David Robbins - [World War II 04]

by Liberation Road (v1. 0) (epub)

  Ben laid a palm on the captain’s back. He rubbed between the shoulder blades, for no reason other than to connect. Whitcomb walked under Ben’s hand, looking down to skirt a crater.

  Their steps carried them through a tank-punched gap in a low stone wall. In the center of the field stood an untouched barn, made like the wall of stacked stones. The building was likely five hundred years old, Ben marveled. America in this war was a bull in a china shop, breaking anything in its way, ancient or not, missing a few items here and there.

  ‘How old you think that barn is?’ he asked Whitcomb, to get some talk flowing.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Whitcomb glanced up from the passing weeds. ‘A thousand years. I don’t know.’

  The captain didn’t care. This barn represented nothing in Whitcomb’s future, off where his fate lay. Ben dropped his hand from the man’s back. They approached the barn in silence, until Ben asked about the breakout.

  ‘What do you hear?’

  ‘Not much. They’re keeping a lid on it. But it’s soon, I reckon. Nobody’s moving up right now but us.’

  ‘So they’re getting ready for one big shove.’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘What are the orders?’

  ‘Just a local action. The 358th is gonna cross the Sèves River south near St. Germain. There’s some Krauts holed up on high ground there, surrounded by marshes. The rest of us are in reserve. Shouldn’t take too long.’

  The 358th was Phineas’s regiment. Ben had not spoken to Phineas in a week, since leaving him behind at the aid station. Phineas had pried too deeply, then judged Ben’s motive for coming back to France. He’d said Ben was not a man of God because he’d returned for revenge.

  The God of the Jews was a vengeful God. Count the miracles, Ben thought, and shook his head. They’re mostly the visiting of death on Israel’s enemies and those who broke God’s laws. Mass deaths, by drowning, plagues, battle, killer angels. Phineas’s Christian God was gentler, but even He made ho bones about punishment for those who strayed. Either way you tote it up, the God of both peoples was no stranger to retribution. Ben’s pact with God was only that he not kill again. But never had God commanded Ben not to be angry.

  Whitcomb jerked a thumb toward the door of the stone barn.

  ‘I don’t know what to do with him, Chap. He was a good soldier. Now, I dunno. You talk to him.’

  Whitcomb moved to precede Ben through the door. Ben stopped him.

  ‘Let me do it alone. Alright?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. Let me know what you think, okay?’

  Ben nodded. He stepped into the stone cool of the barn.

  A skinny soldier sat cross-legged on straw in a corner. His rifle stood propped beside him, his helmet hung cockeyed on the gun barrel. His pack lay on the other side of him. The soldier seemed to have stripped himself of every protection except his hands, and they were tucked around him as though he were cold. When Ben entered, the soldier stopped rocking against the hard wall.

  ‘Hello.’ Ben stopped in the doorway, listening behind him for Whitcomb to walk off. ‘I’m Chaplain Kahn.’

  The soldier released himself. He made to stand.

  ‘Keep your seat.’ Ben approached slowly, as if walking into a cave, to spook nothing. ‘I’ll join you.’

  Ben slid to the straw floor, pulling off his own helmet. He stuffed the pot over his bended knee.

  The soldier knit his fingers in his lap, pressing the thumbs. His gaze strayed. He was no older than twenty, pimpled and faintly bearded.

  ‘You’re Private Sam Baum.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I hear you’ve had a rough time lately.’

  Ben gauged the young private, gathering what he could of the boy’s story from his form, folded and agitated. Baum had quit. Or worse, he had broken.

  ‘You want to tell me about it?’

  ‘Nothin’ to tell. I’m chickenshit.’

  ‘Maybe not, Private.’

  The boy raised his eyes to Ben, fiercely. ‘Yeah. And maybe so.’

  ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘I’m here to help, Sam.’

  Baum snickered, tapping his teeth with his thumbs. He did not meet Ben’s look.

  ‘Rabbi, I appreciate you comin’ by and all. You want to say a few prayers, go ahead. I’ll say ‘em with you. Shema Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echad. I know that one. But I ran away. Pure and simple. When you’re done talkin’ to me and you leave, they’re gonna come get me and they’re gonna court-martial me.’

  ‘Why don’t you just tell me what happened.’

  ‘I don’t want to think about it.’

  Ben kept silent. Baum tapped his teeth harder, closing his eyes.

  After moments spiking himself with his thumbs, he lifted his head. He spoke into the empty barn.

  ‘Captain Whitcomb says you’re okay. He says you know what’s up. That you were on Purple Heart Hill.’

  Ben nodded. ‘I was.’

  Baum’s hands snapped from his mouth, his knees unfolded in the straw. He seemed to want to stand and run, some burst had gone off inside him and he needed to hide. With effort, Baum kept himself on the ground, under the onslaught in his brain.

  ‘Then you know what it’s like. The artillery. The...the...’ He searched for a word, to contain the pounding, concussion, destruction of the shells.

  ‘... the shock.’

  Ben was close enough to lean and touch the boy’s leg. He did not. Baum looked like he would bolt if one more thing in the world touched him.

  ‘That’s what it is, Sam. Shock.’

  ‘It just...The goddam Krauts. They wouldn’t let up. It’s like fingernails scratching...’ Baum reached over his bare head and clawed the air, to invoke the screeching whistle of incoming rounds,’...then, then...’

  He could not say, the blasts. The gouts of earth and man spinning in the air, splintered trees in a killing hail, the stubbing pressure in your ears, lungs, and eye sockets with every detonation. Hours at a time, day or night. No place to hide. Only two choices: burrow in and hold on, or run.

  Baum’s hands bent and faced each other, shaking.

  ‘After a while, this pressure, it builds in your gut like it’s gonna blow up your insides, right there in your chest. Every time another round lands close, it gets bigger, like you’re gonna explode yourself. I didn’t... I didn’t want to. But we been under their guns for weeks. Up on the hill, in the hedges, every stinkin’ day. It just...just...’ Baum’s hands quavered, as if pressing together a steel ball they could not collapse, although he squeezed with all his strength. He looked to Ben.

  ‘I know, Sam.’

  ‘This morning. We was just sitting still, not even in a fight, just resting up, and they started again.’ Baum pointed outside the barn. ‘Two of my buddies, Owen and Hise, they got blown to bits, just ducking in their holes. That ain’t right, Chap. To die like that, not even fighting, that ain’t right.’

  Baum massaged the dark bristles of his pate, gazing into the straw.

  ‘You ever want to run away, Chap?’

  Ben considered this before answering. He knew Baum referred to war. Ben had never dodged combat. But he had spent much of his life in retreat. He thought of the Great War, how he ran to France from his father’s demand that he stay. Then of the steel mills and coal mines of Pennsylvania, how he fled from them to alcohol and depression. From his failures he’d fled to God. When Thomas was lost, he’d come back here to France, to run away from his grief.

  ‘Yes.’

  The current in Baum, rifling though his limbs and eyes, eased. He lifted his head.

  ‘I ain’t afraid, Rabbi. It’s just my nerves couldn’t take it no more.’

  ‘Captain Whitcomb said you were a good soldier.’

  ‘He said that?’

  ‘Yes, he did. I’m sure he’s right.’

  ‘How can you tell? After what I done? Rabbi, I deserted under fire. They
can shoot me for that.’

  ‘You’re not a coward, Sam. Anyone can see that.’

  ‘Then what am I? Honest.’

  ‘You’re an ordinary man, being asked to do extraordinary things. You know what Ralph Waldo Emerson said?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He said a hero is no braver than an ordinary man. He just waits five minutes longer.’

  Baum raised his eyes to the dim rafters. He chuckled. Ben took hope.

  ‘You believe in God, Private?’

  ‘Most times.’

  ‘Well, look at it this way. If you can believe in God, who’s invisible, you can surely believe in yourself. Where you from, Sam?’

  ‘Pittsburgh.’

  ‘You’re kidding me.’

  ‘No.’ The boy squirmed. ‘From Squirrel Hill. Why?’

  Ben laughed.

  Baum, in so much trouble, edgy that he might be getting into more, insisted. ‘Why?’

  ‘You know Isley’s Ice Cream Parlor?’

  Baum coughed, amazed. His jaw hung slack.

  Ben asked, ‘Waldorf’s Bakery? The Hot Puppy Shop?’

  Baum found his voice. The lines in his young face smoothed, the flitting of his eyes stopped and steadied on Ben, wide to take in this miracle of home.

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, we’d go to the Hot Puppy for malts, then go to Frick Park...’

  ‘...to make out. I know.’

  Baum enjoyed this, the old rabbi knowing about Frick Park.

  ‘And the old Manor Theater. And Hyman’s butcher shop on Murray.’

  ‘Swimming at Kennywood Park.’

  ‘Yeah! Hey, did you go to Schenley or Taylor Allderdice?’

  Ben paused. He swallowed.

  ‘No. My son...’

  He expected to stop right there but he did not. Private Baum was waiting for good words and memories, and if Ben did not shirk, he had them to give the boy.

  ‘...my son went to Taylor Allderdice.’

  Baum, eager, noted nothing. He saw only the high school rivalries in Squirrel Hill.

  ‘I went to Schenley. How old is he, maybe I know him?’

  ‘No, Sam. He was older than you. He was ... he was gone before you went to school.’

  Baum sat back. He looked square at Ben.

  ‘Rabbi?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he come over here?’

  The boy’s face was different now, long and solemn, though still nakedly young. Against the old stone wall, seated in the moldy straw, he took on another form from the twitchy, shell-shocked deserter. This was the soldier that Captain Whitcomb described. The good soldier, the steady dirty hand, a veteran of the bocage and Mont Castre, who’d only lost his nerve for a moment in all the fighting days he’d faced. This was a lad who knew war for its suddenness and impartiality, how it showed no favorites to buddies and sons. Private Sam Baum was another boy with a view across the chasm he should not have.

  ‘Yes. He came.’

  ‘Is he okay?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

  Baum sighed again and furled his legs and arms. He shook his head. ‘There’s a lot of them.’

  Baum was right, Ben thought. There were a lot of them. Not just yours, Rabbi. A lot of them—American, British, French, Canadian, Poles. Baum would not reach across the little space between them to comfort the rabbi and grieving father. He had his own losses. Private Sam Baum had even himself to grieve, the loss of his honor, maybe his life if a military court decided so. He was Ben’s equal in despair.

  Ben stood.

  ‘Wait here.’

  The boy’s arms and legs coiled again. He took up his rocking against the stone wall. He looked as if the rabbi had never come into the barn.

  Ben walked outside. Captain Whitcomb was easy to find, sitting in a jeep not far away, smoking.

  ‘What do you think, Chap? What do we do with him?’

  ‘Give him to me.’

  ~ * ~

  McGee Mays stayed silent for the drive to Couvains. He simmered in the kind of funk Joe Amos’s mama used to call a ‘coffee mood,’ black and bitter. Joe Amos ignored his sullen assistant except to tell him to drive faster. McGee’s mulling over the destruction of St. Lô was not going to cost Joe Amos one extra second with Geneviève.

  At the turnoff for the Marquis’s house, Joe Amos told McGee to brake.

  ‘Look. While we’re visiting, cheer up, will you?’

  ‘Yeah. Alright.’

  Joe Amos watched McGee change gears to travel the long wooded lane to the mansion. With a pouting violence, McGee slammed Lucky into second.

  Joe Amos asked, ‘What’s the matter? What you want?’

  The boy glared through the windshield.

  ‘You got a girl. You got them stripes. You got the Major sending you off to get him stuff. That’s alright, I ain’t mad at you, you shot down that Jabo fair and square. But all I got is the U.S. Army. And I ain’t real happy about them right now.’

  The big house emerged from the forest. McGee wheeled Lucky into the circular drive. Joe Amos patted his assistant’s shoulder.

  ‘It’s okay. I know what you mean. You stick with me. We’ll get you somethin’ else. I got a feeling about things. Alright?’

  The boy was reluctant. Joe Amos poked him and McGee grinned for the first time in hours.

  ‘Awright. You say so, Sarge.’

  Joe Amos laid out his hand for McGee to slide him some skin.

  The two climbed out of the cab. The Marquis shoved open one of the great doors at the center of the house. The door was so large, he had to put his shoulder to it.

  With lifted arms and a broad smile, the Marquis greeted them.

  ‘What have you done to my daughter, Joe Amos Biggs?’ he called, approaching.

  Joe Amos shot McGee a glance, reminding him to be pleasant. The Marquis wrapped Joe Amos in a hug with busses to both cheeks, then he gave the same to McGee.

  ‘I didn’t do anything. I just...’ Joe Amos did not know what to make of the Marquis’s welcome.

  ‘No, no, boy!’ The Marquis laughed and waved away the concern Joe Amos put on his face. ‘I did not mean what did you do? I mean, what have you done in her heart?’

  A tingle coursed in Joe Amos, that Geneviève had spoken of him.

  ‘Is she inside?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’ The Marquis peered into the Jimmy’s bed at the two jerricans of gasoline. ‘Are these more gifts from mon ami Joe Amos?’

  ‘Yeah, they’re for you. McGee, get ‘em down.’

  ‘Un trésor!’ The Marquis made a theatrical sweep of his arms, as if Joe Amos had brought him something magnificent. ‘Go, go. She will be happy to see you. McGee, you and I have work to do!’

  Joe Amos gave his assistant one more look. ‘Marquis,’ Joe Amos said, ‘you know, one of those jerricans is a gift from McGee here. Maybe you can let him relax a while today. Show him around the place.’

  The Frenchman looked up to where McGee stood on the truck bed holding the twin canisters. He sighed and flapped his hands to his trousers, in charming defeat.

  ‘Certainement. Come, McGee. Bring these cans around to my Peugeot. We will gas it up and go for a ride. We shall leave the lovers alone, yes?’

  Joe Amos hustled his backpack with the champagne bottle out of the truck cab. Slinging it over his shoulder, he headed for the door before the Marquis could ask if this was another gift for him.

  Inside, Joe Amos paused at the grandness of the house. Murals of hunting parties and tapestries framed the hall, a chandelier dangled over an ancient, giant rug. The furniture, the staircase of mahogany, everything was sumptuous and old, a survivor. Joe Amos moved into a passageway to call for Geneviève. He tried not to remember that Krauts lived here just weeks ago. He thought of St. Lô and the other destroyed places he’d seen, the ones not so fortunate as this house. Then he found her.