Chapter 26

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

S tanley sat up in bed, feeling the pleasant ache through his body, memories of Devon kissing him, the warm air sifting over him.

Then he froze in the blackness of the room. The dream had been so real and Stanley's heart was pounding. The images of the trenches, and the sense of danger, had been so real it was as though he'd been there, going through it all over again. The dream had been made up of a hundred versions of that moment when the shell had exploded, sometimes over their heads, sometimes in Stanley's face, sometimes at his feet, but always sending up shards of mud along with the metal.

Each time, his friends had died right then, or they had not died instantly, but later. Each time, the radio had been wiped out. Each time, the end of the dream was the same as the reality: Stanley had not been able to save Isaac and his friends or anybody in the 44 th Battalion.

The devastation had been real, all of it was real. But the dream was not real, no dreams were. Perhaps not even the one he'd found himself in that he'd awoken to now. The one where he was with Devon, who lived in a world that was the furthest thing it could possibly be from Stanley's world. The one where Stanley was not a soldier, the one where he was in love with a scholar.

It might be that he was meant to be here. However, the longer he was with Devon, the more he had the sense that he didn't deserve it. He'd tried to explain that to Devon, but he'd not done a very good job, so, like with everything else, he'd fallen short. Just as he had on that day, when fate had dive-bombed his efforts and destroyed everyone he cared about. If he stayed here without completing his mission, would the result be the same? Would he lose Devon anyway?

Very quietly, he slid out of the bed before he could think about what he was doing, making very sure not to disturb the blankets, the bed. Devon. Then he padded across the wooden floor and went to the closet where Devon had put his uniform. Very quietly he took it down, and went out into the living room, closing the door behind him. Then he got dressed.

Everything went on easily, even in the dark, for he'd put that uniform on more times than he could count without the aid of a lamp; in the war, you had to be prepared for discomfort. More importantly, you had to know how to button your trousers with blind fingers, and be able to lace your boots without seeing them.

The uniform was scratchy and smelled, oddly, like iodine and salt, though maybe that was because the mud had dried and now smelled like blood? Stanley didn't know, but he couldn't stop to think about it, or his heart would start pounding loud enough for Devon to hear. Which would wake Devon up, and then he would want to stop Stanley. As Stanley was on the verge of stopping himself with every other breath, he couldn't let that happen.

He left his canteen and rifle in one of the corners of the living room, though without them, he felt half naked. At the last minute, he took off his ID tag. He hung it on the bayonet blade for Devon to find as proof that Stanley had been there, so Devon wouldn't think that he was going crazy when he woke up in the morning to find Stanley gone.

For a second, he thought that he needed to find that book, Life in the Trenches , and double check the first part of the code and its accompanying second part. This was a delay tactic, he knew that. He knew the full code; it was right there on the tip of his tongue, and he could hardly move without seeing the words dance in his brain.

In the dark, with the vague ambient light slitting along the bottom of the curtains, he took a moment anyway to find the book. It was on the couch where they'd left it, and he touched it. A talisman, a good luck charm. He didn't know why he was worried, though, because what he was planning probably wasn't going to work, anyway.

Tiptoeing in his heavy boots, he went to the door and unlatched the lock. Then he turned the knob and pulled the door open. Outside, the night sky was not black but instead a silvery gray. The faint stars were being covered up by swiftly moving clouds that smelled fresh and cold, and he realized it was raining.

The heavy, slowly spinning feeling that had been in his head all day sped up, along with his heart, his breath. He had one moment where he could go back on what he'd set out to do. The world would wag on, and maybe other wars would be fought, maybe peace would reign.

The truth of it was, his friends had not deserved to die, nobody in the 44 th Battalion had deserved to die. It had just been bad luck about the radio, and maybe Stanley could go back one more time and fix it so they could live. Whether or not he'd be brought back to Devon, he didn't know, but he had to try. Otherwise, his life with Devon, in this time, would always be bittersweet, the sweetness strained because he'd done nothing to deserve it.

He closed his eyes and thought about Devon's sweet smile, the dark hair above his green eyes. The way he would get so focused on his studies, his work. How smooth his skin was behind his ear. The way he listened. The way he looked at Stanley, like Stanley was something special, and not just another soldier.

Except now, in this moment, another soldier was exactly what Stanley needed to be. He needed to do his duty. Then he'd let fate decide whether or not he deserved to come back to Devon.

The rain pattered against his face, cold little dots that seemed not to want to cause him harm, but they were raindrops, after all, and their job was to fall. Just like his job was to save his friends .

He thought about the trenches and the mortar shell, and the acrid smell of old oil and blood mixed with mud beneath his feet. The sound of far away pounding, the babble of men as they discussed whether there was enough coffee, and who had hid the sugar. In that moment, he could almost hear it all, smell it all. If he reached out, perhaps he could touch it all.

He needed to do this. He needed to go back in time, and the best way to do that was to recreate how it had happened before.

Closing the door against the rain, he went quietly into the bedroom and took Devon's phone from its cord. He closed the bedroom door, then went to the spot in the living room where he'd been when Devon had taken pictures of him. He'd been watching when Devon had used his phone, so he was able to figure out how to turn it on, and how to turn the camera around so it could take a picture of him. He took a deep breath.

"There are penguins on the ice and they skate brilliant figure eights," said Stanley to the night air. He aimed the phone at himself, tapped the face of the phone, and closed his eyes.

It seemed that nothing was happening, though Stanley kept his eyes closed. It was only his imagination that the air was colder and moving swiftly past him, as though he was running. Out of breath. Falling, the phone dropping from his numb fingers, a bright flash like an explosion lighting his brain.

And just as he wanted to open his eyes, his whole body was jarred to attention as his back was slammed against a muddy wall, and his boots were mired in mud. The same dizziness overcame him; he was going to throw up and, half choking, brought the back of his hand to his mouth. Drew in a breath. Smelled gun oil, burnt coffee. Iodine.

"Are you okay, Stanley?"

Stanley opened his eyes to look at who had asked him the question. It was Isaac.

He was sitting to Stanley's right, and on the other side of Isaac, as always, were Rex and Bertie. They each leaned out a little bit more than the fellow in front of him so that Stanley had a glimpse of all of their faces. They peered at him in an almost comical manner, eyebrows raised in the same way, mouths open to ask a question, or to share exciting news, like maybe a retreat had already been called.

"What were you saying?" asked Isaac. "You were mumbling just now and ignoring the fact that I'd just offered you my chocolate. You know I don't care for it, so won't you help a fellow out?"

With numb fingers, Stanley took the chocolate, still wrapped in a fold of greased paper, and put it in his pocket. He couldn't remember what he'd been about to say or do, only that there'd been something terribly important he needed to accomplish. Well, it would come back to him if he didn't worry about it too much. Maybe.

"Hey, thanks," said Stanley. He had the vague sense that there was something or someone he should remember. He couldn't seem to focus on it because there was too much going on in the trench.

"Ah, here comes the coffee," said Isaac. "Finally. If we missed breakfast, on account of them wanting to know about Commander Helmer, which couldn't wait, the least they could do is bring us coffee."

Rex and Bertie nodded in agreement as each took a tin mug from the rough-edged wooden tray that a lowly private was holding out to them. There was one mug left. It was for Stanley, so he took it, and it was with no surprise that when he tipped the mug to his mouth, the dark coffee was bitter with not enough sugar and definitely no milk. It was also hot enough to burn his tongue and tasted like dirt. At least it was warm and filled his belly. He drank several huge gulps of it to distract himself from the odd sensation that there was something he needed to do.

The sky over the trench was a dull silvery brown, thick with smoke from exploded shells, and rippling with the golden light of the sun as it tried to batter its way through. Below that was the line along the top of the dark brown trench they were in, a close-up horizon decorated with howitzer barrels and the points of bayonets. Bits of logs, draped with razor wire, tumbled along the edges of the trenches like badly decorated and very ugly cakes.

In the bunker in front of Stanley was Lt. Billings, who was talking with the sergeant in charge of ammunition. The chaplain was with them too, though his reason for being in the bunker made no sense to Stanley. If they were all handing out death at the far end of their weapons, what good was a chaplain except to bury the bodies? Then there was the scout, a wiry fellow, coated up to his hips in mud, his arms wrapped around himself as he talked to the lieutenant.

"Can you hear what they're saying?" asked Isaac. "Can we go? We already told them that Commander Helmer hadn't told us anything about what he was going to do."

Stanley turned his head, holding his tin mug in front of his mouth so the other fellows wouldn't see that it was trembling. He watched Isaac put down his tin mug to turn up his jacket collar in the jaunty way that pilots did, except that Isaac wasn't a pilot. He was a lance corporal, third class gunner, one level below Stanley because, as Stanley had often thought, though Isaac's hands were always steady on the trigger, he didn't have the heart for it.

"Are you going to barf on my boots?" asked Isaac.

Stanley could see in his eyes that, while he might pretend to be angry about it, he wouldn't be. Sometimes in the trenches, when things got scary, you simply had to throw up and there wasn't always a bucket.

"I'm going to go in there," said Rex.

The statement rang in Stanley's head, as if he'd heard Rex say that exact same thing a dozen times, and would have to make his weary way through hearing him say it another dozen if he didn't do something about it. But what?

"Better not," said Bertie, in a way that told Stanley that he expected Rex to obey him, just as he'd expected the young newsies back home to obey him.

"Hey fellas," said Stanley, suddenly moved by an impulse he couldn't identify and that scared him half to death. "Why don't you come sit on the other side of me?"

"Why?" asked Isaac. "We're quite close right now, aren't we, darling?" Isaac batted his eyes like a showgirl, and Rex almost splashed coffee out of his tin mug as he elbowed Isaac in the ribs, laughing .

"Right now, come on the other side of me," said Stanley, not hiding the urgency in his voice. "I'll let you sit on the canvas that Isaac gave me."

"Now?" asked Bertie. "They'll see us moving and think that we're trying to get close enough to hear what they are saying."

"They're saying that Commander Helmer deserted in the night," said Rex in a tired way, as though he'd said this many times already. "And they're deciding whether or not to go and look for him, or to report him. Or whatever it is that you do when a coward runs off."

"He was too young for command," said Isaac, shaking his head. "Just because his pop owned that shoe factory in Denver, and he was set to take over the board if his pop ever died—"

"Doesn't mean he was fit to lead," said Stanley, finishing for him, feeling yet again that this was a conversation they'd had not only once, but maybe dozens of times. "It's all moot now, as there's no way he could have made it to wherever he thought he was going. Not with the Germans getting closer every time we look away."

It had been like a game of Stop-and-Go for days. The Germans, with their massive amounts of manpower, had been able to build new trenches in the middle of the night, and now they were closer than ever. If you listened hard enough, if it got quiet enough, you could hear their voices saying German words that nobody could understand.

Well, except for Bertie, who knew that Achtung meant attention , and feuer wenn fertig meant fire when ready , and kleines madchen meant little girl , though how he knew that was anybody's guess. Rex had gone as far, that one time, as to accuse Bertie of being a German spy. They'd almost come to blows over it until Commander Helmer had broken it up and told them that Bertie had been close to being accepted into cryptography training. Only they'd needed more warm bodies for the battle, and his paperwork had been stamped for the front lines.

Stanley looked at Bertie with his narrow face and wide blue eyes, his crop of flaxen hair now shorn so it could fit beneath the metal helmet. The way he squinted because he needed glasses, only he never asked Commander Helmer for them .

Stanley thought Bertie never wanted to draw any attention to himself because doing so back home had gotten him beaten up in a back alley somewhere. Bertie should have gone into the ranks of ciphers and coders, and he sure as hell shouldn't have ended up at the front with Stanley. In a trench up to their ankles in mud and who knew what all else.

Then there was Rex, who was big across the shoulders, enough to strain the seams of his uniform. He had tree trunk thighs, and wore huge boots, the biggest the army had to give him, but he walked with the grace of a dancer. He hated Germans so much that he was first up in the morning, and the last asleep at night.

His aim was quite deadly, so deadly that there had been mutterings by Commander Helmer that Rex might be transferred into sniper training. Only Helmer had deserted. Lt. Billings sure as hell wasn't going to order a transfer right in the middle of their current disaster when every man was needed in the trenches, so Rex was stuck with the rest of them, destined to fight in the mud, to die in the mud.

And then there was Isaac, who was still looking at Stanley as if waiting to answer an unasked question. It was a question that Stanley would never ask because, as he looked at Isaac, he knew the answer would be no. It wasn't that Isaac would get angry and punch Stanley in the face. Instead, Isaac would refuse and demur, then make a little joke, brush the scar on his chin with his thumb, and then they could go on as they always had.

Whatever private impulses Isaac might have, he hid them. He moved away and then close, whatever suited him, always the dashing young soldier more concerned with his uniform than he ought to be, given their situation. He always looked as though he was on the verge of hopping into a little wood-and-canvas biplane, a silk scarf around his neck, to fly up into the blue, blue sky. He was like a story that Stanley enjoyed reading, but it was a story only, and would always be so.