The Convict and Other Stories

“Does that make sense to you? Do you know what I mean now by having a vision of both worlds?”

One eye seemed pulled down on his cheek, as though he were aiming along the sights of his M-1.

I didn’t want to answer. I simply wanted the codeine back and to talk with the lieutenant about rotating Jace early. As a corpsman I could do it by saying that I thought he had walking pneumonia.

I heard a truck with snow chains on crunching up the road through the frozen rice field behind us. One of the chains was broken and swinging under the fender.

“That looks like the foot warmers now,” I said. “Give me the codeine so you don’t blow your face off.”

I walked down the ditch past Willard, who was standing against the embankment with his hands in his armpits, smoking a cigarette without taking it from his mouth. The lieutenant was farther on with his back turned to me and his face bent down over an engineer’s compass placed on a mess kit that he had flattened into the snow for a level. He turned an angle on the compass gingerly with one finger and then drew the angle on his notepad.

“Could I speak with you a minute, Lieutenant?”

“Go ahead,” he said, his blue eyes still preoccupied with the mine pattern we were going to lay. He was an Annapolis graduate and a good officer, but he was single-minded sometimes and irritated by what he considered a complaint.

“Bradford’s been spitting up phlegm for two weeks. I think he might have pneumonia.”

“What’s his temperature?”

“He won’t let me take it.”

The lieutenant’s eyes swept into mine.

“What kind of bullshit are you handing me, Doc?”

“I thought he ought to ride back with the mine truck to the aid station.”

“What you thought is you’d slip me a candy-ass con. You’ve been a corpsman too long for that, Doc.”

“I’m supposed to make my recommendation to you, Lieutenant.”

“You’d better listen to me and never do something like this again.”

“Yes sir.”

I walked back down the ditch feeling stupid and humiliated. Up ahead, I saw that Jace had climbed over the embankment and was headed toward the truck. As I passed Willard he caught my sleeve and pulled me to him.

“Don’t wrinkle my threads,” I said.

“Stay cool and have a smoke. I want to tell you something.” He lit a Camel from the one he was smoking and handed it to me. “I heard what you said to the lieutenant, and I also heard what Bradford told you about that kid that got blowed up last night. You done the right thing trying to get him out of here. He ain’t seeing things good in his head, and that gets people knocked off.”

“What do you mean?”

“That kid wasn’t behind the point. He was in the rear all the time. Them three gooks was in a hole at the top of an arroyo, and we didn’t see them till the potato masher come end over end at us. We all went flying down the hill with it rolling down after us, but the kid stood there like his feet was locked in ice. Bradford was the last one down. Maybe he could have knocked the kid back. Maybe any of us could. It ain’t nobody’s fault. But I wanted you to know it didn’t happen the way Bradford said. I tell you what. I’m going to stay so close on his butt he’ll think he’s got piles. If he starts talking crazy again or if I think he’s going to screw up, I’m telling the lieutenant the same thing you did.”

“You’re all right, Willard.”

“Shit. I got thirteen days to rotation and I ain’t getting knocked off because of a crazy man.”

When the sun went down over the hills, a red light spilled across the land and we felt the temperature drop in minutes. The wind blew down out of the hills, and the snow that had fallen that morning was polished into a thin, frozen cake that you could punch your finger through. Beyond the concertina wire the depressions where the mines had been set looked like slick dimples on a piece of moonscape. My feet and ears ached in the cold as though they had been beaten with boards.

In the purple gloom of the ditch Jace was looking around the edges of his pack for something. When he couldn’t find it, he flipped the pack over, then unwrapped the canvas flap and rooted in it with an increasing urgency.

“Who took my newspaper?” he said.

Willard and I looked at his anxious face without replying.

“I want to know who took it. It was tucked inside the strap.”