The Eleventh Man

by Ivan Doig

The pair of them hustled behind the head-high stack between gun pits, Ben asking: "They can track the things that far out?"

  "Radar, yes, but it's not so much that," Maurice replied, checking his wristwatch. "When the Germans are at this, they launch one every quarter of an hour. They're quite Teutonic about that habit, in the worst sense. Oh, right, that prods the old memory box. Here," he dug in a flap pocket of his uniform for something, "as a healthy measure, carry this with you when you're out and about."

  Ben looked in bafflement at what he had been handed. It appeared to be a pocket watch, but with only one hand and no crystal.

  "It's a cocotte clock, in case you're wondering," the explanation was diplomatically put. "A chef's timer, actually, but French prostitutes use these to keep track of the various phases of their services. I have done the necessary research." Maurice paused dreamily. "Ah, Paris. What was that term you used—passion pit?" His brow cleared and he returned to the business at hand. "Set it for ten minutes after each buzz bomb. Gives you five to look around for shelter before the next one arrives."

  "Swell, Maurice. I'll see if I can get used to kissing myself good-bye on short notice." Ben sagged against the sandbags to wait, and took stock. In the same opalescent Belgian sky that had looked down on the foot soldiers of Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington, a robot bomb was on its way. After it blindly fell and did its killing or not, the next one could be tracked in by a timepiece that ordinarily ticked off sessions of bed games. This was a war like no other. Or did writers always say that.

  Ducking lower and yanking at Ben's sleeve for him to do the same, Maurice wordlessly pointed to a metal sliver cutting the sky. Unable to take his eyes off the object clipping toward them at six miles a minute, Ben had the sensation of everything in him pausing, waiting helplessly for the blind bomb with a tail of flame to pass over or not. Then the roars of the anti-aircraft artillery slammed through him.

  For something that sought its target by falling from the sky, a V-1 rocket was oddly nautical, built like an oversize torpedo and traveling with the rumble of a loud motorboat. When that throb stopped, terror began. Any V-1 in its silent dive to the ground brought with it a two-thousand-pound warhead primed to go off on impact. During the long weeks of V-1 ordeal, that feeling of the heart skipping its beats while awaiting doom or survival was the erratic pulse of Antwerp.

  Puffs of blue smoke clouded the air over the gun pits, the long snouts firing, firing, firing as the crews worked madly. Flak bursts dotted the sky behind the flying bomb, then suddenly nearer as the gunners began to get the range and aim off in front of it, leading it as a hunter would a fast-flying duck. The ack-ack noise was unceasing yet somehow everyone knew to the instant when the throb, the buzz, of the bomb cut off and it began to dive. Right at that moment, a proximity shell exploded alongside it and the V-1 faltered in its trajectory, falling away into a field where it burst with a flash of orange flame.

  One more time, Ben felt the moving wall of oblivion shift away, and with the tremor of the exploding buzz bomb, settle to a stop. At least temporarily. Another tug on his sleeve. Maurice was setting his cocotte clock and reminding him to do the same.

  They scrambled out from behind the sandbags and over to where Moxie had emerged from the gun pit. Helmet off, running a hand through his thatch of wiry black hair, he looked drained. To their accolades of "Well done" and "Nice shooting," he simply stood there, all the swagger gone, eyes fixed on the distant bright spot of burning rocket wreckage. "We get nine out of ten of them," he said tonelessly. "About as good as can be done." He glanced down at his steel helmet as though it held something he did not want to see, then put it on and shifted his focus to Ben. "Night control takes over at 0500, it gets dark so Christly early here. I'll meet you at the O Club after chow. I've got a bone to pick with you, don't I." He turned his back on them and strode off, yelling for the ordnance sergeant to hurry up with the ammunition supply.

  "Rough as guts, isn't he," Maurice Overby said mildly. "Shall we return to the charms of Antwerp?"

  Now you hear it, now you don't.

  The bomb, the bomb, the abominable flying bomb.

  If it hits you, then you won't.

  The bomb, the bomb, the bastardly buzzing bomb.

  The gathering of British officers around the piano warbled more closely in tune than any Officers' Club songsters Ben had ever experienced. Must be all those boy choirs. Despite the Brit monopoly on the music, the crowd in the cavernous bunker had a more American flavor than the one in the airdrome, including an occasional heart-quickening note of feminine laughter from scattered flocks of Army nurses and such. Some wag had painted up an over-the-door sign in Germanic letters christening the place the wonder bar. It made Ben wonder, all right. Sitting isolated amid the hubbub fifteen feet underground, wrung out from the double journey through Antwerp's circles of buzz bomb hell—Why can't the glee club stay to "The White Cliffs of Dover"?—he felt as if this had been the longest day of his life. Overlapping with that was the awareness that he had thought the same thing trekking out of the Canadian woods with Jake. And wading ashore at Guam with Animal. And healing on the hospital ship off New Guinea after the ambush with Carl. The list could go on, nearly as long as the war. Not that anyone other than you is keeping track, Reinking, but how many longest days can a guy stand in one life? Beer helped, luckily. Trying to force yourself to relax is much like pouring into the wrong end of a funnel, but sip by sip in the vaulted concrete room full of strangers' racket, he took refuge in that sensation of a place where nobody knows you're you. Yet.

  He was on his second beer, and the Brits were going operatic about how many balls Hitler, Goering, Himmler, and Goebbels had in total, when Moxie joined him at the table, scowling toward the piano crowd. "That pissant Noel Coward has a lot to answer for, if you ask me—they all think they're him." He checked his watch and slumped down into the chair opposite Ben.

  "Here." Ben shoved across a bottle he had put aside for him. "Beer is known to settle the nerves."

  "Who said they need settling?" Well, thought Ben, the facial tic, for one. Moxie in the old days had the nerves of a snake handler. He was always the holder for point-after kicks, unfazed by linemen half again his size hurtling at him as he delicately set the ball in place for Vic Rennie's foot. He had commendations and captain's bars to show for courage under those England years of air raids. Now as he did quick damage to the beer and kept darting glances around the room, with a special dose of contempt for the singing piano warriors, it was all too clear that what had been Moxie's ornery bravado had turned into just ornery.

  "Guess what, you're kind of grumpy, for a short-termer." Ben's own mood was not one of his best. "What's eating you?"

  "Short-termer," Moxie scoffed, "in an ass-backwards way. I've been extended. But you know all about that from A to Why, don't you."

  The coldly spoken words sent a clammy sense of dread into Ben. "Mox, slow down and talk sense, will you? I don't know a rat's ass worth about you being extended."

  Moxie studied him without so much as a blink. "Well, then, let's just go over this, Ben old buddy." As usual, there was about as much give in him as an ice pick. "The adjutant calls me in, the first of the month. Says my new orders have just come in. I'm standing there expecting the million-dollar handshake and the plane home, and instead he tells me I've been extended indefinitely. Back I go, to the goddamn ack-ack and buzz bombs. Next thing, you show up. You think I don't know when somebody screws me over, Rhine King? Was it your own bright idea to get me held until the Germans give up, so you can have your nice story—the last of the team makes it to the end of the war? That is just so shitty, Reinking, and I—"

  Slamming a hand down on the table so hard the beer bottles teetered, Ben put a period to Moxie's rush of words. "If anybody is screwing you over, it's not me. I'm here because you were due to get that handshake and a pat on the butt and be sent home, goddamn it. If it was up to me, we'd both be out of here before I finish this sentence." He was furio
us with Moxie and that mouth of his like a cheap pistol, constantly ready to go off in any direction. "How'd you manage to mess it all up—smart off to that adjutant? The general? Eisenhower himself?"

  Moxie was sitting back out of the way of any more hand forays. "Hey, not me. I've been keeping my nose clean, up the ranks—no way did I want to queer that plane ride out of here." With a mix of disgust and agitation he glanced around the cavernous bunker again. "I don't go for this living like a mole."

  Tense as a harp, Ben took several strained seconds to decide he was on the level. Moxie had never smarted off to Bruno, even during the worst Letter Hill travesties of football practice. In the perfect season, game after game, the tougher the situation on the field, the more businesslike his quarterbacking became. It added up. In extreme cases—and Antwerp fit that, did it ever—the gambler side of Moxie Stamper was perversely capable of the oldest cardshark survival trick, win by not losing. "Okay, maybe it's not your doing. I'll—"

  "Your pal Baldy," Moxie shot in. "Could be he knows what's up with this? One thing I learned around the Brits, it's hard as hell to tell when they're screwing you over."

  "He's not—" Ben didn't pursue the issue of nationality. "I'll put it to him. If he doesn't have the goods about this, I know who does." He was half out of his chair before remembering Maurice was on catch-up shift somewhere performing what censors perform. And Maurice was his doorkeeper to the only other source, the wire room. "Tomorrow will have to do," he muttered as he sank back down. "Damn." Another set of hours with TPWP in touch only as a pain in the neck. "Time-out," right, you Tepee Weepy so-and-sos. Until when—the last goddamn buzz bomb is fired? Moxie will shrivel up so much by then he can be sent home in a matchbox. I won't be much of a specimen of humanity myself.

  Moxie was checking his watch again, and remembering Maurice's mild mention of an occasional V-1 straying to the airfield, Ben wondered if he should be setting the cocotte clock in his pocket. The weight of the war came down over him once more. "Mox, I'm going to have to get to the wire room early, so I'm calling it a day. I'll look you up tomorrow after—"

  "Hang on a little while, can't you?" Moxie practically begged. "There's somebody I want you to—hey, all right, here she is."

  An Army nurse, in off-duty khaki, was forging her way toward them through the packed tables. Busty and broad-beamed, she came with a fixed bedside smile on a square plain face.

  Slick as a whistle, Moxie was on his feet and standing proud to greet her. "Hi, angel of mercy. This is my press agent I was telling you about," he allotted a foxy grin back and forth between Ben and her. "Ben Reinking, Inez Mazzetti." Moxie winked. "But that's all the z's a guy ever catches around her, right, sugarpuss?"

  "Knock it off, you," Inez gave him a tender swat on the arm. "Hi, Ben, gee, I'm glad to meet you." She kept the smile going as Moxie delivered her into a chair. "You can give me the lowdown on this Stamper guy—did he always have a vocabulary like a garbage can?"

  "You should have heard him in football uniform—the Army has cleaned him up."

  "Go right ahead," their subject of discussion grinned around at them again before embarking for the bar, "gossip about me while I'm hunting down beer for you, ingrates."

  Left with no choice, they made small talk, Inez in a practiced way, Ben uncomfortably, until Moxie came back clasping bottles with both hands.

  "To the oldest profession," he toasted as soon as he sat down, "nursing!" It drew him another little swat from Inez, smiling all the while.

  Overflowing with possession, Moxie leaned toward Ben and divulged: "Inez is from Butte. Her old man worked with O'Fallon's in the mines. How's that for a small world?"

  "Awful small," Ben vouched, hiding everything more than that behind a long swig of beer. The damned odds again. Why can't the numbers just behave and quit giving out coincidences like card tricks? In all likelihood he had crossed paths with that miner father at O'Fallon's wake, back at the start of all this. Back when one life subtracted from eleven was thought to be a lot.

  In what passed for conversation from then on, Moxie kidded Inez as if he was playing with a kitten, and she all but purred in response. It would have been plain to a blind person, Ben summed it up to himself, that he was screwing her socks off at every opportunity. The undertow of desire lapping around the table made him want to wade away and flee to higher ground and at the same time dive in and let his imagination soak in it. He stayed helplessly there aswim in times with Cass. Cass curled beside him after making love in his hotel room...I interrupted the greatest movie never made, didn't I. Cass bright as her uniform buttons the giddy night in Seattle...One of those that folds down out of the wall? Genius, what's to keep it from folding back up into the wall just when things get interesting? Cass snuggling next to him in the shelter of the Hill 57 rocks, the Homecoming game losing their interest...Do I have a better offer?

  "Hey, we're not hearing any fooling-around report out of you, Ben." Moxie was feeling better and better as the beer and the night went on. "Haven't you hooked up with anybody yet?"

  Silence was no longer an option, with the two moony faces turned to him. "I did for a while. She's a," he swallowed hard, "a nurse, too—of a kind."

  Nine time zones away, Jones was trying to make a readable press release out of East Base's announcement of another one thousand Lend-Lease aircraft successfully transported into Russian hands. He hummed a snatch of hymn when he was alone and bored, and he was humming now; there were six previous announcements of this sort and even he did not regard this as the freshest of news. He was trying to decide whether it was worth it to change seven thousand to the seventh thousand when he became aware someone had paused at the office doorway.

  He glanced around, and for this officer rose nicely to his feet as he had been taught to do at home.

  "Help you with something, Captain?"

  "If you're feeling full of Christian charity," said Cass with a lump in her throat.

  The lights blinked in the Wonder Club bunker. The whole place went momentarily still, then the electricity steadied and the usual Officers' Club din of conversation came back with a rush of relief. One of the music-hall wits at the piano began to belt out, "I'll meet you at the Underground, you'll know it by the rumbly sound, and we will slip away, for a cozy day..."

  "It's hard to get used to, the rocket SOBs see to that," Moxie addressed the tight look on Ben's face, his own expression more constrained than before. "That one must have hit near the power plant by the river. The night gunners have a tough time of it," he defended the ack-ack brotherhood, "they have to hope the searchlight crews get a fix on the goddamn buzz bomb before it cuts off." He shook his head and went back to, "It's hard."

  "You know what, I'm going to go freshen up while there's light to see by," Inez said with practicality and headed for the toilet.

  Moxie watched her wend her way. All at once he was talkative again. "Funny how things turn out. Back in high school, a carload of us would head into Butte to visit a cathouse and we wouldn't get parked before the Butte kids spotted the Dillon license plate and ganged up to beat the crap out of us. 'Come and get it, sheepherders!' they'd yell." He laughed, more bark than amusement in it. "And we would with our dukes up, and more often than not get our butts kicked good."

  Ben knew Moxie was from a sheep ranch in the Dillon country, but he had not known he ever came out second in mouthing off. "That's Butte for you," he contributed, thinking back to the boisterous wake.

  "And look at now, me and her—" Moxie held Ben in his gaze. "I know what you're thinking, I'm just using her for reconnaissance in the dark. But she keeps me sane, Ben. And she gets something out of it besides a good time in the sack." He leaned in to drive his point home. "Inez is not the greatest looker, unless you like them on the hefty side. But getting herself seen with me, and now you, gives her a lot of brownie points on this base. There are plenty of guys in this room right now you could shake awake in the middle of the night and they'd know how many touchdown passe
s I threw and how many you caught." He knocked wood. "Like it or don't, we're not nobodies. Even here."

  No, that's been the trouble. Ben sat up to pursue that. "Listen, Mox. I found out something about Purcell—"

  "Purcell? Haven't thought about him in years," Moxie was shaking his head, "dumb-ass kid." The head shake slowed into solemnity. "All the guys on the team. All the tickets to the marble farm," he said bitterly. "You know the one that really gets me?"

  I'm afraid I do. Ben would have bet six months' wages he was about to hear a halo put on Danzer, courtesy of the Stomper-to-Dancer mutual admiration society.

  "Jake." Moxie choked up on the name. "It is just a goddamn shame he didn't have the last laugh on the Nazi sonsofbitches."

  Too much had welled up in Ben for him to say anything. Inez came to his rescue by returning, and he used the chance to exit the drawn-out day. He left the flirtatious pair with "Have fun, don't do anything I wouldn't do," and wove through the obstacle course of tables. He stepped outside to the long sunken row of concrete archways topped with more concrete and several acres of the sod of Belgium. It was starting to snow, the first natural thing he had found since arriving to Antwerp. He stood there a minute in the night gone quiet with the weight of snow as the storm came in off the Atlantic, general as the pattern of winter across the war-linked pair of continents and the cold ocean between, the hypnotic flakes accumulating as patiently as the passage of time.

  18

  This was a dry snowfall that would not cling long, but Gros Ventre, which had not tasted paint since the war effort was born, appeared grateful for any fresh coating. Behind him he heard the grind of gears as the bus pulled away in the night to other towns too modestly populated to have a depot, a familiar accompaniment as he walked in so many years of his footsteps toward the newspaper office. The burden handed to him by the bus driver seemed heavier as the war went on, although he knew that was fanciful. Even so, carrying it in the new-fallen snow he took extra care, stomping every so often so his shoe soles would not cake up and grow slick. Shortly he came to the only other lighted enterprise on the whitened main street, two blocks up from where the Gleaner office cast its square of light. He thought to himself he really ought to write a piece about this, how in the ever-changing bargain with time one way-spot of civilization would offer up a cathedral while another would answer human yearning with something as homely as this, a place that could be counted on to be open in the snowy dark, a saloon like a book known by heart. What was the saying? Ancient faith and present courage. He smiled at himself a bit crookedly. Tonight he could stand a glass of courage.