Drink For The Thirst To Come Part 5

She'd shown that hunter, but none had found the place on their own, not a one. None would.

The season was over. Cold come, picking done, she thought. Even these last smelled good as she added them to her sack. Long things, they were, thick-brained and heavy with wet.

The roadway parsnips she'd cultivated another place back in the deep woods. They, too, had a good season. Each fat root had burrowed way down. Rich they were within the earth, their long finger-ends reached deep; deep hairy roots spread wide, held place in the ground. They didn't want to come up and out, but up and out they'd come and she'd stocked her cellar.

Cordelia loved the burlap's p.r.i.c.kle on her shoulder, like a game bag swinging with her walk, heavy with her potatoes, onions, her carrots and 'snips. Near home, now, with the last of the season's sweet things heavy in her bag, Cordelia couldn't wait to make a start. The chopping was first, a long part of it, but the heart of winter soup. Scrubbing, making it clean for the stock. The careful sc.r.a.ping, paring and cutting, the pieces shaped just right for the pot, the broth, the savor of the thing, each thickness, just right to release its flavor.

G.o.d loved good soup and Cordelia made a good, good winter soup.

At home, now, she stoked the stove with seasoned logs, last year's cut. She built sweet, laid the bed for slow, steady heat. She watched as the old logs, the large ones that had lain in porchway shade through summer and early fall, caught flame by their ends and barks. Daddy-leggers scampered into the fire's winking h.e.l.l, spiders twitched and ran, old coc.o.o.ns opened wiggling. Not nice, maybe, but all those little lives, she figured, added to the savor, gave favor to the scent, the earthy scent of G.o.d's good soup.

She chopped into the dark of night; she sc.r.a.ped and parboiled, shaved, halved and quartered. The sc.r.a.pings, the bits, heads and tails, thin parsnip fingers, she added to the stock pot. She crushed the herbs to free the essence and added them to the mix. Then one more thing.

The black iron shears hung heavy on her ap.r.o.n tie. She held her lantern ahead. The picnic basket swung free, crooked in her other arm, the busted-withered one. A bottle of whiskey sloshed, safely nested in a mess of torn rag and sphagnum. Fall leaves hushed in the dark; the shush, shush, shush of her footsweeps spread among the trees. Night critters went quiet as she pa.s.sed. She stepped off a hundred paces up the hill and counted a little more to pa.s.s the pond. Another count took her beyond her 'shrooming patch. Except for her, the forest was still.

She didn't need light for the walk. Light was needed for the work. Down the cellar, in the dark of the cellar, the root cellar, was where light was wanted.

The oak plank door lay across the hole in the hillock. A Civil War lock hung cold against the boards and hasp. Covered with leaves, it was, and near invisible, days, part of the world at night.

The lock snapped open. As she raised the door the earth smell from below breathed over her. Earth and more. She descended the four steps. The light led her, then came the noise. Iron against rock. The clatter cut the silence, a body moaned and rattled his iron bonds against his rock, his earthbound rock.

She hadn't known him, just a huntsman as came walking through the woods. Lost. Asking. She offered a drink of whiskey and pointed a way. He came back, still lost. She said she'd lead, then asked his help, A little thing, please. So good to be a help. G.o.d gave to those who helped. Some more whiskey and he was in chains. Like that!

Those chains and more held him now to that rock below the world in her cellar.

No man she knew. Her light caught him, now. He was white like a grub. And naked. She'd left him blankets, but no clothes to wear. He hung naked, hugging his rock. He looked up. He cried.

Why, yes, oh Lord. Yes. He did live underground like one of them things as wiggled under the rotted logs that fed her morels. She had to chuckle.

His head was long and thin. Not much face to him, narrow hook nose, a thin yellow beard she hardly could see in the yellow of her lantern. His head was flat on top. His teeth were busted, crooked. He cried and tried to stand. He stood and dangled. She laughed again. Up top on the world, he wouldn't have cried.

But she had things to do. She rolled the whiskey jar to him then sat to watch. It took a time. He yelled. He cried. He made to throw the jar at her head.

She laughed. Sweetly. Cordelia had a pretty laugh. Funny face, but a pretty laugh.

The man blubbered. He shouted, "Why...?" Other things, but the heart of it was, "Why?"

"Drink," she said, "an' it won't hurt."

By and by, he drank. Long pulls, tears coming between gulps and runny-nosed blubbers.

In less than an hour the screams were only hoa.r.s.e bubbles. She clipped three fingers and some hand meat from him; a couple toes from his left foot. He screamed and bled. She caught the blood in a Mason jar and capped it. She wrapped his hand and foot with sphagnum and left more rags.

She almost left, then returned and scissored off a rasher of fat from his gut, the flabby place. He screamed and bubbled but by then it was over. Leave the man-oysters for later, she figured. Take them now, he'll lose spirit. Men, so silly and so sweet, she thought, believe in their hearts-way down-their lives, their G.o.d Spirit comes from there, down the root and sack between their legs.

She left a few more rags and the bottle.

The blood smelled rich. The thick warmth pillowed the earthy scent of the cellar. She hoped he'd be all right. She liked the blood-aroma of this one.

Later that night the cries came all the way to her cabin. Sobs and curses. She heard even as the pot came boiling, even later, so much later, the screams. Long far'way echoes, as from a mountain across a valley, all the world's trees between.

Must hurt, she thought, stirring soup. Aww, hurt don't last. She knew that.

Night was over and light was through the trees, G.o.d peeking white through black, He touched His ground with His Mighty Eye.

The pot had bubbled night-long. The perfect heat she'd made had concentrated the liquor of the soup; thin soup was now thick soup, rich soup, winter soup, dark and earthy. Smelled so pretty now.

Cordelia took another swipe with her spoon. Dark broth swirled among the roots and other things. She breathed its rich essence as she stirred. Turnips, potatoes, the spinning joint-bones made dull taps against the iron pot, the carrots and parsnips swirled. She tasted with her nose. Mmmm.

The cabin air had gone winter. Just that one night. Imagine. Fire warmth, and blessed-G.o.d quiet filled the place. Her room was fragrant with chopped wood, spices, and the bite of soup and winter.

Excepting the morning whippoorwill, the woods were quiet. The cries were gone, all gone.

She added the morels last, fried up in the fat. She tasted the tip of the spoon. She sucked a hot spray of broth, her first savor of Winter Soup.

It was good.

After dark she'd maybe take a jar to him in the cellar. A little. She wanted him to last. It was going to be a long, long winter. She felt it in her bones.

WIND SHADOWS.

"We owe respect to the living; to the dead we owe nothing but the truth." -Voltaire 2:50 Ack Emma. Crickets. Finally, morning birds among the crickets' stillness.

3:10 Ack Emma. General Plumer said, "By d.a.m.n."

Bill thought of the shamblers in the dark as he and Welly groped for the tunnel lift.

Then, someone closed the electric gap, a spark gasped. Off went nineteen charges, one voice, a million and more pounds of HE. In friendly trenches up and down the lines, nine and a half miles along, the ground shivered, compressed, shattered. Men fell to earth, the earth quaked, collapsed, ears burst. A half-mile across No Man's Land, a ridge nine and a half miles long rose slowly-or so it seemed, so vast was it, horizon-to-horizon-and rose and rose and rose.

"The mouf of h.e.l.l!" someone said.

Beneath the German lines, nine and a half miles of them, nineteen mouths of h.e.l.l opened wide and the 3 a.m. dawn darkness vaporized in roaring light.

Across the Channel, 130 miles from the Messines Ridge, windows rattled in Maida Vale and Mayfair. In Downing Street, tables set for breakfast quivered, crystal tinkled against crystal. The shiver of silver against silver was deadened by thick white linen. Eyes opened.

3:10 a.m. and some moments. Along nine and a half miles of British lines, whistles blew and the men were over the top advancing through the still shattering dust. Fifteen seconds after zero, the cloud continued to roil upward. Germans, parts of Germans, machines, weapons, and other things began to rain among advancing troops. There were casualties. A blockhouse big as a railcar fell among them. The creeping barrage leading the men toward the blazing craters faltered here and there, sh.e.l.ls fell short. There were casualties. It was the beginning of the day. Some men never remembered dying.

The man remained on deck for the Channel crossing, Dover to Calais. He might have been Old Bill of the cartoons, Old Bill himself. He had been, thirteen years before. They all had been Old Bills, all of them decrepit, stinking beyond belief, scratched raw, sucked by louse, dined on by rat. Old Bills by the hundreds of thousands, 1914 to 1918, citizens of those temporary lands: Verdun, "Wipers," Pa.s.schendale, the Argonne and the Somme and others, worlds without end, amen.

Thirteen years on, Old Bill stood on the deck of a Channel ferry. France rose from the morning ahead. He was old, but who could tell? Bill was old at seventeen, he was. He was old from waiting, from seeing too much or burning too brightly. At eighteen, his eyes were craters in his face, sun-creases radiant from them, a walrus mustache curtained a grin going toothless. That was a boy's grin grown too sure of death and worse. At nineteen his skin was waterlogged and scabbed, hands cracked, feet shocking. But ah, those cheeks, sc.r.a.ped to the skin by razors two-years dull, morning stubble softened by cold water and equal parts mud, old bone, blood, p.i.s.s and s.h.i.t, those bright red child's cheeks put the lie to his age. All their sweet young faces, plucked whisker-by-whisker for morning turnout to quarters: inspection on the firing step, heads down facing No Man's Land, rifle at the ready. Ready for the Hun (should the Hun come today) and, worse, the Lieutenant (who came every day). Worse yet, the Sarge, who was always there, taking names ("You two! I'M LOOKING AT YOU! You and you shall walk the Dixie down to 'Bert today and fetch the water back! Chop-chop!" Sarge screamed. "Can't the n.i.g.g.e.rs hop it, Sarge?" Welly'd said. "Their turn, I'm sure..." Sarge's mouth engulfed Welly's nose and he give him what for: "The Nig-gers? Them n.i.g.g.e.rs ain't yours to detail. Sing me not that hopeful song, you horrid little man! Them nig-nogs got another job, a task of never-you-mind, you dirty b.u.g.g.e.r! Now you two 'op it, you and you!" And Welly and Bill made the two-mile saunter from the front, down the zigzag to the reserve, guessing all the way-this time lucky-where and when to duck and wait the sniper's eye, then another mile rearward along the muddied duckboards and into Albert. "Whatcher fink, Old Bill?" Welly said, pumping water at the well. He pointed at Albert's pocked and potted steeple. The Madonna sagged, barely hanging on, her arms raised, baby G.o.d held at 9 o'clock in the sh.e.l.l-singing sky. "Fink she's gonna topple or fink she'll stay? What say ther, Bill?" And Bill, he'd had no idea except to reckon if the steeple fell one day, it would fall on him, a cert. Him, detailed by the Sarge to sit beneath and "wait for it, wait for it!" Then, with pranged and tinkered Dixie full, Bill and Welly made the same miles back to the line, ducking snipers at the crossroads of their luck/his skill and, slipping on the muck-soft duckboards-Welly remembering at one place along the way, "I sawr him go, Bill. Ol' Ned. One minute there, then zing he scratches at a rabbit in his pants and orf the boards he slips and down he goes into that ther sh.e.l.lhole-that'n ther-and thas the last anyone seen Ol' Ned, drown he was wiff all his kit. You remember Ned?" And Old Bill laughed and laughed remembering Ned. Welly, too. And returning with the Dixie barely half sloshing full of water. "G.o.d d.a.m.n you two! I'm watching you!" Sarge says at the nearly empty Dixie can.) Ahead, in France and beyond, more memories. Inspection mornings: faces sc.r.a.ped, clothes dried and brushed as mudless as could be, their weapons ready.

"Wait for it. Wait for IT!" Waiting for the Sarge's whistle and the call to stand down. ("You there!" Sarge yelled, plain and simple this time, no trench poetry to color it. "Munger! Keep away from that Loop, you! Hans'll have you in his sights and I'll be down another fool!") Waiting for it. Waiting for it.

Then the call, "Staaand. DOWN."

Morning. Each morning: cold water tea and the bouquet of s.h.i.t, of all things redolent of the body, life steeped in p.i.s.s and blood. Trench life, a heady marinade of rotted corpse brewed in No Man's Land.

"It's between," Welly said. He was peeking with Munger through the sniper's loop toward the German lines. "Between is what that is," he whispered, looking at the sea of bloodied khaki that stretched from here to there. "No shelter, no trench, just holes and holes and holes blown in holes."

Bill peeked. Some khaki bits moved but never for long. Sometimes the bodies were blown and buried by artillery, then resurrected from the muck and water-filled holes, their parts pounded, mixed and buried again by the sh.e.l.ls. Over it all a spreading mist of night and death, ga.s.sy, gangrenous, heaving or jostled by amyl nitrate and steel. Here and there, tiny sparks of life flickered, or here and there they screamed. There was that. Since One July, screams licked day and night. The screams were of men and (he still had to laugh) horses. Horses! Mud-drowned horses. The cavalry, up for one last charge, for the old century's sake, don'tchaknow? Haig's urge, "Soften the Hun with HE and steel, pound 'em week upon week, then a steady walk 'cross the green to the German's lines. Who'd survive that barrage, eh? Punt a football, why don't you lads? A prize to the first goal in Otto's trench, eh. And, oh yes, let's have horses. Big push, eh? Cavalry to drive through the hole, enfilade the Hun and crush him, what?"

So: there remained a moaning, seething carpet of pounded khaki and horse bodies dusted pale, yes, and Munger (the peeker at the loop), Munger among them, he and others, Riley and others, others by the thousands all in a few minutes chopped, churned, and added to the pot, stirred with mustard gas, and phosgene spice. Then sprinkled with the hopeless hope of quicklime-lime to dissolve it all, wash all away, but lime left to lay and fly, white and drifting in any breeze.

At night, tucked below the trench lip, night shone green in the downfall swinging brightness of the Very pistol's flares descending like G.o.d-rays through drifting powdered bone, gas, and dust.

Old Bill remembered: the eleventh hour of 11/11, 1918. He remembered that other boat. How he had a drink with Welly on that boat back then... Going home to Blighty.

Now, thirteen years on, he'd come across the Channel again (like he said he'd never), unarmed, a fiver in his pocket. He squinted at the water washing the rusting prow. Blackout drill? Years ago. Tonight? Boat lights laughed across the black water. Silent drill? The band played on the promenade tonight. Tonight, the boat danced, shameless splashing, shining bright, cutting through moon and stars. There was music and light, men and women danced, whites and wogs, Frog and Hun, Brit and Black (he stared at African faces sweating in the white and blue and red lights).

All them muddled together in jazz and night, Welly. Crikey, what a world we made!

No U-boats below reached out. Not now. He knew that much. What U-boats there are, are drowned down there. And if they wait, they wait in the dark, alone forever, torpedoes rusting with the wait. But the boats? Unmoving, dead, the boats. The crews? Ah, the crews in the dark, in the dead drowned boats? Them? Who knew? Who knew? He did not, that was one thing certain.

Old Bill blinked. So long. Thirteen years on. The water beneath them? So much of it. So much below to this old world; too much beneath for any man to see and know. He tried. And couldn't. He blinked again.

The band had finished. Short numbers. It was on the cheap for this day-trip crossing. A lark for the young who'd never been, echoes and shadows for the widows who came across to wonder. For those among the still-living, those who returned to walk in the sun and seek to find where IT had happened-whatever IT was carried: a fragment in the leg, an armless sleeve, a missing mind. All this? Less than a lifetime ago, a few years only. Thirteen, just.

The IT Bill carried: Welly and Bill in the estament at... Where was it? What town? Albert? The chantusey ("Oh, weren't she a piece? Whoo Parleyvoo!") Musky, dark and ("There, right there!") on the stage, ("Two meters away, Crikey! A woman!") singing. And in tears. Who knew what for?

Later, they waited in the narrow hall behind the piano to have a genteel squat.

"Imagine, Billy lad. A loo!"

A door there was, to close your privacy within. A dozen or two waited in the narrow place. The place was filled with blue smoke and scorched and boiled serge.

Then she burst from the W.C., the chantusey, hands balled, shouts and no more tears. The manager of the estament, a big man on Civy Street, old silk and braces, he eases through the waiting line, plunger in hand.

"Lookit. Such a dainty fing." Welly nudged Bill, pointed at the plunger. "Who's seen such a fing as that in years?"

There she was, the chantusey, shrieking, fists tensed to fight. They met, manager and woman, she took and held the ground not a foot and a half from Old Bill's face. Shaking fury, her eyes blown wide and mad, she held up one foot then the other to the manager, her dainty shoes sloshed, sogged with s.h.i.t, stockings soaked and smeared. French words blew past Old Bill, shrapnel blasts of spit, tabac, whiskey, garlic, tooth decay and other things he didn't know what.

Old Bill breathed her clothes and her. Her smell was apart from theirs, a thing from another world. Here were their bodies. The familiar: the trenches disinfected. There was she...

Well, apart, she was one with them. She had voice, sweat, p.i.s.s, s.h.i.t, pa.s.sion.

Then he realized, of course, no, she shared nothing. A mere foot and a half from her, he wasn't there. Not leastways for her. Yet there she was: breath, life, woman. For her, Old Bill, Welly and the rest might as well have been home in Blighty, might well have been dead for all she knew, and her just a foot and a half from him.

A blink: They were hauling their fool selves and a hundred pounds, each, of trench supplies back to the line. On the way, they pa.s.sed beneath the muzzles of their guns. At intervals of four, each piece-six yards apart and ten miles of them-spit flame angled at the night. Their fires cracked and roared away, rolling down the line. Each gun by numbers, the Gunny Sergeant chanting his count: "If I wasn't a gunner, I wouldn't be HERE. Fire now the GUN!" The piece shouted again and again and again as they walked. They walked below, ducking unnecessarily, beneath the elevated mouths.

"You know, Welly," Old Bill said as they pa.s.sed beneath the nitrate breath and downfalling thunder.

"No, what?" Welly shouted as the 8-incher clicked and blew another thundering cough to the Hun, five miles out.

"That's her!" He c.o.c.ked his head at the gun.

WHOOM the gun said to the night.

"Who?" shouted Welly.

"That chantusey back there," Bill went on. "Them civilians. They don't know we're here neither! None of 'em even sees us pa.s.sing..."

"Fire now the GUN!" chanted the gunner.

WHOOM said the gun. And the next to it. And the next. Ten miles on.

"Yea," said Bill.

"But wasn't she a piece? Parleyvoo."

The guns spoke on, and on.

Old Bill disembarked with the other day-trippers. He wandered Calais then, finally, took the train to Wipers.

"Ypres!" said the station agent. "Belgique!"

Not a long ride, Calais to Wipers, but farther than Dover was from Calais.

Wipers was still rebuilding. Thirteen years on and Cloth Hall was still rising from the rubble, a meandering medieval blockhouse, stone icicles melting upward, Bill thought. He had his look. The place was new. Ugly. He wondered about the steeple in Albert.

Precious few buses to be had and all that were were filled with smiling trippers.

"Oh well, oh well. Oh, oh, oh what a lovely day," Old Bill said, and walked.

Flanders was flat, green, small trees now grew here and there. More amazing, it was dry. As he'd known it, Flanders had been wet brown runnels, naught but holes and mud. The trees had been crooked stakes, solitary or, here and there, forests of sticks arising from the muck and drifting mist.

Welly said it: "Holes and holes and holes blown in holes."

A motorcycle and sidecar pa.s.sed, going like 60MPH, and Bill stepped off the road. Warm day and Castrol fumes washed him. He stood on the dirt. The dirt was warm and giving. He took a handful. The war in miniature, dirt, steel bits, bone chips, old powdered flesh, all that, more, sifted between his fingers. A gust of wind carried his thinning hair into his face. Dust breathed across his neck. A wind shadow rippled the pale green gra.s.s. The gra.s.s come quick, hasn't it, Bill?

It's been years, Bill thought. Years, Welly.

Ah, right you are Billy lad.

Gra.s.sy places had remained in No Man's Land, a tuft here and there, the between, Welly called it, where a rabbit nibbled or a flower came red and sudden one morning till Welly or he or Munger or Riley took it with a shot and a laugh. Looking across the rolling green wind, his old eyes dissolved the day down to the earth as he had known it. Down below, under the gra.s.s, the day was still 1917. In 1917, the world was mud down to the chalk. Holes in holes, chalk scooped by steel and high explosive, stone turned liquid by rain, a fluid like flesh rendered by jellied petrol...

Another wind shadow rolled the field; the waves spread.

1917: Concussive ripples spread as sh.e.l.lfalls walked like giants in the wet wild land between armies... or the shadows, rising, nights.

Sarge said, "You two. That's you and you!"