The Cartographer of No Man's Land: A Novel

by P. S. Duffy

  “Ernest Lawrence Havers, Lance Corporal, 45th Battalion, D Company, 14 Platoon,” was the rote reply. Ebbin kept his eyes forward.

  “I’m looking for a soldier named Ebbin Hant. Know him? He was with the 12th.”

  Ebbin shifted with agitation.

  He was in there, alright. Angus was sure of it, but how much better if he weren’t. How much better that would be. Angus would tell the doctor, who would see that this man was clearly in no shape to carry on. That he didn’t have any idea who he was or how he’d jumped rank, nor who Havers was. He’d be sent off to recuperate—in a place where lush lawns stretched out to trimmed hedges, where tiered gardens led to a dripping fountain on which a stone angel might be perched, arms open. Come to me, ye that are heavy-laden, and I will refresh you. A safe haven away from court-martial and God only knew what punishment. Away from enemy fire and firing squads. Safe from himself until the war was over, when Angus would take him home.

  Angus said, “This Ebbin Hant. I think he’s in trouble. I think you can help him.”

  Ebbin shook his head sadly. “No. He’s not.” An excruciating pause followed during which Ebbin opened and closed his mouth several times. Finally, he said, “Ebbin Hant is dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “Died at Courcelette.”

  “I don’t think so—”

  “Yeah? Were you there?”

  “No,” Angus admitted.

  “So you don’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  “Anything.” Ebbin slid his eyes, cold and empty, toward Angus.

  Angus felt the muscles of his jaw tense. “Like what? What don’t I know?”

  “Like what it’s like to hear men screaming after they’re dead,” Ebbin whispered.

  “Is that what Hant heard?” Ebbin did not respond. Angus gripped his shoulder and shook it. “Tell me,” he said with an insistence he instantly regretted. Tread lightly, he told himself. Get a grip. But his breath was irregular, and he felt the slow burn of anger rising. The man in the next bed moaned and kept moaning. The nurse materialized with a lamp.

  “I said keep him awake, not everyone on the ward!” she hissed. She felt the other soldier’s forehead, checked his dressing, gave Angus a sharp look, and was off to help lift a new patient into an empty bed at the far end of the ward; you could hear the man struggling to breathe. Angus tried to shut it out, but it was impossible. “Ebbin Hant saved my life,” he whispered. “I’d like to save his . . .” His hand hovered above Ebbin’s. Ebbin snatched it away. “Couldn’t have. No one could. He was a lousy soldier. Froze up. More than once. Better off dead. There’s plenty like him, more a hindrance than help. They’re all better off dead.”

  “That’s not the Ebbin Hant I know. Who is Lance Corporal Havers?”

  “Me. I am. Lance Corporal Lawrence Havers. I told you.”

  “No, you’re not.” Angus leaned in close and went for broke. “You’re impersonating him,” he hissed. “That’s a crime. You’ve jumped rank. A worse crime. I’m asking you one more time, who is or was Lance Corporal Havers?”

  “I am,” Ebbin replied without flinching.

  “Sweet, sweet Jesus, Ebbin. What the hell is going on?” Angus stood up and raked his hand through his hair. “I come over here to find—”

  “Hant? Wasted your time, you poor bastard,” Ebbin said flatly.

  It was all Angus could do not to slap him. A poisonous humiliation flared through him. He wanted to punch the wall, fling the chair across the room. He gripped the iron bar at the head of the bed and with utmost effort at control, leaned in close, and said into Ebbin’s ear, “Wasted my time? Listen to me, you ungrateful son of a bitch. The best you can hope for is being court-martialed and maybe shot, unless you lay this out for me. Who the hell do you think you are?” He paused. “Forgive me. I think I know the answer to that one. What about Hettie, eh? And your parents? What about them? They think you’re dead. Is that what you want? Is it?”

  He backed away, but Ebbin grabbed his collar and pulled him down. “Yes,” he whispered into his ear. “Because that’s the truth.” Angus jerked, but Ebbin held him fast. “Listen to me. Listen. We’re all going to die over here. The only question is how. Ebbin Hant died early on. But not Havers. Havers lives on.” He released his hold. His arm dropped to his side.

  Angus sat back, incensed at his own confusion. “Who the fuck is Havers?”

  Ebbin turned to face him and in an urgent whisper said, “Your man Hant shot a soldier in Ypres, a pal of his. No one knew because one minute they were filling sandbags, and the next the Krauts opened up. Hant got Willie through the neck.” Tears pooled above his puffed cheek and leaked into the bandage.

  Angus let this sink in. Thought of Orland. Said with all the pity he could muster, “It was a mistake. It happens. I’ve seen it myself. Gun misfires—besides, it was probably a German got your pal. How could you possibly know?”

  Ebbin shook his head. “He wasn’t my pal. And it was Hant’s bullet. He wasn’t much good before that. He was nothing but a wreck after.”

  “What about Havers? Was he there?” Had Ebbin killed Havers, too?

  “No, no. Of course not. I got the story from Hant before he died.”

  There was a great stir at the other end of the ward. Nurses came running with the doctor who had treated Ebbin. Lights came on by the bed. Clotted, choking sounds filled the room. Angus half-stood.

  “Gas. Phosgene, chlorine, doesn’t matter,” Ebbin whispered flatly. “He won’t make it.”

  The nurses had the patient leaning forward. A last, desperate, gurgling gasp for air, and then a heaving, and then silence. They laid him back down. Men on the ward, some propped on an elbow, some sitting upright, watched and listened in silence. The doctor checked his watch and noted the time of death. A nurse pulled a sheet over the soldier and he was lifted onto a stretcher and wheeled away. The wheels creaked down the corridor. Death hovered a moment over the empty bed and then slid along the floor.

  “Poor bugger,” the soldier in the next bed sighed.

  Angus reached for the chain around his neck and withdrew the cross. He slipped it off, held it tightly for a moment and then showed it to Ebbin. “Recognize this?”

  Ebbin grabbed it. “The cross! Where’d you find it?” He closed his fist over it.

  “Yours, huh? You even had it inscribed.” At last they were getting somewhere. “ELH.”

  “Yes, it’s mine. First name Ernest. Middle name Lawrence, Laurie.”

  Angus raked his hand through his hair in desperation. “Christ,” he hissed.

  Ebbin sat up and rocked back and forth, arms around his ribs. “Get away from me. Leave me alone. Please.”

  “I can’t,” Angus said. “We’ll figure this out together, okay? Trust me.”

  Ebbin stopped rocking and looked at the cross and said softly, “Ebbin Hant died but Havers survives. He’ll keep on living when this body I’m walking around in is gone.” With that he sank back on the pillows, exhausted. He asked for water. Asked Angus to read to him. Angus could see he needed a break. Hell, he needed a break. He found some water, but there wasn’t enough light to read, and he didn’t have a book. “Give us a poem, then,” Ebbin pleaded.

  There was such familiarity in that request that it gave Angus hope. He began the first poem that came to mind, one he and Ebbin used to trade line for line. It might break Havers and bring back Ebbin. Who exactly Havers was, he didn’t much care. He’d need to care later but not now, not now. He began:

  “I want free life and I want fresh air;

  And I sigh for the canter after the cattle,

  The crack of the whips like shots in a battle,

  The medley of horns and hoofs and heads

  That wars and wrangles and scatters and spreads;

  The green beneath and the blue above,

  And dash and danger, and life and love.

  “And Lasca!”

  Without opening his eyes, the soldier in the next bed said, �
��Go on then.”

  “I’ll take some of that,” another soldier struggled to say. “Some of that fresh air and free life. Yes sir. I’ll take Lasca, too.”

  “Shhhh!” the nurse said, standing.

  “Please, let us have a poem, Nurse,” a soldier cried out, and others agreed. Perhaps because the soldier who died had the men astir, she nodded her assent.

  Angus carried on.

  “Lasca used to ride on a mouse-gray mustang close by my side,

  With blue serape and bright-belled spur;

  I laughed with joy as I looked at her!

  Little knew she of books or of creeds;

  An Ave Maria sufficed her needs;

  Little she cared, save to be by my side,

  To ride with me, and ever to ride,

  From San Saba’s shore to LaVaca’s tide.”

  Many lines later, he came near the end.

  “The air was heavy, and the night was hot,

  I sat by her side, and forgot—forgot;

  Forgot the herd that were taking their rest,

  Forgot that the air was close opprest,

  That the Texas Norther comes sudden and soon,

  In the dead of night or the blaze of noon;

  That, once let the herd at its breath take fright,

  Nothing on earth can stop the flight;

  And woe to the rider, and woe to the steed,

  Who falls in front of their mad stampede!”

  Further on, when Lasca, stretched across her lover to protect him, is dead, Angus drew a long breath and continued,

  “I gouged out a grave a few feet deep

  And there in Earth’s arms I laid her to sleep;

  And there she is lying, and no one knows,

  And the summer shines and the winter snows;

  His voice broke on the last lines, “ ‘And I wonder why I do not care for the things that are like the things that were . . . ’ ”

  “ ‘Does half my heart lie buried there,’ ” the soldier next to Ebbin said softly, and in unison they finished it, “ ‘In Texas, down by the Rio Grande,’ ” Ebbin joining in.

  Everything went quiet. “How about one about a girl back home?” a voice across the way called out. “Not so sad this time.” There was a chorus of agreement. Angus peered across the aisle. The soldier, leg up in traction, gave a little wave. In the dim light, all Angus could make out was the white of his bandages and the white of his teeth in the flash of a smile.

  Another nurse entered and came swiftly down the aisle. “Hush! You’re keeping the men up. Really! Now, who have we here?” She lifted the clipboard from the end of the bed and looked at Ebbin, who grinned and said, “Lance Corporal E. Lawrence Havers, 45th Battalion, D Company. Awake and raring to take my leave.”

  EBBIN WAS DISCHARGED from the ward, to the sorrow of those nearby. “Good luck, fella!” one called out. Another said to Angus, “Come back and give us a show, you and your pal.” Ebbin and Angus were shown to an office where Ebbin could get fully dressed. He checked the tape around his ribs, then, with his uniform in his lap, slipped the cross around his neck.

  “Since when have you had a cross?” Angus asked.

  “As long as I can remember,” Ebbin said. “Believe in angels?” Ebbin lit the cigarette Angus offered and waited for Angus’s response.

  Angels at the Front were not to be trifled with when the spirit cries out for reprieve from suffering too great to contain. Was he immune? “Maybe I do,” Angus said. “You?”

  Ebbin cranked the window open and leaned on the ledge. He blew a stream of smoke into the night air. “All I know is this. There was a soldier in a ditch who couldn’t get his legs to work when the whistle blew. A blast came, raining dirt, and shook him down. A piece of shrap cut his leg. He heard screaming, but he was alone. Then a lance corporal leaps in, whips out his knife, cleans the wound, disinfects it like a surgeon in a field hospital, wraps it up, points out that his tunic is torn from stem to stern. Ribbons is all. This lance corporal had been around the day before, dancing through bullets, dragging men to safety, killing every Kraut in his path. A lance corporal—medic, avenger, angel, all in one. The kind of soldier you hoped you’d be before you had any idea of what being a soldier was.”

  Angus was afraid to speak.

  Ebbin went on, staring out at the stars. “The company sergeant hadn’t a clue who he was and didn’t care. All he knew was his name was Havers. He’d come from nowhere and wasn’t listed on the books, but he knew how to hold his own. But then, just as he’s leaping up out of that hole to help someone else, he’s shot in the back. Stray bullet. Maybe from our own. Don’t die, the soldier begs him. But he’s going to. He’s dying.”

  Ebbin took a couple of deep breaths. “ ‘God, I wish I had your courage,’ the soldier says. ‘You can. You do,’ Havers tells him. Tells him to take his tags, his tunic, his kit, his gun and ammo, and his cross. The soldier figures he wants them sent home and appreciates the offer of the tunic. But no, he says, ‘keep them, wear them.’ Says the tags and cross aren’t his anyway. He got ’em from another fella two months before, and he got them from someone back at Ypres who maybe got ’em from someone as far back as ’14. Says it’s been a good run for him, but his time’s up. ‘We’re all going to die over here, and Lawrence Havers has the courage to do it well,’ he says, ‘and then lives on. Done my bit. Proud of it. Now it’s your turn.’ He puts the tags in the soldier’s hand. ‘Wear them,’ he says. ‘You’ll find out who Havers is.’ Then he goes ahead and dies, smile on his face. The soldier sits there frozen, Havers in his arms. A stream of men pass by. Boots and legs running. And he looks down at Havers and sees how sweet death looks. But he can’t move. He fingers the discs in his palm until finally he does what Havers says and takes off his own tags and puts on Havers’s and puts on his uniform, too. He tosses his tags as far as he can. And then a miracle. He can stand up. Can move! And is out of that shell hole and in the thick of it.”

  “And you—you became Havers? Like in some fairy tale?”

  “I’ve just told you a story,” Ebbin said steadily, his back still to Angus. “Hoping that somehow you’d understand it. Whether you do is up to you. Like I said, we’re all going to die over here. The only thing that matters is how.”

  “You really believe we’re all going to die. How do you keep going, if that’s what you believe?”

  “Havers, that’s how. Havers is in here,” he turned around and put his fist against his chest, “a saving grace. Doesn’t matter if you believe it or not, there’s nothing you can do can change it. Ask around, you’ll find out what Havers has done.”

  “Do you have any idea who I am? I’m Ebbin Hant’s brother-in-law, his friend.”

  “Ah. Sorry about that, brother.” He put a hand on Angus’s shoulder and then picked up his uniform.

  They were silent as Ebbin got dressed. It was Angus’s turn to go to the window, to look out at the stars. But the only story he had to tell was one of loss, a severing of self from self. A lifetime of memories and all the ways he’d defined himself in relation to Ebbin had been a long, winding trail that took him finally to this place where he was utterly alone. And alone he would remain. And I wonder why I do not care for the things that are like the things that were . . .

  Ebbin was buttoning up his jacket, adjusting his puttees. Their time was short. There was no point turning him in. Hiller had come back with a diagnosis of “nervous but fit enough”—a good imitation of shellshock, it was said, but the line had to be drawn. As for Ebbin, they’d break him and he’d be sent to prison, not a hospital, for impersonating an officer. Rational or not, Angus kept seeing him marched to a stump, a bag on his head. And who knew who Havers really was or what had happened to him? Or what any of the facts really were. Ebbin could have been AWOL for all those months and then—rejoined? Anything was possible. What was certain was that Ebbin was broken, but believed he was whole and had survived as Havers. For by grace you have been saved through faith. Alright, then.
So be it.

  Ebbin was fully dressed now. He straightened his shoulders, whipped out a comb and smoothed his hair in the reflection in the window.

  Havers had as good a chance of making it as Ebbin Hant. Maybe better.

  NOT LONG AFTERWARDS, they stood to the side of the road as a stream of general service wagons passed by. A lorry rumbled up, then stalled, the whine of its engine piercing the air, mud flying, tires whirring. Angus stood there dumbly, clots of mud splattering his legs.

  He heard someone say, “Havers! Hi ya! Where ya been? Better check in with the Sarge toot sweet.”

  Then Ebbin was gone.

  A HALF HOUR later, drained and exhausted, Angus leaned against a stone wall, watching a lone cow meandering in the distance. Paul materialized, mug of hot milk coffee in hand. He offered it up to Angus and said that two years before, the Germans had killed all the cows in that field when they left in retreat. He swiped his hand across his neck to demonstrate. Then, like Angus, he leaned back against the wall and crossed his legs. They kept their eyes on the cow, plodding uselessly on.

  “How old are you, Paul? Quel âge?” Angus asked as he handed the mug back.

  “Onze ans,” Paul replied immediately.

  “Eleven. So, you’ve spent nearly a third of your life in this war.” Cottony wisps of his own life before the war drifted by. He could not grasp them and he did not try. He was trying to overcome a strange lifting feeling, as if the top of his head might come off and his body float up after it. Paul started speaking again. Angus heard the words before they took hold. Paul told him how he’d been at his great-uncle’s farm when the Germans began to slaughter the cows. He’d hidden in the cellar. They’d burned the barn and killed the cows and run a knife through his great-uncle for trying to stop them. And when Paul came out of the cellar, his hair . . . He rubbed his hand over the white patch.

  The words fell into place.

  Paul narrowed his eyes. “One day I will be a soldier. A Canadian soldier. They found me. In the cellar. But first, a German soldier, a private. He see me. ‘Shhh . . . ’ he say.”