Flanders

by Anthony, Patricia

  Travis Lee

  * * *

  SEPTEMBER 9, THE RESERVE TRENCHES

  Dear Bobby,

  The rotation’s slow now. They keep us too long at the front. Still playing cards with Gordon, the rum wallah, and I’m still winning. I take a full canteen to No Man’s Land now, just to while away the hours. Not that there’s much free time. Damned LeBlanc was born with a fierce need to go stirring things up.

  I try to get him distracted by conversation—not the easiest thing to do.

  “You ever notice how the army’s kind of like high school, except with bullets. You ever notice that, LeBlanc, huh? I mean you got the same asshole teachers, the same brat kids. You got your friends. Everybody’s got a group they belong to. Folks got a tendency to herd, you know?”

  All but for LeBlanc. The herd and the predator.

  “Like goddamned sheep.” He has a nasty kind of laugh that makes me want to wash my hands after. He flopped belly-down and lifted his scope. “Twelve yards left, by that gap in the bags.”

  By the time I took aim, the gap between the bags was empty. I lay back down and took me a drink. “I liked school,” I said.

  “I hated it. Hated every Jesus and Joseph fucking thing about it.” He’d gone pale at the corners of his lips. “Nuns all the time after you. ‘Settle down, boy, settle down.’ Things don’t go their way, and they knock your knuckles bloody. You’re not doing anything, eh? Maybe just sneaking a little smoke. And all of a sudden you look around and there she is: one of them waddling bitch penguins, with a ruler in her hand.”

  I laughed so loud that the Boche popped a couple of shots our way. “Your sister’s a nun, right?”

  He took my canteen away, treated himself to a drink.

  “Aw, hell, LeBlanc. My teacher had her a bois d’arc plank paddle with holes in it. You sneak a smoke at my school, and you’d have to drop your pants and bend over. Strong damned woman, too. Arms big around as your thigh. Raised big old welts.” I took back the canteen.

  He peered at the sky as if he was looking for a sign. The day was cool, with gray cotton roller clouds to the horizon. “It was always ‘Yes, Sister’ and ‘no, Sister’ and ‘thank you so much, Sister.’ Made me want to puke. The whole building smelled like dust and Church and women. There were crosses plastered on the walls, saints waiting around every goddamned corner. And everybody moved so slow. Have patience, Pierre. Don’t go so fast, Pierre. Wait for Johnny. Wait for George. And that old mick priest sided with the nuns all the time. He had a metal ruler, too, only he’d heat it up in the grate, and he’d slap me on the arm to show me what perdition was like. When I got home, Papa beat me more, eh? Said Father wouldn’t have burned me if I hadn’t needed a lesson. When I was a kid I was scared I was going to Hell.”

  “Baptists worry some over Hell, too, LeBlanc.”

  He wasn’t even listening. “I thought I was going crazy, eh? Every week I’d go into confession hoping that old mick’d help me. But all he’d say was, ‘Stop having those thoughts. Just stop it,’ he’d say. Sure. Like it was easy as turning off a spigot. I figured there was something wrong with me, eh? I was possessed by a devil or something. Then, when I was in eighth grade, a kid moved to our school from Montreal. He said he knew boys who had got felt up by their priest. Altar boys. And right there in the rectory, too. That’s when I saw that priests were no goddamned better than we are, and I stopped worrying so much about Hell. Still, you know? My mama always said I acted like Satan was nipping at my heels. But I think that’s only because I liked to go fast. Ran everyplace I went. Ran my horse, too. Hey. You like that, Stanhope? Climbing on the back of a horse—just jumping up, no saddle or bridle—and kicking him into a run?”

  “Sure.”

  “Yeah. Yeah. I knew you did. That’s what I like best—going fast, climbing high and diving off into the river. Stepping right on the train tracks while the train’s coming, eh?”

  I knew I was looking inside him for the first time, like I’d found a key that unlocked a vacant house. The furniture there surprised me.

  “There’s plenty of time to slow down when you’re dead,” he said.

  A fine drizzle started falling. He covered himself with the tarp. I rolled around in the hole until I was comfortable and closed my eyes for a little nap. When I woke up, the clouds had lowered, the day was darker. All I could see of LeBlanc was the glint of his eyes—a snake under a rock. It scared me so bad, I sat up fast. A Boche sniper took a wild, fast shot at me. I hugged the ground, my heart hammering.

  He didn’t say anything. Didn’t ask what had startled me into sitting up, nothing like that. I didn’t speak, either. I took a steadying sip from my canteen.

  I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to me like LeBlanc lives fast, Bobby. That stillness, like a scorpion’s. Like a spider’s. The glint of his eyes under the shadow of that tarp. But when he moves, he moves so quick you can hardly see him. I don’t have to watch him kill to know that.

  He was ready to move again. “Come on, Stanhope,” he said. “Get up. Let’s go shoot some Boche. Don’t be so goddamned slow.”

  Does he kill the stragglers? Was murder part of those thoughts that used to scare him? When he moved to the next shell hole I moved too, not daring to stay behind. A hundred or so yards from me, Emma Gee played her deadly rataplan.

  I swear, Bobby, nobody loves adventure like LeBlanc.

  Travis Lee

  * * *

  SEPTEMBER 12, THE RESERVE TRENCHES

  ONE FOR ME

  Dear Bobby,

  Life narrows in the trenches. You spend your time nearsighted. The sky’s small. The horizon’s the next wall of sandbags. Worse, your world of people shrinks till it seems like there aren’t any folks outside your own platoon. Sometimes when it’s quiet you wonder if the rest of the trench is empty, and the war got over, and everybody went home.

  I saw Miller today. It was a foggy, dim afternoon, the clouds hanging low. He was moving down a communications trench to visit the troops, I guess. I was headed up to the med dugout for an aspirin. I made the next zigzag and there he was, taking up my horizon. We both stopped dead. His eyes went darting away from mine.

  “Afternoon, sir,” I said.

  His face was already turning pink. “Good to see you again, Stanhope.”

  “Good to see you, too, sir.” And I meant it.

  He must have heard the welcome in my tone, for his gaze snapped to mine.

  “Sorry, sir. You can’t pass without the password.”

  His eyebrows rose. Cautious now, like a horse the first time in snow, not sure which way to step. “Ah?”

  It was cool. Right in that spot, the air smelled fresh, like there hadn’t been any death around to spoil it. “Yes, sir. Sorry about that, sir. New regs and everything.”

  So damned serious. It broke my heart. He’d caught the upper-class stuffiness of Dunston-Smith.

  I said, “I’ll start it for you, sir. ‘Thou, that to human thought art nourishment.’ ”

  He frowned.

  I prodded him with another line. “ ‘Like darkness to a dying flame.’ ” Daylight was dying, too. And my smile along with it. He had to know Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. Hell, it was one of Shelley’s better-known works, not like The Masque of Anarchy or something. To be truthful, I always thought of it as Miller’s and my private anthem. I went on slow. “ ‘Depart not ...’ ”

  A smile broke out all over him. It was like, for that instant, that the sun had pierced the clouds. “ ‘As thy shadow came!’ ”

  “Doing good, sir. Just the couplet to go. “ ‘Depart not, lest the grave should be ...’ ”

  “Password’s too bloody easy, Stanhope. ‘Like life and fear, a dark reality.’ ”

  We stood in the mist grinning like a pair of fools. “Good to see you, Stanhope,” he said again, and this time he meant it. “You’re well, I take it?”

  “You bet, sir.”

  “And the sharpshooting from No Man’s Land suits you? Lieutenant Black
hall and I had quite a discussion about that. He’s a stickler for rules, you know. Sometimes it’s best to let subalterns have their head, if they don’t abuse the privilege.”

  “I understand, sir. Everything’s fine.”

  “Well.” He cleared his throat. His eyes went wandering the gray afternoon again. “Excellent totals, at any rate. Must buy you a dinner when we’re on leave. Perhaps a run at one of your tarts.” He was smiling when he said that, too; but there was a hint of condescension, too.

  It put me in my place. And it hurt, too, Bobby, if you want to know the truth. I’ve seen coloreds get that smile to them when they’re together and a white boy like me’s around—it’s like they share all kinds of secrets, or like suffering makes them better. Maybe it does.

  About then Fritz decided to lob a few shells our way. A Jack Johnson landed toward the rear. Black smoke rose into the cool pewter day.

  “Take you up sometime on that dinner, sir.”

  We shook hands on it.

  A whizzbang landed next—so close that we both ducked, and then we laughed. “Best find shelter, what?” He sounded sorry to be leaving.

  We had an awkward time of it, squeezing past each other. The trench was tight. We went chest to chest, but he kept his hips best he could away from me. He’s a gentleman like that.

  And when we were past each other and I had started away, I heard him call my name. I looked over my shoulder to see him smiling, there in the misty gloom, in the constriction of that trench.

  “ ‘While yet a boy I sought for ghosts,’ isn’t it?”

  The next line of verse. I’d forgotten. Jesus. How could I have? It sent a shudder through me. “Yes, sir. You’re right, sir.”

  He nodded, tapped his cap with his stick. “Must have us a real challenge some day. A witness each to mark our shots and wipe our brows when we’re sweated. The English Romantic poets and fifty paces. Well. Ta-ta, Stanhope.”

  “Goodbye, sir.”

  I watched him leave, then I went on my way, too—through the gloom of the narrow trench.

  That night Foy was in the graveyard. His yellow blisters were healed. His round baby-face was peaceful. He was in his grave, and there were blood-red flowers and ferns tucked all around him. He was smiling a little, even though his eyes were closed.

  I kneeled down at the edge of the grave and put the flat of my hand on the glass. I called to him, but he didn’t stir. The glass was cool to the touch, the roses around him pimpled and wet with dew. I rested my palm over where I thought his heart would be.

  “When you wake up, why don’t you stick around for a while, Foy?”

  The rest of the platoon had all left. I couldn’t bear to lose Foy, too.

  I got up and started away, but stopped when something told me his eyes had opened. I went back. He was still sleeping. I didn’t see the calico girl around, but I left him, anyway. When I woke up this morning I thought of him lying down there, hands crossed over his chest, his eyes blank and open. What’s he seeing, do you think?

  Travis Lee

  SEPTEMBER 14, A POSTCARD FROM THE ROAD

  Dear Bobby,

  They’ve moved us out. We’re heading north, I hear. Maybe I’ll get to see the ocean.

  Thank Ma for the angora underwear. I’m the envy of the platoon. Tell her next time, though, she don’t have to dye the wool. Believe me, up here with this bunch, plain goat-tan’s best.

  Travis Lee

  * * *

  SEPTEMBER 14, ON THE MARCH

  Dear Bobby,

  They pulled us back and sent us north, away from the best trenches we’d ever had. Nobody wanted to go. That place had been home for a while—a little damp, maybe. Certainly stinky. Still, there was elbow room in all the dugouts and most of the walls were strong—decent Boche digs. Then one morning, as the Brits would say, Bob’s your uncle. Another battalion was coming to take our place. We don’t know why. They tell us to go, and we march. They tell us to fight, and for some unknown reason we do.

  The land here is even flatter. We march past black dirt farmland plowed by combat. Plants grow—mustard and turnips and kale—but everything’s growing in the fallow. Here, war shoulders up to the road. It encroaches on the towns, Bobby. You can see it in the roadside trash, in the odd shell holes, in the forsaken, dismal little villages. This afternoon, we passed our only hints of life: a woman poling along in a flat bottom boat and an old man scavenging through a weedy garden.

  Teatime, we stopped by the burned trunk of what had been an enormous tree. It must have lived centuries, that tree. Must have spread its branches near fifty feet across. Around the bare trunk was piled trash: rusting tins with labels in English, in French; a broken Boche belt buckle.

  Pickering leaned his back against the charred bole. He lit up a smoke. I asked him if I could have one, but he flat-out ignored me.

  Marrs caught on pretty quick to the reason for his mood. “New place won’t be so bad, maybe,” he said.

  Without a glance in Marrs’s direction, Pickering muttered, “Sod off.”

  Pickering’s scared, Bobby. He’d had to leave his cross on the sandbag, that sun-faded T that he took as some sort of sign. I remember the day we got to our old place, he’d seen it. He just had to have that cubbyhole, always had to sleep with his head toward that particular sandbag. Marrs’s private salvation is the letter from his sweetheart promising she’d marry him, the one he keeps over his heart. With me, it’s nothing I can touch particularly, but Emily Dickinson’s poem of grief my mind can’t help playing with: This is the Hour of Lead—/Remembered, if outlived,/As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow.

  Thinking on that, I went quiet, too. I was disoriented. I’d packed up that morning and left home. Pickering had walked away without his sun-bleached cross and now he watched the sky, afraid a shell would kill him.

  Marrs kept trying to get Pickering to talk, but I knew how heavy those lead hours could be, so I didn’t bother anymore. Across the way I saw O’Shaughnessy praying with a soldier, LeBlanc staring at them both. Having those bad thoughts again? Was he wanting O’Shaughnessy to help him? Wish he could help us. It’ll be a new No Man’s Land I’ll be facing. I’ll have to find new shooting spots, new resting spots, new places to snipe from. War’s so goddamned tiring.

  At sunset we bivouacked in a fieldstone farmhouse with shattered walls. Rain started falling faster. Our charcoal fires went out, and we drank lukewarm tea with our cold dinner. When we were finished eating, we settled into our sleeping bags and watched the world fill up with night.

  From the dark next to me came Pickering’s quiet voice. “Bleeding luck.”

  “What?”

  He was no more than two feet away. We’ve slept beside each other so long, I knew his smell. Out of all the snorers, I could pick out his breathing. “Should have cut it out with my penknife, Stanhope, that cross of mine. Would have too, if they’d warned us ahead of time that we were leaving.”

  Pickering leaving his cross. Riddell, his gramophone and Elgar. Miller and Dunston-Smith their straw-warm hut. There wasn’t anything I wanted to go back for. I took a deep breath. The air was perfumed with rain.

  “Might have carried it, you know. Just the T part. The rest of the sandbag might have stayed.”

  “Yeah,” I whispered back. “It’s a shame.”

  “Bleeding British luck,” he said, a man resigned to fate.

  I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes it felt like I was tumbling into the graveyard’s dark. Before dawn I got up and crawled around the sleepers. I went outside. In the yard of the farmhouse I found an old lean-to. There, I lit a candle and read a little Shelley. I wrote you a postcard, then I wrote you this letter.

  When I get to the new trenches, Blackhall will send me into the No Man’s Land there. I have the strange feeling that I’ll recognize it, every nook and hole and cranny. What’s worse is, I understand why: When it comes right down to it, Bobby, all darkness is the same.

  Travis Lee

&nb
sp; * * *

  SEPTEMBER 19, NEW RESERVE TRENCHES

  Dear Bobby,

  The trenches here are crumbling. The mud’s ankle-deep. Dig a hole anywheres, it fills up with water. The soil is full of stinking bodies and white, knobby bones. The earth spews up death. It’s built into the walls. Down the trench a Frenchie, last season’s casualty, is sticking halfway out the bags: one horizon-blue leg; a bloated arm with two fingers off, another rotted to bone. The boys who were here before us said they’d miss him.

  Hearing that, Riddell did a double take. “Whyn’t take ’im with you?”

  They didn’t, but before they left every damned boy in both platoons shook that Frenchie’s gray hand. They bid him adieu. Then they marched away, leaving us with their piss-poor trenches and their dead Frenchman.

  The dugouts here stink of piss and rot. They’re dripping wet. They’re so small that the four of us have to take turns sleeping with our feet stuck in the aisle. Goddamned sentry’s always tripping over us.

  When the Boche shell, we huddle up real tight together, shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, and wait for the walls to fall on us. We hunker shivering under the elephant sheet. There’s not even the comfort of hot tea. We light up the brazier, but the charcoal stinks so bad it chases even the rats out.