Chapter VII
VII
and it’s too much for Arno, who sits down, something Bagger hates to see, mud’s going to soak through the kid’s drawers like he’s loading a diaper, and under his dented helmet, Arno does look pretty shitty as he mumbles, “He’s not stopping.
He’s been yelling for longer than anyone’s ever yelled,” and he screws the heel of a palm into his eye, “It hurts my head,”
and Bagger wonders if the kid’s onto something, what if the shrieker is some new kind of Hun weapon, a sonic cudgel intended to drive doughboys batty, turn them against one another to release the pressure in their skulls, and if so, it’s one more reason not to dally, either they do this task or they don’t,
and so Bagger says, “The kid’s right. So’s Veck.
We don’t mop up this mess, Reis is going to find out.
If he gets replaced, that only makes it worse.
He’s not going to drift peacefully out to sea, you know?
He’ll drag us down with him. He’ll make his last act sticking us with court-martials,” a threat that descends until Popkin hurls it away like the tongue,
and Popkin grunts, “No one’s gotta know what we do or don’t do. Nobody’s gotta tell nobody nothing about nothing. You hear me, darkie?,”
and Bagger smiles big, lets the ash turn his teeth as gray as Popkin’s, and says, “Your belief in us is downright touching, Private Popkin. You’re right.
There’s no way any of us would ever turn against our bosom pals.
Or talk about how one private wanted us to just hunker down till the guy out there stops screaming.
Nah. We wouldn’t dream of it. We’re all-American heroes, all five of us, fresh off the assembly line,”
and Arno concurs with a single-word moan, “Nantillois,” mispronounced but with enough dread for Veck to agree, “Uh-huh. Those blinded Germans at Nantillois. Reis told Company K to question them. Instead they killed them. Reis found out and there was hell,” but Popkin butts back in, insisting, “Company K did right. They did what ought to be done,” and he makes a finger gun, aims it at Veck, and goes, “Bang,”
and Goodspeed, high-pitched as rifle fire, says, “Hold on, everyone just hold on. Maybe you’re right, Bagger, maybe we gotta do what Reis said, but it’s cockamamie for all five of us to go over the top like we’re a whole brigade when we’re not even a platoon, not even a squad, just a piss-poor five-man detail, couple of pop-guns and a flamethrower. You have to be honestly joking,”
and Popkin aims his finger gun at Goodspeed and goes, “Bang,”
and this is rich coming from Vincent Goodspeed, Bagger closes his cold hands over the cocking piece of his Springfield, one quick twist and he could crack Goodspeed’s jaw in half, but instead, Bagger strokes his chin and says, “Only one of us should go, is that right? I wonder why that would be so important to Private Goodspeed? Why he’d want to be alone with our dead bodies,” to which Goodspeed’s squinty face unclenches into gasping offense,
and it’s an act, they all know it’s an act, Goodspeed combs over battlefields like a prospector, harvesting every tradable object so the men who do the actual fighting have to visit the Goodspeed General Store for war souvenirs, he’s got German slouch hats and pickelhaube covers, ideal playthings for stateside sons, and horse gas masks that look like the heads of nightmare stallions, and epaulettes your girl can sew into a quilt, and weapons, they say Goodspeed lugs around an arsenal of saw-toothed bayonets, Mauser cartridges, brass-topped gas shells, even German officer pistols,
and because carrion birds aren’t choosy, Vincent Goodspeed, also known as Vincent the Vulture, also robs the American dead, or so they say, as well as the American dying, there’s a corporal who swears he saw Goodspeed cut the thumb off a dying doughboy to get his wedding ring, not that Goodspeed could ever trade such contraband to fellow Americans,
and that might explain why Goodspeed has gone AWOL during battles only to return from the direction of a village, pockets larded with francs, which isn’t even the ugliest hearsay, that’d be the rumor that Goodspeed makes his best deals during night visits to the German trench, he’s been seen humping across No Man’s Land at dawn, fingers shiny with the military-issue butter he trades to Huns reduced to eating their horses, and it’s fitting he licks those fingers clean, Vincent the Vulture has no morals, only appetite,
and though Bagger knows his own morals aren’t much better, he regrips his Springfield, aware that if he swings it hard enough, Goodspeed’s whole head, including that exaggerated look of insult, will pop right off, but Hugh Popkin is the faster draw, pointing his finger-gun at Bagger, lips peeled back to reveal the overripe fruit of his gums and the long roots of teeth as gray as chicken bones,
and he says, “Bang, Bagger. Right in the balls,”