Once an Eagle

by Anton Myrer

  The sun poured over his flesh like a gauze mantle, cloaking it in heat. He was falling away through time, rolling with the roll of the earth’s turning … He was lying at the edge of the big field near Hart’s Island and the river was the Platte, steel gray under the long, white sky; the trees were cottonwoods and willows, and Celia was standing in her petticoats, dancing a funny little jig and laughing at him; laughing and laughing, mocking him. He moved toward her but she was far too fast for him—she spun away shrieking with laughter, now and then taunting him with words he couldn’t understand; she was joined by his sister Peg now—a situation that embarrassed him subtly. In his sternest voice he ordered Peg to leave but she only laughed, and the two girls began to indulge in some kind of girls’ confidences, all giggles and secrets and confusion; and he listened to them, half-irritated, half-amused, remembering, hidden back under the shade of the trees, a stoneware pitcher full of cold milk and a quarter of a black currant pie …

  He started, hearing voices near them, women’s voices, realized he had been asleep and dreaming—shot up in a sitting position in time to see through the thickets two girls gazing at him in great merriment. He whipped his shirt from under his head and flung it over him and hissed: “Dev!”

  “What’s the matter?” Devlin muttered groggily. Damon gave him a shove and he too sat up, saw the girls and snatched at Damon’s shirt, pulled it over his middle and rolled away with it, leaving the Nebraskan exposed. Damon grabbed at his trousers. The girls had moved off behind some bushes; he could hear them talking, laughing softly. Damon grinned—then glanced in surprise at Devlin, who had leaped to his feet and was hurriedly dressing.

  “Come on, Sam,” he said. “Dépêche, now …”

  “Daypesh what?”

  “Don’t let ’em get away. I mean it.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Charm the pants off them, that’s what. Hurry up, now.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “You watch. Come on, it’s in the stars.”

  They dressed in madcap haste and ran to the thickets. The girls were some distance off now, heading toward a group of buildings near the shattered stone bridge. They hurried after them, walking fast, setting their caps aslant.

  “Now let me handle this,” Devlin commanded. “You’ll see—there’s nothing to it. Your first French lesson.”

  They caught up with the girls, who didn’t seem averse to being overtaken, under a grove of chestnut trees.

  “Mademoiselles,” Devlin called, “—comment allez-vous aujourd’-hui?”

  They turned now, still laughing but wary. One was plump, with a smooth, round, pretty face like a china doll. The other was dark and slender; her eyes flashed in the sunlight like steel. Devlin made a funny little bow, smiling at them. “Nous—sommes Américains,” he declared proudly.

  “Oui, oui, sans doute, Américains!” They burst out laughing together.

  “Nous aimons la France, d’ailleurs,” Devlin pursued. “Elle est charmante, vive, généreuse—comme vous vous-mêmes …”

  “Ah, vous parlez français assez bien, Sergent,” the slim, dark one said—and then she unleashed a burst of French Damon couldn’t begin to follow. Watching Devlin’s face he could see he didn’t have too good an idea, either.

  “Well, we’ve been swimming,” he said in English, in some confusion. “Nager, c’est vrai? dans la rivière …”

  “Oui, nager, bien sûr,” they echoed, and their laughter was like birds singing.

  “Maintenant, nous sommes très fatigués,” Devlin went on. “Beaucoup de blessés, beaucoup de mortes. Nos camarades. Une grande bataille.”

  “Ah.” They got that all right. Their eyes—even the china doll’s—were all at once full of sorrow, anger, wonder, fear, regret. They had such expressive eyes!

  Devlin was talking to the slender, vivacious one. The plump girl with the smooth, delicate skin turned to Damon: “You—officier?”

  “Oh. Yes. Lieutenant.” He gave it the French pronunciation.

  “Mais votre ami”—she pointed one finger—“est sergent.” And her pretty little round face showed confusion.

  He got that and felt absurdly pleased with himself. What the hell, French wasn’t so difficult. “Oui. Sergent. I”—he tapped his chest—“was sergent, he was corporal. Until a few days ago. I—gave him—my stripes. See?” He showed the pale shadows of the chevrons on his sleeves. “Voilà! He is my—best ami. Bon ami.”

  “They just made him one,” Devlin broke in on them. “Promu sur la champ d’honneur. Il est un grand héro …”

  “Vraiment, un héro?” Their eyes flickered up at him doubtfully.

  “Sans blague. Son chef—ah, I can’t say it. The blasted verbs! The Major’s putting him up for the medal of honor. Médaille d’honneur, vous comprenez?”

  “For Pete sake, Dev.”

  “Don’t be bashful. A little artful bragging never hurt, especially when it’s true. For the love of Saint Denis, don’t queer the pitch, now …”

  They began to walk along the riverbank. Devlin was talking in animated conversation with the dark girl with the flashing eyes, whom he had apparently appropriated by virtue of his French Canadian mother. The chubby, fair one was prattling along beside Damon; her eyes darted up at his, the blond lashes falling away languidly. He kept watching them, fascinated. He understood more of her conversation than he would have imagined: it was like glimpsing trout in a mountain stream. Her name was Denise Renaudin. The war was terrible, everyone had suffered. They had been afraid the Americans would never come. The past year had in some ways been worst of all. Her father was a prisoner of war in Germany, her brother (though Damon wasn’t sure of this) was in a hospital at Angers, recovering from a bad wound. Life was hard.

  At the edge of the town, Devlin turned. “Michele wants to know if we can help them out. The door to their place is broken. Don’t you think we ought to give them a hand?”

  “Absolutely,” Damon answered. “Lead on, mister linguist.”

  They retraced their steps, followed the river to a second bridge, this one intact, and turned right up a tiny street filled with narrow houses jammed against each other like an old man’s teeth. A church steeple dark as ancient armor glided along above the tile roofs. They turned onto a still narrower lane where the front doors—massive oak doors with carved lion’s heads and flowered iron knockers—opened right onto the cobbles. Nearby Damon could hear the high rhythmic clank of a forge, and saw across the way the angry red glow, and showers of blue-white sparks like tiny stars. Michele turned and swung open one of the great doors, and they climbed the stairs to a gloomy landing.

  “Voilà,” she was saying, “c’est affreux, hein?”

  It was affrur, all right—if affrur meant a complete wreck. The door to the apartment had apparently been forced, then smashed off its hinges; a funny-looking upholstered couch with a wavy, off-centered back had lost one of its claw legs, an oak table was lying on its side, its top split right down the middle. Michele was talking to Devlin rather nervously. Damon couldn’t get very much of it. It had something to do with American soldiers at a café nearby who had got drunk and followed the girls home and forced their way in, thrown the furniture around and generally ransacked the place before they left.

  “Did they steal?” Devlin demanded sharply. “Est-ce qu’ils ont volé des choses? monnaie? argenterie? choses comme ça?” They shook their heads. Had they reported the affair to the provost marshal, the military police?

  The girls exchanged glances, shook their heads again rapidly. It was impossible: they didn’t know the soldiers’ names. They fell into an odd little silence; they seemed to be at a loss for anything to say. Damon watched the two women reflectively. There was something he didn’t quite understand—and then all at once he did. He knelt down and examined the broken leg of the couch.

  “Beautiful carving, Dev.”

  “Sons of bitches,” Devlin was saying savagely. “Taking advantage of a co
uple of helpless young girls! Christ, I’d like to get my hooks on them …”

  “Well. You won’t.”

  “Probably some of that lousy Third Battalion—a bunch of counter-jumpers and plug-uglies if I ever saw any …” He was waving his arms; he had worked himself up into a fine French-Irish rage. “I’m going to raise hell, Sam. I’m going to see Caldwell—”

  “Look, Dev—”

  “—no bunch of tinhorn baboons is going to get away with a thing like this!”

  “Dev, for Christ sake …” Damon got to his feet and stood close in front of him, tapping him on the chest with his forefinger until he stopped shouting. “Dev, they don’t want to go to the MPs. Can’t you see that?”

  Devlin’s eyes went blank. “They don’t?”

  “No. They don’t. They—can’t …” He gave the Sergeant a long, hard look. “Can’t you see how it is?”

  Devlin stared carefully back at him, then at the girls. “Sure,” he said in a different tone. “Yeah. Sure. I can see how it is.”

  “Okay. Now the thing to do is fix the place up for them. That’s what they want.”

  “Right.” Devlin held a long, complicated colloquy with Michele, after which the two men descended to the ground floor and went out back through a little yard where three or four scrawny chickens scratched listlessly or bathed in the hot dust, fluffing their feathers. At the end of the yard was a sort of stone dungeon without a door. Devlin hallooed and a figure came out of the dungeon, a small, hunched-over man with white hair and mustaches and a narrow, leathery face that twisted into a mask of hostility on recognizing the uniforms. Devlin greeted him with a lot of Gallic frills and salutations; the gnome stared back at them implacably. The young ladies had sent them down to ask for some tools, Devlin went on in the friendliest manner. “Peut-être vous avez des outils, monsieur? marteau? scie à main? rabot?”

  The old man gazed at them a moment longer, then turned away and led them inside to an ancient narrow chest with great brass handles at each end. He lifted the lid and crouched over it in a proprietary way, watching them.

  “Oui, très très bon.” Devlin picked up a wooden jack plane, spun the cylinder deftly and lifted out the iron, running his thumb along the cutting edge. “Look at that, Sam. That’s great steel.”

  The grognard edged closer, his bright old eyes glinting in the damp gloom. “Vous êtes menuisier, vous?” he croaked, pointing a crabbed finger.

  Devlin smiled. “Non, non—aide de charpentier, seulement. Mais mon oncle, il est maître.—De bon acier, hein?”

  The old man smiled a wintry smile. “Regardez, monsieur,” he said, and turned the block to the light. Burned in the wood was the legend P. Grimaud, 1837.

  My God, Damon thought, that’s thirty years before Nebraska was admitted into the Union—that’s ten before the first permanent settlement. He watched the old man, who was drawing one of his gnarled hands back and forth beneath his mustaches and explaining something to Devlin about the plane, whose base was a rich, deep wood, smooth as satin with oiling and use. They cared for things here; it was an attitude he’d learned to respect in the Army. But war didn’t respect any thing, or place, or person. It crushed everything that happened to stand in its way …

  Devlin had shouldered the chest. They both shook hands with the old man and climbed the stairs again; the girls were sitting side by side, mending the upholstery on the couch.

  “Bon. Au travail, hein?” Flexing his muscles, Devlin struck a pose in the doorway, full of prowess, noble resolve, the afternoon sun blazing on his face; the girls laughed, watching him.

  They removed their blouses, took the door off and set in a wooden key where it was badly damaged, reset the lock and rehung it. They repaired the foot on the funny-looking divan, which Michele called a shays-long, and then began on the table. They had a great time. They hammered and sawed and chiseled and called back and forth to each other and the girls. It was very peaceful in the long, high-ceilinged room. Damon worked slowly and carefully; the old, worn tools came to his grip naturally, the shavings curled away from his hands and littered the floor around him, the sun poured through the casement windows; the girls chattered along, talking of things he only dimly understood—and it didn’t matter. He felt as though some parts of him had been restored. Only the thunder-mutter of artillery off to the northwest recalled the war.

  Later they built a fire in the hearth with the wood ends and shavings, sat at the repaired table and ate the thick green soup and drank two bottles of pinot noir; they tore huge pieces of bread from a long loaf and wiped their plates clean, the way the girls did. Devlin was talking a blue streak now, his thin, handsome face flushed with wine, pouring out French and English in a headlong potpourri. He told them of days in Chicopee Falls, his hometown, of coming off work from the mill in the early fall mornings with the sun burnished gold behind the trees and the ground crackling white with frost; and Michele and Denise talked about the war, the terrible days in ’14, with the Germans at Charleroi, at Cambrai, at Soissons, and the Uhlans sweeping the country everywhere like a plague. They had left their homes and sat in the woods all night for two nights, hungry and miserable, not knowing what to do. And then the miracle, when General Maud’huy had captured the heights above Montmirail, and the sales Boches had fallen back … But that had been only the beginning, not the end. After that, year after year of war and no end in sight. Less and less food, clothes, implements—less and less of everything. And every family in Charmevillers in mourning. And only the year before the great mutiny …

  Damon pricked up his ears at this—he had caught the word. A mutiny? in the French army? Well no, not really, Michele answered; it was simply a warning to the officers. The poilus refused to attack in the face of certain death; they would hold the line, but they would not advance, not anymore. They had suffered too much.

  “Well, we’re going to advance,” Devlin declared. “And then this old guerre’s going to be over toot sweet.”

  “You—croyez ça?” They were all talking in eerie mixtures of pidgin English and French, divining one another’s replies more than understanding them explicitly.

  “Of course! The Irlandais and the French can lick la monde. Didn’t you know that?”

  “C’est entendu! Mais—Sam …” and Denise pointed at Damon with an amused, quizzical look.

  “Quoi? Sam’s half-Irish. Same as me. We’re going to run those Heinies all the way to Siberia on a sled, and bring back the Kaiser with an apple in his mouth. You watch our smoke.” Picking up an apple from a blue earthenware bowl he popped it in his mouth and pantomimed the Emperor Wilhelm II with his head on a platter, mustaches drooping, eyes goggling—jumped to his feet, snatched up his soup plate and a gnarled walking stick he’d spied in a corner of the room, and fluttering the plate like a boater went into a strutting song and dance, his eyes rolling, his voice high and clear in the early evening stillness:

  “I’m gonna make a pickelhaube outa Kaiser Bill

  And then I’ll sashay all over Paree!

  Turn on my maximum power,

  Light up the Eiffel Tower,

  With Madame Pompadour to keep me companee …

  I’m gonna take the iron hinges off that Brandenburg Gate

  And then I’ll paint up the town of Paree!

  Get me beaucoup de cuties

  Who all know their duty’s

  To make a Turkish sultan outa me!”

  The girls broke into applause, shrieking with laughter, and Devlin paused, pleased with the results. “Encore?” he called, his hand cupped behind his ear. “Do I hear an encore? Yeah, you’re looking at Jolly Jack Devlin, the terror of the AEF …”

  “Ah, Dev,” Michele cried, laughing, wiping at her eyes. “You are si éveillé!”

  “That’s me.”

  “Et si—si débonnaire …”

  “What’s that mean? en anglais?”

  She shook her head happily. Her eyes were half-closed, her hair fell away from her forehead in li
ttle dark waves, her lips were curved in the gentlest of smiles; and watching her Damon started. With a quiet little shock he saw that she was attracted to Devlin—not as a wild knight errant in khaki or an easy mark, but as a man. His vitality, his joie de vivre, his heedless generosity had reached her. He said in an undertone: “Dev … ”

  But Devlin didn’t hear him. He came up to Michele with mincing, arch entreaty, bowed and said: “Est-ce que Mademoiselle me fera l’honneur de cette danse?”

  Staring up at him, his blouse open, his puttees unwound, his red hair tousled from the swim in the Marne, she laughed—then her face became all at once very grave, almost pained. She rose to her feet and put her arm on his shoulder. He lifted her to him light as a feather, and began to sing softly:

  “Standing by the river, lights all aglow,

  Thinking of an evening out of lost long ago;

  Lord, all I can do is pray

  Let it be somewhere, someday …

  —Why did I ever let you out of my sight?”

  They moved slowly, dreamily, around the little room. Michele’s head was on his shoulder now; she seemed enervated, almost drugged, without will or constraint. And sitting at the table with his glass in his hand, watching the two figures clinging to each other, swaying, Damon felt brushed with dread, he did not know why. He looked away. Outside the windows the sun was sinking behind a graceful row of Raebyrne’s skirmisher trees. The sky dipped into coral and lemon hues, a pale rose on the undersides of the little snatches of cloud; and the river looked not so much like water as metal cooling with the advent of dusk. Far away the big guns rumbled and bumped their slow avalanche of war. He shivered and crossed his arms. They must go. Now. If they didn’t—if they didn’t something terrible would happen.