Alone Together 2/4
Title: Alone Together 2/4
Author: buffyaddict13
Fandom: Band of Brothers
Rating: PG-13
Total Words: ~22,000
Characters/Pairing: Gen, Ed Tipper, Joe Liebgott, Jim "Moe" Alley, glimpses of the rest of the Easy Guys
Disclaimer: I don't own the Band of Brothers book or miniseries. This fic is based on the series and not the real men. I have always loved the scene in Carentan where Lieb comforts Tip and I based this fic on the friendship I created for them. This fic is gen, but if you squint and look sideways, it might be considered slash!lite if you like that kind of thing. It's a love story about friendship, if that makes any sense.
A/N 1: The first chapter is from Tip's POV, the second chapter will be from Liebgott's, and the third and fourth chapters will go back and forth between their POVs.
A/N 2: It used to break my heart some that Joe Liebgott never contacted the rest of the Easy Company guys and that he didn't tell his family he was in the war. And, although that makes me sad, I also understand his decision for distancing himself from what he went through and I respect him beyond words. I love how he pulled himself together and created a new life for himself. Most of all, I love that he found happiness. Joe Liebgott, I salute you. Psst. You too, Tip.
A/N 3: Thank you very much to hiyacynth and luckinfovely for the beta. I'd give you my last pack of Lucky Strikes. If I smoked.
Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.
~Norman Cousins
Lieb hunches himself into the bottom of the foxhole. Alley sits next to him, snoring away. Asshole. Tip's half dead, Tab's got a bayonet to the gut, how the fuck can Moe sleep?
Joe folds his arms, leans his head against his rifle. Every time he closes his eyes he sees Ed's bloody face, his fuckin' eye. Jesus.
He stretches out his leg, kicks Moe's shin.
Moe jerks awake, stares at Lieb. "Huh? What?" He cranes his head around, peers over the top of the hole. "What's going on?"
Joe glares at him. "If I'm awake, you're awake."
Alley sighs, rolls his eyes. "Come on, Joe," he says, wheedling, "that's just cruel."
"No it ain't. Maybe you gotta protect me from Smith in case he feels like stabbin' a few more guys."
More eye rolling. "Very funny."
Liebgott sits in the dark, listening. He listens for the sound of a twig being stepped on. He listens for the sound of gunfire, the distant roar of a tank. He listens for whispered German, the bark of dog, the sound of breathing behind him. All he hears is a bunch of nothing.
"Hey," Alley whispers after a while. "You think Tip's gonna be okay?"
Lieb shifts in the dirt, stares at Moe from beneath his helmet. "Sorry I woke ya, buddy. Might as well go back to sleep while ya still got the chance."
"What about you?"
Lieb shrugs, looks away. "I ain't tired."
* * *
Fuck fuck fuck. Alley's hit bad, he's hit bad, he's all torn up, his whole side, neck, chest, leg--fuck.
No matter what he does his friends keep dropping while he just stands there, watching. They get Alley on the table and Winters is there, and Tab and then Roe--thank God--Roe is there. Roe's all business, in full Doc mode and Alley's gonna be okay, he is, because fuck if Joe is gonna lose Tip and Alley.
Joe doesn't even realize he's bleeding at first, he thinks all the blood is Moe's, but Eugene hands him a bandage. Roe gives him a stern look, points at neck.
"You take care of that," Gene says, and that's the first time Joe feels the pain.
Winters leads them into the dark and Lieb's glad to follow. He wants (needs) to be doing something, wants to get back at those fuckin' Krauts for hittin' Alley. And Tip.
They're outside all night. It rains on and off. It's wet and miserable, but they pick off a bunch of Germans on top of a hill, which is fuckin' awesome. Then they get pinned down. Winters calls for reinforcements. Dukeman gets hit. One shot, and the guy's gone. One minute he's Dukeman, the next he's a fuckin' doll.
Winters leads them to the top of a dike and they spend all morning shooting Nazis like fish in a barrel. Joe lies on the road, one eye closed, tongue tucked between his teeth, and takes careful aim every time. Aim, squeeze the trigger, fire. Aim, squeeze the trigger, fire.
Pretty soon there's a field of dead and wounded SS but Joe's not done. He lies there, watching for movement. Maybe that fuck there is the one who sent Tipper the mail back in Carentan. Maybe that fuck there threw the grenade at Alley. Maybe that bastard trying to crawl away like a fuckin' cocksucker bastard knows where Joe's aunt from Munich went to. Maybe he don't. Either way, they're still Nazis, and they still gotta die.
"Joe."
Some asshole whacks his arm. "Joe. Knock it off."
"Goddammit, what?" Joe barks at the interruption. Oh. The asshole turns out to be Winters. Well, shit.
Winters touches Joe's neck, his finger comes away red. "You're bleeding."
Joe shrugs off Winters' concern. "Ah, it's nothin', Cap."
"I want you to take these prisoners back to Battalion CP and get yourself cleaned up."
Lieb gets to his feet. "Yes sir." No problem. In fact, his day just got better. Joe nearly sings, "Come on Kraut boys."
"Joe."
Liebgott turns back to the Captain. "Yeah?"
"Drop your ammo."
Joe's forehead creases. Obviously he misheard. "What?"
Winters speaks slowly, calmly. "Drop. Your. Ammo."
"Are you kiddin' me?" Joe asks. "What are you--" He doesn't get to finish because Winters isn't kidding, and what he's doing is grabbing Joe's rifle and pulling the ammo out. Winters leaves one fuckin' round. Joe stares mutely, seething. Fine, Winters wants the prisoners back alive, Joe can do that. They're gettin' a helluva lot better deal than Dukeman did.
Joe grins at the disheveled soldiers, winks, full of giddy hatred. At least there's some justice in a Jew leading these Nazi arschlochs off to prison. "Mach schnell, boys," he beams, and gestures them forward with his rifle. He double times them toward the CP, while his neck bleeds.
His dog tags clink beneath his shirt and he imagines he can feel the C burn against his skin. Being Catholic doesn't mean anything. He still got the shit beat out of him, his Pop still got snubbed on the street. It didn't keep his Ma's sister or his cousins from disappearing into thin air. He might be a Jew, but he doesn't believe in any kind of religion. Which is pretty funny when you figure his last name practically means "dear God" in German. From what Joe can tell, God ain't worth believing in. If God's so dear and great and loving, why's half the world stuck in the middle of another goddamn war? There's a shitload of propaganda, but nobody's cranked out a pamphlet with a nifty little answer to that question yet.
One of the Krauts has a bum leg, there's a blood-soaked cloth wrapped above his knee. The man stumbles, and Joe shoves him in the back, hard. The soldier turns to glance back at him, big eyes stuck in a pale baby face. Christ, he's not a man at all, he's a little kid. He's fourteen, fifteen at the most. Shit, this kid oughtta be learning to sew swastikas onto flags in Hitler Youth, not getting his leg shot up in the middle of Holland.
The kid's eyes are leaking like a roof and Joe's throat gets small and hot. Each swallow is like trying to choke down a bullet. His smile falls off. He doesn't try to catch it. He leaves it back on the dusty road and keeps marching, silent, face blank.
* * *
Lieb's got a letter from Tipper in his pocket. He doesn't open it. Sometimes, when Alley's asleep he prods it out of his pocket with stiff blue fingers and studies Tip's handwriting. The letter is addressed to Pfc. Joseph D. Liebgott in Tip's neat handwriting. Jesus, the guy gets blown up and still writes like he's teachin' friggin' penmanship.
Still, Ed must be okay. If he's writing letters, he ain't exactly dead. So that's good. Tipper being alive and safe, that's about the only Christmas present Joe's got this year. Well, he's got Alley too. Jim busted out of the hospital just in time to sit in a snowbank with the rest of the 506 guys.
They sit in their hole, bundled together and sing Christmas carols. It's ridiculous, but Alley can carry a tune, and it's better than listening to Toye sing those fuckin' ballads. Joe's not exactly in a festive mood, but singing keeps his mind off the cold, pulls him back to all night marches and the hot Georgia summer. He's glad to go back.
They're supposed to be holding the line around Bastogne, but mostly they're just freezing. They lose over a dozen guys to trench foot, frostbite, hypothermia, pneumonia. Julian gets killed on patrol, then Welsh and Gordon and Sisk are wounded.
Word is, Smokey's hurt bad. Roe says he's paralyzed but Joe can't think about that. If he thinks too hard about Smokey, Joe's liable to put a bullet in his head or poor old Alley's or run screaming toward the Germans, tossing grenades like snowballs until they mow him down.
Winters pulls him off the line to be his runner for a few days. Joe knows it's a decent thing to do, Winters is a good leader, a nice guy, even if he doesn't let Joe kill Kraut prisoners whenever he feels like it. Lieb spends three days delivering messages, watching Nixon get drunk, drinking only half-shitty coffee, and regaining feeling in his toes. And, as much as he hates being on the line, he feels guilty for being off it. He spends the fourth day translating German for Winters and Sink and worrying about Alley and Hoob and Luz.
He gets back to his foxhole just in time to hear Hoobler shoot himself to death. Then Guarnere and Toye get their fuckin' legs blown off and Compton falls apart. Joe doesn't blame Compton one bit. Lieb's feeling pretty cracked himself. He's never been a huge fan of Wild Bill, but he sure as fuck never wanted anything like this to happen. Bill's always been kind of an asshole, but so has Joe. Their respective assholishness is like when you've got two magnets with opposite poles or whatever. Bill and Joe can't get too close, even if they want to. That's just how it is. Toye, on the other hand is the best soldier in Easy. He's been wounded about a million times, and the guy keeps comin' back. Not anymore.
But the worst, the fuckin' worst, is when Muck and Penkala get it. Joe don't know Penk well, but Muck was a fuckin' prince. Bill and Joe might be assholes, but Muck's the nicest, funniest guy Joe's ever met. He's nicer than Ed Tipper, and that's like being nicer than the fuckin' Pope. Skip don't (didn't) have an asshole bone in his body. Jesus, everybody likes him. Everybody. Joe's pretty sure if Muck had been captured as a POW, the Krauts woulda got into fistfights over who got to interrogate him.
Malarkey sits around like a statue, eyes turned inward. Joe tells Alley he's gonna see if he can take a leak without freezing his dick off. He floats across the snow, like a ghost. He can't feel his feet, his lower legs, nothin'. He's pretty sure if he stepped on a mine he wouldn't even notice until he saw his feet go flying. He doesn't have any feeling until right around his kneecaps. Lieb has to look at the ground to keep from tripping. He stumbles behind a lopsided spruce and and cries into his fist. He doesn't know if he's crying for Muck or all the other guys they lost, or himself.
Maybe he's crying cuz Tip went and left him behind in Normandy and Joe's fucking tired and miserable and scared. He's scared all the time.
Maybe he's crying cuz he's so goddamn cold. He's shaking so hard the muscles in his neck feel like wires pulling on his skull. It gives him a splitting headache.
Lieb wipes his face with the back of his wool mitten, sniffs, blinks hard.
He pulls Tip's letter out of his pocket, looks at the damp handwriting. He doesn't even know the guy Ed wrote that letter to anymore. That guy Tip was friends with, well. Joe doesn't think there's much of him left. Joe returns the letter to its place of safekeeping and floats back through the snow to camp.
Liebgott shivers beside Alley and looks at his blue and ivory hands. They look like marble. He moves his tongue over the canker sores in his mouth. He counts seven. His mouth tastes like rust. He stares at the snow and the sky and eventually he can't tell the difference. Mostly, he leans his head against the icy wall of their hole and waits. There's a lot of waiting in war.
He hopes he doesn't have to wait too much longer to catch the bullet with his name on it. He's more than ready to be done with this shitty war, with life, with everything.
* * *
Joe doesn't catch a bullet. Webb does though. Perco too. The attack on Foy is successful thanks to Speirs. Joe smirks a little to himself. Looks like Winters don't mind guys who shoot POWs too bad after all.
They're supposed to go back to Mourmelon after Foy, but that plan goes out the window pretty quick. Turns out they're going to Haguenau to clean up somebody else's mess. Again.
Still, Haguenau has food and buildings and beds so Joe doesn't complain. Haguenau has something else, too: David Webster.
Webster comes swaggering over to their truck, like he's waiting for his own personal ticker-tape parade, like taking four months to get back to Easy's a friggin' world record. Joe hasn't punched anybody in the face for a goodly while and he kind of wants to punch Webster. His fist is itching for it.
But then Web opens his big stupid mouth and asks about Hoobler and Bill and Joe doesn't want to hit the asshole anymore. He doesn't even want to look at him.
David Webster's the smartest moron Joe's ever met. He's Mister Harvard and waves his fancy vocabulary like a fuckin' flag, and he's annoying as hell. But he's got something going for him the rest of the guys don't. David Webster wasn't at Bastogne. And that, right there, makes him somebody Joe wants to hang around with.
It's not like the other guys talk about Bastogne--they don't. It was hard enough to live through, there's no sense talking about it. But the men don't need to speak about their time there. Memories linger like fog. Like shadows. The sadness in Malark's eyes, the weariness that Lip carries, Skinny's limp, Muck's absence, those aren't things that can be washed away. Malarkey tries though.
So it's just easier to be around Webster because he wasn't there. Most of the guys resent Web for his notorious absence, and Joe plays along. But if the only way Joe can get to sleep is by pretending he wasn't there either, that's his business.
Every time Web opens his mouth, somebody gets mad at him. Okay, so usually it's Lieb who's getting mad, but Johnny takes a turn, so do Malarkey and Heffron. Joe can't quite tell if Web was actually trying to get him out of the patrol across the river. Lieb doesn't give a shit if Web meant to or not. All he knows is he's gonna be on this side of the river tonight and that's a-ok with him. He throws Web a wink and a smile.
When the guys get back, they've got a couple of German prisoners and a near-dead Jackson. Jackson's fully dead in another ten minutes. Joe doesn't stick around. He walks through the remains of the city, without his coat, helmet in one hand. He walks past the holes the 88s left in the cement, past bloody snow and gray slush.
Joe walks by himself, one hand trailing cold brick buildings, the other swinging his helmet against his thigh. It goes thump, thump thump. Then he counts to three and does it again. Thump, thump, thump. It's a little like music.
He mutters to himself, not much. Just a handful of words. He's waiting for the sound of a freight train to fill the sky. For a different kind of train to take him than the ones he's heard carried the German and Polish Jews away. Joe's ready to go, he's got his bags packed, yes sir.
So he walks from Speirs' CP to the crumbling building the men are bivouacked in, and back. He goes back and forth. He's on his fifth circuit when Luz appears next to him, cigarette dangling precariously from his lower lip. He turns to Luz, and Luz isn't smiling. Luz still smokes plenty, but he doesn't smile much anymore. You'd have to be crazy to be able to smile after all the shit they've been through.
Joe grins. He winks at Luz. "Heya George," he says. He keeps walking, helmet thumping, finger drawing invisible lines against ashen brick.
"Joe," Luz says slowly, "you doin' okay?'
Joe nods. "I'm great." He tips his head toward Luz, whispers conspiratorially. "I'm just waitin'."
Luz looks around, confused. "For what?"
"The train." He points upward, hums a few bars of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.
George falters, but keeps walking. Joe gives him credit for that. Everybody thinks Luz is just some goof, but he's way braver than Joe. The guy's got balls as big as that fuckin' radio he lugs around. He nudges Luz in the chest with his helmet. "You're brave," Joe tells him. "Do you even know that?" Also, George's hair is too damn long. His bangs look like one of those little hand brooms. If Joe had his stuff, he'd offer to cut Luz's hair.
George rolls his eyes up into his bristly bangs. "For fuck's sake, Liebgott, are you drunk?" He scratches his head. "You're makin' me kinda nervous, here."
Joe grimaces. "I wish I was drunk."
Luz's mouth makes a relieved shape, but his eyes still look scared. He elbows Joe's shoulder. "Well, that, at least, I can help you with." He grabs Joe's helmet, plunks it back on Lieb's head with a little flourish. "Come on." George steers Joe back toward headquarters.
Joe has the strange feeling he and Luz have slipped into pre-assigned characters. Like, like they're in some kind of backassward school production of Our Town, only theirs is called Army Town and it's pretty fuckin' awful. It's so bad, half the other actors keep gettin' up and walkin' out. So he and Luz walk down the street, both trying to be the person everyone expects them to be, but neither man actually himself.
By now, Lieb doesn't think he knows how to be himself. Or who the fuck that even is.
He hopes Luz has better luck.
* * *
Joe Liebgott doesn't realize the world's about to end.
He's too busy joking around with Web. That guy is so easy to rile up. Jeez, Joe actually had to try with Tip. They're all jammed in the back of a truck heading deeper into Germany. He's felt a little better since getting soused with Luz. Maybe that's all he needed, some booze, a few extra smokes, and a lengthy discussion on which Andrews Sister is the worthiest fuck.
Joe never really noticed before, but every once in a while, Luz reminds him of Winters. Or Lip. All three of them are the kind of guys who worry more about the other fellas than themselves. Sometimes Joe forgets how damn lucky he is to be in Easy. If he was with some other company, he'd have probably bought the farm months ago.
Today the sky is blue and the weather's mild and they're all belting out Gory, gory what a helluva way to die while their convoy bumps deeper into Germany. Kraut troops are surrendering right and left. Luz is goofing on Janovec and Perco's brushing his teeth and Web's writing in his little diary.
The wind ruffles Joe's hair and for the first time in forever, he thinks about San Francisco and cold bottles of Coca-Cola and comic books. He knows just what he's gonna do when he gets back home. He's got a whole plan now, and he's feeling so friggin' okay he decides to let Web in on it.
"First thing I'm gonna do is get my job back at the cab company in Frisco. Make a killing off all those fucking sailors coming home, you know?" After that, maybe he'll open a little barber shop. Work his own hours. That'd be the life.
"Then I'm gonna find me a nice Jewish girl with great, big, soft titties--" Joe helpfully demonstrates the proper size because with all Web's book learning he might not be too familiar with girls or their titties, "--and a smile to die for. Marry her. Then I'm gonna buy a house. A big house with lots of bedrooms for all the little Liebgotts we're gonna be making. She oughtta like that." Joe nods. Yeah. He's gonna like it too. Who knows, the way things are going, he just might read Tip's letter one of these days.
That afternoon, when Joe sees a nervous Perco run past looking for Winters, that's his sign. He doesn't know it yet. He has about another half hour before he learns exactly how broken the world really is, how damaged, how fucked up beyond all reason. Later, he'll think about Perco running pell-mell, the look on his face. He'll want to blame Perconte for finding the camp, for bringing them there, but he can't. He can't. It's not Perco's fault.
* * *
Three words are all it takes.
Juden. Juden. Juden.
With those three words, Liebgott understands more than he ever wants to. He understands what happened to his aunt, his cousins, to thousands of Jews across Germany and Poland, to musicians, tailors, Gypsies, to people. He keeps thinking he sees Ma's face, his little sisters, among the piles of corpses which is stupid because this is a men's camp.
But there's a women's camp a mile away.
Sitting here, in the back of the truck, Joe feels like he's floating again, just like he did in Jack's Woods. He can't feel his feet or his hands. He's dizzy. He keeps seeing the look on their gaunt faces when he told them to go back inside. The anger. Fear. Betrayal. Joe understands perfectly because their emotions mirror his.
If his parents hadn't come to America, he could be one of these ragged men. One of the countless rotting bodies wreathed in flies. He could have been stuffed inside a train car, incinerated inside a stinking hut while men burned silently beside him, too weak to scream. What makes Joe any different from these haunted, ruined men? Nothing.
Nothing.
Joe puts his hand to his head, as if he can somehow yank the memories of the last five hours out of his brain. He doesn't want to see this. He doesn't want to hear the constant sobbing, muttering, praying. He doesn't want to know a place like this exists.
But he does.
And he'll never forget.
Alley and Sisk and Web are trying to talk to him, (hovering like flies) but he ignores them, their useless words. He wraps his arms around his head and tries to wish himself back into a wet foxhole in Holland. Hell, he'll even take Bastogne over this. Let him trade with Muck or Penkala. His hair smells like smoke and decay and cheese. His hands smell like saltwater and guilt.
Webster's tone of voice is all righteous indignation and effrontery and all Joe wants is to be left alone. He wants them to go away, he wants to go away. And then Webster touches him. He puts his Harvard hand on Lieb's shoulder and that's it.
Joe's on his feet in an instant, snarling, and shoves Web hard against the side of the truck. He wants David Webster to punch him square in the face, blacken his eyes, split his lip, break his jaw. He wants Webster to beat the everliving shit out of him for not knowing this was going on, for thinking his mom was paranoid, for daring to believe people were better than this. He stares at Web, eyed narrowed, chin raised. He sneers, gestures Web closer. "Come on," Lieb says, his voice sharp and coiled, the sound of barbed wire.
Webster is stunned. He stands there, wide-eyed and helpless. He flicks a gaze toward Skinny and Moe. "Joe, I--"
Joe smiles wider, and it hurts like a fuckin' razor, but he can't stop. He winks, like this is a game, like it's all in good fun, but "good" and "fun" are over and done with now, forever and ever, amen.
"Come on," Lieb spits. "Do it. You've been dying to punch my Jew face for weeks, right? Go ahead, Webster. Here's your chance."
Web flinches at the word "Jew," which makes Lieb even more furious. He wants to beat the fuck out of everyone here, out of--
There's an emaciated Jew standing at the fence. He's looking at Liebgott and his face is a skull. There's an expression of such loss on the man's face, Joe's lungs seem to seize up. He can't breathe.
All Joe's anger, his double-edged words float away. They join the smoke above the camp and drift.
Their eyes lock and all Joe wants is to scream and beg and plead I'm sorry I'm so fuckin' sorry, I'll be sorry for the rest a my life and all my death and I'd do anything to fix this, to make this unhappen to you, I'm sorry sorry sorry.
And the man stands there, hands resting on twisted wire like pale birds and crazily, Joe thinks of that story about Sobel and the wire cutters and Luz and this should all be a joke, this shouldn't be real, Tip should be here and Joe shouldn't and the man's eyes hold him still and say I am still alive, I still matter and worst of all I still forgive you.
Joe pulls in a long shuddering breath.
Then he launches himself off the back of the truck. He's always been a fast runner. Here's his chance to see just how fast. He's not Joe Liebgott now, he's Buck Compton and he's getting. The fuck. Out.
There are shouts behind him and one of them might or might not be Winters, but Lieb's long past giving a shit, and his feet pound dirt, then grass. With each step his heart hammers Juden. Juden. Juden.
Liebgott runs until the muscles in his side cramp up, and then his legs. He runs until sweat drips from his hair, until he's nothing but movement and the world around him blanks out. He runs until he's gasping for breath, until he's crying again, until Skinny and Web tackle him to the ground and hold his arms.
Joe lies on his back in a clearing. He can see blue pieces of sky between gnarled branches. The grass is tall. A rock is pressing against his spine. Pale ovals of worry make soothing noises at him, but Liebgott's still running, running, running.
* * *
Speirs orders Liebgott and Sisk to eliminate Kommandant Erhard Koch. Koch is a Nazi, he was in charge of the guards at one of the camps. Speirs thinks it was Dachau but the records are sketchy.
Joe knows why Speirs picks him for the job; he's fine with it. Most of the guys have heard about him losing it at the Camp. Lieb doesn't care. He doesn't care about much, actually. Highest on his list of things he no longer cares about are: sleep, food, conversation, and giving a fuck. But shooting a Nazi in the head sounds pretty okay.
Skinny doesn't say much, just salutes and follows Lieb. Web volunteers to come along. Lieb's not really surprised. Webster's been following him around like the world's most annoying nanny for days. Lieb wants to be angry, pissed off, but he can't find the energy.
The three of them head for the Bavarian hills where Koch's supposed to be hiding. Joe studies the map, Skinny drives. Webster sits in the back, silent, arms folded.
It takes a little over an hour. Skinny stops the jeep on a dirt road. A few hundred feet ahead is a ramshackle old house, the very definition of "hide out."
As soon as Joe gets out of the jeep, he knows this is the right place. He knows he's going to kill a Nazi and it won't fix anything or bring anyone back from the dead, but it'll make him feel better. This isn't murder. It's not revenge. It just is.
Lieb starts yelling the minute they bust into the cabin. Joe thinks he's gonna be calm, he thinks he's be all sane and soldierly, but as soon as the fat fuck starts yelling nein, nein Joe's got his gun right up in his Nazi face.
Joe grabs the asshole's shirt, shoves him into a chair. "Do you know what you did to my fucking people?" Joe screams, spittle flying.
That's when Web goes outside. Koch tries to lie, but Liebgott shakes his head, then the gun. "Sagen sie die wahrheit," Leib says. Tell the truth. He grabs a tin cup off the table, throws it across the room. "Keine lügen!" No lies.
Koch's eyes roll up toward the ceiling, then back at Joe He sighs heavily. Bows his head. "Ja," he admits in broken English. "I kill Jews." He lifts his head, a slow, steady smile spreading across his round face. "Was good." The smile reaches his eyes. They watch Liebgott without fear. "Sehr gut."
Joe takes a step backwards, stomach dropping like a stone. He cannot believe what he's hearing. What the fuckin' fuck is wrong with these people? Killing Jews is very good?
Skinny appears beside the table.
"He was at the camps," Joe tells him raggedly. "He just fuckin' admitted he likes killin' Jews."
Skinny looks like he's contemplating shooting the Nazi right then. Then he turns and slips outside.
Joe smiles at Koch, teeth showing. "Killin' Nazis ain't so bad either, asshole," he says and pulls the trigger.
The fucker might look like a big pile of dough, but he's fast. He jerks at the same time Lieb fires and what should have been a head shot grazes Koch's neck. He scrambles out of the chair, screaming, "Ich werde nicht von einem Juden getötet,:" that he won't be killed by a Jew.
He bangs out the back door and Joe chases after him, cursing. He aims again, pulls the trigger and--nothing. "Dammit sonofabitch" He looks at Web, desperate. "Shoot him."
The Nazi's still running for the top of the hill. He's gonna get away. Web is walking in slow motion, Jesus Christ, he's not even holding his gun.
"Shoot him!" Joe shrieks.
Web stares at him. "No," he says. Just like that.
Joe stands there, watching Erhard Koch run. He's just let Speirs down, himself, his people. Everyone.
Koch falls at the same time they hear the blast. He drops onto his knees, then his face. Liebgott and Webster both turn to see Skinny Sisk holding his rifle. The acrid stink of gun powder fills the air.
Koch is dead.
Joe should feel better. But he doesn't. The bastard was right. He wasn't even killed by a Jew.
They go back to the jeep in silence. Joe drives. He has a headache. Webster stares straight ahead. Joe watches him out of the corner of his eye.
"Officers don't run," Joe declares flatly. His voice is a little too loud. He doesn't care.
"The war's over, anybody would run," Webster says wearily. He still won't look at Lieb.
Lieb doesn't reply. He's all too familiar with running away.
* * *
He takes the train back to Aldbourne. At the station, he sits on a bench and pulls the old Nazi flag from Normandy out of his duffel. He smooths it open, puts down the Walther P-38 he got off a dead Kraut, his letters from Alley, Toye, and his folks, and all his medals. He almost adds his jump wings to the pile, but changes his mind at the last minute. He worked too hard for those. Everything else he wraps carefully in the flag. Joe picks up the bundle and drops it into the nearest garbage can.
Then he heads for the ship that's gonna take him home.
When he gets back to San Francisco he doesn't tell anyone. Not his parents. Not the other Easy guys. He gets his old job back at the cab company. His passengers try to talk to him, ask if he was in the war. Joe doesn't know what to say, how to make small talk. Whenever he picks up a soldier in uniform he turns the radio on, lets music fill the car.
He has a tiny apartment over a cigar shop. He lies in bed and smells tobacco. The scent brings Bull's melodic drawl with it. Hurry it up, boys. It takes him hours to fall asleep, even when he gets himself liquored up. It's too quiet. He spent years listening to Alley snore and Perco talk in his sleep. He was always jammed into barracks with other guys, into foxholes, planes, trucks. Now all he's got is himself and it isn't enough. When he does sleep, he dreams. He dreams of the Island and Bastogne. He shivers beneath three blankets even though the apartment is stifling.
Joe dreams of opening a train car door. He finds the bodies of his friends, all the Easy guys turned to bloated corpses. Koch stands beside the open car. He speaks in German, but Joe hears perfect English in his head.
"See what you did, Joseph?"
Joe shoots Koch in the face. But when he looks down, Ed's lying there, his face ruined, not Koch's.
Joe wakes up screaming, scrambling for cover in his foxhole or along the dike or behind a tree or a tank. Only he's on the floor wedged between the bed and the wall and nobody's shooting at him. He didn't kill Ed, he didn't even kill Erhard Koch.
Lieb knows about combat fatigue and shell shock. He knows he's probably going nuts. After everything he's seen, he's not all that surprised. He keeps trying to put the war behind him. He figures if he doesn't think about it, he'll get better. Get back to normal or whatever the fuck vets are supposed to do.
Except the harder he tries not to think about it, the more he does. The war's always there, waiting. It's like he's still in Bastogne with all that fog. You'd think you're safe, the Krauts were gone, but then the fog would lift and shit, you're surrounded. He never knows when the fog's gonna lift now.
One time, he's driving the cab and sees two pigeons bobbing along a telephone wire. That's all it takes. Two birds on a wire and he's soaked in sweat, heart pounding. He has to roll down the window, stick his head out, suck in cardboard lungfuls of air. Thank God he's alone in the cab.
The following month he's taking some guy to meet his wife for their anniversary. The guy yacks the whole way there about what a great evening he has planned. Joe makes noncommittal noises, like he actually gives a shit and isn't dying to drive the cab straight into a tree. They're two blocks from the restaurant when Joe smells it. A sweet meaty odor, drifting from one of the food carts on the sidewalk.
He knows that smell.
It's the smell of cooked flesh, burned bodies, death. He can hear flies buzzing around his head, hear a thin stuttering voice repeat Juden. Juden. Juden.
Joe veers to the curb, almost clips a fire hydrant. The guy in back's yelling, but Joe ignores him. His eyes are watering from the smoke, the smell. A door slams and it's Sink who's gonna tell Winters that the prisoners have to stay in their cage. Then Winters is gonna say Joe has to be the one to tell them. The slamming door is also his fare getting out of the cab and stalking off down the street. Joe wonders how two things can happen at the same time, how he's managed this unwanted miracle of time travel.
He sits in the cab, head resting against the steering wheel for days. For years. Or maybe just minutes. A car honks behind him and he's no longer at Landsberg, he's just sweating inside his taxi. He blinks in the rear view mirror, at the passenger seat. And the fare stiffed him. Great.
Mister Anniversary also calls in a complaint. Joe gets fired the next day. He goes back to his apartment and sits on the edge of his bed.
His apartment contains the following: one chipped sink, one ancient stove with only one working burner, two chairs, one table that lurches like a drunk, one sagging bed that folds up into the wall, one stained love seat, one narrow closet that contains a toilet and a claw foot tub. Everything in Joe's apartment is broken or slightly useless in some way. Just like Joe.
Lieb paces. He tries to sleep. He has nightmares. He screams so much the man from the cigar shop pounds on his door. He pours a can of soup into a pot but forgets to turn the stove on so it just sits there. Eventually he remembers and eats the soup cold. He doesn't notice.
He sits at the wobbly table and spoons chicken broth into his mouth. It tastes like childhood. He thinks of his Ma then, but only briefly. He can't call her. She'll ask him about the war and he'll have no answer. None at all.
A long stripe of sun cuts the table in half. Joe moves his hand, lets the light dissect his skin. He remembers a baseball game on a sunny afternoon. He smiled, and there was laughter. Luz was there, and Alley and Webster and Perco and--
Joe stands abruptly and pours the remaining soup down the drain. He's pretty sure the baseball game is just another dream. At least it's a nice one.
He paces some more.
Eventually he finds himself sitting cross-legged on the floor. He's surrounded by scraps of paper. He's holding a pen in his hand. He has no idea where the pen came from. On every piece of paper, in his sloppy handwriting are the words: I wish it had been me.
He seems to be crying, but he's used to that now. It's all his eyes know how to do. Seeing has become secondary. Ed's unopened letter is resting on his knee. The envelope is creased and stained with fingerprints, the ink faded. The paper is worn to velvet and Joe rubs his thumb over it, back and forth. Back and forth.
Joe Liebgott curls himself onto his side and puts the letter beneath his cheek. Like a pillow.
He stares at the dust beneath the love seat for a long time, thinking. And trying not to.
Author: buffyaddict13
Fandom: Band of Brothers
Rating: PG-13
Total Words: ~22,000
Characters/Pairing: Gen, Ed Tipper, Joe Liebgott, Jim "Moe" Alley, glimpses of the rest of the Easy Guys
Disclaimer: I don't own the Band of Brothers book or miniseries. This fic is based on the series and not the real men. I have always loved the scene in Carentan where Lieb comforts Tip and I based this fic on the friendship I created for them. This fic is gen, but if you squint and look sideways, it might be considered slash!lite if you like that kind of thing. It's a love story about friendship, if that makes any sense.
A/N 1: The first chapter is from Tip's POV, the second chapter will be from Liebgott's, and the third and fourth chapters will go back and forth between their POVs.
A/N 2: It used to break my heart some that Joe Liebgott never contacted the rest of the Easy Company guys and that he didn't tell his family he was in the war. And, although that makes me sad, I also understand his decision for distancing himself from what he went through and I respect him beyond words. I love how he pulled himself together and created a new life for himself. Most of all, I love that he found happiness. Joe Liebgott, I salute you. Psst. You too, Tip.
A/N 3: Thank you very much to hiyacynth and luckinfovely for the beta. I'd give you my last pack of Lucky Strikes. If I smoked.
Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.
~Norman Cousins
Lieb hunches himself into the bottom of the foxhole. Alley sits next to him, snoring away. Asshole. Tip's half dead, Tab's got a bayonet to the gut, how the fuck can Moe sleep?
Joe folds his arms, leans his head against his rifle. Every time he closes his eyes he sees Ed's bloody face, his fuckin' eye. Jesus.
He stretches out his leg, kicks Moe's shin.
Moe jerks awake, stares at Lieb. "Huh? What?" He cranes his head around, peers over the top of the hole. "What's going on?"
Joe glares at him. "If I'm awake, you're awake."
Alley sighs, rolls his eyes. "Come on, Joe," he says, wheedling, "that's just cruel."
"No it ain't. Maybe you gotta protect me from Smith in case he feels like stabbin' a few more guys."
More eye rolling. "Very funny."
Liebgott sits in the dark, listening. He listens for the sound of a twig being stepped on. He listens for the sound of gunfire, the distant roar of a tank. He listens for whispered German, the bark of dog, the sound of breathing behind him. All he hears is a bunch of nothing.
"Hey," Alley whispers after a while. "You think Tip's gonna be okay?"
Lieb shifts in the dirt, stares at Moe from beneath his helmet. "Sorry I woke ya, buddy. Might as well go back to sleep while ya still got the chance."
"What about you?"
Lieb shrugs, looks away. "I ain't tired."
* * *
Fuck fuck fuck. Alley's hit bad, he's hit bad, he's all torn up, his whole side, neck, chest, leg--fuck.
No matter what he does his friends keep dropping while he just stands there, watching. They get Alley on the table and Winters is there, and Tab and then Roe--thank God--Roe is there. Roe's all business, in full Doc mode and Alley's gonna be okay, he is, because fuck if Joe is gonna lose Tip and Alley.
Joe doesn't even realize he's bleeding at first, he thinks all the blood is Moe's, but Eugene hands him a bandage. Roe gives him a stern look, points at neck.
"You take care of that," Gene says, and that's the first time Joe feels the pain.
Winters leads them into the dark and Lieb's glad to follow. He wants (needs) to be doing something, wants to get back at those fuckin' Krauts for hittin' Alley. And Tip.
They're outside all night. It rains on and off. It's wet and miserable, but they pick off a bunch of Germans on top of a hill, which is fuckin' awesome. Then they get pinned down. Winters calls for reinforcements. Dukeman gets hit. One shot, and the guy's gone. One minute he's Dukeman, the next he's a fuckin' doll.
Winters leads them to the top of a dike and they spend all morning shooting Nazis like fish in a barrel. Joe lies on the road, one eye closed, tongue tucked between his teeth, and takes careful aim every time. Aim, squeeze the trigger, fire. Aim, squeeze the trigger, fire.
Pretty soon there's a field of dead and wounded SS but Joe's not done. He lies there, watching for movement. Maybe that fuck there is the one who sent Tipper the mail back in Carentan. Maybe that fuck there threw the grenade at Alley. Maybe that bastard trying to crawl away like a fuckin' cocksucker bastard knows where Joe's aunt from Munich went to. Maybe he don't. Either way, they're still Nazis, and they still gotta die.
"Joe."
Some asshole whacks his arm. "Joe. Knock it off."
"Goddammit, what?" Joe barks at the interruption. Oh. The asshole turns out to be Winters. Well, shit.
Winters touches Joe's neck, his finger comes away red. "You're bleeding."
Joe shrugs off Winters' concern. "Ah, it's nothin', Cap."
"I want you to take these prisoners back to Battalion CP and get yourself cleaned up."
Lieb gets to his feet. "Yes sir." No problem. In fact, his day just got better. Joe nearly sings, "Come on Kraut boys."
"Joe."
Liebgott turns back to the Captain. "Yeah?"
"Drop your ammo."
Joe's forehead creases. Obviously he misheard. "What?"
Winters speaks slowly, calmly. "Drop. Your. Ammo."
"Are you kiddin' me?" Joe asks. "What are you--" He doesn't get to finish because Winters isn't kidding, and what he's doing is grabbing Joe's rifle and pulling the ammo out. Winters leaves one fuckin' round. Joe stares mutely, seething. Fine, Winters wants the prisoners back alive, Joe can do that. They're gettin' a helluva lot better deal than Dukeman did.
Joe grins at the disheveled soldiers, winks, full of giddy hatred. At least there's some justice in a Jew leading these Nazi arschlochs off to prison. "Mach schnell, boys," he beams, and gestures them forward with his rifle. He double times them toward the CP, while his neck bleeds.
His dog tags clink beneath his shirt and he imagines he can feel the C burn against his skin. Being Catholic doesn't mean anything. He still got the shit beat out of him, his Pop still got snubbed on the street. It didn't keep his Ma's sister or his cousins from disappearing into thin air. He might be a Jew, but he doesn't believe in any kind of religion. Which is pretty funny when you figure his last name practically means "dear God" in German. From what Joe can tell, God ain't worth believing in. If God's so dear and great and loving, why's half the world stuck in the middle of another goddamn war? There's a shitload of propaganda, but nobody's cranked out a pamphlet with a nifty little answer to that question yet.
One of the Krauts has a bum leg, there's a blood-soaked cloth wrapped above his knee. The man stumbles, and Joe shoves him in the back, hard. The soldier turns to glance back at him, big eyes stuck in a pale baby face. Christ, he's not a man at all, he's a little kid. He's fourteen, fifteen at the most. Shit, this kid oughtta be learning to sew swastikas onto flags in Hitler Youth, not getting his leg shot up in the middle of Holland.
The kid's eyes are leaking like a roof and Joe's throat gets small and hot. Each swallow is like trying to choke down a bullet. His smile falls off. He doesn't try to catch it. He leaves it back on the dusty road and keeps marching, silent, face blank.
* * *
Lieb's got a letter from Tipper in his pocket. He doesn't open it. Sometimes, when Alley's asleep he prods it out of his pocket with stiff blue fingers and studies Tip's handwriting. The letter is addressed to Pfc. Joseph D. Liebgott in Tip's neat handwriting. Jesus, the guy gets blown up and still writes like he's teachin' friggin' penmanship.
Still, Ed must be okay. If he's writing letters, he ain't exactly dead. So that's good. Tipper being alive and safe, that's about the only Christmas present Joe's got this year. Well, he's got Alley too. Jim busted out of the hospital just in time to sit in a snowbank with the rest of the 506 guys.
They sit in their hole, bundled together and sing Christmas carols. It's ridiculous, but Alley can carry a tune, and it's better than listening to Toye sing those fuckin' ballads. Joe's not exactly in a festive mood, but singing keeps his mind off the cold, pulls him back to all night marches and the hot Georgia summer. He's glad to go back.
They're supposed to be holding the line around Bastogne, but mostly they're just freezing. They lose over a dozen guys to trench foot, frostbite, hypothermia, pneumonia. Julian gets killed on patrol, then Welsh and Gordon and Sisk are wounded.
Word is, Smokey's hurt bad. Roe says he's paralyzed but Joe can't think about that. If he thinks too hard about Smokey, Joe's liable to put a bullet in his head or poor old Alley's or run screaming toward the Germans, tossing grenades like snowballs until they mow him down.
Winters pulls him off the line to be his runner for a few days. Joe knows it's a decent thing to do, Winters is a good leader, a nice guy, even if he doesn't let Joe kill Kraut prisoners whenever he feels like it. Lieb spends three days delivering messages, watching Nixon get drunk, drinking only half-shitty coffee, and regaining feeling in his toes. And, as much as he hates being on the line, he feels guilty for being off it. He spends the fourth day translating German for Winters and Sink and worrying about Alley and Hoob and Luz.
He gets back to his foxhole just in time to hear Hoobler shoot himself to death. Then Guarnere and Toye get their fuckin' legs blown off and Compton falls apart. Joe doesn't blame Compton one bit. Lieb's feeling pretty cracked himself. He's never been a huge fan of Wild Bill, but he sure as fuck never wanted anything like this to happen. Bill's always been kind of an asshole, but so has Joe. Their respective assholishness is like when you've got two magnets with opposite poles or whatever. Bill and Joe can't get too close, even if they want to. That's just how it is. Toye, on the other hand is the best soldier in Easy. He's been wounded about a million times, and the guy keeps comin' back. Not anymore.
But the worst, the fuckin' worst, is when Muck and Penkala get it. Joe don't know Penk well, but Muck was a fuckin' prince. Bill and Joe might be assholes, but Muck's the nicest, funniest guy Joe's ever met. He's nicer than Ed Tipper, and that's like being nicer than the fuckin' Pope. Skip don't (didn't) have an asshole bone in his body. Jesus, everybody likes him. Everybody. Joe's pretty sure if Muck had been captured as a POW, the Krauts woulda got into fistfights over who got to interrogate him.
Malarkey sits around like a statue, eyes turned inward. Joe tells Alley he's gonna see if he can take a leak without freezing his dick off. He floats across the snow, like a ghost. He can't feel his feet, his lower legs, nothin'. He's pretty sure if he stepped on a mine he wouldn't even notice until he saw his feet go flying. He doesn't have any feeling until right around his kneecaps. Lieb has to look at the ground to keep from tripping. He stumbles behind a lopsided spruce and and cries into his fist. He doesn't know if he's crying for Muck or all the other guys they lost, or himself.
Maybe he's crying cuz Tip went and left him behind in Normandy and Joe's fucking tired and miserable and scared. He's scared all the time.
Maybe he's crying cuz he's so goddamn cold. He's shaking so hard the muscles in his neck feel like wires pulling on his skull. It gives him a splitting headache.
Lieb wipes his face with the back of his wool mitten, sniffs, blinks hard.
He pulls Tip's letter out of his pocket, looks at the damp handwriting. He doesn't even know the guy Ed wrote that letter to anymore. That guy Tip was friends with, well. Joe doesn't think there's much of him left. Joe returns the letter to its place of safekeeping and floats back through the snow to camp.
Liebgott shivers beside Alley and looks at his blue and ivory hands. They look like marble. He moves his tongue over the canker sores in his mouth. He counts seven. His mouth tastes like rust. He stares at the snow and the sky and eventually he can't tell the difference. Mostly, he leans his head against the icy wall of their hole and waits. There's a lot of waiting in war.
He hopes he doesn't have to wait too much longer to catch the bullet with his name on it. He's more than ready to be done with this shitty war, with life, with everything.
* * *
Joe doesn't catch a bullet. Webb does though. Perco too. The attack on Foy is successful thanks to Speirs. Joe smirks a little to himself. Looks like Winters don't mind guys who shoot POWs too bad after all.
They're supposed to go back to Mourmelon after Foy, but that plan goes out the window pretty quick. Turns out they're going to Haguenau to clean up somebody else's mess. Again.
Still, Haguenau has food and buildings and beds so Joe doesn't complain. Haguenau has something else, too: David Webster.
Webster comes swaggering over to their truck, like he's waiting for his own personal ticker-tape parade, like taking four months to get back to Easy's a friggin' world record. Joe hasn't punched anybody in the face for a goodly while and he kind of wants to punch Webster. His fist is itching for it.
But then Web opens his big stupid mouth and asks about Hoobler and Bill and Joe doesn't want to hit the asshole anymore. He doesn't even want to look at him.
David Webster's the smartest moron Joe's ever met. He's Mister Harvard and waves his fancy vocabulary like a fuckin' flag, and he's annoying as hell. But he's got something going for him the rest of the guys don't. David Webster wasn't at Bastogne. And that, right there, makes him somebody Joe wants to hang around with.
It's not like the other guys talk about Bastogne--they don't. It was hard enough to live through, there's no sense talking about it. But the men don't need to speak about their time there. Memories linger like fog. Like shadows. The sadness in Malark's eyes, the weariness that Lip carries, Skinny's limp, Muck's absence, those aren't things that can be washed away. Malarkey tries though.
So it's just easier to be around Webster because he wasn't there. Most of the guys resent Web for his notorious absence, and Joe plays along. But if the only way Joe can get to sleep is by pretending he wasn't there either, that's his business.
Every time Web opens his mouth, somebody gets mad at him. Okay, so usually it's Lieb who's getting mad, but Johnny takes a turn, so do Malarkey and Heffron. Joe can't quite tell if Web was actually trying to get him out of the patrol across the river. Lieb doesn't give a shit if Web meant to or not. All he knows is he's gonna be on this side of the river tonight and that's a-ok with him. He throws Web a wink and a smile.
When the guys get back, they've got a couple of German prisoners and a near-dead Jackson. Jackson's fully dead in another ten minutes. Joe doesn't stick around. He walks through the remains of the city, without his coat, helmet in one hand. He walks past the holes the 88s left in the cement, past bloody snow and gray slush.
Joe walks by himself, one hand trailing cold brick buildings, the other swinging his helmet against his thigh. It goes thump, thump thump. Then he counts to three and does it again. Thump, thump, thump. It's a little like music.
He mutters to himself, not much. Just a handful of words. He's waiting for the sound of a freight train to fill the sky. For a different kind of train to take him than the ones he's heard carried the German and Polish Jews away. Joe's ready to go, he's got his bags packed, yes sir.
So he walks from Speirs' CP to the crumbling building the men are bivouacked in, and back. He goes back and forth. He's on his fifth circuit when Luz appears next to him, cigarette dangling precariously from his lower lip. He turns to Luz, and Luz isn't smiling. Luz still smokes plenty, but he doesn't smile much anymore. You'd have to be crazy to be able to smile after all the shit they've been through.
Joe grins. He winks at Luz. "Heya George," he says. He keeps walking, helmet thumping, finger drawing invisible lines against ashen brick.
"Joe," Luz says slowly, "you doin' okay?'
Joe nods. "I'm great." He tips his head toward Luz, whispers conspiratorially. "I'm just waitin'."
Luz looks around, confused. "For what?"
"The train." He points upward, hums a few bars of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.
George falters, but keeps walking. Joe gives him credit for that. Everybody thinks Luz is just some goof, but he's way braver than Joe. The guy's got balls as big as that fuckin' radio he lugs around. He nudges Luz in the chest with his helmet. "You're brave," Joe tells him. "Do you even know that?" Also, George's hair is too damn long. His bangs look like one of those little hand brooms. If Joe had his stuff, he'd offer to cut Luz's hair.
George rolls his eyes up into his bristly bangs. "For fuck's sake, Liebgott, are you drunk?" He scratches his head. "You're makin' me kinda nervous, here."
Joe grimaces. "I wish I was drunk."
Luz's mouth makes a relieved shape, but his eyes still look scared. He elbows Joe's shoulder. "Well, that, at least, I can help you with." He grabs Joe's helmet, plunks it back on Lieb's head with a little flourish. "Come on." George steers Joe back toward headquarters.
Joe has the strange feeling he and Luz have slipped into pre-assigned characters. Like, like they're in some kind of backassward school production of Our Town, only theirs is called Army Town and it's pretty fuckin' awful. It's so bad, half the other actors keep gettin' up and walkin' out. So he and Luz walk down the street, both trying to be the person everyone expects them to be, but neither man actually himself.
By now, Lieb doesn't think he knows how to be himself. Or who the fuck that even is.
He hopes Luz has better luck.
* * *
Joe Liebgott doesn't realize the world's about to end.
He's too busy joking around with Web. That guy is so easy to rile up. Jeez, Joe actually had to try with Tip. They're all jammed in the back of a truck heading deeper into Germany. He's felt a little better since getting soused with Luz. Maybe that's all he needed, some booze, a few extra smokes, and a lengthy discussion on which Andrews Sister is the worthiest fuck.
Joe never really noticed before, but every once in a while, Luz reminds him of Winters. Or Lip. All three of them are the kind of guys who worry more about the other fellas than themselves. Sometimes Joe forgets how damn lucky he is to be in Easy. If he was with some other company, he'd have probably bought the farm months ago.
Today the sky is blue and the weather's mild and they're all belting out Gory, gory what a helluva way to die while their convoy bumps deeper into Germany. Kraut troops are surrendering right and left. Luz is goofing on Janovec and Perco's brushing his teeth and Web's writing in his little diary.
The wind ruffles Joe's hair and for the first time in forever, he thinks about San Francisco and cold bottles of Coca-Cola and comic books. He knows just what he's gonna do when he gets back home. He's got a whole plan now, and he's feeling so friggin' okay he decides to let Web in on it.
"First thing I'm gonna do is get my job back at the cab company in Frisco. Make a killing off all those fucking sailors coming home, you know?" After that, maybe he'll open a little barber shop. Work his own hours. That'd be the life.
"Then I'm gonna find me a nice Jewish girl with great, big, soft titties--" Joe helpfully demonstrates the proper size because with all Web's book learning he might not be too familiar with girls or their titties, "--and a smile to die for. Marry her. Then I'm gonna buy a house. A big house with lots of bedrooms for all the little Liebgotts we're gonna be making. She oughtta like that." Joe nods. Yeah. He's gonna like it too. Who knows, the way things are going, he just might read Tip's letter one of these days.
That afternoon, when Joe sees a nervous Perco run past looking for Winters, that's his sign. He doesn't know it yet. He has about another half hour before he learns exactly how broken the world really is, how damaged, how fucked up beyond all reason. Later, he'll think about Perco running pell-mell, the look on his face. He'll want to blame Perconte for finding the camp, for bringing them there, but he can't. He can't. It's not Perco's fault.
* * *
Three words are all it takes.
Juden. Juden. Juden.
With those three words, Liebgott understands more than he ever wants to. He understands what happened to his aunt, his cousins, to thousands of Jews across Germany and Poland, to musicians, tailors, Gypsies, to people. He keeps thinking he sees Ma's face, his little sisters, among the piles of corpses which is stupid because this is a men's camp.
But there's a women's camp a mile away.
Sitting here, in the back of the truck, Joe feels like he's floating again, just like he did in Jack's Woods. He can't feel his feet or his hands. He's dizzy. He keeps seeing the look on their gaunt faces when he told them to go back inside. The anger. Fear. Betrayal. Joe understands perfectly because their emotions mirror his.
If his parents hadn't come to America, he could be one of these ragged men. One of the countless rotting bodies wreathed in flies. He could have been stuffed inside a train car, incinerated inside a stinking hut while men burned silently beside him, too weak to scream. What makes Joe any different from these haunted, ruined men? Nothing.
Nothing.
Joe puts his hand to his head, as if he can somehow yank the memories of the last five hours out of his brain. He doesn't want to see this. He doesn't want to hear the constant sobbing, muttering, praying. He doesn't want to know a place like this exists.
But he does.
And he'll never forget.
Alley and Sisk and Web are trying to talk to him, (hovering like flies) but he ignores them, their useless words. He wraps his arms around his head and tries to wish himself back into a wet foxhole in Holland. Hell, he'll even take Bastogne over this. Let him trade with Muck or Penkala. His hair smells like smoke and decay and cheese. His hands smell like saltwater and guilt.
Webster's tone of voice is all righteous indignation and effrontery and all Joe wants is to be left alone. He wants them to go away, he wants to go away. And then Webster touches him. He puts his Harvard hand on Lieb's shoulder and that's it.
Joe's on his feet in an instant, snarling, and shoves Web hard against the side of the truck. He wants David Webster to punch him square in the face, blacken his eyes, split his lip, break his jaw. He wants Webster to beat the everliving shit out of him for not knowing this was going on, for thinking his mom was paranoid, for daring to believe people were better than this. He stares at Web, eyed narrowed, chin raised. He sneers, gestures Web closer. "Come on," Lieb says, his voice sharp and coiled, the sound of barbed wire.
Webster is stunned. He stands there, wide-eyed and helpless. He flicks a gaze toward Skinny and Moe. "Joe, I--"
Joe smiles wider, and it hurts like a fuckin' razor, but he can't stop. He winks, like this is a game, like it's all in good fun, but "good" and "fun" are over and done with now, forever and ever, amen.
"Come on," Lieb spits. "Do it. You've been dying to punch my Jew face for weeks, right? Go ahead, Webster. Here's your chance."
Web flinches at the word "Jew," which makes Lieb even more furious. He wants to beat the fuck out of everyone here, out of--
There's an emaciated Jew standing at the fence. He's looking at Liebgott and his face is a skull. There's an expression of such loss on the man's face, Joe's lungs seem to seize up. He can't breathe.
All Joe's anger, his double-edged words float away. They join the smoke above the camp and drift.
Their eyes lock and all Joe wants is to scream and beg and plead I'm sorry I'm so fuckin' sorry, I'll be sorry for the rest a my life and all my death and I'd do anything to fix this, to make this unhappen to you, I'm sorry sorry sorry.
And the man stands there, hands resting on twisted wire like pale birds and crazily, Joe thinks of that story about Sobel and the wire cutters and Luz and this should all be a joke, this shouldn't be real, Tip should be here and Joe shouldn't and the man's eyes hold him still and say I am still alive, I still matter and worst of all I still forgive you.
Joe pulls in a long shuddering breath.
Then he launches himself off the back of the truck. He's always been a fast runner. Here's his chance to see just how fast. He's not Joe Liebgott now, he's Buck Compton and he's getting. The fuck. Out.
There are shouts behind him and one of them might or might not be Winters, but Lieb's long past giving a shit, and his feet pound dirt, then grass. With each step his heart hammers Juden. Juden. Juden.
Liebgott runs until the muscles in his side cramp up, and then his legs. He runs until sweat drips from his hair, until he's nothing but movement and the world around him blanks out. He runs until he's gasping for breath, until he's crying again, until Skinny and Web tackle him to the ground and hold his arms.
Joe lies on his back in a clearing. He can see blue pieces of sky between gnarled branches. The grass is tall. A rock is pressing against his spine. Pale ovals of worry make soothing noises at him, but Liebgott's still running, running, running.
* * *
Speirs orders Liebgott and Sisk to eliminate Kommandant Erhard Koch. Koch is a Nazi, he was in charge of the guards at one of the camps. Speirs thinks it was Dachau but the records are sketchy.
Joe knows why Speirs picks him for the job; he's fine with it. Most of the guys have heard about him losing it at the Camp. Lieb doesn't care. He doesn't care about much, actually. Highest on his list of things he no longer cares about are: sleep, food, conversation, and giving a fuck. But shooting a Nazi in the head sounds pretty okay.
Skinny doesn't say much, just salutes and follows Lieb. Web volunteers to come along. Lieb's not really surprised. Webster's been following him around like the world's most annoying nanny for days. Lieb wants to be angry, pissed off, but he can't find the energy.
The three of them head for the Bavarian hills where Koch's supposed to be hiding. Joe studies the map, Skinny drives. Webster sits in the back, silent, arms folded.
It takes a little over an hour. Skinny stops the jeep on a dirt road. A few hundred feet ahead is a ramshackle old house, the very definition of "hide out."
As soon as Joe gets out of the jeep, he knows this is the right place. He knows he's going to kill a Nazi and it won't fix anything or bring anyone back from the dead, but it'll make him feel better. This isn't murder. It's not revenge. It just is.
Lieb starts yelling the minute they bust into the cabin. Joe thinks he's gonna be calm, he thinks he's be all sane and soldierly, but as soon as the fat fuck starts yelling nein, nein Joe's got his gun right up in his Nazi face.
Joe grabs the asshole's shirt, shoves him into a chair. "Do you know what you did to my fucking people?" Joe screams, spittle flying.
That's when Web goes outside. Koch tries to lie, but Liebgott shakes his head, then the gun. "Sagen sie die wahrheit," Leib says. Tell the truth. He grabs a tin cup off the table, throws it across the room. "Keine lügen!" No lies.
Koch's eyes roll up toward the ceiling, then back at Joe He sighs heavily. Bows his head. "Ja," he admits in broken English. "I kill Jews." He lifts his head, a slow, steady smile spreading across his round face. "Was good." The smile reaches his eyes. They watch Liebgott without fear. "Sehr gut."
Joe takes a step backwards, stomach dropping like a stone. He cannot believe what he's hearing. What the fuckin' fuck is wrong with these people? Killing Jews is very good?
Skinny appears beside the table.
"He was at the camps," Joe tells him raggedly. "He just fuckin' admitted he likes killin' Jews."
Skinny looks like he's contemplating shooting the Nazi right then. Then he turns and slips outside.
Joe smiles at Koch, teeth showing. "Killin' Nazis ain't so bad either, asshole," he says and pulls the trigger.
The fucker might look like a big pile of dough, but he's fast. He jerks at the same time Lieb fires and what should have been a head shot grazes Koch's neck. He scrambles out of the chair, screaming, "Ich werde nicht von einem Juden getötet,:" that he won't be killed by a Jew.
He bangs out the back door and Joe chases after him, cursing. He aims again, pulls the trigger and--nothing. "Dammit sonofabitch" He looks at Web, desperate. "Shoot him."
The Nazi's still running for the top of the hill. He's gonna get away. Web is walking in slow motion, Jesus Christ, he's not even holding his gun.
"Shoot him!" Joe shrieks.
Web stares at him. "No," he says. Just like that.
Joe stands there, watching Erhard Koch run. He's just let Speirs down, himself, his people. Everyone.
Koch falls at the same time they hear the blast. He drops onto his knees, then his face. Liebgott and Webster both turn to see Skinny Sisk holding his rifle. The acrid stink of gun powder fills the air.
Koch is dead.
Joe should feel better. But he doesn't. The bastard was right. He wasn't even killed by a Jew.
They go back to the jeep in silence. Joe drives. He has a headache. Webster stares straight ahead. Joe watches him out of the corner of his eye.
"Officers don't run," Joe declares flatly. His voice is a little too loud. He doesn't care.
"The war's over, anybody would run," Webster says wearily. He still won't look at Lieb.
Lieb doesn't reply. He's all too familiar with running away.
* * *
He takes the train back to Aldbourne. At the station, he sits on a bench and pulls the old Nazi flag from Normandy out of his duffel. He smooths it open, puts down the Walther P-38 he got off a dead Kraut, his letters from Alley, Toye, and his folks, and all his medals. He almost adds his jump wings to the pile, but changes his mind at the last minute. He worked too hard for those. Everything else he wraps carefully in the flag. Joe picks up the bundle and drops it into the nearest garbage can.
Then he heads for the ship that's gonna take him home.
When he gets back to San Francisco he doesn't tell anyone. Not his parents. Not the other Easy guys. He gets his old job back at the cab company. His passengers try to talk to him, ask if he was in the war. Joe doesn't know what to say, how to make small talk. Whenever he picks up a soldier in uniform he turns the radio on, lets music fill the car.
He has a tiny apartment over a cigar shop. He lies in bed and smells tobacco. The scent brings Bull's melodic drawl with it. Hurry it up, boys. It takes him hours to fall asleep, even when he gets himself liquored up. It's too quiet. He spent years listening to Alley snore and Perco talk in his sleep. He was always jammed into barracks with other guys, into foxholes, planes, trucks. Now all he's got is himself and it isn't enough. When he does sleep, he dreams. He dreams of the Island and Bastogne. He shivers beneath three blankets even though the apartment is stifling.
Joe dreams of opening a train car door. He finds the bodies of his friends, all the Easy guys turned to bloated corpses. Koch stands beside the open car. He speaks in German, but Joe hears perfect English in his head.
"See what you did, Joseph?"
Joe shoots Koch in the face. But when he looks down, Ed's lying there, his face ruined, not Koch's.
Joe wakes up screaming, scrambling for cover in his foxhole or along the dike or behind a tree or a tank. Only he's on the floor wedged between the bed and the wall and nobody's shooting at him. He didn't kill Ed, he didn't even kill Erhard Koch.
Lieb knows about combat fatigue and shell shock. He knows he's probably going nuts. After everything he's seen, he's not all that surprised. He keeps trying to put the war behind him. He figures if he doesn't think about it, he'll get better. Get back to normal or whatever the fuck vets are supposed to do.
Except the harder he tries not to think about it, the more he does. The war's always there, waiting. It's like he's still in Bastogne with all that fog. You'd think you're safe, the Krauts were gone, but then the fog would lift and shit, you're surrounded. He never knows when the fog's gonna lift now.
One time, he's driving the cab and sees two pigeons bobbing along a telephone wire. That's all it takes. Two birds on a wire and he's soaked in sweat, heart pounding. He has to roll down the window, stick his head out, suck in cardboard lungfuls of air. Thank God he's alone in the cab.
The following month he's taking some guy to meet his wife for their anniversary. The guy yacks the whole way there about what a great evening he has planned. Joe makes noncommittal noises, like he actually gives a shit and isn't dying to drive the cab straight into a tree. They're two blocks from the restaurant when Joe smells it. A sweet meaty odor, drifting from one of the food carts on the sidewalk.
He knows that smell.
It's the smell of cooked flesh, burned bodies, death. He can hear flies buzzing around his head, hear a thin stuttering voice repeat Juden. Juden. Juden.
Joe veers to the curb, almost clips a fire hydrant. The guy in back's yelling, but Joe ignores him. His eyes are watering from the smoke, the smell. A door slams and it's Sink who's gonna tell Winters that the prisoners have to stay in their cage. Then Winters is gonna say Joe has to be the one to tell them. The slamming door is also his fare getting out of the cab and stalking off down the street. Joe wonders how two things can happen at the same time, how he's managed this unwanted miracle of time travel.
He sits in the cab, head resting against the steering wheel for days. For years. Or maybe just minutes. A car honks behind him and he's no longer at Landsberg, he's just sweating inside his taxi. He blinks in the rear view mirror, at the passenger seat. And the fare stiffed him. Great.
Mister Anniversary also calls in a complaint. Joe gets fired the next day. He goes back to his apartment and sits on the edge of his bed.
His apartment contains the following: one chipped sink, one ancient stove with only one working burner, two chairs, one table that lurches like a drunk, one sagging bed that folds up into the wall, one stained love seat, one narrow closet that contains a toilet and a claw foot tub. Everything in Joe's apartment is broken or slightly useless in some way. Just like Joe.
Lieb paces. He tries to sleep. He has nightmares. He screams so much the man from the cigar shop pounds on his door. He pours a can of soup into a pot but forgets to turn the stove on so it just sits there. Eventually he remembers and eats the soup cold. He doesn't notice.
He sits at the wobbly table and spoons chicken broth into his mouth. It tastes like childhood. He thinks of his Ma then, but only briefly. He can't call her. She'll ask him about the war and he'll have no answer. None at all.
A long stripe of sun cuts the table in half. Joe moves his hand, lets the light dissect his skin. He remembers a baseball game on a sunny afternoon. He smiled, and there was laughter. Luz was there, and Alley and Webster and Perco and--
Joe stands abruptly and pours the remaining soup down the drain. He's pretty sure the baseball game is just another dream. At least it's a nice one.
He paces some more.
Eventually he finds himself sitting cross-legged on the floor. He's surrounded by scraps of paper. He's holding a pen in his hand. He has no idea where the pen came from. On every piece of paper, in his sloppy handwriting are the words: I wish it had been me.
He seems to be crying, but he's used to that now. It's all his eyes know how to do. Seeing has become secondary. Ed's unopened letter is resting on his knee. The envelope is creased and stained with fingerprints, the ink faded. The paper is worn to velvet and Joe rubs his thumb over it, back and forth. Back and forth.
Joe Liebgott curls himself onto his side and puts the letter beneath his cheek. Like a pillow.
He stares at the dust beneath the love seat for a long time, thinking. And trying not to.