Chapter XXI
XXI
and though the angel is carried like Hestia’s flame, night falls anyway, and the men, wherever they are in Bois de Fays or Bois de Dannevoux or Bois de What-the-Fuck, are dead in their boots and stymied by a honeycombed terrain that makes Bagger feel in service of a diabolical queen bee, and stymied as well by blimps of fog concealing what could be two million more Germans, so they grunt their agreement to stop for the night,
and Bagger’s low mood sinks lower when he sees from forty yards off that the space under the howitzer is occupied, a man sitting cross-legged before a miserable spit of fire, no telling if he’s friend or foe, might not matter if he’s edgy and armed, and most men out here are both, which means skirting the howitzer is the smart move, but also means more hiking, more mud, more rain, and the dull looks the foursome give one another tabulate the consensus of no fucking way,
and right now it’s Veck who carries the angel, something none of them loves, not with Veck’s red eyes pitting the horse’s black sockets, and though the horse-man doesn’t seem likely to gallop away, who the fuck knows, so Bagger tells Arno to wait with Veck and scream bloody murder if he tries to leave, a better option than leaving Popkin, Bagger’s gambler senses tell him it’s an even break the lummox would slay Veck and take the angel,
and that leaves Popkin to go with Bagger to the howitzer, he can’t think of a worse sidekick but the pickins are slim, so they slug across a slipskin turf the Great War peeled from the planet, Popkin lugging his Springfield, Bagger waving a banner of puttees to signal peace, and it’s a positive sign that the man, upon spotting them, keeps eating,
and that good sign seems less so when Bagger and Popkin reach the howitzer to find the man devouring a cooked rat, his face glazed in crackling fat,
and that’s not even taboo, not an hour ago Popkin tried to get Bagger and Arno to use their bloody toes to attract leeches, then use those leeches to attract vermin, but this man grins, big moth-gray teeth, and hoots, “Oh, ce sont les américains!” and unjoints upward and bonks his head on the howitzer’s underside, which knocks his cap from a balding pate mottled with the corpus delicti of previous bonks, a risky habit in the French army, which the man’s pigeon-colored overcoat, tunic, and breeches identify him as part of, poor bastard,
and the man springs to flagpole stance in the rain, scabbard swinging, and salutes with his non-rat hand, a hand lacking Chauchat or Lebel or Hotchkiss or Berthier, instead armed with Pinard, the manure-tasting so-called wine issued to French fighters, this fellow has a full bottle, less so after his salute spills a glass’s worth, which he licks from his chin, snorting amusement,
and Bagger glances at Popkin, this poilu’s as blotto as the day is long, but seems so harmless Bagger’s tempted to beckon Veck and Arno, Pinard and Rat du Jour all around, but Popkin jabs his thumb at Germany and says, “Take a hike, Frenchy, we need to bivouac,”
and the soldier’s tipsy grin plunges into a frown so harlequin Bagger thinks it’s a joke until the man snatches the handle of his sword but struggles to extract it from the leather scabbard, he grunts and tugs and curses while Bagger and Popkin stand there getting soaked, whereupon the two-foot blade dislodges so abruptly the soldier staggers sideways and nearly falls, only to plant his feet, point his blade at them, and shout, “Mind that tongue, blackguard! Soit!,”
and Popkin simply hitches up his Springfield, which makes the poilu gasp as if shown an obscenity, whereupon he starts swinging his blade in off-center figure eights until the effort trips him backward into the mud, from where he laughs up into the sky, opens his mouth, and starts drinking the rain like it’s better than the pinard, which it is,
and Bagger nearly agrees with Popkin, it’d be easier, and drier, to murder this fool, but instead Bagger wipes his face and says, “Look, Frenchy, what’s your name?
Comment vous appelez-vous?,” to which the soldier sirens, “Oui! Frenchy! Frenchy Franchouillard, this is the name for me! Soit!,” and Bagger has a hunch this soldier, an officer according to his sword, has gone AWOL, and in more ways than one,
and Bagger sighs, “Don’t make this hard. We’ve had a rough goddamn night,”
and Frenchy Franchouillard sits up with automaton speed, widens his eyes, places a hand to his chest, a burlesque of concern, and coos, “Rough night, is this so? Poor, poor doughboys. Two or three months you spend in discomfort, Je suis désolé,” and then his eyes go gimlet and his smile warps into a snarl, “Four years we die in mud. Waiting for les héros américains to look up from their baseball mitts and Cola-Cocas,”
and Popkin throttles his rifle and gets closer, “Ain’t our fault you can’t handle your business, frog,” and Frenchy Franchouillard drops both rat and saber to clap his hands in sarcastic appreciation, and Bagger feels his own fingers twitch in want of a weapon as the poilu sings out, “Bravo! Here the doughboys come, just as we grenouilles have finished les Allemands for good,”
and Popkin impresses Bagger by knowing that’s how the French say Germans, the lummox sputters with trench mouth viscosity, “Finished? You cheese-stinking drunkie? You ain’t noticed how Jerry’s shelling the shit out of us?
,” to which Frenchy Franchouillard twirls the sword he’s no longer carrying and begins the painstaking process of getting back onto his boots, what’s left of them, the peeling soles, the eyelets enucleated, the leather tongues as rotten as Popkin’s,
and the poilu jeers, “La Boche was fichu in March! Ludendorff could have taken Amiens and then, qui sait? But les Allemands always wants his schnitzel and sauerkraut both. So he splits his armies in three, chop chop chop, and tries to take everything at once. C’est la vie.
They say Ludendorff is, how do you say? Maniaque?
Everything must be tidy? War is not so. So Allemagne falls.
Adieu la guerre à l’outrance. Now France and Britain have only to round up the Les Boche livestock,”
and Popkin raises his Springfield to the level of Frenchy Franchouillard’s knees, “France and Britain and America,” growls the lummox, a freshborn patriot, but his face purples when the poilu snickers, swipes up his sword with surprise aplomb, and whirls it theatrically, bisecting raindrops with enough élan to make Popkin back away, the French always could hold their liquor,
and the officer holds his saber perpendicular to the ground, a musketeer pose to match a musketeer tone, “Les américains hatch like maggots on the corpse. But it is my corpse, you see, dear doughboys, and I am not so happy to have all this worming about. It is not fighting America wants. Not glory. Not la dignité personnelle. It wants spoils, only spoils,”
and Popkin directs the Springfield at the poilu’s face and says, “Frog, I’m gonna shoot you,” but Frenchy Franchouillard’s smirk is for Bagger alone, the man might be drunk, but he knows which doughboy’s haversack carries all the brains,
and the poilu mutters at Bagger with astonishing odium, “You know nothing of courage. Nothing of despair. Nothing of pain. You are children who arrive late to playtime believing there are games yet to play. Non. The games are over. And we have all lost, mon frère,”
and Bagger inhales to tell this frog to can it, but instead chokes, a hot shock,
and because Frenchy Franchouillard spoke of maggots, Uncle Sam hatches his own in Bagger’s lungs, and a fly swarm fills his chest, the tickling shivers of a thousand palpitating wings, a cold roll of housefly thoraxes up his trachea, that’s how hard the shame hits, for the poilu is right, American suffering is a stubbed toe next to what befell the French, and Bagger tilts his face to the rain to cool the fever, to keep the bugs from exiting in a visible cloud of disgrace,
and he gags to Popkin, “Don’t shoot him,”
and Popkin’s stupid, but less so in matters of violence, he assumes that, by nixing a noisy bullet, Bagger authorizes anything else, and through his choking, Bagger hears the clatter of the Springfield barrel disarming the officer of his sword, followed by spongier noises, a body into soggy ground, a kneecap cracking ribs, the eggshell shatter of facial bones, and the knuckle drub, wetter each time, of fists into flesh, fists into flesh,
and that’s it, Bagger vomits up what feels like a jellyfish with a gasoline kick, one spark and he’ll be as torched as the dinner rat, but once he’s regurgitating, he realizes this is his chance to get Uncle Sam out of his system for good, so he retches hard, inhales, retches even harder, timed to each soggy crack of Popkin’s fists, until there’s only the whistling, glottal giggles of Frenchy Franchouillard,
and by the time Bagger’s sinuses are voltaic with scalding acid and his throat bruised from esophageal exertion and his lips drizzling blood because there’s no puke left to puke, he looks up through tear-dunked eyes to see Popkin lift the officer to his feet by his blouse, walk him a few yards into the rain, then shot-put him away,
and yet the poilu’s nimble feet keep him upright, he doesn’t stumble off so much as foxtrot, he’s even got his cap back on, which he tips to Bagger as he fancy-foots backward, such fortitude, so much élan Bagger’s bones bake with jealousy until he’s fevered with Popkin’s patriotism, the U.S.
will win this war, they will be the victor no matter how many weary and weakened nations need their faces punched in,
and when Bagger coughs more blood, Frenchy Franchouillard laughs from the darkness, “Le Pauvre! Is it the plague? The Spanish plague? Or are you the plague, mon frère? Soit!,”
and Bagger roars, “Get the fuck out of here!,” which only sets off more coughing, which only reveals the coy tease of Uncle Sam’s wings, the shamefly’s still there, which only makes Bagger more desperate for the angel to fix his guilt, fix his cowardice, fix the remorse, fix him, at last, no matter what else he must disgorge,