by Amy Lane
“Is there a car, you think?” Nate asked, pausing to breathe heavily. Healing. He was still healing. For a moment, he felt a pressing sense of urgency. They were behind enemy lines, and he was wounded. Didn’t he have to get back? Shouldn’t he try to unite with . . . somebody? But he could barely walk, and he couldn’t think outside the pain and the curiosity, and the gratitude for Walter’s sturdy companionship.
“No, I checked. Car’s gone. But there’s preserves in there on shelves. Lots of fruit. Between that and the wildlife, I’ve been eating okay.”
Nate thought about it. “Is there an orchard nearby? A garden?”
Step, drag, step, drag—soon, very soon, he would be inside the outhouse and able to piss. He looked forward to it.
“Yeah,” Walter said shortly. “I passed one on my way here. I . . . Here we are.”
Yes, indeed, there they were at the outhouse. But Walter had broken off and hadn’t finished that sentence, and Nate was curious why. But now was not the time. The stairs were painstaking, one and two, and then he was in the small room, gasping, holding on to the sides. Walter reached around him, very professionally, and pulled the drawstring on his underwear, then eased them down.
“You need to turn around, and once you’re seated, I’ll shut the door,” Walter said matter-of-factly. “There’s some sort of ladies’ lingerie catalog there, and a cloth and a small bowl of water—use that however you need. I’ll be getting preserves from the garage so give a holler when you’re done, okay?”
Nate turned around painfully and sat down, grateful that it appeared as though the lacquered wooden seat had been cleaned and the inside of the outhouse was not too full. There were enzymes, he recalled, that you could put in such a thing. He wondered if Walter had found them in the auto shed as well.
Once he was situated, Walter shut the door, leaving Nate in the darkness. He waited a moment for his body to catch up with his circumstances and listened as Walter stomped to the garage, making, it felt like, more noise than necessary. He was doing that for Nate.
Nate laughed a little. The clumsy stomping was so very Walter. Blunt, no nonsense, but unapologetically careful of his companion’s feelings. You probably always knew where you stood with Walter.
Hector would like Walter, Nate thought, and his thoughts paused right there.
Would he? Well, Hector and Joey seemed to get along pretty well, and it was not unheard of for a squad to have four men.
What was he thinking? Why would Hector need to like Nate’s new friend? The odds were, if they ever found the Allied forces again, they would probably be shipped to different parts of the war. They could reunite afterward, perhaps, although Nate didn’t see Walter walking the streets of New York.
Of course, he didn’t see Walter intimidated by them, either.
He was immersed in that thought, Walter stomping through the garment district, shopping and haggling with shopkeepers, when his body remembered how to function. Relieved, he washed up and called out briefly, aware that whatever errands Walter had been running had been completed. The only sound in the tiny, three-by-three building with plain wood walls was Nate’s breathing.
“I’m here.” Walter’s voice came from the other side of the door. “Can you get your pants by yourself or do you need help?”
Embarrassingly enough, Nate needed help. Walter opened the door and reached down to Nate’s ankles to get his undershorts, pausing for a moment as he pulled them up.
“Excuse me, mister, but I hope you don’t mind me asking you what in the hell happened to your peter?”
Nate choked out a laugh. “Circumcision,” he said, shocked and mortified. “To symbolize our covenant with Abraham.”
“Well, you ’bout cut off one of my favorite bits! When does that happen?”
Nate blushed as Walter finished tying his shorts and then helped him advance, very carefully, down the steps.
“I was a baby,” Nate said, still embarrassed. “The mohel comes, there’s a bris and a party. It’s a way of welcoming the little boy into the world.”
Walter’s eyebrow was raised in disbelief. Nate was starting to think of that little arch as Walter’s “no bullshit” line. It helped that this was something Walter himself would say.
“That’s a hell of a welcome,” Walter said, sounding genuinely distressed. “Hey, little guy, welcome to the world! We’re gonna clip the hood off your pecker! What do they do for girls?” He shuddered. “Never mind. I don’t want to know!”
Nate was forced to laugh again, even though the trip to the outhouse had exhausted him. “I think they just put bows in their hair,” he said, hoping that would make Walter feel better. “I can’t believe you’ve never seen a circumcised schmekel before!”
Walter glared at him, even as they continued to walk, painstakingly, back to the house. “I try really hard not to check out other men’s equipment,” he said grimly. “First day of basic, Jimmy told me if you check out other men’s equipment too closely, they’re likely to try to fix you with it, if you know what I mean.”
Nate gasped, shocked. “That’s horrible!”
“That’s the army!” Walter replied. “Hell, that’s being the little guy. You just don’t look too close and don’t mention what’s different or it’s gonna be shoved up your ass right quick!”
Ouch. Nate winced, the idiom being particularly apt. “I guess it is easier to break that rule when you are dealing with an invalid,” he remarked sourly, and it was Walter’s turn to wince.
“Well, truth be told, I noticed when I was giving you a sponge bath when you were half out of your head, but, well, it didn’t seem polite to say anything until now.”
A rusty chuckle broke through Nate’s reserve. “That’s . . . that’s really very odd,” he said after a couple of moments. They reached the house, and Nate leaned against the side and panted while Walter opened the door and came back down the two steps to help him up. “I’m afraid that’s the end of my strength. Wonderful. Should the Vichy forces or the Nazis come bursting down the woods, I can hobble to the outhouse. It is always good to have an escape.”
“Don’t have to worry about them coming back,” Walter said, and for some reason, in the quiet, Nate was peculiarly aware of the heat of that wiry little body next to his. With a grunt, Walter helped him across the sitting room and turned to let Nate sit down. To Nate’s surprise, Walter plopped right down next to him. Nate leaned back and turned his head sideways, the better to examine his unlikely savior.
“Why not?” Nate asked, not liking the sound of coming back.
Walter turned his head sideways and peered at him, making another picture in Nate’s mind. Those eyes were the color of the sea around Greece—so blue and green, they hurt Nate’s heart.
“They came by looking for me right after I got here. There’s a space between the closet and the wall upstairs—where they made it bigger to fit pipes. I hid up there. They kicked the door in, broke the windows, left. Guess I was lucky they didn’t have the dogs, but then, the dogs were somewhere else.”
Nate breathed deeply, thought carefully about whether or not this was the time to ask the question. “Walter, how did you get here?”
Walter’s face tightened, the flesh around his eyes crinkling, and he stood up abruptly, leaving Nate feeling the empty place where he’d sat.
“We still got some stew from the rabbit, but I think I’ll go bring up some preserves. They got that sort of pickled cabbage that’s a little sour, but in the two-day stew, I think it’ll be perfect.” Walter turned back toward the door, and Nate watched him about to run away to fetch yet another jar of preserves to match the three already on the counter.
“Walter!”
He paused, his hand on the doorknob, his chest pumping like he’d just been running instead of sharing a curious moment of intimacy. In that heartbeat, neither of them spoke, and Nate realized it was on him to give Walter a reason to confide.
“This is war, and outside this house in the middle of no
where—the world is insane. I don’t know if anything you’ve done can’t be made right.”
“All I did was live,” he muttered, and then he slid, like a fish, out the front door.
Nate made himself comfortable, leaning back against the corner of the couch in his underdrawers and T-shirt. He was bored—the little trip to the outhouse had tired him out, but he was not ready to sleep just yet. Were there any books upstairs? A deck of cards would be nice. There was another room attached to the sitting room—would there be a library there? The thought of walking across the floor was unbearable. He would have to ask Walter.
He had just—in spite of his best intentions—closed his eyes and started to doze when Walter returned, clattering in with an armload of disparate objects. Without ceremony, he dumped half of them on the love seat he’d been sleeping on and took the rest—jars of the pickled cabbage and some beans, it appeared—into the adjoining kitchen. He’d already put the GI rations he’d scavenged from the plane into the cupboards, but Nate got the feeling he was saving them for a day when rabbits weren’t plentiful and the preserves in the garage ran out.
While Walter clunked around the kitchen, making enough noise to discourage conversation, Nate eyed the contents of the love seat with interest.
There were a couple of books—probably written in French, but Nate knew enough from school to at least sharpen his skills—but no deck of cards. There was also a box full of candles and a rudimentary candleholder, the kind a child would make out of clay.
Nate swallowed, realizing, finally, where they might be.
“A summer home,” he said abruptly. “This is a summer home—people who had a home in the city but came here to be in the country. Perhaps there’s a lake nearby.”
There was a final crash, and Walter spoke up. “Why would they take the pictures and the art off the walls?”
Nate had thought of that too. “Because they came here to hide before they left for good. They had probably been selling the art for money—knew the occupation was coming and left.”
Walter paused, a cook pot and metal spoon in his hand. “It’s a real nice place. I can’t believe someone would have a place like this and then another one in the city. Are you sure?”
Nate nodded. “Yes—of course. My parents still take me to a resort in the Catskills one month a year. We swim, play games, put on silly theater. It is a nice place. I suppose if we were better off, we’d have a place like this one, of our own.”
Walter grunted and slammed the cook pot down. “Well la-di-da!” he snapped, sounding petulant. “Ain’t that nice to have a place for the summer.”
Ah. Walter was touchy about being poor. That was uncomfortable, since Nate had never considered himself to be rich.
“What did you do in the summer?” Nate asked, hoping maybe this question would put Walter in a better frame of mind.
“Milked cows and picked squash, along with my mom and old man,” Walter said sourly. “But”—some of his frantic activity eased—“we would usually make it to the swimming hole at night. That was nice. You know, getting all clean?” He sighed. “I wonder if I could find the water main. I miss showers.”
“A lake would be good too,” Nate said mildly, “if there is one.” He was unprepared for the miserable look Walter sent him.
“I crossed the lake on the way here,” he mumbled. “Swam it in January. It’s too close to the town and really too close to the train tracks. We don’t want to go near the lake.”
Nate nodded, digesting this information. “How far away is it?” he asked politely, because that was good information to know.
Walter shook his head. “I got no idea. I was . . .” He shrugged. “I fell asleep in that cubby while the damned Nazis were in the house. Thought, Hell, they’re gonna shoot me if they find me; I wouldn’t mind missing that. Woke up and they were gone. Was the last time I heard another human soul until your plane went down.”
Nate squinted. “So, two months? That’s a long time!”
Walter nodded and turned back to finessing the picky stove—this time, with less noise.
“Yeah. Well, I’m just lucky you turned out to be good company, even half out of your head.”
“You really are charmed, you know,” Nate said, wishing for one of the books to leaf through. “I could have died and my captain could have survived. That would have been no fun at all!”
Walter stood and grunted, apparently satisfied that the stew would warm and he could leave it for a moment. “You want one of them books?”
“Please.” Nate smiled gratefully. “I can read some French. Maybe after dinner, I can translate.”
Walter’s face lit up like fireworks or a sunrise on water. “You could do that?” He put the three books on Nate’s lap, and Nate picked up the first one and started leafing through it. “Man, I’ve been ’bout losing my mind. They don’t even have any cards here!”
Nate had a sudden thought, and then he grimaced. “I think there’s some back in the plane . . . but they’re under Captain Albert’s seat in the cockpit.”
Walter grimaced too. “Well, you been here about a week. Give it another two or three, and by the time you’re ready to walk with me there, the animals will have taken care of most of him and we can bury the rest. That’ll be good though. It’ll be nice to have some cards!”
And so much for Captain Albert Thompson. Nate contemplated feeling bad. If it had been Hector or Joey, he would have. There was just something so vile about using your last breath to curse the person whose lot you shared; Nate was going to have to work harder at forgiveness, that was for certain.
“It will indeed,” is what he said. Then he recognized some of the woodcut drawings in the book and smiled happily. “We’re in luck! Children’s adventure stories—all three volumes. These shall be very entertaining, and they might not strain the boundaries of my prep school French too badly either!”
“I can’t believe you speak a whole other language,” Walter grumbled, taking one of the books from Nate’s lap and thumbing through it. “And these are really fancy. Leather covers, gold edging on the page. You’d think they would have tried to sell these too!”
Nate opened the book he was holding to the plate and read the inscription: “‘To Jean-Claude on your twelfth birthday. You are never too old for adventure.’” He glanced up at Walter, knowing the expression on his face was soft. “They were probably hoping maybe they would return,” he said. “Books are hard to carry and less easy to sell. That’s why they hid them in the garage—if they ever returned, perhaps their son’s keepsakes would be there.”
Walter nodded soberly. “There was a dolly there too. I left her because, you know, two grown men. But . . . I dunno. I think maybe she’s lonely.” He studied the other side of the room. “Silly—I’m sorry. It’s just—”
“No,” Nate said quickly. “Go get her. She will make the place less empty. We can put her on the mantel.”
Walter grinned. “Will do. I’ll be back before the stew heats up.” Then, as though he’d thought of this before but had rejected the idea, he added, “There’s some clothes out there. I brought the underthings from the garage in case you wanted to wear some, and the clothes I been wearing are upstairs. You can tell I adapted some of the suits and all. But I still need to change your dressings, and you’re mostly using the sheets and blankets anyway—”
Nate nodded and realized that Walter was asking for consent. Nate had been undressed for probably three or four days, wearing some poor gentleman’s borrowed underclothes, and Walter was hoping that would continue to be acceptable.
“Yes,” Nate said. “I understand. I will probably make free use of those clothes at a later date, but you don’t need to bring them all in now.”
Walter grinned. “Wonderful. I’m about done with running back and forth today, if you must know the truth.”
He bounded out of the house, leaving Nate to pore through the book but not before he had the thought that Walter could probably run circl
es around the house and garage without pausing for breath.
Perhaps he likes looking at me?
Nate felt the flush traveling from his bare feet, up his hairy shins and thighs, and eventually crawling across his stomach, chest, and neck. His entire body tingled, and he ignored all of that and concentrated on the words in front of him. Whether Walter liked to look at him or not, it did not change the fact that Nate was willing to remain in what amounted to his pajamas for another week at the least.
Poor dolly. She sat on the mantel looking sad, her porcelain face remote and alien, as Nate read to an avid Walter for the next two weeks.
Nate, bored and willing to spend time reading the books and practicing his own wording so his translations were exciting, would gaze on her sometimes while he was thinking. In the background, he could hear the various domestic sounds as Walter brought in wood and pumped water into jars and bottles to use to wash clothes, and basically did all of the hard housekeeping jobs that most men eschewed doing. Walter, trapped in this house when there was snow on the ground, had been doing these things for himself for months; he apparently wasn’t stopping now just because there was another person to care for.
“She’s perfect,” Nate mused one day when Walter was hanging clothes on a rack that he’d found in the garage. “Her dress is silk and linen, the bows are all hand trimmed—she’s exquisite.”
“Yeah, so?” Walter was, apparently, scrubbing the dried blood from the clothes Nate had worn when he crashed. Nate watched him as he picked up the trousers, and had a thought.
“Check the pockets. There’s a roll of film in the cargo pocket on the side that I think is important.”
“Why?” Walter asked. “Wouldn’t they send someone else to take the pictures you didn’t get back with?”
Ouch. There was nothing like being expendable. “There are not so many of us as you might think,” Nate said, trying to hide his hurt. “They had to outfit special planes to fly recon, and only a few men that started in the service qualified to work the cameras. And I wasn’t using the plane cameras; my job was night photography, and you need a handheld with a special lens—”
