by Bryan Young
When we arrived at the tree, LeBeau spread my hospital blanket on the ground. We passed the red wine between us, taking swigs right from the bottle. It was a deep red and dry with a sweetness to it that made us want to keep drinking.
“It haunts me,” LeBeau said, his eyes already twinkling from the spirits.
“What does?” I pulled my own long draught from the bottle.
“The sound of it. The pictures in my head I can handle, it’s the sounds that make it bad.”
“Are you doing all right?”
“Non. I’ve been far from right since our first jump. I just put on a good show. I’ve always just put on a good show.”
“I don’t believe it. The great Andre LeBeau?” I handed him the wine and he took it.
“That’s just the story we tell those who weren’t there and don’t know it like we do. Do you remember the sounds they made as we burned them? I’m not just talking about the screaming that’s heard all around the battlefield. It was the grésillement. The sizzling of the flames on their flesh. That squeal like you’re overcooking a steak, high pitched like they’d pop from boiling.”
He kicked his head back with the cask in his mouth, taking a long, slow swig.
“For me,” I told him, “the sound was bad, but it was the smell that was worst. I hated it at first. It turns my stomach now to think I grew to like it as much as the smell of a hog on a roasting spit.”
“Smell is always worse. It brings the memory back stronger.”
“Oui,” I said.
My heart throbbed in my chest, circulating unexplained anger through my being.
True to form, LeBeau found something to smile about. “Let us not speak of such bad things anymore. I wanted your company, and now I have it. There is no sense in wasting it by drowning in our sorrow. Tell me something happy.”
“Happy things take more effort.”
“I know, but there must be some joy here for you. What of that nurse of yours?”
“She’s beautiful and kind and caring, the sweetest creature I’ve ever known, and I think I’m in love, but, sadly, she’s not my nurse.”
He asked about my real nurse, and I told him how caring a person Hortense was, but how incompetent a nurse, but he didn’t like that line of conversation any more than the talk about the war. It wasn’t pleasant and it wasn’t going to lift my spirits, so he went back to talk about the positive.
And the only positive at the hospital, aside from the fact that I wasn’t dead, was Sara.
“If you love this nurse then I will keep my distance. I was going to ask if you thought I had a chance with her.”
“No,” I said.
He laughed at my quick response.
I had to laugh, too. It was silly to be so concerned, especially since she had no knowledge of my feelings or intentions.
The beauty of LeBeau is that he reads men like books. I knew he was on to me when he asked, “Does she know of this love? Or is it a secret flame?”
“Do secret flames burn less bright than known ones?”
“Isn’t that the thing of a secret? That it’s hidden in the dark? Because if you haven’t told her, then maybe I do fancy a chance with her.”
As much as I tried to choke it down, I panicked, wanting to preserve my chance to win her. “She’s not so easy as all that. I should know, Andre.”
“No one said it would be easy. Why should it be easy? Anything too easy to do isn’t worth doing, oui?”
“I just think she’s not that sort of girl,” I said.
“After what I’ve seen, I almost believe they’re all that sort of girl.”
“Shut up. That’s the wine talking.”
“Wine doesn’t talk. I do,” LeBeau said.
“You don’t know what you’re saying. She’s not like that at all. You’d have to see her here, day in, day out. She’s the epitome of love and care. It’s marvelous, really, what she goes through.”
After a time left in silence, LeBeau looked down at the emptied wine bottle. “Do you have more wine, old friend?”
“No. Renault could only manage one cask by my nurse. She aims to keep me temperate. I’ll see if he can bring more the next time he visits. And you should bring some the next time you see me as well.”
LeBeau suppressed a laugh. “That’s the terrible nurse you told me of?”
“Yes. You don’t still have your flame rifle do you?”
“Non,” he said sadly.
“Damn. That would have made my life much easier.”
“You don’t mean that.”
I nodded my head. I really didn’t. She deserved better, she just needed to be relieved of duty.
LeBeau stood, wobbly from the wine, and stretched, yawning like a house cat tired from his latest nap. If the alcohol was affecting him thusly, he must have been drinking long before visiting me, as I knew him to be a man able to hold his libations.
What else was there for him to do but drink himself into happiness? We’d all tried it with varying degrees of success, always forgetting that alcohol exacerbated depression.
“Where will you go?” I asked him.
“I suppose they will toss me at the Germans eventually. But that can wait since they don’t quite know what to do with us Aeronauts. Until then I’m on a pass to stay in town. What of you?”
“I don’t know. The doctor says I heal well, but...” I shrugged.
“I hope you don’t find yourself re-wounded any time soon. Or ever again at all, really.”
“How would I manage to do that?”
“I’m not sure. But I could very easily see you getting hurt to extend your stay with her and to foil any chances I might have had.”
LeBeau spoke with a smile on his face. I wanted to say something to warn him off, but bit my tongue: a difficult deed for a man with the firm grasp of wine around his heart and throat. I had no provenance over her, no claim to her.
In fact, the whole conversation made me feel ashamed, like we were speaking of her like bidding for property at an auction.
Perhaps LeBeau could sense my uneasiness. “Don’t worry of it tonight, Preston. We can draw straws for her another time. I’ll leave you to your healing. Come, let me help you.”
Before I knew it, LeBeau had helped me back up to my feet, and I found myself with the cane under my right arm and my left arm around his neck.
LeBeau deposited me back into my bed. “Au revoir, Preston, my friend. I will do what I can about that flame rifle. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll bring some nice chianti; surely that takes the sting out of dealing with the wicked.”
He smiled broadly at me, leaned down, and kissed me on both of my cheeks.
“Au revoir, my friend,” I told him reluctantly. I wish there had been no reluctance, but something had unsettled me. My guts were a machine every bit as precise and enigmatic as my old jump pack; someone else cobbled all the appropriate pieces together, assured me that it would function properly, and told me to go.
My mind tore into three equal parts, each of them competing for dominance. The first part of me was happier than I’d been since the whole war started. LeBeau was alive, and seeing him brought me great relief and joy. Somehow, the war had spared him and that was something to celebrate.
The second part of me was filled with tangled nerves. The thought of Sara welcoming the advances of someone so worthy as LeBeau caused me a great amount of heartburn. Each of them had the most open, loving hearts I’d ever met. If they met and talked, of course they’d fall in love. He was a better man, and if he really set his sights on her, he’d win.
That led to the final part of the mess in my head, which was consumed with doubt about my own chances with winning Sara.
Did I have anything to offer her?
LeBeau left the hospital in good cheer, but the feelings he’d stirred inside me did not go with him.
13
There were long days with the doctor ahead, trying to get me walking better, changing my bandages, advanc
ing my progress. My days in hospital were dwindling and I was of two minds about it. The sooner I left, the sooner I’d be out of Hortense’s control. She was getting worse all the time. The next time Renault arrived with a bottle of wine, she knew it somehow. She waited for his visit to end and then had me taken on a therapeutic walk, which seemed too nice, even for her. When I got back I found the bottle missing. My efforts to subvert her had to grow in sophistication and it was exhausting. The cognitive dissonance required to tolerate Hortense’s cheery disposition and terrible nursing took its toll, and I wanted to get out.
On the other hand, the sooner I was in fighting shape, the sooner I would be expected to fight again. But that wasn’t as bad as one simple truth: once I was out of the hospital for good, I’d have no reason to see Sara every day.
LeBeau’s strategy rattled around the computation engine of my brain. I could wound myself again, pop my stitches, jostle my broken bones, something.
I opted against that. You never knew what the French would shoot a man for cowardice over.
Regardless, I knew I was sooner to the end of the my hospital stay than the beginning, so I needed to find time to talk to Sara. But whenever I came to find the time, it seemed as though Renault or LeBeau popped in to visit.
Do not mistake me: I was truly grateful for their friendship. They were the only two people I knew that were still alive and had been through the same horrible things I’d been through. Not counting those in the beds around me, anyway. It wasn’t hard to get hot in the cheeks, taking long swigs from the heavy jugs of wine they would bring, and get roaring about the news from the war.
Germany couldn’t quite reach the French or British capitals, nor could we reach theirs. Zeppelins made it to London once or twice, but they were brought down quickly before they could do much harm. But damage was damage. Other stories told of new German chemicals and armored steam machines that could roll over barbed wire. Different stories spread of entire coastal neighborhoods in England that were bombed out and everyone killed, save those who made it underground. LeBeau and Renault were both convinced these stories were fabrications of the Kaiser and his propaganda effort. None of us had any idea what was true and what wasn’t, so we believed more of what we wanted to and less of what we didn’t.
True or not, bombing a few coastal neighborhoods wasn’t going to turn the tide of war in their favor, though the tanks might. The prospects for the forces of good didn’t look all that great, either.
In short, things were at a standstill. News of the war, good, bad, or stalemate, always harmed my emotional well being. I just wanted it all to be over. I couldn’t handle the constant back and forth between the Central Powers and the Triple Entente. Some days, I didn’t even care which side won because when the uncertainty ended, I would be the winner.
Politics bored me, so I focused on getting better, and my healing went well in spite of Hortense and the doctor.
When Hortense wasn’t poking her fingers into my most tender spots of flesh, she scolded me in French for drinking as much wine as I had. For his part, the doctor would come over and make grim pronouncements in French I barely understood. I’d pick up words here and there, but more than anything I got the impression he wanted me out of his hospital to make room for some poorer soul than me.
If mistreatment by Hortense and the Doctor were the subject and predicate of my misery, the absence of Sara in my life beyond salutations was the exclamation point on those sentences that filled the long days.
I spent my free time, unmolested by the nurses, doctors, friends, or well wishers, staring out at that tree up on the grassy hill, imagining what things would be like between the two of us if I ever found the courage to ask Sara for that walk again and the time to actually make it happen.
My first real chance finally came at the end of one late autumn afternoon, when the leaves on the tree had turned a thousand shades of orange and yellow. Things were quiet in the hospital. Most of the wounded were napping in the last bits of warmth of the day, and Sara was just getting off of her shift. I almost didn’t see her before she left. I should have been getting my rest like the others. Healing is tiring work. Had I not been so concerned about catching a glance of her, I certainly would have been asleep, rosy from a nip of chianti and content in the glowing orange sunlight.
But this was a chance I couldn’t miss.
I collected the bottle of wine that LeBeau and Renault had procured for me and the two glasses I’d tucked away over meals for just such a getaway. I hid it all beneath my blanket in one hand and set out for the foyer with the help of my cane in the other.
Her back was turned to me. Her shoulders were hunched slightly, tired from a long day of caring for us. She raised her hands up over her head and pulled the pins from her hair, letting it all down. The way she looked there, standing in the soft fall light, weary, with her hair pouring down her back was a vision.
Another image etched forever into my memory.
“Sara?” I said, meekly.
She whipped around on her heels, startled by my voice.
“Preston? Oh, dear, please don’t sneak up on me like that. You could have been anybody.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
She must have expected me to say something else, because her head turned slightly on its side like a puppy trying to understand its human. “Did you... need something?”
Gathering my strength from a thousand spots inside my will as a bee collects pollen, I was finally able to softly, timidly make my request. “Sara. Would you like to take that walk with me?”
The effort required to summon the courage to ask her was more difficult than jumping over a trench, and even more difficult than aiming straight up for the German zeppelin that had landed me in the hospital in the first place. Now that the words were out, I glanced left, right, and behind me, waiting for something to snatch her attention from me.
But there was only stillness.
Neither Hortense nor the doctor arrived to demand her attention.
LeBeau and Renault were nowhere in sight.
There was nothing for her to do but respond.
As with the war itself, it was the uncertainty I couldn’t stand. The suspense ate at me until she spoke.
“Why not?” she said with that comforting tone to her voice.
This moment was my most valiant victory in the entire war.
She sidled up beside me as we made our way out into the dwindling daylight. She was careful not to make any physical contact, and I assumed she was trained to make sure she didn’t give me the wrong impression.
“What’s the blanket for?” she asked.
“I thought we might sit.”
Sara offered a timid smile and ambled with me up the path to that lone tree on the hill.
This long walk up the knoll is one of the few, fond, doe-eyed memories I have of this whole affair. This might be the episode that has survived my anger, wrath, and stupidity the least scathed, but that disappointed sadness manages to creep its way in, even in the most idealized of scenes.
I ignored the pain of walking and we made it to the top with no trouble. Standing next to her in the dwindling light of the sun in the French countryside, it was easy to forget about the strain.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
“The view?” she asked.
“Everything.”
As we reached the summit, I dropped the blanket to the ground, revealing my secret wine and the glasses for us.
She took the tone of mock-offense. “Monsieur Preston...”
“I’m found out.”
Her head turned, and she weighed me suspiciously with the sides of her eyes. “Preston, has this been your plan the entire time?”
I shrugged. “I wanted to talk, and wine makes talking easier. Surely you knew how this might go.”
“Maybe I didn’t.” Her voice sounded suspicious, but her cheeks flushed red.
“You wouldn’t have denied so simple
a request from a wounded soldier, would you?”
She knelt down, helping to smooth the blanket, pulling it at the corners and avoiding the question altogether. “How ever in the world have you kept that wine away from Hortense without the help of your friends? Is prestidigitation a hobby of yours?”
“No, there was no magic involved. It was really a very simple trick. I convinced a couple of other fellows to hold on to it while she made her search.”
“How clever.”
“I suppose. But now you know my secret, and you’ll have to help me keep it from Hortense. You’re a party to it now, an accomplice.”
She laughed.
With the white hospital blanket smoothed over the grass, we both sat down. We reveled in the last vestiges of sunlight as it descended toward its final goodbye for the day.
As I got to the wine bottle, panic struck me. The small details were always the most damning, and I felt the fool all over again: I didn’t have a corkscrew. Muttering a curse under my breath, I took a moment before deciding to push the cork into the bottle, which worked rather well.
Pleased with myself, I poured the red nectar into the first glass and handed it to her.
“I really shouldn’t.” She pushed the glass away from her.
“Why not?”
“Well, what if the others see? What if they get jealous?”
“Let them get jealous. It’s just wine. Everyone drinks wine. We’re in France.”
“But what if they all want to drink wine out here with me? I’ll never get any work done. They’ll be lined up for days.”
“Half of them can’t stand well enough to come out here with you, so it wouldn’t matter much anyway.”
Her bottom lip curled over, pouting innocently. “I just don’t want them to feel left out.”
Of course that’s what she’d say. She couldn’t help it.
She cared so deeply about everyone, no matter how inconsequential they might have seemed to me. And it wasn’t just everyone in the hospital, it was everyone in the entire war. She always got teary eyed speaking of the casualty rates and the loss of life and the meaninglessness of it.
