A Special Providence

  “How soon do you think you’ll be able to get me up there?” he asked a fat personnel clerk.

  “Shouldn’t take long,” the clerk said, stacking his papers. “We’ll have you out of here in a couple of days.” Then he looked up with a loose-lipped, effeminate smile. “Anxious to get back to your buddies?”

  Unsettled, Prentice turned away from the desk, only to find his discomfort compounded by glances of shy admiration from two very clean, fresh-from-the-States-looking soldiers who stood waiting in line behind him. How easy it was to play the hero in a setting like this! Here in this room, so many miles from danger, any fool and any coward could saunter across the floor in a golden aura of celebrity as long as his clothes were dirty enough to suggest that he’d been “in combat.” It wasn’t fair, and the unfairness of it made him tighten his face under the scrutiny of these other, newer replacements – yet he was aware too that the very tightening of his face, like the dust and toothpaste stains, had the effect of enhancing his false image.

  The clerk was right: they had him out of there in a couple of days. They had him riding north in a crowded truck, with a brand-new rifle between his knees, rolling along through the tender browns and yellows of the early spring countryside, rumbling through any number of gray, broken towns where old men stared bewildered at the passing truck and children waved.

  They had him in and out of the Ninth Army Replacement Depot in a couple of days too; then they had him riding east through the Rhineland in another truck to division headquarters, then east again to Regiment, and at last they had him standing on a great windless plain in the afternoon, waiting for a jeep from “A” Company to come and pick him up.

  The driver of the jeep turned out to be Wilson, the supply sergeant, a gaunt, bespectacled man with a long neck, a jutting Adam’s apple, and a look of chronic displeasure. Prentice remembered him shouting and quarreling over the distribution of ammunition in the factory, just before Horbourg. But Wilson, plainly, had no memory of him. He walked right past him, calling, “Where’s the man for ‘A’ Company?” and when Prentice was pointed out to him, his eyes went as blank as his glasses.

  “You a new man?”

  “Not really, no. I joined the outfit in Belgium, right after the Bulge.”

  “Yeah? Funny; I don’t recognize you at all.”

  In the jeep, as they hummed along over seemingly endless flatland, Wilson’s profile drew up into a squint. “Which platoon you in?” he asked.

  “I’m the Second Platoon runner.”

  And Wilson briefly turned away from the road to give him a testy look. “You can’t be. McCann’s the Second Platoon runner. He’s been Second Platoon runner ever since we left the States.”

  “Well,” Prentice said, “maybe he was out for a while or something. Anyway, I was—”

  “No, he’s never been out. Not to my knowledge. You sure you’ve got the right company?”

  “Of course I’m sure. I was Second Platoon runner down in Colmar, up until after Horbourg.”

  “Well,” Wilson said. “I’m damned if I remember you.” He rubbed his chin. “Wait a minute. Were you the kid that took sick in the factory?”

  The kid that took sick in the factory! That moaning, shamelessly weeping boy!

  “No,” Prentice said. “That wasn’t me. The factory was before Horbourg. I stayed until afterwards.”

  “You get hit then, or what?”

  “No, I had—”

  “Dysentery?”

  “No. Pneumonia.”

  “Oh. Well, anyway, don’t say you are the runner. You won’t be the runner now. Coverly’ll probably put you in one of the squads.”

  “Who?”

  “Lieutenant Coverly. He’s the new platoon leader.”

  “Oh. And is Brewer still platoon sergeant?”

  “No, Loomis is. Brewer was hit, back in Colmar.”

  “Jesus, I didn’t know that,” Prentice said. “Where?”

  “The hip; bad, but not too bad.”

  “No, I mean where? In Horbourg?”

  “Appenweier. That was the second town we took. Shit, Horbourg was a breeze compared to Appenweier.”

  “Oh.” There was a pause. “And is Lieutenant Agate still—”

  “Yeah, he’s still CO. Only it’s Captain Agate now.”

  “Oh.” And from there on they rode in silence across the plain, which was so long and wide and level as to give very little sense of speed. They passed several artillery positions, far out in the slowly turning land, and then they passed an anti-aircraft gun emplacement. By now Prentice could make out the separate shapes of distant houses that had been mere dots on the shimmering horizon a minute before, and he could see that the land stretching out beyond the houses met the sky in a new horizon that was probably the west bank of the Rhine.

  When they’d reached and overtaken the houses, Wilson swung the jeep into a left turn and they drove slowly down the road on which the houses faced; and now, passing one of them after another, Prentice saw soldiers lounging in their yards and looking out of their windows. All of them were carelessly dressed, and some wore the black silk top hats, looted from German closets, that had lately become an Army fad.

  “This here’s the C.P.,” Wilson said, and brought the jeep to a stop outside the largest house.

  Agate was there in the yard, laughing and talking with some men Prentice had never seen before. He looked about the same except that he was clean and shaved and seemed to have gained some weight. Captain’s bars gleamed on the shoulders of his washed and shrunken field jacket, and over his left breast, crookedly pinned on, was the rich little ribbon of the Bronze Star.

  Approaching him, Prentice wondered if he ought to salute; then in fear of looking silly he decided not to.

  “Excuse me, sir. I’m just reporting back from the hospital. My name’s Prentice; I don’t suppose you rem—”

  And by that time Agate’s eyes had come slowly into a focus of recognition. “Oh yeah,’ he said. “You’re the fella lost your voice, right?” He didn’t offer to shake hands – was that a bad sign? – but his voice and manner were courteous, and Prentice felt a little warmed. “Well, good,” he was saying. “We’ve been having it pretty soft up here lately, but I expect things’ll be getting noisy again very shortly …”

  As he listened, Prentice thought he could see the strolling figure of Logan from the corner of his eye, and he stared fixedly at Agate’s face in order to avoid whatever greeting Logan might have for him. Then he risked a full glance in that direction and found that Logan, or whoever it was, had vanished.

  “Let’s see, now.” The captain rubbed the side of his red neck. “Afraid we can’t use you as a runner any more. You’ll find your platoon in the third house down the road; ask for Lieutenant Coverly. Only first you better go inside here and check in with the first sergeant, for the Morning Report.”

  “All right, sir. Thank you.” And turning away he wondered again if he should have saluted, but it was too late. There were no familiar faces in the C.P. – even the first sergeant himself, fat and partly bald and stupid-looking, was a man he only dimly remembered and who didn’t remember him at all.

  “How do you spell that?” he asked when Prentice gave his name, and he had to have it spelled out for him several times as he hunched over his paperwork, his heavy fingers using the pencil as slowly and gingerly as if it were a surgeon’s scalpel.

  “Dysentery, was it?”

  “No. Pneumonia.”

  “How do you spell that?”

  There were no familiar faces on the road, either, as he made his way down to the Second Platoon. A number of men were loitering in the doorway of the platoon house, some of them wearing top hats, and they all stared at Prentice, blocking his way. Most of them looked no older than himself.

  “Is Lieutenant Coverly here?”

  “Inside. In the kitchen.” And two of the men, or boys, moved aside to let him through. There were other watching strangers in the vestibule of the hou
se, and in the shadowed living room, and in the hall. In the kitchen doorway the slanting rays of the afternoon sun hit him full in the face: he had to stand there blinking and trying to shade his eyes before he could see that four men were sitting around the bright kitchen table, drinking coffee out of flowered china cups. All their heads were raised to look at him.

  The man who seemed to be in charge was dressed in a light, old-style zippered field jacket with no insignia. He was burly and bull-necked, with small eyes set close together in a truculent face; and Prentice was about to address him when he saw that the narrow and much less imposing man beside him was wearing lieutenant’s bars.

  “Lieutenant Coverly?”

  “Right. What’s up?”

  And Prentice labored once again through the announcement of his identity.

  “Well.” The lieutenant stood up, revealing that he was short as well as thin. “Welcome aboard.” His small blond head was delicately handsome and his voice was Southern. His hand was moist, and all its fingernails were bitten to the quick. “You know Sergeant Loomis? Our platoon sergeant?”

  The burly man was on his feet now, crushing Prentice’s knuckles. “I don’t seem to remember you,” he was saying in a deep, theatrical baritone. “Were you with us before?”

  “Just for a few days, is all. Back in Colmar, when Sergeant Brewer was in charge. Only I was the platoon runner then, you see.”

  “That so? I would’ve said McCann was our runner right along. You must’ve been one of the people joined us on that train in Belgium, then. Right?”

  “That’s right. From there to Horbourg. Through Horbourg, actually.”

  “Then what? You get hit?”

  “No, I – I had pneumonia.” And he wondered why he had to stumble in saying it. What was so shameful about having pneumonia? Was he afraid that Loomis, like Wilson, might mistake him for the kid that took sick in the factory?

  “I see,” Loomis said. “Well.” And he nodded toward the other two men at the table. “This is Klein – uh, Joe Klein, the radio man; and this is Ted Bankowsky, the medic.”

  They couldn’t have been more different. Klein was swart and rat-faced, dapper in a grubby way, with a carefully shaped pencil moustache showing black against the gray of a three- or four-day growth of beard, and his smile was yellow. Beside him Ted the medic looked very clean and fair and healthy: he could have been an Eagle Scout or the president of a Polish-American youth club. And the most attractive thing about him now, as he held out one strong and shapely hand, was a dawning of recollection in his eyes.

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “I think I do remember. Didn’t you have laryngitis or something?”

  “That’s right, yes.”

  “Where’ll we put him?” the lieutenant was inquiring of Loomis. “Which squad’s the most shorthanded?”

  “Hell, they could all use another man. I guess Finn’s the worst off, though. Okay, Prentice, we’ll put you in the first squad. Klein, run out back and get Finn in here.”

  “Right.” And the radio man scurried obediently around the table and out through the back door, wearing the earnest frown of a habitual toady. Then there seemed to be nothing to do but stand there and wait – nobody had asked him to sit down – while the men at the table resumed some interrupted conversation of their own.

  In a little while the door opened again and the talk stopped. Klein was back, and with him came a slight, cave-chested man who wore a flat yellow straw boater that might have been the pride of some Rhineland dandy in the early 1900’s.

  “Finn, we got a new man for you,” Loomis said, “so you can quit your bitching. Prentice, this is Sergeant Finn, your squad leader.”

  Sergeant Finn did not smile while shaking hands, which made Prentice feel foolish for having smiled himself, and the next thing he discovered was that Sergeant Finn was surprisingly young – nineteen or twenty at the most. But his thin, homely face was filled with self-assurance, and his squint made it clear that he was sizing Prentice up. This caused Prentice to lick his lips and lower his eyes like a girl, and in self-defense he began furtively looking for flaws in Finn’s excellence. For one thing he was as skinny as Prentice himself, and a good deal shorter. And the antique straw hat was not the only touch of absurdity about him: he was wearing a pair of green special-issue combat pants that were many sizes too big for him, and they were held up by blue-striped civilian suspenders worn over the outside of his tight, dirty G.I. sweater. If you just looked at his clothes, at his odd slouch and sunken chest, it might be easy to see him as a possible fool and butt of jokes – nobody to be afraid of, certainly. But there was his calm face again, and there were his cool, evaluating eyes.

  Finn had him so preoccupied that he didn’t notice the entrance of another man – let alone see who it was – until he heard Loomis say, “And this is your assistant squad leader, Sergeant Rand.”

  “Sam!” And Prentice was filled with elation, grabbing and pumping the familiar four-fingered hand, punching the familiar solid shoulder, while Sam Rand allowed his poker face to break, for once, into a smile of old acquaintance.

  “Good to see you, Prentice,” he said, and then he explained the outburst to the others: “We come over on the same boat.”

  “I’ll be God damned,” Prentice was shouting with a salesman’s enthusiasm. “So it’s Sergeant Rand now – how about that!” He knew it sounded a little excessive, but it did seem important to let them all know, and especially Finn, that this good and valuable man was his friend.

  “Want to come upstairs, Prentice?” Sam said. “We’ll find you a place to sleep.” And he turned respectfully to Finn. “There’s another bed in Walker’s room; okay to put him in there?”

  Finn shrugged, causing the suspenders to hike the loose waistband up and down. “Don’t matter,” he said.

  As Prentice followed Sam down the shadowy hallway full of watching eyes, he hoped they would all notice that Sam was carrying part of his gear for him and asking interested, old-buddy questions: “How’re you feeling, Prentice? … Where’d they have you hospitalized? …”

  It was turning out to be all right, after all. As soon as he had unpacked his stuff and received permission to leave the house, he would go over to Weapons Platoon and find out about Quint.

  “How’s Quint?” he asked, starting up the stairs behind Sam’s slow, laboring buttocks, and at first he thought he hadn’t heard him. “Hey Sam? How’s Quint?”

  Sam paused on the stairs and looked part of the way back over his shoulder, not quite as far as Prentice’s face. “Well,” he said, “that’s not so good.” Then he went on climbing.

  “You mean he’s still sick?”

  “No; worse’n that.”

  “You mean he was hit?”

  “Come on along in the room,” Sam said.

  In the room, which smelled of old wallpaper and damp plaster and rifle-cleaning fluid, Prentice sat on the edge of a quilted bed and Sam sat on a delicate antique chair.

  “It was right after we pulled out of Horbourg,” he said. “On the way to Appenweier – that was the next town we took down there. Anyway, we had to go acrost this big-assed field. The thing is, there was land mines in the field. Not many, but some. Now, I didn’t see this happen – Weapons Platoon was followin’ some distance behind us, and away over to the left – I didn’t see it happen, but I heard about it later. They say Quint stepped on a mine. Now, they say he wasn’t hurt too bad – not then. This medic run over and commenced tendin’ to him; only just then this other medic comes runnin’ over to help, and this other medic set off another mine right up close. They say all three of them was killed outright.”

  There was a long silence, during which the sound of laughter floated up from the kitchen and died away: someone had evidently told a joke.

  “Real sorry, Prentice,” Sam said. “I know you and him was good friends.” He probed inside a pocket of his woolen shirt and brought out a pack of cigarettes. He gave one to Prentice and took one for himself, and he po
nderously lit them both with a tiny, expensive-looking lighter that he’d probably looted from a German home. Then he shifted his weight in the creaking chair and blew a long jet of smoke at the floor between his boots. “I saw him only a day or so before it happened,” he said. “I told him about you bein’ hit; he felt real bad about that.”

  “You told him I was hit? Jesus, Sam, I wasn’t hit. I went back with pneumonia, that’s all.”

  And Sam looked up in mild surprise. “That so? Well, I must of had the wrong information, then. I heard you was hit in Horbourg.” There was another silence, and then Sam got up from the chair and mumbled that he would see him later.

  “Wait a second.” Prentice was suddenly in terror of being left alone. He wanted to say: Wait a second. Listen. Do you know he would have gone back even before Horbourg, if it hadn’t been for me? I talked him out of it! And do you realize I went back the next day without even telling him? Without even telling him? And do you see how awful it is that he thought I’d been hit? Sam, for Christ’s sake, do you realize I killed him?

  But he didn’t say any of those things. Instead he said, “Wait a second. I – I’ve—” he rummaged in his bag until he found the four packages of Bond Street tobacco, but he didn’t bring them out until after he’d torn off the red ribbon and the tag. “You smoke a pipe sometimes, don’t you?” he said.

  “Sometimes, yeah. Well, that’s – that’s real nice of you, Prentice. I ’predate it.” And Sam Rand stood there holding the stack of packages in both hands, straightening their edges with his social finger.

  Then he was gone, and Prentice was alone in a silence that rang with all his shrill, unspoken words. He was so alone that the only thing to do was lie back on the bed and roll over and draw up his knees like an unborn baby, staring with dry eyes at a cluster of pink flowers on the wallpaper, knowing he had never been so alone in his life.

  After a while he rolled off the bed and got to his feet, gazing at the ceiling as if beseeching God for punishment; then he let his head fall forward and clasped his temples with both hands – a gesture as melodramatic as any that Alice Prentice had ever achieved – and he was still doing that when the door burst open and a husky boy in a top hat stood staring at him.