The Woodcarver's Secret (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (26 page)

“Get the candy—that’s what they want!” he yelled.

No one got the message so he snatched his own shovel and scooped up the
paper wrapper, flinging it over the top of the trench. Two of the rats figured
it out and scrabbled up the wall after it. A minute later, the other live ones
had followed.

Sergeant Calloway’s voice boomed. “What the hell! Get those things out
of here!”

At least shoveling up the dead rats and throwing them out of the trench
gave them something to do, Patricio thought as he joined the effort.

“Nasty, disease breeders,” muttered Calloway as he walked down the
line.

“Once the rain lets up I’m getting a haircut,” Roberto said, making
conversation as the last of the dead rats went over the top. “There’s some
Italian guy from New Jersey brought his gear with him, says he ran a barbershop
back home. A real haircut by a guy who knows what he’s doing would be nice.”

“Better than the sloppy one the Army gives you. Maybe I’ll have him do
mine too.” Any activity was better than none; the weeks of inaction showed in
the blank eyes and slack jaws of the men. No wonder they’d leapt to the task
when the rats came.

The patter of rain on their helmets (those things the men joked about
looking like inverted soup bowls) lessened, and as if the clouds had overheard
their conversation a large patch of blue appeared. And, in answer, a volley of
mortar fire began to land heavy rounds nearby. From boredom to terror—it was
the story of their lives these past three months.

They took two days and nights under siege, returning rounds from their
own mortars to push back and retake the slight advantage the Germans had
gained. Eventually, there came the reassuring roar of tanks and Colonel Dugan,
in charge of the battalion, redoubled the offensive, sending infantry to aid in
taking the village only two miles away. Patricio lost track of Roberto in the
mad cacophony of sound and flying dirt, only to find him again when they
mustered outside a tiny patisserie.

“We lost about two hundred,” he overheard Calloway reporting to the
colonel. “Close to a thousand injured.”

“Dig graves,” Calloway was told. “The medical corps is coming along to
treat the wounded.”

Calloway began shouting orders. Patricio and Roberto were sent down the
narrow lane between buildings to find a group of well over two hundred Germans
sitting on the ground with their hands on their helmets guarded by a dozen or
so armed Americans. Prisoners.

“We’re marching them to Bois de
Folie
where
the train will take them to a POW camp,” a Sergeant O’Malley informed them.
“Then we’re off to Belleau Wood where we’ll join up with the Marines.”

Patricio had heard rumor, trench talk, that Belleau Wood was the real
objective; it would probably be one of the larger battles of the campaign with
two full U.S. divisions plus British and French troops. It looked as if he
wouldn’t get his haircut for some time.

* * *

Twenty-six days. Patricio’s company joined the battle after the Germans
had already broken through the French lines to the left of the Marine division,
which had then force-marched ten kilometers through the night, trampling grain
fields and negotiating through patches of forest. By the time his division
assembled and joined the fierce fighting for Hill 142, the carnage included a
significant number of officers as well as enlisted men. Some of the French
began to retreat but the cry often repeated through the American troops were
the words of Marine Captain Lloyd Williams who said, “Retreat? Hell, we just
got here!”

The sentiment got them through as waves of soldiers were cut down when
they advanced on the German positions, as attacks and counter-attacks went on
with little progress in either direction for days, then weeks. When the Woods were
finally declared to be definitively in American hands, the men spent the
following days digging graves. Patricio and Roberto had lost a number of
comrades—but at least not each other.

Calloway had been killed and the new sergeant in charge granted the men
a brief leave to go in small groups to the nearest town on the Paris-Metz road.
A command center had been set up there, and Sergeant promised them a place to
get a hot bath and to receive mail from home. The six mile walk felt like
nothing, not after the torture they’d been through.

“All I want—after the hot bath—is a letter from Emelia,” Patricio said,
his step remarkably light.

“I’ll just be happy to have the bath,” Roberto said, with a little pang
of envy. There was no girl waiting for him, either in Panama or America.

It turned out that the bath would be a shower, since the first tub of
water filled for one of the soldiers had turned to a muddy mess and water was
too limited to allow each man a full tub of his own. But the water coming from
the spigots in the tiled room was hot and there was plenty of soap. No one
complained.

Patricio waited his turn, pulling off his nearly rotten boots and
socks, massaging his aching feet. He would need to ask for salve for the
blisters, but at least they had not become infected from the endless damp
during their month in the trenches.

His tunic came off next and he poked his fingers into the inside pocket
for the reassuring feel of his lucky Spanish
real
. His finger went
through a hole in the material and he realized with a sinking feeling that the
ancient coin was gone. Lost somewhere on the battlefield. All the terror of
being shot at, all the blood, burying hundreds of his fellow soldiers—he’d held
himself together through it all. But now he felt tears spill over his eyelids.
A piece of home, of his family heritage, was gone forever.

“Next up,” said a man with a towel around his waist who had just
stepped out of the shower.

Patricio picked up a towel for himself and stumbled blindly toward the
tiled enclosure.
You’ve been through worse,
he told himself.
Surely
papa has more of the coins at home. He can send another one.
But as he
scrubbed his hair with the bar of homemade French soap he had to wonder—had his
luck already run out?

An hour later he stood in front of the dark green command center tent.
The mail truck had apparently been delayed but was due soon. Roberto came
limping toward him, a dour look on his face.

“What’s wrong?” At least Patricio’s mind had something to focus on
other than his own loss.

“Doc says my foot’s pretty bad. I have to stay here, get admitted to
the hospital tent.”

“Don’t joke around.”

“Not joking. It’s the stupid infection I got out there in the trench.”

“I told you not to
scrat
—”

“I know, I know.” Roberto looked down at his feet which were, Patricio
noticed for the first time, clad in soft slippers instead of his regular boots.

Patricio’s thoughts bounced around. He would go back to the front
without his best friend, the one who had kept him sane out there with his silly
jokes and his comments about haircuts and stories of his sweet little mama from
Panama.

“My toes are turning black,” Roberto said quietly. “Doc has to cut two
of them off. If it gets worse, I could lose my whole foot.”

“What!”

“Shh—don’t say anything in front of the others.”

A dozen men from their company approached, jostling each other, big
smiles all around, relief at having survived the past month’s horrendous
battle, happy to be clean and anticipating mail from home. In answer to that
prayer, a large truck lumbered around the bend in the road, a big transport
with canvas cover and squealing brakes.

“Got mail for Companies A, C and G,” shouted the man who had bounded
from the passenger side. “Give us a minute.”

No one wanted to give them even two seconds, but one thing you learned
in the Army was to wait for things; wait weeks in a trench in the rain and mud
until your day came to be shot at, followed by your few hours of freedom so you
could be told your foot might have to be cut off. Patricio slid a glance toward
Roberto. His friend looked grimly determined to enjoy the possibility of a
letter from home. Any bit of joy in the face of the unthinkable.

“Packages first!” shouted the PFC. “Santini!”

He handed down a small box to the dark-haired man who ran forward with
a whoop.

“Atkins!” A happy shout from the back of the crowd. “Foster! Smith,
Robert-o!”

Patricio smiled at the mispronunciation while Roberto pushed to the
open tailgate of the truck. Inevitably, most of the fellows in their unit had
taken to calling the two of them Patrick and Robert. They’d discovered there
were only so many times you could correct someone’s mangling of your language
before you decided to give up and go along with it.

Roberto came back with a box about twelve inches long and five inches
tall, wrapped in heavy brown paper and pasted with unfamiliar postage stamps.
His grin stretched the full width of his face. “From my
mamacita
—it
has to be something good!”

The PFC had opened a big canvas bag and was pulling out fistfuls of
letters. He called out names and tossed the envelopes, like flat paper
airplanes, into the crowd. Patricio focused, aware of the ache inside him for
news—any news—of home.

“Sanchez!”

The envelope was not one of the flimsies with a red and blue border which
many families used for military mail. This one was of quality paper, heavy. The
soldier who passed it along to him sniffed it and grinned knowingly. “Sanchez
has a girl back home,” he taunted.

Patricio grabbed the envelope and shot the guy a look.
So what, you
don’t have someone?

He wanted to rip open the flap and devour the letter on the spot but
names were still being called and there was the chance that he might get
something else, a letter from his parents or his little sister. He tucked the
precious envelope inside his tunic. Emelia’s words should be saved for a
private moment anyway.

Beside him, Roberto had torn through the brown paper on his package.
Inside, Patricio could see that it contained something carved of wood, a box
with a lumpy surface.

“Ah, cookies from mama!” Roberto said sniffing the lid. He cradled the
box closely. “We will get into these right away.”

Just then the mail guy called Roberto’s name again, holding up a
letter.

“Here!” he shouted, and others passed the letter over their shoulders.

A second letter for Patricio, this addressed in his mother’s hand.

“That’s all,” the PFC said with a shrug toward those who had not
received anything. The disappointed ones shuffled away listlessly.

“Over here,” Roberto said, nodding toward a quiet spot near a clothing
boutique that didn’t look as if it had been open in months. They slid to the
ground, their backs against the stone wall, and tore into their letters.

Emelia’s delicate handwriting filled the single sheet of her personal
stationery.
My dear Patricio …

My
dear
. She still loved him! He read the words, which told of
everyday events—the church bazaar, her younger sister making her first skirt on
the new sewing machine their father had purchased, a calf getting out of its
pen and coming into the kitchen—but the image he clung to was of Emelia the
last time he’d seen her. Wearing a blue dress with some kind of small flowers
printed on it, a darker blue hat with a brim that dipped in front and shaded
her delicate skin. Her face … somehow he remembered her dark eyes and arching
brows, but he could not quite make her smile come into focus. He stared at the
letter more intently, as if it would make her face appear clearly to him. His
eyes dimmed a little. What if he forgot her before he could go home? What if
she forgot him?

A quiver of panic raced through his gut, the urge to run down the
street and leap aboard one of the trucks and demand that it take him to the
coast, to an outbound ship, to his home. He glanced at Roberto, who was reading
his own letter with a little smile on his face. The anxiety passed.

He reached into his pocket to touch his lucky
real
but it was
not there and he remembered that it had disappeared somewhere on the
battlefield. The panic threatened to return and he forced himself not to think
of it.

He folded Emelia’s letter back into its envelope and opened the one
from his mother. Three lines down, her words stood out.
I do not want to
worry you, but thought you should know this. It’s your father. The doctor says
it was a mild heart attack. He will be fine, my dear son, please do not worry.
We have arranged extra help with this year’s crops and everything will be fine.
The corn is already growing tall …

Patricio blew out a long breath and reread the passage. Papá? His heart?
Heart attacks were for old men and his papa had only turned forty; was he an
old man already? He stared at a spot somewhere in the middle of the road,
thinking frantically. Could he obtain a leave of absence, plead a family
emergency? But the commander would want to see the letter and Mamá had made it
sound as though everything would be all right. More than ever he wanted his
lucky
real
.