AHMM, March 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Jake offered the letters up to Kiernan. They were exclusively from the old man in the upstate enclave. The priest noticed idly that the envelopes were still in postmark order, the latest being ten days old.

  "No loose ones in there that might be more recent, Miller? There should be an additional two or three from the past week. Right, Boswell?"

  "No,” Jake said. “And no Bible."

  "Where could they be?” Kiernan mused aloud. “He had the key with him. And there's his empty duffel, so they're not in storage."

  Jake wondered why they should concern themselves. He watched curiously as the priest looked under the pillow and then reached down and hefted the bottom of a flaccid laundry bag tied to a corner of the cot.

  Kiernan dismissed Boswell back to his office duty. He kept out the newest letter and handed the rest back to Jake, who closed and relocked the box. The chaplain looked thoughtfully at the resealed locker, and then down the aisle; but instead of leaving, he handed Jake the letter, gave a little follow-me nod, and walked toward the card players.

  The men finally had to acknowledge his presence.

  "Tenhut!” one of them yelled, beating Jake to it, though he thought they were a little cheeky in the way they sprang up. Kiernan seemed oblivious, however.

  "As you were, boys,” he said, loud enough to let the entire room of upright men get back to their tasks. “Sorry to interrupt. What's that you're playing?"

  "Hearts, sir,” one of players said defensively, maybe thinking this was a crackdown on gambling in the barracks.

  "Ah, a great game of vigilance and vengeance. We call it Black Maria where I come from. But sit down. I just wanted to ask a few questions about the young man who drowned today. I'm looking after things on behalf of the XO."

  They sat at his insistence but did not take up their hands. Anything, even a nosy chaplain, was a diversion to the boredom of a penniless Saturday night.

  "Do you recall seeing him carrying a Bible back and forth to work? Yes? You wouldn't know offhand where it's gone to, would you?"

  Head shakes all around.

  "Did he have any friends besides yourselves that he might have loaned it to?"

  "We weren't exactly friends,” said a sour-looking private with upstate vowels. “He would talk to anyone that came within pistol shot, whether they talked back or not. He was a pest, if you ask me."

  "But was there anyone in the company who might have palled with him, who didn't think him a pest?"

  The players looked at each other again and shrugged doubtfully.

  "You'd notice if someone from another troop came into the barracks to see him?"

  "We would, but we're out on the drill fields most of the day,” the self-appointed spokesman pointed out with thinly disguised condescension. Jake was growing rather tired of the man's tone.

  "Did his pestering include stories about his family?"

  "Yes!” The man gave them an unpleasant smile, no doubt feeling righteous in the contempt elicited by the question. “He would come to me and say, ‘Broszka, I see in your file that you're from Olean. That's not too far from my hometown, which is named after my family. Have you ever been to Halifax?’ What business of his is it where I come from or where I go? And it's damned dull to hear someone go on about rich relatives. What the hell is he doing here in the ranks if he comes from such good stock?"

  Jake thought the other card players were growing a little uncomfortable with their friend's outspokenness. A younger, more cheerful boy with hair like stubbled straw put a hand on Broszka's arm and cleared his throat. The latter shook off the touch but subsided.

  The blond said, “Best not to speak ill of the dead. Right, Chaplain? But you have me thinking that I've seen Halifax tagging after one of the cavalry salts the past couple of weeks."

  "Someone from Headquarters?"

  "I didn't look too closely, but he's definitely not from Headquarters."

  "Where'd you see them?"

  "A week ago Friday night, for certain, I saw them coming out of the riding hall."

  A third player, marked by big ears stuck at right angles to his little head, spoke up in a tenement accent. “Me, too! Halleyfax an’ a Regulah. You kin tell dem boys from how dey spawt deir uniforms in dat jaunty way an’ wawk different. I sawd ‘em togedduh when I hadda detail at d'armorer's shack on de range. Dey was dare last Satuhday, drawin’ ammo fuh target shootin,’ but I dint get too close. It was a break t'see ‘em chewin’ somebuddy else's ear awf. I hadda laugh, dough."

  "About what, son?"

  "De way Halleyfax was playin’ de fateful dawg."

  Kiernan looked aside for a moment, then back.

  "Was Halifax a horseman?” he asked.

  After another communal stare, they nodded grudgingly. The blond soldier said, “Truth, he sat pretty well. From what he told us, he was brought up on horseback."

  "How did he shoot?"

  The city mouse said, “I dunno how ennyone cud yap as much and shoot good at de same time, but I hoid he was a deadeye."

  "Shooting and riding on their own time? That's unusual, isn't it? Don't you fellows get enough of that during the normal day? Well, thanks, boys. Carry on with your game."

  Kiernan sketched the airiest of crosses over the card-strewn footlocker. “And please pray for your lost comrade, who will pester you no more."

  Jake lingered after Kiernan stepped away. He looked Broszka in the eye and then showed his back.

  "Come see me when you're by yourself, penny boy,” Broszka muttered.

  Jake turned back, but before he could launch himself, Kiernan called to him. “Miller, give me a hand with this."

  "His mastuh's verse,” said big ears.

  * * * *

  As they carried the footlocker back to Headquarters, Kiernan said to the air, “Something's amiss here."

  Jake, meanwhile, was simmering. He wouldn't mind answering Broszka's smart mouth out behind the stables, and after that he would pin back that Bowery boy's big ears. Both men had probably enlisted because they had worn out their welcome in the civilian world.

  He took a deep breath of the sweet night, hoping to subdue his fruitless anger. Deliberately, he imagined Halifax trying to draw such a draught of air where there was none. And what of all the drowning souls at sea, like those on the Lusitania, sinking into the bottomless dark with crushed screams?

  He drew back from those thoughts, too, sensing a descent into the morbid state that had disturbed his mother so much. To escape, he said, “May I ask what you mean by amiss, Father?"

  "Oh, I'm not sure. I just wonder where the Good Book and the last of the man's letters have gone to, things I believe he would not have parted with lightly. Put it down to my being a policeman's son."

  "May I also ask why you didn't brace those men? I thought they were disrespectful."

  Kiernan looked askance. “Do you respect me, Miller?"

  "Yes, Father."

  "Why? Because I'm a priest? Most young Catholic men respect their priest as a matter of course, unless he's an old sot—or worse."

  "You're also an officer."

  "Not in everybody's eyes. Aren't we seen as sheep in wolves’ clothing? Besides, I needed facts from them more than I needed thumbs along their seams. And nothing puts off a sinner like a martinet."

  Jake had not had a Catholic priest speak so frankly to him before. Strangely flattered, he pondered Kiernan's philosophy as they trudged back, and shelved a growing question about the necessity of his own presence on this errand.

  The corporal of the guard had gone out to check the posts. Boswell was back behind a newspaper whose front-page stories of race riots and Americans parading in Paris jostled the grinding litany from the Western Front. He rose up with a rustle, thinking perhaps the O.D. had arrived, and then relaxed. “I could have helped with that, sir."

  "As long as we're back, may I take a peek at Halifax's records?"

  Boswell moved toward one of the bins.

  "Did John have any parti
cular friends, Boswell?"

  "You might say everyone—and no one."

  "Not yourself?"

  Boswell looked uncomfortable.

  "Not among the Regulars?"

  "I can't say. He never talked of any persons except his granduncle and all the dead Halifaxes."

  "What exactly were his duties?"

  "He kept the personnel records for our own men and cavalry troops E through H, typed up orders and commendations, memorandums, letters, the usual clerkly life."

  "I heard he was a good rider. Was he also a good shot?"

  Boswell had the folder now. “Yes, an expert it says here."

  "Does it say if he was a swimmer?"

  "We don't keep track of that, but I can tell you he wasn't. Not long ago we were detailed to take our horses down to the Winooskie for a bathe, and he would not ride out into the water. He was afraid of falling off and getting swept away. I didn't ask him what he would do if we ever had to do some deep fording."

  "I see,” said Kiernan. “So how and why did he get out to that raft?"

  Kiernan was laying for him. A big hand came down on Jake's shoulder in the vestibule of the auditorium shared by the Christian faiths on Sundays.

  "Come with me,” Kiernan said. “My official assistant's too hung over to serve Mass."

  "I don't know all the Latin by heart,” Jake pleaded, wondering why the wretched aide didn't get sacked. And didn't Jake have enough duties as it was?

  "I'll give you a card to read from until you learn it. Brighten up, Miller! The less time you have on your hands, the better off you'll be."

  Dragooned, Jake played to a packed house of Irish, Germans, Italians, and others, jingling the bells and muttering the ancient words, wielding the cruets and paten as best he could. Somehow, serving took some of the mystery out his weekly visit, which had already been diminished by the absence of the rich vestments, stained glass, and tortured statuary that he was used to back in Jersey.

  The brief sermon centered on the drowned man, and how one should always be prepared for an end that does not announce itself. After mass, Kiernan said they had something else to do.

  The chaplain had a motor car, a black roadster parked outside the BOQ where he had a room. “A gift,” Kiernan said in answer to Jake's wide eyes, and Jake envisioned the life savings of a veteran beat cop and his scrubwoman wife lavished on their priestly son.

  "It's only a Tin Lizzie, Miller. My former congregation passed the hat for me because I made so many house calls. I suppose, too, it's surety against my return to the fold."

  "Must have been a richer parish than mine, Father. Do you need me to crank it?"

  "No, a friend of mine put an electric starter in. Climb in. We're heading for the lake."

  The top was down and the rush of air elevated Jake as they passed the saluting sentry at the main gate. It was a bit comical how the guard reacted to the officer's decal and then the unexpected sight of a grinning enlisted man in the passenger seat. It gave Jake something to write home about.

  As they turned onto the civilian highway they saw a crop of fresh volunteers riding bareback out on the drill field. Kiernan glanced that way and said, “And on they come, with the hearts of cavalrymen and the asses of chambermaids."

  Jake laughed at the old adage and held onto his campaign hat, feeling the privileged character.

  The lakeside park was deserted save for a handful of young boys who had slipped through the dragnet of church bells. The youngsters stood in their skivvies at the end of a dock that poked out from the far left of the beach where Halifax had drowned. Three of the boys dove in as the men drew closer and slap-splashed their way out to the raft. Jake noticed that they were using a clumsier version of the front crawl he had seen the day before. This was what his swimming-hole friends had called “Indian-style,” similar but much less effective than the surge of the faceless swimmer.

  "Look there, Miller!"

  The two boys who had lingered on the dock were lowering themselves into the water. As soon as they had gotten past the initial shock, they waded forward, waist deep at first, then chest deep with raised arms, and when the water rose to neck level, they began to hop and bounce their way out to the raft.

  "I didn't know it was so shallow on that side. Did you, Miller?"

  "No, yesterday was my first visit to the park."

  "A grown man could walk out easily whether he could swim or no."

  "Yes, but why would he dive into the deep water on his way back?"

  "Maybe he didn't know about the difference in depth. We didn't. Maybe..."

  "Maybe what?"

  "Maybe he was misled. Tell me exactly what you remember from the moment you came down to the water."

  Jake went through it all, prompted by ever-ready questioning. Kiernan listened carefully, keeping his eyes upon the water, as if he were looking through the larking boys and back into time.

  "So they were already out there when you came down, just the two of them on that raft."

  "Yes, the other swimmers were horsing around on the pair of rafts over to the right there."

  "And I can vouch that the ballplayers had their minds on whipping each other and not on who was in the water."

  "My God! You think the other man tricked Halifax into jumping into water over his head. Why?"

  "Miller, there's a whole catalogue of strange and evil motives that we could go through. I may be wrong, but now that we suspect wrongdoing, perhaps we can find the actor and the motive and do something about it. We certainly don't want such treachery in our ranks when the regiment goes into action."

  Jake's neck hairs stirred; Kiernan's dour words had opened a curtain on all the malevolence that awaited them overseas.

  Out on the raft, a scrawny kid in his older brother's boxers stood up straight on the wet planks and put his hand to his forehead in a passable salute. He held it, waiting to be noticed, and Jake snapped to, returned the salute, releasing the boy back to his pleasures.

  Kiernan had watched the exchange. “You have a good heart, Miller,” he said with something like approval. “And let's pray we get the job done over there before any of these lads grow old enough to do more than play at soldiering."

  The last thing Jake wanted was to see either of his brothers in uniform. It would kill his mother.

  * * * *

  The big double doors of the riding hall were wide open when Jake and Kiernan pulled up. They paused just within to observe half a dozen officers taking their mounts over an equestrian obstacle course. It was such a pleasure to see the smoothly muscled creatures defying gravity with such little apparent urging from their riders. Jake held his breath as a glossy, high-shouldered black bunched itself before a double rail and then flowed over it like Pegasus, a whippet-thin lieutenant standing in the stirrups.

  "It's a shame these horses won't be coming with us to France,” Kiernan said regretfully and headed for the office. Maybe they're lucky, Jake thought, still somber from Kiernan's words by the lake.

  The NCO in charge was sitting at a desk mending a halter. Most of his gray hair was bunched critter-like on his upper lip, and his three chevrons looked to have been steeped in tea. He rose up with the respectful but sedate dignity of a Regular.

  "As you were, Sergeant."

  "What kin I do fer ya, Padre?"

  "I'm tying things up for the family of that boy who drowned yesterday. I'd like to be able to tell his kin about his last days if I can. I understand he came here to exercise a mount off hours. Do you keep track of such things?"

  "Why's that important?"

  "His granduncle's old Cav. From what I've heard, he'd greatly appreciate knowing how the boy measured up."

  The old vet's face was politely skeptical as he handed over a cowskin ledger. But what could a padre be up to, after all? Jake sensed the man's scrutiny shift his way and felt deficient. Then the fellow took his seat and resumed his leatherwork as if they were not there.

  Jake went up on his toes to look over
Kiernan's shoulder. “Here's where Halifax signed in, and right below is a Pfc. P. H. Edson. One week ago Friday. The duty sergeant that afternoon was named Duda."

  "That's me, Padre."

  "You know either of these men?"

  "Halifax's the new boy that drownded, right? Didn't know him, but Edson's a Regular from Troop G.” He seemed reluctant to add anything else out of school.

  "Perhaps the relative would want to talk to Edson if he was friends with the nephew."

  "Edson ain't noted for collectin’ friends. Been a real loner and a hard case the years I known ‘im. Weren't even born here, and seems to like it that way."

  "His name doesn't sound foreign."

  "Well, he's got some kind of bunged up English accent. Ain't American, but the Army ain't so particular ‘bout that."

  "They did come in together, though?"

  "Yep. I watched from the door because they was takin’ turns goin’ ‘round with ‘Pache Jack."

  "Apache Jack?” Jake said. “That's that mean roan that kicked some men into the hospital."

  "Yep. Troop G's kinda proud of ‘im. I was lookin’ to see if he was gonna kill off either of ‘em, but they both spurred him through every jump and never got bit, thrown, nor stomped neither. Shame about that boy; you hate to see a good rider go down. That's ‘bout all I remember."

  "Well, thanks for your time, Sergeant Duda."

  "Got plenty of that to spare. Least for now."

  * * * *

  There was no firing on the pistol range on Sundays, but a detail from HQ Company was cleaning the automatics and prepping targets for the recruits who would be qualifying the next day. The corporal in charge let Kiernan into the armorer's shed and found the firing log for him.

  "Halifax and Edson again; the day after their jumping contest,” the priest said. “They brought their own sidearms and drew enough ammunition for three magazines apiece."

  "Riding. Shooting. Swimming,” Jake said. “Just like the pentathlon in the Olympics, which the Swedes always win, of all people. I believe they fence and run some sort of cross-country race too."