Flanders

by Patricia Anthony

  It was peaceful. I fell asleep mad at Miller, but woke up not caring a bit, for those graves were soft and deep, perfect little hidey-holes; and the graveyard was so quiet, seemed like nothing could go stalking there.

  Does the earth always get you? Maybe, if you end up in a graveyard like that, even falling out of the sky to reach it might not be so bad.

  Love, Travis Lee

  MAY 15, STILL ON THE ROAD

  Dear Bobby,

  It’s getting worse. Can’t tell you all of it. Miller’s under pressure from high up. Yesterday he rode by and I caught him eyeing me. His position here is shaky, and he probably figures I can’t be trusted to keep his secret. Shit. Me telling what I know. Wouldn’t that bring him down.

  Two days ago he sent Marrs and me out to forage for water, and we found a quaint pond with swans and then we found some picturesque Boche. They’d broken the line to the south, and Miller had sent us down to meet them.

  The incursion was only about ten men or so. Marrs got a bullet in the butt, which sounds a lot funnier than it looks. We scrambled up the bank of the pond, swans flapping and honking. We ran, him bleeding down his leg. We never fired back a shot.

  Why is it all of a sudden that I scare Miller? Does he feel he has to shut me up? I need to tell somebody, and I hear what’s said in confession can’t be repeated. Still, would that really be smart? All I know is, Bobby, I can’t trust Miller’s orders anymore.

  Travis Lee

  Summer 1916

  THREE

  JUNE 18, FLANDERS, THE RESERVE TRENCHES

  Dear Bobby,

  Sorry I haven’t written, but the army’s kept me busy. Three days up, three days back, three days in reserve. When I’m “up,” my job is to run along the front-line trench, jumping on the firestep and looking for targets. The other sharpshooters need a man to compute range and bearing. Me, I always find my target, and I find it alone.

  See, Bobby, the Boche stick their heads above the parapet once in a while. Some have to, for standing sentry or fixing sandbags obliges them. Some get lazy and just plain forget that I’m there, or forget where the parapet ends. Riddell keeps bets on how many I’ll take down that day. When the boys in the company win, they give me spoonfuls of their jam or stuff their folks sent from home. I finagled myself in with Dewberry, our rumwallah, so everybody can bet with their issue jiggers, too. The work’s not bad, really. The Boche fall clean and sudden, just like bottle targets at a fair.

  The bad part comes on the third day when they pull us back. The rear trenches are sons of bitches, the dugouts cramped and wet and leaking. The walls are sandbagged mud. They shell us nearly every night. All that stands between us and the explosions is a slab roof “elephant” of poor-fitting iron.

  The first night I was there I was picking lice and listening to the whizzbangs when from behind me came a ringing uproar loud as all of Judgment Day. I jumped up so fast, I knocked my head against a bunk.

  Sergeant calmed me. “Well, ’course it’s loud, lad. It’s our own artillery, ain’t it.”

  Our own artillery. Good. They’re giving some of the same back, like I give bullets. Still, I get tired of the noise. Trantham must have, too. Last week we were in the front trenches, mind, just the front trenches, when we heard the Boche start up their big guns; and even though everyone knew they were aiming for the rear, Trantham went running out of the dugout, up the ladder, and straight into our own wire. I don’t know where he thought he was running to, but that’s where the Boche sniper got him. You couldn’t expect us to go out and fetch him down, so Trantham hung like a piece of windblown trash on a fence. Flies landed. It rained and washed the blood and drove some of the flies away. It rained harder, and we went into the dugout and left him dangling. When night fell, Marrs and Smoot cut him down.

  Later I thought that I caught glimpses of him on the wire, hanging skin-tattered, the way dead cows look if you leave them awhile. Since then, I’ve dreamed of the pretty graveyard with the dusty paper flowers and the rain-stained angels. From beyond the cypress I hear a voice calling for help. It sounds like the voice might be Trantham’s.

  Lucky I don’t dream of everyone. We’ve lost eighteen out of our company; but except for Trantham our platoon is more or less intact. We had us a new lieutenant for about a week. Forget his name now. A Boche sniper took him with a head shot. It’s the damned scopes they have, Bobby. Any asshole could shoot with a scope. I told Riddell to get me one, and then I’d show those Boche. Shit. I could take the Kaiser from here.

  You never told me if you got Pa to leave. Is he needing a white cane and a dog yet? You know what I’ve a hankering for is some of Ma’s molasses cookies. You never send me anything, Bobby. Why is that? Must be because you’re a no-account little son of a bitch. Why don’t you send me something? I’m hungry all the time. The others get packages from home. It’s the only thing we have to look forward to; and every mail call I stand there with nothing but my pecker in my hand. If I’m lucky, you send me a one-page letter. I put up with the hard biscuits and the lice and the flies and the shelling, the whole shit stink of it. I wiped your snot when you were a baby. I sheared Ma’s goddamned fancy goats. I stayed up nights when they were born. I wore blisters on my shoulders from toting them goats water, and I never once asked you nor Ma for fucking nothing. Can’t you just send me a goddamned package?

  Travis Lee

  JUNE 21, FLANDERS, THE FRONT LINE TRENCHES

  Dear Bobby,

  That cocksucker Corporal Dunleavy. I’m sick of him and his bullying. This morning he came by and pulled me off the firestep. “Drunk!” he was yelling. “Drunk in the trench! Who gave you that liquor?”

  “Not drunk, sir! And this is mine. I been saving this up.” I was no more drunk than he was. The rest of the men were lounging around. I was holding onto the rum ration I’d just won; and I was sprawled in the mud where he’d thrown me.

  “You’ll not give me that smart look like you gives the other officers. Up, Stanhope! Off your bleeding arse!”

  I got up. I didn’t mean to jostle him. The trenches are pretty narrow there.

  “Cheeky bastard!” He knocked me down again.

  I came up angry and quick this time and butted my helmet into his stomach. I drove him so hard into the wall that one of those floral sandbags the women make us broke. We were both avalanched by stinking black dirt. It was funny, Bobby. That was all. I didn’t mean nothing by laughing. But next thing I knew, the barrel of Dunleavy’s side arm was shoved into my stomach.

  “I’d shoot you soon as look at you, Stanhope.”

  The rest of the platoon started to yell, “Stand down, Stanhope, yer bloody fool! ’E means it, ’e does!”

  Then Riddell was there, saying in that calm way of his, “Put your pistol away, Dunleavy.”

  “He’s drunk in the trench, sir.”

  “Will you shoot ’im, then? Well? Go ahead and kill the man, if you’ve a mind to.”

  I went cold. Dunleavy and I were face-to-face, me so near him that I could smell his gamy breath. In his eye was that killing urge I’d seen so many times in Pa’s. Funny. When I figured I was about to die, you’d think I would have struggled; but I went helpless, just like I used to do.

  The hard ugly thing left Dunleavy’s stare. He stood back, let his pistol hand drop.

  Riddell said, “Best you’d take ’im to see Captain,” and his voice was placid, like no worry had ever broke his surface.

  Dunleavy, his side arm aimed more or less in my direction, marched me down the trench and into Miller’s dugout. Miller was reading by the light of his lantern. His batman was mending a shirt. The dugout was huge, larger than what we had for six men. There was a real bed and a real table and chairs. It had wallpaper, too, Bobby: green leaves on one wall, pink roses on the other.

  When we entered Miller put his book down. I kept looking at those dainty roses, those green leaves.

  “Drunk in the trench, sir,” Dunleavy said.

  Vines curled about c
racked and ancient columns, and if you looked close, you could see birds hiding there. A quiet place Miller had made himself, a spot like my graveyard.

  “What have you to say for yourself?”

  “Wasn’t drunk, sir.”

  Dunleavy said, “Won’t say who he had it from. And he’s a smart mouf on him.”

  “Yes. That he does. Stand on one foot, Private.”

  “Sir?”

  “One foot, please.”

  I couldn’t balance for long. “Got a cold, sir. Makes me woozy.”

  “I see. Count backward from one hundred if you will, Private.”

  It was slow going, but I reached eighty-six when he told me to stop. Then we stood around and waited a while.

  “Sir?” asked Dunleavy.

  Miller said, “That will be all. Harter? Dismissed.” The batman put down his mending, got up, and followed Dunleavy through the door, closing it quietly behind him.

  Miller never took his eyes off me. “You are skirting the edge of drunkenness. Next time I might have you shot.”

  “Sir.”

  “At ease. You’re an interesting problem, Stanhope. I did not give you permission to sit.”

  My leg ached something fierce from where Dunleavy had thrown me down. “Yes, sir.”

  “You are perhaps the most amusing person I’ve ever known. And your cloddishness does not serve to completely disguise your intelligence.”

  “Thank you, sir.” The roses bothered me—they were a faded dusty color, as if the flowers had been too long away from sun.

  “It was not meant by way of compliment, Private. I intended to point out that you are smart and perceptive; and therefore I believe that you will take this suggestion in the manner in which it is meant: Do not spend so much of your free time around Private LeBlanc. He is a bad influence. I see that surprises you.”

  It shocked holy hell out of me. “Sir. Can I speak frankly, sir?”

  “I was under the assumption that this is a friendly talk, Stanhope. Not quite a dressing-down.”

  The dugout smelled of Earl Grey tea. A kettle sat on his primus stove, a plate of sugar cookies by it. If it was a friendly conversation, he would have asked me if I wanted a cuppa and a biscuit. I could near taste those cookies of his, Bobby. Sugar glistened like ice across their tops. They were yellow with butter, the way Ma likes to make them. I imagined my teeth sinking into the soft dough, crunching through that hard sweetness.

  “So what is it, Stanhope? I’m attentively waiting.”

  “Who am I supposed to talk with, sir? I mean, if it’s not LeBlanc, who else?”

  “Um. Odd. I was not under the impression that LeBlanc was acquainted with the English Romantic poets. Is he?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then what is his attraction for you?”

  “Well, sir, he’s funny.”

  “Funny.”

  Miller saw everything. Hadn’t he seen the humor in LeBlanc? “That boy cusses up a storm, sir. And he’ll flat say anything that comes into his head.”

  “I see.” Those watchful eyes. Not like Pa’s, but something in them scared me. Abruptly he said, “Sit down.”

  My leg gave out. I aimed for the chair and collapsed, leaving Miller shaking his head and smiling. Well, I amused him.

  “Stanhope? I will tell you something in confidence. LeBlanc did not join the Canadian forces willingly. He was running from a spot of trouble. No. Don’t ask. I will give no details. But other than his brush with the law, I also find him—as did his fellow Canadians—insolent and surly to the point of boorishness. He does not follow orders and he fails miserably to get along well with others. He is an excellent killing soldier, but a poor excuse for a man. You are not. I need your cooperation, Stanhope. You would do me the favor, please, of helping your platoon run smoothly.”

  “If you need me so bad,” I asked, “then why the hell did you try to kill me?”

  Not as much guilt as I’d hoped for. The skin between his eyebrows creased. “What are you talking about?”

  “That time you sent Marrs and me for water, sir, and the Boche were waiting, and Marrs got shot in the butt. You had to have known they would be there.”

  “Is that what you’ve thought? Good Lord. I . . . Why would I take it in my mind to kill you?”

  “You’d know best, sir.”

  He sat back in his chair and regarded me, perplexed, like my face had just sprouted a hairy ass. Finally he said, “You are the best sharpshooter in the battalion. Because of you, my company totals are extraordinarily high.”

  “Yes, sir. I’d heard that.”

  “So how did you come by your odd conclusion?”

  “Somebody in Ninth Platoon told Dewberry who told Thweat who told Smoot that you’d gotten an updated message about enemy positions, sir.”

  There was a pencil on his desk. He picked it up and toyed with it a while. “Do you know what I am, Stanhope?”

  And so I said, “Sir, I’m real glad you brought that up. This ought to be right out on the table, far as I’m concerned. It don’t matter to me one way or t’other, and I want you to believe that, sir, I really do. Also, I want you to know I have never once spoke about you to nobody. Way I feel, it just ain’t nobody’s business. I considered at the time that you were a real gentleman about it, and didn’t push or nothing. And you don’t go flaunting it, not like some I’ve seen. I like you. I really do, and predilections aside, I think we ought to get together more. Not suggesting we . . . but, hell, a good conversation about literature every once in a while wouldn’t hurt nothing, right?”

  The pencil tapped the desk firmly. Once. Twice. “I am a Jew.”

  The roses on the wall were dusty, like the flowers in the little girls’ graves. A Jew. Simple short words; still, I couldn’t quite understand what he was telling me.

  “And as a Jew, Stanhope, I am disliked and distrusted by many of the other officers. It is more difficult for a Jew, you understand, to establish an army career, as I fully intend to do. I will succeed here, Stanhope. Despite them. Despite you. Despite Private Pierre LeBlanc. I would prefer, however, if I had your good will.”

  I nodded. “Sir.”

  “Needn’t be so lackluster about it.”

  “Sorry, sir. It’s just . . .”

  “Well, right you are. All settled.” He got up. I did, too.

  “Do take a biscuit with you, Stanhope. My mother sends them.” When I bent to select one, he said softly, “A long way, America. Difficult to mail things, without them going bad.”

  The compassion in his voice. It surprised the hell out of me. And because it was so unexpected, it was needle-sharp with hurt, too. Tears came. I didn’t dare straighten up.

  “I will give you an order that you may not care for.”

  Gaze still on the cookies, I said, “Sir?”

  “I wish you to counsel with Father O’Shaughnessy.”

  I blinked away the last of the wet and turned, my cookie fast in my hand. “I’m not a papist, sir.”

  “Neither am I, but I’m not thoroughly convinced that O’Shaughnessy is quite the good little Catholic, either.”

  The cookie was damned tasty. I’m to meet with O’Shaughnessy day after tomorrow. Confession is sacred, Miller assures me; but what does he want me to say? Should I confess how I lie in my cot and think about him? Not the way you’re thinking, nor the way he’d like; but just wondering what he’s doing, if he’s reading or maybe what he’s eating. Oh, shit. That doesn’t sound like something a normal man would do. I’ve never had a problem. Ask around, Bobby. Near every lady in town—married or single—could tell you that. Still, do you think there’s something about myself I haven’t learned? I hope to God not.

  Considering everything I’ve said here, I believe this is a letter I’ll hold onto until we see each other face-to-face.

  Travis Lee

  JUNE 23, FLANDERS, THE REST AREA

  Dear Bobby,

  A comfortable cot, a tent over my head, but still last night T
rantham walked my favorite graveyard. At least I think I heard his voice. I yelled back, loud as I could, “Couldn’t expect us to go get you!” but he kept calling, calling, and I don’t know if he was calling for me, or for his ma, or for somebody just to for Christ’s sake go out and take him down off that barbed wire. He sounded so lost, and the dark by the cypress is so deep, like the shade in the thicket where I used to take Imogene Blaylock so I could sweet-talk the drawers off her; a place so secretive that you felt you could hide from God.

  It was in the safe, bright morning of the reserve area when I asked O’Shaughnessy about my ruminations; and I was pure scandalized when, instead of answering, he took a cigarette out of his tunic pocket and lit up. He offered me one. They were expensive English smokes, smoother than the half-manure ones I’d gotten used to. The damned cigarette was so good that we just walked and smoked for a while.

  It was leafy summer in the reserve area, with everything that had been budding a month earlier in full flower now. Nature was pushy and prosperous. Larks circled, singing up the sun. My counseling time with O’Shaughnessy had got me out of a session of rifle cleaning and enforced sock mending. Having some time to myself without shells and bullets or busy work was pure glory.

  “Can one hide from God, I wonder,” O’Shaughnessy said. We passed under an ash’s cooling splash of shade. “Or does He come in to gather you up?”

  I thought of Pa and got a chill up my spine for my trouble.

  He must have caught sight of that. Come to find, nothing misses O’Shaughnessy’s eye, like nothing much misses Miller’s. “That disturbs you, then? The persistence of salvation?”

  “Just that you ought to be able to hide somewhere, Reverend.”

  “Ah. Ought one? And would you hide from forgiveness or from damnation? What terrible sins are you guilty of, my lad?”