“Call us if you need anything else,monsieur,” said both officers at the same time, and with that, they tipped their French police hats, got back into their Peugeot, and drove away, splashing rainwater with their tires as they went.
For a long moment, Devon stared at the car until it disappeared into the copse of trees along the road that led to the village.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The next breath Stanley took shot into his lungs so hard that he choked on it, clutching his chest in a futile spasm, his mouth open. He tried to scream through the panic, as if that would help. It didn’t.
In one twitch of his body, the hole he was falling into was black as pitch and so narrow he started to feel the coldness of the dirt and the dampness all around. With a mighty jerk, he found himself lurching backwards, his heels in the mud, as though he was holding onto the sides of a beast while it tried to buck him off. His head slammed back and his shoulders were shoved into a wall of mud so hard that he knew he’d be leaving an imprint there.
Then it stopped. When he opened his eyes and took a shriek of a breath, all he could see was the wall of mud of the trench opposite him. There was a scent of smoke and gun oil. In the dim light of what was the gloomy sun splashing like mercury behind the gray clouds was the spattered reflections of mortar shells exploding high in the air. It was raining, though the rain came down in a miserly thin way, like it didn’t really want to. Like it would rather be someplace else altogether.
In his hands was a tin mug of coffee, the bitter dark brew thatserved in place of anything more civilized. There was not enough sugar and definitely no milk to soothe the ragged edge of the taste that Stanley took without hardly thinking about it. He blinked as he swallowed, disoriented in his mind, and unable to focus on any one thing.
What had just happened to him? Something bad, something that left him feeling his insides had been carved out, as though he’d been given a gift only to have it snatched away. There was a memory of a dark-haired, handsome man whose name Stanley could not recall. The sensation of his kind hands, his caring eyes, the warmth of his skin flitted about like the smoke wafting up from an overworked primus stove.
The harder he struggled to remember, the more evasive the memories became. He probably didn’t deserve them anyway, except they lingered in his head, in his heart. They curled around like smoke from the barrel of a newly fired howitzer, with the blow-back coming at him full in the face, tasting of hard usage, and futility, and death.
“Are you all right, Stanley?” asked a voice between the sounds of shots being fired and mortar shells exploding.
Stanley turned to face the voice as the images of the dark-haired man trailed in and out of his head.
In the long trenches, there were bunkers for officers, where they could lay out maps and plan strategy, and little dug out places lined with canvas where soldiers could go to get out of the line of fire or if it was raining very badly. Most of the time, you were in the trench, either up along the battlements, ducking gunfire or mortar rounds, or lining up the howitzers. Other than that, you leaned against the opposite wall of the trench and smoked, or waited along the low, damp seats cut into the mud along the trench.
Sometimes the seats were covered with wooden slats, though usually they were just bare mud most of the time. Stanley was lucky because Isaac had found spare pieces of canvas to spread over the dirt, so at least they could be a little bit warmer, a little bit dryer, that way.
“Stanley,” said Isaac. He held up his tin mug to Stanley in a mocktoast, as if the mug held good, clean, crisp beer, as if the moment was something worth toasting.
Beyond Isaac were Bertie and Rex, who were looking at him as though he had the answers to everything and could possibly, perhaps by magic, transport them to the previous week when they’d gone into the village and been able to take a break from the horror of their daily lives. They’d gone into that pastry shop, and while it had sold the smallest pastries in all of human existence, each bite being about half of the pastry, the taste of sugar, the taste of normal, had been so delicious that they’d each vowed to fight to the last to preserve such a dignified and necessary establishment.
That had been last week, and Commander Helmer had, just yesterday, banned further travels outside of the trenches. In addition, Commander Helmer had disappeared in the night, and now they were waiting on orders from Lt. Billings.
“What are they doing in there?” asked Isaac.
From where Stanley was sitting, he could see into the command bunker. Lt. Billings was talking with the sergeant, who was in charge of the munitions supplies. The chaplain was also there, oddly out of place in his clean uniform, wearing a spot of white in the collar around his neck. With them was a scout, muddy up to his waist, his arms wrapped around himself as he nodded at the map on the plank table in the middle of the bunker.
Stanley could hear the sound of their voices, but could not discern the meaning, though by the look on Lt. Billings’ face, it wasn’t good. The officers were, as rumor had it, talking about planning a retreat. The shelling had been quite bad, with no new supplies, men dropping from gunfire, and constant shelling from the Germans. As well, a strangely powerful flu was finding its way through the trenches as winter neared. Overall, they were ineffective as a battalion, sacrificing themselves for nothing. Or so rumor had it.
Stanley remembered talking with someone, maybe the dark-haired man, about how war was futile. No matter how deeply the battalion dug their trenches and no matter how far they shot their shells and their bullets, no matter how hard they tried, the Germanskept coming closer. They would build an advancing trench in the middle of the night, and from their endless supply of weapons and ammunition, would slaughter half a dozen men before breakfast. And then more before lunch and more before supper, and on it went.
The horrible weather was the key because it locked the battalion in place and prevented much needed supplies from getting in. If only they’d known in advance about the weather they could have prepared better, brought in more guns, more bullets, more food. If only they’d known—
“Stanley?”
Stanley turned his head and found himself looking at Isaac, studying him. Isaac had the collar of his jacket turned up in a jaunty way, like a pilot about to hop into one of those bi-planes. Bertie and Rex also had their collars turned up, as did Stanley. But only Isaac wore his in a way that made him look dashing, a brave young man who was fearless in his devotion to his country and his promise to protect his friends. Though as eye-catching as Isaac was, Stanley had the sense that his unrequited adoration of Isaac had been replaced by something else. But what?
“You can’t hear anything of what they’re saying?” asked Isaac, breaking in on Stanley’s thoughts.
“No,” said Stanley, but this with no rancor.
From where he was sitting, the trench took a little bend in either direction. To his left, he could see the stretch of the trench, and to his right, he could see into the bunker. Plus, he could see the radio on its sturdy stand. It was the cleanest, most intact thing in the whole trench.
Beyond the radio, the trench continued to his right, with his buddies from basic, Isaac, Bertie, and Rex, all lined up. The angle of the trench was such that he could see their faces quite clearly, for they were each leaning forward just enough, with Isaac in the front, and Bertie leaning out to peer around his shoulder, and Rex leaning out a little bit further than that. All of them were looking at Stanley.
“I can’t hear what they’re saying,” said Stanley, clarifying. “But thechaplain looks pretty grim, and they’re all shaking their heads. Now Lt. Billings is pointing at the map.”
“Are they going to go out and look for him?” asked Rex.Him, of course, was Commander Helmer.
“In this weather?” asked Bertie in a joking way, as if the weather were the worst thing to be wary of.
