The air was close with the blanket pulled to. The dugout smelled of damp and incense; a shit smell that was me. I stripped off my uniform blouse, plunged it into the basin.
“Tell me about the woman,” he said.
“I miss her. I miss going there. Lord, but it was a pretty graveyard. The platoon was resting, and she promised she’d take care of them for me.”
“And do you believe her?”
From down the trench, muffled laughter. My hands knotted on my shirt.
“I think I got to.” Around that makeshift curtain, sun drew a halo of sublime light. “Listen. The lieutenant’s going to send me on a stunt. He wants the alleyman to get me. He wants to see if I can dodge Emma Gee.”
“Are you afraid, Travis?”
“No,” I said. Funny dreamlike names for bare bone realities. All these months being afraid of the Boche, the Frenchie’s dread Allemagne. I’d been terrified of shells and ghosties and machine guns. Now that there wasn’t anything but death left, I wasn’t afraid at all. “I think I’m ready to see the lieutenant now.”
“You can’t die, lad.”
The flat, hard tone made me turn.
His eyes were flat and hard, too. Stripes of sunlight lay docile as wings against his cheek. “You daren’t die yet. Fear will keep you from the place you’re wanting to go. And anger. And drink will keep you from it, too. You’d roam, Travis. And you such a fine lad, really. A good lad.”
Like I was already dead. Pity. Always such a good boy.
I took my shirt out of the basin, wrung it as dry as I could. I put it on. “I want to see Blackhall.”
Lieutenant was waiting in a support-line dugout, like he had been made a real officer or something. When I came in, he threw a report across the room. Papers fluttered to the dirt floor, a fall of pale leaves.
Blackhall glared at O’Shaughnessy. He glared at me. “Stanhope?” he said. “Report to the med officer right away. None of your lounging about, mind. ’E wants to ’ave a look at you.”
But I had been so ready, Bobby. I was prepared like Trantham was prepared just before he ran to the wire. All the war to go, and I don’t know if I will ever be that ready again.
“Damn yer eyes! You deaf or sommit, Stanhope?”
“No, sir.”
“Best get him out of here, padre, ’fore I sticks me boot up his arse.”
A hand on my arm. I turned. O’Shaughnessy guiding me again. We walked down the trench to the medical dugout, where an orderly had me take off my clammy uniform blouse. He told me to sit on a cot. He checked my eyes and temperature and heart, then called for the med officer.
The doctor took himself away from lavaging a soldier’s arm wound. It was a small angry cut the doctor was occupied with, one too ragged for bullet or shrapnel. Rat bite, probably.
The officer bent to peer at me closely. “Well, you’re right, padre. He’s looking decidedly infirm. Shooting pains up your shins, soldier?”
“No, but my legs hurt.”
“Specifically up your shins?”
“No.”
He clucked over me and asked how else, then, was I feeling?
I told him I was just so damned tired.
“Breathe deeply.” He touched the cold toe of a stethoscope to my back. “Again.”
He stepped back. “Well! A spot of good luck, padre. No trench fever; but a bit of congestion, and he’s definitely warmish. The leg pain worries me, and I don’t care for the bronchial sounds.” The doctor turned to the orderly, who pursed his lips in disapproval. “Coming down with some ague is my guess. Best send him back before he infects the whole battalion.” He took up a clipboard and marked on a page. “Soldier, I’m ordering you back to the reserve trench and the regimental aid post there. Report to Major Landis. Major Landis. Can you remember that? Good show. Tell him that Captain Fielding has sent you there for observation. Think you can make it on your own? Good. Excellent. Blake? Give the boy here an aspirin and send him on his way. Well, ta-ta, padre,” he said brightly, and went back to his basin and gauze and oozing wound.
O’Shaughnessy escorted me to the communications trench. “Do you think you can make it from here, lad?”
I thought of the canteen in my dugout, but the comfort was too far away. The world was stretched to the point of exhaustion. “Yes,” I told him. I left without saying thank you. He saved my life, I think.
It was a long tiring shuffle to the reserve trenches and the aid post there.
“Feverish? Nauseated? Leg pain, you say?” Major Landis asked. When I nodded, he did, too. We were in complete agreement. “Yes, quite. And faint, I shouldn’t imagine. I’ll wager you’re dehydrated. Take that cot there.” He pointed. “Clear fluids and salt. Jennings! Get the private here a measuring bottle to piss in. Soldier? I expect one hundred cc’s every four hours.”
I took my measuring bottle to bed with me. Every hour the orderly filled a pint glass with water and told me to drink. He made me nibble on salted crackers. Then he’d take a look at my measuring bottle and make a note of how much I’d pissed. He didn’t smile. There was a private with an abscessed tooth in the cot across from me. He didn’t smile, either. My piss was measured with the gravity of a court martial. Direct orders: one hundred cc’s. But the piss came out rust colored and muddy looking, and there wasn’t nearly enough.
The aid post was quiet. It smelled of carbolic and packed damp earth. The walls were wood paneled and sturdy. I closed my eyes and listened to the birds sing. Shells fell, harmless and far away.
It wasn’t the graveyard I dreamed of, but the creek that runs through the ranch. It was just like I was there, Bobby: the glassy water, the murmur and gurgle of the spring. Cedar trees crowded around like they were gathered to the most wondrous thing in the world. And I was so thirsty. And the air was cedar-sharp and clean. I knelt on the bank and plunged my face in. The water was cold, the way it always is. I drank, and the cold spring water numbed me. It tasted like it had flowed through summer: all mown hay and lemonade. I filled myself to bursting, so that in the dream I knew that I’d never have to be thirsty again.
I lifted my head, water dripping. On a limestone boulder in the dark grotto of cedar, the calico girl sat dunking her feet. By her hand was a stand of maidenhair fern, clumped leaves like lime-green bubbles.
So quiet there. I could have stayed, if O’Shaughnessy hadn’t cheated me.
She looked up, too. Her laugh came, bright as specks of sun. “You can’t stay here. That’s an order.” She kicked water at me. It sprayed up rainbows. It fell in icy droplets on my cheek. “You’re to piss one hundred cc’s.”
I woke up with a violent shiver. The aid post was dark except for a single lamp. The open doorway was murky with night, and I had to piss real bad.
I filled the bottle that time. The color looked better. I drank my liter of water and asked the orderly to bring me more. I’ve been pissing ever since.
Travis Lee
* * *
AUGUST 19, A POSTCARD FROM THE AID POST
Dear Bobby,
Don’t worry. Got me a little cold is all. I’m ordered to three days of bed rest, and it’s the first chance I’ve had to write in near a month. They’re keeping me busy, but everything’s fine. Tell Ma I send her my love. Give my mare some sugar cubes and pet her some. Kick Pa’s worthless ass for me.
Travis Lee
* * *
AUGUST 19, THE RESERVE TRENCHES
ONE FOR LATER
Dear Bobby,
Blackhall came to the aid post today to release me for duty. “You’re back to sharpshooter, Stanhope. Them’s the orders.”
I smiled. Things were looking up. Miller. Maybe O’Shaughnessy. Someone was watching out for me.
“Captain wants to see you. Best you go right away.” He stood there, not able to meet my gaze at times, at times staring holes through me. Blackhall was scared I’d tell Miller on him. “Now, Private.”
“Sir.” I walked on down the trench to Miller’s dugout.
The day was overcast, the sky pearly. I lifted my head just in time to see a flock of birds vault toward a pale biscuit-cut of sun. It was funny, Bobby. The desire to fly was so strong that my arms ached. My body felt heavy and unnatural. I nearly called out for the flock to wait, wait up, that I was coming as fast as I could. When they vanished from my trench-bound strip of sky, I felt abandoned, the way I felt when Marrs and Pickering left me in the jail.
I knocked at Miller’s dugout, my thoughts on the birds. My head felt light, my feet not earthbound anymore.
Miller sent his batman away and ordered me to sit down. “Well, Stanhope. A spot of grippe, I hear. Are you quite recovered?”
“Yes. Thank you, sir.”
“You look ...” His brows knitted, searching for a word. From the shadows at the wall, his sad-eyed lady watched, mute. “Are you sure?”
Should I tell him about Blackhall? Carrying tales has never proved an easy burden for me. I stared at the single candle. The silence stretched longer than it should have. “I’m sure, sir. Thank you.”
“Well.” There wasn’t a pencil handy for him to play with. His fingers drummed the tabletop. “It seems there have been rumors floating about the battalion, and so I am forced to ask: The night you were arrested for going AWL, where on earth had you been?”
There was that awkward silence again. Miller’s fingers stopped drumming. His small smile faded. He looked stricken. Oh, shit. He knew. Like that time in the poppy field. We’ve never needed words between us.
“For a walk.”
He frowned. “Whom did you see?”
“Nobody.”
“You’re lying to me, Stanhope. I won’t have you lying to me. “
“No, sir.”
“Were you so drunk that you couldn’t remember?”
The tension in my back gave way. I slumped with relief. “Yes, sir. Could have been real drunk, sir. Yes. Come to think of it, that was it.”
He didn’t look any happier. “A girl is dead, and you cannot remember.”
Miller was speaking a foreign language. I should have understood, but taken together, the words made no sense. Girl. Dead. What I pictured was birds leaping up into a pearly morning.
He rubbed his chin. Rubbed it. All traces of his wry humor were gone. “You were drunk. And you cannot remember.”
“Sir, I just went for a walk. There wasn’t any girl.”
“You have just told me that you cannot remember. Which is it?”
“I would have remembered a girl, sir.”
“Would you? Would you recall forcing yourself on her?”
His voice rose. “Would you recall impaling her with a tree branch? Would you remember that, damn you? Or were you just too bloody drunk?”
The ground under my feet opened, Bobby. I was alone and falling, without anything to hold onto. How could anyone have thought that I’d do that? God help me. And my own damned fault.
“Oh, Jesus.” The words came out weak: neither oath nor prayer. “Not me, sir. You know I’d never—”
“You got drunk and soundly drubbed a tart. Do you recall that? Or did she not make an impression on you, either?”
Who told him? Pickering had been there that night. No. He wouldn’t have said anything. O’Shaughnessy? But he was honor bound by promises. “Sir, that was just—”
“A tart?”
Miller’s voice was a splash of acid. It made my eyes sting, my cheeks burn.
“You know I wouldn’t ever do that.”
“No. I do not know anything about you. You are a sot, Stanhope. You shirk duty, you are insubordinate and insolent. You thrashed a whore. And you are lying to me again.”
“Sir, please. I just went walking.”
“Get up! Get up! Didn’t you hear me, you cheeky bastard! Get on your feet! I’ll hand you to the red caps myself.”
I couldn’t obey. My knees wouldn’t hold me. “I watched you and Dunston-Smith.”
Miller fell back into his chair like he’d been shot.
“I didn’t see nothing. Not really. Look. It was just ... All that time in the trenches and the boys were getting ready to play football and I don’t see the goddamned point to that game. I just wanted ... No. God’s honest truth, sir. This flat embarrasses me to say it, but I was following you to see if I could talk my way out of shit wallah duty. I wanted to catch you alone, sir. I didn’t want Blackhall to know I was going over his head. Didn’t think that would be smart. And so once you left the road, sir, it surprised me, but I just kept going, too. Didn’t mean nothing by it. But all of a sudden there you were, and there was Captain Dunston-Smith, and there was that hut and—Is that an old stable, sir? I’d been wondering about that.” I ran out of excuses and breath all at the same time.
His cheeks had gone pasty. “Good God,” he said.
“I’m not going to tell, sir.”
Abruptly he was on his feet, pacing. He grabbed his swagger stick and started whacking the wall with it. That close, hot, airless gloom; the old food and moldy mud smell of the dugout. That slapping-like something made by a tiny, furious hand.
“Sir. It’s your business and all. I’m not spreading that around.”
I saw in the light of the candle that his face had turned a bright, embarrassed red. “How long were you bloody there?”
“Just for a while. Well. Just till dark.”
“Till dark?” I knew he was counting off the hours. He’d gone in the hut about five. Had I really waited outside so long? If he asked me why, I wouldn’t have any answer. “Well, Stanhope. You’ve cocked it up again, haven’t you? I’m your only blasted alibi.”
“No, sir! You don’t have to come forward, sir. Not until somebody arrests me.”
He stopped pacing.
Girl. Dead. The repercussions were too terrible to think on. “Are they planning to arrest me, sir?”
“No. There are no proofs, only surmise. The army is bound by good English law, after all.” His eyes had a faraway look. He was thinking hard on something.
“How old a girl, sir?” I asked quietly.
I tore him out of reverie. “Oh. The dead girl? Twelve, I believe.”
Twelve. Reason enough for Blackhall to have gone after me like he did.
“Seems she was murdered late afternoon. Mother was a washerwoman; the poor child was making a delivery. Someone dragged her off the road and into a copse at least an hour and a half’s walk from the hut where you saw me. The police put the death at five or perhaps six o’clock at the very latest. So. It seems my testimony could clear you quickly enough.” He shot me a look. “Should you need it.”
That was my cue. I got to my feet. “I’ll try not to need it, sir.”
He nodded and kept nodding, like he was working up the spit to say something else. I knew it would be a thank you.
I waved the words away and he gave me a feeble acknowledging smile. We understand each other like that, me and the captain.
His words caught me at the door. “Stanhope? You might have a chat with your platoon. I have the feeling they natter on about wild Indian adventures. Bad idea, that.”
“Yes, sir.” I felt the door’s rough pine beneath my fingers.
I wanted to sit down in the comfortable shadows, have a cuppa, and talk Ideas with him. I wanted to get into a pissing contest over poetry. Nobody in this place knew me as well as Miller. But how could he have imagined, drunk or not, I’d do something so goddamned ugly?
I let my hand fall from the latch and turned.
“No, no, Stanhope. It’s quite all right. No need to thank me. You’d enough of shit wallah duty, I think. Simply keep your head down from now on. Keep your hands clean. No running off again.”
Maybe we didn’t know each other well at all. “Can I speak frankly, sir?”
He chuckled, waved an indulgent hand: our private unspoken language.
“Sir? You just accused me of murder and rape and God knows what, and with a twelve-year-old kid, to boot. Well, I don’t care what you think of me, bu
t I got something I want to say, and you can take it for what it’s worth.”
The knowing smile went quizzical, his eyes went guarded.
“Some women take advantage. Tell you straight to your face how much they love you, and laugh behind your back. They’ll leave you crying. I think sometimes that’s what they’re after. Got to be careful of women like that, sir.”
No smile at all now, only the caution, like he thought I was about to confess.
“Well, look. I guess it works the same, sir. The same types. The cock-teasers, the gold diggers. Hell, I don’t know why they do it. But in love, you got to keep your wits about you. And when your pecker’s pointing hard at something, well ...”
Softly, “Is there a point?”
“My frank opinion, sir? That Dunston-Smith’s not near good enough for you.”
He frowned, his eyebrows bunched. I knew for sure that he was about to chew ass; but he burst out laughing. “Oh, my dear Stanhope,” he kept saying over and over, wiping his eyes.
“With all due respect, fuck you, sir. I was just trying to help.”
He came over, clapped me on the shoulder. He was still smiling when he said, “My dear, dear Stanhope. You’ve no idea how you’ve touched me.” But the sentence ended as a whisper, and he wasn’t smiling anymore. His hand felt hot. We were face-to-face, and his eyes seemed far too bright. The candlelight glinted there, as if it had struck water.
He was going to tell me he was sorry. Then I’d tell him that it was all right.
But all of a sudden he was way too close for comfort. His lips came down on mine.
“Oh, shit!” I blundered backward.
Instantly, he let me go. “Sorry.”
I scrubbed my mouth hard.
“Do forgive.” Then, with awkward and comical concern, “Are you all right?”
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