“Shut up, we’re not going to.”
“He’ll die if we don’t get to him.”
The moon shone, terribly bright in a mostly clear and starry sky, and Asch’s shape in the field was not moving. Everything beyond him looked as still as a photograph.
Joyner became worried that the enemy could be working around the snowfield in the trees. He kept thinking he heard footfalls, and twice he whirled, ready to shoot.
“I’m telling you it’s a sniper,” Marson said.
The old man repeated the word in English. Then moaned and crossed himself. Marson looked out at Asch where he lay, a shadow outlined with silver light. There was so much light. It hurt the eyes to look at it. But there were little moving silvery clouds in the sky. A small tuft was drifting slow on a trajectory to block the moon. It might cover it, or part of it, for a little space. “I’m coming to get you, Asch. Just stay still.”
They waited. The little cloud missed the moon. The old man whimpered and seemed again to be saying something, some chant in Italian, repeating it over and over. The cold felt solid now, the wind battering them. “I’m gonna go get him,” Marson said.
“Jesus, do you think he’s dead?”
“I’m not leaving him there.”
“I didn’t say that,” Joyner got out. And then he seemed to think more deeply into what had been said. “Hey, fuck you, Marson.”
“Just stay put,” Marson told him. “When I start, cover me.”
“Cover you how? The fucker’s probably on another mountain.”
They peered at the snowfield and the trees beyond, trying to decide where the shot must have come from. Because there had been no more shooting, they knew this was indeed a sniper, a straggler left behind to delay pursuit. And probably he was still out there somewhere.
The wind lifted more snow, and as a cloud shadow passed across the field, Marson got to his feet, his legs trembling as with some nerve weakness, and made for where Asch lay. He took one shaky step, and then another, and another. He felt as though he might collapse any second. The moon, even in the little fold of cloud, was still dazzling, the field too bright, and there were all the foot tracks of human progress across it, and he thought of it that way—oddly, like a reflection in someone else’s mind, even while he ran, even while he felt the terror and the certainty of eyes on him—that here were the signs of human habitation in the open snowy expanse, as if it were the surface of some ice planet. It seemed to him that the stars beyond the clouds and the moon were making their own light. He pushed through the crusting snow, wishing for perfect darkness, feeling himself exposed, watched, followed in sights, a figure in crosshairs, moving in a zigzag, expecting any moment to feel the piercing of the bullet, and to feel it before the sound reached him. But he got to Asch and pitched forward in the snow, his face only inches from Asch’s face.
Asch lay quite still, eyes closed, the snow adhering to his cheeks. His mouth was slightly open, and snow had got into it. Crystals of it glistened in his hair. Marson thought of the dead German. He reached over and got Asch’s helmet, which had flown from him when he fell.
“Saul,” he said, into the snow-spattered face.
Asch opened his eyes. “I’m shot,” he said. “Christ.” He started to cry. “Oh, Jesus Christ. I’m shot.”
“Listen to me,” Marson said. “Can you get up?”
The other man gave him a look of profound exasperation. “Yeah. You wanna dance? We’ll waltz out of here. They’ll never know what happened.”
“If I put your arm over my neck, can you help walk?”
“Just get me out of here, man. I’m shot. Goddamn. I’m shot. Oh, Jesus Christ.” He was crying again.
Marson got to his knees, shouldered Asch’s carbine alongside his own, and then lifted him, standing, using his hip and managing to get the other’s arm across his own neck while still holding the helmet. He staggered with the weight, calling on what felt like the last of his strength, trying to run, aware that snipers watched for the ones trying to help. He felt the immense certainty that he would be shot in the next instant. It made his bowels drop. His voice went out from him, a cry, like a cry of pain. But nothing struck. He was struggling with the other man in the moonlit field and nothing came from the shooter in the distance.
“I can’t feel my fucking legs, man.” Asch sobbed. “I’ll never see my child, you know? Christ. I’m gonna die now, right? Isn’t that right, Marson? I’m gonna die. Oh, Christ, I can’t feel my legs.”
Marson carried him, stumbling in the heavy snow, toward the protection of the ledge, beyond the hillock of driven snow with their frantic tracks all over it. The knowledge that he would not hear the shot until it hit him made him groan and push through, panic rising in him, the sound of the snow breaking at his feet too loud, everything pounding, everything shouting with the not-sound of the bullet he felt coming at him, and he was down at last, out of the clearing at last, below the level of the hill, under the ledge, gasping, and Joyner crouched there with the old man, both of them staring out at the place from which he and Asch had come. There were no other shots.
TWENTY
JOYNER PUT A BLANKET DOWN in a flat dry place under the ledge. Asch lay partly on his right side. He moaned, half conscious now. The other two worked on him, removing his pack and pulling at his field jacket and blouse to get a look at the wound. The bullet had entered his rib cage, missing bone, about eight to ten inches above his hip on the left side, and exited a little down from that and perhaps an inch toward the middle of his lower abdomen. It had traveled a long way and did not seem to have broken bone. The exit wound was slightly larger than the entrance wound, and the blood kept coming there, a spreading black stain in the moonlight. Joyner and Marson kept trying to stanch it with gauzes from Marson’s first-aid kit, and then from Joyner’s. They pressed their hands to it, and Marson worried about what might be approaching from the other side of the field. But the old man was watching, and also watching the struggle to stop Asch’s bleeding.
“I’m freezing,” Asch said. “I’m so fucking cold.”
Marson tried to cover him, but you couldn’t work to stop the bleeding if you couldn’t see the wounds, and now the entrance wound began bleeding, too, filling with blood and then flowing over. The blanket was soaked. They kept working the wounds.
“It’s not stopping,” Asch sobbed. “Christ. I’m emptying out.”
“It is stopping,” Joyner told him. “It is.”
They worked on, feeling the inimical presence in the moon-haunted dark all around them.
“I didn’t do anything,” Asch said, low, beginning to cry. “I was a nice guy. I never hurt anybody intentionally, I swear it.”
“Shut up,” said Joyner. “It’s stopping. We’ll wrap you up and take you down and you’ll be out of the fuck’n war.”
“I’m scared, Benny. It’s bad, isn’t it. I can’t stop shivering.”
Joyner was silent, working hard to make the bleeding stop. Marson stood and looked out at the field and the sky. Asch’s breathing was becoming faster. The entrance wound had stopped bleeding. Another blast of the wind made him realize that the man’s bare flesh was exposed. He knelt and tried to cover his back with the bloody field jacket. Joyner was still working the exit wound, murmuring, “It’s slowing down. Slowing down now. It’s gonna be fine. It’s stopping.”
“It’s starting to hurt,” Asch said. “Oh, Christ help me. It hurts bad.”
“It’s stopped bleeding,” Joyner said. “The cold’s good. It’s really slowing it down.”
“I’m freezing. God.”
“It’s doing good. Almost completely stopped now. I swear.”
“I need something for the pain, though. Give me something for the pain.”
There were morphine syringes in the first-aid kit. Marson pulled the seal from one and stuck it into Asch’s thigh.
“Give him another one,” Joyner said.
Marson did so.
“I didn’t mean anythi
ng,” Asch moaned.
The corporal saw Angelo watching all of this, and watching the field, too. The old man’s face looked changed, the odd marks in the forehead showing in the shadowy light, the black eyes simply taking everything in. Marson had an unpleasant foreboding sense of having missed something about him.
Asch wept softly, apologizing for the noise. “I didn’t mean anything. I’m sorry, fellas.”
“You’re out of the war,” Joyner said. “You lucky son of a bitch.”
“But God, Benny. There’s so much blood.”
“We’ve all got gallons of it,” Joyner told him. “Plenty to spare. I bled as much from a head cut in a football game.”
“I got it all over,” said Asch as if worried about the mess.
“It’s stopping,” Joyner told him. “You take a vial of blood you’d donate and spill it and it’ll look about like this.”
“I spilled a lot of blood, fellas.” Asch sobbed.
For a little space, then, they were all quiet. There was only the sound of the wounded soldier’s breathing and moaning. “If I could quit shivering. God—I knew we’d get it. I knew it.
I knew we’d get it on this fucking piece-of-shit mountain. We were cursed from the start.”
Through it all, the old man seemed simply to regard the others in their trouble while continuing to keep watch on the snowfield. It seemed to Marson that he had the demeanor of someone who had no fear for himself anymore. He seemed almost detached. It was disturbing, and Marson marked it, deciding that it would be wise to watch him more closely. It was possible that instead of keeping watch for an approaching enemy, he was looking for a possible rescuer. The thought blew through the corporal like a blast of icy wind, and he stepped over to the old man and looked out at the field. “Do you see something?” he asked. “Capeesh?”
The old man shook his head. Something about him appeared faintly arrogant now, as if he could not be bothered to fear or respect these armed boys he was with in their trouble. Marson thought of this and it was as if he were briefly inside the other’s mind. He stood close, trying to see into the darkness of the eyes. The moon did not lend enough light to see the irises. But Marson was reasonably certain that he was not imagining the feeling. He said, “Tedesco?”
“Italiano, signore.”
“Guide, right?”
“Guida, sì.”
“Tedeschi out there?” Marson pointed.
“Tedeschi—no. Nessun tedesco. Nessuno che vede. Niente.”
“You take us back down this mountain.” Corporal Marson wanted it to have the force of a command.
But the old man looked at him blankly and seemed to be waiting for him to falter somehow. “Non capisco.”
“Fellas?” Asch said suddenly. “Fellas?”
“We’re here,” Joyner told him.
“Fellas, I can’t move my legs.”
“I’m sure it missed your spine,” Joyner said.
“I can’t move my legs, fellas.”
Joyner grabbed his ankle. “Can you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
He looked at Marson.
“Oh, Christ—Christ. I can’t feel my legs.”
“It’ll pass,” Joyner told him. He was still working the exit wound. Marson watched the old man, and the trees. He used the scope to pan the expanse of disturbed snow and the far tree line. He saw no movement anywhere.
“You’re gonna be thanking God for this wound,” Joyner said to Asch.
He got the bleeding stopped at last. But there was still the problem of the legs. It was strange that the legs were as they were, since the bullet had missed the spine altogether, by several inches. It had exited on a line inches to the left side. Nothing of it would have broken off or splintered. There was no danger of injuring the spine with motion, or there wasn’t any that Marson could think of, and Joyner, who Stateside had done a few weeks of training as a medic, said there certainly wasn’t. Joyner attributed the loss of feeling to shock and said he was practically certain feeling would return as soon as Asch’s blood pressure rose to normal. He said as much to Asch, speaking with certainty, and Asch thanked him, and then lapsed into semiconsciousness. “Billy?” he said, loud, so that his voice carried. “Where’s the toothpaste. Somebody took the toothpaste.”
Joyner said, “I’ve got it, Saul.”
Asch seemed greatly relieved. “Ah, thanks, Billy. You’re a good brother.” He wept a little more. “I should’ve given you that baseball glove. You should’ve seen what I saw, Billy. In the Sahara Desert. Can’t get it out of my mind.” Joyner was working to get the bandages tight around the wound.
They could not be certain there was no internal bleeding. From this angle, it looked like the bullet could have perforated part of the bowel. Joyner leaned into Marson and told him this. Marson saw the old man watching them.
“Father?” Asch said, low, and was gone again.
They wrapped him in bandages from all three kits. The old man watched them and kept glancing at the row of trees bordering the field on the right side.
“You waiting for something there?” Marson asked him again.
The old man did not know he was being addressed.
“Angelo.”
He turned, startled.
“Anything you’re expecting to see out there?”
“Non capisco,” Angelo said.
They closed Asch’s field jacket, and after a wait of a few tense minutes, scanning the prospect of the field in the bath of moonlight and the trees lining it, they began again their trek across the brow of the mountain and toward the way down. Marson carried Asch over his back, holding one arm at the wrist and, with his left hand through the legs, gripping the thick thigh. Joyner carried the carbines and two packs. The old man led them, carrying the other pack. They moved through the trees. Several times they had to stop and listen, and rest. They made very slow progress. And all the time the air got colder, the wind more piercing. They kept moving, and Marson’s legs burned, his sides caught, he couldn’t breathe out fully. The blister on his heel sent white-hot pain all the way to his hip. He would stagger the few feet to the next tree, the next shape or outcropping of rock that might provide cover from a distant shooter, and he continued trying to pray, the God he believed in beginning to feel like the immensity itself all around him. And through it all, he kept sensing someone trying to hold him in crosshairs.
When they arrived at the site of the camp with the dead German in it, they got to the other side of the downed tree and tried to rest awhile. Marson set Asch down carefully in the snow, so that he lay partly on his side again. Joyner looked to see if the wounds were bleeding more. They were not. The two soldiers ranged themselves on either side of Asch and breathed the cold air, and waited for the strength to continue. Asch was unconscious, dreaming something. He mentioned Billy several times, and Africa, in a jumble of words. Marson did not want to think that in his delirium he might be reliving the burning tank.
The wind picked up again, but the snow had mostly frozen, a crust of solidness that their boots had to break through with each step they took. It had drifted over the body of the German officer almost entirely—the body made only a human-shaped mound, now, with a little sharp corner of frozen cloth, a shirt collar, jutting out of it where the neck would be.
Marson drank from his canteen and realized the old man was watching him. He offered the canteen, and the old man drank deeply. If the sniper was pursuing them, he could pick them off one by one. The thought brought Marson to a crouch, peering out past the body-shaped mound, for any sign of movement. The old man handed him the canteen and got down behind the tree, knees up, arms wrapped around them.
“I don’t think we’ll ever know who it was or what it was,” Joyner said.
“They send stragglers,” Marson said. “He probably shot once and went on with the retreat.”
“Or he’s fuck’n hunting us.”
Marson looked out. The trees and shadows appeared motionless as printed i
mages. The wind had paused.
“It’s not so bad, the cold, as long as the wind isn’t blowing.” Joyner offered his canteen to Asch, who had stirred but had not quite awakened. He took it back and drank of it, little sips, and then he made a gagging noise. “Sorry,” he said.
“You all right?” Marson asked him.
“I’m sick. It was a lot of blood. I don’t do blood too well, you know? I couldn’t make it through medic training because of it.”
The field, which looked like a lane between the two rows of trees, was unchanged. “What time do you think it is?”
“Not much past midnight.”
The old man coughed and sputtered and rubbed his mouth. He laid his head back against the tree and closed his eyes.
“I’ve got an idea,” Joyner said.
Marson turned to him.
“Let’s set the Kraut up to look like one of us, with a carbine. Lean him against the tree or something. If there’s a sniper on our tail, maybe he’ll take a shot at our dead friend. You know? It can be a warning for us.”
Marson said, “What if he shoots us while we’re setting it up?”
“We’re in some tree shade here. Be a tough shot.”
“You want to take that chance?”
“If there’s something I can do to get rid of the feeling somebody’s drawing a fuck’n bead on me all the way down this fucker.”
“Okay, then let’s do it.”
They stood at the same time, and the old man stood, too. Marson noticed that he had put Asch’s pack on, and the straps hung from it. Probably it provided some warmth for him. When Marson tried to catch his eye, to communicate, the old man simply looked away.
“No move,” Corporal Marson said. “Stay.”
The old man waited. Marson stepped over to him and gestured for him to get down. Asch moaned and then turned slightly and raised his head. “Robert?”
“We’re gonna set up a decoy,” Marson said to him.
“We’re not down the mountain?”
“Not yet.”
“I knew it. I’m bleeding again, too. I can feel it.”
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