“He thinks you’ve a lass you’re stepping out with,” O’Shaughnessy explained. “And like all jewelers, he’s blathering on about what a fine selection you’ve made and complimenting your good taste. Say merci.”
“Merci.”
The shopkeeper’s head bobbed. He handed the wrapped gift over and we left. Once in the street, O’Shaughnessy laughed. Like Miller, he must have found me amusing.
“Do you know what the shopkeep said to me, Travis? That he’d not have served you had you come in alone. A British soldier, and buying a piece of jewelry? Why, he’d have imagined you set on seducing a town girl. Ah, but you came in with a priest, didn’t you? And to make matters even safer, you purchased a cross. Well, now he knows your intentions are honorable. He asked if you’d set a marriage date as yet.” O’Shaughnessy went to cackling again.
I thought about the girl, about how Miller said she’d been ruined. The gift made me a little sad. “What’d you tell him?”
“That you were American, and not British; and that America is a long way away. Ah, but the man was a romantic. He told me that the only thing better for a man’s soul than overcoming obstacles of affection is pining over unrequited love.”
Right then I recognized what I saw in O’Shaughnessy. It wasn’t happiness, but security. He’d never had reason to doubt that he was cherished.
“You know where the girl lives?” I asked, for it seemed like he was making a beeline for someplace.
“Just ahead here. Ah. We’ll have a lovely time. She always enjoys her visits.”
I shifted the tea crate, slowed my steps. The cobblestone streets were close, the row houses—some white plaster, some red brick—standing shoulder to shoulder in short blocks. The houses were two-and three-storied, with high pitched roofs and gables. One wooden front door each: painted green or white.
The street was deserted but for a wandering cat. War had emptied some of the houses. The whole town looked as if it was waiting.
O’Shaughnessy stopped at a house on the corner. Before he could knock, I shoved the tea into his arms. “Listen. You give the necklace to her for me?”
“Her family’s here, lad. They’re lovely people. You’ll not be wanting to give the gift to her yourself?”
If I looked into her face, I’d remember her spread, submissive ass. I’d hate myself if that happened. “It’s not like no penance or nothing, is it?”
“No. You needn’t see them if you’d rather not.” Still, he looked disappointed. “Will you knock them up for me, then?”
I perched the gift on top of the tea crate, gave the green-painted door a couple of raps. Then I started away fast. Behind me I heard voices in French, a man’s, a woman’s, heard O’Shaughnessy reply. When I turned, I saw the man eyeing me. I shoved my hands into my pockets and rounded the corner.
Just out of sight, I stopped. Near me was a window, its lace curtains worn at the hem and yellowed with age. A fine rain started falling, not heavy enough to seek for shelter. The wind gusted. The curtains heaved. I hunched against the cold, my back to the street.
It was the turning toward the house like I did, it was the wind parting the curtains that made me see her. She was asleep. The bed covers were rumpled, her pudgy hands clutching the feather comforter as if terrified it would leave.
Lots of things would. The ruin of that face would make people scatter. Jesus, Bobby. Her top lip still curved in that perfect, rosebud way I remembered; but her lower lip had been cut off.
And God, how LeBlanc had beaten her. The pink cheeks I remembered were yellow and misshapen with swelling. It was her clutching the bedclothes in her sleep that tore at me—that vigilant, never-trusting hand.
When O’Shaughnessy came back around the corner, I ducked my head and walked away from him fast. Rain fell harder. I heard his splashing steps behind me.
“Travis!”
The blank faces of the row houses, the blind eyes of their windows. A sudden gust sent fallen leaves tumbling down the cobbles, made scavenging pigeons plump their feathers.
“Travis. “
He caught up with me, grabbed my arm, and spun me around.
“He hurt her,” I said.
“You knew that.”
Didn’t know. Didn’t. Not about the lip cut off, not about the teeth exposed. She wouldn’t eat right again, talk right again. Never smile. From that night on, no one would look her full in the face. I jerked my arm free and kept walking.
“Travis. You knew that. Should have been no surprise, lad.”
“Shit!” I yelled, startling pigeons, sending birds and echoes scattering. “That makes it all right? Jesus!”
He touched my arm, but I couldn’t stand it. “I’ll kill him,” I said.
The serenity in O’Shaughnessy vanished. He looked frantic. “No, lad. No. Don’t be taking that sin on yourself.”
“You don’t know shit about sin. I lived with it. It slept in the room next to me. I tried to kill it once. Hell, you probably tell that girl in there she’s supposed to be happy because God loves her, ain’t that right, Father? Well, if God loved her so goddamned much, why’d he let Pierre LeBlanc do that to her face?”
“Travis,” he said real soothing, like he was quieting a spooked horse.
“Why’d he do that?” I meant God as much as LeBlanc. O’Shaughnessy kept reaching for me. I kept knocking his hand away.
I started walking fast toward the billets. Behind me, O’Shaughnessy shouted something. His voice was drowned out by the soft chuckles and contented-baby gurgles of the ram.
It was a long walk back to billets. On the way I thought about LeBlanc’s hands, how kindly they were on the horses, about Pa’s hands lying gentle in his lap the way they did in my dream. I looked at my own, the knuckles red from scrubbing, the fingers scarred from rough work.
Jesus God, Bobby. For all of us it’s only one short step to Pa’s savagery, another step to LeBlanc’s. Kill him? Take the sin of it? How many had I killed already, anyway, and O’Shaughnessy forgiven me? God had to be stuffed to the gills with the fruit of heroes.
I turned a corner and there he was. I would have struck him down right then if he hadn’t been standing at the door of the stables, grinning. He waved me over, “I traded chores, eh? Grab a pitchfork!”
The afternoon smelled of wet manure and rain. It stank of ammoniac horse piss.
LeBlanc, grinning the way the bakery shop girl never would. “There was a captain by here, Stanhope. He said we could go riding, after.”
I walked into the shelter of the stables, out of the gray afternoon and the drizzle. “They know,” I said.
The smile fell off his face.
“Miller told me. The red caps know everything. They got hold of your boots yesterday. You stepped on the girl’s back and left a bruise. On your left boot you got one broken hobnail. Two are missing. Ask me how I know.”
He leaned on the pitchfork and lifted his boot, studied the bottom. His cheeks went sallow.
“They’re gonna get you,” I told him. “Just a matter of time. If it was me, I’d run for it. Head for that last farmhouse where we billeted. You remember where it was?” They’d shoot him when they found him. And I’d tell the red caps where he’d gone.
Outside the stable door, rain fell faster. It trickled from the roof, pattered on wet straw. To the back of the dim, shadowy building a horse whuffled and stamped.
“You were there that night, Stanhope. I saw you. You had your peter in your hand. I’ll tell them you fucked her, too.”
“I’ll deny it.”
“They won’t care. They’ll get you. Hey. It’s almost true. You enjoyed it. Looked that way to me.”
I grabbed a pitchfork. He held his ground, brought up his own pitchfork up the way you do in bayonet training. A strange sort of eagerness went all through me, keen as Marrs’s singing. I tightened my grip on the handle so hard that a stray splinter in the wood bit.
LeBlanc knew I was going to kill him, just like Pa’d known that
time. Like Pa, he gave up; and that was his salvation. The tines of his pitchfork lowered a fraction of an inch. His stare wavered.
I lunged forward, stabbed the tines hard as I could into straw. I started shoveling horse shit fast and furious. He joined me. It wasn’t long after that when I saw O’Shaughnessy pass by. I pretended I didn’t see him. LeBlanc and me shoveled manure until the sun set and Riddell came to call us to dinner.
Why didn’t I kill him? I was taller, stronger. I knew my way around pitchforks. I couldn’t use Miller’s excuse of pity, either. Shit, if I’d been good at pity, I wouldn’t never have killed no one.
It’s just that when I was facing him, I got to thinking how tired I was. LeBlanc was tired, too. Flanders’ air is thick with the stink of rotted soldiers. The soil is root-bound with bones. In that charnel house, one girl’s pain just didn’t seem to matter.
Travis Lee
* * *
OCTOBER 24, THE FRONT LINES
Dear Bobby,
It feels good being back in war. A couple of hours’ march, and life gets real again. I need edges now, Bobby: shells and bullets. I need big noises. That green, quiet world behind the lines is just a fantasy.
I buddied up with the new rum wallah, and last night was the best sleep I’ve had for days. While I slept I walked out through No Man’s Land. I went looking for Marrs.
“There’s not much time left,” I said when I found him. I wasn’t sure why I knew. “You got to come with me.”
He’d gone beyond looking for his letter, beyond laboring to breathe. He was more tired than I was. Still, I kept pestering him, the way Ma’d do me sometimes.
“Please,” I begged him finally. “Please. I can’t let you stay here.”
I did anyway, Bobby. I walked away and left all of them, the Boche, the Frenchies, and Marrs.
That morning when LeBlanc and me crossed the wire, my hand touched something smooth and round like a marble; barbed, too, like an old arrowhead. It was an interesting-feeling thing—my fingers liked the comfort of its roundness, were fascinated by those edges. It was only when the sun came up that I saw what I’d been holding.
It was a spine bone, the small one at the base of the skull. I slipped it in my pocket and every once in a while I’d go to rubbing on it. You know, Bobby, that bone had been the prop of thoughts once, a buttress to love and fear. My thumb slides over it, polishing it more. Sometimes I think I can hear thoughts from it. Is that crazy?
Best talk to that bone. Lord knows LeBlanc and me, we don’t speak much anymore. He’ll peer through the field telescope and say, “Three and a half meters left of the coffee tin,” and I’ll snap a shot off.
We lunch in silence. We bear the wet in silence. When I get back to the dugout, I take the silence with me. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to talk.
I lie in my damp cubbyhole, ignoring Pickering’s and Calvert’s gossip. I slip my hand into my pocket and rub that bone. It tells me about Alpine meadows: a hoop of mountains, an embroidery of wildflowers. It brings me the smells and lowing of milk cows. It sends me to sleep.
I dream of Pa, sometimes twice a night now. I’m always walking down that same hall, seeing Ma’s door ahead and knowing what’s waiting. I want real bad to turn and go the other way; but I don’t. I can’t. I just keep walking that same steady pace.
The light still falls across the hardwoods. The hall smells of floor wax and camphor the way it always does. And like I always do, I stop at the door.
I’m supposed to go in. It’s not just Pa waiting for me to make my move; it’s forgiveness.
Pa sits on the bed in that benevolent wash of sun. Light from the window crowns him, throws a radiant stole across his shoulders. He’s always the same: head lowered and pensive, hands cupped. While I stand there, some powerful force pulls at me. I have to grab the doorjamb to keep from being drawn in.
Still, I walk on despite the soul-deep tug. It’s my choice and I take it, no matter what God expects.
Travis Lee
* * *
NOVEMBER 1, THE RESERVE TRENCHES
Dear Bobby,
Today was the day I got your news. Riddell came down to the place we were working to find me. Pickering and Calvert and me were working on sump holes, and we were head to foot with mud. Pickering had been telling jokes all morning. Calvert—who’ll surprise you sometimes—was relating a story about a fishmonger philandering uncle of his who pranged a whore in an alley once, then hid his used rubber in his pile of herring.
Calvert told it good, too, making his voice high and squeaky when he was imitating his aunt. Got me to laughing so hard I couldn’t catch my breath. Pickering was wiping away tears.
Calvert was saying, “But when me auntie leaves, ’e goes to find it, doesn’t ’e, and it’s gone! Bleeding thing’s gone! And ’e wonders if it were in the kilogram ’e sold to the last old lady customer. Crikey! ’e thinks. Old biddy might fry it up.”
All of a sudden Calvert stopped talking. Pickering stopped laughing. I turned around. Riddell was standing there looking at me, his face full of bad news.
“Stanhope?” He’s a considerate man, but I’d never heard his voice as kindly. “Captain wants you.”
I thought of Ma. Then for a dizzy, terrible moment I thought of you. I ran pell-mell down the duckboards, pushing soldiers out of my way. I slogged my way through the mud in the communications trench, then down the twenty or so yards to Miller’s.
I knocked. He called for me to come in. I opened the door, breathless, and found him sitting, looking down at a paper in his hand. The lamp was lit behind him and the warm glow had settled across his shoulders. The man and the room were wrong, but something in the way he was sitting, Bobby. Something in the way the light fell. For that brief instant I stepped into my dream. I felt a pull, the tug so strong that I had to clutch the door to keep from falling in.
Miller looked up, broke the spell. “Stanhope.” His eyes were full of secondhand sorrow. “Do come in. Sit down. There is something I need to tell you.”
“My pa’s dead,” I said.
“Dear God. How did you know?”
As I came into the dugout, I staggered. He bolted up as if he was going to catch me. I found the chair, sat down in it hard.
“The Red Cross delivered the news as soon as they possibly could. Your brother thought the tidings too grievous to telegraph. It happened a few weeks past, actually. Dreadfully sorry.”
“It’s okay, sir. I think I’ve known for a while.”
“There’s a letter.” He handed it over.
Funny. It wasn’t that I loved Pa, but my vision couldn’t focus. Your clear, carefully written words swam.
“Shall I read it to you?”
I wiped my eyes. “No.”
“Well. I’ll leave you alone for a bit, shall I?”
“I didn’t love him,” I said.
My words must have caught him at the door. Behind me, I heard him clear his throat. “Perhaps you’d like a chat with Father O’Shaughnessy.”
I froze, staring straight ahead. I couldn’t look at the girl he was going to marry, couldn’t turn to look at him. He’d left his pencil on his tabletop. What the hell would he do with his hands? It was a cheerful yellow pencil. There was a red eraser beside it. Some things are made so they’re easy to change.
“I been thinking,” I said. On a wall peg, the lantern flickered erratically. Something was wrong. The wick was bad. Maybe the oil low.
“Yes?”
“You’re stuck with your fathers, you know? No choice or nothing. I reckon your fathers are stuck with you.” My eyes were tired, my lids heavy. The room went hazy, all the edges blurred. “You love yours?”
Miller cleared his throat again. The door squeaked as it opened. Light and air rushed in, rattled papers on his desk. He must have stood there for a while, half-in and half-out of the rain. When he left, he shut the door so quiet that I knew only by the darkness.
O’Shaughnessy arrived to find me staring at the
lantern, your letter crumpled, still unread, in my hand. I heard him walk up behind me.
“I’m all right,” I said.
He put his hand on my shoulder.
“He didn’t mean nothing.”
It struck me that I’d been sitting there too long. Miller would want his dugout back. They’d be needing me at the digging. I thought of that damned story about the rubber in the herring and how I’d been laughing only a little while ago. I thought about the way Pa’d hug on me sometimes, right at the start of his drunks, when he must have been feeling bad about how things had turned out between us. I thought about that little horse Pa’d carved me. Dun. He’d known to paint that mare dun.
I got up. “I better go.”
“If you need me,” he started to say.
“I won’t.”
I shoved your letter in my pocket and left. Back at the sump holes Pickering and Calvert were still cussing. I told them my pa had died, and then I picked up a shovel. They were respectful for a time. Then Pickering told a joke about a man who’d trained his pecker to sing. Calvert dumped a load of mud on Pickering’s foot. I shoved my hand in my pocket and rubbed that spine bone.
That night I got a little drunk. I went to pushing Pickering around. He pushed back, and I would have hit him if Calvert hadn’t pulled me off. I went out walking along the trench until Billings, the sentry, stopped me.
He lifted his lantern. “It’s past lights-out, Stanhope. Best get your arse back to the dugout. Can’t let Blackhall see you drunk. He’ll have you in field punishment soon enough.”
I said, “Fuck Blackhall.”
He laughed. “You’re a caution.” Then his face fell. “Oh! I heard about your father, chum. Me condolences.”
I jumped him. If he hadn’t dropped the lantern quick as he did, if he hadn’t ducked, I’d have broken his nose. Calvert and Pickering, knowing I was up to no good, had followed me. They arrived in time to wrestle me off. Lucky Billings.
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