Maybe the way he felt about death, he was thinking, glancing with instinctive caution down the empty streets of Werpen, maybe that feeling explained his attraction to Sonny Laurel, a powerful, almost painful response to someone so alive. He welcomed a sudden distracting sound, relief from the tensions of his thoughts... a vehicle laboring up through the woods to the town, the motor’s echo flat and muffled under the heavy fog. He picked up his rifle, which he had propped against the jeep, and as he snapped a round into the chamber saw Docker running back into the square, his head turned toward the sound of the laboring engine.
The sergeant climbed onto the rim of the fountain, tracking the valley with his binoculars until he picked up a command car traveling through dark stands of trees. Stepping down, he said to Gelnick, “You better get lost for a while. Go on into the church and light a candle or something.”
“Hey, I’m a nice Jewish boy,” Gelnick said. “What’s this church crap? You want my mother to drop dead, she finds out?”
“It’s Lieutenant Longworth and your buddy Korbick’s with him,” Docker said. “Let’s pay the two dollars, okay?”
“You want me to go hide? Dig a hole or something?”
“Look, Gelnick, Korbick’s got you in his sights for some reason and he’d love to have you back at Battery headquarters where he could work you over. So don’t let’s make it easy for him.”
“Sure, I’ll go hide. I don’t want to spoil his day,” Gelnick said easily, but his head felt like it might explode; he was afraid his thoughts would goad him into something reckless, so he managed a wide smile by flattening his lips and squinting his eyes, and that smile was fixed and steady on his face as he ran through the square and into the church.
The battery command car with First Sergeant Miles Korbick at the wheel stopped in the square between the church and the statue of the archer. Second Lieutenant Longworth, short and compact with a weathered face and careful eyes, climbed from the jeep and casually returned Docker’s salute. He had a bottle in his hand and he tossed it to him, saying, “Think fast, sergeant. Live bottle of bourbon, courtesy of Captain Grant. Merry Christmas.”...
At about this time Carmine Spinelli and Tubby Gruber were searching the bedrooms of a two-storied house at the opposite end of the village, accompanied by Private Leo Pierce, a thin, solemn youngster with patches of raw acne flaming on his cheeks.
Corporal Larkin shouted at them from the street to report for mail call and then started toward the square, where he saw Lieutenant Longworth standing with Docker, and distributing the section’s mail and packages.
Larkin had no letters, he seldom did, but there was an oblong package for him that he knew contained a quart-size Mazola oil can. An identical package arrived every month or so, sent to him by a cousin, the oil carefully rinsed out and replaced with thirty-two ounces of rye whiskey.
Docker had letters from Dave Hamlin and his father, who wrote in his cool style of politics and the German shepherd pups which he had (so long ago, it seemed to Docker) named after American towns — Wheeling, Chicago, Detroit, Kennett, Rye — “Rye’s temperament is constant, I fear. Violent, that is, particularly in regard to felines.”
Docker’s father published and edited two small weekly newspapers in southwestern Pennsylvania. Of politics, he wrote: “FDR will bring the country to ruin and damnation, which we may or may not deserve. I long for the passion if not the principles of Father Coughlin. The voice from Royal Oak is authentic, at least. I distrust people who see all sides of the question. They see none, in fact. Remember, he warned us of ‘the prostituted panderings of a purchased press’? I say this with distress, for there is hardly a newspaper in this country I trust anymore.”
Docker disagreed completely with his father’s politics, but there had never been a way to establish a dialogue in those areas. Even when he was in high school it had seemed to him his father’s views were lacking in substantial conviction. He had begun to wonder how deliberate this was on his father’s part, because those political views had become a wall between them over the years, sounds without any particular sense or significance, as meaningless as the extensive reports he sent him on the antics of his German shepherds.
Docker next read bits of Hamlin’s letter... “Yes, only the Swiss and the dead are neutral in this war... On campus there is an almost fearful anticipation of the end. The war has animated us and given us a sense of importance. We are growing fat and tough and confident on it... Everyone is working again and there is more overtime than the workers can handle. But no sense of guilt — take this with a raised eyebrow if you will — because the civilians feel they are pulling their weight too.”
Docker put the letters away in his map case.
First Sergeant Korbick toured Werpen in the HQ command car, stopping only long enough at the machine gun mount to chew out Tex Farrel for not having properly buckled the chin strap of his helmet. Gunning the vehicle, the first sergeant zigzagged through the narrow streets until he came out again on the square. He patted his forehead with a handkerchief and called to Dormund to bring him coffee.
Sergeant Korbick was thirty-one, stout and thick, with very little fat on him. His complexion was dark, his eyes were liquid and brown. His head was large and his black, close-cut hair stuck up and away from a clean white scalp like porcupine quills.
The sergeant had a particular distaste for dirt and foul odors that was near-pathological; his duffel bag was packed with deodorants and foot powders, salves, ointments and balms, stiff brushes and strong laundry soaps. Each night in his tent the first sergeant ritualistically scrubbed himself in a tub the battery’s technical sergeant had converted from an oil drum for that specific purpose.
When Dormund brought the steaming coffee, Korbick moistened his handkerchief and carefully wiped the rim of the canteen cup. Glancing around the square, he saw Guido Linari and Laurel scuffling in the snow with a large mongrel dog, and Docker and Trankic talking to the lieutenant. When Longworth and the corporal went off toward the guns, Korbick yelled to Docker, “Hey, Bull! You got more fuck-ups in your section than the whole battery put together.”
Docker walked over to him. “What’s your problem. Miles?”
“Don’t worry about my problem. I just had to raise hell with that Texas hotshot you got on the machine guns. He was sitting there with his helmet strap hanging down like a second cock. I got to do your work. Docker, the least you could do is remember me on payday.”
“Sure,” Docker said. “What would you like — a couple more bars of soap?”
“That’s real fucking funny. Docker, really fucking funny.” Korbick grinned at him, looking relaxed and comfortable in his warm sweater and spotless fatigues and field jacket, but a flush of color in his face betrayed his anger. Looking around again, he said, “I don’t see my favorite fuck-up. Where’s the Jew-boy, Docker?”
“I suspect it’s a waste of time to mention this, but he doesn’t like being called that.”
“Don’t give me that shit. He’s a Jew, ain’t he? And he sure as hell ain’t a man in my book. So what does that make him?”
“It’s a tough war without you making it tougher, Korbick.”
“What the hell’s it to you anyway? This morning you got on Haskell about Spinelli. Now it’s Gelnick. Hell, I’m just trying to make soldiers out of these fuck-ups.”
“Gelnick doesn’t need you pounding on him.”
Korbick sipped his coffee, then grinned at Docker. “What is it with you. Docker? You got something going with the Jew-boy?”