“I can’t worry, me, about what I can’t control.”
Making it to the troops’ sleeping area is difficult. I only bother to go once. Some men lie in hammocks that swing wildly. Sean Patrick seems to be having fun, his long legs dangling over the side, him calling out like a child when we pass the crest of a bigger wave. Graves and Gilberto sit on the floor lodged against footlockers. They attempt a game of Crowns, cards slipping around on the crate between them.
Graves looks up at me and says, “You look like death warmed over, X. I warned you about these winter gales.”
Elijah is beside me. He translates. My English is still quite poor. Elijah looks over to a groaning Fat who lies on the floor like a stranded whale. “That’s no way for a soldier to act,” Elijah says, but not loud enough for Fat to hear. The others chuckle.
Elijah steps toward Fat and bends. He asks if he can help in any way.
“Make the waves stop,” he pleads, and Elijah realizes that he means this. Fat is delirious. “Can you shoot them with a rifle?” Fat asks. “Deflate them before they hit us?”
All forms of routine have been stopped by this gale, exactly what the officers don’t want to happen. Even their regular lectures have been postponed. For them to pass up a chance to hear themselves speak surely means this is a serious storm.
I go back to the horses, calm one with wild eyes. I see a large bloody spot of skin on the horse’s flank where it’s been rubbed violently against the stall. I try to apply a salve, but the animal is too frightened. I squeeze myself between the horse and the stall’s side and begin rubbing in the ointment. The other animals grunt and whinny. A wave hits, sending them all to one side, pinning me hard between the heavy beast and the wall. I groan and slip out, slick with the salve, my face and clothing smeared.
I have heard Elijah tell this next part of the story to others in our battalion. He tells them how he remembers the shaking and slapping that woke him. His eyes are glued shut, and when he manages to open them, he sees me slapping him, my face ashen. I did not know then that he had tried the morphine only the evening before.
“Two horses. Broken legs,” I say.
Elijah can hear them. They kick the sides of their stalls, give high-pitched whinnies of pain. How did the noise not wake him? I pull on him, and we head back to the stalls. A young soldier stands by them, looking scared. As I climb into the stall where the horrible screams pour out, Elijah peers in. Two horses lie on their sides, awkwardly trying to stand. They are both crying loud, eyes turned back so that the whites show. I stand uselessly between them. They’ve shit a horrible liquid stench. This whole sight is not good so early in the morning.
“What happened?” Elijah asks. “Were you with them when this happened?”
I shake my head. “I was over there resting.” I point to a little place between crates padded by burlap. “This one was with them.” I thumb to the soldier who stands there. The soldier obviously can’t understand what Elijah and I say, but he understands our tone. He looks like a boy about to be switched by a nun. The horses scream louder.
“We’ve got to get a sergeant, get a gun,” Elijah says. “Wait here.”
And so I wait. Elijah tells how he runs along the stalls and to the stairs that lead up. He makes his way along the crowded passageway. Most of the men appear asleep. The ship still tosses but not as badly now. The odd, larger wave sends the ship off centre. It must have been one of these that scared the horses.
Up on deck a fine mist blows, not quite snow, not quite ice. The deck is treacherous so that he must pad cautiously and keep a hand on any purchase he can. The waves are long, rolling the ship up their backs and sliding it down. Cross waves hit from a completely different direction at times, jolting the ship in a way that’s unnerving.
He gets to the officers’ mess and sees four or five of them sitting, trying to drink hot tea from porcelain mugs. They act as if he isn’t there.
“Sirs,” Elijah announces. They stare up at him. “There is an emergency with the horses. Two are down. It appears that their legs are broken.”
“Who’s your section officer, Private?” one of them asks. From his insignia, Elijah can see that he’s a colonel with the 48th Highlanders.
“Lieutenant Breech, sir,” Elijah says.
“Ah, Ontario Rifles causing this disturbance,” the colonel says, giving the others glances. They smile.
“Aren’t you the one,” another speaks up, “who beat our man in the marksman competition?”
“No,” another one says. “He was in the finals, but it was the other Indian.”
“Sirs,” Elijah says. “Yes, I was there. But there are injured animals in the hold.”
“They can wait,” the first officer says.
All of them seem tall and look the same with their carefully groomed hair and moustaches. Elijah recognizes two of them from his medicine vision the night before.
“Where did you learn to shoot?” the officer asks.
“Near Moose Factory, where I am from, sir.”
“You’re a hunter, then?”
“Yes, sir. With all due respect, sir, the horses.”
The officer waves his hand, as if shooing insects. “In that part of the country do you stalk your game?”
“Yes, sir,” Elijah says. “Sometimes for days.”
“That skill will come in handy,” another one says. “He’ll make a fine scout. We need to recruit more Indians to our regiment.” The others laugh.
“But will he perform so well amidst the roar of cannon?” the first officer asks. “It’s one thing to hit a still target on a range or chase an animal through the forest, an animal who won’t shoot back.” He rubs his chin and stares at Elijah.
Elijah looks around him. They all stare at him, appraising him as if he is some interesting new creature they’ve not seen before.
“You speak nothing like any Indian that I’ve ever imagined,” he says. He looks at the others. “You speak better than I do!” They all laugh.
“I was raised by nuns and have a talent for language,” Elijah says, then pauses. “Sirs,” he says once again. “Two horses are gravely injured and are panicking the others. We must do something immediately.”
“Go raise Breech,” the lead officer says to one of the others. He gets up and walks past Elijah.
Elijah continues to stand impatiently at attention. The others go back to their tea, talking in low voices. Finally Breech appears, pink-eyed with his uniform jacket undone, McCaan behind him, dishevelled, his heavy coat thrown over his undershirt, his red hair standing up. Elijah sees, though, that he has his revolver strapped on. Elijah explains the situation and they turn to leave.
“I think we’ll join you,” the lead officer says. “The storm seems to be abating and it’s been too long since we’ve been below decks.” The officers stand as a group and all of them head out into the wind.
They are more surefooted than Elijah would have guessed. Breech is the only one to slip, banging his knee hard and cursing. Elijah smiles. He leads them along and into the passageway, then down the stairs to the troops’ quarters. Inside, the air is heavy with the stink of many men squeezed into one place, the smells of vomit and sweat and stale cigarette smoke like a fog so that the air is almost unbreathable. Below all of this is the smell of horses.
“Bloody hell,” Breech grunts out.
The looks on the men’s faces as they see officers approaching makes Elijah smile once more. All routine has fallen apart. Men are unshaven. Clothes are wrinkled and dirty. Army habits are gone. But now with the officers among them, attitudes suddenly change. The more observant ones crawl out of hammocks, smooth clothes, pat down hair, stand erect with heels together, fight to hold that pose against the ship’s rock. Elijah looks back and sees some men getting up and standing straight even after the officers pass them.
As they make their way down the final steep stairs that lead to me and the horses, Elijah realizes that something is different. Another thick smell
comes up from the hold. He can’t hear the horses screaming. The young soldier who’d been on watch bolts up the stairs toward them, face pale and mouth open. He pushes past them with crazy eyes, not seeing or caring that these are officers he jostles in his rush to get away.
“You!” Breech shouts at him, but he has pushed past and disappeared.
Elijah is the first to get to the long row of stalls. Horses snort nervously through flared nostrils. Elijah recognizes the smell now. It is the smell of a successful hunt. In front of the injured horses’ stalls the floors are sticky wet. The lead officer looks down at his shiny boots and lifts one up. His reaction is calculated.
“Open these stall doors,” he says to Elijah.
He does as he’s told. All of them stare down at me. I look up, sitting cross-legged with one of the horses sprawled beside me, its head on my lap. I look like I’ve been painted red. The smell of blood is heavy. It covers the wooden walls, the floor, the straw upon the floor. Elijah sees that one of my hands rests on the floor with my skinning knife in it. The horse’s neck gapes open along its big artery.
“My God!” Breech says.
“What in the bloody’ ell?” McCaan spits. The other officers stand there, staring.
I look up at them all. Elijah told me later that the white of my eyes was ghostlike against my red-smeared cheeks and matted black hair.
“The other, it is dead too,” I say in English. “No choice. Legs broke.”
Elijah is told to open the other stall. It too is sprayed red. A horse lies awkwardly in the little space, neck slit and tongue hanging out as if it is tasting the bloody straw.
“I’ll have you up on charges!” Breech shouts to me.
“Now, now.” The colonel speaks up immediately. “Let’s consider this for a moment.” He stares down at the scene, twirling the tip of his moustache between two fingers. “It was no mean feat to dispatch two powerful animals with only a knife. What choice did the private have?”
“Shall I have him arrested?” one of the officers asks.
“On the contrary,” the colonel says. “I suggest we commend him for valour.” A couple of the others laugh nervously. “He exhibits the best traits of an officer. The ability of judgment under duress, the will and strength to carry out unpleasant and dangerous duties, decisiveness.” The others nod at his words, bracing themselves against the ship’s rock. “Lieutenant Breech, dispatch some soldiers down here to help these two Indians clean up this mess.”
“What about the two horses, sir?” Sergeant McCaan asks.
“Throw them overboard.”
The officers leave except for Breech. Elijah watches as Breech leans to me and hisses, “You will never become an officer.” Breech walks away.
“Did he say what I think he said?” I ask in Cree. Elijah nods. “Why does he hate me?”
“I’m not sure.”
Within an hour Elijah, myself and a number of others are shovelling out the stalls and wheelbarrowing out the old straw and manure and blood into a pile where it is collected in burlap bags, brought above deck and thrown overboard. Now that the seas are more manageable, Sergeant McCaan has our section cleaning not just the stalls of the dead horses, but all of them. A big task to deal with, the shit of these fifty horses.
Elijah watches as his burlap bed is dismantled. Gilberto and Sean Patrick throw themselves into the work. They are happy to stretch their muscles after days of inactivity. Fat shuffles about uselessly, getting in everyone’s way, complaining bitterly of the stench. Graves takes charge of things, directing a group of privates to get the cargo winch and slide rope under the dead horses. They lift them up and out of the stalls that way, position them below the cargo hold opening. They will have to wait until the seas are flat or risk waves pouring in and sinking the ship. Grey Eyes, Elijah and I work side by side, shovelling and lifting until our backs ache to stand and our arms burn.
The skies stay grey and heavy for the next five days. Finally the order is given to open the cargo hatch and winch out the horses, stiff now with death and beginning to smell. Elijah and I watch as the horses drop awkwardly over the ship’s side, tumbling and bumping before splashing into the water. They bob black before being sucked down by the wake.
OMAWAHTONIKEW
Collector
AS THE MORNING LIGHT GROWS STRONGER, Elijah climbs onto a beam that allows him a view from the cellar. He can make out the landscape more clearly. The German trenches appear to hover in the mist ahead of him and not so very far away. If he didn’t know better, he would think they were abandoned. The Canadian lines stretch off to his left. From this position he and I will have a hawk’seye view of the action if the smoke from the barrage isn’t too thick. I sit beside him, my eyes closed. I’m resting but not sleeping. Elijah knows this. He removes a syringe from his hide bag and injects just a little of the medicine into his arm. Since being wounded in our raid, he has given up fighting the morphine. “I’m just dabbling with it,” he likes to say with his English accent.
“Soon,” he says now in Cree.
I open my eyes and stand and stretch. I take a piss in the corner and climb onto the beam beside Elijah. Our rifles are perched there, waiting for us, resting in a space between the thick wooden supports that offer good cover and a wide view. Elijah peers through his scope at Fritz’s line, notes the position of smoke rising from cook fires. He trains his scope on the town behind the lines, the place called Courcelette. The place isn’t big but is full of smashed houses. Even if the Canadians can take Candy Trench and Sugar Trench, he can see the town will prove difficult and dangerous.
A whistling sound fills the air and the earth erupts a couple of hundred yards away from us. The beam we stand on vibrates crazily so that we wonder how secure it is. We cover our eyes from the light and wait. It is the creeping barrage that McCaan spoke of. Elijah nudges me, shouts to me over the din, “Watch our lines. Soon you will see us go over the top.”
Sure enough, a few minutes later we watch as Canadians begin to climb over the side of the trench, move in waves, walking almost calmly, bent at the waist with their rifles pointed ahead. The barrage steps closer to the Germans, and smoke and dust block their lines from view. The Canadians advance unscathed, and I think that this creeping barrage is the answer. The thud and crunch of shells hitting the mud and exploding washes over us. A hundred yards away the men approach in thick groups, closing in on Fritz’s trenches. We can tell from the explosions that the barrage falls directly on the Hun’s line now. But then as suddenly as the barrage began, it stops. I wonder why out loud, my voice hollow in the cellar. My ears ring. They have begun to do this more and more in this loud place. I’m worried for my hearing.
“We’re afraid of crushing our own,” Elijah says. I read his lips to understand.
An odd silence suddenly descends for a short time, enough that I can hear the clinking of the Canadians’ gear over the ringing in my head, the thump of their boots on the ground. Elijah is so caught up in this that he forgets everything else. He stares at the advancing men, swears he can see light shining from the ones about to fall. Everything seems to move as if underwater, but then the silence is sucked up by the swift drumming of machine guns. I begin to fire my rifle right beside Elijah, shocking him out of his reverie. I aim at the Hun lines, firing at the yellow cough of the machine guns through the haze. Waves of Canadians begin to fall with the noise, as if on cue.
Elijah turns, sights into his scope and finds the machine guns through the smoke. We set in just above the flashes and fire mechanically, pumping round after round at each bright spurt until it stops. Then we move to the next. Much rifle fire sounds now, and our targets seem endless. I choose a flash of light through the smoke, aim just above it and fire. I know that my bullets penetrate skulls.
Elijah must stop to reload magazines, the world outside erupting, ending for so many. His fingers work fast as they can. I fire a shot, pull back the bolt and push it forward with the simultaneous clink of the spent cartridg
e ejecting, aim, then fire again. Elijah joins me, firing quickly but steadily just above the rifle and machine-gun flashes. Dozens we must have killed in this last short time. Dozens!
“We should have brought a light machine gun with us!” he shouts as the Canadian troops advance to the point where aiming at the Hun is becoming tricky without hitting one of our own. “Look, X! Look! We are going to take their trenches!”
The ringing has dissipated, but I pretend not to hear him, just keep shooting when a target presents itself. Elijah turns his attention back to the firing.
An hour later the Canadians have swarmed that part of Candy Trench and they move along its traverses, Fritz falling back to Sugar Trench and beyond. Elijah and I hurry to pack up our gear and leave the cellar, dragging the piece of canvas with us. We have an idea.
Along another rise, a much higher one, we find a spot with a view into Courcelette. The good positions to fire from don’t offer any cover, though, so we get to work with our knives and the canvas, slicing holes into it and slipping branches into the holes. In ten minutes we’ve created a blanket to cover ourselves with. Elijah crawls under and asks me to stand back and look at it from a short distance. When I crawl back inside I tell him that we’ve become a part of the earth. We poke our rifles from underneath the canvas and scan the ruins of the town for Hun.
From here we have an excellent view of the fighting going on in the trenches and of what’s happening in much of Courcelette. I spot a group of Fritz setting up a machine gun on its tripod beside a crumbled wall, but it must be more than seven or eight hundred yards away.
“What do you think?” Elijah asks.
“I’ve only got a few rounds left for the Mauser,” I say, “and I am not used to this Ross any more.”
“I’ll shoot,” Elijah says. “You spot. Tell me where you see the round hit and direct me to the soldiers if I miss.”
Elijah peers through his scope and finds the target. The men are a long way off, even through the looking-glass. A little wind blows, and he estimates he must aim just above them to hit them from this far away. He sights in on the one instructing the others, aims above his head on the assumption he will hit him in the chest, and pulls the trigger. His bucking rifle doesn’t allow him to see the outcome, but I immediately report, “He’s down. You hit him in the neck.” I know Elijah focuses in and sees the man writhing on the ground. Immediately I think of Sean Patrick. Elijah reloads quickly as the other three bend to the man, aims at the one with his back to him and fires again. The man drops. “He’s down too,” I say. “Fire again before they take cover.” Elijah reloads and takes aim at the blond-haired one who looks up toward him with a look of wonder on his face. Again, Elijah aims above his head and pulls the trigger. “You hit that one in the neck as well!” I whisper. Elijah sees through his scope it is the blond one’s turn to writhe. Before Elijah can fire at the fourth, the man scrambles behind the wall and out of sight.