Flanders (22 page)

“Makes sense to me, sir.”

I think he meant to clap me on the shoulder again, but thought better of it. “Do keep yourself safe, Stanhope.”

Awkward, standing there, that kiss rift between us. I wanted to say something, but like all pathetic should-haves in life, I didn’t. When I left, I left us both unfinished.

I can’t help but wonder how I would feel if he got killed tonight; so I just wanted to tell you that I love you, Bobby. I wanted you to know that you take up all the half-pint places in my childhood. I think about myself and always remember you: how you trotted after me wherever I went, that diaper of yours drooping. When I’d pick you up, you’d go to kissing on me. Embarrassed me down to the floor sometimes. And your kisses were always sticky. I don’t know why. I’d tell you not to do it. Sometimes I’d spank you—never very hard. Even with the spanking, you’d kiss on me, anyway. Love comes out like that, I guess.

If it was me who died tonight, you’d get the things in my pack. You’d get my letters, so if there was ever any question about my loving you, you’d know. You’d get a “Sorry to inform you” letter from my captain, and you’ll know that when I died, he cried over me in secret, like he got misty-eyed when I pushed him away.

I don’t want him touching me, but I’d sooner tell him I loved him than I’d tell any woman. So if I die, write him for me. Enclose this letter. He should know that much, I think.

Travis Lee

AUGUST 23, THE FRONT LINES

Dear Bobby,

Sorry my letters were spotty for a while. And you’re about to find out that there’s a big gap between this one and the last. It doesn’t mean anything, really. Kinder if it did. Home seems so faint and far, that’s all.

Last week the heat was like a sledgehammer. Not a breath of wind. Flies covered No Man’s Land like a black, restless snow. Swarms of flies filled the trenches; killing heat settled in the dugouts. We stripped down to our shorts and splashed each other with water.

The heat was so bad that when the Boche started coming up for air every once in a while, I didn’t have the heart to shoot them. Their snipers didn’t shoot our boys, either. That week on the front lines I watched bare-assed Germans taking sunbaths: bright pink shoulders, bright pink cheeks. I watched them hang up their laundry to dry.

“Best keep it quiet, now,” Riddell warned us. “Last winter we cut the Boche a Christmas tree and took it over, didn’t we. They came up out of their trenches. We sang carols together—“Silent Night” and “God Rest Ye Merry”—and we gave each other presents. Then someone ’as to go tattle, and orders come down: our artillery’s to lay into the poor blighters worse. We bloody pounded them, we did. Right at Christmas. And for us, it was speech after blinking speech on the joys of killing till they figured we’d got back our stomach for battle.”

Stomach for battle. I’ve had that, Bobby. So has Riddell. It’s a bad belly, and when you got it, you do things that make you sick to puking.

For me, the worst was when I shot a Boche who had reached over the parapet to get something. I don’t know what he was reaching for, or why it was so important. He was half over the sandbags when I hit him, and I didn’t get him clean. Maybe in the throat, for that’s where the blood seemed to come spraying and bubbling out. He thrashed real bad, Bobby. He flailed around so, he fell the rest of the way into No Man’s Land.

I should have finished him off. You’d do that much for a deer. But I was too shaken, and pulling the trigger again was too hard. I’d popped all the other Boche without much thought, and they’d fallen fast out of my sight. This boy was suffering so, it made me heartsick.

Instead of doing what I needed to, I sat down on the firestep. I guess I was hoping the whole thing—his mistake and mine—would just up and go away. But when I peeked through the trench periscope again, the boy was still twitching.

His buddies had thrown him a rope, but he evidently didn’t see it. They started to shout, too. I thought they were yelling at him to grab hold; then I caught on that they were shouting in English. They were begging me to kill him.

You do what you have to. It took me two shots, for I was shaking pretty bad at the time. I didn’t even bother to change my position. I was lucky, I guess, that their sniper didn’t nail me.

The next morning I was relieved to see that he had vanished. His buddies had gathered him in.

When bad things happen you put them in a little box somewheres, Bobby. You wrap those memories up real neat and store them in a closet. When you least expect it, though, you’ll turn a corner and find that damned package sitting out. Riddell’s back to his normal self after bayoneting that Boche boy who was trying his best to surrender. Sergeant must have boxed the memory up. Still, I bet sometimes he opens a piece of mental mail and finds out too late that it contained the boy’s death throes and how the rifle stock felt, twitching in his hands.

I hadn’t had a drink until the day the Boche begged me to kill their friend. Hadn’t wanted one, really. But LeBlanc found me, made me sit down with him on some old empty ammo boxes. As the sun set, we had us some brandy.

“Tell me about your mare,” he said.

LeBlanc’s a strange sort. I don’t know where he sleeps night to night. I suspect nobody does. Sometimes when I’m lying in the dugout with Pickering and Marrs I get to thinking about LeBlanc and wondering if he’s out in the dark, hunting No Man’s Land. It sends shivers down me.

“She’s a born cutting horse,” I told him. “Hell, she wasn’t but a year-old filly when she started watching cows. I think sometimes she figures it’s a step-down for her to guard goats. She sees I got the Border collies for the chasing, so what the hell? What about yours?”

“Had to sell him when I joined up. So your mare figures you got her slumming, eh?”

It’s like LeBlanc was raised up without any stories to tell, and so he wants to possess mine. I resent that in him. There’s times I feel like he’s thieving my memories in the casual, sneaky way he takes lives.

I asked him, “You’re Catholic, right?”

Twilight was falling. The trench was murky, the sky above an unsettled color, not blue, not quite pink. I heard LeBlanc moving around, saw the flare of a match, smelled the nose-tickling, intoxicating smoke of a Woodbine cigarette.

“Want one?”

I reached out, fumbled for the pack. LeBlanc was just a dark hulking shape with a coal in its hand. We sat smoking and sipping for a while.

“Yeah,” he said. “Raised in the Church, anyway. You had your nose up O’Shaughnessy’s butt for a while. You turning Catholic there, Stanhope? Better watch yourself. Once the Church gets hold of your short hairs, they never let go.”

“He saved my life once,” I told LeBlanc.

“Who? That mick? That’s what
you
say. You also promised to kiss my great big
baton.”

I watched him take a drag on his cigarette. The coal at the tip went bright. Somewhere outside the sun must have been setting in a bonfire blaze. Pink and orange streaks gloried across the sky.

I said, “I’m puckered and waiting.”

LeBlanc doesn’t laugh a lot, leastways not happy ones; so his gut-loud guffaw surprised me.

“You’re such an asshole, Stanhope.”

The fondness in his tone surprised me, too.

I said, “I thought priests wasn’t supposed to tell on you, I mean, your secrets and all.”

“Can’t trust a priest.” Then he said, “They lie all the time, especially about Heaven and Hell, you know? All that shit.” The cinder-tip of LeBlanc’s Woodbine fell like a shooting star, then lay there, smoldering. “None of us goes anywhere, eh? When God’s finished with us, He tosses us in a garbage can. That’s all we get: darkness. Maybe the stink of old cabbage. Shoulder to shoulder with used rubbers. Goddamn cats rooting around you. Flies all over, and rats pissing on your head. That sort of thing.”

I laughed. I took my last lungful of Woodbine and threw the butt down. Above, the gold and pink rays had faded. The first shy stars were peeking through.

“You think it’s funny, eh? You’ve been in this crapper of an army, Stanhope. You chicken-shit sentimental cunt-headed bastard. You’ve seen what death looks like. You think after death’ll be any better?”

“Well, okay, but you said ‘God,’ right? Seems to me that if you believe in God, you got some sort of pattern going. Come on, LeBlanc. See what I’m saying? Else why believe in God at all?”

“Goddamn Church never gave me any choice.”

He sounded so sad when he said that, like the Church had stolen all his could-be’s.

I don’t know. The way that Boche boy of mine fought dying, you’d think he’d caught a peek of what was to come. He whipped his arms around so, maybe he was battling LeBlanc’s trash-can Purgatory.

Me, I’ve been dreaming about the cemetery again. The mausoleum’s doors have been flung open. The marble niches are empty and waiting. A warm breeze blows through, and birds flutter around the domed glass ceiling. Fallen leaves gather in the quiet corners; they scrape along the floor.

The platoon’s gone, but for some reason that’s all right. Trantham doesn’t call anymore, and that’s all right, too. I walk the gravel path and look down into the glass-topped graves. There are other soldiers sleeping: Boche and Frenchies, Tommies and boot-black Algerians. I look for familiar faces, but all I see are strangers.

I see the calico girl sometimes. Coming across her is always a surprise. When I least expect it she’ll be seated on a fallen tombstone or standing by a pensive angel. She has a thoughty look, as if she’s concentrating hard on all her drowsy charges.

The graveyard’s flowers have gone to seed, Bobby, the plants long bolted, life sucking them dry and woody. Fruit has gone so overripe, so sweet, that it’s all windfalls now. Even in my dreams, autumn’s coming.

Travis Lee

* * *

AUGUST 23, THE RESERVE TRENCHES

Dear Bobby,

This afternoon a shell hit one of Nye’s secret dumping grounds. Shit went skyward. It came down over the enlisted trenches in brown, aromatic sprays. It pattered down in a heavy stinking rain all the way from HQ to the aid post. Hear tell Major Dunn got his fat-assed self a face full. Ain’t war wonderful?

When we’d cleaned ourselves up, me and Marrs and Pickering and the new man, Calvert, were sitting around the dugout when the Boche began shelling for serious. Marrs looked up dubiously at the piece of elephant sheet over our heads. The strikes were close, but without punch, mostly all Jack Johnsons. Still, the earth vibrated. The dust on our plank table erupted into clouds. Bits of dirt and pebbles danced the boards. Pickering and me exchanged looks. Calvert’s first time in a barrage. He’d go to screaming or crying or shitting his pants.

Marrs lit the primus stove that we’d all chipped in to get. He put on a kettle for tea. A Jack Johnson exploding outside the door made our tin cups clatter, sent black smoke billowing over the parapet.

“Milk or lemon?” Marrs asked.

Only powdered milk. Just dried lemon rind, but still. Riddell’s sister had sent him a box full of tea fixings and he shared it with all the platoon. Poor old Foy. Rumor had it he was due back about the same time we got those tea fixings. The fool sent us a message that said he was happy he didn’t have a Blighty. Crazy, isn’t it? Said coming back to the platoon would be just like being home. But I heard that three nights later he took a turn for the worse, his blisters oozing again.

A sharp crack, the blast so near that even Pickering ducked. Dirt rattled down the sheet metal of our elephant like hail.

“Bloody hell,” Marrs said.