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“When I put my hands on your body on your flesh I feel the history of that body. Not just the beginning of its forming in that distant lake but all the way beyond its ending. I feel the warmth and texture and simultaneously I see the flesh unwrap from the layers of fat and disappear. I see the fat disappear from the muscle. I see the muscle disappearing from around the organs and detaching itself from the bones. I see the organs gradually fade into transparency leaving a gleaming skeleton gleaming like ivory that slowly resolves until it becomes dust. I am consumed in the sense of your weight, the way your flesh occupies momentary space, the fullness of it beneath my palms. I am amazed at how perfectly your body fits to the curves of my hands. If I could attach our blood vessels so we could become each other I would. If I could attach our blood vessels in order to anchor you to the earth to this present time I would. If I could open up your body and slip inside your skin and look out your eyes and forever have my lips fused with yours I would. It makes me weep to feel the history of your flesh beneath my hands in a time of so much loss. It makes me weep to feel the movement of your flesh beneath my palms as you twist and turn over to one side to create a series of gestures to reach up around my neck to draw me nearer. All these memories will be lost in time like tears in the rain.”
— David Wojnarowicz
Eugene Roe first met Edward Heffron in August 1944 on a sheet of paper in Captain Winters’s office.
“I don’t know what you think that’ll do,” Captain Nixon said, feet slung up on Winters’s desk. When Gene had walked into the office, Winters made a half-hearted attempt to get Nixon to move, but that didn’t work. Evidently, he had no interest in trying again. “That’s what, twenty, thirty names? Even if you memorize them, you don’t know what they’ll look like.”
“No, sir, but it’ll be easier if I’m familiar with their names, sir.” Antonio Garcia. Lester Hashey. Edward Heffron. James Miller.
“Maybe you oughta take a page out of Roe’s book for once, huh?” said Lieutenant Welsh. “Actually do some fucking work every now and then?”
“Oh, I don’t know… what do you say, Doc?”
Gene gave one last glance over the list then handed it back to Winters, who was staring resolutely at his typewriter, trying very hard not to smile. He nodded at Gene as he took back the list of replacements and set it neatly in a folder on his desk. Gene then turned to Captain Nixon and said lightly, “Well, sir, I wouldn’t if I was you. Colonel Sink might start expecting something from you.”
Welsh burst out into laughter and clapped Gene on the shoulder while Nixon grinned brightly and raised his glass of whiskey. “Hell, you might be onto something there, Doc.”
“Anything else I can help you with, Gene?” Winters asked.
“No, sir, thank you.”
As he walked out of the office, the sound of Nixon’s and Welsh’s laughter drifting through the open door, he went over the list of names again. James Miller. Lester Hashey. Antonio Garcia. Edward Heffron.
They arrived a week later, shuttled in on the worst trucks the army had to offer. They clung to the edges of the mess hall like Gene usually did, but they were watching awkwardly, searching for a way in. Gene was content to stay out.
He studied their faces, tried to commit every angle of them to memory, tried to imagine them covered in blood, dirt, eyes red with tears or smoke, and he did his best to assign every face a name. Last names were easy enough, printed on uniforms, but given names were another question. Especially since half of the Toccoa men, when asked about a replacement’s name, responded with a curt, “Fuck if I know.”
Lipton was the only other enlisted man with any significant interest in learning the replacements’ names. He approached Gene during mess soon after their arrival, a sheet of paper in his hands. Gene smiled knowingly at him. “If that’s the list of replacements,” he said, “I’ve already seen it.”
Lipton blinked at him once, slow like a cat, then smiled back. “I guess you’ve got me beat, then,” he said. “Still might be useful, though. I’ve been trying to take note of anything I’ve picked up.”
Gene took the list and scanned it. Each name had a number one through three, designating platoon. A good number of names had a nickname beside them, and an additional few had a state abbreviation or a skill next to it. Hashey was, apparently, from Maine, and Blake was a decent marksman. Edward Heffron’s first name was striked out, and “Babe” was written above it.
“Garcia likes to be called Tony,” Gene said, handing the list back over. “And I think I heard him speakin’ Spanish the other day.”
“Duly noted,” said Lipton. He took out a pencil and added the intel next to Garcia’s name in neat, careful cursive, then folded the paper and tucked it into an inner pocket. “Are you having any luck putting faces to names?”
Gene looked out at the soldiers crammed in the mess hall and frowned. There were a handful of men who were recognizable — there was Garcia, who Gene had followed closely after mistaking a “mierda” for a “merde,” and Miller, who was stiff and nervous and perpetually in awe — but mostly, he was surrounded by strangers.
“No,” he answered, “can’t say I have. You?”
“I think I’m faring a little better,” Lipton said. “Bill warmed up to one of them, and he’s been helping me out a bit.”
“Who?”
“Babe Heffron.” Lipton nodded his head towards Bill, who was laughing alongside a green-faced, red-headed stranger. “He’s from Philadelphia, too.”
“Babe,” Gene said slowly. He took note of that: Heffron had the red hair, the loud laugh, probably the same thick accent as Guarnere. Able and willing to help with names. Babe Heffron. Heffron.
He took a sip of his coffee, and he put it out of his mind.
Gene jumped into Holland like a dandelion seed blowing in the wind. It was a strange change of pace from Operation Overlord, from the fear that his chute would be pierced by a bullet or scrap metal or set on fire by an explosion, the absolute certainty that he would die before he hit the ground. He could not shake that certainty, even as the late September sun shined warm on him.
He hit the ground hard, the force of it buckling his knees. Still, he managed to look more graceful than any of the replacements, who got tangled in the straps, who could not find the release. If it was D-day, he thought, but he quickly put it out of his mind. It was not D-day, so it was a moot point.
They were met with sporadic German fire while marching to Eindhoven. In Eindhoven, they were met with orange flags, happy Dutch citizens, and a handful of musicians playing songs Gene did not recognize. The certainty of death would not leave him, even as men shook his hand and women kissed his cheek. He felt like a grizzled old vet when he saw men, Toccoa and replacement alike, break off from formation to accept pastries and return kisses. He felt impossibly old.
Through the throng, Gene caught sight of a man sitting at the opening of an alley, clutching a mud-and-blood-stained rag to his head. It was almost a relief to be granted a reminder of the ongoing war, a reason for Gene’s deep-seated anxiety, and it was really no choice at all to walk over with his supply bag open.
The man looked up at him with pale blue eyes, filled with a vague fear that reminded Gene of Blithe. “Medic,” Gene said, pointing to his armband. He racked his brain for the handful of Dutch he was taught and came up empty. Instead, he settled for, “I’ve got bandages, I’m here to help.”
Gene watched as the man’s muscles uncoiled and relaxed, and he took it as a sign he could get to work. Gingerly, he took the man’s hand and pulled it away from the wound, revealing a nasty cut that started right above the man’s eyebrow and ended past his hairline. Head wounds nearly always looked worse than they were, but that did not make them easier to witness. He did his best to hold back a wince and made brief work of cleaning it up.
“Ain’t too bad,” he said. The man looked at him blankly, as Gene expected, but the habit was too deeply ingrained to stop. “I can wrap it up tight, but you’ll need stitches. Hospital. Stitches,” Gene repeated, miming a sewing motion. There was recognition in the man’s eyes, and he sighed like Gene was confirming the bad news he already knew. He mumbled something in Dutch as Gene pulled out a bandage and wrapped it tight around the man’s head.
“Dank je. Thank you,” the man said as Gene stepped away. His accent was thick enough around the English that Gene almost did not catch it for what it was.
Gene nodded solemnly and stepped back into the crowd, blending in easily with the tail end of Easy. When he turned around to catch one last sight of the man, Gene found him staring down at the bloody rag in his hand, untouched by the scenes of joy around him. Something deep within Gene moved, as if tugged by this man, and he wondered what kind of horrors he had seen, what kind of horrors each of these people had seen. He wondered if they, too, had been certain that they would die.
Soon after, Gene was darting through Nuenen, patching up replacements he had only just begun to learn the names of, and he wondered guiltily as they were retreating if it had been wise to use up a bandage on that man in Eindhoven.
“D’you know any Dutch?”
Gene’s brows furrowed and he glanced up at Ralph, who was munching on an apple stolen from a nearby farm. “Why would I know Dutch?”
Ralph shrugged. “Liebgott can get by. Webster, too, and they said they only speak German.”
“Think Dutch is closer to German than French is,” Gene mumbled, turning back to his half-empty supply bag. “You got any spare bandages?”
“Yeah, just took some from the aid station. Gimme a minute.” He bit into his apple and held it between his teeth like a stuffed pig, then rooted around in his bag and pulled out a handful of bright white bandages that he tossed over to Gene.
“Thanks.”
“Where’d your bandages go?”
“Found a couple of kids hiding in a barn bleeding pretty bad.”
“Jesus,” Ralph muttered. “Fucking Nazis.”
“Fucking Nazis,” Gene agreed.
“You know, the army would probably have a problem with you wasting their precious supplies on the Dutch.”
“Fucking army,” Gene said.
“Fucking army,” Ralph agreed.
The conversation slipped away like the tide, Ralph’s crunching covering up distant sounds of gunfire. Gene set his bag aside with a heavy sigh. He did not have as much morphine as he would have liked, but he was okay on plasma and now bandages, and that would have to do. Ever since he first jumped into Europe, the army had left him wanting, and by now he was more than used to it.
Easy was spread out in the field around them, waiting for orders. He had yet to see a famous Dutch tulip, but there were plenty of pretty wildflowers sprouting up everywhere around them. It made for an odd sight, dirt and blood stained soldiers jutting out against delicate spatterings of blue, yellow, and white flowers. He caught glimpses of a few of the men picking them and pressing them into their Bibles and journals, slices of beauty to carry through battle like photos of loved ones. If Gene had anything to keep the flowers in, he would pick some. He had half a mind to ask Ralph if he had anything.
An unfamiliar set of footsteps broke through Gene’s reverie, and a somewhat familiar voice called out, “Hey, Ralph!”
Gene glanced over his shoulder to see Edward Heffron walking towards him and Ralph. It was still a bit strange to see new men on the battlefield, guys who never ran up Currahee, who never checked his pack on a practice jump. It was stranger still to see the replacements covered in the grime of battle. Gene tried to think back to Aldbourne, to remember what Heffron’s red hair had looked like against a clean uniform, but all that came to mind was the dirt-dulled brownish-red he was sporting now.
“What’s up, Babe?” Ralph said as Heffron got closer.
“Got a pair of scissors I can borrow?”
“Sure, what for?” Ralph held the apple in his mouth again as he searched through his bag again. Gene smiled to himself at the image.
“I’m stitching holes back together,” Heffon said. He lifted up the jacket he held in his hands. There was a long tear along the back that was held together with an incredibly messy cross stitch, the leftover thread falling down into the grass. “Guarnere’s too fucking lazy to do it himself.”
Ralph emerged from his supply bag triumphant with a pair of scissors. He handed them over to Heffron then switched the apple from his mouth to his hand. “Well, aren’t you just the goodest Samaritan.”
Heffron grinned and said, “I’m only doing it for smokes. Either of you need anything fixed?”
“Sure, but I like my smokes too much,” Ralph replied. “How about you, Gene?”
Gene startled a bit, surprised to be roped into the conversation. He jerked his head up to look at Ralph and then Heffron, who stood expectantly with an easy half-smile on his face, squinting against the sun.
It was the first time he looked at Heffron like he was looking at an actual man, rather than a corpse he might have to identify. Freckles splattered like flecks of paint across his cheek, an uneven smile that lifted up a little too much on one side. He was handsome, Gene thought.
“Sorry, Heffron,” he said finally. “Got nothing that needs fixing.”
“Alright,” Heffron said with a shrug. He turned towards Ralph and held up the scissors. “I’ll give these back before we start moving out.”
“You better. I’m the one saving your goddamn life with those scissors.”
Heffron was already walking away, but he turned around with a laugh and gave Ralph a messy salute. “Yessir, Spina, sir!”
“Yeah, right,” Ralph mumbled to himself, but he was grinning and his voice held no venom. “Wiseass.”
Gene watched as Heffron made his way back over to the other men, a little group of which Gene could only make out Guarnere and Compton. He watched as Heffron tripped over his pack and stumbled a little, as he kicked his foot out towards Guarnere, head tipped back and laughing. The wind carried the sound away, somewhere in the direction of recently liberated Dutch, and Gene wondered what it sounded like.
The next time Gene spoke to him was in the aid station outside Nijmegen. Heffron was sitting at the edge of the station, clutching a bandage to his leg and wincing, when Gene approached him. At the sound of footsteps, he looked up and grinned. “Hey! Gene, right?”
Gene was sure that no matter how long he was in the army, he would never get used to the casualness of army friendships. He blinked at the man, off kilter from the sudden, sunny attention, then stammered out, “Uh, yeah. Can I see it?”
“Sure,” Heffron said easily, peeling the bandage off his wound. “Just looks like holes and blood and shit.”
There was a spattering of shallow wounds up and down his right calf, dirt mixing with crusting blood. Gene ran a finger lightly across the largest wound, which was already beginning to coagulate, and Heffron hissed in pain. “Shrapnel?”
“Yeah. Think I’ve got half the street in my goddamn leg.”
Gene smirked slightly despite himself. “Well, then,” he said. “Better start taking it out.”
He led Heffron over to a table, laid him down, and got to work. Silently, he took off Heffron’s boot and cut open his battered pants leg, then took a wet rag and started cleaning off the blood. Again, Heffron hissed, and Gene shushed him gently, instinctually. “Gonna be worse when I start taking the shrapnel out.”
“Yeah, I bet,” Heffron grunted. He let Gene work silently for a few moments, then said, “Where’re you from, Gene? You got a funny accent.”
“Ain’t much funnier than yours,” Gene said evasively. He set aside the dirty rag, then took out his tweezers. Out of the corner of his eye, as he plucked out the largest piece of metal, he saw Heffron’s smirk transform into a grimace, and he smiled to himself.
“Jesus Christ, Doc,” he said through a clenched jaw. Gene looked up and saw a hint of a smile, a glimmer of a joke in Heffron’s warm eyes. “Fine, your accent ain’t funny. Sorry.”
Gene’s smile widened. “Apology accepted.”
A beat passed between them. Heffron hissed out a few quiet curses as Gene continued his work, and then he asked again. “So? Where you from?”
“Louisiana,” Gene answered. “Place called Bayou Chene.”
Heffron hummed. “Sounds nice. Bayou Chene.”
“Hell of a lot nicer than Holland.”
“Yeah, I’ll say,” Heffron said. He laughed, short and surprised at the sound of it, or maybe at the person who had caused it. “I’d take Philly over this shit any day. At least Front Street never ended up in my fucking leg.”
“Well,” Gene said. “Never say never.”
“Christ. If Front Street ever starts blowing up, the Dutch better take the fucking shrapnel for me.”
“I’m sure they’d be honored.” Gene fished out the last of the pavement in Heffron’s calf and traded the tweezer for a needle and suture thread. He glanced up towards Heffron with the intention of letting him know he was about to start with the sutures, but was surprised to find Heffron’s eyes trained on him with an odd sort of seriousness that looked out of place on him. Suddenly, Gene became very aware of the beat of his own heart, of each breath he took. Silently, he held up the thread. Heffron nodded, and then Gene got to work.
There was a strange intimacy to the work that Gene rarely had the luxury to feel. In the heat of battle, he worked almost without thought, without feeling, save for a blind, adrenaline-fueled desperation, a single minded focus that was alienating in its intensity. The aid station was typically the opposite, his attention fractured among the many soldiers and officers waiting for their bandages, their stitches, their brief spurt of care, and most of the time the soldiers’ attention was elsewhere, too, onto the next mission, the next battle, the next game of cards.
But when he was stitching up Heffron’s leg, Gene felt more present in his body than he had felt since the day he first enlisted. He didn’t dare look up towards Heffron’s face, too scared of what he might find, but beneath his fingers he felt Heffron’s warmth, something fresh and alive. He felt the beat of Heffron’s heart through the veins of his legs, just slightly off from Gene’s own pulse. Heffron’s boot was coming untied. His hands were clenched in the coarse fabric of his pants. Gene had the strangest urge to hold it and squeeze tight.
The moment was over quickly.
“Try to stay off it,” Gene said. He tossed the bloody needle on the tray. Heffron watched the motion, nose scrunched at the sight of his own blood. “Keep it elevated if you can.”
“Can’t make any promises, Doc.” He swung his legs off the makeshift operating table. The afternoon light fell slanted on his back, and Gene looked quickly away, busying himself with tidying up.
“Just do what you can, Heffron.”
Out of the corner of his eyes, Gene saw Heffron give him a sloppy salute. With a small smile, Gene shooed him away. As he moved towards the next private, he heard Heffron greet another soldier, shoot the shit with a smile Gene could call up clearly in his mind.
A sick feeling slowly settled in the pit of his stomach.
He was young when he realized that he was different. Sometimes, he felt as though he had been born with the knowledge, the way a fish is born knowing how to swim, something he needed to know if he was going to survive. Sometimes, he didn’t know if he was quiet because he wanted to be or because he had to be.
He did not begin to question why he was different, how he was different until fairly late in life. That, too, he figured, was a survival instinct. Curiosity killed the cat, that’s what his pépère always said, and for a long time whatever curiosity he had was easily pushed aside for fear of finding the truth too hard to bear. Even when he did begin to question it, he did not push hard. Even when he did realize what it was, he did not look it head on, did not give name to it. He compartmentalized, shoved the knowledge into the attic of his mind to let it gather dust. It could not kill him if it could not come out.
Once in a blue moon, he would have this dream where the army medical examiner listened to his heartbeat and said, “I see. You’re one of those types.” The army medical examiner always said it in a matter of fact way, which did not make it easier to bear. Gene would sputter out a weak denial, and the army examiner would cut him off and say, “Don’t worry, we’ll take you. We don’t take the faggots, but you guys, the closet cases, we can use you.” The scene would shift abruptly, and Colonel Sink called his name. He walked forward and took the white and red armband, listened while Sink told him in front of the entire regiment, “The medic’s job is a solitary one. We cannot trust you around our men, we cannot let you get close to them. If seeing their guts does not cure you, then at least you will always live with the punishment.” In the dream, Gene threw up. When he woke up, he was queasy.
He was running thin, he knew that much. Everyone had their limits, and Gene was reaching his. There was only so much death one could sweep under the rug, only so much blood one could see before they started losing control, no matter how well practiced they were at maintaining it. On his better days, he figured there were worse ways to lose your sanity. He could have been terrorized by nightmares, screaming and flailing in his sleep, or prone to violent outbursts, or completely and utterly still, unable to move. There were worse things in the world than to be tracking the movements of a red-headed replacement, searching out his every smile and laugh and frown, spending idle time thinking of the shade of copper his hair shone in the autumn sun.
On his worse days, his guilt was so heavy it threatened to bury him six feet under. On his worse days, he moved slowly, only pushed on by the assurance that this was his punishment, God-ordained, and he would either have to endure this or Hell.
“Hey, you’re a Frenchie, right, Doc?” Luz threw his meal tray on the table and sat down in the space across from Gene, waving a newspaper around wildly. “Any chance you can translate for the English-speaking schmucks?”
“Christ’s sake, leave him alone, George,” Malarkey said from the next table over, but he leaned over along with a handful of other guys, eager to hear the news.
Gene smiled slightly. “Not a Frenchie, but I’ll do my best,” he said, taking the newspaper. It was sort of a lie — he almost exclusively spoke in French with his grandparents — but Cajun French was not French French, and he wasn’t the strongest reader in English, much less French. During Operation Overlord, he had collected what newspapers and books he could to practice, and he had improved, but it was always safer to air on the side of modesty.
The paper was from Reims, and it was badly wrinkled and torn along creases, damaged and worn as most things were by the time they got to the army. It was recent, though, only from the previous Monday. He glanced over the front page headlines and tried to pick out what would interest the men.
“We’ve got FDR for another four years,” Gene said to various, noncommittal mumblings, “Goebbels is shooting missiles into England —” this was met with a hearty “No shit,” from Muck, “and a priest from Épernay is recovering from a heart attack.”
“So what you’re saying,” Luz said with an exaggerated frown, “is that Hitler is not dead?”
“Hitler is not dead,” Gene confirmed. “But rumor is Marlene Dietrich is making an appearance in Reims.”
A round of cheers went up among the guys. Perconte, who had been standing by barely listening, said, “Hold on, lemme see that,” grabbed the paper, and sat down next to Gene, scanning it for a sign of Marlene.
“The hell are you doing, Frank, you can’t fucking read that,” Luz said lightly, swiping half-heartedly for the paper.
Perconte jerked the paper out of Luz’s grasp with a distracted, “Hey, fuck off, would ya?” Gene, carefully suppressing a smile, pointed his knife towards the Dietrich article in the middle of the page and snatched it back quickly when Perconte saw her name and leaned over the table to clap Luz on the shoulder.
“George,” he said emphatically, “Georgie. You’ve got to get me to Reims.”
“What the hell am I going to do? Ask Malarkey and More, they’re the ones stealing army vehicles for joyrides.”
Through a mouthful of army mashed potatoes, Malarkey called out, “Like hell I’m taking you, Frank!”
Around Gene, the men's voices grew louder, a hurricane of sound that reminded Gene of hot Toccoa evenings, the rowdiness after a long day of hearing Sobel’s bitching. Normally, Gene stayed out of it, watching fondly from the sidelines, but for once, here in the eye of the storm, Gene was comfortable. He finished his bland chicken and potatoes, seasoned only with a copious amount of salt and pepper, and he listened with a smile.
He finished his meal soon, though, and did not care to linger. Outside, it was already dark. Time moved differently in Europe, more slowly, in a way Gene did not always appreciate. The extra hours of sunlight had been nice those spring months in England, but in battle it had been strange, had made everything hazy like a dream. Maybe that the other men appreciated that quality, the separation between themselves and the carnage, but for Gene’s work, he needed clarity and precision. He did not like being outside of himself.
He lit himself a cigarette and was putting the pack back in his pocket when the door to the mess hall opened, letting out a gust of warm air and the sound of laughter. Gene looked over and saw Heffron, patting his pockets, mumbling a dejected, “Shit.”
It would probably be best if Gene said nothing, if he slipped away to his bunk and spent his night alone in penitence, but it was a good night, the men were happy, and Gene had a nearly full pack of cigs. So he held it out and softly said, “Here.”
Heffron looked up sharply, his expression something like that of a startled deer, and then he broke into a grin. “Hey, thanks, Doc.” He picked a cigarette out of the carton and pulled out his own lighter, something battered and cheap with an E.H. clumsily scratched into the side. He leaned against the wall of the mess hall heavily and breathed in deeply, eyes closed. As subtly as he could, Gene traced the line of his profile, the gentle curve of his nose and the way the moonlight hit it, feeling like a man dying of thirst.
“Lost my pack to Johnny and Bill,” Heffron said finally, opening his eyes. “Fuckin’ poker.”
“Probably shouldn’t bet, then,” Gene suggested.
“Nah, probably shouldn’t. Pieces of shit.” Heffron was grinning again, though, and Gene was sure he would bet again.
There was a loud burst of laughter from within the mess hall that had both Gene and Heffron glancing through the window. Muck was standing up and Penkala was trying to pull him down, and Gene heard something that sounded suspiciously like, “Marlene!” being shouted from within. He smiled to himself and took another drag.
“Jesus Christ,” Heffron said, “the fuck’s gotten into them?”
“Marlene Dietrich is supposedly coming to Reims.”
“Oh, shit, really?” He turned towards Gene and grinned blindingly bright. “Fuck, I’ve got to get to Reims. Shit.”
“Ask Alton More to save you a seat on his bike,” Gene said. Heffron looked at him in confusion, and Gene, feeling suddenly, disproportionately guilty, waved a hand, and said, “Sorry. Aldbourne.”
For his part, Heffron took it in stride, just nodding and taking another drag. “S’alright,” he said. They smoked in silence for a few moments, then Heffron said, “You don’t seem too excited.”
Gene smiled slightly, feeling something light and heavy at the same time. “Don’t think I’m her type,” he said, sliding easily around the truth. “‘Sides, I’ve never seen her in anything.”
“Really? Nothing?”
“Haven’t seen much of anything,” Gene admitted. “Nearest theater was twenty miles away.”
“Shit,” Heffron said. “Bayou Chene’s not sounding so nice now. Fuckin’ love the movies. I went every Friday, right after I cashed my paycheck.”
It took Gene a moment to process the sentence, to understand that Heffron had not only remembered where Gene was from (Bayou Chene — not just Louisiana, Bayou Chene) but had also offered a scrap of information about himself, a love for the movies, a ticket stub to a theater in Philadelphia where he probably had a favorite seat, one he sat in every Friday. There was an immediate impulse to throw that information away, to hide it in the recesses of his mind with the rest of his secrets, but it was too late. Gene was already thinking about when the next showing on base would be, if he’d get a weekend pass, if he would spend it in French theaters straining to understand strange accents, picking a seat and wondering if Heffron would like it.
He felt sixteen again, awkward and stumbling, drowning in water that was only ankle-deep. His cigarette had half-burned away without him taking a single drag.
“Gene?” Heffron asked hesitantly.
“Yeah. Sorry.” Gene tapped his cigarette and watched the wasted tobacco drift to the ground. “It sounds nice. Having a theater close.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it is.” Heffron said it slowly and carefully. Gene looked up and saw Heffron looking back at him like he was trying to read a particularly confusing article. There was a moment where Gene allowed himself to look back, thinking of that time in the aid station where he did nothing but look away, and he felt the water get deeper.
In a split second, Heffron’s expression shifted to a smile, something friendly and vaguely impersonal, and he said, “Hey, I think they’re showing a movie in a couple days. You should come, yeah?”
“If I got time, Heffron,” Gene said, taking another long drag and ignoring the way his throat tightened and disappointment sank like a rock in his stomach.
Heffron grinned. “Front row?”
“Second.”
“I’ll take it.”
The door to the mess hall opened and a group stepped out, loud and still, somehow, on the topic of Marlene Dietrich. Garcia caught sight of Heffron and called out, “Hey, Babe, we’re playing cards if you wanna join.”
“Sure, be there in a sec,” Heffron said. He turned to Gene and grinned at the sight of Gene’s smirk. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” Gene said. “Just be careful with your smokes is all.”
Heffron laughed. “Yeah, fuck you.” He started walking off with the group, then turned around and said, “Remember! Front row!”
Gene waved a hand and watched Heffron’s receding form as he walked towards the bunk. He stood outside the mess hall for a long time after, looking into the dark and letting his cigarette burn away before a strong, cold gust of wind led him back into the mess hall. The newspaper was still sitting in the empty space where Luz used to be, and Gene went over and sat down, slowly working his way through the articles until the army cook shooed him out.
The first thing he did in Bastogne was give Ralph his cigarettes.
He did not have many left, and he thought about distributing them out to whoever was doing the shittiest. But he realized quickly enough that that was unlike him, that it might be taken as strangely as if Speirs was handing them out, so he went to plan B. He slipped the pack into Ralph’s supply bag when the other man was sleeping, and the next morning he was woken up abruptly and opened his eyes to Ralph’s scowl and his crumpled pack of cigarettes.
“What the fuck are your cigarettes doing in my bag.” He didn’t say it like a question.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You piece of shit. Yes, you do.”
Gene was quiet for a moment, then said, “It’d be strange if I shared them with the men —”
Ralph sighed heavily and held up a hand to cut Gene. “Only ‘cause you make it strange,” he snapped, but he was putting the cigarettes into his pocket, anyway, and Gene considered it a win. “They like you, you know. They wouldn’t mind sharing a smoke with you.”
They like the armband, Gene thought, but Ralph was in a mood, so he didn’t say it. Instead, he let Ralph light one of the cigarettes, and they passed it between them silently for breakfast.
Captain Winters appeared when the cigarette was a tiny stub burning the tips of Ralph’s fingers. He crouched down by the foxhole, knees creaking, and nodded in response to Ralph’s and Gene’s greetings.
“Just spoke to battalion,” he said lowly. “They didn’t say it in so many words, but I don’t think we’ll be getting supplies any time soon. I hate to ask this of you —”
“We gotta try to make what we have last,” Ralph finished. He exchanged a look with Gene, then turned back to Winters and said, “We’ll do what we can, sir.”
Winters sighed heavily, a significant sign of exhaustion coming from him. “Thank you. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention it to the other men.”
“Of course, sir,” Gene said.
“Good,” Winters said with a nod. He looked like he was about to say something else and then decided against it. He stood up, said, “Carry on,” and walked back into the fog he emerged from.
Gene and Ralph were quiet for another moment, and then Ralph dropped his head into his hands and groaned. “Jesus Christ,” he said, “we’re fucked.”
It was funny, in a way. He was in Belgium, and all he could think about was his grandmother’s cabin in Bayou Chene. He could chalk it up to the occasional French chatter around him, maybe even the trees, her home having sat deep in the bayou, but it was probably something closer to the hallucinations of a dying man, the failure of reason.
When he was younger, he would spend hours at her house, watching, helping. His maman didn’t like it, thought those weren’t the sort of things a young boy should be seeing, but Mémère took him in anyway and taught him the herbs and salves of her trade, the Latin prayers, the French ones, the English. She kneeled with him before her altar to Saint Raphael every morning and every evening, her prayer an heirloom passed down through generations. “I give it to you,” she told him once, when he was too young to appreciate it. “I give it to you.”
Most people who came to her had burns or sprains, sunstroke in summer, flu in the winter, but sometimes there were tumors, large ones that were visible through the skin, or bloody, violent coughs, some other equally fatal disease. In these rare instances, Mémère called upon Saint Jude, patron saint of the lost cause.
If she were there, in the Bois Jacques, in the church in Bastogne, wherever, would she call upon Him? Would she look at her grandson’s bloody hands, the red soaked sleeves of the blond nurse, the bodies lined along the roads, and ask Saint Jude, that if her petit had to die, could he please have a swift death?
He thought about Saint Jude with his hands stuck in the belly of a nameless shoulder, a Belgian nurse in front of him, a Congolese nurse to his left. He thought about Saint Jude when Renée looked at him with sad, hopeless eyes, and told him God would never give such a painful gift. He thought about Saint Jude when he pulled her scarf from holy rubble, and wondered if He was kind to her.
He made some excuses to go back into town the morning after, excuses that were weak and unbelievable, but they were excuses made to Captain Winters. Sometimes, with the way Winters looked at him, Gene had this feeling, not that he could read Gene’s every thought, but that he understood them. In any case, Winters gave him a nod and let Gene climb aboard the truck.
The wreckage was even worse in the daylight. There were doctors and nurses and soldiers poking around, trying to find anything salvageable to no avail, a few sobbing individuals standing by the next building over. Gene stared helplessly.
He felt more than heard someone walking up next to him, the instincts of a paratrooper. When he looked to his right he saw the Congolese nurse. She had Renée’s coat wrapped around her. Gene’s eyes stung.
“If you are Eugene,” she said, “you should know that she is dead.”
“I know,” he replied. She turned to look at him, and Gene saw her eyes were red and puffy, her sooty face lined with tear streaks. “I found her headscarf.”
The nurse was quiet for a moment, then asked timidly, “May I see it?”
His throat closed up. “I had to use it for bandages. I’m — I’m sorry.”
“Merde.” She knelt down to the ground, put her head in her hands, and let out a few shaky silent sobs. Looking at her, he came the closest to the truth of the situation that he could possibly bear, and he looked away, up at the sky, praying to Saint Jude that he would not cry.
They grieved silently and separately for a few long minutes, then he felt the nurse take hold of his hand. He squeezed his eyes shut and ignored the tear that slipped out.
Finally, they pulled themselves together, turning to the other at almost exactly the same time. The nurse slowly rose from the ground, wincing at the pull of stiff, bruised muscles.
“What’s your name?” Gene said. “Sorry, she told me, but I forgot.”
“It is alright,” she said. “My name is Anna.”
“Anna.”
Anna gave him a weak and watery smile. “She was right. You do have a strange accent.”
Gene laughed, hard, and it gave way naturally to tears, ugly sobs that burned in his chest. Anna used the hand she was still holding to pull him into her arms. He lost track of time again, but when he came to, he felt a wet patch against his collar where Anna had put her head.
From somewhere to the right of him came the sound of an army truck engine starting. He pulled away slowly and reluctantly let go of Anna’s hand. “I need to head back,” he explained.
Anna nodded and wiped her eyes. “If you come into town again, find me. I have stolen Renée’s stash of chocolate.”
Gene laughed wetly.
On the evening after Christmas, Heffron slid in with such force that Gene spilled a third of his lukewarm coffee. He leveled the man with a mild glare, and in turn Edward gave him a half-sheepish, “Sorry.”
“Ralph’s back closer to battalion,” Gene said. “Dike started bitchin’ about not having a medic near him.”
Edward snorted. “Like Ralph’ll ever be able to find him. Stupid son of a bitch.” He shook his head, then said, “No, I’m looking for you.”
Gene watched with something between a mix of shock and horror as Edward settled in with a good deal of jostling and accidental kicking. Edward was searching all of his pockets, blue scarf wrapped tightly around his palm. It was now stained rust-red.
He was quiet long enough that Edward looked up at him expectantly. All he could think to say was, “Why?”
For his part, Edward was not put off by Gene’s awkward bluntness. His eyebrows furrowed a little, but he smiled into the collar of his uniform. “Got a Christmas present for ya. You celebrate, right? McClung said happy Christmas to Liebgott — forgot he was Jewish, the idiot — and Lieb wouldn’t let it go, shoved snow down the back of McClung’s uniform at dinner. Funny as all hell, you should’ve been there, Gene.” Abruptly, he stopped talking and pulled out what he was looking for: a battered, half-smoked cigarette.
Gene whistled, low and long. “Shit,” he said, “where’d you get that?”
“Turns out, if you bother Captain Nixon for long enough, he’ll bribe you to get you to fuck off,” Edward said with a bright grin. He held the cigarette aloft and the pair of them stared in silence at it for a long moment.
“Well,” Gene said, “you gonna smoke it?”
Edward frowned in confusion. Distantly, Gene thought, of all the dumb things he had said around the man, this was the strangest one to be confused by. “Why would I smoke it? It’s your gift.”
“Oh.” Gene felt time slow down, and he felt the rapid beat of his heart, the warm flush of his cheeks with an unbearable intensity. “You didn’t have to.”
“I wanted to,” Edward said. His tone was a little aggressive, and more than ever before, Gene could see clearly how he and Guarnere could have grown up blocks from each other. It was that aggressive friendliness, a hard-edged way of caring about someone, blunt and unrelenting and there whether you wanted it or not. Gene would not be able to reject it, he knew, so he took it with gentle, trembling hands and aimed for a compromise.
“Share it with me?” he asked.
Edward was quiet for a moment. “Sure,” he said finally. “If you want.”
Gene lit the cigarette with his own lighter and took the first drag. He nearly moaned at the taste of it, though it was stale and acrid. He closed his eyes and held the smoke in his lungs, relishing in the burn before blowing it out slowly. When he opened his eyes, Edward was watching him closely, breathing deeply to catch a whiff of the second hand smoke. Gene handed the cigarette over, and Edward took it gratefully. His eyes closed as he smoked it, and Gene tried valiantly not to look at his lips.
They passed it back and forth a few more times before Gene broke the silence. He hadn’t really processed the story Edward had told before, having still been a bit shell-shocked that Heffron was there at all, but in the silence now he could think.
“Did Liebgott get to celebrate?” he asked. “Hanukkah, I mean.”
“A bit,” Edward said, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “He got a 48-hour pass before they shipped us out here. Went to Paris, found a synagogue. Didn’t tell me much else, but he seemed happy enough.”
“Good. At least someone got to celebrate.”
“Aw, I don’t know, Gene.” He held out the cigarette, now almost done, and fixed Gene with another one of those strange stares. “Our Christmas could be worse.”
Gene simply nodded, clueless as to how to reply to that, and took the cigarette. He finished it off, avoiding Heffron’s eyes, and stubbed it out in the snow along the edges of the foxhole. “Thanks,” he said after a pause.
“Of course,” Heffron said.
There was a brief shelling a few moments later. By the time Gene had finished his rounds, Heffron was asleep in the foxhole. Gene slid into the hole and quickly followed suit.
After that night, Heffron kept coming back. In the week that followed, Heffron slept in Gene’s foxhole five out of six nights, and on four of those nights, Heffron initiated conversation. It was inane conversation, mostly, bitching about Dike and recounting something funny Gene had missed during trips to the aid station or during rounds, but it wasn’t how Heffron spoke to the other men. Nothing about home or girls, nothing terribly personal. Gene had the feeling Heffron was tiptoeing around him like he was a deer that would be startled off, which was a fair enough assumption. The other possibility, he thought, was that Heffron was somehow working up to a point where they could be close enough to ask personal questions, but that also seemed unlike him.
But it was a warm body next to him, and it was a warm body Gene had been looking at for a while. It was a warm body in the coldest weather he’d ever experienced, at what he was beginning to suspect would be the lowest point in his life, at a time when the tight grip he was keeping on his sanity showed serious signs of loosening. Whatever he’d had with Renée had been severed abruptly, leaving him drifting helplessly until Heffron crashed into him. He would not deny Heffron the hole, or find another one, and he wouldn’t think about the likelihood of Heffron dying out here, of what would become of Gene if he had to patch him up.
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, he thought every time he walked up to his foxhole and saw a helmeted head waiting for him patiently.
“Close the fucking tarp,” Heffron hissed as Gene slid in. “Jesus, the fucking wind. Here, grabbed you a cup of joe from Shifty.”
“Thank you,” Gene said, eagerly reaching out for the tin. The metal was lukewarm at best, but it felt scorching against his frozen fingers. He drank most of it in a few sips, before it got too cold, then handed the cup back to Heffron.
“I thought Philly winters were bad,” Heffron said. He seemed in an especially sour mood, though most of the other men were, too. A biting wind had settled in their neck of the woods just in time for the new year. “This shit is ridiculous.”
“All cold’s bad to me,” Gene said. He meant to say it neutrally, but it came out more bitter than he would have liked.
Heffron looked at him like he was sizing Gene up, but then realization clicked. “Oh, right,” he said, “Louisiana. How cold does it get there?”
Gene shrugged. “Bit like how it was in Holland. Only sunnier.”
Heffron sighed wistfully. “Sounds like a dream right about now.”
“Yeah. No theaters, though.”
“No theaters,” Heffron said with a grin. “What the hell do you do in Louisiana, anyway?”
“Fish,” Gene said. “Swim. Go to work, go to church. My maman kept a garden, I tended it with her.”
“Wow, you’re real wild down South, huh.”
Gene smiled. “Sure are. Bet you’re real tame up North.”
“You couldn’t handle Philly,” Heffron said. “Real wild bunch. Sunday lunch after church, Wednesday dinner with the whole family. Fridays at the theater. Throwin’ rocks at cars.” Gene chuckled, then Heffron asked, “Hey, did you go see that Dietrich movie they were playing in Mourmelon before they shipped us out?”
“No,” Gene answered. “They had medics getting supplies together.”
Heffron clucked his tongue. “Shame. It was Seven Sinners — not my favorite, but….” He trailed off, and they lapsed into silence.
Gene snuck a look at Heffron. He was staring into space, something melancholy etched into his face. Gene was overcome with a sudden, desperate longing to trace his frown lines, the faint beginnings of smile lines, his hairline, the curve of his ear.
“What is?” he asked.
Heffron turned to look at him. Gene felt the weight of his gaze settle heavy within him. “What’s what?” he said.
“Your favorite Dietrich,” Gene said. Or your favorite movie, he thought. Whatever you want to tell me.
“Oh.” Heffron did not look away but his expression did shift to something different. A bit of red rose to his cheeks, and he looked like he was holding words back, like it was a physical effort to not say them. “It’s, uh. It’s Morocco. You know it?”
“No.”
“It’s a bit old now, I guess. Romantic and all, you know how it is.”
Gene did not know how it was, but he had the impression Heffron was a bit out of his depth. “Sure.”
Heffron kept his gaze locked on Gene, who began to feel like he was missing something. “Yeah,” he said. “If you ever see it, tell me how you like it, alright?”
Gene blinked at him. “Sure.”
“Good.” Finally, Heffron looked away, back to whatever faraway place he was in before. Gene settled in beside him and closed his eyes.
Edward was talking to Lipton when Gene caught his eye, Bill’s and Joe’s blood still wet on his hands. The look on his face was a bit like Buck’s, half blank and empty and half despaired beyond words, but something shifted in his eyes when he looked at Gene. Gene did not know how to say it wordlessly, how to say I can’t talk now, but I promise I can later, but Edward, God bless him, seemed to understand. He nodded, then turned his attention back towards Lipton. Gene felt a wave of relief, then wondered, horrified, when he had become that close to Heffron.
By the time Gene had patched up all the other men who needed patching, it was dark out. Before trudging back to their foxhole, Gene tried using the snow to wash his hands as best he could. It didn’t seem to work, blood caked into the lines of his palms all the same, but the snow he left behind was pink and revolting.
Edward was wrapped up in his blanket and lifted it up for Gene when he slid under the cover. His hand searched for Gene’s blindly, grabbing hold of his thigh and then his forearm until he could intertwine their fingers and hold on tightly.
“What’s the diagnosis, Doc?” Edward said, his voice tight. Gene squeezed his hand back at the sound of it.
“I think he’s gonna be okay,” Gene said softly. “Wasn’t delirious or nothing when I got there. He was joking with me and Joe. Didn’t lose too much blood.” When he was met with silence, he looked over towards Edward, pale and eyes rimmed red, and squeezed his hand harder. “He got the shit beat out of him, but I think he's gonna pull through, Babe.”
Edward was tense and quiet for a second more, and then he let out a shaky breath. With it, a few tear drops fell. “Okay. Yeah, okay.”
In the shadows of the blanket, they clung to each other. Gene wondered what Edward would think if he knew that their blood was still on his hands, but he quickly pushed the question aside. Of course he knew the blood was there. The real question was if Edward held his hand in spite of the blood or because of it. He thought back to the aid station in Nijmegen, to the beat of his heart, to the way the blood slowly disappeared as Gene sewed Edward’s tender skin back together. If Gene was given the option to crawl inside of Edward, if he could spend eternity hidden from the world behind Edward’s ribcage, he probably wouldn’t have to think too hard about his next steps.
He woke up to a rapid heartbeat and Babe’s quick, panicked breaths. He reached out and grabbed a hold of something solid. His sleep-addled brain moved slowly; it took a few moments to realize he was holding Babe’s upper arm.
Babe looked at him. His chest was heaving, but his eyes were not scared, just tired and sad. “I’m fine,” he whispered. “Sorry for waking you.”
Gene mumbled something, the meaning of which he did not even know himself. He shifted to be more upright, ignoring Babe’s protests, and placed one hand along Babe’s jaw, the other searching along Babe’s throat for his pulse. It shut Babe up quickly.
“Just breathe,” Gene murmured. “Deep breaths.”
Together, only half-awake in the dark, they breathed. Gene counted in four on each inhale and exhale, and Babe followed suit as best he could. Eventually, Babe’s pulse slowed against Gene’s fingers, his muscles relaxing. Gene realized his thumb was sweeping back and forth against Babe’s cheek, brushing against the freckles Gene had spent hours staring at. They were even better up close, like stars, like his own personal collection of constellations. Who else studied Babe Heffron like this, with Gene’s intensity, with his adoration?
Their eyes met. His brown eyes looked black in the dark. Gene pulled away.
“Okay,” he said. Babe nodded, perhaps unthinkingly, and Gene nodded back before turning the other way and closing his eyes resolutely.
The aid station in Bastogne had relocated from the church to wherever-the-fuck-the-wounded-fit. It was mostly a matter of putting men behind walls, out of the way of the wind, as buildings with roofs were becoming fewer and farther between.
Most men had been relocated to a school down the road, and most remaining supplies went with them. It was who Anna led him through the building now, to the world’s most pitiful supply of morphine and plasma. “Il y a une pauvreté des fournitures,” she said, “mais une richesse des supérieurs idiots.”
Gene laughed. She had been delighted to learn about Dike, as it seemed the nurses of Bastogne were dealing with a disappearing, oversleeping head surgeon of their own. “Ça, c’est l’armée.”
“Je suis heureuse d’être femme,” Anna said. She tapped Gene’s supply bag, and Gene opened it to let her drop in as much as they could spare. It was not enough, but Gene was getting used to operating on not enough.
As she led him back out to the street, she said, “I have a request.”
“Sure,” he said hesitantly. Though Gene had not known her for long, he had never known her to be evasive.
“I have a feeling that we are coming to the end of the battle.” As they stepped out into the street, a truck stopped before them. Gene held out a hand like he was hailing a taxi, then turned to look at Anna. Her brow was furrowed. “I would like to keep in touch. I would like to know… someone else who knows.”
He understood what she was talking around, and his heart clenched in grief. “I’m not the best writer,” he said.
“Neither am I,” Anna replied. She pulled a pencil and a pocket Bible out of her pocket.
In his best handwriting, he carefully wrote his name and unit. He did not want to say goodbye, fearing the finality, and it seemed Anna was of the same thought. He got on the truck without saying another word, and Anna watched him leave until they couldn’t see each other anymore.
On a windy evening an indeterminable amount of time since they arrived in Belgium, Lipton came up to Gene and asked where Heffron was.
Gene was crouched in Christenson’s foxhole pulling out a few nasty splinters he’d let accumulate, and he accidentally pinched his skin with the tweezers. Sisk laughed as Christenson cursed, and Gene stared at Lipton blankly.
“He’s not in your foxhole,” Lipton said after an awkward beat. Gene’s mind hooked onto the word your, trying to figure out if it was singular or plural, my foxhole or our foxhole, and he had to remind himself that Lipton had asked him a question.
“He might be with Spina,” Gene said.
“Thanks.” He clapped a hand on Gene’s shoulder, and, with a small smile playing on his lips, added to Sisk, “I think you can lay off him, Skinny.”
Sisk, still giggling, waved a hand in acknowledgement but did not make any move to stop. Christenson kicked at him weakly, and Gene, who was slowly coming back to himself, said, “If y’all don’t stop moving, I’ll get both of you.”
He finished his rounds in a daze, and when he came up on his foxhole he saw a familiar helmet like he expected, like he had expected every night since Christmas. Edward looked up when he heard Gene’s footsteps and smiled. His cheeks and nose were pink.
“Hi,” Gene said, feeling awkward as he lowered himself into the hole. “Did Sergeant Lipton find you?”
“Yeah, he was asking about that German fire when I was on watch.” He shifted a bit, never comfortable, always fidgeting, and when he stilled his upper arm was pressed against Gene’s, his knee a slight pressure against Gene’s thigh.
Edward kept talking, about the German fire, maybe, or Lipton, or a hundred other things, Gene couldn’t tell. Your foxhole, Lipton said, maybe your like Gene’s, maybe your like Gene’s-and-Babe’s. He didn’t know which was better, if he actually wanted either option. It was too late either way — he was already in too deep — but it was still a strange thing to reconcile. He had thought himself alone, but evidently he hadn’t been alone for a couple of weeks now.
A slight push on Gene’s thigh where Edward’s knee was digging in. Something queasy churned in his stomach, and he couldn’t think about anything other than Edward.
The other men were probably relieved to be doing something other than sitting around getting shelled, but for Gene, the assault on Foy was more of the same. Running around, dodging bits of metal hellbent on killing him, trying to make sure no one else got killed. No one was particularly excited to be led by Dike, but movement was still movement.
The assault ended up being mostly led by Lieutenant Speirs from Dog, which Gene did not realize until the assault was nearly over. He figured he had spent the transfer of power trying to fix Dike’s mistakes and missed the meat of it. Nearly every man was talking about it, though, and the story trickled down to Gene by way of Spina, who heard from Liebgott who heard from Talbert who heard from Luz that Lipton had been yelling at Dike (a very comforting thought) when Speirs ran in through the smoke, divided the men, then ran off for I company. By the time Randleman came to the truck carrying Perconte on his back, Edward, who, Gene was learning, loved gossip, was wheedling him for more information.
“Nothing got him? Nothing?”
Gene hid his smile as best he could and tried to keep up a veneer of annoyance. “Edward, all I know is he didn’t ask me to patch him up.”
Edward wrinkled his nose at the sound of his own name but didn’t say anything about it, singly focused on Lieutenant Speirs, standing still as a statue across the field talking to Winters. “He’s fucking crazy. Holy shit.”
“Shut the fuck up, Babe,” Perconte snapped, wriggling around on the truck bed.
“You should ask Speirs how he does it, Frank,” Edward said with a grin. “Could’ve dodged that bullet in your ass.”
“Fuck you. Fucking replacements.”
“Stop moving,” Gene said. Frank grumbled something about medics playing favorites that Gene pretended not to hear. Edward heard it and winked at Gene, which Gene pretended not to see. The blush he felt rising to his cheeks said otherwise.
The soft sounds of feet crunching snow came from behind Gene, and when a warm hand came down on his shoulder he knew it was Lipton. Their first sergeant's face was covered in dirt and blood, and his eyes were tired, but he seemed in better spirits than he had been in since before Bastogne.
“You doing alright, Frank?” he asked.
“Fuckin’ peachy.”
“Glad to hear it,” Lipton said. He turned to Gene and asked, “When’s the truck heading out?”
“I think they’re waiting to see if anyone else needs off the line,” Gene said. This was what the driver told him, but he knew that was code for hurry up and wait. He shared a look with Lipton that said as much, and Lipton sighed.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll see if I can hurry them up.”
“Hey, Lip, before you go —” Gene groaned and Frank put in a “shut up, Heffron” that only made Edward’s smile grow, “— is it true that Speirs ran by all the German tanks without getting hit?”
At that, Lipton smiled again, something half admiration and half relief. “Yeah, it’s true,” he said. “I saw it myself. I think the Germans just didn’t know what they were seeing the first time through, but how he came back, I have no idea.”
Edward whistled low. “Fuckin’ crazy,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Glad he’s on our side.”
Lipton laughed softly. “Yeah, me too,” he said before walking towards the officers.
Medics usually got the worst news before the rest of the enlisted men. Gene did not know whether it was because their job was a bit more specialized than the average soldier’s and thus required more preparation to move out, or because their job was already so shit that battalion felt less bad letting the medics down, or because God just had it out for them. He was inclined to believe the latter, because he seemed to get wind of the worst news simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. For example: when he stepped outside the convent in Rachamps to take a leak, he overheard Nixon telling Speirs they would not be taken off the line and would instead be moved along the Rhine.
He walked back inside and sat down heavily in one of the back pews, hardly hearing a word of the hymns. For anywhere between a couple of minutes and an hour, Gene sat there, clenching and unclenching a fist, trying so hard not to think about it that it was the only thing he could think about; his bone-deep exhaustion, his countless tender bruises, one persistent, never-ending headache. He was completely oblivious to the ending of the songs and didn’t register the men walking back to camp.
There was a light tap on his shoulder, and he looked over to see an open carton of French cigarettes.
“Smoke?” Edward offered. Gene took one and followed him outside.
They stood off to the side of the convent doors. The moon was hidden behind clouds, and the warm candlelight from inside only fell on patches of dirty snow and bullet casings. Edward lit Gene’s cigarette with his lighter then lit his own, breathing in deeply.
“I can’t fucking wait to get actual cigarettes,” he said. “This French shit is terrible.”
When Gene didn’t say anything, Edward turned to peer at him. Gene did not look back, instead choosing to stare blankly out at the convent grounds, but he could feel Edward’s suspicious stare like a finger poking at his temples.
“Fuck’s sake, Gene,” Edward said. “I know that look. What is it?”
He took a drag to avoid the question for just a few more seconds, then said, “I heard Nixon say they weren’t pulling us back.”
“Fuck. Those pieces of shit. Fuck.” Gene watched as Edward threw his cigarette down in anger, paced for a few steps, then, regretting the waste of a cigarette, pulled out his carton and lit another one.
“Yeah,” Gene said sympathetically.
“Someone was saying it’s always us,” Edward said, “and I was like, ‘no, it’s just a coincidence, it can’t just be Easy.’ But it always is. It always fucking is. What the hell.”
Gene was silent for a moment. “Back in Toccoa,” he said after a pause, “Sobel had us on another one of his midnight marches, and Randleman asked Winters why Sobel hated Easy. Know what Winters said?”
“No, what?”
“Winters said that Sobel didn’t hate Easy, he just hated Bull.”
Edward didn’t quite laugh like Gene had hoped, but he smiled, which would have to be good enough. “So it’s all Bull’s fault? Tony’ll be pissed.”
“You didn’t hear it from me.”
“I never do.”
At that, Gene looked at Babe. He wasn’t looking back, but as if he could feel Gene’s stare, he turned his head. His eyes were crinkled in that way Gene loved, like his eyes started smiling before his lips got the message. The scratch on his forehead that Gene had cleaned the other day was scabbing over neatly, would soon heal as though it had never been there, but Gene would remember his hands cupping Babe’s head, keeping him still, and the way Babe’s pretty brown eyes looked up at him when he pulled away.
Gene lifted the cigarette to his lips, eyes trained on Babe’s, and took a drag. He watched as Babe’s lips flitted down, then back up. He held Babe’s gaze for a moment, then looked away. He felt desire like angry stabs of hunger in his gut, and for once he let himself feel it.
There was a pang of fear when Martin ran into the room, and “wounded” was barely out of his mouth before Gene was running out of the building, shoving the sergeant in front of him to lead the way. He nearly tripped going down the steps to the basement, and there was a wave of relief when the prone, bleeding body was dark-haired, definitively not Babe, and a wave of guilt following the relief.
He was reminded of the soldier who had died in a chapel in the church of Bastogne, the frantic helplessness that came with trying to save a dying man. There was noise but Gene couldn’t tell if it was from the other soldiers or himself or the blood. When blood came pouring out of a man so freely, there should have been noise to mark the gravity and desperation of the situation, but it was always silent.
When Jackson died, Gene looked up, half expecting to see Renée again, face flushed from exertion and full of pity. Instead he saw Babe, and he watched in real time as the man shook his head in disbelief, as his hope was crushed. Gene watched Babe for a long time after that.
Martin tapped him on the shoulder. Slowly, Gene searched for the dead man’s dog tags, keeping Babe in his periphery as much as he could.
The following night, Babe found him chain smoking in an abandoned shell of a building, a crater going through the center of it. It was an unstable wreck — not even the army wanted to put bunks there — and so it was a refuge from the rest of the world.
He was halfway through his fourth cigarette, standing under the hole in the roof and looking up at the sky. Babe made his way over clumsily, stumbling and muttering curses the whole way over, and it was enough to make Gene crack a smile. He offered the cigarette to Babe, who took it without a word.
There had been a brief moment in time, between Foy and Rachamps, when Babe had been happy, when everyone had been happy, under the impression that soon they’d be taken off the line. The promise of rest had kept them going, but it did not last long. Gene could feel the despair festering within him, and he watched helplessly as it festered within Babe, his already rare smiles coming less and less, his eyes losing their warm spark.
Gene did not usually indulge in self-pity, but watching Babe smoke his cigarette listlessly, he asked God why the fuck He refused to let them meet under better circumstances.
When Babe finished the cigarette, he threw it down onto the floor. It landed next to a hole that dropped down to the basement. The pair of them watched the orange cherry flare one last time, then slowly fade away and die.
“You remember when I cut your hand, I bandaged it with that blue scarf?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Gene saw Babe nod.
“I found that scarf in Bastogne,” Gene said, pushing past the lump in his throat. “During that shelling from the night before. There was this nurse there at the aid station, a woman named Renée. She gave me the chocolate. The very first time I spoke to her, she gave me a bar of chocolate. I don’t — we only spoke two or three times. But when I saw her scarf there in the rubble, in this big pile of rubble —”
He swallowed heavily, hands clenched and nails digging into his palm. He was hyperaware of Babe’s presence next to him, like he could feel the air shift where he stood, and of Babe’s eyes boring a hole into his skull. In the stretch of silence Gene left behind him, Babe breathed out a soft and aching, “Gene.”
“I hate that I couldn’t save it,” he said quickly, desperate to get it out, “and that I couldn’t mourn her or — or anything. But I’m real glad I used it on you, Babe. I’m sorry I hurt you, but I’m glad it meant I bandaged you up first. If it was anyone else —” he stopped, sucked in a deep breath “— but it was you.”
“Gene,” Babe said again, only slightly louder. “Gene, look at me.”
Slowly, Gene pried his eyes from the splintered wood rubble of the house and turned his head towards Babe. He barely recognized the face that stared back at him. There was something so open and raw in Babe’s frown, the way his eyebrows furrowed together, the way he seemed to look right through Gene, right down to the center of his being, that made Gene think he was the only person to ever see Babe like this. He would not miss the opportunity. He stared right back.
His heartbeat was pounding in his ear when he said, “Babe.”
Babe mumbled, “Fuck,” quickly before he grabbed a hold of Gene’s face and smashed their lips together.
He registered the kiss in waves of sensation. The scratch of Babe’s stubble, then the slide of his tongue, then the frantic, desperate pulling, like Babe was trying to swallow him whole. As soon as Gene realized it, he felt the miniscule space between them like a chasm, and he pawed desperately at Babe’s uniform, an irrational need to do anything to get them closer. One hand wrapped around Babe’s hip. The other twisted in the fabric of the army issue jacket.
He moved without thinking; the hand clutching Babe’s jacket started unzipping, migrated to his undershirt, swiped a thumb over a covered nipple. It was enough to make Babe moan into his mouth, to make Gene crave more. He yanked Babe’s shirt out of his pants and finally got his hand on Babe’s skin, the jut of his hip bone. Gene was sure his hand was cold and uncomfortable, but Babe moaned again anyway.
Babe broke their kiss and tucked his head into the crook of Gene’s neck, pressing wet, open mouthed kisses to the skin stretching over his jugular. His hands slid down Gene’s chest, working through the layers as Gene let out breathy sighs and mindlessly mapped out the skin of Babe’s torso, the stretch of muscles beneath his skin, the small of his back where bone gave way to the meat of his ass, the thickening hair at the bottom of his stomach. He couldn’t resist the urge to drift lower, and when he squeezed Babe’s hard cock through his underwear, he felt the vibrations of Babe’s groan through his neck.
Babe lifted his head and kissed Gene again, searing and desperate, whimpering little, “Please, Gene,”’s against his lips. Gene worked his hands under Babe’s underwear, got his hands on Babe’s cock, pumped it a few times, and drank in Babe’s groans.
When Babe got his hands on Gene, he lost any capability at rational thought. Despite Babe’s moans and whimpers, the sweet nothings breathed into Gene’s skin, he moved with a deliberateness that either betrayed practice or instinct. He brought their cocks together, guided Gene’s hand to stroke the both of them together, even as Gene bit the thick muscle of Babe’s shoulder to muffle a groan. Their bodies were pressed tight together, and Gene felt Babe’s muscles clench up as he came, and Gene followed shortly after.
They leaned against each other in the deafening silence that followed, knees weak, chests rising and falling heavily. Gene closed his eyes, head leaning on Babe’s shoulder, and allowed himself a moment of unrestricted longing. If only they were alone, truly alone, if only there weren't a war, if only they could wile the days away together, if only.
He pulled away first. He reached for his supply bag, lying on the floor next to them, and dug out a scrap of bandage to clean them up. Babe let him go but kept a hand on his wrist, as if to prevent Gene from running away, as if Gene could ever be capable of that.
Even as Gene came back up, white bandage in hand, Babe continued to hold him, a loose grip on his wrist as he passed the cloth over Babe’s hand, over his own, over their softening cocks and the base of their stomachs. Babe held on, a thumb brushing idly over Gene’s knuckles, as Gene buttoned and zipped them up again, methodical and precise like he was working on a wounded man.
“Don’t leave,” Babe murmured. He was looking down at their hands, brows furrowed and frowning something sad. “Guys always leave. I don’t — just stick around. Please.”
Gene stared at Babe and came to the sudden realization that Babe was queer, too. Babe was queer, same as Gene, and he probably had the same ugly, tangled mess of feelings about being queer that Gene held inside of him, and a history of being queer that stretched before the war that Gene knew nothing about. Gene thought about men, and he thought about that night in Bastogne where Gene was so deep inside of himself that Babe could barely reach him.
“‘Course,” he said. “Of course.” He pulled their hands apart carefully and moved to cup Babe’s face. Babe looked back at him, expression cracked like a glass mirror. Gene kissed him to see if he could, and a hard knot of anxiety in the pit of his stomach began unraveling when Babe kissed back sweetly, his hand around Gene’s hips, pulling him closer.
They only pulled apart at the sound of gunshots across the river.
“I usually buy my dates dinner first,” Babe said in the silence that followed. Gene smiled for the first time in God knew how long, and Babe grinned back. He reached out to give Gene’s hand a quick little squeeze. Gene squeezed back before they let go.
“I’ll be expecting a five-star dining experience, then,” Gene said lightly, and he delighted in the sound of Babe’s laugh that followed. They started making their way through the shell of a house out into Haguenau proper. The moonlight lit the street, and the pair of them stuck close to the shadows cast by hollowed out buildings.
“You’ll be waiting a while,” Babe said, shooting a grin back at Gene.
“That’s alright,” Gene replied. “I can wait.”
He crossed the Rhine with a fragile bit of hope hiding in his chest. It was a stupid thing to cling to, but the resistance as they moved into Germany was weak, the cries for a medic were becoming fewer, and, perhaps most importantly, the sun had emerged from behind winter clouds.
It came out in full force when they were stationed in a town somewhere west of Stuttgart, and most men were lingering in the streets, in the surrounding fields, just to get a taste of it. Gene was stuck inside most of the day, tending to superficial wounds and moving boxes around, stepping just outside the door for a few minutes at a time so he could feel warmth on his skin. When the army doctor dismissed him, he left without asking if there was more to be done. He just went straight for the hills, tilting his face upwards like a sunflower.
He had been stretched out in the grass for half an hour when a shadow passed over his eyes. Squinting one eye open, he saw Babe hovering over him awkwardly. Something in Gene’s chest fluttered, and he remembered that the sun was nothing compared to Babe.
“Sit down,” Gene said anyway. “You’re blocking the sun.”
Babe smiled and plopped down clumsily. As Gene sat himself up, Babe began ripping up the grass, tearing blades into long thin strips and tiny pieces. It was a mindless movement, and Gene wondered if it was a nervous tick or just one of those things that Babe did.
“Can I ask you something?” Babe said.
“Sure.”
“Am I your first?”
Gene looked down at his own hands. “Man, yes. Person, no.”
There was a moment of silence. He risked a look up at Babe, but Babe was not looking at him. He was staring down at the grass, nodding slightly, brows furrowed.
“You?” Gene asked.
“No to both.” He was quiet for a moment, then said, “My first kiss was with a kid named Johnny. He lived down the block. Real smart, always helped me with math and shit. He moved to Jersey when we were fifteen, maybe, and the last day he was in school he kissed me in an empty classroom. And then he apologized and left and I never heard from him again. And a couple years later I kissed a gal for the first time, and I figured Johnny was just a fluke, you know, like I was confused, because I really fucking liked kissing her, but things happened, and I was with another guy, and I liked that, too. And then I see him out with his gal, and I find out Johnny got married, and I just—” He sighed heavily all of a sudden, then put his hand down on the grass next to Gene. Gingerly, like he was touching broken glass, Gene placed his own hand next to Babe’s and intertwined their fingers. “I feel like I’m going crazy sometimes. Like everyone feels the way I do and I’m the only sucker who doesn’t want to choose.”
From their spot on the hill, they could hear the shouts of men walking through the street, brandishing bottles of alcohol to their friends, and the responding cheers. Gene wished they would disappear, that the whole town would disappear, so he could have this moment alone, so he could say what he wanted to say without feeling like someone would overhear.
“If nothing else,” he said finally, “I’m a sucker, too.”
Babe’s fingers twitched against his. “You, too, huh?”
“Me, too.”
Babe sighed, then he laid down in the grass with his eyes closed. His freckles, Gene noted, looked especially pretty in sunlight. “Sorry. I’ve been thinking about that for a while.”
“It’s okay,” Gene said. “I think about it, too.”
Babe opened his eyes and peered at Gene. “You can tell me about it,” he said. “If you want.”
The sound of a car starting. Laughter. Gene bit his cheek and looked back down to the town below. He felt a gentle touch on his wrist, and he turned back to Babe, guilty in more ways than one.
“Or not,” Babe added.
“When I can,” Gene said, “you’ll be the first to know.”
“Thanks,” Babe said, more sincere than Gene would’ve expected. His face was soft and meditative for a few moments, the fingers on Gene’s wrist tracing slow circles. Then he smiled suddenly and said, “I want to kiss you so bad.”
Gene laughed.
“I’ve been trying to find some place for us to be alone,” Babe continued, smile widening, “but I swear to God, Gene, there’s not a single empty room in this town.”
“Army’s not known for privacy.”
“Then we should go AWOL. No, wait, listen to me!” Laughter bubbled up out of Babe’s chest, and Gene grinned so hard his cheeks began to hurt. “We’ll hitch a ride to Paris and get a room on the Champs Ellisee or whatever and we’ll never leave the bed except to go dancing.”
“I don’t dance,” Gene said. He ignored the shameful little bit of him that asked where the hell they would find a place where two men could dance and played along, desperate for it to be true.
“Well, I do,” Babe shot back. “Not good or nothing, but I dance. Prepare to have your toes stepped on.”
“I’ll wear my army boots, then.”
“Smart. That’s why I keep you around.”
The sky had faded to one of those pretty blue-pink-orange sunsets that Gene loved, and the dying sunlight was golden. It was one of those sunsets Gene had rarely seen in Europe, though he didn’t know if the blame fell more on the European sunsets for not being pretty enough, or on Gene for not looking up and seeing it. It was there though, and Gene was watching it light Babe’s hair copper and gold and kiss freckles into his skin. “I want to kiss you, too,” Gene whispered, a secret from him and Babe and the sunset.
Babe flushed a pretty peach pink and his grin melted into that soft smile that Gene loved, that Gene hoped was given to him alone. “I’m telling you,” Babe said, “we gotta get to Paris. We’ll kiss each other stupid.”
“Why don’t we wait for an honorable discharge first?”
Babe rolled his eyes. “Fine. I can’t believe I fell for a rule hound.”
Gene’s heart skipped a beat at that, the thought that Babe fell for him — it was one of those things that was probably self-evident but felt momentous when spoken aloud. The thought that Babe felt for him the way he felt for Babe, like they shared a heart. He wondered if Babe could feel the same fluttering in his chest.
He laid down on his back next to Babe, the pair of them flat on the ground covered up by the tall grass. The people at the base of the hill probably couldn’t see them, or if they could, they would have to search out their forms. Gene could hear them though, the sounds of motors, the mixed English and German, the noise of civilization. In their imaginary Paris room, they would be on the top floor and they would leave the windows open and they would hear the world outside as they created one of their own.
“You’ll have to learn French if we live in Paris,” Gene said as he looked up at the blue-pink-orange sky. “I’ll teach you.”
“I’ll pick up your accent,” Babe said. His hands were still on Gene’s wrist, right over the veins where his pulse kept a steady rhythm. “Everyone’ll know we’re together.”
The thought wasn’t as scary as it usually was.
In an empty room in a too-big building outside Reutlingen, Gene pressed Babe into the stiff mattress. Slowly, with all the time in the world, he peeled off Babe’s clothes; first his jacket, letting his hands run down the length of Babe’s arms, then his undershirt, dragging his knuckles along the soft skin of Babe’s stomach as he pulled the fabric, then his pants, pressing open mouthed kisses to Babe’s inner thighs. Babe sighed and shivered and slid a hand in Gene’s hair, tugging him up to kiss him messily. The longer Babe kissed him, the more he fell apart, muscles loose, brain slow and stupid in the overwhelming presence of Edward Heffron.
He was intoxicated and spoiled. He would never be able to leave this room, not after feeling Babe’s hairy thighs sliding up his body, not after feeling Babe grip his ass to pull him closer, not after making Babe’s chapped lips slick with saliva. He would miss all the calls for a medic because from then on he would only be interested in hearing Babe’s moans and sighs and mindless babble, “you’re gorgeous, Gene,” “so fucking good,” “please, yes, please,” “Gene, Gene, Gene.” He would be entirely devoted to Babe, he would crawl inside him like he wanted to do in Bastogne, he would live his life in tandem with Babe’s pulse.
It felt like something holy, to have Babe like this, to give himself to Babe. After nearly a year of nothing but death, he had something alive in his hands, breathing, all the intricacies of the human body coming together to make him feel good. Babe’s cock stiffened against Gene’s thigh, against his own hard cock, and it was like a sacrament.
Gene whispered, “Je t’aime,” into Babe’s neck. He knew how it would sound if he said it loud enough for Babe to hear, in a language Babe understood. But it wasn’t for Babe. He held the weight of the confession like a baby bird with a broken wing. Je t’aime, même si tu es un homme et je suis un homme, même si on est damné, même si la guerre n’est pas encore terminée, même si tu ne m’aimes pas, même si tu ne m’aimeras jamais. Je t’aime.
“Gene,” Babe said. “Gene.”
He put his hand against Gene’s ribs and pushed, rolling Gene onto his back. He went easily, because he would have done anything Babe asked in that moment, and pushed his hand through the short hair at the back of Babe’s neck as he leaned down and kissed him. Even as Babe moved down his chest, Gene kept a hold on him. Even as Babe began sucking him off, Gene held him. Even as Gene returned the favor.
In the afterglow, Babe lit a cigarette that they passed back and forth between slow, easy kisses. Gene wanted to say something, but he was returning to the real world now, returning to that knot of anxiety that always sat heavy within him, to the dark cloud of shame. Anything he said would break the dreamy reverie, and it was too good and rare a moment to shatter so mindlessly. He saved his words for another day, and kissed Babe again.
The army’s mail service was perpetually angry at Gene due to his inability to collect his mail. He felt this anger was misplaced, because, in all fairness, Gene rarely got mail. His father could only sign his own name, and his mother was not much better off. Gene’s literacy in English and French had, against all odds, skyrocketed during his time in the army, and now he was on track to be the most literate in the family, save for his hotshot, store clerk cousin in Baton Rouge. Letters from home were few and far between.
Babe was made aware of this in Germany, when a mail clerk chased Gene down to deliver an envelope carrying a photo of his newborn niece with a hastily scrawled Love you on the back. Babe cooed over the baby (“She’s adorable. Gene, you’ve got the cutest niece in the world.”) then decided, without telling anyone, that he would ask for Gene’s mail whenever he asked for his own.
And so it was Babe who delivered Anna’s first letter.
“Who is Anna Chiwy?” Babe asked as he entered the medical supply tent, sitting on a box of bandages. Other medics and army doctors barely gave him a second glance; it was mostly because he was there so often, bothering Gene or chatting with Ralph, but also because, as Gene was learning, Babe had a talent for worming his way into any kind of space, regardless of whether or not he should be there.
Gene looked up from his clipboard in surprise and took the envelope. Anna’s cursive was a bit messy but the lines were confident, the ink even and sure. A wave of relief crashed over Gene, and he realized suddenly that he had been terrified that Anna had died, too, and that he was alone again.
“She was a nurse in Bastogne,” Gene said. He wanted to say more, but the words got stuck in his throat, and he looked up at Babe helplessly, hoping he could understand.
Babe’s face softened. He stuck his leg out and tapped Gene’s ankle with his boot. “I could hold it until you’re done here,” he offered. “Keep it safe.”
It was an out, Gene realized, a way for him to process the onslaught of emotions that came with the letter before he read it, and he wanted to kiss Babe right there in the middle of the tent, surrounded by men, military police be damned. He knew, though, that even if he couldn’t read it yet, he couldn’t hand it over. He was like a child clinging to his favorite blanket in the middle of a hurricane.
“Thanks,” he said, “but I’ll keep it.”
Babe nodded and gave Gene a little smile. Gene smiled back, eyes embarrassingly watery.
After dinner that night, Babe found him again, carrying a letter of his own. “Want to hear from my sister?” he asked. Gene nodded.
They walked out to the edge of town and stretched out in the grass beside the road. Babe leaned back on his hands, a boot knocking into Gene’s, and Gene laid down on his back, a hand pressed against the side of Babe’s thigh. Babe grinned down at him and started reading.
“‘Dear Babe,’” he read, “‘Hope you are doing good. Ma is glad to know things are better for you. Your friend came by the other day, the Polish one, I can’t spell his name. He wanted me to remind you to give the Germans hell, but he wasn’t as polite as that. His wife thought it was Easter and wanted to bring us something. She was early, of course, but it was awfully nice — she baked something with apples and honey, it was real good. I’m sure you will get many Easter well-wishes soon, but I want to be the first to say Happy Easter. Be careful while giving the Germans hell. Love, Mary.’”
“When’s the letter dated?” Gene asked. It was the Friday after Easter for them.
“March 18th.”
“What’s your friend’s name?”
“Mateusz,” Babe said. He was staring into the sunset, and Gene was looking at the back of his neck. “He’s Jewish, came to Philly in, I don’t know, ‘37, ‘38 maybe? I worked with him at the shipyard. Real practical sort, he saw what was going on in Germany and decided to get the hell out of Europe.” Babe laughed abruptly and added, “You know, once he tried giving me a Christmas gift in November. All the guys were talking about their Thanksgiving plans and he thought it was Christmas.”
Gene laughed. “Nice that he got you a gift, though.”
“Yeah, he’s real sweet.” Babe leaned back, then, so he was lying flat on his back like Gene, and turned his head so he was looking Gene in the eyes. “You want to read yours? If you want.”
“It’ll be in French.”
“That’s fine. It ain’t any of my business, anyway.”
Gene laughed, even as a bundle of nerves started gathering in his stomach. He reached into his inner pocket and pulled out Anna’s letter. Careful as he could, he opened the envelope, wincing when the flap tore a little bit. The letter he pulled out was short, only one page, and written in the same messy script that covered the back of the envelope. He unfolded it with trembling hands, and when it was open, Babe took one of his hands and held it.
“‘Cher Eugene,’” Gene read haltingly. “‘Tout le monde vous remercie pour la défense de Bastogne. Moi, je te remercie pour ton adresse. Il ne fait pas encore beau, mais je vois le soleil plus qu’avant et il y a moins de débris dans la rue. J’imagine que c’est la même pour toi. Joyeuse Pâques. Écris-moi. Anna.’”
With one hand, he folded the letter and tucked it back into his pocket.
“All good news?” Babe asked.
“Not much news at all,” Gene said. He stared up at the darkening sky. “I think she was scared the letter wouldn’t make it to me.”
Babe squeezed his hand.
“I like hearing you speak French,” Babe said.
“Yeah, I’m sure you do, Babe.” When Gene tilted his head to smirk at Babe, he was already looking back at Gene and laughing.
Second platoon’s billet in Landsberg was in a vacant apartment building that someone in command believed was home to the Nazi guards of the prison camp. Across the street was a charming plaza, complete with a fountain and benches, where Babe was smoking a cigarette, facing the building.
When he saw Gene approaching, he wordlessly lit a new one and handed it over. He looked exhausted.
“Is Joe okay?” Gene asked quietly.
“Yeah,” Babe said. “I mean, no, but he’s not breaking shit anymore. Tab got him up to bed. I’m guessing you cleaned up his hand?”
“Yeah.” It was Joe who had come and got him, surprisingly. Gene would have expected him to hide the wound, pick out the glass himself, let it get infected, and then, finally, come ask for help. Instead, he came to Gene quietly holding his bloody hand out. While Gene worked, Joe kept a hand on his sternum, where the Star of David on his dog tags was resting. “That was before dinner, though. He start up again?”
“Took shit out to the alley and started shooting at it,” Babe said. “Looked expensive, too. I think Webster was helping him pick the most expensive shit, actually.”
“Huh. Are they friends?”
Babe laughed humorlessly. “Fuck no. Think they were just angry enough to get along for two seconds. Couple of other guys were out there with them, too, they just got tired of it sooner.”
On the second storey, a light flicked on. Through gauzy curtains, Gene made out the shape of a figure, but it didn’t quite slouch the way Joe did, so he stopped paying attention.
“Are you okay?” Gene asked.
Babe sighed heavily. “I feel sick,” he admitted. “Like nervous-sick, almost. Maybe I’m just worried, I don’t know.”
“Probably worried.”
Babe turned and peered at Gene, reading through Gene’s vagueness to grasp exactly at the core of what he said. “How are you?”
Gene thought about spitting out a bullshit “fine” for a longer moment than Babe deserved. “I don’t think I want to leave,” he said finally. “It’s like if I sprinkled some plasma on an open artery but never took the guy to the aid station. We’re leaving when we’ve only done half the job. Not even half.”
Silence stretched out long before them. The light in the second storey window turned off.
The news came from Ralph, which came from Christenson which came from Grant which came from Luz. He walked into the aid station, said, “The bastards surrendered!” and left without further explanation.
There was also a somewhat more official announcement from Lieutenant Lipton around four o’clock, about orders to stay at present position, that they would likely move on at some point, but for the moment the 506th were staying in Berchtesgaden. Shortly thereafter, Nixon sped by with crates full of booze, and shortly after that, another truck driven by orderlies containing more crates of booze stopped in the center of town.
“With regards from Captain Nixon,” the driver said, and then the truck was swarmed.
Gene spent half the evening trying to find Babe, but he kept getting sidetracked and handed drinks. Most of the medics gathered up with five or six bottles of a German white wine and toasted to the end of the war. The relief among them was palpable and a little suffocating in its desperation. All any of them could think of was the hope that they’d never have to watch a man die on their watch again, and it placed an unpleasantly somber mood over the celebrations. Ralph seemed to realize this at the exact same time as Gene, and with one shared look they were out of the building and onto happier soldiers.
Gene lost Ralph within a group of guys from first platoon and a handful of Dog soldiers trading stories about Speirs. He headed to second platoon’s billet in search of Babe, but he got pulled into a pub by Malarkey, who managed to convince him to play one round of darts. Gene was tipsy enough to agree, and he lost miserably, so Luz shoved a glass of German liquor into his hands and cheered as he downed it. When he did finally get to second platoon, he found Liebgott and Grant critiquing McClung’s form as he drunkenly shot down empty wine bottles, but no Babe.
“I think he’s off trying to find you,” Grant said when Gene asked. “He disappeared as soon as he got his hands on a bottle of something.”
“That was probably about two hours ago. Hey, Ramirez!” Liebgott called, waving Ramirez over from across the street. “You seen Babe?”
“Yeah, just saw him talking to Ralph by that bakery a couple streets over,” Ramirez said. He had two bottles of wine half shoved in his pants pockets and a bottle of scotch in his hands. “Oh, hey, Doc. Babe’s looking for you.”
“I heard,” Gene said, already walking away. “Thanks for the help.”
“Tell Babe to be home by three!” Grant called after him. Gene grinned and waved a hand in acknowledgement.
When he got to the bakery, he found Ralph and Babe sitting and talking at one of the tables outside, next to some other guys from throughout the 506th. Ralph saw him first and waved him over. Babe noticed him half a second later and jumped up, stepping over a replacement who was sprawled out on the ground. He wrapped Gene in a tight hug, something alcohol-sweet on his breath, and Gene knew they were both just tipsy enough not to care what anyone else thought. His arms wrapped around Babe and grabbed fistfuls of Babe’s jacket. At the feeling, Babe squeezed him.
“We made it,” he murmured.
“We made it.”
They let go and stepped back to look at each other. Babe’s lopsided smile, his freckles half hidden in the dark, his fingers trailing down Gene’s arms. Their first moments in peace.
“Babe’s got champagne,” Ralph said. “Come try it!”
He spent the rest of the night with Ralph and Babe, drinking champagne and eating bread a replacement had taken from the bakery. Beneath the table, Babe kept his knee pressed to Gene’s, so on top of the warm fizzy feeling from the champagne there was a warm fizzy feeling from Babe, like he was a teenager again, like he was falling in love over and over and over again. The smell of pine was thick in the air, and the stars twinkled brightly, and between two of his closest friends peacetime felt like more than a word.
The night slipped away from him quickly once he had some champagne, and he was beginning to get the feeling that he should not have mixed his alcohols. His eyelids were heavy, and he began leaning against Babe, which was okay because Babe was leaning back, and besides, Ralph was too drunk to notice. There was a part of him, the young part that the war couldn’t entirely eradicate, that just wanted to fall asleep right there in the street. War was effective, though, in killing his impulsivity, and when Ralph dropped his head down to the table, Gene said, “We should get back to our billets.”
“Yeah, probably,” Babe said. He stretched his leg under the table and kicked Ralph to no response. “Ralph. C’mon, let’s get inside. Where’s your billet?”
“Too far away. I’m sleeping here,” Ralph said into the table.
“No the fuck you aren’t,” Babe said brightly. “Get up. Gene and I’ll walk you over.”
“I didn’t agree to that,” Gene said, but he was already standing up, tugging on Ralph’s arm.
“Medic’s duty,” Babe said. “Agreed to it when you signed up.” He went to Ralph’s other side, and together they hauled the man up. He was more tired and stubborn than drunk, so once they forced him on his feet it was not much to keep him moving towards their billet. He was good for a couple of blocks, and then he stopped suddenly and turned towards Babe.
“Hey, I just realized,” he said, “Germans gave you an early birthday present.”
Babe laughed and ushered Ralph on. “Yeah, guess so. Ain’t that nice of them?”
“Is your birthday soon?” Gene asked.
“May 16.” His expression stilled, thinking, and then he asked, “When’s yours?”
“October. You missed it.”
“Goddamn,” Babe said, and his tone was so overly disappointed that Gene laughed at him. He reached a hand out and brushed his knuckles. Babe smiled back.
From a few yards ahead, Ralph said, “My birthday’s in February, if anyone gives a shit.”
“I don’t.”
“Fuck you.”
When they got to their billet, Babe curled up next to Gene on sofa cushions, claiming to be too tired to go all the way to his billet, even though he stayed awake long after Ralph had passed out and started snoring, playing idly with Gene’s fingers. There was an old, faded scar along Gene’s thumb that Babe kept returning to, as if by running his thumb over it enough times he could erase it. Gene understood the feeling well; he always tried it with the scar over Babe’s palm.
“That’s from a fishing hook,” Gene whispered. “I was nine. My cousin took me out fishing. I wanted to impress him.”
Babe smiled. Gene could tell he was imagining a little Gene in the bayou, trying to fish like an adult and instead slicing his hand through. “When I was nine, I was in a turf war with these kids from a block over. They were hanging around the corner me and my friends hung out at, and we got in a fight. We barely hurt each other, but, boy, was my ma mad. Couldn’t leave the house for two weeks — it was supposed to be a month but she got sick of me.”
“Sick of you? I can’t imagine.” Babe laughed softly. Gene studied the lines on his face that appeared when he smiled. It was a young face, he thought, young like him, young like all of them. It always came as a surprise when Gene remembered how young they were.
“How old will you be turning?” he asked.
“Twenty-two,” Babe said. “How old did you turn in October?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Whaddya know. Same age.” He fell quiet for a moment, still rubbing away at Gene’s scar, then said, “I wish I knew it was your birthday. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Gene laughed lightly. “I didn’t tell anyone. You’re pretty, but you ain’t that special.”
“Aw, he thinks I’m pretty,” Babe said. He had a dopey grin on his face, and his cheeks were slightly flushed.
“You know, I thought about asking you for a cigarette,” Gene said. “I told myself that would be my birthday present: a cigarette and talking to you. Never worked up the courage, though.”
“What? Seriously?” Babe’s eyebrows scrunched together and his mouth fell open. “You’ve been interested in me since October?”
“Yeah. Since Nijmegen, at least.”
Gene did not think much of his answer. He had always known, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he was attracted to Babe far before Babe ever took a second look at him, and he was fine with that. But the way Babe was looking, all big eyes and open mouth, made him flush a little in embarrassment.
“You’ll catch flies,” he said a little defensively.
Babe did close his mouth but the shock remained. He shook his head, speechless.
“What?” Gene snapped.
“October,” Babe repeated. “All this time I could’ve been kissing you, and I was sitting on my ass doing nothing.”
It was not the answer Gene expected, and a surprised laugh bubbled up inside of him. “Well, how long for you?”
“In Bastogne,” he said. “Some time after Julian — you know.” He swallowed anxiously, and Gene turned his hand around in Babe’s and squeezed lightly. “Just about swooned when you said, ‘Babe,’ the first time,” he continued. “Thank God I was sitting down.”
“Well, that’s about two months where I was interested and you weren’t interested at all,” Gene reasoned. “So, only a month and a half of sitting on your ass doing nothing.”
“‘Only’ a month and a half. I’m an idiot.” Babe was smiling though, and he tucked his head into Gene’s chest. “I’ll make it up to you. I’ll get you the world’s greatest birthday present. Don’t know what the hell it’ll be, but it’ll knock your fucking socks off.”
“You don’t need to,” Gene said.
“No shit,” Babe mumbled. “I want to.”
A few moments later, Babe fell asleep, the hand holding Gene’s falling slack. Gene followed closely after, but not before thinking about birthdays and presents and Babe’s champagne pink flush.
“Captain Nixon, sir?”
Nixon turned his head gingerly, aviators sitting on the bridge of his nose. “Yeah?” he said gruffly.
“Sir, I was wondering if you had any champagne you’d be willing to part with?”
Nixon sat up a bit, suddenly interested. “Maybe. What for?”
“It’s Private Heffron’s birthday next week, sir. I thought it might make a decent gift,” Gene said, a little embarrassed. He had thought about lying to save face, but by this point everyone knew he and Babe were close, and he had a gut feeling that Lewis Nixon was more sentimental than he let on.
Sure enough, Nixon grinned. “In that case,” he said, hopping out of the truck and motioning for Gene to follow. They went back inside the officers’ billet up to Nixon’s room on the third floor, where open crates of liquor and wine littered the floor. Nixon walked around them with more care than Gene would have thought possible.
“Looking for any year in particular?” Nixon asked. “
“Whatever you’d be willing to part with, sir,” Gene said. He watched as Nixon searched through his bottles, then asked, “Actually, if you’ve got any from 1923.”
Nixon gave him a curious look. “Hope you know that’s not a great year,” he said. He seemed to think about it for a second, and Gene watched in something approaching horror as realization dawned. Nixon smirked. “Oh, I see what you’re doing. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you, sir.”
For a few moments, Nixon mumbled to himself about disorganized aides as he searched through boxes while Gene stood to the side quietly. A few aides passed by the open door, glancing in curiously before scurrying away. There was another, more confident set of footsteps, and then Winters entered the room.
“Hey, Doc,” he said. Gene nodded back, then wondered belatedly if he should salute. Winters, however, had already moved on to Nixon. “What are you doing, Nix?”
“Looking for Heffron’s birthday champagne,” Nixon said, much to Gene’s chagrin. He picked up a red and grinned. “Hey, look, Dick, here’s yours — your birthday wine anyway. A 1918 Bordeaux blend. Not bad.”
“Great, I was really worried about that,” Winters said flatly. Nixon laughed. “What is birthday wine and why are we looking for Private Heffron’s?”
“Private Heffron’s birthday is next week,” Gene answered before Nixon could. “I thought it would be nice to get him something to celebrate.”
Winters nodded. “And he was born in —”
“In 1923,” Nixon confirmed. “At least, that’s what I’m assuming.”
“Yes,” Gene said.
“Well, tell Private Heffron I said happy birthday. And Nix, whenever you get done, I need you in command.”
“Anything urgent?” Nixon asked. He sat back and looked up at Winters, truly present for the first time since Gene had spoken to him.
“No,” Winters said, “just need some advice. Take your time.”
“Sure, I’ll be there soon,” Nixon said, waving as Winters left. Turning to Gene, he added, “Listen, I don’t think I have any champagne that fits the bill, but how do you feel about a Provence rosé?”
“That’ll work just fine, sir,” Gene said.
“Great.” Nixon pulled out the bottle, a pretty pink color that reminded Gene of Babe’s blush. The label read Château La Gordonne, Depuis 1652.
“How much would you like for it, sir?” he asked as Nixon handed it over.
Nixon waved a hand. “Just don’t tell the guys I’m handing out free wine, and we can call it even.”
“Are you sure?”
“Seriously, Gene, don’t worry about,” Nixon said, his tone of voice oddly serious. He would not quite meet Gene’s eyes. “I get it.”
Something suddenly clicked into place for Gene. He nodded and said, “Thank you, sir,” before heading to his billet to stash the wine and then search out Babe.
As it turned out, Babe found him before he could find Babe, half a loaf of German bread under his arm. It was the kind with seeds that Gene loved.
“You missed lunch,” he said in lieu of a greeting. He tore off a piece of bread and shoved it towards Gene. “Eat.”
“Yessir,” Gene said. He bit into the bread, chewed thoughtfully, then asked, “Do you think Winters and Nixon are like us?”
“What?” Babe said around his own mouthful of bread. “Like queer? Yeah, I’d say so.”
Gene nodded, already feeling a little bit stupid. “Think I’m the last person to figure it out?”
“No. I think you Toccoa guys don’t realize it because you’ve been there since the beginning,” Babe reasoned. “I tried asking Bill and Johnny about it back in Bastogne, and they looked at me like I grew another head, just said they’ve always been like that.”
“Maybe I always knew. Just didn’t have the words for it.”
“I think that’s probably true for a lot of you. Hell, maybe Nix and Winters don’t even know,” Babe said. He then shrugged and threw up his hands. “Or maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know. I didn’t graduate.”
“I didn’t either.”
“So what do we know,” Babe said with a bright grin. “I mean, we’re definitely right, but who knows?”
Gene laughed.
A week later, after the three rounds of singing at dinner and a handful of rounds of card games, they sat together on the top floor of Gene’s billet, in a study so small and crowded no one could hope to find room to sleep. They pulled two chairs over to the window to watch the stars above and the men below and to catch the cool summer night breeze. Babe had stretched his legs up and onto Gene’s lap, balancing his whiskey glass of rosé on his thigh.
“This wine is wasted on me,” Babe said brightly. “A poor American queer chugging it out of a whiskey glass. I hope Hitler is rolling in his grave.”
“Cheers to that,” Gene said. He raised his own glass and clinked it against Babe’s.
“We should do this every year,” he continued. “Steal some Nazi’s wine and get shitfaced.”
“I don’t think half a bottle of wine can get you shitfaced,” Gene said with a smile.
“That won’t stop me from trying,” Babe said, and he drank the remaining wine in his glass like it was a shot before pouring himself another glass. Gene thought about admonishing him, maybe reminding him of the hangover they were fighting off only a week ago, but it was really good wine, so he held out his glass and let Babe pour him another.
“I hope this was a decent present,” Gene said.
Babe smiled softly at Gene and poked the pudge of his stomach with his toes. “‘Course it is,” he said. “Your presence is a present.”
“Mmm. Very clever.”
“Ain’t it?” Babe grinned proudly and leaned back on the back two legs of his chair. Gene stuck out his foot and nudged one of the skyward legs, pleading innocence when Babe fell back and broke the whiskey glass.
Zell am See was not Louisiana — not nearly hot or humid enough, no lizards crawling up under his feet, and no thunderstorms, at least not the kind that boomed and echoed down to the marrow of his bones — but it was sunny, warm, and there was a lake to swim in. As far as places to wait out relocation to Japan went, Zell am See was not too bad.
The week before the army really got itself together was like a vacation. He swam in the lake every day, spent a disastrous afternoon trying to teach Babe how to swim, played a surprisingly decent game of baseball with the guys, and let Babe talk him into one round of poker, in which he won fifty dollars and two packs of cigarettes. It felt a bit like Toccoa again, when the war was a distant, intangible thought in the back of everyone’s head, and so it was a week tinged with bittersweet sort of sadness, spent looking for men who were no longer with them. Some of the men handled it poorly, and Gene had a feeling it would get worse as the summer wore on, but he had spent the war avoiding sadness like the plague. When it came upon him, he welcomed it as best he could.
It was during this time that Babe received his first letter from Guarnere. Guarnere had sent a few letters in the same envelope to the men he was closest with, all bearing the same general message: he and Toye had survived, and they were doing “just fine.”
“Just fine” was doing a lot of heavy lifting, and it was easy enough for anyone to see that Guarnere had sent them the same vaguely optimistic account that they had all sent back home. He wrote clumsily around the details, made a too-obvious joke about pretty nurses, and though he seemed in good spirits, he said nothing of Toye’s. It was easier to ignore that, though, and take “just fine” at face value, and so many of the men did. Babe, for his part, encouraged this. It surprised Gene at first, but he quickly realized it was a measure of Babe’s loyalty to Bill; if Bill wanted everyone to believe he was fine, then Babe was going to tell everyone that he was fine.
He was worried though, more anxious than Gene had ever seen him. His muscles were perpetually tensed, his laughter not loud enough and always coming a second too late. When drills became more regular and patrols and sentry duties were assigned, Babe flung himself into them wholeheartedly. There were times in the early morning, when Gene was awake and found it hard to sleep, that he saw a tall, red-headed figure wandering around the camp restlessly.
Babe did not say much to him about it, because there was not much to say. That, at least, Gene could understand, the suffocating anxiety like water filling his throat, muffling any sound, and that look that clouded over his face sometimes, like he was a lost little kid. What was there for Gene to do besides hold his hand, offer comfort where he could?
They wrote their letters together, Gene replying to Anna and Babe replying to Bill. Babe rewrote his response ten times over, littering the floor of his tent with balled up paper. He leaned against Gene like Gene was the only thing capable of supporting him, and he asked to hear Anna’s latest letter again, Gene’s reply. She was going to Bruxelles soon, desperate to get away from the ghosts in Bastogne, and he translated it for Babe, even though Babe never asked.
“We should go to Brussels,” Babe said quietly into Gene’s shoulder. “Fuck Paris.”
“You could meet her. I think she’d like you.”
“I hope so. I like her already.”
There was a quiet pause. Gene looked at the discarded letters and held onto Babe tightly.
“Is it weird,” Babe said, “if I want to tell Bill about you?”
Gene was silent.
“I won’t,” he continued, “but I want to. And I want to tell him how worried I am, about him and Joe, and Liebgott and Tab, too, about everyone, and that most mornings I think about walking out of camp and never coming back. Like if I can tell him how fucked up I am, I can get him to tell me about how fucked up he is. Like we’re actually fucking friends.”
“You are friends,” Gene said reflexively. “Of course you’re friends.”
Babe sighed deeply, and Gene felt his lungs expand like they were his own. “This shit is so fucking stupid,” he said. The sentence trailed off awkwardly. There was more to say that would not come out.
Gene fished for something comforting and came up empty, so he wrapped an arm around Babe’s shoulders and pulled him in close. They stayed like that for a long stretch of time, quiet and sad, until Babe started fidgeting and Gene pulled back. Babe took out another sheet of paper, and Gene watched as he wrote another letter and sealed it in an envelope without reading it over. He gave it to Gene then fell back on Gene’s cot, pulling a blanket over himself despite the early summer heat.
“Post it for me,” he said, “and then come back and be fucking miserable with me.”
Gene smiled slightly. He pressed a light kiss into Babe’s temple, murmuring, “Sure thing, cher,” into his hair, and left. When he came back, Babe was in the same spot, though the blanket was cast off, and Gene laid down next to him, pressing a kiss to the nape of his neck.
“So,” Ralph said one day when he and Gene were manning the aid station. “Babe, huh?”
Gene put down his book — something French and incredibly dull — and looked up. Ralph was looking back at him in a way that made Gene think he really didn’t want to, and his stomach churned. “What about Babe?” Gene said carefully.
Ralph shrugged helplessly. “He’s pretty great. He’s sort of — funny, y’know.”
If Gene weren’t so terrified, he would have laughed. “Is he?”
“Sure,” Ralph said. He held a straight face for only a few seconds before he leaned his head back and groaned. “Jesus. No, he isn’t, he’s fucking annoying. I don’t know what the fuck I’m saying.”
Gene blinked at him. “Okay.”
“Christ, let me just cut to the chase.” He looked back at Gene, still a little nervous but more sure than before. “I know about you and him.” He stuck out his hand and added, “And before you get all nervous like you do, it’s fine. You’re fine and I’m fine and I’m not goin’ around telling everyone and their ma. I just thought I’d let you know.”
The silence afterward was like the silence after a bomb exploded, like Gene’s ears were stuffed with cotton and all he could hear was the thump of his own heartbeat. He had lost his page in the book he was reading, which was fine because he wasn’t really reading it, anyway. He thought about every moment he and Babe had spent together since Bastogne, wondered which one was the one that Ralph saw and understood, which was the moment that was stolen away from him, which was the moment where he should have turned back.
“Oh, God,” Ralph said nervously. “You’re doing it. Stop it, it’s fine. Really. I’m not — I think it’s fine, really. Good, even. I just thought I’d tell you so — I don’t know, so you’d have a friend in it or something. Like, so you’d know someone’s got your back.”
Slowly, Gene came back to his body, though the anxiety hadn’t totally left him. He tried to process what Ralph was saying but couldn’t really, his mind stuck on one word. “Good?”
Ralph breathed in deeply and gave Gene a sad sort of look. “Yeah, good. You’re good together. You’re happy. I want my buddies to be happy.”
Gene thumbed the pages of his book. There was something strangely empty about the way he was feeling, like there should be more feeling. He could feel a little relief, somewhere distant within him, and a little bit of joy and a little bit of shame at the thought of being seen.
“Does anyone else know?” he asked quietly.
“No, I don’t think so,” Ralph said. “No offense, but I’m your only friend. I think only me and Babe can figure out what you’re thinking.”
Gene smiled despite himself, and slowly he felt the panicked numbness seep out of him and be replaced by something warm and light. “How’d you figure it out?”
“My ma worked for two old ladies like that,” Ralph said. “Never married, slept in the same bed, rich and old enough to not get any shit about it. Drove my dad up the wall but Ma loved them. You and Babe remind me of how they acted with each other.”
He could picture it clearly in his mind: him and Babe, fifty years in the future living in a shabby brownstone, the kids of the neighborhood playing marbles on their stoop with Babe while Gene tried sealing a crack in their windows, bickering like an old married couple. One of the kids growing up and telling their friends about the two old men down the block, war buddies who met back up stateside and never separated. He wanted it so bad it ached like a gunshot in his chest.
“I think Winters and Nixon are more the old married couple,” Gene said, trying to change the topic of conversation.
Ralph, the wonderful friend that he was, went along easily. He snorted and said, “Yeah, right. Can you imagine, the two of them hitching up right under Sobel’s nose. God, I wish it were true.”
Gene gave him a sly smile. “I’m serious,” he said, and watched in glee as Ralph tried to piece it together.
“What? Do you really think —” Ralph cut himself off, expression deadly serious, and Gene laughed.
“Can you remember the last time you saw Nixon without Winters?” he asked.
“Holy shit,” Ralph said in amazement. “They’ve totally been fucking.”
They got the confirmation one night when they were sneaking out to the lake with beers and cigarettes in hand. The men usually cleared out of the lake once the sun went down, so it was quiet and empty and dark, and they could hold hands and stargaze and kiss as frequently as they pleased.
When they got to the dock, though, there were two figures already sitting at the end, closer together than they had to be. Gene saw them first and grabbed the back of Babe’s shirt, pulling him back into the treeline and pointing silently. Babe stumbled but mercifully made no noise.
Gene had no intention of disrupting their peace or nosing his way into their business, and was about to pull Babe back to camp with him when Babe reached out and grabbed his arm.
“Holy shit,” he breathed out. “That’s definitely Winters on the left.”
Curiosity got the best of him. He turned around and looked closely. By the weak light of the moon, he saw a glimpse of red hair. It meant nothing, really, until the figure turned his head and Gene recognized the profile from midnight marches in Georgia.
“Then on the right,” Gene said, “that’ll be —”
The other figure, dark haired, stubbly, smoking, leaning in —
Babe grinned and covered his mouth with his hand. Gene really did start pulling him back then, feeling like a schoolboy in trouble, wondering if this was how Babe got caught by the nuns. When they were back on the gravel road far enough away from the dock, Babe burst out laughing, and Gene didn’t bother fighting the grin that pulled at his lips.
“Christ, I love being right,” Babe said around giggles. “I fucking knew it. I had them pegged since day one.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“God, I wish I could rub this in Bill’s face. I told him, I fucking told him Winters and Nix were —”
Gene rolled his eyes. “Savor it. It’s the only time you’ll ever be right in your life.”
Babe shoved him hard.
When they got back to camp, Babe peeled off to join a game of poker with Sisk and Garcia, giving the beer to Gene and asking for a rain check. Gene went back to his tent and curled up on his cot, opened the book Anna had sent him, and did not read a single word.
It was one thing to think, idly, that maybe Winters and Nixon were queer like him and Babe, and it was another to see them being queer. There was a strange disconnect in his brain at the thought, and then he realized it was because these were the first people he had seen being queer. He had no images of queerness in his mind beyond Babe. Though he knew, intellectually, that they were not the only ones, it was hard to believe it when they were surrounded by men who spoke only of women and wives.
As it sank in, he felt that strange mix of relief and fear that he felt with Ralph come again, that prickling sensation of being seen. It should have been good, wholly and entirely good, but there was still a chill along his spine, a sixth sense for disaster, always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
There were moments after battle when the bullets had mostly ceased, but the fear lingered. Anything, a twig breaking, a brick falling, became shrapnel, a gunshot. The body adapted to its surroundings, that’s what their instructors said back in Toccoa. This, Gene realized, was his problem. After twenty years of hiding, the mere act of being seen was unnatural to him. In his own way, he had spent his life straining to hear gunshots, and now that there were none, he was left adrift.
When Ralph came into their shared tent, he had a slightly tipsy Babe at his heels. In feigned annoyance, he shoved Babe towards Gene’s cot and face planted onto his own. “Take your boy,” he said into his pillow. “I played one round and he bled me dry. Fuck’s sake.”
Babe had a bright grin on his lips as he unlaced his boots and crawled under Gene’s blanket. His cheeks were warm where they pressed into Gene’s shoulder. “Maybe we’ll get that five-star dinner after all,” he said brightly. “Thanks, Ralph!”
“Are you staying here tonight?” Gene asked. They hadn’t spent the night together since coming to Zell Am See, but if Ralph knew and didn’t care….
“If you don’t mind,” Babe said. He tucked himself against Gene’s chest and tangled their legs together. “Garcia’s taking the afterparty to our tent.”
“My wife’ll hate you,” Ralph said. “Stealing our hard earned money.”
“Your wife’ll hate you for betting it,” Babe said. As he moved to grab his jacket from the foot of the cot, he elbowed Gene in the gut, smiling apologetically when Gene glared at him. He threw his jacket at Ralph, who did not stir when it landed on his head and right shoulder.
“Yeah,” he said mournfully.
Babe laughed at him and settled back into Gene’s arms.
The relief and the fear again. The warmth of friendship, the chill along his spine. I can adapt to this, Gene thought. I can adapt.
Babe was waiting outside when Gene stepped out of the makeshift operating room, smoking a cigarette. He was kicked out by the surgeon, who had warmed up to him and him alone, and said something about being ineffective when sleep-deprived. Babe’s knuckles were split open and bloody, and Gene felt irrationally angry at him. He did not take the cigarette when Babe offered it, and instead lit his own.
“Speirs said he was gonna make it,” Babe said.
“Yeah,” Gene said. “Did you beat the shit out of that replacement?”
“Sure.” Babe ran his thumb over his knuckles, streaking his skin with red. Some of the scabs began bleeding again. “Wasn’t worth it. My hands hurt like hell.”
“I bet,” Gene snapped. He sounded mean even to his own ears. “Fucking Christ. I ain’t a goddamn nurse.”
There was an awkward silent beat. The sun was rising again, the dawn of another beautiful summer day, and Gene thought about tying a rope around the sun and yanking down hard, so no one would see the sun until he said so.
“It was bad, then?” Babe asked quietly.
Gene rubbed a hand over his face. “I saw his brain,” he said into his palm. “We sawed open his skull and we dug a bullet out of his brain.”
He saw it clear as day in his mind: the pulse of it, sticky with blood, the white of his bone, the layers of his skin. The gentleness of Speirs hands holding Grant’s lifeless ones, and the coiled hatred in the muscles of his back. He had a strong stomach — he could withstand a lot, even as a child hiding behind his Mémère’s rosary, but right after the surgery he left the room and vomited outside the back entrance to the building.
“Doc said he’d be fine, though,” Gene said, more to himself than Babe. “We were quick enough for that. And lucky enough.”
“Fuck,” Babe muttered. “Doesn’t it make you mad? I’m so fucking angry. There was — there was a moment, when I first saw that guy, that I was scared of what I’d do. I could’ve killed him. I really could’ve.”
“Dunno.” He couldn’t fathom the energy it took to even muster that kind of rage. When he thought about Grant, the American bullet that got lodged in his skull, all he wanted was to curl up somewhere, fall asleep, and never wake up. “Think I’m too tired for that.”
He could feel Babe’s stare on the side of his head, and he knew immediately that he was too tired to deal with this, too. “Help me to bed?” he asked, and he let Babe lead him to his tent and wrap a blanket around his shoulders.
VJ Day came late enough in the summer that the taste of fall was just beginning to form on the tip of his tongue. The longer the summer waned on the less the Pacific arena felt real, the more he began thinking of Austrian autumns and fearing another bitterly cold winter, the more it felt like Europe was just Purgatory and he had died months ago. With VJ Day came plans to move men out of Austria, out of Europe. With VJ Day came the certainty of going home.
He had not been home in three years. He was nineteen years old when he said goodbye to his family, and he was now a few months shy of twenty three. His bedroom at home was a faint, hazy memory in his mind by now, and he wondered if his parents would have moved his belongings or cleaned and dusted in his absence. He wondered if they would recognize him.
A part of him that wanted to put it off, wanted to cling to the order and familiarity of the army for just a bit longer. There was an open call for men to stay behind an extra few months, to assist with occupation and the removal of troops, and Gene nearly signed up for it before Babe talked him out of it. “You’ve done your time,” he said, as if it were true, as if it were something that mattered.
He kept returning to the conversation he and Babe had outside Stuttgart and to the way Babe spoke so freely, so easily. Everything poured out of Babe like a fountain, thin streams of water glittering in the sunlight as they poured out of an ancient stone sculpture. That was probably what drew Gene to Babe in the first place, before he even realized it himself: the ease of his smiles and frowns, his laughs, his complaints, everything. Open in a way Gene was too frightened to be.
He was patient, too. He let Gene drag him to the dock nearly every day and sat beside him in silence as Gene lost himself in his thoughts, waited as Gene opened and closed his mouth like a fish out of water.
“Don’t force yourself to say anything for my sake,” Babe said one lakeside evening. “I’ll figure it out. I always do.”
Gene took his cigarette and breathed the tobacco in deeply. “I have to. It’s about going home.”
Babe was silent for a moment. “Is it about us? After all — this?”
“A little bit. And some."
“Can I say my bit now?”
“No, you wait your turn,” Gene said lightly. The anxiety lifted slightly at the sound of Babe’s laughter.
In the meantime, there was the army, and there was mundanity. Between patrols and shifts in the aid station, he got his affairs in order. He sent his Louisiana address to Anna. He asked his mother to gather the paychecks he had sent home together, to make sure there were none missing. He tried to decide if it was worth it to drag his French books back home, even though he didn’t like most of them. It was worth it, of course, because he had underlined the bits he thought Renée might like.
The war was ending. He could not get used to it.
“I’m scared of what I want. Ashamed of it. Sometimes, I think that’s why they picked me out to be a medic. They could tell that if I want something, I’ll never take it. Because I want it. You’re the first person I ever really let myself want.”
On the bedside dresser next to them, their weekend leave passes sat gathering condensation from a glass of water. The window to their hotel room was open, the sounds of a Salzburg evening drifting through. It was not Paris, but it was close enough. The light was fading, and the streetlamps cast odd shadows along the walls.
“What do you want?” Babe asked.
You, he wanted to say. He looked at Babe’s back, at his favorite freckle constellation, a wonky, lopsided heart-shaped thing that he would never, ever tell Babe about.
Babe turned around in Gene’s arms and brought his hands up to cup Gene’s face. “What do you want?”
Gene shook his head. “It’s not possible.”
Outside, a car engine started up with a loud bang.
“There are these parties I’ve heard about,” Babe said after a pause, “in Center City for people like us. A couple of bars up there, too. Right before I shipped out, I went to one and I stood outside it for ten minutes, just smoking, trying to work up the courage to go in. And then I gave up and took the bus back south and went to the dance hall I always went to and danced with a gal and felt miserable the whole night. Back in Holland, all I could think about was that if I got out alive, I would go back to that bar and walk in and have the time of my life. But now I’m thinking I’d probably be miserable there, too, if I wasn’t dancing with you.”
Gene’s stomach sank. “Do you really think we could live like that?”
“I wanna try,” Babe said desperately. “Don’t you wanna try?”
“Of course I want to. But it’s not that simple —”
“It is, Gene,” he said. His eyes were rimmed red, and Gene was sure his own were, too. “It really is.”
In the morning, they got coffee and bread from a bakery down the road, then returned to their hotel room. Gene drew the curtains shut to block out the passage of time, and he kissed Babe like it was the last time. This was how lovers had sex at the start of the war, Gene thought, when soldiers were shipping out to die. He had made it through alive, and he was kissing like a dead man. What a shameful thing to be. What a shameful thing to want.
I’ll write you.
I know, Gene, I know. I’ll miss your voice, though.
Maybe I’ll get a phone.
Maybe.
I’m sorry, Babe, I know —
You don’t need to explain yourself, Gene, Christ. I get it. I really do. I don’t blame you.
Yeah.
I’m serious. I don’t blame you. I mean, if you get married, I’ll hate your wife, but I won’t hate you.
Don’t joke about that.
Sorry.
We’ll see each other again.
Sure.
And I won’t get married.
Fuck’s sake, if you’re just doing this so you can spend your life being miserable —
I’m not. Sorry.
You deserve to be happy. And so do I.
Yeah. I know.
Okay. How ‘bout this. We wait. We give it a year or two. And if both of us still want to be together, we revisit this. How’s that sound?
That’s —
I’m not saying we make plans or anything now, nothing like that. I’m just suggesting we — talk again. That’s all.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
You still have to write me, though. At least a little bit.
Wouldn’t dream of leaving you in the dark.
And you need to get a phone.
You’re pushing your luck, Heffron.
Hey, Babe, Doc, what’re you two doing up here?
Shooting the shit. What’s up?
You’ve just about missed dinner, you’re lucky I’ve saved you some.
What a fuckin’ gentleman.
Yeah, I know.
You coming, Gene?
I’ll be down in a bit.
Okay. I’ll save you some.
Thanks.
He came home to a thunderstorm, a holdout from summer, like it was saving itself just for him. It was his cousin that picked him up. His battered red pick-up was less red and more battered than Gene remembered. Gene did not remember the last time his cousin hugged him.
His wife chatted away in the front seat, holding the baby in her lap, cooing when it started crying. She spoke of all that he had missed, the river flooding its banks last summer, the Mardi Gras fiasco, the leaky faucet at the Lacroix’s. She asked if it was too bad, being over there, and Gene lied. The sky cleared up.
They had put tables in the yard, the same setup used during Easter lunch. Cousin Jerry took his duffel out of his hands, said I’ll put that away, and shoved him towards the sharks, weeping aunts, gruff uncles, nieces and nephews who barely recognized him. Someone had put another coat of whitewash on the house. He hoped it was not for his return, but it was, of course. His father didn’t admit to doing it. Resentfully, Gene thought, I got it from you. This was all from you. The malice was washed away quickly, replaced, as always, with guilt.
His mother hugged him tightly, but she let him go quickly. This was her compromise.
He stayed as long as he could before it became too much, before he had to hide himself in his bedroom. His duffel bag was placed on the center of his bed. The room had been cleaned before his arrival. He could see the residue on the window panes.
His mother knocked on the door half an hour later. “They’re askin’ for you, darling,” she murmured. “I’ll tell them you’re tired, if you want.” Gene nodded.
She didn’t leave right away. She sat on the bed next to him where he was curled on his side, the fetal position. She rubbed a hand over his arm.
“You don’t need to be happy yet, or at all,” she said. “But you need to know you’re loved.”
October 22
Dear Gene,
It’s been 8 hours since I got off the train and I miss you like hell. I’ll probably wait a few days before I post this, just to make sure you’re home when it arrives, but I wanted to let you know I’m thinking about you.
My family was happy to see me and I was happy to see them, but now that I’m in my old bedroom I feel like shit. Being with you I forgot there was a reason I didn’t go to those dances or bars or nothing, but my ma’s got all these fucking crosses all over the house, and she was talking about inviting the neighbor’s daughter over and I couldn’t stand it. I know what you said about real life and waiting and I know I agreed but I miss you and I miss how you made everything okay.
If it’s bad for me I think it’ll probably be bad for you, so remember that Edward from Philly is crazy about you and always will be and that he’ll never regret any of it. You can come up anytime you want even if you don’t tell me before you leave. Just hop on a train and see me cause I’ll always be real glad to see you.
Babe