“Tol’ that bastard Ah didn’t give a hoot in hell what he did,” said Chrisfield in a broken voice.
“Say, Andy, I don’t think I ought ter let anybody talk to him,” said Small in an apologetic tone. “I don’t see why Sarge always gives me all his dirty work.”
Andrews walked off without replying.
“Never mind, Chris; they won’t do nothin’ to ye,” said Jenkins, grinning at him good-naturedly from the door.
“Ah doan give a hoot in hell what they do,” said Chrisfield again.
He lay back in his bunk and looked at the ceiling. The barracks was full of a bustle of cleaning up. Judkins was sweeping the floor with a broom made of dry sticks. Another man was knocking down the swallows’ nests with a bayonet. The mud nests crumbled and fell on the floor and the bunks, filling the air with a flutter of feathers and a smell of birdlime. The little naked bodies, with their orange bills too big for them, gave a soft plump when they hit the boards of the floor, where they lay giving faint gasping squeaks. Meanwhile, with shrill little cries, the big swallows flew back and forth in the shanty, now and then striking the low roof.
“Say, pick ’em up, can’t yer?” said Small. Judkins was sweeping the little gasping bodies out among the dust and dirt.
A stoutish man stooped and picked the little birds up one by one, puckering his lips into an expression of tenderness. He made his two hands into a nest-shaped hollow, out of which stretched the long necks and the gaping orange mouths. Andrews ran into him at the door.
“Hello, Dad,” he said. “What the hell?”
“I just picked these up.”
“So they couldn’t let the poor little devils stay there? God! it looks to me as if they went out of their way to give pain to everything, bird, beast or man.”
“War ain’t no picnic,” said Judkins.
“Well, God damn it, isn’t that a reason for not going out of your way to raise more hell with people’s feelings than you have to?”
A face with peaked chin and nose on which was stretched a parchment-colored skin appeared in the door.
“Hello, boys,” said the “Y” man. “I just thought I’d tell you I’m going to open the canteen tomorrow, in the last shack on the Beaucourt road. There’ll be chocolate, ciggies, soap, and everything.”
Everybody cheered. The “Y” man beamed.
His eye lit on the little birds in Dad’s hands.
“How could you?” he said. “An American soldier being deliberately cruel. I would never have believed it.”
“Ye’ve got somethin’ to learn,” muttered Dad, waddling out into the twilight on his bandy legs.
Chrisfield had been watching the scene at the door with unseeing eyes. A terrified nervousness that he tried to beat off had come over him. It was useless to repeat to himself again and again that he didn’t give a damn; the prospect of being brought up alone before all those officers, of being cross-questioned by those curt voices, frightened him. He would rather have been lashed. Whatever was he to say, he kept asking himself; he would get mixed up or say things he didn’t mean to, or else he wouldn’t be able to get a word out at all. If only Andy could go up with him, Andy was educated, like the officers were; he had more learning than the whole shooting-match put together. He’d be able to defend himself, and defend his friends, too, if only they’d let him.
“I felt just like those little birds that time they got the bead on our trench at Boticourt,” said Jenkins, laughing.
Chrisfield listened to the talk about him as if from another world. Already he was cut off from his outfit. He’d disappear and they’d never know or care what became of him.
The mess-call blew and the men filed out. He could hear their talk outside, and the sound of their mess-kits as they opened them. He lay on his bunk staring up into the dark. A faint blue light still came from outside, giving a curious purple color to Small’s red face and long drooping nose at the end of which hung a glistening drop of moisture.
Chrisfield found Andrews washing a shirt in the brook that flowed through the ruins of the village the other side of the road from the buildings where the division was quartered. The blue sky flicked with pinkish-white clouds gave a shimmer of blue and lavender and white to the bright water. At the bottom could be seen battered helmets and bits of equipment and tin cans that had once held meat. Andrews turned his head; he had a smudge of mud down his nose and soapsuds on his chin.
“Hello, Chris,” he said, looking him in the eyes with his sparkling blue eyes, “how’s things?” There was a faint anxious frown on his forehead.
“Two-thirds of one month’s pay an’ confined to quarters,” said Chrisfield cheerfully.
“Gee, they were easy.”
“Um-hum, said Ah was a good shot an’ all that, so they’d let me off this time.”
Andrews started scrubbing at his shirt again.
“I’ve got this shirt so full of mud I don’t think I ever will get it clean,” he said.
“Move ye ole hide away, Andy. Ah’ll wash it. You ain’t no good for nothin’.”
“Hell no, I’ll do it.”
“Move ye hide out of there.”
“Thanks awfully.”
Andrews got to his feet and wiped the mud off his nose with his bare forearm.
“Ah’m goin’ to shoot that bastard,” said Chrisfield, scrubbing at the shirt.
“Don’t be an ass, Chris.”
“Ah swear to God Ah am.”
“What’s the use of getting all wrought up. The thing’s over. You’ll probably never see him again.”
“Ah ain’t all het up… Ah’m goin’ to do it though.” He wrung the shirt out carefully and flipped Andrews in the face with it. “There ye are,” he said.
“You’re a good fellow, Chris, even if you are an ass.”
“Tell me we’re going into the line in a day or two.”
“There’s been a devil of a lot of artillery going up the road; French, British, every old kind.”
“Tell me they’s raisin’ hell in the Oregon forest.”
They walked slowly across the road. A motorcycle despatch-rider whizzed past them.
“It’s them guys has the fun,” said Chrisfield.
“I don’t believe anybody has much.”
“What about the officers?”
“They’re too busy feeling important to have a real hell of a time.”
The hard cold rain beat like a lash in his face. There was no light anywhere and no sound but the hiss of the rain in the grass. His eyes strained to see through the dark until red and yellow blotches danced before them. He walked very slowly and carefully, holding something very gently in his hand under his raincoat. He felt himself full of a strange subdued fury; he seemed to be walking behind himself spying on his own actions, and what he saw made him feel joyously happy, made him want to sing.
He turned so that the rain beat against his cheek. Under his helmet he felt his hair full of sweat that ran with the rain down his glowing face. His fingers clutched very carefully the smooth stick he had in his hand.
He stopped and shut his eyes for a moment; through the hiss of the rain he had heard a sound of men talking in one of the shanties. When he shut his eyes he saw the white face of Anderson before him, with its unshaven chin and the eyebrows that met across the nose.
Suddenly he felt the wall of a house in front of him. He put out his hand. His hand jerked back from the rough wet feel of the tar paper, as if it had touched something dead. He groped along the wall, stepping very cautiously. He felt as he had felt reconnoitering in the Bringy Wood. Phrases came to his mind as they had then. Without thinking what they meant, the words Make the world safe for Democracy formed themselves in his head. They were very comforting. They occupied his thoughts. He said them to himself again and again. Meanwhile his free hand was fumbling very carefully with the fastening that held the wooden shutter over a window. The shutter opened a very little, creaking loudly, louder than the patter of rain on the roof of the shack. A stream of water from the roof was pouring into his face.