The King's War

by Andrew Stanek

  “They’re going to Martin’s surgery,” he realized. “And those aren’t army trucks, Harry. They’re navy trucks.”

  A cold, hard clenching ball, like iron, had formed in the pit of Will’s stomach. He started to run after the trucks as fast as he could go, Harry following him.

  The trucks beat them to Martin’s surgery by a good five minutes. When they opened the door, they could hear Martin shouting. “Out, all of you, out!”

  Soldiers filed past them in silence. Some of them had blood on their hands. Martin appeared from inside his surgery, saw them, and froze. His face was white as a sheet.

  “You’d better come in,” he said to both of them. “It’s Nate.”

  Will felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. He quietly followed Martin into the surgery. There, laying spread out on the table, was Nate. Martin - or someone - had ripped off his shirt, and hastily-placed bandages were running along his chest, dyed red with his blood - but he wasn’t dead. When the three of them entered, he propped himself up on his elbow, sputtering a little. His face was almost as bloody as his chest, but he was smiling.

  “Hey,” he said with a grin. “Will. Harry. How are you guys doing?”

  “Don’t try to sit up,” Martin said, pushing him back down onto the table. “You’ve been shot at least four times. This is going to sting a little.” He grabbed a small package from inside one of his cabinets and ripped it open, pouring a heap of tan powder onto Nate’s chest.

  “Coagulant,” Martin explained tersely. “It’ll stop the bleeding.”

  “How are you doing, Will?” Nate said vaguely, his head lolling to one side as he spoke. “You still building your airplane?”

  “Yeah, I’m still building it,” Will said quietly. “I’m working on it out in Harry’s barn. I’ve had a lot of problems, but I - I’m getting over them. I’ve got both the wings fixed to the body now.” His eyes couldn’t seem to help tracing up and down Nate’s blood-stained chest. “Unfortunately, I don’t have an engine anymore. But I’m using your lathe, Nate.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Nate said, now staring straight up. “I thought you could probably put it to use, right?”

  “Help me turn him over,” Martin said, after taking Nate’s pulse. “I need to look at his back.”

  Harry and Will helped Martin turned him. Martin gave his back a cursory inspection before telling them to put him back down.

  “No exit wounds,” Martin announced. “The bullets are still inside him.”

  “Is that bad?” Nate asked vaguely.

  “I don’t know. I can’t remove them without making things a whole lot worse though. I don’t have any morphine either.” He looked with distress at his meager stock of drugs.

  Will was shaking his head. “Nate, how the hell did this happen to you?”

  Nate chuckled. “I was doing my duty in His Majesty King Edward’s service,” he said, with a mock salute, then put his arm down shakily. “It was a rebel gunboat. You remember how I said I was going to get transferred to the navy? Well I did. I did the base maintenance work for a while, then I got placed on patrol duties. I was on one of our patrol ships. We saw a rebel gunboat. We were right along the ceasefire line and we started going right along this line and they started going - you know - right next to us, parallel to us, straight across the line. And the regulations say that if they cross the ceasefire line we start shooting, so we were watching them as close as we could.”

  “There was shooting, I don’t know how it started. We had a machine gun - a thirty cal - on our deck but we didn’t get to fire it for more - more than a few seconds.” He shook his head. “They lit up our deck, the cabin, everything. I took a few hits,” he gestured to his chest. “The boat commander was dead. Someone, I guess it was Pager - he was the second officer - turned the boat around, throttled the engine up, and got us back to shore. If we’d been there for a minute longer, they would have sunk us.” He coughed. “There were twelve of us on that boat to begin with, I think five of us were alive when we reached shore, and that’s counting me.”

  “Well, you’re not dead yet,” Martin said. He had wrapped new bandages over the white powder that he scattered over Nate’s chest earlier and was now pressing down, hard, onto the bandages. Harry quietly joined him.

  “What about the rebel gunboat?” Will asked. “Did you sink it?”

  “Nope. We put a few holes in it. We might have gotten some lucky hits in around the waterline... might have hit one of their sailors. Their boat looked to be about the same size as ours. I thought we could take them.” He gave another choking cough.

  “Why didn’t you get help? Why did you fight them on your own? What about the ironclads and the dreadnoughts?”

  “We radioed for help, but I knew it wasn’t gonna come.” Nate gave a slightly manic grin. “None of the other boats at port have any gas in them.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. The officers steal the gas and sell it at market in town. So you couldn’t haul those other boats out of port in an emergency if you wanted to. I think we were the only boat in the whole sea today. As for those big suckers... the dreadnoughts I don’t know about, but the ironclads are rusting in port, and they don’t have any gas in them either.”

  “They steal the gas and sell it,” Will repeated. His mind flickered, with a burst of rage, to the tobacco-chewing navy man who greeted him every day with a call of, “tool, fuel, spare parts, cheap, army surplus.”

  “Why don’t you stop them?” Will demanded.

  “They’re officers,” Nate said with a shrug. “What are we supposed to do about it?”

  There was a silence. Martin was still pressing down hard on Nate’s chest. His fingers were stained red, the same as the bandages and the powder, but the bleeding did seem to be stopping.

  “Am I gonna be alright Martin?” Nate asked vaguely. “Are you going to be able to fix me up?”

  “That depends on whether I can stop your bleeding. I’m sorry I don’t have any painkillers. We should have painkillers. Does it hurt?”

  “Yeah, it hurts. But it got kind of... dull... after a while. I was screaming when the bullets hit. Now I barely feel it.” His manic grin returned. “We’re going to have to chalk this one up as a loss. I don’t think our patrol boat is ever gonna sail again. It had practically sunk already when we got back to port. They sank our boat. Theirs is fine. They won. It’s a pity. Everyone was in such good spirits after we sank that rebel battleship the other day.”

  “You really sank it then?”

  “Oh yeah, we really sank a battleship. When that u-boat came into port we had a big celebration. We were practically carrying those guys around on our shoulders. They were heroes. And the captain got a medal.”

  “What were you doing on this patrol boat?” Will asked quietly.

  “I was the radioman,” Nate said vaguely. “I radioed for help, even though I knew it wasn’t going to work. And the radio was still working on the way back. I listened to the chatter from the base. They wanted to send boats to help us, but they couldn’t get them out of port, like I knew they couldn’t, and we were the only navy vessel in the whole sea today, because all the rest were stuck in dock without any fuel.” He laughed bitterly. “But enough about me. How are you guys doing?”

  They told him about the drought and the harvest and the rations, and how Will had tried to build the plane but it had gotten smashed up, and the market and the engine and the junk yard and the homeless boys, and the weather and the well and every other thing they could think of until the sun came up. Nate lingered, dipping in and out of consciousness. The bleeding stopped, and for a while Martin thought that Nate would live, but blotchy red patches began to appear on Nate’s skin near the morning and Martin declared he was bleeding internally. A few hours later, despite Martin’s efforts at surgery, Nate died.

  All three of them cried. Martin wanted to bury Nate at the local cemetery - do it himself, with his bare hands if he had to - but his fellow soldiers
said they would take him for a military funeral. They loaded his lifeless, bloodstained body into the back of their colored trucks and started the drive back across the field and to the navy base, their vehicles bumping up and down across the furrows. Martin watched until the trucks disappeared into the distance, then went into his surgery without another word.

  That night, the newscaster on the radio announced that the military had won another great victory at sea, and that the previous day the Royal Navy had sank ten rebel ships of various sizes, frigates, cruisers, destroyers, and more battleships. The newscaster proudly announced that the Royal Navy had not had a single casualty in the generation of this victory. Nate’s words echoed in Will’s ears. “I listened to the chatter from the base... we were the only navy vessel in the whole sea today, because all the rest were stuck in dock without any fuel.”

  It was not the last time Will heard about the supposed naval engagement which the radio said was such a great triumph and he knew had ended in such disastrous failure. That week, at the regular village meeting, Ms. Diane stood to address the town.

  “I am sure all of you have heard about the great victory at sea that the King’s armed forces won over the Black Force this past week. I have been told that some of the men from our village took part in this battle, and we should all be extremely proud of their accomplishments. Ten rebel ships were sunk, but, owing to the perseverance and valor of our military, not a single one of our own men was lost.”

  The town broke into a chorus of “All Hail King Edward,” but it didn’t last for long. At this, Martin sprang out of his seat and screamed curses and profanity until they stopped.

  “We didn’t win that battle,” he finally shouted. “And one of our men was lost. Nate Larson. He was a person. He went to school with us. We grew up together. He joined the army, and died in that battle. You’re always telling us how we all have to sacrifice for the sake of the King’s War. Well, Nate believed you. He sacrificed everything for the King’s War, because he believed. And now you’re going to just stand there and tell us that he’s fine? Like he didn’t exist? Like he doesn’t matter?”

  “Nate Larson joined the army, not the navy,” Ms. Diane said cooly. “I’m sure he’s fine.”

  Martin cursed again.

  “Nate transferred to the navy last year, and he was on that gunboat last week. Navy soldiers dragged him into my operating room. He died in my surgery. His blood is still on my table. He was in the navy, he was in that battle, and now he’s dead. And you’re going to tell me he’s not? You’re going to make him disappear? Erase him? Lie to us about him? Like I’m a child? Like I have a puppy that died?”

  The townsfolk began to talk in concerned whispers. People had liked Nate, Will realized. He had been a member of the community, someone with no enemies and had volunteered to go fight the good fight.

  “And I’ll tell you something else,” Martin said loudly. “Before he died, Nate told me that other sailors had died on his boat too. And that they hadn’t sunk any rebel cruisers or battleships. That they’d been the only boat in the whole sea that day, and they’d fought one rebel gunboat. And that’s what he died doing.”

  The buzz-like conversation in the crowd intensified. Ms. Diane glanced around the faces of the townsfolk with a look of mixed apprehension and shrewd calculation.

  “Obviously there has been some misunderstanding,” she said. “It sounds like you are talking about a different naval engagement,” then, before Martin could protest. “I will contact the commander of the Naval Base and ask him what happened to Nate Larson.”

  But Will was sure as he’d ever been that she was lying.

  As Will exited the town hall that day, the sailor leaning on the back of the truck next to the canteen spat out his tobacco. “Hey mechanic!” he called. “Need anything? Tools, fuel, spare parts. Cheap. Army surplus.”

  Will gave him a scrutinizing look.

  “How do you get all this stuff, anyway? How do you get your gas?”

  The naval officer just shrugged. “Army surplus,” he said with a grin. “You want some fuel? Cheap.”

  “No,” Will said with a clenched fist. “Some other time maybe. Thanks.” He walked back to his shop and stared at the ceiling, a whirl of complicated thoughts running through his head. After an hour or more, he got up and started to work on his airplane again, using the lathe for every little thing he could think of even though he didn’t need to.

  Later that day, after he’d worked until his muscles ached, Will made his way to the canteen. He spotted Martin sitting alone at a table. Martin had a black eye and his cheek was swollen and puffy, and blood tinged his face.

  “What happened to you?” Will asked.

  “You’re the scholar,” Martin replied quietly. “You’re smart. You’re smarter than me. I think you already know what happened.”

  Will nodded slightly.

  “Surgery’s going to be closed for a while,” Martin continued nonchalantly. “Navy has appropriated it for the time being. So don’t get hurt any time soon, okay?”

  “Forget me. What about you?”

  “I’ll live.” Martin said quietly. “And that’s more than I could say for Nate.”

  Chapter 13

  Martin moved back in with his parents a few days after the Navy “appropriated” his surgery. He continued his practice as best he could out of their house, but he now wore a permanently grim expression leading Will to believe that Nate’s death was lingering with him, as it was indeed lingering with all of them, and Will felt the images, the thoughts, the feelings would probably stay with him for a long time.

  Will had spent a lot of time in his own shop, with his eyes closed, trying to think and remember everything he could of Nate, but he kept coming back to one thing - the lathe. This was the only thing he had left of Nate, the only thing that Nate had ever given him. He continued to work on the airplane, but redoubled his efforts to use the lathe for almost every single part, no matter how unnecessarily, no matter how much the machine creaked or how much rust had accumulated on its valves. The airframe was again taking shape nicely - he had finished the cockpit and the fixed landing gear and the wings, but the trickier moving parts now had to be considered. He needed a new propeller, a new driveshaft, a new rudder, a new tailpiece, and of course, a new engine. Will had none of these things, but he knew it would only be a matter of time before he found them.

  Harry, who had been appearing in the village regularly, now stayed more or less close to his farm. He came to town only for the weekly meeting or when he desperately needed something. On the few occasions that Will had traveled out into the fields on some job or the other and seen Harry, he’d been digging more wells with the power auger - just digging and digging. Will understood why he was doing it and left him to himself.

  A few more dreary winter days ticked by, much as the last few had done. The winds died down and though the cold remained, people were making frequent trips to the market to buy and sell the fruits of their craft for those of others. Will knew the winter was fast coming to a close and they hadn’t gotten nearly enough rain or snow. Will still had his job as a mechanic to consider, but for whatever reason people seemed to be bringing in fewer and fewer things for him to fix. One of his repair jobs was a radio. When he fixed it and tested it, the news came on. It replayed a speech that King Edward had given the day before. It had been long and sweeping, with the king talking about his pride as the leader of the greatest, most powerful, most advanced country in the world, how the march towards general prosperity, an end to suffering, and above all else, victory over the Black Force, continued. Will switched it off.

  One day Harry found Will and Martin at the canteen. Will was as surprised to see him as anyone. Harry sat down quietly, spat out the straw he was chewing, and then said, “come with me.” He offered no further explanation.

  “Harry and I have been working on something,” Martin said, pulling Will to his feet. “It’s something for Nate.”

  Mart
in and Harry led Will out of the canteen and down to one of the sheds in Harry’s field, well away from where Will worked on his airplane day in and day out. Harry opened the door to reveal something akin to a little shrine. Everything of Nate’s that they could find, his old school clothes, his books, his wind-up mechanical watch, the letters he had written, his navy jacket, even a black-and-white photograph of him that Will had never seen before, were all inside the shed. They were all grouped around a single burning candle. Will stared at it.

  “You guys went to all this trouble?” he asked.

  “They want to tell us that Nate didn’t die,” Martin said slowly. “But that’s not exactly right, is it? They just want us to forget about him. Like he never existed. If we forget about him, we can’t ask questions about him, or try to go see him, or write letters to him that don’t get answered. But he deserved better than that. So let’s not forget about him.”

  Will looked over the collection of items and the single little burning candles. He stared at it and his thoughts drifted back in time, back to the day that he’d stood on the train platform and told his friends that this was goodbye. Nate’s words rang out clearly in his mind.

  “Someone had to go. The King needs soldiers. And look, we always knew this was going to happen, didn’t we? Some of us are soldiers, some of us are farmers, some of us are doctors, and some of us are scholars.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Will said quietly. He walked back down to the village, ruffled through a drawer full of old papers and things he had, and produced the one thing he had of Nate other than the lathe. It was the letter that Nate had sent him. He re-read the last few lines.

  “I know you’re going to be a great mechanic and do the King proud. They were right to have faith in you. Good luck building your airplane.