A Midnight Clear

  “What’ve you been doing anyway, walking around on your hands and knees? Or just praying in the snow for Mundy’s soul?”

  “Nawh. I could see right off the stuff wasn’t there.”

  He looks down at himself. He’s wet from boot tops to crotch.

  “I got wet working out a little surprise for our Teutonic friends.”

  “Grenade trap?”

  I say it and hope not. Shutzer might just do a thing like that. He’s the only one of us fighting the war on purpose.

  He smiles and blows two smoke rings. He can blow the most solid, holding-together smoke rings I’ve ever seen. These two he churns out now are blue and thin against the snow. A draft skittering along the gulley bends, then tears them apart.

  “Built a snowman.”

  “Come on, Stan! Don’t you start bucking for Section Eight, too. Save some space for me.”

  “Built a life-size snowman right where we dropped our stuff. This is perfect snowman snow; rolled two big balls in no time at all, piled one on top of the other, the way people do in kids’ books. Then I made a face with pinecones for the eyes, nose, mouth. Finished the whole thing off using pine needles for a mustache, then a long pine branch, with a flat snowball on the end, stuck out like an arm giving the Nazi salute. I even plastered a few pine needles falling over one eye. Damned good resemblance if I say so myself.

  “You know, Won’t, maybe I won’t start an advertising agency after the war. Maybe I’ll buy myself some rocks and try it as a sculptor. I’ll tell you, I built me a genuine masterpiece out there.”

  “Come on, Shutzer. You mean you built a snowman in the open field on that side-slanting hill. Those German crazies could’ve snuck up behind the mad artist at work and made a few well-placed critical comments with a burp gun. One more ventilated ASTPR whiz brain.”

  “If those Nazis were going to kill me, they already had their chance. I figure they’re dogging it the way we are. They don’t want any trouble; they’re getting all their thrills sticking yellow stars on Jews, herding them into cattle cars, locking them up in concentration camps, using them as slave. labor. They’re not going to do anything against anybody with a real gun in his hands.”

  “You really believe that shit, Stan? You really think the Nazis are killing Jews?”

  “I know it. It’s hard for a goy like you to believe, but I know. I have relatives who were there. These Nazis are bloodthirsty monsters. It’s a whole nation of shits like Hunt and Love.”

  “OK. So maybe you’re right. But what sense does it make building a snowman in the middle of a forest? Tell me that, and no more Zionist sermons, please. I don’t want to hear it; I don’t want to believe anything like that.”

  “All right, buddy; but you’ll see.

  “By the way, I stamped out a message in the snow just in front of my snowman. It faces the forest where they came out at us. If they go by there again, they can’t miss it.”

  “OK. So what’s the message?”

  “FUCK HITLER ! ! !

  “I made the exclamation points with pine branches.”

  Shutzer stands and slings his rifle on his shoulder. We’ve been sitting against the wall out of the wind, waiting for warning bullets through our skulls.

  “Stan, you’re nuts. Tell Gordon and the rest about the snowman, and don’t forget your love note. They’ve been threatening to lock Wilkins in the attic; maybe they’ll lock you up there with him. He can catalogue furniture while you make paper airplanes inscribed with messages in Yiddish to throw out the dormer windows for the Germans. This whole squad is going quietly berserk.”

  Shutzer starts up the hill. I think of lighting another cigarette but don’t. I’m feeling rotten. Cigarettes, breathing, nothing seems to help. My stomach’s rolling, rumbling, and my back hurts.

  I can’t stop thinking about things. Everybody’s saying the war’s almost over, the Germans are supposed to give up, maybe even by Christmas. But it’s never going to end.

  When you think how long it’s taken to come this far; how the farther we go, the closer the Germans are to home, fighting for their lives, with short supply lines, it looks impossible. With all the murder and looting they’re supposed to’ve pulled on the Jews and Russians, I don’t see how they can ever give up either. They’ll fight to the last crossroads, the last railroad station, the last city.

  And after that, the Japs. The only chance to stay alive is get hit, be captured or go ape. I admit I’m afraid of being captured by Germans. Maybe it’s all only propaganda but something inside me is afraid of what they’d do. Seeing those bodies, the one leaned against the tree and the others pushed together in the woods on the way in, didn’t help. Maybe Shutzer’s right; maybe they are different. It had to be the Germans did it. What could they be thinking?

  But we were all ready to give up today, even Shutzer. It was so easy, nothing to do. And God, you can get killed fast; I was expecting it, tight inside, feeling my last time slipping past me, waiting, helpless.

  I’ve got to stop. If you think about what’s happening or what might happen, you’ll never make it. If you start looking at those ideas, then soon you’re waiting and if you start waiting, you’re finished.

  When I go off at eight, I’m dead tired. I’m feeling dry-skinned, my lips feel tight, as if the skin will split and fester. I’ve been fighting off cramps the last hour.

  Gordon comes down for the first night guard. We talk. We reach the conclusion to try two on a guard but only one post, phoning in on the half hour. That way, we can get some sleep. We should really have two posts but what the hell, if that’s how the squad feels, OK.

  I tell Mel the new password is “snow—man.” We laugh about Shutzer’s crazy snow sculpture. Mel says he hopes the Germans don’t find it; all we need is a hot and bothered enemy slavering after our blood.

  Up at the château, Mundy, Miller and Shutzer are settling in for a game of Shutzer’s PANTRANT.

  I say I’ll probably join in soon as I make my call to regiment. I warm the radio. When I get through, Leary says to sign off and call back in five minutes; Ware wants to talk with me.

  I turn off and spread myself on one of the mattresses. There isn’t enough time to go for a crap but the cramps are already beginning. There’s a big pile of shiny, splintered wood leaning against the fireplace. I wonder if Mother knows about this. I should go up in the attic to find out just what the hell he’s doing. What would I do if he’s decided to give it all up and hanged himself? Here I’d have Miller hanging by tire chains and Wilkins dangling in the attic. Maybe I ought to skip the game and check out Mother; that’s what a sergeant is supposed to do, I think.

  The fire’s burning fine; chunks of cast metal are attached to some of the wood and are glowing red in the heat. What could it have been? They wouldn’t burn a piano or anything like that, would they? I don’t think so; I hope not.

  At quarter past, I call again and get Ware.

  “Everything go off OK, Sergeant? Over.”

  “OK, Lieutenant. Shutzer, Gordon and I took it. We checked the shed, nothing there. We found them at the lodge. There were three Germans plus an outpost on the road just under us. Over.”

  “Good work. You only saw four of the fuckers? Over.”

  “No, sir. After that, on the way back, we made contact with an enemy patrol. There were three or more of them; they were about a half mile from the chateau. Over.”

  “You made contact? What the hell’s that mean? Did they see you? Over.”

  “Yes, sir. They pinned us down, could’ve picked us off, but didn’t. I don’t understand it; none of us does. Over.”

  “Well, I’ll be Goddamned!”

  There’s a long pause. My cramps are coming on so hard I’m bent double over the radio. I hear the word for the first part of the game. It’s Miller and the word’s “brinkolar.” He gives the spelling. I think about ice skates, candy bars, stars. Anything but think about what’s happening just north of my asshole. If Ware doesn’t sign of
f soon, I’m going to crap my pants again.

  “Sergeant Knott, things are still confused here. Nobody seems to know what’s happening. I’ll report this to Major Love now. He’s climbing the walls of the S2 tent; at least this is something. Over.”

  “Yes, sir. Over”

  Please! Let me off before I explode.

  “OK, Knott, stay in there. Over and out.”

  I turn off the radio and wait for a strong cramp to let up. Shutzer’s gathering in the slips of paper with the different definitions. Mine would have been “the nearest edge of a frozen star.” I loosen my field jacket, my belt, the top buttons of my pants. I work out some toilet paper from my helmet liner on a mattress beside me. Then slowly I get up and start toward the stairs, leaning over, holding my pants with my left hand. I make it to the top of the stairs, then stand there while a bad one bears down on me. I hold till I get my pants down and my ass jammed into the toilet.

  I sit there and let the cramps roll. I’m bent in half, head between my knees. I keep feeling if I can only get it all out, whatever it is, then I’ll be OK, but it never works. I hate going on sick call, but I’ll do it when we get back.

  I work my way downstairs for the first call-in from Gordon. Nothing. Mundy’s on next. The PANTRANT game is over and everybody’s catching up on sleep. I ask Father to listen for the next call and I go up to find Wilkins.

  The door to the attic is open and I can see the light from one of the flambeaux. Mother is sitting on the floor surrounded by at least fifteen paintings in big gilt frames. He doesn’t turn around when I come in. I lower myself onto the floor beside him.

  “Look, Wont. Look at these paintings. They’re actually not much good, but they’re such a comfort. I can feel the calm and concern of some person who took the time to see and then make something to help me see with him. That’s love, Wont; sometimes I almost can’t believe there’s any love left anymore. These paintings make me glad I’m a human being.”

  I look around at the pictures. They’re mostly forest scenes with pine trees and snow, or meadows with flowers in spring. There are two with deer browsing or looking up at us just the way the deer I saw did. There are also pictures of pots and pans, one of some vegetables falling out of a basket. I start out only worried about Mother sitting up here in the dark but then feel myself falling into it with him.

  Up to that moment, all my experience with art had been limited to drawing. I never had an art course in high school; everybody was pushing me into math or science; trig and spherical trig, solid and analytic geometry; special classes at Drexel Institute. It wasn’t particularly hard but it wasn’t fun either; only more work, learning new games, tricks for nonthinkers, preparing myself to make a living.

  But drawing has been a lifelong private joy. I’d draw on anything, hide drawings everywhere; my schoolbag, notebooks, even textbooks were filled with them. My poor mother would frantically clean out the drawers and closets of my room every few months and throw them out, piles of scratchings. I didn’t mind much; for me it was the process of drawing, not the drawings, that I loved.

  I used to run around the art museum at the Parkway in Philadelphia but I never looked at the paintings on the walls. We were only interested in finding secret hidden doors or passages in the wood-lined rooms, getting scared by Egyptian mummies in the basement when we played hide-and-seek.

  It’s hard to believe a person could get to be nineteen years old and never even look at a painting, let alone see one. But with me it happened. The shock of discovery was overwhelming.

  It might only have been because I was so miserable, scared, the reality around me so unacceptable. I’ll never know all the reasons, but these intimate presentations of another world, another time, through a mind not my own, had an unbelievably profound effect on my deepest psyche. It changed my life. There, murmuring with Wilkins in the voice of lovers, after love, I knew an aesthetic experience. I dimly perceived what it was all about. I’d never be the same again.

  Much later, I bring Mother downstairs with me. He’s agreed to try arranging everything up there into three categories. First, what can be burned without committing too great a sacrilege. Next, what could be burned in dire emergency but shouldn’t be. Last, the things we can never burn for any reason, things that must be defended to the death if we want to maintain any status within the species.

  It’s almost ten o’clock. We’ve been up in that cold, dark attic, in another place, more than an hour.

  I call the squad together, except for Gordon, who’s out on post. I tell them I think tonight we should have two on but only one post, the bridge. Nobody argues. I think none of us was looking forward to being out there alone in the dark.

  I’m glad we don’t argue; I’d’ve been forced to pull rank, and that I dread.

  I’ll be on down by the bridge with Mundy next. It’ll only be two hours; then we’ll have four off sharing the phone. It won’t be bad. After all, there’s a war on and we’re right in the middle of it, more or less.

  I’m still feeling very slow. Looking at the paintings helped but I’m drained, weak. Mundy and I slip on the snowsuits; it’ll make us less visible and also keep that vicious biting evening gulley wind from blowing through us. The snowsuits have hoods we can tie tight over our helmets and around our necks. The trouble is they’re made from some kind of crinkly, noisy material. It makes a sound like Dacron sails when they’re being pulled up. I’m probably the only person in the world who thinks of snow, cold and fear when he hoists his sails on the sunny marina in Venice, California.

  When we go out, the snow has stopped and the sky is clearing. There’s an almost full moon, and clouds are racing across in clumps. Shadows of clouds roll over the trees and snow as we walk downhill to the bridge. Gordon challenges and we all move together against the wall.

  “Any noises out here tonight, Mel; owls, Indians, wood elves?”

  “Quiet; nothing except that spooky banshee wind blowing through the trees like background sound effects for a Frankenstein movie. And wait till that moon starts ducking in and out clouds; it’s as if you’re on some kind of shadow-crashing roller coaster.”

  Gordon picks his grenades off the wall. Seeing that makes me glad we’ve decided on a two-man post. He starts up the hill. Mundy leans against the wall with his back hunched and his shoulders pushed forward. I stand my rifle against the wall and tighten the string on my snow-jumper hood. Mel’s moved the telephone up onto the ledge. I pull it down again to the base of the wall. We don’t want the post looking like a doctor’s office. Mel’s also rolled himself a big snowball to sit on. He was almost ready to receive patients. Mundy slides over and sits on the snowball chair; I begin rolling one for myself. Shutzer’s right; this is perfect snowman snow. I roll it in a few minutes. We both sit on our snowballs, like two guys side by side on johns in a barracks. I don’t know about Mundy, but I’m not up to much talking. It’s going to be a long two hours. If Mundy starts up again on his save the sinner’s soul crusade, I’ll just tell him to can it. I want to think some more about those paintings.

  We’ve just finished our first call-in at ten-thirty when I think I hear something moving on the other side of the road! I push my snow hood back and rip off my helmet. I unhook grenades from my pockets and put them on the wall; Mundy does the same.

  I don’t know if he heard anything, but he can tell for sure I did.

  The moon’s bright just at that moment and we stare hard but can’t see anything. But we can hear it, there’s no doubt now. There’s something moving around in the brush just inside the trees on the other side of the road, less than forty yards from us!

  I’m trying to decide if I should call the chateau. I’m afraid whatever’s out there will hear me; it’s so close! There’s the sound of something big moving, so big I almost convince myself it’s some kind of animal, not a man; then there’s quiet again. Next we hear the sound of what can only be digging. There’s also the sound of shuffling and puffing. It’s human all right.
We’re tense waiting. Cranking up the damned phone makes too much racket; I take it off the hook so they can’t ring us here. This might be one of those “Miller” cases where the signal will be the sounds of shooting and screaming. We wait.

  Then we hear voices, loud whispering, tails of “s” sounds. The moon goes behind a dark, dense cloud; shadows of trees bend as darkness sweeps over them. It’s deeply dark, just snow glow on the ground and everything else invisible, dark. We’re both holding our breath so we can hear. I’m sure I see something on the road, something standing up etched in the dark. We hear voices again and we wait.

  Then, just before the moon finally comes out, there’s a voice, a louder voice, almost a shout, and more scurrying, snow-muffled cracking of pinecones and branches under foot. When the moon comes out strong, we see him on the road.

  It’s a German soldier with a rifle to his shoulder pointing straight at us! Mundy and I duck fast. Nothing happens! I reach up, snatch one of our grenades from the ledge and pull the pin. I lob it up over our wall and count. There’s concussion, a bright flash, the singing thrump of fragments, the smell of nitrate.

  Somebody laughs!

  Mundy and I look at each other. We slowly, carefully, push our heads over the edge of the wall. The soldier is still standing in that same place with his rifle pointing at us! We duck down again. What the hell do we do? Maybe they are supermen. That guy should be riddled with fragments and he hasn’t moved!

  I peek again. I hear somebody, not the soldier standing there, somebody in the trees on the other side of the road, trying not to laugh. Then there’s a yell. First one voice, then at least three.

  “FOO KIT LUR!” “FOO KIT LUR!” “FOO KIT LUR!”

  There’s more laughing. I pick up the phone and dial the château. With all the yelling and thumping going on, one little phone cranking will hardly be noticed. I get Shutzer.