by Bryan Young
“I didn’t feel like I had much of a choice. Where do you think the Kaiser is coming next if he finishes off Europe?”
“You can’t lie to me, Preston. Not anymore,” she said softly but matter-of-fact. “It wasn’t all that and I know it. You’ve kept from me why you really came all this time, haven’t you?”
Had I been that transparent?
Maybe so. “My heart weighed me down from hurt, so I wanted to see if the rest of me could fly. I wanted to train as a jumper in the States, but we weren’t getting into the war. President Wilson seems to think we ought to stay out of foreign conflicts, and if I didn’t come to fly and fight, I’d be useless.”
She gave me that sideways look and half-smile that told me she knew I was lying. “And you’ve still managed to say without saying. What were you running from, Monsieur?”
“What makes you think I was running from something?”
“The way you avoid talking about it. And the hurt behind your eyes when you’re consumed by not talking about it. Who was she?”
“She was no one.” That statement had never been more true. “For a time, I thought Lucy was the love of my life. I thought I’d grow old with her, but we were so young we didn’t know what growing old meant. And her parents didn’t approve of me. They did everything they could to take her from me.”
Sara moved a stray hair from in front of her face, her eyebrows pinched together in concern, and she smiled sadly. “I’m afraid the war’s going to make sure a lot of people don’t know what growing old means.”
As if to accentuate her quiet observation, an agonized squeal could be heard from the hospital, muted through the closet.
Sara’s attention shifted to the door, but I placed my hand on hers, stopping her thought there. “Do you have to go?”
Her eyes moved back and forth, evaluating me. She was judging me, weighing my intentions. Finally, her gaze shifted upward and she smiled, letting out a breath of relief. “No. I suppose I don’t.”
My finger, already on her hand, traced a line up her arm, across her shoulder and up to her cheek.
She shivered beneath my touch. “I deserve something for myself, even in the middle of all this, don’t I?”
Our bodies inched closer. “Why wouldn’t you?”
I couldn’t help but notice the perfect bow shape of her lips as she spoke, chewing her bottom lip when she finished. “You know you’re the only one I talk to like this. These moments we steal, they’re not for you.”
“Who are they for, then?”
“They’re for me, you silly man. I’m just as selfish as you are.”
“I’d never know it, seeing you at work.”
“What I do in the hospital is what I came here for, but even that I do selfishly.”
“Why then?”
“Because I want to know if another lovesick boy like my James makes it here, gassed and dying, that they’d have a friendly face and soft, loving eyes to look at before they go.”
And just like that, I loved her even more.
Just as I’d mustered the courage to lean in for another kiss, the door to the closet swung open, and there stood Nurse Hortense, surprise etched onto her face.
“Nurse Baker,” she said quitely in her bad English, “It is time to change dressings.”
My moment shared with Sara was over.
15
Aside from Hortense, the only real trouble I had in those last few weeks came one overcast afternoon when Renault and LeBeau each came to visit. It was too brisk for me to want to go outside, the cold served no purpose other than to ache my stiff joints and seep into my scars, and so I stayed in bed that day.
Renault came in to the hospital first, outfitted in dress blues and wearing his hat cocked at the same angle as his drooping cigarette. He entered the hospital with a swagger, carrying a bottle of wine and a fistful of folded papers.
I was curious at first why he did not obscure his bottle, but then that curiosity turned to annoyance. If Hortense caught him with it, she’d certainly take it and possibly scold me.
“Preston, my friend,” Renault said as he approached, “how are you today?”
Eyeing the wine so conspicuously in his hand, I could feel sweat beading on my forehead. “I’m fine, Renault, and it’s good to see you, but why not put that away before you get me in trouble?”
Renault lifted the bottle and his smiling spirits lifted with it. “Put it away? She’ll never know.”
“You don’t know that.”
He tossed the papers he held on the bed and straightened his mustache with a single finger. “She won’t argue with the last wish of an old friend.”
I reached down and lifted them up. The pages were yellow and folded in half. Opening them, I saw that they were orders for Renault, written in French.
Before I could decipher the slanted scrawl, Renault snatched his orders back from me. “A promotion.”
“Away from the front?”
“Not that large a promotion. Instead, I move further in and I wear a larger target. This is my last chance for goodbyes before I leave. And so we drink.”
Renault stuffed the papers in his shirt pocket and went to work on the cork of the wine bottle, struggling with its neck between his fingers.
“There we are,” he said as he freed the stopper. “Finally.”
Looking around and seeing no glasses for the wine apparent, Renault simply took a slug from the bottle, drinking in a good, long draught of it before handing it to me.
The vin, a dry and sweet white wine, felt good on my tongue and even better going down. I wished he’d have let me pour a glass, but straight from the bottle was well enough.
“It’s good, non?” Renault said.
“Oui,” I told him.
Renault looked around for a moment, then stepped behind my bed, where I lost sight of him. He returned scraping a chair along the floor behind him.
“Thank you,” I told Renault.
“De rien. It is nothing. You are my best friend here, and I could not leave without seeing you and drinking with you one last time.” He plopped down into the chair, resting his forearms on his knees in a defeated slouch. His face boasted a grim half-smile, half-hidden beneath his twirled mustache.
I took another swig of the wine and handed the bottle back to Renault.
“I have a hard time believing,” he said before lifting the wine to his lips, “that I’m not dead yet.”
“Why do you say that? You’ve never been so defeatist.”
Renault’s face brightened and his cheeks and nose reddened, more from the wine than anything else. “I think it’s a pleasant thought, really. That this is all just a dream. Especially since I’m moving closer. Maybe when I finally catch a bullet, I’ll just be waking up.”
“You believe that? Really?”
“Is that not a more pleasant thought than it all being over and for naught and that I’ll be sleeping in the mud forevermore after?”
I couldn’t argue with him. When I woke up in the hospital, I desperately wished that everything I’d been through to that point had been nothing more than a dream as well.
“Will your duties change?” I asked him before taking the bottle and another mouthful of wine.
“They’re giving me a whistle.”
I almost choked on the wine. “A whistle?”
“Oui. I’ll be the first up, but then I blow the signal and hell follows me. It’s better and worse. Either way, I’d still rather wake up and find this was all a mistake.”
“Oui,” I said, nodding grimly.
How he could have any semblance of a smile still was a mystery to me.
“I hope you’ll write me after the dream ends, Preston.”
“Of course I will.”
Renault fished another scrap of paper from his pocket and surrendered it to me. “Here is my family’s address. They will know what happened to me. And if I’m not caught up in anything too unpleasant, they’ll be able to forward me the letter
. Their anglaise est pas magnifique, however, so you’ll need to write them en francais.”
The address was for a place in a small city I’d never heard of. I told myself I’d visit if I stayed in France. “You’ve been too good a friend to me, Renault.”
“You think too much of me. I’m a scoundrel whose good side you managed to find.”
Renault stood. Our time together was drawing to a close. “Do you have to go?”
“Don’t think yourself so important. I have many goodbyes to pass out tonight. Yours was merely the first.”
“That’s going to call for more bottles of wine, isn’t it?”
“The car I borrowed is full of them. I’ll have no shortage of vin. And tomorrow I go. I don’t want this to be goodbye, my friend, so I’ll say stay well and I will see you before you know it.”
He leaned down to embrace me, kissing both of my cheeks delicately.
“Goodbye, Renault. You are a true friend.”
Renault straightened his back and raised his head to stand up tall. Pumping his arm back and forth in the air as he left, he began to sing, proudly and with a smooth, deep voice I found surprising.
“Allons enfants de la Patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!
Contre nous de la tyrannie,
L'étendard sanglant est levé!”
He made his way out, winnowing through the hospital beds until he found himself near the door leading to the nurse’s station. He turned back toward the hospital room, continuing his song and waved so the whole hospital might join him in his refrain of La Marseillaise.
The men in the beds began their song in low murmurs, but they found their voices, and it was a rousing rendition.
“Entendez-vous dans les campagnes
Mugir ces féroces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras
Egorger nos fils et nos compagnes!”
A shiver ran down my spine when I imagined what it would have been like to be in an American field hospital and to have the same thing happen with the Star Spangled Banner.
And then my mind went elsewhere. Behind Renault the chorus leader, Hortense appeared. Since he didn’t see her, he continued:
“Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons!
Marchons! marchons!
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons!”
And with the completion of the first refrain, Renault let the rest of the hospital carry the song on for him, and he turned with a crooked smile.
Standing there, Hortense gave him a scolding look and I knew I’d end up hearing about the public drunkenness, but Renault didn’t care. Instead of accepting her shocked stare, he gathered her into his arms and gave her a wet, theatrical kiss on the lips.
She seemed so surprised that she couldn’t react. He released her and left the hospital, straightening his hat as he went.
He turned back one last time, offering me a last wink. I’ve not seen Renault since that moment and have not yet had the courage to write his family to discover his fate.
Hortense wiped Renault’s spit off her face with her forearm and blinked as though she’d gone shell-shocked.
Hortense came and scolded me for Renault’s behaviour as soon as the echoes of the national anthem faded into the memories of all the patients. Her tongue lashing didn’t hurt as much as his disappearance into the night and deeper into the war. Why did we have to lose the ones we cared about? What was the point?
I turned these questions over and over in my mind until Renault’s libation wore off. But my night had not yet reached the peak of its eventfulness.
As the evening reached its zenith, LeBeau swaggered in to the hospital, lightly toasted already. He found his way to my bed and sat down in the chair Renault had appropriated for our visit earlier. “Preston,” he said, his speech slurred, “how are you, mon ami?”
His dim smile was as I always remembered it, but somehow duller with the alcohol. I’d never noticed it before, but I don’t ever recall a time where I wasn’t drunk beside him.
“I’m fine,” I remember telling him. “I’m healing well.”
“That is good.”
“Renault came by earlier,” I told him. “They’re giving him a whistle and sending him closer.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I always liked him.”
“Me as well.”
“And what of you, then? When will you be finished?
“Finished what?”
LeBeau arched his eyebrows. “Oh, come now, you know what I mean. Fin... Finie... Finished.”
“The doctors say when I am finished. Not me.”
“You misunderstand me.”
“Oh? How so?” I said.
“I know the doctor holds your visa out of here, but why haven’t you finished with the…eh?” He cocked his head back toward the nurse’s station.
I cast my eyes downward. “I think I love her.”
“I know you do. I can see it. I’ve always liked her myself. If she’ll have you, I’m sure you’ll make her very happy.”
His head hung low, and I couldn’t help but think he was disappointed that he never had a chance to woo her.
But it didn’t matter. Things between Sara and I were going better than I could have dreamed and there was no way LeBeau could butt his way in.
“What of you? Have you received your new orders? Will the broken wings of the Aeronautic Corps be mended and you’ll fly again?”
“Pas tout à fait. I have my orders, but it is not with the Aeronauts. I do not think they will bring us back.” He pulled a tin flask from his hip as he spoke, then sucked down a healthy swig of whatever strong spirit he’d filled it with.
I dimmed. I didn’t want to say goodbye to LeBeau as well. I’m not sure my heart could bear it and I said so.
“Don’t worry,” he said, smiling. “I’m not going very far. I’ve been selected in a courier post, and I’ll be able to keep sleeping in my bed in town. I’ll deliver messages. That sort of thing. I’ll use my rocket pack in emergencies, but a motorcycle otherwise. I won’t be right up front.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” I brightened. “I don’t think I could bear to see you go as well as Renault. The two of you have kept me sane.”
“And Sara.” He offered me his flask.
“And Sara,” I said, accepting the booze. I tipped my head and the metallic tinge of the flask hit my tongue first, then the taste turned to burning when the whiskey poured through.
“I confess that I feel these orders are too good a fate for me, Preston.”
“Why is that?”
“Some other soldier, someone with a family, some honorable man with a future, could use a post as safe as this rather than me. Instead, he’ll die on the front line and I’ll be flying around orders that will send even more of them to their deaths.”
“This isn’t like you, Andre,” I said.
He shrugged. “It just all feels more pointless than it used to.”
We drank in silence for a while. Then LeBeau put a hand on my good leg, clutching it from the bedside. “Get out of this, will you? As fast as you can. We don’t deserve this. None of us do. It’s all just one big engine of mistakes.”
I didn’t know what to say, but the words that came out of my mouth didn’t quite agree with me. Meekly, I said, “I know.”
“Take care of yourself, would you, mon ami?” LeBeau stood, swaying like a tree in a breeze. “I cannot bear to lose any more of my good friends.”
“I’ll drink to that.” I took a final sip from the flask and handed it back to LeBeau.
“I wonder,” he said softly, his head turning down toward our feet, “if our friend Renault would be interested in having a drink with me this evening. I would very much like to see him before he goes. I will leave you to your rest.”
Without another word, he turned and left, his shoulders hunched and his head hung low.
That image caused two thoughts to bubble in my head,
opposing thoughts I couldn’t help. On one hand, I wondered how helpful it would be to LeBeau to receive some of Sara’s patented encouragement and kindness. With a smile and a brush of her hand, I knew she could relieve some of the burden he carried. But on the other, I knew she’d just fall for a man as good as LeBeau.
There’s something about the two of them together I couldn’t trust and I wasn’t sure why.
I cast both those thoughts aside and merely wished there was something I could do for LeBeau myself.
He disappeared and I found that I was angry at him. He’d done nothing wrong, but I couldn’t forgive him. The only person who’d given me any hope that this war was going to turn out all right was now a hopeless wreck. How could I forgive him for such a thing?
The more I thought about it, the more upset I became.
How dare he? I told myself. He can’t just talk to people and reassure them and let them know it’s going to be fine when it’s not. Doesn’t that make him a liar?
Maybe I just didn’t want to lose him.
War makes fools of us all, and perhaps I had no idea my wounds weren’t just on the surface and I was in a cycle of emotions that I could not explain.
Nor did I want to.
I just wanted to sleep without losing anything else dear to me.
But the war doesn’t always give us what we want.
16
It was on the day of my discharge from the hospital that something changed in me, and I thought I might actually get through the war better than I’d entered. But I didn’t know that going in. I found it difficult to transition between being fearful of losing everyone around me and being lovelorn for Sara. Lovelorn was certainly my preferred state, but in those days, after my time in the trenches, I found myself inexplicably quicker to anger than I’d ever been.
I kept close the copper cog that LeBeau had given me on the first day of our war. At all times it was on me, and I hoped it had not run out of its luck. After I arose, I polished it with a toothbrush, hoping I could imbue it with the luck I felt I’d been missing, and found that it sparkled beautifully.
