Strange Yesterday (26 page)

And above, the din continued. With one eye he could see the shoes of a man upon the firing-step, and he watched them become clearer and then dimmer with the bursting of star-shells. Twice the shoes moved, assuming a new posture; he enjoyed that bit of variety, and eagerly he waited for more.

But he tired of it, and he closed his eyes, listening to the confused crackle of fire, an undertone to the artillery. Opening his mouth, he sucked in a little mud, moving it with his tongue before he spat it out. It was acrid, and he did not know just why. Again a star-shell burst almost directly above him, dazzling his single open eye with the light. Attempting to divert himself from the pain that crept down from the shoulder, he moved his attention from one thing to another, reverting always to the feet of the man upon the firing-step. Then something happened to the feet: they became loose and undirected; they stumbled about, and they rocked out of his horizon. He shut his eyes.

The roaring began to assume a cadence, rising and falling to the rhythm of some piece of music he had once heard, although he could not place it. The sound lost in intensity; soon it had died to a mere humming; and he knew, after that, that the pain, too, would vanish.

Somehow, the stench of the trench had resolved itself into the scent of the garden; and that he could not understand. The scent was peculiar to the last night, causing him to wonder what there was about it that should make it so. He found himself speaking, but, as Inez insisted, it was all so much nonsense.

Then, for what seemed a long while, he thought of nothing at all, his mind being taken up by the pain that crept back into his arm from the fingers to the shoulder. He attempted, quite vainly, to decide whether it was his left or his right arm; in the end, he found himself completely at a loss. He did not know, and it occurred to him that there really was no sure way of telling, left from right.

Left and right surged through his mind, sweeping him away and throwing him headlong into an abyss, a well of even inkier blackness through which he plunged with widespread arms. He was falling, and falling, and falling.

Some one was lifting his head, forcing water between his lips, speaking to him. A light shone into his eyes as he opened them, blinding him; as it swung away, he was able to distinguish the forms of many men about him, crouching in such a circle as the narrow width of the trench would permit. They were speaking, but he could not distinguish their words. Then one of them lifted his arm, and so terrible was the pain that burnt through him that he screamed aloud in agony again and again. And when they left his arm, the fiery pain continued, racking his body with convulsive shudders. He attempted to stop the rasping, wet sobs that were escaping from him.

“He's done,” one of them remarked; and that John Preswick heard, each word clear and distinct.

“Nothing to his arm—nothing but shredded bone and flesh. God, it's rotten!”

He heard that, too, saw their faces now as they looked at him in horror, saw faces he had known for many months—familiar faces—but saw them from far.

“Poor kid, he's bleeding to death. I wish to hell I had the nerve to put a bullet through him.”

Unable to halt his sobs, to break off the cries that were coming out of him like the whimpering of a hurt child, he lay there, staring, hearing—thinking that if they would only kill him, he would be happy, completely happy, for then the pain would stop. Such pain he had never known before. AH his arm was a brand of fire, sending its heat to every part of his body, burning him up, burning him…. They were tearing off his shirt, and they were fastening something about his shoulder and drawing it taut. Now the pain increased a thousandfold; they were lifting his arm, handling it, wrapping things about it. He could not help it; he screamed; he continued to scream, shrill, rending cries; pressing hands to their mouths, men turned away. He screamed—he screamed again.

They were bawling for the stretcher-bearers; one of them squatted in the bottom of the trench vomiting; more lay sick against the torn parapet. “Easy—easy,” kid,” another was saying, while his screams cut into the night. A dark bundle sitting on the firing-step muttered: “Why don't you kill him, you goddamn swine?—why don't you kill him?—I'll kill him, if you'll Jet me! Kill him, for Christ's sake! Do you know what it is to suffer! The kid's dying.”

Some one was crying; it was strange to hear a grown man cry.

And he screamed. He did not want to scream; he tried to hold his mouth closed, biting his lips; but they tore out of him by their own impulse. Before, when he had been alone in the mud, it had not pained. Why, then, did it now?

The stretcher-bearers came. Raising him, they laid him upon the canvas roll. They were tired, and they swore beneath their breath. The pain was diabolic. He was being jolted away. He wondered to himself why he did not lose consciousness, why he could not. How they were jolting him! It was endless. He knew what hell could be.

Trenches, trenches, trenches—and always the incessant rumble from the front. Men passed by, dim figures of men in the night, something that looked like a waving tree, incredible pain, the back of the forward stretcher-bearer, who was cursing beneath his breath. Why should he curse? What pain had he?

If there was a God, He would have killed him, so that he might stop crying; but there was no God. Only night there was, and trenches, and the rumble, and the foul smell, and the back of the stretcher-bearer—and the pain.

Once the stretcher-bearer slipped in the mud, and John Preswick was thrown down and half off; they shook their heads angrily; they would never know the pain of that.

But finally they stopped, laid him upon the ground, and left him. He was in a place of grotesque light. Flares smoked all over. Men darted back and forth. There was groaning, interminable groaning, to which his was added. Men in white walked quickly, and there were some women too. But what had women to do in this hell, the first line so near that the rumble sounded harsh in his ear? He saw trucks starting, arriving, rolling close to him; and all of the time he was sobbing and sobbing.

A tall, spectacled man looked towards him, and then walked quickly over. By John Preswick he knelt, pushed back the hair from his eyes, half smiled at him, and said: “Let's see, lad. Come now, just bite those lips of yours, and hold on. That's the stout fella. Your arm, eh?”

An involuntary gasp of horror came from the man's lips as he folded back the wrappings—that in spite of himself. Loosing the tourniquet, he held it for a moment, and then tightened it again. He took a small glass thing from his pocket, pinched a bit of John Preswick's flesh, and jabbed in the needle, pressing down with his thumb. “There—” he whispered—“there, laddie. Lips together now.”

Surely this was death, or something better, for now there was hardly any of the pain. Almost was John Preswick able to smile at him as he stood up. Tall, he was, and misty, and wavering in the light of the flares, and John Preswick thought confusedly of God.

The man was muttering: “Boys—and they say we should love our mothers for giving us life—”

John Preswick tried to smile at him, that he might know what was in his mind, but it was hard, and he gave it up. Then he closed his eyes; it seemed to him that he lost all weight, that he was floating with a gentle, shimmering motion into the air. Abruptly the rumble of the guns had ceased.

9

I
T
was the scent of the garden. Surely it was the scent of the garden; and, eyes closed, John Preswick gulped it in. He feared to open his eyes, feared that it would all disappear, as it had before, when he opened his eyes., The guns had ceased; that was the last he clearly remembered; after that it was much a confused dream, nothing real, nothing distinguishable from anything else. Now there was the scent of the garden.

A cool wind was passing over his face, stirring his hair, soothing his lips, and riding upon the wind was the fresh odor of flowers, the odor of the garden. Oh, it was the odor of the garden. Repeatedly he breathed it, in quick, stinging gulps, holding it before he let it out, for he felt that it would pass. Yet it did not. And if it was the odor of the garden? There were dreams—and dreams.

“Inez—” he ventured—“Inez.”

And he smiled, knowing it to be rather foolish, but being glad in it nevertheless. He was in France. What had Inez to do here? Deep he breathed the odor of flowers.

Then he opened his eyes, to find them dazzled in a fountain of sunlight. In a huge golden slab it was flowing over him, penetrating deep into him, forcing him to blink like a great owl. As his eyes grew used to the light, he saw that he was in a bed by a long open window and that there were other beds, perhaps twenty, in the room, that there were men in the, beds, some sleeping, some awake, some staring at him, most of them bandaged. The room had a high ceiling, which was whitewashed, as the walls were; to one end of it there was a curtained iron lattice; a tremendous chandelier glittered from the center of the ceiling. Turning away, he looked to the open window.

In the chamber there were two windows, reaching from floor to ceiling, both open. They were perhaps seven feet broad. The ground level was just a little lower than the bottom of the windows, so that the flowers planted directly beneath them nodded over the sills. Then he was right about the flowers, the scent drifting into his nostrils even now. Beyond the flowers there were a few trees, trees whose branches hung heavy, in the manner of the locust. The trees were green, set wide apart, and with little, circular stone fences about the feet of them. Beyond the trees, there was an open meadow-space or pasture that swept down for a distance of perhaps four hundred yards to a little town built about a square. A flagpole rising in the center of the town was draped with double standards, and he thought he could distinguish the stripes of America under the tricolor. At the bottom of the slope men were sitting about in groups, or walking. Obviously they were soldiers, though at the distance he could hardly say whether they were Americans. Away from the town, the land rolled off, crop land, raggedly checkered, to a round horizon. Far off at the left was forest, and in the other direction he could just distinguish a river that twisted through the flat-lands. The place where he was stood upon a hill which commanded all the rest of the country—at least all within his sight.

By far, it was the loveliest scene he had laid eyes upon while in France. The sky arched in the blue of a robin's egg, except across at the horizon, where cotton clouds were piling in fluffy masses. And from beneath, a breeze crept up, whispering into and through the room.

And it was quiet. Oh, so quiet was it after the front. Denying the soft sound the wind made, there was not even a murmur to break the silence. It was deliciously, happily silent. One might have said that it was still with the silence of death, but he could no longer associate silence with death. Rather was it silent with the silence of life.

A single bird crossed before the window. He smiled at it. Then, for a while, he closed his eyes.

When he opened them, he looked at the room. Wounded men, all of them, some strapped into strange and grotesque positions; others were heavy with bandages; but there was a certain contentment in their faces, especially in the faces of those who gazed out of the windows. It was as though a lost tranquillity had crept back into them. One who returned his gaze smiled, and he smiled back.

There was no pain now, no other sensation than a remote weariness, inertia. With his back and head propped upon some pillows, he lay. But it was not until minutes after he had opened his eyes, that he saw that his arm was gone—at the shoulder. Over his trunk and over his breast the bandage crossed, making a circle up to his neck, passing directly over the place where his arm had been; and with a sort of wan hope,” he felt at the spot with his hand, thinking that the arm itself might be hidden beneath the bandages. But it was gone—at the shoulder. He winced at the pain.

At first he could not quite realize the thing; out of the window he gazed, attempting to take comfort from the sunlight, from the grass, from the flowers. He smiled to himself, and he tried to laugh a little; but that was no go. Again he looked at the stump. His lips were quivering—quivering.

“If it is gone, then it is gone,” he said to himself.

Looking at his other hand, he flexed the fingers. They were such wonderful fingers, so mobile, so flexible, so deft, so clever, so anxious, so knowing, so expressive, so sensitive—all life was in those fingers! And the wrist; and the thin arm above; all of it was so-wonderful and so clever!

But the other was gone. His right arm—

He wondered that he had not known which it was before. It was his right arm. And the other John Preswick—there it was the left. He laughed! Louder he laughed, until his whole body shook painfully with the sobs. All the men awake in the room looked at him, some pityingly, some sympathetically, some indifferently, some apathetically, some resentfully. Great tears rolling down his cheeks, he continued to laugh.

A nurse came in, a stout, yellow-haired, harried woman, very brisk; hurrying to his bed, she stood over him. “Stop that!” she ordered sharply, clamping a hand upon his mouth. “Stop, I say!”

The laughter fell away. His face relaxed beneath the pressure of her palm. He looked like a frightened school boy.

“Now,” she said, more softly, “take it gently. You have been sick. You still are sick. But you will be well. That is something to remember. You are an American?”

He nodded.

“So am I. If you need anything, call. But no hysterics. You are a man, and there are other sick people here.”

Weakly he nodded again, and she left him. He was glad when she went. The men in the room with him, he did not mind, but there had been something about her, her very lack of color, her yellowness—

Closing his eyes, he tried to think calmly. But it was not easy. The arm was gone. What did it mean? Why was his name John Preswick?—and why had he once come to a place called Steer's Head? There was a key—if only he could find it.