The Complete Crime Stories (28 page)

“Jake, what the hell are you talking about?”

“She's took six of the blue ones. She dissolved them all before she put them down and she won't take anything I fix for her ad it's too late now for anything to be done and this time tomorrow night she's going to die. That's what the hell I'm talking about.”

“Holy Smoke.”

“That's right, only hit it harder.”

“Aren't you sending her to a hospital?”

“I already called.”

“Aren't you—staying with her?”

“She don't want me. And—” with a jerk of a thumb toward the soldier—“She don't want
him
. And
I'll not call Willie.
”

“This boy has to be told.”

“Then tell him.”

Another hush had fallen over the bar. Then suddenly it was cut by a whisper: “Play ‘Little Glow-Worm.'”

Jake said: “Yes, play it. God, play something!”

When he played a few bars, Fred said: “And
she's
got to be told.”

“No she hasn't”

“How do you figure that out?”

“She's coming with me. She's coming with my wife and our two kids, and take the place of the one that died. Anyway till this guy is free and maybe for good. She's going to get up with the sun and go to bed with the sun and drink milk and chase butterflies. And she's
not going to be told.
Mommy just gave her to us, that's all.”

The soldier called for “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.” Jake said: “Get over there now and tell him. About how it was, tell him what's good for him to know, and not nothing about Willie. About how it's going to be, you give him the works. And get the name of his outfit. So I can get his captain on the line and explain why he's not standing reveille.”

From the street came the sound of an ambulance siren, and soon an interne and two orderlies entered the bar. Fred stopped playing, got up, and started his dreadful walk toward the soldier in the booth.

The Taking of Montfaucon

I

I
been asked did I get a DSC in the late war, and the answer is no, but I might of got one if I had not run into some tough luck. And how that was is pretty mixed up, so I guess I better start at the beginning, so you can get it all straight and I will not have to do no backtracking. On the 26th of September, 1918, when the old 79th Division hopped off with the rest of the AEF on the big drive that started that morning, the big job ahead of us was to take a town named Montfaucon, and it was the same town where the Crown Prince of Germany has his PC [Post of Command] in 1916, when them Dutch was hammering on Verdun and he was watching his boys fight by looking up at them through a periscope. And our doughboys was in two brigades, the 157th and 158th, with two regiments in each, and the 157th Brigade was in front. But they ain't took the town because it was up on a high hill, and on the side of the hill was a whole lot of pillboxes and barbed wire what made it a tough job. Only I ain't seen none of that, because I spent the whole day on the water wagon, along with another guy name of Armbruster, and we was driving it up from the Division PC what we left to the Division PC where we was going. And that there weren't so good, because neither him, me, nor the horse hadn't had no sleep, account of the barrage shooting off all night, and every time we come to one of them sixteen-inch guns going through the woods and a Frog would squat down and pull the cord, why the horse would pretty near die and so would we. But sometime we seen a little of what was going on, like when a Jerry aviator come over and shot down four of our balloons and then flew over the road where we was and everybody tooken a shot at him, only I didn't because I happen to look at my gun after I pulled the bolt and it was all caked up with mud and I kind of changed my mind about taking a shot.

So after a while we come to a place in a trench and they said it was the new Division PC, and Ryan, who was the stable sergeant, come along and took the horse, and we got something to eat and there was still plenty shelling going on, but not bad like it was, and we figured we could get some sleep. So then it was about six o'clock in the evening. But pretty soon Captain Madeira, he come to me and says I was to go on duty. And what I was to do was to go with another guy, name of Shepler, to find the PC of the 157th Brigade, what was supposed to be one thousand yards west of where we was, and then report back. And why we was to do that was so we could find the Brigade PC in the night and carry messages to it. Because us in the Headquarters Troops, what we done in the fighting was act as couriers and all like of that, and what we done in between the fighting was curry horse belly. So me and Shepler started out. And as the Brigade PC was supposed to be one thousand yards west, and where we was was in a trench, and the trench run east and west, it looked like all we had to do was to follow the trench right into where the sun was setting and it wouldn't be no hard job to find what we was looking for.

And it weren't. In about ten minutes we come to the Brigade PC and there was General Nicholson [Brigadier General William J. Nicholson, commanding 157th Infantry Brigade] and his aides, and a bunch of guys what was in Brigade Headquarters, all setting around in the trench. But they was moving. They was all set to go forwards somewheres, and had their packs with them.

“Well,” says Shep, “we ain't got nothing to do with that. Let's go back.”

“Right,” I says. But then I got to thinking. “What the hell good is it,” I says, “for us to go back and tell them we found this PC when in a couple of minutes there ain't going to be nobody in it?”

“What the hell good is the war?” says Shep. “We was told to find this PC and we've found it. Now we go back and let them figure out what the hell good it is.”

“This PC,” I says, “soon as the General clears out, is same as a last year's bird nest.”

“That's jake with me,” says Shep. “In this man's army you do what you're told to do, and we've done it. We ain't got nothing to do with what kind of a bird's nest it is.”

“No,” I says, “we ain't done it. We was told to find a PC. And soon as Nick gets out this ain't going to be no PC, but only a dugout. We got to go with him. We got to find where his new PC is at, and then we go back.”

“Well, if we ain't done it,” says Shep, “that's different.”

So in a couple of minutes Nick started off, and we went with him, and a hell of a fine thing we done for ourself that we ain't went back in the first place, like Shep wanted to do. Because where we went, it weren't over no road and it weren't through no trench. It was straight up toward the front line over No Man's Land, and a worse walk after supper nobody ever took this side of Hell. How we went was single file, first Nick, and then them aides, and then them headquarters guys, and then us. About every fifty yards, a runner would pick us up, and point the way, and then fall back and let us pass. And what we was walking over was all shell holes and barbed wire, and you was always slipping down and busting your shin, and then all them dead horses and things was laying around, and you didn't never see one till you had your foot in it, and then it made you sick. And dead men. The first one we seen was in a trench, kind of laying up against the side, what was on a slant. And he was sighting down his gun just like he was getting ready to pull the trigger, and when you come to him you opened your mouth to beg his pardon for bothering him. And then you didn't.

Well, we went along that way for a hell of a while. And pretty soon it seemed like we wasn't nowheres at all, but was slugging along through some kind of black dream what didn't have no end, and them goddam runners look like ghosts what was standing there to point, only we wasn't never going to get where they was pointing nor nowheres else.

But after a while we come to a road and on the side of the road was a piece of corrugated iron. And Nick, soon as he come to that, wishing his musette bag and sat down on it. And then all them other guys sat down too. So me and Shep, we figured on that awhile, because at first we thought they was just taking a rest, but then Shep let on it looked like to him they was expecting to stay awhile. So then we went up to Nick.

“Sir,” I says, “is this the new Brigade PC?”

“Who are you?” he says.

“We're from Division Headquarters,” I says. “We was ordered to find the Brigade PC and report back.”

“This is the new PC,” he says.

“This piece of iron?” I says.

“Yes,” says he.

“Thank you, sir,” I says, and me and Shep saluted and left him.

“A hell of a looking PC,” says Shep, soon as we got where he couldn't hear us.

“A hell of a looking PC all right,” I says, “but it's pretty looking alongside of that trip we got going back.”

“I been thinking about that,” he says.

So then we sat down by the road a couple of minutes.

“Listen,” he says. “I ain't saying I like that trip none. But what I'm thinking about is suppose we get lost. I don't mind telling you I can't find my way back over them shell holes.”

“I got a idea,” I says.

“Shoot,” he says.

“This here road we're setting on,” I says, “must go somewheres.”

“They generally do,” he says.

“If we can find someplace what's on one end of it,” I says, “I can take you back if you don't mind a little walking. Because I know all these roads around here like a book.” And how that was, was because I had been on observation post before the drive started, and had to study them maps, and even if I hadn't never been on the roads I knowed how they run.

“I'll walk with you to sunup,” he says, “if it's on a road and we know where we're going. But I ain't going to try to get back over that No Man's Land, boy, I'll tell you that. Because I just as well try to fly.”

So we asked a whole lot of guys did they know where the road run, and not none of them knowed nothing about it. But pretty soon we found a guy in the engineers, what was fixing the road, and he said he thought the road run back to Avocourt.

“Let's go,” I says to Shep. “I know where we're at now.”

So we started out, and sure enough after a while we come to Avocourt. And I knowed there was a road run east from Avocourt over the ridge to Esnes, if we could only figure out which the hell way was east. So the moon was coming up about then, and we remembered the moon come up in the east, and we headed for it, and hit the road. And a bunch of rats come outen a trench and began going up the road in front of us, hopping along in a pretty good line, and Shep said they was trench camels, and that give us a laugh, and we felt better. And pretty soon, sure enough we come to Esnes, and turned left, and in a couple minutes we was right back in the Division PC what we had left after supper, and it weren't much to look at, but it sure did feel like home.

II

Well, we weren't no sooner there than a bunch of guys begun to holler out to Captain Madeira that here we was, and he came a-running, and if we had of been a letter from home he couldn't of been more excited about us.

“Thank God, you've come,” he says.

“Sure we've come,” says Shep; “you wasn't really worried about us, was you?”

But I seen it was more than us the Captain was worrying about, so I says:

“What's the matter?”

“General Nicholson has broken liaison,” he says, “and we've got not a way on earth to reach him unless you fellows can do it.”

“Well, I guess we can, hey kid?” I says to Shep.

But Shep shook his head. “Maybe you can,” he says, “but I ain't got no more idea where we been than a blind man. I'll keep you company, though, if you want.”

“Company hell,” says the Captain. “Here,” he says to me, “you come in and see the General.”

So he brung me into the dugout what was the PC to see General Kuhn [Major General Joseph E. Kuhn, commanding general, 79th Division]. And most of the time, the General was a pretty snappy-looking soldier. He was about medium size, and he had a cut to his jaw and a swing to his back what look like them pictures you see in books. But he weren't no snappy-looking soldier that night. He hadn't had no shave, and his eyes was all sunk in, and no wonder. Because when the Division ain't took Montfaucon that day, like they was supposed to, it balled everything up like hell. It put a pocket in the American advance, a kind of a dent, what was holding up the works all along the line. And the General was getting hell from Corps, and he had lost a lot of men, and that was why he was looking like he was.

“Do you know where General Nicholson is?” he says to me, soon as Captain Madeira had told him who I was.

“Yes, sir,” I says, “but I don't think
he
does.”

Now what the General said to that I ain't sure, but he mumbled something to hisself what sound like he be damned if he did either.

“I want you to take a message to him,” he says.

“Yes, sir,” I says.

So he commenced to write the message. And while I was standing there I was so sleepy everything look like it was turning around, like them things you see in a dream. It was a couple of aides in there, and maybe an orderly, and Captain Madeira, and it was in behind a lot of blankets, what they wet and hang over the door of a dugout to keep out gas. And in the middle of it was General Kuhn, writing on a pad in lead pencil, and I remember thinking how old he looked setting there, and then that would blank out and I couldn't see nothing but his whiskers, and then that would blank out and I would be thinking it was pretty tough on him, and I would do my best to help him out. It weren't no more than a minute, mind. Why I was thinking all them things jumbled up together was because I hadn't had no sleep.

“All right,” he says to me; “listen now while I read it to you.”

And why they read it to you is so if you lose it you can tell them what was in it and you ain't no worse off. And he hadn't no sooner started to read it then I snapped out of that dream pretty quick. Because it was short and sweet. It said that Nick was to attack right away soon as he got it. And I knowed a little about this Montfaucon stuff from hearing them brigade guys talk while we was going over No Man's Land, so I knowed I weren't carrying no message what just said good morning.

“Is that clear to you?” he says.

“Yes, sir,” I says.

“Captain, give this man a horse. As good a horse as you've got.”

“Yes, sir,” says the Captain.

“You better ride pretty lively. And report back to me here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“No, wait a minute. I'm moving my PC to Malancourt in the next hour. Do you know where Malancourt is?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hunh,” he says, like he meant thank God there was somebody in the outfit what knowed right from left and I was glad I had studied them maps good like I had and could be some use to him.

“Then report to me in Malancourt.” And me and the Captain saluted and went out.

So the Captain took me to Ryan, and Ryan saddled me a horse, and while he was doing it Shep came up and begun to talk about the argument we had about whether we was going with Nick or not, and he handed it to me for figuring out the right thing to do, and the Captain said he was goddam proud of us both for carrying out orders with some sense when everybody else act like they had went off their nut and things was all shot to hell, and I felt pretty good. So pretty soon Ryan come with the horse, and I started out, and after I had went about a couple of miles it was commencing to get light, so I dug my heels in, because I knowed I didn't have much time.

III

Well, in another five minutes I come to Avocourt. And soon as I rode around the bend I got a funny feeling in my stomach. Because I seen something I had forgot when me and Shep was there, and that was that there was two roads what run from Avocourt up to the front line, one of them running north and the other running northeast, and they kind of forked off from each other in such a way that when you was coming down one of them like we done you wouldn't notice the other one at all. And I knowed as soon as I looked at them that I didn't have no idea which one we had come over and it weren't no way to find out.