Flanders

by Anthony, Patricia

  I got back late—late for dinner, late for inspection. In the lamp-lit dark, I ran into a pair of red caps. They arrested me, of course. Then they marched me down to Blackhall, who shook his head and told me, “Stanhope, you’re a lazy bastard. Is there nothing you won’t do to shirk duty?” and ordered me clapped in the glasshouse.

  Jail. Better than shoveling shit.

  Travis Lee

  * * *

  AUGUST 4. THE GLASSHOUSE

  Dear Bobby,

  I can’t sleep here. Something about the place. I toss and turn. I listen to the click of heels as the sentries make their rounds. Nights, I watch crosshatched moonlight climb the wall; and when the moon sets, I get up and pace the three short steps from iron-barred door to meshed window. I stop there sometimes, my palms flat against the wood wall. A damp, grass-scented breeze comes through the mesh, nose-high.

  Funny. I didn’t think being jailed would make me jumpy, but it’s the knowing I can’t leave, Bobby. It’s the having to sit here that drives me crazy. I jiggle my foot to bleed off the nerves. I work my hands together so tight that my nails turn blue.

  When I lie down it seems like spiders are crawling my skin, and I picture the daddy longlegs in the root cellar and how Ma used to hold you tight; how I’d hold you when Ma was too sick and the storms were coming. Do you remember that, Bobby? Do you remember how I used to wrap my arms around you when spiders threatened and the wind howled upstairs? I haven’t been such a bad brother, have I?

  Time travels slow here. Marrs and Pickering came to see me today. Pickering studied me this way and that. “Don’t look half so handsome in clink as you do mucking out latrines.”

  “Hear they gives you bread and water,” Marrs said. “That all? “

  “Otherwise wouldn’t be much of a punishment, Marrs.” Pickering lit up a Woodbine, offered me one. “We’re going into town to prang whores, Stanhope. Wish you could come.”

  Marrs, shy and nervous as a mouse. “Don’t be telling nobody I’m going to visit a tart, now. Don’t want the folks at home to hear, me dad friends with our parish priest and all.”

  “I say, you all right, Stanhope?” Pickering asked. “You sure? Well, you’re the talk of the company again. Good old Stanhope, the font of bloody conversation. Here. Let me light that gasper for you. You sure you’re all right, now? Why’nt give us a smile, then? A fart?”

  “Something,” Marrs said.

  The cigarette tasted stale, but I kept on smoking. “Do me a favor, Pickering. Prang your whore once for me.”

  He put his hand through the bars. “Be five shillings.”

  Marrs gave out with one of his high, insane cackles. “Pickering’s talking you up to the whole company, about you being a red Indian and all, and how you can come and go without being seen, like. He’s goes on about you forever. Got them all believers.”

  Pickering’s face went serious. He took a pensive drag of his cigarette, let the smoke trail out his nostrils: a droll, horse-faced dragon. “So where were you off to, then? I mean, really?”

  I paced the room, trying to outdistance Pickering’s stare. “I can’t sleep no more. Ain’t that funny? No Maxims, no shells, and I can’t sleep worth shit.”

  “Too bad,” Marrs said.

  Blank gray sky in the window, the smell of rain. “You boys bring me back something from town?”

  “Whores’re too heavy to carry, Stanhope,” Pickering told me. “Especially that fat ox you favor. Besides, you’d have to stick your bird through the bars. Think it would go, Marrs? Think our Stanhope’s that gifted?”

  I turned in time to see bashful Marrs duck his head. “Dunno. Ain’t like I ever looked.”

  “Ain’t you, then?” Pickering can do a dead-on parody of Marrs. He’s a mockingbird like that—mimics everyone. He’s a hurtful kind of funny, Bobby, if you know what I mean.

  Marrs takes the joshing a lot better than I would. “Hey,” I said. “Hey, Pickering. No kidding. You bring me something from town?”

  Pickering does Texan with less success. He stuck his thumbs in his belt. “Whut’chu be wantin’, son?”

  “Bottle of that French brandy. I’ll pay you for it.”

  Pickering lost his smile. His arms dropped. Marrs said, “Wish I could, Stanhope. But it’s plain against regs.”

  “Then just bring me a swallow of your rum ration, okay? Okay, Pickering? Huh, Marrs? You can put it in a pozzy pot. Hide it in your shirt. No one’ll have to know.”

  Pickering was shaking his head real slow. It drove me nuts the way he did that. If the bars hadn’t been there, I would have slapped him ugly.

  Marrs looked miserable. “You can see how it is, can’t you, Stanhope? What if we was caught?”

  “Your priest might find out. You fucking piece of shit.” I spanked my palm against the door so hard that my hand went numb. I hit it again. The iron bolt rattled crazily.

  A red cap poked his head around the corner. “What’s it?”

  “No problem, sir.” Pickering sounded so calm, so sure of himself, that the red cap nodded curtly and left.

  I said, “The hell with you. It’s not like I’m asking for something hard.”

  Marrs backed away, shrinking in on himself. Pickering said, “No use getting yourself bothered, Stanhope. Wasn’t us who put you in there.”

  “I’m not goddamned bothered. Look. I thought we were friends, you know? All I’m asking for is one swallow from your ration. Hey, Marrs? Can’t you spare one shitting little bitty swallow of your ration?”

  I begged and begged them, but they wouldn’t pay me no mind. They threatened to go, and I pleaded with them not to leave me. Those yellow-belly, worthless shits. Those goddamned peckerwood bastards. I thought they were pals, but they made me cry, and that shamed me. I’ll never forgive them for that.

  The red cap came and hit the bars with his nightstick, a bare inch from my fingers. Iron rang. The vibration tingled in my bones. “Next time your head,” he told me.

  I went back to my cot and tried to sleep. I tried to pray, and that didn’t work out, either. I couldn’t remember any goddamned words but the last ones I had shouted. Please don’t leave me. Too late. Pickering, Marrs, you, Ma. All gone.

  Travis Lee

  * * *

  AUGUST 6, THE GLASSHOUSE

  Dear Bobby,

  Worse today. I feel sick to my stomach. My body aches like I got a fever. I got the shakes so bad, I can’t light a cigarette. I broke down and boo-hooed this morning for no good reason. I want to forget, that’s all. One little swallow. Is that too much to ask for? One little swallow for company. Just something to hold me when nobody else will.

  I close my eyes and memory comes crowding: you and Ma. Pa in one of his beating moods. Trantham on the wire. Smoot in his glass-topped grave. I try shoving them back, but my arms aren’t strong enough. Faces come. They stare at me close. Shit, Bobby. They’re driving me crazy.

  Travis Lee

  * * *

  AUGUST 8, THE GLASSHOUSE

  Dear Bobby,

  LeBlanc came to visit. “You look like warmed-over crap,” he said. “What’s your sentence, anyway?”

  “Dunno.”

  I paced. He watched me. He was smoking one of his French manure fags.

  “They’re moving us up tomorrow.”

  They were all going to leave me. Every damned one of them. Jesus. I wanted a swallow of rum so bad. I wanted it the way you feel when you want to come with a woman, but you can’t: a huge, limitless Almost.

  “Bring you something before I go?”

  “Drink,” I said.

  “Huh? Speak louder, Stanhope. You’re mush-mouthed.”

  I went to the bars and faced him, lunatic eye to lunatic eye. I whispered, “Drink.”

  He cupped his ear. “You want a drink? That what you’re saying?”

  “I’d suck your pecker if you’d bring me a swallow of rum.”

  LeBlanc has a smile like a knife. Without a word, he turned and left. How long would
my company be gone? Nearly a month the last tour. Miller. He wouldn’t be alone. Not hand-in-hand with Dunston-Smith. Not sharing secrets in a cramped dark place, not breathing in the smell of straw. I sat on the floor, holding tight to the bars.

  LeBlanc was back a few minutes later. He sat cross-legged on the floor across from me. “All right,” he said. “But you can skip the blow job.” He took a pozzy pot out of his uniform blouse. I snatched it away from him. Not cheap watered rum. Pure French brandy.

  “Easy,” he said. “Easy. Don’t drink it all, eh?”

  I couldn’t help myself. He tore the pozzy pot out of my hands. “Not yet. Don’t. Don’t. Get off me, Stanhope. Settle in for a minute. Let it work on you. Take a breather,”

  The brandy felt good all the way down. My fingers itched to hold the jam tin again, my throat ached from wanting.

  “Had an uncle who was a boozer, eh? So I know how it is.”

  “I ain’t a boozer.”

  His laugh cut the quiet. “He saw things sometimes. You seeing purple gnomes yet?”

  A dead Boche. A calico girl. “I ain’t a boozer.”

  “Uh-huh.” He gave the pozzy pot back and watched me drink. “Better cap it off now. Hide the rest. They toss your room every other day, but not if you’re sick. Pretend you’re running a fever, eh? Act like you’re about to get the shits. Otherwise they’ll start feeding you Number Nines, and that’ll make sure you’re loose-boweled and regular.”

  I capped the pozzy pot and put it under my mattress. When I got back, LeBlanc was holding two new packs of Woodbines through the bars.

  “I figured you didn’t like my French fags, so here’s some Brit gaspers for you.”

  I sat down and stuck the cigarettes in my pockets. “Hey. Thanks.” When I looked up, I saw him watching me.

  “Hey,” he said. The sun must have broken through the clouds right then, for a silvery rectangle on the wall behind him suddenly and gloriously blazed. “I missed you. No hard feelings.” He stuck his hand through the bars.

  I took it, remembered the Boche boy’s blood, the childlike bewilderment in the ghost’s brown eyes. LeBlanc’s palm was dry and cool. “No hard feelings,” I said.

  Travis Lee

  * * *

  AUGUST 10, THE RESERVE TRENCHES

  A LETTER FOR THE KEEPING

  Dear Bobby,

  In the dead of night before the company left, Blackhall came to visit. The lieutenant and the red caps woke me. Blackhall jerked me out of bed. “Where was you off to the other day, Stanhope?”

  They’d woke me up too quick. The shadowy room, the question, made no sense at all.

  Blackhall’s arm whipped high, came down fast. Pain in my shoulder drove me to my knees. It hurt so bad, it stunned me. When my eyes could work again I saw that Lieutenant was holding a truncheon. The red caps were looking on, expressionless.

  “Where is it you went, Stanhope?”

  I caught his wrist just as the truncheon came down. The red caps cuffed my hands behind me, and when I was pinned and couldn’t fight Blackhall punched me between my shoulder blades. Air exploded out of my lungs in a kind of gagging bark.

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Goddamn it. Don’t hit me again. You can’t treat me like this. I’ll report—” He rammed the toe of his boot into my crotch. The pain was bigger than sight or thought or hearing. My ears roared with it, My spine went weak. I fell curled, wanting like blazes to hold myself, working my wrists against the cuffs.

  “Where?”

  I couldn’t breathe.

  He kicked me in the kidneys so hard that it brought tears to my eyes.

  “Where?”

  I tried to explain, Bobby. I said I’d felt twitchy that day. Said I’d walked out of camp just so I could be by myself for a little while. He didn’t listen. A metal-tipped toe slammed into my ass, too goddamned near my balls.

  “Where?”

  “In the country. In the country, In the country.”

  “What’d you do there?”

  I started talking fast. I swore before God that I hadn’t done nothing. A kick to my stomach doubled me up again.

  “Liar,” Blackhall said, and the way he said it sent a shiver up me. “Who’d you see?”

  Christ. I couldn’t tell. Not for Dunston-Smith’s sake. God help me. I couldn’t do that to Miller.

  A kick to my thigh. Not so bad. I knew I wouldn’t walk without limping, but all in all, not so bad. “Nobody. Please. Didn’t see nobody.”

  “I’ll beat you senseless, you bastard.”

  The whisper of the truncheon through air, breathtaking agony in my kidneys. Another soft whistle, something rammed into the pit of my belly.

  “Best stand back, Lieutenant,” one of the red caps said.

  My stomach contracted, felt like it folded in on itself. Bile erupted up my throat. It gushed, stinging, out my nose. It pooled, hot and sour, under my cheek. I couldn’t raise my head, but Blackhall grabbed me by the hair and raised it for me.

  “I got my eye on you, Stanhope. I been hearing how you sneaks out and about. But you never met the likes of me. I ain’t no wristwatch officer. Ain’t gone to the right schools. Don’t drink me tea with me little finger lifted. I was a copper, and my beat was the East End streets. So I knows me tarts. I knows me lifters. I knows me soaks and me sods.” He let me go. I fell back into the puddle of vomit. “And I know you,” he said.

  He stepped back. “Get off your arse, Stanhope. I’m sending you up tomorrow with the rest of the company. And best you don’t tell nobody about our talk tonight, else I’ll have you doing a stunt a week. See how long you last.”

  It took some doing to get to my feet. I stood there swaying.

  “Mind you don’t go sneaking again,” Blackhall said.

  The next day we marched and my back hurt from the pack, my balls felt sore and pulpy. The bone-deep bruise on my thigh made me limp.

  Marrs told me it was good to see me. He asked me what the matter was, and I didn’t dare tell him.

  When we stopped for lunch, LeBlanc sat down next to me. “Worked you over, eh? The bastards. Brought you a present.”

  A spare canteen, full of brandy.

  “Don’t drink it all at once, for Christ’s sake. You get too happy around here, they’ll knock the smile off you every time. Hide it.”

  Hide it. Hide the happiness. The comfort. Hide the truth about Miller. The army is after us, Bobby, Miller and me.

  Travis Lee

  * * *

  AUGUST 14, THE RESERVE TRENCHES

  TOO SAD TO SEND

  Dear Bobby,

  Time’s all out of whack. We’re off schedule. How long have we been in reserve? I forget, and I’m scared to ask anybody. Still hauling shit. I stopped pissing blood three days ago. Or was it four?

  Nye doesn’t tell me funny stories now. Nobody sleeps in my dugout anymore. Maybe there’s too much stink. Pickering and Marrs come to visit sometimes. They bring me candy that their families sent them. Toffee, brown as the shit on my hands. They don’t stay long. LeBlanc comes to visit, too, and he brings me comfort. He brings me forgetfulness. Not a bad boy.

  Ma always called me her bad boy. You remember that? No. Too many years between us. You and me, Bobby. The good boy and the bad.

  Every night the Boche have been giving us drumfire. One big gun, then the next. All along the horizon, a fast drum-roll flourish; above us, the high piping squeals of shells falling. I sleep, anyway. That’s the magic that LeBlanc brings.

  Some shells fall with a soft whuffle. They burst with the bakery-shop smell of mustard gas. Foy came back from the hospital in time to catch the whiff of bonbons. He got his mask on in time, but his arms broke out in yellow blisters. They sent him away again. Poor Foy. Poor life.

  Travis Lee

  * * *

  AUGUST 18, THE FRONT LINE

  A LETTER TO KEEP WITH ME

  Dear Bobby,

  Today O’Shaughnessy found me
. “Travis. The lieutenant will be wanting to see you.”

  I started to shake. I trembled so bad I had to put the shitcan down.

  “Come wash yourself.”

  Nye watched in bewildered jealousy as O’Shaughnessy took my arm and led me away. We went down the trench to his cozy little dugout. When we were safe inside, he pulled the blanket across the doorway. He poured me a basinful of water. He handed me a bar of soap and watched as I scrubbed.

  “Travis? I hear that you haven’t been eating, lad.”

  The water felt clean. The soap smelled astringent, like that lavender stalk I’d had for a while and then lost. I remembered the curl of the letter’s Gothic script. The fondness in it. “I had a stalk of lavender once.”

  His quiet, “Did you now?” Then, “Ah. But things leave us.”

  “There was a place I used to dream about,” I told him. “A graveyard and a pretty woman. Smoot and Thweat and Charlie Furbush were there. I haven’t been back since Dunleavy left. So goddamned peaceful. And the girl’s so sweet. I don’t know why he would want to leave that place. Nobody would.”