Articles of War (4 page)

When they had all finished eating, Ives spoke up from his seat in the corner. He glanced now and again at Heck and he talked for a long time, looking sullen, mumbling so that Heck was not sure he could have caught the meaning even if he had understood French. When he had finished, there was a silence. Finally, Heck asked, “What did he say?”

“Thank you,” Albert said. “He says thank you.” He frowned at the boy.

“For yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you're welcome,” Heck said, embarrassed.

He left a few minutes later, after saying good-bye and shaking Albert's hand. “Come back anytime,” Albert said with a strange, leering smile. Heck walked through the high weeds and into the trees, then stood, hesitating. Several minutes passed. Finally, he heard someone coming through the weeds, then brushing through the branches of the trees. She stopped before him and spoke, watching his eyes. She was speaking in French, and seemed to be asking a question, a gentle one, and he nodded. She took his hand—her callused flesh harder and bonier than he had expected—and led him through the trees to a rough path through the woods.

They crossed a couple of empty, windy pastures. They skirted a house and a large garden full of round green cabbages. Soon he heard the blood-rushing sound of the ocean. They entered a span of open land before the seaside. Perhaps this land had once been farmed; now however it was overgrown with grasses and a few wind-bent saplings no more than waist-high. Heck began to feel nervous, thinking the Germans would of course have mined these areas along the shoreline, but the girl had his hand and moved confidently. They passed a concrete bunker gazing with its cyclopean eye-slit toward the Channel. Heck was sweating. He wiped at his face with his free hand and saw it trembling slightly.

They sat on a ledge over the sea. All beyond lay water, its gray surface curling and fluttering, sketched with white doodles and dashes of spume. Directly below them the sea boomed and rebounded off black rocks. A fine, invisible mist hovered in the air and blew a chill over the flesh. Claire's skirts fluttered. “America,” she said to him.

“Yes, I'm an American.”

“Where?” she said.

“America, yes, that's it.”

“No. No,” she said. “Where America? Where?”

He began to point toward the west, toward America, but she shook her head. “No.” She opened her arm out wide. “America.” She brought her hands together and gestured in a small circle and looked quizzically at him. “Where?”

“Oh,” he said. “Iowa.”

“Ohiowa?”

“Iowa. Just Iowa. Iowa.”

She said, stretching the syllables, “I-oh-wa.”

“Yes.” He smiled with a sudden piercing inside, a physical sensation of great longing.

“Beautiful?” she said.

“Yes.” He longed for home. He thought of the wide fields he had worked and in their absence seemed to know them with an intimacy he had never felt before.

The gray water merged seamlessly with the gray sky. It would probably rain again soon. Heck thought of winter at home, of the swells and swales of the snowscape under skies clouded horizon to horizon, devoid of form or sun. But here, in the monochrome field of sky and sea, were the narrow, dark gray silhouettes of ships—so many ships that when he scanned them, from one horizon to the other, they were hard to believe. He could not imagine any earthly power that would bear up for long before the colossal quantities of war machinery carried by such a fleet. For a moment he felt good looking at all the ships.

The girl rose and gestured for him to follow. She went along the bluff, then maneuvered onto a narrow ledge that slanted down toward the sea. She followed it with quick, precise steps.

He went after her, moving gingerly, edging his feet along the irregular shelf, seeking foothold to foothold. She had made it appear simple, and as he tried to follow he was astonished by the speed with which she moved.

Then, when he looked over again, she was gone. He called. He twisted to peer downward, toward the water, and saw no sign of her. He looked back the way he had come, then up—and suddenly felt a profound vertiginous fear. The bleak sky was somehow more foreboding than the rustling water below. His voice cracked as he called again.

Now she answered, her voice high and strangely resonant. He still could not see her. He called and she replied again. Suddenly her face appeared out of the rock ahead. She smiled.

He shuffled and clambered over to her. She was on her stomach in the entrance to a cave. The opening was a sort of crooked slit with a jutting lower lip, just large enough that he might be able climb in beside her. He peered into the dark of the cave and hesitated. He could imagine an animal, or a German, biding time in there. The girl said something coaxing in French. With the acid feeling of stepping into a trap, he climbed in.

His ribs and his shoulder touched hers as he lay there, and her flesh moved against his as she breathed. “Pretty,” she said, gesturing at the horizon. She glanced at him and he looked away, embarrassed. He stuck his head out beyond the lip of the cave and peered straight down at the water.

When he looked at Claire again she was smiling at him. He marveled at her smile. He wondered what she was thinking of to bring her this expression. She nudged him and pointed over the water. “Home,” she said. “Ohiowa.”

He laughed. “Yes,” he said. He shaded his eyes and squinted as though he could nearly see it. He waved. “Hello, home.”

She waved with him. “Hello, Iowa.”

He crossed his arms and set his chin on them and watched the sea. He tried to forget about the war he was to participate in. But it was not easily forgotten—there were all the ships spread before him.

Claire pushed herself up and with a writhing, twisting movement slid over his back and turned herself around. “Come,” she called, crawling into the dark. He watched her disappear, then wormed himself around and followed.

He scraped ahead on hands and knees for a few feet; then the space widened and he stopped. After several seconds his eyes adjusted and he could see a little: the cave opened into a small room, not high enough to stand in but enough to sit. Claire's pale face floated amid craggy shadows of varying darkness. Heck felt along the wall toward her, knocking loose gravel as he moved. Claire giggled. Every noise resonated strangely, like an underwater echo. He sat beside Claire, his thigh against hers.

She began to sing, just softly. Perhaps it was a lullaby. He could not interpret the words but the melody seemed dimly familiar. Her voice, whispery and soft, was beautiful. When she finished, he wished he could sing, but all he could remember were the obscene cadences from training camp.

She pushed herself away from him again, and dimly he saw her cross to the other side of the room. She leaned down and appeared to slither—he saw the shadow of her foot wag amid the shadows—and in an instant she was gone. “Hey,” he said.

Her voice came back flattened and distant seeming: “Iowa.”

He crab-walked to where she had vanished but could see only the broken, irregular wall of the cave. Then he made out an area to the side where the ceiling and floor narrowed toward each other. It might have been an opening, but he could hardly imagine a human would fit through. He crawled nearer. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey!”

He crouched forward, hands on the ground, gazing into the darkness. He heard his own breathing, quick and a little ragged, and felt his heart throbbing. The air seemed thin. He had no particular fear of small places, or darkness, but this—where was she leading him? How deeply into the earth? Someone could put a knife into him in a place like this and no one would ever know or much care. The army would assume he had deserted. Albert would think what a nice American he had been, to give Claire everything in his pockets. Or perhaps Albert had plotted this.

Heck shook his head in the dark, which induced a dizziness.

He felt forward into the crevice. Lying flat he worked ahead with his elbows and knees, feeling blindly with his hands, until he was able to slide under the upper edge of the opening. He heard Claire say: “Iowa?”

“A moment,” he whispered.

“A—moment,” she echoed.

He pushed himself forward until the entire length of his body seemed encased in rock. The pressing stone made him breathe raspingly. He began to lunge and flail forward. Suddenly the route ahead was blocked by a wall of rock and he squealed in panic—he was uncertain how he could back out of this position. Already he could imagine starving and dying here. But after twisting and probing for some time he found open space to one side above his head. He wormed over a sort of hump, and emerged blindly into a larger opening.

He probed about with his hands and every surface—the entire discernable universe—was of cold stone. Then his fingers were on soft, warm cloth—Claire's stomach he realized, and he flinched away in surprise. She laughed. In recoiling he struck his head on the ceiling above and cried out. A host of white shapes swirled in the dark.

Claire asked something in French. He said, “I'm okay,” feeling his head cautiously, anticipating a lump.

“Okay,” she said.

Feeling about with his hands, he found the room to be low and generally circular—pancake-shaped—and perhaps two body lengths across. The floor was relatively smooth. The air was still and cool. He had thought the darkness absolute, but after a couple of minutes he could see a trace of light leaking in the way he had come. It was such a dim smudge that he had to stare at it for some time in order to convince himself that it was not an illusion.

He lay listening. After that first touch on the girl's stomach he had shied away, and now he was not certain of her position. Faintly he heard her breathing and, more loudly, he heard his own breath. Somewhere, occasionally, a drop of water fell. Unless he was gazing directly at the smudge of light where he had come in, it made no difference whether he had his eyes open or closed.

“Iowa,” said Claire.

“Yes?” he said.

Her skirts, her blouse and boots rustled and slid. He felt her fingers in his hair and she giggled. She found his arm and lay alongside him with her shoulder, arm, and leg against his. Her stomach made a noise and they laughed. He turned his face toward her, though he could not see her, and said, “Hungry again?” She said nothing, and after a second he realized sadly that she did not understand. But then she pressed nearer to him and suddenly, within the darkness, her lips were on his.

He flinched slightly but her lips quickly found his again. In the eerie cold of the narrow cavern her touch felt rough and hot on his skin. Though they hardly moved, each noise they made against the stone or each other resounded loudly. She shifted and took his ear in her mouth, and he groaned.

Then her stomach grumbled once more and they laughed. Their mouths came together again. He had the odd thought that she might eat him if she could, but then it was forgotten. The cold had gone, and the dark was full of the sensations flowing across his flesh. She smelled of raw soil and cider and like the humid air from off the sea, she smelled sweaty and sweet and human and awful and glorious. She seemed slight in his hands, and he could feel her muscles tense and relax under his fingers. His penis was swollen to the point of aching. He had once lain with Becky Shirley in the bed of a Chevy truck, and they had kissed for what seemed like a very long time. Then Becky sat up and straightened her hair, he drove her home, and after that they could only look at each other with embarrassment. It was his only experience with a girl's body. It was one of the reasons he had little to say to other men: he imagined anything he might say would reveal an embarrassing ignorance.

Becky Shirley's breasts had been large and heavy as fruits. This girl's breasts were small and through her blouse he easily held each under his hand like a palmful of grain. At the center of each he felt the soft-hard pebble of her nipple. She moved her hands under his shirt and slid her fingers lightly over his chest. She began to whisper something in French. It sounded lovely.

He found his way under her blouse with his hands to her naked stomach and back and chest. He could feel the muscles over her shoulders and the knuckles of her spine. The lines of her ribs were each distinct and he traced them with sorrow and desire. She gasped when his hands arrived on the skin of her breasts, the sudden sound of inhalation loud in the dark. He ran his fingers down into the pelt of her pubic hair, and it was as if he had reached down and brushed his fingers upon the root of the world. He froze in that attitude a moment. Her fingers drew together slowly on his back.

He retreated slightly and brought his hand up to touch her face. Blindly he felt the soft outline of her lips, the form of a cheekbone. She whispered something. Drawing a fingertip near her eye, he discovered moisture. He hesitated, then touched near her other eye. Here too he found a small, shallow pool, her tears warm, her eyes closed. She was crying. “Oh,” he said. Something small inside his rib cage seemed to turn over, a sensation that then grew, as if unfurling. He recoiled from Claire, and the feeling inside him began pressing outward, but, still, it took him a moment to recognize the sensation as simple fear.

He rolled away and shoved his shirttails into his pants. She uttered a small, despairing sob. “I'm sorry,” he said and squirmed around on the stone floor and fled, clumsily, back into the narrow space he had slithered through moments before. Behind him she called, “Iowa? Iowa?” By the time he found his way to the entrance again she sounded as if she were crying and very far away.

He emerged into a rain. It fell thinly and darkened the rock surfaces. When he stretched along the rough ledge they had followed down, he slipped and hung a moment with a foot and hand in space. The surf pounded white below. He brought his body back against the cliff side and forced himself to slow. But soon he was scrambling again. His hands and feet seemed always on the verge of slipping, but he reached the top, pulled himself up by two muddy fistfuls of grass, and ran. When he entered, breathless, the shelter of a few trees the sudden panic that had driven him began to relax, and he slowed to a trot. It was a sublime relief to be free of the lightless cave and have the sky above him again. He stopped and massaged the flesh of his face and discovered himself smiling.