by Keely Hutton
“I do,” Thomas said.
“What kind?” the man asked.
“Coal. In Dover.”
Smoke streamed from the man’s nostrils as he scrutinized Thomas. “I worked the coalfields in South Wales. Thirty-five years. Any work with explosives, Dover?”
Remembering Thomas’s lie to the recruiter at Trafalgar Square, George smiled. “He’s got loads of experience, right, Tommy?”
Thomas’s face flushed scarlet. “I used to watch my dad and brother set the explosives.”
The man with the pipe nodded. “Dover can work with me.”
“Leave it to Boomer to grab the only recruit with any experience underground,” Mole said, dealing out two cards to the other men. He motioned to George. “How about you, Shillings? What experience do you bring our fine crew?”
George took a seat in the only empty chair around the table. “I’ve done a bit of everything. You name it: dockworker, chimney sweep, army recruiter.” He shot a quick wink at Thomas before turning his attention back to the men at the table. “I’ve seen and done it all.”
“Not yet, you haven’t,” Bagger said, pulling him out of the chair by his ear. “But you will. Shillings is with me bagging spoil. How about you, Bats? Which one of these fine British soldiers do you want shadowing you? Eton or—” Bagger craned his neck around Thomas to find Charlie, standing as far away from the men as the cramped dugout allowed. “What’s your name, lad?”
Charlie stared at his stockinged feet. “Charlie.”
“What’d he say?” Mole asked.
“Charlie,” George answered, “but we call him Mouse.”
“Not all of us,” Frederick corrected under his breath.
“And what special skills do you bring our crew, Eton?” Bagger asked.
George reclined on one of the lower bunks. “I believe Eton’s special skill is complaining.”
“I’ll have you know,” Frederick said with a huff, “I have a great many abilities that will no doubt prove far more beneficial to this crew than anything you could offer.”
As Frederick began listing his numerous, invaluable skills, Bats took off his glasses and massaged the deep impressions on either side of his nose. “I’ll take Mouse,” he said in a slow, measured voice. “I don’t need anyone talking while I’m trying to work.”
“Bats is our ears in the tunnel,” Bagger told Charlie. “When you’re not hauling spoil with the others, you’ll be helping him listen for the enemy.”
“And with those ears,” Mole said with a laugh, “Mouse can help you monitor the movement of every Fritz in Berlin.”
Charlie ducked back behind Thomas and tugged his hair down over his ears.
Frederick saluted Mole. “I guess that means I’m with you, sir.”
“Sorry, Eton,” Mole said, lighting a new cigarette, “but those spindly legs of yours couldn’t push through a wall of wet sand, much less a tunnel face of packed blue clay.”
George snorted.
Frederick tried to ignore him by keeping his attention glued on the large clay kicker, but the flare of his pinched nostrils told George he was getting to the snooty, eager soldier, so George laughed harder.
“Then who am I working with?” Frederick asked.
Boomer slapped him on the back, knocking the helmet from his head. “Eton, you get to work with the most important member of our crew.”
“Who might that be?” Frederick asked, bending down to fetch his helmet.
Boomer walked over to a corner of the room, retrieved the birdcage from its post, and handed it to Frederick. “Meet your partner. Feathers.”
* * *
After the men finished their card game and fed the boys a cold meal of bully beef, a tinned corned beef, and K-Brot, a bread sometimes made of such things as dried potatoes, oats, barley, and pulverized straw, Bagger and the other men exited the dugout, leaving the boys with one order—get some rest before their first shift. Thomas hoped the other boys would go to sleep right away so he could start his search for James, but as exhausted as everyone was, no one appeared eager to close their eyes and sleep underground for the first time.
George, lying on the wire bunk above Thomas, regaled his captive audience with stories about life on the streets of London, occasionally asking Charlie to verify his description of London’s seedy underbelly. Every time his voice would start to quiet and the silences between his words stretched long, Thomas hoped he was finally falling asleep, but then George’s head would pop out over the edge of his bunk, his red hair dangling in messy curls like a mane of fire, and he’d begin his next tale.
Seated on the bottom bunk across the dugout, Frederick seemed to grit his teeth against George’s ramblings and scribbled furiously with a fancy fountain pen in the notebook from his kit bag.
Charlie sat in the bunk above Frederick, sketching pictures of Feathers with the nub of a pencil. As he drew, he fed the canary pieces of the bread he’d tucked in his pocket during dinner through the bars of the cage on a shelf in the dugout’s corner. He didn’t speak, but nodded in agreement any time George asked, “Ain’t that right, Mouse?”
After an hour, George’s story about running messages for some man named Grugar trailed off until the only sounds coming from above Thomas’s bunk were stuttered snores.
“I thought he’d never shut up,” Frederick mumbled, taking his glasses and setting them on the top corner of his bunk. Tucking his book and pen under the coat he’d rolled as a pillow, he adjusted the scratchy wool army blanket from his bag and turned toward the wall.
Thomas peeked up at Charlie’s bunk. He couldn’t see Mouse’s face, but the shy boy lay still, his fingers resting against Feathers’s cage. Thomas listened for the slow, steady breaths of deep sleep before slipping off his bunk, grabbing his boots, and tiptoeing out of the dugout.
Muted light glowed at the entrance to the tunnel. Before ascending the incline, Thomas wedged his stockinged feet into his boots and pulled a photograph from his pocket. The edges were soft with wear, and the image yellowed with time. Six faces stared back at him. His mum, her hair pulled back in a tight bun, sat in a chair holding his twin sisters, Charlotte and Letitia, in her lap. Behind the chair stood his dad, a hand resting on his wife’s shoulder. Thomas and James stood on either side of their mum and sisters. Thomas ran his thumb around the creases lining the edges of the photograph, imprints of the frame that had protected it for the last four years, a frame that now stood empty in his parents’ bedroom.
Mum had kept the framed photograph on her nightstand next to a candle that she lit every night for James before saying her rosary. The frame held the only photograph of their family. It was Mum’s most cherished possession, the first thing her eyes sought out when they fluttered open each morning and the last image they held before they drifted closed at night. Like Thomas’s St. Joseph medal, the photograph kept Mum connected to James. It was her lifeline when grief threatened to drown her, and Thomas had severed it and left home, abandoning her to face the crushing waves alone.
For the thousandth time since he’d snuck into his parents’ room on the morning he’d run away to London, Thomas questioned his decision to take the photograph. He knew it was a sin to steal, especially something worth so much to his mum, but staring at James’s face, he knew he’d had no choice. His parents’ letters to the army begging for any information on James had gone unanswered for four months. Thomas had to leave Dover to find James. He would question every infantryman on the Western Front if he had to, and Mum’s photograph would help. There would be plenty of time for apologizing after he brought his brother home.
Tucking the photograph carefully back in his pocket, he exited the tunnels. The midday sky, heavy with clouds, provided little more light than the lanterns in the tunnels as Thomas made his way into the support trenches. No-man’s-land lay quiet between the Allied and Central Powers, but Thomas knew lack of artillery fire didn’t mean the enemy wasn’t watching. He looked down the communication trench that led f
rom the support trenches to the front-line trenches, but, remembering Bagger’s rules and the consequences for breaking them, he kept his head down and scrambled along the communication trench in the opposite direction toward the reserve trenches. Thomas couldn’t afford to be transferred from Ypres, not until he found James.
He searched the reserve trenches for any soldier who was awake, but every infantryman he passed was taking advantage of the brief reprieve from artillery fire. Some lay curled up in muddy dugouts. Others slept sitting upright, leaning against sandbags and one another, steel helmets strapped to their heads, weapons within reach. Thomas crept past, studying as many faces as he could. He knew how desperately they must need the rest and he didn’t want to risk startling an armed soldier.
After forty minutes of searching, he realized if he didn’t head back to the crew’s dugout soon, Bagger and the other men would return to find him missing. The clay kicker had been very clear about his expectations. The new recruits were to get as much sleep as possible, so they’d be rested and alert for their first shift. Not wanting to anger Bagger, Thomas made his way back to the communication trench that led to the support trenches and tunnel entrance. When he reached the last stretch of trench before the tunnel opening, he decided he couldn’t leave with no information about his brother, so he cut left instead of right. He stopped by a sleeping soldier and cleared his throat. The man didn’t stir. Thomas stepped closer and coughed, but the soldier remained motionless.
Thomas coughed louder.
Nothing. Not a twitch of his eyelids, no annoyed groan.
If it weren’t for the shallow rise and fall of the soldier’s chest, Thomas would have thought him dead. Thomas shook his head. No amount of coughing was going to wake a soldier who was used to sleeping through artillery fire. Disappointed, he had turned to leave when he heard voices and laughter in the distance. He glanced toward the tunnel entrance and then reached up and grabbed hold of his medals. “Just five more minutes,” he whispered to himself.
The voices led him down another section of the support trench that zigged and then zagged its way farther from the tunnel entrance, where a cluster of soldiers gathered. Their backs to Thomas, they taunted one another and placed bets on two pairs of soldiers working at the far end of the trench. As Thomas drew closer, he recognized the voices of his crew among the infantrymen.
“Bagger and Max have it this time,” Boomer boasted.
“You tunnel rats are crazy,” an infantryman with a hard, square jaw said as he stubbed out a cigarette on the duckboards.
“Get it right, Harry,” Mole said. “We’re sewer rats.”
Harry laughed. “Digging beneath the streets of Manchester, you may have been sewer rats, Mole, but out here, you’re tunnel rats. Not that it matters. Either way, you’re losers. Johnny and Dan are undefeated.”
“Double or nothing, they lose today,” Mole challenged.
“You’re on,” Harry said, and the men shook hands.
“Count me in with Mole,” Boomer said, tossing five shillings into the waiting hands of an infantryman with a steep forehead and weak chin.
“Anyone else?” the infantryman asked.
Thomas looked for Bats, but the clay kicker’s listener was not among the cluster of men.
A few more soldiers tossed coins to the infantryman, all placing their bets on Johnny and Dan for the win. Thomas inched closer to see what game the men were playing and to catch a glimpse of Bagger’s partner, Max, the crew member who Bagger had said was running messages two hours earlier.
Bagger stood with his back to the others, yelling to his partner hidden beyond the corner at the far end of the trench. “Come on, Max! We got this! Just one more!”
“Shut up, Bagger,” an older infantryman crouched on the floor of the trench warned. “You’re gonna scare ’em off.”
“What’s wrong, Johnny?” Boomer called out. “You afraid of losing?”
Johnny motioned to a soldier at his side. “Give me another piece, Dan.” His partner, a husky infantryman, not much older than George, handed him a hunk of bread. Johnny speared the bread on his rifle’s bayonet, laid the weapon flat on the ground, and slowly backed up. “You tunnel rats haven’t beat us yet.”
“First time for everything,” Bagger said, turning his attention back to his partner working around the corner.
Thomas was so engrossed in the strange competition between the tunnelers and the infantrymen, he didn’t notice the creak of footfalls on the duckboards behind him. Then a hand grabbed his shoulder, and a slow, measured voice asked, “Just what do you think you’re doing out here, Dover?”
NINE
THOMAS’S STOMACH DROPPED. He’d let himself get distracted and hadn’t asked one soldier about James. At best, he’d be reprimanded and sent back to the dugout until their shift started. At worst, he’d be sent to dig trenches in France. Either way, he’d failed his brother and his parents.
Several lame excuses stumbled through his brain as he turned to face his punishment, but when he raised his eyes to meet what he expected to be the stern glare of the crew’s listener, he was instead met with the amused smirk of the London street urchin who’d followed him to the Western Front.
“Good God, Tommy.” George chuckled. “You should see your face. You’d think a Fritz had snuck up on you.” He dropped his voice to mimic Bats. “You didn’t wet yourself, did you, lad?” His gaze dropped to the front of Thomas’s trousers.
Thomas bristled at George’s continued use of James’s nickname for him. “Stop calling me Tommy.”
George rubbed the patchy stubble on his chin and cheeks and cleared his throat to imitate Bagger. “Out here, you’ll answer to whatever I call you. Understand?”
Thomas shoved him away from the cluster of soldiers and back toward the path to the tunnel entrance. “No. And you didn’t scare me. You surprised me. What are you doing out here anyway?”
“I saw you sneaking out. Thought you were hitting the latrine, but when you didn’t come back, I figured I should come looking for you and make sure you hadn’t decided to catch the next train back to London. Brought Mouse along to help drag you back if you had.”
Behind George, waiting at the corner of the trench, Charlie gave Thomas a timid wave, then returned to gnawing on whatever was left of his nails.
George leaned in closer. “You’re not thinking of leaving, are you, Tommy? ’Cause I hear they shoot deserters.”
Thomas started to explain that he just needed some air, when a soldier called out. “Two minutes!”
“What’s going on here?” George asked, peering past Thomas to the gathering of men clogging up the trench.
“Some kind of competition.”
George pushed forward to get a better look. “This I need to see.”
Johnny and Dan had climbed onto a wooden plank lining the trench wall, careful to keep their heads below the sandbags. Everyone’s attention was fixed on the piece of bread on Johnny’s bayonet. Suddenly, a long brown rat scurried along the trench floor.
“There’s one!” a soldier yelled.
The rat stopped, and Johnny shot the soldier a threatening glare, silencing him.
“I sure hope that’s not dinner,” Thomas groaned.
“Wouldn’t be the first rat I’ve eaten,” George whispered. “Bet you’ve had a few too, eh, Mouse?”
Charlie, whose curiosity had lured him closer, didn’t answer.
“Don’t worry,” George said, when he noticed the embarrassed blush tinting Charlie’s face and ears. “Norton-Griffith’s recruiter promised real food for our work.”
The rat’s head swept side to side, nose twitching. Its beady black eyes locked on the hunk of bread. Perched on the bench, Johnny nodded to Dan, who tossed a clot of soil at the trench wall behind the rat. It exploded in a spray of dirt, and the rat bolted forward, picking up speed as it neared the bread. The clay kickers and soldiers leaned in, blocking Thomas’s view. He ducked down to peer between their legs just as the rat
, its mouth wide open to snag the bread in its retreat, impaled itself on the bayonet. Johnny jumped down and jammed the blade deeper, and the infantrymen cheered.
Boomer kicked at the ground, and Bats groaned as Johnny lifted his weapon for everyone to see. Blood dripped from the speared rat’s mouth and its legs twitched twice before falling limp.
“What’s the count now?” Johnny asked.
Two soldiers lifted the ends of a wooden beam. A line of dead rats hung below the board, like prisoners dangling beneath a tiny gallows.
“That one makes nine!” Dan yelled. “We’re up by two.”
“Pay up, boys!” Johnny shook his weapon, sending the dead rat’s legs into a drunken jig. “Our undefeated status lives on!”
The infantrymen cheered louder.
George reached into his pocket and pulled out two shillings. “I’ve got to get in on some of this action.”
“You can’t,” Charlie whispered, his voice tight with panic.
“Sure I can. Coin is coin. These chaps won’t care who places a bet as long as he can pay, which I can.” He jingled the shillings in his hand. “And if I play the odds right, which I always do, between my wages and winnings, after the war, I’ll be strolling back into London with enough coin to pay off my debts and buy myself off the streets.”
He started toward the men but stopped when Charlie grabbed his arm. George’s eyes narrowed on Charlie’s hand clutching his sleeve.
Charlie let go and tucked his hands in his pockets. “Sorry,” he mumbled, backing away.
“Charlie’s right,” Thomas said. “If Bagger catches you, he may never let us out of the tunnels again.”
With a frustrated groan, George shoved the coins back in his pocket. “What good is finally having money if I can’t enjoy it?”
Up ahead, Johnny plucked the rat from his bayonet and tossed it to Dan. “You ready to surrender, tunnel rat?”
“Clay kickers never surrender,” Bagger replied.
In the excitement, Thomas had forgotten the crew leader was still standing at the end of the trench.