Michelle Hoover - Bottomland

“Hey, Hush,” Critters yelled out. “You K.P. now?” The rabbits turned on sticks over the fire. I held another by its hind legs, threading it. When the boys showed, Schmidt seemed some worried. But with a nod from me, he waved them through the gate.

“This is fine,” Bullet said.

“That’s it, Hush.” It was Stan this time. He squatted next to me as I fixed the rabbits. “That’s how you do it.”

We sat on logs around the fire to eat. The girl had joined us, edged close to her father and her face hidden. All but two eyes, she was, and Schmidt put an arm over her shoulder. She looked out from her blanket, studying us.

“What’s up with the girl?” Stan asked.

I shrugged. It didn’t feel right, telling something like that. Something about what a soldier might have done to a girl if he was hungry enough. A German soldier too.

“Haven’t seen a girl in months,” Stan said. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a tin of mints, offered them to her. With his grin, he moved himself closer. I jerked him back.

“What’s with you?” Stan barked.

“Leave her be.” I pushed at him.

Stan was on his feet. “Not so hush now, are you?”

“Hey,” Critters called, palms out. Schmidt reared up. The rabbits spit and burned on the fire. Critters passed me a stick, passed Schmidt another, then Stan. “These are the old man’s rabbits. He’s sharing.” Schmidt sat, pinching his knee. Stan bit the meat right off. “Hess,” he whispered. “You’ve got some German in you yet.”

Critters cleared his throat. “If the war’s done, we have us some celebrating.” He took a bar of chocolate from his bag and broke it into bites. “Peace!” he said, handing them out. “Thanks to the blondie on the fence.”

That small piece of chocolate, it melted away in my hand. All day we’d heard our guns, but now Fritz stayed quiet. Still, done seemed different. Stan sat there, brooding. He wasn’t even close to grinning now. The others licked their fingers. Schmidt brought out a jug of schnapps, tin mugs from the Huns. We raised our drinks. With a nudge from Bullet, Stan raised his too. We were soon enough blurry. Schmidt took the girl under his arm again and Critters, he started to sing.

There’s a long, long trail a-winding

Into the land of my dreams

Where the nightingales are singing

And a white moon beams.

It grew darker than it’d been. The fire flared and dropped off easy. We were close to nowhere. We were closer to shadows. The sky above was black and clean, the fire cracking. Soon Critters’ voice settled, the rest of us quiet. In the low light, we were noses and cheeks. Only the girl was different, being a girl. But as the fire settled and the rabbits were bones, she wasn’t so very much. We sat loose and head-heavy on those logs.

When at last we turned to make bunks, Critters was the first to take to his feet. “Hey, Stan,” he said. “Hush didn’t mean it, right? It’s just a girl.”

I hit my fist to Stan’s shoulder. He hooked an arm around my neck, like Ray had always done. “We’re all right,” Stan said. I smelled the schnapps on his breath. “War’s near to over, Hush. We’ll be the best now.”

That night, we made our beds in Schmidt’s barn and surely did sleep. I unlaced my boots. Didn’t take them off. We’d beaten the Germans to a frazzle. Heard told, even the prisoners didn’t care a fig for the war anymore. But it was days more for us to be brought in. My feet would have to keep until we got back.

As I drifted off, I could taste those rabbits. I could even dream them. Stan, he lay next to me and whistled as he snored. We’re all right , he’d said. With the smell of meat on my fingers, I slept with my hands against my cheek to keep that smell close.

“Hush, you coming?” Out on the road that morning, I stumbled to keep up with the boys. Schmidt had left bread by the door for breakfast, but we couldn’t find him in the house. Couldn’t find the girl. Before the rest of us woke, Stan had gone looking himself. “Nowhere,” he said, tucking in his shirt. “Not her old man, either.” Guns boomed in the distance. From our side, they were going some loud. Bullet had gotten us a truck. We could ride with the men coming in from the lines. The driver, he was a sergeant, Bullet said. He could just as well order us. And he’d fit us in if we could hang onto our seats. Bullet waved me to hurry, but I walked on dead feet. We’d have to hold on some good. That truck couldn’t take so many at once. I was closer then, I was closer than that. The guns went quiet. Critters let out a whoop. They all did, whooping, and I stopped and looked back. We knew what it meant. The sergeant whooped too as he started his engine. “We’re leaving ya,” Critters joked. “We’re on vacation now.” When he turned around, the truck jumped, the sergeant wheeling out of the mud. I was running as best I could. I could have been running on bread as much as feet. Another twist of the wheel and Stan waved his hat. “Hush!” he yelled. A sharp crack. A sound that snapped in my stomach. The truck broke skyward with a flash. I was thrown off my feet, the boys worse than that. The blast so loud it didn’t have any sound at all.

“You can’t stay here all night.”

The waitress stood over me, holding her coffee pot. My head had fallen, spit running from the corner of my mouth. I raised my eyes and the room was a twirl. When the waitress snapped her fingers, the room came back. Outside, the streetlights had gone out. An hour or two, maybe more I’d lost. Without her hairnet, the waitress was red-haired and pretty. She poured another cup. “That’s it,” she said. “I’m off my shift already. You drink that and get on with it, or Bill will show you another way to the street.”

I stood, surprised to feel my feet under me, though they ached. The coffee tasted a razor, but it woke me up. I felt two places at once, the space in my head too big for comfort. I put on my hat and hurried out.

It was terrible cold. The snow was blue underfoot, the sky black. I walked. There wasn’t a soul in the streets. That white space on my map with the name LAKE MICHIGAN, I could just as well have been walking on its surface if anyplace else. During the war, before rabbits, before those five days in the woods, I remembered standing on the German lines. We knew we were near the end. The Germans had pulled back. They weren’t so much for shooting us. Looking across, I thought I’d see what marked them as different. But the land on the other side didn’t show much. Grass and hills. A couple of shot-up houses, same as the villages where we camped. I don’t know why I’d imagined it a separate place. Our maps showed that line, how it cut the land off straight. Over there, that was where Father was born. That’s where he grew to a man. Must have been a drop of something in that water to turn Father so driven and a whole country to start a war like that. That drop, maybe I had it in me too.

I puzzled over that. It was a kind of white space splitting me in half. Out by that fire, I picked Schmidt and his girl over Stan. For only a minute I did. As if sides were required. Just a little thing, my pushing at him. But maybe little things were bigger than a person thought. It made a man believe in blood, good and bad.

I had stepped on a boat and stepped off someplace else. That’s all I could figure. When I landed in France, the farm was so many weeks gone. I couldn’t get the distance straight. Step off one spot of land and step onto another, as if a person could drift anywhere on that ocean. And not one of the boys knew what our farm looked like. When I woke in the hospital, that was something I couldn’t get my head around. The boys were gone. I’d been missing for days myself, weeks even. Even if I couldn’t figure how. Everything went missing, I thought.