I like the name of this place. When I sleep a little, the dreams are good, of the big white horses running free across open green fields, of cool dry cellars filled with food.
More and more Elijah and I are given permission to go out on our own, me spotting and Elijah shooting, because we come back with kills. There is plenty to hide in around here, old brick piles, blasted wagons, the fallen walls of houses. This part of the line is confusing and temporary. In some stretches, the Hun line is only one hundred yards away. The area has claimed many lives on both sides.
Thompson has been out and watches us work. He says he is amazed by how long we can lie still despite the lice and without falling asleep, how we can spot movement that he is not able to see. Elijah explains to him that it is hunting, and hunting is what we have done all our lives. I do not correct Elijah. There is no point in telling Thompson that I am the only one of the two of us really from the bush, the only one who has truly hunted for a lifetime. I have no reason to say it.
Over the early summer that Thompson calls the quiet season and the calm before the killing, Elijah’s numbers grow. Three, five, ten. I have become very good at spotting movement, at seeing the men in the jumble of brick and mud. My job is to find the unfortunate ones who for just a moment forget the danger. But it is Elijah’s job to dispatch them.
I am learning to come to terms with what he does. And that I am his accomplice.
Now when Elijah and I come back in to the trenches after a day or two out, the others look at us differently. We are becoming the talk of the battalion, Thompson says. We’re also beginning to draw attention from the German big guns. When we hunt in one area for more than a couple of days, the shells begin to pour in. This in turn makes us unwanted by our own, and so we spend longer and longer periods of time out of the trenches and sniping from our different nests. The really good nests we keep as long as we can, moving between them as randomly as possible. I like it better out here away from the trenches anyway. There’s no boredom, no officers to answer to, no stand-to.
One night when Elijah and I slip back into our line for a hot meal and a little rest, I overhear Sean Patrick and Grey Eyes talking about us. I hear my nickname mentioned, then Elijah’s, and realize that they don’t know I’m right beside them. I’m becoming a ghost.
“What do they do out there?” Sean Patrick asks.
“They sneak around and kill Fritz,” Grey Eyes answers.
“Don’t they see?” Sean Patrick says. “The more they shoot, the more shelling we get in our sector? I’d rather they do their dirty work somewhere else.”The two of them are silent for a time.
“It’s Elijah that’s the killer,” Grey Eyes says suddenly. “X just spots for him. Elijah told me how X threw up the first time he saw Elijah get a kill.”
“How many do they have now?”
“Elijah’s got dozens, I imagine, if you include the crater raid they did a couple of months ago.”
I leave without a sound so that they do not know I have been there, my ears hot.
A HORRIBLE OFFENSIVE BURNS like a giant fire south of us. The continuous rumble of the big sixty-pounders hammering the Germans doesn’t let off, beats for days like the biggest drums, the earth below me shivering, shuddering even though the bombing is many miles away.
Elijah and I lie in our nest at night or volunteer to sit in listening posts in no man’s land. “Those are our guns,” Elijah whispers to me tonight. His eyes reflect the little light and he has the smile of the mysterious on his lips. Lately, I notice he sleeps less and talks all the time about hunting. He says he can see things over the horizon. Glimpses. We sit in a listening post, a small crater twenty yards out from our own line. We spend this night listening for what Fritz is up to, but all we hear is a German soldier moaning and mumbling, wounded badly but still alive and in the middle of no man’s land.
“Sergeant McCaan says a big attack’s coming,” I whisper, “and that the British are preparing a big offensive.” The night’s at its quietest, with the sun only an hour away but still buried somewhere deep below. The wounded soldier continues to moan and mumble. He is talking some sort of secret language now, I think, speaking with the spirit who will take him on the three-day road.
“Fritz is dug in too well in France,” Elijah says. “Tommy will fail.” The wounded soldier suddenly laughs, as if to agree with what Elijah says. Maybe they see the same thing.
Elijah has killed more men already than I can count on both hands. It doesn’t seem to bother him. Me, I’ve killed no one that I could see yet, but I’ve helped Elijah. I don’t think it bothers me, but I won’t let myself think of it, just push it away whenever it appears.
Elijah smiles and stares out into the black. The guns in the south cause the sky there to glow and pulse. They are the North Lights, in the wrong place, reminding me of home. The line across from us is still. The only noise over the booming in the distance is the muttering and cries of the wounded soldier.
“I’ll be back,” Elijah whispers to me and crawls out of our listening post quick and silent. I know it’s useless to try and stop him. I also see that Elijah has left his rifle behind.
Staying still, I listen and try to fight off the anger that comes to me when Elijah does these stupid things. It isn’t fair. I’m left here like a worried wife, wondering if Elijah’s going to make it back this time or if he will be spotted and shot. I hear the wounded soldier suddenly cry out what sounds like “Nine, nine, nine …” and then in a lower voice, he begins to speak as if carrying on a conversation with someone. Finally, he stops talking. I sit and listen for a long time, the emptiness of the night striking me now that the wounded voice is silent.
When the sun begins to threaten and I am sick with the worry that Elijah will not get back in time or at all and I will be forced to squat in this hole all day until night comes again and I can make it back to the line, Elijah slithers into the crater and leans back on it, breathing shallow and a little hard.
“Where were you?” I ask in Cree, trying not to sound upset, the tone slipping out anyway.
“I helped that soldier find his way to the spirit world,” Elijah whispers.
“We must get back before the sun comes up,” I say.
“I was good to him,” Elijah continues, staring up into the sky. “He’d suffered enough and I didn’t want him to leave violently, so I covered his mouth and nose with my own hand and whispered good things to him till he went.”
“Enough,” I say sharper than I want to, and crawl out of the crater and toward our line.
THE OTHERS IN THE BATTALION have begun to treat Elijah like he is something more than them. I walk beside him or behind him along the trenches between stretches out hunting, and very few seem to notice me at all. When we are given our daily rum ration, Elijah likes nothing better than to sit and talk about his latest exploits to anyone who will listen. And there are many. How soon they seem to forget who is the better shot. None of them know that I am the one who taught Elijah what he knows about hunting. My English isn’t good enough to correct what I see happening, but even if it was I would only sound like a bitter old woman to them. After all, I have not pulled the trigger on a man yet. That is Elijah’s job.
When I am able, I find a place away from their talking and slip into a light sleep that creeps across me like smoke. I drift back to the training place we were sent to after our time in Toronto, in the cool of autumn, back to where we first learned exhaustion. This memory, this pretty little stone, I examine it with my eyes closed tight. Turn it over in my fingers.
Our days of training in these farm fields in Ontario are all the same, the company sleeping lightly and in shifts, working at digging trenches and then filling them back in again, learning about sap lines, fire-steps, parapets, parados, stand-to morning and evening, learning a little of what we will do once we get to France.
Some officers have arrived from over the sea to train the men. The men around me whisper that these officers have seen a lot of
action. They have a certain look about them, a certain hollow stare. One of them is older, British. The other two are Canadians. One of the Canadians is missing his left arm to the shoulder. The British one always looks like he’s crying. The other Canadian, him, he looks like he’s fine to me. Those three sit long hours at night by a fire and talk with Lieutenant Breech and sometimes Sergeant McCaan.
Nighttime is when we learn how to string barbed wire without tearing our hands, how to lie still when flares pop up over us so that we melt into the ground. Nighttime is when we learn to patrol quietly and sneak up on one another. This is what Elijah and I like best, and what we are best at.
McCaan has taken notice of how good we are at this and it makes me feel a little important. During these games at night the men are sent out into the darkness of forest or meadow and told to find the other group that has been sent out or are simply told to make it back to the camp first. The others can’t keep up with Elijah and me, though. In the darkness I feel that Elijah and I are owls or wolves. We have done many night hunts over the years. McCaan reports our talent to Lieutenant Breech. Elijah tells me Breech says that it is our Indian blood, that our blood is closer to that of an animal than that of a man.
While the men are out on night training I know that the visiting officers sit by the fire and talk with Breech. They talk about France, about places with strange names. Popperinghe. Flanders. Festubert. Loos. They talk of the Hun using a gas that when breathed turns the lungs to fiery liquid so that a man drowns in the flames of his own insides. The crying officer was at the place where this gas was first used on the Canadians. He saved himself by pissing into a handkerchief and breathing through that with his face buried in the mud. But the gas got his eyes a little bit anyways.
One or two places over in France will decide the war next summer, these officers say as they sit by the fire. And it’s the soldiers here around them that will help decide it. I find out all of this through Elijah. Elijah comes back late at night to the tent where we sleep, shaking me awake and whispering to me in Cree all the things that he has overheard them say as he lay in the dark spying on them. Elijah sneaks up and stays silent in the shadows for hours while they talk, mimics their voices, their postures, their stares. He cannot wait to get over there. He tells me he’s afraid the war will end before we arrive.
Elijah, he has a talent, him. He has become as good as me at sneaking, and maybe has more patience. Elijah’s like a shadow when he wants to be, lying flat and breathing silent so that he becomes the ground. I know that I am a good hider, a good worker, a good shot. We will both be very good over there. But Elijah, all he wants is that place. This war will make him into something.
One night Elijah and I lie in our tent and talk. The quiet evening with nothing to do is rare. Autumn has come to stay. The air is sharper. The trees glow in the sunlight as part of them dies.
Talk’s started up of the battalion moving again, maybe this time to the ships that will take us overseas to the war. Elijah tells me this in our language as we sit in the tent near the warmth of the wood stove.
“Just a matter of time before this came,” Elijah says. I sit up to hear better. “Before they separated us.”
“What is this?” I ask. “Who says?”
“It is the talk.”
“That’s shit,” I say, then ask, “Will they separate the two of us?”
Elijah stays silent for a while. “Most probably. You must prepare yourself for that, for being on your own, Xavier. Your English is getting better, and that is good, but the army cares nothing for friendships.”
For the first time since arriving in this place the panic begins to come back to me. “Surely they’ll keep the two of us together if we ask,” I say.
“They don’t give a damn about us, Xavier.”We sit without talking for a while. “It might be better that they separate us,” Elijah says in the dark. “It will teach you a little about independence. It will give you a chance to make a name for yourself, to grow a little.”
The words anger me. I wonder why Elijah says all of this.
The next day, two full battalions stand at attention in the great field where the men shoot their rifles. The 48th Highlanders stand across from us, the Southern Ontario Rifles. We all stand tall as we can, the Rifles especially, taller now than we were a few months ago. I can see slight looks of disgust on the faces of the Highlanders facing me. Not one of those men across from me thinks in the slightest that the 48th will lose. They are professionals who have seen many battles. Our battalion is a bunch of farmers and labourers with a couple of bush Indians thrown in. Me, I want to change those looks on their faces.
The British officer sent here to train us, the one with the weeping eyes, marches out into the middle of the field and another officer shouts for the men to come to attention. There is a flurry of movement as they do, and then the British officer clears his throat, preparing to speak. I have to listen carefully to understand as the officer holds his rifle out in front of him and begins shouting.
“The soldier’s Ross is the soldier’s best friend,” he says. “If you care for her working parts what you will hear is the bolt pushed smartly and the clickety-click and one up the spout and there you ’ave ’er, one dead Boche!”
He pauses and stares out at the men on either side of him. His face is red from the effort of shouting and his eyes cry salt water. I wonder if he is mad. I hear a snort beside me and carefully look over to Elijah, who has begun to giggle and seems to have trouble controlling it. The officer begins shouting again.
“You men must really cultivate the ’abit of treating this weapon with the very greatest care, and there should be a healthy rivalry among you growing!” He shakes with the effort of his shouting. It is a strange sight to see the tears rolling down his cheeks and wetting his collar. He pauses and his eyes wander up and down the lines of troops until I am not sure if he is finished his little speech or not. Just when I think the officer must be done, he begins to shout again. “It should be a matter of very proper pride. Marry it, man! Marry it! Cherish your rifle for she’s your very own!” He looks a little confused now, like he has forgotten what else to say, and that is when Elijah erupts into laughter, great gasping laughter so that everyone around him turns at the same time and stares in horror wondering what Sergeant McCaan and Lieutenant Breech will do.
I look to McCaan ahead of me and he has turned toward Elijah now, a look of pure red anger on his face just as a cheer goes up from the 48th across from us. The Rifles join in the cheer. It’s the first time the 48th save Elijah, and I don’t think it will be the last.
When the cheering dies, the best shooters from each company are asked to step forward. McCaan could not choose between Elijah and me so he tells both of us to step up, and this makes me unsure. I can feel a heaviness in my stomach as so many eyes fall on me and the others in the group of marksmen. We stand at attention with rifles at our sides, facing down the field to where green balloons bob on strings fifty yards away. They look small from where I stand, easy to miss as they shift and bounce in the cool wind.
The crying officer shouts out the rules. We are to shoot in groups of ten, and will be eliminated immediately on the first miss. I see that Elijah has been placed in the first group. I have been placed in the last. The wind picks up as the first group takes their position. The balloons jump around like they have a life of their own and know what’s to come. The shooters hold rifles loosely at the ready. When the officer shouts, they raise them and sight in, then fire. After the noise, only Elijah’s and one other’s balloons have disappeared. A cheer goes up from the 48th. The other is their man, small with sand-coloured hair.
The second, third and fourth groups do better. Most make their shot as the wind dies down. As I line up with my group the wind kicks up again. We are ordered to the ready, then to fire, and I raise my rifle, imagining the balloon is a goose floating on wind currents. The wind whips the balloon and I hesitate so as to sight in better. I squeeze the trigge
r and my balloon disappears. When I lower my rifle I see that mine is the only one gone. My company cheers. The officer warns me not to hesitate again or I will be disqualified.
Less than half of the original group is left and once again we are divided, this time into four. Elijah and I are put in the same group. We smile to one another. It’s like the old days when we’d shoot against each other till we ran out of bullets. The British officer orders us all back many yards so that the balloons look the size of coins from where we stand except for their moving in the wind. The first group falls into line, and when the order is given they try and draw a bead on the balloons. With the roar of the guns, only one disappears. The little marksman from the 48th smiles broadly as his battalion hurrahs.
My group is second and my luck is good. The wind slows just enough as we are commanded to fire, and Elijah and I hit our balloons. Our ones, the Rifles, answer the cheer. I smile and settle back on my haunches to watch the rest of the shooters. Two men from each of the two groups are able to hit their balloons in the calmer wind. Only seven are left after two rounds.
I watch carefully as soldiers prepare the next competition. Seven bully beef tins are set along a ridge of earth 150 yards downfield. The seven of us soldiers circle around the officer and pull straws from his closed fist. Once again the little sandy-haired soldier from the 48th goes first. The officer barks out for him to start and pushes the button on a stopwatch. The soldier drops down from attention, unslinging his rifle from his back smoothly, and as he lands on his stomach the breech is already open and a round slammed in by the time he is lining his sights up on the first tin. He is fast and smooth. The rifle fires, followed by the distant metal rip of the bullet tearing apart the tin, followed by the slide and click of his bolt opening. I watch his hand reach for another round, followed by another slide and click as he pushes the bolt closed and crack, another tin is torn apart. When he is done he has hit all seven in a very short time, and not just his own battalion but everyone cheers.