“So you met Rat Dick? Me and him are a team, down the mine.”
“I did. Rat Dick, hey?” said Ernie and smiled. “I like that. How’d they lump you with that one?”
Rat Dick shoved his hands in his pockets. “Almost makes sense, not like some I’ve had. You know that saying, knee high to a grass hopper? Well, there’s no grass for grass hoppers with all the mud. But plenty of rats. So that’s what one of the lads said. ‘Knee high to a rat’s dick.’ ”
Ernie chuckled. “Good stuff, mate. You wear that with pride. Nothing wrong with a rat’s dick. I’d say the old rat dicks must be doing something right to make millions of them little fuckers hiding in every crack and hole out here.”
“By the way, Rat Dick, what’s your real name?”
“Claud. Claud Ellis Norton.”
“Thanks, Rat Dick. Hey, Ernie, you hungry?” said Henry.
Ernie inclined his head. “Ask a stupid question … I’ve been hungry going on two years, mate. Fading away, Hen,” said Ernie and slapped his gut.
“We’ve got extra tonight.” Henry held up his bowl. “My second bloomin’ helping! Got to be eaten. They drew rations for fifteen extra, but they’re stuck in a mine and won’t be out tonight, so it’ll just go to waste.”
“Dead set, mate? They all right, these blokes?”
“Sarge says they should be. Said they should be out for breakfast, or maybe lunch tomorrow.”
“Well, so long as I’m not taking food out of another bloke’s mouth …”
“Take a seat, Ernie. I’ll fetch you a bowl,” said Rat Dick.
“Yeah? Good on you, mate.”
Ernie relaxed his frame onto a crate that groaned a threat of collapse. He draped his slouch hat—the distinctive uniform of the Australian soldier, with one side of the brim pinned by a rising sun badge—over his knee. He ran his hand through his short, thinning hair.
“So listen, Hen. Bit of news. Lot of news, actually. I’ll start with the good. I got me transfer.”
“What?”
“Yep. I knew they’d let up on the regulations sooner or later, once they went through all the good-looking blokes. Third Division. I’m infantry now, mate. Took your old job. Won’t be long before I finally see some action.” Ernie grinned with just his mouth. His eyes stayed as they were, steely and fixed. “About time I did my bit.”
“Don’t be daft. You’ve done your bit, Ernie,” said Henry.
“A bit more then.”
Henry nodded. If that was the good news …
“How’s your jaw?” said Ernie.
“Doesn’t hurt. He barely got me.”
“Good, good. Listen, Hen, I did some asking around. Found out a few things. After Michel did a number on us it sounds like he went and did exactly what he said he was going to do.”
“That’d be just like him,” said Henry bitterly.
“I don’t know it for a fact, but doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together. There’s a story of some soldier going through the Australian trenches near the Messines front. Has to be Michel. Has to be. Nobody stopped him till he got to the forward trench and then he just climbed out. Two blokes caught his legs and pulled him back in. Wouldn’t be the first time they’d seen someone lose it and go over. Michel put them on their asses. Bit too good with the fists for his own sake, I reckon. And that was it. Went over without a rifle. Man wants to kill himself, no one’s gonna go after him. They watched him crawling through the mud till he disappeared into the darkness. The end. The fucking end.”
“So …”
Ernie dropped his head and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah I’m sorry, mate.”
“But … but they might have just taken him prisoner. He could be alive.”
“I suppose it’s possible. But he doesn’t strike me as the sort to let himself be captured. Especially wasn’t the sort that night. Said he was gonna kill every last one of ’em. Frothin’ at the fucking mouth when he clipped you and trod over me. Honestly, mate, I don’t see him being taken prisoner. He was all hot and bothered and intent on doing some damage. Didn’t plan on coming back, I reckon. Like I say, did what he said he was gonna do. Not enough men like that these days.”
Henry shook his head. “To hell with him. Deserves to … to …” and Henry threw his bowl on the ground.
There was nothing much to be said after that. Rat Dick returned with a bowl of food. Ernie ate. When he finished, Ernie gave Henry a pat on the shoulder.
“Sorry, mate. He was a good’un. Ahh, fuck.” Ernie paused and shook his head. “Well, I’ll be seeing you, Hen.”
Ernie walked away, slow and lumbering.
“Ernie,” called Henry.
The Australian stopped and turned.
“You’ll be … going over with the others, then?” said Henry.
“Yeah mate. I’ll be right. Got what I wanted, didn’t I?” He smiled the same smile as earlier, with the same sad, unmoving eyes.
Ernie left. Henry sat there for a long time. Rat Dick let him be.
When Henry got up, deflated and intent on collapsing in what passed for a bed, he remembered he was meant to write a letter to his mom. But if he wrote that letter now, she would know. She always knew what mood he was in, because she knew him better than anyone else in the world.
And he knew her better than anyone else in the world, so he knew how she was worried sick. She did not say it in her letters, but he knew. She would worry more if he let on about how people kept dying and how it kept chipping away at his insides.
It had been such a good day. Everything had been fine. Trust Michel to mess it all up. To insist on being the center of attention even while he was gone and probably dead. The selfish French bastard.
18
12 MAY 1917, BELGIUM
Thirteen days passed. In that time, Yetzel did not return to buy eggs and engage in his strange and unwanted pursuit. He did not return to administer unsolicited justice or dispense advice or save a damsel in distress.
Axe began to breathe a little easier. Perhaps he had moved on. Perhaps she was rid of him for good. On the fourteenth day, Godewyn came slowly strolling along the path that joined their farms.
“Hello, my dear. Just visiting to talk about the weather,” he said in a loud voice. “You do know the weather so very well. Will there be more rain this evening?”
“There is no one here, Godewyn. We can talk.”
“Ah, good. I did not think there was, but with the hearing and eyesight how it is, one never can be sure. I have just been to check on Elmo. I won’t repeat his words. Born resentful, that man. Did you know it was Esmee who delivered him? Oh, talk about a miserable child. Cried even as his mother tried to suckle him. A few more early thrashings as a youngster and he might have avoided this last one as an adult. Anyhow, my dear, he is fine. You needn’t worry about him.”
“Thank you for helping him, Godewyn. It means a lot to me.”
“Bah! One can dislike a man without becoming a savage. I would have helped him whether you asked me to or not. Now, seeing as I was doing the rounds, I thought I should check on my other patient. It’s time to remove the patch, I think.”
Axe led Godewyn inside. Michel heard the voice and walked from his hiding place.
“Ah, here he is. How is the head? Still not leaking too much? A little is all right, unless it is brain matter. Best to keep that in the belfry, where it belongs,” said Godewyn in German, and laughed.
Michel shook his head and smiled with his eyes.
The old veterinarian proceeded to examine Michel thoroughly. “I tell you, Axe, this one is from good stock. Other men would have been laid low for months! Your Michel here is impatient to heal, and I’ve always said that a strong and convicted mind is better than anything in my black bag. All us old veterinarians and doctors agree. The only cure-all in this world is character, fortitude and determination. That three-legged dog has it, and so too our French patient. Coming along in leaps and bounds, both of you, leaps and bounds,” said Godewyn,
and laughed again.
Truth be told, neither Michel nor Monster did much leaping or bounding, though Monster certainly could if she built up a run. And though Michel moved well now, his knee was not yet fit for acrobatics. Soon enough.
Godewyn finished by peeling away the patch from Michel’s face. His eye slowly cracked open and Michel blinked rapidly. After a little blurring, the world surged into three dimensions. Before long his broken jaw would be mended enough for him to talk. There was so much he wanted to say.
For the past two weeks, Michel had felt an ever-present anxiety. He knew he could be discovered at any moment, whereas he was in no state to fight his way out of trouble. If found, he would be killed. Probably Axe, too. But that afternoon, the anxiety began to dissipate.
His strength was returning, and so too his confidence. He was beginning to feel like the Michel of old. He spent the rest of the day enjoying his renewed appreciation of dimension and texture that came with having two functioning eyes.
Of everything that he fondly gazed upon, it was Axe whom he stared at the most. He realized that the short hair he had seen as black did in fact have color. Violet black. And her eyes—in the shade they seemed a pallid grey against her rich tawny complexion, whereas in the sunlight they now showed a distant blue.
He liked her fine lips and broad mouth, especially broad when she smiled. She had a small derrière, pert and muscular. Her shoulders were narrow, her hips even more so, and between the two she was thin and straight, not the hourglass figure so many men lusted after. She was not conventionally pretty, but it seemed to Michel that she looked exactly as she should.
Exactly as she should …
Michel mulled the thought. He was not used to warm, unjudgmental feelings. He had learned to be suspicious of them. He was meant to be a cad and womanizer. A rascal, a rabble rouser. He associated feelings of warmth and tenderness with the women he fucked and fled, as went a crude ditty sung by some of his fellow soldiers.
It was different with Axe. Nothing physical had happened between them to generate a momentary lapse of sentimentality. Nor did he feel boxed in, trapped, asphyxiated. He had no desire to flee at the first opportunity.
Michel knew it was absurd, but he was exactly where he wanted to be. On the wrong side of the front, building his strength so he might someday protect Axe as she had protected him.
And then it struck him.
Fucking Florence! Of course. The sneaky bitch got me too. Damn it, damn it … like all the other wounded fools …
It was a phenomenon so common they had named it: the Florence Nightingale effect. Tens of thousands of injured soldiers enamored with the randomly assigned woman who nursed them back to health.
Oh yes, they were like dumb little ducklings, peeking from their freshly cracked shell, instantly forming a blind devotion to whichever animal they saw first. The love that ensued was ridiculous and irrational, yet inescapable.
It did not matter that this particular patient had never said a single word to his nurse—Michel just stared at Axe, knowing he was a victim of the tricks of his common, all-too-human mind, while nevertheless silently promising that somehow he would repay her.
And repay her in more meaningful ways than dumb adoration or love. In war, love and hate came easy and in plenty. It was surviving that was hard—especially for a smart but stubborn woman like Axe who refused to abandon the farm that had already killed her family. The farm that carried neither crops nor animals, and which straddled a key front of the war that was set to explode.
19
Dusk. Axe was in a field repairing a fence for her non-existent sheep. Michel climbed from the loft.
He cracked open the barn door. Outside, the afternoon twilight was soft and pretty, especially when seen through two eyes that were able to appreciate the subtle play between light and shade. Michel had never ventured more than a handful of steps from the barn, but now he began walking with a minor limp away from his hiding place of over two weeks.
He was confident he would not encounter any German patrols. When they came—almost never—they announced themselves with loud talking and the jangling of equipment, as if the thousands of men who wanted to kill them were not just a handful of miles away, on the other side of a few forested hills. Plus, they never ventured out at dinner time. Their “random patrols” were anything but.
Though the farm was in poor condition—churned, neglected and cratered, even swamped in places—the wildlife did not discriminate. It was a place to live or forage. Twilight was a good time to be out, to see a new wave of life emerge from sleep and hiding, much like Michel.
He walked slowly, making little noise. Fifty yards ahead there was a patch of grass next to a clump of overgrown blackberry vines. Michel saw two large animals, their coats a dirty grey and marmalade, perfect camouflage amid sand but not so good against black and green. First he thought them small dogs hunched over something, but as he limped closer he realized they were in fact two enormous rabbits. Flemish Giants.
Michel contemplated how delicious they would be in the pot and wished for a rifle, then remembered that they would be wasted on him, for he still took his food as broth and tea. He had lost weight in the process. A few kilos of rabbit would fix that.
The animals raised their heads and swiveled their ears. They saw Michel and immediately the biggest of the two pounded his rear paws onto the turf. Michel heard and felt the powerful vibration, a warning to the rest of the warren. They bounded away, their lope heavy and fast. Michel made a mental note to remember the spot, for a rabbit was a creature of habit. Dinner for another day.
He continued on and came to a patch of mud and swamp with duckboards laid out. Swamp was the curse of the farmer, good for nothing but breeding ducks and mosquitoes. It was also the curse of the soldier, and the main reason most the fighting in the failed spring advance on Mesen had skirted Axe’s land.
Michel carefully navigated the wooden boards, wary of slipping and reinjuring himself. Midway through, he stopped and listened to the call of an animal. A grunt-like sound that transitioned into a tight squeal and then another grunt. Pause. Repeat.
Maybe a juvenile boar, thought Michel. Fresh pig would make an even better dinner than fresh rabbit. Oh yes, in a week, or whenever he could start to speak and chew, he would find a way to eat every last piglet and bunny that would fit in his pot.
He stayed still in the hope of seeing the piglet. After almost a minute of waiting, Michel watched a small bird skulk from the reeds, prancing gently and carefully through the shallows.
Careful, a hungry bore will eat you, little friend.
The bird sported long legs that terminated in a compact body. It had a grey chest, hardly any tail and handsome bronze-streaked wings. It’s tiny round head displayed a long red bill; it opened a fraction, and there came the grunt. The beak opened a little more and Michel heard the squeal, then the bird finished with a final grunt.
Michel chuckled. There was no boar, just a peculiar swamp bird with a coarse call that suddenly realized a big animal was near. It froze mid-stride, not moving in the slightest. Michel followed suit and stayed still. A few seconds passed before a single black eye blinked and swiveled, taking a sneaky glance at Michel.
He chuckled harder this time. The bird burst into a sprint then launched with a flurry of flapping. It was a paltry flight, barely rising above the reeds, but an impressive thing to a man destined to never know the skies.
Michel kept walking. He left the swamp and passed through open fields. He saw the results of Axe’s work on a fence, though she was nowhere to be seen. The light had continued to fade into a dim haze, so he was glad she had stopped. He wanted to tell her that she worked too hard. He wanted to tell her that he would do the work for her. He could do neither, not yet.
Michel turned a full circle. The grass would definitely take a few sheep, if Axe could find any to buy. Of course, the sense in doing so was debatable. On the fields of war, sheep fared little better than men.
A copse of trees separated Axe’s land from the larger Faas property and the road toward Mesen. Some of the trees were shattered halfway up their trunks—more misdirected artillery. For some reason, gunners seemed to love obliterating anything inanimate. Trees, statues, churches, grain silos, bridges, barns. If their aim was any better they might have done a few hundred million less in damage, but taken a million more lives.
Perhaps it was best their aim was not worth a damn. Even then Michel could hear artillery firing, by the sound of it somewhere toward Ypres, miles away.
Michel wandered closer to the trees where a muddied path of ochre gravel cut a swathe toward Mesen. Axe had told him about a resident badger family amid the trees; they had moved in sometime after she left the farm, more or less three years ago, at the start of the war. Axe supposed she had just been making room for another.
Never a vacuum in nature. Something goes, something comes. A Greek had said that two thousand years ago—Michel could not remember who. It was just one of the countless things taught to him during his fancy and thoroughly useless education that he had forgotten over the years. His real education had come after.
Michel could see markings on trees where the badgers had scratched away bark, sharpening their claws and marking territory. The burrows would no doubt be close, though hidden. Someone had once told Michel that badgers occasionally shared a burrow with rabbits. If that was so, maybe the big rabbits lived amid the trees, too. If he found their burrow, he could set a snare in a few days.
Michel decided to take a quick look before returning. He walked into the trees, careful with his footing. Though he knew his absence might worry Axe, he was not keen to get back. He was sick of the barn. Sick of being cooped up. While he liked to sit and relax as much as any person, he would never like such things so much as the real world, the one outside the four walls that, even before this latest episode, too often felt like a self-imposed prison.
Michel And Axe Bury The Hatchet (The French Bastard Book 2) Page 8
