by Liz Harmer
“Pardon,” Philippe said. He wandered into the next room, where he found the shapes of musty furniture, and in the shadows, the tracks of muddy boots. Nothing on the walls. An old fireplace, black with soot. He went into the hall and upstairs, where he found two cramped rooms. One with a bed mounted on a metal bed frame, and another containing only the detritus of soldiers. Packs and canteens and blankets laid on the floor. He wanted proof of his children’s lives, though the chance of finding this seemed so unlikely that to seek it made him concerned he’d gone mad. There were no Transformers, no stripped-naked Barbies, no game consoles, no screens even, no small bits of clothing, nothing. Still, his children made the clearest picture in his mind, clearer than the floor creaking under his feet: a child’s hand on a plastic toy, the bits of spittle as he went shuckashuckashucka, and then another child coming from behind and covering Philippe’s eyes. Guess who?
Here, there were only more boot marks, more mud. This wasn’t anything like Winston’s bedroom or Mary’s. Was there any electric light? Were there sockets? He felt the dampish wall beside the door for a switch, and found none. He had the feeling he couldn’t open his eyes wide enough, that no matter how hard he tried, he’d never be able to see.
He sat heavily on the larger bed. The springs whined as they shifted. He lay back, shut his eyes. His body smelled both sour and sharp, of warm earth and clipped grass. Voices took shape and reached him in his half-sleep.
“Boy, he’s really confused. What happened to him?”
“Nothing. He seemed all right. Then he was just gone.”
“Where would he go?”
“Probably went to the barn. These guys love to sleep near warm piles of shit.”
“The manure can’t be warm anymore.”
“Still, he smells bad. Worse than you, Mitford.”
[Laughter.]
“That’s saying something.”
“Ah, fuck off.”
[More laughter.]
“It’s shock. Fatigue. He lost his whole family. Some fucker took all the fucking animals, too, or left ’em for dead.”
“Maybe they ran off?”
“Minds make compensations. Doesn’t know where he is. Seems like he hardly knows there’s a war on.”
“Maybe it’s all a bad dream.”
“Now you sound like Greenblatt.”
“Poor fuck.”
There was a long silence. Philippe felt himself drifting.
“You think the orders are on the way?”
“Nah. We’re fucked.”
“That’s the spirit!”
“We should get him to come with us. He knows the landscape.”
“Who, Philippe? We can’t take a civilian with us.”
“But can we leave him here?”
“His people will come back for him.”
“Don’t be stupid. You think anybody comes back?”
The voices stopped again. The breeze through the window over the bed was a mercy, touching his body where it was sore, cooling him in the places gathering sweat. He considered pulling off his shirt, but was too tired to do so. Deep in his body, he ached to see that small chubby hand, those toys. He again considered removing the shirt. Again he was too tired. He had a shirt. He was here, actually, physically. Will I or won’t I? His shirt had an odor, was made of molecules. Will I or won’t I? I. I. I.
* * *
—
He awoke in a black and heavy silence. His eyes adjusted to perceive a form next to him on the bed. Daniels, hands crossed over his chest, legs straight out, sleeping like a corpse. The bed jumped as he got up, thin mattress a see-saw. In that dark, he stumbled down the stairs. His body knew where each turn was, knew the size of each step, and knew when he had come to the bottom. He swung the door open between the sitting room and kitchen, and there was Ambrose, still awake and staring at the papers, a single candle burning in front of him. Ambrose turned and nodded. Philippe nodded back.
“Du vin. I know where the wine is,” Philippe said and took an unlit candle from the counter, touching its wick to the flame. Tears of wax dripped and landed on the table. He took his candle and crouched down to the cupboard.
“We already looked in there,” Ambrose said gruffly, without turning around. “Anyway, we’re leaving. Had enough wine. We’ll find more, I’m sure. Wine and shit and shells.”
“I will come with you?”
“You can’t come with us. Even if we wanted. We have orders.”
Philippe sat down across from him again, set the candle on the table.
“You ain’t dressed for combat, or for a hike even, to be truthful. You ain’t in shape.”
Philippe nodded, let his gaze rest on the papers.
“But you’ll manage. You got a choice. I ain’t got a choice.”
Philippe absently moved his hands to his pockets. Pulled out the business cards he found there, one from each pocket. Ran his thumbs around the edges.
“What d’ya got there?”
Philippe didn’t answer. Instead, he strained to peer at Ambrose’s papers. Pages scrawled in cursive lettering, a picture of a woman in lingerie, coy pin-up smile on her lips, a few blank pages. Ambrose pulled them into a single pile and shielded them from Philippe’s gaze.
“No privacy,” he said. “No privacy, no comfort, no pleasure.” He glared at Philippe. “Liberty and justice for all. The pursuit of happiness. Written into the constitution. Pursuit of happiness. We’re pursuing our happiness.”
“I’m Canadian,” Philippe said, shrugging.
Ambrose narrowed his eyes. “I thought you were French.”
Philippe flushed hot then, as though something he was trying to keep together had begun to unravel. He looked at the business cards. Embossed blue lettering said “Main Street Public Library” and “Philip McGuire, MLS” and an address and a phone number. On the back, someone had scrawled: You are not at home here. Remember port. And: Come back.
“What’s port?” Philippe handed the cards to Ambrose.
“It’s a kind of wine. Normally you’d have the port. A port. Unless it’s wine.”
“Right.”
Ambrose handed the cards back. “Where’d you get these?”
“They were in my pockets.”
“That’s creepy, man. That’s fucking creepy. You are not at home.”
Philippe nodded.
“But ain’t this your home?”
* * *
—
He ought to have slept; he couldn’t sleep, though Daniels’s weight in the bed calmed him like a wife’s. In the morning, eyes aching with fatigue, Philippe got what flour was left and tried to mix it with drips of oil and water and salt. He kneaded it as well as he could, but the flour was crumbling even before it went into the wood stove.
“I used to have chickens,” he said to himself. “Where did my chickens go?”
“When we found you, you were cooking up the last one. You made up all the eggs and served ’em to us.” This was Cooper, the man who yesterday had been standing watch at the window.
The men had come downstairs one by one, loudly, as teenagers did, their bodies too large for the space, boots thunderous, packs thudding against the ground. Having teenagers in the house, morning shouts—Dad! Dad! Dad!—seemed more real, or at least more recent, than this scene. He was sure that his own kitchen table had been heftier, bigger, laid with red placemats. His wife in her bathrobe opening her mouth to say his name.
“Smells all right, anyway.” Behind him, Ambrose folded each of his pages and put them into inner pockets.
“Something for you to take with you.” Philippe had dusted his cracked hands on his shirt, and white flour fell from his body as he moved around the table with the warm bread. Unleavened, it hadn’t risen, but each man tore off a hunk and ate it with animal fervor until only crumbs remained. These Philippe scooped from the table and tossed into his own dry mouth.
“You’ve been real generous,” Cooper said. “You gotta keep something for your
self. What are you gonna eat?”
Daniels smiled at Philippe. He had long-lashed brown eyes, and his skin was deeply tanned. “You should come with us.”
Cooper shifted, one booted leg on a chair, the other straight. He was pinching his fingers into a jar of something that smelled fishy. He tossed something small and scaled into his mouth and then passed the jar to Ambrose.
“He can’t come. We discussed this.” Licked oil and brine from his fingers. “We aren’t escorts. We’re foot soldiers.”
“He can help us get going in the right direction.”
“We’re just heading north. We can manage.”
“And if things go wrong?”
“Then things go wrong. But the fire hasn’t been anywhere near us.”
“Maybe we just stay here?” Mitford said.
“Can’t do that. Cowards or MIA. The only way out is through.”
“Odds are three out of four of us are dead men.”
“They’re in retreat. Krauts ain’t idiots. They know it’s over for ’em.”
“We can’t leave him here,” Daniels insisted. “We just take him with us and drop him off at the next town. How long’s he gonna make it on his own? We’re human beings, pal. I’m sure we’ll get back to our guys by sunset.”
“While we’re fantasizing,” Mitford said, “who else thinks we’ll be greeted by topless Rita Hayworth on a float?”
“With a brand-new Ford for everyone!” Cooper shouted.
“And we’ll drive that goddamned fucking Ford all the way through this weed-land and into the sea,” Ambrose said.
“Float off to victory.” Mitford cupped his hand in a queenly wave.
Ambrose wheezed and coughed into his arm, and Daniels came around to pat him on the back.
“You guys are real funny,” Daniels said. “It’s gotta be only a day’s walk till we reach our guys. Philippe, go see what you can rustle up in the barn. We need tools, blankets. Whatever you can find.”
The shag-carpeted basement, the hands over his eyes, shuckashuckashucka—these things were fading. Philippe grasped at them feebly as he walked to the barn. They were sinking under black, bobbing on the surface, then gone. The wife he’d pictured with a name in her mouth. Something was happening to his mind. He hadn’t known himself to be French or a farmer, but the barn as he came to it was familiar, even comforting. A place for daily ritual, where, high-booted, he would go just as the sun was coming up.
Why can’t I get my mind straight? His barn and stables, so solid, wavered as though alive, as though ready to do him harm: the chopped wood, the beams blackening with mildew, the dung-scented hay. The sun was cresting in the distance, imbuing everything with golden light. He could see himself touching the long lean face of a horse. He closed his eyes then, hand holding a fence gate, and steadied himself against dizziness. A mouse dashed out of the hay and over his feet, squeaked at him, and was gone.
He found a wheelbarrow and put shovels and wool blankets inside. A shotgun. He carted it back to the house, where the men were sitting on the sagging porch. Its armlike handles felt soft and worn down. His own hands had worn them down.
“A wheelbarrow,” Cooper said. He was the broadest and the only one whose skin seemed to be wearing in the corners of his eyes, crow’s feet a fan that folded and unfolded as he frowned and then laughed. An unlit cigarette was stuck to his chapped bottom lip.
“Philippe, you should put a jacket on.”
“I think I’ll stay here,” Philippe said.
Blue-eyed Mitford had his boot up on a stone ledge, and leaned over to spit in the mud. “Man wants to stay.” He stood and spit over the edge of the porch into the grass there.
An enormous boom sounded, then fainter booming from the north. Daniels took Philippe aside. “It’s your choice.”
Philippe winced. “What happened to all the animals? What happened to my family?”
“We don’t know. You were ransacked, it looks like.”
“But I told you, I definitely told you, that I had a family?”
Daniels nodded. “But maybe they got out in time.”
“Mais ou etais-je?”
Daniels frowned. “Maybe they got out. We’ll take you to the neighbours’. The village. If it had been my family, I’d have sent them to stay with people I knew. Maybe you just caught a little fire, but no harm done. We’re going north. You know the way, don’t you?”
Daniels had the helpless look of a person who loved to have answers and now had none. His long lashes gave his wet eyes a feminine appearance.
“Maybe the Germans were here first. Maybe I let them stay here too.”
Daniels nodded. “Maybe.”
* * *
—
He wore an ill-fitting sweater he found in a drawer. Its sleeves dangled from his wrists, and every few minutes he had to push them back up his arms. It was too hot for a sweater anyway, and soon he tied it around his neck, draping like a piggybacking child’s arms. He steered the wheelbarrow through the empty lengths of dirt road between nine-foot hedges, bouncing along behind the men.
Everyone’s a lotus-eater. He kept step to the strange phrases rising in his mind. Everyone’s a coward. Everyone’s a lotus-eater. Everyone’s a coward.
“Does it look familiar?” Daniels asked him.
The men were marching in the four-points of a square in front of him. He watched their bodies’ slow rhythm as one watches waves breaking on a distant shore. Sweat stung his eyes, and he wiped first one and then the other with the back of his hand, each time causing the wheelbarrow to hiccup. Ambrose turned and glared at him.
“Philippe?” Daniels said, turning his head briefly without breaking his march.
“Oui?” He was thinking in English, but French came out.
“I feel like we’re heading northeast,” Cooper said. He peered into the sky and halted, thus stopping their caravan. “But we ought to be going northwest.”
“Path will turn and head us in the right direction.”
“Who the hell planted these fuckers?” Cooper swung his rifle toward the thick hedges, which were deeply root-bound in shelves of dirt on either side.
“Ils étaient….They were always here,” Philippe said.
Back at the house, he’d changed out of his dirty jeans and into wool trousers. They were too long and a little tight, digging into his ass and crotch, causing his loose belly meat to spill out. He’d moved the business cards over to the new pants, but he no longer needed them, as he’d memorized each of their details, even the feel of the embossed letters. Remember port and the place you come from. Come back. Come back. The words made him ache with something like grief for a lost love. Come back! There was someone who wished for him urgently.
The others had caked wet mud on Philippe’s clothes to mimic camouflage, but there was no cover in the road. They were exposed. Around the next bend, he knew, they might be met with firepower they could not withstand. He gripped the handles of the wheelbarrow hard. His forearms and calves ached. The green endless walls of leaves moved gently as though enchanted.
Everyone’s a lotus-eater. Everyone’s a coward. Everyone’s a lotus-eater. Everyone’s a coward.
“What’s that?” Mitford said.
Philippe shook his head. “Rien. Nothing.”
“You understand English real well,” Mitford said. “For a farmer.”
Sweat dripped from Philippe’s thick eyebrows and down his cheeks.
“He does speak it well, don’t he?” Ambrose said.
“In ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ the castle is surrounded by thickets. Princes have to slice through it or get caught up,” Philippe said.
“Huh,” Ambrose said, without moving his head. “They got ‘Sleeping Beauty’ where you come from too?”
* * *
—
It didn’t take long for sweat to soak through his clothes, for his hands gripping the handles of the wheelbarrow to cramp and stiffen. His wrists grew numb, then his ankles. Despite the hea
t pouring out of the sky, his toes were cold.
“Put the sweater on,” Ambrose said. “You’re shivering.”
“Where is everybody?” Mitford said. He paused at the appearance of a lone shovel on the path. Near it, the earth had been disturbed, chunked out and sliced into. Mitford kicked the shovel nonsensically. “Dugout,” he said, inching along with his back against the hedge.
Philippe felt the tension of the other men as they watched Mitford do this.
“Nothing,” Mitford said, and they moved on.
Philippe looked at the sky, then at the ground, remembering the shovel. He rolled the wheelbarrow down along the dirt and abandoned it in the shallow ditch, then jogged to catch up.
“Smart.” Ambrose nodded at him. “Only take what you can carry.”
“We shouldn’t have stayed so long at Philippe’s house. We look like deserters,” Daniels said.
“What were we supposed to do?” Mitford said. “You’re the one who got us lost.”
Daniels frowned. “Well, we got to get our story straight. Getting lost is one thing. Sitting around smoking in front of a chateau while you listen to your comrades get slaughtered is another.”
“Ah, that never happened. You sound like Greenblatt.”
“Poor fuck.”
“It did happen! I heard it!” Daniels said.
“You think you heard it. And now you sound like a little girl.”
Mitford stopped suddenly, jarring everyone back.
“What is it?” hissed Cooper, aiming his gun at the empty road ahead, then rotating carefully to aim it at the empty road behind.
“Look,” Mitford whispered, pointing at the earth four feet in front of him. A long line of rats flowed past. “They’re fat.”
Cooper laughed.
“Means they’ve been eating.” Mitford climbed into the hedge, using the roots as footholds. A rat climbed out and onto his shoulder. He knocked it off and then returned to the path. Stepped over the rats. “Nasty.”