry.”

“You all right?”

I handed him the rifle. “You take him.” I wouldn’t watch, couldn’t bear to see that flame wink out.

“Couldn’t ’it me Aunt Tilly’s broad bum. ’Ere. ’Ere.” Gentle-voiced as Dunleavy was in my dream. “Wrap the tarp over. Bloody cold. ’Ave yourself a bit of a lie-in. Nobody’s to report.”

I closed my eyes and smiled. Old Harold. How quick he’d made the change from cop to soldier. That day I didn’t fire a single shot, and when dark came we slogged back to the trenches.

Harold caught my arm before I walked away. “No need to tell ’im.”

“Got to. Ain’t going to get no better. I can feel it.” And I went to see Blackhall anyway.

“Lost my nerve, sir,” I said.

His dugout was as cramped as an enlisted’s. He was perched on a crate of whale oil, and he didn’t bother to ask me to sit down.

“Never knew you ’ad any.”

“Lost my belly for killing, sir, is what I mean. Me and Crumb were out there all day, and I couldn’t snap off a single shot. Ask him. He’ll tell you.”

Blackhall plucked his pipe out of his pocket, blew through the stem. He took out his tobacco and started packing the bowl. God, I was tired. I stood there, dull-headed, and watched him.

He lit the pipe, gave it a few long pulls. “You’ll shoot soon as they starts shooting at you.”

“Don’t think I will, sir. Don’t think I can kill anyone again, is what it is.”

“Too late to be painting yourself a bleeding conchie.”

“Permission to see Captain Miller.”

“Denied.”

“Permission, sir.”

He sucked furiously on his pipe. The dugout was blue with tobacco smoke. “Bleeding cheeky soak,” he muttered.

“Haven’t been drinking. I figure Harold Crumb’s told you that.”

“Go on. Get out. Go where you wants.”