The Place

by Gary Collins

  Michael checked his compass by the sentry’s brazier. Southeast and a point or so farther east would guide him home. Jake would be watching for him. He was sure about that. It gave him confidence to know someone was waiting. A lamp waiting in the window.

  Michael slithered back over the roof of the trench. Wondering why he had been sent here, he crouched so low it hurt all over again and left to cross the cove. At intervals, almost as if it were timed, rifle shots blasted over his head, seeking unseen targets through the fog. Michael lay prone until it ceased. Blind shooting, the soldiers called it. The shooting was more frequent from the British side.

  It was rumoured the Germans, allied with the Turks, were stingy with the bullets they doled out, restricting the Turks to just ten rounds per day. Michael scrambled over the clinging mud of no man’s land and wished the entire supply of bullets had been depleted. The fog was lifting. At times clear patches, yards wide, were opening up.

  Michael was still partway across the cove when he came in contact with a dead soldier. The corpse, lying on its back, had been stripped of clothing and boots, and the young man’s eyes were wide open. After getting over the initial shock of seeing a dead man close up—it didn’t take long; Michael had seen dead soldiers before—he noticed the soldier had died with his eyes wide open. There was something irreverent about a man dying with his eyes open, he thought. Besides, vultures, the winged ones, always went for the eyes. The ones without wings had already taken their spoils.

  Reaching up, he attempted to close the soldier’s eyes. Rigor mortis had long since claimed him. The eyelids were fixed open.

  It was Nate Osmond!

  Michael stumbled back. He had heard Nate enlisted, but during all the time over here, they had not met. To see him like this, dead on a field strewn with death, upset him badly. He forced himself to peer at the face again. He had to be sure. It was Nate, all right. He would never forget that face.

  “I forgive you, Nate Osmond,” he whispered, and meant it. Life was too short to hold grudges, the old priest had advised him.

  With handfuls of mud, Michael smeared Nate’s eyes close. It just wasn’t right for a dead man to lie there with his eyes staring into an abyss. He would do his best to have the body recovered. There was nothing more to be done.

  Cannon fire erupted. Michael saw a smear of fire resembling a distant lightning storm threatening through a scudding dark cloud. The shells burst, sundering the air around him, but reaffirmed his direction. It came from the British ships in Suvla Bay, to the southwest. The way home. The shells had been fired from a ship anchored in Suvla Bay. The British were defending their evacuation. Michael crawled away, realizing that if they did come for him, no one could tell if Nate had been friend or foe. The vultures had stripped him of his identity.

  Michael didn’t hear the sound from the rifle that speared the bullet into his back. It happened so quick he couldn’t tell if it came from a Brit or a Turk. No matter, now. He had ventured above the fog. The b’ys always said that if you heard the bullet with your name on it, it was already too late.

  Jake was right. They always aimed for centre mass. Stupid of me, he thought. I always considered centre mass was in your chest, not your back. He felt no pain, but sure enough, Michael was dying. His head was suddenly filled with death. Not his own, impending, but of Ruth, his heart, who had died trying to give birth to their daughter, Leah.

  So vivid were the images of Ruth’s death and the days that followed, he cried out. Not from the pain of the bullet that would soon silence him forever, but from the temporal pain of a lost love. “My heart! My sweet lost heart!”

  Rifle fire followed his anguished cry, and bullets raked the ground around him. The sniper, probably the one who had shot him, was listening. Oblivious now to current troubles, and about to walk the halls of the dead, Michael’s fading mind relived the aftermath of Ruth’s passing.

  27

  After the Christmas cantles had been sung, the Christmas bells had silenced, and he had wished the last of his flock a Merry Christmas at the church door, the old priest came back to the room where Ruth had died. With tears in his eyes, he went to the bedside, where Michael was holding Ruth’s cold hands and weeping piteously. He laid his hand upon Michael’s shoulder, who wept all the more.

  “Life is short. Too short, sometimes,” said the gentle priest.

  “She was far too young to die, Father.” Michael sobbed.

  “Aye, my son, Life is short. Death is sure,” murmured the priest.

  Michael appeared not to have heard him, for he sobbed these words, “And to die giving birth to our daughter, on this night of all others.”

  “Your daughter, Michael? You—”

  “His daughter, Father,” Aunt Kitty said. The old priest didn’t ask Aunt Kitty how she knew the unborn child was a girl. Midwives had their ways. “A coffin birth, Father,” she whispered and blessed herself. “The poor girl tried so ’ard to born the child, it claimed her. Valiant to the end, she was, poor thing.”

  “Can you christen a child still bidin’ in her mother’s womb, Father?”

  “There is a way to remove the child from the womb, Michael. It is called Caesarean, after Julius Caesar, who was delivered by that method,” the priest whispered.

  “No, Father. Caesar was alive. Our child has died with her mother, and with her she will forever stay, even in the cold winter earth, which will soon cover them.”

  “I will christen the child, Michael. What will you name her?”

  “Ruth . . . oh my heart! To speak her name and get no answer, it mires my mind.” Michael broke down before continuing. “Ruth and I had long since decided that if she was to bear a girl child we wanted her named after Leah in the Bible, Father.”

  “Wise choice, my son. Leah, for whom Jacob, her husband, toiled for seven years. Leah, the soft, tender woman from whose womb sprung the tribes of Israel. A clean pan with cold water, Aunt Kitty, please.”

  Aunt Kitty nodded and left the room.

  “Come away, now, Michael, my son,” said the kindly priest. He still had his hand upon Michael’s shoulder. Pulling gently, he endeavoured to separate Michael from his lost love.

  “A moment more, Father. I cannot bear to sever myself from Ruth, my love, my heart, forever.”

  “’Twill not be forever, my son, though at times it will seem like it. But in the plan of He who beckons all men to Him, ’tis but a blink of the weeping eye. Come away, my son, please. To bide longer will not aid your agony. It will prolong it.” He pulled as gently as before on Michael’s shoulder, and Michael released Ruth’s hands, which fell limply upon the counterpane covering her swollen belly. The bed creaked when his weight left it.

  Aunt Kitty returned with a basin in which stood a jug of clean, cold water. The priest removed his outer winter clothes and rinsed his hands in the water. He beckoned Aunt Kitty to his side and motioned to her with his hands and eyes to draw back the bedclothes away from Ruth’s stomach. Aunt Kitty gently pulled back the shroud of sheets to expose the young woman’s upper belly. Michael shook with spasms of grief to see her this way.

  The old man pulled up the cuffs of his raiment and nodded to Aunt Kitty once again. The midwife, all-knowing, laid the basin on the bed and stood weeping quietly with the water gourd in her hand. The priest rubbed his hands over the empty vessel, and without being asked, Aunt Kitty poured water over them. The priest’s voice filled the room as he rinsed his hands in the water trickling down into the font. He made the sign of the Cross.

  “O God, giver and taker of all life, we were not blessed to know this child as we had hoped. But lo, while in her mother’s womb, You already knew her. Therefore the loss is ours alone to bear and not Thine, for while yet resting in the bosom of Ruth, her mother, the child Leah is cradled forever within Thine. While absent from brief earthly life, now assured life eternal. I baptize thee Leah in the name of the Father, S
on, and Holy Spirit.”

  Aunt Kitty poured more water over his hands without been asked. As the water dripped from his cupped hands and fell soundlessly upon Ruth’s stomach, there appeared on her swollen abdomen the sign of the Cross. Aunt Kitty gasped, and Michael pressed his hands together in prayer. The priest, whose eyes had remained closed throughout the ceremony, continued. “Through Mary the Virgin, who grieved at the Cross for her dead Son, give Michael hope, faith, and peace. Enfold Leah and Ruth to eternal life, we beseech Thee. Amen.”

  Two days later, in the morning, Michael and his friends cut through the top few inches of frozen earth using a pickaxe, dug the grave, and in the forenoon of that same day, Ruth, with Leah still in her belly and with everyone in the Place standing round, was gently lowered down into it. The old priest, without his coat but dressed in his official habit, performed last rites and the three prayers over the dead. Michael wanted no one to cover the crypt but him. It was the last thing he could do for them. His wish was respected, and the mourners, one by one, murmured condolences as they filed past him and out of the cemetery.

  The priest was the last to leave. He was looking at his retreating flock when he saw them, Ruth’s parents, standing by the cemetery gate.

  “Be brave, my son,” he said to Michael. “You have two more unexpected mourners.”

  Through eyes glazed with tears, Michael saw them. Not one word was said to them by the people walking out of the cemetery. The priest made to leave, and as he neared the man and woman still standing by the open gate, he nodded respectfully. Not wanting to speak to the priest, Ruth’s mother and father had turned their backs. With a great sigh of disbelief, Michael walked toward them and stopped just inside the gate.

  “You told us once you’d see her dead before allowing a Catholic to darken your door.”

  Ruth’s father cringed at the words. His face was drawn in anguish. He was standing in snowshoes. His wife, in boots, her long cotton dress dragging in the snow, had followed in his tracks. Tears had frozen to her cheeks, and she couldn’t tear her eyes from the dark quilt of earth below which her daughter and granddaughter waited to be tucked in.

  “’Twas said only because we go to different churches, b’y. Nothing more.”

  “It matters not the pew you sit in, sir. The footsteps in which you have walked to get there are all that matters.” Michael turned his gaze from the father and looking directly into Ruth’s mother’s eyes. “I am sorry for the footsteps you have been forced to follow.”

  He closed the gate behind him and said, “Only as far as the stile!”

  And with head bowed, he walked back to the gravesite. Behind him he heard the clacking of snowshoes and the crunch of boots fading.

  Alone in the graveyard, he threw the last shovelful of earth over his wife and daughter. The day was dying, last light all but gone. Looking toward the heavens, he saw it. Venus had appeared without notice, as it always did.

  Last light, first star, she had said. He bent his way home as the lesser stars began to twinkle.

  28

  The Catholic was nearing death on the sundered fields of battle up from the beach of Suvla Bay. He felt little pain, and his mind was clear. Clear enough to pray to Mary, proud Mother of the Christ, to plead forgiveness for him.

  It wasn’t very Christian of me, the way I spoke to Ruth’s parents that day at the cemetery, he was thinking.

  A crouching shadow emerged out of the fog, and for a moment Michael thought he was hallucinating. It was the Crackie coming to his aid. “Ah, my friend Jake. They have named you well. Faithful as a crackie. My Protestant confessor coming to give me last rites and to see me safely over the bar.”

  “I have come to carry you to safety, Michael.”

  “No, my friend, there is no time nor need for that. The Turkish sniper was good. Almost as good as you. Centre mass and all that.” Michael smiled up at Jake, and seeing his friend shuck his rifle and prepare to bear him back to the nearest trench, he said in a pleading voice, “No, Jake. I am done for. There is but time for a few words. I am glad it was you who came. The letter in my pocket. For my mother, the only sweetheart who waits for me. Will you?” Michael was struggling for breath now, his voice low.

  “Yes, Michael, I will find a way to take it to her personally.” Jake looked at his friend, dying from a sniper’s bullet, and doubted if he could play the role anymore.

  “My compass. For you.” Michael blessed himself and breathed deeply. “Just realized the four points of the Cross are like the four main points of the compass. One will guide you to the Place, where Eliza waits. The other will guide you to the Place in heaven, where all the faithful will forever linger.” The pain found him then, and he groaned in misery and continued, rambling at first as if in delirium. Jake had to bend close to hear him.

  The fog, though still patchy, was lifting. The wind had changed. Rifle fire came sporadically, as it always did after midnight. Soldiers slept, too, even on guard. The night was fleeting, and if daylight found them here, they were both as good as dead.

  From Michael’s scattered words Jake learned that around his neck, on a silver chain, his friend carried a ring, also of silver. It was his wife, Ruth’s, favourite colour. He wanted Jake to have the ring for she who waited for him above the tickle. Jake hadn’t known Michael was married and told him so. Ruth was dead, Michael managed to tell him. She had died in childbirth on Christmas Eve. Their child, Leah, was a coffin birth, and he had wrapped them in the soil from whence we all came. He had in his pocket two Newfoundland coppers.

  “For the boatman to take me across the bar,” he said. “You will do these things, Jake? Promise me?”

  “I promise you, Michael. I will do as you ask. The ring I will place upon Eliza’s finger. The silver chain I will forever wear around my own neck. And if ever I have a son, I will name him Templar in your honour, and your compass will be his.”

  Michael sighed as if a great load had been lifted from him. “Take them now, while I live,” he said.

  Jake lifted Michael’s head and unclasped the chain. His hand was sticky with cold blood. Michael was spending his life’s blood upon the fields of history and legend where his teachers had trod on soil or page.

  “Make the sign of the Cross over me, Jake, and repeat what I say. Please, Jake. I must be absolved. It is my essence. My soul.” Michael’s eyes were mere slits, his breath shallow, his voice weak. Jake was so filled with emotion he merely nodded at the request of the only friend he had ever known. He made the sign of the Cross over Michael.

  “In nomine Patris, et Filli et Spiritus, ego te absolvo peccatis tuis,” Michael murmured. Jake stammered out the strange-sounding words, not knowing what they meant. Michael was silent then for the longest time. Jake thought he had died, when he said softly, “Ah, Jake, what a priest you would have made. In death I will cross the stile of ignorance as surely as you, in life, will cross your tickle of wisdom.”

  Jake, not knowing what to say, said nothing. Then Michael grimaced in extreme pain and moaned, “Oh my love! My heart!” And he spoke no more.

  It took Jake twenty minutes of crawling backwards, dragging and pulling, all the way trying to stay below the cover of fog, to get Michael’s body back to the edge of the trench. He wouldn’t leave him for the vultures. He was sweating profusely. The fog had all but gone.

  With all his might he tried to raise Michael’s limp body up over the row of sandbags. He couldn’t do it from a bent position. He stood to his feet, lifted Michael over the parapet, and heard his body drop with a thud on the other side. Jake was pulling his own body over the trench’s lip when he heard the shot and felt the burning bullet enter his body.

  The boys were wrong when they said it was too late if you heard the shot meant for you. He had heard the shot, felt the sniper’s bullet go in his body, and was still alive. Then a caul of darkness came over him. Without a sound, the Crackie tumbled do
wn over the edge of that bitter trench and landed upon the lifeless form of the Catholic.

  29

  The Culler

  Sophie had always carried the lamp upstairs. Jack seldom did—he was awkward with it. Must be a woman’s thing, he thought. When Sophie took the lamp upstairs to their bedroom, he soon eagerly followed, and they frequently loved with passion. Now the lamplight etched his dark shadow upon the staircase, until Jack stood outside the closed door of their bedroom. He didn’t feel good. With the glass doorknob in one hand and the lamp trembling in the other, he slowly swung the door open and entered the room.

  Like the kitchen, the room was undisturbed. The polished board floor was swept clean, the bed was made, and the curtains were drawn tight. Everything was in place. Even Emiline’s crib by Ruth’s side of the bed was neat. The blankets were tucked in, and her small pillow was still waiting for her sleepy head. Jack’s rough features softened, but he shed no tears. If Sophie had done the dastardly deeds to which the evidence pointed, why had she taken the time not only to tidy but leave the house immaculate?

  It seemed to have been planned. Placing the lamp on the dresser opposite the foot of the bed, Jack turned down the lamp wick and stepped to his side of the bed. He was dead tired. His mind was a haze of sorrow, confusion, and disbelief. He was about to pull back the patchwork quilts when he noticed something. An envelope with a broken seal, and with his name written on it, was enclosed in a knotted silk stocking. Tucked under one side of the silken knot were the set of green combs he had given to Emiline. On the other side of the knot was a thick, curly lock of his daughter’s red hair. Sticking out under the edge of the pillow on his side of the bed were the two white garters.