Chapter 27

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

" Y ou fellows ought to move on the other side of me," said Stanley, urgency rising within him, strong, like a punch to the gut. "I'll give you my chocolate for the rest of the war if you do it right now."

"Even the chocolate that Isaac gives you?" asked Rex, always on the lookout for what was right and decent, where every man got his share.

"Yes, even that," said Stanley. He stood up and gestured to the canvas, which was wide enough to cover the muddy bench front to back, and long enough to accommodate at least three soldiers, if not more.

"What about me?" asked Isaac as he stood up.

In his eyes was the expression that Stanley had seen a hundred times before, the one that had made him want to move close and to say things he'd regret in the morning. But that was just Isaac; he didn't mean anything by it.

"I don't care for chocolate, you know that," said Isaac.

"I'll find something special, just for you," said Stanley. "New shoes, maybe," he said, gesturing to their feet, where the mud was squishing over the toes of their boots. "Something you can wear to dance in. "

"Suits me," said Isaac with a toss of his head. "Just make sure they're highly polished."

"Swell," said Stanley. "Now everybody move so I can grab this radio."

They were all in motion at the sound of his voice, which made Stanley feel the way commanders and lieutenants must feel. Stanley pushed away the heady rush as his friends sat down where he'd told them to.

When he grabbed the radio and lifted it up, it was quite heavy and bulky, and he was on the verge of dropping it. From behind him, without asking a single question, Isaac leaped up to help. Together they hauled the radio further down the trench and put it on the canvas, right next to Bertie. Bertie put his arm around it in a protective way, though he looked up at Stanley, a little startled.

"What did you do that for?" asked Bertie.

Without knowing why, Stanley took a step backwards, making sure that the radio, and Rex, and Bertie, and Isaac were all on the leeward side of him. They needed to be away from the danger he could hardly describe even to himself, a feeling of loathing and wariness. Of needing to be the bulwark against the onslaught that was yet to come.

Stanley opened his mouth to say, I don't know, except that at that moment, at that very moment, a mortar shell exploded right over their heads, and pieces of metal slammed into the mud where his buddies had just been sitting. Another large metallic shard hit the table where the radio had just been, shattering the spindly wood to bits. Smoke billowed up in an ugly yellow-brown cloud, and leaves of mud pattered heavily down, a brown rain that smelled of gunpowder and choked Stanley as he breathed it in.

" Stanley ," said Isaac. "You're bleeding."

Though he was yelling, Stanley could barely hear him after the defining roar of explosions. As Isaac yanked on Stanley's arm, he looked down. The upper arm of his uniform was darkened with blood that seeped into a bigger shape even as he watched, a cloud of spreading red and brown .

He looked up, startled, to see Rex coming at him. Rex yanked off Stanley's jacket, tossing it aside as he reached for Stanley, tearing his tan shirt, exposing Stanley's arm.

It could be just a scratch, as Stanley craned his head to see. Blood flowed in a line down his arm, like a thin, red waterfall. Or, it could be, as sometimes happened, that a thin slice of metal had been driven into his arm by the explosion, so fast and sharp and quick, all the way to the bone, that he'd not yet started to feel pain. Rex was going to check with his hands. In another moment, either he'd wrap Stanley's arm and that would be the end of it, or he'd look at Stanley and mutter a prayer because Stanley was about to bleed to death.

The chaplain was quickly at Rex's side, and though he didn't take over as Stanley had thought he was going to do, he stayed close and watched as Rex ran his fingers along Stanley's bare arm. The blood coated his hands, but he was shaking his head and looking satisfied all at once.

"It's just a nick," Rex said. "Just a regular nick."

Stanley wanted to throw up on his boots, his gut churning because it could have been that the shrapnel had gone through his uniform, slicing all the way through his arm, and had that happened, Rex's ministrations would have yanked the arm all the way off. But it stayed in place, even when a medic came up, slopped iodine all up and down Stanley's arm and wrapped it in a bandage.

"There are no clean shirts, I'm afraid," said the chaplain. "You'll have to put on your bloodstained one until our situation changes."

Stanley was about to open his mouth to say that he was fine with that, especially since he got to keep his arm, but his head felt woozy at the sight of his own blood being churned into the mud below everybody's feet. Rex helped him back into his shirt and brown jacket while Isaac and Bertie watched with wide eyes.

"Who the hell moved this radio," bellowed Lt. Billings.

Stanley swayed on his feet, a little unbalanced. Everybody moved out of the way, though he couldn't blame them. Lt. Billings never raised his voice unless the moment was imminent and dire.

"I did, sir," said Stanley. He did his best not to reach for the bump on his arm where the bandage was. But his arm ached, and he couldn't help himself, which drew the attention of Lt. Billings and pretty much everybody within earshot and eyeshot.

"He moved it before the bomb hit it, sir," said Isaac.

"Yes," said Bertie. "Just in the nick of time, sir."

"You might have broken it," said the lieutenant. "And just when I needed to use it."

He didn't say what he needed to use the radio for, but then, he didn't need to. He was the officer in charge, and anything he might say was on a need-to-know basis. Besides, as he shoved his way over to the radio, Stanley had a sinking feeling that he knew what the radio was about to be used for, though how he knew this, he couldn't explain, even to himself.

Lt. Billings turned the radio on. The radio squawked to life with one long, shrill sound that warbled up and down. Lt. Billings adjusted the dial next to the compass. He tapped one of the vacuum tubes, at which point the noise of static went up, and the warble went down. Which meant that although the radio was working, there were no other radios within range that were on or functional.

The full awareness of being the officer in charge fell away from Lt. Billings, and just for a moment, he became a man faced with a very difficult decision that could not be written up in a report and then forgotten afterward. No, Stanley could see it in his face that what he was about to say was going to alter the lieutenant as a human being for the rest of his life.

"The radio is working, but we can't reach anyone on it," said Lt. Billings. The air of being a commander settled over him as he straightened up from the radio to address the small group of men, the chaplain, the scout, and Stanley. "I would call for retreat, but I need the other half of the code to do that. However, I can't reach anyone, so I can't get the code."

Any lesser man in charge would have left it at that, and used the force of suggestion or the enormous blank silence that grew in and among the soldiers in the trench. Lt. Billings wasn't that man, which Stanley knew even before he cleared his throat to speak .

"I need someone to volunteer to go to the major's trench and deliver half the code and bring the other half back," said Lt. Billings. "Then I can call retreat for the 44 th Battalion. Otherwise, we are in danger of being overrun by the Germans."

Stanley stepped forward before anybody could speak because in spite of being a battalion made up of young men, there was more than one soldier who would have been willing to take on the task that had no chance of success and that would surely be a one-way trip. But Stanley knew he needed to be the one to go. He had a mission to complete, and he had made promises—

In that moment, Stanley remembered. Everything .

He remembered Devon. He remembered tripping over Devon in the rain. Being taken inside the warm, dry cottage, and being fed marvelous food. He remembered the hot shower, the clean clothes, and the piles of papers and books that occupied various shelves and spots on the floor.

He remembered Devon sitting at the heavy wooden kitchen table, typing away at his metal laptop, or scrolling to search for information to include in his thesis. The way he would look at Stanley and smile, as if in amazement that Stanley was listening to his ideas about his paper, that Stanley was interested. Which, of course, Stanley had been. It had been his own life, after all, that Devon was writing about.

More than that, when the passion would light up Devon's eyes and his face became animated, it had been more than Stanley could do to resist him. Devon's gentle hands in the dark, bringing Stanley to pleasure, was a sensation that Stanley would never forget, as long as he lived. What's more, he remembered Devon telling him the code. In any other regard, it was useless unless complete, until, at this moment, when the 44 th Battalion needed it most because Stanley knew the full code.

"I'll go, sir," said Stanley. He drew his hand away from his arm and stood as straight and steady as he could.

"But you've been wounded," said Lt. Billings.

"A scratch, sir," said Stanley, and he meant it. Before Devon, he might have played it up, limping like a wounded bird dragging its wing across the dirt, but now he needed to finish his mission. He needed to save the entire battalion to be worthy of Devon's love. "I can make it, just tell me what to tell them."

Lt. Billings placed his hand quite gently on Stanley's arm and pulled him, alone, into the bunker.

"Where's your rifle, son?" asked Lt. Billings. "Where's your canteen? You're going to get mighty thirsty running between bullets, scared enough to piss yourself."

Stanley thought about how he'd left both of those things in the cottage so that Devon wouldn't think he was going crazy when he woke up and found Stanley gone. But it was worth it, all of it.

"They got hit by mortar fire," said Stanley, ducking his chin to hide the fact that his ID tag was also missing.

With a sigh and a grimace that seemed to reflect a sense of desperation, Lt. Billings tapped the map that was spread out on the table. He drew Stanley's attention to the upper left corner, just beyond where the cottage was, the cottage where Devon would one day live and write his paper about weather and how it affected the war.

"It's the far corner, here, do you see?" asked the lieutenant. "You can run along the bottom of trenches for the most part, except for here, where you will have to go over two of them."

As he looked at the map, the lieutenant's face was grave and still. Stanley knew that he would have to disobey orders and run along the top of the trenches the entire way to avoid the mustard gas. He also knew in his heart that the lieutenant would rather have gone himself than to send someone in his place. But he was the officer in charge and needed to stay with his men.

"I understand, sir," said Stanley.

He had the way memorized and almost turned to go on his mission before he remembered that the lieutenant had not yet given him the first half of the code. It would look odd if the lieutenant remembered later that this had not happened, but that Stanley had been able to come back with the rest of the code just the same.

"The code, sir?" asked Stanley.

"Yes," said Lt. Billings, and with a little sigh, he raised his head to look at Stanley. "Tell the officer this: There are penguins on the ice . He'll know what it means, and he'll give you the other half."

"Yes, sir," said Stanley.

He straightened up, gave Lt. Billings a smart salute, and then, exiting the bunker, touched his forelock to his buddies, and smiled at Isaac. Then he ran at a dog trot until he reached the place where he needed to decide whether to go up along the top of the trenches or down along the bottom, as the lieutenant had ordered. Both directions had meant his death by mustard gas, as the last two missions had proved to him. Maybe this time would be different, or maybe it would be the same. Either way, he was going to do his best and prove that he deserved Devon's love. To the world. To time itself.