MCR: Peace Which Passeth Understanding [1]
Happy D-Day, everyone.
Peace Which Passeth Understanding
part one of many. mcr, au. wwii, loosely based on "the ghost of you" video. featuring supporting roles by just about everyone you can think of. partially posted a year ago elsewhere. this is the real deal.
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Les sanglots longs des violons de l’automne
Blessent mon cœur d’une langueur monotone.
08 June 1944
D + 2
They marched back into Colleville-Sur-Mer with the rising sun on their right, its first rays catching the pools of standing water that splashed across their boots. The village separated from the surrounding fields into a medieval cluster of stone houses, a gathering of a few hundred families. Its patchy network of streets seemed shorter than the hyphenated name that clumped in their tired mouths.
Gerard led the men -- his men, now -- through the main highway, already swollen with the tanks and trucks of occupation. They marched in pairs, heads down, feet motoring through each step with the dogged exhaustion of a night's patrol. No one spoke.
Gerard kept his eyes off the ground; the monotony of the paving stones made him dizzy and left his mind free to wander. He and Frank walked shoulder to shoulder behind the front of the column, and Frank's brief, pointed glances made Gerard's temples buzz. The tip of Frank's rifle swung into the corner of Gerard's vision with every left step.
They had met Frank in Florida -- Mikey first, on the train from Jacksonville. The claustrophobic Southern heat turned Gerard's stomach; he'd pillowed his jacket against the scalding windowpane and drifted into shallow sleep. (His first weekend pass at Camp Blanding -- revoked that night for a wrinkled uniform.) "I met someone," Mikey said, shaking him awake. Gerard had noticed Mikey's smile first, then the solid feeling of the stopped train. The small man behind Mikey, one hand on his brother's shoulder, garrison cap pressed into the other, had registered third and distant in his mind. Even later, Gerard couldn't remember his first impression of Frank, tangled as it was with every moment after, in Blanding, Oran, England.
They reached the center of town, the little cobblestone square and its memorial to the last war's dead. Gerard gave the order for the men to disperse, and they melted away in twos and threes, seeking uneasy shelter wherever they could. Most slumped down against the warming walls of houses. Butcher and Carden dropped, heedless of the growing bustle, onto the steps of the marble sarcophagus itself.
Frank touched his shoulder. Gerard flinched. "You should get some rest."
"Nowhere to go," Gerard said. He looked around at the low, sagging buildings, ragged curtains shivering in the windowless gaps. A pair of dark eyes peered through cracks in a broken door, blinking in the morning sun. Mikey, he thought.
Frank slid his hand down, over Gerard's sleeve. "They're gonna have to get you new insignia, Lieutenant Way." His fingers tapped out an arrythmic pattern on the three chevrons of Gerard's sergeant patch.
"Maybe they should go fish out Pelissier's." Second Platoon's old commanding officer, an asshole who'd managed to stay alive through North Africa only to make his men's lives that much more hellish. Gerard wondered how he'd have taken the news, but found all he could think of was the slickness of the man's intestines as they spilled out over the ramp of the landing craft. When he checked that night, the sea had washed the nubby red flecks off Gerard's boots.
Frank's jaw tensed. "Come on." He held Gerard's arm at the apex of the elbow. "The quartermaster set up at a house down on Rue des Lions. We'll get Mikey's things."
"Oh."
Frank walked on, and Gerard followed, planting his feet in the same set of muddy tracks. His feet were larger than Frank's and the clear tread imprint of his boots was lost with each of Gerard's plodding steps.
Gerard saw parachutes, hung on the trees like shrouds. "Airborne," Frank said, steering them past.
Along the road, they passed an orchard, ruined by artillery fire. Tree corpses raised up blackened branches, their trunks maimed and blasted into kindling. A lone unharmed tree stood, its roots exposed in the churned-up soil. Ugly, knotted things, blind and naked in the unfamiliar sunlight. Inverted, like having one's heart pinned outside one's chest. Gerard imagined them grabbing at his ankles, pulling him down into the soil, with the cabbages and the shell casings.
The quartermaster's farmhouse was one of the few left standing; they passed orphaned walls, doorways leading to smoke and nothing, chimneys standing like the stripped trees. Even this house had a dark crater in one wall, just below where the roof sagged and gapped, as if a giant had punched his fist through the stones. The windows of the first floor were barred with long wooden boards; dark cloth hung behind them and obscured the view inside. Gerard heard the fractious crunch of broken glass.
Around the yard lay piles of supplies - ammunition cartridges, small arms, boots. He watched as soldiers shifted through, picking the good pieces out and leaving the broken to lie there. A man gave a cry of joy as he found a tin of sardines, the "RD" of the label blackened by soot.
"Wait here," Frank said. "I'll handle it." Gerard thought about nodding, but couldn't tell if he had.
"Mikey -- " he began.
"Jesus, Gerard." Frank pressed his lips together so tightly that they bled white; he closed his eyes. "Just, wait."
"Be okay," Gerard whispered. Frank opened his eyes.
"I'll be right back."
Gerard watched Frank until a crowd of soldiers wearing the insignia of the 101st Airborne swallowed him up in the doorway of the quartermaster's house. The yard hummed and gritted its teeth; in the middle of this bustle, Gerard felt his body slow. He dragged himself to a segment of the low brick wall that ran back towards the orchard. His blood sluiced in his veins; his muscles thrummed against his skin. The wall heated his palm like a handshake, and the calls of officers were almost like a conversation. But Gerard stood alone in a town in Normandy, France, his trouser cuffs crackled with dirt. Mikey was dead, and even the earth swelled and choked with water.
A harsh drone cut through the air. Gerard shaded his eyes and tilted his head. Three planes appeared from the northwest, cresting over the line of trees in tripartite formation. They crossed the egg-blue sky, exhaust leaving three plumes of smoke that wavered and dissipated in their wake. He squinted, trying to read the markings -- only Bryar among them was good enough to recognize a plane by the growl of its engine. American, but the ordered sets of numbers and letters melted from his grasping mind. Bombers.
"Gerard." Frank touched the edge of the chevrons. His face was caught between exasperation and worry. Under his arm, he held a brown paper bundle, tied with white string.
Gerard motioned to the wisping trails of exhaust. "Didn't hear. Is that?"
Frank nodded. "Let's go." He cradled the bundle in his hands like a newborn boy.
"It's so -- small."
"I had them double-check." Frank smoothed a hand over the surface; his smallest finger twitched. "They packed it in front of me."
"Can I --" Gerard stuck out one hand, palm up, and Frank passed the bundle over -- heavier than Gerard expected, and he bobbled for a moment; his stomach twisted before it righted itself in his grasp. "Thanks."
Gerard pressed the bundle to his chest, flat over the strap of his rifle, the buttons of his shirt. Across the top, someone had written in a neat hand: PVT 1CL WAY (MICHAEL), 2ND PLAT, F COM, 16 INF 1 DIV. He touched the letters of Mikey's name. Michael James Way, he thought. He couldn't feel a difference between the black ink and the rasping texture of the paper.
"Do you want to go open it?" Frank's eyes skated over Gerard's face.
"We've got a meeting with First and Third Platoon," Gerard said. He knelt, sliding off his pack and unbuttoning the snaps. The contents had shifted around in marching, K and C-ration tins clanging against one another. He slid Mikey's bundle in, next to his parcel of letters from their mother in Jersey. Gerard closed the bag and slid it over his shoulder again.
"Okay." Gerard looked up at Frank.
Frank reached his hand out, and Gerard gripped it, tight and dry and warm. He swung to his feet, leveraging himself up from the mud. Frank's fingers fit into the troughs between Gerard's knuckles, like gears in a watch.
"Let's go," he echoed.
...
13 June 1944
D + 7
The night sky hung overhead, pocked with the craters of stars. In the darkness, sounds ricocheted against one another until they built up into the specter of a lurking enemy. Seabirds wheeling inland keened, carrying with them the whistle of guns; the murmur of conversation rolled like the thunder of artillery.
From the deep window ledge of the abandoned barn, Gerard watched the dark smudge of the field. Oh one hundred. Supper time in New Jersey, seven o'clock, the long trains of the Hudson-Passaic line emptying armies of men back to lighted houses. Pork chops, baked potatoes, brothers hiding dirty hands under a white tablecloth.
His cigarette burned low, the flame nicking at the tips of his fingers. Gerard stubbed it on his boot, hearing the sizzle and flicking the butt out into the night. His last one.
"Hear they've got sentries who do this sort of thing, Way." Frank's face glowed in the half-moonlight. His helmet sat askew on his head, the chin strap dangling uselessly against the curve of his neck. A dark spray of stubble cased his jaw, and his eyes were ringed in red.
"Scimeca's on patrol till oh-three hundred," Gerard said. "I just-- "
"Can't sleep again?" Frank pushed up on his forearms, swinging his legs onto the window ledge beside Gerard. His slight frame fit against the other side of the window, knees tucked in.
"I can't sleep either," Frank said, unconcerned when Gerard didn't reply. "Toro's snoring back there - I keep thinking a Kraut's dropping bombs on our heads."
"Yeah."
Gerard turned back, saw a black shadow flit against the blacker sky. Bat, he thought.
"I told Bryar to do us a favor, put us all out of our misery. Said he'd have me written up for sabotage." Frank's laugh sounded nothing like gunfire.
"Got any smokes?"
Frank patted the pockets of his jacket. "Finished my last this morning - besides, you'd just make yourself a sniper target with the light."
Gerard touched his temple under the brim of his helmet, feeling the indentation above his jaw. He circled the space with tips of his index and middle finger, imagining the shatter of thin bone. How fast, he thought, would it be over? A split second, or maybe even less. Not enough time to know you'd been hit. No suffering, no agonized screams, no feeling as everything. Just. Stopped.
Frank reached out, tapped his fingers. "Got a headache?" Even through the blunted surface of his fingernails, Gerard could feel heat from Frank's touch.
He shook his head, dislodging Frank's fingers. "Where are we again?"
"We're in France."
"Wise-ass. Aren't you the maps man?"
"You're staring out at a flooded cabbage field in Normandy. You really want to know the name of the poor bastard whose farm got blown to bits by panzers and left this hellhole for us?"
Gerard glanced back at the barn. The men clustered in groups of threes and fours. Some sprawled across the bales of hay, catching a few hours' rest before the next march, hands twitching in anticipation of grabbing their guns. He saw Siska dealing out cards to Butcher and Conrad, their hands illuminated by the muffled glow of a flashlight sheathed in an extra sock.
"You know his name?" Gerard asked, at last.
"Jean-Marie Huppert. A councilman in Balleroy. We're, just outside."
"Balleroy." He worked his way through the accent, mimicking Frank's, but the sounds slipped from his mouth clumsily. Mikey's French had always been far superior to his own - a summer in France, just before Mikey's first semester at university.
"He make it all right?"
"Gerard -- "
A sound in the field. Gerard swung his rifle over the windowsill, drawing the base to his shoulder. Practiced fingers slid to the trigger. "Get down," he hissed. The smudgy shadows gave no trace of movement.
"Wool," he called out.
Nothing.
"Wool," again, a bit louder, and waited three long seconds until, "Rabbit!"
"Welcome." Gerard tossed out the countersign as PVT Scimeca appeared, holding his rifle above his head.
"Jesus christ, Scimeca -- you forget the password?" Frank flicked pieces of hay off his shirt. "Almost got your head blown off."
"It's just me, Sir," Scimeca said. His hand trembled as he saluted. "Sorry, I - I didn't hear you."
Gerard waited as the muscles of his finger loosened, almost unwilling to released the trigger. "See anything?"
"No, sir. Nothing."
"All quiet on the Western Front," Frank murmured.
Gerard nodded. He wasn't sure who he'd meant the gesture for, but Scimeca saluted again, and walked back out into the field.
"That was." He swallowed. Another second. His finger twitched at his side. A pressure settled itself at the top of Gerard's neck, as if he were carrying someone on his back, the limp weight of a body slung over his shoulders.
"Go sleep." Frank's hand grazed his. Gerard couldn't tell if it was an accident. "We're not moving out until ten hundred, at least."
"Yeah?"
"Trust me. I'm the maps man."
"Right." He nodded. "Right. Yeah. I'll go."
His pack lay in the near corner of the barn, tucked against a bale of hay that smelled of rain and cattle. He set his gun down beside it, angling the body so his hand could clasp it before the rest of him woke.
"Gerard."
He looked up from his makeshift bed, focusing his glance over his shoulder at Frank's warm eyes, and not the gaping darkness behind him.
"Huppert and his family are safe." He smiled, the simplest crook of his mouth.
Gerard attempted a smile of his own, but gave up when he felt the skin of his lips catch over his teeth, taut. He turned his head, and pretended he knew how to close his eyes.
...
20 June
D + 14
"No way." Ray Toro waved a hand. "I'm telling you guys, Italy. We'd all be eating dinner with the Pope, instead of this shit." He stabbed at the brackish stew with his free hand. It squelched mutinously.
"You want gourmet cooking, you heat your own goddamned food," Bryar grabbed the ration tin back, scooping up a gloppy bite. "It's not so bad." He licked a spot of sauce off his chin, offered up the tin to Gerard. Gerard shook his head, and Bob passed it on to Siska.
"That's because you're not Italian," Ray sniffed. He took a bite of his biscuit, the crack spraying crumbs as he spoke. "I got a buddy there -- Brit, 139th Infantry. Says you wouldn't believe the reception they got in Rome. Parades. Flowers thrown at their feet like they was Julius Caesar. More food than even you could eat, Bryar." Toro licked his lips. "My god."
Gerard watched them bicker, the easy way they swapped words, laughter. It was a far cry from the tone of the offensive: slow, bitter fighting from field to field, with the long, high hedges of the Normandy countryside providing trench-like cover for hiding Germans. The 16th Regiment hung back, mostly charged with mopping up enemy resistance behind the lines. Gerard held his breath for the counter-attack that would push them back into the sea.
Today, Fox Company had reached its target an hour before nightfall: an abandoned grain mill on the Orne River, wheel stilled, granary empty.
Frank came out of the makeshift officer's quarters. He stood across the yard from the other men, head turned as he called something back through the closing door. He crossed the space in brisk strides, and Gerard tilted his gaze down, stirred his bullion soup. His nerves tingled their way down his spine.
"Hello, boys," Frank said, coming up to them. "What've I missed?"
"Lieutenant Iero!" One of the new kids -- Suarez, from Jersey -- made as if to salute him, but Frank waved his hand.
"We were just talking about the other campaigns." Bob slid over, and Frank nudged in beside him, fitting himself against Gerard's side.
"That so?"
Gerard sensed the question was addressed to him. He coughed, nodded once. "Toro wants to go fight in Italy again."
"As a fellow paisan, Sir, you have to admit marching through Rome sounds pretty nice."
"The Lieutenant's from Sicily," Gerard said, and felt something warm and dry at the back of his throat when Frank gave him a quick smile.
"I am, and even I don't want to go back. The Poles had a hell of a time at Monte Cassino after we and the Brits left it."
Frank dipped his hand once -- barely even a roll of his fingers, but Ray flicked over another cigarette. Bob scooped out his lighter, Frank pressed the butt of his cigarette to the edge, and Gerard watched, seeing the interplay of hands and flame like the choreographed movements of a dance troupe. He swallowed, and pressed his palms to his pockets.
"Besides," Frank gestured with his cigarette at the scorched landscape, the chuckling river, "you'd trade all this for the Pope and some fritta alla romana?"
"I'd trade it for some grappa and a nice Italian girl, Sir."
"How about two bottles of Normandy Calvados?" Frank opened his pack, and the men gave a up a cheer as he handed over the stash.
Gerard chuckled. "Where'd you get it?"
Frank leaned back against the wall, mopping his brow with the back of his hand. "Captain Trohman found a liquor cabinet in the old foreman's office." He grinned. "He broke the door, kept the cognac, and split up the rest. You should have come inside."
"I don't drink."
Frank wavered. "Yeah, I know. Still. You should have. It was pretty funny."
Ray choked as Bob grabbed the bottle from him mid-swig, a trickle of apple brandy spilling down his chin. "Bastard!"
Siska laughed and slapped Ray's back. "Watch it - if the medic chokes, who's gonna know how to save him?"
"Have you looked through Mikey's things yet?" Frank murmured against his side.
Gerard shook his head. "I will," he said, looking at his hands. "I haven't. Too busy. You know."
"Okay," Frank said.
Gerard took another sip of his soup, and pressed the tin into Frank's hands. "You should eat something."
Frank looked down, blinking. "Thanks," he said. His fingers folded around Gerard's, taking the spoon. They untangled quickly. "You have enough K rations? There's a supply truck supposed to come up tomorrow and restock us."
Gerard nodded. "Two K's. Plus, Tom Conrad got chocolate from his girl back home. Said he'd share." Frank gave a faint sound, and Gerard pressed on. "He owes me fifteen francs from poker last night. I could trade for a bigger portion. If you wanted some."
"Yeah, sure," Frank said. "Thanks." His eyes were flecked, green and hazel. Gerard wondered if he still knew how to draw them, if he could still find colored pencils in his box back home whose shade would match perfectly. He'd lost his portable set of pencils in Africa - traded it to an Australian gunner for a new glasses case for Mikey.
Ray, then Butcher, then Bob started singing, voices twining together. "Ill be seeing you in all the old, familiar places that this heart of mine embraces, all day through." The tune caught on, spreading through Fox Company in hums and tapping toes.
"What?" Frank's nose wrinkled.
Gerard shook his head. "Nothing," he murmured. He shifted, shoulder rubbing against Frank's. Frank nudged back.
...
30 June
The whistling of a shell cut through the humid silence of the day's march, rattling teeth. "Down!" Gerard shouted, diving to the ground. He felt the supersonic whine pass overhead, and exhaled - a near-miss. The shattering explosion, some fifteen yards from the edge of their column, shook the ground.
"Second Platoon, take cover, right!" They peeled off the dirt road they'd been traveling, seeking cover in the ditches at the foot of the bocage, tall hedgerows that lined the countryside. Waiting, panting.
Frank crouched beside Gerard, rifle cocked ahead. "What the hell?" Gerard hissed. "We're divisional reserve - I thought the 29th was handling this shit!"
Frank shook his head, peering at the road. "I don't know - they must've slipped through. Cortez!"
The radio operator, crouched twenty paces ahead, scrambled back to them. Frank yanked the transmitter from its holster. "Get me regimental HQ on the horn," he snapped. He turned to Gerard. "I'll figure this out."
"Yeah," Gerard mumbled. The snapping report of machine guns rang out from a farmhouse, set some sixty yards back. He pulled out his binoculars, caught the gleam of burnished metal at the left side of the house. Figures appeared in the windows of the first floor.
Frank talked into the machine, quick and angry. "I don't care," he was saying, "what the 29th said, we've got Germans on our asses!" He slammed the radio back into its holster. "HQ says the house was cleared. They must have regrouped there. They're sending word to First and Third platoons to come in as reinforcements."
Gerard nodded. He signaled to his Sergeants, Butcher, Carden and Bryar, forming the men into squads. They huddled together in silence. Gerard's own squad collected around him, faces tight with anticipation.
"We're moving out," Gerard told Frank. "They're crawling all over the fucking house. You and Cortez, stay back and - "
"Oh, fuck that," Frank said. He fixed the snaps of his helmet, taking up his gun. Gerard glared, but they ran across the road together, sliding into the ditch on the near side.
"Iero," Gerard hissed.
"It looks like they're concentrating on the right side, towards the front of our line." Frank pointed. "If we come at them from the left, with Bryar and Carden coming in close enough for the machine gun and bazookas, we should be able to shake them loose."
To his left, Butcher and his men crouched, waiting instruction. Shooting, twisting cords of adrenaline stretched down Gerard's limbs; his fingers shook as they twisted, and twisted again. He stretched out his index and middle finger, gave the sign to Butcher and his sections to advance, with Carden and Bryar's guns firing cover. Gerard looked back to Frank, who gripped the barrel of his gun, nodding.
Gerard counted down from three. He swung his body out of the trench, muscles straining to lift himself back onto solid ground. He ran, his feet pounding the ground, his eyes open.
...
01 July
Gerard stood in the churchyard, steadying himself with one palm around the twisted post of the ruined iron gate. The church lay at the outskirts of the small town whose name Gerard had forgotten. It had been shelled last week as the First Army pummeled the retreating Germans. Broken glass littered the streets; those buildings that still stood bore the black residue of fires. The church -- Romanesque, Gerard thought, flexing the part of his brain that knew the differences between architectural styles instead of artillery craters -- had been converted into a hospital for the wounded, and as he stood at its edge, he could hear the sounds of the dying and the healing, commingling in the air.
A sharp wail pierced through the cacophony, the sound so jagged it barely seemed human. Gerard tightened his hand. The edges of the post dug into his palm, and even that pain, clear and fresh and real, couldn't help him understand that scream, the way it echoed between his ears.
"Lieutenant Way."
Gerard jerked his hand back, snapping it into a salute. He turned. "Captain Trohman."
Trohman shook his head, dismissing the formality. Gerard knew the men of Fox Company respected their leader for his disregard for protocol as much as his battlefield intensity. "Crazy Joe," he'd heard Butcher mutter, all the way back in North Africa, "bastard's going to get himself killed," and it was Butcher, so the nickname had stuck.
"Here to check on one of your men, Way?"
Gerard nodded. "Conrad got hit by shrapnel in the leg last night -- bled pretty badly, but I think he's going to be all right."
"Worried?" Trohman eyed him.
I wasn't, Gerard thought, but said only, "The pieces didn't look they got in there too deep."
"Well, we've got the best medic in the whole First Army saving our butts. Toro'll patch him up, easy."
"Yes, sir."
Captain Trohman nodded, and opened his mouth as if to say more. He exhaled a long breath instead; Gerard fought the urge to run as Trohman continued to study him. Just, waiting, almost, as if there was something important they ought to talk about.
Gerard looked at at his hand instead. The iron had scored long, straight tracks into his skin, leaving red lines that ran perpendicular to his wrist. He stretched his fingers, testing it, and felt the cracks widen; the intensity of the pain surprised him.
Trohman touched his arm, and Gerard tried to look up, but found he couldn't. A flap of skin curled up from the swell of his palm, just below his smallest finger, translucent and useless.
Skin was so thin, Gerard thought. Hardly strong enough to keep someone alive. He remembered Mikey as a baby, then, all powder-soft and smelling of milk and bananas. His pudgy little hands, clasping at locks of Gerard's dark hair as he leaned over the cradle, and he was the most fragile, most perfect thing in the world, this small packet of flesh and skin and soft breathing that Gerard knew, even then, he'd do anything to keep safe.
Someone inside the church was sobbing.
"A might fine job second platoon's been doing, Lieutenant Way."
Gerard nodded, swallowing when he found his throat was dry. The French dust gets everywhere, he thought.
"I'm sure your brother would be very proud of you." He knew Trohman was still touching his shoulder in an earnest, awkward move of kindness -- Crazy Joe, who was so much younger than anyone had realized, who'd outdrunk even Butcher on the last night of Basic, who'd gotten a 'Dear John' letter from his girl back in Chicago on the morning they took Palermo and a kiss from a wine-grower's daughter that night.
"I'd better go inside," Gerard said, croaking out a belated, "Sir."
Trohman nodded. "I've got a letter for you -- mail service delivered it to B Company by mistake." He rummaged through his pockets, pulling out a pale blue envelope.
Gerard saw the thin handwriting that curled across the top of the envelope, and hid his hands behind his back.
"Here," Trohman said, holding it out to Gerard. "Sorry it took so long."
Gerard stared at the envelope, and took it. "Thank you, sir." His mother's stationery felt as it always had; just holding her letter made him imagine her sitting at her desk, writing while she sipped at her tea and waited for their father to come home from the city.
"There's an officer's meeting at twenty-one hundred." Trohman raised his hand back in a salute, and Gerard matched him.
He slid the envelope in his pocket, patted it down once. The imprints of the corners pressed through his trousers. He smoothed his hand down his quad, the strong rope of muscle, and walked through the dark mouth of the hospital.
...
06 July
The column froze without warning. Gerard, lost in thought, nearly slammed into Suarez's pack in front of them. The morning sun ticked across the sky, just over the line that marked the difference between pleasant and hot. He felt the first tear-shaped drop of sweat form on the back of his neck.
"This ought to be good." Butcher, marching next to him, swung his gun off his shoulder. His eyes narrowed, aiming into the bocage for the first indication of movement.
Around them, the other men of 2nd Platoon did the same -- stopped on a narrow wagon road through thick, green forest, and Gerard felt his own heart quicken as one word fell through his stomach: ambush.
He moved forward along the column, nudging the replacements back into better cover, exchanging glances with the veterans. Frank nodded as he passed, and fell in behind him. Gerard heard the crack of snaps as he pulled out his map.
At the head of the platoon, Scimeca stood with Siska, conferring. The path bent around the formidable body of a hulking old tree, and beyond it, Gerard could see a small footbridge, the flat wooden slats worn from centuries of horses crossing it. The stream below gurgled lazily, and the bank was less than three feet deep. Fighting in France, Gerard thought, was like ripping apart a Monet: tanks rolling over wheat fields, Higgins boats trampling waterlilies.
"What's the hold-up?"
"We got lost, sir." Scimeca looked at him, face tense with worry. He was a good kid -- from Staten Island; he'd had a photography studio at the foot of the Goethals Bridge -- but a lousy soldier, and Gerard trusted Siska.
"We're lost?"
Siska nodded. Gerard had been trying to hold back his voice, but Siska didn't bother. "It's this bridge -- ain't supposed to be a bridge for another half-mile."
Gerard turned, and Frank nodded. He shook out the map, snapped his fingers. "Scimeca, give me a hand with this." Together, they unfurled the rayon, stretching it out across a section of dirt.
Gerard squatted. "Show me."
Frank took out his compass and pencil from his hip pocket, tossed them onto the flat surface of the map. "We started the morning near Caumont - " he jutted his pencil, marking the tiny dot of the village with a quick stroke. "We headed west, south-west, about two miles, and took a turn around this marsh." His compass spun as he spoke, fingers trailing the way. "We should be here," he gestured, "with a goal of meeting up with Charlie and Easy companies by nightfall, to give support at St. Lo. But we're not."
"Then where are we?"
Frank trilled his fingers on the map. "I have no fucking idea," he sighed. "Unless this map is off, which it very well might be." He glanced up. "You see a stream anywhere on here?"
Gerard shook his head. "Could be a vernal spring. Seasonal. That might not show up."
Frank bit his bottom lip, a flash of white teeth. "Yeah. Maybe. How much time can you give me to figure this out?"
Gerard stood, his knees giving the faintest protest. He looked to either side of him, but the hedges remained the same green walls, implacable. "Just, fix it."
Frank's bottom lip bore the indentation of his incisors. He nodded. "Cortez!" he shouted. "I'll let you know when it's sorted." Frank tipped back his helmet, glanced up. "I'm sorry."
"Yeah," Gerard said, voice hoarse. "Keep an eye out," he turned to Siska and Scimeca. "Let me know if you see any more errant topography."
Scimeca saluted, then frowned, puzzled. Siska just slapped Scimeca's back, grinning. "Got it, Sir."
Gerard left Siska to explain and marched back, weaving on the outer edge of the men. He avoided their curious glances, kept his jaw clenched. Bob gave him a goofy face, and Gerard lost his composure briefly, snorting. Bob saluted, and schooled his features back into the tense mask of combat.
"Is everything all right?"
Gerard turned. Father Jeph Howard stood in the middle of the column, hands at his sides. "Father Howard," Gerard said, uneasily. "I thought you traveled with the Major's staff."
Father Howard gave a broad smile. "The shepherd must walk among his flock every once in a while, Lieutenant Way." He touched his shoulder. "I haven't seen you at mass in some time."
Gerard winced, avoiding the chaplain's gaze. "I've been busy," he murmured. "I was promoted."
"Yes, I know." Howard nodded at the small silver bar on Gerard's lapel. "Congratulations. I've heard nothing but good things about your performance. Especially given..." His voice trailed off, and he fixed Gerard with another pinning look.
Gerard faked a cough, examined his nails. He'd cut them two days ago, but layers of dirt and French grime seeped under the cartilage, embedding itself in the whorls of his fingerprints. "Thank you, Father."
"I was wondering if I might talk to you about that, actually."
"About what?" Gerard said, glancing around. The men murmured among themselves. Bob and Ray started up their usual time-killer, a game whose rules had never been explained to Gerard. He saw Ray's hand dart out, pinching Bob at the fleshy spot, just above his hip.
"Fourteen!" Ray grinned.
"About your brother," Howard said. "Michael."
Gerard took a hissing breath. "Not now." He stamped one foot in the ground, jiggling out the chills that radiated down his left side. "I - there's nothing to say."
"Don't bullshit me, Gerard." Howard crooked a smile - he enjoyed doing that, Gerard thought, catching people off-guard with his blue streak. Father Howard had made it through the Kasserine Pass with the 16th, had been there on the first days of Operation Husky in Sicily. In maneuvers this spring, he'd punched a Canadian soldier in the face for insulting Mikey's scrawny frame. Gerard still hadn't decided if Howard was a son of a bitch, masquerading as a priest, or just a mining town kid with a prayerful streak.
"I administered last rites to Michael on the beach," Howard continued.
"My brother was shot in the first wave. He died in fifteen minutes."
Howard gave a sound, low in his throat. "Well, that's what I wrote your mother. She seemed comforted to know that he'd received his last communion, before passing on."
"He took a bullet to the stomach," Gerard said. "I saw it." He heard the buzzing of an insect, flying around his head in the stagnant heat. Flinched. "His blood. He wouldn't have been able to take communion."
"I'm sorry." Howard touched him again, but Gerard shook his hand off.
"Lots of people died on that beach," Gerard said. "The sixteenth had one thousand casualties, Trohman said." He shrugged. The muscles in his shoulders creaked, the tense inter-working of tendon and bone, shifting with a soft pop. He shifted his rifle down, butt nudging the curved top of his boot. "We should be moving soon."
"She responded to my letter. Said she wrote you one as well, but that she's had no reply." Howard kept his tone low, soothing. The same voice he used to dispense mass. Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. "Have you opened it?"
"I've been busy," Gerard repeated, voice taut.
"What about your brother's effects? I know Lieutenant Iero took you to get them at the quartermaster's station in Colleville; I went to check a few days later and he'd signed them out in your name."
"Really, Father - this isn't the time."
Bob laughed, triumphant, from up the line. "Twenty-four, you wop bastard!"
"You'll never have the time," Howard said, "not before it's too late. None of us do." He moved his hand to touch the rosary that dangled over his uniform, fingers skating over the oblong beads of the hail Mary, down to the anguished figure of Christ, crucified. "Read your mother's letter. Look through Michael's things."
"When the hell are we going to start moving again?" Gerard stepped out of the column, craning his neck. Frank was still crouched over his map, rapidly repeating coordinates into Private Cortez's radio. He scanned the road ahead, the trickling brook and its sad bridge.
"Michael used to come to me for confession," Howard said. "Once every two weeks. I'm positive that he'd want you to see whatever he carried with him. Gerard -- "
"Jesus Christ, Father," Gerard hissed. He closed his eyes, snapping his eyelids shut tight enough that starbursts danced across his field of vision, like artillery shells in the night. He counted to five, opened them again.
Father Howard touched his forehead. His lips moved quickly, reciting a prayer Gerard couldn't hear. His fingers felt cool on Gerard's skin.
"Lieutenant!"
Gerard wrenched himself away, glancing ahead. Scimeca waved, beaming triumphantly. "We're good to go!"
"About time," Gerard heard someone - Carden? - mutter.
Gerard took up his gun, slinging it over his shoulder. He nodded to Howard, who gave him one last smile, and found his place in line.
"Fucking priests," Butcher mumbled. "He want to save your eternal soul?"
"Something like that," Gerard said. "Second Platoon, move out!"
...
08 July
The knot of the string had ossified in a month, hardened into a nub of twine smaller than a fleck of shrapnel. Gerard's fingers scrabbled against the brown paper, trying to slide the edge of his index fingernail between the tightly wedded strands. He hunched over on his pallet, lamp casting a warped shadow of himself against the canvas of his tent.
He sat back, tossing the bundle onto the foot of his bed. His fingers felt fat, useless, like cased sausages. He massaged the kinks out of his muscles, pinching the knobby bones of his joints and easing the strain out of them.
His gear lay spread across the ground, strewn about the small space covered by the heavy canvas tent. Gerard cast out a hand, grabbing his regulation wire-cutters; he took them to the bundle. The string snapped with a meek sound.
Gerard unfolded the heavy brown paper, smoothing the corners flat. He took a harsh breath, and folded the paper back into quarters, eighths. Slid it into the pocket of his jacket.
Mikey's glasses sat on top, sheathed in their hard leather case. Gerard turned the case over in his hands, his thumb sliding over the hinged seam. He remembered swiping a sheen of sea-grit off the left lens in the foggy dawn of that morning.
Mikey had scrunched his nose, flinched. "Sarge," he'd whined. The inflection and cadence of his vowel matched the way he'd said Gerard's name when they were both children.
"Doing okay?" Gerard had mumbled. "Not nauseous?"
"Jesus, Gee." Mikey rolled his eyes. "I'm fine." Fine.
Gerard set the glasses aside, leaving them snug in their little shell. (Coffin, just like a coffin, Gerard thought.) He didn't need to see them.
Mikey's garrison cap was tucked below, folded flat. Most of his other gear, they'd have taken back: pistol, knife, canteen. Sorted, tossed onto one of the heaps outside the quartermaster's station, recycled to another needing soldier. Sent back out into battle.
They'd left a pair of non-regulation socks, gray wool. Soft to the touch - identical to the pair their grandmother Elena had sent to Gerard, last Christmas. His own were tucked in his footlocker, somewhere in Devonshire. Mikey had always hated when his feet caught chill. "I'll want dry socks." He'd refused to be ashamed by the others' jibes.
Mikey's books made up most of the parcel's weight, and stacked against one another at the bottom. Gerard took out each in turn, handling them with the care of relics.
The first, he recognized: his own copy of TS Eliot's The Waste Land, lent to Mikey several summers ago. Gerard had purchased the book in New York, at Schulte's on Book Row. An early British edition, the book had already bore several generations of notations when Gerard bought it for thirty-five cents.
He paged through, his eye glancing across memorable lines. In several places, he saw the spidery scrawl of his own commentary, or the claustrophobic lettering of Mikey's additions. Gerard flipped to the last page, the final line in its haunting opacity.
Shantih shantih shantih
He turned back, through the pages of Eliot's notes, looking for the translation.
"Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an Upanishad. 'The Peace which passeth understanding' is a feeble translation of the conduct of this word."
Gerard flushed at his own handwriting:
"This poem has meant more to me than most people I know. It saved my life. g.w. 4/22/36"
"i concur. goof. m.w. 11/08/38"
Gerard closed the book, taking up the one beside it. This one, he knew as well: a leather-bound edition of the Bible, the same one they'd both received at Confirmation. Gerard's, he'd lost three years ago, stolen with the rest of his pack when he'd fallen asleep in Grand Central Station. Mikey's felt well-worn, the pages dog-eared at certain passages. Gerard went to check which ones he'd marked, but stopped. Something about the move felt intrusive, like eavesdropping at confession.
The last book lay tucked below the Bible, thin enough that Gerard had almost missed it at first glance. Unlike the other two, this one was paperback, printed in folio, its pages doubled. A cheap print run, it didn't even bear the name of its publisher on the spine.
The front cover was a dingy brown, the color of coffee or cardboard. Gerard saw traces of fingerprints on the inexpensive paper, glistening with after-traces of skin cells and sweat. Une Saison en Enfer, Arthur Rimbaud. Gerard had read the English translation in college, a required literature class - Symbolist poetry, highly influential with the current Surrealist set. Not to Mikey's taste.
He turned to a page at random, and a sheet of paper fluttered out. Acting on instinct, Gerard caught it as it drifted to the ground, pinching between his first two fingers. He set the book on top of the Bible, and unfolded the paper.
15 July, 1939
Rue de Chevreuse, 75006
Cher Michel,
The lights of the fireworks have faded out in the sky, melted away into the water of the Seine. Our Seine, our winding, tightly circumscribed river. You're asleep beside me, and I write in English. You told me I should practice.
I swim in your river, locked tight between the buildings of your hands. The bed bobs like we shook it tonight. "Sweeter than the flesh of sour apples to children," My drunken boat.
The July heat presses in, climbing up the stairs. Peeking under the white sheets, where your feet poke out to draw patterns in the water. Underneath the sheets, you sleep. Underneath my skin is flesh, and underneath my flesh are bones and wet, brittle things. Trickling streams and tiny fish. Swimming to you, flickering between your dangling toes.
I think you will wake up shortly. You're stirring. I guide our little boat, our little bed, back to its spot below the windows.
Grosses bises,
Pete.
Gerard read the letter twice. He flipped the page over, but the small, neat handwriting stopped with the flourished signature. Pete.
He slumped back on his pallet, letting the scattered remains of Mikey's belongings lie beside him. Gerard thought back to Mikey's summer in France: weeks before the official declaration of war, and the family had mostly been concerned with getting him home in time. Gerard remembered writing to Mikey, sending recommendations for bars in the Latin Quarter he'd read about, artists Mikey ought to look up if he had a chance. Nothing about a lover. Nothing about Pete.
"Lieutenant?" Frank's voice, from just outside the tent.
Gerard folded the letter, sliding it into the book again. "Come in."
Frank slipped through the flap. "Hey," he said. His face, front-lit by the lamp's glow, separated into valleys and peaks.
"What do you need?" Gerard sat upright.
Frank's gaze flickered across Gerard's form, the belongings scattered around him. He carried his helmet, pressed against his side. "Is that the packet from Colleville?"
"Mikey's things."
"Gerard," Frank started. He stopped. Gerard watched Frank's lips, the way he licked the bottom one before speaking. "Gotta turn off the lights. HQ wants a black out."
"Oh. Yeah, sure." Gerard tucked the books away. Frank stood watching, hand resting on the edge of the canvas.
"Okay." Frank stepped back. "Um, I'll see you -"
"Hey," Gerard said, quietly.
Frank paused.
"You need a pair of socks?" He held up Mikey's, balled in his fist.
Frank's eyes went wide. "No, that's." He shook his head.
"I mean it," he pressed. "You. Your socks are always falling apart."
Frank flushed. "Really, Gerard, you don't have to."
"I want to." He swallowed.
"Oh." A smile crept up his cheeks. "Well. Mine are a little holey."
Gerard tossed the socks over, lofting them underhand. Frank caught them easily. "Thanks," he said. "Have a good night, Gerard."
Gerard met his smile. "You, too."
---
Note: The epigraph comes from a Paul Verlaine poem. Those lines were broadcast on BBC London to signal the imminence of an Allied invasion in June, 1944.
Part Two
Thanks to the veritable army of people (pun intended) who helped this thing along.
Peace Which Passeth Understanding
part one of many. mcr, au. wwii, loosely based on "the ghost of you" video. featuring supporting roles by just about everyone you can think of. partially posted a year ago elsewhere. this is the real deal.
---
Les sanglots longs des violons de l’automne
Blessent mon cœur d’une langueur monotone.
08 June 1944
D + 2
They marched back into Colleville-Sur-Mer with the rising sun on their right, its first rays catching the pools of standing water that splashed across their boots. The village separated from the surrounding fields into a medieval cluster of stone houses, a gathering of a few hundred families. Its patchy network of streets seemed shorter than the hyphenated name that clumped in their tired mouths.
Gerard led the men -- his men, now -- through the main highway, already swollen with the tanks and trucks of occupation. They marched in pairs, heads down, feet motoring through each step with the dogged exhaustion of a night's patrol. No one spoke.
Gerard kept his eyes off the ground; the monotony of the paving stones made him dizzy and left his mind free to wander. He and Frank walked shoulder to shoulder behind the front of the column, and Frank's brief, pointed glances made Gerard's temples buzz. The tip of Frank's rifle swung into the corner of Gerard's vision with every left step.
They had met Frank in Florida -- Mikey first, on the train from Jacksonville. The claustrophobic Southern heat turned Gerard's stomach; he'd pillowed his jacket against the scalding windowpane and drifted into shallow sleep. (His first weekend pass at Camp Blanding -- revoked that night for a wrinkled uniform.) "I met someone," Mikey said, shaking him awake. Gerard had noticed Mikey's smile first, then the solid feeling of the stopped train. The small man behind Mikey, one hand on his brother's shoulder, garrison cap pressed into the other, had registered third and distant in his mind. Even later, Gerard couldn't remember his first impression of Frank, tangled as it was with every moment after, in Blanding, Oran, England.
They reached the center of town, the little cobblestone square and its memorial to the last war's dead. Gerard gave the order for the men to disperse, and they melted away in twos and threes, seeking uneasy shelter wherever they could. Most slumped down against the warming walls of houses. Butcher and Carden dropped, heedless of the growing bustle, onto the steps of the marble sarcophagus itself.
Frank touched his shoulder. Gerard flinched. "You should get some rest."
"Nowhere to go," Gerard said. He looked around at the low, sagging buildings, ragged curtains shivering in the windowless gaps. A pair of dark eyes peered through cracks in a broken door, blinking in the morning sun. Mikey, he thought.
Frank slid his hand down, over Gerard's sleeve. "They're gonna have to get you new insignia, Lieutenant Way." His fingers tapped out an arrythmic pattern on the three chevrons of Gerard's sergeant patch.
"Maybe they should go fish out Pelissier's." Second Platoon's old commanding officer, an asshole who'd managed to stay alive through North Africa only to make his men's lives that much more hellish. Gerard wondered how he'd have taken the news, but found all he could think of was the slickness of the man's intestines as they spilled out over the ramp of the landing craft. When he checked that night, the sea had washed the nubby red flecks off Gerard's boots.
Frank's jaw tensed. "Come on." He held Gerard's arm at the apex of the elbow. "The quartermaster set up at a house down on Rue des Lions. We'll get Mikey's things."
"Oh."
Frank walked on, and Gerard followed, planting his feet in the same set of muddy tracks. His feet were larger than Frank's and the clear tread imprint of his boots was lost with each of Gerard's plodding steps.
Gerard saw parachutes, hung on the trees like shrouds. "Airborne," Frank said, steering them past.
Along the road, they passed an orchard, ruined by artillery fire. Tree corpses raised up blackened branches, their trunks maimed and blasted into kindling. A lone unharmed tree stood, its roots exposed in the churned-up soil. Ugly, knotted things, blind and naked in the unfamiliar sunlight. Inverted, like having one's heart pinned outside one's chest. Gerard imagined them grabbing at his ankles, pulling him down into the soil, with the cabbages and the shell casings.
The quartermaster's farmhouse was one of the few left standing; they passed orphaned walls, doorways leading to smoke and nothing, chimneys standing like the stripped trees. Even this house had a dark crater in one wall, just below where the roof sagged and gapped, as if a giant had punched his fist through the stones. The windows of the first floor were barred with long wooden boards; dark cloth hung behind them and obscured the view inside. Gerard heard the fractious crunch of broken glass.
Around the yard lay piles of supplies - ammunition cartridges, small arms, boots. He watched as soldiers shifted through, picking the good pieces out and leaving the broken to lie there. A man gave a cry of joy as he found a tin of sardines, the "RD" of the label blackened by soot.
"Wait here," Frank said. "I'll handle it." Gerard thought about nodding, but couldn't tell if he had.
"Mikey -- " he began.
"Jesus, Gerard." Frank pressed his lips together so tightly that they bled white; he closed his eyes. "Just, wait."
"Be okay," Gerard whispered. Frank opened his eyes.
"I'll be right back."
Gerard watched Frank until a crowd of soldiers wearing the insignia of the 101st Airborne swallowed him up in the doorway of the quartermaster's house. The yard hummed and gritted its teeth; in the middle of this bustle, Gerard felt his body slow. He dragged himself to a segment of the low brick wall that ran back towards the orchard. His blood sluiced in his veins; his muscles thrummed against his skin. The wall heated his palm like a handshake, and the calls of officers were almost like a conversation. But Gerard stood alone in a town in Normandy, France, his trouser cuffs crackled with dirt. Mikey was dead, and even the earth swelled and choked with water.
A harsh drone cut through the air. Gerard shaded his eyes and tilted his head. Three planes appeared from the northwest, cresting over the line of trees in tripartite formation. They crossed the egg-blue sky, exhaust leaving three plumes of smoke that wavered and dissipated in their wake. He squinted, trying to read the markings -- only Bryar among them was good enough to recognize a plane by the growl of its engine. American, but the ordered sets of numbers and letters melted from his grasping mind. Bombers.
"Gerard." Frank touched the edge of the chevrons. His face was caught between exasperation and worry. Under his arm, he held a brown paper bundle, tied with white string.
Gerard motioned to the wisping trails of exhaust. "Didn't hear. Is that?"
Frank nodded. "Let's go." He cradled the bundle in his hands like a newborn boy.
"It's so -- small."
"I had them double-check." Frank smoothed a hand over the surface; his smallest finger twitched. "They packed it in front of me."
"Can I --" Gerard stuck out one hand, palm up, and Frank passed the bundle over -- heavier than Gerard expected, and he bobbled for a moment; his stomach twisted before it righted itself in his grasp. "Thanks."
Gerard pressed the bundle to his chest, flat over the strap of his rifle, the buttons of his shirt. Across the top, someone had written in a neat hand: PVT 1CL WAY (MICHAEL), 2ND PLAT, F COM, 16 INF 1 DIV. He touched the letters of Mikey's name. Michael James Way, he thought. He couldn't feel a difference between the black ink and the rasping texture of the paper.
"Do you want to go open it?" Frank's eyes skated over Gerard's face.
"We've got a meeting with First and Third Platoon," Gerard said. He knelt, sliding off his pack and unbuttoning the snaps. The contents had shifted around in marching, K and C-ration tins clanging against one another. He slid Mikey's bundle in, next to his parcel of letters from their mother in Jersey. Gerard closed the bag and slid it over his shoulder again.
"Okay." Gerard looked up at Frank.
Frank reached his hand out, and Gerard gripped it, tight and dry and warm. He swung to his feet, leveraging himself up from the mud. Frank's fingers fit into the troughs between Gerard's knuckles, like gears in a watch.
"Let's go," he echoed.
...
13 June 1944
D + 7
The night sky hung overhead, pocked with the craters of stars. In the darkness, sounds ricocheted against one another until they built up into the specter of a lurking enemy. Seabirds wheeling inland keened, carrying with them the whistle of guns; the murmur of conversation rolled like the thunder of artillery.
From the deep window ledge of the abandoned barn, Gerard watched the dark smudge of the field. Oh one hundred. Supper time in New Jersey, seven o'clock, the long trains of the Hudson-Passaic line emptying armies of men back to lighted houses. Pork chops, baked potatoes, brothers hiding dirty hands under a white tablecloth.
His cigarette burned low, the flame nicking at the tips of his fingers. Gerard stubbed it on his boot, hearing the sizzle and flicking the butt out into the night. His last one.
"Hear they've got sentries who do this sort of thing, Way." Frank's face glowed in the half-moonlight. His helmet sat askew on his head, the chin strap dangling uselessly against the curve of his neck. A dark spray of stubble cased his jaw, and his eyes were ringed in red.
"Scimeca's on patrol till oh-three hundred," Gerard said. "I just-- "
"Can't sleep again?" Frank pushed up on his forearms, swinging his legs onto the window ledge beside Gerard. His slight frame fit against the other side of the window, knees tucked in.
"I can't sleep either," Frank said, unconcerned when Gerard didn't reply. "Toro's snoring back there - I keep thinking a Kraut's dropping bombs on our heads."
"Yeah."
Gerard turned back, saw a black shadow flit against the blacker sky. Bat, he thought.
"I told Bryar to do us a favor, put us all out of our misery. Said he'd have me written up for sabotage." Frank's laugh sounded nothing like gunfire.
"Got any smokes?"
Frank patted the pockets of his jacket. "Finished my last this morning - besides, you'd just make yourself a sniper target with the light."
Gerard touched his temple under the brim of his helmet, feeling the indentation above his jaw. He circled the space with tips of his index and middle finger, imagining the shatter of thin bone. How fast, he thought, would it be over? A split second, or maybe even less. Not enough time to know you'd been hit. No suffering, no agonized screams, no feeling as everything. Just. Stopped.
Frank reached out, tapped his fingers. "Got a headache?" Even through the blunted surface of his fingernails, Gerard could feel heat from Frank's touch.
He shook his head, dislodging Frank's fingers. "Where are we again?"
"We're in France."
"Wise-ass. Aren't you the maps man?"
"You're staring out at a flooded cabbage field in Normandy. You really want to know the name of the poor bastard whose farm got blown to bits by panzers and left this hellhole for us?"
Gerard glanced back at the barn. The men clustered in groups of threes and fours. Some sprawled across the bales of hay, catching a few hours' rest before the next march, hands twitching in anticipation of grabbing their guns. He saw Siska dealing out cards to Butcher and Conrad, their hands illuminated by the muffled glow of a flashlight sheathed in an extra sock.
"You know his name?" Gerard asked, at last.
"Jean-Marie Huppert. A councilman in Balleroy. We're, just outside."
"Balleroy." He worked his way through the accent, mimicking Frank's, but the sounds slipped from his mouth clumsily. Mikey's French had always been far superior to his own - a summer in France, just before Mikey's first semester at university.
"He make it all right?"
"Gerard -- "
A sound in the field. Gerard swung his rifle over the windowsill, drawing the base to his shoulder. Practiced fingers slid to the trigger. "Get down," he hissed. The smudgy shadows gave no trace of movement.
"Wool," he called out.
Nothing.
"Wool," again, a bit louder, and waited three long seconds until, "Rabbit!"
"Welcome." Gerard tossed out the countersign as PVT Scimeca appeared, holding his rifle above his head.
"Jesus christ, Scimeca -- you forget the password?" Frank flicked pieces of hay off his shirt. "Almost got your head blown off."
"It's just me, Sir," Scimeca said. His hand trembled as he saluted. "Sorry, I - I didn't hear you."
Gerard waited as the muscles of his finger loosened, almost unwilling to released the trigger. "See anything?"
"No, sir. Nothing."
"All quiet on the Western Front," Frank murmured.
Gerard nodded. He wasn't sure who he'd meant the gesture for, but Scimeca saluted again, and walked back out into the field.
"That was." He swallowed. Another second. His finger twitched at his side. A pressure settled itself at the top of Gerard's neck, as if he were carrying someone on his back, the limp weight of a body slung over his shoulders.
"Go sleep." Frank's hand grazed his. Gerard couldn't tell if it was an accident. "We're not moving out until ten hundred, at least."
"Yeah?"
"Trust me. I'm the maps man."
"Right." He nodded. "Right. Yeah. I'll go."
His pack lay in the near corner of the barn, tucked against a bale of hay that smelled of rain and cattle. He set his gun down beside it, angling the body so his hand could clasp it before the rest of him woke.
"Gerard."
He looked up from his makeshift bed, focusing his glance over his shoulder at Frank's warm eyes, and not the gaping darkness behind him.
"Huppert and his family are safe." He smiled, the simplest crook of his mouth.
Gerard attempted a smile of his own, but gave up when he felt the skin of his lips catch over his teeth, taut. He turned his head, and pretended he knew how to close his eyes.
...
20 June
D + 14
"No way." Ray Toro waved a hand. "I'm telling you guys, Italy. We'd all be eating dinner with the Pope, instead of this shit." He stabbed at the brackish stew with his free hand. It squelched mutinously.
"You want gourmet cooking, you heat your own goddamned food," Bryar grabbed the ration tin back, scooping up a gloppy bite. "It's not so bad." He licked a spot of sauce off his chin, offered up the tin to Gerard. Gerard shook his head, and Bob passed it on to Siska.
"That's because you're not Italian," Ray sniffed. He took a bite of his biscuit, the crack spraying crumbs as he spoke. "I got a buddy there -- Brit, 139th Infantry. Says you wouldn't believe the reception they got in Rome. Parades. Flowers thrown at their feet like they was Julius Caesar. More food than even you could eat, Bryar." Toro licked his lips. "My god."
Gerard watched them bicker, the easy way they swapped words, laughter. It was a far cry from the tone of the offensive: slow, bitter fighting from field to field, with the long, high hedges of the Normandy countryside providing trench-like cover for hiding Germans. The 16th Regiment hung back, mostly charged with mopping up enemy resistance behind the lines. Gerard held his breath for the counter-attack that would push them back into the sea.
Today, Fox Company had reached its target an hour before nightfall: an abandoned grain mill on the Orne River, wheel stilled, granary empty.
Frank came out of the makeshift officer's quarters. He stood across the yard from the other men, head turned as he called something back through the closing door. He crossed the space in brisk strides, and Gerard tilted his gaze down, stirred his bullion soup. His nerves tingled their way down his spine.
"Hello, boys," Frank said, coming up to them. "What've I missed?"
"Lieutenant Iero!" One of the new kids -- Suarez, from Jersey -- made as if to salute him, but Frank waved his hand.
"We were just talking about the other campaigns." Bob slid over, and Frank nudged in beside him, fitting himself against Gerard's side.
"That so?"
Gerard sensed the question was addressed to him. He coughed, nodded once. "Toro wants to go fight in Italy again."
"As a fellow paisan, Sir, you have to admit marching through Rome sounds pretty nice."
"The Lieutenant's from Sicily," Gerard said, and felt something warm and dry at the back of his throat when Frank gave him a quick smile.
"I am, and even I don't want to go back. The Poles had a hell of a time at Monte Cassino after we and the Brits left it."
Frank dipped his hand once -- barely even a roll of his fingers, but Ray flicked over another cigarette. Bob scooped out his lighter, Frank pressed the butt of his cigarette to the edge, and Gerard watched, seeing the interplay of hands and flame like the choreographed movements of a dance troupe. He swallowed, and pressed his palms to his pockets.
"Besides," Frank gestured with his cigarette at the scorched landscape, the chuckling river, "you'd trade all this for the Pope and some fritta alla romana?"
"I'd trade it for some grappa and a nice Italian girl, Sir."
"How about two bottles of Normandy Calvados?" Frank opened his pack, and the men gave a up a cheer as he handed over the stash.
Gerard chuckled. "Where'd you get it?"
Frank leaned back against the wall, mopping his brow with the back of his hand. "Captain Trohman found a liquor cabinet in the old foreman's office." He grinned. "He broke the door, kept the cognac, and split up the rest. You should have come inside."
"I don't drink."
Frank wavered. "Yeah, I know. Still. You should have. It was pretty funny."
Ray choked as Bob grabbed the bottle from him mid-swig, a trickle of apple brandy spilling down his chin. "Bastard!"
Siska laughed and slapped Ray's back. "Watch it - if the medic chokes, who's gonna know how to save him?"
"Have you looked through Mikey's things yet?" Frank murmured against his side.
Gerard shook his head. "I will," he said, looking at his hands. "I haven't. Too busy. You know."
"Okay," Frank said.
Gerard took another sip of his soup, and pressed the tin into Frank's hands. "You should eat something."
Frank looked down, blinking. "Thanks," he said. His fingers folded around Gerard's, taking the spoon. They untangled quickly. "You have enough K rations? There's a supply truck supposed to come up tomorrow and restock us."
Gerard nodded. "Two K's. Plus, Tom Conrad got chocolate from his girl back home. Said he'd share." Frank gave a faint sound, and Gerard pressed on. "He owes me fifteen francs from poker last night. I could trade for a bigger portion. If you wanted some."
"Yeah, sure," Frank said. "Thanks." His eyes were flecked, green and hazel. Gerard wondered if he still knew how to draw them, if he could still find colored pencils in his box back home whose shade would match perfectly. He'd lost his portable set of pencils in Africa - traded it to an Australian gunner for a new glasses case for Mikey.
Ray, then Butcher, then Bob started singing, voices twining together. "Ill be seeing you in all the old, familiar places that this heart of mine embraces, all day through." The tune caught on, spreading through Fox Company in hums and tapping toes.
"What?" Frank's nose wrinkled.
Gerard shook his head. "Nothing," he murmured. He shifted, shoulder rubbing against Frank's. Frank nudged back.
...
30 June
The whistling of a shell cut through the humid silence of the day's march, rattling teeth. "Down!" Gerard shouted, diving to the ground. He felt the supersonic whine pass overhead, and exhaled - a near-miss. The shattering explosion, some fifteen yards from the edge of their column, shook the ground.
"Second Platoon, take cover, right!" They peeled off the dirt road they'd been traveling, seeking cover in the ditches at the foot of the bocage, tall hedgerows that lined the countryside. Waiting, panting.
Frank crouched beside Gerard, rifle cocked ahead. "What the hell?" Gerard hissed. "We're divisional reserve - I thought the 29th was handling this shit!"
Frank shook his head, peering at the road. "I don't know - they must've slipped through. Cortez!"
The radio operator, crouched twenty paces ahead, scrambled back to them. Frank yanked the transmitter from its holster. "Get me regimental HQ on the horn," he snapped. He turned to Gerard. "I'll figure this out."
"Yeah," Gerard mumbled. The snapping report of machine guns rang out from a farmhouse, set some sixty yards back. He pulled out his binoculars, caught the gleam of burnished metal at the left side of the house. Figures appeared in the windows of the first floor.
Frank talked into the machine, quick and angry. "I don't care," he was saying, "what the 29th said, we've got Germans on our asses!" He slammed the radio back into its holster. "HQ says the house was cleared. They must have regrouped there. They're sending word to First and Third platoons to come in as reinforcements."
Gerard nodded. He signaled to his Sergeants, Butcher, Carden and Bryar, forming the men into squads. They huddled together in silence. Gerard's own squad collected around him, faces tight with anticipation.
"We're moving out," Gerard told Frank. "They're crawling all over the fucking house. You and Cortez, stay back and - "
"Oh, fuck that," Frank said. He fixed the snaps of his helmet, taking up his gun. Gerard glared, but they ran across the road together, sliding into the ditch on the near side.
"Iero," Gerard hissed.
"It looks like they're concentrating on the right side, towards the front of our line." Frank pointed. "If we come at them from the left, with Bryar and Carden coming in close enough for the machine gun and bazookas, we should be able to shake them loose."
To his left, Butcher and his men crouched, waiting instruction. Shooting, twisting cords of adrenaline stretched down Gerard's limbs; his fingers shook as they twisted, and twisted again. He stretched out his index and middle finger, gave the sign to Butcher and his sections to advance, with Carden and Bryar's guns firing cover. Gerard looked back to Frank, who gripped the barrel of his gun, nodding.
Gerard counted down from three. He swung his body out of the trench, muscles straining to lift himself back onto solid ground. He ran, his feet pounding the ground, his eyes open.
...
01 July
Gerard stood in the churchyard, steadying himself with one palm around the twisted post of the ruined iron gate. The church lay at the outskirts of the small town whose name Gerard had forgotten. It had been shelled last week as the First Army pummeled the retreating Germans. Broken glass littered the streets; those buildings that still stood bore the black residue of fires. The church -- Romanesque, Gerard thought, flexing the part of his brain that knew the differences between architectural styles instead of artillery craters -- had been converted into a hospital for the wounded, and as he stood at its edge, he could hear the sounds of the dying and the healing, commingling in the air.
A sharp wail pierced through the cacophony, the sound so jagged it barely seemed human. Gerard tightened his hand. The edges of the post dug into his palm, and even that pain, clear and fresh and real, couldn't help him understand that scream, the way it echoed between his ears.
"Lieutenant Way."
Gerard jerked his hand back, snapping it into a salute. He turned. "Captain Trohman."
Trohman shook his head, dismissing the formality. Gerard knew the men of Fox Company respected their leader for his disregard for protocol as much as his battlefield intensity. "Crazy Joe," he'd heard Butcher mutter, all the way back in North Africa, "bastard's going to get himself killed," and it was Butcher, so the nickname had stuck.
"Here to check on one of your men, Way?"
Gerard nodded. "Conrad got hit by shrapnel in the leg last night -- bled pretty badly, but I think he's going to be all right."
"Worried?" Trohman eyed him.
I wasn't, Gerard thought, but said only, "The pieces didn't look they got in there too deep."
"Well, we've got the best medic in the whole First Army saving our butts. Toro'll patch him up, easy."
"Yes, sir."
Captain Trohman nodded, and opened his mouth as if to say more. He exhaled a long breath instead; Gerard fought the urge to run as Trohman continued to study him. Just, waiting, almost, as if there was something important they ought to talk about.
Gerard looked at at his hand instead. The iron had scored long, straight tracks into his skin, leaving red lines that ran perpendicular to his wrist. He stretched his fingers, testing it, and felt the cracks widen; the intensity of the pain surprised him.
Trohman touched his arm, and Gerard tried to look up, but found he couldn't. A flap of skin curled up from the swell of his palm, just below his smallest finger, translucent and useless.
Skin was so thin, Gerard thought. Hardly strong enough to keep someone alive. He remembered Mikey as a baby, then, all powder-soft and smelling of milk and bananas. His pudgy little hands, clasping at locks of Gerard's dark hair as he leaned over the cradle, and he was the most fragile, most perfect thing in the world, this small packet of flesh and skin and soft breathing that Gerard knew, even then, he'd do anything to keep safe.
Someone inside the church was sobbing.
"A might fine job second platoon's been doing, Lieutenant Way."
Gerard nodded, swallowing when he found his throat was dry. The French dust gets everywhere, he thought.
"I'm sure your brother would be very proud of you." He knew Trohman was still touching his shoulder in an earnest, awkward move of kindness -- Crazy Joe, who was so much younger than anyone had realized, who'd outdrunk even Butcher on the last night of Basic, who'd gotten a 'Dear John' letter from his girl back in Chicago on the morning they took Palermo and a kiss from a wine-grower's daughter that night.
"I'd better go inside," Gerard said, croaking out a belated, "Sir."
Trohman nodded. "I've got a letter for you -- mail service delivered it to B Company by mistake." He rummaged through his pockets, pulling out a pale blue envelope.
Gerard saw the thin handwriting that curled across the top of the envelope, and hid his hands behind his back.
"Here," Trohman said, holding it out to Gerard. "Sorry it took so long."
Gerard stared at the envelope, and took it. "Thank you, sir." His mother's stationery felt as it always had; just holding her letter made him imagine her sitting at her desk, writing while she sipped at her tea and waited for their father to come home from the city.
"There's an officer's meeting at twenty-one hundred." Trohman raised his hand back in a salute, and Gerard matched him.
He slid the envelope in his pocket, patted it down once. The imprints of the corners pressed through his trousers. He smoothed his hand down his quad, the strong rope of muscle, and walked through the dark mouth of the hospital.
...
06 July
The column froze without warning. Gerard, lost in thought, nearly slammed into Suarez's pack in front of them. The morning sun ticked across the sky, just over the line that marked the difference between pleasant and hot. He felt the first tear-shaped drop of sweat form on the back of his neck.
"This ought to be good." Butcher, marching next to him, swung his gun off his shoulder. His eyes narrowed, aiming into the bocage for the first indication of movement.
Around them, the other men of 2nd Platoon did the same -- stopped on a narrow wagon road through thick, green forest, and Gerard felt his own heart quicken as one word fell through his stomach: ambush.
He moved forward along the column, nudging the replacements back into better cover, exchanging glances with the veterans. Frank nodded as he passed, and fell in behind him. Gerard heard the crack of snaps as he pulled out his map.
At the head of the platoon, Scimeca stood with Siska, conferring. The path bent around the formidable body of a hulking old tree, and beyond it, Gerard could see a small footbridge, the flat wooden slats worn from centuries of horses crossing it. The stream below gurgled lazily, and the bank was less than three feet deep. Fighting in France, Gerard thought, was like ripping apart a Monet: tanks rolling over wheat fields, Higgins boats trampling waterlilies.
"What's the hold-up?"
"We got lost, sir." Scimeca looked at him, face tense with worry. He was a good kid -- from Staten Island; he'd had a photography studio at the foot of the Goethals Bridge -- but a lousy soldier, and Gerard trusted Siska.
"We're lost?"
Siska nodded. Gerard had been trying to hold back his voice, but Siska didn't bother. "It's this bridge -- ain't supposed to be a bridge for another half-mile."
Gerard turned, and Frank nodded. He shook out the map, snapped his fingers. "Scimeca, give me a hand with this." Together, they unfurled the rayon, stretching it out across a section of dirt.
Gerard squatted. "Show me."
Frank took out his compass and pencil from his hip pocket, tossed them onto the flat surface of the map. "We started the morning near Caumont - " he jutted his pencil, marking the tiny dot of the village with a quick stroke. "We headed west, south-west, about two miles, and took a turn around this marsh." His compass spun as he spoke, fingers trailing the way. "We should be here," he gestured, "with a goal of meeting up with Charlie and Easy companies by nightfall, to give support at St. Lo. But we're not."
"Then where are we?"
Frank trilled his fingers on the map. "I have no fucking idea," he sighed. "Unless this map is off, which it very well might be." He glanced up. "You see a stream anywhere on here?"
Gerard shook his head. "Could be a vernal spring. Seasonal. That might not show up."
Frank bit his bottom lip, a flash of white teeth. "Yeah. Maybe. How much time can you give me to figure this out?"
Gerard stood, his knees giving the faintest protest. He looked to either side of him, but the hedges remained the same green walls, implacable. "Just, fix it."
Frank's bottom lip bore the indentation of his incisors. He nodded. "Cortez!" he shouted. "I'll let you know when it's sorted." Frank tipped back his helmet, glanced up. "I'm sorry."
"Yeah," Gerard said, voice hoarse. "Keep an eye out," he turned to Siska and Scimeca. "Let me know if you see any more errant topography."
Scimeca saluted, then frowned, puzzled. Siska just slapped Scimeca's back, grinning. "Got it, Sir."
Gerard left Siska to explain and marched back, weaving on the outer edge of the men. He avoided their curious glances, kept his jaw clenched. Bob gave him a goofy face, and Gerard lost his composure briefly, snorting. Bob saluted, and schooled his features back into the tense mask of combat.
"Is everything all right?"
Gerard turned. Father Jeph Howard stood in the middle of the column, hands at his sides. "Father Howard," Gerard said, uneasily. "I thought you traveled with the Major's staff."
Father Howard gave a broad smile. "The shepherd must walk among his flock every once in a while, Lieutenant Way." He touched his shoulder. "I haven't seen you at mass in some time."
Gerard winced, avoiding the chaplain's gaze. "I've been busy," he murmured. "I was promoted."
"Yes, I know." Howard nodded at the small silver bar on Gerard's lapel. "Congratulations. I've heard nothing but good things about your performance. Especially given..." His voice trailed off, and he fixed Gerard with another pinning look.
Gerard faked a cough, examined his nails. He'd cut them two days ago, but layers of dirt and French grime seeped under the cartilage, embedding itself in the whorls of his fingerprints. "Thank you, Father."
"I was wondering if I might talk to you about that, actually."
"About what?" Gerard said, glancing around. The men murmured among themselves. Bob and Ray started up their usual time-killer, a game whose rules had never been explained to Gerard. He saw Ray's hand dart out, pinching Bob at the fleshy spot, just above his hip.
"Fourteen!" Ray grinned.
"About your brother," Howard said. "Michael."
Gerard took a hissing breath. "Not now." He stamped one foot in the ground, jiggling out the chills that radiated down his left side. "I - there's nothing to say."
"Don't bullshit me, Gerard." Howard crooked a smile - he enjoyed doing that, Gerard thought, catching people off-guard with his blue streak. Father Howard had made it through the Kasserine Pass with the 16th, had been there on the first days of Operation Husky in Sicily. In maneuvers this spring, he'd punched a Canadian soldier in the face for insulting Mikey's scrawny frame. Gerard still hadn't decided if Howard was a son of a bitch, masquerading as a priest, or just a mining town kid with a prayerful streak.
"I administered last rites to Michael on the beach," Howard continued.
"My brother was shot in the first wave. He died in fifteen minutes."
Howard gave a sound, low in his throat. "Well, that's what I wrote your mother. She seemed comforted to know that he'd received his last communion, before passing on."
"He took a bullet to the stomach," Gerard said. "I saw it." He heard the buzzing of an insect, flying around his head in the stagnant heat. Flinched. "His blood. He wouldn't have been able to take communion."
"I'm sorry." Howard touched him again, but Gerard shook his hand off.
"Lots of people died on that beach," Gerard said. "The sixteenth had one thousand casualties, Trohman said." He shrugged. The muscles in his shoulders creaked, the tense inter-working of tendon and bone, shifting with a soft pop. He shifted his rifle down, butt nudging the curved top of his boot. "We should be moving soon."
"She responded to my letter. Said she wrote you one as well, but that she's had no reply." Howard kept his tone low, soothing. The same voice he used to dispense mass. Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. "Have you opened it?"
"I've been busy," Gerard repeated, voice taut.
"What about your brother's effects? I know Lieutenant Iero took you to get them at the quartermaster's station in Colleville; I went to check a few days later and he'd signed them out in your name."
"Really, Father - this isn't the time."
Bob laughed, triumphant, from up the line. "Twenty-four, you wop bastard!"
"You'll never have the time," Howard said, "not before it's too late. None of us do." He moved his hand to touch the rosary that dangled over his uniform, fingers skating over the oblong beads of the hail Mary, down to the anguished figure of Christ, crucified. "Read your mother's letter. Look through Michael's things."
"When the hell are we going to start moving again?" Gerard stepped out of the column, craning his neck. Frank was still crouched over his map, rapidly repeating coordinates into Private Cortez's radio. He scanned the road ahead, the trickling brook and its sad bridge.
"Michael used to come to me for confession," Howard said. "Once every two weeks. I'm positive that he'd want you to see whatever he carried with him. Gerard -- "
"Jesus Christ, Father," Gerard hissed. He closed his eyes, snapping his eyelids shut tight enough that starbursts danced across his field of vision, like artillery shells in the night. He counted to five, opened them again.
Father Howard touched his forehead. His lips moved quickly, reciting a prayer Gerard couldn't hear. His fingers felt cool on Gerard's skin.
"Lieutenant!"
Gerard wrenched himself away, glancing ahead. Scimeca waved, beaming triumphantly. "We're good to go!"
"About time," Gerard heard someone - Carden? - mutter.
Gerard took up his gun, slinging it over his shoulder. He nodded to Howard, who gave him one last smile, and found his place in line.
"Fucking priests," Butcher mumbled. "He want to save your eternal soul?"
"Something like that," Gerard said. "Second Platoon, move out!"
...
08 July
The knot of the string had ossified in a month, hardened into a nub of twine smaller than a fleck of shrapnel. Gerard's fingers scrabbled against the brown paper, trying to slide the edge of his index fingernail between the tightly wedded strands. He hunched over on his pallet, lamp casting a warped shadow of himself against the canvas of his tent.
He sat back, tossing the bundle onto the foot of his bed. His fingers felt fat, useless, like cased sausages. He massaged the kinks out of his muscles, pinching the knobby bones of his joints and easing the strain out of them.
His gear lay spread across the ground, strewn about the small space covered by the heavy canvas tent. Gerard cast out a hand, grabbing his regulation wire-cutters; he took them to the bundle. The string snapped with a meek sound.
Gerard unfolded the heavy brown paper, smoothing the corners flat. He took a harsh breath, and folded the paper back into quarters, eighths. Slid it into the pocket of his jacket.
Mikey's glasses sat on top, sheathed in their hard leather case. Gerard turned the case over in his hands, his thumb sliding over the hinged seam. He remembered swiping a sheen of sea-grit off the left lens in the foggy dawn of that morning.
Mikey had scrunched his nose, flinched. "Sarge," he'd whined. The inflection and cadence of his vowel matched the way he'd said Gerard's name when they were both children.
"Doing okay?" Gerard had mumbled. "Not nauseous?"
"Jesus, Gee." Mikey rolled his eyes. "I'm fine." Fine.
Gerard set the glasses aside, leaving them snug in their little shell. (Coffin, just like a coffin, Gerard thought.) He didn't need to see them.
Mikey's garrison cap was tucked below, folded flat. Most of his other gear, they'd have taken back: pistol, knife, canteen. Sorted, tossed onto one of the heaps outside the quartermaster's station, recycled to another needing soldier. Sent back out into battle.
They'd left a pair of non-regulation socks, gray wool. Soft to the touch - identical to the pair their grandmother Elena had sent to Gerard, last Christmas. His own were tucked in his footlocker, somewhere in Devonshire. Mikey had always hated when his feet caught chill. "I'll want dry socks." He'd refused to be ashamed by the others' jibes.
Mikey's books made up most of the parcel's weight, and stacked against one another at the bottom. Gerard took out each in turn, handling them with the care of relics.
The first, he recognized: his own copy of TS Eliot's The Waste Land, lent to Mikey several summers ago. Gerard had purchased the book in New York, at Schulte's on Book Row. An early British edition, the book had already bore several generations of notations when Gerard bought it for thirty-five cents.
He paged through, his eye glancing across memorable lines. In several places, he saw the spidery scrawl of his own commentary, or the claustrophobic lettering of Mikey's additions. Gerard flipped to the last page, the final line in its haunting opacity.
Shantih shantih shantih
He turned back, through the pages of Eliot's notes, looking for the translation.
"Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an Upanishad. 'The Peace which passeth understanding' is a feeble translation of the conduct of this word."
Gerard flushed at his own handwriting:
"This poem has meant more to me than most people I know. It saved my life. g.w. 4/22/36"
"i concur. goof. m.w. 11/08/38"
Gerard closed the book, taking up the one beside it. This one, he knew as well: a leather-bound edition of the Bible, the same one they'd both received at Confirmation. Gerard's, he'd lost three years ago, stolen with the rest of his pack when he'd fallen asleep in Grand Central Station. Mikey's felt well-worn, the pages dog-eared at certain passages. Gerard went to check which ones he'd marked, but stopped. Something about the move felt intrusive, like eavesdropping at confession.
The last book lay tucked below the Bible, thin enough that Gerard had almost missed it at first glance. Unlike the other two, this one was paperback, printed in folio, its pages doubled. A cheap print run, it didn't even bear the name of its publisher on the spine.
The front cover was a dingy brown, the color of coffee or cardboard. Gerard saw traces of fingerprints on the inexpensive paper, glistening with after-traces of skin cells and sweat. Une Saison en Enfer, Arthur Rimbaud. Gerard had read the English translation in college, a required literature class - Symbolist poetry, highly influential with the current Surrealist set. Not to Mikey's taste.
He turned to a page at random, and a sheet of paper fluttered out. Acting on instinct, Gerard caught it as it drifted to the ground, pinching between his first two fingers. He set the book on top of the Bible, and unfolded the paper.
15 July, 1939
Rue de Chevreuse, 75006
Cher Michel,
The lights of the fireworks have faded out in the sky, melted away into the water of the Seine. Our Seine, our winding, tightly circumscribed river. You're asleep beside me, and I write in English. You told me I should practice.
I swim in your river, locked tight between the buildings of your hands. The bed bobs like we shook it tonight. "Sweeter than the flesh of sour apples to children," My drunken boat.
The July heat presses in, climbing up the stairs. Peeking under the white sheets, where your feet poke out to draw patterns in the water. Underneath the sheets, you sleep. Underneath my skin is flesh, and underneath my flesh are bones and wet, brittle things. Trickling streams and tiny fish. Swimming to you, flickering between your dangling toes.
I think you will wake up shortly. You're stirring. I guide our little boat, our little bed, back to its spot below the windows.
Grosses bises,
Pete.
Gerard read the letter twice. He flipped the page over, but the small, neat handwriting stopped with the flourished signature. Pete.
He slumped back on his pallet, letting the scattered remains of Mikey's belongings lie beside him. Gerard thought back to Mikey's summer in France: weeks before the official declaration of war, and the family had mostly been concerned with getting him home in time. Gerard remembered writing to Mikey, sending recommendations for bars in the Latin Quarter he'd read about, artists Mikey ought to look up if he had a chance. Nothing about a lover. Nothing about Pete.
"Lieutenant?" Frank's voice, from just outside the tent.
Gerard folded the letter, sliding it into the book again. "Come in."
Frank slipped through the flap. "Hey," he said. His face, front-lit by the lamp's glow, separated into valleys and peaks.
"What do you need?" Gerard sat upright.
Frank's gaze flickered across Gerard's form, the belongings scattered around him. He carried his helmet, pressed against his side. "Is that the packet from Colleville?"
"Mikey's things."
"Gerard," Frank started. He stopped. Gerard watched Frank's lips, the way he licked the bottom one before speaking. "Gotta turn off the lights. HQ wants a black out."
"Oh. Yeah, sure." Gerard tucked the books away. Frank stood watching, hand resting on the edge of the canvas.
"Okay." Frank stepped back. "Um, I'll see you -"
"Hey," Gerard said, quietly.
Frank paused.
"You need a pair of socks?" He held up Mikey's, balled in his fist.
Frank's eyes went wide. "No, that's." He shook his head.
"I mean it," he pressed. "You. Your socks are always falling apart."
Frank flushed. "Really, Gerard, you don't have to."
"I want to." He swallowed.
"Oh." A smile crept up his cheeks. "Well. Mine are a little holey."
Gerard tossed the socks over, lofting them underhand. Frank caught them easily. "Thanks," he said. "Have a good night, Gerard."
Gerard met his smile. "You, too."
---
Note: The epigraph comes from a Paul Verlaine poem. Those lines were broadcast on BBC London to signal the imminence of an Allied invasion in June, 1944.
Part Two
Thanks to the veritable army of people (pun intended) who helped this thing along.