by Howard Bahr
The cemetery at Talowah was no longer hidden by the vines and creepers and the tangled, gnarled privet. In the early fall evenings, Donny had worked with ax and swing-blade to clear the ground. Sometimes, when the day shift closed down, the loggers would come out to help, working silently for a while, then squatting on their heels with a jug and hand-rolled cigarettes. If they wondered the reason for all this trouble, they never asked; instead, while the night grew cool around them, they told stories of the old town and of Pelican Road. They taught Donny to wear stovepipes on his legs for the snakes, and they drove many a timber rattler and copperhead from his ancestral haunts. They showed the boy how to smoke out hornets with journal-box waste, and how to up-end a jar of gasoline over a yellow-jacket nest. One by one, they cleared the broken stones and brought them into the light, and sometimes they had stories of the people who lay beneath their feet.
Now, in bleak December, the loggers were gone, and Donny came into the burying ground alone. He walked among the scattered stones, telling their names to Rosamond and telling of them he knew: Captain Ronan Montieth of the 9th Mississippi; Celeste Condon, beloved consort of Randall Jung; the nameless twins of James and Nancy Falkner; the unknown traveler murdered on Pelican Road; Frank and Ann Smith, early settlers buried side by side, so close their graves made a single depression. So long silent, these vanished ones had a voice at last, and to each, and to the unmarked sunken places and the Negro graves marked only by fragments of stone, Donny Luttrell brought his tokens of life.
When he was finished, Donny found himself alone again. Somewhere Rosamond had left him, but that was all right, for she never went far in time.
He went down into the shelter of the sunken road and took dinner in his solitude, and for a long while he listened. He heard the winter birds, the hawks’ keening far above, the furtive shuffling of sparrows in the leaves, the sift of snow. A westerly wind blew strongly in the pine tops, driving the weather from across the great river. Donny wrapped his coat around him and leaned against the bank of old Pelican Road, thinking of them who had traveled this way in winter hardship, some looking for promise in the new ground, some looking no further than the next meanness they could do. The cold wind blew for them all, and took them all away, as it must Donny Luttrell one day, a stranger like the rest. But not now. For now, he had a name and could still believe in tomorrow. He could sleep for a little while above the soft earth, knowing there would come time enough to sleep beneath it.
And so he slept and dreamed, though in all his long years he would never recall what he dreamed of. For honor’s sake, he liked to think that Rosamond returned to him there in the sunken road, or his mother perhaps, two dark women with kindly voices that spoke in vain to save him, to save them all.
He slept and never heard the Silver Star climbing the grade below Talowah siding, nor the 4512 passing his station. Mister Dunn never called for signals, for the order board was green, and the empty cars made only the faintest rustle in their passing beyond the woods, in their hurrying down toward Lumberton on Pelican Road.
LES PECHES DU MONDE
Artemus went up through the coaches of the Silver Star. He was in a bad humor, though, as often happened, he could not say why. In the vestibules, the deck plates shifted under his feet, and beneath them, invisible, the ground rushed backward in a blur of cross-ties and slag and dead possums, the stubs of burnt-out fusees, spatters of grease and oil, shreds of toilet paper, all the detritus of Pelican Road stretching back to Basin Street, to Artemus Kane’s locker, to the streetcars on Canal and the narrow stairs that led to Anna Rose’s flat.
And more to come, miles and miles unreeling beneath the Silver Star. Down the long serpentine of the rails, over grades and over bridges, through mazes of yard tracks, the train would pass in time toward the familiar outlines of the town that borned Artemus Kane. There, he would stand in this vestibule or another and watch the vine-covered backs of buildings drift by, raise his hand to men he knew, throw the station switch behind for the main line. In time, he would gather up his bag and lantern and step down on the platform, talk a while in the crews’ washroom, start his motorcycle—if it would start at all—and ride through the wet snow, under the colored lights, to the house where every room was filled with his mother’s furniture but nothing else, no longer even ghosts.
In one of the vestibules, Artemus discovered a passenger violating the rules. This person had opened the window and was leaning out the half-door, letting the cold wind pour over him. Citizens, as the sign plainly declared, were forbidden to loiter in a vestibule while the train was in motion, and it was a trainman’s duty to remove offenders. Usually, Artemus could care less; he only chased away those whom he instinctively disliked. Now, however, he was primed for any target.
He opened his mouth to speak, thinking to speak curtly, supported by the rules and regulations of the Operating Department of the Southern Railway that gave him authority over the conduct of passengers on the fast train designated Numbers 5 and 6 on the timecard but known far and wide as the Silver Star, extra-fare, all-Pullman, New Orleans to New York City, upon which Barbara Stanwyck herself had once complimented him on his uniform.
Except that the courteous Tulane student, the handsome lad who had inquired after the coach for Atlanta, turned away from the window, drawn perhaps by the presence of another person in the emptiness. At the sight of the boy’s face, all the elements of Artemus’s reprimand evaporated.
“Oh, hello,” said the boy. He forced a smile and tapped the accusing brass sign with his finger. “I guess I’m not supposed to be here.”
Artemus shook his head. “It’s all right. Just be careful.”
“Oh, sure,” said the boy. “Thanks.”
Artemus moved closer, and now he could see clearly what he thought he had seen, that the boy’s face was shiny with tears. The smile was gone, replaced, in the sudden, guileless way young people have, by a quick turning toward the shadows. The boy dragged the sleeve of his sweater across his eyes, embarrassed and wanting to deny it.
They stood awkwardly for a moment. Artemus knew from experience that it was useless, for him at least, to try to follow a young person into his dark spaces. They were too closely guarded. Still, he could not turn away. “Are you in trouble?” he asked bluntly.
“Oh, no,” said the boy. “It’s just the wind.”
Bullshit, thought Artemus. He said, “Well, it’s poor practice to lean out the window. The train throws up rocks sometimes.”
The boy nodded. He looked away and rested his fingers on the door ledge. “Did you ever know anybody to jump out?”
At first, the boy’s question, spoken in a whisper, fled away amid the noise. Then the words seemed to come together all at once, and Artemus understood. In fact, he had seen such a thing a few years before. He remembered, in a sudden burst of color and sound, the screaming passengers, the squealing and shuddering of the train, the jumper, now a pile of sorry rags, who lay just off the roadbed a half mile behind. They could see the man clearly even at that distance, and they walked toward him through the smell of overheated brakes: conductor Troy Guider, flagman Stanfield, and Artemus, each man walking slowly, wrapped in his own silence, carrying his own particular dread and sorrow as he would no doubt bear them to his own death one day.
Artemus shivered at the memory, and his face, apparently, betrayed him, for the boy held up a hand. “Wait,” he said. “I didn’t mean…I was only asking—”
“Well, don’t,” said Artemus sharply. “That is not a thing to have in your head.” He reached across the boy and unlatched the window and slammed it shut. In the comparative quiet, the boy shrank back as if Artemus had made to strike him.
“Easy,” said Artemus. “It’s all right.” They stood together for a moment, watching the white-dusted pines flicker by, and the fields, glazed with snow, that opened out now and then. The world was going about its business, unmindful of the train and the people who fled past behind the lighted windows.
&n
bsp; “What do you study down yonder?” Artemus asked.
“Architecture,” said the boy, once more in a whisper. “I was going to be—” Then he stopped, his voice dying away. He pressed his fingers to the cold glass. “I was expelled,” he said.
Artemus, surprised, spoke before he thought. “You?” he said. “Why?”
The boy smiled again. “Why not?” he said.
* * *
In memory, Artemus views the scene as he might an etching in a museum: a November sky ballooned with rain; gray fields glazed with water; gray, stricken trees. Along the horizon stretches a leafless wood like a bank of fog, interrupted for a space by the clustered roofs of a village where a black curtain of smoke darkens the sky, fading at its upper reaches so that it is indistinguishable from the clouds.
In the middle distance is a spectral windmill. Closer looms a church of Norman architecture, centuries old. It is a ruin now. The apse and roof are gone, but three walls remain, pierced by narrow windows empty of glass. Outside, along the walls, the glass lies scattered in shards amid the lead strips that bound it: shattered images of saints, the only bright color in the landscape. Through the windows, barely visible, are the collapsed rafters and arches of the roof and the indistinct shapes of men.
The churchyard is crowded with a company of Marines, some seventy-five men this late in the war. The church is surrounded by a stone wall just higher than a man. In a niche, under a Gothic arch set in the stones, a statue of Our Lady stands with her arms outstretched, her face tilted downward toward the serpent coiled at her feet. Beyond the wall is the parish cemetery, headstones and crosses and humble statuary all toppled and jumbled. The occupants, many of them, have been evicted by the pounding of artillery. Their clothes and cerements decorate the limbs of nearby trees, their bones and caskets litter the churned ground. Someone has harvested a score of antique Gallic skulls and set them in a row on the wall, where they stare blankly and breathe silent lessons of mortality. A few have the lower jaw still attached; between the brown teeth of one, Squarehead has inserted the stump of a cigar.
Lombardy poplars rise from the churchyard, their tops shattered. In the garden, the phallic snouts of a mysterious yellowish vegetable probe upward, each parting the ground in perfect wedges as if it were emerging from a pie. The city men call them dickheads. The country men have squatted on their heels, squeezed the sprouts, and declared them cabbages perhaps, but maybe not. Some argue for asparagus. No one knows what grows in the French winter, and no one cares. They are too tired. There is too much rain, and the Germans are in the village.
Artemus Kane’s memory, for an instant, holds all this in silence, all in stillness. Then, gradually, sounds resume, and movement. The Marines, jerkily at first, like the beginning of a film, begin to stir. Soon, their actions take on the peculiar fluid grace of young men. They pace, they pose, they scratch themselves and adjust their equipment. Now and then, one looks off toward the village, then looks away. Despite the rain, they smoke pipes and cigarettes. They speak in low voices, and laugh, and cough. The windmill creaks to life. Swallows come and go from its eaves as the tattered arms are driven by the wind, and the birds driven by the wind, darting and swirling. Ravens croak in the broken poplars, and from the tree line comes the monotonous, intermittent tat-tat-tat of a Maxim gun firing toward the church, though it is just barely out of range. The men within the church begin to move about. They are Marines trying to start a fire for coffee. The crowns of their helmets are faintly medieval, as if the shades of Longshank’s men had returned to pillage.
Artemus and Gideon Kane are standing by the stone wall, which offers shelter from the wind and thus from the blowing rain. Nevertheless, their overcoats are soaked, and they are splattered and caked with mud. Artemus has planted his rifle between his feet, an empty ration tin over the muzzle. Gideon’s shotgun is slung muzzle-down; to the stock is affixed a canvas bandolier with five brass shells, the primers already little circles of green from the damp.
Gideon had finally gone to a field hospital to see about his bronchitis, and the brothers have not seen each other in two weeks. They spend a few minutes trading news. Gideon studies Artemus’s wound from the Belleau Wood and is glad to see it healing well. For himself, Gideon is better now, his lungs cleared up, he says. Neither has received a letter from home. Then they are silent. They do not reminisce on old times, and they do not speak of the future which, after all, is nothing more than the burning village they will have to attack pretty soon, in open order across the fields.
They are, in fact, strangers in a way that each man understands, though neither can voice it. They know that war is all the same save in its narrow spaces, in the minutes, hours, weeks through which a man passes alone, the little increments he perceives and suffers in a way no other before him has in all of time. It is a truth that touches every man in sight, and every man beyond sight across the broad stroke of war, and it makes them all brothers, all strangers forever.
Artemus Kane is overcome with loneliness by the wall of the ruined church, and at the same time seized by a profound sense that he is among strangers and thus the only people he will ever truly love. He wonders how he will explain this if anyone he meets—not in the future, but in some unformed universe beyond death—should ever need to ask. Meanwhile, over the village, a futile illumination flare arcs into the sky, sputters and goes out, leaving a trail of white smoke like a question mark.
Frank Smith, now the company first sergeant, crosses the garden, trampling the sprouts, his face still and solemn. When he draws near, he sees the skulls lined up on the wall. Who did that? he asks, and Artemus and Gideon shake their heads. Smith stands for a moment, his rifle between his feet, the muscles in his jaws working. Like god damn children, he says at last, and lifts his Springfield by the barrel and scrapes the skulls off the wall. They plop and roll in the mud. Smith looks at Artemus Kane. The captain wants somebody in that windmill, he says. Guess who it is?
Ah, the windmill, says Artemus. He looks in that direction, though he cannot see the windmill through the wall.
Gideon coughs wetly and spits an ample gob of white sputum into the mud. I’ll go with them, First Sergeant, he says.
Smith looks at Artemus, then at Gideon. As you will, he says.
Artemus Kane’s regular squad is down to seven men: Squarehead, Round Man, Tall Man, the Preacher, the Artist, and two Mormon brothers. Gideon makes eight, Artemus nine. They gather around the first sergeant and receive their instructions: occupy the windmill, watch for movement, don’t die.
Stay leeward, says Smith finally. That gun down there has the range of the mill.
Aye, aye, Top, says Artemus. Then he asks: What if the Krauts are there already.
Well, Kane, says Smith, if they are in there, then run them the fuck out. Get a prisoner if you can.
Maybe we can paint it, too, says Squarehead, while we’re at it.
Get moving, says Smith.
The men adjust their equipment and fix bayonets, and in a moment they are moving across the stubble field in the rain, leaving the company and the church behind. It is lonesome out there. They walk at port arms, keeping their distance from one another, pulling hard against the mud, splashing through the water in the rows. Artemus wishes his brother hadn’t come, but there is no sense arguing, for Gideon has his own way. In any case, Artemus does not watch his brother; rather, he watches carefully the windmill, tall and silent and grotesque, and the thing seems to watch in return through its narrow blank windows. The Marines move closer. The blades turn lazily, patiently. Artemus can hear the machinery creak in the mill, and it may as well be his own legs moving, his own lungs drawing in the cold air.
The rain comes harder now and pours off the rim of Artemus Kane’s helmet in a silver curtain. All the day past is a flat pane, like something painted on glass, each moment frozen in tableau, each one clearly visible but unreachable now, as distant as an old tale told by old men. Only the present is real, the step in the icy water, the
slight adjustment of the hand along the rifle stock, the unconscious gauging of distance from the next man. Yet the present is enough. It will suffice. In the present is contained all the beauty of the world, all the blood quick with life, all the possibility yet unborn nor even conceived. Artemus is once more seized with loneliness, but he knows he must ignore it, he must pay attention. One day, if he lives, he can think about it, but not now. He is trying mightily to focus his attention when the sniper fires from the windmill.
The shooter must have been a distance back from the window, for the shot is a metallic pank barely heard. Squarehead falls like a stone, face-down in the mud, his arms beneath him. He does not twitch nor quiver nor make a sound, he is quickly dead and now almost indistinguishable from the earth and water that received him. His comrades, too, have made themselves part of the ground, burrowing like turtles into the mud, all but Gideon, who is still walking.
The windows! Artemus cries. Put your fire on the windows! It is an unnecessary command; the men are already firing, working their bolts, firing again. Gideon, still wearing his barracks cap, walks on. He carries his shotgun in one hand by the balance, the sling drooping down. In his overcoat and equipment, outlined against the sky, he seems hulking, gigantic, an unmissable target, like an elephant. Artemus shouts, Gideon! Gideon, what the fuck you doin’!
In the midst of their own fire, they do not hear the next shot from the windmill. A hole appears in the crown of the Artist’s helmet, and he, too, is still.
Now the Maxim gun in the village has found them, and angry splatters and spurts erupt in the mud around them, and the rounds snap overhead. Artemus thinks, We can’t stay here. Let’s go! he says. Move. Get moving.
The men set out at the double-quick, hunched over, their shoes sucking in the mud. The windmill seems to grow no closer, but floats above the mud, beckoning with its arms, and the men, laden with impossible burdens, run as though in a dream. At last, they catch up with Gideon, who is still strolling along. A bullet has struck his canteen; the water arcs out in a silver stream, then dies away. Artemus snatches the boy’s overcoat sleeve, pulls him forward. Why are you doing this? he says.
