11

The sun hidden: blackness. White days: black nights.

Darkness arrived, the grave battalions crawled from the battlefield with their burdens. Digging vast pits, soldiers on guard could hear the shovels breaking earth, the long sigh of dirt as it whooshed from shovel through air, they dumped the hundreds of dead into the sour coldness, emptied bags of lime, and then again those on guard could hear the shovels and the sighs. It was work which took the night’s hours.

During the last few days of February the Loyal Spanish troops and their Interbrigade allies did the attacking, the nationalist enemy the counter-attacking. It was the mission of the attackers to stall the enemy for a week, then, March in attendance, the rains would be a flood. The Road saved, Madrid, the symbol now of Free Spain, would survive for at least another month. And then? Then.

There were many heroes. But one man became a legend.

On the evening of 23 February, in the twilight, just as the German Interbrigade forces began to give ground and it seemed the Jarama river bridge and the Chinchon road would be lost, rumor had it that a huge Hispana Suiza limousine, a polished black palace of a car, rattled over the narrow steel-girdered Jarama bridge, came to a halt, its rear door was flung open, and a man thrown out on his face. The limousine made a quick U-tum, almost hitting some wounded on the side of the road called Death Alley, and disappeared with the running sun. The man picked himself off the ground, found himself a rifle, and barreled into the lines.

He made his presence known first with his voice: a raging, ringing, clear voice, strong, commanding.

He spoke in German, ‘Haltet die Schweine! Stop shooting wildly. Stop the pigs! Hold them!’ It was an amazing voice, ringing high above the battle clamor. It bellowed forth from a gray figure, a helmet plunked on his head, a broad mass of back, his rifle carried like a toy. To those who heard the voice, it seemed unconquerable, unbowed. No one knew whose voice it was, after the battle they would find out. They relaxed their stomachs, forgot their fatigue, controlled their fire, became the pros they were. They held the pigs.

Night dropped quickly, the sun had absconded, the enemy retired to his trenches defeated another day. A day closer to the flood.

The voice disappeared. It seemed a ghost’s voice, but of course it was a man’s, what sort of nonsense is that.

The second day of battle, farther south, after having attacked and been repulsed, the enemy counter-attacking, the Spanish and Hungarian Interbrigade troops, their backs against the last hill before their sector of The Road, were on the verge of disaster. Again the voice commanded—this time in Spanish, ‘La lucha por la libertad! El honor de la vida! For yourselves, your manhood. Hold the dogs!’ It was a powerful voice. Of a god. And its rage could be heard above the crackling bedlam.

The Spanish and Hungarian battalions held; the voice had revived their will.

Again he disappeared. No god—a man in a gray poncho, his helmet down over his ears. No god—what kind of bull! shit! was that.

So another day passed. The Road remained open, one could almost smell the rain. It would come, a deluge, even if the voice had to wring it out of the heavens himself.

25 and 26 February were quiet days: attacks, counterattacks, nothing of great moment. Men were wounded, men died. The grave details worked only half the night. The pits were smaller, fewer lime bags were used. The French, the Slavs, the Yugos heard the voice for a moment, then it was gone.

From Chinchon to Madrid itself, the bedraggled amateur soldiery of Free Spain regaled themselves with this romantic tale. Who was it? Someone would say perhaps it was a famous German comrade who’d disappeared a few months before in Madrid for having broken discipline—what, no one knew—and he’d been thrown into the line to die. Men smiled. The rantings of battle-fatigued soldiers. Shellshock. It was their courage and their will!

Two days closer to the flood. It rained a bit, stopped. Soon, however, soon. The Road would live! Madrid, Free Spain, the soldiers in the line would hoot at the fascist.

27 February. Not even a spit of cloud. ‘Aaa,’ Joe Garms sneered, ‘the goddam rain can’t read the calendar.’

‘Of course not,’ Mack Berg snapped. ‘This is Spain, illiteracy rampant.’

Again it was the Americans’ turn. Some four hundred fifty men, seventy-three replacements arrived the night before as green as newborn grass, men who had never held a gun, let alone shot one, they waited for Prettyman’s command. The machine-gun company was now infantry. Their mission was to take a ledge of rock a mere three hundred meters away. Their cover would again be the two Russian tanks and an invisible air force. They had heard of the voice, snickered at it, now they prayed for it. They didn’t care if it were the voice of ghost, god or man. Beggars aren’t choosers. And if not the voice, perhaps the rains would flood. How the hell did it know it was 27 February and not 1 March?

‘The sky’s as clean of clouds as a baby’s ass of hair,’ Mack Berg muttered.

They were now positioned on the left of the road, flanked by British, Slavs, Spaniards. A battery of 75s began slapping shells into the enemy line before the Spanish battalion. Ah, cover. Where’s the aviation? Where are the tanks? The Americans were led by Prettyman, Cord, Avila, Cromwell Webster. Schlepp had spoken to them once. ‘This is war, comrades. We must learn to take the bad with the good.’

‘What good?’ Mack Berg called out. Everyone laughed. A black mark was put down against Berg’s name. Schlepp disappeared, as did Barrel. Comrade Patrick still survived as did OGPU Demo.

Prettyman called brigade. ‘Where is our aviation cover, Comrade?’

‘Have you placed your aviation directional arrow? No? Well, place it now. Don’t worry, the aviation will arrive. Follow your orders.’

Two men are sent to lay out the arrow for the avion. They are killed, murdered, assassinated, cut to ribbons.

Prettyman called brigade. ‘Where is our aviation cover, Comrade?’

‘Just do as you were ordered. This is not maneuvers, this is war.’

‘Salud, Comrade Commander.’

‘Salud.’

The sun shining, the sky azure, the enemy waiting, drinking tea perhaps, led by Prettyman himself, the Americans hurled, wrenched, dragged, stumbled into no-man’s land. Alone. In the entire sector. The enemy had a ball.

The American boys lay there for hours, the sun burning their tails, the enemy professionals putting them into a deep cold sleep. It was just as senseless to turn back as it was to go forward. They screwed the earth, smelled it, vomited on it, but it did not help. Time was an endless road, the screaming of the dying and the wounded red mileposts marking off the mileage to nowhere.

Mack Berg felt dead, though he knew he was alive because he could hear himself breathing like a rattle. The explosions were like spikes being hammered into concrete at the rims of his ears, yet after a couple of hours he could hear a pin drop.

It was late afternoon. He was still alive—waiting to die. Only make it clean, he prayed. I don’t care if I die, so long as it’s fast and clean. The difference between life and death’s only a philosophical abstraction. Yes, Herr Doktor.

Suddenly there was a lull. He raised his head from the earth, spied a clump of olive trees twenty feet away, decided he wanted to live, lowered his head, shouted ‘Follow me’ to some men nearby, forced himself up and ran crouched towards the trees, threw himself behind them. The enemy fire resumed and it was like sheet metal beaten by an avalanche of rocks. Grateful to the olive trees and their jumble of uncovered roots, he screwed his head about and counted five men. Wondered where Joe and Greg were. Not for long. He began shooting his rifle, and the kick of the gun, the heat of the barrel, the work of reloading made him momentarily forget his fear. The five men near him were now shooting too. He hoped they were all shooting in the right direction. The enemy gunners meanwhile were taking their time, sawing the olive trees down one by one. The enemy’s a pro, we’re just amateurs, five, six days, still amateurs.

They were making a mistake and didn’t know what it was and no one told them. Each group was an island by itself, a little bunched island, all contact lost, every man his own commander.

Others had now crawled and run up to the olive trees and they were fifteen men. No longer trees, stumps. Each stump was no thicker than an old woman’s arm, but it was cover of a sorts and besides it was becoming darker by the minute. If we can hold out, we’ll live. Mission not accomplished, but another day will be gone, and we will be that much closer to the rain. Mack didn’t really believe the rain would intervene in this daily horror they were being put through, but it helped to believe it would. They were beginning to breathe easier at the clump of sawed down olive trees, ignoring the screams, talking to one another.

About thirty meters to their left one of the Russian tanks blasted fifties into the enemy line. Now the sun was gone and in Mack’s mind’s eye he could see the vast ruin, the monuments like black gnarled bodies, then the darkness, then safety.

Suddenly with a rush like kerosene thrown on a bonfire the tank was in flames. A torchlight. The enemy must have laughed. In silhouette the Americans were better targets than before the sun had begun its descent.

It lit up their sector, revealing islands of bunched comrades in an area of a couple hundred meters.

Within the tank there were shattering explosions. Three men were in that burning steel can. Mack drilled the earth, his cheek pressed against a ripped tree root, numb to the sharp edges tearing his skin, his eyes hypnotized by the turret of the tank. It flung open and a head emerged, hair like burning snakes. Mack thought he could smell the man burning, his face seemed to be melting like tallow and he was screaming. Oddly, though Mack couldn’t hear the firing, he could hear the man’s screaming. The man’s head hesitated; then his shoulders emerged, his uniform smoking, his hair on fire, suddenly he was heaved out by the man below. An enemy rifleman put an end to his screams before he hit the ground. The technical invincibility of the modern superman. Mack spat and the wind made by the burning tank splashed it back against his face. Then there was the second head, burning like the wick of a candle, and he melted in front of Mack’s eyes. The third man was never seen.

And still no command.

The tank continued to burn, lighting the sector, the enemy fire cool and accurate. There were only eight men left alive near the stumps—now like pencil stubs ground down to their erasers.

Only one thing to do—tear yourself the hell out of here. Can’t, just can’t move.

He drilled himself into the earth, waiting to die, hoping it would come quickly when it came. It was then from the sky itself he heard a voice—a roar it was, a haunted unrecognized yet familiar voice. ‘Don’t bunch up! Spread out! Run! Spread and run you’ll make it!’

It was a commanding voice and none could say it nay.

So Mack ran, crawled, now alone, driven by the howling, carried on the wings of that commanding voice which still roared ‘Spread out and run you’ll make it!’ shooting incoherently at the unseen terror, the howling, the nogood fascist scum, over the top, go get ’em, Pasaremos! the fight against fascism is the fight for freedom, for equal rights, Madrid the tomb of fascism and of heroes, better to die on your feet than live on your knees, dying on their bellies, running, crawling, driven by the screams Mama Mama Oh Mama Mama I’m dying it hurts Oh God it hurts Mama please I’m dying, running with wings and then there was the ridge of solid rock, Joe Garms hugging him, ‘Dig, puta, dig!’ Mack dug behind the rock with his bayonet and helmet, shovel forgotten. Captain Richard Jordan Prettyman—the dirty incompetent bastard couldn’t even remember to order them to take trench shovels. About seventy men were digging with their bayonets and helmets. But a huge wraith, gray, separated himself from others down the line. ‘I’ll get the shovels, keep digging.’ The voice in a lower octave, familiar yet strange, and he was gone, and Mack resumed digging, listening to the howling, and then next to him he heard a man gasping, holding himself from crying, and Mack became enraged and couldn’t prevent himself from grabbing at the man, punching him, beating him, screaming at him, ‘Cry, you son of a bitch. Cry! You have a right to cry. Cry if you want to cry. Go ahead you stupid son of a bitch. Cry!’ Joe Garms had to lock him in his arms, to hold him tightly so he couldn’t breathe, and Mack caught hold of himself. It was Archie Cohen who’d come up just that day twenty minutes before they went over the top and who had never held a gun in his life and who hadn’t shot one bullet out there. He cried now, sobbing deeply, and he dug with his bayonet, and Mack hugged him and begged his forgiveness. Then Mack began to cry, a man who hadn’t cried in years. And Archie Cohen cried more and said it was all right, it felt good crying, and his voice was a flute. He and Mack became friends hasta la muerte and resumed digging, Archie singing, Good-bye Chicago, hello Madrid. Then the gray ghost was back with a fistful of shovels and Mack turned to him, but he was gone, a gray wraith, a god, a ghost, a man. The enemy found their range, only forty, fifty meters away now, and the ridge of rock sounded like a chute of coal emptying into big tin cans. So they resumed digging—faster, no one wasting time on words.

Abruptly the enemy stopped his heavy fire: the silence was ragged with a spotty pattern of rifle and machine-gun chatter. It sounded like the ticking of a looney clock. Crack. Crackasnap. Crack. Crack crack crack. Crackasnap. Zwinnggg! And the terrified crying of the wounded and dying sounded like rasps filing on the edge of glass.

The man, the wraith, did not return. Mack and the rest—Greg Ballard had a strange look on his smashed black face—wondered who the man was, where he was, kept expecting him to materialize like a ghost.

Hours passed, more shovels were brought, more men showed up, some with coffee and bread. And they wondered to themselves, afraid to ask, how many lay out there. They dug. They were still alive and had learned what mistake it was they had been making. They had bunched and the voice had seen immediately. They had won a victory. The ridge of rock was theirs. They were a day closer to the rain. Each man counted those near to him, wondered where familiar faces had got.

An hour after coffee and bread were brought, a brigade runner appeared out of the dark. ‘Return to previous positions.’

‘What?’

He repeated the order. None of the other battalions had gone over and the Americans had fought themselves into an exposed position.

Joe Garms grabbed at the runner’s throat and now it was Greg Ballard’s turn to haul him off. ‘Save it, Joe. Save it for the commander.’

The runner, an English boy with a face like that of a sleepy owl, stated, ‘He’s been wounded, Cord is dead.’ They moaned. ‘Avila is dead, someone brought him in, a very big man, but he died. In fact, as far as brigade can determine, most of your officers are gone. We’re searching for Webster. If he’s alive, he is next in command.’

‘Leaflets Webster,’ someone said.

‘Deaf’n dumb,’ Garms said. ‘The guy never talks.’

‘He can’t be worse than the last one,’ Mack shrugged.

‘Hardly,’ Ballard muttered.

Archie Cohen piped, ‘What about the man with the voice?’

‘Yeah,’ Joe smiled. ‘A live ghost. An American too.’ But the Germans had said he was German, the Spaniards Spanish.

The runner smiled patronizingly. A wraith. These poor shell-shocked troops. But they knew he wasn’t a ghost, they had seen him.

Silently, haggard and weary, not a few weeping, they shambled back across the corpse-strewn field, picking up the wounded, burying a few of the dead in shallow graves. They searched for the man in the gray poncho, but could not find him. He must have gone to brigade. Must be a leader.

In their trenches they made a count. Concluded, couldn’t believe it and made another count. It was true. They had one hundred twenty-three men left. They had lost about three hundred thirty that day. Counting the men lost in the truck outside Chinchon, the eighty on the 23rd, in ten days they had suffered a loss of close to four hundred fifty men. Now some cried out in anger, some merely wept, all were scared, no, this was not the way it was supposed to be.

They chose Joe Garms to command them. He set up a guard for the night and told them, ‘Tuhmorra we haul ass up to brigade and talk to ole Carryshit. We needa reorganize.’

Mack Berg, depleted of strength, even of anger, found his slit of trench, kicked soft flesh, heard a shuddering sigh. Must be a hurt comrade.

The man huddled against the side of the trench, his head buried in his arms. Mack’s hands soothed his back. ‘Are you hurt badly, comrade?’

A shuddering sigh for answer.

Mack turned the man about, peered into his face. It was Cromwell Webster. The man wasn’t hurt, just frightened. His handsome face was a shudder, his eyes frozen with fear. ‘You didn’t go over?’ Mack asked quietly, his hands continuing to rub the man’s shoulders and neck to ease the tenseness.

‘I jus’ couldn’t Mack. I tried, honest to God, I tried, Mack, but I jus’ couldn’t.’

Abruptly Mack took his hands off the man. A vicious rage invaded him. He wanted to hit the man, to kill him. Before he knew it he found himself thinking, dirty fucking black yellow nigger. Stop it! he yelled at himself. The man huddled in on himself, shook violently, his eyes never leaving Mack’s. And Mack fought with himself. Courage isn’t everything, you barely have enough for yourself. No! he’s a dirty yellow nigger hiding while we all went into that hell. Decimated. Massacred. Coward! He wanted to scream at Webster. The man was panting hard, staring up at him with his frightened eyes. Shame and guilt overtook Mack, so his rage intensified, and he was overcome with hatred for this man, hatred for himself, for every man dead and alive in the sector, and suddenly he raised his rifle by its barrel to use like a club.

‘No!’ Webster screamed and brought his hands up to cover his head.

Mack began to bring the rifle forward, hesitated, flung the gun to the side and threw himself into the trench, beating the earth with his hands, expending his rage wildly. He saw the frightened shamed look of his father sitting on the toilet on Yom Kippur with a piece of bread and butter sticking out of his mouth. Saw his father slapping his mother in anger the next day at some inconsequential omission. Slapping his brother Ben, his sister Ida. I’m just like him. A hypocrite. No, he’d protect this man. Never as long as he lived would he tell anyone how he had found him.

Mack sat up and turned to Webster who still watched him with his scared eyes. ‘Look, we’re all scared. Even Joe Garms is scared. There’ll be days when you’ll be less scared and will help us because it’s our bad day. Someone said you’re to be our new battalion commander.’

Webster huddled deeper into himself. ‘I told them I didn’t want to be an officer, but they wouldn’t listen. They want a colored commander.’ He lowered his head in his hands.

Yes, of course. Instruments of history. Willing victims of history. ‘Let’s hit the sack. When you wake up go to brigade and tell them you don’t want to be commander. Insist on it, they can’t make you. Don’t be afraid to tell them you’re scared, they are, too, the dirty cocksucking bastards. Then come into the line with us. We’ll cover for you. We’re comrades.’

Webster was silent, thinking. Said, ‘I’ll go, Mack.’ He began to breathe normally, his handsome face whole again.

‘Great,’ Mack said tiredly. ‘Very good.’ St Mack.

They stretched out in the trench, head to head, gazing up at the moon shining like a tin pie plate.

‘Go to sleep, Webster,’ Mack whispered.

‘Ace—my name’s Ace.’

‘Okay, Ace.’

The surf off Dogfish Bar roared, and Greg Ballard’s kinky head—he was catnapping after the net had been hauled in that early morning—kept pounding into his arms. Goddam, must be a squall comin’ up.

He awoke. It wasn’t his head pounding, but bullets into sandbags. Christ! Not again! Damn. If they come over now we’re goners. He sat up, his body creaking like a rusty winch. He stretched his short muscular arms. Flexed them. Strength gone. Never in his entire life had he felt so tired. Empty. Not even when Ursuline Washington had run off to New York to wiggle her small hard ass and little girl tits in the Cotton Club for customers lookin’ for a change of luck. Empty. So was the trench all around him. All those dead and wounded. Can’t go on without replacements. Impossible.

Ten meters away Joe’s helmetless head was glued to a gun slit.

‘Put your helmet on!’

‘I hate the friggin’ thing,’ Garms spat without turning. With his crop of jumbled curled brown hair and two-week beard he looked like an ashcan on which someone had plopped a discarded dirty mop.

‘Remember Jimmy?’

‘Yeah; a hunnerd years ago. Between him and now over four hunnerd men.’

Bullets kept slamming into sandbags. Must be some triggerhappy fascist killin’ time. Greg looked into the sky. A gray haze. Dawn hadn’t quite arrived and night hadn’t quite gone, just its tail showing. Ah. Is that a cumulus cloud—that one over there like a stuffed haddock? Would it really come down or wouldn’t it? The heavy rains lasted a month they had been told by the Spaniards. Was it another fish story? A month! To give themselves a chance to build a new battalion, to really learn something. He felt like praying for it to rain. Mom, pray for me today, will yuh? For an easy never-stoppin’ rain and good fishin’. Y’hear me, Mom? You’re a heathen, she smiled brightly, a tolerant woman. Did the whitingest waaash on the Cape. Jest a little black heathen. Yup.

‘What d’you see?’ he asked Joe, coming up to him, Joe’s head still glued to the slit, that fascist still killin’ time.

‘A hand.’

‘A what?’

‘A hand,’ Joe murmured, not turning.

Greg pulled him away, looked for himself.

Gray streaked early dawn like an oyster shell still dripping with sea—a good sign, maybe it’ll rain—and forty, fifty meters away above the moist gray yellow sage: a hand. A thick wrist, five fingers stretched to the sky. It was a human hand severed at the elbow, stuck upright into the earth, just the wrist and five agonized fingers showing.

And an enemy rifleman was taking target practice. The visibility was too gray for his distance, for he kept missing the hand, overshooting, his bullets pounding into the sandbags.

The dew-wet yellow sage and still moist dark gray dawn combined with the pale bloodless hand to give off a shimmering aureole of citron gold about the petrified fingers. Like the old print of a painting of Lazarus’s hand emerging from the earth which hung in Mom’s church.

He shook the image away, laughed harshly at himself. A man had been killed, rigor mortis followed, his body had rolled stiffly into a gully, and the last agony of his hand showed, that’s all.

Still the hand held his attention.

He heard startled mutterings along the trench. Others were now eye to slit. They had seen the hand. A dead hand.

The rifleman two hundred meters away paused. Perhaps he was giving up the game. Poww! No, just reloading; no hurry, the hand was dead.

Ballard wanted to turn away from it, but his head refused to budge. He felt an ache in his heart for the hand, an awesome mystical feeling filled his body, something which whispered in eery ghostly echo. It’s alive.

‘No, dammit,’ he muttered aloud, tearing himself loose, leaning with the back of his head to the slit.

The enemy’s rifle still rattled away, crackasnap, the bullets pounding into the tightly packed bags. He’s shooting too high, or maybe the hand’s unnerved him, just as it has me.

Joe Garms, a few meters away, stayed glued to another slit, a mop with ears. Dirty.

‘C’mon, Joe,’ Ballard called impatiently, ‘let’s see about coffee. We gotta have a meetin’, remember?’

Garms didn’t answer, continued to peer into the ghostly gray field.

Ballard shrugged, he’d had enough of this nonsense, similar visions had appeared to him at sea during heavy fatigue; he started up the trench, stopped abruptly, dammit, drawn again back to the hand.

‘It moved!’ Garms shouted hoarsely, ‘it mov-ed,’ his voice cracking.

Greg trembled as he stared through the slit, found the hand. Frozen stiff. His voice shaking, he yelled, ‘You’re loco—plain loco.’

‘It moved, it moved,’ he heard voices call.

Mass hypnosis. War crazy.

Then he saw the hand waver, hold still. Frozen. A gust of wind must have caught it or it’s a mirage from the dew and moisture crystals of the early dawn.

‘It moved!’ crescendoed up and down the line.

Damn if it hadn’t. No doubt about it. It had moved.

The hypnotic spell shattered, Joe Garms pulled away, called to Ballard to keep watching. ‘If that sonuvabitch’s alive we gotta haul him in—in daylight too goddamittohell!’

Again Greg saw the hand move. Yeah, gotta haul him in. In daylight—an oyster gray early dawn, but daylight. Under that fascist rifleman’s eyes. Then he realized the shooting had stopped. Had the rifleman seen the hand move and himself been moved by it?

No, too far in this light. He remembered the enemy had binoculars, telescopic sights. Perhaps the man has a heart—mebbe. Or a trick up his sleeve. The English had told them that one early morning a company of Moors had approached, hands high, surrendering. They had been permitted to come forward. For their generosity the English had received a fistful of grenades in their faces.

Garms gathered the remainder of the machine-gun company, about thirty men, to discuss the man with the hand. Mack Berg was present, looking thoughtful, wondering if Webster, who had not been in the trench when he awoke, had gone to brigade.

‘We can’t bullshit, it’s gettin’ light,’ Garms said. ‘Ballard and me’ll go. I want anudder man.’

Silence.

‘Even wit’ three it’ll be rough,’ Garms said, ‘but we can’t spare no more.’

Silence.

Garms looked at Berg. ‘Not me,’ Mack snapped. ‘I don’t want to be a dead hero. I’ve had enough.’

Karonian, a bull-face with two knobs high on his forehead where the horns once must have grown, said in his quiet voice, ‘It looks like heavy rain. It will be safer then.’

‘It might and it mightn’t. We gotta get this guy.’

Fidgeting silence. It was just too fucking much. Mack Berg thinned his lips, jutted his jaw, stared into the distance.

Archie Cohen, the new kid, his face pale green, his knees water, said in a barely audible whisper, ‘I’ll go.’

‘Oh, no, for God’s sake,’ Mack Berg bit out.

For a moment the boy’s face lit up hopefully, perhaps he wouldn’t have to go. No, it was too late to back out. ‘I’ll go,’ he said quietly. Then blushing under the stares of his comrades, he said, ‘That’s the guy with the voice and the shovels.’

Ballard observed him sharply: was the kid unhinged?

‘How d’you know?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know how I know—I just know.’

Ballard didn’t know why, but somehow he knew that Archie knew and believed him.

The others were nodding their heads, dirty, rancid with stale sweat, stunned with fatigue and hopelessness. They also believed that he knew. Everyone’s stark ravin’ mad this mornin’. Ghosts, wraiths, voices, hands, they knew. War crazy.

The dawn shone gray, moist, no fog, visibility deceptive. The entire sector was as silent as the winking of an eye. How to get the wounded man and then return, that was the question.

And there was one enemy rifleman who knew what he knew.

‘We gotta take a chance,’ Garms reckoned. ‘We’ll do it wit’out coverin’ fire. Wake up that stinkin’ enemy line an’ we’re dead men. Jest tell the rest a the guys to keep their eyes open an’ their peckers stiff.’

‘I think you should take a litter,’ Karonian said. ‘I’ll go get one.’

‘Nah,’ Garms argued. ‘We ain’t got the time. That stupid sun’ll break through and wake everybody up over there. We’ll turn the trick, don’t worry. Jest get some medics and Doc Jerk-off to be ready.’ Turning to Ballard, he laughed. ‘You go first, you’re the hardest tuh see in this dark gray stuff.’

Greg slipped over, Archie, then Joe, who remembered at the last moment the first-aid kit, which he jammed into his jacket pocket. They heard someone in the trench behind them say, ‘They’ll reach the guy, he’ll be dead.’ Then they heard a hard slap and Mack Berg’s harsh whisper, ‘Shut up!’

Mack Berg always at war with his guilt, Greg thought as he began crawling, the others behind him.

Dead quiet. Yes, maybe the fascist rifleman had a heart. Or an ace up his sleeve.

They crawled ten meters, a quarter of the way, stopped behind the corpse of Rodriguez, one of the Cuban officers.

They were breathing hard, sweating. Archie’s face was puce.

‘You’re a good kid, Archie,’ Joe whispered. ‘More guts than all a us.’

‘Let’s go,’ Ballard urged, ‘before I lose my nerve.’

Again they crawled, using corpses for cover. The silence was massive, oppressive. Shattered by a magpie’s shriek and flutter of wings among the smashed olive branches. It made them deaf. Archie vomited, choking to restrain the rasp which followed the gush.

Niagara Falls followed by a foghorn.

Ballard and Garms waited until he recovered. Now he would feel better. He didn’t, but urged, ‘Okay, let’s move.’ His face was the color of dried putty.

The sage was heavier now, better cover. They crawled more rapidly; stopped at Levy’s body, the Dublin Jew, kosher dietary laws given up por la lucha por la libertad, a black spider eating off the traife pus in his ear.

Ten meters to go.

Ballard was stopped five meters away by another corpse, that of Leonidis the Greek. He had been with them the day Jaime was killed. Greg remembered the letter in his knapsack to Ortega’s father, he had never got to mail it. War the breaker of promises. I’ll do it today, he thought. If …

Garms and Cohen were waiting. Ballard by-passed Leonidis, went ahead.

The silence as they approached the hollow in which lay their wounded—not dead they hoped—comrade had the immeasurable weight of all the dead the world over.

A shot stung out.

They flattened, not breathing.

Far in the distance; their sector remained quiet.

Ballard began to laugh his high-pitched nervous laugh, it squeaked and whined. Garms crawled to him and clouted him hard on the jaw. Dazed, Ballard shook his head, sighed deeply, whispered ‘Thanks’.

They resumed crawling and soon were at the bank of the hollow.

And in.

Aaaah.

He was a heavy man, about six feet, longer perhaps lying there on his face, a hole the size of a soup plate under his right shoulder blade. Hit by an explosive bullet, the flesh and bone had jellied with the congealed blood. A gray poncho, a broad sweeping back, helmet to his ears. ‘I told you,’ Archie whispered. ‘The voice.’

Garms, followed by Ballard and Cohen, slithered round, stared at the man’s face, swallowed hard. Archie kneaded his lips with his teeth, Greg gasped. They merely stared, unable to speak. The man’s eyes were open and from between his teeth, in flagrant heroic movie style, protruded a flattened slug of lead on which he had been biting to keep from screaming. Joe Garms was breathing heavily, suddenly unable to restrain his emotion he cried out, ‘Goddam sonuvabitch Jake Starr, I love you like a brother. Gently he lowered Jake’s upright hand; then no longer able to control himself he took Jake’s head in his arms and kissed him.

Greg, on his stomach alongside them, had to close his eyes a moment, force himself to breathe slowly. Barely able to speak, he whispered, ‘C’mon, Joe, give him a shot and let’s get him out of here. Jake looks like he’s lost lots of blood.’

‘Yeah. Okay.’ Slowly, Joe Garms lowered his friend’s head, then administered a shot of morphine neatly, quickly. Archie just sprawled there incredulity marring his boyish blond face. He remembered that not a month before he had been making speeches for the unemployed in Bughouse Square in Chicago, that a week ago this man Jake Starr had helped hijack him and some other comrades on the road to Le Havre, at the voice, the hand, and now he, Archie Cohen, was also a hero. Life’s strange, isn’t it?

Drugged, asleep, Jake’s jaws slackened and the lead slug fell to the ground. Archie reached for it and without examining it placed it in his pocket. Ballard smiled. And the sentimental shall inherit the earth.

Joe cleaned the wound. ‘They’ll be pickin’ bone outa him the resta his life,’ he whispered.

‘If he lives,’ said Archie, who had taken Jake’s huge wrist in his hand, feeling the pulse. ‘Slow and just alive.’

He saw Ballard and Garms staring at him. ‘I was a boy scout—an eagle.’

‘He’ll live,’ Ballard muttered. ‘If we get back. Let’s go before the cave-in.’

Archie and Joe, flat on the ground, raised Starr and as gently as they could placed him on Greg’s back, then each slid under one of his legs. They tried crawling that way, but got nowhere fast.

‘Goddam jerk I am,’ Joe muttered, ‘should of taken a litter.’

They were compelled to stop.

‘If that puta out there was gonna shoot,’ Joe said, ‘he’d of done it already. Nobody could be that much a killer, to wait and do it now. I’m as much a killer as any man, so I know. Let’s pick Jake up and run. It’s oney a hunnerd twenty-five feet.’

Greg and Archie agreed. Besides, it seemed there was one fascist with a heart.

They heaved the two hundred pounds of dead weight off the ground, began a slow dogtrot. Passed Leonidis—thirty-five meters to go. Made another ten: Sean Levy. Stopped for a little kosher meat.

They were breathless, speechless, unbelieving. Fantastic luck! Could the entire enemy sector be asleep? The one enemy rifleman a Christian? If one fascist rifleman was a Christian then it could be said that even in defeat the war would not be wholly lost.

Jake’s moaning was a file on the bone of Greg’s ear. Greg stared at their trench twenty-five meters away. It bristled with guns. Now he knew what it meant. Looks formidable, Greg thought. Now I know how an approaching enemy sees it. Must be as scared everytime as we are. The thought gave him strength.

Garms signalled to Ballard and Cohen.

They made it to Rodriguez.

Ten meters to go.

Greg could see impatient hands waiting at the sandbag parapet, Mack Berg’s mean, stony face, Karonian’s hornless bullhead. Put your helmet on, you dumb Armenian bastard.

He started to say, ‘Heave’, when they heard a crackling at their ears—sharp and snapping. Crackasnap. They remained perfectly immobile. There it was again. Crackasnap. Sharp and nasty.

‘Lookit!’ Greg heard Joe say, ‘to your left.’

A black crow perched on the back of a corpse. He was eating off the dead man. Sharp and snapping. It was Murchison, who never ate meat, just peanuts. Murchison’s knapsack had opened, and the crow was eating peanuts. Crackasnap.

They began to laugh hysterically.

Archie recalled them to their senses. ‘This guy’s pulse is just about zero.’

‘Heave,’ Joe ordered.

They were running quickly now. They were at the sandbags. Hands, eager, friendly hands stretched out to them—lifting Jake Starr, moaning a gibberish song in his morphine dream, off Ballard’s aching bones.

Greg dove over, followed by Archie and Joe Garms.

They heard the yap of the machine-gun a split second after Joe was hit, a clean bullet hole bored through each cheek of his ass.

Like a signal, it rained.