I pull a tourniquet from my pack and, holding one end in my teeth, wrap the other above the hole in my arm and pull tightly. I feel
no pain. The blood pumps out a little less quickly. My ears ring. I look at Elijah. He lies on his back, laughing at the sky. Blood runs down his cheek in a constant stream, maybe from a piece of shrapnel. He doesn’t seem to notice.
“Is this not beautiful?” he shouts. “Come on.”
He rolls over and crawls to the lip of the crater to peer over. Machine-gun bullets burrow into the dirt all around his head. His dirty hair is longer now than I’ve seen it in years. It sticks out from his head in clumps. The blood from his cheek runs down his neck into his tunic.
He ducks back down. “Give me your Mauser,” he says. “I can take him.”
“Mo-na,”
I say, pulling my rifle from over my head. “We both can.” I do not want to be without a weapon right now.
“All right, then,” he says, removing his from over his head. “Let’s each take a position on either end of the crater. When I say go, start shooting.” He grins at me.
I make my way to the far edge and carefully crawl up the side. I remove the rag from my scope, check the action and push a round into the chamber. I look over at Elijah.
“He is twelve o’clock,” Elijah shouts. “You can’t miss him.”
We slip our rifles over the lip of the crater at the same time, and I search frantically through my scope for the machine-gunner. We have confused him. He shoots first at me, missing by some feet, and then swings toward Elijah. I catch the flash of his muzzle in a dirt bunker ahead of me and focus in on it. The machine gun continues to fire at Elijah.
I have a straightforward shot, but wait.
Elijah fires and misses, reloads and fires again. He is shouting, laughing. “Shoot!” I think he says.
I place my crosshairs just above the muzzle flash of the machine gun. “Niska,” I whisper, “Auntie,” and pull the trigger.
Immediately the world is a dull buzz again.
I crawl toward Elijah. Once I’m beside him, I lie back and stare at the sky. Elijah lies on his stomach still, peers through his scope. Without looking up, he reaches inside his coat. I tense. He pulls out a packet of cigarettes and hands me two, still staring through the scope. The numbness has left my arm now. It feels on fire.
Light them and give me one,
he says.
You always were the better shot.
I look over to him to make sure he said what I think I heard.
The metal case of my lighter clinks open, and just as it does, the earth ahead of us lights up in a great flash. I hear the shrill whistle of a shell streak overhead and explode nearby. The world erupts around us once more. Elijah continues to stare through his scope.
“We have to get out of here,” I shout. “This bombardment’s too heavy.”
Elijah finally takes his eye away from his scope, looks at me, a sad smile on his bloody face. He says something to me, something I can’t make out in the noise.
We both can’t
… he mouths, and then a shell lands close enough to blow and suck a hot wind across us.
“What?” I shout, my eyes fixed on his lips.
Leave,
he mouths, still smiling, his teeth glinting.
Elijah sits up and reaches as if to hug me. When his hands touch me, a cold shock runs the length of my body. I push him back, my wounded arm heavy. Elijah struggles up and reaches to wrap his arms around me again. He’s no longer smiling. His mouth is twisted in an angry grimace.
No thinking any more. I fight against Elijah until I am on top of him. His face is calm, his mouth now set in a thin line. Elijah tries to reach with one hand into his own coat, his other hand pushing up against the weight of my chest. My hands wrap around Elijah’s throat. I don’t know what else to do. I straddle Elijah’s waist and squeeze with all my might. My hands are slippery with his blood.
Elijah’s eyes go wide for a moment, then narrow to slits. He begins swinging at me with his arms, hitting my head, my nose, my sides, my wounded arm. I scream and squeeze harder. Elijah’s tongue sticks out. His face turns dark.
“Mo-na,”
Elijah gasps.
“Mo-na.”
A whistling begins, faint and far away at first. Another shell lands close to our crater and flings me from Elijah. I am on my back, gasping for air, my mouth and eyes filled with dirt. I rub my eyes. When I can see again, Elijah is on his knees beside me, looking down at me.
Why?
his lips ask.
My head feels split open from the explosion. I can’t move, can only stare up at him, his mouth.
“Are we not best friends, Xavier?” he asks. “Are we not best friends and great hunters?”
He is my old friend again. I see the hurt child in him now. I nod.
“You were always the better hunter,” he says.
He reaches for me.
“It has gone too far, hasn’t it,” he says. “I have gone too far, haven’t I.”
His words wake my body. Elijah’s hands reach for my throat. He squeezes it hard, and the words from that letter come back to me then, Niska.
Do what you have to
. I can’t breathe. He is killing me. My good arm grasps at the ground beside me. My fingers grab a rifle. I swing the butt of it awkwardly at Elijah. The hard wood of it cracks the side of his head. He falls over.
With all the strength left in me, I roll up and onto my knees, the rifle in both hands. It is my fine German Mauser. Elijah is on his back, dazed and staring at the sky, a slight smile on his face. I straddle him once more and place the rifle across his throat. I look into Elijah’s eyes. Water splashes on his cheeks. I think it is rain, but then realize that it is my tears. I push down on the rifle. He struggles, legs kicking.
“Elijah,” I whisper, eyes blurring from the tears. “Elijah.”
Elijah doesn’t struggle any more, just stares up at me.
“You have gone mad. There is no coming back from where you’ve travelled.” I press down harder. Elijah’s eyes shine with tears. His face grows a dark red. He tries to whisper words to me but I know that I cannot allow Elijah to speak them. I must finish this. I have become what you are, Niska.
I lean all of my weight down across the rifle. Elijah begs with his eyes. I desperately want to stop what I’ve started but something else controls me now. My tears fall heavier on his face. His mouth opens and closes, gasping for air. Veins bulge from his forehead.
Just when I think that he is made of something unbreakable, the rifle in my hands sinks down and I feel through the stock the collapse of his windpipe under the rifle’s pressure. He goes still. His eyes are open, still watching me.
How long have I stayed here, straddling my friend, staring down as my tears leave streaks in the dirt and blood of his dead face? Finally, I sit back and grasp my knees, rock slowly as the shells scream in and explode all around me. My friend lies still, arms stretched out from his body as if he welcomes the sky. Finally, I turn to him, lean over him once more.
I reach around his neck and grab hold of his medicine bundle. I tug at it. It does not want to break. I tug hard and the hide rope gives. I pull it from the neck, his ID wrapped about it. I place them in the inside pocket of my coat. I reach into his other pockets and take out his few possessions. His comb, a few bullets, his medal in its nice case, a picture of the two of us taken long ago in Toronto. He smiles at the camera while I look away, nervous. Boys. Our haircuts new. Our arms awkwardly around each other. Like brothers. I stick that in my pocket too.
As I close his lids, the bombardment picks up again. I begin to throw handfuls of dirt across him. I cannot give him a proper resting
place in the trees. But his
ahcahk
is strong. It will find its way. When I’ve covered him as best I can, I lay my rifle across him, the same rifle he has wanted for so long.
I stand up in the crater and feel, more than hear, the shells continuing to explode around me. I walk up the crater’s side, head toward where I came from. I stumble across the churned field, my one arm dead beside me. Nothing matters any more, and just as I think this I feel a thud and I’m enveloped by a bright flash and I’m in the air as high as I have ever been, looking down at the ground far below, where I swear Elijah stares up, smiling once more, arms outstretched to me.
D
IFFERENT FACES STARING DOWN
. I float along, through darkness and then back into light.
No, won’t make it,
one with a long moustache says, staring into my eyes, tracing something onto my forehead with his finger. I float away. Shells scream across me. I can see them as they streak through the sky above. I’m not floating any more. I’m on the ground in the mud, men lying dead or dying beside me. They stand and pick me up and I’m floating again.
This must be the three-day road, I think.
I’m travelling still. Another man stares down at me.
This one’s a mess,
he whispers, turns away. There is no pain. I float on a warm river in sunlight.
Still alive?
another says.
This one’s famous, a hero
.
Elijah!
I call out, but my voice does not work. I’m stuck inside myself. He can help me figure this out. But then I remember and I begin thrashing until a man comes up to me and pricks my arm. I drift on a sunlit river again.
Violent rocking. A dark place. Souls all around me, moaning. Screams and shouts. This is the place the Christians talk about. I am a bad man. Something pounds the wall beside me, over and over, rhythmic. Elijah pounding to be let in? I want my friend beside me. I need to say I’m sorry. The big room I’m in turns sideways and I’m
rolled out of my bed. Pain shoots dully along my arm, along my legs. Is it pain? It is! It is all over me suddenly like I’ve stepped on a nest of wasps. I want to stand and run, but can’t. Somebody is picking me up. A big man.
Hell of a storm. That last wave almost capsized us. Don’t usually get them this big in the channel
. Then I’m back in softness again.
I’m in a room, on a bed, staring out a long window. A tree limb outside is black and bare, silhouetted against the grey sky. I’m able to turn my head slowly with much effort. Just one in a long row of beds. They are all full. I glance down at myself covered in a white sheet. Something is wrong. What’s missing?
The echo of singing down the hall. It comes closer. Like a door opening, the song is all around me. Women in white all around me, smiling and singing. I can hear their voices, tinny and far away, like the phonograph I once heard, the volume turned very low. One comes up to me, bends over me and smiles sweetly.
The war is over,
she mouths.
The war is over.
I grasp at her. “Elijah.”
Yes, Elijah,
she mouths back.
The war is over, and you are a hero
.
When I awake from the blackness now, a great pain shoots through my left leg. It runs up and sets my arm on fire. I was shot in the arm, I remember that now. But what came after? Reaching for my arm, I run my hand over the bandage. The pain in my leg grows, throbs so badly that I try to scream, but all that comes out is a sad croaking. And then I remember. It was not a dream. I did what I did. I try to sit up, try to stand, to run, to get away. My body won’t respond. I cry out.
A woman in white walks up to me. A nurse. She gently pushes me back on the bed, hushes me with her pretty mouth.
Lie back,
she says.
Tell me what is wrong
.
I search for the words in English. So much is wrong. “My leg,” I finally whisper. “This leg.” I reach and feel for it with my hand. “It hurts me badly.”
Her eyes are sad.
It is called phantom pain,
she tells me.
I follow the movement of her mouth. I don’t know these words.
It was too badly damaged,
she says.
The doctors had to amputate it
.
I feel my eyes go wide. I don’t understand, don’t want to believe. Moving my hand along the bed I find no leg there. I feel the stump that sticks out from my hip, and blackness rushes across my eyelids.
It will be all right, Corporal Whiskeyjack,
she mouths.
I stare at her.
You are going to live. You are a great hero.
“Mo-na,”
I whisper to her. “Xavier Bird.”
Your friend Xavier did not make it.
She looks with sympathy into my eyes.
I begin to struggle against her. I must get up and fix all of this. I’m not Elijah. I’m Xavier Bird. I see her call out. Another nurse rushes up with a syringe, puts it into my arm before I can stop her. I hear the warm river approaching, and softly, softly, I float onto it.
I come out of the blackness and the warmth more often, into the hurting grey. When I feel my body, I want to go back where I’ve emerged from. When my friend comes to me, I want to say I’m sorry. But instead I try desperately to crawl back into the darkness. The only thing that allows me this solace is the needle, their medicine. I find myself begging for it when I’m conscious enough to do so. Usually the nurses take pity on me, caress my forehead and mouth to me that I’m a hero, that I’ve served king and country beyond the call, as they slip the point of the needle into my arm.
Why do they call me Elijah? Is this some joke Elijah plays on me from the other world? I am Xavier. Am I not? But there is something calming in the idea that I am Elijah. There is something appealing in being the hero, the one who always does the right thing, says the funny thing. Now I understand his love for the medicine. It takes all of the badness away. The world is warm and close with the medicine surrounding me.
The grey light that comes into the room does not change for a long time. I watch the rain pelt the windows. The war is over. I don’t feel anything. The others in the beds around me, they either begin to get up and walk slowly with the help of the nurses or they are simply gone one morning. I know where. Me, I don’t try. I’m stuck between these two places. All I have to look forward to is the comfort of the river. Sometimes I can hear people speaking when they are close by, as if they are talking through a long tube. But mostly there is silence, and this silence helps a little.