Flanders Read online

  It started to rain—not a downpour like it might have in Texas, but a soft, refined European sort of rain. He didn’t make a move to get up. I didn’t either.

  His tone was as mannerly as that shower. “Stanhope? Do tell me: Why on earth did you join?”

  “Well, sir, it’s a long damned story. Won myself this scholarship first. Wrote an essay for some old Harvard alumnus as to why Harper, Texas, needed a doctor. Ma’d been craving a sheepskin for her wall, and I got that first one just to please her. I’ll earn my license, I guess; but there’s a load more study goes into doctoring. Before I settle down I need something just for me: a couple of spoonfuls of adventure.”

  Miller smiled cheerlessly. “Ah, yes. Of course. Adventure.” He looked quickly away, down to where the road grew tired and petered out in mist. “ ‘Mother whose heart hung humble as a button/On the bright splendid shroud of your son.’ ”

  “What, sir?”

  “Stephen Crane. War Is Kind. Please remember that some courage is mere idiocy. Learn to keep your head down when the Boche fire, will you? And you might also acquaint yourself with your own fine American poets.” He got up. I watched him amble across the pasture, worry’s weight bowing him.

  I have made myself a promise, Bobby, that the captain’s warning will not spook me. I inherited Granddaddy’s obsession with the ladies; and like him, when my pecker at last gives out, I plan to die in my bed of disagreeability and old age.

  Love, Travis Lee

  APRIL 9, FRANCE, REST AREA

  Dear Bobby,

  Well, I have seen my first aeroplane and was nearly shot by a Canadian. His name’s Pierre LeBlanc, but don’t let that fool you, for he has only a nodding acquaintance with French. Even the Tommies speak the language better than he, and their vocabulary’s no more than a Texan’s chinga su madre.

  As soon as I came into the company, the Tommies threw LeBlanc and me together. See, this particular Canuck was born on a horse ranch up near Alberta, so as fellow yokel colonials, the Tommies naturally figured we’d have a lot in common.

  Yesterday all of us were in the barracks. There was rain outside, a leaking roof within, nothing but housework to do. LeBlanc looked up from cleaning his rifle and said, “Lose my company, and they throw me in with an untried asshole of a captain. The bastards are doing their best to kill me, eh?”

  The Tommies said nothing because talking about destroyed units is bad luck. We’re a green company and an even greener platoon. Among us, only Lieutenant McPhearson and Corporal Dunleavy and Sergeant Riddell have seen battle, and they don’t like to talk about it much.

  Anyway, I took it upon myself to defend Miller. “Oh, strikes me he’s smart and careful. Rather have that in an officer than one who’s got more balls than sense.”

  LeBlanc jumped to his feet. Mind you, he had his loaded rifle in his hands—pointed downward, but still. “You have a point to make about the Third Canadian?”

  I put up my hands real quick. The barracks was quiet except for the hollow drip of rainwater into a nearby bucket. The Tommies were eyeing us both.

  “Didn’t mean nothing by it, friend,” I said.

  “You’re not my goddamned friend.” All of a sudden he went to shaking hard, trembling like he had the fever. It scared the fool out of me. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you what,” he said.

  “Take it easy.” I spoke to him patient and slow, the way I always talked to Pa when he was drunk.

  “Shut up,” he said. “And listen. You listening?”

  “Yeah. All right.”

  “They sent us into Kitchener’s Wood at midnight, eh? Dark and wet as a whore’s cunt, and we fixed our bayonets and went, not knowing where the hell the Germans were. The Frogs didn’t have the stomach, eh? And the Tommies were bumping into each other in the dark. The Canadians, see? We pushed them back.”

  “Okay. That’s good,” I told him.

  He wasn’t having any of it. “Shut up. You don’t know. It was last April. End of April.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  “Shut up,” he said again, and this time I did. “The weather was nice. Later it rained and all there was, was mud. But it was a pretty morning when we climbed down into the trenches. Later that afternoon we could see it coming. We could see it for a long time, coming across the pasture slow, like fog rolling in . . .”

  “Private LeBlanc,” Lieutenant McPhearson warned.

  It shocked the hell out of me when LeBlanc snapped, “You don’t know! Shut the hell up!” And it utterly bewildered me when Lieutenant went quiet. LeBlanc was still holding the rifle, and I began to wonder if the lieutenant was scared to take it away. “Piss on your bandolier, Stanhope. Piss right on it. That’s what they told us. And so I did. And before it hit, the gas smelled good, sort of like spicy pineapple. Then my eyes started to sting and I put my wet bandolier up to my face. Funny, right? Don’t you think that’s funny? Breathing through your own piss? I would have eat my own shit, too, see? Would have eat yours. I would have done anything. Up and down the trench, men started barking, a terrible hard barking, like choking dogs. Then all of a sudden the firing along the line stopped. Jesus. It got so quiet. For weeks I thought that everybody but me’d turned and run. But piss on it, right? Right? That’s what the Brit officers told us, and they should have known. Still, I feel a tingling in my throat. My chest starts to hurt bad. The captain yells, ‘Up top!’ and the few of us left scramble up the parapet, right into the bullets. The boys who are hit fall in the trench again, down into the gas. Ricky and Danny and Dennis and Jean Claude. And there they are in the bottom of that goddamned hole, clawing at the dirt and turning blue. But we held, didn’t we? We pushed the Boche back. That was the important thing. The whole world was dead and the battle was won and everything smelled like pineapple. Goddamn it to Jesus and Mary fucking holy shit.” He threw down his rifle and walked out into the rain.

  Into the silence, Sergeant Riddell said, “Never you mind, boys. I’ve walked through gas, ’aven’t I? And Lieutenant McPhearson, too. I can tell you the masks work. Captain Miller may be a Jew, but don’t let that worry you, either. You’ll see. When the time comes, he’ll stand shoulder to shoulder with us, stout as any white Christian officer.”

  It fair shook me. A Jew. Now I understand why I never see Miller with the other brass. And why, when he was looking for company, he only found me.

  Still, how could the Tommies know by looking? Miller seemed like an ordinary man. I mean, I can pick out a colored, even if he’s high yellow. I can pick out a Mexican. The only Jews I’ve seen were in cartoons, and they didn’t look at all like Miller. How could the Tommies know for sure?

  And what’s against him anyway, more than an idol-worshipping papist, I mean? And this army’s full of papists. Jews, papists, they’re all of them the same—all walking that long road to Hell. And so what? I have the suspicion Lutherans and Church of Christers will end up sucking flames. If God’s fair, the Congregationalists will, too. I figure that, despite “Once saved, always saved,” I’ll meet with all of them there.

  Later, the rain let up and I walked out of the barracks. Down at the stables I saw LeBlanc. He was standing by an officer’s mount—Captain Hawkins’s, I think. A bay gelding, like a hundred others. Just any horse. And he was so patient, standing tethered there, LeBlanc hanging on to him tight as a man drowning, his face buried in that brown satin neck.

  I walked past the YMCA pavilion. Across the way, a squad of Frenchies marched through a stand of trees, in their horizon-blue uniforms faint as smoke. High up, in a calm azure lake between clouds, a glint of color: an aeroplane. I thought of how lonely the pilot had to be, nothing but wind to hold him.

  Still, I guess I’m flying now, aren’t I, Bobby? Strikes me Miller is, too. And Pierre LeBlanc, just because death put him there.

  I sure do miss you,

  Love, Travis Lee

  APRIL 11, FRANCE, REST AREA

  Dear Bobby,

  Miller came by the practice field yest
erday, all swagger stick and attitude. “Stanhope,” he said. “Put down your rifle. I wish to see you at once.” He turned around and walked off, leaving me to follow, wondering what the hell I might have done to set his temper off. We arrived at the stables, where a group of officers were sitting around a table drinking cheap red French wine and scratching their balls and speculating about what was happening where people were fighting actual wars.

  They shut up fast when they saw Miller and me. Miller began to shout orders: “Bring my horse up!” Then “Wilson! Might I borrow your mount? The private here is to ride mine. I wish him to check my gelding’s wind.”

  One of the captains tapped stick to cap, then went back to his conversation, all the time eyeing us like he was trying not to stare.

  When they brought Captain Wilson’s gray around, Miller climbed up and left me to mount his long-legged sorrel. That gelding had to be near seventeen hands high. I’d never mounted from one of them women rider blocks, but I swallowed my pride this time. Even then I had a hell of a time getting up, since my hobnail boots were too slick for those steel stirrups.

  I swung a leg over that limey excuse for a saddle. Before I was settled, Miller barks, “Fall in!” Damned if that gelding didn’t start sauntering across the paddock—with only half of me on him.

  The officers around the table nearly pissed themselves laughing.

  I held on best I could. Then I hear Miller call out, “Stretch high! High!” and the gelding commenced to backing. About the time he reached the middle of the paddock, he started up on his back legs.

  I jerked that gelding’s head hard right, grabbed me an ear and twisted hard. I surprised the bejesus out of that sorrel. He took to snorting and crab-dancing, and then to standing stock-still in place, waiting to see what I would do next. I crooned to him, the way Grandma de Vrees always taught me; and only when he started to quiver did I let go.

  I looked up. I had everybody’s attention. The officers weren’t smirking anymore.

  “A Cherokee trick, is it, Stanhope?” Miller looked cat-in-the-birdcage satisfied.

  That’s when I got that it hadn’t been my respect he was after. “Yes, sir. Biting the ear is better, but pinching will do.”

  “The stirrups bother you?”

  “Can’t keep my feet in them, sir.”

  He climbed off the gray, came and fastened my stirrups up under the saddle’s gullet. It was odd, sitting and looking down as he helped me. There was gentleness to his touch, a humility to his gesture. I figure it was by way of a public apology and a private thanks.

  He never looked at me. When he was finished, he walked over and climbed up in his saddle. He called for the paddock gate to be opened, then he trotted the gray through. I clapped my legs around the sorrel’s belly and followed.

  At the road, Miller let the gray have his head. We cantered past chattering knots of soldiers, past artillery shells nestled in their open boxes like brass eggs. There is a magic to riding, you know, Bobby? An enchantment, even astride that jackrabbit sorrel and that slick little postage stamp of a saddle. When we were clear of the lorries and the road stretched wide and empty, Miller cried out, “Put heels to him!” and we flew into a dead run.

  The race was just for the intoxication of it, I guess, for once past the next turn of the road, he halted. He turned to me, and his face was flushed. “Close your eyes, Stanhope. No, don’t gape at me so, old man. I’ll take your reins.”

  He kicked the gray close and nearly tore the reins out of my hands. Then he gave me one of his rascally grins. “Close your eyes.”

  Eyes shut tight, I let him lead me. The thud of steel on clay softened; dry leaves crackled under hoof. The chill of dense shade washed my face. The air went damp and rich with the scent of horse and forest. A crow cawed, startlingly loud. Soon the wind freshened and the dark behind my lids went ruddy and hot sun prickled my skin.

  “Look,” Miller said.

  I opened my eyes. Before me stretched a meadow of crimson, as if God himself had bled there. A breeze sent flower heads nodding. A current shivered through the poppies and blew a confetti cloud of white butterflies upward.

  “I thought you should see it,” Miller said, “before it is gone.”

  I dismounted and waded knee-deep into that calm scarlet sea.

  His quiet voice came from far behind me. “We are to move out the day after tomorrow,” he said. “I could not let the flowers die unseen.”

  I turned. Astride his horse and at least twenty feet away, but his stare was as assertive as a hand. “Sir?”

  He ducked his head. “Yes. Well. I suppose we should go.”

  Still, he sat where he was, sat so quiet that it seemed he had given up on breathing. I walked to the sorrel and hesitated. There was no convenient rock wall, no fallen tree trunk. Finally Miller awkwardly, and without meeting my eye, dismounted to give me a leg up. Close as we were—chest to shoulder, my knee planted in his hands—I could feel him tremble. His face was high-colored, his skin so hot that his heat baked right through my trousers. As soon as I was up, he sprang away, clearing his throat.

  “Right you are,” he said. “Just a bit of sightseeing. Hope you enjoyed it.”

  He mounted the gray. There we sat, considering each other across a gulf of rank and questions.

  Miller’s a gentleman, I’ll give him that. A poetry lover, as Uncle Cecil would say. All that time, Bobby, he was hoping. And when it came down to it, he was so smooth that he asked and then accepted my rejection without either one of us having to say a word.

  Those dark eyes of his went even sadder. “I’d best get Wilson’s mount back to him.” Suddenly he wheeled the gray and cantered back to camp.

  Knowing that he’s a light-stepper disgusted and shocked me for all of ten minutes; then I decided, unless he tries proselytizing some, I don’t really care. Long before I came, this company set fast as concrete. Everyone else is runoff. There’s no sticking place for me, who’ll always be a stranger; nor for Miller, who they look down on; nor for LeBlanc, who no one understands. I wish there was some way for me to tell Miller that I need him—not in the way he’d like, but in the simple way humans need each other.

  When we got back to the stables, Miller dismounted and handed the gray’s reins to a groom. He thanked me coolly for testing his mount; then he walked away, the other officers’ eyes following him. At first I thought they knew about his predilections, but his secret’s too dark and Miller is too discreet. I was right. When he was out of earshot, I could hear whispers: “. . . right school, but good God, how could they have taken a sheeny,” and “. . . whole outfit’s rotten with kikes, bad as the Boche army.”

  Damn those Brit officers. Those soft faces, those softer hands. They remind me of those Harvard Congregationalists. I’d rather kill me some limey officers, frankly, than any poor helpless Germans.

  I’ll keep this letter until I see you again, because—for poor Captain Miller’s sake—I daren’t send it through the censors.

  I remain yours in outrage, Travis Lee

  APRIL 20, FRANCE, ON THE ROAD

  Dear Bobby,

  Granddaddy de Vrees should have told me about the marching. Understand, Bobby, that to secure some glory you have to get from Point A, where battle isn’t, to Point B, where things are going on. I never imagined the tedium.

  I’d been off my feed the day before, and achy like I was coming down with an ague. The ague never hit. The next day started off well enough: everybody finally marching to war, each platoon singing, me having to learn the ditties in a hurry: “Oh, Landlord, Have You a Daughter?” and “Mandalay.” Then the pack gained some weight, and the straps started to bite into my shoulders, and the hobnail boots, which never fit me worth a damn, rubbed blisters onto my feet.

  We marched on and on, not singing anymore. We stopped for lunch, and afterwards, just to break in my boots, we marched some more. Everyone looked tired. One of the battalion’s supply wagons lost a wheel, and our company was ordered to stay behi
nd and guard it. The rest of the companies marched on.

  It wasn’t just the wheel that had gone bad. It was the axle, and it took three hours to mend. We hurried to make up the time. LeBlanc, who isn’t a big man to begin with, looked to be collapsing in on himself, pressured by fatigue and fury.

  How many picturesque churches can you pass without them looking the same? Miller rode up and down the line of our bent-backed shuffling company, throwing out a sympathetic word here, a joke there—a cutting horse watchful of the herd. He would not meet my eye.

  When the sun began to lower, the wheel failed again. We bivouacked that night where the wagon broke down, deep in a dripping forest; and some of us slept in a charcoal shed and some slept in a smokehouse. It rained, and the damp brought the fragrance of long-eaten hams from the smokehouse’s walls. I dreamed of food and thought I heard thunder. The next day we found the bridge five miles up had been blasted. Despite our songs, war had gone on and men had died. We passed a dray mare with her two back legs blown off and a mercy bullet between her ears. Then we marched by two Frenchies, one with a splendid handlebar mustache, his eyes glassy with surprise. His horizon-blue uniform was stiff and so maroon with blood that for the life of me, I couldn’t tell which part of him had been wounded.

  Nobody talked much. We looked over our shoulders for the next several miles. Except for that capricious death, there was no other sign of battle. We stopped to eat in a woody copse by masses of white flowers—so many blossoms that it seemed like we’d stopped in snowdrifts. My stuffy head and aching muscles had turned into a full-fledged cold. I couldn’t smell the flowers. I couldn’t smell my rations. I sneezed.

  Miller put guards at the perimeters, told us to keep our talk down and to set no cookfires. The dappled woods spooked me. I could see the others’ eyes dart here and there. My boots had not turned comfortable and the pack was just as heavy; still I was ready to leave that place. The missing bridge took us five hours out of our way.

  Poplar-bordered lanes. Churchyards with their dead sleeping under tapestries of pink winecups. Bluebottle flies buzzed us like enemy aeroplanes. By the time the sun sank, I sank, too. I couldn’t breathe. My feet hurt.