He cried and sobbed and groaned and grunted and gasped in pain. He gagged at the swirling reek of the putrescence that ran from his body. He shuddered as it settled under his body clinging to his numbed flesh like hot ooze, building up on each side of his crotch, soaking his testicles and the end of his penis in its slime, lapping hot at the small of his back.
It seemed endless. His eyes were closed and his chest throbbed with jerking breaths. He prayed for death, life seemed too horrible to be endured. Oh God, kill me please!
His stomach gurgled to a halt.
And he wept.
Wept as he had never wept in his life. With complete loss of manhood, of humanity. He wasn’t even a frightened child as before, an infant helpless before the terrors of night and inexplicable discharge. He had gone lower than that.
He was a terrified animal.
A mindless tortured beast. His teeth chattered together without control. His tongue got caught between them and he bit it without even being able to stop it and it flared up with raw pain and bled.
Tears flooded from his eyes, blinding him, making the shadows and the bars of light flicker like jumping monsters in a prism, like shivering gelatine-like horrors seen through bright lenses. The hot salty tears ran into his mouth and he was wild and lost and frightened out of his wits.
His eyes stared and his lips shook. The sounds that broke from his throat and mouth were animal sounds. Bestial. Stripped of all intelligence, senseless sounds that expressed nothing but the riot of fear and crazed grief that tore at him with hot fingers and tried to pluck away all sanity.
And he would have screamed if he could. Howled if he could. Roared if he could. Torn off his clothes if he could. Butted his head against the wall, ripped the bed clothes apart with his teeth, thrown himself through the window and shattered himself on the pavement four stories down—if he could. Anything to end the agony and the mental torture.
But he couldn’t.
He could only cry.
It was only after a long while, after church bells had sandwiched an hour between their clanging, that his sobbing quieted down and his eyes dried.
Then he saw again. And knew he was still Erick Linstrom, wounded and in racking sickness. But still alive.
And with a mind to suffer through every last bit of it.
And, as he lay there, his body torn by agonies that scarred his every thought, he was carried back.
And, half comatose, dreamed of the past, remembering another time when his body wastes had gushed out uncommanded and he had been bound helpless in brain-cutting ties of revulsion.
14
They were marching along a pitch-black German road, their clothes soaked from the drenching rain that had ended only a few minutes before.
It seemed very silent without the sound of rain sheets tearing up scars from the face of the earth. All Erick could hear was the rattle and clanking of equipment and the sucking sounds of great dark boots sinking into the oozy mud and then pulling loose.
The thick slime clung to his soles and heels, making him feel as if his feet weighed a hundred pounds each. Added to that weight was his full field pack, his rifle, two bandoliers of cartridges, a bazooka, and a case with two bazooka shells in it. He was so loaded down that he was positive if he fell he couldn’t possibly get up again.
He marched without strength, reverted, bent over like the old man he felt. His lower jaw hung down loosely and he gasped at the cold, black air and lolled his tongue and stared stupidly at the ground. In the far reaches of his mind an alien voice told him he was overdoing it. That he was being sorry for himself. But he couldn’t straighten up.
In later years, at college he wrote in his diary,
I wouldn’t throw out my chest and march along with sturdy strides murmuring the Star Spangled Banner under my breath. Murmuring, “Glory be, I’m going to fight for Old Glory, for My Country, for Liberty. This is my chance for immortality. I give my soul to The Stars and Stripes Forever. Give me my machine gun and I shall stalk out to a true Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer finish, taking several detestable enemies of Humanity with me and saving these ten feet of mud for Democracy. “
At the time, the most he’d said to John was — “To hell with the Germans. I say let’s declare war on the second looies.” And John had said, “It’s okay with me Erick.”
“Break!”
The word came fluttering back through the dark, slogging ranks and Erick stumbled off the road abruptly and fell down on the mucky earth.
He hung his head back on the top of his pack and opened his mouth like a goggling corpse. The rain drops from bare tree limbs fell and spattered on his tongue and yellow teeth and over his cheeks.
He didn’t even notice.
He rested the bazooka over one shoulder and the M-l rifle over the other shoulder and let his hands flop in scrawny heaps of bone and flesh wherever gravity took them. His legs ceased functioning and lay like two khakied lengths of worm-eaten wood. I’m dead, the thought trickled over his brain. I’m breathing and my heart beats but I’m dead.
His thin chest rose and sank in shallow movements. He wondered for a second where John was but before he could think about it any more he was sound asleep in the mud.
He’d been having the same dream for days now. He was back on the ferry, standing beside John, watching dull-eyed as the glittering city passed by. It was a terribly realistic dream, more as if he were actually re-living the moment than going back to it in sleep.
He saw the Battery, the glowing top of the Empire State Building. Then they were riding into the dock. They were standing under the Queen Elizabeth, its huge grey structure looming over them like a mountain as they walked toward its gangways.
Distracted Red Cross women rushed about on clacking heels, giving everybody doughnuts and coffee. They worked desperately as thought it were some holy ritual the men must partake of before embarking for overseas lest they be doomed.
Erick drank the coffee and ate the hot crispy doughnuts and was sick inside. He wanted to scream, to throw himself on the dock and kick his feet and scream and scream—No, I’m not going! You wouldn’t even let me go see my mother before you ask me to die for you so I’m damned if I’ll go now!
But he didn’t cry or scream. He didn’t even speak. He filed mutely up the gangplank and the ship swallowed him.
At sea later, John, trying to comfort him, told Erick he was sorry it hadn’t been him on K.P. duty the night twelve-hour passes were given.
John said that the train schedules were all off and it took him half the time to get home to Vermont. Then he had only about an hour to say goodbye. He had to drive like a bullet around his town to say goodbye to everyone. He’d only had the time to stop at his girl’s house for a few minutes, kiss her and hold her close.
Erick never could imagine John making love to a girl. He was too boyish. But he guessed John had a girl all right. And he’d kissed her warm, shaking lips that night. And then—goodbye, goodbye I hope I come back, I may not, I may die. And her standing in the early morning light in her bathrobe, staring blankly at the receding car and feeling nameless dread tear her heart out.
“I wish I hadn’t gone,” John told him.
“Sure, it’s easy for you to say that,” Erick said bitterly.
His eyes jerked open on night and cold, wet air. In his ears was the soft sound of the whistle, resurrecting the dead.
He groaned and grunted as he pushed himself up. He wavered, thought himself incapable of standing, much less marching on again.
Then he’d fallen in with the rest of them into uneven formation and they’d started out again.
As they marched, his eyes kept closing. He kept stepping on the heels of the man in front of him and being snapped back into wakefulness by the cursing.
Then he kept slowing down until the man behind him gave him an impatient shove and he slipped in the mud and almost fell. A sudden mindless fury exploded in his chest. He trembled without control and felt like pulling the rifle fr
om his shoulder and shooting the man behind him, emptying the clip into him. Shooting everybody and running away and getting shot to death himself. He didn’t care what happened. He just hated everyone suddenly, the world itself. And he wanted to destroy. If someone had placed a button before him and said—Push it and the Earth will explode—he would have lunged for it.
In an hour they reached a great, open plain.
There, as morning light crept over the far hills, they all removed their heavy, soaked equipment and some of the men started to pick and shovel at the slimy rock and mud to make holes for themselves. But the holes filled up with water as quickly as they were dug. Most of them gave it up.
Erick didn’t even start digging.
He didn’t care if he had a trench or not. Somehow it just didn’t seem to matter to him that he might die if the Germans started to shell them and he didn’t have a hole to jump in for protection. He didn’t care. He was so tired and disgusted that he almost enjoyed thinking about death.
There was no future anyway, he told himself. Every thought had to be memory. There was no room left for dreams or aspirations. Dreaming and aspiring were the height of impracticality then. Whatever he mulled over had already happened. And when they went into combat there would be neither past nor future but only blistering present. Then, every moment of life would be another moment to breathe in air, a little bit longer to get hungry for the cold slop they’d bring in from the rear. Then, every gut that stayed in his stomach would be that much more to be caressed by food. And the tongue that could still wag could taste coffee instead of maggots crawling.
But he thought only vaguely of what it would be like when they went into combat. He was too tired to think of it. And, long before, he had repressed all thoughts of battle because they were too frightening. It was better to go on pretending that it was never going to actually happen.
During the day he looked around for John.
Foley was a messenger for the platoon. He was kept running all over. Once in a while Erick got a brief glimpse of him with his helmet high on his large skull, flopping a little as he ran. And a grim fixed expression on his usually good-natured, florid face. With his rifle and his flimsy machine pistol, John Foley looked like an apple cheeked school boy playing war in the corner lot.
Years later, Erick thought that it might have been that way. That the plain was a great corner lot and they were all playing a melodramatic game which some inventive fool had titled “War.”
It was only a game though and soon they’d all stop playing it and run home to the warm skirts of Ma and eat thick slices of white bread hot from the bakers all covered with great juicy blobs of jam and yellow butter. That was it.
That wasn’t it.
* * * *
That night one of the squad got sick.
They all thought it was appendicitis. Because when the platoon medic pressed his palm into the boy’s side, the boy screamed out loud and tried to bite the medic. Then he writhed on the muddy ground and cried like a baby and asked for his mother.
The rest of the squad lay around silently under their muddy shelter halves and listened to the boy groaning until some other medics came with a stretcher and took him away.
Erick lay shivering under his shelter half, his dirty hand slid under his jacket, pressed against his warm chest.
He tried to sleep but he couldn’t. He listened to the sounds in the night. A far-off truck climbing a hill with gears grinding. Feet rustling in the mud. Voices calling softly. And the host of indeterminate sounds that a night is filled with.
His hearing was hypersensitive. True silence would not come. Even when the sound of the truck was gone and the footsteps died out, he heard metal rattling, a depressive wind sloughing over the wet earth, voices calling softly. It seemed they’d never stop. And his shelter half was wet and part of him was sticking out in the cold. When someone stumbled over his feet he told them, for Christ’s sake, to watch where the hell they were going.
Then he suddenly realized that the voice was calling for him.
“Erick?” John was calling very softly, as if he didn’t want to disturb anyone. He sounded lonely and afraid. “Erick?”
Erick lay there silently, without moving. He had looked for John all day and now John was there. A sort of selfish lethargy covered his limbs. He didn’t speak. He started to wonder if there was enough room on the shelter half for the two of them.
“Erick?”
John’s voice was plaintive. Erick thought of him wandering around the field all night in the damp blackness, afraid. With a sigh, he raised up on his right elbow, pulling the canvas from his face.
He waited.
“Erick?”
“Here,” he said.
He heard John stumbling around. “Where, Erick? Where are you?” John sounded pathetically happy.
“Here,” Erick repeated, almost sullenly.
John stepped on his right foot. “Look out, for Christ’s sake!” he snapped.
“Oh gee, I’m sorry,” John said anxiously. Then he crouched down. “Oh God, am I glad I found you,” he said, “I was afraid I’d be walking around all night.”
His voice shook a little. And suddenly Erick felt sorry he’d been so cold. He felt a surge of affection for John.
“Is there room under the shelter half?” John asked, feeling the canvas.
“I guess so.” Erick’s voice was still cold despite the fact that he really wasn’t angry now.
John climbed under the shelter half with him. It didn’t work.
“Wait a minute,” Erick said. He pulled the canvas around so that it covered both of them and their legs and feet stuck out in the air. Then they lay down and were quiet a moment. John sighed.
“Wow, have I been walking around,” he said.
“Yeah?” Erick said quietly, “Where?”
“Golly, I went everywhere.”
“New York?”
“I wish I did. I wish I’d gone back to Vermont.” Erick heard John’s throat contracting in the silence. His voiced sounded so plaintive that he couldn’t feel anything but friendly toward him. He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a small can. After a moment’s deliberation, he asked,
“Hungry?”
“I had a little stew and coffee this afternoon but that’s all.”
Erick had planned on having all of the can himself. Now it was too late. He wasn’t sure whether he was pleased or not. His voice reflected the feeling. Almost reluctantly he said, “I have some crackers and cheese, want some?” In a tone of voice that wrought of visions of him shaking his head vociferously and etching a “say no” look on his features.
“Golly yes!” John said, “Thanks.”
They lay in the darkness, their legs and boots sticking out in the cold air, crunching on hard crackers and nibbling on cheese. “I make sandwiches,” said John. “Gee this tastes good,” he said.
“You are starving,” Erick said.
They were quiet a while. Erick became extremely conscious of himself and his surroundings. There he was six or seven thousand miles from home. Lying on a cold wet field and eating crackers and cheese with another boy. It was impossible to understand. The more he thought about it the more unreal it became. Why? All because some little man with a comedian’s mustache decided to rule the world? That’s what he thought then. In college he amended it to—just because some businessman decided to make extra profits for a while.
“Where do you think we’re going?” he asked to end the thoughts.
“Gee, I don’t know,” John said, “I think the captain said something about Metz.”
“We already went through Metz,” Erick said irritably.
“Oh,” John said, “I guess… that’s what he meant then.”
“I guess.”
Erick turned on his side, away from John, and tried to sleep. It was hard though. He couldn’t understand that because he was absolutely exhausted. Yet he couldn’t sleep. He kept hearing footsteps slogging past in
the night and all the other sounds.
Finally, he rolled irritably onto his back again. “Jesus, who can sleep?” he said in disgust.
John could.
* * * *
It was morning and John sat cross-legged and helmetless on the ground, cleaning his glasses.
Erick rested on one elbow watching him. He noticed the light curling fuzz on John’s cheeks and his sandy hair stuck in flat clumps to his scalp and forehead. He watched him breathe the lenses cloudy and rub them carefully with a clean khaki-colored handkerchief. Then he watched John slip the glasses over his ears. He and John looked at each other. John half smiled. After a second Erick smiled back.
“I have to go,” John said.
“Yeah,” Erick said, yawning, “Give my worst to the captain.”
“Okay,” John said. John liked the captain. He got up and put on his helmet, slung the rifle and machine pistol over his shoulders and looked around.
“Did I forget anything?” He asked.
“You forgot to lock the front door.”
John grinned a little. Then they looked at each other and, in the silence, they suddenly felt the wordless terror that clung to each of them because they were going into their first combat. Erick’s throat moved.
“Take it easy, John,” he said.
John’s mouth twitched and his brown eyes were warm behind his glasses.
“You too Erick,” he said. Then, “You’re my best friend.”
Then John turned away and Erick felt tears in his eyes before he could stop them. He wasn’t sure whether to feel happy or enraged. Happy that he was John’s best friend. Enraged that John’s words should bring tears.
He closed his eyes a moment and let the feeling pass. Then he opened them and watched John walking slowly over the plain and, finally, disappearing behind a dip in the ground.
In the cold stillness he lay staring at the mud-flecked canvas and listening to himself breathe, very slowly, and very carefully, as though he wanted to remember how it went.
* * * *
It was oddly warm for December.
The sun was bright and the sky light blue and cloudless. The air was clear and crisp. All around the scattered troops were bare, deserted woods. The countryside seemed to be waiting patiently. As thought it knew what was coming and was rubbing its topographical hands together in anticipation.
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