House of the Rising Sun (Hackberry Holland 4)

mpling all around him; some were caught in the wire and trying to free themselves with their bare hands; some were atomized. In the background was the constant knocking of the Maxims, as dull and unrelenting as a woodpecker tapping on a telephone pole. Suddenly, Ishmael and ten others, all of them gray with dust, as featureless as aborigines, were standing on the lip of the enemy trench, firing point-blank into the Germans trapped below, then jumping into their midst, clubbing heads with rifle butts or pistols and double-edged trench knives with brass knuckles on the hand guard, impaling or beating to a bloody pulp every enemy soldier who didn’t surrender and sometimes those who did.

Both French soldiers and members of his regiment were leaping over the trench, driving deeper into the German line. Others were rounding up the Germans who had thrown down their weapons and raised their hands. Ishmael shucked the spent shells from his revolver and reloaded each chamber, his fingers shaking uncontrollably. On his left, he saw the French Legionnaires piling into the trench, some picking up German stick grenades and stuffing them in their belts. Something else was going on, too. A crowd had formed at a bend in the trench, each soldier trying to look over the shoulder of another. Someone was shouting in German.

Ishmael tore the wrapper off a candy bar and began eating, trying to close his mind to what may be happening farther down the trench. Then a man screamed. Ishmael could not tell if the voice belonged to the man who had been shouting in German. The scream contained no hope, only terror and pain.

He walked through the clutter of haversacks, ammunition boxes, gas masks, knee mortars, stretchers, pistol flares, telephone wires, shell casings, wire cutters, blood-caked bandages, first-aid kits, ration tins, rotted food, newspaper that someone had cleaned himself with, ammunition belts and boxes of potato mashers and rifle grenades fitted into their compartments like eggs in a carton, then pushed his way through the Legionnaires, who were bunched tightly together. He saw what they had done and tried to look away in the same way you would if you opened a bedroom door at the wrong moment.

A German soldier in a dirty gray uniform was sitting with his back against the trench, his legs splayed, his bucket helmet lying beside him. He had a long face, like a horse’s, and bad teeth and flaxen hair and defensive wounds in his hands and a large wet area around his thighs where he had soiled himself. A sawtooth bayonet had been driven through his left eye socket, all the way to the hilt, pinning his head to the wall.

They were Legionnaires, many of them criminals, Ishmael told himself later. If they hadn’t joined the Legion, they would have been on Devil’s Island. They were victims themselves, sent into the lines as cannon fodder. What they did is not their fault.

But rationalizing the scene in the trench was not an easy job. These men had descended from the same tree and were made of the same flesh and blood as their victim. Their crime was not committed in hot blood, and their choice of a victim was arbitrary. Ishmael had seen three other German prisoners captured with rifles that had sawtooth bayonets. One had gotten a punch in the face; nothing was done to the other two. Later, the executioner of the German solider, a peasant from Brittany, made coffee and smoked cigarettes and chatted with his comrades a few feet from the body, as blithe as a bridegroom on his wedding day.

Psychiatrists might assure their patients that dreams were only dreams and they disappeared into the daylight. But psychiatrists had no cure for the truth about man’s capacity for cruelty. The ancient Greeks understood that, and so did the growers of the opium poppy. The gift of Morpheus brought not only sleep but oblivion. You just had to be careful, a little touch now and then. You did not think of it in a self-serving or profligate way. You chewed the tablet gently, your eyes closed in a demonstration of gratitude and reverence. You let the granules slide down your throat with your saliva, and you swallowed with the words “thank you” on your lips. How could any gift from the natural world be bad? Morphine healed all wounds and lifted all burdens. The tranquillity it purchased was ethereal, if not holy.

The orderly kept his word and placed a vial of pills under Ishmael’s pillow. That afternoon, when Ishmael woke from his slumber, he felt the wind blowing through the window like a cool burn on his skin. The snow on the peaks of the mountain was feathering against the sky. Then a figure stepped in front of the window, blocking out the sun. It took a moment for Ishmael’s eyes to adjust. He studied her face and the redness of her mouth and the trimness of her body and her elegant clothes and the thickness of her hair. Though she was an older woman, she was one of the loveliest women he had ever seen.

“I’m Maggie Bassett. I used to be your father’s wife or animal trainer, take your choice,” she said. “My, you’ve grown into a big boy.”

SHE WAS WEARING a purple dress with a silver and ivory brooch at her throat and high-heeled boots and a tall domed black hat with a floppy brim. She sat down in a chair by the widow and removed her hat and brushed her hair out on her shoulders. It was dark brown and looked freshly washed and dried, reflective of light, soft on her skin. “You don’t remember me?” she said.

“I remember the name,” he said.

“Probably not in the best way. Hack and I weren’t a good match. Was it bad over there?”

“In the trenches? Not always. I wouldn’t believe all the stories you hear.”

“Is your mother alive?”

“Why wouldn’t she be?”

“I heard she was involved with anarchists or something. In a mass killing.”

“She was at the Ludlow Massacre, right down the road. The miners were on strike. They weren’t anarchists.”

“You have unusual attitudes for a professional soldier.”

“I’m a soldier, not a company gink. The Colorado militia was doing Rockefeller’s dirty work.”

“You’re certainly your mother’s son. I always admired her. I think she and I have a lot in common.”

“Nobody is like my mother.”

“We both got involved with a man who has ten inches of penis and three of brain.”

“You talk pretty rough.”

“You don’t know the half of it, sweetie.”

“Why are you here?”

“I believe I helped deny you the home and family you should have had. I have a conscience, believe it or not.”

“You came here to tell me that?”

“No, to offer you a job with an export-import company.”

“Oh yeah?”