Flanders (50 page)

Across the yard the officers came: Colonel Caraway, Major Dunn, Captains Wilson and Dunston-Smith. I watched the two captains pass and thought I saw Dunston-Smith cast a furtive glance my way. Then, so very soon really, and without much ado, they were inside the pavilion. A batman and two aides went to the windows, shut them with heavy caliber bangs. Into that featureless and enigmatic building they brought Miller. I saw him cross the yard, nearly hidden by mist, a red cap to either side. I caught one clear-edged glimpse as he looked around at the sixteen of us. Dangerous men. All of us killers.

They went slowly up the three steps and entered. Blackhall entered after them, shut the door. We stood, let the rain fall, and watched the day slip into afternoon.

Driggers came by, stopped at Goodson’s side, stared out at the shut pavilion. He took stock of us, and said into Goodson’s averted face, “Come into the warm, man. Have a cuppa. The cooks have made us lemon biscuits. Why stand out here in the rain? There is nothing you can accomplish by it. Why, there is not even anything here to watch. I simply don’t see the point.”

Goodson ignored him. Like he was tired of standing, Calvert sat down on the logs. Hutchins did, too. The rain pattered down, soaked our knit caps, rolled into our eyes. After a while, Driggers went away.

A long time later, the door of the pavilion opened. Blackhall came out alone and walked toward us across the soggy grass.

Hutchins called, “What happened?”

“Don’t want yer crying out,” Blackhall warned. “Don’t want that.”

Goodson stood up. “What’d they say?”

Blackhall nailed me with a warning look. “Captain’s been found guilty. ’E’s to be executed in the morning.” I sat down hard on the logs. I didn’t cry out. Blandish sat down beside me.

“ ’E was always nice to me,” Blandish said. “A real gent, like.”

I told him to shut up.

The door opened again and two red caps led Miller out.

His chin was high, his gait loose and easy, his expression calm. He cast one look at us as he passed. The afternoon was dark, but I thought I saw him smile.

Next the colonel came, and Dunn. Then Wilson with Dunston-Smith. Wilson stopped in the meadow and let the others walk on. He stared at us a long time.

Blackhall sat down beside me. “Blandish? Dismissed.”

“Want to stay, sir,” he complained.

“Go get the men sommit. You and Goodson. Men ’as to eat. “

The two walked away in the gathering dark.

“Was wounded around who seen it,” Blackhall said, “but they was our company, and wouldn’t speak against ’im. Was only that med aide what served as witness. Fool admitted to it, right in court. Didn’t ’ave to, you know. Officer’s word against an enlisted. Anyways, I stood up and showed all me evidence, but the women wasn’t an issue, that’s what the colonel said.”

Rain pattered down, soaked Blackhall’s British Warm. He took his dress cap off, shook it, wiped the wet from his balding, close-cropped head. “Tomorrow, when it ’appens, you’re to keep your mouf shut, understand?”

I pictured the firing squad in that broad meadow. Puffs of smoke from the barrels. The weary Miller slumping.

“Promise me,” Blackhall said.

I did.

“The men can stay ’ere or can go to barracks. Tomorrow, when it’s done, they can watch; but they’ll need to keep to the road. That was the agreement. I guaranteed it. Stanhope, don’t make me out a liar.”

I hugged my knees, let the rain wash my face.

Blackhall said, “I got a way you can visit.”

There in the mud he drew a map, showed me where the sentries passed the glasshouse, what times I could expect them. When he was finished, he scratched over the lines he’d made, said he was going to get dinner, said he had plans to sleep in quarters.

Then he shook my hand. “Miller’s the best man I ever worked for, copper or army. But ’e’s the kind of fool tries to make life right for everybody. ’E fiddles at things. Breaks ’is back trying. That sort of goodness always comes back on you.”

He got up, groaning, knees popping, and walked over to Riddell. He bent down and they whispered back and forth for a while. The rain let up. When smoky dusk rolled over the meadow, when warm, welcoming lights came on in the barracks windows, Riddell got up and left with him.

Calvert sat down beside me, jerked his chin toward our guard. “Scared of us.” The squad had dwindled to three cold-looking boys.

He lit up two Woodbines, passed me one. We smoked and watched the last of twilight leave the meadow. Night came on. Hutchins and Goodson left, returned with a lantern and tarps.

“ ’Ow’ll it be, you think,” Calvert asked, “to stand ’ere and watch ’em kill ’im?”

The wind was brisk. The cold buried itself under my coat, dug under my vest, and lodged in a place near my heart. The chill hurt. It made me shiver.

I got to my feet.

Calvert looked up at me. “You all right, Stanhope?”

I walked away, down the corduroy road and past the paddocks. I went into the warm of the stables and stood, my hand on the door, staring into the glow of the lantern and the empty golden straw.

Memory got so big that it pushed me out. I left, went down past the officers’ quarters. Everything there was contained, the doors and windows shuttered all except for one. Inside a room Wilson sat on a straight-backed wooden chair, arms hanging so limp in his lap that it looked like he was dead.

I broke into a trot, then into a run. Past the place where the officers had once practiced their show—Dunston-Smith on the ill-tuned piano, Miller laughing in his chorus line—past the weeping willow and the bridge-Dunston-Smith and Miller close, the smell of beer heavy in the air. I didn’t stop until the sentry challenged me.

“Talk funny,” he said. He was just a dark blot in the night—a shadow soldier, same as me.

“I’m an American.” Funny how proud it made me. Right then, right there. It made me homesick, too. I thought of the limestone hills, the Perdenales. I pictured the pavilion and its red, white, and blue flag; the stripes turned the wrong way, all the stars extinguished.

“What’chur business?”

“I’m in Captain Miller’s company.”

I heard the clank of his gear as he moved. Too dark to see, but I knew he’d aimed his rifle. “Best be getting on.” The fright in his voice amazed me.

I turned around and walked away.

I followed the memory of Blackhall’s map, squeezed between the wall of a storage building and the latrines. I came out on the far side of the glasshouse: a long dark rectangle, one square of meshed yellow.

“Sir!” I whispered. The window was high. I took off my gloves, reached my arm up far as I could, grabbed the sill. “Sir!”

Rustling within. Miller’s voice, first a dull “What?” then a disbelieving “Stanhope?”

Fingers met mine through the mesh. I jerked my hand away, then realized what I’d done. I reached out for him this time. The warmth of his touch made my eyes well up. It sapped the strength out of my legs.

“Aw, goddamn you,” I said. I leaned my head against my arm, hung onto the wire tight. “Why didn’t you just bald-faced lie?”

I didn’t expect the laugh. I didn’t ever think that, from a dying man, it could go on as long or could grow so loud. Then a “Shhh” from Miller, and the boom of footsteps on hardwood boards. From somewhere in the building, mutters.

I took my hand down from the mesh, stuck it in my coat to warm it. Across the way, lanterns winked slow and lazy the way the lights in the graveyard do.

Then from the window, “Stanhope?”

“Yeah?” I put my hand back up. His hand was waiting. I remembered Pickering in the hospital, unconscious but still holding on.

“I had to stop him,” Miller said.

“I know that, sir.”

“And I was caught at the thing fair and square. Aide said he’d seen me. Now no one else can be blamed. At least there’s some justice to it.”

“Ain’t no justice, sir. That’s just goddamned bullshit. Wasn’t no justice when my pa came looking for me with the belt. Never saw a lick of justice, ’cept for what came from you.”

He sighed. “Well. There is justice. I wish you’d believe that. Wish you’d try to bring it about. Otherwise what I’ve done has no meaning, you see.”

We stood for a while, just touching.

“You scared?” I asked him.

His fingertip rubbed lightly up and down my knuckle and I let him. I wouldn’t move my hand away. Never again.

“There’s this graveyard,” I told him. “It’s a place I go in my dreams. Dunleavy’s there. And Marrs and O’Shaughnessy and the others. It’s pretty. There’s a girl who watches over. That’s where we go when we die, I think. I think we sleep for a while.”

He sniffed. “Thoughtful of you, but I don’t need any hope of Heaven. Most kind of you to try. Still, one turns to religion at the end. Must be inevitable, I suppose. I have been sitting there considering what sort of Jew I have made.”

Miller, tinkering at goodness.

“Tell you one thing, sir. The guys in your company respect the hell out of you. Looks like they’re going to hang around outside the pavilion until it’s all over with. Funny the way it happened. Nobody’s said anything. Nobody’s made no plans. Haven’t talked about mutiny. They just stand there, like everybody’s too tired to move.”

“You must persuade them not to do anything foolish. Shouldn’t want any of you hurt for my sake.”

We had jumped the bags for him. We had faced shelling and not run away. We had walked head-on into machine-gun fire. “I’ll tell ’em.”

“Kind of you to come.” His fingers went away.

“Sir!”

His voice was faint with distance. “Best get back to barracks. Do persuade the rest of the men to go with you. Tell them I am perfectly well.”

“Sir!” I hissed, but he didn’t answer.

I splashed back to the storage building, fumbled around in the dark until I found something to stand on. I dragged the crate to the window, stood up on one end. I could see the cot, his boots. He was lying down.

“Sir!”

No answer.

“Damn it, sir!”

The boots moved off the bed. A tired grunt, and he was back at the window again. “Do go on to barracks, Stanhope.” From his voice I could tell he’d been crying.

“I’m not leaving you.” When they brought him out, I’d stand in front of his body. I’d take the bullets for him.

He lifted his hand to the mesh. In the light of his candle I could see his fingertips—skin pale from the cold, the half moons of his nails. I caught him, held on. “Listen to me. Whatever you believe, there’s this graveyard.”

“We are born, and then we die. We do the best we can.”

“All right, then. Tell me what you believe.”

“Just that. Doing one’s best. Good Lord, Stanhope. It is complex. One spends a lifetime studying the Torah.”

“Give me something to hang onto. Shit. Don’t you see? Tomorrow I got to stand there and watch them murder you.”

A long and contemplative silence, then “ ‘What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor,’ ” he told me. “Shammai said that that is the whole of the Torah. The rest is merely commentary on it.”

I held his hand. There’s something to touching, Bobby. Even asleep, Pickering knew that.

“As they lead me out, I’ll be saying the
Shema Ysrael,”
he said. “It’s what a Jew should do if he knows he’s to die. Well. So. Not the first time. Whenever I jumped the bags, you know, I said the
Shema.”

“Say it.”

He taught it to me, syllable by syllable.
Hear, O
Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.
I said it with him while moisture collected on the mesh, while it beaded on the sill. He asked if I’d be there when he was buried, if I’d say a Kaddish over him. And then he taught me that.

“There’s this graveyard,” I said when he was finished.

He shushed me. “Dear Stanhope,” he said. “Your being here is enough.”

A noise. Miller’s fingers slipped away. I reached out, tried to hold on, but the mesh stood in between.

From a distance, Dunston-Smith’s shy question, “Richard?”

And Miller’s surprised and heartfelt, “Colin. So glad you came.”

I left them, walked past the storage building, the paddocks, the mess hall. I shoved my hands in my pockets and strode fast through the muck. Damn him. Forgiveness without limits is stupidity. I don’t know, Bobby. Does God really expect that? Miller forgiving Dunston-Smith. Probably forgiving the men who would shoot him. Forgiveness lurked like a flaw in Miller, the way Pa does in my dreams.

After a while I wandered back. Miller’s candle was still burning. I stepped up on the crate and looked inside. The room was empty except for the edge of that cot, those boots.

“Captain Miller?”

He bolted up so fast that the cot thumped the wall. “Thought you’d gone.”

He came back to the window, but didn’t lift his hand to mine.

“Hate to ask, but would you do me a favor? It’s my father.” He was crying and trying his best to hide it. “Would you write him? Could you do that? Just a short note. Let him know that I did what I thought right.”