Snow, Ashes

by Alyson Hagy

  He slipped the photos inside his field jacket, then paused to see if Hobbs would tell the one about Miss Minni, the Rawlins brothel keeper, and her trick poodle dog. That story was one of Hobbs’s favorites. It didn’t seemed to matter to anybody that Hobbs had never set foot in Miss Minni’s railroad hotel or never laid eyes on the poodle or Miss Minni’s infamous .44 caliber pistol. Hobbs’s first real try at whoring had come in Japan, and the attempt had resulted in a story Hobbs wasn’t likely to tell on this afternoon.

  Ry Pilcher, a grocer’s son from Alabama, interrupted Hobbs. “That is a pure damn lie,” he snorted, trying not to laugh through his nose. “You’ve primed us with whoppers before, cowboy, but I ain’t listening to this one. It’s as bad as the bull you shoveled about that damn outlaw in his pickle barrel.”

  “Shut up,” Rocque said. He’d wiped the hair tonic from his hands and was trying to roll a fresh cigarette. “I want to hear what he says. Leave him alone.”

  Pilcher coughed until his eyes were shiny. “The cowboy is pulling your sweet Texas leg, Rocque, but if that’s the way you want it, be my guest. I bet Big Adams over there can set you straight.” Pilcher waggled a finger in Adams’s direction. “Give it to them, A-man. Tell us you didn’t really find no famous gunman salted down like one of my daddy’s hams.”

  But they had, sort of. It depended on how you told the story. He and Hobbs and little Charlotte had driven to Rawlins that past spring to buy supplies at the mercantile. They’d gone to Molander’s to gawk at the new Chrysler sedan that was fresh off the train. They’d bribed Charlotte with two cherry Cokes to sit on the sidewalk while they went into Addington’s to shoot some pool. They were on their way to the no-name Mexican restaurant that served cheap food to sheepherders and ranch hands when Charlotte spotted a crowd gathered at the excavation site for Hested’s new store. She was off like a shot, the brat. Before Adams could catch her, she’d wormed through the crowd and slid down a muddy plank into the half-dug foundation. Two sweating excavators had just wrestled an ancient whiskey barrel from where it had been buried near an old foundation. The workers knew the barrel wasn’t sloshing with whiskey, so they claw-hammered it open, and the first thing that got to them was the stink. The second thing that got to them was the sight of a hand and arm bobbing in a moss-colored broth of formaldehyde and brine. Charlotte snuck close enough to see the show. Then she vomited all over her starched pinafore and Sunday shoes.

  “Big Nose George,” Adams said. “They really did bury him that way. Nothing Christian about it. He got lynched in the old days for killing two deputies, then stuffed into a barrel. It was what he deserved.”

  “And your governor skinned him out and made himself up a pair of shoes,” Rocque crowed. “Don’t forget that part. I never heard anything so loco.”

  Adams grinned. “The governor did tan some of George’s hide. The rest went into that barrel. After sixty years, it weren’t a pretty sight.”

  Adams tried to catch Hobbs’s eye as he finished his version of the tale, but Hobbs kept his head down while he reassembled his gleaming rifle. Hobbs had really helped him out that day. Adams had been so angry at Charlotte, so embarrassed, that he’d wanted to slap her, but Hobbs kept the lid on, using his own shirttail to wipe the vomit from Charlotte’s soiled pinafore. Hobbs had assured Adams’s little sister that it wasn’t chicken to puke when you saw a dead man. By the time they’d driven the fifty dusty miles back to the Trumpet Bell, Charlotte was as sassy as she’d ever been—if a little ripe smelling. She and Hobbs filled the truck cab with groans and wails and other mummy sounds they attributed to an unburied, revenge-seeking Big Nose George.

  A few weeks later, as high-school graduation drew close and the newspapers ran worrisome columns about collaboration between the Russians and the Chinese, an army recruiter arrived hat in hand at the grange hall in Baggs. Maybe it came from missing the big war against the Germans and the Japs, maybe it came from wanting to get out into the world they’d heard about from Etchepare and Uncle Gene—but he and Hobbs soon found themselves on a train to Cheyenne where they volunteered to be marines. To Adams, the enlistment was like stringing one more bead onto a slender string, year after year, event after event, Hobbs never holding him back, Adams never obstructing Hobbs. Now they were in a place called Sudong on Sergeant Jonas Devlin’s smeared, inaccurate map, and they were stringing on more beads, faster. Times were changing. They were changing. Adams was glad C.D. was liked by the other men, that he had an easy capacity for friends. He, himself, didn’t feel the same need for company, though he liked how it happened among the others—the impulse, the crafted talk and laughter. He believed it could only be good for him to step into his days with those sounds in his head for as long as they might last.

  Devlin wasn’t leading the patrol, but he might as well have been. The new lieutenant from Virginia was smart enough to let his sergeants run the squads. There were squads from mortars and squads from machine guns, in addition to Third Platoon’s riflemen and Hebert, the regular corpsman. Even with attachments, the patrol was under strength. That wasn’t supposed to be a problem since their job wasn’t to defeat the enemy but to find out where he’d laid his lines.

  “Let me tell you bastards what the Chink bastards been telling the intelligence pinkies which you are not supposed to know.” Devlin wasn’t conspiratorial now. He was still in the bulk of his buttoned jacket and thick flannel shirts, poised and watchful, like a hawk in a barren tree. It wasn’t how Adams had imagined his sergeant whom he thought of as mischievous and catlike in attitude even when his business was serious. The skin of Devlin’s face was pasty under its smears of burned cork, and Adams could see newly deepened hollows under his eyes. There was a rumor that the sergeant had contracted the influenza but would in no damn way go off the patrol because he didn’t think much of the other noncoms except for Sutherland who’d lost his stripes. Adams didn’t believe the rumor. Devlin didn’t look sick to him.

  “The bastards are bragging to the running dog capitalist soldiers of the United States of America. They say they’ve got a whole division up there.” Devlin gestured in the direction of their jump-off point. “They claim there are ten divisions south of the Yalu where we’re going for our riverside picnic with the 8th Army. They’ve given names, numbers, armament—every little thing but current addresses—because they invite war with the marine butchers and their imperialist generals. Tokyo says this is Commie prop-o-ganda bullshit, Chinese got nobody down here but a few hundred volunteers with the N.K. If you want me or the lieutenant to tell you what this really means, we can do it right now.”

  Adams turned his head until he could see Sutherland squatting next to the light machine gun. He’d been assigned to carry ammunition for Sutherland. The older man was smoking and working the thongs that held his dog tags between a tight thumb and finger. His brown, close-set eyes were no more than slots. He seemed comforted by every syllable of bad news Devlin uttered.

  Devlin went on. “We’re going out quiet, no helmets, and keep your canteens and bayonets secure. You’re supposed to have an extra day’s rations so you better have them. Password is ‘Deep Purple,’ don’t forget it. I’ll say this. This is the Chinks’ country, and they’re good at what they do. We’ll have to be better. Checkpoint will pass us through in ten minutes, so do your pissing and coughing now.”

  Adams watched as the lieutenant laid out the order of march. A man on point would be followed by a rifle squad that included the lieutenant and his radioman. A mortar section would go next, then Sutherland’s gun crew, more riflemen, the second section of mortars, etc. Rocque would be Sutherland’s assistant. Adams and a kid named Greenbaugh were to lug a box of .30 caliber belts between them. Pilcher was back with Spoonhauer and the second machine gun.

  Adams studied the white oval of the rising moon. It looked like a storm lantern hung just out of reach. The wind that rushed past his face bore the familiar, metallic taste of snow on its edge. He knew the wind would muffle their adva
nce just as it obscured any movement by the Chinese or North Koreans. This wasn’t hunting, Adams told himself. When a man went hunting, he most often went onto land that was familiar and in conditions that were in his favor. This was blindness. And a kind of provocation. He knew he’d appreciate his bulky dress as the temperature fell, and he knew his well-worn boots wouldn’t give him any trouble. But he would be slower than usual with the ammunition to carry. This made him uneasy. Devlin had made it clear that action—especially action at night—sometimes spooked new guys, and he didn’t want to be the one who spooked.

  The men drew themselves into formation. Adams saw Sutherland wave to him, and he moved closer to the gunner with Greenbaugh by his side. Sutherland had a wool cap and a felt-lined hat pulled tight over his wide forehead. He told them to get ready to hoist their load. “I want to say something about the fucking Chinks that maybe Dev don’t feel the need to say.” The guttural voice smelled bitterly of cigarettes. “I want to say they ain’t as cocky or desperate as the N.K.s. They’ll wait us out. They got discipline, and they don’t go stupid. But they like their bottleneck ambush coming from high ground just like the god damn Sioux did, so they’ll take their chance if they fucking get it which is likely in this hellhole terrain. You don’t want to get caught by them. You don’t want to be their prisoner.” His pinpoint eyes telescoped to the guarded barrier of a memory. When the eyes returned to their waiting faces, they reflected a wet, prismed anger. “Best advice you’ll ever get.”

  They got the signal and passed through the line manned by Dog Company. They didn’t receive the usual taunts from their fellow marines, and they knew this was because of the crush of refugees and the unruly flight of the Republic of Korea army, which seemed to be dissolving in front of them. It wasn’t long before they could barely hear the noises of the camp, the tight fart of the diesel engines, the orchestra of aluminum and steel that crashed above the more easily dispersed murmurs of men. Adams and Greenbaugh shifted hands on the handles of the ammunition box. Its weight was awkward and cut off the circulation of their fingers even when they wore gloves. While they were on the road they found it easier to walk side by side, which they wouldn’t be able to do on paths in the hills.

  As the patrol snaked forward, Adams heard movement, panicked and sudden, from the roadside ditches. He was prepared for this. There were refugees to consider. And ROK deserters. They were supposed to be careful about firing at anything along a road. The drainages around Sudong were also full of small Korean deer that were high-hocked and quick. “There’s another one,” Greenbaugh whispered, nodding toward the tangled brush. Greenbaugh was from near Chicago, but every fall he took his deer meat from the forests of Wisconsin. He’d been watching the roads and ditches for several days. “They’re being pushed out of their cover,” he said. “Whatever’s in those mountains has got them on the run.”

  He hadn’t even said good-bye to Hobbs. C.D. was gearing up for the patrol when Devlin came into the squad tent and called his name. Hobbs followed the sergeant with his rifle and helmet in hand, but not his pack. He carried his shoulders loose in their sockets as though he expected to return. He hadn’t. Devlin had walked him straight to the command post to meet with the captain.

  He thought of Hobbs as they crossed the small creeks that were silvered with ice, as they toiled through underbrush at the base of the black, treed slopes that towered over them. Hobbs would probably compare the patrol to night duty with the sheep herd. With sheep, you sometimes had to stay out until dawn tracking a lion or coyote. You sometimes had to scout for a lost band of ewes and lambs in the darkness as carefully as you’d scout an enemy. Except this wasn’t the same as herding sheep. It couldn’t be. You didn’t have your dogs, for one thing. What you had instead was the huffing and banging of thirty men trying to maintain a silence that couldn’t be maintained. And you weren’t going to get shot at when you were with sheep. Not normally. The biggest danger in those mountains was lightning.

  Adams wondered if Hobbs was thinking of him. He’d seen men marking time in camp after they’d been taken off assignment. They looked uncomfortable, shrunken, as if they’d been drenched in the wrong kind of rain. How would C.D. handle it? Would he sleep off his disappointment or twist himself into a double barb of energy? Adams wished he’d been able to say a few words to Hobbs, to explain himself. Because now, as the hours passed and the wind began to needle his skin with invisible sleet, he felt himself begin to drift. Maybe it was the fatigue. Maybe it was the endless valley they were in, the way the patrol’s path wound into a complete and foreign darkness, but Adams found he couldn’t conjure up a clear image of C.D.’s face. Only the weather remained real to him. And the quiver of his exhausted muscles. The slow stumble of Greenbaugh’s feet was also very real. Nothing else mattered for the moment. What else could matter? C.D. Hobbs, whoever he was, was not part of this struggling body. C.D. Hobbs had been left far, far behind.

  A few hours before dawn they struck a trail that ran north. Somebody had recently used the trail, that was obvious, so they waited while the lieutenant sent out scouts. The place was a wallow of long-bladed grass and stagnant water that would have been brown with tannins if they could have seen it. Rocks were notched like teeth along the length of a mucky creek bed. The lieutenant quickly decided he wanted them on better ground. They would climb a small hill to the west, then cross a narrow, unprotected saddle to a longer ridge that led south. The lieutenant was afraid they had put themselves behind more enemy than they could handle. He was fresh from Virginia, but he still had that feeling. Adams would later be told that the scouts had heard Chinese pickets talking to one another as they withdrew up the northern trail. The scouts had gotten close enough to smell garlic on the pickets’ breath.

  Climbing the hill was awkward business because of the heavy ammunition box and the eroded soil that gave way under their feet. Adams and Greenbaugh scrambled as well as they could, both of them working their thighs in short, paired strokes like pistons. Adams slid onto his face more than once. The earth that worked its way into his mouth tasted of frozen, unliving rock before he spit it out.

  Sergeant Devlin knew what to look for on the hilltop, and he found it—a shallow, elongated pit already scraped out for a gun. The pit afforded a clear field of fire across the saddle toward the southern ridge. Devlin also found some enemy soldiers, a small number of them, abandoning the crest as he and a team of riflemen elbowed themselves over the top. A marine with a big .50 caliber Browning Automatic Rifle began to fire at the departing soldiers before Devlin could stop him. The lone cough of the B.A.R. made Adams’s pulse double. “Nothing but scouts,” Devlin hissed. “They wanted us to see them. Get the gun up. We need to secure this spot because what those S.O.B.s will do is try to keep us off that next hill, which is our way home.” And he pointed into the jabbing wind toward a raised brow of stone they couldn’t even see.

  Adams couldn’t remember taking cover behind a comb of brush with Greenbaugh. He felt his sweat go clammy against his skin, but he did not identify its chill as a discomfort. It was just there like the light of the moon was there, blue and withdrawn. The enemy did return to probe their position. Sutherland was ordered not to fire the machine gun until necessary because they didn’t want the enemy to mark it. Uneven rifle fire crackled around the perimeter, then a precious illumination round from one of their own mortars lit the sky, and they could see men bellying across the saddle under the false, stagy light, all of them in green quilted coats. Chinese, not Korean.

  The rifle fire from the marines rose in pitch. Adams saw men trying to ascend the steep slope below him and below Greenbaugh. The sight choked him with adrenaline. Greenbaugh rolled a grenade downhill, then another. He hurried the first one, but the second one shattered the incline with light. Adams fired his rifle several times in that direction, but his fire went unanswered. He reloaded, striving for something like efficiency even as he paused to vomit from a stomach that held no food.

  Soon there was sh
outing and gunfire from all points; it made orientation nearly impossible. Adams swore to himself, over and over, that he wouldn’t spook, and he watched for the floating shadow that was Devlin. He watched Sutherland, who seemed to operate at a deliberate, balletic pace, keeping Rocque calm as Rocque fed the icy belts of brass cartridges into the chittering gun that they’d begun to fire. Devlin came to them, flick-eyed and kneeling, his gaze thick with some kind of internal purpose but fixed directly on their faces. He told Adams and Greenbaugh to sling whatever ammunition they could carry onto their shoulders. He would lead them forward, shortly. All the way across that damn saddle.

  Adams tried to look at Greenbaugh, tried to ask Greenbaugh if he was all right. Greenbaugh’s breath was steaming so hard and fast from his lungs it seemed as if he must be hurt. But Greenbaugh wasn’t hurt. The two of them peered again over the drop-off to their left. It was like peering into a quarry filled with undisturbed water. Then Devlin waved them out.

  He saw some of them get hit. A rifleman buckled to his knees in front of him. And he high-stepped over another splayed shape as he ran parallel to the hot red stitchery of the tracers from Spoonhauer’s machine gun. There was shouting, some of it from pain, some from haste and fear. The marine mortars were pummeling the high ground now, and it was their luck the Chinese had no mortars. Sutherland and Rocque got their gun two-thirds of the way across a narrow bridge of land that looked as gray as cement under their racing feet before Rocque was hit. Bullets took the meat from his right shoulder. Sutherland pumped his arm to draw Adams forward, and he was there, ready to set the bipod under the gun while they hunkered in a shallow depression made by their own mortar shell. The corpsman found Rocque lying conscious in his geometry of bandoleers. He could use his legs. Greenbaugh was on his stomach to Adams’s left. The hood of his jacket had fallen away from his blackened face, which was panting but expressionless, wiped clean by exertion. Adams wondered if he looked that way. He fought the need to make noise as he exhaled. The lieutenant came up with his radioman. The lieutenant asked Sutherland if he could make it to the base of the hill. There was apparently some trouble with the other machine gun.