Pelican Road

by Howard Bahr

  Outside, the air was damp and cold, a good feeling after the overheated restaurant, the crowded depot. Smith walked along the platform toward the crews’ washroom where his orders would be waiting. The other men ought to be there by now, and they would compare their orders and their watches and sign the train register. Smith supposed that, while he was there, he ought to get word to Artemus Kane that he would be moving in.

  Halfway down the platform, Smith met a pair of soldiers. They leaned against a stanchion, smoking, in their heavy wool overcoats and garrison caps. One boy had a smooth face; the other’s was blistered with acne and his nails were bitten. They had no rank, but on their overcoat sleeves they wore the stylized propeller flash of the air corps.

  “You boys coming or going?” asked Smith.

  The two soldiers dropped their cigarettes and came to attention. “Just passing through, sir,” one said.

  Smith laughed. “Stand at ease,” he said. “Where you from?”

  Omaha and Detroit, they told him.

  They talked a while. The lads were going to New Orleans before reporting for duty, and they asked about places to see down there. Smith gave them his Times-Picayune to study. He learned about their families. He learned they had both been to junior college, to basic training in Oklahoma, and to aerial gunnery school. They were part of a B-17 squadron that was to train at the new Army field in Biloxi. They would be waist gunners, they said, and explained to Smith what that meant. Then they had to go back and explain what a B-17 was. The conductor listened with interest, though the concept of standing in an open fuselage, six miles above the earth, was difficult for him to grasp. “How can you do that?” asked Frank. They told him about oxygen masks and flight suits, then admitted that neither had seen an actual B-17 or flown in an airplane in his life.

  Jesus, thought Smith. “Well, that’s all right,” he said. “I haven’t either.” He dug in his pocket and found the coins that Charlie Granger had returned to him. “Go get you some coffee and donuts,” he said. When they protested, he said, “That’s an order.” They took the offered coins then, and thanked him, and went on toward the waiting room. They were a few steps away when one of them turned.

  “You were in the last one,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Smith. “Fifth Marines.” He thought a moment. “Maybe there won’t be another one,” he said.

  The other boy stopped and turned now. “Devil dogs,” he said. “That’s what the Germans called you, isn’t it?”

  Smith was impressed. “Yes,” he said. “That’s what they called us.”

  The boy shook his head. “How did you guys do it?”

  “It was easy,” said Smith. “We had dirt to dig in. You fellows should carry some dirt along.”

  The first boy laughed and saluted. “If it comes to that, sir.” Then they turned smartly and were gone.

  * * *

  Frank Smith, who has commanded the platoon for three weeks, is standing under the mildewed canvas fly of the CP, watching his new platoon leader, Mister Carmody, pore over maps. The lieutenant wears leather leggings instead of puttees. He displays his bars on his overcoat epaulets and keeps his helmet strap buckled at all times, and he smokes cigarettes like a Frenchman. He has been absorbed in the maps since his return from officers’ call. The maps, drawn during the Franco-Prussian War, are only marginally useful, like the lieutenant himself, who has been here less than a day. This is his first command out of the Academy, their fourth platoon leader since the regiment entered combat. By the statistics of the Fifth Marines, the lieutenant has, on the outside, three weeks before he is killed or wounded. Smith wonders if the officer knows this, and if so, what it must be like to know it.

  Corporal Artemus Kane is in the CP, too. An hour ago, while the lieutenant was away, Kane showed up demanding to know where his squad was. He had his Springfield rifle, all his 782 gear, and a haversack stuffed with Mills bombs. He was still addled by hospital morphine, and Smith wondered how he had gathered all that equipment, how he had found the platoon at all. In any event, the sergeant ordered Kane to remain at the CP as a runner. Sit down here where I can keep an eye on you, he told the corporal. And for Christ’s sake, keep your fucking mouth shut. Compray-voo?

  Since then, Kane has been sitting quietly, smoking, drinking coffee. In fact, he has drunk nearly two pots of coffee and has visited the sinks a half-dozen times. Smith is encouraged, for a man coming down out of the morphine clouds often craved coffee, and pissing purged the system. The lieutenant does not know Kane from Adam’s house cat, but thinks he is an actual runner. He does not know that the corporal is AWOL from the regimental hospital. Men often leave the hospital and return to their companies, a breach of regulations that everyone accepts, though no one fully understands until he has done it himself. It is a reality the lieutenant will need to learn, if he lives. In any event, Smith sees no need to trouble him with it now. Kane’s cheeks are still plastered with dirty white bandages, however, and the lieutenant keeps glancing in his direction. Luckily, the maps have proved a distraction.

  Squarehead arrives suddenly, ducking his head under the fly. He has been interrogating prisoners at battalion. He takes off his helmet and scratches the greasy mat of his hair. Fuckin’ Krauts, he says. Guess what they’re callin’ us now.

  Suddenly, Kane brays with laughter. If they’re dead, they can’t call us anything, he says.

  The lieutenant looks up sharply. Smith thinks, Goddammit!

  Squarehead beholds Artemus with surprise. Where the fuck did you come from? I thought you were—

  Smith glares and draws a hand across his throat. Squarehead looks at the sergeant, then at Artemus, then at the lieutenant. He grins. Right-o, Staff Sergeant, he says.

  So what do they call us? asks the lieutenant.

  The Marine looks at Smith, who nods his head. Squarehead laughs. Teufelhunden, sir, he says. Fuckin’ devil dogs. Can you beat that, eh?

  I rather like it, says the lieutenant. He adjusts his glasses and considers the men before him as if he were seeing them for the first time. His gaze rests for a moment on Artemus Kane, then moves away. Do we have any more of that coffee? he asks.

  Smith pours the officer a canteen cup of coffee from the new pot simmering on the fire, then slings his rifle. Permission to check the line, Mister Carmody, he says. The lieutenant lifts his hand. Carry on, he says, and, with a last curious glance at Artemus, goes back to his maps. Smith points to the corporal. You come with me, he says.

  Smith walks out of the CP, pulling through the slick, glistening mud. He does not look back, but he can hear Kane following behind, his shoes squelching in the mud. The day is dark and gray. They have not seen the sun in a long time, and they all talk of it as if it were some mysterious star that the ancients once knew. It must rain again soon, and when it does, the Germans will most likely make a raid.

  Presently, Smith comes to the line. The men are sitting on the parapets of their rifle pits. They take turns cleaning weapons, writing letters, combing the lice from their tunics, while the others watch to their front. Out there, the artillery has blasted away every tree and landmark save for the chimney of a ruined house. The ground is laid with staked concertina that wiring parties set out during the night, always a touchy business under the illumination flares.

  The Marines are lean and hardened by their long marches, hollow-eyed from lack of sleep. They are running out of cigarettes and ammunition, and rations are short. They have been fighting for weeks without relief, and that, too, shows in their eyes. They have seen too much. They are nervous and watchful, quick to react to any sound, any sudden movement, so that it is unwise to approach them unannounced, even from the rear. Frank Smith whistles tunelessly; they look up, expectant and motionless.

  Smith hears a tap-tap-tapping behind him. It is Artemus Kane, moving slowly, tapping a Mills bomb against the steel breech of his rifle. The men relax at the corporal’s approach, and they shout greetings. One of them makes a joke about old Lazarus risen f
rom the dead. My Lord, he stinketh, says the joker.

  Fuck you, says Kane. Fuck alla you.

  They are all caught in a fog of time, and sometimes men emerge from it, and sometimes they don’t. Three weeks ago, the company was in a patch of tangled woods heavy with smoke, leaves and branches falling from the bullets thick among them. Everybody was mixed together in time, Krauts and Marines, all yelling, firing every which way, clubbing and stabbing. Most of the company officers were dead or wounded, and Smith had command of his platoon. He was trying to move the men forward when he came upon Gideon Kane. The boy was sitting on top of Artemus shouting Corpsman! Corpsman! and struggling to keep his brother’s hands away from his bloody face. Smith glanced at Artemus’s wound, the blood, the exposed teeth, and felt a sickness well inside him. Nevertheless, he pulled Gideon up by the collar, had to fight him until he stood erect. You got to leave him! he shouted into Gideon’s ear. We got to keep moving! He kicked the boy in the seat of his pants, kicked him again until he was lurching forward, Smith close behind, prodding with his bayonet. To stop was to die in a patch of fucking woods nobody ever heard of.

  Later, Gideon returned to the place where his brother was shot. Artemus was gone, of course, and Gideon spent two days tracking him down to a field hospital in a grove of linden trees. When Gideon returned at last, their third platoon leader, a nervous OCS graduate who had been with them eighteen hours—Smith could not remember what his name was—declared he would have Gideon court-martialed for desertion in the face of the enemy.

  But, sir, said Smith, Mister Baylor gave Private Kane permission to seek out his brother.

  Lieutenant Baylor was their second platoon leader, a promising officer come up from the enlisted ranks and thus well liked and trusted by the men. He had granted no such permission, of course, for he was killed by machine gun fire in the opening moments of the Belleau Wood fight, and long before Gideon went over the hill. But Smith felt it was the sort of thing Mister Baylor would have done.

  Why was I not told of this? demanded the fresh lieutenant, who did not know Smith’s name at all.

  Sir, I did tell you, said Smith, though of course he had not.

  Well, by god, Sergeant, you keep me informed, said the lieutenant.

  Aye, aye, sir, said Smith.

  The next morning, the new lieutenant was struck in the forehead by a single sniper’s round while inspecting the line. When Smith removed the officer’s identity disc, he learned that his name was Cantwell, Joseph C., that his service number was NG7954862, that he was a Protestant. Smith promised the dead officer that he would learn the names of all those who followed him, no matter how long they stayed.

  Now Smith takes Kane’s grenade away and returns it to the haversack. I told you to stay quiet in the CP, he says. You never listen, goddammit.

  In the gray light, Kane’s face is pale and sunken. The bandages have kept him from shaving. Sorry, Staff Sergeant, he says. When I came up, I was hoping Mister Baylor was still the boss.

  Mister Baylor is dead, says Smith, and tells the story.

  My god, says Kane. I stayed away too long. You got any fags?

  Smith lights a cigarette for himself and one for the corporal. How you feelin’? he asks.

  I got a headache, is all, says Kane. He unslings his rifle and rests the butt on his shoe. What about Gideon?

  Smith nods to the right. Still with the weapons squad, he says.

  I meant to ask how he was, says Artemus.

  He’s all right, says Smith. He drops his cigarette in the mud and lights another. After a moment he says, Gideon has a bad cough. The corpsmen say it’s bronchitis. I told him to go to the hospital, but he don’t listen any more than you do.

  The rain begins, slowly at first, then harder. The men curse and begin to reassemble their weapons and tuck their letters away. The clouds seem all at once to settle on the ground to their front, and the wired and shell-pitted landscape, already ghostly and foreboding, takes on an even more sinister air. Then a green flare goes up over the German lines. The men watch it rise and sputter out. They all know what it means.

  Here we go, says Kane.

  Welcome back, says Smith. They are the only ones standing erect now. The others are lying in their holes, rifles cocked and locked and pointed toward the ground that lies before them. Kane and Smith fix their bayonets. The staff sergeant knows full well that it is useless to order Artemus Kane back to the CP. Most likely, Mister Carmody will not notice Kane’s absence. If he does, and if he makes inquiry, Smith will lie, and all will be well. Smith says, Can you handle the squad?

  The cigarette is drooping from Kane’s mouth, and he squints against the smoke. He rests his Springfield against his chest and, with both hands, pulls the bandages from his cheeks. Underneath, the wounds are blue and ghastly, smeared with ointment, dangling with stitches. Kane drops the bandages in the mud. How does it look? he says.

  Like shit, says Smith.

  Is it corrupted? Any pus?

  Smith peers closer. He lays two fingers against Artemus’s cheeks, one then the other, to test for fever. Not so I can tell, he says, but you prob’ly should of stayed.

  Fuck that, says Kane. Too much time on my hands. I’ll be careful.

  All right, then, says Smith. You know what’s fixing to happen. Your boys are on the left, up against first platoon. I’ll keep Wurtz as a runner.

  Aye, aye, says Kane, but he doesn’t go. He stands fast, twisting his hands on the muzzle of his rifle, the rain bouncing comically off his helmet. Thanks for looking out for me, he says.

  Go on, says Smith. We’re out of time.

  All right, says Kane. He slings his rifle, hesitates, turns to the right.

  Artemus, says the staff sergeant. Not that way.

  I know, I know, says Kane. He turns again and walks slowly, painfully away, like old Lazarus, toward the left where his squad lies waiting. The staff sergeant watches him go, then turns back to the CP, where he must inform Mister Carmody that he is about to meet armed Germans for the first time.

  * * *

  Alone on the depot platform, Smith looked at his watch. Time was growing short. He set off down the worn bricks; beside him lay the rail yard which, for all his reading, all his pondering, remained the one place on earth that made any sense to him.

  The two young airmen would be drinking coffee in the depot restaurant by now. If Charlie Granger was still there, he might well buy them breakfast. Granger’s eldest son was buried somewhere in the fields of France, but his name was engraved on the monument that loomed in the middle of 23rd Avenue—a cairn of stone crowned by a bronze infantryman arrested in the moment of attack, Springfield rifle in his left hand, right hand poised to throw a Mills bomb, coiled barbed wire and the old familiar junk of battlefields strewn about him. How unlike the Confederate monument by the courthouse, where the soldier stood at rest, youthful and contemplative and sad.

  SWEET PEARL RIVER

  Not long after he met Anna Rose, Artemus got bumped off the Silver Star and bid on a daylight freight job as conductor. One afternoon, southbound, they were stopped on the main line waiting for a northbound local to get out of the way. The local had pulled a drawbar and had to set the car out and had lost time, and Artemus’s train was stuck. His drag was so long that the engine was at the south switch of the passing track, and the caboose was stopped in the middle of the Pearl River bridge. Max Triggs the flagman was flagging behind, Hubert Craft the swing brakeman was reading Field & Stream in the cupola, so Artemus filled his pipe and went out back to smoke. He was glad to have the chance, for he loved rivers, and he usually passed quickly over the Pearl, the iron bridge trusses flickering by and gone. Now he could study it for a while, take the evening air, sit on the porch as he might at home.

  It had rained in the early afternoon, so the river lay under a fine mist. The water stretched away on either side, but Artemus sat down on the west-side steps, among a whine of mosquitoes, so he could watch the sun fall. In fact, it had alrea
dy passed below the trees, painting the feathery tops of the cypress and pines with a delicate bronze light. Cypress and pine and oak were all draped in gray moss and hung with vines. In the shadows below, in the rank grass where white and yellow flowers bloomed, the fireflies were rising. Among the shadows, too, a single great sycamore leaned from the bank, whose silver leaves and white trunk seemed to hold still to the light of day. The leafy top of the sycamore dragged in the water, and Artemus thought he saw movement there. In a moment, a graceful pirogue poked its nose out, parting the mist, rounding the tree slowly. A boy sat in the stern, paddling lazily. He looked up at the bridge, and when he saw Artemus, he lifted the paddle from the water. “Hidy,” said the boy.

  “Hidy, yourself,” said Artemus.

  “Say, can I come up there?” asked the boy.

  Artemus beckoned, and the boy landed his boat and scrambled up the bank. The steps of the caboose were so high above the bridge timbers that Artemus had to pull the boy up by his hand. When he was aboard, the boy sat down next to Artemus, comfortable as if he were an old friend. He was about ten, a black-haired lad with a solemn face tanned the color of dark walnut. He smelled of fish and child-sweat, and Artemus remembered how his niece Fanny sometimes smelled that way at day’s end in the summer. The boy wore a cotton shirt and jeans britches rolled to the knees. His legs and bare feet were spotted with chigger and mosquito bites, some bloody where he had scratched them. “Dern these muskeeters,” he said. “It ain’t been a breath of air all evenin’.”

  Artemus laughed. “What’s your name, sport?” he said.

  “Sturgis Montieth the Third,” said the boy. He pulled a corncob pipe from his pocket. “You got a Lucifer?” he asked.