by C. P. Boyko
He heaved a gurney out of the ambulance. —“Nuh-uh,” said Private Spack, his voice glutinous with blood, “I can walk!” And without taking his hands from his throat, he rolled onto his knees, stood, and showed that he could indeed walk, by walking to the ambulance and clambering inside.
Andrew rolled Private Faulkin onto the gurney and winched it up, but he could hardly move it over the rough ground. Luckily, a soldier came bounding out of the trees, and, hoisting the other end of the gurney, helped load it into the ambulance. Then, without having uttered a word or made eye contact, he bounded back to his cover.
Andrew jumped in and slammed the door, and the ambulance became his body. Tensing every muscle against bullets and shrapnel, steeling himself to ignore injury and roll through every obstacle, he hurtled down the trail and out of the woods, bounced past the officers and medics scurrying about the pasture, and leapt up onto the road. He turned off his headlight, turned on his siren, and ratcheted his transmission into second gear, where he left it. They were on their way.
“Twenty minutes to Pokeshole!” he said—though it would be longer if he avoided the direct route, which was all straight and open road. He decided to stay on it, but to continually change his speed in order to make himself a difficult target for the landmines. He pumped all three pedals as if he were operating a loom, but with ingenious irregularity, weaving an intricate pattern of patternlessness. The ambulance lurched like a wild horse. “Hope you guys buckled your seat belts!”
Private Faulkin kept blacking out. He had lost a lot of blood and was dehydrated. His tongue was wooden, and he could feel its every bump and cranny, all the way back to his epiglottis. His hands felt hot and swollen to the size of oven mitts; his fingertips were sensitive, so that touching anything, even his own palms, was stiflingly overwhelming. The pain in his pelvis was trailing several feet behind the ambulance, twisting and shrieking like a wraith. He couldn’t see anything, not even darkness; he couldn’t see.
Private Spack was concentrating on his breathing. Blood or mucus trickled into the back of his mouth faster than he could swallow it. He felt an overpowering urge to clear his throat, but was afraid of tearing or dislodging something. He exhaled, swallowed, inhaled, spat, exhaled, swallowed, inhaled, spat. He made snoring and wheezing and burbling sounds when he breathed but so far he had not inhaled much blood. He was afraid of what coughing would do to him. He felt no pain, only a creeping black panic, as if his head and chest were slowly filling with rubber.
Andrew was exhilarated, and sought channels into which his exhilaration could flow. These soldiers—they were great. The mainland army was great. Even the enemy was great. War was great. The islanders were great. Hallie was great. Oh, God—Cassie was great! He pictured her barefoot in the yard, laughing and taunting and dodging the clods of dirt her brother threw at her. He remembered how he had longed to chase her, to wrestle with her. The way her body moved seemed to invite it, as if she knew that all life was play. She carried herself with the graceful indifference to grace, the comfortable clumsiness of an experienced middle-aged woman at home in her own skin. He loved her; and the astonishing, wondrous thing was that she loved him too. That was what she had been trying to tell him all week; and that was what he had taken such pains to avoid learning. The proximity of so great a happiness—happiness was great!—had daunted and paralyzed him. But now he would act. He would never fail to act again. His alacrity was translated to speed as he gradually stopped making use of the clutch and brake pedals.
“I can’t see,” said Private Faulkin. —“There’s nothing to see,” Andrew reassured him. “It’s nighttime. I can hardly see the road myself!” —“I’m blind. I can’t see.” —“You’re okay. It’s just dark out. There’s no lights. You’ll be okay. We’ll be there soon.” —But exhaustion and pain had finally deprived Private Faulkin of all restraint. He succumbed to a wave of self-pity; tears spilled from his unseeing eyes. He recalled what he had been only an hour ago—his ideal self, the self he presented to his mother in his letters home: clean, well fed, healthy, and relaxed; friendly, funny, and popular; a good man and a good soldier; young, handsome, and whole. Now he was wrecked, and no use to anyone. No one would want him like this, not even his mother. It wasn’t fair. He sobbed softly, “My eyes are shot. I can’t see.”
“Your eyes are fine, boss,” said Andrew. “Here, look: I’ll turn on the light for a second. See? You’re all right.” Then the steering wheel jumped through his hands and smashed his chin.
The soldiers naturally assumed that they had been shelled again, but Andrew knew what had happened as soon as he came to. He was unconscious only briefly but completely, so that everything that followed had a stark and tremendous quality, as if he’d been wakened in bed by an earthquake.
He had driven into a crater at full speed.
He could not open his door. The interior lights no longer worked. The siren was silent. He smelled gasoline, heard it glugging from the tank. “Are you guys okay?” He climbed into the back and scrabbled over cabinets and limbs to the doors, which he threw open to fresh air and moonlight. “Come on, we better get you out of here. This thing could blow at any second.”
Private Spack followed him out but Private Faulkin remained where he lay, crumpled between the passenger seat and his gurney. From the edge of the crater, Andrew reached down into the ambulance and began pulling out and throwing aside whatever his hands encountered, clearing the debris from his path to Faulkin. Private Spack started to ask for bandages, so that he could pressure-dress his wound and free his hands to help, but air bubbled out through his fingers when he tried to speak. He rummaged through the scattered contents of a medical kit with his feet.
Andrew lowered himself back into the vehicle and shook Private Faulkin roughly. “Come on, big guy. You awake?” —“Leave me,” said Faulkin. “I’m no good anymore. Just leave me.” —“Oh, cut it out. Come on, put your arms around me. Good, now hold on tight.” —“I can’t.” —“You can.” —“I can’t,” he continued to say, even after Andrew had lugged him out of the ambulance and dropped him onto a gurney; “I can’t.” —“You did!” Andrew ruffled his hair; the young man’s whining helplessness only amplified his own feeling of masterful competence. Now he turned to Private Spack. “Let’s get that wound of yours bandaged, soldier.” He wrapped three rolls of gauze around Spack’s neck and told him to keep it elevated. Spack nodded and sat down by a tree. Although slightly strangled, he did feel better. His moist, irregular breathing sounded like a man trying to get the last film of dish soap out of the squeeze bottle.
“Okay. Are you guys all right here for a few minutes? I’ve got to go get us a new vehicle.” Private Spack nodded, but Private Faulkin, with the hopelessness of a child who knows he will be denied, pleaded for painkillers. Andrew rifled through the detritus for pill bottles, which he held up to the moonlight. He was astounded: codeine; morphine; dexedrine! He knew what these pills did, all right. He realized that he had not taken a single pill for nearly six weeks, not even his asthma pills—nor had he needed them. He did not stop to ponder if he needed these pills now; his only reflection was that six weeks’ abstinence meant six weeks’ reduced tolerance. He gave Faulkin a couple of morphines and himself chewed a dexedrine and a codeine, feeling all the nervous anticipation of a neophyte. Then he clapped his hands, and to Private Spack’s amazement, turned and without hesitation sprinted across an empty field, over a hill, and out of sight.
Hunger and boredom returned to Private Spack, and, with them, resentment. To be hit with artillery while picking cabbages! There must have been rebels in the barn they’d passed. Why couldn’t the jinkies have waited five minutes, till after he’d eaten? His mind lovingly fabulated the salad he had been about to enjoy: crisp cucumbers; tender carrots; chives and radishes and shredded beets; leaves of lettuce as robust and fibrous as palm fronds; all drizzled lightly—so lightly!—with a lemon rosemary dressing. And on the side—
a potato! Oh, what he wouldn’t do for a baked potato. Even a butterless, boiled potato. Even a raw potato—even half a raw potato! He would happily kill any number of jinkies for half a raw potato. For a baked potato, he would choke Private Faulkin to death, twice. The night was chilly; he snuggled nearer to the image of his baked potato. In the distance he heard the sarcastic cry of a peacock, and wondered elaborately what peacock tasted like.
Andrew soon returned, pedaling a bicycle, which he had purchased at gunpoint from a groggy and unsympathetic farmer. He was breathing heavily and eating an apple, most of which he exhaled. Only now that he was facing the prospect directly did he realize that the bicycle would never carry all three of them. His mind raced through considerations. Faulkin seemed to be in worse condition and so should probably be helped first. On the other hand, he would, in his weakened state, be more unwieldy; what if he couldn’t hold on? Perhaps Spack should ride the bicycle, and Andrew could carry Faulkin? No; even in his exalted state he realized that Pokeshole was still too far to walk. It would be better to send an ambulance back for the second soldier. Would it be faster altogether if he simply rode to Pokeshole alone and came back with an ambulance? What if there weren’t any available? Perhaps he should instead ride the bicycle to the nearest town and steal a car. No; he wouldn’t leave his casualties alone again. “All right,” he said, “who wants to go first?”
“Leave me,” sobbed Faulkin. “I’m useless.”
Private Spack looked at him with disgust. At last he gestured that Andrew should take Faulkin first.
They lifted Faulkin onto the seat side-saddle, wrapped his arms around Andrew’s chest, and tied his hands together with his belt. Andrew saluted Private Spack, who saluted him; then, pulling hard on the handlebars for leverage, he pedaled away at top speed, Faulkin’s feet dragging behind in the dust.
Private Spack watched them till they were out of sight. Then, dreaming of apples, he started out across the empty field and over the hill.
Private Jeremy Faulkin died in surgery. Private Lorrie Spack survived, eventually being operated on by a local nonpartisan doctor. A year later he married an islander, and was arrested and court-martialed for desertion when he tried to bring her back to the mainland with him.
Hallie’s father, seeing Andrew return the next morning covered in blood, decided not to denounce him to the rebels when they entered the town (they never arrived), but instead warned him to get away. Andrew asked Cassie to come with him; startled, she said no—and always regretted it. He spent three more months on the island, driving ambo at Knob Grange and other enemy-proximate installations, before he was shot in the leg, and flown home at the taxpayers’ expense.
Captain Augello had been killed by a mortar, and no replacement had yet been sent. Major Jenkman knew nothing of the medical corps, and wanted to know nothing. He gave Doctor Vadilevaniakis and Doctor Latroussaine free rein, and told them to do their best.
Hillary, uneasy in this vacuum, thought that one of them should assume command temporarily. As an army doctor, she had the higher rank, but Eric had more experience, both since and prior to being drafted. They flipped a coin. He took command.
At first, Eric liked Pastor’s Hill very much. He had no one to report to, and nothing to do. Once a week he spoke to Major Lopez on the radio, and asked for supplies that he knew would not be sent. He had no duties, for the casualties wounded on patrols were evacuated by helicopter directly to the field hospitals at Hard Top River or Poplar Junction; anyone seriously injured by the incessant mortar fire was also evacuated, because the medical hut contained little more than an instrument cart, resuscitation box, and a cabinet of expired antibiotics. He soon grew accustomed to the shellings, and ceased even to wonder why the air force didn’t simply raze the forest surrounding the base. He had enough money for whiskey, and time enough, at last, for Pascal—the only book he had brought with him from the mainland. His French was poor enough to render the text richly unfathomable. He could daydream entire afternoons over such teasing obscurities as (in his own translation), “We are so miserable that we cannot take pleasure in a thing designed to make us angry if used badly,” or “When everything moves, nothing seems to move—like in a something; when everyone moves towards the something, no one seems to move towards it.” His leave had twice been canceled, and was three months overdue. Now, instead of leave, he had been sent to the front. So he had no qualms—at first—about treating Pastor’s Hill as a holiday.
The only problem was Doctor Vadilevaniakis. She did not know how to relax, and her vigilant industriousness made it difficult for him to relax. He found some reassurance in his newfound rank, telling himself that, naturally, the subordinate should handle most of the routine tasks, leaving the superior free to address crises, should such arise. At other times he reasoned that there was not enough work for even one of them, and he was doing Doctor Vadilevaniakis a favor by letting her keep busy. She had more to learn, and was learning.
But these rationalizations were less effective at alleviating disquiet than whiskey; and when he was drunk, solitude made him maudlin. So he drank with the privates, who were friendly and boisterous, but with whom he felt little rapport. For one thing, they were all a decade younger than him. For another, unlike him, they were not on holiday: they went out on patrols most nights of the week, from which some of them, sometimes, did not return. Consequently, every few days, Eric got up from the mess table where they drank, bullshitted, and gambled, and carried a bottle to the medical hut, where he attempted to persuade Doctor Vadilevaniakis to unwind, to cut loose, to have a little fun.
Hillary was sitting at the desk, rubbing her scalp and watching flakes of dandruff fall tumbling through sunlight to the page below. She was vaguely surprised that her hair was almost long enough to twist around a finger; but otherwise her mind was empty. When Doctor Latroussaine entered, she stiffened with shame. She stood and saluted him, though they had agreed this was not necessary.
“Fuck off, Doctor. As you were. Have a drink.”
“Thanks, but fuck you all the same, Doctor. I don’t drink when I’m on duty.”
“Are these sterilized?” —“They were this morning.” —He poured whiskey into two graduated cylinders, but set both before himself. He proceeded to sip from one with demonstrative relish. “Sure you wouldn’t like a taste?” —“Quite sure, thanks.”
Aside from the fact that his conversation was sometimes repetitive, Hillary did not mind these visits from Doctor Latroussaine. Though she felt guilty whenever they were in the same room, as if they could best serve the base’s medical needs only by spreading out, she did stop worrying, when he was here, about what she should be doing. If they were idle, it was his decision—his order.
“What’s that you’re laboring over?” —“Oh,” she said, putting it away, “just a letter to my brother.” —“Which one?” —“Ben.” —“Ah yes. Ben. ‘Ben.’ How is Ben?” —She told him how Ben was. Sweet, imprudent, and naive, Ben had married a harpy, who he now realized was a harpy. He wanted to know why no one else had noticed, or if they had, why no one had warned him. Hillary was torn between explaining exactly why nobody had thought fit to tell him that the woman he was in love with was a bitch, and encouraging him to make the best of a bad situation. So far, after five hours, she had written a paragraph of greeting.
Eric, however, was impressed, and contrite. He had not written to his mother in over a month. “You don’t believe in divorce?” he asked. —“My family doesn’t. My brother doesn’t, I don’t think. Anyway, they’ve only been married a year.” —“I was married five years, and I wish someone had told me to get the fuck out after a year.” —“What happened?” —“The short story, I guess, is that I was a workaholic. Do you want to hear the long story?” —“If you want to tell it.”
He told her the long story.
She commiserated, and refrained from pointing out what he might have done differently.
> “That’s probably why I’m here,” he said. “Probably I wanted to get away from everything—her family, all our friends. Otherwise, wouldn’t I have fought the draft a little harder?” —Hillary sighed. “You didn’t fight the draft because deep down you knew it was your duty to your country.”
Eric denied that one had any duties to one’s country; countries had obligations to their citizens, not the other way around. Indeed, one had a duty to flout one’s country, to practice civil disobedience, if one disagreed with its policies. One must obey only good laws, and fight only good wars. —Hillary, borrowing from her father an opinion she at other times had repudiated, said that it was attitudes like his that were causing them to lose the war. “Nobody likes war. So if you send over a bunch of cameras and journalists to show the average person what the war is really like, of course they are going to object.” —“What’s your alternative? Censorship and propaganda? A mushroom electorate, kept in the dark and fed on shit?” —“The time for discussion is before the decision is made. Continuing the debate, protesting the decision, just hamstrings everybody and undermines all our efforts. You see it all the way down the line. Why can’t we get a fucking cardiograph in this room?” —“I don’t remember any discussion. I don’t remember being asked if we should go to war.” —“It’s called a representative democracy. They’re not going to consult you personally on every matter. And anyway, it’s too much to ask that every civilian be informed on every matter. Don’t you think it’s too much to ask every private here to search his or her heart every morning after reading the newspaper and to decide whether or not the war is still a just one? Isn’t there enough pressure on them already? You’d have them held responsible for the president’s decisions. You’d have them subjected to being spat on and called murderers when they come home.” —Eric made violent clearing gestures, as if he were climbing through cobwebs. “The truth is that war is murder. Neither the generals nor the populace should ever be allowed to forget that. If we’re going to bomb a village, we’d damn well better have a TV crew on location to interview the survivors and show the carnage. That’ll keep us from making the decision lightly. And if soldiers are spat on as murderers, they’ll be damn careful about choosing their wars. They should be spat on.” —“You don’t really believe that.” —“Fucking right I do.” —“All those privates you carouse with, all those men and women whose lives you’ve saved—they’re all murderers?” —“Yep.” He laughed bitterly. “No. I don’t know. They’re just a bunch of dumb kids.” The crash of exploding mortars drowned out their conversation for several seconds. Automatically, they climbed down from their chairs and sat on the floor, their backs against the desk. “All I’m saying,” he continued, “is that at least we have the decency, while fighting a pointless and unjust war, to hamstring ourselves. At least we’re doing this fucking thing half-heartedly. You can say that much for us.”