Flanders (2 page)

“Give it your best shot,” I said.

He let loose at an innocent bystander duck who took cheerfully to the shower. The striped cat that I chose was not so sanguine. I laughed so, I fell into a nearby ditch. I was told that the Frenchman attempted to get me out; but since I was unwilling and he too was drunk, he walked off and left me, forgetting to inform my sergeant where I was. There I lay until my mates stumbled upon me the next morning. The officers had assumed that I had deserted, and it was a trial explaining my hardshell Baptist upbringing. I told them, “Don’t y’all get me to dancing, then, for I ain’t used to that, neither; and God only knows what I’d do.”

They would have put me in the clink had they not found me such a caution. Had I not been such a dead-on shot. The sad thing is, last night I came to find out what lures Pa to the bottle, and I wonder if I shall discover in myself the same gloomy thirst. Promise me, Bobby, to stay away from liquor, as it gives a short-lived sort of glee, and you don’t remember the best parts.

One thing you might try, though, is pissing on a duck, as they seem to enjoy it. You might also try pissing on the Jennings’ calico cat for something of the opposite reason.

Yours in sin,

Travis Lee

* * *

APRIL 2, FRANCE, RESERVE AREA

Dear Bobby,

Yesterday my new captain, Miller, ordered me to go with the new subaltern; and so the pair of us shouldered our packs and set off down a poplar-corridored lane, toward what destination I could not discern. As the lieutenant was a Scot he could not, in understandable English, tell me, either. After an hour’s pleasant stroll, we came upon what looked like a crude bar ditch, with a few soldiers lining one side and peering off across an orchard.

Right then the lieutenant throws himself down, yelling, “Four in! Four in!” The Tommies lining the ditch begin to shout, “Hed doon!” And then I heard wasps buzzing.

The lieutenant waved frantically. “Yer bloody ignorant Yank! Fritz is four in!”

I dived headfirst into the ditch. Soldiers and packs and curses were propelled every which way. When we got untangled, I saw that the lieutenant was ordering me to ready my rifle, which I did. There were only a few Boche, and they were lurking about the trees in the apple orchard, plinking at us haphazardly. My first shot dropped one, an outcome which took me by utter surprise. I saw the helmet sail off the German boy’s head. I saw him go down. Regret so overwhelmed me that I nearly vomited, an enterprise which, considering the close confines of the trench, would have earned me a pummeling. Luckily I must have only winged the man, for to my relief he soon sprang up and fled east through the trees, his fellows behind.

I have read of battles, and Granddaddy de Vrees talked enough about Shiloh to make me think I’d been there. This seemed like a puny encounter, without much glory. Still, I think that I shall like this war, as there is a sort of silliness to it.

When the battle was over and the Germans had run off through the apple trees, the lieutenant clapped me on the back. The corporal gave me a tot from his ration of rum. We lounged about and had a smoke.

The trenches are less than I thought, and the war is, too. I was prepared to go face-to-face with spike-helmeted ogres and damnable cowards. I understand why the old soldiers, the ones who have been here for a while, have an odd pity for the enemy. You shall see—very soon the Germans will lose heart altogether and run home, and the disagreement will be over.

I’ll travel a bit then, and see more of Europe. I need me enough memories to last through all the tedium of adulthood—for I realize that I must grow up eventually. There are enough scrub oaks and mesquites in my future; enough mockingbirds and grackles to make me forget the larks. The afternoon in that ditch smelled of moss and history. I sat and listened to the Tommies bicker over their game of cards. Apple blossoms drifted across the meadow like snow. In some other bar ditch well removed from us, a German sang a ditty in a lilting tenor, so high and pure a sound that it near brought tears to my eyes. The sun lay down, gently dying, in the soft grass of the orchard. I stood guard, and I would not have shot him for it, but my Fritz did not come back to retrieve his helmet. Evening settled with calm, chill indigo. Stars emerged. Oh, Bobby. How I love it here. Even after the warmest days, the nights are cool as salvation. Lieutenant sent someone into town to fetch dinner, and we ate crusty bread and hard cheese while the silent parliament of night convened. As I closed my eyes for sleep that night, I saw the German fall and fall again, in showers of petals, in the tranquil beauty of the meadow.

I shall soon have to overcome my squeamishness, for killing is why I came. But the first deer I ever shot was so sloe-eyed that I sat down and cried over him, too.

Forever stout and bravely yours,

Travis Lee

* * *

APRIL 5, FRANCE, REST AREA

Dear Bobby,

Well, I am unmasked for an academic. Captain Miller came upon me today as I sat alone, reading from my Keats.

“Why are you not at the YMCA pavilion?” he asked.

“Noisy,” I told him. It was getting noisier all the time where I sat, too, what with the bees buzzing like sluggish bullets through the nearby clover and the captain making have-to conversation.

“Are you having problems with the others, Private? Any complaints you care to unburden yourself of?”

I took it upon myself to needle him a bit. “Yes, sir. Matter of fact, what with the rifle cleaning and all the grenade training, there just ain’t enough quiet time to read, sir.”

As is usual with the Brits, Miller failed to get the point. “Well, idle hands, what? Practice sharpens skills. Besides, our enlisted chappies are illiterate, or the nearest thing to. Books simply fail to interest them.”

Well, I tell you, that rubbed my fur wrong-ways. “You joshing me, sir? Somebody swore up and down this book has pictures of naked women.”

It wasn’t meant as invitation, but he sat down on the grass by me, anyway. As I said, the Tommies are always mistaking my intent. They howl with merriment at my anger and bristle at my good humor. God only knows what would happen if I’d up and kiss one. “Lieutenant McPhearson tells me you acquitted yourself well the first time under fire.”

“Um.” I went back to my reading.

It was a damp day, and the Tommies do better with the chill than I do. I pulled my greatcoat up around my neck.

“ ‘The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold.’ ” Miller has melancholy eyes and the stuffed-shirt British sort of voice that sounds like he’s eating mush; but that troublemaker grin of his gives him away.

I closed the book, marking the page with my finger. “ ‘The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass.’ ”

“ ‘And silent was the flock in woolly fold.’ ”

There I was, in another pissing contest.

I recalled the next line easy. “ ‘Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he told ...’ ”

“ ‘His rosary!’ Too easy, Yank. ‘And ... and ...’ Oh, bugger it!”

In pissing contests, it helps to have a full bladder; it’s essential to know your Keats. “ ‘... and while his frosted breath,/Like pious incense—’ ”

“Cheating!” He snatched the book out of my hand. “You’d just read it!” He opened the book at the marked page and surprised, he read the title:
“Endymion?”
He looked at me then—not like an officer on a soldier, nor even like a rich man on a poor. “Good memory, Yank.”

“Travis Lee.”

“Travis Lee Stanhope. Good God. How inutterably quaint.”

“Ma worked on it.”

He handed me the book. “Travis Lee. So I find that you are not quite the rube.”

“I can pass in a pinch.”

“Um? Ah. Yes, I see. Well, you shoot. I have been made well aware of that. You have ridden horses too, then, I take it? “

“Bareback like a wild Indian. And if you will forgive me, sir, you don’t sit a horse for shit. Although you ride some better than Major Dunn, who I expect got the crack up his ass from being throwed so often, if I may be so blunt.”

He relished the comment about the major like spun sugar candy. “Please, Private Stanhope,” Miller said, smacking his lips, “promise me that you shall always be blunt. So tell me. Were you acquainted with any wild Indians, there in Texas?”

“Ma’s half Cherokee.”

He took to that, too. “How charmingly American of her. Which side?”

“Her ma come across the Trail of Tears and stopped when she got tired of walking. Hell, she was always tired after that, for Granddaddy de Vrees sired fourteen children off her. He sired more off a widder woman he knew, more off some boughten slaves. It fair shames me to admit to it, sir, but half the boys in Texas—white and colored—are relatives of mine.”

“Really.”

“Uh-huh. Granddaddy stuck it in everything it pointed at. Ma always tells me I favor Granddaddy de Vrees, and she don’t mean it kindly, sir.”

The captain guffawed so loud that he embarrassed himself. Right quick, he clapped his hand over his mouth. He peered about, then shrank back against the bole of the elm. “Shhh, Stanhope. Please be less entertaining. We must take care that no one hear us. In case you were not aware, it’s frowned upon for officers to consort with the enlisted.”

Well, Bobby, about that time I started asking myself, “Why me?” and hoping I hadn’t given him the wrong idea. It struck me that consorting might have overtones, for, as Uncle Cecil was always fond of warning me, you know the predilections of those poetry readers.

It started to rain—not a downpour like it might have in Texas, but a soft, refined European sort of rain. He didn’t make a move to get up. I didn’t either.

His tone was as mannerly as that shower. “Stanhope? Do tell me: Why on earth did you join?”

“Well, sir, it’s a long damned story. Won myself this scholarship first. Wrote an essay for some old Harvard alumnus as to why Harper, Texas needed a doctor. Ma’d been craving a sheepskin for her wall, and I got that first one just to please her. I’ll earn my license, I guess; but there’s a load more study goes into doctoring. Before I settle down I need something just for me: a couple of spoonfuls of adventure.”

Miller smiled cheerlessly. “Ah, yes. Of course. Adventure.”

He looked quickly away, down to where the road grew tired and petered out in mist. “ ‘Mother whose heart hung humble as a button/On the bright splendid shroud of your son.’ ”

“What, sir?”

“Stephen Crane.
War Is Kind.
Please remember that some courage is mere idiocy. Learn to keep your head down when the Boche fire, will you? And you might also acquaint yourself with your own fine American poets.” He got up. I watched him amble across the pasture, worry’s weight bowing him.

I have made myself a promise, Bobby, that the captain’s warning will not spook me. I inherited Granddaddy’s obsession with the ladies; and like him, when my pecker at last gives out, I plan to die in my bed of disagreeability and old age.

Love,

Travis Lee

* * *

APRIL 9, FRANCE, REST AREA

Dear Bobby,

Well, I have seen my first aeroplane and was nearly shot by a Canadian. His name’s Pierre LeBlanc, but don’t let that fool you, for he has only a nodding acquaintance with French. Even the Tommies speak the language better than he, and their vocabulary’s no more than a Texan’s
chinga su madre.