Flanders

by Anthony, Patricia

  “Why’d he want to hit me? You see that? He hit me for nothing. Why’d he hit me?” Billings said.

  Calvert had me pinned in a hammerlock. “ ’E’s in mourning.”

  They hauled me back to the dugout, kicking and fighting. Pickering scrounged up some rope. The two of them hogtied me, threw blankets over my legs, and told me to go to sleep.

  I said they had to let me go. I said I had to piss. I said that come morning, I’d get them.

  They said I’d better shut up. That if I kept yelling, Blackhall would come. He’d find out I was drunk.

  I told them I hated my father.

  Calvert got a Woodbine from his pack. “Mine’s all right.” He struck a match. “I suppose ’e’s all right.” The cigarette was damp, and he had to suck on it hard to get the fire started. “For an ill-tempered sodding little blighter.”

  Pickering said, “Mine hates my house. Thinks my wife’s a tart. And when I was at the bank, he was forever asking when I planned to get a decent job. Silly me. All the while I’d imagined I had one.”

  “I gets wif me da, I ends up wif me peter shriveled. Stubborn old sot. Never can win an argument wif ’im.”

  “Mine’s always in a paddy about something,” Pickering said. “The government’s cocked up. The newspapers print trash. Nothing’s ever right.”

  “That’s me da,” Calvert agreed.

  I’d stopped struggling long ago. No use. I was too tired. You can’t ever win the war with your father. I closed my eyes and heard Calvert saying, “Pickering? You write a note to me da for me? Just a little note, maybe just asking ’ow ’e’s getting on.”

  I slept. I didn’t dream. Now that I’ve been told, maybe Pa’ll finally leave me alone.

  Travis Lee

  * * *

  NOVEMBER 1, A POSTCARD FROM THE RESERVE TRENCHES

  Dear Bobby,

  Captain called me in today to tell me that Pa’s sucking flames. Go ahead and do your crying, but don’t bother telling me any more about how he suffered. I see better suffering here most any day.

  Kiss Ma for me. Tell her all the old lies about him being in a better place.

  Thanks for the goatskin vest.

  Travis Lee

  NOVEMBER 4, THE RESERVE TRENCHES

  Dear Bobby,

  LeBlanc’d been watching me all that day. That should have set me wondering. He never said nothing to me. Well, neither of us talked. We ate lunch hunkered down in a shell hole. The Boche had thrown some mortars, and we kept having to move. It was cold and it was raining. The mud dragged at my legs, sucked at my feet. My whole body was weighted down with wet. I guess we were both tired.

  And I was drinking heavy. It pains me to admit it, Bobby, but I’d been drinking hard again—ever since I’d seen what LeBlanc did to that girl. Drinking makes time go fast; and there’s something nice and uncomplicated about speed, Bobby. It’s got a dimwit kind of happy to it. No thinking. God. No thinking. Thinking slows you down. LeBlanc knows that.

  Still, he was watching me; and I knew he was up to something. I drank anyway. My own damned fault. Drink does that to you, too: blunts importance. Muddles things.

  I don’t remember going to sleep that afternoon, but I remember waking up.

  I was blind.

  “LeBlanc?”

  It was so damned quiet. But for the cold and the wet, the whole world was missing. I wondered if I’d died without knowing it and fallen into that cloying dark beyond the cypress. I stuck my dirty fingers in my mouth just to taste something. I shouted just to fill up my ears with noise.

  “Hello!” I called, hoping the calico girl would hear me. “Anybody?”

  She wouldn’t come. My mouth was gritty from the mud I’d tasted, my throat raw from yelling. The air was too cold and clammy to be Hell. I was lying with my head higher than my feet. No Man’s Land, then; and probably a shell hole. But where were our lines? Where were the Boche?

  It was one of those nights when the air’s nearly too thick to breathe. No rain, but damp condensed on my face, tickled down my forehead. I took a breath and thought I could smell the sea.

  Something splashed through a nearby puddle. I jumped, hissed “Shit, shit, shit,” groped through the darkness for my rifle, couldn’t find it. My heart beat so fast that the insides of my chest quivered.

  “LeBlanc!” I called. “Hey! Hey! Anybody!”

  No answer—not a tracer bullet, not a flare. I wanted for shelling, longed for the brilliance, for the clamor of it. I scrabbled out of my shell hole, my eyes desperate, my body frantic. I got to my feet, mud sucking and pulling at me. I nearly toppled, nothing but black to hold onto.

  “Hey!” I called.

  I took a step into nothingness, went tumbling into the dark, splashed into frigid water, smelled dead fish, thought, Gas. Phosgene gas. Stale water made me sputter. My eyes stung. I thrashed my way to my feet. I was waist-deep in that stinking water and, God, I couldn’t see.

  I clawed my way upslope. At the top I hugged ground, my mind as empty as a panicked animal’s.

  The air was icy, there in that blackness. I lay for a long time, my teeth chattering. A sly and terrible way that LeBlanc had of killing me—leaving me drunk and sleeping. For I was bound to perish there in No Man’s Land. I didn’t know which direction to head for safety; if I tried to stay where I was until dawn, I’d freeze to death.

  When I saw the blue glow I first thought I was seeing one of those visions you get when it’s so dark that your eyes play make-believe. Still, I crept through the blackness, over jagged trash, over things slimy and wet. My uniform caught, snagged. I was terrified that the blue would evaporate like a mirage when I got closer, but it lingered: a small, contained patch of color. The ethereal sort of blue the sky turns at twilight.

  It was a corpse. A Boche. His skull was cerulean. The tatters of skin left him were the complex hue of the ocean. A god of a creature, Bobby. His hands were open. Maggots shone like golden suns in his palm.

  I raised my head and I could see, Bobby. Sweet Jesus, it was beautiful. Across the torn field, bodies gleamed a calm, tender indigo. Rats raced among them, brilliant earthbound meteors. Even the soil teemed and sparkled with life. My own muddy hand burgeoned with it.

  I watched a sentry peer over the Boche sandbags—glowing like a yellow petal backlit by sun.

  I stood up, but the sentry didn’t raise his rifle. When I looked back at my own trenches, I witnessed a golden angel on the parados take a fiery piss.

  So I started home, slogging through the glittering mud, past shell craters where brilliant existence twinkled on the water. Past last season’s bones shining gas-flame blue. Beyond the British sandbags, our sentry was a beacon. Goodson, I saw as I got closer. He didn’t hear me until I was nearly on him.

  He raised his rifle quick.

  “No,” I said. “Don’t shoot.”

  He peered so hard, Bobby. Confused and frightened. Awed by me, maybe.

  “It’s just me, Goodson.”

  “Gorblimey! Stanhope? That you, Stanhope?”

  I climbed over the sandbags and into the sizzling incandescence of his candle. He was so bright, I had to shield my eyes.

  Then Goodson was yelling. “Sergeant! It’s Stanhope! Thought he was a ghost! But it’s bleeding Stanhope, Sergeant, standing right in front of me!”

  Riddell came sparkling down the trench. He grabbed me by the arms. “You all right, lad? Stanhope, you ’ear me? The boy’s freezing! Get ’im a blanket! Sod all! Get ’im some tea!”

  Riddell took me to his dugout. A universe away, he was shouting orders. “Nash? Best get Lieutenant. Bring ’im ’ere. Go tell Captain that Private Stanhope’s been found alive.”

  Blackhall came. Then Miller. They asked me questions and I answered. When Miller and Blackhall left, Pickering and Calvert came in. They shook my hand. They clapped me on the back. Filthy as I was, Pickering hugged me. On Riddell’s order, they accompanied me to the medical dugout. The doctor’s assistant gave me a cot, a bu
cket of warm water, a couple of towels, and a change of clothes.

  When everyone left, I scrubbed down, dried myself in the warmth of the brazier. Alone, I watched the mud wall gleam. The intensity of it, Bobby. Life, every place I looked. I slept cradled in it. When I woke, the vision had faded. Just as well.

  They kept me a day. When I was released I was told that Miller wanted to see me. I found him in his dugout, reading field reports.

  “Now that Blackhall is not about, you should have no fear to tell me: What actually happened out there?”

  “Like I said, sir: LeBlanc and me just got separated.”

  “I have not discussed my suspicions with Blackhall, but it would not surprise me to find that you were drinking, and that LeBlanc was annoyed enough to leave you where you had passed out.” His doubting eyes searching, still searching.

  “You’re right, sir.” His fiancée smiled at me from her perch on the wall. A girl with fire in her. A golden, blazing girl.

  He nodded. “Well, I should think your night out has been punishment enough. Still. Intolerable of LeBlanc to report you dead. Despite how Command feels about him, something will be done about it, I can assure you.”

  “I know I been a worthless shit, sir. That’s going to change.”

  He looked at the picture, then at me. Was it jealousy I saw, or caution? I could never steal her from him. Didn’t have the elegance, the breeding. Wouldn’t embarrass him like that.

  “I say, Stanhope! Would you care to see the letter I had started to your family? Worked bloody hours on it. Brilliant piece of prose, actually. Someone should get the good.”

  I took the paper. Address neat in the upper left corner.

  Mrs. Leon Stanhope

  Box 56

  Harper, Texas

  My dear Mrs. Stanhope:

  I regret to inform you that

  Then nothing.

  “Worked literally hours. Stared at the paper. Nibbled on the pen. Hadn’t the least idea what to say. Hate to write them, you know. One more of your adventures, and I’ll force you to write your own.”

  “Please, sir. If it happens, write to my brother. Tell him I died of a hard-on.”

  He laughed, shook his head. “Dismissed, Stanhope. Report to Lieutenant Blackhall.”

  “I’m not going to be drinking anymore, sir. I learned my lesson.” Truth was, Bobby, I’d seen something that made me scared to drink, for fear I’d be throwing something magnificent away.

  “Yes, yes.” He waved his hand. “Whatever you wish.”

  Blackhall was waiting in his dugout for me. “Poof squabbles,” he said. “Won’t ’ave you and LeBlanc working together no more. Nothing bloodier than two fairies fighting it out. Besides, I figures you and LeBlanc got something to ’ide, ain’t you?”

  “He beat and raped that bakery shop girl, sir.”

  “I knows that. Knows you was there, too. Confronted ’im wif it. ’E as much as told me.”

  I shook my head. It didn’t matter.

  “When you takes up sharpshooting duty again, you’ll be going out wif another gentleman, name of ’Arold Crumb, a bloke I knows from the old days. ’E’ll keep you on the straight and narrow, ’Arold will.”

  I saluted.

  “Didn’t dismiss you as yet, Stanhope.”

  “Sir.”

  “Seen this before, two blokes as got a secret between them. One always ends up murdered, seems to me. If LeBlanc ends up wif a shiv in ’im, I’ll know ’oo did it.”

  I didn’t go looking for LeBlanc this time. He didn’t go looking for me. Whatever tie we once had had been severed. Through the grapevine I heard that he’d come back from No Man’s Land with my rifle. Said he’d seen with his own eyes that I caught a mortar round. The bastard. Still, look what he gave me, Bobby. For an hour or two I was surrounded by splendor.

  Travis Lee

  * * *

  NOVEMBER 4, A POSTCARD FROM THE RESERVE TRENCHES

  Dear Bobby,

  Well, LeBlanc pulled one of his crazy stunts and they made him shit wallah for it. Hear tell he hates the duty, ha ha. Nye’s not all that enraptured with him, either.

  I was a couple of days off duty. When we’re back at the front, I’ll be plinking Boche in No Man’s Land with some hardass named Harold Crumb.

  Travis Lee

  * * *

  NOVEMBER 6, THE RESERVE TRENCHES

  Dear Bobby,

  The shelling’s picked up. The rain has, too. The communications trenches have collapsed, but there’s no sense digging them out again. The earth doesn’t have any hold to it anymore. Flanders is tired, Bobby. Rain and shells have beat it down. Corpses have softened it. Walk to the rear now, and you go overland, dodging whizzbangs and daisy-cutters, slogging around craters and their pools of sludge-yellow water.

  Pickering isn’t taking things well. “Should just bloody give it up, shouldn’t they? Not sportsmanlike to go on bashing us.”

  We were huddled in the dugout waiting for the sump pumps to start working so we could finish revetment duty. Calvert and me laughed. Pickering wasn’t in the mood.

  “Unenlightened sods, the pair of you. Like the bloody British Army, can’t look at things reasonably. We’re down and out. Only an idiot would advance in this sort of weather. Since both armies are mired, why can’t we simply postpone the war until the weather improves? Done it before. Remember that time we took up residence in part of the Boche trenches?”

  Calvert said, “It’s effing Command that’s the problem, ain’t it? Leave it in my ’ands, we’d pack it in and go home.”

  Pickering brightened. “Yes! Let’s!”

  Calvert and me slapped each other and howled. Outside the cramped misery of our dugout, a waterfall of rain splashed down the revetments. Even the bird song had drowned.

  No way the pumps would work today. I lit the primus. Calvert picked ants out of the tea. Still, when the tea was brewed and poured, a few were left floating. I pinched mine out with my fingertips, wiped the bodies on my pants. Calvert, who once liked his tea plain, drank it down, sugar, bugs, and all.

  Conversation was too heavy to lift. I listened to rain drum the sandbags. Pickering wiped an ant off his tongue, sat there looking at it. “Bloody surrounded by death. Depressing, if you ask me.”

  It was depressing, and I wanted a drink. Riddell’s weed cure only blunts the need a little. I beat the craving twice already. I’m near as tired as Flanders now. The calico girl made quitting so easy that I had taken it as cheap. Damned if I didn’t throw the gift she gave me away.

  Listen to me, Bobby. Never drink. For to give up whiskey, you have to be strong every single minute of your life. Pa knew he wasn’t sturdy enough. I think it pissed him off. Made him beat on me, maybe—knowing there was something in this world more by-God stubborn than he was. It took control of him; and Pa couldn’t abide weakness, not mine, not Ma’s, not his own.

  I watched the bloated corpse of a rat sail the trench, bumping its nose on floating duckboard, on sandbags, until it beached on the rise of our dugout. The current nudged it around until it was facing me. Its black eyes were fixed and intent.

  “I keep dreaming the same damned dream about my pa,” I said. “After I heard for sure he was dead, I thought they’d stop. Bastard won’t leave me alone.”

  Calvert opened a pack of Woodbines, passed them around.

  A fresh pack, but the cigarettes were stale.

  I took a deep drag, sent smoke streaming out into the gray day. “Ain’t that a pile of shit?”

  Pickering’s jaw was tight. “Sometimes I dream about Marrs.”

  “Don’t dream, meself,” Calvert said.

  I asked, “What kind of dreams?”

  The two looked at me. A whistle, falling down the scale. The whizzbang struck not far away. I waited for the screams. None came.

  “Pickering? Tell me. What do you dream about Marrs?”

  A whuffling noise above us. Calvert raised his head. Not a gas shell. A good solid crack that made the
three of us jump. Black smoke trickled down the sandbags.

  “So. What about Marrs?”

  Pickering said, “Just a dream is all.”

  “It’s real important.”

  “It’s a bloody, piddling dream!”

  Only a dream. Marrs stuck out in No Man’s Land. Pickering holding him there.

  “Stop dreaming about him.”

  Pickering’s droll face twisted. A nightmare, then. “Blast, Stanhope! I don’t want to bloody dream about him. Do you want to dream about your sodding father?”

  “Don’t dream, meself,” Calvert said. “Blinking waste of time, seems to me.”

  I leaned toward Pickering. His gaze kept sliding away. “Got to tell me what he’s doing in your dream, Pickering. Please. It’s real important. You got to tell me.”

  His knee kept going up and down, a crazy never ending toe-tapping, like there was some ditty playing. “I see him die, is what it is.”

  That wasn’t the answer I needed. “He died bad,” I said.

  “No bleeding use to dreams, far as I can see.” Calvert, near the door, blowing smoke rings. “No use in remembering the sad, either. Wallowing in it. Me mum always made us look on the cheery side. Should try that, the pair of you, ’stead of nattering on about death and the like.”

  There was more to the Marrs story. The tension hadn’t left Pickering’s jaw. “Tell me the rest,” I said. “He was your best friend. Tell me.”