Voices of a Summer Day (20 page)

“You,” he said, although the boy was at least four years older than himself and thirty pounds heavier. “Get up.” Louis stood up.

The boy with the flask looked around and smiled when he saw the size of his challenger.

“What’s biting you, junior?” he asked.

“You talk too much,” Louis said.

“Do I?” the boy said. “What do you think you’re going to do about it?”

Louis tapped him on the shoulder again, this time hard. “Come on down under the stands,” he said, “and you’ll see.”

“You’re frightening me to death, junior,” the boy said.

Louis hit him with his closed fist this time, still on the shoulder.

“Ah,” the boy said, still acting amused and superior, “you’re a rough little feller, aren’t you?” But he stood up and followed Louis down under the stands.

It was too bad that Louis missed the next two minutes after the time-out, which were the last two minutes of the game, because Benjamin redeemed himself then and there would have been no need for that brotherly trip under the stands.

The score was nothing to nothing, even though Benjamin’s team had been pushed all over the field all day, and the opposing team had only two yards to go to win and four downs to do it in. Federov closed in, backing up the line, and watched the opposing quarterback. He was a small, cocky boy named Craven who had a big reputation among the minor schools that made up the schedules of both teams. He called out his signals in a sharp, barking voice, with a showy raucousness that was aimed not so much at his teammates as at the spectators in the stands.

The first play was an orthodox one—a plunge by the fullback into the center of the line. The play was piled up with no gain. The team came out of the huddle fast, and Craven began barking his signals. Somehow, with the certainty that occasionally comes to athletes at crucial moments of a game, Benjamin was sure what Craven was going to do on the play. Before the teams began to move, Benjamin slid quickly to his left. He was as confident as if Craven had said it to him in plain English that the boy was going to try to make it around right end. It had been a successful play all day for the other team and had gained a lot of ground, and Benjamin had seen enough athletes to know when a quarterback was determined to reap the glory of winning a game for himself. So even before the play started, Benjamin was there, waiting. The interference swept away his own tackle and end and the man backing up the exposed wing, but nobody had counted on Benjamin’s being there, and he had a clear crack at Craven and brought him down on the line of scrimmage. Craven drove hard, but Benjamin had him dead, and there wasn’t an inch gained.

Again, as the two teams lined up, Benjamin had the same serene sense of foreknowledge. He was sure that Craven, having failed once off the end, would be certain that Benjamin’s team would be looking for a plunge at another point of the line. But Benjamin, tuned in relentlessly now on the sharp, shallow mind behind the flinty little street-fighter face, moved with the signals to exactly the same spot he had covered before and stopped Craven in exactly the same place.

Incredibly, Craven tried the same thing on the next play and incredibly Benjamin knew he was going to do it and was there to stop it. The final gun went off as Benjamin drove in hard and threw Craven savagely to the ground, this time for a three-yard loss. The game had been saved and Benjamin had saved it. He lay for a moment, gripping Craven’s legs, feeling the hard fiber of the thigh guards under the canvas pants. For the moment he was only glad that it was all over. He got up to one knee and looked down at Craven, who was lying on his back now, breathing with difficulty because of the drive of Benjamin’s last tackle. The boy’s face was working with rage and disappointment, and for a second or two Benjamin thought Craven might break into tears and he felt a little wave of pity for him, all that arrogance exposed as false, all that cheap, unprofitable craftiness and vanity and glory-seeking now so openly revealed for everyone in the stadium to see.

Benjamin patted the boy’s shoulder. “Tough luck,” Benjamin said without cynicism.

“Fuck you, brother,” Craven said bitterly. They both stood up and walked away from each other without shaking hands.

When Benjamin came out of the locker room after the game, stiff and aching and hardly able to carry his duffel bag, Louis was waiting for him in the frozen dusk. Louis’s face was a mess. He had a black eye and his ear was puffed and bleeding.

“What the hell happened to you?” Benjamin asked.

“Nothing.” Louis said. “I got into a little argument. Here—let me carry your bag.”

“What about?”

“There was a loudmouth sitting near me and I thought he ought to be taught a lesson.”

Benjamin examined his brother’s face closely. “It looks as though you’re the one who got taught the lesson,” he said.

Louis touched his eye. “This—” he shrugged. “It’s nothing. I busted his nose for him. The cop took him to the hospital.”

“The cop?” Benjamin asked incredulously.

“Yeah. He had to come and butt in,” Louis said. “He threw me out of the stadium. Anyway, there’s one feller who’ll be a little more careful about what he says the next time he goes to a football game.”

“When did all this happen?” Benjamin asked.

“The last quarter.”

“When I dropped the punt?” Benjamin said.

“Somewhere around then,” said Louis. “Here, give me your bag.”

Benjamin handed over the bag, and Louis swung it on his shoulder and they began to walk through the early darkness toward the bus station.

“Wait till Mom sees you,” Benjamin said. “She won’t let you out of her sight on Saturdays for a year.”

“I can handle Mom,” Louis said.

They walked in silence for a while.

“I sure was lousy out there today, wasn’t I?” Benjamin said.

“You sure were,” Louis said.

Then they both chuckled.

Finally it hadn’t been a bad day, fever or no fever, not a bad day at all.

1944

T
HE SERGEANT TYPED STEADILY
(rations, intelligence reports, casualties, courts-martial, passes—the tapping, long war on paper, through weak eyes, blurred behind smudged thick glasses). It began to rain outside, gray, Alsatian, a permanent drip of November on soggy tents, stained uniforms, clogged rifles, scarred metal wings. The door opened, a pilot wandered in, looked around, said nothing, went out. Eternal, dangerous, dull November.

Then there was the sound of approaching engines.

“There they come,” the sergeant said without looking up, without stopping his typing.

Federov heaved himself to his feet. He realized he had been dozing. In a war you slept wherever you could sit down or lie down in a warm place, even with your brother over Essen (flak usually heavy in the area, no significant fighter opposition expected).

Federov went outside, zipping the collar of his combat jacket, putting his helmet on. There was the thunder of engines over the field, but the clouds, or more accurately the one, even, thick cloud that covered the whole war that season, hid the planes from view. Then one plane broke through, then three, then five. Two of the planes were firing red flares and the ambulance went bumping across the mud to the wire landing strip to take the wounded off.

Federov opened the door to the orderly room. “How many planes went out from this squadron?” he asked.

“Six,” the sergeant said, never stopping his typing. “Group asked for eight, but we’re all shot up. Group yelled bloody murder.”

Federov closed the door. One missing.

The planes landed bumpily, taxied. The medics ran to the two that had fired the flares. Swiftly, they carried out three figures, limp in fleece-lined leather suits, two from the first plane, one from the second.

Federov watched. One by one, the engines came to a stop. The ambulances clanked off. A fleet of jeeps went across the mud toward the dispersal area. Other figures in fleece-lined leather suits, not limp these, clambered to the ground, took off helmets, climbed into the jeeps. The jeeps jolted back toward the Operations hut fifty yards from the farmhouse. Federov didn’t move. The jeeps passed within ten feet of him. He saw Louis sitting on the hood of a jeep, holding onto the windshield strut. Still, in the middle of a war, angelic, an exhausted angel. There were five other men in the jeep. There was no expression on Louis’s face. He looked right at Benjamin for two or three seconds, but there was still no expression on his face. Another helmeted soldier standing around in the rain. The jeeps stopped at the Operations hut and the men went in to tell the G-2 what had happened; bombs away at fourteen twenty-three hours, flak heavier or lighter than expected, no fighter opposition or we were bounced over Mulhouse. Six bogies. Two passes. They did not persist. One probable, flames seen coming out of engine. 104s. Evasive action. Port engine on the
Gorgeous Irene
seen to explode twenty-two minutes before bombing run. Smoke. Spiral down. Four parachutes counted. On target or not on target, satisfaction, reproaches, alibis, where’s the goddamn whiskey?

Federov walked slowly over toward the Operations hut, his boots sucking in the mud. He leaned against the wall of the hut. The voices inside sounded weary, emotionless, not the voices of men.

Federov waited. The rain dripped down from his helmet, cold on his neck and working its way under the soggy knit collar of his combat jacket. Another soldier standing around in the rain.

The fliers began to drift out of the Operations hut. It was almost dark by now. Federov didn’t move. Louis passed alone three feet away from him, walking slowly, looking down at the ground, his face set in the young-old lines of the war. Federov let him get past him, two, three yards.

“Well now,” Federov said.

Louis stopped. Then he turned around, very slowly.

One of ten million men standing around in the everlasting rain of eternal November slowly metamorphosed into a brother.

They embraced wordlessly.

“Lieutenant Federov,” Benjamin said, “I suggest one more kirsch.”

“Sergeant Federov,” Louis said, “you show initiative, aggressiveness, tenacity, excellent understanding of terrain, high qualities of leadership. I am recommending you for Officer Candidate School in the Portuguese Navy.”

“Mademoiselle! Fräulein!”
he shouted to the old lady behind the bar.
“Deux kirschs, s’il vous plaît. Zwei Kirschen, bitte.”

It was midnight and they were both drunk. They were in a smoky café in the village near the base. They could have had whiskey in the officers’ club (a converted, leaky barn behind the squadron headquarters, with boards leading to it so that you wouldn’t disappear in the mud when you left it drunk after dark), but they had both wanted to get away from the Army that night. There were four or five old peasants in stinking leather coats and muddy berets sitting at the other tables. There were no young men. The young men had all been drafted into the German Army. Years ago, in 1940, when it meant something to be in the German Army. The old men spoke only German, and there was no expression of gratitude in their eyes as they looked at the two Americans who were the representatives of the army that had passed through the town one day and told them that they had been liberated and were now once more officially Frenchmen.

The old lady brought the kirsch bottle and poured for them both. She smelled of pigs, wet wool, small children, mud, decay.

“Danke schön, Fräulein,”
Louis said ceremoniously. He raised his glass and considered it critically. “Best vintage of the century,” he said. “Nineteen forty-four. Join the Air Force, learn languages, travel, meet the fascinating people of romantic countries, develop an exquisite palate.”

They drank.

“God damn it,” Louis said quietly, “when this is over and if I get out alive, I’m not going to let anything bother me again. I am just going to
breathe.”

Two drinks later, they went out of the café. The old peasants were still there speaking German, trying to figure out ways of getting the American Army to pay for the cows that had been killed when the town had been taken two months before.

The town was blacked out and they could have been anywhere. Anywhere black. The dark side of the moon. The bottom of a well. In a whore’s bedroom. In someone else’s grave.

Louis took out a flashlight and they were back in Alsace again, back in November. Louis’s hand was not steady and the thin beam of light wandered and it took a long time for Benjamin to get the rotor back in place. Finally he managed it and slammed the hood down. He had to hold onto the jeep to keep from falling as he made an unsuccessful effort to climb aboard.

“Sergeant Federov,” Louis said, “don’t you think it’s dangerous to drive in your condition?”

Then they began to laugh. With forty-three missions behind them, with the miles from Cherbourg to the Rhine behind them, they laughed and laughed and laughed, clinging to each other, the light extinguished now, in the dark nowhere of November.

1964

F
EDEROV WALKED IN THE
direction of the club a half-mile down the beach.

If I
get out alive, I’m not going to let anything bother me again. I am just going to
BREATHE
.

Federov permitted himself a sigh, half-troubled, half-ironic, remembering November, walking barefooted on the wide deserted peaceful beach, remembering November. His brother was breathing all right on this sunny afternoon in September, 1964, but anybody who could shout over the telephone, “My blood, my balls, and the marrow of my bones,” could hardly pretend he wasn’t being bothered by anything.

Wars do not teach as much as one would like to believe. The guns fall quiet but the soul still trembles.

Federov could see the wide veranda of the Club now. It was deserted, except for two small figures, shapeless bundles of sweaters, skirts, scarves, under a striped parasol.

Federov had never been inside the Club and had never swum off its beach, although the beach, from the high tide line seaward, was public. The Club, except for two or three tame token specimens who were extraordinarily rich or extraordinarily well connected, wasn’t for Jews.