“All right; when you’re through, report back to the Company.” The lieutenant went out, drawing on a pair of khaki-colored gloves with a satisfied and important gesture.
Fuselli walked back slowly to the tents where the Company was quartered, looking about him at the long lines of barracks, gaunt and dripping in the mist, at the big tin sheds of the cook shacks where the cooks and K. P.’s in greasy blue denims were slouching about amid a steam of cooking food.
Something of the gesture with which the lieutenant drew on his gloves caught in the mind of Fuselli. He had seen people make gestures like that in the movies, stout dignified people in evening suits. The president of the Company that owned the optical goods store, where he had worked, at home in Frisco, had had something of that gesture about him.
And he pictured himself drawing on a pair of gloves that way, importantly, finger by finger, with a little wave of self-satisfaction when the gesture was completed… He’d have to get that corporalship.
The company sang lustily as it splashed through the mud down a grey road between high fences covered with great tangles of barbed wire, above which peeked the ends of warehouses and the chimneys of factories.
The lieutenant and the top sergeant walked side by side chatting, now and then singing a little of the song in a deprecating way. The corporal sang, his eyes sparkling with delight. Even the sombre sergeant who rarely spoke to anyone, sang. The company strode along, its ninety-six legs splashing jauntily through the deep putty-colored puddles. The packs swayed merrily from side to side as if it were they and not the legs that were walking.
At last they were going somewhere. They had separated from the contingent they had come over with. They were all alone now. They were going to be put to work. The lieutenant strode along importantly. The sergeant strode along importantly. The corporal strode along importantly. The right guard strode along more importantly than anyone. A sense of importance, of something tremendous to do, animated the company like wine, made the packs and the belts seem less heavy, made their necks and shoulders less stiff from struggling with the weight of the packs, made the ninety-six legs tramp jauntily in spite of the oozy mud and the deep putty-colored puddles.
It was cold in the dark shed of the freight station where they waited. Some gas lamps flickered feebly high up among the rafters, lighting up in a ghastly way white piles of ammunition boxes and ranks and ranks of shells that disappeared in the darkness. The raw air was full of coal smoke and a smell of freshly-cut boards. The captain and the top sergeant had disappeared. The men sat about, huddled in groups, sinking as far as they could into their overcoats, stamping their numb wet feet on the mud-covered cement of the floor. The sliding doors were shut. Through them came a monotonous sound of cars shunting of buffers bumping against buffers, and now and then the shrill whistle of an engine.
“Hell, the French railroads are rotten,” said someone.
“How d’you know?” snapped Eisenstein, who sat on a box away from the rest with his lean face in his hands staring at his mud-covered boots.
“Look at this,” Bill Grey made a disgusted gesture towards the ceiling. “Gas. Don’t even have electric light.”
“Their trains run faster than ours,” said Eisenstein.
“The hell they do. Why, a fellow back in that rest camp told me that it took four or five days to get anywhere.”
“He was stuffing you,” said Eisenstein. “They used to run the fastest trains in the world in France.”
“Not so fast as the ‘Twentieth Century.’ Goddam, I’m a railroad man and I know.”
“I want five men to help me sort out the eats,” said the top sergeant, coming suddenly out of the shadows. “Fuselli, Grey, Eisenstein, Meadville, Williams… all right, come along.”
“Say, Sarge, this guy says that frog trains are faster than our trains. What d’ye think o’ that?”
The sergeant put on his comic expression. Everybody got ready to laugh.
“Well, if he’d rather take the side-door Pullmans we’re going to get aboard tonight than the ‘Sunset Limited,’ he’s welcome. I’ve seen ’em. You fellers haven’t.”
Everybody laughed. The top sergeant turned confidentially to the five men who followed him into a small well-lighted room that looked like a freight office.
“We’ve got to sort out the grub, fellers. See those cases? That’s three days’ rations for the outfit. I want to sort it into three lots, one for each car. Understand?”
Fuselli pulled open one of the boxes. The cans of bully beef flew under his fingers. He kept looking out of the corner of his eye at Eisenstein, who seemed very skilful in a careless way. The top sergeant stood beaming at them with his legs wide apart. Once he said something in a low voice to the corporal. Fuselli thought he caught the words: “privates first-class,” and his heart started thumping hard. In a few minutes the job was done, and everybody stood about lighting cigarettes.
“Well, fellers,” said Sergeant Jones, the sombre man who rarely spoke, “I certainly didn’t reckon when I used to be teachin’ and preachin’ and tendin’ Sunday School and the like that I’d come to be usin’ cuss words, but I think we got a damn good company.”
“Oh, we’ll have you sayin’ worse things than ‘damn’ when we get you out on the front with a goddam German aeroplane droppin’ bombs on you,” said the top sergeant, slapping him on the back. “Now, I want you five men to look out for the grub.” Fuselli’s chest swelled. “The company’ll be in charge of the corporal for the night. Sergeant Jones and I have got to be with the lieutenant; understand?”
They all walked back to the dingy room where the rest of the company waited huddled in their coats, trying to keep their importance from being too obvious in their step.
“I’ve really started now,” thought Fuselli to himself. “I’ve really started now.”
The bare freight car clattered and rumbled monotonously over the rails. A bitter cold wind blew up through the cracks in the grimy splintered boards of the floor. The men huddled in the corners of the car, curled up together like puppies in a box. It was pitch black. Fuselli lay half asleep, his head full of curious fragmentary dreams, feeling through his sleep the aching cold and the unending clattering rumble of the wheels and the bodies and arms and legs muffled in coats and blankets pressing against him. He woke up with a start. His teeth were chattering. The clanking rumble of wheels seemed to be in his head. His head was being dragged along, bumping over cold iron rails. Someone lighted a match. The freight car’s black swaying walls, the pack piled in the center, the bodies heaped in the corners where, out of khaki masses here and there gleamed an occasional white face or a pair of eyes-all showed clear for a moment and then vanished again in the utter blackness. Fuselli pillowed his head in the crook of someone’s arm and tried to go to sleep, but the scraping rumble of wheels over rails was too loud; he stayed with open eyes staring into the blackness, trying to draw his body away from the blast of cold air that blew up through a crack in the floor.
When the first greyness began filtering into the car, they all stood up and stamped and pounded each other and wrestled to get warm.
When it was nearly light, the train stopped and they opened the sliding doors. They were in a station, a foreign-looking station where the walls were plastered with unfamiliar advertisements. “V-E-R-S-A-I–L-L-E-S”; Fuselli spelt out the name.
“Versales,” said Eisenstein. “That’s where the kings of France used to live.”