I’d become a Jew, if they let you train for that. We’d live in England if she wanted. For a woman like that one, I’d make my life over, burnish it till it was clean and shiny.
When Miller came in, he found me standing, still mooning over that picture.
“That girl there’s got a good face.”
He put his helmet on the table, shot me a cautious look. “Thank you.”
“I don’t mean especially that she’s pretty, even though she is. Pretty, I mean. But she looks smart, too, you know? Like she could hold up her end of a conversation.”
That got a smile out of him. He struck a match, lit the lamp, pulled the door to. “Quite true, actually.”
“She fond of poetry?”
The quiet was filled with the smell of burned match, the hot-metal reek of the lamp. “An opera lover. But she enjoys renaissance works: Shakespeare, Milton, John Donne. She has a mind for trivia. Can recite, like you do, great stretches of things. Only her recitations are of opera lyrics and bloody Paradise Lost. A waste of talent, if you must know. A crashing bore.”
Like me. She was like me. I looked at the photo again. “I bet I could get her to recite Shelley.”
“You’d have a fight on your hands, Stanhope. Sarah’s one of those debaters who knows chapter and verse, and doesn’t mind rubbing your nose into your errors. She has quite a wicked sense of humor. Puts most suitors off, actually.”
“If I’m ever in England, you introduce me?”
His surprise set, became brittle.
I said right quick, “I don’t mean to be forward here or nothing, sir. I know what you think of me, but I clean up pretty good. Hell, I graduated Harvard, remember? Wasn’t top man in my class, but they accepted me into med school. All it needs is me going back and taking up my studies again.”
He picked up a pencil from his desk, toyed with it.
“Sir, I’m just saying she seems like an interesting woman is all. I know I visit whores, but if I had me a decent girl I wouldn’t. And strong women don’t scare me none. Hell, I’d be a better bet for her than some old English boy who keeps her homebound all the time. I like a woman with some fire to her. Oh. But, look, sir. I wouldn’t be trying to sweet-talk her into bed or nothing. Don’t get me wrong. I know how to treat a lady. Besides, I wouldn’t ever take no liberties with Sarah, not seeing as how she’s your sister and all.”
He put the pencil down. He said, “She is my fiancée.”
He must have got tired of me standing there with my limp dick in my hand. He sat down at his desk. “Do take a seat, Stanhope.”
I fell down into it. Fiancée. Maybe when the war was over he planned to put away his light-stepping, like boys will put away their late nights and their whores.
“There has been some unpleasantness.” He laced his fingers. “Another village girl was attacked and violated.”
Strange how you can get used to anything: living in shit holes, being shot at, being accused of rape. “When, sir?”
“October third.”
The night I’d got so drunk. I sat back. I knew the answer before I even asked the question. “Who did it?”
“We’re not sure. Your name has been bandied about.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“I didn’t think so.”
I wiped my hands over my face. Cool in the dugout, but I was sweating bad. I asked the questions I should have all along. “The girl all right?”
“Alive. And more’s the pity. She was beaten badly about the head. Beaten silly, in fact. Can’t testify. Doesn’t remember. Don’t know that she’ll ever be right. Cut about the face as well. Terribly disfigured. The man cut her in—shall we call it a private place? At any rate, there’s no marriage in her future, certainly. Can’t even work in her blasted little bakeshop for fear of terrifying the customers. A bloody disgrace.”
It came over me hot and fast, the way Marrs must have felt under the thrall of the flamethrower. The white floury skin, the shop’s yeasty cinnamon smells, the girl’s sweet smile. I got up so fast that I knocked the chair over. I wrenched the door open and stumbled into the rain before I threw up. Vomit splattered duckboard, pattered across the mud. A passing sentry stepped carefully out of the way.
Miller’s calm voice behind me. “I’ll need your boots.”
Damn LeBlanc. Shoving it in her while she was battered and bleeding. Cutting her up, so he’d be her first lover and her last—because she had been a virgin, Bobby. I could tell by those blushes.
Damn me for standing there and watching him do it. For giving myself a hand job while he did. I remembered her spread, submissive butt and how hard I came. Lust inserted itself into my disgust—a bad mix, like the hunger I felt at Marrs’s death. I bent over, threw up again.
“Your boots, if you don’t mind, Stanhope. Have you been drinking? “
I straightened, wiped my mouth. My gullet burned, my throat tasted sour. The trench stank of death and bile. The air was heavy. No matter how much I breathed, seemed like my lungs wouldn’t fill.
“I regret to make this an order, Stanhope, but I haven’t the time to lounge about watching the results of your pub crawl—however entertaining that might be. Your boots, please.”
Seeing the blood. Watching him fuck her, anyway. I pushed past Miller, went back into the dugout and sat down. I pulled at my laces, but they were tied too tight, my hands were too clumsy.
“No need to be rattled, Stanhope. I’m sure this will prove your innocence. The bastard left a bruise on her back, a clear boot print. Here. Here.” He knelt at my feet, said gently, “I’ll have those off for you.” He took out his pocket knife and cut the laces. “No sense taking such care. They won’t be given back, I imagine. I’ve another pair here for you somewhere. I’ve arranged, in fact, an oversized boot. Your feet are wider than the norm. Comes from walking barefooted, I suspect. Which is why I should think the proof of your innocence definitive. I have it on quite good report that the boot which caused the bruise was a small one.”
He slipped my right boot off, checked the bottom of it. “Yes. Just as I thought. Your sale is intact. The marks on the girl’s back show an odd-shaped mark—a broken nail, I do believe—plus two nails which are either worn or missing. Yes, indeed, Stanhope. This should clear you straightaway.” He looked up at me then, and his expression fell into woebegone lines of concern. “What is it?”
“Ask LeBlanc.”
“Pardon? “
“LeBlanc done it, sir. I saw him.” Cold in the dugout, and I was wet. I couldn’t stop shivering.
“Are you certain?”
“We were close as from here to the turn of the next traverse, sir. Saw him clear as day.” Didn’t see him, really. But felt his presence. Heard his voice.
Miller dipped his head, slipped my left boot off.
“Sir, listen to me: I saw him do it. Well, the rape part, anyway. It shames me to say it. I should have stopped him but, hell, I was drunk. Couldn’t even figure out what was going on there for a while. But go ahead and get his boots. They’ll match.”
He set both my boots carefully aside.
“I should have put a stop to it at once, sir. Arrested him right then and there. Called for the police or something. She was a sweet girl. She waited on me once at her bakery shop.” Then lamely, for there wasn’t no other way but lame to say it: “I should have stopped him.”
Miller rose, refused to meet my eye. He found my new pair of boots under his batman’s haversack and brought them over. I thanked him and put them on. “If you want me to testify before a court-martial board, just ask, sir. I’ll be willing.”
“Need to change your socks more often, Stanhope. Wouldn’t want trench foot. Be your own fault.”
The new boots were almost comfortable. I tied the laces. “Yes, sir.”
“No excuse, you know.”
Our eyes met. I got up, saluted and left.
Mark this day, this time. It was the first I ever thought about suicide. And it wasn’t that
I wanted to rest in the graveyard. No, I wanted to lose myself in the dark.
That girl’s rape. The shame of what I’d done was like swallowing a knife. Every which way I’d turn, it’d poke at me. It was tearing my guts out.
In the end, I went down to O’Shaughnessy’s dugout. I waited until he was finished talking to a soldier, and then I went inside. It was quiet and cool and dim. He was sitting, a candle beside him on the table. I knelt in front of his chair and crossed myself the way I seen Marrs do.
“Bless me, Father,” I said, surprised that it came easy; and then I told him the rest. When I was done, he asked me what penance I thought my sin deserved.
I said what I’d done had no forgiving.
“You make too harsh a god, Travis.”
I told him I’d burn myself alive, then, the way Marrs got it. Told him I’d go running off toward No Man’s Land the way Trantham did, leave myself hanging on the wire.
He said, “An unforgivable sort of sin: despair.”
I told him the shame hurt too bad to abide, asked him how I could stop it. He told me he didn’t know. Then he asked me to get up off my knees and sit in the chair. He lit a cigarette, handed it to me.
“Why didn’t I stop him?” I asked.
And he said, “Lust.”
A one-syllable explanation for my shiftless nature and even for my drinking; for it was lust I felt for the bottle, too. I took a deep drag, let it out, watched smoke curl toward the board ceiling.
“I need to quit drinking,” I told him.
“Pray,” he said. “Ask after Sergeant Riddell’s herb cure.”
I promised I would. I promised, too, I’d quit.
He said, “Don’t do your promising to me, lad.”
“They put LeBlanc in front of a firing squad?”
He checked his pocket watch. Did it so sneaky that I barely caught what he was doing.
“It’s what he deserves, Father.”
O’Shaughnessy stared into the corner for a while, then asked if I wanted tea. Whatever appointment he had was going to be broken.
I said I’d be appreciative of some tea, and he put water on the primus. He opened a tin of butter cookies with currants and put it on the table.
“Should imagine it will go hard for Captain.”
My cookie stopped a few inches from my mouth. “Why?”
“Because he’s a Jew, and that lad’s the most decorated soldier in the battalion. Don’t be altogether surprised, Travis, if nothing comes of it. When word gets to Command, they’ll be blaming it on the girl herself, on the natural lusts of a soldier, on Captain not keeping a watch when he knew the boy had a history.”
I put the cookie back in its stiff paper cup. So hurting women was the trouble Miller tried to tell me about.
The water started steaming. O’Shaughnessy went to tend the tea. “Well, Pierre’s a hard and bitter lad. A troublemaker as well, which is why the Canadians wanted rid of him. It was Major Dunn who took a liking to the lad’s combat record and asked after the transfer; but it won’t be the major taking the blame. No, it will fall on Captain, and him only having pity for the boy.”
“LeBlanc murdered that little girl, and Miller knows it. He knew it all the time. Goddamn him, anyway.” I can tell you how betrayal tastes, Bobby. It’s gall-bitter, with an aftertaste of tarnished-penny rage.
“The worst shame of it is that she’s been forgotten already. One death among thousands now. Let it go,” he said quietly and firmly. “Let it go.”
“I’ll kill LeBlanc, Father. Or he’ll kill me out there. He’s bug-eyed crazy.”
“He’s lonely, Travis.”
“Lonely, shit.”
“Comes from being raised without a family, and the Sisters of Charity no replacement. Comes from running the Toronto streets. He’ll be looking for belonging, yet pushing friendship away. One has to feel pity for a boy like that.”
“I don’t have to feel a goddamned thing. That’s your job, Father. I’m shut of him.”
I left. We never drank that tea. I never ate the cookie. It’s night. Hours have passed. I haven’t told Pickering, even though he keeps asking what’s wrong. I don’t dare tell him. LeBlanc hasn’t been arrested yet. Maybe he won’t ever be.
Anyway, tomorrow we march to the front lines. There, I’ll be crawling out into No Man’s Land with a murdering boy. Tonight LeBlanc’s curled in his covers, wrapped in his lies, safe. Maybe he’s dreaming of his fantasy horses, his imaginary family. Maybe he’s dreaming about fucking that mangled girl.
Travis Lee
* * *
OCTOBER 12, THE FRONT LINES
Dear Bobby,
Still not arrested. And LeBlanc knows I know. The first day out in No Man’s Land with him was a day of terrible silence. I plinked away at Boche. It was all I could do not to blow LeBlanc’s brains out.
That night I dreamed red dreams, and when I woke up, my jaws ached from chewing on fury.
I ate some breakfast before dawn, careful not to wake Pickering and Calvert. By the time I was done, LeBlanc was waiting for me outside the dugout. I didn’t speak a word to him. We climbed up the ladder and snuck out into the dark.
It was about noon that I got started thinking about that girl. I probed the memory like a mouth ulcer, wondering how many other women LeBlanc had hurt. God knows I wasn’t blameless. I wondered what I would have done if I’d seen him with that twelve-year-old girl.
“Three yards to the right of that white post.” He was peering intently through the field telescope.
“Fuck you.”
Rain was beating on us in that halfhearted way it does here.
He looked around, said, “Take the shot. Don’t be an asshole.”
I snapped one left instead, scared the bejesus out of a Boche officer, dinged the prong off the top of his helmet, sent him diving for cover.
I was ready for LeBlanc, too. When he reached out to slap me like he does when he thinks we’re playing, I struck back, left-handed but knuckle-first. I slammed him hard on the side of the mouth, Bobby. Knocked his helmet off, split his lip for him, made blood run. It felt good. I hit him again, right-handed this time—clubbed my fist down on his ear.
My hand hurt. Christ. Hurt all the way to the elbow.
The blow stunned him. I saw it in his grimace, the way he cupped the side of his head.
“You lying chicken shit bastard,” I said. “You want to ride a horse? Let’s put you on Miller’s damned sorrel. You’d crap your pants, city boy. See, I know all about you, about the orphanage, about how you go fucking women. Is that the only way a girl’ll have you?”
A blow from an unexpected direction. He kicked, bruised the hell out of my thigh, missed my balls by an inch. My rifle, his telescope, went sliding down the mud incline and into the water. He grabbed me. We went slipping down the mud, too, and hit the water, still pummeling each other.
There were dead things down there. The water wore a greasy film of putrefaction. It was greenish-yellow and saturated with gas. I pushed him face-down into it, tried to hold his head under. I was bigger, but he was desperate. He pushed me off, came up sputtering.
“Holy shit, Stanhope!” he yelled.
He rolled out from under me. I hit him again—a glancing blow off the side of his jaw. He gave me one back, but he wasn’t nearly fast enough. I ducked under, grabbed him one-handed by the throat. I saw terror come all over him. He pulled away, started crawling fast up the incline.
I grabbed at his tunic, got a handful of mud for my trouble. He kicked, caught me, sharp and painful, on the side of the neck. I snatched at his trouser leg. He squirmed free.
I climbed the hill after, caught him in the flat, rolled him belly-up. He tore at my face, at my eyes. A bullet smacked a hillock of mud near us, splashed my face. A quick, violent tug at my leg. Not LeBlanc. The Boche sniper had shot my boot heel off.
That surprised me, made me relax my grip. LeBlanc skittered away, fast as a crab. I went after, caught him on the downside
of another hole, flipped him over. His eyes were wide. His mouth was bleeding.
“You’re crazy!” he said.
I hit him again.
“They’re shooting at us, Stanhope! Jesus. Don’tcha see? The Boche sniper’s shooting at us!”
“Who’s scared now?” I asked him.
He kept begging me to stop, kept trying to fight back; but I beat him, Bobby. I pulled him down into a shell hole and beat him stupid. I pounded on him till my hand couldn’t take no more. By the time I was finished, I was too exhausted to move. It took me hours to pry my fingers open.
Both his eyes were swollen nearly shut. There was a star hemorrhage in his right. His nose was broken, squashed flat. His mouth looked like one of those ugly cartoons they draw when they’re making fun of coloreds. He really didn’t look human anymore.
I crawled off, found the telescope and my rifle. When dark fell, I let him make his own way back. I could hear him, though, tagging along behind like a kicked dog.
Jesus, Bobby. What does he want from me, anyway? The horses? My family? Well, shit. He can have all my memories of Pa.
Back in the trenches, Blackhall held up a lantern. He checked LeBlanc’s face, looked at my knuckles.
“A dust-up, is it? Daft, having a row out there. How’d it start?”
I didn’t answer. Maybe LeBlanc’s mouth didn’t work well enough to speak.
“Me, I’d shoot the bof of you, and save the Boche the trouble.” He called for Riddell, who came and blinked sleepily at LeBlanc, looked crestfallen at me.
“Take ’em down to Captain,” Blackhall said. “Let ’im see how ’is two pets is getting along.”
Miller didn’t seem surprised. Unlike Riddell, he didn’t even seem disappointed. He gestured toward LeBlanc. “Sergeant? Accompany this man to the medic. See that both are fined a week’s pay. No free time for a month.”
Riddell said his “Yes, sir”s and “right away, sir”s.
I told Miller, “Think I broke my hand, sir.”
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