Part 8

Dennison warmed the motor and chewed an apple and swung 9 west, west across dry ground, climbing gradually. The treads beat down a hedgerow. The cab was getting hotter so they stripped and climbed and wormed 9 and filed through a woodland and crossed a field. The battle swept around them. Battle without immediate barrage. For Dennison driving became a matter of mechanical movement, goading of muscle, endurance of heat, tolerance of gasoline stink, smell of oil and gun powder ...

Dennison was amazed to see a flock of sparrows in a hedgerow.

At the top of a slope he saw Jeannette's face.

What are you doing there?

9 was working toward the port side.

He braked.

Dead Nazis lay in front, their bodies in a clot of equipment: they were sprawled in a maw of bicycles, smashed machine guns, duffle, rifles, coils of telephone wire, helmets.

Dennison remembered that their infantry had fought here yesterday. Last night's rain had soaked the dead men ... their bodies were sinking into the ground, into weeds and grass.

They blurred as he jazzed 9.

A saddle sloped below the tank and he nosed the bus along it seeing a machine gun emplacement on the next crest, its sandbagged front standing out. Dennison signalled Landel and Landel loaded his gun, swaying, grabbing for handholds, helmet slipping.

For a dozen yards the slope was easy going: it seemed to be sod all the way: then the ground leveled to a sort of pasture, oddly green, brilliantly green: vaguely, Dennison tried to figure out why the green was different: his brain was too tired to register. Green snagged at the treads and then he caught the flash of water; before he could swerve, before he could brake, he felt 9 sink.

No amount of power budged her.

Cleverness at the controls meant nothing: he reversed both treads, tried the port tread, tried the starboard tread, 9 bogged deeper and deeper. They were trapped in a runoff, a swampy catch basin--mud and water under tractionless treads. Sweat poured down Dennison's face and he wiped it from his eyes, scrutinizing Landel, aware now that Landel had been yelling at him as he struggled to extricate 9.

"God," he groaned, "we're stuck, sure as hell."

_Stop_, Landel signalled.

Grabbing a note, Dennison wrote:

_Motor overheated_

Landel scribbled:

_Don't leave tank. Intercom out_.

As he read the scrawl, Dennison thought he would rush outside: Landel's grey face and jittery scrawl maddened him; he thought angrily: we can't crawl out of here--we'll die in this hole. Then he recalled the machine gun emplacement above them.

He wiped his face--waited.

Bullets ripped across 9's cab: they crawled and re-crawled over the armor plating. Battening their ports they checked their ammunition, checked the fan, checked the turret bolts.

In a short time Landel returned their gunfire, using all of his skill: he lobbed four single shots, waited.

Dennison stumbled to the rear to urinate.

He bumped against Zinc who was clinging to his gun, blacked out: their half-naked bodies slapped. Locating their canteen, Dennison passed it to Zinc who drank, canteen tipped up, his eyes shut. Shoving Zinc into the driving seat, he took over his gun.

How good to stand up. Yet he had to fight off sleep. Swaying against the machine gun butt he drowsed, trusting Landel, Captain Fred Landel. If the bastards unlimbered an anti-tank gun or hurled grenades or mounted a flame thrower! If!

Probably the Nazis were trapped in their own emplacement.

Let somebody else wipe them out!

Anyhow, 9's beat. Battery weak.

Maybe another tank could drag her free.

Maybe ... a requiem of shells!

Tonight ... what time was it?

Tonight was a long way off.

He shivered and drowsed. Sleepily, he fingered his automatic, and found its steel warm.

... Bretten's bombardment seemed to be going on and on.

... The clock tower was still exploding.

... His world shifted, perception by perception.

... Christ, it had been a tussle, piloting the tank to the Roer River: debris: men and trucks: fog along the river: mental fog: like London fog: walked and walked in the fog: that was in Tunbridge (or was it Tunbridge?): that was the night he had slept with Raymonde: the hearth in her room had a Solomon's seal on each tile: they had talked and talked: warm: warmth of her body: nice little breasts: nice and warm: warm covers: Raymonde very tired: warm ...

... Strange--that hammering sound: mortar shells?

... Strange, Zinc asleep.

... Strange, to be an Ithacan!

He woke when a shell rocked the tank. He shouted.

He felt inside the stomach of death. When could they crawl out? Another shell whined. His throat tightened. He felt cold and buttoned his shirt and zippered his jacket and licked his lips and listened: was Landel shouting? Was it dark outside? It seemed to him that 9's motor was running. Bending over Zinc, he tested the switches. No, the motor was not running. Zinc was asleep.

Fumbling about, reaching for Dennison, Landel pulled him close and yelled:

"No ... they'll shoot you down."

"You stay ... try the radio ... I get nothing ... stay."

The flesh under Landel's eyes was quivering.

He realized he could not weather out their rescue: frantically, he clawed at the jacket: an hour, another hour.

"I'll make it ... get help. Fire my gun!"

"Hell, they'll cut you down."

"No ... they don't return my gunfire ... when I fire ... nothin!"

"A trick," Dennison warned.

"No," Landel said

"Hell," Dennison yelled.

Landel was gone.

Dennison lined up the emplacement, arching and depressing the gun accurately: there was no return fire when he fired. He fired again. Five minutes. Ten. No return fire.

Perhaps Landel had made it by now.

Dennison eased into the seat, wondering about Zinc.

He was still asleep; his sleeping face was repulsive; his warped body, his jockey body, was repulsive.

Eyes on the emplacement, he studied its arrangement of sandbags, ripped off branches, wilted and shredded leaves: he estimated that four or five men had done the job: why had they selected this location? The emplacement looked old, a week, a month. Some sort of rear guard. They could have depleted their stock of ammunition. They could have retreated.

He slept.

Zinc woke.

He fished in his pocket for an apple and ate it. Somewhere they had K-rations on board. Without lighting the cab (it was dark now), he brought out the rations and the canteen. They ate and slept. Fired guns and ate. Cheese, K, chocolate bars. Without tasting anything they ate everything. The radio was out because the battery was low. Water was oozing over the floor: the bus had sunk that far. They had to sit with their shoes on the dash or on the walls of the tank. As their hearing returned to normal they talked a little. It seemed to them that the radium hands of the chronometer were glued to the dial.

There was no shelling except in the distance.

It was colder.

Raising his jacket collar, Zinc thought of home: home and steam radiators, his dad smoking his pipe, the neighbor kids ... yeah, they poked fun at my hair ... Red ... Red ... banter across his dad's grocery counter ... why you little Jew pissant, how the hell are you? Heah, runt, reach me a box of saltine crackers ... no not that size ... the giant one....

At school they pestered him, name, age, color of hair ... His dad had said, over and over, get yourself a job, boy, the sooner the better. Life had been stupid until Millie came along, Millie and his boat. Millie wouldn't fail him: her letters (he tapped his pocket), kept him going.

Eyes on his machine gun slot, he mouthed chocolate and it adhered to his teeth and stuck between them and clotted his palate (the bar had threads on it from his pocket); he tongued the piece down with a sticky tongue.

He imagined himself thumbing a magazine, the fold-out of a naked girl: someday, soon, he'd have time to read the Sunday comics; someday he'd find a 32-footer in the classifieds, Buick engine, cabin good condition, sleeps 4, galley, 2-way radio--terms ... a price he could afford ... someday he'd open a deli and make damn good money.

Somehow the lull in the shelling became threatening: it was ugly, heavy, a part of the armor plate, part of the menace of the emplacement.

Dennison hunched his legs, unzippered his trousers, and picked lice from among his hairs. He searched with the help of his flash. On his belly the engine scar seemed to have a thicker scab; he tested the scab and scratched it soothingly.

He wanted to masturbate but something prevented him, perhaps the eye of the compass. He swayed, let himself sag, when he shoved back against the cushion the bent spring bothered him.

Apple cores floated on the water.

Change, that was it: war was change, if nothing else, the slap of rain, slug of wind, whistle of death. Fear had its changes too. Fear was possessive. Then change was possessive. Change ... you ate and slept and that was change.

Your scrotum shrank between your legs. Another change. Your genitals crawled inside your body. Your penis crawled in. Sometimes shellfire drove them in, penis and scrotum.

Sanctuary.

Abruptly, clearly, Jeannette spoke to him: "Orv, don't stare at the floor like that ... turn out your flash ... you've got to get out of that bus ... crawl out ... tell Zinc ... both of you have to leave ... do something about getting out ... get up..."

He dragged himself to the engine and leaned against it.

Can't stay here ... move!

Eyes to the periscope he submerged: below surface he observed his mother painting a watercolor, a stand of trees along the Nile, brilliant green against brilliant sun on the river: The torpedo raced toward Persepolis, sand, Persian sand, sun, flies, flies on the ruined city, flies in the shah's palace: another ruin to the starboard: flies on our food: the dune moved: this was Notre Dame, its buttresses bombed, water high along the apse: wasn't that bell from Claude Debussy's music?

Water had flooded the Louvre, or was it the bombings that had wrecked the building? Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa lay on the floor. Gold was washing over the frame: if he hurried he might save the painting. Save? How?

Hunkered over, cold, he felt he had been isolated for years: everywhere was the impenetrable: dazed, he sagged against the wall; then, peering out, he realized the sky was a flame above the emplacement. So Bretten was burning. Shelling grew distinct. Burning clouds seemed to be approaching.

Dennison regarded the sand bags for a long time.

"They're gone," he said to Zinc, hand on his shoulder.

"There's nobody up there. See. Look. Nothing. See in the light from the sky, nothing. Landel ran for it. He got away. Come on ... let's get out of this mess..."

Through wavering light from the town and the clouds he thought he saw somebody stumbling toward 9.

"Zinc, look, somebody's coming."

"Where?"

"It's Landel."

They waited, waited.

It was nobody and Zinc sank into pain. Dennison lit his flash and fumbled about for their canteen. Shaking its near-emptiness, he drank, then pushed it at Zinc, who drained it.

"Bah, it tastes bad."

"Let's go."

"Where?" Zinc asked.

"Look at the sky ... there's light enough for us to see ... Bretten's done for..."

"What about Landel?" Zinc asked.

"Hell with him!"

"Then, let's go."

He found his flash; the canteen was floating on the tank floor, cap off; Dennison unbolted the turret; as he spun a bolt he felt for his automatic; leaning down he yelled at Zinc:

"Have we any grenades?"

"No grenades."

Outside, in the protection of the tank, they saw that their shovels were still wired to the cab. They thought of putting the bus in action. Could be safer than wandering. What about the battery? Gas but not enough juice. Splashing in water they walked a few steps.

"Hopeless," said Dennison.

"Leave the damn thing."

Crewmen appeared--stepped out of the dark, the sky coloration on their helmets: there appeared to be eight or ten, plastered with mud, sopping, their flashlights hooded. A guy loosened his helmet strap and said:

"I'm Captain Kernie. You two alone?"

"Bogged down ... our bus..."

"No battery power," said Dennison.

"Gas?"

"Yeah, we lost two tanks ... nearby ... hey, Walt, get a battery ... get Mack to help you ... bring a battery ... we'll put this bus back in action..."

"Captain went for help, hours ago," Dennison said.

"What about the machine gun emplacement?" Zinc asked.

"My guys wiped it out ... crew's dead," said Kernie.

"Good."

"There's timber ... logs ... by the woods ... We'll put your bus on rollers ... have her out in no time."

Zinc unwired a shovel.

"We're in luck," said Dennison mournfully.

Light crept over Kernie's face, then face and light went. His men placed scraps, logs, branches, replaced the battery, the engine fired. Cab light went on. Zinc reloaded his gun--sleep at his elbows.

9 backfired, rocked, rolled, apple cores bobbed on the floor, floated toward the rear. Easing the bus forward, on a rise, the water began to drain. Someone in Kernie's gang banged on the driving port.

Dennison worked her to the starboard, slipping, slipping; but she began to climb, stuck, climbed. With a wild teetering the treads grabbed and rolled away, rolled steadily downhill, to solid ground. Kernie and his crewmen had melted away.

Zinc stood beside Dennison.

He mopped the periscope with a rag.

In the cab light, dial light, they smiled at each other.

The down terrain held tough: the land had been tilled but was sodded: 9 rolled through a maze of vineyards and truck gardens. When a hedgerow blocked their way, Dennison sliced through it, slewing. He followed the remains of a paved road. Smoke mushroomed. Instinctively, he wobbled the tank. A shell hole gaped. Then another. A shell careened, spraying shrapnel. The cushion crushed against Dennison's testicles and pain tore through his body and magnified the roar of the engine and the treads. Nauseated, he could not see: blobs shook in his brain. Bending over, he closed the ignition.

A shell threw dirt and rocks onto 9.

Mouth open, both waited, clinging to their seats.

Another shell whined, then became a rumble.

His will drained from him: the nerves in his arms and hands ached: he tried to talk to himself as earth spouted over the port side, another shell at the rear. Something rattled and clanged. Light spat: every aperture admitted flame: it glazed their hands, their faces, the walls, the instruments. Shrapnel pounded blows.

Recoiling, Zinc's brain slid in on itself, whimpering, grimacing like a monkey, something Neanderthalic: he doubled up on the floor by the engine, head on his arms, legs jerking: death was here!

Dennison jabbed his hands into his stomach: Christ, not to vomit. Opening his mouth over and over, he tried to lessen the concussions.

Why can't it stop? Stop ... yes ... this muck ... those arms in the sand, those flies on Robinson's arms ... dust, all that heat, arms, hands, wrists, arms ... we got away ... we got away ... got to get away from this ... I'm comin, back, Jean ... I'm going mad, Chuck and I.

"No, Zinc, I'm all right. Okay, the shelling's stopped ... I'll drive ... we'll make it out of this!"

What, what was this?

It was Paris ... and they were stripping her in the street, the beautiful Princesse de Lamballe ... they were hacking off her breasts ... they were hacking off her legs ... Do you speak French? May I help you, mademoiselle? Long live the guillotine! _Vive la revolution!_

Dennison saw his dad lying on the floor of his little Renault: he was seriously wounded: nobody was helping him: his tank lay on its side.

Dennison was urinating on the floor.

He would not drive the tank again: he would refuse to drive any tank: what could they do? They could do their damnedest and he would go AWOL. But now, now the shelling had stopped, just cut itself off, leaving a ditch of silence.

He tried to figure out the cessation: it seemed to him it was his duty to figure it out: he must unravel enigmas, supply answers. That was what life was for.

The bent springs in the cushion bored into his back and he leaned forward and wet his lips with his tongue. Fingers and arms trembling, he cupped his head in his hands, closed his eyes.

Miraculously--he felt he was a boy, playing the game he used to play, playing soldiers on the living room floor: he had his troop in line and rolled something against them and they reeled and fell, the entire line fell.

And something else: the half-frozen needle of a phonograph was spinning music for their skating on Beebe Lake, light-hearted music. The chimes of the library tower struck ten o'clock in solemn notes. A girl was skating with him, Cathy Bowers: her slip-on sweater hugged her, they hugged each other, circling the lake quickly, their skates scraping softly.

But it was over ...

The barrage was over; yet he could not stir; he began to count the minutes on the chronometer; the greenish face of the chronometer was trying to say something; he inched forward a little, inched more, pushed the brake lever. Presently, he considered all of the dials:

Got to check, got to see where the shell hit us, got to estimate ... estimate the damage ... got to climb out ... put on my flash ... climb ...

He signalled Zinc with his flash; Zinc responded; together they left the bus, the air acrid with smoke, as if burned in a filthy oven, raw with slugged mud.

At the bow, with dimmed lights, they stooped over the starboard tread. Then the port tread. Plates had been torn out and the entire tread had been folded back like a strip of hide: there was no power there: they could do nothing to restore mobility.

Dennison motioned Zinc inside the cab.

"I'll destroy our maps," he said.

"What? Couldn't hear you."

He could not repeat himself.

Risking interior lights, he gathered the maps, ripped them into shreds, tramped them underfoot. Thinking of clips for his automatic he shoved them into his pocket. His helmet. Jacket. Was that all? No canteen? No thermos? No apples?

"Okay," he said.

"The ammunition," Zinc yelled.

"Leave it."

"Not much ... outside."

He hurled his belts; Dennison threw out Landel's shells; the floor was a mess of sludge and they slipped as they worked.

"Put out the lights."

"Lights out."

Behind the bus they crouched down for cigarettes: as Zinc lit his fag something expanded inside him: a vague, battered sense of freedom: freedom? He wasn't sure what kind it might be. He sucked in smoke, looked up: something was there?

Dennison felt no loss: he had had enough of 9: enough, enough, that thought continued as they slogged down a slope: he was sorry for his Isaac Jacobs, so small, so vulnerable: he led him across barren fields, toward the Roer, expecting shellfire, expecting death.

It was a long way to the Roer River, black-walking. They had to avoid corpses, had to avoid barbed wire, shell holes: their dimmed lights were sometimes useless. They thought they remembered a farm house and argued about it, then stumbled on, uncertain. Seeing lights they became more cautious, stopping, waiting, listening. MP's challenged them, and one of them acted as guide to the remnants of their division.

Men from the Corps had bedded down in a barn; they might be crowded there; somebody suggested the country church: there was room at the rear: shellfire had blasted the small, gothic thing: its altar was a contrivance of boards and tarp and cross. They entered through a gaping wall. Windows of antique glass remained: blue, rose, yellow, mauve against the night. Both stopped to see leaded glass on bits of steel.

Dennison recognized Landel, woebegone on a pew, his head and neck bandaged, face drawn, hand to his mouth, his beard peppered with grey. A medic was adjusting his neck bandage, talking.

Dennison had hoped Landel was dead.

He refrained from speaking to him: motionless, wanting to sit or lie down, he rubbed his hands over his jacket, unsteady, hating his grime: he smelt his own stench: he craved a drink. Zinc, too, hesitated, ready to buckle from fatigue.

GI's sprawled on pews, lay in the aisles, sat on the altar platform: they were sleeping, eating, talking, smoking, bedding down. The beautiful window had died. Coleman lanterns sputtered on tables, pews, ledges. Dennison and Zinc headed for the altar where there seemed to be space to lie down. Before they could reach it, Fred Landel saw them, approached them.

"Hey, you guys!" he shouted, his neck injury paining him. "What's eating you? How'd you make out?"

Zinc faced about, without a word, helmetless, his filthy face and clothes a little dirtier than most of the others.

Dennison looked at Landel scornfully.

Landel's eyes were bloodshot; he, too, was filthy, mud-spattered; he raised an arm, stopped, resentful of his crewmen, aware, by their attitudes, they had marked him off.

"Couldn't find help ... shrapnel hit me..." Why should I make excuses: can't they see? "What happened to 9?"

"Tank's done for," Dennison yelled.

"You guys just walk off and leave it?"

"Naw, we put it in mothballs!" Zinc cracked.

Landel took a long look at him.

"Shell hit us ... we lost a tread," said Dennison.

"Lost a tread," Zinc repeated, smiling, knowing that sleep was going to knock him out at any moment.

"I'll get us another machine," Landel yelled.

Pain was flashing through his head; he walked to a pew and sank down on it, moaning. Far off, he heard Dennison say something about getting washed, getting something to eat, Landel wasn't sure.

Okay ... okay ... am I crackin' up? There were slits in the floor, cracks, slits ... a cockroach was busy ... there had been swarms of cockroaches in Panama, cockroaches, fever, heat. Arm hooked over his eyes, lying on the pew, he sank into a fitful sleep.

Dennison and Zinc found a wash basin and some soap, and then ate, ate without exchanging a word, nine of them at a table made out of a door, an army cook doling grub: the men humped over their food, jaws mechanical: stew ... canned peaches ... bread ... coffee.

Dennison hoped that food would stop a cramp in his belly. His eyes fixed on a fork: it seemed to him that the tines were moving, the handle was forming a half circle. Something peeled off in his mind: he felt he was at home: the fork had a "D" on it: Mama was humming in the kitchen: there were candles on their dining table: he felt about in his pocket for a pack of matches to light them.

More GI's jammed the church, most of them yammering for food.

"Jesus Chriz ... if it ain't Dennison! Hiya!"

"Hi, Pete ... Hi, Vic ... ,"

Pete and Vic were tankmen out of Sherman 446, grizzled, smiling, punch drunk; they had participated in attacks with Dennison, always helpful: both were New Yorkers, Vic had been a physics major at NYU, Pete was a cutter, in a suit shop, in Harlem.

"How did you guys make out?" Pete asked.

"We lost our bus."

"9?"

"Yeah." Dennison was biting a section of a peach.

"What's news about the minefield?" Zinc asked.

"We lost twenty-three," said Vic, squeezing himself in at the table.

"Twenty-three tanks?" yelled Dennison.

"Twenty-three men," Vic said. "Wounded ... dead ... don't know how many..." Elbows on the table he covered his face with his hands. Near him a pot of stew was puffing.

"It's been a hell of a day!" said Pete, standing behind Dennison. "They had their minefield planned ... they know they're licked but they make us fight on and on. Dumb. All that waste of life." He picked his nose mournfully, his bleary eyes on the crowded church, the milling GI's, the men at the door-table.

"Bretten's ours," said a lieutenant at the table. "We took it a couple hours ago."

"Will there be street fighting?" someone asked.

"I don't know."

"Jus' lemme sleep," said Zinc, liking his cup of coffee. God, it smelled good.

"The Germans are burning their towns as they retreat," someone said.