Flanders (10 page)

“Yes, sir. I’d heard that.”

“So how did you come by your odd conclusion?”

“Somebody in Ninth Platoon told Dewberry who told Thweat who told Smoot that you’d gotten an updated message about enemy positions, sir.”

There was a pencil on his desk. He picked it up and toyed with it a while. “Do you know what I am, Stanhope?”

And so I said, “Sir, I’m real glad you brought that up. This ought to be right out on the table, far as I’m concerned. It don’t matter to me one way or t’other, and I want you to believe that, sir, I really do. Also, I want you to know I have never once spoke about you to nobody. Way I feel, it just ain’t nobody’s business. I considered at the time that you were a real gentleman about it, and didn’t push or nothing. And you don’t go flaunting it, not like some I’ve seen. I like you. I really do, and predilections aside, I think we ought to get together more. Not suggesting we ... but, hell, a good conversation about literature every once in a while wouldn’t hurt nothing, right?”

The pencil tapped the desk firmly. Once. Twice. “I am a Jew.”

The roses on the wall were dusty, like the flowers in the little girls’ graves. A Jew. Simple short words; still, I couldn’t quite understand what he was telling me.

“And as a Jew, Stanhope, I am disliked and distrusted by many of the other officers. It is more difficult for a Jew, you understand, to establish an army career, as I fully intend to do. I will succeed here, Stanhope. Despite them. Despite you. Despite Private Pierre LeBlanc. I would prefer, however, if I had your good will.”

I nodded. “Sir.”

“Needn’t be so lackluster about it.”

“Sorry, sir. It’s just ...”

“Well, right you are. All settled.” He got up. I did, too.

“Do take a biscuit with you, Stanhope. My mother sends them.” When I bent to select one, he said softly, “A long way, America. Difficult to mail things, without them going bad.”

The compassion in his voice. It surprised the hell out of me. And because it was so unexpected, it was needle-sharp with hurt, too. Tears came. I didn’t dare straighten up.

“I will give you an order that you may not care for.”

Gaze still on the cookies, I said, “Sir?”

“I wish you to counsel with Father O’Shaughnessy.”

I blinked away the last of the wet and turned, my cookie fast in my hand. “I’m not a papist, sir.”

“Neither am I, but I’m not thoroughly convinced that O’Shaughnessy is quite the good little Catholic, either.”

The cookie was damned tasty. I’m to meet with O’Shaughnessy day after tomorrow. Confession is sacred, Miller assures me; but what does he want me to say? Should I confess how I lie in my cot and think about him? Not the way you’re thinking, nor the way he’d like; but just wondering what he’s doing, if he’s reading or maybe what he’s eating. Oh, shit. That doesn’t sound like something a normal man would do. I’ve never had a problem. Ask around, Bobby. Near every lady in town—married or single—could tell you that. Still, do you think there’s something about myself I haven’t learned? I hope to God not.

Considering everything I’ve said here, I believe this is a letter I’ll hold onto until we see each other face-to-face.

Travis Lee

* * *

JUNE 23, FLANDERS, THE REST AREA

Dear Bobby,

A comfortable cot, a tent over my head, but still last night Trantham walked my favorite graveyard. At least I think I heard his voice. I yelled back, loud as I could, “Couldn’t expect us to go get you!” but he kept calling, calling, and I don’t know if he was calling for me, or for his ma, or for somebody just to for Christ’s sake go out and take him down off that barbed wire. He sounded so lost, and the dark by the cypress is so deep, like the shade in the thicket where I used to take Imogene Blaylock so I could sweet-talk the drawers off her; a place so secretive that you felt you could hide from God.

It was in the safe, bright morning of the reserve area when I asked O’Shaughnessy about my ruminations; and I was pure scandalized when, instead of answering, he took a cigarette out of his tunic pocket and lit up. He offered me one. They were expensive English smokes, smoother than the half-manure ones I’d gotten used to. The damned cigarette was so good that we just walked and smoked for a while.

It was leafy summer in the reserve area, with everything that had been budding a month earlier in full flower now. Nature was pushy and prosperous. Larks circled, singing up the sun. My counseling time with O’Shaughnessy had got me out of a session of rifle cleaning and enforced sock mending. Having some time to myself without shells and bullets or busy work was pure glory.

“Can one hide from God, I wonder,” O’Shaughnessy said. We passed under an ash’s cooling splash of shade. “Or does He come in to gather you up?”

I thought of Pa and got a chill up my spine for my trouble.

He must have caught sight of that. Come to find, nothing misses O’Shaughnessy’s eye, like nothing much misses Miller’s. “That disturbs you, then? The persistence of salvation?”

“Just that you ought to be able to hide somewhere, Reverend.”

“Ah. Ought one? And would you hide from forgiveness or from damnation? What terrible sins are you guilty of, my lad?”

“Not
my
goddamned sins,” I said. It’s tough when you get took out from your hidey-hole; but maybe it’s worse to be lost in the place Trantham is. “I dream sometimes about Trantham, Reverend.”

We passed a hedgerow where a troupe of acrobat stalks balanced flower heads like white plates.

“I seen Boatman once, too.”

“Do you think it’s ghosties you’re catching sight of?”

Trantham’s lost-sounding call.

“No shame nor terrors in it. I’ve seen them meself, lad. Ah! And what a reaction to confession! Can an Irishman not believe in ghosties?”

“You can, I guess. I don’t know if I want any truck with them.”

To one side, a velvet green pasture; to the other, a sleepy stagnant-looking bayou, the kind you’d go catfishing in. I wondered if they had channel cats, and then for a minute I imagined I could see old Charlie Whalen with one of his cane poles and that blue tick hound dog of his, and I got to missing home so bad that it felt like memory was burning me inside-out. I wanted to see a friendly black face, Bobby. I wanted to hear the music of Charlie’s kids’ laughter. It ain’t natural for a Texan to go off living someplace without coloreds and tortillas, catfish and tamales and cane poles.

“Travis. What is it you’re afraid of?”

“I’m in a damned war, sir. Jesus God almighty. Isn’t that enough? And, look. Thanks for getting me out of cleaning duty, but with all due respect, don’t go pretending there’s something between us just to get up next to me. I don’t plan to tell you much of nothing. Next thing I know, you and Captain Miller would be making more fun.”

He looked utterly stricken. “Ah, lad. Was it our laughing at your shoes, then?”

There were spotted milk cows in the pasture and a calf with buds for horns. I thought of the innocence of white-faced Herefords; the rambunctiousness of Ma’s fancy goats.

“Come now. I’ll be giving you my sincere apology.
Mea culpa.
There. Is that enough? Now I’ve a mind for a bit of conversation, Travis, and Captain says you’re quite the philosopher. Would he be lying, then?”

“Look. I don’t know.”

He whispered sadly, “Whose sin is it, Travis? What terrible thing are you hiding from?”

I was anxious all of a sudden; memory itching at me bad. “I don’t know.”

I started back fast.

Behind me came O’Shaughnessy’s voice. “The first time I was in a gassing, I nearly took my mask off, for I saw ghosties: German and English and French. Oh, but there’s a great many ghosties here.”

His voice was getting fainter all the time; still, what he said sent a shiver of cold right through me. I stared hard at the dead calm surface of the bayou where no fish jumped, no dragonfly hovered.

“Travis!”

I didn’t stop. I couldn’t.

“Tell me the sin, Travis, for I fear you’ll be seeing the ghosties, too!”

I have these dreams, Bobby. They’re only dreams. Besides, there’s no sin left to punish. It was over long ago. The best thing to do is forget. Christ help me. Why can’t I just forget? Pa’s going blind, Bobby. He can’t find me anymore.

Travis Lee

* * *

JUNE 24, THE REST AREA

Dear Bobby,

Major Dunn is back, and on crutches. Hear he goes around telling everybody who’ll listen that last year the king got his fat self throwed by General Haig’s chestnut mare, so Dunn figures as how he’s in good company. Today he called us in for a little talking-to. We stood at attention by the YMCA pavilion while a sweet light rain was falling. I watched the foliage near me shiver under the gentle blows of the drops.

Dunn talked about duty and honor and of how virtue was expected from us, seeing as how we were in an insolent and discourteous place. It was all very well and good, he said, for a Frenchman to go around doing wickedness, but the English must set an example. He called our battalion, that bunch of whore-fucking lice-infested bastards, “Guiding Lights.” He rambled so that this particular Guiding Light got tickled. To shut me up, Dewberry stomped hard on my foot.

When the flowery prose all ran out of him and Dunn finally dismissed us, I ducked Corporal Dunleavy’s stare and double-timed it to the meadow where our company team, the Jam-Pots, was fixing to play Captain Dunston-Smith’s Maconochies.

Marrs caught up with me there. “Lay you half a crown on the winner, Stanhope.”

Knowing our players, I took the Maconochies. I watched both sides kick hell out of that ball. The game didn’t make a damned bit of sense.

Surrounded by a crowd of ass-kissing officers, Major Dunn was grinning like a fool. “Sound body; sound heart,” he was saying, like their idea of football could drive back the Boche.

Smoot ambled up, eating peaches out of a tin his ma had sent him. He passed the can around. “Think it was the Frenchies, meself,” he said.

Marrs, chewing open-mouthed on a peach, told him, “Nobody I knows would do it.”

I poked my fingers around in the syrup, fished myself up a slick bite of fruit. “What?” I asked.

“What Dunn was preaching about.” Smoot took the can from me. He laughed. “Had to be pitch-dark for a poke like that.”

Marrs flushed, angry. “Not proper subject for a giggle, Smoot. Bashed her eye out, I hears, and her a grandmum.”

The problem talking with Brits is being lost in conversation all the time. “What?”

I got their attention.

“What the hell you boys talking about?”

“Well, it’s the old lady, ain’t it,” Smoot said. “That French old lady that got beaten and worse.”

Marrs shook his head. “Wasn’t you listening, then? We been talking it up in the tents.”

“Our little Yank’s been skulking about the side of the billets drinking his winnings, is what. Why go sneaking your drinks, Stanhope? ’Fraid them temperance ladies back home will see?”

“Shut your goddamned mouth, Smoot.”

Smoot pushed me. I pushed back. Marrs stepped in between. I saw O’Shaughnessy giving us the eye.

“Anyway, had to be dark,” Smoot grumbled. He lifted the can, drank the syrup. “I seen her. The one who ran the bakeshop. The one with the yellowish gray hair that stood up like a brush all ’round. She had a great bloody wen on her cheek. Even the fat whore’s a sight better. And the sod nearly beat her to death just to get his bird in. So who was the buggering bastard? Was he blind? Or did he have great sodding bad taste? I says it has to be a Frenchie. Wouldn’t be one of us. Was you drunk enough to give an old lady a tumble, Stanhope?”

Goddamn him for asking me that question, for all of them staring at me, waiting to hear my answer. When Smoot passed me the peach can, I shoved it at Marrs and went back to the tent.

To my disappointment I saw that Riddell was there. He was listening to Elgar, his eyes closed, his expression blissful. At my entrance he raised his head. “Stanhope. Best mind your manners about Major Dunn. Major’s after excuses, ain’t ’e. I know Captain’s a Jew, but ’e’s a bit of all right. I won’t have you cocking things up for ’im.”

I went to my pack, got out my canteen and my dog-eared, musty-smelling copy of Shelley.

“You mind what I said?”