If I’d been quicker about it, I could have stopped them. The horses wouldn’t have started. The rope would have stayed loose, and Ray’s fingers wouldn’t have caught. But Ray was already on the ground, his arm hung up in the ropes and strange behind him. His hand was tied good. Bloody as gutting a thing and not even a hand anymore. He lay there white, his eyes dark. Looking at me and waiting for something. Then his head fell back. I jumped to the wheel. Worked him loose. He was an empty sack on my shoulder as I carted him home. It was long and slow over that field, the house a far shot, and raining enough to drown us. If it wasn’t for Elliot, I thought, because now Ray was quiet. If it wasn’t for rocks being in a place where they shouldn’t. Father would paddle whip me good. What were you doing? he’d ask. Only hours before he’d been grinning. Boys, he’d said. Not for years would Father say that again, but my brother would say plenty. About keeping your mind to how a thing worked. About what a man without a hand could and couldn’t do. The way he looked at me before he was dead did. And the way he looked at me after said it too.
If a person asked, I’d tell them war wasn’t any different. Brothers by the dozen, accidents too. When I found myself laid up in France, they said I was wounded. I didn’t remember that. About the hospital, I remembered plenty. One bed after the other, all of us at arm’s reach, some sleeping, some not. At night the nurses kept the hall lit and there wasn’t a quiet to be had. Not with so many of us. Shudders and howls. Most of the boys worse the better they got. In the daytime they made notes on my chart. Did I see flashes? Hear ringing sounds? Doc said I was on the mend. With my feet red and hot enough to burn, he said that was what mending felt like. I said, time to go then, if I’m mended. Not yet, he said to that.
I was in La Fauche, Base Hospital 117. The light outside the windows was cold and clear. Must have been after harvest, but I couldn’t see more than fences in the yard. At home, I’d surely missed it. The doctors didn’t bother about harvest. The stink of us, a high taint they called disinfectant, that’s what they bothered about. Our bed frames were hollow as tubes, our pillows blocks. Those pillows carried the sweat of every worry in our heads. Morning and night, an old man mopped the floor, leaving behind his piney scent. I’d been in the woods, an infantryman in the 88th near Hagenbach, border of Germany and France. It was late October then. The mud in the woods nearly finished my feet. Boot rot, they called it, but it felt something worse. We had crossed the lines, the boys wild for a taste of something better than beets. Then the blast hit. I hadn’t seen one man from our squad since.
“Private Hess, your dinner.” The nurse spun a table to my chest. She had the accent of a Brit. Her hands were small, warm as a loaf. The food should’ve had a smell, but didn’t. Some kind of chicken, a helping of pea-like shapes. The English tea, it was a brown stir of water, though I’d taken some liking to it. The nurse’s hair was plain and brown too, her face milky. She wore it short and close to her face, the way Esther did. That smile of hers, it was hitched at the corner. Same as Esther’s too.
“Be good,” the nurse said. “Try to eat this time. Otherwise they’ll never send you home.”
I couldn’t tell her. Since the blast, I didn’t have the stomach to eat peas or anything else.
They kept us on a straight watch. 06:00 to wake, noon for dinner. At 14:00 there was exercise and 18:00 another tray in our laps. Lights out wasn’t very dark. But I’d never thought sleep was good for much. The boy next to me favored talk. “Hush,” he whispered. “You’ve got to hear this.” Squire was his name, his bed nearest. He had a mother who wrote him every day but Sunday, though he couldn’t write back. His arms were as dead as drowned pups. Nurse said she’d do a letter for him. He couldn’t even look her in the eyes. But to me, he told plenty. About a cousin he fancied. About a cellar back home, so dark he never went close. There was a Jerry he shot in the stomach. Couldn’t finish him off. He talked about that. I thought to tell him about our farm and how I missed harvest. How with a man gone, Father and Ray might have it some hard. But I was the one who’d made Ray less than he’d been, and I stood for the draft to make things right. Can’t shoot with a busted hand, the corporal had told my brother. Can’t even hold a pistol. But this one here. The corporal had looked at me. He’s big as a horse. We’ll take him, old enough or not.
“Wake up, Hush. You listening?” Trouble was, I couldn’t keep straight one story from the next, mine or his. Squire repeated a second time. Sometimes a third. He’d have snapped his fingers if he could. At night, I had dreams. I was sitting with the boys in a barn. Me, Critters, Stan, and Sam Bullet. That was us. Our stomachs were full. Our heads soft. That barn had a fair shake of hay, the nicest bed we’d had in weeks. Stan was watching me, and Critters too. They called my name. Then the hay blasted to fire beneath us. When I looked, there was nothing but straw burnt up where the boys had been. The ends of my legs, where my feet had gone to nothing, they were burnt too.
Someone pulled at my arm. “Private Hess.” A doctor stood at my bedside, clipboard in hand. “Do you remember what day it is? Do you know where you are?” I said I knew the day just fine. It was November.
“Look out that window, Private Hess. Does it look like November to you?”
The nurse wheeled me out. The sun was hard on the grass. The garden beds, they were some full. I couldn’t figure that. “I can lower these footrests now,” the nurse said. I turned my head to see her, but felt dizzy fast. “You’ll be right as rain,” she went on. “Just a tingling in those feet of yours. Pretty soon you’ll be pushing this chair yourself.” But the doctors wouldn’t sign my release, that’s what I wanted to tell her. I thought of Squire too. How he might have made sense if I wasn’t the one to hear him. How I might have something more than boot rot. The nurse shook her head. “Nerves is all. That blast, it knocked you clear out.”
“What about the others?” I asked.
The nurse stayed quiet. “Tell you what,” she said. “We can go off when you’re feeling better. Have our own little adventure. The war’s over. Why, even this place, it’ll be closed in a month or two. Made into a boarding school. Wouldn’t you like that?”
“That would be something.” In truth I believed different. Those beds were no place for kids. Even with a man gone, he was still there. Even when they put another one in his place.
It must have been time for winter crops. That’s what I thought that night. End of November, it must have been. No matter that garden or the doc. At home the rush of work before the snow. The first frost would have killed a fair lot, and they’d be trying to save the rest. By now, Mother would have picked her turkey from the pen. She’d be feeding it meal to get it fat, worrying about her cellar shelves. How many more jars they could hold. How much we’d need to make three months, maybe four. Nan would be a help to her, but not the others as much. If I was there, I’d be a help too.
“Here you are, Private Hess.”
I woke, a ringing in my ears. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t pry that ringing out. The doctor was back, the nurse too. Even Squire was quiet in his bed, perched on his pillows, watching us. “Hey there, Hush,” he said. “You all right?”