by Amanda Dykes
I took his hand and pressed the apple into it. Summoning him awake to something good, after the night he had faced.
“I say,” George said, offended. “That was for you, Angel of Argonne.”
Matthew stirred, sitting up slowly. Bleary at first, then astonished. Confused. At the apple in his hand. My presence by his side.
“Was I asleep?”
“Yes, you slacker,” George said, taking an impossibly loud bite of his own apple. I did not know this word, slacker, but at the way Henry elbowed George in the middle, I guessed it was not good.
“Slacker,” Matthew repeated, as if the word were ridiculous. He pulled his face into a smile. Up close like this I saw the way his cheek near me—imprinted by the seam of stone floor he had slept upon—etched into curves around his mouth when he did so. It was—it was nice. “As I recall, one of us did try to outrun the war, and it wasn’t me.”
“And yet here I am.” George spread his arms low and wide, turning his face up to the roofless sky beyond. “Chaplain George, at your service. And a hero, what’s more, if you’ll kindly recall last evening’s escapades.”
He came near and I felt myself tense. I did not mean to be so. I knew in my head that the man meant me no harm. It was not his fault that his accent reminded me so of another.
“That fellow never sleeps.” He tipped his head at Matthew. “Surprised we caught him catching a few winks at all.” He chewed on his bite of apple and seemed to remember then that he was, by his own claim, my translator. “L’âne ne dort jamais.” He shook his head and pushed his mouth to the side.
I worked very hard not to laugh. The donkey never sleeps. I nodded gravely.
He pulled another apple out of his satchel and handed it to me. We all breakfasted so, the men speaking of plans to leave soon and which route to take to Paris. Madame Aline’s map was a treasure, but as Hank-or-Henry said, it was not her fault that it had led us into the den of the enemy last night. We needed “more current intelligence,” he said, and they agreed to find such along the way.
Stepping outside the church felt different, somehow, from when we first set foot inside. I had felt an intruder, then. But somewhere in the night—somewhere with my head pounding so hard, and waking in the dark to find I was watched over by someone very kind, distant but near. Even in the smallest act—of eating a bright red apple for breakfast and feeling the little one inside quicken in response—it felt like a safe place. A healing place. And I left a little bit of myself behind, there.
The journey through the rubble was a breathless one, each of us with our senses standing tall and our figures crouched low. But where words did not come, neither did gunshots, and birdsong ushered us out of the clutches of that place, back out onto the road.
22
Henry
WAVES OF COURAGE
For column “Your Boys, America!”
By Hank Jones (Or Henry Mueller)
We passed an entire battalion of your men on the road a few days back, America. The valiant American Expeditionary Forces, on the road to the front. We knew they were yours by the way they beamed courage. Back home on the farm, when the wind would come sweeping through, we’d all marvel at the way it took single stocks of wheat, set them to motion, and blended them into wave upon wave of movement. It caught the light and gave us all hope for a life-giving harvest in the months to come.
Well, America, your men do the same but a hundred times more. Let me tell you, watching a battalion of them take up the whole width of a muddy road, watching the way their marching moves their legs in sync and seems to set the ground to trembling—why, it makes me stand in my tracks and salute.
These men were fresh off the trains. You could feel their eagerness in every footstep. You could see it in their eyes, the way they were fixed on the horizon ahead. They were bringing force and life to a downtrodden place.
[News Editor: I know you may cut the following. Please consider leaving it in. The courage is highlighted by the whole story, not defeated by it.]
My comrades and I, on special assignment, stood to the side and let them pass. The fresh faces, the eager ones, passing by the somber few who accompanied me, was a thing to behold. Since we’re speaking of wind, have you ever heard wind blow through a place? Picture it: It kicks up dust and debris, making its presence known and formidable. But then somewhere along the way, it passes an open pipe—the thing that will catch it, recognize it, and sound a hollow, mournful song right back to it with its own force. Or maybe you’ve seen children do the same, blowing air across the top of an empty soda bottle.
That was what the passing men were like. The fresh soldiers, so full of anticipation and life. Singing “Let’s All Be Americans Now” and saluting us as they marched. But you could see it as they read on our faces—particularly on the face of the soldier who stood next to me, who has seen battle more than any man should—how those smiles melted into flat lines. How a few of them looked from him, back to their singing comrades, torn between two realities: their present, and their future.
My soldier friend saw it, too. I saw him see it and saw him conjure up a grave but valiant nod of respect for any who looked his way. Though he could not smile at their anticipation, he could yet respect it and instill some hope and courage in them, from one soldier to another.
It was as if he was extending an invisible hand to their shoulders. He would not give false hope to the men. He would not willingly send them into battle with masks pulled over their heads about the atrocities they might face. But he would, with all sincerity, say to them, “Your courage is good. Your fortitude is right. You will need them both, and who knows but that we were born for such a time as this? It is a brave thing that you do. Go, now, and do it well.” In that fleeting exchange with no words, he sent them on their way armed with candid purpose. He harnessed the wind and sang their song right back to them.
These are times such as the world has never seen. We all heard of it back home for the past years before our country entered the war, but being here on this war-torn soil itself has opened this reporter’s eyes more than I wish to own. I am a farmer by trade. I sow fields of hay and plow them come fall with my trusty mare, Mabel. We use new machines to aid in our harvest at times.
I am not the only “farm boy” here on the front. Too many of us have stood wide-eyed as we see that here the war sows fields of blood. The trusty steeds are used to pull cannons and great guns larger than any machines I’ve ever seen for farm duty. The harvest is one of men.
Simply put: It is awful. It is atrocious. It is abominable.
And yet—we believe hope is at hand. This country so deeply scarred by trenches and terror is beginning to feel its wounds stitched together by Allied forces, battlefield by battlefield, salient by salient, victory by victory.
America, it is a brave thing that you do. Go, now, and do it well.
There was more to the story, things I couldn’t put in, for the safety of the soldiers. A new route we needed to take due to a flooded road. On this more northern detour, we found a German salient—a bulge into French territory long held by the enemy—that had been recently abandoned by the enemy, by all appearances. And a warning that “all appearances” were usually wrong, which explained the sniper from the night before.
This, and the carefully chosen words given by Matthew Petticrew about what awaited these new men. “It’s fierce,” he’d said. “But you can do it.” He was very aware of the many listening ears. Men of few words, I was realizing, said much with their silence over here.
As they conversed, I finished my piece and in the next town found a hotel from which to wire it to the paper, with a prayer that hard truth might bring truest hope. As I exited the hotel, none other than the reticent Petticrew stood at a postbox, slipping an envelope in and flushing red when he turned to find me there.
“Good to keep in touch, eh?” I said, slapping him on the back and, I hoped, letting him know he didn’t need to explain any letters to me. That was his b
usiness. As for me, I’d had my fill of the written word for the day.
And as for him . . . well, if my editor wanted these pieces written “like America was my sweetheart,” maybe they should have gotten Matthew Petticrew to write them. Judging by the way he watched over the French woman, he might know a good bit more about that than I did. I considered, briefly, writing of our mission in my installments. America would take great interest in a lost heiress discovered in the shadows of war. But I did not know if it was my story to tell.
23
Matthew
Time is different in war. I knew very well that only six days had passed since we found Mira. I knew very well that it had been twenty-seven days since Saint-Mihiel. I knew, now, that shells and artillery would echo in a mind and shake a body well beyond the twenty-seven-day mark.
And I knew that in only a handful of days on the road in this treacherous, beautiful land . . . a lifetime could insert itself. Carve time clean away until the snipers, the washed-out roads, the battalions, the comrades, the growling stomachs filled out those meager days and made them feel like weeks. Months. Years, even.
But nowhere did I see this more clearly than in Mira’s dark eyes. I worried for her.
We were between villages, and far—at least I hoped—from the enemy. You never knew, and you never ever settled that within yourself. You let your guard down, you’d die. And if you died—then those in your care died, too.
And the ones they carried.
“There,” I said, spotting a barn up ahead. Built of stone, built to last. It would be a place to shelter for the night.
Henry was with me, and Mira just behind. For once, he didn’t take out his notepad. I felt for him, truth be told. He had fight in him but wasn’t allowed to fight. He funneled all of it into his pen, and I did respect him for it—but I couldn’t pretend I didn’t wonder what he was writing. Or who he was writing about. The last thing Mira needed was a light shining her into the newspapers, broadcasting her story to an entire country in between ads for cigarettes and liberty bonds.
He was a good guy, though. He nodded, looking at the large barn and shaking his head. “Gone from sleeping in trench stench to roofless cathedrals to sleeping with the cows all in the space of a few days. Could you ever have imagined?” He smiled and shrugged, and I liked that there wasn’t a shred of disdain in his voice. “Looks like home to me,” he said. “I’ve slept in my fair share of livestock stalls before. Let’s go.”
I felt Mira’s gaze on me, saw a wink in the barely there smile she gave. A look that spoke clearly of a seventeen-year-old boy who smelled of goats. I refused to acknowledge the look and heard a silent laugh in return. We had a private joke, it seemed. Secret livestock stories, binding our souls.
Henry tromped the way up the rise and showed us how to live like farmers. He disappeared for a bit and came back with a sack, careful to hide its contents until it was roasting golden and savory over a fire. A goose, it was, and you’d think we were all kings, the way we dined that night sitting on the dirt floor.
In the night I studied the map, the places we’d drawn in our new route as if we knew where things actually were. Over on the left edge stood this one word, shining like a beacon: Paris.
But as I looked at my comrades, weary from the journey, I wondered if we’d make it.
Mira groaned a quiet, pained sound in her sleep from the hayloft. The others slept through it. As rustling sounded above, I made my way up the old ladder and saw her sitting, arms looped around her knees, head bowed.
She was silent, and the look of anguish on her face made me think she was forcing her body to absorb whatever sound, whatever groans were trying to find escape.
I remembered that sound, from long ago. And I remembered what had happened to my mother.
I knew I shouldn’t do so, but I drew near and sat beside her. “Are you alright?” I said, making my voice as low as I could.
Slowly, she raised her head, her body stiffening at the realization that she was not alone. She swiped tears quickly with the backs of her hands. “Yes,” she said. In a flash, she bit her lip, features compressing in pain again. “I am alright,” she said, as if speaking the words would make it true.
I looked around for something—anything—to help. The bones in my fingers ached to take hold of something, to vanquish this foe she faced.
Only straw, a shovel, and—I narrowed my eyes to see in a shadowed corner—an oil lamp. Retrieving it and returning to her side, I sat. Reached inside my jacket for my matches and realized they were down in my haversack. I felt her watching me and cringed that I’d failed to give her this one small thing again.
With the lightest touch on my shoulder, she offered out something. My eyes fell on the small box.
I laughed quietly. Matches. I accepted the box and lifted it. “We’re making a habit of this, aren’t we? I’ll have to keep better track of my matches so that I don’t use all of yours.” I slid her box open and saw the way she watched the three thin sticks roll around.
“You’re sure it’s alright to use one?” It didn’t seem so, looking at the way she bit her lip, as if this cost her greatly to offer.
She hesitated, then nodded. “Oui.”
I waited. Releasing a breath that relaxed her shoulders a little, she began to tell me of her father. Him leaving for the war and her promise to keep a lantern lit for him.
“The lantern in the woods,” I said. The one that had brought me to her.
I struck the match, moving toward the lantern. Again, she nodded. “The matches . . . they are hope.”
They are hope. The three words socked the air from me. Bringers of hope . . . creators of light from dark, when struck on hard places. And her supply, dwindling. Near gone.
Heat neared my fingers as the match burned itself nearly out, and the oil lamp surged to life. It hissed and sputtered and set a gentle glow between us, sending shadows dancing.
I hated to ask the next thing. It crossed into forbidden territory, it revealed my absolute ignorance, and it put her in an impossible place. But it was the only thing I could think to ask.
“Is the child coming?”
She froze in place. I’d just extracted her deepest fear and placed it directly before her to confront.
I wished I could pull back the words. Wished I could catch her in her free fall into that question.
“I do not know,” she said at last. “I . . . do not know very much of such things.”
The silence stretched tense between us. “That . . . makes two of us.” I didn’t tell her I knew some. I didn’t tell her of the night I sat beneath my mother’s window, out in the night, and heard the same sort of cries.
We had spoken of some things, in the days since the church. The night had become ours. The only place she chose to speak in our shared language, the only time our companions slept. We had spoken of growing up, of her grandfather. She told me of her father, vanished into war many years ago. But never had we spoken of the child.
Oddly, it was my confession that seemed to break the straining silence between us.
She made to rise, stiffening halfway up. I reached for her elbow to steady her, and she didn’t withdraw, as she had other times. “It is my fault,” she said. “I was meant to ask Madame Aline. I had determined to do so. But . . . when I saw her, I could not.” Her cheeks flushed. “I was . . . I had . . . I just could not.”
Her face flushed. I reached for something to say but found nothing. My arm stretched out, gesturing toward the doors that opened the hayloft into the night. Perhaps footsteps, the simple act of movement from this place of anguish, might help in some way.
She studied me a moment before I felt her relax and realized my other hand still held her elbow. As she straightened, her arm slipped into mine like it intended to live there, to rest there always. We walked the few steps to the doors. Carefully, I pushed them open, wincing when one clattered on a loose hinge. When no sound came from below and it seemed the others still slept, we
sat.
She seemed burdened, so burdened. I could feel the weight of what she carried pulsing upon her. If I could but lift some of it . . .
“Is there anyone who knows? Did your grandfather . . . ?”
The questions felt so personal, they could have been weapons—or stitches in an open wound. Both hurt, I knew. But one healed. I hoped for the latter.
“No,” she said, and there was fondness in her voice. “I did not want him to know. It would have killed him. He was already so sick. I confess—” She stared at her hands, clasped together in her lap. “I did not know for a long time what was happening to me. We had heard people speak of a sickness in the world, and I thought I must be growing ill with it.”
I nodded. The influenza was another war, just as great as the one we fought in the trenches, and greater by the day.
“And then when I realized . . . I could not tell him.”
There was another question. A blaring one, one that begged details she should not be forced to speak. It was a question I couldn’t bring myself to speak. Who? Three little letters and a universe of hurt. I would be no gentleman, if I spoke it.
So I waited, and let her own words decide what to tell and what to conceal.
“There was much shame, Matthew Petticrew.” She said my name as if to seal a pact between us. A question, a pleading that I would hold this between us. I nodded. “I should have known much sooner. I grew up in the forest with the animals,” she said. “It is no great secret to me where life begins. But, I confess, I did not imagine life coming from such a—a lifeless act.”
She was asking me to read her words. To understand a story, without her telling it. I had to listen hard, listen past the pounding in my head, the clenching of my jaw as I began to understand.
