Part 10

He hit nearer the lock: a steel shaving gave way: hurling himself against the bar, the lock snapped; he pressed down, and the door opened.

Breathing in gasps, he threw the little door wide.

Smoke, black smoke, crawled out of the cab.

Crewmen pushed Dennison aside and crowded close to 67. Leaning against his tank, Dennison watched them, unseeing, unmoving: glad to be away from 67. He wanted water but could not ask for it. In spite of himself he vomited green slime.

Too late ... there's nothing anybody can do ... I was too late.

Nobody can crawl inside: the guys are dead: they've been dead for ... it's done: it's over: maybe that's something:

"It's over," he yelled.

Ben and his injured shoulder: Ben said he was going to get well: Ben was majoring in math ...

Carson was a nice guy ...

Arthur said I'm the one and future king ...

Dennison coughed and blinked and walked about and wet his lips with his tongue.

"You nearly got yourself killed," Landel barked at Dennison. He waved his fire extinguisher at 67. "They're dead ... fried to a crisp ... you were a damn fool!"

Dennison barely understood ... he nodded.

Rubbing his eyes, he tried to lessen the sting of the smoke, the acid of burning rubber, the force of fear ... Presently, he saw Zinc beside him with a canteen of water in his hands.

"Drink."

He helped Dennison swab his face and sop his neck, his own hands trembling; he appeared a little idiotic without his helmet, his hair going every which way, but he smiled insanely. Grease streaked his forehead and beard and one ear was blobbed with oil.

All tanks had halted: tankmen sat and lay on the freeway or on the shoulder: the sun was ugly in a salve-like cloud: in a woodland a B-29 hung in some trees, strips of wing metal flashing.

Harold Stragoni, in one of the last tanks to pull up, hurried to Dennison and Zinc.

"Is that your tank ... did you lose your tank?"

"No."

"67 turned over ... burned."

"Hit by a shell?"

"Turned over."

PM came up.

"I looked inside ... with my flash ... they're incinerated to nuthin' ... clothes all burned ... It's too hot to climb inside..."

Zinc inspected the machine: walking around it, he noticed the yellow paint, flaked grease, dented armor, damaged cannon, a broken grouser. In Akron there had been a truck crash, the cab catching fire--this same incineration. In spite of that vivid Ohio memory he wanted a glimpse of Arthur--no matter how charred. Arthur was a man ... but Zinc could not identify anyone: just reddish stuff, a leather helmet, a hand, guns. Sadly, he rejoined Dennison and they lit cigarettes.

"There was a broken grouser ... maybe that caused 'er to flip," said Zinc mournfully.

"Maybe."

Landel fished his binocular from its case; focusing it he scrutinized the woodland, the intervening fields, a remote farm, its heap of manure, haystacks.

"We ought to bury our guys," someone said.

"Yeah ... let's bury them," Stragoni said, filling his pipe, shaking tobacco back into a leather pouch.

"Nobody's gonna bury them!" Landel yelled. "They're buried already." Fools for sentiment. "We've got to shove out of here. We'll be spotted ... our buses all along the highway!"

Near a wire gate he caught a solitary figure: the figure reminded him of his father before they imprisoned him: the field man had the same defeated air, the same stoop.

Their company commander, Colonel Fraser, bumped up in a fast jeep: he and his staff did not have much to say: his brown, middle-aged face expressed great chagrin: maps under his arm he checked 67, one of his lieutenants scribbling in a field book.

"You were right behind her," he said to Landel. "Did you see her go over?"

"I didn't see her go over."

"I saw her ... she seemed to travel on one tread ... drop to the shoulder ... maybe a broken tread," Dennison said.

Landel grasped the Colonel's shoulder:

"Here, here ... look..."

He pressed his binocular into Fraser's hand.

"See ... see that M129, dangling in those trees ... they're readying a mortar there ... we've got to clear out!"

He began gesturing, calling to the crewmen:

"Out of here ... everybody ... into the tanks ... mortar fire!"

He hustled from man to man. By the time Fraser had spotted the mortar, Landel had men bee-lining.

Fraser ordered the tanks to roll. He and his staff piled into their jeep.

Dennison tossed the crowbar onto the floor of their machine, swung into the bus, dropped wearily onto the driving seat. He permitted himself time for a long, long swig: water was incredible. When you're dead you don't drink much, he told himself. He passed the canteen to Zinc who passed it to Landel.

"Goddamn the Wehrmacht!" Landel shouted.

Water wet his fingers and wrists, rolled off oil and grease.

"What hellish luck!" Dennison shouted.

"Let's go!" Landel yelled.

Switch on, the cylinders whammed into action; other tanks had raced ahead; in an instant Dennison passed 67; as they roared on a mortar shell exploded far from its target, geysering dirt.

This section of the _autobahn_ had been shelled and Dennison kept the bus at thirty, leery of potholes, treads rolling in unison, the motor synchronizing, the highway a slant of light.

Jeez, he thought, we didn't get away any too soon!

He scrunched deeper into his seat, wanting to ease his shoulders: that crowbarring had been rough! Well, here was one up for Fred Landel, old eagle eye! The grumbling of the engine was satisfying. This bus was in order.

A sign read _8 K Olpe_.

"Olpe!" Dennison muttered through the phone.

"What?" Zinc yelled.

"Olpe ... Olpe lies ahead!"

He knew exactly what lay ahead because he had seen so many ruined towns: pulped houses, streets galled and scrambled, downed trees, power plant in bits, splintered telephone poles, church sheltering a crucifix.

Ten dead lay on the road: he recognized their uniforms: he knew, as he drove past them, that some of the men had been riding motorcycles and bicycles. Their motorcycles had swastikas on their sidecars.

The sign read _7 K Olpe_.

_World world_, went the treads.

Water dripping from a brown jar is white, he thought. Honey in a comb is thick. Goat's milk tastes strong. The desert is yellow in places, streaked, as though the _mistral_ had ... yeah, and those fly-coated arms in the wadi...

Robinson's arms raced ahead on the _autobahn_, raced the tank, very white, flecked with sand...

Chuck was good at assembling an automatic rifle...

How far was it he could throw a grenade?

Dennison's back was paining him more acutely: he felt the drag of the crowbar, the weight and friction of it:

Gonna be lame tomorrow, lame in my arms and back.

Tomorrow, tomorrow I'll be back in E ... I'll stroll along the Nonette ... that book in the attic ... Chateaubriand ... she had read _Atala_ to him, dwelling on the most melancholy passages ... Atala's burial ... that book in the attic ... I'll re-read those passages ... book bound in red leather ... memories from ...

His head was throbbing as they entered Olpe, a yellow cat crouching in front of someone's empty cottage. It spat at the crewmen as they climbed out, parked to grab some air: the town was dead: alone, on a slab of masonry, Dennison rested his head on one hand. Other tanks rolled in, stopped. It would be dark in an hour or so. They would be eating soon?

How he wanted the roar of the tank to seep out of his brain, wanted some of the filth to ooze from his body.

He wanted a place alone. Better alone in this bombed town than never alone! Better to die in a field! A B-29 flying low, conspicuous ...

In Britain there had been Spitfires and De Havilands: constantly aloft: this B-29 was a reconnaissance plane circling lower and lower: the bomber was reaching a danger point: was it out of fuel, was the crew about to bale out?

Climbing a big mound of garbage he saw chutes billow; then came the twisting dive, smoke from the cockpit area as the plane went down. Five chutes were swaying, drifting. A black column headstoned the crash site. Dennison jumped from the garbage pile and informed some of the crewmen. At once several GI's took off, dog trotting through the dusk, toting small arms. Dennison was glad to run, glad to be on the go across a field--free of armor.

The first chute man, tangled in his chute, lying on his side, lying behind bushes, opened fire with his submachine gun, almost killing PM. Bullets cropped weeds and grass around him.

"Look, you goddamn ass! We're not Nazis!" shrieked PM, flat on his belly...

"How do I know who you are! Some of you bastards talk English," the airman yelled.

"Yeah, well, I'm from Chicago, see. I used to clean up the loop every day for eighteen bucks a week. Dee is my uncle. I'm in the 321st ... all of us are in the 321st. We just crawled into this lousy town. Put down your tommy gun: I'll show you some snapshots? Okay?"

"I guess so, but keep your hands up! Don't fuck around!"

In a moment they were shoulder-slapping and pumping hands; within a short time the tankmen located three more flyers--one with a smashed leg. Someone hacked a willow and thin pine poles and Dennison and Zinc improvised a jacket litter.

On the way into Olpe they located the other flyer, his parachute shot down. Dennison was stung by his death: he felt the tragedy of his broken body: he looked into Zinc's face: but he was looking at something else: everyone here about the same age, Dennison thought: all trapped. Another kick from death! Death, lousy death, that insatiable hellion! He wanted to defy death. He wanted to kick it in the ass. He wanted the world to know what death was doing!

Smog was filtering over Olpe's dumpage: the brick and stone walls, a slate roof, the beams and plaster: nearly every structure had been shambled. Olpe had been known for its oil refinery but shelling had dug and re-dug earth, pipes, storage tanks, cracking gear.

They carried the pilot into a ruined inn: somebody had already explored the town and led them there: somebody rounded up a medic: Dennison, Zinc, Landel and PM bedded down in the low T-shaped building that still had a giant elm tree in front.

Debris was everywhere, broken dishes, broken window glass, dangling plaster, a disemboweled sofa, ripped out wiring, pulverized bricks and tiles: Dennison walked through the rooms as through a surrealist museum: finding burlap and a mattress he lay down and unbuttoned his trousers and scratched and then lay motionless.

No food had come.

One of the flyers hung a flashlight and its swaying light crawled about, expressing hate. Other crewmen bedded down. Dennison's mind had nothing to tell him so he wriggled underneath the sacking and hunger became his anesthesia. Turning his hands palm-up, he gazed at them, one at a time, dozed, and then slept.

Landel was vomiting from pain, lack of food, alcohol, and fatigue. Crouched in a corner, he had an empty bottle beside him.

Whiskey would help! He shrugged: who's Johnny Walker? Down in Panama, years ago, the gambling rooms of the Palacio Rivas had been fabulous: coco palms in a lush garden, macaws on perches, gardenias floating on the swimming pools ... lovely whores ... _copitas_. But he had gotten drunk and killed a man, shot him through the lungs and heart ...

When the war ended he planned to settle in Germany and horn in on the black market graft: army supplies, PX supplies: sell, buy, swap: a sure way to stack up the dough!

PM was snoring.

Zinc lay on his side, watching one of the B-29 guys mess with his lighter: a nearby tankman removed his shoes and sox and massaged his feet: Zinc felt the smallness of his body: other men had something to be proud of: muscles were jerking around his mouth: he rubbed the muscles halfheartedly: closing his eyes he tried to think of home but home had not existed for a long time. Mom had been dead for four or five years ... Millie ... where was she? He turned onto his back. It seemed to him his spine was injured. Certainly something was wrong with his stomach: there were too many aches there.

A cloudy moon hung above Olpe ... in the gutted inn night was eventful: food began arriving in the early hours: the old walls heard a few cheerful sounds; the smell of food roused some of the men.

Sometime in the night Landel woke, chilled, afraid: he couldn't find a cigarette and woke Dennison and asked him for his pack. He tried to talk to him--wishing to talk about his past: most of all he simply wanted to talk. Drags on his Luckies helped. He found a blanket. That helped. With Dennison lying nearby he thought of admitting what a bastard he was and yet that seemed stupid: everything seemed stupid, everything was stupid, torn apart, like Olpe.

Under the ribs of an adjoining building--a long shed--fifteen or twenty tankmen ate breakfast, fog around them: fog had seeped in with a yellowish thickness, a thickness that seemed related to old masonry, old walls and crumbling plaster. The eaters appreciated the hot food, untroubled by the fog; as they ate they simply stared.

_Go to Morb ... Panzers ... Serious_.

That was the morning radio directive: the Corps was dispatched onto the _autobahn_ again, now crammed with one-way military and civilian traffic. It began to drizzle as the Shermans and Lees grumbled forward; then the drizzle changed to a downpour that sloshed over turret, periscope and viewer. Dim-outs popped on. Olpe traffic jammed: a jeep had crashed: a truck had stalled: a civilian truck resembled an oiled animal under its flapping tarp.

Memory's belt began in Dennison's brain:

The Gestapo, the man said at breakfast ... the Gestapo ... they did their best to get information from the Maquis ... they were trying to round up the Maquis ... they were ... Fritzes ... that's what the guy at breakfast called them ... said he had fought in North Africa ... said ...

... Okay, send us back to Olpe; at least there is something to eat there ... what was that radio message?

... Slow, slow, now pass, shift into second, watch that fool, he doesn't know how to drive ... funny, Zinc squatting there, asleep maybe ... Landel looks bad ... too much rain, German rain.

When the tanks reached Morb, at 9 kilometers, military cops, outside a battered school, flagged them past an artillery battery: 88's, 102's and 4.2 mortars were snorting over. General Jake Marlin had his trailer in the field--a zigzag gash in its gleaming aluminum side, his flag soggy.

Why had they been directed to Morb?

Obviously, there were no Nazis here.

Low-flying bombers were passing.

The radio was sputtering misinformation.

On a side street the crews had a chance to oil and gas up, time to urinate, time to drink, time for a chew of gum, time to smoke and talk.

Dennison wandered into a wrecked cottage: plaster crunched underfoot; he straightened a picture on the wall; he listened to the punch of shells; fragments fell from the ceiling as percussions went on. A door opened.

That was a school, had been a school:

Today we'll confine our lessen to Siberia. Do any of you know anything special about Siberia? Can you give us an idea of its size? How about you, Hermann?

What good was it, sending kids to school? They have been attending school since the Romans, or was it before the Romans? Have schools stopped war? Nobody through all those centuries has had a peace class. He grinned, as he leaned against the battered doorframe of the little cottage.

Again he listened to the constant shellfire.

_Tanks into action_, somebody signalled.

Action!

"Get going!"

"Okay."

"Okay."

Dennison turned over the driving controls to PM and PM smirked his pleasure like a kid: he settled into the driving seat, checked the controls, thinking fast, confident. Landel gave him a wigwag. Then 248 hunched forward, the tracks working evenly; the motor revved smoothly.

Dennison punched PM, and they swung left.

A latch of his mind was fastened to the periscope.

Starboard sank into a pothole; they floundered through other potholes, now following the side of a small river, other tanks in front. Smoke gnarled the sky. They were in a section of Morb, streets, houses. Port side a shell exploded. Something clanged against 248, clanged like a bell. The bus rocked, and Dennison stared anxiously at PM. PM grunted.

The tanks moved through smoke walls down a street: as if propelled through a tube, through a tunnel, Nazis rushed toward 248. They bunched. They fell. Some retreated down a cul-de-sac. Scrambling across barbed wire and fencing, PM followed.

Realizing that the men were trapped, Dennison fired slowly: he tried to account for each man, firing PM's gun: he shouted and fired, shouted and fired: this was the same, knocking out wooden ducks at the fair.

Three down, four to go.

So, the tank was an improvement on the Trojan horse!

Smoke closed in.

Frames flitted by, image after image, scenes without continuity, a sciamachy of trees, people, Greeks, Russians, a cloud, a room, Jeannette, children's face, a cactus in a steamy conservatory, a swan, a wounded boy. On the walls of a latrine he read: THE LAST SEVEN WORDS.

PM was circling, circling.

A shell shook 248.

Dennison ducked to avoid the concussion: he rapped his shoulder on the gun butt: he was angry and fired blindly, and wet his lips with his tongue.

Men were escaping, dozens of them.

Dennison fired in rage, fired at the windows of an apartment: he riddled a closed door: he chipped off stucco: he fired into a pine tree: his shooting jag was warming his belly. 248 swung around a corner.

"Watch out for that concrete slab!" Dennison warned.

PM did not hear.

One of the tracks grazed it.

Dennison signalled again.

His eyes were watering from the heat and smoke.

PM was hit by bullet splash and stopped the tank: fumes and heat almost overwhelmed the crew as they worked over him, Zinc swabbing. Dennison was remembering Al, remembering....

PM waved them off: No, I'm not down for a count of ten! No, let me get back at the controls!

"Where?" he asked Landel.

"How much gas have we?"

"Quarter."

Landel briefed his map, fingers uncertain, eyes uncertain, wanting to stall, to call a halt.

The radio had conked.

_Turn back_ he scribbled.

Back?

Where?

Near the guns, near the trailer, by the school ... men had camouflaged Jake Marlin's trailer with a huge camouflage net ... Dennison and Zinc found a patch of grass in front of the school and settled down, cross-legged, like Ojibways, the grass uncut and weedy.

Zinc chewed a grass blade.

"PM does all right," he said.

"Huh?"

"PM does all right."

"He's good," said Dennison.

"He's gone to see a medic."

"Scratch ... not bad."

"Good."

"Good."

"Tired," Zinc admitted, unlacing his shoes to ease his feet, cigarette creasing his mouth: he was no longer in Morb but was tacking along Lake Erie, on his boat, Millie snuggled down among cushions.

Dennison felt that hate was moving closer, was controlling his hands and arms: grubbing his jackknife out of his pocket he scraped grease from his nails, from his fingers: who was that freckled guy, with dirty beard, sunken eyes? Was that Landel, over there jawing with men? Why hadn't he been killed?

He tossed the butt of his cigarette away, lay back on the grass, fell asleep. Unopposed, they stormed along a narrow street: men with a flame thrower had gutted a tank: 248's guns destroyed the thrower in a giant swoosh of flames: on the margin of his mind, beyond the roar, he saw a wire of light, filament: his mind shut around it: he lost track of time: he clamped his jaws.

_North_.

That was Landel's scribble.

Leaning forward a little, Dennison wet his lips with his tongue.

* * *

*4*

The train was slowing down.

Orville considered the green countryside and then, as the train crept along, the streets and houses of Ermenonville, appreciating the simplicity of the village, a few blocks square, scaled to the past, a park, a lake, a swan or two, a rambling chateau, and rain-wet cobbles.

Rain streaked the train windows ... rain, so, let it rain ... rain has meaning here. It's home again, home, if there is such a place. He was seeing the familiar, outwardly unchanged by war: seeing the old brick/wood house, the mangy Chateaubriand books in the attic, Dad's poilu hat, the grand piano: certain hours would come alive in certain rooms.

It was after two p.m. and the train was late ... wasn't that Jean standing there by the depot, a bunch of farmers around her?

A grey freight car on the siding cut him off, car by car, from the station. The locomotive whistle cemented rain drops together: his face close to the window he waited, counting the passing freight cars, aware too of his compartment: it seemed to rise up around him, threaten: the shabby seat, the shabby suitcase on the shabby carpeting: everything attained a linear dimension: for seconds more, as the engine braked and the cars ground to a stop, he reviewed his trip across Germany, the dangerous jeep ride to Offenburg, a strafing of the German train, the endless check-points, ID problems, the mockingly tedious truck trip into Paris. How could there be so many, many fields and police and hedges strung together? So many, many stops at villages, on sidings?

Opening his compartment door, he glared at the platform people, dozens of rain-splattered faces, those blank faces, beseeching faces. Jeannette was standing under the depot eaves, near the entry door, wearing her uniform, bareheaded, a cape about her shoulders.

He waved and hollered.

Stepping down, a _gendarme_ bumped him, and then her arms were around him, her face against his.

"Orville ... Orv, oh, darling!"

Claude was there to shake hands in his old way, something brotherly. He was ready to carry the suitcase.

She squeezed Orville hard, breathing hard, her face upturned, smiling. Thinking of his filthy mufti, he wanted to break away from her: her cleanliness was difficult to accept: he thought her uniform's immaculateness might make him dangerously conspicuous. No one noticed. Everyone was busy coming and going.

He asked about Lena.

Jeannette shook her head.

"No tears," he said.

At that she gave him a special smile: her girlishness struck him, made him shiver, made him wonder how long it could last. To hide his consternation he said:

"Are you coming along with me?"

"Of course I am."

"Our car's parked at the rear of the depot," Claude said. "How are you?" The question came with a genuine sense of concern.

Orville simply nodded.

The bearded face seemed unchanged.

Sitting in the car, Jeannette kissed Orville consolingly, understanding his fatigue, ruling out his greasy mechanic's uniform, his unshaven face, peasant cap: as they drove the short distance to the Ronde's, he said very little, but he did admit it had been "a rotten trip ... I tried phoning you from Paris, but I couldn't get through" ... it was easier to sit and stare at the village, at things he knew; Jean guessed the state of his mind.

He asked about Lena again.

"She's very ill."

"Is she in the hospital?"

"She's at home--there's no room at the hospital."

"What really happened to her? The radiograms didn't help me much."

"Overwork ... no, not that ... she took crazy chances ... on a parachute drop she ... well, it was exposure ... those Maquis ventures ... then she contracted pneumonia."

Orville realized from her jerky phrases that she was disturbed.

"Aunt Therese ... how's she?"

"Not so well."

"Her telegram said..."

"You're safe ... you're here ... a few days ... we have you for a few days ... you and I." She kissed his hand. "There will be time for you ... to rest. Let's be glad we have each other."

He held her against him.

Rain and windshield wipers and thoughts mixed.