by Daniel Kraus
His teeth were blood-splattered, mud-spattered, but still, when he flaunted them, objects of American splendor.
“Can I shoot? Heck, Private. I was born to shoot.”
XII.
CHURCH WAS CARTED AWAY, ALONG with scores of others, to a med station set up inside a barn near Marigny. That night, I emptied the wilting straw from my thigh, improvised sticks as replacements for the missing bone, packed the hollow with clay, and tied it with bandages.
With Church left the regiment’s capability for transcendence. That does not mean the boys did not fight well. Through morning mist, we captured two-thirds of the Wood on June 11. The whispered word was that the Marines were holding at a seventy-percent casualty rate. The Skipper requested reinforcements; it did not happen. The next day at 1730 hours we launched an offensive in hopes of breaking through into the northern third of the Wood; that, too, did not happen. The lines of fire clotted, the paths of attack coagulated. The rough arithmetic was one inch gained per life lost.
On the night of June 15 our runners brought the overdue word that we were to be relieved in the morning. Such news would have ushered in celebration if not for Mouse. He was lost somewhere in no man’s land, laughing out beneath the stars. The sound was so unexpected from Mouse that a few of us chuckled, too. Hours later we figured out that he was dying, his lungs shot up so that his screams came out like giggles. By then it was too late. Jerry lit the skies with magnesium, making rescue impossible. Mouse, the quiet one, was not quiet near the end. He damned soldiers by name, mine included, for not coming to save him, damned the whole regiment, the whole military, the whole war, the whole world.
Our march to bivouac grounds was a glum one indeed. What few of us were left humped across the same gutted landscape we’d come in on and tipped our helmets to the same dead farm animals. They were in worse condition this time, but then again, so were we.
We made camp at dawn, a miraculous sight: clean gray tents, a pond for bathing, warm chow for the eating, tables for card playing, men who still dove at the whistle of distant bombs, and their good buddies who pretended not to notice. The Skipper left us at ease near a sentry tower, returning a few minutes later with a surprise.
With his crisp laundered uniform and easy grin, Burt Churchwell was ready to model for enlistment posters. That calf wound of his had been a “blighty,” an injury serious enough to put him on the next westward boat. Church, though, not only walked upon the leg but swaggered. A shocked silence prevailed until someone let out an EEE-YAH-YIP! and the battalion, maudlin since Mouse’s death, erupted. Church was swarmed. There came a percussion performance of back slapping and all the best expletives. The Prof hoisted two bottles of French wine. Where had he acquired them? Who cared! The starstruck scene, thought I, had to remind our guest of honor of his days leading homecoming parades as a Grinnell College Pioneer.
Celebration made it a challenge, but his eyes found mine. He was of meat-and-potatoes Iowa stock and it clearly bothered him to accept so much adulation while I, his deliverer, stood friendless to the rear. But I understood that this was the necessary order. Were these boys to survive, they needed a leader, and that leader’s shine could not be smudged.
I left them to their rejoicing and wandered the camp. Everywhere I saw men trying to recall ordinary behavior. I saw them sit for haircuts and wince at each snick of the scissors—Jerry crawling through the wheat with his bayonet. I saw them sunbathe, donning sunglasses as if that might help shield them from the clanking of artillery shells being unloaded, the moans of despair from the medical tent, and, worst of all, the hyperventilations of troops fresh off the boat. How prematurely we’d become the grizzled vets.
Only Piano rejected the chance for R&R. He usurped a corner of the camp and paced it until dust clouds rose, his left cheek clenching as if from invisible jabs. Every five or ten minutes he dropped to the grass, unrolled his tube of maps, removed his colored pencils, and added clarifying granularities. War had stripped most soldiers of their patience, and to preserve sanity they repeatedly ejected Piano from earshot, often by force. At last the Irishman spoiled the isolated nook I’d claimed.
“. . . arseholes be lost without me maps . . . those woods are bleedin’ thick . . . they gonna die out there if they don’t listen . . .”
The blather needled me the same as any other. I gathered my gear and walked away. Evening had arrived and guys everywhere were burping compliments to the best corn willy they’d tasted in weeks. They waddled about, overfed and dazed, dousing firepits so that German biplanes could not isolate our location at night. In fifteen minutes it was as black as a trench but for the million or so glowing cigarettes flitting about like fireflies.
“Finch.”
I was strolling between dual rows of tents. Against better judgment, I ducked down and parted the flap of one of them.
Church sat alone, his back straight, his legs crossed like an Indian. Before him lay a collection of French pin-up girl postcards and a perspiring bottle of Coca-Cola, though both had the feel of untouched props. He was shirtless except for his bandolier and his guns were arranged close for quick access. His face was difficult to read. He pointed at the space in front of him.
“Sit,” said he.
“Nice of you to offer. But I think I shall—”
“Sit.”
The tent flap swept shut behind me.
Church positioned a piece of beef jerky between his teeth and watched my right thigh as I manipulated it into a sitting position. The jerky was tough and he wrenched his head side to side to bite off a hunk.
“I’ve seen you give Piano your rations. My thinking was always, well, he’s a bully, you’re a chicken. I didn’t think any more of it.”
“Thank you.”
“Why are you thanking me? I haven’t done anything for you. Not a darn thing.” He flung the rest of his jerky into the tent wall. “I’ve been sitting here five days now and it’s like there’s a grenade in my brain with the pin pulled. Listen—will you just listen? You saved my life and I can’t go on like it didn’t happen.”
“Rest assured it was not personal.”
“Here’s the problem. I can’t just go to the Skipper and have him write you a commendation. Because I’ve got a hunch you wouldn’t want me to. He’d find out about your—you know. Your leg. What you are. Not that I know myself, because I don’t, but I sure as heck know you’re not normal.”
“Who’s normal?”
Church barked once in laughter.
“That’s true. Out here they blast the normal right out of you.” His smile withered and he peered at me with raw curiosity. “Why in the world are you here? Someone like you?”
Call it battle fatigue, call it a hunger for the sort of conversation I’d not shared in twenty years, but in that tent I found myself willing to release the burden of my secret.
“It seemed a fine place to die,” said I.
“Huh. Golly. I don’t really know what to make of that.”
“Why are you here, Corporal?”
“Me? Fact is, I read a story in a magazine: ‘A Soldier’s Glory.’ All full of pomp and circumstance. Got me riled up, I guess. But now I’m thinking different. Maybe what it did was make a sucker out of me.”
“If anyone is supposed to be here, it is you.”
“See, that’s the thing.” He tapped his chest. “I’m still here because of you, Finch. You and me, we’re connected. I owe you. My folks owe you. Lillian Eve Johnson owes you. We Churchwells, we pay our debts.”
It did not escape my notice that he was at last using my real name. This moved me more than I would have guessed, but it did not mean I would drop my guard. One need only peruse recent history to find that affiliation with me was hazardous.
“There is nothing from you that I want,” said I.
“C’mon, fella. You’ve got nothing to hide from me. Tell me how you g
ot this way. I’ve never begged for nothing my whole life and I’m begging you now.”
Dickens had it right: this dream of life was an undigested bit of beef, a fragment of underdone potato, more gravy than grave. Me, fighting for a country instead of for myself? Me, happy to be inside of a cramped tent beside an armed man? Me, in France? The pure farce of it dictated that it mattered not a pinch what I told to whom. So I began with the Black Hand escapades from before Church’s birth and then toured him through such popular destinations as Dr. Whistler’s Pageant of Health, a bona fide secret lab, and a plantation full of southern-fried whangdoodles.
It was a fable without a discernible moral, and at its completion Church swallowed hard, as if General Pershing had informed him that the moon was made of stinky green cheese and he’d just have to accept it. Church chose to believe, I think, because believing was, for him, the easier path. Now he could go about reimbursing what he felt was owed.
“If you’re . . . dead, like you say . . . what would put you at peace?”
It struck me as a penetrating opening question.
“I used to believe it would be revenge against he who killed me. What else but revenge can drive one for so long?”
“But you said you came here to die.”
“The trail went cold. All things, to me, grow cold.”
“Maybe there are better things to live for.”
I thought of Merle, out there somewhere, still wilding.
“Perhaps,” said I.
“I got another question. This la si . . . len . . . sio . . .”
“La silenziosità.”
“Right. It lets people see their own death?”
“It is more akin to feeling their own death. The state of their soul at the end should they not alter their path.” I shrugged. “Or so I believe.”
Church slapped his bandolier. “Do it to me. I’m ready.”
I gave my head a mild shake. “I will not. It saps all energy and willpower.”
“For you? Or for me?”
“Both. La silenziosità is not something to trifle with.”
He considered this for a moment.
“All right, another question. How many minutes did you say you were dead?”
This question, on the other hand, struck me as offbeat.
“Seventeen,” replied I.
“And how old were you? Are you, I mean.”
“Seventeen.”
“Merry Christmas, Finch! Don’t you think that’s a clue?”
“How do you mean?”
“Look, how many people did you hurt with the Muddy Fingers?”
“The Black Hand.”
“Right. Make an estimate. Any chance it was seventeen?”
This resourceful young man! I was sad to let him down.
“More. Much more.”
“Then how many people have died? From your actual hand, Finch. Could that be seventeen?”
“I suppose.”
“Well, you ever think that’s why you’re here? To save seventeen lives, to pay back as many as you took?”
Dr. Leather, for all his vials, calipers, and annotated bits of fastidious flesh, had never struck upon an idea so crystalline as had this cornfed corporal. Math: nothing was simpler or more profound. Could my resistance to shooting the young German be linked to a tacit inkling that I remained here on Earth not for murder but for salvation?
In the end, of course, the idea was no more than a rose-tinted fancy. What Church had not calculated into his tempting Theory of 17 were the recent figures that weighed the equation against me: Johnny, Pullman Larry, perhaps by now Mary and Gladys Leather, or even Merle, not to mention the troops who died on June 6 while I cowered in a crater with an unspent rifle.
“Maybe,” continued Church, “I’m Life Saved Number One. And if you’re, you know, rotting away like you say, then I’d wager there’s no time to waste.”
“’Tis an attractive notion,” said I, “but I should need to save the entire regiment to compensate for all I have taken.”
“Heck, is that it?” Church chuckled. “If anyone can do it, it’s you.”
We were interrupted by a tipsy, red-eyed GI passing word that some musical son of a bitch had himself a gee-tar and a bunch of jackasses were singing songs and it was all sorts of god-danged fun and if we Marine bastards liked fun we ought to do ourselves a favor and get our butts over there. Church shot me a raised eyebrow. Our conversation was hardly finished, but then again, if we were as bound as he claimed, would it ever be? He grabbed his Coca-Cola and crawled toward the door.
“C’mon, Finch, let’s see if we can kill Jerry with the worst singing this side of Berlin.”
Indeed it was a racket unrivaled. The Army guitarist, a captain, was an able plucker, but the brawling conglomeration of off-tune louts gave the inharmonious Carlo Gesualdo a run for his money. Their cause went unassisted by the snappy pap of wartime rags: “Over There,” “Pack All Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag,” and that counterintuitive classic, “Oh! It’s a Lovely War.” Reader, it drove me out of my skull until Church slung an affectionate arm around my neck. Every Marine present witnessed the gesture and promptly lost track of the lyrics.
Their faces said everything. This pairing of brash American hero and unpopular ghoul was unnatural and they would not stand for it. I wished to retreat, but Church gripped me more fiercely. Soon enough, the music rediscovered its pace, the intoxicated Marines grew tired of holding mistrustful glares, and Reader—it pangs me even now to say it. Gød help me, I put my arm around Church, my friend, whom I resolved to treat better than Johnny if it was the last thing I did, and I lifted my voice until it chased away the final vestiges of Leather’s phantasmal scorn, until I sang just as poorly and loudly as Church, as the Professor, as Jason Stavros, as all of those doomed fools.
XIII.
NEVER AGAIN DID THE DOCTOR’S oxygen-smothered voice ring inside my skull. Four days later we were back at war and within the half hour a lieutenant brought the bad word that I was to appear before Major Horstmeier. The sun had not yet shown itself and many a disgruntled grunt grunted as I jostled their dozing bodies on my way through the trenches. I ducked into the officer’s hutch, an underground bunker complete with tables, chairs, lamps, bookshelves, radio equipment, a liquor cabinet, and a bowl of goldfish.
I saluted.
The Skipper glanced up from a map on which rested pawns similar to the Hazard sisters’ chess pieces. He looked, as usual, as if he’d been eating a two-by-four that did not agree with him.
“Private Prefer-Not-To, it has reached my hairy old ears that on the tenth of June you rescued several of my boys pinned down by machine gun. I find this pretty hard to believe. So I’m asking you man to man: is it true?”
“It’s true, sir.”
But it was not me who responded. The Skipper and I turned to discover Church standing at the entryway. Four days now he had proved muttlike in devotion, but this was a bolder maneuver. ’Twas a good thing indeed that being Burt Churchwell came with certain privileges; Horstmeier did not bother to chew him out.
“All right, Prefer-Not-To. You’ve got a pair of legs and a talent for dodging bullets. So happens that’s just what I’m in the market for. A couple of runner positions have opened up and I’d like you to consider the job.”
“Opened up, sir?”
“One boy got bit in half by a bear trap in the woods, and the other caught fire when his signal flares ignited. Neither got shot in battle, if that makes you feel any better.”
“Not really, sir.”
“Position’s voluntary. Command won’t force this on anyone.”
“May I have a few days to think about it, sir?”
“A few . . . ? Hell, no, you can’t have a few days! We’re at war here! I need your answer now!”
Let me summarize all th
at I knew about being a runner. Better known as “suicide detail,” our squad was comprised of six crazy-eyed, punch-drunk renegades who were our best method of communication between Allied positions. It was a primitive age, Reader; common was the use of signal lamps and carrier pigeons. A runner worth his salt, however, could ford smoke, fog, mud, and razor wire to deliver attack orders or casualty reports from captain to captain, to lug food and water to soldiers dying of hunger and thirst. Runners were the veins and vessels that tied units into a single body.
They also got blown up a lot.
“He’ll take it, sir,” said Church.
“Good,” said Horstmeier.
I, of course, opened my mouth, just to, perhaps, get in a word or two regarding this brisk sealing of my fate. But before I spoke I considered Church’s Theory of 17, which was not so far-fetched after all, was it? Being a runner might provide me a non-killing role in this War to End All Wars—a position of appreciable irony, seeing how I’d once gorged upon three square meals of violence a day.
“And I’ll take it, too, sir,” said Church.
So surprised was the Skipper that he dropped the proper salutation.
“Church, I didn’t ask you.”
“I accept anyway, sir. You said you were down two runners.”
“But your leg.”
“Good as new, sir. You saw me march this morning.”
Church’s grin was more persuasive than a howitzer. The Skipper looked lost before staring back down at his map.
“Report to Captain Rockwell, both of you,” muttered he. “Dismissed.”
Once we had surfaced amid a peach dawn, Church clapped me where, some years ago, I’d taken two slugs in a duel. He looked giddy. It was the fourth quarter and he wanted the ball.
“You and me, little buddy. The Game begins anew, eh?”