Human for a Day (9781101552391) (9 page)

“
A weapon?
”

Jamming, shattering, flung away, tossed aside, or held as tightly as a talisman.

“
No, it
'
s too fine, more like wire. Yes, see here
'
s a roll of it around what was probably a wooden spool.
”

Crawling in the darkness and the mud, a line of wire unraveling behind him in the darkness.

“
Wait. There
'
s something here tucked up beside the ribs, something leather. A small book, I think, or a piece of it, anyway.
”

“
A journal?
”

“
Could be.
”

“
Can you open it? Can you make anything out? Words or a name?
”

“
I think so. Shine your torch here.
”

“
Careful now, careful.
”

The rush of memories froze in place as he waited for words he'd hadn't known he'd ever hear or ever thought he'd need to.

“
Private William Falkner.
”

A boy in face and form, and a man in duty, lost, and honored to be carved in stone by the ones he'd left behind. Found.

He opened his eyes.

 

A white-dressed cemetery filled his vision: a jumble of old gravestones and iron markers radiating out to lines of stark, grey trees. He heard birds and far away a single church bell tolling morning. As the dawn sun warmed his face, he stepped off the monument that had been his sentry box and heard the crack of hard-packed snow break beneath his boots. The wind whispered past his face and, as he turned, he saw a single candle flame beckon in the distance.

He followed it.

The gravestones became older, darker, covered in moss and worn smooth by years of rain and snow. At the far end of the cemetery, the land sloped steeply down into a line of trees and he stared at them for a long time, feeling them stare back. They and their kin had been fed by the dead for so long that it was impossible to tell where trees left off and the dead began. But he could see the candle flame flickering behind them. He took a single step forward and suddenly the memories he had carried for so long rushed over him: the screaming of the shells, the stiffness of his uniform, the fear, the falling and the darkness. Behind him, the monument called out to him, offering the serenity of silence and the strength of stone, but the candle flame still beckoned and he stood frozen, unable to go forward and unable to go back.

Far away he felt himself lifted as the voices that had begun his transformation spoke again.

“
Be careful with his bones. They
'
re fragile.
”

“
I wonder if he has any relatives still living who might remember him.
”

“
I doubt it, after all this time. But there might be family somewhere and a grave. People do that sometimes, you know. Just place a marker with a name on it to have a place to go.
”

He glanced about the rows of gravestones. Many of them had fallen into disrepair as the people who'd once tended them had died in turn. The soldiers who lay beneath them had long since passed beyond the trees.

All save one.

He moved towards it, then crouching down, he stripped the moss away and read the words aloud.

“Private Arthur Townsend.”

His own voice startled him for a moment; then he shook himself and bent to study the grave itself, seeing it as only he could see it. The soldier who slumbered in this place held on to memories so dear that he would not be moved no matter how beseechingly the candle beckoned. And stretching out into the distance, past the monument, he saw a line of equal strength that bound the living to the dead through memories too precious and too painful to be forgotten.

But as he watched, it wavered and he knew it would not bind them long. Death was searching for this final soldier and it would not be denied. A day, no more. The dead might refuse the candle flame but the living could not refuse the dead no matter how much strength they might command. No strength could overcome the strength of death.

He paused. No strength except the strength of stone.

He rose and, with a sudden urgency, passed through the cemetery's wrought-iron gates and set out walking, his boots making a soft
shush, shush
noise in the fine layer of snow upon the ground.

 

He walked all morning, barely pausing to register the changes in the world. The memories he carried were not the memories of shops and streets and he could not remember how the world had been before them enough to notice any change. No one remarked upon his presence and for a moment he doubted that he was even really there until he paused before a tavern window and peered in at his reflection with a frown.

He saw a young man, eighteen or nineteen years old, smooth cheeks, hair cut short, but grown out shaggy and uneven beneath his helmet's rim as if he'd had no time to care for it. Uniform tunic, belt, and trousers wrapped in linen up the calves, boots old but serviceable. Hair, and eyes, and face, and clothes the gray pallor of cold stone and expression: haunted. He shuddered but, as he turned away, he saw the candle flame and, with a new resolve, he set out walking once again.

 

He passed by people, young and old, some healthy and some ill, some carrying the memories of sacrifice and pain but none of them the one he sought and so he passed them by and came at last to a long, low building of gray brick painted white. Not a hospital, although it had the sense of one. The entrance door was locked, but as two women exited, chatting amiably together, he slipped inside a hushed and carpeted anteroom. Old men and women sat in wheelchairs, some talking loudly, some calling for a nurse, but most just staring into space, into the past. An old man sitting in a patch of sunlight, a blanket thrown over what once had been his legs, gestured to him.

“Are you Death?” he demanded when he approached him.

“No.”

The old man's shoulders sagged. “I'm Clem and I'm dying. They don't think I know it, but I do. I can see it, that light out there. Can you see it? A single light, like a candle maybe?” Clem waved his hand before his face, then dropped it with a sigh. “Can you see it?” he repeated.

He looked into Clem's eyes, past the lines of battle, past the fallen, past the blood, and pain, and death, and saw the candle flame and nodded.

“I can see it.”

“I can't reach it.”

“That's because your memories won't let you go. You're holding on to them too tightly. Let them go and they'll let you go.”

Clem gave a snort. “Easier said than done, boy. I've got nothing left but memories. My friends are all dead and my legs ache something awful in the night. They keep me up. They keep me remembering. Yeah, yeah, I know they're gone,” he snapped. “I lost ‘em in forty-three, but they still ache.” He jerked the blanket up about his stomach.

“So why are you here?” he demanded. “You didn't come for me, not in those clothes, you didn't. You look like a picture of my old dad from the Great War and he died years ago.”

“I'm looking for someone.”

“Someone?”

“One of mine.”

Clem snorted. “You won't find him. They're all gone. All of them. Most of mine are gone now, too.”

“I will find him. I have to find him.”

“You won't. I told you, they're all gone. Go look in a cemetery, that's where they all are now. Bones, just bones.” Clem fell back, panting slightly. “All,” he muttered. “All but me. I'm tired, boy. I'm so damn tired, and I miss my friends.”

The sense of urgency grew as the line wavered once again but the call of duty was still strong, and so he crouched before the aged soldier and took one hand in his, drawing out his memories of battle, one by one. “The candle flame is coming closer,” he whispered. “Can you see it?”

Clem's haunted gaze drew inward. “Yes, but . . .”

“Hush. Can you hear the bugle sound the ending of the day?”

“Yes.”

“And do you see them, the lines of the fallen, your fallen, moving off into the distance?”

“Yes.”

“Follow them.”

He left the old man's body slumped in his chair and walked away without looking back. Rooms marched along either side of a long, somberly painted hallway; bedrooms, some with two beds, some with four, not a hospital although he could sense that many of the people in the rooms were ill, and some were dying. At the far end of the hall, he turned and stared into a final room to see a wizened old woman nestled in a pile of brightly crocheted afghans staring back at him. He saw the trenches in her eyes and heard the hiss of gas and felt the fear and the resolve they shared and knew he'd found the one he sought.

Her rheumy eyes traveled down the length of him as he approached her bedside.

“Are you Death?” she asked as Clem had asked. “I saw Death on the TV once and he looked like you, a pretty boy in uniform.”

He shook his head. “Not Death,” he answered.

“Good, ‘cause if you were, you could go take a flying leap,” she snarled. “I'm not going anywhere.” She crossed her arms and glared at him. “I can see that blasted candle shining in the darkness, just like in the old days,” she stated. “You know. You were there. I can see you were. You got some mud and you built a little shelf and you pressed a candle stub in it and it held up good. In the dug-outs. You remember, don't you?”

“I remember.” The tiny specks of light, the smell of petrol, and the odor of unwashed bodies. The faces in the darkness holding fear, and hope, and a dreadful, bone-numbing weariness that could never be forgotten.

She snapped her fingers at him impatiently and he returned his gaze to her.

“Stay outta there,” she ordered. “No good can come from memories like that. You wanna see the dying all the time, hear the whizz-bangs and feel the cold mud seep into your bones forever?”

He shook his head. “No,” he whispered.

“I should think not. Memories like that'll drive you mad. I oughtta know. I'm 107 last month. Got the letters from the government to prove it. All of them saying congratulations for not dying sooner.” She laughed, a weak, raspy laugh that devolved into coughing. “That's all they know,” she sputtered once she'd regained her breath. “Hundreds died, thousands, but I didn't. I promised Arthur that I wouldn't. I promised him I'd live.” She stared off into space. “I promised him I'd live for both of us.”

The line grew fainter and for a moment he feared she might reach out for the candle flame at last, but then she shook herself with a rough gesture.

“Fetch me the picture on the shelf up there and I'll tell you a secret I've never told anyone in near a century.”

He brought down a small framed photograph so faded that he could hardly make out the figures standing grinning together, two young soldiers in brown woolen uniforms, arms slung companionably across each other's shoulders. He turned it over and peered at the fine, black writing.

“Arthur and Mark Townsend,” he read out loud, “France, 1918.”

She closed her eyes and he watched the memories flit across her face. “We were 15, both of us, in 1918,” she whispered. “Only just and we couldn't wait no longer. We were powerfully afraid it would be all over before we had our chance to see it. Fools. Young fools, the pair of us, and I'm an old fool for remembering how important it all felt; how
necessary
. We
needed
to go, Artie and me, we felt it that strongly.”

He nodded.

“Both our parents died of the fever just a month before and the bank took the farm for taxes. Bastards. There was nothing keeping us, so I cut my hair and Artie gave me some of his clothes to wear. We were that close in size. Twins we were, as alike as any brother and sister might be and tall for our age. We walked for three days to get to the recruitment center, and just before we went inside, we took some chalk and wrote the number 18 on the soles of our boots.” She chuckled. “You remember that trick? Over 18?”

“I remember it.”

“They were pretty desperate for troops by then and we went out fast. We didn't have much training, but then, we didn't need much. We both knew how to shoot already. Most farm kids did in those days. Not so much now. So much has changed. I guess it's for the better. That's what they tell me, anyway.”

Her gaze grew far away. “The battles all had names, but I think they gave them names afterwards. It was all the same to us. There was mud everywhere so thick it would pull a body down right before your eyes and there was nothing you could do to save them.” She hunkered in her blankets, her expression bleak. “I haven't thought about that time for many years. Haven't talked about it either. But you were there, you saw it, so you know. No one knows I was there, you see, no one, and I didn't tell no one neither, not even afterwards.”

“All the battles had names,” she repeated. “Named after the places they fought them at. Those that died there, well, the battles and the places became theirs for all eternity.” She snorted. “I heard a minister say that once years ago. I suppose it's true. Artie's place was Ors. Did you see Ors?”

“I saw them all.”

He closed his eyes as one single line of memories rushed over him. Lying on his belly in the darkness, unable to move his legs, unable to cry for help. Already the mud had a hold of him, pulling him towards his grave. One arm was trapped under his body wrapped in wire, but the other one was free enough to reach out towards the lights of camp so far away.

Too far away.

When he opened his eyes, she was watching him with a knowing expression.