Casualties of War: The Advocate Trilgy

by Bill Mesce

  “Where are you from, Corporal?”

  “Oh, is this like you’re Ernie Pyle? You gonna put this in some paper back in England?”

  “Afraid to disappoint you, Corporal. Just for my own interest.”

  He winced at his own presumptuousness. “You know Montana? My family had a ranch, a small spread, outside a town called Livingston. That’s out in the eastern part a the state.”

  “Was that where you were going to practice? I know of Montana. I’m afraid I’m not that acquainted with Livingston.”

  He laughed. “Not much ta get acquainted with. There’s not a whole lot ta the place. I guess not zackly a big need for much lawyerin’. Maybe somebody gets inta it ‘bout who’s dog peed on his porch.” More reflective now: “It was somethin’ my pa thought’d be a good thing. Out where we are, it’s still kinda woolly if you know what I mean.”

  “Where I come from, ‘woolly’ usually describes a garment of some sort.”

  The laugh again. “I guess what I mean is it’s out far ‘nough that some things haven’t changed too much from the ol’ days. I mean, somebody’s cows cross the line on ta your spread, you’re more likely ta send a Winchester shot past his nose ‘fore it occurs ta you ta go for the law. I think my pa thought maybe it was finally time for it ta be a might different. I guess he got me thinkin’ the same way.”

  “A rather eloquent dream to impart to one’s son.”

  He smiled with a pride in his father he was too self–conscious to express.

  “Might I ask you something, Corporal?”

  “All–righty fine with me. Long’s it’s nothin’ ‘bout the case.”

  “Nothing about Lieutenant Sisto, I promise. I was just wondering, if you were comfortable with it, if you’d tell me about it. About what it was like on that hill.”

  It was almost imperceptible, the change in him, as if some mild but distasteful current had suddenly passed through his body. “‘Bout like any other battle, I guess. Colonel says you just ‘bout been ever’where, writin’ ‘bout the war ‘n’ other stuff. He told me ‘bout, well, you bein’ in the Pacific somewhere ‘n’, um…” He did not want to be improper. “You know; ‘bout your leg. I don’t know what I could tell you you haven’t awready heard ‘bout some other fight.”

  He was right. Yet…

  “Colonel Voss is right to some degree,” I explained. “I have covered quite a bit of the war. And other things as well. Natural calamities. The odd assault and homicide. Even the occasional lurid sex crime. As the colonel pointed out, I’ve even been under fire. But I’ve never – not actually – been in a battle. By the time I get there, well, it’s all done, isn’t it? I arrive on the scene and it’s time to take away the bodies and sweep up the rubble, eh? Do you understand?”

  He set down the plate he’d been drying. “You haven’t missed nothin’, Mr. Owen. If a fight comes up, you can have my spot if you want.” The punctuating smile was half–hearted as he was only half in jest. “I could tell you what I’m gonna ‘member.”

  I nodded at him to continue.

  He didn’t speak immediately. He stacked up the dried dishes, toted the clinking pile about the kitchen as he poked into this cupboard and that looking for their proper place. “I wasn’t one a the ol’ men from when the outfit was in Italy. I was one a the replacements come over in July when they were refittin’ in England. A lotta the guys I come over with, we’d all been in basic together. By the time we shipped cross the Channel, I’d known some a those guys I guess eight, maybe nine months. That’s a long time.

  “I don’t know you ever been on an Army post, but ya got time to do a lotta jawbonin’. When you’re not out bustin’ your arse on some course, somebody gets a card game goin’, ‘n’ you got table talk, you’re gabbin’ over chow, or while you’re in line – ‘n’ you’re always in line for somethin’ – you get ta gassin’ with a feller. You talk ‘bout where you’re from, ‘bout your folks. A guy’s got a girl, you talk ‘bout that, or if he’s married, or if he’s got kids. You talk ‘bout what you used to do’fore you got called up, ‘n’ you talk ‘bout what you’re gonna do when you get out.

  “Eight, nine months, you get ta know the fellers you bunk with pretty good. You get to know what they…” He stopped fiddling with the plates, looking for the words. “…what they sound like, understand? You know when somethin’ comes up almost what a certain feller’s gonna say, who’s gonna laugh, what it’s gonna sound like when he does.”

  He looked to me worried he wasn’t making any sense. I nodded I was with him.

  “Then we come over together. We were all scared, ‘n’ even if you wanted to you couldn’t hide it; that’s how scared we were. I don’t know ‘bout anybody else, but I figgered, well, a situation like that, it made it a little better bein’ with all these fellers I knew.

  “Then we went up that hill the first time.” The remaining orphan plates were forgotten now. His fingers fished about in his breast pocket for a crumpled packet of Camels. His Ronson flared briefly, he took a long draught of his cigarette.

  “I look over and there’s somebody – one a those fellers you got ta know over those eight, nine months – and he’s down. I mean, he’s gone. Just like that. Like somebody picked up the Victrola needle in the middle of the song. ‘N’ he’s not alone. Left ‘n’ right, they were goin’ down.

  “Sometimes, we used ta talk ‘bout gettin’ wounded. We knew chances were somebody was gonna get hurt, but we never figgered none of us were gonna…” He shook his head, amazed at their own naiveté. “We used to talk ‘bout what kinda wound we’d take, like you got to pick. ‘Well, a leg wound doesn’t seem too bad, walk ‘round with a cane for a bit.’ This one guy talked ‘bout takin’ one in the arm, havin’ a sling, somethin’ that’d really impress the gals back home.

  “I didn’t see much a that on that hill, Mr. Owen. It wasn’t that…that neat. ‘Till you see it, you never figger a body can come apart like that.”

  There was a scarred butcher’s block nearby. Thom boosted himself atop it. I got the feeling he no longer trusted his legs.

  “That first night after we come down from the hill… I was sittin’ in my hole thinkin’ on all them that was either still up there or… The one’s goin’ home, I wondered if their people, how’d they be when they saw ‘em like that. I guess the biggest thing…I couldn’t believe…I couldn’t believe how many it was! ‘N’ it finally got to me: it could just as easy be me as any of ‘em. You think you’re gonna live forever, ‘n’ then you see…well, then you see it doesn’t take much ‘n’ phhhht… ‘N’, man, when that hits you? No matter how you ever been scared in your life before, you never felt it like when that gets to you.

  “So, second day, we were back up on the hill ‘n’ I was prayin’ – you feel bad later, sittin’ in your hole, you kinda hate yourself talkin’ like that – but I was sayin’, ‘Dear God, anybody but me! Please, God!’ I thought, Ok, I’ll take a hit. ‘Please, God, just a little wound! Just somethin’ to get me off this goddamn shit pile!’”

  He held his fag up to his face as if just noticing it. “Lookit that. ‘S’almost gone ‘n’ I hardly even took a puff.” He stubbed it out on the wooden block, and when he didn’t see an ashtray or dustbin about, slipped the fag end into his pocket.

  “End a the second day, hardly anybody I knew was still on the line. Then we got the word ta go back up the third day. Then it come over me. These crazy people are gonna keep sendin’ us up this damn hill till they kill us all.”

  He hung his head, shaking it over a barb of a memory, then looked up with a strange half–smile. “That third time, we moved up before sun–up. You ever see tracers in the dark, Mr. Owen?”

  “At a distance.”

  “Funny sayin’ it, but they’re kinda pretty. Almost don’t look real somehow. Krauts had so many guns dug in – those MG 42s, they can really pump it out – it looked like some kinda gold rain comin’ down the side of that hill. I rolled over on my back ‘n’ it loo
ked like they were goin’ just past my nose. Bullet comes close enough ta you, you feel it. Like a little – “ He made a small puff with his lips. “…’n’ you hear a little snap when it cuts the air. That’s all I heard: snapsnapsnap. I thought, ‘Andy, just stick your hand up ‘n’ catch one ‘n’ you are outta here! That’s all it’s gonna take.’ Hell, I knew guys – I saw one of ‘em – went SIW, waited for when they thought nobody was lookin’ ‘n’ put a bullet through their own foot.”

  “But you didn’t put your hand up. And you didn’t put a bullet through your own foot.”

  “‘N’ I’ll be damned if I could tell you why I didn’t, Mr. Owen.” Andy Thom slid his feet back to the floor and shuddered, as if shaking off a chill. He rolled his sleeves back down and picked up his windcheater. “On the ship comin’ over, we used to talk ‘bout we hoped the war’d still be on enough for us to see some action. That was my first fight, Mr. Owen, ‘n’ if I never get in another one, I’m not gonna cry.”

  He pulled on his windcheater, but stopped at the kitchen door. “Mr. Owen, you do me a favor, ok? Unless it’s ta talk ‘bout the case…you don’t ever ask me about it any more.”

  As I turned back to the sink, I saw la comtesse standing in the doorway at the other end of the kitchen. I don’t know how long she’d been there. Long enough, I surmised, judging by the way one finger dabbed at her eyes. She quickly recovered her per usual stoic demeanor, brought herself more erect. “I hear the noise in the kitchen,” she said, explaining her appearance. She took in the now cleared counters, the stowed dishware. “To you and the boy, merci.”

  “I’m afraid it won’t last. I’m off for a few days. The corporal as well.”

  There was no outward change in her mien, but she said, “You return, perhaps I make another omelet. If the chickens lay.”

  “Merci. An incentive for a quick return.”

  She turned to leave, then turned about, her eyes on the door through which the corporal had exited. “I hear him sometime at night. He and the other boy. When they sleep. That one, he call out. The other… Q’uest–que c’est? He weep. Maintenant, je comprenais. Bon soir, Monsieur.”

  *

  With the early nightfall of the northern European winter, it had been hours dark by the time la comtesse had retired, but I had no idea how late it might be. I resisted looking at my watch; it was, for the moment, important to me not to know the lateness of the hour. I was fatigued but felt too restless for bed. I did not want to lay in my bed and hear Andy Thom’s woeful tale replay itself in my head as I was sure it would, nor listen to the very real sounds of the corporal’s night screams nor Dominick Sisto’s sobs. So, in the revered ancient tradition of disquiet in the castle, I grabbed my winter garb, found a stair turret that let me out on an allure running along the crest of the main keep and walked the castle walls.

  I thought of the noble wish Andy Thom’s father had had for his son. Hamlet–like, I imagined my own father appearing to me on the parapet, his message less grandiose than that of pater Thom. Ye’d’ve done better at home tendin’ the sheep, spake the conjured ghost. Ye’d be more ignorant, but a sight less unhappy.

  I let the cold, clean air whistling through the machicolations take the voice away. Clear nights that time of year in that part of the world are infrequent, but this was one of those rare gems, possessed of that crisp brilliance only winter nights can have. The sliver of moon was enough to set the thin layer of snow aglow on the motte’s slopes, and etched the shadowy serrated ranks of the surrounding firs sharply against the star–speckled obsidian night.

  I was not alone on the wall. I could make out another figure, his Military Police brassard barely legible in the dim light, the white “MP” on his helmet alight with the moon. I assumed him to be one of the sentinels Courie and Alth had sprinkled about the estate grounds. I nodded a good evening, but the helmeted head barely moved in acknowledgement.

  “A wee bit cold this night, eh?” I offered conversationally, uselessly rubbing my gloved hands together.

  Another stiff nod. His seemed not so much that granite–like stance the American Army policemen seemed to enjoy affecting, but more an awkward discomfort; as if I somehow intimidated him. I smiled an apology for troubling him, and stepped off to allow him the walk to himself.

  “Well, if by ‘wee bit’ you mean it’s ball–bustin’, ass–freezin’ cold, I’ll second that!” Despite the salty language, the voice was no more than an adolescent chirrup. I looked over to the MP, could not imagine the utterance coming from that rigid pose of vigilance. But then, from his other side, I saw a figure lean to look across the sentry’s back in my direction.

  It was a diminutive silhouette, school boyish, and I thought the quartermaster would have to have outfitted him from the smallest sizes available. He was made smaller hunched, as he was, against the cold, his woolen Army “beanie” pulled low across his ears, hands jammed deep in the pockets of his windcheater. I stepped a little closer and saw a flare on his collar as his gold second lieutenant’s bar momentarily caught the moonlight. “You the Scottish guy?” A hand came out of his pocket and reached across the rear of the MP. “Owen, right?”

  I took the hand. “Aye.”

  “Aye!” He seemed quite tickled by that. “That’s really Scottish talk, huh? Look, don’t mind Benjie here,” and he clapped a friendly hand on the MP’s shoulder. “He gets nervous. I’m not supposed to be up here. He’s just a softie. Hey, Benjie, how’d a softie like you get to be an MP? I thought you gotta have no heart to make it into MP school. How’d you pass the test?”

  “I cheated,” Benjie grunted.

  The smaller man laughed again.

  “Lieutenant Sisto, I presume?” I guessed.

  “Oh, I didn’t say? Jeez, I’m sorry. Yeah, Dominick Sisto.” He thrust his hand at me, again. “There, now it’s all formal.”

  “Ya mind keepin’ it down, Lieutenant?” Benjie hushed. “Lieutenant Alth finds out, he’ll tell Courie and he’ll hand my balls to me!”

  “Sorry, Benj.” Sisto nodded me to follow him into the shadowy arched entrance of the tower at the far end of the walk. He touched a cautionary gloved finger to his lips. “The guy’s really puttin’ himself out for me,” he said quietly. “I don’t want him gettin’ in trouble. ‘Sides, here we’re outta the wind. It really bites you on the ass up on this wall.” I heard a rustle of paper in the gloom. “Ya want some gum?”

  “Nae, thank you.”

  “Nae.” Again, an amused chuckle, then, in the dark, the crackle of chewing gum. “See, this guy Courie – you know him?”

  “Of him. We’ve yet to meet.”

  “He’s a real ass–buster the way he’s got me locked up in one of these towers like what’s–’er face. The one with all the hair.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know! The fairy tale, the broad with all the hair.”

  “Rapunzel.”

  “Right, Rapunzel. ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair,’ right? Benjie there, he feels kinda bad, so after everybody turns in, he brings me up here for a little air. He gets caught, I mean, hell, I’m up to my ass in the shit now, so I’m jake, what else can he do to me? But Benjie does me a solid, I don’t want him – ”

  “I understand. Mum’s the word.”

  “Thanks. This Courie, boy. A lock on the door, I got a guard outside twenty–four hours… I don’t know where he thinks I’m gonna go. Maybe I should start growin’ my hair and slip out the window just to give him agita, huh?”

  “A–gi–..?”

  Sisto laughed, then – in deference to Benjie’s trepidatious situation – muzzled himself with his hand. Quietly, now: “Agita. Gas. Heartburn.” He thumped his chest for emphasis.

  “He sounds the sort it would serve right and proper.”

  He leaned over the hollow center of the tower and, with unenviable skill, neatly tucked his wad of gum safely in his cheek…and spat into the abyss. I could not see his face in the gloom of the unlit landing, but I s
ensed he gained some satisfaction from the distant, echoing splat. He resumed his cud–chewing. “Look, Mr. O., Signor Roosk says – ”

  We both froze at the sound of a horse’s whinny. I looked questioningly at Sisto, and he nodded with – I thought I detected – a grin. He pointed me to the archeria which girdled the landing on the outward side of the tower. The vantage looked across the front of the chateau. I recognized the stately form of la comtesse on a mottled gray carefully picking its way down the snow–gilted scarp before starting across the list first at a trot, then at a gallop that set the lady’s hair flagging behind her.

  “You met her?” Sisto asked.

  I nodded.

  “She seems like a nice lady. I feel bad for her the way we took over her place.” A moment of study, then: “This isn’t the first time I’ve seen her off on a midnight ride like this.”

  “Do you know where she goes?”

  Sisto shrugged. “Not like it’s my place to ask. Maybe she’s got a guy stashed in the woods.” In a stripe of moonlight through an arrow loop, I saw the apologetic smile over the poor jibe. The smile disappeared as he stood watched her disappear into the ranks of trees. “She have kids? A son?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He shook his head, remembering he’d never finished what he’d begun say prior to the lady’s appearance. “I was sayin, Signor Roosk talks a lot about you. He’s got you down all aces, Mr. O, and comin’ from the signor – ”

  “Signor Roosk?”

  A flash of a smile in the slice of moonlight, the small teeth like a child’s. “That’s what we call him back in the old neighborhood. Almost everybody was Italian, and here’s this Russian guy, a Russkie, get it? Russkie, Roosk – ”

  “I see. What did they call Joe Ryan?”

  “Joe Ryan.”

  We both chuckled.

  “With the signor, it was different. Nothin’ against Joe Irish, don’t get me wrong, but Mr. V… Well, that’s just how it was. All the time I was growin’ up, he was always Signor Roosk. You said it with a kinda…”