Stork Bite

by Simonds, L. K.

  Cargie knelt beside him. “The iron harvest,” she said.

  “Is that what they call it?”

  “Yes sir. Read where one of these came into a plant with a load of turnips and killed three workers. Folks still dying every year from these things. Some of them are loaded with gas. Chlorine or mustard—awful stuff. Maybe these are, for all we know.”

  “Mercy,” said Thomas.

  They stayed at a fancy hotel in Sedan, and early the next morning they drove south to the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery at Romagne-sous-Montfaucon. “I’m sorry Bill never got to see this,” Cargie said. “Not just the cemetery. All of it, especially the countryside looking beautiful again. He would’ve liked that.”

  “He could’ve come over here.”

  Cargie sighed. “I reckon.”

  In the late afternoon, they sat in the cool inside the cemetery’s memorial building, admiring the light coming through tall, stained glass windows. Cargie took Bill Cole’s diary out of the big purse she brought on the trip. “I had in mind to read some of it here,” she said.

  “Sounds fine.”

  She opened the worn journal and read aloud.

  11 November 1918, Le Meuse, France

  Before daylight this morning we resumed heavy bombardment. I was with Wally and a 128th Infantry guy from Texas named Jesse. We were in the first advance. We scrambled from shell hole to shell hole and got pretty close to a German trench. We saw the parapet when the star shells went off. Only thing was the Germans spotted us and laid down machine gun fire, pinning us in the muddy pit.

  We lay low for a couple of hours. Dawn came on, and we wondered where the rest of the troops were. They should’ve been in the vicinity, but it looked like we’d advanced too far ahead and were stuck. The bombardment didn’t get stronger after daylight as we expected. Instead the artillery and mortars and machine gun fire slowed down—like popcorn slows popping when it’s done. We were in a jam. We settled into the mud because we’d get our heads blown off if we did anything else.

  Jesse said maybe they were putting an end to it, and we ruminated on that while the front fell quiet. We heard men shouting, and we thought we heard singing, but it sounded like it was coming from the German side, so we weren’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad one.

  Then there was a volley of artillery and the whiz of shrapnel, and Jesse caught a fragment in the neck. Wally leaped over to him—he was closer than me. I guess that’s all the sniper was waiting for because I instantly heard a shot and the thunk of a round hitting metal. Wally’s helmet flew off, and I thought that was it for my buddy. He collapsed against Jesse. I scrambled to them and put my hand on Jesse’s neck where Wally’s had been, but my fingers kept slipping off because of the blood and mud.

  I pulled Wally’s face out of the mud with my other hand. I tried to find where he was hit but had no luck at all. After a minute he started coming around and feeling the back of his head. I reckon the bullet hit on an angle and ricocheted right off his helmet. I set to whooping, and pretty soon Wally started whooping too. Even Jesse was grinning.

  I heard a rifle shot from behind us, and out of nowhere two guys jumped into the hole with us. One of them looked at Jesse’s neck wound and said the fragment missed the artery and Jesse was gonna make it. He started hollering for a stretcher-bearer. The other guy said he shot the sniper. They were from the 128th, Jesse’s company.

  Turned out the Germans had called for a cease-fire, and the higher-ups made a symbol out of the time and day. They signed the Armistice at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. I don’t know if you could call it a real victory or if they just decided to call off the war. It should’ve been a wonderful day for us, and it was, except for what happened to Chaplain Davitt.

  Chaplain Davitt really was about the best pastor I ever knew, bar none. To hear some people back home tell it, Catholics aren’t even saved, but Father Davitt was a first-rate Christian and very brave too. He had just hoisted the American flag and gave a big whoop for the war ending when some lousy Germans fired off an artillery shell and killed him. Everybody knew the war was over, but they killed him anyway. Some of the boys went after the Germans, but they were long gone by the time our guys got across to their side. Chaplain Davitt had the same Christian name as me—William.

  Wally and I and some of the guys sat on a parapet for a long time this evening and took a good look at No Man’s Land. We never could get a look at the whole thing while the fighting was going on because of the snipers. Such a wasteland never ought to exist. All the earth between our side and theirs was burnt black and blasted full of shell holes. There was just nothing left except barbed wire and ruination, and men from both sides were combing every foot of it for the wounded and the dead and the pieces. Sitting on that parapet this afternoon was the first time the awful smell of the place didn’t seem normal.

  I reckon God alone knows the number of men whose blood defiles this land. If Abel’s blood cried out from the ground, the scream from No Man’s Land must be earsplitting. And who will answer for them? I have no idea how long it will take to make this part of France green again, if it ever can be. War is Hell. We said it a hundred times a day. We kept repeating it because it’s true—Hell itself has nothing on the front line.

  I heard birds singing this afternoon. I think they were in a stand of poplars behind the German line. A few poplars that survived the bombardments. They’re all that’s left of a forest that must’ve shamed the thick pines in east Texas and Louisiana. Poplars are pretty trees, very tall and straight. The bark reminds me of the sycamores back home.

  Reckon I survived the war.

  Cargie closed the diary and looked up. Her eyes opened wide when she saw the crowd of visitors Thomas had been watching collect in a semicircle around them. Cargie would scold him later for not letting her know, but he didn’t because she would have gotten embarrassed and stopped reading.

  The crowd stood in silence for a time. No one, not even the children, moved or made a peep. Then a woman began to clap, slowly and respectfully, and the rest of them joined in. Thomas knew it was a moment these folks would remember for the rest of their lives. A moment they would tell their families and friends back home about. They would tell their children and grandchildren too.

  After the crowd broke up an elderly man came forward and held Cargie’s hand. He had tears in his eyes. “Merci,” he said. “Merci beaucoup.“

  “You’re welcome,” said Cargie.

  Thomas and Lydie had coffee in the sunroom. It was the room in which Rudy and Becca had played as children, the room in which they had fallen in love. As a teenager, Becca confided to her father about her blossoming feelings toward Rudy. She approached Thomas shamefaced because she thought she was confessing a sin. She thought Rudy was her brother, believing kinship to be a matter of proximity rather than blood. Becca was elated to learn that Rudy was no relation at all and could be hers. Thomas still chuckled every time he thought about that beaming face turned up to his.

  Lydie drank Community coffee with chicory, and she turned up her nose at every other brand. That was Lydie. Most folks could not stomach chicory anymore, even in Louisiana, but Thomas liked the charred, bitter finish just fine. Lydie loved everything that included lagniappe. That’s why she loved his Beef Bourguignon, although she didn’t know it. “If you’re makin’ a Bourguignon tonight, I’ll be there,” Lydie said. “You make it better than those snooty cooks at Cordon Bleu.” Lydie refused to call them chefs, even when she was in Paris on their home turf. That, also, was Lydie dead out. “You know you’re gonna tell me your secret ingredients one of these days,” she said.

  “Yes’m.” Thomas grinned. “Just not today.”

  When he got back to the house, Thomas spent half an hour spraying water on the yard and flower beds. It had been a dry autumn and warm. They had not had a freeze yet, and the bed plants were still going strong. Little Bit, a tiny piebald mutt who had showed up in late summer with more mats on her than mea
t, jumped and ran after the water so persistently that Thomas had to put her in the house to get the job done. He sprayed the dust off a row of crosscut pine rounds that marked the graves of the dogs they’d owned over the years. Seven of them altogether, beginning with Lazarus, and every one of them had died in Thomas’s arms. Afterward, he always walked to the lumberyard and picked out a pine round to mark the grave. And he always thought about Huck.

  As Thomas wound the garden hose back onto the holder that hung on the side of Pretty Mama’s house, he noticed the mismatched shiplap on the corner. He always noticed it. It had bothered him for half a century. He sighed and straightened his back. “Too late to worry about it now,” he said aloud. “Let it go, old man, will you?”

  He went inside to get the Bourguignon going so it could simmer in the oven through the afternoon. He smiled when he took the brown sugar and cayenne from the pantry. So simple, these two ingredients, but they sure had given a lot of pleasure over the years. He’d tried them in just about everything he cooked at one time or another.

  “Thomas, your fried chicken is the best. Better’n Mama’s, but don’t tell her.”

  “Daddy, make some of that sweet and hot bacon, please!“

  “What did you put in these collards? They’re delicious.”

  When the beef was in the oven, Thomas put away all the spices except the brown sugar and the cayenne, which he left out on a lark. He would not say a word about it, but he knew Lydie would notice. Finally, she would know his secret. What good were secrets anyway, if you never get to tell them?

  He sat in his recliner to read, and Little Bit hopped up and settled into his lap. Thomas had learned to love poetry in the Wylie College library. One of his favorite reads was an autographed first edition collection of Robert Frost’s poems. The children went in together and bought it for his ninetieth birthday. The book’s pages were yellowed and brittle, but it was still a sight younger than he was. Thomas enjoyed reading from it because it contained many of his favorite lines of verse.

  He rubbed the little dog’s head and asked, “How are you feeling today, little girl?” She looked up at him with the same adoration he had seen in the eyes of every dog he had ever shown kindness. “Would you like to hear some good poems?” Little Bit did not object to the idea, so Thomas read,

  We stood a moment so in a strange world,

  Myself as one his own pretense deceives;

  And then I said the truth (and we moved on).

  “I have a private interpretation of that one,” he told the dog, “You don’t mind if I skip around, do you?” Little Bit did not mind.

  Whose woods these are I think I know.

  His house is in the village though;

  He will not see me stopping here

  To see his woods fill up with snow.

  The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

  But I have promises to keep,

  And miles to go before I sleep,

  And miles to go before I sleep.

  “Can you picture it?” Thomas asked Little Bit. “I stopped on a snowy evening like that years ago. In a place that wasn’t mine.” He tenderly turned the stiff pages.

  I’d like to get away from earth awhile

  And then come back to it and begin over.

  May no fate willfully misunderstand me

  And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

  Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:

  I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.

  At odd times during the day, Thomas often thought about Cargie and what she was doing. Cargie, who never wanted to quit working, never had. Every weekday morning, she drove to the First City Bank building to work in the second-floor office of Cole-Pittman Enterprises. Thomas imagined her in a sparsely furnished room—Cargie hated clutter—sitting at a desk poring over financial records, sizing up young companies and keeping a watchful eye on old ones. It was pure conjecture. Thomas had never been to Cargie’s office. With respect to many things, their lives had been separate, but he did not think their hearts and minds could be closer.

  Little Bit snored and coughed and woke herself up. “Am I boring you?” Thomas asked. He gently closed the book and laid it on the occasional table beside his chair. “Reckon we’ll just have us a nap.” He pushed back in the recliner until his feet were up. It was a peaceful, quiet afternoon, and it did not seem there was anything at all that needed doing, at least not until the Bourguignon came out of the oven. Thomas and Little Bit closed their eyes and nodded off to sleep.

  Thus the thoughts of David Walker ended.

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Thomas died in October, which seemed to be the popular month for big events in his life. Lydie came early for supper and found his body in the recliner, the little dog still curled in his lap. She turned off the oven and waited with him until Cargie got home.

  “I need a minute,” Cargie said when Lydie said she would call an ambulance.

  “Take as long as you want. God knows he won’t be hisself again after the undertaker gets hold of him.” Lydie tried to pick up Little Bit, but she bared her teeth and snapped.

  “Leave her,” Cargie said. “She’s afraid.”

  Sometime during the fuss of the ambulance fetching Thomas’s body and Lydie Murphy hanging around until Cargie convinced her to go home, Little Bit peed by the back door. The tiny creature ducked her head and ran under the bed when Cargie found it. “It’s not your fault,” Cargie hollered toward the bedroom. “It’s not your fault,” she repeated quietly as she sopped up the mess. She dropped the rag and settled onto the floor, where she wept for a long time.

  When Cargie collected herself, she finished cleaning up the mess and hunted around for something to feed the dog. In all the years since Lazarus had arrived—all the years of Thomas adopting strays that thumped their tails every time they heard his voice—in all that time, Cargie had not paid one bit of mind to how he tended to the dogs. She rummaged through every cabinet, searching for dog food, but she did not find any. She considered calling Lydie to ask if she knew where Thomas kept it, but that would only bring her back to the house to help. Cargie finally gave up and scrambled an egg in bacon grease. The smell brought the dog into the kitchen, and Cargie scraped the egg onto a plate.

  “It’s hot, Little Bit. Got to let it cool a minute.”

  Little Bit’s tail wagged at the sound of her name, and she looked Cargie in the eye for the first time. Cargie placed the plate on the floor, and the dog gobbled the egg so hungrily that Cargie scrambled another one, this time with cheese.

  That night Cargie put the dog up on the bed to sleep with her, but Little Bit would not stay. She jumped down and left the room, and Cargie found her in Thomas’s chair with her head resting on her paws. “You’re breaking my heart,” Cargie said.

  The next morning, the house filled up with children and grandchildren and neighbors, and Cargie and Little Bit retreated to the bedroom. Cargie pulled Thomas’s clothes out of the hamper and off the hangers in the closet and piled them on the bed. She put Little Bit on top of the pile and watched the dog burrow in. Then Cargie lay down too and buried her nose in his scent. “How are we ever gonna make it?” she whispered. Little Bit did not have an answer.

  Zion Rest Cemetery was not what it used to be, but Thomas and Cargie had agreed they wanted to be planted together in Mooretown, where their lives had been. So here Cargie stood, inside the rundown fence. A considerable crowd of mourners waited quietly for the preacher to begin. The air had taken on the chill of evening, and the sun cast long shadows.

  Once the preacher got going, he talked and talked. This young pastor had a lot to say, and Cargie’s thoughts drifted while he was getting it all out. What was she supposed to do now? Thomas had left her suddenly, without giving her a chance to get used to the idea of being alone.

  The preacher finally finished and it was time to sing Thomas’s favorite hymn. David stood and helped his mother to her feet, even though she cou
ld have stood up just fine by herself. Cargie was self-conscious about her singing voice, and she asked Thomas to forgive her for only mouthing the words.

  Amazing grace! How sweet the sound,

  That saved a wretch; like me!

  I once was lost, but now am found,

  Was blind, but now I see.

  Cargie looked around in the dying light. Across the highway, the emerald rolling fairways of the Shreveport Country Club golf course caught her eye. Wispy white fog had collected in the low places. Vapors rose from the sun-warmed earth into the cooling air, making the golf course seem enchanted. While Cargie watched, shadowy specters appeared within the white mist. Thin and ethereal, they moved slowly toward one another. Congregating. Cargie closed her eyes, and the a cappella voices of Thomas’s mourners continued,

  Through many dangers, toils, and snares,

  I have already come;

  ‘Tis grace that brought me safe thus far,

  And grace will lead me home.

  Cargie opened her eyes again. Her imagination had ceased its trickery, and the apparitions on the golf course had vanished. “Go on now, David,” she whispered. “Go on home. I’ll be along directly.”

  “What’s that, Mama?” David, her son, asked.

  “It’s nothing, baby.” Cargie slipped her arm through his. “Your mama’s muttering like an old woman.”

  The visitation dragged on through the evening, and Cargie was distracted by the thought that she needed to go and get Thomas. He would be cold out there in the night. She knew he was past feeling the cold, but it still disturbed her to leave him there alone.

  She and Little Bit retreated to the bedroom again, but Cargie was restless. She looked through Thomas’s dresser drawers. She pulled boxes from the top shelf of the closet and opened them. One was filled with letters and cards from Zachary Tatum and a few from his brother Luke. Zachary’s correspondence had arrived from all over the world. Luke’s was from a rural box. She carried an envelope out to the hallway, looking for one of her children to get Luke Tatum’s telephone number.