Travis Lee
SEPTEMBER 20, THE RESERVE TRENCHES
Dear Bobby,
This time I went looking for O’Shaughnessy. I asked if I could talk to him alone. We sat on a couple of jam crates in the weak afternoon sun. He treated me to some French chocolates one of the nun nurses had given him. We ate the candy like kids—picking around the box for our favorite. They were great chocolates, Bobby: hearts and leaves and some painted up like gift boxes. They went down smooth as cream.
He asked how I was, and I told him I was doing okay, considering. I asked how he was doing, and he looked surprised.
“It’s kind of you to ask, lad. I’m well as can be expected, I suppose. But you’ve come to tell me of your troubles, and not be hearing of mine. What brings you, Travis?”
I could have told him “chocolates.” I rummaged around in the tissue paper and picked out a dark square with a pink stripe around it. It was bittersweet with an aftertaste of cognac; and it made me think of Pa and the wooden horse he’d carved me.
I must have been quiet for too long, for O’Shaughnessy said, “What is it, lad?”
“Wish you’d talk to Marrs, sir. He keeps crying at night and everything.”
“Does he?” O’Shaughnessy picked out one I’d had my eye on: a spiky ball that looked like it had coconut in it.
“Yeah. He cries when the boys are all asleep and he thinks nobody can hear him. He keeps it down, so as not to wake us. I reckon he’s kind of ashamed. Pickering cries some, too. Well, Marrs is Catholic, so you got yourself a leg in; but Pickering’s not much of anything religious. Still, a word or two from you might not hurt. Hell, I don’t know what to tell them.”
He looked pensively down into the chocolate box. “Don’t you?” He plucked out a white lozenge with a red marzipan heart and rolled it around in his fingers.
“Hey. Don’t tell them I said nothing, about them crying and all, okay?”
It seemed he was sad to be eating the candy. He finally popped it into his mouth and sucked a while. “Well. I’ve seen this sort of thing before: men breaking down when they’re moved out. I’m sure they’ll be settling down soon enough. And you, Travis? How would you be?”
Marrs’s and Pickering’s despair dismissed so carelessly. “I’m fine, okay? This ain’t about me. See, Pickering left his cross behind in the old digs. It was just a faded mark on a sandbag. I never did see much in it, but he took a shine. Always thought it protected him from the shelling. Now he’s scared. Guess he feels like he don’t have nothing to hold onto anymore.”
“A cross, is it?” O’Shaughnessy shrugged. “Well. Seems he has something after all. He’s not entirely a nonbeliever, lad.”
“No, sir. That’s not the way it is. What he’s hanging onto is superstition.”
“Who’s to say that religion and superstition are not sometimes one and the same?”
That threw me. Before I could recover, he changed the subject. “You were well for a while, Travis. I saw your joy come back, and your gentleness with it. What causes you to drink again?”
“I’m not drinking.”
He set the top on the chocolate box, put the box away. “Would my eyes be lying?”
“Look. I come to ask help for Marrs and Pickering, sir. Not to talk about me.”
“Ah, and what a grand altruistic gesture.”
The contempt in his voice got me to my feet. “What the hell’s the matter with you? I come to talk about problems, and you go riding me again. Damn your ass, anyway.”
He seized my wrist. “You’ve no right.” His grip was so tight, it hurt. “Listen to me, Travis. If God gives you a gift, you’ve no right to be throwing it away. You’ve been sent to us because we need you. When you drink, souls can be lost.”
Sent? Shit. I didn’t like the implications of that. “All due respect for your beliefs and such, sir, but I don’t see this ghostie stuff as no goddamned gift. It scares me sometimes, thinking I’m going to turn around and come face-to-face with a dead man. Now, that graveyard’s all well and good. Hell, the truth of it is, I like being there. But don’t you go looking to me for answers. I don’t know nothing. Besides, that girl in the graveyard, why, it’s her job to keep an eye on things.”
“And well it might be; but we need you, anyway. Her keeping an eye on us doesn’t mean we can’t be blinded.”
He confused the hell out of me. Troubled me, too. I jerked free and stumbled back. “Sorry, sir, but you don’t want to go counting on me handling things. I’m really kind of worthless, you want to know the truth.”
“Worthless or no, promise me, lad. Will you promise me one thing? If you ever see me in your graveyard, promise that you’ll stay with me. Will you do that? Will you keep me company a while?”
In his voice was such an ache that I broke out in goose flesh.
“Travis?”
I walked away fast. He might have called me again, but if he did, he called soft-voiced, and I didn’t hear.
No matter. O’Shaughnessy begging my help to get to Heaven? Because begging was what he was doing, Bobby. There was something frightened in his eyes.
If Heaven lies beyond the graveyard, a priest of all people should go. Oh, I could see God leaving Pastor Lon wandering. If war’s taught me one thing, it’s that the Church we grew up in is shallow, all fellowship and “Shall We Gather at the River”s and dinners on the ground. Preachers fretting about dancing and vaudeville shows. They’d never recognize an ancient, murky dark like the one that’s hiding in LeBlanc. When LeBlanc was a boy, that Catholic priest must have recognized it. I figure that’s why he beat him with a hot ruler. Baptists are sunshiny folks. They don’t know how to exorcise a demon. Hell, they’re too inconsequential to even bury somebody right.
I couldn’t ask O’Shaughnessy about what was really worrying me, so I caught Marrs alone. He explained last rites and why O’Shaughnessy goes out into the field even when Emma Gee’s firing. His job, no matter what, is to save the souls of the dying.
“Well, what if O’Shaughnessy himself dies out there?”
“A priest?” It must have been the first Marrs had considered it. “Without extreme unction? Unconfessed and all?” He looked worried, and I didn’t care for that. “Well, if he’d a mortal sin, he’d have Hell, wouldn’t he. Venials, a bit of Purgatory.”
The whole notion’s crazy: Heaven depending on the timing of your death and who’s around and all. It’s just not fair. O’Shaughnessy’s been so damned faithful, Bobby. God owes him Heaven. He shouldn’t have to count on me.
Travis Lee
SEPTEMBER 22, THE FRONT LINES
Dear Bobby,
Early yesterday before the sun came up, LeBlanc and me went out to the new No Man’s Land. The sky was overcast, not as much as a star to guide us. I might have been a blinded soul wandering. The world was reduced to touch: sharp things that startled me; mush things that made me sick. We crawled through shell holes that stank of dead fish, and I wasn’t sure if were smelling old carcasses or phosgene gas.
Black finally lightened to gray. A colorless sun came up over mud fields. We ate breakfast in a watery shell hole where two swollen rats floated.
LeBlanc was too chipper; but after all, it was his sort of weather, his landscape.
“You find yourself a dugout?” I asked him.
“Yeah. Hey. I been working on something. You ever blow up a toad?”
“Nope. So who you rooming with?”
“You never blew up a toad? Holy shit, Stanhope. What kind of childhood didya have? I’m thinking of making firecrackers out of bullets. Stick ’em up rats’ asses.”
More about killing things. I rolled over on my stomach and lifted the periscope to see if I could spy some Boche. In the other trenches, nothing much was happening.
“Ka-blooey,” LeBlanc said. “Get enough powder up ’em, there’ll be guts and brains flying, you know?”
I looked around. He’d lit up a cigarette. I slapped it out of his hand. “You asshole. Get us
killed that way.”
He didn’t yell or nothing. He stared, and that was worse.
“Come on, LeBlanc. They’ll pinpoint our position. Smoking like that is dangerous.”
“And your drinking’s safe?”
I took another peek through the periscope.
He said, “Rum slows you down, Stanhope. It makes you do crazy things. Maybe you’re crazy, Mama’s boy. You ever think of that?”
“Could be.”
Something hard slammed my back. Air exploded out of my lungs. For a terrifying minute I couldn’t breathe.
He relaxed his fist, spread his fingers. The sympathetic heat of his hand pressed the spot between my shoulder blades. He whispered into my ear, warm and soft and close, “You think you’re better than me. You’re no better than me. Nobody is. You shit like I do, eh? You piss like I do. Only I don’t get scared. Do you ever get scared, Stanhope?”
He jumped to his feet, waved toward the Boche trenches, shouting, “Hey! Hey, assholes!”
I caught him around the knee, bowled him over backward. He fell, and we rolled down the slope into the water. Bullets buzzed in a fury over our heads.
He thrashed and spat. The dead rats bobbed wildly. I grabbed his bandolier and pulled him out.
“You think you’re something special, Stanhope. You and your Harvard. Your mother sending those blue angora socks. Your goddamned dun mare. You’re nothing but shit.”
“Stop it.”
“You think you’re smart, don’t you? Mr. College. Kissing up to that kike Miller.”
I shook him hard. “Shut up.”
“You a kike, too, huh, Stanhope? You a sheeny? Wait! Maybe you’re a poof. That’s it! You and Miller’ve been butt-fucking, eh?”
Rage made me careless. I raised my fist up high. Something stung my upper arm. A bee, I thought, until I saw the blood pouring out. I’d been goddamned shot. And by the Boche sniper.
Just a scratch. Not much of a wound. Still, I forgot all about hitting LeBlanc. I hugged the ground. He started laughing like nothing at all had happened. He clapped me on the back, on the place his fist had bruised me. “Jesus and Mary, Stanhope, but you’re fun.”
Right then, Bobby, I felt the future roll away, this never-ending war, the years whirling out of control, always beyond the reach of my fingers. Days of mud and bullets and lunacy. Seasons passing, ugly and colorless. At my feet dead rats rode the waves of our struggle.
When LeBlanc said that we ought to have lunch, I told him hell, why not. I drank from my canteen until the future didn’t hurt no more.
Travis Lee
SEPTEMBER 24, THE FORWARD TRENCHES A QUICK NOTE JUST IN CASE
Dear Bobby,
Riddell came by during supper tonight. Seems Major Dunn’s got a bug up his butt again. A few hours from now, our company’s due to go on a stunt—me and LeBlanc included. Even my scratch of a bullet wound—aching as it does once in a while—wasn’t enough to keep me back.
So if anything happens, I want you to have my mare. Only sell her if you have to, and then go to Sharon Jewel Whitehead first. Sharon Jewel’s always had an eye for that horse, and she’s got a gentle hand. I can sleep easier knowing no one’ll take whip nor spur to her. Sell my books in Austin. They might bring a penny or two. There. I reckon that’s about all of me that’s worth messing with.
Make it a short funeral and a cheap one. If it was me choosing, I’d have that Taverner’s “Magnificat,” but I doubt anybody back home knows the words. If it was up to me, I’d have O’Shaughnessy in his black dress and linen petticoat, and I’d have everyone speaking Latin, too; so nobody’d have to listen to Pastor Lon droning on and on about folks being called home too soon and all the God-works-in-mysterious-ways excuses. But you and Ma do what you have to. Y’all the ones has to sit through it, not me.
Pickering’s depressed. Ever since Riddell told us the bad news, he’s been sitting around moping. Marrs went on down to see O’Shaughnessy. There wasn’t nothing better to do; I went on down, too.
Remember going to the fair and seeing the gypsy? How she stayed in the trailer, and there was a line of folks waiting? Then you went in one by one and she shut the door, remember? Just you and her and your secrets. And there was that candle on the table and all. Well, confession was just like that.
When Marrs lifted the blanket and came out, crossing himself, I went into the dugout. O’Shaughnessy saw me and smiled a satisfied kind of smile. “Ah! Turning Catholic now, are you, Travis?”
“Thought we might pretend.”
His new dugout was cramped. Still, there was a table set up along the back wall, a big white candle and a cross and a painted statue of Mary on it. She had on a dark blue cloak with stars, and she was looking down, mild and indulgent. There was a book resting in her hand, but she wasn’t reading. She was smiling at the tame yearling bull at her feet.
“My Mary. I felt I must bring her. In war we too easily forget the gentleness of women,” O’Shaughnessy said.
There was a Bible on the table, too. A fancy one. It was open, a red ribbon trailing down the page like a narrow stream of blood. I scanned the Latin: Dum transisset Sabbatum Maria Magdalena et Maria Jacobi et Salome emerunt aromata ut venientes ungerent Jesum.
Easier to translate seeing the Latin than hearing it. “ ‘Then’ . . . no, when. ‘When gone over Sabbath,’ well, ‘When the Sabbath was done,’ I guess. ‘Mary Magdalene and Mary of Jacob’?” I turned. He was eyeing me.
He didn’t need to know which page, which line. “Mary the mother of James.”
I ran my finger along the words. “ ‘Mary the mother of James and Salome brought,’ what?” I looked at him again. “Perfume?”
“Spices.”
“ ‘And to go . . .’ ” I stopped reading then, for I knew the next two words, and what part of the Bible I was reading.
“ ‘Anoint Jesus,’ ” O’Shaughnessy said softly.
He was sitting in his black wool, his purple stole. His hands were laced together on the table. Near him was a bottle I knew was the wine, a little box that must have held the bread. And a tiny glass vial.
“Did Marrs get the oil and everything?”
“I give the extreme unction for those who want it. Will you be wanting it, Travis? For you’re not baptized in the Faith, and it would be a sin for me to give it.”
Bad as he worried about Purgatory, I wouldn’t ask that. “Just thought it might feel good to confess.”
“It’ll be face-to-face, lad. No grille between us.”
“I know.”
“Then sit down. You needn’t look at me.”
It was him who turned his face away. He propped his elbow on the table and rested his head in the fingers of one hand.
I looked at Mary.
“Bless me, Father,” he said.
“What?”
He didn’t raise his head, but he grinned. “It’s what you say before confessing, lad: Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
“Bless me—” My throat closed up on the next word, Bobby. It was too hard to say. And the three words taken together started me shaking. The quiet in that dugout, like the magnificent stillness of churches. My eyes burned from the pressure of childhood. By the candle, Mary’s gold leaf halo caught the light.
I tried to say it. I tried, but my throat, my lips, wouldn’t go on. O’Shaughnessy, waiting so patient. I started thinking about that damned wood horse Pa carved me—painted dun with a blaze, its face as intelligent and sweet as my mare’s—that carefully carved toy that I had hidden down in my haversack, as much of an icon as anything else.
“Bless—” I had to stop again. Something came pushing from way deep inside. It bottled up in my chest, tight and huge and aching—too big for me to swallow anymore.
I thought of Ma, and memory swelled even bigger. It pushed a sob out. I clapped my hand over my face. Through the confines of my fingers, I said, “Bless me, Father.”
I cried. Just like Pickering and Marrs. Just like we all do wh
en we’re tired or war’s made us heartsick. Shit, Bobby. Crying doesn’t matter.
O’Shaughnessy put his hand over mine. “Are you frightened, lad?”
I shook my head.
“Well.” All he needed to say. I guess he knew everything then; knew what was haunting me as sure as I knew those last two words of Latin. He saw in an instant the tragedy that my crying implied. “For your penance, I’ll be having you write a few words to your father, lad. You needn’t send them, but you must put them down.” A whispered incantation. I looked up in time to see him finishing the sign of the cross.
He told me to go in peace and sin no more, and so I went out and got pen and paper. I figured I’d best put the words down so they won’t be lost.
I don’t forgive Pa. You tell him that. Hell, that’s not important. I doubt we’re really expected to try and live happy-ever-afters. Tell him that when I come home—if I come home—I’m not going to go hugging on him or nothing. I did all the crying for him I’m going to do.
But hating’s no good either, so tell him I’m shut of that. I’m not sorry I tried to kill him, and if I had it to do over, I’d aim better. Still, I’m sorry. I’m damned sorry he couldn’t enjoy what life gave him. He had a wife who loved him. A pretty little ranch. Two children. I’m so sorry that instead of being content with that, he spent all his energy fighting his own mind’s monsters. It’s just damned sad, is all.
Odd, but I’m thinking now that he probably suffered much as Ma and I did. After all, there’s a pecking order to things. Whether he imagined it or not, life beat on him. He just passed the sorrow down.
So tell him I understand. That’s better than forgiveness, anyway. Forgiving and forgetting’s only for them dim-witted folks, the ones with the short memories. And I don’t expect Pa to forgive me, neither. I just want him to understand his legacy: my nightmares, why I hide in dark, small places. Why, no matter where I am, I never feel safe.
If I die tonight, kiss Ma for me. Lie and tell her I was happy. Tell her I forgave Pa for everything. Tell her the war wasn’t so bad.
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