by Amanda Dykes
I nodded a greeting, waiting for her to pass.
“I’m no commanding officer, Mr. Mueller,” she said, her voice cheery. “You seem ready to salute at any moment. At ease.” She laughed, and the muscles across my shoulders obeyed her command. At ease.
Celia took up the crumpled paper from the ground and before I could think, I lunged for it, thanking her for it, face burning. In the process, I dropped something, and she stooped to retrieve that instead.
Another crumpled paper. I froze. She unfolded it and studied it, then me.
“I thought you were a journalist, Mr. Mueller.”
“That’s . . . debatable. I’ve never seen any articles by Henry Mueller,” I said, scuffing my feet. “Just some guy named Hank Jones.”
She smiled at that. “Oh yes, I know all about Hank Jones.”
“You do?”
“All of the nurses do. All of America does, if you want to be precise. But all of the nurses are particularly interested, and there are many who’ve laid claim to nursing him back to health, should he ever encounter peril to such an extent that he finds his way to the hospital barge.”
The heat in my face returned. Words were my currency. I knew what I was supposed to say here. Something like, “Oh, yes? And have you put your name in the hat, pretty lady?”
I cringed. The words would sound as natural from my mouth as piano music from a trumpet. I’d botch them a thousand ways and hate the artifice of it all. But to the point: I knew the words I was supposed to say in a situation like this. George Piccadilly would’ve tripped all over himself by now and proposed marriage thrice, spouting such talk. And who knew? Maybe Hank Jones, if he was real, would go around flirting and winning hearts.
But I was just me. Just Henry Mueller, who wanted to laugh at those sort of words.
So I spoke different ones instead. “I’ll, uh . . . I’ll pass the message on to him,” I said. “But I’m afraid they’d all be sorely disappointed in the conversation partner they’d find. I can write a thing or two, but it’s my editors who shape it into a shiny ‘love letter to America.’ They have created Hank Jones out of thin air.”
This was where she was supposed to brush me off, lose interest, by all good logic.
But she didn’t. She looked at the paper. “Seems you can draw a thing or two, as well,” she said and closed the space between us to hand me back the picture. “I won’t tell the subject of your picture that you saw fit to crumple her up and toss her aside, though.” She was jesting, I knew, but she shouldn’t have to think that.
“I didn’t mean to do that,” he said.
“Which? Draw it, or toss it?”
“Both. Sometimes my pencil just runs off on its own and draws something that—” I gulped—“something that catches its attention. I . . . hope the subject of the portrait doesn’t mind.”
“Oh, well, I know her, and she says she’ll think a while on it before deciding.” This, she said with a smile.
“Please tell her I didn’t mean any offense. And that she’s deserving of a much better artist.”
She nodded and waited. In the silence, words began to come back to me, one by one. As well as the situation at hand.
“Can I ask you, as a medical person—what do you think should be done?”
“Ah, now there’s the journalist.”
“It’s a mess, is all, and you might be the only one here with any sort of insight into what’s best for Mireilles.”
She looked off toward the house, where Mireilles tossed grain to some hens, who ran about pecking as if there weren’t a war on. Oh, to be oblivious. And to not have to be the one to destroy the rare oblivion of others.
“I think Mireilles might have a much better idea what’s best for her than I do.” She inhaled. “She’s remarkable, really. But to answer your question, if I were in charge, I’d put her on the barge with us and keep her by my side until we could get her to a proper home—a midwife, or a doctor, someone to help her through this. But . . .”
“You’re not in charge?”
“No one is, truthfully. We’ve got our orders and our chain of command, just like you do, but the truth is we’re at the mercy and whim of a war and a fever.”
“The influenza,” I said. It was beginning to make more headlines than the war did—and to take more lives, too.
“Yes. So, in that way, it’s best if she doesn’t hop on board our barge. So many of the soldiers are contracting it.” She looked at me directly then, scrutinizing. Assessing for symptoms. “I’ve already given my brother a proper inquisition over any possible symptoms. Do you need one, too?”
“I’m just fine, I assure you.”
“How about Hank Jones, then? Has he encountered the flu?”
“If only.” I spoke the words before I could stop them—and was met with quick, warm laughter.
“You’re funny, Henry Mueller,” she said. “Dry wit. I like that.”
I smiled, the dry wit leaving me wordless just now. Didn’t know what to do with a person sitting long enough to have a conversation with me, much less laugh at my quips.
“So, no influenza for Hank Jones. You’re certain?” she said, her face growing serious.
“Yes. But he is up against a difficult fate. A deadline.”
“Well, tell him, if you would, as he writes to his sweetheart, America, that she can take a bit more of the whole truth. If he doesn’t mind.”
“He doesn’t.” And I wouldn’t mind sitting and talking longer with Miss Celia Petticrew, either. But she had a barge to catch, and Mireilles, I hoped, had a train.
“And tell him to let Henry Mueller have a turn with the pen. It’s a good, strong name, and I’ve a hunch he has some good, strong things to say. This is a war, after all, and you know what they say.”
Her eyes were so large, so clear as they waited, her silence kind as it shaped the question mark between us. “The pen is mightier than the sword, Mr. Mueller. Or the bayonet, as the case may be.” She smiled, the corners of her mouth dimpling in sadness and hope intertwined.
She turned to go and was nearly trampled by the arrival of our hapless chaplain.
“Ah, good, there you are,” he said.
“Me?” Celia tilted her head, beholding George with curiosity.
“I do believe I’ve been looking for you my whole life, my estimable Miss Petticrew. But sadly, no, it was the other one I was addressing.”
I looked around. There was only me. The other one.
I tried to bite back a sarcastic remark. Celia Petticrew might think me witty, but she wouldn’t like that wit when it was pointed like a weapon, I was sure of it.
“Come on, then,” George said and started to walk away.
“Where?”
“Just come, you’ll see.”
My eyes met Celia’s, and she looked as befuddled as I. She shrugged a shoulder as if to say, Why not?
So we followed. We skirted the small farmyard, a cackle of various feathered outcries heralding our approach. Wonder of wonders, I had to really work to keep up with George. I hadn’t seen him drive on with this much purpose in his step since—well, ever.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Just here,” he said, rounding the back of the horse barn. “I’ve discovered the whereabouts of the single most broody man to ever walk the face of the earth.”
“Broody,” I said, molding the word downward in tone. “What on earth are you getting at, Piccadilly?”
“There,” he said, pulling up so that I collided straight into his back. He waved me off and pointed at something a ways in front of him. “That.” He whispered. “Behold, Brooderly Broodman in his natural habitat. Crossed with shadows from lifeless trees and watching his future rush off in the currents of a river cold as ice.”
It was just Matthew. Sitting beneath a dead tree by a creek. And sure, he looked a little downcast. Petticrew was a bit on the somber side in general, but that didn’t warrant us making a spectacle of him. Even if I did disagr
ee with him most emphatically about Mireilles and a certain train. I shook my head. “Is that what you dragged me over here for? To make fun of—of that?”
Matthew hung his head, unaware he had spectators.
“I’m leaving. And you are, too.” I turned to go. George gripped my elbow and darted in front of me.
“No you’re not,” he said. “Not till you go fix that.” He tipped his head at Matthew.
“I didn’t do that,” I said, too forcefully. Matthew looked up and saw us. Closed the gap between us, standing there and waiting.
“Well?” he said. “What is it?”
George jabbed my arm with his pointy elbow. I grimaced, shooting him a look that said, what?
Somewhere, a barn owl hooted. “Who-who,” it said, taunting us, as if to ask who’d speak next. “Who-who!”
“Shut up,” I said to the owl.
“Shut up,” Matthew Petticrew spat at the owl, too. We glared at each other, waiting.
George Piccadilly stepped back, crossing his arms over his chest and looking awfully satisfied.
Matthew lifted an arm at him in question and let it drop back against his own leg. “What is this?” he asked.
“This”—George raised his eyebrows—“is a meeting of the minds. Neutral ground, a place for reckoning and reconciling. Drawing up treaties. Armistice,” he said, raising his hands in the air near his ears as if he held the grand word between them and meant to loft it into the heavens.
He pointed between us. “Look here,” he said. “Whatever happens next, we’re in it together. We started it together, we’ll end it together, and though you wished to wring each other’s necks like a Christmas goose just now, you’d better leave that notion behind you posthaste, if you see what I mean.”
“No,” I said.
“I don’t,” Matthew Petticrew said at the same time. Couldn’t seem to learn how to wait his turn to speak.
“Blast it all to smithereens, you fellows are as dense as they come. Make peace!”
“There’s nothing to make peace over,” I said. “We’ve just gotta come to some conclusion. And the answer is clear.”
Matthew’s stance eased, just a bit. “Agreed.”
“Mireilles must go,” I said.
“Mira will stay with us,” Matthew said at the same time.
George looked grim. For the first time in his life, possibly, the indomitably optimistic George Piccadilly looked ready to explode.
His fingers fisted. His fists began to shake. His face reddened, and I wondered if I should take cover. Matthew, too, leaned back with wary concern.
Judging by the increasingly lobster-like hue of him, George Piccadilly would explode in approximately five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . .
“Adversity!” He spewed the single word. Mount Vesuvius, in human form. And we were Pompeii, the wrath of his word falling on us like molten lava, freezing us in place. Not petrified, as was Pompeii, but—stupefied, to much the same effect. Stumped, as it were.
“Huh?” Matthew said.
I let him do the talking, this time. Profound as he was.
“Adversity, I say! A brother is born for adversity. So saith Psalms. Or Platitudes, or Proverbs. One of the P-books, anyhow, and—”
He halted, so suddenly the silence nearly knocked us into one another. He spun, to see that Celia had approached from behind and was tapping him on his shoulder. She whispered something at him behind her hand.
“Proverbs,” he said, nodding. “Just so. Thank you.”
He seemed to be reeling in his own deliverance of this speech, all tangled up in it. “Now, where was I?”
“Proverbs,” Celia said, clearing her throat. “The seventeenth chapter, if I’m not mistaken.” She stepped back, watching on in amusement. I couldn’t help noticing that the light slipped through the branches far above, playing across her features. She caught my gaze. Smiled. And shifted her eyes toward George, redirecting my gaze silently.
“Now, see here. A brother—” he took a deep breath, calming somewhat—“is born for adversity. And what are you? Adversaries. I cry foul! I say nay. Did you cross the world, survive the battlefield?” He pointed at Matthew. “Did you write in your book”—he pointed at me, spinning his finger like a crazed pencil—“survive a sniper, and encounter a veritable forest angel, all to cut each other away and toss each other out like so much rubbish?”
He waited.
So did we. But oddly, a bothersome heat began to creep up my spine. It felt like, well . . . almost like shame.
I swallowed.
George saw it. He saw it, and in an entirely uncharacteristic swoop of insight, he caught it. Gave me a knowing look. “You know it. You know this standoff must end. That whatever happens with that poor—” he inhaled, whether for dramatic effect or from true feeling, I couldn’t decipher—“poor Angel of Argonne, you had best put aside your differences.
“Because I’ll tell you something. It’s not about you. It’s not even your decision. So, put yourselves aside. Put this foolish”—he winced at the word, shaking his head and breaking a sweat, this man who wouldn’t even fetch his own olives—“foolish disagreement behind you. You were born for this, I say. Born for times of adversity. To—to—why, to band together, not to be adversaries!”
Even the owl was silent, as George waited.
Matthew’s mouth was grim. Brooderly Broodman, indeed. But he gave a solemn nod.
And so did I.
He put out his hand.
And I took it.
George gripped our hands and gave a solid pump, releasing us all away from one another and stepping back, looking on us with the affection of a wise grandfather.
A wise grandfather who couldn’t get his boots on the right feet most of the time but had somehow managed to broker a peace treaty between two warring nations, right here behind an ancient barn.
George closed his eyes and tilted his head up to the heavens.
“Don’t look now,” I said to him, and he opened one eye to squint at me from his place of holy repose, “but I think you just preached your first sermon, Chaplain George.”
Both eyes flew wide open.
He looked from me, to Matthew, to Celia, to the yellow-eyed owl who watched from a barn window above.
“You don’t say,” he said, true disbelief in his every word. “You don’t say! This . . . this calls for a christening.”
“Don’t get carried away, old bloke,” I said. There’s no one here to christen. We all have names.”
“Our brotherhood-born-for-adversity doesn’t have a name.”
Matthew rolled his eyes. But then he froze, looking sideways at George. Looking a little like a hopeful kid, even though he tried to keep his words very nonchalant. “You mean . . .” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. Shrugged a shoulder. “Like the Rough Riders?”
“Just so,” George pointed. “We’ll be the—Brave Battalion!”
Matthew grimaced. “I don’t know. Does it feel sort of . . . cheesy?” He used the word the other Plattsburgh and Harvard boys bandied about when giving each other a hard time.
“Definitely an element of cheese in that,” I said solemnly. Maybe in the whole notion of naming us.
George’s hackles rose. “Now see here,” he said. “If we’re speaking about cheeses, may I remind you that you, Hank,” he spat the k out like a weapon. “You were the one so keen on ‘finding the Fontinelles.’” He made his voice so nasally on that last bit it had to hurt.
I’d had about enough of him. “For the last time, the Fontinelles are not cheeses!”
“Brave Battalion,” Matthew said the proposed name and tried not to cringe. But he raised his hands to make a point, to do his part to keep the peace. “Cheesy or not, there are too few of us for a battalion. A thousand or so too few.”
“The Courageous Company, then.”
“Couple hundred too short for a company, sorry to say,” I chipped in, grinning at Matthew. I wondered how long we could keep Ge
orge going.
We volleyed the joke on past his suggestions—Proud Platoon (answer: no), Successful Squadron (answer: absolutely not), Dastardly Division (negative: to an exponential degree).
He threw his hands up in the air, letting them fall against himself in exasperation. “What, then? Is there no name under God’s glowing orb of a sun that will satisfy the two of you?”
Celia raised a finger, stepping again out of the shadows. “If I may . . . ?”
George let his face hang slack, along with his defeated posture. “Please,” he said. “Anything.”
“Something . . . simpler, I think. You’re a band. Yes? Banded together, against all odds. And usually, these groups—battalions, companies, all of them—they are numbered. Shouldn’t you be also?”
I leaned forward, the gears of my mind clicking into her words like they were meant for each other. “Something memorable,” I said.
“Three, right?” George said. “Have I guessed it? Clearly I’m no good at this, so please put a bloke out of his misery, if you’ll be so kind. Are we to be the Band Three? Because it doesn’t precisely have that ring to it, that elusive something—”
“Seventeen-seventeen,” I said.
George rolled his eyes at me. “It’s 1918. Or have you forgotten? I know time on the road moves in a waggly sort of way, but—”
“From your sermon,” I said, backhanding his shoulder. “Seventeenth chapter of Proverbs . . . seventeenth verse. I think.”
“Right. Yes. Of course. Precisely,” he said, as trying to convince himself. Or us. “The One Thousand, Seven Hundred and Seventeenth Band.”
“The Seventeenth Band,” Matthew said, shortening it.
Silence fell. Blessed silence, assured answer.
We were together, we three. For perhaps the first time since we’d set foot into the Argonne Forest, we were truly, deep-down, together. Even if we disagreed.
The Seventeenth Band. Sorry lot that we were . . . we had a name.
And we’d need that name to hold us together. Because the subject of the chasm that had tried to divide us—she approached, footfalls soft. We all turned to face her. Mireilles, cloaked in quiet assurance but shaking as she exhaled, spoke.
