The fields and the misty blue-green woods slipped by slowly as the box
car rumbled and jolted over the rails, now stopping for hours on sidings
amid meadows, where it was quiet and where above the babel of voices
of the regiment you could hear the skylarks, now clattering fast over
bridges and along the banks of jade-green rivers where the slim poplars
were just coming into leaf and where now and then a fish jumped. The men
crowded in the door, grimy and tired, leaning on each other's shoulders
and watching the plowed lands slip by and the meadows where the
golden-green grass was dappled with buttercups, and the villages of
huddled red roofs lost among pale budding trees and masses of peach
blossom. Through the smells of steam and coal smoke and of unwashed
bodies in uniforms came smells of moist fields and of manure from
fresh-sowed patches and of cows and pasture lands just coming into
flower.
“Must be right smart o'craps in this country.... Ain't like that damn
Polignac, Andy?” said Chrisfield.
“Well, they made us drill so hard there wasn't any time for the grass to
grow.”
“You're damn right there warn't.”
“Ah'd lak te live in this country a while,” said Chrisfield.
“We might ask 'em to let us off right here.”
“Can't be that the front's like this,” said Judkins, poking his head
out between Andrews's and Chrisfield's heads so that the bristles of his
unshaven chin rubbed against Chrisfield's cheek. It was a large square
head with closely cropped light hair and porcelain-blue eyes under lids
that showed white in the red sunburned face, and a square jaw made a
little grey by the sprouting beard.
“Say, Andy, how the hell long have we all been in this goddam train?...
Ah've done lost track o' the time....”
“What's the matter; are you gettin' old, Chris?” asked Judkins laughing.
Chrisfield had slipped out of the place he held and began poking himself
in between Andrews and Judkins.
“We've been on this train four days and five nights, an' we've got half
a day's rations left, so we must be getting somewhere,” said Andrews.
“It can't be like this at the front.”
“It must be spring there as well as here,” said Andrews.
It was a day of fluffy mauve-tinted clouds that moved across the sky,
sometimes darkening to deep blue where a small rainstorm trailed across
the hills, sometimes brightening to moments of clear sunlight that gave
blue shadows to the poplars and shone yellow on the smoke of the engine
that puffed on painfully at the head of the long train.
“Funny, ain't it? How li'l everythin' is,” said Chrisfield. “Out Indiana
way we wouldn't look at a cornfield that size. But it sort o' reminds me
the way it used to be out home in the spring o' the year.”
“I'd like to see Indiana in the springtime,” said Andrews.
“Well you'll come out when the war's over and us guys is all
home... won't you, Andy?”
“You bet I will.”
They were going into the suburbs of a town. Rows and clusters of little
brick and stucco houses were appearing along the roads. It began to rain
from a sky full of lights of amber and lilac color. The slate roofs and
the pinkish-grey streets of the town shone cheerfully in the rain. The
little patches of garden were all vivid emerald-green. Then they were
looking at rows and rows of red chimney pots over wet slate roofs that
reflected the bright sky. In the distance rose the purple-grey spire of
a church and the irregular forms of old buildings. They passed through a
station.
“Dijon,” read Andrews. On the platform were French soldiers in their
blue coats and a good sprinkling of civilians.
“Gee, those are about the first real civies I've seen since I came
overseas,” said Judkins. “Those goddam country people down at Polignac
didn't look like real civilians. There's folks dressed like it was New
York.”
They had left the station and were rumbling slowly past interminable
freight trains. At last the train came to a dead stop.
A whistle sounded.
“Don't nobody get out,” shouted the sergeant from the car ahead.
“Hell! They keep you in this goddam car like you was a convict,”
muttered Chrisfield.
“I'd like to get out and walk around Dijon.”
“O boy!”
“I swear I'd make a bee line for a dairy lunch,” said Judkins.
“Hell of a fine dairy lunch you'll find among those goddam frogs. No,
vin blank is all you'ld get in that goddam town.”
“Ah'm goin' to sleep,” said Chrisfield. He stretched himself out on the
pile of equipment at the end of the car. Andrews sat down near him and
stared at his mud-caked boots, running one of his long hands, as brown
as Chrisfield's now, through his light short-cut hair.
Chrisfield lay looking at the gaunt outline of Andrews's face against
the light through half-closed eyes. And he felt a warm sort of a smile
inside him as he said to himself: “He's a damn good kid.” Then
he thought of the spring in the hills of southern Indiana and the
mocking-bird singing in the moonlight among the flowering locust trees
behind the house. He could almost smell the heavy sweetness of the
locust blooms, as he used to smell them sitting on the steps after
supper, tired from a day's heavy plowing, while the clatter of his
mother's housework came from the kitchen. He didn't wish he was back
there, but it was pleasant to think of it now and then, and how the
yellow farmhouse looked and the red barn where his father never had been
able to find time to paint the door, and the tumble-down cowshed where
the shingles were always coming off. He wondered dully what it would be
like out there at the front. It couldn't be green and pleasant, the way
the country was here. Fellows always said it was hell out there. Well,
he didn't give a damn. He went to sleep.
He woke up gradually, the warm comfort of sleep giving place slowly to
the stiffness of his uncomfortable position with the hobnails of a boot
from the back of a pack sticking into his shoulder. Andrews was sitting
in the same position, lost in thought. The rest of the men sat at the
open doors or sprawled over the equipment.
Chrisfield got up, stretched himself, yawned, and went to the door to
look out. There was a heavy important step on the gravel outside. A
large man with black eyebrows that met over his nose and a very black
stubbly beard passed the car. There were a sergeants stripes on his arm.
“Say, Andy,” cried Chrisfield, “that bastard is a sergeant.”
“Who's that?” asked Andrews getting up with a smile, his blue eyes
looking mildly into Chrisfield's black ones.
“You know who Ah mean.”
Under their heavy tan Chrisfield's rounded cheeks were flushed. His eyes
snapped under their long black lashes. His fists were clutched.
“Oh, I know, Chris. I didn't know he was in this regiment.”
“God damn him!” muttered Chrisfield in a low voice, throwing himself
down on his packs again.
“Hold your horses, Chris,” said Andrews. “We may all cash in our checks
before long... no use letting things worry us.”
“I don't give a damn if we do.”
“Nor do I, now.” Andrews sat down beside Chrisfield again.
After a while the train got jerkily into motion. The wheels rumbled and
clattered over the rails and the clots of mud bounced up and down on the
splintered boards of the floor. Chrisfield pillowed his head on his arm
and went to sleep again, still smarting from the flush of his anger.
Andrews looked out through his fingers at the swaying black box car, at
the men sprawled about on the floor, their heads nodding with each jolt,
and at the mauve-grey clouds and bits of sparkling blue sky that he
could see behind the silhouettes of the heads and shoulders of the men
who stood in the doors. The wheels ground on endlessly.
The car stopped with a jerk that woke up all the sleepers and threw one
man off his feet. A whistle blew shrilly outside.
“All right, out of the cars! Snap it up; snap it up!” yelled the
sergeant.
The men piled out stiffly, handing the equipment out from hand to hand
till it formed a confused heap of packs and rifles outside. All down the
train at each door there was a confused pile of equipment and struggling
men.
“Snap it up.... Full equipment.... Line up!” the sergeant yelled.
The men fell into line slowly, with their packs and rifles. Lieutenants
hovered about the edges of the forming lines, tightly belted into their
stiff trench coats, scrambling up and down the coal piles of the siding.
The men were given “at ease” and stood leaning on their rifles staring
at a green water-tank on three wooden legs, over the top of which had
been thrown a huge piece of torn grey cheesecloth. When the confused
sound of tramping feet subsided, they could hear a noise in the
distance, like someone lazily shaking a piece of heavy sheet-iron. The
sky was full of little dabs of red, purple and yellow and the purplish
sunset light was over everything.
The order came to march. They marched down a rutted road where the
puddles were so deep they had continually to break ranks to avoid them.
In a little pine-wood on one side were rows of heavy motor trucks and
ammunition caissons; supper was cooking in a field kitchen about which
clustered the truck drivers in their wide visored caps. Beyond the wood
the column turned off into a field behind a little group of stone and
stucco houses that had lost their roofs. In the field they halted. The
grass was brilliant emerald and the wood and the distant hills were
shades of clear deep blue. Wisps of pale-blue mist lay across the field.
In the turf here and there were small clean bites, that might have been
made by some strange animal. The men looked at them curiously.
“No lights, remember we're in sight of the enemy. A match might
annihilate the detachment,” announced the lieutenant dramatically after
having given the orders for the pup tents to be set up.
When the tents were ready, the men stood about in the chilly white mist
that kept growing denser, eating their cold rations. Everywhere were
grumbling snorting voices.
“God, let's turn in, Chris, before our bones are frozen,” said Andrews.
Guards had been posted and walked up and down with a business-like
stride, peering now and then suspiciously into the little wood where the
truck-drivers were.
Chrisfield and Andrews crawled into their little tent and rolled up
together in their blankets, getting as close to each other as they
could. At first it was very cold and hard, and they squirmed about
restlessly, but gradually the warmth from their bodies filled their thin
blankets and their muscles began to relax. Andrews went to sleep first
and Chrisfield lay listening to his deep breathing. There was a frown
on his face. He was thinking of the man who had walked past the train at
Dijon. The last time he had seen that man Anderson was at training camp.
He had only been a corporal then. He remembered the day the man had
been made corporal. It had not been long before that that Chrisfield had
drawn his knife on him, one night in the barracks. A fellow had caught
his hand just in time. Anderson had looked a bit pale that time and had
walked away. But he'd never spoken a word to Chrisfield since. As he lay
with his eyes closed, pressed close against Andrew's limp sleeping body,
Chrisfield could see the man's face, the eyebrows that joined across the
nose and the jaw, always blackish from the heavy beard, that looked blue
when he had just shaved. At last the tenseness of his mind slackened; he
thought of women for a moment, of a fair-haired girl he'd seen from
the train, and then suddenly crushing sleepiness closed down on him and
everything went softly warmly black, as he drifted off to sleep with no
sense but the coldness of one side and the warmth of his bunkie's body
on the other.
In the middle of the night he awoke and crawled out of the tent. Andrews
followed him. Their teeth chattered a little, and they stretched their
legs stiffly. It was cold, but the mist had vanished. The stars shone
brilliantly. They walked out a little way into the field away from the
bunch of tents to make water. A faint rustling and breathing noise, as
of animals herded together, came from the sleeping regiment. Somewhere
a brook made a shrill gurgling. They strained their ears, but they could
hear no guns. They stood side by side looking up at the multitudes of
stars.
“That's Orion,” said Andrews.
“What?”
“That bunch of stars there is called Orion. D'you see 'em. It's supposed
to look like a man with a bow, but he always looks to me like a fellow
striding across the sky.”
“Some stars tonight, ain't there? Gee, what's that?”
Behind the dark hills a glow rose and fell like the glow in a forge.
“The front must be that way,” said Andrews, shivering. “I guess we'll
know tomorrow.”
“Yes; tomorrow night we'll know more about it,” said Andrews. They stood
silent a moment listening to the noise the brook made.
“God, it's quiet, ain't it? This can't be the front. Smell that?”
“What is it?”
“Smells like an apple tree in bloom somewhere.... Hell, let's git in,
before our blankets git cold.”
Andrews was still staring at the group of stars he had said was Orion.
Chrisfield pulled him by the arm. They crawled into their tent again,
rolled up together and immediately were crushed under an exhausted
sleep.
As far ahead of him as Chrisfield could see were packs and heads with
caps at a variety of angles, all bobbing up and down with the swing of
the brisk marching time. A fine warm rain was falling, mingling with the
sweat that ran down his face. The column had been marching a long time
along a straight road that was worn and scarred with heavy traffic.
Fields and hedges where clusters of yellow flowers were in bloom had
given place to an avenue of poplars. The light wet trunks and the stiff
branches hazy with green filed by, interminable, as interminable as the
confused tramp of feet and jingle of equipment that sounded in his ears.
“Say, are we goin' towards the front?”
“Goddamned if I know.”
“Ain't no front within miles.”
Men's sentences came shortly through their heavy breathing.
The column shifted over to the side of the road to avoid a train of
motor trucks going the other way. Chrisfield felt the heavy mud spurt up
over him as truck after truck rumbled by. With the wet back of one hand
he tried to wipe it off his face, but the grit, when he rubbed it, hurt
his skin, made tender by the rain. He swore long and whiningly, half
aloud. His rifle felt as heavy as an iron girder.
They entered a village of plaster-and-timber houses. Through open doors
they could see into comfortable kitchens where copper pots gleamed and
where the floors were of clean red tiles. In front of some of the houses
were little gardens full of crocuses and hyacinths where box-bushes
shone a very dark green in the rain. They marched through the square
with its pavement of little yellow rounded cobbles, its grey church with
a pointed arch in the door, its cafes with names painted over them.
Men and women looked out of doors and windows. The column perceptibly
slackened its speed, but kept on, and as the houses dwindled and became
farther apart along the road the men's hope of stopping vanished. Ears
were deafened by the confused tramp of feet on the macadam road. Men's
feet seemed as lead, as if all the weight of the pack hung on them.
Shoulders, worn callous, began to grow tender and sore under the
constant sweating. Heads drooped. Each man's eyes were on the heels
of the man ahead of him that rose and fell, rose and fell endlessly.
Marching became for each man a personal struggle with his pack,
that seemed to have come alive, that seemed something malicious and
overpowering, wrestling to throw him.
The rain stopped and the sky brightened a little, taking on pale
yellowish lights as if the clouds that hid the sun were growing thin.
The column halted at the edge of a group of farms and barns that
scattered along the road. The men sprawled in all directions along
the roadside hiding the bright green grass with the mud-color of their
uniforms.
Chrisfield lay in the field beside the road, pressing his hot face into
the wet sprouting clover. The blood throbbed through his ears. His arms
and legs seemed to cleave to the ground, as if he would never be able
to move them again. He closed his eyes. Gradually a cold chill began
stealing through his body. He sat up and slipped his arms out of the
harness of his pack. Someone was handing him a cigarette, and he sniffed
a little acrid sweet smoke.
Andrews was lying beside him, his head propped against his pack,
smoking, and poking a cigarette towards his friend with a muddy
hand. His blue eyes looked strangely from out the flaming red of his
mud-splotched face.
Chrisfield took the cigarette, and fumbled in his pocket for a match.
“That nearly did it for me,” said Andrews.
Chrisfield grunted. He pulled greedily on the cigarette.
A whistle blew.
Slowly the men dragged themselves off the ground and fell into line,
drooping under the weight of their equipment.
The companies marched off separately.
Chrisfield overheard the lieutenant saying to a sergeant:
“Damn fool business that. Why the hell couldn't they have sent us here
in the first place?”
“So we ain't goin' to the front after all?” said the sergeant.
“Front, hell!” said the lieutenant. The lieutenant was a small man
who looked like a jockey with a coarse red face which, now that he was
angry, was almost purple.
“I guess they're going to quarter us here,” said somebody.
Immediately everybody began saying: “We're going to be quartered here.”
They stood waiting in formation a long while, the packs cutting into
their backs and shoulders. At last the sergeant shouted out:
“All right, take yer stuff upstairs.” Stumbling on each others' heels
they climbed up into a dark loft, where the air was heavy with the smell
of hay and with an acridity of cow manure from the stables below. There
was a little straw in the corners, on which those who got there first
spread their blankets.
Chrisfield and Andrews tucked themselves in a corner from which through
a hole where the tiles had fallen off the roof, they could see down into
the barnyard, where white and speckled chickens pecked about with jerky
movements. A middle-aged woman stood in the doorway of the house looking
suspiciously at the files of khaki-clad soldiers that shuffled slowly
into the barns by every door.
An officer went up to her, a little red book in his hand. A conversation
about some matter proceeded painfully. The officer grew very red.
Andrews threw back his head and laughed, luxuriously rolling from side
to side in the straw. Chrisfield laughed too, he hardly knew why. Over
their heads they could hear the feet of pigeons on the roof, and a
constant drowsy rou-cou-cou-cou.
Through the barnyard smells began to drift... the greasiness of food
cooking in the field kitchen.
“Ah hope they give us somethin' good to eat,” said Chrisfield. “Ah'm
hongry as a thrasher.”
“So am I,” said Andrews.
“Say, Andy, you kin talk their language a li'l', can't ye?”
Andrews nodded his head vaguely.
“Well, maybe we kin git some aigs or somethin' out of the lady down
there. Will ye try after mess?”
“All right.”
They both lay back in the straw and closed their eyes. Their cheeks
still burned from the rain. Everything seemed very peaceful; the men
sprawled about talking in low drowsy voices. Outside, another shower had
come up and beat softly on the tiles of the roof. Chrisfield thought
he had never been so comfortable in his life, although his soaked
shoes pinched his cold feet and his knees were wet and cold. But in the
drowsiness of the rain and of voices talking quietly about him, he fell
asleep.
He dreamed he was home in Indiana, but instead of his mother cooking at
the stove in the kitchen, there was the Frenchwoman who had stood in the
farmhouse door, and near her stood a lieutenant with a little red book
in his hand. He was eating cornbread and syrup off a broken plate. It
was fine cornbread with a great deal of crust on it, crisp and hot, on
which the butter was cold and sweet to his tongue. Suddenly he stopped
eating and started swearing, shouting at the top of his lungs: “You
goddam...” he started, but he couldn't seem to think of anything more
to say. “You goddam...” he started again. The lieutenant looked towards
him, wrinkling his black eyebrows that met across his nose. He was
Sergeant Anderson. Chris drew his knife and ran at him, but it was Andy
his bunkie he had run his knife into. He threw his arms round Andy's
body, crying hot tears.... He woke up. Mess kits were clinking all
about the dark crowded loft. The men had already started piling down the
stairs.
The larks filled the wine-tinged air with a constant chiming of little
bells. Chrisfield and Andrews were strolling across a field of white
clover that covered the brow of a hill. Below in the valley they could
see a cluster of red roofs of farms and the white ribbon of the road
where long trains of motor trucks crawled like beetles. The sun had just
set behind the blue hills the other side of the shallow valley. The air
was full of the smell of clover and of hawthorn from the hedgerows. They
took deep breaths as they crossed the field.
“It's great to get away from that crowd,” Andrews was saying.
Chrisfield walked on silently, dragging his feet through the matted
clover. A leaden dullness weighed like some sort of warm choking
coverlet on his limbs, so that it seemed an effort to walk, an effort to
speak. Yet under it his muscles were taut and trembling as he had known
them to be before when he was about to get into a fight or to make love
to a girl.
“Why the hell don't they let us git into it?” he said suddenly.
“Yes, anything'ld be better than this... wait, wait, wait.”
They walked on, hearing the constant chirrup of the larks, the brush
of their feet through the clover, the faint jingle of some coins in
Chrisfield's pocket, and in the distance the irregular snoring of an
aeroplane motor. As they walked Andrews leaned over from time to time
and picked a couple of the white clover flowers.
The aeroplane came suddenly nearer and swooped in a wide curve above the
field, drowning every sound in the roar of its exhaust. They made out
the figures of the pilot and the observer before the plane rose again
and vanished against the ragged purple clouds of the sky. The observer
had waved a hand at them as he passed. They stood still in the darkening
field, staring up at the sky, where a few larks still hung chirruping.
“Ah'd lahk to be one o' them guys,” said Chrisfield.
“You would?”
“God damn it, Ah'd do anything to git out o' this hellish infantry. This
ain't no sort o' life for a man to be treated lahk he was a nigger.”
“No, it's no sort of life for a man.”
“If they'd let us git to the front an' do some fightin' an' be done with
it.... But all we do is drill and have grenade practice an' drill again
and then have bayonet practice an' drill again. 'Nough to drive a feller
crazy.”
“What the hell's the use of talking about it, Chris? We can't be any
lower than we are, can we?” Andrews laughed.
“There's that plane again.”
“Where?”
“There, just goin' down behind the piece o' woods.”
“That's where their field is.”
“Ah bet them guys has a good time. Ah put in an application back in
trainin' camp for Aviation. Ain't never heard nothing from it though. If
Ah had, Ah wouldn't be lower than dirt in this hawg-pen.”
“It's wonderful up here on the hill this evening,” said Andrews, looking
dreamily at the pale orange band of light where the sun had set. “Let's
go down and get a bottle of wine.”
“Now yo're talkin'. Ah wonder if that girl's down there tonight.”
“Antoinette?”
“Um-hum.... Boy, Ah'd lahk to have her all by ma-self some night.”
Their steps grew brisker as they strode along a grass-grown road that
led through high hedgerows to a village under the brow of the hill. It
was almost dark under the shadow of the bushes on either side. Overhead
the purple clouds were washed over by a pale yellow light that gradually
faded to grey. Birds chirped and rustled among the young leaves.
Andrews put his hand on Chrisfield's shoulder.
“Let's walk slow,” he said, “we don't want to get out of here too soon.”
He grabbed carelessly at little cluster of hawthorn flowers as he passed
them, and seemed reluctant to untangle the thorny branches that caught
in his coat and on his loosely wound puttees.
“Hell, man,” said Chrisfield, “we won't have time to get a bellyful. It
must be gettin' late already.”
They hastened their steps again and came in a moment to the first
tightly shuttered houses of the village.
In the middle of the road was an M.P., who stood with his legs wide
apart, waving his “billy” languidly. He had a red face, his eyes were
fixed on the shuttered upper window of a house, through the chinks of
which came a few streaks of yellow light. His lips were puckered up as
if to whistle, but no sound came. He swayed back and forth indecisively.
An officer came suddenly out of the little green door of the house
in front of the M.P., who brought his heels together with a jump and
saluted, holding his hand a long while to his cap. The officer flicked a
hand up hastily to his hat, snatching his cigar out of his mouth for
an instant. As the officer's steps grew fainter down the road, the M.P.
gradually returned to his former position.
Chrisfield and Andrews had slipped by on the other side, and gone in at
the door of a small ramshackle house of which the windows were closed by
heavy wooden shutters.
“I bet there ain't many of them bastards at the front,” said Chris.
“Not many of either kind of bastards,” said Andrews laughing, as he
closed the door behind them. They were in a room that had once been the
parlor of a farmhouse. The chandelier with its bits of crystal and the
orange-blossoms on a piece of dusty red velvet under a bell glass on
the mantelpiece denoted that. The furniture had been taken out, and four
square oak tables crowded in. At one of the tables sat three Americans
and at another a very young olive-skinned French soldier, who sat
hunched over his table looking moodily down into his glass of wine.
A girl in a faded frock of some purplish material that showed the strong
curves of her shoulders and breasts slouched into the room, her hands
in the pocket of a dark blue apron against which her rounded forearms
showed golden brown. Her face had the same golden tan under a mass of
dark blonde hair. She smiled when she saw the two soldiers, drawing her
thin lips away from her ugly yellow teeth.
“Ca va bien, Antoinette?” asked Andrews.
“Oui,” she said, looking beyond their heads at the French soldier who
sat at the other side of the little room.
“A bottle of vin rouge, vite,” said Chrisfield.
“Ye needn't be so damn vite about it tonight, Chris,” said one of the
men at the other table.
“Why?”
“Ain't a-goin' to be no roll call. Corporal tole me his-self. Sarge's
gone out to git stewed, an' the Loot's away.”
“Sure,” said another man, “we kin stay out as late's we goddam please
tonight.”
“There's a new M.P. in town,” said Chrisfield.... “Ah saw him maself....
You did, too, didn't you, Andy?”
Andrews nodded. He was looking at the Frenchman, who sat with his face
in shadow and his black lashes covering his eyes. A purplish flash had
suffused the olive skin at his cheekbones.
“Oh, boy,” said Chrisfield. “That ole wine sure do go down fast.... Say,
Antoinette, got any cognac?”
“I'm going to have some more wine,” said Andrews.
“Go ahead, Andy; have all ye want. Ah want some-thin' to warm ma guts.”
Antoinette brought a bottle of cognac and two small glasses and sat
down in an empty chair with her red hands crossed on her apron. Her eyes
moved from Chrisfield to the Frenchman and back again.
Chrisfield turned a little round in his chair and looked at the
Frenchman, feeling in his eyes for a moment a glance of the man's
yellowish-brown eyes.
Andrews leaned back against the wall sipping his dark-colored wine, his
eyes contracted dreamily, fixed on the shadow of the chandelier, which
the cheap oil-lamp with its tin reflector cast on the peeling plaster of
the wall opposite.
Chrisfield punched him.
“Wake up, Andy, are you asleep?”
“No,” said Andy smiling.
“Have a li'l mo' cognac.”
Chrisfield poured out two more glasses unsteadily. His eyes were on
Antoinette again. The faded purple frock was hooked at the neck. The
first three hooks were undone revealing a V-shape of golden brown skin
and a bit of whitish underwear.
“Say, Andy,” he said, putting his arm round his friend's neck and
talking into his ear, “talk up to her for me, will yer, Andy?... Ah
won't let that goddam frog get her, no, I won't, by Gawd. Talk up to her
for me, Andy.”
Andrews laughed.
“I'll try,” he said. “But there's always the Queen of Sheba, Chris.”
“Antoinette, j'ai un ami,” started Andrews, making a gesture with a long
dirty hand towards Chris.
Antoinette showed her bad teeth in a smile.
“Joli garcon,” said Andrews.
Antoinette's face became impassive and beautiful again. Chrisfield
leaned back in his chair with an empty glass in his hand and watched his
friend admiringly.
“Antoinette, mon ami vous... vous admire,” said Andrews in a courtly
voice.
A woman put her head in the door. It was the same face and hair as
Antoinette's, ten years older, only the skin, instead of being golden
brown, was sallow and wrinkled.
“Viens,” said the woman in a shrill voice.
Antoinette got up, brushed heavily against Chrisfield's leg as she
passed him and disappeared. The Frenchman walked across the room from
his corner, saluted gravely and went out.
Chrisfield jumped to his feet. The room was like a white box reeling
about him.
“That frog's gone after her,” he shouted.
“No, he ain't, Chris,” cried someone from the next table. “Sit tight,
ole boy. We're bettin' on yer.”
“Yes, sit down and have a drink, Chris,” said Andy. “I've got to
have somethin' more to drink. I haven't had a thing to drink all the
evening.” He pulled him back into his chair. Chrisfield tried to get up
again. Andrews hung on him so that the chair upset. Then both sprawled
on the red tiles of the floor.
“The house is pinched!” said a voice.
Chrisfield saw Judkins standing over him, a grin on his large red face.
He got to his feet and sat sulkily in his chair again. Andrews was
already sitting opposite him, looking impassive as ever.
The tables were full now. Someone was singing in a droning voice.
“O the oak and the ash and the weeping willow tree,
O green grows the grass in God's countree!”
“Ole Indiana,” shouted Chris. “That's the only God's country I know.”
He suddenly felt that he could tell Andy all about his home and the wide
corn-fields shimmering and rustling under the July sun, and the creek
with red clay banks where he used to go in swimming. He seemed to see it
all before him, to smell the winey smell of the silo, to see the cattle,
with their chewing mouths always stained a little with green, waiting to
get through the gate to the water trough, and the yellow dust and roar
of wheat-thrashing, and the quiet evening breeze cooling his throat and
neck when he lay out on a shack of hay that he had been tossing all day
long under the tingling sun. But all he managed to say was:
“Indiana's God's country, ain't it, Andy?”
“Oh, he has so many,” muttered Andrews.
“Ah've seen a hailstone measured nine inches around out home, honest to
Gawd, Ah have.”
“Must be as good as a barrage.”
“Ah'd like to see any goddam barrage do the damage one of our thunder
an' lightnin' storms'll do,” shouted Chris.
“I guess all the barrage we're going to see's grenade practice.”
“Don't you worry, buddy,” said somebody across the room.
“You'll see enough of it. This war's going to last damn long....”
“Ah'd lak to get in some licks at those Huns tonight; honest to Gawd
Ah would, Andy,” muttered Chris in a low voice. He felt his muscles
contract with a furious irritation. He looked through half-closed
eyes at the men in the room, seeing them in distorted white lights and
reddish shadows. He thought of himself throwing a grenade among a crowd
of men. Then he saw the face of Anderson, a ponderous white face with
eyebrows that met across his nose and a bluish, shaved chin.
“Where does he stay at, Andy? I'm going to git him.”
Andrews guessed what he meant.
“Sit down and have a drink, Chris,” he said, “Remember you're going to
sleep with the Queen of Sheba tonight.”
“Not if I can't git them goddam....” his voice trailed off into an
inaudible muttering of oaths.
“O the oak and the ash and the weeping willow tree,
O green grows the grass in God's countree!”
somebody sang again.
Chrisfield saw a woman standing beside the table with her back to him,
collecting the bottles. Andy was paying her.
“Antoinette,” he said. He got to his feet and put his arms round her
shoulders. With a quick movement of the elbows she pushed him back into
his chair. She turned round. He saw the sallow face and thin breasts of
the older sister. She looked in his eyes with surprise. He was grinning
drunkenly. As she left the room she made a sign to him with her head to
follow her. He got up and staggered out the door, pulling Andrews after
him.
In the inner room was a big bed with curtains where the women slept, and
the fireplace where they did their cooking. It was dark except for the
corner where he and Andrews stood blinking in the glare of a candle
on the table. Beyond they could only see ruddy shadows and the huge
curtained bed with its red coverlet.
The Frenchman, somewhere in the dark of the room, said something several
times.
“Avions boches... ss-t!”
They were quiet.
Above them they heard the snoring of aeroplane motors, rising and
falling like the buzzing of a fly against a window pane.
They all looked at each other curiously. Antoinette was leaning against
the bed, her face expressionless. Her heavy hair had come undone and
fell in smoky gold waves about her shoulders.
The older woman was giggling.
“Come on, let's see what's doing, Chris,” said Andrews.
They went out into the dark village street.
“To hell with women, Chris, this is the war!” cried Andrews in a loud
drunken voice as they reeled arm in arm up the street.
“You bet it's the war.... Ah'm a-goin' to beat up....”
Chrisfield felt his friend's hand clapped over his mouth. He let himself
go limply, feeling himself pushed to the side of the road.
Somewhere in the dark he heard an officer's voice say:
“Bring those men to me.”
“Yes, sir,” came another voice.
Slow heavy footsteps came up the road in their direction. Andrews kept
pushing him back along the side of a house, until suddenly they both
fell sprawling in a manure pit.
“Lie still for God's sake,” muttered Andrews, throwing an arm over
Chrisfield's chest. A thick odor of dry manure filled their nostrils.
They heard the steps come nearer, wander about irresolutely and then go
off in the direction from which they had come.
Meanwhile the throb of motors overhead grew louder and louder.
“Well?” came the officer's voice.
“Couldn't find them, sir,” mumbled the other voice.
“Nonsense. Those men were drunk,” came the officer's voice.
“Yes, sir,” came the other voice humbly.
Chrisfield started to giggle. He felt he must yell aloud with laughter.
The nearest motor stopped its singsong roar, making the night seem
deathly silent.
Andrews jumped to his feet.
The air was split by a shriek followed by a racking snorting explosion.
They saw the wall above their pit light up with a red momentary glare.
Chrisfield got to his feet, expecting to see flaming ruins. The village
street was the same as ever. There was a little light from the glow the
moon, still under the horizon, gave to the sky. A window in the house
opposite showed yellow. In it was a blue silhouette of an officer's cap
and uniform.
A little group stood in the street below.
“What was that?” the form in the window was shouting in a peremptory
voice.
“German aeroplane just dropped a bomb, Major,” came a breathless voice
in reply.
“Why the devil don't he close that window?” a voice was muttering all
the while. “Juss a target for 'em to aim at... a target to aim at.”
“Any damage done?” asked the major.
Through the silence the snoring of the motors sing-songed ominously
overhead, like giant mosquitoes.
“I seem to hear more,” said the major, in his drawling voice.
“O yes sir, yes sir, lots,” answered an eager voice.
“For God's sake tell him to close the window, Lieutenant,” muttered
another voice.
“How the hell can I tell him? You tell him.”
“We'll all be killed, that's all there is about it.”
“There are no shelters or dugouts,” drawled the major from the window.
“That's Headquarters' fault.”
“There's the cellar!” cried the eager voice, again.
“Oh,” said the major.
Three snorting explosions in quick succession drowned everything in a
red glare. The street was suddenly filled with a scuttle of villagers
running to shelter.
“Say, Andy, they may have a roll call,” said Chrisfield.
“We'd better cut for home across country,” said Andrews.
They climbed cautiously out of their manure pit. Chrisfield was
surprised to find that he was trembling. His hands were cold.
It was with difficulty he kept his teeth from chattering.
“God, we'll stink for a week.”
“Let's git out,” muttered Chrisfield, “o' this goddam village.”
They ran out through an orchard, broke through a hedge and climbed up
the hill across the open fields.
Down the main road an anti-aircraft gun had started barking and the sky
sparkled with exploding shrapnel. The “put, put, put” of a machine gun
had begun somewhere. Chrisfield strode up the hill in step with his
friend. Behind them bomb followed bomb, and above them the air seemed
full of exploding shrapnel and droning planes. The cognac still throbbed
a little in their blood. They stumbled against each other now and then
as they walked. From the top of the hill they turned and looked back.
Chrisfield felt a tremendous elation thumping stronger than the cognac
through his veins. Unconsciously he put his arm round his friend's
shoulders. They seemed the only live things in a reeling world.
Below in the valley a house was burning brightly. From all directions
came the yelp of anti-aircraft guns, and overhead unperturbed continued
the leisurely singsong of the motors.
Suddenly Chrisfield burst out laughing. “By God, Ah always have fun when
Ah'm out with you, Andy,” he said.
They turned and hurried down the other slope of the hill towards the
farms where they were quartered.