An Owl's Whisper

by Michael Smth

  There was more bellowing by the sergeant. Up and down the line, engines started up. Stragglers came running, one pulling up his pants as he dashed. Before hustling to his truck, a soldier scraped what was left of his chow onto the ground next to Stan’s fir. Soon all the soldiers had remounted their trucks, their bicycles, their motorcycles—whatever brought them. Then the parade moved on.

  Except for his shaking, Stan didn’t move a muscle for five minutes. Sentries were still patrolling. They were back to their three-minute intervals.

  After one sentry passed, Stan reached out and grabbed a fistful of the food the German had dumped near his tree. It was a glob of gluey, wide noodles with a few peas and carrot pieces in brown gravy. It tasted wonderful.

  Another troop convoy came by a half hour later. This one was all Opel trucks, and it did not stop. Its last truck picked up the sentries. Then everything was quiet.

  Alone, cold, frightened, Stan thought about the good men he had seen die in the last two days. Especially Sgt. Harkin. He figured Maxwell went out so well, doin’ what he loved—couldn’t feel too bad for him. But Harkin—Dang, in the space of a few days the guy became like a pa to me. Stan didn’t know much about Harkin’s personal life, just that he wasn’t ready to die. He whispered, “Didn’t even know his first name.” Nestled under his fir tree, he shivered and tears rolled down his cheeks. At some point, he drifted off to sleep.

  Stan woke at dawn. The road was quiet and he snuck from under the tree and found several piles of dumped food. He spied an untouched tray of chow next to a large rock and was walking to it when he heard a sound behind him. It was a skinny dog with the same idea he had. Stan said, “It’s OK, fella, there’s plenty for both of us.”

  An instant later Stan heard voices. He scrambled back under his tree. Three soldiers approached, walking down the center of the road. As they got close, Stan realized the trio was two Germans with a GI in front, his hands on his helmet. The Germans followed him, one with his weapon trained on his back and the other carrying two rifles.

  Stan remembered Harkin saying, “You kill when you have to kill.” Saving another GI counts, he figured. He saw no one else around. As the men passed, he silently slipped off the safety on his M-1 and put the rifle’s sights on the center of the back of the German covering the GI. Steady now. Hold your breath, Stan. The world, except for the center of his target’s long gray coat, blurred. Just squeeze that trigger. This’s for Harkin.

  The shot’s report and the rifle’s recoil startled Stan. It crashed everything back into stark crispness. He heard the soldier’s cough and watched him crumple. Stan felt a surge of pride. The other German spun round. He crouched, scanning the roadside. “So long, Fritz,” Stan whispered as he fired, knocking his enemy backward.

  The American on the road threw his hands up. “GI. GI. Don’t shoot!” he hollered.

  Stan crawled out from under the fir and looked up and down the road. He ran toward the American, who picked up his M-1 and brought the butt down on the throat of the German screaming in pain. Then all was quiet.

  As Stan got close, the GI turned to him. “Max?” Stan gasped.

  Max yelled, “Chandler! What the fuck are you doing here, you beautiful SOB, you.”

  “Just a lousy REMF tryin’ to help the real soldiers in my own little way.” Stan winked. “But there’s no time for yapping. Place’s crawlin’ with Krauts. We’d best get these guys off the road before some more come by.”

  Max ignored Stan. He ran up and gave him a bear hug. “Pally-boy, I owe you a heap.”

  Stan pushed him away. “OK, OK, so you owe me. Let’s clean up and get outta here.”

  They dragged the Germans behind the fir tree, retrieved the cigarettes they’d swiped from Max an hour before, and took a canteen of water and a flask of brandy. Max brushed snow on the bodies while Stan ran back to cover the blood on the road.

  Soon Max was tugging Stan’s arm. “OK, Chandler. S’good. Let’s hot-foot it.”

  Stan jerked his arm free. “Hold on. There’s some civies holed up in there.” He pointed to the tannery. “Gotta see if they’re OK.”

  Stan picked up the tray of food that had been left by the rock and ran to the tannery door. He peered in and saw the woman and her children cowering in a dark corner. Stan put down his rifle. He said slowly and loudly, “I’m an American. Are you OK?” The woman pulled her children close. “Don’t be scared. I won’t hurt you. The Hun left grub when they pulled out. Help yourself.” He set the tray on the floor. “You know, Mangez!”

  When Stan stepped back outside, Max was already heading for the woods, calling over his shoulder, “Come on, pally. Let’s make tracks.”

  Stan looked back at the woman, who was still enveloping her children in a quaking embrace. He tipped his helmet and picked up his rifle, then he hustled after Max. At the tree line, he looked back at the tannery building. Not a stir. He didn’t look back again.

  The two Americans continued on the western tack Stan had been following. The shelling to the south, toward Bastogne, was heavy and continuous.

  The pair walked all day and most of the night of 20 December. Finally, the next morning, near the village of Samrée, they spotted a GI truck hitched to a howitzer. The tandem was stopped on a snowy little road just off the highway. Icicles hung from the truck’s fenders and snow covered its hood. Five soldiers huddled around a smoky fire nearby.

  Stan and Max approached cautiously until they heard the men speaking English. “Hey fellas,” Max called, “got a couple GIs coming up on ya from the west. Don’t shoot.”

  One of the men stepped toward Stan and Max with his rifle ready. “Whatcha want?”

  Stan put a hand up, an Indian peace sign. “Brother, we’re cold. Just want to mosey up to your fire. Maybe get a bite to eat if ya got it and a ride to wherever you’re headed.”

  The man waved the pair forward. “You can share the fire and have some grub, but we ain’t going nowhere.” Drake was written in crayon on a piece of tape on his helmet.

  The seven GIs stood silently around the fire, rubbing their hands and stomping their feet.

  Finally Stan said, “So, what’s the story here, gents?” He swallowed hard.

  Drake looked at his comrades. “We were with the 114th Artillery. Got overrun this side of La Roche.” He pointed to the howitzer. “This piece’s the only one survived. Division sent what’s left of our outfit to beef up 3rd Armored, near Trois Ponts. Hear it’s lousy with Kraut tanks up there—trying to punch a hole in our lines and race up to Lefebvre. Word is, our brain trust broke some German code and found out that’s the linchpin for their whole fucking operation. Reckon they’re fixin’ to whack us in two like a ripe melon.” He looked at his comrades. “Well, we figure we been whacked enough.” The men with Drake nodded their heads and mumbled.

  Hearing Lefebvre sent a shiver through Stan. He forgot how tired he was. How hungry. How cold. “If there’s a chance to stop the stinkin’ Hun this side of Lefebvre, count me in. You sad sacks don’t seem to be using the truck, so I’ll be taking it up to Trois Ponts.” Reflected flames danced in Stan’s eyes. “And nobody’s stoppin’ me.”

  “Haven’t forgotten I owe ya, Chandler,” Max said. “I’ll tag along to watch your back.”

  Stan grinned at Max. “Don’t mind if you do. Let’s roll, pally.” He took a step toward the truck and stopped. He turned back and eyed Drake and the others back at the fire. “’Fore I go, let me say just one thing to you saps. I knew a fella that ran out on some good men to save his skin. It ate on him, I’ll tell ya. Comes down to this—stay here shakin’ in your boots, and you’ll never forgive yourselves. Not long as you live.” Stan’s gaze went from man to man. He saw Max, standing next to him, discretely slide his hand to the stock of his rifle.

  For a moment, no one moved. Drake’s lip trembled and he growled, “You bastard.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his gloved hand. “I’m no coward. None of us are. Only when we got our asses whooped back there�
��” His voice softened. “—I guess we just lost it.” Drake kicked at the snow and grimaced. “Look…maybe I could give it another go.” He turned to the others. “Anybody else up for it?”

  The gunners looked at each other and muttered OKs and yeahs, none very enthusiastic.

  “Sounds like the Lone Ranger here’s talked us all into heading up Trois Ponts’ way with him,” Max said. He jerked the truck cab’s door open. “How ’bout if I drive this crate?”

  The six other GIs climbed aboard, and Max tore off. Near the crossroads town of Chevron they were folded into General Iron Mike Faronell’s 3rd Armored Division, the unit assigned to blunt the 2nd SS Panzer’s thrust to the Meuse.

  On December 27, Stan, Max, and what was left of a tank platoon from Faronell’s Division were using a burned-out Sherman’s hulk to block the main road into Chevron. A Tiger tank, supported by infantry, engaged them. With a bazooka, defenders uphill of the road managed to knock a track off the panzer, immobilizing it. But its gun was still operational and it blasted the charred husk of the American tank Stan was using for cover. The detonation knocked him unconscious. The panzer was raking the GIs with machinegun fire when a P-51 Mustang rolled out of the sky, spewing rockets that turned it into a metal inferno. The advance was blunted.

  Stan awoke in a makeshift first aid station set up in a cabin near Odeigne. The right side of his face was covered in gauze held by a bandage that wrapped around his head. A Belgian named Ronday had managed to stop the bleeding from metal splinters in and around Stan’s right eye. A day later, he was evacuated to the K-2 hospital in Liege.

  Stan’s hospital ward, B-4, had ten beds. In the next bunk was a PFC named McCoy. With a cast from hip to toe suspended by wires from the ceiling, the private was immobile, so occasionally Stan helped him out, fetching glasses of water and scratching his foot with a comb they kept for that purpose. In return, McCoy read aloud to Stan from magazines and newspapers. A January 10th Stars and Stripes feature on the fighting they’d both been part of was of such interest that McCoy repeated the closing paragraph.

  “It’s early for definitive assessments,” McCoy read, “but the Bulge fighting ongoing in southeast Belgium looks likely to prove pivotal. While he termed US losses ‘sobering,’ General Eisenhower called the cost to Germany, already pegged at 100,000 men and commensurate materiel, ‘terminal.’ Said Ike, ‘There will be difficult days as we drive through the German homeland to Berlin, but thanks to the fortitude and determination of American fighting men in the Ardennes, I believe the final outcome of the war in Europe is no longer in doubt.’”

  “No longer in doubt.” Stan inhaled like he’d just stepped into a rose garden. “Like the ring of that, McCoy. Can you clip me what you just read?”

  McCoy tore the story out and handed it to Stan who folded it carefully and tucked it into his pajama pocket.

  In Fragrant Water

  Even after Army surgeons removed metal fragments from his right eye in early January 1945, Stan was still blind on that side. The docs were hopeful the condition was temporary, but he would need several weeks’ recovery in the military hospital on the edge of Liege.

  Eva heard about Stan from his friends at the Lefebvre depot. She was preparing to go to Liege when she got a postcard from Henri. Business problems. Pruvot still missing. Grandfather assigned me new work. Elsewhere. Try to connect with Canary. I’ve told her what to do.

  Madame Ducoisie arranged for a room for Eva in the home of her cousin in Liege’s old city. Waiting for the bus that would take her there, Eva told the old woman, “Uncle’s business had a big setback. He’s left the country. Left me on my own, he said. But he hasn’t really. You see, he doesn’t approve of Stanley. So, if he sends anyone snooping, asking about me, tell them I’ve gone to France looking for work. Tell them you don’t know where.”

  Eva came every day to see Stan in the hospital. She was sunshine in his darkness. On January twenty-third, the day his bandages were traded for a black eye patch, he learned the same was true for the other men in Wardroom B-4.

  Cutting off the bandages that morning, his doctor told Stan, “You’re making good progress, Son.” But afterward, with the vision in his right eye still murky a month after his surgery, Stan sat in bed, brooding about how far he still had to go. That’s how Eva found him when she visited that afternoon, wearing a bright red bandanna. In her first minute there, she removed the scarf and tied it over the top of his head, seaman-style. Using a butter knife from his lunch tray, she ceremoniously dubbed him, “Monsieur Patch of Black, le Pirate Notoire.” Then she went into an impromptu musical sketch based on a children’s song about the life of a pirate. It had many verses, and chanteuse Eva sang a mix of English and French lyrics, some of which she made up on the spot. She did a little hornpipe dance as she sang. After the first verse, she circled the room, from bed to bed, blowing kisses and tickling grizzled GIs under the chin as she sang.

  “Better than Bob Hope,” said the nurse from Tulsa who peeked in during Eva’s routine. Then, seeing the men’s faces, she reconsidered. “Hell, make that better than penicillin.”

  After the pirate number, the men cheered so heartily that Eva engaged them all in an extended version of Frère Jacques, sung in rounds, first in English and then in French. No one wanted to stop, and it went on and on and on. Stan really got it only when he glanced over at the next bed and saw the kid who had lost both legs to a mine and hadn’t said a word in the week he’d been there—now he was singing along and laughing so hard tears rolled down his cheeks. At that moment, Stan knew it. Even if he did make Eva his wife, he’d have to share her with the world. But looking at the guys around him, seeing the joy she cooked up, he figured, heck, sharing her with the world wouldn’t be so dang bad.

  With his bandages removed and his patch in place, Stan was given three more weeks’ convalescence at the hospital. He was required to sleep there, but his days were his own. He spent them with Eva in Liege.

  Every morning Eva rode the streetcar to the hospital, arriving before eight. Typical of Belgian winters, misty rain often rode down on gusting wind. No matter how gray the weather, Eva and Stan ate breakfast outside, under the awning of a sidewalk café a block from the hospital. They always had strong coffee, bread, and chocolate. Then Eva would take Stan’s arm and they’d walk.

  Though cold and wet, the air was good. And the occasional screech and sputter of German V-1 buzz bombs overhead lent excitement. The parts of the city that hadn’t been heavily damaged were charming and romantic.

  “Cold as hell,” Stan muttered as they shuffled along.

  Eva’s brow wrinkled. “But it makes no sense, cold as hell.” She poked Stan. “In English, there is never a logic.”

  “Huh! Now that you point it out, I reckon it don’t.” Stan looked up at the sky. “Guess we say as hell and hell of a when we mean a lot. Beaucoup.” He pulled her close. “Anyway, cold or hot don’t matter, bein’ here with you.”

  By early afternoon, they were chilled and tired and ready for lunch. They always ate at du Point de Vue, an old tavern across from a pigeon-covered statue on the Place de la République Française. Outside, the tavern was easy to overlook, a sparrow nesting among the architectural cardinals and finches of the square. But inside it was alive and full of character. Inside, history was written on the low, soot-covered ceiling. Inside, air warmed steamy by the fireplace and the coal stove with its boiling pot of soup made the windows opaque. Dusty hunting trophies, the mounted heads of fierce, tusked boars, glared down. The beer was cold and the ham and cheese sandwiches were hot. Inside, coal miners were the equals of bankers.

  And inside, Madame Hélène, the plump, old propriétaire whom everyone kissed on coming in and again on going, was sovereign. Hélène, whose puppet-like face, with its hoary skin set off by thin red hair on top and garishly rouged cheeks on the sides, launched nary a ship. Hélène, whose hearty laugh, ever lurking behind the ivory cigarette holder clenched in her amber teeth, warmed as well as h
er stove’s fire.

  Madame Hélène took an instant liking to Eva and Stan. She mentioned an American boy she knew after the Great War, and maybe that had something to do with it. She always seated them in a stoveside booth, even holding it for their arrival. Hélène made them special dishes for lunch. After a week, she slipped Eva the key to one of the two upstairs rooms overlooking the Place. She was blunt about it: “For your lovemaking. You can’t very well spend your afternoons in his hospital bed, you know. Besides my rooms are famous, or perhaps, infamous.” Hélène leaned close to Eva and whispered, “This inn got its name in the Seventeenth Century, when people used its upper floor to watch the executions of murderers, rapists, and spies carried out in the Place.” She arched her eyebrows.

  Eva’s only reaction was flinching at the word spies.

  When she and Stan finished lunch, Eva used her finger to draw a heart in the moisture clouding the window next to their booth. She took out the old iron key Hélène had given her. It was black and heavy and it hung from her finger on a loop of cord. Eva swung the key as might a hypnotist, telling Stan with an enticing grin, “Madame Hélène invites us to take a view of the Place from upstairs. Come up with me and you’ll see something.”

  Stan followed her through the door at the back of the tavern. They creaked up a narrow, steep set of stairs to the second floor. At the top was a long hallway, set off by a railing from an open storage area. The storeroom was dusty. Old furniture, pictures, and boxes were piled up. A large, orange-stripe cat crouched on one box and watched the couple pass. At the hallway’s end were doors. Eva went directly to the door with the brass numeral 2. She gave the key to Stan, and he inserted it into the lock and strained to turn it. The lock groaned and finally disengaged with a clunk. Instead of a doorknob, there was a hinged brass ring. He lifted the ring and turned it, and the old door swung into the room. As it did, a flood of sunlight poured out, enveloping Eva in the hallway. Gray as the weather had been, the brightness surprised Stan. Eva looked so radiant, so fresh, he felt as giddy as he had the first time he saw her on that bicycle in Lefebvre.