Articles of War (10 page)

He searched up and down, gradually circling farther away. He had to slow to a walk. There was a heat behind his eyes and a tightening inside his gut. Ives could have led him to her, he thought, Claire.

He walked for a couple of hours. He returned to the town square, where the band was still playing and the old men still argued. He sat on a low stone curb and watched. The soldiers drank and danced with the loose-jointed energy of puppies. Blue, white, and red bunting was strung over the shops. A second band set up across the square, to compete with the first.

Someone jostled Heck's shoulder. He looked around in annoyance, and here stood Ives, gazing expressionlessly at him, and it occurred to Heck for the first time that perhaps he was the one who had been followed.

“Ives, what are you doing here?” he asked. But the boy only smiled. Heck took from his pocket a couple of chocolate bars and offered them. Ives accepted them gravely and put them into a hidden place inside his shirt. Then he prattled out a torrent of French and made expansive hand gestures. He was jittery and bounced as he talked. The boy's foot seemed to have healed.

Then, with an exasperated roll of the eyes, Ives seized Heck's hand and dragged him into the crowded square. The little boy cried out and cursed in his high voice, gesturing with his free hand for people to clear the way. By now everyone in town had been drawn to the square, it seemed, for the streets beyond the cobblestones were deserted except for a few wandering drunks. Ives let go of Heck's hand and led him rapidly along. They again crossed the creek, on a low bridge. They passed a stone church, which, with dried flower arrangements on its steps and moss on its roof, possessed an air of reserve in the face of abandonment. Water sat in dull puddles on the street. Laughter drifted out an open window.

Albert was seated on a bench near the edge of town, his legs crossed in a pose of nonchalance. “Hello,” he said. “How do you do?” He was dressed in an assemblage of rags, of which by far the cleanest and least battered element was the empty sleeve dangling at his side. The pocks on his cheeks appeared to have grown even deeper and more darkly purpled.

“Albert,” Heck said. Albert's smile seemed strained, and it made Heck anxious. “Is your daughter here?” he said, looking around. Directly across the street from Albert was a small hotel and a flower shop. Behind Albert was a row of narrow little houses, their windows shuttered. Farther down the street the houses ended abruptly and the landscape opened into fields.

Albert said, “I did not really expect to see you again. I am glad we found you.” He glanced across the street. “Maybe you should buy some flowers.”

Heck said, “For her?” Albert smiled and stood.

Inside the flower shop, a gray-haired woman in dark glasses stood behind the counter. She was blind. Albert spoke to her in French, and she handed Heck a bundle of roses. Heck paid with a handful of coins, which the blind woman felt through one by one, then lifted her face and smiled at him. Outside Ives was leaping from the bench to the ground, ground to bench, bench to ground. Albert said, “Jumping around like a Cossack at a party.” He adjusted the bouquet in the Heck's arms, then put his nose into one of the blooms.

Heck said, “Are we going now to see Claire? Where is she?”

Albert bent to kiss his son. The boy squirmed. Albert said, “A wonderful day, isn't it?”

Heck glanced at the sky, shifted the flowers in his hands. He felt slightly ridiculous with them. “You said you found me. How did you find me?”

“When she told me, I returned to the château, to see if you had returned. Your footprints were all over, and Claire found this. Why did you leave this?” Albert held out the music box.

He seemed to be offering it. Heck shifted the flowers and took it; its contours felt familiar under his fingers. He said, “How did you find me here?”

“You had returned. I knew you must have been injured. How could you have returned unless you were injured or dead? Or a deserter? If you were dead, you could not have gone to the château and left the music box. If you had been injured, you were likely to be here. In any event, the hospital was the first place to look.”

Heck shook his head. “Take me to Claire, please. Is she all right?”

“You cannot see her yet. We must have reassurances first.”

“Reassurances?” Heck glanced at Ives, and Ives stared back.

“But really I think perhaps you can guess what has occurred. Can you guess? Can you guess what you've done? Of course you can. I need not tell you.”

“I can guess?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Of course it will be obvious if you think on it. If you consider what you have done and its natural consequences.”

Heck wondered if Albert knew somehow of his cowardice under the shelling in the nameless town. Or of how he had been dallying now in this temporary hospital. But he couldn't make sense of it, so he was silent, and watched Albert. He began to think Albert was toying with him in his confusion, which turned the confusion toward anger.

Albert said, “You understand.”

“No.”

“So. Then we must be very frank. You lay with my daughter, did you not?”

Heck stared a second at Albert, then flinched and looked away. She had told her father.

“Did you not?”

Heck nodded.

“So,” said Albert, “as is the natural course and outcome to follow such events, my daughter is become pregnant with a child inside her and you, as father, are beholden to certain ancient responsibilities.”

Heck, believing he had misheard or misunderstood, said, “What?”

Albert smiled in a gentle, avuncular manner and shook his head. “Let us not be coy. It is unnecessary. We are men. We are fellow soldiers. Surely you see now you have certain duties.”

“She's
pregnant
?”

“Yes, precisely as I have said.”

“I didn't do that. I couldn't have.”

Albert wagged his hand in a gesture of deprecating dismissal. “Do not be stupid. I'm sure you are as aware of the basic facts of biology as I.”

“No, I didn't.”

“Maybe it is a surprise.”

“No, no. You don't understand. We didn't do that.”

Albert angled slightly forward and peered at Heck from under a lowering brow. “Of course you did. You told me yourself a moment ago.”

Heck wondered if possibly he
had
gotten her pregnant. The actuality of what had occurred and the repeated fantasies of what might have happened had become convolved in a way that caused him to doubt himself. Suddenly a thought struck him. He said, “Did you put that note on my bed?”

“I did, I did.” Albert sighed theatrically, perhaps sardonically. “I should apologize for it. It was written in a moment of anger.”

“I need to see her.”

“Yes, but first I need to be sure that you understand your responsibilities now.”

Heck backed away. This situation was impossible in every aspect. He needed space, solitude to think.

Albert stepped forward, closing the distance between them. “You will not run away from this. I will not allow it.” He seized Heck by the collar and shook him. “You have had your pleasure. Now you must help her.” He curled his arm, pulling Heck near enough to smell the wine on his breath. Albert's eyes were wide and staring, his pupils dilated. “Be decent, you bloody American shit.” They were breathing on each other, Heck gazing with fear into the deep lines of Albert's face.

Then he raised his knee, hard, into Albert's groin. It was something he had once seen a girl do to a boy in grade school. It was effective—Albert let go and doubled over with a shocked gasp of pain.

Heck moved several steps away, watching as Albert tilted to the ground with his hand cupping his groin. The roses lay around him on the road; Heck had not been aware of dropping them. He still had the music box in his other hand. Albert's breaths came in hisses; his eyes were closed, then open, and he glared up at Heck.

Heck backed away, turned, and began walking. Behind him Albert said in a voice shallow with pain, “You coward.” Heck walked on. More loudly Albert called, “You are a coward!” Suddenly Ives, who Heck had forgotten, sprinted past him and ahead, stopped, turned, and stood in the street with arms spread slightly like a gunfighter. Heck continued straight ahead, toward the boy. He decided he would accept without complaint or defense any punishment the boy could inflict. Ives held his ground, silent, grimacing, until Heck was only a step away. Then Albert called out, and Ives twisted to dodge from Heck's path, at the same time lifting his face. Heck felt a moistness strike him just below the eye. He did not, however, look back and did not reach up to wipe away the spittle until he had turned a corner.

He returned to his tent and lay abed the rest of the day. He seemed to dream without sleeping, for he was not tired and while he moved through dream he was simultaneously aware of the sounds and smells of reality. The next day he awoke expecting, again, to be sent toward the legions of Germany. Again it did not happen. He felt an uplift and he set off toward town, convinced that now he would find her.

However, the sky had clouded over, the temperature was low, the people in the street looked once more huddled and irritable, and Heck's sense of optimism rapidly declined. He stood for several minutes at the bench where he had found Albert, but no one was here. The flowers he had scattered over the street were gone. He went in to talk with the blind woman in the flower shop, but she could not understand his English, and he could not even pantomime for her. He walked the alleys looking for Ives, without success. In his mind he experimented with explanations or apologies or accusations he might offer Albert, none of them satisfactory. He spent much of the afternoon seated in the square, his hands slowly turning cold, then numb, watching for Ives or Albert. He thought he should not have kneed Albert in that way. He was bigger, younger, and stronger than Albert. He had, after all, two arms. He had acted in panic.
Coward.
He was a coward. It entered his mind that perhaps he should allow himself simply to be killed by the Germans.

He turned on his cot that night, unable to sleep. Whenever he neared that state of oblivion he seemed to find his hand inside the chest of a dead man and he woke with a start. In the morning he was told to grab his weapon and his bag, and he was put onto a truck going east.

5.

AT MIDDAY HECK
'
S TRUCK STOPPED IN A DEPOT BUSTLING WITH
lines of vehicles and surrounded by barbed wire, antiaircraft batteries, and piles of refuse. They waited through a crawling line for fuel, then hurried through a town where brick dust swirled thickly off the ruins. Heck was the lone passenger in a truck that could accommodate twenty men. No explanation for his solitary condition had been offered, and Heck felt tired and hapless and had neither concentration nor patience to try to guess the reasons. After a couple of hours, when Heck next looked around, they had entered a density of tall pines. The pitching of the truck had become especially violent. They went on through pines for several miles, and the road became worse and worse. Suddenly the truck halted. The door of the cab creaked open. The driver peered at Heck over the tailgate, and his expression seemed to convey distaste for what he saw. He said, “Your stop.”

Heck clambered out. He stood in a muddy rut with dense evergreen woods to either side. The truck had stopped in a minor widening of the road, just enough to allow the possibility of turning around. The driver was already climbing into the cab again. Trying to stall him, Heck said, “What do they call this place?”

“The Hürtgen Forest.”

“You sure this is it? Where I should be?”

“Yup.”

“There's no one here.”

“Someone will meet you.”

“When?”

“I don't know. Soon.”

“I just wait here.”

“You just wait here.”

The engine roared and the driver put his head out the window. He frowned at Heck and his features tensed, as if he were resisting an emotion at the sight of Heck alone with his pack in his arms. “Best move,” he said. “Unless you want a dirty shower.”

Heck backed away. With much wheel spinning and flinging about of mud the truck worked itself around until it was pointed back down the road. With one last mucky flurry, it set off.

Heck dropped his pack at the base of a tree and, to avoid sitting in the mud, squatted on his haunches. The trees grew in long, close rows like ranks of soldiers or headstones, creating odd, flickering optical effects as Heck peered about. Overhead moved flat, shapeless clouds that granted only grudging opportunities to the sun. He sensed a damp, sharp cold lurking in the darkness underneath the trees. Somewhere in the far, far distance were artillery explosions, which Heck tried to believe bore no danger to himself. Time passed. He removed his helmet. His leg itched where he had been injured. A crow cawed and wheeled twice overhead, then settled into the branches of a tree across the road. The bird drew its wings in and observed Heck with one eye, then the other.

Heck extracted an egg-sized stone from the mud and stood and threw it at the crow. It was a long throw and nearly as high as it was long—the stone arced up and began down again. The crow saw it and lifted its wings, but too late, and to Heck's surprise and dismay the stone struck the crow with a soft
pok
. The crow dropped, following the stone downward through the pine boughs with a soft rustling noise.

A low voice behind Heck said, “First of all, don't throw shit around like that, you'll attract attention you don't want. Second, that was amazing.”

Heck started and turned. The soldier he found was so unwashed and encrusted with earth that he might have just crawled out of the soil like a worm.

The soldier said, “Where are the rest of you?”

“Of me?”

“The others.”

“I'm alone.”

“I can see that. But what happened to the others?”

“There were no others. Just me.”

“There weren't others that got killed somewhere?”

“No.”

“Well, huh. Really? Do you want to fetch that crow?”

“What for?”

“I don't know. For eating? Just asking. Let's go. Stay close and quiet. The position, it's surrounded on three sides, so, stray off, you're going to end up in the shit. By the way, I'm Zeem.”

“People call me Heck.” But Zeem had already turned and started away. Heck shouldered his pack and jogged to catch up.

Zeem carried only his rifle and moved through the trees with a nimbleness that Heck, with his backpack, could not duplicate. He felt loud and clumsy and had to pause occasionally to disentangle a strap or sleeve from a low branch. His back grew sore from walking stooped under the pines. They followed a zigzagging path among the rows of trees and continued in this way for more than an hour. The forest appeared to grow increasingly dense, but this may have been only an illusion of the deepening gloom of the day's end. Then they passed through an area where many of the trees had been stripped of their branches, so that they looked like a congregation of battered telephone poles. Fallen foliage lay piled all across the ground. In places treetops and entire trees had come down or jutted at oblique angles. The smell of raw pine sap competed with the odor of cordite. Shortly after this, in a place where the trees were again dense and largely intact, Zeem stopped and waited for Heck. “Follow me,” he whispered. “I'm going to go real fast. They got spotters on our position, and soon as they see anyone moving around they bring down a few shells. They hit the treetops and stuff goes all over the place. So, be undercover before they start banging. It'd be better if you had arrived at night. It's safer to move around then.”

He set off at a run, and Heck lumbered after him. They wove through the trees, the distance between himself and Zeem gradually widening, the pines tearing at clothing and flesh. Zeem had gotten as much as a hundred feet in front when he stopped, turned, and waved to Heck, then crouched and disappeared. Struggling for air, Heck ran on, reached the place where Zeem had vanished, and stood looking around. He saw nothing but trees and parts of trees. He felt a rapid expansion of panic in his chest. An explosion not far to his right threw him over into the mud. In a panic he struggled upright, and saw it—under a scatter of branches, a narrow gap down into the mud. Another explosion was followed by splinters and shrapnel falling with a noise like a heavy rain. Heck slithered forward, slipped off his backpack, and slid into the opening, a pig down a chute.

He landed face-first on the muddy floor of a dark space. The crashing of explosions continued, jolting the earth. He scrambled forward, bumped into someone's leg, stopped, lay still, then pushed himself up. Dimly he saw three figures. He was inside a hole perhaps five feet tall and eight feet square, lit by a few cracks of light in a log roof. No one spoke while the artillery bursts continued. Then the noise stopped, and still no one spoke. Heck's ears rang. His boots sank an inch into the muddy floor and created a nasty sucking noise as he tried to extract them. The others were seated on ration boxes, and Heck found another to sit on. One of the men fiddled with a radio.

Adjusting to the darkness, Heck watched the three vague figures before him gradually gather detail, becoming three filthy young men into whose faces a variety of bitter lines had been cast. Heck had the sickening feeling of having arrived here only by some unholy mistake. Zeem was nearest him, and gestured to another of the men—the one without the radio—and said, “This is the lieutenant.”

He wore no officer's insignia. He was filthy and unshaven and cadaverous, his eyes rimmed red. Heck began to salute, but the lieutenant cut him off. “Don't ever do that here. Just get out of the habit. A sniper sees you do that, I'll be dead before I can say ‘At ease.' ”

The radioman looked up and added, “Then you'd be stuck in the salute. You'd look pretty dumb, I guess, standing there saluting a dead lieutenant.”

The lieutenant nodded. “That's right. So no fucking salutes. Okay? Who are you?”

“Tilson, sir. George Tilson.”

“Don't say ‘sir' either. They might hear you.”

The radioman put in, “I'm Obie.” He smiled as if pleased by the sound of his name.

The lieutenant was looking through a notebook. “You said Tilson? Christ, we marked you AWOL weeks ago.”

“I was in the hospital. I have my papers—”

“Doesn't matter, you're here now. We'll fix the paperwork. Ready to kill some krauts?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Fuck! Don't use that word!”

“Yes,” Heck said and stifled the following “sir” already on his lips. “All right. Sorry.”

“Good. Keep your head down and maybe you'll get a chance. But it's really hard to kill krauts if you get killed first. That right, Zeem?”

“Extraordinarily difficult.”

“Okay.” The lieutenant looked at his hands, then shook his head as though the sight of his hands disgusted him. He said to Obie, “Who was it that lost his head yesterday?”

“Polanski?”

“Conlee's his buddy, right?”

“I think so.”

The lieutenant looked at Heck. “You're going to join Conlee in his hole. Ask him to show you how not to get killed so you can kill some krauts. Conlee's done all right so far. Zeem, will you show him the hole?”

“I'll point it out.”

“Good. And Tilson, try to find a way to dry your feet out once or twice a day. We're sending back too many men with trench foot. Stay buttoned down and keep your head together and you'll do fine.”

For the moment, however, Zeem made no move toward the exit. Everyone sat listening to the radio fire staccato bursts of static. After a minute the lieutenant idly filled a ration can with mud, leveled off the top with a bayonet, and tested its weight in his hand. Heck said, “There was a man with me the first time I was sent out, Anthony. Is he here?”

The lieutenant said, “What's the name?”

“Anthony. He had kind of funny-looking eyes.”

“I don't remember him,” said the lieutenant.

Obie interjected, “He bought the farm.”

“Who?”

“Anthony. It was before your time.”

The lieutenant looked at Heck. “I'm sorry.”

Another minute passed. “All right,” Zeem said suddenly. He stood and led the way out. He ran ahead and Heck followed, dragging his backpack through the mud. Zeem stopped and pointed. “See that tree there? Broken off halfway up?”

“Yeah.”

“Your hole is just below it. Hurry.” Zeem turned and ran in the opposite direction.

Heck reached the tree, found a hole hidden under a few logs and a scattering of branches, and slipped inside as artillery shells began exploding again. His pack caught in the opening, and he tugged at it once, then left it. He found himself in a tight, muddy space, less than four feet high and just wide and long enough for two men to lie side by side. A helmetless GI squatted in the far corner, staring at Heck. His eyes were so deeply set that they were completely obscured in shadow, skull-like. In one large hand he gripped a cigarette. With the other he scratched in his beard. The artillery lifted after only a half dozen shells. The man with the cigarette said, “You're the one that's got the krauts all riled up.”

“I couldn't get my backpack down,” Heck said. “Through the hole.”

“Food in it?”

“A little chocolate. Some rations.”

“Take that out when it gets dark. The rest you're probably better off without. I left my pack behind the day I got off the truck. What's your name?”

“George Tilson. But people have been calling me Heck.”

“Heck?”

“Heck.”

“Heck—fuck. Heck.” The shadowed eyes wrinkled a little, whether with mockery or merriment Heck was unsure. “Listen, Heck. I'm Conlee. Here's all the advice I can give you: when you need to move your bowels, when you absolutely can't help yourself, shit in your helmet. Maybe a K-ration box. Then throw it out that opening. Do not go outside to shit. Please.”

Heck decided he could hold out for a while. “Yeah,” he said. “All right.”

“The last replacement I had insisted on going outside and died with his pants around his knees. Don't get too attached to anyone. Not me, not anyone. Certainly not the lieutenant, dear God—we go through a lieutenant a week. Don't get too close because they're probably going to wind up dead, and it probably won't be pretty, and it'll probably happen right in front of you. I'm sure as hell not going to get all chummy with you then waste time crying when a splinter of shrapnel gets you, and don't you do it for me. Best try not to get too attached to yourself either—that's the trick. If you can do that you're really in good shape, you'll be fine, one way or the other.”

Then Conlee was silent. He finished his cigarette and lit another. Heck, crouching to stay out of the mud, began to hurt in the muscles and joints of his legs. He took off his helmet and sat on it.

Conlee, staring at Heck's thin hair, said, “How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“Yeah? Me too.” There passed a quiet moment in which, it seemed to Heck, each doubted the other's honesty. Then Conlee reached around behind himself and brought out a small cardboard box. “We've got a few of these little sterno heat blocks. You light them and kind of crouch on top of them, they'll warm your feet a little. Be careful they don't burn through the soles of your shoes.”

“We just sleep here?” Heck said. “In the mud?”

Conlee stared at him a moment, then nodded.

The day-end wan illumination of their muddy pit very slowly dimmed, then was gone. Someone came by and dropped water and K-rations down. The cold and wet accumulated in Heck's muscles and began to make thrusts into his bones. Soon he was shivering uncontrollably.

From then on, the minutes and hours seemed to pass in clotted, desultory spasms, as if time were shambling forward with a great weight on its back and could advance only by effortful paroxysms. Every so often, preceded by a brief, fluttering noise, a few rounds of artillery exploded overhead. At one point there was rifle fire somewhere. Just before dawn, another round of K-rations came down.