Once an Eagle

  “Michele, I’ve been riding half the day.” He opened his coat but did not take it off. The door into the bedroom was closed. All at once he felt weak with fatigue: his head was floating and his belly burned. “Dev,” he said in a low voice, without moving.

  “If you do not go,” Michele warned, “I call the police …”

  “Dev,” he repeated. “It’s me. Sam.”

  Michele came up to him swiftly and said: “Go. Please go. I will tell you where you can see him tomorrow, only please go—!”

  He made no reply. He was too tired to argue with her, and beyond that he had really nothing to say. He was here. Dev was here. That was all there was to it. There was a heavy silence, invaded subtly by the forge across the street—a long-drawn metallic whine, broken off sharply by several measured blows of iron on iron. The hammering stopped, there was another interval of silence—and then the bedroom door was flung open and Devlin stood there, staring at him. He was wearing a faded blue shirt and a pair of baggy trousers gathered in at the waist with a narrow yellow leather belt.

  “—Jack,” Michele said sharply.

  “Oh Christ. I told you this wasn’t any good.” He stood there doggedly in the doorway, watching Damon. His face looked gaunt and very pale. “Hello, Sam.”

  “Hello, Dev.”

  “You—get leave?”

  “No. I took off for a day.”

  “Did you? What the hell for?”

  “To see you.”

  Devlin took a pack of Gauloises out of his shirt pocket, put one in his mouth and offered the pack to Damon, who shook his head. After a moment Devlin lit his cigarette; he still had not looked at Michele, who was standing perfectly motionless by the long windows. “Why, I haven’t got a whole hell of a lot to say to you, Sam.”

  “I suppose not.”

  For the first time he noticed the new insignia on Damon’s shoulders. “I see you made captain.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Congratulations … You look kind of tired, Sam.”

  “Yes. The burden of command, and all that rag.”

  “And all that rag. How’s the outfit?”

  “Rocking along.”

  “What’s left of it.”

  “What’s left of it.”

  “How’s old Jumbo—he a little upset about my taking a powder?”

  “Jumbo’s dead.”

  “No …” Devlin’s glance darted to the wall, to Michele, back to Damon. “Why Christ, it was only a—it was only a slug in the arm, Sam—”

  “Well, it—he got gangrene.”

  “Jesus … who’s sergeant major now?”

  “Right now there isn’t any. Nobody wants the job. A new man named Taylor’s coming in, a transfer.”

  “Well. That’s charming. C’est drôle, hein? très drôle.” Devlin laughed once, became sober again; sauntered up to the table and swinging a chair around straddled it, his arms over the back. The two men looked at each other in silence.

  Finally Damon said: “You haven’t been out for a while.”

  “No—I’ve been taking it easy. Getting rested up, for a change.” His face was white and drawn in the dull light. “Getting ready to go up again, aren’t you?” he demanded suddenly. The Captain nodded. “Sure. Why not? Nothing better to do … Well, this was real nice of you to drop in. Right out of the blue …” He grinned mirthlessly. “Getting a touch lonesome, eh? Misery wants company. That it?”

  “They miss you, Dev,” Damon answered in a low voice. “The whole bunch. Raebyrne was talking about you only yesterday. He said all sergeants were ornery and stampageous, but if God made him choose—”

  “The hell with that,” Devlin broke in flatly.

  “What?”

  “I’m not going back, Sam. I’m through.”

  “I see. For good?”

  “For ever and a day. There’s no point in it, Sam. No point in it … All that slaughter. At Brigny and Soissons. And for what? So the frigging brass could foul it up all over again. You and I could have done better than that stupid bastard Benoît. A five-year-old kid could have done better—you know that …”

  “I guess you’re right. The only trouble is, the five-year-old kids aren’t running it.”

  “No, they aren’t—they certainly aren’t.” He leaned forward, his eyes infuriate. “I’ll tell you who’s running it though, Sam, because I’ve seen them. The fat little porkers in their Prince Albert coats and their black limousines, with their fat little poules on their arms. You think they want Foch to end it—you think they want anybody to wind it up? Jesus Christ, they’re having the time of their lives, turning out the shells, hoarding all the butter and bacon and stashing it away …” He waved one arm. “I heard one of them. Right down there in the square. Dressed to kill, with a droopy mustache and eyes that would turn you to stone. His dirty sidekick asked him something, and he said, ‘Il faut faire des concessions mutuelles, mon gars’—and then he turned to me and told me to polish up the headlights on his chariot. Handed me a five-franc piece, and walked off. Just like that … Concessions mutuelles, all right. And we’ve got to creep across a thousand fields for that? So that they can go on making a fortune on hand grenades and uniforms?”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “You know I’m right. It’s a dirty, filthy game—there’s no sense in it, Sam …”

  Damon nodded. “You figure on lying low till it’s over.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And then—what’ll you do then?”

  Devlin shrugged once. “Get me a job. Carpenter, cabinet maker—I used to do carpentry back home, you remember … ”

  “I see. Sure. And then, after that?”

  “After what? What do you mean, after that?”

  “After a few years have gone by, and you want to go back to the States, back home, see your family—”

  “The hell with that.” Devlin scowled. “I won’t ever go back.”

  “Or you want to go for a little trip. To London or Luxembourg. A vacation to get out of the rut.” Devlin made no reply. “Out into the country. Take the train: Brigny-le-Thiep, Verneuil, Soissons …”

  “Look, Sam—”

  “Verdun, Metz, Saint Avold … And then they come to the border, and the customs inspector wants to see your papers—”

  “No!” Michele came up to the table and leaned over it. “He is not going back to your filthy war. He is staying here. No more killing. No! Go on back—leave us and go back there and blow each other to bits, until no one is left in this endless madness …” Damon watched her in silence, while she struck her breast with her fist. “He will stay here and live, with me. In love. Yes, love!… You think I don’t know?—you think I am a fool, a weak woman and a fool?” She whirled around, darted to the huge oak chest, wrenched open one of the doors and began pulling out an armful of framed photographs, spilling them on the table in front of Damon, striking the glass with her nails. He saw a handsome officer with a graceful dark mustache seated on an upholstered chair, a heavy-set older man, a farmer or perhaps a mechanic, wearing a helmet, two young boys in tight-fitting tunics, hatless, their arms around each other’s shoulders, smiling in a sunlit courtyard. “My father, at Le Cateau, my uncle, at Verdun. My brothers, l’un mort, l’autre grand mutilé de guerre—” she was abandoning her English in her rage “—et mon cousin Guy, et là, là, mon fiancé Edmonde, aussi à Verdun … Et pour quoi, donc? Dites moi, Capitaine! Dites moi, je vous en prie.”

  She stopped, panting a little. “You think he is a coward to stay with me, hein? Ah, of course—because you are all so heroic, so noble, so brave … Well, he is worth ten of you, a hundred, a thousand! Un homme plein de sensibilité, plein d’émotion … You find that strange, do you?” she cried, though Damon had not changed expression. “That a man wants to live in peace and dignity, in 1918? Why couldn’t you leave him alone—since you knew he had come here … But no—you could not, could you?” She leaned forward, her arms at her sides, her large, dark eyes gl
ittering. “You, Captain. You have killed, have you not?” Damon nodded, almost imperceptibly. “Ah yes, of course—all those medals … How many, Captain,” she pursued savagely. “How many?”

  “Mitch—” Devlin began.

  “Be still!—How many, Captain? Make me an estimate.”

  “… Too many,” he said softly.

  “Ah oui, assurement.” She laughed, a brittle, silvery laugh. “And it pleased you, hein? When you did it. It gave you a deep, secret pleasure in your soul—”

  “No,” he muttered. “No.”

  “Oh yes, I say yes!” she hissed. “You found it a secret, and sweet.”

  “Mitch, no,” Devlin protested, “he was only obeying orders, like any other poor son of a bitch …”

  “Ah—orders!—”

  “No more of that,” he shouted at her. “You don’t know anything about that! You can’t judge him that way—”

  She whirled on him. “What are you all—some glorious freemasonry of death?” she cried. “Some privileged élite guard of disaster? with secret countersigns? You are the only ones who can speak of suffering? And the other part, too—the dirty, secret pleasure …” She turned back to Damon again. “You have decided in all your wisdom he is a coward to stay here.” She leaned forward again, her breasts rising and falling passionately, her face flushed, her lovely dark hair disheveled. Her anger beat in her cheeks, her eyes; she looked breathtaking and terrible, and Damon thought with a pang of that afternoon after Brigny, a hundred thousand years ago, and two figures in close embrace, swaying in the twilight, with the curtains stirring in the soft breeze off the river. “No! I say he is brave to stay, the bravest of the brave—and you, all the rest of you, are the cowards, the cattle, the craven, drunken fools …”

  She stopped and turned away. For a moment no one said anything. Across the street they could hear the thin, sibilant whine of the scythe blade being ground again.

  “Yes,” Damon said after a moment. “Maybe it is more courageous, Michele. I don’t know for sure. Maybe you’re right … But that isn’t all of it.” He glanced at Devlin, who was gazing at him imploringly—as though the force of Michele’s appeal had stripped away his harsh defiance layer by layer, leaving only a raw, naked anguish. “Think of your life, Dev. The whole rest of your life. What will you do? What will you think about? When it’s over, and some old doughboy comes through here, looking for landmarks, for graves. When she has a boy of yours, who begins to ask a thousand and one questions. When you’re lying in bed late at night and you can’t sleep … You’ll get to hate yourself, Dev. You will. You’ll even get to wish you were with Starkie and Kraz and Turner and the rest of them.”

  “—Yes and I God damn near did end up with them, too. All the good guys … and what for?—so the slackers and profiteers can feed on our carcasses? I say fuck it!” he cried. “I say fuck this filthy war …”

  “So do I,” Damon answered quietly. “With all my soul. But that’s no answer now. You’re in it, Dev.”

  “The hell I am—”

  “Yes, you are. You signed up for it when I did … Sure, I know—it’s rotten; and fools and sons of bitches are running the show. But you’re in it, and so am I; and the only hope is to get it over with—and then make sure nothing remotely like it ever happens again.”

  “—And just how do you plan to manage that?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m damned well going to try … Dev,” he said urgently, “you can’t live this way. You care too much. Maybe some men can, but you can’t. You’ll dry up and fade away to nothing, you know it. You’ll hate your own guts more and more each day …”

  There was a long silence. Devlin looked down at his hands and shook his head slowly. “What the hell,” he muttered, “I couldn’t go back now if I wanted to.”

  “Jack!” Michele cried.

  He gazed at her desperately. “I can talk with him, can’t I? It’s just talking …” She gave a muffled groan and put her hand to her mouth.

  “You can come back,” Damon said.

  Devlin laughed harshly. “Oh, sure—I can come back: under guard and in irons … if you think for one minute I’m going to rot in some stockade—one of Black Jack’s fancy little labor battalions—”

  “You won’t have to.” For the first time Damon leaned forward and put his hand on the Sergeant’s arm. “It’s all fixed up. The Old Man’s full colonel now. He’s got the regiment.”

  “Caldwell?”

  Damon nodded. “You can come back with me tonight and there’ll be no questions asked. I’m the only one who knows where you are. The company thinks you’re in the gas ward at Nanteuil.”

  “What do they think that for?”

  “Because I told them so. Look, I’ve got the regimental Dodge waiting down by the bridge.”

  Devlin stared at him; after a moment he whispered: “You mean you got the limousine?… Jesus.”

  “I’ve been covering for you on the roster, and so has the Old Man. You won’t get the stockade if you come back with me tonight. I give you my word.”

  “And suppose we get picked up going back. What then?”

  Damon put his hands on his knees. “Then I’ll go up with you for harboring a deserter, and they can bust me and lock me up, too.”

  “You’d do that for me?”

  “Of course I would.”

  Devlin looked down again, ran his hand along his jaw. Michele gave a cry—a wild, abandoned cry that was half a gasp, and ran to the table.

  “Non, non, Chéri,” she pleaded, “ne te laisse pas faire—Jack!” He got to his feet and she flung herself on him, gripping him around the neck in a violent, animal way, as if she were mortally afraid of falling. For a moment they swayed by the table, locked together, while the rain drummed on the long windows.

  “Mitch, honey,” Devlin murmured. Slowly, with infinite reluctance he pulled her hands away from his neck and held them in his own. “He’s right, Mitch.”

  He turned away and went into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. Michele stood for a moment, staring at it; then she walked up to where Damon was standing.

  “Bête,” she said. “You hurt everyone you touch. You are hateful.” She was weeping now, steadily and quietly, staring at him. “You are so certain. So certain! And also afraid. Yes. To leave him here. Outside your carnival of horror …” Very clearly and slowly she said: “I hope you are killed, Captain. I pray that you will be wounded horribly, grotesquely, most painfully—and that you will have a great deal of time to suffer, and think about it, and suffer some more … Je prie pour ça de tout mon coeur.” Then she struck him in the face with all her might.

  He swayed backward. He felt all at once cold and hollow; her imprecation had shaken him, filled him with fear such as he had never felt before.

  “… That’s not true,” he heard himself whisper. “I am not like that …”

  She made no reply, merely went on staring at him, her large eyes stony with hate, her lovely, gaunt face streaked with tears. They stood like that, nearly toe to toe, looking at each other, until the bedroom door opened and Devlin came out. He was wearing his uniform. Half the buttons were gone, and his breeches were torn at the knees. He had cut off his chevrons; the cloth where they had been made dark, triangular shadows below his shoulders. He was carrying Lieutenant Gillespie’s musette bag in one hand. He stood looking at the other two for a moment; then slung the bag over his shoulder and pulled down hard on his blouse.

  “Okay, Sam,” he said.

  As soon as he spoke Michele turned and walked to the window.

  “Mitch,” Devlin said.

  She made no answer.

  “Mitch …”

  Without turning she raised a hand swiftly and dropped it; and this brief movement seemed more desolate than anything she might have said.

  “Ah, honey …” He went up to her and put his arms on her shoulders; she gave a groan then and fell against him, seized him with all her might, and wept and wept. “Ah, Jesus,
” he said. “Ah God, Mitch, I can’t help it, I’ve got to. I’ve got to, Mitch—”

  An instant longer she clutched him to her—then all at once wrenched out of his arms and ran into the bedroom and slammed the door. The two men stood staring at it as if it possessed some hard and irrefutable answer it was desperately important for them to fathom.

  “Go on in,” Damon said after a minute, “talk to her if you want.”

  “No. Wouldn’t do any good. Nothing will do any good.” Devlin rubbed his face with his sleeve. “Let’s go.”

  They went down the long flight and out into the street. It was still raining. Across the street the fire of the forge flared and sank, flared and sank as a young boy in baggy trousers pumped at the bellows; and a baldheaded man with short, powerful arms brought a cherry-red bar of iron to the anvil and began to beat it, the hammer rising and falling with implacable persistence. Catching sight of Devlin the blacksmith paused, his face blank with inquiry; then he looked down at his work again. The iron flattened, the orange sank to wine red, to ruddy purple …

  Damon found he had stopped at the entrance to the forge, his hand on the wood.

  “Come on, Sam.” Devlin pulled once at his sleeve; his voice was toneless and hard. “What are you waiting for? Let’s get on back to the lovely frigging abattoir …”

  “All right.” But still Damon went on gazing at the iron, half-mesmerized, unable to avert his gaze.

  9

  The sniper’s rifle cracked, a thin, remote sound; the bullet struck a shell casing or some piece of metal and whined away like a snapped guitar string. Raebyrne said: “Try again, you cross-eyed ornery Pee-roossian.” Reaching out of his hole he offered the blue tin of Argentine beef to Pelletier, who waved it away, muttering: “Keep it. I can’t get it down. Tastes rotten to me.”

  “Well now, it does appear a mite swivelly.”

  Tsonka watched Raebyrne with distaste. “How you can put that crap away is beyond me.”

  “Mike, I’ll eat anything around this swamp I can find. Excepting love apples, of course.”