Loon Lake by E. L. Doctorow Page B

against the mules’ flanks, the bracing of backs on six-foot wheels, spokes like baseball bats tires of steel, each soldier alone and miserable inside his coat, charred trees beside the road the sky showing through city hall, gusts of acrid air blowing from the front, and here is Corporal Penfield riding the signal wagon, flag tubes strapped to his back like quivers, a helmet tilting over his eyes because the strap is too loose, and on his lap the crate covered with a khaki blanket shifts perceptibly, the pigeons whirring with each dull boom lighting the sky like lightning miles ahead.
    He was dangling a medal. He had taken it from his pocket. He handed it to me. The colors of the ribbon had bled, there was thread and lint attached to it, but it was a Silver Star and it was his.
    I leaned forward put it in her hand leaning forward over the bear rug between us, our hands grazed I felt the heat of her hand.
    And there in our minds as we looked at the palpable proof was Signal Corporal Penfield during the battle of the Somme dispatched urgently to semaphore the artillery to drop some heavy stuff on the encircling Huns.
    “The field telephone didn’t work, there wasn’t even a damn pigeon left.” He paused to wet his throat. “So I took the old semaphore flags and went up to the top of a hill where I could be seen, because even though it was night the star shells were like the Fourth of July and it was brighter than day. I could see out over no man’s land. I sent my message”—here he lifted his arms, attached to the glass and bottle and did a half-hearted pantomime—“and a while later the artillery came in on target, and that’s what I got the medal for.”
    “You’re a hero,” she said, smiling. She dropped the medal in his lap and then raised her glass to her lips.
    “No, but, love, you haven’t heard the end.” He dropped his chin to hischest. “I was so terrified I didn’t send the message I was supposed to. What I semaphored was the first verse of a poem.”
    “What?” I said.
    “‘There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream,’ and so on,” he said. “And a while later the shells came in on target. It was very strange.”
    She was laughing. “In the war—in the battle?”
    “Surely you know it,” he said. “The Intimations Ode? Didn’t you have it in school?”
    “But why?”
    “I don’t know why. Maybe I thought I was going to die. Maybe it seemed to me the only appropriate thing to say. Anyway, after I got the medal I wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Army returning it and telling him it was more properly William Wordsworth’s.”
    “But it wasn’t a medal for poetry,” I said, and immediately felt like a fool.
    “Apparently not, Joe of Paterson. Apparently not. I had to go for psychiatric tests. They pinned the medal on my bathrobe. They kept me under observation for ninety days in Nutley, New Jersey.”
    “Where?” she said, happily laughing. He looked up at her, victorious in her amusement. “Oh, Warren, you old fuck, where?” She threw back her head and laughed and laughed, I gazed at her throat, her neck, it was a moment in which I could look at all of her as she sat in her white satin robe, she bending forward now in her laughter, the robe unfolding like unfolding wings so that I could see her breasts.
    Then I realized Penfield was looking at me, with his head lowered, with raised eyebrows, a characteristic expression, I knew at once, full of sadness, full of self-acknowledgment, and as she reached out and touched his head he too began to giggle, he was in love with her, and soon they were both laughing and I was laughing, but trying not to for some reason, feeling badly that I laughed, feeling ashamed.
    I hadn’t realized how drunk they were. A few moments later, in silence, she put her glass down and reached out, holding his head in her