Glenn Taylor: The Marrowbone Marble Company

After that, when Ledford went flat on his bedding at night, he saw it: McDonough’s confused face and the way it was instantly changed into something no longer a face, into something Ledford’s brain could barely comprehend. His memory held no pictures such as this one. The only thing that came close was a sight he’d beheld as a boy. He’d come upon his father on the front porch, the dog whimpering and held off the ground by the scruff of its neck. His father swung a switch at the dog’s backside, just as if it was a boy who’d done wrong. At the corner of the porch, where the chipped floorboards came together, sat a heap of ruined leather. His father’s white buckskin mitt lay there, mauled almost unrecognizable. He’d kept it oiled regular since his time in the Blue Ridge League in 1915. Now the dog had gotten a hold of it and it was ragged-edged and wet and ripped from the inside out. Same as McDonough’s face.

Ledford played a little game with his brain for six straight nights in late September of 1942. The game played out on the backs of his eyelids, where the furnace fires had set his mind on visions. Now he’d lay down, shut his eyes, and here would come McDonough’s ragged-edged noface and his daddy’s exploded buckskin mitt and the squeal of the dog and the crack of the switch on short-haired hide. All of it would amplify against those eyelids until it became so loud that Ledford could not be still. He’d open his eyes and the sounds would quiet. But no man can hold open his eyes forever, and when they closed again, Ledford’s heart beat against his breastplate double-time, and he sat up bone straight for fear his own mind and body were killing him. On it would go like this until he got up from his bunk and swallowed sufficiently from his own pint or somebody else’s. Whiskey was the only thing to save him.

Erm Bacigalupo had won enough poker hands to own what little liquor the men had left. Some of it was Navy-smuggled, some of it was swiped from bombed-out Japanese camps. Either way, Ledford owed Erm for liquor. It was all written down on paper scraps Erm kept in his cigarette tin.

On the seventh night, the whiskey finally killed the pictures and howls in Ledford’s head. Rendered them temporarily gone.

He woke up the next day a new man. His voice had changed, gotten deeper. There was a whistle in his left ear. But from that morning on, Ledford was no longer visited by McDonough’s exploding face.

In the days to come, he saw other men suffer similar fates to McDonough’s. The enemy took to staking American heads on sharpened bamboo poles. It wasn’t long before a Marine returned the favor.

After a time, Ledford found a quiet space inside the whiskey bottle. It was the same place his daddy had once found.

Ledford listened to the woods. He watched the treetops sway. He slept easy and ate well.

Rachel’s letters saved him. He could get a hard-on just picturing the pen in her hand, moving across the paper he now held. I love you , she wrote, and he wrote it back.

October 1942 October 1942 November 1942 August 1945 May 1946 June 1946 September 1947 October 1947 November 1947 February 1948 May 1948 July 1948 September 1948 November 1948 April 1949 October 1951 June 1953 II - A House on the Sand June 1963 August 1963 September 1963 December 1964 February 1965 March 1965 April 1965 May 1966 June 1966 February 1967 June 1967 July 1967 September 1967 October 1967 February 1968 March 1968 April 1968 July 1968 December 1968 January 1969 Acknowledgments About the Author Also by Glenn Taylor Author’s Note About the Publisher Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

HE AWOKE IN HISfoxhole at 0300 hours. It was black and quiet. The dreams had visited him again, but already they were gone. At the mouth of his hole, Erm crouched, smoking a cigarette. “Let’s go,” he said.

Ledford stood. He slugged hard from Erm’s flask.

In front of him, Erm covered ground in silence. They put five miles behind them at a quick clip. Stopped, breathed, slugged the flask. Tucked themselves into the ridge folds west of the Bonegi and crept, then belly-crawled toward a small camp of sleeping Japanese. The rain beat in torrents. Its sound allowed them to move unheard. Its curtain allowed them to advance unseen. Single-file, they belly-crawled, stopping now and then to survey. Each gripped his .45. The mud sucked at their bellies and hips and knees.

Behind the enemy’s line, Erm looked for sleeping pairs.

He found two such men tucked inside a makeshift tent of bamboo shoots and canvas. He peeked inside the open flap, then signaled for Ledford to stand watch. Erm slipped inside. Ledford kept his head on a swivel, once or twice glancing at the sleeping men inside. Each had dropped off while eating a tin of rice, now emptied and atop their chests. Ledford watched the slow rise and fall. He listened to the snore, recognized the exhaustion. The rain kept up. There was no sign of movement on the perimeter. Erm reached from the tent and tapped his shoulder. Your knife , he mouthed. Ledford holstered his .45 and fished the dogleg jackknife from his breast pocket. It had been his father’s before him. Pearl-handled and well made. Thackery 1 of 10 etched by hand on the flat. He’d spent hours honing the bevel on a pocket stone.

Ledford watched Erm crawl between the two men. One of them wore a thin mustache, the other was clean-shaven. They were rail thin. Young as McDonough. Ledford looked at the lids of their closed eyes, barely discernible in the low glow of their lantern, its oil nearly spent. He watched the eyeballs rolling wildly underneath. It was deep sleep. Dream sleep. He wondered for a moment what haunted these men, and then he watched Erm looking from one to the other and back. He chose the one on the left, put his hand over his mouth and drove the jackknife into his jugular vein, pulling it across the throat with all the muscle his forearm could muster. Blood came fast and heavy, surging in time with the young man’s heart. Erm waited out the few soft gurgles, his eye on the other soldier, who continued to snore. He wiped the blade across the dead man’s still chest, one side and then the next, so that it made a red X next to the empty rice ration. He folded the blade shut and handed it to Ledford.

They left the tent and maneuvered back to blackness. On their way, Ledford considered the young soldier they’d left alive. He envisioned him stretching awake come morning, wiping the sleep from his eyes and turning to face his comrade. What horror the young man would experience—what confused detriment to arise to such a sight. This type of warfare could not be measured. It was more than payback for McDonough, more than putting a chopped head on a stick. More than taking a father forever from a baby girl whose picture he carried. This was what their drill instructor back in boot had told them would win wars. The man had sat in earshot until daybreak just to hear the screams of German boys echoing across the French forest. The awful screams. “Nothing like it for defeatin the enemy,” he’d told them. That was so long ago now. Now here he was.