“Are you hungry?” he asked Winter. Freddie wasn’t. His stomach churned. But he had to do something. Anything but lie there waiting.
A startled hitch in the German’s breathing. Then— “No,” Winter said. And added, carefully polite, “No, thank you.”
“I—I’m not either,” said Freddie, although when he thought about it, maybe he was. Must not be dead yet. It was damp wherethey were sitting. The rain was getting in somehow, bubbling up out of the saturated earth. Was it drinkable? No.Water water everywhere and not a drop to—
Maybe they would drown. Drown while already buried, in a pillbox in Flanders.
“I’m from Halifax,” he said, struggling to fend off the silence. Why couldn’t they have just been killed at once? He thought he heard Winter turn toward him as he rambled: “Nova Scotia. Bluenose to the core, you know, although my mother’s from Montreal. My father worked on a tug in the Narrows. There. My sister’s out here too—in Flanders—a nurse—a proper nurse is Laura, not one of those who learned out here, practicing on us poor devils. An officer, even.” A flicker of pride. “CAMC gave all the nurses commissions. She’s a captain now, you know. Or the equivalent. Read you the riot act as soon as look at you. Cleverest and prettiest sister you could ask for.”
Winter said nothing.
Cursing himself for his rising panic—Why can’t you just die quietly like a man, Iven?—he said, “Where are you from, sir? Mr. Winter. Er, Herr Winter.”
No answer. There was a thick smell rising from the sludge of water at their feet. Freddie dropped the tin of beef, swore, and began groping around for it. His hand met sodden cloth. It was a moment before he realized what he was touching. He jerked back. He’d touched dead hands before, of course. He’d once been given a stack of sandbags and tasked with the cleanup after a direct hit on an artillery installation. There was one trench, near Vimy, where some poor fellow had been buried in the breastworks with his arm sticking out. Men would shake the hand for luck when they went up the line; or did until the bone started showing.
But it was different now. Aboveground, even in trenches, you were certain that there was an essential difference between you and the blue-gray fingers sticking out of the revetments.Hemight be buried in the breastworks, in a sandbag, in pieces, butyouwould, one day, when the war ended, go home to Canada and make afortune painting stormy landscapes, or at least enough money to publish your mediocre poems.
But here…
Freddie’s world narrowed suddenly to the knowledge that in a day or in an hour, it would be him sliding into the sludge, and he’d be there floating with the other ones. Missing, presumed killed, until in five years or ten Laura gave up hoping. And all the while he’d be down here in the dark…
Something began to shatter, deep in his own mind, and he didn’t know what animal sound of terror he was making, until the German, with surprising accuracy, reached around, seized Freddie’s shoulder, and cracked him across the face.
Freddie’s head rocked back and he tasted blood. The grip on his shoulder was hard, pinching. Then Winter’s hand fell away, and Freddie heard it fall back,thump,to his side.
“I—thank you,” said Freddie, after a strange pause.
Winter was silent. Then— “Did you drop the tin?”
“I—yes,” said Freddie. “I can’t find it now.” It hardly seemed important.
He felt Winter stiffen. “Children in Munich are eating bread of turnips. And you will waste meat?”
Freddie had a moment of blank incomprehension. “Eating this—or not—won’t help the children in Munich. Wait—is that where you’re from?”
Pause. “From the mountains. And it is wrong to waste food.” It was physically impossible tofeelsomeone frowning, and yet.
Groping around the muck was beyond him. “You look, if you want it.”
“I don’t,” Winter admitted. He didn’t move. He hadn’t moved much at all, except to subdue Freddie. His breathing hadn’t settled. It was still fast and harsh and—
“You— Are you wounded?” said Freddie.
A silence. “Yes,” said Winter, in his precise voice. “But not badly enough.”
To die, he meant. Or at least to die quickly. But— “It hurt you. It hurt you to hit me.”
“I do not want to be alive in here with a madman.”
“What if I’d killed you? What if I’d got too frightened and killed you?”
He was startled to hear a huff, Winter’s half-voiced laughter. “Kill me by all means, if you like. Do you want to—be here alone with my corpse?”
“Where are you hurt?” Freddie demanded. He thought,Oh, Christ, what if he’s dying? What if he could die any second?It didn’t matter how quickly they’d try to kill each other if they were anywhere else. Freddie knew that if Winter died, he’d go mad. He wouldn’t have enough sanity left even to kill himself. And if some miraculous hand of God came down and freed him, it wouldn’t matter because his mind would never get out of the pillbox.
“Don’t die,” he whispered.
He heard the scrape, as Winter shifted. Perhaps he understood.
