IV

“The officers scrambled out of the advance parallels with a last shout of ‘En Avant, mes Enfants’ to the men and the wave of ‘invisible blue’ tipped the parapet with foam. The great offensive of 1915 had begun, and all those who took part in it are agreed that no moment of the battle was so thrilling, so soul-stirring and impressive as that which saw the first wave of Frenchmen in blue uniforms, blue steel Adrian Casques, with drums of grenades hanging at their waists, burst from the trench in which they had hidden for so many months and strike across the intervening No Man’s Land for the enemy’s line.”

—The [London] Times History of the War, vol VI, 1916

JOE SAT IN A HEAP ON THE FLOOR AND TOOK INVENTORY OF WHAT hurt. It wasn’t difficult except in discerning where one pain left off and another began. His head hurt, his neck hurt, his back and sides and chest hurt, his hands hurt. His legs did not hurt, but he figured that was because they were farthest from his brain and had to wait until closer body parts registered their complaints before they could get an open line.

He had been in fights before and had been beaten worse, but any beating left its legacy. His breathing was heavy and his heavy breathing ached inside his chest, but he felt nothing loose or broken. That was good news. He could see, he could breathe through his nose, and he could walk. Everything worked more or less as it had been originally designed. Over the night, however, he knew that he would tighten like dried leather.

He pushed his hair off his forehead and sat back against the overturned mattress of his bed. He was not seeing double, he felt no blood on his head and just a trickle from his nose, his ribs still attached, his hands not too swollen to make a fist. Not too bad after all.

When he stood, though, he felt the years of an arthritic man four times his age as the blood coursed through his wounds and bruises, and he had to sit again. The second time, he stood more slowly and used a chair for balance.

Weak and dizzy, he was like a man suffering through the blue devils of the DTs. He took his time walking to the light switch, a couple of stumbling steps then a pause to regain control then a couple more stumbling steps, until his body and brain began to register in approximately the same time and order. He turned on the wall switch. His eyes and head immediately rebelled against the light. Covering his eyes, he braced himself against the wall like an old drunk come from the pub to find the morning sun. Once he regained a semblance of control, he crossed the room to the porthole window, opening it to let in a draft of fresh air. He inhaled as deeply as his chest would allow, which was considerably less than a full breath, but he felt better for the air’s salty freshness.

From a side wall, he lifted off a framed picture, a landscape print by Cezanne, a single tree in front of a stand of trees on a Provence ridge. With his pocket knife, he removed the pins holding the paperboard backing. Inside the backing were the envelopes of names, the lists, and the photograph of the men in a trench, along with his few speculative notes. He replaced the paperboard, taking care to keep from leaving markings that would signal the backing had been removed.

He checked the bathroom and found his Luger missing. He had taped it to the back of the commode and all that was left was the tape. Back in the main room, he checked the desk’s trashcan for the .45. It was there beneath a pile of crumpled papers, cold and hard, a Smith & Wesson .45 1917 revolver with a short barrel the metallic color of a tempest sky. He smiled. The best place to hide something, he thought, was in plain sight. He glanced back at where Gresham’s photograph was hidden and thought momentarily of what his manuscript might involve—something hidden in plain sight.

His head hurt too much for such thoughts, so he went over the .45, something concrete with nothing hidden about it. After opening the cylinder to check the bullets and sighting through the foresight to gauge his unsteady hand, he lay the revolver on his washstand.

His mind flashed quickly and unexpectedly on a warm scene from his youth with his father sitting on the edge of a leather chair to work on the pieces of a revolver laid out on a trivet table pulled from in front of the fireplace. Joe kneeled across from his father to watch the man’s large hands disassemble and clean and reassemble the gun, which in his youth appeared enormous to Joe. After arranging the separate pieces across the metal table, Joe’s father would tap down the tobacco in his pipe before commenting on each piece, describing its fitting and its purpose. He wiped and oiled the revolver, its function and its placement and its mechanism, like a tuner at his Steinway.

In front of a banking fire with the revolver spread on the table in front of him and the night-sounds of the high desert outside their ranch house, Joe came to know his father’s .45 as well as he knew the sandy arroyos he rode each day. Not a Smith & Wesson but a Colt that waited, along with his father’s tooled Western saddle and a cache of family heirlooms, in his uncle’s basement for his return to the Purgatory River at the base of the Sangre de Cristos in Southern Colorado.

Joe shook away the reverie. He stripped down to undershirt and pants, suspenders hanging slack to his sides. He pushed the pile of clothes to the wall before replacing the mattress so that he could just fall into bed when the time arrived.

Because the water pitcher had been placed on the floor beside the washstand and not broken against the floor, whoever had searched his room had done so with some care against noise. He put it back on the table and looked into the oval mirror above the table and wondered if Lazarus emerging from the dark had looked as bad as he did. He poured water into the bowl to clean his face then spoke to himself in the mirror. “You can’t run, buddy, and you can’t hide.”

He considered sliding into bed but knew that he should take a little exercise first. He had learned years earlier that after a fight, win or lose, the best thing to do was keep moving. If not, he would stove up tight as a chimney pipe and not even be able to rise from bed in the morning.

Dressed and wearing the buffalo robe, the .45 in one of its deep pockets, he set out for a couple of walking laps around the deck. He knew that he could expect a return visit from his intruders looking for what he did not have, but he did not want to be surprised again. After he closed and locked his door, he broke a toothpick between frame and door. Anyone opening the door would let it loose and not know where it belonged even if they saw it fall. If he could not keep them from entering his cabin, at least he could be prepared for them when he returned.

He walked a trail once around the ship with the air cold and wet and fresh, freezing in his nostrils as he breathed. He stepped to the railing and stood in the cold darkness to enjoy the sea air.

Around him lay a suspension of silence, with the ship’s turbines a continual dull thrum of sound. He looked out again at where the blackness of the sky met the blackness of the sea, the liquid traces of moonlight on the dark water. Above, the night’s stars shined like distant diamonds shook out on a velvet sheet. Closing his eyes, he listened to the deep churn of the turbines. Only with concentration could he feel the easy movement of the big ship in the water. Joe opened his eyes and stared into the dark, unblinking with his head raised as though smelling the salt in the air

“You don’t look so bad off, old man.” Huntington’s polished voice came out of the darkness from behind him. Joe turned and watched the man approach along the railing, walking with a quiet and steady gate. One of the Englishman’s hands stayed in his coat pocket, as did one of Joe’s. He wore a properly pressed English smile across his face, his black hair slicked back. His eyebrows were cocked and he still wore his rakish smile, which made him look like a man who enjoyed an occasional adventure or even a good scrape.

“Pardon me?” Joe said.

“The way you were standing,” Huntington said, nodding toward the railing. “I’ve seen plenty of sick men lean against the rail like that.” He paused. “You don’t look all that ill. Mal de mer, the French call it. They have such a way of making even unpleasant things sound romantic.”

Joe made a half turn to face Huntington. “You’re not looking hard enough.”

Huntington looked at him again and smiled. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose not. You appear to be wearing a few rather new bruises.”

“I slipped,” Joe said.

Huntington nodded as though absorbing Joe’s words, then said, “You slipped?” He punctuated his words with a half-laugh. “You must take proper care.”

“I lack the necessary sea legs for ocean voyaging.”

Joe looked as closely as he could into Huntington’s eyes, searching for any sign that Huntington had been involved in the beating. He saw none, but that meant little.

Huntington smiled a pleasant smile. He looked out toward the sea. “You must be anticipating our arrival with eagerness.”

Joe did not answer. One more day on the ship, then clearing customs at Cherbourg, and after that he could choose his person—himself, Gresham, or someone else entirely, someone with no past. He could hide himself in with the thousands of other American men traveling to France. In plain sight.

“Are you going to Paris?” Huntington asked, watching Joe with steady eyes.

“Undecided,” Joe said, his words tinged with a growing distrust. “Why do you ask?”

Huntington turned his back to the railing and leaned against it. While the man had the unmistakable air of superiority bred deeply into an English gentleman, Huntington did not have that aura of disdain and smugness. He removed his cigarette case, silver on top with a college line traversing one corner and his monogram in the middle. Holding the case in the palm of his hand, he opened it with his thumb and held it out toward Joe. A dozen short, white cigarettes perfectly lined the inside of the metallic box.

Joe shook his head and turned so that he also leaned back against the rail. “No thanks,” he said.

“They’re American. Chesterfield’s.”

“No,” Joe said and began to add more but just stopped.

“A Yank who doesn’t smoke. Something of a rarity, I suppose,” Huntington mused and took a cigarette from his case.

“Never had the urge, except maybe once during the war when I was wounded.”

“Ah,” Huntington said, nodding, “necessity’s sharp pinch. I know that need quite well.”

Joe wondered whether they were playing a game, how much Huntington knew of Gresham, whether he was really a cousin to one of the men in the photograph, whether Huntington had anything to do with the searching of his room.

Huntington tapped the cigarette twice on the closed lid of his case and put it unlit in the corner of his mouth. He then opened his overcoat, loosened his tie and collar, and pulled his shirt open enough for Joe to see the purple remains of a round scar just inches from the base of his neck. “Got it during the Somme. Lucky bastard potted me just as I stepped from the trench ladder.”

He retightened his collar and added, “Another . . . to the arm . . . in the mud, Passchendaele. I suppose I didn’t learn my lesson the first time.”

Joe nodded. “Mine aren’t as easily exposed,” he said.

“Funny thing, though,” Huntington said. “I turned out the lucky one at the Somme. I was wounded right off and right in front of a medical lad.” He blinked and added, “Not one in four of my men survived that morning. A bloody waste.”

They said nothing for a moment while Huntington lit his cigarette from a silver lighter and took a deep drag. Joe began to like Huntington. The man was a bit arrogant, to be sure, but the arrogance was a bred arrogance that had been softened by a life lived outside of manors and manners.

Looking at the orange glow of the cigarette between his fingers, Huntington asked, “What is your name, sir?”

Joe felt his face darken. “You know my name. Wynton—”

“I mean your real name.” He leaned closer.

Joe could smell the man’s expensive cologne as though he had been set for a good night, dressed in black and detailed like a prince.

“You ever heard what happened to the curious cat?” Joe asked.

“You mean the one who lied about his name, was found to be a stowaway, and turned over to the authorities? That curious cat?” Huntington looked at Joe, eyebrows raised, a non-committal grin on his face.

Joe fingered the revolver in his pocket. “What’s your point?” he asked and felt his body tense and his eyes press.

“No point, old man. Just asking for your name, your real name.” He continued to study his cigarette some more, holding it a foot from his face and tilting it so that the smoke curled in its own gray column against the black backdrop of the ship’s walkway. He held it that way and gazed at it in a posture that seemed to Joe as something Huntington might have learned at Eton or choreographed from a duke or a prince.

Joe breathed heavily but did not say anything, his breath pluming in the night’s cold air.

Without looking at Joe, Huntington said, “I’m sorry, old man, did you say something? Your name?”

Through a plume of cigarette smoke, he added, “And please don’t tell me that you are Wynton Gresham. Wynton Gresham is dead. I know that.” He looked around and scratched at his cheek before continuing. “Against my better judgment, I like you, old man. Don’t make me call a ship’s mate to assist us.”

Had Joe not been so tired and sore and stiff and addled, he probably would have felt a panic rush through his body. As it was, though, he just felt tired.

Huntington breathed in a long drag on his cigarette and exhaled softly, tilting his head slightly and letting the cloud dissipate before he spoke, “Still fingering the gun in your pocket?” He smiled and added, “Something of a crude joke, wouldn’t you say, had a woman said the same thing to you?”

Huntington leveled his gaze and continued, “What I want to know, sir, is who you are and why you are impersonating Wynton Gresham.”

Joe took a minute to consider his options—tell the truth, tell another lie, or toss Huntington to the sharks. The last option sounded most appealing to Joe, but he might as easily end up swimming with the fishes himself. He flipped a mental coin and it came up tails.

“My name is Joe Henry,” Joe said with a sigh, his words forming through a cloud of steam from his breath. “I’m a friend of Gresham. A week ago, he wired me in New York and said that he had reservations on this ship and could not come—I don’t know why—and asked if I wanted the ticket. I said yes and he wired it to me.”

Huntington looked at Joe through eyes that studied and weighed and gauged him without any hint either of acceptance or disbelief. Joe did not smile nor did he allow his eyes to break from Huntington’s stare. It was a simple lie. He hoped that its simplicity would carry it, even under the scrutiny of the Englishman’s hard gaze.

Huntington remained leaning against the rail until it appeared that he had sifted through the conjured story and had come to some sanction. He flicked his cigarette into the ocean. Joe could see the orange glow disappear into the drift. He stepped away and turned to face Joe head on as though forming one pole of dueling opposites. “It is probably a lie, but it might not be. If it is another lie . . . well, at the least, you will be detained in Cherbourg. Maybe, I will simply kill you.”

Joe met Huntington’s gaze. “Killing me would not be that easy,” he said.

“Possibly,” and he shrugged.

“Now let me ask you something,” Joe said, hoping to deflect the conversation from him. “Did you search my room earlier?”

Huntington coughed a laugh. “No,” he answered, “I am not the only person interested in Gresham.”

“Who else is?” Joe asked.

Huntington laughed again, not unpleasant. “What an interesting irony life can become.” Huntington smiled and pushed himself from the rail. He removed and lit another cigarette, inhaling a drag before taking a step toward the entrance to the deck.

“Wait a minute,” Joe said.

Huntington turned back. “Yes?”

“I talked with you. You talk with me. Give and take.”

Huntington laughed. “You told me enough lies to fill a Scottish maun. Do you want me to tell you a lie as well?”

In his mind, Joe worked around the rough edges of the truth. He nodded. “Okay,” he said. “You’re right. Gresham is dead. Shot. By whom, I don’t know. I found him and the police think I killed him, but I didn’t. I needed a quick exit. His ticket on this ship provided that for me.”

“And your name?”

“Joe Henry, as I said.”

Huntington nodded. “That sounds closer to the truth. With Gresham’s death, what makes you think I won’t now turn you over to the ship’s officers?”

“You may, but you may have anyways,” Joe said, regaining some balance. “You need something, or you want something from me, else you would not have searched me out. You came to me hoping to find Gresham. You didn’t, and now you have more questions. Maybe I can help.”

After a full-beat pause, Huntington stepped closer. “Maybe.”

Joe said slowly, “And maybe you can also help me.”

Huntington nodded. “Quid pro quo.”

Joe said, “You scratch mine, I scratch yours.”

Huntington nodded.

“Who searched my room?” Joe asked.

Huntington took a drag on his cigarette, holding it in for an extra second before tilting his head to exhale. He watched the gray smoke disappear as though he was searching its depths.

“There are others,” he said, “besides myself, who are interested in the manuscript Gresham was writing about Champagne. I had been doing some research into the battle myself when I found the address of a man in Paris who had been there with Gresham and my cousin. He told me about the manuscript and I reserved passage as soon as I could. Unfortunately, I was unable to locate Gresham before his murder. My. . . friend in Paris told me that Gresham was sailing for France on this charter. I had already booked it for myself in case I could not connect with Gresham in the States, and then I read about his murder and thought that the entire trip had been a waste. Imagine my surprise when I find that a dead man is a sailing mate.”

Joe shrugged.

“Who’s your friend in Paris?” Joe asked. “Your friend’s name?”

Huntington smiled and shrugged. “Not yet,” he said.

Joe looked out at the sea then back at Gresham. “What do you have against Gresham?”

“Until recently, I had believed, as did others, that Gresham was the one who sold out the advance.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Neither do I; not anymore,” Huntington said. He held out his cigarette, studying the half-inch of ashes on the end before flicking the cigarette out and over the railing. “If you give me a copy of the manuscript to read tonight, tomorrow I will tell you everything you want to know.”

Joe shook his head. “I don’t have a copy.” He added. “Not with me.” He watched Huntington arc a single eyebrow.

“Ah, well then—”

“Who else is on board?”

Huntington smiled. “I’ll contact you in the morning.”

“Why was Gresham killed? What had he written that would get him killed?”

“That should be obvious.” Huntington held a finger up as though silencing a school boy. “Tomorrow we shall speak more.” He waved his hand in the air and walked toward the doorway, trailing a wake of breath steam behind him.

Huntington disappeared into the white light of the ship’s vestibule. Joe watched him until the swinging doors shut, then turned toward the bow of the ship and let the wind wash his face with a cold and steady breeze. He wondered, looking at the charcoal outline of the ship receding into the darkness ahead of it, where he would have been had he just stayed in Greenwich and let himself be arrested. He wondered also where he would be in a week from that moment, where a smart man would be if he himself were a smart man. He had not liked the idea of someone pulling his strings when he was in the army, and the closer he sailed to France the more that uncomfortable feeling returned.

Joe walked through the empty hallways to his cabin and found the toothpick still tight where he had left it. He unlocked and opened the door and let the toothpick fall to the carpet. He lay down on the bed and fell asleep with his clothes still on, the buffalo robe as a covering.

In a dream he studied himself naked, eyes closed and mouth shut tight in a strained line as though he were clenching it against the pain. Blood stained his left cheek from a wound to his shoulder which had already crusted and blackened. His torso was streaked with sweat and mud. Another wound blackened on his left hip and pinpricks of shrapnel had turned his legs into mosaics of blood and bruises and mud. He dreamed of a morning, but his dreams were felon and uncertain. He dreamed things that could not have happened. Men and parts of men flying in slow motion through the smoke-hazed morning to land in small and large splashes within the muddy and water-filled hollows from old bomb shells. Holes opened inside the middle of men’s bodies as they ran and some fell as though tripping when they suddenly lost the lower portion of a leg. A man, his jaw shot off, walked dumbly across the pockmarked landscape, arms limp and useless, his eyes speaking a horrible language. He tripped over men who lay with their bodies opened and entrails spilling out and giving off a purplish vapor like whiskey lit with a match. He saw a no-man’s land in his dream. Within that no-man’s land there was nothing alive. Every tree truncated and left to stand with jagged tops, no bushes or grasses to hold water in the ground, only mud stained red. Every man not dead felt dead and felt as though he would never again be alive. In his dream, the morning became afternoon. He lay in his own blood and filth through the rest of the eventide and through that night. The next morning he listened to flies and to the moans of men who prayed to die. He heard rats feed on men, some of whom not yet dead. He watched a bloody and muddy mongrel dog pick its way through the broken rubble of bodies until finding one it wanted and then begin to eat pieces of a dead man’s exposed and opened stomach.