Scott Turow - Ordinary Heroes

It was nearly noon the next day before the i8th Division's motor pool surrendered a jeep to us, and I thought for a second that Bidwell was going to get into a fistfight with the private filling the tank, who might as well have been using an eyedropper.

"That ain't but a third of the gas we come with," Biddy told him.

"Sarge," the boy said, "this here's my orders. And you'd do better to look close at that map than keep your eye on me. Krauts are two miles from where you're headed. One wrong turn, Sarge, and your war might end early."

As we drove north into the hills, the sun arrived like a blast of horns, lighting up the isolated groves of trees in full fall color. This was rolling country, principally open fields, resembling southern Wisconsin, where my parents sometimes took us for long Sunday drives in my Uncle Manny's borrowed Model A when I was a boy. After a day together, Bidwell had become more approachable and we laughed about the private who'd parceled out gasoline as if he expected us not to come back. Half an hour later, when we heard the echo of mortars and the pecking of rifle fire from the east, we grew a trifle more serious.

I asked Biddy if this was the closest he'd been to the front. A sardonic snort escaped him.

"D-Day," he said. "That count, Lieutenant? D plus one, actually. Landed my whole MP company on Omaha. Needed us to take custody of the POWs, but we had to scrap our way up that beach like everybody else.

"D-Day! My God, I bet this duty seems boring after that.

He found the idea amusing.

"Hell no, Lieutenant. That was the like of some-thin I don't never wanna see again. Truth to tell, I didn't care much for it when they made me an MP. Basic, I put in for an engineering company, truck mechanic. I been fixing cars at home a couple years since I left high school, figured it'd only make sense. But this here is the Army. My orders come through sayin 'Provost Marshal Section,' I had to ask what all that was, and cussed when they told me. I don't hold nothin 'gainst po-licemen,-Lieutenant, but it ain't what I ever had a mind to do. Turns out, though, it got its good side. Generally speaking, MPs don't get there till the shooting's over and Mama's little boy here, he promised her he's gonna do his best not to get hisself killed. You can keep combat, Lieutenant. All I care for is take a few pictures and go home."

Like half the soldiers I knew, who remained part tourist, Bidwell always had a camera in his hand. Given his size, he looked almost dainty when he put it to his eye. Most troops took photos of the wreckage of war and of their buddies, but Biddy seemed more studious about it and, typical of his solitary ways, would go off at moments and fix on particular objects and scenes that didn't appear to hold much. interest. Driving yesterday, we fell in with the convoy from the 134th and came to a halt when they did, so we could empty our bladders in a roadside ditch. The drivers were Negro troops, as was often the case, and six or seven of them had gathered for a little society, since the white boys as a rule would have nothing to do with them. From behind one of the trucks, Biddy snapped several photos of the colored men carrying on with one another over their cigarettes. It had disturbed me that he hadn't bothered to get their permission.

Recollected, the incident brought Biddy's Georgia roots to mind and I asked when his people had left there and where they'd ended up. He seemed to have no interest in answering. That was this man's army. From boot camp on there were guys who showed you photos of their ma and pa and sweethearts and told you every imaginable detail about them, right down to dress size, and others who wanted to keep home as far from this mess as possible. I was in the latter group anyway, but I prodded a bit now, because I wanted to be sure before criticizing Bidwell's manner with the coloreds that he'd actually had the chance to learn the difference between North and South.

"Daddy, he was a tenant farmer down there. His people been workin that patch, only God Hisself knows how long, hundred years, two hundred years, but it just didn't make no sense to him, when times got so bad. In 1935 he picked us all up and moved us North. He was thinkin to find somethin in a factory, I guess."

"Yes, but where did you settle, Bidwell?"

He smiled for a second while he looked over the road.

"Ever hear of Kindle County?"

I actually cried out. "Dear God, Biddy! You must have heard me talk to Eisley a dozen times about home. Why didn't you say anything? I'm half a world away and it turns out I'm touring around with a neighbor."

"'Cause of just that, Lieutenant. Wasn't much way you and me was neighbors."

"Don't be so sure, Biddy. I don't come from the high and mighty. My father's a shoemaker." I rarely shared this detail, fearing it might undermine me, both among fellow officers and the troops, and as I'd anticipated, I could see I'd caught Bidwell by surprise. "Pop's been at that trade since he was a boy, right after he landed in the U. S. An uncle took him in and taught him. I grew up in a three-flat on Deering Road. The folks are still there. What about you?"

Biddy shook his head as if he didn't know.

"We was all over," he said. "You know how that goes when a man's scratchin for work. Come the end of the month, sometimes Dad and the landlord wudn't seein eye to eye. I must have been near to eighteen 'fore I stopped in askin why we didn't move in daytime like other folks." He smiled at the memory, but his green eyes drifted over to see what I made of that. As the son of a cobbler, though, I knew a lot about hard times. In the Depression, Pa had plenty of work because people wanted to make their shoes last. But many of them couldn't come up with the six bits once their footwear was mended. Some pairs left on credit, if Pa knew who he was talking to, even when it was all but certain he'd never get paid. But he'd let a man walk out barefoot rather than get cheated.

After hearing the gunfire, we stopped several times to check directions with the locals. In the end, a farmer on a horse trotted ahead of us and pointed out the Comtesse's narrow drive, which we might well have missed amid the heavy brush. The Lemolland property was bounded by an old stone fence, topped in the French way in red roofing tiles, but the gate was open and we headed up an incline beside the vineyards, where several workers were tilling among the stubby twists of the grapevines. The plants, hanging on long wire supports, looked to have been recently harvested.

At the top, we found a square formation of joined sand-colored buildings. I thought of a fort, but I suppose the arrangement was a small replica of a feudal manor. Each wing was several stories high, sporting long red jalousies folded back beside the deep windows and topped with a steep mansard roof. Huge wooden doors were thrown open on an arch that passed through the building facing us, and we drove into a vast cobblestone courtyard. At the far end stood the house. It incorporated a round tower that had to date from the Middle Ages, giving the residence the look of a little castle.

An unshaved worker with a hoe watched us warily as we stopped. Visible behind a corner of the Comtesse's chateau were a ramshackle chicken coop and a pasture, where two cows swished their tails.

At the house, I pulled several times on a bell rope until the door was parted by a large dark man, with the stub of a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and one eye closed to the smoke. He was a Gypsy, with a potato face and women's-length hair tied behind him. In French, I asked for Major Martin. The Gypsy took a second surveying our uniforms, then motioned us in and bellowed up a staircase at his right.

"Ro-bert," he called, giving the name the French pronunciation, without a 't.' "Un moment," he told us, then disappeared out the door we'd entered.