Flanders (6 page)

MAY 3, THE FIELD HOSPITAL

Dear Bobby,

Don’t fret. I’m better. Just a shrapnel cut on my back, and it’s knitting. The fever’s gone, and I don’t see strange things anymore.

It was the night after Foy’s rat, and we were still in the rear trenches. Most of the men were mending socks; and those who knew how to were writing letters home. So quiet a night that if you listened hard, you could hear the first shell coming in. The 8.5
had a soft voice, like an imaginary whisper.

I knew I was hearing true when Corporal Dunleavy cocked his head. “Artillery.”

The whisper grew to a howl and Sergeant’s eyes went white-rimmed. “Eight five! On us!”

Even inside the dugout, we ducked. At the open door, night thundered. Somewhere down the trench, fire flashed and men cried out.

The Boche had found our range and suddenly the whole world was screaming. Shells pounded the rabbit-hole where we hid. The earth danced. The explosions shook me down to my core and set my bones to jittering. Sergeant was yelling something. In the unsteady light of the candle Danny Boatman sobbed. Huge, hulking Charlie Furbush crouched next to me, his hands plastered to the sides of his head, his eyes squeezed shut and leaking tears.

The shelling went on; as demented as Pa when he was drunk.

You see? It wouldn’t stop, Bobby. The shelling just wouldn’t stop and the walls kept closing in and I kept seeing the roof collapsing. That’s the worst part. I could have stood it if I hadn’t thought that any minute the roof would come down. And so when there came a pause in the shelling and Danny Boatman ran through the door, I ran with him.

Lieutenant McPhearson was at my heels, jerking at my bandolier. Outside the dugout the air was sweeter, the sound of the explosions pure, the inferno of the shells as bright as flashing day. McPhearson dragged me to my knees and we knelt together in the firestorm.

“Back in, ye bloody fool!”

“Dugout’s collapsing!” I yelled back.

He shook me. Reason dropped into place. My heart was pounding something fierce. My belly was sick with panic. I saw his disappointment and felt a fair bit of shame.

“You’ll return to the dugout, Stanhope, or I’ll put a bullet in ye meself!” Then the lieutenant was on his feet and scrambling down the trench yelling, “Boatman! I’ll have ye oop on charges! Boatman!”

I snuck back to the dugout. No one, not even Riddell, paid any attention to my return. I’d left behind my helmet and gas mask. Outside, shells whistled and screeched. The earth shook. The explosions came fast and furious. The noise above our heads was a solid thing, a ceiling you could reach out and touch.

Soon McPhearson came back, Boatman in tow. I didn’t want their company; still McPhearson sat Boatman, my albatross, down by me. Smoot and Dewberry covered their heads with their blankets. Trantham, empty-faced, rocked in a corner.

Sometime during that lunacy, Sergeant made tea. Dunleavy and LeBlanc ate quietly and alone. The shelling let up, the explosions coming farther and farther apart. In the aftermath my ears buzzed something fierce. After a bit I could hear, in the brief lull between shells, nervous coughs and mutters from our platoon, the moans from luckless soldiers, the shouts of passing stretcher bearers. Boatman leaned his head back against the filth-encrusted wattles and closed his eyes.

I listened to the individual strikes, even though I tried my best not to. The whistles get louder and louder until your nuts try to crawl up into your body. Your hair stands on end, Bobby. You’re so damned afraid that this one’s coming for you.

I’m terrified of dying. I never knew that before. The others are, too. I can see fear in every face—even LeBlanc with his pretense of disdain, even Trantham with his terrible vacancy. There we sit, crowded together in a rat-infested cavity in the earth, and wait. We wait lonely, because nobody wants to admit they’re scared.

The shell that hit us was like any other—the whisper, the howl, the skin-crawling anticipation. But when the blast came, the noise was so stunning that my nose gushed blood.

I don’t remember much except that the wind planted a hand in my back and shoved me. I remember trying to shout for help and sucking dirt into my mouth, instead.

I swear there wasn’t any sensation of traveling from life to unconsciousness nor of going from unconsciousness to home; but that’s where I was—on that hill by the Perdenales. And she was there.

I knew her as well as I know you. Maybe somehow even better. Her hair was loose and buttery with sun. Her smile was so sweet that it cut me.

They say that I looked peaceful as they took me away on the stretcher. They say I lay still as they stitched me up, and that I gave them no trouble. I don’t remember that; but I remember that the blue of her calico dress matched her eyes.

The dugout they took me to was shelled, too; and for a while it was pretty thick. All I know is, while I stayed on that hill I felt safe; and when I came to a few hours after the shelling had stopped, my ears didn’t work anymore and my back hurt and I had started a fever.

I heard they pulled Danny Boatman from under the collapsed wall, but not soon enough. Lieutenant didn’t make it, either. When Sergeant Riddell dug McPhearson’s body out, word is that he cradled him on his lap and bawled just like a baby.

Next day they moved me. I must have gone a little crazed from the fever, ’cause I could have sworn that I saw Danny Boatman walk through the hospital, up and down the rows. I even tried to call to him, but he paid me no attention. When I told a nurse he was there, they gave me something for the pain.

When I could hear better, Captain Miller came by. He stood tapping his swagger stick on his boot and looking anyplace but at me. “Well, Stanhope,” he said. “Well.” He stared hard at a table of rolled bandages. “Not quite a Blighty. Up and about soon, eh? And rejoining the old Fourteenth.”

“Yes, sir.”

The angry slap of stick against his boot. His lips tightened.

“Riddell ended up with McPhearson’s bloody gramophone, you know. Soldier’s last will and testament. One record, and Sergeant must play it. The same blasted Elgar symphony, over and over. Good God, Stanhope. Elgar.”

Whack of leather against leather. Blows so violent that they had to have stung. Miller’s jaw worked. “Elgar.” He shook his head and walked away.

Elgar. Could be worse. When I was in the forward sap, all the Germans listened to was Schubert. Still, I know exactly how Miller feels. Nothing is more stiff-upper-lip and carry-on-boys than Elgar. I bet you LeBlanc hates him like Mary Hell, too.

Tomorrow they’re releasing me from the hospital. Five days later we move out, north I hear. Some idiot of an orderly threw out my comfortable boots, thinking they’d got ruined in the explosion.

Never you mind this letter. I’ll get over my scared and get on with it. You eventually have to, you know.

Travis Lee

* * *

MAY 4, THE FIELD HOSPITAL

Bobby,

Got your excuse for a letter today. Goddamn it, don’t you tell me about how she feels sorry for him. Don’t you try to tell me how old and helpless he is. More than once I’ve seen Ma with blood running down her chin, all huddled up by the wood stove, cowering like a whipped hound. Shit. Don’t you think she was helpless, too?

If she’s contemplating with another part of her anatomy, then you be the one to use your head. I’m warning you and Ma both: You’d best get him out of there. If Pa wants any argument, let the 30.06 do your debating for you. Make sure he understands your meaning, boy, for I’ve had enough of his bullying ways; and if he’s still around the place when I get home, I’ll kill him.

Travis Lee

* * *

MAY 5, THE FIELD HOSPITAL

Bobby,

I dreamed about Pa last night. We were in the dugout together, just the two of us; and the Boche were shelling. It was a murky place, black except for a single candle. I could just make out his eyes and hands—Pa’s worst parts. He was taking off his belt and he was saying in that low dangerous voice of his, “ ’Pears you’re sassing me, boy. You sassing me?” Me in a gloomy corner of a darkened room; Pa the monster. Above my head bombs were falling; but soft and terrible I could hear Pa hiss: “You sassing me?”

Jesus. Lying here I’ve had time to ruminate about life, and I understand something about myself—why I took the whip to old man Krause the day he tortured that barn cat of his; even why I came to Europe to fight—I’ve been trying to slay the monster, Bobby. I can’t kill me any goddamned bombs, so I’ll just have to kill Pa if I see him. You tell Ma that.

Well, well, well. Of all the people to come visit. A few minutes ago, LeBlanc was here. He sat down beside the bed, lit himself up a cigarette and then offered me one. We smoked for a while, and when a Belgian nurse told us to put them out, he said, “Up your rosy red ass.”

She went away. “Not a nice thing to say to a nun,” I told him.

“No one better to say it to, eh? Except maybe it’s up her ass with Father O’Shaughnessy. Or maybe Corporal Dunleavy’s more his game. Goddamned micks. They’ll fuck anything. That’s how they take over places. Spread like weeds. Seen it happen, eh? Back home it’s got so you can’t fart without gassing an Irishman. These bastards here are probably IRA: O’Shaughnessy, every one of them. A little arsenic in your potato soup, Stanhope, just in case the shells don’t get you? Think about that. Hey. People are talking about how you and Boatman and McPhearson were the only ones who quit the dugout. It’s like the three of you knew something, eh? Trantham’s fucked.”

LeBlanc’s cigarettes are unsmokable—strong and French. “Trantham? Was he hurt, too?”

LeBlanc lit another cigarette off the butt of his first. He didn’t offer me another. “Not so’s you can see, but next time they pound us, he’s going shell-shocked for sure. He crapped his pants and then just sat there in it, even when the shelling was over. Goddamned Dunleavy had to inform him that he was stinking up the dugout with his wet brown
merde.
And you see that look on his face when the eight fives were dropping? Oh, yeah. Soon we’ll be seeing that stupid little smile all those poor bastards get, eh?—like their brains just took a Blighty. You ever walk into East-6? That’s where they store them. Locked away from the rest of us, so’s we don’t get ideas on how to duck the war. Assholes.”

It’s an interesting adventure, talking to LeBlanc. Most times he doesn’t say much, but when he does, it’s him that does the talking and you that do the listening, except for the detours in his conversation where you’re forced into asking questions like: “Assholes? Those shell-shocked folks?”

“Nah. The doctors. They don’t think it really happens, you know? Shell shock. Think they’re phonies. Sometimes just for the fun of it they’ll send one of them back. Saw a man walk out of hospital once, right into the trench and straight over the parapet. There he goes, wandering off across No Man’s Land, smiling that shit-eating grin like he was out picking daisies or something, everybody shouting at him to come back and him not listening, until Fritz mowed him down. Cut him in half with a Maxim.”

“Damn.”

“Damn right. They’re all against us. Nice shoes, Stanhope.”

“Uh-huh. Somebody throwed my good ones away. You carve me another pair?”

“Just to watch the major’s ass pucker.” LeBlanc leaned his head back and blew a smoke ring. “I’m ready for a good fuck.”

My mind sort of froze on that.

When I didn’t take the bait, he asked, “What shape’s your
bâton
in, Stanhope? Want a little?”

All of a sudden I was fighting to keep my head above an undertow of questions: Was LeBlanc, like Miller, a poetry-lover? If he wasn’t, why the hell had he come by to visit? Just what were we talking about here? He didn’t give me any clues, so I said cautiously, “Pecker’s just fine, and thank you kindly for asking.”

“You and your shrapnel got the company a day’s leave. There’s a whorehouse in town. If you’re up for it, I’ll meet you by the YMCA pavilion at sundown.”

Oh, Bobby. Up for it? Wound or no, the acreage south of my belt sure is. LeBlanc walked away without saying another word. Now I been lying here thinking about things. And thinking. And thinking. Lord God almighty, Bobby. Real French whores.

I’ll finish this letter later. The doctor’s coming down the row. I figure he’s about to release me, stiff
bâton
and all.