Another ambulance was coming down the lane. A Dodge four by four with a winch on the front and a red cross emblazoned on the roof—a dull-green truck which Peters of his unit, after just two weeks in England, began suddenly to call a “lorry.” Strange word, “lorry.”
Through the open door of the barn, cracked just enough for the cats and the dog to come in out of the snow, Daniel looked for a lorry. He saw the outline of a truck moving slowly through the curtain of the softly-falling snow. It came and went in the folds of the storm until, finally there it was:
Someone ground a gear and the engine slowed, it’s sound muffled. Daniel was waiting for its bland, squat green form to emerge from the shadows of the swirling snow that is falling still. There would be bodies on it, he was sure. Bodies of soldiers draped over the hood, and he saw them now, draped with no helmets, and could almost feel their weight, the helpless weight of dead men that he must lift. He was waiting for the lorry and waiting for the inexplicable task of tending to death.
The truck emerged from the white of the storm to become the surprising color of red. He looked around: the snow was building. The tracks he had made earlier, coming out to do the chores and the milking, were now almost totally obliterated from view as the truck turned, the twin saucers of its headlights turning towards Dan, who leaned slightly through the door and waved.
Father Seymour got out of his red Ford pickup and slowly waded towards the barn, head down, snow sticking to the wire rims of his glasses in spite of his efforts, the collar of his clergy shirt buttressed by the plaid of his red Mackinaw. The old priest walked slowly, stolidly towards Dan who slid the barn door open for his sudden guest and then they were both inside, standing in all a barn should be in winter: warm, humid air; manure and hay smells; the comforting sounds of cows chewing, nosing the water cups for a drink.
“Well, Father,” he said, “you’ve caught me by surprise, coming out on a day like this.” They shook hands, and then Dan took one step back, eyeing the priest nervously.
“Daniel,” the priest said, looking straight into his eyes with those steel-blue eyes of his own, “you’ve been on my mind.”
Two would help out. They always needed two. One for the head especially. He wanted the feet, but even there he could not help but looking for the face. Always it was the same. You were drawn there. You had to look, had to check the face. And if there were none, then it was dog tags. The dog tags were somewhere. In the shirt pocket, sometimes wrapped around a boot.
“Well, why’s that, Father? I’ve just been here, working away with the cows.”
“Yes, of course.” The priest looked around at the cows staring back at their strange guest from the U-shaped pattern of their stantions. “Can we sit down?”
“Sure,” Daniel replied, motioning Father Seymour to the hay bales that were piled haphazardly together in the center of the barn, just below the hay drop.
They sat. The coffee thermos was still there from the morning’s milking and the stuff was still warm as Daniel poured himself a drink, the brew steaming in the air as if in response to the breathing of the cows. There was enough for two. He found a cup and then the two of them drank, Dan with his long legs stretched out in front of him, both of them thinking of what the snow was making still, both of beauty and of work, just outside the door. It had been two long hours of shoveling before his work had finally brought him to the barn and its massive doors, and now that work was almost totally gone, covered.
Outside it was still falling. Inside they were a party of three. The two of them sitting on hay bales in the midst of the cows who surrounded them in stanchions on three sides, this the third party, gathered as if for court—or church—the blowing and chewing of the Guernseys and Jerseys not unlike the coughing of the gathered congregation on a winter morning, many holding back the sound during prayer or times of silence to release them in loud hoarse hacking noises during the organ’s introduction to the first hymn.
He turned to the priest: “Now why have you been worried about me, Father? Because of Dad?”
“Yes. I suppose something of that great loss has been on my mind as it should.”
“Well, there’s nothing to bother you about that, then. I am grieving, sure. But he lived long and well. And those last weeks in the nursing home, seeing his frail form in the bed—well, I’ m glad that’s done.”
“And so am I Daniel,” Father Seymour said, his hands around the steaming cup.
The team was still outside and now a white horse’s head appeared in the window. He had turned them out as he usually did in first light, scraping the snow away from the manger and shaking out a full bale for the two of them—the dapple-grey Percheron and the blonde sorrel Belgian, gelding and mare, who nosed it eagerly. Now she moved from the window to the door and the show began.
“You’ll see this, now, Father—watch.”
She could get down low, almost on her knees and work the metal handle of the door into the middle of her back, and then up. She was at it now, leaning and lifting with her 1800 pounds until the door itself shook and lifted some. She stopped. It dropped with a loud, predictable bang that surprised no one in the barn, except the priest who jerked some. He took a sip of the coffee:
“How often does this happen?”
“Oh, Dolly just wants to come in. Happens everyday.“ Sure enough there she was, back at the window, ears pricked, looking in, waiting.
“You see, Daniel,” he said, “there it is. Ritual. We need it deeply within. It’s a sure part of who we are— humans and animals, too—we feed on its patterns and its cadences.”
And Dan had thought of the pall then, on his father’s coffin, and of the long reach of the embroidered cross, flowing down its length and its sides, so that all at once he was back in the crowded room, hearing the shuffling feet of the congregation and the cough of the old organ getting its wind into the leathers of the billows. And then, at the open door, the first prayer for the reception of the body:
With faith in Jesus Christ, we receive the body
of our brother Joshua for burial. Let us pray with
confidence to God, the Giver of Life, that he will
raise him to perfection in the company of the saints.
Then the clicking of the keys, the sound of the old organ, its coughing and the coughing of the congregants together as the air found the pipes to begin the first hymn.
“Daniel, you seem a long way away. My comment on ritual take you somewhere?”
“Well, yes, sir,” he said, surprised at the last word, and while he completed his thought aloud about reflecting on his father’s recent death, his mind was full of boots and of dirt mixed with blood. Another lorry was pulling in.
He was at the feet this time. Corporal Peters at the other end. They turned the soft frame of flaccid muscle and of bone and he had to look. This time he knew the face. The face of a boy across the mess tent just two days ago. Picking up the tray. Boy from Tennessee with a soft drawl that Dan liked and a spirit that found humor whenever possible. Shrapnel had hit high, so that the helmet he was grasping in the mess tent was now grasping him, a crown of thorns: the dried blood on the boy’s right cheek, the brow above his right eye, caved, compressed some—and still he had to look.
He found his way back to his father’s funeral day and now to the priest’s eyes, direct and probing, eyes just like his own, refusing to look away.
“You’ve gone somewhere just now, have you not?” Steel-blue eyes were still looking.
“Yes, I suppose you could say so.”
“And where has it been that you have gone?”
“Well,” he shrugged, “to tell you the truth, Father, to places of death.”
Well there he had gone and said it. Said some of it anyways. Opened the door some. The priest gave his coffee a twirl in the cup before responding.
“What places, Daniel?”
“Well, my father of course.”
“Yes
. But we have just been there. You had something else in mind: where else do you go?”
“Well, sometimes… Sometimes I find that I must go…well, just to other places.”
The priest frowned without knowing it, and a kind of pall of concern settled in over the features of his face.
“Well I would be less than honest, Daniel, if I didn’t tell you of my concern when you go away this way. Go away to these places. Maggie seen it?”
The word brought her to him, across the space of two farms, the woman he would marry, freckles and calico and summer sunlight in just the name. That and her inner strength and resourceful spirit.
“She’s seen it and she’s worried. She gets this worried look when I just slow down and get all quiet at once.”
“I see.” His voice trailed out on the air of the barn.
Another lorry coming. Softly, in the snow. He could almost hear it. It was gearing down for the hill and in the sound he could feel the weight of the cargo that was coming to him. More lifting. And then, later, all the muddy boots out in front of the chaplain, his stoles like Father Seymour’s at his own father’s grave, whipping in the wind, the troops facing the boots, the man in prayer:
For none of us liveth to himself,
and no man dieth to himself.
For if we live, we live unto the Lord;
and if we die, we die unto the Lord. …
Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. …
for they rest from their labors.
“And you’re still there now?”
“Yessir. I suppose you could say that a part of me is.”
“And, Daniel, where precisely is it that you are?”
Slowly he was unwrapping him. Daniel was surprised. How could this old man take him, like a Lazarus suddenly visited, lost in death, and suddenly begin pulling off the grave-clothes? Here in the humid barn, a strange place for nakedness, he was being slowly unwrapped.
“Well, sir, mostly France.”
“How long ago?
“It’s been eight years. Winter of Forty-four.”
“Muddy?”
“Well, yes, often. But at times it really snowed when we worked our way up north into the mountains.”
Neither one said anything, but they both instinctively looked to the window where snow was falling still. This morning he had measured it as he leaned through the open door, his left leg extended into the space of the mud room, his left hand curled around the door jamb, like his father would, his right hand probing with the yard stick.
“Seventeen inches!” he had announced to the air, the jackets, caps, coveralls hanging to his right; the onions, leeks and beans behind him on the shelves, a nodding somnolent audience at first light.
Now more snow. But it was safe, a good place to be in this barn.
Now he saw the brown outline of the hut he had found one day, just four of them that day, stumbling upon it in a snow-storm, no animals inside, just musty hay. A place to stretch out while the snow covered their tracks. They sat there on mouldy hay bales and stayed one full day—safe, secure, away from the war.
“And now you’re there again? Just now?”
“Yessir. I did lapse off. It’s been a while, now, but today, with the snow, I’ve been there a lot today.”
The priest looked at him openly and Daniel, before looking down, saw him suddenly smile.
“And you have been good enough to let me in, Daniel, on this snowy day. You’ve been good enough to give me some sense of what it is that is hanging over you. And I thank you for that.”
“Well, Father, I wouldn’t make too much of it. It comes and goes, you know.”
But the priest knew better. He knew that something was slowly being drawn forth into the light for both of them to view. And when they could both see it, together, and acknowledge its presence, it would assume a greater reality and focus. It would cease to be a vague dream. It would come in such a way that he could feel its substance, feel its weight—the burden that he was always carrying.
“Oh, yes. I am sure it does. But you have let it be here. Just a bit. You have not hidden it today. Or turned aside. It has come with the snow and you have felt it and gone there in my presence.”
He stood. “Well I’m sorry if I—you, you know I got work to do.” He wanted to move, to be moving somewhere, to go. “Sorry, work.”
“Oh now, Daniel, “ the old man said, standing and half turning, searching him out again with his eyes. Now his hands were out, hands impossibly close, arms extended, hands on his shoulders in a soft, strong grip:
“No son. You should not work to be sorry. You should work to be free.”
He did not want this, and yet Daniel reached towards the man. He did not want any more of the burden, but nevertheless, Daniel bent down and found himself on the edges of the old red Mackinaw, touching clutching.
Was he simply another one? Another one to lift? Another body? Would he have to look and see yet again some wounded place, some destroyed face?
No, not another one. This one was different—he thought as he clutched the old man’s arms—soft with life.
It was then that Daniel felt the tears. First tears they were. First time he had found his way back to tears. And as he cried, there was the voice of the old man, rasping in his ear, and praying—yet one more time—the prayer that the chaplain too had prayed day after day as they had stood before the boots, the muddy boots in the searching cold wind:
Son of the living God…give mercy and grace to the
living, pardon and rest to the dead, to thy holy Church
peace and concord, and to us sinners everlasting life
and glory; who with the father and the Holy Spirit livest
and reignest, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
How did Seymour know to say these words? Mercy and grace…mercy and grace. Pardon and rest… They were an invitation. Pure somehow. No mud, no blood. They were an invitation to unlock some door, an invitation to exhale and begin breathing in a way that he had not thought possible. He did not like them, these words, because they brought with them the rending that he was now feeling deep inside of him, but yet he suffered them, took them inside of him, nevertheless.
Daniel stood there, clutching the old man, while the words, with their sound and substance, floated out upon the moist air of the barn. These old words, suddenly new, came to him powerfully, painfully—warming him from the inside out as Daniel stood there in the congregation of Jersey and Guersey cows, a tall, thin man bending awkwardly from the waist clutching the other, an old man with the collar, who stood there when his prayer was done, and simply waited.
KICKAPOO WINTER
I withdrew yet farther into my shell, and endeavored to
keep a bright fire both within my house and within my breast.
–Henry David Thoreau