by James R Benn
“I—it caught me off guard, that’s all.”
He shook off Chris’s hand on his arm. Who the hell did he think he was anyway, his nursemaid? The sudden movement left him unbalanced and he wobbled, slipping in the damp grass, regaining his footing after a brief flail with both arms. He felt his face flush, his mouth turned down in a grim frown. He wanted to go home, fed up with this foolishness. Bob was dead days now, put his body in the ground and be done with it. He didn’t look at Chris, or Addy. He watched as the folded flag was handed to Joanne, who cradled it in her hands.
“Let’s go,” Clay said, and stalked off to the car. Chris could take care of Addy, he’d only be in the way.
Bob and Joanne’s house was filled with people. Joanne’s house now, Clay corrected himself. Wonder if she’ll move. Florida? In with her daughter? Or will she stay here, with the memories embedded in the walls along with the family photographs and pictures of Bob in uniform? A small snapshot in a standup frame stood on the mantle. A black and white, nearly faded, of Bob in khaki, standing in front of a tent, a big grin spread across his face.
Clay sat next to Addy on the couch in the living room. Folding chairs were everywhere and people scurried busily between rooms, trays of food, bottles of liquor, cakes on platters, all being transported to the kitchen and then dispersed throughout the house.
“Clay, ah could eat somethin’” Addy said. When she said his name, she had to roll it around so it would come out right. It sounded like two words, Cla – ay. Clay smiled, hiding his secret wish that Addy might recover, speak clearly, walk easily with him. He felt ashamed, but couldn’t stop himself from wishing it. He patted her knee, pushed himself up and off the couch with a grunt, and walked through the narrow archway into the kitchen.
Nodding at people he knew he should know the names of, Clay shuffled along in line, paper plate in hand, scanning the mounds of food set out on the kitchen table. Addy liked little bites, things that were easy to chew on one side of her mouth. Especially in public. He chose chicken salad for her, a small roll with roast beef for himself. He wasn’t hungry, but it gave him something to do.
In the living room, Joanne was in his seat and Addy was holding her hand.
“…blessin’. Coulda been so much wor…wor…been so bad,” Addy said to her. Some words defeated her entirely. Clay was never certain if she couldn’t say them or couldn’t remember how they ended. Either way, she was right. Bob was too young to go, but who was to say a sudden stroke now was worse than a lingering disease five years from now? It had been quick, out on the sidewalk on Colony Street, right after a cup of coffee at his favorite diner.
“I know, dear,” Joanne said, “I know. Like Marcy Stevens, her husband had brain cancer. He wasn’t the same man after the operation, and she cared for him day and night. I don’t know if I could—” Joanne stopped, suddenly aware of Clay standing in front of them, holding two plates of food. She hesitated, not knowing what to say next. It wasn’t her place to comment on the ability of people to take care of each other, not with Clay and Addy.
“Here, Clay, sit down,” she said, halfway up before he put a hand on her shoulder.
“You stay, Joanne,” he said, as he handed Addy her plate. “I can eat a sandwich standing up. I’m not that decrepit.”
“Yet,” said Addy. She smiled her odd half smile, as if she wore that theater mask, half comedy, half tragedy.
“Sweetie,” Joanne said, leaning her shoulder against Addy’s, “I’m glad you’re here. I can use all the laughs I can get.”
“You an’ me both,” Addy said, raising a forkful of chicken salad to her mouth. That cracked them both up, it was so funny in a sad and unintended kind of way. Clay smiled, felt good for the first time that day. The grieving widow and the stroke victim, yukking it up. Good for them. He grabbed an empty folding chair and pulled it over, put his plate down on it.
“Can I get either of you a drink?” he asked.
“What are you, a bartender?” Joanne asked. For some reason, this was even funnier than the last crack, and they hooted. People turned their heads, wondering who was disrupting the solemn occasion. Joanne cupped her hand over her mouth and buried her head on her knees. Clay, worried she was sobbing, put his hand on her shoulder. She popped up, looked around the room, looked at Addy, and they started all over again.
Sometimes you just gotta let them laugh at you. Like that time they took over some K Company foxholes outside of—where was that—Durier, maybe. Kraut artillery was dropping all around them, and everyone raced for the foxholes. Clay jumped in the nearest one, landing right in a pile of shit. The foxholes were about five yards apart, but everyone heard him yelling and cussing. The previous occupant had taken a crap into an empty D-Ration box, common enough when getting out of your foxhole for any reason meant a sniper’s bullet or an artillery barrage. Usual practice was to toss the box out, but this guy must’ve done his duty right before pulling out, and left it, maybe because he forgot or maybe he was a real bastard.
The whole squad laughed at him for two days. All they had to do was look at him and they’d burst out laughing. He was mad at first, then irritated, then he gave up. If it was good for a laugh, so what? He came back with a scotch and soda for them both. A good bartender knows.
He sipped his own drink, good bourbon from a bottle he had given Bob for a birthday present last year. It stinks when your whisky outlives you. He looked at the empty glass and was about to get another when Joanne leaned forward from the couch. She was laughed out now, eyes red with tears, spent. She rubbed her hands together, massaging aching knuckles and trying to bring back any of the warmth they had once held.
“Clay, I want you to know how much it meant to Bob that you two patched things up, or whatever happened. Maybe you just put it aside, I don’t know, and I don’t care. You were there when he needed you. You both were.” She turned and grasped Addy’s good hand. “You were a good friend to him, Clay.”
He couldn’t speak. He took her other hand and the three of them sat there, faces set in grim smiles, connected to each other through death in more ways than Clay dared count. After twenty-two years of not speaking, of not acknowledging each other on the street, at ball games, restaurants, anywhere their paths might cross, Clay had heard the news. Bob and Joanne’s boy Gary, their oldest, had been killed in a car accident. Clay drove over to their house, this house, with Addy nervously standing behind him. She and Joanne had not been party to what had driven the men apart, but had drifted apart themselves, the gulf between their husbands too great for them to bridge alone. The house had been full then too, cops and casseroles wall to wall. Clay found Bob and said, “I’m sorry, Bob,” and it was all over. Clay and Addy entered their grief and stayed on, as if the intervening decades were just a blip, a little misunderstanding that no one even remembered.
Clay let her hand go, sat back in his chair, contented. Thank God I did something right.
Chris drifted into the room, trailed by two young boys, somebody’s nephews, Clay couldn’t remember whose. Chris was holding a bottle of beer and answering their excited questions about the State Police.
“Auntie,” the older boy said to Joanne, “did you know Mr. Brock is a detective? A real State Police detective?”
“Yes, Matthew, I think I did know that,” Joanne said. These are Mr. Brock’s parents. Say hello, boys.”
They managed a nod towards Clay and Addy, too excited to complete their manners.
“Uncle Bob got a twenty-one gun salute, didn’t he?” Matthew said. He and his brother had managed to pick up a handful of shell casings after the funeral, which had turned out to be much more interesting than they had ever hoped when they realized the soldiers were going to fire their guns.
“No, not exactly,” said Chris. He squatted down, so he could look at them directly. “A twenty-one gun salute is fired all at once, and it’s only for presidents. Today the seven soldiers fired three times, but it’s not the same thing.”
“Why
not?”
“It’s an old custom from the Civil War. Back then, they used to stop battles to pick up the wounded and the dead from the battlefield.”
“Wow,” said Michael, the younger of the two. “Dead army men?”
“Yep,” said Chris, “and when they were all done, and the dead were all carried away and safe, each side would fire a volley of seven shots, three times.”
“Why?” asked Michael.
“It meant that they had taken care of their dead, and could start up the battle again.”
“You mean they weren’t done, even if they had dead army men?” Michael screwed up his face, as if he were trying to see all his plastic army men in their greens and browns and camouflage colors, spread out on the ground, killed.
A chair scraped back on the floor, and Michael jumped, startled by the sudden noise.
“Sorry, kid,” Clay said, standing up. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
He retreated to the kitchen, clutching his empty plastic cup in his hand, making his way back to the bourbon. Scared? All the stories, shocks, surprises in the world couldn’t scare you as much as one day, no, one hour out there.
Dead fucking army men, all right. They had no idea.
Chapter Four
1945
Jake awoke, head jammed up against jagged clods of cold earth, the rear rim of his helmet pressing into his neck. His feet scraped the other end of the foxhole, inches from Clay’s head. There wasn’t room enough for the two men to lay down any other way in the cramped coffin-shaped hole. It was deep though, and Jake liked deep, appreciated the ground when it didn’t offer up boulders or tree roots the size of his leg. This was fine ground to dig in. Lying down, he had a good sixteen inches up to the parapet and open air. He twisted, feeling the pine boughs beneath him, catching their sharp odor as he crushed the needles with his weight.
Above him were three thick logs, covered on top with layers of soft piney branches. Digging it out, they had built up the sides with the dirt and laid logs across the top, leaving enough room to slide in at the rear, and enough at the front to aim and fire. It was a good hole, as holes went. Not much snow got in, and it was too cold for mud. Way too fucking cold.
Jake checked his candle. Set inside a hole carved into the side of the foxhole, it nestled at the bottom, large enough for him to stick his hands in. He dug into his jacket pocket, pulled out his Zippo, removed his mitten, and flicked the lighter. Once, twice, it lit on the third try. No one had lighter fluid anymore, and Jake had filled the lighter with Calvados in Normandy, cognac in Trois Ponts, and schnapps in some farmhouse last week. Clay had made a joke about the lighter getting lit more than they did, or something like that, but Jake couldn’t remember what was funny about it. He lit the wick and snapped the Zippo shut. Clink.
“Toss it over.” Clay was awake too. He tossed it, and Clay reached over Jake’s boots into his own hole in the wall, lighting his candle stub. Frosted breath flowed from Clay’s face, like a steam engine at rest.
Jake took off his other mitten, then both gloves. He blew on his bare hands, and stared at the candlelight, encased in the little hole. He watched the spark at the tip of the wick, concentrating on the thin blue light that shown down from it, and the supple yellow flame that seemed to float above it, incredibly bright at its center, a spear point of hope. He slowly edged his hands into the hole, on either side of the candle, until his fingertips touched.
He felt warmth. Not the absence of cold, but real warmth, the feel of hot sun on his palms, reaching between his fingers, easing the pain, thawing his hopelessness, caressing him. The warmth settled into the base of his fingers, gathering in the swirls of flesh until it was almost unbearable. Not the heat, but everything else. Knowing he’d have to leave here, first his hands back out into the frigid air, then his body. Exposed to cold, steel, shrapnel, fear, loss. He rested his helmeted head on the wall of the foxhole, feeling as if he were at prayer, afraid of tears.
You weren’t supposed to have a light in a foxhole. Any little pinprick of light, even a faint glow, and Kraut gunners somewhere would get an order from an observation post for a fire mission. They’d probably curse and stumble out of their foxholes, saying Fuck it’s cold out here in German, load up their 88s or 75s or mortars, drop a half dozen rounds on you, then go back and try to sleep if they could, maybe have a smoke and curse you for being so stupid, getting spotted and making them go out into the cold and kill you.
So no warmth, no fires. But everyone had their candles. If you were dumb enough to let it be seen, by the Krauts or an officer, well then you wouldn’t be around too long, so enjoy it while you got it. Jake and Clay were smart though, plenty smart. Brains enough to know they needed these tiny flames, needed to draw warmth from somewhere, and brains enough to keep it well hid, burrowed deep, their bright shining secret.
“Hey, you guys,” Tuck whispered hoarsely. He was ten yards behind them, squatting down, not daring the slight rise in the forest floor that would expose half of his head to the unknown.
“Yeah,” said Clay, squirming around to face the rear opening.
“Company cooks are bringing joe up, ‘bout a hundred yards back. Ammo truck too.”
“Fuck,” said Clay.
“Shit,” said Jake, blowing out his candle. Hot coffee, extra ammo and they had found the MLR yesterday. He rolled up his blanket, grabbed his pack and his M1, and followed Clay out of the foxhole. A couple of inches of new snow had fallen last night, covering the log-reinforced foxholes around them. It looked peaceful, soft, white and gentle. They stumbled out into it, running low, dirty and brown, a collection of rags bound by webbing, belts, canvas ammo pouches tied over their shoulders, field packs worn high on the back, knives, canteens and more ammo hung from belts, softly clinking and clunking as they ran.
Strands of sunlight broke through clouds, forcing them apart like a pry bar lifting granite. Clay squinted up at the unfamiliar sun as he walked alongside Jake, his belly full of lukewarm coffee and oatmeal, his pockets stuffed with grenades and extra clips of .30 caliber ammo. He looked around and saw the whole company on the move, on the road that led into the woods, and out on the flanks too. Probably other companies moving up with them, headed for the MLR. He shook his head, driving that thought out, no reason to worry about it right now.
He went back to thinking about food. Guys groused about the coffee not being hot, but Clay knew it was impossible to keep it hot after it was brewed at the Company kitchen a mile back. He was grateful to have it, happy that somebody went to the trouble of cooking for him. Clay knew about going without, knew what an bare table looked like, knew the feel of an empty stomach, and the loneliness of an empty kitchen. He knew enough that he never complained about something not being quite right. It was there, and he was glad. He might bitch if there was nothing, which he had every right to do. But when the cooks poured coffee with the last few pitiful remnants of steam swirling above the surface, and plopped oatmeal almost ready to congeal into the consistency of cement into his mess tin, he smiled and said thanks, buddy, and moved on.
There was a lot about the Army Clay didn’t like, but it always fed him, and that was something he took with a seriousness that only someone who had gone without could muster.
Gone without. Funny when you thought about it. Gone. He hadn’t gone anywhere, just stayed at home. Stayed after they’d buried his Mama, dead of consumption in the winter of 1936. Stayed with his older brother when his Dad told them there was enough food in the larder for two weeks, then walked down the road to get to Nashville somehow, where his cousin had promised him a job. He’d write, send for them. Teddy would have to get a job, whatever he could find, to keep them in beans until then. Dad never made it. The railroad police found him dead in an empty freight car on a sideline in Topeka. Rolled for two bits and his shoes, hit a little harder than the bindlestiff meant to, but that was that. Cops came to the door one day with the news, the bank came the next. Teddy couldn’t earn enough in a year to pay
what they owed, even if he had found work. That was a bad winter, but then again, so was this one.
Well, no mama, no poppa, no home, not even a big brother no more, with Teddy lost deep in the Pacific, off the Solomons, since his cruiser went down in ’43. Clay felt the losses rip through him, as he shook a couple of cigarettes loose, giving one to Jake, who lit his, then Clay’s, with his Zippo. The pain was fresh and new, as if right now he were standing over his Mama’s open grave, reading the telegram from the War Department as the Sheriff brought him the news from Topeka. The sudden realization. He was the last of them.
“Fuck,” said Clay.
“You said it, brother.”
Jake inhaled and blew out blue smoke mixed with frosted breath. The trucks hadn’t brought only chow and ammo. They brought replacements, and Jake stared at the three who had been assigned to their squad. They looked the same, they all looked the same when they climbed down off the truck. Twenty of them, clean, scared, wide eyed, huddled together, their shiny new helmets impossibly huge on thin, freshly-shaven faces.
Jake looked at Clay, Shorty, Tuck, Big Ned. They looked like hell, like something out of a monster movie. Filthy, unshaven, bristling with death. A dull, sullen stare, unfocused, the kind of stare you hoped didn’t land on you if you didn’t know the guy. Even Miller, a few paces behind Big Ned, burdened with ammo pouches bulging with BAR clips, was starting to look worn and mean. No wonder they looked so scared. They’d probably shit their pants when they saw the Krauts.
“You guys,” Jake said, pointing at the three replacements, feeling like he was talking to children. “Don’t bunch up.”
He watched as they split apart, and in a minute were back together, whispering, looking around at the men spread out on the road on either side of them, the thick fir trees towering above their heads. Jake felt pity for the poor bastards. They had been dumped off trucks after a night on the road and parceled off to squads in twos and threes, finding themselves in the company of wraiths; men festooned with grenades, knives, belts of machine gun ammo, caked in dirt, week-old beards obscuring faces, eyes darting out to the horizon, not lingering on human company. They looked like they came from a different army, a horde from the forest, acclimated to the terrain of death. Their helmets were battered, painted olive-drab with sawdust grit mixed in the take off that shiny glare. They smelled.
