Hunger and Thirst (16 page)

And the ground was getting rockier the deeper he went. He had to pry out small boulders and lift them up, teeth gritted, back aching and stiff.

What am I doing here? he wondered once. Like a fool in a place I’ve never been, digging a damn hole in the ground.

But it was his other mind. He couldn’t think of it consciously. He kept digging like a dull-eyed robot, held in a vise of agonizing necessity.

When he’d finally finished, he lowered himself and all his equipment down into the cold trench. There he sank back against one muddy wall and stared at the muddy wall facing it.

Now.

There was nothing, absolutely nothing to do. But wait. He remained motionless, half sitting, half lying, his body throbbing with an exhaustion he could never abate, he thought. There wasn’t that much rest left in a lifetime.

In a little while the shelling started again and grew intense. He fell down and stared at the mucky brown earth and listened to the whine and crash of the shells. And he was sure that he would be there forever, crouching in a hole.

“Eighty-eights,” he heard someone say in the lull between shells. It was the man with the thick glasses and he sounded very smug and very self-important. Erick pressed his lips together and called the man a bastard.

Then he closed his eyes and tried very hard to forget where he was.

* * * *

Night came and there was no food.

It began to rain. A cold, drenching rain that poured over him mercilessly. He had nothing to cover himself with but his raincoat. He put his head under it and as much of his body as he could. He curled up into a muddy ball of wool and flesh.

But he couldn’t get his feet under the raincoat. His shoes stuck out in the cold rain and it ran over them, re-soaking the leather, making his feet icy, then numb. After a while he could hardly feel them.

He slept a black exhausted sleep, without dreams.

Once in a while, for no seeming reason, he woke up with a start and rose up sitting to peer over the edge of the trench into blackness, hearing the tinny drumming of the rain on his helmet. Once he stood up and urinated over the edge of the trench. He stood wavering in the oceaned blackness, his eyes closed, feeling that it must be a dream. Then he buttoned up his pants and sat down in the mud again and pulled the raincoat over his head.

There was no sound but that of the rain. It hid all else behind its rushing curtain. For all the world he might have been alone in Germany, in the night and the drenching rain. He might have been a corpse who had just dug his own grave and was sitting in it waiting for the command to lie back and sleep so the rest of the men could throw down the mud over him as he had wrenched it up.

Then they could move on and leave him be.

* * * *

It was quiet and he heard someone crying.

He sat up quickly with a rustling of clothes. A puddle of rain held in his raincoat splashed down over his legs.

He looked around.

Two men were leading Old Bill away. He had slept all night in the cold rain bent over at the waist and now he couldn’t straighten up. He looked like a little boy, hands clutched over his stomach as though he had eaten green apples. He was moaning and Erick saw big shiny tears dribbling down over his bearded cheeks.

He watched the two men and Old Bill until they disappeared. Then he glanced over at the squad leader.

“How are you?” asked the squad leader.

“All right,” he said, surprised at the flat, dead sound of his own voice.

Then, after he stared mutely for a moment at the squad leader, he fell back against the wall of the hole again. He stared at rock and mud. He tried to wiggle his toes. At first he thought they were stiff and he couldn’t move them. Then he realized that he was wiggling them all right but they were completely numb.

* * * *

“Hello Erick.”

“John!”

“Can I sit in there with you?”

“You bet!” He drew up his legs and John stepped down into the hole. He sat down across from Erick.

The night had done something to him. His eyes were watery and circled with dark flesh. His face had lost its color. It was pasty hued and smudged with dirt, still covered with that thin fringe of curling whiskers.

“Where have you been?”

John leaned his rifle over one shoulder. “Gee, I don’t know,” he said shakily, “I’ve been everywhere. I’m so tired.”

“Your rifle is all rusty.”

“I know,” John said quietly. Erick was sorry he’d said it. It seemed a ridiculous thing to speak of now. As if in atonement he held up his own rifle and said,

“Look at mine if you think yours is bad.”

John nodded without changing expression. He looked doped.

“Didn’t you sleep?” Erick asked.

“No. I’ve been delivering messages all night.”

“God. That’s awful John.”

Silence a while. John stared exhaustedly at his drawn-up knees. Then he took off his glasses and held them in one inert hand. His eyes looked very weak. Erick thought—if he loses his glasses he’ll be helpless.

“You know where we’re going yet?”

John gestured wearily with his head. “Down that valley,” he said.

“Did the captain say when they were going to bring up food?”

John shook his head. Then he reached into his overcoat pocket with a weary grunt and drew out a can of K ration cheese.

“Here,” he said, “I got it last night.”

“Swell!”

Erick took the can from John and opened it quickly. He looked up. “Can I have half of it?” he asked anxiously.

“Take it all,” John said. Erick felt guilty. “No, you take some,” he said. John shook his head. Erick held out a piece and John took it and looked at it as if it were something repulsive.

Erick paid no attention. He took a big bite of the cheese and chewed on it hungrily. It tasted good, creamy and tangy.

“Where’d you get this?” he asked mouth full of cheese. He took another bite.

“It belonged to Sergeant Jones.”

Erick chewed noisily. “What’d he give it to you for?”

“He didn’t,” John said.

Erick’s jaws stopped moving as he looked up.

“He’s killed,” John said.

“What?”

“An eighty-eight shell landed right in his trench.”

Erick looked at the cheese gripped in his grimy hand.

“Oh,” he said.

He didn’t know what to say or feel. He wasn’t sure whether he was sorry or not. He didn’t know whether he should go on eating or whether he shouldn’t.

Abruptly he remembered Sergeant Jones. He saw the man’s face, remembered the exact sound of his voice. He remembered, once in England, when Sergeant Jones had taken the platoon for an exercise run around the countryside. When the men were out of breath Sergeant Jones laughed and told them to take it easy until they got their wind back. And while they all walked along slowly, he told dirty jokes and everybody laughed at them. And a little while later they all sang popular songs and the people leaned out their windows to watch as they marched past led by Sergeant Jones.

Now he was dead.

Erick tried to believe it. To understand it. Sergeant Jones. Dead. Not even dead in one piece.

That was when the cheese choked in his throat.

“How… did you…?” he started, holding up the cheese.

“The first sergeant gave it to me,” John said, “He told me I was dumb if I didn’t take it. He said there was nothing wrong with it.”

“God,” Erick muttered.

He put the cheese in his pocket. John gave him the other piece and he put that in his pocket too. They looked at each other.

“C-can you stay?” Erick asked.

“I don’t know,” John said, “The captain said he’d send for me when he needed me.”

“Why don’t you take a nap?” Erick suggested. He thought that maybe if John was asleep underneath his coat, nobody could find him and he could stay with him. He didn’t want to be alone. The worst thing was being alone.

“I guess I will,” John said quietly. He closed his eyes. He leaned his helmet against the side of the trench. He was asleep in a moment.

Erick sat looking into his face.

In repose it became once more the face of a boy. A dirty-faced boy placed by some strange and callous power in a place where even men could not survive.

He sat there a while. Then the first sergeant came over to the trench and stopped. He was walking from trench to trench finding out how the men were.

“How’s it going, Linstrom?” he asked.

“All right.”

“Who’s that?”

Erick swallowed. “Foley,” he said, reluctantly.

“He all right?”

“He’s tired.”

“We all are.”

“Say, sarge, you don’t happen to know where I could get some medicinal jelly, do you?” Erick asked then, knowing before he finished it that it was a silly question.

“What for?” the sergeant asked.

Erick held up his hands. They were caked over with hard mud. The skin was cracking and blood oozed out.

“If I could get some jelly,” he went on, “Maybe I could soften them up. I tried to get it off with a bayonet but I couldn’t.”

The first sergeant shook his head. “I haven’t got any, Linstrom,” he said. Then he took a paper out of his pocket. “Here,” he said, “A copy of
Stars and Stripes.”

Erick took it. “Thanks.”

“Take it easy,” said the sergeant and left. Erick watched him trudge over the crest of the hill. He wondered if the sergeant thought he was a cry baby for asking if he had any medicinal jelly.

No, why should he? he defended, Christ,
look
at my hands. They do need something.

He glanced at John. John hadn’t stirred once. Erick leaned over to where John slept exhaustedly against the barrel of his rifle. He made sure the safety catch was on. Then he sat back and opened the paper.

When John woke up, Erick said, “Good news John.”

“What?”

“Here’s a story in the
Stars and Stripes
where a congressman promises that no eighteen-year olds will be sent overseas.”

“I’m eighteen,” John said sleepily, half conscious of what Erick was saying.

“Well, then,” Erick said, “Aren’t you glad you’re not going to be sent overseas?”

John looked blank. Then he rubbed a hand over his cheek and smiled weakly.

“I’m glad,” he said.

* * * *

The day was an endless grey passage of sky and earth and time blending together into one dull flat pattern. Everything was bare and dead. They sat in the hole and shivered once in a while from the cold wind that was blowing over the ground.

During the afternoon Erick took off his soggy shoes and socks and looked at his feet.

“Good God,” he said.

“They’re all white,” John said.

They looked like the bellies of dead fish. They looked as if the flesh could be scraped away with the nails. He poked a finger into them gingerly. He couldn’t feel them. He wrapped his hands around them and tried to press back warmth. It didn’t work. He rubbed them. He could feel a prickling sensation in his insteps and into his ankles. But nothing in the feet themselves. The felt dead, numb, as if they had been cut off from his system and then carelessly glued back into place.

He took a candle from his combat pack, lit it and held it under one of his feet.

“Don’t, you’ll burn yourself,” John said.

Erick grimaced and stared incredulously at his feet.

“I can’t feel them John,” he said, “I can’t feel the flame. I can’t feel it at all.”

In a rush of outraged horror, he felt tempted to press the flame against his feet until he did feel it, even if it had to be the feet going up in flames. Then, quickly, with a shudder, he blew out the flame and shoved the candle back into his jacket.

He rubbed his feet a little more but nothing happened. He took out a pair of dry socks and put them on. Ten minutes after he put on his shoes, the socks were damp.

“How are
your
feet?” he asked John.

“They feel all right.”

Erick didn’t answer. But a look of dissatisfaction crossed his face. If he was a friend, his mind conceived the perverse notion, then he’d get
his
feet frozen too just to keep a pal company.

He closed his eyes and repelled the notion. In a little while.

* * * *

Hours and hours passing.

“Let’s build a house,” he said to John.

“How?”

Erick climbed out of the trench with a crackling of stiff bones. He straightened up with a groan and stamped his feet on the ground without feeling the impact except in his ankles and legs.

“Come on John,” he said.

John got out of the hole. Erick walked over to the squad leader’s trench. It was empty. He saw the sergeant’s pack in the hole and took a pair of wire cutters from it.

“Let’s go,” he said and started down the hill toward a length of barbed wire.

“What if there’s snipers?” John asked.

“There aren’t any around here,” Erick said, “Come on. We need a roof on the damn hole. If it rains again we’ll both end up with pneumonia. We’ll just put those logs over the top and stretch your blanket over them. Then we’ll have ourselves a house.”

“I don’t think we…”

“Come
on
, John. What are you afraid of?”

John didn’t answer but Erick thought of Sergeant Jones suddenly. He didn’t say anymore. He just kept walking down the hill. If John didn’t want to come, he didn’t have to. He was going to get those logs. He glanced back once and saw John edging down the hill, looking around worriedly.

Erick reached the barbed wire. The thought of anyone taking a shot at him seemed absurd. It was a cold winter’s day and he was out to get logs that was all. No one had ever shot at him in his life. Why should it start now?

He began to cut the wire at the log edge. It was brittle. The sound of it breaking was a sharp snap in the cold air. He went down the log, now crouching, putting the cutters over the wire and snapping the handles together.

Ping!
—went the wire in the cold.

He was conscious of John a few paces from him. John wasn’t standing still. He was moving about slightly as though presenting an imperfect target to some sniper in a tree.

“We’d better hurry,” John said.