Flanders

by Patricia Anthony

  “Talk funny,” he said. He was just a dark blot in the night—a shadow soldier, same as me.

  “I’m an American.” Funny how proud it made me. Right then, right there. It made me homesick, too. I thought of the limestone hills, the Perdenales. I pictured the pavilion and its red, white, and blue flag; the stripes turned the wrong way, all the stars extinguished.

  “What’chur business?”

  “I’m in Captain Miller’s company.”

  I heard the clank of his gear as he moved. Too dark to see, but I knew he’d aimed his rifle. “Best be getting on.” The fright in his voice amazed me.

  I turned around and walked away.

  I followed the memory of Blackhall’s map, squeezed between the wall of a storage building and the latrines. I came out on the far side of the glasshouse: a long dark rectangle, one square of meshed yellow.

  “Sir!” I whispered. The window was high. I took off my gloves, reached my arm up far as I could, grabbed the sill. “Sir!”

  Rustling within. Miller’s voice, first a dull “What?” then a disbelieving “Stanhope?”

  Fingers met mine through the mesh. I jerked my hand away, then realized what I’d done. I reached out for him this time. The warmth of his touch made my eyes well up. It sapped the strength out of my legs.

  “Aw, goddamn you,” I said. I leaned my head against my arm, hung onto the wire tight. “Why didn’t you just bald-faced lie?”

  I didn’t expect the laugh. I didn’t ever think that, from a dying man, it could go on as long or could grow so loud. Then a “Shhh” from Miller, and the boom of footsteps on hardwood boards. From somewhere in the building, mutters.

  I took my hand down from the mesh, stuck it in my coat to warm it. Across the way, lanterns winked slow and lazy the way the lights in the graveyard do.

  Then from the window, “Stanhope?”

  “Yeah?” I put my hand back up. His hand was waiting. I remembered Pickering in the hospital, unconscious but still holding on.

  “I had to stop him,” Miller said.

  “I know that, sir.”

  “And I was caught at the thing fair and square. Aide said he’d seen me. Now no one else can be blamed. At least there’s some justice to it.”

  “Ain’t no justice, sir. That’s just goddamned bullshit. Wasn’t no justice when my pa came looking for me with the belt. Never saw a lick of justice, ’cept for what came from you.”

  He sighed. “Well. There is justice. I wish you’d believe that. Wish you’d try to bring it about. Otherwise what I’ve done has no meaning, you see.”

  We stood for a while, just touching.

  “You scared?” I asked him.

  His fingertip rubbed lightly up and down my knuckle and I let him. I wouldn’t move my hand away. Never again.

  “There’s this graveyard,” I told him. “It’s a place I go in my dreams. Dunleavy’s there. And Marrs and O’Shaughnessy and the others. It’s pretty. There’s a girl who watches over. That’s where we go when we die, I think. I think we sleep for a while.”

  He sniffed. “Thoughtful of you, but I don’t need any hope of Heaven. Most kind of you to try. Still, one turns to religion at the end. Must be inevitable, I suppose. I have been sitting there considering what sort of Jew I have made.”

  Miller, tinkering at goodness.

  “Tell you one thing, sir. The guys in your company respect the hell out of you. Looks like they’re going to hang around outside the pavilion until it’s all over with. Funny the way it happened. Nobody’s said anything. Nobody’s made no plans. Haven’t talked about mutiny. They just stand there, like everybody’s too tired to move.”

  “You must persuade them not to do anything foolish. Shouldn’t want any of you hurt for my sake.”

  We had jumped the bags for him. We had faced shelling and not run away. We had walked head-on into machine-gun fire. “I’ll tell ’em.”

  “Kind of you to come.” His fingers went away.

  “Sir!”

  His voice was faint with distance. “Best get back to barracks. Do persuade the rest of the men to go with you. Tell them I am perfectly well.”

  “Sir!” I hissed, but he didn’t answer.

  I splashed back to the storage building, fumbled around in the dark until I found something to stand on. I dragged the crate to the window, stood up on one end. I could see the cot, his boots. He was lying down.

  “Sir!”

  No answer.

  “Damn it, sir!”

  The boots moved off the bed. A tired grunt, and he was back at the window again. “Do go on to barracks, Stanhope.” From his voice I could tell he’d been crying.

  “I’m not leaving you.” When they brought him out, I’d stand in front of his body. I’d take the bullets for him.

  He lifted his hand to the mesh. In the light of his candle I could see his fingertips—skin pale from the cold, the half moons of his nails. I caught him, held on. “Listen to me. Whatever you believe, there’s this graveyard.”

  “We are born, and then we die. We do the best we can.”

  “All right, then. Tell me what you believe.”

  “Just that. Doing one’s best. Good Lord, Stanhope. It is complex. One spends a lifetime studying the Torah.”

  “Give me something to hang onto. Shit. Don’t you see? Tomorrow I got to stand there and watch them murder you.”

  A long and contemplative silence, then “ ‘What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor,’ ” he told me. “Shammai said that that is the whole of the Torah. The rest is merely commentary on it.”

  I held his hand. There’s something to touching, Bobby. Even asleep, Pickering knew that.

  “As they lead me out, I’ll be saying the Shema Yisrael,” he said. “It’s what a Jew should do if he knows he’s to die. Well. So. Not the first time. Whenever I jumped the bags, you know, I said the Shema.”

  “Say it.”

  He taught it to me, syllable by syllable. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. I said it with him while moisture collected on the mesh, while it beaded on the sill. He asked if I’d be there when he was buried, if I’d say a Kaddish over him. And then he taught me that.

  “There’s this graveyard,” I said when he was finished.

  He shushed me. “Dear Stanhope,” he said. “Your being here is enough.”

  A noise. Miller’s fingers slipped away. I reached out, tried to hold on, but the mesh stood in between.

  From a distance, Dunston-Smith’s shy question, “Richard?”

  And Miller’s surprised and heartfelt, “Colin. So glad you came.”

  I left them, walked past the storage building, the paddocks, the mess hall. I shoved my hands in my pockets and strode fast through the muck. Damn him. Forgiveness without limits is stupidity. I don’t know, Bobby. Does God really expect that? Miller forgiving Dunston-Smith. Probably forgiving the men who would shoot him. Forgiveness lurked like a flaw in Miller, the way Pa does in my dreams.

  After a while I wandered back. Miller’s candle was still burning. I stepped up on the crate and looked inside. The room was empty except for the edge of that cot, those boots.

  “Captain Miller?”

  He bolted up so fast that the cot thumped the wall. “Thought you’d gone.”

  He came back to the window, but didn’t lift his hand to mine.

  “Hate to ask, but would you do me a favor? It’s my father.” He was crying and trying his best to hide it. “Would you write him? Could you do that? Just a short note. Let him know that I did what I thought right.”

  “You bet I will, sir.”

  “I’ve asked Colin, but he’s in an awkward position, you see. Can’t be helped.”

  Bullshit, I thought. “I’ll do it. Don’t you worry, sir.”

  “Yes, well.” He was fighting sobs. “Perhaps you’d best run on.”

  “I won’t ever leave you.”

  I heard his footsteps as he walked away.

  “There’s this
graveyard, sir.”

  The cot creaked as he lay down.

  “Look for me there,” I said.

  I slipped away into the dark, stealthy as Turnhill had when he was dying. I wandered down through the storage buildings and past the mess hall. I walked the log road to the dark, huddled obstacle in its path. The men were still waiting, and I knew then that they hadn’t been waiting for me. They’d been waiting for dawn.

  I sat down beside Calvert. “We’re going to bury ’im,” he said. “Me and Sergeant and Goodson and Hutchins. Blackhall says ’e’ll be there. And Blandish, too.”

  I stretched out my legs.

  “They was about putting ’im wif the cowards and the criminals, but that won’t ’appen. Lieutenant spoke to Dunn about it.”

  Blandish threw me a tarp. Halcomb passed me down a cheese sandwich. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten, the last time I’d slept.

  We sat and watched the sky go from ebon to charcoal. Lights came on in the barracks and in the mess hall. Halcomb and Goodson brought us all back a dixie of tea, and we drank while the sky turned pearl.

  Down the log road Blackhall and Riddell and Driggers came walking. They were in their dress uniforms and they looked fine.

  “Soon now,” Blackhall said.

  I stood. The others stood up with me. In the glasshouse, they’d be offering him breakfast. He’d refuse.

  A foggy morning. Over by the mess hall a crew was dumping the morning’s trash. A flock of birds flew up from a tree-line and I followed their flight, my neck craning. A squad of men marched up and surrounded us, their rifles cradled.

  In the glasshouse, they’d be directing the chaplain in to him. Miller would send him away. The last fear would hit. Try as he might to keep his hand steady, the teacup would jitter in his hands.

  Dunn and Caraway emerged from the glasshouse first. Small as toy soldiers, they walked across the wet field. Then a knot of other officers came: Wilson, Everett, Dunston-Smith. I watched them approach Dunn and halt. Everyone waited.

  Through the gauzy fog came the firing squad: new boys, smart in their clean coats. A lieutenant carried out a straight-backed chair and set it down. Dunn barked an order. The lieutenant moved the chair closer. Caraway bellowed and gestured. The lieutenant repositioned. The firing squad looked at each other. The chair was no more than five yards away.

  Two red caps came out of the glasshouse, the handcuffed Miller between them. They’d sent him out without his coat, and it was a cold day. Still, he walked proud, Bobby. He kept his head up. He didn’t stumble. Beside me, Calvert came to attention. We all stood, saluting rigid and right as we’d ever had in training.

  Miller’s mouth was moving.

  Shema Yisrael.

  I remembered the feel of his hand in mine, but then thought that the hand I remembered might have been Pickering’s. I was tired. Memories bled into each other and edges blurred.

  The lieutenant was young and inexperienced. He blindfolded Miller too soon. Handcuffed, unable to see, Miller staggered. The lieutenant caught his arm and tried to pull him to the chair. Miller slipped in the mud, nearly went down.

  Goodson muttered angrily, “Blast them.”

  Adonai Eloheynu.

  Miller slipped again, his lips still moving. Dunn came forward, took his other arm.

  Adonai Echod.

  Dunn and the lieutenant played an excruciating game of blindman’s buff, pulling Miller, stumbling, with them. Once at the chair, they let him go. He fell awkwardly into it, his back bent, his head lowered and swiveling right to left, right to left, searching for the correct posture. Miller, needing to do things right.

  They were so far away that the lieutenant’s shout was like the final reverberation of an echo. “Ready.”

  My hand shook so, my forefinger tapped my eyebrow. My back, so straight, tensed. But I didn’t cry out. Miller was sitting sideways, shivering in the cold and the rain, his head moving side to side, not knowing which direction to face.

  Softly over the still-green meadow: “Aim.”

  Miller’s back snapped erect as if they had already fired. He sat rigid, facing east. Miller, trying his best. His mouth was moving.

  Blandish said, “Need to set him about, don’t they.” Then he shouted, “Bugger it! Set him right! He’s cold! Give him a blanket! You blind or sommit?”

  Miller raised his head in our direction.

  Calvert told Blandish to shut up.

  So quiet the order to fire. So faint the pop of the guns. Beautiful, the white puffs from the barrels; and I didn’t cry out. Miller shuddered: once, twice. He slid from his chair, kneeling. Slow, so slow, he tumbled the rest of the way. He twitched once, I think, but it was so easy, really. A better and surer thing than battle. The lieutenant took out his side arm, cocked it, walked to Miller’s side, and shot him in the head.

  They left him and walked away. The bunch of us came forward to where he was lying. Blackhall knelt and took the blindfold off. The bullet from the pistol had stolen Miller’s face.

  We tucked him into one of the tarps and carried him with us. Riddell had found us a pretty spot, right by a poplar sapling. I said the Kaddish over him, like he’d taught me. The grave Hutchins and Riddell dug had filled up with water; and we put him in gentle, watched the water take him. All of us took turns filling the grave. Goodson had made a wooden cross with flowers on it. I watched him hammer the cross at Miller’s head and didn’t have the heart to correct him. But what Goodson did was all right. The worst was over, and everything was all right.

  When we were finished we said words over him. The boys remembered odd kindnesses here and there. Riddell burst into tears and bawled like a baby. We left Miller in the drizzle and the cold, and we went back to barracks. The brass didn’t badger us. They didn’t ask us any questions. They levied no fines, no punishments. I fell into my cot and slept, and didn’t wake up until late the next day. I didn’t dream about him.

  Travis Lee

  DECEMBER 14, THE REST AREA

  Dear Bobby,

  The day after we buried Miller I went looking for Dunston-Smith. I stopped a batman, who hadn’t seen him; found Wilson, who had. Wilson looked dazed and puffy-eyed. Still, with that British upper-class courtesy, he drew my route in the air: Turn by the mess hall, go down the log road to the officers’ billets, knock up the fourth barracks on the end.

  “He was a wonderful officer,” Wilson said. “Nothing we could do, you know.”

  I left him, walked by the mess hall, down the corduroy road, past the officers’ billets. I went up the steps of the fourth building and saw that the door was ajar. I knocked on the jamb, heard Dunston-Smith say, “Come.”

  He straightened when he saw me. He had been packing. There was an open crate on the cot. He was holding a book. The room smelled of Earl Grey tea. On a small table beside the bed was a pencil, a length of gold chain with a Star of David, and beside it a photograph of a beautiful, sad-eyed girl. I felt Miller in that room so strong that I nearly called out his name.

  Dunston-Smith held the book out: a small book with a blue cloth cover, a bloom of gray mold across it. I remembered Miller and Dunston-Smith and a bloom of moss on a straw-warm hut in the woods. “For you, I believe. Richard was quite the romantic.”

  The book smelled of mildew. The pages were swollen by damp, rain-stained. I opened it up, read the words: He has out-soared the shadow of our night.

  “He was in love with you, you know.”

  I looked up, carrying the next line of verse with me: Envy and calumny and hate and pain.

  “Ridiculously, deliriously in love. Silly about you as a schoolgirl.” Dunston-Smith’s eyes were clear and empty; nothing—neither guilt, nor jealousy—to cloud them. He took another book from a stack on the table, read the spine. “A Talmud, in Hebrew. Doubt you would want that.” Then, surprisingly, a hip-sprung stance. A toss of his head. An arch, pouting smile. Clues he had never shown me. “You’re not of the same persuasion.” He met my eyes again. />
  The volume of Shelley open in my hands. Simple white page; lucid black letters. And that unrest which men miscall delight. “No.”

  I heard the Talmud drop into the crate with a dull thud.

  “I came to get his father’s address.”

  He picked up the framed photograph and stared at it a while. The glass caught the light from the window, winked.

  “He asked me to write, sir.”

  The sad-eyed girl disappeared into the crate, put down so gently that I never heard the sound of her leaving.

  “Sir?” I said softly. “It was the last thing he asked of me.”

  I knew why Miller loved him. Dunston-Smith was a weak man, and Miller was so damned good at forgiveness. His finger tapped the stack of books.

  “Sir?”

  Abrupt and furious movement. He yanked a journal out of the stack, ripped a page from it, grabbed the pencil, and started scribbling. Under his breath, he muttered angrily, “Yes. Best that someone do, what? Best that it’s known.”

  Dunston-Smith was giving me the address, even though I knew the whole story, even though I could tell Miller’s father the truth behind why the army had hunted him. Why they had killed him. That Dunston-Smith had been his lover. I could even tell the whole wide world that in the end, Dunston-Smith had betrayed him.

  He stood straight, as if he had been ordered to attention. He whipped his hand out, the scrawled page in it. His expression gave nothing away—he’d trained himself to hide things. But there was too much pressure. A muscle twitched in his cheek. I closed my fingers over the paper, took a crisp step backward.

  “Whatever your relationship—” he said. He looked away quickly, picked up another book. “I’m glad his affections were returned.”

  I stood for another heartbeat in that hushed room that still smelled of Miller. Then I left, closing the door quietly. I went back to the barracks, got out my paper, and wrote: Dear Mr. and Mrs. Miller, I knew your son.

  Like Miller had that time he wrote the letter to Ma, I stopped and couldn’t go on. Around me, the boys came and went. A few of the newer ones, Blandish and Hunter, had already forgotten yesterday and were laughing. Against regulations, I stoked up the primus and made myself a cup of tea.