Justin Cronin - The Summer Guest

“Supporting fire’s in position.”

Joe tossed the stub of his cigarette on the ground and crushed it under his heel. “All right,” he said wearily. “Tell them to hold fire. This is just a clearing op for now. The S2 says nobody’s home.”

Torrey frowned. “Fuck battalion. I don’t like it. There’s way too much cover on the left.”

“I’ll put it in the suggestion box.” Joe rose and shouldered his weapon. “You take first squad down the right, I’ll take second squad up the middle. Anselmo keeps the third squad in reserve and waits for my signal. And Mike?”

“Yeah?”

“Tell your point man to keep his eyes open. I don’t like it either.”

They moved in two lines of twelve men across the field, the low morning sun behind them. Below them the village lay dormant, no movement at all, not even the sound of a chicken to say that people lived there. Grasshoppers buzzed in the knee-high grass, leaping ahead of their boots as they advanced. The adrenaline of battle usually brought Joe into a vivid awareness of his surroundings, as if he were viewing events from several angles at once, but not this morning. The flicking grasshoppers, the swishing, dew-drenched grass, the silent town with its old stone buildings and terra-cotta roofs glowing in the morning sun: all combined to give the scene a feeling of dreamy unreality. He had been a soldier at war for 412 days, 342 of these as a platoon leader, not counting today, this Tuesday in June. It was not so strange he knew these numbers; everyone did. But as the days moved by, the meaning of the numbers changed: all they meant was, I’m not dead yet.

They had approached to within fifty meters of the church when it happened.

“Down!”

The point man, Reynolds, dropped to the ground, his figure instantly swallowed by the tall grass. Everybody hit the dirt.

There had been no shot; it all took place in quick silence, twenty-four grown men flinging themselves to the earth. Reynolds had seen something, Joe knew: a glint of light off a rifle scope, movement behind a window, camouflage being lifted off a mortar emplacement or the swinging barrel of an MG42. He eased up slowly on his palms, his eyes reaching just over the tips of the grass, twisted his head right, found Torrey. Their eyes met, and Joe mouthed the word: What? Torrey pointed at the steeple.

“Fuck.” Joe pressed his face to the ground. The job was his: he would have to move forward and find Reynolds. Fuck the S2, fuck battalion, fuck fuck fuck.

Joe had lifted his face a second time to find his point man when the sniper in the belfry-the son of a music professor from Bremen-took him in his sights: the bullet pierced his cheek, blowing fragments of bone and teeth up into his left eye, crossed the damp interior of his mouth, and found the far line of his teeth and sheered them off in a second explosion of bone and silver before blasting through his jawbone. “Lieutenant!” he heard. “Lieutenant!” And then more gunfire, the MGs and then the big German 88s opening up and his own machine guns firing in reply, and the thud of mortars all around, but nobody was asking him for orders; his men had pulled back, thinking him dead, and left him alone. His pain was surprisingly vague; he wondered if this meant the end was near, or had somehow already occurred. The first medic who reached him took his dog tags and hurried away; this man with the ruined face, one eye gone under bloody shadow, how could he still be alive? He lay in the grass through the rest of the day, listening to the distant contest for Magliano, looking through his one eye at the flattened sky, and what he thought of wasn’t the war, or the men with whom he’d fought-elsewhere now, pinned down by fire or sleeping on the hard floor of an empty farmhouse or moving through the trees on the far side of the little town-or the people he had left at home in Boston, Amy and his parents and his sister, Eileen, who would learn about his death, he guessed, a week from now or even later. None of these. He closed his one good eye and what he saw behind it was a lake, and mountains, and a river flowing through an open field into woods. Was this heaven? But it was a real place his mind saw; if he lived, he would find it, and claim it as his own.

They traveled north, and by the time they reached Waterville a gray dusk had fallen. They made their way wearily out of the empty station; at least the snow had stopped. In the lot he found the truck that had come with the bargain, a ’32 Ford with a rusted tailgate and bits of straw still in the bed. He searched the cab: no note, but taped to the steering wheel a map to the camp, and above the visor a heavy ring of keys. As Amy took the passenger seat, a sudden fear twisted through him: what if it didn’t start? But when he opened the choke and pressed the starter the old engine sputtered obediently to life.

Amy pulled her coat around the baby, who was still, somehow, asleep. “How far is it?”

He unfolded the map over the wheel. “A couple of hours. I guess it depends on the roads.” He had only made the drive in summer, when time did not matter and the weather was good; now he thought only of getting them to the camp before it got too late to travel safely. The road north, he knew, had no towns on it at all. It was entirely possible, where they were going, to lose your way in the dark, to become stranded and wait for hours, even a day, before somebody came along to help. The train had pulled away; the lot around them was empty, devoid even of tracks in the snow. He thought of trying to find a room for the night, but pushed this idea aside: in for a penny, in for a pound. He depressed the accelerator and listened as the engine settled smoothly back on its idle.

“Your new truck,” he said optimistically. “How do you like it?”

“You know, I never expected in my whole life even to own a truck.” Amy peered out the windows. “All right, where is everybody?”

“Inside, I guess. Keeping warm.”

“Maybe they know something we don’t.”

The roads were clear, and where the plows had not been, the snow was only a few inches deep. The storm had slid south, after all. They drove two hours, arriving at the camp in darkness. Huge drifts lined the long drive, eight miles in from the main road and following the river. The camp had been closed for three years, but the owners had left a caretaker-the same man, Joe supposed, who had plowed the drive and left the truck for them at the station. A dozen cabins sat on the lake, their windows shuttered and boarded up. Beyond them, the main lodge was a dark, uninviting bulk. It was all theirs, and the land besides, two hundred acres along the river and lake; he had purchased it all, virtually sight unseen, for forty thousand dollars.

At the end of the drive Joe parked the truck and turned off the engine. In the sudden silence they sat without speaking, amazed at what they’d done. So many months of planning; now they were here.

He took his wife’s hand. “Let’s get inside.”

The air in the lodge was musty and still, and smelled vaguely of animals. Joe tried the lights but nothing happened. A fuse had blown, or maybe some wires had been nibbled away by mice. The heat was out as well; their breath clouded thickly around them.

“Did something die in here?” Amy whispered.

“I can’t see a goddamn thing.” Joe stepped forward with his arms held protectively before his face. At once his right knee banged into something solid and sharp: the edge of a table. “Shit, shit, shit!” He tried to back away but his right foot tangled with the table’s leg. Something heavy and made of glass thudded to the floor. It rolled away unbroken, but then found a set of steps-steps? he thought; what steps?-and bounced down and away, picking up speed before shattering into pieces somewhere below them.