Copyright © 2010 John H. Dirckx
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Fiction: DESERTERS by Chris Muessig
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Edward Kinsella III
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Knee deep in the shallows, Jake Miller looked across Champlain to the whale-backed mountains and put aside the sins and misfortune that whispered for his attention. The lake was placid, chilly, though the morning was beginning to pile up with heat and humidity. A ball game had started up behind him—Supply Company vs. Troop L—and hearty souls were already thrashing and diving out by the rafts. It was not hard to give in to the green world and its birdsong.
He stepped forward, and the water soaked into his flannel knee pants. Bending, he thrust his sleeves below the surface and brought up a cold armload to splash against his wool jersey. In the corner of his eye a pair of men leapt from the nearest raft. He turned their way and saw the platform left bare and bouncing on its barrels. Good, the deserted raft would allow a diving start for a swim out beyond the ropes before the lifeguards came on duty.
One of the divers swam in with a quick, fluid, crawling stroke unlike any Jake had ever seen. He watched in fascination as the man drove shoreward, but he could not make out the face that barely came out of the water. How did he breathe?
The man was almost to shore when Jake looked to the other swimmer, who had been left far behind. This second man was only a few body lengths from the raft, still twenty-five yards off the beach. He had stopped there and looked as if he was trying to push himself up out of the lake. He did not yell, probably because his mouth was too full of water. The wide eyes looked Jake's way as they went under.
Jake pointed at the spot, riveted his eyes upon it, and yelled, “There's a man in trouble! Man in trouble!” in his best parade-ground voice. Then he ran forward, eyes wide open, and went into the deeper water and began to breast stroke powerfully toward the spot where the desperate face had gone down. He did not look back for any others who might have heard his call; he was too afraid of losing the exact mark.
Feeling neither the cold water nor the weight of his suit, Jake kicked and reached forward, raging at his slowness. He tried not to blink; and when he reached the spot, he took three quick, shallow breaths and dove straight down.
The water was perhaps ten feet deep, clear in the slant light for the first fathom and then darkening into a murky blend of silt and vegetation that camouflaged the bottom. He cleared his ears and kicked hard against his natural buoyancy. His anxious, groping hand churned up clouds of particles that added to the obscurity along the lake bed.
Fingertips finally encountered a foot that toed into the mud like a climber's. He pulled himself along the leg and got a grip on the upper suit. There was no struggle against him. Using the weight of the other body as an anchor, he put both feet on the bottom and pushed hard.
His air was about spent, and the surface seemed no closer. He kicked harder and inadvertently clawed toenails into the man who burdened him. Then his face broke into the air, and he drank it.
The other was still under, but the fresh lungful enabled Jake to rearrange his grip and get both their faces just above the surface. He started sidewise for shore. The raft was closer, but he would never get this man onto it without help.
Though he was a fairly strong swimmer and buoyant enough to doze while he floated on his back at the seashore, Jake was losing the struggle with the deadweight. He'd never been trained in such things; he thought he might even be strangling the man as he towed him.
Other hands and bodies reached and splashed around him, unburdening him just as he felt them both going under. Someone pulled him along until he was able to touch his feet on the bottom and stagger ashore. He fell to his hands and knees and breathed deep against a sudden rush of prickly darkness. A friendly hand touched his back, and a voice asked something solicitous.
When his vision cleared, he saw a newly arrived lifeguard and a man from their own medical detachment working to revive the boyish form, so pale in its sopping, oversized suit. An older, hatless man in a Fordham football sweater, who had been umpiring the ball game, knelt beside them, speaking urgent words that might have been instructions until Jake recognized them as Latin.
"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been eight weeks since my last confession."
Jake spoke into a square of netting in the makeshift partition separating him from Father Kiernan, recognizable now in his proper setting. The chaplain's silhouette was encouraging, but Jake hoped to rush by the offense that preyed most upon his mind. “I was disobedient and lied to my mother. I also took the Lord's name in vain three times and..."
"Whoa, soldier. Let's back and fill. What is it that your mother asked you to do?"
Dammit.
"Well, she made me promise not to enlist until I was of age. I would count lying to the recruiter as a sin too except he seemed awfully eager to be lied to."
"Does she know where you are?” the priest asked with a simple, sympathetic curiosity.
"Oh, yes. She tracked me to Fort Slocum and was ready to raise cane and bring me home."
"What stopped her?"
"I told her that I had enlisted to be in the band and that the Army was agreeable to that."
"Ah, so your only danger would be tripping up in a parade."
"She doesn't know that it's all brass and drums and no call for violins."
"You're a violinist, are you?"
"Yes, Father. I led a dance band."
"What about your father?"
"My stepfather died last year."
"Does your mother depend on you to bring money in, then? Is that why she wanted to keep you back?” A new, tablet-hard tone had entered Kiernan's voice.
"No! Our aunts took us in, and she was left enough to keep her and my brothers going. She thinks I'm too young, and that I am in the wrong frame of mind for enlisting."
"How old are you, Private?"
"I'll be eighteen in September."
"And what is your frame of mind? Why did you enlist?"
Jake had a ready tale for that, partially true, repeated often enough to convince even himself.
"I was walking to work in Manhattan one morning, and I saw a big banner going up on the El. It said President Wilson was asking for American men to volunteer to help defend democracy. When I got up to Times Square and saw the line-up at the recruiters, I decided I wasn't going to let other men fight my battles."
"So you signed up on the spot."
"Yes."
"But your mother had already tried to head you off."
"Yes."
"Why did she make you promise?"
"She knew I was down in the dumps about several things I had just learned about, and she was worried I would do something reckless—like signing up. A couple of other boys had already done that."
"Do you regret enlisting now?"
"I only regret being underhanded about it."
"But why the cavalry?"
"It beats walking."
Kiernan laughed. They both knew that the troops still did plenty of marching afoot while the horses were resting.
"And do these matters that may have prodded you into signing up seem as important now? Will they distract you from your duty?"
Jake hesitated. Perhaps he would not be completely absolved unless he revealed himself more completely. And the questioning was not likely to let up until he did so.
"I'm still stewing about them. You see, I was expecting to come into some trust money left me by my grandfather, but it turns out my old man, my mother's first husband, rifled the fund. It's all gone. He used it to drink himself to death. I had plans to set myself up in business with that money. When my girl's family found out about it, they made us stop seeing each other because my prospects were all shot to hell. Sorry."
"So, you lost your birthright, so to speak, your great expectations, and your girl in one fell swoop. Like the fellows that join the Foreign Legion."
; That remark gave Jake pause. Then he asked, “Must I tell my mother the truth?"
"The regimental band leader hasn't arrived on post yet. Do you know for certain there wouldn't be a spot for you in a military band?"
"Have you ever seen a violinist marching down the street on Decoration Day?"
"No—not a sober one at least; but why don't you wait and see? It's not as if you've left your mother and brothers in dire straits. I will leave it to your conscience as to what you tell those at home. As to your age, well, I'd say that you have the pluck for what's coming up, based on your actions this morning."
So much for the anonymity of confession.
"That's another thing. I wonder if I acted correctly today. Had I used my head differently or taught myself rescue or a faster stroke, that man might still be alive."
"He might still be at the bottom of the lake if it weren't for you. I heard your shout from all the way out in the field, and you were after him like a shot before anyone could even think. I actually saw one man who had swum by you in the opposite direction just keep walking when he came ashore. He didn't have a clue about what was going on, must have had water in his ears. No one else could have gotten to the boy so quickly. Don't let it trouble your conscience."
Easier said than done, Jake thought, remembering the beseeching eyes.
"Who was he, Father?"
"Pfc. John Halifax, a clerk in headquarters."
The priest stopped as if reminded of something.
"Should I continue, Father?"
"Is there anyone else on line for confession?"
"I believe he got tired of waiting and went away."
"Do you have anything serious left to confess?"
"I had impure thoughts."
"Did you act upon them?"
"No, Father, but it was touch and go."
"There's a pun in the making. Well, banish your sensual restlessness; there is no more friendless fate than self-worship. Now, let's hear your act of contrition. For your penance, you will stand in this evening for my assistant, who is away without my leave. I have a chore over at Headquarters that you can assist me with. You don't have any duties that would interfere, do you?"
"No, Father,” Jake said, trying not to sound wary. He didn't know if he was getting off easy or not, but maybe aiding the chaplain would help the te absolvat take a better hold on his conscience.
The sky was striking its colors beyond the Adirondacks as they went into Regimental Headquarters. The office was manned by a duty clerk and the corporal of the guard, both of whom looked up from their reading and jumped to attention at the captain's bars.
"At ease, boys,” the chaplain said affably. “I'm here for Pfc. Halifax's personal items. The XO asked me to take care of that for him."
The chaplain was tall, ruddy, and solid, with cropped auburn hair beneath his peaked cap. Having ten years on most of the enlistees, he carried himself with all the assurance of Rome. He had also proven himself a big strider and a good rider, though Jake had not yet learned enough about him to see past these outward appearances.
The duty men took Kiernan at his word, however, and immediately relaxed in his presence. The bony young clerk brought them over to a neat desk near the record bins. On the desk, a small framed photograph from civilian days paired the dead man with a much older figure. The two subjects stood on a hilltop with a fair-sized town in the prospect beyond them. The elderly man was much taller, gaunter, not a great resemblance, but there was an obvious pride and mutual affection in their pose. Kiernan picked up the pewter frame while Jake pulled out desk drawers.
"John and his granduncle,” the clerk remarked. “We had a tale or two about the old fellow every day. He was a captain of cavalry in the Civil War, and founded his own town in upstate New York, and ran ten businesses, if you can believe that. John worshiped him."
"Still living?"
"Yes, and I expect he'll outlive all of us."
The clerk's fatalism had no basis in experience yet, unless one counted the drowning; it was rote lip service to three years of tabloid slaughter. But Jake had heard words in the same vein even from veterans, cavalrymen who had fought the savage Moro in the Philippines. They would look you perversely in the eye and ask how, after the years of carnage overseas, anyone could think himself more charmed than those millions dead.
"Did they correspond much?"
"Heavily. John read us passages. The old man put much cheer into them, with funny spots about the doings at home, and we could tell that he was keen for John to follow in his footsteps—the greeting was always ‘Dear Trooper Halifax'—and John ... was a type eager to please. He would ask us what would be best to put into the replies so that the old man would have a clear idea about his career in the ‘modern cavalry.’”
"A close pair."
"They were the last of the Halifaxes. Family was all. The old man will be very sad to hear of this, I'm sure."
"Why did his granduncle send him off to war if he was the sole survivor?” Jake wondered aloud.
"Sometimes,” Kiernan said, “families place equal weights of love and duty on the scales. Well, the colonel will have wired him the bad news. We'll have to see if he's coming over for the body once the examiner lets it go. What's your name, Private?"
"Boswell, sir."
"Well, that's fitting,” the chaplain said with a laugh.
"Sir?"
"You seem to have drunk up a lot of material from the departed."
"Couldn't help it. He could talk a mutt down from a meat wagon. But he was a good man for all that."
"Remember him and pray for him then, our first casualty."
Boswell nodded, probably out of politeness, not faith. He looked past Kiernan to Jake and said, “You're Miller, the man that pulled him out. Let me shake your hand."
Embarrassed, Jake put his hand out and Boswell gave it a wiry squeeze.
"What about the letters you mentioned?” Kiernan said.
Boswell stepped forward and looked into the opened drawers. The desk seemed to contain only official material. “I'm sure he wouldn't have thrown them away, but maybe he didn't want to keep them here."
"Here's something personal, I think,” Jake said. He picked up a sheet of paper laid flat at the back of a lower drawer. “Looks like he wrote up a genealogy."
"That's exactly what it is,” Kiernan said, sounding impressed with Jake's vocabulary.
Halifax had begun in too large a hand, so the outer branches and offshoots drooped and twisted to make room for one another, the lettering shrinking steadily in size until it bumped abruptly against the margins.
Boswell said, “Right! He began taking names and dates and places from his family Bible not long ago. I suppose it was his way of whittling away the time."
"He carried the family Bible away from home?"
"A miniature version the grandunc gave him, but it had the same family facts copied into it. He toted it back and forth from the barracks like an old Puritan. Probably stowed it in his footlocker at night. I guess his letters are there too."
"Perhaps you can show us to his cot."
Jake felt odd as they spoke of the dead man, his possessions and connections. These matters seemed so remote from the hard reality of those eyes going under the surface, as pleading as his little brother's, and the fearful struggle to get the man up in time. Fingering the remainders made Jake's failure more poignant—all his failures. For a moment, Lily McCreary's dark, sympathetic eyes seemed upon him, as in those moments when he had been less than sure or courageous. Then the eyes turned aside with pain, and he forced her out of his mind.
The two Halifaxes continued to smile up at him. He tried to recall the countenance of his grandfather, he who had sought to bridge time and the damage wrought by the handsome drunkard that had wooed his beautiful daughter away.
It was too long ago. Grandfather was a specter whose generosity had been leeched away with the help of a suborned trustee. Instead, his father's reddish face puckered lik
e a scar on his memory, spewing vicious words that made his mother's eyes brim with unbearable surface tension.
"Miller!” Jake started from his unwelcome reverie and followed Kiernan and the clerk outside.
A great wall of insect sound had risen up beneath the stars. A horse whinnied in a distant stable, and a bark of human laughter sounded once and was gone. The scent of new-mown lawns and flowerbeds blended in a damp, pervasive perfume, sweetening the music that drifted from a parlor window on Officer's Row. It did not feel as if they were at war.
Boswell led them across to one of the brick barracks facing HQ. Light shone forth from both floors; silhouettes of troopers passed the opened windows. They went up to the second floor and into a big, cot-lined room. A quartet was playing cards at the far end of the aisle. A few other men were scattered about, working on their gear, writing, reading, laboring in solitude.
"Leave them be,” Kiernan said when he sensed Boswell was about to call the room to attention. “Just show us to the cot."
It was halfway down the room, still made up with tight hospital corners. Underneath was a government-issue locker with a padlocked hasp. Kiernan reached into his pocket and pulled out a small chain with a key attached to it.
"See if this opens it up, please,” Kiernan asked the clerk. He turned to Jake's quizzical face and added, “I took it from around his neck before they carried the body away."
The explanation did not dispel Jake's discomfort, yet perhaps such morbid presumption was customary with priests.
The locker slid out smoothly on the scrubbed floor. The key fit, and when the lid went up, they saw a divided tray containing rolled canvas belts, buckles and brass cleaner, gun oil, pistol rod and patches, shoe polish and brush, toiletries, and other odds and ends, but no book other than a small military manual.
"See if you can turn up the Bible and the letters, Miller."
Jake put the picture frame and lineage on the cot, lifted out the tray, and hunkered down. The removal of the tray exposed folded uniforms and skivvies with a dented campaign hat and holstered .45 on top. The soldier's duffel bag had been compressed into one corner like a folded flag. Jake put reluctant hands upon the belongings and sorted through the layers. At the bottom he uncovered an oilskin wallet in which he found a few greenbacks and a bundle of letters.
AHMM, March 2010 Page 11
