The Heavenly Table(18)
“So? I guarantee you Malone knows more about what’s goin’ on over there than your Lieutenant Bovard ever will.”
“He’s a bad one to drink, my boy is,” Ellsworth interrupted. It was embarrassing to admit, but what did it matter? He would never see these men again anyway. “And dumb, too,” he added, figuring he might as well lay it on as thick as possible. “You don’t want to be a-fightin’ along someone like that, do you? Hell, he’s as liable to shoot the wrong man as the right one. Believe me, fellers, he ain’t fit to be in your army.”
“Mister,” Crank said, “if being stupid kept men out of the army, there wouldn’t be enough left in Camp Pritchard to wash the dishes in the chow hall.”
“Don’t listen to the bookkeeper,” Ballard told the farmer. “He’s just pissed because—”
Throwing up his hands in frustration, Ellsworth said, “What if I talked to the boss?”
Both the privates laughed, but before either could make another smart remark, Corporal Zimmerman silenced them with an upraised hand. He had allowed this foolishness to go on too long and he needed to reinforce his authority. Turning to Ellsworth, he began speaking slowly, as if he were talking to someone who had just awoken from a long coma. Zimmerman had discovered, over the course of manning the gate eight hours a day for the past couple of weeks, that many people, soldiers and private citizens alike, have a hard time taking no for an answer. They’re like little children who have been spared the rod and trust that, by yowling long enough and loud enough, they will eventually get their way. He was convinced that any parent who didn’t beat their offspring within an inch of their lives at least once a week was doing the world a great disservice, and he was thankful now that his own father had followed that line of thinking. Sure, it might have hurt at the time, but if it hadn’t been for his old man’s leather strap, Zimmerman thought, he might have turned out like that sniveling whiner Crank, or, God forbid, that mouthy, fatheaded Ballard. “Now,” he told Ellsworth, as he finished explaining the situation in short declarative sentences that even a cretin might understand, “the best thing for you to do is go back home. Don’t worry, you’ll see your son in a year or two.” He held up one finger, then another, in front of the farmer’s face.
Ellsworth’s eyes widened. “A year or two!” he sputtered. Why, he couldn’t imagine it taking more than a few weeks to kill every human being on the planet if you had someone overseeing things who knew what they were doing. But then again, with the government in charge, it might go on forever without anything to show for it. There was no way he was going to get Eddie back. He realized that now. “What’s this war about anyway?” he asked.
The soldiers glanced at one another uneasily. In all their hours of manning the gate, and answering a thousand questions, nobody had ever asked them that one before. “It’s complicated,” Zimmerman said.
“What’s that mean?”
“Some bastard shot some other bastard,” Crank said. “Over around Russia somewhere.”
“That’s pretty much the crack of it, from what I hear,” Ballard chimed in.
“You mean the crux of it.”
“Actually,” Zimmerman said, “it started in Austria. I ought to know. I’ve still got family living there.”
“I’ll bet you do,” Ballard said snidely. “I’ll bet ol’ Australia’s full of your kind.”
Crank rolled his eyes. “He said Austria, not Australia.”
“Well, if that’s the reason they started this war, the politicians must be clear out of their minds,” Ellsworth said, raising his voice. “Either that, or they’re a-lyin’ to ye.”
The soldiers all stared silently at the farmer for a moment. Regardless of how they felt about each other, they all believed, deep down, that there was nothing nobler than being a courageous patriot defending his country against the savage Germanic hordes. Even Crank, as much as he missed his parents and French toast on Sunday mornings and his peaceful bedchamber overlooking the sugar maple in the backyard, would have agreed with that if push came to shove. “Sir, you could be arrested for that kind of talk,” Zimmerman finally said.
“Yeah, what the hell are you, buddy?” Ballard added. “One of them damn Wobblies?”
Ellsworth didn’t know what a Wobbly was, but from the way the guard spat the word out of his mouth, he figured it couldn’t be a good thing. Lately, it seemed that wherever he turned, something beyond his comprehension was lying in wait to make him look like a fool. He decided not to say anything else. Even if the reason they gave for the war sounded like one of the dumbest things he had ever heard in his life, there was no way he was going to give these guards any more ammunition to use against him. As soon as he did, they’d have him playing house in a pickle patch with that other poor bastard they had joked about. He turned away and climbed back on his wagon.
Reaching for the gourd under the seat, he took a drink of water, then looked over at the camp again. In a field far off to the left, a row of soldiers stood at attention near the edge of a freshly dug trench. A thick-chested man with skinny legs paced back and forth in front of them, giving a speech. His voice was loud and gruff, but Ellsworth was still too far away to hear what he was saying. He gripped a rifle with a gleaming bayonet attached to the end of the barrel. Every so often, he stopped talking and gave a bloodcurdling cry, then stabbed the bayonet into what appeared to be a feed sack filled with sand. Ellsworth wondered if Eddie was standing in the line of soldiers, and if he had helped dig the ditch. As hard as it was getting him to do a few chores around the farm, it would serve him right if the army had stuck a pick and shovel in his hands first thing. He’d ask Eddie about that the next time he saw him. He would probably be wearing one of those brown uniforms, have a story or two to tell. Maybe he would even know the whereabouts of Germany. It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps the army was a good thing, especially if it toughened the boy up. Hell, he might turn out to be a halfway decent farmer after all.