by Julie Berry
The 2nd Section men laughed. “What’s your name, kid?”
“James Alderidge,” he said. “From Essex.”
“It’s German artillery,” Packer said. “But that’s just Fritz having a sneeze now and then.”
Another soldier took a drag on his cigarette. “You wait till he really catches cold.”
“Tell you what, though,” said the taller, wiry fellow. “Something’s cooking. I overheard the adjutant talking to Feetham—”
James interrupted. “Feetham?”
Several heads turned his way, as if this were an embarrassing question. “Brigadier General Feetham,” said a heavily freckled soldier. “CO of the Thirty-Ninth.”
Adjutant: a captain and aide to the CO, commanding officer. Brigadier general: head of a brigade, or in this case, a division. So, the adjutant was aide to Brigadier General Feetham.
At least, James was fairly sure that was how it worked.
“The Fifth Army’s line keeps spreading,” said the chap in the know. “They’ve given us too many miles to cover. We’re stretched too thin. Don’t have enough soldiers to defend it. That’s why they hurried you boys into the army and up to the Front.”
Sam Selkirk, who had seen service before, spoke. “What’s on the other side? How many divisions has Jerry got?” Selkirk had a face like a basset hound’s. It was tricky not to stare.
“Who’re you?” asked the wiry 2nd Section chap.
“Sam Selkirk,” said the basset hound.
The other nodded in greeting. “Clive Mooradian. Good to meet you.” He blew smoke into the inside of his coat pocket.
This got Chad Browning curious. “Here, why d’you do that?”
“And you are?”
“Browning. Chad Browning.”
“Well, Private Browning,” said Clive Mooradian, “there’s half a dozen of us here smoking. What d’you think will happen next if we let the smoke rise up, easy as you please?”
Chad scratched his head. “Er . . . I dunno.”
“Fritz’ll know just where we are, won’t he?”
Chad looked like he must be daft. “You telling me Fritz doesn’t know we’re here?”
Second Section thought this was hilarious. “Course he knows we’re in the trenches, dippy. If they can tell by the smoke that a handful of us are lolling here, smoking, here’s what’ll happen. His bombers will lob an egg grenade right into our laps. Or his snipers will train their sights on this spot, waiting for one of us to poke our heads up.” He glanced up at Billy Nutley. “You’d best find a way to get shorter, mate, if you want to make it through the week.”
Billy slumped as best he could. His back would soon hurt like the devil.
Frank Mason blew smoke through his coat. “Mooradian,” he said quietly. “You said you heard the adjutant talking to Feetham. Is that all you heard? About the thinning of the line?”
Clive Mooradian tapped the ash off the end of his cigarette. “No, it ain’t,” he said. He looked around to make sure no officers or NCOs (noncommissioned officers) were near enough to hear them. “Russia’s pulling out of the war, see? They’ve gone communistic over there, and the new government wants to be out of the war before the Germans kill every last starving Cossack.”
“So what?” chirped Chad. “What’s a bunch of Russkies got to do with us?”
Clive gave him a scornful look. “Think, dumb-arse. The Germans and Russians are in peace talks, right? And when they sign an armistice, where d’you think all those German armies from the Eastern Front are gonna go? Back home to kiss Ursula and Hildegard?”
“If they won’t,” said an older man from 2nd Section, waggling his eyebrows, “I will.”
“Go ahead, Casanova,” said Benji. “Tell ol’ Fritz to bring his sisters to the Front for you.”
“Shut up, shut up,” drawled Clive casually. “You’re wrecking my story.”
“They’ll come here,” said James. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it, Mooradian?”
“That’s right, genius.” Mooradian pointed his cigarette at James. “Who’s this bright young lad? Oh. Right. You’re Jimmy. So, Jimmy, how long d’you think the Eastern Front is?”
James shrugged. “I don’t know. A lot longer.”
“You’re not half right. A lot longer. We’ll have double, triple the German soldiers, all their artillery and planes. Facing our thin line of Fifth Army. How long d’you think we’ll last?”
Frank Mason spoke up. “What about the Oise River?” he said. “They said it’s so wet and soupy, it’s a natural defense, so a thinner line’s okay. The Germans can’t cross it easily.”
“Better hope so.” Benji took a drag on his cigarette. “Sounds like betting on a puddle.”
“But the Americans are coming,” Mick Webber said.
“Seen any sign of ’em?” replied Mooradian. “At this rate, they’ll get here in time to toast the Germans’ victory.”
Sam Selkirk, basset hound, shook his head. “It’ll be Wipers all over again.”
Frank Mason, seeing his comrades’ bewilderment, translated. “Ypres. Belgium.”
“What he means,” said Private Mooradian, “is that it’ll be suicide.”
APHRODITE
Caught—January 15, 1918
AUBREY CAME TO the Y hut on his next free evening.
They sat at the piano. Hazel on the bench, and Aubrey to her right. When Colette sat by Aubrey, Hazel found herself sliding off the edge, so she got herself a chair.
Aubrey played, reminding himself not to stare at Colette. He had to hear her sing. Watch her move. She wore a dark blue dress tonight. No stiff uniform. One dark curl escaped her hairpins and dangled beside her ear.
He pointed to a French war tune. “What would you think of doing it like this?” He began to play it with a slow, sleepy, take-it-easy beat.
“What do you call that?” demanded Colette.
“Syncopation,” Aubrey said. God, she was gorgeous. So intense, like she wanted to pry answers out of him. Pry away, mademoiselle.
“How does it do that?” she asked. “It . . . turns the song on its head. It protests the, how do I say, the proper, the stuffy . . . Hazel, what do I mean?”
Hazel chewed on her lip. “It subverts it,” she said slowly. “It makes the song a rebellion.”
“A rebellion,” Aubrey said. “I like that, Lady Hazel de la Windicott.”
Colette handed Aubrey an old French goodbye song. He played it slowly, darkly. Colette immediately understood. She sang, knowing exactly what color to add to give it the blues.
“Where, Miss Fournier . . .” Aubrey began.
“Colette, please,” said she.
First-name basis! “Where, Colette, does that anger come from?”
Colette felt suddenly exposed. “Anger?”
Aubrey nodded. “To look at you, you’re this sophisticated lady without a care in the world. But when you sing, whew!”
Whew, what? Colette feared she was blushing. That hadn’t happened in a long time.
“There’s a whole lotta something bottled up in there. Emotion. Intensity. Anger’s not quite the word, but it’s the closest I can find.”
Colette glanced down into her lap. “Maybe it’s just that I sing loud,” she said. “My choir director used to scold me for that.”
“Anybody’d be nuts to scold you for the way you sing,” Aubrey said. “I want to take a voice like that on the road with me and make it famous around the world.”
Colette watched Aubrey’s face. Was he just flattering her? His dark eyes met her gaze unapologetically.
Mon Dieu, was she staring at him? She was staring at him. Quickly, she looked away. She should leave. Now.
Hazel, watching them, wished she could tiptoe away silently without them noticing.
Aubrey was just playing the intro
duction to a new song when Hazel snapped her fingers. She’d heard something. An opening door. From one of the bedrooms near the front door.
Aubrey’s hands froze over the keyboard.
“Down,” hissed Colette. She pushed Aubrey’s head toward the ivories, out of sight of anyone below the stage. She stood quickly, gesturing for Hazel to stand also.
“What’s going on here?”
Mrs. Davies appeared in a robe and a frilly cap perched over the curlers in her gray hair.
Hazel rose, her heart pounding and her face flushing. She was the worst liar in the world.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Davies,” Colette said calmly. “We didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“We were practicing,” Hazel said. Was the tremor in her voice as obvious as it felt?
Aubrey, bent behind the wooden piano cabinet, tried not to breathe. He was free to ogle Colette from the shoulders down just at that moment, and he took advantage of it.
If the girls were caught, they’d be dismissed in disgrace from the YMCA. They likely wouldn’t be allowed to work for a relief organization again. But if Aubrey were caught? Military disobedience had terrible consequences. Sometimes fatal, to make an example of the guilty.
The enormity of their crimes became agonizingly real.
“There’s no call for you to practice when decent people are asleep,” said Mrs. Davies. “Off to bed with you, now.”
“We will go, right away,” Colette said.
Mrs. Davies scowled, as if to say, she wasn’t one to be put off by such flimflammery.
“Well?” the secretary demanded. “I’m waiting.”
“Oh,” Colette said smoothly, “you wish to see us off to bed before you go yourself.” As though this was entirely reasonable, and not in the least insulting to two young women old enough to be away from home on their own. Calmly, slowly, even leisurely, she collected and straightened her music. Hazel attempted to do the same with shaking hands.
Colette left the stage as if without a care in the world, and Hazel followed after her.
“Bonsoir, Mrs. Davies,” said Colette. “See you in the morning.”
“Good night, Mrs. Davies,” Hazel mumbled, fearing the words might accidentally tumble out as, “Good night, Mrs. Davies, we are hiding a soldier behind the piano.”
She eased her bedroom door shut, then waited, listening for an eternity for any sound.
Colette prepared herself for bed and lay down to read. The night grew quiet. Aubrey must’ve snuck out, and from the seesawing sounds coming through the partition, Mrs. Davies had fallen asleep too.
The book couldn’t hold her attention, so she switched off the light and began her nighttime ritual of visiting her dead. She’d discovered a trick, years back: if she thought of her parents, her brother, her cousin, her uncles, every night, if she summoned their faces and thought of them, one by one, she was less likely to dream, and see blood—less likely to dream, and drown in anguish.
But for the first time in ages, her thoughts wouldn’t stay trained on those dear faces. Try as she would, her thoughts kept drifting back to Aubrey Edwards.
She wasn’t quite sure what had happened that night. She hadn’t seen this storm brewing on the horizon. The King of Ragtime was a hurricane, and somehow she’d forgotten to close one of her windows.
She’d have to be more careful, next time.
APOLLO
Half an Hour—January 15, 1918
HALF AN HOUR’S a long time to sit behind a piano in the dark and wait for some old biddy to go to sleep. Aubrey stayed awake by dreaming of Colette. There she lay, in her bed, fifteen feet away.
Oh lordy. In her bed. In that silky nightgown. Purple. It was purple.
Nothing stood between them but a thin partition wall. What he’d give . . .
Nothing but a thin partition wall, and the United States Army.
What if he tiptoed in there, and put his arms around her, and kissed her?
Aubrey Edwards—he heard his mother’s voice—she never said she wanted to kiss you. She just likes your music.
“Give me time, Mama, and I’ll play my way into her heart,” he whispered.
Never mind girls, I told him. Play your way into the life you dream of. Play your way into legend.
But he had other things on his mind.
When Aubrey couldn’t take the waiting anymore, he pulled off his boots and tiptoed across the stage, feeling his way to the stairs. He climbed down and went out the door.
He stuffed his feet back into his boots and struck out for his own barracks.
Then he heard it. A click. He froze.
The unmistakable cocking click of a pistol.
Military police. He should’ve known. But whoever it was said nothing.
Finally he couldn’t bear waiting. “Who’s there?”
A footstep. Aubrey turned to face it.
“Who’s there?” he repeated. He couldn’t see anything in the darkness. But he felt someone there. More than one? He crouched, coiling his muscles, ready.
“I saw you go in there,” said a soft Southern voice.
Not the military police. They’d be direct.
“I was just playing some music,” Aubrey said. “Lady in there says I can.” It made him sick, needing to invoke some white person’s permission.
“We say you can’t.”
“Who’s we?” He strained his ear to hear if anyone else was there. He tried to think. It was dark. If he couldn’t see them, maybe they couldn’t see him. He got ready to spring.
Aubrey knew his mom’s stories. She knew, growing up in Mississippi, what could happen to black folks who put a foot outside of the line. Her brother, Audrey’s uncle Ames, had never been the same after the night a gang of white drunks beat him up. He’d played Dixieland at a Biloxi club, and he smiled, they said, at some white ladies.
Right now, far as Aubrey could tell, it was just one soldier. A kid, looking for a fight. If it was a fight he wanted, Aubrey’d give him one. He just had to get that gun out of the mix.
“You Negroes”—Negras on his tongue—“you got a hut of your own. If you want to fool around with your own black girls, that’s between you and Uncle Sam.”
Carefully, Aubrey lifted one foot.
“Where you going, Negro?”
“Nowhere.”
“That’s right.”
Aubrey’s head spun. This could not be happening. This stupid kid was going to kill him.
“What are you planning to do?” Keep him talking. It was Aubrey’s only plan.
“Tell you what we ain’t gonna do.” He came closer. “We ain’t gonna let you Negroes get a taste for white women. That’s why you was all in such a hurry to get to France.”
Aubrey wanted to retch. A taste. As if they’d risk their lives, leave home, and put up with all this redneck prejudiced shit in the army, just to lay hands on white girls.
Dignity and pride. They can’t take that away from you.
They could come pretty close.
“Can’t have y’all getting spoiled, now, can we? You’ll want our white girls, and think that uniform give you the right.”
Never mind guns. Rage would kill Aubrey Edwards. Explode his veins. Send fire shooting from his hands. The vicious insult to every black man, woman, and girl! His feisty mother, his classy sister. He’d go for the throat, and with his own bare hands, he’d . . .
. . . do the last thing he ever did in this world.
Aubrey had a few other things he’d like to do with his hands before his life was over.
“Ever been with a black girl?” Aubrey asked.
A low laugh was his reply. Aubrey owed that boy a thrashing for that poor girl’s sake. He had no illusions about her being a willing participant.
“Why would you stoop so low,” Aubrey asked, “if
white girls are so much better? Or can’t you get one of your own?”
A snort of anger. “Shut your mouth.”
Aubrey swayed on his feet. Was there a loaded gun? How badly did he want to find out?
He’d been in fights before. Upper Manhattan was no Sunday picnic.
He crouched down. The white guy made no move. Aubrey picked up a chunk of ice.
He waited. His fingers became icicles. He just needed to break the other guy’s focus.
Far away, down the path, one of the barracks switched on a light. The shadow puppet of the Southern soldier turned. Aubrey heaved the chunk of snow to land near his feet. The soldier jumped toward the sound. Aubrey tackled him, knocking him hard into the ice.
The Southern boy fought back, but was unprepared for Aubrey’s rage and momentum, and his skill in a fight. Aubrey soon had his pistol, with the guy pinned underneath him, facedown in the snow. He pressed the cold nuzzle of the revolver against his victim’s temple.
“Let me tell you something,” he hissed. “You don’t know what you’re wandering into, messing with the Harlem boys of New York 15th.” He felt the guy’s panicked breath underneath his knees. “We bite back.”
He nodded frantically.
Aubrey stood up, uncocked the pistol, and slid it into his pocket.
“Tell it to the rest of the bigots,” he said. “Harlem boys won’t put up with your shit.” He kicked at the body lying in the snow. Not too hard. But maybe a little harder than was needed. “Get out of here. Don’t let me see your ugly face again.”
The body scrambled upright and skidded away until the darkness swallowed him.
Aubrey patted the gun at his side and disappeared into the darkness himself. Too bad, he thought, that he’d never actually seen the kid’s ugly mug a first time. He’d like to be able to recognize his new friend if he saw him out and about.
The wine of victory was on his tongue. Just try to get in my way again, white-trash boy.
He glanced back once at the Y hut before leaving and breathed in the Rococo-scented thought of purple sleep.
