Lovely War(61)

“Dad,” he whispered. “I didn’t make it.”

His father began a song in earnest. “I looked over Jordan, and what did I see, coming for to carry me home . . . ?”

Joey turned to me once more. “It’s going to kill them when they get the news,” he said. “Especially if they hear how it happened. Dad’s heart might not hold up. And Ma—”

He began to cry. I am so often moved by souls whose first concern is not for their own lost years, but for the grief their passing will cause to those they love. It’s more common than you might think. The most ordinary mortal bodies are housed by spectacular souls.

“Swing low, sweet chariot, comin’ for to carry me home,” sang Joey’s father.

Joey knelt beside his father and rested his head on his knee.

“Somebody’s got to warn them,” he insisted, “so the news doesn’t destroy them.”

“It sounds good in theory,” I told him, “but in practice, where death is concerned, it’s quite tricky to pull off.”

“Somebody’s got to look after them,” Joey said. “It’ll be hard for them for years to come.”

“Why not you?”

He stopped and looked at me. “Could it be me?”

I nodded. “Of course.”

“Don’t I have ”—he gestured broadly—“things I’m supposed to be doing?”

I smiled. “Not strumming harps, or stoking fires, if that’s what you mean.”

I liked Joey Rice.

“What else happens here?” he asked. “In Heaven, or the afterlife, or whatever?”

I rose to leave. “The options,” I told him, “are practically infinite. And you have all the time you could wish for to explore them. But anytime you like, you can rest in Asphodel.”

Joey sat in a chair between his mother and father. “I think I’ll stay here awhile.”

“Stay as long as you like,” I told him. “I should warn you: it won’t be easy.”

“Wait,” he said. “Am I supposed to be judged? Have my soul weighed, or whatever it is? Good or bad? Should I be worried about that?”

I shook his hand before leaving the room. “It was a very brief examination,” I told him. “You’ve already passed.”





ENTR’ACTE





Three Trains—February 12–13, 1918





APOLLO


ONE TRAIN TOOK the 15th New York Band to Nantes, where they kicked off their tour with a standing-room only concert in the opera house. They played French military marches, “Stars and Stripes Forever,” and plantation melodies.

“Then came the fireworks,” drum major Noble Sissle recorded. “‘The Memphis Blues.’

“Colonel Hayward has brought this band over here and started ragtimitis in France; ain’t this an awful thing to visit upon a nation with so many burdens?” wrote Sissle. But when “The Memphis Blues” was over, the audience roared, and Sissle made a discovery. “This,” he wrote, “is just what France needs.”

Which is precisely why I had brought them there.

Aubrey Edwards, however, missed the whole show. He lay curled like a cocoon in the backseat of an empty car on the train.





APHRODITE


Hazel and Colette boarded a noon train from Saint-Nazaire, bound for Paris, with nothing but excitement and fun on their minds. It would be midnight before they reached Paris.

They passed the time with a game Colette invented. “What’s Your Secret?” As passengers, porters, conductors, and waiters passed by, Colette and Hazel spied on them and then proposed to each other what each stranger’s secret might be. A stout, stern woman, Colette declared, suffered an unrequited passion for her dentist. A miserly looking old man, Hazel decided, wept nightly over the grave of his childhood goldfish. A blue-eyed soldier was a German spy. A forlorn young woman in a fine but faded coat was a Russian Romanov princess in exile.

Laughter was just what Hazel needed. She was a mass of nerves and butterflies, but they only added to the thrill of anticipation. Mortals curse me for the jitters of love, but I overlook it. Such delightful terror proved to Hazel that she was alive.

It’s what I do best.





ARES


At dawn, James took a supply line from a few miles behind the lines to a depot in Bapaume. From there, a southbound train took him to Paris. It was a ride of about five hours.

He watched the signs of war slip away behind him until all that was left was countryside. Even frost-covered, it was painted with rich colors. He marveled that color still existed, that there was anyplace left on the planet not scarred by shell holes.

He wished he could peel off the war like a scab. All he wanted now was to be was a chap with a lovely girl at his side. Even if his uniform was all he had to wear.

(They never just send me soldiers. They send me heartaches.)

The warmth of the train car, its lulling rhythms, and a month of sleep deprivation pulled James under. He didn’t even realize he’d fallen asleep until the conductor jolted him awake by declaring they had reached Paris.





ACT THREE