Title: Forward, Children
Author: Paul Alexander Bartlett
Publisher: My Friend Publisher
Address: #101, 654-3 Yeoksam-Dong. Kangnam-Ku, Seoul, Korea
Registration Number: 16-1534
Date of Registration: October 17, 1997
Copyright (C) 1998 Steven Bartlett. All rights reserved.
Printed and bound in Republic of Korea.
First Printing: March 10, 1998
ISBN 89-88034-03-1
*Project Gutenberg edition 2014*
_Forward, Children!_ was published in 1998 in Korea, nearly a decade
after the author's death. The author's literary executor, Steven James
Bartlett, has decided to make the novel available as an open access
publication, freely available to readers through Project Gutenberg under
the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
license, which allows anyone to distribute this work without changes to
its content, provided that both the author and the original URL from
which this work was obtained are mentioned, that the contents of this
work are not used for commercial purposes or profit, and that this work
will not be used without the copyright holder's written permission in
derivative works (i.e., you may not alter, transform, or build upon this
work without such permission). The full legal statement of this license
may be found at
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/legalcode
[Illustration: Creative Commons Logo]
*OTHER BOOKS BY PAUL ALEXANDER BARTLETT*
_When the Owl Cries_ (novel), Macmillan, 1960.
Available as a free downloadable eBook in a variety of formats from
Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40245.
_Wherehill_ (collection of poems), Autograph Editions, 1975.
_Adios, Mi Mexico_ (novelette), Autograph Editions, 1979.
_Spokes for Memory_ (collection of poems), Icarus Press, 1979.
_The Haciendas of Mexico: An Artist's Record_, University Press of
Colorado, 1990.
_Voices from the Past - A Quintet: Sappho's Journal, Christ's Journal,
Leonardo da Vinci's Journal, Shakespeare's Journal, and Lincoln's
Journal_, Autograph Editions, 2007.
Available as an illustrated printed edition from Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Voices-Past-Paul-Alexander-Bartlett/dp/061514120X/ref=sr*1*1/102-5793561-6667321?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1177817149&sr=1-1
Available as a free downloadable eBook in a variety of formats from
Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39468
_Lincoln's Journal_ (the fifth novel of _Voices from the Past_).
Available as a free downloadable audiobook from:
http://archive.org/details/VoicesFromThePast-LincolnsJournal
_Sappho's Journal_, Autograph Editions, 2007.
Available as a separately printed illustrated edition from Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb*sb*noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=9780615156460&x=0&y=0
Available as a free downloadable eBook in a variety of formats from
Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39467
_Christ's Journal_, Autograph Editions, 2007.
Available as a separately printed illustrated edition from Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Christs-Journal-Paul-Alexander-Bartlett/dp/0615156452/ref=sr*1*1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325740964&sr=1-1
Available as a free downloadable eBook in a variety of formats from
Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39400
Available as a free downloadable audiobook from:
https://archive.org/details/VoicesFromThePast-ChristsJournal
*TO THE YOUTH OF THE WORLD*
_Allons, enfants de la patrie,_
_Le jour de la gloire est arrive!_
--_La Marseillaise_
_Forward, children of our country,_
_the day of glory is at hand._
*Forward, Children!*
*by*
*Paul Alexander Bartlett*
*INTRODUCTION*
*Steven James Bartlett*
_Forward, Children!_ is a gripping anti-war novel. It brings vividly
back to life the experience of WWII tank warfare as it was fought and
endured by soldiers in the tank corps. The novel is also a story of love
in French Ermenonville, where Rousseau lived during the last period in
his life and was buried.
The title _Forward, Children!_ comes from the opening line of _La
Marseillaise_, the French national anthem (_Allons, enfants de la
patrie_). _Forward, Children!_ is a novel that was long in the making.
Paul Alexander Bartlett completed the first manuscript of _Forward,
Children!_ in the years before the outbreak of the second world war. He
had been deeply affected by the first world war, by the horrors and
suffering it caused. Wishing to bring to readers a convincing and
powerful first-hand experience of that war, he portrayed in the first
version of _Forward, Children!_ the hardship and terror of tank warfare
as it had been conducted by the American Expeditionary Forces Tank Corps
during World War I.
Renowned English novelist, poet, and critic Ford Madox Ford thought
highly of _Forward, Children!_, and shortly before his death devoted a
large part of an essay published in the _Saturday Review of Literature_
to praise for the novel, urging its publication.
"_Forward, Children!_ ... is the projection of the life of a
fighting soldier in the A. E. Tank Corps in France. It is so to
the life that for some days after reading it, the writer's
nights were rendered heavy by the return of the lugubrious
dreams that for years after the signing of the Treaty of
Versailles attended on his slumbers. When you read _Forward,
Children!_ you _are_ in a tank crawling amidst unspeakable din
and unthinkable pressure up the sides of houses, and down the
banks of dried-up canals, crashing through the walls of
factories.... [I]f not on artistic grounds then at least for the
public weal this book should be published and widely
circulated."
Ford Madox Ford died two weeks after this essay was published in 1939.
In the subsequent years, with the attention of the world now fixed on
WWII, Bartlett decided to rewrite _Forward, Children!_ to portray tank
warfare in the ongoing world war. He had already become knowledgeable
about tank warfare in the first world war and he now researched the
conditions and accounts of tank fighting in the second. As a result,
_Forward, Children!_ builds on the author's attempt to stand in the
combat boots of the tank soldiers of both world wars and conveys to the
reader an account of their experience with unforgettable realism.
_Forward, Children!_ was ironically never published during the author's
life, despite the strongest commendations the work received not only
from Ford Madox Ford, but also from John Dos Passos, who remarked:
"Praise from Ford Madox Ford is praise indeed. The descriptions of tank
warfare are vivid and as far as I know unique. This is a very, very good
novel."
Russell Kirk added his admiration for the novel: "Permit me to commend
_Forward, Children!_ The novel attains a pathos rare in war novels. The
scenes of battle are drawn with power. Bartlett is an accomplished
writer." Pearl Buck, Nobel Laureate in Literature, wrote: "He [Bartlett]
is an excellent writer. _Forward, Children!_ is an excellent piece of
work, with fine characterizations."
Upton Sinclair wrote: "I found _Forward, Children!_ extremely
interesting and convincing. I think it is one of the best descriptions
of fighting I have ever read. In fact, I can't remember any account of
tank fighting in such detail and [which is so] convincing." James Purdy
remarked: "_Forward, Children!_ ranks with the best books--its anti-war
message is inescapable. It is an important book and [Bartlett is] an
important writer."
_Forward, Children!_ eventually came to interest a small press in
war-scarred Korea; in 1998, the press published the book in a limited
edition that has reached few readers. To remedy this, the author's
literary executor has decided to re-publish the book in open access form
as an eBook to be made freely available to readers through Project
Gutenberg.
Whatever the obstacles have been that so often stand in the way of
authors, and that plague the world of publishing, after many, many
decades it is time for _Forward, Children!_ to reach its readers.
*ABOUT THE AUTHOR*
Paul Alexander Bartlett (1909-1990) was both a writer and an artist,
born in Moberly, Missouri, and educated at Oberlin College, the
University of Arizona, the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City, and
the Instituto de Bellas Artes in Guadalajara. His work can be divided
into three categories: He is the author of many novels, short stories,
and poems; second, as a fine artist, his drawings, illustrations, and
paintings have been exhibited in more than 40 one-man shows in leading
galleries, including the Los Angeles County Museum, the Atlanta Art
Museum, the Bancroft Library, the Richmond Art Institute, the Brooks
Museum, the Instituto-Mexicano-Norteamericano in Mexico City, and many
other galleries; and, third, he devoted much of his life to the most
comprehensive study of the haciendas of Mexico that has been undertaken.
Three hundred and fifty of his pen-and-ink illustrations of the
haciendas and more than one thousand hacienda photographs make up the
Paul Alexander Bartlett Collection held by the Nettie Lee Benson Latin
American Collection of the University of Texas, and form part of a
second diversified collection held by the American Heritage Center of
the University of Wyoming, which also includes an extensive archive of
Bartlett's literary work, fine art, and letters. A third archive
consisting primarily of Bartlett's literary work is held by the
Department of Special Collections at UCLA. Bartlett's book about the
history and life on the haciendas, including a selection of his
illustrations and photographs, was published by the University Press of
Colorado in 1990 under the title _The Haciendas of Mexico: An Artist's
Record_.
Paul Alexander Bartlett's fiction has been commended by many authors,
among them Pearl Buck, Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos, James Michener,
Upton Sinclair, Evelyn Eaton, and many others. He was the recipient of
numerous grants, awards, and fellowships, from such organizations as the
Leopold Schepp Foundation, the Edward MacDowell Association, the New
School for Social Research, the Huntington Hartford Foundation, the
Montalvo Foundation, Yaddo, and the Carnegie Foundation. His novel _When
the Owl Cries_ received national acclaim; his fine art has been
exhibited throughout the United States and in Mexico; his poetry has
appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies and has been
published in individual volumes of his collected poetry. Bartlett was
very prolific and left to the archives of his work many as yet
unpublished manuscripts, including poetry, short stories, and novels, as
well as more than a thousand paintings and illustrations.
His wife, Elizabeth Bartlett, a widely published and internationally
recognized poet, is the author of seventeen published books of poetry,
more than one thousand individually published poems, numerous short
stories and essays in leading literary quarterlies and anthologies, and,
as the founder of Literary Olympics, Inc., served as the editor of a
series of multi-language volumes of international poetry to honor the
work of outstanding contemporary poets.
The author of this Introduction (Paul and Elizabeth Bartlett's only
child)] apparently inherited their writer's gene and has published
books and articles in the fields of philosophy and psychology.
* * * * * * * *
*Forward, Children!*
*PORTRAIT*
Orville Dennison was five feet eleven inches tall and weighed a hundred
and fifty pounds. He had the body of an athlete, the body of a crewman
and a tennis player.
His eyes were brown with flecks of grey in them. He had brown hair and
combed it straight back and when it was long it bulged out on the sides
and had waves that crossed from ear to ear, waves that were sun bleached
on the top.
His nose was aquiline, his mouth was thin-lipped and rather small. He
had large ears. His eyebrows were bushy and his lashes were long and
thick. His forehead was broad but was not unusual except that it was
very smooth while the skin of his face, which was rather florid, had
enlarged pores here and there.
His hands were wide across the back and his fingers were strong; his
shoulders and arms were muscular.
He walked quickly with a natural swing.
He had a ready smile and even teeth.
His voice was pleasant.
He was twenty-four.
One was struck by the sadness in his face, the careworn lines about his
mouth and eyes.
*1*
Landel shook Dennison's shoulder.
"Whatcha want?" Dennison mumbled, raising himself on one elbow and
unconsciously pushing aside his blanket.
"The supply trucks have come," Landel yelled.
"Who's come?"
"The trucks and tanks are here. Three trucks have brought supplies.
We've got food. Are you awake? Hey, do you hear me?"
"What did you say? Sure, sure, I'm awake," Dennison replied hazily. He
squinted and ducked as Landel shot the beam of his flashlight directly
into his face.
Landel knelt down beside Dennison and fumbled about the floor of the
abandoned plank and sandbag irrigation shack for his tank helmet. His
tall body almost filled the place. His bald head looked repulsively
bald to Dennison--something surgical.
"I let ya sleep a little longer than the other guys," Landel yelled.
"Yeah, you needed sleep." He shifted his flashlight around the crude
shack, over the mounds of blankets where their crewmates had been
sleeping.
"Our kitchen's here! The trucks are here ... three of them," he
repeated.
"We've got something hot to eat," he hollered. "Are you awake?" He
pushed Dennison--shoved him against the floor. "Come on, get out of
here!"
"What time is it?" Dennison asked.
"Nearly fifteen ... we've got to get moving," Landel crabbed. He found
his helmet underneath a sandy, greasy blanket and stuck it on. "Raub's
got here with his kitchen ... so, let's go ... okay? Now?" He was
talking to himself, spitting out words, annoyed by the day's problems,
war's problems. He rose from his knees and, stooping low to keep from
cracking himself against the roof, edged, crab-fashion, toward the door.
"I'm leavin' ... I'm goin'," he cried.
"I'll be along in a minute," Dennison said, yawning and propping himself
against the wall, legs and shoulders feeling stiff.
Landel reappeared.
"Go on ... I'm awake!" he shouted. "See you at the chuck wagon."
"We've got to eat quick ... we've a hell of a lot to do," Landel
screamed, his head in the doorway. He zoomed his flashlight into
Dennison's eyes, like a warning, and walked off.
Angry, Dennison rubbed his hands over his bearded face, slumped down
onto the floor again.
Through the doorway he caught glimpses of the flashlights and lanterns
of men headed for the kitchen: legs and lights passed with metronome
jerkiness across the sand: dust came up from beneath boots. Shellfire
rumbled in the distance, a sound that had in it all the vacuity of the
African desert.
A jab of wind dribbled sand through the doorway and shook sand from the
make-shift roof of the shelter where only yesterday gunners had been
trapped emplacing a gun.
Dennison smelled the stench of gasoline and grease from the tanks and a
tank dump nearby; he could smell the gas and grease on his clothes; it
seemed to swirl around him.
The incoming air was chilly.
Shivering, he hauled a blanket around him and with his shoulders against
a sandbag, lit a cigarette. As his lighter flared he noticed his
squashed, grease-pocked helmet; sleepily, he reached for it and placed
it across his lap, pressing it down, making it a part of him. One hand
holding his pack of cigarettes, the other bringing a cigarette to his
mouth, he tried to think.
It seemed to him that he had dreamed during the night.
The tip of the cigarette glowed encouragingly.
Yes, he had dreamed about the library tower, the chimes, the sounds
travelling down the hill slopes, down toward Lake Cayuga, the tower and
the sounds blurring. Kids were sitting in the library, at long tables,
faces, faces. There seemed to be an elm tree at the far end of the
reading room, snow, lake ...
He tried to remember the sound of those chimes.
Huddled against sandbags, he drowsed and as he drowsed he saw a campfire
in the woods somewhere, students standing around the fire, some of them
singing. A guy was playing his harmonica, muting his music by cupping
both hands over the instrument ...
Dennison's arms and hands had fallen asleep.
Yesterday the pace across the desert had been formidable, the heat
increasing, a shortage of water, the water warm and sickening, nothing
at all to eat at noon ...
He shook his hands and arms to bring back the circulation, groaning,
cold, the exhaust of a tank stinking and coughing nearby. The sound
brought with it the sensation of violent pitching, the distress of
gasoline and oil fumes, the threat of shellfire at close range.
Shoving his sweater inside his trouser, adjusting his belt, he knelt and
fished about: his helmet had rolled heedlessly and bumped against the
wall: recovering it, he strapped it on, tilting it over his forehead,
aware of its grime.
Slipping on his leather jacket, yanking the zipper, he wormed about the
blankets for his mess kit and stepped out into the open, feeling sand
drop off his clothes.
Outdoors, his cigarette tasted better and he inhaled deeply to help wake
up. The chilly air nipped his face and hands, as he stood motionless
urinating.
Behind the shack rose a tangle of rusty machinery from an irrigation
pump, the machinery snarled over a cannon-sized conduit, the pipe's
mouth toward the sky. The stars seemed closer because of the junked
pipes and gears: the sky, utterly cloudless, was defiant: in a few hours
its sun would be hammering, leading on and on, sand gobbling sand, dunes
blurring into hills: heat and flies would move it together, thirst would
be everywhere.
A G.I. scuffed by, coughing and spitting.
"Raub's here," he called, noticing Dennison and his cigarette. "We're
ready to eat!" He coughed again.
Dennison wet his lips with his tongue and swallowed.
"I'm right behind you," he said. "Wait a second ... I've got my
flashlight. Here, Millard!"
He pulled his flash from his jacket pocket and walked behind his
crewmate--the sand deep, their boots scuffing, the flashlight wobbling
as if asleep.
"Gonna get hot today," Millard hollered.
"Can't hear you," Dennison hollered.
"Any news on the radio?"
"What was it you said?"
Raub had his kitchen under lopsided leafless trees and a scabby fire of
branches burned close to it, kitchen and blaze hidden behind a dune, an
enormous crested thing with skeletal brush and camel grass growing on
its side. Gaunt, set off by stars, it threatened the kitchen and men,
hung, swollen, a thing of unbelievable weight. Yellow light crept up
the slope and bounced off the scarred steel of the field kitchen. Steam
gushed from pots at the rear of the stove; the air smelled of coffee and
hash.
His flashlight in his pocket, Dennison worked his way through sixty or
eighty men, brushing sand out of a mess kit with a dirty handkerchief
and the palm of his hand. It seemed to him that he had done this many
times.
"Hi," he greeted one of the Corps.
"Hi, Dennison ... Hi. Goddamn desert, cold. Freeze off your ass." The
man drained his coffee and then blew into the bottom of his cup.
"Coffee's good," he said.
"Give me a cup of coffee," Dennison said to Raub, at the kitchen: Raub
had his coffee pot raised for pouring, his face smudged, his eyes
puttied with sleep; cups were scattered along the kitchen counter in
front of him, some of them clean.
"Howdy, any news from you guys?" Raub asked, tilting the pot, arm
extended across the counter, the pot steaming. He smiled at Dennison,
liking him: Dennison reminded him of a fellow back home, in Atlanta, a
boy he'd grown up with.
"You ought to know the news," Dennison said, "you just came in with your
outfit, so what's the news? What's up?"
"Not a damn thing! Here, hold still, have some hash. Hungry? It's not
bad stuff."
"Sure," Dennison said.
"Fill'er up," Millard said, behind Dennison. "I could eat anything!"
The Corpsmen wore regulation uniforms or the coveralls of the mechanic;
there were a number in fatigues; some men wore helmets; they were an
unshaven lot. Their khaki did not count for much: they were all of a
piece: their greasy, oily, gasoline messed clothes stuck to their
greasy, oily bodies; they had not washed in days. No water, no
inclination.
They appeared strangely alike in the firelight, each with a bush on his
face, each with a crew cut or helmet, each with his mess kit or cup of
coffee.
A shell thudded behind the great dune.
"Hell, I hope they don't lay a line on this fire," Millard said, moving
a few yards away from the kitchen to allow others to queue up.
His pan filled, Dennison stepped out of line and pushed his way through
the crewmen.
"Captain Meyers had guys pull some of the wood out of the blaze," a fat
sergeant told Dennison.
"They're not near enough for a hit," Dennison belched cheerfully,
spooning some hash.
"Christ, there's a village burning up over there, beyond that dune,"
somebody yelled. "What's a piddling campfire alongside a village!
We'll be out of here in an hour. It'll be our turn to let them have
it!"
Dennison found a hollow and sat down on a dead tree, a palm, a frondless
bole; shoes sliding into the sand, he resumed eating, spooning and
chewing slowly, listening to the men talk, noticing the stars now and
then. The pan burned pleasantly in his hand and he shifted it about and
spooned another spoonful of hash, his mouth sticking out, his nose in
the steam.
On one side of him, Millard was shouting:
" ... Why, you know the drag of those cylinders, the lousy combustion;
why, man alive, the Panzer tanks withstand the desert heat a hell of a
lot better than our machines. Why..."
Somebody was yelling for more hash.
Somebody beefed:
"We've got fifteen Sherman tanks in reserve ... I'll bet we never use
them!"
Dennison was familiar with some of the voices and the familiarity
helped: the fire was encouraging: the hash was really hot: there was
more at the chuck wagon. Coffee too.
Yesterday ... he tried to shut off the memory as he would a tap, but
memory trickled through: Jesus, the vast terrain they had covered, that
whamming through the sand, screwing round to avoid rocks, ducking behind
a dune, climbing to fall into the direct fire of a Panther, her guns
blazing ...
Luck, nothing but luck had pulled them out of that jam.
You never could tell, maybe they would have a lucky break today ...
maybe it wouldn't get too hot inside the bus; maybe there might be
enough water, stuff that was fit to drink ... they could travel across
some comparatively level ground, none of the loose sand to baulk the
treads. And food? Maybe they'd have something to eat, a chance to eat
outside the tank.
It was a wretched kind of hope, the same hope that everyone got up with
every morning--but it was hope. Gazing at the smoke from the fire, he
followed it upward where the sky was a thousand stars, no New York sky;
even through the smoke the points blinked brightly. Coldly. He held a
mouthful of coffee on his tongue before he tackled his food once more.
The bread was fresh. Good crust. He felt his body lose a little of its
weariness; one leg sank into the sand; probably the desert was not too
bad in the winter time, at some oasis, town or city.
He signalled to Isaac Jacobs who was wandering through the crowd of
crewmen, walking sleepily, balancing his heaped up mess kit, coffee cup
in the midst of the hash. Zinc's beard shone weirdly, crazily red in
the light. He pushed his way past a couple of gesturing men and stepped
on a smoldering log someone had dragged from the campfire.
"Goddammit," he exclaimed, wobbling, balancing. "Almost got myself badly
singed. Gotta watch where we step in this desert." His teeth flashed
in a grin intended for Dennison. Dennison grunted and nodded, his mouth
full, his eyes narrowed to friendly slits.
"Sit down on the tree."
"How goes it?" Zinc asked, sitting, his mess kit on the trunk alongside.
"Not bad. Any news?"
"Sure, Raub shorted me on hash and bread--that's news!" Zinc said,
spooning food.
"I heard Chuck say that a unit of the 604th is trailing us; somebody
picked up their radio."
"I wouldn't mind seein' ole Sutter and Reynolds again," Zink said,
sopping hash onto a lump of bread, bowing his legs around his kit.
The fire was sparking and sending out low flames: for several minutes
the dune came nearer, seemed taller, more ominous. When the flames
flared the dune retreated.
Zinc's face, because of his beard, appeared round and oriental; a hint
of satire, of his good humor, was apparent as he chewed and watched the
fire, the coming and going men. His hair, badly cut, trimmed by a
madman, was greasy, in contrast to his scrubbed whiskers. He was built
like a jockey--small boned, and lightly muscled. Staring at Dennison,
he rolled his chocolate eyes expressively.
"This stuff, this hacked up meat, is easier to eat than the gunk they
fed us yesterday," he said. "A pan of salmon's not my idea of chow in
the desert."
"Yeah, it was lousy," Dennison agreed.
"I'm gettin' me more of this hash, when I'm done."
"Sure ... there's plenty."
"Raub got here plenty early..."
"Great logistics ... I'll have more hash before the flies move in," said
Dennison.
"Flies ... flies ... they're everywhere when we stop ... a fine way to
go to hell ... carried there by flies!"
"How's your stomach?" Dennison asked. "Any better this morning?"
Yesterday, at a noon halt, Zinc had held to a tread and vomited,
gasping, his face white above his beard. During the morning run he had
been hurled against the stock of his machine gun.
"I'm doin' all right," Zinc said "My guts have settled into
place--somehow. Maybe the muscles inside are knittin' together again or
whatever. I can breathe okay. No pain."
He chuckled faintly. "It was one hell of a rotten jolt, and came near
puttin' me out of running. I think this food will stay down."
"You'll be okay," Dennison said.
Zinc flaunted a hunk of bread.
"As long as I can eat I can manage," he exclaimed.
The fire had attracted more of the Corps; some sat on the palm tree; two
perched on a bed roll; others squatted on the sand; several sat on oil
drums; some ate with their backs to the flames; others loafed about the
kitchen. When Raub waved a mess kit and yelled, Dennison got up and
crossed the sand to the wagon.
"More hash ... more coffee," he said, offering his pan.
"Sure man," said Raub.
Dennison stared at him while he spooned hash, sliced bread, and poured
coffee: he was a far off guy, slow, sloppy, small, with black rimmed
spectacles and a black wad of a moustache, the image of a grubby
Parisian painter though he had never painted or been outside of Georgia
until the war.
"Did you have a tough time, bringing the kitchen forward?" Dennison
shouted.
"Yeah ... bad findin' you guys in the black ... bad truck ... but weah
heah."
To Dennison he sounded unreal: where the hell was Georgia? Where was the
US? All these men ... here ... how had they gotten here? The dune
became real but the conflict was unreal.
Settling his cup on the kit he asked himself whether he should eat more?
What about being wounded on a full belly? Was it worse with the belly
full? Some said....
"Heah, heah," said Raub. "I've got some sinkahs for you. Would you all
like a couple?"
"Huh ... I guess so..."
Raub opened a cupboard door--a stainless steel door in the side of his
kitchen--and pulled out a cellophane bag and passed doughnuts to
Dennison, one at a time, hooked over a finger.
Dennison grinned.
"Good boy, Raub."
"Mum's da word. Quick, hide'em, while we're alone." Raub frowned,
imagining GI's storming over the sand, howling for doughnuts across the
counter. "Jus' remember, when your folks sends you all some stuff, jus'
remember me again."
"I'll remember."
Dennison returned to Zinc and munched a doughnut underneath his
nose--sitting down beside him.
"See how it's done!"
"How'd you rate that?"
"Reach in my jacket ... there's another sinkah ... you all likes 'em."
Zinc appreciated Dennison's fake accent, fished for the doughnut, and
bit into it.
"Perfect."
Hunkered on the tree, they finished their food and drank more coffee.
They stopped talking. Dennison lit a cigarette and offered his pack to
Zinc, who accepted one. They had stopped talking because of fear. Fear
was in the cigarette. In the sand.
"Landel was nervous as hell yesterday," Dennison began. "He acted as if
the whole Africa Korps was on him!" He remembered Landel bellowing over
the tank intercom, storming about supplies. Using the radio he screamed
at officers, berating them when they answered.
"Operation haywire," Zinc commented, recalling the outburst.
"Colonel Morris says he'll report Landel ... Landel was drunk on Monday
... well, hell, we need a break," he said, wanting a leave, a week, two
weeks, a month away from the assaults. Let some other guy knife his way
through the Anadi pocket. Let some other crew hammer at the men
entrenched at Anadi. Anadi was nothing. Never could mean anything.
"Morris is bad," Zinc said. "He couldn't take it yesterday, couldn't
talk some of the time. One of his men got shot through the head. Their
tank conked out ... a faulty timer."
Again they stopped talking, already feeling the heat of their bus, the
perspiration drenching their legs and arms and backs; they felt the
lunging of their machine; they heard the sob of the motor, the bang of
pistons, the bark of the exhaust.
Fear slid down the dune, sat with them, picked at the grains of sand,
shuffled through the dying fire, rubbed their faces, old fear, present
before every attack.
They heard the far off shelling, felt it in their feet.
A nerve began to tremble in Dennison's right hand.
He looked at his hand, stared.
He thought of the little village of Ermenonville, his E, thought of his
years there, his aunt's home, those gawky French windows in grey stone
walls; he thought of his uncle's writing desk in his room upstairs, a
desk usually littered with maps and photos and calculations--pigeonholes
ready to burst.
As he peered at the sand under his shoes he saw the fishing tackle in
his own room ... rod and gun rack. He could almost see the park at E,
the oaks, ash, chestnut, willow ... the miniature island where Rousseau
had been buried ... the Petit Lac reflected the tall Lombardies on the
island ... a swan--swimming sedately--was part of the scene ... the ivy
walled chateau.
Millard sat on the tree trunk, yakking, repeating rumors, speculating:
each man had something to say about the terrain that was ahead:
unfolding a map, some went over the lay of the land together. Wiping
their mess kits half way clean with handfuls of sand they tossed them
into a bin behind Raub's kitchen.
By now the fire was out.
Flashlights bloomed and died. Lanterns blinked.
Seated men, men standing in groups, became death figures.
Dennison walked slowly, head bent; Zinc followed him; Millard followed.
Their tank was parked among other machines behind the shack where they
had slept, almost at the base of the great dune. The bulk of each tank
was something cut out of the night. As Dennison popped on his flash,
rocks and gravel mixed with the deep sand ruts left by the treads.
A mechanic's spotlight had been trained on their M4 Sherman: she was a
dusty blob twenty-four feet long, nine feet wide and eleven feet high.
Paint had been chipped off innumerable places. Her starboard side had
sunk down where the sand had given way under her weight. She weighed
thirty-five tons, and carried three machine guns, a 75 mm turret cannon.
Walking up to her, Dennison kicked sand off his shoes against the armor
plating.
"Where in Christ's name have you been?" Landel screamed, appearing out
of the dark, flashlight in hand.
"Just finished eating," Dennison yelled.
"Here's your helmet," Landel yelled. "I found it lyin' on the floor of
the bus. My god, man, can't you keep anything! You bastards always
lose our stuff."
"I'm wearing my helmet," Dennison yelled. "That's Zinc's helmet."
Landel's flashlight winked out; the mechanic's vivid spotlight went out;
the darkness seemed to alter the tone of the captain's voice, make it
more irritable:
"Who the hell's dickering with that light? What's the matter! This is
no blackout! Gotta check!"
He stumbled across sand ruts, his flash poking the sand and rocks. In a
matter of seconds the mechanic's light snapped on. Dennison had climbed
on top of their tank when Landel returned. Landel grabbed his leg and
yelled:
"Dennison, you and Zinc carry our quota of 75 mms and all the stuff you
can lug. Snap into it! We've got to get out of here; we've a hell of a
lot to do before we can pull out. Millard," he screamed: "MILLARD,
Milla-ard. Grab yourself! Go with Zinc. Go with Dennison. Bring mms
to our tank. I'll be inside ... you can feed it to me."
The three walked away, avoided a blown-up tree and its branches.
Tricky, bombed sand sent Zinc pitching on his belly. He got up with a
grunt, not a word. Their bearded faces leered at each other in the
winking light; a halftrack blocked their way; the wind was coming up and
slapped dust at them as they snaked along one behind the other.
"A rotten place to lug supplies," Millard snapped. "Why not move our
bus and then pick up the shells?"
Shadowy light remained on Millard's face: how old he had become: Millard
Evans, twenty-six, now a middle-aged farm hand, face seamed, ugly. His
mouth was too big, flabby, because he had lost several front teeth.
Only the eyes were young, kind, normal.
"Here ... over here, here's the dump," Dennison said. His flash
yellowed boxes of ammunition and supplies spread on a giant tarpaulin.
"Let's not drag the stuff ... gotta keep sand off those boxes ... you
know what that could mean!"
"Had sand in my gun yesterday," Zinc said. "Couldn't swivel it for
awhile."
Working fast, they lugged mm, cannon shells, gasoline, water tins, cans
of grease and oil. Someone got the idea of ripping tarpaulin and wiping
off the machine gun cartridges before lugging them. The path to the
tanks became crowded; the sand got very loose; lights stabbed the junked
sand, scraped the dune's side and seemed to drag down more sand, more
dust, more darkness.
The three greased their stauffers and rollers and cleaned the cab.
Dennison filled transmission grease cups, the cups of the stuffing box,
and those of the bevel-gear case. He checked fuel lines for leakage.
Starting the motor, revving it, he glanced at his wristwatch again and
again: the radium dial obsessed him, tension mounting with the jerk-jerk
of the second hand, the thudding of the motor ...
Outside, he bumped into Chuck Hitchcock, his hulky body coming out of
the night, his helmet yanked low: Chuck was the youngest crewmate.
"Here, help me," he exclaimed, handing Dennison a wrench.
"Okay, where?"
Chuck's handsome blond features expressed great pain: he resented the
war, he hated Libya; he hated the tanks; the old happy days had been his
boyhood days in Wisconsin, on his dad's farm. Agilely, he jumped onto a
sand layered tread, motioning Dennison to come.
He had found a cracked plate and together they fought to remove it or
replace it. Everything they touched was sandy; sand spat at them,
rasped their hands, got into their mouths, abraded their knees as they
knelt on the steel.
A sliver of steel jabbed Dennison's hand; he smashed savagely at a bolt
with his wrench; a shell boomed among the machines; there was an
enormous rattle of steel as gravel and rocks struck steel; men shouted;
sand ripped from the great dune; smoke shut off the sky.
"They've got a line on us," Chuck yelled. "Lights out ... lights out!"
We're in for it now, Dennison thought. Something went wrong: we're
always blundering, blundering ... the Nazis are supposed to be miles
away from here:
"Climb inside, Chuck ... we can go!"
Dennison tightened the bolt, checked another.
Stripping off his jacket, wiping his hands on it, he climbed inside, the
chill interior amazingly dark and foul with gasoline. Another shell
struck, banging furiously. Darkness meshed with silence! Someone
flipped on the cab lights; Dennison jazzed the motor, Landel dove
inside; Millard was okay; Zinc was bolting the turret; the cab light
went out, leaving behind the pure black of steel.
Shellfire was constant now, rocking the tank: the steel walls became
paper partitions, likely to bend inward, collapse at any moment.
In his driver's seat, Dennison adjusted his driving slits, Landel beside
him, unfolding his map, spreading it across his legs by flashlight.
During a jab of silence Dennison thought over the route briefed for them
the day before: starboard, around the great dune; northeast by road for
six kilometers; then north: was that right? Well, he could rely on
Captain Fred Landel's directions.
Bolted inside, the cab light seemed something pitiful, sick and trapped;
then a bulb flashed on at the rear, muscling the naked shoulders and
waists of the crew, glazing the unstacked shells. Somebody coughed over
the intercom. The rear light got doused; another bulb popped on where
Chuck was working at a bolt on his gunnery seat, tilting the pad to a
new angle. Millard, squatting on the floor, was wiping shell cartridges
with an oiled rag. On the port side, Zinc swung his machine gun from
left to right, his beard level with the gun, bristling, crazy.
With lights extinguished, the walls, the roar, the stink of gas and oil
crammed the men. Dennison shifted the powerful Chrysler motor into
second and swung away from the great dune. Although the cooling fan was
rotating, the engine had already heated the cab.
Dennison glanced at his wristwatch.
Darkness, viewed from inside the rocking Sherman, from inside steel,
appeared blacker: it had the appearance of glass, a sheet of tinted
Plexiglas. A shell, exploding in the distance, resembled a fake dawn.
Pushing down with his palms, Dennison gripped the clutch levers.
Feeling jailed, stunned, he eyed first the left port and then the right.
He expected a signal and blinked to keep his eyes focused, swiping his
face to stay alert.
Some sort of communication was coming in over the radio.
Rocks tilted the machine; Dennison shifted gears to ease the treads; as
the bus jolted over rocks he flooded the engine and it snorted and
backfired and spat into the dark. Carefully he coaxed the engine into
third and fourth, down-shifting into second.
Now a green signal bobbed in front indicating: turn, to port. In time
the light became a code, and Dennison read it painfully: it read:
_armored attack ... small_.
He jabbed Landel's arm and Landel jabbed him back: their prearranged
signal for mutual understanding. Connecting his phone, Dennison yelled:
"Okay ... attack ... where they attacking from?"
"I'll try the radio," Landel shouted.
Light was papering the horizon with its desert paper, how ancient, how
wrinkled that flap of sand: good, to get out of that black stuff, can
pilot this box: there are tanks to starboard, not bad!
As Dennison watched the creep of dawn a flare ripped the sky and hung
suspended, rocking, kicking, sucking everything inside its brilliance.
Instantly, he spotted a Nazi gun, mounted on a dune-rise, a silhouette
of men and gun, the flare exploding behind the gunners. He shouted at
Landel but a shell blew up beside the Sherman and hurled it half around.
Dennison toppled from his seat--the air knocked out of his lungs. He
thought: We're hit ... we'll catch on fire! Back at his controls, he
cut the racing motor and wobbled out of the line of fire, Landel
babbling incoherently over the intercom.
Another shell.
"Port side ... port!" Landel yelled.
The treads caught, slipped, jerked, the M4 flopping from side to side;
the rumble of the treads, rolling unevenly, drowned the shellfire.
Their grinding was like the beating of pneumatic hammers on metal
sheets. It seemed to the crew that the interior darkness became part of
the noise, whirled around with it, cyclotronic, snagging thought and
muscle.
Dennison's signaller appeared and led the tank to a strip of packed sand
behind a lofty dune; he leaned forward to relieve a cramp in his side
and wet his lips with his tongue, craving a drink. A shell boomed. The
signaller said _stop_.
They're waiting for dawn, Dennison thought.
I've got to rest a little ... got to have some water.
Unable to speak, he tapped Landel's shoulder and indicated his mouth:
lights in the cab flickered on Landel's face, his twisting lips.
"Okay," Dennison heard on the phone.
As he drank and sensed the cool decency of water, he was afraid, afraid
he would never have another drink, never get out, never have a chance to
walk through fields or woods, stoop to cup water from a stream ...
The darkness, the waiting, the crash of shells, the steel: it was both
pain and the unknown.
His hand shook as he gave the canteen to Landel.... Strange, dark inside
but growing light outside.
He had wandered through a low ceilinged cave as a boy, on the heels of a
guy who carried a dim lantern ... this was another cave, a cave that
moved. He shivered from the heat and his dripping sweat. Sweat trickled
along his arms, down the inside of his forearms and into his palms.
With his port visor open he watched the dawn: it would soon free him
from the signaller's microscopic dot. He wet his lips with his tongue
and eased against his seat.
Someone was jabbering on the phone; the radio was wheezing instructions;
Landel was yelling ...
The quiet was uncanny, no motor running, no shellfire: Dennison knew
that he dozed: he glanced at his wristwatch nervously; he glanced
through his slit across the desert, across slab after slab of unfamiliar
ground where yellow light exposed columns of dust: tanks or trucks were
there, rolling north: dust, sand, heat, rolling heat, rolling sand and
dust.
Zinc was talking to Chuck on the phone.
"There's our signal!" Landel yelled.
"Let's go," Chuck called.
A shell dumped a spout of sand that became a ragged blur, it was grey
inside the tank now; the faces of the crew were grey; grey clouds hung
in the morning light.
Zinc was thinking of Ohio, dawdling on a quiet elm street; Millard was
shoving at the gum around a painful tooth: the thing had to be
extracted. Fred Landel had his palms palmed over his eyes, his brain
shut out; Chuck had thrown his shirt around his shoulders, knotted the
sleeves around his neck.
Dennison jockeyed the engine, thinking:
If I could go to Bizerte and lie in bed and sleep ... could write a
letter ... I should ...
He felt the treads digging in; they tossed sand to the rear; the bus
rolled through a wadi, climbed into the sun that was burning ahead.
Something in the rocking motion, the rise and fall, made him feel that
he was driving over the bodies of wounded men. He seemed to see across
treeless fields, across horizons, across Africa, across Europe, across
Asia--into a snowland: there was time to ride through forests, time to
ski ...
Shell flames seared his thoughts.
He wanted to swing back, put the Sherman into reverse, turn, rush toward
the rear--retreat. He wanted to open a steel door, jump out, run,
blunder away from the din, away from the stench of gas and oil.
Landel scribbled something on his knee pad and handed it to Dennison.
As Landel yelled on the radio transmitter, Dennison bent over the scrawl
and forced his brain to come together and make sense:
_Entering Anadi--Armed Corps_.
What was Anadi?
Dennison had to jerk his machine away from an abutment of rocks; then it
was smooth going: he shot the bus into faster gear: they were rolling at
forty: they got to fifty, the heat mounting, billowing.
They were in formation with other tanks in their Corps.
Visibility: a hundred miles.
Blank sand.
Rolling.
He heard somebody open fire with a machine gun: it was Zinc: then their
75 pounder whammed into action.
Landel signalled _slow_.
Dennison observed a tank to starboard, tank inside a cloud of dust and
sand; the tank began zigzagging; the machine on the port side was
driving straight ahead. He opened his visors to better vision. For
seconds he watched his compass dial.
North-north east ...
Chickens flapped wildly along a street.
Anadi, appearing out of sand, was a cluster of mud huts, brick huts,
doors sagging on leather hinges, scraped white walls, white roosters,
bashed dome, a toppling minaret, more Libyan dust. From a brick
compound, pierced by a jagged hole, a cannon fired at the Sherman,
spreading smoke and yeasty light into the street.
A radio tower, designed like a potato masher, appeared through smoke and
dust. A shell made the Sherman swivel. Lights failed inside. Dennison
rolled forward slowly. The lights went on. Dennison had a moment to
catch a glimpse of tiled roofs, barred windows, a bleached garden with
broken benches, a dead woman. A pair of dogs dove through an open
doorway. The door shut.
Where was the cannon, firing out of the compound? Dennison coaxed his
bus over cobbles, over a low barricade, close to a white wall; there a
poster displayed a veiled woman, smiling. God, he thought, are there
really women here?
Maybe I can get a drink ... rest ... maybe ... maybe eat ...
Smoke choked the street, brown smoke, acrid: it filled the space from
house to house, street side to street side: it seemed to be working its
way between the cobbles.
Dennison's eyes slid over his indicators, oil gauge, gas gauge,
temperature, compass, ammeter, water gauge.
He tried to remember how many of their tanks were supposed to converge
on Anadi but a shell crashed on the thought: he held his mouth open,
expecting another detonation. The treads scrambled over bricks, smashed
a door, travelled on paving, zigzagged, knocked down fence posts.
The ventilation fan seemed to have stopped.
Dust increased.
It was steel, desert, shells, more steel.
Can't see through the goddamn dust ... why doesn't it clear up? Christ,
how my shoulders ache! What have they got in this rotten little town
that we need so badly?
Twenty tanks, thirty tanks in this town ...
Now, now I can see. Okay, we push ahead ... okay go ...
A streetcar lay on its side--broken glass everywhere. Every house
window was shuttered. Doors had been boarded over, were padlocked or
x'd with planking as if the war could be shut out. White flags fluttered
on roof tops--dirty white rags. Sandbags, with Egyptian lettering on
them, leaned against an iron fence that leaned against a damaged truck.
Nazi dead lay on paths in a circular rose bed, flowers tangled around
their arms and legs, around rifles and helmets. Flowers. Bushes.
A lifeless dog lay in front of the Sherman and reminded Dennison of a
dog he had owned in E, a brown dog: here Tubby, here Tubby. Dog eager
to lick your hands and grin. Cocker. Here Tubby.
The treads of the tank spun over gravel: Zinc's machine gun destroyed an
emplacement on a roof: Millard's gun mowed down three men, rushing along
an alley.
Landel signalled and they rumbled along another alley and the cannon
blew apart the front of a store where Nazi gunners were firing. Above a
dome, perhaps a mosque, a shell burst, hurling bricks and stucco over
doors, the Sherman and along a street.
Dennison jazzed the bus down a wide street and townspeople fled ... ten
or twelve on one side, bunched together, men and women, their clothing
white and blue; their turbans white. Landel swung his machine gun to
kill them: several dropped, a youngster, a boy, stumbled into the
gutter, and lay there.
Spitting on the tank wall, Landel cursed them:
You goddamn sons of bitches ... why the hell are you out in the street
... don't you know no better?
Even with all the ports open the air inside the cab writhed. Gun powder
stung their eyes and throats. The crewmen's faces were haunted. They
stared out of ports and slits, leered, grimaced, mad, incredulous,
exhausted, hungry, thirsty, deaf.
Dennison saw the sun directly ahead as the prow wrenched upward ...
Somewhere, sometime, he must do something about the sky, study it,
understand its composition, figure out how it originated, whether it
altered at night, how it was influenced by storms, changes in
temperature.
Only a week ago Al had died on one of the morning attacks: Landel had
bellowed through the intercom: he had seen Al crash onto the floor: they
had wanted to lug him outside, into the air, but he had died in
Dennison's arms, his head saturated with blood, a bullet in his brain.
Yeah, Al had liked the sky. They had talked about it. He liked the
sun. Al had wanted to buy a farm, have some horses and a cow. Horses
not cars. He had talked about horses at camp: they had been buddies at
Camp Manley. Yeah, they had put in days together, fishing at a nearby
pond, hiking through Texas fields ... bluebonnets....
Dennison observed other tanks: M3's and M4's, on a side street, the
machines parked one behind the other, the crews still inside. A signal
Corps flag appeared in the doorway of a two story building. A Corps
flag wagged on a roof. Dennison drove his bus into a treeless square,
and stopped, settled deeper into his seat, and asked Landel for the
canteen.
As he drank, he read Landel's scrawl:
_Stay!_
In another section of Anadi, shells were gutting, lofting smoke, sand
and dust.
The canteen water sent a chill through Dennison; a fleck of London
hovered behind his eyes, streets with trees, fog, people waiting for a
double-decker, kids leaning over a bridge rail, Big Ben, the grey Thames
flowing ... he thought of Al again: Al had been twenty-three, a graduate
of Western Reserve: the bullet had torn his ...
Landel checked the gas gauge.
Okay, gasoline.
Suddenly, they were off, a tank almost in front of Dennison, a tank
toward the rear. At the first intersection, they separated, to mop up.
A barricade had been erected on a street between low, white walls; there
were trees to one side, delicate plumes of tamarisk, tamarisk in a
row--trying to beat the desert and its heat.
Again every window was shuttered, even second floor windows. Grey
shutters. Mauled shutters. Paintless.
Nobody was defending the barricade. The treads moaned over sandbags and
piles of masonry. As Dennison topped the barricade a Nazi tank opened
fire, firing head-on, a squad of infantrymen armed with Brens squeezed
together behind it.
The tank's swastika burned in Dennison's brain: he spun his bus to the
left, increased speed, shot ahead, cut to the right; he yelled through
the intercom to Chuck, ordering him to open fire. Chuck's 75-pounder
boomed. Dennison tried to signal Landel but grew confused. Why was the
Nazi tank motionless? Was it some sort of trick?
Again he swung his tank to one side and then spurted forward as fast as
she would roll. If the commander of the German bus was stalling, what
the hell was he figuring?
Chuck steadied his gun--his body a part of it: steady boy, steady.
Look, the Nazi turret is revolving. Wait, Chuck heard Landel's command
to let go. As Dennison pivoted the Sherman, he pulled the trigger.
The 75 pounder hit the Nazi prow and threw the tank to one side.
Millard fed another shell to Chuck. The Nazi dropped a shell behind the
Sherman: it exploded so close its force threw Landel to the floor.
Smoke drenched the ports. Chuck's gunfire tore open the Panther's armor
plate and ripped off a tread and port gun--gapping the machine.
The infantrymen, with their Brens, froze: they still expected help from
their smashed tank: they signalled each other and began to fan out as
Dennison stared, his bus motionless. The sun was beating down: the
smoke was clearing: dust was rolling up from somewhere: pigeons flew
low: like a Hollywood prop the antenna mast on the Panther bent, and
then collapsed onto the cobbles.
Landel was first to come to:
He whirled his machine gun on the half petrified infantrymen: he was too
fast and depressed the barrel and bullets clattered across cobbles and
rubble. Some of the soldiers crouched behind the tank. Others ran. A
man fell. Then no soldiers: they had melted away.
Dennison tried to follow them and then returned to the square where
other M4's were parked, near a small stone fountain and several olive
trees.
Now, he thought ... I can rest ... get outside ... some water ... wet my
face ... walk ... eat ...
Egging himself outside, he stumbled to the fountain where GI's were
standing, and splashed water on his face; removing his helmet, he
splashed his head, staring into the shallow white tiled pool. A single
fish was swimming: or was it a trick of the mind? Alive? Or coloration?
And that bubble: were there still bubbles in the world?
He splashed his face again, the tank forgotten.
Water, air, trees, a grey-grey something, a gnarled something!
A lizard scuttled up a branch, stopped, flicked its tail, puffed its
body, and stared inquisitively.
A cat slunk out of a bombed house and crossed the square and brushed
against a GI, meowing, wobbling.
"I'll be damned ... a mangy cat," croaked Zinc, his hands in the
fountain: he flopped water over his face and soaked his shirt.
Dennison heard Zinc's words faintly: it would be hours before the tank
deafness wore off.
More crewmen milled around, jostling, swearing. A fat guy pounded
Landel on his back as though he had won the war: he had seen Landel's
bus knock out the Nazi machine. Landel pointed overhead. Planes roared
by; low on the horizon, a dozen Fortresses crawled through a dusty sky.
Dennison picked up the cat and stroked it.
As the line of men washed and drank, a boy scuttled from one of the
houses, carrying a clay bottle of water: he offered it to the men
nervously, speaking French, talking jerkily, as if something had injured
his tongue. He could not get it into his head that the crewmen were
temporarily deaf; his mother had told him they might not understand his
French; he thought that was the trouble.
Dennison drank from his bottle--cool, cool.
He explained that the Corpsmen were deaf; then, as Dennison handed back
the bottle, the boy began to shout and point: he indicated the roof of
one of the buildings across the square.
"Look, Monsieur ... look, on the roof ... the roof of the mayor's house!
See! There's machine gun ... it's pointed this way! Maybe somebody can
... see, the gun is moving ... they're getting ready."
Dennison had difficulty understanding the boy's jargon; when he got it
straight he yelled at the nearest crewmen. The warning spread. Someone
at the fountain, a skinny guy in oily jeans, raced across the square and
lobbed a grenade.
It fell short. At once the gunmen fired.
A bullet chipped Dennison's arm, and the waterboy dropped, Millard fell,
slumping heavily against the basin of the fountain; the cat scampered
for shelter, leaves fell from the olive trees.
Seconds later, another grenade wiped out the roof gun and gunners ...
planes roared overhead ... Millard was dead; the water-boy lay
motionless ... Zinc began bandaging Dennison's arm.
Two minutes, or was it three? Or five?
"It's nothing," Dennison objected. "I'm okay. We'd better see about
the kid."
"I know it's not bad ... a nick. Hold still!" Zinc yelled.
They were crouched alongside the fountain, Zinc's first aid kit on the
rim. Millard faced the olive trees and the many ripped off leaves
around him. Dennison thought that his face had become years older: oil
had spattered his chin. His lowered lip sagged, exposing his missing
teeth. Landel was bending over him, checking for his ID, his dog tag.
Landel's greasy bald head filled Dennison with great bitterness: it
said:
Here we are, who cares! In Africa, who cares!
Who will bury us?
The waterboy was moving.
"Hold still," Zinc commanded.
"Now there are only four of us to crew our tank," Dennison yelled.
"So what!" Zinc yelled.
"Four of us," Dennison repeated.
"We can manage, Chuck is good."
Dennison wondered what Millard's wife was like: had she loved the guy or
was the beneficiary sum worth far more? His hands trembled: death was
such a crappy business. In Ohio death wasn't like this! In Ohio, there
were preachers, graves with names and dates on them.
When Zinc had taped his arm they carried the waterboy, carried him into
a house across the square, banging on a door, shoving him inside when
two women opened. A bullet had smashed his leg. The kid moaned and
flopped his arms. He was bleeding badly.
Dennison liked his bright face, his gaunt, nomadic build. He respected
his courage: that business with the water bottle, the spotting of the
roof gunners. Kneeling and sitting on the tiled floor of someone's
living room he and Zinc did their best to bandage the boy's leg.
Dennison tried to talk to him but he couldn't come to. People crowded
around, yapping, yapping: he saw their mouths going.
Speaking French he yelled at a woman:
"Try to locate a Red Cross man!"
The veiled figure hovered over the boy, her blue boubous was flecked
with something white.
"Medecin," she mumbled.
Dennison and Zinc risked a third of their stock of bandages: they
rebound the break, padding it.
"Good boy, good boy," Dennison said to himself. "Nice kid, nice kid!"
Zinc said.
According to Landel, the Anadi mess was a mere delaying action, a hinge
in the Nazi retreat. Millard was left, to be trucked to a base. The
tanks gulped water. A supply tank furnished gas and oil. Landel, Zinc
and Chuck and Dennison worked steadily, with a few minutes for food.
Where's the thermos? Where's the coffee? Cigarettes? God, thought
Dennison, where now?
A radio screamed: _Advance to Beramet_.
A merchant, with a yellow and blue turban on his head, was opening a
double door, a pack of dates lay on his table, a girl was prostrate on a
cot, two camels appeared, a pigeon flew.
There was no opportunity to remember the olive trees: Dennison shut his
eyes: he belched and swayed in his seat: the hatch banged shut, was
bolted shut: he shifted his controls ... Remember?
His arm stung where the bullet had nicked him; he minded the heat;
already the roaring of the tank had lost some of its noise: he was
growing deafer.
Over the intercom--far away--he heard Landel:
"There's a concrete pillbox ahead!"
Why the hell should we knock it out! Whose pillbox was it? Why was it
there? Where was the damn artillery? Asleep! Must be some other M4's
around! Or an M18! Maybe the rest of the Corps was lost on the
desert--in some hellish place. Thoroughly angry, swiping sweat from his
face, he decelerated to 5 mph. Let some other bastard wipe out the
pillbox!
Landel indicated starboard and they swung close to a brick wall, snailed
along it, rounded a corner, and there, near a chapel, was the pillbox,
white, dirty, plastered with faded movie posters. Before Dennison could
shift gears the crew in the box let go and a shell blew bricks out of
the wall and shrapnel crashed against their armor plate.
Landel signalled.
Dennison bent forward in his seat and wet his lips with his tongue, and
felt the blood flow from his head: he thought: going to conk out. Must
have canteen, soak my handkerchief, sop my face. Better tell him, better
tell him ...
"Side street ... go side street."
Dennison obeyed automatically.
Zinc and Chuck bawled at each other.
"Get shells ready ... ready, Chuck..."
Swinging roundabout, they caught the pillbox from an angle: its cannon
was futile, just a rod of steel: methodically, Chuck trained his 75; his
first shell overshot but the second crushed the concrete dome; the third
shell, aimed low, burst open a side.
Machinegun triggered, visors wide opened, Landel accounted for the crew,
his blood boiling:
He was yelling, whistling, screaming.
Barbed wire fenced the box and Dennison smashed it, treads burying the
spirals, the port tread crushing remains of the pill box.
Thinking of the canteen, he got it and sopped his handkerchief: water,
face, water, the turret flung open, now he could breathe. Water, a
little more water ... there was plenty of water!
As they sped onto a highway the surface seemed annoyingly, deceptively
smooth: probably mined.
Watch it, boy!
"Mined?" he asked Landel.
"Safe," Landel reported, doubting their luck.
He had sopped his head and underneath the open turret, his face shone
like an Inca ceremonial head: a scratch under one eye was bleeding; his
naked shoulders were soaked; he leaned against the side of his seat,
mouth gaping ...
He hated the day, hated the bad luck, hated losing Millard. He called
himself a fool for permitting his men to crowd about the fountain.
Should have known, should have. It was Dennison's fault for not
reconnoitering. Give him hell tonight. Tonight ... well, they'd be
midway to Ghat. The swaying tank, the roaring treads made him clamp his
eyes.
Someone was yapping on the radio.
On the road, beside a bombed truck, lay a crippled GI. The fellow
raised his arms--appeared to see the oncoming tank--but Dennison could
not avoid him without crashing off the highway. He had no chance to
diminish his speed and zoom aside since they were clocking forty.
Dennison's nerves buckled, his spine stiffened, his throat contracted
painfully, his hands shook: the Sherman raced over the man in a flash
and yet Dennison saw him die--could see him underneath the treads--felt
him gasp, heard him scream.
"Jesus Christ ... I killed him ... I killed one of our guys ... Jesus
Christ..."
Sun was beating through the turret, stabbing the desert. Desert heat
swirled with engine heat.
If the highway is mined!
Landel was using his periscope.
The viewer showed an even expanse.
Souped-up, they were hitting sixty.
Was it riskier to cross a mine at top speed? What would the explosion
do, heel then over, crumble a tread, stove in the floor, belch out the
walls? ... In the white walled house, the Arab, in the yellow-blue
turban, was opening the shutters to his windows ... did he sell dates?
In Texas, while piloting his training tank, he had thought of the rags
and litter on the ground as the bodies of men. Excellent imagination.
Useless. Absurd. Such thinking had not hardened him. It was just
another kind of fear. Another kind of folly. His hands were still
trembling.
Nothing had prepared him for the first dead in Africa, that first week
in Africa, when men got crushed underneath his treads: then it had
seemed to him that he had crushed them himself, mashed then with his own
weight. He had dreamed then, for many nights, of arms and hands
struggling against pressure, faces blotted into nothingness. He had
longed to climb out of his machine, kill himself, go, go somewhere.
And now?
Beramet appeared on the road ahead ... palm trees, white one-story
buildings, olive trees, tamarisk.
Through radio transmission he knew that their tank forces were
pincering: the town was to be grabbed by nightfall.
Light shimmered in front, misty pools of it, mirage water, the
desert--port and starboard--was undulating with heat and light: heat,
combining a scab of dust, wavered over Beramet: a single point, a blue
minaret, broke through.
An MP slowed Dennison: standing beside his motorcycle, black glasses
over his eyes, tropic hat slapped down low, he seemed a little insane as
he swatted at flies. The dust on his cycle matched the dust on his
fatigues. Dust was approaching, trailing from a stream of converging
trucks, half-tracks, tanks, cars, and ambulances.
Dully, Orville stared at his compass ... so this was Beramet? Where, in
Beramet, would they stop, climb out, rest?
In a few minutes the compass began quivering: they were in the thick of
street fighting, Arabs dodging from house to house, Nazis firing from
doorways, windows, firing machine guns, firing rifles. GI's opened a
front. A grenade exploded. Sand gushed up. Another grenade forced sand
through the visors and ports of the bus. Both Dennison and Landel
coughed violently. Dennison leaned forward, his back soaked, his arms
soaked, the cushion behind him clumsy, lumped.
Urine sloshed across the floor.
He forced his brain above the shaking tank and roar of fighting. Hell,
how lunatic, self-preservation and fear clawing each other. Eyes on the
street havoc, he moved his machine as directed. Sometimes he saw Arabs
firing, sometimes Nazis, sometimes smoke blotted everything. Something
crumbled and fell through dust. Blinding sunlight took over as the
Sherman crept forward.
Gradually through radio communications, through signals with Landel, he
became aware that the Beramet probe was almost over ... now he noticed
that his hand was scratched and he licked the scratch absently,
groggily. It seemed to him that it was some other person's hand.
It seemed to him he was very old (these had been days not hours): in
this world there was only pain and everyone hoped to die. In this world
there was the torture of sound being tortured. Following a deserted
street, he observed death at the next corner, sitting on an oil drum.
He snarled at himself for having joined the Corps, for having thrown in
his lot with Landel. A concentration camp would have been better. Time
could never obliterate these memories. The brain was permanently
wounded. He tried but could not tap the future: he was too exhausted,
too hot--as Landel ordered "stop" Dennison doubled over, craving water:
he wanted to lie down in water: he wanted to die.
That night, sleeping in the open, death woke him. He woke shaking,
remembering, half-remembering ...
On Sunday, eleven tanks and two half-tracks were compelled to halt
because of gas shortage: they squirmed into a wadi below a hundred meter
red cliff topped by a single dead tree, an acacia that had been dead and
stark for fifty years or more.
Crewmen called the place "the dam" although there had been no water
there for many seasons. The dam was a low, concrete wall that crossed
the wadi. Its concrete apron bedded a few of the Shermans. Landel,
hoping the cliff might afford some protection, had suggested they make a
halt until supply tanks and trucks could catch up.
Flies were everywhere: they were inside the tanks; they were outside on
the treads, guns and turrets--on weeds, rocks, sand. They zoomed into
food the crews tried to eat. They crept over hands and faces and necks
as men tried to work. They bit. Singly and by the dozens, they came
from below, from above, left, right, and flew into eyes, ears, mouth.
Men slapped at them, swore at them, shouted at them.
They crawled over K-rations.
Dennison and Zinc, sharing rations, sprawled below the cliff, troubled
by the flies. Zinc poured cold coffee from a thermos. With a rag over
his face, Dennison was determined to rest as long as possible, doze
perhaps. He felt himself drift perhaps ten minutes: how long he never
knew.
A bomb hurled him, dragged him through gravel and sand.
Through a torn spot in the rag he saw the tree on top of the cliff fall;
he heard rocks and gravel avalanche onto the tanks, rocks and then a
dribble of sand.
A second bomber flew over but dropped no bombs.
In a kind of back-flash, he recognized that the second plane was a
reconnaissance plane, following their tell-tales across the desert.
Like infallible radar the ruts could lead bombers to "the dam."
Scrambling to his feet, dropping the rag, he raced for his tank.
A plane swooped low: a black wall of sand met Dennison and spun him
around; as he fell he saw the tread of a Sherman expand like a rubber
band and slice a man across his waist and chest: the man did not scream.
God, Dennison groaned. Another bomb flattened Dennison: Jesus, how many
did they have upstairs! The scream of steel on steel mingled with the
roar of falling rocks. A bomb with a bent fin howled as it dropped.
He burrowed into sand to avoid hurling metal: he imagined Zinc, Chuck,
Landel, dead.
Pain twisted his back.
Silence ...
Getting up, he stumbled across the gully. He found crewmen there,
crouched behind boulders and camel grass. Somebody had spread a tarp
overhead to cut down on the spray of sand. Nobody said a word.
Presently, Chuck Hitchcock came crawling, blubbering, mouth gaping:
crawling on hands and knees he banged into a rock. A blast of sand had
sandpapered his eyes: lids and eyeballs were ingrained, a sand and blood
inlay.
As Dennison dragged Chuck under the tarp he realized he would never see
again: he tried to shield his wounded face, the man sobbing, breathing
in gasps, his blond, pallid face distorted.
He won't play billiards again, Dennison thought, remembering Chuck's
stories about billiard games at the University of Wisconsin.
A bomb crashed and a tank exploded: it seemed to leap into the air--the
whole Sherman--fell into ensheathing fire. It was visible to everyone
under the tarp. Sand fountained. Ignited gas and oil spouted: machine
gun bullets began to ricochet. Metal whizzed past.
Another bomb exploded.
"Let's run for it!" Dennison shouted.
"Get out of here! ... get out of here!" someone roared.
Dennison and a fellow, Jim Harrington, grabbed Chuck, and rushed him
down the wadi, swaying, pitching, dragging. They began to gasp. Chuck
was sobbing. Dennison thought every step was getting them nowhere; yet
Landel appeared out of a wall of smoke, his head plastered with dirt.
He slid an arm under Chuck and the three carried him into a thorn
thicket out of the wadi and laid him on the sand.
"I'm blind!" Chuck cried. "I'm blind! Help me!"
Another bomb geysered sand: it left a fog of sand, everyone coughing and
spitting. Men tied rags or handkerchiefs or shirts over their face.
So, it was sand, not flies. The heat sweated the sand into the flesh.
So, it was heat, heat coming down from the cliff.
"Can't see our bus" Dennison shouted, trying to estimate damage. He
snuffed and continued coughing.
Suddenly, he grinned, and began to shake: the flies are gone, the bomb's
got rid of the flies! He laughed loudly, throwing back his head.
"No flies ... no flies ... the bombers killed our flies!"
"Shut up," Landel said, hitting him.
"No flies!"
Landel hit him again.
Dennison crumpled to the sand: he knew what Landel meant: he realized
too, in spite of his hysteria, that he was lucky to have escaped:
cradling his head on his arms he attempted to blot out Chuck's raving.
With the last bomber gone, the crewmen came to life, swatting off sand
and dust, huddling, at first in little groups. In twos and threes they
began checking, climbing on their machines, crawling inside. Out of
nowhere supply trucks arrived.
"Gas," the men said.
"Gas."
Zinc pointed to some butterflies, flying close to the sand, headed past
the Shermans.
Dennison rubbed his face: they can really fly: yellow butterflies ...
beyond them, in the face of the sun, the heat puffed and writhed; a
slight wind kicked up dust. A section of the wadi cliff had toppled and
sand had buried snouts and sides of several machines and both
half-tracks: the sand had acted as a cushion protecting treads and armor
plate. Men began to dig ... gas tanks got filled ... motors started ...
tanks pulled away ...
Dennison led Chuck by the arm, Chuck moaning and trembling. They both
fell into a sand hollow. Directly in front of Dennison lay a pair of
arms, intact from finger to shoulders, the dog tag visible on the wrist,
above the greasy fingers.
_Lawrence_, Dennison saw:
Lawrence Robinson, from California.
Dennison jumped away, shrank back, dragging Chuck, almost hurling him
down, bumping into Landel.
"What's wrong with you?" Landel scoffed. "Watch where you're going! A
pair of kooky arms scare ya!"
Without hesitating, Dennison whirled on Landel, and knocked him down: he
tried to jump on him but Chuck clung to him, moaning, saying "no ...
no..."
"Jeez, man!" Landel gulped. "Are you nuts again?"
"That was Lawrence Robinson," Dennison yelled. "Larry Robinson ... it
could have been me!"
"Fuck you," said Landel, picking himself up, remembering a corner of the
Argonne, where men's bodies had been blown about like chips. Glaring at
Chuck's bloody eyes he felt no pity for him: he felt they should save
themselves for their machines and the job of fighting: let scabs go to
hell!
But remembering his job as captain he ordered Dennison to take Chuck to
Corporal Willits ...
"He's over there ... he's Red Cross ... take him, then let's get our bus
rolling. He's not been hit. Not bad!"
"Not bad," Dennison said to himself, angrily.
He saw himself returning to Base Camp with Chuck; he would see him
hospitalized; on leave, he would rest by the ocean; ships would be
unloading; the surf would be warm; he'd have good chow.
Assisting Chuck, Dennison sat down by him as Willets examined the
lidless eyes: in the sun the imbedded sand glistened like glass; blood
glistened like glass. Chuck was trembling, his hands quivering on his
lap, fingers wholly uncoordinated.
Willets was talking kindly to Chuck.
"Can you hear?" Dennison asked, bending close.
"No."
"Willits is looking after you ... he's from the Medical Corps..."
"Who?"
"Willits."
"He a doctor?"
"Medical Corps."
"Where am I?"
"By a half-track ... there are wounded here ... Willits and Cobb are
helping the men ... we'll be moving out of this gully..."
"Don't go, Dennison."
"Can you move your head ... to the side? ... I want to put medication in
your eyes," said Willits.
"Okay."
"The stuff won't hurt."
"Okay."
"Hold still."
"Light me a cigarette, Dennison."
"Sure..."
Dennison began fumbling through his clothes, expecting his cigarettes to
be shredded; the pack was badly squashed but he straightened a
cigarette, lit it, and put it in Chuck's mouth.
Chuck drew a puff or two and then pain doubled him up as smoke trailed
across his eyes; the cigarette dropped to the sand; rolling his head
from side to side, he groaned, and flailed his arms.
"My eyes ... my eyes!"
"Keep your hands off them!" Willits ordered.
"Are they so bad?"
"Yeah ... they're bad--keep your hands down..."
The wind shook a dwarf thorn tree behind him.
"Lift your head up ... higher ... I'm using more medication ...
soothing..."
"Can ya gimmie a drink?"
"I will," said Dennison.
Willits was a dark skinned man, very Italian, with greying moustache and
grey animal-kind eyes. When Dennison returned with water, he nodded at
him, jerked his head toward Chuck, then shrugged his shoulders:
hopeless.
"Now you keep your hands off your eyes ... I'm gonna put cool antiseptic
salve on a bandage, real loose ... gonna put that around your head ...
over your eyes ... we'll get you to a doctor soon as we can ... I'll use
the transmitter ... others ... other guys ... you know ... get help ...
they need help..." Groggily, he went on repeating, talking to himself.
Chuck was still shaking as Dennison walked away--back to his machine.
He and Zinc removed shovels from the rear of the tank: it was slow
digging but they released a tread, cleaned the hatches, freed the guns:
Landel had a shovel: there was no Al, no Millard, no Chuck: climbing
inside Dennison switched on lights, checked dials, checked the intercom
and radio: something about the white interior helped.
Switching on the transmitter he shouted:
"Dennison calling ... Lieutenant Dennison calling ... calling X2B ...
calling X2B ... Dennison reporting for Fred Landel ... M4-221 reporting
... bombers caught us at point L-T ... place we call "The Dam" ... tanks
badly damaged ... several wounded ... one man dead ... can you send
medics? Dennison calling ... can you hear me?..."
A little of the horror abated: there was promise in the lights around
him, in the transmitter, the old seat cushion, the thermos on the floor,
the gleam of dials: with the earphones over his ears he waited.
The radio spluttered:
"X2B ... we read you ... roger ... we've got you on the maps ... news
has been coming in ... we know your conditions ... medical help enroute
... tanks moving forward ... medical help coming ... tanks coming ...
pass on the word ... over..."
Climbing out of the tank, into the dying day, Dennison notified officers
and crewmen. Enjoying a smoke he perched on the rear of his bus: crews
were shoveling sand away from the tanks, bedding treads with tarp and
gravel. A star specked the horizon. For an instant, for several
minutes, he contemplated the ancientness and greatness of this
continent: perhaps some of that greatness could resurrect mankind. How
absurd the steel hulks, primitive without claiming any antiquity,
primordial because of weight and shape. Yet their hellish threats were
not absurd. They had crawled into sand as if it was their birthplace,
as if returning home after millennia.
After dusk, after the takeover of the sky, tanks, trucks and halftracks
arrived: there were two makeshift ambulances, a corps of medics: "the
dam" became an encampment, a black-in of men and steel. Dennison, at
the door of the ambulance, did his best to break through to Chuck who
was lying beside an unconscious GI.
It seemed to Chuck, as he fought his pain and depression, he was losing
his best friend: everything was out of proportion as he talked to
Dennison.
" ... sure ... sure ... and you know there's my sister in London. You've
got to meet her ... somehow you've got to meet her. She's, she's pretty
... was the prettiest girl in Racine ... She's stationed at Red Cross
... Dalton Station ... Red Cross ... Dalton ... remember ... if you are
ever in London on leave ... remember ... Jeannette..."
The roof lights in the ambulance blinked off.
The chauffeur said: we're shovin' off.
"Here ... take her pic ... her photo from my billfold ... here ... tell
her I sent you ... take it ... you can find her ... send me word when
I'm at Hopkins ... tell me ... find her..."
"Good-bye."
"Good-bye."
London, Dennison thought, as he shovelled away more sand: I'll never see
London again. Perspiration made his hands slip on the shovel handle.
He and Zinc were digging by lantern light, their shadows mugging each
other: arms, heads, legs, shovels, machine. They were able to hear the
hissing sound of sand. Nearby someone revved a motor.
In the light of a tank, Jeannette's photo showed a beautiful woman.
Slipping it into his billfold he called her his pinup.
"Hell ... I'm hungry," he said to Zinc.
"There's chow," said Zinc. "I saw the truck ... yeah, there's chow," he
repeated, rubbing his beard. "We gotta get some sleep ... gotta sit ...
rest." He was trying to rub away intestinal pain with his right hand:
he had strained muscles as he helped load wounded into the ambulances.
Somebody had given him a sticky candy bar, he could still taste it;
maybe it would stay down.
"Chuck's had it ... he's lost his sight ... he's..."
He went on mumbling to himself.
He and Dennison had located Robinson by flash. Dennison had brought his
arms and placed them across his mutilated body, on a stretcher in a
converted supply tank. Robinson's ID fell beside the tank and Zinc
brushed off sand and stuck it inside Robinson's torn shirt and buttoned
the shirt over the crushed leather.
"Well, he doesn't have to be buried here," Dennison said, folding some
canvas over him. "Who's better off ... Chuck ... or Robinson? Chuck
or..."
Zinc was too weary to reply; his eyes were swollen from the heat, sand,
and lack of sleep: numb, he stumbled toward the chow wagon, shoes
sinking into the sand: everything he saw was indistinct: everything
difficult.
Behind trucks, sitting on the sand, on gasoline drums, oil drums, boxes,
the crewmen ate, no light, no smoking.
Shivering as night came on, the two bedded together on the floor of a
truck, under blankets and tarpaulin. Wind scraped at the tarp with a
sandpapering sound: it tapped on the truck cab and clicked on its glass.
"We attack early in the morning," Dennison said.
"I know," Zink said.
"Hope we have luck."
"Yeah."
Overhead, Libyan sleep was dropping lower and lower: Dennison squinted
at the stars, wondering how many more miles they had to travel before
the war ended. Three stars burned in a ragged triangle: gradually, the
upper star assumed a greenish pallor. While digging out Robinson's body
a star had glittered above the cliff ...
Dennison felt the expanse of the desert around him, felt its thousands
of square miles. Pulling the tarp over his head he imagined himself in
a grotto, Atala's grotto: ah, that pitiful story: beauty obliterated by
superstition, by folly: lovely Atala had been his companion in
Ermenonville, as boy, she and her Chactas ... Chactas the blind man ...
the lover ... the wanderer ... Dore's wonderful engravings--those days
in E ...
And now ...
The desert rustled the tarpaulin. The truck swayed.
Still cold, Dennison hunched closer to Isaac, needing all of the warmth
he could steal: his arms and shoulders ached: sand grubbing had done
that: sand, he felt it in his shoes, in his shin, between his fingers
...
Poor Chuck ...
Soon, dawn threw out its flag of light; soon men were yelling, talking,
pushing, urinating, shitting, coughing, eating ...
Motors throbbed.
The radio in a truck blared boogie-woogie, from Casablanca.
Dennison read his wristwatch.
Their tank motor refused to start.
Landel transferred them to another Sherman--number 58. 58 started
easily, warmed easily, and they rolled out of the gully, rolled across a
flat of sand and sandstone that could have served as an airport, the
full moon its beacon.
Everything about the new tank pleased Dennison: it was a pleasure to get
away from the old bus.
Little by little, he coaxed 58 into top speed, glancing at his watch,
leaning back against the seat, the cushion solid. A shaft of light came
in. The periscope was excellent. The viewer clean. He leaned forward
and wet his lips with his tongue, something like a smile on his face.
Landel was occupied with his map, his phone wobbling against his Adam's
apple, black, cancerous: his bald skull teetered stiffly, pencil between
his fingers.
Directly in front of 58, a tank rolled along, another M4, grey, lobbing
up dust.
Dennison contrasted its size with the immensity of the desert.
The M4 climbed out of a bomb crater, flicked its fantail, ducked,
disappeared.
Dennison realized that the men inside were as lonely as he: men riding
inside nothingness, gaping at dunes and flats of sand.
Wasn't that a knock in the motor?
What was that strange vibration in the port tread?
Wasn't that a clicking sound in the transmission shaft?
And the motor temperature?
Heat began to close in.
Driving ports were wide open, the turret was open, the fan was rotating;
yet it was growing hot rapidly. Dennison mumbled to himself about the
vents. The roaring of the treads knocked the roof of his brain; he felt
that the old deafness was returning.
When gasoline and oil fumes increased he let up on acceleration but not
before Zinc came down with a harsh coughing spell.
Fear came ...
It crawled along his spine, yesterday's fear, last week's, the past
mucking up death, Robinson's arms in the sand, Al screaming, a village
gouting smoke and fire. He saw, as in another world, another man's
world, his years in Ithaca, at Cornell. The bronze figure of Ezra
Cornell was hazed by leaves--then blurred by falling snow. He saw
tree-fogged paths winding to his flat on the hilltop above Cayuga. He
saw the lake gleaming, blue as a smudged blueprint. He saw himself
rowing with the university crew, his body synchronized to the dim bodies
of his mates: Locksley ... Neilson ... Murphy ... Lee ...
Lee was coxswain:
Steady boys, steady now ...
But all this was dead: his mother was dead: Aunt Therese was dead, Uncle
Victor, Landel and Zinc were dead: all were travelling through a fog, a
distant fog.
Without being aware of it, Dennison began to rub his neck at the base of
his skull. His head was pounding. He wanted to drink. He wanted to
close his fingers around a tangerine, strip the peeling, smell the
strong smell. His mother used to buy tangerines at Christmas,
tangerines from California, tangerines and purple grapes, oranges,
avocados--pile them on a platter on the dining table.
He wanted a piston to jam, he wanted the radiator hose to split.
He longed to sleep during the afternoon or all night.
Sleep, he thought, sleep ...
* * *
*2*
The Ermenonville rain was a cold autumn rain, falling out of a dull sky,
slanting in a light wind.
Orville stood beside the grave of his father, weather streaks across the
red granite tombstone, across Robert St. Denis, and the dates:
1893-1921. Orville warped his hat to shed the rain and tried to button
his makeshift coat closer, broken umbrella hooked over one arm, umbrella
and coat from a Paris flea market. He had left Paris early in the
morning, on a heaterless bus, a trip of delays and Nazi harassment.
When he started to walk to his dad's grave the sky had been bleak but
not threatening. Maybe the sky was trying to flip its calendar, turn it
back to another rainy day in June, when Robert had been wounded at
Bermicourt, his little Renault tank exploding from a direct hit, on that
muddy battlefield of World War I.
Orville was peeved that the rain had caught him; he had wanted to sit on
the grass and think of other times in Ermenonville. He noticed other
graves in this family plot, those of Aunt Irene, Uncle Mark, his cousin,
Marcel ... graves under leafless Lombardies. The rain made him
resentful of the place and of death. The ground was spongy; the sod
could absorb little more; he kicked at weeds with a quick kick. Through
the poplars he observed the Petit Lac, its placid water grey: the small
poplar covered island, at one side of the lake, with its carved Rousseau
tomb, seemed adrift in the falling rain.
Well, here we are, father and son, in the rain. I wish we could have
shared our lives. You might have been a pretty fair provincial lawyer.
The rain has had you a long time. If I'm killed in my tank I'd be
carted here ... I guess we like it in Ermenonville.
So long, Bob.
He had never called his dad Bob. He had no memory of him except from
photos: one of them came to mind, young face, maybe like his own.
Moustache. Blond moustache. A tall man, lean, a horseman, dead for
twenty-seven years. Tall man who had taken years to die the invalid's
death.
So long ...
A swan, on the little lake, close to the poplar planted shore, moved
without any apparent effort, its reflection now bright, now dark, now in
the rain, now in the clear.
There were swans here when Jean Jacques Rousseau lived here ... swans
... chateau swans ... and when Rousseau said we should return to nature,
had the swans influenced him?
Walking toward his aunt's house, Orville felt undercurrents as a boy in
E, when the wind vane on Lautrec's house had thrilled him, when the
spire on the stone church had prodded more than clouds. In those days
there had been frogs to spear in the Nonette, kites to fly, boats to
sail on the Petit Lac.
He passed the bronze statue of Rousseau in the village, a rain beaten
thing. Cobbled streets fanned out from the figure. The statue was
unchanged. The cobbles were the same. Smoke from peasant houses
climbed as it had years ago.
The rain was coming down as it had years ago: a beautiful scene.
He tried to raise his umbrella but had no luck; it banged against his
leg as he began to walk faster, hustling into the wind, his aunt's home
a few blocks away.
Old Claude Bichain, the family servant, opened a side door; he had been
watching for Orville, his bearded face close to a window. Orville,
glancing at the rambling breaktimber house, saw his face and, cane-like,
lifted his umbrella.
"My, you're soaked! Mon dieu, Orville, come in..."
"I shouldn't have tried ... but it's not far to the cemetery," Orville
said, and handed Claude his umbrella and hat, shedding his coat in the
doorway.
"I came in the back way ... the front lawn's flooded."
"Yes, it's a heavy rain. The gutters are poor ... we haven't been able
to find anyone to repair them. Come with me," Claude suggested. "I
have a fire in the kitchen."
Orville followed him through the butler's pantry, perturbed by the
house, somehow stiff, apart, unfriendly. The weather, no doubt.
"Change here ... it's the warmest place. I'll bring your clothes, the
things that you left here ... we've kept them for you."
"Claude, how has life been?
"Ah, well enough, I guess ... well enough."
"You haven't gotten married again?"
"At my age!"
Orville enjoyed his laughter, the restrained laughter of old age.
"And you?"
"Me ... I'm glad to be here. Seven years since I was here ... seven or
eight."
Bichain nodded, remembering.
"And the war?" he asked, unsure of himself, trying to interpret
Orville's sad face.
"It goes on and on ... I sometimes..." but he stopped.
"I'm glad you made it ... your bus was late, but buses are always late
now ... let me get your clothes ... I put some pots of water on the
stove ... you see the boiler isn't working for the bathtub." He found
it hard to speak: he was troubled by Orville's greasy mechanic's
clothes, his bearded face, his staring eyes, grim mouth.
Orville found it comfortable washing himself by the cast iron
stove--polished as always. Copper pots and copper spoons decorated a
wall. The fire was crackling in the stove; there was plenty of hot
water, Claude had stacked several towels on a chair. Cakes of soap.
The rain guttered down the windows.
Orville stood on a braided rug, probably braided by Annette long ago.
He appreciated Claude, so thoughtful, respectful: his beard was longer
and whiter. Annette was in the village but what had delayed the Rondes?
Where was Jeannette? On duty at the hospital, no doubt. He wondered
whether the hospital was overrun with wounded.
It was a long way in space and time, from Africa to London, to
Ermenonville's kitchen: that bombed railway station, that taxi ride
through bombed streets, past the British Museum spewing books and walls,
blocking the street, one siren triggering another until the city howled
like dying children. It had taken some doing to locate Jeannette
Hitchcock, at the Dalton Street Red Cross station.
Opening the stove door, Orville poked the fire and shoved in a couple of
sticks: the light played on his naked body. Dumping dirty water down
the sink he poured himself a hot pailful. Soap and hot water relaxed
him as he washed his legs and thighs.
Claude had his arms full of clothes; stopping in the doorway he envied
Orville his hard, white body.
"Can't find anyone to repair the heater," he said.
"This is fine ... I guess this is where I scrubbed when I was a kid."
"Use all the hot water."
"Will Aunt Therese be home soon?"
"I think so."
"I'd forgotten it could rain so hard around here."
"Where did you get off the bus? Did they let you off at the wrong
place?"
"No ... I got off in the village..."
"You shouldn't have gone to the cemetery. Not today."
"No matter ... I wanted to look around ... to think..."
Claude spread Orville's clothes on the kitchen table, arranging them
carefully--the valet's touch. He hoped everything would fit. Orville
hadn't put on weight. Was I ever built so well?
He limped away and Orville saw his hand on the closing door, remembering
it as a boy, the red "v" on the back: it wasn't so much the redness, it
was the ragged shape of the thing. Bichain had the face of a Pole; his
Cracow ancestor's grey eyes that faded into nothingness, his beard went
to his chest, the hair was always brushed and immaculate.
As he toweled, Orville glanced at the scars across his stomach, where he
had been burned by an engine explosion during training at camp. It was
pleasant picking up his clothes from the table, holding them up,
remembering. He thought everything would fit. Socks first. That old
crew neck shirt from mom.
He was eager to telephone Jeannette.
The trousers were okay ... Claude had remembered his belt.
By god, maybe it was going to be good after all, this leave, this
Ermenonville, his Jean.
Somebody ought to shut off the rain.
It was growing dark: the eye of the fire poked across the door. Across
the braided rug.
The phone was at one end of the long living room, unless someone had
rewired it. Without switching on lights or lamps, he walked across the
room, hoping it had not been altered: the phone ... he lifted the
receiver and waited:
"What number, please?" a pleasant voice asked: the voice was
Ermenonville French and yet Orville thought of a girl in Ithaca, a face
with yellow hair around it, a happy face.
"Can you get me the hospital?"
There was a pause as if the operator was trying to identify Orville or
was puzzled by his accent.
"One moment, please."
Then the hospital responded--someone, a man, spat through an earful of
static:
"What do you want?"
It was the voice of war, with a German accent.
"This is Claude Bichain," Orville lied. "I want to speak to Mlle.
Jeannette Hitchcock," he said. "She may be on duty."
"If she's on duty, I can't call her."
"It's an emergency ... damn you!" he snapped out. "Important ... get it?
Important!" He hated the guy.
"You'll have to wait ... I'll call you back, M. Bichain. Are you at the
residence?"
Orville waited on the tapestry upholstered telephone chair; listening to
the rain his mood began to adjust: drops were racing down the French
doors: Claude was switching on lamps, tending a fire in one of the
fireplaces. Firelight blurred the walls. It was an elegant room.
1788, he recalled. The Rondes had purchased the property from some
member of their family. He couldn't remember who the builder was.
Both fireplaces were constructed of yellow glazed brick, their white
mantels rested on rococo Caen stone pillars. The furniture, of several
periods, blended well, touches of ormolu, marquetry, rosewood, mahogany.
The phone jangled.
"Hello ... hello ... is this M. Bichain? This is Jeannette Hitchcock."
"Hi, Jean?"
Orville had to bring himself round suddenly, snap into the present.
"Hi, darling!"
"Orv, Orv ... oh, it's you. How's everything?"
"Fine. And you?"
"Fine ... Orv, you're here, you're safe!"
"When am I going to see you?" he asked, excited now, wanting to see her
at once. "Can I see you tonight?"
"Not tonight, darling." Her voice trembled. "Can't be tonight. I'm on
emergency shift. Surgery. Maybe for three hours ... a bad case. I
don't want to see you when I'm tired. We've waited ... I can't spoil
it."
"When?" he asked.
"Tomorrow morning. I'll meet you anywhere you say. How about that,
Orv?"
"Can a hospital car bring you here?"
"But I don't want to be with your family. Not now. When did you get
here?"
"On a late bus ... I have gotten into some clothes ... get a lot of
rest, turn in early, if you can. I'll come in the morning." He wanted
to say it's marvelous, hearing your voice, being in Ermenonville; she
was already saying good night, and he heard himself saying good night
with woodenness; then the phone went dead in his hand--the crude, dumb
thing.
Hardly had he placed the receiver on its hook when the phone rang.
Picking it up indifferently, he said:
"Hello."
"Orville, it's you! How nice. Oh, Orville, I'm so glad you are home.
When did you get home? I've been trying to get you, but this wretched
phone..."
"Hi, Aunt Therese! I got here an hour or so ago. You sound far off or
the connection's bad. Where are you?" He dropped into her kind of
French, the kind she had taught him, Ermenonville's patois.
"I'm out in the country about ten or twelve miles, at a horrible, dirty
farm. Our car has broken down ... I'm afraid I won't get back till
late. Maybe not till tomorrow. Lena and I are here--we're so
disappointed not to be home ... to welcome you. Tell Annette to fix a
supper. Claude will look after you..."
Therese's effusiveness annoyed him but he sent his love to Lena and
assured them that everything was all right.
" ... Lena's fine ... we got awfully wet because we had the top folded
down, and we couldn't get it raised again. Such a muddy road. And then
our engine had to act up. Have you seen Jeannette? Have you phoned
her?" She was sputtering. Orville remembered her volubility; she went
on chatting about nothing, Orville nodding, smiling.
"Their car broke down ... they won't be back until late or tomorrow," he
explained to Claude, who was offering a pack of cigarettes. "They're at
Placiers."
Bichain nodded.
"Anything you want?"
"No ... I'll let Annette know."
Orville walked about the elegant room. Yes, it had been seven years
since his last visit: he and his mother had stayed several weeks during
that summer. During those seven years he had ample time to finish high
school, enroll at Cornell, make the crew, go to war!
In front of the alabaster bust of Chopin he shoved his hands into his
pockets. Chopin's face seemed more poetical than he remembered it. The
man's eyes stared absently into his eyes. The lips had their absinthe
smile.
No, the furniture had not been changed; of course the settees, sofa and
chairs had been reupholstered with the identical pattern of pomegranate
flowers: that was Therese's way. The woodwork had been dusted and
polished two thousand times and Claude had waxed the parquet--over and
over. Parchment lamp shades seemed to be new. He bent over a cloisonne
vase: its birds and flowers were in the same Kyoto greenery. He glanced
up: ah, it was there, the gold and silver and green fresco of oak and
laurel leaves, twined in their ceiling wreath.
Dark red curtains ...
Tired, he dumped himself on a settee, his thoughts reverting to his
trip, a sick and quarrelsome woman, the SS troopers playing poker, a boy
begging for food ... a half hour slipped away.
He absorbed the quiet. Had the rain stopped? He hoped so. The fires in
the twin fireplaces spread their warmth. Maybe the war was ending ...
maybe it would end while he was home; certainly it was the right place.
Yet assurances were missing.
Shall I go upstairs, to my room?
He closed his eyes as he sensed the firelight.
Claude woke him to say that supper was ready.
Colonel Ronde's meticulous oil portrait dominated the wall alongside the
dining table: the gold fame was heavy and ornate: the Colonel was
wearing his 1918 captain's uniform, a trench helmet and a pistol, and a
pair of grey gloves lay on a table beside him: he appeared to be a
reticent, egocentric, stupid man. Orville remembered how dictatorial he
had been: you kids get out of the greenhouse ... you kids are not to
ride your bicycles through the garden ... you kids must come to dinner
punctually ...
Orville was relieved that the old boy was not around: the portrait's
frame was tarnishing: pigment was flaking: the Ermenonville forest
background was fading: good.
Orville fiddled with the table silver, idly aware of the monogram, the
crystal candleholders, the cut glass sugar creamer: three days ago, less
than seventy-two hours ago, it had been hell itself at the front:
fooling with his knife, eyeing its ornate handle, he wondered where it
had been crafted; he sampled the entree, glad that Annette was putting
herself out to please him.
When will I be eating alone like this, in such middleclass pomp!
Annette served roast duck, stuffed artichoke, creamed parsnips, and
buttered carrots. Finger rolls were a specialty of hers. He recognized
the dry local wine ... he imagined, as he tasted it, the wines,
brandies, liquors inside that inlaid buffet ... Therese would soon be
insisting. He would come across some favorites.
The kitchen door widened a crack.
"Everything all right?" Annette asked, hands pouching her apron, smiling
attentively.
"Just great!" Orville said. "It's a treat, having you and Claude look
after me ... like old times. Where's the Colonel these days?"
"He's in Marseilles."
"Good ... then he's not caught in the thick of it."
"But he's, ah, on duty ... he's ... well, you know how it is."
The door shut but not before he realized that Annette could lose twenty
pounds across her stomach and another five through her breasts.
Obviously, she knew how to provision her Ermenonville larder.
The dining room was a cluttered place: it reflected neglect or
unconcern: unmatched chairs rectangled an ormolu table of cherry, the
antique silver service on the Louis buffet represented several periods:
the flowered wallpaper and a bevy of melancholy still lifes in oil were
unharmonious. Orville could not remember the room as it had been years
ago but felt it was quite different.