Love and Lament Page 33

  “You tell ’em, Leon!” one of the men said. “We ain’t so bad, are we, gentlemen?”

  “Naw,” came a lieutenant’s reply, “we’re as good as the next people, as good as sheep.”

  “Then,” the captain went on, “then, he said it was a shame the army should be accused of breeding vice, and that if the church felt that way they ought to see about providing a remedy for the evil instead of trying to keep men from performing their patriotic duty by enlisting. He said, ‘I’m thirty-three years old, too old for the draft, but I enlisted. I’m as good a man as anybody here, and I don’t expect to be any the worse when I get out of the army. And anybody that says so is guilty of slander.’ His exact words: ‘guilty of slander.’ ”

  “And then what?” asked one of the more by-the-book officers.

  “Well, the preacher was routed. He went off, and he never came back. And the church had to find a new preacher.”

  “And now,” said the lieutenant, “Leon has no choice but to live the model life. That’s why he can’t drink and cuss and chase mademoiselles.” He winked at Leon, who drained the last of the vin rouge from his tin cup, but refused to take the bait.

  “No, I’m not much on swearing,” Leon said. “My daddy played cards and drank, but I have a lady friend who doesn’t much care for it. Her grandfather pretty near ruined himself with drink.”

  The lieutenant shook his head. “Not even your wife, and you can’t get away from her here.”

  “Maybe that’s why I can’t,” Leon said, and the men laughed. But he wished he hadn’t brought her into it.

  August 22

  Camp de Coetquidan

  Guer

  Morbihan Province

  France

  Dear Miss Mary Bet,

  We ship for Toul tomorrow, so I may not be able to write you again for some time. We’ve enjoyed exploring the old town of Rennes, about 30 miles from here, which you can get to on a narrow railway for 25 cents. It seems that every town around here has a very pretty church or cathedral, and the one in Rennes has the most beautiful stained glass I believe I’ve ever seen.

  I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t say I was excited about Toul and what adventures lie in wait for us there. The truth is that we’re also a little nervous. I don’t want you to worry about us, though, just to know that you are in my thoughts. This has to be a short letter because I was up late with the cooks, giving the boys a big feed before we ship out tomorrow. It’s late here, so I know you’re already in dreamland and I hope dreaming happy and peaceful dreams.

  With love and best wishes,

  Sincerely,

  LST

  They were two days getting to Toul, in boxcars, forty men or eight horses to the car. They slept in shifts on the rough wood floor, jostling in the dark, the smells of men and animals thick in the stale air. For the first time they could see that they were in a nation at war as they passed mile after mile of munitions factories, aerodromes, and vast artillery parks, and they began hearing, faintly over the racket of the train, the low thumps of heavy guns. At the stops the sound was unmistakable.

  They passed trains sidetracked at little field hospitals, tent cities, and men unloading wounded soldiers. And the shelling grew louder the farther east they traveled. They were heading to the front at last.

  Leon thought that he had never known such happiness, such purity of purpose and joy in the company of his fellow man. They were singing boisterous, jubilant songs as they arrived in Toul. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon, and the sky was buzzing with Boche planes, the black crosses on their wings more vivid even than they had imagined. They watched in amazement as an antiaircraft battery felt out a plane, and they gave a collective sigh of disappointment as it droned away unharmed.

  There was some confusion about the billeting for the night. The villages around Toul were already full with other units, and even though Leon’s regiment had sent horse feed and rations in advance to one of the villages and much negotiation in high-school French had appeared to promise decent accommodations, the regiment was commanded to camp on the road outside town, finding what shelter they could. The men took it well. It was all part of army life, and, anyway, they were so close they could smell the front.

  Leon made sure his men had all they could eat, especially of bacon and beans, and, his big surprise, an apple betty made with fruit they’d brought from Coetquidan. From now on it was to be canned rations. They rested a few hours, until darkness inked the eastern sky, and an eerie quiet settled over the men as the light faded in the west. At pitch dark they began hiking north and east.

  They climbed for hours, up through the Forêt de la Reine, until they came to a clearing that afforded a view some twenty miles wide. It was a sight so magnificent and stirring Leon was sure he would never forget it. The front at last. On the far horizon rockets shot into the black sky, and now and then a flare would arc up, warning of a trespasser in no-man’s-land. Sometimes, only a few miles away, the brilliant flash of a nearby battery would boom and rumble the ground, but the steady noise was the distant thunder of the real front, like the sound of drums the size of ponds. And as they marched, paced by the wagons and limbers and caissons—the horses, unperturbed in their dumbness, steadily rattling their harnesses—the men knew what it was to feel at once thrilled and terrified. There was little talking.

  The trucks and wagon trains and men moved with no light, not even cigarettes, a long black snake sliding through the dark. Gone too were the usual blaring horns of the heavy vehicles. Only once that first night did they hear a distant Klaxon, and they knew it was a gas scare but they didn’t know if it was real. At the edge of the forest, in the shelter of tremendous oaks and beeches, they pitched their pup tents. “If I can sleep here,” one of Leon’s tentmates said, “I can sleep anywhere.”

  “I’m so tired,” Leon said, “I could sleep standing up.”

  They spent thirteen days on the edge of the forest, and though the batteries went into action, it was a kind of seasoning period, allowing the regiment to taste battle from a safe distance. They even retreated farther into the woods for better cover, and when the rains came in the second week the forest roads became a bog, swarming with fifteen hundred soldiers and a thousand horses. They’d finally discovered a source of water that wasn’t entirely punk, though it still had to be chlorinated. Too many men had already gone down with terrible retching illnesses. Dehydrated water was what they called the chemical stuff, and it was barely palatable in sugared coffee. But the men had the comfort of a YMCA hut with hot water and soap for showering, and, even better, a Salvation Army house where two stout, merry beauties baked the best pies and doughnuts the men had tasted since leaving home. And sometimes there were bowls of Hershey’s Kisses.

  “War’s not as bad as Sherman said it was,” Leon remarked one morning to the captain after breakfast.

  “Don’t count your chickens, Sergeant,” the captain warned. “I expect we’ll look back on this time like it was home.”

  Leon nodded. “I expect you’re right,” he said. “It’s just that I tell my boys things like that to keep their spirits up.”

  CHAPTER 28

  1918

  THE DOOR OF the roadhouse stood slightly ajar. Mary Bet could make out the words “orgie tonite” and “jazz” and some initials. Would he have come here to a place where there was loud music and liquor, and people who might make fun of him? Would he have brought his girl here, or might he have come here to meet someone, a hearing girl? He’d liked music, the vibrations, the sense of motion he got from his hand on the piano. If she could picture clearly those last days and hours, she could, in her mind at least, get to him and warn him away from the tracks, away from whatever was urging him on to his own destruction. A lizard glinted in a shard of sunlight on the window frame, and disappeared through a crack. She suddenly had the feeling that this had not been a bad place, a den of vice and iniquity, but a place where lovers could escape to, and she felt herself relent a little. People
younger than she had met here—yes, black and white, as hard as that was to believe—not to sin, but because they had to cleave to each other in a lonely world.

  She went back outside and told the driver to take her to the courthouse. On the way over she opened her compact to adjust her hair.

  “Wait here,” she told the driver as she got out. “I don’t expect to be long.” She would speak to the sheriff on business—introduce herself and tell him she was up paying a visit to the state hospital. She knew that you couldn’t just say what you wanted, because most men would find some way to jolly you out of it if they didn’t want the bother. You had to play their own game—be friendly, in no particular hurry, and then firm of purpose.

  She was pleased that the courthouse here was not quite as impressive as Haw County’s. It had an ornate cupola, and the pediments and pillars were fine too, but the whole thing looked like a miniature of what she was used to. Perhaps because the green around this one was bigger. She straightened her shoulders, put on her most businesslike look, and strode up the walkway.

  Inside, she was directed down the hall to the sheriff’s office. The doors here were heavy and substantial with titles printed in bold block letters. Back home, there were no titles. They had more state money here, with the hospital and the school for the deaf. She hesitated, took a breath, and knocked on the door.

  Nobody answered, so she went in. A mousy woman wearing thick glasses, her hair pulled back to her scalp line and caught in a tight bun, sat hunched over a magnifying glass reading a typed document. She reminded Mary Bet of what she herself had been like, would end up being again after her term expired. The woman’s desk was neatly arranged, papers stacked in a wire basket, rubber stamps lined up just so. On the wall behind, above a black iron safe, hung framed portraits of Woodrow Wilson and the new governor, while another wall was occupied by a bookshelf and a telephone, its brass bells staring out like breasts. Mary Bet almost laughed, imagining what this woman would’ve made of the office back home—the old governor staring down from the wall, papers and books littering desks and floors, last year’s calendar getting mixed up with this year’s.

  She rapped her knuckles on the door, and finally the woman looked up. Mary Bet drew herself erect, letting the woman take her in—the tilted hat and half-veil, the long sable coat, the purple scarf fastened in front with a silver brooch. She introduced herself and asked if the county sheriff was in.

  The woman repeated what she’d just heard, then, the words sinking in, a light came to her eyes and she said. “Oh, you’re the one from over in Haw they put in while your sheriff was away.”

  Mary Bet eyed the woman, judging her to be a good ten years older than she, and said, “I am. I’m sheriff until there’s an election, and if I run and win I’ll still be sheriff.”

  Now the woman pulled back, and a little smile of admiration broke out around the corners of her pinched mouth. “Wouldn’t that be something?” she said.

  The woman suddenly remembered her place and said to Mary Bet, “I’ll go tell Mr. Upchurch you’re here.” Then, sotto voce, “He’s not busy today.”

  Mary Bet took a seat in a wooden armchair and waited for her counterpart, trying to think of him as a counterpart instead of a man with a badge. What was she, really, but a deputy, a clerk authorized by the county to fill in until a real sheriff could be put in office? But she had solemnly sworn to support, maintain, and defend the Constitution of the United States and to execute the office of sheriff to the best of her knowledge and ability, so help her God. Away from home, she was a young woman—at best, a lady with a sterling reputation—but she expected to be treated like any visiting dignitary. Just let Mr. Upchurch try to shift her around here—she’d handle him, so help her God.

  She felt as if she were embarking on a journey that she had meant to take long ago, and that she had caught the last train leaving the station. Whatever she uncovered, she felt that she must know, or be forever stuck in some waiting room, while life went on all around her and the bitter taste grew stronger. If she found nothing, she would return home satisfied. As soon as she had this thought, she knew that she was only fooling herself. What she’d already found had brought her this far. The note: “I have make a terrible mistake,” the ambiguity of “have make” tearing at her, standing halfway between the past and the present as though challenging her to believe he’d intended to say exactly that.

  The clock on the wall ticked and the quarter hour chimed, and still Mr. Upchurch kept her waiting. The mousy woman came back and said that the sheriff would be out in a few minutes and asked her if she’d like some coffee. Mary Bet shook her head, her lips pressed together. She didn’t much care for coffee or any stimulating drink. She didn’t see the point in being stimulated beyond what you already were—if you were tired you should go take a rest. Alcohol—that was a different thing. It could make people say things they ordinarily wouldn’t. She folded her gloved hands in her lap and waited.

  Presently, the secretary stood and said that Sheriff Upchurch would be happy to see Mary Bet now. She stood and followed the woman to an inner office, where a large man with a large empty holster stood studying some papers in the light of a sash window that gave onto a shrub-enclosed courtyard. The sheriff, standing before a massive rolltop desk, looked up from his papers and said, “Ah, Miss Hartsoe, it’s a pleasure. I’ve heard so much about you.” He had a wen the size of a grape on one side of his forehead, and a thick brown mustache that looked as neatly combed as his hair. He bowed his head and indicated an armchair for Mary Bet to sit in. “Looks like we might get some of that rain we’ve been needing,” he said, taking a seat and glancing out the window. “How’ve y’all fared over there?”

  “Tolerable,” she said. She decided to get right into her business here. “Mr. Upchurch, I had a brother who was killed on the train tracks outside of town here sixteen years ago. He was brought to the sheriff’s office, where your predecessor got a coroner to declare him dead. I wondered if you could show me the paperwork on that case?”

  Mr. Upchurch had been listening with an open mouth, which he now closed. “Well,” he said, trying to collect himself. He leaned back in his chair and sighed, his big belly rising and falling. “Well, I don’t know anything about that. Sixteen years ago, you say?”

  “Yes,” Mary Bet said.

  “Sheriff Meacham would’ve filed that report, and he’s been at the state hospital for a long time, so he wouldn’t recollect anything about it.”

  Mary Bet started to tell him that her own father was at the same hospital, but it was never something she told strangers, never talked about with anyone, unless they asked, and she didn’t see how it could help her here. She decided to play poker with Upchurch, let him go on and explain where the paperwork was.

  He rubbed his chin and regarded her a moment, and she merely smiled. “What were you looking for, exactly?”

  “I want to see what it says about cause of death and time of death. It bothers me that I’ve never seen that report.” She realized the only way she’d get anything here was to relieve his suspicions and lay everything out for him to see. “It bothers me that I’ve never understood what caused him to be walking along those tracks like that and then not even feel the train a-coming.”

  Mr. Upchurch nodded now, his second chin pouching. He stood and went to a wooden filing cabinet in a corner of the room. He opened and closed two drawers, then at the third he pulled out a large manila file folder and began thumbing through the contents. “Dr. Bone may have his own reports. I don’t know how long he keeps them. But they’re probably less detailed than what we have here. Here we go, we’re onto the right year now. Deaths. What was the month?”

  “November.”

  “All right. Demsey, Given, Hartsoe. Siler. Here ‘tis.”

  At his name, Mary Bet’s heart flipped. Here he was, filed away for sixteen years, and might’ve disappeared from the record altogether if Burke County had not been so careful. The thin pages were bradded
together into an inch-thick sheaf, and Upchurch was folding them over for easy viewing, reading as he did so, when he paused. “You’re not going to do anything with this, are you?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Well, I don’t know. You’re not going to bring a case against us, are you? Heh, heh,” he laughed.

  “I don’t reckon I’d have any cause to.” She reached over and took the sheaf from him and read the report like she was drinking water after a long hot day. The report was typed, with signatures by Sheriff John Meacham and Dr. J. Trimble Bone. Her brother’s name appeared at the top of the report. She gulped in the text and its significance: “Cape Fear and Yadkin Valley Railroad … Turkey Run crossing approx. 1 mile southeast of town … Siler Hartsoe, 20-year-old student at the North Carolina School for the Deaf …” And then the words that swam up from the page and into her brain: “Accidental Death, poss. Suicide.”

  “What does this mean?” she asked, showing Mr. Upchurch the line.

  He shook his head. “It means there was no way to determine what happened.”

  “But why would they list suicide if they had no reason to suspect it?”

  Again Mr. Upchurch shook his head, glancing at Mary Bet and then down to his desk. “I don’t know, Miss Hartsoe. Honestly, I wasn’t there. I can tell you that since I’ve been sheriff, lots of people have committed suicide in Burke County—something around seventeen—and three of them were on the railroad tracks.”

  “Were any of them deaf?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “I just don’t see why they’d write possible suicide, not having anything to go on.”