Flanders

by Patricia Anthony

  A shocked, “Dear God, but you’re a hard case, Travis! Well, since you’re expert at penance, choose one for me, for you’ve caught me stealing tea from out the storeroom.” He didn’t look particularly ashamed of himself. In fact, he looked button-popping proud.

  “Well, good on you, Father, as they’d say around here. Your penance is to steal yourself some currant and cinnamon loaf while you’re at it.”

  He laughed. “Needn’t tempt me. For the family I’m visiting, bread’s a plethora. It will be the tea that’s dear.”

  I stopped scouring. Another bug crept out from a baseboard, hurried its way past me. I let it go. “I’d like to give that poor girl something,” I said.

  I stared at the top of his boots. Near him, in the light from the doorway, sun winked on a puddle, turned a froth of bubbles into pearls.

  “Just some little something. I saved up some money to buy Ma another present, but the lace napkins can wait.”

  The floor shook. It was LeBlanc walking heavy-footed—burdened by water pails—on the stair. The door banged open.

  “You?” LeBlanc said when he caught sight of O’Shaughnessy. “You’ll get our goddamned floor dirty.”

  “Well, lad. But the red caps will have their evidence, won’t they? And with the boyo here to give his testimony.”

  LeBlanc’s cheeks went a hot, furious red. He stared down at me.

  O’Shaughnessy tipped his hat—a common man’s gesture. “Good day. I’ll be taking my plunder. ’Tis an excellent job you’re doing, Travis. Me compliments to your mother.”

  When he left, LeBlanc dropped my bucket down next to me with a thud. Water crested, splattered my already clean bit of floor.

  “What’d the mick mean by that?” His voice was shaking.

  Too painful to watch. Maybe when they came for him, it would be best if I wasn’t around. “I don’t know. He was making jokes about stealing tea.”

  “Up your ass, Stanhope. Come on. Tell me the goddamned truth. What was he doing here? What were you two talking about?”

  “Nothing,” I told him.

  He took his own water pail and went to his corner of the room. Officers’ morning teatime came and went. Cooks tracked mud from pantry to stove and back. LeBlanc and me refilled our buckets, set about scrubbing again.

  It was near lunch when Harry Barstow came bursting in. “Stanhope!” He was out of breath. “Captain wants to see you straightaway, and he’s having himself a royal blinking paddy. He says to me, ‘Barstow, sees you brings Private Stanhope here on the double,’ and all the time him slapping that stick of his into his palm. Best go on.”

  God almighty. Blackhall had taken the boots to him, dropped the problem of LeBlanc right into his lap. He’d think I’d been loose-lipped about it. I left brush and bucket and ran fast as I could to the officers’ barracks.

  It wasn’t raining, but the clouds were considering it. Miller was standing outside the portable building having a chat with Dunston-Smith. They looked public-school elegant, upper-class composed.

  When I saluted, my hands were shaking. I was so out of breath, I could barely speak. “Private Stanhope reporting, sir.”

  Miller sketched a return salute. “Ah, Stanhope. I’ve been told that you’ve volunteered to help Father O’Shaughnessy with a bit of an errand. Is that so?”

  It took me a few whooping gasps to sort through theories about LeBlanc and the firing squad, through charges of rape and a battered girl. Then I understood I’d been put smack in the middle of a game. But who was playing, O’Shaughnessy or Miller? “Yes, sir. He wanted me for an errand, sir.”

  “You do realize that you are under discipline.”

  I wondered what Dunston-Smith was making of the scene. There was an arch little grin playing around his lips.

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Shouldn’t have offered.”

  Miller turned to Dunston-Smith, shook his head. “I don’t know quite what to do with him at times, Colin. The boy is so damnably energetic.”

  In turning away he missed his reward: Dunston-Smith’s defensive sulk.

  I said, “I’ll just tell him I can’t, sir.”

  “No, no, Stanhope. I’ll not have you disappoint him. He’ll have you for one of his bloody good deeds, I expect.”

  “Yes, sir. I expect so, sir.”

  “I suppose there’s not much enjoyment to be had. Charity and all that. You may go, but not for long, mind. And do your best to stay within O’Shaughnessy’s sight, what? No chasing off on your own. Oh, Stanhope?” he called as I turned away. “I’ve a donation you might add to your coffers.”

  He dug in his pocket, came up with a fistful of money, handed it to me.

  “Good God, Richard,” Dunston-Smith said in fiscal shock. “You’ve given the boy over twenty pounds.”

  “Yes, quite. One of my favorite charities. See that you use it well, Stanhope. Won’t have it wasted. Least I can do. Twenty pounds or so. Not much, actually. It’s the very least I can do.”

  His eyes so level. His mouth rueful. I knew then. The red caps weren’t coming for LeBlanc, not ever. Twenty pounds as a blood payment. LeBlanc would get away with it all.

  I left Miller, walked fast across the yard, and found O’Shaughnessy. He’d been standing around the church building, waiting. When he saw me, he started to chuckle. “Ah, the poor lad! I see you’ve been ordered to help my efforts.”

  “I need to stop by a place so I can buy a present.”

  He nodded.

  I carted the tea for him. “Those bastards. They’re going to let him go,” I said.

  No need explaining who. “That’s likely.”

  “Just ’cause Miller’s scared.” He was letting them win. Well, there was no way for me to judge the effects prejudice has on courage. I was raised around them, and I can’t hope to understand what coloreds go through. Still, I bet his fiancée would have given those Oxford assholes what for.

  “Ah, lad. It’s that everyone’s tired, is all. And it’s not Miller’s fear you’re dealing with, but the fright of the British Army. For Pierre’s a hero, and you can’t be tarnishing nor punishing that. After all, what—other than stories of valor—makes soldiers follow a charge? No, Travis. For an army to win, heroes must shine like suns. They must be rewarded. Heroes are why other men go on.”

  For war’s sake, men die, women are beaten. “There’s no damned justice.”

  He shook his head, amused. “Ah, lad. If you’re expecting justice, you’ll be disappointed. It’s only death that’s fair.”

  We walked in silence for a while, then he asked me for news of the graveyard. I told him that Foy had gone on, that LeBlanc’s youngest victim was staying a spell.

  “Does she look happy, lad?”

  I thought about it. Hard not to be happy there. “I know she’s dreaming.”

  He liked that.

  “But death being equal still don’t make everything right,” I said.

  “Don’t you think so?” I’ve never seen such contentment on a person as I saw in O’Shaughnessy right at that moment. Oh, LeBlanc had been happy on his horse, but this was different. It was like O’Shaughnessy was savoring something, even knowing it was bound to end; and somehow loving the ending, too. It was a deep, peculiar satisfaction that O’Shaughnessy had. I wondered if he loved death too much.

  We arrived at town, pausing to pass the time of day with the town’s priest. From his armload of food, I figured the old man’d been on his way home from shopping. The two blathered away in French. The old priest offered us an early apple each. Mine was still sour.

  It was odd watching the two talk, casual as workers on a break. I wondered if this was the man O’Shaughnessy confessed to, tried to imagine what sins he wanted rid of.

  Then they were saying their adieus and nodding and waving. O’Shaughnessy took me a few blocks down and showed me a place to shop. I sorted through pearl brooches and sapphire rings, garnet earrings and onyx necklaces. It was a cross on a chain I finally bought, for it was
pretty and I thought it might give the girl’s heart some ease.

  It was an expensive, frilly gold cross; to buy it, it took all my money and Miller’s, too. The shopkeeper wrapped it pretty. When he was tying the red ribbon, he winked.

  “He thinks you’ve a lass you’re stepping out with,” O’Shaughnessy explained. “And like all jewelers, he’s blathering on about what a fine selection you’ve made and complimenting your good taste. Say merci.”

  “Merci.”

  The shopkeeper’s head bobbed. He handed the wrapped gift over and we left. Once in the street, O’Shaughnessy laughed. Like Miller, he must have found me amusing.

  “Do you know what the shopkeep said to me, Travis? That he’d not have served you had you come in alone. A British soldier, and buying a piece of jewelry? Why, he’d have imagined you set on seducing a town girl. Ah, but you came in with a priest, didn’t you? And to make matters even safer, you purchased a cross. Well, now he knows your intentions are honorable. He asked if you’d set a marriage date as yet.” O’Shaughnessy went to cackling again.

  I thought about the girl, about how Miller said she’d been ruined. The gift made me a little sad. “What’d you tell him?”

  “That you were American, and not British; and that America is a long way away. Ah, but the man was a romantic. He told me that the only thing better for a man’s soul than overcoming obstacles of affection is pining over unrequited love.”

  Right then I recognized what I saw in O’Shaughnessy. It wasn’t happiness, but security. He’d never had reason to doubt that he was cherished.

  “You know where the girl lives?” I asked, for it seemed like he was making a beeline for someplace.

  “Just ahead here. Ah. We’ll have a lovely time. She always enjoys her visits.”

  I shifted the tea crate, slowed my steps. The cobblestone streets were close, the row houses—some white plaster, some red brick—standing shoulder to shoulder in short blocks. The houses were two- and three-storied, with high pitched roofs and gables. One wooden front door each: painted green or white.

  The street was deserted but for a wandering cat. War had emptied some of the houses. The whole town looked as if it was waiting.

  O’Shaughnessy stopped at a house on the corner. Before he could knock, I shoved the tea into his arms. “Listen. You give the necklace to her for me?”

  “Her family’s here, lad. They’re lovely people. You’ll not be wanting to give the gift to her yourself?”

  If I looked into her face, I’d remember her spread, submissive ass. I’d hate myself if that happened. “It’s not like no penance or nothing, is it?”

  “No. You needn’t see them if you’d rather not.” Still, he looked disappointed. “Will you knock them up for me, then?”

  I perched the gift on top of the tea crate, gave the green-painted door a couple of raps. Then I started away fast. Behind me I heard voices in French, a man’s, a woman’s, heard O’Shaughnessy reply. When I turned, I saw the man eyeing me. I shoved my hands into my pockets and rounded the corner.

  Just out of sight, I stopped. Near me was a window, its lace curtains worn at the hem and yellowed with age. A fine rain started falling, not heavy enough to seek for shelter. The wind gusted. The curtains heaved. I hunched against the cold, my back to the street.

  It was the turning toward the house like I did, it was the wind parting the curtains that made me see her. She was asleep. The bed covers were rumpled, her pudgy hands clutching the feather comforter as if terrified it would leave.

  Lots of things would. The ruin of that face would make people scatter. Jesus, Bobby. Her top lip still curved in that perfect, rosebud way I remembered; but her lower lip had been cut off.

  And God, how LeBlanc had beaten her. The pink cheeks I remembered were yellow and misshapen with swelling. It was her clutching the bedclothes in her sleep that tore at me—that vigilant, never-trusting hand.

  When O’Shaughnessy came back around the corner, I ducked my head and walked away from him fast. Rain fell harder. I heard his splashing steps behind me.

  “Travis!”

  The blank faces of the row houses, the blind eyes of their windows. A sudden gust sent fallen leaves tumbling down the cobbles, made scavenging pigeons plump their feathers.

  “Travis.”

  He caught up with me, grabbed my arm, and spun me around.

  “He hurt her,” I said.

  “You knew that.”

  Didn’t know. Didn’t. Not about the lip cut off, not about the teeth exposed. She wouldn’t eat right again, talk right again. Never smile. From that night on, no one would look her full in the face. I jerked my arm free and kept walking.

  “Travis. You knew that. Should have been no surprise, lad.”

  “Shit!” I yelled, startling pigeons, sending birds and echoes scattering. “That makes it all right? Jesus!”

  He touched my arm, but I couldn’t stand it. “I’ll kill him,” I said.

  The serenity in O’Shaughnessy vanished. He looked frantic. “No, lad. No. Don’t be taking that sin on yourself.”

  “You don’t know shit about sin. I lived with it. It slept in the room next to me. I tried to kill it once. Hell, you probably tell that girl in there she’s supposed to be happy because God loves her, ain’t that right, Father? Well, if God loved her so goddamned much, why’d he let Pierre LeBlanc do that to her face?”

  “Travis,” he said real soothing, like he was quieting a spooked horse.

  “Why’d he do that?” I meant God as much as LeBlanc. O’Shaughnessy kept reaching for me. I kept knocking his hand away.

  I started walking fast toward the billets. Behind me, O’Shaughnessy shouted something. His voice was drowned out by the soft chuckles and contented-baby gurgles of the rain.

  It was a long walk back to billets. On the way I thought about LeBlanc’s hands, how kindly they were on the horses, about Pa’s hands lying gentle in his lap the way they did in my dream. I looked at my own, the knuckles red from scrubbing, the fingers scarred from rough work.

  Jesus God, Bobby. For all of us it’s only one short step to Pa’s savagery, another step to LeBlanc’s. Kill him? Take the sin of it? How many had I killed already, anyway, and O’Shaughnessy forgiven me? God had to be stuffed to the gills with the fruit of heroes.

  I turned a corner and there he was. I would have struck him down right then if he hadn’t been standing at the door of the stables, grinning. He waved me over, “I traded chores, eh? Grab a pitchfork!”

  The afternoon smelled of wet manure and rain. It stank of ammoniac horse piss.

  LeBlanc, grinning the way the bakery shop girl never would. “There was a captain by here, Stanhope. He said we could go riding, after.”

  I walked into the shelter of the stables, out of the gray afternoon and the drizzle. “They know,” I said.

  The smile fell off his face.

  “Miller told me. The red caps know everything. They got hold of your boots yesterday. You stepped on the girl’s back and left a bruise. On your left boot you got one broken hobnail. Two are missing. Ask me how I know.”

  He leaned on the pitchfork and lifted his boot, studied the bottom. His cheeks went sallow.

  “They’re gonna get you,” I told him. “Just a matter of time. If it was me, I’d run for it. Head for that last farmhouse where we billeted. You remember where it was?” They’d shoot him when they found him. And I’d tell the red caps where he’d gone.

  Outside the stable door, rain fell faster. It trickled from the roof, pattered on wet straw. To the back of the dim, shadowy building a horse whuffled and stamped.

  “You were there that night, Stanhope. I saw you. You had your peter in your hand. I’ll tell them you fucked her, too.”

  “I’ll deny it.”

  “They won’t care. They’ll get you. Hey. It’s almost true. You enjoyed it. Looked that way to me.”

  I grabbed a pitchfork. He held his ground, brought his own pitchfork up the way you do in bayon
et training. A strange sort of eagerness went all through me, keen as Marrs’s singing. I tightened my grip on the handle so hard that a stray splinter in the wood bit.

  LeBlanc knew I was going to kill him, just like Pa’d known that time. Like Pa, he gave up; and that was his salvation. The tines of his pitchfork lowered a fraction of an inch. His stare wavered.

  I lunged forward, stabbed the tines hard as I could into straw. I started shoveling horse shit fast and furious. He joined me. It wasn’t long after that when I saw O’Shaughnessy pass by. I pretended I didn’t see him. LeBlanc and me shoveled manure until the sun set and Riddell came to call us to dinner.

  Why didn’t I kill him? I was taller, stronger. I knew my way around pitchforks. I couldn’t use Miller’s excuse of pity, either. Shit, if I’d been good at pity, I wouldn’t never have killed no one.

  It’s just that when I was facing him, I got to thinking how tired I was. LeBlanc was tired, too. Flanders’ air is thick with the stink of rotted soldiers. The soil is root-bound with bones. In that charnel house, one girl’s pain just didn’t seem to matter.

  Travis Lee

  OCTOBER 24, THE FRONT LINES

  Dear Bobby,

  It feels good being back in war. A couple of hours’ march, and life gets real again. I need edges now, Bobby: shells and bullets. I need big noises. That green, quiet world behind the lines is just a fantasy.

  I buddied up with the new rum wallah, and last night was the best sleep I’ve had for days. While I slept I walked out through No Man’s Land. I went looking for Marrs.

  “There’s not much time left,” I said when I found him. I wasn’t sure why I knew. “You got to come with me.”

  He’d gone beyond looking for his letter, beyond laboring to breathe. He was more tired than I was. Still, I kept pestering him, the way Ma’d do me sometimes.

  “Please,” I begged him finally. “Please. I can’t let you stay here.”

  I did anyway, Bobby. I walked away and left all of them, the Boche, the Frenchies, and Marrs.

  That morning when LeBlanc and me crossed the wire, my hand touched something smooth and round like a marble; barbed, too, like an old arrowhead. It was an interesting-feeling thing—my fingers liked the comfort of its roundness, were fascinated by those edges. It was only when the sun came up that I saw what I’d been holding.