Beast of the Field

by Peter Jordan Drake

  Best to all, Your brother Jr.

  Tommy asked, “You remember when Gomer and Geshen Neuwald and Pat Fitzmorris and Junior took on those Indian boys from Buffalo? After that football game? Gomer got licked by that gal, their little sister, but then Junior whipped their big boy and two of the smaller ones by himself.”

  Millie smiled. “Sort of…not really.”

  “How about when Junior took on that mule we used to have—what was that mule’s name?

  “Teddy.”

  “Yes, Teddy. You have a great memory, Mil. Anyway, those two going at it like brothers, that mule trying to bite him and push him against the side of the stall, Junior punching and kicking him. Neither one of them would give an inch. Junior was always quick to fight. Stubborn and he had a quick temper and lucky for him he was big too.”

  It came to her, sort of. Junior punching that mule in the face like it was a man. Those two grunting and spitting at each other while they fought. Using their big shoulders and big bellies to force the other this way and that.

  Something must have shown in her face.

  “Good,” said Tommy. “Now just put these memories you have of Junior into the army. And keep track of the dates on the letters, and the places. There’s a story unfolding here.”

  May 15, 1918

  Hoboken, New Jsy.

  Little Brother,

  Well, I never would of thought it, but I am the first Donnan to ever see the ocean. We are about to board the boat. So one last quick goodbye from the Good Old USA. I miss you all. Look out Kaiser Bill, here comes hell! Jr.

  “Hoboken, New Jersey. Picture it. Smoke stacks, steam ships, the Woolworth Building and the rest of the New York skyline. Re-create it in your mind. Build a world around your big brother,” Tommy said, “then put him in it.”

  Millie was trying. The world part was easier than the brother part.

  “Keep reading. Look where he is next.’

  May 19, 1918

  Little Brother, Dover Eng.

  Boy o boy you should see Merry Old England. This is the place for you, T. It is so pretty here, prettier than anywhere in the Good Old USA. The English Channel is wonderful, the air is so clear with no dust. Quite a nice place. I keep seeing these airoplanes flying around an I cant keep my eyes off of them. I think maybe you should join up and become a flyboy. These guys make a buggy look like a snail, and they do loops and dips and all kinds of things.

  I have to go now. Im in Merry Old England, little brother, can you believe that? Your dopey big brother walking the same ground as King Arthur. If I see Old Billy Shakespeare, Ill tell him you said hi—HAHA!

  My Best to All, Jr.

  Tommy was starting to get that light in his eye, that life in his step as he paced the mow floor talking. “But think about it,” he said. “This is England in 1918. War is the only thing in the world over there. An old and dreadful war. They’re tired, weak, wounded, sick to death of the war. Now here comes these Yanks, like Junior, pink-cheeked and ready for a fight. Can’t you hear him talking to me? It’s like he’s talking right to me. Go on, from this point on, your big brother is fighting in a war.”

  Little Brother, France, June 2, '18

  From now on the censers are going to be "cutting" these letters up even more than they have been already.

  We are still in Northern France, and we are still drilling. I have been re-asigned to an artillery unit because of my size. They figure if I can eat like three men, I can carry shells like three men. There right, I gess. Anything to do my part, I gess.

  We are marching now non-stop. We pass thru towns that are in ruins, you wouldnt believe. There are only old folk, mostly, left in these towns. This was nice country, once. Not anymore. The fields are so full of bomb craters they look like the moon. To eat we have bully-beef and hard tack, and to drink very little water. I am wasting away, let me tell you. Some of the littler guys feel sorry for me and give me some of there tins of beef, but I dont know if Ive ever been more hungry in all my life. I cant wait to sleep. In the Army you learn how to sleep when you march or you dont sleep at all. I cant wait to get to some real fighting. This game of war is pretty boring so far and I am ready for some action.

  Im glad you like that last letter I wrote. I sure miss you guys. Send more chocolate! Hug our soldier for me.

  Best to All, Jr.

  It was coming to life in her head. She had seen enough pictures of the war in the newspapers that she could build on them in her mind. She could now see Junior in his uniform, marching, dying for food. He hardly went two hours without eating. She couldn’t imagine him going a day on a couple cans of corned beef. No wonder he’d been so ready for a fight.

  Little Brother, France, June 26, '18

  We are marching to a place called ___ _______, which is a forest close to _______ I think. We might see some fighting there. Us Do-boys will be fighting with the French, the Canadians, the English and the Australian troops. Too much for the Hun, you can bet. We are in range of the German guns now, and have seen some shelling. It has not come down on us, but close to us. What a sight. It is like one of the worst thunderstorms like we get in Kan., but the ground shakes the whole time.

  We are training with the French as we march, and let me tell you, these guys know there stuff. They have been at it for 4 years now. It is amazing that a guy can fight like this all that time and still smile and joke around. Tho maybe a lot of there smiling has to do with the bottles of wine they carry in their packs. One platoon has a mule that jingles with bottles as they tug it along with them.

  We slept in a barn last night, but that was not really sleep at all. They gave us 4 hours to rest and all we did was fight off rats the whole time. Yes, the rats do fine here. They have everything from man to mouse to get fat on. I can barely stand the site of the piles of dead mules and horses. They get blown to smithereens the same as anything else. The jerrys aim there guns right at them. No place for a horse person like you, little brother.

  Tell Mother war is a piece of cake, and Im doing OK. As always, give our little soldier a big tight hug for me. When I get home, your getting a big hug too, little brother, like it or not. HAHA!

  Best to All, Jr.

  He was changing. He wasn’t the brave Yank anymore. He was becoming scared, sad and angry. It showed in his handwriting, the words themselves.

  Little Brother, France, Aug '18

  They moved me again. Now when you write to me, send it to Co. A, 1st Army, A.E.F. Some officer in a infantry co. saw me gathering up some of the wounded boys that were on the battlefield, and he decided I didnt belong "shoving shells in the artilary units". Anyhow I found the fight but good now. Weve been stuck here in ______ Forest which is a part of the _______ Forest and we have been stuck here for weeks. If you ever wanted to see hell, well here it is. We came into a trench outside the village of __ _______ and it was full of body parts, horse and man, and bloody clothing and bloody equipment. It was my job—me Clem Heigh and some other boys—to clean it out. No one should ever have to lay eyes on something like that.

  I got this good buddy from Tex. his name is Clem Heigh--some name huh—I dont know if I told you about him. You say his name like 'hay.' Well, it was last week and we havent had any water in three days and the jerrys havent been gassing and so me and him decide to go out to the shell holes and collect some fresh rain water for the boys. It was nighttime and we thought it would be okay. We fill up canteens and bottles and were starting back and that’s when the Hun opens up on us. Let me tell you, I think Mother must of been praying for me right at that moment, we get back to the trench and those German sons of _______ poked holes in our canteens and our uniforms, but not a scratch on us. We share the water we got back with our boys and some French boys and it was like passing a wine bottle, let me tell you.

  Well, we got relieved by the 27th so we could get us some sleep. Cant wait till this war is over, little brother. Hug our soldier for me.

  Best to all, Jr.

  Now it was all
clear to her. Something went click like an electrical switch and she could not only picture Junior, she was there with him. Sometimes in her dreams the details of something came to life all around her, so realistic, so many thousands of little details, that it had to be real, just had to, but it wasn’t. Her mind had invented it. That’s how it was now: she was in the war with Junior.

  Now she would see something that would change Junior forever.

  Little Brother, France, Spt., '18

  Tired, but I got a few minutes. Something happened. I lost a buddy in a bad way. I wrote you a letter about it. I havent sent it yet. Maybe never will. Maybe I should never think about it again. Were in the woods now, pushing the Hun back. But we are losing men all the time. Already were stepping over stacks of dead bodys. Even pulling our carts over them. Tired, Going now. Cant sleep but I have to try. Jr.

  “That’s it? That was the last letter?”

  Tommy didn’t answer. Something had come over him. He was there too, maybe.

  “Tommy, aint there no more letters after that? How the hell am I supposed to solve a mystery if there aint no more shit-blasted letters?”

  “’Aren’t’, ‘any’, Millie. Aren’t. Any. My God, sometimes you sound like Huckleberry Finn,” Tommy said, but he wasn’t cracking wise. He was still in the middle of something darker than the hayloft of the barn. “No,” he said finally. “There were a few more. There was a field card. Sometimes a sergeant would walk up one way of a long trench handing out these field cards, then come back and pick them up on the way down.”

  He showed her:

  NOTHING is to be written on this side except the date and signature of the sender. Sentences not required may be erased. If anything else is added the post card will be destroyed.

  {Postage must be prepaid on any letter or post card addressed

  to the sender of this card.}

  ________________________________________________________

  I am quite well.

  I have been admitted into hospital

  {sick} and am going well

  {wounded} and hope to be discharged soon

  I am being sent down to the base.

  {letter dated

  I have received your {telegram " __________

  {parcel " __________

  Letter follows at first opportunity.

  I have received no letter from you.

  {lately

  {for a long time

  Signature Only } Jr.

  Date______Oct '18_____________________________

  U.S. War Dept.

  “So that was it?” Millie asked, but she was not surprised or angry anymore; something about Junior just signing his name to them, and not doing anything else made her sad.

  Tommy thought hard before he answered. “Well, this is supposed to be a secret, Mil, but I’ll tell you. Junior has one more letter he keeps hidden away. I don’t have any idea what it says. He won’t let me read that one. He won’t let anybody read it. He did let me figure out by asking him questions that it was something bad in it.” Tommy shook his head. “It must have been real bad.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because whatever it was, it’s what made Junior what he is today.”

  So Millie spent a few days finishing her story, solving her mystery. She watched Junior work. He was like a mule. Two mules. He never said a word, except for the one, “H-y.” He never complained. It was like he was doing penance. For what? She had wondered.

  Suddenly, three days after Tommy showed her Junior’s letters, she woke up from a dream she couldn’t remember with a brother she could. Junior was there as she knew him before he left. The big quiet laugh, the hugs—those huge squeezes that hurt but you still never tried to get out of them—the drunken dancing he used to do in the barn, in his big old boots and a bottle of beer in his hand, the cussing he taught Millie just because it made Mother batty, and yes, the fights too. The fist fights in town, the cussing with Pa in the fields, the deep shade of red his forehead would get when he got mad. She remembered it all. In that moment a mystery was solved. A story could be told: The Story of Junior Before the War.

  And that same moment she learned not how to read, but why to read.

  8.

  Yes, it was starting again: a draining, gritty feeling behind and beneath his ribs. There had been a few cases before—the dead Arab in Louisville, for instance, that family of seven in Little Rock—that had appeared to everyone else to be accidental deaths, and at first to Sterno too. The Arab had been a hophead, clumsy enough in his altered state to fall off the top floor of the Brown on the eve of the Derby. That family had been—father to baby—Ozark simpletons: only a matter of time, said the residents of their town, before one of those idiots burned the house down. Yet in each case Sterno had stuck around for some reason, nothing more than the trace of a scent. He would sip from his flask, sniff at the air, follow his nose. The sipping soon became drinking. The sleeplessness followed. After this came the sickness in his stomach that sometimes became an offshoot of anger, then anger outright, then a debilitating sickness again. That was what murder did to him. Murder was loss, and Sterno knew about loss.

  He wasn't there yet, he was still somewhere between the drinking and the sleeplessness, but the feeling was the same, and he knew it well. Those other cases had turned out to be murders. Sterno had put three men in penitentiaries—two of whom got the gallows—and only then did the feeling go away. Who was going to hang this time?

  After making it official to the Donnan woman he would be taking the case, Sterno drove back into town. There was no way he could spend another night assailed by those icy blue eyes; he would take a room at the hotel. It was better for investigation, anyhow, now that there officially was an investigation. At the German restaurant across from the hotel he had pig knuckle and a potato salad so sour he made a face on the first few bites. He also had a bottle of Bavarian lager the restaurant’s owner, Victor Hausladen, had brought from under floorboards, and it was good. Sterno smoked cigarettes and made notes as he drank two more of these, then smoked outside the restaurant, looking up at the window to Dr. Rosenzweig’s room and office. Sterno shook his head, smoked.

  Something…he just didn’t know.

  Finally, he made his way across lampless Main Street to the hotel.

  "Hey, you're that Pinkerton detective. You were here with the mayor this morning. I'm Theresa Helmcamp, call me ‘Tess,’" the hotel’s owner and operator said when he’d rung the desk bell. He nodded, tried to smile. He felt heavy and tired from the beer, and when the Helmcamp woman appeared behind the desk he sucked in his stomach, realizing even as he did it that it had been ages since he last did that in the presence of a woman. Ages since he cared. Why now?

  "So, how long will you be staying?” she said. She then stopped short, pulled her reading glasses down on her nose to look at him. “Well, my goodness, you are so much more handsome up close. A little knocked around, but handsome." She had an older-sisterly way of speaking that allowed her to say about anything she pleased. A widow, he thought.

  "Couple days," Sterno said to her question. "And we'll go from there."

  A few electric floor lamps burned in the lobby, but did little to illuminate the grand room. The light softened the Helmcamp woman’s features—taking the rough-worked edge from them that he had seen that morning. She was a handsome woman with chestnut hair and chestnut eyes, about the same age as Marnie Donnan, but younger looking for the indoor life she led. Her lips were brown too and were framed in deep and long dimples that tapered in toward her chin, and these with the way her eyes twinkled in the lamplight made her smile all-knowing somehow, reassuring in a way that helped Sterno's nerves to settle. However, she wore a simple dress cinched around her waist, accentuating her hips and breasts, and this seemed to undo the settling effect of her smile. He found himself averting his eyes like a schoolboy and twisting slightly against feelings below his abdomen he had not felt since the death of Elizabeth.

/>   She gave him a key from a drawer under the counter. "We serve meals here in the dining room, or the lobby—they’re the same room, more or less. Seven for breakfast, noon for lunch, five for supper. If you would like a piece of pie or coffee, one of the girls can help you." She spoke with a flat tone until she said the following, which she softened. "Or maybe, if I'm around, I could help you to a piece of pie. Sure a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Sterno."

  They stood there in silence for a handful of seconds. He had been waiting for her to tell him in which room he'd be staying; instead, she put her elbows on the desk and her chin on the knuckles of her interlaced fingers. "The lobby’s empty. I was about to sit and have a little, um, coffee. You care for a sip?"

  They sat in soft chairs in the lobby, just where a circle of light thrown by one of the lamps bordered the darkness of the room. She curled her legs in beneath her in the style of a high school girl, poured more than a sip of whisky into a coffee cup for Sterno, the same amount into hers, followed by a splash of Coca-Cola.

  While he rolled cigarettes for them, she told him she had been born in Price, hoped to die there too. She had married and lived in Texas, but hated the weather. Her husband died in the oil fields near Galveston before they had had kids. She had traveled around after that—Cincinnati, Chicago, even his hometown, St. Louis, but eventually came home to run the hotel with her father. He had let her roam because in his youth he had done some adventuring, so no reason a woman shouldn’t go do some; he had also been glad to see her back home to help with the Old Blue Mare. Still, it was only last spring when he had finally given her complete control of the hotel. She was happy here, she said, because it was home, and she wouldn’t raise a child anywhere else (though, she admitted freely to her cup on its way to her lips, she was running out of time for that). She was happy here for other reasons, too: she had never found a sky like the one over their heads at that moment, never a breeze like the one that went through Hope County, "even if it is going thirty mile an hour."