This Is How I'd Love You (12 page)

“We?” Rogerson says, incredulous. “Bullshit. It’s you or me, Reid. Not both.”

“I was being charitable, Rogerson. Obviously it’s me.”

“Unless you don’t make it,” Rogerson says, lighting another cigarette.

Charles throws a hard punch into his shoulder. “Bastard.”

Rogerson laughs. “There are silver linings, eh?”

“She wouldn’t have you. She’s refined. Discriminating.”

“But if you’re gone, and I’m the closest thing to her dear Mr. Reid. You see? I’m part of your history. I’ve got the broad shoulders girls love to cry upon.”

Charles puts his foot on the brake. He turns to face Rogerson. “That’s not funny. Not at all. In fact, I think I may be sick to my stomach.” He makes a production of gagging with Rogerson’s lap his target. Rogerson squirms slightly, entirely unsure of the veracity of his nausea.

Finally, Charles swallows mightily and puts the King George back into gear. “I think I could defy all metaphysical limitations and haunt you so fiercely you’d beg her to leave you.”

Rogerson puts his hand to his helmet and salutes. “Aye, aye, sir.”

When they arrive at the train station, it is bustling with activity. In addition to the other ambulances unloading wounded from other clearing stations onto the train, there are large groups of refugees. There is an old woman with her goat tethered to her wrist, a pile of books in her arms, and a cloth bundle tied to her back. Her hair is short and thinning with barely any color, making her look like a freshly hatched fowl. She leads the crowd, mostly very young and very old, babies riding donkeys, and old men carrying chickens.

Charles and Rogerson get to work, unloading stretchers and carefully transferring the boys to the Red Cross train. Some of their bandages have soaked through with blood, but they don’t risk changing them here for fear of a hemorrhage. The entire train is saturated with the salty, clotted, metallic smell of blood.

Standing back out in the sunshine, Charles takes a deep breath.

“Your face,” an old man waiting with the refugees says to Charles, using an arm to gesture, “is covered in blood.” His French accent is heavy and for a moment, as Charles closes up the back of the King George, he doesn’t understand him.

Charles touches his cheek. “Oh, it’s just mud,” he says to the old man, smiling. “From the road.”

The white chicken trembling under the old man’s arm squawks. “Ah, mud. Looks like blood. Everything looks like blood now.”

Charles nods. “Where are you headed?”

He shrugs. “Wherever the train takes us.”

“Good luck to you,” Charles says, offering the man a cigarette from the pack in his pocket.

The old woman just in front of this man observes his offer and she immediately leaves her place in line and stands beside Charles, her hand on his arm. She speaks no English, but her meaning is perfectly clear. Within seconds, nearly half the crowd of refugees has followed her lead, reaching for Charles, pulling at his jacket, begging for a drink, a smoke, a ride. Charles hands out the rest of his half dozen cigarettes, but that only seems to enrage them as they argue over the distribution.

One little girl no more than five has wrapped her arms around his leg, burying her face in his pants. Another old man is trying to relieve him of his helmet, buckled loosely beneath his chin. Charles holds tightly to his helmet with one hand while he works on the little girl’s hands with the other, trying to pry them off.

Suddenly Rogerson lays on the horn. “Get back in line.
Retournez à votre place. Maintenant
.”

Slowly and with disgust, the old people and the babies in their charge turn away and leave Charles alone again. The little girl wipes her snot against his pants one final time and then lets go. She stands on his boot with both feet, her weight barely registering, then follows the crowd.

He walks around the King George and sits in the passenger seat without a word.

“Merci,”
Rogerson says to nobody as he starts the engine. The ride back is solemn. The mud splashes up and stains the opposite arm and side of each of their faces, making the dirtying complete.

“I gave away all my smokes,” Charles says finally.

“Of course you did,” Rogerson replies.

 • • • 

R
ogerson is in the latrine with a stomach flu the next night when the front blows up. For weeks, there has been a pattern to the fighting, with the heaviest fire in the middle of the day, and the evenings usually spent on reconnaissance or resupply at the front and surgery and wound dressing for the CCS. But this night is different, a tremble beneath their feet after dinner, coupled with the shrill moan of far-off artillery. Charles gives up thoughts of sleep, not knowing how long it will be before things quiet enough to evacuate the wounded.

He stands outside the latrine door and calls to Rogerson, “Is it all coming out right?”

“Damn it, Reid. Shove off.” Charles hears him gag and the awful sluice of vomit hitting the hole.

“At least you’re escaping a night run,” Charles says, leaning his back against the wall. “You’ll get to sleep once your stomach settles.”

“Which may be never.” He hears him spit and moan slightly. “Tell me, was there a letter?”

Charles lights a cigarette and puts his hand against the envelope in his chest pocket. “Yep.”

“Mrs. Immortality. Keeping us alive all the way from the Wild West of America. God, I love her.”

Charles smiles. A snag of jealousy pulls at his chest when Rogerson talks like that, as though she is a girl to be shared. As though she is theirs, together, a joint adoration. But he’s given up keeping Hensley to himself. He can’t. He lets Rogerson read each letter, watching his eyes as they move over her words, relieved, at least, that they are real. He has confirmation of her existence, her singularity, her appeal. But he writes on his own, at dawn, usually, if they are not already in the King George. Rogerson seems to accept this. It does not diminish his participation in the fantasy. And Charles can’t blame him. They both know that it matters to whom the letters are addressed. She is writing Charles’s name in the salutation, addressing
his
questions and passing the sound of
his
words through her mouth as she reads.

While the soldiers at the front scream obscenities and whisper their hopeful prayers as they climb over the edge, Charles stands outside the latrine and reads Hensley’s words. In between Rogerson’s violent bouts of nausea and the crescendos of gunfire, Hensley consoles them both.

Dear Mr. Reid,

It’s been said that we are walking on gold here. Rumor has it, and you know how rumors fly, there is so much gold that it is literally beneath our feet, just waiting to be found. I fancy this image as I walk to the small stream running not far from our house and then bravely put my bare feet into the frigid water. I tell myself, Hensley, you are standing on a ribbon of gold, worth millions of dollars. You are the world’s richest girl and you can order bolts of silk and French linen, sprinkle gold flecks on your morning oatmeal, and sail a yacht to Greece. Of course, the old cottonwood trees that bend their branches graciously over the stream, giving it shadow and romance, have been twisting their roots through all that gold, pushing their way through its hard ore, for hundreds of years and they are not dressed in silk, nor have they commissioned fancy boats or golden cereal. Given their stature and the lush green leaves that joyfully host owls (!), sparrows, squirrels, and even bats, I’m told, I wonder if my aspirations are misplaced. I wonder if I would do better to emulate the cottonwood for its dreams: a strong, hidden heart that is unmoved by a dry summer or a dreary winter, but that can appreciate a powerful gust of springtime wind for the glance of past and future that it offers as it litters the sky with the tree’s own tender, fuzzy seeds.

Charles pauses as Rogerson heaves again. When he’s finished, he pokes his ashen face out the door and moans, “She’s breaking my heart in here, chap.”

“The next part is about a cabbage dish from the local Chinese place. Wanna skip it?”

Rogerson shakes his head. “Nope. I hate cabbage anyway. Lemme hear it.” He closes the door again just as a particularly large shell explodes and the force knocks over a couple of empty gas cans.

“It’s gonna be a rough night,” Charles says, looking at the sky just over the front, bright white and pink with the excess of battle. He begins reading again.

My father and I have discovered a little place to eat here run by a Chinaman named Lin. Usually we have a quiet dinner at home. Nothing fancy, but I have been cooking since I was thirteen and I know what tastes good. In order to be a part of this place, however, my father thought it would be fun to try a night out at Lin’s Chinese Cooking. It is a small wooden shack, if you can imagine . . .

“I can,” Rogerson moans from inside, “I can.” Charles continues:

... with maybe eight tables. There are no linens or silverware. Only a pair of red chopsticks marks the place in front of each chair. He makes two or three dishes nightly and we chose the one called, plainly, cabbage and eggs. I’m the richest girl in the world here, remember? Walking on gold and eating . . . cabbage!

But truly, it was the most delicious meal we’d ever eaten. It began with a thin, salty soup. Just broth, really, with limp, flavorful scallions and cubes of stale bread making it ever thicker as we ate. Or sipped, I should say, because there were no spoons. As we brought the red bowls to our mouths, the steam made our skin damp. Then, there were blue plates covered in hunks of sweet, tangy pork and mint leaves that he plucked straight from one of the many tin cans growing little green plants on the windowsills. The pork almost melted in our mouths and the mint made our tongues tingle with its freshness. When Mr. Lin stood by our table and asked, “You like?” my father grinned at our good fortune.

Now for the cabbage. It came, slightly browned and oily, piled over a mound of white, sticky rice. It looked like nothing. Like something you might feed to animals in a barnyard. But we were the happiest of creatures the moment we tasted it. The cabbage had taken on a kind of deep, earthy flavor, aided by garlic and onion and a spicy red paste. Nestled in among the thick cuts of cabbage were small pieces of fluffy, scrambled eggs, slightly salty and peppery and wholly wedded to the flavor of the cabbage. Does this sound crazy? I know it must. I wish I could send you a sliver of the meal to place on your tongue. In solidarity, I’m sure, you would marvel at Mr. Lin’s abilities. Needless to say, my father and I have not had a happier night since we arrived.

Charles notices the quiet when he’s finished reading. “You okay? I’m gonna make a run. Get some sleep if you can.”

“She made me want that cabbage, Reid. Unbelievable. God, but I really want her.”

Charles folds the letter. He nods but does not speak. Standing up straight, he crushes his cigarette, long spent. “I know,” he says finally, fiddling with the key in his pocket. “I know.”

The black kilometers that stretch between the hospital and the front are absolutely indecipherable. The sound of the engine keeps him company and he hopes the moody radiator does not quit this time. Charles drives by memory alone, hoping that there is not a new mortar hole or pile of debris since his last run. Even more than the slight curves and bumps of this road, Charles knows that Rogerson’s words are his own. He wants her, too. He wants desperately for this blackened road to bend itself toward her and the obscure town in New Mexico where he might stand barefoot in a stream beneath those old trees with her and eat in a dirty wooden shack with her, letting her show him how to use chopsticks and how to be alive in the world.

H
er father has returned from the mine and the two of them sit in front of the empty fireplace. He is silent except for an occasional sigh as he surveys the chessboard on the small table pulled close to his chair. He props his head between his two index fingers. It’s been three weeks since her father has made a move. He is distracted, whether by the situation at the mine, or her own condition, she doesn’t know. Perhaps he has been in touch with Lowell. Would he tell her?

Finally, Hensley speaks. “Isn’t there a time limit on your thinking?”

He smiles, barely. “What is your allegiance to Mr. Reid, my dear?”

She shrugs, looking at her hands. Her father doesn’t know she has begun her own correspondence. “There is some urgency for the poor man. He
is
near the front lines, after all.”

It is now that they both furrow their brows. From beyond the front door there is a banging, as though they themselves are suddenly under attack. Soon the banging is accompanied by whistles and tambourines and joyful shrieks. They rush to their feet, knocking a pawn to the floor.

Her father opens the door, while Hensley stands behind him, her hand on his shoulder, her eyes searching the dusk.

The scene on the street in front of their house is like a dream. There are white-faced clowns juggling glass spheres lit from within by some delightful, unknown source; girls ride by on bikes wearing short bloomers and tuxedo jackets, the tails flapping behind them with alacrity; a bearded man stands atop a carriage with bars that entrap a sleeping bear curled up in the corner and three barking hound dogs; beside him sit two small monkeys shaking maracas and hooting; men in white tights stand inside black hoops that are being rolled by a woman in a bright orange evening dress; there are several small men shaking tambourines; and at the front is an adolescent boy dressed in red stripes banging a huge snare drum.