a moment I thought… ”
“What? What did you think?”
“I thought I was back at my dormitory at New York University, lying awake and fantasizing about Iris.”
I imagined the young man lying in a bunk bed, hands clasped behind his head, staring at the ceiling.
“She had great ankles,” he said. “Doelike and nimble. Like those tall champagne flutes.”
“You’re killing me, Frank.”
“Yeah, me too. Jesus. The longing never goes away, eh?”
“No, just the ability,” I said.
“Yeah,” he laughed. “But the funny thing is, even when I had the ability most of the good stuff still took place in my dreams.”
I thought of Julia; of her smell and the feel of her skin and the warm moistness of her lips.
“But not all of it,” I said.
“No, not all of it.”
Frank had been a second lieutenant in the Marines fighting the Japanese in the Pacific. At Tarawa he watched fourteen Marines drown in ten feet of crystal-clear water. “We came in to this beach under intense fire,” he told me one afternoon as we sat on the porch playing cards. “Bullets smacking against everything and great big spouts of water splashing down on us. We were certain we’d be hit before we even made land. And God what a beach, beautiful white sand, water the color of robins’ eggs. Honeymoon stuff, you know? Well, the captain in the landing craft next to mine must have panicked because he opened his ramp early and the boys went charging out into the water and sank straight away like stones. Jesus, Patrick, they just sank right to the bottom with their packs weighing a hundred pounds, and we could see them struggling clear as day but nobody could help them because we were all getting shot to pieces. A whole goddamn platoon standing on the bottom and staring up at us. Never forget it so help me God.”
I saw the men, and their faces caused a dull pain in my abdomen.
“Of course, you were on the Western Front weren’t you, Patrick? So that kind of shit is nothing new to you. But goddamn, you know, it sticks with you.”
I wonder whether Frank was looking at those boys’ faces under the water or Iris’s ankles when an aneurysm in his chest burst and dropped him straight to the linoleum in the hallway just off the kitchen.
I hope he was looking at Iris’s ankles.
WE FOUGHT IN the Aisne-Marne region northeast of Paris throughout June and July, first repelling the German advance, then slowly turning them, farm by farm, village by village, as the U.S. Expeditionary Forces swelled into the millions. Everywhere the battered countryside was littered with the dead, who often lay unburied for weeks, so that you could walk for miles without getting away from the smell.
In September we took part in the huge American assault on the Saint-Mihiel salient south of Verdun, losing thirty percent of our company before being rushed north into the Meuse-Argonne during the final push to take the railhead at Sedan.
At the time we rarely knew where we were or where we were headed, and the days ran together in a strange tincture of terror and monotony, distinguished only by whether we were at the front or at rest. Most of the villages we passed through were in ruins by the time we reached them, their ancient buildings pocked with shell and bullet holes and their streets cluttered with debris and the carcasses of animals and burned-out trucks and tanks. Others we destroyed ourselves trying to drive the determined Germans out.
From May until the end of the war that November our battalion lurched from battlefield to battlefield, ordered about by invisible—and much cursed—forces up the ranks to plug a gap, make an assault or hold the line on the fast growing portion of the Western Front being held by the Americans. Sometimes we fought on the move, taking shelter in hastily dug rifle pits and funkholes. Other times we dug in deep and lived underground, bracing for the desperate German counterattacks and the unremitting shelling. Each day more
“What? What did you think?”
“I thought I was back at my dormitory at New York University, lying awake and fantasizing about Iris.”
I imagined the young man lying in a bunk bed, hands clasped behind his head, staring at the ceiling.
“She had great ankles,” he said. “Doelike and nimble. Like those tall champagne flutes.”
“You’re killing me, Frank.”
“Yeah, me too. Jesus. The longing never goes away, eh?”
“No, just the ability,” I said.
“Yeah,” he laughed. “But the funny thing is, even when I had the ability most of the good stuff still took place in my dreams.”
I thought of Julia; of her smell and the feel of her skin and the warm moistness of her lips.
“But not all of it,” I said.
“No, not all of it.”
Frank had been a second lieutenant in the Marines fighting the Japanese in the Pacific. At Tarawa he watched fourteen Marines drown in ten feet of crystal-clear water. “We came in to this beach under intense fire,” he told me one afternoon as we sat on the porch playing cards. “Bullets smacking against everything and great big spouts of water splashing down on us. We were certain we’d be hit before we even made land. And God what a beach, beautiful white sand, water the color of robins’ eggs. Honeymoon stuff, you know? Well, the captain in the landing craft next to mine must have panicked because he opened his ramp early and the boys went charging out into the water and sank straight away like stones. Jesus, Patrick, they just sank right to the bottom with their packs weighing a hundred pounds, and we could see them struggling clear as day but nobody could help them because we were all getting shot to pieces. A whole goddamn platoon standing on the bottom and staring up at us. Never forget it so help me God.”
I saw the men, and their faces caused a dull pain in my abdomen.
“Of course, you were on the Western Front weren’t you, Patrick? So that kind of shit is nothing new to you. But goddamn, you know, it sticks with you.”
I wonder whether Frank was looking at those boys’ faces under the water or Iris’s ankles when an aneurysm in his chest burst and dropped him straight to the linoleum in the hallway just off the kitchen.
I hope he was looking at Iris’s ankles.
WE FOUGHT IN the Aisne-Marne region northeast of Paris throughout June and July, first repelling the German advance, then slowly turning them, farm by farm, village by village, as the U.S. Expeditionary Forces swelled into the millions. Everywhere the battered countryside was littered with the dead, who often lay unburied for weeks, so that you could walk for miles without getting away from the smell.
In September we took part in the huge American assault on the Saint-Mihiel salient south of Verdun, losing thirty percent of our company before being rushed north into the Meuse-Argonne during the final push to take the railhead at Sedan.
At the time we rarely knew where we were or where we were headed, and the days ran together in a strange tincture of terror and monotony, distinguished only by whether we were at the front or at rest. Most of the villages we passed through were in ruins by the time we reached them, their ancient buildings pocked with shell and bullet holes and their streets cluttered with debris and the carcasses of animals and burned-out trucks and tanks. Others we destroyed ourselves trying to drive the determined Germans out.
From May until the end of the war that November our battalion lurched from battlefield to battlefield, ordered about by invisible—and much cursed—forces up the ranks to plug a gap, make an assault or hold the line on the fast growing portion of the Western Front being held by the Americans. Sometimes we fought on the move, taking shelter in hastily dug rifle pits and funkholes. Other times we dug in deep and lived underground, bracing for the desperate German counterattacks and the unremitting shelling. Each day more
Similar Books
