Presently a lieutenant walked into the room and Heck stood, operating under trained habit. The lieutenant said, “At ease.” He looked several years older than Heck, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, and he appeared untroubled, calm. Heck could nearly convince himself that the freckled man had been lying, making an awful joke perhaps, and now the truth would emerge.
But the lieutenant, though he seemed calm, held his silence ten seconds, then longer, while everyone stood looking at him, and the dilating silence broke Heck's hope.
The lieutenant said, “As you know, we are here to execute a man, a Private Slovik, for the crime of desertion. I don't suppose it's a task any of us likes. But you shouldn't feel bad about it.” The lieutenant moved his gaze from face to face. “The man deserted. Twice, in fact. He was tried in a fair court. We are here simply to implement a decision made by those authorized to do so. There is no need for you to feel bad or upset about your task. The man is a condemned coward, who willfully and knowingly abandoned his unit. All we are here to do is carry out a sentence.”
The lieutenant continued talking a while longer, but to Heck it seemed the man was only repeating himself in synonymous phrases, possibly trying to convince himself as much as the others. He hated the lieutenant for his face of calm.
The lieutenant ended by saying, “We will go through the whole procedure tomorrow, so you'll know exactly how it goes. The execution itself will take place the following morning. Are there any questions?”
Heck thought to himself,
Will take place.
There were no questions asked. The lieutenant departed, and a minute later a corporal came in and led them to another room for supper.
The food was goodâmutton stew and dense bread and a vinegar-doused potato salad and little berry pies. Heck ate meagerly and without hunger. The other men began to talk in low voices. The windows were painted black. Pages tacked to the wall offered French words in the ungainly script of children's handwriting. Beside Heck was a big-gutted, pink-cheeked man, soon advancing into his second helping of stew, who said to the GI across from him, “I asked if there wasn't a way I could get out of this. Asked the captain. Captain said, âNot unless you want to take his place.'â” With his stew spoon in midair the pink-cheeked man brayed in a mirthless imitation of laughter. “Some choice.”
Heck asked him, “What's the name again? The man we'reâ?”
“Slovik.”
That night Heck lay gripping the silver music box with both hands on his chest. He was uncertain if he slept; he had a sense of the night rushing by. When the sergeant came in and woke them for breakfast, he felt exhausted, as exhausted as if he had spent the night slinging hay bales. The exhaustion forced a measure of resignation, and he trudged to breakfast in a gray state of mind.
After breakfast they were lined in two ranks at attention. A white-haired man strolled into the room, bearing the decorations of two general's stars and a Distinguished Service Cross. A round little belly pressed against his uniform, and under his left arm he carried a steel-tipped swagger stick. For several seconds he stood silently looking over the men before him; then he said, “At ease, gentlemen. I'm Dutch Cota, division commander. I'm sure you all know me.” But Heck had never seen him before.
“You have a difficult task ahead,” the general said softly, without tension or urgency, like one explaining the rules of a card game. “It is perhaps the most difficult task that the United States Army will ever ask of you. That's saying something, but we should not hesitate to acknowledge the utter seriousness of this matter.”
The general pressed the tip of his swagger stick against the wooden floorboards and twisted it slowly. He looked one man in the eye, then another. He looked at Heck, and Heck felt a useless fury. “Let me tell you a little about the man whose actions have brought us here today. His name is Private Eddie D. Slovik, 36896415, Twenty-eighth Division, One hundred and ninth Infantry, Company G. Born February 18, 1920, in Michigan, in Detroit. In 1932 Slovik first came to the attention of the policeâhe was twelve years oldâwhen he broke into a brass foundry. From then on he was in trouble, and his police record is a long one: breaking and entering, disturbing the peace, theft, embezzlement, so on and so forth. He was in and out of reform schools, then prison.” The general looked at the floor and made a little downward gesture of despair with his free hand. “Maybe it was a mistake for the army to take in a man like this. But, as you know, we are in a war against terrible enemies, and the army cannot now afford to be as selective as it might like. We need everyone to pull their weight, everyone. And, moreover, the army gives everyone a fresh chance. This man's criminal record was forgotten when he became a GI. This man could start new; he could have gone home a hero.” The general paused and looked several people in the eye again. “Instead he chose to run away. Not once, but twice, abandoning to their fates good soldiers such as yourselves. He wrote a confession to these desertions. He was offered the chance to return to his position and the matter would have been forgiven, but he refused to return to his rifle company under any circumstances. Refused. He had never even entered combat. He knew the consequences of his actions. A court was convened, considered his case, and now our course is clear.”
The general went down the line shaking each man's hand, gazing calmly at them. The floorboards creaked underfoot as he moved from man to man. His grip was surprisingly soft.
That afternoon they were told to take their rifles, and they loaded into the truck again. They drove through town, passing civilians in thick coats who paid them no heed. They turned uphill into the northern slope of the valley. They followed a narrow, frozen streambed, escaped the closely clustered buildings of town, and stopped before a gated stone wall nearly eight feet high. They unloaded and crossed the black, iced stream on an arched footbridge and passed through an elaborate ironwork gate. Before them stood a three-story turreted house, gray with orange shutters, forested slopes rising up behind.
They went inside and were led through spacious rooms of polished wood and crystalline light fixtures. From the walls gazed paintings of stern figures in dark suits. In a small side room they were greeted by a compact, muscular man in a chaplain's uniform. He looked the GIs over and said quietly that the responsibility for this decision lay with a higher authority, and this authority was not theirs to question. Theirs was to carry out orders to the best of their ability. He assured: “The condemned man will arrive here later this evening, and he will have time to prepare himself and his immortal soul before the morning.” He said anyone who wished to speak privately with him could, and several of the men did. Heck watched them go in and come out, their grim expressions unchanged.
After a time the lieutenant escorted them through a back door into the garden. To either side were the leafless winter forms of shrubs laid out in symmetrical geometries. The garden was entirely surrounded by a stone wall, and the hillsides rose just beyond. Overhead, the sky was a dull color split by luminous cracks. In an open space before them paths had been shoveled through the snow, like a miniature trench works. The lieutenant lined them up in the position where they would be shooting and described a sequence of events: each soldier's M-1 would be loaded with a single bullet, and one man, selected randomly, would be firing a blank while the others would have live ammunition. This way, theoretically, none of shooters would know if he had fired a killing bullet. From his training, however, Heck knew that a blank didn't cause a gun to kick like live ammunition. Everyone here must have known this, but no one said anything. Some twenty paces away stood a wooden post, about six feet high, where the condemned man would be tied. Behind that a large wooden board had been erected to prevent ricochets. A few feet farther behind was the stone wall, then the mountains.
They went inside again, to a room where they were introduced to a doctor. He was very tall, with a slow, deliberate manner. He told them that they should aim for the heart. He pointed to the smallest man in the firing squad and asked him to step forward and circled with a finger the area where the man's heart was. The doctor asked if there were questions, and one of the soldiers said, “Maybe there should be a piece of paper pinned on there, on Slovik I mean, for a target.”
The doctor appeared startled. He did not answer immediately but stood gazing at the place he had circled.
Finally the man he was staring at looked around with a pleading expression. The doctor said, “Seems a little theatrical, doesn't it? Pinning things to a man who's about to die? It seems to me a decent marksman should be able to hit a spot that size pretty easily.” He circled the heart once more. “At twenty paces? Isn't that true?”
“Sir,” said one man, softly, as if confessing, “at the distance we're shooting from, I suppose I could hit a spinning nickel.”
As they drove back to the schoolhouse, a swirling snow had begun to fall.
After supper a few of the men played cards and some of them talked quietly. Heck heard one say, “This duty's rotten.”
Another said it was bad enough shooting krauts; he didn't get into this to shoot his own. “I don't know what I'll do. I might aim high, I don't know.”
Heck lay on his bunk listening, and it occurred to him that theyâthe officers, the armyâwere afraid no one would shoot. Surely that was the reason the squad was being given these pep talks, rehearsals, these assurances that matters were out of their hands and all that remained was to do their duty. Heck began to hope. He could make a proposal to these men: none of them should shoot when the time came. The army couldn't possibly execute the dozen of them.
But then someone said, “Fuck that.” It was the freckled man who had sat beside Heck on the truck. He spit into a can on the floor beside his bunk. “I got no sympathy. No one in my company ever deserted. We're fighting and getting killed. This guy's got no right to walk away from it. I hope I don't get the blank. If ten shots miss high and there's just one in him, I guarantee it'll be mine and it'll be in his heart.”
A high, piping wind teased at the windows. A sergeant came with an extra ration of cigarettes for everyone. He said a fearsome blizzard had kicked up outside.
The lights were turned off. Heck lay in the dark and did not sleep nor did he have any desire to. He felt inside himself an awful sickness. He rose and moved through the dark to the bathroom. He stood several minutes over the toilet, expecting to vomit. From the hallway the wind could be heard howling noisily. He came out of the bathroom with his stomach unrelieved. A perfunctory night guard stood duty at the front door, but down the hall and around the corner was a rear door, and no one there. Heck crept back to his bunk, retrieved his rifle and coat, and went out the back door.
A hurtling, frozen wind took the breath from him. He plowed through snow to his knees, around the schoolhouse to the street. The snow-filled night air was a pallid-hued, harsh substance, and he moved over the cobblestones largely by feel, peering uncertainly at the looming shapes of blacked-out buildings to either side.
His plan was vague. But it had occurred to him that he might free Slovik and escape with him. He had no desire to shoot anyone in the course of this, and besides he didn't have any ammunition in his rifle. They would need to commandeer a vehicle. They would goâsomewhere. Some isolated farmhouse where French-speaking people would help them. After a couple of days perhaps they would split up, and he could look for Claireâ
He turned uphill. He could only barely see the stone wall they had entered earlier that day, and he nearly stepped off the arched bridge into the moatlike stream below. He was grateful to find the iron gate unlocked. At the house an MP opened the door. He looked at Heck and peered into the snowing night. “Who are you?”
“Is the prisoner Slovik here?”
“Did you bring him?”
“Me?”
“Yeah.”
“No.”
“I thought you might be the one bringing him. We're waiting for him.”
“He's not here?”
“He's somewhere between Paris and here, I guess. They're late. The storm's pretty bad. Who are you?”
“The lieutenant sent me.”
“Lieutenant Koziak?”
Heck shrugged stiffly. “I'm not certain of the name.”
“Wellâ” said the MP. He blinked blearily at the night.
“Do you think he will be here in time? For things to go as scheduled?”
“No idea. Anything's possible, I guess.”
The snow cut innumerable white lines between them. Heck's fingers and feet were numb. He said, “I better go report back to the lieutenant.”
“All right. You walked here in this? You want to come in and warm up a minute?”
Heck hesitated, feeling the cold along his limbs.
The MP said, “Come on in.”
Heck realized it would be unbearable to stand and try to talk. “I better go.”
“Suit yourself.”
The door shut and Heck was again enclosed in the snow-filled substance of the night. He was cold and shivering, but told himself these details were irrelevant. His rifle was a weight on his shoulder. He passed through the gate and over the little bridge to the road feeling both relieved Slovik had not been there and disgusted at his relief.
He was on the main street in town, heading toward the schoolhouse, when it occurred to him that he should wait for Slovik to arrive. They might be able to steal the vehicle he arrived in and make off in it.
He stopped on the corner and stood shivering.
But he was too cold, or, as he told himself, too weak. The snow attacked like many tiny vicious animals. He resumed his trudging pace. Besides, Slovik might not arrive at all. The vehicle might have rolled into a ditch. Anything could have happened in this snow.