At least in France, he could imagine that he was alone because there was nobody around; the grant that he’d received had included a stipend and use of a cottage that had once stood at the edge of thetrenches that the 44thhad dug. The cottage was a mile from the village, which had a compact but thorough museum and history center about the war. Most academics, however, preferred to study the area that had been closer to the Western Front. That was where the Battle of the Somme had been fought, and which, incidentally, was closer to Paris, where all the amenities of life could be found, according to one of his very few fellow students.
Devon had been to Paris, of course. You couldn’t come to France without going, and it had been wonderful in a lot of ways. In the end, though, Paris was just another city like Denver, big and crowded and noisy. He told himself he was here, in Ornes, because he preferred the quiet countryside, which he did. Except now that the field stretched out before him, the cool rain falling, he couldn’t decide whether he was contented or lonely. Perhaps both. So he began to walk.
The air was fresh on his face, and a keen wind kicked up as he clambered up one of the mounds of earth. The edges of the trench had been dug long enough ago that they were softened by time and covered with a carpet of green grass. He was high enough that he could look across at the cemetery, which occupied the flat valley at the edge of the trenches. It was dotted with white crosses, ten rows of twenty, two hundred and one in all. There was the memorial at the far end with an inscription to the over 200 brave men of the 44thBattalion who’d lost their lives.
Some days, he liked to go all the way around and stand in front of the memorial. He liked to admire the marble carved to look like American and French flags, crossed across their flagpoles. Beneath the flags, the stone was meant to look like mourning swags, but which, especially in the rain, usually looked like cold stone that couldn’t possibly reflect, let alone empathize with, the condition of being mortal and dying in a strange country far from home.
Today was one of those days where he didn’t think he could bear it. Instead, he faced away from the memorial and looked out over the acre or so of earth, the rippled rows of lush green corduroy where once the battlements of barbed wire and old railroad ties had fortified the trenches and kept out the enemy.
The wind was in his face now, but it whipped the cobwebs from his thoughts and allowed him to just look and see and not take mental notes. To not think about what would happen after he finished his exams, oral and written, to not think about what it would be like to be an associate professor whose days and nights were so focused that he would get paid for feeling bad about American doughboys. He felt bad for all of the young men, even those who had been among the enemy. The war had been a stupid, foolish rush for power, as all wars were, only this one had been tragic beyond belief. Had there been any benefits? Few, very few.
Devon shook himself and strolled along the top of a trench, his hands in his pockets, his sneakers growing damp with each step in the wet grass. With his head down, he tried to imagine that he was a young soldier, perhaps on watch in the middle of the night, or when dawn was just breaking over the edge of the battlefield.
There might be the smell of coffee, or the mournful, faraway sound of voices as the men woke up and prepared for another day of fighting. What would that coffee taste like? Who would his friends be? What was his rank? How did he feel about the shovel he’d used to dig the trenches he and his buddies were now hunkered down in? Where was the shovel, and did he have blisters from using it?
These were the thoughts that really drove him, really interested him. He wanted to know what it had felt like to be a doughboy, to really be one. Only this was the path that led his thesis advisor to roundly scold him for getting distracted from the main point, and which had driven off his more casual friends and the guys he met with on the weekend to go running or to go to the bar.
One friend had actually told him that gay guys weren’t supposed to be as geeky as Devon was, which seemed a rather limited view, not to mention rude. For who was to say? Devon liked guys, but he liked burying his nose in a book and spending hours in the library. He also enjoyed walking around, like he was now, pretending he was somebody else.
He stopped and saluted an imaginary commander on watch so that he could be relieved of his duty and go get something to eat. Therewould only be bully beef and tea, and maybe some sugar, if he were lucky. He’d eat with his pals, and together they would make jokes about how hard the biscuits were, and laugh in the face of danger. Then maybe they’d stack shells so they could be used in battle, firing at the enemy.
In truth, though, Devon’s imaginings always turned away from actual fighting and ended with an image of him in a circle of soldiers, one of whom was bending to light a primus stove so they could make some hot tea. That was the moment that always drew him, that huddle of soldiers, their faces lit by some imaginary light as if in a painting, joined together in adversity, strengthened each by the other. That’s what he really wanted to be a part of, and what he always felt he’d missed out on.
Which was foolish because the price to pay for that was being involved in the war where the possibility of dying, probably needlessly, was almost one hundred percent.
Devon reached the far end of the field where the trenches ended and dipped down as though fading away as they turned onto a blacktop road that led to the village. The edge of the field was marked by a copse of trees that gave the whole area a solitary feel. Standing there always felt as though he was miles from anywhere, though only a single mile separated Devon from the small village with its shops, and museum, the patisserie that sold mostly sweet things, and the one that sold mostly daily bread, and the string of restaurants, of which there were surprisingly many for such a small place.
He turned and started walking back, trying to resist the impulse to take off his shoes so that he could connect with the earth. Truth be told, his real desire was to touch his skin to a flake of dust that somebody from the war had touched. He kept his thoughts from the idea that he might one day find bone, or blood-darkened earth caked around a bayonet because it had been over a century since the fateful battle, and surely all of that had been dug up by now. But the image was a vivid one, so he took off his sneakers and socks anyway so he could at least stand there and think about the doughboys in this one little moment, and pretend that he was one of them.
Which, as it inevitably did, led him to lie down in the wet grass along the slope of a trench, his arms and legs spread wide to absorb as much of the energy of the place as he could. He also felt that if he held still enough, he could absorb the memory he was sure the earth held, an idea that he’d never shared with anyone because they would not believe him. Worse, they would make fun of him, and while he was a steady sort of person, this one thing, this tiny part of his heart, was one he could not bear to have broken.
With the soft rain falling on his face, he looked up at the sky and thought about being a soldier. He breathed so slowly that he became almost still. This was one of his favorite moments, when the cottage seemed a faraway place that he might have made up in his imagination, and technology was farther away than that. Where the world was only the sky above, the green grass beneath, his breath misting in the cool air, mingling with the breath of soldiers, his beloved American doughboys, from years past.
He ignored the fact that the dampness was soaking into his clothes, and that soon his spine would feel like it had been fused to the earth in one long column of ice. In another minute, he would realize how foolish this was and rise into consciousness. He needed to come back to reality, go back into the cottage, change into dry clothes, and put another two good hours into his thesis. Then he could have something to eat, another cup of coffee, and then he could pull up Netflix and do his very best to watch something other than a movie or documentary about World War I.
CHAPTER THREE
Stanley surged up from where he had fallen, his eyes wide open, his hands out in front of him. Instinctively, he reached for his rifle, wondering why he’d not pierced himself through the heart with his bayonet when he’d fallen. He clutched at his canteen to make sure the metal lid was still screwed on so he didn’t lose all his water, which he’d need to keep from being dehydrated because he was just about to piss himself, just like Lt. Billings said.
His knees were soaked, and he was cold all the way through, as though he’d been in a block of ice. He reached up to touch his head; mud caked through his short hair fell in damp clumps. He stepped forward with jerky movements and a sense of what-the-hell? Before him were row upon row of white crosses across a green, frost-tipped field. At the far end was a larger cross, also white, and he saw the stone swags that he thought were meant to represent a flag or funeral bunting, and squinted.
Where were the trenches? If he drew his eyes along the edge of the field in the right way, he could see the top of the most recent one he’d been running along, but that was impossible. The sun was coming over the trees with bright, gold shards, cutting through the chilly morning, sending fog up from the earth, dressing the air with wisps ofghost-like tendrils. They would soon grab him if he didn’t move, except he couldn’t because the mustard gas had been all over him, and he’d fallen and maybe hit his head. Was he unconscious and dreaming? Or had he died and was he a ghost?
There was no war. There was nobody, no soldiers, no barbed wire, no smoke and, noticeably, no sounds of mortar shells exploding. No shouts of command, no cries of despair, no movement. There was only stillness and the white crosses across a green field, the edge of what could have been a trench. A sky full of frosty, jagged clouds as the blue began to break through. Larks singing somewhere in the bare trees.
Over the rise, he thought he saw the roofline of the cottage so that, at least, was familiar. If he moved toward the center of the crosses, which was eerie as hell, the cottage came fully into view. Stanley knew he had to get to a high point so he could figure out where he was and started running.
The movement jarred his head, and his lungs felt seared with the gas, the burning taste in his mouth that made him want to throw up. His heart was beating so fast, but he couldn’t stop running till he made it to the edge of the field and got closer to the cottage. A moment later, he could see the ruin that before had been only a pile of stone with one wall, but its carved frame against the sky like a broken hand reaching for help was now an entire, well-tended building.
Stanley had only one moment to wonder why or how such a ruin had been repaired so quickly when he tripped over a body on the ground. Thinking it was a dead body of a soldier whose face he did not want to recognize, Stanley pushed his rifle away from his body and rolled as he fell. He braced his elbows and pointed the rifle at the body as it sat up, one of the living dead.
His arms were shaking and his breath came in heavy jerks, sweat rolling down the side of his face. He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead to keep it from getting into his eyes. Gripping the rifle again, tighter, he pointed it at the man, and wanted to shout.
But what would he say? He needed to figure that out before he started blabbing, as that would be the sensible thing to do. And thenthe words spilled out anyway, all in a rush, as they tended to do when he couldn’t put the brakes on them.
“Where did the ruin go? Where are the bodies? Where is the mud—where is the fucking war?” He was almost screaming when he stopped, mouth open, gasping for air.
The man on the green grass leaned back on his arms to support himself. He didn’t seem the least bit worried that Stanley was pointing a rifle directly at him, though he was frowning, as though confused, which of course he would be because where in the world was his uniform?
