Уильям Макгиверн - Soldiers of ’44

Corporal Schmitzer looked at the silent snow-curtained streets. “Empty towns like this spook me, sarge. We seen ’em in Tunisia.”

“I know, you figure somebody’s got a bad conscience.” Docker folded the map and tucked it under the dashboard of the jeep. “Keep an eye on things. I’m going to inspect the guns.”

“Sarge, the motor of your jeep is running rough. Want me to check it? I won’t strip it down. Just tune it. We got to snap shit out of here, we can haul ass.”

Docker decided then that he could depend on Schmitzer, which gave him Trankic, Solvis and a few of the others. “Okay, check it,” he said.

Schmitzer poured gasoline from a jerry can into a bucket and collected rags from the rear of the jeep, then stood watching Docker’s tall figure swinging into the sleet toward the machine guns.

The jeep’s motor was the only sound in the deserted town as snow fell on the engine block and evaporated in a series of sputtering eruptions.

Gelnick was eating from a can of K-rations with his fingers; cheese and bacon bits rimmed his brush mustache with yellow flecks.

Schmitzer said to him, “Gelnick, why don’t you heat some water in your helmet and give yourself a bath?”

A smile appeared on Gelnick’s lips. “Sarge told me to help Chet with the chow.”

“Then why in hell aren’t you?”

“I was just taking a break.” Gelnick’s smile was obsequious, practiced, but he was thinking. Fuck you, you monkey clown, shit on you, it would end and he would have Doris and his family instead of this rotten war which was just another fucking game loaded against him. Sergeant Korbick had tried to kill him back in that stinking Camp Stewart, but he couldn’t break him, no one could, not even Docker with his goy’s guilt, and so he’d make it, he thought, all the way back to Doris and home—

“So snap some ass,” Schmitzer said.

“Sure thing, you just watch me.” Gelnick smiled again and gave the corporal a big sweeping salute.

Schmitzer cleaned the spark plugs of Docker’s jeep. The engine sounded better then, not perfect, but he couldn’t do much more without stripping it. (Suddenly his thoughts burned again with a need for Sonny Laurel.)

To distract himself, Schmitzer emptied the bucket of gasoline, folded the rags and walked aimlessly around the fountain, staring at the stone archer and forcing himself to imagine what his Uncle Ernie would have said about it. He’d probably have shouted that it was put up by working stiffs so rich people could walk by it on fine nights with their ladies while a fat priest bowed to them from the church. Yeah, that’s what Uncle Ernie would say. He’d say the workers would get nothing but a cup of gruel and a shafting for using their stupid backs to make a statue that was just for rich people to smile at. Yes, he’d have said things like that if they hadn’t broken his crazy head in prison in Barcelona... Schmitzer’s mother and father hadn’t known for a long time that Ernie was in prison. They’d just stopped hearing from him. He had written from Madrid, letters full of excitement and bullshit about meeting writers and reporters. No way to know whether it was true or not, because Ernie was always half-crazy anyway, joining weird groups, picketing plants he’d never punched a time clock in... Uncle Ernie was like a dog in heat to get to Spain. Then they’d got a handwritten Christmas card from him in Spanish, and that’s when they knew he was in jail. He must have got someone to write it for him, and bribed a guard to get it out.

J yamas iran al olvido—

A quellas pascuas pasadas—

I nolvidables han sido—

L as familiares veladas—

Schmitzer took it to a high school teacher who had liked him and she had translated it for him. But it was Schmitzer’s father who figured out what the poem really meant because he saw that the first letter of each line, in Spanish and in English, spelled out the word J-A-I–L.

J ust remember, I’ll never forget—

A ll those Christmas days gone by—

I neradicably stamped in my head—

L ovely memories are held high—

The little poem told them what had happened to Uncle Ernie — and what a wild story he would have made about how he had suckered the Spanish jailers with that message, except they’d split his head and killed him before he had a chance to tell everybody how smart he was. But what the hell was he doing off in Spain with a lot of other crazy Americans, anyway, what the fuck business was it of theirs...?

Schmitzer checked the jeep again; it sounded fine, but he couldn’t concentrate on the rhythmic thrust of the pistons, the smooth hum of the motor, or even what was around him, Dormund pumping the stoves and Gelnick still feeding his face with the cheese and bacon. The snow and sleet that cut his cheeks and the backs of his wrists, he tried to think about that, tried consciously to feel it, but he couldn’t, not any more than he could keep his mind on the statue of the archer and his crazy Uncle Ernie dead in Barcelona or even the other deaths that were always present in his mind, his father with the gun in his hand at the empty coal bin and the portholes welded shut on the Lex . They had all become shadows through which the face of Sonny Laurel stared at him, lips soft and curved in laughter, eyes clear and fresh and gay... Schmitzer had tried to convince himself over the past few days that his pleasure in the boy was only natural, the way he’d probably feel about anything that pleased him... like a freshly ironed shirt, a hot meal at a table, a shower he didn’t have to share with a dozen other guys... it was normal enough, wasn’t it, for a veteran noncom to look after a raw recruit, help him on the guns, answer his questions? The effort it took to justify this had made Schmitzer sullen, resentful; his feelings were so close to the surface that he had begun to imagine that some of the men in the section were watching him. Screw them, he had nothing to apologize for. Hell, the proof of it was a talk he’d had with Laurel a day or so ago... They were together in the cab of the truck and Sonny had said he’d been afraid the war would be over before he had a chance to get into it. And because Schmitzer believed he knew certain things about life, he’d taken that opportunity to explain them to the boy. Was there anything the hell wrong with that? Anything strange or funny about helping out a younger guy? He’d said, “Look, you’re nineteen, I’m twenty-six. So listen to me... you didn’t have to worry about getting into the war because they were killing people all over the world to make room for you.” He’d paused to search for words, picking at skeins of thought as clumsily as if he were sorting them with mittened fingers... “So here’s the thing to remember, don’t make room for nobody else here. We stay alive. This section’s like a factory with all the jobs filled. No vacancies, no fucking help wanted. Keep that in your head and you’ll be all right...”

Maybe the way he felt about death, he was thinking, glancing with instinctive caution down the empty streets of Werpen, maybe that feeling explained his attraction to Sonny Laurel, a powerful, almost painful response to someone so alive . He welcomed a sudden distracting sound, relief from the tensions of his thoughts... a vehicle laboring up through the woods to the town, the motor’s echo flat and muffled under the heavy fog. He picked up his rifle, which he had propped against the jeep, and as he snapped a round into the chamber saw Docker running back into the square, his head turned toward the sound of the laboring engine.

The sergeant climbed onto the rim of the fountain, tracking the valley with his binoculars until he picked up a command car traveling through dark stands of trees. Stepping down, he said to Gelnick, “You better get lost for a while. Go on into the church and light a candle or something.”