He nuzzled my arm, whuffled. Miller must have made sugar cubes or carrots a habit. I held up my hands, fingers flat, to show him I wasn’t carrying. Damned if that horse didn’t rub his nose up and down my shoulder, a gesture that won me.
“Old horse,” I murmured. I scratched up a storm on his ears and forehead. “You old horse.”
It’s amazing what animal affection can give you: no demands in return. We had us a mutt one time. I know you don’t remember. Died when you were just a baby. Every time Pa’d whop on me, that old dog would come looking; and he’d find where I’d be hiding. He’d put his head in my lap and let me hug on him. Made it easier, the beatings. That horse of Miller’s, the smells of that stable, the foggy blue twilight at the door—they eased the war.
The two of us tended to the little things. We soaped Miller’s and Dunston-Smith’s saddles. I showed him how to check the bridle leather for cracks. When we were done and he had started away, I grabbed LeBlanc’s arm. The bruises on his face were fading like sallow sunsets.
“Only say it once,” I told him.
He was attentive, like I was going to tell him something about horses.
“You do it again—you know what I mean—and I’ll blow your brains out. No discussion. No nothing. You understand?”
He nodded and I let him go.
Nearly a perfect day, Bobby, the horses, the misty cool. But when we got to where we’d left our boots, I saw that somebody had moved them from the spot where we’d set them down. My belly wobbled. I remembered clear: My boots had been nearest the door.
LeBlanc didn’t notice. He was still smiling horses. He sat down and pulled his boots on.
Someone had checked our soles, Bobby. And whoever did it had known we were at the stables. Miller? Dunston-Smith?
LeBlanc looked up at me. “Hey, asshole. You going to go barefoot to dinner? Those damned limeys won’t like that.”
No. Blackhall.
“Come on, Stanhope, for Christ’s sake.”
I nodded. “Sure.” I shoved my boots on and we walked down to the enlisted mess.
When we were finished eating we wandered back toward the barracks. Blackhall was standing outside tamping his pipe bowl under the light of a hanging lantern. Beyond him the night was foggy and close. A pale dusting of rain blew through the circle of lamplight. When we passed, he returned our salute with barely a look. Five or six steps later I turned around and saw that he was eyeing us hard.
I give LeBlanc four days at the most, Bobby. Takes gossip that long to spread. Then they’ll haul him before the court-martial board. I’ll testify to what I know. They’ll bring up the other charges: the blinded old lady, the dead little girl. They’ll put LeBlanc before a firing squad.
It’s best that way. He’ll go quick, and I can remember him well: bouncing up and down on that bay mare, grinning.
Good to go happy, I think. No matter what you’ve done, you should have one of your dreams come true. LeBlanc’s will be a death that won’t haunt me. It was me who gave him an afternoon of horses.
Travis Lee
* * *
OCTOBER 19, THE REST AREA
Dear Bobby,
Well, it’s back to drills, back to marching. We get a few days off, and the army can’t leave us alone. About four o’clock when the drills are done and the boys get their free time, LeBlanc and me scrub the barracks floor. We peel potatoes and carrots down at the mess hall. We scrub pans. We lime the latrines.
It’s nice to have tasks with limits, ones that you can tell when you’re done. LeBlanc and me scrub the floors on our hands and knees. It’s a prayerful sort of thing. I like the rasping sound the brush makes. I like the memories it brings, too:
Ma and me in the kitchen, splashing buckets and flicking water at each other. You never was no good at it, Bobby. Have you learned the chore better? If you do learn it, you’ll find there’s a calm, soapy goodness to floor scrubbing. Don’t you never tell Ma I said that.
They haven’t come for LeBlanc yet. It’ll pain me some when they do, for he sticks to me like slick on grease. He does things like me. Walks like I do. Eats like I do. LeBlanc’s private game of Simon Says. It scares me sometimes, like there ain’t enough stuffing in him to make a person, so he has to go borrowing from someone else. How will it be, I wonder, to watch my own shadow die?
Travis Lee
* * *
OCTOBER 20, THE REST AREA
Dear Bobby,
Last night while I was walking the graveyard alone, I heard someone singing. The clear tenor voice wound like a lustrous thread around granite markers, between praying angels. Marrs. And not Latin this time, but Scots-tinged English.
“ ... the broom, the broom, the bonnie, bonnie broom ...”
Marrs had made it out of No Man’s Land. I hurried into the mausoleum, calling his name. The place was empty but for stray autumn leaves and the plaintive echo of his voice.
“ ... all maids that ever deceived ...”
I stood in the puddle of light from the glassy ceiling and listened. Where was he? And who was he serenading? I left, twined my way through mounds of bright paper flowers, past graves of sleeping strangers. I turned a corner and there he was, seated below me on the steps. He looked wrong somehow.
I stopped behind him. At his feet was a glass-topped grave. There, comforted by flowers, a little girl was sleeping. She was dressed all in white, and in her hands was a bouquet of violets.
The song stopped. He turned, tapping his finger to his lips.
It wasn’t Marrs. It was Foy. “Poor mite. Too young to be married,” he said.
I sat on the steps beside him. The breeze was chill. It smelled clean and astringent, like lavender.
He sang, “ ... the bonnie, bonnie broom ...”
Marrs’s same high, piercing register; Marrs’s clarion tone.
“He gave me his voice when I dreamed,” Foy told me. He was grinning, hugging his knees like a kid.
I looked down at the girl: the blinding white lace, the childish innocence of her hands.
“You’re holding me here,” Foy said. Accusing words, but there was nothing but concern in his voice.
He wanted to leave me. Panicked, I stood. Down the steps and beyond a cluster of gravestones, the calico girl waited by the mausoleum’s iron gates.
“Please, Stanhope,” Foy said. “Don’t need me so bad.”
But who would be left to understand when all the old gang went away?
He stood, too. “She’s been though a hard spot, the girl.”
LeBlanc’s smallest victim. I knew it sure as the world. “Seems to me you need to stay with her, then.”
“I’ll stay if you want.”
But he wanted so damned bad to leave. “Please,” I said. “Can’t you, please?”
I knew he couldn’t; and so I watched him go—up the stairs and down the gravel path. I caught glimpses of him making his way among the tombs. His leaving knocked the stuffing out of me so that I had to sit down.
I sat there for a while with the girl. Her face was sweet. Her lids were closed, but underneath them her eyes slid, restless with visions. I kept watch while the sun lowered and the light turned brassy, until foxglove blooms blazed like indigo candles in the last of the light.
I woke up feeling sad. The sad stayed with me, and so that morning, cleaning up the officers’ mess, I didn’t have much to say.
LeBlanc was a blabbermouth. “Hey. When this shit’s over, I’m gonna save up my money and raise a buncha horses. You want to be partners with me?”
Three days left for him to live, I figured. Three days, time enough for aspirations. “Sure,” I told him. I plunged the brush into the bucket, sent water sloshing.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “That’s what we’ll do. I won’t even mind cleaning out the stables or anything. We’ll get us some land in Alberta, eh? Right near Calgary. It’s terrific there. I saw it once—went through Alberta on the train. I won this spelling bee, see, and the Sisters sent us on a trip. Christ, Stanh
ope, the mountains. Jesus and Joseph, you wouldn’t believe the mountains. And a yellow plain that comes right up. The whole damned place is yellow and purple. That’s Alberta.”
He was whistling as he scrubbed. Even if I went looking for LeBlanc after the firing squad was done, I wouldn’t find him. He’d be traveling so fast, I’d never catch up. He’d be running over the golden plains. He’d be climbing purple mountains. And all the time he’d be grinning. I just knew he would.
He said, “We’ll have us paint horses, those white ones with the big brown spots. And palomino horses, and solid black ones, too. Shit, Stanhope. We’ll have us all colors of horses.”
He got up, took our buckets out to the tank to get more water. I kept on scrubbing. He’d gotten me to picturing it too: the wheat-colored land, a purple petticoat of mountains. All colors of horses. A sound startled me out of my fantasies. O’Shaughnessy was standing in the door of the kitchen, a case of officers’-issue tea in his arms.
He was smiling a cheerful little smile. “ ’Tis very domesticated you’re looking, Travis. It strikes me that you’ve a natural way with the brush.”
“Back home, floor cleaning was one of my chores, Father.”
“Ah, and your mother had you doing the rough for her, was it? Me own mother spoiled me. I’m useless for housework. Can’t wash a kettle.”
It was comfortable there in the kitchen. The air smelled of pine soap and damp and hardwood ash. By O’Shaughnessy’s shoulder hung a braid of yellow onions, their chubby bellies taut and translucent. Sun cascaded through the windows, poured in a broad glowing stripe down the wall.
“Does it make a penance, lad?”
I scrubbed the boards around the table leg, startled myself up a bug. “Not suffering enough, Father. If you want to know the truth, it’s kind of fun.”
A shocked, “Dear God, but you’re a hard case, Travis! Well, since you’re expert at penance, choose one for me, for you’ve caught me stealing tea from out the storeroom.” He didn’t look particularly ashamed of himself. In fact, he looked button-popping proud.
“Well, good on you, Father, as they’d say around here. Your penance is to steal yourself some currant and cinnamon loaf while you’re at it.”
He laughed. “Needn’t tempt me. For the family I’m visiting, bread’s a plethora. It will be the tea that’s dear.”
I stopped scouring. Another bug crept out from a baseboard, hurried its way past me. I let it go. “I’d like to give that poor girl something,” I said.
I stared at the top of his boots. Near him, in the light from the doorway, sun winked on a puddle, turned a froth of bubbles into pearls.
“Just some little something. I saved up some money to buy Ma another present, but the lace napkins can wait.”
The floor shook. It was LeBlanc walking heavy-footed—burdened by water pails—on the stair. The door banged open.
“You?” LeBlanc said when he caught sight of O’Shaughnessy. “You’ll get our goddamned floor dirty.”
“Well, lad. But the red caps will have their evidence, won’t they? And with the boyo here to give his testimony.”
LeBlanc’s cheeks went a hot, furious red. He stared down at me.
O’Shaughnessy tipped his hat—a common man’s gesture. “Good day. I’ll be taking my plunder. ’Tis an excellent job you’re doing, Travis. Me compliments to your mother.”
When he left, LeBlanc dropped my bucket down next to me with a thud. Water crested, splattered my already clean bit of floor.
“What’d the mick mean by that?” His voice was shaking.
Too painful to watch. Maybe when they came for him, it would be best if I wasn’t around. “I don’t know. He was making jokes about stealing tea.”
“Up your ass, Stanhope. Come on. Tell me the goddamned truth. What was he doing here? What were you two talking about?”
“Nothing,” I told him.
He took his own water pail and went to his corner of the room. Officers’ morning teatime came and went. Cooks tracked mud from pantry to stove and back. LeBlanc and me refilled our buckets, set about scrubbing again.
It was near lunch when Harry Barstow came bursting in. “Stanhope!” He was out of breath. “Captain wants to see you straightaway, and he’s having himself a royal blinking paddy. He says to me, ‘Barstow, sees you brings Private Stanhope here on the double,’ and all the time him slapping that stick of his into his palm. Best go on.”
God almighty. Blackhall had taken the boots to him, dropped the problem of LeBlanc right into his lap. He’d think I’d been loose-lipped about it. I left brush and bucket and ran fast as I could to the officers’ barracks.
It wasn’t raining, but the clouds were considering it. Miller was standing outside the portable building having a chat with Dunston-Smith. They looked public-school elegant, upper-class composed.
When I saluted, my hands were shaking. I was so out of breath, I could barely speak. “Private Stanhope reporting, sir.”
Miller sketched a return salute. “Ah, Stanhope. I’ve been told that you’ve volunteered to help Father O’Shaughnessy with a bit of an errand. Is that so?”
It took me a few whooping gasps to sort through theories about LeBlanc and the firing squad, through charges of rape and a battered girl. Then I understood I’d been put smack in the middle of a game. But who was playing, O’Shaughnessy or Miller? “Yes, sir. He wanted me for an errand, sir.”
“You do realize that you are under discipline.”
I wondered what Dunston-Smith was making of the scene. There was an arch little grin playing around his lips.
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Shouldn’t have offered.”
Miller turned to Dunston-Smith, shook his head. “I don’t know quite what to do with him at times, Colin. The boy is so damnably energetic.”
In turning away he missed his reward: Dunston-Smith’s defensive sulk.
I said, “I’ll just tell him I can’t, sir.”
“No, no, Stanhope. I’ll not have you disappoint him. He’ll have you for one of his bloody good deeds, I expect.”
“Yes, sir. I expect so, sir.”
“I suppose there’s not much enjoyment to be had. Charity and all that. You may go, but not for long, mind. And do your best to stay within O’Shaughnessy’s sight, what? No chasing off on your own. Oh, Stanhope?” he called as I turned away. “I’ve a donation you might add to your coffers.”
He dug in his pocket, came up with a fistful of money, handed it to me.
“Good God, Richard,” Dunston-Smith said in fiscal shock. “You’ve given the boy over twenty pounds.”
“Yes, quite. One of my favorite charities. See that you use it well, Stanhope. Won’t have it wasted. Least I can do. Twenty pounds or so. Not much, actually. It’s the very least I can do.”
His eyes so level. His mouth rueful. I knew then. The red caps weren’t coming for LeBlanc, not ever. Twenty pounds as a blood payment. LeBlanc would get away with it all.
I left Miller, walked fast across the yard, and found O’Shaughnessy. He’d been standing around the church building, waiting. When he saw me, he started to chuckle. “Ah, the poor lad! I see you’ve been ordered to help my efforts.”
“I need to stop by a place so I can buy a present.”
He nodded.
I carted the tea for him. “Those bastards. They’re going to let him go,” I said.
No need explaining who. “That’s likely.”
“Just ’cause Miller’s scared.” He was letting them win. Well, there was no way for me to judge the effects prejudice has on courage. I was raised around them, and I can’t hope to understand what coloreds go through. Still, I bet his fiancée would have given those Oxford assholes what for.
“Ah, lad. It’s that everyone’s tired, is all. And it’s not Miller’s fear you’re dealing with, but the fright of the British Army. For Pierre’s a hero, and you can’t be tarnishing nor punishing that. After all, what—other than stories of valor—makes soldiers follow a
charge? No, Travis. For an army to win, heroes must shine like suns. They must be rewarded. Heroes are why other men go on.”
For war’s sake, men die, women are beaten. “There’s no damned justice.”
He shook his head, amused. “Ah, lad. If you’re expecting justice, you’ll be disappointed. It’s only death that’s fair.”
We walked in silence for a while, then he asked me for news of the graveyard. I told him that Foy had gone on, that LeBlanc’s youngest victim was staying a spell.
“Does she look happy, lad?”
I thought about it. Hard not to be happy there. “I know she’s dreaming.”
He liked that.
“But death being equal still don’t make everything right,” I said.
“Don’t you think so?” I’ve never seen such contentment on a person as I saw in O’Shaughnessy right at that moment. Oh, LeBlanc had been happy on his horse, but this was different. It was like O’Shaughnessy was savoring something, even knowing it was bound to end; and somehow loving the ending, too. It was a deep, peculiar satisfaction that O’Shaughnessy had. I wondered if he loved death too much.
We arrived at town, pausing to pass the time of day with the town’s priest. From his armload of food, I figured the old man’d been on his way home from shopping. The two blathered away in French. The old priest offered us an early apple each. Mine was still sour.
It was odd watching the two talk, casual as workers on a break. I wondered if this was the man O’Shaughnessy confessed to, tried to imagine what sins he wanted rid of.
Then they were saying their adieus and nodding and waving. O’Shaughnessy took me a few blocks down and showed me a place to shop. I sorted through pearl brooches and sapphire rings, garnet earrings and onyx necklaces. It was a cross on a chain I finally bought, for it was pretty and I thought it might give the girl’s heart some ease.
It was an expensive, frilly gold cross; to buy it, it took all my money and Miller’s, too. The shopkeeper wrapped it pretty. When he was tying the red ribbon, he winked.
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