Flanders (51 page)

“You bet I will, sir.”

“I’ve asked Colin, but he’s in an awkward position, you see. Can’t be helped.”

Bullshit,
I thought. “I’ll do it. Don’t you worry, sir.”

“Yes, well.” He was fighting sobs. “Perhaps you’d best run on.”

“I won’t ever leave you.”

I heard his footsteps as he walked away.

“There’s this graveyard, sir.”

The cot creaked as he lay down.

“Look for me there,” I said.

I slipped away into the dark, stealthy as Turnhill had when he was dying. I wandered down through the storage buildings and past the mess hall. I walked the log road to the dark, huddled obstacle in its path. The men were still waiting, and I knew then that they hadn’t been waiting for me. They’d been waiting for dawn.

I sat down beside Calvert. “We’re going to bury ’im,” he said. “Me and Sergeant and Goodson and Hutchins. Blackhall says ’e’ll be there. And Blandish, too.”

I stretched out my legs.

“They was about putting ’im wif the cowards and the criminals, but that won’t ’appen. Lieutenant spoke to Dunn about it.”

Blandish threw me a tarp. Halcomb passed me down a cheese sandwich. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten, the last time I’d slept.

We sat and watched the sky go from ebon to charcoal. Lights came on in the barracks and in the mess hall. Halcomb and Goodson brought us all back a dixie of tea, and we drank while the sky turned pearl.

Down the log road Blackhall and Riddell and Driggers came walking. They were in their dress uniforms and they looked fine.

“Soon now,” Blackhall said.

I stood. The others stood up with me. In the glasshouse, they’d be offering him breakfast. He’d refuse.

A foggy morning. Over by the mess hall a crew was dumping the morning’s trash. A flock of birds flew up from a treeline and I followed their flight, my neck craning. A squad of men marched up and surrounded us, their rifles cradled.

In the glasshouse, they’d be directing the chaplain in to him. Miller would send him away. The last fear would hit. Try as he might to keep his hand steady, the teacup would jitter in his hands.

Dunn and Caraway emerged from the glasshouse first. Small as toy soldiers, they walked across the wet field. Then a knot of other officers came: Wilson, Everett, Dunston-Smith. I watched them approach Dunn and halt. Everyone waited.

Through the gauzy fog came the firing squad: new boys, smart in their clean coats. A lieutenant carried out a straight-backed chair and set it down. Dunn barked an order. The lieutenant moved the chair closer. Caraway bellowed and gestured. The lieutenant repositioned. The firing squad looked at each other. The chair was no more than five yards away.

Two red caps came out of the glasshouse, the handcuffed Miller between them. They’d sent him out without his coat, and it was a cold day. Still, he walked proud, Bobby. He kept his head up. He didn’t stumble. Beside me, Calvert came to attention. We all stood, saluting rigid and right as we’d ever had in training.

Miller’s mouth was moving.

Shema Yisrael.

I remembered the feel of his hand in mine, but then thought that the hand I remembered might have been Pickering’s. I was tired. Memories bled into each other and edges blurred.

The lieutenant was young and inexperienced. He blindfolded Miller too soon. Handcuffed, unable to see, Miller staggered. The lieutenant caught his arm and tried to pull him to the chair. Miller slipped in the mud, nearly went down.

Goodson muttered angrily, “Blast them.”

Adonai Eloheynu.

Miller slipped again, his lips still moving. Dunn came forward, took his other arm.

Adonai Echod.

Dunn and the lieutenant played an excruciating game of blindman’s buff, pulling Miller, stumbling, with them. Once at the chair, they let him go. He fell awkwardly into it, his back bent, his head lowered and swiveling right to left, right to left, searching for the correct posture. Miller, needing to do things right.

They were so far away that the lieutenant’s shout was like the final reverberation of an echo. “Ready.”

My hand shook so, my forefinger tapped my eyebrow. My back, so straight, tensed. But I didn’t cry out. Miller was sitting sideways, shivering in the cold and the rain, his head moving side to side, not knowing which direction to face.

Softly over the still-green meadow: “Aim.”

Miller’s back snapped erect as if they had already fired. He sat rigid, facing east. Miller, trying his best. His mouth was moving.

Blandish said, “Need to set him about, don’t they.” Then he shouted, “Bugger it! Set him right! He’s cold! Give him a blanket! You blind or sommit?”

Miller raised his head in our direction.

Calvert told Blandish to shut up.

So quiet the order to fire. So faint the pop of the guns. Beautiful, the white puffs from the barrels; and I didn’t cry out. Miller shuddered: once, twice. He slid from his chair, kneeling. Slow, so slow, he tumbled the rest of the way. He twitched once, I think, but it was so easy, really. A better and surer thing than battle. The lieutenant took out his side arm, cocked it, walked to Miller’s side, and shot him in the head.

They left him and walked away. The bunch of us came forward to where he was lying. Blackhall knelt and took the blindfold off. The bullet from the pistol had stolen Miller’s face.

We tucked him into one of the tarps and carried him with us. Riddell had found us a pretty spot, right by a poplar sapling. I said the Kaddish over him, like he’d taught me. The grave Hutchins and Riddell dug had filled up with water; and we put him in gentle, watched the water take him. All of us took turns filling the grave. Goodson had made a wooden cross with flowers on it. I watched him hammer the cross at Miller’s head and didn’t have the heart to correct him. But what Goodson did was all right. The worst was over, and everything was all right.

When we were finished we said words over him. The boys remembered odd kindnesses here and there. Riddell burst into tears and bawled like a baby. We left Miller in the drizzle and the cold, and we went back to barracks. The brass didn’t badger us. They didn’t ask us any questions. They levied no fines, no punishments. I fell into my cot and slept, and didn’t wake up until late the next day. I didn’t dream about him.

Travis Lee

* * *

DECEMBER 14, THE REST AREA

Dear Bobby,

The day after we buried Miller I went looking for Dunston-Smith. I stopped a batman, who hadn’t seen him; found Wilson, who had. Wilson looked dazed and puffy-eyed. Still, with that British upper-class courtesy, he drew my route in the air: Turn by the mess hall, go down the log road to the officers’ billets, knock up the fourth barracks on the end.

“He was a wonderful officer,” Wilson said. “Nothing we could do, you know.”

I left him, walked by the mess hall, down the corduroy road, past the officers’ billets. I went up the steps of the fourth building and saw that the door was ajar. I knocked on the jamb, heard Dunston-Smith say, “Come.”

He straightened when he saw me. He had been packing. There was an open crate on the cot. He was holding a book. The room smelled of Earl Grey tea. On a small table beside the bed was a pencil, a length of gold chain with a Star of David, and beside it a photograph of a beautiful, sad-eyed girl. I felt Miller in that room so strong that I nearly called out his name.

Dunston-Smith held the book out: a small book with a blue cloth cover, a bloom of gray mold across it. I remembered Miller and Dunston-Smith and a bloom of moss on a straw-warm hut in the woods. “For you, I believe. Richard was quite the romantic.”

The book smelled of mildew. The pages were swollen by damp, rain-stained. I opened it up, read the words:
He has outsoared the shadow of our night.

“He was in love with you, you know.”

I looked up, carrying the next line of verse with me:
Envy and calumny and hate and pain.

“Ridiculously, deliriously in love. Silly about you as a schoolgirl.” Dunston-Smith’s eyes were clear and empty; nothing—neither guilt, nor jealousy—to cloud them. He took another book from a stack on the table, read the spine. “A Talmud, in Hebrew. Doubt you would want that.” Then, surprisingly, a hip-sprung stance. A toss of his head. An arch, pouting smile. Clues he had never shown me. “You’re not of the same persuasion.” He met my eyes again.

The volume of Shelley open in my hands. Simple white page; lucid black letters.
And that unrest which men miscall delight.
“No.”

I heard the Talmud drop into the crate with a dull thud.

“I came to get his father’s address.”

He picked up the framed photograph and stared at it a while. The glass caught the light from the window, winked.

“He asked me to write, sir.”

The sad-eyed girl disappeared into the crate, put down so gently that I never heard the sound of her leaving.

“Sir?” I said softly. “It was the last thing he asked of me.”

I knew why Miller loved him. Dunston-Smith was a weak man, and Miller was so damned good at forgiveness. His finger tapped the stack of books.

“Sir?”

Abrupt and furious movement. He yanked a journal out of the stack, ripped a page from it, grabbed the pencil, and started scribbling. Under his breath, he muttered angrily, “Yes. Best that someone do, what? Best that it’s known.”

Dunston-Smith was giving me the address, even though I knew the whole story, even though I could tell Miller’s father the truth behind why the army had hunted him. Why they had killed him. That Dunston-Smith had been his lover. I could even tell the whole wide world that in the end, Dunston-Smith had betrayed him.

He stood straight, as if he had been ordered to attention. He whipped his hand out, the scrawled page in it. His expression gave nothing away—he’d trained himself to hide things. But there was too much pressure. A muscle twitched in his cheek. I closed my fingers over the paper, took a crisp step backward.

“Whatever your relationship—” he said. He looked away quickly, picked up another book. “I’m glad his affections were returned.”

I stood for another heartbeat in that hushed room that still smelled of Miller. Then I left, closing the door quietly. I went back to the barracks, got out my paper, and wrote:
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Miller, I knew your son.

Like Miller had that time he wrote the letter to Ma, I stopped and couldn’t go on. Around me, the boys came and went. A few of the newer ones, Blandish and Hunter, had already forgotten yesterday and were laughing. Against regulations, I stoked up the primus and made myself a cup of tea.

Calvert came around and asked if I wanted dinner. I had been staring at the paper so long that it surprised me to see the lamps had been lit and the sun was already going down.

“Got to eat, chum,” he said. “Won’t do, this bloody ’unger strike. Go into the faints. Won’t carry you about, can count on that.”

I told him to bring me something back. He left with Goodson and Hutchins. I watched them walk into the muddy yard, past the intermittent glow of the lamps; watched them skirt the lustrous puddles.

I took up my pen and, while they were gone, I finished the letter. Here’s what I wrote:

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Miller:

I knew your son. He was a brave man. I guess you would want to know that. But more, he was a good man; the best commander I ever served under. Maybe the best man I ever knew.

I regret that there was no Jew here for him; but I assure you that he said his Shema before he died. We buried him soon thereafter, in a pretty spot; and I said a Kaddish over him. We did the best we could.
Mr. Miller, I want you to know that he spoke of you fondly. I think that must be important, sir, for I have noticed that boys in battle most often call out for their mothers. It surprised me, frankly, the affectionate regard in which he held you. My own father and I were not as close.

Also, let his Sarah know that he always kept her picture with him. He spoke of her often, and with great admiration. She must be an extraordinary girl. She was such an integral part of our friendship that it seems at times that I knew her.