Flanders (49 page)

I was finishing my lemonade when Calvert came, told me that Riddell was asking for me in barracks. When I arrived, I found Riddell inside, waiting. He was standing with an officer and a corporal who were battle-dressed and covered in mud. The three stopped talking when I walked in.

“This Stanhope?” the captain asked Riddell.

“Yes, sir.”

The captain studied me. “Private Stanhope. Where is Private LeBlanc’s pack?”

“Lieutenant Blackhall already took it.” I noticed Riddell’s expression. “What’s going on?”

The captain turned to the boy by him. “Marchbanks. Find Lieutenant Blackhall at once. Seize that bag for evidence.” The corporal saluted and ran out.

“What’s going on here, sir?” I asked Riddell.

The captain said, “Sit down, Private. I’ll need a statement. Sergeant, you are dismissed.”

Riddell didn’t even look at me when he left.

I started to sweat. “Sir?” I wiped my hands down my greatcoat.

The captain pulled up two chairs, sat down in one, propped a clipboard on his lap. He crossed his legs. Mud dropped off his boots and fell onto the scrubbed planks with a splatter.

“Sit,” he told me. “I shall make this brief.” He took out a fountain pen. “Have you any idea why someone has murdered Private LeBlanc?”

I nearly missed the chair. The question left my head empty, my chest hollow. “Sir?”

A shit of an officer. He made his words real slow and clear, like he thought I was deaf or stupid. “Have you any idea why Private LeBlanc was murdered?”

“Half my friends were murdered.”

The captain sat back as if I’d slapped him. His gaze drilled through me. “I’ll have none of that.”

And then I understood what was happening. It scared me so bad, my stomach twisted. “Don’t be thinking I did nothing to him.”

“No one said you had.”

I remembered the long lists of the dead, of Morgan and Lefleur, of O’Shaughnessy and Turnhill. So many corpses. Nothing made sense.

“Why should you think you’d be suspected?”

I swallowed hard. Sleet tapped gently at the window. “Just that I knew he deserved it.”

“Deserved killing?”

“Best leave it alone, sir, is what I’m saying.”

“The man had the M.C. and Bar. He had every decoration worth having.”

I sighed hard, and broke the promise I had made to Miller. “Pierre LeBlanc hurt women.”

The captain had gray eyes that didn’t give anything away. He said calmly, “That has never been substantiated.”

I went cold.

He started writing. I wanted to grab the pen out of his hand, wanted to tear the paper up and throw it away.

Damn them. “Sir?” They knew.

The captain looked up.

“A lot of folks died. It was a raid, sir.”

Those gray eyes, the color of the low Flanders sky. “That will be all, Private.”

I got up, saluted, and left, found Riddell lurking around the door, a hangdog look on his face. “Sir? What the hell?”

He grabbed my arm, led me to the other side of the building. We stood in the shelter of the eaves.

A cutting gust of wind. Riddell hiked his coat higher on his shoulders. “Was one of the medical aides what seen it.”

I leaned against the wall, felt the barracks shake. The heavy-footed captain was leaving.

“LeBlanc ’ad made it back to trenches,” Riddell said, “even wif ’is knee cocked up. ’Ad ’imself a pukka of a Blighty.” Sleet rattled against the roof, a sound like faraway machine guns. “But the aid station was full. Them wif Blighties was set out in the trench.”

I remembered that it had been wet then, too. LeBlanc, his knee shattered, lying in the water, in the pelting sleet.

“Was just before dawn, and it was a bedlam, Stanhope, what wif wounded screaming and shells still coming down. Dark as pitch, too. One of the aides was keeping an eye, time to time; and last ’e’d seen of LeBlanc, seen ’im talking wif an officer. Next time the man checks, ’e’s been shot dead in the chest.”

I took a breath. The air tasted chill and clean. Snow coming, maybe. “There’s some things you never knew about LeBlanc, Sergeant. Trust me: It’s better for everybody that he never went home. You tell Blackhall that if he needs me to speak up for him, I will.”

Riddell looked haggard. Sleet had melted on his balding head. His eyes were red-rimmed and watery from cold. “Not Blackhall, lad.” His mouth twisted as if he’d tasted something bitter. “Was the captain.”

I took one step away from him. Then another. By the end of the barracks, I was running. And by the time I got to the officers’ quarters, the red caps were taking Miller away.

Travis Lee

* * *

DECEMBER 13, THE REST AREA

Dear Bobby,

The night after his arrest, Miller slept in the glasshouse. I asked to see him, but the red caps turned me away. I went back to barracks. I couldn’t eat, but I wanted liquor the way I had wanted it when all I could think about was the next sip of rum, when I needed it as strong as I’d
ever needed a woman. See, if I got drunk, Bobby, I could forget what was about to happen. If I got drunk enough, I could finally sleep.

I asked Calvert for rum. I begged Hutchins. I begged Goodson. Uncle Tim said, “Easy on. Don’t have none, mate. Can’t see that? Nobody ’as none.”

I booted my pack, sent it sailing across the room. I slammed my cot into the wall again, again, until the wood turned to splinters. I fought that room until I was so tired that my muscles went to jerking. That’s when I noticed the sixteen survivors of my two hundred and forty-strong company. They were sitting on their bunks, watching me.

Calvert got up, offered me some tea. Blandish asked if I wanted dinner, and I told him no. They left for the mess hall together. I sat in the ruins of that room, and when the boys came back an hour later we played a little cards. I laughed once or twice. That night I lay on a dead man’s cot and didn’t sleep; and the next morning I walked out to see if I could stop it.

The YMCA pavilion was already being prettied up for the court martial. The doors and windows were open. The long table where kindly women once served lemonade had been cleared, a straight-backed chair set to its front. Enlisted men bustled around the huge room, sweeping the floor, carting carafes of water, bringing in paper and pens. Soldiers I’d never seen were coming and going, sergeants I didn’t know were barking orders. And in the middle of that commotion, that mute and lonely chair.

The boys wandered out of the mess hall and gathered around. Blackhall and Driggers walked up. Blackhall looked natty in his dress uniform.

Driggers cleared his throat. “Men? May I have your attention, please? Lieutenant Blackhall and I have spoken with Major Dunn. As of this moment, you are ordered confined to quarters.”

Not a one of us moved.

Blackhall sidled up to me. “Me tie straight?”

“It’s fine.”

“Flaming ties. Never could get the knack.” He fiddled with his collar. “Requested permission to address the board. Somebody needs to speak up for ’im.”

Driggers asked loudly, “Well, men? What are your plans?”

Hell, I didn’t know. I doubted any of us did. Stand there until Miller was tried and shot. Until the whole goddamned war was over.

Blackhall leaned toward me again. “Anything you want me to tell Dunn?”

“LeBlanc was guilty of those rapes.”

The busy pavilion. Our motionless knot of men. A misty morning, and the horizon lost in fog.

Blackhall caught my elbow, led me out of earshot. “Listen, Stanhope. Know you and Miller ’ad something between you. Don’t need to know what it was. But don’t want you to get your hopes up. Others would follow you, and that could start a riot. Miller’s own fault, anyways. ’E was a fool.”

I pivoted, started back to the others. He grabbed my elbow.

Blackhall’s grip hurt. His voice held no room for doubt or charity. “ ’E was a fool.” A voice so full of indignation that spittle sprayed my cheek. “ ’Ad too many witnesses. Poor, damned bloody fool. If only ’e’d asked, I’d have done it for ’im.” He let me go.

A captain came riding up and reined in by Driggers. His chestnut gelding was lathered. The horse crab-stepped away, danced. The captain grabbed mane, held his seat the best he could. “Lieutenant!” he called. “Order these men into barracks! “

Driggers said, “Won’t go, sir.”

The chestnut fought the reins, tossed his head, blew noisily. “Men!” the captain said. “As of this moment, you are confined to quarters!”

I left Blackhall, walked over to the group, and stood beside the somber-faced Blandish—a small boy who’d grown up in a hurry.

The captain’s face flamed. “Sergeant!”

Riddell, sitting on the corduroy road, shook his head. “Sorry, sir.”

With a look of disbelief, the captain whirled his chestnut and cantered away. Through the open windows of the YMCA pavilion, my eyes riveted on a splash of color: a Union Jack.

We stood there for a while in the sprinkling rain until Blackhall looked over his shoulder, snapped to attention and barked, “Steady on, men!”

From the mist came marching an armed squad. Without a word, they surrounded us. Their commanding lieutenant stepped forward, ordered us to surrender our weapons.

Riddell raised his hands so they could take his side arm, then sat back down. Blackhall handed his pistol over. After some frowning indecision, Driggers gave them his, too.

“You are ordered back to quarters,” the lieutenant announced. A well-spoken boy, like Driggers. Too unseasoned for his rank. He held Driggers’s pistol, the barrel pointed at the ground; and his fright was so strong I could smell it. “That is a direct order from Colonel Caraway. Well? Did you not hear me?” He looked us over. I looked us over, too, saw the hard faces, the long-cast stares. Dear God, Bobby. We looked like convicts.

The boy cleared his throat. “The colonel has instructed me to warn you that noncompliance with his order may be construed as mutiny.” A kid. Not much starch to him. “Do you not hear what I am telling you?” His voice broke, rose out of his control. “You men are under arrest! Fall out! I said, fall out!” He whirled to his squad, ordered, “Fix your bayonets!”

They were a green squad—clean boys, just out of training, ones who were good at orders; boys full of piss and vinegar and patriotism. They instantly obeyed. I looked around that ring of bayonets, at those blank, earnest faces.

The lieutenant said to us, “I shall give you to the count of three.”

Outside the ring, Blackhall and Driggers were standing, calm and attentive. At the edge of our silent group, Riddell sat, elbows on his knees, head in his hands.

“One!”

Riddell raised his head, looked straight at the boy who was holding a bayonet to him. The kid’s face was full of a disturbing and simple-minded innocence.

“Two!”

So loud that Driggers flinched.

I watched the boy near me—his expression held in such tight check that his jaw was knotted. The tip of his bayonet trembled.

I lifted my face to the sky. The air smelled of damp and grass. Cool, light-fingered rain touched my forehead. I closed my eyes and thought how nice it would be to walk through the sunset of the graveyard and watch the angels shimmer, to talk to Dunleavy and Marrs again, to see the leaves falling slow.

The lieutenant screamed, “Surrender or I shall have them shoot you! I shall order them! I do not wish to do this! Dear God! What is the matter with you men? Are you insane?”

I opened my eyes. Beyond the circle of weapons, the lieutenant stood, his bottom lip quivering. “Do you not hear me? You must hear me!” And then he whirled to his men and shouted, “Blast! Damn! Stand down!”

The squad lowered their weapons. The lieutenant stalked away. A while later, the captain galloped back. “This will not do,” he said. “Court is to convene, and the officers of the board are hesitant to appear. This simply will not do.”

It was funny somehow: sixteen unarmed men. I knew I should have laughed. I glanced over at Calvert. There was a strange, baffled smile on his face.

Blackhall went up to the chestnut’s side. Him and the captain talked in whispers, the captain bending down, frowning. Then the captain kicked his mount and trotted back toward the officers’ quarters. Blackhall followed.

The rain fell harder. It drummed against the shoulders of my greatcoat. It splashed and tinged on the new boys’ helmets. In a while, Blackhall returned. He stood at parade rest in front of us and said, “Bringing in the court now. Promised the colonel there wouldn’t be trouble. Promised ’im you’d stay where you was.” His eyes caught mine. “Promised ’im you wouldn’t hoorah nor jeer.” He said, “I promised ’im. Agreed?”

I nodded. Around me, I heard a smattering of quiet “yes, sir”s.