Souvenir (19 page)

“Thanks, Miller,” Clay said, “you don’t have a bad pair of eyes yourself.”

“Thanks. They’re all a little bloody, but your coat’s an officer’s, Clay.”

Clay laughed and turned away as Miller chased after Big Ned, still smiling. It was strange how in the middle of this nightmare, normal thoughts and feelings still stood their ground. Like the odd look on Jake’s face, or Miller being so happy at finding three dead men’s coats. Little things that shouldn’t matter, shouldn’t even register in this deep dark cold night. But here they are, as real as if he were back in basic, or back home at a barbeque. Miller wanting to be one of the guys, to prove to them and himself that he was better than the fear that grabbed him and sent his legs running the other day. Jake needing something too, his eyes drifting toward something neither of them could see. Clay had no idea what it was or how Oakland figured in. Maybe Oakland had something Jake wanted, but what could that be?

Clay stood at the trench leading to the hole Jake had crawled into. He looked around, checking to be sure everyone had a spot and that things were quiet. Soft grunts and the rustling of hay, clothing and gear rose up from the ground all around him. Signs of life under the snow, reminding him of late winter back home, when you could feel the plants and roots underground, waking up, getting ready to emerge. The thought was soothing, and it dredged up from the depths of his mind the memory of when he first understood that everything comes back in the spring, nothing really ever died. He had been, what, six years old maybe? He could feel his hand grasping the branch of a bush growing by the front porch, rubbing his fingers against the buds bursting out, understanding that they could grow and bloom and die and come back again. It had seemed wondrous, a silent secret revealed to him alone. Looking back at the two Germans frozen in that hole, he wondered if they’d ever thought about that, and what might creep out of the soil in a few months and further bind them to the earth.

Above ground, it was silent, and Clay looked at the coat in his hands in the full moonlight. The collar was ripped, but the silver stitching was intact. Two sharp angled slashes like lightning bolts. SS.

Fuck.

Inside the hole there wasn’t much light. Clay fixed the blanket as tight as he could behind him and reached out his hand. He felt Jake’s leg and moved to the opposite side, his head by Jake’s feet. The pine logs extended out over the firing slit, blocking most of the moon’s light. Clay moved by touch and settled in. With his head propped up against one end of the hole, he stretched out his legs so they were touching the other end, next to Jake’s head.

“There’s bad news, bad news, and good news,” Clay said.

“Save the good news for last.”

“Okay. Bad news is that the guy who wore this jacket was SS.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Jake whispered. “And the bad news?”

“We don’t have any extra socks. We both left our musette bags back at that house.” Clay heard a groan and a half laugh. The groan was real, a pained sound pulled deep from Jake’s throat. The laugh died in his mouth, but even so, Jake said what was expected of him.

“Sure glad there’s good news.”

“The good news,” Clay said, “is that there’s no more bad news.”

They both laughed a bit, the completion of the set up and the punch line relaxing the tension. It was an old joke, an old routine. There never was good news, only an end to the bad. They had said it dozens of times before, maybe more, it was always the same, and they always laughed. But what really gave them comfort was that they’d said it so many times before, and here they were saying it again, which meant that one day they’d be somewhere else, out of this situation, one of them saying sure glad there’s good news, in another place, another time. But this bad news was really bad. No fresh socks, and their feet were cold and soaked in sweat. The shoepacs they wore were waterproof, but they kept the moisture in, and after a long cold day and night, their feet were sweaty, damp and freezing. Trenchfoot became a real possibility, and they needed their feet. Trenchfoot out here was death, or a POW camp at best.

“Red was right about pockets,” Clay said as he began to unlace his boots. Red never carried a pack. Everything he needed was stuffed in pockets. Shirt pockets, fatigue pants pockets, wool pants pockets, field jacket pockets, overcoat pockets, plenty of pockets. On their legs, arms, chest, everywhere. Red believed in having everything on him, so when he had to haul ass fast he only had to worry about his rifle and his helmet. On your head and in your hand, then run like hell. Extra socks were the most important item of clothing to have, and a lot of guys carried them in a musette bag slung over their shoulders, keeping their pockets bulging with ammo, first aid gear, grenades. Others, like Red, put everything in their pockets. It made it harder to sleep with so many stuffed pockets on all sides, but Clay had to admit, Red had been right. His and Jake’s musette bags were on the floor in a back room at the house, and there had been no going back when the shooting started. Krauts were wearing their socks now.

Clay got both boots off and placed them between his legs. He peeled off the damp wool socks and squeezed them, coaxing moisture out as best he could. He could feel Jake moving, doing the same thing. There was only one way to dry socks outdoors in the cold, with no fire. Use your own heat. Clay unbuttoned his coat, his jacket, his shirt, pulled up his wool sweater, and unbuttoned his long johns. He placed the socks on his chest, shivering at the cold damp feel of the wool against his skin. He pulled the sweater down and waited. His feet felt like heavy frozen pieces of meat. They had to dry too, and they were too wet and cold to go back into the boots.

“Ready?” Jake whispered.

“Yeah.”

They moved so they lay directly across from each other. Clay felt for Jake’s bare feet, pulling them up under his clothes, shuddering at the icy cold feel of them as he buttoned up as best he could and pulled his sweater down tight. His own bare feet went under Jake’s clothes, next to his ribs, tucked up as far under his armpits as they could go. He felt Jake shiver as he clamped his arms down as best he could, giving Jake’s icy feet all the warmth he had to spare. With no chance of a fire, it was the only way to dry socks and warm feet. Using your own precious warmth to evaporate the dampness in the socks and your buddy’s warmth to keep your feet from freezing. What you lost at one end you gained at the other.

Clay spread the German overcoat out over them, covering their legs and the boots they had tucked in between them. By first light the socks would be dry and warm, and their feet would emerge from under each other’s clothing feeling like they had been under a down comforter. This was almost good news.

“You okay?” Clay asked. There was a long silence.

“Can’t stop thinking about things back home.” Clay waited after Jake spoke. He could tell something was bothering him, and Jake didn’t usually talk much about his family.

“Funny,” Clay said, “I was thinking before about how little things can still eat at a guy, even out here, going through all this shit. You’d think it would just drive everything else out of your mind. But it doesn’t.”

“You thinking about home too?”

“Yeah,” Clay said, after a moment’s thought. “I guess I always am one way or the other. Thinking about what was, what coulda been. Just remembering people, can’t help it. They drift in and out of my mind all the time. Like visitors.”

“Some visitors you’re glad to see go,” Jake said. Clay could feel Jake’s legs quiver as the cold sent his body into another round of shivering.

“What’s eatin’ at you, Jake?” More shivering, as Clay tried to keep his arms clamped down, giving Jake all the warmth he could. He waited, but Jake didn’t answer him. Maybe he was asleep, maybe he just plain couldn’t talk about it. Clay let his mind drift, listening for noises outside. If he concentrated he could hear the pine branches rustle in the wind, but nothing else. Good news. For the first time since the Germans attacked the house, he could feel his body relax. He felt it in his thighs, then his stomach. His body seemed to melt into the hay, and even the feel of Jake’s cold feet in his armpits didn’t bother him. His own feet felt like they were tucked in under the covers, and an image of his mother leaning over his bed flitted through his mind. A visitor. He could feel himself falling asleep, falling, down, down, into a dark safe place, swathed in soft hay. He hoped his mother would visit him as he dreamt. He saw his family in his dreams, enough to keep the memory of their faces fresh in his mind. They’d be sitting at the kitchen table, playing cards or drinking coffee, and he’d look up at his father, suddenly realizing he was supposed to be dead. But there he was, taking high, low and jack as they played Pitch. The dream always ended as soon as he realized his father, mother, brother were dead. For just a split second, he’d look right into their eyes, and really see them again. If could just stay with the dream a few seconds longer, they might say something important to him, share a secret, tell him it was all right where they were. Or that’d it be all right where he was.

“You asleep, Clay?” Jake’s question brought him out of that long fall into sleep.

“Just about,” Clay said.

“SS,” Jake said. “That really is bad news.” 
“Yeah,” said Clay, struggling to open his eyes. “Probably that’s who hit us at the house.”

“Yeah, the way they kept coming on. Yeah, probably. Rock and a hard place is what we got here. Could be them or our own artillery waking us up.”

“Yeah,” said Clay, closing his eyes. “Could be.” So instead of falling asleep with images of his family in his dreams like old fading photographs, Clay was left with visions of SS troopers sneaking up the hill, hearing their grunt and snores. Bad news.

“Yeah,” said Jake, hoping to keep the conversation going, but he could hear Clay breathing heavy and he knew he was asleep. Sleep should’ve come easy to Jake, but it didn’t. His mind raced between his hometown in Pennsylvania and everywhere else, thinking of where he could go after the war instead of there. Maybe he’d visit Clay in Tennessee, look for a job, settle down there. Let his folks think he died—but they’d know he didn’t. No telegram with the War Department’s regrets.

The Waffen-SS might take care of that for him. Those bastards worried him, worried any sane man. It wasn’t that they were supermen or anything, that was just propaganda. But they were good soldiers, good at what they did. They’d started off on the Eastern Front, most of them, and after a few years fighting Russians, they knew plenty about killing. But so did a lot of Krauts in their regular army.

The problem was that they didn’t seem to care much about living. They’d die as indiscriminately as they’d kill, throwing away their lives for a farmhouse or a hilltop or a foxhole. They’d stand, fight and die when any other Kraut or G.I. would pull out and live to fight another day, no shame to it, just common sense. They’d attack over and over again, jumping over the bodies of their comrades to get at what they wanted. You had to kill them all or run away, there was no in-between, no half-measures, no mercy.

Sleeping in ground zeroed in by their own artillery and probably soon to be reclaimed by its former owners, they were between a rock and a hard place, all right. Rock and a hard place, he should feel right at home. It sounded just like Minersville. Like their narrow two-story brick house tucked under the shadow of a mountain of rock.

Chapter Eleven

1964

Clay waited at the light for a line of cars turning into the Hubbard Park entrance. He felt hung over, as if he’d drunk too much of his cheapest whisky last night. His mind was thick, churning with thoughts of Addy’s ultimatum. His head throbbed. Too little sleep, too much thinking, and too many tears jammed up behind his eyes, threatening to drown his face and reveal the emotions he carefully kept stored away, like a folded envelope at the bottom of an old drawer. Most of yesterday had passed in a fog as he went through the motions of work, the shock of what Addy had said wrapping him in a cocoon of disbelief and confusion. He felt like a hundred pounds hung on his back all day long, the fear of losing her bearing down on him until every step was an effort and all he wanted to do was close his eyes and sleep. Fear of the loss, yes, but shame too. The shame of failure, of not being good enough to carry through with even the most basic human behaviors. A wife and family.

He and Addy didn’t speak much last night, and this morning they shared the bathroom and kitchen as if they were both trespassers, careful politeness replacing familiarity as they struggled in silence with what had been spoken. Excuse me. Want some coffee? Pardon me. I’ll get that. Goodbye.

Sunlight glinted on his windshield as colored leaves drifted off tree branches, fell on his hood and over the road in front of him, dancing across the blacktop like brightly colored insects. He watched as one leaf landed on the hood of his car. Bright yellow and red, its curled edges tip-toed across the hood until the breeze lifted and tossed it into the air. Clay watched it go and felt the sense of loss deepen, reaching down into his gut and take hold, as if it were going to stay with him a long, long time.

Indian summer was making a show on this October day, and plenty of folks were headed into the park for their last chance at a picnic under the bright sun. When the last car crossed his lane, with two women in the front seat and a pack of kids in the back, a boy at the window turned and smiled at Clay. Clay had a blank look on his face, at best, probably a frown. He could feel the grim set of his jaw, his lips pursed tightly against his teeth, drawing down the corners of his mouth. The boy turned his head as the car pulled into the park, watching Clay, the grin gone from his face. Clay wondered if he’d frightened him? Had the kid seen a glimpse of his future in the face of some old guy driving a beat-up station wagon filled with cardboard boxes, passing the park by on a warm fall day?