Joe Amos took up his backpack. He opened his door. McGee didn’t turn.
‘Stay here.’
‘Okay.’
In the second Jimmy, Baskerville climbed out to meet him.
‘What’s up?’
‘Gotta see a man. You keep everyone in line for a few minutes? I’ll be right back.’
Baskerville squared his shoulders. ‘You need me, man? You want me to come wit’choo?’
‘Naw, ‘Ville. It’s cool. Just some business. You know.’
Baskerville nodded and narrowed his eyes. He eyed the backpack dangling in Joe Amos’s grip.
‘Awright. Hey.’
‘What.’
‘That was very cool with them crackers.’
Joe Amos didn’t say they deserved it. This was assumed. And if they didn’t deserve it from ‘Ville, Joe Amos figured some others did some other time and got off light, so this squared it.
Baskerville glanced up and down the quay. ‘You go ahead. I got your back.’
Joe Amos turned away, chuckling at the intrigue. It was just a couple cartons of smokes for some fancy French booze. ‘Ville acted like they were on a mission from Ike.
On the opposite side of the quay ran a line of squat wooden sheds, too humble for the Krauts to blow up. The shingle sidings rotted in mint green. Screen doors slapped as greasy engineers went in and out. All of them carried some bundle or other. Joe Amos headed for the shed at the far right end.
Stepping inside, he set his backpack on a long counter. On the far side was a pair of desks clotted with papers, In and Out boxes, and yellow telegrams. Clipboards hung on nails below a filthy window. A tall bald fellow unfolded from an accountant’s chair behind one of the desks. He made a show of slapping his ink pen to the desktop.
‘Well, well, it’s the Jabo killer.’
‘You heard?’
‘Colored boy shoots down a Messerschmitt, yeah, I hear.’
The sergeant behind the counter flipped out a big white palm, not for Joe Amos to shake but to slap.
‘What you got for me today? You bring me my welder’s mitts and goggles? I need gas canisters, more torches, Christ, I’m short of bootlaces.’
Quartermaster Sergeant Thalhimer leaned around Joe Amos to see out to the quay through the screen door.
‘Those trucks are empty.’
Thalhimer looked down at the backpack on his countertop. ‘You drove a bunch of Jimmies to my front door to bring me this? I don’t think so.’
‘I was hauling assholes today. Left ‘em off at COM Z.’
Thalhimer dropped his fast banter. ‘Aw, shit. Bad?’
‘I’ve heard worse. Bad enough.’
Thalhimer shook his head. ‘I don’t get it, man. I don’t get it.’
‘Yeah, you do.’
Joe Amos shrugged and snorted, unable to say more. The Quartermaster sergeant fidgeted in the silence of their shared sympathy. His long fingers beat a bothered tap on the countertop. Joe Amos had never known any Jew to be comfortable with being recognized as one. It wasn’t the same being colored. Then folks saw you coming a mile off. But Jews tended to keep their kind quiet, and who could blame them? At what time or place in history had it ever been a good idea to raise their hands and say, ‘Hey, we’re Jews over here’? Never, that’s when.
‘Well, screw ‘em,’ Thalhimer said.
‘Screw ‘em, Himey. I brought you somethin’.’
Thalhimer slid the backpack closer and looked inside. ‘Cigarettes. Where’d you get two cartons of cigarettes?’
‘Can’t say. You know.’
‘Yeah. What do you want me to do with ‘em? I don’t smoke.’
‘Trade ‘em.’
Thalhimer gave Joe Amos a bemused gaze. ‘Trade ‘em, huh? What makes you think I got anything to trade you for ‘em?’
Joe Amos returned Thalhimer the same quizzical look. The quartermaster shrugged.
‘For what? You want a welder’s apron, I got one your size.’
‘Booze.’
The sergeant snickered. He pushed the backpack across the counter to Joe Amos.
‘I don’t know anything about booze. I’m a quartermaster.’
‘A colored boy shoots down a Jabo, you hear. An underground cellar of wine and enough booze to get thirty thousand Krauts high, you don’t hear about. Himey, come on, brother. Who you talkin’ to here?’ Joe Amos shoved the pack across the countertop again, like another move in chess.
The sergeant considered the pack, then looked at Joe Amos. ‘You on the level?’
‘Straight and true. You know me.’
‘ ‘Cause it’s trouble for a lot of folks if you’re not. You included.’
‘It’s cool. Honest.’
‘Close the door.’
Joe Amos shut the rickety hut door. Outside, Baskerville and the other drivers stood ogling the hunks of metal flying overhead and the great whomps when the crane plopped them on the scow. When Joe Amos turned around, the backpack lay emptied on the countertop. Thalhimer had disappeared into the oily confines of his shack.
Joe Amos waited. He hadn’t expected such drama just swapping some smokes for a couple bottles of Frog brandy. Major Clay must have known it would go this way, that’s why he picked Joe Amos Biggs, a cool hand.
By the time Thalhimer returned with a cardboard box, Joe Amos felt some rite had happened, that he’d passed a kind of test to enter the secret world of alchemy, where cigarettes became booze. Thalhimer set the jingling box on the countertop.
‘Alright. Pick two.’
Joe Amos glanced over the lip. Six dark bottles stood with dusty necks.
‘I dunno, man. You pick.’
Thalhimer dug out a fat bottle. ‘Armagnac. Dupeyron vineyard, ‘34. Nice stuff.’
He set this aside.
‘Lafite Rothschild. Bordeaux, ‘23. You like wine?’
‘It ain’t for me.’
‘Okay. Whatever. Here you go, take this one, somebody will love you.’
‘Gimme one more.’
Thalhimer already had his hands on the sides of the box to put it away, back into the hidden inventory.
‘One more is for me. Come on, Himey.’
‘I give you one more, you owe me, sport.’
Thalhimer grabbed a bottle with a cork held in by wire. The glass appeared older than the others, fat and dark. Its label had yellowed.
‘Champagne. Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin.’
Thalhimer held the champagne at an admiring arm’s length.
Joe Amos asked, ‘What year is that one?’
‘1899- Turn of the century.’
‘Man, that’s old. Is it still good?’
‘It’s probably great.’
Joe Amos reached for the champagne. Thalhimer handed it over, saying, ‘Funny thing, though. The folks who drank this stuff back then had no idea.’
‘About what?’
‘That they were toasting the blood twentieth. You know, Veuve means widow in French. Lot of widows this century.’
Joe Amos almost handed the bottle back for a different, less ominous sounding one. But he kept it, because Thalhimer said it might be great.
~ * ~
Ben Kahn put on his boots. He had not worn them in sixty hours, since Phineas left him at this aid station. He’d kept his uniform on, never took it off, slept in it. But three days ago, the moment Phineas had left, before he collapsed on the cot in a corner of the hot tent, Ben pulled off his boots, washed his socks, and hung them on the bed rail. He stayed barefoot, lying down or sitting upright to talk with the doctors or nurses who checked on him. He did not leave the cot, ate three squares a day, dozed, and stared at nothing. He did not say a prayer, no one asked him to. He sniffed his boots several times a day, to enjoy that they were airing out.
He tied the second shoelace knot and lifted his head. Sitting on a stool next to the cot, Phineas seemed to Ben very much the Christian, grinning his approval. Phineas had rescued him on Mont Castre, from Ben’s own exhaust
ion and failing spirit. Phineas had come to France to do good, and found much here to do. This was why he never seemed tired or downcast. So much evil and death ran rampant that Phineas was having one long field day. Ben envied Phineas his mission more than his youth and energy.
‘You look swell,’ Phineas told him now. The boots were ready, and the little Baptist had come to take him back. Ben glanced down at the wrinkled sheets of the cot.
‘You sure you don’t want to do a stint here?’ Ben asked. ‘Got this bed all broken in for you.’
‘No, no, I’m fine. You just pushed too hard, is all. But you look great now.’
‘So do you, Phineas.’
The young chaplain did. He propped on the stool like a bit of the bocage itself. Phineas was dirty as a path. Bits of sticks and leaves were caught in the webbing over his helmet. Looking at Phineas, an almost feral-looking boy, Ben did not want to leave the cot just yet.
‘Any news? What have I missed?’
Phineas pulled off his helmet. This was the first time Ben had seen the top of his head. Phineas was strawberry blond, more saffron than his eyebrows revealed. His hair was cropped in a military flattop. He ran a hand over the bristles like a teenager, playing soldier in the mud of a farmer’s field.
‘Well, Monty and the Brits finally took Caen yesterday, a city everybody figured he would’ve gotten on D-Day. I hear the place is blown to Kingdom Come, but at least it’s in our hands now. Down south, the St. Lô sector is heating up. Three divisions set off this morning on a big offensive. A battalion in one of them got raided by four hundred Kraut paratroopers after midnight, before the attack got under way. Krauts just ran right through their lines tossing grenades and firing into foxholes in the dark. That’s crazy. The battalion took fifty percent casualties.’
‘The attack go off on time?’
‘Yeah, but it’s headed right into the hedges. You know it’s gonna be slow.’
Slow meant deadly.
‘How about on Mont Castre? How’d we do?’
Phineas cocked his head. ‘You didn’t hear?’
‘No. I…’
Ben looked down, ashamed suddenly in front of Phineas. He had not ministered to any of the GIs flowing through the aid station. He’d kept to his cot, barefoot.
On the stool, Phineas shifted. He set his hands to his knees and leaned forward.
‘Let me tell you how we did.’
Ben lifted his gaze. Phineas beamed, eager and wholehearted. The little Baptist could do this, absolve a man with just the faith in his eyes.
‘The 90th has got a new name for Mont Castre.’
‘What is it?’
‘Purple Heart Hill.’
Ben envisioned the blood and bandages, bark winging off trees, the gunfire through the forest, and the shouts of men knocked down.
‘Did we take the crest?’
‘Oh, yeah. And a lot more.’
‘What did we lose?’
‘Two thousand for the first five days. A hundred or so yesterday and again this morning.’
Phineas continued with enthusiasm. Ben pushed away the urge to remind the young chaplain he was talking about death and maiming in huge proportions. He figured he was no one to lecture Phineas Allenby. The boy knew the costs and dangers to the soldiers as well as any frontline dogface. Listening to the tale of Mont Castre’s fall, Ben saw how caught up Phineas was in the uncomplicated themes of war, the simplicity of valor, the completeness of blood. Phineas, like Ben, urged the men forward. Ben’s intent was to see victory and find his son. Phineas did it to see the soldiers go, and to go with them.
‘The night we got you off the hill, all three battalions made it to the top. We took away the Kraut’s OP and that made things a little better for a while. We hauled in four hundred fifty prisoners, to boot. Then the Krauts decided they wanted their hilltop back.’
Phineas returned his pot to his head, reliving the incoming rounds of his story.
‘They beat the heck out of us with mortars and such. Then they came after us with everything they had, grenades, hand-to-hand, you name it. It got so bad the 359th had to gin up a J Company out of every boy they could find in the Field Train. Truck drivers, clerks, cooks, mechanics, they handed ‘em all a gun and got ‘em up on the hilltop. Let me tell you, sir, them rear boys fought like banshees, like everybody else did. And they took their lumps like everybody, too.’
Phineas carved images for Ben out of the warm air. He grabbed a steering wheel for the drivers, shoved a rifle in their mitts, and waved hands for the fighting of banshees. His voice took the tone of a sermon, and his passion for war and the Tough Ombres fashioned his words into a great clashing in the forest of Mont Castre. The wounded and killed did not burden his telling.
‘Dang a mule, Ben, you should’ve seen ‘em. Coming down the south slope of that hill, those Joes fought through five kinds of damnation. Went whoopin’ after the Krauts. The closer they got to the bottom, the harder the Jerries tried to stop ‘em. They had hidden machine guns and mines, trenches, everything prepared way in advance, and you couldn’t barely see twenty feet for the trees and scrub brush all around. But yesterday we got across the Lastelle road and broke through the Mahlman Line. And while this was all going on, the 357th kicked the Krauts out of Beau Coudray. So this mornin’ the Jerries are on their heels and backin’ up.’
Ben rested his palm on the cot beneath him. The bed had been his refuge for three days while the 90th slugged up and over Mont Castre, then chased the Germans down the back side of the hill. There was no reproach in Phineas’s voice for the fact that Ben stood in a bed instead of the fight. Nonetheless, Ben wriggled on the cot, working his toes in his clean socks, uncomfortable with his own safety. He’d told the men in the trench he would stay with them, and he hadn’t. Whitcomb had ordered him to come down. Ben was not at fault. But he’d given his word. He juggled these thoughts, guilt and blamelessness, while Phineas spun his heroic tale.
The young Baptist must have seen Ben’s agitation. He quit his descriptions of the battles and outcomes.
Quickly, he said, ‘So I came to get you. Figured you’d want to be in on the last of it. You sure earned it, Rabbi.’
‘Thank you, Phineas.’
Ben stood. He reached for his helmet, its metal was cooled and rested, too. Over two thousand casualties, he thought. What will be left of the Tough Ombres? Shavetail lieutenants nobody knows or trusts, exhausted veterans using up their luck, green boys with clean hands. The 359th’s CO had already got the boot, more brass will follow him out the door. More high-up asses will be covered to explain the body count. The 90th’s victory on Purple Heart Hill will do little to lift the division’s morale. Who will be left to remember it? Barely more than half. Ben. And Phineas.
‘Let’s go.’
Phineas did not rise from his stool. He pulled off his helmet again.
‘Not so fast. Have a seat.’
Baffled—he thought he was supposed to be leaving—Ben sat again on the cot. The mattress felt foreign now, with his boots on.
‘What, Phineas?’
‘You had a son.’
‘Yes. Have a son. Maybe. I don’t know.’
‘I want to know.’
‘About what in particular?’
‘About him, about the blood on your hands. Why you’re back in France. What happened?’
‘You’re younger than my son. I never explained myself to him. I don’t think I need to explain myself to you.’
‘I’m your colleague, Ben. And your friend.’
Phineas’s posture on the stool was firm. He held the power of belief, what a man can do when he knows he is right.
‘Neither of us has got a single soul we can talk to out there, Ben. We get tight with a fella and next thing we know we’re collectin’ his things. Dang it, you’re gonna go crazier’n you already are if you don’t open up to somebody. I don’t care if I’m no older than your last haircut, I’m here and I’m willing to talk. Especially if I’m the one w
ho’s gonna have to come and round you up every time you push too far. Now, talk to me.’
Phineas crossed his arms over his chest and waited.
‘Where do you want me to start?’
The suddenness of this startled Phineas. The little Baptist clearly expected more of a fight. Caught off guard, he lowered his arms. Ben lifted a palm.
David Robbins - [World War II 04] Page 27
